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.
***
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
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, the stores have been full of Christmas decorations and the radio has been playing Christmas carols, songs and ads for it seems like forever. Addressing Christmas cards, shopping for gifts for my family and friends—somehow I’m getting worn out with it all. Do you have any ideas that could help me keep my focus on the real meaning of Christmas while inundated with wall to wall sound bite advertising?
As I began to reflect on your question about the almost urgent need to recover the real meaning of Christmas in terms that can break through the noise of the commercials, I let my mind slip into an imaginative memory world of midnight masses, children’s Christmas Eve services, the music of open-mouthed choirs mingled with deep resonant voices reading Christmas scriptures.
In my imagination, I saw again Scrooge, Christmas Past, and the transforming power of Tiny Tim on crutches. I saw tired, irritated parents wrapping presents. Dancing in their heads were not sugar plums, but doubts about “Did we do enough?” or “Did we do too much?” And last, fathers alone at 2:00 a.m., trying to put together complicated toys or doll houses by sparkling Christmas trees, surrounded by layers of brightly-colored presents of all sizes and shapes.
And finally, near dawn in the blinking darkness of the tree lights, the small wooden figurines of the manger scene on the mantle seemed to come to life.
What had God really been trying to say on that first Christmas night? Had the cultural acid rain of our anxious holiday energy-storm dissolved God’s purposes?
As I recalled the familiar biblical passages, I began to see that the story didn’t look “religious” at all. It was a wonderful love story about a lovely, still teenaged young woman and a vigorous young man, who were engaged to be married. But their romance was interrupted when Mary was visited by an angel named Gabriel. His message—totally incredible to Mary—was that God Himself was going to make an extended personal appearance as a human being. That would have been startling enough—since it had never happened before—but Gabriel went on to say, “Mary, you have been chosen by God to be the mother of a baby that is somehow going to be conceived in your womb by God! And the baby’s name will be Jesus.”
This baby would grow up to deliver a remarkable, loving message—a personal introduction to God, an offer of intimacy with God. In some strange trans-rational way, Jesus would be the Love, the Introduction, and the Intimacy—in a living person. The Truth about Life was to be conveyed through a multiple progression of living, healing actions from Jesus to people, and from those whom He touched to others.
In a mysterious way, the Christmas story of this young couple seems to have been God’s way of saying that He Himself—as well as His Message—will come most fully into the human scene in the context of loving family, of intimate community.
From this unknown young family, God would send Himself forth in Jesus as a message of love and an invitation to all people everywhere to invite the people in the whole world into an intimate relationship with Himself as Father and with them as His children. God sent Jesus to make sure that down the ages we would both hear His unique message and offer of caring, and in an unprecedented way, actually meet God personally in the behavior, the teaching, the personal sacrifice, and most of all in the character and personality and self-limiting love of Jesus.
And finally, as this reflection/waking dream is ending, I realize that something has happened to me while I pondered the story of Jesus’ birth and let it come close to my heart. As I listened to and saw the Christmas story through the magnifying lens of prayerful imagining, it felt very different: less like an olivewood manger scene, more down-to-earth, personal and interactive—yet paradoxically, more holy somehow. I am seeing in a new way that God’s gift of His healing, restoring power is available to you and to me, now, through Jesus.
The question of Christmas for me is: Even with His help can I dare to risk being really authentic and loving and to walk confidently in God’s way—as Mary and Joseph did that first Christmas—not knowing the outcome?
So my own response to your question of what you can do to help keep your focus on the real meaning of Christmas is this: as you and I realize that God may really love us, we can look for people who are not feeling loved, and who may not be able to “afford” Christmas. We can then find some personal way to help them in whatever way we can to have a better Christmas day than they would have had you not asked your question.
Jesus, thank you for showing me in living color how I can reflect God’s authentic, loving way of life. Life’s stresses pressure me toward taking control, hiding from reality, and medicating my pain with purchases, food, and competitive present buying. Thank you, thank you, that your healing power can restore us all to the authentic, loving way of living for which we were made. As we think about the story of your entry into humanity that we will celebrate in a few days, help us to dare to risk reaching out and being more authentic and loving—even in our own families—even though we don’t know the outcome—if we take a step out of ourselves for You. In Jesus’ Name, amen.
…God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin’s name, Mary. Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her:
Good morning! You’re beautiful with God’s beauty, beautiful inside and out! God be with you.
She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. But the angel assured her, “Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.”
Mary said to the angel, “But how? I’ve never slept with a man.”
The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Highest hover over you; Therefore, the child you bring to birth will be called Holy, Son of God.”
Luke 1:26-32, 33-35, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, our teenaged son went to a summer camp a normal, interesting kid who was only interested in football (and, I assume, sex). But when he got home last week he was a religious freak, spouting Bible verses out of context with his eyes shining like his team had just won state. I’m a church going Christian and we’ve prayed he’d do the same. But as you once said to me, about another matter, we must have “over-prayed.” What can we do?
A funny thing happened years ago at our house. One of my daughters (as a teen) was learning to drive. She had always been aware of where we were and where we are going when we are out driving. I am not. I often drive for blocks past a turn-off, with my mind a thousand miles away. This daughter was the one who often sat beside me and whispered, “This next block is our turn, Daddy.” She knew our town with her eyes closed.
But when she got behind the wheel for the first time in traffic, it was as if we were in a new city: “Do I turn here, Daddy . . . Is this the right street?”
I was amazed and thought at first she was teasing me. But then I saw that she was not. A town that she had known like the back of her hand as a passenger became a strange and foreign place when she became responsible for the minute-by-minute decisions of driving. She had to look for a whole new set of objects and distances—cars backing out of driveways, dogs and children starting for the street, vehicles at intersections, all kinds of street signs, in addition to everything behind her in the rearview mirror. With all of these new things on which to focus—which had heretofore been only a part of the background—she felt as if she were in a different world.
I started to tell her to “Pay attention to what you are doing!” Then I realized that she was very serious and was paying attention. But she was experiencing a reorientation in the same situation because of trying to focus on different elements of her environment. So I said nothing and kept telling myself it was the end result of her training which was important.
As we drove along, I began to understand why it may be that newly committed Christians appear to be sort of “out of it.” For a while, they seem to be like new drivers behind the wheel—in a kind of daze in which the world they have known appears to be totally different. Because of accepting the responsibility of a new relationship with God and focusing on loving Him and his people, they seem to be unaware of things and people to whom they once paid attention quite naturally. Many ministers or relatives are hurt and surprised when a church member gets “turned on” at some sort of lay renewal meeting and begins paying less attention to them while focusing on new Christian friends. They often suspect that the new commitment might have been to a cult of some sort of self-centered pietists. The temptation is to be very judgmental of people experiencing this reorientation[1].
I do not know how one really ought to handle this situation. But by the end of the week (in our car) I noticed that my daughter knew where she was again. And now she can include both the old things she used to see . . . and the new things she needed to see to grow up and get on down the road.
When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is. When we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.
Goethe[2]
as quoted in Psychological Foundations of Education
In training a horse, it is important not to break his spirit because it is his spirit, during and after the training period, which will determine his style and endurance. Does education, we may ask, allow for the expression of the wildness of vitality during the educational process, or does it repress vitality in the interest of form and conformity?
Reuel Howe
The Miracle of Dialogue[3]
Lord, help us to be patient with new Christians who seem to have lost their perspective as they have entered a new relationship with you. If they become temporarily blinded to the ordinary responsibilities and the old friends around them, help us to provide an atmosphere in which this new relationship with You can be tested and translated into deeper relationships with people. Help us in the church to let new Christians enjoy the excitement of discovery without our hypercritical judgment—even though there may be some anxious moments about their soundness and responsibility. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others, mocking, said, “They are filled with new wine.”
Acts 2:12, 13
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.
2 Corinthians 5:17
[1] This same kind of turned on excitement that makes people appear to have become weird and distant and act as if they “know” and their families and friends “don’t” can take place when people first get into a 12 Step program, or even a comprehensive diet and/or exercise plan.
[2] Morris E. Eson, Psychological Foundations of Education (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 39.
[3] Reuel Howe, The Miracle of Dialogue, (Greenwich, CT: Seabury Press, 1963), 124.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, how can I help people in trouble if I don’t know many Christian answers?
In the early years after I made a commitment to Christ I got the idea that I was supposed to have “Christian answers” to people’s problems. So I repeated a few answers I’d learned from “old-timers” to people in trouble who came to me. I was surprised to discover most people didn’t respond well to these “answers.” It took me a while to realize that in the first place I can’t really help people as Jesus did until I at least listen to them and find out a little about who they are, where they came from before I met them and they shared their problem with me. I began to understand that God is almost the only one who is always ready to listen. Many of us who are His followers are too busy talking to listen to people with the calm accepting love that God does. So now I try to listen longer and more carefully before I say anything about their “presenting” problem, even though it’s not easy to keep listening when someone says something that triggers one of my old “answers.”
I was surprised to learn that often the problem someone presents is not what is really bothering him or her, but more of a decoy—to see how I respond. Will I be accepting or just spout pat answers? The real problem is usually something the person feels he or she should not have (as a grown-up or as a long-term Christian) and is afraid of being rejected because of having it.
Sometimes by listening I discover whether the individual really wants to be healed. Sometimes people unconsciously keep God’s kind of healing at a distance by enjoying always being the sick one, the abused one, the deserted one who has been wronged.
But either way, as I listen I try to recognize how the person is feeling and to remember how I’ve felt when I have experienced that problem, or known about it. I respond by briefly telling my own personal experience and how painful it felt or ashamed I was when I experienced it. And when I do that, often something happens that changes the atmosphere that the person wanting help and I share.
The person may realize that he or she is not alone with this problem—and that what he or she is feeling is totally “normal” (though possibly very painful and guilt producing). This realization may calm fears and anxiety enough so that we can discover together steps to take to resolve or accept the situation. Often it is the feelings of anger, shame or guilt about having the problem that blind one to possible new approaches to solving or accepting the problem.
The simple idea (of listening first) led to a change of perspective that was very freeing to me. I’m convinced that sometimes people want just to be heard, known and understood. When they feel that they are known and accepted they may be able to set aside even painful feelings and experience the relief of a resolution or acceptance. If someone else notices the person’s improved mood and asks about it, my experience indicates that the person usually doesn’t say, “I’ve found someone with great answers.” Instead the newly relieved person is more likely to be thankful and tell his or her friends “Here’s someone who helped me see who I really am.”
Lord, help us to learn to surrender our lives to you and pay attention to what is happening to us, so that we can learn from the painful experiences in our lives. Help us to accept painful rejection and failure as a future drawbridge across which we can bring others into our lives to be introduced to Your kind of love and attention that transforms even the more devastating pain, loss and despair into Your kind of wisdom and healing love—that can become the most creative “solution” to life’s most difficult problems. Thank you that these lessons can become parts of the living library of wisdom from You that we’ll need in order to let people know there is hope for them beyond the pain and fear they are now experiencing.
And thank You, Lord, that You waited for me to get through with all my rejection of You and then the superficial play-like commitments that I made early in my life. Help me to keep listening to those other hurting, lonely and marginalized people in whom You said we’d meet You and find the Life You brought to share with us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Back in the village she told the people, “Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out. Do you think he could be the Messiah? And they went out to see for themselves.”
John 4:28-30, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
I am a grown person, and I have tried to commit my whole life to God and really want to do God’s will. Whenever I am tempted to do something immoral or dishonest my head is filled with difficult inner voices debating inside my mind. There are rigid, fearful, and righteous voices on one side, and smooth seductive, rationalizing, shaming voices on the other.
I’m feeling like a real failure as a Christian. Whatever the Saints I’ve read about did to remain so peaceful, I just ain’t got it. Do you have any suggestions about how to get rid of those inner voices (or at least get control of the outcome of their inner debates)?
Wow! That’s a mouthful of difficult (but very real) questions. I have certainly had a lot of time with some very similar sounding and convincing voices, and from what I’ve heard so have many other people.
When I first became a Christian, I was amazed at how hard it was for me to give up certain habits of thinking or acting on certain impulses (everything from exaggerating expenses on my income tax forms to lustful fantasies). Contemporary Christian leaders I’d met didn’t seem to have such grubby problems after they had made serious commitments of their lives to Christ. So I began to read about the lives of the people the church has designated as Saints, figuring that they might be honest about the real stuff.
Fortunately, a wise older Christian mentor told me that he’d also wrestled with temptations, experiencing almost despair until his mentor told him that there are apparently at least two kinds of Christians. Some seem to be blessed with a simple, clear cut way to deal with temptation: when a temptation comes to act against principles that are God’s will, they apparently just pray about the decision and decide to do God’s will.
The second kind of Christian experience is like yours—and mine. We seem to have all kinds of inner voices trying to seduce us away from God and his will. My old friend said, “I try to convince all of my “good” voices to join forces and support me in doing the right thing. I try to get them to the polls early to give me a quick, and overwhelming “No” vote victory to stop the rationalizing, seductive voices from luring me into a decision to move toward the temptation or back into indecision.”
Even using this approach there were some temptations about which it was very hard to get a big majority vote, much less a one hundred percent vote for God’s way—which I thought should be the normal outcome for a really committed Christian. But when I asked about that, my old mentor smiled broadly and said, “I discovered that all you need is a bare majority of one vote. Just enough to make the decision to do God’s will.” He added, “Keith, if you struggled and won the decision to do God’s will by only one vote every day for 20 years, you’d be a real flesh and blood Saint!
“Sainthood,” he continued, “is not achieved by killing off all the tempting voices, but by growing through the struggles in the midst of a world of temptations, realizing that each victory is basically a result of continuing to live life in Christ the best we can. Each attempt adds a kind of spiritual muscle to handle more and more important problems and decisions in God’s Kingdom. And over the years,” he said, “I feel calmer and have more and more confidence that God will give me the strength I need to live for Him one decision at a time.”
He reminded me that in the garden, the night before his trial, Jesus tried three times to get out of doing God’s will, the most loving act in history—and his struggle was so difficult the text says, “he sweated blood.”
Leaving there, he went, as he so often did, to Mount Olives. The disciples followed him. When they arrived at the place, he said, “Pray that you don’t give in to temptation.”
He pulled away from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, remove this cup from me. But please, not what I want. What do you want?” At once an angel from heaven was at his side, strengthening him. He prayed on all the harder. Sweat, wrung from him like drops of blood, poured off his face. Luke 22:39-44
Paul describes his experience of this struggle in Romans as follows:
But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. … The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. Romans 7:17-19, 25. THE MESSAGE
I guess it’s really the Spirit of living our entire life in Christ that finally lets us relax and enjoy the game.
Lord, thank you that you give us enough strength for each day and we don’t have to worry about having strength for our whole future right now. I am grateful that you have let us see through your honest servants like Paul that building your kind of character is sometimes more like playing baseball than being so focused on perfection. They tell me that the greatest batter in baseball’s history struck out about half the time at bat. Help me to take it easy and just learn the fundamentals of loving and showing up for the practice where you can teach us to love the other person as well as the game—instead of spending so much time fretting about the score. In Jesus’ name, amen.
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny….. Romans 8:1-2, THE MESSAGE
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’ve been praying on a regular basis with a sense that God is more “real” since I made a conscious decision to turn my entire life over to God. But very recently I’ve been distracted fairly often, and I fear that the sense of closeness and intimacy may have been only short term honeymoon type feeling. Has this been something you’ve experienced?
I was nervous waiting outside the hotel room for my appointment with Dr. Benton, who was conducting a series of seminars at our church. Finally, my turn came.
“I pray regularly,” I told him, “but so much of the time I don’t feel that God hears me. Not only that, but I don’t feel anything much, even when I tell Him I love Him. To pray at times like that seems insincere.”
As we talked, I confessed that frequently I didn’t feel anything during the communion service either.
The minister leaned back in his chair and thought a minute.
“Are you married?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you kiss your wife as you go out the door on the way to work?”
“Yes,” I smiled. “Every day.”
“Does it give you a great feeling of love every time you kiss her at the doorway?”
“Oh no,” I said, laughing. “If it did, I’d never make it to work!”
He smiled, and I went on. “I admit that sometimes I couldn’t even remember whether I had kissed her or not by the time I got to the office.” Dr. Benton identified with my experience, but said that occasionally when he kissed his wife, he was overwhelmed by how much she meant to him as a person. All of those kisses at the door were threads, weaving the fabric of their daily lives into the kind of relationship in which great feelings of love could be experienced naturally and fully when they came. As a Christian, Dr. Benton said that he felt the same way about habits of prayer and worship. Sometimes he did not sense much substance in his feelings for God during his private prayers or at the communion rail, but at other times he was almost overcome by feelings of hope and gratitude to God for His love, acceptance, and for giving him meaning and purpose for his life.
As I was going down the elevator, I could not help smiling when I thought if his analogy about marriage. I began to recall some of the “little things” about being married: the “accidental” touching of our hands in a church pew, and laughing about all the hamburgers and tuna fish salad we had to eat when we were first married, or even the agony of worrying together about a sick child. And I saw that Dr. Benton was right: a deep, loving relationship is woven out of a good many mundane responses which do not feel like love at all . . . at the time.
. . . this fervour is especially characteristic of beginners, and its drying up should be welcomed as a sign that we are getting beyond the first stages. To try to retain it, or to long for its return in the midst of dryness, is to refuse to grow up. It is to refuse the Cross. By our steady adherence to God when the affections are dried up, and nothing is left but the naked will clinging blindly to Him, the soul is purged of self-regard and trained in pure love.
H.A. Hodges, As quoted in Unseen Warfare
Lord, help me to need You and want You so consciously and continually that I will turn to You regardless of my religious feelings. Help me to be willing to walk into the problems of today representing You . . . even though I must go without the certainty of a bag of pat answers or perhaps even without any feeling of Your being with me. But so often I am afraid to take real risks without the sense of Your presence. I guess I am praying for faith, Lord, so that I can act on the reality of Your love. . . even when I cannot “see” it with my senses.
And what is faith? Faith gives substance to our hopes, and makes us certain of realities we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1 NEB
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
I’ve recently gotten a promotion and have been traveling and doing presentations to the executives in some of the branch offices of the company I work for, and I’ve come home very excited. But my wife pours cold water on what I’m sharing by barely even listening to me or telling me she’s in the middle of something important. I feel discounted and like she’s bored and not even interested in my succeeding. It’s like she isn’t interested in me anymore. Can you help me with this?
Years ago I came home from a speaking trip very excited about the audience’s response to what I was saying. “You don’t listen to me anymore!” I blurted out, right in the middle of a sentence I was “delivering.”
“Why, I do too,” my wife answered in what seemed like genuine surprise.
But I did not believe her. After a week of traveling on a speaking trip, I am usually a highly tuned listener to individuals with whom I have been counseling. And I can usually spot it when someone is not paying attention to what I am saying. When I had first started traveling, my wife had been anxious to hear how things had gone and had pumped me for details about each trip as soon as I got home. Often I had not felt like “replaying” the meeting, but she had wanted to hear, so I had told her about it.
But now something had happened. She still asked about the trips, but then seemed to get diverted by almost any kind of interruption, often just as I was getting into something which was very exciting to me. This really bugged me, and I would get furious. If she didn’t want to listen, then why did she ask… and then not pay attention? Maybe she was getting bored with me. After all, we had been married over fifteen years.
Anyway, I was furious when this happened one day. I had just come home from a seven-day trip. The two meetings I had attended were made up of very sharp couples. Although many of the people did not agree with some of the things I was saying and doing, they gave me the great compliment of listening to me. In counseling sessions and social visits between larger meetings, people who came to see me could not have been more attentive, and I was conscious of being very open and receptive to each of them.
But when I got home, here was this seeming indifference. Being a neurotic, I conjured up reasons for my wife’s behavior, all of which boiled down to the facts that (1) she was not interested in that which I was doing and (2) she was not interested in me any more. After a couple of hours of unexplained resentment and cutting remarks—which had the desired effects of making us both miserable—I let my problem out in the open.
Following the initial expression of feelings back and forth, we began to talk about what had happened. And being so mad at her, I had a hard time hearing what she was saying. But one thing echoed in my mind as I drove toward the office later: “When you come home from these speaking trips you act like a spoiled king!”
That hurt! Particularly because I had the sneaking feeling it just might be true. But until she said those words, it had not occurred to me that my behavior and attitudes about myself and what I was doing had changed. I was now associating with very attractive and successful men and women about our age while she was stuck at home taking care of three little girls.
As I thought about this, I wondered how many lay speakers, ministers, doctors, bank presidents begin unconsciously to behave like spoiled kings and queens without even knowing it is happening. I wondered how many other men and women begin unconsciously to expect their mates and families to hang on their words and attend to their needs with the same speed and solicitousness their hosts at meetings or their secretaries do? I started not to write this because it is difficult for me to accept this about myself. Since I consciously want it not to be true, I would like to deny it to myself, and especially to you. But I am afraid it is true.
I realized that one of the things which makes it so bad—and I think may even exaggerate it in the eyes of a husband or wife—is the fact that important unshared experiences often separate people. That is, when I have been off to a stimulating seminar alone, I often make the mistake of coming home and very excitedly telling my wife about a “fantastic place” or person or group which has changed my life. In one sense she is glad. But in another sense, the experience she did not share separates us, because I am implying that I am “going on” away from her due to what happened to me. And since she was not present, there is an implication that I am leaving her behind—or perhaps an unconscious fear on her part that I might—even though that is not what I am saying and thinking.
But if I am really honest I must tell you that my demands for my wife’s total attention on demand has been more about my own feeling that I am not lovable. And it’s only been as I’ve decided to surrender the results of my actions to God and trust Him with my life and relationships that I have felt loved by the people close to me.
All this does not mean that I am suddenly going to quit talking about trips and conferences when I come home. That would really cause problems. But I am going to attempt to be more thoughtful concerning the way I talk about them. I hope I will not forget to find out first what has been going on at home to laugh or cry about while I have been away and to tell my wife how grateful I am for her and all she does for me. And I am going to try not to expect a busy, involved woman to suddenly stop the world in which she has been operating alone for a week to cheer at my recital of the great time I have had (away from home responsibilities) as as “honored guest” somewhere.
“There is in the human heart an inexhaustible need to be loved, and a continual fear of not being loved. Consequently, in all our relations and in all our activities we look for proof of love from the other person. …we seek others’ reassurance. Those who doubt their own worth have a particularly insatiable desire for marks of affection because they just as continually doubt that others could love them.” – Escape from Loneliness, Paul Tournier
Lord, forgive me for my self-centered blindness to my own insensitivity and to my own doubts about being lovable. Give me the insight to see the effect of my real behavior on other people and on You. And then, Lord, please give me the courage and strength to trust your love and confess my sin and change my actions. Thank You, God, that You are in the life-changing business. In Jesus’ name, amen.
You’re blessed when you care: in the moment of being ‘care-full’ you find yourself cared for.”
Matt. 5:7 THE MESSAGE
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, over the years you have said in a number of different ways that God uses stories to change our lives in specific and deep ways. Can you give a specific example of your hearing a story told by someone you did not know that changed your life in a specific and significant way (as Jesus’ stories evidently did in his listeners lives)?
That’s a very good question.After almost 50 years of listening for the truth in stories, I am deeply touched more and more often with stories people tell about their own lives.
Here’s a recent example. On the final evening of a large conference I attended a man in his 40s spoke about how he became a Christian. He was an award winning writer from a very famous and artistic family, whose actor-father had captured the hearts of America with roles he had played on two of the most watched TV series of all time.
The young man had wonderful memories of his early childhood—especially about his father. When his father came home he would spend a lot of time talking to him, being silly with him, and giving him lots of hugs and kisses. The man speaking to us said, “My dad meant everything to me. Everyone loved him. In fact looking back, I can see that he was my god.”
Then one day when the boy ran in from school, his red-eyed uncle met him at the door, saying, “Something terrible has happened. Your dad has left, and your mother’s upstairs crying. She needs you.”
He went into his mother’s room to find a weeping, broken woman.
The man at the podium before us was obviously recalling that moment, and the surprise on his face was still present. Since his parents had never fought in front of him, he had no idea their marriage was in trouble.
He then described how he slipped into the drug and alcohol life of many of the children of wealthy families in Hollywood. Finally, one night he totaled a fine car his father had bought him when he was old enough to drive. To console him for wrecking his own car, his father gave him his Lamborghini sports car—evidently an example of the way the father dealt with the vacuum in the boy’s life.
Then that young man told us with unforgettable sadness that his daddy had died, and they had never been reconciled.
The story continued, but my heart was suddenly torn in two. It was no longer the heart-break in the speaker’s life that was so agonizing to me. A door had quietly swung open in the basement of my own heart as he told us that his recurring memory still was of when he was very young, and his dad held his hand and laughed as they went to the studio. He shook his head and said something to the effect of, “He just didn’t get it that the extravagant gifts were not even in the same playing field as the grief I was experiencing, as I disappeared into the world of alcohol and addiction for several years.”
The speaker moved on to tell about a woman who worked for his mother. She kept urging his mother to go to church, and eventually she had gone. And much later he had more reluctantly gotten talked into going with them, and finally got converted.
But I can’t tell you the details of how that happened, because from the moment he spoke of walking proudly down the street with his father when he was a small child I had begun to cry, struggling to hold in deeper sobs. I was caught completely by surprise. I guess I was surprised because my children were almost grown when I left home and got a divorce, over thirty years ago. And I hadn’t realized how theirchildhood memories would be affected. For years I had tried to apologize and make amends to them, but I could tell that they knew something was still terribly wrong with me.
That night God used that simple story to break through my entrenched defenses. And I understood for the first time in the thirty-plus years something more about what had happened in our family. I had forgotten that hundreds of people who read my books responded to my writing and speaking with love and gratitude as if I were some sort of movie star or great athlete. And I realized in agony that in my children’s eyes I had been as much of a celebrity as the speaker’s father had been to his audience. But it was that picture of father and son holding hands that got through my defenses and denial, and broke my heart.
I saw that it was not that what I had done was unforgiveable to grown daughters—many people get divorces that are horrible. I saw that my leaving had shattered the memories of the only childhood life they had, memories of a father who had loved them. It wasn’t that I had been an awful father when my children were young; it was that when I left, the memories of the life we had known together were damaged irreparably.
Later that night, away from the crowd, I could not stop crying as gut-wrenching grief enveloped me, and I sat again in agony on the edge of despair. I realized to the bottom of my heart the enormity of my Sin, and that there was nothing I could ever do to “make it right” for my own daughters. But after a while I was filled with a deep gratitude, that even if I could not change the past, I had been given the gift of experiencing the reality and depth of my Sin and self-centeredness, and could turn to God as I had heard that night’s speaker tell about the pain that had driven him into the arms of a loving Father—who will never desert him.
I realized that my Sin had done the same thing for me that his grief had done for him, and I prayed that my children’s grief and anger had done it for them too.
What is that worth? What is the truth worth—that our sins and failures can lead us beyond our irreparable pasts to a new and deeper life with God?
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve learned that not all Christian stories that have changed my life—and helped me grow up and be more responsible—are happy ending stories in the usual sense. But even though I will never get over the effects of my actions, and I cannot undo the harm I have done, I do believe that God can forgive me. And I know that God can use simple stories like this one to give me a far deeper and more transforming resolve to live the rest of my days as a more honest and loyal child of God… and father to my own children.
“…I tell stories to create readiness, to nudge people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and not get it.
(Matt. 13:13,The Message)
“It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Those things that hurt, instruct.’”
(The Road Less Traveledby M. Scott Peck, p.16)
“What we need to know…is that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars, but who in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world.”
(The Magnificent Defeatby Frederich Buechner, p. 47)
Dear Lord: Thank you that you continue to give us direction, insight and hope—even through our worst failures and sins. Thank you that you have set up ways that we can confess our sins to one another and pray for each other, so that we can live together more whole and healthy, become more honest and loving, and grow closer to you and the other members of your family. In Jesus’ name, amen.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I am dancing around the decision of committing as much of my life as I can to as much of God in Christ as I can understand. I’ve been told that this is an intellectually honest way to move into a life with God in the center. But my question is: does that mean I’m putting on intellectual blinders or castrating the investigation of new aspects of reality as these come to my attention?
For a long time the notion of making a “total commitment to Christ” seemed like a kind of intellectual suicide to me. In some vague way I had gotten the idea that such a commitment would lead to a narrow, fragmented intellectual life made up of “religious” thoughts, books, and conversations on one hand, and “non-religious” ones on the other. I guess my sense of loyalty made me feel that once I “joined” Christ, I could never again question his existence or his way of life. Since I felt that I would be obligated to think “Christian thoughts,” I believed that my mind could not roam in new fields and seek new truths with the freedom to examine anything—a freedom which is very important to me.
However, in the act of offering as much of my life as I could at a particular time to as much of Christ as I could grasp at that moment, I began to learn some fascinating things about the intellectual effects of trying to make a serious surrender of one’s future to God.
I am discovering that in trying to find God’s will and the shape of the Christian life I have begun an adventure so great that its total completion will always be ahead. And this has had a unifying effect on my intellectual life that I had not counted on at all. Years ago the Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport pointed out that the striving for a goal beyond one’s reach is thought by many psychologists to be the greatest power for unifying the diverse elements in a personality structure(1). Certainly this has seemed to be true in many of the developmental stages of my life.
As an adolescent, for instance, the overriding purpose of playing basketball affected every part of my living: what I ate, what I drank, how much I slept, and how I did my studies.
My whole life was ordered by my desire to play basketball well during high school. I did many other things, but having a single dominant incentive gave me a way to establish my priorities and unify my life during a period that could have been very fragmented. As it turned out, the goal of being a great “all American” player was beyond my reach. But this only made the unifying effect continue as I played. Because, as Allport pointed out, the achieving of a goal is often not nearly as unifying as the pilgrimage in search of it. For instance, the Allies were much more unified in fighting the Second World War than when we had won it and should truly have had unity.
In trying to commit my life to finding and participating in some of the purposes of Christ, as I can determine them, my energies and abilities are gradually being focused and are working together. I have a point of reference for my learning: what does a book or a new experience in a different field have to say about the world and life as Christ presented them? I have a hypothesis which I can test in all areas of thought and relationship. And I sometimes experience a freedom to experiment with and challenge old methods and patterns of teaching the Christian message.
But at other times I push away from God and want to be rich or famous. On such days I have two or more different dominant goals. And I gradually begin to feel split and torn in my attempts to focus all my energies on one or the other. Many times I want to be God’s person but want more to be a famous writer someday. And I get caught in a real conflict of motives . . . until I begin again and make a primary commitment of my whole future happiness to Christ—whatever the outcome may be with regard to my other dominant goals. Often following such a commitment, I find that paradoxically I am free to work at my secondary purposes more honestly and creatively, because my ultimate happiness does not depend on succeeding there anymore.
It seems that so many young people today are feeling disintegrated in their lives. They appear to be searching for something, a unifying adventure that will bring into a single focus all of their abilities and energies. I guess I am projecting my own experience on them, because that is what I was looking for all my life: an adventure with a meaning and purpose beyond my grasp—a hypothesis with which to integrate all truths. I guess if I were a professor, I would go and tell them what a relief it is to have found such a unifying adventure in the Christian life . . . because it is.
The staking of a [overall] goal compels the unity of the personality in that it draws the stream of all spiritual activity into its definite direction.
Alfred Adler
Psychologies of 1930 (2)
Of course education never is complete, and the process of integration extends throughout life; but that is its fundamental purpose—that out of the chaos which we are at birth order may be fashioned, and from being many we may become one.
William Temple
Nature, Man and God (3)
Lord, help me to realize fully the paradoxical freedom that is found through trying to commit all of life to you. Sometimes I am amazed that this commitment has issued in creativity and a freedom to look in all areas for truth, when I had thought it would mean a narrower, restricted intellectual life. Sometimes at first as I read philosophy and psychology, I was afraid I might find out that you are not real. But I thank you that it is through the strength which comes in this relationship with you that I find the courage to examine even the evidence which might destroy my faith. I find that as I continue to pray,
read the scriptures and join Jesus in loving the Father and his other children—on the adventure of learning about God in all aspects of Reality.
“Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’”
Jesus
1 Gordon Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality
2 Alfred Adler, Psychologies of 1930, ed. Carl Murchison (Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1930); see chapter 21, “Individual Psychology.”
3 William Temple, Nature, Man and god (New York: The Macmillan company, 1956), 233.
