by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
I am a grown person, and I have tried to commit my whole life to God and really want to do God’s will. Whenever I am tempted to do something immoral or dishonest my head is filled with difficult inner voices debating inside my mind. There are rigid, fearful, and righteous voices on one side, and smooth seductive, rationalizing, shaming voices on the other.
I’m feeling like a real failure as a Christian. Whatever the Saints I’ve read about did to remain so peaceful, I just ain’t got it. Do you have any suggestions about how to get rid of those inner voices (or at least get control of the outcome of their inner debates)?
Wow! That’s a mouthful of difficult (but very real) questions. I have certainly had a lot of time with some very similar sounding and convincing voices, and from what I’ve heard so have many other people.
When I first became a Christian, I was amazed at how hard it was for me to give up certain habits of thinking or acting on certain impulses (everything from exaggerating expenses on my income tax forms to lustful fantasies). Contemporary Christian leaders I’d met didn’t seem to have such grubby problems after they had made serious commitments of their lives to Christ. So I began to read about the lives of the people the church has designated as Saints, figuring that they might be honest about the real stuff.
Fortunately, a wise older Christian mentor told me that he’d also wrestled with temptations, experiencing almost despair until his mentor told him that there are apparently at least two kinds of Christians. Some seem to be blessed with a simple, clear cut way to deal with temptation: when a temptation comes to act against principles that are God’s will, they apparently just pray about the decision and decide to do God’s will.
The second kind of Christian experience is like yours—and mine. We seem to have all kinds of inner voices trying to seduce us away from God and his will. My old friend said, “I try to convince all of my “good” voices to join forces and support me in doing the right thing. I try to get them to the polls early to give me a quick, and overwhelming “No” vote victory to stop the rationalizing, seductive voices from luring me into a decision to move toward the temptation or back into indecision.”
Even using this approach there were some temptations about which it was very hard to get a big majority vote, much less a one hundred percent vote for God’s way—which I thought should be the normal outcome for a really committed Christian. But when I asked about that, my old mentor smiled broadly and said, “I discovered that all you need is a bare majority of one vote. Just enough to make the decision to do God’s will.” He added, “Keith, if you struggled and won the decision to do God’s will by only one vote every day for 20 years, you’d be a real flesh and blood Saint!
“Sainthood,” he continued, “is not achieved by killing off all the tempting voices, but by growing through the struggles in the midst of a world of temptations, realizing that each victory is basically a result of continuing to live life in Christ the best we can. Each attempt adds a kind of spiritual muscle to handle more and more important problems and decisions in God’s Kingdom. And over the years,” he said, “I feel calmer and have more and more confidence that God will give me the strength I need to live for Him one decision at a time.”
He reminded me that in the garden, the night before his trial, Jesus tried three times to get out of doing God’s will, the most loving act in history—and his struggle was so difficult the text says, “he sweated blood.”
Leaving there, he went, as he so often did, to Mount Olives. The disciples followed him. When they arrived at the place, he said, “Pray that you don’t give in to temptation.”
He pulled away from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, remove this cup from me. But please, not what I want. What do you want?” At once an angel from heaven was at his side, strengthening him. He prayed on all the harder. Sweat, wrung from him like drops of blood, poured off his face. Luke 22:39-44
Paul describes his experience of this struggle in Romans as follows:
But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. … The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. Romans 7:17-19, 25. THE MESSAGE
I guess it’s really the Spirit of living our entire life in Christ that finally lets us relax and enjoy the game.
Lord, thank you that you give us enough strength for each day and we don’t have to worry about having strength for our whole future right now. I am grateful that you have let us see through your honest servants like Paul that building your kind of character is sometimes more like playing baseball than being so focused on perfection. They tell me that the greatest batter in baseball’s history struck out about half the time at bat. Help me to take it easy and just learn the fundamentals of loving and showing up for the practice where you can teach us to love the other person as well as the game—instead of spending so much time fretting about the score. In Jesus’ name, amen.
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny….. Romans 8:1-2, THE MESSAGE
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’ve been praying on a regular basis with a sense that God is more “real” since I made a conscious decision to turn my entire life over to God. But very recently I’ve been distracted fairly often, and I fear that the sense of closeness and intimacy may have been only short term honeymoon type feeling. Has this been something you’ve experienced?
I was nervous waiting outside the hotel room for my appointment with Dr. Benton, who was conducting a series of seminars at our church. Finally, my turn came.
“I pray regularly,” I told him, “but so much of the time I don’t feel that God hears me. Not only that, but I don’t feel anything much, even when I tell Him I love Him. To pray at times like that seems insincere.”
As we talked, I confessed that frequently I didn’t feel anything during the communion service either.
The minister leaned back in his chair and thought a minute.
“Are you married?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you kiss your wife as you go out the door on the way to work?”
“Yes,” I smiled. “Every day.”
“Does it give you a great feeling of love every time you kiss her at the doorway?”
“Oh no,” I said, laughing. “If it did, I’d never make it to work!”
He smiled, and I went on. “I admit that sometimes I couldn’t even remember whether I had kissed her or not by the time I got to the office.” Dr. Benton identified with my experience, but said that occasionally when he kissed his wife, he was overwhelmed by how much she meant to him as a person. All of those kisses at the door were threads, weaving the fabric of their daily lives into the kind of relationship in which great feelings of love could be experienced naturally and fully when they came. As a Christian, Dr. Benton said that he felt the same way about habits of prayer and worship. Sometimes he did not sense much substance in his feelings for God during his private prayers or at the communion rail, but at other times he was almost overcome by feelings of hope and gratitude to God for His love, acceptance, and for giving him meaning and purpose for his life.
As I was going down the elevator, I could not help smiling when I thought if his analogy about marriage. I began to recall some of the “little things” about being married: the “accidental” touching of our hands in a church pew, and laughing about all the hamburgers and tuna fish salad we had to eat when we were first married, or even the agony of worrying together about a sick child. And I saw that Dr. Benton was right: a deep, loving relationship is woven out of a good many mundane responses which do not feel like love at all . . . at the time.
. . . this fervour is especially characteristic of beginners, and its drying up should be welcomed as a sign that we are getting beyond the first stages. To try to retain it, or to long for its return in the midst of dryness, is to refuse to grow up. It is to refuse the Cross. By our steady adherence to God when the affections are dried up, and nothing is left but the naked will clinging blindly to Him, the soul is purged of self-regard and trained in pure love.
H.A. Hodges, As quoted in Unseen Warfare
Lord, help me to need You and want You so consciously and continually that I will turn to You regardless of my religious feelings. Help me to be willing to walk into the problems of today representing You . . . even though I must go without the certainty of a bag of pat answers or perhaps even without any feeling of Your being with me. But so often I am afraid to take real risks without the sense of Your presence. I guess I am praying for faith, Lord, so that I can act on the reality of Your love. . . even when I cannot “see” it with my senses.
And what is faith? Faith gives substance to our hopes, and makes us certain of realities we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1 NEB
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
I’ve recently gotten a promotion and have been traveling and doing presentations to the executives in some of the branch offices of the company I work for, and I’ve come home very excited. But my wife pours cold water on what I’m sharing by barely even listening to me or telling me she’s in the middle of something important. I feel discounted and like she’s bored and not even interested in my succeeding. It’s like she isn’t interested in me anymore. Can you help me with this?
Years ago I came home from a speaking trip very excited about the audience’s response to what I was saying. “You don’t listen to me anymore!” I blurted out, right in the middle of a sentence I was “delivering.”
“Why, I do too,” my wife answered in what seemed like genuine surprise.
But I did not believe her. After a week of traveling on a speaking trip, I am usually a highly tuned listener to individuals with whom I have been counseling. And I can usually spot it when someone is not paying attention to what I am saying. When I had first started traveling, my wife had been anxious to hear how things had gone and had pumped me for details about each trip as soon as I got home. Often I had not felt like “replaying” the meeting, but she had wanted to hear, so I had told her about it.
But now something had happened. She still asked about the trips, but then seemed to get diverted by almost any kind of interruption, often just as I was getting into something which was very exciting to me. This really bugged me, and I would get furious. If she didn’t want to listen, then why did she ask… and then not pay attention? Maybe she was getting bored with me. After all, we had been married over fifteen years.
Anyway, I was furious when this happened one day. I had just come home from a seven-day trip. The two meetings I had attended were made up of very sharp couples. Although many of the people did not agree with some of the things I was saying and doing, they gave me the great compliment of listening to me. In counseling sessions and social visits between larger meetings, people who came to see me could not have been more attentive, and I was conscious of being very open and receptive to each of them.
But when I got home, here was this seeming indifference. Being a neurotic, I conjured up reasons for my wife’s behavior, all of which boiled down to the facts that (1) she was not interested in that which I was doing and (2) she was not interested in me any more. After a couple of hours of unexplained resentment and cutting remarks—which had the desired effects of making us both miserable—I let my problem out in the open.
Following the initial expression of feelings back and forth, we began to talk about what had happened. And being so mad at her, I had a hard time hearing what she was saying. But one thing echoed in my mind as I drove toward the office later: “When you come home from these speaking trips you act like a spoiled king!”
That hurt! Particularly because I had the sneaking feeling it just might be true. But until she said those words, it had not occurred to me that my behavior and attitudes about myself and what I was doing had changed. I was now associating with very attractive and successful men and women about our age while she was stuck at home taking care of three little girls.
As I thought about this, I wondered how many lay speakers, ministers, doctors, bank presidents begin unconsciously to behave like spoiled kings and queens without even knowing it is happening. I wondered how many other men and women begin unconsciously to expect their mates and families to hang on their words and attend to their needs with the same speed and solicitousness their hosts at meetings or their secretaries do? I started not to write this because it is difficult for me to accept this about myself. Since I consciously want it not to be true, I would like to deny it to myself, and especially to you. But I am afraid it is true.
I realized that one of the things which makes it so bad—and I think may even exaggerate it in the eyes of a husband or wife—is the fact that important unshared experiences often separate people. That is, when I have been off to a stimulating seminar alone, I often make the mistake of coming home and very excitedly telling my wife about a “fantastic place” or person or group which has changed my life. In one sense she is glad. But in another sense, the experience she did not share separates us, because I am implying that I am “going on” away from her due to what happened to me. And since she was not present, there is an implication that I am leaving her behind—or perhaps an unconscious fear on her part that I might—even though that is not what I am saying and thinking.
But if I am really honest I must tell you that my demands for my wife’s total attention on demand has been more about my own feeling that I am not lovable. And it’s only been as I’ve decided to surrender the results of my actions to God and trust Him with my life and relationships that I have felt loved by the people close to me.
All this does not mean that I am suddenly going to quit talking about trips and conferences when I come home. That would really cause problems. But I am going to attempt to be more thoughtful concerning the way I talk about them. I hope I will not forget to find out first what has been going on at home to laugh or cry about while I have been away and to tell my wife how grateful I am for her and all she does for me. And I am going to try not to expect a busy, involved woman to suddenly stop the world in which she has been operating alone for a week to cheer at my recital of the great time I have had (away from home responsibilities) as as “honored guest” somewhere.
“There is in the human heart an inexhaustible need to be loved, and a continual fear of not being loved. Consequently, in all our relations and in all our activities we look for proof of love from the other person. …we seek others’ reassurance. Those who doubt their own worth have a particularly insatiable desire for marks of affection because they just as continually doubt that others could love them.” – Escape from Loneliness, Paul Tournier
Lord, forgive me for my self-centered blindness to my own insensitivity and to my own doubts about being lovable. Give me the insight to see the effect of my real behavior on other people and on You. And then, Lord, please give me the courage and strength to trust your love and confess my sin and change my actions. Thank You, God, that You are in the life-changing business. In Jesus’ name, amen.
You’re blessed when you care: in the moment of being ‘care-full’ you find yourself cared for.”
Matt. 5:7 THE MESSAGE
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, over the years you have said in a number of different ways that God uses stories to change our lives in specific and deep ways. Can you give a specific example of your hearing a story told by someone you did not know that changed your life in a specific and significant way (as Jesus’ stories evidently did in his listeners lives)?
That’s a very good question.After almost 50 years of listening for the truth in stories, I am deeply touched more and more often with stories people tell about their own lives.
Here’s a recent example. On the final evening of a large conference I attended a man in his 40s spoke about how he became a Christian. He was an award winning writer from a very famous and artistic family, whose actor-father had captured the hearts of America with roles he had played on two of the most watched TV series of all time.
The young man had wonderful memories of his early childhood—especially about his father. When his father came home he would spend a lot of time talking to him, being silly with him, and giving him lots of hugs and kisses. The man speaking to us said, “My dad meant everything to me. Everyone loved him. In fact looking back, I can see that he was my god.”
Then one day when the boy ran in from school, his red-eyed uncle met him at the door, saying, “Something terrible has happened. Your dad has left, and your mother’s upstairs crying. She needs you.”
He went into his mother’s room to find a weeping, broken woman.
The man at the podium before us was obviously recalling that moment, and the surprise on his face was still present. Since his parents had never fought in front of him, he had no idea their marriage was in trouble.
He then described how he slipped into the drug and alcohol life of many of the children of wealthy families in Hollywood. Finally, one night he totaled a fine car his father had bought him when he was old enough to drive. To console him for wrecking his own car, his father gave him his Lamborghini sports car—evidently an example of the way the father dealt with the vacuum in the boy’s life.
Then that young man told us with unforgettable sadness that his daddy had died, and they had never been reconciled.
The story continued, but my heart was suddenly torn in two. It was no longer the heart-break in the speaker’s life that was so agonizing to me. A door had quietly swung open in the basement of my own heart as he told us that his recurring memory still was of when he was very young, and his dad held his hand and laughed as they went to the studio. He shook his head and said something to the effect of, “He just didn’t get it that the extravagant gifts were not even in the same playing field as the grief I was experiencing, as I disappeared into the world of alcohol and addiction for several years.”
The speaker moved on to tell about a woman who worked for his mother. She kept urging his mother to go to church, and eventually she had gone. And much later he had more reluctantly gotten talked into going with them, and finally got converted.
But I can’t tell you the details of how that happened, because from the moment he spoke of walking proudly down the street with his father when he was a small child I had begun to cry, struggling to hold in deeper sobs. I was caught completely by surprise. I guess I was surprised because my children were almost grown when I left home and got a divorce, over thirty years ago. And I hadn’t realized how theirchildhood memories would be affected. For years I had tried to apologize and make amends to them, but I could tell that they knew something was still terribly wrong with me.
That night God used that simple story to break through my entrenched defenses. And I understood for the first time in the thirty-plus years something more about what had happened in our family. I had forgotten that hundreds of people who read my books responded to my writing and speaking with love and gratitude as if I were some sort of movie star or great athlete. And I realized in agony that in my children’s eyes I had been as much of a celebrity as the speaker’s father had been to his audience. But it was that picture of father and son holding hands that got through my defenses and denial, and broke my heart.
I saw that it was not that what I had done was unforgiveable to grown daughters—many people get divorces that are horrible. I saw that my leaving had shattered the memories of the only childhood life they had, memories of a father who had loved them. It wasn’t that I had been an awful father when my children were young; it was that when I left, the memories of the life we had known together were damaged irreparably.
Later that night, away from the crowd, I could not stop crying as gut-wrenching grief enveloped me, and I sat again in agony on the edge of despair. I realized to the bottom of my heart the enormity of my Sin, and that there was nothing I could ever do to “make it right” for my own daughters. But after a while I was filled with a deep gratitude, that even if I could not change the past, I had been given the gift of experiencing the reality and depth of my Sin and self-centeredness, and could turn to God as I had heard that night’s speaker tell about the pain that had driven him into the arms of a loving Father—who will never desert him.
I realized that my Sin had done the same thing for me that his grief had done for him, and I prayed that my children’s grief and anger had done it for them too.
What is that worth? What is the truth worth—that our sins and failures can lead us beyond our irreparable pasts to a new and deeper life with God?
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve learned that not all Christian stories that have changed my life—and helped me grow up and be more responsible—are happy ending stories in the usual sense. But even though I will never get over the effects of my actions, and I cannot undo the harm I have done, I do believe that God can forgive me. And I know that God can use simple stories like this one to give me a far deeper and more transforming resolve to live the rest of my days as a more honest and loyal child of God… and father to my own children.
“…I tell stories to create readiness, to nudge people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and not get it.
(Matt. 13:13,The Message)
“It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Those things that hurt, instruct.’”
(The Road Less Traveledby M. Scott Peck, p.16)
“What we need to know…is that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars, but who in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world.”
(The Magnificent Defeatby Frederich Buechner, p. 47)
Dear Lord: Thank you that you continue to give us direction, insight and hope—even through our worst failures and sins. Thank you that you have set up ways that we can confess our sins to one another and pray for each other, so that we can live together more whole and healthy, become more honest and loving, and grow closer to you and the other members of your family. In Jesus’ name, amen.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I am dancing around the decision of committing as much of my life as I can to as much of God in Christ as I can understand. I’ve been told that this is an intellectually honest way to move into a life with God in the center. But my question is: does that mean I’m putting on intellectual blinders or castrating the investigation of new aspects of reality as these come to my attention?
For a long time the notion of making a “total commitment to Christ” seemed like a kind of intellectual suicide to me. In some vague way I had gotten the idea that such a commitment would lead to a narrow, fragmented intellectual life made up of “religious” thoughts, books, and conversations on one hand, and “non-religious” ones on the other. I guess my sense of loyalty made me feel that once I “joined” Christ, I could never again question his existence or his way of life. Since I felt that I would be obligated to think “Christian thoughts,” I believed that my mind could not roam in new fields and seek new truths with the freedom to examine anything—a freedom which is very important to me.
However, in the act of offering as much of my life as I could at a particular time to as much of Christ as I could grasp at that moment, I began to learn some fascinating things about the intellectual effects of trying to make a serious surrender of one’s future to God.
I am discovering that in trying to find God’s will and the shape of the Christian life I have begun an adventure so great that its total completion will always be ahead. And this has had a unifying effect on my intellectual life that I had not counted on at all. Years ago the Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport pointed out that the striving for a goal beyond one’s reach is thought by many psychologists to be the greatest power for unifying the diverse elements in a personality structure(1). Certainly this has seemed to be true in many of the developmental stages of my life.
As an adolescent, for instance, the overriding purpose of playing basketball affected every part of my living: what I ate, what I drank, how much I slept, and how I did my studies.
My whole life was ordered by my desire to play basketball well during high school. I did many other things, but having a single dominant incentive gave me a way to establish my priorities and unify my life during a period that could have been very fragmented. As it turned out, the goal of being a great “all American” player was beyond my reach. But this only made the unifying effect continue as I played. Because, as Allport pointed out, the achieving of a goal is often not nearly as unifying as the pilgrimage in search of it. For instance, the Allies were much more unified in fighting the Second World War than when we had won it and should truly have had unity.
In trying to commit my life to finding and participating in some of the purposes of Christ, as I can determine them, my energies and abilities are gradually being focused and are working together. I have a point of reference for my learning: what does a book or a new experience in a different field have to say about the world and life as Christ presented them? I have a hypothesis which I can test in all areas of thought and relationship. And I sometimes experience a freedom to experiment with and challenge old methods and patterns of teaching the Christian message.
But at other times I push away from God and want to be rich or famous. On such days I have two or more different dominant goals. And I gradually begin to feel split and torn in my attempts to focus all my energies on one or the other. Many times I want to be God’s person but want more to be a famous writer someday. And I get caught in a real conflict of motives . . . until I begin again and make a primary commitment of my whole future happiness to Christ—whatever the outcome may be with regard to my other dominant goals. Often following such a commitment, I find that paradoxically I am free to work at my secondary purposes more honestly and creatively, because my ultimate happiness does not depend on succeeding there anymore.
It seems that so many young people today are feeling disintegrated in their lives. They appear to be searching for something, a unifying adventure that will bring into a single focus all of their abilities and energies. I guess I am projecting my own experience on them, because that is what I was looking for all my life: an adventure with a meaning and purpose beyond my grasp—a hypothesis with which to integrate all truths. I guess if I were a professor, I would go and tell them what a relief it is to have found such a unifying adventure in the Christian life . . . because it is.
The staking of a [overall] goal compels the unity of the personality in that it draws the stream of all spiritual activity into its definite direction.
Alfred Adler
Psychologies of 1930 (2)
Of course education never is complete, and the process of integration extends throughout life; but that is its fundamental purpose—that out of the chaos which we are at birth order may be fashioned, and from being many we may become one.
William Temple
Nature, Man and God (3)
Lord, help me to realize fully the paradoxical freedom that is found through trying to commit all of life to you. Sometimes I am amazed that this commitment has issued in creativity and a freedom to look in all areas for truth, when I had thought it would mean a narrower, restricted intellectual life. Sometimes at first as I read philosophy and psychology, I was afraid I might find out that you are not real. But I thank you that it is through the strength which comes in this relationship with you that I find the courage to examine even the evidence which might destroy my faith. I find that as I continue to pray,
read the scriptures and join Jesus in loving the Father and his other children—on the adventure of learning about God in all aspects of Reality.
“Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’”
Jesus
1 Gordon Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality
2 Alfred Adler, Psychologies of 1930, ed. Carl Murchison (Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1930); see chapter 21, “Individual Psychology.”
3 William Temple, Nature, Man and god (New York: The Macmillan company, 1956), 233.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, some of us have known you for years. You have often talked about being grateful to be in a “new place.” Many times I have thought I had changed after receiving a “great insight” or having an inspiring experience at a conference or after reading a book, but people around me don’t seem to believe I’ve really changed. My question is: What is a specific example of your knowing you have changed in a significant way, and someone close to you believing that you have changed significantly? What would that look like?
Ooh, difficult question. But the most recent experience I’ve had that convinced me and a family member that I have changed happened this summer.
After about twenty-five years of flying under the radar of the Christian author/speaker world, I had received an invitation to conduct a weekend conference in a local church located several hundreds of miles from here. I thought, “If I can speak without drooling on my shirt front, or thinking I am Bruce Larson in midsentence, maybe I could do a little traveling and speaking again.” But, at eighty-two, I was a little nervous about it. (I’d participated in some institutional programs during the past few years, but usually shared the time with one or two, or a number of speakers.)
I prepared my material, and then packed my clothes etc. in a large suitcase. Andrea was going with me (and I was secretly very grateful about that since I was feeling some of the fear and anxiety of my younger days.)
At the last minute, Andrea said, “Honey, your bag weighs just a little too much. Would you like for me to take something out?”
Now Andrea is a truly amazing wife. She helps me in a hundred ways—but she is very wise and always asks first if I would like her to help. So I said gratefully, “Thanks. Just take out the heavy black shoes and the brown tie shoes and put in the cordovan loafers. I’ll wear them with everything.” So she finished packing, and the next morning I stumbled out of bed and we caught a flight to Alabama.
When we arrived, I just had time to shower and dress for the opening Friday night session. I planned to wear a dark suit or sports coat to the meeting. As I sat down to put on my shoes, I glanced at my watch. (Ah, not a minute to spare—but on time.) But then, I slipped my shoes out of their red shoe bags. The only pair of shoes I brought looked strange. Then it hit me. THERE ARE TWO BROWN LEFT SHOES—ONE LOAFER AND ONE TIE SHOE! AND NO TIME TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!!!
All the adolescent fears of my youth descended on me, fears that I had secretly protected my self from for almost 70 years, (by prayer, reasoning with myself, taking a drink, running away). What could I do? It was too late to run to a store and pick up a pair of new shoes (at that moment I would have paid $500 for any two that matched.)
Then I looked at Andrea who knows me so well. She was in anguish, and sounding a little fearful, “I’m so sorry, Honey! Oh, how could I have done that?”
“Exactly the right question!” I thought. And I felt the old fear-anger rising in my chest.
Now some people who are not proud, insecure males may not see this situation as significant problem—to be coming back to your former vocation at eighty-two, (specifically trying to demonstrate that you are not an addled old man), and having to wear dirty white sneakers with a dark suit to speak from the front of a sizeable church. But for me it was my worst nightmare, and it was really happening! And then I thought, “And it isn’t even my fault!”
I felt my eyes narrowing, as I prepared to shame my wife (in order do get the onus off me somehow), by saying with icy sarcasm something like, “Is packing one pair of shoes that difficult?” (Interpreted for non-Texans: “Can’t you even pack ONE damn pair of shoes?”)
But then, unexpectedly, I thought about God, and how I was about to tell these people that God loved them. And then I saw in my imagination the faces of some of the men in the men’s group I meet with, and remembered how we are trying to surrender our entire lives to God. And then I looked at my dear wife, who had never in the thirty years of our marriage made a mistake (like the shoes) that involved me. And I thought about how she had interrupted her work to come along on this trip and help me, knowing how scary this could be for me at my age. I looked at her face. No excuses, just concern for me—and she was prepared for the axe.
She said uneasily, looking at her watch, “They’ll be here in five minutes. What are you going to do?”
Inside, something happened. I suddenly smiled as I realized that I was saying to God, “Sir, I realize that this shoe deal may provide the answer to the viability question in these peoples’ eyes—but I would appreciate it if you would let me make my own mistakes…like you always have before.”
And chuckling, I said to Andrea, “Listen, let’s make a game out of this. It’s a little bizarre, but I am going to be perfectly dressed, wearing one loafer and one tennis shoe. I’m going to wear that white sneaker this entire weekend, and I’m going to make you a bet. I’ll bet you that no one will have the guts to mention it. And I won’t even limp.”
I can still see the smile and the grateful, loving look on her face as she shook her head and laughed. The storm was over, and I was glad too. But then—almost immediately—my clever little self-centered mind was thinking that this two left shoes experience would be an unbelievably great story to introduce my weekend with the people—a story that would vindicate me. And my quick thinking would prove to the audience that I still have a sharp and agile mind!
But then, out of nowhere, the faces of my friends in the men’s group flashed into my mind, solemnly shaking their heads. And I realized that although telling the story would clear me of responsibility for my ridiculous costume, it would shame Andrea in front of all those people, making her look like a stupid wife (which she is anything but), when all she’d been trying to do was to help me correct something I hadn’t checked right in the first place. So, I just thanked God for stopping me from hurting the one I love, and got up and did my best to help those people see the wonder and love I’m finding in this life of trying to trust God for the outcome of everything I do. And I didn’t say a thing to anyone all weekend about the shoes. Only one person, an older lady, even asked about it. She said, “What in the world happened to your foot?”
In my most conspiratorial tone I whispered, “Oh, you wouldn’t want to know!” Her eyes widened, and she nodded, and walked away.
So, with regard to the question you asked about knowing whether I have really changed, virtually all my life that I can recall, I have hated to fail, be wrong, or be thought inadequate in any area in which I have been highly trained or successful. In order to avoid such opinions I have shaded the truth (i.e. lied—and denied to myself I was doing it, blamed someone else—even someone I loved—rather than take the blame for a shaming mistake.) But in this case, my love for my wife was greater than my fear of failure. In that moment in my eighty-second year, I saw that I had changed more deeply than I ever dreamed I might.
I didn’t even explain what had really happened privately to our host on the way back to the airport. The sense of peace and gratitude I felt as I sat down in the aisle seat of row fourteen told me more that in Christ even very old dogs can learn new tricks.
And how do I know that my wife recognized that I had really changed? All I can report about that came from two bits of evidence: first, the look of love and gratitude in her eyes when I told her about the game and the bet I was proposing, and two, that in our more than thirty years of marriage, I cannot remember a closer and more loving weekend together—following that moment.
Lord, thank You that You really can change us, if we will surrender as much of our futures to You as we can, and turn loose of trying to manipulate and control people, places and things to justify ourselves at every step and pretend to be more and better than we are. I know that in my case the battle is not nearly over (to rest content and trust You and just be the person You made me to be). But thank You that because of these unexpected little victories, I can sometimes trust You and really enjoy being my self—without trying to “fix the future.” Amen.
In the midst of his great chapter on love, Paul said some strange things about Christ’s kind of love, “Love cares more for others than self…Love doesn’t have a swelled head…Love isn’t always me first…Love doesn’t fly off the handle…Love doesn’t keep score of the sins of others…Love puts up with anything …Love trusts God always…Love always looks for the best…and Love keeps going to the end. (From 1st Cor. 13 THE MESSAGE.)
“Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”
Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you mentioned that your wife, Andrea, is also a writer. What kind of writing does she do, and is there something available in print now?
Yes, Andrea is a very accomplished writer and an editor. She recently showed me a devotional she wrote, and I asked her if we could use it on this Monday morning space. She agreed. So here it is.
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I looked at a picture of my brother and his family on the monitor’s screen. According to the e-mail to which it was attached, they were having breakfast with our sister on a visit to Tennessee where she was living in our late mother’s garden home. My sister’s happy face smiled back at me, too.
A flood of memories and feelings washed over me as I surveyed the scene…the familiar fireplace in the background over my sister’s shoulder flanked by the unfamiliar arrangement of objects placed there for a recent estate sale.
My eyes settled on my nephew’s face. At fifteen, he is tall and slender, much like my father had been at that age…and my brother, too. The expression on his face is so achingly familiar it causes a catch in my throat. Eyebrows raised high, lips pressed together and upturned in a smile, his smile echoes one of my father’s smiles. From grandfather to grandson…the connection is so visible. Of all the memories that picture holds, that one teen-age smile is the most gripping, a living connection to the precious gift we siblings have shared … parents with strong commitment and deep loyalty. They passed their great faith on to us as they guided and provided for the three of us and our sister (who suffered brain damage a few hours after her birth) through our growing up years.
We are in the process of dissolving that home place. My fingers froze on the keyboard as I wrote, thinking of all the “endings” taking place as we do this. We share the decision-making and work of this transition, and also the memories and gratitude for the gift of two such remarkable parents.
Lord, thank you that no matter what endings happen in our lives, we’ll never be alone. You’re always here to be our home. Amen.
“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you.” – John 15:4 (THE MESSAGE)
“Sorrow … turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history…”
– C. S. Lewis
Note from Keith: Andrea has written or co-authored seven books. The following are the ones still available at www.keithmiller.com.
• The Eternal Present, ed. by Andrea Wells Miller (Daily Devotionals Selected from the published works of well known Christian Authors)
• Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody, with Andrea Wells Miller and J. Keith Miller
• Breaking Free: A Workbook for Facing Codependence, by Pia Mellody and Andrea Wells Miller
• Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody, with Andrea Wells Miller and J. Keith Miller
Besides the books listed above, Andrea has written a number of study guides for books and small groups. She has also edited and helped write a number of Keith’s books.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, your life sounds like a real adventure story. How have you met so many interesting people and gotten them to help you? My experience vacillates between being boring and scary by comparison and people seem to resist helping me.
It’s interesting that you would say that my life sounds like “a real adventure story” because just this week Andrea and I were talking about the fact that we both think of our lives as being on an adventure as we try to learn to relate more deeply to God and to do God’s will as we can understand it. My life is sometimes scary, but it’s not boring. It could be that the reason I write about so many interesting people and experiences is that we have come to believe that everyone we meet on God’s adventure may teach us somehow about God and loving. So we pay a different level of attention to people and listen more intentionally than we used to—and people we contact everyday have become more fascinating to us. An “adventure” may begin in a very ordinary situation.
For example, about four years ago, I was helping our pastor begin a small group series at our church. At the introductory meeting each small group leader was asked to talk a little bit about their group and how the participants might grow spiritually. The group that Andrea and I were leading was titled, “Living What You Believe in Every Area of Your Life.” I briefly described that the group’s main purpose would be to learn how to walk in faith everywhere in their lives. After I spoke we broke up into several groups that had been selected by the staff ahead of time.
One young couple, David and Jessica Lyon, came up to me afterwards and asked if they could visit with us. They heard me mention a book and wanted to talk about it.
We invited them to come by after class and talk. As a result, we became friends and David and I began spending time discussing his interest in theology and the work we were doing in helping people discover and accomplish the dreams God may have planted in them. Shortly after that the woman who was our administrative assistant moved out of state, just as Jessica had decided that she was more interested in helping people the way we were trying to than following her vocational profession of being a teacher (she also has a degree in Architecture). She was looking for a way to accomplish that dream and follow God’s will for her. I told her that we needed some help, as our assistant was moving, but that she was way over-qualified for the job as our assistant. However, if she wanted to work for us for a while as she was making the transition, we’d be happy to have her with us. That was two and a half years ago and Jessica was a God-send.
Shortly after David and Jessica were married they decided to have a baby. As the time for the baby to come approached, Jessica said she was going to have to quit because they felt that it was especially important to care for the baby themselves the first several months of his life.
We agreed. But when Jessica told us she would still need to work, and after we all prayed about the situation, we invited Jessica to keep working and bring the baby with her. We have offices in our home, and her office was right next to our quiet, private guest room, which had a rocking chair in it. We borrowed a crib, and she could have a private place to feed and change the baby, and he or she could nap there. She accepted.
And so suddenly life changed for us. At 60 and 80 years old Andrea and I hadn’t been in the same house with a baby around for a long time. But since we believed this was the way we were supposed to live, we were excited when Blaine arrived at the hospital—and then appeared at our house.
We had some strange experiences during his early days. One morning, about 10:00 a.m., I was talking on the phone to someone in an Eastern city. Suddenly Blaine let out a big happy scream (that filled the entire house) followed by a sweet baby giggle and the business man on the line said, “What was that noise?”
I said, “Oh, nothing, it’s just the baby.”
“THE BABY! You’re 80 years old and you have a baby in your office?”
So I explained how Blaine had joined the team for his first season, as a free agent.
Andrea and I were writing a book at the time, the thesis of which centered around an argument Jesus’ disciples were having about who was to have the highest rank/position in God’s new Kingdom that Jesus was announcing.
Jesus was apparently horrified and disgusted that the argument was happening after all his teaching that the old order would be replaced with a whole different way of relating, doing away with the hierarchical social system they were arguing about. Jesus put a young child in the midst of them and said:
“I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.” (Matthew 18:2, The Message)
After Blaine started crawling, whenever I walked into Jessica’s office in the morning, he would look up at me but wouldn’t come to me. As I watched him glance up from the floor and then ignore me, it hit me that this new “distance” between the baby and me might have something to do with what Jesus had been talking about. The next morning I got on my hands and knees in the hall outside Jessica’s office, and crawled into the room where he was playing on the floor.
He glanced up, surprised, and didn’t look away. Then I lay down on the floor absolutely on his level and looked at him—eye to eye—across the floor. Blaine cocked his head a second and then crawled right over to greet me.
Suddenly I had two insights: (1) My lying on the floor to connect with Blaine was a picture of what God had done for us in Jesus—gotten on our level, becoming like us to get into our world so we’d feel safe enough to hear what God wanted to tell us. And (2) that the disciples were in some way to do the same thing, to deal eye to eye with the little child within the people they invited into the kingdom. Furthermore, as a twenty-first century disciple, I am to do this also, to walk with people in terms of their real inner lives as they are experiencing them and not from some elevated position as an expert theologian, professor, or therapist. I realized that disciples are still to relate to people vulnerably, with a kind of eye-to-eye-level love that was what the Kingdom Jesus was announcing was all about.
As I went back into my office and started to thank God for that insight, I realized an even more important thing that Jesus may have been saying to me, about my relating to God. Before I could relate much as a disciple of Jesus to the child minds of people I was talking to about the Kingdom/Reign of God, I would have to relate to God as a little child relates to his daddy. And when I thought about actually addressing God with the word, “Daddy,” I almost choked on it. It didn’t seem appropriate, not ‘holy’ enough. (But the word Jesus used in the “Lord’s Prayer,” the only prayer he gave us, was “abba,” translated properly as “daddy.”)
And it was then that I saw my problem: I didn’t want to be a helpless, defenseless child when I related to God. I wanted to be like an intelligent committed young therapist or disciple talking to his older, more experienced mentor. I was ashamed to acknowledge that. But I decided that this attitude just might be the thing that had me stuck on my book project and my life at age 80, trying to relate to God.
So I imagined myself as a little child coming to his loving, all-knowing, trustworthy, safe father, and one morning I finally addressed God with the word, “Daddy.” I began to cry, to weep as I hadn’t done in a long time, because I was warmed with the sense that I was at home and safe in God’s presence as a little child would be with an all-loving father.
I’m not saying that you should do what I did, but I am telling you that by taking a young couple named Lyon seriously one morning at a meeting in our church, a new adventure started that led me to discover a deeper relationship with God. And a little over three years later, I was rescued from a stuck place on our book project—you might say “trained”—by the youngest Lyon, named Blaine. And for me, that was a real adventure that took place in our own home.
Lord, thank you that we don’t have to do big things, be famous people or go to exciting foreign places to have “important” adventures with you. Thank you that you offer to introduce us to all kinds of fascinating people to love if we, as little children, pay attention and let you reign as our Daddy from heaven. In Jesus’ name, amen.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, who was the person who gave you the courage to reveal your own problems and unacceptable feelings as a way to connect with and free Christians plagued by “unspeakable” problems?
Thanks for asking this. I haven’t talked about much, but at one point I knew that what I needed personally was a model: someone who was seriously trying to be God’s person and who obviously was committed to Christ and had intellectual integrity, but who also faced the kinds of fears, problems and failures that I faced. Evidently, this was not a combination to be found in a single Christian communicator. People seriously committed to God either did not have the kind of struggles I had, or considered them too insignificant to be mentioned. I had met some other strugglers who, like me, were trying to slug it out with this paradox, but we were all nobodies. I had never run across a communicator with any authority who admitted to this strange predicament of feeling unable to be whole, in spite of the power and joy to be found in the gospel.
Then in the summer of 1965, Dr. Tournier came to Laity Lodge in the remote hill country of southwest Texas for a conference. I was director of the conference center. And although I had heard of Paul Tournier, I had never read anything he had written.
The first evening he spoke, the “great hall” at the lodge was filled with psychiatrists, psychologists, MDs of all varieties, Christian ministers and lay leaders from various professions. The air was almost electric with expectation, and I realized how much the conference guests were looking forward to hearing this man whose books they had read. Many of the guests had traveled hundreds of miles for this weekend. We had turned down a number of requests to attend, and still the group had overflowed into the motel in the nearest town. As we all gathered for the first session, I wondered how well Tournier would be able to cross the language barrier from his French through an interpreter to us. I had no idea what content to expect.
Then he began to speak. Within five minutes the room had faded and we were transported into another world. A little boy was describing his struggle with loneliness and self-doubt almost sixty years before in a country several thousand miles away. You could have heard a pin drop on the stone floor. I sat behind the speaker near the huge fireplace and looked past Paul Tournier into the eyes of almost a hundred sophisticated American professionals. Inside those eyes, wide open, I could see a roomful of other lonely little boys and girls reliving their own struggles for identity and worth.
After fifteen or twenty minutes had passed, a strange thing began to happen, something I have never seen happen before or since. As Paul spoke in French, we found ourselves nodding in agreement and understanding—before his words were translated. We trusted him so much, and felt he understood us so well, that we knew at a subconscious level we would resonate with what he was saying. He described problems, doubts, joys, meanings, fears—many of which still existed for him—and spoke of them naturally, as if they were the materials God normally worked with in God’s healing ministry among all people, Christians included.
Before us was a man who did not even speak our language, an almost white haired man in his sixties who wore a wrinkled tweed suit and was exhausted from a whirlwind trip across America. And yet as he spoke fatigue, age, clothes and language difference all faded into the background. He turned periodically to make eye-contact with those of us behind him. I was mainly conscious of his sparkling eyes, his personal transparency, and a glow of genuine caring about his face. As he spoke, I felt and heard love and the truth of God about my own life.
I found myself having to fight back tears—tears of relief and gratitude, and release from my solitary burden. Because of my own struggles, I had sensed that, to be healed, we need more than good medical advice or even excellent psychological counseling. We need presence, vulnerable personal presence. I knew the Bible claimed that was what God gave us in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit: his own presence to heal and strengthen us. And I had felt that somehow we Christians were to be channels to convey that healing presence personally to other people’s lives through our own openness and vulnerability. But in Paul Tournier I met at last a living model of the kind of communication I was trying in a stumbling, understand way to find.
I made two decisions during that conference. First, I would go back to school to get some psychological training. Second, as soon as I finished a manuscript I was working on, I would read some of Tournier’s books. I was already in the process of writing a book for new Christians about living in a personal relationship with God. Existing books of this sort seemed to me overly pious, and they did not deal with the “stumbling blocks” that had bothered me as a new Christian. After Tournier’s visit, I completed the manuscript of that, my first book, with great enthusiasm.
And when I sent my manuscript to the publisher, the next thing I did was to read The Meaning of Persons. Again, tears. For years I had been looking for books whose authors were real and transparent so that I could identify with their problems and move toward healing in Christ. The closest thing I had found was Augustine’s Confessions, written in the fourth century, which is what had finally persuaded me to write a book about my own struggles as a contemporary Christian. But if I had read Tournier first, I doubt I would have felt the need to write that manuscript, The Taste of New Wine.
Knowing that a man existed who loved God and yet who also faced his own humanity and used the discoveries and methods of scientific investigation did something for me. And knowing that, at least partially because of Christ, this man could afford to be honest about his own struggles, was to push me far beyond my small horizons of security and faith. From that day forward, until his death in 1986, Paul Tournier became a mentor and friend.
“Give from the center of who you are. Don’t fake it.” Eph. 4:15f THE MESSAGE
Lord, thank you that you want us “to grow up, to know the whole truth, and tell it in love.” (Rom. 12:9, THE MESSAGE) In Jesus’ name, Amen.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’m a Christian and I feel like I am pretty committed, but I know that I don’t have the courage to be open about my faith in some situations. How does a person learn to have the courage to stand up and be counted in really unchristian situations? Can you give me some ways to find this sort of commitment? Where have you found courage that has let you take some of the hits you have taken?
For years I was looking for the courage that would make me unafraid to take unpopular stands if I needed to. Your asking the question brought a vivid picture to mind, a scene that happened half a century ago in Richmond, Indiana.
Gordon Cosby was the guest preacher in the Earlham Quaker meeting in Richmond, Indiana one November Sunday morning in 1961. Gordon had started a church in Washington, D.C. that had only sixty members and a long waiting list to get in. The required disciplines were very strenuous. I’d heard that almost half the members were ordained ministers from other churches and denominations who had left their churches to come be a part of a little church that was more demanding than some of the seminaries from which they had graduated. In that church, each person had to re-make his or her commitment every year. The influence from that small new company of committed Christians was already radiating throughout the Christian world.
I was a thirty-four year old Episcopal business-man-student at the Earlham School of Religion, the first Quaker seminary in history, and I was thrilled to meet Gordon Cosby and hear him preach. I wondered where he got the idea that a small group of Christians with stringent discipline could change the direction of a materialist Culture.
His sermon title was “The power of Discipline.” He told the story of how Gideon defeated a vastly larger and superior army with only 300 men. Gordon’s point was that God wanted Gideon to know two things: (1) to whom to credit the victory, and (2) what can be done with a small group who are really committed and disciplined to stay. He referred to the minority situation of the Christian Church in America.
Then he related his own war experience of being part of an all-volunteer air born division in the army during the Second World War. The discipline in this division was extremely hard and exacting. At one point General Taylor had court-martialed an officer for not shaving—even though there was no water, but all the men were required to shave. Gordon said that the General was right and that it was the tough discipline that allowed that division to do things that simply could not be done, and to make an unheralded but powerful contribution to winning the war.
Gordon then said that the commands of Jesus were two, (1) to be obedient and (2) to love. As a conclusion, he pointed out that following these commands as Jesus obeyed them demanded a rare and hard kind of discipline that was possible only for people who are deeply committed. “As a matter of fact,” he pointed out, “we must have the kind of love and obedience that makes us realize that we are expendable in Christ’s cause, that we become willing to be lost for His cause.”
Gordon then cited what he said was on of the most moving experiences in his life. At one point during the war, his airborne division was surrounded, their supplies and ammunition were almost depleted, and they were cut off. But they were commanded not to retreat. They were to stay or the larger battle and the whole war effort in that area could be lost. They were ordered to stay in their fox holes in a long valley. Gordon, a Chaplain in that division, was watching from a cliff as the German tanks moved toward the men he had come to know and care for a great deal. The tanks could not bypass them because if they did, the American soldiers could come out and harass the infantry following the tanks. The enemy did not know that the soldiers were out of anti tank weapons, so the tanks roared down upon them. Gordon watched, horrified, as the tank drivers drove over the fox holes with the men still in them, spun their tanks, and sealed the men in the holes…alive. But even seeing the tanks do this as they approached, the men did not panic. They realized that they had to be expendable to win time for the main body of the army to escape. And they stayed.
Gordon looked at us in that meeting and said evenly, “The commitment that frees, that overcomes fear and hesitation comes from the person who finally comes to the place where he doesn’t care what happens to him. In a sense he couldn’t care less. He is willing to be expendable in Christ’s cause. And that’s where the power comes from to change impossible situations.”
I was very moved when I heard Gordon telling us that story. I grasped for the first time that I was sitting not ten feet from a man who had seen people he knew well live and die with that kind of commitment. And I knew in my bones that Gordon Cosby had that kind of faith too. I heard that sermon forty-eight years ago, and I have followed Gordon’s work since he “stayed” and was obedient. He loved the poor and marginalized, the unloved of all kinds, and faced angry threatened Christians, selfish politicians, police, judges, and lawmakers at all levels, in the South during integration, and in Washington D.C. for fifty years, in order to build housing and new lives for people with no advocates or powerful friends. He and the others at the Church of the Saviour have in fifty years done things that simply couldn’t be done.
And Gordon, 91 now, still goes to the building where prisoners who have served their terms are released on the streets of our capital city with only enough money for a few days—with no where to go—in one of the busiest cities anywhere. And he meets them…and cares, though be doesn’t have the money to care for them—for there are hundreds of them…oblivious of the tanks coming down the valley.
Thank you, Gordon, for just being who you are….and changing my life.
Lord, thank you for the men in those fox holes, who never knew that a Chaplain from Virginia saw them stay and die, and drank their courage through his eyes—and brought it home to plant its seeds to save a floundering, half-committed Church and nation. And it just occurred to me that Gordon and his bunch may not know—as the soldiers in the foxhole didn’t at the time—the effect of his courage, and “staying,” and giving his life (when all seemed lost) has had on so many of us who stood on the hill…and watched him stay and love your needy children for You, Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard, what you saw, and what you realized.” (Paul talking to the Philippians 4:8f. THE MESSAGE)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you talk a lot about surrendering your life to God. I have two questions: (1) Do you honestly think you can do that? and (2) How do you negotiate the frantic, unexpected overload of sound bites and conflicting demands on your time any better because you’re trying to surrender your life to God? I know this may seem pushy and cynical, but I am sick of religious crap and am just wondering how much you are saying is real for you and how much is phony? (I have other questions but they depend on your answer to the first one.)
Two weeks ago I responded to the first of the above two questions. The second one is my subject this week. Following are three of the changes that have made dealing with my ordinary life a much better experience (less frantic, overloaded and conflicted).
1. Loss of fear of being thought naïve intellectually for telling people about my attempt to surrender to Jesus’ Father God: At first I didn’t tell anyone about deciding to surrender my whole life to God because even most of my friends at church and a number of ordained ministers I know seemed to believe that it was embarrassing when someone came around who unashamedly loved Jesus and had said he or she had surrendered their lives to Him. It was as if such a person had deserted his or her intellect somehow. But when I finally realized that nothing in my graduate degrees in either Psychology or Theology had been as intellectually challenging or faith producing as simply trusting God, I realized that I was somehow on more solid ground intellectually then I had been when I had worn my real “faith suit” (my real commitment) only around like-minded Christian.
Douglas Steere, while writing about Thomas à Kempis’ book, Imitation of Christ, described my experience when he said,
“Faith is not as it has been so often depicted, an act of intellectual mutilation, but it is rather one of inward abandonment to a course of life that in advance accepts willingly the consequences regardless of what they may turn out to be.” (Imitation of Christ, p. 25).
2. The dissolving of life-long specific fears: I have always felt drained by different kinds of fear, of financial loss, loss of love, etc. But as I began to learn to listen to people so I could find out how I might love them specifically, a strange and totally unexpected thing happened.
One day at a hospital where I’d been taken because of an injury, I was waiting for the surgeon to sew up my arm and upper thigh, which had been ripped open when a neighbor’s dog attacked me. I thought about the fact that if I hadn’t known to give the dog a karate chop across the nose, he might have gotten to my throat and killed me. But as I lay there waiting in the emergency room, thanking God and reassuring my neighbor that I wasn’t going to sue him, I realized that I hadn’t been afraid for a long time.
I recalled that the apostle John had concluded his comments about fear by saying that mature love casts out fear—amazing! I’d always prayed for courage to cast out fear only to discover this late in life that when I am living a life of loving and caring about each person in my small adventure during my ordinary days and nights, loving can take away the fears of financial loss, injury and even death. In the fifth Beatitude Jesus points to how this works when he said, “You’re blessed when you are care-full (full of caring), because then you feel cared for.” And that is becoming true for me. I feel that whatever we have or lose, we will somehow be able to (with God’s help) carve a life of love out of it.
3. New attitude about trying to buy security: At times the temptation has come up to do or buy something that would meet my exaggerated needs for financial security, or for sexual assurance from a woman, or to try to claim or imply that I’m a lot more than I am so I’ll feel more secure. It used to be that I might spend a lot of time fantasizing about and then buying things that would hide my self-centered insecurities. I see now that these fantasies and purchases were ways of not trusting God and of taking control of my “image” by acquiring material possessions to prove that “I am enough.”
With my decision to surrender more completely, my perception changed almost immediately. And when my old unreal habits of thinking came up, I began to realize the ridiculous nature of my temptation to purchase. I try to confess, “I need a Mercedes Benz like I need to be fifteen feet tall! Forgive me for my grandiosity!” Then I say to God, “I offer my whole life to you. Please help me to see your will.” Now every morning when the alarm goes off, I say the following prayer:
“Lord, I offer my entire life to you to build with me and do with me as you will. Take away my bondage to self so that I can better do your will. Overcome my difficulties so that victory over them will bear witness to those I would help of thy powers, thy love and thy way of life. Help me always to do thy will, in Jesus’ name, Amen.” (Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous)
All this may be more than you asked, but history records some brilliant and courageous people who have wrestled with the same self-protecting demons that capture our lives, demons that can, it seems, be exorcised only by putting our lives in the hands of a power greater than that of our “most trusted passions” and the irrational temptations that would drag us back into them.
Thank you Lord that you don’t ask us to figure you out, but offer to come into our personal experiences and show us in the drama of our own lives the truth about your offer of love and freedom. Help me not to get too discouraged because I can’t express the depth of happiness, love and purposes you bring with you as you house-clean and guide your children to come be more like your Son. Amen.
Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them…. All they want is easy street…But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites.
Selected from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, 3:15, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, how it happened, I don’t know, but in my gratitude to God for a new chance at life, I seem to have forgotten how to live the human everyday life with my family. I am so into self justification that it is hard for me to hear that I’m being selfish. Have you faced this?
I received this question years ago when I was a relatively new “Christian writer” and I responded:
Oh yes, one of the most subtle problems I have uncovered as a “committed and active” Christian is this: when I begin to minister to others I sometimes start gradually to take on a sort of “holy immunity” from some of the normal responsibilities of family life, because of my “high calling.” For instance, any normal husband would be in big trouble if he were gone from home in the evenings as much as the average minister is. Although it is true that I have often been as upset as my wife about having to be away from our family so much, it is also true that when the children were small, there was often a great relief in bypassing the thousands of details and questions with which our little girls plagued us in that rather frantic twilight period near the end of the day. And often when I was at home physically, I was absent emotionally.
Because of the lack of dependability of my presence with the girls when they were still quite young, my wife was forced to assume the underlying responsibility for their growth and development. But the thing about this responsibility that seems to be particularly frustrating to wives is that it is only felt by the one who accepts it. So I did not even realize that there was such a burden, much less that I was not bearing my part of it. My ignorance of this problem led to no small amount of resentment in our family life. My wife felt that to bring up my continual absence “for the Lord’s work” would make her look like a lazy or nagging wife and a poor Christian. When she would bring it up, her tone was so loaded with resentment that I sort of felt she was those things.
But at a pastors and wives conference at about that time I counseled with a number of women, most of whom were married to prominent ministers. Several of them felt emotionally deserted with their children. And the husband, if confronted, had been irritated that the wife couldn’t “do her part.” Or he had retreated behind the ministerial shield with the guilt-provoking insinuation that however much he wishes it were different, “The Lord’s work must come first.” Some have even referred to the passage where Jesus’ family came to get Him while He was speaking to a group, and He refused to come out (Mark 3:31-35).
But as I began to see that these women were genuinely hurt, bewildered, and felt terribly alone with the emotional responsibility for their children, I started looking into it—especially since it seemed to be so common. That was when it occurred to me that I was doing the same thing to my own family.
Later, at home, I re-read Mark 3:31-35 and discovered one thing immediately that would blast a legalist: When Jesus would not leave the group to whom He was ministering to go out to His family, He was talking about His parental family (mother and siblings). But He was not talking about leaving His wife and children in order to stay with the group to whom he was preaching.
I realize this may sound like scriptural nit-picking, but there is a great deal of difference in my mind between responsibility for the marital family one instigates and the parental family he or she is supposed to leave to fulfill his or her vocation. In other places the Scriptures say that a man is to give second place to his parental family and give his first attention to the family represented by his marriage (Genesis 2:24; Ephesians 5:31). And of course the New Testament Epistles are pretty clear about a male Christian (particularly an ordained minister) bearing his responsibilities to his wife and children (Ephesians 5:5; 1 Peter 3:7; 1 Timothy 3:4, 12; Titus 1:6).
If this were true, I had a reorientation job on my hands . . . with my own life. I began to realize that my unconscious avoidance of a good bit of the constant nitty-gritty of family living had made me hesitant to preach or teach about intimate life in the home. And yet so much of the distress of new Christians seemed to center in bruised family relations. But how could I speak about problems I still had? So what I often did was to avoid this issue and talk about “more important matters” . . . like prayer or social involvement. And this way I avoided facing the true nature of my holy immunity.
But as I continued to read about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I saw One who refused to witness or preach from a favored position. Although He was evidently never married, He lived and witnessed out of an authentic life in which He was as vulnerable as the people to whom He ministered. I began to see that unless I could try to be a genuine, participating father and husband, sharing the emotional responsibilities for my family’s growth and happiness, I had nothing to say about an authentic life in Christ to the families around us.
How did I find a balance in all this when I did have to be away from home more than some men? And yet I had to find a way to include every member of my family in the shifting circle of my inner emotional horizon. How did I build each one of them into a calendar already filled with important and even necessary dates? I did not know how I could, but only that I had to try. (In future devotionals I will talk about some things I have tried if any of you are interested.)
The “great” commitment all too easily obscures the “little” ones. But without the humility and warmth which you have to develop in your relations to the few with whom you are personally involved, you will never be able to do anything for the many. Without them, you will live in a world of abstractions, where the solipsism, your greed for power, and your death with lack the one opponent which is stronger than they—love. Dag Hammarskjold, Markings
Lord, help me not to take myself and my work so seriously that I fail to be a husband, father, and grandfather to those special people you have given to me alone, to love and care for in your name. If I fail with my mission as a witness to the community, you can raise others; but if I fail to listen for the needs of those in my own family, there are no others to fill the void. This frightens me, Lord, because I don’t know how to be a good husband and father, and I realize now that my own father didn’t know either. So often I have let my own dreams and resentments keep me from facing my inadequacies. Help me to begin again to learn how to be genuinely and unselfishly loving with my own family. And when I fail, help me to have the courage to face my failures and get up and try again. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 1 Timothy 5:8
