Discipleship

Hi Guys,

I read an article on the Christianity Today website a couple of weeks ago by Richard Foster and it really resonated with me, sometimes I know, I get the cart before the horse. It also reminded me of what Dave Andrews wrote in his book Plan Be that we have to be the change we want to see in the world, and for me I know I have no hope of being that change except when I'm closely connected with God and allowing him to change me.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the article

...Vast numbers of well-intended folk have exhausted themselves in church work and discovered that this did not substantively change their lives. They found that they were just as impatient and egocentric and fearful as when they began lifting the heavy load of church work. Maybe more so.

Others have immersed themselves in multiple social-service projects. But while the glow of helping others lingered for a time, they soon realized that all their herculean efforts left little lasting imprint on the inner life. Indeed, it often made them much worse inwardly: frustrated and angry and bitter.

Still others have a practical theology that will not allow for spiritual growth. Indeed, they just might see it as a bad thing. Having been saved by grace, these people have become paralyzed by it. To attempt any progress in the spiritual life smacks of "works righteousness" to them. Their liturgies tell them they sin in word, thought, and deed daily, so they conclude that this is their fate until they die. Heaven is their only release from this world of sin and rebellion. Hence, these well-meaning folk will sit in their pews year after year without realizing any movement forward in their life with God.

Finally, a general cultural malaise touches us all to one extent or another. I am referring to how completely we have become accustomed to the normality of dysfunction. The constant media stream of scandals and broken lives and mayhem of every sort elicits from us hardly more than a yawn. We have come to expect little else, even from our religious leaders—perhaps especially from our religious leaders. This overall dysfunction is so pervasive in our culture that it is nearly impossible for us to have a clear vision of spiritual progress. Shining models of holiness are so rare today.

Yet echoing through the centuries is a great company of witnesses telling us of a life vastly richer and deeper and fuller. In all walks of life and in all human situations, they have found a life of "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 14:17). They have discovered that real, solid, substantive transformation into the likeness of Christ is possible...

...God has given each one of us the responsibility to "grow in grace" (2 Pet. 3:18). This is not something we can pass off onto others. We are to take up our individualized crosses and follow in the steps of the crucified and risen Christ.

All real formation work is "heart work." The heart is the wellspring of all human action. All of the devotional masters call us constantly, almost monotonously, toward a purity of heart. The great Puritan divines, for example, gave sustained attention to this. In Keeping the Heart, John Flavel, a 17th-century English Puritan, notes that the "greatest difficulty in conversion, is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God. … Heart work is hard work indeed."

When we are dealing with heart work, external actions are never the center of our attention. Outward actions are a natural result of something far deeper, far more profound.

The ancient maxim Actio sequitur esse, "action follows essence," reminds us that our action is always in accord with the inward reality of our heart. This, of course, does not reduce good works to insignificance, but it does make them matters of secondary significance, effects rather than causes. Of primary significance is our vital union with God, our new creation in Christ, our immersion in the Holy Spirit. It is this life that purifies the heart; when the branch is truly united with the vine and receiving its life from the vine, spiritual fruit is a natural result.

This is why the moral philosophers could say, "Virtue is easy." When the heart is purified by the action of the Spirit, the most natural thing in the world is the virtuous thing. To the pure in heart, vice is what is hard.

It is no vain thing for us to return to our first love over and over and over again. It is an act of faith to continually cry out to God to search us and know our heart and root out every wicked way in us (Ps. 139:23-24). This is a vital aspect of the salvation of the Lord.

We are, each and every one of us, a tangled mass of motives: hope and fear, faith and doubt, simplicity and duplicity, honesty and falsity, openness and guile. God is the only one who can separate the true from the false, the only one who can purify the motives of the heart.

But God does not come uninvited. If certain chambers of our heart have never experienced God's healing touch, perhaps it is because we have not welcomed the divine scrutiny.

The most important, most real, most lasting work is accomplished in the depths of our heart. This work is solitary and interior. It cannot be seen by anyone, not even ourselves. It is a work known only to God. It is the work of heart purity, of soul conversion, of inward transformation, of life formation...

Love your thoughts,

Nigel