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© 2000, 2011 by Calvin Miller

The material in this book is adapted from Into the Depths of God by Calvin Miller

Published by Bethany House Publishers

11400 Hampshire Avenue South

Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

www.bethanyhouse.com

Bethany House Publishers is a division of

Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4412-7069-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations identified KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Cover design by Dan Pitts

To Barbara, companion, lover, friend,

who for more than fifty years

has committed herself to my well-being

and who has inspired me to be the best

believer I can be.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Breaking the Sensual Thrall

Breaking the Thrall of Materialism

Breaking the Tyranny of the Urgent

Notes

About the Author

Back Cover

O Lord God, how comfortable we are.

How exquisitely complacent.

How deliciously at ease.

We, your church, loll drowsily amid our privileges.

We treat our spiritual treasures cheaply,

as if possessing them in abundance

were a natural state of affairs,

always to be expected.[1]

—Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.

On a dark night, kindled in love with yearnings

—O happy chance!—

I went forth without being observed,

my house being now at rest.

(Briefly then, the soul means by this stanza

that it went forth—being led by God—

for love of him alone, enkindled in love of Him,

upon a dark night, which is the privation and purgation

of all its sensual desires,

with respect to all outward things of the world,

and to those which were delectable to its flesh,

and likewise with respect to the desires of its will.)

—John of the Cross

To renounce what one has is a minor thing;

to renounce what one is, that is asking a lot.[2]

—Gregory the Great

Should we not all be flexible before we know God’s will? Should we not all be immovable after we understand what he wants done?

****

He has put us like a statue in its niche.

When there is added to this simple staying some feeling that we belong completely to God, and that he is our all, we must indeed give thanks to his goodness. If a statue that had been placed in some niche in some room could speak, and was asked, “Why are you there?” it would say,

“Because my master has put me here.”

“Why don’t you move?”

“Because he wants me to remain immovable.”

“What use are you there; what do you gain by doing so?”

“It is not for my profit that I am here; it is to serve and obey the will of my master.”

“But you do not see him.”

“No, but he sees me, and takes pleasure in seeing me where he has put me.”

“Would you not like to have movement so that you could go nearer to him?”

“Certainly not, except when he might command me.”

“Don’t you want anything else, then?”

“No, for I am where my master has placed me, and his good pleasure is the unique contentment of my being.”[3]

—Francis de Sales

Breaking the Sensual Thrall

Appetite is a life sign. Healthy people get hungry. Our appetites can at last define us. Christians are to be people who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6). In other words, Christians are to be defined as people who are hungry for God. They are hungry to please Christ. Martyrs are not necessarily those who are hungry to die. They are merely souls with an excessive appetite to please Christ. They would rather please him by having to die than disappoint him by selling out on key issues of obedience.

Most of us don’t hunger to this extent. We are perhaps a trifle hungry for Christ, but we more often pursue the ordinary Maslovian values: shelter, food, safety, power, and sexual fulfillment.[4] These are all perfectly normal human appetites, but they can become truly dangerous when we lose our mastery over them and allow them to take over our lives.

There is but one check that provides the balance to all appetites. It’s that word we’d rather not agree to, or at least push as far to the side as we can—”self-denial.” But without self-denial, every eater is a glutton, every earner is a larcenist, every lover is a rapist. So at the outset of our call to follow Jesus is his entreaty—stern and yet beautiful—”If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23 kjv).

BAM! There it is! All fun gone, every second helping done away with. Every grasping desire supplanted with charity. Every sexual fantasy stabbed with moral integrity. Yield to self-denial and marriage endures, for no mates ever cheat. No banker ever embezzles. No addictions ever occur.

So then why don’t we do it—why don’t we deny ourselves? We fail at self-denial for three reasons. First, our focus is usually on the braking system rather than the steering wheel. Second, we live at too great a distance from the Grand Enabler. Finally, we cannot get heaven’s perspective on the real values.

I can hear some objecting to such a well-outlined path to self-denial. And it’s a fair objection. Can self-denial really be this simplistic? Can we one-two-three our way to moderation and spiritual well-being? Let us walk a bit together and measure the victory.

The victory always lies in our hunger for the spiritual intimacy of our union with Christ. In some sense it is more than a hunger, it is a stalking—pursuing God as a safari tracks the spoor of big game. But it is more than our stalking of God. God is also haunting us with his intangible reality. Like children trembling in an old, dark, empty house, so God’s lovers tremble before the reality of silence in his presence. Why do children quake in a large empty house? They fear it is not empty but filled with some portent of terror. So we tremble, knowing his reality is all about us, so real that we feel what we cannot see—the terrifying reality of God. We are not afraid he will destroy us. We are only afraid of what he might require of us.

We are so hungry to know him in his fullness that we cry out like Catherine of Siena: “O depth of love! What heart could keep from breaking at the sight of your greatness descending to the lowliness of our humanity! We are your image, and now by making yourself one with us you have become our image. . . . You, God, became human, and we have been made divine!”[5] This is the glory of spiritual image: the merger of two likenesses.

But best of all, new appetites become our focus. This unceasing craving is for more of Christ—and even more the imitation of Christ. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote of union with Christ as an all-consuming appetite she called the work of love. What a spiritually exotic term this is! She wrote, “Now I wish only for one thing—to love Jesus, even unto folly! Love alone attracts me . . . my only guide is self-abandonment, I have no other compass.”[6] She recognized that her work of love was identical to that of the Carmelite St. John of the Cross, who wrote, “I drank deep within the hidden cellar of my beloved. . . . My soul is content to serve him with all its strength. I have finished all other work except the work of love.”[7]

Focusing on braking before steering

Consider the brakes and steering wheel metaphor. It would seem odd to a driving examiner as he assessed our driving skills, if we arrived at the vehicle test station with an eighteen-inch brake pedal and a six-inch steering wheel. Yet this is often our spiritual profile. Many people are reluctant to become Christians because they don’t feel “their brakes are big enough.” They wonder, Can I slow my appetites down enough to be a good, moral Christian?

For most outside of Christ, Christianity is an old jalopy, not a sports car. It is generally thought to be no fun and to do very little good for one’s image. It seems to those outside the church that brakes are all that really matter to Christians. But these brakes do not only apply morally. They apply culturally as well. In every era of progress, it always seems to be the Christians who are harking back to yesteryear and putting the brakes on the future of all cultural advancement.

Further, personal evangelists are always trying to lure swanky sinners into the faith by asking grim questions like, “If you died right now, do you know for sure you’d go to heaven?” or “Can you stop sinning? How’s your braking system?” Such no-joy mystiques make would-be converts doubt that they have brakes enough to be a Christian. These reluctant converts should not be asked “Can you put the brakes on your sin life?” but “Where do you want to go in life?” These then must be told that Christ is there to help them steer into the future God has for them.

Evangelicals for most of their history have had a curious emphasis on the brakes rather than on the steering wheel. They are forever quitting this or that. It is with some embarrassment that I must confess that most of my Christian life I’ve been trying to quit doing those things I felt were a barrier in my devotion to Christ. Indeed, I was decades into my life in Christ before it seriously occurred to me that we do not become vibrant believers because of the things we quit. Christians are not to be so much quitters as starters. They do not endear themselves to God because of all they lay aside at conversion. Rather, it is what they take up that catches heaven’s esteem. It is the newness of life that causes them to bless each new dawn and the possible beginning of a new and closer walk. Spiritual growth occurs by ever starting, starting, starting every day some creative new thing that will sponsor a creative, never boring walk with Christ.

Where then do we get the odd doctrine of quitting?

This erroneous view came early in my life because of the perennial revivals that came to our church and community. Brother Flame (and he went by many names) came to us twice a year with two-week revivals. He exhorted the lost to be saved, and, of course, they were. That alone brought joy to the church. The motivation, however, with which he challenged the lost, was neurotic napalm. Fire fell (and a good bit of brimstone) in every sermon, and at least one of the community’s worst villains would cry out and come out of his sin, and in time wind up the chief of severe deacons. For all the melodrama of their art, I sometimes miss these flaming country heralds.

But one function of their preachment was always the call to quit. “Quit drinking—give up your godless whisky and come and put it on the altar,” was a typical plea. “If God had wanted you to smoke, he’d have put a smokestack on your head,” cried one such evangelist in our church. Some went forward and laid their cigarettes on the altar. We all could see that these chimney-heads were cleaning their lungs and perfecting their faith. Hallelujah for the brakes! Some vowed that never again would they be guilty of “having a dancing foot and a praying knee on the same leg.” Some gave up cards and quit canasta for the glory of God forever. Some, however, went back to their card-playing to the delight of the demons.

I was young, and I loved Jesus more than might be imagined. I wanted to “quit stuff” like everybody else. But I usually felt guilty that I had so little I could quit. I wanted to know that devoted, neurotic spirituality that comes from quitting drinking or dancing or smoking. Alas, I was thwarted by a major absence of real sin in my life. I was playing life pretty straight for a nine-year-old.

Then my pastor, noticing that I was sinless and pretty smug about it, began to condemn movies. Thank God! At last I had something I could quit. I adored westerns: Hopalong Cassidy, Lash LaRue, and Gene Autry were among my favorite characters. Alas, they were not God’s favorites: they were movie stars. God liked Christians but not movie stars. He despised these vile seducers of the heart, I was told. Further, if God and I ever got together, I must confess my worldly affection for them. A pox on Hoppy, Lash, and Gene! This infernal trinity of damnable heroes, I could quit. So I did—I gave up movies.

Now at last I was a first-class Christian. I could hardly wait till Sunday to announce my new asceticism to the church. Only gradually did Sunday come. But when it finally did, my spiritual delirium was at its zenith. At altar time, while our little congregation “just-as-I-ammed,” I walked to the front of the church. I visualized myself laying Hoppy, Lash, and Gene on the altar for Jesus. Heaven stood at attention over my glorious new self-denial. The angels wept. The wicked Hollywood demons fled, totally expunged from my life. I was free. Now when my pastor said, “Do you want to be in a godless movie house when Jesus comes again?” I could cry, “No, for I have separated myself from the world and put behind me the unclean thing.”

I was from time to time puzzled about the supposed depth of degradation in the ’40s western. But I accepted the judgment of those evangelists, knowing that I was neither as old nor wise as they. I knew their walk with Jesus allowed them to measure the unseen corruption I did not immediately see. So when the revival was over, without the godless Hollywood cowboys, I was living the deeper life as I understood it. My unsanctified friends tried to lure me back to sin, saying, “Want to go and see Riders of the Purple Sage?” I at first answered, “No, thank you, I’ve quit all that!”

Still, the cinema sin was all-alluring. I couldn’t hold out! I usually went back to the movies soon after the revival closed. I fell from my large professions as often as I clung. But on and on they went, till I lapsed and went back to my old ways. My strong intentions were as dry as the old crusted wads of spearmint gum stuck to the undersides of those heathen theater seats. I couldn’t really enjoy the movies, because, after all, Jesus might come again, and there I would be, “riding the purple sage” into the abyss—where all unfaithful backsliders perished because they didn’t keep their revival commitments. Alas, I had fallen, and there was nothing to be done except wait for the next revival—then maybe I could purge my soul and quit once again before I lapsed once again, before I quit once again.

So it was years before I realized that I rarely focused on Jesus, but rather on all the things I needed to quit. I was guilty of the I-wish-sin-wasn’t-so-much-fun complex. Many, if not most, Christians spend their lives thinking, I really wanted to follow Jesus, but I wanted to have fun too. It was not possible, they said. So I was led to believe that Jesus and fun were antithetical. The recent What Would Jesus Do? bracelets can feed this same neurosis. Would Jesus have gone to see Hoppy, Lash, and Gene? Maybe in 1999, but not in 1948. The oddity of our new WWJD propositions almost always caused me to say no. But in reality it was always hard for me—particularly as a young person—to see Jesus in my world. With all my mental powers, it was hard for me to imagine Jesus in Enid, Oklahoma, walking around the courthouse in his long white robe. However would he have managed not to get sandburs in his sandals? And never could I imagine his glow-in-the-dark halo in the dimly lit movie murk of the Mecca Theater watching Hoppy, Lash, and Gene.

I was trapped by the imagery of it. In my late teens I learned to water-ski. It was from the skiers that I finally got an answer to “Would I want to be in an Enid theater when Jesus came again?” I did love to ski—it was fun. Would Jesus water-ski? Of course not. Jesus never had any fun. He loved prayer meetings. Then the old revival loomed out ahead of the towrope. Jesus was driving my motorboat and wagging his finger back across the foam. “Do you want to be on these skis when I come again?” he seemed to say.

I knew it must be wrong; it was so much fun! What would Jesus do? He would pray and pass out revival fliers, wouldn’t he? Even if he were not averse to good times, his halo and sandals would mandate that he behave himself, remaining stern and self-directed, and, of course, deeply Baptist. Jesus? Water-ski? Of course not—his long white robe would drag in the water.

Then for the first time I focused not on what Christ might do (for indeed he seemed to have fun in the Bible, what with always going to parties) but what he sanctified. In other words, there might actually be a difference between what Jesus would actually do and what he sanctified.

He was a carpenter who blessed those who fished, though he himself seemed to have no preference for fishing. Who can say whether or not he would have skied or, for that matter, gone to the movies? If the moral content of anything we do does not ignore holiness, then the presence of Christ in our lives may indeed sanctify it.

But the key thing that I learned in this area was that I needed to quit quitting. Quitting involves a cathexis that is focused on what or what not to quit. Those who focus on Christ rarely have to quit anything, because their desire for union with Christ prohibits them from starting anything they might later want to quit.

The sin of living too distant from the Great Enabler

Indulgences that at last ensnare us in their mesh of addiction are at first quite weak in the spell they cast over us. People don’t always begin to drink because they wish to be drunk; they often get drunk as a habit of empty living. But this is not merely true of drunkenness, it is true of all our addictions.

Gluttony destroys as does unbridled envy or unchecked lust. But the seven deadly sins rarely root themselves in a busy, purposeful life. All of them grow best in the soil of human emptiness.

Emptiness is the central neurosis that sires so many smaller addictions. I have known several ministers who compromised themselves with illicit affairs. Without exception, all confessed it was not the appetite for the illicit that first lured them toward a fallen witness. They felt the church had abandoned them and left them alone, depleted in spirit with no one to talk to. Their adulteries sprung from their own weak spiritual rapport with Christ. Their infidelities grew as their neediness warred against their emptiness.

Emptiness leaves us wanton till we fill it with whatever secondary appetite might seem to stop our hungers of soul. One of the loneliest Christians I have ever known was an executive for a large company. He commanded an entire galaxy of enterprises, but he confessed that on the leather-chair side of his great glassy desk he found himself alone. His wife was busy raising their four children, and gradually between his late hours and her fatigue their relationship died. He began drinking to ease himself off to sleep, and finally a dependency developed. When I suggested that he could be an alcoholic, he protested. Gradually, though, he consented and began a detoxification program, which along with Alcoholics Anonymous delivered him forever—one day at a time.

I wouldn’t have brought the whole thing up except that he was a clear example of a man who was a Christian before he became an alcoholic. His emptiness preceded his addictions. In him, once again I could see the truth in Jung’s proverb: “The absence of Inwardness is the central neurosis of our time.” The absence of inwardness is the lost freedom we trade for addictions. Pascal was right. There is a God-shaped vacuum in our lives that only God can fill. Here I must ask the question: Are you already a Christian in whose life there is a vacuum yet unfilled? Even Christians can have such vacuums. How did they come to own such emptiness? Through the simple neglect of their God relationship.

When God fills our inner vacuum with his Holy Spirit, life works. When God does not fill the vacuum, a host of consuming appetites swarm through our better intentions. Brilliant people who should be masters of their appetites are at last managed by some dread fiend that was at first unwelcome in their lives. Then the fiend was made welcome. Then his presence was customary. Then he became habitual. At last, the addiction and not the Christian was master.

Consider how many neuroses flood into the lives of various addicts.

Gilbert Grape’s mother allowed her gluttony to destroy her inside a house whose floor joists would barely support her. Upton Sinclair’s Cup of Fury deals with the addiction to alcohol, as does The Lost Weekend, or Ironweed, or any number of titles. Books and films and national politics hold tales of sexual addictions. An unbridled lust for power is the theme of Primary Colors, Wag the Dog, any of the Godfather films, and virtually half the novels and films released.

Sex itself is a common inhabitant of our inner lives. It can come so regularly into our minds that it takes the place of the thought and time we ought to give to God. Frederick Buechner has referred to sex as “the ape that gibbers in our loins.” He calls it the great secret we hold within ourselves to the point it produces an unhealthy spiritual pathology. “I suppose sex is the secret that to one degree or another all of us keep from each other . . . the great open secret that, whatever else we are, we are bodies and that as bodies we need to touch and be touched. . . . Once they sinned, Adam and Eve tried to hide their nakedness from each other and from God, and to one degree or another, we all have been hiding it ever since for the reason, I suppose, that we know that our sexuality is yet another good gift from God which as sinners we can nonetheless use to dehumanize both each other and ourselves.”[8]

The most popular films and novels are tales of our losses to our appetites. But the saddest commentary on contemporary Christianity lies also at this point. Many Christians from publishing house to publishing house and from church to church are owned by a spirit of ungodly competition. Megachurches wear an altruistic (and sometimes evangelistic) face while all the time waging their zealous, jealous wars of Madison Avenue growth tactics. While many theologians and thinkers have tried to call them back from this stance, the race to be the biggest and best and most famous goes on. Under other names pressed with pretended sanctity these vying Christians rarely lay aside their sanctified brinkmanship.

It all adds up to a kind of powerlessness, which always results from living too far from the Grand Enabler. When we will not provide a place for the direction of the indwelling Christ, all that is left is the frenzied agenda of our hassled discipleship. The sad thing about all this is that true discipleship can never be frenzied, for it emulates its Master and turns from the turbulent to embrace a steady devotion and a silent adoration.

Failing to get heaven’s perspective on the real values

There is only one real question for the believer: How does God view my discipleship?

During the years of the Clinton presidential scandal, I developed a dull weariness with public opinion. News and talk shows presented gossipy editorials of viewpoint and irresolution. Church leaders and theologians also opined and theorized. But rarely did anyone set forth the presence of divine viewpoint. I believe those who remained the quietest did so because they had seen with the eyes of God and measured our national sin with the plumb line of God’s expectations.

No culture is quite so blind as those who will not see. No Christian is quite so dead as one whose vitality has been sapped by being out of touch with God. Institutions (and most were established to do noble and sacrificial service in obedience to God as they understood him) degenerate at last into little more than ladders of egoistic advancement. Denominations, once founded for the altruism of missions, end up little more than religious clubs protecting their vested interests. Catherine of Siena wrote that the church leaders of her day lived shackled to luxury. They were ignorant of Latin and so could not perform a sensible mass. They were barons of power with nothing but empty lives and weak preaching to define their competitive, non-compassionate lives. Their service to God was hurried and pretended.[9]

Perhaps the weightiest of all personal vision is to see with the eyes of God. To know what God wants of a nation, but to have zero ability to make that happen, inevitably leads to brokenness.

The first step toward healing always lies in the admission of our illness. Israel, in moments of decline, did not consider her ways wicked, so healing was not possible. Oswald Chambers felt that we ought to feel the pain of our sins if we were to convince ourselves we took our sin seriously. “The entrance into the Kingdom is through the panging pains of repentance crashing into a man’s respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, who produces these agonies, begins the formation of the Son of God in the life.”[10]

The unceasing Niagara of opinion polls during the Clinton presidential scandal caused few to ask, “Does God have an opinion on this?” If he does, maybe we should alter our opinion to match his. Perhaps it is the greatest of hypocrisies to swear presidents into office with their hand on the Bible, when those presidents never again open that Bible to pursue God’s moral objectives.

Among all Christians there is not much noble living, but here and there arises a man or woman whose discipleship begins the day by asking, “Lord, what will thou have me to do?” Such a question prescribes a way of living for that day and such a way of living describes a way of life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, near the end of his life, realized that his life held no firm definition except that which God gave it. He wrote exquisitely:

I bore the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win. Am I then really that which other men tell of? Or am I only what I know of myself? Restless and longing and sick. Whoever we are, we are God’s.[11]

How are we to treasure God’s final ownership of our lives? I must confess that my own life is ever torn by my desire to be a writer of significance and my desire to be nothing more than a soul who wants to discover God’s agenda for my life—one minute at a time. Ambition rises in most every heart. It fuels our careers, of course, but it is too intrinsically selfish to be a reliable guide. Only heaven’s view will guide us to joyous, error-free obedience. And only godly living will enable us to see our lives as they should be lived, desiring for God’s world all it should become.

In the crowded city of Tokyo, there is wide agreement (actually a city ordinance) that no one can erect a skyscraper, or any other building, that shuts off anyone else’s view of the sun. The Japanese feel that for some time during every day, everyone has a right to see the sun. Long ago God gave me the conviction that I must try to help people end their emptiness. It seemed to me that everyone has a right “to see the Son.” Then all purely human appetites would lose their power. Let us move toward the appetite gallant. We shall have him in our heart of hearts. We will then need no Christian jewelry to tell the world of our cravings. They will see beyond our jewelry into our lives.

Conclusion

The difference between what God wants for us and what we ultimately become rests in how we break the thrall of those appetites that chain us to selfish lifestyles and selfish life goals. The steps to freedom are simple but always demanding. First, our focus needs to be on hungering after what God wants rather than merely trying to quit what he doesn’t want. Second, we must agree to live close to the Great Enabler. Finally, we must live in abundant inwardness until we can see the kind of world God wants to exist and endeavor to become the kind of Christian God wants us to be.

Oswald Chambers felt that most of us do not intentionally renounce God’s vision for our life. We lose the vision through neglect. When we are born again we seem to catch sight of the significance of our worth to both God and ourselves. We become disobedient to that vision when we begin to live as though it cannot be obtained.[12] We rarely deny the vision or argue with God’s dream for us. “We lose the vision by spiritual leakage,” says Chambers.[13] This is too bad, for we can never know spiritual happiness until we accept God’s vision for our lives.

When we accept God’s vision for our lives, we pray. But it may be that we expect too much instant revelation from our prayers. We want to pray for a fiery chariot in the morning and be riding to church in it by nightfall. We rarely pray for fire and open our eyes to find a box of matches in our hand.

Thunderclaps and lightning flashes are very unlikely. It is well to start small and quietly. No need to tell one’s friends and acquaintances. No need to plan heroic fasts or all-night vigils . . . prayer is neither to impress other people nor to impress God. It’s not to be taken on with a mentality of success. The goal, in prayer, is to give oneself away.[14]

Can the issue be so simply resolved? Yes. Living the God-life is all that ever can satisfy us. Of course, those who see what it is and know what God wants must weep from time to time. But weeping over the waywardness of those he created is the nature of our living, loving God. Loving was why he sent his Son. Calvary is not a very complex solution to human sin, but it cost God all he had. And Calvary was God’s crying place. To change a world is to spend everything and then to wait and weep.

Come, in my labor find a resting place

And in my sorrows lay your head,

Or rather take my life and blood

And buy yourself a better bed—

Or take my breath and take my death

And buy yourself a better rest.[15]

—Thomas Merton

Use what you have.

The five barley loaves and two small fishes

will increase as they are distributed.

Do not envy one more successful than yourself,

or you will be convicted of murmuring against

the appointment of our Lord.[16]

—F. B. Meyer

Am I allowing my natural life to be slowly transfigured

By the indwelling life of the Son of God?

God’s ultimate purpose is that His Son

might be manifested in my mortal flesh.[17]

—Oswald Chambers

How shall we break free of this world except by thinking of the next?

****

Was it not through prayer that St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, St. Theresa, and so many other friends of God found that wonderful knowledge that has enraptured the greatest intellects? Archimedes said, “Give me a fulcrum and with a lever I will move the world.” What he could not get, the saints have been given. The Almighty has given them a fulcrum: Himself, Himself alone. For a lever they have that prayer that burns with the fire of love. Thus they have moved the world, and it is with this lever that those still battling in the world move it and will go on moving it till the end of time.[18]

—Thérèse of Lisieux

Breaking the Thrall of Materialism

The Desert Fathers went into the desert to be “freed of their plenty.” Having plenty isn’t an abominable state, but to be controlled by it is. God wants his people to live free from the “green addiction.” He doesn’t want people to be miserable because of greed. Quite the opposite. The most miserable people are those who are possessed by materialism. The etymology of the word “miserable” is formed of the same stem as “miser.” Miser-y is really misery.

Catherine of Siena was convinced that hardship was a better friend of materialism than wealth. The wealthy often consider their income and the keeping of it with less fervor than do the needy. The needy (perhaps because they have to scrimp more to attain it) often dote on their little treasures more than the wealthy cherish their larger ones.

She cautioned her prosperous friends to live united to God’s will. She also stressed that there is goodness in material possessions, for God wishes us to live in the joy of his gifts. But she also cautioned us that we must not love these gifts in such a way that, instead of our possessing them, they begin to possess us.

In Luke 18 Jesus meets a rich young ruler. The man had great wealth, but the mere having of it was not his sin. It was the clinging to it.

Barnabas also had great wealth (Acts 4:36–37), but he sold his estate and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet. What did Barnabas do that the rich young ruler couldn’t do? He set himself free from a great addiction. The young ruler was a slave of the passion called having. Nor had he trained himself in the art of detachment. The ancient monks interpreted detachment as “not allowing either worldly values or self-centeredness to distract us from what is most essential in our relationship with God and with each other.”[19]

Having and the sin of materialism

Annie Dillard wrote a short poem that states the foolishness of trying to keep Jesus and mere dollars in the same safety deposit box:

We keep our paper money shut

in a box, for fear of fire.

Once, we opened the box

and Christ the lamb stepped out

and left his track of flame

across the floor.[20]

“Having” is not the first sin of materialists. The sin that precedes it is the sin of regarding what we have as our own. Most new Christians begin their life of having by not seeing their goods of any consequence, and so are quite willing to give God the glory for giving them what they have. But sooner or later some of them forget the source of their material blessings. To those who forget, “having” is not what God makes possible but what they feel they have achieved and thus have a right to.

In two recent round-the-world mission junkets, I have had the opportunity to try out that materialist bumper-sticker epigram: He who has the most toys wins. Wins what? Some sort of Dow-Jones esteem, perhaps, but little more. The happiest people I met were often in places like Calcutta, where there was no possibility of wealth. There are few rich young rulers in Calcutta. The only reasonable goal in that teeming mass of humanity is to be alive the next morning.

I traveled in villages and cities where the inhabitants can’t imagine a credit card. Any idea of a shopping trip is not possible. “Shop till you drop” is a condemning slogan devised by those whose larders are already full and whose large garages are the manifest bunkers of unnecessary vehicles.

In Calcutta, a lot of other materialist bumper stickers also disappeared: I owe, I owe—so off to work I go was missing, as was My child and my checks go to the university. Strangely absent were questions like “How many square feet . . .” or “What’s your second car . . .” We were told again and again not to compliment any object in the homes we visited because the Christians who lived there were apt to give it to us.

The editors of Leadership magazine suggested nine rather drastic steps wealthy Westerners would have to take to truly identify with the developing world:

First, take out the furniture: leave a few old blankets, a kitchen table, maybe a wooden chair. You’ve never had a bed, remember?

Second, throw out your clothes. Each person in the family may keep the oldest suit or dress, a shirt or blouse. The head of the family has the only pair of shoes.

Third, all kitchen appliances have vanished. Keep a box of matches, a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt, a handful of onions, a dish of dried beans. Rescue the moldy potatoes from the garbage can: those are tonight’s meal.

Fourth, dismantle the bathroom, shut off the running water, take out the wiring and the lights and everything that runs by electricity.

Fifth, take away the house and move the family into the tool shed.

Sixth, no more postman, fireman, government services. The two-classroom school is three miles away, but only two of your seven children attend anyway, and they walk.

Seventh, throw out your bankbooks, stock certificates, pension plans, insurance policies. You now have a cash hoard of $5.

Eighth, get out and start cultivating your three acres. Try hard to raise $300 in cash crops because your landlord wants one-third and your moneylender 10 percent.

Ninth, find some way for your children to bring in a little extra money so you have something to eat most days. But it won’t be enough to keep bodies healthy—so lop off 25 to 30 years of life.[21]

Materialism is the worldview of those who keep their eyes focused on “getting ahead” in the world at hand. Christ championed a higher focus. Jesus encourages us in Matthew 6:33 to treasure the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and the values of the world at hand will be exposed for what they are. Materialism sponsors a lot of bogus values. What God wants us to treasure is inward and spiritual. Only as we get the God’s-eye view of things can we escape becoming forever trapped in minor material hungers and surface values.

Grace is the antidote to materialism. Grace is never a show-off that calls attention to itself. The overwhelming wonder of all God has done for us and given to us washes us with quiet gratitude. A rhythm then comes in with his visitations of spiritual plenty. His grace comes and goes, furnishing us with everything beautiful in life. Suddenly we awake to the wonder, and feel ashamed that we have lived so long never thanking him for his abundance.

Materialism often takes over at the same rate at which our spirituality decays. I have noticed that as people grow older, the sparkle they once had in their eyes begins to die. Sometimes their zeal also dies and they start hoarding cash for the “golden years.” They quit trusting God and start stashing goods. Gone are the easy-giving days of first faith.

Remember first faith?

Francis de Sales had sipped the elixir of first faith, and refused to ever let it become secondhand: “Alas! Every day we ask him that his will may be done; and when it comes to the doing we have so much difficulty. We offer ourselves to God so often; we say to him at every step, ‘Lord, I am yours. Here is my heart!’ “[22]This was what we said to become Christians. This is what we must still say to demonstrate our faith.

When Jesus Christ comes into our lives with soul-force, something is born in us that says, I can make a difference. I can reach my world. I can live for him as I sacrifice myself for him. But our former greed stays with us and we are never out of danger. At any moment we can return to our old values and become a goggle-eyed shopper leaning against the sports car of our choice. When we trade our spiritual treasures for mere trifles, the grand dream we had for serving God seeps away through the glitzy pores of our greed.

The substance of inwardness

We must break the habit of treasuring our treasures and develop the habit of treasuring the abundance of God’s grace. We must cherish what François Fénelon called the “state of bare faith.” Bare faith treasures God, for all other values are seen to be only nakedness and poverty.

When you feel yourself to be in dryness, obscurity, poverty, and almost powerlessness of soul, remain humble under the hand of God in a state of bare faith, recognize your own misery, turn yourself toward the all-powerful Lord, and never doubt his assistance. . . . All greed flees in favor of endurance.[23]

Paul says that our inner life is a reaching after such endurance—after Christ.

In 1 Corinthians 6:12, the apostle reminds us that while all things may be permitted, some things aren’t good for us. Those things that steal my vision for God are not good for me. I will not be brought under the power of any of them. Consider materialism as chief of these addicting powers.

Under the power of what? Remember this list: “Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9b-10). But what is the origin of these motley states? How does an adulterer become an adulterer? How does a drunkard become a drunkard? How does an immoral man become immoral? He becomes so by losing his mastery over his appetites.

If we had all the spiritual maturity we need we would be able to see this. God never denies us what we want in an attempt to be mean to us. He withholds what we don’t need so that what he wants will become possible for us. And what does he want? Our conformity to the image of his Son. So let us never be guilty of thinking that our cravings for material things will ever produce Christlikeness in our lives. It cannot be, for Christ himself repudiated the emptiness of the material world. When he died on the cross absolutely bereft of all goods, he told us just how far we would have to go to be as unselfish and non-materialistic as he was.

The best time to deal with a temptation of any sort—materialism notwithstanding—is to meet the allurement up front. To hold anything in our hearts that is contrary to the single-minded call is to split our attention between Jesus and whatever else is calling for first place in our allegiance.

One of the bedfellows of materialism is busyness, or busyanity as it has been called. It is a kind of sanctified hassle by which Christians vie for importance by comparing their agenda and the speed at which they serve the various programs of the religious community. The idea is that the more one does for Jesus the more the angels must be impressed. So we brag that we’re here on Tuesday and there on Wednesday. We belong to half a dozen clubs or run day and night to church as though there’s some kind of inherent life in sanctified speed. Fast living and fast spending keep company. A heavy appointment calendar and the sheer egoism that comes from heavy spending are close companions.

Materialism and busyness can lead us to claim that we are living the “good life.” Paul, after reminding us that we are the temple of God says, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19b-20). Now when God purchased us, he took us out of that way of life. He changed both our moral preferences and the way we feel about getting and having and hurrying for the sake of acquiring a bogus reputation for sincere living.

Thérèse of Lisieux said that the key to answering all of our appetites, material or otherwise, was to imitate Christ. She had a linnet that she kept in a cage, having had the bird since it was a fledgling. She also had a canary that was given to constant singing. The quieter linnet, in time, began to try to imitate the canary. It was not easy, but he kept at it. “It was charming to watch the efforts of the little thing,” she wrote. “It obviously found it hard to make its own voice harmonize with the vibrant notes of its master, but to my great surprise its song did in time become exactly like the canary’s.”[24]

To fail to imitate Christ is to grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). How exactly do we do it? The key to understanding this is to remember that “grieve” is a love word. When we do not live up to the thing that God saves us to do, it’s not that God gets mad at us and becomes bent on some path of getting even. Instead, God hurts for us.

I cannot remember getting much new furniture in our house in Oklahoma when we were growing up, but I do remember when we got two brand-new chairs. My mother probably spent every last dime she had to buy them. It was not as though we didn’t need them, but we rarely had money for furniture. Most of our family spending was done for more basic things. I remember at first thinking how obscene those new chairs looked. They were polished and beautiful, ruling as maple thrones over the rest of our furniture. At some point, they wound up on the front porch of our house (when you have three rooms and nine kids, you spend a lot of time on the front porch).

Across the street came one of my little friends. He had something brand-new too—a pocketknife! I can remember that as we talked, he took his brand-new pocketknife and carved on those brand-new chairs. I never thought to stop him; he seemed more creative than evil to me. But I do remember that when my mother came out on the porch, I saw a condemning flash of fire on her face. There was open hostility and anger. But those who really know their mothers and fathers can look past the hostility and see that behind it there is deep hurt. Something beautiful was spoiled. It made me want to cry.

When Paul says, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,” he is really saying, “As a Christian it is impossible for you to make God mad, but it is possible to hurt the heart of God.” To keep this from happening, the indwelling Christ lives within us. We are bought. We were purchased that day when Jesus hung on a tree. It was an expensive ordeal. It cost thorns! It cost blood! It cost the whole crucifixion of Jesus Christ! Yet he hung there—purchasing, buying, spending, writing “paid in full” across all our neediness!

I think I know the pain that Jesus must have felt when he looked out, having done no wrong, and cried, “Father, forgive them!” Then he cried, “It is finished!” Not “I am finished,” but “It is finished! I have paid the purchase price,” called the Christ unto our souls. “You are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.”

Since we are bought with a price, maybe we should forgo the fruitless pursuit of our own shallow getting and spending. Perhaps Christ’s ownership of us will be altogether more important than our ownership of any mere material thing.

But best of all, his ownership establishes a rich sense of inwardness—a wholeness of life and attitude that makes our access to God immediate. Embracing this ownership is a giant step in our attempt to cease loving things, and it enhances our love of God.

In a sense, it is also a step in breaking the material thrall. This is done by hiding heaven’s treasures—not our own—in the inward life. By such a simple act, a massive displacement takes place. The appetite for having is replaced by the appetite for being. The heart given to Christ is not a toy-shopper. He sets us free to love him, and loving him displaces the adoration of mere material things. We have been purchased by his dear blood. How petty must be whatever trifles our paltry coins might buy. For us it can never be “he who has the most toys wins” but he who has been purchased by the blood of Christ wins and will continue to win throughout the ages.

Times change and so to keep up with them

we must modify our methods.[25]

—Madeleine Sophie Barat

Happy are they who give themselves to God!

They are delivered from their passions,

from the judgments of others,

from their malice,

from the tyranny of their sayings,

from their cold and wretched mocking,

from the misfortunes which the world distributes to wealth,

from the unfaithfulness and inconstancy of friends,

from the wiles and snares of the enemy,

from our own weakness,

from the misfortunes and brevity of life,

from the horrors of a profane death,

from cruel remorse attached to wicked pleasures,

and in the end,

from the eternal condemnation of God.[26]

—François Fénelon

Lord, I am yours;

I do yield myself up entirely to you,

and I believe that you accept me.

I leave myself with you.

Work in me all the good pleasure of your will,

and I will only lie still in your hands and trust you.[27]

—Hannah Whitall Smith

It is amazing that we take our individual schedules so seriously that we never wonder if God has anything else for us to do.

****

It has been observed that if the 50,000 years of man’s existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately 62 years each, there have been about 800 such lifetimes. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves. Only during the last 70 lifetimes, has it been possible to communicate effectively from one lifetime to another—as writing made it possible to do. Only during the last 6 lifetimes did masses of men ever see a printed word. Only during the last 4 has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only in the last 2 has anyone anywhere used an electric motor. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in everyday life have been developed within the present 800th lifetime.[28]

—Alvin Toffler

Breaking the Tyranny of the Urgent

One of the first machines was the clock. First driven by water, later by spring and pendulum, and finally by quartz and dials, it remains a controlling machine whose tick-tock power leaves us neurotic. Clocks were created to make us the stewards of our time but sometimes end up making us nervous.

Of all the gifts God gives us, surely the most precious is the gift of time.

Seconds, minutes, years are all life-parts, assembled and ready for our use in his service. The sand of our lives is running through the hourglass—fast, steady, precious. It is so precious that when we give it back to God, it sets the angels at their alleluias. Yet we cannot give our entire lives to God at one time and have it done with for all time. We must surrender second by second.

Making holy the days of our lives

Therefore, the primary question for the indwelling Christ is not “What wilt thou have me to do in life?” but “What wilt thou have me do today?” The clock belongs to Christ, and each tick summons us to surrender every second to the glory of his name. The rhyme on the dial of the grandfather clock states the diminishing nature of our ongoing sacrifice of time: “Lo, I stand by thee upright, to give thee counsel day and night. For every tock that I do give cuts short the time thou hast to live.”

Jesus knew his earthly life had its limits. “Mine hour is not yet come” (John 2:4 kjv), he said. “The hour is coming, and now is” (John 5:25 kjv), he said on one occasion, and on another, “Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed” (Matthew 26:45 kjv). He criticized the Pharisees because they could not “discern the . . . times” (Matthew 16:3 kjv).

The apostle Paul also seemed to be aware that his time upon the earth was brief. He said, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4–5 kjv). Toward the end of Paul’s life, he wrote, “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand” (2 Timothy 4:6 kjv). The apostle understood that only those who obey in the moment can link their obedient moments into a significant lifetime. The point is not to merely live a long time (oat bran and a regimen of herbs will help see to that). The point is that we are to offer our days as a sacrifice of silver on an altar of gold.

Time may be either the friend or the enemy of our surrender to Christ. The Chinese sage summed up our clockish biographies in three words: hurry, worry, bury. How often this trinity of words describes our surface churchmanship. Church is so often the busiest of all madness. We run from meeting to service and back again. Exhausted by our frantic externalness, we collapse in bed at night, and for what? Does our hurried religiosity cause us to lift up our eyes to our King? Have we looked upon our small performance with spurious pride? Have we sighed over our small prayers and been satisfied? All the while we know—deep in our hearts—there must be some deeper, more meaningful way to live for Christ.

When we sum up our large professions and our little faith, we know we need to confess our spastic obedience to time. “Lord Jesus, forgive us our hurry. Help us to remember that across from hurry, worry, bury stands a loftier trio of words: cling, linger, and savor.” We need to pray, “Lord, our spiritual dysfunction is an indication that we are splashing about on the shallow surface of our religiosity to avoid diving into your depths.”

What mature believer does not delight in seeing new converts talk with Christ? As we get older, we sometimes hurry past the ardor we knew as younger Christians. Hurried Christians beget hurried disciples. Hurried disciples become a hurried church—a hassled fellowship of disciples who serve the clock and call it God. But this subnormal Christianity has become so normal we don’t see anything abnormal about it. In fact, we’ve come to believe that the most sincere Christians are supposed to be shallow neurotics. Yet the church holds only one possibility of relevance: Time itself must be surrendered to the pursuit of the depths of God. God does not wear a watch. His unthinkable glory is learned only in our time-consuming communion with him. But once we learn it, we are delivered.

Delivered?

Yes, from our horrible addiction to hurry.

The child of one of my friends said that one Sunday they were singing in the worship services of the church the chorus, “I exalt Thee!” Only the child was singing, “I exhaust Thee!” If God were not all-powerful, he would likely be exhausted by the pace of our neurotic adoration. We cannot possibly flatter the Almighty by hurrying into his presence, flinging a song and a prayer at him, and hurrying out of church back into our hassled lifestyles. God is never flattered by our sanctified exhaustion.

Like the frantic rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, we seem ever convinced that we’re always late for this or that. I’ve always wondered if that white bunny was not an evangelical rabbit with a watch and a Day-Timer. Churches are hassled hutches of busy bunnies, publishing their agendas by date on the assumption that those who really want to experience God must “calendar him in.” The tyrant is urgency. We can see our spiritual apathy, but we are convinced that even our apathy should arrive on time.

We must slow down and get quiet in our worship. Why are we frightened of silence in evangelical churches? When worship gets quiet, evangelicals get fidgety. Thomas Merton suggested that people who don’t like each other have trouble being quiet together.[29] The Quakers long ago learned the power of corporate silence. Evangelicals need to learn that to be quiet before God is to see him.

But God does not meet with us in the silence so that he can produce something in our lives. There is nothing to produce. These silences do not exist to create product but to bless us with authenticity.

How much time do these prayer rendezvous take? Time is not the object. We do not punch a time clock in our fellowship with God. We meet and wait and measure nothing.

Identifying time zones

Let us examine two Greek concepts of time: chronos and kairos. Chronos (from which we get words like “chronology” and “chronometer”) is clock time: minutes, decades, centuries—past, present, and future or is-ness, was-ness, and will be. Kairos, on the other hand, is time as substance. It is nonsequential and indivisible. Such time is merely is-ness. It is God’s category of time just as chronos is the human category.

Most of us spend our lives serving chronos; we run from it and yet surrender to it. Clocks dictate our pace and wall us in with agendas and deadlines. Tick by tock we serve the clock.

At the basis of entering into the depths is God’s entreaty to change time zones—to move from chronos to kairos. In chronos the second hand drives life forward, but in kairos, time doesn’t move. Kairos, like God himself, is not static. It ever moves; still it is ageless. Kairos never looks back and wishes it had achieved more; with kairos there is no back. Therefore, there is no drivenness in kairos, which would make us want to do more planning or strive to achieve more.

Kairos is the “is” of being, the “I am” of all existence. As Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees, God did not say to Moses at the burning bush, “I was the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” but “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Mark 12:26, emphasis added). God is all present tense. To say he has been or he may be, is to strip all godhood from him and make him a prisoner of mere measured time.

Changing time zones. How is it to be done? Paul says it this way: “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15–16). Time belongs to God: “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil” (James 4:13–16).

Mythologically Chronos was the name of a short Greek god whose legs were muscular and whose heels were winged. He moved fast. He was bald and slick at the back of his head, but scalp-locked in the front. The implication was that if you could grab him as he came toward you, you could take hold of him and make him respond to your wish. But if you waited till he was past you, it was too late, for he was smooth-headed in the back and could not be grabbed once he had passed.

Chronos is like water flowing through a pipe. The pipe could be cut into three parts and water would be equally present in all three. Kairos, by contrast, is a grand ocean, and oceans are immeasurable. There, a single drop of rain might fall into the grand sea of measureless time and be absorbed.

In the Christian view of time, our earthly lives are like time in the pipe. Once our frail lives are over, we too join the sea of God’s immensity. Our ultimate joining of kairos does not mean we will lose our own separateness. We will retain our identity all through eternity, but we will no longer need to chop time into parts. Until that time—the grand kairos to which our present chronos is headed—we will always be in the hands of God. Even Jesus, during his earthly sojourn, admitted that he did not know the time (chronos) of his second coming. William R. White is a masterful storyteller who has a quaint tale that reminds us of the hiddenness of kairos time.

There once was a king who ruled his small country with justice and love. Unknown to his subjects, the king would put on a disguise in the evenings and roam the streets of the towns in order to understand life from the perspective of the people.

One night as he walked in disguise, the king was drawn to a simple cottage. The doors and windows of the house were thrown wide open, and inside a rather robust man was eating and singing with great volume. Knocking on the door, the king inquired, “Is a guest welcome here?”

“A guest is a gift from God!” the man shouted. “Please, enter and eat with me.”

The king sat down and began to eat the very simple but substantial food that rested on the table. The two men talked freely, immediately feeling a bond between them. Finally the king asked, “What is your trade, my friend?”

“I am a cobbler,” came the enthusiastic reply. “Each day I take my tool kit and wander about town fixing people’s shoes. They give me some pennies, and I put them in my pocket. When the day is over, I spend it all to buy my evening meal.”

“You spend all of your money each day?” the king asked incredulously. “Don’t you save for the future? What about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is in the hands of God, my friend,” laughed the cobbler. “He will provide, and I will praise him day by day.”

Before the king left that evening, he asked if he might return the next night. “You are always welcome, my friend,” the cobbler replied warmly.

On the way home the king developed a plan to test the simple cobbler. The next morning he issued a proclamation prohibiting the repair of shoes without a permit. When he returned the next evening he found the cobbler eating and drinking and making merry. “What have you done today, dear friend?” the king asked, hiding his surprise.

“When I heard that our gracious king had issued a proclamation prohibiting the repair of shoes without a permit, I went to the well, drew water, and carried it to the homes of people. They gave me some pennies, I put them in my pocket, and went out and spent it all on this food,” the cobbler sang. “Come, eat, there is plenty for all.”

“You spent it all?” the king asked. “What if you cannot draw water tomorrow? Then what will you do?”

“Tomorrow is in the hands of God!” the cobbler shouted. “He will provide, and I, his simple servant, will praise him day by day.”

The next morning the king decided to test his new friend again. He sent his heralds throughout the land announcing that it was illegal for one person to draw water for another. That evening when he returned to visit the cobbler, he found him eating and drinking and enjoying life as before. “I worried about you this morning when I heard the king’s proclamation. What did you do?”

“When I heard our good king’s new edict, I went out to chop wood. When I had a bundle, I brought it to town and sold it. People gave me some pennies, I put them in my pocket, and when the workday was over, I spent it all on this food. Let us eat.”

“You worry me,” the king said. “What if you cannot chop wood tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, good friend, is in the hands of God. He will provide.”

Early the next morning the king’s heralds announced that all woodchoppers should report immediately to the palace for service in the king’s army. The cobbler-turned woodcutter obediently reported and was trained all day. When evening came, he was given no wages but he was allowed to take his sword home. On the way home, he stopped at a pawnshop where he sold the blade. Then he bought his food, as usual. Returning to his house, he took a piece of wood and carved a wooden blade, attached it to the sword’s hilt, and placed it in his sheath.

When the king arrived that evening, the cobbler told him the entire story. “What happens tomorrow if there is a sword inspection?” the king asked.

“Tomorrow is in the hands of God,” answered the cobbler calmly. “He will provide.”

In the morning the officer in charge of the palace guard took the cobbler by the arm. “You are to act as executioner today. This man has been sentenced to death. Cut off his head.”

“I am a gentle man,” the cobbler protested. “I have never hurt another man in my life.”

“You will do as you are commanded!” The officer shouted.

As they walked to the place of execution, the cobbler’s mind was exploding. As the prisoner knelt before him, the cobbler took the hilt of his sword in one hand, raised his other palm to the heavens, and prayed in a loud voice. “Almighty God, you alone can judge the innocent and the guilty. If this prisoner is guilty let my sword be sharp and my arms be strong. If, however, he is innocent, let this sword be made of wood.”

Dramatically, the cobbler pulled his sword from the sheath. The people were amazed to see that the sword was made of wood.

The king, who had watched the events from a distance, ran to his friend and revealed his true identity. “From this day forward you will come and live with me. You will eat from my table. I will be the host and you will be the guest. What do you say about that?”

The cobbler smiled from ear to ear. “What I say is, the Lord has provided, and you and I together will praise him day by day.”[30]

Changing time zones

To change from chronos to kairos time is to discover that prayer is not a pry bar given to us to open the future. All watches must be checked at the gates of the throne room. None who wish to commune with God can ever see him while they insist that he tell them exactly where their lives are going. God is to be met and listened to, not sat down and talked to. God alone says when he is through talking and the time of our communion is over.

To run in and out of the presence of royalty or to try to set the limits on our conversation is to forget who we are and to whom we are talking. God is the King. We are fortunate to have an appointment with God. We must lay down all our appointment books; they are not significant in the King’s presence.

Throughout history, those who wrote about prayer were not largely people of intercession. They rarely went to God to get him to do things for them. Rather, they were enthralled by a hunger for relationship. They seemed to understand that intercession begs a “to-do” list. Those who serve such lists actually make notes of the time when they asked God for something, and then leave a column in their prayer ledgers to record the date God gives them the answer. It is an odd kind of bookkeeping on the faithfulness of God. It can foster the notion that when the checklist is through, our prayer responsibilities are through. Or that in order to pray longer, our lists will have to get longer.

The purpose of praying devices, such as rosaries, is probably an attempt to extend time in prayer. Most new converts in a zealous attempt to spend more time in prayer have tried to rise early in the morning to pray, only to find their unfocused minds wandering in and out of the throne room. Those with intercessory prayer lists probably do better with the struggle. However, these can become a kind of rosary with a “give me, God” focus that also serves to keep the mind from wandering.

Satan has no desire to see anyone develop an abiding prayer life, so he will always be there, like the sandman in Gethsemane, making sure that none of us stays awake to watch one hour with Christ (Matthew 26:40). I remember those initial attempts. I rose very early, because it is generally agreed that no real prayer warrior ever prayed at two in the afternoon. I wanted so much to be faithful in my praying, so I set the alarm early enough to impress St. Francis. Then I got up and made a long intercessory list—pages and pages. Yet after I had finished asking God for reams of things, very little time had passed. Then I began to pray for everyone I knew by name, in what seemed a pious recitation of the county telephone directory. Still I had prayed only a few minutes. Then as I tried to begin the process all over again, I found myself falling asleep.

This drowsiness that destroyed my prayer intention overcame me largely because I conceived of my prayers as my doing all the talking. If I wasn’t talking, I wasn’t praying, or so I thought. Fénelon instructed me, “Our conversation with God resembles that with a friend. At first there are a thousand things to be told, and just as many to be asked. After a time, however, these diminish, while the pleasure of being together does not.”[31] Once I discovered the pleasure of his presence, I learned that prayer is not a human monologue offered in somber tone with upturned eyes. Prayer is being with God.

The basis of real praying is longing after relationship. Real relationships never keep their eye on the clock.

John Wesley often attributed his power in preaching to prayer that lost itself in such heavy adoration that it never watched the clock. At Fetter Lane on December 31, 1738, John and Charles Wesley, along with George Whitefield, sat up most of the night praying. Wesley wrote of it in his journal: “About 3 o’clock in the morning as we were continuing in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us so that many cried out for exceeding joy and fell to the ground. As soon as we had recovered a little from the awe and amazement at the presence of his majesty, we broke out with one voice, ‘We praise Thee, oh God! We acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!’”[32] Wesley knew that praise of that sort was rapture out of control. It was a kind of rapture that forbids us to keep our eye on the clock because we are lost in the wonder of an all-consuming adoration.

So how do we change from chronos to kairos? How do we change time zones? Obviously the answer does not lie in the grit of our intention. We cannot grind our teeth to show we are serious. That would be the equivalent of an unoccupied young suitor grinding his teeth till he managed to secure a date. Then, after he had a date, grinding his teeth to be sure it lasted from seven to ten o’clock. It is not possible to strain at chronos till we arrive at the unending, unmeasured joy of kairos.

In changing time zones, we fall in love with God. Then we fall in love with the wonder of our togetherness with him. Can we force this to happen? No! It happens on its own under the gentle urgings of our need for God. It has its own language—the language of praise. I am not speaking here about a special prayer language or the gift of an unknown tongue. I am speaking of good, intelligible adoration. Praise is the language of spiritual lovers. In the joy of such togetherness, the clock disappears, and our relationship transcends clocks. Then time doesn’t matter. Only God.

It is difficult for time-conscious American suburbanites to imagine great worship services in other parts of the world. It is not unusual for these services to go on hour after hour. People who come to Christ in order to know him, grow ever deeper. None complain that prayers and altar times are too long. God is on the earth! The church is alive in his presence! No one wants the glory of his presence to end.

The stewardship of our days

We have been given 86,400 ticks of the second hand each day. And only 8,760 strikes of the hour hand each year. Having been entrusted with this precious commodity called time, we must realize that, once spent, the treasury cannot be replenished. Thus our stewardship of the clock must be defined by four truths.

1. We are clearly not the owner of our days. James reminds us that our lives are fleeting. “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14). Evangelicals have a hymn that never lets the church forget the passing of years is an issue of stewardship: “When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more. . . .” In other words, whatever work God has given us to do, we are always working against a deadline. We recognize that Jesus is coming again, and at that moment every pendulum will cease to swing and all mainsprings will break. A grand new infinity will amputate the hands of all clocks. Their numbered dials will melt and flow down like Salvador Dali’s “Clockscape.” Then time, that tyrant that has hurried us through all our lives, will no longer be our master. Then we will meet Jesus, whose very life taught us that mere deadlines are a small reason ever to have lived.

2. We are to be faithful in our management of all those gifts and goods God has given us (1 Corinthians 4:2). In terms of natural talents, such as communication or music or administration, these natural and spiritual gifts should be used in the church (Ephesians 4:8–12). The material gifts, such as salary, income, and inheritances, are to be spent in such a way that our use of all our money will indicate that we understand that our material possessions were never our own. On the other hand, neither were our days. God gives them to us to be spent like currency drawn from the wallet of our lives.

I have never known anyone who wanted to waste life, but I have known only a few who could make decisions and stick to them until they held the destiny and dream of God.

3. The ultimate purpose of Christians is to glorify God (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). The tiniest of gods are to be found in the mirrors of egotists. Yet this little “mirror of the me” is where most of the world’s masses worship. They may occasionally peer past the edges of the mirror to see that there is a worthier vastness beyond it. But most continue to adore the little image of themselves, always asking at every turn, “What’s in this for me?”

But praise—authentic adoration—smashes such little altars and bids these micro-idolaters to get real. Praising Christ calls out, “Come past yourself and see the heavens opened and hear the seraphim crying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy.’ Smash your little mirrors, for past your slavery to the clock lies the vastness of his glory. There you will see the Lord, high and lifted up—there you will praise him and be forever free of your ego.”

Augustine said that to glorify God was the very reason we were given life and being. Our management of our days tends to move in two directions. We either use our time to magnify God or to exalt ourselves. Since our days are owned by God, our stewardship must consider every second precious.

Using time without regard to God is indeed to lose it. Whether we run to please the clock or we merely live as captives to its hassled demands, we have failed to understand that hurriedness is no substitute for calculated usefulness.

4. We are the trustees of our glorious individuality (1 Timothy 6:20). No two of us are alike in this universe, and we have each been given unique kinds of gifts. There is something given us to do that no one else can do quite like we can. DNA is God’s chromosomal stamp that speaks to the individuality of our lives. This glorious and God-imparted uniqueness should put zeal into our stewardship of life. But our self-esteem must never be a springboard into arrogance. On the other hand, we must use the years so that our management of time may end in eternity with the compliment of Christ, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (Matthew 25:21).

A final word about the tyranny of the urgent: Most of us live our lives serving some form of Christian institution. This may be a church, a college, a hospital, or a school. In these places, our lives will be mandated by those who impose on us deadlines, forms, corporate agendas—in short, clockly restraints. But the believer who wants an in-depth affair with Christ must not allow time clocks and ledger sheets to destroy that wonderful holy leisure by which we make friends with God. To be a godly disciple means that we transcend the clock, because to be with God mandates that we give our life to become one who waits on God for the sheer pleasure of his company.

Notes

[1].  Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., A Passion for God (Wheaton, Ill., Crossway Books, 1994), 148.

[2].  Gregory the Great, quoted in Woodene Koenig-Bricker, 365 Saints (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1995), from the September 3 reading.

[3].  Frances de Sales, Thy Will Be Done, trans. Henry Benedict Mackey (Manchester, N.H.: Sophia Institute Press, 1955) 34–35. (Originally published 1894.)

[4].  Abraham Maslow, a prominent psychologist, was the first to identify these five basic needs.

[5].  Mary Ann Fatula, Catherine of Siena’s Way (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1987), 186.

[6].  Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul, trans. John Beevers (New York: Doubleday, 1957), 109.

[7].  Ibid.

[8].  Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 74–75.

[9].  Fatula, 190.

[10].  Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour & Co., Inc., 1963), from the December 7 reading.

[11].  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, trans.: R. H. Fuller (New York: Touchstone Books, 1959), 20.

[12].  Chambers, from the January 24 reading.

[13].  Ibid., March 11.

[14].  Emilie Griffin, Clinging, 15.

[15].  Thomas Merton, The Seven-Story Mountain (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1948), 404.

[16].  F. B. Meyer quoted in Changed by the Master’s Touch, 55.

[17].  Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, from the May 31 reading.

[18].  Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul, 148.

[19].  Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 32.

[20].  Annie Dillard, Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 125.

[21].  Leadership magazine (Summer 1988): 81.

[22].  Francis de Sales, Thy Will Be Done, 8.

[23].  François Fénelon, Talking With God, 86.

[24].  Thérèse of Lisieux, 72.

[25].  Madeleine Sophie Barat, quoted in Woodene Koenig-Bricker, 365 Saints, from the August 5 reading.

[26].  François Fénelon, quoted in Richard Foster, ed., Devotional Classics (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1989), 46.

[27].  Hannah Whitall Smith, quoted in Richard Foster, A Spiritual Formation Journal (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1989), unnumbered page.

[28].  Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), 15.

[29].  Thomas Merton, The Spring of Contemplation (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1992), 20.

[30].  William R. White, Stories for Telling: A Treasury for Christian Storytellers (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986), 83–86.

[31].  François Fénelon, Talking With God, 10.

[32].  E. M. Bounds, The Possibilities of Prayer (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1994), 102.

CALVIN MILLER is a poet, a pastor, a theologian, a painter, and one of Christianity’s best loved writers with over forty published books. His writing spans a wide spectrum of genres, from the bestselling Singer Trilogy to The Unchained Soul to the heartrending novella Snow. His most recent books and articles have dealt with spirituality as a journey and the pilgrimage which strives for union with Christ.

Miller presently serves as Professor of Preaching and Pastoral Ministries at Beeson Divinity School in Alabama, where he and his wife, Barbara, make their home.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Breaking the Sensual Thrall

Breaking the Thrall of Materialism

Breaking the Tyranny of the Urgent

Notes

About the Author

Back Cover