ATHOL DICKSON

Letter to a Disappointed Friend

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Practice Intentional Gratitude
Practice Intentional Gratitude

I wrote a letter to a friend who had suffered a bad setback. It was unlikely that her life was going to unfold the way she had hoped. She was angry and depressed. But after she received the letter she started to feel better … in fact, her outlook improved so much that she started sharing the letter with other people who were also feeling down about their lives. Since the letter helped so much, I decided to post it here (with a few details left out, to respect my friend’s privacy). If you’re in the middle of tough times, I hope this will help. Actually, I know it will help, if you will just do what it says.

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Dear Friend,

I’m so sorry your expectation of how life will unfold isn’t going as you hoped. You’re being reminded very forcefully that the Lord’s ways are not our ways. As a woman of strong faith, it’s something you’ve always known and accepted intellectually, but of course it’s much more difficult to sincerely say “Thy will be done” when circumstances look so different from our own hopes and dreams. Most people our age have learned that the hard way, but most of us still have to be reminded now and then that our hopes and dreams are often not what’s really best for us. It can be very painful. But we (or at least I, for sure) often make it worse than it must be, by “kicking against the goads.”

You wrote, “I’m going to need for God to make some serious changes in my heart and my attitude….” I was glad to read your words, because I think that’s exactly the right prayer for you right now. In fact, every single time I pray for you, I get the strongest sense that there is a path to deep joy and peace for all of you in this, but you can’t set out along that path until you adjust your thinking. The path involves complete rejection of everything you hoped would happen in the years ahead, and sincere acceptance of whatever God desires instead.

You probably think that’s easy to say, but hard to put into practice. But with the greatest respect for you, I want to offer one specific suggestion–an action you can take–that will absolutely change your life for the better. It’s going to seem very “Pollyanna-ish” at first read, but if you will give it a try I promise it will make a huge difference. Here goes:

Starting immediately, thank God for every gift He gives, from those as small as a whiff of honeysuckle or jasmine in your backyard, to the realization that you just had a few moments without pain, to really big things like the fact that your husband is in the next room safe and sound.

I’m talking about the practice of intentional gratitude. “Intentional,” because it involves an aggressive effort to remain aware of God’s gifts as you move through your day, and to actively acknowledge each gift with a simple “Thank you.”

…intentional gratitude is not as easy as it sounds.

Rather than being a Pollyanna suggestion, this is an extremely powerful spiritual technique that will eliminate the self-centered and negative thinking that distances us from the Lord. In a life filled with the practice of intentional gratitude, there can be no “Yes, but…” or “It’s not fair,” or “Why me” downward spiraling kinds of thinking. The two attitudes simply do not mix.

Also, to focus on life’s gifts you must live in the moment. With the practice of intentional gratitude, there is no time for regrets about the past, or worries about the future. There is only thankfulness for the here and now.

This is the secret to contentment in any circumstance that Paul mentioned. It’s also the secret to Paul’s apparently impossible command to pray without ceasing, because every expression of gratitude is a prayer, which means the practice of intentional gratitude leads directly to a life lived in continual worship.

But another reason this is not a Pollyanna suggestion is that intentional gratitude is not as easy as it sounds. Part of living in a fallen world is a default setting that causes us to take most of life’s details for granted, when in fact almost every part of every day is a direct gift from God. So especially at first, you may have to work at recognizing blessings for what they are, and at giving thanks as blessings come throughout your day. It’s not easy, but it’s simple and actionable, and if you do take this seriously and work at it until it becomes a routine part of life, I promise unconditionally that you will regain your joy.

Athol

Slave Labor Here and Now

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What slave labor looks like in America.
What slave labor looks like in America.

Is it really possible for slave labor to exist in American today? I never quite believed that could happen in our modern society. Then I read this story.

Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived.

She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been.

Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.

Read the whole thing.

God of Discipline

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We Are All Addicted
We Are All Addicted

Do you worship discipline?  I once had the privilege of giving a kind of commencement speech to a group of men who were graduating from a Salvation Army rehabilitation center. All of the men had been at war for six months against the powerful urge to drink or to do drugs, and all of them were about to leave the program to continue the battle in a hostile world. I was asked to speak because several staff members of the center had read The Cure, and thought I might have something useful to say to their graduating residents. That novel has now become a favorite in several rehab centers that I know of. Probably they like it because it rings true. I wrote it from personal experience.

In the heady flower child days of my late teens and early 20’s I did a lot of drugs and drinking, and developed a serious “problem” with amphetamines. I was also homeless for a time. But since I don’t struggle with alcoholism and it’s been decades since I had the urge to do drugs, some might wonder what makes me think I can offer meaningful advice to people in a rehabilitation program. The truth is I fight the very same battle every single day, for I am just as deeply addicted as any of those men, and you know what?

If you have a pulse, you’re an addict, too.

Sin is nothing more than the original addiction. It reveals itself in countless ways, but make no mistake about it: we’re all in the same condition, one way or another. So here is what I said to those brave warriors, a few words about the cure, offered in the hope that it might help you, too…

Everything I’m about to say assumes you men who are about to leave this place are Christians. If you are not a Christian, then what I’ll say won’t make much sense to you, and all I can offer you in the way of advice is, come to your senses and submit yourself to Jesus Christ. You do not want to be on your own when you walk out of here.

It may be that some of you were not Christians when you first walked into this place, so you may only recently have learned about God’s amazing grace. In that case, let’s make sure you fully understand the thing that saved you. Many people think grace is mercy, but they aren’t the same at all.

Mercy is when you’re guilty and the judge decides not to throw the book at you. Mercy can actually be a bad thing, if it comes at the expense of justice for the wife and child whom you abandoned for cocaine, or the pedestrian you hit while driving drunk, or the shopkeeper you robbed to get a bottle or a fix.

But grace is always good. Grace is when the judge does the right thing, when he goes ahead and throws the book at you because you’re guilty as charged, but then he comes down from the bench and suffers your punishment for you. And as every Christian knows, that’s exactly what Jesus did for us. That’s the whole point of the cross. God sentenced us to death for what we’ve done, which was only right and just, but Jesus took our punishment, so we are innocent in God’s eyes now.

Now, what does God expect from us in return for this? Absolutely nothing. God’s son died for us. How could we ever pay that back? We’d have to die to make it up to Him, and what good would that do when the whole point of the cross was to save us from our punishment? So it makes no sense to think we could do anything “in return” for this amazing grace. We can accept it. Period. That’s all. We can’t repay God. We can’t serve him. We can’t even obey him.

Yes, you heard me right. I just said we can’t obey God. But before you start thinking they let some kind of a pagan in here to talk to you, some kind of wolf in sheep’s clothing, let me quickly mention that the Apostle Paul said exactly the same thing in the Bible. He said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing…. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

See? Paul said it a long time before I did. We cannot obey. I don’t know if Paul was an alcoholic or addict, but he sure sounds like it when he says, “What I hate, I do.” I hear that, and it’s like he’s quoting from the Big Book (although of course it’s really the other way around). He’s saying, “we admitted we were powerless over alcohol.” He’s saying he “made a searching and fearless moral inventory of himself,” and he came up short. So if you’ve ever secretly felt guilty because it seems like obeying God is still impossible for you even though you’re a Christian now, if you think you must be weaker or more flawed than other Christians, damaged goods, then I want you to remember this: even the Apostle Paul agreed with the first step. Even Paul found his life unmanageable. Does that mean he was an alcoholic or a drug addict? No. But Paul was an addict all right. We’re all of us addicted to some kind of sin, one way or another, and as far as God is concerned there are many secret sin addictions which are just as bad as doping or drinking.

So, Christians, since we were powerless over our sins before we trusted Jesus, and we remain powerless over our sins today, obviously it’s a waste of time to ask, “What can I do?” But did you notice that question Paul asked at the end? He asked, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” That’s the smart question to be asking. Who will rescue me? Because if there’s no way you can win a fight, you need to be rescued. And praise the Lord, when a Christian begs for help, he will indeed be rescued.

Every Christian believes along with Bill and Bob that there is “a Power greater than ourselves [who] could restore us to sanity.” Every Christian knows our Higher Power is not some wimpy little god “as we understand him,” but a mighty god we could never understand. Every Christian knows God personally, because we have met our higher power in the flesh on the cross. And if Jesus saved us then, He will go on saving us now, unless we start putting faith in our own will power instead of having faith in Him.

Listen now, this is important: Jesus didn’t give us power over sin. Jesus is our power over sin. What this means is, God’s grace wasn’t finished at the cross, it remains available for us right now, this instant, in every moment that we live. We were saved by grace through faith in Jesus, and not by our own works. We continue to be saved in exactly that same way. What good news this is! What a relief!

The secret to a happy Christian life is not to work harder at being sober. In fact it’s just the opposite. It’s to let Jesus do the work for you.

What does this mean in the day-to-day challenge to be sober? It’s very simple. When the devil sends that first little tickle—you all know the one I mean—you have just two choices. You can put your faith in your own willpower, or you can put your faith in Jesus Christ. If you tell yourself “Be strong,” if you put your faith in willpower, you will surely fall. But if you start praying, if you say “Jesus, I can’t win this fight! I’m too weak! Rescue me!” then the Lord will surely step right in to rescue you.

Does this mean Jesus will remove the urge to drink or use completely? Usually not. But you know what? If God leaves that urge in us, it’s because—hear me now, this is really important—if God leaves that urge in us, it’s because that urge is what keeps us turning back to Jesus.

We don’t know exactly what drove Paul to cry out, “Rescue me!” but we do know he wrote in the Bible about having something he called a “thorn in my flesh,” and a “messenger from Satan.” Sounds like an addiction, doesn’t it? Paul says, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” Was Paul disappointed that God refused to take away his thorn, his Satan’s messenger? No. On the contrary he wrote, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses.” But why did Paul boast about his weaknesses? Here’s the answer in his words again: “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Hear that famous line again, Christians. “When I am weak, then I am strong.” There’s your key to a successful life, regardless of your sin of choice. Probably most of you have begged and pleaded with the Lord to take away your addiction. Since you’re here, that means God said “No” to you, just as he did to Paul. And like the Apostle Paul, you should praise God for that answer. Think about this carefully.

Do you really want to put your faith in discipline instead of in Jesus Christ?

If God took away your sin addiction, would you really be a stronger person, or would you be tempted to think you don’t need Jesus quite as much? Would you be tempted to pray a little less? Read His word a little less? Worship Him a little less? Spend less time with other Christians? Focus on yourself a little more, until you are alone again just as you were before you met him at the cross? Sober, but alone and terribly, terribly lost? Is that really what you want? Is sobriety worth that?

Now it’s time for the next battle, and as you prepare to go, I hope you will remember that your weakness makes you strong if you embrace it. Your weakness is a blessing. Don’t fight it; celebrate it, as Paul did. Boast about your weakness and take delight in it, because if you will do that, then your weakness will always point you back to Jesus.

Think about this carefully: your weakness is a blessing.

Don’t ever feel sorry for yourself because you have to fight this battle. Instead, pity the person who seems to find it easy to be “good,” who looks like they have life under control. Pity the poor Christian who is “only” addicted to gossip, or “only” surfs porn on the internet in secret, or “only” lusts for money. Those Christians may look clean and sober on the outside, but because their sin addiction is well hidden they can go for years—for all their lives in fact—without ever getting past the first step, without ever going beyond the entry-level grace they found on the first day they were saved. You, on the other hand, have a particular thorn in the flesh that’s impossible to ignore, so you’ll always find it easier to embrace your weakness, easier to put your faith in Jesus instead of in your own will power, and easier to walk deeper and deeper into the amazing grace that’s always there to rescue you.

The foregoing was originally published on January 6, 2010, at What Athol Wrote and is posted here with minor changes.

Choosing Between Ba’al and Beelzebub

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Beelzebub from The Pilgrim's Progress
Image of Beelzebub from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)

There is a kind of Christian who believes all good things come from above, and all bad from below. But as Job said, “Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” The reality is, God sometimes sends bad things, even to His most faithful people. Christians who don’t accept this do not know their Bible, and when the chips are down they tend to find out their faith is lukewarm and shallow.

God speaks everything into existence. That includes evil things. The Bible says so clearly, in many places. God does this not for evil, but for good. He tests us. Sometimes His testing comes in the form of a choice between two evils. By forcing us to make such choices, God teaches us to trust that all things work together for the good of those who love him. Perhaps the most famous Biblical example is the story of Isaac’s sacrifice, in which God forces Abraham to choose between disobedience to God, and the human sacrifice of his own son.

Obviously, choices like that are tough. Fortunately for us, God’s main concern is with what is in the heart. So in times of trouble Christians would be wise not to judge anyone who, with a heartfelt desire to please God, chooses what they believe to be the lesser of two evils…not even when it seems obvious to us they’ve chosen wrongly.

I was reminded of this by a Christian who seems to have forgotten it. Andy Crouch, who is executive editor of Christianity Today, recently wrote the following in that publication:

“Most Christians who support [Presidential candidate Donald] Trump have done so with reluctant strategic calculation…but there is a point at which strategy becomes its own form of idolatry—an attempt to manipulate the levers of history in favor of the causes we support. Strategy becomes idolatry, for ancient Israel and for us today, when we make alliances with those who seem to offer strength—the chariots of Egypt, the vassal kings of Rome—at the expense of our dependence on God who judges all nations, and in defiance of God’s manifest concern for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed. Strategy becomes idolatry when we betray our deepest values in pursuit of earthly influence. And because such strategy requires capitulating to idols and princes and denying the true God, it ultimately always fails.

So, here we have an influential Christian publicly accusing other Christians of a terrible sin, merely because he disagrees with their political choice. If Mr. Crouch had simply condemned Donald Trump’s obvious misogyny, immoral lifestyle, bullying behavior, and foul mouth, I would have heartily agreed. But Mr. Crouch wants me to know if I vote for Trump, I will become no better than Trump. I will commit idolatry. I’ll be “in defiance of God.” A vote for Donald Trump is no different from placing faith in Trump to save me, as if stepping into the voting booth for Trump is the modern equivalent of bringing sacrifices to the altar of Beelzebub.

For the vast majority of Christians I know, a vote for Trump will be just that: a vote. It’s not a declaration that Donald Trump is their personal Lord and Savior.

For the vast majority of Christians I know, a vote for Trump will be just that: a vote. It’s not a declaration that Donald Trump is their personal Lord and Savior. It’s not even a vote of confidence in Trump. On the contrary, most Christians I know who plan to vote for Trump are convinced “the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed” would be worse off after a Trump Presidency. But they’re also convinced the results for such people would be even worse after a Clinton Presidency. They’re not idolaters, placing faith in a man or in the political system. They’re just sinners, doing the best they can to please their Father with their actions in spite of the fact that right now, in America, we’ve been cursed with two horrific choices.

A little later in the same opinion piece, Mr. Crouch writes, “Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord.” But I wonder what our neighbors think when Christians question each other’s faith because of politics? Shouldn’t Christians of all people avoid the slander and ugly insults that have become the norm between other Americans in this election cycle?

“For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged.” Andy Crouch, all the editors at Christianity Today, and you, and me, and every Christian everywhere would do well to remember that.