God Loves Working with People Who Are Failures

 

Sioux Falls, SD

Someone shared with me that they wanted to follow Jesus, but were afraid they would fail. Their fear of failure was leading them to stay distant from God. Here are some thoughts I have about this.

1. Anyone who follows Jesus will, at times, fail. Follow anything and you will, at times, fail. Mistakes will be made.

2. What's needed is a community of Jesus-followers who are non-judgmental about failure. What's needed are Jesus-followers who are learning to love as Jesus loves.

Paul wrote, "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1).

Sadly, the amount of in-fighting and slandering within "churches," and towards outsiders, makes church the last place where you'd want to fail. Avoid these churches.

Churches that are successful in the Jesus Way are honest and real about failure, without condemnation and judgmentalism. We all need this kind of more perfect love. "Perfect love casts out fear; there is no fear in love" (1 John 4:18).

3. Unless you get real about your failure, you will never succeed. "Success" is: growing into greater Christlikeness. Not one of us is there yet. All of us are failing in some ways. Avoid people who do not understand this (love them anyway, but don't fellowship with them).

People who act as if they never fail but you do fail are spiritually toxic. They are failure-producing people who want to bring you down to the level of their failure.

4. Remember the Original Twelve, Jesus' inner circle of disciples. They misunderstood Jesus, stumbled spiritually, misjudged things, betrayed Jesus, and eventually left his side at the point of his greatest suffering. Yet out of the rubbish of their failure came the first real Jesus-followers. You and I can likewise be transformed as we go after Jesus.

In the spiritual journal I have now kept for fifty years I have recorded many instances of my own failures. Some of these have been seen by other people. A number of them are known only by my wife Linda, and my sons. And some are only known by God, and I am ignorant of them.

As I have journaled about these failures of action and attitude, I have always encountered a God of love and grace who forgives me, and continues to mold and shape me. God will not give up on me, or you, if we come to him with a heart that says, "God, I love you, and want to learn how to love you more."

God loves working with  people who are failures. After all, in his Church, it's all he has to work with.

Habitual Praying

 Dear Praying People, 

 Your praying times should be what you do, as usual. 

 This morning I received two e-mails from friends who have been desperately praying for answers from God. Today, they received those answers, and were blown away by this. One person wrote, “Why do I not expect this to happen?” Now, for the moment at least, they are motivated to pray more. 

 In a few minutes I will walk to the back of our property, by the river, where there is an old table, and my praying chair. I’ll bring my journal, Bible, and a cup of coffee. I will meet with my God and pray. I will pray for others. I will listen to God speak to me. And it shall be good. 

At this point in my life, I rarely leave these praying times without feeling encouraged and strengthened. I pray. A lot. I do this because “Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.” (Luke 22:29) What Jesus did there was: 1) instruct his disciples to watch and pray. 2) pray, himself. 

 “As usual,” Jesus went to the Mount of Olives, and prayed. “As was his habit.” Praying was Jesus’s customary way of doing life. Praying was a way of life for Jesus. If Jesus habitually did this, who am I, one of his followers, not to? 

 I heard of a sign, supposedly on the Alaskan Highway, where the road turned from pavement to dirt. It read: “Choose your rut carefully. You’ll be in it for the next hundred miles.” Choose a praying life. Over time, it will become your habit, something you engage in, as usual. 

 Love, 

 PJ 

 COUNSEL 

 Identify one day, during the week, to pray for an hour. 

 Identify a place of least distraction, where you will do this. 

 Do it weekly.

From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Praying.

When Does a Human Life Begin?

 

 

(Frost on car window)

"An amicus curiae (literally, "friend of the court"; plural: amici curiae) often referred to as amicus brief is defined as the legal brief where someone who is not a party to a case assists a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. The decision on whether to consider an amicus brief lies within the discretion of the court. The phrase amicus curiae is legal Latin and its origin of the term has been dated back to 1605-1615. The scope of amicus curiae is generally found in the cases where broad public interests are involved and concerns regarding civil rights are in question." (From Wikipedia)

One of the legal briefs accepted by the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case regarding abortion rights concerned the following.

(From the brief.) 

"Amici curiae are biologists who work at colleges, universities, and other institutions in 15 countries around the world.

The fertilization view is widely recognized—in the literature and by biologists—as the leading biological view on when a human’s life begins... An international survey of academic biologists’ views on when a human’s life begins reported 96% of 5,577 participants affirmed the fertilization view. 

Fertilization, generally, marks the beginning of a sexually reproducing organism’s life and, specifically, marks the beginning of a human’s life, as it is the point at which a human first comes into physical existence as an organism that is biologically classified as a member of the Homo sapiens species."

When someone asks me why I am against abortion, my response is: 

Because I am against killing an innocent, defenseless human being.

Pastors - Want to Read a Book with Me?

Next Sunday at Redeemer we begin preaching through the book of Exodus. We'll finish in mid-January. 

In addition to looking at commentaries on the text, I just purchased Israel In and Out of Egypt: The Archaeological and Historical Background to the Exodus.

If there is a pastor or two (or more) who wants to join me in reading this book, let me know. Perhaps we could meet to discuss on a Zoom call, in January.

johnpiippo@msn.com 

My Song "More Like You"

 

Way, way back in 1973, I wrote a song for our wedding (for Linda) called "More Like You."

At the time, there was a Christian band called "The Archers." 

One of them, Gary Archer, picked up my song and recorded it with Light Records (1975).

Note my name - misspelled.  :) 

Guidelines for Civil Discourse: #1 - Love Others

Flicker, in my back yard

(I don't read what people post on social media. I don't have time to do this. I am on Facebook, but I unfollow everyone except my family and our church staff. 

I'm not on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumbler, Snapchat, or Whatsapp. Or anything.  

I post this blog to Facebook. Some respond to my blog, and I often interact with them. Thank you.

I have always been a culture-watcher. I am interested in human behavior. I study moral behavior and its sources like a madman. I am interested in how we Jesus-followers should live and act and have our being. 

I have personal experience with humans abusing each other verbally. Even among Christians. Even, sadly, at times, me.

This post is about how someone who claims to follow Jesus should conduct themselves, in any medium, in all human interaction.)

***

If you are a follower of Jesus, this is for us. 

Though the world fails in civility, we must engage in civil discourse.

Our foundation for civil discourse is love. We are to love others, in our behaviors. With the love of God, exemplified in Jesus. We must love like Jesus loves.

This includes those who disagree with us. It encompasses our enemies. They are among our "neighbors."

Love is the sign, the mark, that we are what we declare we are; viz., Christians. If we don't love, we have nothing. (See 1 Corinthians 13) If we don't love, we don't have our identity, at least in the eyes of others.

Jesus affirms the call to love in John 13:34-35:

“A new command I give you: 

Love one another. 

As I have loved you, 

so you must love one another. 

By this everyone will know 

that you are my disciples, 

if you love one another.”

People will know that you and I are with Jesus as we love one another. If we fail to do this, we will be considered to be far from Jesus. Or, people will think of Jesus through the lens of our rudeness and uncivility.

When Christians hate one another on social media, they fail to display what is supposed to be their distinguishing mark; viz., love. When we get disgusted, show irritation, demean, mock, slander, ridicule, or bully, we dishonor people made in God's image. And bring shame upon our Lord.

Francis Schaeffer, in his classic The Mark of the Christian, writes:

"We are to love our fellowmen, to love all men, in fact, as neighbors. 
All men bear the image of God. They have value, not because they are redeemed, but because they are God’s creation in God’s image. Modern man, who has rejected this, has no clue as to who he is, and because of this he can find no real value for himself or for other men. Hence, he downgrades the value of other men and produces the horrible thing we face today—a sick culture in which men treat men as inhuman, as machines. As Christians, however, we know the value of men. 
All men are our neighbors, and we are to love them as ourselves. We are to do this on the basis of creation, even if they are not redeemed, for all men have value because they are made in the image of God. Therefore they are to be loved even at great cost." (Schaeffer, pp. 15-16)

It is clear, is it not, that in all our discourse with people we are to love them. This is the higher ground, where Jesus was suspended on a cross.

The love principle applies even when in sharp disagreement with others. Remember that to love is not equivalent to affirmation, and that disagreement is not a justification for hatred.


***
My books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

The Great Invasion: 31 Days of Christmas 

What the Dark Night of the Soul Is, and Is Not, About

The "dark night of the soul," 

at least according to the originator of that phrase, 

is not about "going through a hard time."

At times I have read or heard someone say that they are going through a "dark night of the soul," and by this refer to a time of personal suffering. This is not the "dark night" St John of the Cross was speaking of in the classic The Dark Night of the Soul. This "dark night" is far more interesting than that.

To explain. John of the Cross was a mystic. "Mysticism" comes from the Greek word muo, which means "to conceal." There is, on mysticism, a way of "knowing" God that cannot be gained via things like the physical senses. Mystical literature speaks of such knowing as "dark knowledge."

John of the Cross, in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, writes: "The first night or purgation is of the sensual part of the soul, which is treated in the present stanza, and will be treated in the first part of this book. And the second is of the spiritual part; of this speaks the second stanza, which follows; and of this we shall treat likewise, in the second and the third part, with respect to the activity of the soul; and in the fourth part, with respect to its passivity." In the first "night" or "purgation" of the soul one's senses are "darkened." If one wants to know God in the sense of a God-encounter then this, precisely, cannot be gained via the five physical senses. The five senses must be darkened.

For John of the Cross, there are a series of darkenings, which then leave the soul without any of its ordinary tools to rely on in the quest to know and be known by God. This is good, since, for a mystic like John, God cannot in principle be known this way. John writes: "And the second night, or purification, pertains to those who are already proficient, occurring at the time when God desires to bring them to the state of union with God. And this latter night is a more obscure and dark and terrible purgation, as we shall say afterwards." (Ascent)

The soul is purged of its active senses, and eventually becomes passive, receptive. This is what Meister Eckhart means when he uses the word "Gelassenheit" to mean a passive "letting be," as opposed to an active grasping-after God. In the "Passive Night of the Senses" God purges the soul of its default ways of knowing. John calls this purgation "horrible," since in it we lose our normal way and can feel disoriented. But this is a holy disorientation, as we are being prepared for a unitive knowledge of God that cannot be gained with the separative physical senses. One experiences a great sense of loss, only to emerge into the greatest gain possible: knowledge of the ineffable God that comes to meet us.

The heart of John's "dark night" is expressed in these words:

"The night which we have called that of sense may and should be called a kind of correction and restraint of the desire rather than purgation. The reason is that all the imperfections and disorders of the sensual part have their strength and root in the spirit, where all habits, both good and bad, are brought into subjection, and thus, until these are purged, the rebellions and depravities of sense cannot be purged thoroughly."

I have long been attracted to the mystical tradition, for the following reasons.

1. Surely knowledge of God cannot be captured in the steel nets of literal language.
2. Surely God, in his essence, is beyond what our abilties can grasp.
3. If "God's ways are not our ways," then it seems reasonable to think that there are limits to our human abilities when it comes to knowing the ways of God.
4. I have often had the sense, especially in times of praying, that I am meeting God in a way that is both "beyond" me and more real than sense experience.
5. Weekly, I talk with ordinary non-theologians in my congregation, who describe encounters with God that are both real and indescribable (in essence).
6. Jesus' words in John chapters 14-17 imply a strong "in us" and "in God" experience that is better captured, often, in Christian mystical literature than in the evangelical hyper-rational environment I was trained in and loved. And, btw, still love.

The greatest danger of over-emphasizing mystical experience of God is that, at times, the mystical literature describes the contemplative union with God as an ontological union, a union of being. Here one gets "lost in God" to the extent that one is metaphysically the same as God. Surely, on Christian theism, there remains a metaphysical distance between us and God. Mysticism, at its extremes, conflates us and God so that we are ontologically one. I do not think that is true, nor do I find it helpful.

On another note, when I read the early pages of Dark Night I see similarities between the way our church and others worship. Reading sections of Dark Night remind me of worship songs that are sung by the beloved to the Lover of our souls. To me, that is very good, since there is a hymn-culture that more stresses the distance between us and God, thus taking the Emmanuel-encounter out of the church.

Breaking Free from Institutional Measures of Success

(Ladybug, in my home office)

Dallas Willard's interview on measuring spiritual growth among Jesus-followers is prophetic and subversive (the two often go together!). Many churches, he says, measure the wrong things, "like attendance and giving, but we should be looking at more fundamental things like anger, contempt, honesty, and the degree to which people are under the thumb of their lusts."

Why don't churches measure spiritual effectiveness by these things? Because these qualities are "not worth bragging about." "We'd rather focus on institutional measures of success."

People in today's American churches are suffering, especially pastors and their families, because "much of North America and Europe has bought into a version of Christianity that does not include life in the kingdom of God as a disciple of Jesus Christ. They are trying to work a system that doesn't work. Without transformation within the church, pastors are the ones who get beat up. That is why there is a constant flood of them out of the pastorate. But they are not the only ones. New people are entering the church, but a lot are also leaving. Disappointed Christians fill the landscape because we've not taken discipleship seriously."

Churches, and Jesus-followers, must change their definition of "success." Or, perhaps, abandon it entirely. Like Mother Teresa, who once said, "I am not trying to be successful. I'm trying to be faithful."

"They need to have a vision of success rooted in spiritual terms, determined by the vitality of a pastor's own spiritual life and his capacity to pass that on to others. When pastors don't have rich spiritual lives with Christ, they become victimized by other models of success—models conveyed to them by their training, by their experience in the church, or just by our culture. They begin to think their job is managing a set of ministry activities and success is about getting more people to engage those activities. Pastors, and those they lead, need to be set free from that belief."

***

My Books

 Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

The Great Invasion: 31 Days of Christmas 

Rejecting "Church" as an Entertainment Center

                                                            (Sterling State Park, Lake Erie)

I like this little interview with Chuck Swindoll at christianitytoday.com. Swindoll says that, when church becomes an entertainment center, biblical literacy is the first casualty. 

I'm so thankful we're not putting money into entertaining the people at Redeemer. A main goal of mine is to increase Jesus-literacy. So, we preached through the four gospels over a period of seven years. Now, we are finishing preaching and teaching through the book of Hebrews. 

The world doesn't offer this. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, "When the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first."

Church leaders don't want to be hated, so they focus on attracting more and more people.  Swindoll says: "But if we're here to offer something the world can't provide, why would I want to copy the world? There is plenty of television. There are plenty of talk shows. There are plenty of comedians. But there is not plenty of worship of the true and living God."

Besides, "Jesus never suggested that crowds were the goal. He never addresses getting your church to grow. Never. So why is that the emphasis today?" 

The Peace that Transcends All Circumstances

                                                                    (Flowers, in our front yard.)

A few years ago Linda and I vacationed in Cape May, New Jersey. It's a beautiful area, with a great beach on the ocean. We stayed in a very cool, old Victorian Bed & Breakfast. Cape May has wonderful restaurants and places to see and shop. All was well except... the weather. It was cold and rainy. The circumstances were not what we wanted, because what we really like is sitting under the sun on the beach, and reading and talkin,g and listening to the sound of the crashing waves.

Such is life. Circumstances often do not go one's way. In spite of the conditions, Linda and I enjoyed Cape May, and had inner peace.

The good news is that the "fruit of the Spirit" in Galatians 5:22-23 is not circumstance-dependent. Part of that fruit is "peace." There is an inner well-being available to all who live the Jesus-connected life. This inner well-being does not rise and fall with the external environment. It's more like a thermostat than a thermometer; it is non-reactive and consistent. 

When I abide in Christ, my inner thermostat is set to "peace," even though my outer thermometer is reading "cold."

Howard Thurman writes:

"Here we come upon the most interesting aspect of personal freedom - the living of one's life with confidence that transcends discouragement and despair. This means that one does not have to depend upon the favorable circumstances, the fortuitous "break," the applause, approval, and felicitation of friends, as important as these are...
"Seek ye first the rule of God," the Master says. And after that? The key that one needs for one's peace is in the heart. There can be no personal freedom where there is not an initial inner surrender."
- 40-Day Journey with Howard Thurman, 64

Surrender your entire being to the rule of Christ today, and discover the peace that transcends all circumstances.