What does it mean to Burn the Ships?

It’s commitment. It’s the no going back level of commitment.

If you’re looking past the bow of your ship, looking onto the horizon, and a choice is before you, a path has to be taken.

However, there’s always an unspoken third path. Behind the stern of the ship, in the wake of the waters you’ve already cut through, is the tempting way to turn back the way you came from.

The retreat to the familiar.

It feels safe because you know it.

The comforting memories of the days before the dilemmas of your current crossroads began to pull at you.

As was true for the Israelites, so there’s application for us: you’re never going to get to the Promised Land if you want to go back to Egypt.

Burn the ships means there’s no going back.

The only way is forward, and the only way out is through.

It’s tough to make a commitment, isn’t it? Decision making is hard in itself, and that’s a conversation for another day. The specific angle I’m aiming for here is how we move forward.

Do we commit internally with everything we’ve got, or do we comply externally just to keep the peace?

One of those paths is faith, and one of those paths is fear.

G.K. Chesterton captures this beautifully with a thought about Joan of Arc, who seems to also embody some kind of Lancelot ideal.

That part about being all talk stings, because that’s the ditch outside of the Lancelot ideal it’s so easy for the writer to fall into. I’m doing a lot of talking and at some point my life will either show an embodiment of courage to take action, or I’ll be exposed as a windbag who’s a wild spectator that did nothing.

While passion and choosing your path like a thunderbolt is important, there also has to be some guiding boundaries that keep you grounded. One such example of someone who put all she had out there but crashed into the rocks herself was the Queen of rock and roll, Janis Joplin. My dad and I have been listening to her together a lot lately and enjoying her music, even if her story was tragic.

Janis burned the ships to a hum drum life of settling into the polite expectations of society. She didn’t hold back. She put her feelings first and let them lead her like a thunderbolt. She gave everything she had, including her life, and that rawness is what made her music so magnetic. Tragically, her life wasn’t guided by life-giving purpose and she died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.

Casting off restraint does burn the ships, and many have been tempted to cross boundaries in the exploration of empty promises to seek fulfillment in pastures boasting greener grass. Feelings alone will not get us there. They cannot be our master, lest we find our feelings be more of a harsh, cruel mistress than a benevolent kinsman redeemer.

Reckless abandon isn’t the only way we can put our feelings at the helm, though. If we make feelings our captain, then we will have to wait and see how the wind is blowing that day before we choose our heading. Should we allow ourselves to be directed by feelings in this way, bowing to their whims, then we will chase the wind without ever catching it. We will drift. We will go wherever the wind blows us, and perhaps then we will discover we had more in common with Janis Joplin than we thought we had. Total commitment needs direction.

One picture I love that gives a vivid visual to burning the ships comes in the two-novel series Fin’s Revolution by A.S. Peterson. In this two book series, The Fiddler’s Gun and Fiddler’s Green, our protagonists are forced with decision after decision there’s no going back from. The only way is forward, forward with purpose and intent, and it requires the utmost of commitments. Compliance by the sidelines won’t work for them, and it would lead to catastrophe. If you haven’t read them, they’re spectacular and one of my favorite works of fiction.

That’s a long lead up, so what does burning the ships mean for us in our daily lives? It means that with those you love, there is no plan B. There’s no hedging your bets. There’s no keeping your options open in case something, or someone, better comes along. There’s no exit strategy.

Burning the ships in a marriage is not about choosing between two options ahead of you, but to burn down the option of retreat. If you’re mindset is, “I’ll do this as long as it works for me,” then you’re commitment is to yourself. If you’re mindset is, “Your ship is my ship, and your sea is my sea, and regardless of what storm or shipwreck or failure may come, I refuse to abandon ship, and I’m going to hold you in my arms as we drown together,” you might just be committed.

Have you deliberately chosen to remove every alternative to faithfulness?

If not, then instead of amplifying the purpose with your marriage, you’re splitting it. When your commitments were built on insurance policies based on if what you’re doing doesn’t work out, the only thunderbolt you’re going to experience is the one that divides you and your spouse as it splinters your purpose like a tree blasted by lightning.

Over the course of February this year, the weekly issues of Fightin’ Poseidon dealt specifically with marriage. First up was fighting contempt in your marriage and then we followed up with how great the woman’s influence can be, a true river of life to her marriage, family, and the world around her. Last week, we sent a cannonball at the sirens that would endanger the purity of marriage. These writings were not primarily about power dynamics or romance, though we did talk about those, but about shared direction. Our culture uses the phrase ride or die to denote blind loyalty, but in the sense we’re talking about here it’s the commitment to burn down your options where all that’s left is embracing the heading of there being no version of the future where I win and you lose. Whether we sink or swim, and we do it together.

With shared direction, you have more momentum to move forward. When two are committed to one another and the direction they’re going, you become force multipliers to each other. When there’s mere compliance, or box checking, or doing just enough to keep them off your back, you become momentum splitters. Your thing is your thing and my thing is my thing, and let’s make sure to keep them separate and stay at a safe arms length from each other. It may feel safe, but without shared risk and the compounding of energies, your purpose is split when your ship that’s meant to be built on two who become one fractures and begins to break apart as there are two directions, two strategies, and two survival plans. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Commitment is also not just hanging on. It’s realizing that your spouses boat is your boat, and loving your spouse equates with loving yourself. If they’ve sprung a leak, lording yourself over them and telling them how they need to patch it isn’t going to help. Seeing them suffering and backing away is going to deepen the wound. That’s a separation. You don’t know what to say? Help them patch it. Be there. Be present. Make some physical contact to communicate it. Be the answer to your spouses prayers. This really comes with a dying of self, the mindset that I’m going to give you all I’ve got to help keep you afloat. Now, one can NEVER be the only thing that keeps another afloat. We can only support the other. Be there for each other. If we try to be the sole thing that holds up the other, any of us will crumble beneath that weight.

The true way of pursuing one another and growing closer to one another is by seeking the Lord. As the old diagram goes, if we’re looking at a triangle and the Lord is at the top corner and a husband and wife are at the bottom corners, the closer they grow to the Lord, the closer they grow to each other.

What route back to Egypt are you holding onto?

What glorious futures are you forsaking?

Maybe you're keeping a mental escape hatch for the days it’s not going your way or you feel like an easier route.

Are you fantasizing about a parallel life, a story that wasn’t written but you’d like to read, where things were different?

Are you keeping an emotional escape hatch to a place that looks a lot like the perception of the better days where you came from?

Are you treating your husband or wife like a variable in your equation instead of a constant?

If so, today is the day to burn the ship and don’t look back.

Longing to go back to the familiar country isn’t unique to us.

It isn’t even unique to the Israelites.

It’s been a temptation for all who have sought a greater country.

Burning the ships is one more way of dying to self. It’s dying to our wisdom and impulses and desires, putting them aside because we believe the Lord is right.

Our faith often falters and fails because we look back with greater longing than we look forward.

That faltering, as James says, is double-minded and unstable. Not to be trusted.

All of this is hard. I’ve walked it. I’ve faltered on the walk. I’ve looked back only to have tripped and fallen again. Trying to do it on your own, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, doesn’t even get you there. Which direction is your heart being steered by? It is a deceitful thing, after all. (Jeremiah‬ ‭17‬:‭9‬)

Our feelings and emotions, while they may tempt us to turn back, can also serve as fuel for the journey ahead. Firey passions make excellent fuel for the path forward. They’re just lousy at charting a direction.

Burning the ships is about removing the possibility of retreat. There’s still opportunities for how to advance ahead. How to keep going and keep growing.

I’ve taken up enough space today, so we’ll be talking about the advance in the near future.

Thanks for reading. If you know someone who needs to quit wavering between two opinions and burn the ships, forward this to them. Maybe even tell them how you’re tempted to waver.

Lay down fear. Embrace faith.

Light the fuel. Move forward.

Stay Anchored and keep fighting the good fight,

~ J.P. Simons ⚓️

PS: If you haven’t already ordered it, please check out my first book, Pray Then Plow: Practical Steps For Men Who Won’t Give Up.

How fitting that this week’s Deep Dive from Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (1692) by Thomas Brooks is on making the soul bold to venture into sin. We can grow bold to live by our wisdom. We can grow bold to abandon the Lord and those we’ve entered covenant with. We can grow bold with eyes filled with green envy for what we do not have as contemptuous rot fills our heart for what we do have.

DEVICE 7: BY MAKING THE SOUL BOLD TO VENTURE UPON THE OCCASIONS OF SIN

Says Satan, You may walk by the harlot's door though you won't go into the harlot's bed; you may sit and sup with the drunkard, though you won't be drunk with the drunkard; you may look upon Jezebel's beauty, and you may play and toy with Delilah, though you do not commit wickedness with the one or the other; you may with Achan handle the golden wedge, though you do not steal the golden wedge.

Remedy (1). The first remedy is, solemnly to dwell upon those scriptures which expressly command us to avoid the occasions of sin, and the least appearance of evil (1 Thess. 5:22): 'Abstain from all appearance of evil.' Whatever is heterodox, unsound and unsavory, shun it, as you would do a serpent in your way, or poison in your food. Epiphanius says that in the old law, when any dead body was carried by any house, they were enjoined to shut their doors and windows. Theodosius tore the Arian's arguments presented to him in writing, because he found them repugnant to the Scriptures. Augustine retracted even ironies, because they had the appearance of lying.

When God had commanded the Jews to abstain from swine's flesh, they would not so much as name it—but in their common talk would call a sow another thing. To abstain from all appearance of evil, is to do nothing wherein sin appears, or which has a shadow of sin. Bernard 'Abstained from whatever is of evil show, or of ill report, that he may neither wound conscience nor credit.' We must shun and be shy of the very show and shadow of sin, if either we have a regard to. our credit abroad, or our comfort at home.

It was good counsel that Livia gave her husband Augustus: 'It behooves you not only not to do wrong—but not to seem to do so.' So Jude 23, 'And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.' It is a phrase taken from legal uncleanness, which was contracted by touching the houses, the vessels, the garments, of unclean people. Under the law, men might not touch a menstruous cloth, nor would God accept of a blemished peace-offering. So we must not only hate and avoid gross sins—but everything that may carry a savor or suspicion of sin; we must abhor the very signs and tokens of sin. So in Prov. 5:8, 'Remove your way far from her, and come not near the door of her house.' He who would not be burnt, must dread the fire; he who would not hear the bell, must not meddle with the rope. One speaks of two young men that flung away their belts, when, being in an idol's temple, the laving water fell upon them, detesting, says the historian, the garment spotted by the flesh. One said, As often as I have been among vain men, I returned home less a man than I was before.

To venture upon the occasion of sin, and then to pray, 'Lead us not into temptation,' is all one as to thrust your finger into the fire, and then to pray that it might not be burnt. So, in Prov. 4:14, 15, you have another command: 'Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men: avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.' This triple gradation of Solomon shows with a great emphasis, how necessary it is for men to flee from all appearance of sin, as the seaman shuns rocks and shelves; and as men shun those who have the plague-sores running upon them. As weeds endanger the corn, as an infection endangers the blood, or as an infected house endanger the neighborhood; so does the company of the wicked endanger the godly. Friendship with wicked consorts is one of the strongest chains of hell, and binds us to a participation in both their sin and their punishment.

Remedy (2). The second remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to consider, That ordinarily there is no conquest over sin, without the soul turning from the occasion of sin. It is impossible for that man to get the conquest of sin—who plays and sports with the occasions of sin. God will not remove the temptation to sin, except you turn from the occasion of sin. It is a just and righteous thing with God, that he should fall into the pit, who will adventure to dance upon the brink of the pit, and that he should be a slave to sin, that will not flee from the occasions of sin. As long as there is fuel in our hearts for a temptation, we cannot be secure. He who has gunpowder about him had need keep far enough off from sparks. To rush upon the occasions of sin is both to tempt ourselves, and to tempt Satan to tempt our souls! It is very rare that any soul plays with the occasions of sin—but that soul is then ensnared by sin!

The fable says, that the butterfly asked the owl how she should deal with the fire which had singed her wings, who counseled her not to behold so much as its smoke.

It is seldom that God keeps that soul from the acts of sin, who will not keep off from the occasions of sin. He who adventures upon the occasions of sin, is as he who would quench the fire with gasoline. Ah, souls, often remember how frequently you have been overcome by sin, when you have boldly gone upon the occasions of sin! Look back, souls, to the days of your vanity, wherein you have been as easily conquered as tempted, vanquished as assaulted—when you have played with the occasions of sin. As you would for the future be kept from the acting of sin, and be made victorious over sin, oh! flee from the occasions of sin!

Remedy (3). The third remedy against this device of Satan is, seriously to consider, That other precious saints, who were once glorious on earth, and are now triumphing in heaven, have turned from the occasion of sin, as hell itself; as you may see in Joseph (Gen. 39:10), 'And it came to pass, as she spoke to Joseph day by day, that he hearkened not unto her, to lie by her, or to be with her.' Joseph was famous for all the four cardinal virtues, if ever any were. In this one temptation you may see his fortitude, justice, temperance, and prudence, in that he shuns the occasion: for he would not so much as be with her. And what a man is indeed, that he is in a temptation, which is but a tap to give vent to corruption. The Nazarite might not only not drink wine—but not taste a grape, or the husk of a grape. The leper was to shave his hair, and pare his nails.

The devil knows that corrupt nature has a seed-plot for all sin, which being drawn forth and watered by some sinful occasion, is soon set a-work to the producing of death and destruction. God will not remove the temptation, until we remove the occasion to temptation. A bird whiles aloft is safe—but she comes not near the snare, without danger. The shunning the occasions of sin renders a man most like the godliest of men. A soul eminently gracious dares not come near the temptation. So Job 31:1, 'I made a covenant with my eyes not to look with lust upon a young woman.' I set a watch at the entrance of my senses, that my soul might not by them be infected or endangered. The eye is the window of the soul, and if that should be always open, the soul might smart for it. A man may not look intently upon that, that he may not love entirely. The disciples were set a-gog, by beholding the beauty of the temple. It is best and safest to have the eye always fixed upon the highest and noblest objects: as the mariner's eye is fixed upon the star, when their hand is on the stern. So David, when he was himself, he shuns the occasion of sin (Psalm 26:4, 5): 'I do not spend time with liars or go along with hypocrites. I hate the gatherings of those who do evil, and I refuse to join in with the wicked.'

Stories speak of some who could not sleep when they thought of the trophies of other worthies that went before them. The highest and choicest examples are to some, and should be to all, very quickening and provoking; and oh that the examples of those worthy saints, David, Joseph, and Job, might prevail with all your souls to shun and avoid the occasions of sin! Everyone should strive to be like them in grace, that they desire to be equal with in glory. He who shoots at the sun, though he be far short, will shoot higher than he who aims at a shrub. It is best, and it speaks out much of Christ within, to eye the highest and the worthiest examples.

Remedy (4). The fourth remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to consider, That the avoiding the occasions of sin, is an evidence of grace, and that which lifts up a man above most other men in the world. That a man is indeed, which he is in temptation; and when sinful occasions present themselves before the soul, this speaks out both the truth and the strength of grace; when with Lot, a man can be chaste in Sodom, and with Timothy can live temperate in Asia, among the luxurious Ephesians; and with Job can walk uprightly in the land of Uz, where the people were profane in their lives, and superstitious in their worship; and with Daniel can be holy in Babylon; and with Abraham, righteous in Chaldea; and with Nehemiah, zealous in Damascus, etc.

Many a wicked man is full of corruption—but shows it not for lack of occasion; but that man is surely godly, who in his course will not be bad, though tempted by occasions to sin. A Christless soul is so far from refusing occasions to sin, when they come in his way, that he looks and longs after them, and rather than he will go without them he will buy them, not only with love or money—but also with the loss of his soul! Nothing but grace can fence a man against the occasions of sin, when he is strongly tempted thereunto. Therefore, as you would cherish a precious evidence in your own bosoms of the truth and strength of your graces, shun all sinful occasions.

Plutarch says of Demosthenes, that he was excellent at praising the worthy acts of his ancestors—but not so at imitating them. Oh that this were not applicable to many professors in our times!

~ Thomas Brooks