Where do you grow as a Christian?

A Christian isn’t simply a person who believes all the right stuff. It’s someone who has a personal relationship with the living person of Jesus Christ whereby He is the Lord/Leader of their lives, and they are following Him everyday. Just like any other relationship, it isn’t a static thing. It must be nurtured, and God’s design is that we grow in our trust and obedience as we experience His expressions of grace and love to us.

But how and where does this happen? Surely it can’t be reduced to a program or series of steps (we as evangelicals are addicted to books that have the word “steps” or “paths” in them). On the other hand, we shouldn’t think that our relationship with Jesus is so mysterious that sanctification will just happen to us, like a kind of spiritual osmosis. The truth is it’s both. “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:12-13) So, we work it out, and God works it into us.

Greg Ogden’s book on “Transforming Discipleship” makes the case that the best context for working it out while God works it within is a small group. That’s not a new notion. We know from Scripture and experience that people are transformed most often when they have regular opportunities to talk and listen and share and work out their salvation among a small group of committed friends. For years small groups have been identified as a primary factor in a church’s effectiveness in not only making disciples, but growing disciples. What is new is Ogden’s assertion that a “triad”–a small group of just three people–is the best, most transforming context. In his study he compared small groups of various sizes, as well as one-to-one discipleship models, and discovered that triads worked best. He doesn’t say other sized groups are unimportant, but that triads provide unique advantages. Triads are more intimate than larger small groups, but not as limited or (sometimes) intimidating as a “Paul-Timothy” mentoring relationship. Ogden feels adding just one more person to a mentoring pair gives everyone more room to breathe and respond without undue pressure.

What do you think? Have you ever been in a “triad”? How did that experience differ for you from a small group of 5 to 10 people? Have you ever been in a mentoring relationship one-on-one? Where have you grown the most as a Christian?

“Pay It Forward”

I just used a clip from this movie in today’s sermon message (Ephesians 6:1-4) to talk about honoring your father and mother. That commandment can be a real challenge for adult children who have been exasperated by a parent who failed to “bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord,” and instead brought them pain and frustration. In “Pay it Forward,” the sub-plot of a mother forgiving her homeless, alcoholic mother is a powerful illustration of how to honor a parent. It doesn’t mean pretending the parent hasn’t failed or ignoring their destructive actions. It doesn’t mean you should necessarily trust them (some parents are not trustworthy), or try to feel affection for them. It means you make an intentional moral choice to treat your parents with dignity and courtesy and loyalty to their best interests. The scene where Arlene (played by Helen Hunt) seeks out her mother (played by Angie Dickinson) to tell her, “I forgive you,” is powerful because Arlene is under no illusions about her alcoholic mother, and yet she offers unconditional love. Tellingly, Arlene’s mother’s name in the film is “Grace.”

I encourage you to watch this movie not only for that scene, but for the overall theme that the One who loves us unconditionally and shows us profound grace can never truly be “paid back,” but we can “pay it forward” to others. Isn’t this what the Lord says will happen when we receive his love and are filled with his Spirit? He becomes in us “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14), overflowing into the lives of others. “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

“Same Kind of Different as Me” by Ron Hall and Denver Moore

Some books sneak up on you, taking you by complete surprise. When I began reading “Same Kind of Different as Me,” I wasn’t particularly drawn to the title, book jacket design, or summary blurb. And in the first few chapters I was even (at first) turned off by the every-other-chapter tag-team narrative between the two authors. But a fourth of the way into it, I was hooked. It was fascinating to read both perspectives on the same circumstances and events shared by these two men, who came at them from such different backgrounds. Ron Hall (a wealthy fine art dealer) and Denver Moore (an uneducated homeless man) were brought together, against all odds and even their own desires, by God’s grace and grand design into something truly special. This true story is more than a call to social action and a testimony of spiritual awakening. It teaches deep lessons of pain and forgiveness, disappointment and grace, prejudice and love without resorting to preachy self-righteous platitudes. Simply by telling what God did in their ordinary and imperfect lives, Hall and Moore expand our capacity and desire to put our hearts “out there,” and into the lives of others. We spend so much time trying to create fences and borders and walls and distance with those we don’t know or understand–we think to protect ourselves–only to discover that we’ve isolated ourselves from the very people God intends to use to transform us in marvelous ways. Read this book. You will not feel called to action so much as drawn to love, beyond your natural comfort zone and into the amazing possibilities of grace.

“What’s So Amazing About Grace? (visual edition)” by Philip Yancey

Here’s a small book ablaze with powerful images, text that literally spirals and runs off the page, compelling graphic design, and an abundance of font styles; And yet it manages to grab and focus your attention on a singular theme that is riveting enough–the scandalous grace of God. Based on his complete book by the same name (although that one uses only one font style), Philip Yancey weaves stories and poems and quotes and newspaper accounts into this wonderful primer on the nature of God’s grace. None of us is deserving of God’s love, but this book will test how deeply you really believe that central, Biblical truth.

I guarantee you will not be bored. In fact, I’m pretty sure you will be offended by at least a few of the pages. It reads like a deovtional guide, and I’d recommend stewing over each short selection instead of moving on too quickly to finish it in one reading (though it’s short enough to do that in about half an hour). I found my own self-righteousness revealed on more than one occasion. The very design of this book adds to the message and creates visual memories that will stick with you long after you finish it.

Here are just a few tidbits from this little book of treasures:

“Grace is not fair”

“The murdered. The murderer. Which does God love the most? He loves them both, equally.”

“The Bible’s many fierce passages on sin appear in a new light once I understand God’s desire to press me toward repentance, the doorway to grace…In other words, he awakes guilt for my own benefit. God seeks not to crush me but to liberate me.”

“Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more–no amount of spiritual calisthenics and renunciations, no amount of knowledge gained from seminaries and divinity schools, no amount of crusading on behalf of righteous causes. And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less–no amount of racism or pride or pornography or adultery or even murder.”

“God dispenses gifts, not wages.”

“Grace has about it the scent of scandal. When someone asked theologian Karl Barth what he would say to Adolf Hitler, he replied, ‘Jesus Christ died for your sins.’ Hitler’s sins? Has grace no limit? Grace has no limit.”

“The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith” by Timothy Keller

Just finished this short little book a week or two ago. For years after I began following Jesus I used to worry that I didn’t have a “favorite Bible verse.” It seemed like every good Christian did. I actually spent some days looking for one that could be mine, but they never really took (I don’t recommend Psalm 41:8, for instance). But in the last ten years, I think I have definitely found my favorite chapter in the Bible: Luke 15. Three parables by Jesus telling of something lost, something found, and the celebration that results. The third of these lost/found stories is the one usually called, “The Prodigal Son.” In this book, Pastor Tim Keller puts into words a central belief that I’ve had about this text: That is, that the older son in Jesus’ story is just as lost as his younger brother whose wild living leaves him laying in the gutter of a pig-pen. The older son obediently stays home to work for his father, but all the while he is angry, resentful, devoid of love, and he rebuffs his Father’s desire to “come in and celebrate.” Separation from God can be happening just as easily while you are sitting in a pew as it would elsewhere.

So then, this book identifies the two primary ways in which we sin and separate ourselves from our Heavenly Father: self-indulgence (the younger son who runs off and wastes what he has been given) or self-righteousness (the older son who stays home, but he does so with bitterness and manipulation in his heart). Sometimes we flit back and forth between the two–being self-indulgent in subtle ways, but then seeking self-righteousness as a way to assuage our guilt. Both ways are deadly if left unchecked. Only the Father’s undeserved, forgiving, hugging love that seeks us out where we are can save us from ourselves.

What about you? In that story (Luke 15:11-32), do you find yourself sinning mostly through self-indulgence or self-righteousness? Or what kind of mix of these two surfaces from time to time? How have you received your Heavenly Father when he has come looking for you? Do you accept his forgiving hug, or do you remain distant even while standing on his porch?