Monthly Archives: August 2015

“But Jesus did not trust Himself to them . . . for He Himself knew what was in man.” John 2:24-25

These words come after Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem for the Passover. After performing some signs (John’s word for miracles) some people believed in Jesus, but apparently their faith was based solely on the signs and not on the person. In return for this shallow faith, Jesus literally did not have faith (this is the Greek word behind the translation “trust”) in them. This is an important phrase. In other words, Jesus knew people could be shallow and fickle. He was not surprised when they acted according to their nature. Thus, He “knew what was in man.”

But He never gave up on anyone. He never stopped working to bring out the best in man. He told the parable of a father’s love for a prodigal son. He accepted Peter after his denials. He called Paul to be an apostle even after he persecuted the church. Jesus went to a cross because in addition to knowing how bad our fallen nature could be, He also knew how sublime our redeemed nature could be. He died to make that possible, and lives to bring it to the surface of our lives. Repeatedly.

You also, in part, “know what is in man.” Think about it. Your difficult person may have done some genuinely bad things. People tend to do that. They have disappointed you. They have not returned your love. In fact, they may have returned curses for your love! Here is the point: you cannot be surprised when people act according to their lower instincts. We all do it regularly. It is in our nature at times to be irritable, dishonest, arrogant, etc. What is your response?

The passage above teaches us that while Jesus was never surprised by what we are capable of, He was also never disillusioned by people, and that is our goal. We must not trust everyone. Even Jesus did not do that! However, you are expected to love everyone, and you can do that through the power of Christ in you.

As in all matters, your response to challenging and difficult people is far more important than changing the challenging and difficult person. Your mission is not to change anyone, but simply be an agent of God’s grace. Trusting the person to God protects you, and is, in fact, the only reasonable response. When I am mentally wrestling with someone, wishing they would change, expecting them to change, telling other people how they should change, I am burning up a lot of energy. I’m much more at peace when I accept (not approve or endorse behavior) the fact that difficult people are part of life, and trust that grace will lead me home.

The Paradoxical Commandments were originally written by Kent Keith and several versions circulate today. They outline very nicely a grace-filled response when dealing with difficult people:

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

Here are our takeaways: Do not be disillusioned to the point of despair. The residue of our fallen human nature can make for very prickly relationships. Cultivate a gracious love, but try not to be naïve about our shared ability to be prickly. We’re all normal until you get to us, and we can hurt each other badly. One Man gave His life for all us difficult people. Don’t try to be the second. Boundaries are essential, and you’re not the Son of God.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis
August 30, 2015

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

Life sometimes is a grind, a meaningless grind. The chirpy writer of Ecclesiastes put it this way "Nothing is new. Everything is empty. All things are full of weariness."

While not uplifting, these thoughts do have a ring of truth. They reflect the way many people feel on a Sunday afternoon as they get ready for another week of work. Another. Week. Of. Work. And it's going to be hot down here in south Louisiana, again. And people are just as surprised by the heat this year as they were this time last year.

These morbid reflections crystallized into a single word for me this afternoon: "homogeneous." People don't feel divinely unique. They feel as if they are simply part of the mass, part of the matrix, little more than a dot in the Petri dish. The world can make us feel pretty small and overlooked.

David, the battle king with the soul of a poet, would have understood. Out under the stars one evening he felt pretty small. This man who had so many significant spiritual experiences that his story is peppered throughout the Bible, began to wonder if God could possibly know him.

He didn't take long to come up with the answer. God created him, and all people, only a little lower than heavenly beings, and crowned each one of us with glory and honor. Friends, we're at the pinnacle of creation! That eternal reality is far stronger than the previous morbid reflections.

How to convey these impressions to you? What would God say precisely? I thought about the scripture and all the ways God has tried to impress upon us that we, each one of us, is divinely unique. I think the following words represent fairly what God would say to anyone who feels homogenous:

"I know your face. I know your name. I know your past, your present, your future, your eternity. I know everything about you. And I love you. You are important to me. The moment you turn your attention to Me and let me quiet the clamor of your mind, you will hear My whispers. I am present with you always. I Am."

William Osler (d. 1919) was a brilliant Canadian physician, and a founder of Johns Hopkins. He combined a keen mind with a deeply compassionate heart. One day he visited the pediatric ward of a London hospital and watched with delight as a group of children played together at the far side of one room. Then he noticed another small girl, sitting alone on her bed, a doll clutched in her arms. She seemed intensely lonely.

He asked a nurse about the little girl, and she explained that the other children ostracized her. Her mother had died. The father had paid only one visit to her, bringing the doll she now held tightly. Other than that no one had come to visit her. The other children concluded she was unimportant, and, as children can sometimes be quite mean, treated her with disdain.

Osler walked over to her bed. "May I sit down, please?" he asked in a voice loud enough to carry to where the other children were at play. "I can't stay long on this visit," he explained, "but I have wanted to see you so badly."

The little girl brightened. The other children began to notice. For several minutes the physician talked with her, now in quiet, almost secretive tones. He asked about her doll, placed the stethoscope on the dolls chest and appeared to be listening intently. After several moments of making this little girl the center of attention he rose to leave, and raising his voice so the other children could hear he said, "now you won't forget our secret will you? And mind you don't tell anyone." As he left the other children now gathered around the little girl. By this kind physician's attention she had been made to feel special and important.

God wants you to feel special and important, not in a maudlin, self-centered, entitled way. He wants you to know that part of His grace is the remarkable ability to focus on you individually as if you were the only person on earth.

This does not make necessarily make your work easier tomorrow. It won't make traffic smoother. It certainly won't make the days cooler. But I think it does help to know you are important to God, and you are never alone.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis
August 23, 2015

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5

A few weeks ago Leslie and I spent some time in the Shenandoah National Forest in northern Virginia enjoying cooler weather and, of course, the mountains. I love all mountains. They're nature's way of declaring what it can do with a combination of time, pressure, heat, and pure muscle. The Rockies are jagged and young, geologically speaking. Precambrian adolescents at best. The Appalachians beat them by 400 million years or so. The Rockies are brash and tall and full of boasts. The Appalachians were once as tall, but their high peaks long ago washed into the lush valleys that surround and wind their way through the chain.

The Rockies thrill with a majestic energy. The Appalachians whisper a gentle wisdom that the same nature that pushed them up will eventually wear them down. They are accepting of the fact that even the earth recycles. The Rockies offer a powerful thrill. The Appalachians whisper serenity. At this stage in my life, I'm more into serenity.

You can probably tell that I'm an Appalachian type of guy. Stepping under the canopy of hardwoods seems like coming home to me. Leslie and I spent our vacation hiking the trails, touring the caverns, wading in the streams, and taking time to drink in a green so lush it seems to glow.

One stop was at the Grand Caverns. Leslie has done some real life, wild cave, spelunking. I just take tours. The Grand Caverns were splendid, with some of the caverns, well, grand. One of the "rooms" was hundreds of feet long and about 80 feet tall.

Now every cave tour guide is contractually obligated at some point to turn off the lights to demonstrate how complete the darkness is. Our guide turned out the lights and let the darkness settle on us like a thick shroud. Then he lit a candle, and once again my favorite illustration of faith came to light.

Faith is like a candle in a world of darkness. It doesn't have to be especially bright. That little halo of light in the cavern is enough to safely walk out. And no amount of darkness, no matter how complete, can snuff out the light. Light wins. It always wins.

What struck me this time around was that faith has a social aspect to it. Let me explain.

I have faced some dark times in my life, times when my little light went out. I was sitting in the darkness or wandering aimlessly, feeling hopeless and often simply feeling sorry for myself. But I held onto the candle. I never lost faith that God was there.

Then people of faith came to me, with their candles lit. Their light encouraged me. It reminded me. It helped me see. My faith was still a lightless stub, but the good souls around me brought a glow that helped, comforted, and challenged me.

Never underestimate the warm effect of your faith. It doesn't have to burn like a bonfire to encourage someone else. Besides, bonfires only last a short time, and you can't carry one around with you. Nary a bonfire illuminated my darkness. They were all candles of caring from brothers and sisters in Christ.

One other way faith is social. I held onto my candle long enough for my candle to be kindled by another. God almost always uses other people to bless and help me. In fact, I'm not sure He done anything for me that He hasn't used someone else as the agent of His will. God, who in His very nature is social, wants our faith to be social as well.

Each one of us has a candle. If yours is lit, then enjoy that little light. It's all you need to make it through a dark world. And let your light shine. It may help someone else, and God may use it to rekindle the faith of someone you know.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis
August 16, 2015

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9

The movie Titanic came out in 1997. My daughter at the time was nine years old and according to her was “the only person my age not allowed to see it!” Despite her indisputable accuracy, and due to the fact that we, her parents, were obviously social Neanderthals, I would not allow her to go see the movie due to a few racy scenes. Besides I ruined the story for her when I quite inadvertently let slip that the boat sank. Hence she did not need to go see it anyway.

All parents have been in this position multiple times. You withhold an opportunity from a son or daughter they feel is crucial to their socialization. If not allowed to go, they will have few or no friends, or worse the wrong group of friends. And finally the deadliest of labels applies, they will not be popular.

This article is not about parenting, but let me quickly add that parents should never fear the common “but everybody else is doing it argument” as coercion for giving in on an issue. I promise you, other parents are with you, and are looking for support in their position that they are not the only parents not allowing their child to go on an un-chaperoned kindergarten graduation cruise to St. Thomas.

The purpose of this GraceWaves has to do with what we are being prepared for. Neither my daughter nor my son understood my response to their complaints about being left out of the popular group of over-privileged children of chronically self-important parents. I said to them repeatedly: “I am not concerned about your social success in junior high. I am not designing you to peak in high school. I am preparing you for success in the real world.”

At every juncture when I gave that little speech my children stopped and looked at me with a mixture of wonder and gratitude. Their words were something like, “Thank you, father, for your wisdom in not allowing us to go further down this path of dissipation.” Then we hugged and went back to watching The Little Mermaid.

Of course it did not turn out quite like that, but I stand by the point. My greatest concern is that my children learn how to function well in the real world, a world that can be very rough, unfair, and uncaring. Going through tough and unpopular times was unpleasant but necessary for a much higher goal than temporal success or popularity. I could not sacrifice their future by giving into every present wish for ease or unhealthy peer-acceptance.

Paul was writing to chronically fractious Corinthians who loved to compare and rank themselves. Additionally, they looked down on Paul as shallow and unsophisticated, yet his defense was “I simply preach the cross, and that is the way to glory.”

God has never made it easy on His servants. Prophets were seldom popular and often imprisoned, apostles were stoned, shipwrecked, beheaded, and crucified. A very reasonable request to God might be for some incentive here that makes the Christian life more appealing here. While God does bless us immeasurably in this life His main response to us appears to be “I am not preparing you for temporal success, but for eternal glory.”

The delay of gratification is a cardinal Christian quality. The writers of the New Testament had their eyes on heaven and eternity. It was not an escapist view, for they engaged life by going from city to village, planting churches, writing letters and gospels, and generally arguing for the necessity and truth of a puzzling message: God loves you, offers eternal life to you, but requires you to have faith every step of the way.

Look at the disciple John, for example. Writing late in his life, he understood the necessity of faith quite clearly. His life had not been an easy one, though he had been the beloved disciple. He had been on the “inner circle” with Jesus, but he enjoyed no life of ease. How do you explain this apparent contradiction of having followed Christ so closely and writing about the Christian life so divinely and extensively (1 gospel, 3 letters, and an apocalypse) yet having so little in the earthly sense to show for it? Listen to his explanation: “this is the victory that overcomes the world: our faith” (1 John 5:4).

This yearning for faith and greater faith became all-consuming for New Testament writers, and it gave them a vision for eternity in which “the things of earth grew strangely dim.” Possessed of this same eternal vision, and faith as the means to it, Paul quoted Isaiah, “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

With all of our great technology and rapid expansion of knowledge, we suffer today from a very limited vision. We worry about bills, arthritic hips, a banking crisis in Europe, and who will be the quarterback for LSU. We turn to God with all these gravely important worries (and some are genuine) and ask that He make life easier.

His typical response? “I am not preparing you for worldly success. I don’t want you to peak in 2015. I have plans for an eternity for you.”

We cannot possibly conceive of how glorious our future is in Christ. While we cannot imagine the unimaginable, just remember this is our future. Your present task, therefore, is quite simple: love God deeply and have faith in Him. Today, this week, or the coming years, may be full of toil, but part of your worry is simply due to your inability to grasp what God has in store for you. You are being shaped for eternity.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis
August 9, 2015

“After He had dismissed them, He went up on a mountainside by Himself to pray. When evening came, He was there alone.” Matthew 14:23

What do you do when life becomes difficult? When the rpms of the day rev up and life gets a little bit crazy what do you do? Jesus prayed. I’ve always found that infinitely significant. The Son of God relied in prayer on the Father and the Spirit. What possible hope do we have without an enduring reliance on prayer?

And yet… When pressed by life most of us tend to become practical. We want to act, to solve, to understand, to explain. We want to handle the situation. Frankly, being a mature and capable person in life requires some of this. We cannot pawn off every problem, blame others, and generally avoid taking responsibility. We do have to act.

What we omit, however, is the less evident resources of the Spirit. Busyness and hurry edge out prayer because we think we don't have time for it. Some people say I'm too busy to pray, but others say I'm too busy not to pray.

A few years ago I realized that I was in the former category. I never doubted the necessity of prayer nor was I agnostic about it. I trusted that prayer worked, but, when pressed by life, prayer seemed to be the first item I lopped off my to-do list. It was not practical.

I plead for understanding here. I was not angrily rejecting prayer or doubting God's care. My pride, the enfolding of myself upon myself, was more subtle. I knew that God gives me gifts and tools to make it through life. My problem is that I began trusting in the tools more than I trusted in the God who gave them to me. My attitude, not necessarily spoken, was "I've got this."

Little by little and then suddenly I was living more and more a self-directed life. I had become self-sufficient in the very worst sense of the word. Prayer, rather than a vital link to a sustaining God, had become nearly impractical. I knew what needed to be done, how to handle my problems. I just needed time, and heart, and courage to do it. I also yearned for the universal cooperation of everyone around me. My unconscious creed was “Don’t just stand there, do something” (or worry incessantly about what I believed should be done).

Now my creed is “don’t just stand there, pray.” Prayer is the most practical action I can engage in, for it invites God’s presence and power more deeply into my life at the precise point of need. Whenever I feel pressed, if I can remember to pause, breathe deeply of God’s Spirit through a simple prayer, then I have acted in the most practical way possible.

There is not a single problem that cannot be solved or at least made manageable through prayer. It used to be that when someone asked me if I had prayed about a problem I was slightly irritated. Of course, I had said some general prayers at some point in the recent past! Then I learned again the practical importance of naming a problem to God and asking for His help. Now I irritate all the “practical” people around me by reminding them to pray about a problem.

I’ve learned again to pray simply because I’ve needed it. God was always there doing His God-thing: waiting patiently, listening intently, and smiling lovingly. He was just waiting for me to become practical.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis
August 2, 2015