Kickin’ It

       I’m sure the goat had been teased.  Being around two hundred Junior Highs is not a calming experience—for animal or for human.  And as they arrived week after week I’m sure the goat was driven deeper and deeper into his private goat hell.  But he started it.  He was a mean goat from the beginning.

       The reason I know so much about him is that I lived with him in the corral at Forest Home Christian Conference Center .  This was when I was in college and worked two summers at the Junior High camp—the ranch. Now, actually, I didn’t live in the corral.  I lived in the bunkhouse next to the corral.  But it looked and smelled about the same.

       Unlike the riding horses—or the calf that was terrified each week at the rodeo—the goat had no redeeming social purpose.  He was just there—malevolent and subtle—slipping through the brush and between buildings—looking for unsuspecting campers to butt.

       Obviously this couldn’t continue.  There had to be a way to control the goat—even if there wasn’t a way to control the campers.

       Cliff the wrangler provided the way.  He returned from his ranch near Yucaipa with a metal tube about two and a half feet long that had within in the power to motivate animals.  He called it a hotshot—a tube of concentrated low-voltage lightning to win a goat’s attention and respect.

       The goat was introduced to the hotshot that same morning.  We didn’t see him the rest of the day.  One more encounter was enough to teach him the lesson—“The hotshot commands obedience.”  Soon we didn’t need the hotshot. A broom handle and a “buzz” did the job.  That was one thoroughly motivated goat.

       Not all animals are so smart. For example, an ox in harness will not learn obedience quickly.  He will feel the prick of the driver’s sharp, metal-tipped goad—giving him direction—and kick out against it.  He will hurt himself over and over again until he learns to yield to the goad.

        The reason I am telling you all this, is that it helps us understand something that Jesus said to the Apostle Paul.

       The story of the conversion of Saul who later became the Apostle Paul is familiar .  You recall how Saul stood as the official representative of the Jewish ruling body as Stephen was stone.  In Acts 26, Paul tells King Herod Agrippa about that time in his life:  “I was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth.  And that is just what I did in Jerusalem . On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the saints in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them.  Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme.  In my obsession against them, I even went to foreign cities to persecute them.” (Acts 26:9-11)

       Someone once said that great sinners and great saints are often made out of the same cloth.  I think that’s true.  Someone who is energetic about their sin will prove to be energetic for faith when they turn to Jesus.  That ought to be a place of hope for some of us as parents. 

       Jesus wanted Paul because Paul was always sold out – even when he was headed the wrong way.  As San Jose Shark General Manager Dean Lombardi said after trading for a punishing defenseman named Bryan Marchment: “I’d rather tame a tiger than paint stripes on a kitty cat.”  Jesus feels the same way.  Saul is a tiger to tame.

       Saul ravages the church in Jerusalem and then got permission to pursue the followers of Jesus to Damascus in Syria —to hunt them down and drag them back to Jerusalem in chains.  Saul is suddenly confronted by Jesus on the Damascus Road .  “Saul!  Saul! Why are you persecuting me?”  “Who are you, Lord” “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Saul is led into Damascus , had his sight restored, and became obedient to Jesus Christ.

       This story is told three different times in the Book of Acts.  The first is Chapter 9 where Luke tells it as part of his history.  The second is Acts 22 where Paul tells his story to the Jewish people. The third is Acts 26, where Paul tells the story to King Herod.

       There is a very significant detail that Paul includes in the Acts 26 account that is not in the other accounts.  Jesus first says to Paul in the Hebrew dialect:  “Why are you persecuting me?” Then He adds the statement:  “It is hard for you to kick against the goads!”

       “It is hard for you to kick against the goads!”

       Jesus is telling Paul what Paul already knows—that this encounter on the Damascus Road is not the first encounter between Paul and the Risen Christ.  It isn’t a bolt out of the blue.  It is, instead, the culmination of a series of events.  Jesus has been after Paul. Paul has known it.  Paul has been fighting against it. He has been “kicking against the goads” like an ox in harness.  He has hurt himself and others in the process.

       Francis Thompson in his poem “The Hound of Heaven”, describes himself running away from a God who pursues him “still with unhurrying chase, and unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy.”  And all the time he is running from God, he is also desperately looking for what only God can give him.

       This is Paul’s story.  Jesus, the Hound of Heaven” is tracking Paul, even as Paul is tracking down the followers of Jesus.

       Luke, the great historian, deliberately connects Stephen and Paul.  Stephen’s joyous death had carved an unforgettable memory on Paul’s granite heart.  And his words gripped the mind of Paul with strange power.  Of course Stephen was wrong.  He had denied the power of the law to save.  But even Paul, in his hearts of hearts, didn’t like the law.  He confesses later in Galatians and Romans that he didn’t like the law because the law condemned him.  It is like a mirror that revealed the dirt on his face but gave him no power to make himself clean.

       Even as Paul persecuted the followers of Christ, he saw in them something he did not have but desperately wanted—joy.  And as Paul saw himself being attracted to the people of Christ, he tried to bury his doubts and quiet the goads by striking out against them.  He plunged into violent action against the people of Christ in Jerusalem .  But this only made matters worse.  Why did they make him so angry if he knew was right? What secret did these people have which let them face peril and suffering and loss, serene and unafraid?

       It was Paul’s idea to go to Damascus , not the Sanhedrin’s strategy.  But behind Paul’s plan, a greater plan was at work.  The same Lord who had arranged Paul’s exposure to the vital faith of the church was beginning to draw the net around him.  Paul knew he was being watched. He knew he was being pursued even as he pursued.  And he kicked and kicked until he could kick no more.

       In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis writes this of his own conversion:  “Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God.’ To me, as I was then, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.”  (Sounds like Paul.)  I had wanted, above all things, not to be ‘interfered with.’  I had wanted (mad wish) ‘to call my soul my own.’  I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight.  I had always aimed at limited liabilities.  I had pretty well known that my ideal of virtue would never lead to anything intolerably painful—I would be ‘reasonable.’  Doubtless, by definition, God would be reason itself.  But would he also be ‘reasonable’ in that other, more comfortable, sense?  Not the slightest assurance on that score was offered me.  Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded.  The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me.  The demand was not even ‘all or nothing.’ Now the demand was simply ‘all.’

       “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalene college, Oxford night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.  That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me.  In the Trinity term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God is God, and knelt and prayed—perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England .”

       Lewis concludes:  “I did not see then what is now the most shining and obvious thing—the divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The prodigal son at least walked home on his own two feet.  But who can duly adore that love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking and struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape.

       “The words ‘compel them to come in’ have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them—but properly understood, they plumb the depth of divine mercy.  The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”

        Like Frances Thompson, and like the Apostle Paul, Lewis finds in God the very thing he has been looking for all the time he has been running from God and kicking against the goads—he finds joy.

        Now this is not a game of “top my testimony.” I’m not comparing myself either to C.S. Lewis or to the Apostle Paul.  But I am your Pastor and you have a right to know about this vital center of my life. 

       I grew up in a Christian home and joined the church when I was twelve years old because that’s what my friends were doing.  When I was thirteen I started asking hard questions about the Christian faith. I would lie awake at night and wonder.  I know now that there are answers to my questions. But then I didn’t ask anyone who had the answers—because I was afraid that they would say: “You go to this church but have questions like that! Shame on you!”  So I didn’t seek out the answers.  And by the time I was sixteen, I decided that God didn’t exist.  I also hoped He wasn’t too mad at me for thinking that way.  I was a very bad atheist.

        The crisis came my freshman year at Whitworth College .  As a freshman, I didn’t know any better than to sign up for the fall retreat—a time away talking about spiritual things.  Usually I didn’t have any problem with that.  I had been in Sunday School long enough to know all the jargon—even if I didn’t know the power behind the jargon.  But God, in His mercy, stripped away my intellectual mask.  The words that were used, were words I knew—by which I mean that I could define them.  But as they were being used, I realized that I didn’t understand them at all.  They didn’t make any sense in my life.  A word would be used or an idea shared and I was not able to interact with it at all.  Not emotionally.  Not intellectually, not definitionally.  Not at all.

       I gave in to Jesus Christ about three weeks later at a skid-row mission in Spokane .  No, I hadn’t become a bum.  I had gone down there a couple of times with some friends to help out.  I was sitting in the kitchen one night, well away from the main action out front.  I was looking at a paper, only half-listening to the words of the preacher, when I was confronted by the Lord.  The preacher was quoting the words of Peter in Acts 10—how God is not a respecter of persons.  And I suddenly knew that those words were for me.  I knew that as far as real purpose and direction, I had no more going for me than any of the bums in the front room—sitting out the service as payment for a meal and a bed.  I was checkmated.  I was caught by God.

       Now I would like to say that I stopped kicking against the goads at that point.  But that wouldn’t be true.  For right upon my surrender, probably within the space of a minute, I received a call to full-time Christian ministry.  I kicked against that for the next five years – because I didn’t like ministers.  They struck me as uptight people who would wear a suit even to mow a lawn because “someone might see.”  That wasn’t what I had planned for my life.

       But God is persistent with His goads.  And the more you kick against them, the more you hurt your own self.  So here I am—in the Ministry and in Moorpark where, fortunately, my front lawn is mowed by a homeowner’s association so no one will ever see me do anything undignified like sweat.

       I am telling you my story for the same reason Paul told his story to King Herod Agrippa—to suggest to you as Paul suggests to Agrippa—that God may be after you, and to witness to you that it hurts to keep kicking.  We get into all sorts of things to fill what Blaise Pascal called “the God-shaped” vacuum in the human heart—drugs, materialism, destructive sex, alcohol.  We kick and we run and we hurt other people and our own selves.

       Perhaps the goads you are kicking against are those which are moving you to a first-time commitment of faith in Jesus Christ.

       Sometimes people wonder if a dramatic Damascus Road encounter like Paul’s is necessary to become a follower of Jesus.  Very few have had that kind of dramatic encounter with the Lord.  The Lord reaches each of us differently.  He’s not the cookie cutter God making sure we all come out the same.  The real questions are: “Have we ever been brought to the end of our own resources?  Have we ever felt completely helpless without the Lord’s healing?  Have we ever made an unreserved surrender of all that we are and have?  Have we felt the persistent pursuit of the Lord? 

       It’s not how dramatic an encounter is that’s important—it’s how decisive our response to Jesus has been that counts. Or, in the words of the old revival preacher: “It’s not how high you jump when you ‘git religin’ that matters.  It’s how straight you walk after you hit the ground.”

       I will never forget a young man who sat next to Carol and me on a plane from Oakland to L.A. years ago. We chatted for a bit.  Then he asked: “What do you do?”  I told him that I am a minister.  I thought he would jump straight out of his seat.  He probably would have if his belt wasn’t fastened.  He came down and exclaimed: “I knew it!  Every time I sit next to someone he turns out to be a Christian.  I can’t escape.  I know that God is after me.”  I told him he was probably right—and that the only smart thing to do in such a situation is to surrender.  The only alternative is to harden your heart and shut yourself farther and farther off from the only true source of life.

       Or, perhaps, as a Christian, you are wrestling with the expression of your faith in your vocation. Or, perhaps, you are wrestling with a change of vocation.  Perhaps you are kicking against the goads that would move you to share your faith with a neighbor or a loved-one.

       I don’t know where the goads are for you.  You can walk away from God but God won’t walk away from you.  You can kick out but you won’t hurt God.  You’ll only hurt yourself.

       I don’t know where your struggle is.  If you would like to share it with me, I am willing to walk through the struggle with you.

      But don’t expect me to help you kick.

      Because I am here to testify to you on the basis of God’s word and from my own experience that God is good. He only wants the very best for you.  And what you run away from in His will may very well be the one thing you have been looking for your whole life.