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July 9, 2019 - June 27, 2020
We must approach current disappointments about the walk with Christ in a similar way. It too is not meant to run on just anything you may give it. If it doesn’t work at all, or only in fits and starts, that is because we do not give ourselves to it in a way that allows our lives to be taken over by it.
Our responsibility is to implement the Great Commission right where we are, not just to raise efforts to do it elsewhere. And if we don’t, it won’t even be implemented “over there.”
He wants us to establish “beachheads” or bases of operation for the Kingdom of God wherever we are.
We need to emphasize that the Great Omission from the Great Commission is not obedience to Christ, but discipleship, apprenticeship, to him. Through discipleship, obedience will take care of itself, and we will also escape the snares of judgmentalism and legalism, whether directed toward ourselves or toward others.
The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian—especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He or she stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the Kingdom of God.
Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have never decided to follow Christ.
The disciple is one who, intent upon becoming Christ-like and so dwelling in his “faith and practice,” systematically and progressively rearranges his affairs to that end.
For those who lead or minister, there are yet graver questions: What authority or basis do I have to baptize people who have not been brought to a clear decision to be a disciple of Christ? Dare I tell people, as “believers” without discipleship, that they are at peace with God and God with them? Where can I find justification for such a message? Perhaps most important: Do I as a minister have the faith to undertake the work of disciple-making? Is my first aim to make disciples? Or do I just run an operation?
First, there is absolutely nothing in what Jesus himself or his early followers taught that suggests you can decide just to enjoy forgiveness at Jesus’s expense and have nothing more to do with him.
“feeling that a notable heresy has come into being throughout evangelical Christian circles—the widely accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need him as Savior and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to him as Lord as long as we want to!”1 He then goes on to state “that salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred scriptures.”
This “heresy” has created the impression that it is quite reasonable to be a “vampire Christian.” One in effect says to Jesus, “I’d like a little of your blood, please. But I don’t care to be your student or have your character. In fact, won’t you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and I’ll see you in heave...
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Second, if we do not become his apprentices in Kingdom living, we remain locked in defeat so far as our moral intentions are concerned.
Third, only avid discipleship to Christ through the Spirit brings the inward transformation of thought, feeling, and character that “cleans the inside of the cup” (Matthew 23:25) and “makes the tree good” (Matthew 12:33).
But, someone will say, can I not be “saved”—that is, get into heaven when I die—without any of this? Perhaps you can. God’s goodness is so great, I am sure that He will let you in if He can find any basis at all to do so. But you might wish to think about what your life amounts to before you die, about what kind of person you are becoming, and about whether you really would be comfortable for eternity in the presence of One whose company you have not found especially desirable for the few hours and days of your earthly existence. And He is, after all, One who says to you now, “Follow me!”
What lies at the heart of the astonishing disregard of Jesus found in the moment-to-moment existence of multitudes of professing Christians is a simple lack of respect for him. He is not seriously taken to be a person of great ability. But how, then, can we admire him? And what can devotion or worship mean if simple respect is not included in it? In
If we would live the life which God made us for, we must take our guiding information from Jesus in three respects: First, we must learn from him the reason why we live and why we do the things we do.
Jesus brings us reliable information about who we are, why we are here, and what the humanly appropriate motives are for doing whatever we do. First, he informs us that we are by nature unceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe. We will never stop existing, and there is nothing we can do about it.
Second, we must learn from Jesus, our “in-former,” a new internal character: new “bowels,” one old translation says. New guts we should frankly say today (see also Colossians 3:9–10). He teaches us in the first place that this is what God intends for us, and what he makes possible.
We must learn of his positive interactions and involvements with us in the concrete occasions of our day-to-day activities.
One aspect or side of our triangle is the faithful acceptance of everyday problems. By enduring trials with patience, we can reach an assurance of the fullness of heaven’s rule in our lives.
The second side of our triangle is interaction with God’s Spirit in and around us.
The presence of the Holy Spirit can always be recognized by the way He moves us toward what Jesus would be and do (John 16:7–15). When we inwardly experience the heavenly sweetness and power of life—the love, joy, and peace—that Jesus knew, that is the work of the Spirit in us.
The third side of our triangle is made up of spiritual disciplines. These are special activities, many engaged in by Jesus himself, such as solitude and study, service and secrecy, fasting and worship.
In general, then, we “put on” the new person by regular activities that are in our power, and we become what we could not be by direct effort. If we take note of and follow Jesus in what he did when he was not ministering or teaching, we will find ourselves led and enabled to behave as he did when he was “on the spot.”1 The single most obvious trait of those who profess Christ but do not grow into Christ-likeness is their refusal to take the reasonable and time-tested measures for spiritual growth. I almost never meet someone in spiritual coldness, perplexity, distress, and failure who is
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The need to achieve is too great. Invariably, it is the personal and spiritual life of the minister that suffers. And—like doctors, lawyers, and other professionals today—he often comes to feel strongly that the circumstances in which he works are in conflict with the very goals for which he entered his profession in the first place. Heightened frustration and disappointment go hand in hand with decreasing strength, peace, and joy. The conditions and habits of our work in ministry often seem incompatible with the life that Jesus lived and surely offers to us. But
Grace is opposed to earning, not to effort. And it is well-directed, decisive, and sustained effort that is the key to the keys of the Kingdom and to the life of restful power in ministry and life that those keys open to us.
Sabbath is a way of life (Hebrews 4:3, 9–11). It sets us free from bondage to our own efforts. Only in this way can we come to the power and joy of a radiant life in ministry and work, a blessing to all we touch. And yet Sabbath is almost totally absent from the existence of contemporary Christians and their ministers.
Very practically, Sabbath is simply “casting all your anxiety on Him,” to find that in actual fact “He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7; see also Psalm 37:3–8). It is using the keys to the Kingdom to receive the resources for abundant living and ministering.
The command is “Do no work.” Just make space. Attend to what is around you. Learn that you don’t have to do to be. Accept the grace of doing nothing. Stay with it until you stop jerking and squirming.
Silence completes solitude, for without it you cannot be alone. You remain subject to the pulls and pushes of a world that exhausts you and keeps you in bondage, distracting you from God and your own soul.
You rarely find any person who has made great progress in the spiritual life who did not at some point have much time in solitude and silence.
The church of Jesus Christ is not necessarily present when there is a correct administration of the sacrament and faithful preaching of the Word of God. The church of God is present where people gather together in the power of the resurrected life of Jesus Christ. It is possible to have the administration of the sacraments and the preaching of the Word of God and to have it be simply a human exercise. And the misunderstanding of the church in this respect is one of the things that create a primary problem for the integration of theology and spirituality. Because, as was emphasized yesterday, a
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Union in action with the triune God is Christian spirituality.
So my fifth point is this: spiritual formation is the process whereby the inmost being of the individual takes on the quality or character of Jesus himself. My sixth point is that such a process is not a matter of the human spirit or heart only. We must be careful about how we talk about the person and its several parts. Rather, spiritual formation is a whole life process dealing with change in every essential part of the person. We don’t work on just our spirit, but on everything that makes up our personality.
But now consider: when the people of Israel came into the Promised Land, the first city they approached was Jericho, and the walls of Jericho, we know, fell down flat. Tell me, how many more walls of cities fell down flat in the conquest of the Promised Land? What did the Israelites have to do with the rest of those cities? They had to take them, didn’t they? And we are today lulled into a false passivity by our basic teachings about the nature of salvation and the work of God in our souls. We like to quote verses like, “Without Me you can do nothing,” which is absolutely true. But we forget
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When you hear stories about men and women who have, as we say, fallen, I hope you will realize that the sad thing is not just that they fell, but what has been in their mind all along—possibly for many years or even all their life. That’s where the work must be done for spiritual formation. It isn’t just action control. That is the error of the Pharisee.
Being a servant shifts one’s relationship to everyone. What do you think it would do to sexual temptation if you thought of yourself as a servant? What do you think it would do to covetousness? What do you think it would do to the feeling of resentment because you didn’t get what you thought you deserved? I’ll tell you. It will lift the burden.
Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action.
I make bold to say, the gospel of the entire New Testament is that you can have new life now in the Kingdom of God if you will trust Jesus Christ.
Character is formed through action, and it is transformed through action, including carefully planned and grace-sustained disciplines.
We have counted on preaching, teaching, and knowledge or information to form faith in the hearer and have counted on faith to form the inner life and outward behavior of the Christian. But, for whatever reason, this strategy has not turned out well. The result is that we have multitudes of professing Christians who well may be ready to die but obviously are not ready to live, and can hardly get along with themselves, much less with others.
Having been found by God, we then become seekers of ever-fuller life in him. Grace is opposed to earning, but not to effort. The realities of Christian spiritual formation are that we will not be transformed “into his likeness” by more information, or by infusions, inspirations, or ministrations alone. Though all of these have an important place, they never suffice, and reliance upon them alone explains the now-common failure of committed Christians to rise much above a certain level of decency.
The secret to a strong, healthy, and fruitful ministerial life lies in how we work with God in all of these hidden dimensions of the self.
Natural gifts, external circumstances, and special opportunities are of little significance. The good tree, Jesus said, “bears good fruit” (Matthew 7:17). If we tend to the tree, the fruit will take care of itself.
The “sudden” failures that appear in the lives of some ministers and others are never really sudden but are the surfacing of long-standing deficiencies in the “hidden person of the heart” (1 Peter 3:4).
The people to whom we minister and speak will not recall 99 percent of what we say to them. But they will never forget the kind of persons we are. This is certainly true of influential ministers in my own past. The quality of our souls will indelibly touch others for good or for ill. So we must never forget that the most important thing happening at any moment, in the midst of all our ministerial duties, is the kind of persons we are becoming.
The first and most basic thing we can and must do is to keep God before our minds.
The way forward then lies in intentionally keeping the scenes and words of the New Testament gospels before our minds, carefully reading and rereading them day by day. We memorize them. We revive them in word and imagination as we arise in the morning, move through the events of the day, and lie down at night. By this means we walk with Him moment by moment—the One who promised to be “with us always.”
As a beginning step in this practicing process, we can choose to practice constantly returning our minds to God in Christ on a given day. Just decide to do it, and then do the best you can without harassing yourself. In the evening, then, we can review how we did, and think of ways to do it better the next day. As we continue this practice, gently but persistently, we soon will find that the person of Jesus and his beautiful words are automatically occupying our minds, instead of the clutter and noise of the world—even the church-world.
Our concentration on Jesus will be strengthened by memorization of great passages (not ju...
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