No Country for Old Micromanagers

“I went up … in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.”

In the first two chapters of his earliest letter, the apostle Paul is concerned to establish the credentials of his gospel. The background: in Paul’s absence, religious Jews were encouraging the young Christians from the churches in Galatia to supplement their faith with vestiges of the now-obsolete Law of Moses. Paul recounts how, fourteen years after his first and only post-conversion visit to the birthplace of the Christian faith, he had chosen to return to Jerusalem once again. He also tells them why.

He wanted to make sure he “had not run in vain”.

A Two-Letter English Pronoun

Relatively mature Christians have absorbed an abundance of important principles from scripture. Sadly, we don’t always apply them as effectively or comprehensively as we might. At least, I don’t.

The limitations of human memory in a fallen world are such that we are constantly relearning things we already know. For me, this week’s “Oh yeah” moment was a conversation with my brother about our dad, and a reminder that the Lord put us together in one Body by his Spirit for many reasons.

One good reason: iron sharpens iron. We help each other understand the Bible. You will always see things I don’t, and vice versa.

Tears in Your Bottle

“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”

— From Psalm 56, a Miktam of David

Scholars debate when various scribes added the superscriptions over some of the Psalms, and whether we can trust them all to the same degree. They note, for example, that the translators of the Septuagint a few centuries before Christ both edited and freely supplemented existing Hebrew superscriptions.

Changing Focus

Those of us who read the word of God day by day over a period of years have all probably experienced more or less the same thing: each trip through a particular passage of the Bible years apart tends to produce different observations and associations.

I’m always amazed how much more there is in any given passage than I have previously been able to dredge out. That’s both a commentary on the limitations of even the most avid, committed human mind to take in and retain the teaching of scripture, as well as a reflection on the incredible depths of wisdom in the Word.

Anonymous Asks (361)

“Does marriage hinder your relationship with God?”

Hmm, I suspect somebody has been reading 1 Corinthians 7. “Those who marry will have worldly troubles.” “The married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.” “The married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.” “I want you to be free from anxieties.”

If the apostle Paul is correct — and several decades of observation strongly suggest to me that he is — then, yes, it’s certainly possible that any given marriage can become an impediment to one’s service for the Lord, peppering life with distractions and putting you in the position of trying to serve two masters, which we know is impossible. I don’t believe it has to, but it can.

The Butler Did It

When John Milton, the famous 17th century poet and eventual author of the epic Paradise Lost realized in mid-life that he was going totally blind, he felt a rising sense of panic. How could a wordsmith be of any value, to God or anyone else, when he had not even the use of his own two eyes?

When the great night finally descended, he was reduced to dependency and darkness. And understandably, he agonized over why the Lord would allow such a thing. He recorded his struggles in a short poem — perhaps his most-quoted piece of work.

“When I consider how my light is spent …” he began. With half a life left to give, what point would there be in him losing the one great talent he had? It would remain, he worried, “lodg’d within me useless”, and yet his “soul [was] more bent to serve therewith [his] Maker”. How could he give an account to the Lord if he could no longer serve, and in fact, could no longer even see?

More by Running Than by Considering

When I worked in print years ago, every shift started the same way. The lead would put a job into production by stacking all the marked-up hard copy on a central table, where typesetters would queue up to grab themselves a handful of pages and go to work coding or correcting the content to produce the desired output.

One of my fellow employees became notorious for loitering at the table, picking through the hard copy looking for what we referred to as the ‘cake’: pages of straight text with no complex tables to code and no graphics to insert, or corrections that amounted to nothing more than adding a few periods to the end of existing paragraphs.

You couldn’t miss what he was doing; he was always holding up the line. The only time ‘Norm’ ever attempted anything more challenging was if you put it right in his hand and assured him he had no other option.

To One and All, A Mary Christmas

“… the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”

“So this is Christmas, and what have you done?”

So sing the children in John Lennon’s wretched ditty. I really don’t know why he bothered himself about Christmas when he also wanted to “imagine there’s no heaven”. But each to his own. I’m sure he’s thought better of that since.

At Christmas time, I can’t imagine a more dismal question. Another year over, Lennon accuses, and you haven’t done anything. The poor are still starving, the world is still at war. When are you going to get off your haunches and be worth something?

Ah, there’s nothing like Christmas pudding and the sounds of self-flagellation to improve the seasonal mood.

Staying in Your Lane

A few years ago I watched a friend melt down in slow motion.

At the time I didn’t know it was coming. If I had known, I might have said something, but I had my own family distractions to deal with and he seemed to be managing. He was one of those good guys who shows up in a local church with a surplus of gift, energy and goodwill, and is immediately drafted into everything. He was recognized as an elder despite a shortage of family qualifications. He ran the youth group and helped with Sunday School, preached regularly, spoke at conferences, worked a more-than-full schedule and he and his wife were relentlessly hospitable, despite not having a large place to share with others.

And then suddenly … POOF! He was gone.

What We Bring to the Table

Everyone has needs. The man who says he doesn’t isn’t without need, he’s without self-awareness, or perhaps just unwilling to be honest. With respect to need, the only important difference between Christians and unbelievers is that, in coming to Christ, believers acknowledge their neediness and seek to have it addressed. Unbelievers don’t.

That makes us weak, some say. Let’s grant them that. Why not?

Vision, Inspiration and Leadership

“Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’ ”

What makes a person give up everything in order to follow Christ?

What motivates a lifetime of obedience and service?

What makes men into real men, spiritual men, dedicated men, godly men, and what makes women into women of substance?

Well, let’s see what the Bible says about that.

Harking the Herald Angels

“So this is Christmas,” sang John Lennon, “and what have you done?”

That Lennon — never one to get a point.

Whatever Christmas means, you can trust me: it’s not about what you’ve done. When you get stock-taking at the end of the year, you can easily get more than a little depressed. How has the year worked out? Did you achieve all the goals you set for yourself? Did you always live up to the mark, always do your best, and always win what you hoped? How’s it all been going?

Merry, merry Christmas indeed!

Too Hot to Handle: Billy Graham Regrets …

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Evangelist Billy Graham, in a 1977 interview with Christianity Today:

“One of my great regrets is that I have not studied enough. I wish I had studied more and preached less. People have pressured me into speaking to groups when I should have been studying and preparing. Donald Barnhouse said that if he knew the Lord was coming in three years he would spend two of them studying and one preaching. I’m trying to make it up.”

Tom: Does that quote surprise you at all, IC?

A Better Second Fiddle

Back in 1939, theorist Kurt Goldstein coined the term “self-actualization” to describe the motive to realize what he called “one’s full potential”.

In Goldstein’s view this drive might take the form of creative expression, pursuit of knowledge or the desire to contribute to society in some personally-defined way. Goldstein believed self-actualization was any organism’s “master motive” and its most basic drive in life. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory built on Goldstein’s concept and is probably the most familiar expression of it.

Among others in Christian circles, Rachel Held Evans seems to have bought into Goldstein’s theories.

Getting Off the Hamster Wheel

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things …”

The COVID church life interregnum served at least one profitable purpose: it stopped all our programs and activities dead in their tracks, and forced anyone with critical faculties to give at least a cursory examination to their validity and usefulness.

That was a long overdue exercise. But when governments finally pushed the “continue” button and allowed us to unlock the doors of our buildings, many Christians couldn’t wait to climb back on the hamster wheel and begin spinning again.

Some of the more reflective folks did not. I do not believe they are necessarily being carnal.

Ambition and Acclaim

“Learn to grapple with souls. Aim at the conscience. Exalt Christ. Use a sharp knife with yourself. Say little, serve all, pass on.

This is true greatness, to serve unnoticed and work unseen.

Oh, the joy of having nothing and being nothing, seeing but a living Christ in glory, and being careful for nothing but His interests down here.”

— J.N. Darby

As a young believer, I was being asked to go here or there, preach or give counsel to others, and seemed to be on the rise and gaining some sense of purpose from it all. I was encouraged to put a high value on doing “the Lord’s work”. I had yet to learn that, for most believers, this will mean in a kitchen, in a barn, on the factory floor, or behind the desk in a conglomerate. All my activity made me to think I should pursue a path that would make any gift I had received from God of benefit to more people.

Purpose-Built

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Remember pet rocks? Five million of those useless things were sold in 1975-76. They were marketed to people with a droll sense of humor and no time or energy to devote to a real pet. Like any fad they quickly disappeared, but for a brief period of time the pet rock craze made the people who came up with the idea some serious money.

Falling and Standing

“Son of Adam, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.”

Ezekiel the priest had fallen on his face at the sight of the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. As a son of fallen Adam, that was where he belonged. That is where we all belong, naturally speaking. Down through history, whenever men glimpsed the glory of the Lord even in smaller ways than the spectacular view afforded Ezekiel, they have tended to keel over.

Serving and Being

“Have you considered my servant Job?”

The jargon believers use with one another often sounds a little unusual to those unfamiliar with it, something of which I was jarringly reminded during a conversation a few weeks back with an unsaved friend. I lapsed momentarily into incomprehensible Churchian and unthinkingly used a euphemism to describe a Bible teacher with whom we are both acquainted.

I called him a “servant of the Lord”.

“Servant?” my friend remarked. “What a strange thing to say!”

The Butler Did It

The most recent version of this post is available here.