A Line That Cannot Be Walked

Introduction

We have all watched highwire artists walking some type of tightrope, an act that causes our nervous system to shout, “Danger!” Most of us will never attempt such a daring act and the very thought of it puts our anxiety level on high alert. But there is another type of tightrope attempt that every human being feels compelled to try out, which is far more dangerous. It is the attempt to walk the line between righteousness and sin. Another analogy for this dangerous act is to view it as trying to walk as close to the edge of a chasm as possible without losing our footing and falling into the chasm. The danger of it is set aside in favor of what we view as the benefits of taking the risks, dangerous though they may be. The bottom-line question we are asking ourselves is how much of the world can we enjoy without losing our souls?

Those even vaguely familiar with the Bible know that Satan is always tempting us to follow him instead of God. As we think of temptations, we are quick to think of temptations to get drunk or high on alcohol or drugs, to be immoral, to get extremely angry, to allow that anger to move into a condition of hate and bitterness, etc. Certainly Satan wants us to succumb to such temptations to commit overt sins, but they are not nearly as dangerous to our spiritual health as is his much more subtle temptation aimed at convincing us that we can walk the line between righteousness and sin. Almost all people try this highwire balancing act and a large majority of them end up losing their spiritual lives, and even their physical lives. This truly is a line that cannot be walked – at least not for long.

Biblical Warnings

Essentially, all warnings in the Bible are warnings against this huge temptation. God knows that we are extremely prone to try and experience as much of the world’s offerings as possible without falling off the tightrope and into the chasm. Younger people are especially susceptible to this temptation. The rigid rod of reality hasn’t hit them between the eyes as strongly and clearly as it has those who are older. But it eventually will. Whether they can crawl out of the chasm at that point or not is a question that will only be answered in time. Most cannot or at least will not. We start off being attracted to the thrill of it, becoming addicted to the practice of it, and end up being swallowed up in our own self-inflicted addiction of sin. As any addict will tell you, giving up your drug of choice becomes a lifetime battle and even when you beat it for a period of time, you are still categorized as an addict, and rightly so. The path backwards is far easier and more enticing than the path forward.

The tightrope I am describing is addressed specifically in several passages. Here are a few of them to consider.

James 4:2-4
² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. ⁴ You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

1 John 2:15-17 
¹⁵ Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. ¹⁶ For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷ The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

Luke 16:13-15
¹³ “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” ¹⁴ The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. ¹⁵ He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.

What Jesus says in Luke is especially pointed, as he says that trying to balance sin and righteousness is impossible. For the Pharisees, their love of money was controlling their hearts and lives. For others, it might be their love of what money buys – materialism and possessions. For others, it could be entertainment and pleasure. For yet others, it would be achievements and success, power and position or unhealthy relationships. Thankfully, the Bible gives us an in-depth look at a person who tried all of these avenues the world has to offer, and accomplished an incredible amount, but lived to recognize his abject failure in life. His example is especially helpful in recognizing the futility of trying to walk the tightrope, because he began as a young man walking closely with God but held on to bits of the world. Let’s examine his example.

Solomon’s Early Days

Solomon succeeded David as King of Israel. His initial entry into this role was accompanied by his understanding that the task was highly challenging and quite impossible without surrendering himself as a person and as a king to God. Yet, from the beginning of his reign, he tried to walk a tightrope, as 1 Kings 3:3 shows: “Solomon showed his love for the LORD by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.” He loved God and followed the Bible in many ways, but he made a compromise with the world which ultimately led to a vast number of compromises. However, his initial approach to God was quite spiritual and quite appreciated by God.

1 Kings 3:7-12
⁷ “Now, LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. ⁸ Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. ⁹ So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?” ¹⁰ The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. ¹¹ So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, ¹² I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.

1 Kings 4:29-34
²⁹ God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. ³⁰ Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the people of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. ³¹ He was wiser than anyone else, including Ethan the Ezrahite—wiser than Heman, Kalkol and Darda, the sons of Mahol. And his fame spread to all the surrounding nations. ³² He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. ³³ He spoke about plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also spoke about animals and birds, reptiles and fish. ³⁴ From all nations people came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom.

One of Solomon’s greatest accomplishments was to build a temple for the Lord. It took seven years to build, and no expense was spared in making it a magnificent structure. His father, David, was forbidden to build it because he had been such a man of blood, but now Solomon had accomplished what David had commissioned him to do. His prayer of dedication at its completion, as recorded in 1 Kings 8, was most impressive, showing true spiritual insights into the nature of God and the needs of the people.

But the first sentence in 1 Kings 7 provides an obvious hint that Solomon’s values were mixed. He took seven years to build God’s temple yet took thirteen to build his own palace. To use our analogies, he was already getting wobbly on the tightrope or walking too close to the edge of the chasm separating spiritual values and worldly values. Here is a description of the world’s allure and victory in his life. Kings were warned against being sucked into the world’s values long before any king had been appointed in Israel, in fact the warning came while the nation was still in the period of wilderness wandering. Read the warnings.

Deuteronomy 17:16-20
¹⁶ The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” ¹⁷ He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. ¹⁸ When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. ¹⁹ It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees ²⁰ and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

Another obvious hint from the very beginning of Solomon’s reign is found in the first sentence of 1 Kings 3. He made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. The Deuteronomy passage makes it clear that since Egypt had been the nation’s oppressor for 400 years, they should avoid doing any business with them. The ultimate result of Solomon’s attempts to walk a tightrope between God’s world and Satan’s world was shocking. Read it.

1 Kings 10:21-28 
²¹ All King Solomon’s goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. Nothing was made of silver, because silver was considered of little value in Solomon’s days. ²² The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Hiram. Once every three years it returned, carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons. ²³ King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. ²⁴ The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. ²⁵ Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift—articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons and spices, and horses and mules. ²⁶ Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem. ²⁷ The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills. ²⁸ Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue—the royal merchants purchased them from Kue at the current price.

1 Kings 11:1-9
¹ King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. ² They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. ³ He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. ⁴ As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been. ⁵ He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. ⁶ So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD; he did not follow the LORD completely, as David his father had done. ⁷ On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. ⁸ He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods. ⁹ The LORD became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.

Solomon wrote many wonderful parts of what we call “Wisdom Literature” in the Bible, but he ended with the saddest account possible, the Book of Ecclesiastes. In it he recounted in his own words his path to destruction and failure. He sought from the world the exact same things that people in the 21^st century are seeking for meaning to life, but he not only sought them – he found them in abundance. Yet, he was left at the end of his days in a state of failure and misery.

What did he achieve? The greatest knowledge and wisdom imaginable, but it was a mix of godly wisdom and worldly wisdom. In chapter 1, he said it was all a “chasing after the wind.” He tried finding meaning in amassing great wealth and accomplishing great projects. In his own words, he “denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure” (2:10). He had power and position over everyone, and that didn’t satisfy either. His conclusion says it all, his tightrope walk had failed miserably. In 2:11, he sums it up with these words: “Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”

He had everything in abundance that we moderns think will bring satisfaction in life: money, materialism, knowledge, accomplishments, pleasure, power and position. Near the end of his life, he finally figured out what did matter.

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
¹³ Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. ¹⁴ For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

Did he figure it out soon enough, and if so, was he able to truly repent and escape his addictions? I don’t think the Bible provides the answer to that question. I do believe the example of Solomon trying to enjoy the world while still hanging on to God answers the question about the line that cannot be walked. Despite all the good Solomon did with the breathtaking gifts he was given, the end of his life shouts, from his own lips, failure upon failure upon failure.

In your life’s decisions, are you asking if a given activity will aid or harm your spiritual direction? How many of those decisions would reflect an answer something like this? “Well, it isn’t going to lead me in spiritual directions, but I don’t think it will hurt me.” That’s tightrope walking, doomed to failure. When you get where you are going, where will you be? Life, like a bullet, always ends up where it is aimed. Where is yours aimed – right now? Well then, that is where it is going to arrive. Do you need a course correction? Then take it – now!

One Way of Contrasting Consumer Christianity with True Christianity

Dallas Willard is often credited with popularizing the concept of spiritual formation. Instead of leaving spiritual growth as merely something to shoot for in a general way (go to church, read your Bible and pray), spiritual formation suggests specific goals with specific steps to reach these goals. For example, the ultimate goal of evangelism is not simply helping another person “get saved” in order to go to heaven when they die, but rather to “make disciples by baptizing them and then teaching them to obey all things he had commanded the apostles” (Matthew 28:19-20). Thus, as followers of Jesus, they are taught obedience to all that he taught, the path to becoming more and more like him.

The idea of having different commitment levels for different “types” of Christians with different expectations from God is nowhere to be found in the Bible. The clergy/laity distinction of commitment is a human invention, and a very bad one from multiple vantage points. Paul, as an apostle and disciple maker, would describe the path of spiritual formation as imitating him as he imitated Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). Spiritual formation has as its goal becoming more and more like Jesus in this life as a part of his spiritual kingdom, and according to what we term his “model prayer,” his kingdom is where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). Seen correctly, being a Christ follower involves radical and continuing life change.

Consumer Christianity

Willard frequently calls current evangelical Christianity consumer Christianity. This is a much-downgraded version of true Christianity which could be described as “having your cake and eating it too.” In other words, once you “get saved,” then you can basically carry on your life focused on this world with its entertainment and materialism with little spiritual change, yet remain assured of going to heaven and avoiding hell at death.

This seriously misguided concept is enhanced by the also popular view of “once saved, always saved,” an odd remaining remnant (Perseverance of the Saints) of a generally rejected TULIP system of Calvinism. The foundation of the “P” is based on the previous four elements of the system which are now discounted by most evangelicals. (I have a chapter on Calvinism in my book, “Prepared to Answer,” available from Illumination Publishers). Consumer Christianity is in truth little more than spiritual fire insurance. It is not about life change through striving to become like Jesus as our model, and as a result, truly enjoying what he calls the “abundant life” (John 10:10).

Willard notes that the term “Christian” is found only three times in the New Testament and left undefined at that. On the other hand, the term “disciple” is found many times and is quite well described and defined. Consumer Christianity is an invention of a materialistic Western World, especially the American part of it. True Christianity is characterized by being a disciple, meaning one who follows Jesus with the express purpose of learning his ways and imitating him as a person and adopting his ways by putting them into practice.

The Basis of the Contrast

You will have to read Willard’s books to more fully understand and appreciate these concepts, but in a footnote (which is far more than a footnote), he makes a statement about the famous “Twelve Step” program of Alcoholics Anonymous, lists the full version of the steps, followed by a most profound statement regarding “how utterly superficial the consumer Christianity of our day is.” He than ends his footnote comments thusly: “Imagine, by contrast, being a member of a Church or local assembly of Christians where these 12 steps were applied without specific reference to alcohol.” Indeed! Were this to actually happen, we would reach a high-water mark of spiritual formation where implementing Jesus’ words in the Great Commission would become reality rather than simply wishful thinking.

He introduces the steps with this comment: “Because the famous 12 steps of A.A. are more talked about outside A.A. than actually studied themselves, it will be useful here to fully state them:” (Please read them slowly and carefully, putting your “besetting” sin in the place of alcohol as needed. It will prove to be a very valuable meditation time.)

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

From Alcoholics Anonymous, 3d ed., New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1976, pp. 59–69.

Read again Willard’s ending comments in the footnote. “Compared to this, one sees how utterly superficial the consumer Christianity of our day is. Imagine, by contrast, being a member of a Church or local assembly of Christians where these 12 steps were applied without specific reference to alcohol.”

Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God (p. 437). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I Just Want to Hear Your Voice – Episode 1, by David Malutinok

Introduction to this Essay Series

C.S. Lewis, who was no stranger to tragedies in his life once wrote “Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”

My life experienced a tragedy on March 30, 2009, when our middle child, Scott, was involved in a near fatal motorcycle accident. The accident was marked as a fatality, but God had other plans for Scott. God had other plans for me as well.  Scott was in a coma for 5 months, and will be in rehabilitation for the rest of his life with a traumatic brain injury.

I have been journaling my experiences, feelings, and thoughts for over 15 years. While not everyone thankfully will be affected with a similar tragedy, God has taught me numerous lessons that I pray will help you during difficult times. Jesus said in John 16:33, “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”  The road of life takes many interesting turns.  We can either learn from them or ignore the lessons. I am trying to learn the lessons and hope these lessons encourage you.

 I Just Want to Hear Your Voice – Episode 1

The call came that no parent ever wants to answer. I was in my office on March 30, 2009, and at 4:30 p.m., someone called me out of the meeting I was in, saying that I had a call from the main switchboard about my son. I glanced down at my cellphone and saw that I had received a number of calls on it, but I had silenced it because I was in a meeting. As I looked more closely at my phone, I saw that two very good friends had called me. I wondered what the problem was and then I received a call from my wife Peggy. She said, “Dave, Scott was in a very serious motorcycle accident, and they’ve marked it as a fatality. He’s been airlifted to a hospital, but we don’t know which one.”

Emotional Shock Wave

Immediately panic, concern, fear, and every other emotion that you can imagine came through my mind. But then my fatherly instincts kicked in, and I immediately started calling police stations to find out where he had been taken.  After about 30 minutes, I found out that he was at the Atlanta Medical Center in downtown Atlanta. His accident happened in Marietta and so I assumed that he had been taken to one of the local hospitals. I believe it was the Cobb County police who told me that for extremely bad accidents he would need to go to a level one trauma center, and the only ones were Atlanta Medical Center and Grady Memorial Hospital. I called Grady first and then Atlanta Medical Center, and he was there.

I remember driving down to the hospital during rush hour, praying and begging God that he was OK. I was praying for a miracle and voiced prayers that only a mother or father prays during a time like this. This came so out of the blue.  I had just seen him before I left for work.  He was going to study the Bible with a friend and then going to work out with another friend.  How can this be?  “Dear God, this makes no sense. He was just trying to live for you.”

I was not able to see him immediately because of the seriousness of his situation, but later in the evening, the doctors came out to see Peggy and me. We had driven there separately, and the doctor did not have very good news. He said our son had a broken clavicle, a broken nose and was internally bleeding profusely. He said they were trying to stop the bleeding, but whether he would live was very much in question. The feeling a parent has at such a moment was the worst gut punch I have ever received in my life, and I have had many.

After two days of not knowing whether he was going to live or die, another surgeon came out and said they had found the bleeding. “It was in the rear part of his spleen,” he said, “and we took out his spleen, and we believe we stopped the bleeding.” He had multiple tubes in his body and had been put in a medically induced coma.  I can’t tell you the despair and pain that I felt.  The worst feeling was the hopelessness of being totally out of control. His life was purely in the hands of God. We prayed, and we prayed, and we prayed.  Those nights were agonizing.

An Emotional Roller Coaster

During the first evening and night, many. many of our Christian friends and some of my friends from work started coming to the hospital. They offered so much comfort and so much emotional relief and yet there’s nothing anyone can say or do to remove that gut wrenching pain and fear of a parent. We are so grateful to the North River Church, my friends there and those from my workplace at the time, Habitat for Humanity International, who came to offer comfort. We spent three nights in the surgical waiting room near the intensive care area and waited and prayed.

My pain became anger: anger at God, anger at the situation, which drove me to ask the two questions that we always seem to ask in the situation: “Dear God,  Scott is a Christian, he’s a good man, why him?” I then started asking God, “What is the purpose in this, what do you want to teach me? What do I need to learn?” I’ve always trusted the grace of God; I’ve always trusted the power of God, but something like this can just throw everything I thought I knew about the power of God out the window, and yet God never left us. I knew that God was there; I knew that God had lost his Son, and I knew that God understood the feelings that we were having. Although that was my greatest comfort, I still vacillated between despair, anger, fear, faithlessness, courage, hopelessness, worry and so many other emotions.

A New Opportunity

After two weeks, Scott physically stabilized (he would live…prayers answered) but continued to be in a coma. We heard from a neurologist that multiple brain scans showed that his brain was not working properly.  He had sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury.  In cases like this, no one can tell what the extent of that injury was. We would have to determine the damage only by what he was able to do, if and when he “woke up.”  He would most likely never return to “normal”, but would he permanently remain in a vegetative state, would he ever walk, would he ever talk, would he even be able to recognize us?

We heard about an amazing brain injury hospital in Atlanta called The Shepherd Center. There was not much more that the Atlanta Medical Center could do for him, so we prayed that we could transfer him to this rehabilitation center we had discovered.  We worked with the Shepherd Center intake team, and they accepted him to be transferred.  (Prayers answered again.)  He spent over three months in Shepherd hospital.  The first two weeks there he barely opened his eyes. There was no response.

I remember praying to God about how much I loved his laugh and how much I loved his jokes and how much I loved having fun talks with him.  I remember praying to God, “Please let me hear his voice again. It doesn’t have to be spectacular. He doesn’t even have to put words together. I just want to hear him. I just want him to be able to respond to me, whether by voice, touch or smile – just some reaction that acknowledges he sees or hears me.” Yet there was nothing. The weeks turned into a couple of months, and one of the fallacies that people think is that when a person goes into a coma, they suddenly wake up and everything’s okay. He was in my world completely, but I was not in his world.  He couldn’t squeeze my hand. He couldn’t follow any commands; his eyes just looked straight ahead. I continued the prayer, “Lord please help him to understand that I am his father. I just want him to communicate with me even if it’s just by blinking his eyes or squeezing my hand.” I love him so much and I just wanted him to communicate with me.

After a few weeks, he would follow people in the room slowly with his eyes. I would smile at him, talk to him and touch him, but there was no reaction. I would look at my son, the young man whom I spent 20 years nurturing and raising and enjoying life with, and that same young man would just stare at me with no reaction or acknowledgment that I was in the room with him.  I can’t tell you what it’s like to see your son listless, motionless and unresponsive. I was with Scott. I could see him. I could touch him. And yet no acknowledgment of me or anyone was occurring. I would stop by the hospital before work, and I would pray, “God, let today be the day he speaks. Let me see an acknowledgment. Let me hear his voice just a little bit and again it doesn’t need to be anything profound, just a touch, just to squeeze my hand, a smile, and if possible, some words.” But there was nothing.

I would come back from the office and pray for the same thing, yet nothing happened day after day, month after month. I prayed the same prayer and yet it remained the same unanswered prayer.  As I looked at Scott day after day after day and would look into his eyes, it was almost like I could look directly into his spirit as if I could see the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  I knew that the Holy Spirit dwelling within him was still alive and vibrant and that I could communicate with Him, and believe me, I was communicating with Him so much. Yet from Scott’s physical body, I heard nothing back – no acknowledgement, no smile, no words, no touch.

God’s Heart for Us

I then realized a very profound mystery of God. You see, I had a son whom I loved so much, but he didn’t acknowledge me. He wouldn’t speak to me. He wouldn’t touch me. He wouldn’t smile at me.  Scott was fully in my world, but I was not in his.  I realized how God looks at me as a son.  Just like I spent hours and hours and hours in Scott’s room, hoping for some kind of acknowledgment, God sees us every day and what does he want from us? He loves us so much and he’s looking at us. He’s in our room and yet when we don’t pray, when we don’t talk to Him, when we don’t acknowledge Him, we are breaking his heart because he wants to hear our voice, He wants our acknowledgment of him. How selfish it is for us not to acknowledge the Creator of the universe. To not acknowledge the God who gave his only Son for our salvation, for our joy and our peace in this lifetime must be so painful to our Creator. It must break his heart.  Just like it didn’t matter to me what Scott said or how he communicated, but only that he let me know that I was in his world, our God wants us to acknowledge him. I can’t imagine how God must feel when we go day after day after day without prayer, without just acknowledgement of our Father, without thanking him for the nature that he provided us, the lives he provided us, and most importantly, without thanking Him for the salvation that cost Him so dearly.

As you go about your day, your heavenly Father is in your room, in your car, in your house, in your workplace, while you’re sleeping, while you’re awake, and like a father or mother to their child, he wants to hear from us. Our prayers do not have to be anything profound; he just wants to hear from us. Prayer took on a whole new meaning for me.  Prayer is not simply asking for things. Prayer is not simply using God as a Santa Claus – “I’ll do this if you do that for me”. The God of the universe wants a relationship with us.  He shows us his love every day. He shows us how much he cares about us every day. When we pray, do we talk to him as a father, as a son talks to his earthly father?  Remember how much God loves you and remember he just wants to hear from you. We are totally in his world; Is He totally in your world? He just wants to hear your voice.

What Are You Learning? by Jim McCartney

“What are you learning?” is one of my favorite conversation starters. The response I get often tells me a lot about my conversation partner.

I love to learn. There is so much to discover, big and small things, about others, about life, and even about myself. My love of learning translates to a lifestyle of listening to others, reading, being curious, and, when I am at my best, being humble.

In fact, humility is the foundation of a learner’s spirit, and it is essential to anyone who strives to follow Jesus and wear the badge of “disciple.” A disciple is a learner, and it is impossible to be a disciple without the recognition that I have something to learn. I need the humility to see my shortcomings, inexperience, biases, pride, defensiveness, misunderstandings, and more.

Biblically, there are many ways to learn: from history (Romans 15:4), from making mistakes (Proverbs 26:11-12), from discipline and correction (Proverbs 12:1), from others (Proverbs 12:15), and through effort/intentionality (Proverbs 4:5). Proverbs has a lot to say about humility and learning; in fact, the language of Proverbs chapters one to seven is that of a parent teaching a child. God wants us to be the children and to learn from Wisdom. Jesus further emphasizes the illustration in Matthew 18:1-4 (all quotations are from the NRSV):

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” ² He called a child, whom he put among them, ³ and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. ⁵ Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

Learning From History

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. Romans 15:4

There is an oft quoted saying by the Spanish philosopher George Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Winston Churchill memorialized and modified it in writing as, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

This is applicable to the importance of reading the Old Testament well, but also in understanding both world history and church history. There are many dark chapters in church history, but during most of those dark chapters the church did not see the darkness. Crusades, indulgences, corrupt power structures, defending slavery, racism, sexism, and humanism have all plagued the church at different times, and some of these are still issues today.

What is difficult during each era is the defensive confidence that the status quo is enlightened; we have learned what there is to learn from the past, and those who question today’s norms are to be condemned and ostracized, or at a minimum, marginalized. It takes humility and a learner’s spirit to consider that we may have more to learn, and that the status quo may be off the mark.

Learning from Making Mistakes

Like a dog that returns to its vomit
is a fool who reverts to his folly.
¹² Do you see people wise in their own eyes?
There is more hope for fools than for them. Proverbs 26:11-12

Many of us are experiential learners. We only learn when we try or do and mess up. We touch the hot stove and learn. The continual challenge then is to take responsibility for what happened and reflect. There is an increasingly influential way of thinking that if things do not work out favorably for me it is because someone else did something wrong. In other words, if something does not work out it is because I am a victim. We blame circumstances, leaders, friends, and family members. And God. It is a lot of work to take responsibility for our mistakes and many of us do not want to put the time and energy into both owning them and working to address them.

Learning from Discipline and Correction

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,
but those who hate to be rebuked are stupid. Proverbs 12:1

Sometimes, this is just learning from life. This year I decided to talk to a Christian counselor about my life and persistent character challenges. We had many sessions to talk about my premature birth, early childhood lack of attachment to my mother, my upbringing, alcoholism in the family, the early death of my mother and my failure to mourn, and my struggle with being emotionally rigid, easily aggravated, and excessively ordering my environment. As we were working through the early issues, I was beginning to believe that my struggles were all explainable: look at what happened to me!

But there came a point when talking about relationships in my immediate family that the counselor changed his tone and became a bit more direct. He said, “Jim, the problem is you value control and your own comfortability more than the relationship.” His words, though stunning, immediately rang true. Sure, my family history lent itself to my struggle, but it is not an excuse, and I am responsible for who I am today and will be tomorrow. Discipline and correction are uncomfortable, and I even find the process of change disorienting. While giving up on my control strategies I have begun to lose things and forget things, but hopefully I am more present in the moment, and I sense the quality of my relationships improving.

Learning from Others

Fools think their own way is right,
but the wise listen to advice. Proverbs 12:15

Whom I am willing to learn from is a significant indicator of my humility and learner’s spirit. I see a trainer twice a week who is 28 years old. He teaches me about fitness, and both encourages and challenges me. I have a tennis coach who is 20 years younger than me. He knows more about doubles tennis strategy and develops drills to help me improve; when he gives me an encouragement or correction, I take it seriously. My wife is an overcomer and a natural leader, with strong qualities that I lack; I watch and learn every day. My adult children are all in their thirty’s; the three boys are professionals and leaders, with experience and perspective that I do not have, and I learn from them continually. I am frequently amazed and inspired by women leaders who have emotional maturity and a gift at connecting with others; I want to be more like them.

One of the challenges some of us have is that we are quite selective about who we are willing to learn from, and what we are willing to question, consider, or reflect upon. We may have a hierarchal view of learning, have sacred self-interests, or a discomfort with anything that is not highly certain. Think of the challenges others had in changing their minds about the shape of the planet, slavery, the rights of women to vote, and basic civil rights for people of color.

The big challenge Jesus had with the religious ruling class of his day was that they were not willing to learn from him, and there was so much to learn! They had the defensive confidence that the status quo of their time was enlightened. Jesus was disruptive, a troublemaker, someone to be marginalized. They couldn’t discredit him, or kick him out of their circle, so they killed him. God knew this to be the case and worked his redemptive plan out of the cross, but let me ask a question: is it possible that I am more like the religious ruling class of Jesus’ day than I care to admit? If Jesus came into my church today, would I see him as disruptive if he had something to say about the way I am living, leading, and treating others?

Learning from Effort and Intentionality

Get wisdom; get insight: do not forget nor turn away
from the words of my mouth. Proverbs 4:5

Are you a learner? If so, what have you changed your mind about recently? I heard Gordon Ferguson speak after bouncing back from almost dying from cancer and its treatment protocol. It was remarkable to hear him talk (just before turning 80) about how his view of God has shifted, and how he is learning how to trust and be ready for his transition when it does finally come. What a significant change of thinking about perhaps the most important topic on the planet: how we view God. His recent experience was the trigger, but he also took that experience and reflected and studied and came to some new conclusions. That is humility and learning. It takes effort and intentionality.

I have had to do quite a bit of work the last few years to learn how to better read the Bible, become more aware of my cultural biases, to be more open to feedback and correction, and to tackle my persistent character flaws and sins. I am also beginning to grapple with the concept of retirement (or evolving!) and what that might look like. It takes significant thought, effort, and energy, and I am committed to it.

The default, however, is to be lazy and defend the status quo, to have a defensive confidence that is inflexible and unwilling to learn and change. I contest that you cannot call yourself a disciple if you are living in this default state.

What are you learning? How are you growing? Are you willing to change your mind if you get added information or a new perspective?

I love Psalm 25. David was in distress; he had a pervasive confidence, but it was in God, not himself. Look at the language of learning and humility and trust in this psalm and be inspired to imitate this heart. Below are verses 1-9, but I encourage you to meditate on the entire psalm.

Psalm 25

Prayer for Guidance and for Deliverance

Of David.

¹ To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
² O my God, in you I trust;
do not let me be put to shame;
do not let my enemies exult over me.
³ Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame;
let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

⁴ Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.
⁵ Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all day long.

⁶ Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
⁷ Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me,
for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!

⁸ Good and upright is the Lord;
therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
⁹ He leads the humble in what is right
and teaches the humble his way.

Revive Us Again–Jim McCartney

“Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you?” – Psalm 85:6 (NRSV)

Our family of churches has roots in a series of revival movements. The Stone-Campbell movement in the late 1700s was a unity and revival movement to find unity in scripture, to be “Christians only, but not the only Christians”. It was refreshing and spread like wildfire.

Beginning in the late 1960s, during a time when young people were going through a time of immense social change, Campus Advance, a movement within the Churches of Christ to have informal Bible studies in dormitories and apartments to reach out to college students, effectively inspired large numbers of students to follow Jesus with “total commitment”. Forgiveness, the lordship of Jesus, and contagious evangelism characterized this revival movement.

From the late 1970s into the 1980s the Campus Advance movement evolved into a “discipling movement” or “the Boston movement”, characterized by a revival in international missions.

Today, many in our family of churches are looking for another revival. The movements of the past changed directions, lost steam, or collapsed under their own weight due to systemic problems and humanism.

The Stone-Campbell unity movement fragmented over the course of time around issues of cooperation, worship style, and governance. One branch of the Stone-Campbell movement, the Churches of Christ, divided and fragmented repeatedly around a myriad of issues. The unity movement became a disunity movement.

The “total commitment” movement was a revival of evangelism and enthusiasm, and it was in that era that I was reached out to as a first-year student at Duke University in 1978. We were evangelistic for sure, but most of our energy and conversation was about learning to follow Jesus/walk with God. Our campus ministry was characterized by an eagerness to know our Bible, a desire to be equipped to answer the tough questions our friends would ask, learning how to pray, and helping each other stay and feel close to our God. Our evangelism was organized, but it was secondary to and an overflow of our growing love for God.

The total commitment campus ministries were embedded in Churches of Christ that were prone to divide and fragment, so after a decade or so, the revival flames began to flicker.

The “discipling movement” molded in Boston was characterized by a zeal to train ministers and plant churches around the world. This inspiration and zeal became a unifying force for many from the total commitment movement, and once again fanned the flames of revival. Many in their 20s and 30s were inspired to go into the ministry and train to be missionaries. There was tremendous energy and sacrifice that also got the attention of folks in other corners of the Churches of Christ. This revival gained steam for about 20 years before collapsing under its own weight for a variety of reasons.

{Note: Gordon Ferguson, Douglas Foster and others have written more thorough articles and books about this history; my intent here is to lay out a short runway for the thoughts to come. I have therefore been very general, highlighting only themes and progressions.}

As stated earlier, many in our family of churches are looking for another revival. There is a range of views about what this would look like, but I think most would talk about commitment, evangelism, and numerical growth – with a desire to inspire what was good about prior revival movements while avoiding the problems.

God Revives

When you look at the context of the introductory scripture in Psalm 85, the overall prayer is to ask God to act. God shows favor, forgives, restores, revives, shows his love, and grants salvation. There are some things he looks for in us, which we will discuss later, but it is remarkably clear that God is the one who revives.

One of the ills of the discipling movement was that it became too human, and that humanism is a strand of DNA in our leadership thinking. We want to push people to do more, crank up our evangelistic efforts, and force a unity. Our language implies a belief that we grow the church. While it is acknowledged that spiritual formation, or the quality of our walks with God, is important, there is often a reticence to focus on it too much as it might encourage people to be too inward and not focused on evangelism. I have been involved in several discussions with experienced ministry leaders who hold this position quite strongly. In other words, we put the responsibility for revival squarely on our own shoulders – i.e., we need to revive our churches. A human approach to the need. Is it working? I think not.

Some questions I have therefore are: When will God revive us? What needs to happen? What do we need to learn, and who do we need to be, or become?

Zeal to Know and Love God’s Word

“My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to your word” – Psalm 119:25

I am incredibly grateful for my early experience as a follower of Jesus. I was a campus student, and in learning mode, but I was immersed in a church culture that valued learning the scriptures – information, context, understanding, and application – and with a spirit of continually learning. That is, convictions developed, grew, and even changed over time. I learned how to learn, and began a lifetime of loving to read, better understand, and more faithfully live out God’s word. I would describe it as a zeal to know and love God’s word. His word revives me and will revive us. If personal and corporate Bible study is simply a supporting tool to promote our agenda or inspire behavior change, and is not the lifeblood of each disciple’s faith, revival will not happen. How much effort do we make to help the flock learn how to read their Bibles, and to find revival in God’s word?

Know the Lord

“Come, let us return to the Lord,
for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
he has struck down, and he will bind us up.
² After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
³ Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord;
his appearing is as sure as the dawn;
he will come to us like the showers,
like the spring rains that water the earth.” – Hosea 6:1-3

Knowing the Lord is more than Bible study. It is a relationship. We can talk to him, listen to him, observe him, hide from him, return to him, and press on to know him. In the person of Jesus, we can know the Lord in seeing the way that Jesus lived, taught, and interacted with others. Knowing is not just having knowledge about, but it is a close, intimate relationship.

For me, knowing the Lord involves emotional intimacy, a foundation of my faith that gives perspective to my day, my work, my relationships, and church life. I am sensitive to how I feel about God and imagine how he feels about me. Sometimes in the morning I pull up a chair and imagine Jesus sitting in it, looking at me, and then we talk. I look down in shame, I cry, I smile, am grateful, and just talk about what is going on – and then listen to hear his voice, which is usually a scripture, the recollection of an insight or something someone shared with me, or a new insight.

There can be no revival without knowing my Lord.

Humility

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. ⁷ Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you….¹⁰ And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.” – 1 Peter 5:6, 10

If God is not yet reviving us, we should take a long hard look at our humility or lack of it. We still have a hierarchal, command and control strand of DNA in some of our leadership. As a seasoned, but non-staff brother in my church, it is a rare occasion that someone on staff or serving as an elder is genuinely interested in my observations or insight. (Not to toot my horn, but I have been a devoted disciple for 44 years and am continually learning and growing. I have been around a few blocks.) Communication tends to be more about teaching, training, and directing, not listening and learning. This does not bother me too much because I am always looking to listen and learn, but it makes me wonder about the others’ humility and willingness to get input or learn from someone who is not senior to them. I have a very fond memory of seeing my friend Scott Green at a conference in Berlin in 2000. Scott was overseeing the missionary efforts in China and God was working amazing miracles. When Scott and I spoke for a few minutes, he was warm, curious, and humble. He did not want to talk about himself, but asked me what I was learning, and took great interest, a rare quality for someone of his influence at that time.

Love

“Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.” – Psalm 63:3

David’s infatuation with God’s love compelled him to praise him. Knowing God’s love for me, and falling deeply in love with him, changes my heart in a way that commitment, evangelism, and perseverance are an overflow of my understanding of God’s love for me and my love for him. People trying to change my behavior without those in place will exasperate me and themselves. Someone trying to change the behavior of a group or a church through effort and programs, getting back to basics, or running a tighter ship, without a collective foundation of relationship, scripture, a close walk with God, humility, and a deep love for God and his kingdom will fail.

So, what do we do?

• Ask God to revive us and to expose all that is needed to bring that about.
• Have a zeal to know and love God’s word and help all disciples to do the same.
• Make knowing God, spiritual formation, our walk with God a supreme focus of our ministry.
• Be humble. Leaders will be judged more strictly by God (James 3:1), so what am I missing? What do I need to learn?
• Marinate in God’s love for me and fall deeply in love with him. Watch this overflow in my love for others. Help others have this same experience.

Finally, pray and sing the old hymn:

“Revive us again, fill each heart with thy love.
May each soul be rekindled with fire from above.

Hallelujah! Thine the glory, hallelujah! Amen!
Hallelujah! Thine the glory, revive us again.”

Uncle Pete–October 31, 2011

Facebook Introduction

All of us have relatives who become so special to us that they hold a unique place in our hearts and lives. When they die, they leave a big hole in our hearts and it takes a while for the grieving process to replace the pain with only precious memories. Ten years ago yesterday, I lost such a relative, a very special uncle. As I almost always do in times of loss, I wrote, as I mentioned two days ago in introducing another similar article. I just posted what I wrote on Halloween ten years ago. Hardly anyone who reads the brief article will have any idea of who my Uncle Pete was, but I would like to introduce a man to you who was an important part of my growing up years. Hopefully it will encourage you to write as you work through your own times of grief. Enjoy!

Uncle Pete

Today, Uncle Pete passed from this life. He was a half month shy of his 79^th birthday (which would have been on November 16^th). His name will be listed in the obituary as “Brider L. (Leroy) Ferguson” but the only name I ever heard him called by was Pete, or Uncle Pete by his nephews and nieces. I was blessed with five uncles and a number of great-uncles, and I loved all of my uncles in unique ways and thankfully, felt loved by all of them. But for me, Uncle Pete was in somewhat of a special class. For one thing, we were reasonably close in age. I made my entrance into the world when he hadn’t yet turned ten. And he married two years after I did. For all practical purposes, we were contemporaries or at least became that in a reasonably short period of years.

However, for a decade of my life, we shared something especially important to me as a youngster growing up. Prior to my teen years, my dad and I regularly enjoyed the Louisiana outdoors together with Pete and my other two Ferguson uncles, Stanley and Jack. We fished until hunting season opened, and then started back fishing again as soon as the hunting season closed. I could write quite a long article (maybe a book) about all the adventures of the Ferguson boys. As the oldest grandchild, I pretty much became the fifth Ferguson boy. My granddad died when he was relatively young, and in time, I sorta became one of Grandma’s five sons. It was not a coincidence that all five of us went to make her funeral arrangements together when she died at age 75.

But back to what made Pete so special in my life. About the time I became a teenager, he and Grandma moved to Gaars Mill, Louisiana in Winn Parish. They lived on a 65 acre farm with its own little fishing pond and all of the trappings of farm life. Although Pete kept laying brick for a living, he populated the farm with cows, chickens, a horse or two and a couple of dogs. God provided the rest of the population, primarily rats, snakes and other assorted pests. The first two on the list were actually fun pests, in that they provided excellent opportunities for target practice. I shot the snakes with my pellet gun as I made my way around the banks of the pond fishing. Pete, Daddy, Jack and I often shot the rats at night with our .22 pistols loaded with rat shot as they were running across the rafters of the various barns and sheds. Wearing headlights and yelling and hollering as we emptied our guns time and time again would have no doubt alarmed the neighbors – if there had been any! Grandma and Pete definitely lived in the country, but that’s what made it extra special.

Pete didn’t have many rules for me when I visited them, and I visited them often – from about age 13 until they moved back to Shreveport ten years later. He often did make me get up well before daylight to feed the cows and do various other farm chores, but most of the time I did exactly what I wanted and little else. And considering the breakfasts Grandma cooked, getting up early had its own rewards. Pete was not only a really fun uncle, he was an amazingly generous one. From the time he moved to the country, he started letting me drive his fairly new car. I would occasionally pick up a certain distant relative so early in the morning that he didn’t have time to get drunk yet, and the two of us would drive 50 miles to a good fishing hole. He didn’t have much about him to endear himself to the human race, but he endeared himself to me by knowing how to catch lots of fish. It was always a mystery to me why Pete would trust me with his car to drive, knowing that I was not only an underage driver for a few years, but I carried passengers of questionable character in his car when the need arose!

Those years visiting in Gaars Mill left me with some of my best memories of my growing-up years. I could write a fairly lengthy book filled with the memories of those years, replete with chapters that could only be viewed as Ferguson craziness. Right now, I couldn’t imagine life without those years, nor without the memories that made those years so memorable and enjoyable. And all of that means that I couldn’t imagine life without my Uncle Pete. After I heard that he had been diagnosed with a serious form of cancer, I tried to make it back to my hometown as often as possible to see him, and was able to visit him on at least four different occasions between diagnosis and death. The last time was one week ago today in the hospital, and he was still lucid enough to recognize me. For that I am most grateful. I am also strangely grateful that he only lasted one more week, because being confined to bed wasn’t his thing and watching him suffer wasn’t mine.

Although I knew he couldn’t last long, and hoped that he wouldn’t since recovery wasn’t a possibility, hearing the news today hit hard. I’ve thought of little else since, and after talking to his sweet daughter, Melissa, I was able to let the tears flow and drain off some of the grief. Like all such occasions when losing someone you love, it will be a process in which the pain is gradually replaced by the special memories. The mental image of seeing him in his last stages will give way to the memories of a young uncle doing the things that he and I shared together. Even as I write out my feelings of pain now to hopefully help deal with the loss, I have a plethora of feelings of appreciation for having enjoyed an uncle named Pete for the 69 years and four days of my life. Tomorrow will be my first day to awake without an Uncle Pete to share planet earth with any longer. But that fact can never erase his residence in my heart. Good-bye Pete, and thanks for the memories. It was quite a ride.