Category: Spiritual Growth (Page 1 of 4)

The Valley of Despair

September 3, 2024 / BroClo-Blogger-2022 / 0 Comments

In his book Atomic Habits, author James Clear uses the phrase “Valley of Disappointment” to describe an early phase of trying to change a habit. People set goals and implement small changes, but after weeks or months see little progress. They get discouraged during this time and quit trying. This period of frustration and apparent lack of progress is the “Valley of Disappointment.”

Often Christians experience a similar phenomenon. Maybe they’ve lost a family member to death. Maybe they’ve suffered a faith crisis. Maybe it’s persecution or a life-altering illness. Maybe it’s disappointment in others or struggle with persistent sin. Regardless of the specific problem, Christians find themselves at a turning point with no choice but to start over again. They make the necessary changes and press on. Only to find themselves in a rut, with no resolution in sight.

It’s less about disappointment than despair – a feeling of loss or hopelessness, worrying that either God won’t answer or that he’s already answered with a resounding “No!” Less a Valley of Disappointment than a Valley of Despair. That’s not to minimize the importance of good habits, nor is it to suggest that the frustrations of habit building don’t sometimes lead to despair. It does, however, remind us that in Christ we’re dealing with matters that touch the essence of who we are as people made in God’s image, and with matters that have eternal implications.

Persistence is the key to nurturing good habits and working through the Valley of Disappointment. Likewise, perseverance (the spiritual version of persistence) sees us through the Valley of Despair. Part of perseverance is simply waiting. “My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him” (Psalm 62.5). The greater the despair, the greater the need for patience. “I am weary with my crying, my throat is parched, my eyes fail while I wait for my God” (Psalm 69.3).

This kind of waiting, however, is anything but passive. “Wait for the Lord and keep his way” (Psalm 37.34a). It’s not mere resignation, but full of hope. “And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you” (Psalm 39.7). Such patient perseverance is rewarded by God. “The Lord favors those who fear Him, those who wait for his lovingkindness” (Psalm 147.11).

The Valley of Despair is as dark a place as imaginable. It’s full of frustration and uncertainty. It’s a place where Satan exploits our doubts and fears and convinces us that continuing the course is futile.

Faith knows better, for in faith, we “rejoice in hope, persevere in tribulation, and devote ourselves to prayer” (Romans 12.12).

Seeking Light

August 21, 2024 / BroClo-Blogger-2022 / 0 Comments

If you’ve ever had a garden, you’ve probably noticed that many plant varieties are phototropic, which means that they’re light seeking. The plants lean toward the sun as they grow. Some are heliotropic – a specific kind of phototropism – meaning that they bend or shake to track the sun’s movement during the day and maximize each plant’s exposure to the sun. Sunflowers are an especially good example.

Light is central to God’s creation. On the first day of creation, after creating the heavens and the earth, he made light and darkness. On the fourth day of creation, he made the celestial bodies to govern the various cycles of light and dark, as well as seasonal changes.

Light is central to God’s moral creation. The apostle John said, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1.5). The psalmist understood God as the source of all light: “For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light” (Psalm 36.9). God doesn’t just provide light, he is light.

If God is light, it shouldn’t surprise us that his moral light is necessary for spiritual growth. Just as plants need light to survive and thrive, we need God’s light to be spiritually healthy. Sometimes his light is for illumination (Psalm 18.28; 119.130). Sometimes it’s for guidance (Psalm 43.3; 1 John 1.7). Sometimes it symbolizes blessing (Psalm 4.6). Sometimes it represents moral purity and righteousness (Psalm 112.4; Ephesians 5.8-9). Sometimes it’s the opposite of moral darkness (Romans 13.12; Ephesians 5.8-9, 13; 1 Peter 2.9). The concept covers a lot of territory in the Scriptures.

But the critical point for believers is that we must always seek the light. Yes, we need light to survive, but we must seek it. Plants do this because they’re programmed to do it. Humans, on the other hand, have a choice.

Most people are familiar with the great affirmation of God’s love in John 3.16. But the verses that follow are equally important, because they explain what it means to believe and receive the promise of eternal life. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” (John 3.19-21).

Do I hate darkness enough to seek the light? Do I love the light enough to expose myself to its penetrating power? Do I love God enough to seek his truth, practice it, and accept his judgments about my way of life?

These are questions we all need to ask.

Lincoln’s Filing System

August 13, 2024 / BroClo-Blogger-2022 / 2 Comments

At 6-feet, 4-inches tall, Abraham Lincoln was America’s tallest president. As if that weren’t enough, he wore a silk stovepipe hat that added an additional 7 or 8 inches of height. Add a couple more inches from the heels of his boots and he appeared to be about 7 feet tall.

Lincoln’s hat wasn’t just a fashion statement. He kept important papers in it as well.^[1] He was known to store speeches, official government documents, and personal correspondence in his hat. He once apologized to a politician, Richard S. Thomas, for failing to respond to a letter because he put it in the wrong hat and forgot about it.

We all have our own filing systems. We may not put things in our hats, but many of us stack things on our desks. Some have carefully organized file cabinets. Some store things on their computers or in the cloud. Some throw things in a box. Some just throw everything away and hope for the best.

There are some things, however, that should be filed away safely, permanently, and instantly available. God’s word is one such thing.

Job said, “I have not departed from the command of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23.8). For him, God’s words were his sustenance, even more so than the food on his table. God’s words were a priceless commodity to Job.

To that same end, the psalmist said, “Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You” (Psalm 119.11). Like Lincoln, the psalmist had a special place for his most important stuff. Unlike Lincoln, they weren’t in his hat, they were in his heart. The psalmist internalized the words of God and made them a part of himself.

To love the Lord will all our heart, soul, and might (Deuteronomy 6.5) requires nothing less. If we love the Lord, we’ll love his word. If we treasure our relationship with the Lord, we’ll treasure his word. If we depend upon the Lord, we’ll depend upon his word.

To treasure God’s word in our heart starts with our habits. We need to read God’s word. We need to meditate upon it. We need to memorize it. We need to take notes about it. We need to spend time with it. We need to cherish it, prize it, use it, share it, talk about it, pray about it, and thank God for it.

Where do you store the word of God?

^[1] https://historyfacts.com/us-history/fact/abraham-lincoln-stored-important-documents-in-his-top-hat/

Cake or Bread?

July 24, 2024 / BroClo-Blogger-2022 / 0 Comments

“Religion is meant to be bread for daily use, not cake for special occasions.”
Anonymous

Religion is a system of beliefs about God that produces worship and a particular lifestyle. Worship and ethics are the fruits of religion. When rightly understood and practiced, religion is a noble and necessary aspiration. When wrongly understood and practiced, it becomes an epidemic disease that afflicts us all.

Religion, in biblical terms, is how we express our beliefs. That may be a good thing or a bad thing. The Book of James uses the word “religion” twice in back-to-back verses, once in a negative sense, and once in a positive sense.

First, James says that if our religion doesn’t improve our morals, it’s a worthless religion. “If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless” (James 1.26). A religion that allows or encourages immoral thoughts, words, or actions isn’t much of a religion.

Second, James says that our religion should nurture compassion toward others. “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1.27). The Bible emphasizes that if we love God, we’ll love others as well. In fact, if we don’t love others, we’ve demonstrated that we don’t really love God. That should be obvious, but it’s something we all seem to struggle with.

Both of these statements from James remind us that religion is more than just an occasional check in at church. It’s the daily discipline of using our beliefs to shape our character. We’re either eliminating the harmful residue of sin or nurturing the beneficial effects of love. It’s not cake, it’s bread.

Perhaps the problem with much religion is that it’s practiced only on Sunday mornings, only if our parents are looking, or only if the preacher’s standing nearby. True religion takes the fiber of faith and weaves it into a cloak of daily good.

Is your religion cake or bread?

Deep Roots

May 22, 2024 / BroClo-Blogger-2022 / 1 Comment

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,
But he who hates reproof is stupid.
A good man will obtain favor from the LORD,
But He will condemn a man who devises evil.
A man will not be established by wickedness,
But the root of the righteous will not be moved.
Proverbs 12.1-3

Have you ever tried to get rid of a stubborn weed or a sapling or a bush that has sprung up in the wrong place? No matter how hard you try, it seems to win. You cut it; it grows back. You spray it; it comes back.

Why do weeds so often win? Simple. They have deep roots. If you don’t kill the roots, you won’t kill the plant, and if you don’t kill the plant, it’ll always come back.

However, the same thing is true of desirable grasses and flowers and shrubs and trees. If they have well developed root systems, they’ll also persist.

The third verse of the above text suggests that righteousness, by the Lord’s design, is intended to operate the same way. The first three sayings in Proverbs Chapter 12 contrast various manifestations of righteousness and wisdom against various manifestations of wickedness. The righteous love discipline and knowledge, but the evil is too lazy to learn. The righteous are blessed while the wicked are cursed.

Then in verse three Solomon unexpectedly reverses the order: The wicked person will not be established, whereas the righteous person has a firm root. This reads much like Psalm 1.3-4 with its imagery of the righteous as a well-planted, well-watered tree, and the wicked as chaff to be blown away by the wind. By reversing the order, I think Solomon wishes to emphasize the permanence of the righteous in God’s economy.

During the spring and summer, many of us are thinking about stubborn weeds, and with good reason. Solomon suggests that we should also think of stubborn righteousness, also with good reason. Not obstinate righteousness, but resolute righteousness. The righteous simply never give up in their righteousness, and in that righteousness, they lay deep roots.

How deep is your righteousness?

Pen & Paper

March 13, 2024 / BroClo-Blogger-2022 / 0 Comments

A fellow-preacher and friend of mine is currently vacationing in Ireland. While in Dublin, he visited the Chester Beatty, a library and museum which houses a document called “p46,” the oldest known manuscript of the apostle Paul’s letters. It’s a collection of most of Paul’s letters dating to the middle of the second century, discovered in Cairo Egypt in the 1930s.

The earliest reference to a collection of the apostle Paul’s letters is in the New Testament itself in 2 Peter 3.15-16. There, Peter says to “regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

Peter was writing to an audience in Asia Minor (what we call Turkey) that was already acquainted with Paul’s writings. Peter equated Paul’s letters with “Scripture” (v. 16). So then, by about AD 64, Paul’s letters were already being collected and circulated in Asia Minor. The existence of manuscript p46 means that within a century, Paul’s letters were being published and distributed across the Roman Empire at least as far away as Egypt.

One interesting feature of manuscript p46 is the presence of reader’s marks – strokes and dots – written with a different ink than in the original text. Apparently, whoever owned this document made notations in it. They appear to be efforts to divide the text into smaller units (much like our chapter and verse divisions). Marking in your Bible is not a modern invention, it appears to be a long-held tradition for serious Bible students.

One of my great fears about modern publishing is the disappearance of physical documents. These days, everything is “virtual” – real documents, but only in electronic form. Much of what we know about ancient Christianity and Judaism comes in the form of physically written documents preserved over time. Once an electronic document is destroyed, they’re almost impossible to recover. At least with pen and ink, fragments are often left behind for us.

I’m thankful that God in his providence used pen and ink to preserve His Word in a permanent form. I’m thankful that ancient brothers and sisters in Christ loved their Bibles enough to mark in them. I’m thankful that something as simple as a stick with some ink at one end can be such a powerful instrument in God’s eternal plans.

I encourage you to do two things. First, don’t be afraid to write in your Bibles. It’s a great memory and study tool. Many electronic Bibles allow you to do this. Second, the next time you’re in your Bible, take a moment to thank God for preserving it for us to read today.

Forward Progress

February 21, 2024 / BroClo-Blogger-2022 / 0 Comments

Two men were riding up a long, steep hill on a tandem bicycle. It was required a huge effort, and when they finally reached the top, the man in front said, “I honestly didn’t think we were going to make it! I was afraid we were about to go backward!”

The man in back said, “Me either! That’s why I had my foot on the brake the whole time!”

It’s a humorous reminder that if we want to move forward, we must first stop moving backward. That’s especially true in our spiritual lives.

1 Peter 2.1-3 says, “Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.”

Peter gives us an insight into the nature of spiritual growth. The main idea in this sentence is that they grow in respect to salvation. Let’s look at four things Peter says about it.

First, spiritual growth requires that we get rid of some old habits. Peter gives us a short sampling of them here: malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander. It’s interesting that all of these involve sinful attitudes or behavior against others. Not only do these things stand between us and other people, but also between us and God, between us and our pursuit of growth.

Second, spiritual growth requires that we’re hungry. Here, Peter says our hunger should be for God’s word. We need the intensity of a baby’s appetite. At a practical level, we regularly study the Bible and look for opportunities to do so. Only God’s word can fill us and nourish us.

Third, it requires that we look forward. Here, salvation is future (our final salvation with God in heaven). It’s also something toward which we grow. We should be getting further and further from this world while drawing closer and closer to the world above and beyond.

Finally, Peter tells us that the motivation is God’s kindness. The kindness of God is the sum of his grace, love, is mercy, and care for us. If we have experienced the kindness of God to any degree, we owe it to him to pursue spiritual growth.

Where are you in this process?

When Your Feet Hit the Floor

September 20, 2023 / BroClo-Blogger-2022 / 0 Comments

“Be the kind of woman who, when her feet hit the floor in the morning, causes the Devil to say, ‘Oh no – she’s up!’”
Joanne Clancy, Irish Author

I don’t have any context for this quotation, so I’m not sure if it’s meant in a positive way or a negative way.

On the one hand, it could be referring to some women who are so thoroughly bad, that even the Devil trembles. Biblically, I think of King Ahab’s evil wife, Queen Jezebel. I think of their daughter Athaliah, who killed her own grandchildren so she could become queen. I think of Herodias, who engineered the beheading of John the Baptist. Some folks are so bad that they can give Satan a run for his money.

I prefer to think of it in a good way, and not just about women. I’d like to think that when we Christians arise each day – when our feet hit the floor – we’re prepared to do battle with Satan.

On one hand, that’s a scary proposition. In Ephesians 6.12, Paul said “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Satan has power and lots of help.

On the other hand, we have God’s power and weaponry available. In this same text, Paul goes on to describe in detail the armor of God, which is at our disposal. He says in verse 13 “Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”

Elsewhere, in 2 Corinthians 10.4, Paul also said that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.” Christians have the most potent arsenal available. Each day presents an opportunity to war mightily against Satan and his forces.

Finally, we need the assurance that Satan can be withstood. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,” was James’ counsel (James 4.7). Ultimately Satan prefers battles he knows he can win. He has little interest in a battle he knows he will lose. Stand firm, and Satan will run.

For today and every day, make the Devil regret that you ever got out of bed! When your feet hit the floor, be ready for a fight!

Your Happy Place

August 16, 2023 / BroClo-Blogger-2022 / 0 Comments

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed.
Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute
with love, grace and gratitude.”
Denis Waitley

Waitley is a popular, long-time motivational speaker and writer. I remember attending a “Seeds of Greatness” seminar in college sponsored by his organization. If memory serves me correctly, I think his Seeds of Greatness was the first motivational book I ever bought.

His quotation is a good starting point for thinking about happiness. First, happiness isn’t a thing. It’s not something apart from us that we go and get. It’s not something to be purchased or acquired or traded.

Second, as Waitley says, it’s a “spiritual experience”. Happiness is the melding of our experiences and our beliefs. Whatever we experience: good things or bad, success or failure, sickness or health, wealth or poverty, good relationships or bad, all of these are shaped by our belief system. Happiness is looking at our experiences in a biblical and constructive way.

Third, Waitley notes that happiness requires “love, grace and gratitude.” Biblically speaking, we are recipients of the first two, and cultivators of the last one. Regarding love and grace, the apostle Paul said, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13.14). If we receive love and grace, we must learn to extend love and grace if we want to find this thing called happiness.

Regarding gratitude, Paul also said, “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5.16-18). In other words, gratitude is a choice, and an action, and a frame of mind that’s cultivated by means of our relationship to God in Christ.

We often speak of our “happy place.” Happiness isn’t so much a place as it is a way of thinking. With the right frame of mind, you can be in your “happy place” no matter where you are.

Roots

April 12, 2023 / BroClo-Blogger-2022 / 1 Comment

This time of year, many of us are already gardening, planting, fertilizing, weeding, landscaping, spraying, pruning, and all kinds of other springtime agricultural rituals.

The key to growing anything – grass, flowers, vegetables, shrubs, trees – is developing a good root system. Plants depend upon the nutrients and moisture provided by the soil. The deeper and more extensive a plant’s root system, the more it will be able to survive drought, wind, disease, and pests.

So it is with our growth as Christians. We can’t grow without deep, healthy roots. The apostle Paul prayed for the saints in Ephesus “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3.17-19). Before they can grow upward, they need to first grow downward.

Paul had a similar exhortation for the Christians in Colossae. “Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude” (Colossians 2.6-7). Growth, gratitude, and a deep faith are impossible without a deep root system.

That’s why regular spiritual disciplines and practices are so essential to the formation of our faith. Bible reading, meditation, memorization, and study are building blocks of spiritual maturity. We need the daily challenge of personal Bible study as well as the weekly opportunity to study with other Christians. Prayer is an opportunity to expand our root system by expressing gratitude and praise to God, as well as offering our petitions to him. Worship keeps us vital and strong. It provides nourishment and refreshment from the harsh realities of life. It gets us in the presence of God and in the presence of his people. It puts our minds on a higher plane awhile each week.

So, while you’re thinking about taking care of your lawn and garden, take a bit of time to nourish your soul. Get some water and feed, pull some weeds, and get ready to grow.