Hunt For Him

Hunt What Matters

Jake Bowman

Good soil.

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Planting season is just around the corner.  Green will soon be the dominant color on the landscape again, chasing away the browns, tans, and muted earth tones of winter.  Blue skies are advancing, grey skies are retreating. Personally, I prefer the colder temperatures, the ability to see deer sign clearly, working on habitat improvements and hanging stands without sweating profusely, and most of all, the absence of mosquitoes.  I’m one of those odd people that enjoy the barren, cold blanket of winter. I’d rather sit by the fire than sit by the pool.

Still, I welcome spring.  It is a time of growth and multiplying.  Spring is necessary to bring forth new life and to revitalize those that survived the lack brought about by winter.  The deer need green food to browse on, crops need planted, and newborn wildlife need a hospitable environment to survive and thrive.  

Many of us are focused on planning and planting summer food plots this time of year to help improve our hunting properties. We want to keep deer on our property and provide them with great nutrition, particularly while the does are nursing fawns and bucks are growing their antlers.

Growing anything well requires good soil.  Good soil needs to have the proper pH, nutrient content, moisture content, depth, and be free from weeds. It takes a lot of work to prepare a productive seed bed. Unwanted plants must be ripped up, plowed under, destroyed. They must be killed so the desirable plants can live, produce fruit, and multiply. Hardened soil must be disturbed, plowed, torn apart, and exposed to the light to become good soil. After all this violent disruption, the soil is ready to receive the seed and produce fruit for all to enjoy.

I want to be good soil.  I want my life to “…bear fruit, thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold.” (Mark 4:20).  Becoming good soil isn’t a comfortable process and can be very painful, but what a blessed disruption.  The thorns in my life must be ripped out and killed. These thorns are “…the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things…” (Mark 4:19).  Thorns are violent and should be battled as such. Thorns don’t give up easily. Some are rooted so deeply, we can’t get rid of them on our own, we need help from Him, the Gardener of our soul.  He won’t trespass against our will, we must surrender, unlock the gate, and allow Him to do His work. And allow Him we should. No matter how much it hurts, healing will come and the soil will be restored.  If left in place, the thorns will occupy the soil and choke out the precious Seed. His Word is the precious Seed and the beginning of all life. It is the Seed of all seeds, the Seed of life, from which all life grows, the source of life from the very beginning:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” – John 1:1

Along with removing the thorns in my life, I must have the depth of soil necessary to bury, protect, and sustain the Seed as it takes root.  Shallow soil won’t do. Shallow, weak faith won’t multiply, it won’t persevere during tribulation and persecution, it won’t bear fruit, it will let the Seed wither and die (Mark 4:6).  Nor will shallow soil protect the Seed from Satan, he will easily pluck it away (Mark 4:15).

Faith, like soil, is deepened by disruption.  It’s the times when my life is not going smoothly that bring me closer to Him.  These are the times He has his hand on the plow, He is working the ground, and preparing the Seedbed.  I welcome the Blessed Disruption. Adversity, suffering, struggle, discipline. These things I embrace, they deepen the soil.

(Not) About Me

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Hunt for Him is not about me.  Hunt for Him is about Him.

Having said that, you may still want to know something about the man He inspired to create Hunt for Him.  My name is Jake Bowman and I’m completely, and ever increasingly, in love with my beautiful wife Mary and we have four precious children together, Cora, Eliza, Judah and Ezra. “You’ve got your hands full!” is something we hear on almost a daily basis. Together, we’ve embraced this observation from outsiders and affectionately call ourselves the “Handful of Bowmans”. The true meaning of this for us is that we are a handful because we are held in His hand. The handful is His, and because of this, we not only have our hands full, we have our hearts full.

As my last name conveniently implies, I’m passionate about archery, bowhunting, and the outdoors.  Hunt for Him exists in response to His calling to inspire others to pursue Him above all else, to Hunt for Him.  Ultimately, the best way to tell you who I am is to share with you my number one Priority in life.

In life, like building a house, the foundation must come first.  The foundation is the most important part of the house, and First things must come first.  The bigger and stronger the foundation, the bigger and stronger the rest of the house will be.  When the foundation is strong and First things are put first, second things aren’t diminished, they are increased.  Christianity is the foundation of my life. Why? Because after asking and honestly investigating the hardest questions I could possibly ask, I’ve found that Christianity offers the most reasonable and logical explanation of why I exist and what will happen after I die.  It may seem odd to some but I think about death daily. Thinking about my own inevitable death has shaped my priorities more than anything else.  For me, thinking about my death melts away all of the facets of this existence that are not important. Death reveals what matters in life. Death shows me what I should be aiming for, it shows me the True Target at the end of life’s range. Confronting my mortality forces the question, what really matters?  What (or rather Who) should be the aim of my life?

There was a time when I was as skeptical as any other non-Christian and although I still experience times of doubt like most believers, I’ve decided to plant my soul’s flag here. Truth be known, no matter what you believe, you are exercising faith and you must decide where to plant your flag.  First, I believe there is sufficient historical and factual evidence that Christianity is the true explanation of existence and second, what do I have to lose? If Christianity isn’t true, I’ve lost nothing, if it is, I’ve gained Everything.  

For this reason, I’m passionate about providing a fresh perspective of Jesus that people can connect with, particularly men. I see a lot men who have been led to believe that to be a Christian they have to become boring, weak, passive and feminine.  Somehow there has been a misconception in our culture that Jesus was passive and weak. How completely untrue this is! Jesus was meek, which is the opposite of weak. More on this topic later. So, who I am flows completely from my first Priority and my identity is in the One who made me. I am the clay, He is the Artist.  My number one priority is to allow the Artist to finish His work and be pleased with what He has made.

With Christianity as my foundation and focus, my marriage is my next priority followed by my children.  I can sum up my priorities up this way:

The best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother, and the best thing he can do for their mother is to love God.  

Life is really pretty simple, aim at loving God above all else, He will take care of the rest.

Hunt What Matters. Hunt for Him.

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The sun never sets on a day that I have not thought about hunting.  This is not an exaggeration. I put a tremendous amount of thought, time, energy, money, and work into hunting, bowhunting specifically.  It is an important part of my life and I cherish it. Hunting has carried me to peaks of incredible joy and satisfaction, and also dropped me into valleys of heartbreaking pain and disappointment.  Any pursuit that requires much sacrifice from us has this effect.

Many of you will identify with this and, perhaps, like me, you have taken your love of hunting too far at times, turning a healthy and positive passion, into a harmful and negative obsession.  In my younger days, I unknowingly fell into the trap of wanting bowhunting to take up the most space in my identity. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but deep down I wanted to be recognized as a great bowhunter, after all, my last name is “Bowman”.  I had lost sight of what really Mattered in life. It was a failure on my part to keep my pride in its proper position, crushed beneath my humility. I didn’t have the spiritual maturity to realize that my priorities were out of order. I was hunting for the wrong thing and hunting had become an idol.  

Despite many humbling and enlightening experiences later, this temptation remains and must be put under the knife periodically.  Many of you, if you’re honest with yourselves, will know what I’m talking about. It’s not something that just happens to hunters, it’s the temptation of every man to feed his pride, to take matters in his own hands and take the credit.  Eventually I realized that the room behind pride’s door is empty, vacant, and lonely. On the day when my strength has left me completely, my personal accomplishments, hunting or otherwise, will not matter apart from those done in pursuit of the One that Matters.  Today, tomorrow, and forever, I want to Hunt what Matters, I want to be about His Business, I want to Hunt for Him. I want to be a “capital H” Hunter.

The surprising truth is that when First things are put first, second things aren’t diminished, they are increased.   Far from losing my “lowercase h” hunting on earth, I’ve experienced a much more fulfilling and deeper enjoyment than ever before.  I now hunt without pressure and expectation. By letting go of hunting, I finally found it. The same is true with everything in my life.  When I Hunt for Him above all else, I find a healthier marriage and better relationships with my children, I find that I am more, not less, myself.  I’ve learned that to Hunt for Him and His desires for me, I have to give up control of my life. I have to want what He wants because what He wants is what Matters, and it is what will bring me true satisfaction.  Just as a seed must go through a death and burial in the earth before it springs to life, the selfish part of my soul must die in order for me to come alive. This death must be repeated quite often, and like any death, it is painful.  I must die by my own choosing when I’m tempted to hunt for the wrong things, the things of this world. I’ve learned that by willingly crushing my selfish pride and laying down my life, I find the pure, free, and true life I was made to live waiting for me.  Lose it to find it. Kill it to bring it to life. Lay it down to pick it up.

Hunting is a wonderfully useful metaphor for pursuing Him.  It requires denying one’s immediate comfort, intense dedication, and singularity of purpose. In hunting, we must learn in depth the nature of the creature we pursue if we are to be successful.  It is not an easy undertaking, in fact, it can feel almost impossible at times. If we are successful hunters, the creature will sustain our physical lives for a while. If we are successful Hunters, He will sustain our souls forever.  

I’m reminded of an old hymn written by John Cennick in 1743 that begins:

Jesus, my all, to Heaven is gone,

He whom I fix my hopes upon;

His track I see, and I’ll pursue

The narrow way, till Him I view.

I want to pursue His tracks.  He has given us sign to follow and show us the way, but it is not always easy or obvious.  I want to find and follow His faint and righteous track, the narrow and difficult trail, not the wide and easy path.  I won’t experience a close encounter with my quarry by stumbling carelessly through the wilderness. I’ll find the wilderness sure enough, but not the cherished prize at the end of the track.  Nor will I find Him with an unintentional and undisciplined life, I’ll find the world. I want the heart of a Hunter and I want to Hunt what Matters. I want to be on the Hunt every second of every day, I want to Hunt for Him.