I’m reading a book called Balancing Your Family, Faith & Work by Pat Gelsinger. Pat is the Senior VP in charge of the biggest technology group at Intel, the Digital Enterprise Group. I wanted to record here some of the ideas that impacted me and why.

When my time on earth is complete I want to be like Paul and have run the good race (2 Tim. 4:7) and used up every ounce of energy, minute of time, and dollar of resources for his purpose and kingdom.

I think I’ve had this idea in the back of my head for a long time, and have feared it. I feared what I would lose by trying to ‘give my all.’ But lately, I’ve been seeing that living this way yields the most satisfaction. What is satisfaction? I think it’s essentially our closeness to perfection (in abstract) or how close our heart is God (what to actually pursue). This equation comes about when pursuing perfection if “perfection” is a personal God.

Everyone derives satisfaction from all sorts of things on a short and long term basis. Eating a great meal is a small bump in our satisfaction level over a short period of time. Being happily married and raising a family can be a large source of satisfaction over a long period of time. But every experience in our life can operate in isolation, or contribute to the slope of our life over time as time goes to eternity (infinity in the x axis). Are we using and allowing experiences to bring us closer to perfection and keep us there (infinity in the y axis)? I.e. do we change for the better - become closer to God? Or do we return to where we were?

I think of the satisfaction bumps as divine updrafts - blessings from God. But we don’t have wings. We don’t have the means to approach heaven over an infinity of time (consistently change for the better and grow closer to God). The only one who can forever bring us along closer to infinity is infinity Himself. Our own efforts at life result in death by chaos (sin) or death by crystallization (law). We don’t have a source of eternal life within us. If we are to gain ever greater satisfaction, we need to put to death our independence and rely on God. God has made this possible by creating a space/time connection to us through Jesus. He enables us to relate to the infinite without being burned away in our imperfection. He provides our perfect example. And obeying Him as Lord gives us the wings we need to approach x/y infinity (eternity/perfection).

Cheesy graphs NOT TO SCALE. ENLARGED TO SHOW TEXTURE. INFINITY NOT DEPICTED.
Satisfaction in Ourselves	Satisfaction in Christ

As I was reading this book I rediscovered that this process isn’t completely about sacrifice and self-denial. It is the most rewarding path possible. My fears were real, but unfounded. The key is Christ - without Him, I do have the downslope of every temporal satisfaction to look forward to. With Him, I can look forward to infinite love and joy.

If I believe my spirit is eternal, while my body is mortal, should not the nourishment of the former be more important, sans exception, than the latter? And yet I have been more consistent in eating cereal! ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ From Desiring God:

This has been the secret of God’s great spiritual warriors. They have saturated themselves with the Word of God. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, sustained himself through incredible hardships by a disciplined meditation on the Bible every day. Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor give us a glimpse of this discipline:

It was not easy for Mr. Taylor, in his changeful life, to make time for prayer and Bible study, but he knew that it was vital. Well do the writers remember traveling with him month after month in northern China, by cart and wheelbarrow with the poorest of inns at night. Often with only one large room for coolies and travelers alike, they would screen off a corner for their father and another for themselves, with curtains of some sort; and then, after sleep at last had brought a measure of quiet, they would hear a match struck and see the flicker of candlelight which told that Mr. Taylor, however weary, was pouring over the little Bible in two volumes always at hand. From two to four a.m. was the time he usually gave to prayer; the time he could be most sure of being undisturbed to wait upon God.

Often I’ve thought “I don’t have time to read today, I’ll just pray on the way to work.” George Mueller, a great saint of God, shares in his autobiography a turning point in his spiritual growth. It’s encouraging me to put in the work necessary to adjust my schedule so that I have time to read scripture every day.

Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed in the morning. Now I saw, that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, whilst meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental, communion with the Lord. I began therefore, to meditate on the New Testament, from the beginning, early in the morning.

The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.
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The difference between my former practice and my present one is this. Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the time. At all events I almost invariably began with prayer…. But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.; and often after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray.
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As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time, except we take food, and as this is one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man. We should take food for that, as every one must allow. Now what is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God: and here again not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts…

From John Piper’s book “Desiring God,” I resonated with this section because I have lately felt the frustration of reaching the end of all my “mountains.” I’ve been unhappy and guilt-ridden at my unsatisfaction in life, when I have so much to be grateful for. The unsatisfaction has driven me to seek lesser things (”exciting” tech news stories, driving fast, etc..) when I had a thrilling lifelong set of challenges right there. I think the key is that I forgot myself in the world. I forgot that the gnawing void of dissatisfaction cannot be filled in this world; no, we are on a climb that only reaches the peak when we meet Christ in the next. So I’m off now, to work on this internal mountain, knowing that I will experience intense joy and grief intermingled until I’m together with the object of my climb.

Conquering the Internal Mountain of Pride

There is an analogy here to a powerful motive that exists in unbelieving hearts as well. Virtually all people outside Christ are possessed by the desire to find happiness by overcoming some limitation in their lives and having the sensation of power. Heinrich Harrer, a member of the first team to climb the north wall of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps, confessed that his reason for attempting such a climb was to overcome a sense of insecurity. “Self-confidence,” he said, “is the most valuable gift a man can possess . . . but to possess this true confidence it is necessary to have learned to know oneself at moments when one was standing at the very frontier of things…. On the `Spider’ in the Eiger’s North Face, I experienced such borderline situations, while the avalanches were roaring down over us, endlessly.”

The all-important difference between the non-Christian and the Christian Hedonist in this pursuit of joy is that the Christian Hedonist has discovered that self-confidence will never satisfy the longing of his heart to overcome finitude.

He has learned that what we are really made for is not the thrill of feeling our own power increase, but the thrill of feeling God’s power increase-conquering the precipices of un-love in our sinful hearts.

As I said in the letter to my friend Ronn, it is an indictment of our own worldliness that we feel more exhilaration when we conquer an external mountain of granite in our own strength than when we conquer the internal mountain of pride in God’s strength. The miracle of Christian Hedonism is that overcoming obstacles to love by the grace of God has become more enticing than every form of self-confidence. The joy of experiencing the power of God’s grace defeating selfishness is an insatiable addiction.

This is a section out of the book The Sacred Romance that I liked. The underlined parts are things I really identified with.

… A second picture of the way God desires to commune with us is found in 1 Kings 19 where we find the prophet Elijah worn out and afraid, fleeing from Jezebel. She has been trying to kill him ever since he did the same to her prophets. God tenderly ministers to Elijah, twice bringing him food and water. Elijah, strengthened, travels forty days and forty nights until he reaches Mt. Horeb, where he goes to sleep in a cave. The Lord wakes him and listens to his lament about what it is like to be God’s prophet. Elijah is worn out from “doing” and badly in need of restoration of spirit. A great wind strikes the mountain, followed by an earthquake and a fire. And God is in none of these. Finally, Elijah hears a “gentle whisper.” and it is in the gentle whisper that he finds God.

And so it is with us. God is not “out there somewhere” in some dramatic way, waiting to commune with us by earthquake of fire or signs in the sky. Instead, he desires to talk with us in the quietness of our own heart through his Spirit, who is in us. It is his voice that has whispered to us about a Sacred Romance. What do you hear when you listen for that gentle, quiet voice?

What I so often hear, or feel, is a restlessness, a distractedness where it seems that dozens if not hundreds of disconnected or scattered thoughts vie for my attention. … There seems to be no stillness or rest. If I try to hold still, my soul reacts like a feather in the afternoon breeze, flitting from place to place without purpose or direction. I almost seem invisible in the noise or blankness. Theologians refer to this condition as “ontological lightness,” the reality that when I stop “doing” and simply listen to my heart, I am not anchored to anything substantive. I become aware that my very identity is synonymous with activity.

Many of us sense that this is true in our vocation, our religion, and even our recreation. When we are trying to get to know who people are, we typically ask what they do. I am a counselor, you are abusinessman. It is how we tend to think of ourselves … Our whole American culture is infected with ontological lightness, celebrities and pro athletes being the most dramatic exapmles of this victimization of our souls that ruins us for any substantive love relationship. They are anchored only to their performances and out of their performances come their identities–and ours who worship them. As soon as they stop performing, their identities–and ours–disappear.

… Two years ago, worn out by three years of spiritual battle, I found myself asking the question this way: “Jesus, if your Spirit abides in me in the person of the Holy Spirit, who is my Comforter, why do I so often feel alone and you seem so far away?” What came in response were Jesus’ words in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Jesus was saying, “Living spiritually requires something more than just not sinning or doing good works. In order to live in the kingdom of heaven, you must abide in me. Your identity is in me.”

If I’m not abiding in Jesus, then where is it that I abide? I asked myself.

I began to notice that when I was tired or anxious, there were certain sentences that I would say in my head that led me to a very familiar place. The journey to this place would often start with me walking around disturbed, feeling as if there was something deep inside that I needed to put into words but couldn’t quite capture. I felt the “something” as an anxiety, a loneliness, and a need for connection with someone. If no connection came, I would start to say things like “Life really stinks. Why is it always so hard? It’s never going to change.” If no one noticed that I was struggling and asked me what was wrong, I found my sentences shifting again to a more cynical level: “Who cares? Life is really a joke.” Surprisingly, I noticed by the time I was saying those last sentences, I was feeling better. The anxiety was greatly diminished.

My “comforter,” my abiding place, was cynicism and rebellion. From this abiding place, I would feel free to use some soul cocaine–a violence video with maybe a little sexual titillation thrown in, perhaps having a little more alcohol with a meal than I might normally drink–things that would allow me to feel better for just a little while. I had always thought of these things as just bad habits. I began to see that they were much more; they were spiritual abiding places that were my comforters and friends in a very spiritual way; literally, other lovers.

The final light went on one evening when I read John 15 in The Message. Peterson translates Jesus’ words on abiding this way: “If you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon.” Jesus was saying in answer to my question, “I have made my home in you, Brent. But you still have other comforters you go to. You must learn to make your home in me. ” I realized that my identity had something to do with simply “staying at home.”

It also dawned on me that holiness, surprisingly, also comes not out of doing but out of staying at home, with who and where we are and with who and where God is in us. Indeed, we will only have the courage to leave home and continue to live as pilgrims out on the road if we have some sense that our true home abides within us in the Spirit of Christ and that we can do the same with him. And in the meantime, out of this abiding, Jesus transforms us. Our identity begins to coalesce, not out of doing, but out of living with a good friend for a number of years and simply finding we have become more like him.

… Resting in Jesus is not applying a spiritual formula to ourselves as a kind of fix-it. It is the essence of repentance. It is letting our heart tell us where we are in our own story so that Jesus can minister to us out of the Story of his love for us. When, in a given moment, we lay down our false self and the smaller story of whatever performance has sustained us, when we give up everything else but him, we experience the freedom of knowing that he simply loves us where we are. We begin just to be, having our identity anchored in him. We begin to experience our spiritual life as the “easy yoke and light burden” Jesus tells us is his experience. We become ontologically substantive.

I asked God, “Why should we toil, in light of Ecclesiastes?” If our motivation is not gaining anything, be it knowledge, wealth, wisdom, “karma,” acclaim, power for its own sake or power to “change the world for good”… then what is our motivation? Why did Jesus, our perfect example, persevere? I asked Him these things and read several passages randomly, and the theme? Judgement. Not heaven/hell judgement, but accountability for our deeds: Ecclesiastes 11:9-10, John 12:44-50, 2 Timothy 1:8-14. And I recalled something I had read yesterday all about judgement at the last day — that we will be granted eternal life simply for our belief in Christ and acceptance of His love, but that we will be judged and “rewarded” accordingly for our deeds on earth.

But rather than leave it at that carrot/stick level of understanding, God showed me what the reward means, and why it is a joy, not a burden. In the 2 Timothy passage,

“This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

This was Jesus’ mission: destroy death and darkness and reveal God’s truth in a message of love. The gospel is a love letter from God to man (just read John, 4th book in the New Testament!).

In every moment, our “deeds” are either in obedience to truth, or in obedience to our own will. And in this, God is preparing us for eternity. I don’t know how the judgement and rewarding of our deeds will play out in eternity, but it makes sense that our role there, in the undeniable presence of God’s truth, will be shaped by what sort of being we are becoming here when we can deny Him.

Our charge is to reveal God’s wonderful truth in love. And our motivation is being part of the most real, genuine relationship available to us — with Jesus our God who loves us. A relationship that will continue into eternity. But the present — NOW — is part of eternity and we are shaping our eternities. Jesus speaks with authority and beautiful simplicity:

“For I did not speak of my own accord, but the father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.” (John 12:49-50)

Jesus knew obeying God, not his own whims, leads to eternity without death and evil — and He chose to do so. We have the same choice. We all fail, but with His grace, we can join Him in eternity and continue where we left off when we die. I’d like to explore the concept of eternal life next time.