Questions about Sin.

So I am going to say things that are heretical, and possibly get myself looked down upon as a naive and somewhat uneducated person in spiritual matters. One who probably has too much time on their hands, and is probably going to lead people astray with his crazy ideas. Someone who may not be a Christian, because he brings up ideas, and no one wants to be rude enough to contradict him, or at least bring biblical proof of a differing opinion.  Yes, it is a time to ask a question about the Bible, and to wonder if a preconceived notion is actually true, or if we just try to make the Bible tell us what we want to hear about it.

The topic I am talking about is Sin. We all know what it is right. Its when you do something that we wouldn’t do if the pastor was watching. Its what we don’t do so that our Mom’s aren’t disappointed in how they raised us. Its what we are saved from when Christ died for us. Its our natural nature. It drives a wedge between us and God. It is death. It is obviously bad… but what is it? Why and how does it work? Is it a constant? Is it defined before or after the consequences? Is it a noun or a verb?

Ok so we know more about what to do about the problem, than we do about how to actually define the problem. The problem with any explanation I have heard, is that it is lacking. There are two main bodies of thought on Sin, one is that Sin is “A known transgression against God” and the other is to “miss the mark.” One is intentional, and can not be done accidentally, also it requires that someone know that something is a sin, for it to be a sin to commit it. The other is accidental or on purpose, it is anything that doesn’t measure up to perfection. The problem I see is that both of these are ways to describe individual actions. It is to describe individual things that we do, one time events. From what I have recently been seeing, I will be blogging more over the next few weeks, maybe months, about this, so bear with me. I am starting to see that there are a few areas where I want to bring about the possibilities of possibly wrong or maybe just incomplete preconceived notions about sin and how it relates to Christians.

The first is that I do not believe God sent Jesus to die for our individual actions. Granted, those individual actions are a symptom, I believe that it is our sinful nature that Jesus died on the cross to forgive.

The second is that I do not believe that most of the time when the word sin is used in the English Bible, it is accurately represented. The reason for this is that the tenses used are wrong much of the time. When talking about sin, it is many times a tense in the greek, that is continual. It is both present and forward, and many times has the connotations of past as well. In that case, my request for the forgiveness of sins and the forgiveness I receive, may just mean future sins too… Who knows, I might start thinking once saved always saved… Even if someone lets their life go to crap… I don’t know… you will get a full blog on that trust me. Anyway, translating into English is always a problem, especially from an expressive and precise language such as Greek.

Lastly, I worry that we spend too much time worrying about how we should react to other people’s sins. I worry that we need to allow God to convict of certain sins, and that we may need to lay off… even other Christians, and for sure, we need to lay off those who are not believers. This is an issue of do we love each other and maybe God is working on other issues, and working on too many areas at once would be detrimental to someone. Maybe its a case by case basis for God to decided what it is that we need to work on and in what order we need to work on it.

 

Well those are some questions that have been bouncing around my head. This is going to take a lot of study, and when I see things, I will throw them in my blog for you to see too. Feel free to leave comments, I like the open debate they can foster. Feel free to disagree, but if you disagree, please back it up somehow biblicaly, and be ready because I will most likely ask you questions about the context of your verses, as well as if the Greek is meaning the same thing.

 

Some resources I love are

http://www.scripture4all.org/ – For the greek

http://www.biblegateway.com/ – For different translations into English

http://www.eliyah.com/lexicon.html – Strong’s Concordance stuff

http://www.gmail.com – for creating those anonymous posts so no one knows who you are so you don’t have to worry about offending anyone. I hope you don’t have to use it, but if you want to, you can.

Thank God

God has truly been blessing me of late. There is not much I can say because what he has been doing has been too great for words. Prayers being answered, events happening that I didn’t think I would ever see, friends growing in the Lord, and God changing me from the inside out. Those are a brief synopsis of what he has been doing for me. Like I said I can’t put how I am feeling about all of this into words, they just don’t do justice to how God is working in my life.

One major prayer request that I have had for the past two to three years has been to get a new job, one that paid as well as my current job, and one that I would enjoy, or at the least, not hate. It didn’t matter which job I had, either being a phone agent, a tech lead, or a documentation expert, I did not like any of those jobs. I felt I was underpaid, and I felt that I was living under unrealistic expectations, all the while trying to pick up the slack for those who didn’t do their work themselves.

Well God answered both prayers, but not in the way I was expecting. I was expecting to get a job where I would be able to help develop tools, or explain technical data to executives who didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. I thought maybe I would get a job with a non-profit helping people out somehow. I thought… That was the problem, God does not answer our prayers the way we think he should. God answered my prayer by giving me a peace about my job, he changed my attitude towards where I work. No pay raise at the time, no change in duties, no change in who I worked with, just a change in my attitude. It reminds me of the prayer I should have been praying, “being the same in mind as that of Christ Jesus.” I now know that the prayer should have been that God would change my heart to be content with where I was. Oh well, I think God likes to use things like that to grow us.

I have been content with my job for the past few months, but the money situation was super tight. I didn’t have a lot of money at the end of each month, in fact I generally ran out about 3-4 days before the end of each pay period and stressed about even finding enough to eat on the last two days… not that I would have gone hungry, I just really didn’t want to eat top Ramon again. Well I was praying and searching for a second job that I could either work super early in the mornings, or right after work untill supper time, and then be off the rest of the evening. I had been looking for a few months, nothing turned up, it seemed everyone had just finished hiring just as I applied. Home depot, Lowes, everyone was just not hiring at that particular time. I was stressing a little bit, how could I not find a minimum wage job as a second job? Well, I had figured out what I would have gotten and man, I figured it would be just enough to start saving, and start paying down debt faster.

Then the big news came just a week or so ago, I was at home after work and I get a call from my boss. Uh oh, this isn’t good, I only get called at home so I can either log in and take care of something at work, or I get the axe and will be asked to return all company equipment to the office ASAP. The conversation went something like this.

Boss: Hey, I don’t usually call anyone at home except for emergencies, and at least this isn’t one of those.
(My brain goes, hrmmm well I won’t have to start working after I am already off work, but its important enough to call me at home… I’m getting fired)
Me: Ok, so what’s up?
Boss: Well we put each individual in for a review of their position about six months ago for upper management to see what they thought of what was going on for everyone, and the results came back today.
(My brain goes, oh crap I had just started six months ago, and was still sucking at my job at that time. I’m getting fired)
Me: Ok, well I had heard rumors about that, but what does that mean now?
Boss: Well yours came back with some surprising results. We didn’t expect to have this happen to someone who had just started on the team, honestly its kind of crazy.
(My brain goes, yeup, fired)
Boss: You got a huge raise.
(My brain, yeap just got fired… WHAT!!?? I am so confused now how did that happen?)
Me: A what? how did that happen I thought we weren’t getting any raises any time soon?
Boss: Well we put in and asked for a certain amount figuring they would give us a third or half of what we asked for, and they gave us the whole thing. Here is your new pay grade it works out to be (about the same I would make at a part time job.)
Me: (slightly stunned) Wow, you can call me with news like that any time you want. Thank you for calling.

HUGE praise there. I didn’t expect to get a raise any time soon. I had resigned myself to trusting God, because I had enough money to live, I had what I needed and honestly God had been changing my heart to be content with whatever he provided rather than striving for more and more. Who knew? God did. He is amazing in our times where we begin trusting him, although I still do not know if my trust was from me, or from God. I am leaning towards God because if it were from me, it would have happened a long time ago.

Add to this, my friends that have been out of work, are starting to find jobs. Some are changing to better jobs, some that have been out of work over a year, are finding new jobs that pay a decent wage, and others are getting raises of their own. God is financially helping those who needed it. We can now afford to be generous ourselves, no more having to horde and scrimp on giving just because we want to eat for the next few days. God is amazing me in ways I can’t explain, so many prayer requests being answered in such a short time is kind of blowing my mind.

On another front, (a more impacting front) God has seen fit to bless me with an amazing woman of God to share in my life. He gave me a girlfriend who just knocks my socks off. To answer the age old question of, “where should I go to meet women?” I will have to answer with, at church. OK, so that is what I have said my whole life, and its something I always believed. I had gone to church my entire life, and had not really found that one person I wanted to get to know at a deeper than friend level. Usually we would get to be good friends and I would decide not to pursue any further for any set of given reasons.

About a year ago, I had decided to stop looking for a woman, my whole life I had been looking, and not finding what I was looking for, and I figured it might just be God’s desire for my life that I grow old alone. Not lonely by the way, just alone. In this way I could give way more time to serving God, I wouldn’t have to take time to take care of anyone else, I could throw myself whole heatedly at God and his purposes and ministries. Genuinely, I was happy with this, I was going to be at the center of God’s will with nothing to distract me. At this stage in life I could go to church at 8:00AM and stay till 10:00PM I could take the place of several other volunteers and relieve the stress of several ministry leaders. It was a great thing.

Then, several months ago I met a woman who kind of rocked my world. She was a strong Christian young woman, who actually liked studying the Bible, and getting to know God more and more. She was beautiful and she liked to talk as much as I did. She could actually quote scriptures with the reference (which blew my mind.) She was from an agricultural background. She had a large family, and had even attended a Nazarene church for a while… Wow, what a find. She, to me, is literally the perfect woman. Well I didn’t know all of this at first, I knew she was good looking and she liked going to church, so I figured we should be friends… well several months went by and we spent a ton of time together and through a somewhat tragic and humorous story we decided that we were more than “Just Friends.” and so now we are able to go through our days encouraging one another, and learning to be closer to God and to each other.

She is another one of those blessings from God that I don’t understand why he felt I deserved this. I obviously did not, but he blessed me anyway. He blesses us with so many things, even when we can’t seem to find them. Sometimes we can be blessed by what God is doing in others. One of my best friends just got married to another good friend, a blessing, and again if you had asked me two years ago if that was going to happen, I would have said no, he would die a bachelor with tons of friends, now he will die a happily married man with lots of friends, and I couldn’t be happier for the couple. I get to host/lead a small group in my home every week, and seeing the growth of those who are in the group is amazing. Seeing everyone, myself included, drawing closer to God, learning more about him, and his purpose in our lives is something I wouldn’t want to miss for anything.

At Church we have gone though some trials. We are always looking for more volunteers. We seem to never have enough. We get close to enough and then we grow again, and need more. I praise God that he entrusts us with so many people, but I pray that as he gives us more, he gives us even more. God is amazing and we have to remember that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that he will not give us more than we can handle, even if it isn’t comfortable, we will still be able to make it to the other end as long as we believe in him, and trust that he will provide when we don’t have everything we expect. Why can’t we believe this is true, we have story after story in the Bible, we have story after story from our friends and in our own lives… I pray that God will give us what we need, when we need it and that we will not worry about finding it for him. That we don’t lean on our own abilities to the extent that we cut God out of the equation. God can and will provide what we need when we are ready and in need of it, not before, not after. I can attest to that with my own life.

Thank you God for everything you have done for me, thank you for everything you have done for my friends and family. You are so amazing in ways that I can’t even describe correctly in words. I can only tell the stories of the events that have lead to my current feelings of gratitude. Someday you will be face to face with me, and I can praise you appropriately, forever and ever. There is no way to provide the depth of meaning, so I will have to infinitely praise you in the heavens at that time. There is no way, no action that can make up for what you have done for me, mentally, physically and most of all spiritually. I am so blessed by you. Thank you, again and again.

Salt? I like salt.

So a friend of mine asked me the other day what I thought it meant at the end of Mark 9 when it talks about being salted with fire, and what if salt loses its saltiness. I of course take a look and feel that I should immediately interject some sort of sage learned gibberish that would be too hard to understand, even for myself, and then I could sound all cool and wise beyond my years… which isn’t hard, I’m not that old yet.

This all comes from Mark 9:50, what a troublemaker. Well I take a look, and then for the last few days I’ve been trying to figure it out for sure. All I can say is there isn’t any one predominant theory or proof as to what it means for sure. Some say that this is a way to show that there is a place of purification (purgatory) that everyone goes to be cleansed from their sins. Others say that it is speaking to the preservative properties, that all will be purified at some point. Still others say that it is talking about us being akin to a temple sacrifice, which all required salt and fire.

So, how do you find more about a topic like this? How would you go about differentiating which theory is correct? Every one of them can be backed up by other scriptures, and every one of them is as likely as the other to be correct… well with the exception of the purgatory reference, that one is a lot harder to initially see, and back up with other scriptures.

I could go on and on about which exact interpretation I believe is correct, but in the end, they both come up with the same point, so why would I want to worry about how I got to that same point? The point is that whether it shows us as being a sacrifice, or if it is being a purifying agent, at the end of the process we are forgiven, and seen as pure by God. This particular verse is right in the middle of a passage talking about removing what is impure from themselves, and this is just a sub point of doing good to others in the name of Jesus.

So the passage says be good to children, a radical and crazy concept at the time, and do little things for everyone. Even those who you don’t really think deserve our time or attention. He goes on after having the conversation steered away by John towards a man using the power of Jesus’ name even though he wasn’t a disciple, to say that again no one should turn a child away from him in any way, and to remove anything that might cause one to do that.

The sin here is the word “skandalizo” (skan-dal-id’-zo) which really means, to trip up, or to cause one to turn away to something different. It is an intentional changing of another’s path, or at least enticing them to change the way they are going. This whole passage uses the same Greek word translated as sin. It is saying that you should not allow yourself to lead others, or yourself astray, and to avoid that at all costs. We are then introduced to the Salt. I would have to go with the interpretation that the Salt is the way we can rid ourselves of what causes us to sin. This is done as if it were being purified in a sacrificial fire, which we all need to become pure in the first place. We have to continue in the fire, to continue the process of being salted, or we will lose our saltiness over time. Salt doesn’t immediately lose its saltiness, but it will if left to the elements. We should not allow ourselves, or others, to be lead away from what keeps us pure.

This mixed with a little bit of other passages makes a lot of sense. According to 2 Cor 5, we are warned to continue in our faith in Christ, to continue living for him, and then again in Hebrews 10 we see that it is a process of our lives with God that we are being made Holy by Christ’s sacrifice. We can see that we can be lead astray, that it is a continual process to be purified by Christ. Not that we aren’t forgiven, but if we want to become more and more of what Christ wants from us, we must continue to walk with Christ, and to continue to be purified by him, the only one who can do that. He is the only one who can continue to save us.

My Struggle with God’s way

So normally I would try to find some parallel, some story to tell, that would make a concept easy to understand, but I don’t think I need to today. The more I think about it, the more I realize that what I am about to talk about is something most people struggle with, some only when they are new Christians, and others their whole life. I wish I didn’t struggle with it, but I do, and I want to share my thoughts on the matter No matter how hard I try, I want God to do things my way. There I said it, and I mean it whole heartedly. I know in my brain that God is way smarter, can see way past the end of my results, and knows what is best in the long run. I know in my head that I really only want what I feel is best for me, whether I am just making myself feel better about myself, or whether I am actually making myself more comfortable, or whatever, its generally a selfish reason that I am asking for something from God. Now to the heart of the matter, I also know how I should be praying, and that I should not be just asking, and that I should not be using God as a cosmic pinata full of all sorts of goodies just waiting to shower down on me. No, God is more of the rice and beans of life than the candy that we crave, and more often than not, I am asking for candy, not the rice and beans I need. Sure candy will give me a burst of energy for God, but rice and beans will help me in the long run, giving me energy for hours and hours. I should be using my prayer time to work on drawing nearer to God and listening to what it is he wants for my life. When understanding what it is God has done, and is doing in my life, it does give me energy to keep moving forward, but it isn’t nearly as fun as seeing a huge fun blessing falling into my lap. Examples are things like the friends God has given me, and are around to help shape my life. There are a rice and beans blessing from God. I have a good time with them, and they sustain me, but they aren’t exciting and don’t give me an adrenalin rush every time I talk to them, it is a general encouragement. On the other hand, at the end of last year, I was having a bit of financial struggles, and I got a decent bonus at the end of the year, which was enough to put money in the bank, and pay off two credit cards never to see them again, which was a big burst of energy, but a month later it wore off. By sitting in my prayer life asking to go from burst of energy to burst of energy (often called mountain top experiences) I am not taking the time to step by step grow in God. Taking time to listen is so important because I am not called to know things about God, I am called to know him more and more each day. By knowing God more and more each day, I learn to make decisions that would honor him, rather than cause a rift between us. The wisdom he brings will guard me, and my heart in all situations. He will be there and be my strength. The strength should come from him, not from the bursts of energy which are so fleeting. I know I am a bit mellow dramatic here, but its where I am. I am working slowly on letting God change my heart to desire him more and myself less. I encourage anyone else that is working on this, that it will take time, that we may want those quick blessings, but the blessings that really mean something, take time, and are generally more constant that those that are quick and fleeting. Take time with God to listen, however you listen to him, make it a discipline whether its 5 minutes of kneeling next to your bed, while you take a shower, sitting in a dark room, sitting on your porch, laying next to the pool… whatever it is take time to hear what it is God wants you to know.

The Emancipation of Mankind

Have you ever looked at the teen starlets that walk around and wonder how much freedom and happiness they actually have? Something to think about is, what is their home life like, they are making money hand over fist, but at the same time, they are still bound by the rules their parents and guardians set before them. This is the reason so many decide to break free from these rules, famous examples are Jenna Malone, Drew Barrymore, Christina Ricci, and Macauley Culkin, all of which emancipated themselves to no longer have to follow the rules of their parents.
Granted, there were good reasons for most of these teens to split from their parents, so my examples are flawed. They do illustrate a point though. We, even if we own everything, still have to conform to the rules set forth for us by our guardians. We are not free to do anything and everything we want with it, until we are adults. Sure things have our names on them, but we still have to ask permission to go out at night and have fun, we still have to ask if we can buy a candy bar at the store. We are still learning what the boundaries should be, where the lines we shouldn’t cross are. Once we have lived with the rules long enough, we have a sense of what should and shouldn’t be done.
This is similar to what Paul talks about in Galatians 3:38-4:7 where he equates the time that the Jews spent under the law, with an heir that owns an entire estate, but is treated like a slave (in that they have everything planned for them and that they had to follow someone else’s rules) until they reach adulthood. Just like the young heir, humans were put through a time where the rules were everything, they were the only way most people had to relate to God. Humanity had, for a time, to learn the rules of God, to learn where the lines were and how God wanted people to act towards one another.
You could say God enslaved the Jews with huge lists of rules and regulations. There were rules on everything from how to prepare food, to where you could relieve yourself. There were rules for how far you could walk on a Saturday, to what kinds of food you could eat with other foods. All of these rules were to prove a few things to the Jews, one of which was that they couldn’t do it themselves, and this is probably the most common point. Although I think that the rules and regulations did more than that, it wasn’t just a lesson in futility, God doesn’t really work that way. No I think it was a way to show people how to love one another, and how to love God. To point them in the right direction, just like a parent’s rules are just there to frustrate the kids, the rules are to protect and guide the child. The rules are there to help the child even after the child is no longer bound by those same rules.
In the same way, when Jesus came, he didn’t come to get rid of the rules, he came to fulfill the rules. He came to show a way to live where although the rules are good, they aren’t the end all reason for doing what we are doing. This is how Jesus didn’t destroy and get rid of the law, no he fulfilled the law, he brought the relationship between God and Man to a new level. A maturing of the relationship between God and Man was taking place, has taken place, and now a new paradigm has to be in place. We can now choose to do what honors God, rather than being bound to it. We can now use the principles of the rules we used to follow, and figure out how we should now live.
Just like when we move out on our own, we are no longer bound by the rules of our parents, we are free to do what we want when we want. But if we look at the wisdom set forth by our parents, we begin to see that some of their rules weren’t as dumb as we would like to think. Our curfew was there so we would be in bed in time to get enough sleep to think clearly the next day. Eating our food pyramids worth of everything lets us grow healthy bodies. Doing our homework opens up opportunities later in life that we may otherwise not have. The list goes on, but if we take the habits our parents tried to instill in us, many times we can grow even further once we are no longer bound by those same rules.
I would like to think that Jesus made the way for us to have a truly mature relationship with God, and that we can be better people because of it. I feel blessed to be part of a time where this is possible. Where although I can read the rules that were laid out for humanity before the fulfillment of the law, I have the ability to follow what Jesus tells me to do. I can take wisdom and learn the lessons from the law that are needed, but I get to use the wisdom to make my own choices, rather than having those choices made for me.
I have to thank God every day for allowing me freedom, and then ask for the wisdom not to screw it up. Thanks God, for everything.

Space Mountain

Have you ever been to Disney land, with all the rides and distractions, so much to see hear and do? If not, let me just tell you, its kind of like a sensory overload of childhood cartoon goodness. I know some people don’t like Disney, and some people don’t like amusement park rides, but none of those people are children. As a kid I loved it there, I had a blast checking everything out, to me everything was new. My top three favorite rides were The Haunted Mansion, which basically you sat in a fancy wagon, and it took you through a haunted house. I was amazed by the optical illusions, and the way they could make things appear out of nowhere. Number two on the list was splash mountain, when it was sunny, and warm. Getting wet shoes and walking around all day, not a good idea. But we had fun with it anyway, half the fun was watching the Brier rabbit story as you wound your way to the top, and then, you watched as you came over the edge and plummeted down to the water below. My absolute favorite though was Space Mountain. This ride is unique, its all about not seeing what is going on, and not being able to tell what is going to happen next. This roller-coaster is in a huge, dark room. You get on, and then… you are riding a roller-coaster in the dark. There is no telling when you will be upside down, going left or right, you are just flowing with the track, that you can’t see. You are afraid, to put your hands in the air, for fear that you might hit something you can’t see, or you might want to duck, or lean the wrong way, you just don’t know what to do, but its a blast. For me, I have a hard time enjoying the same thing in my relationship with God. I should trust him, that what he has is better than anything I could think of. Sure I won’t see the twists and turns ahead of time, but I should relax, and just let the ride happen. I should be trusting him. I like to think that I can handle anything that comes my way, and I like to plan ahead, thus removing the whole need for God in the first place. Now I’m not talking like planning a vacation, but I am talking about planning everything out. I try to plan almost every conversation I have out before I have it, I try to figure out ways to make life move where I want it to go, and I try to convince myself as much as anyone else what it is God wants for my life, and then I try to figure out how to get there myself. I fail miserably when I do that. My attitude sucks, because nothing goes like I planned, and its all other people’s fault. I don’t want to give credit when I think I should get any sort of credit, I become selfish with my time, and I am overall a grump extraordinaire. Then God comes along side, and says, “hey, you screwed up, lets get you back on track.” He did this again recently as I have been frustrated at work, and have been trying to figure out how to alleviate that stress, all on my own. Then I saw this verse, 1 Peter 5:6-7 “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” OK, so what does humbling myself have to do with him caring for me? Why is that important? And who does Peter think he is telling me to be humble anyway, didn’t he cut of a dudes ear, wasn’t he always in trouble with Jesus for being a hothead… yeah so again, I lose my own humble card right away, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who actually knows me. I am pretty proud of my accomplishments, I have every right to be proud by worldly standards, but its not what God calls me to. I am struggling with this, but am learning that if I am fighting God, and trying to do it my way rather than his way, he has a much harder time keeping me safe. Its like I’m one of those animals trapped in a burning building, I know I have to get out, but I can’t do it on my own, and if a firefighter comes along, and I fight with him than even though I am being saved, I am not making it easy, and I am even possibly putting my own life, my destination on the line. Why would I try to make God’s life harder, why would he who is there to lift me up need to be fought? Learning to humble myself, to realize that I am not smart enough to fix my own situations, that I am not strong enough to pick myself up. That there is actually an innate need for God’s wisdom and strength in my life if I am going to live a joyous life. If I am going to serve God better and more efficiently, I need to give my decisions over to him, and stop to listen to what he has to say in my life. To follow the still small voice, the nudging that I feel. To actually do what it is that I know I need to do, instead of telling myself its just gas, or that I shouldn’t have eaten that doughnut or drunk that extra coffee. To humble myself and actually take the steps God has said to take rather than finding my own way to serve him. I want to live by faith, hands in the air, screaming, but not having a clue where I’m going. Knowing in the end I will end up where I am supposed to be, and knowing that getting there the way the designer intended, is much better than trying to get there myself. Not to mention less dangerous, can you imagine trying to cross a roller-coaster without being in the cart, neither can I, and now I understand just a little bit more of what I need to do next on my journey.

Vines and branches?

So, for anyone who has been in a large corporation, every few years some new way or sometimes an old way (but its had a fresh coat of paint thrown on it) of systematically updating and upgrading the business comes out. They want ideas on how to better produce their product, or find ways to more fully impress and create raving fans. They want to know how to cut costs, and get everyone to produce more in the same amount of time. They want to see numerical growth in the bottom line and they want to see it quickly.
I was a business major and every improvement has a few things that are similar to every single improvement program every devised. First you have some sort of analysis phase, which is important, you have to figure out where you are before you can change that.  Then you get to a planning phase, which is where you figure out where you are going, and how to get there. Third, is the implementation phase, where you put your plan into practice. Then as they say every time, the most important part is the upkeep of the process, continually going back to the analysis phase and figuring out how to do better.
Well the problem is that after the first year, after the initial “fun” of changing has gone through, everyone forgets to keep improving. Everyone becomes satisfied with their new level of accomplishment. Which isn’t in and of itself a bad thing, people are continuing to work hard, and they are doing a good job. No one is detracting from what needs to be done, but no one is finding better ways to do it.
I don’t know about you, but I have the same problem in my spiritual walk. I have at many times made advancements in my walk with God, but then I seem to get stuck at the same level, and in many cases revert back to where I was months, or even years before. And then I have to try to figure out what happened. Why didn’t I keep moving forward, and why didn’t I keep growing?
One thing I see clearly, is that when I am actually doing what Jesus commands, I tend to keep growing, when I get distracted from this, that is when I start falling away. It seems simple doesn’t it, but for me it isn’t. I take an example of Jesus talking about this very thing, John 15:1-17. This passage talks about being a branch bound to the Father, who gives life, and makes it possible for us to bear fruit. The branch’s job is to bear fruit, but it can’t do that without the vine. The fruit we bear, what we are to ask the Father for, is to bear good fruit. (not to be asking for ponies and sports cars.)
Now how do we continue to stay in the Father, how do we stay plugged in? That is what the question in verse 9 answers. It tells us, to remain in Jesus’ love, to obey his commands. Guess one, his only command, and he says it about a million times and stresses what it means in the next 8 verses, is super simple to understand. It is to love each other, to love everyone in a way that puts yourself second.
This is where I get all excited, and I start laying out plans on how to love other people, and I start working on that, and I start doing things left and right to love on people, and then eventually I feel my spiritual walk waning again. I start to see myself slip away from the Father, and worse yet it generally takes some kind of a wake-up call to get me back on track. My problem is that all those plans become ordinary, they start to become habits, and start to become routine. They are no longer about showing love, but are all about me doing my duty to others, which is the wrong focus. I need to start showing love to those who don’t deserve it, who have done nothing to win my favor, but are still part of humanity.
We all need to stay in our analysis mode. I know in my life, I need to continually ask, why am I doing this? Is this to love others, or is it because that’s just what I do? Am I doing this in effect to earn my way to God, or is it because God says to love, and I have decided to follow his lead? Sometimes we just have to refocus our habits, because they can be about love, we just have to shift our eyes to the right goal. We have to continually ask the Father for guidance, and to help us bear fruit and show love to everyone.