How Do We Grow Spiritually?
Is it primarily something we experience, or something we do?
Video
“Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into the thing that has them. … They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry” (CS Lewis).
"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me" (Jn 15:4).
"Now this is eternal life that they may KNOW ... Jesus Christ" (Jn 17:3).
Is there a problem with Christianity? Is it having a problem with relevance? Read on if you want answers.
The best place to start is probably at the beginning, the book of Genesis (ch 3). Here we see a brief story that is too often skimmed over without understanding the issues involved. Originally man lived in a perfect relationship with God where faith and love motivated their actions. They were free to do what they wanted, and because God's love was in their hearts, they wanted to do right. Right and wrong were not issues for them. In fact, they were told to avoid the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil (a preoccupation with right and wrong)”. They were free as birds and loved their garden home and they loved God.
Why did they love God? Because they had every reason to. Everything He did was a blessing to them. They loved God because of who they thought He was: good, kind and giving. We are wired to love good people, and they loved God who was very good. This is the essence of the new covenant: forgiveness, then trusting God because we believe He is loving and good.
Then one day, Eve wandered near the “tree of knowledge”. A serpent beckoned her from its branches and asked her a question. “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’”. Eve said, “We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden, but not this tree, lest we die”. The serpent responded, “you shall not die”, implying God was a liar. In fact, he said, “your consciousness will be expanded to be like God’s, knowing good and evil”.
Remember, everything was perfect until that moment. Why? Because they believed God was what he professed to be. Now the seed of doubt and the evidence of her senses made Eve question her understanding of God. She wanted to expand her consciousness. She ate the fruit. Then she gave some to Adam.
They did not drop dead. However, they did die. They died spiritually. The life giving relationship with God, founded in love and trust had been fractured. They no longer experienced the joy and happiness found in loving and trusting Him. In fact, they feared Him. They hid from Him.
And what happened to their relationships? When confronted with their actions, Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and both, by implication, blamed God for allowing this to happen. From loving and trusting, they moved to fear, distrust and blame. How can something seemingly so small, produce such drastic consequences?
Enter the Old Covenant, the covenant of law. This is the relationship we have with God and our fellow man when we aren’t in a loving and trusting relationship with God. Rather than living in the loving, freeing, patient, understanding and compassionate relational atmosphere God's love provides, we are now born separated from God. The conscience, which was simply meant to provide moral discrimination, now acts to motivate and enforce right actions through guilt and moral pressure. Right and wrong, now becomes the realm of the conscience which it dominates.
In the New covenant, the covenant of grace, we aren’t meant to be preoccupied with right and wrong. We are meant to be preoccupied with the love and security we find in our relationship with God. We are meant to abide (Jn 15) in that atmosphere, for it is the attitudes inspired by that atmosphere that motivate goodness and love, just as it did in Eden. “But this is the covenant I will make in those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts” (Jer 31:33).
When we rest in the love and care of God, peace, joy and love result. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28). “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace” (Gal 5:22). The new covenant is primarily about God and our understanding of Him. If we get that right, we will love God and freely and naturally want to follow Him.
Something else happened that day in the garden. They sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness. Somehow they hadn’t needed that sort of covering before. They now had a new sense of inadequacy. They needed to cover that. They needed to hide their sense of shame. And so we are forever seeking to be more than, better than, smarter than, prettier than, richer than. We have to fake it, cover it, hide from it. We often don’t even see what we’re doing. We just keep seeking that something that's missing.
Self righteousness, playing games, creating walls, defensiveness, get in the way of our truly living our lives. It, most importantly, gets in the way of our seeing our need for God. We are so busy being something we aren't, we don't even realize our need.
Separated from God, our hearts can never be truly right (I Tim 8:7). There will always be a root of selfishness to spoil our motives. But we aren't selfish are we? Without God, who is going to look out for us?
We try and hide our self-centeredness from ourselves and others. God addresses this self deception in a rather counterintuitive manner. He leads with the law (right and wrong). This serves to restrain our selfishness (ITim 1:9), but it can also help bring us insight into our flawed state.
The Bible speaks of this when it talks about the law being a “pedagogue” to lead us to see our need for Christ (Gal 3:24). The law (right and wrong) shows us, if we are honest, that we aren’t really living as we ought. If we accept this insight, it opens the door for us to need and accept God’s grace rather then continuing on with our self-deception.
God wants to restore our relationship with Him to the way it was originally meant to be, for it is His love that inspires our goodness. If we’ve seen our need for God, the first step is to accept His forgiveness. This is a free gift, unconditional acceptance, and establishes the foundation for all else. God wants us to understand that He does not want us to feel we have to perform for Him. His acceptance is conditional only on the fact that we accept His gift by faith, for what it is - free. If we don't have faith we can't grasp His love which motivates all else.
Christianity, however, has too often turned things around to emphasize the need to obey. It would seem that God is speaking out of both sides of His mouth. On the one hand, He says that we are free. On the other, there is the call to submission and obedience. This can be confusing. We need to understand what’s going on here.
God calls us to obedience to catalyze the process of switching covenants from the performance based old covenant to the new covenant where the focus is on experiencing God’s love and care that then inspires our goodness. So the call to obedience requires us to ask, and begin to answer the question, what is it like to follow God? It's a type of “reparenting”. We were born into an old covenant, reward and punishment, relationship with the law (right and wrong) and are being “born again” into a new covenant relationship that functions according to very different principles.
We are not primarily changed by doing right. We are changed as we experience what it’s like to walk with God. It is His love, or the loving manner in which He relates to us that changes us. In order for that to happen we must get past the old covenant principles of reward and punishment. That means that we have to deal with our conscience by putting it back in its place of moral discrimination and refuse to accept its role as motivator through pressure and guilt. "There is therefore now no condemnation" (Rm 8:1). We must take the freedom God offers us in the new covenant or we will never change in a healthy manner.
There are a number of parental styles used in rearing children. Understanding two of them, authoritative and authoritarian, can help us see what's going on here. God is authoritative. That means that He has the answers. He can be counted on to know what’s what. He is not authoritarian, lording it over those over which He has authority. He does not boss us around any more than you should boss around your spouse or children. He deals with us according to the principles of a loving relationship that does not use its authority to manipulate us into compliance.
Authoritarian relationships are one of the reasons that PKs (preacher’s kids), are often rebellious or troubled. They always feel under pressure to behave, either from their father or from the church society in which they live. They don't have the freedom to grow in a healthy fashion.
What about obedience? The term obedience is used to make the point that this is not, "do your own thing". We are coming under God’s authority. However, we need to begin the process of learning what its like to follow Him. The more we know God the freer we become. “Obedience”, wanting to follow God, is the natural response to His grace. In the new covenant God lets us change by setting us free to walk with Him, learning the nature of real love.
Yes, some need a heavier hand, just like some children need more discipline than others. However, we must offer the freeing alternative so those who are ready can move forward. Taking away our freedom actually inhibits real growth.
So how do we follow God? Just as in healthy human relationships, we are not to be preoccupied with our performance, doing right. We are, instead, meant to abide in the sense of God’s love and care, learning the freeing nature of His presence.
Now we can simply deal with choices as they come, without being preoccupied with them. If we have learned to abide in God's love, experiencing our lives in the context of His loving attitudes, it will inspire love in our hearts. That motivation will then drive our choices. If love is in the heart will not right be carried out in the life. However, it will be in an entirely different atmosphere, the atmosphere of freedom and love.
Thus, our choices must be experienced in the context of the new covenant attitudes; freedom, mercy and understanding in place of moral pressure and guilt. We must resist the pressuring and badgering of our conscience and replace it with grace. If it brings up an issue, we can address that issue, but not in that authoritarian atmosphere. God wants us to be free. He wants us to GROW into maturity. That takes freedom, love and time.
God gives us all the room we need to make free choices without pressure or manipulation. That means that when we feel pressure to do right, it is not coming from Him. We can then resist the moral pressure without feeling guilt because we know that God wants us to respond to different motives.
Remember, obedience means different things depending on the covenant within which it takes place. In the old covenant obedience means doing everything right, in the new covenant it means trusting God. Seeking to do everything right makes you neurotic (Rm 4:15). It’s simply the wrong focus. Knowing that we are changed as we experience the loving manner in which God relates to us turns our focus in the right direction. We are changed as we contemplate His love. Seeing God’s love inspires our trust (Heb 12:2). Love and trust then, inspire good behavior.
Faith takes hold of God’s truth and sees it as the best thing we can do for ourselves. It’s like finding a treasure map. No one has to pressure you to seek the treasure. The motivation comes naturally. God sets us free to walk with Him, allowing love, and faith in the goodness of His way, to motivate us to follow Him.
In the new covenant it’s the nature of God’s freeing love that makes it possible to both submit and be free at the same time. It’s like two lovers who are bound to each other, while feeling completely free. That is the nature of real love. It values the others freedom and respects their boundaries in such a way as to win their devotion without any inkling of pressure or manipulation.
Abiding in God's love requires time with God. “Keep your wants, your joys, your sorrows, your cares, your fears before God. You cannot burden Him; you cannot weary Him. He who numbers the hairs of your head is not indifferent to the wants of His children. … His heart of love is touched by our sorrows and even by our utterances of them. Take to Him everything that perplexes the mind. … Nothing that in anyway concerns our peace is to small for Him to notice. There is no chapter in our experience too dark for Him to read; there is no perplexity to difficult for Him to unravel. No calamity can befall the least of His children, no anxiety harass the soul, no joy cheer, no sincere prayer escape the lips, of which our heavenly Father is unobservant, or in which He takes no immediate interest. ‘He healeth the broken heart and bindeth up their wounds.’ Ps 147. The relations between God and each soul are as distinct and full as though there were not another soul upon the earth to share His watchcare, not another soul for whom He gave His beloved son.” We must keep this connection with God open.
I don’t mean to discount our choices. Following God's truth provides positive feedback as we experience the results of cooperating with Him. However, our choices may not always be easy. At times we may need to ponder the nature of an issue until we see the value of God's way. However, without the foundation of God’s love and care, we simply become religious, doing things without the foundation of peace, joy and love.
All things in the spiritual life have their foundation in faith. We need to understand what faith is. We too often try to make faith a feeling. However, faith is simply believing what God says. Many times we have to take hold of God’s truth with our wills, ignoring our contrary feelings, until they fade.
We must avoid getting bogged down with worries and cares. Talk to God then let go. He has pledged to work all things for our good. Peacefully do what you can, trusting in Him to provide.
Click here to see the practical application of this.
Copyright Patrick Fagenstrom 5/2017, edited 4/19
Is there a problem with Christianity? Is it having a problem with relevance? Read on if you want answers.
The best place to start is probably at the beginning, the book of Genesis (ch 3). Here we see a brief story that is too often skimmed over without understanding the issues involved. Originally man lived in a perfect relationship with God where faith and love motivated their actions. They were free to do what they wanted, and because God's love was in their hearts, they wanted to do right. Right and wrong were not issues for them. In fact, they were told to avoid the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil (a preoccupation with right and wrong)”. They were free as birds and loved their garden home and they loved God.
Why did they love God? Because they had every reason to. Everything He did was a blessing to them. They loved God because of who they thought He was: good, kind and giving. We are wired to love good people, and they loved God who was very good. This is the essence of the new covenant: forgiveness, then trusting God because we believe He is loving and good.
Then one day, Eve wandered near the “tree of knowledge”. A serpent beckoned her from its branches and asked her a question. “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’”. Eve said, “We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden, but not this tree, lest we die”. The serpent responded, “you shall not die”, implying God was a liar. In fact, he said, “your consciousness will be expanded to be like God’s, knowing good and evil”.
Remember, everything was perfect until that moment. Why? Because they believed God was what he professed to be. Now the seed of doubt and the evidence of her senses made Eve question her understanding of God. She wanted to expand her consciousness. She ate the fruit. Then she gave some to Adam.
They did not drop dead. However, they did die. They died spiritually. The life giving relationship with God, founded in love and trust had been fractured. They no longer experienced the joy and happiness found in loving and trusting Him. In fact, they feared Him. They hid from Him.
And what happened to their relationships? When confronted with their actions, Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and both, by implication, blamed God for allowing this to happen. From loving and trusting, they moved to fear, distrust and blame. How can something seemingly so small, produce such drastic consequences?
Enter the Old Covenant, the covenant of law. This is the relationship we have with God and our fellow man when we aren’t in a loving and trusting relationship with God. Rather than living in the loving, freeing, patient, understanding and compassionate relational atmosphere God's love provides, we are now born separated from God. The conscience, which was simply meant to provide moral discrimination, now acts to motivate and enforce right actions through guilt and moral pressure. Right and wrong, now becomes the realm of the conscience which it dominates.
In the New covenant, the covenant of grace, we aren’t meant to be preoccupied with right and wrong. We are meant to be preoccupied with the love and security we find in our relationship with God. We are meant to abide (Jn 15) in that atmosphere, for it is the attitudes inspired by that atmosphere that motivate goodness and love, just as it did in Eden. “But this is the covenant I will make in those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts” (Jer 31:33).
When we rest in the love and care of God, peace, joy and love result. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28). “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace” (Gal 5:22). The new covenant is primarily about God and our understanding of Him. If we get that right, we will love God and freely and naturally want to follow Him.
Something else happened that day in the garden. They sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness. Somehow they hadn’t needed that sort of covering before. They now had a new sense of inadequacy. They needed to cover that. They needed to hide their sense of shame. And so we are forever seeking to be more than, better than, smarter than, prettier than, richer than. We have to fake it, cover it, hide from it. We often don’t even see what we’re doing. We just keep seeking that something that's missing.
Self righteousness, playing games, creating walls, defensiveness, get in the way of our truly living our lives. It, most importantly, gets in the way of our seeing our need for God. We are so busy being something we aren't, we don't even realize our need.
Separated from God, our hearts can never be truly right (I Tim 8:7). There will always be a root of selfishness to spoil our motives. But we aren't selfish are we? Without God, who is going to look out for us?
We try and hide our self-centeredness from ourselves and others. God addresses this self deception in a rather counterintuitive manner. He leads with the law (right and wrong). This serves to restrain our selfishness (ITim 1:9), but it can also help bring us insight into our flawed state.
The Bible speaks of this when it talks about the law being a “pedagogue” to lead us to see our need for Christ (Gal 3:24). The law (right and wrong) shows us, if we are honest, that we aren’t really living as we ought. If we accept this insight, it opens the door for us to need and accept God’s grace rather then continuing on with our self-deception.
God wants to restore our relationship with Him to the way it was originally meant to be, for it is His love that inspires our goodness. If we’ve seen our need for God, the first step is to accept His forgiveness. This is a free gift, unconditional acceptance, and establishes the foundation for all else. God wants us to understand that He does not want us to feel we have to perform for Him. His acceptance is conditional only on the fact that we accept His gift by faith, for what it is - free. If we don't have faith we can't grasp His love which motivates all else.
Christianity, however, has too often turned things around to emphasize the need to obey. It would seem that God is speaking out of both sides of His mouth. On the one hand, He says that we are free. On the other, there is the call to submission and obedience. This can be confusing. We need to understand what’s going on here.
God calls us to obedience to catalyze the process of switching covenants from the performance based old covenant to the new covenant where the focus is on experiencing God’s love and care that then inspires our goodness. So the call to obedience requires us to ask, and begin to answer the question, what is it like to follow God? It's a type of “reparenting”. We were born into an old covenant, reward and punishment, relationship with the law (right and wrong) and are being “born again” into a new covenant relationship that functions according to very different principles.
We are not primarily changed by doing right. We are changed as we experience what it’s like to walk with God. It is His love, or the loving manner in which He relates to us that changes us. In order for that to happen we must get past the old covenant principles of reward and punishment. That means that we have to deal with our conscience by putting it back in its place of moral discrimination and refuse to accept its role as motivator through pressure and guilt. "There is therefore now no condemnation" (Rm 8:1). We must take the freedom God offers us in the new covenant or we will never change in a healthy manner.
There are a number of parental styles used in rearing children. Understanding two of them, authoritative and authoritarian, can help us see what's going on here. God is authoritative. That means that He has the answers. He can be counted on to know what’s what. He is not authoritarian, lording it over those over which He has authority. He does not boss us around any more than you should boss around your spouse or children. He deals with us according to the principles of a loving relationship that does not use its authority to manipulate us into compliance.
Authoritarian relationships are one of the reasons that PKs (preacher’s kids), are often rebellious or troubled. They always feel under pressure to behave, either from their father or from the church society in which they live. They don't have the freedom to grow in a healthy fashion.
What about obedience? The term obedience is used to make the point that this is not, "do your own thing". We are coming under God’s authority. However, we need to begin the process of learning what its like to follow Him. The more we know God the freer we become. “Obedience”, wanting to follow God, is the natural response to His grace. In the new covenant God lets us change by setting us free to walk with Him, learning the nature of real love.
Yes, some need a heavier hand, just like some children need more discipline than others. However, we must offer the freeing alternative so those who are ready can move forward. Taking away our freedom actually inhibits real growth.
So how do we follow God? Just as in healthy human relationships, we are not to be preoccupied with our performance, doing right. We are, instead, meant to abide in the sense of God’s love and care, learning the freeing nature of His presence.
Now we can simply deal with choices as they come, without being preoccupied with them. If we have learned to abide in God's love, experiencing our lives in the context of His loving attitudes, it will inspire love in our hearts. That motivation will then drive our choices. If love is in the heart will not right be carried out in the life. However, it will be in an entirely different atmosphere, the atmosphere of freedom and love.
Thus, our choices must be experienced in the context of the new covenant attitudes; freedom, mercy and understanding in place of moral pressure and guilt. We must resist the pressuring and badgering of our conscience and replace it with grace. If it brings up an issue, we can address that issue, but not in that authoritarian atmosphere. God wants us to be free. He wants us to GROW into maturity. That takes freedom, love and time.
God gives us all the room we need to make free choices without pressure or manipulation. That means that when we feel pressure to do right, it is not coming from Him. We can then resist the moral pressure without feeling guilt because we know that God wants us to respond to different motives.
Remember, obedience means different things depending on the covenant within which it takes place. In the old covenant obedience means doing everything right, in the new covenant it means trusting God. Seeking to do everything right makes you neurotic (Rm 4:15). It’s simply the wrong focus. Knowing that we are changed as we experience the loving manner in which God relates to us turns our focus in the right direction. We are changed as we contemplate His love. Seeing God’s love inspires our trust (Heb 12:2). Love and trust then, inspire good behavior.
Faith takes hold of God’s truth and sees it as the best thing we can do for ourselves. It’s like finding a treasure map. No one has to pressure you to seek the treasure. The motivation comes naturally. God sets us free to walk with Him, allowing love, and faith in the goodness of His way, to motivate us to follow Him.
In the new covenant it’s the nature of God’s freeing love that makes it possible to both submit and be free at the same time. It’s like two lovers who are bound to each other, while feeling completely free. That is the nature of real love. It values the others freedom and respects their boundaries in such a way as to win their devotion without any inkling of pressure or manipulation.
Abiding in God's love requires time with God. “Keep your wants, your joys, your sorrows, your cares, your fears before God. You cannot burden Him; you cannot weary Him. He who numbers the hairs of your head is not indifferent to the wants of His children. … His heart of love is touched by our sorrows and even by our utterances of them. Take to Him everything that perplexes the mind. … Nothing that in anyway concerns our peace is to small for Him to notice. There is no chapter in our experience too dark for Him to read; there is no perplexity to difficult for Him to unravel. No calamity can befall the least of His children, no anxiety harass the soul, no joy cheer, no sincere prayer escape the lips, of which our heavenly Father is unobservant, or in which He takes no immediate interest. ‘He healeth the broken heart and bindeth up their wounds.’ Ps 147. The relations between God and each soul are as distinct and full as though there were not another soul upon the earth to share His watchcare, not another soul for whom He gave His beloved son.” We must keep this connection with God open.
I don’t mean to discount our choices. Following God's truth provides positive feedback as we experience the results of cooperating with Him. However, our choices may not always be easy. At times we may need to ponder the nature of an issue until we see the value of God's way. However, without the foundation of God’s love and care, we simply become religious, doing things without the foundation of peace, joy and love.
All things in the spiritual life have their foundation in faith. We need to understand what faith is. We too often try to make faith a feeling. However, faith is simply believing what God says. Many times we have to take hold of God’s truth with our wills, ignoring our contrary feelings, until they fade.
We must avoid getting bogged down with worries and cares. Talk to God then let go. He has pledged to work all things for our good. Peacefully do what you can, trusting in Him to provide.
Click here to see the practical application of this.
Copyright Patrick Fagenstrom 5/2017, edited 4/19