Category: Leading and Helping When People Want to Stay Stuck

How can we use our limited resources to make the biggest impact in the world?

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Pursuing Excellence

When you think of excellence, who do you think of? Lebron James, Albert Einstein, Muhammed Ali, Thomas Edison, or Ludwig Beethoven? All of these people accomplished great things.

The reality is, though, that most of us won’t be pro basketball players or boxers or famous scientists or compose musical numbers that people will enjoy listening to centuries after our deaths. No matter how hard we work, pray, or think, these things will not happen.

However, the door to an excellence that is greater than anything these men accomplished is wide open to everyone. That is the excellence of reflecting the glory of God!

How do we do this? We do it through virtue. Virtue is an excellent trait that shows the nobility and glory of humans and reflects the glory of God.

Humans were created in the image of God to reflect the glory of God, but this glory is diminished by original and actual sin. Corruption rather than virtue more often characterizes the human race. The goal of the Christian faith is to restore human beings to their original glory, excellence, and virtue.

What does this look like? The Apostle Peter provides us a beautiful description in his opening exhortation in 2 Peter 1:3-11. He begins by telling us that we now have everything we need for a godly life. How? Through God’s own virtue (same word as virtue in the Greek, v. 3). It is His own excellence that provides for us what we need to live a godly life.

When we think of a godly life, it is important that we think not merely of doing the right things or not doing the wrong things. It is about who we are. It is about characteristics that are excellent and noble that reflect the glory of God, participating, as it were, in the divine nature (see 2 Pet. 1:4).

After laying that groundwork, Peter explains what those characteristics are. He says, “For this very reason, make every effort, be totally zealous, to add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge self-control and to self-control endurance and to endurance godliness and to godliness brotherly love and to brotherly love, a love that reflects God’s love for lost sinners (agape love).”

This list does not exhaust the excellent character traits that reflect the glory of God, but they provide a helpful overview.

When we think of these characteristics, it is easy for us to miss that they are all about joy and happiness. When we think of God, we should see Him as being eternally content and happy. He has everything He needs for total and perfect happiness. He is the One who is creative and delights in making things. He is so full of goodness that His goodness cannot but overflow.

That’s the excellence that we should pursue. We should seek to be happy and joyful people because we are filled with the sufficiency of God. We delight in the good that God is and the good that He creates. We are filled with joy because we expect good things from Him, and so we don’t need to desire things that are not good or reasonable for us (self-control). Like God, we move out of this sufficiency to create and to love, even the most unlovable.

That is the glory that is available to each and every human being and that God offers to us as a gift.

If it is so available, why do we not see more people who reflect that glory? Because it involves serious effort. It takes zeal. We have to work at it. This does not mean simply trying harder. It means enlightening our minds through the means of grace, engaging prayerfully in the world with a new mindset, and enlisting folk to help us and serve as examples.

At the same time, it’s not an effort that is beyond normal human reach. It is available to us. His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life. The burden and yoke of Jesus is a light one that actually gives us rest and gives us an excellence that reflects the transcendent glory of God. The power, promises, and presence of God are always available. We can become people of virtue, people whose character reflects the glory of God.

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Doing All the Good We Can

Why did God put us on this green earth? To do all the good that we can possibly do.

What else could our purpose be? What else would we want to do? Get as much wealth as possible? Travel as many places as possible? Make it to retirement? Reproduce? Play as many video games as possible?

To me, it seems self-evident that we are here to do as much good as we can possibly do. So, why don’t we live that way? Because fulfilling our potential to do good takes time and effort, and a lot of our body and brain chemistry tells us to enjoy the thing that is most pleasurable in the moment. The emotion of what we should do in the moment often contradicts our long-term purpose.

So, how do we overcome the sluggishness of our body and brain and get out of the ruts that would keep us from fulfilling our potential?

We need to start by getting clarity on the fact that we want to do as much good as possible. This is not our default. We have to get a vision for it. We have to take it in deeply.

Once we do, we have a direction. But then, how do we do the most good we can possibly do?

Here’s my suggestion for doing as much good as possible: focus on yourself, focus on others, focus on a bigger vision, and recognize it takes time. This list is not necessarily chronological. They can and should overlap, but all four need to be present in order for us to do all the good that we can possibly do.

First, Focus on Yourself
It’s somewhat ironic that you have to focus on yourself in order to do as much good as possible, but it’s true. Why? Because whatever you do, you have to use your self as the tool. If that tool is not in good condition, you won’t be able to do much effectively.

Certainly, there are wrong ways to focus on yourself. It is wrong to focus on yourself if it means fulfilling whatever desires you have in the moment, making yourself as comfortable as possible in the moment, and reacting to whatever anyone does in the moment. In this sense, we have to die to ourselves in order to live.

The right way to focus on ourselves is seeking to become the human being that God made us to be: to become as healthy, strong, virtuous, and skilled as we can be.

Focusing on ourselves means attending to our relationship with God. Christianity offers to us unparalleled and often unused resources to ground our sense of self in a God who loves us and cares for us. The death and resurrection of Christ provide a way to put the guilt of the past in the past and empower us for the new life of the future. Without these resources, we will look for love, acceptance, security, and power in all the wrong places. Our relationship with God comes first. The more we are rooted in God’s love and grace, the more we have to give to the world around us.

Second, we become more loving people. We stop reacting to what everyone around us does and learn to relate to others with the virtues of patience, kindness, compassion, and wisdom. The more loving we are, the more good we have to give to the people around us.

Third, we develop our ability to work and serve. This includes health and physical exercise, the development of our gifts, time management, knowledge, etc. The more of these abilities we have, the more we have to give for the good of the world around us.

Fourth, we embrace enjoying God’s creation. We learn to experience the good things around us. This means more than just going outside and looking around (though that’s a good idea!). It also means developing our capacity for enjoyment of creation and culture. For example, you can only experience the joy of what your body can do in exercise by exercising it. You can only enjoy the potential of music by training you ear or hands to experience it better. The more we can really enjoy the world God has created, the more we have to give for the good of the world around us.

Focus on Others
The next aspect of doing good is to focus on others. We don’t want to just do good for ourselves. We want to do good to all people, especially the household of faith (Gal. 6:10).

This means we start to think about bringing those things we have developed in ourselves to other people. We think about how to promote a relationship with God to those around us. We reach out to those who need to experience a loving touch. We start to use our skills to the benefit of others. We take our enjoyment of the world and share it with others.

Think about an ability to cook and plan a good meal. You can do this for yourself and get joy out of it. You can also do it to throw a party for your friends. Then, you are doing good to others as well as to yourself. When you go further to throw a party for those who are lonely or who need connection, then you are doing more good. That is what it means to focus on others.

Focus on a Bigger Vision
But don’t just get caught up in the day to day doing of good. Think long-term. Think of what you could really accomplish if you worked at it over a long period of time (I owe some of my clarity on this to Jordan Peterson, as you can read in my article here).

Think about promoting a relationship with God. You can do this in a very simple way with those whom you meet day by day. If this is your passion, though, you may want to develop this much further. You will want to understand the people among whom you want to promote God’s grace. You will want to understand the Bible a lot better and understand how people have reflected on the Bible through the ages. You will want to be a better communicator. You will want to learn what platform you can use to promote a relationship with God. You will want learn to be a better friend so you can connect with people because that is generally the best context for helping people connect with God. All these things take time.

To fulfill our potential to do good, it takes a lot of preparation and effort. To do that requires a bigger vision, a long-term vision, of what God and will do through us and in us.

Recognize It Takes Time
It is important to remember that doing all the good that we can do will take time. We have to develop and grow as an individuals. It will involve following some dead ends and making mistakes. It will involve hard work and often suffering.

Think of a friendship. We can’t just build a friendship in one day. It takes time to get used to each other, to walk through difficulties together, and to work through differences. At the end of a long period of time, we can have really strong friendships. These friendship are a tremendous good and service for both friends. However, it takes a lot of time to build these lasting friendships.

Like relationships, developing the skills and building the organizations to do greater good take time. However, if we keep planting seeds and keep the vision for doing good in front of us, we can, by God’s grace, make a lot of progress.

And what would be a better investment of our time? What better could we say at the end of our lives than that we have done all the good that we could do?

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The Lesson of Saint Patrick’s Day

The Roman Empire in the West was crumbling. In A.D. 383, the leaders of Rome made a strategic decision. They would give up on Britian, the homeland of Patrick, and leave them to their fate.

The results were inevitable. The poorer nations around Britain invaded and took land, treasures, and slaves. When Irish marauders landed on the beach of Western Britain, they demolished Patrick’s town, stole all they could, and took Patrick captive as a slave back to Ireland.*

There, Patrick had a terrible life. He was cold, lonely, and isolated as he watched over his master’s sheep. Patick’s parents raised him in a Christian home. He knew the faith of his fathers but had not made it his own. In captivity, he cried out to the Lord and found comfort and solace in a newfound relationship with Christ.

One day, he believed he heard a voice telling him that his ship was ready. He walked around 200 miles to the coast. There, he joined some traders headed for the European mainland.

Once Patrick returned to the Empire, he trained to be a minister of the Christian faith. Eventually, he returned to Britain. There, he made a rather remarkable decision. He would go back to Ireland to tell them about his faith and urge them to turn to the one, true God.

This was no easy task. The Irish were not asking him to come. They were a warlike people who had no qualms about pillaging towns and enslaving people. When Patrick went, he was often in danger and had to pay the Irish chieftans for safe conduct through their lands.

What would drive Patrick to do this? Somewhere along the line, Patrick had taken into his heart the command of Jesus, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Mt. 28:19-20a). He believed that Jesus had commanded His followers to make disciples of every nation.

He not only believed that God wanted him to go, he also wholeheartedly trusted the promise of Matthew 28:20, “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” He would not go alone. This sentiment is commemorated in his famous “breastplate” or prayer: “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me; Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me; Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me . . .” This expressed his confidence and trust in the power and presence of the Triune God as he stepped forward into the uncertainty of his missionary endeavor.

Even though he did not know how it all would work out, he was optimistic that these efforts would be successful. He had in his mind the promises of the Old Testament such as, “I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Is. 49:6, compare this to what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 15). Patrick explains this in his “Confession,” which you can download here or read online here.

The point is that Patrick believed in a mission that was more important than his own peace, safety, or comfort. God blessed his efforts, and Patrick had tremendous success as a missionary, essentially turning the entire island of Ireland from paganism to Christianity.

He concluded his “Confession” by encouraging others to take up the same vision:

Now I have given a simple account to my brethren and fellow servants who have believed me because of what I said and still say in order to strengthen and confirm your faith. Would that you, too, would strive for greater things and do better! This will be my glory, for a wise son is the glory of his father.

His hope was that the new disciples would have the same vision for mission that he did and do even more.

Thomas Cahill in his book How the Irish Saved Civilization continued the story. The Irish sent missionaries to Scotland and the pagan conquerors of Britain. They also became the main preservers of the literature of the Roman world passing it on to future generations. This only stopped with the Viking invasions several centuries later, but, by then, other monasteries throughout Europe had taken up the work.

It all started with Saint Patrick’s vision. He believed that God could and would change the world through him and through anyone who would get that same vision. Cahill’s story tells us that many of the Irish did just that.

This also tells us what we should take away from Saint Patrick’s Day. Patrick wanted all those who read of his example to have a vision that would lead them to “strive for greater things and do better!” My hope is that the example of Patrick and the Irish will inspire you to do just that.

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*For another telling of his story, see Mary Cagney’s article Christianity Today’s Christian History magazine. You can read the article here. This article was helpful to me in preparing this article.

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A Bigger Vision: What the Lord’s Prayer Hasn’t Taught Us About Prayer

“Our Father who art in heaven . . .” Thus begins one of the most famous prayers in history. Ever since Jesus taught it to His disciples, Christians around the world have prayed it every day.

In spite of that, there is something very strange about the Lord’s Prayer. In our society especially, that’s not how most Christians pray.

Most prayers are about sickness, jobs, or disasters. These are legitimate prayers, and they fall under one of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” The address of the Lord’s Prayer “Our Father who art in heaven” teaches us that we have a Father in heaven who is both willing and able to help us. We should never fear to bring to our Father anything that we are struggling with.

The only problem is that there are five more petitions that don’t figure so prominently in our prayer lives. The 5th and 6th petitions are about personal transformation. We pray that He will empower us to forgive others, will enable us to experience His forgiveness, and will extricate us from evil. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd petitions are about God’s kingdom, prayers for the transformation of the world into the place God intended it to be. The Lord’s Prayer contains a very big vision of worldwide transformation that brings God and man together in prosperity, joy, and communion, all to God’s glory!

But does this grand, worldwide vision characterize our prayers? No matter how many times I have asked for prayer requests that fit this character of the Lord’s Prayer, people always respond to my call for prayer requests with: “Pray for Aunt Hilda’s broken toe.” Nothing wrong with that in itself, we’re just missing most of the Lord’s intention for prayer. Why?

It seems to me that there are primarily two things that drive us to prayer: suffering and vision. Consider suffering. People pray when they experience suffering or when they fear that they will suffer. They pray when they fear for their job, health, or relationships. They pray when they get sick or experience loss. And that’s good! Prayer is a great place to go when we experience or fear suffering. It connects us to our heavenly Father and gets us in touch with the One who can help!

The other driver of prayer is vision. When we have a vision for things that is way beyond what we can do, we begin to pray. When we want to start a business, children’s ministry, or a church, we pray. When we have a vision to equip a village with clean water, raise money for a new building, or start a new family, we pray. Prayer grows out of the vision.

May I suggest that we do not pray for moral and worldwide transformation because a vision for these things has not gripped our heart? That’s what the Lord’s Prayer still hasn’t taught us: a bigger vision for what God can and will do in our lives and hearts and in our communities and churches. When we have that bigger vision, we will pray. When we pray, we will not only repeat the words of the Lord’s Prayer, we will bring the spirit of the words into all our prayers. Then, we will have learned the lesson of the Lord’s Prayer.

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Encouragement for Parents

Parenting is a scary thing. You have responsibility for a precious little life, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. The atmosphere of parenting is anxiety, and the family is a sort of anxiety generator.

The trouble with anxiety is that it is an emotion that is not always (not often?) based on reality. Anxiety leads us away from thinking and to action that is rooted in emotion rather than reality. Sometimes, anxieties about people become self-fulfilling prophecies. We may have had parents whom we thought were too strict. This may have led us or our siblings to act in ways that led to harm. Out of fear of this, we may not set boundaries for our children. This may end up harming them. So, then our kids go overboard emphasizing boundaries. Anxiety has a way of working through the generations.

I have seven kids from ages 5 to 16. I have tried to be a less anxious parent without disengaging from my children. As I have tried to look at reality and not just go by my feelings, I have seen quite a few things that have encouraged me. I would like to share that with you here.

The number one thing is to relax about parenting. In spite of the challenges of our times, parents do have a big influence on their kids. Most kids figure out how to deal with life and become relatively productive members of society. The long-term trends and statistics for parenting are good. There are exceptions, but the overall picture is relatively positive. You can influence your kids in a positive direction. Continue reading “Encouragement for Parents”

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