A New Series…

You know how most Christians tend to have the same problems and many of them sort of persist?

They’re the elephants in the room when we get together. Even if we don’t struggle with particular sins or Christian disciplines, we may counsel plenty of friends who have these struggles.

A few months back I decided to write up a kind of survival guide for overcoming these common threats to our Christian walks. These sins, doubts, fears, and short-comings can nibble away out our faith and keep us from intimacy with God, following Jesus daily, and completing the mission he has given us here on earth to proclaim his Kingdom.

The solutions are there. God’s power is available for us. So it’s time to challenge our doubts, short-comings, and fears. It’s time to lay hold of his power for us and to embrace the fullness of life Jesus promised us.

Let’s begin…

Part of One of “You Can’t Stop Sinning”

You know that guy at work who rarely does his job. He mocks you and the other peons who slave away while he plays games on his computer and shuffles papers, somehow convincing your boss that he’s a valuable asset. And so you get together with your colleagues while the coffee is brewing and talk about that sniveling, lazy jerk and his long, crooked nose.

Talk is too sedate a word for it. You slam him. You roast him alive like a fat pig. You make him the butt of your jokes and the target of your slander. He’s the worst kind of person and you always feel better about yourself whenever you’re done tearing into him.

And yet, you know deep down that a Christian shouldn’t mock this man’s character, lacking though it may be. And perhaps you shouldn’t make fun of the way he eats his hard-boiled eggs, the way he slurps his coffee, or the way he shoves his wispy black hair away from his forehead with a brush of his hand. No, the Christian way is to love this man rather than insulting him behind his back.

The tongue being a restless evil aside, you still think he kind of deserves it. It’s just words after all. Really, you haven’t done anything all that terrible. And as you hide behind justifications, you arrive at the real truth of the matter. You don’t want to stop slandering him. In fact, you can’t stop. It’s natural, easy, and feels good, as if you can undo his grievances against you by the power of your words.

But perhaps you haven’t struggled with words. Perhaps your struggle is with lusting after a neighbor along your block. He or she often walks past your house in the evening, and you find yourself thinking about this person in very inappropriate ways. It may be the scent of his cologne that lingers or that titillating blouse she wears that sparks your imagination and leaves you burning.

While you’re alone at home he sneaks into your thoughts with a seductive look or when you’re driving home from work your heart beats a little faster at the thought of seeing her today. This infatuation is both terrifying and wonderful, fulfilling some deep-seated desires that crave to be fulfilled even if they seem endless in their demands. You can’t help but give in to them because you’re not really hurting anyone, and worse than that, you don’t feel like you can resist them. The urges are too strong, your will too weak, and those exciting moments of surrender to lust are too exciting.

In either scenario, sin has taken hold and become a master of sorts. It isn’t that slander and lust are harmless sources of fun and fulfillment that God doesn’t want you to have. It’s that you’re actually enslaved to them, letting them control you, shape you into a different sort of person, and keeping you from the good things God has planned for you. When sin becomes an irresistible force that we cannot fight, we have a tremendous problem that must be addressed without delay.

The next post in this series will deal with sin and our information problem…

The Destination is Not Up to Us…

When I moved from college to seminary, I had a picture in my head of what I would be like as a mature Christian. Since most of my money was paying for a seminary education, you’d better believe I thought a vast biblical knowledge would be a key part of that.

My experience is that God often has something else in mind from what we imagine. In fact, it’s hard for us to predict what God’s destination will be for us.

I think seminary was a really important part of my growth, but it wasn’t the decisive factor I thought it would be. So far as I can tell, the most significant moments of my Christian growth have always been tied directly to learning how to pray or meet with God.

My biblical knowledge was important, but these moments of meeting with God drove that truth home.

Life is a careful balancing act of doing what we believe God has called us to do, while remaining flexible to his leading and his new destinations. Perhaps faithfulness is the art of being flexible with the results and clinging to God alone.

Ten years since I entered seminary, I am at a completely different place in life than I would have expected. I have no complaints, but it has been humbling to watch some of my plans and goals crumble. However, in holding to my plans loosely, I’ve learned there is joy to be found in the new places God calls us to.

We should pursue whatever it is that God places on our hearts, but it’s equally important to let go of our chosen destinations if God chooses to send us elsewhere. Life is this constant process of letting go of one thing in order to embrace another only to find that you will soon need to let go of the new thing in order to embrace another.

On and on it goes.

We’ll get beat up and frustrated if we make our lives about the things we’re aiming for rather than God. This is a lesson in the Kingdom. Christ is all and in all, and we have nothing without him.

I was kind of nuts. It was all about minimizing stops for gas and the bathroom, while keeping my speed as high as legally possible. I was a blathering mess by the time I arrived, but if I could shave off a few minutes, it was all totally worth it. Really, my friends didn’t know what to do with me after I arrived at Taylor.

While driving I’d also get a Caesar salad and a frosty from Wendy’s. If I was really living it up, I’d snag some chicken nuggets. Don’t ask how I ate my salad.

I’m luck to be alive.

I remember driving across Pennsylvania and despairing. It’s such a long, monotonous state—though not monotonous like Kansas, the bane of cross-country road trips. But on the PA turnpike I was like, “Oh golly, another long hill of a mountain. I’ll bet they’re mining THAT one for coal too.” I would always despair over how long I still had to go in that state which really shouldn’t be allowed to be so wide.

When I’m facing my own issues with disobedience and sin, I’m reminded of my Pennsylvania road trips.

Some days I’m so dang discouraged about how far I still need to go in my Christian faith. In the letter First Corinthians, Paul calls the Corinthians immature, needing to hear about Christ crucified all over again because they suck at obeying God and loving one another.

I don’t know about you, but that all sort of sounds familiar. Am I really just an immature Christian who can’t get the cross and basic obedience down? It’s humbling.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Christians pass through seasons. Sometimes we have struggles and other times we have our mountain peaks. However, the path to maturity surely must run through deepening our intimacy with the Father.

The good news is that God isn’t waiting at our destination, checking his watch, wishing we’d step on it and knock off the chicken nugget pit stop. He’s there in the car with us, wondering why we’re barreling forward at such high speeds instead of pulling over to have a chat with him. That’s where he wants us to start.

I dig a little deeper into the Bible and worry a little more about my prayer life, pressing my foot to the floor as I accelerate myself into a holy fervor. And yet, while God wants me to be obedient, he wants me to obey because my love for him is what drives me.

It’s true that we have very far to go in our quest for holy living and Christian maturity as part of God’s family, but we won’t zoom ahead by trying harder. That is the hardest lesson to learn.

Am I doing enough? Am I doing this right? Is this good enough? Am I making any serious mistakes?

It’s really easy to doubt myself and my plans.

There came a point when I simply needed to jump in to the ministry that I sensed God had placed before me. While I want to do things well and even with excellence, sometimes our ideals can stand in the way of taking action, making some good mistakes, and learning as I move forward.

I have learned that God can provide as we step forward in obedience, even if we don’t have all of the details lined up. However, taking that leap of faith requires letting go of my own idealism that can sometimes become a poor excuse for inaction and it eventually becomes laziness.

The perfect can prevent the possible. While it’s good to aim high, I have learned that sometimes the quest for perfection can become a hindrance.

Sometimes we settle for less than we should. However, when it comes to taking a first step, inaction can bring about its own imperfection that may be worse than taking a less than perfect step forward.

You need to go. Ministry requires going. Even going when you don’t have all of the pieces in place.

This does not mean reckless going, but rather, taking steps forward to do what you know needs to happen and trusting in God’s leading and provision.

It’s kind of wild, freeing, and terrifying all at once.

It’s wild because I never would have thought that God could work like this… calling me to take a step in faith so that he could provide what I needed at the last second.

It’s freeing because I don’t have to figure everything out. He has the control. It’s his work.

It’s terrifying because he’ll keep doing things this way, and who knows what he’ll ask me to do next!

I was making sure God knew about all of that.

What was I thinking? Of course he knew all of that. I realized that I had a very silly and limited view of God. While I needed to let go of these matters and entrust them to his care, my prayers that morning treated all of my requests as fresh news to him, as if he might fall off his throne with surprise at what I had to say.

No, God was not shocked. And so, if I didn’t need to spend too much time filling him in on everything, what should I do with my prayer time? I didn’t have too much to talk about when I cut my suggestion list short.

That was a bad sign.

I’ve been reading the Psalms lately. It’s been good for me to read about the majesty and power of God. It’s also a nice cheat sheet on how to pray. I could steal the Psalmist prayers.

As I meditated on my reading from that morning, I thought of a question: “God, what do you want?”

I’m sure I’ve thought of this before, but the question just about knocked me over. Good thing I was sitting on the floor. After asking that question I sensed the joy of God. Something opened and I sensed that God was up to something.

I had changed my focus from myself to him, and that has made all the difference.

Readers are attracted to writers who can tell a good story. I mean, who isn’t?  Personal stories are the very life-blood of blogs, with the best story tellers rising to the top with their tales of raising children, suffering impossible colleagues, and overcoming struggles.

For many Christian writers, their blogs are places to share what they are learning, how they have seen God at work, and what they believe. From blogs to books on Christian living to spiritual memoirs, the personal angle is important with Christianity because our faith is based on the incarnation of Jesus and the Spirit-empowered embodiment of his life among us.

If we aren’t living the truth, then the game is over for Christianity.

The Pitfalls of Personal Stories

Unfortunately, personal stories of faith can lead to the drawback of becoming too, well, personal. While we may aim to share how God is working in our lives, our stories can turn into trite little triumphs of our cleverness or insight.

I often feel this tension when sharing anything personal.  I don’t want to slip into a celebration of my perceived virtues.

Personal stories also fall short when we use excessive private details to draw in readers who are curious to learn more about our lives. In other words, we can encourage voyeurism, rather than sharing what God is doing in us. The former prompts readers to desire information about us, and the latter prompts readers to desire what God is up to, with our lives as more of side detail.

Perhaps we can ask ourselves, “Are readers walking away from this piece impressed with me or with what God is doing?”

The Benefits of Personal Stories

Besides keeping us focused on living the truth we profess, personal stories serve an important role as written testimonies that can encourage fellow readers. In fact, as a seminary student who has posted his fair share of abstract and generally useless posts on theology, philosophy, and Christianity, I think personal stories are more important than ever.

As we pray, study scripture, and live out of God’s empowering Spirit, we should have stories to share. That’s part of the fun of being a Christian—God works and we get to share that with others as witnesses. Do a search of the word “witnesses” in the book of Acts sometime. It’s startling to see how often that comes up.

We are witnesses, which is another way to say, we share personal stories of our faith. That’s how this is supposed to work.

When We Don’t Have Stories to Tell

Lately I was in the midst of a dry spell where I could hardly sit still to pray or read scripture for about a week or two. It was tough. I tried, but I couldn’t focus. If I had any stories to tell, they were in the past tense.

Finally, one morning I put off everything else I planned to do, and kneeled down to pray. In a rush God broke through, teaching me that I’d been too driven by lists and schedules, and that these means of organizing my career had taken over my spiritual life.

If you’re at a place where Christianity isn’t all that exciting or you don’t feel like you have anything to share, I encourage you to stop, relax a bit, and sit before God. Don’t expect anything. Just worship him for who he is, accept that he loves you, and ask him, “Now what?”

I can’t guarantee anything about what will happen next, but we were created to live in relationship with him. He will meet with us if we seek him. And when he meets with us, stories will soon follow.

The last significant aspect of our vocabulary of the Holy Spirit concerns the ways in which the Holy Spirit speaks to and through us.

Many evangelicals such as myself have a hard time with this one since we’ve historically been rather fixated on the Bible as our source of revelation. Tossing the Holy Spirit into the mix complicates things.

However, even if we just try to read the Bible without acknowledging the role of the Spirit, we’ll keep bumping into verses that give the Spirit a prominent place in our lives.

Teaching Us

Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus frequently speaks of the Holy Spirit as a guide for his followers, leading them into the truth (John 14:17, 26; 15:26: 16:13, 15). The scripture itself came about originally through the work of the Holy Spirit.

The process of interpreting the scriptures and living with wisdom is just as connected to the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts (1:2, 6:10). Paul frequently alludes to the guidance of the Spirit in discerning a particular belief or application.

Therefore, as we study scripture we can also speak of the Spirit as a guide who teaches us. This isn’t a stretch of scripture, though we can certainly take this notion too far by creating individual bastions of interpretation and defying all who disagree with us. Though, we don’t need the Holy Spirit to do such a thing, we can abuse the leading of the Holy Spirit in heavy-handed ways.

Prophetic Words

We could choose several different ways to speak of prophetic words from the Holy Spirit, but I think it’s quite biblical to speak of the spiritual gift of prophecy as another way the Spirit guides and teaches us. According to 1 Corinthians 14 a prophetic word is a revelation from the Spirit that edifies the church.

Acts, Romans, and 1 Corinthians all speak of prophetic gifts being given to God’s people, and Paul even said that he wished all of the Corinthians would prophesy. Having said that, he also took a great deal of care to explain how to use their gifts in orderly, beneficial ways. Prophecy is intended, above all else, to help other Christians to grow.

We could debate whether Acts 2 makes prophecy a gift for all Christians or whether Paul’s spiritual gift lists make it one gift among many that we may not have. I’m not certain about this, but I do believe we should remain open to the possibility of God giving ourselves or someone else a specific word for our edification.

I mean, God spoke through Balaam’s mule (or ass if you want a laugh), so there’s no reason why his Spirit couldn’t speak through me, right?

Desiring the Lord, Not Just the Gifts of the Lord

The work of the Holy Spirit is an incredible blessing that I sometimes wish I experienced on a more regular basis, but the trouble with such gifts as prophetic words is we can end up craving the gifts rather than the Lord we are called to love above all else.

And so while we should desire these important gifts that will empower us for ministry and help us contribute to the health of the church, our chief desire should be the Lord himself. As we draw near to him and remain open to the work of his Spirit, he is able to direct and empower us as he sees fit.

While I believe that the Holy Spirit should be quite noticeable and active in the lives of Christians today, the role of the Holy Spirit in our salvation is something that we may not notice at first. I know I can’t say why exactly I believed the words of scripture and began to follow Jesus in the first place.

However, in retrospect, I can see that somehow God’s Spirit was at work, guiding me to him. When I look back at the times I took significant steps forward, I can hardly take any credit because the Holy Spirit taught me something or brought a particular healing to my life.

If we are saved by God’s grace, and we are dependent on him to one degree or another (no Calvinist/Arminian debates please), then at rock bottom we can agree that the Holy Spirit must be integrally involved in the process. The Holy Spirit is how God imparts life to us (see John 3:3,6; 6:63).

In addition, when we speak of Jesus as Lord, we can be confident that this is only possible because of the Holy Spirit (see Matthew 22:43). Any devotion we may feel toward God is the work of the Holy Spirit who is given generously to all who repent (see Acts 2:38).

When we speak of being saved, or brought into God’s family by the Holy Spirit, we can trust that the means by which we have entered will continue to be the means by which we continue. If we couldn’t come to God without the work of the Holy Spirit in the first place, what makes us think we can add anything to our relationship with him now?

In continuing to grow as believers, we continue to rely on the Spirit who brought salvation to us and enabled us to become God’s children. Next week we’ll discuss some of the ways we continue to follow the Spirit in our lives as disciples of Jesus.

When I speak of developing a vocabulary of the Holy Spirit, I’m referring to the practice of regularly speaking of the various ways that God’s Spirit works among us. Theologically speaking the Holy Spirit plays an absolutely essential role int he Christian life, but the language of most evangelicals lacks references to the third member of the Trinity.

Today I’d like to identify a few reasons why many Christians, especially my own evangelical tribe, have a hard time speaking of the Holy Spirit.

We Fear We’ll Sound Like Pentecostals

Most Christians are familiar with emotional and dramatic Pentecostal preachers who dance around their pulpits, strike people on the head, and send them flopping onto the floor. Whether or not all such preachers are to be trusted, they generally speak regularly of the power of the Holy Spirit in their ministries.

Perhaps there are some who are genuinely moving with the Spirit, while others are invoking the Spirit’s influence to validate a suspect ministry. That’s not for us to decide. However, Christians who associate such ministries with fraud can run the risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water when it comes to the Spirit.

In the broadest sense, Christians will err by either favoring Spirit or truth. Some will focus on manifestations of the Spirit, but fail to work at the truth of scripture and the guidance of their traditions. Others will focus on truth, but neglect the direct influence of the Spirit. Both groups would acknowledge they depend on Spirit and truth, but their language, among other marks, suggests otherwise.

I’ve tended to belong to the side of truth over Spirit throughout most of my Christian life. It has taken me years to learn that God’s Spirit can work in very real and present ways among his people without making the mistakes of showmanship and manipulation that are often associated with the dark side of Pentecostalism.

We Fear We’ll Get It Wrong

Even if we are open to the Spirit working among us, Christians tend to fear speaking of the Spirit’s work because they don’t want to get it wrong.

We wonder things such as: Was that prompting I sensed really a work of God, or was it just my mind or emotions? Will I use that prompting to manipulate someone? Could I lead my family into trouble by mishearing the Spirit?

I’ve seen some terrible situations unfold because Christians were convinced they heard from the Holy Spirit, though every other Christian involved sensed they were wrong. Matters of pride and control often come up. In addition we have our limitations and fallibility to consider.

When I think of all the times I’ve misinterpreted the Bible, it’s a wonder that I’m still willing to read it and to reach conclusions that I’ll share in public. I spent several years listening to some pretty wacky fundamentalist doctrines. However, I’m still game for reading the Bible after all of my mistakes. Why should listening to and speaking of the Holy Spirit be any different?

Listening for the Spirit and moving according to the Spirit’s lead is a fallible, imperfect process. Get used to it. You’ll get better at it given some practice, and all of those Christians in your church are there to help you sort through things when you aren’t sure.

God Transcends Our Language

Even if we are open and willing to work with the Holy Spirit, many don’t know what it looks like for the Spirit to genuinely work among us. We aren’t sure how to apply the scriptures or how to speak of the Spirit’s work.

For instance, I know some folks think I’m positively out to lunch when I try to relate what I’ve learned over the past few years about spiritual warfare and the work of the Holy Spirit in my life. It sounds a bit far-fetched, and I struggle to put my experiences into terms that they’ll believe. Perhaps there are no terms that will resonate with those unfamiliar with the hands-on work of the Spirit.

Other times the Spirit sneaks up on me in ways that I can only describe in emotive terms. I once prayed over a youth pastor and his wife, and the presence of God just crashed onto all of us. I knew we needed to pray, but then God took over.

Something happened that day. I’m almost brought to tears whenever I think of that day, and I sense something stir within me. What is that all about? We don’t even know what God did, and we lack the ability to quantify it for others.

Tomorrow

Now that we know about the obstacles that stand in the way of speaking of the Holy Spirit, I’ll spend the rest of the discussing ways we can speak of the Spirit’s work among us, including the saving work of the Spirit, listening to the Spirit, receiving guidance from the Spirit, living in obedience, and a few other topics that will carry over into next week.