St. John Studies

I have already made the admission that I make hard stuff out of easy stuff.

I guess I am not alone.

Pastor Idleman tells us the story of Naaman in 2nd Kings in Chapter 4. Naaman is a powerful military commander from the Kingdom of Aram.  He is used to doing big things, complex things.

One day he gets terribly upset because he has developed a skin disease.  He is beside himself with worry about this disease.  In his past military conquests he has taken an Israelite girl to be his wife and she says she knows how to cure his problem.  All he has to do is travel to Israel to meet with the prophet Elisha.

Naaman anticipates great complexity.

He assembles his entourage–750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold, horses and chariots, 10 changes of clothing, supplies.  He even asks the King of Aram to write a letter to the King of Israel saying essentially “you had better see that my buddy Naaman gets his healing or else!” Naaman is prepared for anything.

As his company approaches Elisha’s territory, Elisha sends out a messenger.   The message: tell Naaman that all he has to do is go to the River Jordan and bathe 7 times.”

Naaman:  It could not be that easy and what is this upstart prophet doing sending his messenger to me.  I am supposed to send my messenger to him.  It is not proper protocol for Naaman to receive messengers first! Naaman is expecting to conquer someone; Naaman is expecting to have to pay someone vast sums of money; Naaman is expecting to climb a mountain to reach some inaccessible peak.

No, just take 7 baths.

Guess what:  Naaman bathes 7 times and the skin disease goes away.

Guess what:  Naaman leaves Israel declaring that “there is no God anywhere on earth other than the God of Israel.”

Are you like me and you have things you need to do but in your mind, the work is too complex, it costs too much or you think you don’t have the skills?

Maybe we need to “get over ourselves and take that bath.”

Don’t make hard stuff out of easy stuff.

Chapter 4 in AHA is deceptively simple.  It is short. It has fewer illustrations or stories and Pastor Idleman is just not as wordy as he has been in the first three chapters.

But what is it about?  Simplicity.

I guess it is time for me to admit some stuff.

1. I tend to make things harder than they have to be.  Are you that way?  I know there are people who plunge into tasks and get a lot accomplished very quickly. They have confidence in their ability to utilize their skills.  I am too analytical.  I have to think a lot and plan a lot before I lift my finger to do anything.  In my mind, I have this habit of saying “It can’t be that easy” so I proceed to make things hard.  We will discuss this in the context of Chapter 4 this week.

2.I sometimes lack self-awareness.  People who like popular psychology love to toss around terms like “self-awareness” and sometimes the meaning of such terms is blurred but what I am saying is I don’t stop and ask myself how I am coming across to others.  Let me give you a very specific example.  I sometimes fall in love with my own writing so much that I  don’t catch my errors of expression or even my typos.  I depend on my wife to clean up my mistakes.  You see, she is not in love with my writing and she can see it for what it is–maybe some good ideas from time to time but also some unclear expression and careless typos.  She is objective.  I am subjective.  We will discuss this in the context of Chapter 4 this week.

3.I have been practicing yoga for many years and as I have gotten older, it is very helpful as these old muscles and bones don’t work as well as they used to.  I mention this because I am amazed at how much better my yoga sessions go if I can clear my mind of the stuff of daily life and I just concentrate on yoga.  I am frustrated when I begin to stretch and then I find myself thinking of something that happened in the past or something I have to do in the future.  I am pulled out of the “now” and mentally I go somewhere else.  Why can’t I just quiet my mind?  We will discuss this in the context of Chapter 4 this week.

Simplicity

Maybe the startling realization is that we don’t know how to live simple lives…Chapter 4.

If you don’t have a book yet, don’t despair.  We have 9 more chapters to go after this week and you can get a book and catch up easily.  All my posts are still below and you can read those if you want.  You can comment if you want.

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As we wrap up Chapter 3 in AHA, Pastor Idleman recounts the story of Jonah, who received the assignment from God to go and preach at Nineveh.  The problem was, he did not want to accept his assignment; he wanted to go anywhere but Nineveh.

The city had a rep.  Scripture from the Book of Nahum describes Nineveh as “the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!…Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses.” Would anyone want to go there?

What did Jonah do?  He went in the opposite direction, to Tarshish, literally 2,000 miles in the opposite direction.  Can anyone say “The Distant Country”?

God was not too happy.  As Jonah travelled in the opposite direction God sent a vicious storm and everyone on the boat thought that life was about to be over except, you guessed it–Jonah.  Jonah was asleep below deck.   He is about to be killed and he is sleeping through the storm.

Pastor Idleman does not put this story in his book to fill pages.  It is the perfect example of what we do; we sleep through the storms in our lives.  We ignore, we delay, we gloss over, we think the problem will go away but it won’t.  It will remain and in many cases it will get worse.

For you folks who may view this blog, you know I am from Kentucky as Pastor Idleman is.  When he talked about going to the Kentucky State Penitentiary, I know about this place.  Ok, stop.  I have never been on the inside, but I have driven by there and am fascinated by how it looks, like a “Castle on the Cumberland River” which is how many refer to it.  Indeed it looks like a castle with a few added features, like razor wire.  My brother-in-law worked there as a guard and social worker his whole life.  One of the most important men in my life Chuck Dickerson made a speech in my speech communication class on “The Castle” and to this day, I have never forgotten Chuck or that speech.

So when Pastor Idleman wrote about “The Castle” I perked up.  He wrote about a time when he went to the penitentiary [which by-the-way is a maximum security facility] and spoke to inmates.  An inmate came up to him with Bible in hand and spoke to him after his presentation, spoke to him about the fact that he was doing things God’s way now.  Pastor Idleman hugged the man and told him how proud he was of him.  This man was sleeping through the storm in his life until he finally woke up, in a maximum security prison.  He said “I just wished it hadn’t taken being sent here for me to come to my senses.”

Thinking about him, thinking about me–I cried.

Have you ever received advice from others and when it was all over, you wish your “comforters” had not come to “comfort” you?

Job suffers his disasters and then his three friends arrive.  First of all they sit on the ground with him for three days and then they repeat over and over that Job is suffering because he is a sinful man.

Job does not appreciate their opinions, calling them “worthless physicians”, “miserable comforters” and people who talk “nonsense.”

Have you ever assumed a friend or family member needed your advice when maybe they didn’t?  In my years of teaching interpersonal communication, I can tell you that unsolicited advice does more harm than good.  Yet people keep on doling it out with the misguided idea that their wisdom and experience can help another.

What are the chances that your advice can really help another person; someone who has a particular problem that springs from their unique experiences?  Really the chance is slim to none.

What do we need to do when we have a friend who is going through problems?  Listen.  Encourage them to talk out their troubles.  Let them solve their problems the best way–by posing their own unique solutions.

When someone insists that you give them advice, be careful when you give it.  Let the troubled person know that your advice is probably not going to work for them and then ask them seriously “do you still want to hear it”?

People who impose their advice on others may just be giving someone something they don’t need and don’t want.  Unsolicited advice can result in further disaster as people can try your solutions and your solutions don’t work in their life.

One of my favorite writers John Stott comments on Job’s comforters.  Stott tells us that “we may not quote anything out of the comforter’s speeches as Scripture, for their speeches are included in order to be contradicted not affirmed.”

Consider the advice you give to others; is it comfort or does it cause discomfort?  Should it be contradicted, instead of being affirmed?

“It is God’s will.”

I was at the funeral visitation and the older woman approached the relatives of the deceased with that message, “It is God’s will.”

Of course one can look at death that way.

In my opinion, that’s the short term view.

What will be the long-term view of the death of this person in the casket, the long-term effect of the loss on the lives of the ones left here on earth?

Gerald Sittser’s experience,  another illustration used by Pastor Idleman to make his point….. Gerald is a professor at Whitworth University who lived through a horrible automobile accident, an accident that took three generations of his family, his mother, his wife and his young daughter.  Can you imagine the woman coming to the caskets telling Gerald “It is God’s will.”

Gerald wrote a book about the loss of his three loved ones and he says in his book that the loss was not the one point in his live that defined his life.  He did not let it define him.  He will never forget this horrible thing that happened but he found a way through our Lord and Savior to move beyond that time in his life.  Instead of letting grief envelope him forever and anguish turn him away from God, he allowed his faith to take over.

Loss in life is a part of life.  It is not good to dwell on it on a daily basis, but the day will come when everyone loses someone they love.  How we respond to these events is what makes us the Christian that has the capacity to grow beyond the event itself, the Christian God wants us to be.   There is always more life to live and more work to do in the name of Jesus Christ.

The long view is that blessing and growth can spring from grief…if we do not let loss be our defining moment.  If we don’t let grief be our lasting occupation…

2 Corinthians 7:10 [NIV]  “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”

Question:  Have you seen people not handle loss well?  How did you feel about their Christian witness as you watched them struggle?  [no names please]

My wife and I don’t get into a deep theological discussion that much [if at all] but yesterday we were walking and she raised a good point, “Who would want to be Job?”

In this popular Old Testament book, Satan is betting that Job will run for cover when hard times come.  God is betting that Job will stand firm.

Idealistically, what an honor to have God trust us and believe in our faith….but look what Job had to endure as he experienced that honor.

Would we be happy to be chosen by God as His example of a stalwart believer?

Maybe we would say, “Nah, I think I will pass on that one God.”

Proverbs 20:30 says [NIV] that “Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being.”  That is exactly what Job was experiencing.  Circumstances [undeserved I might add] were pounding him into the ground but he held firm.  God won the bet with Satan but Job had to pay the price.  He lost everything.

But what did he gain?  Job says [42: 5] “my eyes have seen you [God].”  Imagine being able to say that.

Read on: God blesses Job more in the latter part of his life than the first, much more livestock, many more children [nowhere in the land were found women more beautiful than Job’s daughters], and Job lived 140 years, seeing his children and their children to the fourth generation.  God recouped all Job’s losses many times over.

I guess to answer my wife, I would say we need to take the long-term view if we can.  God wants the best for us even though the horrible times come.  If we wait long enough He will restore us…just like Job.

Pastor Idleman in Chapter 3 is hitting us hard with example after example of difficult circumstances in peoples’ lives and he does that to get the reader to recall those bumps in the road that we all have experienced.

Sometimes it seems like a lot more than a bump.

Sometimes a difficult circumstance is a little more.  Sometimes it is a deserved circumstance.

The Bible has Job who suffers due to difficult circumstances.  Satan is betting that Job will distance himself from God [go to the Distant Country] but Job does not.  You know the story: children died, house collapses, painful sores from top of his head to the soles of his feet–he lost everything.  Why?  It does not seem to be his fault.  He is in the midst of difficult circumstances.

Sometimes we bring about our own demise and I would call this situation a deserved circumstance.  We make a series of bad choices that lead to serious trouble.

Whether it is a difficult circumstance or a deserved circumstance, how do we respond?  Job’s AHA moment occurred because of his difficult circumstance and he said”My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you God.”  He chooses to draw closer to his God.

What will we do when difficult circumstances or deserved circumstances happen?  Draw closer or move further away?

Your choice……..

I don’t know how many of you are studying along with me but Chapter 3 really gets into the moments of crisis that God uses to draw us closer to Him.  Pastor Idleman has a long list of times when people get to the “end of their rope.”  Here are some: “she filed for divorce, I heard myself say I am an alcoholic, people found out about my secret, I woke up in the hospital after an overdose, I found myself in the back of a police car, I was fired for embezzlement, the affair was discovered” etc.etc.

Idleman really gets into the difficult circumstances of our lives and poses the question, what would you change?

How many of you would say I would rewrite my past completely!  I had so much pain and my family has suffered so much!

I hope some of you have bought the book AHA.  If you have not, you can catch up to Chapter 3 easily and there are 13 chapters.  We will be in AHA for 10 more weeks after this week is over.  Chapter 3 has a fascinating exercise in it.  I don’t want to spoil it for you but it is the “story of Jillian”.  Psychologist Jonathan Haidt developed this exercise and Pastor Idleman asks us to read it and erase the “pigpen moments,” those times when Jillian suffers.  Imagine she is your daughter.  What would you erase from her life?  That hardship that taught her to pray to God?  That hardship that taught her that she has a lot of joy to celebrate in her life when she is not going through tough times?  That hardship that shows her that her life has a purpose?  That hardship that causes her to reach out to others in love and caring?

Pastor Idleman’s point; “pigpen moments” or difficult circumstances lead us to God.  We need them.

Where have your “pigpen moments” guided your life?  Do you agree that they are valuable?

We have all known people who are going through hard times.  Heck we have all had hard times.

Have you heard anyone say “This is part of God’s plan for you” or “God won’t put any more on you than you can handle.”  It is almost as if God has caused bad circumstances to be a part of your life.

How many of you believe that?

How many of you want to hear those words above coming from someone else when you are struggling?

Probably none of you want to hear those words at all, yet does God cause the tough times?

Pastor Idleman does not deal with the cause as much as the use of tough times in Chapter 3.  He spends Chapter 3 telling us that God uses tough times for our own good because they make us draw closer to Him .

Think back on some of the toughest times you have ever had.  One of the toughest, most gut-wrenching times of my life resulted in me crying out to God and He answered.  At that time I needed Him so badly but the irony was that it was the first time I ever asked Him for help.  He  helped.  I won’t get into the gory details about what was going on in my life but I needed something.  I was about to lose all that was dear to me.

I cried out–He answered–I was “born again” and have had a relationship with God ever since.

Yes, God used my tough times.  It is clear to me now as I reflect back on my 16 years of walking with Him.

Question: Some of you have had hard times.  Do you believe God has used those for your good?  If not, did you cry out in earnest for Him to help?

As we get to the end of Chapter 2, Pastor Idleman concludes with a prayer.

He references 2 Kings when Elisha the Prophet was attacked by King Aram.  Elisha saw that God was with him but his servant did not.  The servant cried out in fear but Elisha said not to fear because God is with us and will defeat any army.

Then the servant awakened and saw his master was right.  God was there and they were safe.

We need that reminder.

This past week I have commented on friends who can offer correction to us when we are making mistakes, alarms that can go off when we are about to sin, our unwillingness to listen when clear messages are delivered that warn us, sleepwalking that takes over as we stumble into sin thoughtlessly and finally,  the billboards of life we need when we just aren’t getting it any other way.

All of these things can keep us from moving away from God or as Idleman says “going to the Distant Country.”

Let’s add prayer to the list.

Yes, there are people in your life that are praying for you to have some victory in your life, people who are praying that you will learn to put on the whole armor of God, people who want you to have some freedom from sin.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17

To pray for someone in your life to experience this just ask God to help them WAKE UP!

Questions based on Chapter 2

Do you have friends that are trying to help you make better choices or do you spend time with people who are not a positive influence on your life?

Are there alarms going off in your life right now and you are going back to sleep?

Are you a person who is so wrapped up in your own life that you are not processing messages from others–not listening?

Are you sleepwalking through life, not taking time to reflect on your choices?  You don’t even think about what you are doing half the time.

Are you the kind of person who needs a “billboard”?  It needs to be obvious that the mistakes are being made and the punishment cannot be ignored?