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by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Dear Keith, last year at this time my marriage was beautiful. We could tell each other anything, were very much in love, and enjoyed being together and with the children. We realized how good things were and swore we’d always keep them that way.
But a year later everything seems to have fallen apart. My husband and I can’t even talk about it without getting mad. We both love God and go to church. Is it normal for a good Christian marriage to change when neither party wants it to? Why would our relationship change so drastically?
Good question. Of course I don’t know why your relationship with your husband has changed. But I can say with some conviction that I would be very much surprised if it hadn’t. Good marriages I know about do change.
If one (or both) of the parties in a close relationship changes as an individual, then the previous balance of the marriage relationship is automatically changed. And in periods of rapid development in a man’s or woman’s life, which may include a significant promotion at work, the birth of a child or one party gaining important insights or changes in self-concept, the existing relationship in the marriage may be in for quite a storm. For instance, a man may realize he’s been acting like a little boy and avoiding some decisions he should make as a husband and father. So he steps up and starts making these decisions, and his wife is hurt—thinking he no longer trusts her to make them.
The most helpful thing I can do in our changing marriage is to keep communicating with my wife about what I am discovering and try to keep listening to her. But if we start being too busy to visit with each other alone, changes and irritations can build up until they are too big to handle easily. When these periods happen we often avoid communicating about personal discoveries and pains at all. It sounds crazy because we both know we should talk things through, but neither of us wanted to face the anger, etc. that can be part of the process. One thing that has helped is that we have located a counselor who understands us both, and we call him when we need to.
A very good aspect of this business of a “beautiful” period being followed by a hard one is that when two people get some problems solved and feel very close, a feeling of new security often develops in the relationship. And one party or the other may feel safe enough at last to bring out (or act out) problems which were “too dangerous” before the beautiful period—and all hell seems to break loose right in the middle of the peace.
Sorry I can’t tell you why things have changed for you and your husband. Everything is going well in our house right now, but next week I may be wanting to write to you about what happened to us. Keeping the communication lines open is not easy for busy people.
Lord, I don’t understand why good relationships can become difficult, and why it is so hard to resolve the problems that cause the difficulty. So often I’m tempted to sweep these issues under the rug and pretend everything is as good as “it used to be.” Help me to realize that hard times are “normal” in most relationships and lead to growth. Help me to recognize when things seem difficult for me and be willing both to talk to and listen to my wife instead of sweeping problems under the rug and faking it. In Jesus’ name, amen.
But Jesus said, “Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace. Marriage isn’t for everyone. Some, from birth seemingly, never give marriage a thought. Others never get asked—or accepted. And some decide not to get married for kingdom reasons. But if you’re capable of growing into the largeness of marriage, do it.” Matthew 19:11, The Message
“One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again.” Judith Viorst, American Poet and Author
“Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy.” Phyllis McGinley, American Poet and Author
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I seem to be constantly overwhelmed with stuff to do! I am busy all day getting things done, but the list of what DIDN’T get done seems always longer than what I did get done! I can hardly go to sleep at night because I worry about how I will ever get caught up. How can I get God involved in solving this? I seem to be pretty helpless about it myself.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. Lots of people (including me) have this experience. Here’s how it usually goes for me: Yesterday, I woke up with things to be done swarming around in my mind like bees looking for a place to sting me. I jumped up and made an “action plan” about these urgent tasks.
Once I’d completed it, the plan transformed some things I could “consider doing” to a list “carved in stone” and handed to me on a mountaintop by God. I felt that I had to accomplish the entire list that day to be a worthy human being!
However, as I prayed, asking what God would have me do that day, I realized that there were several problems with the list—and the ones like it that I have made up every day for years.
1. It was at least twice what any sane person would try to do.
2. It was a grandiose projection of my own unreal expectations of how much time it really takes to do each thing.
3. It was a reflection of the fact that I wasn’t trusting God with the everyday decisions about how to spend my time each day, since I realized that my primary job is to love God and the people I contact every day, and trust Him with the rest.
I thought about what my list would look like if I could somehow totally trust in God (which, I realize, is practically impossible, given my human tendency to take back control once I’ve surrendered.) But if I could, how would I prioritize this list? What would I remove altogether? What could I entrust to someone else? What really had to be done? Trying to answer these questions gave me a new perspective on how I fill up my time with what seems to be “urgent” without considering what God might think is really important.
Then I remembered a story I had heard a while back about a man who routinely brought work home from the office to do after dinner. His little boy wanted his daddy to play with him, but his father always told him that he was too busy. Finally, in tears, the little boy asked his mother, “Why can’t Daddy play with me after supper?”
His mother said, “Because he’s behind with his work at the office.”
The little boy asked through his tears, “Well, why don’t they put him in a slower group?”
I realized then that perhaps God wants me to get in a different group, too, the group of those who know that they are not God, and have seen that “sober judgment” includes seeing things as they really are, including how much they can realistically expect themselves to do in a day. And that’s when I began to listen more and care more specifically for the people in my schedule—and when I do that—I have been amazed at how much more peaceful and at home I feel in my own everyday life.
Lord, help me to be willing to live a sane life for You that includes taking time to love the people You’ve given me to love—even if I have to get in a slower group. in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. – Romans 12:3 (NIV)
Since Jesus went through everything you’re going through and more, learn to think like him. Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way. Then you’ll be able to live out your days free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannized by what you want. – 1 Peter 4:1, The Message
When we breathe, we do not stop inhaling because we have taken in all the oxygen we will ever need, but because we have all the oxygen we need for this breath. Then we exhale, release carbon dioxide, and make room for more oxygen. Sabbath, like the breath, allows us to imagine [realize] we have done enough work for this day. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, Jesus said again and again. Let the work of this day be sufficient…. – Wayne Muller, Sabbath
We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies. The things that have to be done must be done, and for the rest we must not allow ourselves to become infested with thousands of petty fears and worries, so many motions of no confidence in God. Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world. – Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, If the church is going to make it in increasingly complex political, social, and economic worlds, don’t you think our first priority to be effective Christian communicators should be to keep up, to learn all we can about the latest advances in these fields? How else can we speak intelligently as ministers to the problems people face who are trying to live in these complex and changing environments? P.S. If you agree, have you got any ideas about how to get the time to ‘keep up’ in all these fields?
Wow, I can see what you’re talking about just from my own challenges with complex new developments. I just learned a few months ago how to text my grandkids! And the state of the economy, world events and politics here in the U.S.A. come through to us so much more fully because of all the communication technology that has evolved in the last fifty years.
I agree that it is important for those who would be Christian communicators to realize the fact that enormous changes are taking place in the social, economic and political scenes. But I don’t think it is necessary or possible for anyone to keep up with all the specific changes in all these areas. In fact, an attempt to be totally knowledgeable in all these fields could become a cop-out and a defense against specific action which might lead to actual improvement in any one area.
This is what I mean: I think that God, through the Gospel, deals with basic human conditions which include people’s responses to social, economic, and political activities and changes. And the basic human conditions and responses do not change all that much. They include our separation from God, from other people and from our authentic selves. Our responses include experiences of anxiety, fear, hunger, sickness, being dispossessed, persecuted, and loneliness.
If these things are true, then one Christian approach to helping people deal with social, economic, and political changes affecting the basic human problems would go something like this:
Get involved with real people in a specific place. Get to know them and their needs, hopes and dreams. Then as social, political, and economic changes affect those people adversely, we can examine those specific changes and try to speak out or take action, such as going to bat to help the specific people affected by the changes to live in the freedom and love God has for them.
That way the issues and changes we concentrate on are always relevant, and our passion to engage these issues as Christian communicators comes from love of God and His people rather than from a love of issues and of becoming a good Christian communicator. (This is much easier for me to say than do.)
Dear Lord, thank you that no matter what economic, political or social conditions we encounter, your basic message of love applies. Help us to learn more and more how to love you and other people in our lives by the way we respond to changes and how they affect us and those around us. Help us learn how to provide a loving, human touch in the midst of whatever changes we may confront. In Jesus’ name amen.
This is a large work I’ve called you into, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. It’s best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose out on a thing.” – Matthew 10:40
“Beware you are not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.” – John Wesley
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Recovery, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you have said that it’s better not to run from pain but to embrace it. But I don’t get it. What on earth can be good about pain?
You’re sure not alone with that question. Have you noticed how many commercials on television are about ways to quiet our pain? Yet I believe that pain plays an important—even essential—role in our spiritual growth process.
The first time I can remember hearing anything good about pain was one day when I was about eight years old. My mother and I were sitting at the breakfast table. I was not in school that day because my friend Jimmy had thrown a pampas grass spear at me during a mock battle and had struck me between my right eye and right eyebrow—miraculously missing putting out my eye, which was now almost swollen shut and hurting like crazy.
“Why would God invent something as awful as pain?” I asked, wishing mine would go away.
Mother raised her eyebrows and looked out the window behind me a few seconds. Then she said, “Well, feelings like pain are God’s way of sending helpful, even life-saving, messages to us about dangerous or harmful things we’re doing that we might not notice until it was too late.”
I scrunched up my face and asked, “What do you mean?”
She continued, “You might say that pain is like a fire alarm system God’s given us to help us pinpoint the exact place where our personal fires, our injuries or sicknesses, are. And if we don’t pay attention, the pain usually gets louder until we do. And God uses all kind of pain to show us where we need to change our live if we pay attention. So pain can be a life-saving friend.”
“How could pain actually save my life?”
“Well, imagine that early one morning you were running barefoot down the beach alone and you stepped on a jagged piece of glass bottle half buried in the sand, and it cut your foot, maybe nicked a large vein. If it weren’t for pain, you might bleed to death if you didn’t happen to look back and see that you were leaving a trail of blood in your footprints. Pain is one way you learn to take care of yourself.”
I thought about that for a few minutes, wondering if there was anything connected to the pain of my swollen eye that I could learn that would be a life-saver. Then I asked, “You mean like my deciding not to play spear-fighting chieftains anymore?”
Mother smiled and nodded her head. “That seems like a pretty smart change to me.”
Lord, thank you that so many kinds of pain contain a message to teach me about how to live my life. Help me not to numb it, or avoid it, but to examine it squarely and seek the life-meaning behind it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“Distress that drives us to God…turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.” Cor. 7:10, The Message
“How privileged we are to understand so well the divine paradox that strength rises from weakness, that humiliation goes before resurrection, that pain is not only the price but the very touchstone of spiritual rebirth.” Bill Wilson, Christmas Letter, 1944
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, just wanted to ask you what you think about making New Year’s resolutions. I have tried to live up to the Christian standard, but I never can. So I’m not too optimistic about making any big resolutions for 2011. What’s the point?
Where has this idea come from that there is just one image we should imitate in order to live the Christian life? This question occurred to me after realizing that for a long time, I had not felt free and natural in my Christian living because I was always trying to be something I was not so that I could be “like a child of God” (like those other children of God around me).
But a while back I realized that God has given each of us our own individual “sound”, our own lives. For years I have been a piccolo trying to play in the tuba section, because some men I admire greatly play the spiritual “deep notes.” Can you imagine anything more pitiful than a piccolo trying to play in the tuba section? Yet this had been the story of much of my life. It seemed to me that if it were true that each of us was to find the particular creative form of our own obedience, then it was all right for me to be a piccolo. I did not have to pretend that I was a tuba. What a relief!
I had once heard a friend say that he had taken the most outstanding characteristic or ability of each of the greatest Christians he had known and built for himself a composite picture of a Christian—and then tried to live up to the whole thing. And now as I remembered hearing him say that, I realized I had done the same thing. I had drawn up my image of how I was to live from C. S. Lewis’s ability with the written word in English, Elton Trueblood’s discipline, Gert Behanna’s sheer emotional power as a person on the platform, Sam Shoemaker’s ability in helping people individually to find a handle to the doorway into the kingdom—all these and many more. Unconsciously, I was trying to be all of these things, and, needless to say, I wasn’t making it and had felt discouraged. But now I was discovering that I could just be me, for Christ’s sake. As a matter of fact, that is the only way I can play my true part in God’s orchestra. When I really believed this, I set out to try to live a life-sized life.
But I didn’t have the slightest notion of how to be my real self. And as I’ve continued to search for the “natural me,” it has taken years to begin to discover what that is for me. So when New Year’s eve rolls around and I think about any resolutions I might make, I try to think in terms of asking God to help me continue to find my true place in his orchestra, and to begin again to learn how to use my God-given natural characteristics, abilities and dreams to love God and the people who are already in my life, which Jesus said was the underlying principle beneath the ten commandments.
Lord, thank you that it’s all right just to be me. In fact, it’s not only “all right,” but it is what I am supposed to be. Help me to surrender my whole life to you and let go of what is not me. Show me how to bring your love into the world I already live in wherever I go in 2011—using the traits and abilities you instilled in me when I was created. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.
Romans 12:1-2, The Message
Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”
Mt. 22:37, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Merry Christmas!
Wishes for a blessed Christmas come with this note! I tried to write a blog for this week, but couldn’t. Here’s what happened instead.
Andrea and I were all set for a quiet Christmas in Austin together since we had been with kids and grandkids for Thanksgiving. One night earlier this month, after watching a Spurs basketball game, I began to feel a sharp pain in my stomach, and I began to wretch with the dry heaves from this very sharp pain.
Because I couldn’t stop, and the pain grew very intense, Andrea called 911. They arrived very quickly and took me to the emergency room at Seton NW hospital.
After X-rays and an ultra-sound, the ER doctor said I’d had a gall bladder attack and I should see my doctor to talk about having my gall bladder removed. A few days later we sat together in the office of a surgeon, listening to his explanation of where the gall bladder is and what it does…and how it is removed. He suggested that I sign up for the nearest Monday and have mine out.
Since Andrea and I have been trying to complete the writing of a four-year book project, I was reluctant to undergo general anesthesia for the third time this year. The first two had set me back mentally so much that I was afraid I’d “lose” my train of thought about the book. So I was determined to put my surgery off until we completed the first draft—which I estimated would be about mid-January. I figured I could tough it out until then.
The surgeon said it was a “reasonable risk.” But he added, shaking his head, that if I had any more attacks I’d need to go into surgery ASAP!
All went well until last Friday morning at about 5:00 a.m. I had another bad attack, and I had misplaced the emergency gall bladder medicine I had gotten. I felt like Ray Milland in the 1945 movie The Lost Weekend about an alcoholic on a four-day binge, looking frantically all over his house for a bottle of bourbon he’d hidden from his family. Finally we located the pills and in about an hour the pain subsided. As soon as the doctor’s office opened, I called and was scheduled for the first opportunity available, which was the following Monday. So I had to wait all day Saturday and Sunday for surgery on Monday morning, just hoping that there would not be another attack.
Looking back, I can’t believe how arrogant I was. The phrase, “I am older, though “wiser” is not something I can relate to today. But I have learned once more that the philosopher was right on when he said “Advice we may listen to, but pain we obey!”
I tried to write a blog about Christmas for you today, but it’s a little difficult to be spiritual when one has made a complete fool out of himself—at least it is for me! So instead, I’ll offer this newly acquired wisdom for the coming holidays: Pay attention to your stomach while you’re over-eating at Christmas. Cut down on greasy food, and drink plenty of water.”
I am very grateful that the surgery was successful, but am ashamed about my arrogance in thinking my work was more important than the gift of health God had offered me in my 83rd year. I think the Lord may be speaking to me, telling me to provide food and medical attention for other people who are more willing to be more obedient and not so cocky about their ability to control their lives.
Andrea and I wish you and your family a blessed Christmas!
Lord, thank you that you continue—again and again—to give us new chances to grow up and become the people you made us to be. And thank you for giving Andrea the patience to stay the course when I stand up and rock the boat. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?”
Mark 34-37, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, people make me so angry and frustrated when they don’t do what they say they’re going to do. I don’t know what to do when I have these feelings. I can’t seem to let things go without judging and shaming the people I love most—just to prove they’re wrong. Any ideas?
That’s a hard question—but a good one.
The first part of your question mentions people making you angry. When I get angry at family members (or just about anyone else) my experience has been that the anger is all about me—virtually always. A friend named Lane explained this by telling how a mentor once asked him, “What do you get if you squeeze an orange hard enough?” He’d reply, “Orange Juice.” The mentor said, “Yes, and the juice came out of the orange, not the person doing the squeezing.” Lane was saying when someone squeezes me hard enough, my angry response is made up of something inside me.
Pia Mellody puts it another way[1]. She says that people don’t “make” us mad. What happens is that when they say or do something, we have a thought about what they said or did—and that thought creates the anger.
So I learned that when I’m with someone whose actions have triggered anger in me, I can ask myself, “What thoughts am I thinking about what just happened (or didn’t happen)?”
When my wife doesn’t keep her word about something very important to me, before I know it I am living with anger, usually because I feel rejected and discounted. How can I deal with this? Somehow, just knowing that my anger is coming from my thoughts about her forgetting something she promised to do doesn’t make the anger go away.
The other night that happened to me. Andrea and I had spent a couple of days Christmas shopping and I thought we really needed a break. So I suggested, “Honey, let’s quit early this evening and get ready for bed and read together for a while.”
She said, “Great! I’ll wrap some Christmas gifts that have to be mailed to our family, then come up stairs around 9:00.”
So I did a few things, then got ready for bed at about 8:45 and started reading a book I wanted to read. A few minutes later I looked up and it was 9:15. I was a little put out but realized there were quite a few packages to wrap for mailing, so I kept reading. But when I looked at the clock and it was a quarter to ten, I was suddenly angry and decided I’d just wait and see how long it would take before she remembered her “promise” to me.
She came in around 10:30 and said, “Honey, I’m sorry, but I realized I can’t read with you tonight. I have got to get all of these things wrapped and mailed before it’s so late we have to pay extra postage to make it on time. I just now noticed the time, and I came up to tell you what happened.” Then she left to go back downstairs to wrap some more gifts.
But even with her explanation and brief apology I was still furious. I began remembering all the things I’d done recently that she wanted me to do. And then as it got to be midnight I was still very, very angry and couldn’t go to sleep. But then I remembered that the anger was all about me and my not getting what I wanted when I wanted it. And I realized that those presents she was wrapping were from both of us, and I am a very bad wrapper.
So I had to face the fact that I was hurt and angry that my wife didn’t do what I wanted her to do. I asked God for help and guidance about how to diffuse the anger that came from my thoughts about what happened.
The answer I almost always get to this prayer is, “get out of yourself by helping someone else who needs help.” But it was just the two of us in the house and suddenly Andrea had become “the enemy.” So I prayed again—and the response that came to me was, “Think about what you could do for Andrea if you weren’t mad at her… and do that.”
I groaned and resisted. But this approach had helped me get past all kinds of self centered solo-pity-parties in the past. So I thought about what I could do that would be most helpful to Andrea—if I hadn’t been angry. And I remember that we’d left the kitchen without washing the dishes and cleaning up after dinner. And on raw faith I got up, went into the kitchen and cleaned up a fearsome mess.
As I finished up the job, something wonderful happened. I began realizing how fortunate I was to have such a talented and loving wife who does dozens of things for me and our families—especially at Christmas.
The anger was gone, and I was filled with gratitude. Because of being surrendered to God and to living the life of self-limiting love Christ lived and lives in us, I had been able to see my anger turn into gratitude, and in the process I’d given my wife a gift that would really please her. And, I added to myself—I didn’t have to tell her about my gift—making it a perfect gift! Then I was able to get some sleep.
As it turned out, Andrea stayed up all night wrapping presents. And because our assistant brings her baby to work, and the guest room/wrapping room becomes a nursery room during office hours, Andrea had also cleaned up all the wrapping paper scraps and straightened up the jumble of boxes and bows. When I got up early Andrea was just coming to bed. She smiled and said “I’ll just take a nap. I know I’ve got stuff to type and edit for you today.”
But I heard myself saying, “Honey, don’t worry about that, I’ll ask Jessica to do it. You just get some rest and sleep as long as you need.”
I was feeling holier by the moment—until I turned and—where this remark came from I have no idea—but I said, “By the way, I cleaned up the kitchen.”
As I closed the bedroom door, I cursed, hit my fist into my palm and shook my head, laughing at myself as I realized “I’m not quite ready for even an hour of selfless sainthood!”
Lord, thank you that you give us ways to love the people around us when we are filled with ourselves and our needs to be right—when we put ourselves in the driver’s seat of our lives. Help us to remember that only you can get us where we really want to go, which is why you need to be in the driver’s seat. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
– Matthew 5:43 The Message
“Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding. 2-4“When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—’playactors’ I call them— treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively.
– Matthew 6:2-4 The Message
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
[1] From Facing Codependence
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Dear Keith, I’m wondering if you could talk about God’s love as you understand it. If God’s love is “unconditional,” as people often claim it is, why does he need people to accept him? Isn’t that a ‘condition’? It seems contradictory to me for Christians to claim that God loves everyone and then that only those who love him back a certain way get a reward. I’m hoping you have something insightful to say about your own faith that will help me sort through this issue. Thanks, Emily
This is a great question, Emily, one that theologians have wrestled with a lot. All I can do here in this blog is try to tell you how I’ve come to deal with it in my own faith journey.
I believe that God loves all people like a perfect parent would love his or her child, regardless of what the child has done. For me, God’s unconditional love doesn’t require anyone to accept him. The greatest gift he has given us (besides his unconditional love) is free will, which allows us to decide whether we will live life with God or without God. Therefore, because of God’s integrity, he will not take away this free will and coerce us or manipulate us to accept him. Whichever choice we make, his love continues unconditionally.
I’m assuming that when you say “get a reward” you are referring to eternal life with God in heaven after death. But I am convinced that this eternal life is not a reward for “loving him back in a certain way;” it is a relationship with God and other people that we are invited to start now. So if we choose to live a life with God, what does that mean? God invites everyone to live Life with him. Jesus told us before he died that the Spirit or Personality that we saw in him is going to be with us and within us as our tutor and companion in a relationship with God that begins now and never ends. This life involves learning from God by seeing how Jesus and other Christians on God’s adventure are living that life in a loving way without hesitation or equivocation.
When we make this choice we re-position ourselves to allow God to be in charge of everything in our lives, and to become child-like students who want to know everything about God and his nature, and to learn to live more and more as loving co-creators and healers with God. The more we can surrender our own wills and let God lead us, teach us, and transform us, the more we learn the freeing power of being loved just as we are, without doing anything to earn this love. This is living in the creative image of God. The more that we do this (live the life that Christ modeled) the more that we realize the creative potential that we possess and the more fulfilled we can be.
This transformational process is not generally what is seen in the religious institutions of the world. This transformation is something that happens to individuals in a family/community that sees itself as part of the transformational family of God that is being actualized now. This life is based on a continuing and constant prayerful and intimate relationship with God’s Personality (or Spirit) within us and with other Christ followers in a safe and sharing community, helping each other as they are loving hurting people in the ‘worlds’ each inhabit.
Those who do not choose to accept God’s invitation to life with Him, choose separation from God (which is a primary definition of hell.) And I suspect it makes God very sad when people choose to try to reinvent life in ways destined to separate them from God and other people.
Emily, I hope these thoughts in this limited format will help you sort through this issue. There is so much more I wanted to say about God’s unconditional love and about how a life with God has been transforming me and other people I have been in community with. Perhaps I will say more in future blogs. And if what I’ve said today raises any other questions for you, please let me know.
Jesus, thank you for telling us that your spirit or personality would be with us and within us to teach us and be our companion if we choose to live a life with you. And thank you for the enormous gift of freedom to make our own choices—and that you can patiently love us just as we are even when we make choices that do not bring fulfillment or the realization of our potential. Help me to make good choices that are in accordance with what you had in mind when I was born. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus, thank you for telling us that your spirit or personality would be with us and within us to teach us and be our companion if we choose to live a life with you. And thank you for the enormous gift of freedom to make our own choices—and that you can patiently love us just as we are even when we make choices that do not bring fulfillment or the realization of our potential. Help me to make good choices that are in accordance with what you had in mind when I was created. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus said these things. Then, raising his eyes in prayer, he said:
Father, it’s time. Display the bright splendor of your Son
So the Son in turn may show your bright splendor.
You put him in charge of everything human
So he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge.
And this is the real and eternal life:
That they know you,
The one and only true God,
And Jesus Christ, whom you sent.
– John 17:1-4, The Message
Peter replied, “Master, to whom would we go? You have the words of real life, eternal life. We’ve already committed ourselves, confident that you are the Holy One of God.”
– 1 John 5:21, The Message
And we know that the Son of God came so we could recognize and understand the truth of God—what a gift!—and we are living in the Truth itself, in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This Jesus is both True God and Real Life. Dear children, be on guard against all clever facsimiles.
– 1 John 5:21, The Message
God’s mercy is not merely therapy for a few individuals beset by guilt…God does not dole out mercy like cookies only for good, repentant children. God’s mercy is not conditioned by our response. God is mercy. So, wide is wider than we guess…. Our calling is to live in mercy…. Recalling God’s unmerited mercy … we absolve one another, enacting the good news. ‘In Jesus Christ,’ we say, ‘we are forgiven.’ So we look into each other’s eyes without illusions; we are sinners all. Yet we embrace each other in the mercy, the wide, wide, mercy of God.
David Buttrick, The Mystery and the Passion
“If men and women today began by the thousands to experience the depths of Jesus Christ in a transforming way, there would simply be no place for their expression of experience to fit into present-day straitjackets of Christianity.”
Gordon Cosby, Sermon
If any of you are interested in one simple way to accept this invitation from God there is a free download, “How Can I Find God?”, here.
by Keith Miller | Bible, Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, is the Bible true? And if it is, how can I know it’s true?
That’s a good question, one that a lot more Christians wonder about than you would imagine. The simple answer is that since the story is all about God, what God is like, and what God wants from the relationship with His people, only God would know if the story is true or not.
But there is included in God’s story a way for people to know him and know what he wants in a relationship with him. If we surrender our lives to God and begin to live in the intimate relationship with him, we can begin to “see” him walking around in Jesus in the scriptures. We see him loving and inviting people to live with him in the creative life of giving and being loved that he has offered to us. Then, in the actual living with him and for him, we will know that the story is true in a way that is convincing enough for us to keep going.
Since the life God offers people in the Bible is an intimate life of mutual love and trust with God and other people, it should not be surprising that knowing whether the story about God’s loving us is true can be determined only by entering the relationships and beginning to love and trust the God whose story it is.
The love of the God of the Bible whom Jesus called Father is a love that transforms those who accept it and try to live it and pass it on. And the characteristic way that love is transforming is that the loving reign of God in people’s lives works like yeast that is put in dough—it permeates every aspect of a person’s life, and not just Sundays or the “religious” room in one’s inner home.
My experience has been that I first surrendered as much of my life as I could at the time to as much of God as I could understand—which I realize now was not much. But I really thought I’d done it, and that was enough. And as I “took God with me” into the daily aspects of my life, work and relationships I discovered that my life was changing. I began by becoming aware that when I made time to acknowledge God’s presence in the different parts of my life I began to talk to him about what I was experiencing (pray). And I asked him to change one thing after another, until one day I asked God to change everything in my life that was not God’s will for me. It was then that I began to change my behavior as if God were continually with me—which I realized he was.
Although I could tell you thousands or more words about this process, you haven’t asked me to do that. So I’ll just finish this blog by saying that for me the transformation (so complete it’s like being born into a new life) is not just changing one’s ideas about God, but rather in my case it was the changing of my whole perspective about who God is, what he wants from people—particularly from me—and how to love without trying to control people to get outcomes I want to fulfill my dreams and make me happy. I began to think about how I could enhance the lives of people around me. The Bible calls this Life and relationship with God “Eternal Life” that begins “now and never ends.” (John 17:3, The Message) And this is eternal life: to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.
***
Dear Lord, thank you that you didn’t bring a religion to control our lives, but a Way to live and love and learn about all of life. Help us to surrender to a life of love with you in which we can know you and your way of being human. Amen.
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. (1 John 4:7-10, The Message)
God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us… (1 John 4:17-18, The Message)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you write a lot about how a certain kind of small group has helped you learn how to face and deal with real temptations, fears, inadequacies and other painful areas of living. How can you do that? I’m afraid to trust other people enough to be honest about my real stuff for fear they will reject me or shame me for being like I am. But I’m not happy and life is getting a little out of control. No one is happy with me—including me. And I feel like I’m over my head and sinking somehow.
Thanks for your honesty. I had to feel like my relationships were bad and I couldn’t see my way out before I’d risk a group where people were being honest about real problems they were having.
When you ask what these groups provide spiritually that helps me the most in my own spiritual growth, the word that popped into my mind was “oxygen.” Why “oxygen,” I wondered? A picture flashed into my mind from more than fifty years ago. I was in a commercial diving boat off the coast of Acapulco, Mexico, going out for my first diving experience, using oxygen tanks. The night before I had ingested too much hot Mexican food and probably too much tequila (this was before I quit drinking 25 years ago). I had gotten sick and thrown up intermittently most of the night. But since we had paid a lot of money up front for our share of the boat, instruction crew, and equipment, I was determined to go out anyway, even thought I was very queasy.
As I recall, the crew didn’t speak much English, so I couldn’t tell them about my queasy stomach, etc. (Only those who have experienced such behavior and consequences will understand my concern about getting into deep water and “losing” my oxygen mouthpiece.) But not wanting to appear to be afraid—which I was—I tried to look cool as I watched them demonstrate how to use the diving equipment.
A couple of the first-time divers went over the side first and disappeared. As my turn came, I was filled with mixed feelings. I did not want anyone to know how afraid I was that I’d get down twenty plus feet and somehow my oxygen mouthpiece would pop out or malfunction—or I’d barf it out and drown. But I was more afraid that the other guys in our group would know that I was that afraid.
The man in front of me went over the side. After only a few seconds he surfaced, choking as if he were dying and hurling salt water out of his lungs through his mouth and nose. After they’d dragged him out, it was my turn. Looking as cool as I could, I went over—and down, down, down into the water—filled with fear of what to do if I lost my oxygen. But to my surprise, it was beautiful down there. I was fascinated with the schools of brightly colored fish darting around me. Then I saw a man lose his oxygen mouthpiece. Immediately one of the professionals took a deep breath of oxygen, then took his own oxygen mouthpiece out, stuck it in the troubled diver’s mouth, and they both surfaced up the rope slowly and easily. And suddenly I was free to enjoy the beauty of a whole other world. I felt safe because I knew that other people in that world would know how to keep me from drowning if I needed help.
I’d forgotten that experience of fifty years ago until your question came up. When I first started meeting with ten of my male friends, I was very afraid of what would happen to me if I went too deep inside myself and found something I’d have to share that might cause me to be rejected or drown in shame. But as I saw these men, particularly in men’s groups, going over the side of their boats and sharing more deeply than I would go, I was amazed at their honest reporting of things they had been or done that were hurtful to the people they loved, or were immoral or unethical. And there was no judgment or rejection, just understanding and identification.
And when over the weeks and months I saw the hope and joy they experienced as they reported actually making amends with family members, business associates and friends, I got the courage to go deeper inside myself, behind my façade of adequacy. And by doing so I experienced a new freedom and understood a little about what James is reported as saying, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healthy.” (James 5:16, The Message).
When I do lose my breath and/or get deeper than I can handle, someone else usually hands me his oxygen connection—in the form of his own similar experience—so I can spiritually catch my breath and come safely back to the surface. This has made it possible for me to look around and see the wonder and beauty of a world in which I’d almost been afraid to open my eyes. And perhaps the best thing about these groups is that when I am away from them and feel the fear that I am going to drown, I can signal one of them by phone and he will reconnect me to our common source of oxygen and guide me back to the surface.
After years of resisting any group like this (that wasn’t being monitored by a psychological counselor or psychiatrist) I discovered that this kind of open, mutual sharing in a safe atmosphere (like that of a Twelve-Step group) is the best practical way I’ve found to move into spiritual transformation from a fearful, compulsive and protective hidden life of inner isolation and denial to a life of learning how to give and receive love without the terrible fear of rejection or being shamed.
This way may not be right for you but in this blog, I am simply holding out my oxygen mouthpiece and saying welcome to the world of “breathing under water.”
***
Lord, thank you for your willingness to go over the side first and for your willingness to get back in the water with those of us who are often trying to look like fearless grown up divers—who are really scared little children inside when we find ourselves in such deep water that we can’t see the sky. Thanks for offering us your oxygen tank if that’s what it takes. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal. 6:3, RSV)
“Are you hurting? Pray… 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 5:16, The Message)
On protecting ourselves and our reputations:
“If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.” (Mt. 10:38, The Message)
Note: It occurred to me after I wrote this post that Richard Rohr has written a book with a similar title. I have not read the book so any similarities are merely coincidence.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Since so many scientists and educators and psychologists are atheists, how can I believe it’s possible to have a personal relationship with God? People who don’t believe in God point out how stupid some people are who say they do believe. How can I re-think about this? (Surely all the people who believe in God can’t be wrong.)
Another good question.
Some years ago a wise man told me: if all the millions of brilliant and spiritually sensitive people of integrity who claimed they had an intimate personal relationship were wrong—except one, then it would be true that a person can have an intimate personal relationship with God. Then, since it would be possible, if even one had such a relationship the question would change to how can I have an intimate personal relationship with God? (Since at least one person does.)
As I read about and later met some outstanding and loving people whose lives seemed to have a solid calm foundation in reality, I asked some of them how they began that personal relationship with God. Some said they had believed since childhood but hadn’t ever considered that an intimate ongoing relationship with God would be a reality until they met someone who really believed in God who also cared about them. Encountering these people was profoundly life-changing.
Other people said they had turned to God when their “planned” lives had hit bottom or at least they felt powerless to overcome the fears and facts of their lives on their own. And in one way or another the pain of life led them to places where they decided to surrender—however little that surrender was at the time. But for them that willingness to surrender to God created the open door through which they could take a step toward God, who—in some way they did not understand—met them and made them sense the safety of God’s presence enough that they could continue the journey with God.
But however the first willingness came about, God became real enough that the people making that first step began to pray, to try to do what they felt God wanted them to. And they were led to other people on the same spiritual journey into which the new person had stepped.
And from that simple willingness to believe and trust, a whole new way to live began to unfold—a world in which there was One to take the fears and failures and receive the gratitude for the joys and ‘learnings’ that began to unfold.
Each person’s journey to faith is unique like each person’s experiences of falling in love or having a child or facing fear, rejection and disappointment are different, unique in some way. But all these experiences can be transformed by God. Failures become ways to learn, fears become occasions to give God the only thing we really have to give God: the gift of faith and trust.
And for me over the past half century, I feel as if I had become ready for some kind of spiritual cataract surgery. Everything that happens to me now is part of the adventure of living and learning how to love God, other people and even myself as his child who wants to become all God wants me to become.
And this very different way of seeing all of life is part of the adventure God is giving me to live—one day, one minute at a time. And all I can tell you is that this Way has already changed my experience of everyone in my life—including you.
And so I continue to try to face and confess my sins of controlling people, situations and outcomes, I am living in a world that looks safer and more welcoming than the anxious world I came from with its imperious need to change people, places and things to suit my insatiable wants.
Why don’t I think this life of faith is a delusion? Because I catch myself living in a more honest, loving and less selfish way as time goes on. And as a person who studied psychology and theology, I believe that these experiences are much more reality-oriented and healthy from a scientific point of view than the tight fearful focusing on myself and my wants, always trying to convince other people to do what I thought they should, and using other people to get what I want.
And at 83, although I am still only a growing child inside (after almost 60 years of becoming willing to trust that God is real and trying to surrender my life to him), I am happier and more connected to the wonder of loving God and other people with whom God has sent me. So in my case, I’d be a fool not to believe that a personal relationship with a loving, mentoring God is real.
Dear Lord, if you are not real, you don’t have to send any atheists to warn me. I’m afraid I wouldn’t believe them now, since you have been with me in so many unlikely ways and transformed my experience of living so profoundly by your love and caring guidance that now I know my job is not to outsmart them but just to love them—the way you‘ve loved me. Thank you very much. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other… Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.” (2 Cor. 5:16, 20, The Message)
“By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ’s life, the fulfillment of God’s original promise.” (Galatians 3:25, The Message)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Prayer, Weekly Devotional
You often talk about trying to find ways to help other people when you feel like no one really loves you. How does your helping someone else help you?
Very good question. Because I am a writer and have written a lot of books about trying to live my ordinary walking around life for the God Jesus called Father, I’ve gotten hundreds of questions over the years about trying to live and relate to other people in my own home or whatever town in which we’re living. In many of these letters people have said that they are so miserable they can’t imagine how helping other individuals could change anything—especially for themselves.
Well, we have been watching a dear Christian friend of ours growing and changing for several years now. She and her husband are in their early thirties and have two children under three. She has been praying about how God could use her and creative ways to get out of her comfort zone to care for people who don’t have the advantages she has.
Not long ago I asked her what she had discovered about helping other people she did not know but who God called her to help. She told me the following story, which I asked if I could pass on to you.
***
“I pulled into the grocery store over four years ago, prepared to do the mundane task that I did every week: grocery shop for my husband and me. As I waited at the light to turn into the parking lot a young man (who appeared to be in his early teens) walked across the street in front of my car. In that instant some inaudible, but real voice said to me, “Ask him if he needs help.”
My mind raced. I came up with at least a dozen excuses for why I shouldn’t talk to him. I had no idea what I could possibly do for him, so I said, “God, if you want me to help him, he needs to cross my path again.”
I thought I was off the hook but as I entered the store, this same young man crossed in front of me again. I ignored the strong nudge to talk to him and went on with my grocery shopping, looking around for him as I shopped.
As I buckled my seatbelt after loading the groceries into the car, I started sobbing uncontrollably and put my head down on the steering wheel. All my excuses seemed so ridiculous at that moment, and I knew that I had not followed God’s will for my life that day. I was overwhelmed with sadness.
I had just started really living for God, was a part of a small group for the first time in my life, and I knew that this opportunity to help someone else was one that would have brought me closer to God. But fear and anxiety kept me from doing what I knew was right. I asked God’s forgiveness and hoped that he would give me another chance.
Two weeks later at the very same grocery store my next opportunity arose. The previous event was gone from my memory, and I was in a big hurry to get my groceries and then get home where I needed to be. I believe we had dinner plans with friends that night. As I rushed into the parking lot from the grocery store I passed another young man I guessed to be in his early 20’s, wearing very worn, dirty clothes. He looked tired and beaten down, like he had worked all day. As I passed him, I again “heard” the inaudible voice, “Buy his groceries.”
“Buy his groceries? Really?”
My mind raced again as the excuses poured out: surely God does not want me to go back into the grocery store, find this man and his cart full of groceries and buy them; surely he knows that I am in a hurry; surely he knows that we do not have the money to buy this man’s groceries. Surely God has it wrong!
As I began to rattle off my excuses I suddenly remembered the previous incident and that feeling of sadness after I had failed God. But fear still welled up inside of me. As I packed my groceries in my car I argued with God about why it was a bad idea and then ultimately I said, “What am I supposed to say? I am going to look so stupid. I am so scared. And what if he says no? What will I do then?”
And as clear as day, I heard the voice again—so patient and loving, “Buy his groceries.”
Then I knew that I had to go back in that store, find that young man, and do what the Spirit was prompting me to do. My nerves were a wreck—palms sweating, knees shaking, teeth chattering and all. I searched the store and finally found him. It looked to me like he was just finishing, so I waited by the checkout lanes. He found his aisle and I threw up a prayer, “God, please help me do this.” As I stood behind him I noticed that he was buying the essentials— milk, bread, eggs, meat and other items that indicated that he had kids. I stood there trembling, tears rolling down my face, and I heard the cashier give the man the total for the order. ‘This is my cue,’ I thought.
“Excuse me, Sir. Would you do me the honor and let me buy your groceries today?”
The check-out lady looked at me as if I were crazy, and then we both looked at the man as he stared at my tear-stained face. Dumbfounded, his eyes also filled with tears. He said, “What? You want to buy my groceries? Why?”
‘Oh, Good Lord’ I thought… ‘he wants to know why!!??’
I continued, now sobbing, (I’m sure I was a sight at this point) “Sir, my God has asked me to help you today by buying your groceries. I don’t know why but I want to be obedient and I want you to know that He loves you. Please let me buy them. And when you get an opportunity to help someone else, I hope you’ll do so.”
He put his wallet away with a sigh and said, “Yes, please, that would really help today.”
I moved up to the cashier, paid his bill, said “God Bless you and your family,” and ran to my car, still crying. This time my uncontrollable sobbing was a joyous sob. It was crying that was full of love and happiness. My tears indicated to me that I had just done ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ and following God’s will was life changing for me that day.
***
I think each person has to find his or her own ways to reach out to people. But Andrea and I have found over the last few years that when we pray and ask God to show us how to love the people in our lives, it is incredible how situations come up in which it is right and natural for us to care for people and help them in ways we never would have thought of before. But as unusual and off the wall as some of our experiences have been, I can’t think of a time when the act of loving didn’t change our lives, lift our mood, make us stronger in our faith and bring us closer to God and to other people. And hearing our friend’s story this week opened some new windows of hope that my life can become more loving and real.
Dear Lord, thank you for making it so clear that if we want to show our love to you, we can do so by loving the people around us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Then the King will say …. ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! …. And here’s why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me….’
“‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:35-40 The Message)
How have you responded to situations that seemed to be opportunities to help someone else?
