Crash the Chatterbox: Hearing God's Voice Above All Others (24 page)

At first he couldn’t walk from one room to the next. Eventually he couldn’t leave the bed, scratch his own itches, turn over, or reach up to tap the screen of the iPad that had been his lifeline to the world as the disease had progressed. He couldn’t pass a bowel movement without help. And in the last three days of his life, as he struggled to breathe, he couldn’t even speak to tell us what hurt.

As he drifted in and out of semiconsciousness, I decided to put his Martin guitar to use and sing medleys of his favorite hymns and gospel songs. The longer he hung in there, the more obscure the songs got. It was fun trying to remember as many songs about heaven as I could. When I ran out of songs about heaven, I mixed in some CCR. My mom and Holly helped me with the harmonies. My brother isn’t much of a singer, but he was there.

And I told those who were gathered at the memorial about how, as I lay beside him in his bed, reading him a sermon by Charles Spurgeon called “The Peculiar Sleep of the Beloved,” watching as he finally took his last breath, my sadness about his suffering gave way to rejoicing.

Because death is not the end of the line for a believer.

And even though my dad is gone,
the train is still rolling …

When I got to this point in my eulogy, the crowd was on their feet. And together as a church family, we celebrated the life of a man who was “hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
³

At the conclusion of the service, we gave away $61,000 in his honor (he would have turned sixty-one in just a couple of weeks) to the outreach organizations that were especially meaningful to him. And we gave a train-shaped wooden whistle to each of the thousand people who had come to celebrate his life. Everybody blew them in unison as the band played “I Saw the Light.”

It was one of the most moving events I’ve ever been a part of. And when it was over, I felt a tremendous sense of peace and relief, knowing my father had finally made it to heaven and will never hurt again. I also sensed the grace of God in the way the story ended, knowing that, as hard as it was, the result could have been so much worse.

I had so much to be thankful for.

When I made the trip back to the lake house, though, and walked onto my makeshift writing porch and saw the writing schedule on the corkboard, I realized how far behind I was. And discouragement hit.

Like a freight train.

Even after I had taken a few days off, when I opened my MacBook, I couldn’t get any words flowing. I started making a plan to beg the publisher to push the release date a few months. Then I again began to entertain the option of scrapping the idea of the book altogether. A chorus of chatter was filling my mind with reasons to quit. But another voice inside me said, in a whisper,
Keep rolling
.

It may sound dumb to you, like the locomotive version of Dory’s advice to Marlin. But that’s what I needed to hear, and that’s what I needed to do.

That simple impression overpowered the chatterbox long enough for me to write new note cards, breaking all the writing I had left to do into smaller assignments.

At first I wrote some stuff that was unbearably bad, then some stuff that was a little better, and in the weeks that followed, I kept rewriting until this book was the best I had to offer.

And you’re holding it in your hands. No, it’s not Dickens. But it’s done. For this project I crashed the chatterbox. I kept rolling. I fulfilled God’s purpose to deliver this message in this season of my life. I did it through confusion, self-doubt, and even the death of my dad. By God’s grace I kept rolling.

Not that the discouragement I had to push through could be considered a dark night of the soul. But it was real to me, and it almost succeeded in preventing me from going forward. In my clash with discouragement, though, I learned something I’ll carry with me the rest of my life.

God’s grace doesn’t clear the tracks of discouragement and setbacks.

It gives me the power to override the reasons I should stop.

And keep rolling.

The day I started writing again, I took my boys out to ride a Jet Ski. I’d been grinding all day and needed a break to clear my head.

We were exploring the different coves on the lake and naming them. I was trying to have a good time, but my mind was back on the writing porch. I was still having a hard time believing I actually had what it took to get the job done—to overpower my own chatter—and write a book worth reading.

Eventually we came upon a cove that was tucked behind a train trestle.

“This one’s AWESOME!” Elijah shouted.

“Yeah, let’s name it L-Train Cove,” Graham replied.

Moments after he said this, we heard a rumbling sound, followed by a small black train passing by, fewer than fifty yards in front of us.

I got the message.

I hope you’re getting it too.

If you are a believer who hopes to accomplish the will of God for your life—and go to the next level spiritually—you have to defy the inertia of internal
discouragement to get there. Whether you’re a missionary in Calcutta, an apostle to the Gentiles, a barber in Moncks Corner, or that barber’s son trying to write a book about how to hear God’s voice above all others—you can’t let the chatter stop you.

You have to keep rolling. And God says you can.

Now let’s talk about how.

So you don’t intend to establish orphanages or write two-thirds of the New Testament. That doesn’t mean you don’t need a battle plan against discouragement. Chatter attacks everybody. It affects those who have public, visible roles in the kingdom of God, as we’ve seen. But it also affects those who have less prominent yet equally significant roles in the eyes of the Lord.

Every Christian has a calling. And the chatterbox is assigned to interrupt that calling. The ability to overcome discouragement is driven by our intentional decision to reassure ourselves:
God says I can
. This is especially crucial at the times when the chatter is most convincingly overwhelming us with reasons why we can’t.

Holly used to teach fifth grade, and I used to take her lunch sometimes. One day I walked into her classroom, and I felt like I was in a scene straight out of
Sister Act 2
. The kids were singing a gospel song I’d never heard, called “Yes, I Can.” It was quite inspirational to see them all singing such a positive message, until Holly explained to me that the principal had mandated they sing it in preparation for end-of-grade testing. After this discovery the “Yes, I can” chorus was less convincing.

Listen, I’m aware it may feel a little predictable at this point in the book for me to pump you up with a confession as simple as
God says I can
. But even if it seems forced at first, it’s vital that you train your heart to confess this with conviction.

Your destiny depends on it.

When the internal dialogue of discouragement starts in your heart, remember—the Enemy’s goal goes way beyond putting you in a bad mood temporarily. He’s trying to talk you out of trusting God’s plan for your life at a foundational level. And he’s not just trying to derail
you
. He aims to limit the impact God wants to make through you and beyond you.

Discouragement can gradually undermine your passion for raising your children, for example. It can leave you feeling and behaving more like a warden than a shepherd. And, yes, you’ll miss opportunities to enjoy your children, and you’ll regret this. But that’s only one dimension of what you’ll miss.

You’ll also miss the opportunity to partner with God in preparing them for their destiny. Who knows what great works your children are capable of for God’s glory? As a parent, you are God’s agent—appointed to help steward their calling.

But when you allow discouragement to bring you down, the gravitational pull seizes them too. The Enemy attacks
them
by telling
you
:

Nothing you say to them ever sticks anyway. It’s not working, so what’s the point?

They don’t appreciate you and probably never will. It’s not working, so what’s the point?

It doesn’t matter whether you take them to church. It’s not working, so what’s the point?

Other parents don’t try nearly as hard and don’t struggle nearly as much. It’s not working, so what’s the point?

I’m using one example—parenting—to illustrate a universal feature of discouragement. Discouragement shows up in multiple ways. It can set in because of what others say or what they don’t say, what they do or don’t do. It can hit as hard when we’re winning as when we’re losing—remember Elijah in the cave? Sometimes it comes like a flood; sometimes it drips incessantly.

But regardless of how or when it arrives, discouragement always displaces hope and leaves you feeling something like this:
It’s not working, so what’s the point?

Haven’t you felt this way at work? at school? on the elliptical? in church? while reading this book? in a conversation with someone you love?

Defeating discouragement is largely about understanding the stakes. It’s largely about understanding the implications of your obedience—beyond you.

But rejecting the chatter of discouragement and persisting instead in the purposes of God also requires choosing to believe what He has said, whether you can hear it right now or not.

Someone asked me recently, “What’s the greatest source of discouragement you’ve faced in ministry so far?”

My first answer was “people,” but I was only kidding. I was kind of kidding. Then I gave him a more serious answer: “The greatest source of discouragement for me is going through pain when I can’t see the purpose.” What I meant was, I don’t get very discouraged when I’m exhausted or hurting—as long as I can see that what I’m doing is
working
.

I don’t mind sacrifice as long as it produces a greater gain. I don’t grow weary in welldoing, as long as the work I’m doing produces tangible results. It’s not pouring myself out for a worthy purpose that depletes me. What’s draining is giving my all and seeming to get nothing in return.

I have a sermon I love to preach about John the Baptist. I call it “The Most Encouraging Message You’ve Never Heard.” I love to preach it because it’s uplifting and simple. These are my three points:

As I preach these points, I ask the people in the audience to participate by preaching them back to one another. And then I tell them to take these points home and regularly preach them to
themselves
. Because discouragement will arrive at the doorstep of your mind as certainly as a Cialis commercial will air during the Masters. Okay, a wings commercial during
Sunday Night Football—
is that more appropriate?

But the presence of extreme discouragement isn’t necessarily an indication that you’re not doing the will of God. In fact, the secret struggles of John the Baptist, just like those of Mother Teresa and the apostle Paul, prove the opposite.

Inner conflict is often a
confirmation
of your calling. The Enemy only fights those who pose a threat.

If you’re not sick of my preacher lines, permit me one more: If you haven’t had a head-on collision with the devil lately, it may be because you’re running in the same direction.

Say “amen,” somebody.

But discouragement need not be a dead end. Properly navigated, it can become a doorway to discovering the comfort and courage of Christ in untold measures.

In Matthew’s gospel we see John the Baptist’s discouragement surfacing in the form of a question:

Evidently, John’s confidence in Christ is progressing, full speed, in the wrong direction. Understandably so. While Jesus is busy dazzling crowds on His regional speaking/healing/deliverance/miracle tour, John is rotting on death row. As he serves an unjust prison sentence because of his stand for righteousness, John is missing out on fulfilling the mission he was a part of inaugurating.

After all, it was John who had announced,

So when John sends a few of his staff members to ask Jesus, as directly as possible, “Are you the one?” it’s surprising.

There’s nothing strange or unique about the question—
everyone
is wondering at some level about the true identity of the prophet from Galilee. He’s a profound teacher, to be sure, and that thing with the fish and loaves was a
heck of a deal
, but is He the
One
? the Messiah? the Savior of the world?