Today’s FAITH Gives Me Peace
Nearly thirty years ago when I first began speaking at conferences and hosting leadership seminars, my entire audience was made up of pastors. But over the years, more and more businesspeople have discovered that the leadership principles I teach work equally well for them. Today, about 70 percent of the people I teach are business leaders. And in the last seven or eight years, the number of invitations I have received to speak to large corporations, entrepreneurial businesses, and leadership-intensive institutions has exploded. (One of the highlights of 2003 was accepting the invitation to speak on leadership to cadets and faculty members at the United States Military Academy at West Point.)
When I speak to businesspeople, I often share with them my pastoral background. My faith is the most important thing in my life, but I’m very sensitive to the fact that others may have a very different point of view from mine, and I never push my faith on anyone. In fact, recently when I was speaking to a group of corporate executives, one of the people asked me, “Where did you learn your leadership principles?”
“I don’t think you want to know,” I told him.
“Sure I do,” he said.
“You may not like the answer,” I said.
“Try me.”
“Okay,” I responded. “Everything I know about leadership I learned from the Bible.” He was surprised but very respectful.
I know some people who read this book will have ambivalent feelings about my opinions regarding faith. And some may be offended. If that is true for you, I apologize. (Please feel free to simply skip this chapter if that is the case.) However, knowing my background, you’re probably not surprised that faith is one of my Daily Dozen. My reasons for including a chapter on the subject in Today Matters is twofold. First, for the sake of my integrity, I must include it in the book. All my life I have been trying to increase my faith and encourage others to develop theirs. Second, I want to be sensitive to your views concerning faith. Therefore, I will share with you my personal spiritual journey with the hope that it will encourage you to explore this aspect of your own life. I sincerely believe that faith holds the key to life’s meaning.
I sincerely believe that faith holds the key to life’s meaning.
Skeptical of Faith
It’s interesting to see how people react when someone brings up the subject of faith. Over the years, I’ve found that faith usually gets one of the six following responses. People . . .
1. Ignore It: What do people do when something doesn’t apply to them? Generally, they ignore it. Some people don’t see the relevance of faith. It seems “quaint” or out of date—something for another age.
2. Misunderstand It: Others believe that acquiring faith is like trying to get your hand around smoke. They figure it’s too mystical and elusive, and they’ll never get a handle on it.
3. Discount It: There are people who think faith is better suited for somebody else, not for them. Perhaps it’s an alien concept. If their family didn’t embrace faith and none of their closest friends do, then they assume it couldn’t be right for them either.
4. Fight It: Have you ever had someone argue with you about your faith? That’s what some people do. Because they don’t value it, they argue against its value for anyone else.
5. Delay It: Some people instinctively believe that faith is important, but they don’t want to deal with it now. (I suspect that some are worried they’ll have to give up what’s important to them if they look into it.) Instead, they say that they’ll think about it someday when they’re old.
6. Explore It: There is one other way people react to faith issues. They are willing to give it a chance. Hopefully, this will be your response.
Why Faith Matters Today
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “I am fully convinced that the soul is indestructible, and that its activity will continue through eternity.” Even skeptics will admit that people have a spiritual aspect. As philosopher Teilhard de Chardin said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” There are longings of the soul that can be satisfied only with spiritual experiences, though people try and fail to meet them in material ways.
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
—TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Take a look at just a few of the things faith does:
FAITH GIVES ME A DIVINE PERSPECTIVE TODAY
There are a lot of things in life that are difficult to understand. Faith allows the soul to go beyond what the eyes can see. Or to put it another way, as author Phillip Yancey says, “Faith is trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”
If you’re a parent, then you already understand how this works. When children are small, they ask a lot of questions. Most of the time we can give them pretty specific answers that satisfy them. But sometimes we tell them something, and their life experience doesn’t provide them with what they need to grasp it. It’s like trying to explain to a three-year-old that if he falls into a swimming pool when no one is around, he’ll drown.
“But why?” he asks. “How do you know?” You try to explain, but at some point, all you can say is, “You just have to trust me on this.”
Perhaps the most difficult questions any person faces relate to death. I recently attended the funeral of Jane Chapman, the wife of my good friend Tom Chapman. During the service a poem was read that captures the power of faith and the perspective it brings. It said,
I am standing on the seashore.
A ship appears
and spreads her white sails
to the morning breeze
and starts for the ocean.
She is an object of beauty
and I stand watching her
till at last she fades away on the horizon,
and someone at my side quietly says,
“She is gone.” Gone where?
Gone from my vision, that is all;
she is just as large as when I saw her last.
The diminished size
and the total loss of sight
is in me, not in her;
and just at the moment
when someone at my side says,
“She is gone,”
there are others who are watching
her coming and other voices
take up a joyful shout,
“There she comes!”1
People of faith understand that when you seek to broaden your perspective and try to see life from a heavenly vantage point, everything makes a lot more sense. Being willing to make that jump may not be easy, especially if you’re a natural skeptic. But I believe that if you’re willing to sincerely try to seek perspective from God, you will be rewarded.
FAITH GIVES ME HEALTH TODAY
Years ago, I read about a study from Purdue University that found people who practice their religion regularly develop only half as many medical problems as nonbelievers. The researchers concluded that religion kept people’s stress down and their sense of well-being up because their faith added meaning and perspective, as well as valuable social networks.2 Recently a group of physicians reconfirmed these findings. They wrote,
We have recently completed a systematic review of over 1200 studies on the religion health relationship. These studies have been conducted by different investigators, working at different institutions, studying different clinical and community populations located in different parts of the United States and world over the span of a century. The vast majority of these studies show a relationship between greater religious involvement and better mental health, better physical health, or lower use of health services.3
If you desire to improve your physical well-being and your emotional outlook, increasing your faith can help you.
FAITH GIVES ME STRENGTH FOR TODAY
A strong faith of any kind gives a person strength. Few things can help a person overcome adversity the way faith can. S. G. Holland, former prime minister of New Zealand, asserted that “faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain; and only faith can do it.” Faith gives a person power.
The opposite is also true. Faithlessness is de-energizing. Where there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present. Years ago, a hydroelectric dam was planned in Maine that would create a lake whose waters would cover up a small town there. Quite a bit of time elapsed after the plans for the dam were announced before the citizens of the town would have to relocate. As the flood date approached, the people in the town stopped doing every kind of maintenance. They didn’t paint or repair buildings. Sidewalks went untended. Roads deteriorated. The town got so shabby that it looked abandoned long before the inhabitants moved away.
Where there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present.
FAITH GIVES ME RESILIENCE TODAY
Not only does faith give a person strength, it also makes them more resilient. Soon after actor Christopher Reeve fell from his horse and broke his neck, he was almost ready to give up. But he found the strength to bounce back because his wife, Dana, had faith in him. Now he is known for his determination and faith, which he believes is part of how Americans are wired. Reeve says,
America has a tradition that many nations probably envy. We frequently achieve the impossible. But that’s part of our national character. That’s what got us from one coast to another. That’s what got us the largest economy in the world. That’s what got us to the moon. Now, in my room while I was in rehab, there was a picture of the space shuttle blasting off. It was autographed by every astronaut down at NASA. On the top of that picture it says, “We found nothing is impossible.” Now, that should be our motto. . . . So many of our dreams, so many dreams at first seem impossible, and then they seem improbable. And then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. So if we can conquer outer space, we should be able to conquer inner space, too. And that’s the frontier of the brain, the central nervous system and all the afflictions of the body that destroy so many lives and rob our country of so much potential.4
When you believe in something, you have something to live for. And that keeps you going, even under extremely difficult circumstances. Perhaps Mother Teresa summed it up best when she said, “Faith keeps the person who keeps the faith.”
“Faith keeps the person who keeps the faith.”
—MOTHER TERESA
Making the Decision to Deepen and Live Out My Faith Daily
I grew up in a household filled with faith. My father, Melvin, became a pastor as a young man and remains in ministry to this day at age eighty-three. I heard words of faith from him and my mother, Laura, every day growing up. But you can’t live on someone else’s faith. There are no spiritual grandchildren. Each person must make his own decision and act on it with integrity. At age seventeen, I made my faith decision: I will accept God’s gift of his Son, Jesus Christ, as my Savior.
That decision, more than any other, has shaped my life. It has forged my worldview. Recognition of God’s love for everyone has influenced how I view others. The Golden Rule has taught me how to treat people. God’s love for me has given me great self-worth. And the Bible has taught me how to lead people. Whenever I am asked to sign a copy of the Maxwell Leadership Bible, the edition that contains leadership notes from my thirty years of studying leadership in Scripture, I write, “Everything I know about leadership I learned from this Book.”
It is my privilege to be a national board member of the Center for Faith Walk Leadership. The organization, founded by my friend Ken Blanchard, encourages leading in the workplace according to the highest standard. Here’s what Ken says that means:
It doesn’t mean the bottom line, or looking good to Wall Street, or being praised by your peers. It’s not about getting the credit, or the promotions, or the raises. It’s about working with those you lead to get results in a way that honors God. It’s about people, service, and results. It’s a new way of leading based on the teachings of Jesus, the greatest leader of all time. He gave his followers a vision of something greater than themselves. He consistently reminded them of the long-term effects of their work. He allowed those around him to fail, but held them accountable. He redirected them. He forgave them, and he inspired the best in others. And the result? He started a movement that continues to thrive more than 2,000 years later.
True leadership starts with the heart—with character. The underlying message from God is not to act differently, but to become different. Not to act honestly, but to become an honest person. Then honesty will be at the core of your leadership style. It will be at the core of your life. My faith has not only given me peace; it has given me a wonderful model for leadership and life.
True leadership starts with the heart—with character.
If you desire to make an honest exploration of faith, then know this:
WE ALREADY HAVE FAITH . . . THE IMPORTANT CHOICE IS WHERE WE PLACE IT
Author John Bisagno observed, “Faith is at the heart of life. You go to a doctor whose name you cannot pronounce. He gives you a prescription you cannot read. You take it to a pharmacist you have never seen. He gives you a medicine you do not understand and yet you take it.”
We all have faith. Every day we act on beliefs that have little or no evidence to back them up. That is also true in a spiritual sense. Just as one person has faith that God is real, an atheist has faith that there is no God. Both people hold strong beliefs, and neither person can produce evidence to absolutely prove his point of view. Right now, you already have faith in something. Your goal should be to align your beliefs with the truth. Seek the truth, and I believe you will find it.
UNDERSTAND THAT FAITH IS OFTEN BIRTHED OUT OF DIFFICULTIES
I’ve already shared that some skeptical people see faith as a negative thing, almost as a sign of weakness. If faith is new to you and you are uncertain how to approach it, then I would advise you to view it as an opportunity for a course correction in the journey of life. In a play by T. S. Eliot, one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century, one character expresses it in those kinds of terms. He describes a faith that comes after extreme disappointment. He calls it the “kind of faith that arises after despair. The destination cannot be described; you will know very little until you get there; you will journey blind. But the way leads toward possession of what you have sought for in the wrong place.”
If you are experiencing difficulties, allow yourself to explore faith in response to it. Henri Nouwen said this “is the great conversation in our life: to recognize and believe that the many unexpected events are not just disturbing interruptions of our projects, but the way in which God molds our hearts and prepares us.” Faith not only can help you through a crisis, it can help you to approach life after the hard times with a whole new perspective. It can help you adopt an outlook of hope and courage through faith to face reality.
“[This] is the great conversation in our life: to recognize and believe that the many unexpected events are not just disturbing interruptions of our projects, but the way in which God molds our hearts and prepares us.”
—HENRI NOUWEN
A FAITH THAT HASN’T BEEN TESTED CAN’T BE TRUSTED
You may have noticed that the heading for this section of the chapter is titled “Making the Decision to Deepen and Live Out My Faith Daily.” It’s not enough to simply make a faith decision. If you want to live it out, then you have to work at deepening it. Faith gives you peace and strength only if it’s not superficial. The deeper the faith, the greater its potential to carry you through the rough times. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel said, “Faith like Job’s cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken.”
Perhaps nothing in recent history tested the faith of so many people as severely as the Holocaust. Viennese psychiatrist Victor Frankl was one of the survivors of the Nazi’s atrocities. He spent 1942 to 1945 in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. Frankl once said, “A weak faith is weakened by predicaments and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.” Despite the horrors he witnessed and the treatment he suffered, his faith didn’t weaken—it deepened.
Managing the Disciplines of Faith
Thousands of books have been written on how to live out the disciplines of faith. Perhaps that is so because it is such a difficult thing to do. For me, the discipline can be captured in one simple phrase: Every day to live and lead like Jesus. While the words are simple, following through is not. Living out the discipline of faith is the greatest challenge of my Daily Dozen. The problem is that instead of being like Jesus, I often want to be like John Maxwell. I fall short of the mark. But with God as my helper, I keep growing. And when I do follow in his footsteps and live his principles, people are helped and I am fulfilled.
Following are four suggestions for managing your discipline of faith:
1. EMBRACE THE VALUE OF FAITH
I’ve already given a number of reasons why I think faith is beneficial. But let me add to that list. There are some things in life you will arrive at only through faith. In the past, many people hoped that science would provide all the answers to life’s questions. But science cannot do that. Ironically, what is embraced as scientific fact changes from generation to generation. Just look at the way scientists have viewed our solar system. Ptolemy believed the earth was at its center. Copernicus asserted that the sun was at its center and the planets moved in circular orbits around it. Kepler proved that the orbits were elliptical. Today, scientists no longer argue the structure of the solar system, but ideas about how it was formed change continually. In fact, just this week scientists found what they are calling the oldest known planet in the globular star cluster M4. They say it is a “‘stunning revelation’ that will force scientists to revise their ideas of planetary formation.”5
Contrast science with faith. The core beliefs of Judaism and Christianity have not changed in thousands of years. There is a spiritual aspect to human life that cannot be denied. Spiritual needs must be met spiritually. Nothing else will fill the void.
2. PUT GOD IN THE PICTURE
There’s a story of a man driving a convertible on a mountain road who took an unexpected turn too quickly and went right over the edge. As his car fell, he managed to grab on to a tree sprouting from the cliff face as his car dropped a thousand feet to the canyon floor.
“Help!” he screamed. “Can anyone hear me?” An echo was the only response.
“God, can you hear me?” he cried.
Suddenly the clouds rolled together and a voice like thunder said, “Yes, I can hear you.”
“Will you help me?”
“Yes, I will help you. Do you believe in me?”
“Yes, I believe in you.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes, yes, I trust you. Please, hurry.”
“If you trust me, then let go of the tree,” thundered the voice.
After a long silence, the man cried, “Can anyone else hear me?”
If you want to embrace faith, you must let God into your life. No one else is worthy of our absolute and unconditional trust. Theologian F. B. Meyer said, “Unbelief puts our circumstances between us and God. Faith puts God between us and our circumstances.” Who wouldn’t like to have the Creator of the universe helping them? James, one of the fathers of the first-century church, advised, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.”6
“Unbelief puts our circumstances between us and God. Faith puts God between us and our circumstances.”
—F. B. MEYER
3. ASSOCIATE WITH PEOPLE OF FAITH
Comedian Bob Hope once went to the airport to meet his wife, Dolores, who had been doing some charity work for the Catholic Church. When her private plane pulled in, the first two people to step off the plane were Catholic priests. Then came Dolores, followed by four more Catholic priests. Hope turned to a friend near him and quipped, “I don’t know why she just doesn’t buy insurance like everybody else!”
It’s a fact that you become more like the people you spend time with. If you desire to increase your faith, spend time with others who exercise theirs. Learn from them. Find out how they think.
4. EXPLORE AND DEEPEN YOUR FAITH
Developing your faith is very similar to developing yourself physically. Perhaps that’s why the Bible contains so many athletic metaphors for spiritual growth. If you want to get into good physical condition, you need to exercise your body regularly. If you don’t, you not only don’t gain strength and conditioning, you begin to lose what you once had.
D. L. Moody, a nineteenth-century lay preacher who founded Northfield Seminary and the Moody Bible Institute, explained how his faith developed. He said, “I prayed for faith, and thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, ‘Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.’ I had closed my Bible and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since.”
Reflecting on Faith
St. Augustine of Hippo observed, “Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.” When I made my faith decision back in 1964, I knew at the time I was doing the right thing for myself spiritually. But I didn’t know that I would “see what I believe” played out so dramatically in my life:
In my teens . . . My faith gave me assurance of eternal salvation.
In my 20s . . . My faith gave me meaning and fulfillment.
In my 30s . . . My faith gave me a platform to help others.
In my 40s . . . My faith gave me a foundation for my leadership.
In my 50s . . . My faith gives me a peace that cannot be given by others or taken away by them.
I cannot imagine how my life would have played out without my faith at the center of it.
“Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.”
—ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Dreaming of the Heavens
Ever since he was a kid, Rick Husband wanted to be an astronaut. He remembered seeing his first space launch at age four, and he was fascinated by the Gemini and Apollo missions. Patty Ragan, a friend whose family has been close to the Husbands for three generations, said, “Rick wanted to be an astronaut from the time he was in the fourth grade, and he did everything he needed to do that.”7
When Husband went off to college at Texas Tech, he studied mechanical engineering and became a member of the Air Force ROTC. He completed undergraduate pilot training and then began his career as an F-4 fighter pilot in the air force. Before long, he became a flight instructor and then a test pilot. As a program manager, he helped work on an increased-performance engine. He became an F-15 demonstration pilot, and he participated in a pilot exchange program with the RAF. In all, he had logged more than thirty-eight hundred hours of flight time in more than forty different kinds of aircraft. He was among the best of the best. Along the way, not only did he earn his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cal State Fresno, but he also got married and had two children. He was respected not only for his skill in his career, but also for his faith and his devotion as a husband and father.
The Right Stuff
In December of 1994, Husband finally realized his dream of becoming an astronaut and began training a few months later. In 1999, he went into space for the first time as pilot of the space shuttle Discovery, and he loved it. “One of the most enjoyable things about flying in space is getting to see God’s creation from a different perspective,” said Husband. “There are just so many different beautiful aspects of the views you get to see out there that it is an awe-inspiring sight, almost no matter in which direction you’re looking.”8
Husband’s next trip into space was aboard the Columbia, and this time he commanded the mission. As usual, his family watched the launch in Florida. That was always the most nerve-racking time. When Rick’s wife, Evelyn, described it, she said that the worst is “in the first couple of minutes because of the Challenger. When I saw the rocket boosters come off, that pretty much does it for me because I feel like we’re home free.”9
Little did anyone suspect that the real danger would be when Columbia was making its final descent to land at Kennedy Space Center. On February 1, 2003, at about 9:00 a.m., the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over the Dallas-Fort Worth area, just a few hundred miles from where Rick Husband grew up. The entire crew of seven was lost.
Just two days after the tragedy, Evelyn Husband was interviewed by Katie Couric on the Today show. She was remarkably composed. She talked about how the families of all Columbia’s astronauts had come together to comfort one another, how they were grieving together, and how supportive NASA had been. She expressed her desire that space exploration continue. And she also explained how she was making it through such a difficult time:
When Rick autographed pictures for people, he always put a Bible verse on it that was Proverbs 3:5-6, which says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” And that verse has been a blessing to me and Rick, and now it’s a tremendous blessing to me because I don’t understand any of this, but I do trust the Lord, and so that’s been a tremendous comfort.10
If you desire to have the kind of peace that Evelyn Husband has and the assurance that she and Rick enjoyed, then make a faith decision and learn to deepen and live out your faith daily.
FAITH APPLICATION AND EXERCISESDEEPENING AND LIVING OUT YOUR FAITH DAILY
Your Faith Decision Today
Where do you stand when it comes to faith today? Ask yourself these three questions:
1. Have I already made the decision to deepen and live out my faith daily?
2. If so, when did I make that decision?
3. What exactly did I decide? (Write it here.)
Your Faith Discipline Every Day
Based on the decision you made concerning your faith, what is the one discipline you must practice today and every day in order to be successful? Write it here.
Making Up for Yesterday
If you need some help making the right decision concerning faith and developing the everyday discipline to live it out, do the following exercises:
1. What has been your attitude toward faith up to now? Has your approach been to ignore it, misunderstand it, discount it, fight it, or delay it? Try to understand your personal barriers to faith. What must you do to remove them so that you can place your faith in God?
2. Sometimes when people open themselves up to seek spiritual truth, they can look back at their lives and see the hand of God at work. Think about your own life. Have there been times when God might have been trying to get your attention? Were there times when you seemed to be protected from harm despite your own actions? Ask God to reveal his pursuit of you in your life.
3. If you once embraced faith but allowed it to fall to the wayside, perhaps it was because you hadn’t deepened it before a time of testing. Go back to your spiritual roots and do some exploring. Approach it afresh. Study the Bible and learn now what you neglected then. Bring God back “into the picture.”
4. Seek out people of faith whom you respect. Talk to them about their beliefs. Ask them to recommend books and tapes for your growth. And find out where they are connected spiritually so that you can find a community of believers with whom you can connect.
Looking Forward to Tomorrow
Spend some time reflecting on how your decision concerning faith and the daily discipline that comes out of it will positively impact you in the future. What compounding benefits do you expect to receive? Write them here.
Keep what you’ve written as a constant reminder, because . . .
Reflection today motivates your discipline every day, and
Discipline every day maximizes your decision of yesterday.