Transcription
And I see this time and time again in spiritual direction and in church. We know what we're supposed to do. Read the Bible, pray, forgive, be less anxious, but we feel really spiritually stuck. We don't know how to do it and how to do it in the spirit and not in the flesh.
And our first instinct when we fail at these things that we're supposed to do is to say, "Okay, I'll try harder. I'll be more disciplined. I'll put more effort in." But that is when we actually make our spiritual life a self-improvement project and we don't learn to actually walk in the spirit.
In my last video, I talked about how we're all spiritually formed whether we are aware of it or not. Our spirits have been formed a certain way. And so when we hear sermons preach the ideal like be anxious for nothing or put off anger or be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect, there creates this natural anxiety or this gap of well that's where I'm supposed to be and this is where I am. And we don't know how to fill it. We don't know how to change the gap from where I am and where the ideal is. A lot of theologians call this the sanctification gap.
So if it's not my effort, if I'm not supposed to do it, then how does Christ grow me? How do I grow in Christ? If I'm not supposed to do it by myself, but where is God in the midst of this?
For years, I thought growing spiritually just meant I needed to try harder and I needed to be more disciplined and more spiritual. I needed to get rid of all the things of the flesh, not engage with anything that's worldly, and be totally dedicated to Christian things. If you remember the bracelets from the '90s, "What would Jesus do?" I had three of those on my arm in multiple different colors, and I would just think, okay, I just need to do what Jesus did. Look at scripture, read it, memorize it, hide God's word in my heart, and then do it and apply it to my life. And I did that for a really long time. And it worked until it didn't. Until I became spiritually dry, really frustrated, and stuck. And I found that I had zero desire to serve God. I was sick of it. I didn't know where he was. And so, I shut off spiritually and spent years trying to relieve this guilt and this burden that I had that I was a huge failure, that I wasn't good enough to be loved by God.
But what that did was actually keep me from the very person who I longed to be connected to, which was God. My guilt and shame was something I was trying to fix in my life by doing more, by putting more effort in, which is not how we grow spiritually. And unfortunately, I see this all over in the church where there's this fantasy that if we can just do more, if we can stop being lazy, if I can be more disciplined, then therefore I will feel closer to God and then my life will bear fruit. A lot of Christians aren't struggling with laziness or as what some Christians like to say, backsliding, but they're actually struggling with self-salvation. Paul talks about this in the book of Galatians where he says, "You foolish Galatians. Why did you begin your life in the spirit and are now trying to perfect yourself in the power of the flesh?" And 2,000 years later, we still do the same thing. Because human beings act like human beings. We do human things.
What I see over and over in spiritual direction is dedicated Christians who love God and want to see God's work in their life and want to be close to him looking for the signs and the right steps to close the gap to feel close to God again when God is already present with us. The really hard part about all of this is that it's usually unconscious. We're not consciously thinking, "I'm going to try to save myself." The Bible talks about something called the hidden heart, which the hidden heart keeps us from growing spiritually because there are things in our hearts that do keep us from God. And we can't memorize theology. We can't outstudy or outserve the hidden heart within us that keeps us from God. That can keep us from experiencing God's love. We can do Christian things in the power of ourselves. I can read the Bible without God and avoid him. I can teach a YouTube video. We can do ministry without needing God. That's a really sobering, scary thought that we can live a Christian life without engaging with the spirit of God. We can do things that look Christian and sound Christian and behave like Christ did, but if our hearts haven't changed, we're not walking in the spirit.
So, how do you know that you're doing this? How do you know if you're walking in the power of the flesh? My mentor came up with these two tests that really discern where the heart is positioned and what's actually happening within the heart. The first test is the guilt test. When you sin or fail, what is your first instinct? And I'm curious, actually, let me know down in the comments, not to out yourself, but just to name what which one you struggle with more. I struggle with both of them. But when you sin or fail, what is your first instinct? Is it to say, "I'll do better. I need to get more serious. I need more discipline. I'll try harder." Because if that's your first move, then it's self-management.
The second test is whenever you're aware of sin or failure, do you just feel frustrated, feel depressed, feel sad, and then you try to get out of those feelings by repressing those feelings and repressing your sin? Because a lot of us tend to just manage ourselves versus going to God and asking him for help. I realized a lot of my spiritual life was me just trying to get out of feeling the guilt and shame. But I never opened my heart in those feelings to God. And that's how I actually changed. That's how I actually learned to walk in the spirit.
How does spiritual growth actually happen? How do we walk in the spirit? We bring the things that we do in the flesh to the presence of God. Now, God is already present to us. We have the Holy Spirit. We've been sealed with the spirit. 1 Corinthians, I believe 6:17, if if I recall correctly, says that we are now united with Christ's spirit. And so, we have God's spirit with us all the time. But we can sow in the flesh and we can sow a life in the spirit.
What does growth look like? Spiritual formation. It's the process the spirit takes us on to become like Christ. We need to open up to another person. We are relational beings. God is a relational being. I'm not trying to say anything heretical here, but God in and of himself is in community. So, we change through communion with God, through opening up our hearts and our lives to the spirit and then having God work in and through in and through Christ. Jesus's prayer for the disciples and the church is that we would be one as he and the father are one. So, to walk in the spirit is an embrace of the union that you already have.
When I became a Christian, something fundamentally changed in my heart. I became a new creation. But yet, there was still this sin residue, if you will, or these things in my life that were, to use the Bible's language, fleshy, or I was doing them in the power of myself. And so, all of those things that I'm doing the power of myself can be opened up to God. And that's how we grow in Christ. You say, "I know what to do, but I can't do it." That's because there's a part of our heart that probably doesn't want to. But here's the thing, that is not to make us feel guilt and shame. That is a sign that we need Christ in those places. That we need the love of God in those places. We fundamentally don't change by having right theology, by Bible study. While those things are so important, what fundamentally changes us is being open to a person, to the person of Christ and his love. God's love is what changes us.
One, one of my favorite authors, Henry Nouwen, talks about living from our belovedness. That we are beloved of God. We are the loved ones of God. And when we try to perfect ourselves in the power of ourselves, we're divorced from God's love. To grow in Christ, we need to learn to live from the reality that we're already loved by God. People don't change by hating themselves enough and by forcing themselves to do spiritual disciplines. When we stop hiding and self-managing and and going to come to God with these parts of our hearts that we don't like, that we don't know what to do with, that change can happen.
People often ask me, "Aren't spiritual disciplines important?" I need to read the Bible and to pray and to fast. They do form you and it is important to have spiritual disciplines. There is a space for training in the life of Christ and to sow to the spirit. But spiritual disciplines don't change us in and of themselves. But what they do is they open us up to what's going on in our hearts so that we can open up to Christ. Spiritual disciplines help us to draw near to God, the one who can change us. We change relationally and spiritual disciplines bring us to the one who can reorder our life from the inside out. So that we can walk by faith and not by sight. So that we participate with Christ and we don't just imitate him like "What would Jesus do?" bracelets. It's actually a way to abide in Christ. Branches don't give life to the vine. Vine gives life to the branches. And so, we have to stay connected to God relationally.
How do we do that? Number one, through honesty, confession, confessing our hearts to God, to knowing the things in our hearts even when we resist God, naming what we resist God. A very simple practice that I like to do is whenever I read a passage of scripture, there are lots of times where I disagree with it or I'm confronted by scripture and instead of just quickly trying to apply it to my life, which would be me working out of the flesh, I stop with the Lord and say, "Ooh, this is hitting something in my life. I'm resisting this." And I talk about what is happening in my heart within this passage and how it's confronting me. Same thing with a sermon. I hear a sermon and it bugs me. I don't like this. I don't like that. It's like then I can say, Lord, thank you for showing me what's in my heart. Now, let's have an honest conversation about what what this might actually mean.
One of the biggest ways that we can resist trying to use our Christian life as a self-improvement to try to have self-salvation is by opening up to the truth of the cross, which is the gospel. The gospel is that Jesus gave us himself, that he came to us and now as Colossians 3 tells us, we have our life hidden in Christ. It's nurturing the spirit within us, connecting to the spirit of God who is already with us. It's from 2 Corinthians 5:16 and I'll read all the way through to 21. I'll start in verse 17. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For your sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." This verse, I think, really sums up what it means to walk in the spirit in our lives.
Sin, guilt, or failure. The move is then to go to the foot of the cross, to open up to the reality of the cross with the spirit. That now we've been reconciled to God, and that God now has given us a ministry of reconciliation. So, from my understanding, the word reconciliation, one of the ways it's translated is eyelash to eyelash. Can you imagine failing in your life? Being exposed to your sin and sitting in the guilt and shame of that instead of closing down or trying to outwork it or feeling alone and cut off from God that God through Christ brings your face close to Christ's face, eyelash to eyelash. The amount of intimacy that that picture, knowing that it means eyelash to eyelash, totally expands and colors this image with intimacy that now I can walk by the spirit because my sin was cast on somebody who knew no sin and therefore has brought me close to God in all of the areas of my life. My waking up, my laying down, my doing the dishes, my praying, my working on the computer, my editing YouTube video, all of that can be done by learning to open up to the spirit of God, to come to the cross in all of those things. Not to try harder in my own effort, but to open up to the reality of the cross that I am now in Christ. I am a new creation, and therefore, I can come out of hiding. He doesn't hold my sin against me. He's not waiting around the corner to beat me up. And I don't have to live a life of self-hatred or depression or burnout because I'm trying to outwork my guilt and shame. My guilt and shame becomes a door to love. And that's how we change in Christ. We open up to the power of God's love in Christ. We need to come out of hiding and by being honest, confessing, and opening up our hearts to the truth of the cross. And that's good news.
So the invitation is, can can we stop hiding and allow God to see and love us? And he already sees and knows, but I think we don't see that he knows and we try to avoid our own guilt and shame. And if we can open up and sit in our guilt and shame with God and allow him to teach us and to love us. I invite you to come up with a prayer that really gets at the heart of this. And a prayer could look something like, "Lord, I don't want to deal with my guilt and shame anymore by myself. I don't want to manage my spiritual life or try to puff myself up with knowledge. I want to have your love, Lord. I need the courage to be able to sit in the discomfort of my pain or the discomfort of how I feel about myself and my failures. I trust that in my weakness, you're going to work. That there is something about weakness that your power is made perfect in it. And so Lord, help me to embrace my weaknesses. Show me where I'm weak. And Lord, protect me from my instincts. Show me where I'm trying to fix myself. Show me where I'm trying to get out of my shame by avoiding it, by working harder as a way to cover it. Help me come out of hiding. Help me know that you deeply love me even when I don't love myself, even when people have told me that I'm unlovable. Help me to see the truth of my heart and the truth of your heart that we are now reconciled, that I am new. I can learn to live out of my belovedness and not out of the part of me that is disconnected from you."
I encourage you to find your version of that prayer. Maybe it's journaling, coming to God with whatever is in your heart moment by moment. And we do this over time, trusting that God is working and willing himself through us. Scripture says that God is always already with us. So, we don't have to now try to fix our life. We can just rest in the power of the cross.
Thank you so much for everyone who supports this channel. It means the world to me. If there's other video topics you would like me to cover, please let me know down in the comments as well. I do have a Substack. Feel free to follow me over there if you want deeper formational content. And I will see you in the next.