by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
I have been going to my church for over five years. The sermons are helpful, and I’m learning a lot from the classes offered there. But when I look around at other people talking and laughing before meetings or classes begin it seems like most of them have special friends that they are close to, and I feel lonely. I know a lot of them by name and often “chit-chat” with them. But being a “loner” feels miserable. Any ideas?
What a great question. I admire your openness to ask it and to try to deal with your lonely feelings. Not only have I had them—and sometimes still do, but years ago, when I was participating in a ministers’ meeting, I met Jack. At the time, Jack was a district superintendent whose position in his denomination made him a pastor to fifty or sixty other ministers. He was handsome, intelligent, articulate, honest about himself, personally committed to Christ…and miserable.
As we talked, Jack told me that he felt basically lonely inside—even though he has a good family life and success in his work. It seemed to him that many of his co-workers were part of a kind of “in-group,” and seemed to have close personal friends with whom they came and shared a room. He couldn’t be as personal with anyone as they seemed to be with each other. In fact, he didn’t have any close personal friends among his associates, and very few truly close personal friends at all.
As we talked, I thought about how often over the years I have felt like a “loner.” I remembered our family moving to a new city when I was in middle school. I looked at groups of boys who seemed to be close buddies, wishing I could be a real part of what they seemed to be sharing. But when I became a part of such groups, and later fraternities, and even was a leader in several, I discovered a surprising secret. Except in rare instances, “in-group” members are not nearly as loving and vulnerable to each other about their real problems and aspirations as they appeared to be from the outside. I discovered the “façade of intimacy” that in-groups often wear. And this well-guarded secret makes probably millions of kids and adults feel inadequate if they do not have “lots of close friends who are ‘in.’”
As I have counseled with successful men and women over the years, I have found myself identifying with their feelings of inadequacy in this area of life so often that I began asking some of them how many really close personal friends they had. Many replied, “None.” Some said, “One or two,” but almost no one had more than five or six. After having moved more than a dozen times as an adult, I realize that although there are many people I love, respond to, and enjoy being with on occasion, there are only a handful of people I feel are close friends.
All this made me wonder if perhaps many of us have been subtly conditioned to look for something which actually does not exist, expect in a few cases—a place in life with a large number of intimate, totally open friends. In a busy active life one has the time and energy to be real friends with only a very few people on a continuing basis.
And I now believe this restless yearning for connection to others is universal. And although we try to fulfill it through friends, mates, and children, it seems to me that this restlessness can never be completely satisfied by people. I am becoming convinced that this deepest unrest is a longing for a deep connection with God, a longing planted in the fabric of every person’s life. Maybe Augustine was right when he said that our hearts will always be restless until we find our ultimate rest in Him.
Some years ago a friend called me and ten other friends, telling us he was having a hard time and asking if we would meet with him over a Friday night to counsel and pray with him. We did, and because of what those of us who came got from the meeting, we have continued to meet three times a year and share our real failures…and successes—for thirty-one years now. It has been through those men that I have learned that at some level we are all just uncertain children.
In my own life, I feel closer to people with whom I work and pray, who are also trying to surrender their lives to God since I do not expect them to fulfill an interpersonal need which can be met only by God. And paradoxically, some of us are becoming to each other the deeply sharing friends for whom I have always longed.
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Augustine, Confessions
“Great priests, saints like the Curé d’Ars, who have seen into the hidden depths of thousands of souls, have, nevertheless, remained men with few intimate friends. No one is more lonely than a priest who has a vast ministry. He is isolated in a terrible desert by the secrets of his fellow men.”
Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
“’A friend is one soul in two bodies.’ Yet friendship implies few friends rather than many; he who has many friends has no ‘friend’; and ‘to be a friend to many people in the way of perfect friendship is impossible.’ Fine friendship requires duration rather than fitful intensity…”
Aristotle, Ethics
Lord, give me the grace to avoid trying to force other people to give me the kind of unconditional acceptance and love that only You have to give. Help me not to reject them when they cannot be You. Thank You that in Christ You have offered to be the personal friend I have longed for—in whose unconditional love and acceptance I can sometimes find the courage to reach out to others. Help me to risk their rejection in order to introduce them to You and Your truth about living as a son or daughter in this complex world. Although I hate to admit it, I am glad that You went through the experience in Christ and with Paul of having to go it alone without friends during some trying times. It is comforting to know that You understand the feelings of a loner. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Jesus:
…“Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.” Matthew 26:56
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice…’My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’” Matthew 27:46
And Paul:
“Do your best to come to me soon, for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me… At my first defense no one took my part; all deserted me…” 2 Timothy 4:9-11, 16
Has the “façade of intimacy” affected you? If so, how?
Do you have a close friend with whom you share your life?
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’ve recently become a Christian. Everybody says I’ve got to be willing to let God into my life, and to let God guide my life. So I finally am willing, but nothing has happened. Can you help me?
This is an excellent question, maybe the best anyone could ask who wants to lead a spiritual life. My problem is that most of my life I’ve lived in my head, that is, in my thoughts. If I thought of something, I thought I’d done it. But Jesus seemed to be teaching that everything we commit to do in our heads has an appropriate behavior in the real world to accompany it. In other words, if you commit to loving God, then you’ll do certain things that God would have you to do. The questions are: what are those things, and how do we get these things out of our heads and out into our real, behavioral world.
I guess what I’m saying is that willingness is the true beginning. But willingness means that you move toward actually doing the things that God wants you to. And as you begin to do them you experiment with how to do them, what your style is and how it works for you.
To find out where that guidance is accessible, I began to look in the scriptures for the kinds of things that would help me change my life. The Apostle Paul spent a good bit of his time teaching people how to do these things. At one point, he said that we’re supposed to surrender our everyday ordinary lives—our eating, sleeping, walking around, going to work lives to God. (Romans 12:1)
So I said, “Okay, I’m willing to do that.” But then someone pointed out to me that I needed to start doing it. So I began to think about God when I went to work at the office. At the end of the first day, I realized that I forgot about God as soon as I got out of the car in the parking lot. So how did I get God from inside my head out into actions at my work place?
I created some personal reminders. For example, I wrote on an index card, “Listen to this person. God may have a message for you.” Then I put this note card in the lap drawer of my desk. Every time someone walked into my office, I’d open my lap drawer, take out a pencil and pad and put them on the desk. And as I did that, I’d see the note card with the reminder on it. I began to listen to people better, and as I got to know them I could pray for them.
When I went to get a drink at the drinking fountain down the hall, I’d pray silently for the people as I passed them. These were some ways I began to bring my willingness to have God in my life out into actually doing things in my real life, without making a big sanctimonious show of it.
As I read scripture, I found that Paul described very simply one way this life is transmitted to others. He said, “Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard, and saw, and realized. Do that and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.” (Phil. 4:8) In other words, if you’re willing to get worked into God’s plans, then he said to the people following him:
1. First put into practice what they heard. They heard Paul say that Christ lived in him and had changed him from “the chief of sinners” into someone who was willing to risk talking about and living for Christ.
2. Then the next thing is “what they saw.” After people heard Paul talk about risking his life, they saw him do it. For example, they saw him get arrested for believing. They saw him take chances of all kinds with his real life, his vocation, everything.
3. And then, after they’d heard and seen him, they realized, “I could do this too.” Something clicks over in one’s minds when he or she actually see someone else taking the risk of really trying to live for Christ in ways the beginner is afraid to do. Christian mentors don’t have to talk about the life they are trying to live all the time. They just live their life in line with what they teach and witnesses to. But it’s obvious that God is always a part of what they’re doing and being when one is with them.
When people asked Paul how to change the inside of one’s mind so these outward behaviors would follow, he said in effect, to change the content of what you put into your mind. The only way into your mind is through your senses, your eyes and ears and so forth—what you listen to and what you watch. You have some control over that. You can choose what you watch and read and listen to. Is it porn? Is it the market place? Is it football? What is it that you put into your mind?
Paul’s advice was to put good things in there that will replace the bad things. You don’t try to ferret out the bad things. You put the good things in and there isn’t room for any more, so something has to go. You can ask God for guidance about which things to eliminate when you put in prayer, meditation and reading the scriptures and other helpful books. Paul said it this way. “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling and gracious. The best, not the worst, the beautiful not the ugly, things to praise, not things to curse.” (Phil. 4:7)
It also helped me to tell some people (e.g. my mentor, or people in the small group I’m in) that I’m willing to be God’s person. And then I began to do some of these things and share what happened to me—good and bad—when I tried to change the habitual content I’d taken in. And they had heard me talk about this, and then they saw me doing it, and then they started asking the real questions, like you’re asking. So I became a Christian who likes to help people find out who they are and what God may have for them to do with their lives.
Another change I made came when I had trouble sleeping. Twenty years ago I began to memorize certain prayers and scripture passages about what I wanted to be. These passages include the two that I just mentioned and two other passages on love: 1 John 4, and the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians. I also memorized the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. So when I couldn’t sleep at night, I would lie in bed and repeat these things, putting these things into my mind instead of the terrors of the night or my fears or anxieties about the future. After I got them memorized, I wouldn’t have to get up and turn on the light (which often got me out of my funk) and I would go back to sleep. I would replace the sleep-depriving thoughts with these great statements about how to live for Christ.
Almost all the great heroes of the faith have wound up seeing and telling the people to whom they wrote that loving people and God both in their minds and in their behaviors is the goal of the life Jesus offered us in God’s name.
“We cannot help conforming ourselves to what we love.” Francis de Sales
Lord, thank you that you do not try to make us pious, “successful” looking people we are not, but that you offer us a way to live and love that fits us and can release us from the fears and limitations that keep us from being the honest, free and loving people we’ve always hoped we could be. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.” John 13:34-35 The Message
“My beloved friends…everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love, so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him.” 1 John 4:7 The Message
“God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.” 1 John 4:17-18 The Message
Keith mentioned ways that he has moved from “willingness” to “action”. Share your experience with this and have you encountered any blocks that have kept you from doing things you believe God would have you to do? If so, what are they?
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
I have been disloyal to my wife and she found out. I’ve confessed, and have also confessed to God. I feel like God has forgiven me, and I’ve forgiven myself. But my spouse says “It’s not that easy—that something’s broken—that ‘being sorry’ won’t fix it.” She said she feels betrayed and that is (so far) not possible to get over. We both still love each other, but don’t know what to do to get really close again. Can you help us any?
Oh boy, this is a question that many people have asked—including me. From my counseling and my own experience, I have found that for some people (who are the “betrayers,”) it is difficult to grasp all of the domino-cascading consequences resulting from the betrayal. One of these consequences is related to the nature of trust. In fact, many people equate “forgiveness” with “trust.” But there is a difference between the grace that allows someone to forgive us, and the difficulty that person has with trusting the betrayer again. Personal betrayal is about as deep a wound as can be inflicted.
Recently I heard a sermon by Rick Shurtz, teaching pastor at Gateway Church, that helped me see this whole problem more clearly. Rick talked about the impact a personal betrayal had on him. One of his elementary school teachers was, he felt, the best teacher he had ever had—even through graduate school. The teacher was especially friendly toward Rick, and Rick especially remembers the period set aside each day during which each student read silently something of his or her choice. Rick noticed that the teacher did his own silent reading, and he always had his Bible open in front of him. This made a very strong positive impression on Rick.
Eventually this teacher moved to another city and became the Principal of another elementary school. One day, when Rick was around fourteen, his parents told him that they had just learned that this former teacher—the man who had befriended him, inspired him to learn, and who showed him that it was not shameful to be a Christian—had been arrested for child molestation.
Later that evening, as Rick watched the story reported on the local nightly news, he felt numb with shock. This teacher’s behavior felt like a personal betrayal to Rick—and it hurt and confused him in many ways. For example he couldn’t help wondering if, when he went to class the next day, the other students (who knew Rick was one of the teacher’s favorites) would think that Rick had been one of the students this teacher had molested, although he hadn’t been. He questioned everything that he learned from his teacher—particularly concerning his Christian witness.
In his sermon Rick pointed out that many people who have been betrayed (though not all) have found God’s grace and been able to forgive the person who betrayed them. And although grace, and forgiveness are a free gift, the trust of the people who had been betrayed had to be earned, and restoring trust might take a lot of time. After a betrayal, the person betrayed experiences many painful feelings, and must also grapple with the heart-breaking knowledge that the trusted one had the ability and the will to deceive her or him.
This statement said a lot to me about the struggle that a person who has been betrayed goes through, especially after deciding to continue in a relationship after a betrayal. It is difficult to regain that original freely given trust that had existed.
So it may be that what your wife says is “broken,”—that saying, “I’m sorry” won’t fix— is trust. Trust is one of the most essential ingredients of a close relationship. So if getting close again is what you and your spouse want to experience, perhaps your focusing on restoring trust between you can help you make progress.
So how do people restore trust when it has been broken? I don’t know. But for the one who has been the betrayer, as you have, I think practicing patience and learning to do what you can to behave in a trustworthy manner toward the one you have betrayed would be important.
For the one who has been betrayed, here is something I learned from Pat Mellody.[1]
“Relationships require trust. The problems come when we do not recognize that trust is not a decision, but the result of certain actions. Trust is the result of taking risks over time and not getting hurt.”
Somehow the one betrayed has the idea that he or she must be vigilant and smart to somehow avoid being betrayed again. But keeping up a constant vigilance to protect oneself from the pain of being betrayed can close the door on current and future intimacy. So making the decision to take some risks with the relationship is a step of courage that—if one doesn’t get hurt—can allow trust to grow.
While the original, unblemished, freely given trust you each had for the other may never return, I believe it is possible for a new kind of trust to grow, perhaps stronger because of what you have both learned in this painful but maturing process.
And for both parties, I would add—pray for yourselves and each other as you go through the coming months and years.
This sermon clarified for me why some people close to me (not my wife, Andrea) have difficulty being around me, even almost forty years after I had a moral failure and betrayed their trust. I have been forgiven (by God and by these people), and I have tried to conduct myself in a trustworthy way toward them. But the relationships with some of them are not close (at least not as close as I would like them to be). And the tenuous contacts I do have with them feel very delicate and touchy to me. I am very sad about that, but understand and accept it as one of the many consequences of my unwise choices almost forty years ago. I am grateful for the insight I got from Rick’s talking about how being betrayed impacted him. So I want to say “thank you” to any of you reading this for questions like this. Sometimes in trying to help you sort these issues out, God helps me to deal with them in my own life.
Dear Lord, thank you for your grace and forgiveness when we confess. Help me to hear and try to understand with patience the reactions of those whom I have hurt. Teach me what you would have me to learn from the painful reality of the pain I have caused in others.
And please help me to learn how to be trustworthy in all my relationships—particularly with you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Are you hurting? Pray. … Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out.
Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. (James 5:13, 15-17)
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself. Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear
How do you learn to be trustworthy, when you can’t undo a betrayal or have hurt someone in other ways and they can’t trust you? We welcome your comments below.
[1] Mellody, Pia, with Andrea Wells Miller and J. Keith Miller, Facing Love Addiction. p. 157
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Sometimes I feel like my life for Christ doesn’t amount to much. I don’t do big things that change people or their lives, and I don’t know how to do that. Someone told me that they felt their purpose is just to love people. But I can’t see how simple acts of love in my ordinary life could be significant. Any ideas about that?
For years it didn’t occur to me that simply doing or saying loving things as a Christian could be significant. But your question took me back to a time when Andrea and I were doing a course with some people who asked this question: “What can we do that’s loving, and how could simple loving actions as Christians be powerful?”
So we decided to explore what Christian loving would look like in our daily lives. We met with this group of people to try to see what we could learn about what loving people for God might mean. At the end of each weekly session, I’d give them various assignments, such as focused listening and paying attention to someone in their family, getting to know people around their church, in their neighborhood or at work whom they didn’t know very well, and then experimenting with doing caring acts for people—like calling on new people moving into your neighborhood and helping them locate good cleaners, pharmacies or other services they might need.
As the final weeks of the course approached, I gave this assignment: “Think of somebody that you really don’t like. You don’t like to be around them, you have negative feelings and you find yourself not wanting to be with them at all. Then do one of these loving acts that we’ve all been doing in the previous assignments with one (or more) of these people and report what happens when we meet again next week.
There was a collective groan and a spattering of chatter before the closing prayer period. So Andrea and I were really curious to see what we and the other group members would come up with. (We always did the same assignment as we asked the others to do.)
Well, the next week one woman—who was usually one of the last ones to report—spoke up first. (She never had done that before.) She said, “I just don’t believe what happened this past week! I didn’t have to go outside my own family to find somebody I didn’t like. I have five siblings, and we haven’t communicated with each other in our family in almost twenty years. As a matter of fact I moved out to Texas from up north to get away from them.
“Our oldest brother is the one that drove me away. We just don’t like each other, and I haven’t spoken to him in all this time. So although it really scared me to think about talking to him, I prayed about it and decided that he would be the one I’d contact.
“After putting it off for several days, I called him. When he answered the phone, I felt a kind of shock to hear his voice, and I didn’t know what to say. So finally I said, ‘Uh, Brother?’
“And he said, ‘Sis, is this you?’ And then after a brief silence, he added, ‘ What do you want?’
“I took a deep breath and said, ‘Well, I just want to…uh…to tell you… uh… that I love you.’
“Then Brother said, ‘Good grief, Sis—what’s happened to you?”
“I didn’t know what to do then, so I just said, ‘I can’t talk about it.’ And I hung up.”
Everybody laughed , and she did too. Then I asked her, “Well how did that feel?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “It was frightening, but there’s more! The next evening my sister called, the one I’m closest to. I haven’t really communicated with her very much either but she’s the one I would call in a family emergency. She called me from 1,500 miles away and said, ‘What in the world did you tell Brother?’
“And I said, ‘Why?’
“Then my sister said, ‘Because he just e-mailed us today that he’s sending all of us round trip tickets to Austin, TX to come down and find out what happened to you.” And she stopped talking and swallowed hard. And we both almost cried.
And as I heard that woman’s experience, I thought, “My gosh, I’d been thinking all my life about big things could I do for God that would be helpful.” And then after the other group members had reported, I thought, “Maybe there are some people in my life I’m reluctant to talk to whom I just need to tell that I really care about them—because listening to that woman’s simple act of caring made me realize how important simple acts of love can be.
Lord, teach me how to be loving even toward those whom I do not like—or am afraid don’t like me. Forgive me for reviewing in my mind all the reasons for my dislike of people who hurt me so that I can learn how to re-approach them with simple in loving ways that are genuine. In Jesus’ name.
“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.” Matthew 5:42-44, The Message
“This is a large work I’ve called you into, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. It’s best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose out on a thing.” Matthew 10:40, The Message
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.” John 13:35, The Message
Please share your experience with us. How has a simple act of love changed you? Post your comment below.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Last week I got a text message from a new friend: “Can you tell me what God is to you?” I realized how different a world we live in to try to communicate the Gospel (than the one I learned about God). Not that the question was bad in any way. It was a great question, but the expectation was that in using 150 characters I could tell another person what my relationship with God is and what it means to me.
Later the same day I was in a meeting of people who were (like me) on a spiritual journey and a similar question came up. “What is your relationship with God like?” And “How has it changed as you have gotten closer to God over the years?”
When my turn to speak came, I thought about my friend’s question and said something like the following:
When I first heard about God as a child, it was as if my life were a car I was given by God to drive through life. I put God in the car with my family and closest friends (with God in the back seat with my parents and my closest friends were in the front seat with me). And I learned to talk to God when no one else was in the car.
Then when I was an adult and the members of my family of origin had all died or were killed (before I was 30), I made a serious personal commitment of as much of my life as I could to as much of God as I could understand in the story of Jesus’ life, teaching and sacrificial death. (Looking back I didn’t understand as much as I thought I did.) But I was very serious, and so I moved God into the front seat next to me and put everyone else in the back seat.
My prayer life changed radically. Every morning I would wake up in the car, turn to God, and say something like, “Good morning, God. I love you and am grateful for a good night’s sleep and for all the good things and people in my life.” I’d tell God about my problems, confess a sin once in a while, and ask God to help me with my burdens that I couldn’t seem to carry. Things like that.
Then I’d start the car, and say something like, “God, I’m going to drive to Dallas on business and I will appreciate your help as I talk to some people about you, or about a new insurance policy, or investment, etc.” I began to live for God one day at a time.
Then, a bit later, I learned to add at the end of my prayers, “But Lord, not my will but yours—if you have other plans for me.” Someone asked me at that point, “What happened to your life with God in your car when you tried to surrender your entire life to God?”
“Whoa,” I thought. “Good question.” Then I slowly began to explain, “Well, although nothing changed about my circumstances, when I tried to surrender my entire life—everything—to God and to begin living each day as if it were my last, it was as if I had given God the keys to the car, transferred the title to Him… and let God sit in the driver’s seat.”
“How did that change things?”
“Well, it’s one thing to tell God where we are going and what I’m going to do, and then to ask God to help me do that. But it’s quite different to realize that it is God’s car and he’s in the driver’s seat and turn and speak to him about my day!”
“Different? How?”
“Well, I used to tell God where I was going and ask for his help to succeed or deal with any failures. But now if I am going to live each day as if it were my last, I get in the passenger’s seat and ask … “Where are we going today?” And that’s a whole new adventure.”
Lord, thank you that you give us ways to plan ahead (to make appointments and pay the bills, etc.), yet to fill most of today with doing the next right thing and trusting you with the things we can’t do today. As I can gradually learn to quit committing to do things that are about my self-centered need to be important and successful, and concentrate on loving you and the people I will see today, I feel more loved and fulfilled than I ever did in my feverish driving to multi-task my way through long frantic days of busy-ness. Help me to listen and plan today, and make other arrangements with those things and people I can’t tend to today, until I can learn to live a life-sized life with you, loving and listening to the people you put in my life this day and wherever you take me today. I love you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Take me by the hand;
Lead me down the path of truth.
You are my Savior, aren’t you?” (Ps. 25:5, The Message)
***
“My Lord god, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in face please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Recovery, Weekly Devotional
Dear Keith,
I am in the process of working the Twelve Steps in a small group and am amazed at the challenge and healing it has already brought into my life. Though I have been a Christian for twenty years, and was raised in a wonderful church, I feel like a new person! I have lived my life, even as a Christian, as a fearful person, and attempted to control so many of my loved ones rather than actually loving them. God has revealed this sin in my heart, and with his help and a strong community of honest friends, I am rebuilding my relationships on new and free foundations.
But a problem has come up. A friend has asked me about the Twelve-Step process, then argued that it seemed like I was becoming addicted to God. He said that perhaps the Twelve-Step process I am working is just another attempt to control God, my ego, or the people around me. He equated it to a spiritual high people get after a rousing conference that produces false or short-lived change.”
Could you address these questions? 1. Can we become addicted to God? 2. Is working the Twelve-Step process a short-lived and false solution and really just a substitution of one type of control to another?
Thanks for taking the time to write me about this. Your friend has raised some interesting questions. I’m familiar with the Twelve-Step process and have adopted them as my primary spiritual guidelines for the past twenty-five years— not as a substitute for church, but as a supporting enhancement. Following this process has transformed my life enough to cause me to do research of all kinds in helping people all over the world to find God and peace and relief from their addictions.
I have come to see the Twelve Steps as the opposite of a control strategy because they ask the follower to give up control and surrender one’s life and will to God as one understands God very early in the process—in the first three steps. The fact is that if someone is not willing to surrender his or her life and will to God, then this program won’t alleviate an addiction or transform a life.
Working these Steps with a group of people also trying to live by this process is another basic necessity, because the primary symptom of all addictive diseases is denial. That is, we cannot see our own destructive behaviors by ourselves even though we can pinpoint them clearly in other people. I couldn’t see that I was controlling people. I thought I was just trying to help them. But by listening to other people in a group talk about their discoveries of control in their own lives, I could see what my family had been trying to tell me—that I had controlled them for years and that I just couldn’t be wrong—I had to be right all the time.
Also I have learned what to do about the relationships that were/are harmed by my destructive controlling and my intense need to be right: to confess and make amends. This is advised by James, who says “Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you may live together whole and healthy.” (James 5:16)
So as to question number one, let’s begin by looking at what an addiction is. Webster defines an addiction as “a persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.” But you have found that as you work the Twelve Steps your relationships are getting better. You’re trying not to control people. You’re loving them instead of trying to fix them. This is the evidence in your life that this is real. Surrendering to God and loving God and other people is not harmful if you are not trying to control them. As a person is able to surrender more and more to God, he or she becomes more loving and helpful toward other people. This is the opposite of what an addict would do. An addict gets into a smaller and smaller world as he or she focuses on getting satisfied from the addiction, getting in control or having people agree or getting enough of a pain-relieving substance such as alcohol or a drug.
There is one qualification I want to mention: if someone uses what he or she is learning form the Twelve Steps to try to control or convince other people that they should also work the Twelve Steps, it seems to me that some addictive controlling behavior is leaking into the person’s process of recovery. As I understand it, working the Twelve Steps is for our own transformation, and improves our ability to love other people just as they are, with less and less control, correction or advice.
I’ve noticed that people, even Christians, who have never faced themselves have a hard time understanding why anyone who was a “good person” would want to face “horrible things” about themselves—and then talk about them in a group. Many Christians seem to think they are not sinners if they’ve never committed murder or adultery or stolen anything. But the Twelve Steps indicate that when we put ourselves in the center instead of God, or put anything or any person in the center instead of God (such as an addictive substance, being a success in a career, being attractive, or pleasing a spouse or parent), then that substance, goal, behavior or person is our god. We make our decisions on the basis of satisfying or meeting the demands of this thing or entity that is in the center of our lives.
Here’s another definition of addictive behavior that may clarify this.
“Any process that relieves intolerable reality can become an addictive process. Substances or behaviors that relieve our distress become a priority in our lives, taking increased time and attention away from the other important parts of our lives. And eventually the relieving substance or behavior can lead to harmful consequences that we often choose to ignore since we don’t want to give up our pain reliever. We can learn to medicate our unwanted reality through one or more addictive processes. But these processes become destructive forces with lives of their own.”
(Pia Mellody, Facing Codependence, p. 55. My wife, Andrea, and I wrote a 12-week study course for small groups using this book and DVD’s.)
I was fascinated to realize that the Twelve-Step process is the same process that Jesus taught people to live by. Many people in the church have never been through this process. I wrote a book called A Hunger for Healing: The Twelve Steps as a Classic Model for Christian Spiritual Growth about how the Twelve Steps bring biblical principles of faith to bear on the pain of contemporary people in a way that leads sufferers into a close living relationship with God. Anyone who wants to find out what they may be putting in the center of his or her life instead of God can use the Twelve-Step model to identify such a god (with a small “g”) and begin to surrender it to God.
And as for question number two, whether the results in your life are short termed or not, you can ask your friend to wait and see, and then you can continue to pray, work the Steps and meet with your fellow adventurers on the journey into the life Jesus offers us all.
Dear Lord, you taught us that to love you with all our heart, mind and intelligence and other people as well as we love ourselves is how we were made to live. But having free will makes it so easy to love something or someone more than we love you, and to make choices that bring frustration and pain and cause separation between us and you and between us and other people. Thank you that you have made a way for us to return to you again and again, through surrendering once more to you, facing our own wrongdoing, acknowledging it and allowing you to transform us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17
It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom. Galatians 5:19, The Message
If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God. 1 John 1:8-9 The Message
“God continually turns this “walking through the pain of life” into demonstrations of faith that are remarkable. And perhaps that is why this may be the fastest-growing spiritual movement in America today.” J. Keith Miller, A Hunger for Healing, p. 213
“…in the Twelve Steps, where people learn about God through their experiences with him, there is no attempt to “persuade” with theology or verbal arguments. We let pain do the persuading, because we know that it is only through pain that the hunger for healing comes that will make us ready to admit our powerlessness. We know that until the pain of our lives was greater than the fear of swallowing our pride and going for help, we were not hungry enough for healing to go for it through the Twelve Steps.” J. Keith Miller, A Hunger for Healing, p. 199
“People change because they have paid the price in their vulnerability and willingness to surrender to God, to pray, to do the steps, go to meetings, read the Big Book, clean up their pasts and their relationships, and offer their whole lives to God so he can change them.” J. Keith Miller, A Hunger for Healing, p. 166
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith: I’m a new Christian. I’ve recently been talking to some of my atheist friends, who agree with some atheist scientists who are very brilliant men who say that surrendering to God is very naïve intellectually since neither the existence of God nor the “characteristics” of God can be proven scientifically. . The question I have to ask you is, do I have to check my brains at the door when I go into a church, or is it intellectually in the ball park to believe in God?
Good question. But it seems strange to me for people who claim to be scientists to assert with great confidence that there is no God, because the non-existence of God cannot be proven for the same reasons. In my experience, there is a lot more evidence in favor of there being a God than that there is no God. Although it will be impossible to explore this matter in any depth in a short blog, I’m going to suggest an alternative way to check the validity of a serious “faith-in-God” journey.
Basically, there are two kinds of science. Theoretical science involves applying mathematical methods and concepts in theoretical modeling. It is amazing what has been done through this sort of scientific thinking in the material world that occupies so much of our time and effort.
But another branch of science is experimental science. These scientists use what is known as the “scientific method,” that consists of forming a hypothesis and developing an experiment to either prove or disprove the hypothesis. Their conclusions are based on deductive reasoning.
For example, a doctor’s reported experience with the healing properties of a certain herb might lead an experimental scientist to hypothesize that eating a certain amount of this herb will cure a known disease. The experiment might be set up using two groups of people who have been diagnosed as having similar symptoms of the disease. Everyone in one group takes a medicine made from the herb in a certain prescribed way over a period of time. Everyone in the other group also takes a pill, following the same regimen. But the pill given to members of the second group does not contain the herb or any other medicine—it is a harmless “neutral” substance.
If the first group (taking the herbal medicine) has a significant number of people who either are healed or show significant improvement, and members of the second group (taking the harmless pill) show no improvement or get worse, then there is some evidence that the herb is, in fact, doing some good. At that point the herb has begun its journey toward becoming an approved treatment for the disease. However, if the group that did not take the herb also shows improvement or healing, this would cancel out the evidence from the improvements in the health of the people in the group taking the herb.
But even experimental science is not what many people think it is. Since the conclusions are based on deductive reasoning, one must evaluate the validity of the reasoning being done by the scientists.
For example, even though the herbal remedy experiment may support the fact that it can heal or alleviate symptoms of a certain disease, in a majority of cases, there may be some bad side effects from the herbal remedy in some people. This past year after some surgery I warned the surgeon that I am allergic to narcotics. So he chose a new non-narcotic pain pill which was administered after the surgery. My body swelled up with edema, and I was miserable and in much pain until I was given a diuretic. Even though I lost eight pounds of fluid in first nine hours, it took a long time to get rid of the rest of the swelling and the serious pain. Then because of complications with the first surgery, I had to have a second surgery soon after that. I warned the physician to be sure to give me a different pain medication, but the second new drug had the same effect. These medicines had been tried and used successfully by thousands of people, but just didn’t work for me. Notice how many of the advertisements for the sale of medicines on TV warn the buyer about side effects, and about conflicts with other medications or other physical conditions (i.e. high blood pressure, impotence, heart attacks or even death).
What I’m saying is that “exact science” is not exact, in that it makes claims that are not a hundred percent applicable. And a “tested” medicine may injure or kill certain people. So when people observe abusive or antisocial behavior in men and women who call themselves Christian without testing the behavior of thousands of Christians whose influence is quietly beneficial to millions of people all over the world, it causes me to suspect that such observers and critics have not been scientific in their investigation of a serious life of faith in God, since Christianity is not a theoretical idea about God that can be proven by applying mathematical methods and concepts.
By its nature its validation must be “scientific” in that one must take the hypothesis that God is real and experiment in one’s ongoing life. And with Christianity, these additional hypotheses should be taken:
1. Jesus Christ was conveying the love of God in a way that we could understand and incorporate into a way of living in response to that love.
2. The Bible contains what God is said to have instructed his people to do to have a good life that is loving, honest and less self-centered than a life based on materialistic values.
So if I were a scientist and was interested in finding out if God is real, I would take these hypotheses, bet my life on them, and conduct an experiment.
I’ve been a Christian for over fifty years. I have tested the faith as if it were an hypothesis in every area of my life that I could think of. Early on I had some horrible relationships and was depressed and unhappy because of my self-centeredness. But by taking the hypothesis that God is real and that the biblical record contains sound and healing ways to live and relate to other people and to the inevitable changes and challenges of living, my relationships and state of mind today are different and much better.
I remember making a comment during a lecture I gave at Baylor University years ago that, although I was as committed to God with my whole heart as I could be, I still had arguments with my wife. Afterward, a very self-confident young woman came up to me and said, “Mr. Miller, I don’t think that’s right. I think you can have a life of marriage without arguments if both people are Christians.”
I asked, “Are you married?”
“No,” she answered, “but I’m just about to get a Ph.D. in Marriage and Family.”
I said, “Well, I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I know more about marriage than you do as far as how the intimate relating is experienced when negotiating the adjustments of the parties to each other and married life. If you are not married, I do not believe you can really know the pressure that happens within a marriage.” She left, somewhat upset, but our conversation helped me see that unless a person is willing to risk taking an hypothesis and entering an intimate long term relationship like marriage or a life of faith in God, that person will always be intellectually naïve and far from knowing the inherent and life transforming possibilities of either.
So how would an experiment work that would test the hypothesis that God is real? This is one experiment: Give as much of your life as you can to as much of God as you know, in Christ. Then you do the things he said to do. For example, you love God and other people, you pray every day, you confess your mistakes, you thank God for the blessings in your life. You enter and share the experiential journey with a small group of others who are also surrendering their lives to God. You refrain from doing things that are against the way of life that Jesus portrayed, such as murdering, stealing, and so on. But you also don’t take advantage of people, you become interested in those who are disadvantaged. And you try to eliminate habits and goals or activities that keep you from loving God and other people. Jesus said that he would meet us through those people that we try to love, and particularly through reaching out and caring for those who can’t care for themselves. In fact our lives will be evaluated not on the numerical quantity of our devotionals or what we have accumulated, but by the way we have loved.
Some people who have been mentors to me personally and in their writings, such as C.S. Lewis and Elton Trueblood and Paul Tournier, were very intelligent people with advanced degrees. They committed their lives to God in Christ and their lives changed. And two of these three went to great lengths to love me and guide me as a young man. People I’ve known who did not share their lives and love with others (who are seeking to know God) often find their old age miserable and boring by comparison.
The last thing I’d suggest for anyone trying to verify the reality of a life centered in God is to check with some people who have tried this experiment and are positive, loving and happy. And as I’d suggest not evaluating the validity of marriage by interviewing people who have never been married, but rather by talking to people who are happy, loving and happily married. In other words, find someone who has a strong faith and talk to him or her—or read books by people like those I’ve mentioned. For example, I read Mere Christianity when I was struggling with this years ago and it helped me enormously. I later wrote a book called The Taste of New Wine which is about beginning the experiment of committing as much of your life as you can and how this can affect your life in business and your family and various areas of your life.
This intimate relationship with God is a lifelong adventure that for me has transformed the experience of living. If somebody tells you that it is naïve to believe in God, my experience and study would indicate that that person is not personally well informed about the transforming power and healing nature of a relationship with God—or at least is a person not willing to risk taking the hypothesis and probably not personally living an experiment of faith in his or her own life..
There is more than I have time to discuss in this brief blog. But if any of you want to ask other questions about the issue or difficulties you’ve had when considering a life aimed at being intimately connected with God while discovering God’s character and purposes, I’d be happy to share from the sixty-year experiment I’m still on.
Dear Lord, thank you for giving me the freedom to choose to surrender my life to you or not, to question, to wonder, to open or close my mind. Without this freedom of choice there would be no “surrender,” and there would be no experience of love, but only a robot-like conformation to your will. Grant me the strength, will and grace to continue to risk surrendering my life to you in this ongoing experimental journey of faith in you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (Romans 12:1-2, The Message)
“Because science says that it cannot handle a certain aspect of life, scientists or onlookers have no right to say that therefore it does not exist. That is either confused thinking or willful blindness, and the fault is not that of the science, but of science so-called.” Nels F. S. Ferre, “Faith and Reason”
“Who can sense the mind—hear it, see it, taste it, feel it? Yet who says it is not real?” Nels F. S. Ferre, “Faith and Reason”
“Our problem is not lack of knowledge to conceive of God, it is lack of power to commit to him and the life we instinctively feel must be available to man in his ordained fulfillment.” St. Augustine
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith: About a year ago I started going to church again. I was raised to believe that after a real commitment and surrender to God, we can live a moral life and have good relationships. I’m still having strong temptations that are a real struggle to resist, and I get into arguments with my wife and children a lot, too. I guess I didn’t really make a total commitment, and I want to know how to do that so these struggles and painful encounters in my relationships will go away. Any ideas?
Well, for me there has been good news and bad news about inner conflict (struggle with temptation) and problems like pride, envy, lust, and controlling of people with whom I am in relationships. First the bad news: these things don’t automatically go away because we have surrendered to God. But here’s the good news. They can be diminished because we have given God permission to transform us—to change our attitudes and thoughts—the culprits behind our inner conflicts and painful relationships.
When I first decided to surrender my life to God as I saw God in Jesus, I found that I still had inner conflicts and difficulties. Wanting to learn, I looked for books that dealt with having problems after becoming a Christian, but I couldn’t find any. The writers of the books at that time (1956) seemed to assume (as you were taught) that once a person makes a serious commitment to God, his or her only problems are learning how to read the Bible and pray. The unspoken (or spoken) assumption was that the problems and temptation I had would melt somehow because I read the scriptures and prayed. It seemed to me that the point of most of the books I read was that “real” Christians don’t have problems with moral issues and relationships. The common thread was, “I used to have horrible problems. But since I accepted Jesus (bless the Lord and give him all the credit), I don’t have such struggles anymore.”
But when I shared my experience, I just couldn’t bring myself to tell my newly converted friends (or even imply) that the truly committed Christian is relieved of all his or her problems simply because of making a sincere verbal commitment. If they heard and believed that, they might feel their commitment must not have been valid because they still had to struggle with the ethical and moral issues of control and self-centered behavior in their personal and business/professional worlds.
As I read the story of the apostle Paul in the Bible, it seemed to me that he never ever got over his pride and some of his other problems. And I remember feeling very relieved when I noticed that. So I said, in effect, “Since I became a Christian, I love God very much. My deep intention is to love the Lord Jesus Christ with my whole heart, and my life is consciously committed to God. But I still have problems. I’m still selfish, I’m still greedy. I still want to be inordinately successful. I’m still resentful. I have lustful thoughts. Yet, I love God with all my heart and I’m finding hope and meaning—and my wife says I’m a lot more fun to live with.”
Almost ten years after I began my search for a book about living a Christian life that included dealing with problems I wrote a book about my own experience, called “The Taste of New Wine”. I described becoming a Christian and still having to struggle with difficulties. To my amazement, the book sold more copies that any of us could have imagined. That led me to realize that many people identify with our struggles in the midst of our hope and joy as we live out our stories. We are brothers and sisters, not at the level of our piety and religious achievements, but in our insecurity, pride, and fear.
Yet we Christians tend to tell about our conversion experience but leave out many of the agonizing problems we still have inside. But when we leave them out, we lose the point of identification with people: their felt need for hope in the midst of problems.
So if this is true, why don’t we acknowledge and talk about our real lives, including the struggles and failures? Before I became a Christian, my fear was that if I commit my future to Christ and become vulnerable by letting other Christians walk into my real life, they’ll see my imperfections and pride and judge me or avoid me. Or, if I tell the people closest to me that God is really changing me, they’ll still be as they were and will reject me for changing.
I think that almost all of us have this fear that if we reveal the broken fragments of our lives to one another, we won’t be loved.
But I’ve come to believe that God can use those broken pieces as part of a beautiful mosaic as he fits the pieces of our lives closer to himself and each other. In fact Jesus told the disciples that they were supposed to be light. He told them that “by opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16 (The Message)
Dear Lord, I give you permission to infuse my heart and mind with your love, so that I can begin to see my awful, ingrained habits of pride, selfishness, control, and all the rest, and finally trust you with everything in my life… so you can furnish the power for me to change. Show me how to live and love people enough to open my life more to other people and live like you would have me live. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Jesus heard about it and spoke up, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting outsiders, not insiders—an invitation to a changed life, changed inside and out.” Luke 5:31 The Message
“God is kind, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.” Romans 2:3 The Message
“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so you can live together whole and healed.” James 5:17
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Dear Keith,
Recently I felt that God was urging me to write a letter to another Christian telling her that she was arrogant and unloving and was very vain about her physical appearance. In what I considered to be obedience I wrote the letter. My friend not only did not receive the letter well; she blasted me in return, telling me that my letter was more judgmental and arrogant than she had ever been. And she proceeded to criticize me about several areas I’m very sensitive about in my own life.
I now realize that the letter was judgmental, but how can I know in advance whether something like this is God’s will? I want to help the people around me to see the light and change.
Paul Tournier points out in one of his books, The Violence Within, that the main trouble with violent or aggressive acts (for which your letter would qualify) is that they trigger defensiveness and greater violent or aggressive acts. If you had reacted to your friend’s reaction, you could have escalated your feelings until one of you resorted to physical violence or ran away from the relationship.
Confronting someone directly with his or her faults is a notoriously ineffective way to produce change in other people. The only luck I’ve had in talking to people about the problems and failures involved in trying to live for God has been by talking about my own problems and failures and pointing beyond the problems to the hope I’m finding in Christ as I try to work through the difficulties of life.
You ask how you might know in advance whether something like your urge to write the letter really was God’s will. I’m not sure, but I find that when God seems to be speaking to me about a certain behavior in someone else, my first step had better be to examine my own life with regard to that behavior. When something someone else is doing really upsets me, it is often because I have a similar problem hidden from myself in my own life.
Jesus said that before we try to take the speck of sawdust out of a brother or sister’s eye we’d better first get the plank out of our own. Then we won’t feel much like bugging our brother or sister about his or her “specks”.
I don’t know how you see Jesus, but several places he said the bottom line is always to love your brothers and sisters “the way I have loved you.” (Jn. 13:35) And Jesus decided that the best way to straighten us all out was to die for us—to love us enough to kiss goodbye that which was most important to him, his life and ministry, in order to let us know that God and he really love us. And from God’s perspective, “this is how much he loved the world. He gave his son, his one and only son, for us. (Jn. 3:16-18)
So although I have often been uncomfortable with some of the faults of my friends and relatives, I have discovered that almost always there is something I do of which I’m not aware that contains some aspect of the faults I see in other people. For example, the first thing your friend did was to point to your having the same problem of which you accused her. It has been very hard for me to realize that I could have a serious problem like those I see in others and basically not be aware of having them. But I do.
Dear Lord, it is so hard sometimes for me to tolerate a friend’s or family member’s irritating behavior. I just want to blurt out, “Can’t you see how irritating you are?” And I confess that sometimes I do try to get it across, though not in those exact words. But other times your presence prevails and I am able to bite my tongue, though I notice I avoid that person more and more. Thank you for providing a way for me to unlock my own denied “fault vault,” and to face my own irritating behavior that has other people biting their tongues. Help me with your grace to find the humility to own these faults and bring them to you for healing, so that I may become less irritating and more understanding, patient and loving toward others. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Paul said, “Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it—because it does.” (1 Cor. 14:1.)
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, and criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor. Matthew 7:1-5 (The Message)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’ve recently come back to church. Rather, a good way to put it is I’ve found a church that explains Christianity in a way that makes more sense than what I got out of church when I was young. The service I’ve been going to is designed for people who are searching, as I was. But now I feel like I’m ready to grow, and I’m wondering what “spiritual” maturity would be. I’m very confused about this and would appreciate any help you can give me.
It’s great that you’ve found a place where some of your spiritual questions are being explored, and even answered. As far as “spiritual” maturity goes, I’m not really sure what it is. But there are some behaviors and attitudes that seem to me to indicate a person has begun to allow God to transform his or her life and become more mature.
For instance, as God’s transformative process begins to take place, many people seem to be able to see and take responsibility for their own sins and mistakes. Once they identify them, they confess them to God and make whatever restitution is helpful (and not destructive) to those they have hurt or wronged. Most of us blame other people, “explain ourselves,” and try to get out of admitting our own sins.
Also it seems to me that those who appear to be spiritually mature don’t seem to have to get credit for the good things they do for others. They seem to find time to help and encourage people with real needs and pains, whereas most of us are too busy to help people much of the time and when we do we expect credit and gratitude for being helping persons.
Another indicator for me is that spiritually mature people seem to have the ability to face openly the doubts and uncertainties about God and about what his will is, while continuing to live and act in faith. I’ve often been afraid even to admit that I don’t know where I am going or what God’s will is much of the time—even as a professional, but I find myself being more loving and less defensive.
I see spiritual maturity in people who face tragedy or failure with their real feelings of anger and grief and then try to learn through the circumstances rather than wallow in self-pity and accusation.
They are more and more able to face the faults and sins of the people around them without being judgmental and condemning them—even if the other peoples’ behavior is not something they approve and is something they would condemn in themselves.
Although I could list many other traits which might indicate spiritual maturity, I think some of them can be summed up by saying that a spiritually mature person might be willing to surrender his or her whole life to God and want to do God’s will in every area of his or her life—not for what the person can get but simply because he or she loves God and is grateful for the love, life and forgiveness God has given.
Dear Lord, thank you that you love me just as I am—but when I try to surrender my whole life to you and am willing, you allow me to see and confess my self-centeredness and hurtful behavior that come from wanting my own will instead of yours. Help me to “grow up” into the authentically loving and caring person I believe you made me to be—who doesn’t have to be right or in control of other people and the situations we share. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him…[so]…fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out…[and let] God bring the best out of you.” Romans 12:1 The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
For years I have been a basically lonely person, actually it seems like always. When I became a Christian as a single adult some years ago, it helped, but I was still lonely. I figured it was natural though since I wasn’t married. But fifteen months ago I married a lovely Christian woman and we have been very happy. The only trouble (and you’ll probably think I am crazy), lately I have realized that I’m still a basically lonely person. What’s the matter with my faith? Or my marriage?
Thanks for sharing your lonely feelings. That was an important step that helped me get beyond mine. I don’t know that anything is necessarily the matter with your faith or your marriage. There is a common notion among Christians that if you are a “committed Christian” and happily married you couldn’t really be a lonely person. But I think this is a serious misunderstanding of our basic human condition. I believe that all people are lonely at times unless they have repressed their feelings. Some years ago I was surprised to read about one of my Christian heroes, the priest-scientist Pierre Teilhard, that although he was a real optimist (he attributed a sense of direction to the universe in spite of the existence of evil and in spite of appearances), he was evidently often lonely in his personal daily life and “far from being an optimist. He bore with patience, it is true, trials that might well have proved too much for the strongest of us, but how often in intimate conversation have I found him depressed and with almost no heart to carry on… and he sometimes felt that he could venture no further. During that period he was prostrated by fits of weeping, and he appeared to be on the verge of despair.” (See introduction to “Letters from a Traveler” by Pierre Teilhard.)
As I have studied the lives of the saints—married and single—I have come to believe that the deepest kind of human loneliness is universal and is not caused by rejection or failure of faith as we often suspect. No success, no beautiful, loving wife or husband or intimate embrace and tender kiss, no community, no woman or man or child will ever be able to satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely condition. I see this loneliness as the hunger for ultimate acceptance and completion which brings us back to God again and again.
But not recognizing and accepting that basic loneliness is real and natural leads us to make exhausting demands on ourselves and the people around us to fill a need we believe can be satisfied by an ideal human relationship and/or massive human approval and affirmation. Finally we may become bitter and hostile when we start discovering that nobody and nothing can live up to our total expectations (to eliminate our loneliness). Some people keep rejecting prospective mates, and others ruin their marriages or vocational partnerships because they have the idea that the right marriage partner or business partner should be able to take away their basic loneliness as Christians.
By getting with some men for a number of years now who also believe in God and in sharing our real lives, and praying for each other, I’ve learned that we’re a lot more alike that I could have imagined. As we’ve shared our feelings, God has normalized our loneliness. And now loneliness for me—when I finally quit fighting and fearing it—has become a time to do simple things like filing notes, writing letters, reading articles I’m behind on, and praying, (thanking God in the awareness of my finitude—which loneliness brings—that he loves me). And gratitude for the real and present blessings in my life,—that I didn’t even notice when I was so busy trying to get people to meet my needs…blessings like “sight” (two cataract operations this month), “a place to sleep and work,” “the ability to walk and do strength training, and gratitude for family members and a deepening relationship with God.
God, when I am restless and miserable because of loneliness, struggling to figure out why I’m lonely, wondering what is wrong with me, help me to remember that periods of feeling lonely are a natural part of being human. Help me to stop fighting and fearing being lonely and afraid sometimes, and to learn to keep moving through my days, turning my focus away from my own condition toward you, and toward doing something for someone else who may be feeling lonely, too. I am very grateful that you faced loneliness and provided a way that we’ll never have to be alone again. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus’ solution to our deepest loneliness: Knowing how great the fear of loneliness is, Jesus said before leaving the disciples,
“I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take him in because it doesn’t have eyes to see him, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!” John 14:15-17, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Sometimes I feel like a terrible phony. I don’t feel as if I can be myself anywhere. I seem to have at least five different personalities—most of which don’t feel like the real me. I’m one person at home with my family, another at work, another when I go out on dates, another at church and still another as I sit here and write to you and think about things like this.
And I see other people around me who don’t seem to like what they are being or doing. Why am I afraid to be myself? And secondly, how do we get this way? (I’m assuming and hoping there are others like me.) And finally, how does a Christian find herself (or himself)?
In the first place there are other people like you. It seems that most of us are afraid to be ourselves in some circumstances and are afraid that if we were our “natural” selves we wouldn’t be loved. At least I am that way. The surprise to me has been that since I began to try to write and speak what I really feel about most things, some people seem to like me better.
But I’ve thought a lot about the questions, “Why am I afraid to be myself?” and “How did I get this way?”
Dr. Paul Tournier has helped me a lot with these questions. He believed, in essence, that each of us is born as a sort of natural responder to life. When we like someone or something, we smile and go for it. When we don’t like something or someone, we frown and/or howl and push away. Tournier calls this natural responder the “person.”
But it seems that one of the basic needs this little person has is to be loved. So the “natural,” little person is fine as long as he or she is receiving love (and the necessary basic material things). But one day the child does something that displeases a parent. For example, let’s say that a father sees his little boy playing with his sister’s doll, and angrily says, “Put that doll down. That’s a girl’s toy!” As the boy watches his disgusted father walk away, he may receive only the message that his father will not love him if he touches or likes anything that girls like. And from then on a series of changes can take place in the boy.
In an intense effort to win his father’s love, he may try to hide from his father any feelings or actions he thinks might have to do with girl-things, such as dolls—which may include his interest in art or music or anything else which might in the child’s mind be associated with his father’s evident disgust. So the son may work hard to become a fine athlete while repressing his intuitive sensitive side—thus, perhaps, killing a potential artist, musician, actor or writer. When the boy grows up and marries, this fear of losing his father’s love may even go so far as to hamper his ability to relate intimately to his wife. But of course by this time he has long since “forgotten” the father’s attitude, and believes that any natural interest in anything his father considered “feminine” should be squelched.
On the other hand, in order to win his or her parent’s love a child may be rewarded for certain behaviors. A three-year-old boy in church may say a loud “Amen” at the end of a sermon. The mother’s eyes get wide—and may even tear up. She reaches over and hugs and kisses the child and whispers to his father, “Did you hear Johnny?” And a minister is born.
That little boy realizes that he will be loved and admired if he prays, goes to Sunday school, and talks about God. Forty years later the boy, now grown, and an ordained minister (or banker, artist, or whatever his parents loved him for showing signs of becoming) realizes he wasn’t “called” but “sent” to his vocation. But of course the man had not been conscious of why he was doing what he was.
Fortunately, most people who start out from these parental love-winning motivations wind up liking the vocation they choose. But many don’t and never know why. Their lives are filled with unreal behaviors which are performed for parents perhaps no longer living. And this unreality makes people feel miserable and phony.
When I got to the end of my rope, I decided to turn as much of my life as I could over to as much of God as I could understand at the time. I knew I didn’t know who I was underneath all my efforts to achieve. And I was driven inside to think that everything I did was not enough. It was then I learned that I’d have to listen for God’s voice in my prayer time. Gradually I began to see that if I would give God my whole life each morning and then look and listen for his will in the office in which I worked and at home with my wife and kids, I could get out of myself enough to try to do things to love God and the people he’d already put in my world, and help them have a better life.
I realize this sounds pretty radical, but trying to turn the driver’s seat of my life over to God has brought me the only peace and experience of “who I am” that I’ve ever had.
One of the miracles of the Gospel is that God loves us “just as we are,” and this is a free gift for which we don’t owe God. But if we surrender our lives to God, we find that God will help each of us to discover and become the creative, loving person He’s created us to be. Then we won’t have to “perform” or live out other peoples’ expectations when we are adults in order to be loved unconditionally.
I know this in my head and am trying to learn to live it out in my relationships. Those times when I can be the honest and loving person I want to be, I love life, people and God much more. And having found some brother and sister Christians who are also struggling to commit their lives to God and to learn to be authentic persons, I’m finding some real hope—and help.
God, thank you that you love me just as I am—even during times when I struggle with several different sets of behaviors to suit different situations. I surrender my life to you today. Help me to “lean into your love,” to discover and become the “authentic person” you created me to be, and to begin to show that authenticity in all the settings of my life—at home, at church, at work, and with friends. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?
Matthew 16:24, The Message
