Stability In Unstable Times

By John Stallings



If you follow sports, chances are you will recognize the name Cal Ripken Jr.

Born August 24, 1960, Cal played short-stop & third base for the Baltimore Orioles from 1981 to 2001. On September 6, 1995, Cal played his 2,131st consecutive major league baseball game, making him a legend for his amazing consistency. In that feat he broke Lou Gehrig’s record.

Cal was nicknamed Iron Horse for doggedly remaining in the lineup despite numerous minor injuries & for his ability to “show-up” to work everyday. He, during that time was the winner of two most valuable player awards & played in twelve consecutive All-star games, hitting more runs than any other major-league shortstop.

As for money, Cal has that. But more than money, he rightfully has a tremendous sense of accomplishment. By his own words, --all he ever wanted to do was play baseball & do his best in every game.

His consistency has also showed up in his family life, for his wife & children are the most important thing in his life to this day. On Cal’s night of breaking these records, he was honored by world famous people, big corporations & even the President of the United States. And think about it; all this for just showing up and doing what he loves to do; all for being consistent & stable. Cal Ripken jr. is a man of unique stability, one of the rarest qualities found in an individual; the ability to not only start but finish well.

James 1; 8 says” A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”

Men like Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, & Thomas Edison all had a rough time in route to success but they all had the determination & stability to endure. They experienced many failures but weren’t defined by them. Ask yourself; how do you react to your own failures? Are you frequently tempted to give up, or do you push on and work your socks off to actually test the mettle of your faith? Do you go the distance or do you retire, wounded from the race? Do you lean on God or just follow the path of least resistance & end up with a fizzle instead of a sizzle?

Look at your circle of acquaintances & ask how many people you know who are truly consistent. How many people are generally the same every time you see them, & can always be counted on to not allow their moods to affect the way they treat people. I’m not asking if they’re sweet, lovable and fun, I’m asking only how they would rate in stability. I will hazard a guess that you don’t know that many stable folk & neither do I.

In Luke 9: 51 Luke records --“Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem.” This clearly indicates that Jesus was staunchly determined to go to the city & pursue the course that would finally culminate in his arrest, trial & Crucifixion. He had come to earth with an assignment & that was to die for the sins of mankind & He had the stability of heart & mind to accomplish it. Through his agony in Gethsemane, His betrayal by Judas, His fake trial, & subsequent lashing & final Crucifixion, He steadfastly taught & lived out one all consuming fact; that he would die for our sins

I’m always challenged by the testimony of the three Hebrew boys in the first chapters of Daniel. They along with Daniel were captives and schooled in the ways of their heathen captors, but never allowed these false teachings to penetrate their minds.

I’m a big believer in home schooling and Christian schools for our children for I believe they are far superior to today’s public schools. However, a Christian young person should and will be able to stand for Christ anywhere they go & under any conditions. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego asked politely to not eat the food the others ate but to eat their own special diet of herbs & water. Later when they were compared to those on the king’s diet, they had a fair, shiny countenance, & were ten times smarter than the other men. Imagine that; ten times smarter.

Young Daniel and these three Hebrew boys were subjected to some terrible pressures. They were subjected to Lion’s dens and fiery furnaces but they steadfastly stood for God & were miraculously preserved. Through it all they never let their emotions get the best of them, lashed out at their captor’s or got angry with God. In other words, they stood like mighty oaks in the face of persecution & danger. It’s no wonder these four men got into God’s favor & rated mention in his word. God honored them for their stability.

I believe the greatest threat to the Church today is lack of this mature quality called stability. Paul tells the Ephesian church in the forth chapter, beginning at verse 11 that God gave the several ministries to the church to perfect the saints & in verse 14 he says:

“That we henceforth be no more children- tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.” In this passage stability is equated with maturity; God desires that we not be tossed around & wishy washy, but stable.

James 1; 6&7 says that if we waver we needn’t expect to receive anything from God. The facts are obvious; unstable folk won’t do the basics and continue doing them day in and day out, rain or shine until they see success. They’ll just quit and start something else. They make bad decisions. They won’t show up at the right times. They won’t do their homework. They are often good people in many ways but when the chips are down, they just can’t endure.

Though it may sound trite, my Dad used to tell me that one of the greatest traits a person can have is to show up on time & leave when it’s time to leave. Lack of stick- ability costs people jobs, relationships & financial rewards. I have seen folk who had stability & very little else, but they did more in life than extremely gifted, talented people who were up one day and down the next. One of the greatest gifts of the spirit is "the gift of showing up." Unstable folk never see success in anything and even if they happen to stumble on it they can’t sustain it.

STABLE PEOPLE ACT-THEY DON’T REACT!

Unstable people are like ping-pong balls bouncing back & forth on a table. When you & I are reactive we put far too much power in the hands of others.

Did you ever consider that it’s easier to control your actions than it is your reactions? It’s true. We have very little trouble with our actions. We can go along smoothly & nicely for days, weeks & months with no real problems. But then let somebody say or do something that rubs us the wrong way, & before we know it we’ve thrown a conniption-fit.

Often times we blame the one who upset us for causing us to do or say things we shouldn’t have said. But the truth is nothing ever comes out of us that isn’t already in us. For example, if I am holding a cup full of liquid & someone comes by & jostles the cup and some of the liquid spills out, the reason it came out is that it was in there. Nothing will ever spill out of us that we aren’t full of.

We will blame the mailman, the policeman, the teacher, our spouse or kids for causing us to explode, but the truth is they only furnished the jostle. What came out was what we were already brimming full of. Reactive people are constantly at the mercy of those who push their buttons. None of us will always be consistent and stable in all of our life situations. Part of what brought us to God was our recognition that we, on our own are failures. That’s why we need to pray that the Holy Spirit will grant us courage, perseverance & wisdom, not only to seek God’s mercy & forgiveness but to get up & began again.

STABLE FOLK DON’T WEAR THEIR HEART ON THEIR SLEEVE.

Stable people don’t depend on people flattering & encouraging them but go along pretty much independent of what people do or say. It’s not that they don’t have feelings or need & appreciate compliments; they enjoy that as much as anyone. But they have an inner strength about them that just keeps clicking no matter what. As David did, they “Encourage themselves.”

The people who have impacted me most in life have been stable people. Somehow I draw strength from their example of just being there day in and day out, doing their duty. Stable people have been mentors to me who never knew it but I keyed off their example of strength and consistency.

I certainly don’t mean to convey here that I see myself as the soul of stability. Not at all! What I can say is that I aspire to and have always coveted in my life Paul’s attitude; “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling, in Christ.” Haven’t you ever been inspired by people who just took a licking & kept on ticking? If they have bad days or bad moods they don’t show it, they are always the same. That’s stability. We all need people like that in our lives.

Someone has said that life mainly consists of a few great high moments held together by vast stretches of tedium, with not a lot happening. If that’s true, and I think it is- how importance it is to have the quality of tough stability, built for the long haul.

Job was a man like that. [Here I go again with Job.] Most everything he held dear had been swept away. He certainly had a right to be mad at God but he had patience. In Job 1; 22 we read “In all of this Job sinned not nor charged God foolishly.” The book of Job is a 42 chapter delay, dragging this man through every kind of disappointment you can conceive of. But the Bible says; -And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.

Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Talk about God rewarding the stable man, there you have it. And when you read the whole book of Job you see that he had almost no help from others. His wife Matilda [Oh I don’t know her name] was certainly no help. She told him to curse God and die. But Job decided that if he could curse God & die he could also bless God & live.

Job’s friends just made his nightmare worse but Job never allowed people to cause him to give up. They probably often got on his last nerve but Job didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, nor need people to pat him on the back. Consequently today we know Job as perhaps the greatest paragon of stability, not only in the Bible but in all of literature.

STABLE PEOPLE AREN’T SHALLOW & EMOTIONAL.

I’ve often said that I wouldn’t give a nickel for someone who had no emotions, but I also wouldn’t give a nickel for someone controlled by their emotions. Stable folk have an ability to discern between the pressing &the necessary. They are plodders. Usually they don’t buy into fads or get carried away by the new & flashy trends coming down the pike.

Joseph is another, I believe, perfect example of stability & balance. His inspiring story is in the book of Genesis chapters 37-50. I believe God put his story in the Bible for some big reasons.

Can you imagine how shattering it would be to be literally sold out by your brothers & know that they despised you & wished you dead? And despite this, be willing to shower them with love & forgiveness, never allowing their misdeeds to make you bitter. Because of these brothers, Joseph ended up away from his home & family, in the far off land of Egypt to be put to work as a slave in a powerful man’s home, be falsely accused of raping his wife & thrown in jail.

To be able to stand strong the way Joseph did, you must take your eyes off what folk have done to you and put them on God. A vicious, nasty lie was told on Joseph & he was thrown in jail yet he never allowed bitterness to unhinge him. And it’s amazing that he never tried to escape. Joseph just wasn’t that kind of man. The way he saw it, they put him in jail so he’d make the best of it until God turned it around for him. Then he’d be in a position to do something constructive with his life.

Joseph understood that they meant it for evil but God meant it for good. For thirteen years not much good happened to Joseph yet his maturity & stability caused him to not see the bars of his prison but to look above the bars & see a God he knew would be faithful to him. That jailer must have realized there was something different about Joseph because he put him in charge of all the other prisoners.

Even in prison God blessed everything Joseph did. Joseph asked the baker & the butler who were in the prison with him to please remember him when they stood before the king. He knew if he was faithful, someday his moment would come, & he was right.

One night Pharaoh had a dream he couldn’t understand. Then the dream recurred & he called his best men in and they couldn’t help him with the interpretation. The butler spoke to the King about Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams so Joseph was brought in. It’s no surprise that Joseph was able to give the meaning of the King’s dream for Joseph himself had always been a dreamer.

Eventually, God showed that old heathen Pharaoh, through Joseph what to do to save Egypt in a coming time of famine. Think of the poise and self possession Joseph had in this moment. He not only told the King what the dream meant, he went on & told him how to put the information of the dream to practical use to save his land in coming famine. Because he was prepared to seize opportunity when it came, Joseph was given favor and ended up second in command in Egypt & had the inscription numeral 2 on his license plate.

Often we don’t have the patience to see the fruits of our right doings, but Joseph did. When the story was just about over in Genesis 50, - “Joseph remembered his dream.” Frankly, when you look at all Joseph went through, his emotional and mental condition should have been shot by this time. It’s a wonder he isn’t howling at the moon. But again he shows awesome stability. Even as he was dying he was pouring out his love to his family that had done him so wrong. He assured them,” God will surely visit you and bring you back to the land He has promised to you.”

And then, a man who could have died so young, died at the ripe old age of one hundred & ten. It’s interesting to me that while I’m sure Joseph wasn’t a perfect man; God wouldn’t allow one negative thing to be recorded about him in the entire Bible. A tribute, I believe, to a man of great love & rock- hard trustworthiness & stability. Also,

STABILITY DOESN”T TRY TO LIVE ON MOUNTAIN PEAKS BUT SPECIALIZES IN THE DAILY WALK.

If we try to live our lives from one great moment or experience to another, the times in between will become drudgery to us & we are sure to end up wavering and wobbling through life.

In Acts three, there’s the wonderful story of Peter & John going up to the temple at the hour of prayer. This is the day after Pentecost. This is the day after they had both been in the upper room and been filled with the Spirit along with the rest of the one hundred and twenty who waited there.

Let’s walk beside them for a moment and see if they’ll speak to us. We approach by saying, “excuse me, aren’t you Peter and John? Weren’t you two men in the upper room yesterday when the tongues of fire sat on people and all of you spoke in languages you never learned in school”? “Yes,” -we hear them answer, “you’ve got the right men, we were there. It was a glorious experience and we’ll never be the same again.” “Well” we continue, “Where are you going now?” They answer, “We’re going to the temple. It’s the hour of prayer, it’s our custom to go up and pray.” “But “we say,” “we just checked at the temple and there are just a few people there. Are you sure, after what you experienced yesterday that you want to go to that kind of small meeting? After all, there won’t be tongues of fire and you probably won’t see the same outpouring you saw yesterday.”

Finally they stop and turn to us and say, “Oh- you have us wrong, we know this is a small meeting, we don’t really expect it to be like yesterday. We expect to meet God in the service but not in the same way we met him yesterday. You see, this isn’t the same thing, we aren’t expecting a shaking today. Shakings are good but this will no doubt be a small moment. To be frank with you we are going for one reason and one only; it’s our duty to go to the temple & pray. This is our everyday walk with God.”

The spiritual experience these men had at Pentecost didn’t destroy their appreciation for the small moment, the ordinary, & the everyday walk with God. They were showing stability & Christian maturity in their actions the very next day after one of most miraculous events of their lives.

Furthermore, we read that there was a lame man who had been laid daily at the gate of the temple & as they walked by they saw him. If I’m reading right, this is the first time Peter and John had really seen this man who had been there for years. The story says that they ministered to the man and he was healed & went walking & leaping into the temple praising God. There are many great truths here but what I want you to see is that the magnificent experience of Pentecost gave these men a more dead level perspective than obviously they’d ever had before.

All the mountain top experiences we might have with God are worth little to us if they result in making us less able to see the needs of those around us. The Holy Spirit baptism, in its true reality will allow us to walk in a more consistent way, and will give us power to be stable witnesses for Christ as were Peter and John in this story.

STABILITY IS SYNONYMOUS WITH FOCUS AND SINGLE MINDEDNESS.

Stable people aren’t trapped in the past and won’t allow baggage from the past to affect their present lives. Unwillingness to let go of past hurts is a major cause of instability in a life. How could we be living in stability when our focus is constantly being broken by past hurt & disappointments? I have known people who brought past wounds into their present relationships & destroyed the relationship they were trying to build. The only way we can live balanced lives is to forgive where forgiveness is needed, even if it’s forgiving ourselves & then get on with the business of living.

To be successful in what we are endeavoring to do, we can’t be looking in the rear view mirror all the time. That will only result in broken focus.
Stable people see a big picture and allow nothing to divert their mind from it. They realize that what they focus on becomes the dominate force in their lives. Athletes won’t allow anything to stop them from their training programs for they know the key to their victory is embedded in their everyday schedule. Their victorious outcome isn’t going to be realized by what they do once in awhile but by what they consistently do each & every day of their lives.

Professional golfers will practice sometimes until their hands bleed. Football players will often get their wounds wrapped and go back into a game with blood soaked bandages on. These qualities of stamina and stability in an athlete are what make them heroes to their fans, & are much revered virtues in our culture.

STABLE PEOPLE REALIZE THAT IT’S NOT WHAT HAPPENS IN THE FIRST HALF OF LIFE THAT’S IMPORTANT- BUT THE SECOND HALF.

I’m sure you remember O.J Simpson. He was born a natural athlete & proved his abilities in College then in the National Football league. He was perhaps the most successful running back in all of professional football.

He obviously made it to the top in sports & then went on to capture Hollywood. His face was constantly seen on movie & T.V screens around the world. He was accepted in the highest social circles & at one time was one of the most recognized & respected men in the world. But none of those things will be remembered about O.J. He will be remembered for allegedly killing his estranged wife & her male companion, & one of the most famous trials of the twentieth century. O.J knew from his football days that the second half is always the most important. As for his life, he lived the first half well but all of that will be overshadowed by what he did in his second half.

The writer of Hebrews urged to a failing Christian community to -Run with patience the race that is set before them their eyes fixed on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross scorning its shame” Hebrews 12:1-2.

If we are to rise to meet the challenge of being what God wants us to be we must know that it can’t be done with a half hearted commitment, only a stable effort will be triumphant.

Blessings,

John