Stress Awareness Month and the path to transforming hope

US stock futures fell and oil prices rose this morning after President Trump announced a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. His statement came after marathon talks with Iran failed to reach an agreement that would end the war.

In better news, Russia and Ukraine observed a truce in their war across the Orthodox Easter weekend. However, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin ruled out extending the ceasefire beyond Sunday.

Did you know that April is Stress Awareness Month? You won’t be surprised to learn that apparently unsolvable problems like war not only cause significant stress, but worrying about them also impairs cognitive functioning and makes things worse. I presume this is why counselors typically focus on stress management techniques we can control, such as deep breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation.

However, many people seem not to know that there is a cause of anxiety which underlies nearly all our stress. Like worrying about unsolvable problems, attempting to control it only makes it worse.

But when we choose the opposite of control, we discover the transforming hope available to every anxious heart today.

Including yours.

The central problem of political science

In American Dialogue: The Founders and Us, historian Joseph J. Ellis discusses what John Adams defined as the central problem of political science. According to Adams, “In every society known to man, an aristocracy has risen up in the course of time, consisting of a few rich and honorable families who have been united with each other against both the people and the first magistrate.”

Our second president believed that all societies eventually produce social and economic elites who, if left unchecked, achieve political dominance at the expense of everyone else. Adams, therefore, designed his version of government—the one (which became the president), the few (which became the Senate), and the many (which became the House of Representatives)—primarily to counter this ever-present pressure toward oligarchy.

However, the root of the problem lies not with wealth but with the reason we desire it. In Adam’s view, “Ambition springs from the desire for esteem and from emulation, not from property.”

Aristocracies motivated by this quest for esteem and the wealth that secures it behave in the same way the world over. I would point to the ruling classes in the supposedly classless societies of North Korea, China, and Cuba, for example.

But this quest for power is by no means limited to governments. C. S. Lewis identified the lure of the “inner ring, ” the quest to be on the “inside,” to be one of the “people who know,” a goal for which many compromise their integrity and become what Lewis called “scoundrels.” As King Solomon wrote, most certainly from personal experience, “A man is tested by his praise” (Proverbs 27:21).

Adams’ observation calls to mind management theorist Warren Bennis’s warning that there exists in every organization an “unconscious conspiracy” to preserve the status quo for the future benefits of current participants. Having pastored five churches and served on the boards of several organizations, I can attest to the accuracy of his assessment.

“What good deed must I do?”

So far, so good.

As a vocational minister, I have neither the financial means nor the personal opportunity to join a wealthy oligarchy that aspires to control society for its benefit. And I am now a writer rather than a megachurch pastor, so Bennis’s warning seems less relevant to me.

You may feel yourself to be more like me than the powerful people we have been discussing thus far.

But the will to power behind Adams’s concern is just as prevalent in us as in anyone else. For me, it takes an insidious form illustrated by the “rich young ruler” of the Gospels. Because of his means and social status, he was apparently among the oligarchy of his day. But this was not enough for him when he asked Jesus, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16).

Like this man, I want to know what I can “do” to earn favor with God. I want to place myself in the position of a worthy employee before my obligated employer rather than admit that I am a needy creature before my omnipotent Creator. And I want to impress others with my good deeds out of the “desire for esteem” Adams identified.

Accordingly, I am tempted to write this article to earn God’s favor and yours. And to pray, read Scripture, and perform other “spiritual” activities for the same reason.

But the King of the universe will not be obligated by his subjects. Spirituality for selfish purposes is a contradiction in terms and cannot lead to the transformation my fallen soul needs. And like the rich young man, I know that there is something I “still lack” (v. 20). Nothing I do is ever enough to fill the vacuum in my heart.

“Nothing short of Christ”

The good news is that Jesus stands ready to help. The most powerful person who ever lived could obviously have created an oligarchy of the highest rank for himself and his disciples. In fact, this seems to have been the desire of his followers even after his death and resurrection (Acts 1:6).

Instead, he is ready to infuse my character with his, my spirit with his Spirit.

The key is to seek Christlikeness as our highest purpose, then to submit ourselves so fully to the Spirit that he can effect such a miraculous transformation in our lives (Ephesians 5:18). The way to know he is doing so is to measure our motives: Are we serving to be served or to serve? Are we praying to be blessed or to be a blessing? Are we reading Scripture to fulfill a religious duty or to share God’s word with someone today?

The paradox is that the more we seek to serve, the more we become the people we long to be. The more we strive to be a blessing to others, the more we are blessed in all the ways that matter most. The more we work to improve our world, the more our lives become their most missional and significant.

By any objective measure, Jesus of Nazareth changed the world more than any single individual in history. What if millions, if not billions of us, continued his life and ministry today?

Imagine the impact on our fallen world. This and nothing less is God’s purpose for your life.

Charles Spurgeon was adamant:

“The Christian should take nothing short of Christ for his model.”

Do you agree?

Quote for the day:

“To become like Christ is the only thing in the world worth caring for, the thing before which every ambition of man is folly and all lower achievement vain.” —Henry Drummond

Our latest website resources:

• What the Masters reveals about our souls
• Military rescue in Iran, Artemis moon mission, Cane’s vs Chick-fil-A, March Madness champs & Masters predictions
• “A Great Awakening” and the future of America
• Vibrant pews, empty seats: The paradox of America’s revival
• Gary Woodland vs Tiger Woods: Two divergent paths to recovery

Denison Forum

I’ll begin with a confession: my first experience with golf was illegal. I grew up in an apartment complex in Houston, Texas. Across the street was a country club with a golf course. Before and after golfers played the course, my friends and I used to sneak onto the fairway of one hole to play football.

The people running the club noticed our clandestine activities and erected a chain-link fence around the course. Thus ended my golf engagement for many years.

When God called our family to pastor First Baptist Church in Midland, Texas, I took up the game of golf so as to spend time with staff colleagues and church members who played. The local country club allowed clergy to play for free on Thursdays. I could never have afforded the dues to be a member of the club, but I could pretend to be one on Thursdays because of their largesse.

Our next pastorate was in Atlanta, Georgia. One Sunday morning, a member of the congregation—who was also a former governor of the state—asked if I would care to attend the Masters. I thought, fasted, and prayed about his invitation for about a millisecond before accepting.

He loaned me his clubhouse badge, which allowed a companion and me to attend the tournament and even enter the players’ clubhouse. One year, Greg Norman held the door for us, thinking we were someone special.

My back condition has prevented me from playing golf for many years now, but it has not diminished my fascination with the game. I watch most weekends on television when I get the chance. And I put the Masters on my calendar every year. Watching “a tradition unlike any other,” as it’s called, is an annual tradition for me.

Therein lies my point.

Where concessions are cheap and cellphones are prohibited

In The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis has a demonic tempter explain to his apprentice:

The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, [God] (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as he has made eating pleasurable.

But since he does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end of itself, he has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world he has made, by the union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immortal theme.

This insight of rhythm and change is nowhere more articulated in my experience than at Augusta National.

I have been privileged to attend the Masters several years, and each time, it was the same experience. The concessions are still amazingly inexpensive; the merchandise is still extremely popular (and available for purchase only at the tournament); the holes are still named for flowers selected by descendants of the original landowner of the property. Cellphones are still prohibited, a fact that caused even a thirteen-time PGA winner to be dismissed from the grounds this week.

Watching the tournament on television, it seems that nothing has changed from thirty years ago when I first walked the course.

And yet, it is different every year in all the ways true to athletic competition. No golfer plays the course the same way each day, much less each year. Only three times in the tournament’s long history has a golfer won it in consecutive years. Every shot is new to that moment. Every day is a day that has never been before and will never be again.

The sameness and change Screwtape described exist in a symbiotic relationship at the Masters in a way that is especially timeless and timely.

Why is this reality so resonant in my soul?

The shift “from screens to sanctuaries”

One of the most interesting facts about religious life in the West these days is the resurgence in attendance among the most traditional of Christian expressions.

CBS News reports that “Catholic Church attendance is rising, with the number of young people at Mass ‘way up.’” The New York Times headlines: “Orthodox pews are overflowing with converts.” A priest said about the surge of young men drawn to the church’s demanding traditions, “In the whole history of the Orthodox Church in America, this has never been seen.” The conservative Anglican Church in North America has grown by 12.2 percent.

One analyst explains: Children have been warned about climate disaster for years; social media has pummeled adolescents with misinformation; political leaders are less trusted than ever; rising home prices are leaving many behind; school shootings, a global pandemic, and skyrocketing college tuition add to “the increasingly complex and shaky nature of the foundation upon which young Americans were taught to stand.”

By contrast, traditional religious institutions and practices offer a compelling source of solidarity amid the chaos. This shift “from screens to sanctuaries” tells us something about the depth of anxiety in our day but also about the “God-shaped emptiness” we seek to fill.

How to “discern his presence in the midst of the noise”

I would be the last person to advocate conflating golf with worship and attending the Masters with attending church services. But I do think their similarities point to something significant about our souls.

From weekly worship to daily spiritual disciplines such as prayer, Bible study, solitude, fasting, and meditation, we were made for God and made for the rhythms by which we experience him with personal intimacy. As Dr. Ryan Denison notes in his latest Daily Article, when we engage in these practices with our hearts focused on our Father, we “discern his presence in the midst of the noise” in our lives.

From the hushed beauty of Augusta National to the quiet of a room behind a closed door (Matthew 6:6), the divine presence is as close as our knees and as powerful as his omnipotence. Our Father calls us today to “be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

When was the last time you accepted his invitation?

Denison Forum

Why the device that helped save an American pilot is sparking controversy today

New information continues to emerge in the remarkable story of how the American pilot shot down in Iran was rescued on Easter. In the press conference announcing the operation’s success, President Trump alluded to a top-secret device that the CIA used to help locate the missing airman. In the days since, reports have begun to leak that the technology in question is called the “Ghost Murmur” and, depending on who you talk to, is either a quantum leap in our ability to detect electromagnetic signals like a human heartbeat or a gross exaggeration based more in science fiction than in real science.

So, what does the device do, and where does it fall along that spectrum?

When the New York Post broke the story earlier this week, they described the Ghost Murmur as a device that uses “long-range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic signal of a human heartbeat and pairs the data with artificial intelligence software to isolate the signature from background noise.”

Continue reading Denison Forum – Is the “Ghost Murmur” miracle tech or a military myth? →