God's reply to a young man's plans: 'Well, that's not quite what I had in mind.'

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

Continued ridiculously on …

These three pages that make up “Part 1” of this chapter in Caussade’s book contain a number of central thoughts that help guide the follower of Christ. As with the faith itself, just about the time I think I am finished with these pages, I find that I have merely begun.

Caussade is going to introduce us to the matter of indifference when it comes to embracing the will of God.

I will start with a story from the life of one of the most insecure people I know: Me. As a young pastor (and here I mean “extremely, very green”) I had been called up by my then-denomination to start a church from scratch in a small town in western Montana. The Christian & Missionary Alliance Church had sent me to Hamilton, where neither I nor my wife knew a single soul. We were to scrounge up our own jobs, find willing church-starter-type people, make converts and start services.

Many were the Sundays we set up borrowed folding chairs in the spacious living room of the apartment we miraculously rented on our second day of arrival. We had to return the rental truck on the third day after we arrived. Our first night in this strange town – our new home – was spent in a distressingly-decorated motel that excelled in a depressing atmosphere. Sunday after Sunday I preached carefully-studied sermons to my wife and our two cats. I had a sign made and kept it in our front window, which opened immediately onto the sidewalk on North Second Street: “Valley Alliance Church meets here.”

Almost 30 years later, that sign is all that remains of my failed attempt at church-making in Hamilton. I use it as level footing for my backyard barbequer.

I was daily tormented by lack of success. Every once in a while a wanderer would knock on the door for food, and I would walk with him to the Range Café and buy him a hot beef sandwich. For a while, a welfare family of 10, two parents and eight children, with one on the way, took up the use of us. When they showed up on Sundays, we had an immediate need for a Sunday School and a Children’s Church. When they didn’t show, it was back to my wife and the two cats. Other than that, the Valley Alliance Church wasn’t much of anything. From my point of view, neither was its pastor.

I had no doubt that God had led us here, but I was quite dubious about myself as someone . . . effective. I didn’t seem to have a meaningful ministry. Wait, and you will see what a trap that word “meaningful” can be.

Feelings of inadequacy were only worsened when I was required to attend pastors’ conferences within the district. A group of pastors is not unlike any other group of professionals. There are the quiet, there are the blustery, there are the competitors, there are the self-assured, there are the nice, and there are the asses. I was never comfortable in this group. I was always afraid someone would ask, of all things, “How’s it going?”

At one of these conferences, in Missoula, we had all been given roles in the night’s events. There were featured speakers, people to introduce them, song leaders, invocators, benedictionaires, special music presenters and Scripture readers. And ushers.

Ushers, of course, are as necessary at a pastors’ conference as the French were in World War II. When I discovered that I had been assigned to ush, which amounted to walking backwards down an aisle and pointing knowingly in a direction with an expression on my bitten-closed smile that said, “That right there is a chair,” I fled the conference.

I silently, privately had no confidence in myself, but I could not endure having it publicly confirmed among my peers in this way: “Tim, we think, would make a passable usher.”

This was a microcosm of my general malaise. I wanted my ministry to have meaning. Instead, I felt like a sticky note in a vast library full of massive, intimidating, important books.

You can tell I was let down, disappointed, frustrated, self-absorbed, fragile and angry.

I had made a fundamental error in my walk with God. I had not yet learned that even a Christian’s idea of success can lead to problems. I had come to believe that the work I did in God’s kingdom would have to be satisfying and meaningful to me; that I would somehow look good on paper; that I would be seen as successful and competent by my fellow creatures. I might even win a prize.

The truth is, the work I do in His kingdom has to be satisfying and meaningful to Him. I may have something in mind completely different from God’s idea when I involve myself in my plans. By now, for example, I can tell that, while I wanted a career and a stable employee life, the Lord has thought otherwise. Since my college graduation I have had at least 23 jobs scattered in many different fields. Bursting forth from high school, I was committed and unstoppable in my pursuit of becoming a music teacher. Exploding out of Bible college, I was singularly set upon becoming a pastor.

God’s response to my plans might have sounded like this: “Well, that’s not quite what I have in mind.”

About the will of God, we have this example from Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it.” (Matthew 26:39) and again, “My Father, if this cup cannot pass by, but I must drink it, your will be done.” (26:42)

Once we carefully integrate this approach in our walk with God: “Let it be as you, not I, would have it,” we are closer to what Father Caussade calls “a universal indifference.” That is, as he writes, “a soul freely submitted to the divine will with the help of grace” (Page 55).

This is a radical distinction, and brings us to another of Caussade’s thoughts in this section of his book.

“We should then love God and his plan in everything … We should abandon ourselves purely and entirely to God’s design, and thus, with a complete self-forgetfulness, be eternally busied with loving and obeying him, without all these fears, rejections, twistings and turnings and disquietudes which sometimes result from the care of our own salvation and perfection.” ~Caussade (Pages 55, 56.)

The indifference here required is to realize that your life is not what your life is all about.

My ministry, such as it is, has not been packaged in the way I thought it would. In my earlier years this led to the above-mentioned disquietudes. As I develop a better-integrated spiritual life through grace and practice, it becomes clearer that God is doing what he wants with me at all times. As I grow in the faith, I kick somewhat less against this.