Godward Toil

From the page to my life

In John Piper's moving explanation for his upcoming leave of absence, he acknowledged pride in his life:

But on the other hand, I see several species of pride in my soul that, while they may not rise to the level of disqualifying me for ministry, grieve me, and have taken a toll on my relationship with Noël and others who are dear to me. How do I apologize to you, not for a specific deed, but for ongoing character flaws, and their effects on everybody?

This touching acknowledgment of pride made me think about something he mentioned in a sermon about greatness and humility several months back: 

A Yearlong Focus and Lifelong Passion. One evidence of how crucial we feel this to be is that the pastoral staff small groups this coming year will be reading and praying over and applying C. J. Mahaney’s book Humility: True Greatness. The five of us who lead those small groups agreed on this so that the quest to put to death our pride and all its ugly fruit would not be a passing interest with this sermon, but a yearlong focus for us—and then a lifelong passion.

I have no idea how God used the small-group study of Humility to sanctify Pastor John and others in the group. But it made me know that I want to let the good books I read really have an effect on my life. God is doing a million X a million things in ordaining that we pick up a godly book to read. And when he moved men of God to write them.

On my shelf right now I have three unread books that could change everything if I take them as seriously as I imagine John Piper takes a book like Mahaney's:  DA Carson's A Call to Spiritual Reformation, Richard Phillips The Masculine Mandate, and Timothy Witmer's The Shepherd Leader.

What books are on your shelf? Will they make it to your life?

Can a Christian do GTD and Col 2:8?

A dear brother emailed me this afternoon to alert me to an interview with Wayne Grudem by C.J. Mahaney.  Grudem is a theological giant of modern orthodox Christianity.  I have heard several Christian leaders (including Sally Michaels of Children Desiring God) say that Grudem's Systematic Theology is the most important book, outside the Bible, for anyone with a teaching ministry to own.

In the interview with Mahaney, Grudem says:   "As far as human advice and counsel, I have found the system described in Getting Things Done by David Allen to be very helpful—I am just now rereading that to try to get all of my “in box” items back under control again and listed in one place, and then processed. I should add that I find effective use of time to be a continual challenge and I keep making small modifications here and there."

I have mentioned before that I approached GTD with a fair amount of skepticism because of Allen's New Age background and aims.  I'm in the middle of reading his latest book, Making it all work and I remain on guard against the promise of "Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life" (as the full title offers).  The Bible is about victory in life and everything else!  And because it is, there is a part of me that wants to throw into the fire any other book that makes a similar claim.   I think that part of me is righteous and I want to keep that fierce rejection of claims that compete with the Bible's claims.   And, at the same time, I have found that, as a bottom-up approach (set of tools) for managing what God puts in my life, GTD has helped me serve my family, teach, fight sin, lead, pray, and respond to the Spirit in church more effectively.  I love and desire productivity for the Lord, and want to steward his time and tasks well.  The disciplines associated with GTD are not essential for me to do that, but they do help.

So it is comforting to hear that someone whose heart and mind I admire as much as I do Grudem's has come to similar conclusions.  I do think it takes an enlightened mind and a strong foundation of faith and theology to read David Allen and remain true to Paul's exhortation in Col 2:8, "See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ."  But it is possible.  And if the heart and mind conditions are right, GTD can be a powerful tool in the hand of a Christian.

Getting things done with prayer

In a recent sermon on prayer, John Piper made the following staggering assertion:

...God has ordained to make our prayers real causes of real events. Real causes. The words of James 4:2, “You do not have because you do not ask,” do not mean, “You would have had anyway, even if you didn’t pray, since God had a plan and your prayers don’t matter.” “You do not have because you do not ask” means prayer causes things to happen that do not happen if the prayers don’t happen. This is breathtaking. And if you neglect this privilege—your participation in God’s moving the world—you are acting very foolishly. We pray because it is a staggeringly awesome privilege.

I nearly gasped when I heard this.  And it has changed my prayer life.   Why?

Anyone who knows John Piper's mission and theology knows that no one on Earth has a higher view God's sovereignty and supremacy.  In the very paragraph before the one I quoted above, he says,  "God runs this world with infinite wisdom. You and I never inform him of anything he doesn’t already know. We never add to his wisdom about what he should do next."    So when I heard him say "prayer causes things to happen that do not happen if the prayers don’t happen," I knew that  He was not taking about an open theism position in which God lacks foreknowledge and therefore is ever improving and responding.

That meant that I really needed to come to terms with this radical statement.  Does he really mean "cause"?   Do my prayers matter in a "cause" kind of way?   I knew that I hadn't been praying like that.   I asked God to show me truth, to enlighten and enlarge my mind so that I might possibly hold onto such a potentially glorious paradox long enough to examine it and let it touch me.    With that prayer, I went to the Scripture and found just what John Piper found:   We have an inscrutable God who knows and causes all things, and who has taken pleasure in causing prayer to cause things to happen in the universe.   This reality is so profound, that I can barely begin to think about before I exhaust my mental capacity.

Yet, marvelously and inexplicably, my soul can respond to it.  When I was first born of God, I prayed this way.  And I have begun to pray this way again.  Early this week, while I was reading the Bible in the morning, I felt overwhelmed by all of the tasks and responsibilities I had this week.  I could not see how I could possibly do everything that I had to do.  Next actions and projects identified, but not nearly enough time to fit them in.  In my prayer journal, I asked God to help me.   And I asked with the fervency that came from the meditations on prayer that had been sparked by the Piper sermon.   Later that day, one of the huge things I had to do was completed and taken away in 30 minutes.   When it happened, I knew with certainty (with as much unprovable certainty as I know I love my children) that my prayer had caused that to happen.  I thanked and praised Him.   An unbelievable interaction had taken place with the One who holds the universe in His hands.  I participated in God moving the world.  He caused my circumstances (the work I had, the sermon, everything), moved my heart to pray,  heard the prayer, and made it happen.   He ordered all of this such that my prayer was the only way it would happen--and/because it is the way He gets the most glory.

Prayer:  a trusted system for getting things done.

Testimony of Trust in God's Wisdom and Sovereignty

Not obviously productivity-related, but such a glorious and Bible-saturated testimony that I want to capture it here.   Thanks to Justin Taylor for his post pointing to this 4-minute video.

Of course, there are productivity implications for this kind of trust (there are implications for everything of this kind of trust!).  The consequence for productivity is that we do not have to rail against any circumstance or task before us, however painful or distasteful, but rather can direct our energy and focus on diligent work for the Lord.  I often waste much energy wishing things weren't so, or cursing unexpected trials.  I want to be an imitator of this man's faith (as Paul put it in Heb 6:11-12), and focus my energy instead on God's work for me and go about doing it diligently, fervently, and to the praise of his glorious name.

My Godward Toil Story (Part 3)

...Continued from PART 2.

I tend to have a preference for orthodoxy, so once I decided that I would try GTD I wanted to implement it by THE BOOK.   But the book said it could take 3 days to start!  How would I find 3 solid days (!) to reorder my work and home life?   I decided that I would try to do it in 2 days, and set them aside during the week of Christmas when things are quieter around my workplace.   I prayed that God would be pleased with this step, and honor it by giving me great speed.   Instead, God provided an additional two days!   We were visiting out-of-town family for Christmas and both of my kids got sick, causing us to come home early.  It was sad and hard for us to leave early, but by the time we got home the kids were much better and my wife and I decided to seize the moment for me begin my GTD implementation  It turns out I needed it--it took 4 full days to bring order to my complicated life.

It is appropriate at this point to note my wife's role in this.   By nature, she is a more organized person than I am.  She never criticized me for the way I managed things (or didn't), but my attitude when tasks around the home would come up was terrible.  I often grumbled and complained, and she bore the brunt.  It pains me to think about how it must have discouraged her to have a husband so full of energy and ideas, yet so ineffective in responding to the day-to-day details of our family's life.   Many times, I forced her into a position of having to organize me with lists and schedules, which wasn't good for either of us, nor is it how God intends a marriage to be.  When I told her I was ready to try a new system, she was probably skeptical but was extremely supportive.  She gladly gave me the time, and the space in our home I needed to implement my plans.

to be continued...

My Godward Toil Story (Part 2)

(continued from Part 1)
In my searches, I looked at lots of productivity systems, including the most common ones.  I eventually found my way to David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) work via the MindManager world. I had purchased Mindmanager a week earlier, and had barely begun to experiment with it. I don't remember the exact search string, but it doesn't take long to find GTD if you enter "Mindmanager" and almost any productivity-like term.  I started surfing blogs and blogrolls, and eventually understood enough about GTD to know that I wanted to know more.  It was a case example of the power of Web 2.0 social networking (though I had never heard that term at the time).

I borrowed the book from our wonderful town library.  As a Christian,I am wary of any kind of self-help book.  Most pop psychology or self-help books glorify the inner power of the human being.  They make much of people, and little (or nothing) of God.  They offer people the promise of change and happiness, if only they will believe in...themselves.  I understand and respect the earnestness and good intentions of authors in the genre (and, in a previous time looked for Answers in these and New Age spirituality books), but most are not compatible with a Biblical worldview.

So, I approached the book with skepticism and caution.  In fact, I was even a little embarrassed when I checked it out of the library.  And, indeed, I did find some of the hallmarks of humanistic self-help and the elevation of human potential (in the last couple of chapters of the book, in particular).  But I also found a methodology that was manifestly sound, and, in ways I didn't expect, adaptable to my worldview.

The bottom up approach of GTD is what makes it so compelling in this way.   The methodology can be applied as a discipline, without even needing to buy into "stress-free productivity" (the subtitle of the book) as a primary goal.  Rather, the methods can help a reader bring order to his life, such that he can more effectively discern and pursue the right ends (telos).

Nevertheless, the Biblical Christian does need to do some work to filter, alter, and morph GTD in order to bring it under God's authority and to make it consistent with a life of Godward orientation and childlike dependence in faith.   That is the work I aim to do in the seminar I'm developing and in this blog. 

To be continued in Part 3...

My Godward Toil Story (Part 1)

On December 9 2005, I was at a Christmas Open House at my pastor's home.  Around 9pm, I got into a conversation with a young brother who asked work and family.   I answered him honestly,  "I'm fed up with myself.  God has given me so many great things to do, but every time someone asks how I am, all I ever do complain about being too busy or stressed.  I need a change of heart and attitude, and some way practical way of keeping better track of everything."

Not long after that (I don't remember how long), my cell phone rang.  The caller ID showed the home phone number of Bill, a colleague of mine.  It was strange for him to call me on the weekend, so, concerned it might be a clinical emergency, I answered:

"Hi Bill."
"Tony!  How are you?"
"Good. I'm at a Christmas party. What up?  Everything OK?"
"I just looked online and didn't see your part of our presentation proposal for APA [2006 American Psychological Association Annual Convention].  Did you submit it?"
"What?  Oh no...no....NO!...Oh my goodness"
"The deadline is tonight at midnight."
"Oh no...no...no!  I can't believe I did this.  I am so sorry, Bill.  I'll go home and submit it right now."

I quickly excused myself from the lovely party and went home to put a proposal together with the clock ticking.  I had a terrible pit in my stomach.  If I couldn't do it, I would disappoint both Bill and the other colleague (from another institution) with whom I had agreed to present--for one of them it was a presentation about his central area of study.

I prayed, pounded something out, and hit "Submit" on the APA website at 11:59pm.  I took a screenshot to record the moment, then spent the next 2 hours searching the web for "time management," "organization," "task software," and every other name I could think of...until I figured out that the category I was looking for was "personal productivity."

(...to be continued in Part 2)