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by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’ve been going to church off and on for years, and I’ve always prayed to God, even if I didn’t attend church. But lately prayer has gotten pretty boring—like talking to old people who don’t listen and just repeat the same stories. But you act like you think God is real and might say something important… or at least interesting. If that’s right why do you feel that way?
The truth is that for a long time prayer was just something I did because I believed there was a God and I was taught that Christians pray. But through a series of sicknesses and deaths in my family of origin, I found myself the last member of our family at age 28. I was at the end of my rope, and didn’t know what to do. I decided to surrender my whole life to God.* At that point I didn’t know how to live for (and with) God in business, at home or how to handle anger, fear, etc. that I still faced on a regular basis as a Christian. But after that attempt at surrender, something happened to me. Without knowing just how it happened, I found that God became more real to me than I could have imagined. The relevant point here is that I started praying about some of the real and non-religious questions and relationship problems that affected my important day-in day-out happiness, self-esteem, and sense of value (or lack thereof) in everyday life. I was told to just offer the issues to God, and pray for guidance in dealing with them. This made prayer a lot more interesting. (Just as I listened to my Dad better than I ever had when I finally got the courage to ask him about sex.) But my prayer life changed most drastically not too many years ago.
One night a few years ago I sat up in bed in the dark, unable to get back to sleep. “God,” I prayed, “I love you. But to be honest, my prayer life is just not working. Please give me a hand.”
I opened the Bible to Matthew 18 and tried to read, but my spirit wasn’t in gear. Then I had a strong nudge: “Focus on what you are reading. It’s for you!”
Jesus was telling his disciples, “I’m telling you once and for all…” (That sounded very serious) “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.” Suddenly God seemed to say, “Keith, you can’t see reality from My perspective—or what I think is the best thing to do—unless you become like a little child again.”
Next, I asked myself, “Is there anywhere else that Jesus said we should approach God as a child?” Immediately I remembered that the Lord’s Prayer—the only prayer Jesus ever gave as a model—began “Daddy” (Matthew 6:7-13)
DADDY? Really? Calling God “Daddy” felt sacrilegious, but…all right. I’d try. I bowed my head. “Daddy, I am a lost little boy trying to get you to help me control everything and everybody around me instead of listening to you as your little child.”
Instantly tears came, and I grasped the problem with my prayer life. When praying to “Our Father” I prayed adult to adult, as if God were a peer with expertise in an area I hadn’t mastered (whom I could fire if I didn’t like his advice.)
When I prayed to “Daddy,” I totally REPOSITIONED MYSELF as a listening child. Simply saying, “Daddy” brought what all my studying and meditation experience had not: a new set of ears. Although there was a lot more that I learned about God—and myself—by that one change of perspective, that attitude of being teachable was a new beginning.
Jesus 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 18:2-5 THE MESSAGE
Daddy in Heaven, thank you for teaching me to lay aside my controlling knowledge and skills, and come to you with childlike eyes wide open and ears listening, so you can re-parent me to be like your Son… Amen.
* Described in some detail in Chapter three of The Taste of New Wine.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, what can I do with my depressing feelings of guilt and failure? I’ve tried talking with my family members, but I can tell they’re getting really tired of hearing my sad story.
Years ago I formed a terrible habit guaranteed to keep life from being boring, but which rained gloom and doom on my own house. At times, all kinds of unrelated failures and lonely feelings from the past came out to dance with me, and I would tell my family members how miserable and sad I felt about my failures and inadequacies. I painted my feelings in the blackest and most discouraging colors I could think of, asking them to pray for me. As we talked, they become sad and depressed, too, and sometimes felt guilty, thinking I was blaming them. When they lovingly tried to help me by making specific suggestions or offering solutions, I had “good” reasons why none of their suggestions would work.
Sooner or later they would give up, or it was time to be somewhere else or go to bed. My previously happy and carefree loved ones were now long-faced and unhappy, while I felt better. When I went to bed on such nights, I’d go right to sleep.
It’s as if my family were living with a live skunk. I’d call them all together and spray them with my skunk oil of depression and doubt. Then as we talked, they got those smells all over them. I was the only one that went to bed “smell-free.”
While in a small group of Christians trying to learn how to turn our lives and wills over to God, and to love others as God loved us, I came to see that my “center-of-the-world” habit of dumping my depressing feelings on family members was sort of like vomiting—I certainly felt better—only I was vomiting on the people I loved. God showed me through these fellow adventurers that this kind of “dumping” was a form of victimizing my family by getting them to “carry” my sense of failure and regret in the name of “sharing my reality.” And one day I stopped in mid-whine and faced the fact that, although it temporarily made me feel better, it wasn’t a very loving action toward my family members.
After that, if a reason to talk about my painful feelings came up, I used a different approach. I began by saying something like “This is how I’m feeling right now, but these feelings are not about you.” And when I finish sharing the feelings, I say, “I know these feelings are not your fault. I’d just appreciate your praying for me as I’m dealing with them.” And then I get off the subject and ask about their lives.
Better yet, I now share a lot of these painful emotional storms with my fellow strugglers on God’s adventure in groups outside my family—and ask these strugglers to pray with me there. In addition I have discovered that I can hear fellow struggler’s honesty and suggestions about options I might choose better than I can from my family members, and that these Christian companions are not as likely as my family to absorb and carry my feelings.
“Make this your common practice. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so you can live together whole and healed.” James 5:10 THE MESSAGE
Lord, I am grateful that you give us a safe fellowship of recovering sinners in which to face our feelings and learn from them. When I share my sins with other people on the same spiritual adventure I’m on—and do not “dump” them on my family, expecting them to carry my feelings for me—I can get real help, while learning to be more loving and supportive of those closest to me. Amen
by Keith Miller | Christian Living
Keith, I am a deacon in the church and people tell me I’m a good witness for Christ in our community. But behind closed doors in our family things are often very tense, snippy and hard-headed. There are certain things concerning the roles of husband and wife that I insist of because I was taught that way and I’m not willing to consider changing because I’m standing on principles. How can a Christian give up the principles he was raised on without violating his integrity?
The longer I am involved in the Christian life, the more clearly I see that the beginnings of significant lifelong changes often hinge on seemingly insignificant discoveries and decisions in the intimate arena of personal relationships.
Some years ago about twelve of us got together to form a small group. We were trying to find out how we could learn to be God’s people away from the church during the week. This was a new adventure that was exciting for most of the group.* The idea was to attempt various experiments in our lives during the week and then report to the group what happened to us. We decided that we would not tell anyone outside the group what we were doing, since some of our experiments (like listening) involved our spouses, children or friends.
Our plan was to begin in our families and work outward into the world. During the first week we were to look around, listen in our homes and see what we were doing to bug the people we live with, and then pray about our behavior to see if we could change it. Usually in prayer groups we had looked for those things other people were doing to bother us and then pray for them to change. This is a very different approach.
The next week was an interesting one. One member of our group was a lovely, pleasingly plump, white-haired woman, who was very attractive. At the first meeting I remember thinking that Lillian looked almost angelic . . . with a slight twinkle in her eye. She didn’t seem to have any problems and prayed sweet, sincere prayers. Frankly, I wondered how she got in our group. Lillian had not said much so far, but she came into the next meeting like a rodeo rider out of chute four. She was so excited she was practically bubbling over. When I asked the group about the experiment, all Lillian could say was, “You all, it’s the shirts!”
All I could think to say was, “Would you like to talk about it?”
She went on, “I’m from the old South. And when I got married, my mother told me ‘Don’t you ever iron any man’s shirts. That’s not wives’ work.’ So after the honeymoon, twenty-five years ago, I told my husband I was not going to iron his shirts. he was a struggling student at that time, and we didn’t have very much money, but he had to send his shirts out. After a few years, he developed a rash on his neck and had to wear shirts that required hand ironing. So for sixteen years Bill has been getting up on Saturday mornings and ironing his own shirts—right in front of me—while I fixed breakfast. We were both Christians, but about that time we started going to different churches.”
She stopped talking and put her fist against her mouth, and her bosom shook with an involuntary sob. In a moment she went on with tears in her eyes: “This week I discovered that all my guilt and self-hate as a woman, all of the wrangling and separation I’ve caused in our marriage, stem from the fact that I wouldn’t iron Bill’s shirts. I’ve prayed all week, and I don’t know if I can do anything this late to change things for Bill . . . But I’d like for you to pray for me that I will.” And we did.
Well, I don’t know what Lillian did at home those next few days, but the following week Bill showed up at the meeting, smiling from ear to ear. And they came to the group together regularly, like two happy kids, until Lillian died suddenly of a stroke a year later. But you know, that couple found each other, found a new kind of life together after twenty-five years.
What is that experience worth in terms of changing the world? I don’t know, but watching it happen changed the rest of us in that group somehow. We began to see that the closed doors in our lives and relationships which we have been trying to batter down with argument and reason all these years—that those doors often swing open when we become willing to oil some small rusty hinges, change some little things . . . like the shirts.
“Indeed, this need of individuals to be right is so great that they are willing to sacrifice themselves, their relationships, and even love for it. This need to be right is also one which produces hostility and cruelty, and causes people to say things that shut them off from communication with both God and man.”
Reuel Howe,The Miracle of Dialogue
Lord, help me to have the courage to look for the little inner walls and fortresses in my relationships, behind which I protect my pride. Forgive me for camouflaging these defenses and calling them “matters of principle” when so often they are only means to keep from having to admit that I have been wrong and wanted to be number one. I guess this is what has always made you so threatening to me. When you expose my self-justifying defenses, I either have to confess them or put you down . . . which is what I guess we tried to do on the Cross. And I still try to put you down when you get close to revealing the motives I have hidden. Help me, Lord, not to cling to my “rights” but to unclench my spiritual fist so that I can be free to follow you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Let your attitude to life be that of Christ Jesus himself. For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his privileges as God’s equal, but stripped himself of every advantage by consenting to be a slave . . . and . . . he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, to the point of death . . .
Philippians 2:5-8 PHILLIPS
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, no one I know talks about the imperious and demanding Mr. Hyde (or Ms. Hyde) transformation that temptation can change even a deeply committed (to our Lord) Christian into a totally self-centered drooling squinty-eyed lascivious or gluttonous pagan. It would be helpful if you are willing to deal with this question in a reality oriented way.
Temptation is a strange experience for me. I want to be God’s person. But I also have some deep human needs for approval, affection, and the satisfaction of strong physical and emotional drives. When wrestling with a specific temptation, I seem to change into a different person inside. I have a kind of tunnel vision and only see the object of my resentment, greed, or lust. All else is blotted out. I am no longer the smiling, friendly Christian, but instead am an intense and sweating stranger—yet not a stranger, for I know this one so well. Reason waits outside the door of temptation for me. I argue against my conscience and dazzle myself with agile rationalizations. By that time the battle is usually lost.*
Of course, sometimes there are long periods of peace and productivity when all the dragons appear to be dead. But then, one day when I am seemingly in good control of my emotions, I am suddenly in the midst of temptation. My senses are alive to the object of my resentment or my desire. I am practically engulfed in the urge to surrender to my inclination—to glorify my desires above everything—the instant they are born. And sweeping away reason, goodness, God’s will, caution, and the potential guilt—I succumb.
People who have not had this experience as Christians would make poor counselors for people like me. I know you may say that I am weak. And of course that is the truth. I am weak. But my question is, “What does a weak yet utterly sincere committed Christian do when temptation gets through all blockers and tackles him or her with a crippling jolt?”
My reactions have been varied. Almost always I feel inadequate and do not like myself. I shy away from prayer, feeling that somehow I could have resisted longer and not succumbed. It is strange, but because of my pride, I always think I could have conquered. But this notion rests on the dubious idea that if I am truly committed to Christ, I can control all my actions with reason and determination—if I will just try hard enough.
The truth about the Christian life seems to be, however, that no one bats a thousand in facing temptation. As a matter of fact, most of the saints felt that their averages were pretty low. We can improve our performance, and I thank God that this is so. But evidently in this life we will always have the occasional experience of succumbing to some kind of mental, physical or spiritual temptation. The sad truth is that much of the time I am too weak to resist, and my failure is simply a hard cold fact with which I must live. I have to come to God with the horrible uncomfortable feeling of failure. And finally, with no excuses, I force myself to my knees before him in confession, asking for restoration to a state of usefulness and self-acceptance by His grace.
I thank him that this process is what the gospel is all about—the forgiveness of the glorification of our desires and pride to a position above everything, including him. And asking him for a new set of controlling desires, I thank him for the miracle of forgiveness and the new starts he can give me. I pull myself to my feet, brush the caked spiritual mud from my clothes and walk into another day as his child.
First don’t dwell on yourself, do not say: “How could I be such as to allow and suffer it?” This is a cry of proud self-opinion. Humble yourself and, raising your eyes to the Lord, say and feel: “What else could be expected of me, O Lord, weak and faulty as I am.”
Lorenzo Scupoli,Unseen Warfare
I resolve to meet evil courageously, but when even a small temptation cometh, I am in sore straits. That which seemeth trifling sometimes giveth rise to a grievous temptation; and when I think myself to be secure, and least expect it, I am overcome by a light breath.
Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Dear Lord, I know it must have broken your heart to realize that even those of us who follow you would get carried away and crush the people around us, trying to satisfy our hungers for attention and power and love.
Help me not to kid myself about my real needs and desires and cloak them with phony righteous motives or plead “weakness” as an excuse for succumbing to temptation. Although the nature of the sins has changes, the process is the same. And I realize that I am still capable of almost any sin. Give me the courage to face you more realistically. Thank you that you have made those things which are loving, creative, beautiful, and constructive so attractive to me that I spend more time running toward them . . . in another direction from the crippling world of inordinate self-indulgence.
And Lord, thank you for indicating that you believe a person should be forgiven more than once. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Matthew 18:21, 22
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith,I’ve been a Christian for many years. I’ve committed my whole life to Christ and have been taught that I should trust God. But inside where I face the challenges like (1) the changing economy that threatens my vocation, (2) the reckless and (to me) dangerous behavior of my teen-aged son and daughter and (3) recurring fears that I (or they) will not be able to meet the challenges and will fail. And yet at the same time I keep receiving the strength to go on. Am I just an underachiever in the faith department?
These are good questions. I believe that I and many other serious followers of Jesus have been afraid to be honest about our real feelings. But my experience of this paradox goes like this.
One morning I was lonely. My wife and children were all there with me, and we loved one another very much. But I was facing some fears of failure that could not be shared with them. I felt that my performance on a very important examination involving the future for all of us would not be adequate, and I was anxious and afraid, like a small boy. Yet God seemed very near. If I failed, he would be there, and I could pick up whatever pieces there were and do something else. And this gave me a deep underlying courage. But the conditioned franticness which made my mind a beehive of fears was a carry-over from a lifetime of feeling that I must succeed to be acceptable.
This paradox is hard to understand—a sincere commitment to Christ combined with human insecurity in the face of failure. And many of the great Christian speakers and writers have left me alone in my predicament by neglecting to tell me of these paradoxes of the inner journey. As I have read devotional books and listened to the evangelists and teachers of the faith, I have tried to reconstruct from their words a picture of the inner way. But many of them have omitted so much of the sweat and gravel from their descriptions of the Christian life that I am left with visions of untroubled saints, walking through the quiet aseptic corridors of their souls with unchanging attitudes of serenity and courage.
I am finding that serenity and courage are very different in “appearance” inside my own life. And as I counsel with other Christians, I realize that I am not alone in this. The record of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as he wrote from the Nazi prison camp before his martyr’s death, sounds stimulating and rather glorious at first glance. But as I read his letters* more closely, the actual daily experience for Bonhoeffer seems to have been very different. Much of it was made up of the buzzing whine of summer flies around his face, the maddening frustration and disappointment as his hopes for release were agonizingly prolonged or smashed, fear and doubts, and despair. All of these were things that often filled his mind as he lived out those days and nights of “marvelous Christian discipline and courage.” Yet because of the paradoxical joy and hope he experienced, Bonhoeffer was able to go through that miserable imprisonment and make of it a great positive sign for all of Christendom. And this same paradox faces thousands of ordinary men and women who are trapped in jobs or marriages that seem impossible. But because they think that a “truly committed Christian” should feel victorious, they hide and feel ashamed of their painful fear and loneliness and the guilt they bring.
That morning, as I was confronted by the threat of changing to a new vocational direction in midstream of life with my bridges burned behind me, I could risk it because of my faith in Christ. But the fear of failure rode with me in the pit of my stomach as I went to the examination that would determine the next chapter in my life. If I passed the test and “succeeded” in my new venture, some of my friends might say someday, “What courage, to have launched out in faith at your age!” And I wondered if I would remember the anxiety that made my palms sweat. Or would I only smile, humbly “give God the credit,” and forget to tell how slender the thread of faith seemed to be that I was following through the jungle of my fears that morning?
“I have repeatedly observed here how few there are who can make room for conflicting emotions at the same time. When the bombers come, they are all fear; when there is something good to eat, they are all greed. . . By contrast, Christianity plunges us into many different dimensions of life simultaneously.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God
“It is rather in overt behavior that we must look for a measure of belief, and it is principally this that is inhibited in doubt or disbelief.”
D. E. Berlyne, as quoted in Signs, Language and Behavior
Lord, thank you that you give us the courage to go ahead and “risk it” occasionally in trying to follow you, forgiveness when we “chicken out” and cannot, and the clean slate of a new day after each of our failures and denials. In my attempts to witness to the hope and joy of your presence in ordinary life, help me not to whitewash the frailty of the humanity into which it came to dwell as I try to trust you in everything. I am grateful that even you had some struggles in facing the challenges in your life.
Anguish and dismay came over him, and . . . he went on a little, fell on his face in prayer, and said, “My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Yet not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
Jesus in Matthew 26:38, 39 NEB
by Keith Miller | Christian Living
Keith, how can I quit resenting people who have ridiculed me or lied to me, etc.? I can’t seem to shake off resentments—even when I pray and want to let them go.
When I first read the question I thought, you’re asking the wrong guy. But then I realized that I haven’t harbored a resentment for a long time, and when I thought back I had to laugh at myself at how long it took me to do the things necessary to me to give resenting up.
I have Charlie by the scruff of his shirt with my left hand, and was about to knock him out of the front door backwards! I can still feel the resentment seething up from my chest into my face and arms, giving me an unreal strength.
Just then I hear my wife’s voice. She is shaking my shoulder gently from the other side of the bed. “Keith, wake up; you’re having a bad dream.”
The fantasy of my beating up Charlie, my associate who shamed me at the office, collapses like a pop-up scene in a child’s King Arthur book as I wake up and roll over.
In that half sleeping-half awake state, I realized that resentments have plagued my life since I was a child. Usually they are fueled by my perception that someone has slighted me, gossiped about me, not included me in an “invitation” of some sort, been disloyal, or cheated me. But whatever the “crime,” obsessions about resentments have caused many painful and helpless hours. I flutter back into the pillow and close my eyes.
*
I see a heavy walnut door swinging open in the basement video theater of my mind. A title rolls across the screen as I sit down: ACT ONE: “JUSTICE” The action is just beginning. We are in a great courtroom, with a heavy walnut judge’s bench. A huge white-haired figure in a long white robe is sitting behind the bench, looking remarkably like God. He is handing down justice from this “highest court in the land.” My associate, Charlie, the one who humiliated me, is standing before the bench. The scene begins with the crashing of a thousand-pound gavel and a roaring voice—deep and powerful enough to be heard across the Rose Bowl—“GUILTY.” I smile and nod my head.
Now a familiar dramatic scenario begins to unfold as the title “ACT II: REVENGE. THE COST THEY’LL PAY!” is rolling across the screen. And then, there I am, the prosecutor, the hero, delivering creative, brilliant, scathing, and cutting accusations about the heinous nature of the guilty party’s crime, and calling for the most horrible sentence possible, as I subtly orchestrate the offender’s fate—actually wanting to clobber him physically as “the enemy”! (He mumbles that he’s sorry, but I know he doesn’t mean it.”)
I’m angry and I go to the Bible to see what Jesus said about forgiving. (That was not a good experience.) Jesus said that what God decides to do about forgiving us is connected directly with our forgiving other people. “You can’t get forgiveness, for instance, without forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God’s part.” (Mt. 6:14, 15, The Message)
My mentor explains to me that it isn’t that God’s being hard-nosed and legalistic; it’s just that when I’m filled with resentment and unforgiveness I am automatically disqualifying myself to receive forgiveness.
I know that Act III is supposed to be “FORGIVENESS,” but I also know that I usually just rewind Acts I and II and play them over and over, day after day, escalating the revenge and punishment scenarios when I’m really into a big-time resentment. But this time I hear the wise deep voice of the Judge telling me: “Mr. prosecutor, when you keep resenting people, you are letting them life rent free in your head and it shuts the doorway to you-know-Who.”
I cry out, “But how can I quit? I’ve tried and tried, but there seems to be no ‘power off’ button when I am into a resentment scenario!”
The Judge replies as patiently as he can, “Forgive him! That’s the healing remedy I’ve given you to stop the pain of resentment.”
Forgive my associate?! I try—and sure enough, I feel better—for about five minutes, and then I am back obsessing about the wrong he’d done to me.
“See,” I whine to the Judge, “forgiveness just doesn’t work for me!”
“Forgive him again! and get back to work at what is before you today, (without congratulating yourself for forgiving him.) Think about the time you first came to me for forgiveness and mercy and I forgave you. Do this as many times as it takes, and one day the resentment just won’t come back. Then you can move to the final scene, ACT III, and the freedom I’ve provided for those under my jurisdiction through the miracle of forgiveness-which is the only way to get free when someone hurts you.”
I cry, “It’s not fair!” But the giant gavel crashes on the Judge’s bench again.
“Next case,” the deep echoing voice says, and a shrill bell rings. And I know what I have to do.
I Jump awake with a start as my wife is leaning over me to answer the first call of the morning on the bedside phone. “It’s for you,” she says sleepily. “It’s Charlie, from the office.”
“Forgive him. Even if it’s personal against you and repeated several times through the day and he says ‘I’m sorry. I won’t do it again,’ forgive him.” (Luke 17:3,4 THE MESSAGE)
Lord, thank you that you have stayed with me until I finally see that my own sin and judging and condemning Charlie is more crippling to me than anything Charlie has done. Thank you for forgiving me and giving me another chance. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, when I decided to become a parish priest I had no idea that some people consider ministers as “hired hands” and not colleagues, brothers or sisters on the adventure of living for Christ. My response to being treated as a lackey by some prominent church people is to want to bust them in the mouth. Did I get it wrong about the role and status of an ordained minister? D.M.
I don’t know what you should do, D.M., but I can certainly identify with the “bust them in the mouth” urge. I am a layman, and am not paid by a church, but I have degrees in Theology and Psychology and do counsel a lot of church people. Some years ago I had to make a serious attitude adjustment about my role as a servant/minister. It happened like this.
I was very busy trying to get what seemed like a thousand things done before leaving for a three-day speaking trip on the East Coast. There hadn’t been time to prepare my talks, so I was under a lot of pressure when a friend, a fine Christian woman, called. A couple she knew ws having marital problems. “They might call you,” she said, “because they could not agree on either a minister or a psychiatrist.” But my friend thought it crucial that I see them if at all possible.
It seems that the majority of people I’ve counseled with lately have had marital problems. Even though I was dead tired, I agreed to talk with them, hoping they wouldn’t call. But sure enough, at almost midnight the telephone rang. The man called me “Reverend” Miller (in what I thought was a condescending tone).
“Keith Miller,” I said with some definiteness. “I am a layman.”
“I’d like to make an appointment to see you,” he said without any details or preliminary remarks. Just when I started to ask who was calling, it occurred to me that he was the husband of the couple having troubles. He was, but he had the impatient and imperious tone of a power player totally insensitive to other people’s feelings, and I could see how his marriage might “have a few problems.” So realizing the man was under pressure and had probably put off calling all evening, I set the appointment for one o’clock the following day at our house.
I was a little irritated, since seeing them meant driving five miles from my writing hideout in the middle of the day. But I asked myself, “What kind of Christian are you if you can’t help another human being in trouble?” But I still felt angry that this guy had talked to me as if I were some sort of hired hand. I was only seeing him as a friend, with no intention of charging him as a counselor. So I prayed to be open to the man, and I was (at least consciously) ready to do that by the time I got home the next day at 12:30.
The telephone rang at 1:10 and the man said, “Something has come up, and I won’t be able to make it to your house.” I started to tell him he could just forget it, but then it occurred to me that he was slick enough that he might be avoiding the conference purposely. And from what my friend had said, this couple could be in serious trouble. So I agreed to see him the following day.
We had a good visit, but it was apparent that their marital problems were severe. By that time my schedule was really pressing. Not long after the husband left, his wife called, and after a long conversation, she asked for an appointment. Knowing how hard it is to wait when things seem to be closing in on you, I agreed to see her at 11:00 the following morning. (All of this was happening long before I learned about boundaries—and how Jesus set them.)
I rushed home at 10:55 to find that the woman had just called and left word: something had come up and she was not going to be able to come. I was furious! Three days had been fouled up by these people. They didn’t even have the courtesy to consider how much inconvenience I was going through for them. I wanted to call and tell them that one of their problems was “self-centeredness.” And further I wanted to inform them that I was very busy myself…and then it hit me: how important I must think I am if a thing like this can make me as mad as it did. Here were two people in the agony of struggling to keep their home together—with no telling what other complications—and I was incensed that they were treating me like a common servant…when that is what I claim I’ve committed my life to be: a servant to Christ and his suffering people. But my reaction told me that secretly I must want to be treated like a big-shot writer and counselor. That discovery eventually led me to a treatment center and the beginning of a whole new understanding of myself—and of what it might mean truly to want to be a servant.
So I don’t know what you need to do, D.M. But years ago when the question you asked first arose in my life, the search for an answer led me to have to face my denial about how much of my ministry has been about building a reputation as an outstanding Christian. And for me that was a very painful—but eventually transforming—discovery.
“For the self-flattery of our nature is very subtle and few can discern it. Secretly it pursues only its own ends, though meanwhile its outward conduct is such, that it seems to us we have but the single aim of pleasing God, though in actual fact this is not so. . . . So if a man does not watch himself well, he may begin some activity with the sole purpose of pleasing the Lord, but later, little by little, introduce into it a self-interest, which makes him find in it also a satisfaction of his own desires, and this to such an extent that the will of God becomes completely forgotten.”
Lorenzo Scupoli, Unseen Warfare
“In renunciation it is not the comforts, luxuries and pleasures that are hard to give up. Many could forego heavy meals, a full wardrobe, a fine house, et. cetera: it is the ego that they cannot forego. The self that is wrapped, suffocated in material things—which include social position, popularity, and power—is the only self they know and they will not abandon it for an illusory new self . . . which they may never attain.”
Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi, His Life and Message for the World
Forgive me, Lord, and help me not to look for the respect and acclaim of people but to be willing to die to my self-concern enough to accept them just as they are. And help D.M. and anyone else who may be struggling with what it means to be Your servant and minister to your other bruised and broken people. Thank you that you have helped me become more direct and to set better boundaries in contacts with controlling people with regard to their keeping appointments, if they want help. Amen.
And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus in Mark 10: 42-45
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, my college aged kids and my husband claim that I am trying to control them when I offer suggestions-when all I am trying to do is help them. How can I help them see that I want them to make their own decisions?
Ooooh! That question strikes too close to home. Listen to a telephone conversation from my journal that I had with a daughter about to graduate from college: “Of course you can do whatever you want to, honey. I just want you to be happy.” I sigh into the phone to my almost grown daughter in college. “But, I think you ought to call her back and tell her you won’t do it.” As I say these things into the telephone, I notice how my voice is both raised and syrupy in a strangely familiar way.
Silence on the other end of the line. And in my imagination saw in that instant the face of my dear departed enmeshing mother who always “only wanted the best for me” and always wanted me to make “my own choices”-unless they were unlike the choices she would make. She was amazing, thoughtful and generous to a fault, but she could control everyone in the family within a hundred-mile radius with a disappointed sigh.
Good Lord, can it be that without ever knowing it I have become just like her and am controlling my family?
Well, I hope everything turns out okay,” I say into the void on the line, realizing belatedly that my daughter had just wanted to share with me and I’d taken over again and tried to “fix” her, implying unconsciously that she couldn’t figure out what to do if I didn’t-and she hadn’t even asked for my advice. I’d screwed it up again-for the thousandth time.
“Goodbye, Dad,” I hear the discouraged and irritated voice as she hangs up-and I remember how much her voice sounded like my own younger voice when I used to come up against that wall of sugary (but steely) shaming control my mother unconsciously used on me.
I want to call my daughter back and tell her that I love her and am only trying to help, that I only give suggestions “for her own good.” But then I remember that it never worked when my mother did that to me. And with a start I realize, “Oh my gosh-it’s true! I’ve turned into my mother-and I never saw it coming.”
As I’m sitting here looking out at the waving sea grass on the dunes, I realize the horrible truth about me: I try to control and “fix” people close to me because I feel uncomfortable when they don’t do things the way I’d do them. I’m really giving advice to make me feel more comfortable and less afraid of what might happen.
I seem to feel, at some primordial level, that I am the unofficial director of the life dramas each of my family members has been given to act in. Some white and gray crying gulls flutter and settle among some Goat’s Foot Morning Glory vines winding their way across the big dune outside my window. I realize that when I, unbidden, meddle in the lives of my dear ones, I am playing God as I try to be the “producer and director” of a drama in which I am only another actor-who hasn’t yet gotten his own lines straight.
What can I do?? How can I tell whether I’m controlling or making helpful suggestions?
I called a friend whose kids are grown, and ask my question. And my friend said, “Keith, if I want to see whether I’m actually helping instead of controlling, I try to notice what happens-what their response is-when I think I’m helping them. If they get mad at me and clam up when I ‘help’ them,” he said, “it’s a pretty good clue that I am doing something besides helping.”
Now-25 years later-when I feel the urge to “help” (teach) one of my (now grown) children, I can sometimes say, “Did you just share with me or would you like a suggestion?” And they usually say, “Thanks, Dad. I’m just sharing.” But sometimes they say, “No, I’m asking what you think I ought to do.” Then and only then do I feel ok about making concrete suggestions. This new way of “helping” has made life a lot more peaceful-when I can do it.
God, help me to quit playing your role and ‘teaching’ my family all the time. Today I can see again that I’m just not cast right for your part. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
“Fathers don’t exasperate your children.” Ephesians 6:4 The Message
“Don’t be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths.” James 3:1 The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, what is the best way you’ve found to begin to convey the message that they are loved by God to people who are very cognitive and scientifically oriented and don’t even believe there is a God?
Recently I ran across the following conversation between a camp counselor and a camper who finally decided to become a Christian:
Counselor: When did you decide you wanted to be a Christian?
Camper: When you learned my name.
When I first became a Christian, I wanted to tell everyone all about Christianity. But it didn’t take long to discover that most of my contemporaries outside of church (and inside) had a strong and efficient resistance to people trying to change them or talk them into something new. And in my mind I only wanted to tell them they were loved.
What I gradually came to believe was that just saying words—even very true and holy words—is not what is meant by loving people as a Christian. At the office, I had learned some things about a kind of preparatory loving I had seen Jesus doing in the New Testament—a kind of a “tuning in” to the person who is with you, a sensitivity that makes anything you may say later about God much more authentic and understandable.
In fact, I began to learn that talking is seldom the most powerful way to get people’s real attention. Much to my surprise, I found that listening is a much more effective way of giving my presence to somebody when I am with them. It’s as if my listening attention were a spotlight that God has given me to focus. I can focus my attention in the past, I can focus it out in the future, or I can focus it into the lives of the people around me.
By personal experience I know that, when somebody really gives me his or her attention, that person draws me gently out of my cold tight absorption with myself and into the healing arena of the “in between”—that space that exists only between people. It is like magic. In such an exchange with another person I often find myself moving into the area of the personal, and the situation changes. When I am listening to somebody this way, even in a crowd of people, I’ve noticed that I am often watching them and listening as if no one else were there. I imagine a glass bubble is around the two of us, and that only we are sharing this special moment of attention.
I have become convinced that what we call the agape love of Christ rides down the beam of our honest attention into people’s lives. And this seems to be true whether I am involved with my wife, a child, or a stranger being encountered for the first time. In a way, I think this focusing on the other person is a taste of the greatest kind of love there is, for in a strange way we are giving people our lives,a second at a time, when we give them our undivided attention.
As a counselor, I have talked to many people who have said in different ways about an estranged mate, “I don’t expect him (her) to do a lot for me. I just want him (her) to know that I exist. I want his (her)attention!
Years ago, when I was director of Laity Lodge, we had scheduled Elton Trueblood to speak at a weekend conference. That weekend, a young woman came from hundreds of miles away just to be at a conference where he was speaking. None of us knew this young woman. But she had heard about the conference from a friend and had come this long distance by herself.
One of the things we did that weekend was to divide into small groups, and one of the small-group activities was to go around the circle and answer the question, “What is the most important single encounter you’ve had with another human being (not counting members of your family)?”In one group, after a few people had responded, it became the young stranger’s turn.
She looked up and said, “Well, when I was a child, maybe ten years old, Elton Trueblood came to our city to speak. My daddy was an elder in the church and in charge of the program, and so the speaker stayed in our home for several days. At the dinner table during that week, Dr. Trueblood would ask the adults questions and then listen attentively to their answers. But then he would turn to me and ask me a question, and he would listen to my answer with the same care he had given to the adults. Then he would ask me another question about something I had said! He did this all week long. He treated me as if I were an intelligent, sensitive, mature Christian. And that week I made up my mind that I was going to spend the rest of my life becoming one.”
Once when I was a new Christian, I got very discouraged about the church I was attending. I read a book by Sam Shoemaker. I wrote him a personal note telling how I felt about the church and thanking him for writing the book—not really expecting an answer—since he was a famous author. But in a few days I got a reply from him, obviously hand-typed on a typewriter with some keys not striking regularly. It was a single paragraph that said something like, “Don’t leave. We need people who see like you see.”He sent “prayers.”
I was astounded.I had never written anything nor had I met anyone who knew this man. And he had not only heard what I was feeling, but he had taken the time to write a personal note to me. I looked at that note every day for a month, and I stayed afloat emotionally and spiritually because he had paid attention to me and taken me seriously. Consequently, when I became a writer, I answered virtually every letter I received for the next thirty years.
“Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”Matthew 5:16 The Message
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I love 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
Dear Lord, thank you for the miraculous power of personal, loving attention that you offer to each of us.And thank you that by simply listening and responding to people, we can sometimes help to nourish the transformational life of loving you offer us in Jesus.Help us to pass it on to someone I meet today. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, how does a man get reconciled with his father? I never was close to mine and he is very sick, maybe dying. I’m afraid he’s going to die and we’ll never be close. They tell me not to push the issue now, but if I don’t, I’ll never get closure with him. Any ideas?
Some questions I can’t relate to but this one I can. My father died when I was about twenty-two, and I thought I’d lost my chance. But about twenty-five years later I had a chance after all.It happened like this.
I was alone in an old house at the beach. A Norther was blowing rain sideways and whipping tall palm trees like buggy whips. And suddenly there my father was on the stage of my mind.I spoke to him as the storm raged outside.
How long has it been since I allowed your face out of the black basement of my unconscious? Three, five, ten years? No, not so long. But sitting here on a stormy day with everyone else scurrying in the rain to do the things they have to do, I am home alone. Fifty-five years sliding back toward twelve nestled in the familiar comfortable silence of this house with the ever present wind outside whining in from the Gulf outside in sheets of rain, like giant mewing tabby cats crying to come in from the rising storm.
Then there you were! My long dead father, full blown like a giant cash register number suddenly punched into view. And, as unbidden as your face, came the waves of anger belching up from deep in the dark waters of my soul.
There we were, confronting each other for the first time in some primal way—two men now, yet one a boy with wreckage of the awe and fear still swirling around the now emerged father face.
“Dad,” I said in a voice surprisingly deep and strong, fueled by an ancient rage. “I hate your guts for not loving me, for preferring Earle when I needed a father more than God Himself. I hate you for never letting me know how you felt in ways I could understand. I became a tall athletic challenger filled with intensity, exuding confidence and faith, but fearful as an unwanted child inside—which I felt I was.”
Your face looks sad—and something else: Is it fear? It is!
In a moment, as if you were a lamp and a light had gone on inside you, I could see—that you’d been afraid and lonely too. And that youdidn’t even know how to tell me that you loved me—if you did. And that you were as afraid of me somehow, as I of you. I saw in those seconds before the lamp cord was pulled into blackness again, that my mother had trained me as a warrior to do battle with you because she was angry and hurt that you couldn’t tell her that you loved her either.
No wonder you didn’t like me. I was smart and quick and tough like my mother, a trained survivor in passive aggressive sheep’s clothing. And my family task was to pry open that iron mask you wore and free you for us all from the emotional tomb into which you were locked—before you choked to death on the blinding black beard, locked in there behind the stolid metal face.
In that moment of illumination, my rage engulfed you, a huge wave crashing against the shore, and then you were gone. And what moved gently back toward me down the beach was a sliding backwash of sadness. I saw your reflection in the wet sand, a frightened man trying, like me, to be more than he was.
And sitting there alone with your memory, as the storm was now spent outside, I felt forgiveness welling up, and a kind of compassion and recognition of one man by another—both of us powerless to make things right. But in some strange way I was now the father, and you the helpless son.
I told you as gently as I could, “I realize you had no one to teach you how to live. But I’ve found people who could teach me, love me as I am, and give me tools to find and face my fears. I…I love you Dad—though I confess I don’t know how a man can love a father (how it works). But I ask your forgiveness for the times I shut you out to hurt you, because that’s all I knew to do—not dreaming that you, too, might be hiding in there afraid and all alone.
“But I’ve found God somehow, and I want you to know that I forgive you for ignoring me—or whatever it was you really did. Now I’m going on and live my own life.
“I pray that you and I can now find rest and freedom. But I do know that I can never release you from your prison. That’s God’s job and yours.
“With His help, I’ve just done mine.”
Lord, I am so grateful that You’re not bound by our limitations of time, strength, and even death, and that Your reconciling love can roll back the stones when we’re ready, and release us and those we love from the tombs we’ve been buried in, even for years sometimes.I am grateful that you specialize in transcending our shallow “logical” contemporary wisdom about such things. Thank you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him.” 2 Samuel 14:14 (NIV)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’m an ordained minister in a local church. I’ve tried all the programs our denomination has and almost no one in our parish is strongly motivated by them. In fact, most of my congregation seems to want only to float downstream in their canoes—without even ever picking up a paddle. How do busy people get motivated to become interested in hearing (and living) the Christian message.
Over the years I’ve heard variations of this same question from a number of talented, hard-working ministers: How can a church leader motivate people even to come out to hear the gospel, much less to become Christians?” At one time this question seemed to be implicit in every leadership meeting I attended. I have found a single recurring answer echoing down the years. For many people there is only one universally effective way to interest them in Christianity—and that is to expose them to a person with whom they can identify, a person who is finding hope and meaning in Christ in his or her own life. For years I was a little hesitant about the idea of new Christians trying to influence other people before they really understood some of the implications of the gospel. However, some years ago now, something happened that made me rethink this whole matter.
While on a speaking trip in another state, I was feeling restless, tired and phony. I did not want to speak to this particular group. How could I possibly project hope and purpose concerning the Christian life?
Waiting my turn to speak, I looked out over those hundreds of strange faces. I wondered if anyone else had come to this meeting unwillingly . . . and could not shake loose from the slough of self-pity and the frustration of not being able to control his or her circumstances. But after I had finished speaking, I found myself still standing before the lectern, sort of hesitating.
Finally, I heard myself saying something I had never said before—and was a little embarrassed because it sounded like some kind of gimmick: “You know, I have the strangest feeling that I came all this way to talk to one of you who may be going through some of the same feelings of frustration and self-pity I am. And if you think you are the person, I would like to meet you after this session.”
As I sat down, I mentally kicked myself in the backside. “Why did you say a stupid thing like that? These people will think you are some kind of nutcase.” But it was too late.
After the program a large number of men came to greet the speakers. As the line came by, I forgot all about my closing remarks until a short, heavy-set man with glasses and black wavy hair walked up to me. He gripped my hand with great intensity and I saw a couple of tears start down his cheeks. Leaning forward, I said quietly, “Say, if you have a minute, I’d like to talk to you.” He nodded. I pointed over to a corner and said I would be there in a few minutes.
As soon as I could break loose, I went to him.“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
“This is the damnedest thing that ever happened to me.I am an attorney and travel a lot. Although we belong to this denomination,” and he nodded toward the group still clustered around the speaker’s platform, “it hasn’t really meant anything to me in years. I certainly never planned to come to this meeting. As a matter of fact . . . ,” and he stopped, looking at me a little uneasily. “As a matter of fact, I have a mistress in this town and was coming to see her—though I was supposedly on a business trip. For weeks I have been feeling very guilty. I wanted out of this relationship, but couldn’t seem to break it off.”
“Well, anyway, I got out of my car in front of her apartment, a block from this church.Who should come charging up to clap me on the back but three guys from my home church.I almost fainted as one of them asked, ‘What are you doing here, Joe?’
‘I, uh . . . I’m just passing through,’ I lied, scared to death they were going to see the guilt written all over me.
‘Hey great. We’re just going down to hear some Christian businessmen speak. You’ve gotta come with us.’ And I was afraid to say no, for fear I’d somehow give myself away.
“But as I heard you speak about a new start in life—a life with purpose and meaning, I was amazed. I had given up on having any purpose and meaning and had been filled with self-pity.I had no idea what to do.Then you stood up there and looked squarely at me and said what you did, and I knew that I was the one.” He stopped talking and looked at me.
“Listen,” I said, not really knowing what to do, since I had to catch a plane.“We haven’t much time. Would you like to commit your whole future to God, including the relationship with this woman?”
He just stood there biting his lips, and finally said, “Boy Isure would!”
“All right.There are a couple of things involved in beginning, as I understand it.One is to confess that you really don’t want your own way more than God’s; and if you can do that, then ask God, as he is revealed in Christ, to come into your inner life and show you how to live for him . . . and then give him permission to make you want to.”
In a prayer, standing in the corner of that huge church, Joe made a new beginning. I pointed out that Christianity was not a “ticket to heaven” but a way of life that starts now and transcends death, and that all he had done with me was to make a bare beginning—now he had to begin to learn to live again.
I heard my name called and noticed that the people who were to drive me to the airport were looking at their watches.
Hating to leave this man, I said, “Hey, listen, Joe, I’ll make a deal with you.I’ll pray for you every morning for a month, if you will pray for me.If you want to go on after that, write me a card and say,‘You’re on for another month,’ and I’ll stay with you a month at a time from now on.”
Joe was in tears as he shook my hand. I hated to leave but had to. Glancing at my watch, I saw that my time with this man had lasted about twelve minutes.
When I got home from that trip, at the end of the month there was a letter from Joe.He had begun to live for God.Things looked great.He had started by breaking off the relationship with his mistress.Already it was hard, but he was going to try for another month, if I would stick with him.
Well, I knew old Joe was in for some real adjustments. And as the months went by, I was amazed at the way God was getting hold of this man.He began reading the scriptures and all the books he could get his hands on about living his whole life for God, and he began going to his churchand having long talks with his minister. Joe began to see his self-centeredness and changed his behavior towards his family and friends in the little southwestern town of a few thousand in which he lived. During all this time I had not seen Joe or talked to him. All he knew was that someone he had met one day was praying for him at 6:30 every morning.
About a year later Joe wrote and said he had told a few people about what was happening to him, but he didn’t feel they understood him. If I would come to his church, he said he would get these people together for a discussion about living for Christ as a person in business.
This was a very busy time in my life. But I had gotten Joe into this, and the circumstances were so unusual that I thought the least I could do would be to go and visit with the little group to which he was trying to witness. So I went.
I got in just in time for the meeting.Joe met my plane and was very excited as we drove to his church. He said he was sure glad I was there, because several people in town had come right out and asked him what had happened in his life. Since I had never written any books or articles at that time, his friends would know me only as “a friend of Joe’s.”
As we arrived at the church, the minister said that he was glad I’d come and that Joe had really helped him personally.By this time we were a few minutes late.We went through a door at one end of the church to meet the friends who were curious about Joe’s life.I stopped for several seconds . . . looking into the faces of over 800 people crowded into every corner and aisle of that church and adjoining rooms.
I realized in that moment that all of the promoted programs and Christian education plans in the world will be virtually worthless to motivate people to become Christians.People are generally not very interested in hearing about Christianity unless they see some ordinary person like Joe who is actually finding hope and a new way to live in Christ.And then many of them may listen.
The most pragmatic of reasons for seeing that Christ is the most dependable of realities is that of changed human lives.When we consider Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, we are in the realm of the empirical as contrasted with the merely speculativeve.Saul said it was the Living Christ who had met him, and the person who seeks to deny this is confronted with the face of a permanent change in Saul’s character.We cannot, of course, know whether a man is lying when he says “I believe,” because belief is intrinsically internal and personal, but the evidence of changed lives is something which other people can observe.In Saul’s case the change was so radical that it led to the production of some of the finest literature of the world, a literature which would not have been produced apart from the crucial encounter.
The evidence of lives changed by contact with Christ is so abundant that the full story can never be told; it is, indeed, of a kind not matched anywhere in any culture. The changed lives have come about, not primarily by a set of ideas or by acceptance of a doctrine, but by commitment to a Person.
D. Elton Trueblood, A Placeto Stand
Lord, we have somehow lost the art oflivingfor you in our attempts to educate people into the Kingdom of God. Sometimes I have reduced your Way into a study program “about” the faith of the church. At other times I havetried the emotional techniques of psychology and industry to motivate people to participate in the life of your church. Help me, Lord, to spend personal time with individuals, time in which we can discover together how to live our days and nights for you. Help me to learn again the amazing motivating power of lives which are in the process of discovery and change. Amen
And as he [Jesus] was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.But he refused, and said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” And he went away and began to proclaim in theDecapolishow much Jesus had done for him; and all men marveled. Mark 5:18-20
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, about two years ago I made a decision to turn my life and my will over to God. And I’m discovering a different way to love in which I am interested in learning how to love people. I read once where you described what happens to you when you tried to take your faith to your office. Can you tell me how you did that?
When I decided to take my faith to the office I would pray as I drove to work and parked my car that I would remember to be God’s representative in that oil company’s exploration office.But I was shocked to realize that when I got into my office and looked at what I had to do, I didn’t even give God a thought until I got back in my car to drive home.
Then I tried praying for people in the office after I arrived, but realized I didn’t know anything about them.
So I finally put a 3” x5” card in the lap drawer of my desk with a pencil on top of the card. When anyone came into the office I opened the lap drawer and took out the pencil, glancing at the card. I’m not sure how the message on the card was worded but in effect it said to me, “Keith pay attention to this person. I may have a message for you from them.God.”
That’s how I began to listen to people and ask them how they were.Over the next few months something started happening.I discovered that most people had problems, pain, frustration, hopes and dreams they didn’t usually talk about.Those sophisticated business people came in and just sort of opened themselves and let me see their inner lives. And I soon realized that there were enormous personal problems, loneliness, and searching among people in the oil exploration business.
Several years later I had met some other Christians in the oil business through my good friend Bill Yinger (who encouraged me and helped me more than he knows). Through Bill I was hired by another oil company and subsequently became that company’s exploration manager. And one day when the vice president in charge of our office was overseas, I said silently, “Okay, Lord, I’m going to get involved with any of these people who want to pray about this business.” I didn’t think we ought to meet together on company time, but I thought, “I’ll have a meeting with them before work and maybe we can find out how to be Christian business people.”
Among the men and women in that office were a Buddhist, a Jewish fellow, all kinds of “believers,” and some who did not claim any kind of religion. But I went to their offices to invite them and, since I was a manager, they listened to me.
I said, “We’re on a pretty fast track in this business, and I’d like to pray about what’s happening and what we’re doing here together. I’m a Christian. I don’t know if you are or not, but if you’d like to pray together, I’m going to come early, at seven thirty, and have a little coffee. If you want to come, fine. If you don’t, no sweat.” That was Friday, and I said, “We’ll start Monday—for any of you who’d be interested.” (I had a conference room next to my office that would give us privacy.”
All that weekend I kicked myself all over the house. “Why’d you do that?” I said.“You’re a stupid fool!”(Not that I have any pride, you understand.).I often have what at our house we call “cringers.” For instance, sometimes I have said something at a party that seemed “real clever” at the time, but when I’ve gotten home and remembered what I had said, I would grimace and shake my head, saying, “Oh no,whydid I saythat?” And so I was cringing all during the weekend about having been so vulnerable at the office. What if no one came” I’d feel terrible.
But on Monday I went in early, and of the fourteen people in that office almost all showed up. We began to talk together and share our feelings.After a few weeks the secretaries began to pray for the business and for the executives in our office, and the executives began to pray for the secretaries and for each other. We learned that we were all just persons who were struggling to live the best way we could in our circumstances.
After six months, people from other companies would walk in the office and say things like, “What kind of a deal do you have here? These people are sure friendly.”We didn’t necessarily say anything about Jesus to visitors; we just loved them.I kept a journal through all this time and was amazed at the waymylife changed.I felt more a part of the lives of the people with whom I worked.As I listened and let them know me, I began to feel love for them. And in a way I could not understand, I felt deeply that we were not alone in that hard-driving, secular business we were building.
“When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God, and God lives in us.That way love has the run of the house, because at home and mature in us.”1 John 4:17 The Message
Lord, thank you that you have gradually been knocking out the partitions in my life until I can be the same person in all areas of my life. Amen.
