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
Keith, a few weeks ago I watched as John Burke interviewed you at Gateway Church. I am an emerging leader at Gateway and have a few questions for you. First, specifically, why do you think the kind of small group you described is so important?
(You can watch the interview here.)
This one is a great question. And I’ll save your other questions to write about in another blog soon.
In the first place, I want to tell you that for most of my life I hated small groups and refused to be in one. I’m a classic loner in that regard—or rather I was until I surrendered as much of my life as I could to as much of God as I understood and started reading the New Testament. (1) What I discovered was that in Jesus’ three-year ministry the only “structure” he used was one small group of twelve—with the same membership. And that he spent approximately two-thirds of his time with that group of twelve. (2) The only subject or curriculum on which the group seems to have focused was “What is the God really like (whom Jesus called “Father”)? And “how (specifically) would people live if they surrendered their whole lives to the Father and became citizens of the New Kingdom of God (His “reign” over their lives) and how would they live out relationships with the Father, each other and everyone else?”
In that group they tried to do what Jesus did and told them to do, and they asked questions about everything. Since Jesus was living the life (as the first citizen in the New Kingdom), they had him and each other’s experiences to learn from. And besides hanging out watching Jesus, the content of their learning was largely made up of stories (parables, etc.) about how people who were committed to God would live and spread the life and love that Jesus was announcing and inaugurating before their eyes.
The small group was so important that after Jesus left them they chose another member, Mathias, to replace Judas.
And that small group was all Jesus left them. He left no money, no rich donors, no influential people, no buildings and not even a book. (The Old Testament was locked in the synagogue and there was no authoritative New Testament completed until the fifth century.) He had said that their life together could continue after he left because the Personality (the Spirit) they had experienced in him would still be in the midst of them to keep guiding and teaching them.
And it was the same with Paul. He first tried to use the existing churches (synagogues) as his structure but Jesus’ message (and the Christians’ lives) were so different from the life and attitudes of the people in the synagogues of that day that the Christians were usually thrown out. And when they were thrown out, all they had with which to invite (evangelize) the world was to start small groups and replicate the kind of group the apostles had been in with Jesus. He had told them that whenever two or three of them met in his name (i.e. as he would meet), he would be with them. The letters of Paul, Peter, and John were not theological treatises but mostly dealt with specific everyday problems and misunderstandings about how the Father wanted them to live in love.
And the new “family” spread clear across the Roman Empire—mostly one small group at a time—until the Father’s Reign became the “official” religion of the Roman Empire in about 25 A.D. During this time the apostles encouraged and taught the people in the groups by visiting them, writing letters to them and sending lay teachers (like Timothy) to encourage the small groups who met mostly in people’s homes. The subject of these small groups was still mostly about how to live for God, learning how to love Him, each other and other people as they delivered the Father’s invitation to an intimate and eternal life with Him and them.
The bottom line for Paul and John was the commandment Jesus gave the disciples, to love each other. This was so important that Jesus said it was their primary teaching and evangelizing asset. The way Jesus put it was, “Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”
So I came to believe that our first task as Christians is to learn how to love each other as Jesus loved. And as we experience being loved as we are and loving each other, warts and all, we will not have to be prodded to love the marginalized people Jesus loved, at least that’s been my experience.
Paul described how the transmission of the living/loving way of life that Jesus embodied and taught occurs. It is passed from Christian to Christian in these groups as Paul told the Christians at Philippi in a letter: “Put into practice what you learned from me; what you heard, what you saw and what you realized.” (Phil. 4:9, the Message)
The people in the groups heard Paul (and each other) say he was (they were) trying to live for Christ. They saw him and each other risk reputation and even life for Christ’s cause. And then they realized, “Wow! I can do that, too.”
So to answer your first question, I think that this particular kind of small group is important because this was virtually the only teaching “laboratory” Jesus used to get across how God wanted us to live and learn to enter into a Father-child relationship with God to whom we give permission to be in control of our lives (surrender). And out of that surrendered life we learn how to be in relationship with each other—a way to pray and read the scriptures. And then—out of this supportive, truth-telling, loving culture that develops in the group, we move out into the rest of the world to invite others to step into this loving culture of people who have surrendered their lives to God, and who are allowing God to transform them and the way they relate to others. We invite them to experience this life along with us. But if we are not being transformed ourselves, then the invitation we extend to others will most likely not reflect the reality and love we are being exposed to in the sermons and lives of our teaching pastors.
What I was referring to in the interview with John was a safe small group process Bruce and Hazel Larson and I created where people can go on the adventure of living for God experimentally for thirteen weeks in this kind of group and this perspective of how to live for Christ. The format is so simple that anyone who wants to live his or her life more as Christ wants him or her to live it can have an opportunity to try it in real time with a few others.
We have helped start hundreds of these groups over the years and more has happened to people who have been in these groups than in all the preaching, teaching and book writing we’ve done in the past fifty years.
P.S. Several people at Gateway have started and led some “Adventure” groups. After the closing prayer I have added a copy of a recent letter from a member of Gateway who led a group this year. If you’d like to get in touch with them, let us know and we’ll give you their contact information.
“This new plan I’m making with Israel isn’t going to be written on paper, isn’t going to be chiseled in stone; this time I’m writing out the plan in them, carving it on the lining of their hearts. I’ll be their God, they’ll be my people. They won’t go to school to learn about me, or buy a book called God in Five Easy Lessons. They’ll all get to know me firsthand, the little and the big, the small and the great. They’ll get to know me by being kindly forgiven, with the slate of their sins forever wiped clean. By coming up with a new plan, a new covenant between God and his people, God put the old plan on the shelf. And there it stays, gathering dust.”
– (Jeremiah quote found in Hebrews 8:6)
Lord, sometimes I still wake up lonely and discouraged when nothing is really wrong. Thank you that you have invited us into your family style Kingdom where you can transform us into the creative, loving people you made us to be, so that we can know your peace and be happy living in our own skin. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Letter to Keith
Keith,
I’m writing to let you know of the profound change that occurred in my small group as a result of doing the 13 week Edge of Adventure group experience create by you and Bruce Larson. Our group went from an intellectual group of socializers to a caring community of honest people who love each other and are committed to walking through life with each other. This 13-week group experience taught our small group how to actively love and live as Jesus did resulting in a profoundly purposeful and vibrant life.
Before this study our small group was literally on the brink of dissolving. We had met together for 2+ years and were “sticking it out” out of a sense of obligation. We were a group of lonely self-centered people who wanted to change but didn’t know how.
As we started this adventure, I noticed an immediate change simply caused by implementing the expectations of this study. There was a safe environment created by the “no cross talk” rule. People who were normally quiet opened up because of the practice of giving each person a chance to speak by going around the circle to answer each question. The confidentiality requirement was a simple, yet critical, element that was referenced many times in the first few weeks as people began to open up and share.
Having you and Bruce on the audio tapes helped set the tone of each meeting in a powerful way. We were able to sense and be inspired by your passion for the discussion topic. We were also assured that it’s okay to have struggles and doubts and that there can be a very real sense of liberation that comes from honestly sharing these thoughts and feelings with others.
I believe that this group experience can be the tipping point for many small groups by helping them develop the community that God intends. When this happened for us, we began to experience a more deep, rich an abundant life. It’s not that life will always be fun and easy, it’s that life’s struggles now have meaning.
My small group was so moved by the changes that occurred during these 13 weeks that we want to share this experience with others at Gateway. We simply can’t hold in the blessings we have received as we feel called to share them with others. We want to share this in any way that would be the most appropriate and helpful. We could split up and each visit other small groups or we could all band together to lead this in a large group format. We would like to discuss this with you and the appropriate leadership at Gateway to see how we could be the best service.
Thank you for this course. It has been a blessing!
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Honesty, Weekly Devotional
I have been sitting here for some time, writing my heart out to you on our new software program. I was telling you about our family’s solution to not having quality time together with our kids, grandkids and great grandkids.
After pouring my heart out for three pages, I was just writing a prayer at the end, when all of a sudden the cursor (and the curser) went wild moving backwards at the speed of light—erasing all my loving vulnerable sharing. I punched every button in sight and hollered for Andrea. By the time she got here, all my work had disappeared. The computer monster had gulped down EVERY WORD without a belch or even a “thank you.”
This is Friday, July 8th, and we have been trying to get caught up from our annual family gathering at a ranch near Bandera (21 of us), and from a surgical procedure I had upon returning (it looks like the Lord has given me another extension-for which I am very grateful—even though I actually forgot all about being grateful when the computer’s word feast began).
The bottom line is that I am exhausted somehow, and simply do not have the energy to rebirth and re-edit that personal document right now. So this will have to be my blog for the week. We will have another one up on Monday or Tuesday (the 11th or 12th).
Andrea and I are sending love and prayers with this note for any of you who have read this far.
Faithfully in our Lord,
Keith
