Curing Selfishness » Paul's Ponderings

We live in a world gone wrong. This becomes evident every time we are faced with some sort of tragedy and something within us screams, “That is not right!”

In those moments God is reminding us that our world has been corrupted and things are not what they should be. Satan, sin, and death are wreaking havoc throughout this world.

Another way we see the corruption of sin is through the selfishness of people. Many of the problems that exist in the world are the result of human selfishness. These problems were either caused by selfishness or they continue because or selfishness. This tells us that a tremendous amount of good could be done if people just lived out to the two great commandments: love God and love people. When we live with compassion and mercy we fight against the evil that is present in the world."

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Starting the Process

"Spiritual formation in Christ is an orderly process.  Although God can triumph in disorder, that is not his choice.  And instead of focusing upon what God can do, we must humble ourselves to accept the ways he has chosen to work with us.  These are clearly laid out in the Bible, and especially in the words of and person of Jesus." ~ Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart (2002), p. 10

Life is so much easier when you go with the flow.  It takes so little effort.  The problem is that you are at the mercy of where the current takes you.  So many Christians lack spiritual maturity because we simply went with the flow and never disciplined ourselves to truly becoming like Jesus.

God, in His graciousness, has still brought healing to our hearts and transformation to our lives.  We should thank God for the work He has done in our lives, even when we have not lived up to our side of transformation.

The reality that confronts us as we talk about spiritual formation is an avoidance of any appearance of  salvation by works.  What is emphasized is faith, which usually gets boiled down to what we believe.  When this happens the most important thing we can do is to believe the right things and let God take care of the rest.  Then the issue becomes what are the "right" beliefs we are to have, and so fighting for "truth" and correct doctrine are among the most important things we can do.

The way I see it is that while truth is important, and we should always base our beliefs on what we know is true, that is not what Biblical faith is all about, nor is it the foundation for spiritual formation.  Much more foundational to Biblical faith are the ideas of trust, commitment, and obedience.  These ideas always come out in the way we live our lives, and thus always look like works.

Since spiritual formation is an orderly process then there must be a beginning.  The beginning of spiritual formation is repentance. Repentance was central to the message Jesus preached; From then on Jesus began to preach, "Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near" (Matthew 4:17; NLT). 

Repentance isn't just feeling sorry and confessing our sins, rather repentance is changing our loyalties.  Sin is rebellion against God and His Kingdom, and therefore through our sin we have pledge our allegiance to Satan and his kingdom.  Repentance is declaring that our loyalties are now changed, and we are now loyal citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.  This change of loyalty is absolutely crucial to spiritual formation.

There are other steps that we must go through in this process, and at times it will look different for each of us, but it always begins with repentance.  Repentance, at is core, is an act of faith. It is through repentance that we declare our belief, trust, and commitment to God.

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Daily Thought: Being Dead to Sin

To be dead to sin with Christ is not to be lacking in these natural desires, but to have a real alternative to sin and the world's sin system as the orientation and motivation for our natural impulses. In our new life, we are capable of standing beyond sin's reach as we choose what we will do and in that sense we are unattached from it, we are dead to it.  It is still possible in the abstract for us to sin, but we see it as the uninteresting or the disgusting thing it is.  The psychological condition established in us by the influx of Christ's life—a psychological reality—allows us to rise above our "old person" for the motivation, organization, and direction of our physical existence.

Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, HarperOne (1991), p. 115

Daily Thought: A Mere Bowl of Soup

Jesus does not deny us personal fulfillment, but shows us the only true way to it.  In him we "find our life."  He would keep us from selling our birthright as creatures in God's image—a birthright of genuine goodness, sufficiency, and power for which we are fitted by nature—for a mere bowl of soup (Genesis 25:30-31): perhaps a little illicit sex, money, reputation, power, self-righteousness, and so forth—"the pleasures of sin for a season"—or for the mere promise or possibility of such.

Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, NavPress (2002), p. 68

Video: Doubt and Belief

Linkage: The Power of Implementation Intentions

One of the realities that we discover as we follow Jesus is the need for constant change.  We realize that we need to change our attitudes and well as our behaviors.  Yet time and time again we discover we don't have what it takes to change, and our good intentions remain good intentions.

The good news in this is that this change that needs to happen in our lives is not entirely our responsibility. The apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 5:22-23; "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law" (ESV).  One of the truths that Paul wants us to understand is that this changed life we are to live is the result of the Spirit working inside of us.  Our changed life is the fruit that the Spirit produces in our lives.  So when it comes to making changes in our lives we first need to surrender to God and ask Him to bring healing, wisdom, and strength to us through the Spirit.  We need God's help to change.

With that being said we have to realize that we have a part of play in our transformation as well.  Ultimately God wants us to be people who freely choose to do what is right.  We need to learn how to make the right choice, so that the right choice becomes second nature to us, something that we do without thinking about it because it is how we are.

Dallas Willard in his book The Renovation of the Heart provides a formula for the human side of transformation: VIM.  Vim stands for Vision, Intention, and Means.  We have to have vision of what that transformation will look like in our lives, we need to have the intention to bring that vision to reality in our lives, and then we have a means on making it happen.

It is in that last point, the means of turning our intentions into reality, that this article from the Art of Manliness about.  I hope that you find it helpful in your quest to become the person God created you to be.

If you’re like many men across the world, you probably set some new goals for yourself on January 1. Maybe it was to work out regularly or get into the reading habit. Or maybe you wanted to pay off your debt or increase your productivity. 

Perhaps you did okay for the first week or two, but have already fallen off the goal-achieving wagon. Oh well. There’s always next year, right? 

Hold on there, chief. No need to wallow in regret for the awesome life that could have been. There’s still hope for you yet. 

To end this month-o-motivation, I set out to do a comprehensive post about all the ways to increase your chances of reaching a goal. 

But as I waded into the research, what I found was that 1) summarizing all of the information required more of a book than a blog post, and 2) a lot of the methods didn’t personally strike me as all that helpful.

Continue Reading A Formula for Success: The Power of Implementation Intentions.

Daily Thought: Putting It Into Practice

"And so we must apply our thinking to and with the Word of God.  We  must thoughtfully take that Word in, dwell upon it, ponder its meaning, explore its implications—especially as it relates to our own lives.  What are we to do in the light of the facts of the gospel and the revelation of God and of human destiny contained in the Bible?  We must 'pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it' (Hebrews 2:1; NRSV).  We must thoughtfully put it into practice."

Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, NavPress (2002), pp. 104-05

Daily Thought: The Human Contradiction

"The two sides of the great human contradiction, dust and divinity, then, are  set in place.  Human creatures, like all living beings, have a life of their own.  But though that life is mortal and short, it is still a life in which we alone among living beings can stand in opposition to God—in order that we may also choose to stand with God." ~ Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, pp. 52-53

Daily Thought: Spiritual Formation and Community

"Spiritual formation, good or bad, is always profoundly social.  You cannot keep it to yourself.  Anyone who thinks of it as a merely private matter has misunderstood it.  Anyone who says, 'It's just between me and God,' or 'What I do is my own business,' had misunderstood God as well as 'me.'" ~ Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 182

Daily Thought: Being Lost

"Certainly, if you are lost in any sense there is little likelihood of your arriving where you want to be.  But the condition of lostness is not the same as the outcome to which it leads.  We're not lost because we are going to wind up in the wrong place.  We are going to wind up in the wrong place because we are lost." ~ Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 55

Daily Thought: We Need the Mind of Jesus

"What is more unlike humans than to treat all kinds of people with equal truth and love?  The ideas and images that govern unredeemed humanity make it impossible, except in highly selective circumstances in in very recent societies strongly influenced by Jesus and his followers.  Paul knew we can only escape being conformed to a fallen humanity by receiving the mind of Christ himself (1 Corinthians 2:16; Philippians 2:5).  Spiritual formation in Christ moves toward a total interchange of our ideas and images for his." ~ Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 102

Daily Thought: What Does It Mean to be Human?

"Without an understanding of our nature and purpose, we cannot have a proper understanding of redemption.  You may wonder, what does all this really have to do with our salvation.  Do we really need to know so much about our own nature before we can understand how that nature can change through salvation.  Yes, we do.  What 'salvation' is depends upon what is being saved.  Before something can be saved it must face the risk of being lost. And, essentially, it is the nature of what is being saved that determines how it can be at risk and at loss.  For example, 'saving' and investment is a different kind of project from saving a life, a reputation, or an injured pet, because investments, lives, reputations, and pets are different kinds of things.  So, if we want to know what it is to save a human being, to redeem the human soul or personality, we cannot find a better way to begin than by asking: what did God make when he made us, and how could creatures such as we be at risk and at loss?" ~ Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 45

Daily Thought: Surrendered to God's Will

"The strongest human will is always the one that is surrendered to God's will and acts with it." ~ Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 152

Daily Thought: Choosing Hell

"Thus no one chooses in the abstract to go to hell or even to be the kind of person who belongs there.  But their orientation toward self leads them to become the kind of person for whom away-from-God is the only place for which they are suited.  It is a place they would in the end, choose for themselves, rather than come to humble themselves before God and accept who he is.  Whether or not God's will is infinitely flexible, the human will is not.  There are limits beyond which it cannot bend back, cannot turn or repent." ~ Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart, p. 57

Daily Thought: To Heal Or To Wound

"The astonishing power to use what is beyond ourselves is one of the main clues to who and what we are. Due to our intelligence and social organization alone, we extend our powers over the earth and its inhabitants to a degree both awe-inspiring and terrifying, promising to heal the agony of human history or threatening utterly to  destroy the planet." ~ Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 61

Thoughts from Dallas Willard

Saw this on Scot McKnight's blog: Jesus Creed.  Good stuff from Dallas Willard.

Daily Thought: The Ball is in Our Court

"Everyone must be active in the process of their salvation and  transformation to Christlikeness. This is an inescapable fact.  But the initiative in the process is always God’s, and we would in fact do nothing without his initiative.  However, that initiative is not something we are waiting upon.  The ball is, as it were, in our court. God has invaded human history and reality.  Jesus Christ has died on our behalf, is risen, and is now supervising events on earth toward an end that he will certainly bring to pass, to the glory of God.  The issue  now concerns what we will do." ~ Dallas Willard,  The Renovation of the Heart, p. 82

Daily Thought: Explaining Away Holiness

"We talk  about leading a different kind of life, but we also have ready explanations for not being really different.  And with those explanations we have talked our way out of the very practices that alone would enable us to be citizens of another world." ~  Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, p.108

Change is Happening

Change is not very easy.  Ask anyone who has tried to shed a few pounds, losing weight doesn't happen over night.  We don't become thinner just because we started to go to the gym, eat fewer calories, and begin to take the stairs at work.  These things over time help, but sometimes it takes weeks, even months, before we begin to notice a difference.

We shouldn't be surprised that the defects in our character, the sin we struggle with, and the bad attitudes we carry around don't easily disappear when we surrender our lives to Jesus.  After all many of these things have taken years to developed and are intertwined with how we cope with life.  Yes, Jesus can bring about healing and restoration, but it will take awhile as He goes for the root of our sin and we learn to trust Him more and more.

This can be frustrating because we are become so exhausted with dealing with the crap that is a part of our lives.  It is tiring to have to fight through fear every time we want to talk to a person or to rev ourselves up enough to get our depressed hearts out of bed in the morning.  We want the joy of the Lord and to live the abundant life Jesus promised His followers!

Dallas Willard wrote;

Love, joy, and peace fostered in divine  fellowship simply crowd out fear, anger, unsatisfied desire, woundedness, rejection.  There is no longer room for them—well, perhaps there is for a while, but increasingly less so.  Belonging to Christ does not immediately eliminate bad feelings, and we must not be drawn into pretense that it does. (Renovation of the Heart, p. 136)

Here is my point: The transformation of our lives takes time.  It isn't just about the elimination of the bad, but the addition of the good.  The way God works is to bring in the light to chase away the darkness and to add love to force out hate.  This takes times, but little by little transformation happens.  I think it is Rick Warren who said, "We over estimate how much we can accomplish in a year and under estimate how much we can accomplish in five years." If we are faithful in following Jesus, if we are consistent in crying out for His healing, and if we truly hungering and thirsting for righteousness we will experience change in our lives.  God will transform our lives, but it will happen so slowly that we might just miss it.

Last night I had the chance to reflect on my life and I was overwhelmed about the transformation God has brought about in my life.  Yes, I have a long ways to go, but I am more energized to keep going because I know the difference God has made in my life and the healing He has brought to my heart.

Hang in there.  Just because you don't see the change doesn't mean God isn't working in your life.  Continue to trust Him and one day you will discover that He did come and make you into a new person.

Daily Thought: Our Initiative

"Once the individual has through divine initiative become alive to God and his Kingdom, the extent of integration of his or her total being into that Kingdom order significantly depends upon the individual's initiative." ~ Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 68