Overcoming
Your
Your Lack of Knowledge about How to Grow
NOTE: These are separate obstacles, but they have overlapping
solutions. So as far as recommendations for overcoming the obstacles to growth,
we can deal with these obstacles together.
Christian maturity is not
something that just happens to us as we mindlessly munch on chips and surf the
Internet. Logging years in the Christian
faith is no guarantor of growing in Christ-likeness either. As taught for centuries by theologians,
pastors and others, the individual Christian has an essential, active
role to play in his or her spiritual growth, and that role entails dependence
upon and daily communion with God.
“But doesn’t our growth come
from God?” one might object. “And if so,
how can ‘Independence from God’ be a real obstacle? If He wants to grow us, He will!”
This objection has some
merit because it is God who ultimately works within to change us, to
transform us into the likeness of His Son.
It is the fruit of His Spirit – not of our own efforts – that we
see manifesting character attributes and spiritual maturity. So in a sense, it is understandable that some
might conclude that our spiritual growth is “God’s job,” not ours, and
therefore, independence from God is not really a threat to the sanctifying work
of a sovereign, all-powerful God.
However, the more complete
conceptualization of the growth process is that God has a role and we have a
role. The interplay of those roles has
been likened to the task of sailing a boat from one place to another. To get a boat from A to B, two crucial
elements are required. We need some wind
blowing toward the destination and we need to put the sail into position to
catch that wind. You can probably guess
the analogs here. God’s Holy Spirit is
the wind, seeking to gradually move us toward Christ-likeness. We are the sailors, needing to raise the
sail; that is, to do something that puts us in position to catch
God’s Spirit, so that the Spirit will then move us along toward the desired
destination.
Many have claimed that our
role, that “something” we are to do, is to habitually practice what have been
called the “spiritual disciplines,” spiritual activities “within our power that
we engage in to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort” (Dallas
Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God, HarperSanFrancisco, 1998, p. 353.). These are activities like prayer, confession
of sin, fasting, worship, service to others, Bible study and submission to
God’s will – bodily activities that in essence “raise the sail,” expediting internal
change for the better in our lives.
Since the 1978 publication
of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, contemporary writers have
increasingly provided explanation and commentary on these disciplines – their
“why’s” and “how’s.” If you are looking
for instruction regarding how to practice the spiritual disciplines, you should
probably begin with these contemporary works.
Besides Foster, other fine books that would pay similar dividends
include The Spirit of the Disciplines, and The Divine Conspiracy
by Dallas Willard, The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg, and Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian
Life by Donald Whitney. If you want
to also go to the classic sources, consider The Imitation of Christ by
Thomas à Kempis, Introduction
to the Devout Life by Francis de Sales, Dark Night of the Soul by
St. John of the Cross, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, A
Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by William Law, and The Practice
of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.
Again, the skeptic might ask
a very legitimate question here: Does practicing the disciplines really
influence one’s Christ-likeness, as so many claim? Does it make us more God-centered
people? Do we really need to depend on
God this way to grow spiritually? This is
a critical inquiry. If there were no
evidence or even weak evidence of a connection here, it would call into
question the entire discipline-growth theory handed down through the centuries.
But no such questioning
appears to be necessary. As shown in the
figure below, there is clearly a connection between practicing the disciplines
and greater Christ-likeness. Based on
our study of more than 6,000 Christians worldwide, we found a strikingly
consistent trend, indicating that the more disciplines one practices, the
higher one’s Christ-likeness. And it’s
not just a little higher. As this line
chart demonstrates, those who practice most or all of the disciplines that we
examined appear to be significant more Christ-like in character than those who
practice few or none of the disciplines.
A God-centered lifestyle, marked by the practice of the
disciplines, is a distinctive of spiritually mature Christians.
The Linkage Between Spiritual Disciplines and
Christian Character
** Note: Christian character here is measured by the
Christian Character Index, available at assess-yourself.org
As you might sense, though,
correlation is not the same as causation.
That is, just because disciplines and virtue move in the same upward direction
does not mean that the former causes that latter. So the question remains: Are the disciplines
actually a pathway to growth? Are
Christ-like Christians high in Christian virtue because they practice
the disciplines?
In fact, they are. For the interested reader, we provide some
specifics of our relatively sophisticated analysis here in a footnote,[1]
but the bottom line is this: the practice of more spiritual disciplines
is not just a distinguishing characteristic of spiritually mature Christians,
it is also a reason that they have aspired to higher levels of Christian
character than have other Christians.
The Godliness of mature Christians is not a result of their age,
their gender or the number of years they have been Christian. It is, however, largely a result of
practicing the disciplines. And without
getting technical, we can say that by statistical standards, the result here is
off-the-charts.
Quite frankly, this finding
hardly constitutes news for people already on this road, but it is important
confirmatory evidence for others. If you
want to grow spiritually, consider learning more about the spiritual
disciplines and begin to practice them in earnest. They are without question a pathway to
spiritual maturity and growth.
Here are some other
resources to help you know God more and to grow in dependence upon Him:
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
From Amazon.com: In 1943
Great Britain, when hope and the moral fabric of society were threatened by the
relentless inhumanity of global war, an Oxford don was invited to give a series
of radio lectures addressing the central issues of Christianity. Over half a
century after the original lectures, the topic retains it urgency. Expanded
into book form, Mere Christianity
never flinches as it sets out a rational basis for Christianity and builds an
edifice of compassionate morality atop this foundation. As Mr. Lewis clearly
demonstrates, Christianity is not a religion of flitting angels and blind
faith, but of free will, an innate sense of justice and the grace of God.
Experiencing God: Knowing
and Doing His Will by Henry Blackaby and Clause King
(Broadman and Holman 1998)
From
Amazon.com: Knowing God does not come through a program, a study, or a method.
Knowing God comes through a relationship with a Person. This is an intimate
love relationship with God. Through this relationship, God reveals Himself, His
purposes, and His ways; and He invites you to join Him where He is already at
work.
This is the central thesis
of Experiencing God by Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King. The authors' emphasis on
revelation through personal relationship makes faith sound like a true
adventure--leading believers to engage with people and circumstances they might
otherwise have avoided. The organization of Experiencing
God adds to this effect, proceeding step by step through the various ways a
believer's relationship with God is deepened (via the Bible, prayer, and the
Church, among others).
The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton
A modern-day Confessions of Saint Augustine, The Seven Storey Mountain is one of the
most influential religious works of the twentieth century. It tells of the growing restlessness of a
brilliant and passionate young man whose search for peace and faith leads him,
at the age of twenty-six, to take vows in one of the most demanding Catholic
orders-the Trappist monks. At the Abbey of Gethsemani, "the four walls of my new freedom,"
Thomas Merton struggles to withdraw from the world, but only after he has fully
immersed himself in it. In the
half-century since its original publication, this timeless spiritual tome has
been published in over twenty languages and has touched millions of lives.
The Pursuit of God by A.W.
Tozer (Christian Publications 1982)
During a train trip from
Chicago to Texas in the late 1940s, A.W. Tozer began
to write The Pursuit of God. He wrote all night, and when the train arrived at
his destination, the rough draft was done. The depth of this book has made it
an enduring favorite.
Knowing God by J. I.
Packer (InterVarsity Press, 1993)
From Amazon.com: A lifelong
pursuit of knowing God should embody the Christian's existence. According to
eminent theologian J.I. Packer, however, Christians have become enchanted by
modern skepticism and have joined the "gigantic conspiracy of
misdirection" by failing to put first things first. Knowing God aims to redirect our attention to the simple, deep
truth that to know God is to love His Word. What began as a number of
consecutive articles angled for "honest, no-nonsense readers who were fed
up with facile Christian verbiage" in 1973, Knowing God has become a contemporary classic by creating
"small studies out of great subjects." Each chapter is so specific in
focus (covering topics such as the trinity, election, God's wrath, and God's
sovereignty), that each succeeding chapter's theology seems to rival the next,
until one's mind is so expanded that one's entire view of God has changed
My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers
A treasury of daily
devotional readings that has fed the souls of millions of Christians in the
twentieth century. Future generations of Christians must continue to draw from
this treasury
The Cost of Discipleship
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Simon and Schuster)
What can the call to
discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the
businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean
to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the
Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers these timeless
questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between "cheap
grace" and "costly grace." "Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer wrote, "is the grace we bestow on
ourselves...grace without discipleship....Costly grace is the gospel which must
be sought again and again, the girl which must be asked for, the door at which
a man must know....It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is
grace because it gives a man the only true life."
The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of
sacrifice and ethical consistency from a man whose life and thought were
exemplary articulations of a new type of leadership inspired by the Gospel, and
imbued with the spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic
duty.
The Divine Conspiracy:
Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God by Dallas Willard (Harper San Francisco
1998)
From Amazon.com: Dallas Willard,
an acclaimed theologian and professor of philosophy at the University of
Southern California, fulfills the longing of many Christians who want to live
as true disciples of Christ rather than distant dabblers. Likewise, he scoffs
at consumer Christians who are simply banking on admittance to heaven as their
payoff for attending church. Or worse still, those who use Christianity to
advance their political agendas rather than their spiritual ones. But this is
not a scolding book. Rather, Willard devotes his efforts to discussing specific
and inspiring ways to develop a discipleship to Jesus--not as an act of
sacrifice or even one of spiritual luxury--instead, as everyday people
committed to the teachings of Christ. "The really good news for Christians
is that Jesus is now taking students in the master class of life," writes
Willard. "So the message of and about him is specifically a gospel for our
life now, not just for dying. It is about living now as his apprentices in
kingdom living, not just as consumers of his merits."
The Jesus I Never Knew by
Philip Yancey (Zondervan 1995)
Yancey reveals the real
Jesus beyond the stereotypes, revolutionizing the reader's passion for Christ.
Basic Christianity by John Stott (Eerdman’s
1986)
John R. W. Stott defends the
fundamental claims of Christianity and defines the proper outworkings
of these beliefs in the lives of believers. Here is a sound guide for those
seeking an intellectually satisfying presentation of the Christian faith.
The God Chasers by Tommy Tenney (Destiny Image 1999)
In an age of instant
gratification and information overload, Tommy Tenney
emphasizes that "we like things to come quickly, easily, and
cheaply--microwave revival." The God
Chasers seeks to reach those who hunger for God's manifest presence and
whose endurance to boldly pursue Him will lead to heartfelt revival in
America's churches. Tenney, a self-proclaimed God
chaser, has preached since he was 16 and has toured in a mobile ministry for
over 17 years in 30-plus states. Through personal accounts of the miraculous, Tenney insists that humility before and intimacy with God
are the secret facets to apprehending more of God's glory. While the
conservative may argue that God cannot be forced into a linear timeline, Tenney desires to "have God show up" in order to
reveal new revelations so that we may be saturated with His presence, arguing
that experience supercedes doctrine.