by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Recovery, Weekly Devotional
I’m a Christian and am also newly in a recovery program. But I’m confused about some of the terminology of the spiritual life that seems to me to be more similar to the faith I found before recovery than I had thought, but still different. My question is: In the 12-Step program I’m now in, some people talk about the process as leading toward “recovery.” But others say “This is a program of “transformation.” After almost 27 years, I feel strongly that I am being transformed into a better, more caring, less self-centered person. And I’m happy about that. But “transformation” implies that I’m being changed into a ‘different person’—whereas the word ‘recovery’ implies that I’ve lost something I once had and by working the program I will one day be able to recover it.
Since I’ve started thinking about this, I’m wondering if Christian transformation doesn’t raise the same question. Is God making me into a different person than I feel like I am now? Or does God help me to be a new and better version of the me I used to be?
I realize that this may be a dumb question. But since I can’t imagine myself being the super-pious person some Christians seem to claim they are experiencing being, I am looking for some clarification of where we are headed on either or both spiritual journeys.
Thanks for the good questions. These have been real questions for me, too. But for a long time I just parked them aside. However, after 26 years of being on a spiritual journey that in a sense combined a 12-Step program and a Christian spiritual way, I can at least tell you how these apparent differences are being resolved in my life.
My experience as a Christian and a person in a 12-Step recovery program is basically this: In both cases I needed to recover from the effects of my intense but denied self-centeredness. This putting myself in the center of my life where only God belongs is what Christianity calls Sin (with a capital ‘S’.) In other words, without my realizing it, I wanted my wife and children (and everyone I worked with) to behave the way I thought they should—although I didn’t realize the extent to which that was true.
I finally saw that my behavior and attitudes were hurting the people around me and making them angry. When I heard that if I would surrender the driver’s seat of my life to God and try to learn to live as God made me to live, I finally put myself in his hands, and I began to be able to see my sins (with a small ‘s’) that were things I did because I had put myself and my wants in the driver’s seat of my life instead of trying to find out what God would have me do.
Many years after becoming a Christian my life and relationships became very painful because of drinking alcohol to calm my fears when I tried more openly than I had before to get what I wanted. My self-centeredness tended to override my commitment to doing God’s will as I understood it. So when I went to treatment, I saw that I needed to recover from the use of alcohol. And as a Christian I realized that I needed to let God transform my whole life toward being a more unselfish and loving man.
But over the years as I did the steps and worked the program, I saw that I was being transformed—but not into a different person. No, I felt that I was, for the first time, gradually becoming the loving, honest person I had always wanted to be.
So the bottom line for me now is that both Christianity and the 12 Steps are aimed at helping me become more my authentic self. I say this because I never did feel natural trying to be some kind of pious saint or paragon of Christian virtue or a “perfect person” or “big-book thumper” who always pretends to do the Steps and the principles of the program perfectly.
And the joy for me is that God seems to be helping me to be transformed into the loving person I always wanted to be. Not perfect by any means, but becoming more natural and feeling more at home in my own skin—more the same person in all the different relationships and situations in my whole life.
And by surrendering my life to the God Jesus called Father every day, and asking him to teach me how to be the loving person he made me to be, I feel like I am “coming home” to enjoy being simply the person it feels like I was somehow designed to become—not super good, but more real somehow.
God, thank you that you evidently don’t want us to live a life in which we can’t feel comfortable, but that you’re freeing us to be what we really always wanted to be—but didn’t know how. Help me to surrender to you so you can help me become who I was meant to be all along. 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. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
– Romans 12:1-2, The Message
Fritz Kunkel summarized the difference of recognition of self and God as it unfolds for the individual coming to himself [or herself]. “He who really finds himself finds God… Our true self is the final goal of our religious development. At first it is “I;” then it becomes “We;” and at last it will be “He.”
– Fritz Kunkel, In Search of Maturity
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, what does Jesus say about the fact that good Christians often have serious pain?
I don’t know where the notion came from that committed Christians shouldn’t have pain. But for me pain has been the most important way that I find my way back to God—again and again. I remember hearing Dr. Paul Tournier, a Swiss physician and author and also a Christian, give a lecture on this topic. A physician in the audience asked him a similar question: “Dr. Tournier, how do you get your patients out of their pain?” I was shocked at his answer, as was everyone else in the room.
“Oh, I don’t,” he responded. “Not until they know the meaning of it.”
For most of my life I was very anxious to get out of pain—that is until I tried to surrender my whole life to the God Jesus called Father. It had not occurred to me that personal pain is virtually a necessity for one who hopes to live as a serious citizen of God’s Kingdom/Reign. In fact, as I’ve said before (see this post), pain is like a fire alarm system to help us pinpoint issues we need to recognize and deal with.
There are many kinds of personal pain: pain that results from physical injury or various kinds of pain involving loss of self-esteem or from troubled or broken relationships.
When Jesus first drew his disciples apart from the crowds to teach them, he listed some of the most painful personal experiences or losses people can experience and said to them, “You’re blessed …
- …when you reach the end of your rope.
- … when you feel you have lost that which is most dear to you.
- … when you are content with just who you are, no more, no less.
- … when your commitment to God provokes persecution.
- …every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me…You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble. (Matthew 5, The Message)
I think he was saying that until the disciples and I realize that we are powerless on our own to control our lives, our circumstances and other people’s acceptance and approval of us, we will not really believe that we actually need to surrender our whole lives to God.
When I became a Christian, I surrendered my “overall” life early on with a statement to that effect. But as time went on my behavior (and my family) finally told me that first surrender had evidently not included my insistence on being right in arguments, and over time my ambition that caused me to neglect my family (although I made valiant attempts to make it up to them, etc.). But clearly I was powerless and hurt my family because I was over-focused on succeeding at everything I did—even as a Christian. And I failed as a husband and a father. Only then in the despair and rejection resulting from a failed marriage that I had caused did I hear Christ saying to me that unless I would go back to square one and become like a child in my relationship to God as my intimate Father. I could not see and change my life-long mostly unconscious compulsion to control circumstances and people to get them to act the way I wanted them to. I needed to recognize clearly that inside where no one can see, I am a little child calling out to his intimate Father (abba=daddy). I am asking Him to teach me how to live and relate to other people as loving siblings instead of getting them to be actors in the drama I am producing and in which I am the star.
This stance of putting ourselves on center stage in our daily or professional lives and subtly or openly trying to get the others around us to be supporting actors in our drama is a powerful word picture of the self-centered Sin that we Christians believe only God can overcome. The problem is that God’s process of transforming us into the wonderful, loving and creative people he created us to be cannot, it seems, begin without our giving God permission (to the best of our ability) to teach us who we are and what our role in life will be that can bring happiness and fulfillment to other people and ourselves. And this evidently begins with awareness, confession and surrender.*
One of the greatest mysteries about God’s process of transformation is that we cannot see in our own lives and behavior that we are in fact trying to control the other people around us (however subtly and “lovingly” we may be doing the controlling). Some people who have the most serious problem of controlling their wives, husbands, children or siblings are consciously so “gentle and loving” with their hints and suggestions that they are astounded when accused of controlling. They may even cry or rage and say things like “Controlling?! Good grief! I’m only trying to HELP you!!” Or weep and say, “I’m trying to help you avoid making some terrible mistakes!!” And that may be how they experience their behavior. So solving these difficulties may take some counseling to unravel.
In my case, rejection by family member—when they couldn’t get through to me about my self-centeredness and control issues—caused me so much pain that I went to a treatment center, and there my denial finally cracked open. (I described how this happened for me in The Secret Life of the Soul.) Now I try to listen to the pain in my own life and see how I can relate to it as Jesus did and see what it may have to teach me about how to be more loving the way Jesus loved.
The experience of inter-personal pain is often a shock—whether it is experienced by being rejected by a person or group or the pain of a degenerating spine. The good news is that as I surrender the pain and my future to God I can learn how to walk through the pain of living and understand better how to love people as I’m going through it. And looking back I have realized that the areas of personal pain in my own life are like drawbridges I can put down into other people’s lives and walk with them as I learn how to take their hands and help them know at least one path through their particular kind of pain.
So it is often through our experiences of pain that we become “specialists” in helping people learn how to deal with their experience of that same kind of pain—or at least to know that it is possible to make it through that pain, because we made it through—or are still making it through.[1]
And my journey as a Christian has led me to realize that it is the experience of personal pain that can lead us to see new values in the world and to be more caring and loving to people who are alone in their pain. And since that is one of the purposes of citizens of God’s New Reign in Jesus—to love people and be a part of their healing, we can actually use our painful lonely experiences to become the loving people we were designed to be—if we can learn to look for and notice when other people are in pain…and when appropriate, to walk a few steps with them.
Dear Lord, thank you for realizing that the various kinds of secret pain in my life can be sources of wisdom as to how to love you and other people specifically when they are going through the loneliness of solitary pain. Help me to learn to listen and let people tell about their pain instead of rushing in with fixes and all kinds of “answers” (before they are even asking for help). Thank you that you didn’t promise us “answers” in the usual sense but said you would be present with us in our pain—and that would somehow transform us to learn how to love others in their pain. Help me to be willing to go and sit with people in their pain—as you have done through those who have visited me. 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.
-Romans 12:1, The Message
Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self.
-Mark 8: 35, The Message
Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth…and another way to put it: You’re to be light, bringing out the God colors in the world … (and the way you’re to be light is) to shine…be generous with your life. By opening up to others you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
-Mt. 5:13-26, The Message
* I’m not being “Pollyanna” here. I still want to get out of pain as quickly as possible. But I’m not quite as frantic about having pain because I have realized that all I have learned by going through a good bit of pain has helped me to become more sensitive and loving to other people—and more aware of God’s presence in my real life.
[1] If you have had this experience, you might consider taking a look at Facing Codependence.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, as I have watched you from a distance for the past twenty-five years, you have not been a Christian who just made up his mind to be a Christian and just relax and be one. You seem to keep wrestling with the faith as if it is a continuous process after you are saved (or accepted by God). Why would you have to struggle with faith problems when you’ve been saved?
That’s a good question. It implies to me that you (or people you know) see Christianity as a transaction between God and a person like joining the YMCA or signing up as a Democrat or Republican. Once you’re in, you’re in. Of course you may have to pay dues, but the decisions are over once you’ve made the choice to join.
But for me, a serious relationship with God is more like a marriage than joining something. A marriage involves an initial commitment, but if one has a real marriage there is a commitment to ongoing communication and growth as the relationship deepens. Here’s a thumbnail sketch of how the life of faith has gone for me.
When I was a little my mother told me that God is real and taught me to pray. I continued to “say my prayers” at night, and prayed for help when I felt vulnerable or like I might fail or not get what I wanted.
Then by the time I was twelve or thirteen I decided that “God is real”—not symbolic like Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny. So when asked to, I stood with a bunch of other young people in front of the huge congregation at Boston Avenue Methodist Church in Tulsa and “said the words” that the Methodist church had for a commitment to Christ. I was doing what I had been told was the next right step. And according to the Church, I was officially saved and going to heaven. And I am not doubting the validity of the churches confirmation rite. But for me, inside my mind, I was to experience a lot about which I hadn’t been told.
That was when puberty hit. I began having two kinds of consciousness. I had my usual mind that dealt with schoolwork and how to be better at sports, etc. But when I was tempted to do things I was pretty sure God wouldn’t encourage us to do (like masturbate, think about girls and sex, etc.) I stepped out of the “God room” in my mind and into an empty windowless film room. Having a secret space to go where God was not invited didn’t seem like that big a deal for a long time since I’d never been told that God would “get me” if I wasn’t good.
Then life brought devastating situations that I could not change or make sense of by myself. My only brother was killed in WWII. A few years later I walked beside Dad as his damaged heart weakened, then killed him. I sat with Mother (taking the night shift in the hospital) a few short years later as cancer took her life, an inch at a time.
I began to ask questions I’d never asked, like “What is death?” and “Why do people hurt and kill each other?” I read serious books about what it might mean really to know God and learn how life was designed to be lived—since I believed he was its creator. I knew that I didn’t know God as I knew other people.
I had married a beautiful and very intelligent young woman. We were in love and I went to work to start fulfilling the American dream of raising a family and “becoming successful.” But when my mother was dying I realized that life wasn’t what I’d thought it would be. And then one day on a roadside in a car I had a deep intuitive knowing that I needed to surrender my whole life to God, and that he would guide me into the truth about life.
When I started to live out my commitment (to this God Jesus called Father) in every area of my life, I began to write books about the journey. The books succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I studied theology and then psychology, writing and lecturing in many places across the world about what I was discovering. Before I knew it, I had been given more affirmation and success than I could ever have predicted.
The experiences about which I’ve written might be seen by some people as struggling with faith. But to me it as been more like a struggle between myself and God over who would be in charge of my life.
Sometimes I wish it were as easy as I’ve heard people say it is for them—easy just to surrender, keep out of the driver’s seat of my own life and allow God to be in control all the time. It has not been so for me. At each stage of my learning, I was being asked to face personal issues that came up. I would pray and finally realize that I was putting something ahead of God. And after much prayer and counsel, I would see what I needed to give to God, finally surrender that and have a new burst of freedom.
Somewhere along the way—after some years of notoriety and the deference that comes with it—life lost its joy, and I was bewildered. I became aware of “something” about myself that was totally resistant to surrendering to God. I didn’t learn exactly what it was for years. But I was baffled at the uneasiness and frustration I was experiencing—while living a life of effectiveness and glamor caring for many people everywhere I went. I was really confused, but could not see what the matter with me was.
People close to me sensed that somewhere very deep in my life I was not the unselfish person whom people seemed to experience in relating to me. (The person whom I consciously was much of the time.)
Eventually a little beer or wine morphed into a lot of Scotch whiskey. Even several years of prayer and psychological and spiritual counseling did not uncover what the problem was. My behavior deteriorated and I acted out some of my fear and frustration in very self-centered and immoral behavior leading to a divorce and to the crash of the great life and work I’d been given to do.
Finally my misery led me to a treatment center where I learned that the thing I would not surrender to God was so deep and so well defended that I’d even repressed it from my own sight and sincerely thought God was driving my life. I came to the place where I saw no other way, no other solution than to agree to surrender whatever it was that I was hiding, if God would show it to me, as frightening as that prospect was. And at last I saw that it was my self-centered need to be in charge of my life and to make sure that I could get my own gigantic need for love and attention met. Facing and surrendering that was the most frightening experience of my life. I felt that if I surrendered my future, I might be nothing. (I have described the experience in a book.) The morning after facing my deep self-centeredness and my unconscious need to control even God, I realized that the self-centeredness and need to control had been my underlying denied problem all my life.
So the answer to your question, “Why have I continued to struggle with God and faith if I were truly saved or converted when I first committed my whole life to God” is this: In my conscious experience I gave all of my life I could see to as much of God as I could understand, asking him to show me what to do. And as God began to shed light on what I might do for him, that same light revealed things I needed to surrender in order for me to be able to do what he gave me to do. My struggle has been to recognize, confess, and be willing to give up each character defect he showed me—and then ask God for the power and the courage to live and love people, trusting Him with the outcome of my efforts.
Twenty-six years ago I began a new adventure of faith by seeing and confessing my deepest sin of wanting to control my destiny. On the new adventure, I have been learning more about how to think about other people and their adventure and to help those who are seeking to find the dreams God has put in their lives—and to help some of them accomplish those dreams.
***
I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.
– Galatians 5:4, The Message
Cultivate your own relationship with God, but don’t impose it on others. You’re fortunate if your behavior and your belief are coherent. But if you’re not sure, if you notice that you are acting in ways inconsistent with what you believe—some days trying to impose your opinions on others, other days just trying to please them—then you know that you’re out of line. If the way you live isn’t consistent with what you believe, then it’s wrong.
– Romans 14:22, The Message
The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him [or her]. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you.
– Galatians 3:11, The Message
Lord, thank you that you have been so loving and patient with me as I have struggled to see not only your will for my life, but also as I have struggled to learn to live each day asking what your priorities are for me today, right now. And thank you that my job is not to try to change other people—especially family members—but just to love them as you have loved me. In Jesus’ name, amen.
by Keith Miller | Bible, Christian Living, Small Groups, Weekly Devotional
This is a response to the second question of a two-part question that came up after John Burke (Lead Pastor at Gateway Church) interviewed me last month. I responded to the first of the two-part question on last week’s blog. Last week’s question was about why I think the kind of small group I had mentioned was important. My response is that Jesus spent approximately two-thirds of his three-year ministry with a small group of twelve men—the same twelve men. And all Jesus left was that small group and the Spirit in their midst. Further, Paul’s ministry was largely devoted to starting and continuing to correspond with and mentor a few small groups scattered in cities around the Roman Empire.
So now I’m getting to the second question: “What is the purpose of the small groups you talked about, and do these groups prepare Christians to fulfill the Great Commandment to issue God’s invitation to the world?”
What is the overall purpose of an “adventure” group?
Although the members of an “adventure” group learn about and experience ways to pray as Jesus taught the Twelve, and they examine relevant scripture passages, the overall purpose is for the group members to experiment with and actually experience receiving and giving the love of Jesus in their real time everyday lives and relationships. The experiment begins with every member agreeing that for thirteen weeks they will assume that the God Jesus called Father is real. And for the thirteen-week period the participants will live as if they had actually surrendered their entire lives to God. This includes an agreement among the group members not to argue about God’s existence or different interpretations of the Gospel. Instead they will be guided to experiment with how to love the people in their personal and vocational lives beginning with the other group members. They learn how to share in the group meetings by listening without interrupting or challenging what anyone else says they have experienced, and by reporting what happens—the failures as well as positive experiences—when they consciously take God with them clear through their days and nights. Each group member agrees to pray for the others every day during the experiment about the things shared in the group.
This group experience is not like any Bible study or sharing group most people have ever been in. The purpose is not to evangelize your neighbors or become expert Bible students; it is to learn (by doing) how to carry out the new command that Jesus gave the disciples when he was about to leave them: “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.” (Jn. 13:34-35, The Message)
Since we are also called to love the world, the primary purpose of Jesus’ group and these groups is to learn how to love God and do his will in all areas of our own lives, secular as well as “religious.” And as we try to do some simple things to learn how to receive and give love—with the Father and each other, we will be acquiring the core characteristics, attitudes and behaviors that we will need later when we go out to meet the needs of those who have been marginalized in our culture—the hungry, the sick, those without clothing and shelter, etc. I’ve always thought it was strange that Jesus didn’t send the Twelve out on missions until not too long before the crucifixion. He evidently wanted them to be sure to go out with love as well as a perspective in everything they did.
Bruce Larson and I worked for years with dozens of groups to build a course that is emotionally safe. We did this by developing rules (and making these rules clear) that keep the members from putting people down who risk sharing their reality, (i.e. not “fixing” them, offering suggestions or corrections) that would shame them for not participating or for “making mistakes”. The leader and all the group members will help each other to learn how to love and assure every person’s safety in the group. (This experience can be invaluable later in missions to people who have been abused in their worlds.)
Almost anyone can lead an Adventure group. In the meetings, Bruce and I face and respond first (on CD’s) to every question to which group members are asked to respond. And the group leader responds third. So an appropriate level of vulnerability is established before other group members are asked to share, which allows the group to become safer and closer more quickly than is usually possible otherwise. Also, any participant can choose to “pass” on responding to any of the questions or exercises without being shamed or criticized. These guidelines create a safe and more free and open atmosphere than many participants have ever experienced anywhere. An atmosphere in which the real issues, the fears, the joys and the reality can be shared—of trying to commit their lives and relationships to God in the real life contexts of their own families, church situations and vocational and social lives.
So in this safer atmosphere, the participants try various experiments in their real life situations (outside the group, between sessions) of praying, handling the many disappointments of admitting when they are wrong and asking forgiveness. As they do so, they are building a library of experiences—living stories—from the experiences they will personally go through and share with the group during meetings. And while they are carrying out these experiments between group meetings, the group members will also be examining some of Jesus’ stories (parables) and considering with which character they identify—thus adding more living stories to their educational base.
When people close to Jesus (including the Twelve) asked about the stories he pointed out that they (whom he was teaching) were getting a good picture of how the Kingdom of God works in their lives. But other people whom they encountered along the way—people who hadn’t had this much teaching from Jesus and so didn’t understand—for those people stories created readiness—readiness to hear more. (See Mark 3:10-11, The Message, quoted at the end of this blog.)
What usually happens—invisibly at first—is that in the process of being heard and accepted as they are, people who may have been church members for years, come to realize that love has crept in and replaced loneliness and the sense of not fitting—feelings that apparently all people long to overcome.
As to the sharing, it often happens that when someone who has “passed” several weeks in a row finally speaks, he or she may be a different person than the one whom you met at the first meeting.
We believe that these experiences are all parts of the transformation process Jesus said was essential. It is like being “born anew from on high.” And friends, when you see a fellow adventurer being transformed before your eyes, week after week, it is impossible to tell you what this can do to your faith and ability to love God and other people. It seems that one must experience this personally to understand how important it is.
There is also a strong rule about keeping everything that is said in the meetings confidential. At first this seems strange but in the end, this creates an unbelievable sense of freedom and honesty. I remember when I started the first group of this kind in a church in Norman, OK in the 1950’s I had explained the group plan to the pastor and gotten his permission to start the group. We were meeting in our home. After several weeks the pastor called me and said, “What are you telling the people about money?”
I said, “Why are you asking?”
He said, “Well, three of the couples have started tithing since the group started meeting and they were a little vague when I talked to them.”
I laughed because tithing hadn’t even been mentioned. But the minister was so happy that he said, “I’m sending another couple over to join your group.”
“I’m sorry, Joe,” I said. “The rules are that no new members are allowed to join a new group after the second week. In this intimate atmosphere running in new people every week means starting to build the trust level all over again. We may do another group later if some people want to.”
The minister then asked, “Well what is this ‘secrecy’ all about? Where did you ever come up with a rule about people not sharing what’s going on in a group?”
I smiled and said, “Jesus. Several times Jesus told people who’d been helped by his ministry, “Don’t tell anyone.”
This may sound like an unusual way to operate a group, but people who have been together for thirteen weeks sharing their reality, the good news and the bad, sickness and celebrations, have reported time and again that long before the thirteen weeks are over, participants report that they find themselves becoming more caring for people around them outside the group, even difficult people and even in painful situations. But these feelings and attitudes of really beginning to trust and share are new and a little scary for people at first. And we are convinced they need a safe, non-critical place to report failures as well as successes. (We still attend such groups after all this time.)
This sort of group experience can create a spiritual culture of people who want to experiment with really trying to offer to God the living out of their eating, sleeping, working, walking around lives for Christ. (See Romans 12:1, The Message)
No group structure or process is for everyone, of course. But we have found that unless a large church finds a way for new people to learn to love each other and pray specifically for each other in a face to face atmosphere, over a period of time the back door of that church will become bigger than the front—no matter how gifted and committed the teaching pastors are. And our experience indicates that many group graduates go on mission trips after a thirteen-week group, or join a mission group in their own city, or teach a class in the church. They report that because of their experience in these groups, they find themselves listening to and praying for or with the people they are going out to help.
I have not tried to give you a comprehensive picture of the course content. If you would like to read about the course materials, click here.
And one last thing: because of years of being in adventure group meetings of various kinds, I realize that people are all different in their needs, hopes and dreams. And I have discovered that my job is not to change anyone—even any of you who may be reading this blog. So if what we have learned is not something that you feel comfortable trying, we won’t bug you. But this is just my answer to the person who wanted to know the purpose of this kind of group experience.
We are starting up again working in local churches after many years of working in different cultures here and overseas. If you choose to use this group experience as a part of your Christian formation effort, we’ll be glad to do what we can to help that happen.
***
“When they were off by themselves, those who were close to him, along with the Twelve, asked about the stories. He told them, “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom—you know how it works. But to those who can’t see it yet, everything comes in stories, creating readiness, nudging them toward receptive insight. These are people—
Whose eyes are open but don’t see a thing,
Whose ears are open but don’t understand a word,
Who avoid making an about-face and getting forgiven.”
-Mark 4:10-12, 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, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s.”
-1st Jn. 4:17, The Message
Lord, Thank you that you took the time to live the life of love with the few people you chose to deliver the Father’s invitation to the rest of us, so we’d know it’s really livable. Give me trust at this time to believe that I will get my work done if I risk interrupting my busy schedule long enough to live your life with a few others…again. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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 | Christian Living, Prayer
Keith, what can I do when my prayers are boring—even to me? How can I pray more attentively in a way that leads toward the transformation of my real life?
Years ago, when I first began taking a life of communicating with God seriously, I felt uneasy with silence while praying. So I filled most of the communication time with words. But as the years rolled on and I read the lives of many of the saints of the church, (and met some very loving and unselfish Christians), I noticed that a number of them seemed to view communication with God as a time for them to listen to Him (since they had the idea that the purpose of prayers was to let God change them—instead of informing Him about what He should be doing each day).
At about that time Paul Tournier told me that he and his wife, Nellie, spent time together each day listening for God, and writing down what came to them in the silence. I still didn’t do anything until some years later when another very reality-oriented spiritual friend told me she did the same thing the Tourniers did, and it helped her a lot. So, feeling a little uncertain, I began to listen for ten minutes, writing whatever came to me. At first what came was a cross between a laundry list and a “to do” list for a Daytimer. The first thing I wrote down was “get your car washed.” I shook my head but wrote it down, along with calls to make, immoral thoughts that came up as I was praying, and financial worries.
When I reported that listening for God didn’t seem to work very well, my friend pointed out that I was getting my day organized, and the immoral thoughts could be transferred to my prayer, asking God to help me with them. “Besides,” my friend said, “you’ve told me that you have spent a good many years tuned into other stations in your mind. It may take weeks or months to be able to sort out the way God talks to you.”
I am amazed at what has happened. After many years of listening this way, I now often get a list of everything I need to do for that day in about five to eight minutes. Later I reorder the list, and my day is planned, and—after several years of doing this—I added almost nothing to the list except for new things coming into my office that day. But often the last couple of minutes I’d just sit in silence and listen.
And in that small space of silence, one morning I heard, “Keith, you are a precious child and I love you”—and I wept.
I didn’t know whether that came from God or just the deepest part of me. But I wept the first time I wrote it down, because I had never heard anything like that in my mind before. All the inner voices I’d listened to all my life seemed to be critical, pointing out faults and mistakes I had made, or was afraid I would make. And in that last few minutes I have also become aware of ideas for creative projects, many of which I later investigated and some of which I have carried out.
But some days, God seemed to be silent. That is, I didn’t feel or hear God’s presence. And I guess I had the idea that I wasn’t doing something correctly. I smile now as I think of the way I often used to get busy at such times doing religious things, as if by doing that I could get God’s attention. I would increase my time of reading the Bible, or lengthen my (talking) prayer time—focusing on intercession. But most of the time God was still silent.
I told a friend about this not feeling God’s presence. I told him that some days I didn’t seem to have any faith. He smiled and said, “You seem to think that if you don’t have a spiritual feeling you don’t have any faith?” When I looked a little puzzled, he said, “Keith, if you have the feelings that God is with you, you don’t need any faith.” He went on to tell me how someone had pointed out to him that on those days when God is silent, and there are no spiritual goose bumps, that could be an opportunity to give God a special gift—as a matter of fact about the only gift we can really ever give Him: a day of living in raw faith.
So now when God is silent, instead of feeling I’m losing out on a relationship with God, I tell God that I love Him. I say something like, “Thank you, God for this chance to tell you that I love you by risking doing what I think may be your will today and living in faith—with no feelings that you are here at all. I love you! Have a good day!”
Then I try to do something for someone in trouble, or need, a small thing, a call or visit with someone who is lonely. And often I feel much better at the end of such “silent” days in which I haven’t worried about taking my spiritual temperature.
Lord, thank you that you have given us a life of love, instead of just a religion. Help us learn to let love loose in our lives—and through them. Amen.
It’s best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose out on a thing.”
Matt. 10:40 The Message
Have you ever tried to spend a whole hour doing nothing but listening to the voice that dwells deep in your heart? … It is not easy to enter into the silence and reach beyond the many boisterous and demanding voices of our world and to discover there the small intimate voice saying: “You are my Beloved Child, on you my favor rests.” Still, if we dare to embrace our solitude and befriend our silence, we will come to know that voice.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Life of the Beloved
