by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I have had many successes—president of my company, more than comfortable financially, elected a deacon at my church, my kids are grown and in good colleges. But I’m not as satisfied or fulfilled as I thought I would be after all this and am a little disturbed about the lack of satisfaction I’m experiencing. Do you ever feel this way? R.T.
Good question. In the fall of 1945 I was an entering sophomore at Tulsa Central High School which had 3,500 students. I was coming from a middle school that essentially sent its students to another high school, so I didn’t know many kids at Central. After the first day of bumping through the crowded halls on four floors, any self-confidence I had ever had vanished. I came home and complained to Mother, “I don’t know anybody in this school. This feels awful”
She said quietly, “Everybody coming in there is lonely and feeling inadequate. and they are all jumping into a bigger frog pond as minnows. You can just trust me on that. But if you’ll learn the people’s names and speak to them by name, you’ll get to know some of them. And you’ll also really be helping them, because all people want to be known.” I didn’t have anything else to do so I did what she suggested—except I didn’t just speak to a few kids. By the next fall I had memorized the name of virtually everyone whose picture was in the yearbook.
I also went out for basketball, and I was only about 5’ 7” tall. Fortunately I grew to six feet between my first and second years. In my senior year we did not lose a single game during regular season.
Near the end of school each year there was a big musical show at Central called “High School Daze.” A king and queen of the school were elected, to be announced and crowned the first night of Daze. I had become president of the senior class; we’d had a great basketball team; and I had won a few other honors. Then in the Spring of 1945 I got elected “king.”
I remember sitting in a room backstage alone, all dressed up in a tuxedo with a big red cape looking at the crown they were going to put on me. The school queen was a beautiful girl, and I was crazy about her. But as I sat there alone waiting for the “coronation” to begin, I had a strange hollow feeling inside—not at all the excitement and anticipation I’d thought I’d have. I asked myself, “Is this all there is?” And in that moment I knew a secret: being “king” is not the meaning of life. But I didn’t know what was.
After college some notable successes came my way in a couple of different fields that you know about, R. T. But the successes didn’t answer my question, “Is that all there is?” The thing that did lead to the answer I was seeking were the pain of failure and losses in my personal life (loss of my entire family of origin by the time I was twenty-eight, and then going through a painful divorce for which I was primarily responsible—in the midst of my greatest outward successes.)
Finally, in several stages, I saw my incredible self-centeredness and that even though I was sincerely committed Christian I was in denial about the fact that I had unconsciously put myself in the center of my life instead of God and was unwittingly building a Christian kingdom in which I was the king instead of Jesus Christ
When I discovered that many years ago now, I was horrified. And after much struggle I finally confessed my self-centeredness and the resulting sins and consciously surrendered everything in my personal and vocational lives to God.
I’m telling you this R.T. because since that surrender, what I began to learn to do as a sophomore in high school sixty-six years ago has become the way I’m trying to live my life now—that is, paying attention to and getting to know people around me—all kinds of people. Only now I’m loving them and specifically trying to help them find hope and self acceptance in life because that is what God is continuing to do for me. And as they ask me—or it becomes appropriate, I tell them what I’ve discovered by trying to surrender my life to God.
Mostly I’m not consciously running for anything now or trying to win some kind of prize or “game.” And that change of purpose brings peace and happiness into the present. But it’s the sense of God’s love and guidance that has been teaching me to enjoy life—whatever is going on that I’m facing. I’m eighty-two now and I’m learning how to live for God while walking toward death. And in doing what I believe God wants me to do now, I’m enjoying this final stage of life more than any so far!
I’m telling you these things because many years after I was “King Daze” and found a real King to live for, I came to see that everyone out there is lonely and sometimes feels inadequate at some level. And that if I can just get to know a few people personally, listen to them and help them in ways that I feel God would have me to, I can always have a life of meaning and I will never have to be alone, or bored. Of course sometimes I still wake up lonely or afraid, but now I know that’s just a natural part of life—sort of a spiritual “bad hair day.”
Lord, I’m so glad that you don’t leave us when we’re winning—or losing. Thank you that you keep teaching me that the values that aren’t your values are not nourishing very long. It’s good not to have to get an increasing supply of them all the time in order just to feel “normal.” Thank you that you can actually free us (in this life) from that rat race to success in which it’s so easy to get lost. I love you very much. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, a lot of my friends talk about being “blessed” all the time when something good happens to them. Recently a neighbor felt “blessed” because her husband got a raise. And last month a friend at work said she felt blessed because no one was hurt in a car wreck she was in. But Jesus said we’re blessed when we’ve just lost that which is most dear to us—things like that. So… what does being blessed really mean for a Christian?
Good question. I wrestled with that one for years because I came to God because I had already lost a lot, and already was at the end of my rope! Feeling terrible, I finally said, “Lord, just tell me straight. What good news do I have to share about being blessed when I’m at the end of my rope?”
And then my answer came. One morning I was stunned to read about Jesus’ telling his disciples to consider themselves blessed when they “lost what was most dear,” when they were “persecuted,” or even “at the end of their ropes.”—as if these tragedies were actually God’s delivery vehicles for sending us His blessings?
Ridiculous!
Then reading through all the beatitudes in Matthew 5, I saw…and my world changed. “Wow!” I thought. “Maybe the best news I can bring to an anxious world terrified of failure, personal rejection, and loss of loved ones is this: As I’m surrendering my life to Him—with all my failures and broken relationships—the Lord is giving me the courage, honesty—and willingness—to face, and walk through some of the most difficult problems this world has to offer, with my eyes wide open! And for me that has been wonderful news.
Before now, it hadn’t crossed my mind that the willingness, honesty, courage are the blessings from God I didn’t know to request. Yet they turned out to be doorways to the understanding and love I’ve always longed for.
Lord, thank you. Your “blessings” are Good News indeed when it comes to spiritual maturity—even if they sometimes feel a little like sandpaper. Amen
“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 (The Message)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I am so over-committed that I wake up often on the verge of panic. The problem is that I’m a minister and can’t even find the time to pray anymore. It seems like I’m swimming like crazy but the shore is getting farther away. Have you ever had this experience? If so what did you do to get back on solid ground?
Oh yea, periodically as a new Christian, I wanted to help people and to be a part of everything Christians were learning or doing that appeared to be God’s will. But before long I had made more commitments than my calendar could possibly hold. I cut down on sleep, exercise, and play time with my family. But things got more and more chaotic, until one night I woke up in a nameless panic, staring with saucer eyes into the predawn blackness. I began thrashing around in my mind for solutions that didn’t involve failing or being shamed by having to admit I couldn’t fulfill all my commitments. Thoroughly revved up, I jumped up to another frantic day of jockeying appointments, meeting deadlines, and short-changing my family—promising that I was almost caught up. But something told me that wasn’t true, and in addition my frantic life was far from Jesus’ “peace that passes understanding,” but though I felt guilty giving up projects that seemed so “Christian”, I felt like I was about to drown—and the shore was getting further and further away.
My stomach was in a knot, my chest tight, my mind a buzzing bee hive that had been upset. As I tossed up a “please help me” prayer and lay down on the floor to do a few token sit-ups, a bizarre memory flashed on my inner screen—an old newspaper story: Before dawn on a cold December morning, three duck hunters in waist-high rubber waders—were thrown into the icy black water of an unfamiliar lake when their small flat-bottomed boat capsized. Thrashing around in the dark trying to swim ashore, all three drowned. The article said the accident was particularly tragic since the water where the boat capsized was less than five feet deep—but the men didn’t know. Had they not panicked, but simply put their feet down, they could have waded out.
*
I shook my head, smiling at my own blindness. I’d been struggling so frantically to take over Jesus’ job and save the world that I’d almost gone under, when all I had to do was stop, be still, and let my full weight down on God.
So I did—right then. And when I did that, I saw clearly that I am not God and I made some calls and cancelled some things. I’d been participating in and out of a need to be more than I am.
“Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10 RSV)
Lord: Thank you that even when we’re in our worst messes you’re love is always close enough to stand on—if we will just quit thrashing, remember that You are God, and let our feet down!
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I go to church every Sunday but during the week I seem to rush from one activity to my next appointment. How can I find God during the week?
After several busy years of public witnessing and teaching as a new Christian, my spirit turned gray. I felt less and less intimate with God. One day, as I read the dramatic account of the judgment day scene in Matthew 25, I got a simple picture about how I might spend more intimate time getting to know Jesus.
The “Son of Man” Judge/ King divided the judgment day crowd into two groups: the sheep (the good guys) on his right and the goats (bad guys) on his left. He told the sheep they would be with him forever because they had cared for him, clothed and fed him, and visited him. The good guys said, “Sir, we don’t remember doing any of that for you.” The Judge replied, “Oh yes, when you did those things to a specific person who was overlooked or ignored, you did them to me.”
Then to the goats he said, “Get out you worthless goats. You didn’t feed me when I sas hungry, or care for me in any real way.” The goats objected, “When did we see you hungry, thirsty, sick or imprisoned and not respond?” The Judge replied, “When you didn’t do those simple things for someone overlooked or ignored, you overlooked and ignored me!”
Jesus seemed to be saying to me that morning, “Keith, I’m with you Sundays at church. But during my work week, I live with people who are poor, lonely, sick, imprisoned, or feeling marginalized—especially any such people who are at the end of their rope. If you want more intimate time with me between Sundays, that’s were you can find me.”
Soon after that, I visited a friend in the hospital, dying of cancer. As I listened to him share his experience of dying, I began to picture Jesus sitting inside my friend, cradling his heart. I could almost see the Lord smile and mouth the words silently, “Keith, I’m glad you came…I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.”
Matthew 25: 40 (The Message)
Dear lord, thank you for offering us on the job training for heaven with you…learning your quiet ways of loving the little ones you died for. Amen
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’ve been going to church off and on for years, and I’ve always prayed to God, even if I didn’t attend church. But lately prayer has gotten pretty boring—like talking to old people who don’t listen and just repeat the same stories. But you act like you think God is real and might say something important… or at least interesting. If that’s right why do you feel that way?
The truth is that for a long time prayer was just something I did because I believed there was a God and I was taught that Christians pray. But through a series of sicknesses and deaths in my family of origin, I found myself the last member of our family at age 28. I was at the end of my rope, and didn’t know what to do. I decided to surrender my whole life to God.* At that point I didn’t know how to live for (and with) God in business, at home or how to handle anger, fear, etc. that I still faced on a regular basis as a Christian. But after that attempt at surrender, something happened to me. Without knowing just how it happened, I found that God became more real to me than I could have imagined. The relevant point here is that I started praying about some of the real and non-religious questions and relationship problems that affected my important day-in day-out happiness, self-esteem, and sense of value (or lack thereof) in everyday life. I was told to just offer the issues to God, and pray for guidance in dealing with them. This made prayer a lot more interesting. (Just as I listened to my Dad better than I ever had when I finally got the courage to ask him about sex.) But my prayer life changed most drastically not too many years ago.
One night a few years ago I sat up in bed in the dark, unable to get back to sleep. “God,” I prayed, “I love you. But to be honest, my prayer life is just not working. Please give me a hand.”
I opened the Bible to Matthew 18 and tried to read, but my spirit wasn’t in gear. Then I had a strong nudge: “Focus on what you are reading. It’s for you!”
Jesus was telling his disciples, “I’m telling you once and for all…” (That sounded very serious) “unless you return to square one and start over like children you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.” Suddenly God seemed to say, “Keith, you can’t see reality from My perspective—or what I think is the best thing to do—unless you become like a little child again.”
Next, I asked myself, “Is there anywhere else that Jesus said we should approach God as a child?” Immediately I remembered that the Lord’s Prayer—the only prayer Jesus ever gave as a model—began “Daddy” (Matthew 6:7-13)
DADDY? Really? Calling God “Daddy” felt sacrilegious, but…all right. I’d try. I bowed my head. “Daddy, I am a lost little boy trying to get you to help me control everything and everybody around me instead of listening to you as your little child.”
Instantly tears came, and I grasped the problem with my prayer life. When praying to “Our Father” I prayed adult to adult, as if God were a peer with expertise in an area I hadn’t mastered (whom I could fire if I didn’t like his advice.)
When I prayed to “Daddy,” I totally REPOSITIONED MYSELF as a listening child. Simply saying, “Daddy” brought what all my studying and meditation experience had not: a new set of ears. Although there was a lot more that I learned about God—and myself—by that one change of perspective, that attitude of being teachable was a new beginning.
Jesus said: “I’m telling you once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.” Matthew 18:2-5 THE MESSAGE
Daddy in Heaven, thank you for teaching me to lay aside my controlling knowledge and skills, and come to you with childlike eyes wide open and ears listening, so you can re-parent me to be like your Son… Amen.
* Described in some detail in Chapter three of The Taste of New Wine.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, what can I do with my depressing feelings of guilt and failure? I’ve tried talking with my family members, but I can tell they’re getting really tired of hearing my sad story.
Years ago I formed a terrible habit guaranteed to keep life from being boring, but which rained gloom and doom on my own house. At times, all kinds of unrelated failures and lonely feelings from the past came out to dance with me, and I would tell my family members how miserable and sad I felt about my failures and inadequacies. I painted my feelings in the blackest and most discouraging colors I could think of, asking them to pray for me. As we talked, they become sad and depressed, too, and sometimes felt guilty, thinking I was blaming them. When they lovingly tried to help me by making specific suggestions or offering solutions, I had “good” reasons why none of their suggestions would work.
Sooner or later they would give up, or it was time to be somewhere else or go to bed. My previously happy and carefree loved ones were now long-faced and unhappy, while I felt better. When I went to bed on such nights, I’d go right to sleep.
It’s as if my family were living with a live skunk. I’d call them all together and spray them with my skunk oil of depression and doubt. Then as we talked, they got those smells all over them. I was the only one that went to bed “smell-free.”
While in a small group of Christians trying to learn how to turn our lives and wills over to God, and to love others as God loved us, I came to see that my “center-of-the-world” habit of dumping my depressing feelings on family members was sort of like vomiting—I certainly felt better—only I was vomiting on the people I loved. God showed me through these fellow adventurers that this kind of “dumping” was a form of victimizing my family by getting them to “carry” my sense of failure and regret in the name of “sharing my reality.” And one day I stopped in mid-whine and faced the fact that, although it temporarily made me feel better, it wasn’t a very loving action toward my family members.
After that, if a reason to talk about my painful feelings came up, I used a different approach. I began by saying something like “This is how I’m feeling right now, but these feelings are not about you.” And when I finish sharing the feelings, I say, “I know these feelings are not your fault. I’d just appreciate your praying for me as I’m dealing with them.” And then I get off the subject and ask about their lives.
Better yet, I now share a lot of these painful emotional storms with my fellow strugglers on God’s adventure in groups outside my family—and ask these strugglers to pray with me there. In addition I have discovered that I can hear fellow struggler’s honesty and suggestions about options I might choose better than I can from my family members, and that these Christian companions are not as likely as my family to absorb and carry my feelings.
“Make this your common practice. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so you can live together whole and healed.” James 5:10 THE MESSAGE
Lord, I am grateful that you give us a safe fellowship of recovering sinners in which to face our feelings and learn from them. When I share my sins with other people on the same spiritual adventure I’m on—and do not “dump” them on my family, expecting them to carry my feelings for me—I can get real help, while learning to be more loving and supportive of those closest to me. Amen
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, no one I know talks about the imperious and demanding Mr. Hyde (or Ms. Hyde) transformation that temptation can change even a deeply committed (to our Lord) Christian into a totally self-centered drooling squinty-eyed lascivious or gluttonous pagan. It would be helpful if you are willing to deal with this question in a reality oriented way.
Temptation is a strange experience for me. I want to be God’s person. But I also have some deep human needs for approval, affection, and the satisfaction of strong physical and emotional drives. When wrestling with a specific temptation, I seem to change into a different person inside. I have a kind of tunnel vision and only see the object of my resentment, greed, or lust. All else is blotted out. I am no longer the smiling, friendly Christian, but instead am an intense and sweating stranger—yet not a stranger, for I know this one so well. Reason waits outside the door of temptation for me. I argue against my conscience and dazzle myself with agile rationalizations. By that time the battle is usually lost.*
Of course, sometimes there are long periods of peace and productivity when all the dragons appear to be dead. But then, one day when I am seemingly in good control of my emotions, I am suddenly in the midst of temptation. My senses are alive to the object of my resentment or my desire. I am practically engulfed in the urge to surrender to my inclination—to glorify my desires above everything—the instant they are born. And sweeping away reason, goodness, God’s will, caution, and the potential guilt—I succumb.
People who have not had this experience as Christians would make poor counselors for people like me. I know you may say that I am weak. And of course that is the truth. I am weak. But my question is, “What does a weak yet utterly sincere committed Christian do when temptation gets through all blockers and tackles him or her with a crippling jolt?”
My reactions have been varied. Almost always I feel inadequate and do not like myself. I shy away from prayer, feeling that somehow I could have resisted longer and not succumbed. It is strange, but because of my pride, I always think I could have conquered. But this notion rests on the dubious idea that if I am truly committed to Christ, I can control all my actions with reason and determination—if I will just try hard enough.
The truth about the Christian life seems to be, however, that no one bats a thousand in facing temptation. As a matter of fact, most of the saints felt that their averages were pretty low. We can improve our performance, and I thank God that this is so. But evidently in this life we will always have the occasional experience of succumbing to some kind of mental, physical or spiritual temptation. The sad truth is that much of the time I am too weak to resist, and my failure is simply a hard cold fact with which I must live. I have to come to God with the horrible uncomfortable feeling of failure. And finally, with no excuses, I force myself to my knees before him in confession, asking for restoration to a state of usefulness and self-acceptance by His grace.
I thank him that this process is what the gospel is all about—the forgiveness of the glorification of our desires and pride to a position above everything, including him. And asking him for a new set of controlling desires, I thank him for the miracle of forgiveness and the new starts he can give me. I pull myself to my feet, brush the caked spiritual mud from my clothes and walk into another day as his child.
First don’t dwell on yourself, do not say: “How could I be such as to allow and suffer it?” This is a cry of proud self-opinion. Humble yourself and, raising your eyes to the Lord, say and feel: “What else could be expected of me, O Lord, weak and faulty as I am.”
Lorenzo Scupoli,Unseen Warfare
I resolve to meet evil courageously, but when even a small temptation cometh, I am in sore straits. That which seemeth trifling sometimes giveth rise to a grievous temptation; and when I think myself to be secure, and least expect it, I am overcome by a light breath.
Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Dear Lord, I know it must have broken your heart to realize that even those of us who follow you would get carried away and crush the people around us, trying to satisfy our hungers for attention and power and love.
Help me not to kid myself about my real needs and desires and cloak them with phony righteous motives or plead “weakness” as an excuse for succumbing to temptation. Although the nature of the sins has changes, the process is the same. And I realize that I am still capable of almost any sin. Give me the courage to face you more realistically. Thank you that you have made those things which are loving, creative, beautiful, and constructive so attractive to me that I spend more time running toward them . . . in another direction from the crippling world of inordinate self-indulgence.
And Lord, thank you for indicating that you believe a person should be forgiven more than once. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Matthew 18:21, 22
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith,I’ve been a Christian for many years. I’ve committed my whole life to Christ and have been taught that I should trust God. But inside where I face the challenges like (1) the changing economy that threatens my vocation, (2) the reckless and (to me) dangerous behavior of my teen-aged son and daughter and (3) recurring fears that I (or they) will not be able to meet the challenges and will fail. And yet at the same time I keep receiving the strength to go on. Am I just an underachiever in the faith department?
These are good questions. I believe that I and many other serious followers of Jesus have been afraid to be honest about our real feelings. But my experience of this paradox goes like this.
One morning I was lonely. My wife and children were all there with me, and we loved one another very much. But I was facing some fears of failure that could not be shared with them. I felt that my performance on a very important examination involving the future for all of us would not be adequate, and I was anxious and afraid, like a small boy. Yet God seemed very near. If I failed, he would be there, and I could pick up whatever pieces there were and do something else. And this gave me a deep underlying courage. But the conditioned franticness which made my mind a beehive of fears was a carry-over from a lifetime of feeling that I must succeed to be acceptable.
This paradox is hard to understand—a sincere commitment to Christ combined with human insecurity in the face of failure. And many of the great Christian speakers and writers have left me alone in my predicament by neglecting to tell me of these paradoxes of the inner journey. As I have read devotional books and listened to the evangelists and teachers of the faith, I have tried to reconstruct from their words a picture of the inner way. But many of them have omitted so much of the sweat and gravel from their descriptions of the Christian life that I am left with visions of untroubled saints, walking through the quiet aseptic corridors of their souls with unchanging attitudes of serenity and courage.
I am finding that serenity and courage are very different in “appearance” inside my own life. And as I counsel with other Christians, I realize that I am not alone in this. The record of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as he wrote from the Nazi prison camp before his martyr’s death, sounds stimulating and rather glorious at first glance. But as I read his letters* more closely, the actual daily experience for Bonhoeffer seems to have been very different. Much of it was made up of the buzzing whine of summer flies around his face, the maddening frustration and disappointment as his hopes for release were agonizingly prolonged or smashed, fear and doubts, and despair. All of these were things that often filled his mind as he lived out those days and nights of “marvelous Christian discipline and courage.” Yet because of the paradoxical joy and hope he experienced, Bonhoeffer was able to go through that miserable imprisonment and make of it a great positive sign for all of Christendom. And this same paradox faces thousands of ordinary men and women who are trapped in jobs or marriages that seem impossible. But because they think that a “truly committed Christian” should feel victorious, they hide and feel ashamed of their painful fear and loneliness and the guilt they bring.
That morning, as I was confronted by the threat of changing to a new vocational direction in midstream of life with my bridges burned behind me, I could risk it because of my faith in Christ. But the fear of failure rode with me in the pit of my stomach as I went to the examination that would determine the next chapter in my life. If I passed the test and “succeeded” in my new venture, some of my friends might say someday, “What courage, to have launched out in faith at your age!” And I wondered if I would remember the anxiety that made my palms sweat. Or would I only smile, humbly “give God the credit,” and forget to tell how slender the thread of faith seemed to be that I was following through the jungle of my fears that morning?
“I have repeatedly observed here how few there are who can make room for conflicting emotions at the same time. When the bombers come, they are all fear; when there is something good to eat, they are all greed. . . By contrast, Christianity plunges us into many different dimensions of life simultaneously.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God
“It is rather in overt behavior that we must look for a measure of belief, and it is principally this that is inhibited in doubt or disbelief.”
D. E. Berlyne, as quoted in Signs, Language and Behavior
Lord, thank you that you give us the courage to go ahead and “risk it” occasionally in trying to follow you, forgiveness when we “chicken out” and cannot, and the clean slate of a new day after each of our failures and denials. In my attempts to witness to the hope and joy of your presence in ordinary life, help me not to whitewash the frailty of the humanity into which it came to dwell as I try to trust you in everything. I am grateful that even you had some struggles in facing the challenges in your life.
Anguish and dismay came over him, and . . . he went on a little, fell on his face in prayer, and said, “My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Yet not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
Jesus in Matthew 26:38, 39 NEB
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, when I decided to become a parish priest I had no idea that some people consider ministers as “hired hands” and not colleagues, brothers or sisters on the adventure of living for Christ. My response to being treated as a lackey by some prominent church people is to want to bust them in the mouth. Did I get it wrong about the role and status of an ordained minister? D.M.
I don’t know what you should do, D.M., but I can certainly identify with the “bust them in the mouth” urge. I am a layman, and am not paid by a church, but I have degrees in Theology and Psychology and do counsel a lot of church people. Some years ago I had to make a serious attitude adjustment about my role as a servant/minister. It happened like this.
I was very busy trying to get what seemed like a thousand things done before leaving for a three-day speaking trip on the East Coast. There hadn’t been time to prepare my talks, so I was under a lot of pressure when a friend, a fine Christian woman, called. A couple she knew ws having marital problems. “They might call you,” she said, “because they could not agree on either a minister or a psychiatrist.” But my friend thought it crucial that I see them if at all possible.
It seems that the majority of people I’ve counseled with lately have had marital problems. Even though I was dead tired, I agreed to talk with them, hoping they wouldn’t call. But sure enough, at almost midnight the telephone rang. The man called me “Reverend” Miller (in what I thought was a condescending tone).
“Keith Miller,” I said with some definiteness. “I am a layman.”
“I’d like to make an appointment to see you,” he said without any details or preliminary remarks. Just when I started to ask who was calling, it occurred to me that he was the husband of the couple having troubles. He was, but he had the impatient and imperious tone of a power player totally insensitive to other people’s feelings, and I could see how his marriage might “have a few problems.” So realizing the man was under pressure and had probably put off calling all evening, I set the appointment for one o’clock the following day at our house.
I was a little irritated, since seeing them meant driving five miles from my writing hideout in the middle of the day. But I asked myself, “What kind of Christian are you if you can’t help another human being in trouble?” But I still felt angry that this guy had talked to me as if I were some sort of hired hand. I was only seeing him as a friend, with no intention of charging him as a counselor. So I prayed to be open to the man, and I was (at least consciously) ready to do that by the time I got home the next day at 12:30.
The telephone rang at 1:10 and the man said, “Something has come up, and I won’t be able to make it to your house.” I started to tell him he could just forget it, but then it occurred to me that he was slick enough that he might be avoiding the conference purposely. And from what my friend had said, this couple could be in serious trouble. So I agreed to see him the following day.
We had a good visit, but it was apparent that their marital problems were severe. By that time my schedule was really pressing. Not long after the husband left, his wife called, and after a long conversation, she asked for an appointment. Knowing how hard it is to wait when things seem to be closing in on you, I agreed to see her at 11:00 the following morning. (All of this was happening long before I learned about boundaries—and how Jesus set them.)
I rushed home at 10:55 to find that the woman had just called and left word: something had come up and she was not going to be able to come. I was furious! Three days had been fouled up by these people. They didn’t even have the courtesy to consider how much inconvenience I was going through for them. I wanted to call and tell them that one of their problems was “self-centeredness.” And further I wanted to inform them that I was very busy myself…and then it hit me: how important I must think I am if a thing like this can make me as mad as it did. Here were two people in the agony of struggling to keep their home together—with no telling what other complications—and I was incensed that they were treating me like a common servant…when that is what I claim I’ve committed my life to be: a servant to Christ and his suffering people. But my reaction told me that secretly I must want to be treated like a big-shot writer and counselor. That discovery eventually led me to a treatment center and the beginning of a whole new understanding of myself—and of what it might mean truly to want to be a servant.
So I don’t know what you need to do, D.M. But years ago when the question you asked first arose in my life, the search for an answer led me to have to face my denial about how much of my ministry has been about building a reputation as an outstanding Christian. And for me that was a very painful—but eventually transforming—discovery.
“For the self-flattery of our nature is very subtle and few can discern it. Secretly it pursues only its own ends, though meanwhile its outward conduct is such, that it seems to us we have but the single aim of pleasing God, though in actual fact this is not so. . . . So if a man does not watch himself well, he may begin some activity with the sole purpose of pleasing the Lord, but later, little by little, introduce into it a self-interest, which makes him find in it also a satisfaction of his own desires, and this to such an extent that the will of God becomes completely forgotten.”
Lorenzo Scupoli, Unseen Warfare
“In renunciation it is not the comforts, luxuries and pleasures that are hard to give up. Many could forego heavy meals, a full wardrobe, a fine house, et. cetera: it is the ego that they cannot forego. The self that is wrapped, suffocated in material things—which include social position, popularity, and power—is the only self they know and they will not abandon it for an illusory new self . . . which they may never attain.”
Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi, His Life and Message for the World
Forgive me, Lord, and help me not to look for the respect and acclaim of people but to be willing to die to my self-concern enough to accept them just as they are. And help D.M. and anyone else who may be struggling with what it means to be Your servant and minister to your other bruised and broken people. Thank you that you have helped me become more direct and to set better boundaries in contacts with controlling people with regard to their keeping appointments, if they want help. Amen.
And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus in Mark 10: 42-45
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, my college aged kids and my husband claim that I am trying to control them when I offer suggestions-when all I am trying to do is help them. How can I help them see that I want them to make their own decisions?
Ooooh! That question strikes too close to home. Listen to a telephone conversation from my journal that I had with a daughter about to graduate from college: “Of course you can do whatever you want to, honey. I just want you to be happy.” I sigh into the phone to my almost grown daughter in college. “But, I think you ought to call her back and tell her you won’t do it.” As I say these things into the telephone, I notice how my voice is both raised and syrupy in a strangely familiar way.
Silence on the other end of the line. And in my imagination saw in that instant the face of my dear departed enmeshing mother who always “only wanted the best for me” and always wanted me to make “my own choices”-unless they were unlike the choices she would make. She was amazing, thoughtful and generous to a fault, but she could control everyone in the family within a hundred-mile radius with a disappointed sigh.
Good Lord, can it be that without ever knowing it I have become just like her and am controlling my family?
Well, I hope everything turns out okay,” I say into the void on the line, realizing belatedly that my daughter had just wanted to share with me and I’d taken over again and tried to “fix” her, implying unconsciously that she couldn’t figure out what to do if I didn’t-and she hadn’t even asked for my advice. I’d screwed it up again-for the thousandth time.
“Goodbye, Dad,” I hear the discouraged and irritated voice as she hangs up-and I remember how much her voice sounded like my own younger voice when I used to come up against that wall of sugary (but steely) shaming control my mother unconsciously used on me.
I want to call my daughter back and tell her that I love her and am only trying to help, that I only give suggestions “for her own good.” But then I remember that it never worked when my mother did that to me. And with a start I realize, “Oh my gosh-it’s true! I’ve turned into my mother-and I never saw it coming.”
As I’m sitting here looking out at the waving sea grass on the dunes, I realize the horrible truth about me: I try to control and “fix” people close to me because I feel uncomfortable when they don’t do things the way I’d do them. I’m really giving advice to make me feel more comfortable and less afraid of what might happen.
I seem to feel, at some primordial level, that I am the unofficial director of the life dramas each of my family members has been given to act in. Some white and gray crying gulls flutter and settle among some Goat’s Foot Morning Glory vines winding their way across the big dune outside my window. I realize that when I, unbidden, meddle in the lives of my dear ones, I am playing God as I try to be the “producer and director” of a drama in which I am only another actor-who hasn’t yet gotten his own lines straight.
What can I do?? How can I tell whether I’m controlling or making helpful suggestions?
I called a friend whose kids are grown, and ask my question. And my friend said, “Keith, if I want to see whether I’m actually helping instead of controlling, I try to notice what happens-what their response is-when I think I’m helping them. If they get mad at me and clam up when I ‘help’ them,” he said, “it’s a pretty good clue that I am doing something besides helping.”
Now-25 years later-when I feel the urge to “help” (teach) one of my (now grown) children, I can sometimes say, “Did you just share with me or would you like a suggestion?” And they usually say, “Thanks, Dad. I’m just sharing.” But sometimes they say, “No, I’m asking what you think I ought to do.” Then and only then do I feel ok about making concrete suggestions. This new way of “helping” has made life a lot more peaceful-when I can do it.
God, help me to quit playing your role and ‘teaching’ my family all the time. Today I can see again that I’m just not cast right for your part. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
“Fathers don’t exasperate your children.” Ephesians 6:4 The Message
“Don’t be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths.” James 3:1 The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, what is the best way you’ve found to begin to convey the message that they are loved by God to people who are very cognitive and scientifically oriented and don’t even believe there is a God?
Recently I ran across the following conversation between a camp counselor and a camper who finally decided to become a Christian:
Counselor: When did you decide you wanted to be a Christian?
Camper: When you learned my name.
When I first became a Christian, I wanted to tell everyone all about Christianity. But it didn’t take long to discover that most of my contemporaries outside of church (and inside) had a strong and efficient resistance to people trying to change them or talk them into something new. And in my mind I only wanted to tell them they were loved.
What I gradually came to believe was that just saying words—even very true and holy words—is not what is meant by loving people as a Christian. At the office, I had learned some things about a kind of preparatory loving I had seen Jesus doing in the New Testament—a kind of a “tuning in” to the person who is with you, a sensitivity that makes anything you may say later about God much more authentic and understandable.
In fact, I began to learn that talking is seldom the most powerful way to get people’s real attention. Much to my surprise, I found that listening is a much more effective way of giving my presence to somebody when I am with them. It’s as if my listening attention were a spotlight that God has given me to focus. I can focus my attention in the past, I can focus it out in the future, or I can focus it into the lives of the people around me.
By personal experience I know that, when somebody really gives me his or her attention, that person draws me gently out of my cold tight absorption with myself and into the healing arena of the “in between”—that space that exists only between people. It is like magic. In such an exchange with another person I often find myself moving into the area of the personal, and the situation changes. When I am listening to somebody this way, even in a crowd of people, I’ve noticed that I am often watching them and listening as if no one else were there. I imagine a glass bubble is around the two of us, and that only we are sharing this special moment of attention.
I have become convinced that what we call the agape love of Christ rides down the beam of our honest attention into people’s lives. And this seems to be true whether I am involved with my wife, a child, or a stranger being encountered for the first time. In a way, I think this focusing on the other person is a taste of the greatest kind of love there is, for in a strange way we are giving people our lives,a second at a time, when we give them our undivided attention.
As a counselor, I have talked to many people who have said in different ways about an estranged mate, “I don’t expect him (her) to do a lot for me. I just want him (her) to know that I exist. I want his (her)attention!
Years ago, when I was director of Laity Lodge, we had scheduled Elton Trueblood to speak at a weekend conference. That weekend, a young woman came from hundreds of miles away just to be at a conference where he was speaking. None of us knew this young woman. But she had heard about the conference from a friend and had come this long distance by herself.
One of the things we did that weekend was to divide into small groups, and one of the small-group activities was to go around the circle and answer the question, “What is the most important single encounter you’ve had with another human being (not counting members of your family)?”In one group, after a few people had responded, it became the young stranger’s turn.
She looked up and said, “Well, when I was a child, maybe ten years old, Elton Trueblood came to our city to speak. My daddy was an elder in the church and in charge of the program, and so the speaker stayed in our home for several days. At the dinner table during that week, Dr. Trueblood would ask the adults questions and then listen attentively to their answers. But then he would turn to me and ask me a question, and he would listen to my answer with the same care he had given to the adults. Then he would ask me another question about something I had said! He did this all week long. He treated me as if I were an intelligent, sensitive, mature Christian. And that week I made up my mind that I was going to spend the rest of my life becoming one.”
Once when I was a new Christian, I got very discouraged about the church I was attending. I read a book by Sam Shoemaker. I wrote him a personal note telling how I felt about the church and thanking him for writing the book—not really expecting an answer—since he was a famous author. But in a few days I got a reply from him, obviously hand-typed on a typewriter with some keys not striking regularly. It was a single paragraph that said something like, “Don’t leave. We need people who see like you see.”He sent “prayers.”
I was astounded.I had never written anything nor had I met anyone who knew this man. And he had not only heard what I was feeling, but he had taken the time to write a personal note to me. I looked at that note every day for a month, and I stayed afloat emotionally and spiritually because he had paid attention to me and taken me seriously. Consequently, when I became a writer, I answered virtually every letter I received for the next thirty years.
“Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”Matthew 5:16 The Message
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I love you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”John 13:35 The Message
Dear Lord, thank you for the miraculous power of personal, loving attention that you offer to each of us.And thank you that by simply listening and responding to people, we can sometimes help to nourish the transformational life of loving you offer us in Jesus.Help us to pass it on to someone I meet today. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, how does a man get reconciled with his father? I never was close to mine and he is very sick, maybe dying. I’m afraid he’s going to die and we’ll never be close. They tell me not to push the issue now, but if I don’t, I’ll never get closure with him. Any ideas?
Some questions I can’t relate to but this one I can. My father died when I was about twenty-two, and I thought I’d lost my chance. But about twenty-five years later I had a chance after all.It happened like this.
I was alone in an old house at the beach. A Norther was blowing rain sideways and whipping tall palm trees like buggy whips. And suddenly there my father was on the stage of my mind.I spoke to him as the storm raged outside.
How long has it been since I allowed your face out of the black basement of my unconscious? Three, five, ten years? No, not so long. But sitting here on a stormy day with everyone else scurrying in the rain to do the things they have to do, I am home alone. Fifty-five years sliding back toward twelve nestled in the familiar comfortable silence of this house with the ever present wind outside whining in from the Gulf outside in sheets of rain, like giant mewing tabby cats crying to come in from the rising storm.
Then there you were! My long dead father, full blown like a giant cash register number suddenly punched into view. And, as unbidden as your face, came the waves of anger belching up from deep in the dark waters of my soul.
There we were, confronting each other for the first time in some primal way—two men now, yet one a boy with wreckage of the awe and fear still swirling around the now emerged father face.
“Dad,” I said in a voice surprisingly deep and strong, fueled by an ancient rage. “I hate your guts for not loving me, for preferring Earle when I needed a father more than God Himself. I hate you for never letting me know how you felt in ways I could understand. I became a tall athletic challenger filled with intensity, exuding confidence and faith, but fearful as an unwanted child inside—which I felt I was.”
Your face looks sad—and something else: Is it fear? It is!
In a moment, as if you were a lamp and a light had gone on inside you, I could see—that you’d been afraid and lonely too. And that youdidn’t even know how to tell me that you loved me—if you did. And that you were as afraid of me somehow, as I of you. I saw in those seconds before the lamp cord was pulled into blackness again, that my mother had trained me as a warrior to do battle with you because she was angry and hurt that you couldn’t tell her that you loved her either.
No wonder you didn’t like me. I was smart and quick and tough like my mother, a trained survivor in passive aggressive sheep’s clothing. And my family task was to pry open that iron mask you wore and free you for us all from the emotional tomb into which you were locked—before you choked to death on the blinding black beard, locked in there behind the stolid metal face.
In that moment of illumination, my rage engulfed you, a huge wave crashing against the shore, and then you were gone. And what moved gently back toward me down the beach was a sliding backwash of sadness. I saw your reflection in the wet sand, a frightened man trying, like me, to be more than he was.
And sitting there alone with your memory, as the storm was now spent outside, I felt forgiveness welling up, and a kind of compassion and recognition of one man by another—both of us powerless to make things right. But in some strange way I was now the father, and you the helpless son.
I told you as gently as I could, “I realize you had no one to teach you how to live. But I’ve found people who could teach me, love me as I am, and give me tools to find and face my fears. I…I love you Dad—though I confess I don’t know how a man can love a father (how it works). But I ask your forgiveness for the times I shut you out to hurt you, because that’s all I knew to do—not dreaming that you, too, might be hiding in there afraid and all alone.
“But I’ve found God somehow, and I want you to know that I forgive you for ignoring me—or whatever it was you really did. Now I’m going on and live my own life.
“I pray that you and I can now find rest and freedom. But I do know that I can never release you from your prison. That’s God’s job and yours.
“With His help, I’ve just done mine.”
Lord, I am so grateful that You’re not bound by our limitations of time, strength, and even death, and that Your reconciling love can roll back the stones when we’re ready, and release us and those we love from the tombs we’ve been buried in, even for years sometimes.I am grateful that you specialize in transcending our shallow “logical” contemporary wisdom about such things. Thank you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him.” 2 Samuel 14:14 (NIV)
