God’s Spiritual Roadmap

God has two primary goals for us, and both of them start with the gospel. According to the apostle Paul, the gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16). In practice, the power of God in the gospel accomplishes two things:

1) The gospel is the message of salvation from sin through Christ’s atoning death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and his enthronement as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. God wants me to believe in the gospel, to give my life to Jesus, and thus allow him to forgive me and cleanse me from the guilt of sin.

2) The acceptance of the gospel ushers me into an intimate and loving surrendered relationship with the Father through the Son within which he can begin to transform my heart and mind. In this process he cleanses me, heals me, strengthens me, and slowly begins to unravel and redeem the broken and twisted parts of my life, thus freeing me from the power of sin.

In most of modern Christendom, we have tended to focus overwhelmingly on the first, and paid very little attention to the second. It’s true that you cannot really have the second part without the first, but forgiveness, wonderful gift though it is, is far from all God wants for us. He never intended for us to get stuck at the first part. In fact one might even say that forgiveness is but a necessary first step toward what God really wants for us.

For the last five years or so, my ministry has primarily involved helping Christians (and non-Christians) move into this second part of the experience of God. It is a ministry of relational spiritual nurture, and it happens slowly — more like a crockpot and less like a a microwave. It doesn’t happen in a six-week (or even twelve-week) program. It happens best in the context of an ongoing relationship. Remember, Jesus spent three years with his disciples and even then they needed the Holy Spirit to finish them off.

The journey God ultimately wants to lead us all on is to a deeper experience of his love, and consequently, to a greater trust. This is discipleship, or what Jesus calls “abiding in him” (John 15:4-6).

Abiding deeply in Jesus changes us in the following ways:

1) We find an ever-deepening comprehension of God’s love (Eph. 3:16-19), enabling us to rest in that love. Paul calls this “the fulness of God.” Simply, we are learning to live loved. Living loved frees us from fear (1 John 4:18).

2) We develop a richer understanding and appropriation of grace, and the consequent freedom from a desperate need to perform or produce in order to be acceptable to God.

3) We increasingly enjoy a life characterized by a “peace that passes understanding” (Phil. 4:7).

4) We increasingly surrender more of ourselves to God (because we will not obey one whom we do not trust, and we will not trust one whom we do not believe loves us), and thus more often choose obedience.

5) We find growing freedom from the need/desire to manipulate or control circumstances and people to make things turn out a certain way (Matt. 11:28-30).

6) And overall, we experience a growing holiness (sanctification), a greater sense of being led by the Spirit, and the increasing manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23).

Because you cannot give what you do not have, these six ongoing internal changes God makes in us equip us for gospel blessing (what we typically think of as “outreach” or “evangelism”) in the following ways:

1) God develops in us a greater capacity to love others.

2) God develops in us a greater ability to live love without agenda (a greater capacity to nurture others in their own search for God without trying to control them or to trying to produce certain outcomes).

A Christian simply cannot engage in outreach effectively without the transformation that only comes through a discipleship of abiding in Jesus. Said another way, outreach flows naturally and organically from a life of abiding in Jesus. Fully formed disciples truly become leaven in the world around them.

Over the last ten years, these truths have become some of my deepest convictions about God’s work in the world. The place to begin all ministry must be helping people come to a deeper experience of God’s love and a growing intimacy with him. In the end, it is only the power of God that can change us. As Jesus reminds us, “apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Shalom

The Road Back to Church – The Relentless Power of Grace

When I eventually left the Hermitage Church of Christ to move to Texas to go to preaching school, the congregation threw me a party. Along with his family, Sperry Hogue, the minister at the church, put together a video in which they went around and talked to almost everyone at the church and gave them the opportunity to say nice things about me. Some of the comments were hilariously funny, many were deeply touching. A lady name Dori, who I’d come to love, actually wrote a song about me, and played the guitar while she and a few others sang the song on video.

I’d spent A LOT of time at Sperry’s house over the three years I was there. Being in their peaceful, loving home was like a taste of heaven to me. Many of those evenings I stayed far later than I should have, and only later did I realize how intrusive I probably was. But they were so gracious and never asked me to leave. So in the video they made, interspersed throughout the interviews with others in the congregation, were clips of Sperry and his family standing inside the front door of their house saying goodbye to me. They’d be saying things like, “Well Ron, thanks for stopping by. Always glad to see you.” As the clips progressed throughout the video, one person after another would appear in pajamas and they’d all act more and more tired. By the last clip, they were all slumped down on the floor, barely awake as they were saying, “Thanks for stopping by, Ron.” The whole thing was hilarious, and I’ve rarely felt as loved and appreciated.

That video is still one of my most treasured possessions, and still watch it every few years. In fact, I’m tearing up even now as I think about it.

The church in Hermitage wasn’t perfect, to be sure, but it was an almost perfect incubator for my fledgling faith. And as I’ve reflected on my time as a part of that church, as a brand new, dripping wet, baby Christian, I’ve come to realize how many of my values about what church and the Christian life should be were formed there. I want to share a few of those values here in the next few posts, and the stories that cemented those values into my soul.

Shortly after my baptism, I began to struggle. You see, when I gave my life to Jesus, I gave my LIFE to Jesus. I trusted him to save me from my past sins, and as a consummate sinner, I knew what that meant. So when I gave my life to Jesus, I also made him a vow that I would sin no more. And I worked HARD at keeping that vow.

I failed.

And oh how I beat myself up for each sin. Keenly aware of all that Jesus had done for me, and genuinely believing that he had made me pure, I was ashamed that I could not do more to remain pure. After a couple of months of trying, and failing, and trying harder, and failing yet again, I was dispirited. I became convinced that God had turned his back on me. And why wouldn’t he? After doing so much for me only to watch me, unable to remain pure for even a week.

So I talked to Sperry about it. And then Sperry talked to me about grace.

That evening, we drank deeply from 1 John 1:5-2:2. Those verses saved my fragile faith.

Grace is pretty good stuff, as it turns out. Here’s the gist of those verses:

God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. We’re often more darkness than light, so we walk in his light, which cascades down on us and wraps in a warm embrace. And as we walk in his light, where he is, we can enjoy an actual relationship with him. And as we live in the warmth of the Father’s affection, the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

The key concept there is this idea of walking in the light. And that phrase trips people up, because at first glance it sounds like it must be talking about the quality of one’s walk. But the passage is not really about the verb “walk,” as if this was about our own efforts at walking well. No, walking in the light is not about how we walk, but about where we walk. And in the warm glow of the Father’s light and love, no matter how imperfectly we walk, we have fellowship with him. And in his light, the blood of Jesus, in an ongoing, continual way, cleanses us of whatever we need cleansed of. As . . . it . . . happens.

A fresh well-spring of grace for each eruption of sin.

Cool water. Parched earth.

I’ve never been shown anything that impacted me more, and in all my years of ministry, I’ve never shared anything — publicly or privately — that has had more impact on hurting, struggling, broken people.

God is desperately, hopelessly in love with you, and has done literally everything to make it possible for you to live in peace with him, with yourself, and with others. It is such a liberating revelation that I’m surprised we don’t talk about it more. But I seem to regularly find Christians who haven’t learned to live in that place.

How might your life be different if you knew when you woke up each morning that nothing you screwed up that day was going to have any effect at all on your Father’s love for you or on your standing with him? If you knew, really knew — because he’s won you to that place — that he . . . is . . . for . . . you? How would it change your life if you could really learn to live loved? To quit wrestling and striving and manipulating the world around you to try to get for yourself some peace, some security, something that would make you feel better about yourself? To simply relax and learn to rest in the Father’s affection for you?

Grace. It’s that good. It changes the way you think of God. It changes the way you think of yourself. And it’ll change the way you interact with everyone else in your life.

Grace is not just an idea, a mere theological concept. No, it’s much more than that. It’s in the genetic sequence of God himself. And as Christians, he’s put that in us too. So grace is not optional for us. For the Christian, because we have experienced the abundance of God’s grace, we simply must extend that grace – in all its warmth and power – to others. Grace should not be something we come to after much thought and deliberation, something we put to a vote and act on (or not) only after achieving consensus. No, grace is to be a knee-jerk reaction for the Christian, because it was a knee-jerk reaction for God.

That was given to me early on in that little church in western Pennsylvania. I saw it in Scripture, as a gentle breath of God toward man. But I saw it in that church too, lived out by many and given as freely as it was received.

And it became forever part of me. A heavenly treasure in a fragile clay pot.

Next: Church as an Incubator of Faith

Deep Healing

The key to life is not living for Jesus. Rather, it is found in Jesus living through us. – Terry Wardle

In John chapter four, Jesus has a remarkable encounter with an unnamed woman from Samaria who is in need of deep healing. I was reading this passage recently, and it occurred to me that everything Jesus wants to do for this woman will take place within her own heart.

He wants to give her living water “that will become in her a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” He wants to place something inside her.

Not very far into the conversation, he asks about her husband. I always imagine that at this request, the woman hangs her head, and replies in words barely audible. “I have no husband,” she admits. Of course, Jesus already knows this . . . and more. “You are right in saying you have no husband,” he says gently. “In truth, you have had five husbands, and the man you’re with now won’t even give you his name.”

Now we’re at the heart of this woman’s existence, which is always where Jesus is headed with us. Used, broken, filled with shame and regret, perhaps abused, looked down upon by her peers – this is where this woman lives. Every day. These are the parts of her most in need of redemption, and they are heart issues.

She responds the way most of us respond when our tender, fragile, wounded hearts face exposure – she changes the subject, diverting Jesus like she’d learned to divert others from what is most true about herself. “Let’s talk about the mechanics of worship,” she says. “Some say we’re to worship here (or in this way), and others say we’re to do it there (or in that way).” How often we try to avoid intimacy by diverting ourselves and others into tiresome discussions about church mechanics and minutiae.

Remarkably, perhaps, Jesus does not force his way in. He never does. He will never force his way into a heart that has not invited him in. But he does begin to talk about truth. God desires worshippers who engage him in spirit – passionately, eagerly, and with joy – and in truth – coming clean about their brokenness, fears, hurt, and failures.

Why are these things so important to God? Because these things – eagerness and openness – are the basis of relationship. Any relationship God desires worshippers who come to him as they are, hiding nothing and inviting him into their life. Into the pain. Into the truth.

For a second time, she tries to divert him (v. 25), ironically by talking about the Messiah. “Well, when he comes, he’ll help us with such things.”

Jesus must have smiled. He says, in essence, “I’m here. It’s happening – here, now . . . and with you!”

And that does it. Off she goes to tell the rest of the town. And her message to them is so telling. She doesn’t say, “Come see the Messiah,” or “Come get your cosmic questions answered.” She says, “Come see the one who knows me . . . really knows me. He knows everything I’ve ever done.” And she doesn’t say it, but I’m sure she feels it: “And he loves me ANYWAY!”

Healing is free and abundant, but it is only accessible when we lay our hearts bare before the Lord, and dialogue with him about what we find there. Your heart is Christ’s favorite venue of activity.

By the way, the most important factors in a relationship with God – eagerness and honesty – are the most important factors in a relationship with our church family as well.

Shalom.

A Dynamic Relationship

All relationships are dynamic. They change and evolve, grow or die, ebb and flow. A healthy relationship requires the participation and engagement of both parties, and the relationship flows as each friend responds to the other. It’s fluid, not static. The very best relationships are made of two people who are paying very close attention to one another.

This is also true in our relationship with God. It is dynamic and ever-changing. While we’re not equals, there is a give-and-take to our relationship with our Father. He nudges us, encourages us, and at times, waits for us. And we wait for him. He responds to us, and we respond to him. Being in a relationship with God is not merely about following a code of conduct handed down from a distant potentate. Nor is it about reading an owner’s manual, following a blueprint, or executing a strategic plan. These are not the things of relationship. God is real, and the relationship he desires with each of us is real too. Not contrived, organized or orchestrated, but real. Dynamic.

And just like any relationship, the key relational skill is attentiveness. Attentiveness to a living being. The same kind of attentiveness you show to your child or your spouse or your aging mother. The problem is, most of us are not used to thinking of God in those terms. We’re used to thinking of God as one who’s said all he’s going to say and who now merely expects allegiance and fidelity. We’re used to thinking of him as one to be obeyed, not as one to be engaged. Thus, we’re not very good at paying attention to God.

We’re beginning to talk about it; the missional mantra insists that we “see what God’s up to and join him in that.” That’s a good impulse, but how do we do that? There’s little in our religious background that teaches us how to do this. So how do I know what God is doing?

It starts, I believe, with what can be described as careful listening. I’ve come to believe that we can hear directly from God today, and that he is often much more accessible than we typically realize. In fact, he’s as accessible as you’d expect someone with whom you are in a relationship to be. As I’ve learned this (and I’m still learning this), I’ve discovered that it’s quite unlike anything I would’ve imagined it to be. It seems quite natural, actually. And it’s really, really good!

So, in my next post(s), I’ll describe a bit more about what that has come to look Iike for me and what it can look like for you.

Shalom