How Can I Become A Full Citizen In God’s Kingdom?

Keith, I’ve been going to church off and on for years, and I’ve always prayed to God, even if I didn’t attend church. But lately prayer has gotten pretty boring—like talking to old people who don’t listen and just repeat the same stories. But you act like you think God is real and might say something important… or at least interesting. If that’s right why do you feel that way?

The truth is that for a long time prayer was just something I did because I believed there was a God and I was taught that Christians pray. But through a series of sicknesses and deaths in my family of origin, I found myself the last member of our family at age 28. I was at the end of my rope, and didn’t know what to do. I decided to surrender my whole life to God.* At that point I didn’t know how to live for (and with) God in business, at home or how to handle anger, fear, etc. that I still faced on a regular basis as a Christian. But after that attempt at surrender, something happened to me. Without knowing just how it happened, I found that God became more real to me than I could have imagined. The relevant point here is that I started praying about some of the real and non-religious questions and relationship problems that affected my important day-in day-out happiness, self-esteem, and sense of value (or lack thereof) in everyday life. I was told to just offer the issues to God, and pray for guidance in dealing with them. This made prayer a lot more interesting. (Just as I listened to my Dad better than I ever had when I finally got the courage to ask him about sex.) But my prayer life changed most drastically not too many years ago.

One night a few years ago I sat up in bed in the dark, unable to get back to sleep. “God,” I prayed, “I love you. But to be honest, my prayer life is just not working. Please give me a hand.”

I opened the Bible to Matthew 18 and tried to read, but my spirit wasn’t in gear. Then I had a strong nudge: “Focus on what you are reading. It’s for you!”

Jesus was telling his disciples, “I’m telling you once and for all…” (That sounded very serious) “unless you return to square one and start over like children you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.” Suddenly God seemed to say, “Keith, you can’t see reality from My perspective—or what I think is the best thing to do—unless you become like a little child again.”

Next, I asked myself, “Is there anywhere else that Jesus said we should approach God as a child?” Immediately I remembered that the Lord’s Prayer—the only prayer Jesus ever gave as a model—began “Daddy” (Matthew 6:7-13)

DADDY? Really? Calling God “Daddy” felt sacrilegious, but…all right. I’d try. I bowed my head. “Daddy, I am a lost little boy trying to get you to help me control everything and everybody around me instead of listening to you as your little child.”

Instantly tears came, and I grasped the problem with my prayer life. When praying to “Our Father” I prayed adult to adult, as if God were a peer with expertise in an area I hadn’t mastered (whom I could fire if I didn’t like his advice.)

When I prayed to “Daddy,” I totally REPOSITIONED MYSELF as a listening child. Simply saying, “Daddy” brought what all my studying and meditation experience had not: a new set of ears. Although there was a lot more that I learned about God—and myself—by that one change of perspective, that attitude of being teachable was a new beginning.

Jesus said: “I’m telling you once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.” Matthew 18:2-5 THE MESSAGE

Daddy in Heaven, thank you for teaching me to lay aside my controlling knowledge and skills, and come to you with childlike eyes wide open and ears listening, so you can re-parent me to be like your Son… Amen.

* Described in some detail in Chapter three of The Taste of New Wine.

Taking Toxic Waste to the Proper Dump

Keith, what can I do with my depressing feelings of guilt and failure? I’ve tried talking with my family members, but I can tell they’re getting really tired of hearing my sad story.

Years ago I formed a terrible habit guaranteed to keep life from being boring, but which rained gloom and doom on my own house. At times, all kinds of unrelated failures and lonely feelings from the past came out to dance with me, and I would tell my family members how miserable and sad I felt about my failures and inadequacies. I painted my feelings in the blackest and most discouraging colors I could think of, asking them to pray for me. As we talked, they become sad and depressed, too, and sometimes felt guilty, thinking I was blaming them. When they lovingly tried to help me by making specific suggestions or offering solutions, I had “good” reasons why none of their suggestions would work.

Sooner or later they would give up, or it was time to be somewhere else or go to bed. My previously happy and carefree loved ones were now long-faced and unhappy, while I felt better. When I went to bed on such nights, I’d go right to sleep.

It’s as if my family were living with a live skunk. I’d call them all together and spray them with my skunk oil of depression and doubt. Then as we talked, they got those smells all over them. I was the only one that went to bed “smell-free.”

While in a small group of Christians trying to learn how to turn our lives and wills over to God, and to love others as God loved us, I came to see that my “center-of-the-world” habit of dumping my depressing feelings on family members was sort of like vomiting—I certainly felt better—only I was vomiting on the people I loved. God showed me through these fellow adventurers that this kind of “dumping” was a form of victimizing my family by getting them to “carry” my sense of failure and regret in the name of “sharing my reality.” And one day I stopped in mid-whine and faced the fact that, although it temporarily made me feel better, it wasn’t a very loving action toward my family members.

After that, if a reason to talk about my painful feelings came up, I used a different approach. I began by saying something like “This is how I’m feeling right now, but these feelings are not about you.” And when I finish sharing the feelings, I say, “I know these feelings are not your fault. I’d just appreciate your praying for me as I’m dealing with them.” And then I get off the subject and ask about their lives.

Better yet, I now share a lot of these painful emotional storms with my fellow strugglers on God’s adventure in groups outside my family—and ask these strugglers to pray with me there. In addition I have discovered that I can hear fellow struggler’s honesty and suggestions about options I might choose better than I can from my family members, and that these Christian companions are not as likely as my family to absorb and carry my feelings.

“Make this your common practice. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so you can live together whole and healed.” James 5:10 THE MESSAGE

Lord, I am grateful that you give us a safe fellowship of recovering sinners in which to face our feelings and learn from them. When I share my sins with other people on the same spiritual adventure I’m on—and do not “dump” them on my family, expecting them to carry my feelings for me—I can get real help, while learning to be more loving and supportive of those closest to me. Amen

The Hinge of the Doorway to a Locked Heart May be Very Small

Keith, I am a deacon in the church and people tell me I’m a good witness for Christ in our community. But behind closed doors in our family things are often very tense, snippy and hard-headed. There are certain things concerning the roles of husband and wife that I insist of because I was taught that way and I’m not willing to consider changing because I’m standing on principles. How can a Christian give up the principles he was raised on without violating his integrity?

The longer I am involved in the Christian life, the more clearly I see that the beginnings of significant lifelong changes often hinge on seemingly insignificant discoveries and decisions in the intimate arena of personal relationships.

Some years ago about twelve of us got together to form a small group. We were trying to find out how we could learn to be God’s people away from the church during the week. This was a new adventure that was exciting for most of the group.* The idea was to attempt various experiments in our lives during the week and then report to the group what happened to us. We decided that we would not tell anyone outside the group what we were doing, since some of our experiments (like listening) involved our spouses, children or friends.

Our plan was to begin in our families and work outward into the world. During the first week we were to look around, listen in our homes and see what we were doing to bug the people we live with, and then pray about our behavior to see if we could change it. Usually in prayer groups we had looked for those things other people were doing to bother us and then pray for them to change. This is a very different approach.

The next week was an interesting one. One member of our group was a lovely, pleasingly plump, white-haired woman, who was very attractive. At the first meeting I remember thinking that Lillian looked almost angelic . . . with a slight twinkle in her eye. She didn’t seem to have any problems and prayed sweet, sincere prayers. Frankly, I wondered how she got in our group. Lillian had not said much so far, but she came into the next meeting like a rodeo rider out of chute four. She was so excited she was practically bubbling over. When I asked the group about the experiment, all Lillian could say was, “You all, it’s the shirts!”

All I could think to say was, “Would you like to talk about it?”

She went on, “I’m from the old South. And when I got married, my mother told me ‘Don’t you ever iron any man’s shirts. That’s not wives’ work.’ So after the honeymoon, twenty-five years ago, I told my husband I was not going to iron his shirts. he was a struggling student at that time, and we didn’t have very much money, but he had to send his shirts out. After a few years, he developed a rash on his neck and had to wear shirts that required hand ironing. So for sixteen years Bill has been getting up on Saturday mornings and ironing his own shirts—right in front of me—while I fixed breakfast. We were both Christians, but about that time we started going to different churches.”

She stopped talking and put her fist against her mouth, and her bosom shook with an involuntary sob. In a moment she went on with tears in her eyes: “This week I discovered that all my guilt and self-hate as a woman, all of the wrangling and separation I’ve caused in our marriage, stem from the fact that I wouldn’t iron Bill’s shirts. I’ve prayed all week, and I don’t know if I can do anything this late to change things for Bill . . . But I’d like for you to pray for me that I will.” And we did.

Well, I don’t know what Lillian did at home those next few days, but the following week Bill showed up at the meeting, smiling from ear to ear. And they came to the group together regularly, like two happy kids, until Lillian died suddenly of a stroke a year later. But you know, that couple found each other, found a new kind of life together after twenty-five years.

What is that experience worth in terms of changing the world? I don’t know, but watching it happen changed the rest of us in that group somehow. We began to see that the closed doors in our lives and relationships which we have been trying to batter down with argument and reason all these years—that those doors often swing open when we become willing to oil some small rusty hinges, change some little things . . . like the shirts.

“Indeed, this need of individuals to be right is so great that they are willing to sacrifice themselves, their relationships, and even love for it. This need to be right is also one which produces hostility and cruelty, and causes people to say things that shut them off from communication with both God and man.”

Reuel Howe,The Miracle of Dialogue

Lord, help me to have the courage to look for the little inner walls and fortresses in my relationships, behind which I protect my pride. Forgive me for camouflaging these defenses and calling them “matters of principle” when so often they are only means to keep from having to admit that I have been wrong and wanted to be number one. I guess this is what has always made you so threatening to me. When you expose my self-justifying defenses, I either have to confess them or put you down . . . which is what I guess we tried to do on the Cross. And I still try to put you down when you get close to revealing the motives I have hidden. Help me, Lord, not to cling to my “rights” but to unclench my spiritual fist so that I can be free to follow you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Let your attitude to life be that of Christ Jesus himself. For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his privileges as God’s equal, but stripped himself of every advantage by consenting to be a slave . . . and . . . he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, to the point of death . . .

Philippians 2:5-8 PHILLIPS

Temptation: A Strong Wind for a Flickering Flame

Keith, no one I know talks about the imperious and demanding Mr. Hyde (or Ms. Hyde) transformation that temptation can change even a deeply committed (to our Lord) Christian into a totally self-centered drooling squinty-eyed lascivious or gluttonous pagan. It would be helpful if you are willing to deal with this question in a reality oriented way.

Temptation is a strange experience for me. I want to be God’s person. But I also have some deep human needs for approval, affection, and the satisfaction of strong physical and emotional drives. When wrestling with a specific temptation, I seem to change into a different person inside. I have a kind of tunnel vision and only see the object of my resentment, greed, or lust. All else is blotted out. I am no longer the smiling, friendly Christian, but instead am an intense and sweating stranger—yet not a stranger, for I know this one so well. Reason waits outside the door of temptation for me. I argue against my conscience and dazzle myself with agile rationalizations. By that time the battle is usually lost.*

Of course, sometimes there are long periods of peace and productivity when all the dragons appear to be dead. But then, one day when I am seemingly in good control of my emotions, I am suddenly in the midst of temptation. My senses are alive to the object of my resentment or my desire. I am practically engulfed in the urge to surrender to my inclination—to glorify my desires above everything—the instant they are born. And sweeping away reason, goodness, God’s will, caution, and the potential guilt—I succumb.

People who have not had this experience as Christians would make poor counselors for people like me. I know you may say that I am weak. And of course that is the truth. I am weak. But my question is, “What does a weak yet utterly sincere committed Christian do when temptation gets through all blockers and tackles him or her with a crippling jolt?”

My reactions have been varied. Almost always I feel inadequate and do not like myself. I shy away from prayer, feeling that somehow I could have resisted longer and not succumbed. It is strange, but because of my pride, I always think I could have conquered. But this notion rests on the dubious idea that if I am truly committed to Christ, I can control all my actions with reason and determination—if I will just try hard enough.

The truth about the Christian life seems to be, however, that no one bats a thousand in facing temptation. As a matter of fact, most of the saints felt that their averages were pretty low. We can improve our performance, and I thank God that this is so. But evidently in this life we will always have the occasional experience of succumbing to some kind of mental, physical or spiritual temptation. The sad truth is that much of the time I am too weak to resist, and my failure is simply a hard cold fact with which I must live. I have to come to God with the horrible uncomfortable feeling of failure. And finally, with no excuses, I force myself to my knees before him in confession, asking for restoration to a state of usefulness and self-acceptance by His grace.

I thank him that this process is what the gospel is all about—the forgiveness of the glorification of our desires and pride to a position above everything, including him. And asking him for a new set of controlling desires, I thank him for the miracle of forgiveness and the new starts he can give me. I pull myself to my feet, brush the caked spiritual mud from my clothes and walk into another day as his child.

First don’t dwell on yourself, do not say: “How could I be such as to allow and suffer it?” This is a cry of proud self-opinion. Humble yourself and, raising your eyes to the Lord, say and feel: “What else could be expected of me, O Lord, weak and faulty as I am.”

Lorenzo Scupoli,Unseen Warfare

I resolve to meet evil courageously, but when even a small temptation cometh, I am in sore straits. That which seemeth trifling sometimes giveth rise to a grievous temptation; and when I think myself to be secure, and least expect it, I am overcome by a light breath.

Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

Dear Lord, I know it must have broken your heart to realize that even those of us who follow you would get carried away and crush the people around us, trying to satisfy our hungers for attention and power and love.

Help me not to kid myself about my real needs and desires and cloak them with phony righteous motives or plead “weakness” as an excuse for succumbing to temptation. Although the nature of the sins has changes, the process is the same. And I realize that I am still capable of almost any sin. Give me the courage to face you more realistically. Thank you that you have made those things which are loving, creative, beautiful, and constructive so attractive to me that I spend more time running toward them . . . in another direction from the crippling world of inordinate self-indulgence.

And Lord, thank you for indicating that you believe a person should be forgiven more than once. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Matthew 18:21, 22

The Frightened Elephant in the Living Room of Faith

Keith,I’ve been a Christian for many years. I’ve committed my whole life to Christ and have been taught that I should trust God. But inside where I face the challenges like (1) the changing economy that threatens my vocation, (2) the reckless and (to me) dangerous behavior of my teen-aged son and daughter and (3) recurring fears that I (or they) will not be able to meet the challenges and will fail. And yet at the same time I keep receiving the strength to go on. Am I just an underachiever in the faith department?

These are good questions. I believe that I and many other serious followers of Jesus have been afraid to be honest about our real feelings. But my experience of this paradox goes like this.

One morning I was lonely. My wife and children were all there with me, and we loved one another very much. But I was facing some fears of failure that could not be shared with them. I felt that my performance on a very important examination involving the future for all of us would not be adequate, and I was anxious and afraid, like a small boy. Yet God seemed very near. If I failed, he would be there, and I could pick up whatever pieces there were and do something else. And this gave me a deep underlying courage. But the conditioned franticness which made my mind a beehive of fears was a carry-over from a lifetime of feeling that I must succeed to be acceptable.

This paradox is hard to understand—a sincere commitment to Christ combined with human insecurity in the face of failure. And many of the great Christian speakers and writers have left me alone in my predicament by neglecting to tell me of these paradoxes of the inner journey. As I have read devotional books and listened to the evangelists and teachers of the faith, I have tried to reconstruct from their words a picture of the inner way. But many of them have omitted so much of the sweat and gravel from their descriptions of the Christian life that I am left with visions of untroubled saints, walking through the quiet aseptic corridors of their souls with unchanging attitudes of serenity and courage.

I am finding that serenity and courage are very different in “appearance” inside my own life. And as I counsel with other Christians, I realize that I am not alone in this. The record of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as he wrote from the Nazi prison camp before his martyr’s death, sounds stimulating and rather glorious at first glance. But as I read his letters* more closely, the actual daily experience for Bonhoeffer seems to have been very different. Much of it was made up of the buzzing whine of summer flies around his face, the maddening frustration and disappointment as his hopes for release were agonizingly prolonged or smashed, fear and doubts, and despair. All of these were things that often filled his mind as he lived out those days and nights of “marvelous Christian discipline and courage.” Yet because of the paradoxical joy and hope he experienced, Bonhoeffer was able to go through that miserable imprisonment and make of it a great positive sign for all of Christendom. And this same paradox faces thousands of ordinary men and women who are trapped in jobs or marriages that seem impossible. But because they think that a “truly committed Christian” should feel victorious, they hide and feel ashamed of their painful fear and loneliness and the guilt they bring.

That morning, as I was confronted by the threat of changing to a new vocational direction in midstream of life with my bridges burned behind me, I could risk it because of my faith in Christ. But the fear of failure rode with me in the pit of my stomach as I went to the examination that would determine the next chapter in my life. If I passed the test and “succeeded” in my new venture, some of my friends might say someday, “What courage, to have launched out in faith at your age!” And I wondered if I would remember the anxiety that made my palms sweat. Or would I only smile, humbly “give God the credit,” and forget to tell how slender the thread of faith seemed to be that I was following through the jungle of my fears that morning?

“I have repeatedly observed here how few there are who can make room for conflicting emotions at the same time. When the bombers come, they are all fear; when there is something good to eat, they are all greed. . . By contrast, Christianity plunges us into many different dimensions of life simultaneously.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God

“It is rather in overt behavior that we must look for a measure of belief, and it is principally this that is inhibited in doubt or disbelief.”

D. E. Berlyne, as quoted in Signs, Language and Behavior

Lord, thank you that you give us the courage to go ahead and “risk it” occasionally in trying to follow you, forgiveness when we “chicken out” and cannot, and the clean slate of a new day after each of our failures and denials. In my attempts to witness to the hope and joy of your presence in ordinary life, help me not to whitewash the frailty of the humanity into which it came to dwell as I try to trust you in everything. I am grateful that even you had some struggles in facing the challenges in your life.

Anguish and dismay came over him, and . . . he went on a little, fell on his face in prayer, and said, “My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Yet not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

Jesus in Matthew 26:38, 39 NEB

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