Growing up

“If you haven’t grown up by the time you’re 50, you don’t have to!” At least, that’s what someone’s status said on Facebook.

It’s tempting to think of how nice it would be to go back to the halcyon days of our childhood – a time with no stress and no worries. Of course, anyone who has raised children knows that this image of childhood is bunk. Being a kid is hard, and the problems kids face that seem insignificant to adults are monstrous at them. Our mistake is that we picture being kids again, but with all our adult knowledge, skill, and perspective. While staying a kid forever sounds good in fantasy, in reality it wouldn’t be so great at all.

So I wonder why there are so many believers who settle for being “Peter Pan Christians.” So many have never gotten beyond a Sunday School understanding of our faith, and are trying to use tools appropriate for spiritual children to wrestle with adult problems and needs.

Is your faith growing? Can you name at least one way that you’ve become more spiritually mature in the past year? Five years? Something you’ve learned? Some way you’ve come to know God better or love God more? Some way you’re living more faithfully or obediently in the grace of God?

Spiritual growth doesn’t happen by accident, and attending worship on Sunday mornings is simply not enough food to grow the spiritual soul. That’s why we try so hard to get everyone into a Growth Group – a place where you can wrestle with your faith, dig into the meat of God’s word. If Growth Groups aren’t your thing, I challenge you to develop a spiritual growth plan, and stick to it! Don’t know how? Give us a call. We’ll be glad to help.

Do You Believe in Miracles?

Tomorrow night I’ll be beginning a new Growth Group (Small Group) studying the book You Were Born for This: 7 Keys to a Life of Predictable Miracles. I mention this because when I was given a review copy of YWBFT, I was expecting to hate it.

The author, Bruce Wilkinson, is best known as the author of The Prayer of Jabez, and frankly, I found Jabez a bit thin. It was inspiring, but to this day I don’t think the biblical prayer says or even implies all that Wilkinson says it does.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that YWBFT is not only built on solid, biblical ground. It’s also a book that has completely challenged my understanding of how God works miracles in everyday life. It has really challenged my traditional reformed and Presbyterian comfort zone.

Wilkinson’s premise is that God uses everyday people to work miracles in the lives of people around them. If we want to be bearers of God’s miracles, we have to be aware of opportunities that God places in our path, open to being used when the opportunities arise, ready to give up our agenda to follow God’s agenda, and guided by the Holy Spirit so that whatever God does through us is to God’s greater glory.

The book is replete with stories of Wilkinson feeling a “nudge” from God when doing something very ordinary such as flying in an airplane, driving down the road, or walking down the sidewalk. His attention is drawn to a person he would otherwise overlook. Recognizing God’s prompting, he initiates a conversation with this friend or stranger, only to discover that they have been asking God to help them with a problem that Wilkinson is uniquely equipped to solve. In every case it is clear to both Wilkinson and the other party that God brought them together at this time and place to miraculously provide for that need.

This isn’t a book about lame people walking, empty vessels being filled with wine, or time standing still. It’s a book about how we can learn to be available to God to meet genuine human needs, in a way that can only be explained by saying “It’s a God thing.”

When Wilkinson suggested that we begin each day by praying for God to use us to do a miracle in someone’s life, it made me face my own reluctance to set aside my agenda for God’s agenda. I don’t want God to ask me to talk to a stranger. I don’t want to be delayed in reaching my destination to help someone on the side of the road. I don’t want to risk embarrassment or failure. So to ask God to use me today – not sometime, but today – requires me to demonstrate radical trust and genuine sacrifice. Perhaps the reason we see so few miracles is that so few of us are truly available to God.

So I’m leading a Growth Group, not only to teach this book, but to wrestle with my own faithfulness. I know I want God to use me. Now I just need to want it enough (and trust God enough) to actually be used!