Tag: spiritual growth

May
30
2012

This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

You can read all the man­u­als on prayer and lis­ten to other peo­ple pray, but until you begin to pray your­self you will never under­stand prayer. It’s like rid­ing a bicy­cle or swim­ming: You learn by doing. Luis Palau

This is what we are after, isn’t it? We want change for our lives. How­ever, we want the real thing as well. Be entirely hon­est with your­self, are you the same per­son you were a year ago? Five years ago? Forty years ago? This might pos­si­bly be the great­est dan­ger in being a Christian—not truly mak­ing strides in our lives.

Along these lines, I once heard a pas­tor say this, Trust this Jesus—this all you need to do. Maybe he mis­spoke, but that was com­pletely an untrue state­ment. This is what so many peo­ple are told when they come to faith and it only gives them per­mis­sion to con­tinue to be the bro­ken indi­vid­u­als they are, not grow­ing and not chang­ing into the incred­i­ble peo­ple they were meant to be. Being in rela­tion­ship with Jesus goes way beyond just trust­ing. So really dwell on this question—are you any dif­fer­ent than you used to be?

  • Is anger always at your side and comes out when­ever it wants?
  • What about the inabil­ity to over­come the con­tin­ual depres­sion and joylessness?
  • Or the art you’ve acquired to being com­mit­ted to absolutely noth­ing or anyone?
  • Or the per­pet­ual lying and half-truths?
  • Or the end­less rela­tion­ships you’ve had that go about an inch deep?
  • Or wast­ing your life away with pro­cras­ti­na­tion or laziness?
  • Or the past that always stands between you and where you want to go?
  • Or how you allow shop­ping or sex (or any­thing else other than God) make you feel secure and happy?

We could go on and on with these kinds of exam­ples. This would be a great time to take a moral inven­tory and really look at your life. Again, being a Chris­t­ian on one level is about con­stant change. Are you a sin­ner? Of course you are. Just like me. And this is exactly why God is always at us to become more, more in terms of who He desires us to be—more whole today, sin­ning less tomor­row, and becom­ing just a lit­tle bit more like Jesus. Let’s make no bones about it, this is no sim­ple or easy task, but this is what we must be after—we need to every­day become dif­fer­ent peo­ple than who we were from the pre­vi­ous day.

This is why change hap­pens in large part because we do some­thing to bring about that change. This reminds me of a story. The very first client I ever had came into my office, sat in the chair and demanded in no uncer­tain terms that she didn’t think she was going to get very much out of this “coun­sel­ing thing.” I think I might have sur­prised her, because I agreed with her. I said to her that she was prob­a­bly right—in a cer­tain way. I explained to her that this time that we shared together was most likely going to only make a small impact on her life. What she did out­side of the time that we met—this was what was going to make all the dif­fer­ence. It’s exactly the same here. Sim­ply learn­ing about the dif­fer­ent stages of the Chris­t­ian walk will do absolutely noth­ing for you. Knowl­edge is just knowl­edge unless it’s applied to one’s life. Too often books or things we read just become infor­ma­tion to us and not much else. God wants us to have more than the facts. Again, every­thing will depend on what you do with the infor­ma­tion that you obtain.

Let me make one final word at this point. Through­out this writ­ing I am going to be label­ing these three dis­tinct rela­tion­ships that we can have with God; they are unique words which have dis­tinct mean­ings: believer, ser­vant and friend. Unique to this is that most often when read­ing a Chris­t­ian book or blog, the use of the words believer and ser­vant are usu­ally pos­i­tive ones. I fully agree that these can be good terms to char­ac­ter­ize a per­son who is a Chris­t­ian. How­ever, for the pur­pose of this blog, they most often will be used as neg­a­tive terms. In the end, God wants us to be his friend, not just a believer and not just a ser­vant.  As Jesus clearly shows he wants more from us and as he directly says I no longer call you ser­vants, instead I have called you friend. (John 15:15) Let me end this sec­tion by briefly offer­ing def­i­n­i­tions to these dis­tinc­tions that hope­fully will fill in your under­stand­ing of what we will be talk­ing about through­out the blog. In the fol­low­ing posts, we will fully explore what each of these are all about:

  • Believer: A per­son who just believes in God, but does not actively fol­low him. “Believ­ing” in this case is sim­ply giv­ing men­tal assent to a reli­gion or creed—this is the per­son who has very lit­tle con­vic­tion about what it means to be a fol­lower of Jesus Christ. Often­times, these are peo­ple who have grown up in a church (Catholic or Protes­tant), but have never fully given their lives over to God and applied the scrip­tures to their lives. A term you may have heard that would apply here is “nom­i­nal Chris­t­ian.” A nom­i­nal Chris­t­ian is one who says that they are a Chris­t­ian, but rarely goes to church or is some­one who selects “Chris­tian­ity” as their reli­gion, but would also say they are “non-practicing.” Exam­ples of char­ac­ters in the Bible who would be char­ac­ter­ized as believ­ers would be: Esau, Saul, Solomon (toward the end of his life), Ahab, and Judas.
  • Ser­vant: A per­son who has gone beyond just believ­ing in Jesus, but bases much of their rela­tion­ship with God on rules and reg­u­la­tions. This per­son may know a tremen­dous amount of “stuff” about God, but prac­ti­cally speak­ing, does not know Him per­son­ally and has not gen­uinely expe­ri­enced three impor­tant aspects; these would be grace, gen­uine self-forgiveness and per­sonal heal­ing for trou­ble spots in their lives (e.g., anger, sex­ual addic­tions, depres­sion, etc.). These peo­ple are eas­ily bound by legal­ism, because they have not expe­ri­enced this grace and free­dom. Peo­ple caught in this phase of faith often use reli­gion to their ben­e­fit, are very adept at hid­ing prob­lems in their lives, and yes, some­times are even lead­ers in the church. The two clear­est exam­ples of this type of per­son would be the reli­gious lead­ers, the Phar­isees that Jesus would often chal­lenge and con­front and as we will explore in detail in the blog, the char­ac­ter of Peter that we read about in the gospels (before Jesus’ resurrection).
  • Friend: A per­son who has under­gone a trans­for­ma­tion and is begin­ning to know heal­ing, matu­rity and the free­dom of fol­low­ing Christ. This per­son can gen­uinely say, I know grace. This per­son is begin­ning to hear the voice of the One they fol­low (John 10:27) and gra­ciously encour­ages oth­ers to do like­wise. This per­son looks care­fully in the mir­ror at their lives and seeks out heal­ing for the wounds that have occurred to them and the bro­ken­ness that they have brought into their lives. Those who have become friends of Jesus are not bound by rules and reg­u­la­tions, but through the Spirit live lives which are char­ac­ter­ized by the fruit of the Spirit (Gala­tians 5:22–23). Those that we find in the Bible that we would char­ac­ter­ize as being friends with God would include: Abra­ham, Joseph, Moses, David, Eli­jah, Ruth, Peter (after Jesus’ res­ur­rec­tion), Barn­abas, and Priscilla.

In the next post, we will begin to explore what it looks like to be “just a believer” in God.

In: Friend to Jesus
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Feb
29
2012

This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

Every­thing you want in life is right out­side your com­fort zone. Robert Allen

I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to expe­ri­ence pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of non-feeling, or stop ques­tion­ing and crit­i­ciz­ing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new under­stand­ing, and new love. Sylvia Plath

God draws, but He draws the will­ing one. John Chrysostom

As I thought about this woman that I men­tioned in the pre­vi­ous post, it dawned on me just how imper­a­tive it is to con­tin­u­ally pur­sue God. As an exam­ple of this, I know of some­one who recently has walked away from their faith. This was a per­son who some years back was serv­ing and liv­ing a life that was exem­plary when it came to being a Chris­t­ian. How­ever, over the last cou­ple of years, I began to see that this life began to wane and he did not take his rela­tion­ship with God very seri­ously over these last years. Slowly over time, it began to show, and not only with the obvi­ous out­ward signs. Sadly, since that time, he has made many poor deci­sions, which has not only impacted him neg­a­tively, but his fam­ily as well. It’s been a lit­tle bit like watch­ing a train wreck.

Of late, I have been think­ing about how unhealthy it can be to not have Jesus at the cen­ter of your life on a daily basis. Yet this hap­pens all the time. In gen­eral, the church today places such empha­sis on evan­ge­lism, “get­ting peo­ple saved and into heaven,” but focuses too lit­tle on discipleship—learning how to live a life with Jesus. The Barna Group has some stag­ger­ing sta­tis­tics, con­firm­ing the fact that the church is good at “mak­ing con­verts, but not disciples:”

  • In a recent study, when Chris­t­ian adults were asked to iden­tify their most impor­tant goal for their life, not a sin­gle per­son said it was to be a com­mit­ted fol­lower of Jesus Christ.
  • Less than one out of every five born again adults had any spe­cific and mea­sur­able goals related to their per­sonal spir­i­tual development.
  • Less than 1% of all Chris­tians per­ceived a con­nec­tion between their efforts to wor­ship God and their devel­op­ment as a dis­ci­ple of Jesus.
  • The most widely-known Bible verse among adult and teen Chris­tians is “God helps those who help themselves”—which is not actu­ally in the Bible, and con­flicts with the basic mes­sage of Scripture.

Liv­ing with Jesus every day—this is really where life begins, not when you say the sinner’s prayer. Life is always con­tin­u­ing and we need to move with it. How­ever, too often in Chris­t­ian cir­cles, being reflec­tive and delib­er­ate about our rela­tion­ship with God is put to the side. For what­ever rea­son, peo­ple tend to stag­nate rather than thrive after mak­ing a com­mit­ment of faith. Ques­tions don’t get asked. Masks begin to be worn. We play the part, but in real­ity, we don’t know how to gen­uinely be in friend­ship with God. Liv­ing the Chris­t­ian life and going through the motions is easy, being in rela­tion­ship with Jesus is a whole dif­fer­ent mat­ter. This is what he was talk­ing about when he told the para­ble about build­ing your life on the sand—that it was unsafe to build on some­thing that is temporary.

After becom­ing a Chris­t­ian, I learned an impor­tant lesson—if you have any amount of bib­li­cal knowl­edge, watch out. You even­tu­ally will become the expert, the guru. Peo­ple will per­ceive that you have it all together, look up to you, and believe that you and God must be best buds. But all of this can be dan­ger­ous, because it can per­pet­u­ate a seri­ous problem—you will begin to learn how to live an inau­then­tic life; you will learn how to fake it. In the end, you will paint your­self  into a cor­ner to which there is no escape. Because you have played the role of the well-behaved church­goer, you won’t know how to play any other part. Sadly, I know this from first-hand expe­ri­ence from years past.

But reli­gious knowl­edge is never the stan­dard for hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with God and too often in the church, this is what we empha­size. It’s easy to know a lot about some­one; it’s a whole new thing to know some­one. This makes sense—it’s much more easy and com­fort­able to just know about some­one, sim­ply know­ing the facts (e.g., “she works at a hos­pi­tal, likes to eat sal­ads at lunch, has three kids, and dri­ves a white Toy­ota Sienna.”). There’s dis­tance and safety and very lit­tle mess. But know­ing just the facts about some­one does not mean you know them. Lots of us know a lot of stuff about a whole bunch of peo­ple, but it goes about as far as that. Our knowl­edge is a mile wide, but an inch deep. For some, it can be rare that they have gen­uinely deep and strong friendships. They keep peo­ple at bay, at a safe dis­tance and they don’t go too deep. We can also do the same with God.

But we need to move beyond just know­ing about God—we need to push to know him per­son­ally. John Wes­ley once wrote, “Once in seven years I burn all my ser­mons; for it is a shame, if I can­not write bet­ter ser­mons now than I did seven years ago.” In that state­ment, Wes­ley was say­ing that it was not a good thing if he hadn’t grown beyond where he once stood in terms of know­ing God. We need to keep mov­ing on as well, being rest­less and ask­ing for more. This should be our end goal. I think C.S. Lewis said it in the most direct way possible:

Every time you make a choice, you are turn­ing the cen­tral part of you, the part of you that chooses, into some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from what it was before. And, tak­ing your life as a whole, with all your innu­mer­able choices, all your life long you are slowly turn­ing this cen­tral thing either into a Heaven crea­ture or into a hell­ish creature—either into a crea­ture that is in har­mony with God, and with other crea­tures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fel­low crea­tures and with itself.

Those are strong and dif­fi­cult words, but they are true. Yogi Berra said it in a sim­i­lar way, but in a way only he could: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up some­where else.” As Chris­tians, we need to con­tin­u­ally change and grow and move beyond just know­ing about God and gen­uinely encounter him. At the end of the day, we need to know where we are headed.

In: Friend to Jesus
Tags: , , , , , ,
Feb
29
2012

This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

The out­ward work will never be puny if the inward work is great. And the out­ward work can never be great or even good if the inward one is puny or of lit­tle worth. The inward work invari­ably includes in itself all expan­sive­ness, all breadth, all length, all depth. Such a work receives and draws all its being from nowhere else except from and in the heart of God. Meis­ter Eckhart

Some peo­ple feel the rain. Oth­ers just get wet. Bob Dylan   

The other night I was watch­ing a show on tele­vi­sion and a woman being inter­viewed said that she had grown up in a “good Chris­t­ian” home. I’ve heard that phrase a lot lately. We all want to be good Chris­tians, don’t we? But the ques­tion is—what is a “good Chris­t­ian?” Is a good Chris­t­ian one who says they believe in God? Is a good Chris­t­ian one who does all the right things: doesn’t go see rated R movies, or cuss, spit or have tat­toos? Is a good Chris­t­ian one who goes to church every Sun­day and every Wednes­day? Is a good Chris­t­ian one who reads the Bible every morn­ing with­out miss­ing a sin­gle day for years and years? Is a good Chris­t­ian one who serves down at the home­less shel­ter every other week­end? Is a good Chris­t­ian one who prays before each meal, head bowed and eyes closed? Is a good Chris­t­ian one who has mem­o­rized a whole slew of Bible verses and can recite them on com­mand? Is a good Chris­t­ian some­one who tithes 15% of their gross income? Is a good Chris­t­ian one who com­mits his life to being a pas­tor, a dea­con or a mis­sion­ary to some for­got­ten world? What exactly is a good Chris­t­ian? I think a good Chris­t­ian is one who loves God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength and then also loves their neigh­bor as them­selves. But one can only do that by being in an ever-growing rela­tion­ship with Jesus. These are his words—not mine.

So with this, some years ago I was asked one of the most dif­fi­cult ques­tions I have ever encoun­tered as a psy­chol­o­gist. The ques­tion caught me off guard. A young wife stared at me seri­ously and almost in a whis­per, reluc­tantly asked a sim­ple, but pro­found ques­tion. Her words were uncom­pli­cated as she asked, “How do I have a rela­tion­ship with God?” You have to under­stand that this was a twenty-six year old woman who had grown up in the church, had attended church for many years, and I know for a fact, heard some very good ser­mons on this very ques­tion while attend­ing there. Yet this ques­tion kept at her, so much so that in the silence that some­times dis­turbs a coun­sel­ing ses­sion, her ques­tion emerged, and it prob­a­bly lin­gered in her for years unspo­ken. How­ever, her prob­lem was not so straight­for­ward. She was really ask­ing a more com­plex ques­tion—how do I know God? I thought—now, that is a ques­tion! It made me won­der, how many oth­ers also wish to ask that very question?

Beyond this, she was look­ing for some­thing that she had never experienced—she did her devo­tions; she attended church reg­u­larly; she stood up and sang the songs dur­ing the wor­ship dur­ing the ser­vice. This young woman was look­ing for friend­ship. As Bernard of Clair­vaux said nearly a thou­sand years ago about his rela­tion­ship with God, “I have a friend. I have freed my soul.” Think about that—what does that mean to have your soul freed? That’s what this client of mine wanted; she wanted to be freed. Yet she knew deep in her heart the rela­tion­ship with God she had was not doing this—there was lit­tle, if any, free­dom in her soul. She knew deep down that there was some­thing more dynamic, more all-encompassing and she wanted it.

Very slowly, I began to explain to her this process and the jour­ney I will detail in this blog. To be hon­est, I had to think about that ques­tion more deeply than I ever had. I wanted to give her the right answer and not just a line. This is a moti­va­tion of why I write—one Thurs­day evening a young wife asked a ques­tion that called out to be answered—how can some­one have a free­ing rela­tion­ship with their Cre­ator? Bren­nan Man­ning paints the answer to this ques­tion in bright col­ors: “Reli­gion is not a mat­ter of learn­ing how to think about God, but actu­ally encoun­ter­ing him.” This woman, like so many oth­ers, no longer wanted to just think about God or play games with him, she desired to encounter him. Was that even possible?

 

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