We can’t grow if we think God is against us

 

Spiritual growth and maturity take time! Here's why...

Encourage and build up each other

The Holy Spirit is essential to spiritual growth.

What about spiritual growth? Where is your focus?

Total Contentment, Joy And Confidence In Your Everyday Experience of God - A Healthy Soul

John Ortberg, a pastor of a large church, asked his friend and mentor, Dallas Willard, what he needed to do to help his church experience greater levels of spiritual growth.  John was frustrated because the people of his church were not “changing” in the positive spiritual ways he was hoping for.

After John’s question Dallas paused for a long time and said, “You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.”

John’s response to Dallas’ instruction was:  “Huh?”

They talked about Dallas’ answer and after some conversation back and forth John said this…

“But how can I have total contentment, joy, and confidence? … My work isn’t going nearly well enough.  Lots of people are not happy with me.  I am inadequate as a pastor, husband, and father.  Every week I carry the burden of delivering a sermon and knowing I’ll have to feel the pain it if doesn’t go well.”

Dallas then responded like this…

“I didn’t say you should experience total contentment, joy, and confidence in the remarkable adequacy of your competence or the amazingly successful circumstances of your life.  It’s total contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday experience of God.  This alone is what makes a soul healthy.”

John shares this exchange in his book, “Soul Keeping: Caring For The Most Important Part of You.”  What Dallas told John sounds like a very simple idea but it is profound.  I encourage you to take a moment to quietly, seriously ponder the truth of what he said.  When I read this story earlier today it touched, encouraged and challenged my heart in a significant way. 

I want to find contentment, joy and confidence in God.  I want to find delight in Him, in the midst of all the circumstances of life.  Is that really possible?  I believe it is. 

I hope, as you consider these thoughts, God uses them to do something significant for your heart, too.

Dan Marler

First Church of God

Oak Lawn, IL

What Does It Mean To Grow Spiritually?

What does it mean to grow spiritually? The basic answer is this: To become more and more like Christ.  Jesus is our model.  Jesus is the perfect example of what it means to be complete and whole—to be fully alive in God’s kingdom.  This is why we don’t put our focus and dependence on other people; we look to Christ and we fix our eyes on Him.

Podcast for 4/10/12

I talk with Vic about standing ovations.  Also, we deal with a question about the importance of Bible reading to spiritual growth and development.

                     Click here for audio!

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Q & A -- Do We Need To Work On Ourselves In Order To Provide Leadership To Others?

Question: 

I heard a Christian speaker say that we need to “work on ourselves” before we can lead others.  But that doesn’t sound right to me.  Isn’t working on ourselves an inherently selfish thing to do?  Jesus said that leaders are supposed to be humble.

Answer: 

I suppose working on ourselves can become a form of selfishness, because we have the ability to take just about any pursuit to the point where it becomes unhealthy. 

(I made a trip to the gym unhealthy, one time.  It involved a deep fryer and several packages of Twinkies.)

However, the idea of working on ourselves could be understood to mean that we are actively pursuing spiritual growth and maturity, i.e., becoming more like Christ.  Hebrews chapter 12, vs. 1, tells us: “…Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”  This is speaking of spiritual discipline using the metaphor of a long race.  It’s a form of working on ourselves.  In this case, working on ourselves would, obviously, be good and it would be important to spiritual leadership.

Sometimes Christian teachers will attempt to give insight and help involving aspects of life in Christ that they have not personally experienced.  I heard a Christian teacher refer to this as the preaching of “rumors and innuendo”.  (That’s a pretty effective way of putting it.)  Working on ourselves becomes critical because there is a sense in which we cannot lead people very capably into areas where we have not gone ourselves. 

So, although it may sound selfish, working on ourselves is actually an aspect of becoming the kind of person who can genuinely lead and assist others.

Why Is God Important When Receiving Criticism?

I posted a thought earlier today in which I stated that God is important to the process of receiving criticism in a healthy way.

Why is this true?

In order to understand how God can help us in this area of our lives, it is helpful to start with this realization:  Criticism feels threatening to us.

There is a part of our brain that perceives almost any kind of criticism to be a threat.  Even if the person who is offering the criticism does not mean to be threatening, it feels that way to us.  And so there’s a natural defensiveness that rises up in us when we first hear a criticism.

In a fundamental way, what we’re talking about is, fear.  Most of the time, when we receive criticism there is some measure of fear that is stirred in us.  That’s why sometimes we can see someone be criticized in a very minor and gentle way and yet their reaction to the criticism seems extreme.

We look and think, “Why is this person reacting in such a volatile way to such a minor criticism?  What’s going on here?  Why such a strong response?” 

The answer is that the person is afraid.  The strong reaction is coming from fear.

This is where God is so important.  God drives out fear.  How does He do this?  With His love.  God’s love for us is perfect, unfailing, and unending.  And the Bible tells us that, “…love [real love, God’s love] has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear.”  1John 4:18.  The last part of that verse is expressed this way in the NIV translation, “Perfect love drives out fear.:”

When you don’t really believe that God loves you, you will experience more fear in life.  If you don’t believe that God loves you, you will have a hard time receiving any kind of constructive criticism because of the fear that it will generate in you.

On the other hand, the more convinced you are that God loves you, the less fear you will experience.  If you are really convinced that God loves you, you will be more able to hear criticisms without anger and melt downs and furious denials because when you realize that God loves you, you realize that “it’s alright”.  You will be able to say to yourself, “The fact that I’m receiving some criticism is alright.  The fact that I have areas in which I need to grow is alright.”

The person who truly knows God’s love calmly understands that criticism is alright because we know that our inherent worth and value as a human being is not based on the fact that we’re imperfect and still have room to grow.  Our inherent worth and value as a human being comes from this unshakable truth: God loves me.

I’m going to repeat that last sentence because it’s very important to think about it:  Our inherent worth and value as a human being comes from this unshakable truth: God loves me.

Do you believe that God loves you?  Do you?  Really?  Please note: I’m not asking if you know words about God’s love—I realize that you know those words—I’m asking if you have a true conviction in your heart that God loves you?

If you do then you can receive criticism graciously. 

And if you can receive criticism graciously, congratulations!  That means you’re in a good place to grow.

Are You Growing In God's Love?

How do you know if you are growing in God’s love?  One way is this: If you find that you are increasingly willing to SERVE those who are, perhaps, not so easy to serve, or those who you would not necessarily be naturally inclined to serve.

Problems Are An Opportunity for Growth

God’s word tells us that difficulties, trials, problems and set-backs in life are fantastic opportunities for growth—even something to be thankful for.  I understand that truth and have experienced the reality of it.  But it still hurts.  “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.” James 1:2.  I hope you are experiencing God’s presence today.

Step Out, Be Vulnerable, and Grow

One of our key concerns in life is to protect ourselves—which is understandable and can be very reasonable. However, we have to be careful not to allow our desire to protect ourselves prevent us from stepping out and experiencing the fullness of life God has for us. “If you are not stepping out in some way that is VULNERABLE, you are not being stretched and are not growing in your faith.” [Cloud]

Has God Messed With You Lately?

I asked a friend recently, “What have you been reading these days?”

She said, “I read this book ‘Crazy Love’ by Francis Chan. And God has really been messing with me, as a result of it.”

So, I picked up a copy of “Crazy Love”. It’s a quick read. And God’s been messing with me, now, too.

Oh yes, I’ve thanked my friend for contributing to my nights spent laying awake staring at the ceiling, pondering these matters. But she just laughs at me and says, “join the club, bub.”

I think Chan has a gift for challenging one to seriously grapple with questions like:

· Am I really committed to God and not just playing a game?
· Is there evidence of a true commitment to God in my life?
· Am I really trusting in God or does my life reveal that I have back up plans and insurance policies in case God doesn’t actually come through?
· If my faith in God could possibly seem “strange” to those who don’t walk with God, isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?


The questions listed above may or may not be found in the book, I don’t recall for sure. I’m just saying they are the types of questions that I found myself pondering as I read the book.

One of the questions that definitely is in the book is this one that was posed to a class in which Francis participated back in Bible college: “What are you doing right now that requires faith?” It’s an interesting question for an authentic Christ follower to ponder. Is there anything you are doing in your life, right now, that truly requires faith?

“Crazy Love” is likely to get you thinking and provide a good and important challenge to your faith in God. In fact, He might just “mess” with you as a result of reading this book.

Dan Marler
Oak Lawn, IL

I've Got No Magic Formulas

Every now and then I will find myself getting sucked into the hope that there is some kind of simple, magic formula to deal with difficult issues in my life and in my work as a pastor. I love the idea of formulas. You do this and this and this and then . . . this will be your result. Ahh, the wonderful simplicity of that idea. It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

But, what usually ends up happening is that life comes along and reminds me that the magic formulas don’t typically work the way I thought they would. Even though I’d love to come across some simple formulas, I find, over and over again that the important, substantive issues of this mortal journey don’t seem to fit neatly into the formulas; they require case-specific thinking and they call for lots of time and effort and attention.

Take something like relationships, for example, I have years of training and learning, both academic training and on the job training in relationship issues. I had almost enough hours for a sociology minor in college—sociology involves relational issues. I’ve counseled hundreds of people regarding relationship matters. (Okay, I haven’t done it very well. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I’ve got lots of experience at it.) I’ve been involved in numerous conflict resolution meetings. As a pastor of a church a big part of my life involves trying to encourage relationships, and repair relationships, and foster relationships and help relationships work and coax relationships and pray for relationships.

If there were a magic formula that helped to create and maintain perfect, loving, fulfilling, harmonious relationships, you would think that I would have found it, by now. Wouldn’t you? But I haven’t. In fact, I find that I still, personally make simple, obvious relational mistakes from time to time.

So, I wish there were magic formulas for the big issues of life, but my experience is that there aren’t.

Instead, what I propose, is that we make a commitment to five fundamental concepts that are the basic practices of healthy Christians, and healthy churches—and have been throughout the history of the church—with the acknowledgement that these five fundamentals are not magic formulas, but, rather, lifetime pursuits. We can grow and learn and continue to strive in each one of these areas for the rest of our lives.

The basic idea, here, is to commit to a long distance marathon race rather than searching for the quick fix of a magic formula.

The five purposes are: Worship, Fellowship, Serving, Discipleship, & Evangelism.

If you are a follower of Christ, a good question to ask yourself is this: “Are these purposes part of my life? Am I involved in: Worship, Fellowship, Serving, Discipleship, & Evangelism?”

Every now and then, I get the distinct impression that people want something jazzier than the five basic concepts listed above. That stuff seems a little too ordinary. They are hoping that there might be something else that would feel like a more esoteric “snatch-the-pebble-from-my-hand-Grasshopper” pursuit of deeper spiritual insights and secrets.

When I mention the five purposes—worship, fellowship, serving, discipleship and evangelism—I, occasionally, get a look or a response like this: “Yeah, I already know about those things, but what else?”

I wonder if Jesus got some “Yeah-I-already-know-about-that-but . . . what-else?” kind of looks when he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” But I better abandon that line of thinking, it’s a little too close to pouting.

Here’s a thought: The “what else?” is probably who we encounter and what we encounter on the journey of life as we regularly pursue the five purposes, fully engaged in the obedient life of faith in Christ.

So, Grasshopper, forget the magic formulas and live each moment of life, fully engaged. Live a life of worship (God is worthy), rich fellowship, servanthood, spiritual growth (discipleship) and telling the good news of Jesus (evangelism).

Master Po asked me to pass these helpful thoughts along to you.

Dan Marler
First Church of God
Oak Lawn, IL

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