In my journey as a Christian over 43 years, I have learned a lot of lessons about spiritual growth and maturity that I wish I had known decades ago. Since my heart attack in March, I am more aware of my need to leave a legacy to the work God has done in my life. I’m probably not going to write a book, as too many have been written already, so I would prefer to share some of my lessons learned through sermons like this one. My desire is to make your spiritual journey a bit smoother than mine has been.
- Secular/Spiritual Dichotomy
First of all, I would like to share with you the snare of tolerating in your life what I call a secular/spiritual dichotomy—the idea that our spiritual life is compartmentalized into certain religious activities and our secular lives are still lived pretty much as they always were.
In 2001 or 2002, I was attending a Bible study with some men from Cheyenne Hills Church. At the time, I was a 10-year veteran in the U.S. Probation Office in Cheyenne, and looking forward to retirement in another 10-plus years. Somebody was asking a question about what we would do after we retired. Well, I thought I had a pretty pious-sounding answer: that I wanted to become involved in full-time ministry. Imagine my surprise when Roy Howell, a local real estate agent, said, “Huh, I like to think that I already am.” I knew that Roy facilitated AA groups in the jail and elsewhere. That simple statement proved to be life-changing for me. I realized that I needed to rethink how I approached life as a disciple of Christ, and that my first priority was to be making disciples. I wasn’t doing that. In short order, I was facilitating a Bible-based 12-step group in Cheyenne and I continued that until COVID.
Colossians 3:17 says, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”
That word in the Greek for “everything” means…everything. All, the whole, entire.
When we become Christians, we are now bondslaves of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I Corinthians 6:19-20 says
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you have been bought for a price: therefore, glorify God in your body.”
Imagine walking around all day with this ministry shawl on. I got it when I was commissioned as a minister last summer with Volunteers of America. I feel self-conscious with it on – and maybe that’s the point! When I have it on, I think differently, I react differently, and people see me differently. But if I am constantly aware that my primary responsibility in life is to be a disciple of Christ and in the business of making other disciples, then I should be thinking and reacting to things all day long just as if I was wearing this ministry shawl even when I’m not.
As blood-bought Christians, there are no longer any secular activities. We don’t just go on mission trips—we live on a mission field all the time. When we are doing regular activities like working, going to the grocery store, or the bank, or getting gas in the car, we remain aware that the Lord may use us in ministry at any given moment. A person who needs gas; a woman crying in the parking lot; a neighbor who has medical problems; a coworker going through a divorce; a client who is suicidal. For us, there is no more luck; no more coincidence; no more chance encounters. We are now destined for divine appointments with people everywhere we go. This is a startling realization, but one that greatly increases how the Lord can use us.
Even our recreation changes. For example, I love to hunt pheasants, and I did it for a long time just to enjoy pheasant hunting. But I am more intentional now on helping introduce pheasant hunting to others and making it a blessing to them. I took a disabled veteran out last fall to shoot his first pheasant and have introduced several men and their sons to pheasant hunting. I still go pheasant hunting but the emphasis has changed.
- Stimulus/Response Gap
Another really important realization the Lord gave me came from a book by Viktor Frankl, called “Man’s Search for Meaning.” He was a Jewish psychologist who survived the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, and gained a lot of rich spiritual insight in the process. He learned that the greatest of human freedoms was the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances. He elaborated in other writings that there always exists a gap between stimulus and response. If we know that, then we can use that gap to choose to respond appropriately.
There is always a gap between stimulus and response.
Most people are oblivious of this gap. They behave like Pavlov’s dogs: there is no conscious control over their response to provocation. When Pavlov rang the bell, the dogs started drooling for food. For people, if you insult them, they will respond in kind immediately.
Even as Spirit-filled Christians, we will continue to behave as people of the world until we learn about the gap, and allow the Holy Spirit to rule that gap. This takes extreme diligence on our part. If we are caught off-guard, almost surely, we will fail to let the Holy Spirit control our response and we will say or do something offensive. So, we must not be caught off guard! Just as we learn to drive defensively—always anticipating other drivers to do something wrong—we learn to live defensively: always on guard for provocation, so it doesn’t blindside us and elicit a thoughtless response.
When provoked, we will naturally be shocked, but if we have been anticipating that something like this might happen, we will likely have the presence of mind to beseech the Lord to help us. In these situations, I have found that the assistance is immediate and effective as long as I continue to resist taking the provocation personally.
This topic of provocation leads directly into a related discussion of anger in Ephesians chapter four.
In verse 26, Paul says, “Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.”
In verse 31, he says, “All bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice.”
How much anger must be removed from you? All.
So, is Paul contradicting himself from verse 26 to 31? Actually, no. There are two separate Greek words for anger used in these verses. In verse 31, Paul uses the word Strongs G3709, Orge, which means to be angry or wrathful or vengeful. It’s a word used commonly in Scripture to refer to the wrath of God. That is reserved for Him, and is not an appropriate response from us. He is God; we are not.
The word in verse 26 is Strongs G3710, Orgizo, and means to be provoked to anger. So, we are subject to be provoked to anger, but we choose to not act on that provocation or we would run afoul of the commandment to remove all anger from us in verse 31.
Let’s say we decide that is asking a bit too much of us. Getting angry is natural, and a little bit is okay, we just don’t want to go to bed angry. Let’s give ourselves just five seconds to indulge in anger and then put it away. That seems reasonable, doesn’t it?
What can happen in five seconds?
In five seconds, an unrestrained tongue can cause severe emotional and mental trauma and ruin a relationship. In five seconds, an unrestrained fist can cause a physical assault. A person carrying a concealed weapon can draw and fire in less than two seconds. If we are indulging even a few seconds of anger every time we are provoked, we will probably have no healthy relationships in our lives. Many people in prison are there because they let their anger go unrestrained for a few seconds.
How do we stop fleshly anger?
With one second and the Holy Spirit.
Watch how Jesus handles provocation:
In John 8:39-44, in a discourse in which the Jews claimed Abraham was their father, Jesus disputed that. In verse 41,
“They said to Him, “We were not born as a result of sexual immorality; we have one Father: God.’”
Now, this was a dig at Jesus because they all knew that His mother had been betrothed to Joseph at the time she became pregnant with Jesus, and Joseph was not Jesus’ father. They were displaying the common Jewish belief that Jesus was illegitimate.
So, how does Jesus respond?
Verse 42: “Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I came forth from God and am here; for I have not even come on My own, but He sent Me.”
Jesus completely ignored the insult, and did not let it distract Him from what He was trying to get them to understand.
A bit later in Chapter 8, there is a similar situation. In verse 48, in response to Jesus’ statement that He is not a sinner and speaks truth, the Jews respond:
Verse 48: “The Jews answered and said to Him, “Do we not rightly say that You are a Samaritan, and You have a demon?’
Okay, calling a Jew a Samaritan was perhaps the ultimate put-down. Jews despised Samaritans for historical reasons we won’t dive into here. Not only that, but they accused Him of being demon-possessed.
Here is Jesus’ response:
Verse 49: “Jesus answered, ‘I do not have a demon; on the contrary, I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me. But I am not seeking My glory…’”
Jesus matter-of-factly addresses the issue about being demon-possessed, but totally ignores the comment about being called a Samaritan. How many times do we waste our breath defending ourselves from frivolous disrespect? We need to learn to ignore disrespect, and move on to substantive matters.
Well, can a Christian be angry and not be in the flesh? I believe they can. We see Jesus, for instance, angry with religious hypocrites in Mark 3:5.
Christians, if under the influence of the Holy Spirit, will be provoked to anger by hypocrisy; oppression of the poor; racism; and a host of societal evils brought on by living in a fallen world. But we will not become angry and hostile about personal insults.
If we allow the Holy Spirit to rule the gap, then our response to provocation will be reasoned, calm, and convicting. But if we run ahead of the Holy Spirit, we will respond with pettiness, defensiveness, and will invite truthful criticism of being a hypocrite.
So, let God rule the gap!
- Bearing Spiritual Fruit
This is a struggle for nearly all newer Christians!
Galatians 5:22-23
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
When we think about a verse like this, we know that as Christians we should be filled with these things. So, we try to be patient, and loving and kind because, hey, that’s what we do!
We grow up in a society where hard work and persistence are trumpeted as the pathway to success. Finish the sentence:
“If at first you don’t succeed…”
“Where there’s a will…”
“Quitters never…”
“God helps those…”
You get the idea.
But trying these techniques to produce spiritual fruit will leave you stuck in the waste land of Romans Chapter 7. You know:
“For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.” Romans 7: 18-19
I doubt there has ever been a Christian who has not felt this way, and frequently. But I will tell you good news: Paul didn’t stay stuck here, and you and I don’t have to either.
Paul calls this process of failure “the law of sin and death” in Romans 8:2, and he tells us that the “law of the Spirit of life” has set us free from it! Past tense! It’s done!
What does the law of the Spirit of life do for you?
He tells us in verses 3 and 4: “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, SO THAT THE REQUIREMENT OF THE LAW MIGHT BE FULFILLED IN US WHO DO NOT WALK ACCORDING TO THE FLESH BUT ACCORDING TO THE SPIRIT.”
So why don’t we experience practical victory in our spiritual lives? Because we fail to apprehend how to practically walk “in the Spirit,” and instead walk “in the flesh” because we don’t know any better.
You see, being godly is the easiest task ever for God, and will always be impossible in our own strength. The Gospel is not that suddenly you have a Holy Spirit Cheerleader rooting you on to be loving, kind, peaceful, joyful, patient, etc. The harder you try to be godly, the more failure God will ensure that you experience. He will never enable you to manufacture His character through your own effort.
Instead, He reminds you that you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and it is just like falling off a log for Him to be humble, patient, joyful, loving, kind, and every other character attribute you can think of to describe God.
The secret to seeing godly character produced in our lives is not to try harder, but to yield more.
Get out of God’s way, and let Him be Himself, through you. It seems too simple, effortless really, and it truly is once we learn to let go of our stubborn desire to do everything.
Romans 7 is not the common experience of a mature Christian; it is the common experience of Christians who have not yet learned the fine art of yielding to the Holy Spirit.
Well, there you go. May God use these lessons that I’ve learned the hard way to make your spiritual journey a little easier. And be sure to share the lessons you learn the hard way with others and me, because we all need to learn from each other.
