When your back is against the wall

Have you ever felt a situation was so desperate that it was crushing you? That you had your back to the wall? That everything was closing in on you?

There is a narrow pass in the mountains of present-day Turkey near Paul’s home town of Tarsus. It is so narrow that, travelling by foot, there are places you can barely squeeze through. This is thought by Bible scholars to be the source of Paul’s statement to the Corinthians, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed.” The last word refers to being caught in a place so narrow you can barely get through. It’s a place Paul would have had to traverse many times as he made his way in and out of Tarsus.

There are massive crevasses in the rock of the Niagara Escarpment not far from our house. I don’t look down them when I jump over them, because I am somewhat claustrophobic (and I don’t like heights either). But with many of them, if you did fall down, you’d just get stuck.

Have you ever been in such a place?

Last week there was a social media opportunity in Canada for people to publicize their issues with mental illness or stress. I noticed a number of comments from pastors’ wives concerning the struggles their husbands have as pastors.

Whether it’s because I’m a Christian leader or not, I can certainly and openly testify to many battles I have fought with fear, stress and feelings of giving up. In fact, a recent survey noted that at any given time, 75% of pastors in the United States are considering doing just that.

Part of the reason for this is that pastors are dealing all the time with people in their churches from every walk of life who are themselves in the same boat, and at some point it all gets too much.

Someone once said to me, “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” It’s funny, but also very descriptive of where we occasionally find ourselves.

Can I suggest there’s no shame in that?

I am quitting a perfectly good job and losing my lifeline to financial security to step out in faith (again). As of yet, we have nowhere definite to relocate to, and by no means are our finances in place. Many mornings I wake up with anxiety. My cure is to do 100 push-ups and follow that up with chin-ups and sit-ups and generally exert myself to the point my anxiety gets knocked out of my head. Until the next morning when it comes back…

Yes, I am stupid. Yes, Jesus keeps yelling in my ears, as he did this morning: “Your father knows what you need before you ask him.” That’s Matthew 6:8, by the way, not some prophetic pronouncement. And there’s lots more in that chapter about money, fear and God’s provision. You should read it regularly.

I was sitting in my car by the bay a while ago watching the seagulls, when I felt the Lord spoke to me to read out loud to myself the last half of Matthew 6. It’s all about the birds and the grass and the stupidity of being anxious, and how our mandate is actually very simple. It’s to seek his kingdom and let him do the rest.

It’s a good word for those days when I feel my back is against the wall.

When I was 19 and had no money to go to university, I asked God to help me. He gave me an all-expenses paid scholarship to one of the finest universities in the world.

When I started my first church, I had no money and no backers. I asked God to help me and he did.

When we went to Canada as newly-weds with no money, no job and nothing but a word from God, I asked God to help me. And he did.

When I started my second church, I had no money and no backers. I asked God to help me and he did.

Twice, when it looked like our church would fall apart and we would be left with nothing, I asked him to help me and he did.

When your back is against the wall, ask God to help you.

And he will.

The worst pain of all

What is the worst pain of all? Is there a pain worse than death itself? I think there might be.

We have a few friends who have suffered the premature loss of a son, daughter or grandchild. I wrote about one of these situations in my previous blog. I can remember a series of funerals over the years, none of which I will ever forget. Grief of this nature is a pain that is almost unbearable. But there is another kind of pain that in a strange way may be even worse.

My thought comes from asking this question: where did Jesus experience the worst pain? There’s no doubt it was on the cross. But even greater than the pain of his physical suffering was the experience of rejection by the One he loved: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In that terrible moment, Jesus endured the pain of deliberate rejection which had to occur for him to carry our sin and extinguish the anger of God against it.

I can undertake challenges of faith and keep my head above water, but when someone with whom I have relationship does something to hurt me, it can come pretty close to sinking my boat.

There is a difference between being lovingly cautioned about something and deliberate rejection. Let me illustrate at my own expense. A friend who knows what he’s doing comes with me to the gym. He looks at the weights I am about to lift, and tells me with a worried look they may be too heavy for me. That may be slightly discouraging, even mildly damaging to my sensitive male ego. Yet no real harm is done -- more likely, harm is prevented! But what if he simply looks at me and says, “Who do you think you are, trying to do that? Give up, you’re a loser, you’re hopeless”? That’s different. That hurts.

Rejection is somebody else whose opinion matters to us trashing who we are. Rejection is crushing because it touches the very heart of our identity, our worth and our value.

Massive numbers of people suffer from rejection because in childhood they were told by a parent whose love they craved that they were worthless and they were treated as such. When people grow up like this, it becomes very difficult even to convey any kind of helpful advice to them, because they are so weak in their identity it comes across as rejection.

People with rejection often reject even those who genuinely care for them. Hurting people hurt people. The anger and pain of rejection is at least an energy we can control ourselves and direct outwards. It gives us back an identity - but not a healthy one! We even reject people who love us in order to try to force ever more extreme displays of love and care from them. And then we hit back so others can feel something of the pain we have lived in. It’s a terrible prison millions of people are incarcerated in. And it’s in leaders and churches. And sometimes, it destroys them.

Rejection operates most powerfully in a context of vulnerability in relationship. That is why church can be the most dangerous place for rejection. Almost all the arrows I have endured wound up in my back, not in my chest.

Jesus came to deliver us from rejection. He endured rejection in order to set us free us from it. The gift of our identity as sons and daughters of God liberates us from the prison we were cast into by being trashed by people who should have loved us but didn’t. He gave us the gift of infinite worth and value at the cost of his own life.

Here’s my advice. Rejection at some level is a problem for all of us, so do a self-audit. How do you react to criticism? Are you secure in your identity in Christ, or are you often threatened by comments others make? Do you hit back at people when you perceive criticism on their part?

And read a good book on the subject. My friend Steve Hepden has written one, Rejection Hurts, available for Kindle through Amazon (CAN, US, UK).

We reject because we were rejected. But here’s the good news. We love because he first loved us.

The truth will set you free.

The triumph of life

A year ago, our dear friends suffered the loss of their three year old son and grandson. If I wanted to find four people who love Jesus and serve him with all their heart, these two couples, Don and Lisa and Brian and Malyn, have got to be pretty near the top of my list.

Sometimes we are taught that the more you serve the Lord, the better things will go for you. Don’t believe it. Or do believe it. It all depends on the perspective!

Let me explain.

Back when I was a student at the University of Toronto, I used to make my way up Avenue Road Sunday nights to the church that had been pastored by Dr. A.W. Tozer at the time of his death a few years previously. It was one of the first places I felt the tangible presence of God.

Dr. Tozer pulled no punches. Listen to his words:

"Though the cross of Christ has been beautified by the poet and the artist, the avid seeker after God is likely to find it the same savage implement of destruction it was in the days of old. The way of the cross is still the pain-wracked path to spiritual power and fruitfulness. So do not seek to hide from it. Do not accept an easy way. Do not allow yourself to be patted to sleep in a comfortable church, void of power and barren of fruit. Do not paint the cross nor deck it with flowers. Take it for what it is, as it is, and you will find it the rugged way to death and life. Let it slay you utterly."

A year ago, Elaine and I got into our car and drove down to Michigan. We arrived at the funeral home just in time to witness an extraordinary spectacle. Never in my life have I seen such a mixture of unbelievable grief and supernatural comfort. It continued in the hours following as half the community poured into the church to pay their respects, the funeral was conducted and little Camden’s casket was placed in the ground.

When you serve the Lord, things do not always go well. Sometimes they go very badly. If we teach people otherwise, we are giving them false hope and a false gospel.

But this is not the end of the story. At the end of human sorrow stands the outstretched and merciful arms of Jesus. His cross is indeed the way of death, death to our flesh, our hopes, our dreams. But it is also the way of life.

You want resurrection power in your life? Well, the only way to get it is through the path of suffering, the way of the cross. And that is Biblical truth. Read Philippians 3 very carefully if you do not believe me.

On my visits to India, I was struck by the nearness of both death and the supernatural. The people there were by far more familiar and comfortable with both than we are.

If suffering is the way to life in an earthly sense, then even more true is the fact that physical death is only the doorway to eternal reward. And that gives us a whole different perspective.

Yes, when you serve the Lord, things will go well for you. You inherit eternity, beginning now. The reward, as the last book of the Bible consistently reminds believers suffering for their faith, is always better than the price.

Our dear friends, through all their pain, have never looked back, never complained, never questioned God’s goodness. And God was glorified in at all, to the point that that little boy probably accomplished more for God’s kingdom in his short life than most people do in 80 years.

The great British preacher Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, shortly before his death, asked people to stop praying for his healing. His words were these: “Do not hold me back from the glory!”

Let the cross do its work of destruction in your life. Things will often not seem to go well. But in the end, they will.

Let the cross slay you. In the midst of death, you will find the triumph of life.

The secret to success

The secret to success I am about to unfold is probably not what you thought it would be, but it’s better than anything you could have imagined. If you’re intrigued, read on.

It’s a brand new year.

While any day is a good day to move your life forward in a positive way, the beginning of a new year presents us with a special psychological moment to make a fresh start. That’s why it’s such a great opportunity for motivational speakers, resolution-makers and all those people who are so good at telling us what we aren’t but should be.

The problem is, most of it is hype and never works.

Can I offer a very counter-intuitive suggestion? In simpler language, an answer that at first doesn’t make sense. Here goes…

The secret to success is this. Start by admitting you’re a failure. It’s not very ego-inflating, but it’s the truth.

This past year, I have felt my own failures very often and very keenly. I’ve tried to write about some of them, hopefully without deteriorating into just talking about myself, which helps nobody. I have looked at the testings and struggles I’ve faced and often judged my own responses negatively. I’ve looked at friends going through worse things and felt they seemed to respond better than me.

So it seems I’m a failure. You positive thinkers and sympathetic friends, please listen for a moment before you either throw me overboard or try to comfort me.

The fact that I am a failure is actually very liberating. It sets me free from the delusion that I can break myself out of prison. And in the process (and this is the important part) it reminds me of the greater truth that God himself can do in me what I cannot in my own strength ever do.

The devil came to Martin Luther in a dream with a long list of all his current failings as a believer. In the dream, Luther saw a hand writing these words across the list: “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses me from all sin.”

So before we trot out the saying that we’re saints, not sinners, and all that is behind us, let’s acknowledge this one fact. Only one successful human being has ever walked the face of this earth, and we know his name.

Recent non-Christian historians, I read last week, have pegged Luther as perhaps the single most influential person in modern history, yet even Luther knew that in himself he was a failure. That’s why he coined the phrase simul iustus et peccator -- at the same time justified and a sinner.

He didn’t argue over his failure with the devil, but chose instead to stand on the fact that he was now identified with the one man whom the devil (to his terror) knew was and is an everlasting and unbeatable success.

I want my life to move forward this year. I want to make a difference for God. I want to do everything he calls me to do. I want to be successful, but…

I know that I can never in myself be a success. All I can do is allow him to give me a share in his success.

And that alone is what gives him the glory.

I have no righteousness, but he has allowed me to share in his. I have no status with God, but he has allowed me to share in his. I am a child of God, yet only through him.

So at the beginning of this new year, with all its possibilities and challenges, I choose to cast myself as a man without merit or success in myself, as in fact a glorious failure, on the mercy and grace of the man who alone can give success, in the hope that my life can make a real and tangible difference to his kingdom in 2017.

Stay tuned…

Perseverance

I’ve just come back from a weekend with 30 young men eager to grow in God and extend his kingdom.

What do young men need to hear about? Well, at or near the top of the list is how to persevere. And that’s what I talked about.

One of Paul’s most powerful statements is this: “Forgetting what lies behind, I strain forward.” The last phrase in Greek is a double compound participle. Yikes! What is that? It means an ordinary word intensified, and then intensified again.

In the same passage, where he writes to the Philippians using the terminology of about the Olympic races, he has already talked about pressing on. That’s a running word: “keep running.”

Now he adds to it the picture of the runner at the very end of the race, with his body stretched out at a 45 degree angle, straining forward to get the greatest possible advantage in order to cross the finish line first.

Our culture is built around convenience, not perseverance. We want it, and we want it now. We want to make the minimum investment to gain the maximum benefit. That’s why you see people lining up at the lottery counter and the casino.

That’s why we produce charismatic preachers who explode at 30 but are finished at 40, often by some moral or character failure.

God has a different way of operating. He will take 40, 50 or 60 years of a person’s life just to prepare them for what he wants to do with the rest of it. When he’s refined the gold, he can make something beautiful and lasting out of it.

But how do we get there?

Yup, you got it. Perseverance.

We watch professional athletes, skilled musicians or gifted surgeons, and none of us has any doubt about the incredible amount of hard work it took to get them to where they are.

So why is it we think that we can accelerate the process when it comes to Christian character or leadership?

Don’t trust anyone who hasn’t submitted to training. It is good for a man (or woman) to bear the yoke when they are young. That is the Bible speaking, not me.

When I started running again 9 or 10 years ago, it took me a long time before I really began to make progress. Then one day I went out with a running club in the UK, and to my surprise I found myself near the beginning of the large pack.

When I started to learn Hebrew, for a long time it looked like nothing more than hen scratching. Then one day I began to find myself translating Biblical passages and even reading parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I’m sure there were many victims of my early years of preaching and counselling. I even counselled people (confidently!) on marriage issues when I was still single. But eventually God was able to use my skills and gifts to help people, though I am still amazed how he does it.

There may be shortcuts to the gym, but there are no shortcuts at the gym.

Likewise, there are no shortcuts to maturity.

It requires perseverance.

If there is such a thing as a guarantee of success in life, it’s perseverance. It will get you further than anything else I know.

And it’s just like a financial investment -- the earlier you start, the better.

Today would be a good time.