“I’ll Grow Into It”
Every Thought Captive, part 5
Wildwind Community Church
February 18, 2007
David Flowers
2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV)
5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Taking every thought captive… The last four weeks we have looked closely at a few lies Christians believe that keep them from living spiritually productive lives, with the intention of taking these thoughts captive, of de-clawing them, diminishing their power over us. We introduced the topic in week one, exploring the critical link between thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This link is the reason lies are so powerful, because they work on the most fundamental level – the level of our thoughts. Thoughts lead to feelings lead to behaviors lead to consequences. That’s why lies matter, and why truth matters. Week 2 we looked at the lie that spiritual experience is all in our heads, that we’re just wishing it into existence. Week 3 was the lie, “I’m too weak to serve God.” Last week was, “God can’t really expect me to live like Jesus said to live – that’s impossible.”
Today in week five I’ll talk you through the lie, “I’ll grow into it.” Next Sunday I’ll be out of town, and Dr. Joe Hendricks will bring this series to a close with a look at the lie, “I’m missing out – my old life before God was better.” Our series is called Every Thought Captive. In saying those words, “We take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ,” Paul told us a great deal. He told us that there are thoughts we have that are naturally disobedient to Christ. He told us that there’s an element of intention, of intensity, that’s necessary for us to identify and pursue these thoughts. He used the language of capture. That’s intense language. And he told us that we have to make our thoughts obedient to Christ. Do you know what this means? It means there are thoughts in your head that are keeping you from Christ, and unless you identify them, capture them, and force them into submission, they will run roughshod all over you. That’s Biblical. They must be captured and brought under discipline. Too many Christians are living laissez-faire lives, just allowing anything to trip through their heads whenever, not even consistently asking the question, “Yes, but this thing I’m thinking – is it true? Does it lead to freedom? (Because remember, truth always leads to freedom). Or does it leave me confused, upset, panicked, and stressed?” Today we launch into a look at another lie that will stall your spiritual life, and that’s the lie that you can just kind of mope along and God will come alongside you eventually and magically change you into a spiritual person. I’m calling this lie, “I’ll Grow Into It.” I’ll just let time go by, and eventually I’ll grow into this and become closer to God. I don’t really need to pray or read God’s Word or be in a small group or go to church, or whatever – my heart’s in the right place and eventually I’ll just learn through osmosis the things I need to know.” I want to talk to you about where this lie comes from, the problems it causes when we believe it, and what we can do about it.
I think we believe this lie because of three misunderstandings, and they all start with the letter G. Well, actually I have forced them all to start with the letter G, hoping you will remember them better that way. Ever wonder how it is that some preachers look in the Bible for spiritual lessons and it just happens that they all start with the same letter? Confess, Conform, Commit. Pursue, Produce, Praise. See it. Say it. Share it. It would be great if God wrote the Bible fully alliterated for us, but unfortunately it doesn’t come that way, so you have to pay Bible teachers like me to sit around with thesauruses open coming up with memorable ways to say things. Which I have done for your benefit today!
Back to the subject at hand, which is three reasons why we believe this lie that we can just sit back and wait for spiritual growth to occur. They all misunderstandings . The first is a misunderstanding of growth. We figure, hey, physical growth happens naturally. You don’t have to actually do anything. The problem is that’s not true! Physical growth does happen naturally, but it happens naturally as you do a certain number of things, without which it would be impossible. You eat two, three, four meals a day. That makes physical growth happen. You sleep at night. That makes physical growth happen. You take medicine when your body is sick, which keeps you from dying, which allows growth to keep happening. All of these things and more are habits you have gotten into that allow growth to happen. Understand they do not CAUSE growth. You take a rug and rub food into it, pour medicine on it, and not much will happen, other than you’re up cleaning the rug all night. Food and sleep and medicine do not CAUSE growth, they just allow it.
The reason it seems like you don’t do anything is because you have established growth habits in your life that are so deeply engrained that they don’t seem like you’re doing anything. Eating is pleasurable most of the time. Sleeping can be too if you are tired. Taking medicine is nasty but necessary, right? So you do it. And as you keep doing it, you grow physically. And I’m not just talking about height here, I’m talking about those processes that go on in you that have to keep going on in order to sustain life. In children it is about height, in adults it’s about the ongoing processes of cell division and multiplication, oxygenation of blood, manufacture of hormones, etc.
So that’s the first reason we believe this lie. We misunderstand spiritual growth. We think “Hey, I don’t have to do anything to grow physically, so I won’t have to do anything to grow spiritually either.” The second reason is because we misunderstand grace. We think, “Man, God has already done this for me, right? Jesus has already died for my sins, already paid that price. And besides, God loves me unconditionally right? Why should I need to really strive to have him in my life when he already loves me as much as he ever could? And then, if we’ve been in the church a while and think we know scripture, we bring out the atomic bomb of spiritual misunderstandings:
Ephesians 2:8-9 (NLT)
8 God saved you by his special favor when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.
9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.
We think, “See, it says right here that there’s nothing I can do in this. God saved me by his special favor, I can’t take credit.” What can I do, it’s out of my hands.” This verse is responsible for one of the biggest misunderstandings about grace. What this says is that there’s nothing we can do to earn salvation. What it does not say is that therefore no effort must be made. Grace is opposed to earning, but is not opposed to effort.
Watering a seed isn’t going to CAUSE the growth is it? I mean there’s nothing in water that causes growth, otherwise you could pour it anywhere and something would grow. Something would be growing out of your faucet and in your dishwasher right now. So you can’t earn growth with water, can’t cause it, can’t make it happen. In the same way, there is nothing you can do to earn salvation. No good thing you do will ever cause a salvation process to begin in your life. No amount of prayer or Bible reading or church attendance or evangelism or anything else will CAUSE growth in your life. You are powerless to earn what God has freely given. That is the meaning of that verse in Ephesians. God begins a process in your life that only God can begin. It’s entirely independent of who you are, what you have done, and what you might deserve. That’s 100% God, 0% you. It can’t be earned. But at the same time, effort must be made. The tree will not grow WITHOUT water. Gardens will not spring up where too many weeds are allowed to grow. Just keeping a place weed-free won’t cause carrots to spring up, but if carrots are already in there, and you don’t keep weeds out, you are failing to create the conditions where they will naturally grow. In the same way, holiness will not spring up in your life if you wait long enough, or even if you do spiritual things like pray and attend church. You can’t earn this or make it happen, but you can – and you MUST – create the conditions in your life where the seed God planted in you can spring to life and health. So the second reason we believe we can just hope to stumble into spiritual maturity someday is because we misunderstand God’s grace and the difference between earning and effort.
The third reason we believe this lie is because we misunderstand the nature of gradualness. [And what I really mean here by gradualness is process, but process doesn’t start with a G.] When something is happening gradually, when something is in process, it is always in process in a certain direction. A tree is either gradually growing, or gradually dying. When does the dying process start? The second the growing process stops. Some of us think, “I’ll just kind of do my own thing and eventually I’ll just kind of become spiritually mature. After all, Dave says I can’t arrive over night. This is a process, after all.” That kind of thinking comes from a misunderstanding of process. See, in order for us to become spiritually mature, the process must actually be happening now. And in order for the process to be happening now, we must be creating the conditions where that process will naturally unfold. That’s where effort comes in on our part. I have used this illustration before, and I want to use it again today. The day I had my first child, I did not feel like a father. [Or maybe I did, I just didn’t know what it feels like to be a father.] Would it have been okay for me to say, “I’m not gonna hold this baby. I’m not gonna help care for her right now. I’ll be a father one day, no sense rushing things. I feel awkward and unconfident right now – perhaps I’ll get involved later when that feeling goes away. Maybe fatherhood will just dawn on me one day.” What would I be missing? I’d be missing the fact that fatherhood dawned on me June 2, 1993 when Brittany was born. I had to get into the game, let the process begin working. Sure I didn’t know anything about being a father, but there’s only one way to learn. Folks, hear me out. Changing diapers and preparing formula and staying up all night and putting ponytails in hair and cleaning up puke don’t make a person a parent. What those things do is put you into a relationship with a child, invests you in the life of a child, puts you into a child’s world, and only by getting into a child’s world will you ever learn how to be a parent. Wanna sit back and wait to feel more confident, more motivated, less sleepy, and just wait for parenthood to dawn on you? Then you’ll never be a parent. If you wait for God to dawn on you, if you wait for spiritual growth just to happen to you, you will never come to know God. Prayer, and Bible reading, and living in close relationship to other believers, and perhaps even fasting sometimes, or moments of solitude and silence and meditation and worship and celebration – these are the ponytail moments of spirituality. They don’t make you holy, they don’t make you spiritual, but they create conditions in you where God can make you spiritual. Spiritual practices don’t transform you, but they put you into God’s world, and only by getting into God’s world will you ever learn how to be God’s child.
So we buy into the lie that we can just sit around waiting for spiritual growth to happen – that one day it will just dawn on us. And we do that because we misunderstand growth, we misunderstand grace, and we misunderstand gradualness.
And what happens when we believe this lie? How does it affect us? The first and most obvious way is by leading us into chronic spiritual immaturity. Year after year goes by and we never learn the Bible. We never learn submission or forgiveness. We never develop patience or love or a sweet spirit. We go unchanged, because we keep thinking it’ll just happen. We neglect the process, because we keep waiting for an event that never comes. The Apostle Paul had very strong words for people with this attitude:
1 Corinthians 3:1-3 (MSG)
1 But for right now, friends, I’m completely frustrated by your unspiritual dealings with each other and with God. You’re acting like infants in relation to Christ,
2 capable of nothing much more than nursing at the breast. Well, then, I’ll nurse you since you don’t seem capable of anything more.
3 As long as you grab for what makes you feel good or makes you look important, are you really much different than a babe at the breast, content only when everything’s going your way?
The next thing you’ll find in those who believe this lie is disappointment with God. They have never learned to be God’s children, and they are disappointed that their Father is not closer to them. They don’t experience an ongoing presence of God, they don’t learn to see God around them, they pretty much think and feel in the same ways non-believers think and feel, only they try hard to make sure their behaviors look Christian, and they are disappointed that their faith hasn’t really changed them in any way. Usually that’s because they have not engaged with it and are waiting on the lighting bolt – the cosmic zap that will change them. They’ll wait a very long time, and they’ll deal with a lot of disappointment. If we want to know God, we must relate to him on his terms.
Third, in those who believe this lie you will find apathy and a sense of resignation. “I guess this is the Christian life for you. Year after year with the same stinking problems and a God who never seems to hear my prayers.” After a while the disappointment becomes too much to bear, so we just get apathetic. We kind of give up on expecting that following Christ can be anything more, and we just settle into our ruts. “Well, at least my friends are at my church. At least I enjoy the music.”
So what do we do? How do we address this? What do we do about it? What does it mean for us in this situation to take this thought captive? Fortunately God’s Word has already shined the light of truth on this and given us clear instructions.
2 Peter 1:3-9 (NIV)
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.
4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;
6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness;
7 and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.
8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
Let me bring out a few principles for you that I hope can help you combat this lie in your life, if this is a difficult one for you to deal with. First of all, notice that Peter says that our ability to participate in the divine nature (to become Christ-like) depends on one thing: our knowledge of God’s promises. Peter writes that God’s promises enable us to become like Christ. But in v. 3 he says that our knowledge of those promises makes all the difference. My friends, this gets back to what I have preached dozens of times. First and foremost, you have to know God’s Word. Audiobooks, contemporary translations, word-for-word videos, sermons, books, whatever it takes – you have to take in and learn God’s Word. You have to expose yourself enough to it that it can shape your thinking because what combats lies? Truth. Where is truth found? In the mind! God’s Word feeds what? The mind. The mind. Everything begins in the mind. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:1) Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5).
Second, you must make deliberate effort to cultivate godliness in your life. In verses 5-7, Peter says for this very reason, in other words, in order to escape the corruption in the world, in order to become like Jesus, make every effort to add to your faith these qualities, and then that big list. I want to focus you on the words make every effort. That’s the main point of today’s message. If the lie is, “Spiritual maturity will just happen to me one day,” then the truth is, “If you are to become like Christ, you must make every effort. You must be in process now and always. You must be watering the seed that was planted in you.” Why must you make every effort? Because if you don’t, then apathy, disappointment, and spiritual immaturity are predicted in scripture!
2 Peter 1:8 (NIV)
8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In other words, if you don’t possess these qualities, if you haven’t cultivated a life that looks like this, then all you know will be worthless. You will know about God, maybe even know about the Bible, but without a life where you are allowing God to build in these qualities, all you know won’t matter much.
Peter finishes this passage with strong words:
2 Peter 1:9 (NIV)
9 But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
Third, you must realize that the only way to remember what God has done is to continue cultivating godliness. At a certain point on our journey we are blind to our own sin. At some point we see it and ask Christ to forgive our sin and lead us. But over the long haul, failure to follow him, failure to cultivate holiness, failure to stay in the game, to make every effort, actually leads us back to a point of spiritual blindness again. A life of spiritual discipline is a life that springs directly from gratitude and realization of what God has done with our sin. If we clock out and wait for the lighting bolt to change us, we will forget who God is and what God has done. Sounds like a dull, dead, empty life to me. Lies bring slavery and deadness. Truth brings freedom and life. Take every thought captive my friend. Don’t listen to this lie, don’t let it trap you into a miserable dead religion. Honestly, that’s worse than not knowing God at all.
I’m going to finish by making an offer to you. I have a practical tool you can use to cultivate godliness in your life. It’s in my office and if you want it I will get it to you. It’s called the Spiritual Life Profile and it will help you to be intentional about cultivating godliness in your life, to assess where you are right now and make a plan to move forward. On the back table there’s a stack of Spiritual Life Profiles and you can take one when you leave. It can be a great help to you and I hope you’ll take it and use it compliments of Wildwind Church. Nobody needs to stay in a rut – we can all be growing and moving forward. Will you pray with me?
