A Journey of Faith

I have been spending time recently taking my spiritual life much more seriously. It was a shock for me to realize that somehow, I had ended up a pharisee. Now my outlook and goals are very different. Instead of being stuck in my hubris, believing I have ‘everything worked out’, I’ve come to realize just how much I still have to learn.

A big part of my journey is realizing that as a Western Christian, I have lost something important. I knew all the right doctrines, I believed all the orthodox things. But it didn’t mean anything, not in a personal, real way. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I have come to realize that it is as A. W. Tozer wrote;

“For millions of Christians, God is no more real than He is to the non-Christians. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a mere principle.”

The Pursuit of God

I was living a life of spiritual apathy and complacency. I experienced no power in my life. Reading the Bible was a tedious chore, same for prayer. I rarely prayed because it felt like I was talking to the wall. I absolutely professed Christ, but I was still empty. I never meant to lie or deceive mind you, I just thought this was the average experience. I thought that it was only the ‘super-Christians’ or what have you that got to experience ‘the deep stuff’ as I thought about it. If I wanted to go ‘really deep’, I needed to be a missionary or a monk I figured.

A Life of Apathy

So I tried to obey as best as I knew how. I adopted the ‘God helps those who help themselves’ mentality. (By the way, this occurs nowhere in the Bible. That was Benjamin Franklin writing in Poor Richards Almanac just so you know) I never experienced any joy or peace from this formalist way of living. I experienced zero passion. I would absolutely get riled up whenever there was some political attack on Christianity, but I was only defending an institution. But that was all it meant to me. The result was a soul sucking way of life.

Recently I read a book that caused me to rethink my entire life. I read “Blessed Child” by Ted Dekker/Bill Bright and it shook me to my very soul. Through that story I came to realize that I was living a powerless life. I wasn’t living the way God intends for us all. Out of a deep conviction I prayed and repented of my apathy, my complacency, and my formalism. I laid it all before God. The results have been nothing short of profound.

For the past week I have been in the process of utterly re-orientating my life and my priorities towards God. Religion and orthodox doctrine is no longer good enough. I am not content with merely professing to follow Christ. I need the real thing.

This has created a dual effect within me. On the one hand I have experienced greater peace and joy than I can remember. There is a clarity in my mind that I have never experienced before. I’m not saying that all of the sudden my life has become idyllic and perfect, but there is a shift that has taken place within me. I believe that God is leading me into the ‘abundant life’ that Christ promised. I am experiencing a passion that is growing within me.

My Life is Not About Me

On the other hand, now I am unsure of what to do next. For months now I was haranguing everyone around me about how I was going to do all these great things and how I would become this super successful person. But these were empty goals. They were all centered around the unholy trinity, me, myself and I. If I truly am a follower of Jesus, then I should remember that the Word makes it clear that the “Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) Jesus Himself took the role of a servant, going as far as to wash the feet of His own disciples. I certainly haven’t displayed that in my life for the past few years.

Now the goal for my life is to bear in mind that my goal serve God, and the Church (I have more to say about this later, so stick around for that) in general. So far, I’m not exactly sure what that looks like. For now I am simply trusting in God, and praying. Whatever talent I have, whatever skill I have, I just want to use it in service. We all talk about our ‘calling’, and I believe that God calls us to do different things. But in whatever, everything boils down to service. Doesn’t matter if I’m a writer, bridge builder, businessman, employee, chef (I’m trying to present all spectrums here), whatever I do must come from service to God and His people.

I don’t have all the answers. That’s the first mark of a pharisee, they know everything. But God does everything, and I trust Him to provide the answers as He sees fit. In a way this is actually a relief, I no longer have to know it all. I don’t have to immediately have everything figured out. God does, and my job is to trust Him.

Still Learning, Still Growing, Just Making Progress

I’m a pilgrim who is making progress. I’m on a journey, and that journey ends when my physical life comes to a close. For the present time, my goal with this blog is to share my journey in hopes that this will help someone else. I’ll still be discussing books. After reading Ted Dekker’s “Blessed Child”, I believe God used that book to set me on this journey. Lately I’ve been spending lots of my time in the Word, but I believe God uses other books for His purposes. Sometimes we need to hear the message a little differently.

It is my belief that as Western Christians we are seriously missing out in our faith. Like the above quote from Tozer, we are content to worship an ideal or a principle. When there is a very real God, who is at work in our everyday lives. I believe that the modern day institutional church has lost something vital over the years, leading to a soul sucking complacency today. When that is never what we were created for. I sincerely hope that I can help illuminate this in some way with this platform. I am not a teacher, not a preacher, I am just a pilgrim making progress.