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.
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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.”
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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)
