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by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Over the years many serious, committed Christians have asked me questions about how to come to grips with such painful topics as sickness, handicaps, accidents leading to permanent injury or death, and other such matters. Devastated parents, husbands, young adults, when faced with the loss of someone on whom they depend, and whom they love deeply, begin to wonder what part God has in it all.
“Why was our child born with birth defects?”
“Why did my wife get cancer at 34 with four young children to raise?”
“Why was my father killed in a head-on collision by a drunk driver?”
“How could God let these things happen?”
These questions from the drawn, haunted faces of grieving, frustrated Christians keep coming back to me in the quiet of my study. Why indeed?
I have faced questions like these in my own life before and after trying to make a serious commitment of my life to Christ. I have cried, prayed, read, asked, and thought about the meaning of sickness and death.
When I was eighteen, I walked through the grief of a war telegram announcing the death of my only brother in a plane crash and saw what this did to my parent’s lives. I saw my mother have a nervous breakdown and then sat by her as she died of cancer in a few years. My father had ulcers and then a heart condition which combined to kill him when I was twenty-three. And in the midst of these sicknesses I broke my neck in a car wreck, and the doctor thought I might be paralyzed.
As each member of my family died I planned funerals and tried to console the ones who remained. As each one “disappeared,” I spent a lot of time as a young man thinking about sickness and death. I watched how they affected us all—the bad things and the good. And I remember looking up at the stars late the night we heard of my brother’s death and crying out, “Why?”
Since I have become a Christian I have seen that this scream is a way of asking probably the deepest and most perplexing question that faces a person who believes in the God of Jesus Christ: “If God is all powerful and also good, why does he allow evil and pain to plague his people?”
This was one of the first questions my mind went to after my conversion. Out of their uncertainty, people have come up with three basic notions about sickness—with dozens of variations. Some say, “Sickness is God’s will; therefore we must bear it patiently.” Others say, “Sickness is of Satan. And if we pray and have faith, God will root it out and heal us.” Still others believe that “out of sickness can come understanding, noble character and achievements which would never have been.” But having studied the Scriptures and having read many books on sickness and the whole problem of “undeserved” evil, I have not found any theoretical solution which satisfies the pain of the human soul in its agony and tells us “why.”
How then do we Christians face sickness when it strikes us or the people we love, or deal with the death of someone we love?
In God’s Good News—expressed in the drama of the life choices and experiences of a Person (not a reasoned theory about those choices and experiences), Jesus gives us something which is more valuable than intellectual answers to the deepest problems of human life. With his unique self-limiting love (he chose not to use his power to save himself or even to save his cause) he provides a paradoxical offer of freedom for all of us self-centered humans to transcend even our fear of death, to risk all of our lives in order to find the blessedness of God. Since our imaginations can absorb and be transformed by a love of us that does not demand a price in return, God gives us a choice of whether we want His gift of life in our experience that allows us to transcend and even utilize the circumstances that have us blocked. But to incorporate Jesus’ “answers” in our lives, we must move beyond the question of “why illness?” to “what can I learn from this illness?” and “How can I love others better in the midst of sickness and failure.
One person learns patience, understanding, and almost unimaginable compassion for others; another becomes an unbearable, complaining, hyper-sensitive and self-centered block to the healing power of love in the culture he or she inhabits. The choice can be ours. The question is, “will we choose to be wedded to Life and Love or to move into and be carriers of death’s darkness while still alive?”
But if the losses and tragedies of life can be valuable, then is sickness a good thing? The Gospels and the Church answer a resounding, “No!”
Here we have another of the many paradoxes of life and faith. Although disease, accidents and undeserved tragedies can bring great transformation of character, including the Christ-like qualities of compassion and the love of seemingly unlovable enemies to some, these horrible experiences of unexpected illness and early death can also destroy all a person’s values.
Christian physicians are right, I think, in giving their lives trying to snatch people from sickness and death, as Jesus did. For it certainly seems obvious that Jesus entirely rejected the idea that sickness was sent by God as a punishment. And as Louis Cassels (in The Real Jesus, page 26) points out, Jesus did not encourage the belief that the sufferer ought to remain ill in order to acquire courage or learn patience. In fact, the Gospels report nineteen specific instances, and allude to hundreds of others in which Jesus healed sick people by a word or gesture.
So Christ anticipated modern medical science by recognizing that all illness is to some degree psychosomatic—involving the mind as well as the body. And his conversations with the sick always show a concern for the mind and the spirit as well as the body.
But Jesus did not give those being healed, or his disciples, rational closure or a theory of sickness. He gave them a way to do what they could to help love those who were sick or lost. And today, by surrendering our lives to the Father and walking with those in pain we can be part of the love God offers to those at the end of their own ropes so that they can be open to experience God’s love and a way of life that can transform their sickness and even death into renewing life with the Father and his family.
God, forgive me when I blame you for allowing evil and pain, sickness and death, into our lives. Show me how to learn from suffering, and help me to let you show me a way through the suffering and pain, a way that leads me closer to you and toward becoming more like the loving person I now see that you always wanted me to become. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“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
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Dear Keith, I’ve been troubled a lot with anxiety lately and seem to be having more problems with my relationships recently. I have made a commitment to Christ and asked God for the filling of the Holy Spirit and I have done everything my friends have told me to do to get rid of this anxiety and these problems. I have gone back to reading the Scriptures and praying regularly and I’ve gone to several people for counseling, but I still seem to have these problems. Do you have any idea what this might mean?
You sound as if you think anxiety and problems are bad things and that you should do things to improve your spiritual life so these problems will go away.
I believe that problems and anxiety are not necessarily bad things. I think any time we are anxious, it is like a fire alarm going off warning us that there is something not being faced either in our relationship with God, another person, ourselves, or with our work. Some people, for instance, are overworking terribly and suddenly become anxious “for no reason at all.”
What I do when I become anxious or have a problem in a relationship is to stop and ask God, “What messages are you trying to get through to me?” In other words, instead of praying that the anxiety will go away, I am learning to ask God, “What is the anxiety signaling that might help me get closer to You and to live more sanely as your person?” Most often, the problem or the anxiety I am experiencing is merely a signal that something is wrong. Rather than trying to get the signal to stop, I find it’s better to locate the fire or the difficulty that is causing the anxiety or the problem in the relationship. When I discover the real problem, and address it (which usually requires me to change some unacceptable behavior) then often the anxiety disappears.
For example, one day I woke up anxious, afraid, and feeling very insecure—all adding up to a frightening loneliness and doubt about the reality of my Christian commitment. I hated to admit it, but my Christian friends began to get on my nerves. They seemed to be so untroubled, and I knew intuitively that some of them must have similar problems—but they just didn’t talk about it. So I started faking it, without even being conscious of it. Someone would call and say, “Hey, buddy, how are you feeling?” And I would reply, “Fine, things couldn’t be going better,” when in reality I was dealing with something serious or was worried sick.
Don’t misunderstand, I am not for telling everyone about your every ache and pain in order to be scrupulously honest, but sometimes I think we hide our less than joyful feelings because we believe that it is a denial of Christ to be miserable. Consequently I, and some of my friends, being human, were left alone and guilty in our times of misery.
Then I began to see that this position of hiding our humanity is that of the “whitewashed sepulchers” Jesus spoke of, smiling on the outside and rotten with guilt, anxiety, and incompleteness within. (See Mt. 23:23–28)
As I struggled with this problem, I had to take a new look at my humanity—the humanity of a man who wanted with all his heart to be God’s person and yet found himself anxious and restless inside. Why would I have vague feelings of unhealthy dependency and incompleteness, just when I seemed to be living a disciplined, outgoing life?
At last this search sent me to my knees, beginning again like a child. God had used my anxious sense of incompleteness to drive me back to the place where I would again put my life in his hands. The “fire,” in this particular case, was expecting myself to live up to some kind of image of what a “perfect Christian” would look like and hiding from myself the fact of my own humanity.
For me then, anxiety and restlessness as a Christian were not necessarily bad, but, like physical pain, they could be a warning signal—warning me that something was out of balance in my life, that I was somehow ignoring God—even while I was doing religious disciplines to “earn” some peace and quietness. And because of the signal that anxiety provided, I could stop and do something before I destroyed myself and the work I was trying to do.
At about that time, I remember being asked to speak to a men’s group on the subject “The Christian Life.” I went to the meeting and spent five or ten minutes telling the men very honestly that I was feeling weak and miserable. I was tired of speaking to groups and of being a Christian, and had even considered not coming that night. Then I told them that I had realized that whatever else had meaning to me besides God was so far back in second place that I had decided to come and tell them that I was a Christian almost by default—that is, there seemed to be no other way to find any purpose or meaning in my life at all. I had come to the meeting on the chance that some of them might live with misery and incompleteness too—that some of them might be looking for a Way that could give purpose and meaning even to a life that included anxiety and restlessness and the accompanying lack of confidence in themselves.
I thought that my honest and specific confession of my miserable restlessness and self-centeredness would compel these men to reject me and any message I might have to give them. Instead, I found a room full of brothers, of warm, struggling fellow human beings, who also needed a second touch from their Lord, even though many had been committed Christian ministers for years.
I have found that committing my life as wholly as I can to God and receiving the reassuring sense of his presence does give me a deep and ultimate security my humanity has longed for. And, when I discover that I am again anxious, I remember that Jesus counted on his disciples having troubled hearts and told them he was sending the Holy Spirit to comfort or “strengthen” them when they did (see John 14). And not only that, but I now believe that restlessness and ultimate dependency, like pain and evil, are woven into the fabric of life perhaps to become the motivating power to drive us toward fulfillment in God as he is revealed in Jesus Christ.
Understanding this, however, has not changed the fact that I find it very unpleasant to be anxious, restless, discouraged or afraid. It is all very well to understand that God will teach me something from the inexplicable and anxious periods and bring me closer to himself, but during these times I feel very lonely, and I still resist surrendering control of the people or situations to God in order to find God’s way. Only now, I can remember faster that when I’ve held out and refused to surrender, I have experienced long and unproductive sessions of introspection and discouragement.
My prayers come with this for you. It has not been easy for me to accept the fact that I can even hide things from myself that I don’t want to face. This may not be true of you, but based on my experience it’s what I have to offer you at this point.
Dear God, thank you that you have given us an “alarm system” for discovering things we cannot see about ourselves. Help us to pay attention when the alarm signal goes off, and to begin to change any behaviors, thoughts or situations that have triggered the alarm. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:22-24 NIV
Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed.
James 5:16, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Prayer
Keith, what can I do when my prayers are boring—even to me? How can I pray more attentively in a way that leads toward the transformation of my real life?
Years ago, when I first began taking a life of communicating with God seriously, I felt uneasy with silence while praying. So I filled most of the communication time with words. But as the years rolled on and I read the lives of many of the saints of the church, (and met some very loving and unselfish Christians), I noticed that a number of them seemed to view communication with God as a time for them to listen to Him (since they had the idea that the purpose of prayers was to let God change them—instead of informing Him about what He should be doing each day).
At about that time Paul Tournier told me that he and his wife, Nellie, spent time together each day listening for God, and writing down what came to them in the silence. I still didn’t do anything until some years later when another very reality-oriented spiritual friend told me she did the same thing the Tourniers did, and it helped her a lot. So, feeling a little uncertain, I began to listen for ten minutes, writing whatever came to me. At first what came was a cross between a laundry list and a “to do” list for a Daytimer. The first thing I wrote down was “get your car washed.” I shook my head but wrote it down, along with calls to make, immoral thoughts that came up as I was praying, and financial worries.
When I reported that listening for God didn’t seem to work very well, my friend pointed out that I was getting my day organized, and the immoral thoughts could be transferred to my prayer, asking God to help me with them. “Besides,” my friend said, “you’ve told me that you have spent a good many years tuned into other stations in your mind. It may take weeks or months to be able to sort out the way God talks to you.”
I am amazed at what has happened. After many years of listening this way, I now often get a list of everything I need to do for that day in about five to eight minutes. Later I reorder the list, and my day is planned, and—after several years of doing this—I added almost nothing to the list except for new things coming into my office that day. But often the last couple of minutes I’d just sit in silence and listen.
And in that small space of silence, one morning I heard, “Keith, you are a precious child and I love you”—and I wept.
I didn’t know whether that came from God or just the deepest part of me. But I wept the first time I wrote it down, because I had never heard anything like that in my mind before. All the inner voices I’d listened to all my life seemed to be critical, pointing out faults and mistakes I had made, or was afraid I would make. And in that last few minutes I have also become aware of ideas for creative projects, many of which I later investigated and some of which I have carried out.
But some days, God seemed to be silent. That is, I didn’t feel or hear God’s presence. And I guess I had the idea that I wasn’t doing something correctly. I smile now as I think of the way I often used to get busy at such times doing religious things, as if by doing that I could get God’s attention. I would increase my time of reading the Bible, or lengthen my (talking) prayer time—focusing on intercession. But most of the time God was still silent.
I told a friend about this not feeling God’s presence. I told him that some days I didn’t seem to have any faith. He smiled and said, “You seem to think that if you don’t have a spiritual feeling you don’t have any faith?” When I looked a little puzzled, he said, “Keith, if you have the feelings that God is with you, you don’t need any faith.” He went on to tell me how someone had pointed out to him that on those days when God is silent, and there are no spiritual goose bumps, that could be an opportunity to give God a special gift—as a matter of fact about the only gift we can really ever give Him: a day of living in raw faith.
So now when God is silent, instead of feeling I’m losing out on a relationship with God, I tell God that I love Him. I say something like, “Thank you, God for this chance to tell you that I love you by risking doing what I think may be your will today and living in faith—with no feelings that you are here at all. I love you! Have a good day!”
Then I try to do something for someone in trouble, or need, a small thing, a call or visit with someone who is lonely. And often I feel much better at the end of such “silent” days in which I haven’t worried about taking my spiritual temperature.
Lord, thank you that you have given us a life of love, instead of just a religion. Help us learn to let love loose in our lives—and through them. Amen.
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.”
Matt. 10:40 The Message
Have you ever tried to spend a whole hour doing nothing but listening to the voice that dwells deep in your heart? … It is not easy to enter into the silence and reach beyond the many boisterous and demanding voices of our world and to discover there the small intimate voice saying: “You are my Beloved Child, on you my favor rests.” Still, if we dare to embrace our solitude and befriend our silence, we will come to know that voice.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Life of the Beloved
by Keith Miller | Christian Living
Last November I had surgery at a day-surgery center, under a general anesthetic and then went home after a few hours. I always clearly request “no narcotics,” for pain relief, since I have had severe problems with certain drug reactions in the past—both in and out of medical situations. But the new drug seemed to be ok, that is, until I took it.
Since some of you may still be looking for entertaining drugs for weekend adventures, I will not identify the drug, except to say that I was, they tell me, very entertaining for a while, but not for the Christian circuit. And then came the edema, a part of the reaction to the drug that puffed me up like a toad. And when they finally got a diuretic in me I lost 8 pounds in nine hours, (or that’s what I think they said). The pain in the area of the surgery was intense—and saying it that way feels like minimization as I write it.
I am telling this to you because although I finally got back to health before the year was over—or what passes for health in the 82-year-old body I inhabit—I had some sort of fluke accident toward the end of February and split the skin near the old surgery in a vulnerable area. The situation required instant attention and possibly some very negative consequences if I didn’t get it taken care of. After checking into the hospital, and much fast but careful re-testing (because of my age and the short time since the first surgery), I found myself once more slipping into unconsciousness, staring up into the big lights in surgery.
Now this was not to be a big deal, the surgeon said (a surgeon who is very good at his job, and very careful not to take risks with his patients’ health). But having two “knock you clear out” surgeries that close to each other is not to be taken lightly by people in “my group” (the really old guys)—especially after a bad drug reaction following the first round. Although the medical people involved are very good and did their jobs well, I was not a happy camper. I had things I had to do! I was behind on a writing commitment, and I had lost time having my system messed up by the combination of the anesthetic aftermath and ticketless drug trip I’d had a few days earlier (actually several weeks, but it seemed like “only yesterday” to me.) I was really antsy to get back to work.
But anyway, at 2:00 a. m. the morning following the second surgery, a new night nurse was trying to insert a catheter into my very pain-filled body—the second catheter for me in the previous four hours. A wonderful young nurse trainee came in to report quietly to the catheter nurse some details about two female patients who were just arriving on our hall. Now my nurse, who was working so conscientiously on me, was under a new time constraint! When I closed my eyes, I saw—and felt—a medical training movie I’d seen years before of someone receiving one of the first electrical shock treatments. When the pain hit me during the initial “needle threading” probes, it seemed like nothing was touching the bed but my heels and the back of my head. Then, just as I realized I was about to morph into an angry, irrational, profane, mean-spirited and commanding old white Texas male—something amazing happened.
In a split second of clarity I remembered Jesus and the Father, and my commitment to be present to people wherever I am and to try to help them. I recalled that He was with us in that darkened room with the bright light that was revealing me—in several ways. Instantly I became quiet inside and thought about this dedicated young nurse—and I could feel the pressure under which she worked.
I prayed, silently, “Lord, help me to be your person now. I am exhausted too, but I am only thinking about myself, and my impatience and bracing for the pain.” Then I found myself caring for this harassed young nurse as if she were my granddaughter. I heard myself saying in a quiet confident voice, “Can you stop just a second?”
She looked up, evidently experiencing a very different patient than she had been dealing with—an unhappy and potentially irascible and explosive old man. When her eyes met mine I said calmly, “I’m so sorry all this is descending on you at once,” (as I nodded toward the speaker over which a voice was calling for her). “I know that you need to check on those women who just got to their rooms, and I’m really not uncomfortable with regard to the pressure to urinate. If you’d like to go and check on those two women, and can get back to me in forty-five minutes, I’ll be fine.” And I touched her lightly on the shoulder.
She gave me the strangest look. There was total peace in the room. Then she smiled for the first time, and seemed to relax. And in that instant, my pain was gone.
I said something like, “Go on. I’ll pray for you and the two women. I’ll be fine.” And, I really meant it. My fear and pain had disappeared, and I realized that the young nurse and I—from different continents and perhaps cultures that had been worlds apart—were somehow sitting together in the soft light—in the Kingdom of God..
I was amazed to realize that I was content to be just who I was right then—and where I am in my rickety life right now…if I never get caught up. And I felt very blessed.
***
When I got home, I thought about you, the people who may be reading this blog. And since I didn’t have any spiritual message written to send you, I decided to send this note with a message from Jesus that I recite almost every morning:
“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you, there is more of God and his rule.” (and) “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourself cared for.” (See Mt. 5:3 and 7, The Message)
P.S. By the way as the nurse smiled and nodded…the catheter was in.
Lord, thank you that in a split second we can connect with your constant presence, even in the midst of excruciating circumstances…at the end of our rope. Thank you for your transforming love. In Jesus’ name, amen.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living
Keith, my problem is that my spouse says that I am selfish, but I buy her nice clothes and presents of jewelry, etc. I even joined the church because she wanted me to. And I know a lot of men don’t do things like that. But in spite of everything I do, she is very frustrated because she still thinks I’m selfish and is getting very discouraged because I still can’t see that I’m selfish (and I’m angry because she thinks that.) What does a man have to do to let a woman know he’s not selfish???! What does being selfish mean to you?
A lot of people (and couples) have wrestled with that one. When I made a serious commitment to become a Christian, I—like you— had always done a lot of “nice things” for my wife (and other people, too), and I was floored when we started getting more open with each other that she felt that I was selfish—even though I was sincere in wanting to be God’s person.
As I read the Bible and talked honestly to the other Christian men in a small men’s group about this, I learned that there is evidently sort of a “secret control room” in the center of my mind that has one seat (a throne). And whoever or whatever is sitting on that throne determines all my actions. If I am sitting in the control seat, then without even knowing it, virtually all of my conscious actions are intended to influence and control the people and situations in my life to make me happy or to enhance the image I want to project that will make people admire me or love me. And usually the desired outcomes I try to bring about lead to my getting more than my share of their time, attention and love in close relationships. But I can’t see that I am doing this because I do so many “nice things” for them.
In my case, I began to see that I was trying to project an image of being smarter, wealthier, sexier, and a better Christian than I felt I really was.
Then one day after an argument, I recalled a movie, The Wizard of Oz, in which Dorothy, the young girl from Kansas, was in this huge hall in the land of Oz. She and her new friends (the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion) were standing before a huge frightening holographic image of the great Wizard. But Toto, Dorothy’s little dog, had run over to the side of the great room and pulled back the curtain, exposing a frumpy little old man sitting at the large control board that controlled the voice and movements of the huge projected image of a wondrously powerful Wizard with a deep booming voice. The little man (the actual wizard) tried to save himself from the shame of being revealed as only an ordinary man by having the booming voice say, “Don’t look behind that curtain!” But it was too late.
That’s exactly how I felt when my spiritual mentor helped me pull back the curtain of denial and see that I had been unable (or unwilling) to recognize and deal with my motivations for maneuvering to get outcomes I wanted from people and situations in my life. I was in denial not only about pretending to be more than I am, and a pretty unselfish husband, but also I had not been able to face that I am inordinately self-centered even as a Christian.
It finally got through to me that becoming a Christian meant putting God in the center control seat (of my life) so that His character revealed in Jesus and His values would determine my actions. Through study and prayer, but mostly by confessing my Sin of taking God’s role in the center of my own life (and the lives of people close to me) and then surrendering that place to God, I began the reorienting process of making decisions on the basis of what will help God transform me into the loving, giving, culpable, and vulnerable person I believe God made me to be.
And when I began consciously to surrender to God the throne room and control board of my life, I discovered what my wife had been trying to tell me—that just giving her nice clothes and jewelry (although a nice thing to do) also made her a more beautiful trophy wife, part of the larger-than-life image of myself I was unconsciously trying to project as a successful male in America.
I was horrified to discover this and it was only the beginning of discovering the double meaning of a lot of my “unselfish” behavior. This does not mean that I didn’t love my wife, or that I didn’t want to give her nice things because I love her. (Because that was true.) But it does mean that until I am willing to face, confess and make amends for my self-centered taking of God’s place by trying to ‘shape’ the world around me into my image, I can never be the intimate, happy and loving man I was made to be—and now want with all my heart to be.
This has already meant a revolution in the way I live my days and nights. In order to know how to love the people around me, I am having to learn to listen to them and discover what I can do to help them become all they want to be—instead of insisting they play their parts in my drama of being the “Wizard of Austin, Texas.”
Lord, I want to see more clearly where I am occupying the throne in my life in Your place. Help me to become aware when I am on that throne. Show me how to get out of Your way, and how you would have me love and free the people you put in my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.”
Mt. 5:5, The Message
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
Mt 5:8, The Message
Blessed the man, blessed the woman, who listens to me, awake and ready for me each morning, alert and responsive as I start my day’s work. When you find me, you find life, real life, to say nothing of God’s good pleasure.
Prov. 8:32 The Message
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.”
Teilhard de Chardin
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, not long ago a good friend, someone I like and respect, complimented me on some design work I’d done. I knew he meant it and at one level I was very pleased—especially since we work in the same field and he’s very good at what he does. But I was also, sort of… embarrassed, and felt like he could spot the defects and might just be buttering me up. So I laughed and shook my head and said, “I was lucky they even accepted it! I tossed it off in about thirty minutes from an idea I had in junior college.” Actually, that wasn’t true. I worked for days on that design. My friend looked at me as if I’d hurt his feelings, nodded his head and walked off. Why would I do that? Have you had a similar experience?
Good question. This is how I recorded my experience years ago in Habitation of Dragons: Squelching a Word of Love, page 118.
***
“That was a great job, Keith!” The man who was speaking is a person whom I deeply respect and love. I had just given a talk in our church, and he was enthusiastically and sincerely affirming me.
“Thanks, but I’m afraid I was too direct,” I replied. “I was tired and felt a little hostile.” He looked at me strangely, and I went into the educational wing to get ready for Sunday school.
While walking away, I realized what I had done. I had very subtly and unintentionally devalued him as a person. He was trying to tell me that I had done a good job, and he had really meant it. But instead of thanking him for his affirmation, I had told him in effect, “Actually, you aren’t really very smart. I heard some negative things about my talk that you didn’t hear.” Although I had not said that, I saw that my negative reply had in some way rejected him and his kindness in complimenting me in the first place.
Thinking about what had happened; I realized how often I turn people off when they try to say something nice to me. If I happened to make a high score on an exam in college, for instance, and someone said, “congratulations,” I might have laughed and come back with something cute like, “As much time as I spent studying for that one, an orangutan would have done well.” I seemed to turn attention away from their attempts to affirm me, thinking somehow that I was being humble.
But now I am beginning to see that instead of humility, this inability to accept praise or affirmation is really an insidious form of pride and insecurity. Further, it represents a completely thoughtless attitude toward the needs of the one trying to offer congratulations. If a person is sincere with a compliment, he or she is going out on a limb to identify with me. The person is reaching out to say, “I, too, feel as you do or appreciate life as you do.” Or, “In some sense we are related or I would not have responded to what you said.” But my reply of supposed humility has turned the attention away from the person giving the compliment and toward me and my cleverness. I have devalued the offered love by joking or saying in effect, “No, we are not alike, because you misinterpreted my performance.” Or, “Your perception is faulty.” Or, “If you are like me, you are really a dummy, because any dolt could have done what I have.”
My dear friend Bruce Larson finally confronted me one day about squelching a compliment by saying, “Keith, you are a good giver of affirmation, but you’re a stingy receiver!” It was clear to me in that moment that with all my apparent willingness, as a Christian, to love other people, I fail to love them when I refuse to hear their attempts to love me. I suppose I reject their love because I’m afraid it is unreal, and I cannot risk being hurt—in case they do not mean it—or sometimes I evidently want to appear humble, if they do mean it. So I protect myself from being hurt or from looking proud by dismissing as insignificant any attempts people make to say affirming things to me. Never before had I realized fully the negative, squelching effect of refusing to accept another’s kind word.
Since making these discoveries, I am going to try to look people in the eye and say simply and warmly, “Thank you,” if they try to say something positive to me. At a deep level I know that anything worthwhile I have is from God. And somehow, by letting people express positive feelings to me through a handshake and a few words, I think something is completed in the attempt to communicate the love of God in human terms.
“Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power. By words one of us can give to another the greatest happiness or bring about utter despair. . . . Words call forth emotions and are universally the means by which we influence our fellow creatures. Therefore let us not despise the use of words. . . .”
Sigmund Freud
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis[1]
Thank you, God, that You are willing to receive my stumbling and often half-sincere attempts to praise You. Since You showed us in Christ that it is important for us to be able to receive, please give me the grace I need to do so. I am grateful that You take these praises of mine seriously rather than rejecting me with a denial or a joke, which would leave me alone and sorry I tried. Help me to learn how to love. But, O Lord, give me the serenity to risk receiving from other people . . . love, which I fear may not be real.
It is hard to receive:
Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”
John 13:8, 9
[1] Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (New York: Washington Square Press), 22.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I keep running into people who can’t seem to believe there really is a God—and honestly I don’t know if I do. These scientists are almost making fun of people who believe that God is real! And if God is real, they ask, how can he change the basic character of people who believe in him? Could you help me with this?
This is an excellent time to be asking those questions. With regard to the reality of God—think about all the brilliant men and women who have claimed that they have had a relationship with God (e.g. C. S. Lewis, St. Francis, Luther, Augustine, Martin Luther King, Jr. and scientists like Blaise Pascal, not to mention all the men and women who were not writers but the witness of whose lives changed the generations in which they lived. They wouldn’t all have to be right for there to be a God who interacts with people—if only one person in all of history was right about having a personal relationship with God, then God is real, and interactive.
There are all kinds of philosophical arguments for and against the hypothesis that God is real, but Christianity is about a God who has a “personality,” that is, a God who can be “known.” And the New Testament makes the claim that if a person wants to know if God is real, the only way that person can know is to take the hypothesis that God is real and commit his or her life to God and to the discovering and doing of God’s will in that person’s whole life.
I understand that you are saying to take God that seriously is to take a big risk. And of course that is true. But even scientists have to take risks and face rejection sometimes when they take an idea and assume that it is true (when they take a hypothesis) and then scientists (and people on spiritual journeys) make experiments in the real world to see if the idea holds up in relation to things and situations the scientist already believes are true.
So how would you prove for yourself that God is real?
When I came to that place in my life, I was frightened. I was afraid that if God were real and I surrendered my real life to God and to trying to live according to the principles attributed to God, then God might change me into some sort of pious religious nut that my family and friends wouldn’t want to be with.
But when I finally decided I had to know if God were real, and surrendered my life, my future, to God, that was when I began to realize that the life that God offers people who are in relation to him was the life I’d always been trying to find, to discover by becoming successful and prominent somehow.
A long time ago, a wise Christian told me that God doesn’t change us into something that we are not already. Rather the truth is that we have almost from birth been adding unreal things to our lives, personal characteristics. For instance, I tried to appear to be a strong, self-confident Western male—stronger and smarter than I really was. It was as if I was wearing life like a suit two sizes too large, hoping I’d grow into it.
When I decided to surrender my whole life to God as I saw God revealed in the Biblical story, and began to do the disciplines of prayer and helping other people in ways I felt God would want me to do those things, it was more like taking old ill-fitting clothes off and discarding them. Because I didn’t need the exaggerated characteristics in order to feel that I was enough.
As I met some strong beautiful Christians with integrity and humility, I realized that what God offers to do for me is not to transform me into something I never have been but rather to help me remove things I and the culture I live in have added to my natural self that I had used to cover up, to hide the person God made me to be. And the unconscious fear of being revealed as the imperfect person I really am, tainted all my relationships—particularly my close relationships.
So the big news for me is that when I am being the loving child that God designed me to be, I am free not to hide or pretend to be more than I am. And that means that I could learn to be myself and risk being rejected when I set out to become the authentic human being who was in one sense always inside me, waiting to get free enough to live and be happy being who and what I am.
That’s why I began to learn how to write as a vocation and finally left the oil exploration business—not because the oil exploration business is evil somehow, but because I was a writer hiding inside the life of an oil business entrepreneur. This has not been an easy or trouble free journey, and may not be one that you should take. But I thank God every day that I decided to trust God in this way.
It’s a long trip to the Beginning—clear back to Square One.
Lord, thank you that we already have everything we need to be the people you designed us to be. Help us to learn how to remove the extra characteristics we have “put on” trying to be happy and successful, and to gradually discover and, where appropriate, reveal ourselves the way you meant for us to be. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
“For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.”
Matthew 18:2-5, The Message
Note: For a clear account of what actually happened when Keith made this beginning in his everyday life as a husband, father, and young business executive see the newly republished The Taste of New Wine.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’m not a pious person and have never liked doing things that sound like they will look more “religious.” But I was fascinated to hear that God wants to transform me into the person God designed me to be. Can you suggest an approach to spiritual transformation that has its feet on the ground?
Great question. In my case, before I could begin a serious journey toward the radical transformation that they said would follow the daily disciplines of living a new life, I needed to clear my path of the pitfalls and snarling vines growing out of the past that kept tripping me up, and also to inventory the assets and gifts I had.
When Jesus said specifically to “worry about the beam in your own eye,” (Mt. 7:4-5) I think he was referring to whatever is in my life that prevents (or hinders) God from working within me to transform me. For me these blocks seem to come from the virtually universal tendency to put ourselves in the center where only God should be, which is Sin (with a capital “S”). And in my case, all the other “sins” (lower case “s”) stem from that one act. And these dishonest, petty or terribly destructive habits or controlling acts in relationships are what block God’s transforming work in me.
I needed to see clearly what was in my life now (and in my past history) so that I would have nothing mysterious (denied) to hide that could jump up and scare me; because by this time I knew that my Sin would use anything that “pushes my buttons” to threaten me with: the specter of failure, fears, guilt, shame, rejection, and spiritual death. For me it was crucial to make as clean a beginning as possible if I hoped to stay close to God.
So I was helped to begin by confessing what I could see of how I have hurt others. I learned that when I began to think about these things, the natural response was to feel sadness and/or guilt about what I had done. But as I kept focusing on the damage my controlling and self-defeating behavior had caused, the resulting sadness began to produce the motivation to turn away from a particular sin and confess it to God, asking for his power and help not to repeat the harmful behavior. So I had to confess not only the act of putting myself in the center where only God belongs (Sin with a capital “S”) but also make explicit (in detail) as many of the shadowy deeds and thoughts as I could see at the time. I was told to make a list of all people my behavior had injured. This act of confession of what I could see brought a number of hidden sins and unconscious self-centeredness and habits out of my unconscious and into my memory and helped expel them and their destructive power from my heart.
I had to find a small group of men on this spiritual journey to find the courage to even see much less confess before another person. But I discovered that was evidently normative behavior for the early Christians (e.g. “Make this your common practice. Pray together and confess your sins to each other so you can live together whole and healed.” James 5:16, The Message).
Over the years as I confessed to God all the specific sinful acts I could recall, the past felt clean and not as painful. I began to realize (and it took a number of years and different groups and mentors) that I am forgiven. I could embrace the gift of a new chance at life. It is as if God has erased the black board on which the sins I had confessed had been listed and handed over a piece of chalk and said, “Here, you can write a new chapter for your life.” The peace, joy and motivation to live for God that come from these actions is incredible to me: one’s spiritual life can come alive! But it has not felt like I was getting more religious, but rather more caring and sensitive—and real somehow—than I had ever been both to God and to the other people in my life. And in looking back, I realize that the transforming work of God had begun to occur in my life.
In addition to the gift of a new life, God has given me the security of his love and forgiveness. As a forgiven person, I don’t need to hide my Sin from God. On the contrary, I can afford—and want to see even farther—even behind walls of delusion and denial—and begin to have a clearer and deeper view of the harmful behaviors and attitudes that have been brought on by Sin. Then I pray sincerely for God to remove them. I never thought I could do that. Most of the things I’ve discovered about my selfish attitudes and behaviors were not even conscious to me when I began.
But how do we do this specific housecleaning today when everyone seems to be embarrassed by the idea of confession and horrified at the prospect of revealing anything that might make them look inadequate or sinful? The saints have given us an answer to this dilemma regarding the exhuming of our buried sins—as a bathing and cleansing of the infectious self-destructive material. But this course of action is so terrifying that many of us in contemporary religious denominations have discarded it as too severe a remedy—“exaggerated” by the writers of the past to pressure their disciples. But this very attitude of thinking that they exaggerating their “righteousness” was an example of my projecting my own Sin of pretending to be better than I am. And this hiding my own Sin by doubting the saints’ sincerity is just another universal habit that is part of my Sin that has kept me from growing and finding the freedom and courage to receive and give love.
This is one way it works: we begin cleaning out the debris of the past by making a thorough examination of our own lives and bringing what we find out into the light (see 1 John 1:5-9). We face these character defects and moral transgressions as thoroughly and honestly as we can—and go back and make things right where possible. (See Matthew 5:23)
And we also need to include the positive character traits and abilities that God has given us along with our list of sins. Because these are some of the assets through which he will work to transform us into the people he designed us to be.
When we seriously commit our lives to God, it’s as if we are agreeing to transfer to him all the assets and liabilities of a business we own. If we were doing that, we would take an inventory of the damaged goods and the valuable assets that are stored in the warehouse of the past. And to transfer to God these things we must make the inventory very specific.
For instance, for years I would, on occasion, do something helpful for someone that might cost a significant amount of money or time. I would tell myself (and sometimes the one “helped”) that I didn’t expect anything in return. But if the person I’d helped did not express what I considered to be “reasonable” gratitude, I resented him or her—a lot. I finally realized that my real motive was not just to be loving, but that giving of my help had been sort of an “investment” for which I expected a dividend: to feel like and look like a good Christian. My dishonesty about my expectations also set me up to resent people I wanted to help. So my failure to clean my own house made me into a “generous” Pharisee.
This may sound bizarre to you. It did to me for years. But I was fortunate enough to get caught in a serious moral failure and that destroyed and/or almost destroyed my deepest relationships. I hope you won’t have to do that to find the life, love and settledness about who you are and what you’re “designed” to do and be in your life. Thanks for asking that question. It made me feel closer to you, and my prayers come with this for this new chapter in your adventure with God.[1]
Lord, thank you that you forgive us our Sins, especially when we can become aware of them and confess them to you. Help us to allow you to transform us into the people you designed us to be. And Thank you for such an incredible opportunity. In Jesus name, amen.
“This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.” (Matt. 5: 23-24) (In other words this kind of honesty takes precedence for Jesus even over public worship.)
“If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God.”
1 John 1: 8-10 The Message
[1] If after reading this piece you would like to examine an in depth approach that uses the principles expressed here, you might want to read the book A Hunger for Healing: The Twelve Steps as a Classic Model for Christian Spiritual Growth (Or study the twelve-week DVD course by the same name.)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, in a group sometime ago I heard you say something about anger, and it got me thinking about my situation. I have a problem with being angry a lot. About the only feeling my father ever expressed was anger—he thought that real men get angry; other emotions were for women and wimps. We’ve become Christians and my wife is all over me trying to get me to express more love to our sons. But that makes me angry too, and yet down inside I hated it when my father was angry with me and was afraid of him. I really would like to quit feeling so angry, but it always seems like my anger is justified by things people do or say. Any magic bullets?
No magic bullets, but it’s a great question.
Most of my life it was not okay with the people around me if I’d get angry. So I pushed a lot of my anger out of sight and said, “No, I’m not mad,” even when I was seething inside. But it was like pushing a beach ball under water. The farther down I pushed it, the greater the explosion when it suddenly surfaced—often about something someone said or did that was far too insignificant for the anger explosion.
I got on a spiritual journey with a group of men in which we make an effort to be honest with each other in order to grow spiritually. One of my mentors in the group told me that he’d discovered that explosive anger was really the other side of a fear. He suggested that I might ask myself “What am I afraid of?” when I get angry.
So the next time my wife gave me some suggestion that I interpreted as “being criticized” I started to get very angry. But I remembered what my mentor had said and asked myself, “What are you afraid of losing Keith, or not getting, or feeling.” And the answer to those questions was pretty clear. I was afraid I’d look like a weakling to my wife (as my father appeared to me to be when my mother criticized him in front of his sons). Other times I was angry because I was afraid my wife’s criticism was a veiled warning that she didn’t respect me as I am or might not want to make love to me.
In fact over a period of time I realized that most of my anger was because I was afraid what someone did or said that “made me angry” would make me lose something I didn’t want to do without, like respect, reputation, money or love—or the fear beneath my anger (at something someone did or said) was the fear that I wouldn’t get something I wanted very much to have (like a promotion at work or to be elected to an office in an organization). I began to see my anger is often about my own fears that I am not enough (of a man, a father, a husband, a lover, a valued worker, or friend) or that I’m not a fair, generous and/or caring person. (Of course that attitude made me a little more difficult to live with.)
My question then was, “How can I overcome the fear feelings of imaginary loss and shame that trigger my anger at people who say or do things I think might hurt my reputation as an intimate, unselfish and caring man? I’ve discovered that my outbursts of anger only work to make me look precisely like the selfish, uncaring and week defensive person I do not want to be seen as.
In our group I learned the biblical truth that we could begin to get over our fears of inadequacy by confessing our attempts to control other people’s opinion by being angry, shaming the one trying to straighten us out, etc. The writer of the book of James advises new Christians to “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed.” (James 5:16, The Message). And sure enough, by confessing to my small group my petty angry responses that shame or put down people who trigger my anger/fear, I began to be able to hold my tongue and listen to criticism aimed at me. This has a wonderful effect in our home (when I finally really wanted to know what I was doing that hurt my family members so I could quit hurting them.)[1]
I guess what God has been doing for me is showing me through the men who are on the same spiritual journey I’m on, is that when I could surrender my whole life to God, then I was on a search to discover and offer to God the very things I’d been hiding and was afraid I’d be rejected for feeling or thinking.
This didn’t happen overnight, and it is only a part of the way of living for God in all areas of our lives. This is a journey I’m still on after more than forty years, and it has has already transformed my life and relationships more than I would have imagined—even though I’m still seeing new aspects of my self-centeredness and lack of concern for others.
But the bottom line discovery I’ve made with regard to the anger question you wrote about is that it is not the courage I was looking for to face the fear I’d hidden from, courage that would cause the fears to be defeated. I learned that when I began to pay attention and care about other people who were struggling with problems in their lives and relationships—when I cared about them that way—I was actually loving them. I never would have guessed that when I was actually loving that way I would not be afraid. Jesus said it this way: “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.” (Mt. 5: 7, The Message)
I know this may sound naïve or simplistic, but I don’t care how it sounds, because the honest truth is that this way of life some of us are trying to live is actually giving self-centered fearful and even angry people like me a whole new way to live and love, and let God and other people love us as we seriously buy into the process of living to help other people. And although I am still just beginning to learn the power of God’s way of loving to make angry fearful cowards into caring and happy and helpful people, I can say to you from one who is only a work in progress that Jesus was really on target regarding the anger-fear problem when he said that it is “perfect love—not courage—that casts out fear.”
Lord, help us to put our lives in your hands—seriously to trust you to lead us into the courage and willingness that can transform us into the courageous lovers we—and people everywhere—are longing to be—beneath the anger that is driving us apart. Amen
[1] If you or the person you live with have a painful and distancing effect on your relationship, it can be very helpful for you to go to counseling. Then you may realize what you can do to change things. To try to begin by forcing the other person to go for help is very difficult. I found this to be true in my own life.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Sometimes when I’m praying my rational mind jumps in and says, “Do you suppose anybody is really listening?” Or I simply wonder if I’m talking to myself. That often makes me want to stop praying until I feel clear about God’s presence. But then I feel bad because I’m not praying regularly. It’s a vicious cycle that seems to engulf me at times. Does this ever happen to you? And if so, what do you do to get past it?
As I read your question, I thought of the dozens and dozens of times this has happened to me. And when it does, I almost invariably feel as if I must be doing something wrong and need to “straighten out my life” so that I can get through to God better.
But I came to realize a long time ago that this experience of doubt in the midst of prayer is just part of the human condition. Yet many people I’ve talked with have been taught that it means some hidden evil is in our lives—and of course that can be sometimes. But when that occurs to me I just ask God to show me anything that is blocking my relationship with Him—or other people—and to help me face what ever comes up—and ask Him to help me deal with it.
I suppose Paul is right in implying that we all will see through a glass dimly as long as we are in our human bodies. But it also makes me realize that there are a lot of notions about prayer that are simply not true and distract us and tempt us to withdraw or sit in judgment of the real rough and tumble struggles that are evidently parts of everyone’s experiences of trying to communicate with the living God.
This notion that if I am really in a good relationship to God I will always feel the warmth of His presence when I am praying to Him is, for me, a gross misconception and was certainly not Jesus’ experience (he “sweated blood” praying in Gethsemane). I am always reminding new Christians that Jesus did not say to me, “I will give you goose bumps.” Instead, he said, “I will be with you unto the end of the age.” Goose bumps represent physiological feelings, not faith. If we have the goose bumps, we don’t really need faith to believe God is with us. Faith has to do with believing when there is no physical evidence that convinces the mind. In other words, on those mornings when I get up and do not feel God’s presence, I now thank Him that He is with me even though I don’t have a lot of excited feelings. I tell him I want to give Him back the only thing I really can give Him and that is the gift of faith for this day. I tell Him that I am going to try to live as if I had enormous feelings of His presence. This may sound like some sort of autosuggestion, but in fact it is simply behavior based on a belief in His word in the scriptures that He would be with us “day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28: 20 The Message)
Another closely related misconception I have to fight my way through is that if I committed my life to God and gave my whole future to Him, then I would be happy and contented and would avoid the usual pains and agonies of life. The assumption behind this kind of thinking is that suffering and pain are punishments for misbehavior or lack of commitment. I’ve come to believe deeply that much of what we call suffering and pain are parts of the fabric of all living and can be important blessings. And that what Christianity does, instead of eliminating these things, is to give them meaning. As I confront the universal problems, doubts and heartaches of life, I find that they can bless me by teaching me how to love God and people better and make me more sensitive to my own needs to grow as I face pain the way our Lord did. “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.” Matthew 5:3 The Message
What’s happened to me in my prayer life is that instead of praying “Lord, take this anxiety and pain out of my life today,” I might pray (on my best days) something more like, “Lord, help me to understand why I’m anxious and to learn from this pain and agony I’m going through something about the meaning of life, and how to love people more nearly as you do.” Then I am not so frightened about the anxiety that comes into my life. It’s not that I don’t still have anxiety, but I don’t find so much fear about the experience of having it as I once did. I realize now that difficulties, pain and frustration are always to be experienced somewhere in the life of people who are growing and developing, leaving old securities and trying to establish new ones. I am more at home in the world and feel better when I come to God with these problems openly, rather than trying to get them all cleaned up before I come to Him in prayer. And of course this means that I can come to Him anytime, since I know that He is not going to be disappointed in me for continuing to have problems that are a natural part of the fabric of living and particularly ‘growing’.
In my opinion God has not given us a “status” of perfection when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, but rather He has given us a process that allows spiritual growth and maturity to take place. The process includes an awareness of sin or incompleteness, a struggle not to admit our own responsibility in the problem, a confession that in fact we have sinned, a turning to God and asking His forgiveness, and then a thanking Him that He builds His kingdom out of the broken pieces of our lives when we bring them to Him in prayer. After this process there sometimes comes an understanding or a grasp of the sin in which we’ve been involved that can sometimes help me recognize sooner and avoid this sin. As I see these kinds of insights age over the years in people’s lives, their ‘troubles’ may eventually be transmuted into what the Bible calls wisdom and understanding. And as soon as one receives the forgiveness each time it is as if—in forgiving us—God has taken a damp cloth and wiped off the blackboard of our cortical slate so that our minds are clean and fresh. Then He hands us a new piece of chalk to write the next chapter of our life on that day, that hour. And the process repeats itself again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again . . . and again.
Lord, thank you that we can trust that you are with us whether we can “feel” your presence or not. When experiences of doubt enter our minds, help us to remember your promise. And Lord, as we encounter problems, pain, and struggles, help us to know that we can bring them to you so you can teach us what we need to know about our part in these problems. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.”
Mt. 28:18b, The Message
“The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.”
Hebrews 11:1 The Message
“I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge… Is there no one who can do anything for me?…The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does… With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.”
Romans 7:22 – 8:2 The Message
“It does sometimes happen that my prayers degenerate into introspection. I can soon sense the difference: I begin, in fact, to listen to myself more than to God, to concentrate on myself instead of Him. It is then that the human dialogue can help to revitalize the dialogue with God. Contact with other Christians, their witness, what they have to say about their own experience of the activity of the Holy Spirit, renews the quality of my own prayer life.”
Paul Tournier, The Meaning of Persons, 169
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Happy New Year! During the last week of 2009, Andrea and I made some plans for 2010, including plans about this weekly blog. We will be starting 2010 by addressing how one might deal with some of the basic questions of life from the perspective of living one’s entire life for Christ. I’ll be writing blog posts about making a beginning (or renewed) commitment, about finances, sexuality, parenting, work, relationships, prayer and meditation, and many other topics. I’ll start with questions I have already received, but I’m interested in hearing what’s on your mind right now. So send in your questions. We’ll keep your question anonymous when I address it. If you prefer to send your question by mail (unsigned), send it to me at: P. O. Box 203061, Austin, Texas 78720-3061
Today I’ll begin with making a commitment to live for Christ. The material for today’s post is excerpted from a booklet called “How Can I Find God?” You can download the entire booklet (at no charge) from our web site at www.keithmiller.com under “Free Resources”.
HOW CAN I FIND GOD?
What Makes Us Ask the Question?
“I’ll never see my husband again. He’s dead.” … This intelligent, haggard-looking woman sitting across from me in my office was saying that suddenly she had realized she didn’t know God personally. She was looking down at her hands which were clenched into fists, one holding a tear-soaked handkerchief. Finally, after what seemed like several minutes, she looked up and asked quietly, “Keith, how can I find God?”
As I sat there thinking about her question, I could remember the faces of dozens of people who had sat in that chair over the years and in different ways asked that same question. I could see again the bewildered look on the lovely white-haired lady’s face as she told me through her tears that she had committed adultery—after having been faithful to her husband for thirty years.
I felt once more the numb despair of a fifty-seven-year-old man. Without any explanation, he’d just been fired from a fine position he’d held for twenty years. He could find no other job. The world has no use for the old—and “old” is getting younger every year.
Then there was that long line of ancient-looking teenagers. They seemed to be feeling blindly along the wall of life looking for a doorway, wondering if there is any entrance to a world with meaning for them. Was there anyone anywhere who would love them specifically? Many of these emotional nomads with the haunted cynical eyes said they did not believe in God. Yet their presence in my office made their agnostic pronouncements sound a little hollow.
Finally, I saw the stunned faces of women whose confidence had been shattered when their husbands had deserted them for no apparent reason, and who were trying to put the pieces of their personal worlds back together. They silently cried out for some new support since all the props which had held life in place for them had been swept away.
And many times through the specific disappointments and despair of all these people I had heard the deeper question they had not had time for when things were going well: “How can I find God?”
The Problem with Success
But I can also recall another sort of person who, far from having failed, had succeeded marvelously in life. These were the fortunate ones who had reached the material or professional goals on which they had counted to bring them happiness and fulfillment. But to their surprise and confusion, the success many of them had sought so compulsively left them empty and alone. The great purpose which had made their journey toward the top so exciting disappeared when the goal was reached. Long-repressed anxieties and insecurities arose to fill their days and nights. These men and women too asked, “What does it all mean? Is there anyone out there beyond ourselves? And if there is a God, how can someone like me find him?”
You may think I am painting a black picture of modern life—that I am exaggerating the problems, the loneliness and restless incompleteness around us. But I do not think so. … We seem to be caught up by forces both beyond and within us over which we have little control. … And to people searching urgently for personal meaning and hope, the fact of God’s “existence” means very little if they cannot find him and know him personally.
A Case History
How does a person describe a new beginning with God as the motivating center of life without basing that experience on some vague mystical feeling? How does an individual who wants to have intellectual integrity describe the experience of encountering God as the personal, the immediate, and limitless Thou in life?
(What happened to me that brought me to make a beginning commitment is too long to include here, but it’s in the booklet.)
Finding God Where You Are
I have become convinced that the things which keep us from finding a live relationship to God are often not the bad things in our lives, but the good things which capture our imaginations and which keep us from focusing on Jesus Christ. I think this accounts for much of the frustration of moral people. One looks around and says: “No stealing, no murder, no adultery! Why, God, am I so miserable and frustrated in my life?” But we have not seen the fact that we have never really offered God the one thing he asks—our primary love.
What do we do when we find out that we love something more than God? For me it was rather terrifying, because that which was keeping me from the freedom of Christ was my desire to be a great Christian leader! It seems evident that our decisions will ultimately be made to conform with whatever has truly captured our imagination. My own decisions and sacrifice were not being made purely to love and feed Christ’s sheep out of obedience and love of him. Rather, my decisions were made to help the church’s work (my work) to its greatest fulfillment. This led to chaos and frustration.
When we see and can honestly face the fact that our world is really centered in something besides God, in ourselves, I think we face the most profound crossroads in our lives. Because this is to recognize that we have separated ourselves from God by taking God’s place in the center of our own little world.
What do we do? For me the answer is paradoxically the simplest and yet the most difficult thing I have ever done. In our age of complexity we want a complex answer, but Christ seems to give us instead a terribly difficult one. I think there are basically two things involved in coming to God at the center of life: (1) to tell God that we do not love him most and confess specifically what it is that we cannot give up to him; and (2) to ask God in the personality of Jesus Christ to come into our conscious lives through his spirit and show us how to live our lives for him and his purposes, one day at a time.
But what if you recognize that you honestly do not want God more than whatever is first in your life? I think this is where a good many perceptive people find themselves. In that case I would recommend that you (1) confess (as above) and then (2) tell Christ that honestly you cannot even want him most. Tell him that you want to want him most (if you do), ask him to come into your life at a deeper level than you have ever let him before, and give him permission to win you totally to himself. This may be your first honest encounter with Christ, and he will take you wherever you are. As a matter of fact I believe this is really all any of us can do — give God permission to make us his. I, nor anyone I’ve known well, could not be his by our own strength of will.
If you made this new conscious beginning in a conversation with me, this is what I would tell you: From now on you are not responsible to exert the pressure or to carry the burden of muscling yourself up to be righteous. You are not promising to change, or to have strength, or to be a great Christian. You have only confessed your need and turned your life over to Christ. What a relief! It is his responsibility to furnish the forgiveness and motivating energy for you to live in a new and creative way.
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Now you can begin a whole new way of living—at your own address!
Dear Lord, Thank you for your never wavering commitment to be with us and guide us. Help us to find the courage and humility to begin to recognize what we may love more than we love you, and help us to come clean and confess whatever it is to you, and give you permission to draw us more and more toward loving you with everything we’ve got! In Jesus’ Name, amen.
Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got! Deut. 6:5, The Message (See also Matt 22:37-40).
Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence…[and] love others as well as you love yourself.” Matt 22:37-40 The Message
P.S. If you would like to learn more about living your entire life for Christ, try the newly released Third Revised Edition of The Taste of New Wine, available at www.keithmiller.com/store/
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, just before Christmas this year I had my annual physical (which I’ve always passed with flying colors). This time my Internist went over a shockingly long list of borderline results that indicated I need to watch everything I eat, get regular exercise and get some sleep.
That evening I was stunned to realize that with no medical training at all my wife and my college football player son have been telling me—no pleading with me—for years to do virtually the same things. The doctor’s conclusions have confirmed that they were not nagging but trying to save my life. But I have just gotten angry with them, especially when my wife uses as her discouraged exit line, “You’re just like your father!”
It’s true that I was very angry with my father for not taking care of himself and dying young. Maybe I am like him! But how can knowing that help me through this paralysis? Help!
Horribly good question! Look, I’m an old man and I’m realizing that a lot of “answers” and advice people give me just don’t work for me. Even though I’m almost as old as dirt, I have noticed recently that my glasses are not as good as they used to be, I’m taking a fist full of vitamins and prescription drugs, the names of which I can’t pronounce, and in my gym suit I look to be about seven months pregnant—only I’m a man.
On top of that, to find out what’s really going on with me I have to pay attention to the people who love me most in my family. So I am familiar with people urging me to change. All I can do that may or may not help you is to tell you how a memory about my father came to me in the office of a specialist my Internist sent me to because I was noticing that my family has been shouting at me. This recent experience with the specialist reminds me of your situation because he gave me some pretty bad news about my future.
The doctor was being kind and yet direct, as good doctors often are when giving bad news to eighty-two year old patients. “We don’t really know what happened but it’s apparent that you have lost almost a third of your hearing during the last few weeks.”
For a man who does a lot of counseling and consulting, that was not good news.
“What do you think is the cause,” I asked, “and, more important to me, what’s the prognosis?”
He wrinkled his brow and thought about that. Then he said, “I don’t know. There’s no tumor or the usual physical road signs that give us specific medical direction. It may just be hereditary. Were any of the old people in your family of origin deaf?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They all died when I was very young. But I do remember that neither my mother and or my father was hard of hearing.”
As I said these words, however, a scene popped into my mind as I recalled how many times when I was a little boy I tried to talk to my father quietly when he was reading the paper or listening to the radio after office hours. I saw again how he often didn’t even look up at me, and I concluded that he obviously just wasn’t interested in talking to me. He kept his head buried in the newspaper as I’d walk away hurt and angry. This is a very painful memory.
Then from the mists of that world long gone, I saw and heard another often-recalled scene: my mother was pleading with my father, “Earle, you are not even listening to me!” And I saw again my father look up with that ambiguous questioning expression—neither acknowledging or denying what my mother had said. I was about to get back into my childhood feelings of anger at my father’s “not caring for my mother enough” to answer her question or even acknowledge her having spoken to him. Although I could still feel my own tight-chested feelings of shame at being ignored by that stony, silent man, I had repressed my own feelings and focused on the (more acceptable) anger at him for ignoring my mother, who did so much to make his life better.
Then without warning or reason in the doctor’s office seven decades later I had a clear and life-changing insight that had never even occurred to me before: MY FATHER COULDN’T HEAR US! He must have been going deaf and was too proud to let anyone know! If that were true, maybe his not responding to my quiet attempts to interrupt his newspaper reading was not rejection as I had always thought at all. And maybe his silent unsmiling expression when he did realize someone was talking to him was a defensive move to give him time to try to figure out what had been said to him. AND WE HAD ALL FELT REJECTED BY HIM! (Except my older brother who had Dad’s total attention any time his oldest son was on the premises—because they were soul mates.)
The doctor was kind as he concluded his explanation of hereditary deafness. “Keith, if it’s hereditary, there is nothing you can do except get good hearing aids, pay close attention when people speak to you, and put up with the irritation people sometimes have when an older family member doesn’t hear them. It’s sad, but some of them may think you just aren’t interested enough to care what they are saying.”
But I could hardly hear what the doctor was saying because I was elated, smiling from ear to ear. The doctor looked puzzled. When I saw the doctor’s expression at my elated reaction to the possible death sentence of my hearing (which he knew was especially valuable to me in my life and work), I shook my head to let him know I wasn’t laughing at him. And my joy was certainly not because I’m going deaf.
I was laughing because after seventy-five years of painful childhood memories of thinking my father ignored me and didn’t want to answer my personal daddy questions when we were alone—I’d finally just realized that my father’s problem was not disdain! He just couldn’t hear my shy little boy questions—and when he did notice I was pleading with him, he was ashamed to admit that he was going deaf.
Suddenly my wife and kids didn’t seem so “nagging.” In fact the Lord seemed to have been giving them injections of higher I.Q. Although I can still hear many things with my wonderful hearing aids, I have gone public to my family and people I see regularly thanking them for their patience and perseverance in urging me to get help. Also, I’ve admitted that I still miss a lot that is being said to me, and ask for patience.
As I’m writing this I am very grateful that whatever happens to my hearing—or my sight—at the heart of Jesus’ good news about God the Father is that he will always be listening to and reaching out to love me—even if I wind up alone with Him in a soundless world.
I don’t know if this experience will help you, but it caused me to adjust my whole life and my exercise and sleeping habits to get in shape.
Dear Lord, thank you that you have promised that you will never leave me or forsake me if I call upon you from my heart. Help me to learn to listen more carefully, and pay close attention to the people close to me so that they will know that I am listening and that I love them deeply and really want to change, and to hear them and whatever it is they are saying to me—even if they have to say it more than once. Amen.
When troubles come and all these awful things happen to you, in future days you will come back to God, your God, and listen obediently to what he says. God, your God, is above all a compassionate God. In the end he will not abandon you, he won’t bring you to ruin, he won’t forget the covenant with your ancestors which he swore to them.
Deuteronomy 4:30-31, The Message
