The Language of Success

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As a sociology major in both undergraduate and graduate school, I have always been fascinated with human-to-human interaction.  I had a communications professor who told me that once she wandered around the Cornell University campus and when people asked her how she was, she would reply, “I’m dead” – just to see who would respond.  Most people said, “That’s nice.  Well, see you around.”  Along those same lines, I’ve always been intrigued by how we begin conversations with people we’ve never met before.  Isn’t it interesting that when we meet someone new, we almost always begin the conversation by asking “What do you do?”  We want to know what a person does because we somehow think that knowing the occupation a person holds will tell us about who that person is. 

But pause to think about it – how many of us have held jobs that just touch the surface of describing who we truly are?  When I worked in Pennsylvania in student affairs at Penn College, saying that I was ‘a residence life coordinator’ would tell you very little about what I valued, how I spent my time, or who God was to me.  And for many people, a job is just a way to pay the bills, so to attempt to define those people by knowing what they do from 9-to-5 would be almost completely missing the mark.

Where do we find our worth and identity?  Certainly many them in the friends they have, in the jobs they hold, in the grades they score, or in the social circles where they might be found.  Let me be direct here in stating that the language of success is rather limited in the Bible.  It’s not that it doesn’t exist, but much more prevalent are the languages of faithfulness and relationship.  People who are described in the Bible as having achieved much are often described in terms of how well they loved God or how true they were to His calling on their lives.  You’ll also read a lot of language related to ‘son-ship’ – the idea that we are defined by our relationship to our Heavenly Father.  We are called children, chosen, beloved, and the list goes on.  For a great list of who we are in Christ, just hop on Google and type in “who I am in Christ”, and you’ll find a list of the verses that tell us about our relationship to God.

The reason we must grasp the centrality of identity is that self-esteem defined by anything other than Christ will eventually fail us.  We will live from experience-to-experience, standing on the edge of the cliff of failure, wondering if one day we might fall off and be seen as not good enough.  If you are a Christian, you are called to work hard and live well for Christ’s glory, but not to do so in order to be loved by Him – He already loves us without end.

What might it look like if you were so grounded in your identity in Christ that all the other things in life for which so many strive became worthwhile but not worth-giving?  A life that has found self-esteem and identity in Christ is one filled with “peace that passes all understanding” (Phil. 4). 

Always On Time

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In the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 3, we read the story of John the Baptist arriving on the scene to proclaim the Good News of the coming Messiah.  John is the fore runner, the one to come before Christ and to prepare the people for the King who is soon to arrive.

In response to John’s call to repentance, we see the crowd, the tax collectors, and the soldiers all inquire, “What should we do?”  Interestingly, in response to the tax collectors, John says, “Don’t collect any more than you are required to.”  During this time period, the tax collectors egregiously overcharged those being taxed and they for took a huge portion of what they collected and kept it for themselves.  John’s call to them was this – be people of integrity.  Take what is due to the government, keep the appropriate portion that is your legitimate salary, and do not take any more.  In essence, John was saying, “Be a person of integrity.”

I find this passage very intriguing.  We see that this chapter starts with a proclamation of the coming King Jesus.  The new Kingdom is being ushered in and John is giving insight to those who are around him as to how to live in the new Kingdom, insight into what the values of the new Kingdom are.  One of these is clearly integrity – being a man or woman who keeps his or her word and does what is correct.  Oftentimes, I think it’s easy to think of  “The Kingdom of God” and living in light of this Kingdom as focused on the spiritual disciplines and evangelism – reading our Bibles, praying, going to church, sharing our faith.  While all of these are aspects of the Kingdom, there are more subtle aspect that we might overlook.  One of these Kingdom values is integrity.

Integrity is doing what you say you will do.  Integrity is being true to who you are called to be.  In my experience, we as Christians tend to be late.  Meetings start late, people arrive to meetings late, people arrive late to pick someone up, and the list goes on.  While we are called to live as gracious people, we are also called to live as people of integrity.  What would it look like if Christians were the ones who were always on time?  What would it look like if Christians were known to always keep their word, even when it was hard to do?  I realize that “life happens” and that at times, we just can’t be where we planned to be due to an unexpected change in plans or a sickness in the family.  But in the day to day existence, what if Christians were to live as people of outstanding integrity, even in this one area of being on time?   What would that mean?

It would mean that a piece of the Kingdom of God was in our midst.

Food for thought - Caedmon's Call Sings "This World"

There's tarnish on the golden rule 

And I wanna jump from this ship of fools 

Show me a place where hope is young 

And a people who aren't afraid to love 

This world has nothing for me and this world has everything 

All that I could want and nothing that I need 

This world is making me drunk on the spirits of fear. 

So when he says who will go, I am nowhere near. 

And the least of these look like criminals to me 

So I leave Christ on the street 

This world has held my hand and has led me into intolerance 

But now I'm waking up, but now I'm breaking up 

But now I'm making up for lost time

Discerning Direction - Faith

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Over the last few days, we've looked at the concept of finding God's will for our lives.  Needless to say, a topic of this enormity cannot be covered in just a few posts during a week or do.  A few good resources for this topic are Dallas Willard's Hearing God and Henry Blackaby's Experiencing God.  Both have their strengths, but taken together they will offer a primmer of this vast subject.

As we close, I'd like to offer one thought.  While this was addressed earlier on, I believe it is the most appropriate topic on which to close this series of posts.  Faith - do you really trust in God?  When I was a campus minister I recall speaking to a student who was expressing frustration over his fellow students and their laissez-faire attitude toward ministry on-campus.  "If God wants to do something, He'll do it" was their chorus.  I told this student, "There is certainly truth in that statement, but as we look over the history of the Christian church, it is interesting to note that those who have had the greatest impact worked the hardest."  We cannot sit on the sidelines and then wonder why God is not speaking.  The author of Hebrews reminds us that God rewards those who seek Him with all that they have (Hebrews 11).  So yes, we must work at discerning God's will.

But in the end, if we have put forth an effort of which we can be proud, the issue of God's will for our lives comes back to faith in God - that He is who He says He is.  We are reminded in Matthew 7 how reasonable it is to assume that an earthly father would provide for his child.  If that is true, Jesus asks us how much more filled with unconditional love is God our Father?  And if this is true, we can have the faith that He will lead us if we seek after Him.  It may take time and it may all come to pass in a different way than we hoped or expected, but He is good and He will lead us.

At the core of this whole question is our relationship with God.  If we aim to please Him, to love Him, and to be loved by Him, then we can believe the Lord's Prayer that indeed His Kingdom will come and His will will be done on earth.

-tC

Discerning Direction - Prayer

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(Again, please see Henry Blackaby's book Experiencing God for the original collection of the 4 ways God often communicates His will to us). 

Prayer serves at least two main functions when we are working on discerning God's will in our lives.  These functions are to focus us on God and to hear God's Spirit speaking to us.
We will consider both of these in this post.

Prayer can be described as a conversation with God.  Interesting to describe it that way, perhaps, because many feel like prayer is more about humans speaking than it is about God answering.  However, before we even address the topic of how God speaks in prayer, we should note a few things.

Prayer implies need and awareness of God's ability to meet that need.  Praying to God is an acknowledgment that we cannot do it all on our own.  When we ask anyone for help, we are stating that we need assistance.  So it is with prayer.  Asking God for direction in life is stating (as a sub-text) "Because God, I can't find out Your will on my own and I don't really want to live just by my will."  So prayer shows we realize our need.  Additionally, prayer focuses us on God.  When we become so consumed with where God wants to lead us or what God wants us to do, we can lose the focus that at least in part the joy is found in the following of Christ.  Prayer reminds us of our need for God and it centers us on knowing and enjoying Him.  The Aaronic prayer found in Numbers 6 reads, "The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make His face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn His face toward you and give you peace" (Number 6:24-26).  This blessing is not about God's will, but instead about the blessing of being with and experiencing God.  Thus, prayer is a healthy exercise in all seasons, but especially when we are seeking out God's will in our lives - it keeps us looking to Him and not to our challenges or questions.

Secondly, God can speak to us in prayer.  As noted in the earlier posts, we must always test all things against the Scriptures, so when we pray and we feel that God may be speaking to us, we should immediately compare what we are "hearing" with His Word.  But how does God speak to us in prayer?  In the vast majority of cases it is not in an audible voice.  Instead He often communicates to us in prayer by bringing ideas, Scriptures, or other things to mind.  Elijah spoke about this as the "still small voice" (1 Kings 19).  When you are praying, be sensitive to those quiet whisperings in your soul - that may be God's Spirit speaking to you.  Perhaps it's a word or phrase, perhaps it is a Scripture that God wants to use to communicate to you.  Either way, God can communicate with us in prayer.

When we listen for the promptings of God the Holy Spirit in prayer, tested against the Scriptures, and then combined with direction and insight from people, and added to situations into which God has led us, we have a powerful formula for seeking and finding God's will.

Tomorrow we will close out this series of posts about discerning God's will.

-tC    

Discerning Direction - People

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(Again, please see Henry Blackaby's book Experiencing God for the original collection of the 4 ways God often communicates His will to us). 

As we look at the many ways God can use to reveal His will to us, people must be added to that list.  While God's Word is the most certain, people can also be directed by God (often unbeknown to them) to speak His truth and direction into our lives.  This can be true of both Christian and non-Christians.  Let's look at this a bit more.

As mentioned in an earlier post, there are no coincidences in life, and thus we must be aware of how God might be speaking to us through the people in our lives.  An example of this comes from a friend of mine who was questioning his call to ministry.  As he wrestled with his own frailties and apprehension about the things to which God might be calling him, God used a variety of people to speak into his life and encourage him to stay the course.  First it was a pastor he knew, then a friend, and then a mentor - all in one day.  All of them affirmed his gifts and the pastor told him that he believed there was a calling God had on his life.  While these might just be passing comments, to have them come when they did amd from whom they came - it might just be a sign that our caring and personal God has communicated with us.

These kinds of situations don't just occur for those called into full-time vocational ministry - they can be the experience of anyone.  Of course, we must listen to what people are saying to us and then process it through the grid of God's Word.  No matter how many people might tell one to steal, God's Word is the ultimate trump card and thus, we must affirm that the words from people fall in line with God's Word.

Scripturally, there are many passages that speak to the way God uses His people (followers of Christ) to speak His word to others.  When Jesus sends out His disciples (Luke 10), He is sending them to speak God's words, to be God's messengers for Him.  Later on in the New Testament, we read in 2 Corinthians 5:20 that we are sent "as God's ambassadors, as if God were making His appeal through us."  And Peter tells us that when we speak, we should do so as if we were speaking the very words of God (1 Peter 4:11).  Certainly, that doesn't mean that every word spoken from a Christian to a fellow Christian is God's will, but if we are interacting with people who love and are committed to Christ, we can be sure that God may just be using them to communicate His will to us.

When it comes to God speaking through someone who is not a follower of Christ, it can certainly also happen.  In Romans 1 we read that God speaks through Creation, and if so, we can be sure that He can speak through someone who is not just His creation, but someone who is made in His image (Genesis 1:26).  The key when listening for God's direction through others is to remember that all people are fallen and that we must always approach what is said to us by first considering it in light of God's Word and secondly, with a prayerful heart (the topic of tomorrow's post).

In summary, God can use other people in your life to speak His will to you.  In concert with His Word and circumstances, we might begin to see a clearer picture of what it is God is sharing with us and where He is leading us.

-tC

Discerning Direction - Situations and Circumstances

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(Again, please see Henry Blackaby's book Experiencing God for the original collection of the 4 ways God often communicates His will to us). 

If we can confirm that the direction we believe God may be leading us is in line with God's Word, we can next look to situations and circumstances to continue to discern how God is directing our steps.  It's been said that there are no coincidences, and philosophically and logically, I believe that to be true.  The question of causation always has to come back to a First Cause.  Consider the concept of all that occurred to create the universe in which we now live, often known as the Big Bang Theory.  We can look forward from the Big Bang and posit that there are always actions that cause reactions - the leaf falls because the wind blew, the wind blew because of a storm, the storm came to be because of the way the weather systems formed, and so forth and so on.  But going all the way back, we need a First Cause, the uncaused cause of all other things.  In the Christian faith, this is God. 

Now if we can see God as the ultimate cause/first cause, and we can agree that the Scripture describes Him as a personal God, it makes sense that situations in our lives are likely caused or influenced by God.  An example might help here.  Let's say that money is tight and I am wondering if I should pay a bill that has arrived in the mail.  If I look into the Word of God, we see that God affirms the idea of not being in debt (Romans 13) and being true to one's word (Matthew 5:37).  So we can begin by knowing that yes, God wants us to pay our bills.  Next, we go to church on Sunday and hear a sermon about following through on commitments.  Coincidence - possibly, but we note it down that another situation has seemed to affirm the idea of paying this bill.  Next, we get a note from a friend and in it we find a $100 bill.  The note says, "I know things have been tight - hope this will help".  Could it be that God wants me to go out and get a new pair of shoes with thing money?  Not likely.  And then let's say that we get a call from the company to whom we owe the money and they say, "We had an accounting mistake and you don't owe us $150, you only owe us $100."

Given - this is a pretty clear scenario from God about what we should do, but please don't miss the point.  God uses situations and circumstances to direct us into His will.  He directs people to us that will speak a message into our lives.  He places opportunities in front of us that are oftentimes hard to miss.    But we must go back to our earlier portion of this discussion and test our own hearts - when the Word confirms and situations seem to be pointing toward God's will, do we have the will/faith to move forward into whatever God has for us?

A cautionary note: do not practice 'voodoo theology' (a phrase from Chuck Swindoll) and think that everything is a sign from God.  For example - I'm wondering if I should take a flight to Hawaii for a vacation that I cannot afford, but I wake up at 7:47 a.m. and take it as a sign that I should get on a 747 plane and go.  This is a dangerous way to live our lives.  What if we randomly opened the Bible to see God's will for our lives and our eyes fell on the passage that said, "Judas hung himself"?  We close our Bibles, certain that this isn't God's will, so we flip it open again and read, "And they all rejoiced..."  Clearly, we don't want to turn God's will into hocus-pocus.  My recommendation is to wait on circumstances and see if God uses multiple situations to confirm how He might be speaking to you.  No, we cannot wait forever, but we also should not rush ahead because of one blip in the radar.  God will often use other people to confirm His will in your life (our topic for the next post).

God uses situations and circumstances to share His will with us.  If we are grounded in His Word to confirm God's broader will, He will sometimes use these non-random occurrences to show us what our next step might be.  Psalm 139 tells us that He knew us before we were born, that He formed us in our mother's womb.  If that's true, it makes sense that He certainly would take the time to put us in places where He speaks His will to us through situations and circumstances.

- tC