by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I seem to be constantly overwhelmed with stuff to do! I am busy all day getting things done, but the list of what DIDN’T get done seems always longer than what I did get done! I can hardly go to sleep at night because I worry about how I will ever get caught up. How can I get God involved in solving this? I seem to be pretty helpless about it myself.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. Lots of people (including me) have this experience. Here’s how it usually goes for me: Yesterday, I woke up with things to be done swarming around in my mind like bees looking for a place to sting me. I jumped up and made an “action plan” about these urgent tasks.
Once I’d completed it, the plan transformed some things I could “consider doing” to a list “carved in stone” and handed to me on a mountaintop by God. I felt that I had to accomplish the entire list that day to be a worthy human being!
However, as I prayed, asking what God would have me do that day, I realized that there were several problems with the list—and the ones like it that I have made up every day for years.
1. It was at least twice what any sane person would try to do.
2. It was a grandiose projection of my own unreal expectations of how much time it really takes to do each thing.
3. It was a reflection of the fact that I wasn’t trusting God with the everyday decisions about how to spend my time each day, since I realized that my primary job is to love God and the people I contact every day, and trust Him with the rest.
I thought about what my list would look like if I could somehow totally trust in God (which, I realize, is practically impossible, given my human tendency to take back control once I’ve surrendered.) But if I could, how would I prioritize this list? What would I remove altogether? What could I entrust to someone else? What really had to be done? Trying to answer these questions gave me a new perspective on how I fill up my time with what seems to be “urgent” without considering what God might think is really important.
Then I remembered a story I had heard a while back about a man who routinely brought work home from the office to do after dinner. His little boy wanted his daddy to play with him, but his father always told him that he was too busy. Finally, in tears, the little boy asked his mother, “Why can’t Daddy play with me after supper?”
His mother said, “Because he’s behind with his work at the office.”
The little boy asked through his tears, “Well, why don’t they put him in a slower group?”
I realized then that perhaps God wants me to get in a different group, too, the group of those who know that they are not God, and have seen that “sober judgment” includes seeing things as they really are, including how much they can realistically expect themselves to do in a day. And that’s when I began to listen more and care more specifically for the people in my schedule—and when I do that—I have been amazed at how much more peaceful and at home I feel in my own everyday life.
Lord, help me to be willing to live a sane life for You that includes taking time to love the people You’ve given me to love—even if I have to get in a slower group. in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. – Romans 12:3 (NIV)
Since Jesus went through everything you’re going through and more, learn to think like him. Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way. Then you’ll be able to live out your days free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannized by what you want. – 1 Peter 4:1, The Message
When we breathe, we do not stop inhaling because we have taken in all the oxygen we will ever need, but because we have all the oxygen we need for this breath. Then we exhale, release carbon dioxide, and make room for more oxygen. Sabbath, like the breath, allows us to imagine [realize] we have done enough work for this day. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, Jesus said again and again. Let the work of this day be sufficient…. – Wayne Muller, Sabbath
We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies. The things that have to be done must be done, and for the rest we must not allow ourselves to become infested with thousands of petty fears and worries, so many motions of no confidence in God. Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world. – Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, If the church is going to make it in increasingly complex political, social, and economic worlds, don’t you think our first priority to be effective Christian communicators should be to keep up, to learn all we can about the latest advances in these fields? How else can we speak intelligently as ministers to the problems people face who are trying to live in these complex and changing environments? P.S. If you agree, have you got any ideas about how to get the time to ‘keep up’ in all these fields?
Wow, I can see what you’re talking about just from my own challenges with complex new developments. I just learned a few months ago how to text my grandkids! And the state of the economy, world events and politics here in the U.S.A. come through to us so much more fully because of all the communication technology that has evolved in the last fifty years.
I agree that it is important for those who would be Christian communicators to realize the fact that enormous changes are taking place in the social, economic and political scenes. But I don’t think it is necessary or possible for anyone to keep up with all the specific changes in all these areas. In fact, an attempt to be totally knowledgeable in all these fields could become a cop-out and a defense against specific action which might lead to actual improvement in any one area.
This is what I mean: I think that God, through the Gospel, deals with basic human conditions which include people’s responses to social, economic, and political activities and changes. And the basic human conditions and responses do not change all that much. They include our separation from God, from other people and from our authentic selves. Our responses include experiences of anxiety, fear, hunger, sickness, being dispossessed, persecuted, and loneliness.
If these things are true, then one Christian approach to helping people deal with social, economic, and political changes affecting the basic human problems would go something like this:
Get involved with real people in a specific place. Get to know them and their needs, hopes and dreams. Then as social, political, and economic changes affect those people adversely, we can examine those specific changes and try to speak out or take action, such as going to bat to help the specific people affected by the changes to live in the freedom and love God has for them.
That way the issues and changes we concentrate on are always relevant, and our passion to engage these issues as Christian communicators comes from love of God and His people rather than from a love of issues and of becoming a good Christian communicator. (This is much easier for me to say than do.)
Dear Lord, thank you that no matter what economic, political or social conditions we encounter, your basic message of love applies. Help us to learn more and more how to love you and other people in our lives by the way we respond to changes and how they affect us and those around us. Help us learn how to provide a loving, human touch in the midst of whatever changes we may confront. In Jesus’ name amen.
This is a large work I’ve called you into, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. It’s best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose out on a thing.” – Matthew 10:40
“Beware you are not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.” – John Wesley
by Keith Miller | Bible, Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, is the Bible true? And if it is, how can I know it’s true?
That’s a good question, one that a lot more Christians wonder about than you would imagine. The simple answer is that since the story is all about God, what God is like, and what God wants from the relationship with His people, only God would know if the story is true or not.
But there is included in God’s story a way for people to know him and know what he wants in a relationship with him. If we surrender our lives to God and begin to live in the intimate relationship with him, we can begin to “see” him walking around in Jesus in the scriptures. We see him loving and inviting people to live with him in the creative life of giving and being loved that he has offered to us. Then, in the actual living with him and for him, we will know that the story is true in a way that is convincing enough for us to keep going.
Since the life God offers people in the Bible is an intimate life of mutual love and trust with God and other people, it should not be surprising that knowing whether the story about God’s loving us is true can be determined only by entering the relationships and beginning to love and trust the God whose story it is.
The love of the God of the Bible whom Jesus called Father is a love that transforms those who accept it and try to live it and pass it on. And the characteristic way that love is transforming is that the loving reign of God in people’s lives works like yeast that is put in dough—it permeates every aspect of a person’s life, and not just Sundays or the “religious” room in one’s inner home.
My experience has been that I first surrendered as much of my life as I could at the time to as much of God as I could understand—which I realize now was not much. But I really thought I’d done it, and that was enough. And as I “took God with me” into the daily aspects of my life, work and relationships I discovered that my life was changing. I began by becoming aware that when I made time to acknowledge God’s presence in the different parts of my life I began to talk to him about what I was experiencing (pray). And I asked him to change one thing after another, until one day I asked God to change everything in my life that was not God’s will for me. It was then that I began to change my behavior as if God were continually with me—which I realized he was.
Although I could tell you thousands or more words about this process, you haven’t asked me to do that. So I’ll just finish this blog by saying that for me the transformation (so complete it’s like being born into a new life) is not just changing one’s ideas about God, but rather in my case it was the changing of my whole perspective about who God is, what he wants from people—particularly from me—and how to love without trying to control people to get outcomes I want to fulfill my dreams and make me happy. I began to think about how I could enhance the lives of people around me. The Bible calls this Life and relationship with God “Eternal Life” that begins “now and never ends.” (John 17:3, The Message) And this is eternal life: to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.
***
Dear Lord, thank you that you didn’t bring a religion to control our lives, but a Way to live and love and learn about all of life. Help us to surrender to a life of love with you in which we can know you and your way of being human. Amen.
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. (1 John 4:7-10, The Message)
God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us… (1 John 4:17-18, The Message)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Since so many scientists and educators and psychologists are atheists, how can I believe it’s possible to have a personal relationship with God? People who don’t believe in God point out how stupid some people are who say they do believe. How can I re-think about this? (Surely all the people who believe in God can’t be wrong.)
Another good question.
Some years ago a wise man told me: if all the millions of brilliant and spiritually sensitive people of integrity who claimed they had an intimate personal relationship were wrong—except one, then it would be true that a person can have an intimate personal relationship with God. Then, since it would be possible, if even one had such a relationship the question would change to how can I have an intimate personal relationship with God? (Since at least one person does.)
As I read about and later met some outstanding and loving people whose lives seemed to have a solid calm foundation in reality, I asked some of them how they began that personal relationship with God. Some said they had believed since childhood but hadn’t ever considered that an intimate ongoing relationship with God would be a reality until they met someone who really believed in God who also cared about them. Encountering these people was profoundly life-changing.
Other people said they had turned to God when their “planned” lives had hit bottom or at least they felt powerless to overcome the fears and facts of their lives on their own. And in one way or another the pain of life led them to places where they decided to surrender—however little that surrender was at the time. But for them that willingness to surrender to God created the open door through which they could take a step toward God, who—in some way they did not understand—met them and made them sense the safety of God’s presence enough that they could continue the journey with God.
But however the first willingness came about, God became real enough that the people making that first step began to pray, to try to do what they felt God wanted them to. And they were led to other people on the same spiritual journey into which the new person had stepped.
And from that simple willingness to believe and trust, a whole new way to live began to unfold—a world in which there was One to take the fears and failures and receive the gratitude for the joys and ‘learnings’ that began to unfold.
Each person’s journey to faith is unique like each person’s experiences of falling in love or having a child or facing fear, rejection and disappointment are different, unique in some way. But all these experiences can be transformed by God. Failures become ways to learn, fears become occasions to give God the only thing we really have to give God: the gift of faith and trust.
And for me over the past half century, I feel as if I had become ready for some kind of spiritual cataract surgery. Everything that happens to me now is part of the adventure of living and learning how to love God, other people and even myself as his child who wants to become all God wants me to become.
And this very different way of seeing all of life is part of the adventure God is giving me to live—one day, one minute at a time. And all I can tell you is that this Way has already changed my experience of everyone in my life—including you.
And so I continue to try to face and confess my sins of controlling people, situations and outcomes, I am living in a world that looks safer and more welcoming than the anxious world I came from with its imperious need to change people, places and things to suit my insatiable wants.
Why don’t I think this life of faith is a delusion? Because I catch myself living in a more honest, loving and less selfish way as time goes on. And as a person who studied psychology and theology, I believe that these experiences are much more reality-oriented and healthy from a scientific point of view than the tight fearful focusing on myself and my wants, always trying to convince other people to do what I thought they should, and using other people to get what I want.
And at 83, although I am still only a growing child inside (after almost 60 years of becoming willing to trust that God is real and trying to surrender my life to him), I am happier and more connected to the wonder of loving God and other people with whom God has sent me. So in my case, I’d be a fool not to believe that a personal relationship with a loving, mentoring God is real.
Dear Lord, if you are not real, you don’t have to send any atheists to warn me. I’m afraid I wouldn’t believe them now, since you have been with me in so many unlikely ways and transformed my experience of living so profoundly by your love and caring guidance that now I know my job is not to outsmart them but just to love them—the way you‘ve loved me. Thank you very much. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other… Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.” (2 Cor. 5:16, 20, The Message)
“By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ’s life, the fulfillment of God’s original promise.” (Galatians 3:25, The Message)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’ve recently come back to church. Rather, a good way to put it is I’ve found a church that explains Christianity in a way that makes more sense than what I got out of church when I was young. The service I’ve been going to is designed for people who are searching, as I was. But now I feel like I’m ready to grow, and I’m wondering what “spiritual” maturity would be. I’m very confused about this and would appreciate any help you can give me.
It’s great that you’ve found a place where some of your spiritual questions are being explored, and even answered. As far as “spiritual” maturity goes, I’m not really sure what it is. But there are some behaviors and attitudes that seem to me to indicate a person has begun to allow God to transform his or her life and become more mature.
For instance, as God’s transformative process begins to take place, many people seem to be able to see and take responsibility for their own sins and mistakes. Once they identify them, they confess them to God and make whatever restitution is helpful (and not destructive) to those they have hurt or wronged. Most of us blame other people, “explain ourselves,” and try to get out of admitting our own sins.
Also it seems to me that those who appear to be spiritually mature don’t seem to have to get credit for the good things they do for others. They seem to find time to help and encourage people with real needs and pains, whereas most of us are too busy to help people much of the time and when we do we expect credit and gratitude for being helping persons.
Another indicator for me is that spiritually mature people seem to have the ability to face openly the doubts and uncertainties about God and about what his will is, while continuing to live and act in faith. I’ve often been afraid even to admit that I don’t know where I am going or what God’s will is much of the time—even as a professional, but I find myself being more loving and less defensive.
I see spiritual maturity in people who face tragedy or failure with their real feelings of anger and grief and then try to learn through the circumstances rather than wallow in self-pity and accusation.
They are more and more able to face the faults and sins of the people around them without being judgmental and condemning them—even if the other peoples’ behavior is not something they approve and is something they would condemn in themselves.
Although I could list many other traits which might indicate spiritual maturity, I think some of them can be summed up by saying that a spiritually mature person might be willing to surrender his or her whole life to God and want to do God’s will in every area of his or her life—not for what the person can get but simply because he or she loves God and is grateful for the love, life and forgiveness God has given.
Dear Lord, thank you that you love me just as I am—but when I try to surrender my whole life to you and am willing, you allow me to see and confess my self-centeredness and hurtful behavior that come from wanting my own will instead of yours. Help me to “grow up” into the authentically loving and caring person I believe you made me to be—who doesn’t have to be right or in control of other people and the situations we share. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him…[so]…fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out…[and let] God bring the best out of you.” Romans 12:1 The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living
Keith, my problem is that my spouse says that I am selfish, but I buy her nice clothes and presents of jewelry, etc. I even joined the church because she wanted me to. And I know a lot of men don’t do things like that. But in spite of everything I do, she is very frustrated because she still thinks I’m selfish and is getting very discouraged because I still can’t see that I’m selfish (and I’m angry because she thinks that.) What does a man have to do to let a woman know he’s not selfish???! What does being selfish mean to you?
A lot of people (and couples) have wrestled with that one. When I made a serious commitment to become a Christian, I—like you— had always done a lot of “nice things” for my wife (and other people, too), and I was floored when we started getting more open with each other that she felt that I was selfish—even though I was sincere in wanting to be God’s person.
As I read the Bible and talked honestly to the other Christian men in a small men’s group about this, I learned that there is evidently sort of a “secret control room” in the center of my mind that has one seat (a throne). And whoever or whatever is sitting on that throne determines all my actions. If I am sitting in the control seat, then without even knowing it, virtually all of my conscious actions are intended to influence and control the people and situations in my life to make me happy or to enhance the image I want to project that will make people admire me or love me. And usually the desired outcomes I try to bring about lead to my getting more than my share of their time, attention and love in close relationships. But I can’t see that I am doing this because I do so many “nice things” for them.
In my case, I began to see that I was trying to project an image of being smarter, wealthier, sexier, and a better Christian than I felt I really was.
Then one day after an argument, I recalled a movie, The Wizard of Oz, in which Dorothy, the young girl from Kansas, was in this huge hall in the land of Oz. She and her new friends (the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion) were standing before a huge frightening holographic image of the great Wizard. But Toto, Dorothy’s little dog, had run over to the side of the great room and pulled back the curtain, exposing a frumpy little old man sitting at the large control board that controlled the voice and movements of the huge projected image of a wondrously powerful Wizard with a deep booming voice. The little man (the actual wizard) tried to save himself from the shame of being revealed as only an ordinary man by having the booming voice say, “Don’t look behind that curtain!” But it was too late.
That’s exactly how I felt when my spiritual mentor helped me pull back the curtain of denial and see that I had been unable (or unwilling) to recognize and deal with my motivations for maneuvering to get outcomes I wanted from people and situations in my life. I was in denial not only about pretending to be more than I am, and a pretty unselfish husband, but also I had not been able to face that I am inordinately self-centered even as a Christian.
It finally got through to me that becoming a Christian meant putting God in the center control seat (of my life) so that His character revealed in Jesus and His values would determine my actions. Through study and prayer, but mostly by confessing my Sin of taking God’s role in the center of my own life (and the lives of people close to me) and then surrendering that place to God, I began the reorienting process of making decisions on the basis of what will help God transform me into the loving, giving, culpable, and vulnerable person I believe God made me to be.
And when I began consciously to surrender to God the throne room and control board of my life, I discovered what my wife had been trying to tell me—that just giving her nice clothes and jewelry (although a nice thing to do) also made her a more beautiful trophy wife, part of the larger-than-life image of myself I was unconsciously trying to project as a successful male in America.
I was horrified to discover this and it was only the beginning of discovering the double meaning of a lot of my “unselfish” behavior. This does not mean that I didn’t love my wife, or that I didn’t want to give her nice things because I love her. (Because that was true.) But it does mean that until I am willing to face, confess and make amends for my self-centered taking of God’s place by trying to ‘shape’ the world around me into my image, I can never be the intimate, happy and loving man I was made to be—and now want with all my heart to be.
This has already meant a revolution in the way I live my days and nights. In order to know how to love the people around me, I am having to learn to listen to them and discover what I can do to help them become all they want to be—instead of insisting they play their parts in my drama of being the “Wizard of Austin, Texas.”
Lord, I want to see more clearly where I am occupying the throne in my life in Your place. Help me to become aware when I am on that throne. Show me how to get out of Your way, and how you would have me love and free the people you put in my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.”
Mt. 5:5, The Message
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
Mt 5:8, The Message
Blessed the man, blessed the woman, who listens to me, awake and ready for me each morning, alert and responsive as I start my day’s work. When you find me, you find life, real life, to say nothing of God’s good pleasure.
Prov. 8:32 The Message
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.”
Teilhard de Chardin
by Keith Miller | Weekly Devotional
Now that I’ve decided to say “yes” to God and am willing to follow Christ, I don’t know if I am kidding myself about my motives—I sometimes think I do good things for people so they’ll think I am a good Christian. How can I know for sure I’m not building my own kingdom instead of God’s?
“Mommy, I’m not sure if I am being nice to these people because I like them or because I believe it will make them think I’m a neat kid. And it worries me.Should I quit being so friendly?”
The woman who was showing me this passage was puzzled.It was from her young teenage daughter who was away at camp for the summer. The mother said that she had not worried about such things when she was a girl and asked me what I thought about the letter.
Smiling a little to myself, I realized that I could have written a similar letter at many different times in my life. The problem—of mixed motives—has given me fits in several different ways. Those of us who have a deep need to be accepted and for whom acceptance as a child was subtly contingent on our “being good” may have more trouble with motivational nit-picking than other people. Sometimes in school, I remember worrying about whether I was thoughtful to other kids because I meant it or because by being friendly to them I would likely be elected to class offices. Although I knew at some level that both motives were there and that both were pretty natural, I wanted to besuremy motives were right—like the young girl in the letter.
When I became a Christian, this occasional compulsive need to have pure motives took an especially insidious form, which brought the whole business to a head. Beginning to witness in other churches as a layman, I wondered sometimes if I were going because I wanted to tell people about God . . . or about me. This worried me, since I reallywantedto be God’s person and to do His will. On one occasion I almost called a minister and cancelled a meeting because I wasn’t sure if I were going for God or for Keith. But having put off contacting him until it was very late, I went ahead an drove to the church—knowing that my motives were definitely mixed. Before I spoke that night, I prayed silently that God would use me “if you can use a man as full of himself as I am.” After I started speaking, I forgot all about my motives.
Several days later a man who attended the meeting came to my office. he said that he had been desperate and had almost lost hope, and was considering suicide. But as a result of attending the session that night, he had decided to give life another try. After he left, I sat thinking about what had happened.
In the first place, my desire to keep my motives spotless and pure had almost kept me from helping a man who was really desperate. I saw how totally self-centered this “keeping myself righteous” is. It constitutes a strange kind of Christian idolatry—I was worshiping clean motives. Keeping them spotless was more important somehow than going ahead with mixed motives and letting God possibly help someone through me.
In the second place, it came crashing home to me that my motives arealwaysmixed to some degree-and that most likely they always will be in this life. So that for me the leap of faith in witnessing for Christ is to go, knowing my needs for attention, but taking the risk that I will speak for Him instead of for myself. I must go in faith, praying that God will use me in spite of my self-centeredness.
In fact, after all these years, I simply pray that God will free me to point over my shoulder to Him. Because when it comes right down to it, all I have to tell about is what I have seen and heard of God—how he is helping me to find freedom, occasionally to love other people, and even to accept myself . . . with my mixed motives.
What can we take with us on this journey to we do not know where? What we must take is the knowledge of our own unending ambiguous motives . . . .
The voice that we hear over our shoulders never says, “First be sure that your motives are pure and selfless and then follow me.” If it did, then we could none of us follow. So when later the voice says, “Take up your cross and follow me,” at least part of what is meant by “cross” is our realization that we are seldom any less than nine parts fake. Yet our feet can insist on answering him anyway, and on we go, step after step, mile after mile. How far? How far?
Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
Dear Lord, help me not to be a Christian Pharisee who is more interested in “being ethical” than in loving you and your people. Be with the young girl who wrote the letter to her mother, and help her to understand that sometimes she will have to risk her motives in order to do anything good.Give us both the courage to follow you, even if it means taking the risk, as you did, of being misunderstood.I want to resist phoniness . . . yet without wallowing in the problems of motivation. It all seems very complex, and sometimes I do not even understand my behavior after the fact.So I am offering myself and my subtly mixed motives to you, Jesus, right now, asking that you take me beyond such self-centered preoccupations with taking my own spiritual temperature into your loving perspective. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
“What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then act another, doing things I absolutely despise. . .I obviously need help!…I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one out there who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. Romans 7:15, 17, 24, 25 The Message
