4. The Objectives
4
The Objectives
There is a sense in which the objective toward which God leads us is not separable from the means by which he will lead us there. The poet F. W. H. Myers recognized this when he wrote “St. Paul”:
Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning,
Christ shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed;
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.
Christ, in other words, is the ultimate objective. Christ himself is also the way. This makes it difficult to have a chapter exclusively devoted to objectives. The things that are promised along the way (his presence, guidance, peace, light, assurance) and the conditions entailed by the promises are inextricably linked to the final object God has in mind. But being human, we cannot think of many things at once. So within the scope of this chapter, let us look at the goals of guidance as they are expressed in the Bible.
Our own goal is to know the right way. We don’t like to make mistakes. What is the truth of the matter for me, right now? It’s my life; I want to live it well. Or perhaps my decision affects people I care about—I want things to turn out well for them. Coming to God, we have come to the right place, for we have come to the One who not only can tell us the way, show us the truth, and give us life but who also has said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus identifies himself here in one of his great I am statements, and we are reminded of the primary condition of asking for help: the recognition of who God is. He is everything we are asking for. He is the Alpha, for nothing would have begun without him. He is the Omega, for it is in him that everything finds its perfection and fulfillment. These are mysteries that go deeper than we can fathom, but there are simpler terms which may help us.
Obviously we do not take a road unless it goes where we want to go. If we are following Christ, where is it he is taking us?
The Father’s House
“To his holy abode” is one biblical answer to the question of where Christ is taking us. “Thou hast led in thy steadfast love the people whom thou hast redeemed, thou hast guided them by thy strength to thy holy abode.” The Father’s house is where we belong, and the way to it, as in the story of the prodigal son, is repentance. So he leads us to the first objective. “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.” Our relationship with him begins with this act of the will. “I will arise and go to my father.”
How do we get to him? Jesus Christ has told us. “I am the way.” We have free passage. This is a great theological truth we may hear often without much idea of its application in day-to-day living. A prayer written by Phillips Brooks has helped me to see that theology does work down where I live, that every event of every day is a chance to take a step toward God.
O Lord, by all thy dealings with us, whether of joy or pain, of light or darkness, let us be brought to thee. Let us value no treatment of thy grace simply because it makes us happy or because it makes us sad, because it gives us or denies us what we want; but may all that thou sendest us bring us to thee, that, knowing thy perfectness, we may be sure in every disappointment that thou art still loving us, and in every darkness that thou art still enlightening us, and in every enforced idleness that thou art still using us; yea, in every death that thou art still giving us life, as in his death thou didst give life to thy Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
“May all that thou sendest us bring us to thee.” Or, to put it in another way, “This is the will of God, your sanctification.” “Sanctification” is an old word for making holy. All that redemption means, all that it takes to bring us home to God, is at one and the same time a part of the process of making us fit to live with him. “Thou wilt bring them in, and plant them on thy own mountain, the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thy abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.” Nothing goes into the sanctuary except what is sanctified.
A simple little prayer like “Show me the way” or the more advanced but often glibly pronounced “Thy will be done” carries us far into regions we never meant to approach. We are wondering about the will of God in terms of changing jobs or buying a house or what courses to take in college, and we are told that the will of God is a matter of sanctification. The verse says, “your sanctification,” using the plural “your.” The process is not accomplished alone. “He led forth his people like sheep.” All God’s people, all the flock he is shepherding, are in relationship to one another. What he does with one may seem puzzling to that one, but he has the whole flock in mind all the time, never forgetting, however, the individual. He names them, counts them, provides for them, and each has his own responsibility to the rest. All are made one, all are brought together under one Shepherd, in order that all may at last be holy.
“Holiness” is a frightening word only because of modern connotations. Originally it meant sound, whole (or “hale”), and happy. In the Old Testament the word meant set apart for a special purpose. What it takes to set a person apart for God’s special purposes may not look at first glance like a way to soundness or happiness. Christ himself, we are told, had to be “sanctified” for the sake of those he loved. Clearly this had nothing to do with the getting rid of sin, an idea we sometimes associate with sanctification. He was set apart for one purpose: “Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.” This meant, in his case, sacrifice. Not only his death on the cross but also many sacrifices before that. At the very beginning of his public ministry, as soon as he had been baptized and authenticated as the Son of God, he was “led up by the Spirit.” And where did that Spirit take him? Into green pastures and beside still waters? Not by any means. He was led into the wilderness. And he was led there, not to bask in the presence of God, but to be tempted by the devil.
Can the guidance of God actually take a person into a wilderness? It took Israel into one. It took them to Marah, where the water was too bitter to drink. It took Jesus into forty days and nights of harrowing temptation by his archenemy.
How such leading could possibly be the will of God for anyone, even for Jesus, would be a total mystery if we were to try to understand the case in isolation from others. But it was, according to Jesus’s own words later, “for their sakes” that he sanctified himself.
We are not Jesus. We are not even a part of that huge mob of Israelites that moved through the deserts toward the promised land. But what we learn from them is meant for us, because we are going in the same direction—Home. I have found it true that obedience may lead me not to the fulfillment of my own ideals of spirituality but to very unexpected situations, very “unspiritual” situations, in my view, that are meant to teach me to be meek and lowly in heart. If I want to learn of him, this is what I am going to have to learn. And there, to my surprise, I find rest. I find the chance to recall once more (how many, many times I have to review my lessons) that if I am serious about my primary aim, I may be led elsewhere than my lesser aims would take me, for I do not know what I really need. God sees the “one thing needful,” and he alone knows the path that will take me there.
His Name’s Sake
When the prophet Elijah had called for a showdown with the prophets of Baal and had been answered by the miracle of fire from heaven, he began to see himself as a martyr and a hermit. The redoubtable Jezebel, for one, was after him and he ran for his life. Sitting under a broom tree, alone in the wilderness, he could see no solution to his problems but death. Death in itself did not scare him—if God would kill him, it looked to Elijah like a good way to go. But the idea of Jezebel’s catching up with him turned his knees to water.
God’s solution, however, was not death. Nothing so dramatic this time. Elijah had had plenty of theatrics in his lifetime (when God saw that they were what was needed for the good of his people and the sake of his name), but what he needed now were the simplest requirements of human life: rest and food. Elijah went to sleep and was wakened by an angel’s touch. There in front of him was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He didn’t bother about the drama this time—though I think the question would have crossed my mind as to whether the angel had heated the stones and baked the cake himself. Elijah asked no questions. He merely ate and drank and went back to sleep.
The same thing happened a second time, and then Elijah had strength to take up the next leg of his journey. This was a long one—forty days and forty nights—that led to a cave where he again moaned his complaints to the Lord about being the only one left who was faithful. God sent wind, earthquake, and fire—the things a man of Elijah’s temperament and experience would expect as manifestations of the Lord’s presence with him—but this time the Lord was not in them. His voice came still and small, and he gave directions as to what Elijah was to do next.
The accomplishment of God’s objective for the nation of Israel required from Elijah not a tragic martyr’s death in the wilderness but just sleep, and then cake and a jar of water delivered by an angel. The word of the Lord came not through a spectacular demonstration of power but in a whisper.
Elijah was in the wilderness not as Jesus was—because the Spirit had taken him there—but because his own fears had. Jesus was there in obedience to God. If we find ourselves in some lonely position, whether as a result of fear or obedience, God can still meet us there and work out his own purposes. But it may not come close to our idea of a spiritual solution. What we had thought of as the “glory of God” may seem to have disintegrated. “O Lord, thy will be done!” is a high-sounding prayer, but the lessons of meekness and lowliness of heart will probably take us to the bottom of the barrel. Elijah, the prophet who had four times called down fire from heaven, who parted water with his mantle, and who “went up by a whirlwind into heaven”—this man, in the will of God, was also fed by ravens, by a destitute widow, and by an angel. He collapsed in exhaustion under a bush, his hopes demolished. But there the God he had once trusted was with him. It was all a part of the path of righteousness “for his name’s sake.”
“If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, whom would you like to be your companion?” is a tired old question. For most of us, the idea of prolonged isolation with anybody we didn’t love is a thing to be avoided at all cost. With someone we love it may look like heaven. With anyone else it looks like hell. We don’t care to be “taken aside” or given any “quiet talks,” to be subjected to any situation that will lead to heart-to-heart conversation, especially if the person holds any kind of power over us. We’d rather stick with the crowd. The presence of other people is a protection. Issues can more easily be avoided.
I have sometimes been afraid to be alone with God. This fear, John tells us, would be “cast out” if I loved God perfectly, but of course I don’t. Issues I have been successfully avoiding might come up if I were to get alone with him. I know quite well that something awkward may arise between us that I would just as soon not deal with. But what if the kind Shepherd takes me aside somewhere because he has something special for me, something he did not want to bring out until he got me alone?
When Jesus was in the region called the Decapolis, a deaf and dumb man was brought to him for healing. Quite a crowd had collected to see the fun, but what Jesus planned to do he wanted to do in private. What if the man had said, “Oh, no, you don’t get me off by myself!” But the deaf-mute was willing to take the risk. What he had heard of Jesus gave him hope; he took him at his word and got healed.
The healing was not meant, however, as a public demonstration. Not that time. Jesus wanted it kept quiet. This in itself indicates that the divine objective is not necessarily what we think (“Wouldn’t it be a marvelous testimony!”). Jesus told people not to mention it but, as we probably would have done, they spread it around as fast as they could. On another occasion, Jesus took a blind man by the hand and led him away from the village before healing him. He wanted to get the man alone. Then he told him not to go back to the village at all, but straight home.
There can be no doubt that Jesus had good reasons for wanting certain things kept confidential. Sir Robert Anderson, who was for many years head of Scotland Yard and therefore must have been thoroughly experienced in sifting out truth and discovering the real issues at stake, wrote, “Among Christians it is pestilently evil to make the exceptional experience of some the rule of faith for all. The Word of God is our guide and not the experience of fellow-Christians; and when this is ignored the consequences are disastrous.” People have a strong tendency to make of some spiritual experiences status symbols. Doing this is to forget what God’s objective is—it is not our reputation he is concerned about. We ought to be willing to allow God to do “special” things for us if he wants to and to accept them quietly, confident that whatever he does fits into the working out of his purposes for us all. Our sanctification is at the very least an intricate business, and who are we to say that advertising is necessarily helpful?
Help for Others
In fulfilling his objective of “bringing many sons to glory” (another of the biblical ways of describing his objective), God often chooses one of those sons to bring another one. He gives to us in order that we may give to others. But this is not the same as saying that what he gives us he will give to others. A song that has been popular among American Christians says, “What he’s done for others he’ll do for you.” If this refers to his receiving us, it’s true. He receives all who come. But the song is misleading if it is taken to mean that whatever God has done for others he will do for you. He did not make all deaf men hear or all blind men see. He got Paul and Silas out of prison, but he left John the Baptist in prison—left him there, in fact, until his head was chopped off. He prevents some accidents and allows others. He keeps us from diseases at times and at other times lets us get them. When he lets us get them he sometimes heals us and sometimes lets us die. But in whatever he does in the course of our lives, he gives us, through the experience, some power to help others.
This ability to share is one of his intermediate objectives: “And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.” We need to remember that if we are asking for something that will end with us or shut us off from others, a dead-end kind of thing we have prayed for without much regard for our responsibility to other people, it may be withheld. On the other hand it may, like the quails sent to the Israelites in the wilderness because they begged for meat, be granted, along with leanness of soul. That leanness, that impoverishment, inevitably accompanies selfishness. There is no way to Life except through the narrow gate, but this narrow gate opens out into unimagined largeness and fullness of being. But if we choose the broad way and the wide gate which makes room for our selfish wants, we will find someday that the lane ends, as on a modern highway, we have no place to “squeeze” left or right, and there will be leanness and finally destruction.
Commitment (A Parenthesis)
If we have chosen the narrow gate, it is fortunate for us that we cannot always find a way to go back. We are committed—we have trusted God and agreed with his objective, though we do not know all that this is going to mean.
An early lesson in commitment is a ride in a roller coaster. Most of us remember the eager waiting at the gate, the rush to climb in when the cars came clattering to a stop at the platform, the ecstasy with which we gripped the cold steel of the guardrail in front of us, and the first steep climb up into the sky. But in that split second when we came over the top and saw the tracks dropping away beneath us, we gasped at what we were about to do. The impossibility of changing our minds was an awful revelation. As I look back on it, it strikes me as appalling that so many are willing to pay to have themselves helplessly flung through the air like this, sickeningly plunged and whirled and jerked. The worst of it, the part that doesn’t bother many children, is that the train isn’t going anywhere. You’ve had this terrible ride just for the ride.
As we grow up, we are usually more careful not to commit ourselves unless there is a destination we want to reach. We’ve learned that getting there may not be fun.
The initial choice to go the whole way with God is made of necessity in ignorance of all that will follow. We have been warned that the road will be a hard one, for our Master himself walked a hard road, and he reminds us that servants are not greater than their masters. To the scribe who so eagerly affirmed his willingness to follow anywhere Jesus might lead, Jesus said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.”
But if, given all these previews of what is coming, we have nevertheless set our faces to follow the Pioneer of Faith, there will be many times along the road when we look over our shoulder, longing, like the Israelites on the way to the promised land, for the “leeks, the onions, and the garlic” of our slavery. We are fortunate, then, that it is hard to find a way back.
“Our heart is not turned back . . . though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.” It has usually happened that a place God has put me has proved to be (sometimes quite in contrast to my expectation) a place of contentment. I have looked at others and said, “How do they stand it?” and then, finding myself in a similar place, in the will of God, I had the answer. It is a great thing to know you are where you belong.
But one particular spot where I lived as a missionary became like a “place of dragons.” It was full of things I was afraid of and did not know how to cope with. Once in a while I felt as though I were about to be devoured. “Sore broken” is the psalmist’s expression, and I thought I knew how he felt. I was on my way back to that place one night, camping where we usually did at the junction of two rivers. The Indians had made me a reed hut to sleep in and had finished their own hut-building, fishing, eating, and talking. Everything was quiet except for the night birds and tree frogs. There was nothing especially distinct about this journey back home. I had made it before. But as I lay in my blanket I began to feel something like what fell on Abraham: “a horror of great darkness.” How could I go back to those “dragons”? My heart was about to turn back.
Then I thought of Jesus’s words to his disciples: “Lo, I am with you all the days.” If he was with me then I was certainly with him. The place of dragons was the place he was taking me, and I was still following—I had not gotten off the track. I was with him still, sharing in a small measure his cross.
“Thou hast covered us with the shadow of death.” That dark shadow that chills us may be, after all, the shadow of the cross. His mercy and his love surround us still. It is this mercy and this love, although we do not always realize it, that keep our hearts from turning back. Never for a second does God lose sight of his objective. It is we who forget what it is. We are distracted by immediate circumstances, and it is no wonder we want to give up the whole thing. It was the “joy that was set before him” that enabled Jesus to endure the cross.
Without a clear understanding of the ultimate objective, the intermediate objectives make no sense to us. “Why this, Lord?” we keep asking. But if we bear in mind that we shall, beyond any doubt whatsoever, finally dwell in the house of the Lord, settle down to stay in his presence, then the intermediate pastures and waters, even the valley of the shadow or the place of dragons, are understood. They are stations and landings along the journey, and they will not last long.
Thanksgiving
It is even possible to be thankful for the valley of the shadow, not because we like it or find anything to enjoy in that fearsome ravine but because we have been told ahead of time that it is not the end of the journey. It is on the way to the Lord’s house, and when we get there we’ll know it was worth enduring any trouble along the way.
The chances are, however, that while we happen to be in the middle of the trouble it doesn’t look like anything but trouble. It doesn’t occur to us to compare it with the biblical illustrations, and if someone suggested we do this, we might laugh. “You want me to think spiritually about this? Why, it’s got nothing to do with the will of God or the path of righteousness or any of that. It’s nothing but bad luck.”
The Scriptures have a way of covering all the possibilities. Our bad luck can be transformed if we do one simple thing: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” That is what the Bible says. We could not ask for a clearer statement. The circumstances may not look even remotely like the will of God, but to give thanks in (not necessarily for) them is the will of God. That much we can do.
The Knowledge of Truth
The God of Truth purposes that all men should come to the knowledge of the truth. This is another facet of his ultimate objective. We know that the truth will make us free, but not just any truth acquired anyhow and anytime. The leading of God toward the full light of truth is, like our recognition of him, a lifelong process, and for this we can be thankful. We move one step at a time, and Christ is the Way and the Truth. He does not drop the whole block of truth into our laps at once, for we could not possibly bear the weight of it.
The words “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” are so familiar that those which preceded them are often skipped over entirely: “If you continue in my word.” This is a very different thing from “If you fully comprehend and are perfectly obedient to all I have said.” The promise is to those who go on learning; it may be only a very little at a time. “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Discipleship, which means discipline, is the only road to freedom. We walk by faith now, for we do not see all the truth. Even Paul admitted that he knew only in part and saw through a glass darkly. But truth is God’s objective, and when the day comes for it to be fully revealed, faith will no longer be needed.
We will know the truth in the end, because in the beginning we have taken that first simple step, asking God to show us his will. “If any man’s will is to do his will, he shall know. . . .” “Obedience,” George MacDonald said, “is the opener of eyes.”
We have a Helper, too. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”
As a child in the second or third grade, I was having trouble with arithmetic. I tried very hard in school to understand, and I did my homework diligently every night, often asking my father to explain things I had missed in class. But the lessons were so hard for me that I lay awake at night crying for fear I would fail. One day the teacher said, “If there is anything you don’t understand, ask me. That’s what I’m here for, you know.”
I shall never forget the enormous relief that simple statement brought to me. It had never occurred to me, and I suppose she thought it was so obvious to us she didn’t need to say it, but the logic of it hit me: that was what she was there for. Why else was she called a teacher? And she was there to teach me.
God has given us a teacher. That is why we have the Holy Spirit. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.”
When we contemplate the great ends God has in mind for us, it may be that the thing which brings us to him today seems so trivial as to be hardly worth mentioning to him. What business have we got troubling the Master with this little worldly concern? But we may hope our concerns are not littler or more worldly than the things we read of in the Bible that brought all kinds of people to him. He is a Master used to being troubled by ordinary people, willing to be bothered by our stumbling, grade-school efforts, so long as we bring them to him. For then, meeting us where we are (and where else would he get hold of us?) he can take us on further. He never loses sight of his own object, which is of far greater importance to him than any of our objects are to us.
Most of us do things every day that we do not particularly enjoy doing. We do them in order to accomplish some object we desire. A man may not enjoy the actual pushing of a lawn mower, but he does like to see the lawn neat. A woman may find peeling potatoes less than satisfying in itself, but she loves to see her family enjoy a good meal. T. H. White, who wrote The Once and Future King, said of an earlier book, “I shall probably be glad to have written this book, but I hate writing it.”
The people who got to the top of Mt. Everest got there through literal peril, toil, and pain, but they stood one day on the peak. They would not have suffered what they suffered if they had not had that hope in them. It would be quite true, I think, to say also they could not have suffered it—it would have been beyond human power, unless they had had a supremely desired object.
It will help us to do what we have to do today if we can remember why we do it, especially if it seems to us that the answer we get when we pray for the will of God is beyond our powers. It is then that we need to look beyond our powers, beyond ourselves, beyond our own immediate desires. Let us go over again in our minds God’s objectives, and we may be surprised at the ease with which we can then obey.
The consciousness of his origin and destiny enabled Jesus to do very humdrum things. We get things completely backward when we feel that because of “who we are” or “where we came from” or what an important job we have to do we can’t stop or stoop to do the humdrum; we are engaged in the high and holy will of God and can’t be bothered with the ordinary. A look at how humdrum it must have been for the Son of God to become the Son of man will help us to regain a proper perspective. His whole human life was a humiliation. And at the Last Supper, we read, Jesus, “well aware . . . that he had come from God and was going back to God . . . taking a towel . . . began to wash his disciples’ feet.” It was the act of a slave, just before the final humiliation of crucifixion, but he did it voluntarily, remembering his origin and his destiny.
We, too, come from God, and it is back to God we go.