Marking Points That We Make

It’s good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

-Ursula LeGuin

Personal change is important, because it is innate to being a follower of Jesus. Naturally, we are continually being renewed, growing and emerging and becoming more. With this, our journey of faith has marking points. Being a Christian is a progression. We have many examples of this in Christian literature, The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan as the classic, and The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis in the last century. And yet, the walk of faith is never one in which the person “arrives”--that they have it all figured out. We will let the eastern religions keep that monopoly! The walk of faith is like an long road trip, going from one town to the next and every now and then stopping alongside the road perhaps to change the tire that has blown or getting off at the next exit to have some good coffee and a piece of pie at a diner just off the beaten path. Discovery, in the in end, is at the heart of the Christian faith.

Throughout the Bible, God is attempting to pound this idea that it's all about a relationship with him that matters the most. The Israelites of the Old Testament had such a hard time with this one, because they wanted so much to make it about religion—following a set of rules was so much easier than being in a relationship with their Creator. Very few characters we read about in the Old Testament got it right. Most, which we read about, insisted on obeying all the rules versus moving into a friendship with God. If we were to think about that list of who got it right, it is a relatively short one. A few would be: Abraham, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Josiah, annd Elijah. When we read their stories, we learn about the ramifications and possibilities of having a relationship with God.

In the New Testament, Jesus makes the same challenge. He says that the basis of everything is relationship, a relationship with him. Let’s listen to Jesus’ all-important words, “I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) The Message restates it even more directly: “Separated, you can't produce a thing.” Now that’s saying it like it is! Meditate on that one for a minute. Are we really going to believe such a statement? No one—not your Aunt Bev, not the nice guy down the street who shovels your sidewalk every winter, not even your own mom, the nicest lady in the world—can do anything good without Jesus. What he means in that statement, is simply this—everything has to be about him, otherwise it means nothing. As C.S. Lewis wrote so eloquently in Mere Christianity, in making such statements like this, Jesus was either an ego maniac, mentally ill or God Himself! Everything will come up short without Jesus. Every part of our lives must be subject to him: the inner strength of our marriage; the skills and talents we use on the job; our ability in the classroom or on the basketball court; how well we can think or feel; our financial security; our gifts of hospitality or giving; our ability to be a father or mother, son or daughter. Jesus is the center and how centered our lives are to his, will determine how well we do in everything. Everything about our lives starts with him. It’s not that we don’t have importance as well in this on-going relationship; but the whole of our lives and how we live them starts with the One who made us. Let me say that one more time: the whole of our lives and how we live them starts with the One who made us.

This is the starting point and the ending point. Our life, all of it, is in relationship to the One who created us (Colossians 1:16). The closer we are to him, the better we are. I see this continually with my own life and in the lives of others. The better a relationship with God a person has, the more “effectiveness” they have in their own lives. Depression is easier to conquer; marriages re-connect sooner; a father and a teenage son begin to have fun again; sometimes, you can even hit the golf ball straight. Things begin to happen that you never expected to happen. Life begins to fall in place. Inevitably, if we want to have the life we want, if we want to be the person we are supposed to be, it will tie back to our connection with Jesus. In essence, only the person who has God at the center of his life can have the good life. Again, the closer you are to him, the better you will be.

To end, Muhammed Ali said it well: “The man who views the world at fifty the same way he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.” The person who commits his life to God and his ways will go through many changes of not only mind, but heart and soul as well. Relationships will change. Interests will change. Thinking will change. Life, itself, will change. If we allow it, the whole of life will just be an on-going metamorphosis into something more, something different and better. In the process of the journey, we are inevitably changed. Literally, one year-five years-twenty years later, you’ll become an entirely different person, a better person, more sound and connected to something extraordinary.

Learning By Doing

You can read all the manuals on prayer and listen to other people pray, but until you begin to pray yourself you will never understand prayer. It's like riding a bicycle or swimming: You learn by doing.

Luis Palau

This is what we are after, isn’t it? We deeply want change. However, we want the real thing. Be entirely honest with yourself, are you the same person you were a year ago? Five years ago? Forty years ago? This might possibly be the greatest danger in being a Christian. I once heard a pastor say this, Trust this Jesus—this all you need to do. Maybe he misspoke, but that was a completely untrue statement. This is what so many people are told when they come to faith and it only gives them permission to continue to be the fallen individuals they are, not growing and not changing into the incredible people they were meant to be. Being in relationship with Jesus goes way beyond just trusting. You probably have never heard of him (I hadn’t either), but the Archbishop of Canterbury (1691-94), John Tillotson spoke it about as direct and truly as it can be said:

It is a great mistake, and of very pernicious consequence to the souls of men, to imagine that the gospel is all promises on God's part, and that our part is only to believe them and to rely upon God for the performance of them, and to be very confident that He will make them good, though we do nothing else but only believe that He will do so.

So really dwell on this question—are you any different than you used to be?

• Is the anger still there and comes out whenever it wants?
• What about the inability to overcome the continual depression and joylessness?
• Or the art you’ve acquired to being committed to absolutely nothing or anyone?
• Or the perpetual lying and half-truths?
• Or the endless relationships you’ve had that go about an inch deep?
• Or wasting your life away with procrastination or laziness?
• Or the past that always stands between you and where you want to go?
• Or how you use people?
• Or how you allow shopping or sex (or anything else other than God) make you feel secure and happy?

We could go on and on with these kinds of examples. This would be a great time to take a moral inventory and really look at your life. Again, being a Christian on one level is about constant change. Are you a sinner? I’ll answer this one for you. Of course you are. Just like me. And this is exactly why God is always at us to become more and more who He desires us to be—more whole today, sinning less tomorrow, and a becoming a little bit like Jesus. Let’s make no bones about it, this is no simple or easy task, but this is what we must be after—we need to everyday become different people than who we were from the previous day.

What I've Been Reading

This is from one of the classics by A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God. This is a must read.

We have almost forgotten that God is a Person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can. It is inherent in personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and loving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of both can be explored.

All social intercourse between human beings is a response of personality to personality, grading upward from the most casual brush between man and man to the fullest, most intimate communion of which the human soul is capable. Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may. In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemer man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.

Coming Clean

I wonder how many people with some serious unloading of their “deep dark secrets” would find that a significant amount of their issues they struggle with would simply fall away. The year I gave my life to the Lord, I heard a message from Tony Campolo who advised that if a person was going to make it as a Christian, they would have to live a life of genuine accountability. When I heard this, it meant that I would have to get with a group of people and begin to live a life that exposed my daily sins and not hide the secret sins that invaded my life. I could hear the truth in that counsel.

I took this to heart and started living this out. I remember I went to my pastor at the time and another friend and asked them if they would like to on a weekly basis begin sharing the dirt in our lives; and they agreed. However, I quickly began to see how easily it is to hide even in an accountability group. This was new to me and I desperately wanted to be clean. I was baring my soul. I was young and so had a ton of stuff to get out. My struggles that were many just seemed to come out. My pastor, however, unbeknownst to me, believed in “sinless perfection;” that is, he believed that once you became a Christian you no longer sinned. In fact, with much of the dark stuff I was sharing, he believed it wasn't even sin! Our little group only lasted about two months because we just weren’t on the same page in terms of what our purpose was. On a side note: sadly, years later I learned he left his wife and family and attempted suicide a handful of times. I think now, if only he would have shared some of the darkness that was going on in his soul!

The other person in this group was a man who became a tremendous influence on my life. His name is Kent Copeland (Kent has a remarkable story in that when he was five he met a missionary/surgeon serving Cambodia and decided at that young age, he wanted to do the same -- today Kent is a missionary as a surgeon in Cambodia!). Soon thereafter, Kent and I started meeting on Friday nights to restart our accountability group. We invited anyone who wanted to come and another guy joined us after a couple of months, who also became a very close friend. We were young (I was twenty one at the time) and we would meet from 10pm – 1am most Friday nights (today, I would have to make our meetings earlier and probably shorter!). We would spend time in worship, reading the Bible together and then offering what was really going on in our lives.

Those nights I bathed my soul. I began to wash my garments of sin clean. Not even knowing it until years later, I was leaving behind years of anguish and pain. Demons were trampled, and I did not even know it. Looking back at those couple of years, who I am today, began a “good work” in me that lasts to this day. Really what we were doing those late Friday nights was practicing confession. I like how the dictionary describes the word, because this was exactly what we were doing:

con-fes-sion (kn fen) n. 1 an acknowledgment or declaration, especially of one's faults, misdeeds, or crimes

Do you have a couple of men or women who you can trust and with whom you can bare your soul and be the real you? If not, I highly recommend it. In my own life, I continue to learn Tony Campolo’s words well – if I don’t have a place in my life in which I can be myself and tell a couple of trusted guys who I really am, my life with God stagnates and loses that luster.

Perhaps you can start here:

1) What are the top three places you struggle and be specific (e.g., more and more, I have outbursts of anger, I struggle with pornography, I feel inadequate around others, I have a knack for rarely telling the truth, etc.). Write these out on paper and be honest with yourself. Begin the process of confession.

2) Who are the three people you have trusted most? What did they do for you or who were they that you trusted them so much? If possible, reestablish those relationships or pursue new ones.

The life of accountability is a good life if you can find a couple of people who you can genuinely trust and with whom you can be yourself. Trusting someone with your life’s secrets can be something that brings tremendous amounts of healing and growth. I love how the Message spells out the challenge of James 5:16:

Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. Elijah, for instance, human just like us, prayed hard that it wouldn't rain, and it didn't—not a drop for three and a half years. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. The showers came and everything started growing again.

Thoughts on Suicide

Just in the last two months, I have heard of three individuals who have committed suicide. In each of these instances, the families and friends of these individuals were shocked that their loved one took their own life. Whether it is the economy (two of these individuals had significant financial problems in their lives) or because we are nearing the winter months, it is important to have our eyes open to those who are around us who might want to harm themselves in some way. Perhaps with a little intervention and listening, we can help someone who is moving toward hopelessness and despair. Most people who are thinking about suicide suffer from conditions that will pass with time or with the assistance of a friend, they can make it through this difficult time. There are many steps we can take to improve how we respond to those who are feeling suicidal and make it easier for them to seek help. Below are some thoughts on how you might be able to help.

First, it can be helpful to know who is most susceptible to taking their life. Research has shown that over 2/3rds of those that commit suicide meet clinical criteria for an affective disorder, such as major depression or bipolar disorder. Similarly, substance abuse also increases the likelihood of suicide. One who has a problem with alcohol or drug use can predispose one to suicide, because such substances may increase impulsivity or cause psychotic symptoms.

With this, you also have to determine the circumstance of the person who you think might be susceptible to suicide. Here are some points to be mindful of:

• Has the person attempted suicide before? If so, how did they attempt suicide?
• Is there a means to commit suicide?
• Is there family/relational history in the case of suicide?
• Has there been a significant life change for the person? (Death or terminal illness of relative or friend, divorce or separation, a broken relationship, significant health problem, loss of job or other personal security)
• If the person is acutely suicidal, do not leave them alone.

In the above questions, if the person does have a means to commit suicide, you or someone close to the person may need to intervene in the situation to remove any means they may have in committing suicide (e.g., removing firearms from the home or detoxifying their home). Likewise, in the questions you ask of the person, if the person has a family history in terms of suicide (i.e., a family member such as a mother or sibling committed suicide), statistics increase dramatically that that person could be very susceptible to taking their own lives. The operative words here are to keep your eyes and ears open to those around you, especially for those who have a history with these issues.

If someone has confided in you that they are considering suicide, here are some issues to be mindful of as you speak with them. First, offer space to the person and give them every opportunity to unburden their troubles and voice their feelings. This is not a time to argue with them or attempt to give them advice (e.g., “But you have so much to live for!”). It’s a rarity that you can “talk someone out of” committing suicide. In these instances, you don't need to say much; again, you simply need to listen. Most importantly, let the person know that you are glad they turned to you. Attempt to create trust. If the person ever does come to a place where they are about to take their life, they may at the last minute reach out to you, because they trust you.

With this, one of the myths concerning suicide is that if I feel like someone might be susceptible, I shouldn't bring it up, because it might put an idea in their head about committing suicide. If you do have suspicions, the best thing you can do is bring the topic up. In the end, you are showing the person that you care about them, even so much that you are willing to ask difficult questions. When I was a counselor, I always wanted to be more safe than sorry, and I have asked many clients and a handful of friends if they were currently thinking seriously about suicide. All you have to do is gently ask, “Hey, are you thinking of harming yourself in any way?” This simple question can maybe save someone’s life. On one occasion some years ago, I was surprised by one friend who answered that question positively. By opening up to me, it gave him an opportunity to tell me what was really going on in his life and this burden was lifted from him over time. Today, he is doing great and the dire situation he faced many years ago is no longer an issue in his life.

These are just some thoughts on the issue of suicide. With the current state of our economy and the season turning over to winter, we may know someone who is at a point of despair so large that they may think that taking their own life is the only answer. Again, keep your eyes open to those around you and don’t be afraid to ask challenging questions. If you are currently struggling with suicidal thoughts, get help now. Don’t wait. If this is something you are struggling with, feel free to write me an email at kbonewell@adabible.org and anything that you share with me will be confidential.

What I've Been Reading

Of late, I have been reading some of T.S. Eliot's poetry. Eliot became a Christian in his late thirties and his poetry and plays were infused with his beliefs about faith and how that faith should impact a person. For me, his poetry has a haunting feature about it, because every now and then he states something in a sublime and thoughtful manner, which makes you...well...think about what he said. As Johan Bergstrom-Allen wrote, "Christian artists and writers have often had much to teach Christians about the world around them. They express the mysteries of faith in a more concise and beautiful way than many traditional theologians." For me, this defines T.S. Eliot as a writer and as a Christian.

Here are some selections from "The Choruses from the Rock" (you can google the title if you would like to read the entire poem); read some of these verses that speak in a proverbial and profound way. In some ways, this selection might remind you of the book of Ecclesiastes--verses that you need to read a couple of times through to understand what he is attempting to say--in this sense, you can also think of Jesus speaking in parables. He wants you to really listen and not just quickly read over the words.

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The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.
And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor
Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

Pointing Them in the Right Direction

I had a cool thing happen last week.

I have known a couple for quite some time and to put it lightly, they have struggled in their marriage. As an analogy, helping someone in their marriage is as if you are in a boat and you are attempting to have both individuals “stay in the safety of the boat” so that they can move forward in their relationship. However, the problem arises that what too often happens is that just as you are about to get both of them in the boat, you turn your back, and then one has jumped back into the water! A relationship is made up of two people and if you don’t’ have them both on board, little good can happen.

Anyway, the wife in this situation came to me and strongly stated that she was going to seek a divorce. She had given up. She couldn’t take it anymore. He wasn’t going to change anyway. I met with her at church and I think that when she showed up she thought I was going to have my Bible in hand and make sure she had all of Bible verses that talked about how “God hates divorce.” When she sat down and explained her situation and her resolve, I simply said, “You gotta do what you gotta do.” She looked at me astounded; she must have thought, wasn’t I going to admonish her! And then after a pause, I said this, “All I ask is this, do me one favor, ask God if he wants you to divorce your husband. Can you do that?” She nodded, we concluded our conversation and we said our good-byes. As I walked back up to my office, sadly, I thought, Well, that’s probably the last I will see of her…

The next day as I came to the office I opened up my email and viola, there was an email from her. Kind of surprised, I opened it up and the writing simply said this:

I want to thank you for your advice and your suggestion to pray. I did as you asked and prayed about divorce. I came across an on-line Bible study about marriage, studied this and prayed some more. I decided you were right; I was shaping things to my will instead of God’s will. I expressed my thoughts to my husband and I will not be bringing up divorce again.
Isn’t that amazing…if we would simply go ask God what he wants us to do, our lives can be shaped by his will and not our own. I think often when we are helping someone, this is all we have to do—point them back to the One who has all the right answers (and questions). Sometimes, we don’t have to get out the Bible; sometimes we don’t have to give them our best advice; sometimes we simply have to say, Would you talk to God about this? What does He want you to do?