Those of us who work in churches do it because we believe in the power of God to change lives: “we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ” (Eph. 3:15).
When that does not happen, we begin to die a little, even if the church is increasing numerically. Of course, we can’t make growth happen. But just as doctors do with children when their growth is stunted, we can look for the conditions that lead best to growth, and ask if they’re present in our churches. I’m thinking a lot these days about why many churches aren’t growth-nurturing communities. Often it’s the wrong message, the wrong measure, and the wrong means.
The right message
Jesus made staggering promises about his ability to transform human lives:
“‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flowing from within.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive” (John 7:37-39).
This life is not something we produce; it exists independently of us. It is the Spirit of God.
Often people are moved by the vision of Jesus, are overwhelmed by the hope and beauty of his promise, and they say yes to it. For a time, there’s a kind of a spiritual honeymoon period. They’re filled with love for God, and they’re drawn to the Bible. And some things change. Maybe coarse language gets cleaned up. Maybe certain habits get overcome.
But over time this sense of progress stalls out. People find themselves wrestling with patterns of anger, or sexual addictions, or chronic anxiety that are embedded too deeply in their bodies to be lifted out simply through hearing more information. And they get stuck in a gap.
When they first hear the gospel, they’re aware of the gap between them and God caused by sin. And they come to understand that human effort cannot bridge that gap; it can only be bridged by grace.
But over time they become aware of another gap: the gap between who I am right now and the person God wants me to become.
People think they are supposed to bridge that gap by trying harder.
You hear about someone who gets up at four o’clock in the morning to pray, and you feel guilty because you think you don’t pray enough. So you resolve to do that too, even though you’re not a morning person, even though at four in the morning you’re dazed and confused and groggy and grumpy, and no one wants to be around you at four in the morning. Even Jesus doesn’t want to be around you at four in the morning!
But you think, Well, this is exhausting and miserable—I certainly don’t like doing it—so it must be God’s will for my life. It must be spiritual. You keep it up for several days or weeks, but not forever. Eventually you stop. Then you feel guilty. After enough guilt, you start doing something else.
It leads to a cycle: I feel guilty, so I try harder to do some devotional practice, but eventually I get fatigued, and eventually I quit, and after a while I feel guilty about quitting, and the whole cycle starts again.
We teach people how to be saved by grace.
But we often do not teach people how to live by grace.
Self-improvement is no more God’s plan than is self-salvation. God’s plan is not just for us to be saved by grace—it is for us to live by grace. God’s plan is for my daily life to be given, guided, guarded, and energized by the grace of God. To live in grace is to flow in the Spirit.
This is largely a matter of teaching. I try on a regular basis to communicate this: the only way to become the person God made you to be is to live with the Spirit of God flowing through you like a river of living water.
The more my habits are formed around resentment or anxiety or greed or superiority, the more often I will quench the Spirit. It will take time and wisdom for habits to get re-formed. But the Spirit of God is tenacious. All that is needed in any moment is a sincere desire to be submitted to the Spirit’s leading. We need not worry about God’s response; a sincere heart never needs to fear God is mad.
I was traveling on obscure back roads in a part of the country I had never been to before, so when I got a rental car the man at the counter recommended a GPS unit.
My immediate response was, “No. I’m not going to pay for that. I can find where I’m going without that.”
But when I went out to parking lot, I could not find the stall my car was in. I had to go back to the counter and tell the man I got lost before I found my car.
I decided to get the GPS.
There was a voice coming out of that box. You don’t even have to look at a screen or follow a map. Someone talks to you. It is a British voice, because people who talk with a British accent always sound smarter. You’re just inclined to do what they say. And it was a woman’s voice, because … same thing.
You can get the box. You can hear the lady’s voice. But that doesn’t mean you trust her. If you trust her, you do what she says. If she says, “Turn left,” you turn left. If she says, “Turn left,” and in your heart you think, Oh, I think I need to turn right, you remember that verse, “There is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof is death.”
To live in the flow of the Spirit means doing what Jesus says. I will mess up a lot. I’m going to need his power. I know that, but I form the intention. I say to him, “God, with your help, as best I can, I will do what you say. I will give you my life, my time, my obedience.” If that is not my settled intent, then it is best to be honest about it.
There is something else you need to know. At one point when we were driving, I was quite sure the lady was wrong. She said to go left, and I didn’t go left. I went right because I knew she was wrong. Then, in a fascinating response, she said, “Recalculating route. When safe to do so, execute a U-turn.”
I knew she was wrong … so I unplugged her. That’s the beauty of that little box. You can unplug her.
And I got lost as a goose, which my wife enjoyed immensely. So we plugged that lady back in, and you know what she said?
“I told you so, you little idiot. You think I’m going to help you now? You rejected me. There is no way. You just find your way home by yourself.”
No, she didn’t say those things. She said, “Recalculating route. When safe to do so, execute a U-turn.”
That’s grace.
God will say to anybody: “Here is the way home. Execute a U-turn.” As soon as you’re ready to listen, as soon as you’re ready to surrender, that’s called repentance.
He’ll say, “I’ll bring you home.” That is grace.
The right message is not simply how to get to heaven when you die. Nor is it simply human wisdom about how to be a better parent or more successful at work. The right message is that we grow to desire and follow God’s Spirit each day of our life to fulfil our purpose.