God Wants Me Unhappy

I have been thinking a lot about my own happiness lately, so it is no coincidence that Randy Alcorn’s discussion of happiness slid across my Facebook page recently. God has a way of planting supplements to my devotional diet directly in my path so I can only avoid them on purpose. Many times I have had the subject of print or other media floating in my thought hopper only to find that it is the perfect preparation for a teaching or preaching assignment I am about to be given. It is exciting to work with an omniscient God. I am not yet sure what all this business about happiness is leading to.

When I taught high school students, the subject of God’s will for their lives was a frequent topic of discussion. Since the middle of the 20^th century, Christian teens have had to face numerous life choices that were seldom presented to earlier generations. Do I consider military service? Should I attend college? If so, what career should I pursue? Must it be a Christian college? Should I take on student loans? Who should I marry? Does God want me to get married at all? These are vexing questions to a young person who has been taught that God has a perfect will for each of them, and it is their responsibility to figure out what that will is.

I remember one young man who was horrified with the thought that God might call him to remain unmarried, to be celibate. He believed that sex outside of marriage was clearly forbidden, so marriage was his only hope to satisfy his biological desires. The idea that it might be outside God’s will for him to marry literally gave him many sleepless nights. He could not imagine being happy unless he was married.

I don’t recall the exact words I used to counsel him, but I do remember the general tenor of my advice. First, God will never ask us to do anything for Him that he does not give us the strength to accomplish. Next, God does not reveal His plan for our entire life all at once; that would negate the need to walk by faith which is what builds our trust in Him. The best we can do is take the step that is before us and wait on God to reveal the step after that. As long as we avoid taking steps we know are against God’s revealed will, His personal will for our lives will become clear as we live step by step.

In my recent response to Alcorn’s book, Happiness, I mentioned three of the countless episodes in the Bible that present unhappy servants. Here I might add Abraham who waited unhappily for 25 years for the son of promise only to be told he was to be sacrificed to the God who gave him. Abraham would not have been a happy camper trudging up Mt. Moriah knowing what lay ahead. Happiness came naturally when the angel stopped the knife and a ram appeared in a thicket to take Isaac’s place, but one cannot miss the agony through which Abraham walked as he followed God’s will up that hill. Nor can we miss the same thing when our Substitute walked up that same hill years later. I think Jesus was not happy about the crucifixion; he rejoiced in what it would accomplish, but to call that happiness is to wrench all meaning from the word.

Many of us find ourselves in circumstances that make us unhappy. The high school lad with raging hormones is not the only one who must wait on God’s answer to the burning question. Consider the husband or wife who has lost a spouse to divorce or death. While some may dispute the option of remarriage, none will argue that celibacy is the only righteous option outside of another marriage. Consider the man who, because of medical procedures or health issues, can no longer function normally. It would be comforting to think that the urge dies when the capability ceases, but that is often not the case. Consider the wife of that man. In these and countless other cases unrelated to sex, God’s will leads to unhappiness at least for a time.

There is a statement I probably borrowed, and I think I have posted it here before, but it bears repeating: God is less concerned with our comfort than our character. We are called to conform ourselves to the image of Christ, who for the joy set before him endured the cross (Hebrews 12:2). Endurance builds character; character, biblically defined, is what suits us for heaven.  Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are few prayers at parties. If my unhappiness makes me more like Christ, I’ll be “happy” to endure it.

Tillapaugh: Review and Resolution

I am half way through Frank Tillapaugh’s book, The Church Unleashed. The first thing I noticed is that his diagnosis of the infirmity in the church in America is spot on. The next thing that I realized is that his book is over thirty years old; that is a sad commentary. Then it occurred to me that another of my favorite twentieth century authors, A.W. Tozer, said essentially the same things Tillapaugh said another thirty years earlier. Two generations apart, two thoughtful men of God identify the same weaknesses in the church. Tozer lamented the emphasis on program over Presence, and Tillapaugh criticized the pastor-centric fortress mentality so prevalent in American evangelicalism versus what he called the unleashed church.

Tillapaugh traced the fortress mentality to the evangelical stance developed throughout the early years of the twentieth century in opposition to religious liberalism. He believed that as mainline denominations drifted away from doctrinal orthodoxy into unbiblical emphases like the “social gospel,” evangelicals retreated into bunkers to defend the true faith. This defensive position became ossified by the time Tillapaugh wrote (1980’s) and was exacerbated by the transition of American society from rural to urban and suburban in nature. In other words, Tillapaugh believed that the church closed itself off from the world, and the world moved away.

This separation resulted in a largely ineffective church, evangelistically speaking. The majority of time, treasure and talent were spent inside church walls on programs meant for members, and the main thrust of what evangelism did exist was to bring people into the church. The Gospel of Jesus Christ was held captive in the church building, and unbelievers were expected to come there to find it. Because the church had become irrelevant to a changed society, Tillapaugh believed it had failed in its prime directive: making disciples.

The corrective according to Tillapaugh is to stop thinking of a church building as the place where people find the gospel and start taking the gospel to where the people are found. The way he proposes to do this is to unleash both the pastors and the laity to minister as they are led by the Holy Spirit, a clear application of the principle found in Ephesians 4. He believed that committee meetings are a place where good ideas go to die, and though structure is necessary, the Spirit must dominate the structure rather than the structure dominating (quenching) the Spirit.

Apparently Tillapaugh’s ideas worked. At the time he wrote The Church Unleashed, the proving ground for the unleashed church, Bear Valley Church in Denver, was a body of thousands working out of a building designed for 300 and doing ministry all over the city to target groups such as street people, international students, singles and more while not abandoning a traditional Sunday ministry to believers. His application of Jesus’ teaching about new skins for new wine was apt: the old church “skins” are no longer functional given the newness of the “wine” he is recommending.

Here I plant my Ebenezer, as the old song goes. The church I now call home (when not snowbirding) has elements of both the fortress and the unleashed church. I am going to work to free the gospel from its captivity there and maximize the good already being accomplished, or else I will find a place where it is already unleashed. I loathe church hopping to find the perfect church (which does not exist in this world), but I believe Tillapaugh is right when he counsels against trying to fight against leadership that resists being unleashed. I want to be like the men of Issachar in David’s day: understand the times and act accordingly. The lost and dying world deserves better than what the typical American evangelical church offers. I plan to see what I can do about that.