• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

Humble Listening

Posted on October 11, 2010 by wtdavid

“For the Christian, dialogue is a fundamental aspect of bearing witness to the truth of Christ.  Where there is genuine longing for the other to come to ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. 4:6), there will always be a posture of humbling listening.  For it is the desire to communicate that motivates us also to listen well.  Listening to people involves taking their beliefs, fears and aspirations with utmost seriousness, even being prepared to be disturbed and challenged by them ourselves.  All witness, and thus all true dialogue, is a risky undertaking.  Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also (12:26). It is not the missionary who carries Jesus to others; on the contrary, it is the crucified and risen Jesus who leads us in our witness into places where we fear to venture.”

This quote comes from a book I’ve been working my way through: The Message of Mission, by Howard Peskett and Vinoth Ramachandra.  I recognize that it speaks of our own witness to others of the truth of God, and how in that process we as well can grow from that “dialogue”.

But these words also spoke to my heart as I consider my ongoing preparation for Cape Town 2010.  I think that they encapsulate what should be my main prayer, and the one I would ask you to pray for me: that I would have a posture of “humble listening”; that I would listen well to others and discern what God is saying to me and to us as a mission community through these brothers and sisters in Christ from so many different nations and people groups. 

Maybe this should be our prayer together over the coming days: that we would humbly listen to those around us where we serve, and learn what God would have to say to us through them.

Filed under: Communication, Humility, Sharing the Gospel story | 1 Comment »

Who Am I And How Are Others Receiving Me?

Posted on August 19, 2010 by wtdavid

In response to my most recent post (“A Developmental Mindset”), Noah made the following observation: It is our privilege in mobilization to foster a person’s awareness of their giftedness, in full recognition of their Creator and Redeemer’s authorship in their story. It is our privilege to point them to their Creator’s redeeming process in their lives.  That got me thinking.  We have been emphasizing the importance of other-centered development in several posts, but we should not neglect our own personal development as well.

One of the core elements for training in the Gospel Leader Profile is self-awareness, and one of the ways to describe it is as follows:

Self-awareness of one’s own need for the Gospel and personal development in relation to God, self and other team members.  A leader reflects a proper estimate of their own strengths and weakness and also seeks insights from others around them.  They keep a close check on their physical and emotional health in the varying seasons of life.  They seek to maintain healthy boundaries in relationships and on the use of their time.

Once again, if we ‘re-wrote’ this statement for all cross-cultural workers, we might come up with something like: “Self-awareness of one’s own need for the Gospel and personal development in relation to God, self and other team members.  A worker with a cross cultural heart reflects a proper estimate of their own strengths and weaknesses and also seeks insights from others around them.”  As soon as I put the statement that way, I realized that “insights from others” could come from a variety of sources, including short and mid-term workers whom I might be developing.

Then I began to wonder about my level (our level) of openness to receive such insights from others; to potentially be developed by others whom we are developing.  My own pride and self righteousness can stand in the way of that approach.  I realized I had missed a key phrase in what Noah had written: “It is our privilege to point them to their Creator’s redeeming process in their lives.”  And I would add, it’s our privilege to be pointed back to our Creator’s redeeming process in our lives. 

Self-awareness is that ongoing process where God shows us again and again our need to “first look upon His face, and then turn from contemplating Him to scrutinize ourselves.”  It’s Gospel self-awareness that we are ultimately after.

Filed under: Humility, Mentoring, Mobilization | 2 Comments »

Another look at self-forgetfulness

Posted on July 14, 2010 by wtdavid

I thought I would try out my last post on some friends who were visiting.  The husband is actually a mentor to me in many ways.  As I read through the post, he listened intently without stopping me to add his take on what I had written.  When I was done reading, I remarked how few are the names that come to mind when we look for an example of a humble person.  In an offhand way, I added, “And the number of people who would come to my mind would probably only be one or two.”  Without skipping a beat, my friend responded, finally, by saying, “It just shouldn’t be that way.” 

I was taken aback.  What did he mean, it shouldn’t be that way?  That’s the way it is.  Humility is so hard and elusive.  My friend graciously went on to say that self forgetfulness [not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less] must arise from an ever deepening understanding of the Gospel and our need for Jesus.  That understanding and experience of the Gospel will lead us to cry out daily, even hourly [remember the hymn: I Need Thee Every Hour?], for the Spirit and His ongoing work of applying the Gospel to our lives in very tangible ways … such as learning to think more of God and others than ourselves; learning to “serve” God and others before ourselves.

In his mind, the fact that we weren’t seeing many “humble” people was a reflection of our shallow grasp of the implications of the Gospel, and our satisfaction with self.  That’s when it hit.  Self-forgetfulness is more than just a nice concept to talk about in theoretical terms.  Simply talking about self-forgetfulness can end up putting the focus back on self.   Self-forgetfulness must anchor itself in very practical ways for us to see the Spirit begin to “displace” our fascination with ourselves with something bigger, something more important, and something that calls forth our heart and our service. 

Self-forgetfulness could anchor itself in our community in the offer to come alongside a teammate in another location, and participate in his/her project for a specified time period.  Self-forgetfulness could anchor itself in the decision to physically move to a new location and offer one’s gifts to the team there.  Self-forgetfulness could anchor itself in conversation about missions where we described multiple opportunities rather than just one local work.  Self-forgetfulness could anchor itself in the simple commitment to pray for another worker or another team over this coming year.

What other ways might you see to anchor self-forgetfulness?

Filed under: Humility | 13 Comments »

Self-forgetfulness

Posted on July 12, 2010 by wtdavid

One indicator of a “closing mind” is addressed through active listening to others or demonstrating “intense interest” in another’s journey (James 1:19). A second indicator which I described as “an unhealthy confidence in my own cultural (and spiritual) journey that would keep me from looking at new ideas, new perspectives,” is more difficult for us to address.  Put another way, this indicator points us to the need to deal with our very own pride.

Now this is where it gets sticky.  We are well aware of the statement that James makes a little later in his letter where he says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (4:6). We know then that the ultimate objective is humility rather than pride.  Yet, how does one become more humble?  The moment that you think you are making progress in becoming more humble, you have immediately become prideful about that very progress.

C.S. Lewis in his witty yet insightful work, The Screwtape Letters, struggles with this very question. It is the fictional story of Screwtape, “a self-described under-secretary of the department of temptation,” and his nephew Wormwood a “junior tempter.”  Though this quote is extended, I think it is worth the read:

“All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is especially true of humility.  Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove!  I’m being humble,” and almost immediately pride – pride at his own humility – will appear … But there are other profitable ways of fixing his [the Christian] attention on the virtue of Humility.  By this virtue, as by all the others, our Enemy [God] wants to turn the man’s attention away from self to Him, and to the man’s neighbors.  All the abjection and self-hatred are designed, in the long run, solely for this end; unless they attain this end they do us little harm; and they may even do us good if they keep the man concerned with himself, and, above all, if self-contempt can be made the starting point for contempt of other selves, and thus for gloom, cynicism, and cruelty. 

You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility.  Let him think of it, not as self-forgetfulness, but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character …

To anticipate the Enemy’s strategy, we must consider His aims.  The  Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another.  The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents … For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; he really loves the hairless bipeds He has created.”

A “closing mind” is addressed by a certain “self forgetfulness.”  As one friend put it, not thinking less of oneself, but thinking of oneself less.  So one way this can happen, or can begin to happen, is when God becomes so BIG, so major in our lives that other pieces of our lives truly become secondary.  It happens when we are overwhelmed by Him and His love (read Psalm 136 for example) to the point that it actually influences how we relate to others, how we do ministry.  

 

Filed under: Community, Humility | 3 Comments »

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