Monthly Archives: July 2019

"And the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7

I'm fairly sure it's not an official DSM diagnosis, but I believe many of us suffer from just plain craziness. Are you crazy? Before you answer no let's dig into the notion of craziness for a minute.

The English word "crazy" appears to be derived from a Middle English word meaning "to crush." In turn, that old word likely derives from the French word "ecraser" which means "to crush, break, or shatter." While you may not be completely crushed, broken, or shattered, judging from your schedules and general spiritual temperament, many of you can honestly say that you are at least a little rattled. Some of you have definitely crossed the line into full-blown brokenness. Craziness does come in degrees.

Life fractures all of us in many ways, and it can completely shatter us sometimes. I think we operate in this broken world with a kind of baseline craziness, and we're often pushed over the threshold into being fully cracked up.

Occasional craziness is a nuisance, but chronic craziness is spiritually debilitating. Fear is the underlying disorder that gives rise to all the surface-level expressions of craziness. You may imagine controversies, magnify disputes, rehearse or create angry conversations, become unreasonably impatient with only the slightest provocation, or complain regularly. On the other end of the emotional spectrum, you feel apathetic, dull, tired, afraid, or alienated.

Sometimes when teaching about craziness I would illustrate by taking a dinner plate, wrapping it in a towel, and hitting with a mallet. "This is your life" and "This is your crazy life." Craziness removes the wholeness of life, its integrity, and purpose. So we need something or Someone to put all the pieces together.

The solution lies in maintaining your connection with the God of peace. Paul wrote about a process of letting all your requests be made known to God. We all love that idea! When Lauren was about eight I'd taught her the ACTS acronym for how to pray (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication). She said quite seriously "I have a lot of supplications."

Lest we treat God like a cosmic Santa Claus, however, Paul added that we are to make these supplications "with thanksgiving." Gratitude is such a magnet for blessings.

But it's the result we want to focus on. Paul concluded this section with "And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." God's peace restores wholeness to our logical selves and emotional selves, both sides of the brain. We end up with a clear head for thinking and a warm heart for loving.

What's more, there is a certain irrationality to this peace. It passes all understanding. I've often heard from people in crazy times "I have peace." Sometimes they're puzzled by it. Give God a chance in the middle of the worst storm, and He will show up.

The word "peace" in Greek and in Hebrew fundamentally means "wholeness." So it is peace we need to quiet our craziness, and the God of peace provides a way for us to receive it. In fact, it's not just a gift He dispenses. Peace is God's presence that guards us from the craziness of life. Thus Jesus said "My peace I give to you" (John 14:27).

As always, the presence of God in our lives is the key. Even though we may understand 1/1000 of a percent what that fully means, it is stupendously true. It's why we can have peace.

In another very important program of my life, I've learned that when I'm agitated or doubtful, right at that moment, I should pause and pray. Sometimes I get foolishly practical and try to control or solve the craziness on my own. That simply never works in the deep places of my heart and soul. When I pray, however, I've never notfelt a sense of peace and found an eventual solution.

Try it. When something happens today that threatens to push you over the edge, pause, pray, and ask God to guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. I'm sure you'll find peace and be a little less crazy.

Grace and peace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

July 28, 2019

"Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin and gave the lad a drink." Genesis 21:19

Imagine looking through a paper towel tube like you did when you were a kid. What you see is a very limited circle of reality. Now keep that in mind as we fill in some backstory.

Hagar is the woman in this verse. She was Abraham's concubine, a "gift" from Sarah, his wife, to bear him a child. As a practical aside here, wives don't do this. Husbands don't suggest it. In case there are any doubts, we discourage this practice today. Email me directly if you have any questions.

Over 3500 years ago, however, this was not an unusual practice. Sarah was in a rush to try and fulfill God's promise to make a great nation from Abraham. Because she was barren, Sarah took matters into her own hands. Her impatience brought a great deal of heartache to many, many generations.

In the inevitable jealousy that followed, Sarah drove Hagar and her child away. In the harsh wilderness near Beersheba, Hagar ran out of water, laid her child under a bush so that he might die in the shade, and moved off a small distance so she too might die.

The Bible tells us God heard the cries of the child and sent an angel to assure Hagar of her survival, and then we come to the verse quoted above, "God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water."

Look carefully at the verse again. Do you get the impression that God miraculously created a spring there in the wilderness? No. The wording suggests that God simply made her aware of the well that was always there. Her grief, fear, hopelessness, etc. had blinded her to God's presence, providence, and provision

Pain in its various forms has a constricting effect on faith. We end up with a paper towel tube view of life that allows us to look only at our troubles. In our little circle of reality are all our fears, resentments, doubts, and complaints. What's more we want other people to look through our paper towel tube. That little circle consumes us.

The Scripture often presents faith in terms of seeing. Light and dark are related common themes. Jesus' healings of the blind have a metaphorical meaning. Paul wrote about our need for insight and that the "eyes of our hearts" may be enlightened so that we can see all that God has for us.

During the darkest time of my life I felt alone and hopeless. The circle of my reality shrank until all I saw was genuine despair. The recovery of my faith and joy began with a simple prayer something like "God I feel lost, and I need You now." I soon felt something I can only describe as a breath. It was as if the Spirit whispered "I am here. You are not alone. Let's walk back to the light." And I saw again.

Pain can shrink our field of view so that our pain is all we see. It becomes an all-consuming reality. Faith, however, expands our view and reveals God's wonder, beauty, and light even in the midst of the darkness. That is the wonder of it all really. Through the lens of faith God transforms our pain, so that pain, instead of being a proof of God's inexistence becomes the means to see Him most clearly.

Our greatest need is not for God to create something new as much as it is for God to simply show us Himself and what He's already provided. The well of Living Water is always there. Your need is met. You just need to look again. So, maybe your prayer this week should be for God to take away your paper towel tube.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

July 21, 2019

"What is man that Thou are mindful of him?" Psalm 8:4

Does the night sky make you feel insignificant? Most people reading this have a very limited access to the night sky, our city lights washing out all but a relative few bright points. But when you had a chance to see the vastness of our galaxy, perhaps even seeing the slash of the Milky Way across the night sky, did you feel small? That would be understandable. But did you feel insignificant? That's hazardous.

In his book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil de Grasse Tyson tells of a planetarium in New York that takes people on a journey from the surface of the earth to the edge of the cosmos. Within a month of the opening he received a letter from an Ivy League psychology professor who studied things that make people feel insignificant. He said that when he viewed the show he experienced a dramatic sense of smallness and insignificance. He wanted to administer a before-and-after questionnaire to assess the depths of depression people experienced from viewing the show. Dr. Tyson eventually proposes "the cosmic perspective" as a solution, and explicitly states that this perspective must not be religious.

Contrast that with the response of a man whose vocation early in life required him to be outside at night, so he literally spent untold hours looking up. He lived in a time undimmed by any city lights, and he actually considered this question of smallness and insignificance that plagued the professor. "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" In other words, with all of this "bigness" how can God even notice me in my smallness?

David's answer, however, was far different from the professor's. "Thou hast created man a little lower than the angels." The night sky produced a feeling of religious awe in him that led to a sense of profound significance. His religious faith was integral to his feelings of self-worth and having a valued place in the universe.

Psalm 19 is another astronomical psalm and is a marvelous study in the healthy relationship between scientific knowledge and religious belief. David's curiosity and observations led him to both wonderful insights about nature and deeper theological convictions.

That combination has interested me from a very early age when I had telescopes, microscopes, and chemistry sets. Discovery for me has always been tinged with religious awe. And my theological convictions have always led me to want to discover and know (the word science is from the Latin word for knowledge - that's a good thing!). What concerns me today is the culturally binary attempt to dispense with the former while embracing only the latter.

Chesterton said that before you tear down a fence you need to find out why it was there in the first place. What are the spiritual, intellectual, and even social implications of getting rid of religion?

When we lose the capacity for religious awe, or even lose the willingness to respect the role of religion, we begin worshiping lower things. Without question religious participation is on the decline in our country. This is particularly true among young adults, which has actually always been the case. People tend to gravitate toward matters of faith as they grow older. That's been true as long as I've been watching the statistics.

What's changed however is a growing impression that religious convictions are not only obsolete or anti-intellectual, but downright dangerous. This phenomenon accelerated tremendously after the 9/11 attacks. Equating religious beliefs with fanaticism became vogue, and thus "militant atheism" was born.

I see this regularly. A student from a university I'm familiar with recently told me one of his professors stated one of his goals in the class was to expose the lunacy of religious belief. I don't recall the details other than the class had nothing to do with religion at all. The supposition, however, is clear: religion is dangerous, we've outgrown it, and we need to rid ourselves of it. In the professor's case he went so far as "I need to rid it from you."

Shouldn't the real distinction be between good and bad religion, instead of religion or no religion at all? We can easily point to screeching failures of both religious people and religious institutions, but do we really want to get rid of the whole idea? That would be akin to my saying I don't like art because I don't like Andy Warhol.

What do we lose if we frivolously dispense with the notion of a Creator and the religious structures that seek to teach us about Him and to connect us to Him? (the word religion literally means to reconnect - that's a good thing!). Again, when we lose sight of the Highest we end up worshiping lesser things. Thus, for example, I fear too many of our young people are graduating from our great academic institutions with empty souls, meaningless degrees, mountains of debt, but a passion for recycling.

To return to my art analogy, to witness the beauty of such artistry everywhere around me calls deeply for me to believe in an Artist. Religion simply helps me to develop the rituals, rites, and rhythms that help me understand and serve the Artist. In that belief I find my truest significance.

My modest weekly suggestion for all ills, both personal and societal, is to emphasize the great necessity for grace. Whatever your religious impulses might be, grace, at the very least, should make you feel accepted by God and significant to Him. If we accept at our deepest levels the great fact of God's love for us then not only will we feel significant, we will stop hating one another. Think of how much better our world, our nation, our communities would be if we simply stopped hating one another?

Therefore, if we lose religious awe, I truly believe we lose ourselves and the impetus for us to love one another.

I honestly see no prospect for a better anything apart from grace, and that begins with me. When I look into the night sky I may feel small, but I don't feel insignificant. God created me a little lower than the angels. With that conviction I get a better sense of personal value and the value of all people. Far from being an impediment to any real social gain, my religion, founded upon grace, leads me to love and serve God and love and serve you, whoever you may be.

Do you feel insignificant? God knows and loves you. Now with that certainty go love and tell someone else. That, I'm sure, is God's great aim for us all.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

July 14, 2019

"Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces enduring strength, and you must let that enduring strength have its full effect, that you be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." James 1:2-4

I have a friend whose son is a professional pitcher, working his way through the many levels of the minor leagues in the hope of making it to The Show, Major League Baseball. He's had all the ups and downs of a young, aspiring athlete. Success in an early level means a promotion to the next level with better hitters and bigger challenges. He's apparently working hard and has good prospects of success. We're all pulling for him.

One day I asked my friend how her son was doing, and in the course of giving me a brief run-down she said "His attitude is 'you either win or learn.'"

Win or learn. I really like that.

How different we might be if we had a "win or learn" attitude for any pursuit in life. In fact, I believe this is really solid theology and goes to the heart of what James had in mind.

When it comes to life, not just sports, I'm fully committed to winning. I like to win. For example, I like good health. When I have some nagging injury (a loss), I go to my doctor or PT (or call my son who is a PT, very good, and totally free) and try to get well (a win). To date, I've had really solid success in winning at health.

I like solid professional success. I enjoyed a long career as a pastor (a win) and enjoy my present career as an interventionist and speaker (another win). Now I haven't always gotten my way, and there have been those rareexceptions of an ornery church member or two (losses), but I'm in a good place professionally (back to winning).

You get the picture. We all want to win these often significant "competitions" in life. They can be as minor as the air conditioner working all the way up to healthy and happy children and grandchildren, for example.

When we lose, our natural and understandable response is to try to get back to winning. We want to fix things, and, for the most part, we're pretty good at that. But if we meet a trial only with the desire to fix, then we are going to miss a very important principle: we only learn through the losses.

Now you're probably mentally trying to come up with all kinds of objections, but never try to live by the objections. There is a certain way the spiritual world works. God takes our trials, our setbacks, our sufferings and teaches us something very powerful that we could learn no other way. If we expect nothing but unbroken success, then we risk becoming spoiled children who just really can't handle real life.

That's what James had in mind with the staggering verse that we are to "count it all joy when we meet various trials." No one wins all the time and winning all the time is not even the point of life. Growth is the point. Growth in faith, in love, in joy, in peace. James had learned through a lifetime of being with Jesus that in every loss God includes enough grace to get us through and a blessing that comes no other way. God makes certain that on the scoreboard of eternity, no one ever needs to lose.

You're either facing or will face another loss. Try to avoid the tendency to curse pain and sink into self-pity. Instead look for the collateral grace and blessing that God tucks into every loss. The endurance and faith you gain are the real and eternal wins.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

July 6, 2019