The dry soul

Since this April, I have diligently pursued the spiritual disiciplines.  Since then, I have noticed a difference in my walk with God.   I have gained much more insight into many areas of faith. My latest writing project, The  Faith Matrix, my workbook  Prayer- the Adventure,  as well as my course on spiritual disciplines have all grown out of this interest.   God continues to open up new ideas in this area, and I hope soon to write about ideas that may tie it all together. 

One thing I am finding, though is  that spiritual disciplines are not easy.  Just as your body gets tired from exercise, and your mind gets tired from study, your spirit can get tired from  seeking God. The spiritual life is no bed of roses.  It involves a lot of down and dirty wrestling with sin,  judgementalism,  impure motives, and a host of other problems.

There's a famous painting called The Temptation of St Andrew. He was one of the first hermits  in church history.  He's sitting on a rock praying, and all around him are hosts of devils of every kind, trying to tear him away. I haven't been a hermit,  but even  at home, trying to pray, I have experienced a few of their brothers bothering me. 

The hardest part prayer is when you seek some experience of God, and come up dry. Some times He seems to be right at your shoulder. Other times,  your prayers seem to be careening off the ceiling. 

I try to think of what to do. Maybe I should get my guitar and sing. Maybe I should just read more, pray harder,  study a little deeper, get quieter, etc.  But none of this works. There seems to be nothing I can do.  Nothing.

As unpleasant as it is to be separated from the feeling of God,  though, there is one good part.  When I realize that there is nothing I can do, I also realize that there is nothing I need to do.  We are not promised heavenly bliss all the time, nor that we will have ecstatic experiences. If it  happens,  then good. If not--well, so what?

The greatest danger in these dry spells is losing our focus. My focus shouldn't be on what feels right, but on what is right.  Faith is not in a feeling, it's in God.  Sometimes  God takes away the feeling so I can learn to trust Him.  

When my kids were younger, we'd go on a trip, and they would pepper me with questions.  "How much farther?" they would ask.  "Where are we now?" I'd give them the road atlas.  "What state is this?" they would say.

I don't blame them for being curious, but after a while, it could be annoying.  I would want to shout to the back seat  "If you're not driving, you don't need to know!"    If God is in control of my life, then why do I need to know what happens next?   Could it be that I don't fully trust him?   I want constant reassurance because My faith is not what it should.  The only way it can improve is to sit back and allow God to reveal Himself when and how He wants to.  He knows my need for His presence and He will show Himself when I need it. 

Even when I am a dry soul, I'm God's.  Even when I don't feel Him, I can believe  in  Him.  The feelings may come later.  I can trust Him today. 

A Fat Boy's Guide to Fasting

I'm getting ready to teach on spiritual disciplines, so I have been studying on their meaning and practice.  The third most mentioned of the spiritual disciplines, behind prayer and Bible study, is fasting. 

Personally I hesitate to  teach on it.  After all, what does a fat boy know about fasting?  I'm beginning to think that the only people who understand what fasting really is or can be are fat people.  We understand food, and its seductive appeal better than anyone else. 

 A great deal is written about fasting. Nevertheless , it is the least practiced of them all.

There is a lot about fasting in the Bible and in church history.  Jesus spoke about it in the Sermon on the Mount.  What He wrote seemed to be  saying that He expected us to do it,  and not just occasionally,  but regularly.

Some have argued that Christians don't need to fast. They argue this on the basis of a comment Jesus made when his enemies challenged his disciples for not fasting.  "When the bridegroom is with you, you don't fast."  In other words,  who fasts at a party?  That doesn't mean we don't fast the rest of the time.

First of all, I want to dismiss some of the mistaken ideas about fasting. 

Many in the church have been taught about fasting as a kind of "super prayer."  If you don't get an answer from  God by simply asking Him, then we go on a hunger strike until we get it.  Not only does it sound irrational, it doesn't even seem Christian.  Is God like some prison guard who has to make concessions?  Yet this idea of fasting is common among us.

Another misconception is that we go on fasts to gain some kind of deeper spirituality.  We don't think we're deep enough spiritually, so we go on a fast so that we can hear God's will better.  Again, why?  Why not just hop on one foot for an hour to gain spiritual enlightenment? 

Another misconception about fasting is that it is a form of showing how sorry we are for our sins.  Again,  this does not seem rational.  If people starve themselves in our modern culture to show grief, then why do we bring so many cakes and pies to people's houses when they lose a loved one?  It seems to me we should be taking food out of their house, if starvation is a form of grief.    It may be for some people, but not for most of us.

No, fasting is most important for our lives,  perhaps vitally important, but for none of the reasons we think it is.  I am becoming increasingly convinced that we must fast, and fast on a regular basis.  But the reason for it is much simpler than any of these--we fast because we are addicted to indulgence.  We depend upon worldly necessities and pleasures to get us through the day.  The only way we can depend upon God is to stop thinking of food, and other pleasures as so necessary to us.  That can only come when we voluntarily go without them.  We buffet our bodies  (that's in the discipline sense, not the all-you-can-eat restaurant sense)  for the purpose of showing our bodies who is in charge.   Our addiction to fleshly desire is our ruin. We don't follow God, because it affects our compulsion to eat and eat well.

Let me give you an example.  A friend of mine had recently become a Christian.  His occupation was driving a beer truck.  I won't argue whether or not it's unchristian to drive a beer truck, but in his mind it was. Nevertheless, he kept driving it.  His reason  "A man's gotta eat."  

True enough. But what if we didn't.  Suppose we could live on a lot less than we think we could.  Suppose we discovered that we could live on thirty dollars worth of groceries a week, instead of a hundred. Think what that would free up for us.  We could do what we wanted,  take whatever job we wished, because we were freed from the necessity of supporting our self-indulgence habit.  We could drop out of our job, start a church or an orphanage, or just spend more time in prayer and fellowship.  Freed up from the necessity of a full-time job we hated, we could do what we wanted. There would be sacrifices, of course, but so what?  We'd be giving up minor pleasures, but we would be gaining major ones.

Yet faced with the prospect of giving up desserts or television or chocolate, our minds go into panic mode. We behave like heroin addicts on the prowl for another fix.  I saw one T shirt which said "Just give me the chocolate, and no one will get hurt!"   We, especially we obese folk,  are not far from that.  That's why fasting scares us.

Fasting is simply the realization that if we are to practice positive disciplines such as prayer, quiet times,  and exercise  with regularity and zeal, then we must also practice the negative disciplines of fasting,  simplicity, and  dieting.  We cannot be in control of our positive actions while allowing other portions of us such as our  physical hunger,  to act like a spoiled brat, throwing tantrums and demanding whatever it wants. 

It's not just hunger, it's all our appetites.  Why do otherwise intelligent men and women get caught in stupid sexual sins?  Why do some people feel compelled to take on crippling debt over a slick car or massive home, when common sense would say they did not need them?  It is because we can no longer tell the difference between our needs and our wants.

Fasting is a spiritual discipline that teaches us to say "no" to our appetites.  Like Sabbath keeping and tithing, the real power of it is to teach us what we do not need,  and to let us know what we do need.  It is our way of saying to our bodies that they are not in charge.

Seen in this way, fasting is a tremendous boon to our spiritual lives.  But occasional fasting will not do this, only regular fasting.  Regular fasting is establishing regular rhythms of eating and not eating for the purpose of learning that with God's help we can do anything. 

A Church or a Chapel?

The word “chapel” was believed to have derived from a holy relic—the capa or capella of St. Martin of Tours.  This relic was carried into battle by the French army as a token of God’s favor. The priests who carried the relic were called capellians, or in modern vernacular chaplains. Later, other holy relics went with them.  When these totems were not employed in battle, they were stored in a reliquary called a chapel.  In time, these reliquaries became the main place of worship for the noble families.  The keepers of the reliquaries performed religious services for the benefit of the nobles who owned the buildings, doing their weddings, baptisms, funerals, and other services.  In time these priests, called chaplains, became very powerful.

Chapels, were not churches, though.  In fact, in many ways they were the opposite of churches.  The Greek word for church—ecclesia-- means a group of people called by God to meet together, to seek Him and do His will.  God brought His people together without regard to race, status, education or background.  In the early church, anyone who wanted to could come together and seek Him.  Farmers and lords met together on equal footing.  Not only that, but they also had an equal calling to do God’s work. The early church was called the Body of Christ, an organic structure in which God distributed His spiritual gifts and divine personality,  for the purpose of furthering His kingdom on earth.   The people who met together were not related by blood or nationality, but by faith and love. It was an army, not a hospital, dedicated to doing and finding His will together.

Chapels in the medieval context were not for all people—but for the private use of the royal family. The blessings of the chapel were not for everyone, but only for those who the royal family said ought to be blessed.  Power and authority did not flow from God to the king, but from the king to God, or at least to the representative of God’s house who he commanded to be there.  The chapel existed for the king’s benefit. The church exists for God’s.

Now for the big question--which churches are churches and which are chapels?

Looking at the religious landscape there are churches on every corner==many having only one or two families attending.  Most of their people have the same last names.  Many have less than seventy attendees on a Sunday. 

Big churches are not really that different. They may have more last names on the role, but there are usually a few influential leaders who have real power.  Often, it is a single, lordly pastor who controls everything.  On paper, they exist for lofty goals—winning people to Christ, transforming lives, feeding the poor and the hungry, but practically they are institutions whose real goal is to stay alive as institutions, supporting big preachers, big programs, and a big organization, that must constantly be fed with people and money to stay alive for the purpose of being whatever the lords of the church want it to be. 

Before we can decide whether a church is a chapel or a church, we need to ask what conditions are necessary for a church to be a chapel.

Before a church can be a chapel, there has to be the assumption among its leaders that there is nothing unique about it. If we think we are the only true church in town, it is harder to be a chapel. Our consciences would convict us that we had better open our doors for anyone, because there is no one else who will.  However, if we think we are just one of a hundred other churches, who have no unique message, then we can assume that some other group will take care of the rest.  Like the segregated churches of the old South, we can assume that someone else will minister to the inferior people, and we do not have to do it.

Second, we have to assume that the reason our church exists is for our comfort.  It exists for the same reason our living room exists, for a place we can relax, be ourselves and do whatever we want.  Our living room is not for refugees or for the homeless, but so that we can feel comfortable at home.  We can say “this is mine, and I’ll do whatever I want here.”  Only if we think of the church as our own private property can we think that we can get away with keeping outsiders out.

Third, we have to assume we should have nothing to do with the rest of the world except to impose our will upon it. When St. Francis of Assisi had the audacity to go preach to the Muslims instead of killing them during the height of the Crusades, the church in general was highly displeased.  The only time the medieval priests went forth was to wage war on their neighbors. Then they would trot out their holy relics as a sign that God was on their side, not the enemy’s.  Others were the enemy, not the mission field.  It is not much different from churches who march against abortion and gays, but otherwise stay within their walls.

Finally, in order for a church to be a chapel, the flow of power has to be from the church to God, not God to the church.  In other words, there must be a higher source of power in the church than the Bible and the Holy Spirit.  In a chapel, there is always a king or noblemen who wields the real power, while the other peons sit back and let them. 

The church is God’s instrument for doing His will on the earth. The chapel is an instrument for legitimizing our work in the eyes of God.  Maybe we need to ask whether the place where we worship is a church or a chapel. 

Meat and Milk: Spiritual Formation in Mature Believers, Part 2

This is the second part of a three part post taken from a lecture in the Voices of New Life Series.  If you haven't seen the first one, you might look at it before reading this one. 

Modern Stages of the Christian Life

Modern discipleship differs from that of the ancient church in two significant places.  First, baptism is either performed in infancy or at conversion, not after an extended period of catechesis.  Because catechesis is performed either before baptism or not at all, many are baptized who never grasp the full significance of the faith, or the duties that are connected to the faith.  Second, when actual training is done, it is presumed to be complete in a relatively short period of time.  The contemporary church has programs for study and enrichment, but they are generally without a formal goal or direction.  Seekers, learners, and disciples learn together with the same material.  As a result, the seekers often are at a loss to understand what is happening, while the mature believers find it difficult to stay alert.  It is a “one-size-fits-all” approach to discipleship.

Modern church discipleship, when it is attempted at all, is a relatively short-term process, aimed at developing productive believers who serve the institutional church We hurry disciples though the steps at a pace the early church would consider insanely fast, turning out like-minded believers like cars off an assembly line.

One of the best and most effective examples of modern Christian discipleship comes from Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church.[16]  Warren uses a baseball diamond model to illustrate his church’s disciple making process.  The bases represent knowing Christ, growing in Christ, Serving Christ, and Sharing Christ.  Moving through these four stages usually takes about two years.  Sharing Christ is the final stage and the apex of spiritual maturity.  At the end, the mature Christians are expected to evangelize and disciple others, and keep the chain going.

The Navigators, perhaps the best known and the most effective discipleship ministry in the contemporary church, has a wide variety of excellent materials for discipleship and Bible study.  Fruitfulness, in the form of making disciples, is generally considered the end of the discipleship road.  Lorne Sandy, former president of the Navigators, listed the three stages of Christian discipleship as Identified with Christ, Obedient to Christ, and Fruitful in Christ.[17]

Campus Crusade for Christ, founded by Bill Bright in 1951, uses eleven “transferable concepts”—“How to be sure you are a Christian,” “Experience God’s Love and Forgiveness,” “Be filled with the Spirit,” “Walk in the Spirit,” “Be a fruitful witness,” “Introduce others to Christ,” “Fulfill the Great Commission,” “Love by faith,” “Pray with Confidence,” “Experience the joy of giving,” and “Study the Bible effectively.”  Two transferrable concepts deal with assurance of salvation, two with the Holy Spirit, three with sharing, two with prayer and Bible study, one with love and one with stewardship.[18]  Each book is intended to be used in one or two weeks, for a total of between eleven and twenty-two weeks of discipleship—about six months.

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has a four week Christian life and Witness course.  The final lesson of this course focuses on sharing the faith. [19]

Let us put Warren et. al. into the same rubric as the others.

Table 5.  Stages of Christian life with contemporary examples

	Repentance	New Birth		Eternity
1 John 2	Children	Young Men		Fathers
1 Cor 3	Carnal			Spiritual
Mapping	Seeker	Servant		Settler
3rd C. Church	Seeker	Learner	Kneeler	Disciple
Warren et. al.	Knowing	Growing	Serving	Sharing

The last line of the chart demonstrates the difference between the modern evangelical understanding of Christian discipleship and the Biblical/historic/traditional understanding of discipleship.  Generally speaking, the discipleship of the evangelical church is directed at training people to share Christ and build up the immature believer.  Looking it in human terms, it would be like saying that the purpose of human existence is to have more babies.  While this is certainly a part of why we are here, that cannot be all.

This modern formula of spiritual formation is reflexive—that is, it is focused backwards upon itself.  We are not just called to make more disciples, but to make better ones.  If we only focus on the process of making more, and do not focus also on the process of making better disciples, then the quality of Christian discipleship will necessarily erode over time, and the church becomes more shallow and less effective.

The ancient church apparently believed that something more was necessary.  The mature disciples were trained in ways that were not even shared with the young.  Something was being passed down from mature believer to mature believer that was not part of the process of sharing.

This statement is not intended to suggest that the early church did not evangelize, or that we should not evangelize.  On the contrary we most emphatically should!  Nor am I suggesting that programs such as Warren’s, Billy Graham’s, and the Navigators’ are wrong or need to be corrected in their discipleship of new believers.  If there is a deficiency today, it is in the church’s deficiency to fully consider what mature discipleship entails.  It requires more than faith sharing, more tithing, more even than becoming good church members.  True discipleship means a whole life change and the maintenance of spiritual health for a lifetime.

The irony of our modern emphasis on making new members is that it has not worked.  No matter how much effort we put into evangelistic methods, the majority of our people never spiritually reproduce.  Even a highly effective evangelistic church draws more believers than unbelievers.  Christians who are supposed to be mature still cannot and do not share Christ.

The reason for our failure is not that we have not been told to share Christ, but that we have been told little else.  God requires Christians to press on to a deeper maturity.  In the Great Commission Jesus said:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."[20]

Going, making disciples, and baptizing are the first three stages of a four-stage process which also involves teaching people to behave like Jesus.  Our goal is not simply to produce new disciples but to produce better disciples—fully incorporated into the Body of Christ, trained to live as Christians, aware of the presence of God in their lives and capable of standing until the end of their age.