Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot

Too private to post what I had typed out… what a longing.  Read the book, and follow this man who followed his Savior.

My Little Brother Greg

My, Father, what a work You have done in my little brother Greg.  Perhaps we will live and minister and die together in a far-off land reaching the unreached.  That would have been unimaginable just two years back.  He is so alive now.  Alive from the dead.  ”Our chains fell off, our heart was free, we rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”  His heart is beautiful.  Please, never let it get ugly with pride.  Keep it blooming with grace and humility.  Thank You for saving us.

The Death of a Man: A Meditation on Real Service

Long posts lately, I’m noticing.  Too long-winded, I suppose.  Long-worded, I mean.  Many-worded, to be more accurate.  Ah, the pursuit of clarity never ends.  It takes a lot of work to be precise, doesn’t it?  I’ll put that one aside for now lest I become many-worded again (although the more I think about it, working hard in order to be precise is a very important thing).  Now for some journaling whiplash:

I think that you can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a person is truly a seasoned servant when you and others stop noticing their service.  Not to say that at some point in this life we become wholly Christ-like.  But when people stop noticing that you serve and stop thanking you profusely when you serve and start assuming that you’ll serve and start treating you like a servant, then I think that you are beginning to understand and live biblical service.

How did Jesus serve?  Constantly.  People just came to him and expected Him to help them and expected Him to heal them and expected Him to protect them and expected Him to provide for them and expected Him to stand boldly when everyone else was running away.  Because of the way that He had lived among them and how He had served them, they just assumed His service.  And that’s when the dying comes.  That’s when the pain starts.  That’s when the pride and the self-pity and the attention-seeking manipulation starts to rear its ugly head.  That’s when the battle starts.  And what a battle it is!

For me, it’s easy to serve when my service is noticed or when I’m thanked for it or when I enjoy what I’m doing.  But it’s like culture shock for the soul when my service is unnoticed, when my late nights and early mornings go unknown, when I’m asked to do something I’m not good at or don’t enjoy or that “someone else should have done.”  And it’s absolutely brutal when I’m treated like a servant — when it’s just assumed that I’ll help.  But isn’t that true service?  What did I expect?

My problem is that I think that when I serve others, I’m stooping down.  And that almost unconscious, back-of-the-mind thought is one of the biggest, most subtle lies of the heart, and one of the most perverted, subversive deceptions that stands in stark contrast to the concept of biblical service.  Christ stooped down to serve me (Philippians 2).  But I have never stooped to serve anyone.  I’m already a servant.  That’s my job.  That’s my role.  That’s my place.  And if by the grace of God I can ever be trained to think that way, I will then be a true servant.  It’s my job to stack the chairs.  It’s my role to stay up until 3am at the hospital.  It’s my place to give lots of ‘my’ (God’s) money to the church.  It’s my privileged place to do whatever needs to be done for whoever needs it.  It’s not special.  It’s not spectacular.  It’s not worthy of praise.

I ought not to notice that I’m serving.  Ever.  And I pray that I might serve so much and so heartily and so joyfully and so constantly that others will virtually cease to notice.  I pray that it might just become who I am.  Does a servant marvel and wonder at the fact that he’s doing his job?  Of course not.  He just does it.  Because he knows that that’s what he is.  He isn’t impressed by the hardships he is asked to overcome.  He doesn’t pity himself that he has to get in line last because he’s the servant.  He doesn’t inwardly whine when he’s told (not asked) to stay up late and clean up.  Learn to serve, Gunner.  Learn to really serve.  And realize that when you notice how much you’re serving, you’re not really serving.  You’re *acting* like you’re a servant, but you don’t really believe that you are one.  Christ lowered Himself to serve me.  But I have no high place from which to lower myself.  I am low.  I am base.  I am a servant.  Thank You, Father, that I am a servant (not just a servant, but at least a servant).  What a wonderful thing to be.  What a wonderful Master to serve.  And what a reward awaits those who “die every day” in His service.

May we be so blessed as to become people whom others always expect a “yes” answer from when they ask if we have time to help (and who will give our time, even when we don’t have it — *especially* when we don’t have it); whose sacrifices are so constant that they begin to go unnoticed; whose service is so joyful that we stop being thanked; whose hearts are so ready that we never hesitate to say “sure” right when someone asks; who believe we actually are servants; whose broad and full and pure smiles say “my pleasure” louder than words ever could; who recognize and hate our self-pitying pride; who learn to recognize needs so precisely and so quickly that we don’t need to be asked to help; and who truly believe that he who loses his life every day for Jesus’ sake and for the Gospel’s sake will find it.

“Selfless.”  “Sacrifice.”  “Service.”  So often talked about, so often praised, so often preached about, but how often truly and wholly lived?  So many biblical concepts and commands and callings are so much deeper than I know them to be.  Teach me to think, Father.  Teach me to see.  Teach me to serve.

“Which of you, having a slave plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come immediately and sit down to eat’?  But will he not say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, and properly clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink; and afterward you may eat and drink’?  He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were commanded, does he?  So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done’” (Luke 17:7-10).

Every Hero But Jesus

I watched “The Day After Tomorrow” with my father-in-law today.  Something stuck out to me:

There is a noticeable and heavy and seemingly inherent respect that resides in the human heart for those who put themselves and their well-being aside for the sake of another person.  A father committing to come and find his son no matter what the cost; a nurse staying behind with a child cancer patient when everyone else was evacuating and the last ride was leaving; and a traveler cutting the rope by which he was hanging so that he wouldn’t drag his partners down to their deaths with him.  These were sentimental and emotional and weighty moments in the theater.  And before we laugh off such sentimentality and emotions and soul-heaviness simply because it was produced by a movie, I must ask, “Why do we feel that way about someone laying down his life on behalf of another person?”  Was that feeling really produced only by the movie and the scene and the circumstance and the music, or also by something within the soul?

God has put His law on our hearts.  We are disfigured and distorted and mutated by sin, yet were still created in His image, and we were designed with a conscience upon which the truth and character God is unerasably written.  To one extent or another, we just know that some things are good and right.  So good and so right.  Putting others’ interests before your own, thinking of others above yourself, laying your life down for a friend or a son or someone in distress, holding tenaciously to a promise made to take care of someone in need come hell or high water — these are so very good.  They are right.  “Greater love has no one than this, that a man would lay down his life for his friend.”  True, sacrificial, selfless, risk-taking, life-giving love is etched upon the human heart as being virtuous and noble and right.  And to do otherwise is horrifically wrong.  The natural response of the audience to these virtuous acts was the fascinating aspect of the movie (or at least a few parts of the movie).

The frustrating part was that the greatest example of true, sacrificial, selfless, risk-taking, life-giving love, the Lord Jesus Christ, is hated by the same people.  The Gospels are littered with this kind of mercy-driven boldness.  They are overflowing with Christ’s love and compassion and commitment and tenacity and sacrifice and pain on behalf of others.  Yet the world hates Him.  How can we get emotional and sentimental and have our hearts respond to the noble selflessness of an actor in risking or giving his life to save another person and then see the person of Christ and reject Him?  Is His love not more amazing and beautiful and desireable than the noblest of heroes and the most pain-embracing of rescuers?  How can we adore the life-giving hero (even an acting hero) and yawn at the bloody Savior of the world?  If it is right and good for any man to lay down his life out of pure love for another individual, how much more is it shockingly beautiful for Christ to willingly undergo all that He underwent for His *enemies*?  How can it be?

I find only one answer: blindness.  We cannot see.  Until regeneration, until the new birth, we are blind and deaf and mute and calloused.  We cannot see the glory of His sacrificial and perfect heroism, we cannot hear His constantly compassionate words, we cannot speak a word to His honor, and we cannot feel the multi-colored penetrations of His love into our world.  We are dead.

But once He gave me eyes to see and ears to hear and a mouth to speak and a soul to feel and desire and have holy affections, how glorious He appears!  Christ is the hero; Christ is center stage; Christ is the life-giver, giving His life for us and thereby giving His life to us.  The heroes of “The Day After Tomorrow,” noble though they be, must all fall at the feet of the crucified and risen Christ.  His love is wonderful, His tenacity is stirring, His sacrifice is inspiring.  May the world have eyes to see with spiritual eyes what they see in the theater with human eyes.  Open our eyes…