Living Condemned

Chasing the Wind

Have you ever wondered why so many Christians live condemned, could it be as simple as mistaking the seismic shift of being re-birthed, that glorious event of being saved as something that removes them from the process that it actually is.

I was listening to a couple of guys talking about this the other day; the one went on to say that in spite of his born again experience much if not most of his life seemed pretty much the same, dealing with the same struggles and stuff that was there before his experience, so, does this negate the reality of his, our re-birthing?

Many people suffer in this matter because they try to understand our life in this world in terms of an event rather than the process it actually is. Consequently, it is felt by many people that once we are saved we should be somehow perfect. When this does not occur at all levels of our living we shift to seeking the “right event” to make us perfect. We are deceived into believing that we can be made perfect by the baptism of the Holy Spirit or by attaining the right knowledge or by some other event. This results in Christians chasing after the right seminar, the right healing or the right miracle. However the reality of our living is that as we go from event to event we carry the same root problems along with is.

It is because of the process nature of going on with God that we see uneven behaviour in our lives as Christians. As children grow physically, they display changing levels of maturity. Anyone who has raised children through infancy, childhood and adolescence can tell you that these changes do not happen smoothly. A child in transition will at one moment show a wisdom and maturity beyond their years. In the next instant they show a level of childishness that you thought they were done with. This dynamic is also evident with us in our spiritual growth.

Our spiritual growth differs fundamentally from salvation because our spiritual growth is a process and salvation is an event. In the working of this process we experience an ongoing change. The process we are speaking of here occurs over our entire earthly life. What takes place in this process is the progressive subjection of the independent self and the ever-growing operation of the individual self. Through this dynamic we are brought along from being spiritual infants to become full-grown children of God.

In an age that highly values speed and instant results we find the idea of an immediate transformation very alluring. Our Father is not so enamored with the instant however. It is God’s good will and pleasure to have us mature spiritually by a growth process. This is an ongoing work of the Father that we must voluntarily submit to undergo. That submission is a moment-by-moment series of decisions on our part.

Rich