by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, some of us have known you for years. You have often talked about being grateful to be in a “new place.” Many times I have thought I had changed after receiving a “great insight” or having an inspiring experience at a conference or after reading a book, but people around me don’t seem to believe I’ve really changed. My question is: What is a specific example of your knowing you have changed in a significant way, and someone close to you believing that you have changed significantly? What would that look like?
Ooh, difficult question. But the most recent experience I’ve had that convinced me and a family member that I have changed happened this summer.
After about twenty-five years of flying under the radar of the Christian author/speaker world, I had received an invitation to conduct a weekend conference in a local church located several hundreds of miles from here. I thought, “If I can speak without drooling on my shirt front, or thinking I am Bruce Larson in midsentence, maybe I could do a little traveling and speaking again.” But, at eighty-two, I was a little nervous about it. (I’d participated in some institutional programs during the past few years, but usually shared the time with one or two, or a number of speakers.)
I prepared my material, and then packed my clothes etc. in a large suitcase. Andrea was going with me (and I was secretly very grateful about that since I was feeling some of the fear and anxiety of my younger days.)
At the last minute, Andrea said, “Honey, your bag weighs just a little too much. Would you like for me to take something out?”
Now Andrea is a truly amazing wife. She helps me in a hundred ways—but she is very wise and always asks first if I would like her to help. So I said gratefully, “Thanks. Just take out the heavy black shoes and the brown tie shoes and put in the cordovan loafers. I’ll wear them with everything.” So she finished packing, and the next morning I stumbled out of bed and we caught a flight to Alabama.
When we arrived, I just had time to shower and dress for the opening Friday night session. I planned to wear a dark suit or sports coat to the meeting. As I sat down to put on my shoes, I glanced at my watch. (Ah, not a minute to spare—but on time.) But then, I slipped my shoes out of their red shoe bags. The only pair of shoes I brought looked strange. Then it hit me. THERE ARE TWO BROWN LEFT SHOES—ONE LOAFER AND ONE TIE SHOE! AND NO TIME TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!!!
All the adolescent fears of my youth descended on me, fears that I had secretly protected my self from for almost 70 years, (by prayer, reasoning with myself, taking a drink, running away). What could I do? It was too late to run to a store and pick up a pair of new shoes (at that moment I would have paid $500 for any two that matched.)
Then I looked at Andrea who knows me so well. She was in anguish, and sounding a little fearful, “I’m so sorry, Honey! Oh, how could I have done that?”
“Exactly the right question!” I thought. And I felt the old fear-anger rising in my chest.
Now some people who are not proud, insecure males may not see this situation as significant problem—to be coming back to your former vocation at eighty-two, (specifically trying to demonstrate that you are not an addled old man), and having to wear dirty white sneakers with a dark suit to speak from the front of a sizeable church. But for me it was my worst nightmare, and it was really happening! And then I thought, “And it isn’t even my fault!”
I felt my eyes narrowing, as I prepared to shame my wife (in order do get the onus off me somehow), by saying with icy sarcasm something like, “Is packing one pair of shoes that difficult?” (Interpreted for non-Texans: “Can’t you even pack ONE damn pair of shoes?”)
But then, unexpectedly, I thought about God, and how I was about to tell these people that God loved them. And then I saw in my imagination the faces of some of the men in the men’s group I meet with, and remembered how we are trying to surrender our entire lives to God. And then I looked at my dear wife, who had never in the thirty years of our marriage made a mistake (like the shoes) that involved me. And I thought about how she had interrupted her work to come along on this trip and help me, knowing how scary this could be for me at my age. I looked at her face. No excuses, just concern for me—and she was prepared for the axe.
She said uneasily, looking at her watch, “They’ll be here in five minutes. What are you going to do?”
Inside, something happened. I suddenly smiled as I realized that I was saying to God, “Sir, I realize that this shoe deal may provide the answer to the viability question in these peoples’ eyes—but I would appreciate it if you would let me make my own mistakes…like you always have before.”
And chuckling, I said to Andrea, “Listen, let’s make a game out of this. It’s a little bizarre, but I am going to be perfectly dressed, wearing one loafer and one tennis shoe. I’m going to wear that white sneaker this entire weekend, and I’m going to make you a bet. I’ll bet you that no one will have the guts to mention it. And I won’t even limp.”
I can still see the smile and the grateful, loving look on her face as she shook her head and laughed. The storm was over, and I was glad too. But then—almost immediately—my clever little self-centered mind was thinking that this two left shoes experience would be an unbelievably great story to introduce my weekend with the people—a story that would vindicate me. And my quick thinking would prove to the audience that I still have a sharp and agile mind!
But then, out of nowhere, the faces of my friends in the men’s group flashed into my mind, solemnly shaking their heads. And I realized that although telling the story would clear me of responsibility for my ridiculous costume, it would shame Andrea in front of all those people, making her look like a stupid wife (which she is anything but), when all she’d been trying to do was to help me correct something I hadn’t checked right in the first place. So, I just thanked God for stopping me from hurting the one I love, and got up and did my best to help those people see the wonder and love I’m finding in this life of trying to trust God for the outcome of everything I do. And I didn’t say a thing to anyone all weekend about the shoes. Only one person, an older lady, even asked about it. She said, “What in the world happened to your foot?”
In my most conspiratorial tone I whispered, “Oh, you wouldn’t want to know!” Her eyes widened, and she nodded, and walked away.
So, with regard to the question you asked about knowing whether I have really changed, virtually all my life that I can recall, I have hated to fail, be wrong, or be thought inadequate in any area in which I have been highly trained or successful. In order to avoid such opinions I have shaded the truth (i.e. lied—and denied to myself I was doing it, blamed someone else—even someone I loved—rather than take the blame for a shaming mistake.) But in this case, my love for my wife was greater than my fear of failure. In that moment in my eighty-second year, I saw that I had changed more deeply than I ever dreamed I might.
I didn’t even explain what had really happened privately to our host on the way back to the airport. The sense of peace and gratitude I felt as I sat down in the aisle seat of row fourteen told me more that in Christ even very old dogs can learn new tricks.
And how do I know that my wife recognized that I had really changed? All I can report about that came from two bits of evidence: first, the look of love and gratitude in her eyes when I told her about the game and the bet I was proposing, and two, that in our more than thirty years of marriage, I cannot remember a closer and more loving weekend together—following that moment.
Lord, thank You that You really can change us, if we will surrender as much of our futures to You as we can, and turn loose of trying to manipulate and control people, places and things to justify ourselves at every step and pretend to be more and better than we are. I know that in my case the battle is not nearly over (to rest content and trust You and just be the person You made me to be). But thank You that because of these unexpected little victories, I can sometimes trust You and really enjoy being my self—without trying to “fix the future.” Amen.
In the midst of his great chapter on love, Paul said some strange things about Christ’s kind of love, “Love cares more for others than self…Love doesn’t have a swelled head…Love isn’t always me first…Love doesn’t fly off the handle…Love doesn’t keep score of the sins of others…Love puts up with anything …Love trusts God always…Love always looks for the best…and Love keeps going to the end. (From 1st Cor. 13 THE MESSAGE.)
“Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”
Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you mentioned that your wife, Andrea, is also a writer. What kind of writing does she do, and is there something available in print now?
Yes, Andrea is a very accomplished writer and an editor. She recently showed me a devotional she wrote, and I asked her if we could use it on this Monday morning space. She agreed. So here it is.
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I looked at a picture of my brother and his family on the monitor’s screen. According to the e-mail to which it was attached, they were having breakfast with our sister on a visit to Tennessee where she was living in our late mother’s garden home. My sister’s happy face smiled back at me, too.
A flood of memories and feelings washed over me as I surveyed the scene…the familiar fireplace in the background over my sister’s shoulder flanked by the unfamiliar arrangement of objects placed there for a recent estate sale.
My eyes settled on my nephew’s face. At fifteen, he is tall and slender, much like my father had been at that age…and my brother, too. The expression on his face is so achingly familiar it causes a catch in my throat. Eyebrows raised high, lips pressed together and upturned in a smile, his smile echoes one of my father’s smiles. From grandfather to grandson…the connection is so visible. Of all the memories that picture holds, that one teen-age smile is the most gripping, a living connection to the precious gift we siblings have shared … parents with strong commitment and deep loyalty. They passed their great faith on to us as they guided and provided for the three of us and our sister (who suffered brain damage a few hours after her birth) through our growing up years.
We are in the process of dissolving that home place. My fingers froze on the keyboard as I wrote, thinking of all the “endings” taking place as we do this. We share the decision-making and work of this transition, and also the memories and gratitude for the gift of two such remarkable parents.
Lord, thank you that no matter what endings happen in our lives, we’ll never be alone. You’re always here to be our home. Amen.
“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you.” – John 15:4 (THE MESSAGE)
“Sorrow … turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history…”
– C. S. Lewis
Note from Keith: Andrea has written or co-authored seven books. The following are the ones still available at www.keithmiller.com.
• The Eternal Present, ed. by Andrea Wells Miller (Daily Devotionals Selected from the published works of well known Christian Authors)
• Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody, with Andrea Wells Miller and J. Keith Miller
• Breaking Free: A Workbook for Facing Codependence, by Pia Mellody and Andrea Wells Miller
• Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody, with Andrea Wells Miller and J. Keith Miller
Besides the books listed above, Andrea has written a number of study guides for books and small groups. She has also edited and helped write a number of Keith’s books.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, your life sounds like a real adventure story. How have you met so many interesting people and gotten them to help you? My experience vacillates between being boring and scary by comparison and people seem to resist helping me.
It’s interesting that you would say that my life sounds like “a real adventure story” because just this week Andrea and I were talking about the fact that we both think of our lives as being on an adventure as we try to learn to relate more deeply to God and to do God’s will as we can understand it. My life is sometimes scary, but it’s not boring. It could be that the reason I write about so many interesting people and experiences is that we have come to believe that everyone we meet on God’s adventure may teach us somehow about God and loving. So we pay a different level of attention to people and listen more intentionally than we used to—and people we contact everyday have become more fascinating to us. An “adventure” may begin in a very ordinary situation.
For example, about four years ago, I was helping our pastor begin a small group series at our church. At the introductory meeting each small group leader was asked to talk a little bit about their group and how the participants might grow spiritually. The group that Andrea and I were leading was titled, “Living What You Believe in Every Area of Your Life.” I briefly described that the group’s main purpose would be to learn how to walk in faith everywhere in their lives. After I spoke we broke up into several groups that had been selected by the staff ahead of time.
One young couple, David and Jessica Lyon, came up to me afterwards and asked if they could visit with us. They heard me mention a book and wanted to talk about it.
We invited them to come by after class and talk. As a result, we became friends and David and I began spending time discussing his interest in theology and the work we were doing in helping people discover and accomplish the dreams God may have planted in them. Shortly after that the woman who was our administrative assistant moved out of state, just as Jessica had decided that she was more interested in helping people the way we were trying to than following her vocational profession of being a teacher (she also has a degree in Architecture). She was looking for a way to accomplish that dream and follow God’s will for her. I told her that we needed some help, as our assistant was moving, but that she was way over-qualified for the job as our assistant. However, if she wanted to work for us for a while as she was making the transition, we’d be happy to have her with us. That was two and a half years ago and Jessica was a God-send.
Shortly after David and Jessica were married they decided to have a baby. As the time for the baby to come approached, Jessica said she was going to have to quit because they felt that it was especially important to care for the baby themselves the first several months of his life.
We agreed. But when Jessica told us she would still need to work, and after we all prayed about the situation, we invited Jessica to keep working and bring the baby with her. We have offices in our home, and her office was right next to our quiet, private guest room, which had a rocking chair in it. We borrowed a crib, and she could have a private place to feed and change the baby, and he or she could nap there. She accepted.
And so suddenly life changed for us. At 60 and 80 years old Andrea and I hadn’t been in the same house with a baby around for a long time. But since we believed this was the way we were supposed to live, we were excited when Blaine arrived at the hospital—and then appeared at our house.
We had some strange experiences during his early days. One morning, about 10:00 a.m., I was talking on the phone to someone in an Eastern city. Suddenly Blaine let out a big happy scream (that filled the entire house) followed by a sweet baby giggle and the business man on the line said, “What was that noise?”
I said, “Oh, nothing, it’s just the baby.”
“THE BABY! You’re 80 years old and you have a baby in your office?”
So I explained how Blaine had joined the team for his first season, as a free agent.
Andrea and I were writing a book at the time, the thesis of which centered around an argument Jesus’ disciples were having about who was to have the highest rank/position in God’s new Kingdom that Jesus was announcing.
Jesus was apparently horrified and disgusted that the argument was happening after all his teaching that the old order would be replaced with a whole different way of relating, doing away with the hierarchical social system they were arguing about. Jesus put a young child in the midst of them and said:
“I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.” (Matthew 18:2, The Message)
After Blaine started crawling, whenever I walked into Jessica’s office in the morning, he would look up at me but wouldn’t come to me. As I watched him glance up from the floor and then ignore me, it hit me that this new “distance” between the baby and me might have something to do with what Jesus had been talking about. The next morning I got on my hands and knees in the hall outside Jessica’s office, and crawled into the room where he was playing on the floor.
He glanced up, surprised, and didn’t look away. Then I lay down on the floor absolutely on his level and looked at him—eye to eye—across the floor. Blaine cocked his head a second and then crawled right over to greet me.
Suddenly I had two insights: (1) My lying on the floor to connect with Blaine was a picture of what God had done for us in Jesus—gotten on our level, becoming like us to get into our world so we’d feel safe enough to hear what God wanted to tell us. And (2) that the disciples were in some way to do the same thing, to deal eye to eye with the little child within the people they invited into the kingdom. Furthermore, as a twenty-first century disciple, I am to do this also, to walk with people in terms of their real inner lives as they are experiencing them and not from some elevated position as an expert theologian, professor, or therapist. I realized that disciples are still to relate to people vulnerably, with a kind of eye-to-eye-level love that was what the Kingdom Jesus was announcing was all about.
As I went back into my office and started to thank God for that insight, I realized an even more important thing that Jesus may have been saying to me, about my relating to God. Before I could relate much as a disciple of Jesus to the child minds of people I was talking to about the Kingdom/Reign of God, I would have to relate to God as a little child relates to his daddy. And when I thought about actually addressing God with the word, “Daddy,” I almost choked on it. It didn’t seem appropriate, not ‘holy’ enough. (But the word Jesus used in the “Lord’s Prayer,” the only prayer he gave us, was “abba,” translated properly as “daddy.”)
And it was then that I saw my problem: I didn’t want to be a helpless, defenseless child when I related to God. I wanted to be like an intelligent committed young therapist or disciple talking to his older, more experienced mentor. I was ashamed to acknowledge that. But I decided that this attitude just might be the thing that had me stuck on my book project and my life at age 80, trying to relate to God.
So I imagined myself as a little child coming to his loving, all-knowing, trustworthy, safe father, and one morning I finally addressed God with the word, “Daddy.” I began to cry, to weep as I hadn’t done in a long time, because I was warmed with the sense that I was at home and safe in God’s presence as a little child would be with an all-loving father.
I’m not saying that you should do what I did, but I am telling you that by taking a young couple named Lyon seriously one morning at a meeting in our church, a new adventure started that led me to discover a deeper relationship with God. And a little over three years later, I was rescued from a stuck place on our book project—you might say “trained”—by the youngest Lyon, named Blaine. And for me, that was a real adventure that took place in our own home.
Lord, thank you that we don’t have to do big things, be famous people or go to exciting foreign places to have “important” adventures with you. Thank you that you offer to introduce us to all kinds of fascinating people to love if we, as little children, pay attention and let you reign as our Daddy from heaven. In Jesus’ name, amen.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, who was the person who gave you the courage to reveal your own problems and unacceptable feelings as a way to connect with and free Christians plagued by “unspeakable” problems?
Thanks for asking this. I haven’t talked about much, but at one point I knew that what I needed personally was a model: someone who was seriously trying to be God’s person and who obviously was committed to Christ and had intellectual integrity, but who also faced the kinds of fears, problems and failures that I faced. Evidently, this was not a combination to be found in a single Christian communicator. People seriously committed to God either did not have the kind of struggles I had, or considered them too insignificant to be mentioned. I had met some other strugglers who, like me, were trying to slug it out with this paradox, but we were all nobodies. I had never run across a communicator with any authority who admitted to this strange predicament of feeling unable to be whole, in spite of the power and joy to be found in the gospel.
Then in the summer of 1965, Dr. Tournier came to Laity Lodge in the remote hill country of southwest Texas for a conference. I was director of the conference center. And although I had heard of Paul Tournier, I had never read anything he had written.
The first evening he spoke, the “great hall” at the lodge was filled with psychiatrists, psychologists, MDs of all varieties, Christian ministers and lay leaders from various professions. The air was almost electric with expectation, and I realized how much the conference guests were looking forward to hearing this man whose books they had read. Many of the guests had traveled hundreds of miles for this weekend. We had turned down a number of requests to attend, and still the group had overflowed into the motel in the nearest town. As we all gathered for the first session, I wondered how well Tournier would be able to cross the language barrier from his French through an interpreter to us. I had no idea what content to expect.
Then he began to speak. Within five minutes the room had faded and we were transported into another world. A little boy was describing his struggle with loneliness and self-doubt almost sixty years before in a country several thousand miles away. You could have heard a pin drop on the stone floor. I sat behind the speaker near the huge fireplace and looked past Paul Tournier into the eyes of almost a hundred sophisticated American professionals. Inside those eyes, wide open, I could see a roomful of other lonely little boys and girls reliving their own struggles for identity and worth.
After fifteen or twenty minutes had passed, a strange thing began to happen, something I have never seen happen before or since. As Paul spoke in French, we found ourselves nodding in agreement and understanding—before his words were translated. We trusted him so much, and felt he understood us so well, that we knew at a subconscious level we would resonate with what he was saying. He described problems, doubts, joys, meanings, fears—many of which still existed for him—and spoke of them naturally, as if they were the materials God normally worked with in God’s healing ministry among all people, Christians included.
Before us was a man who did not even speak our language, an almost white haired man in his sixties who wore a wrinkled tweed suit and was exhausted from a whirlwind trip across America. And yet as he spoke fatigue, age, clothes and language difference all faded into the background. He turned periodically to make eye-contact with those of us behind him. I was mainly conscious of his sparkling eyes, his personal transparency, and a glow of genuine caring about his face. As he spoke, I felt and heard love and the truth of God about my own life.
I found myself having to fight back tears—tears of relief and gratitude, and release from my solitary burden. Because of my own struggles, I had sensed that, to be healed, we need more than good medical advice or even excellent psychological counseling. We need presence, vulnerable personal presence. I knew the Bible claimed that was what God gave us in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit: his own presence to heal and strengthen us. And I had felt that somehow we Christians were to be channels to convey that healing presence personally to other people’s lives through our own openness and vulnerability. But in Paul Tournier I met at last a living model of the kind of communication I was trying in a stumbling, understand way to find.
I made two decisions during that conference. First, I would go back to school to get some psychological training. Second, as soon as I finished a manuscript I was working on, I would read some of Tournier’s books. I was already in the process of writing a book for new Christians about living in a personal relationship with God. Existing books of this sort seemed to me overly pious, and they did not deal with the “stumbling blocks” that had bothered me as a new Christian. After Tournier’s visit, I completed the manuscript of that, my first book, with great enthusiasm.
And when I sent my manuscript to the publisher, the next thing I did was to read The Meaning of Persons. Again, tears. For years I had been looking for books whose authors were real and transparent so that I could identify with their problems and move toward healing in Christ. The closest thing I had found was Augustine’s Confessions, written in the fourth century, which is what had finally persuaded me to write a book about my own struggles as a contemporary Christian. But if I had read Tournier first, I doubt I would have felt the need to write that manuscript, The Taste of New Wine.
Knowing that a man existed who loved God and yet who also faced his own humanity and used the discoveries and methods of scientific investigation did something for me. And knowing that, at least partially because of Christ, this man could afford to be honest about his own struggles, was to push me far beyond my small horizons of security and faith. From that day forward, until his death in 1986, Paul Tournier became a mentor and friend.
“Give from the center of who you are. Don’t fake it.” Eph. 4:15f THE MESSAGE
Lord, thank you that you want us “to grow up, to know the whole truth, and tell it in love.” (Rom. 12:9, THE MESSAGE) In Jesus’ name, Amen.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’m a Christian and I feel like I am pretty committed, but I know that I don’t have the courage to be open about my faith in some situations. How does a person learn to have the courage to stand up and be counted in really unchristian situations? Can you give me some ways to find this sort of commitment? Where have you found courage that has let you take some of the hits you have taken?
For years I was looking for the courage that would make me unafraid to take unpopular stands if I needed to. Your asking the question brought a vivid picture to mind, a scene that happened half a century ago in Richmond, Indiana.
Gordon Cosby was the guest preacher in the Earlham Quaker meeting in Richmond, Indiana one November Sunday morning in 1961. Gordon had started a church in Washington, D.C. that had only sixty members and a long waiting list to get in. The required disciplines were very strenuous. I’d heard that almost half the members were ordained ministers from other churches and denominations who had left their churches to come be a part of a little church that was more demanding than some of the seminaries from which they had graduated. In that church, each person had to re-make his or her commitment every year. The influence from that small new company of committed Christians was already radiating throughout the Christian world.
I was a thirty-four year old Episcopal business-man-student at the Earlham School of Religion, the first Quaker seminary in history, and I was thrilled to meet Gordon Cosby and hear him preach. I wondered where he got the idea that a small group of Christians with stringent discipline could change the direction of a materialist Culture.
His sermon title was “The power of Discipline.” He told the story of how Gideon defeated a vastly larger and superior army with only 300 men. Gordon’s point was that God wanted Gideon to know two things: (1) to whom to credit the victory, and (2) what can be done with a small group who are really committed and disciplined to stay. He referred to the minority situation of the Christian Church in America.
Then he related his own war experience of being part of an all-volunteer air born division in the army during the Second World War. The discipline in this division was extremely hard and exacting. At one point General Taylor had court-martialed an officer for not shaving—even though there was no water, but all the men were required to shave. Gordon said that the General was right and that it was the tough discipline that allowed that division to do things that simply could not be done, and to make an unheralded but powerful contribution to winning the war.
Gordon then said that the commands of Jesus were two, (1) to be obedient and (2) to love. As a conclusion, he pointed out that following these commands as Jesus obeyed them demanded a rare and hard kind of discipline that was possible only for people who are deeply committed. “As a matter of fact,” he pointed out, “we must have the kind of love and obedience that makes us realize that we are expendable in Christ’s cause, that we become willing to be lost for His cause.”
Gordon then cited what he said was on of the most moving experiences in his life. At one point during the war, his airborne division was surrounded, their supplies and ammunition were almost depleted, and they were cut off. But they were commanded not to retreat. They were to stay or the larger battle and the whole war effort in that area could be lost. They were ordered to stay in their fox holes in a long valley. Gordon, a Chaplain in that division, was watching from a cliff as the German tanks moved toward the men he had come to know and care for a great deal. The tanks could not bypass them because if they did, the American soldiers could come out and harass the infantry following the tanks. The enemy did not know that the soldiers were out of anti tank weapons, so the tanks roared down upon them. Gordon watched, horrified, as the tank drivers drove over the fox holes with the men still in them, spun their tanks, and sealed the men in the holes…alive. But even seeing the tanks do this as they approached, the men did not panic. They realized that they had to be expendable to win time for the main body of the army to escape. And they stayed.
Gordon looked at us in that meeting and said evenly, “The commitment that frees, that overcomes fear and hesitation comes from the person who finally comes to the place where he doesn’t care what happens to him. In a sense he couldn’t care less. He is willing to be expendable in Christ’s cause. And that’s where the power comes from to change impossible situations.”
I was very moved when I heard Gordon telling us that story. I grasped for the first time that I was sitting not ten feet from a man who had seen people he knew well live and die with that kind of commitment. And I knew in my bones that Gordon Cosby had that kind of faith too. I heard that sermon forty-eight years ago, and I have followed Gordon’s work since he “stayed” and was obedient. He loved the poor and marginalized, the unloved of all kinds, and faced angry threatened Christians, selfish politicians, police, judges, and lawmakers at all levels, in the South during integration, and in Washington D.C. for fifty years, in order to build housing and new lives for people with no advocates or powerful friends. He and the others at the Church of the Saviour have in fifty years done things that simply couldn’t be done.
And Gordon, 91 now, still goes to the building where prisoners who have served their terms are released on the streets of our capital city with only enough money for a few days—with no where to go—in one of the busiest cities anywhere. And he meets them…and cares, though be doesn’t have the money to care for them—for there are hundreds of them…oblivious of the tanks coming down the valley.
Thank you, Gordon, for just being who you are….and changing my life.
Lord, thank you for the men in those fox holes, who never knew that a Chaplain from Virginia saw them stay and die, and drank their courage through his eyes—and brought it home to plant its seeds to save a floundering, half-committed Church and nation. And it just occurred to me that Gordon and his bunch may not know—as the soldiers in the foxhole didn’t at the time—the effect of his courage, and “staying,” and giving his life (when all seemed lost) has had on so many of us who stood on the hill…and watched him stay and love your needy children for You, Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
“Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard, what you saw, and what you realized.” (Paul talking to the Philippians 4:8f. THE MESSAGE)
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you talk a lot about surrendering your life to God. I have two questions: (1) Do you honestly think you can do that? and (2) How do you negotiate the frantic, unexpected overload of sound bites and conflicting demands on your time any better because you’re trying to surrender your life to God? I know this may seem pushy and cynical, but I am sick of religious crap and am just wondering how much you are saying is real for you and how much is phony? (I have other questions but they depend on your answer to the first one.)
Two weeks ago I responded to the first of the above two questions. The second one is my subject this week. Following are three of the changes that have made dealing with my ordinary life a much better experience (less frantic, overloaded and conflicted).
1. Loss of fear of being thought naïve intellectually for telling people about my attempt to surrender to Jesus’ Father God: At first I didn’t tell anyone about deciding to surrender my whole life to God because even most of my friends at church and a number of ordained ministers I know seemed to believe that it was embarrassing when someone came around who unashamedly loved Jesus and had said he or she had surrendered their lives to Him. It was as if such a person had deserted his or her intellect somehow. But when I finally realized that nothing in my graduate degrees in either Psychology or Theology had been as intellectually challenging or faith producing as simply trusting God, I realized that I was somehow on more solid ground intellectually then I had been when I had worn my real “faith suit” (my real commitment) only around like-minded Christian.
Douglas Steere, while writing about Thomas à Kempis’ book, Imitation of Christ, described my experience when he said,
“Faith is not as it has been so often depicted, an act of intellectual mutilation, but it is rather one of inward abandonment to a course of life that in advance accepts willingly the consequences regardless of what they may turn out to be.” (Imitation of Christ, p. 25).
2. The dissolving of life-long specific fears: I have always felt drained by different kinds of fear, of financial loss, loss of love, etc. But as I began to learn to listen to people so I could find out how I might love them specifically, a strange and totally unexpected thing happened.
One day at a hospital where I’d been taken because of an injury, I was waiting for the surgeon to sew up my arm and upper thigh, which had been ripped open when a neighbor’s dog attacked me. I thought about the fact that if I hadn’t known to give the dog a karate chop across the nose, he might have gotten to my throat and killed me. But as I lay there waiting in the emergency room, thanking God and reassuring my neighbor that I wasn’t going to sue him, I realized that I hadn’t been afraid for a long time.
I recalled that the apostle John had concluded his comments about fear by saying that mature love casts out fear—amazing! I’d always prayed for courage to cast out fear only to discover this late in life that when I am living a life of loving and caring about each person in my small adventure during my ordinary days and nights, loving can take away the fears of financial loss, injury and even death. In the fifth Beatitude Jesus points to how this works when he said, “You’re blessed when you are care-full (full of caring), because then you feel cared for.” And that is becoming true for me. I feel that whatever we have or lose, we will somehow be able to (with God’s help) carve a life of love out of it.
3. New attitude about trying to buy security: At times the temptation has come up to do or buy something that would meet my exaggerated needs for financial security, or for sexual assurance from a woman, or to try to claim or imply that I’m a lot more than I am so I’ll feel more secure. It used to be that I might spend a lot of time fantasizing about and then buying things that would hide my self-centered insecurities. I see now that these fantasies and purchases were ways of not trusting God and of taking control of my “image” by acquiring material possessions to prove that “I am enough.”
With my decision to surrender more completely, my perception changed almost immediately. And when my old unreal habits of thinking came up, I began to realize the ridiculous nature of my temptation to purchase. I try to confess, “I need a Mercedes Benz like I need to be fifteen feet tall! Forgive me for my grandiosity!” Then I say to God, “I offer my whole life to you. Please help me to see your will.” Now every morning when the alarm goes off, I say the following prayer:
“Lord, I offer my entire life to you to build with me and do with me as you will. Take away my bondage to self so that I can better do your will. Overcome my difficulties so that victory over them will bear witness to those I would help of thy powers, thy love and thy way of life. Help me always to do thy will, in Jesus’ name, Amen.” (Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous)
All this may be more than you asked, but history records some brilliant and courageous people who have wrestled with the same self-protecting demons that capture our lives, demons that can, it seems, be exorcised only by putting our lives in the hands of a power greater than that of our “most trusted passions” and the irrational temptations that would drag us back into them.
Thank you Lord that you don’t ask us to figure you out, but offer to come into our personal experiences and show us in the drama of our own lives the truth about your offer of love and freedom. Help me not to get too discouraged because I can’t express the depth of happiness, love and purposes you bring with you as you house-clean and guide your children to come be more like your Son. Amen.
Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them…. All they want is easy street…But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites.
Selected from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, 3:15, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, how it happened, I don’t know, but in my gratitude to God for a new chance at life, I seem to have forgotten how to live the human everyday life with my family. I am so into self justification that it is hard for me to hear that I’m being selfish. Have you faced this?
I received this question years ago when I was a relatively new “Christian writer” and I responded:
Oh yes, one of the most subtle problems I have uncovered as a “committed and active” Christian is this: when I begin to minister to others I sometimes start gradually to take on a sort of “holy immunity” from some of the normal responsibilities of family life, because of my “high calling.” For instance, any normal husband would be in big trouble if he were gone from home in the evenings as much as the average minister is. Although it is true that I have often been as upset as my wife about having to be away from our family so much, it is also true that when the children were small, there was often a great relief in bypassing the thousands of details and questions with which our little girls plagued us in that rather frantic twilight period near the end of the day. And often when I was at home physically, I was absent emotionally.
Because of the lack of dependability of my presence with the girls when they were still quite young, my wife was forced to assume the underlying responsibility for their growth and development. But the thing about this responsibility that seems to be particularly frustrating to wives is that it is only felt by the one who accepts it. So I did not even realize that there was such a burden, much less that I was not bearing my part of it. My ignorance of this problem led to no small amount of resentment in our family life. My wife felt that to bring up my continual absence “for the Lord’s work” would make her look like a lazy or nagging wife and a poor Christian. When she would bring it up, her tone was so loaded with resentment that I sort of felt she was those things.
But at a pastors and wives conference at about that time I counseled with a number of women, most of whom were married to prominent ministers. Several of them felt emotionally deserted with their children. And the husband, if confronted, had been irritated that the wife couldn’t “do her part.” Or he had retreated behind the ministerial shield with the guilt-provoking insinuation that however much he wishes it were different, “The Lord’s work must come first.” Some have even referred to the passage where Jesus’ family came to get Him while He was speaking to a group, and He refused to come out (Mark 3:31-35).
But as I began to see that these women were genuinely hurt, bewildered, and felt terribly alone with the emotional responsibility for their children, I started looking into it—especially since it seemed to be so common. That was when it occurred to me that I was doing the same thing to my own family.
Later, at home, I re-read Mark 3:31-35 and discovered one thing immediately that would blast a legalist: When Jesus would not leave the group to whom He was ministering to go out to His family, He was talking about His parental family (mother and siblings). But He was not talking about leaving His wife and children in order to stay with the group to whom he was preaching.
I realize this may sound like scriptural nit-picking, but there is a great deal of difference in my mind between responsibility for the marital family one instigates and the parental family he or she is supposed to leave to fulfill his or her vocation. In other places the Scriptures say that a man is to give second place to his parental family and give his first attention to the family represented by his marriage (Genesis 2:24; Ephesians 5:31). And of course the New Testament Epistles are pretty clear about a male Christian (particularly an ordained minister) bearing his responsibilities to his wife and children (Ephesians 5:5; 1 Peter 3:7; 1 Timothy 3:4, 12; Titus 1:6).
If this were true, I had a reorientation job on my hands . . . with my own life. I began to realize that my unconscious avoidance of a good bit of the constant nitty-gritty of family living had made me hesitant to preach or teach about intimate life in the home. And yet so much of the distress of new Christians seemed to center in bruised family relations. But how could I speak about problems I still had? So what I often did was to avoid this issue and talk about “more important matters” . . . like prayer or social involvement. And this way I avoided facing the true nature of my holy immunity.
But as I continued to read about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I saw One who refused to witness or preach from a favored position. Although He was evidently never married, He lived and witnessed out of an authentic life in which He was as vulnerable as the people to whom He ministered. I began to see that unless I could try to be a genuine, participating father and husband, sharing the emotional responsibilities for my family’s growth and happiness, I had nothing to say about an authentic life in Christ to the families around us.
How did I find a balance in all this when I did have to be away from home more than some men? And yet I had to find a way to include every member of my family in the shifting circle of my inner emotional horizon. How did I build each one of them into a calendar already filled with important and even necessary dates? I did not know how I could, but only that I had to try. (In future devotionals I will talk about some things I have tried if any of you are interested.)
The “great” commitment all too easily obscures the “little” ones. But without the humility and warmth which you have to develop in your relations to the few with whom you are personally involved, you will never be able to do anything for the many. Without them, you will live in a world of abstractions, where the solipsism, your greed for power, and your death with lack the one opponent which is stronger than they—love. Dag Hammarskjold, Markings
Lord, help me not to take myself and my work so seriously that I fail to be a husband, father, and grandfather to those special people you have given to me alone, to love and care for in your name. If I fail with my mission as a witness to the community, you can raise others; but if I fail to listen for the needs of those in my own family, there are no others to fill the void. This frightens me, Lord, because I don’t know how to be a good husband and father, and I realize now that my own father didn’t know either. So often I have let my own dreams and resentments keep me from facing my inadequacies. Help me to begin again to learn how to be genuinely and unselfishly loving with my own family. And when I fail, help me to have the courage to face my failures and get up and try again. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 1 Timothy 5:8
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you talk a lot about surrendering your life to God. I have two questions: (1) Do you honestly think you can do that? and (2) How do you negotiate the frantic, unexpected overload of sound bites and conflicting demands on your time any better because you’re trying to surrender your life to God? I know this may seem pushy and cynical, but I am sick of religious crap and am just wondering how much you are saying is real for you and how much is phony? (I have other questions but they depend on your answer to the first one.)
Good questions. Your questions remind me of the man many years ago who was sent to investigate me for heresy. I’ve wrestled a lot with both of these questions. Sounds like you’re a serious player.
Question number one is easy, and the answer gets at the heart of my own spiritual journey. Sometimes I hate to write these pieces every week because I can see so many ways my life is far from “totally surrendered to God.” But at another level, this attempt at total surrender has been the doorway to the life I got three degrees and helped build a business looking for—but never found.
I’ve come to believe two things about “being totally surrendered to God.” First, since Freud’s postulation of the unconscious, most thinking people believe that much more than half of the content stored in our minds is not even accessible to us—memories, painful facts, sins, resentments and experiences of all sorts hide from us when we try to call them back, etc. If the “unconscious” is a real phenomenon, then if I did surrender all of my life I can see to God, two-thirds of my life might not be committed at all. And the next morning after the “surrender,” a long-buried lust or lie or memory of hurting or cheating someone (or someone hurting me), or a scheme to get even, may jump into my mind full blown along with attached unsurrendered feelings of anger, guilt, resentment or lust—none of which were conscious to me when I surrendered my life. In other words, I don’t believe we even have access to most of our past experiences when we consciously surrender our lives to God.
A common example of this not being able to access material in our own minds happens to students all the time. Let’s say that you prepare thoroughly for an examination in school. During the exam, you come to a question that you studied for and had the answer down pat the night before. But though passing the test is very important, you cannot remember the answer. Finally the bell rings, and you have to turn in your exam. Then, walking down the hall two minutes later, the answer appears “out of nowhere.” There are many other examples of not being able to access information in our own minds.
Since every life contains some sins, guilt, selfish attitudes and lusts that are not ever conscious when we decide to “surrender our whole lives to God,” I believed that all I could do was to decide, “Do I really want to surrender my entire present, past and future to God?” And I make that surrender.
With that decision (for me) came the realization that the journey to wholeness in Christ is largely a matter of being willing to face the unsurrendered areas of my life and surrender them when they appear—though I may have been in denial about them for years.
But by trying to live my entire sleeping, eating, working, playing life for God, I have seen things that have been hurting my closest relationships for years that I might never have owned. And as a Christian I have steps to take to surrender them. (Confession, making amends, etc.)
So when I finally surrendered, I gave God permission to help me see unsurrendered acts, thoughts and character problems Only then could I confess them, make amends when necessary, and ask God to help me not to wander in areas of my life where I might repeat those acts and patterns of thought that put me in the hidden “control seat” of my life instead of God.
There were a couple of areas which seemed to be so important to my inner security and comfort that I didn’t in any serious way consider surrendering to God to the extent that I could say “I will trust you for the amount and/or fulfillment in these two areas and I will do your will even if it means giving up my financial security and my sex life in order to be the loving and non-manipulative man you created me to be. And I am willing to trust you to guide me in working out how to deal with these as well as every other area of my life.
When somehow I made that surrender to God, the surprise was that intuitively I knew my life would never be the same. My perception of my whole life and all my close relationships came into focus in a different way. And at the same time I realized that I had never really trusted God with my life before—though I’d said the words of surrender. But as a sub-conscious level I knew that I was not going to surrender my sex life nor my financial security to God. And although I was not doing anything dishonest or immoral about getting sex or financial security—I was uneasy about the suspicion that my spiritual growth was going to stop if I didn’t finally offer these things to God.
And finally making that that decision and surrendering everything to God led me to discover the answers to your second question: “How do you negotiate the terrific overload of your life any better because of having surrendered?” (I’ll write about that here next week.)
Writing about the real dynamics of what goes on in the lonely silence behind our “adequate faces” may seem irrelevant or even not Christian to some of you. But at this stage of my life, I am sick of my own unreality and failure to risk rejection in order to share as honestly as I can what is true for me about living and loving for God. And the truth about “surrender” for me is that, as scary as it was the first time, the willingness to take that step each morning is making me feel at home in my own skin—and at our house.
“Lord, help me not to try to run other people’s lives as I am learning so late to trust you and walk peacefully and with you and other people with an open heart to love your hurting lonely people —even those who discount us. I do love the people you have introduced me to in the past. And I am sad when I think that my attempt to surrender to you as something that will cause them to back off and find more sane and reasonable friends. But I know that the beautiful, sinful, and trapped new people being freed to whom you have introduced Andrea and me—the tribe of those who will not, cannot, stay locked inside with their fears and dishonesty, people who want to risk going with you on your scary creative adventure of turning loose, and perhaps walking together with us into the future.” Amen.
“Surrender is the stage of “final satisfaction” because we discover in that moment of surrender that the God who seeks us is also the God we seek; that in being found of God we find God in the only way God can be found; that in being thus defeated we are in the only possible way victorious.”
John Knox, Limits of Unbelief
Is surrender ‘going overboard’ on our faith if we want to be great human beings? Alfred North Whitehead said, “…a certain excessiveness seems necessary in all greatness. In some direction or other we must devote ourselves beyond what would be warranted by the analysis of pure reason.” Alfred North Whitehead, The Adventure of Ideas
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you. Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going to work and walking around life—and place it before God as an offering.”
Paul’s letter to the Romans 2:1, THE MESSAGE
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I was a basket case when I became a Christian divorcee (lost joy, divorced and terribly lonely) but my life is changing a lot—for the better. I’ve become a Christian, but I don’t seem to have any of the gifts the leaders in our church do. I can’t preach, teach, and I don’t know enough about the Bible or theology to answer peoples questions about the faith to help people decide about Christ. It seems like people like me with no religious gifts or qualifications are just supposed to write checks, pass the plate and shake hands at the door. I hate to say this, but the truth is if that’s all there is, it won’t be long before I am bored out of my skull! How can I get some qualifications to help people find God?
Very real question! I don’t know what you were told being a Christian means, nor what kind of Christian Formation classes are available in your group but by the time I was 23 I’d helped bury all the members of my family except my mother. I’d broken my neck in a car wreck and only a great doctor and a lot of painful therapy allowed me to recover and start learning that I was pretty well powerless over a lot of things in my life. Then when I was 27, my mother discovered she had cancer and only had a few months to live—she was 64.
I am telling you this because about that time I came to what I felt was the end of my rope and made an attempt to surrender my life to God. I had been drinking quite a bit and did not think I had much to offer God.
But during the next few years I worked hard trying to be a good Christian and taught a kids Sunday School classes.
About that time I met a man who was very real and honest with me. When I told him I didn’t feel I had the correct qualifications to talk to other people about surrendering their lives to God, he laughed and said, “you want me to help you?” I nodded.
He asked me to tell him my life story. So I told him about the pain and loneliness of losing my family and about my failures as a man, a husband and a parent.
I don’t remember exactly how he worded his response to my story, but what I heard was, “what are your other qualifications for leading people to God?”
Other qualifications??
“Yea, the pain you experienced in helping all the members of your family die and learning how to clear up their things after they were gone qualifies you to understand, listen to and help people who are going through that pain and fear (of dying for instance) in ways a Bible teacher or professional theologian never could unless they’d been there. Same with you breaking your neck and facing possible paralysis and your divorce after you became a Christian.”
“These are credentials for helping people find God??”
“Well, did God help you through these crisis and the pain you walked through?”
“Absolutely!”
“Then the story of each of these events that were so painful to you at the time, can be a drawbridge you can let down and walk across into other peoples lives who are suffering as you have. You can go to people and ask them to tell you about what happened to them. Then you can tell them that you experienced these tragedies and share your story with them—they will know you understand and will not be as lonely and scared because you obviously made it through the experiences. And as you offer to be with them and help them in practical ways, you may have a chance to point over your shoulder and tell them what it meant to you to have the sense that God was with you—perhaps through other Christians, or prayer—and when you got to the end of yourself you surrendered your life and will to God.”
“How will telling my story, my experiences help them find God? Seems to me they want help not stories.”
“When his followers asked Jesus why he always told stories to people He said that “if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and not get it.” (Matthew 13:12, The Message)
“You mean I’m going to preach to them at a family funeral?”
“Of course not, but you asked about credentials and I’m just telling you that pain, failure, and loneliness have been my greatest credentials—the fact that I am a Christian and I love people when they have problems that I’ve had, has given me more credibility with some people than Billy Graham or Henry Nouwen—if these people (Billy Graham or Henry Nouwen) have not been through the same experiences and survived with God’s help. And what I learned is that if I go to love the people in trouble and not try to evangelize them, they will wonder why I came. Especially people I’m not related to and from whom I don’t want anything.”
“But, what if they don’t ask about God?”
“My job, as a Christian, is just to love them (Matthew 25)—to visit them and open my life to them and “to live generously”. Doesn’t sound very effective. But my job is not to be effective but to love people, and besides until I get to know someone and walk alongside them a little, I don’t know how they are already coping and what they may need.”
“You mean, as a Christian, you just go through your days and weeks finding ways you might be able to love people you are with?”
“That’s about it—and after just hanging out with people, you would be amazed at the incredible things that happen to some of them when they feel loved by someone who’s not trying to change them out somehow.”
“But the point is that it’s not my knowledge or academic credentials that are my real credentials for loving people from God’s sake, but stories of the pain and failure that God helped me get through. These stories are stored in my memory and become my human resources.
“He said, “Then you see how every student well-trained in God’s kingdom is like the owner of a general store who can put his hands on anything you need, old or new, exactly when you need it.” Matthew 13: 52, The Message
“You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. . . . I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:14, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, I’ve been secretly wondering if I’m a real nut case—I’m highly motivated to do well and be a good Christian—but I resist doing things that are difficult and or will take a lot of time—even if the payoff for me will be great. I don’t tell anyone about this problem because my vocation involves complex and time consuming research and writing—which I love but which I put off and put off until I miss a deadline. Am I alone with this problem?
I don’t know how many others have this problem, but I sure do. I may wake up feeling very uneasy with a strong urge to “escape.” Suddenly, I sit up in bed, wondering, “What’s the matter with you?” As I reflect on our family life and my job, I realize that things are really going very well. We’re all healthy and have enough to eat, and no major problems are undermining the comfort of our life together. I am in the midst of writing a book. But I have the feeling that it is dull and no one will read it—or if they do, they will think I am naïve. So I will have to go through the agony of reworking the manuscript again to try to reproduce in writing the pictures which I see in my mind. And this is very difficult for me.
At this point I saw my problem. For some reason I was trying to avoid writing, the very thing I love to do. Why? As I thought back over my life, I realized that I have often avoided things I really wanted to do, just because they were difficult. I remember as a skinny little boy wanting to have a well proportioned physique. But I would do almost anything, including feigning sickness on occasion, to avoid heavy muscle-building work around our yard. I love to learn, and yet in school I avoided studying for exams as long as possible.
I said here, last week, that later, as an adult, I strongly resisted the notion of committing my life to God—for many years. Although I was strongly attracted to the idea and suspected that it was the better way, the suggestion of “total commitment” made me angry and was repelling. Such a commitment would no doubt fill my life with difficulties and force me to examine my true motivations at every turn. I was convinced that I would have to give up the normal joys and goals of living.
Throughout my life a strong desire has often forced me to overcome my resistance and try the more difficult thing: to begin doing the calisthenics, work, study in school, and finally, to become a Christian. In each case, when I chose what appeared to be the difficult course, I learned a strange truth about life: often the difficulties were actually the doorways to growth and fulfillment. Yet, I have spent much of my life, both before and after becoming a Christian, unconsciously avoiding painful and uncomfortable situations.
I realized this morning that most of the insights that have been of value to me in relating to other people were distilled from my own difficulties and pain in trying to wrestle with the problems of life. Some of these things—the conflict with loved ones, the blundering mistakes in trying to learn to pray at home—some of these seemed funny when I wrote or told about them in retrospect. But at the time I was facing the situations they were difficult, agonizing encounters from which I wanted to run—and often did.
I cannot recall a single person who has been of real help to me in learning to cope with life who has not personally faced some great difficulties or suffering in his or her own experience, even though he or she may have seemed profoundly positive and joyful.
The second thought that struck me was that the experience we call “joy” does not usually come from the trouble-free and effortless periods of life. Rather, joy seems to be distilled from a strange mixture of challenge, risk, and hope. And as I have met in groups with other uncertain Christians to share the difficulties in our families, vocations, and relations with other people and God, the effect has often been one of deep joy and insight into life—even though the difficulties themselves may not have been overcome.
But if this is true, then I should not run from the risk of difficulty and responsibility as I have done so often. I should quit trying to avoid necessary hard tasks but instead thank God for them. Because these things seem to provide the main doorways to character and firsthand knowledge about life. (I am not saying that one should go out looking for personal pain and difficulties. This tendency can be a mental sickness called masochism. It has been my experience, however, that one will find plenty of problems and pain to face just trying to do God’s will.)
My restlessness this morning must have been because I did not want to face the difficulty of writing these pages to you. But doing it has brought a great sense of peace about today. And I hope that for the rest of the day I will spend less time running from the tasks and problems that may lead me to life and wholeness.
People then should rejoice in suffering, strange as it sounds, for this is a sign of the availability of energy to transform their characters. Suffering is nature’s way of indicating a mistaken attitude or way of behavior, and… to the non-egocentric person every moment of suffering is the opportunity for growth. Rollo May, The Art of Counseling
Where there is no strife there is decay: “The mixture which is not shaken decomposes.”
Heraclitus, As quoted in The Story of Philosophy
Father, thank You that Your Holy Spirit seems to use my hours of conflict and suffering as “teachable moments” in my life. Help me to distill from difficulties a way of living that is whole and gutsy and does not sugarcoat reality. Give me the grace not to reject those Christians whose circumstances have been such that they claim they have never personally faced fear of failure and the frustration of suffering through something difficult. Thank You that Your presence with me in my weakness often brings endurance and hope.
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. Romans 5:3-5
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, you seem to be writing a lot about the importance of surrendering your entire life to God. I have some fear about trusting God that much. Were you afraid to really turn loose? What’s the real skinny on actually deciding to?
P.S. And also, can you guide me to other writers who have helped you regarding the idea of surrender?
The simple answer is “yes,” only I wasn’t just a little afraid to surrender totally. I wasn’t sure it would even be safe to. I had started my real Christian adventure by committing “as much of my life as I could to as much of God as I could understand.” That commitment allowed me to come out of the spectator section onto the playing field and become a “visible” serious Christian. But when I first heard that God was calling me to “surrender my whole life” to him, I was very fearful. I had been baptized and confirmed and made some serious commitments and changes in my disciplines, behavior and attitude.
But there were some problems. People in my close relationships seemed to think I was controlling them (while I thought they were trying to control me.) And certain things plagued my intimate relationships, arguing with my spouse about some of the parameters of our most intimate life (ego, money, sex, and who’s really in charge here). Whatever the issues, I had an inordinate need to be declared “right,” even in arguments about who said what, etc.
I could not surrender to God because that meant I might have to acknowledge my self-centeredness and quit trying to make sure I always turned out to be the “good guy”—or that I might have to quit thinking some clearly un-Christian thoughts that occupied a lot of my time. Although I managed to change enough habits and behaviors that were very important and made me more vulnerable than I’d ever been, I just wasn’t willing to risk trusting God with my whole life that much—in a blank check sort of way. I didn’t trust that God would work the above issues out in ways that would make me happy or allow me to do well in a competitive world. This wasn’t all conscious, but I now can see it was very real and confining. So I just muddled along, experiencing a lot of anger and rejection in my most personal relationships—and ironically, honestly helping a lot of people.
But finally, in a treatment center, the pain got big enough to drive me to the end of my rope because of the threat of losing my family’s love and respect altogether. That put me in a position of powerlessness. I saw that with all I’d learned during my studies in theology and psychology, I couldn’t make anyone forgive me nor love me. At that point I finally really surrendered everything to God. I stepped through the portal of fear-filled pain in me and awareness that I was powerless to change my family’s opinion of me. And I simply surrendered my entire life (including the future) to God.
What has happened since that time has not been easy, but the sense of peace and the new perspective on just about everything has surprised me beyond anything I can describe to you.
I saw that God doesn’t evidently want me to spend all my energy focusing on “being good” or being “more religious,” but rather to focus on trusting and loving God, facing my denied selfish habits and learning how to be real and loving toward the people in all the different everyday areas of my life. But I now realize that I couldn’t possibly have kept all the rules, perfectly, or the disciplines, or loved perfectly—without a lot of denial and rationalization. I finally had to admit that in spite of all my determination and ability, I am powerless to transform myself into what I thought God wanted me to be.
About that time I was told that the faith that can transform our lives is not religious but “spiritual.” Whereas a religious person wants to know how to do the religious behaviors and disciplines and services that the religion prescribes, a spiritual person (particularly one who is committed to the God Jesus called Father) wants to know and do what’s real and loving in and outside of any church with which one affiliates. I finally got it that if an individual person is being the person he or she was made to be, that person will no longer focus his or her life on ‘goodness’, but rather on being authentic and trusting, while loving God and loving and helping other people become all they can be under God.
That was when I began to understand why I hadn’t been able to “give up” and surrender to God. In grad school I had learned from psychologists that everyone has several basic ‘drives’ that guide us to the things we need in order to survive: hunger, thirst, sex, autonomy, power, closeness, etc. But in our fear of not getting all we need, we have twisted these normal and natural instincts and exaggerated them to make sure we get what we decide we want (are entitled to)—based on what we are taught by our materialistic culture that we “deserve” if we are willing to work hard enough for them.
So I discovered that if I want to be the person God evidently designed me to become, I have to try to surrender my entire life to God, and then face my compulsively exaggerated and twisted focus on some of those basic instincts, and then confess the ways I have hurt and used other people in my life by using anger and subtle manipulation to get more than my share of money, possessions, prestige, sex etc., And as I saw these unacceptable facts and events in my life, I learned to make amends. When I tried to do these things, my worship and trust of God felt natural, and strengthening. (See Matt 5:23-24)
Now when I go through the daily process of facing, confessing, and making amends for my harmful actions toward God and the other people hurt by these self-enhancing behaviors, then the instincts and need to be right usually shrink toward being normal sized. And my experience over a number of years indicates that God will not try to make me into a super-pious saint. But instead, God is gradually allowing me to feel at home in my own skin and enjoy using and sharing the gifts and abilities he has given me to help other people to move toward becoming all they can be as God’s children. And most of the time I’m not afraid of getting old and all the shriveling that involves, (although it’s true that women don’t give me a second look any more (except maybe to see if I’m going to make it across the street safely). And that tells me that I’m not exactly “ruby-lipped and 22. But I am happy, really happy, and in love with my wife, Andrea. And I know that deciding to surrender my whole life to God was the biggest step on this leg of the adventure in loving we’re on.
And I’m still fascinated and passionate about learning all I can concerning God as God is revealed in Jesus, and about living that kind of loving.
Thanks for asking.
God, forgive my frightened stubborn avoidance of surrendering my life and my will. Help me to surrender this day and just trust you. Teach me how to love you more, and how to love other people and help them become what you made them to be. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
“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.” 1 Jn 4:17 (THE MESSAGE)
P.S. The following are a few statements of faith from people whose writing has helped me along the way in looking for the courage to surrender:
“If then, thou desirest to obtain freedom and grace, freely to offer thyself into the hands of God is the first essential. The reason why so few attain to inward light and freedom is because they cannot endure wholly to deny themselves. ‘My words remain unalterable: Unless a man forsake all he cannot be my disciple. If therefore thou desire to be my disciple offer thyself unto me with thy whole heart.’ “ Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, p. 253.
“Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.” Blaise Pascal, Penses, p. 78.
“But conversion is not realizing that it is possible. It is a conscious submitting of all we see of ourselves to all we understand of God. The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.” Blaise Pascal, Penses, p. 79
A prayer to enter the deeper life: “Lord Jesus, I believe that thou art able and willing to deliver me from all the care and unrest and bondage of my Christian life. I believe thou didst die to set me free, not only in the future but now and here. I believe thou art stronger than sin, and that thou canst keep me, even me, in my extreme of weakness, from falling into its snares or yielding obedience to its commands. And, Lord, I am going to trust thee to keep me. I have tried keeping myself, and have failed, and failed most grievously. I am absolutely helpless. So now I will trust thee. I give myself to thee. I keep back no reserves. Body, soul, and spirit, I present myself to thee as a piece of clay, to be fashioned into anything thy love and thy wisdom shall choose. And now I am thine. I believe thou dost accept that which I present to thee; I believe that this poor, weak, foolish heart has been taken possession of by thee, and that thou hast even at this very moment begun to work in me to will and to do of thy good pleasure. I trust thee utterly, and I trust thee now.” Hanna Whitehall Smith: The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life, p. 54
“Here in this inner region, in this root of man’s being, he [God] is still subduing his enemies, he is conducting his mysterious education.” F.D. Maurice quoted by H. Richard Niebuhr, Christian Culture, p. 228.
(The following is a thought I jotted down while reading Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventure of Ideas.)
Looking out on a clear beautiful day one would assume the only light in the sky was the sun, but wait for night and you will see the stars—which could not be seen at first because of the brilliance of the first light you saw. To see the beauty in the heavens we must look further—maybe a deeper conversion, a deeper life for us all. J.K.M.
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Keith, the heroes in the Bible seemed to have much more vivid encounters with God than I do. I’ve been wondering what it might be like to have an encounter with the living Lord. And if I did, would anyone believe me? How would I tell if it was real?
Good question. Some years ago, not long after I had made a decision as an adult to commit my life to God, I was thinking of how little we know about communication. I tried to imagine the live television pictures from the moon hitting my brain with pinpoint accuracy after traveling untold thousands of miles through the fantastic speeds of the earth’s and moon’s orbits and their joint travel around the sun. This kind of communication is more than my father could have even imagined. As a matter of fact, I remember seeing a demonstration with him of the first live television equipment at a university exhibit when I was a boy. I overheard people saying that television was interesting but would never be feasible, because it could only transmit a stationary picture for a few feet.
Just now I thought about the intimate experience I am having as I communicate with you through this book in your mind, perhaps across thousands of miles . . . conceivably over years of time. And yet even if I am dead when you read this, my living mind is meeting yours, and we are sharing to some degree the communication I am experiencing as I write. It is eerie, but it is true.
We may be just beginning to learn about the transmission of information between persons and between God and people. If God is personal in nature and we are to pray, “Our Father . . .” as Christ suggested (Matthew 6:9), then we should expect some sort of response in meaningful terms. It may be that our ability to tune in to God’s frequency is blocked by our own self-centered absorption. Perhaps our sin is like “filling our receiving screens with snow.” Yet occasionally people get very clear “pictures” of God’s answer to a prayer in terms of a meaningful word or image. And whether the contact was actually with God or not, sometimes the depth of the experience carries with it the power to change the life of the person praying, and through him or her, the lives of many others.
Several years ago a good friend named Alan told me about a startling encounter he had just been through. My friend is an intelligent professional man and in some ways a little cynical about things he hears. I certainly do not know if the experience had a transcendent reference, but my friend had been deeply moved by the account he related.
A Christian, an automobile salesman, who was a friend of Alan’s, decided he was going to make hospital calls two days each week as a part of his response to Christ’s admonition to visit the sick. During a routine telephone call to a man named Bennie Abernathy, with whom he had talked earlier about buying a new car, the salesman, Bert Johnson, reached his potential customer’s wife. She said, “Mr. Johnson, I don’t think my husband will be needing a new car. He is in the hospital and has incurable cancer. He will probably never get out.”
Bert thought, “I’ll go by to see him, just to say ‘Hello.” When he got to the man’s room in the hospital, he had a very superficial conversation. Bennie was nice enough, but Bert didn’t know him very well and had no idea how he felt about death. Finally, just before leaving, Bert decided to get in at least a word about the real situation. He turned to the sick man, “Well I hope the Lord gives you peace about all this,” nodding toward his body.
When the man heard Bert, his face lighted with a wonderful smile. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “All my life I have never really known what I felt about God. I have heard that a person must ‘commit his life to Jesus’ or ‘be born again’—but I didn’t really know how. Yesterday I was lying here, very depressed, because I did not know what to do to tie my life into God. In desperation I decided to pray. I simply asked God how I could come close to him.” The man’s face was very sincere and intense as he remembered his experience. Now he looked into Bert’s eyes with great clarity. “And do you know what’s happened as I prayed? I saw Jesus—here in this room, as real as you are. He was standing over there (he nodded toward the corner), and there were people coming to him. As they got to where he was, each one would reach inside his own robe and lift out his heart . . . and hand it to Jesus. First there were grown men, all kinds, and then there were the children…” Bennie paused as he saw it all again in his mind against the wall in the corner of the room. Bert did not know how long they sat like that, but finally the man looked up calmly and said, “Then I gave him my heart, too—and he took it, put his other hand on my shoulder and smiled as he said, ‘Peace.’ And then he was gone.”
Bert could only nod his head slightly as if in agreement. “That’s . . . wonderful,” he said softly.
The man in the bed went on thoughtfully, “You know, Mr. Johnson, I realize this whole thing sounds absurd, but it’s true. It’s the truest thing that ever happened to me. And I am going to tell every person who comes in that door before I die.”
And he did.
. . . All I can do is indicate indirectly certain events in man’s life, which can scarcely be described, which experience spirit as meeting; and in the end, when indirect indication is not enough, there is nothing for me but to appeal, my reader, to the witness of your own mysteries—buried, perhaps, but still attainable.
Martin Buber, I and Thou
A miracle is “not contrary to nature,” but contrary to what we know as nature.
Augustine, The City of God
In the dispute concerning the true God and the truth of religion, there has never happened any miracle on the side of error, and not of truth.
Blaise Pascal, Pascal’s Pensées
Lord, sometimes in my cynicism I feel as if prayer is autosuggestion and that we are playing games with ourselves when we talk of communicating with you. And then I see the miracles of modern science and realize that we are already experiencing things which point beyond our intellectual horizons to a time when people may be able to communicate mind to mind across thousands of miles. With regard to you, we seem to see though a dim lens now; but I believe with Paul that someday we may communicate face-to-face. I believe, and I appreciate your help with my unbelief. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete . . . . We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright. We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us.
I Corinthians 13:9,12
