by Keith Miller | Bible, Christian Living, Prayer, Recovery, Weekly Devotional
Keith, what if we have let God in our lives and into the driver’s seat and nothing happened? I still have the same struggles that I have always had. Is there ever a way out? I am really wondering and feel as though I am constantly in a spiritual battle between God and the devil. Thanks, R.
This is a question that most Christians don’t have the guts to ask. And yet for anyone who has consciously and seriously tried to put God in the driver’s seat of her or his life, it is the question to ask.
There are a couple of times Jesus dealt directly with that question. “What’s necessary to put God in the driver’s seat where the decisions are made?” One is recorded in Matt. 19. A rich young man came to Jesus and told him that he wanted to quit being a listener and start being one of Jesus’ committed disciples—which in terms of our conversation would be saying, “I am ready to put the God you call Father in the driver’s seat of my life.”
Jesus said in effect, “Great, “If you want to enter the life of God, just do what he tells you.”
The young man said, “What in particular?
Jesus said, “Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as you do yourself.”
(R., can you say that you are following what Jesus says? I suspect you are from the tone of your inquiry.) Anyway, the young man said in effect, “I’ve done all that.” (I’ve put God in the driver’s seat and am willing to keep all his commandments.)
Then Jesus must have looked at the man and said, “This young man is a serious player.” But then Jesus says something completely of the wall. He asked the young man to give up the thing that was really most important to him that wasn’t even a “bad” thing, but was the thing that bottom-line motivated and determined his most crucial decisions (what was really in the driver’s seat of his life—but he had never seen it that way.) Jesus told him that if you really want to trust God with your whole life, then, “go sell all your possessions; give everything to the poor. All your wealth will then be in heaven. Then come follow me.”
What I think Jesus is saying to the young man, and what I heard him saying to me (that for years stopped me in my tracks) was that I already had a god sitting in the driver’s seat of my life—in fact several as it turned out–and until I was willing to see and admit that something or someone who was not God was the most important thing in my life (“in the driver’s seat determining my private decisions”), I could not really surrender my whole life to God at all.
The young man in the story’s response was: “That was the last thing the young man expected to hear. And so crestfallen, he walked away. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and he couldn’t bear to let go.[1]”
What Jesus does still, it seems to me, is to help us see that when we come and want to follow God totally, we already have a god we do not realize is a trump card to our attempts to put God in the driver’s seat (or maybe several gods that we obey when they call.) The young man’s god was his money, or possessions. And until we see and admit that these gods which unconscious to us are already in the driver’s seat, we are not free to surrender our whole lives to God and are baffled that we are constantly in internal battles we don’t understand.
I was absolutely shocked when I tried to see what was really most important to me—because consciously God was number one. Some of the things I have had to admit were keeping me from surrendering my whole life were—at different times—financial security, sexual fantasies or actions, the love of my wife or one of my children (more than anything), my vocational success, drinking too much, my reputation as a fine Christian man, and my writing and speaking ministry. A mentor helped me realize that each of these things was at times more important than God, when I would spend time thinking about and doing one of them to the detriment of my clear duties as a father, husband, and Christian man “surrendered wholly to God.” Many of these things were not even “bad” things, but they kept my focus on me and what I wanted, instead of what I knew was the priority of God for me, and were detrimental to my growing up to be the man God had in mind for me to become.[2]
But after many years of meeting with other men and women wanting to follow Jesus and be his people, I finally realized that although I can’t just “put God first,” I can tell him that I am willing to, and give Him permission to show me those things that I have consciously and unconsciously put in the driver’s seat of my life and relationships. In fact working with individuals and small groups to help them –and me—to discover, confess and commit God those other hidden gods, so that together we can uncover and achieve the dreams and vocations God has for each us—this became my life’s work for God.
These positive changes in direction came about when some bad decisions I made because of obeying some of the competitive gods I had not faced caused me such pain that I became willing to surrender my entire life to God, realizing that only He could give me the courage and insight to even want Him that much.
But the other part of what happened when I specifically set out to give God permission to sit in the driver’s seat in my life was that I agreed to start doing the disciplines that could help me learn how God wants me to live. For me this has entailed learning all I could about what Jesus said the Father wants us to do in the new Kingdom (Reign) of God in his people’s lives. I read the scriptures, concentrating first on the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1-2), the parables, and the teachings of Jesus describing the character and purposes of God, realizing that God wants us to live out of these same characteristics. That includes loving the poor and marginalized people, but also Jesus said people will know we are his followers by the way we (Christians) love each other. (John 13:35) And I prayed almost every day about what I was learning, asking God to show me where my life needed to be different, and to help me to stop clinging to my old ways of running my life as I learned how to let God be in control.
And when I saw how Jesus said God wants us to live, I examined my life and saw not only the false gods in the driver’s seat, but also self-centeredness everywhere. And when I discovered I had hurt someone I had to learn to confess to God, then go and confess to the person I had harmed and make amends to that person. All of this became part of a running conversation with God about the life of loving I was discovering that I’d always wanted to live but was afraid to try because I might look “pious” or “holier than thou.” Now I don’t care. I just want to love people and learn how to use the gifts God has given me in the process.
And all I can tell you is that what has happened to me has made me more loving, aware of my good traits as well as those which derail my best intensions and conscious motivations.
I started not to tell you all this, but since I found that God accepts us the minute we come to him in as complete trust as we have, I have discovered the life I always suspected might be out there somewhere for me. I am still only a child trying to obey his intimate heavenly “daddy.” But I also care enough about you to tell you these things, whatever you may think me. And that—as anyone who has known me many years will tell you—is a real miracle.
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved 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 13:34-35
The Message
“I am talking about a revolutionary way of living. Religion isn’t something to be added to our other duties, and thus make our lives more complex. The life with God is the center of life, and all else is remodeled and integrated by it. It gives singleness of eye. The most important thing is not to be perpetually passing out cups of cold water to a thirsty world. We can get so fearlessly busy trying to carry out the second commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” that we are undeveloped in our devoted life to God as well as neighbor”
Thomas Merton
A Testament of Devotion
“We live in a world of unreality and dreams. To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence…. To empty ourselves of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and the true center is outside the world, this is to consent…. Such consent is love.”
Simone Weil
Waiting for God
“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which use to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.”
Alcoholics Anonymous
Third Edition, page 83-84
P.S. If you want to check out a way a Christian or group of Christians can use the 12 Steps as a guide to spiritual wholeness see A Hunger for Healing: The Twelve Steps as a Classic Model for Christian Spiritual Growth.
[1] If you want to see a case in which Jesus did the same kind of helping someone see the ‘god’ that was already in the driver’s seat of her life, but upon seeing that god was ready to put Jesus’ God first, see the story of the woman at the well—and what happened to her life when she made the decision to put God before her secret god (i.e. Relationships with men—or sex.) See John 4.
[2] R. – I am not suggesting that you have any particular ‘gods’—just sharing what happened to me when I faced this very question.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Dear Keith, I’m wondering if you could talk about God’s love as you understand it. If God’s love is “unconditional,” as people often claim it is, why does he need people to accept him? Isn’t that a ‘condition’? It seems contradictory to me for Christians to claim that God loves everyone and then that only those who love him back a certain way get a reward. I’m hoping you have something insightful to say about your own faith that will help me sort through this issue. Thanks, Emily
This is a great question, Emily, one that theologians have wrestled with a lot. All I can do here in this blog is try to tell you how I’ve come to deal with it in my own faith journey.
I believe that God loves all people like a perfect parent would love his or her child, regardless of what the child has done. For me, God’s unconditional love doesn’t require anyone to accept him. The greatest gift he has given us (besides his unconditional love) is free will, which allows us to decide whether we will live life with God or without God. Therefore, because of God’s integrity, he will not take away this free will and coerce us or manipulate us to accept him. Whichever choice we make, his love continues unconditionally.
I’m assuming that when you say “get a reward” you are referring to eternal life with God in heaven after death. But I am convinced that this eternal life is not a reward for “loving him back in a certain way;” it is a relationship with God and other people that we are invited to start now. So if we choose to live a life with God, what does that mean? God invites everyone to live Life with him. Jesus told us before he died that the Spirit or Personality that we saw in him is going to be with us and within us as our tutor and companion in a relationship with God that begins now and never ends. This life involves learning from God by seeing how Jesus and other Christians on God’s adventure are living that life in a loving way without hesitation or equivocation.
When we make this choice we re-position ourselves to allow God to be in charge of everything in our lives, and to become child-like students who want to know everything about God and his nature, and to learn to live more and more as loving co-creators and healers with God. The more we can surrender our own wills and let God lead us, teach us, and transform us, the more we learn the freeing power of being loved just as we are, without doing anything to earn this love. This is living in the creative image of God. The more that we do this (live the life that Christ modeled) the more that we realize the creative potential that we possess and the more fulfilled we can be.
This transformational process is not generally what is seen in the religious institutions of the world. This transformation is something that happens to individuals in a family/community that sees itself as part of the transformational family of God that is being actualized now. This life is based on a continuing and constant prayerful and intimate relationship with God’s Personality (or Spirit) within us and with other Christ followers in a safe and sharing community, helping each other as they are loving hurting people in the ‘worlds’ each inhabit.
Those who do not choose to accept God’s invitation to life with Him, choose separation from God (which is a primary definition of hell.) And I suspect it makes God very sad when people choose to try to reinvent life in ways destined to separate them from God and other people.
Emily, I hope these thoughts in this limited format will help you sort through this issue. There is so much more I wanted to say about God’s unconditional love and about how a life with God has been transforming me and other people I have been in community with. Perhaps I will say more in future blogs. And if what I’ve said today raises any other questions for you, please let me know.
Jesus, thank you for telling us that your spirit or personality would be with us and within us to teach us and be our companion if we choose to live a life with you. And thank you for the enormous gift of freedom to make our own choices—and that you can patiently love us just as we are even when we make choices that do not bring fulfillment or the realization of our potential. Help me to make good choices that are in accordance with what you had in mind when I was born. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus, thank you for telling us that your spirit or personality would be with us and within us to teach us and be our companion if we choose to live a life with you. And thank you for the enormous gift of freedom to make our own choices—and that you can patiently love us just as we are even when we make choices that do not bring fulfillment or the realization of our potential. Help me to make good choices that are in accordance with what you had in mind when I was created. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus said these things. Then, raising his eyes in prayer, he said:
Father, it’s time. Display the bright splendor of your Son
So the Son in turn may show your bright splendor.
You put him in charge of everything human
So he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge.
And this is the real and eternal life:
That they know you,
The one and only true God,
And Jesus Christ, whom you sent.
– John 17:1-4, The Message
Peter replied, “Master, to whom would we go? You have the words of real life, eternal life. We’ve already committed ourselves, confident that you are the Holy One of God.”
– 1 John 5:21, The Message
And we know that the Son of God came so we could recognize and understand the truth of God—what a gift!—and we are living in the Truth itself, in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This Jesus is both True God and Real Life. Dear children, be on guard against all clever facsimiles.
– 1 John 5:21, The Message
God’s mercy is not merely therapy for a few individuals beset by guilt…God does not dole out mercy like cookies only for good, repentant children. God’s mercy is not conditioned by our response. God is mercy. So, wide is wider than we guess…. Our calling is to live in mercy…. Recalling God’s unmerited mercy … we absolve one another, enacting the good news. ‘In Jesus Christ,’ we say, ‘we are forgiven.’ So we look into each other’s eyes without illusions; we are sinners all. Yet we embrace each other in the mercy, the wide, wide, mercy of God.
David Buttrick, The Mystery and the Passion
“If men and women today began by the thousands to experience the depths of Jesus Christ in a transforming way, there would simply be no place for their expression of experience to fit into present-day straitjackets of Christianity.”
Gordon Cosby, Sermon
If any of you are interested in one simple way to accept this invitation from God there is a free download, “How Can I Find God?”, here.
by Keith Miller | Bible, Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Who is God, and what is the Bible really all about? I try to tell my children that God is love. But I see God’s people in the Bible (and in history today) slaughter people in God’s name. Can you give me a simple definition of who God is and what the Bible is all about?
That’s a very good question—probably impossible to answer in a brief blog post. But since I have spent the past four years almost full time reading virtually nothing but the Bible (trying to write a book that Andrea and I hope will shed a little light on that very question) here is my two minute impossible “answer” to your impossible questions.
In very simplistic terms the Bible is the story about God—who created the world and everything in it. The story line of the Bible deals with God’s experiment as “Father” with human beings, or you might say—with family life. According to the story, God “Fathered” human beings as male and female, and he gave only them free choice so they could experience love. (Without being able to choose, humans could not have made a decision whether to love God or one another or not.) The tragedy of the plot is that from the beginning (Adam and Eve) chose not to respond to the Father’s love and tutoring about what life and reality are about—“what is good and what is evil.” And the first humans rebelled and tried to replace God as their own teacher of what is good and what is evil.
From that point the Bible is the story of how we human beings—men and women—have scratched and clawed (either with bared claws or wearing velvet gloves) to get what we want that we think will make us “happy” and justified our choices because we have put ourselves and our self-centered desires in the center of our life where only God, who created everything, belongs.
In the pages of the Bible are all the Father’s recurring offers to transform whatever we get as the result of our efforts (failure, injury, disappointment or hollow success) into what we need in order to be transformed into what we were ‘designed’ to become: co-hosts in the Father’s family as we join God in inviting the rest of humanity into the intimate, caring relationship with the Father and each other to learn how life and loving were made to work. In this relationship, the Father has offered to limit his power and personally tutor each of us about how to interact with him, each other and the environment—teaching and modeling the same self-limiting love with which God relates to us. And the idea seems to be that it is the Father’s love that lubricates all of the rough edges of life and turns them into the wisdom and knowledge that can make existence a heaven or hell—now and always.
Since all of us human beings have consciously or unconsciously put ourselves and our wants to satisfy our self-centered desire in the center of our lives and relationships (thus creating what we call Sin: replacing God as the source of the knowledge of what is good and evil for us and those around us to do,) we all resist accepting the Father as our tutor about how to live and relate.
This unconscious but universal tendency to replace God (Sin) blinds us to who God is and who we were made to become. We project our own need to control onto God, punish those who disagree with us and use his name to enforce our own will on others. And we have honestly taught and projected our conclusions onto God. So we lost the original vision of the self-limiting love of the Father. For centuries we see the Father touching the lives of those who would trust him, and sending messages through these “prophets” about our screwing things up. Invariably we killed or ignored these prophet-messengers.
Finally Jesus came to make clear what the Father is like—how the Father’s self-limiting love looks walking in our homes and neighborhoods as we face our political and personal dishonesty and controlling relationships. At last we could see and interact with the Father person in Jesus.
But people’s projections of their own unconscious self-centered experience and ideas about God overshadowed Jesus’ self-limiting love. They could not accept the fact that God would transcend even legalistic justice to forgive them, love them and teach them how to love each other and even their enemies, so that love could be the guide for Reality oriented life and relationships.
Experiencing the fact that we could not believe that kind of self-limiting love (because we couldn’t do it ourselves), Jesus limited his power to escape or retaliate and instead died for us—the unmistakable act of self-limiting love. (“i.e. if I stepped in front of you and took a bullet to save your life, you would know that I care for you.)
So in Jesus’ life and death we see God as the loving, intimate Father we always longed for but most of us could not find, who limited his power to punish us in order to give life and freedom to us if we will accept as we see it in Jesus.
That’s the impossible short version of the answer the Bible story gives to our impossible questions: “Who is God?” and “What’s the Bible story about?”
“It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us.” Ephesians 2:1-2, The Message
***
“The person who knows my commandments and keeps them, that’s who loves me. And the person who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself plain to him.”
Judas (not Iscariot) said, “Master, why is it that you are about to make yourself plain to us but not to the world?”
“Because a loveless world,” said Jesus, “is a sightless world. If anyone loves me, he will carefully keep my word and my Father will love him—we’ll move right into the neighborhood.” John 14:21-24, The Message
***
“How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.” Ephesians 1:2-4 , The Message
Lord, thank you that you have not given us a complex philosophical system that only the brilliant and educated could understand. But instead you loved us as your children and gave us a story to walk in with you and each other. And thank you Lord, that it’s a love story about forgiveness. In Jesus name, amen.
“God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.” 1 John 4: 17-18, The Message
