The four steps on the path to a whole life

Are you on the path to whole life?

I am so grateful that Jesus wants to give us life.

That’s the heart of what Jesus says when he says in John 10:10, “I’ve come that they might have life, and have it to the full.”

Don’t you love that? Jesus has come, that you may have life, and have it to the full.

It is possible to call yourself a Christian and not be stepping into that whole life that Jesus calls you to.

Jesus Himself says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Jesus is saying, it’s possible to call yourself a Christian, sing worship songs, play the religious game, but not enter into the life that only He brings.

A. W. Tozer. wrote:

“A notable heresy has come into being throughout evangelical Christian circles–the widely-accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need him as Savior and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to him as Lord as long as we want to.”

-I Call It Heresy (Harrisburg, Penn.: Christian Publications, 1974), p. 5f.

Do you get what he’s saying? That it can be tempting to want to find Jesus the Saviour but put off looking for Jesus the Lord. If we do that, we find that life looks a lot like it was before we found Jesus because we’re still being run by the fundamental beliefs that ran us before we found Jesus.

Once you come to faith in Jesus, the work the Bible calls ‘sanctification’ begins.

Sanctification is becoming more and more like Jesus, which means letting go of the beliefs which are not grounded in him and which are not producing whole life.

The belief tree

What this tree shows is that there is a journey we all have to take.

We have some very beautiful fruit and some pretty oddly-colored fruit. Our lives are full of good and bad stuff because our beliefs are full of right and wrong things.

We don’t know the difference and that, ultimately, we need to come to Jesus to have our beliefs checked.

The whole life He promises, only happens as we allow Him to change the wrong beliefs, the wrong stories we live from, and focus on Him, and live from His teaching.

In the last reflection I quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, “Inside all of us, there is a civil war going on.” I don’t know if you can identify with that. The Apostle Paul said, “The things I want to do, I don’t do. Things I don’t want to do, I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:19)

The real journey of faith is the journey to life

The journey of faith is the journey of taking Jesus hand, and letting Him gradually peel away the stuff that holds you back, and becoming more and more whole.

There is one metaphor in the Bible that is used positively and negatively, and it’s the same metaphor. Paul uses it negatively, and Peter uses it positively. It can be a bit confusing.

Look at 1 Peter 2:1-3, where Peter says, “Rid yourselves of all malice and deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” He’s saying, face the stuff that is causing brokenness in your relationships and get rid of that stuff. He said, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk.”

Peter is saying, “No, no. Stop feeding yourself crap.” Stop living on junk food, and fast food, and stuff that isn’t good for you. Stop filling your mind with stuff that is unhealthy and unhelpful.

He’s saying, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it, you may grow up in your salvation, now that you’ve tasted that the Lord is good.”

This is what A. W. Tozer was saying.

Too many people are finding salvation and then not growing up. Too many people are finding salvation, thinking, “Okay, that’s covered. I’ve got the eternity covered. Now I can continue to live on the basis of my wrong beliefs.”

Jesus comes and says, “Look. Well, you can do that, but there’s a whole life I want to introduce you to. I want you to be free.”

We want to be a church where we’re all increasingly becoming free, don’t we? We don’t want to play religious games, do we? We want to be real.

I love that Galatians 5:1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” He says, “Then stand firm then.” He’s saying, “It’s going to take some choices. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by yoke of slavery.”

Remember, Jesus said it was going to be the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth that would choke the life out of us (Matthew 13:22). Unless we come to Jesus and allow Him to change how we actually see things, we won’t be free. We’ll be continually in slavery. Jesus heart is that you’d be free. Isn’t that good news?

What does it mean to live your life focused on Jesus?

There are four things that we need to build into our lives if we are going to focus on Jesus.

• We’re going to need to learn to reflect,
• We are going to need to learn to recognize what is healthy and unhealthy.
• We’re going to need to make choices about doing things differently.
• And finally, we are going to need to actually do things differently.

I’ve created a simple diagram to capture these four things, and their central focus:

Sometimes it can be tempting to look for the spiritual, emotional moment that changes everything, but the Bible makes it clear that we actually have this process of growing up. It’s an ongoing journey.

There isn’t, this side of eternity, going to be this spiritual, emotional moment that all of a sudden deals with all your problems.

All four of the things in the diagram are what it means to actually, increasingly, live your life with Jesus as Lord.

As you can see in the diagram, everything comes from and around being focused on Jesus.

Reflect

I think it’s also true, every day, we need moments in our day where we stop. We need space to reflect, space just to stop. What we mean by reflection there or to reflect… It says, “Looking in the mirror, allowing space to examine the beliefs behind your thoughts and actions.”

You actually have to create space to think about Him. You are not focused on something unless you’re looking at it. The only way you can create space to look at Jesus is by stopping. God created us into a pattern of seven days with the idea of having a Sabbath.

Allowing space to look at questions like:

• Okay, how is the fruit of my life actually going?
• What is producing that fruit?
• What are the beliefs that I’m living from?
• What does it mean to be open to the whole life that God has for me through Jesus?

It was Socrates who said “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

I think one of the real challenges for us as a generation is there is more noise, there are more inputs for us in this generation than any generation before.

You can live your life without ever taking time to stop and take stock. You can fill your life with noise, can’t you?

What we don’t understand is that noise is actually shaping us. That noise is helping us become the person we are today.

Jesus said to His disciples, “I’ll set you an example.” As He was doing that, He was washing their feet. I think more than that, in His life, He was setting us an example in the way He did life.

We see in Luke 5:16. “Jesus often withdrew. Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”

How often do you withdraw? How often do you get the space you need to reflect?

It’s really hard to listen if you don’t stop. It’s particularly hard to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit unless you stop. Jesus assumed that when we pray… He said, “When you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray. Pray to your Father who is unseen.” (Matthew 6:6)

Jesus assumed that our prayer would not be a big performance, but it would be coming out of a space, out of space to reflect.

You won’t accidentally find space to reflect. I know I have to work at it. Often, my mind is all over the place. That’s why I need a journal. It helps me reflect. I also need a paper Bible when I am reflecting because it doesn’t have notifications that pop up, and I’m not tempted to look at Facebook. When I come to reflecting, a paper journal and a paper Bible is all I’m mature enough to manage.

You’ll need to work out how it is for you. Can I encourage you? Start to think about how do you build time into your weeks and into your days just to reflect. Then as you do that, you’ll discover that the Holy Spirit is going to help you recognize things.

Recognise

You can’t force an aha moment. You can’t say, “Holy Spirit, make me recognize this.

What does happen though, as you create space and as you are open, you will start to see things.

You’ll start to see in your life what is healthy and what is unhealthy. You won’t do that unless you previously have created the space to reflect, but then as you do and if you’re open, you’ll start to recognize things.

Now, that should not be a surprise. Jesus said that’s what would happen. He said, “When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own. He will speak only what He hears. He’ll tell you what is yet to come.” (John 6:13)

The Holy Spirit’s job is to guide you into truth. As you create space to listen to Him, you’ll start to see things differently. You’ll start to see yourself, and your family, and your work. You’ll start to see the good fruit and the bad fruit in your life, and start to see where some of that stuff comes from. We have to then take the journey of growth.

As Paul is praying for the Philippians (1:9-11) he writes, “This is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.” He is praying that they’ll see more and more, that they’ll be on the journey of seeing.

As they see more, they will be “able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness.”

Paul is making it clear that there’s something about creating space and growing in your awareness that will help you produce a better and healthier kind of fruit in your life.

Following Jesus is an ongoing process of recognising where you’re not following Jesus and as a result, discovering how you are not living in the whole life He’s got for you.

Input

You’ll see on the green arrows, there’s words on the diagram. As you start to recognize things, as you begin to glimpse your wrong beliefs, you’ll need some input.

God never intended for you to do this journey alone. That was never the plan.

Ephesians 4:11-12 indicated that Christ’s plan for his church was that there would be leaders with a diversity of gifts and abilities. Apparently we all need Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers. Why do we those different gifts? So that we would be equipped for our works of service, and the body of Christ may be built up.

As you do start to see the areas in your life where you need help, that’s where you will need to seek some input from people who are gifted differently to you and see the world differently to you.

Choose

As you start to see some of the ways that your life could be different, it will be important to make a choice.

Nothing is going to change in your life unless you make a choice to change it. You will continually be run by the root beliefs of your life unless you make a choice to change.

Choosing to do things differently will sometimes even feel wrong because the way you are living right now feels right. That’s why you’re doing it. You just react to life on the basis of your current beliefs. Living differently will sometimes feel a bit strange.

Paul says, “You were taught with regard to your formal way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires.” (Ephesians 4:22-24)

What he’s saying is there is part of you, that you need to be honest about, that actually wants to do the wrong thing. There’s part of you that wants to live from your old beliefs.

He’s saying, “Put that stuff off.” It’s a process. He’s made it clear, it’s a choice. “And be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Richard Foster wrote the book, The Celebration of Discipline. At the front of that book, he says

“Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant sanctification is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people or gifted people, but for deep people. The classical disciplines of the spiritual life call us to move beyond surface living into the depths. They invite us to explore the inner caverns of the spiritual realm. They urge us to be the answer to our hollow world.”

Hebrews (12:11-13) tells us… “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.” Sometimes the choices you need to make will feel a bit weird and even sometimes painful.

One of the disciplines that I’ve had to put in place is getting up earlier. I hate it. I don’t know if I’ll ever become a morning person, but I’ve discovered that my life works a lot better when I have enough space to talk to God. I also need to walk the dog. I need to do both of those things. That means I need to get up even earlier. Some people are naturally morning people. I wish I was.

For me, getting up earlier has become an important spiritual discipline. I don’t know what disciplines you need to put in place for where you are at, but that’s just been one for me. There will be disciplines that you need to put in place, like Hebrew says there, that ultimately produce a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who’ve been trained by them.

There’s a whole bunch of disciplines on the big red, yellow and green banners we have at church. The reason we have the Follow, Bless, and Share acronyms is because we think each one of those things are disciplines that we think are important as followers of Jesus.

One of the things I have learned is don’t ever try and do it all at once. The Holy Spirit is gentle. You watch. He’ll be wanting to work with you on, usually, just one thing.

Let Him work with you on that thing before He moves you on to the next thing.

Fellowship

Once you make choices, it’s really important to at least tell a friend you’ve made a choice, to have some fellowship. If you are just trying to choose to make changes without talking to anybody, you’re up against it.

You are designed to be in community. You need friends who understand some of the changes you’re wanting to make.

Act

Then you need to actually do it. It’s not rocket science. The danger is you can make all these choices, and go around, and have all these great inspirations, but not actually do it.

James says,

“Don’t merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but doesn’t do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in the mirror, and after looking at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they’ve heard but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do.”

Jame 1:22-25

Habit

Doing things repeatedly produces habits. God’s wired our brains so that, gradually, things take less effort, like learning to drive a car. Initially, it was terrifying, but gradually, the car learns to drive itself. As the neurons in your brain get wired, you don’t have to think so much about it.

70 to 90% of all you do and think is habit.

It’s one thing to have right ideas. It’s a different thing for your life to reflect Jesus. That will only happen as you make conscious choices to act.

Gradually, as you do that, you’ll develop new habits, and you’ll need to make less choices. It gets a bit easier.

Paul writes to Timothy:

… train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

1 Timothy 4:7-8

Train yourself to be godly in every area of your life.

No one can do it for you.

There’s no exam.

You don’t tick a box on the way into church or anything like that.

You can completely ignore this if you like, but I can promise you, as you open yourself to the whole life that Jesus calls you into, and you let Him take your hand, and face the stuff that holds you back, life gets better, better and better.

It doesn’t necessarily get easier, but it does get better as you do it more and more with Him.

Over the coming weeks I will reflect more on what it means to Reflect, Recognise, Choose and Act.