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#93 Rules of Engagement(07/09/03) Dr. Robert H. Schuller My message title this
morning was inspired by the coming of the prisoners of war to
church this morning. The title of my message is "Rules
of Engagement." Everybody who's ever been in the service
understands what those words mean. Many of you who've never been
exposed to the discipline of the establishment of the military
institutions probably don't understand it. It's very important.
There are rules of engagement and I'm not going to give you their
rules of engagement because rules of engagement vary even from
one battle to the next, from one war to another war for very good
reasons that we don't have the time to explain. But we have come and
been thinking for a long time in this ministry about peace and
the fact is that living always will require that we must pass
through danger zones. Maybe it will be at the end, maybe it'll
be at the mid-point of life, but living requires that we take
risks, that we fulfill our commitment to living and go through
danger zones. And we need rules of engagement every time we go
through conflict. It would help a great deal if families got together
and established their rules of engagement - how they treat each
other, respect each other, how they talk to each other, parents
and children. It's amazing to me how easily it is for a close
knit group, call them parents and child, to get in a conflict
because they have no rules of engagement. That could include the
use of words. Some words we cannot use. Some phrases we cannot
use, etc. But in every controversial
contradicting institution or situation we need to have rules of
engagement. We had them in our family and I'm not going to get
into that, I don't have time for it. But you need it in your living,
you need it in your relationships, you need it in challenges.
How far will you go? What will you allow to happen in this whole
negotiation? In your career pursuits, you need rules of engagement.
In goal management you need rules of engagement. I have had personal,
private rules of engagement in my lifetime and they have worked
well. And I'm not going to go over all of them this morning but
let me just give you 5 very simple that I've tried to live with
in all of my life, in my marriage, in my family role, in developing
goals and dreams and plans for building this church. I'll see
if I have time to elaborate on them but I'll give them to you
very briefly, swiftly, right here and now. #1
rule of engagement: keep focused on your mission. Vision rises out of
your values and that produces your mission statement. And if you
take your eye off your mission before you know it you will be
violating your values or you will be clouding up your vision,
what you're in this whole thing for. And when you keep an eye
on mission, keep the eye of the tiger, eye of the tiger. I must
tell you, that's what's happened in my life and in our ministry
and in this church. We have the tiger eye and the tiger eye keeps
its eye on that goal and as the goal may seem to shift you don't
shift and you hear something behind you but you don't turn around
and look. I said to Mother Teresa
once, "Mother, when God is so beautiful and Christ is so
beautiful why doesn't everybody rush to God and live with Christ
in their life? Why do they put Christ out and let all of the trash
of a secular culture be consumed in their personality? Why don't
they all become loving followers of Jesus?" I'll never forget
her answer, one word: distraction.
Yes, we're distracted by music, by television, by anything.
#1 - keep your eye on your mission. Rule
of engagement #2 - follow the book. There is a book. It's
there for the military. Rules are set down. It's true in most
corporations. It's true in most institutions. Maybe it's in the
by-laws. Maybe there's a special book governing corporate employees.
Keep your eye on the mission then follow the book. And in our life as
Christians living, everybody listening to me, I don't care who
you are what you believe or what you don't believe but I must
say to you everybody listening has to have a book. To go out without
a map into territory where you've never been before is just stupid.
To walk a path called living where you have to make decisions,
confront conflicting temptations, not to have a book is just wild.
We have as Christians a book. It's nothing new. I wouldn't buy
into something that's new, that rejects and ignores the wisdom
of the centuries. Don't try to give me a book that doesn't include
Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Paul, the lives of people who've
encountered God and testify there is a God and this is what He
expects of us and this is what He will do for us if we live the
path. We've got a book; it's called the Bible. Keep your eye on
the mission; #2 follow the book.
Don't try to write your own. That would be just simple, ultimate
immaturity. My Uncle Henry put
his hand on my head when I was 4 years and said you're going to
be a preacher when you grow up. My Uncle Henry and this man, Dr.
Henry Poppen, were classmates in Princeton. They married sisters.
They went on the same boat to China as missionaries in the early
1920's. My Uncle Henry had to come home early because of the loss
of a child who would be my first cousin. And his wife's health
was bad but Henry Poppen stayed there and was widely reported
about. He became known in China. In fact, when the great march
began under Mao Tse-tung, Mao Tse-tung made it a decision to stop
at the home of Henry Poppen. Had tea more than once with Mao Tse-tung. Mao Tse-tung knew him,
was a powerful man, and when Mao Tse-tung completed the great
march and started getting rid of those who would give him trouble
Henry Poppen was one of the first that he had arrested. And he
had him put in solitary confinement, probably as small as what
you POWs were in. There was no window, there was no nature light,
there was just a little slot about 2" wide and 8" long
in a solid door. And the only thing he saw for months and months
was the eyeball of someone looking at him and then some food slipped
through. He would sleep on the stone floor. They had a plan that
this solitary confinement without any natural light would totally
weaken any resistance he would have and he would renounce the
faith and praise Mao Tse-tung. It was told that he would be simple.
He could just tell the people how he had tea with Mao Tse-tung,
he knew Mao Tse-tung, and they had wonderful conversations together,
let him lead you. That's all he had to do and he could be free.
Pretty simple. But days became months
and months became horror and he held on to one Bible verse he
would tell me, it is And
then "I will lift up my eyes unto the hills. Where does my
help come from? It comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth." And again when he was
so depressed words cannot describe it. Those words would come
out of his mouth. "I will lift up my eyes to the hills."
And finally it gave him the strength to keep his eye on his mission
to follow the book and to obey his Lord. And then suddenly one
night it became so bad even the Bible verses didn't help, prayer
didn't work, and he called out to God and he said, "God,
I can stand no more. Take me home tonight, please." And he
fell prostrate on the cold stone floor and wept and then there
was a knock on his door and suddenly the door opened and there
stood someone, who he didn't know, but the man said, "Follow
me quickly." He followed the man, and the man said, "We're
going to the water. There's a boat waiting for you. You will get
on the boat. Do not look back. Do not wait. The boat will immediately
leave. It will never stop until it reaches Hong Kong, when it
does you will be told to jump off immediately and don't look back,
just run, run, run anywhere but disappear in Hong Kong."
And that's exactly the way it happened. Wow! Keep
your eye on your mission, follow the book, and then define your
own role and responsibilities. Remember one of the
rules of engagement - you don't have total authority, nobody does.
You can't just say what you want to say, do what you want to do,
and proceed the way you think you should proceed. Rules of engagement
limit your authority and responsibility. Now that could be very
frustrating to eagles but it's a rule of engagement. Break it
and you're in trouble. But it's a blessing, too. You know, I remember
the earlier years when I was, first weeks when I was preaching
in a drive-in theater, that was our first church. And I was standing
on the roof top of the snack bar and if you want to know what
kind of a roof top that was they cut the piece out where I stood
for 6 years and preached and it's on exhibit in our new building. I used to worry on
Saturday night, what if it rains tomorrow morning. I'll be embarrassed;
the people will be embarrassed because they know I'm embarrassed.
And one night when the predictions were heavy for rain I prayed,
"O God, please don't let it be rain. I'd be so embarrassed."
And the message I got loud and clear was "Schuller, the weather
is not your department. You work on your sermon. You haven't put
enough time and work in it. That is your responsibility. Leave
the weather to Me." I can't tell you how that's helped me
through the past 48 years. Many of you worry and take on as your
responsibility something that is not your responsibility and you
should not interfere. Rules of engagement. 4th
rule - live by the rules.
Don't try to revise them. You do not have the authority to choose
which ones you're going to live with and which ones you won't.
The rule of engagement for lessons in living is very simple: none
of us have that much freedom, not even in America. If you're a
follower of Jesus Christ your freedom is limited by Him. If you're
a member of an institution or a corporation you don't have total
freedom. You have to understand this. If you don't like it you
have the freedom to start your own corporation, yes. Or you have
the freedom to drop out of this college and go to another university.
But rules, you have to live by them. #5
command doesn't
stop with you. There is a Supreme Commander.
Maybe he's an Admiral, maybe he's a 4 star General, maybe it will
be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the military,
or maybe it may be the President of the Untied States of America.
But remember you are not the commander, you are not. You have
a role, it's very important and when you're frustrated lean back
and have a prayer that where the buck stops he will make the right
decision. And take comfort from it. Believe that ultimately he
will do what he can to rescue you. Rescue, very important word.
Spent the past 2 days
with my daughter Carol in Colorado and she said, "Only
if people have ever been rescued can they understand what it feels
like to be rescued." She was rescued after she'd lost
17 pints of blood and had no tourniquet on the leg that would
soon be cut off completely. She's never forgotten that God came
to her in that ditch was rescued. There
is a supreme commander; you are not the supreme commander.
When it's all out of your control it's not out of somebody's control
and that in our faith is God. You step on an airplane. You don't
see the pilot, you didn't see him come on, the door was never
opened. Let's roll the clock ahead a few years and be imaginative
and fantasize. They now have, it's the year 2008, and because
one of the critical parts of an air flight is taking off they
have computerized it to the point where no human being controls
the take off, it's all automatic. So the plane takes off, it's
smooth, it reaches its elevation and at that point the live pilot
and navigator do take over. When suddenly over the loud speaker
the announcement comes, "Ladies and gentlemen, as you all
know the take off was automatic, we now have an announcement we
have to make. We have just discovered the pilot did not come on
board." Suddenly if atheism was right that's the kind of
an announcement that would be made. We can't live that way. There is a pilot on
board even though you didn't see him and you didn't hear his voice,
there is a pilot on every plane you and I will board, believe
that and he'll rescue you. One of the bleakest, darkest moments
of my life in this ministry is something I will not talk about
but I wrote about it in my autobiography, "The Journey."
I don't remember how much I told but I know it reached a point
where all of my dreams were being obstructed by power people and
nothing would happen and I would be leaving the church. None of
this would have happened. And I was so depressed, very depressed,
I cried out in my little office, "God, what do I do? What
do I do? I don't know what to do." And in my mind I heard
loud and clear a Bible verse that I had memorized as a child,
but I heard it like I never heard it before. "I will build
My church, Jesus said." But this is the way I heard it in
that bleak, dark, despairing, depressing moment, I heard this,
"I will build My church."
Wow! This isn't my church, it's His. He'll build it and I think
He's done a good job, don't you? There
is an Ultimate Commander, rules of engagement, and one rule is
you don't have the freedom to quit without His approval. Rules
of engagement in living.
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