The Starting Line
Dear Lord,
Thank You for giving me the appetite and opportunity for writing a book. I praise Your name because I know You never call me to do anything You have not already equipped me to do. I am trying to take action on that which I know, rather than that which I feel.
I thank You for Your promise that You will complete what You have begun. On the basis of that promise, I know the battle of the book is already won and that You are indeed the victor.
However, there is one little problem. I do not know how to begin the book! Never before have I realized just how blank a blank piece of paper is and how long.
Lord, Your Book begins with such majestic ease. I don't ask for anything as mighty as that, but I would so appreciate it if You would solve the anagram of my thoughts and give me some kind of opening chapter.
I pray in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Many years ago I was in an off-Broadway show with little success. The pitifully brief run of that play was preceded by a lengthy rehearsal, and during that time, I held the position of Equity deputy. I was
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elected to this office while I was out of the meeting getting a drink of water, and greeted the news of my election with the ecstasy of one being told of a dentist's call in reference to an impacted wisdom tooth.
I took my job very much to heart, despite my initial reluctance. Every morning I would check with every cast member to be sure they were receiving their benefits. However, every morning one bright-eyed ingenue always said no. She hadn't received her insurance informs, her complimentary tickets, or her notice of the next Equity meeting.
I began to write imploring letters to the front office. The honor of my assignment was at stake if I could not manage full benefits for this one fledgling.
I had to admit defeat one morning. "My dear, I don't know what they have done with your records. I'm going to go over to the office and check into this personally. Are you a junior or a senior member"
"Of what?" she inquired. Then it hit me.
"Do you mean that I have been writing letters to our union office criticizing their lack of attention to a nonmember's needs? Why didn't you tell me you were not a member?"
"You never asked me."
I learned a great principle that day: Before you try to apply the benefits, check first into the relationship between the "benefiter" and the "benefitee." Since this book will be primarily about the joys and privileges of being a Christian, I'm going to write first about becoming a Christian.
So to the nonbeliever whom this may concern: I want you to know first that you are loved, really loved.
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I, for one, love you because you've read this far and are still with me. I have an especially tender empathy for you. I was as you are for longer than I have been as I am.
More importantly, God loves you, and has taken action on your behalf. If you were given this book by someone, you are loved by that person. If a Christian gave you this book, he was not trying to earn Brownie points with God, because none are given. You've been given this book because someone wants to share with you something that might lead you into your full potential.
Did you know that God purposes good things for you? Nobility of man is not man's idea, it's God's idea. That was hard for me to understand. I thought God was some kind of super critic, trying to keep me belittled, humiliated, and smothered by restrictions. I used to say I didn't want God to take over my life, because I didn't want to be a puppet.
It wasn't until a short time ago that I learned the believer is not the puppet. The nonbeliever is. We often overlook the fact that God can use the non-believer just as easily as He can use the believer. During Israel's exodus from Egypt, God used Pharaoh as well as Moses, but He used Pharaoh like dead wood, and Moses as a contributing participant.
My road from fear of God's authority to gratitude for His Sovereignty was a long, hard one. It doesn't offer a very exciting story, though. I thank the Lord for each detail of my testimony, but do find it one of the duller accounts in the family!
We are so indoctrinated to externals that we measure
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testimonies by experimental happenings. We ask God's mysteries to move within the aura of our personal sense of drama, so that we may be tantalized, traumatized, and even titillated into fellowship.
I have known hundreds of Christians to lose confidence in their own relationship with Christ just because their account of it did not measure up to someone else's. The devil would rather you do anything in the world other than accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, but once you have gone against his Satanic will and accepted Christ, then he shifts his efforts to another purpose — that of making you doubt the validity of that acceptance.
A testimony should be an attesting to the work of Jesus Christ. It is His action that implants the drama in the Christian experience. That drama unfolds in a story of relationship.
I've heard a lot of Christian testimonies that held startling and vivid accounts of life before the encounter with Jesus. My sharing of Christ in me turns naturally to what I have claimed of Him this day; that I still stand amazed in the Presence, that His personal revelation in the now triggers joy beyond words.
I grew up in a Christian home, for which I thank the Lord. My home environment introduced me to prayer and Bible study as naturally as our backyard introduced me to lightning bugs and stars. I didn't know until I went away to school that one chose to go to church — I thought the only choice was between 8:00 or 11:00 A.M. services.
My parents gave me the indelible memory of their
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own personal involvement in Christianity. My mother evidenced prayer by her active participation in it. I am sure she is praying for me today as she has prayed for me every day of my life.
My fondest memory of my father is of him sitting out on the back porch after supper, reading his Bible. Years later, when I would scorn every remnant of what I had called faith, I could not toss away the fact of what my parents believed. What they did affected me far more deeply than what they said I should do.
When I was twelve years old I walked down the aisle of our church behind my parents and accepted the God they recognized. My father had joined the church from another denomination, and he and I were baptized together.
The baptismal pool seemed awfully deep and the assembled congregation frighteningly large. The minister ushered my father into the water, and then me. I wasn't much at ease about following the Lord Jesus, but I knew nothing but good could come from following my Daddy. So there I was, a scared and dripping twelve-year-old, newly baptized into the faith of her father. And there I stood about twenty-two years.
By the time I got to New York, I had already begun to show the marks of growing old before I grew up. I had been in three Broadway shows that folded before they got in — a sure mark of success. I was doing regular summer stock and off-Broadway work. I had a fine agent, and had done several top commercials. I was doing just what I had always wanted to do, and I was miserable.
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The great tragedy in life is not in failing to get what you go after. The tragedy is getting it and finding out it wasn't worth the trouble! I was depressed.
It's embarrassing when you're depressed and the circumstances aren't. Society allows us only programmed emotions. Grieve only at funerals, rejoice only at parties, and be depressed only when pressure is visible.
I began to feel guilty and ashamed. What kind of ingrate was I, to go around feeling depressed when there were people in Outer Mongolia who were starving and cold. But happiness is not derived from comparison. I've never known a hangnail to hurt less because someone else had a ruptured appendix. In spite of this, people generally try to treat depression by applying compresses hot with other people's woes.
In the midst of my depression, a friend sent me a copy of the Phillips translation of the New Testament. I was not regularly reading the Bible at that time. I knew enough about it to disprove some of it in verbal confrontations with Christians who knew a mite less than I did. Armed with a reverent ignorance as to what the Bible said, I argued determinedly against its validity.
Still, I had a Bible which I treasured. It was a little white Bible, wrapped in cellophane. I always plopped it down on my dressing-room table each time I opened a show. My white Bible served the purpose of making my friends feel ill at ease, and when they referred to it, I related that to insidious persecution, and tightened the belt of my nobility.
Have you noticed how many girdles are badly misplaced halos?
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A halo at best is a chancy adornment — some Christians suffer from migraines because they put their halos on themselves and place them a trifle low and very tight!
My little white Bible was very precious to me. I never read it, but panicked if I couldn't find it. One night I was taken backstage at the Metropolitan Opera to meet Jerome Hines. We stood in the doorway of his dressing room and chatted. I looked past him and saw on his dressing table what to me was a shocking sight. A great big, floppy Bible was open on the table! The binding was torn, the pages were dog-eared, there were markings all over it.
Well, I thought, they tell me Jerome Hines is such a fine Christian, but he certainly doesn't respect his Bible! I've learned another principle since then: If your Bible is in good shape, you're not!
I looked through Phillips translation without much interest when it arrived. Suddenly, one phrase entered the atmosphere of my understand, like that first fireball re-entry of our space program.
Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould.... Romans 12:2 PHILLIPS
That's what I was doing! I was letting the world around me form the pattern of my own self. I had been trying to purchase acceptance by pretending to be what anyone wanted me to be!
If I was expected to be sweet, I tried to be sweet. If I was expected to be funny, or smart, I would try that, too.
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I was scared to meet new people because I might not be able to be the person they would expect. I was terrified of being with large groups, because they might expect me to be different persons at one and the same time!
The worst horror of all was being alone with one person who might discover the dreadful secret that I wasn't anyone at all — I was nothing but a reflection!
I can't help but be a bit envious of people having nervous breakdowns now. It's so much easier for them than it was for me. I had mine before they were popular and had to have it in secret.
Today you can turn to someone in an elevator and say "I'm having a nervous breakdown," and hear that answer "Really? I had mine last summer."
I couldn't tell anyone that I wasn't the happy child I appear to be. There was no way out. I had pretended so well I almost kept my secret away from me, but it was brought clearly into focus by that verse from the Bible. Don't let the world form you — be!
How could I be? I didn't have any me to be. Mine was a major identity crisis, because I didn't have any identity!
