Sitting quietly in church service every Sunday, my legs swinging under my too big chair, I would listen carefully to the many sermons about what it meant to live for God. The disconnect in my child-sized heart was wide as I tried to understand what walking with God really meant. I learned it wasn't rules, but there would be actions. The actions kind of felt like rules, but rules meant works and I knew Salvation was by grace. Even non-Christians lived principled lives and sometimes Christians lived unprincipled ones. The book of James always presented a special problem because he spoke about works as the result of faith, so was it both? and if so, how? If I acted badly was that proof I didn't really have a faith?
Sitting quietly in church every Sunday, my adult legs crossed I would listen to many sermons about what it meant to live for God. The disconnect in my adult-sized heart was wide as I tried to understand what walking with God really meant. I learned it wasn't rules, but there would be actions. The actions kind of felt like rules, but rules meant works and I knew Salvation's by grace. Even non-Christians lived principled lives and sometimes Christians lived unprincipled ones. The book of James always presented a special problem because he spoke about works as the result of faith, so was it both? and if so, how? If I acted badly, was that proof I didn't really have a faith?
I would like to say this was a child sized problem and something that would easily be understood as I grew, but I found it to be a profound problem for me as an adult as well. I talk to enough people to know it is a problem for others as well.
The question on my mind was never what a life lived with God should look like, but more how to live that life. Knowing what didn't answer how. There were some areas in my life where I felt defeated and God's power seemed powerless. As it turns out, this was the greatest gift of a predicament to find myself in because it led to the question, "What does it actually mean to walk with God?"
This question exhausted me and brought me to my knees. I was a pretty buttoned up people pleaser and by nature, I am fairly outwardly obedient. Following rules is my forte and I always colored inside the lines, but it turns out that following rules doesn't change hearts and beliefs about God don't change hearts either. This is one reason why we have witnessed the chaos in the Church community in recent years.
We can 'give our lives to God' and remain fairly unchanged inwardly. What is inside us will always come out eventually. We can be inwardly envious, lustful, angry, prideful, bitter, full of hatred, self-serving, quick to gossip and get by with it pretty well as long as we put a good face on it. In fact, sometimes we even dress it up in judgments towards those who have what we secretly want and even be secretly happy about their failures. We mask our ugly interior by calling it 'righteous anger', 'being discerning', 'serving other's'(to hide our own emptiness), and sharing 'concerns'. We decide we are just hopelessly 'messy' and destined to live that way, but 'at least we're forgiven.' It happens all the time. This is how 'good' people fall hard like we have seen so often in recent years. We try to act better and dress up the places where we can't.
Beliefs can point us in the right direction, but just believing that God changes hearts does not make our heart change. Phrases like "Rely on His grace" and "Put your trust in the finished work of the Cross" are both true and beautiful but can feel trite when you don't know what that looks like in practical day to day life. What if you don't know how?
Jesus has so much better for us!! This is great news for those of us caught in the predicament I just described.
He doesn't want us to act more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, gentle or self-controlled. He wants us to actually BE all of those things and that can only come through Him. Gritting our teeth to have an outwardly good response was never His plan for us. In fact, that sounds an awful lot like the white-washed tombs mentioned in the Gospels.
A changed life doesn't come through a belief system or trying harder. It comes from being WITH God. Jesus is so loving that while He was dying, the most natural response for Him to have was to love us anyway. I've heard it said that it would have been harder for Him to be hateful than to be loving because loving is who He actually is. While in our world, Jesus often went away to be with the Father. The Father was His Source. Even Jesus, who is perfect, had a habit of being with the Father.
The pathway to change is through habits that put us in the way of God. The habits of our lives are important and without them, we won't grow and will never know what it is like to be truly transformed. They are the framework our faith is built on. Just like a natural relationship needs rhythms and structure to stay healthy, so does our relationship with God. Theologian, Dallas Willard, wisely says, "Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude, effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone."
The habits don't change us, but the habits quiet us down and put us in a place to encounter God. If our habits are the goal, they can become nothing more than an item to mark off a checklist. If they become the means to encounter and know God, change will come. For sure, not all at once and sometimes the growth may be very slow. So slow we may wonder if we are growing at all, but growth will happen. We can't spend time with God and not change. It's impossible. We always become like who we spend time with. We never become like those we don't spend time with. This is true in the natural world and in the spiritual world as well. It is when we are with Him that we learn to rely on His grace. It takes time. It takes trust and trust is built over time. As we sit with Him and allow Him to speak to our hearts, we truly begin to understand more and more the power of the Cross and what it means for our lives day to day.
It is in this place that He begins to tell us who we are and remind us Whose we are. He takes our fears and quiets them. Where we once had fear, love begins to grow. The deep things in us that drive the behaviors we so detest and can't get free from begin to dissipate. He makes us holy and whole; the two go hand in hand. He gives us people in our lives who can help us. He helps us to forgive. He heals the things in our hearts that drive our behaviors. He trades our self-protective ways of doing life and replaces them with Himself. He expands our ability to be with others in more authentic ways. He gives us His heart for others and we treat them with the honor they deserve as ones created in God's image. The more we learn to hear His voice, the more we hear Him speaking and we realize we really never were alone or on our own. He wants us to do life with Him; not for Him. Habits help us do this.
Here are some habits that I have found valuable in my own life that have put me in God's way:
-Sitting in silence with God (not expecting Him to speak and not speaking)
-Journaling prayer (Writing what I sense Him saying to me as well as my own thoughts of processing with Him)
-Walking outside and enjoying nature with God
-Turning my attention to Him throughout the day
-Learning to pray with Him (asking what is on His heart for me to pray)
-Interactive Bible Reading (God, what are you speaking to me through this passage?)
-Lectio Devina (This is a new one for me that I love) Find out more here: https://www.prayerandpossibilities.com/lectio-divina-prayer/
-Listening to worship music
-Using car time to pray
-Reading books (My favorite right now is Tyler Staton's Praying Like Monks; Living Like Fools. I also love this video:
-At night, we sometimes enjoy the Examen (evening prayer) on the Lectio 365 app while going to sleep
https://www.24-7prayer.com/resource/lectio-365/
All of these practices have been truly life changing for me. I find my attitudes changing, my outlook on things changing and places I used to find difficult to manage within me no longer need managing. I am convicted more often, but feel shame less often and my world is expanding. There are so many more ways than I have listed but these are just the ones that I have enjoyed personally so far. Ask Him what habits may work for you. Let's put ourselves in God's way!
John 15:4 NIV
Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
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