3. The Conditions

The Conditions

We have ample evidence that the Lord is able to guide. The promises cover every imaginable situation. All we need to do is to take the hand he stretches out. But it is here that the hardest question arises for me. How, exactly, do I take his hand? Isn’t this an extreme oversimplification of the conditions of the promises?

I know he has said over and over, “I will guide you.” I know the words, “It is the Lord who goes before you; he will be with you, he will not fail you or forsake you; do not fear or be dismayed.” But there are so many promises with conditions attached, conditions that seem impossible to fulfill for us who are not far along the road to sainthood. Often I have prayed to God for light, and he has shown me some promise in the Bible that indicates he will certainly give me the light I am asking for, if—and then I have found, to my despair, that a great deal is asked of me in exchange. Who does God think I am, that I can meet such demands before he will answer my prayer?

The Recognition of Who God Is

The first condition is the recognition of God himself. It is not who does he think I am, but who do I think he is. I confess that after many years I am still having to go back often to this, to Lesson 1 in the school of faith. I forget what I learned. I started out on false premises: who I am, what I need, why my case is special, what I’m hoping for, what I pray for, or something—anything but the thing that matters most: who God is.

To learn who he is, we go to the Bible. The Bible is a Book about God. It tells us all we need to know about him, and it shows us how he makes himself known to human beings. The Old Testament begins with God’s relation to one man, Adam, and takes us through the story of how he led the people of Israel, a race he had chosen to bear his name. The words “lead” and “guide” occur much more often in the Old Testament than in the New. God’s guidance of Israel was literal and specific, and most of us find it easier to understand than his dealings with people in the New Testament. The rules were laid down quite clearly (written out, in fact, on stone tablets to begin with), the journey was from Point A to Point B to Point C, the pillars of cloud and fire were easy to see.

Then, too, the Israelites were a group. God led them like a flock. They all took the same route, suffered the same privations, witnessed the same miracles. But if we read carefully, we see that God never lumped them together in a single faceless mass. The responses of individuals varied. Some rejected the Word of God and “left their bones in the desert.” Some simply refused to trust.

The New Testament is another story. The first four books, called the Gospels, give us the life of Jesus. This was a human life, lived on earth to show us, in a way we can comprehend, what God is like. The God of the Old Testament, who called himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is the same God who showed himself in the New Testament in the Person of Jesus Christ. “Anyone who has seen me,” Jesus said, “has seen the Father.” A man’s response to Jesus is his response to God.

The people of Israel had no Scriptures in their hands. The people in the time of Christ had only the Old Testament. Today we have both the Old and New Testaments, the latter interpreting the former. When we speak of the recognition of who God is, we need to take into account all that he has revealed about himself in the whole Bible.

But not all at once. That would be too much for any of us. We can only come as we are, with a readiness to be shown. “Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” This is what Abraham did, and he was called a man of faith. We can be Abraham’s children by faith. This makes us a part of the group, sheep in the flock called the Church in the New Testament, eligible for the Shepherd’s guidance.

When asking God for guidance in some individual matter, it is a good thing to have as a background some inkling of the larger picture so we see our own position in that perspective.

I love to study the biographies of the Bible as biographies, to learn what sort of event in a man’s life the Spirit of God regarded as worth mentioning. I find not just one but many instances of God’s going to great lengths in order to get a man’s attention long enough to say to him, “I am.” And in most instances, the man had to be isolated in some way.

Abraham had to leave behind all that was familiar to him, and it was then, in a strange country, that God said, “Fear not . . . I am your shield.”

Jacob, away from home in Bethel, asleep with his head on a rock, saw the Lord in a dream saying, “I am the Lord . . . I am with you . . . I will not leave you.”

Moses, tending a flock in the wilderness, heard the voice of God from the awesome burning bush: “I am the God of your father . . . I have seen . . . have heard . . . I know . . . I have come down to deliver . . . I will be with you.”

King Nebuchadnezzar was stripped of his power and made to live like an animal until he recognized who God was.

The apostle Paul, when he was still called Saul, zealous persecutor of Christians, was stopped in his tracks and confronted with that terrible revelation, “I am Jesus.” After Jesus had identified himself, he gave the order Paul was to carry out.

When John was in exile on the island of Patmos, probably an old and very lonely man, he was given the vision of one like a son of man who said, “Fear not, I am the first and the last . . . I died . . . I am alive . . . I have the keys.” Then came the order: “Now write what you see.” First the I am. Then the do this.

Pharaoh, refusing to recognize who God was, had the audacity to disobey. “Who is the Lord,” he said to Moses and Aaron, “that I should heed his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover I will not let Israel go.”

If we want to know what to do, we need to know first who will tell us.

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

If we have once shut up long enough to know this, we have, at least in that moment, been ready to obey. But it is the being still that is so hard for us. It often takes illness, loss, suffering of some kind, isolation, and loneliness. Only when we have come to the end of our own resources, when few distractions are left to us, does it become possible to be quiet.

But if, in the providence of God, we have not yet had to weather a real crisis, we may “be still” on purpose. We may choose to obey the command, stop all activity, turn aside in stillness, and know. The best kind of beginning, when we are wanting to know the will of God, is to concentrate first on God himself. And of course, the briefest effort to do this will humble us, for we will learn how poorly we are in control of our thoughts. For me, there is nothing like the printed word to help me corral my scattered thoughts. Simply looking at a verse in the Bible that tells me something of God and reading through a hymn or a prayer are aids to discipline, and I need all the aids I can get.

I have been told that in one of the China Inland Mission homes in China there was a motto on the wall that said, “The sun stood still. The iron did swim. This God is our God for ever and ever. He will be our guide even unto death.” This God, the One who, in answer to the prayer of an ordinary man, stopped the sun in its course, the God who suspended his own law of gravity and made an ax head float, this is the God to whom I come. This is the God whose will and direction I am asking. This God is the One whose promises I am counting on. And can he help me out of my predicament? Whatever my predicament may be, as soon as I compare it with the circumstances surrounding the miracles of the sun and the ax, my doubts seem comical.

God knows all about those comical doubts. He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust, and it is to us, knowing all this better than we know it ourselves, that he made those promises.

God is, according to Isaiah 43, our Creator, our Redeemer, the Lord our God, the Holy One of Israel, our Savior. Would we ask him to be anything more than this, before we admit in our hearts that he can be trusted? He is called also El Shaddai, “the God who is Enough.” Will we settle for that?

I have called this—the recognition of who God is—the first condition. Perhaps it would be better to call it the primary condition, for it is not one we can fulfill once and for all and then move beyond. The recognition of who God is is a lifetime process. Nor does it end with our earthly life. “This is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” The process of knowing him modifies the quality of our lives. It is a continual fulfillment and a continual attraction. “Let us know,” the prophet Hosea wrote, “let us press on to know the Lord; his going forth is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”

The quality of our lives is transformed not only by our initial response to Christ but also by the daily answer of faith to whatever a day holds. If we have, perhaps through some small incident, come to a new knowledge of our own sin, we then recognize him as Savior. In our sorrow we learn that he is the Comforter. In perplexity he shows himself as our Counselor. Our weakness gives us occasion to call on him as the Mighty God, Strength, Fortress, Deliverer, and Refuge.

The prophet Habakkuk saw the God of Israel not as a tender Shepherd but as a raging Giant: “Thou didst bestride the earth in fury, thou didst trample the nations in anger. Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, for the salvation of thy anointed. Thou didst crush the head of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck. . . . Thou didst trample the sea with thy horses.” This representation of power is followed by Habakkuk’s testimony of faith: “God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like hinds’ feet, he makes me tread upon my high places.” That fearful deity, that Giant who roars forth for the deliverance of his people, is the God who makes us able to walk where it seems there can be no walking.

Although the first condition, as a lifetime and even an eternal process, may overwhelm us, we will find, if we are willing to look, that whatever happens today affords ample opportunity to make a beginning. The Gospels can help us see how this works. They are full of stories of how Jesus met individual men and women, in the ordinary course of their lives, and did things for them.

One example is the story in Mark 9 of the man who brought his son, who was possessed by a “dumb spirit.” After describing the torment the boy had suffered, the father said, “If you can do anything, have pity on us and help us.”

There is not much faith in those words. But Jesus said, “If you can! All things are possible to him who believes.”

“I believe,” cried the father. “Help my unbelief!”

He had, like most of us, only the faintest recognition of Jesus—a good Man, he had heard, one who did some wonderful things and taught well. So with the feeblest hope (but it was hope) he had come. He had come, and he had brought with him his suffering child. He had, in that act, fulfilled the first condition. He had come to the right Man, the only One who could do what needed to be done. The issue now rested not on “If you can do anything” but, as Jesus told him, “If you can believe.” So the man believed.

Belief

Belief is the second condition, clearly dependent upon the first. We are asked to have faith. Faith means, for one thing, believing that God means what he says. If we have really recognized him, we will be able to trust his word. Jesus told the epileptic boy’s father in Mark’s story that all things are possible to the one who believes. The father had been hoping for an impossible thing. (“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”) In a flash he responded, “I believe!” Here, as in other Gospel stories, the act of coming was followed by the verbal declaration of belief. Even then the demon did not vanish automatically. There followed Jesus’s word of command, then noise and convulsions, then minutes that were an eternity of stunned silence when the child appeared to be dead. The father had time, I think, to wish with all his soul he could take back those rash words “I believe.” They must have seemed for a few seconds the words of a madman. At last Jesus took the boy’s hand, and the boy got up. In that short space of time, the father went from the flimsiest kind of faith to terror-stricken doubt to the place where faith became sight. The story is a short version of the life of faith, for it shows us quickly, and in a form we can take in, where it all starts.

The Obedience of Faith

The recognition of who God is and faith in him—are these two conditions enough? What of all those stringent conditions such as:

“He is in the way of life that keepeth instruction.”

“The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.”

“The meek will he guide in judgment.”

“The integrity of the upright guides them.”

“He who does these things [walks blamelessly, and does what is right, and speaks truth from his heart; who does not slander with his tongue, and does no evil to his friend, and six more things] shall never be moved.”

“If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.”

The list could be much longer. The Old Testament reiterates what is expected of the godly man. In his earliest dealings with the people of Israel, God asked obedience and they disobeyed. God gave them promises, dependent on their willingness to do what he asked, and they did not do it. But he did not give them up. It was the glory of his own name that was at stake. If in fact he was their Creator, Redeemer, and Savior, if he had chosen them as a people to bear his name and had entered into a covenant relationship with them, he must take the responsibility of that glory upon himself. In countless ways he bore with them, corrected them, punished them, goaded them, and brought them to the promised land. His love for them was inexorable.

Israel’s travels in the Old Testament graphically illustrate what it means to be guided by God. In the New Testament, to become a follower is called discipleship. The conditions for this look humanly unattainable:

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

No one can serve two masters.

He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

At this point I want to cry, Stop! Don’t tell me any more. I can’t fulfill the conditions. I do not “keep instruction.” I hardly listen to it, in fact. I am not “godly.” I am not good or meek or upright or blameless or truthful or self-sacrificing in any sense at all except a relative one (surely I am no worse than most?). Even a casual look at God’s Word shows me that a relative goodness won’t do. I am none of the things I am told I need to be in order to expect God’s guidance. The thing I needed so desperately and wanted to pray for so simply looks now like a carrot on a stick. It is no simple thing that I can reach a hand to take. The illustration of the Indian on the log only mocks me. I must attain some point of perfection before I can even begin to ask, so I can’t qualify, now or ever.

The consciousness of my own imperfection implies a consciousness of perfection. Intuitively we know that if there is such a thing as a relative goodness there is such a thing as absolute goodness, and before that goodness we shrink and are afraid. There is nowhere to turn. Like C. S. Lewis, as he described his own conversion, with eyes darting right and left in search of some escape, we find that there is none. There is nowhere to turn but back to him whom we dread.

Graham Greene tells us in his autobiography that he came “to the limit of the land and there the sea waited, if I didn’t turn back. I was laughing to keep my courage up.” Thomas Binney has expressed it in his hymn, “Eternal Light”:

Oh how shall I, whose native sphere

Is dark, whose mind is dim,

Before the Ineffable appear

And on my naked spirit bear

The uncreated beam?

How shall we? We can retreat into darkness, refusing the way of escape and shutting ourselves off from rescue. But Binney goes on to answer the question:

There is a way for man to rise

To that sublime abode;

An offering and a sacrifice,

A Holy Spirit’s energies,

An Advocate with God.

So all those other conditions that look like insurmountable barriers to our ever getting the light we are looking for become, in and of themselves, matters of faith. We cannot do them by ourselves, so we trust God to do them for us.

We are back to the analogy of the guide and the log across the ravine. The truth is that the whole thing has been done for us—Jesus is our Guide, and he is himself the Way. My sins are those ravines, the gaps I cannot cross by myself, the interruptions along the way. But there is a way across. Logs have been laid and Someone is there to help me walk on them. However, we don’t need to cross all of the logs at once. We take them as they come, and it is the same Guide who helps us over each one. We go with him.

The Glory of the Name

In Africa during the earlier part of this century, men called “white hunters” built up for themselves a good reputation as guides. They knew where the animals were and they charged high prices to lead foreign hunters to where they could shoot them. It was not only the big game the foreigners paid for but the big name of the guide as well. A high reputation carries a high responsibility.

Old Testament writers made much of the name of God. Israel was a nation specifically set apart as a place for God to put his name. Appeals were made on the basis of the name. “For thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me,” the psalmist prayed. Not because of who I am, not in recognition of my reputation, but because of who you are. “And his name will be called ‘Wonderful Counselor.’” “The Lord is my banner.” “Lord God of Hosts.” No questions of merit can arise with regard to that name. It is above every name. Therefore I can come today on the grounds of that name’s merit.

The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples begins with the petition, “Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” Whatever our requests may be that bring us to his feet, they should begin with a careful consideration of the meaning of this form of address. If we say the words slowly and thoughtfully, they cannot help but color the rest of the prayer. If it is guidance we are asking, we may be very wrong in our hopes as to the direction it will take. We may be ill-prepared in heart for the road God will choose for us. But, as George MacDonald wrote, “The thought of him to whom that prayer goes will purify and correct the desire.”

If we did not have God’s unequivocal promise, the words “Guide me, for the sake of your name” would sound outrageously presumptuous. But the truth is that God said he would do just this. There is nothing presumptuous or precarious about it. The validity of the divine word is at stake, and that is a very sure foundation.

Making a Beginning

Before a man begins building he must make sure of the foundation. Hearing and doing the Word—this is the bedrock of faith. Jesus made this simple enough for children to understand in his story of the two men who built houses, one on rock, one on sand. We all know what happened in the storm. The stability of one house is the picture of the man who hears the Word of God and does it. For me, it is wonderfully reassuring to know that this does not mean knowing all the Word, being perfectly obedient to all the Word, at one time. Hearing one thing, doing that one thing, is what is required. This puts me in touch with God, which is precisely what we mean when we speak of an “act of faith.” “It is only when we obey God’s laws that we can be quite sure that we really know him,” John wrote.

When a child begins to walk, his first step is reason enough, in his parents’ eyes, for enthusiastic praise. The step is not a very successful one. It is wobbly and may take the child where he didn’t mean to go faster than he wanted. But it contains the elements of walking—putting one foot in front of the other. Doing this over and over will eventually get the child somewhere.

To believe one thing—this one promise that God will guide us, for example—is a baby step. It is a beginning of a walk with God. The steps that follow will be like the first one in that they contain the element of faith. If God means it this time, he means it the next time. I take him at his word now, and I will hear another word tomorrow.

For the baby, walking soon becomes easy. I do not think this is quite analogous to our walk with God. There is a sense, of course, in which seeing a promise fulfilled gives us confidence. But it is also true that each step of faith is a step of faith, and there is always the void beneath, the dark ravine. Jesus, called the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” had to learn obedience, and the lessons during his life on earth certainly did not get easier. On the night before his crucifixion he sweated over the will of his Father. He was, as J. B. Phillips translates it, “horror-stricken and desperately depressed.” But he was still able to say, “O my Father.”

For us, the road may have varying degrees of difficulty. But the Pioneer has traveled it before us. There will be no ravines he cannot cross. He knows the way; he has been over every foot of it. “This God is our God: . . . he will be our guide.”

Prayer and Fasting

We ought to pray for guidance. Paul’s letters contain many prayers for Christians, that they might know and do the will of God. A strong recognition of who God is, a strong affirmation of faith in him, runs through those letters. “I know whom I have believed,” Paul wrote to the young man Timothy in a letter meant to give him courage in his life of faith. Paul himself had started out on what he thought was service to God, but after years of fervent activity he had experienced the shock of recognition on the road to Damascus—recognition that, far from serving the Lord, he had been persecuting him. This produced a total change in Paul’s life. He had a new knowledge, a new belief, and a new kind of activity.

Faith requires action. Perhaps the most “natural” activity is prayer. If we know the One in whom we have believed, we turn to him for help. I have not compiled statistics, but it seems to me that the single kind of help most frequently prayed for in the Bible is guidance. In the Psalms alone we find these:

“Lead me . . . in thy righteousness.”

“Lead me in thy truth.”

“Lead me on a level path.”

“For thy name’s sake lead me and guide me.”

“Send out thy light and thy truth; let them lead me.”

“Lead thou me to the rock that is higher than I.”

“Search me, O God, and know my heart . . . and lead me in the way everlasting.”

“Let thy good spirit lead me on a level path!”

It is possible that we may say to ourselves, “If God has promised to lead me, what is the point of my always asking him to?” But the examples of Scripture show us that godly men who knew those promises very well prayed continually. The simple bringing of the request to God is an acknowledgment, both to ourselves and to him, that we need him. It is an act of faith in itself, a stretching out of our hands to our Guide, hence a good way to prepare ourselves for whatever his leading may be.

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he did not explain all the mysteries we glimpse there. He simply told them what to say. “Thy will be done” and “Lead us not into temptation” concern specifically the matter we are discussing. The fact that the short prayer Jesus gave the disciples includes the matter of guidance assures us it is an entirely proper request.

But why, instead of praying positively as the psalmist did, “Lead me in thy righteousness,” did Jesus tell us to ask, “Lead us not into temptation”?

Is it likely that the Lord who is our Shepherd, who loves us even to death, would lead us into temptation? It is a strange request, and one great minds have wrestled with. Perhaps a partial explanation is that here the one who prays takes it for granted he is being led, as though he had said, “I’m right behind you, Lord, I’m following, go on leading me. But not—please, Lord, not into temptation. I am weak.” The New English Bible translates it, “Do not bring us to the test.” It is a very human prayer (it mentions food before it mentions temptation), and as such shows us how thorough was Jesus’s understanding of our human limitations and tears. We dread tests or examinations of any sort. If there’s anything we would rather not know it’s what is wrong with us. We know too many things without being shown more. Don’t turn on any bright lights. Deliver us from evil. We can’t avoid it ourselves. Show us the way out. We’re following.

Not many of us come to God for the first time with the intention of putting ourselves into his hands for the rest of our lives. We haven’t thought that far. We need guidance in one particular matter, and usually we have already exhausted other sources without success. There is nothing left to do now but pray about it, and we make an emergency call: “Help, please!”

Many people in the Gospel accounts met Jesus in this way. They heard he was passing by and rushed out to get help. He did not rebuke them for this opportunism. He stopped and confronted them, sometimes requiring that they state exactly what it was they wanted, even when it must have been obvious to everyone around. Imagine a famous healer asking a blind man, “What is it you want?” The statement of the need was a necessary condition for his meeting it. But how many of them understood that there was far more for them than they had dreamed of asking? How many saw the possibilities beyond the healed hand, the loaves and fishes, or the tubs of wine at a party? If only the Samaritan woman had recognized him she would have asked for the Water of Life. Not even the disciples themselves grasped very much of what was offered to them, but the love and grace of Jesus kept pouring out.

Prayer is the statement of a need. “Let your requests be made known unto God.” Doesn’t he know about them? He does, but that is not the point. We need to come to his feet. “Tell God every detail of your needs in earnest and thankful prayer.”

Sometimes, to make sure I don’t forget the details, I make a list. The necessity of recalling all the things that have any bearing on my need for guidance—the pros and cons of all the possible courses that seem open, the circumstances which look to me significant, the reasons I have for wanting one thing above another—helps me to sort out exactly what it is I am asking. And sometimes, through this sorting, I see that I ought to ask something quite different. So Paul’s advice to tell God the details may actually contain the solution. The fact that I am telling God, too, makes them look different. It casts a different light. “In thy light shall we see light.” All my muddle-headed thinking before I started praying was a waste of time and only kept me in the dark.

When I was young I had the idea (I am sure I must have heard sermons on this) that I would somehow have to annihilate my own will before I could properly pray to God for his. “You must have absolutely no will of your own in the matter,” someone had said. This sounded all right to me, and I spent a lot of time and energy trying to follow this advice. Finally I saw that no such thing was required. The struggle Jesus had in the Garden of Gethsemane showed me this. A conflict was taking place—not to annihilate his own will but to accept the will of the Father, which was other than his. It did not end with Jesus saying, “My will is now thine” but with, “Not my will but thine be done.” The act of praying, far from divesting us of human desires, enables us to lay them before God as very real and pressing and say to him, “Not these, Lord. Yours.” (If we had gotten rid of them, there would be nothing to lay down.)

There is something terribly down-to-earth about this. They are my own requests I am supposed to “make known” to God. They are things I feel strongly about. They may be sinful. If they are, making them known to God might make plain to me their true nature. But I start by making them known. I pray for what I want, as a child asks its father for whatever it wants. This is faith’s legitimate activity.

Sometimes a father’s answer to his child is no. If God, like a father, denies us what we want now, it is in order to give us some far better thing later on. The will of God, we can rest assured, is invariably a better thing, but our having asked for what we wanted now provides the occasion for us to say, “Nevertheless not my will but thine be done.”

In praying for guidance, I find I usually have some solution in mind that looks attractive to me. I want God to guide me, but I am hoping it will be in my way. What my prayer amounts to is approval of my plan. I know this and God knows it and there is no use pretending it isn’t so. Paul found himself in terrific conflicts of interest. He wrote:

My own behaviour baffles me. For I find myself not doing what I really want to do but doing what I really loathe. Yet surely if I do things that I really don’t want to do, I am admitting that I really agree with the Law. But it cannot be said that “I” am doing them at all—it must be sin that has made its home in my nature. (And indeed, I know from experience that the carnal side of my being can scarcely be called the home of good!) I often find that I have the will to do good, but not the power. That is, I don’t accomplish the good I set out to do, and the evil I don’t really want to do I find I am always doing.

This is the story of our lives. And the only way out is the way Paul goes on to describe: the new life in Christ, which is strictly a matter of faith.

I am by nature so skeptical that I am nearly always doubting my own (not to speak of others’) sincerity, so that when I pray for God’s will in a matter it is no easy thing to convince myself that I really want it.

One way of taking myself in hand is fasting. I have not done this often, but at times when the most difficult decisions faced me I have found it helpful. It seems to me a sensible way of proving (again, as in the bringing of requests to God, it is proof to myself and to him) that I am serious. I like to eat, and fasting is not a good way of getting one’s mind off food, but it is a way of deliberately putting one’s mind on one thing (God) because you are reminded every minute of the other thing (food). The fact that you have made up your mind not to eat keeps before you the reason you are not eating. You are after something specific from God, and although your own will may be too weak to will his will, it is at least strong enough for this one small thing. God in his mercy and fatherly love takes note of this flicker of movement toward him. He sees the heart and he sees if we, like Daniel, have purposed in our hearts regarding the matter of eating—for once purposed seriously enough, that is, to do something about it. God has met me on such occasions, and his kindness in response to so simple an act, an act available to anybody anytime, cheered me.

One Man’s Cross

“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Jesus’s words imply that there is a cross that is meant for each individual. It is peculiar to him, something that no one else could take up for him even if he wanted to. The taking up of that cross must be an act of the will, a thing one might refuse to do. But it is the prerequisite if he is serious about following.

Things that are not at all matters of choice are often called “crosses.” Blindness, deafness, or some other physical disability, a cognitively impaired child or a disobedient and ungrateful child, a drunken spouse, senile parents to care for, poverty or loss or limitation of any kind are all things about which people sometimes say, “Well, I guess that’s the cross I’m supposed to bear.” But of course such things are required of any human being regardless of whether he has any intention of following Christ. In some of them there may be room for a certain amount of choice, but unless the choice is made for the sake of Christ rather than for some other reason (for example, saving face: “What would people think if I didn’t do this?”), it has little to do with the taking up of the cross Christ was speaking of.

What is that cross? It is, I believe, the thing required of me today. “Let him . . . take up his cross daily,” Jesus said, “and follow me.” Some duty lies on my doorstep right now. It may be a simple thing I have known for a long time I ought to do, but it has been easy to avoid. It is probably the thing that springs to my mind when I pray the prayer, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.”

It may be that, although I have been doing something I ought to do, I have never done it without grudging. The so-called cross I could not avoid I may, for a change, take up with gladness. Might I not then, for the first time, be on the way to true discipleship?

The Lord who calls us will surely not leave us in confusion about what it is he asks. He knows perfectly well whether our desire to be a disciple, a learner, is an honest one. But still we worry. It seems a risky business, and what if we miss the way? What if we make the wrong decision? What if we take up crosses never meant for us? What if we fail to see the one appointed to us? What if . . . ?

“The care that is filling your mind at this moment,” wrote George MacDonald, “or but waiting till you lay the book aside to leap upon you—that need which is no need, is a demon sucking at the spring of your life.

“‘No, mine is a reasonable care—an unavoidable care, indeed!’

“‘Is it something you have to do this very moment?’

“‘No.’

“‘Then you are allowing it to usurp the place of something that is required of you this moment!’

“‘There is nothing required of me at this moment.’

“‘Nay, but there is—the greatest thing that can be required of man.’

“‘Pray, what is it?’

“‘Trust in the living God. . . .’

“‘I do trust him in spiritual matters.’

“‘Everything is an affair of the spirit. . . .’”

Here is the heart of the matter. We come to God for guidance in some practical affair, something we had not really thought of at all as an “affair of the spirit,” but in his presence, as we pray, we come to see that it is in fact exactly that.

Why do we ask what we ask? Because we need it, of course. We’ve got to know. But then God looks at us as any father looks at his child, and in the recognition of his love we suddenly lose our frenzy. The words that were about to tumble out are silenced, and the thing we wanted looks different to us because we cannot help looking at it from his angle.

Asking God for a handout is one thing. We may get it. How often God simply hands things out right and left, to the good man and the bad man, to the man with faith and the man who hasn’t an ounce of faith—good health and sun and rain and the capacity to enjoy and the ability to work and all sorts of “luck” for which he is not asked or ever thanked.

But when we understand the taking up of the cross in order to follow, we begin to understand that everything is actually an affair of the spirit, and we shall be asked about our motives. “The chief end of man,” says the Shorter Catechism, “is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” This is what we are here for. Do I accept this position in God’s universe or do I rebel against it?

The true disciple has a single eye. “Purity of heart,” wrote Kierkegaard, “is to will one thing.” The glory of God is to be our primary motive. It should not surprise us then if what looked like a very simple thing (I don’t ask very much, do I?) turns out to be a spiritual matter, an object that reveals my heart’s direction.

“The LORD alone did lead him,” was written about Israel. You can follow only one person at a time. Rushing off in all directions at once, trying to serve two masters, will ruin us. The sooner we make up our minds to take up the cross and follow one Lord and one Master, the sooner we will be shown the right road, the path of righteousness.

It is not reasonable to ask for guidance in one matter if we are aware that in another matter we have rejected the guidance already given. Let us first go back, if possible, to where we turned away. If this is no longer possible, let us confess our sin. It may often be a “small” thing in which we see we have been disobedient, while it is a “big” decision we are asking guidance for, but it is the big thing that has stopped us, brought us to attention, and forced us back to God. If he asks us then about something smaller, we are given the chance to correct it.

All our problems are theological ones, William Temple said. All of them have to do with our relationship to God and his to us, and this is precisely why it makes sense to come to God with them.

The taking up of the cross will mean sooner or later saying no to self. But it is also a resounding yes. It means saying yes when everything in us says no. To decide to do the thing that we (and it will seem everybody else in the world) do not want to do because it is not “natural.” And in our giving of whole-hearted assent, we find to our amazement that the impossible becomes possible and the things we were sure were beyond us are now within reach, for God’s command is his enabling. Never has he given an assignment that was not accompanied by the power to accomplish it.

The cross entails sacrifice, too. There is no getting around this. Christianity has been criticized and rejected by many as an “unnatural” religion, a life that denies living, a negation and not an affirmation. Jesus never tried to make it look easy. The principles he taught cut across the grain of human nature: lose your life in order to find it; be poor in spirit if you want to be happy; mourn if you want to rejoice; take the last place if you want the first. The corn of wheat must first fall into the ground and die if it is ever to produce anything.

What we must not forget is that he traveled this road before us. “He himself endured a cross and thought nothing of its shame”—not because he had a particular liking for self-denial and suffering but “because of the joy he knew would follow his suffering. . . . Think constantly of him enduring all that sinful men could say against him and you will not lose your purpose or your courage.”

A few lines I learned while a student in college have come back to my mind, beckoning me when more immediate rewards were attracting my attention: