Gaining hope,
I remember and wait for this thought:
How enduring is God’s loyal love;
the Eternal has inexhaustible compassion.
Here they are, every morning, new!
Your faithfulness, God, is as broad as the day.
Have courage, for the Eternal is all that I will need.
My soul boasts, “Hope in God; just wait.”
(Lamentations 3:22-24 The Voice)
“You know what, Nana? Leaders need helpers. A leader needs helpers cuz if they don’t have helpers they don’t have anyone to lead.”
I was playing dolls with my four-year old granddaughter when she said this out of the blue. I don’t know where it came from; perhaps she was processing what it meant to have a turn being “the helper” at preschool, but knowing the Lord’s love of revealing wisdom to children he may have just been joining us on the living room floor.
I have myself been processing what leadership and helpership mean in the context of learning to submit to one another (Ephesians 5:21).
Am I the only one who has images of whips and ridiculous leather costumes or Inquisitor’s tools pop unbidden into my less than pure mind when I hear the word “submission?”
Am I the only one who is embarrassed by what non-Christians must see when they look at competitiveness and ambition between “ministries” seeking more bums in seats?
Am I the only one who tires of authoritarian-style leadership where the gulf between platform people and audience people grows wider?
Am I the only one who groans at the disrespect and harsh criticism of people in the public eye lobbed by self-labeled experts who have no actual relationship with those they seem to need to fix?
Am I the only one who cringes when I hear another stern message that lords anatomy over character and calls for people making up half the population of the world to sit down and shut up without mentioning their own obligation to submit to one another and to love sacrificially like Jesus?
Am I the only one to sigh with disappointment when members of that population lob scathing incendiaries right back?
Am I the only one who tires of arguments about who merits the role of leader -or leader of leaders- in a hierarchical system that places official credentials above the ability to love -or on the other hand, the ability to demonstrate well-intended kindness above both knowledge of the scriptures and the character of God in an intimate relationship with the Holy?
Who is a leader in the big C Church?
Perhaps a leader is someone who helps his or her helpers.
No doubt there is a need for leadership. In the days of Judges when everyone “did what was right in their own eyes” not many people “did right” by others and me-first divisions resulted in all sorts of nastiness. Paul wrote that not many should strive to become teachers realizing that a higher degree of accountability would be applied to teachers, but implied that some definitely should become teachers like Priscilla and Aquila whom he honoured. He also gave lists of qualities to look for in leaders and the kind of gifts needed in leadership (none of which were of any use without the essential qualification of the ability to love). The Bible states clearly that consideration, honour and respect (including, in some cases, financial respect) ought to be given to leaders.
I heard a recognized leader (one who promotes others above himself) say that all sorts of people from unexpected (usually anti-Christian) backgrounds were showing up at their gatherings. His response? “Everyone is welcome! Not everyone gets to preach.”
A man I admire asked me to proof-read his resumé when he applied for a position as lead pastor of a church. I was impressed that he said, essentially, “These are my gifts, and these are not.”
“When it comes to [one area in particular],” he wrote light-heartedly, “I believe in the priesthood of believers and raising up others ready to use their gifts.” He went on to say, “I do not own the pulpit and if someone in the congregation is demonstrating a gift for building up others through public speaking, I will encourage them to do so.” Then he added, “I believe in the priesthood of all believers, but not in the leadership of all believers -until they are equipped.”
Who determines when leaders are ready? A board of examiners from the school for hoop-jumpers? Well for some this might be the process God chose for them to learn to give up their own desires and to go the second mile. For others such methods become a way to disqualify those not intellectually-oriented enough to attend seminary, but who still have a lot of wisdom to share. While recognizing and respecting a dire need for teachers with the calling to study and to teach accurately, I seriously wonder if the Lord meant leadership to be confined to those with the ability to be sermonizers.
I don’t know who said this (care to help me here?) but I love this quote: A man who leads when no one follows is going for a walk.
I wonder if a true leader is chosen by those who, by a willingness to help him or her, demonstrate the willingness to follow. I wonder if a willingness to both lead and follow is the result of the willingness to be helped. I wonder if recognizing a leader is recognizing in someone the ability to raise others up to become leaders themselves by helping to develop whatever gifts God has placed in them.
My little granddaughter taught me to play a new game I was not familiar with. I helped her set up the board and the cards when she showed me where they went. She had no problem respectfully correcting me when I did something wrong. I had no problem submitting to her leadership. She was the expert here. When we were finished the game, she submitted to my expertise and helped set the table to get ready for a meal featuring her favourite entré , macaroni and cheese. Helpers helping helpers. Leaders submitting to each other.
A little child shall lead them.
Thank you, Abba, that You reveal yourself in whomever You choose. No wonder Jesus did a happy dance when He saw You do this.
At that moment Jesus himself was inspired with joy, and exclaimed, “O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, I thank you for hiding these things from the clever and the intelligent and for showing them to mere children! Yes, I thank you, Father, that this was your will.” (Luke 10:21 Phillips)
Foibles. Even the great have them.
Sometimes the great have more than foibles; they have character flaws that in any other circumstance but the one that thrust them into the role of hero, could have them hung from the gallows. When we are desperate enough to need a hero we are willing to waive that factor.
We tend to deify heroes when we have to depend on them and vilify them when we are done. Rarely do we offer them the privilege of being neither gods nor devils. Rather, we fail to recognize them as fellow-pilgrims who also struggle with temptations (some greater than any of us will ever know). I’ve been thinking about fallen leaders. I’ve no one in particular in mind; there have been so many.
No doubt a higher level of responsibility requires greater purity of thought and character. When a leader falls he drags a lot of people down with him. Collateral damage can be significant. But sometimes the pedestal is not of his own making. I read this interesting verse about John the Baptist today:
A man named John, who was sent by God, was the first to clearly articulate the source of this Light. This baptizer put in plain words the elusive mystery of the Divine Light so all might believe through him. Some wondered whether he might be the Light, but John was not the Light. He merely pointed to the Light. The true Light, who shines upon the heart of everyone, was coming into the cosmos. (John 1:6-9 The Voice)
It seems that some who felt drawn to his message were tempted to think he was The Light. Jesus said that up until that point there was no one born of woman who was greater than John, but even John succumbed to one of the greatest sins for a man in his position -doubting God’s word. In Matthew 3 we are told he saw the dove descend from heaven, he heard the Voice declare, “This is My beloved son.” Nothing subtle requiring interpretation there. Yet later, in a moment of weakness, when he is in prison, (Matthew 11) John sent his own groupies to ask if Jesus was actually The Light or if they should look for someone else. (Like Elijah, John seemed to be seriously intimidated by the King’s wife.) I wonder how confused this must have left John’s followers?
I don’t remember this part of his character being taught in Sunday School. Most of the time we were told to be like John the Baptist (who also doubted), be like Gideon (who also created a false item of worship), be like Hezekiah (who also didn’t care about his sons’ futures), be like David (who also conspired to murder to cover up adultery). The teacher ignored the parts about their failures. Bible characters were as one-sided as the flannel board avatars placed up on the easel.
We still do it. We take a leader with remarkable gifts of encouragement, or teaching, or healing, or vision-casting, and stick them way up in the air on a pedestal with barely enough room for feet of clay. Then we hang our hopes on them.
No doubt many servants of God are tempted to use this position for self-aggrandizement — especially those with unhealed wounds of rejection — and by so doing hasten their own fall. Some folks, who consider it their calling in life to point out weaknesses and to make sure no one is disappointed like they once were, drag people in public life down and hit them with their own shoes, as if proof of failure in one area invalidated everything they ever did or said.
Confronted with the evidence of John’s weakness, Jesus chose to publicly honour him, to point out that others in the crowd were also guilty of unbelief and to replace John’s words of doubt and fear with words of truth.
All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. (Matthew 11:27)
I wonder if the only way a leader can survive on a tiny platform in the air, not of his or her own making, is to know who they are and who they are not and just keep pointing to Jesus Christ.
I wonder if, in some instances, a public fall may actually be a manifestation of grace to shift people’s adoration away from their former hero and toward the Saviour Himself.
I wonder if the best way to support leaders is to earnestly pray they will be kept from the evil one and not be led into temptation.
We need to stop turning fellow travellers into false idols, take our eyes off them and look instead to where they are pointing — toward the Light.
It was when I was happiest that I longed most.
The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing
to find the place where all the beauty came from.
-C.S. Lewis
One night I kept dreaming about a big ship out on the deep blue waters of the ocean. I’ve learned that when a dream repeats several times it is worthy of attention, so I prayed, asking about the significance of the image of the ship. Then I remembered that before I fell asleep I asked the Lord what “in the world, but not of the world” meant.
This was a loaded expression for me. In the culture I grew up in “worldliness” was the biggest enemy. “In the world, but not of the world” meant I had to go to public school, but I couldn’t look good doing so. Dressing fashionably, wearing make-up or having an up-to-date hairstyle was considered worldly -as was just about every other fun thing my friends did. The list of worldly activities seemed to grow with every request to do anything. I couldn’t play the same games, go to the same places, watch the same TV shows, or listen to the same music -at least not with permission. My grandmother gave me a transistor radio to listen to her favourite evangelists, but I may have tuned to a pop rock station after I figured out how the ear bud worked. I realize her intent was to protect me, but I often felt isolated and well, just weird. It didn’t help that my school mates re-inforced the weird label.
One of the sad results of having fences around fences was that I became very good at spotting worldliness breaches in others. If I couldn’t get away with it, why should they? I learned to be pretty judgmental.
Another consequence was not learning self-control or moderation when I was young. Since the rules often made no sense to me I depended on others to determine what was right or wrong. Choices were based on fear of punishment more than on caring and loving myself or others. I had a fear-based relationship with a God who specialized in saying no with a “shame-on-you” scowl behind that great white beard in the sky since he was mostly evoked to make me more compliant.
The end result of striving to obey all the rules, ironically enough, was that I never realized I had the right to say no. No to religious authority figures who abused power, no to bullies in the workplace, no to those who wished to make me their personal servant, no to people with ulterior motives — not even no to salespeople I felt sorry for. I bore a lot of scars for a long time. The hardest part of breaking free was constantly living with a sense that God, when and if he showed up, was on somebody else’s side -because they had already gone and tattled about me.
It’s been a long journey to learn that God is love and relentlessly kind and is not very much like the god I grew up with. So when I asked, “What does in the world, but not of the world mean?” the question carried a lot of baggage.
“Like a ship,” I heard.
I thought about it. A ship sails on the water; it depends on the water, but it remains separate in substance. Even a submarine avoids becoming one with the sea. When a reed raft, like the one used on the Kontiki expedition absorbs too much sea water, it sinks. When an iron ship has a hole under the waterline like the Titanic, it takes on water and is dragged down to the bottom. But a ship in dry dock, safely away from dangers of sinking, is a boat going nowhere. It serves no one and has no influence no matter how modest its paint job or how clean its decks.
Then, much to my surprise, I found the expression held over my head for so many years, was not actually in the Bible. The closest passage I could find is Jesus’ prayer in John 17:
13 “Now I am coming to you. I told them many things while I was with them in this world so they would be filled with my joy. 14 I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15 I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to this world any more than I do. 17 Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth. 18 Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. 19 And I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them so they can be made holy by your truth. (John 17:13-19)
He asked for protection from the evil one for his followers and that they would be set apart by the word, which is truth. I may come to the same decision about choices I make now, but a lot of times I don’t – especially if pressured to make decisions based on negativity (God’ll get you for that) or fear (What if there is not enough?) or impatience with God (I guess I’ll just have to fix this myself) or a need to control others to remove the temptation to worry (You really should…). Boxing God into the limits of human reasoning no matter how impressive the brain (and I have met some incredibly intelligent people) feels like absorbing soggy ideas laden with questionable presuppositions sometimes, and when I neglect to dump the bilge water of too many scornful talk shows or scary shark movies my thinking is affected. I start going down.
The Greek word used for Spirit in the New Testament is pneuma, meaning air. I can live on the ocean and appreciate its beauty and its dangers, but I am not called to be one with the ocean. I need air. I need to be in a boat that floats so I can enjoy the ride. The Holy Spirit is the one who fills our sails and leads us into the truth that brings about real change. Repentance doesn’t mean doing penance. It means cooperating with Holy Spirit to change my way of thinking and choosing to go in a better direction in a boat that can be as colourful as I like.
God’s language is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, and when decisions are based on these things, there is no need for rules.
Sail on!
How good it is when from the distant land,
From lonely wanderings, and from weary ways,
The soul hath reached at last the golden strand,
The Gates of Praise!
There, where the tide of endless love flows free,
There, in the sweet and glad eternity,
The still unfading Now.
Ere yet the days and nights of earth are o’er,
Begun the day that is forevermore–
Such rest art Thou!
-from “Hidden in God’s Heart” by Gerhard Tersteegen, 1697 -1769
Though the Lord gave you adversity for food
and suffering for drink,
he will still be with you to teach you.
You will see your teacher with your own eyes.
Your own ears will hear him.
Right behind you a voice will say,
“This is the way you should go,”
whether to the right or to the left.
(Isaiah 30:21.22 NLT)
“3-2” doesn’t mean much when it’s just an answer floating around in the air, unattached to a question.
But in this part of the world, where annual general meetings, and weddings (or even funerals) are not given a spot on the calendar until the hockey schedule is checked, “3-2” is a great response to a question. The question? What was the final score for the Canada/USA women’s hockey game? I tell you there was so much hootin’ and hollerin’ going on around here this week that if my Grandma was still alive she would have been fixin’ to go to the revival because it sounded like a whole bunch of folks just got saved. (And apparently a last-minute “salvation” of sorts did show up at that game.)
I expect more than a few Canadian hockey fans will pull themselves out from under down-filled comforters at 4:45 A.M. to watch the men’s finals in the morning. Personally I don’t get it. I’d much rather sleep, but hockey is a big deal here. It’s like football in Europe and the rivalry with the much more populated country to the south is a little silly, but it’s part of our overlooked little brother (or little sister) identity, so there you go.
It’s questions that give answers value. Many believers sit in pews being fed a mountain of answers that have as much bearing on our lives as a detached “3-2”. Sometimes God allows adversity and frustrating circumstances to show up because he has the answer ready for us. He’s just waiting for us to recognize its value. He’s waiting for the question.
I read my journal from last December that I found whilst re-organizing my home office this week. It was full of answers without questions. Some of them were verses of scripture that stood out as if written in neon lights. Some of them were “pay attention” concepts repeated in books or blogs or podcasts or in song lyrics over several days. Some of them were ideas that came “out of the blue” as I prayed or walked in the woods thinking about something entirely different. I knew they were important, but I didn’t know why, so I wrote them down in my journal -and filed it someplace safe amongst my shelves of books -where I wouldn’t notice it for a year. But when I did go back and read it, I was amazed at how accurate those entries were.
One of the answers was very specific. I dreamed a Jesus-loving friend who lives in difficult circumstances in a third world country, came to me with a message that I would have many storms ahead in the next year, but that Jesus would be in the storm with me and would see me through. He was giving me the tools in advance.
I just didn’t appreciate them at the time. It was (metaphorically speaking) like getting a bus ticket to Bien Fait (pronounced Bean Fate by Les Anglais) when I had no intention of going to Saskatchewan. Later when I found myself somewhere around Moose Jaw (still being metaphorical here) in a horrendous storm, I prayed (begging and crying and pleading) for a train ride or covered wagon ride -or anything that could get me through the onslaught. Then a kind of spiritual bus stopped and I finally found the soggy ticket in my pocket. He did get me through.
I wrote to someone the other day, asking for advice on how to handle a problem. He answered by asking (nicely) if I ever actually read the stuff I write, because the answer was already there in my email, and repeated in a blog. I looked again, and realized he was right. It was right there.
God doesn’t always give us the answers ahead of time because he knows some of us have a tendency to belittle them, thinking them either illogical or too challenging. Like a good teacher he waits until we try all the solutions that don’t work first, the ones that cause us to become frustrated and hopeless enough to ask a better question than “Why me?” He waits for a question that connects with the answer and makes us realize His solution takes into account unanticipated last-minute changes. His ways are brilliant and worth hootin’ and hollerin’ over when we participate in the victory. He’s just that good.
So the Lord must wait for you to come to him
so he can show you his love and compassion.
For the Lord is a faithful God.
Blessed are those who wait for his help.
O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem,
you will weep no more.
He will be gracious if you ask for help.
He will surely respond to the sound of your cries.
(Isaiah 30:18, 19)
He rescues and saves and sets us up to score.
Prayer is not presenting God with a list of wants -or demands. We may not actually want what we think we really, really, really want.
Prayer is spending so much time with the perfect Lover of our souls that we learn to ask better questions.
Charis: Subject to Change 