Jay’s Blog – Strong and Courageous – Part II

Special note: Jay’s Blog is now available in audio form on Spotify. Tune in as Dr. Ferguson shares wisdom and personal testimony on topics such as parenting, faith, legacy, and victory in Jesus.

As we begin a new school year, what is God calling you to? Here are some questions from author Alan Fadling that are consistently challenging for me to reflect upon as I head into a new year: 

• We ask questions of Jesus all the time in our prayers, but when was the last time you listened for what questions He might be asking you?
• Do you believe that God is truly for you? How is that borne out in how you live? What is against you? 
• Do you truly believe that God’s generosity is limitless? What won’t He give us? Do you assume scarcity or abundance? How does this truth affect how you live? 
• What does the accuser, your enemy, say about you? What is the truth? Are you living out the truth or the lie? 
• Who is separating you from the love of God? Can anything? Does anything? 

Your answers to at least one of these questions may indicate that God is calling you to live differently this year. And that will require strength and courage.  

Last week, I wrote about this year’s theme, being strong and courageous, from Joshua 1:9. If God is calling you to step into or out of something this year, He will ask you not to be afraid, to be strong and courageous. As I’ve reflected on it this summer, I think being strong and courageous may require a lot of things from us, but it certainly requires that we surrender to our Lord, that we “stay in our cell,” and that we step into each other’s lives, those to whom God has called us. 

As I near the end of the sixth decade of my life (which, I’m learning, is not as old as it may sound to some of you), the Lord is teaching me many things, things that I wasn’t ready to learn earlier in life. One of those is that most of the great things that happen to you in life come not from doing and winning and achieving but as a result of letting go, of releasing, of surrendering. 

I wouldn’t have said that earlier in my life, definitely towards the beginning of my career. I would have described myself as a doer, a highly productive person, and someone who “got stuff done.” Other people described me as that person as well. Throughout my work life, even until recently, I’ve had people say, “I don’t understand how you do all you do.” To me, that was winning. I secretly loved the idea of being the highly productive guy, as if I were somehow capable of accomplishing more than “normal” people.  

But I’m realizing now that while Jesus had a very active life of preaching and healing, his greatest work came at the end of his life, in surrendering. In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” The act of “being lifted up,” Christ’s passion and sacrifice on the cross, an act of suffering and death, required not active doing but surrender.  

Jesus allowed Himself to be captured by the Temple guards, to be convicted of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin, to be turned over to Pilate and consigned to crucifixion, to be scourged and crucified, and to take on the sin of all of us. Jesus wasn’t a victim, but He did surrender. In John 10, He tells His disciples, “No one takes it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.” 

Surrender is critical to our lives and ministry as well. In The Road to Daybreak, Henri Nouwen notes that “Just as with everyone else, most of my life is determined by what is done to me and thus is passion. And because most of my life is passion, things being done to me, only small parts of my life are determined by what I think, say, or do… my passion is a much greater part of my life than my action.” 

Nouwen touches on a great truth here, one I came to realize later in life–that for all my activity, my discipline, my doing, it’s my passion, my surrender to God’s work and His hand in the face of things being done to me, sometimes things that bring me pain, that really determine the course of my life. 

As I look back over the past decade of my life, I am now slower to speak and trying to listen better and more. More content to wait on the Lord to work in my life and in the lives of others than to try to actively bring about that change myself (realizing from past failure that I couldn’t). I find joy in watching the people I work and do life with flourish, in doing and in growing, more than in seeing those things in myself. I am comfortable with stillness, silence, and learning to rest. I have forgiven the past, and I’m largely free from it. I am better able to live out my life as the Beloved of Jesus, not because of what I do, but because I am His. 

Now he is teaching me that in the fourth quarter of my time leading Grace, my most important years will involve equipping the next generation of leaders and stakeholders to carry on the mission and vision that God began here, that my generation inherited from others, and that we will pass on and pray will continue. Successfully passing on that torch will involve continued surrender—letting go of my innate desire, after nearly 25 years, to be in control, to be the builder, to own the vision, and to lead by doing. And to continually release those things to others. I’m learning that sometimes the best leadership isn’t about doing, but about surrendering. 

What do you have control over that you need to surrender for the Lord to grow, to shape you, to prepare you for what’s next for you, and prepare your children and others behind you for what’s next for them? 

Being strong and courageous involves not just surrendering but “staying in our cell”. This summer I read What Grows in Weary Lands, Tish Harrison Warren’s great book on Christian resilience. She wrote about what the Desert Fathers, the early monastics, called acedia– an internal state of restlessness, boredom, cynicism, and futility. Literally, it means “lack of care.” John Paul II had a good definition of acedia: “a sadness arising from the fact that the good is difficult.” You’ve felt it before, on a Tuesday in February. And you’ll feel acedia again this year. When life gets arduous, when you procrastinate and grumble about work. Or when you get bored and cynical about your spiritual walk. Or when you resent the next meeting with the person who just isn’t getting it or having to sit down to listen to that person’s story. Or emails and texts and the next place to be are overwhelming you, and everyone, including the people in your home, are just so dang needy. And we just say inside, “Why can’t this all just be easy?” Acedia. 

This was the temptation of the monks, Warren says, and the advice they gave each other was “stay in your cell”—your room—stay in prayer, and remain steadfast. As she says, “Practices like prayer and fasting; silence and solitude; study of and meditation on the scriptures; … and love of neighbor. These all involve repetition, failure, renewal, perseverance, and hard-won wisdom. They will all feel slow and take time, which is why, more than any new strategy, plan, app, or insight, they are what we most need to sustain a life of faithfulness (or to be strong and courageous) and to learn the practices of stability.”  

These practices, the practices of staying in our cell and doing what we know to do, regardless of our motivation or whether we feel like it or not on any given day, are the things that, over time, allow us to be transformed by God’s grace into something we never thought we’d be capable of becoming. But it’s not dramatic. It requires staying at it, staying in our cell. 

Finally, being strong and courageous means stepping in. Stepping into our relationships with others and their needs. I was reading the other day about Jesus’ Upper Room prayer on the night He was betrayed in John 17. His biggest prayer was for unity among his people, both the disciples present and those who would come after us. And the point was that unity, like Christ-centered love, is supernatural. We’re not actually capable of unity in our own flesh. We are people at war with ourselves and at war with others. Unity is an act of grace, from hearts that are collectively transformed by the Holy Spirit. It’s not actually possible in the way Christ prayed it in any other context. 

But just because it’s supernatural doesn’t mean we don’t have to fight for it. Like spiritual disciplines, unity requires human agency. It requires stepping into conflict when it brings reconciliation, even though we would rather avoid it. It means having the hard conversation face-to-face, rather than using email. It means realizing that, in order to serve that student or that family well, I have to change or do something differently, and then being willing to do that thing. It means trying to find ways to tell people “yes” unless we’re absolutely certain the answer is “no,” and that “no” is based on conviction, not feeling. 

Over the years, I’ve had people angry with me. In my role as head of school, this should be surprising to no one. After all, we only deal with people’s money, their children, and their religion, so how could there be any problems, right? With nearly 1600 students in the school, almost 200 employees, and all the parents and spouses, Grace has thousands of constituents, literally. I promise you, on the best day, there are dozens of people mad at me. Most of the time, they’re not even really mad at me; they’re just mad at the “head of school chair” I occupy and that I represent at the school. We work through it, and they get over it, but still. On any given day, I’ll walk into a room, or a game, or the grocery store, or a party, and someone will give me the “stink eye.” And I know. They’re mad about something. Most of the time, I don’t know what. But you know the look, because you’ve received it and maybe, just maybe, given it before. 

You’ve been in that situation, and you might have, as I have been, tempted to also turn away and avoid that person the rest of the evening. But over the years, God has taught me to step in, to shake that person’s hand, give them a hug, and greet them warmly. I have to have the courage to say, through my actions, “We’re in this community together, and we’re not going to treat each other that way. We’re going to love each other.” And then go work it out. To fight for unity. 

When conflict arises, major or, like this example, minor, love steps in. It’s courageous, not shy. And it pushes the devil and his schemes aside on the way to unity. 

Surrendering, staying in your cell, and stepping in are all on-ramps to being strong and courageous, but they all have one other thing in common. They’re hard and often painful. They go against our natural selves, our temptations to take control, to have it easy, and to avoid the hard step of loving another that might require change or putting yourself out there. 

But I was thinking the other day about what it means to glorify God, to worship him. God led me to John 12. In the week he was going to be crucified, Jesus said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.”

When I think of “being glorified,” I’ve often thought of having a bigger platform or doing something on a bigger scale for Jesus. But here, Jesus talks about being glorified through suffering and sacrifice. And, in that suffering and sacrifice, that pain and discomfort, that strength and courage, we grow ourselves and reproduce our own, dozens of times over, in the lives of those we teach and lead. And we not only hold onto the gift we’ve been given; we launch it into the next generation.

Jay Ferguson, Ph.D., Head of School at Grace Community School, writes regularly on his blog, JaysBlog.org.