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About the Book
"100 Ways to Simplify Your Life" by Joyce Meyer offers practical advice on how to simplify and improve various aspects of your life, covering topics such as relationships, decision-making, time management, and stress reduction. The book provides easy-to-follow tips and strategies to help readers navigate the complexities of modern life and find more peace and fulfillment.
William Still
I recently read Dying to Live (Christian Focus, 1991), the autobiography of Scottish pastor William Still. I became interested in Still after reading his book The Work of the Pastor earlier this year.
The first half of Dying to Live tells about Still’s early years into young adulthood and his beginning in pastoral ministry. Still had an unsettled childhood. His parents were separated in his early years, and his father was an alcoholic. He was a sickly child who took refuge in music and became an accomplished pianist. He was part of the Salvation Army as a young man but then entered ministry in the Church of Scotland and served at the Gilcomston Church in his hometown of Aberdeen from 1945-1997.
The second half of the book deals with various aspects of Still’s pastoral ministry. Still was an evangelical. In his early ministry he worked with Billy Graham, Alan Redpath, and others in evangelistic events. With time, however, he moved away from what he came to call “evangelisticism” to develop a solid expositional ministry.
Still faced his fair share of hardships during the course of his ministry. When he moved away from pragmatic evangelistic methods, for example, more than two hundred people stopped attending his church almost overnight. In the preface, he references Martin Luther’s observation that there are three things which make a minister: study, prayer, and afflictions. He observes, “He who is not prepared to make enemies for Christ’s sake by the faithful preaching of the Word will never make lasting friends for Christ, either” (p. 93).
He describes one particularly difficult controversy early in his ministry when he confronted a group of disgruntled elders. At the end of one Sunday service, he read a statement confronting these men, which ended, “There you sit, with your heads down, guilty men. What would you say if I named you before the whole congregation? You stand condemned before God for your contempt of the Word and of his folk.” He adds, “The moment I had finished, I walked out of the pulpit. There was no last hymn—no benediction. I went right home. It was the hardest and most shocking thing I ever had to do in Gilcomston” (p. 124). That same week seven of his elders resigned and Still was called twice before his Presbytery to answer for the controversy. Yet, he endured.
Still maintains that in light of the unpleasantness one will face in the ministry that the minister of the Word must possess one quality in particular: “…I would say that this quality is courage: guts, sheer lion-hearted bravery, clarity of mind and purpose, grit. Weaklings are no use here. They have a place in the economy of God if they are not deliberate weaklings and stunted adults as Paul writes of both to the Romans and to the Corinthians. But weaklings are no use to go out and speak prophetically to men from God and declare with all compassion, as well as with faithfulness, the truth: the divine Word that cuts across all men’s worldly plans for their lives” (p. 140).
Still was a pioneer in several areas. First, he developed a pattern of preaching and teaching systematically through books of the Bible at a time when this was rarely done. He began a ministry of “consecutive Bible teaching” starting with the book of Galatians in 1947, calling this transition from “evangelisticism to systematic exposition … probably the most significant decision in my life” (p. 191).
He was also a pioneer in simplifying and integrating the ministry of the church. After noting how youth in the church were drifting away, even after extensive involvement in the church’s children’s ministry, Still writes, “I conceived the idea of ceasing all Sunday School after beginners and Primary age (seven years) and invited parents to have their children sit with them in the family pew from the age of eight” (p. 171). He laments “the disastrous dispersion of congregations by the common practice of segregating the church family into every conceivable category of division of ages, sexes, etc.” (p. 173).
Dying to Live is a helpful and encouraging work about the life and work of the minister and is to be commended to all engaged in the call of gospel ministry. As the title indicates, Still’s essential thesis is that in order to be effective in ministry the minister must suffer a series of deaths to himself (cf. John 12:24). On this he writes:
The deaths one dies before ministry can be of long duration—it can be hours and days before we minister, before the resurrection experience of anointed preaching. And then there is another death afterwards, sometimes worse than the death before. From the moment that you stand there dead in Christ and dead to everything you are and have and ever shall be and have, every breath you breathe thereafter, every thought you think, every word you say and deed you do, must be done over the top of your own corpse or reaching over it in your preaching to others. Then it can only be Jesus that comes over and no one else. And I believe that every preacher must bear the mark of that death. Your life must be signed by the Cross, not just Christ’s cross (and there is really no other) but your cross in his Cross, your particular and unique cross that no one ever died—the cross that no one ever could die but you and you alone: your death in Christ’s death (p. 136).
Blessed Are the Unoffendable
I remember the flush of embarrassment that came to my face as I realized that my friend was letting me know I hadn’t been invited to be a part of the group of women she was meeting with regularly — and not by accident. I tried to navigate the moment, relieving the tension by telling her not to worry about it. I let her know that my plate was full with doctors’ appointments and kids’ activities. “I couldn’t join the group even if I were asked!” I laughed, doing all I could to keep her from feeling sorry for me. And my words were true. I really did have a plate too full to add anything else. I really didn’t want her to worry about it. Yet my hot cheeks and thumping heart told the secret I was trying to conceal — I was fighting the impulse to take offense. Shutting the Gates I knew well enough how destructive becoming offended can be. Proverbs 18:19 says, “A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city.” What horrible strength there is in taking up an offense! Offended people can become unassailable. Recalcitrant. Too hard-hearted to hear an appeal. When we are offended, we believe ourselves to have the moral high ground; therefore, we feel justified in making the one who has offended us a villain. I thought I was on the inside of this particular group of friends, only to discover I was not. My sense of where I fit in with others was challenged in a painful way. I could choose to accept it with goodwill toward these sisters and lean on my Savior who has called me his friend, or I could get tough — hard as nails — like an unyielding strong city whose gates have been shut and whose pride has locked out the offending parties. “Offended people become unassailable. Recalcitrant. Too hard-hearted to hear an appeal.” The Scriptures show us many instances of Jesus causing offense. He offends his hometown crowd. He offends Pharisees and scribes. He is the stone of stumbling and rock of offense. This is no big surprise to Christians. We aren’t shocked that the Pharisees or the hometown crowd are resentful and outraged by his superior understanding and his mighty deeds. From our vantage point, it isn’t too hard to see that when Jesus challenges their view of reality, he’s always right. We can see their blind spots and pride and how that pride makes them easily offended. But it’s much harder to spot the pride when we’re the one being offended, and when the offender is someone other than the perfect Jesus. The Drug of Offendedness What do we do when we’re offended by one another? What do we do if the offense given or taken is a result of carelessness, or thin skin, or personality differences, or unintentionally missing the mark, or sinfulness in ourselves or others? First, remember that when others are offensive in a truly sinful way, their offense is against God first and foremost. Sin against us feels personal, because it often is personal. But it’s significantly more personal to God, who doesn’t just relate to us, but who created us. God is patient with those who have offended his holiness. But he will not wait forever. And for those who are united to his Son through faith, their offenses against him have been extinguished at the cross. Second, it is good to remember that God has made a way for us to deal with a legitimate offense. We can follow the instructions of our Lord and go to that person directly in the hopes of gaining our brother (Matthew 18:15). We don’t ever need to stay offended. Even when we don’t gain our brother by going to him, we don’t have to live in our offended state; we can lay that down at the cross. And laying our offense there, we can take a posture that is eager for reconciliation, should God grant it. But what about when there is no intentional or discernible sin? What about the kind of situation that I found myself in — the one where I had not been sinned against, yet my hurt feelings were poised to harden into offendedness? It helps to acknowledge that taking offense is a powerful drug. It’s a powerful drug precisely because it gives us power. Remember the proverb — the offended brother is more unyielding than a strong city! “Taking offense is a powerful drug. It’s a powerful drug precisely because it gives us power.” When we turn hurt feelings into offendedness, we go from vulnerable to impenetrable. When we’re hurt by someone else’s words or actions, it’s tempting to try to protect ourselves with anger or self-righteousness that masquerades as having been offended. It’s easier to imagine the ones who have hurt us as villains rather than own that our hurt often has to do with our insecurities and fragility more than with the objective sinfulness of others. Good Sense and Glory Proverbs 19:11 says, “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” Good sense and glory are in short supply these days. Rather than slow down and give our rational minds a chance to inform our wildly thumping hearts, we let our feelings inform our response. Rather than overlook an offense, we go conjuring them up from every possible infraction, mounting chips on our shoulders. Everything another person says that we disagree with is a devilish opportunity for taking up an offense. Anything another person does that is different than how we would do it strengthens the resolve of the unyielding, hardened heart. Too often, we can’t merely disagree with people; we are personally offended by the words, opinions, and actions of others, even when they have no bearing on our personal lives. And if we can’t find a way to be personally offended ourselves, too many have begun taking up an offense on behalf of another. Rather than cover an offense in the interest of love and refusing to repeat a matter (Proverbs 17:9), the society around us urges us to lend and borrow offenses as a currency of backward virtue. Blessed Are the Unoffendable There is more than insecurity and fragility underneath our proclivity to take up an offense, although those problems are constantly feeding it. At root, our easily offended hearts are full of pride and idolatry. We have set ourselves as the standard of what is right and good and what must be honored — any perceived challenge to that assumption results in anger, resentment, and the taking up of an offense. But we’re not the standard; God is — which is wonderful news for sinners. Because he is the standard, because only he can see into hearts and discern the motives of each of us, we can be free to assume the best of others, trusting that he will judge perfectly in the end. We can have the good sense to be slow to anger. We can become gloriously unoffendable. Won’t you lay down the offendedness you’ve nursed against others, and rest in the salvation of the God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love? He is patient in delaying judgment, but judgment will come. Today is the day to crucify the counterfeit power of offendedness and take hold of the gospel — which is the power of God for salvation to all who believe (Romans 1:16). Article by Abigail Dodds
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