Crisis, Commitment, Communion

Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. -- Proverbs 13:11

I think I heard that there were three winning tickets for this week’s huge Powerball drawing.  That’s means probably a minimum of a hundred million or so to each winner – a lot of money to be dumped into someone’s lap.  Most of us cannot even imagine what that means, and most people cannot handle that kind of wealth.  We have learned how to manage the income we have.  Poor people have acquired skills in dealing with poverty.  Show up at any Walmart or similar store the day after the monthly load of EBT cards takes place.  These people know to the minute when their money will be available.  They know to the penny how much they have -- three or four hundred bucks, or fifteen hundred, a person like that can manage with some degree of skill.  Give them access to a hundred thousand, a million or a hundred million, and they simply have no concept.

It happens to lottery winners, to athletes, and to some entertainers – especially those who become overnight celebrities.  To the rest of us, it seems strange that someone who has an inordinate amount of money should ever end up in debt and bankrupt, yet, this is a very common path.  Managing large amounts of money is a skill like any other.  It can be learned, but it is takes time.  If your money comes in slowly and your wealth accumulates little by little, your management skills grow apace.  Everything works out.

The same applies in the spiritual realm.  We get a picture of it in type as God promises to give Canaan to the Children of Israel:    I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you.  Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land (Exodus 23:29-30). 

The problem the Israelites had was that, though they had been delivered from slavery, they were still slaves in terms of their mindset.  It took time for them to see themselves as the Lord saw them.  Upon encountering the gigantic inhabitants of Canaan, the faithless spies famously said that they were as grasshoppers in the eyes of their enemies, and in their own eyes.   After being beaten down and oppressed for generations, they could not change their minds about who they were and what they were capable of.  They had come out of Egypt in crisis which led to, quite naturally, celebration and vows of commitment, but very few of those so delivered entered into communion.

I believe that conversion is a genuine experience, but, at the same time, I am skeptical of instant Christians – just add water.  Typically, I think we come to a point of crisis where we realize what we are doing isn’t working.  We recognize and embrace the truth of the Gospel.  We commit ourselves to Christ.  The riches of God’s grace and mercy become available to us, and we rejoice.  After a while, though, most of us experience difficulties.  The same old problems confront us.  The same old man too often responds to those problems.  We wonder if we were ever “saved”, or if we need to “rededicate” our lives to Christ.  Maybe it didn’t take the first time.  I have a close relative who used to rededicate about every six months.  I don’t suppose it hurt anything, but I’m not sure it helped anything either.  How many times do you need to cross the Red Sea?  It borders on magical thinking. 

What did Jesus tell us to do in the Great Commission?  Make disciples.  Disciples are those under discipline.  They are learning and developing a new attitude and a new mindset – renewing our minds is the Scriptural phrase, to go with the new nature we have been given.  When people say that we learn to pray, we mean that people learn when to pray and that prayer is listening as much or more than pleading.  We have faith, but we need to develop it and refine it, challenge it and test it in real world situations. 

It takes time.  This is why most people do not die immediately after coming up from the waters of baptism.  A Crisis Christian can immediately or almost immediately become a Committed Christian resulting in a Celebrating Christian.  It doesn’t always happen, but it’s common.  To become a Communion Christian, however, is always going to be a process.  A few of us -- for reasons known only to God, move to that place fairly quickly.  To those watching from the outside, the transition may appear seamless and sudden.  The rest of us take the long way home.  We adapt slowly.  At times it may seem that we are making no progress at all, but we can trust that the Lord is leading by the way that is best.  Some of us take more changing than others, more dying to self than others.  Do not despair or fear.  Little by little, we grow in grace. 

Big Daddy

And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.  --  Numbers 13:33

Success in life has a lot to do with perspective.  We are all aware of people who like to talk about their disorders, diseases, and the number of surgeries they have had.  Almost all of us, in our honest moments, have fears that nag and plague us.  Fear can be a powerful and positive motivator.  Men who would have eaten their weight in deep-fried ice cream will push back from the table after one serving following a quadruple bypass.  People who have smoked two packs a day since they were sixteen will find the power to quit when seeing a loved one dragging an oxygen tank behind them or laid out in the funeral home from lung cancer. 

On the other hand, I often point to The Princess and the Goblin containing MacDonald’s insightful quote:  “… but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of ...”.  Fear as a realistic motivator is a good thing, but fear is never content to motivate us.  If we are not careful, it will seek to control us and take away our hope and our courage.  I hate snakes, I dread snakes, but the likely presence of snakes never kept me out of the woods or off the river.  There’s no sense in stepping one, though, if you can help it. 

The Israelites, after 400 years of servitude in Egypt, were free to enter and conquer the land God had promised to Abraham.  “Enter” was no problem.  It was the “conquer” part they were having trouble with.  Since God has made us this promise, shouldn’t He be the one to clear out the Canaanites?  There are some Christians who seem to believe that encountering obstacles means they have missed God’s will for their lives.  Actually, giants and obstacles are usually a sure sign that you are on the right course.  Overcoming obstacles and overcoming the paralyzing effects of fear are part of God’s challenge that constitutes life in the material world.  Sometimes we think that there will be an end to our boot camp obstacle courses, and there is for many folks who decide that “getting out” is all that really matters, and the wilderness, after all, isn’t such a bad place. 

Anybody can say at any point that they have come far enough.  Anyone can saddle up the camel and head back to Egyptian bondage to live on carp, onions and watermelon.  No one has to face the giants.  I suppose that is true, in a sense, but I fear it is misleading.  Each of us has a destiny, a place in the Temple of God, a function and a purpose in the Body of Christ.  There are some diehards that insist if a particular person fails utterly, then the Body will simply lose the benefit of that person’s life.  Thus, you have deterministic Calvinists and patient Universalists agreeing that God will get a person into the right condition.  Calvinists will modify to say that it applies only to “the elect”.  Universalists will add the word “eventually”.  

Me, I don’t know.  I do know what Proverbs 13:15 says, “Good understanding giveth favour: but the way of transgressors is hard” (KJV).  In other words, if you haven’t got the sense to go on with God, you will have a hard row to hoe. Those who could not overcome their fear of giants moved on continually, finding no rest in the desert.  Life was a bitch. Then they died. 

It is easy to sit back in the recliner and wax eloquent about the need to “endeavor to persevere”.  When it is my boots on the ground and the entire enemy line looks like it is made up of Hulk clones, it might be understandable that I am a little less certain.  How do we press on when things appear hopeless and the opposition is simply overwhelming?  Look at what the faithless spies said, “… we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”  It was their own view of themselves in relation to their opponents that caused both parties to see them as insignificant. 

First, we need to be realistic about our own limitations.  I try to practice this in every venue.  The other day I had a review where my supervisor mentioned that my assessment of my own capabilities was pretty well in line with how others saw me.  This is not the case for all my colleagues.  Self-esteem is all right, but it should be based on something.  If I say I am good at something, I ought to be able to point to an accomplishment as proof.  The spies were not wrong in thinking that, one-on-one, strictly from a physical point of view, the sons of Anak could probably dunk on them. 

But, second and much more important is to realize that the game is, to some degree, about finding your limits and learning to transcend them in Christ.  As Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  It is not the task before us, whether easy or demanding that is the point, rather it is to be in Christ and relying upon Him and upon His strength.  The challenge just helps us realize the necessity of putting off the strange armor of the old man and putting on the whole armor of God.  David understood:    

Then Saul clothed David with his armor. He put a helmet of bronze on his head and clothed him with a coat of mail, and David strapped his sword over his armor. And he tried in vain to go, for he had not tested them. Then David said to Saul, I cannot go with these, for I have not tested them. So David put them off.   Then he took his staff in his hand and chose five smooth stones from the brook and put them in his shepherd's pouch. His sling was in his hand, and he approached the Philistine.  (1 Samuel 17:38-40)

We really can’t do much better than to conclude with David’s example, for he, too, faced a giant: 

Then David said to the Philistine, You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.  This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head.   And will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear.  For the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you into our hand.  (1 Samuel 17:45-47)

There were twelve spies.  Ten spoke of the giants and the fortified cites.  Two, Joshua and Caleb, dismissed the fears.  Like David, they knew that the battle was the Lord’s and that they need not dwell upon themselves and their own inadequacies. 

Our fears, especially during tough times, can loom large.  Just remember, our Father can beat up their father.