Christian Living

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Too Burned Out to Shine for Jesus
By Patricia Backora, author of the book
Tough Love in Christ’s Millennium
Which you can order online from: http://www.publishamerica.com

How easy to point fingers at overworked, time-starved Christians and criticize them for “not being on fire for Jesus” when, by comparison, your own life is a bed of roses.

Granted, your bed of roses may have a thorn or two, but that’s still no excuse to condemn other Christians who are so rushed and harried they don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Many years ago my husband Tom and I started a restaurant in Holland. The locals were thrilled to see it happen, because we would bring them authentic American cooking, with everything made from scratch. Mexican chow, brownies and chocolate chip cookies. This meant that I would have to hop onto my bike and circle around the shopping area, stopping at many stores and shops, searching for ingredients. I couldn’t even find baking soda in the supermarket. I had to get it from the drug store! I went to a herbs and spices store, the oriental grocer, an exotic supermarket, a butcher’s, a cheese shop, ad infinitum. The town center was packed with other bikes and people. As I rode my bike down the picturesque lanes, groceries piled high in three baskets like packed paniers balanced on both sides of a donkey, I’d mutter under my breath: “Please, Lord, help me not to swear, they’re slowing me down.” I’d need to get back in a reasonable time, because we were thinly staffed and there was all the prep work to do for the dinner trade.

Tom thought it a good idea for me to attempt to learn Dutch, another challenge in itself! My daughter was making progress in the language, but children’s minds aren’t set like concrete and they can learn languages more easily. I was introduced to a lady at church who genuinely wanted to teach me. I already had a book so I went over to her home to get better acquainted with “Gretl”. She and I hit it off right away. She was a native German who had married a Dutchman. I was fascinated by her cozy, well-furnished home. Though relatively modest in size, it was bright and brand new, located in a quiet, peaceful area. Gretl owned a big library full of edifying Christian books, as well as a piano and a real VCR (a luxury back then!). Our own lodging, just above the restaurant, was austere by comparison.

Gretl said we two had much in common, because she also had done much geographical moving in her lifetime. Once we were done with the week’s lesson, we would visit for another hour or so before I rode home. As the weeks passed we got to be good friends. We liked to discuss key Biblical doctrines, and share any revelations we had received on the Scripture. Back then I didn’t seem to be getting all that many myself, because my life was a whirl of shopping, chopping, cooking, washing countless dishes, and preparing huge vats of chili for the chest freezer. Gretl always seemed to be hearing from God. She kept notebooks full of her latest insights into the deeper meaning of His Word. Her home sparkled with cleanliness, calm and serenity, partially due, I guess, to the fact her four kids were older and quieter.

Gretl seemed to have a sixth sense, where it concerned picking up stress vibes off people. Restaurant life is a balancing act, and it can be sheer bedlam if you drop the ball. You’ve got to take time to prepare the food to perfection, while at the same time rushing it out to the diners so it won’t get cold. Mistakes can be costly. One time Tom was so tired and distracted he stuck his hand in a deep fat fryer to see if it was still hot. He ended up in the hospital emergency, but thank God, it healed very well.

We lived next door to a rowdy bar. I had to wear ear plugs to get any sleep. Next day I’d be off again with my bike, rummaging the shops for supplies. Then I’d rush into my little kitchen and hack my way through a pile of veggies to make salads, taco meat, and chili. Not to mention the baking I did, or the household chores. One woman I know said I looked like I was running round in my sleep. But people loved our place, and standards must be kept up.

We had to work hard for our living, but Gretl had everything handed to her on a silver platter. Gretl’s kids were neat and tidy, and if her husband let his sloppy side show, she would say something to make him snap back into line. There could have been a cultural clash between those two, because traditionally the Germans put a high priority on orderliness, while the Dutch are a bit more balanced in their life view.

The church where Gretl and I went did not believe much in the grace of God. They preached that you might be saved by grace, but you are kept strictly through works. If you did not “bear fruit” (i.e. give birth to more souls) God would cut you off as a dead branch. Their simplistic view was: "The fruit of a Christian is another Christian". The more street witnessing you did the better chance you had of staying connected to Christ the Living Vine. That is really putting the cart before the horse. Fruit bearing is a natural consequence of being connected to the vine. The vine doesn’t strive to produce fruit in order to qualify for receiving sap from the vine!

That particular church was predominantly comprised of young people, I guess because they’re the only ones who have enough energy to chase strangers down the street to hand them a tract. When we first moved to the area, my daughter said that a girl from that church ran after her to get her saved, and she thought the other girl was crazy.

Gretl quit going there, and she tactfully suggested I should consider doing the same thing. She told me that the very first time she laid eyes on me the Lord seemed to say to her: “That woman doesn’t belong here.” After many months of feeling condemned by my English interpreter because I wasn’t going into every highway and byway to beat the bushes to shake the sinners out of them, I left.

My understanding of a Christian bearing fruit is primarily this: developing the Fruits of the Spirit in your life, as listed in Galatians 5: 22-23. If you refuse to allow Christ to cultivate His nature in your life and prefer to hang onto your old sins, then that is when you are in danger of being cut off as a dead branch. If getting souls saved is what keeps you saved, then at first glance Noah can be counted as a dismal failure. Noah spent hundreds of years preaching righteousness as he built the Ark (II Pet. 2:5), and that’s a lot longer than most of us have in this world. But only seven family members went with him into the Ark (I Pet. 3:20). John the Baptist preached repentance and baptized people but he did not leave his desert headquarters to evangelize the streets of Jerusalem and hand out tracts. Yet both Noah and John were full of the fruits of godliness and were accepted by the Lord because of their faith. However important it is to be on fire for Jesus and to have a fervor for lost souls, it is ultimately the Holy Spirit who breathes life into souls dead in trespasses and sins. Free films and concerts can lure the fish to the Lord’s net, but only He brings about the New Birth. Christians are Christ’s fellow laborers in the Gospel, but they don’t give birth to new converts. God does (John 1:12-13). God regenerates souls to newness of life through the power of His Spirit-activated Word (James 1:18). It is only in our capacity of ministering that anointed Word to lost souls that we can say we had any part of birthing them into God’s Kingdom. God has children, but He doesn’t have grandchildren. As for zeal, the prophet Jonah did not even pretend to love the lost souls of Nineveh. He didn’t even want to preach to them because they were dangerous enemies of Israel. Jonah preached to the Ninevites only because God made him do it. But despite Jonah’s lack of zeal the whole city repented in sackcloth and ashes (Jonah 2:5).

It is spiritually hazardous to preach the doctrine of “saved by grace, kept by works”. Satan will allow a stream of truth, because he can still kill the fish by slipping a tiny dose of arsenic into the water. The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 3:3: Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

I was too transparent to Gretl. I told her how tired I often felt from nonstop things to do. She had some words of wisdom: ”Life is living itself upon you.” There were days I did felt like I was barely there, and life was dragging me along for the ride. Tom had fired our helper for being too lazy so it was even busier for me. Gretl hinted that maybe we could pay her son for helping out. I didn’t want to pursue that, so tactfully I dropped the subject.

I went with Gretl to another Dutch-speaking church. I enjoyed it, though I could only understand part of what was being preached. One of Gretl’s friends, “Leila”, looked sad and troubled. She was going through such a devastating trial she could not put on a cheerful front for anyone. It wasn’t long before Gretl told me she broke off her friendship with Leila because she found her so depressing. Days afterward, Gretl told me about a delegation of ladies who came from that church to rebuke her for her unloving attitude, which had hurt Leila. But Gretl did not receive their admonition in meekness. Instead she had angrily ordered them out of her house.

Oh, Gretl had tons of time to enjoy basking in God’s Presence. While her hands were lifted high in praise, mine were busy hacking up a pile of peppers and onions. I didn’t absorb the Dutch lessons as well as I might have if my brain hadn’t been in the chili pot all the time. One day I went over to Gretl’s house and confessed there had been a bit of friction in the air over something, because she sensed some unease about me. I didn’t look cheerful enough to suit her, and she said: “Now you’d better not dump on me or bring me down.” She reminded me that she had just dumped Leila, and the same could happen to me. If I had been a stronger woman, I would have walked out of her house then and there. “Bring me down”! My daughter, 16 at the time, said about that: “She thinks she’s more spiritual than you, Mom.”

Another of Gretl’s friends, “Helen”, was a spiritual go-getter. She didn’t work outside the home either. Her husband heard a voice from heaven which told him to repent and believe on Jesus. So lucky Helen was spared having to wait endless years for “Casey” to see the light and get saved. This transformation in her husband came without endless struggle of spiritual warfare on her part. I don’t think Gretl felt jealous, though. She LOVED to go through trials, even if it meant being teased for her faith by an unsaved husband. Some of Gretl’s books were biographies of saints who had actually embraced their horrible persecutions and sufferings as a blessing! I told Gretl I longed for heaven because there would be no trials there. Gretl loved to sail through trials, though.

Gretl praised Helen for the way she loved to do street evangelization. While other Christians preached to people on the streets, I’d be blessing myself out for forgetting to pick up a bunch of chives for the dinner rush. Gretl criticized me “because I wasn’t doing anything for the Lord”, so how could I possibly claim to love Jesus? Surely that was more important than making a big pot of chili, and if I were better organized, I could find time for the more important things in life. One time when I said something bad had happened, Gretl grinned and said: “Why do you think it happened?”

I knew what Gretl was thinking. I bit my tongue. If she thought God might be punishing me for some shortcoming in my life it would have tickled her pink for me to admit it to her. If only I’d been braver, I would have asked her why she thought she was so qualified to judge me, if she was not also walking in my shoes! I never did tell her, but besides the fact I was way too busy making a living to live, I had been badly bullied in school, and as a result I was people-shy. Maybe it’s easy for others to rush up to strangers and ask whether or not they’re saved, but I found that almost as difficult as standing in front of a firing squad. When people come to Christ, they bring all sorts of baggage with them. I hate to burst the bubble of those who think all Christians are supposed to be cookie cutter look-alikes, but Real Life is a messy business, and it doesn’t always come in neat, orderly packaging! What are you going to do, tell wounded souls they must go find some other savior who won’t make street-storming a prerequisite for keeping their salvation? Admittedly, Jesus was an extroverted, sociable guy, but what do you say to people who have been so badly burnt by others they had to learn how to love all over again?

The day came when Gretl’s predictably orderly life was shattered. She came over to the restaurant to see me, crying that her husband had just left her. Immediately she got a grip on herself and apologized for crying, as if it were something to be ashamed of. Romans 12:15 says to “Rejoice with those who rejoice”. That’s a highly popular teaching, celebrating blessings and success together. But folks ignore the sticky part of that verse: “Weep with those who weep”. My Bible says it’s okay to cry. The shortest verse of the Bible speaks volumes about Jesus’ compassion: “Jesus wept (John 11:35).

Gretl’s zeal for “order” and lack of tact cost her dearly. One popular saying goes like this: “Don’t sweat the small stuff”. That’s exactly what she did. Instead of counting her many blessings, Gretl griped whenever she lost control over any part of her tidy little world. She had laid a guilt trip on her husband for wasting money on butter while she and the children ate margarine. She nagged him about his friends. Being a religious control freak cost Gretl her marriage.

We were going to expand on our business when Tom got a phone call that threw a monkey wrench into our plans. A family emergency back in the States meant that we had to pack up and go back immediately. Through a long chain of bad circumstances, medical bills, setbacks, etc., we were left without a proper home for awhile. When Gretl found out how bad things had gotten for us, it wasn’t long before she stopped writing altogether. Proverbs 19:7 nails it: “All the brethren of the poor do hate him: how much more do his friends go far from him? he pursueth them with words, yet they are wanting to him.” But that verse doesn’t make it okay to kick somebody when they’re down. James Chapter 2 has plenty to say about despising those who aren’t wallowing in prosperity.

Maybe it's dangerous to boast about how much you enjoy going through trials. Nothing delights the devil more than the chance to call your bluff. Poverty can be a relative concept. Gretl lost her husband. Although she had four children she reassumed her maiden name. She wrote me that she had just a little to live on each month and had to move into a much humbler apartment.

In that situation she couldn't write me off as being poorer than herself, unless her concept of being poorer differed from mine. Sometimes the definition of poverty varies from one person to another. Gretl had a fixed abode, however humble it was. I still had my husband, though she had lost hers. She lived in a land where a bicycle could get you just about anywhere…to church, shopping, etc. Plus she had a car. When we had no certain dwellingplace (I Cor. 4:11) we helped some ungrateful relatives to start their own baby clothing shop. They decided that putting us up was too much bother, so we slept in back of the store till we got back on our feet. We were in the outskirts of a vast desert city where it was way too far to reach any church, and you would die of sunstroke if you tried to cycle ten miles to one. And I wanted to wait until circumstances improved so if I met someone at church I'd have a home of my own to bring them to! But at least I didn't lie about it and write Gretl that I'd found a wonderful church, when I hadn't! When she realized I hadn't settled into any church in our depressed circumstances, she dropped me like a hot potato, right at the time I could have used a faithful friend the most. How easy, as a backslider when you don't even bother to wonder what circumstances they're in and you haven't suffered a tenth of what they've been through!

Gretl’s passive, silent denial of the Savior’s love spoke much more loudly than any of the “revelations” she'd shown me in Holland. Why didn’t I wonder more about Gretl when she dumped poor Leila for being too sorrowful to appear cheerful?

Why hadn’t I been able to see past Gretl’s religiosity? We’d had many nice visits and chats together, even laughed at a funny video together before I left Holland, but never once had I ever heard her say “I love you in the Lord, sister”. So I never should have expected this kind of commitment from Gretl: “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (I John 3:18).

Only by separating hypocrites in my mind from the true Christ of the Bible could I continue to hang onto Him during those difficult days.

[email protected] http://www.kingdomageministry.com

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