CHAPTER 4

WHEN GOD’S STORY BECOMES YOURS…

YOU HEAR A VOICE YOU CAN TRUST

THINK ABOUT IT!

Luke Skywalker had Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. Daniel had Mr. Miyagi, Harry Potter had Dumbledore, Frodo had Gandalf, and Cinderella had a fairy godmother. The feature players in all our stories have good voices they can trust to guide them past their confusing times. So how do we know whom to listen to?

YOU THINK IT’S HARD TO WALK IN THE DARK? FIND IT DIFFICULT to navigate a room with the lights off or your eyes closed? Try flying a small plane at fifteen thousand feet.

Blind.

Jim O’Neill did. Not that he intended to do so. The sixty-five-year-old pilot was forty minutes into a four-hour solo flight from Glasgow, Scotland, to Colchester, England, when his vision failed. He initially thought he had been blinded by the sun but soon realized it was much worse. “Suddenly I couldn’t see the dials in front of me. It was just a blur. I was helpless.”

He gave new meaning to the phrase “flying blind.”

Turns out, he’d suffered a stroke. O’Neill groped and found the radio of his Cessna and issued a Mayday alert. Paul Gerrard, a Royal Air Force Wing Commander who had just completed a training sortie nearby, was contacted by air traffic controllers and took off in O’Neill’s direction. He found the plane and began talking to the stricken pilot.

The commander told O’Neill what to do. His instructions were reassuring and simple: “A gentle right turn, please. Left a bit. Right a bit.” He hovered within five hundred feet of O’Neill, shepherding him toward the nearest runway. Upon reaching it, the two began to descend. When asked if he could see the runway below, O’Neill apologized, “No sir, negative.” O’Neill would have to land the plane by faith, not by sight. He hit the runway but bounced up again. The same thing happened on the second attempt. But on the eighth try, the blinded pilot managed to make a near-perfect landing.7

Can you empathize with O’Neill? Most can. We’ve been struck at various times in our lives, paralyzed not by a stroke but by circumstance. A best friend stabbed you in the back, you didn’t make the team, your parents separated. We’ve lost sight of any safe landing strip and, in desperation, issued our share of Mayday prayers. We know the fear of flying blind.

Unlike O’Neill, however, we hear more than one voice. Many voices besiege our cockpit. The talk show host urges us to worry. The news forecasts a meltdown. The pastor says pray; the professor says phooey. So many opinions! Lose weight. Eat less fat. Join our church. Stop eating meat. It’s enough to make you cover your ears and run.

And what if you follow the wrong voice? What if you make the same mistake as the followers of self-help guru James Arthur Ray? He promised to help people achieve spiritual and financial wealth, asserting to “double, triple, even multiply by ten the size of your business.”

He gave more than financial counsel to the more than fifty clients who crowded into his 415-square-foot sweat lodge in Sedona, Arizona. They had paid him between nine thousand and ten thousand dollars apiece for a five-day spiritual warrior retreat. The participants had fasted for thirty-six hours as part of a personal spiritual quest, then ate a breakfast buffet before entering the saunalike hut that afternoon. People were passing out and vomiting, but were still urged to stay in the lodge. Two hours later, three of them were dead.8

Zach, 17 — When I first moved from Atlanta, the first people to accept me at school were not the best at honoring God. When we hung out I was always pressured into things I knew weren’t right. I can’t say I have heard God’s voice directly, but he has used others to help guide me. My father loves God very much and has always been someone I can listen to who will keep me from harming myself.

Oh, the voices. How do we select the right one?

A more important question cannot be asked. In fact, a form of the question was asked by Jesus himself: “Who do you say I am?” (Mark 8:29).

He had led his disciples into Caesarea Philippi. The region was to religion what Walmart is to shopping — every variety in one place. A center of Baal worship. An impressive temple of white marble dedicated to the godhead of Caesar. Shrines to the Syrian gods. Here Jesus, within earshot of every spiritual voice of his era, asked his followers:

“Who do people say I am?”

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”

—MARK 8:27–29

When it came to expressing the opinions of others, the disciples were chatty. Everyone spoke. But when it came to this personal question, only Peter replied. We do well to wonder why. Why only one answer? Was Peter so confident and quick that the others had no time to speak? Did Peter drown out the replies of everyone else? “YOU ARE THE MESSIAH!”

Maybe Peter’s confession echoed off the walls of the temples. Or perhaps it didn’t.

Perhaps no one else spoke because no one else knew what to say. John ducked his eyes. Philip looked away. Andrew cleared his throat. Nathaniel kicked the dirt, then elbowed Peter. And Peter sighed. He looked at this lean-faced, homeless teacher from Nazareth and pondered the question, “Who do you say I am?”

It couldn’t have been a new one for Peter. He must have asked it a thousand times: the night when Jesus walked off the beach into the bay without sinking, the day he turned a boy’s lunch into an “all you can eat” buffet, the time he wove a whip and drove the swindlers out of the temple. Who is this man?

Peter had asked the question. So have millions of other people. All serious students of Christ, indeed students of life, have stood in their personal version of Caesarea Philippi and contrasted Jesus with the great philosophers of the world and heard him inquire, “Who do you say I am?”

“You’re a decent fellow,” some have answered. After all, if you can’t like Jesus, can you like anyone? In Jesus, the poor found a friend, and the forgotten found an advocate. Jesus was nothing if not good. True blue. Solid. Dependable. Everyone’s first choice for a best friend, right?

Sure, if you want a best friend who claims to be God on earth. For being such an affable sort, Jesus had a curious habit of declaring divinity.

His favorite self-designation was Son of Man. The title appears eighty-two times in the four gospels, only once by anyone other than Jesus.9

“The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Matthew 8:20 NKJV).

“The Son of Man must suffer many things” (Mark 8:31 NKJV).

“They will see the Son of Man coming” (Mark 13:26 NKJV).

First-century listeners found the claim outrageous. They were acquainted with its origin in Daniel 7. In his visions the prophet Daniel saw “One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven!… Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13–14 NKJV).

“That’s me,” Jesus was saying. Every time he used the phrase “Son of Man,” he crowned himself. Would a decent fellow walk around making such a claim? You want a guy like this in your neighborhood?

And what about his “I AM” statements? “I am the light of the world.” “I am the bread of life,” “the resurrection and the life,” and “the way, the truth, and the life.” And most stunning, “Before Abraham was born, I am!”10

By claiming the “I AM” title, Jesus was equating himself with God.

Jesus claimed to be able to forgive sins — a privilege only God can exercise (Matthew 9:4–7). He claimed to be greater than Jonah, Solomon, Jacob, and even Abraham (Matthew 12:38–42; John 4:12–14; 8:53–56). Jesus said that John the Baptist was the greatest man who had ever lived but implied that he was greater (Matthew 11:11). Jesus commanded people to pray in his name (John 14:13–14). He claimed to be greater than the temple (Matthew 12:6), greater than the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8). He claimed his words would outlive heaven and earth (Mark 13:31) and that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him (Matthew 28:18–20).

Does a decent fellow say things like this? No, but a demented fool does.

Maybe Jesus was a megalomaniac on par with Alexander the Great or Adolf Hitler. But, honestly, could a madman do what Jesus did?

Look at the devotion he inspired. People didn’t just respect Jesus. They liked him; they left their homes and businesses and followed him. Men and women alike tethered their hope to his life. Impulsive people like Peter. Visionaries like Philip. Passionate men like John, careful men like Thomas, methodical men like Matthew the tax collector. When the men had left Jesus in the grave, it was the women who came to honor him—women from all walks of life, homemaking to philanthropy.

And people were better because of him. Madmen sire madmen: Saddam Hussein created murderers, Joseph Stalin created power addicts, Charles Manson created wackos. But Jesus transformed common dockworkers and net casters into the authors of history’s greatest book and founders of its greatest movement. “They stand like a row of noble pillars towering far across the flats of time. But the sunlight that shines on them, and makes them visible, comes entirely from Him. He gave them all their greatness; and theirs is one of the most striking evidences of His.”11

And what about his teaching? What about the day when Jesus’ enemies sent officers to arrest him? Because of the crowd, they couldn’t reach him directly. As they were pushing through the people, the officers were so gripped by his words that they abandoned their assignment. Their hearts were arrested, and Jesus was not. They returned to their superiors without a prisoner. Their defense? “No man ever spoke like this Man!” (John 7:46 NKJV).

Christ stunned people with his authority and clarity. His was not the mind of a deranged wild man. Demented fool? No. Deceiving fraud? Some have said so.

Some believe that Jesus masterminded the greatest scheme in the history of humanity, that he out-Ponzied the swindlers and out-hustled the hucksters. If that were true, billions of humans have been fleeced into following a first-century pied piper over the edge of a cliff.

Should we crown Christ as the foremost fraud in the world?

Not too quickly. Look at the miracles Jesus performed. The four gospels detail approximately thirty-six miracles and reference many more. He multiplied bread and fish, changed water into wine, calmed more than one storm, restored sight to more than one blind man. He healed contagious skin diseases, gave steps to the lame, purged demons, stopped a hemorrhage, even replaced a severed ear.

Yet, in doing so, Jesus never grandstanded his miraculous powers. Never went for fame or profit. Jesus performed miracles for two reasons: to prove his identity and to help his people.

Around AD 120, a man named Quadratus wrote the emperor Hadrian, defending Christianity. His apologetic included this sentence: “The works of our Saviour were lasting, for they were genuine: those who were healed and those who were raised from the dead were seen… not merely while the Saviour was on earth, but also after his death; they were alive for quite a while, so that some of them lived even to our day.”12

Had Jesus been a fraud or trickster, the Jerusalem congregation would have died a stillborn death. People would have denounced the miracles of Christ. But they did just the opposite. Can you imagine the apostles inviting testimonies? “If you were a part of the crowd he fed, one of the dead he raised, or one of the sick he healed, speak up and tell your story.”

And speak they did. The church exploded like a fire on a West Texas prairie. Why? Because Jesus performed public, memorable miracles. He healed people.

And he loved people. He paid no heed to class or nationality, past sins or present accomplishments. The neediest and loneliest found a friend in Jesus:

• a woman scarcely clothed because of last night’s affair. Christ befriended and defended her. (John 8:3–11)

• an unscrupulous tax collector left friendless because of his misdealings. Christ became his mentor. (Luke 19:2–10)

• a multiple divorcée who drew from the well in the heat of the day to avoid the stares of the villagers. Jesus gave her his attention. (John 4:5–26)

Could a lying sham love this way? If his intent was to trick people out of their money or worship, he did a pitifully poor job, for he died utterly broke and virtually abandoned.

What if Peter was correct? “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29).

What if Jesus really was, and is, the Son of God? If so, then we can relish this wonderful truth: we never travel alone. True, we cannot see the runway. We do not know what the future holds. But, no, we are not alone.

We have what Jim O’Neill had: the commander’s voice to guide us home. Let’s heed it, shall we? Let’s issue the necessary Mayday prayer and follow the guidance that God sends. If so, we will hear what O’Neill heard.

BBC News made the recording of the final four minutes of the flight available. Listen and you’ll hear the patient voice of a confident commander. “You’ve missed the runway this time… Let’s start another gentle right-hand turn… Keep the right turn coming…. Roll out left… No need to worry… Roll out left. Left again, left again… Keep coming down… Turn left, turn left… Hey, no problem… Can you see the runway now?… So you cannot see the runway?… Keep coming down…”

And then finally, “You are safe to land.”13

I’m looking forward to hearing that final sentence someday. Aren’t you?

Nick, 17 — Trusting God’s voice gives me strength and courage. I’ve made mistakes and learned to trust God. Wise people you can’t always trust, [but] God is the Almighty; he will answer your call when you need him. The Bible is the truth. It helps guide you through life and other obstacles. Trusting God has made a difference in me.

DON’T JUST SIT THERE…

Thank God that Jesus is completely trustworthy; ask him to help you to grow to trust in Jesus more and more.

Make a quick list of the three most trustworthy people in your life. Circle the one who has the most in common with Jesus.

Ask a good friend to describe to you whom they believe Jesus to be. Be prepared to answer the question yourself.

Pay attention to the next story you read or see and notice whom the hero is asked to trust in (e.g., the “force,” himself or herself, a mentor, a system, etc.).

If you consider Jesus trustworthy, make a list of three things he has asked you to do. Circle any that you are not doing and write down why.

The next time you sing praise songs or hymns, pay attention to what they say about trusting God.