Will You Finish Well? (Part 7) by Maxie Dunnam

Check out the earlier articles in this series where Maxie shared about the need for personal holiness (part 1), surrender (part 2), character (part 3), faithfulness (part 4), the wisdom of the saints (part 5), discipline and obedience (part 6).

Two more characteristics of the saints I want us to explore as we wrestle with the question, “Will I finish well?” Closely akin to the issue of obedience is a third characteristic of the saints: they didn’t seek ecstasy, but surrender to the will of the Lord. 

The Meaning of Surrender in Christian Leadership

In her strange and beautiful book which is part memoir and part meditation, The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris talks about the experience of becoming a Benedictine oblate. She said she knew two things: One, she didn’t feel ready to do it, but she had to act, to take the plunge. Two, she had no idea where it would lead. An oblation is an abbreviated, yet powerful profession of monastic vows. A person attaches herself to a particular monastery by signing a document on the altar during mass. The promise is that you will follow the rule of Saint Benedict in so far as your situation in life will allow. Norris confessed, 

The fact that I had been raised a thorough Protestant, with little knowledge of religious orders, and no sense of monasticism as a living tradition, was less an obstacle to my becoming an oblate than the many doubts about the Christian religion that had been with me since my teens. Still, although I had little sense of where I had been, I knew that standing before the altar in a monastery chapel was a remarkable place for me to be, and making an oblation was remarkable, if not, incomprehensible, thing for me to be doing. 

The word “oblate” is from the Latin for “to offer.” And Jesus Himself is often referred to as an “oblation” in the literature of the early church. Many people now translate “oblate” as “associate,” and while that may seem to describe the relationship modern oblates have with monastic communities, it does not adequately convey the religious dimension of being an oblate. Substituting the word “associate” for the “oblation” in reference to Jesus demonstrates this all too well; no longer an offering, Jesus becomes a junior partner in a law firm. The ancient word “oblate” proved instructive for me. Having no idea what it meant, I appreciated its rich history when I first looked it up in the dictionary. But I also felt it presumptuous to claim to be an “offering” and was extremely reluctant to apply to myself a word that had so often been applied to Jesus Christ. (Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk, xvii-xviii)

After making that confession, Norris told about the monk who was to be her oblate director – that is, the one who guided her studies of the rule (a period that was supposed to last a year but rambled on for nearly three). She spoke with appreciation for this spiritual guide who waited patiently for her to sort out her muddle. Finally she said to him, “I can’t imagine why God would want me, of all people, as an offering. But if God is foolish enough to take me as I am, I guess I had better do it.” 

The monk smiled broadly and said, “You’re ready.”

That kind of submission was the ongoing concern of the saints. They did not seek ecstasy, but surrender to the Lord. They knew that submission in the Bible is a love word, not a control word. It means letting another love you, teach you, influence you, shape you. On the human level, the degree to which we submit to others is the degree to which we will experience their love. Regardless of how much love another has for us, it can’t be appropriated by us unless we are open, vulnerable, and submissive.

The saints experienced the same thing in relation to God. They knew that it is only when we can imagine what God wants with us, or what He might do with it, and certainly when we are humble enough to know that anything He does for us or with us is all grace, only then that we put ourselves in the position for the Spirit to work within us. 

Surrender Over Ecstasy: How the Holy Spirit Actually Leads

While we are not to seek ecstasy but surrender, Paul weds the two in a remarkable way. Here is one example of it.

They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. (Acts 6:6-10)

Paul was not seeking an ecstatic experience, but he was open and responsive to the Spirit’s working in his life. He followed what some would certainly label ecstatic – a vision of a man begging, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Paul interpreted this vision as God’s call to go to Macedonia and preach the Gospel.

He went specifically to Philippi, the major city in the Macedonian region, a port city, and easy to get to. Miraculous things happened there. Lydia, a Gentile businesswoman, was converted and the Philippian church was established in her house. A slave girl was delivered of “a spirit of divination” which led to Paul and Silas being beaten and thrown into jail. There in jail the third miracle took place. When Paul and Silas were praying and praising God at midnight, God honored their trust and faithfulness by throwing open the prison doors and freeing them. This miracle led to the conversion of the jailer.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”  They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. (Acts 16:25-33)

The conversion of a Gentile businesswoman and a jailer, along with the healing of a demon-possessed slave girl – all the result of Paul’s surrender to an ecstatic vision. The lesson is clear. When we are open to the Spirit, and cease trusting our own wisdom and power, our actions, and accomplishments will far exceed our normal potential and capacity as commonly perceived. Jean-Pierre de Caussade addressed the issue in this fashion:

Those who have gauged the depths of their own nothingness can no longer retain any kind of confidence in themselves, nor trust in any way to their works in which they can discover nothing but misery, self-love and corruption. This absolute distrust and complete disregard of self is the source from which alone flow those delightful consolations of souls wholly abandoned to God, and form their unalterable peace, holy joy and immovable confidence in God only. (Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Llewelyn, pg. 249).

We need to keep balance: never trust our own resources alone, but never doubt that the Spirit will use us, often in remarkable, even miraculous ways. Again, the key is not to seek ecstasy, but surrender and openness to the Spirit’s working.

The Pursuit of Holiness and Purity of Heart

The fourth and final characteristic of the saints that I would mention is this: they were thirsty for holiness.

If there is no obvious difference between a Christian and a non-Christian, something is wrong – seriously wrong. Paul made a graphic distinction between those who belong to the day and those who belong to the night.

But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. (I Thess. 5:4-11)

See the sharp distinction between “children of light” and “children of darkness.” What Jesus wants is not admirers, but disciples – those who will conform their lives to His. 

Meister Eckhart warned that “There are many who are willing to follow our Lord half-way – but not the other half.” (The Imitation of Christ, arr. and ed. Douglas V. Steere, Great Devotional Classics, Nashville, TN, The Upper Room. 1950, pg. 8)

In his introduction to a short collection of passages from The Imitation of Christ, Douglas Steere says:

The Imitation not only recruits disciples from those who have been admirers.It would train and draw these disciples along until they were willing to enter “the other half,” the half where the easy charts and pocket maps vanish and where there are no return tickets available. It, too, would launch them out upon the 70,000 fathoms of water where the foot can no longer touch bottom, where there is no longer any trusting God and keeping your powder dry, but where one must now trust God and take what comes a day at a time. (Steere, pp. 8-9)

All the saints acknowledged this. They were thirsty for holiness and sought to conform their lives wholly to Christ.

The end toward which we move in our thirst for holiness is purity of heart. The Puritan divines labeled this heart-work. John Flavel, a seventeenth-century English Puritan, put it in this perspective: the “greatest difficulty in conversion, is to win the heart to God; the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God… Heart-work is hard work indeed.” (Keeping the Heart, Grand Rapids, MI, Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1971, pp. 5, 12).

The crux of our heart-work toward holiness is our will fully surrendered to Christ so that God can take full possession of us. The Apostle Paul expressed it autobiographically:

But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing. (Gal 2:17-21)

Holiness requires the full surrender of our independent self-will in order that God can eradicate our self-orientation. I have a young friend named Tammy who is living this Jesus style dramatically. She was converted at the University of Georgia. She arrived at Asbury Seminary as a student about the same time I came as president. I didn’t learn her story until a couple of years later. She arrived at school with only enough money to take her through the first semester. Hers is a modern faith miracle story. She worked as much as she could, but there was no way she could work enough to pay her tuition and living expenses. So she prayed. She never asked for money, but time and again when she had nothing, no money to continue, somehow it would come. 

The summer before her last year in seminary, she went to India on a short-term mission. By a series of circumstances and following God’s call, she returned to India a year later to establish “Grace House,” a home for street children. When I last heard from Tammy, there were sixty children under her care in two different facilities. The story is the same as it had been during her years in seminary. She is totally dependent upon the Lord. I have never known her to ask anyone for money, but miraculously she receives what she needs.

Indeed it is the Lord who always sustains lasting ministry.

Holiness, surrender, obedience, discipline – these words mark the pages and my imagination as I think of finishing well. The saints before us have shown a way for sustainable ministry. Do we want to be holy? Will we offer our own ‘personal holiness’ to our congregation’s need for the Kingdom?