Implementing the Bible’s statements on male headship in marriage has proven to be a great challenge to Christian people over the centuries. There is no question that the concept has been warped, distorted and abused to the advantage of males. We know that evil has warped everything within God’s creation and every aspect of His revelation of Himself and truth to humanity. So the distortions of this idea should not cause us to jettison it. The perversion of the truth, rather than causing the easy pendulum swing reaction, should cause us to carefully study, examine, and test it in order to discern truth from error.

The statements about the husband’s headship in marriage are present throughout Scripture in words addressed to fallen people in a fallen world. It must be possible to rightly implement them in a way that marginalizes no one. As people of the Scripture we feel the responsibility to reckon with these statements and come to an understanding of what God desires in our homes.

The term and concept of male headship comes from verses like this one in Ephesians 5:22-24.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Our essential task is to understand verses like these and their implications in 21st century American Culture.

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This is one of the questions we have received since many of you began the READ the BIBLE in One Year. We thought we would post it along with an answer from one of our staff.

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What is the belief on being spirit filled with the evidence of speaking in tongues? Do you believe that or not?

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Speaking in tongues is just one of several manifestations of the Spirit mention by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12. These are given according to the Spirit’s will and are for the common good (1 Cor 12:7). It is also apparent from this chapter that not all believers exhibit the same manifestations (verses 29 and 30). Moreover, nowhere in Scripture is the filling of the Spirit connect with any of these particular manifestations.

Rather, the filling of the Holy Spirit is conditioned on our obedience (Eph 4:30; 1 Thess 5:19; Gal 5:16) and is evident in the believer’s walk with the Lord. In other words, the person who is filled with the Spirit will have an attitude of love toward their fellow believers and of thankfulness toward God (Eph 5:18-20) and will also be full of God’s word (Col 3:16-17).

Richard Weisenburger

America has been collectively processing homosexuality in a very public way over the past three decades. There are diverse opinions being expressed on this subject in the political arena and in the religious arena. The tone of this conversation is varied as well, ranging from open hostility and violence to camaraderie and solidarity.

As we watch and participate in this conversation at Red Mountain Community Church we have four important commitments that we want to honor. They are commitments that we think are inherent in calling oneself a follower of Christ.

• We are committed to conveying to all the story of God paying for our sins through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus. Conveying this story by word and deed is a trust that demands from us an open-heartedness to all people.
• We are committed to support any and all in their personal journey toward a fuller expression of the character of Christ. This demands understanding and tolerance of our imperfections, and patience as patterns of thought are wrestled with. We must foster the progress of all who wish to live as Christ desires them to live.
• We are committed to represent accurately what God has revealed in terms of his thought for humanity. Christ represented God to the very end, and it cost Him His life. We must follow Him in this.
• We are committed to a certain tone and rhetoric in all conversations. Our commitment is to speak our convictions with precision, but humbly, with loving, empathetic, and respectful words.

Bible Interpretation
We believe that God has provided for us a written record of His heart and mind with regard to our experience of human life and existence. While this record does not give us an exhaustive revelation of all we might like to know about God, it is a sufficient unveiling of His thought so that we can know with certainty His mind on many matters. We realize that interpreting this record, the Bible, is a challenge, but not in the sense that its meaning is lost or hidden. Interpretation is challenging only because our knowledge of the culture and usage of words within those cultures is limited. And so those of us that have chosen to live by the principles of the Bible know well and first hand the challenges of Bible interpretation. There are sections of it that are very challenging.

The Bible’s Teaching
Having acknowledged the complexity of Bible interpretation, we must say that the passages of Scripture dealing with homosexuality are not among those difficult to interpret. In the entire record of the Bible that deals specifically with this subject, there is no contradiction. Though different human authors separated by centuries of time recorded the words, the accounts of the mind of God on this matter speak as from one voice. The testimony of the Bible is this; homosexuality is not God’s will for humanity (Leviticus 18:22; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11). To those involved in the gay lifestyle, those words sting. We must empathize with that feeling. All who are Christ followers know that feeling well. It stings when we read about things like deceit, anger, slander and so many other things we naturally fall into. But there is no doubt about what the message of the Bible on homosexuality is. Homosexuality is outside of the will of God for us.

Many in Christian circles have sought to refute the acceptance of the actual words of the Bible on this subject. Only lowering one’s view of the Bible and dismissing its words as the testimony of a certain culture from a certain era in history can lead one to do this. To us however, if the Bible were that unreliable, logic would lead us to abandon our entire faith. If the record of the Bible is not reliable, then nothing in it can be trusted, and we would be foolish to base our thinking on any portion of it. In that case, what we have in it is a quaint, cultural tale, not the revelation of the mind of God. We believe that all evidence points to the Bible’s reliability.

The Gospel and Homosexuality
What the Bible says about the practice of homosexuality is relatively easy to establish. How that message should be conveyed must be pondered carefully and prayerfully. We must remember that the grace and love of God must be communicated and demonstrated to all people. We all espouse that, but somehow when it comes to homosexuality, we have not practiced it. Some see no conflict in Christians carrying signs that say things like “God hates fags.” We must grieve at such things. We must not frontload the gospel with the demand that gays and lesbians lay aside their lifestyle before God can accept them. We would not be as quick to demand that of a liar, or of an arrogant person. Somehow we have come to view the gay lesbian community as having extra dues to pay. We must not project that the blood of Christ covers them only if it is combined with a promise never to practice homosexuality again! Our approach should be to extend the gospel to them as we would anyone else, with the deepest sincerity and love, as something freely offered by God. Once their spirits are united with God, effectual change in this matter is made possible, as with all other behaviors that are outside of God’s will. God will be faithful to bring inner conviction regarding truth.

Can one be a Christian and practice homosexuality? Yes. Can one be an obedient Christian and be practicing the gay lesbian lifestyle? No. Gays and lesbians who believe in Jesus are like all Christians in that we all share a common challenge. We must choose obedience on a moment-by-moment basis, conforming to the pattern of life modeled by Jesus Christ. Diligence and faithfulness are required of all of us in myriads of real life issues that God desires to change in us. At risk is our progress in the Christian faith, our personal freedom, our eternal reward, and our experience of God’s power and blessing. This holds true whether one’s natural behavior leads them into fits of rage, into bouts of anxiety, into substance abuse, into adultery, or into homosexuality. We each have battles that relate to who we are and how life has shaped us. We must fight the battles and make the choices each moment of the rest of our lives on this earth.

“But I Can’t Fight Who I Am!”
On the subject of one’s sexuality the statement is often made that it is naturally determined and we must be true to who we are. We believe that this is a flawed argument not because we understand all the genetics of the matter. It is flawed because who we are naturally is not where God wants to leave us. In a host of areas God’s heart is to take us away from natural, instinctive living and to lead us into supernatural living that is choreographed within us by the Holy Spirit. The point of Christianity is that many things have gone wrong in all of creation and our loving and gracious God is in the process of patiently bringing it back. Sexuality is just one area in which we are called to something other than what comes naturally (Galatians 5:15-26; Ephesians 4:17-32).

What We MUST Do
The journey to where God wants us in so many matters is just that, a journey. It is a process we must get good at supporting in all people, no matter what their particular patterns of behavior have been. By getting good at supporting the spiritual journey of others we mean making a personal investment in them. We mean coming along side of them, speaking the truth in love, extending grace, building supporting relationships with them, standing with them through failure and re-starts. This is part of the debt that the Bible says we owe to each other. We must face the fact that we have wrongly arrived at the point where we extend great grace and patience in helping people through certain sins. Other sins, homosexuality being one of them, we tend to govern by different rules—one strike and you’re out! We must squarely face this bias that is in us.

What then will our posture be in the conversation regarding homosexuality. First, we simply do not have the freedom to change what God has revealed to be His will for us. To do so is to take His place, and make ourselves out to be God. That means that we must when asked, speak humbly, lovingly, and precisely for God. His will is that we leave behind the gay lesbian lifestyle. We will likely be misunderstood when we state this truth plainly. We must do all we can to mitigate that, which leads to a second observation. While the truth is not up for negotiation, our tone must be. We must be confident that we will not change or endanger the truth one iota by changing our tone and our posture in this conversation. We must go overboard in projecting a tone of grace and love. In doing so we will find ourselves representing more of the heart of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We will increase the power of the truth by the tone of our words.

One of the most significant life investments you can make is to develop and strengthen your own personal devotional life. By building your own personal devotional life I mean intentionally engaging solo in the kinds of activities that strengthen your ability to know and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. You will find that this becomes one of the most fulfilling and meaningful things you have ever pursued. I want to help you begin or begin again to build a personal devotional habit.

A most important thing to understand as you begin is something I have already alluded to. The purpose of all the things you do as part of your devotional life is to help you know and follow the leadings of the Holy Spirit all day every day. The activities themselves are not the goal. So always remember that the purpose of an activity like Bible reading is not just to read the Bible. You will engage yourself with the Bible because it equips you to accurately hear the voice of God’s Spirit above all the other voices. The proof of a good devotional life in you will not be that you successfully put in a certain amount of time day in and day out doing certain activities. Your devotional life is successful if you find you are carrying out your various roles in life in God’s way because you are sensing the leading of His Spirit. If you do not understand this, your devotional life will become meaningless religious routine. It will make you arrogant instead of more like Christ. You will have a false sense of your own spiritual health. A strong devotional life is evident in the fact that it makes us think and act like Christ.

I am suggesting a beginning point for your devotional life. Don’t try to jump in the deep end immediately! Here’s what I mean by that. Very often we try to start where others have arrived over the course of many years. The result is usually disastrous. It is best to set modest and realistic goals. By goals I am talking specifically about time. I think that your first step is to identify a block of time that you know you have a reasonably good chance of protecting. It doesn’t matter when in the day it is. I would suggest a modest amount of time, 15 minutes to a half hour. I would suggest four or five days a week. You can always add time. Biting off too much will discourage you.

As you begin, there is something very important you need to know. You are destined to feel you have failed at this, many times. Your routine will be interrupted, maybe even set aside. Remember, the goal is not to faithfully stick with a certain schedule of prayer or Bible study. It is to become different. If you are seeing changes in your thinking and courses of action, you are succeeding, regardless of how well you’ve maintained the schedule. But keep restarting in terms of making it a scheduled event. That is the most important advice I would give anyone who is starting out. Keep on restarting. Don’t be paralyzed by the false starts along the way. It is not uncommon to work at this for a decade or two before it feels right.

Your devotional life should be centered on interaction with the Bible. Notice I did not say it should be centered on READING the Bible. Reading the Bible is something you should do and will do. But you need to remember that some of history’s most powerful Christian men and women were illiterate. Having a personal copy of Scripture is a relatively recent thing. So merely reading the Bible isn’t the goal. The activity that the Bible itself says transforms a life is meditation on the Scripture (Psalms 1:1-3; Joshua 1:8). In research done in the modern era, when people are asked to identify what they attribute their own spiritual growth to, the overwhelming majority point to personal interaction with Scripture. So your goal is not just to READ the Bible. Your goal is to process its words, to ponder their meaning and their implication in your life and relationships, and then to obey them. Reading is just the beginning. Your time in the Scripture should be aimed at taking something away to reflect on. Don’t focus it on reading through a certain number of pages.

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Who do you think the Nephilim are? Are they fallen angels? Are they giants?

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Grace and peace, Dave Lindstrom

The Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 probably comes from the Hebrew word pronounced “Nephal” which means “to fall” or pluralized “fallen ones”. According to the context of the passage found in Genesis 6:1,2 people were increasing on the earth (Genesis 6:1), there was marriage going on with the sons of God and the daughters of men (Genesis 6:2), and wickedness was great on the earth grieving Yahweh (Genesis 6:5,6).

1 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.

4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. 5 The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

The Nephilim were part of this offspring between the sons of God and daughters of men (Genesis 6:4) and seemed to exist before the flood and after the flood as mighty warriors and giant sized people (Genesis 6:4, Numbers 13:33, Deuteronomy 1:22, 2:10).

The main question to ask in this passage is,” Who are these sons of God and daughters of men?” Bible scholars have arrived at 4 possibilities: 1) Fallen Angels and Mortals, 2) Godly Line and Ungodly Line, 3) Dynastic Rulers and Commoners, and 4) Man and Woman. Even though all 4 views have some strengths and weaknesses, as other Scripture is compared, the main two views given the most support are 1 and 2.

Either the sons of God are the fallen angels who were allowed by Yahweh to have sexual relations and marital relations with human woman (view 1) or the sons of God are the believing line of godly people coming from the lines of Seth, Enoch, Noah, etc. who start intermarrying with non-believing lines of people (daughters of men). Depending on which view you take gives you the Nephilim which are either a combination of half-demon (fallen angel) and human or a combination of a godly believing line intermarrying with an ungodly believing line.

Due to the difficulty of the passage, a spirit of Christian grace should be given with a leaning to views 1 and 2 as best fitting the Scripture. There is quite a bit of study to do in supporting and disproving each of these positions that the space of this explanation will not allow. My personal view is position 2, the Godly Line and Ungodly Line. My main support for this view comes from the context of the passage (where people, not other life forms) on the earth are multiplying in wickedness, angels were not previously mentioned in Genesis before this, and the fact that nowhere in the rest of Scripture does it allow for angels to interact and mate with humans. Also, Jesus seems to
discredit this idea in Matthew 24:38, Luke 17:27, Matthew 22:30.

Another one of the questions we have received since many of you began the READ the BIBLE in One Year. We thought we would post it along with an answer from one of our Elders.

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Why did God, when addressing the Serpent specifically use the word “her” in the phrase in Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers;”?

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In the bulk of the passage, God is addressing the three ‘offenders’; Satan, the Woman, and the Man. There were consequences for each of them. One of the principles of interpretation here is to NOT assume an unwarranted exclusion, based on the use of the word. In other words, God wasn’t saying that there wouldn’t be enmity between Satan and the man’s offspring. He could have used the words ‘their seeds.’ He just chose to focus on the enmity between the woman’s offspring and Satan.

Why, though? In my view, at least two reasons. First, according to the text, Satan and the woman were in a conversation that resulted in the woman being deceived. Adam was apparently there, so he has full responsibility, but it seems that Satan deceived Eve, and Adam, watching his wife eat, took the fruit too, knowing that it had been forbidden by God to do so. So the order of the course of events was Satan deceived Eve, Eve disobeyed, and Adam disobeyed. In Hebrew, order is very important. Thus, when God handed out the consequences, Satan was first, Eve came second, and Adam followed.

There is another reason that I think has prophetic implications. The balance of the verse is And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

The ‘who’ in the offspring is significant. Eve’s offspring was first Cain, then all of humanity that followed out of her ’seed’, including Jesus….and including all of those that follow Christ, like you and me. The ‘enmity’ is there between the children of God and Satan. As to the ‘head crushing’…the ‘he’ in that is Jesus.

So, putting it all together, the offspring of Eve would continually be in conflict with Satan. Eventually, out of that offspring, Jesus would come and, despite a ‘flesh wound’ that is not permanently fatal (such as a heel injury, not to a vital organ…..and perhaps an early illusion to the nails through the feet on the cross), Jesus will deliver the fatal blow to Satan as he is ultimately cast into the Lake of Fire.

Finally, in Hebrew tradition, the blood line of a people is traced through the mother. The genealogy of Jesus is traced both through Mary’s lineage and through Joseph’s in the Gospels. Another reason that God probably chose to use the phrase, “her seed”.

Paul Klimke

This is one of the questions we have received since many of you began the READ the BIBLE in One Year. We thought we would post it along with an answer from one of our Elders.

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Genesis 2:2-3: In these verses it says that on the 7th day, God rested and he blessed it and made it holy. With Sunday being the first day of the week, why do we worship and keep Sunday holy? Please help me understand this.

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The pattern God set in Genesis 2 of alternating periods of work and rest became the pattern for the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. The command to observe the Sabbath day was given to Israel to teach them to honor God as holy and to trust Him for their needs (Exodus 16:22-30; 20:9-11 ― note: this will open the passage in a new window.) This command and the whole Old Testament law pointed forward to Christ.

Now that Christ has come, fulfilling the law, we as Christians are no longer under the law but under grace. Regarding the sabbath Paul says in Romans 14:5-8: “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.  He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord.” And Paul also states in Colossians 2:16 and 17: “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.”

All of this means that we are no longer required to observe the Sabbath laws though it is still wise to maintain a weekly pattern of work and rest. Moreover, the New Testemant does command us to meet regularly in a local assembly (i.e. the local church). Very early in the Church’s history they began meeting on the first day of the week instead of the seventh to commemorate Christ’s resurrection, which was on the first day of the week. This is why we meet on Sunday rather than Saturday. It is important, however, to remember that everyday belongs to the Lord, so that no matter what we are doing, whether worship, work or play, we do these things as unto the Lord.

Richard Weisenburger

Pastor Bob Fox

Making spiritual progress is a matter of embracing specific practices that foster it. In addition to placing His own Spirit in us, God has provided certain things outside of us that become tools in the Holy Spirit’s hands used to reshape us. We have a choice in the degree to which we expose ourselves to these things. The degree to which we are engaged with these instruments of God’s Spirit impacts deeply our spiritual progress.

God knew that your spiritual progress would depend on a nurturing process. So He created something that you are a part of. It is a living organism that nurtures your spiritual health. You interact with the rest of that living organism and as you do you promote the spiritual progress of others and they help nurture yours. This living organism is an ingenious invention of God’s. It is the local Church. It is primary in His plan for your spiritual growth and so you must be fully engaged with it. It is not just a matter of attending Church, though that is where you must start.

Fully engaged means several things. Fully engage with the Church by officially becoming a member of it. Fully engage by being a regular part of its meetings. To be fully engaged means to establish and maintain healthy relationships with people in it. It means to join them in remembering the Lord’s death through communion. It means to join with a few such people that you trust and open your lives to each other for support and for accountability. Fully engaging with Christ’s Church means to serve in your local church by using your spiritual gift. It means shouldering responsibility for its financial support. It means to be accountable to it and submit to its authority. It means to pray for its leaders and its members.

In doing these things God’s Spirit will constantly be weaving your life together with others. Through supportive fellowship you will make progress together. God has no alternate plan for your growth. Don’t ditch the organized Church. He hasn’t. The things that follow do not take the place of the Church. In fact, being fully engaged with a local Church will enable you to draw more from the things below.

A second instrument of growth that God’s Spirit uses in your life is the Bible. The Bible reveals truth about God, the World, and you. In it you will find truths that you otherwise would not know. This truth is conveyed to you on its pages through history, through poetry, through prophecy, and through letters. You have in the Bible an ordered account of God’s thought for you that you can consult at any time. Read it on your own. Seek out opportunities to be taught by those who have greater understanding of it than you do. Involve yourself with others and discuss with them what you are learning. Learn from it at Church and study it away from Church.

Aside from fully engaging with your Church, a habit with regard to the Bible is one of the most crucial things for you to cultivate. Mature Christian people cite this as the number one thing that caused them to make spiritual progress. It is a good idea to start by simply reading it. Look up Matthew in the index in front, turn to it and begin there. Read a portion of the Bible each day until you have read to the end of the Bible. You have now read the entire New Testament. Along the way, begin to keep a pencil or pen with you to mark phrases that stand out to you as important. After you have read the New Testament go back and pick some sections that are of interest to you. This time read slower. Read each day until you read something that speaks especially to you. Write that thought down. Ask God what He wants you to learn from that. You are now hearing from Him, and that’s the purpose of this habit. In time, turn some attention to the Old Testament.

If your habit breaks down, or never gets started, pick up wherever you left off. Simply do a re-start. Don’t wallow in guilt and don’t become discouraged. Just keep trying. It may take years to become consistent, but everything along the way will be worthwhile. Just stay with it. That’s the best advice to give anyone who is seeking to develop any kind of devotional habit.

A third instrument used by God’s Spirit to shape you is meditation. Write down on a card a verse from Scripture that has stood out to you. Place that verse on the visor of your car, or on the refrigerator, anyplace you can look at it during time when your mind is free. Ponder the words in that verse and the concepts behind them. Use times when your hands are occupied but your mind is free. Ask things like “Why is that particular word used here?” Observe the details of the language. Force yourself to wring the full meaning of each word from the text. You’ll be amazed at the things you learn that never would have occurred to you if you had just read the verse. This activity of meditation is one that God says will lead to spiritual progress and blessing. He said to Joshua, “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night , so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” (Joshua 1:8)

A fourth instrument God’s Spirit uses in your life is prayer. It is a way for you to talk to God about any and every concern you have. It is a way for you to experience His leading as you pray for others. You will minister to many simply by praying for them. Don’t view prayer as just talking to God. Be silent before Him and sense what thoughts He might be placing in your mind as you are quiet before Him. He will speak to you in this way and nurture your growth. Pray with other believers and pray on your own.

Identify things you are anxious about and pray about these. Making a list can be helpful, but freshen it often or your praying will become mechanical. Put people on your list. Start with a few. Eventually ask them what’s happening with them that you can pray for. You may wish to start a prayer journal. This is a notebook in which you write down the things you pray for, and thoughts that come to you as you pray. All who have done this have found it highly rewarding. Don’t forget to worship in your praying. Worship happens when you commend God for who He is, for the great things he has done that describe what He is like. Praying for a period of time speaking only of Him, with no mention of words like I, or me, or we, can totally change your perspective on everything. Your problems shrink when you look at the greatness of God.

A fifth instrument in the hands of the Holy Spirit is ministry. Ministry is serving others with a view toward helping them make spiritual progress. Now you might ask, “How does my own progress come about if I busy myself with someone else’s spiritual progress?” An important principle regarding God’s family and kingdom is this, “Give and it will be given to you.” We find that in serving others, we ourselves are served. In ministering to them, we are ministered to. I cannot reach out to encourage someone else and not be encouraged myself. It is a very curious thing, but it is an axiom of the kingdom of God that in giving, I find that I am given to.

Some ministry is very direct, such as teaching children, or giving money to someone in need. Other ministry is more indirect, like serving behind the scenes while someone else “delivers the goods.” Both are ministry and you will find that as you minister and help push forward the kingdom of God in others, you yourself make spiritual progress. Ministry also becomes a catalyst for the other four things mentioned above. As we minister to others we become more engaged with our Church, with the Scripture and in prayer. So one of the most important things for you to do early in your spiritual journey is to begin to minister to the spiritual needs of others. You will experience great spiritual progress as you do.

There is very clear testimony that God has consistently used these five tools for centuries to bring about spiritual progress in his people. There are other tools, but these are key. These should be understood as what we have described them as, tools in His hands. They are not magical in themselves. Only as they are entered into with the anticipation and desire to hear His voice are they of value. He Himself is our source of nurture and growth, not routines. It is important to realize that our faithfulness in approaching these things in this way will largely determine our degree of spiritual progress. This is His plan and provision for us. He has no other plan.

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Pastor Bob Fox

There is no prayer that is guaranteed to be answered like your prayer for your own spiritual progress. You should continually ask God to help you grow up, and you should do so with great confidence. It is God’s will for every person at all times. Nothing could be closer to His heart for you than that you grow up in Him. But that raises a question. Since that is true, why aren’t more Christians experiencing spiritual progress? Why aren’t churches busting at the seams with people who exemplify phenomenal spiritual growth? The answer to this dichotomy is complex. It is important to wrestle with it so that we have right expectations of God, of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and of ourselves.

First, we must affirm that a lack of spiritual progress in any of us does not occur because stagnancy is somehow God’s will for us. It does not occur because God withholds His power from us. The reason for the shortfall when it occurs lies in us. It is certain that He has made available to us everything that pertains to life and godliness.

Second, we must understand that when spiritual progress happens in someone, we have witnessed both a miracle of God and something achieved as the result of that person’s effort. God has placed within every believer His Spirit. The super-natural is constantly at work and happening within them. Spiritual progress would never happen apart from this dynamic of His Spirit working within us. At the same time the individual’s will enters into the equation of spiritual growth. Are they listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit? Do they resist the Spirit? Are they ignorant of spiritual truth that relates to the situation they are in? It is important to understand that our spiritual progress is not automatic. In fact it is possible for any of us to fail miserably as a Christian in any moment of any day. And so the writings of the New Testament, all of which are directed at believers in whom the Holy Spirit resided, are full of specific commands and exhortations to be diligent. Our degree of spiritual progress is not predestined. We can and do retard it. To make spiritual progress, effort will be required of you. If you do nothing, your progress will be painful as God disciplines you. It will also be slow. So while your role in your own spiritual progress is secondary, it is still key.

Third, we must understand that spiritual progress is a process, a lifelong one that is hard to quantify along the way. It cannot necessarily be defined by predictable stages that occur uniformly according to the number of years a person has known Christ. Perhaps after a certain elapsed time with Christ a Christian should have learned certain things. That seemed to be an expectation of New Testament writers. But it was also their testimony that in a number of cases those lessons were clearly not learned. You must be patient with yourself on the one hand, and demanding of yourself on the other. It is right to expect and demand certain things of yourself. It is also right to extend grace to yourself as God does, and allow time. This process of growth toward maturity is referred to in Christian thought as sanctification.

Fourth, spiritual progress is impacted by sins of the past. In the course of our lives in an evil world we can incur some debilitating wounds. They can make faith and trust difficult. They can make all forms of self-denial and self-discipline elusive. They render relationships troublesome. It is certain that God forgives the past, completely. It is also true that He specializes in rebuilding lives. Spiritual progress involves battling past old thought patterns. They are not automatically dissolved. Undoing them and relearning can be complex. The damage done to some is greater than others and so they take longer to heal. You will find that your progress in some areas is very, very slow. You will wonder at times if you will ever get past certain things. You will, because His grace will be measured out to you each day in proportion to its challenges.

Fifth, making spiritual progress is a matter of embracing specific practices that fosters it. In addition to placing His own Spirit in us, God has provided certain things outside of us that become tools in the Holy Spirit’s hands used to reshape us. We have a choice in the degree to which we expose ourselves to these things. The degree to which we are engaged with these instruments of God’s Spirit impacts deeply our spiritual progress. The next article will deal with some of these specific tools that God wants to use in your life and how they can be implemented.

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Pastor Bob Fox

Do you feel like you are making spiritual progress? Or is your spiritual journey really just spiritual wandering? Spiritual progress is the sense that you are moving closer to the God who made you, that your understanding of life is increasing, that you are becoming wiser. Most people feel the need for this. A spiritual journey is one thing. Most of the world is on one. But the real deal is spiritual progress.

There are many things you should know about spiritual progress. It will eventually involve every nook and cranny of your life. God will leave no area of your life untouched. Spiritual progress will take time, and to a large degree you will determine how much progress you make in any given time period. God will do much in a short period of time if you are up for change at a fast pace. Spiritual progress will involve times of great victory and celebration. It will also involve faith on your part, which means risk, uncertainty, fear, and many other things that are uncomfortable. Spiritual progress will involve critical seasons and strategic crossroads. You will have to take high stakes action that will either propel you forward to a higher plane, or freeze your progress wherever you are, maybe even set you back. All of this you will experience over time. But there is a key first step to spiritual progress.

Because God is the key player in real spiritual progress, the journey begins with being right with Him. How does one do that? It is precisely at this beginning point that most spiritual journeys run amuck. People set about getting right with God by doing “good deeds,” things that they believe will put them in His good graces. They approach it as they would building a relationship with another human. They act out behavior toward God that they have learned pleases people. It’s what they know and it usually works well with people. But it’s different with God.

It’s different with God, because He’s different. Though He is a personal being, He’s not a human being. We don’t have to get His attention, He knows us. We don’t have to convince Him we’re valuable or worthwhile. He knows we are because He made us! The problem between ourselves and God is evil. It is the reason we are separated from Him and feel the need to set out on a journey. It is the reason for the disconnect. Evil is not just outside us, it is in us. Evil is an instinctive desire within us to be our own masters and have God serve us. God calls that sin. We may be polite, respectful rebels, but we desire to swap roles with Him and have Him bring about for us our own agenda. That makes us sinners.

As sinners we embark on all kinds of spiritual journeys. But our spiritual journey is about discovering power for ourselves, or at least making ourselves more fulfilled or happy. This self-centeredness is a deep character flaw in each of us that we cannot cure ourselves of. Knowing this, God realizes we cannot possibly rise by our own efforts to harmony with Him. Our currying of His favor will always arise from impure motives. We don’t fool him. He’s different than human beings, because He sees our motives and they reveal something defective in us. By His own standard of justice He cannot ignore what He clearly sees in us. So, He cannot join Himself to us even though He desires to do so. The reason we’re on a journey and not arriving is the presence of this instinctive evil in us, evil that God cannot ignore.

The good news is that God loves us anyway! And so what we cannot do for ourselves, He has done for us. He became a man, the man we know as Jesus. By becoming a man He accomplished a number of important things. A very important one is that in His death, He bore the punishment for our evil. He substituted Himself for us and bore the penalty His justice demanded for our sin. It is as if when the time came for us to pay for our sin, Jesus took us out of the game and stepped in for us. The result is that full payment of the penalty for all of our flaws is available. As a result, what He wants to do for us, He can now justly do. And so He has chosen to forgive all who simply believe the bad news about themselves and the good news about Jesus!

So then, the first step in moving from one who is simply on a spiritual journey to one who is making spiritual progress is belief. It is an incredibly simple but profound step. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—that’s the simple command of God to all who seek to be joined to Him. Your thought process in taking this step might be something like this:

I believe I am a sinner. There’s just something in me that makes me want to control my own life and have you fit in, God. I’ve seen and felt that in me. That’s bad news! But, I believe the good news—that You love me anyway. You became a man and You paid for my evil. You ask me to believe that, God. Since I do, I am now joined to You and can become who You want me to be. Lets begin God!

It is very helpful to express this thought as a prayer to God. You can and should do that right now. Just remember the prayer doesn’t save you. Your faith and trust in Him does. He knows your heart and the moment you believed He forgave you. His Spirit has now been joined to you. You made huge spiritual progress by that step of belief. Now you can make more progress, because you have been joined to Him in the deepest part of your being.

Remember that because of evil in the world and evil that is in us, everything is wrong until God makes it right. You’ve developed patterns of thinking in the years you’ve been separated from God. Now He wants to change those to make them right. Spiritual progress is a matter of allowing God to separate out from you thought and action that is not in harmony with what is true. Knowing His thoughts will require the use of your mind. Your mind will need to be directed to His thought for you. Your thinking will be reprogrammed over time. Part 2 of this article will help you understand some of the things God has provided so that we can think His thoughts and make spiritual progress.

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