by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’m a Christian and I feel like I am pretty committed, but I know that I don’t have the courage to be open about my faith in some situations. How does a person learn to have the courage to stand up and be counted in really unchristian situations? Can you give me some ways to find this sort of commitment? Where have you found courage that has let you take some of the hits you have taken?
For years I was looking for the courage that would make me unafraid to take unpopular stands if I needed to. Your asking the question brought a vivid picture to mind, a scene that happened half a century ago in Richmond, Indiana.
Gordon Cosby was the guest preacher in the Earlham Quaker meeting in Richmond, Indiana one November Sunday morning in 1961. Gordon had started a church in Washington, D.C. that had only sixty members and a long waiting list to get in. The required disciplines were very strenuous. I’d heard that almost half the members were ordained ministers from other churches and denominations who had left their churches to come be a part of a little church that was more demanding than some of the seminaries from which they had graduated. In that church, each person had to re-make his or her commitment every year. The influence from that small new company of committed Christians was already radiating throughout the Christian world.
I was a thirty-four year old Episcopal business-man-student at the Earlham School of Religion, the first Quaker seminary in history, and I was thrilled to meet Gordon Cosby and hear him preach. I wondered where he got the idea that a small group of Christians with stringent discipline could change the direction of a materialist Culture.
His sermon title was “The power of Discipline.” He told the story of how Gideon defeated a vastly larger and superior army with only 300 men. Gordon’s point was that God wanted Gideon to know two things: (1) to whom to credit the victory, and (2) what can be done with a small group who are really committed and disciplined to stay. He referred to the minority situation of the Christian Church in America.
Then he related his own war experience of being part of an all-volunteer air born division in the army during the Second World War. The discipline in this division was extremely hard and exacting. At one point General Taylor had court-martialed an officer for not shaving—even though there was no water, but all the men were required to shave. Gordon said that the General was right and that it was the tough discipline that allowed that division to do things that simply could not be done, and to make an unheralded but powerful contribution to winning the war.
Gordon then said that the commands of Jesus were two, (1) to be obedient and (2) to love. As a conclusion, he pointed out that following these commands as Jesus obeyed them demanded a rare and hard kind of discipline that was possible only for people who are deeply committed. “As a matter of fact,” he pointed out, “we must have the kind of love and obedience that makes us realize that we are expendable in Christ’s cause, that we become willing to be lost for His cause.”
Gordon then cited what he said was on of the most moving experiences in his life. At one point during the war, his airborne division was surrounded, their supplies and ammunition were almost depleted, and they were cut off. But they were commanded not to retreat. They were to stay or the larger battle and the whole war effort in that area could be lost. They were ordered to stay in their fox holes in a long valley. Gordon, a Chaplain in that division, was watching from a cliff as the German tanks moved toward the men he had come to know and care for a great deal. The tanks could not bypass them because if they did, the American soldiers could come out and harass the infantry following the tanks. The enemy did not know that the soldiers were out of anti tank weapons, so the tanks roared down upon them. Gordon watched, horrified, as the tank drivers drove over the fox holes with the men still in them, spun their tanks, and sealed the men in the holes…alive. But even seeing the tanks do this as they approached, the men did not panic. They realized that they had to be expendable to win time for the main body of the army to escape. And they stayed.
Gordon looked at us in that meeting and said evenly, “The commitment that frees, that overcomes fear and hesitation comes from the person who finally comes to the place where he doesn’t care what happens to him. In a sense he couldn’t care less. He is willing to be expendable in Christ’s cause. And that’s where the power comes from to change impossible situations.”
I was very moved when I heard Gordon telling us that story. I grasped for the first time that I was sitting not ten feet from a man who had seen people he knew well live and die with that kind of commitment. And I knew in my bones that Gordon Cosby had that kind of faith too. I heard that sermon forty-eight years ago, and I have followed Gordon’s work since he “stayed” and was obedient. He loved the poor and marginalized, the unloved of all kinds, and faced angry threatened Christians, selfish politicians, police, judges, and lawmakers at all levels, in the South during integration, and in Washington D.C. for fifty years, in order to build housing and new lives for people with no advocates or powerful friends. He and the others at the Church of the Saviour have in fifty years done things that simply couldn’t be done.
And Gordon, 91 now, still goes to the building where prisoners who have served their terms are released on the streets of our capital city with only enough money for a few days—with no where to go—in one of the busiest cities anywhere. And he meets them…and cares, though be doesn’t have the money to care for them—for there are hundreds of them…oblivious of the tanks coming down the valley.
Thank you, Gordon, for just being who you are….and changing my life.
Lord, thank you for the men in those fox holes, who never knew that a Chaplain from Virginia saw them stay and die, and drank their courage through his eyes—and brought it home to plant its seeds to save a floundering, half-committed Church and nation. And it just occurred to me that Gordon and his bunch may not know—as the soldiers in the foxhole didn’t at the time—the effect of his courage, and “staying,” and giving his life (when all seemed lost) has had on so many of us who stood on the hill…and watched him stay and love your needy children for You, Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard, what you saw, and what you realized.” (Paul talking to the Philippians 4:8f. THE MESSAGE)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you talk a lot about surrendering your life to God. I have two questions: (1) Do you honestly think you can do that? and (2) How do you negotiate the frantic, unexpected overload of sound bites and conflicting demands on your time any better because you’re trying to surrender your life to God? I know this may seem pushy and cynical, but I am sick of religious crap and am just wondering how much you are saying is real for you and how much is phony? (I have other questions but they depend on your answer to the first one.)
Two weeks ago I responded to the first of the above two questions. The second one is my subject this week. Following are three of the changes that have made dealing with my ordinary life a much better experience (less frantic, overloaded and conflicted).
1. Loss of fear of being thought naïve intellectually for telling people about my attempt to surrender to Jesus’ Father God: At first I didn’t tell anyone about deciding to surrender my whole life to God because even most of my friends at church and a number of ordained ministers I know seemed to believe that it was embarrassing when someone came around who unashamedly loved Jesus and had said he or she had surrendered their lives to Him. It was as if such a person had deserted his or her intellect somehow. But when I finally realized that nothing in my graduate degrees in either Psychology or Theology had been as intellectually challenging or faith producing as simply trusting God, I realized that I was somehow on more solid ground intellectually then I had been when I had worn my real “faith suit” (my real commitment) only around like-minded Christian.
Douglas Steere, while writing about Thomas à Kempis’ book, Imitation of Christ, described my experience when he said,
“Faith is not as it has been so often depicted, an act of intellectual mutilation, but it is rather one of inward abandonment to a course of life that in advance accepts willingly the consequences regardless of what they may turn out to be.” (Imitation of Christ, p. 25).
2. The dissolving of life-long specific fears: I have always felt drained by different kinds of fear, of financial loss, loss of love, etc. But as I began to learn to listen to people so I could find out how I might love them specifically, a strange and totally unexpected thing happened.
One day at a hospital where I’d been taken because of an injury, I was waiting for the surgeon to sew up my arm and upper thigh, which had been ripped open when a neighbor’s dog attacked me. I thought about the fact that if I hadn’t known to give the dog a karate chop across the nose, he might have gotten to my throat and killed me. But as I lay there waiting in the emergency room, thanking God and reassuring my neighbor that I wasn’t going to sue him, I realized that I hadn’t been afraid for a long time.
I recalled that the apostle John had concluded his comments about fear by saying that mature love casts out fear—amazing! I’d always prayed for courage to cast out fear only to discover this late in life that when I am living a life of loving and caring about each person in my small adventure during my ordinary days and nights, loving can take away the fears of financial loss, injury and even death. In the fifth Beatitude Jesus points to how this works when he said, “You’re blessed when you are care-full (full of caring), because then you feel cared for.” And that is becoming true for me. I feel that whatever we have or lose, we will somehow be able to (with God’s help) carve a life of love out of it.
3. New attitude about trying to buy security: At times the temptation has come up to do or buy something that would meet my exaggerated needs for financial security, or for sexual assurance from a woman, or to try to claim or imply that I’m a lot more than I am so I’ll feel more secure. It used to be that I might spend a lot of time fantasizing about and then buying things that would hide my self-centered insecurities. I see now that these fantasies and purchases were ways of not trusting God and of taking control of my “image” by acquiring material possessions to prove that “I am enough.”
With my decision to surrender more completely, my perception changed almost immediately. And when my old unreal habits of thinking came up, I began to realize the ridiculous nature of my temptation to purchase. I try to confess, “I need a Mercedes Benz like I need to be fifteen feet tall! Forgive me for my grandiosity!” Then I say to God, “I offer my whole life to you. Please help me to see your will.” Now every morning when the alarm goes off, I say the following prayer:
“Lord, I offer my entire life to you to build with me and do with me as you will. Take away my bondage to self so that I can better do your will. Overcome my difficulties so that victory over them will bear witness to those I would help of thy powers, thy love and thy way of life. Help me always to do thy will, in Jesus’ name, Amen.” (Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous)
All this may be more than you asked, but history records some brilliant and courageous people who have wrestled with the same self-protecting demons that capture our lives, demons that can, it seems, be exorcised only by putting our lives in the hands of a power greater than that of our “most trusted passions” and the irrational temptations that would drag us back into them.
Thank you Lord that you don’t ask us to figure you out, but offer to come into our personal experiences and show us in the drama of our own lives the truth about your offer of love and freedom. Help me not to get too discouraged because I can’t express the depth of happiness, love and purposes you bring with you as you house-clean and guide your children to come be more like your Son. Amen.
Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them…. All they want is easy street…But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites.
Selected from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, 3:15, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, how it happened, I don’t know, but in my gratitude to God for a new chance at life, I seem to have forgotten how to live the human everyday life with my family. I am so into self justification that it is hard for me to hear that I’m being selfish. Have you faced this?
I received this question years ago when I was a relatively new “Christian writer” and I responded:
Oh yes, one of the most subtle problems I have uncovered as a “committed and active” Christian is this: when I begin to minister to others I sometimes start gradually to take on a sort of “holy immunity” from some of the normal responsibilities of family life, because of my “high calling.” For instance, any normal husband would be in big trouble if he were gone from home in the evenings as much as the average minister is. Although it is true that I have often been as upset as my wife about having to be away from our family so much, it is also true that when the children were small, there was often a great relief in bypassing the thousands of details and questions with which our little girls plagued us in that rather frantic twilight period near the end of the day. And often when I was at home physically, I was absent emotionally.
Because of the lack of dependability of my presence with the girls when they were still quite young, my wife was forced to assume the underlying responsibility for their growth and development. But the thing about this responsibility that seems to be particularly frustrating to wives is that it is only felt by the one who accepts it. So I did not even realize that there was such a burden, much less that I was not bearing my part of it. My ignorance of this problem led to no small amount of resentment in our family life. My wife felt that to bring up my continual absence “for the Lord’s work” would make her look like a lazy or nagging wife and a poor Christian. When she would bring it up, her tone was so loaded with resentment that I sort of felt she was those things.
But at a pastors and wives conference at about that time I counseled with a number of women, most of whom were married to prominent ministers. Several of them felt emotionally deserted with their children. And the husband, if confronted, had been irritated that the wife couldn’t “do her part.” Or he had retreated behind the ministerial shield with the guilt-provoking insinuation that however much he wishes it were different, “The Lord’s work must come first.” Some have even referred to the passage where Jesus’ family came to get Him while He was speaking to a group, and He refused to come out (Mark 3:31-35).
But as I began to see that these women were genuinely hurt, bewildered, and felt terribly alone with the emotional responsibility for their children, I started looking into it—especially since it seemed to be so common. That was when it occurred to me that I was doing the same thing to my own family.
Later, at home, I re-read Mark 3:31-35 and discovered one thing immediately that would blast a legalist: When Jesus would not leave the group to whom He was ministering to go out to His family, He was talking about His parental family (mother and siblings). But He was not talking about leaving His wife and children in order to stay with the group to whom he was preaching.
I realize this may sound like scriptural nit-picking, but there is a great deal of difference in my mind between responsibility for the marital family one instigates and the parental family he or she is supposed to leave to fulfill his or her vocation. In other places the Scriptures say that a man is to give second place to his parental family and give his first attention to the family represented by his marriage (Genesis 2:24; Ephesians 5:31). And of course the New Testament Epistles are pretty clear about a male Christian (particularly an ordained minister) bearing his responsibilities to his wife and children (Ephesians 5:5; 1 Peter 3:7; 1 Timothy 3:4, 12; Titus 1:6).
If this were true, I had a reorientation job on my hands . . . with my own life. I began to realize that my unconscious avoidance of a good bit of the constant nitty-gritty of family living had made me hesitant to preach or teach about intimate life in the home. And yet so much of the distress of new Christians seemed to center in bruised family relations. But how could I speak about problems I still had? So what I often did was to avoid this issue and talk about “more important matters” . . . like prayer or social involvement. And this way I avoided facing the true nature of my holy immunity.
But as I continued to read about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I saw One who refused to witness or preach from a favored position. Although He was evidently never married, He lived and witnessed out of an authentic life in which He was as vulnerable as the people to whom He ministered. I began to see that unless I could try to be a genuine, participating father and husband, sharing the emotional responsibilities for my family’s growth and happiness, I had nothing to say about an authentic life in Christ to the families around us.
How did I find a balance in all this when I did have to be away from home more than some men? And yet I had to find a way to include every member of my family in the shifting circle of my inner emotional horizon. How did I build each one of them into a calendar already filled with important and even necessary dates? I did not know how I could, but only that I had to try. (In future devotionals I will talk about some things I have tried if any of you are interested.)
The “great” commitment all too easily obscures the “little” ones. But without the humility and warmth which you have to develop in your relations to the few with whom you are personally involved, you will never be able to do anything for the many. Without them, you will live in a world of abstractions, where the solipsism, your greed for power, and your death with lack the one opponent which is stronger than they—love. Dag Hammarskjold, Markings
Lord, help me not to take myself and my work so seriously that I fail to be a husband, father, and grandfather to those special people you have given to me alone, to love and care for in your name. If I fail with my mission as a witness to the community, you can raise others; but if I fail to listen for the needs of those in my own family, there are no others to fill the void. This frightens me, Lord, because I don’t know how to be a good husband and father, and I realize now that my own father didn’t know either. So often I have let my own dreams and resentments keep me from facing my inadequacies. Help me to begin again to learn how to be genuinely and unselfishly loving with my own family. And when I fail, help me to have the courage to face my failures and get up and try again. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 1 Timothy 5:8
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you talk a lot about surrendering your life to God. I have two questions: (1) Do you honestly think you can do that? and (2) How do you negotiate the frantic, unexpected overload of sound bites and conflicting demands on your time any better because you’re trying to surrender your life to God? I know this may seem pushy and cynical, but I am sick of religious crap and am just wondering how much you are saying is real for you and how much is phony? (I have other questions but they depend on your answer to the first one.)
Good questions. Your questions remind me of the man many years ago who was sent to investigate me for heresy. I’ve wrestled a lot with both of these questions. Sounds like you’re a serious player.
Question number one is easy, and the answer gets at the heart of my own spiritual journey. Sometimes I hate to write these pieces every week because I can see so many ways my life is far from “totally surrendered to God.” But at another level, this attempt at total surrender has been the doorway to the life I got three degrees and helped build a business looking for—but never found.
I’ve come to believe two things about “being totally surrendered to God.” First, since Freud’s postulation of the unconscious, most thinking people believe that much more than half of the content stored in our minds is not even accessible to us—memories, painful facts, sins, resentments and experiences of all sorts hide from us when we try to call them back, etc. If the “unconscious” is a real phenomenon, then if I did surrender all of my life I can see to God, two-thirds of my life might not be committed at all. And the next morning after the “surrender,” a long-buried lust or lie or memory of hurting or cheating someone (or someone hurting me), or a scheme to get even, may jump into my mind full blown along with attached unsurrendered feelings of anger, guilt, resentment or lust—none of which were conscious to me when I surrendered my life. In other words, I don’t believe we even have access to most of our past experiences when we consciously surrender our lives to God.
A common example of this not being able to access material in our own minds happens to students all the time. Let’s say that you prepare thoroughly for an examination in school. During the exam, you come to a question that you studied for and had the answer down pat the night before. But though passing the test is very important, you cannot remember the answer. Finally the bell rings, and you have to turn in your exam. Then, walking down the hall two minutes later, the answer appears “out of nowhere.” There are many other examples of not being able to access information in our own minds.
Since every life contains some sins, guilt, selfish attitudes and lusts that are not ever conscious when we decide to “surrender our whole lives to God,” I believed that all I could do was to decide, “Do I really want to surrender my entire present, past and future to God?” And I make that surrender.
With that decision (for me) came the realization that the journey to wholeness in Christ is largely a matter of being willing to face the unsurrendered areas of my life and surrender them when they appear—though I may have been in denial about them for years.
But by trying to live my entire sleeping, eating, working, playing life for God, I have seen things that have been hurting my closest relationships for years that I might never have owned. And as a Christian I have steps to take to surrender them. (Confession, making amends, etc.)
So when I finally surrendered, I gave God permission to help me see unsurrendered acts, thoughts and character problems Only then could I confess them, make amends when necessary, and ask God to help me not to wander in areas of my life where I might repeat those acts and patterns of thought that put me in the hidden “control seat” of my life instead of God.
There were a couple of areas which seemed to be so important to my inner security and comfort that I didn’t in any serious way consider surrendering to God to the extent that I could say “I will trust you for the amount and/or fulfillment in these two areas and I will do your will even if it means giving up my financial security and my sex life in order to be the loving and non-manipulative man you created me to be. And I am willing to trust you to guide me in working out how to deal with these as well as every other area of my life.
When somehow I made that surrender to God, the surprise was that intuitively I knew my life would never be the same. My perception of my whole life and all my close relationships came into focus in a different way. And at the same time I realized that I had never really trusted God with my life before—though I’d said the words of surrender. But as a sub-conscious level I knew that I was not going to surrender my sex life nor my financial security to God. And although I was not doing anything dishonest or immoral about getting sex or financial security—I was uneasy about the suspicion that my spiritual growth was going to stop if I didn’t finally offer these things to God.
And finally making that that decision and surrendering everything to God led me to discover the answers to your second question: “How do you negotiate the terrific overload of your life any better because of having surrendered?” (I’ll write about that here next week.)
Writing about the real dynamics of what goes on in the lonely silence behind our “adequate faces” may seem irrelevant or even not Christian to some of you. But at this stage of my life, I am sick of my own unreality and failure to risk rejection in order to share as honestly as I can what is true for me about living and loving for God. And the truth about “surrender” for me is that, as scary as it was the first time, the willingness to take that step each morning is making me feel at home in my own skin—and at our house.
“Lord, help me not to try to run other people’s lives as I am learning so late to trust you and walk peacefully and with you and other people with an open heart to love your hurting lonely people —even those who discount us. I do love the people you have introduced me to in the past. And I am sad when I think that my attempt to surrender to you as something that will cause them to back off and find more sane and reasonable friends. But I know that the beautiful, sinful, and trapped new people being freed to whom you have introduced Andrea and me—the tribe of those who will not, cannot, stay locked inside with their fears and dishonesty, people who want to risk going with you on your scary creative adventure of turning loose, and perhaps walking together with us into the future.” Amen.
“Surrender is the stage of “final satisfaction” because we discover in that moment of surrender that the God who seeks us is also the God we seek; that in being found of God we find God in the only way God can be found; that in being thus defeated we are in the only possible way victorious.”
John Knox, Limits of Unbelief
Is surrender ‘going overboard’ on our faith if we want to be great human beings? Alfred North Whitehead said, “…a certain excessiveness seems necessary in all greatness. In some direction or other we must devote ourselves beyond what would be warranted by the analysis of pure reason.” Alfred North Whitehead, The Adventure of Ideas
“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.”
Paul’s letter to the Romans 2:1, THE MESSAGE
