Alec Hill

Living in Bonus Time

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 05:00:00 +0000

Gordon Govier

Living in Bonus Time

With his immune system collapsing and his white blood cells turning to junk, ��ñ�� President Alec Hill stepped out of office in the spring of 2015. Returning to his native Seattle for treatment of myelodysplasia (MDS), a cancer of the bone marrow, his doctor told him MDS was worse than leukemia.

The news from his doctors kept getting worse until Alec found out his brother Grant was an identical match for a bone marrow transplant. “That was when the elevator started going back up,” he said.

But the elevator ride was still rough for months. It included massive doses of chemotherapy and full-body radiation. While the transplant took hold, 50 pills a day were needed to replace his immune system. Then, finally, more great news: the transplant was working. He had a new immune system and his brother’s DNA. But he still faced 12 months of isolation to protect himself from infection.

Now, two years later, as President Emeritus of ��ñ��, Alec mentors younger staff and considers each day “bonus time,” like the extra minutes that are added at the end of a soccer match. He takes seriously the admonition from Psalm 90:12, “Teach us to number our days.” Achievements have become less important, and relationships much more important as he tries to live each day fully, one day at a time.

Speaking to the staff at ��ñ��’s National Service Center in Madison, Wisconsin, for the first time in 25 months, Alec offered two other lessons that were impressed upon him through his brush with his own mortality.

The first is to embrace the Lord’s presence. Like Moses in Exodus 33:15, who said to God, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here,” Alec’s biggest concern was his relationship with God through the experience. He has learned anew that God draws closer as we reach out to him. “When we are at our worst, when life is at its hardest, his presence is the sweetest,” he said.

His month of greatest trial was also his month of greatest intimacy with God. He looks back on that time with joy and thankfulness for the life-giving presence of God’s Spirit. Through extended quiet times and long walks, he continues to make time for extended fellowship with God.

“What I’ve learned from this is that living in crisis is not the enemy of his presence, but being too busy is,” Alec said. “Ignoring the Sabbath is, doing drive-by devotions is, letting our tech devices crowd out silence is. I encourage all of us to make seeking his presence our highest priority. When you’re in a crisis, this foundation is a rock and not sand.”

The second lesson he has learned is the illusion of control. He admits that he used to think he had control over most of his own life and compared himself to the captain of a large ship on a small lake. But reality has a way of letting us know that God is in control, not us.

“We have to be humble and admit we don’t always understand how God exercises his sovereignty,” he said. He now sees himself more as the captain of a small boat tossing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. For him, observing the Sabbath is an admission of our limitations and dependence on God.

Small aggravations no longer bother him as they once did. He takes more risks, is less diplomatic, and extends grace more readily. Surviving a crisis is, surprisingly, very liberating.

He takes each day one at a time. At the beginning of each new day he asks, “What manna do you have for me today, Lord?” He rejoices in God’s faithfulness.

“While my medical experience is not your experience, our spiritual journeys are similar,” he concluded.

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The Obedience Imperative

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:31:14 +0000

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Alec Hill, President of ��ñ��

The Obedience Imperative

Of all the characteristics of a disciple, none is more basic than obedience. Jesus is emphatic on this point: “Follow me”¹; “my sheep know me and listen to my voice”²; “only he who does the will of my father will enter the kingdom of heaven”³; and “when you have done everything you were told to do, you should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”⁴

Throughout church history, mature disciples have submitted to our Lord in humble obedience.

Three Exemplars

In the early 1940s, Andre Trocme served as pastor of a backwater Huguenot (Protestant) village in southern France. His life, and those of his parishioners, changed radically when the Nazi-controlled Vichy government took control.

Over four long years, Trocme and 3,000 villagers risked their lives by hiding 5,000 Jews, mostly children, and leading them to safety in Switzerland. What could possibly motivate these poor farmers to daily expose their families to Nazi reprisals for the sake of total strangers?

In a compelling historical account, author Philip Hallie struggles to find an answer. A secular American Jew, Hallie is struck over and over again by the villagers’ simple responses – they were merely obeying Jesus. As his disciples, they saw no other option.⁵

A second exemplar is also grounded in World War II. As the war was about to expand in 1939, friends of thirty-three year old Dietrich Bonhoeffer hustled him out of Germany. For the next month, safely in America, Bonhoeffer anguished over his calling, his sense of discipleship.

Only two years earlier, Bonhoeffer had penned his now famous book, The Cost of Discipleship. In it, he wrote: “Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience . . . faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.”⁶

Despite learning that a leading German pastor had just been beaten to death, Bonhoeffer felt called to return home. A mere five weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland, he re-entered Germany. Over the six next years – before his martyrdom – the Lord used him to build up the German church and to undercut Nazi evil.⁷
A final example of obedient discipleship involves a young American, Adoniram Judson. In 1813, at the age of 25, Judson received a clear call to be a missionary to Burma (today known as Myanmar). Obediently, he assembled a team of students.

But hardships waited at every turn. The youngest member of the team – a mere 17 years old – died en route. Shortly after landing in Rangoon, Judson lost all of his donors over a denominational issue. Suspected of being a British spy, he was thrown into a “death prison” where he was hung upside down in leg irons every night for a year. Then his wife died.

During his four decades in Burma, Judson led twenty-five Burmese to the Lord. Perhaps only ten of these displayed a real living faith. Over this time period, he also buried two wives, six children and eleven co-workers. Yet, even during these difficult times, Judson obediently persisted. He did not walk away.

Obedience, Not Success

God cares not a fig for our success. What he craves is our obedience. When we follow Jesus, we squarely place ourselves on the pathway of the cross. As his followers, we echo his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Not my will, but yours be done.”⁸

Our call is to faithfulness, not outcomes. Cotton Mather prayed several hours every day for twenty years, but didn’t live to see the Great Awakening. William Wilberforce fought to end slavery in the British Empire for half a century, but lay on his death bed as Parliament enacted the legislation.⁹ Adoniram Judson didn’t live to see the six million Burmese who eventually came to faith as the result of his long obedience.

Just so, we in ��ñ�� will continue to be true to God’s call for our mission – to plant, build, and share the Gospel on campus. Whether successful or not, we will obey our Master. Whether welcomed or rejected, we will submit to the will of God. That is what disciples do.

My thoughts could easily conclude here, but I simply can’t resist sharing some marvelous quotes from several great saints. Be blessed!

Select Discipleship Quotes:

Charles Finney (19th century American evangelist): “What if God should send me to hell, what then? Why, I would not object to it… For hell could no longer be hell to me if I accepted God’s perfect will.”¹⁰

Mother Teresa: “I am God’s pencil. A tiny bit of pencil with which he writes what he likes.”¹¹

Bob Pierce (founder of World Vision): “I promise that I won’t say no (Lord). I give you a license to do your will with me, whether I like it or not – irrevocable for the rest of my life. . . . I give you authority forever.”¹²

Jim Elliot (missionary martyr, 1956): “Consume my life, for it is thine. I will not seek a long life but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.”¹³

Charles Spurgeon (19th century English preacher): “The peerage of Christ’s kingdom is ordered according to obedience.”¹⁴

Blaise Pascal (17th century French mathematician and philosopher): “Why is it so hard to believe? Because it is so hard to obey.”¹⁵

Jesuit constitution (16th century): “Behave as if you are a lifeless body which allows itself to be carried to any place and to be treated in any manner desired.”¹⁶

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Only he who believes is obedient; only he who is obedient believes.”¹

¹ Mathew 4:19
² John 10:14-16
³ Matthew 7:21
⁴ Luke 17:10
⁵ Hallie, Philip, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Good Happened There, Harper, New York.
⁶ Bonhoeffer, Deitrich, The Cost of Discipleship, McMillan, New York, 1963, pp.69 & 219.
⁷ Metaxas, Eric, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2010, p.345.
⁸ Luke 22:42
⁹ Colson, Charles, Loving God, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1983, p.36.
¹⁰Finney, Charles, The Autobiography of Charles Finney, Bethany Fellowship, Minneapolis, 1977, pp.197-8.
¹¹Aikman, David, Great Souls: Six Who Changed the Century, Word Publishing, Nashville, 1998, p.191.
¹²Graham, Franklin, Bob Pierce, This one Thing I Do, Word Publishing, Waco, 1983, pp.23-24.
¹³Sittser, Gerald, Water From a Deep Well, ��ñ�� Press, Downers Grove, 2007, pp.278-9.
¹⁴Stott, John, Christian Counter Culture: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, ��ñ�� Press, Downers Grove, 1978, p.74.
¹⁵Tucker, Ruth, Walking Away from Faith, ��ñ�� Press, Downers Grove, 2002, p.146.
¹⁶Lowney, Chris, Heroic Leadership, Loyola Press, Chicago, 2003, p.159.
¹⁷Colson, p.19.

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Alec Hill

The Importance of Dependence

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:42:14 +0000

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Alec Hill, President of ��ñ��

The Importance of Dependence

“God’s design for our life is that we should be dependent.”
– Professor John Wyatt, University College London

Last month, I began a series of reflections on discipleship by focusing on the theme of non-conformity. In this column, we will briefly explore the trait of dependence.

For most Americans, dependence is a very uncomfortable subject. Preferring to see ourselves as rugged individualists, we romanticize about characters such Ayn Rand’s main character, Howard Roark, in her novel Fountainhead. Reliant upon no one, he follows only his own inner sense of direction.

As disciples of Jesus, we pursue a very different path — not to autonomy but to obedience; not to ascension, but to surrender; not to seizing control but to yielding it. Indeed, the concepts of lordship and dependence are at the very core of Christian discipleship.

As the ��ñ�� community continues to experience an extended season of blessing, we must be ever vigilant to guard against seeing our cleverness, hard work, and piety as the primary reasons. Such thinking — even if unspoken — is not only wrongheaded but highly dangerous.

The Wilderness Paradigm
The difficulty of living in a dependency mode is illustrated by Jewish refugees fleeing from Egypt over three millennia ago. In one of the greatest chapters in Scripture, Deuteronomy 8 captures the tension well.

For four decades, the Lord had led the community through many hardships, provided manna, and even maintained their clothing. His greatest concern as they stood on the brink of entering the Promised Land? That they would take credit for the produce of the land and praise themselves for their beautiful homes, saying “My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.”

In other words, the Lord’s fear was that His people would see themselves as self-made and self-reliant. The presenting issue remains the same for us today. Who calls the shots in our lives? Who gets the credit when things go well?

The Illusion of Independence
How easily we are seduced by the myth of control. Seeing ourselves as the masters of our own fate — captains of our destinies — we are co-opted to believe that we control circumstances and the future.

The reality, of course, is quite different. How much control do we really exercise over our genetic composition? Over macro economics? Over cancer? Over a drunken driver in the next lane?

In the classic TV program, The Twilight Zone, a curmudgeon librarian is portrayed as loving books more than people. When an atomic blast occurs while he is in a protected vault, he is actually thrilled to find that his books have survived but the people are gone.

All goes well until he trips and breaks his glasses, rendering reading impossible. With no one to repair his spectacles, the chilling reality of his dependence becomes abundantly clear.

Dependence vs. Risk
Let me confess: losing control is perhaps the most difficult aspect of following Jesus for me. As a “Type A” personality, I enjoy plotting out adventures and relying on my own wits. Some of my best college memories involve hitchhiking across country.

We must be careful never to confuse dependency with risk-aversion. The paradox of discipleship is that the more we rely on Him, the more risk we experience. The more control we yield, the bumpier the ride.

As we live out our daily lives, our dependence upon Him should become more and more evident. It becomes clearer just how dependent we are upon His goodness and grace. As a result, we respond to His initiative, live in obedience to His word, and minister out of love for Him.

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Alec Hill