Over twenty years ago I lost a friendship because someone spoke the truth to me and it made me angry.
I was angry because my desire to go into vocational ministry was not manifesting in my life and I was basically griping about it.
My friend, who was, and still is, a full-time vocational minister said, “You know, maybe no one will ever call you pastor…”
That was all I heard. I am sure he went on to say some encouraging and loving things because that’s the kind of guy he has always been but I didn’t hear anything he said.
I was too offended.
My friend wasn’t unkind, rude, or cruel. He was honest. In fact, what he said was the most loving thing he could have said at that time and it turns out, he was absolutely right.
The problem was that my offense made me deaf to his encouragement.
I cut him out of my life for a while. I’m not proud of that.
When I realized that I was carrying bitterness in my heart against him I asked to meet him for lunch and asked him to forgive me.
As a brother in Christ, he did and there was reconciliation between us of a sort. But it was never really the same.
When something someone does or says touches a place of deep pain in us, we recoil and maybe even lash out.
“That hurts!!”
The mature and wise thing to do is to question those overreactions. To dig a little deeper. When our reaction is out of proportion, it is a signal. Something deeper is being touched, and it deserves our attention
I was not mature enough at the time to do that. I am trying to be now.
Don’t let offense make you deaf. Don’t let it harden you against the men who care enough to speak with honesty. A true brother tells you the truth in love. When it touches a place of pain, press in. Do not retreat.
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:1-4, ESV)
I have the joy of preaching on Philippians 2:1-4 at Southpoint Fellowshipin McDonough, GA this Sunday and in my study and preparation, I came across these 7 principles from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I won’t be using them in my sermon, but I still wanted to share them.
To eradicate selfish ambition in Christian community, Christians, Bonhoeffer says, should…
hold their tongues, refusing to speak uncharitably about a Christian brother (or sister),
cultivate the humility that comes from understanding that they, like Paul, are the greatest sinners and can only live in God’s sight by His grace,
listen ‘long and patiently’ so that they will understand their fellow Christian’s need,
refuse to consider their time and calling so valuable that they cannot be interrupted to help with unexpected needs, no matter how small or menial,
bear the burden of their brothers and sisters in the Lord, both by preserving their freedom and by forgiving their sinful abuse of that freedom,
understand that Christian authority is characterized by service and does not call attention to the person who performs the service.
As an everyday example of how this Enlightenment-era machine metaphor persists comes from a friend who has a daughter with Down syndrome. My friend heard someone observe that a classmate was ‘low-functioning’ in comparison to my friend’s child. This well-intentioned comment made my friend realize that talking about any person’s abilities in terms of ‘functions’ is dehumanizing because it serves to ‘compare them to a machine.’ When we use language such as ‘functioning’ to describe human beings, my friend wrote, ‘we play into the dehumanizing rhetoric of modernity.’ We treaty ourselves as Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, as if we were ‘created in the likeness of a machine rather than in likeness of God.’ – Karen Swallow Prior, The Evangelical Imagination
My professional career is in Training and Development, which is a part of Human Resources, a term I have never liked. There was a time when HR was called Personnel. I had a colleague who had the habit of referring to his employees as “resources.” As in, “we have ten resources at that account.” To which I usually replied with something like, “You mean human beings, right?” This usually elicited an eye roll from my colleague, but I was serious.
We see this dehumanizing language everywhere…
That’s just the way I’m wired.
I need to reboot.
That does not compute.
We’re working like a well-oiled machine.
I need to let off some steam.
I need some time to process that.
As I thought about this a while, I realized that I don’t have language to replace it with. This kind of dehumanizing language that diminishes the dignity of being made in the image of loving Creator has become such a part of the way I think and speak, that I don’t know what to say instead.
I’ll admit that changing the way we speak is a challenge and may even make us look a little weird. But hey, if we’re Christians, we’re weird already so why not really lean into it?
Of course, instead of referring to people that work for us as “resources” we can simply say, “employees” or, what I like to use is, “team members” or “colleagues”.
Perhaps, the way we speak about ourselves and others will change based on the way we see and think of ourselves and others.
The deer in Psalm 42 feels desperate and afraid and alone. His soul is “downcast” and “in turmoil” (v. 5). He is being taunted by his enemies (v. 10) and is reminding himself to hope in God (v. 11). He desperately wants to be in God’s presence because he feels forgotten by him (v.9). We often pull the first two verses out of the context of the rest of the Psalm, and imagine a nice little deer who is thirsty and finally getting to a take deep drink from a river or lake. I feel like the author’s have made that mistake here, but I also think the question itself is valid and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
When was the last time I felt truly DESPERATE for God? For HIM. Not for what he can do for me or give me or change for me, but just for him.
Like many/most Christians my personal prayer life is filled with requests for myself and others.
Lord please do… Lord please give… Lord please heal… Lord please provide…
There is nothing wrong with that. As Spurgeon said, “Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the kingdom.”
We are not God and we are utterly dependent on God. We do not take a breath without his allowing it to be taken. We must humble ourselves before him in prayer and ask for what we need and want and trust him to do what is best in answer to those prayers.
But is that all our prayer life is? Asking for things?
Exodus 33:11 is a beautiful verse and I love it.
Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. (emphasis mine)
Joshua did not have the incredible pleasure of God speaking to him “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” but even after Moses left the tent of meeting, Joshua wouldn’t leave. He wanted to stay right there where God had been speaking to Moses. He just wanted to be with God. God didn’t even have to speak to him, Joshua just desperately wanted to be in God’s presence. He didn’t ask for anything. He just stayed.
I also think about Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, hanging on his every word (Luke 10:38-42). She didn’t ask for anything. She just wanted to be in the presence of the Lord she loved.
What would this look like in our lives, I wonder? What would it look like to pray just to be with God? Without asking for anything at all?
I think it looks a lot like worship.
The Psalms are filled with prayers of supplication and intercession. There are also Psalms where the writer doesn’t ask for anything. He just writes a Psalm of worship. Many of these are the Psalms of Ascent, which were the songs the people of Israel would sing on their way to worship in Jerusalem. There are Psalms that are proclamations of God’s goodness and holiness and kindness and steadfast love. We can read these Psalms and meditate on who God is and all that is beautiful and wonderful about him.
When we go to church on Sundays and sing songs of worship and praise, we can enjoy God’s presence with our brothers and sisters in Christ just for the joy of being with God together.
Another verse I love is Mathew 13:1. “That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.” Full stop. The next verse has great crowds gathering around him but the whole thing begins so simply and quietly. Jesus just went out of the house and sat by the sea. I wonder how long he sat there before people found him and wanted something from him. How long did he just sit by the sea in the presence of his Father?
We can go out of the house and sit in nature, quiet and still in the presence of God. I doubt great crowds will be looking for us, so we can just be in God’s presence in worship and fellowship.
There is nothing wrong with asking God for things. In fact there is something very RIGHT about that. But we have an anemic prayer life if that’s all we do.
God is incredible and worthy of worship because of who he is. He doesn’t have to do anything other than just exist. There is no end to God. There will be no point in all of eternity where we will stop being astonished by him. We can get a taste of that now.
Sometimes it is good to simply “be still and know that [he] is God.” (Psalm 46:10)
Be quiet my soul, you’re talking too much. – Guigo II, The Carthusian
I am quieter now than I was as a younger man. That may shock some people who know me, but it’s true. I used to talk way too much, dominating conversations, showing off, trying to be the center of attention, and keep everyone entertained and engaged…with me, of course.
My journey to keeping my mouth shut started when I was playing Bible Trivia with a group of friends in college. I regaled them all with my knowledge of the Bible, answering every question correctly. No one stood a chance.
The problem is that I had not been invited to join them. I just inserted myself into the group and started playing. Another problem was that I wasn’t giving anyone else a chance to play.
Yeah. I was THAT guy.
Finally, a girl in the group, clearly tired of my bombastic attitude shut me down hard. Glaring at me she said, “This would be a lot more fun if someone didn’t take over and we all had a chance to play!”
No one contradicted her and no one defended me. They just looked at me. Clearly, they all felt the same way.
I offered my apologies, and made a hasty exit, tail tucked between my legs, my face red from shame.
Could the young lady have handled the situation in a more gracious and kinder way? Of course. But she wasn’t wrong. I was an unwelcome guest, and worse, I was a rude guest.
The event caused me to think about how I came across to others and that I did not make room for them. Bottom line: I talked too much and listened too little. “[L]et every person be quick to listen, SLOW to speak” James reminds us. I was the opposite.
I wish I could say I learned the lesson once and never had to learn it again, but that would be a lie. I still have to remind myself to be still and quiet and to make room for others. To welcome others to open their hearts and let me truly HEAR them for a while. And in doing that, I am loving them.
A quiet soul helps us live a quieter life. A life that makes room for others. A quiet soul also makes room for God. It’s hard to hear the voice of God when our soul is talking too much.
I was on my way to church, where I was scheduled to preach as part of our Summer series, Saved: Stories of Redemption and Grace. I was wrestling with an illustration I included. I wasn’t sure it should be in there. It felt contrived to me but I couldn’t convince myself to cut it. I was beating myself up because I assumed I was being prideful (which is not a bad assumption to make, really) but I could not get a peace either way.
Finally, I quieted my soul and listened for a moment.
And that’s when I realized that the story was fine. It was just missing a piece. It was missing the part where I pointed back to Jesus. Once I realized that I gave thanks to God and used the story with a sense of purpose and peace.
I just had to be still and quiet enough to listen.
A quiet soul, the one that hears God’s voice, is one that is still.
Stillness is the quiet space where God migrates from the periphery back to the center, and prayer pours forth from the life that has God at the center.
Prayer, that conversation between us and the one who created us and loves us.
A still and quiet soul is hard. It has always been hard, but it seems even more difficult in our cultural context. As R. Kent Hughes writes.
Americans seem obsessed with the need for unending sound…But silence slows the frantic pace and gives time for reflection and individual dialogue with God.
When was the last time you sat in stillness and silence? No screens, no people, no projects or books or journals or music. Just still and silent?
A dear friend of mine said he tried that recently for just two minutes and he felt overwhelmed by the experience.
It’s harder than you think. But everything worth doing is.
Of course, being still and silent does not magically make God show up and speak to your heart and mind. He is God. He cannot be coerced or manipulated or forced. He will do what pleases him and what pleases him is always right and perfect and loving. What we are doing in stillness and silence, is making room for him. We are making him the priority. We are letting him set the agenda.
Brennan Manning was telling his friend Larry Crabb about a silent retreat he had coming up. One that he did every year. Crabb questioned him about the retreat.
“What does God show you on these retreats? What has he said to you in your silence?”
“You know…I don’t think God has ever spoken to me during one of these retreats.” Brennan said.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…a time to keep silence and a time to speak. (Ecclesiastes, 3:1,7)
Years ago, when my now grown sons were children, I took them on a homeschool field trip in the Fall to a Civil War historic site. There was a walking trail with multiple stops along the way where you could read about what took place during the battle.
We made our way together along the trail and they took turns reading to us about the events of the battle and we would stare for a moment and try to imagine what it may have looked like before we moved on.
When we climbed a hill I noticed something in the trees and directed my sons to sit down on a bench conveniently placed in front of what I hoped they would see a short distance away.
We sat and I said nothing and, as young boys do, they quickly grew bored and wanted to move on. I asked them to be still and be silent and just watch.
A moment later, my oldest son gasped and pointed through the trees. His brothers were soon gasping and pointing as well as a tree that looked like it was covered in golden leaves suddenly came to life as hundreds of Monarch butterflies spread their wings and began to fly away from its branches leaving them nearly barren. It was truly a beautiful sight and one I will probably never see again.
That sight is what my boys talked about the most over the next day or two. But we all would have missed it if we had not been silent and still.
About this time last year, a friend and I visited a Makoto Fujimura exhibit just a couple of hours from where I live. My favorite piece was one called “Silence” inspired by the novel of the same title by Shusako Endo. The picture below does not begin to do it justice.
We were invited to sit in front of the massive work of art in silence to enjoy it. I have extreme hearing loss so I turned off both of my hearing aids, which reduces me to only 25% of my hearing, and sat in literal silence before that painting.
At first my mind was racing with images I thought I saw and patterns and meaning and then I tried to quiet all of that and just sort of let the beauty of it wash over me. I didn’t try to empty my mind or anything, I just tried to notice and be aware and let the thoughts come without trying to force them.
I am thankful to God for that experience. For BOTH of these experiences. They are a reminder to me that there is a time for silence. There is a time to be still and quiet and open to whatever God wants to do in that moment, even if he is silent himself.
I think we all know there is “a time to speak” but I think we forget that there is also “a time to keep silence.”
But we live in a culture that majors in distraction and noise. It’s everywhere we look. It’s loaded into the device in our hands that is now essentially an extension of our bodies.
Life has been so hectic lately, so stressful, with so many things to do and places to be and things to pay for and goals to achieve and projects to complete. I feel overwhelmed.
Do you?
What I long for is some silence. To just sit with God in a quiet place and see what he will say. Or just sit with God in a quiet place and know I am beloved even when he says nothing.
Why is that so hard for us to do? And I don’t mean finding time to do it, I mean the act itself is hard.
When was the last time you tried to just sit in complete silence for a while?
But what are we missing by chasing and saturating ourselves with noise?
The world says, ‘If you are not making good use of your time, you are useless.’ Jesus says: ‘Come and spend some useless time with me.” If we think about prayer in terms of its usefulness to us–what prayer will do for us, what spiritual benefits we will gain, what insights we will gain, what divine presence we may feel–God cannot easily speak to us. But if we can detach ourselves from the idea of the usefulness of prayer and the results of prayer, we become free to ‘waste’ as precious hour with God in prayer. Gradually, we may find our ‘useless’ time will transform us, and everything around us will be different.
Prayer is being unbusy with God instead of being busy with other things. Prayer is primarily to do nothing useful or productive in the presence of God. To not be useful is to remind myself that if anything important or fruitful happens through prayer, it is God who achieves the result. So when I go into the day, I go with the conviction that God is the one who brings forth fruit i my work, and I do not have to act as though I am in control of things. I have to work hard; I have to do my task; I have to offer my best. But I can let go of the illusion of control and be detached from the result. At the end of each day I can prayerfully say that if something good has happened, God be praised.
“One of my concerns about contemporary society is that it suffers from a lack of agency…Alain Ehrenberg notes in his book THE WEARINESS OF THE SLEF, that inhibition is one of the symptoms of contemporary depression. He ties it to the burden of being a sovereign self, an overwhelming experience for most people that often leaves them frozen and feeling unable to move in the world.”
The belief that you are completely sovereign over your own life can be a paralytic.
What if I take the wrong path in life?
What if I never fulfill my potential?
What if I just live an ordinary life and never do anything great?
What if I fail?
What if I look foolish trying to do something?
What if my life doesn’t go EXACTLY like I want it to?
The belief that a good, loving, and kind God is sovereign over all things liberates us from the paralysis of self-sovereignty. It sets us free to risk and to advance and to try. And yes, to fail too. Because failure is a part of living. A BIG part of it.
If God is sovereign, then I am free to live without fear.
If God is sovereign, then I am free to take risks.
If God is sovereign, then I do not have to be afraid of whatever trials may come or what their eventual outcome may be.
When we don’t keep God’s sovereignty in mind, we put far too much pressure on ourselves to achieve certain outcomes and it can paralyze us into doing nothing.
A lack of faith in God’s sovereignty can also cause us to procrastinate on things we know we should be doing.
It is arrogant to believe I will always have the time to do what I know I should be doing right now. I don’t control the length of my life. My days are quite literally numbered (Psalm 139:16) and only God knows when they are up.
That fact should create a sense of urgency but without fear.
I am absolutely immortal until my days are done because they are in God’s book and I cannot add even one hour to their length (Luke 12:25-26).
So why worry?
Urgency without fear. We must do what we can. And leave the results with God.
Christians should be some of the boldest risk takers and doers and leaders and creators on the planet. We can risk and do and lead and create without fear, because we know we are not sovereign and that God is.
Inside the Armory 