Experiencing Spiritual Breakthroughs

by Bruce H. Wilkinson

no one can move toward change without a significant level of trust in a good outcome.

But the lives of Second Chair Christians, no matter how successful they seem from the outside, are really case studies in loss—colors gone gray and destinies squandered. What you see on the outside might be enviably successful, well-balanced people, but inside they’re besieged by doubts and dissatisfactions.

•compartmentalized

But if you’re trying to reach for all God’s best for you, compartmentalizing is a blueprint for a breakdown instead of a breakthrough. How, for example, can you be sure that more than one drawer of your life is really interested in pressing on with God? And what will happen if the you at church makes a decision that the you on the golf course has no intention of honoring?

Every Second Chair person discovers soon enough that what started out as a street-smart way to win (even over God’s revealed will) ends up as a deep personal loss. Relationships falter under the weight of deceit. Dreams splinter. The spirit withers and eventually admits defeat. From personal experience I can tell you that the most unhappy, frustrated, stressed, and disillusioned people in the world aren’t non-Christians as you might expect, but Second Chair people who know Christ yet who fight Him and His leadership for years and even decades. Why? Because when compromised believers turn away from the Lord and strike a deal with sin, the Holy Spirit convicts and disciplines them so that they’ll return. Why wouldn’t He? They gave themselves into God’s eternal keeping at the moment of salvation. Yet when they try to turn toward the Lord to receive His best with only a few parts of their life in agreement (that is, without fully embracing His agenda and His leadership in every “drawer”), they experience only frustration and failure. Of course! God made us with one will, one mind, one heart, one spirit; it is Satan’s lie that leaves us fractured and paralyzed. I believe that what drives a person to a compartmentalized lifestyle more than anything else is this root commitment to using every opportunity and gift God has given you to get the most for yourself. And to get the most return when you’re living in between requires that you play a lot of different roles. For Second Chai...

First Chair believers love and are most interested in people. Second Chair believers love and are most interested in something else.

Second Chair believers have a hard time putting people first in their lives unless they’re helping us achieve another priority, like success, pleasure, or status. Reaching out to the needs of people as worthwhile in itself, or simply to honor God’s priorities, just doesn’t motivate us for long. Soon people are taking a backseat.

For the man in the middle, a new set of custom-made priorities takes the place of people. His or her driving interests usually fit one of the following categories: • desire to acquire possessions • desire for personal pleasure • desire for power and prestige But what looks like a winning ticket for the man in the middle turns into ruin. If you don’t believe me, just look around you at unhappy Second Chair believers. Just look at one man in the Bible who had everything God above and the earth below could give—and still managed to compromise his life away into destruction and despair.

At that moment, and during countless decisions that followed, Solomon slipped further and further away from Chair One. Why? Because if your answer to “Who and what do you love most?” is anything but loving God and others, you move to Chair Two. Of course, your choice will seem normal, logical, even fool-proof. I’m sure it did to Solomon, too.

If First Chair living is so terrific, and Second Chair living is such a dead end, how does Second Chair living happen, and why is it so common? I’ve given this one a lot of thought. If you look at this group carefully, you’ll find two kinds of Christians who account for most of the Second Chair crowd.

Casualty #1. The first is the person who started out in the First Chair, then carried on by living mostly on the memory of his conversion (without an ongoing, lively relationship with Christ as Lord), then gradually slid into compromise.

Casualty #2. The second way you might find yourself sitting in the Second Chair is that you grew up leaning on the First Chair—and someone moved.

parental faith must become personal faith for spiritual growth and blessing to be possible.

First Chair faith looks at the difficulty of a commitment and calls on the resources of the all-powerful God. Second Chair faith looks at the difficulty and measures what seems practical. Second Chair faith never conquers giants. Second Chair faith never moves mountains.

I ask you only these three breakthrough questions: Do you have the courage to learn and face the truth about God? Do you have the desire and will to believe the truth? Are you willing to act on—build the habits and practices of your life upon—what you know and believe?

The more you dominate, the more you will live as a stranger in your own house.

Authority doesn’t make you a leader; it only gives you the responsibility to be one.

we never have to choose between a good life and God’s life.

I believe a successful marriage is the result of falling in love over and over again—always with the same person!

The Salvation Outcome Observation: If your children grow up in a truly committed Christian home where you as the parents have a close relationship with the Lord and genuinely seek to serve Him, your children will come to know Him as personal Savior 100 percent of the time. After polling hundreds of thousands of people around the world, I have never personally found one exception to that fact.

If God really has your heart, your heart will attract your children’s heart like nothing else on earth.

My seminary professor, Howard Hendricks, used to say, “You only know the quality of your parenting when you see what your grandchildren become.”