P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

MOVING YOUR TENT STAKES OUT

I guess it’s been just about the hottest book out there in recent months — and Christians are very excited because it happens to be a spiritual bestseller. The Prayer of Jabez, by Dr. Bruce Wilkinson, of Walk Thru the Bible Ministries, has racked up sales in the five million range and gone to the top of even the secular charts. And in case you haven’t yet enlarged your territory by reading this very interesting 92-page book, that’s exactly what the prayer of Jabez contains: a I Chronicles petition that God would give him a bigger playing field. “Expand my borders, God. Give me a bigger slice of the pie. Make me a gimper for you.” Wilkinson explains right in chapter one that a gimper is a person “who always does a little more than what’s required or expected.”

“In the furniture business,” he writes, “gimping is putting the finishing touches on the upholstery, patiently applying the ornamental extras that are a mark of quality and value.”

Well, friend, this is all very interesting, because as we wrap up our week of study here in Luke chapter 9, it seems like Jesus is saying the opposite to us. “Deny yourself,” He tells us. “Shrink your ambitions. If you want to save your life, lose it instead . . . for My sake.” In fact, just five chapters later, Jesus advises His friends and followers to always take the lowest seat at a banquet; deliberately pick a table right next to the kitchen. It doesn’t sound at all like “Lord, enlarge my territory.”

Let’s put a “counterpoint” story on the table and then see how these two philosophies balance out. In the incredible book, The Ten Challenges, Dr. Leonard Felder, a noted psychologist here in L.A., explains the value of the Tenth Commandment — Thou shalt not covet — by telling about a noted film director who came to him for some therapy. This man would lay on the couch and admit that even though he had made successful movies, and prospered financially, and moved audiences with his cinematic vision, there were always OTHER directors out there, the Spielbergs and the Camerons and the Ang Lees, who had made bigger movies, cashed in bigger box office receipts, gone home with more Oscars and Golden Globes. This frustrated man wanted to enlarge his own territory in the Hollywood Reporter, and get his movies in more multiplexes, and couldn’t stand to get beat. In fact, he confessed to Dr. Felder: “Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.”

So, friend, how do we sort out these two life philosophies? On the one hand, five million readers have decided that it’s good to expand your tent stakes. On the flip side, we read over and over that to want more and more and more — especially when you want part of your next-door neighbor’s camp site — is very dangerous. What makes expansion good and what makes it bad?

We’ve often quoted from the marvelous chapter in C. S. Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity, which is entitled “The Great Sin.” And what is that sin? Here it comes:

“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free,” he writes, “which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. . . . The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. . . . According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

It’s ironic that Lucifer himself, up in heaven, demanded of God: “Hey, expand MY territory. Jesus, Your own Son, has a bigger portfolio than I do, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Lewis continues:

“Each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise.” That was the film director’s problem, wasn’t it? “If I am a proud man,” Lewis continues, “then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy.”

Does that hit close to home? It certainly does here at Box 53055, and in the mirror I peer into each morning. So we ask again: what is the secret variable which makes “Lord, enlarge my territory” an acceptable prayer? And the answer is this: friend, what you and I want more than anything in this world is for God to bless us more so that we can do more for HIM. So that we can lift up JESUS higher. So that we can touch more lives — not with our own prowess or good looks — but with the good news of Jesus Christ.

Wilkinson, in this life-changing little book, puts it like this:

“When we seek God’s blessing as the ultimate value in life, we are throwing ourselves entirely into the river of HIS will and power and purposes for us. All our OTHER needs become secondary to what we really want — which is to become wholly immersed in what GOD is trying to do in us, through us, and around us for HIS glory.”

The Prayer of Jabez is full of personal stories explaining this concept, and late in the book, he tells how he began to not only pray each day, “Lord, let me do more, more, MORE for YOU” . . . he actually began to just walk up to total strangers and ask them: “How can I help you?” Once, in Atlanta, he was fighting traffic to get to the airport, praying that God would delay his flight to Asheville. Sure enough, the plane WAS late. Standing in line was a nicely dressed woman who seemed flustered. So Dr. Wilkinson just came out with it: “What can I do for you?” She gave him a goggle-eyed gaze. “Nothing.” “No, really,” he said. “What can I do for you?” Bit by bit, the barriers came down and she admitted that she was flying home to divorce her husband. She had caught him cheating with another woman. Deep in conversation, they were the last two people to get on the plane, and Sophie was frustrated that they couldn’t keep talking. “Don’t worry,” Bruce said. “God will put us together.”

But they compared boarding passes and they were five rows apart. However, just as they sat down, a man stuck in a middle seat he didn’t like offered to trade, and voila! — they had all the way from Atlanta to Asheville where God allowed this Christian minister’s territory to enlarge into the marital counseling arena. By the time the wheels of the plane touched down in North Carolina, he had been able to share Bible promises about forgiveness, and Scriptural teachings about commitment . . . and Sophie’s marriage was spared.

We talked yesterday about running for a high office like the presidency here in the United States. Is it all right to scramble for votes and debate your opponent and say on TV, “My plan for America is better than that guy’s plan”? Well, yes, it is . . . IF you truly do want to just help people and put pure “compassionate conservatism” into place. If you want trappings of power, and headlines, and glory, and accolades for yourself, and simply want to beat “wooden Al,” then the answer is no. In other words, what is your motivation?

Someone once asked C. S. Lewis, in a Q&A session clear back in 1944, while World War II was going on: “Is it all right for a man to want to be a general?” And he replied: “Sure! But it all depends.” Actually, here’s the verbatim answer:

“The mere event of becoming a General isn’t either right or wrong in itself. What matters morally is your attitude towards it. The man may be thinking about winning a war; he may be wanting to be a General because he honestly thinks he has a good plan and is glad of a chance to carry it out.” That would be a “Prayer of Jabez” motivation, agreed? But Lewis concludes the thought: “That’s all right. But if he is thinking: ‘What can I get out of the job?’ or ‘How can I get on the front page of the Illustrated News, then it is all wrong.”

Interestingly, in the question right before this one, Dr. Lewis makes this observation:

“Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people — which is what I think it does mean — then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn’t wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.”

You know, it’s interesting. Right here in Luke 9, Jesus personally gives His twelve disciples all sorts of powers. They can heal. They can cast out demons. They can preach with power. In a sense, He turns them into film directors and generals, essentially pinning the four stars on their lapels Himself. “Now go,” He commands. “But lift up GOD’S kingdom. Proclaim heaven’s agenda. Point people to the soon-coming Cross which will save them.” He expands their territory . . . but lifts up His own Father.