The eleventh hour

How many times have you heard it said, “God moves at the eleventh hour”? That statement is both incredibly true and undeniably false.

How can I so obviously contradict myself?

Let me explain.

We often make the observation that God’s ways are not our ways. But just as often, we miss the equally important truth: God’s timing is not our timing.

And this explains the apparent contradiction. The time at which God moves is often the eleventh hour to us, but not to God.

Here is an observation I have made in my own life experience: God moves at the hour of our greatest desperation. To despair means literally (in Latin) to run out of hope. The moment we run out of hope in our own resources and ability is the moment we can enter into God’s resources instead.

Elaine and I have been planning a massive transition in our life from local church leadership to a wide-ranging ministry. We will live in and travel to various places to use the gifts God has given us to encourage and raise up leaders around the world and expand the capacities of local churches to understand and apply the Word of God. We will not slow down, we will ramp up!

That is exciting, but transition means leaving a place of relative security (though not without its own challenges), into something new. Our last transition was when we got on a plane thirty years ago to come to Canada with no money and no job, only the call of God to plant a church, and where it would be we had no idea. And by God’s grace, we did plant a church, a church in healthy condition we will certainly hand over to capable hands, a church whose best days lie ahead.

Where does that leave us? In a place of faith. And dependency. When things do not develop as easily or quickly as we thought, at first it becomes disconcerting, and then finally desperate.

But that is when God starts to work.

Will it be the eleventh hour before it all works out? It may be, at least to me. But to God, it will be nothing of the sort. It will be his perfect timing. It will be his opportunity to use challenging circumstances to cast me into a greater dependency on him. And by the end of the process, he will have shown me how he was using all those frustrating circumstances to develop and reveal his perfect will for us.

Next summer, by faith we will walk into a whole new phase of our life and service to God. God will provide for us in every possible way. When that happens, will I at last be able to say I have now arrived? No. I hate to say it, but there will be more eleventh hours. As long as I walk in the steps of faith and the way of the cross, God will use circumstances to bring me into that desperation that releases his solutions and causes him alone to receive the glory from what happens.

When you feel desperate, don’t give up!

It’s often the very moment God is about to move.

Peter was a man who lived all his life in the certain knowledge he would die a martyr’s death. What was his answer? “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares for you.”

As you face your eleventh hour, it’s pretty good advice to take.

He will not fail you.

The back side of the tapestry

Durham Castle, in which I lived for a year, is the oldest continuously inhabited castle in England. At least, that’s what I told people I gave tours to! In 1603, King James VI of Scotland stopped in for a night on his way to London to be crowned James I of England. Later he gave his name to the famous translation of the Bible.

In one of the great chambers of the Castle hang some enormous tapestries, each of which is several centuries old. Perhaps King James enjoyed them the same way I did when I sat after dinner most nights having coffee.

Tapestries are funny things. On the back they resemble a collection of completely unrelated threads amounting to absolutely nothing. On the front, the threads come together to form a picture of great beauty. Needless to say, they take a great deal of time and effort to make. The Durham tapestries probably took years to produce, not months.

This year my life has often looked far more like the back side of the tapestry than the front.

But that’s OK, because God is teaching me something in it.

Maybe it’s the same thing he was teaching Abraham when he followed the call of God into the desert, and the promise of a son did not materialize. Maybe it’s the same thing he was teaching David when he was anointed king, only to spend years fleeing for his life in the caves and hills of Judea. Maybe it’s the same thing he was teaching Paul when he sat for years on the back side of Tarsus, wondering if the guy who appeared to him on the road to Damascus had got it wrong.

What he’s teaching me is that it’s most often when things look the worst that God is doing the most.

And usually the smartest thing to do when you’re in that place is… nothing.

Almost anything you do when you’re at the bottom of the pit will come out of a desire for deliverance from a fire in which God is refining you.

Whether it’s a life or a tapestry, the key to success is time. Most of the most powerful promises God has made to Elaine and I have taken years to come to fulfillment, and some we still await.

God always takes more time than we would like him to because he is doing a work greater than we realize. And in it there are all sorts of pieces beyond our control that he has to bring together.

But here is the most important thing. Through the days, months and even years, he takes the apparently random and unattractive threads and weaves them into something of true and amazing beauty.

Then there are those wonderful days when the tapestry is turned over. Those are the days when we suddenly see what God was doing while we waited. And I’ve had some of those lately too. And there are more to come, for God is often most at work in the very times when you think he’s forgotten you.

David, who knew more about adversity than most of us, got it just right: “The steps of a person are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand” (Psalm 37:23-24).

And a few verses later: “Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land” (verse 34).

Just be patient and wait.

The day will come when the tapestry will be turned over, and all the time, hard work, heartache and sorrow that went into its production will have been worth while.

The big man syndrome

“In your movement, you like the big man.” This was another Christian leader’s comment regarding the movement I am part of. Though the comment was probably made in jest, it disturbed me.

The extent to which it is accurate is open to debate, but as they say, there is no smoke without fire. I don’t believe this guy had an axe to grind. He was merely describing what he saw.

So we have a issue. You could call it the “big man syndrome.”

Here’s what it is. Direction and decision-making are referred back to somebody who sits on top of the pile. Everyone defers to that person. The larger a church is, the more likely it is to fall into this situation, if only for the reason that megachurches are often built on the personal ministry of pastors who become so powerful they cannot be challenged. Until disaster intervenes, as it sadly too often does.

The same thing happens with movements, though the title of the one at the top may range from bishop to president to apostle, depending on your theology.

With a good leader, the damage, though real, may be limited. But when an insecure person reaches the top, the shrapnel from wrongful control due to self-protection and self-promotion cascades down the chain. People, churches and movements are hurt, sometimes critically.

This is a particular problem with newer movements and churches, which tend to be built on the foundation of relationship. Relationship is a good thing, but trust can be abused when there are no safeguards. Older movements may be encrusted with tradition and institutionalism. That often isn’t great, but it does provides protection from the big man syndrome because there are all sorts of counterbalances (synods, presbyteries and the like). Even the Pope, as I’ve been reading lately, has limited power to change the Catholic church.

What is wrong with the big man syndrome is the damage it does to the Biblical view of relationship, and in particular to the consistent teaching of Jesus and the apostles on servant leadership.

Jesus compared himself to a servant waiting at table, not the one being deferred to. Paul described a genuine apostle as one at the end of the parade, not the parade marshal. Peter told leaders to serve as humble examples, not to seek position or power.

When I look at the life of Paul, it strikes me that his ministry always involved extending the boundaries of the kingdom. He never sat at the top of a movement or ecclesiastical pile. He was too busy moving on to the next place to establish a hierarchy involving the previous places. He exercised authority out of his position in God, not out of his position in a church movement.

My friend Jason Reid spent many years in the Royal Navy specializing in submarines, attaining the same rank as James Bond (but without the extras). I asked him how leadership in that context works. Here are three things I learned from him. Submarine command in the Royal Navy “is predicated on an implicit trust between the Ship’s Company and their Commanding Officer.” He is a servant (despite some of the huge egos involved), not a tyrant. The job of the commanding officer is first to keep everyone safe, and in the process to get the team to its destination. He is not there to build an empire for himself, but to put the interests of the mission before his own (“mission command”). His ability to share leadership with the three department heads on the vessel is critical to this mission. He is a delegator, not a micro-manager.

A great leader is always in the business of empowering and enabling others, always in the process of raising up and giving away. Success is successors.

Authority is a good and necessary thing. The cure to its abuse is not anarchy, but correct use.

Perhaps we could learn something from the Royal Navy? We also want to keep people safe, and get them to their destination.

And remember this. There is only one big man in the church.

His name is Jesus.

Pressure is my friend

It must have been one of those kinds of summers. Here is my second post on pressure in one month.

Every so often I have one of those awful days when one crisis seems to land on top of another, and I reach that point where I think that if one more thing happens, I am going to crack up, explode, implode or just simply drop dead, which would resolve all my problems quite nicely.

It’s at those very moments that a phrase spoken many years ago by my spiritual mentor, Duane Harder, always surfaces in my mind. I hate those words he spoke, mostly because I knew they were true. So here it goes: “Pressure is my friend.”

No, no, I protest, you made a mistake there, Duane. Pressure is not my friend at all. It is destructive, it is soul-destroying, it makes my life miserable.

But here’s the thing. Pressure does produce all sort of undesirable feelings and emotions, and it can absolutely ruin your day, week or month, no doubt about it. I’ve been there.

But the question to be asked is this: Is God really sovereign? Is he truly sitting on the throne of heaven? Is his absolute sovereignty just an item of theological truth we believe in our mind, or is it a lived reality in our experience?

If God is sovereign, then he has allowed that pressure to come upon us. That is not to say he is the author of some of the bad or wrong things that caused the pressure. It is just to say that he sovereignly and purposefully allowed the crisis to come upon us.

We complain about pressure because it doesn’t feel good. But what we should be doing is asking what God’s purpose is in the pressure.

And here’s an answer which is as good as any: pressure is meant to propel us into the presence of God.

When do we grow in God? Not when times are good, but when things are hard. The impact of our still very imperfect nature ensures that we usually don’t seek God seriously until we have to.

When the pressure mounts, can I encourage you to do one simple thing? Go somewhere where you have some privacy, throw yourself on God’s mercy, submit to God’s ways and cry out to him for help.

I have a good friend called Mike Monson who owns a couple of meat-packing factories, one in Michigan and the other in Indiana. If you tour the premises, you will see how the beef or pork is ground up and squeezed into packages fit for sale. That’s what pressure does. In this case, it produces some of the tastiest pork patties you will find anywhere in the United States.

I have days when I feel like the poor cow or pig entering Mike’s killing floor. But the truth is that pressure has the effect of killing my pride, my independence and my rebellion. It may not make me fit to eat, but it does make me fit to live more effectively as a son of God.

I love men and women of faith. But faith is not the ability to shield ourselves from pain and pressure. Faith is the ability to stand in the midst of anything hell can throw against us. The power of faith is not in our confession, but in the God whose promise and Word we confess.

When the pressure becomes unbearable, all you can do is hold on to the sovereignty and the love of God. But that is all you need to do, for in fact his love is holding on to you.

And what the enemy intended for evil will be turned to good in his amazing hands.

If you’re in Michigan, try one of Mike’s pork patties, and be grateful to God that the result of his pressure process leaves you in much better condition than Mike’s poor pigs.

But here’s one last tip: don’t ask Mike for the recipe. He won’t give it to you.

And you don’t need it, because what works for Mike or his pigs may not work for you. God’s recipe for producing character in each person is different. Just embrace what he is doing in you.

Pressure is your friend. Let it do its work.

Winning the waiting game

The other evening, a few of us were sitting around our dining room table trading airport horror stories. They all revolved around one thing: waiting.

I hate waiting.

If there is a Bible verse that rubs me the wrong way, it’s this one: “Wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7).

This year it seems to me that I have been waiting for something most of the time. I vented my complaints to God with no tangible results.

At some point, it occurred to me that maybe God had a good reason for what he was doing. The problem might not be with God, but with me. In that case, it might work better for me to thank God for whatever it was he was doing while I was waiting, even if I didn’t know what it was and wasn’t happy about it.

There are actually good reasons God wants us to learn to wait. Here are three of them:

1. We rush into way too many wrong decisions because we are too impatient to spend the time making a careful evaluation. Why do you think supermarkets place all the wrong kind of items right at the check-out? When you have no time to analyze, you jump without thinking to fill a need you don’t really have. Waiting changes what we are asking for. It allows the Lord to adjust our will to fit with his will. And when that happens, it releases the purpose of God for our lives.

2. God’s plan for our lives involves many other people and circumstances. I don’t know why people can’t figure this out. We think the entire world revolves around us. But just as other things in life involve all sorts of factors outside our control, so also does God’s plan. You want a husband or wife. But what if the one God has in mind is in another country and way too young right now? That’s not hypothetical -- it was Elaine and I. It’s just as well I waited! If life is a big jigsaw puzzle, God has the capacity to bring all the pieces together in such a way that it enables what he wants for our lives. But it takes time to do that, even for God. His role is to make it happen. Our role is to wait. Waiting changes our circumstances.

3. Waiting, more than almost anything else, draws us into the presence of God. As we become more and desperate for what we are seeking, we turn to the Lord for help. If all waiting does is deepen our walk with the Lord, it’s worth it. Waiting changes us.

So out of all this, one thing becomes clear: waiting is one of the most important activities we can undertake. Waiting is an action which will change things for the better more than almost anything else you can do.

Waiting does not make you powerless. It is probably one of the most important ways you can bring about change. Why? Because you give up trying to make things happen quickly and let God make things happen properly.

I opened with one verse on waiting, and I’ll close with another:

“Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).

This verse proves one thing: waiting works.

Try it. Wait a while and you’ll see what I mean!