Thy Kingdom vs. My Kingdom - Part Three

In case you missed them, you can catch the previous posts in this series here:
Intro
Part One - I Can't Get No Satisfaction

Keeping Bathsheba Out of Your Bed Part 2

Long ago I worked with a guy who often said, "I need the ministry more than it needs me."  While that may seem like a very gracious way of saying that the mission is bigger than any one person, he actually meant that without having to prepare sermons he might not actually read the Bible or seek God.  I'm not throwing any stones (at least not heavy ones).  God knows I've needed the ministry too.

In a recent job interview, I was asked what my biggest regret was.  (I'll be honest... I never give the right "you wanna hire me" answer.  I know this about me, so don't tell me this was the wrong answer.  Trust me - I know.)  I confessed that there were times when I had an unhealthy relationship with ministry.  That there were times when I needed to get my paycheck from a church in order to feel good.  It was self-esteem, love, accomplishment, even an imitation of godliness.  There were times the church served me more than I served the church. Thankfully, my interviewer understood completely and appreciated the honesty.  She even confessed to having done the same... I still didn't get the job though.

Viewing leadership or ministry for what it can give you or what it can do for you is dangerous and can lead to moral failure.  Leaders who fail morally either get lazy about building the kingdom and reaching people outside of it, or they feel like the kingdom is for them.  We see this in the story of David with Bathsheba found in 2Samuel 11-12.

At the time of year when kings went off to war, we find David walking around the roof of his palace.  Now I don't want to read more into that than the passage says, but I will say there is at least one other instance in scripture when a guy was taken to a high place to overlook kingdoms and face temptation.  He did far better than David in the situation.  What do you think was going through David's mind up there on that roof?  I don't think he went up there looking for a hook up.  I don't think leaders who fail morally do so with that kind of determined forethought.  Like we talked about in the beginning, it's a subtle drift.

No, I think David was walking around feeling really good about what he saw - his kingdom, his people, his accomplishments.  The problem is none of that really was his.  It wasn't His kingdom.  They weren't his people, and I would argue that none of it was an accomplishment to his personal credit.  And later when the prophet Nathan rebukes David over sleeping with another man's wife, killing the man and covering it up, he proves this.  Nathan told a story of a man who had everything and still took another man's sole possession.  David hated the story and vowed to bring justice to the wealthy man for what he did... but David was that wealthy man.  God then speaks through Nathan and lists the possessions, the position and the people He'd given David - "and if that had been too little, I would have given you more."

Leadership is stewardship, and more is a gift not an accomplishment.

As leaders, I think we know that... we just drift from that.  We work hard so it feels like an accomplishment when things go well - when offerings are up, seats are filled and people follow.  But those things are all God's to give, God's to take away, and ours to account for.  I doubt that if David had seen Bathsheba as a responsibility he would have treated her like a commodity.  I doubt that if he'd seen his resources as a stewardship he would have wasted them like he did Uriah.  Human resources ought not be squandered any more than financial ones.  I doubt that if he'd seen his own position as a gift from God he would have thought himself to be above the justice he intended to mete out.

Whether leading a church, ministry, business or home, we can avoid the pitfalls of moral failure with regular self-assessment:

1. By asking ourselves if we'll build the Kingdom today by going to war for those who don't know God yet? 
2. By reminding ourselves that none of this is ours, none of this is for us, and none of this is about us.  

Thine - Yours, God - is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory forever.  Amen.

Robin Williams, Sticker Shock and Hope

From the Instagram of
@TheRobinWilliams on the
set of "The Crazy Ones".

"Well, that's gotta be a social media hoax," I thought when I saw tweets regarding the passing of Robin Williams.  It just didn't seem plausible.  But a quick Google search revealed the headlines no one wanted to read and from which no one could seem to turn away.

And worse, he died at his own hand.

It was as if the whole world sighed a teary-eyed "no"  in defiance of the story.  Social media flooded with pictures, memes, quotes, memories, memorials.  A majority of Twitter trending topics for the next 2 days were his movie titles.  The top 5 out of 6 "watching" choices on Facebook's status options were his movies rather than anything current or recent.  I personally pulled out a VHS copy of Aladdin to watch. (Yes, VHS believe it or not.)  People normally unaffected by celebrity news seemed to be affected by this.  Someone who brought such joy, who filled our childhoods with pleasant memories, who always made you laugh even when he made you cringe at impropriety, was just gone.

And worse, he wanted to be.

I obviously never met the man.  I was certainly entertained by him.  He seemed nice and from all accounts, he genuinely was as kind and sweet as you could imagine.  Fellow comedian Dennis Miller said of him, "At the core, his default set was gentle and his unconscious was sweet."  Williams recently starred in the CBS comedy "The Crazy Ones", a comedy about an iconic advertising executive played by Williams and created by the quirky and wildly brilliant David E. Kelley.  I was a fan of the show and may never forgive CBS not only for not picking it up for another season, but also for removing the episodes from their app.  It was hilarious, and at the end when credits rolled they would play outtakes and riffs by Williams and the cast.  Ridiculously funny stuff.  Sarah Michelle Gellar played his on-screen daughter in the show, and in her tribute of him, said he was the dad she always dreamed of having.  That is quite a eulogy.

Everyone is talking about mental illness, depression, suicide.  All of which are invaluable discussions to have at any time for any reason.  As someone who wriggles from the clutches of an emotional pit from time to time, freedom to be honest is rare even among friends, but perhaps the ability to speak about it is the beginning of healing.  Bring it to the light and see if it still lives... it likely won't.  "Thoughts untangle themselves over the lips and through the fingertips." (Dr. Howard Hendricks, I believe, but correct me if I'm wrong.)

My lingering heaviness over losing someone I've never known is from a different place though.  I am trying to reconcile the gift with its cost.  I feel like for a long time we've been receiving from him countless laughs, levity, stress relief, entertainment, good will - all of that - and this week we saw the check he'd been writing for it all.  We discovered the bill, and we have sticker shock.  It cost him dearly.  It cost him everything.

And I feel guilty for taking it... now that I know how extravagant it was, how lavishly it was given.  I wanna throw my hand up at the end of a stiff arm and declare, "You can't do that... it's too much."  And not in one of those fake protests like when your BFF wants to spring for lunch or pay for your facial.  No, a real protest when you know they don't have it to spend - when you know it would cost too much and to take it would mean they would do without something they desperately needed.

I wouldn't reduce the issue of depression, anxiety or mental illness down to something as simple as the high cost of celebrity.  It's much more complicated than that.  However, all of this makes me wonder who it is in my circles that smiles on the outside, giving and helping, always sweet and kind, yet on the inside is dying a little every day deeply unhappy, who looks pretty and perfect on the outside and inside feels a gaping hole of sadness and loneliness and fear.

We live in a broken world with broken people - people looking not just for hope but for a reason to hope, for a reason to believe underneath all the chaos and pain is something worth sticking around for.  The more broken the world is, the more we need hope; and the more broken people are, the more we need kindness.  We need to come out from behind the emotional safety of our mini-blinds and not just see others for where they really are, but engage them with kindhearted hope.

People on social media have begun declaring whether or not Robin Williams is in heaven or hell.  I'm more concerned with where he was - in a hopeless place unable to find a kindness to make him want to stay alive.  I'm concerned with who else occupies such a space.  We need each other.  We need the best version of each other to show up in dark, hidden places.

I've been sitting staring at this screen for days trying to determine what ribbon to use to tie a bow on it.  I could make a hard right turn into what Jon Acuff calls a "Jesus Juke", or talk about evangelism and sharing the Good News of the Gospel.  Both are valid for a blog of this genre.

Instead I leave you with this:  Love people deeply. Don't be afraid of their wounds or their dark spaces.  Be more afraid of the empty place they might create with an early exit.  The sticker shock is overwhelming.

I Can't Get No Satisfaction - Part Two

If you missed the Intro, you can read it here.

Keeping Bathsheba Out of Your Bed Part 1

Several years ago, a friend and I took a trip to Dallas for a church conference.  We never quite figured out the "Texas Way" of marking (or not marking) highway exits, ate too much Mexican food (if too much is even possible), took in a Stars vs. RedWings game, worshiped at the Potter's House and had a great time.  The conference itself was just ok, but had memorable moments about it.  My favorite was the session when Bill Hybels spoke.  Faithful readers will recognize the name from last week's Five for Friday the Podcast Version.  I listen weekly and the experience of hearing him in Dallas is why.  

At the end of his session, the conference host joined him on stage for an impromptu Q&A.  One question in particular stood out:  If you could describe your life in a song, what song would you be and why?  Hybels looked down taken a bit off-guard but eventually looked up at the crowd and said, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction?"  The place erupted in laughter, and Hybels was quick to explain that he never has a sense that he's done enough or that the global church has exhausted their resources for the sake of the Gospel.  When others are ok with their efforts to tell the world about Jesus, Hybels stated he is never satisfied. "Can't we do more? When a kid in Africa dies from a disease that would have been prevented by a fifty cent mosquito net, can't we do better?"  The unreached world is ever before him and it keeps him discontent.  

In his answer, Hybels identified one of the moorings that guard against spiritual drift.  While many believers and Christian leaders tend to be content to insulate their lives from the unbelieving outside world, those who refuse to drift from the calling to win the lost seem to rarely lose their moral compass.  Too much is at stake when you are constantly aware of a watching, unbelieving world.  Believers in Jesus have been entrusted with the Kingdom of God - not to merely manage it, but to expand it.  And this is where it would seem David lost his footing in our story of him and Bathsheba.  

2 Samuel 11

At a time when kings went off to war, David stayed home.  I've always heard it taught that he wasn't where he ought to be, or this sin with Bathsheba wouldn't have happened; but truthfully, if his heart had been where it ought to be, he would have been where he ought to be.  These were the glory days of Israel.  The Kingdom was in great shape.  The Spirit of God "rushed" on David and made everything he did successful.  He had God's favor, God's calling and God's Kingdom forces with him... and he stayed home.  Had he grown content with the "enough" he already attained for the Kingdom?  Was he content to just tell the troops on the ground what to do without being involved himself?  It seems he'd lost his sense of mission - a warring man who didn't go to war, a king who had all the kingdom he could handle. 

Who can fault him really when we often do the same?  Christianity is so comfy in our hemisphere that we call graffiti persecution.  We tend to insulate ourselves from the unbelieving world rather than find strategic places in it to be kingdom people.  Or we get so busy managing a church building that we forget to be light in dark places, hope in hopeless places, healers in broken places.  We really are ALL of those things... but we drift.  We forget we have God's favor, God's calling and God's Kingdom forces with us.  

I'm not sure the exact preventative measure to keep us from drifting, but a couple of things come to mind.  Stay close to the Father's heart - the lost are prominently positioned there.  His Son's primary mission was to seek and save those who were lost, and He did so at great expense.  Secondly, simply pray to be what my old-school-roots would call "soul conscious" - aware of the eternal state of those you encounter.   You don't need a sermon.  Just be ready to tell your story.  God loves answering the prayer asking for an opportunity to share Him with others.  Test Him on this, and be ready.  Go to war and build the kingdom in your corner of the world.  

You can read the final installment of this series here.  

Keeping Bathsheba Out of Your Bed - Part One

Daddy, Daughter & A Beautiful Day

Intro

Over the July 4th weekend this year, I was visited by my family.  We had the best time and spent a couple of afternoons at the beach.  It was perfect beach weather and having three adults to look after six kids under the age of ten was nearly ideal.  The waves weren't too overwhelming and the rip currents weren't too strong, but three sets of eyes stayed vigilant nonetheless.

On Sunday at Canaveral Seashore, the waves were at an odd angle.  Rather than coming straight onshore, the pulled to the north.  Not a problem necessarily, except that it caused you to drift north - away from the adults, a little farther from earshot, a little farther than a rescuing hand could get to quickly.  We were constantly calling the kids back closer to us for their own safety and for our peace of mind.

How easily we tend to drift in life and spirituality.  We get caught up in the waves crashing over us and before we know it we are soundly out of earshot of God - not beyond His care or reach, but beyond our own grasp.  I wondered if this was how David found himself in the self-created soap opera of his moral failure with Bathsheba.  (The story is found in 2 Samuel 11.)

I was in ministry for 20 years, and honestly don't think I believe that moral failure "just happens".  It's often has a drift from some very important foundational principles of leadership and faith in general; and let's face it - we're all susceptible to the drift that leads to moral failure.

In this series, we'll discuss two important questions to check ourselves - to measure the drift, and prayerfully to either get back to or to remain near the hand of the One who rescues us from our self-destructive ways.  For now precious reader, take a few minutes to read the passage and we'll dive into it in our next post.

Keeping Bathsheba Out of Your Bed Part 1
Keeping Bathsheba Out of Your Bed Part 2