St. John Studies

Why would anyone title a chapter “The Messy Truth about Spirituality?”

There is a good reason Pastor Adam Hamilton* titles his chapter that way.

It is messy.

When I was a member of my previous church, I did not worry about my spirituality. I just went to church one time a week [my only duty] and that was it.

Eighteen years ago that all changed. I had a born-again experience.

I have read about these and talked to numerous people about these and they are all different. Mine came in the middle of a serious family crisis. I will never forget it. For the absolute first time in my life I sincerely asked God to help me. I admitted that I was lost. I did not know what to do.

He saved me.

But he also left me wanting more. I knew that going to church was not anywhere near the whole picture. I needed to dedicate myself to God because I knew God had dedicated Himself to me. Pastor’s words took on a whole new meaning; they seemed directed at me. I started daily early morning prayer. I began to read a devotion [Streams in the Desert by L.B. Cowman]. I participated in anything spiritual I could find to participate in. I found myself thinking about Jesus all the time. I read the New Testament with a spirit that was amazing. I read it like it was a novel that was so thrilling I could not wait to turn the page. It was speaking to me.

That was eighteen years ago.

Then came messy spirituality.

Life has its ups and life has its downs. Spiritual highs are followed by spiritual lows. As Pastor Hamilton says in one’s spiritual life “we take two steps forward and sometimes three back.” In the past eighteen years I have metaphors that seem to work for me. I am at the threshold of the door and I want to go through the threshold into a new room but I can’t quite make it into the new room.   I am at the base of a mountain and I want to climb straight up but I often go round and round the mountain instead of up the side.

What are we talking about?

Romans 7: 15-20: “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.   For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.   But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.”

Even the Apostle Paul was aware of the messy truth about spirituality.

I wish spiritual growth was a straight line…ongoing…easy but something gets in the way. My humanness. My human nature often is the cause of the messiness in my life. I have a daily fight with temptation that can throw me off track very easily. Somedays I succeed in my battle. Sometimes I have so many failing days that I feel I have lost the war.

And then I have a good run.   Things seem to click. The prayer comes easily in prayer group. The Bible reading for the day is clear as a bell, the path forward seems to be obvious and it is a good path. I have made a succession of good choices that have good results. God is good!

This won’t last forever…it never does. Challenges will come and when they do, now I know God does not go away. He is there to help. He is there as I push through the trouble. He is there when the trouble is no more.

Eighteen years ago, I could not even begin to understand James 1:

“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing….Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”

Yes, spirituality is messy and life is messy but as we live our lives with God He takes the messes and makes something good out of our trials.

He makes us better people…

*from Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White Chapter 16

My Bible preaches humility.

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. … [Philippians 2: 3-11]

“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” [James 4:6]

“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” [Luke 14:11]

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you.” 1 Peter 5:6

Yet humility is something that most of us struggle with.

I know I do.

Along with Pastor Hamilton, John Ortberg* has written about the value of doubt.* He states “It may sound strange but some would be better believers if they had a little more doubt..”

How could doubt encourage humility?

It’s all about what we think we know.

Believers who are super confident can easily cross over into the land of the prideful because they think they know “God’s will.” Have you heard from a confident Christian the words “I have had a word from God,” “I know God has spoken to me,” or my favorite “God has touched my heart.”

I hear things like that and I am quiet. But in my mind I am thinking “I hope so because that would be wonderful. I hope so because now you have declared it to everyone.”

Maybe it is just coincidence, but I am reading the Book of Job right now. Job was a confused and humbled man. As many of you know, he was “super-rich”, a man of great power and wealth with a large family. Satan took away his wealth and family and thus his power and Job reacted with words like “of all the miracles God works, we cannot understand a one.” He certainly could not understand his sudden demise.

Yet he was surrounded by three friends who seemed to know God’s will. They knew that God only visits suffering on the wicked so they said that Job had brought his calamity on himself.

What happened when God spoke to Job? We find that God was really on Job’s side and He was upset with the prideful friends: [42:7] “because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” There was more faith in Job’s confusion than in the three friend’s pious certainty.

When a person has so much confidence that they know God’s will, I wonder if the declaration of God’s intent is really the true will of God or if the declaration is really a way to manipulate others to achieve their own desires. Sometimes I wonder if a declaration of God’s will is just a way to draw attention. If I am a Christian and I can say I know what God’s will is…well, that makes me special.

Ortberg writes of a comic strip he was given about a new arrival in heaven. The comic strip shows St. Peter interviewing a new arrival. He says to the potential candidate “Are you a believer?” The new arrival says in a prideful, confident voice “Yes, beyond a doubt.” St. Peter says “You are a believer, yes. But you skipped the not-being-a-jerk-about-it-part.”

Doubt puts me in my place. I am a man, struggling to live the best life I can.   At times I closely relate to Paul who says “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” I get as confused as a newborn and realize I don’t have what it takes to do God’s work, let alone live a life that would make anyone feel good. In times like that, I truly know that God is God and David is David.

That’s ok.

I need to be humbled. I need to know my place. My uncertainty can produce character in me as I have to trust God in my times of confusion. I accept it because…

my Bible says “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Amen.

*John Ortberg Know Doubt

“If ours is an examined faith, we should be unafraid to doubt. If doubt is eventually justified, we were believing what clearly was not worth believing. But if doubt is answered, our faith grows stronger still. It knows God more certainly and it can enjoy God more deeply.”   Os Guinness

A growing faith is a very desirable thing.

There have been so many times in my life when I fell short in the faith department.   I did not have enough faith. Doubt took over and I had no foundation to support me in times of despair.

In the previous post “The Value of Doubt” I discussed that doubt can cause us to turn our back on God entirely [I have done that]. I discussed that fear of doubt can cause us to adopt a faith complete with blinders [intractable faith] and I discussed the doubter that faces doubt head on.

I have had my doubtful moments and yet I know I am a Christian. I would fall into the third category. I admit my doubts.   I face them. I also believe the doubts that I have don’t disqualify me from being a Christian but they may disqualify me in the minds of others. Some Christians feel they must have “perfect” faith or they can’t be believers at all.

Not me.

I am a person who accepts process.   I always see myself as moving on to a better faith, a faith that has fewer doubts.

I’m not at the “perfect” faith stage yet.

But along the way I am gaining something else–trust.

Trust is a necessary element in our relationship with God. Trust is the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.   For us to have trust, we have to put ourselves in a vulnerable position; in relationships with humans, it may mean that we share something special with someone else and they are true to us by not sharing that information with others. It may be that we have a friend’s back when they are being criticized by others.   You defend your friend in spite of the unpopularity of that position in the criticizing context. Maybe you say you will help your friend and when they call on you for that help, you are there immediately.   There is no hesitation in the offer of aid.   When a friend is hurting, you hurt alongside them.   Their pains affect you too.

It is a process of discovery with human relationships.   For a person to become a trusted friend it takes time.

For me, it is also a process of discovery with God.

As I have become a believer, I have seen God deliver me from tough situations time after time. I have common denominators in these situations. I have been overwhelmed, powerless and afraid. I have no clue what to do.   I need to let God take over and yet I struggle with that because it necessitates that I admit I have lost control.

But that is what has happened…I have lost control.

That’s when He steps in.

From my admission of vulnerability comes the power of God. He has helped me overcome my fear over and over again. He gives me the wisdom to understand.   He allows me to have the strength to continue on, even when everything else is telling me to stop.

Where does all this come from?

It begins with the doubts that I have. They put me in the position to trust.   Trusting helps me to quit struggling. Jesus was clear that, apart from Him, we can do nothing (John 15:5).  To trust, I must rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to do what I have to do. The metaphor of the vine and branches in John 15 is very appropriate. Christ is the vine; we are the branches. “Everything branches need to bring forth fruit comes from the vine—water, nutrients, the genetic material of life itself—while nothing is provided by the branches. The branches are simply something to hang the fruit on. The same is true of the Christian life. We are a conduit through which Christ displays His (not our) fruit.”*

The main point is this; for us to do what we need to do in life, we have to learn to trust God. We have to learn to depend on God. We have to learn to “let go and let God”.

That’s why it is so good to be honest about doubts. I believe if you have them it is ok.   God extends His grace to doubters.   When will doubt begin to go away?

When we learn to trust.

*from the “Got questions?org website”

When trouble comes…

Where is God?

This is my last post on this topic, a topic that challenges the faith of the devout, further drives the doubter deeper into doubt, and makes the unbeliever even more skeptical.

We know that trouble will come for all of us, no matter what our spiritual orientation, but some Christians struggle with tragedy and hard times more than others because they just can’t figure out where God fits into the picture.

Naively, some Christians think they are immune from difficulties; others rationalize that the difficult times are part of God’s plan.   Some even pin the tragedy on God; they want a cause.

However, I have written that accidents happen and God is not a part of those; I have written that people make choices that are not the best choices and God is not part of those choices. I have acknowledged that we bring our own suffering on ourselves.

But again, where is God in the process of going through trouble?

Is He on the sidelines just watching us suffer?

Here is the answer in Psalms 91:15 [referring to the troubled person] “I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.”

What does God expect of us when we are in the midst of hard times?

He wants us to learn, to grow, to rest in Him.

Quoting from the words of a father who lost his child when he was struck and killed by a car: “My faith grew, but not at first. I believe the despair and darkness of not having faith made me realize that the only way to go on without hatred and anger consuming my life was to embrace God and the idea of heaven. For me, faith doesn’t fix problems, but it helps you to cope and survive, and eventually grow through the inevitable tragedies that everyone will have to face.”*

The mom of this child had a different struggle.   Different Christian friends told her that her three-year-old son had died because it was God’s timing. It was part of God’s plan. She did not buy into that thinking; instead she reasoned that God gives us free will and sometimes bad things just happen.

That allowed her to turn to God for help. “[My faith] is a deeper faith that has been tested through tragedy. I know that God does promise to always be there to love me, comfort me, and guide me. My faith gives me something that people without faith don’t have—hope.”*

Can you hear the maturity in their battle-tested words?

I have a dear fellow church member who is mentoring me in prayer.   She has seen so much tragedy in her life, has come from some dark places and has learned the power of our Lord and Savior, the power He has in the midst of tragedy.

She told me that when God tests you, it is a good time to test Him. Put His promises to the test and claim from God exactly what your trials have made necessary.

Too often we face the trials of life and we just try to get past the trial.   When it has passed, it is time to be thankful. Another approach is to recognize that the trial is a challenge from God.   It is time to claim a larger blessing than we have ever experienced before. To try to accept the trial with as much delight as possible, to see it as an opportunity, to receive a greater measure of God’s divine grace.

Take to heart the optimistic words of 1 Corinthians 15:54: “death has been swallowed up in victory.” Take to heart the optimistic words of Romans 8:37: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”

When trouble comes, where is God?

He is right there with us, showing us the way past the difficulties.   He is right there offering His grace as a way to help us heal. He is right there to teach us the most important lessons of life.

Not always OUT of our troubled times,

And the struggles fierce and grim,

But IN—deeper IN—to our sure rest,

The place of our peace, in Him.

Annie Flint

*as quoted in Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, Adam Hamilton

1 Peter 5: 8-9 “Be on your guard and stay awake. Your enemy the devil is like a roaring lion, sneaking around to find someone to attack. But you must resist the devil and stay strong in your faith.”

Peter the Apostle was writing to the churches in Asia Minor that were experiencing persecution.

John 8: 44 “Your father is the devil and you do exactly what he wants. He has always been a murderer and a liar. There is nothing truthful about him. He speaks on his own, and everything he says is a lie. Not only is he a liar himself, but he is the father of all lies.”

In the book of John, Jesus is confronting His questioners who are expressing doubts that He was sent from The Father. He retorts that these people are under the devil’s powers.

Since August 12, I have posted seven times on where God is when bad things happen, a chapter in Adam Hamilton’s book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White.

It is a struggle to understand the role of God when sickness arrives at our doorstep, financial disaster occurs or sudden, unexpected death enters our daily world.

For many Christians, they just brush away the notion that God is involved in the bad things. Others see God involved and working out His plan for our good [despite the tragedy that is right in our midst]. Many see the tragedy in life as a direct result of accidents that happen, while others see our choices in life as the main cause of much of our woe. They don’t see God as the cause as much as man.

But are we leaving someone out?

Because I started this post with direct references to the devil, I am going to ask this tough question: does the devil play a role in the “bad things” that happen to us?

I believe he does.

Pastor Billy Graham says it so well in these words “God is not responsible for the evil in the world, nor will He ever do anything evil or wrong. The Bible says ‘His works are perfect, and all His ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He’” [Deuteronomy 32:4].

Given this, God is not the tempter. God does not make us do wrong.

Again Graham states “Ultimately evil comes from Satan, who is absolutely opposed to God and everything good. Sometimes Satan’s works are very open and obvious—but more often he works behind the scenes, deceiving and manipulating people and events in ways we may not realize.”

This is a very negative and scary thought. To admit the existence of Satan is more than many people can bear. Recent polls bear this out. Close to ninety-five percent of Americans claim to have a faith in God, heaven and angels but these same people struggle to admit that there is a Satan in this world. The Barna Reseach Group reports that two-thirds of Americans don’t believe that Satan exists.*

Today we have pushed the idea of ultimate evil out of our consciousness as much as possible.

Not so in the past.  In medieval times, monks began to illustrate Bibles with pictures of Satan. Dante popularized the devil with his famous work The Inferno. Indeed the devil became a “real” personal being roaming the earth, creating havoc in disaster after disaster. People wanted to blame someone, so they very quickly blamed the devil.

What has happened to our ability to admit to the devil’s existence today? Why do we struggle with this theological construct?

Maybe it resides in the expression the comedian Flip Wilson popularized in the 70’s “the devil made me do it.”   He said it but we did not believe it. We laughed. He said it but it became a joke. Of course it is absurd to blame today’s lack of serious regard for the devil on a comedian’s popularity but maybe Flip’s joke just illustrates how we want to be distracted from how the devil works.

He works in you and he works in me.

Wow that is hard to admit; it is even harder to write.

Here is the “bottom line.” When I do evil it is because I have turned my back on God. I have become selfish and I want to go my own way, not God’s. Admitting the devil exists is an admission that I have personal failures.   Focusing on a silly made-up devil as the agent of evil distracts me from the hard work of confronting my own wrongdoing. Focusing on the idea that the devil does not exist deludes me from the work I know I need to do to become a better person. Focusing on the idea that the devil is a figment of my imagination makes me easy prey for the devil.   Remember “the devil is like a roaring lion, sneaking around to find someone to attack.”

When we say “the devil made me do it”, we take a very serious idea and make it funny.

It is not funny. The delicious apple is on the tree. The devil has put it there. I pick it and I eat it.

This is why I need Christ, for only He can forgive my sins and give me the strength to do what is right.

Do you need Him?

*Gustav Niebuhr as reported in The New York Times, “Is Satan Real? Most People Think Not”

God’s perspective on our lives is different from our own…

Pastor Hamilton raises that point and to be honest, when bad things happen to us, it is important to realize that.

James 4: 14 “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

From God’s point of view, life and death happens all the time. God has been the overseer of our planet for 4 billion years, has overseen creation for 14 billion years. Our lifespan whether it is 5 years or 100, is just a particle of microscopic dust in the vast expanse of time and our existence is truly a “mist.”

Yet God knows us by name, sees what we are doing all the time, knows the circumstances of our birth and death and grieves right along with us as we suffer our losses.

This all sounds so dire, except for one thing, one very important promise.

God sent His son Jesus to walk among us to prove to us that there is hope beyond the suffering and death that we will all experience.   That hope is the promise of resurrection.

Jesus came and suffered the worst evil that a person could experience. He truly suffered and died and then rose again to show us that death is not the end.

Why did this have to happen to Jesus? Why did He have to suffer? Why did He have to experience the horrible evil of judgement, punishment and crucifixion? He had to go through this to show us that He understands suffering and that there something better beyond the suffering.

In Chapter 14 of Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, Pastor Hamilton includes a quoted clipping from a church newsletter and I am going to quote it here. I like the way it uses the word “sometimes” and “may” because those words are key to us understanding God. They acknowledge that we don’t know the mind of God.

“Suffering is not God’s desire for us, but it occurs in the process of life. Suffering is not given to teach us something but through it we may learn. Suffering is not given to punish us, but sometimes it is the consequence of our sin or poor judgement. Suffering does not occur because our faith is weak, but through it our faith may be strengthened. God does not depend on human suffering to achieve His purposes, but sometimes through suffering His purposes are achieved. Suffering can either destroy us, or it can add meaning to our lives.”

I am reminded of James 1: 2-4, 12.

“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”

When bad things happen to us, God is right there with us in the midst of the suffering. He is not the cause of the suffering, but He will take the suffering and use it.

To communicate a message.

To teach us a lesson.

To grow our faith.

To help us make a mid-course correction in our lives.

The ways God can use our suffering…the list goes on and on.   He is God

As believers, we can experience the suffering, hold onto our beliefs and learn how to endure. We know not everyone can do that. Some lose their faith because they question God and they just won’t let God be God. They can’t accept the idea that God’s perspective on our lives is different from our own. They think God is the author of the suffering. Consequently they can’t believe in a God who causes their pain.

The world is a big place.   From Chapter 14, “every minute 106 people die, more—more than 2,000 have died as you read this chapter [Chapter 14], and today 152,000 people will pass away.”

For us every pain is personal, every instance of suffering is significant and every death is hard to bear but God’s focus is on the “long view”.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Friday afternoon August 26^th, at three o’clock.

One of those phone calls that everyone dreads: “This is ____.* Your wife was in an accident. They are loading her in an ambulance and taking her to the hospital.   Get there as soon as you can!”

Everything changed instantly.

I was reading a book at the time.   I threw it down and gathered the basics, went to my truck and headed for the hospital.

Many of you know what you do…the mind goes crazy with anxiety and very unhelpful thoughts pop up in those anxious moments. Thoughts about mortality, thoughts about injury, even thoughts about what life will be like without her.   Crazy unhelpful thoughts.

I was lucky. I got a handle on my brain after about eight minutes.   I stopped the horrible thoughts and just told myself “pay attention to the road, traffic rules, other drivers and just get to the hospital.”

That is the first thing I did to get some control and that stopped the flow of doomsday thinking.

A second wave of unhelpful thought then appeared. You know thoughts like “If I had only been with her and she had not been alone.”   I followed that up with “I wished I had kissed her and told her to be careful and that I loved her as she left.”   Believe it or not, we do that a lot at my house but today she was in a hurry and I was distracted when she left and we skipped that part. My son who has lived in large urban areas all his adult life always says goodbye with “I love you and be careful.” Great habit to have.

In the book I have been posting about we have been discussing the role of God in the midst of tragedy and here I was: possibly in the midst of one. On the 18^th, I posted about accidents and how they happen and God is not the causal factor.   We attribute the cause of the accident to God and that is not fair.   On the 22^nd, I posted about choices and how we all make choices which lead to bad things happening. God is not making us choose.   We do that. It is not His fault that we choose what we do. We have the freedom.

This morning I reflect back on the last few days. My wife did not intentionally cause her car wreck. It was a set of circumstances that were truly accidental. It is amazing how many times I have listened to people who have used the word “accident” to console us about this event.

I also know that she chose to be where she was that day.   She had just delivered a small wooden statuette to a Sunday School member who has cancer. This woman has complications with her cancer that none of us would ever want to go through and our whole class is trying to support her in her time of need. My wife chose to go to the woman’s house alone and I chose for her to go alone because I felt that conversation would be better between them if a man was not present. She chose to turn on the road she turned on. She chose to be driving at that time of day.

The list of choices goes on and on…

A couple of things I do know.

She did not choose to be hit on the passenger’s side of her car by two other vehicles.

She did not choose to be in the emergency room that day… but life happens. It happens to all of us and we have to deal with it. Some weather life’s occurrences with whatever belief system they have or maybe they don’t have a belief system at all.

My wife is a Christian.

She knew I was praying from the moment I got the call. When I got to the hospital, I kept praying and I made a few key phone calls to people I knew would be praying for her…you know, people who would stop what they were doing and call upon the Lord to help her.

Great friends, great Christians, powerful people of God.

Did God show up that day?

Of course He did. We were so blessed. She did not suffer cuts or broken bones. Even if the news had been horrible, He would have been there to help us. He was there in the comforting words of two pastors who came to the emergency room to pray with Susan. He was there in the timing of a visit from our son who came on Monday after the wreck on Friday.   He is the best medicine for her. We have not seen him since November of 2015 and he is here now, at the best time for her.

Yes, life happens and sometimes life is difficult.

No one wants to have a phone call like I received on August 26^th. At that moment, I knew we had lost some things, but as you know, things don’t really matter. The people we love matter.

I won’t write that God caused my wife’s wreck. I won’t write that accidents happen and God is not aware. I don’t believe that. I believe God was there on the scene. He was there in the car with her. He was there in the stranger who held my wife when she was crying and going into shock. He was there in the nice young woman who searched for her telephone and called me. Now God continues to minister to her needs as she recovers.

He cares for His people and I believe His words are true: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” [Hebrews 13:5].

*name withheld