How can I change?

Well, we might not like to hear it, but the way to desire more of God is to come closer to where He pours out his grace. That is in the Church, where Jesus speaks through orthodox preaching, and feeds his people thru the sacraments.  The Fathers were adamant that sin is a terminal disease like cancer, and the only way to overcome it is to get what they called “the medicine of immortality” that comes in the humanity of Jesus through the sacraments. Feeding on Jesus through his Church and the means of grace it offers—Word and sacrament—is the best way to grow in God, which means becoming a true disciple.

The great temptation today is to think that we can be Lone Ranger Christians and grow outside of the orthodox Church. That is a myth that comes from the devil himself.

Herman Bavinck rightly proclaimed, “God and God alone is our highest good.”  Brought into covenant with the living God, we have been joined to the crucified and risen Christ. He is the Lord of the covenant and to him we owe all glory. In his covenant Lordship, Christ claims us for God.  We are his possession. Whatever we eat or drink, or whatever we do, we are to do all for the glory of God.

But, he is also the Servant of the covenant. In his covenant Servanthood, Christ claims God for us. Joined to Jesus Christ by faith, we enjoy communion with God and and forevermore. We are being called to become what we already are in Christ.

Joined to Christ by faith and experiencing already the blessings of heaven, suffering and self-sacrifice for Christ become the opportunity for glory. The mode of our life as believers is modeled after Christ’s life on this earth, which was a movement from humiliation to glory. The life of faith is not just Christ for us, it is also Christ by his Spirit in us.

I think we sometimes try hard to be a Christian when we haven’t quite understood the good news of the kingdom (Mark 1:15). The good news is not that you get yourself to a point where you qualify for acceptance by God by stopping some bad behaviour, or that you hold to some orthodox doctrines. Rather you repent that you have run your own life and done your own thing and you put your trust in Jesus as the king. In other words, you come under new management so Jesus is Lord now to direct your life. True repentance and faith are the two sides of the one coin. Seek and you shall find, said Jesus, who promises the Holy Spirit to those who ask.  There’s a big difference between doing Christian ‘stuff’ because you are motivated by guilt and doing such because the love of God has been poured out in your heart through the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5).

The answer is found in the comparison of Matthew 13:44-46 and Matthew 18: 21.  The first is the parable of the field with the hidden treasure and the parable of the pearl of great prize.  Seeing and knowing the incomparable value of the field and the pearl, the person sells everything they have in order to gain the prize.  The next passage is the story of the rich young ruler, who when asked to sell everything could not and would not do so. The difference?  One like Paul was able to see the “surpassing value of Jesus” (Phil. 3:8). The other was not. When we see the surpassing value of Jesus, we see him as the “one thing that is necessary” (Luke 10:42).  So this takes us back to what has been said above. It’s not only that I can see and encounter Jesus in the scriptures but its that there is an urgency to this. If I am not, then I will most likely settle for something far less than what Jesus has offered.  I will settle for outter courts living. I will drink old wine and say, “it’s enough.”

We may think that by doing Christian disciplines of reading the Bible, prayer, fasting, worshipping at a church, we become spiritually mature. But with all respects to these honorable activities, it is the Holy Spirit who changes our hearts and minds. Does this mean we have to leave all Christian practices? Not at all. But we need to understand that they are simply means to abide in Christ and to walk in the paths where the Spirit walks, where transformation happens. There is definitely a transformation of mind involved (Rom. 12:1-2), and God is more concerned about what kind of person I am and less what kind of deeds I do. Faith walks hand in hand with works (Jam. 2:26). So, we grow as we do and we do as we grow. We should not expect to reach maturity without tests and opportunities to apply what we have learned. We all need good examples of mature spiritual believers. Pray and find one around you.

All true Christians and believers in the gospel are disciples of Christ who desire God and seek his kingdom above all else. Yet all God’s children need to grow more in this holy desire and practice. They do this by listening to preaching that informs the mind and stirs the heart with God’s Word, meditating on that Word, exercising faith and obedience to the Word in the midst of inner conflicts and outer persecution, cultivating friendships with other godly people in the church, and continually looking to Jesus Christ as he is clothed in the gospel.

I just wrote a book about this! It’s entitled Hearers and Doers: A Pastor’s Guide to Making Disciples through Scripture and Doctrine. I wrote it because your question raises a real problem: why self-professing Christians aren’t growing more like Christ. 

I don’t have time to rehearse everything I do in the book here. But to answer your question speaking personally, I can say that what I desire above all is to be real before God. And, when I say “real,” I mean that I want to realize more fully what I truly am “in Christ.” 

For me, the Bible and Christian doctrine are not simply about the true, but about the good and the beautiful as well – in a word, reality. Why has God brought me into being? To get real! That is, to become the creature he has intended humans to become, persons who can fellowship with him, enjoy his company, and glorify him in all that they do (in case you missed it, I just sneaked in the answer to the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which I suppose could also be my short answer to your question!).

Perhaps “compelled” is not the right word here. I much prefer “persuaded” because it directs us to the Holy Spirit-inspired converted human heart.  We need to pray more for the Spirit of God to truly renew us and we need to be sure that we do not confuse our renewal with moral activism as though “doing more stuff” makes us better disciples.  God calls us to humble, quiet obedience in the ordinary, daily affairs of our life (in our families first, then in our churches and our communities).  We need to respect the different gifts, energies, and passions that God gives his people and not create priorities and hierarchies of obedience (for example, thinking that going overseas as a missionary is far more important than being a good Christian parent or student and therefore makes us better Christians).  However, some are called to follow Christ in what we might consider “radical ways” and we need to go where God calls us; he does not call us all to the same place (that’s why the church is a body of many and diverse members) and we must respect this variety of callings.  The best practical advice I can give to firm-up our life of Christian discipleship?  In addition to the staples—“read your Bible, pray every day”—read the accounts of the martyrs, especially modern ones, and then reread them.

One key way of making following God real in our everyday lives is to try to really live as if what we are taught to pray in the Lord’s Prayer is true. We pray for “God’s will to be done.” That means we should be seeking to do his will every day and in every way we can. One of the great texts in the Christian tradition is the Heidelberg Catechism, which teaches of the Christian that “Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.” The Holy Spirit changes us and empowers us more and more to do God’s will. And just as God cares about everything in creation, everything we have and do as well are impacted by this daily experience of dying to our sin and living for God. CS Lewis has a wonderful essay called “Work and Prayer,” and these are the two basic ways that God has designed for human beings to act in the world and have an impact.

By loving God above all and our neighbor as ourselves. That flame of love has to fanned daily by the Holy Spirit through the means noted in my response to number three. When we live to glorify God and serve others, we grow. In losing ourselves to God and others, we find ourselves. Life is rich, full, good, satisfying.