by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, just wanted to ask you what you think about making New Year’s resolutions. I have tried to live up to the Christian standard, but I never can. So I’m not too optimistic about making any big resolutions for 2011. What’s the point?
Where has this idea come from that there is just one image we should imitate in order to live the Christian life? This question occurred to me after realizing that for a long time, I had not felt free and natural in my Christian living because I was always trying to be something I was not so that I could be “like a child of God” (like those other children of God around me).
But a while back I realized that God has given each of us our own individual “sound”, our own lives. For years I have been a piccolo trying to play in the tuba section, because some men I admire greatly play the spiritual “deep notes.” Can you imagine anything more pitiful than a piccolo trying to play in the tuba section? Yet this had been the story of much of my life. It seemed to me that if it were true that each of us was to find the particular creative form of our own obedience, then it was all right for me to be a piccolo. I did not have to pretend that I was a tuba. What a relief!
I had once heard a friend say that he had taken the most outstanding characteristic or ability of each of the greatest Christians he had known and built for himself a composite picture of a Christian—and then tried to live up to the whole thing. And now as I remembered hearing him say that, I realized I had done the same thing. I had drawn up my image of how I was to live from C. S. Lewis’s ability with the written word in English, Elton Trueblood’s discipline, Gert Behanna’s sheer emotional power as a person on the platform, Sam Shoemaker’s ability in helping people individually to find a handle to the doorway into the kingdom—all these and many more. Unconsciously, I was trying to be all of these things, and, needless to say, I wasn’t making it and had felt discouraged. But now I was discovering that I could just be me, for Christ’s sake. As a matter of fact, that is the only way I can play my true part in God’s orchestra. When I really believed this, I set out to try to live a life-sized life.
But I didn’t have the slightest notion of how to be my real self. And as I’ve continued to search for the “natural me,” it has taken years to begin to discover what that is for me. So when New Year’s eve rolls around and I think about any resolutions I might make, I try to think in terms of asking God to help me continue to find my true place in his orchestra, and to begin again to learn how to use my God-given natural characteristics, abilities and dreams to love God and the people who are already in my life, which Jesus said was the underlying principle beneath the ten commandments.
Lord, thank you that it’s all right just to be me. In fact, it’s not only “all right,” but it is what I am supposed to be. Help me to surrender my whole life to you and let go of what is not me. Show me how to bring your love into the world I already live in wherever I go in 2011—using the traits and abilities you instilled in me when I was created. 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. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.
Romans 12:1-2, The Message
Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”
Mt. 22:37, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Merry Christmas!
Wishes for a blessed Christmas come with this note! I tried to write a blog for this week, but couldn’t. Here’s what happened instead.
Andrea and I were all set for a quiet Christmas in Austin together since we had been with kids and grandkids for Thanksgiving. One night earlier this month, after watching a Spurs basketball game, I began to feel a sharp pain in my stomach, and I began to wretch with the dry heaves from this very sharp pain.
Because I couldn’t stop, and the pain grew very intense, Andrea called 911. They arrived very quickly and took me to the emergency room at Seton NW hospital.
After X-rays and an ultra-sound, the ER doctor said I’d had a gall bladder attack and I should see my doctor to talk about having my gall bladder removed. A few days later we sat together in the office of a surgeon, listening to his explanation of where the gall bladder is and what it does…and how it is removed. He suggested that I sign up for the nearest Monday and have mine out.
Since Andrea and I have been trying to complete the writing of a four-year book project, I was reluctant to undergo general anesthesia for the third time this year. The first two had set me back mentally so much that I was afraid I’d “lose” my train of thought about the book. So I was determined to put my surgery off until we completed the first draft—which I estimated would be about mid-January. I figured I could tough it out until then.
The surgeon said it was a “reasonable risk.” But he added, shaking his head, that if I had any more attacks I’d need to go into surgery ASAP!
All went well until last Friday morning at about 5:00 a.m. I had another bad attack, and I had misplaced the emergency gall bladder medicine I had gotten. I felt like Ray Milland in the 1945 movie The Lost Weekend about an alcoholic on a four-day binge, looking frantically all over his house for a bottle of bourbon he’d hidden from his family. Finally we located the pills and in about an hour the pain subsided. As soon as the doctor’s office opened, I called and was scheduled for the first opportunity available, which was the following Monday. So I had to wait all day Saturday and Sunday for surgery on Monday morning, just hoping that there would not be another attack.
Looking back, I can’t believe how arrogant I was. The phrase, “I am older, though “wiser” is not something I can relate to today. But I have learned once more that the philosopher was right on when he said “Advice we may listen to, but pain we obey!”
I tried to write a blog about Christmas for you today, but it’s a little difficult to be spiritual when one has made a complete fool out of himself—at least it is for me! So instead, I’ll offer this newly acquired wisdom for the coming holidays: Pay attention to your stomach while you’re over-eating at Christmas. Cut down on greasy food, and drink plenty of water.”
I am very grateful that the surgery was successful, but am ashamed about my arrogance in thinking my work was more important than the gift of health God had offered me in my 83rd year. I think the Lord may be speaking to me, telling me to provide food and medical attention for other people who are more willing to be more obedient and not so cocky about their ability to control their lives.
Andrea and I wish you and your family a blessed Christmas!
Lord, thank you that you continue—again and again—to give us new chances to grow up and become the people you made us to be. And thank you for giving Andrea the patience to stay the course when I stand up and rock the boat. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. 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. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?”
Mark 34-37, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, people make me so angry and frustrated when they don’t do what they say they’re going to do. I don’t know what to do when I have these feelings. I can’t seem to let things go without judging and shaming the people I love most—just to prove they’re wrong. Any ideas?
That’s a hard question—but a good one.
The first part of your question mentions people making you angry. When I get angry at family members (or just about anyone else) my experience has been that the anger is all about me—virtually always. A friend named Lane explained this by telling how a mentor once asked him, “What do you get if you squeeze an orange hard enough?” He’d reply, “Orange Juice.” The mentor said, “Yes, and the juice came out of the orange, not the person doing the squeezing.” Lane was saying when someone squeezes me hard enough, my angry response is made up of something inside me.
Pia Mellody puts it another way[1]. She says that people don’t “make” us mad. What happens is that when they say or do something, we have a thought about what they said or did—and that thought creates the anger.
So I learned that when I’m with someone whose actions have triggered anger in me, I can ask myself, “What thoughts am I thinking about what just happened (or didn’t happen)?”
When my wife doesn’t keep her word about something very important to me, before I know it I am living with anger, usually because I feel rejected and discounted. How can I deal with this? Somehow, just knowing that my anger is coming from my thoughts about her forgetting something she promised to do doesn’t make the anger go away.
The other night that happened to me. Andrea and I had spent a couple of days Christmas shopping and I thought we really needed a break. So I suggested, “Honey, let’s quit early this evening and get ready for bed and read together for a while.”
She said, “Great! I’ll wrap some Christmas gifts that have to be mailed to our family, then come up stairs around 9:00.”
So I did a few things, then got ready for bed at about 8:45 and started reading a book I wanted to read. A few minutes later I looked up and it was 9:15. I was a little put out but realized there were quite a few packages to wrap for mailing, so I kept reading. But when I looked at the clock and it was a quarter to ten, I was suddenly angry and decided I’d just wait and see how long it would take before she remembered her “promise” to me.
She came in around 10:30 and said, “Honey, I’m sorry, but I realized I can’t read with you tonight. I have got to get all of these things wrapped and mailed before it’s so late we have to pay extra postage to make it on time. I just now noticed the time, and I came up to tell you what happened.” Then she left to go back downstairs to wrap some more gifts.
But even with her explanation and brief apology I was still furious. I began remembering all the things I’d done recently that she wanted me to do. And then as it got to be midnight I was still very, very angry and couldn’t go to sleep. But then I remembered that the anger was all about me and my not getting what I wanted when I wanted it. And I realized that those presents she was wrapping were from both of us, and I am a very bad wrapper.
So I had to face the fact that I was hurt and angry that my wife didn’t do what I wanted her to do. I asked God for help and guidance about how to diffuse the anger that came from my thoughts about what happened.
The answer I almost always get to this prayer is, “get out of yourself by helping someone else who needs help.” But it was just the two of us in the house and suddenly Andrea had become “the enemy.” So I prayed again—and the response that came to me was, “Think about what you could do for Andrea if you weren’t mad at her… and do that.”
I groaned and resisted. But this approach had helped me get past all kinds of self centered solo-pity-parties in the past. So I thought about what I could do that would be most helpful to Andrea—if I hadn’t been angry. And I remember that we’d left the kitchen without washing the dishes and cleaning up after dinner. And on raw faith I got up, went into the kitchen and cleaned up a fearsome mess.
As I finished up the job, something wonderful happened. I began realizing how fortunate I was to have such a talented and loving wife who does dozens of things for me and our families—especially at Christmas.
The anger was gone, and I was filled with gratitude. Because of being surrendered to God and to living the life of self-limiting love Christ lived and lives in us, I had been able to see my anger turn into gratitude, and in the process I’d given my wife a gift that would really please her. And, I added to myself—I didn’t have to tell her about my gift—making it a perfect gift! Then I was able to get some sleep.
As it turned out, Andrea stayed up all night wrapping presents. And because our assistant brings her baby to work, and the guest room/wrapping room becomes a nursery room during office hours, Andrea had also cleaned up all the wrapping paper scraps and straightened up the jumble of boxes and bows. When I got up early Andrea was just coming to bed. She smiled and said “I’ll just take a nap. I know I’ve got stuff to type and edit for you today.”
But I heard myself saying, “Honey, don’t worry about that, I’ll ask Jessica to do it. You just get some rest and sleep as long as you need.”
I was feeling holier by the moment—until I turned and—where this remark came from I have no idea—but I said, “By the way, I cleaned up the kitchen.”
As I closed the bedroom door, I cursed, hit my fist into my palm and shook my head, laughing at myself as I realized “I’m not quite ready for even an hour of selfless sainthood!”
Lord, thank you that you give us ways to love the people around us when we are filled with ourselves and our needs to be right—when we put ourselves in the driver’s seat of our lives. Help us to remember that only you can get us where we really want to go, which is why you need to be in the driver’s seat. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
– Matthew 5:43 The Message
“Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding. 2-4“When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—’playactors’ I call them— treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively.
– Matthew 6:2-4 The Message
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
[1] From Facing Codependence
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Dear Keith, I’m wondering if you could talk about God’s love as you understand it. If God’s love is “unconditional,” as people often claim it is, why does he need people to accept him? Isn’t that a ‘condition’? It seems contradictory to me for Christians to claim that God loves everyone and then that only those who love him back a certain way get a reward. I’m hoping you have something insightful to say about your own faith that will help me sort through this issue. Thanks, Emily
This is a great question, Emily, one that theologians have wrestled with a lot. All I can do here in this blog is try to tell you how I’ve come to deal with it in my own faith journey.
I believe that God loves all people like a perfect parent would love his or her child, regardless of what the child has done. For me, God’s unconditional love doesn’t require anyone to accept him. The greatest gift he has given us (besides his unconditional love) is free will, which allows us to decide whether we will live life with God or without God. Therefore, because of God’s integrity, he will not take away this free will and coerce us or manipulate us to accept him. Whichever choice we make, his love continues unconditionally.
I’m assuming that when you say “get a reward” you are referring to eternal life with God in heaven after death. But I am convinced that this eternal life is not a reward for “loving him back in a certain way;” it is a relationship with God and other people that we are invited to start now. So if we choose to live a life with God, what does that mean? God invites everyone to live Life with him. Jesus told us before he died that the Spirit or Personality that we saw in him is going to be with us and within us as our tutor and companion in a relationship with God that begins now and never ends. This life involves learning from God by seeing how Jesus and other Christians on God’s adventure are living that life in a loving way without hesitation or equivocation.
When we make this choice we re-position ourselves to allow God to be in charge of everything in our lives, and to become child-like students who want to know everything about God and his nature, and to learn to live more and more as loving co-creators and healers with God. The more we can surrender our own wills and let God lead us, teach us, and transform us, the more we learn the freeing power of being loved just as we are, without doing anything to earn this love. This is living in the creative image of God. The more that we do this (live the life that Christ modeled) the more that we realize the creative potential that we possess and the more fulfilled we can be.
This transformational process is not generally what is seen in the religious institutions of the world. This transformation is something that happens to individuals in a family/community that sees itself as part of the transformational family of God that is being actualized now. This life is based on a continuing and constant prayerful and intimate relationship with God’s Personality (or Spirit) within us and with other Christ followers in a safe and sharing community, helping each other as they are loving hurting people in the ‘worlds’ each inhabit.
Those who do not choose to accept God’s invitation to life with Him, choose separation from God (which is a primary definition of hell.) And I suspect it makes God very sad when people choose to try to reinvent life in ways destined to separate them from God and other people.
Emily, I hope these thoughts in this limited format will help you sort through this issue. There is so much more I wanted to say about God’s unconditional love and about how a life with God has been transforming me and other people I have been in community with. Perhaps I will say more in future blogs. And if what I’ve said today raises any other questions for you, please let me know.
Jesus, thank you for telling us that your spirit or personality would be with us and within us to teach us and be our companion if we choose to live a life with you. And thank you for the enormous gift of freedom to make our own choices—and that you can patiently love us just as we are even when we make choices that do not bring fulfillment or the realization of our potential. Help me to make good choices that are in accordance with what you had in mind when I was born. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus, thank you for telling us that your spirit or personality would be with us and within us to teach us and be our companion if we choose to live a life with you. And thank you for the enormous gift of freedom to make our own choices—and that you can patiently love us just as we are even when we make choices that do not bring fulfillment or the realization of our potential. Help me to make good choices that are in accordance with what you had in mind when I was created. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Jesus said these things. Then, raising his eyes in prayer, he said:
Father, it’s time. Display the bright splendor of your Son
So the Son in turn may show your bright splendor.
You put him in charge of everything human
So he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge.
And this is the real and eternal life:
That they know you,
The one and only true God,
And Jesus Christ, whom you sent.
– John 17:1-4, The Message
Peter replied, “Master, to whom would we go? You have the words of real life, eternal life. We’ve already committed ourselves, confident that you are the Holy One of God.”
– 1 John 5:21, The Message
And we know that the Son of God came so we could recognize and understand the truth of God—what a gift!—and we are living in the Truth itself, in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This Jesus is both True God and Real Life. Dear children, be on guard against all clever facsimiles.
– 1 John 5:21, The Message
God’s mercy is not merely therapy for a few individuals beset by guilt…God does not dole out mercy like cookies only for good, repentant children. God’s mercy is not conditioned by our response. God is mercy. So, wide is wider than we guess…. Our calling is to live in mercy…. Recalling God’s unmerited mercy … we absolve one another, enacting the good news. ‘In Jesus Christ,’ we say, ‘we are forgiven.’ So we look into each other’s eyes without illusions; we are sinners all. Yet we embrace each other in the mercy, the wide, wide, mercy of God.
David Buttrick, The Mystery and the Passion
“If men and women today began by the thousands to experience the depths of Jesus Christ in a transforming way, there would simply be no place for their expression of experience to fit into present-day straitjackets of Christianity.”
Gordon Cosby, Sermon
If any of you are interested in one simple way to accept this invitation from God there is a free download, “How Can I Find God?”, here.
by Keith Miller | Bible, Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, is the Bible true? And if it is, how can I know it’s true?
That’s a good question, one that a lot more Christians wonder about than you would imagine. The simple answer is that since the story is all about God, what God is like, and what God wants from the relationship with His people, only God would know if the story is true or not.
But there is included in God’s story a way for people to know him and know what he wants in a relationship with him. If we surrender our lives to God and begin to live in the intimate relationship with him, we can begin to “see” him walking around in Jesus in the scriptures. We see him loving and inviting people to live with him in the creative life of giving and being loved that he has offered to us. Then, in the actual living with him and for him, we will know that the story is true in a way that is convincing enough for us to keep going.
Since the life God offers people in the Bible is an intimate life of mutual love and trust with God and other people, it should not be surprising that knowing whether the story about God’s loving us is true can be determined only by entering the relationships and beginning to love and trust the God whose story it is.
The love of the God of the Bible whom Jesus called Father is a love that transforms those who accept it and try to live it and pass it on. And the characteristic way that love is transforming is that the loving reign of God in people’s lives works like yeast that is put in dough—it permeates every aspect of a person’s life, and not just Sundays or the “religious” room in one’s inner home.
My experience has been that I first surrendered as much of my life as I could at the time to as much of God as I could understand—which I realize now was not much. But I really thought I’d done it, and that was enough. And as I “took God with me” into the daily aspects of my life, work and relationships I discovered that my life was changing. I began by becoming aware that when I made time to acknowledge God’s presence in the different parts of my life I began to talk to him about what I was experiencing (pray). And I asked him to change one thing after another, until one day I asked God to change everything in my life that was not God’s will for me. It was then that I began to change my behavior as if God were continually with me—which I realized he was.
Although I could tell you thousands or more words about this process, you haven’t asked me to do that. So I’ll just finish this blog by saying that for me the transformation (so complete it’s like being born into a new life) is not just changing one’s ideas about God, but rather in my case it was the changing of my whole perspective about who God is, what he wants from people—particularly from me—and how to love without trying to control people to get outcomes I want to fulfill my dreams and make me happy. I began to think about how I could enhance the lives of people around me. The Bible calls this Life and relationship with God “Eternal Life” that begins “now and never ends.” (John 17:3, The Message) And this is eternal life: to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.
***
Dear Lord, thank you that you didn’t bring a religion to control our lives, but a Way to live and love and learn about all of life. Help us to surrender to a life of love with you in which we can know you and your way of being human. Amen.
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. (1 John 4:7-10, 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… (1 John 4:17-18, The Message)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you write a lot about how a certain kind of small group has helped you learn how to face and deal with real temptations, fears, inadequacies and other painful areas of living. How can you do that? I’m afraid to trust other people enough to be honest about my real stuff for fear they will reject me or shame me for being like I am. But I’m not happy and life is getting a little out of control. No one is happy with me—including me. And I feel like I’m over my head and sinking somehow.
Thanks for your honesty. I had to feel like my relationships were bad and I couldn’t see my way out before I’d risk a group where people were being honest about real problems they were having.
When you ask what these groups provide spiritually that helps me the most in my own spiritual growth, the word that popped into my mind was “oxygen.” Why “oxygen,” I wondered? A picture flashed into my mind from more than fifty years ago. I was in a commercial diving boat off the coast of Acapulco, Mexico, going out for my first diving experience, using oxygen tanks. The night before I had ingested too much hot Mexican food and probably too much tequila (this was before I quit drinking 25 years ago). I had gotten sick and thrown up intermittently most of the night. But since we had paid a lot of money up front for our share of the boat, instruction crew, and equipment, I was determined to go out anyway, even thought I was very queasy.
As I recall, the crew didn’t speak much English, so I couldn’t tell them about my queasy stomach, etc. (Only those who have experienced such behavior and consequences will understand my concern about getting into deep water and “losing” my oxygen mouthpiece.) But not wanting to appear to be afraid—which I was—I tried to look cool as I watched them demonstrate how to use the diving equipment.
A couple of the first-time divers went over the side first and disappeared. As my turn came, I was filled with mixed feelings. I did not want anyone to know how afraid I was that I’d get down twenty plus feet and somehow my oxygen mouthpiece would pop out or malfunction—or I’d barf it out and drown. But I was more afraid that the other guys in our group would know that I was that afraid.
The man in front of me went over the side. After only a few seconds he surfaced, choking as if he were dying and hurling salt water out of his lungs through his mouth and nose. After they’d dragged him out, it was my turn. Looking as cool as I could, I went over—and down, down, down into the water—filled with fear of what to do if I lost my oxygen. But to my surprise, it was beautiful down there. I was fascinated with the schools of brightly colored fish darting around me. Then I saw a man lose his oxygen mouthpiece. Immediately one of the professionals took a deep breath of oxygen, then took his own oxygen mouthpiece out, stuck it in the troubled diver’s mouth, and they both surfaced up the rope slowly and easily. And suddenly I was free to enjoy the beauty of a whole other world. I felt safe because I knew that other people in that world would know how to keep me from drowning if I needed help.
I’d forgotten that experience of fifty years ago until your question came up. When I first started meeting with ten of my male friends, I was very afraid of what would happen to me if I went too deep inside myself and found something I’d have to share that might cause me to be rejected or drown in shame. But as I saw these men, particularly in men’s groups, going over the side of their boats and sharing more deeply than I would go, I was amazed at their honest reporting of things they had been or done that were hurtful to the people they loved, or were immoral or unethical. And there was no judgment or rejection, just understanding and identification.
And when over the weeks and months I saw the hope and joy they experienced as they reported actually making amends with family members, business associates and friends, I got the courage to go deeper inside myself, behind my façade of adequacy. And by doing so I experienced a new freedom and understood a little about what James is reported as saying, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healthy.” (James 5:16, The Message).
When I do lose my breath and/or get deeper than I can handle, someone else usually hands me his oxygen connection—in the form of his own similar experience—so I can spiritually catch my breath and come safely back to the surface. This has made it possible for me to look around and see the wonder and beauty of a world in which I’d almost been afraid to open my eyes. And perhaps the best thing about these groups is that when I am away from them and feel the fear that I am going to drown, I can signal one of them by phone and he will reconnect me to our common source of oxygen and guide me back to the surface.
After years of resisting any group like this (that wasn’t being monitored by a psychological counselor or psychiatrist) I discovered that this kind of open, mutual sharing in a safe atmosphere (like that of a Twelve-Step group) is the best practical way I’ve found to move into spiritual transformation from a fearful, compulsive and protective hidden life of inner isolation and denial to a life of learning how to give and receive love without the terrible fear of rejection or being shamed.
This way may not be right for you but in this blog, I am simply holding out my oxygen mouthpiece and saying welcome to the world of “breathing under water.”
***
Lord, thank you for your willingness to go over the side first and for your willingness to get back in the water with those of us who are often trying to look like fearless grown up divers—who are really scared little children inside when we find ourselves in such deep water that we can’t see the sky. Thanks for offering us your oxygen tank if that’s what it takes. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal. 6:3, RSV)
“Are you hurting? Pray… 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 5:16, The Message)
On protecting ourselves and our reputations:
“If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.” (Mt. 10:38, The Message)
Note: It occurred to me after I wrote this post that Richard Rohr has written a book with a similar title. I have not read the book so any similarities are merely coincidence.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Since so many scientists and educators and psychologists are atheists, how can I believe it’s possible to have a personal relationship with God? People who don’t believe in God point out how stupid some people are who say they do believe. How can I re-think about this? (Surely all the people who believe in God can’t be wrong.)
Another good question.
Some years ago a wise man told me: if all the millions of brilliant and spiritually sensitive people of integrity who claimed they had an intimate personal relationship were wrong—except one, then it would be true that a person can have an intimate personal relationship with God. Then, since it would be possible, if even one had such a relationship the question would change to how can I have an intimate personal relationship with God? (Since at least one person does.)
As I read about and later met some outstanding and loving people whose lives seemed to have a solid calm foundation in reality, I asked some of them how they began that personal relationship with God. Some said they had believed since childhood but hadn’t ever considered that an intimate ongoing relationship with God would be a reality until they met someone who really believed in God who also cared about them. Encountering these people was profoundly life-changing.
Other people said they had turned to God when their “planned” lives had hit bottom or at least they felt powerless to overcome the fears and facts of their lives on their own. And in one way or another the pain of life led them to places where they decided to surrender—however little that surrender was at the time. But for them that willingness to surrender to God created the open door through which they could take a step toward God, who—in some way they did not understand—met them and made them sense the safety of God’s presence enough that they could continue the journey with God.
But however the first willingness came about, God became real enough that the people making that first step began to pray, to try to do what they felt God wanted them to. And they were led to other people on the same spiritual journey into which the new person had stepped.
And from that simple willingness to believe and trust, a whole new way to live began to unfold—a world in which there was One to take the fears and failures and receive the gratitude for the joys and ‘learnings’ that began to unfold.
Each person’s journey to faith is unique like each person’s experiences of falling in love or having a child or facing fear, rejection and disappointment are different, unique in some way. But all these experiences can be transformed by God. Failures become ways to learn, fears become occasions to give God the only thing we really have to give God: the gift of faith and trust.
And for me over the past half century, I feel as if I had become ready for some kind of spiritual cataract surgery. Everything that happens to me now is part of the adventure of living and learning how to love God, other people and even myself as his child who wants to become all God wants me to become.
And this very different way of seeing all of life is part of the adventure God is giving me to live—one day, one minute at a time. And all I can tell you is that this Way has already changed my experience of everyone in my life—including you.
And so I continue to try to face and confess my sins of controlling people, situations and outcomes, I am living in a world that looks safer and more welcoming than the anxious world I came from with its imperious need to change people, places and things to suit my insatiable wants.
Why don’t I think this life of faith is a delusion? Because I catch myself living in a more honest, loving and less selfish way as time goes on. And as a person who studied psychology and theology, I believe that these experiences are much more reality-oriented and healthy from a scientific point of view than the tight fearful focusing on myself and my wants, always trying to convince other people to do what I thought they should, and using other people to get what I want.
And at 83, although I am still only a growing child inside (after almost 60 years of becoming willing to trust that God is real and trying to surrender my life to him), I am happier and more connected to the wonder of loving God and other people with whom God has sent me. So in my case, I’d be a fool not to believe that a personal relationship with a loving, mentoring God is real.
Dear Lord, if you are not real, you don’t have to send any atheists to warn me. I’m afraid I wouldn’t believe them now, since you have been with me in so many unlikely ways and transformed my experience of living so profoundly by your love and caring guidance that now I know my job is not to outsmart them but just to love them—the way you‘ve loved me. Thank you very much. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other… Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.” (2 Cor. 5:16, 20, The Message)
“By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ’s life, the fulfillment of God’s original promise.” (Galatians 3:25, The Message)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Prayer, Weekly Devotional
You often talk about trying to find ways to help other people when you feel like no one really loves you. How does your helping someone else help you?
Very good question. Because I am a writer and have written a lot of books about trying to live my ordinary walking around life for the God Jesus called Father, I’ve gotten hundreds of questions over the years about trying to live and relate to other people in my own home or whatever town in which we’re living. In many of these letters people have said that they are so miserable they can’t imagine how helping other individuals could change anything—especially for themselves.
Well, we have been watching a dear Christian friend of ours growing and changing for several years now. She and her husband are in their early thirties and have two children under three. She has been praying about how God could use her and creative ways to get out of her comfort zone to care for people who don’t have the advantages she has.
Not long ago I asked her what she had discovered about helping other people she did not know but who God called her to help. She told me the following story, which I asked if I could pass on to you.
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“I pulled into the grocery store over four years ago, prepared to do the mundane task that I did every week: grocery shop for my husband and me. As I waited at the light to turn into the parking lot a young man (who appeared to be in his early teens) walked across the street in front of my car. In that instant some inaudible, but real voice said to me, “Ask him if he needs help.”
My mind raced. I came up with at least a dozen excuses for why I shouldn’t talk to him. I had no idea what I could possibly do for him, so I said, “God, if you want me to help him, he needs to cross my path again.”
I thought I was off the hook but as I entered the store, this same young man crossed in front of me again. I ignored the strong nudge to talk to him and went on with my grocery shopping, looking around for him as I shopped.
As I buckled my seatbelt after loading the groceries into the car, I started sobbing uncontrollably and put my head down on the steering wheel. All my excuses seemed so ridiculous at that moment, and I knew that I had not followed God’s will for my life that day. I was overwhelmed with sadness.
I had just started really living for God, was a part of a small group for the first time in my life, and I knew that this opportunity to help someone else was one that would have brought me closer to God. But fear and anxiety kept me from doing what I knew was right. I asked God’s forgiveness and hoped that he would give me another chance.
Two weeks later at the very same grocery store my next opportunity arose. The previous event was gone from my memory, and I was in a big hurry to get my groceries and then get home where I needed to be. I believe we had dinner plans with friends that night. As I rushed into the parking lot from the grocery store I passed another young man I guessed to be in his early 20’s, wearing very worn, dirty clothes. He looked tired and beaten down, like he had worked all day. As I passed him, I again “heard” the inaudible voice, “Buy his groceries.”
“Buy his groceries? Really?”
My mind raced again as the excuses poured out: surely God does not want me to go back into the grocery store, find this man and his cart full of groceries and buy them; surely he knows that I am in a hurry; surely he knows that we do not have the money to buy this man’s groceries. Surely God has it wrong!
As I began to rattle off my excuses I suddenly remembered the previous incident and that feeling of sadness after I had failed God. But fear still welled up inside of me. As I packed my groceries in my car I argued with God about why it was a bad idea and then ultimately I said, “What am I supposed to say? I am going to look so stupid. I am so scared. And what if he says no? What will I do then?”
And as clear as day, I heard the voice again—so patient and loving, “Buy his groceries.”
Then I knew that I had to go back in that store, find that young man, and do what the Spirit was prompting me to do. My nerves were a wreck—palms sweating, knees shaking, teeth chattering and all. I searched the store and finally found him. It looked to me like he was just finishing, so I waited by the checkout lanes. He found his aisle and I threw up a prayer, “God, please help me do this.” As I stood behind him I noticed that he was buying the essentials— milk, bread, eggs, meat and other items that indicated that he had kids. I stood there trembling, tears rolling down my face, and I heard the cashier give the man the total for the order. ‘This is my cue,’ I thought.
“Excuse me, Sir. Would you do me the honor and let me buy your groceries today?”
The check-out lady looked at me as if I were crazy, and then we both looked at the man as he stared at my tear-stained face. Dumbfounded, his eyes also filled with tears. He said, “What? You want to buy my groceries? Why?”
‘Oh, Good Lord’ I thought… ‘he wants to know why!!??’
I continued, now sobbing, (I’m sure I was a sight at this point) “Sir, my God has asked me to help you today by buying your groceries. I don’t know why but I want to be obedient and I want you to know that He loves you. Please let me buy them. And when you get an opportunity to help someone else, I hope you’ll do so.”
He put his wallet away with a sigh and said, “Yes, please, that would really help today.”
I moved up to the cashier, paid his bill, said “God Bless you and your family,” and ran to my car, still crying. This time my uncontrollable sobbing was a joyous sob. It was crying that was full of love and happiness. My tears indicated to me that I had just done ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ and following God’s will was life changing for me that day.
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I think each person has to find his or her own ways to reach out to people. But Andrea and I have found over the last few years that when we pray and ask God to show us how to love the people in our lives, it is incredible how situations come up in which it is right and natural for us to care for people and help them in ways we never would have thought of before. But as unusual and off the wall as some of our experiences have been, I can’t think of a time when the act of loving didn’t change our lives, lift our mood, make us stronger in our faith and bring us closer to God and to other people. And hearing our friend’s story this week opened some new windows of hope that my life can become more loving and real.
Dear Lord, thank you for making it so clear that if we want to show our love to you, we can do so by loving the people around us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Then the King will say …. ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! …. And here’s why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me….’
“‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:35-40 The Message)
How have you responded to situations that seemed to be opportunities to help someone else?
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Prayer, Weekly Devotional
With elections just completed and Thanksgiving creeping up on us, we are in the midst of the screamers on the radio and television talk shows warning us of the “crooks” running for office, or the “blindness and the incompetence” of our elected representatives, and of the failings of our leaders in virtually all fields. However, I want to tell you that we Christians have a deep well of strength, hope, and confidence from which to draw a toast to the future this Thanksgiving in the country in which we live that has more freedom and opportunity than any place the world has ever seen.
By the time I was 28, I had buried all the family I grew up with and I’d broken my neck in a car wreck—which ended my hope to be a basketball star. These events made me realize I am not the center of the universe. I also realized through these losses, some other failures in my life and the resulting fears were more than I could handle by myself.
But it was due to the chaos, pain and doubt of those days and nights that I was driven to the end of myself and wound up parked on a lowly roadside in East Texas. There I made my first attempt to surrender my future, my family’s future, and the future of the world I lived in to the God Jesus called Father.
I drove that stake into that East Texas soil as deeply as I could at the time. I was a helpless little 28 year old boy inside. And that day I turned from surveying the inner turmoil in my life, looked in a different direction—and saw a rim of light on the horizon. It was the beginning of a sunrise I had not known would ever come. I had been facing and living every day a “sunset” of all my hopes for my life. And when I turned my focus around, I realized that God is alive beyond mountains and oceans of my fear if I can but turn around right where I am each time the mountains or oceans threaten to overwhelm me.
Whatever happens outside us, God will be with us and give us the courage and strength to deal with our losses, failures, fears, and difficulties, one day, one hour at a time, as individuals and as a nation.
God has changed my life so much that I am spending my life pointing over my shoulder to tell you there is real solid hope to stand on. Right now—where ever you are!
So for the next few weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I am focusing on all that I have for which to be thankful, including renewed hope that comes from the realization that God knows where each of us is and will never give up on us.
God bless you and Happy Thanksgiving (and the weeks of preparation that are leading up to it).
“Just think—you don’t need a thing, you’ve got it all! All God’s gifts are right in front of you as you wait expectantly for our Master Jesus to arrive on the scene for the Finale. And not only that, but God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.” (1 Cor. 1:7, The Message)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Prayer, Weekly Devotional
Dear Keith, I’m having trouble with my prayer life. I’m not getting a lot of my prayers answered. (And I’m praying “in Jesus’ name.”) He indicated that he would answer prayers that were prayed in his name. Can you shed any light on that? And can you advise me what I can do to have a better average? I am committed to Christ and will work hard to pray right.
These are questions most thinking people have faced—good question.
The idea that the Father will answer our prayers if we pray them “in Jesus’ name” came to me first when I was a new Christian. I was working as a land man in the oil exploration business. One of my jobs was to buy oil and gas leases in a new area. The senior land man told me, “Keith, don’t ever forget that you are buying these leases in the company’s name.”
When I heard the phrase, “in the company’s name,” I thought about Jesus saying that the secret to having prayers answered was to pray them in His name. So I listened carefully to what buying leases “in the company’s name” meant.
“When you buy leases in someone else’s name,
1) you buy them in the location the company wants leases
2) You pay the price the company wants to pay
3) you buy only the five-year term the company wants to buy, etc.
In other words you buy each lease as the president of the company would buy it—the same location, price, and all the other conditions set out in the leasing agreement that the president would use if he were buying leases in each different area. And you need to know what different things the president may want in different places you will be sent to buy leases in his name.”
Later, I thought again about Jesus’ saying that God would answer our prayers if we prayed them “in Jesus’ name.” And it occurred to me that maybe he was saying that God will answer my prayers about any situation if I will learn to pray exactly as Jesus would pray if he were praying about that same particular situation. That way I will be personally representing God in the world as I pray.
If this is so, then in order to pray “in Jesus’ name” I needed to learn a lot more than I knew about Jesus: what he prayed about, what his priorities are, and what he asked for when he prayed. As I thought about this, I realized that the content and tone of my prayers was changing as I learned more about what Jesus prayed for, and as I committed more and more of my life to God. Over the years I’ve noticed that many times I just say about a situation, “and thy will be done,” since I often don’t know what is best for other people. (And I now realize that many of the things I didn’t get when I prayed for them would have ruined my life if I’d gotten them.)
That raised the question: who is “the Father” Jesus always prayed to—and what is our attitude and behavior toward God, the Father, to be? Over the years I come to see that knowing “the Father” intimately would be like relating to a strong, creative, intimate, and loving Father (more perfect than any earthly father could be). And Jesus prayed as he thought his Father would (e.g. in Gethsemane he said about his own death, “but thy will be done.”)
What Jesus Said about How to Begin a Prayer Life, Praying in Jesus’ Name
This passage gave me a cameo picture of the attitude and behaviors God wants us to have, as Jesus described how to begin a prayer life “in Jesus’ name”:
“And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?
“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.
“The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need…” (Matthew 6: 5-13, The Message)
What Jesus Said about How to Pray in Jesus’ Name
In this picture—and many others like it—we see how we should pray, and a little about what it would mean to “pray in Jesus’ name.”
In the passage, just before Jesus gave his disciples the only prayer Jesus ever gave them, Jesus said this about the process of praying to the Father:
“Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding. “When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—’playactors’ I call them— treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.” (Matthew 6: 1-4, The Message)
Jesus then gave his disciples—and us I believe—the perspective that has helped me more than any other. He tells us, I think, that if we want to pray as Jesus would—in His name (as Jesus positioned himself before the Father) then we are to position ourselves differently than I ever had. I had treated God like a business partner ( who had all the money) or like a powerful psychiatrist I would consult (and fire if he got too confronting). But here Jesus gave what for me became the key to learning how to pray (and live) in his name. He said it this way:
“With a God like this loving you (one who “knows better than you what you need!) you can pray very simply like this.” [And he began to pray by saying,] “Daddy, in heaven”[1] and what followed is the prayer that Jesus gave us as a model of how we should pray.
What all this means to me is that if I want to pray with the same approach to God that Jesus had (in Jesus’ name) I need pray as if I were a small child and he was a loving daddy, not a business partner or psychiatrist whom I can fire. And to pray as a small child, I need to surrender as much of my entire life to God as I understand Him, realizing that the answer to my prayer is completely up to God. That way I can learn to listen and watch for God’s answers with the open mind of a child wanting to learn all I can from his father, the intimate loving Father in whose image Jesus was made, and who accepts me warts and all.
I have spent the last 50 years learning all I can in order to more nearly pray as Jesus would pray. These are a lot of words, but I’m dead serious when I tell you that in trying to surrender my entire life to the Father, my prayers have changed in many ways. Some of my prayers have been answered in ways I could not have imagined. And the ones that haven’t been answered…well, maybe they have, but I’m just not able to recognize God’s answer just yet, since the “answers” may have been something I needed to happen so I could grow up in some area—instead of what I ask for.
Some time I’ll talk more about the kinds of radical changes that have come about in my experience of trying to live for God as a small child and what being blessed by God has come to mean.
“In the world humans pride themselves on prudential wisdom, but the purpose of a Christian is to be a child. The child spirit is a goal and not merely a starting point. Though not all children demonstrate it, the ideal child spirit is of one who seeks to learn, because he knows that he does not know, and one who trusts his parent unreservedly. At best, the world of a child is a world of wonder, unspoiled by cynical judgment of others or by the corrosive effect of consciously hidden motives. The end, says Christ, is to rediscover the beginning.” Elton Trueblood, Confronting Christ
Dear Lord, thank you that you have let me experience enough pain through my self-centerdness and sinful bad choices that I was forced to face myself, decide to surrender and live for you and begin to learn how to pray and live in your name. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Then Jesus made it clear to his disciples that it was now necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, submit to an ordeal of suffering at the hands of the religious leaders, be killed, and then on the third day be raised up alive. Peter took him in hand, protesting, ‘Impossible, Master! That can never be!’
“But Jesus didn’t swerve. ‘Peter, get out of my way. Satan, get lost. You have no idea how God works.’
“Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. ‘Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. 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 finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself?’” Matthew 16: 21-26 (The Message)
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‘‘ ‘Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You’ve concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people. Yes, Father, that’s the way you like to work.’
“ Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. ‘The Father has given me all these things to do and say. This is a unique Father-Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does. But I’m not keeping it to myself; I’m ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen.
“ ‘Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.’” Matthew 11:25-30 (The Message)
[1] The word for our “Father” here is Abba which almost always can be correctly translated, “Daddy.”
by Keith Miller | Bible, Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Who is God, and what is the Bible really all about? I try to tell my children that God is love. But I see God’s people in the Bible (and in history today) slaughter people in God’s name. Can you give me a simple definition of who God is and what the Bible is all about?
That’s a very good question—probably impossible to answer in a brief blog post. But since I have spent the past four years almost full time reading virtually nothing but the Bible (trying to write a book that Andrea and I hope will shed a little light on that very question) here is my two minute impossible “answer” to your impossible questions.
In very simplistic terms the Bible is the story about God—who created the world and everything in it. The story line of the Bible deals with God’s experiment as “Father” with human beings, or you might say—with family life. According to the story, God “Fathered” human beings as male and female, and he gave only them free choice so they could experience love. (Without being able to choose, humans could not have made a decision whether to love God or one another or not.) The tragedy of the plot is that from the beginning (Adam and Eve) chose not to respond to the Father’s love and tutoring about what life and reality are about—“what is good and what is evil.” And the first humans rebelled and tried to replace God as their own teacher of what is good and what is evil.
From that point the Bible is the story of how we human beings—men and women—have scratched and clawed (either with bared claws or wearing velvet gloves) to get what we want that we think will make us “happy” and justified our choices because we have put ourselves and our self-centered desires in the center of our life where only God, who created everything, belongs.
In the pages of the Bible are all the Father’s recurring offers to transform whatever we get as the result of our efforts (failure, injury, disappointment or hollow success) into what we need in order to be transformed into what we were ‘designed’ to become: co-hosts in the Father’s family as we join God in inviting the rest of humanity into the intimate, caring relationship with the Father and each other to learn how life and loving were made to work. In this relationship, the Father has offered to limit his power and personally tutor each of us about how to interact with him, each other and the environment—teaching and modeling the same self-limiting love with which God relates to us. And the idea seems to be that it is the Father’s love that lubricates all of the rough edges of life and turns them into the wisdom and knowledge that can make existence a heaven or hell—now and always.
Since all of us human beings have consciously or unconsciously put ourselves and our wants to satisfy our self-centered desire in the center of our lives and relationships (thus creating what we call Sin: replacing God as the source of the knowledge of what is good and evil for us and those around us to do,) we all resist accepting the Father as our tutor about how to live and relate.
This unconscious but universal tendency to replace God (Sin) blinds us to who God is and who we were made to become. We project our own need to control onto God, punish those who disagree with us and use his name to enforce our own will on others. And we have honestly taught and projected our conclusions onto God. So we lost the original vision of the self-limiting love of the Father. For centuries we see the Father touching the lives of those who would trust him, and sending messages through these “prophets” about our screwing things up. Invariably we killed or ignored these prophet-messengers.
Finally Jesus came to make clear what the Father is like—how the Father’s self-limiting love looks walking in our homes and neighborhoods as we face our political and personal dishonesty and controlling relationships. At last we could see and interact with the Father person in Jesus.
But people’s projections of their own unconscious self-centered experience and ideas about God overshadowed Jesus’ self-limiting love. They could not accept the fact that God would transcend even legalistic justice to forgive them, love them and teach them how to love each other and even their enemies, so that love could be the guide for Reality oriented life and relationships.
Experiencing the fact that we could not believe that kind of self-limiting love (because we couldn’t do it ourselves), Jesus limited his power to escape or retaliate and instead died for us—the unmistakable act of self-limiting love. (“i.e. if I stepped in front of you and took a bullet to save your life, you would know that I care for you.)
So in Jesus’ life and death we see God as the loving, intimate Father we always longed for but most of us could not find, who limited his power to punish us in order to give life and freedom to us if we will accept as we see it in Jesus.
That’s the impossible short version of the answer the Bible story gives to our impossible questions: “Who is God?” and “What’s the Bible story about?”
“It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us.” Ephesians 2:1-2, The Message
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“The person who knows my commandments and keeps them, that’s who loves me. And the person who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself plain to him.”
Judas (not Iscariot) said, “Master, why is it that you are about to make yourself plain to us but not to the world?”
“Because a loveless world,” said Jesus, “is a sightless world. If anyone loves me, he will carefully keep my word and my Father will love him—we’ll move right into the neighborhood.” John 14:21-24, The Message
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“How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.” Ephesians 1:2-4 , The Message
Lord, thank you that you have not given us a complex philosophical system that only the brilliant and educated could understand. But instead you loved us as your children and gave us a story to walk in with you and each other. And thank you Lord, that it’s a love story about forgiveness. In Jesus name, amen.
“God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.” 1 John 4: 17-18, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Dear Keith, I made a decision to give my life to Christ over ten years ago. It felt so freeing—to be able to trust God with the struggles in my life. But periodically I go through times of not being able to sleep, of going over my situation with a magnifying glass to see what I am doing wrong that is keeping my problems from clearing up. And as an only child and single mom, I worry what will happen to my boy and my girl if I should get killed or get sick and die! What happened to that freeing experience I had back at the beginning? Sometimes (I’m ashamed to say) I wonder if God is even real!
Your question brings up something I have experienced at several points in my life since I surrendered my life to Christ by a roadside in Texas. One occasion that comes to mind is a morning when I woke up restless and vaguely afraid…of what I wasn’t sure. Then I remembered: in the mail the day before I had received a letter from a good friend. He had just learned from his doctor that he had between two weeks and three months to live—a malignancy had reached his liver. I was deeply shaken and grieved. The vague anxieties I had felt earlier blossomed into concrete fears, and I began to imagine all kinds of bad things happening.
Over a year before I had decided to devote my time to writing professionally, without the support of a regular job. But I had been doing so much public speaking and traveling that I worried about not getting any writing done and not being able to make a living for my family. As the specters danced out of the shadowy corners into my conscious mind, I imagined my wife’s death and my great loneliness at her dying… the children had grown up and left home… I was a lonely old man. Then, like a jack-in-the-box, out jumped the specter of my own death, and I was afraid. I did not know in that instant whether I believed in Christ or even in God the Father. I experienced the great emptiness of death, was horrified… and desperately wanted proof and certainty.
But as I saw these things and faced the panic they brought, I also understood again with razor-sharp clarity the deep human meaning of the gospel of Jesus Christ for me:
- “Let not your hearts be troubled…” (John 14:1)
- “I go to prepare a place for you…” (John 14:3)
- “…be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
I saw that I could not capture faith once and for all time and put it in a box for safekeeping. In the face of death and possible failure in my own life or in the lives of those I love, I could not even know for sure that “God is.”
“What am I going to do?” I thought, trying not to give in to the wave of desperation I felt was about to break over me. I had lived with faith for years, and it seemed to be crumbling all around me. Then I knew. All I could do to come to terms with my own death was to bet my life that Jesus Christ is “for real” and give Him my whole future.
I wish I could say that has been the only time in my life that I have gone through that cycle of doubt, panic, fear and re-commitment. But the cycle has occurred in various ways again and again, until it has become evident to me that this Christian Way is not often entered through the lofty door of philosophical reasoning, but through a wager, a bet with fantastic stakes. Because of what I have seen and heard in my own experience and in the lives of many others across the years, I have bet my life that God is, and that He is the kind of love that walked around in the life and actions of Jesus Christ. I have wagered that He even loves me and wants me to be related as a child to Him. And when out of great need, I have made this bet, I have stepped into a new dimension of life—life in which there is hope in history because God is at the end of the road for me and for all of us.
Now, although I still cannot know that God is real, I somehow do know. Even though I cannot prove it to you or even make the bet for you, I can say this: for me, these seem to be the only two alternatives—to live a worry-filled life of frantic hiding from myself and of psychological repression of thoughts about death and meaning, or to face death and life and make this strange gamble of faith that turns me outward toward other people and makes me want to be a loving person. I can see no other way for me than following Christ.
“We all want to be certain, we all want proof, but the kind of proof that we tend to want—scientifically or philosophically demonstrable proof that would silence all doubts once and for all—would not in the long run, I think, answer the fearful depths of our need at all. For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about Himself in the stars but who in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle that we are really after. And that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.” Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
Lord, I do love You. And I am very grateful that this relationship with You has been so often one of hope and a sense of expansion into a larger and more interesting journey. But occasionally there are these times of dread and doubt which bring me to my knees in awe. I see again that faith is a gift of grace, and that all the figuring and reasoning in the world cannot transport me across the void between us and You. Thank You that in Christ You have provided the leap of faith, the fantastic wager of life. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.” Psalm 34:4
