Category Archives: Spirit-Led Living

Articles on how to grow spiritually and how to flow better with the Holy Spirit’s leading in your life

by | December 10, 2008 · 9:24 pm

Transformation—One Step at a Time

The book that grew out of our pilgrimage

A Request I Couldn’t Get Out of My Mind
About two years ago, one of my sons’ friends and his parents came to our house for dinner one night. As we were flipping hamburgers on the grill, Mike (the father) and I started talking about spiritual growth. In a moment of candor, he said to me, “I would really like to grow spiritually, but I don’t know what to do. I wish someone would break spiritual growth down into specific steps that I could take.”

As I worked for the next year and a half on a book that was just published a couple of weeks ago, Mike’s request haunted me. By the time I was done writing it, I realized that I had been writing for Mike and other Christians who want to grow spiritually. Taking pilgrimage as a metaphor for the spiritual life, I titled the book, One Step at a Time: A Pilgrim’s Guide to Spirit-Led Living (https://spirit-ledleader.com/?page_id=29, the Alban Institute, 2008).

At the heart of this book is my wrestling with the question, “How can I experience more transformation in my life?” Biblical writers teach that believers are changed by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in their lives, but if transformation is so elusive for so many of us, what’s wrong? Is it our theology or something we need to do differently? What could I say to help others experience real, lasting transformation in their life?

Insight on the Camino
Two and a half years ago, the summer before my conversation with Mike about spiritual growth, I went on a long hike. A very long hike. Jill, my two sons and I walked 500 miles across northern Spain on pilgrimage. I was on sabbatical, and I felt led to walk this ancient pilgrimage route to seek God’s leading for the next phase of my life. Even more, I was hoping that God would use this intense, extraordinary experience to transform me in some way.

I didn’t really know what I was getting myself in for. The first night we slept in bunk beds, in a room with 120 other pilgrims. Our clothes got soaked, our legs were aching, we were exhausted, and this was only day 1. Some days the temperature was over 110 degrees. Jill injured her leg and nearly got heat exhaustion. My feet ached and my legs throbbed. We had to face things in ourselves and in our marriage that we didn’t want to have to face.

I was praying to be transformed every day, but all I was getting was crabbier, more tired, and more fed up with myself and everyone else. Oh, there were lots of wonderful moments, too, but I was really wondering if significant transformation was even possible in my life.

Then one day, something shifted. I started off in a particularly crabby mood. We had an extra long way to go that day, and on top of it, the rain started falling. This was really going to be a good day, I could tell!

Along the way, I noticed that the rain would come and go depending on the wind. When there was no wind, the rain just kept dripping on me. But when the wind would start up, sometimes the rain cloud above me would blow away, and we’d get a respite.

All of a sudden, I got this insight.

The Holy Spirit is like the wind. When I pray and ask for help with my negative moods or temptations or hard feelings, I am inviting God to do in me what I cannot seem to do for myself. It’s not magic, and it doesn’t work every time, but often, when I truly surrender my will to God’s, and ask for help with an open heart and mind, God produces a change within me. To go back to the metaphor, the Holy Spirit often blows away whatever is making me all wet spiritually, mentally or emotionally.

I also came to realize that the changes the Holy Spirit makes in me are seldom permanent. I trust that God has given me eternal life, but I still need the Holy Spirit to breathe into me freshly every day and every moment for me to continue to experience the changed life that comes from God.
Such an ongoing dependence on the Holy Spirit is what Jesus meant by abiding in him. Apart from Jesus we can do nothing. With Jesus we can bear much fruit. Apart from the Holy Spirit, we will be our old normal, limited, unchanged selves. With the Holy Spirit, we can experience love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

It’s that simple.

I didn’t say, it’s that “easy”, but it is a simple concept. With and only with the Holy Spirit’s active working in our lives and through us, can we experience the change we most desire, and the change we are called to as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, too many Christians have accepted the message of salvation, but have not learned how to let the Holy Spirit transform their hearts, minds and behavior on a day-by-day basis. Or, if they know how to yield to the Holy Spirit’s prompting, they often choose not to. Did I say, “they”? I meant, “we.” We all know the experience of knowing the right or good thing to do, but choosing a different course.

The Christian bookstores are full of inspirational and instructive books on living the Christian life, but not one will do you any good, if you are not willing to say “yes” to the Holy Spirit. You can listen to sermons, get videos of great teachers, and read the Bible until you’ve memorized every word, but if you are not prepared to say “yes” to the Holy Spirit on a moment by moment basis, you are not going to experience transformation. You are not going to experience the change you need, the change you hope for, and change you can believe in.

I cannot tell you specifically what the Holy Spirit wants to say to you at this moment, but I guarantee you that the Spirit has something to say to you that fits with God’s will for your life. God is trying to lead you in the ways he wants you to go, on a step-by-step basis.
We are not called to figure out God’s master plan for our life ahead of time. We are called to learn how to stay connected to the Holy Spirit, to recognize the Spirit’s prompting when it comes, and to say “yes” for the next thing God is asking us to do. Then, and usually only then, after we have said yes and have followed through on the Spirit’s leading, will we be ready to hear the next bit of instruction.

Transformation rarely happens in one fell swoop. We change as we learn to take one step after another as the Holy Spirit leads us. As we say yes to the Spirit’s leading today, we move to the place where we can say yes to whatever he wants us to do tomorrow. Then, when we add up all the days of our lives that are filled with moments in which we are being led by the Holy Spirit, the net result is a truly transformed life.

The place to start, though, is with this present moment.

What’s the Holy Spirit saying to you now?

What’s your answer?

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. —2 Corinthians 13:14

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by | December 2, 2008 · 11:31 pm

Change We Can Believe In

This is the first of two parts of a sermon I preached on November 16, 2008 in Sister Bay, Wisconsin.

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” –Romans 5:1-5

 

This fall has been a huge time of change in America. The financial markets have fallen precipitously, industry giants such Ford and General Motors are on the brink of bankruptcy, and many people are losing their jobs and feeling the strains of a worsening recession. Now, in the midst of all the stress and strain, everyone is hoping for some positive change in the days, months and years ahead.

Yet, seeking change is nothing new to most of us. Whenever you or I want a better life, a better marriage, better work, better relationship with others, a better community or church, or even a better world, we are talking about change. We may not be able to describe exactly what we would like, but we know it’s different from what we are experiencing at the moment. We want some kind of change in the hope that our future will be better than our past or present.

At its core, the Gospel is itself all about change.

• When Jesus came into the world he preached repentance from sins and a return to heartfelt, faithful, and loving devotion to God. That was a message of change.

• When Jesus died and was resurrected, he brought hope of eternal life to the world, showing that death need not have the final say in our lives. That was a big change.

• When we move from guilt to forgiveness, from judgment to salvation, from death to life, from despair to hope, and from powerlessness to power through the Holy Spirit, that’s real change.

• In Romans 5:1-5, everything Paul talks about has to do with change. By faith, we move from alienation from God to justification. We move from anxiety over our sins and fear of punishment to forgiveness and peace with God. We move from despair over life’s hardships to hope, because we see God at work in our suffering to produce perseverance, character and confidence for the future. Above all, we move from trying to worship a scary God out there somewhere, to having our hearts filled with love by the Holy Spirit, who is present within every believer in Jesus Christ.

• And, if God has his full way with us, we will also move from serving ourselves to serving Christ with our lives. With this transformation, our whole way of looking at life changes dramatically. We move from a self-centered way of being in the world to becoming instruments of God’s love to one another. Life ceases to be “about us” and increasingly becomes about Christ and serving God’s purposes in the world.

Now all of these changes help give us what we most need. They start as promises, but increasingly become reality for us as grow in faith and in our relationship with God. Truly, they are “the change we can believe in”!

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that we live in a world that is filled with all sorts of impediments to the change God wants to produce in us and among us.

• We have our human weaknesses, bad habits, addictions, and psychological hangups.

• We are subject to our sinful nature, and are surrounded by lies and deceptions from unseen spiritual forces that fool us or tie us up in knots.

• We can easily become afraid or distracted from the Spirit’s leading, and revert back to our pre-changed ways.

Do you know what I’m talking about?

Nothing can undo the work of Christ on the cross, and nothing can separate us from the love of God, but many things can sap the life out of our spirit and undermine our joy and ability to fully live out our God-given purpose.

What I experienced in Africa

The Rwandan genocide in 1994 is an extreme example of what I’m talking about. The church leadership utterly failed the nation of Rwanda, where 85% of the country was “Christian” before the genocide. Before the killing was over, one million people were murdered and 500,000 women raped in 100 days. As I sat with one of the bishops of the Anglican Church in October, he told me that the country is still suffering from effects of the genocide, and that the root of the problem was deep-seated hatred for others, and a failure of church leaders to develop the people spiritually. They had no concept of letting the Holy Spirit pour out God’s love in their hearts.

On the other hand, perhaps one of the most inspiring people I’ve met so far in Africa is Pastor Jacob Lipandasi. I first met Jacob at the Pastors Leadership Conference in Goma that I was leading a year ago. I learned of his compassion for the widows and orphans in his village, and my wife, Jill, and I helped him to raise $500 to buy seeds and tools in order to help the most vulnerable people in his area to plant their own crops.

This year, we invited Jacob to participate in a new program of spiritual life coaching. We had chosen just 3 of the 30 pastors from the conference to participate in the six month program, and he was one of them. We did not have enough money in our new ministry to pay for his travel expenses at the time, so he borrowed the $15 needed so that he could get the cheapest place on the cheapest boat to cross Lake Kivu to come for coaching. I found out that he stood on the outside of the boat for 13 hours, over night, just to come. He arrived with no money for his return ticket. He was trusting God to provide.

During the coaching, he refined his vision for his ministry to help these poor women move from just providing food for themselves to actually creating businesses for themselves so that some day that might get out of poverty. Jacob will need to attend more schooling to learn how to do this, and he has no idea where the money will come from to pay for his further education or for the training center that he wants to establish, yet he has faith and he has compassion that compels him to keep looking for solutions. He is determined.

Jacob’s life has been changed by God in many ways over his lifetime, and he wants to be a change-agent in the life of others. No, he does not have all of his plans figured out. But he is putting his faith into action. The Holy Spirit has done and is doing a powerful and beautiful thing in his life, and only God knows what will unfold in the future as he continues to seek to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Looking closer to home

Now we don’t have to look to Africa to find examples of Christians who do not know how to be filled and led with the Holy Spirit or for those who do. We can look in our own lives. There are times when we experience the Holy Spirit’s working mysteriously or powerfully, and times when we are being led by dark forces and sinful impulses within. That mixed reality is true of every Christian everywhere.

The question is not, are we sometimes driven by our sinful nature? The question is, how committed are we to learning how to be a Spirit-led follower of Jesus Christ?

What have you learned about how to be more Spirit-filled and Spirit-led in your life? 

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by | October 8, 2007 · 7:16 pm

Hopes and Dreams

All I got was a blank stare. I had asked the group what their hopes and dreams for the future were. At first, no one knew what to say.

One person hoped he didn’t run out of money before he died. Another was scared about getting dementia. Someone else said he’d be happy just to get enough business to make ends meet. On the other end of the spectrum, another person dreamt of winning the lottery and winning the Pulitzer Prize, even though she doesn’t buy lottery tickets and doesn’t write much anymore.

Finally, someone blurted out that he doesn’t think in those categories. Hopes? Dreams? He’s just trying to get through life!

I felt sad for the “quiet desperation” I was hearing. At the same time, I was perplexed and deeply troubled. I continually meet people who seem to have no vision for their life. I hear comments that suggest that hopes and dreams are only for the rich, the lucky, the privileged. One pastor of a large, growing church even told me realizing one’s dreams doesn’t apply to 98% of the world’s population.

What? If Christians cannot hope for a better life, to realize their God-given dreams, or to fulfill their purpose in life, what in the world is he preaching and teaching?

Now, to be fair, the people who tell me that that hopes and dreams are not for them often are thinking about all that they cannot do. They have reluctantly come to the point of accepting that some secret aspiration that they have had is beyond their reach—becoming President of the United States, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, being a world explorer, or something equally grand. Or they feel demoralized after looking at someone else who has more money, more talent, more education, or more opportunity. With a twinge of envy, resentment, or resignation, they conclude that pursuing one’s hopes and dreams is only for a lucky few.

But does realistic thinking mean that there are not hopes and dreams that we can pursue? Do the special privileges of a few mean that we should give up on hoping and dreaming for ourselves?

I don’t think so. The nature, size and scale of our hopes and dreams will vary widely among us, but cannot nearly everyone aspire to something that they desire but is not yet a reality?

Abraham Maslow argued that humans must first meet “lower” level of needs before they will be able to pursue higher ones. That is, we start with seeking to meet basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing, and security. Only when these needs are met are we able to move to higher level needs, such as love, friendship, self esteem, and ultimately self-actualization. As a general rule, I think he’s right. Yet, how many people have let anxiety over lower level needs unnecessarily keep them from simultaneously pursuing higher level needs?

Here’s another problem. When we talk about hopes and dreams, so often people think in terms of wealth, status, power, comfort, or material gain. Thus, those who think that they aren’t the lucky ones, or as smart or talented as others, or who don’t have the same opportunities as others, sometimes falsely conclude that there is no point to hoping and dreaming for them.

But what about hoping and dreaming in different categories? What about a dream of closer relationships? What about building a stronger community? What about joy from serving others? What about knowing and loving God better? What about pursuing meaning and purpose in one’s life? What about simply finding peace in the midst of so many situations outside of our control? These things are not dependent on luck, financial resources, or special opportunity. In fact, some of the materially poorest people in the world are some of the most vibrant people I have ever met. Yes, they have some unfulfilled hopes and dreams, but many also have other blessings—joy, friendship, community, meaning, purpose, vitality and so forth. These qualities of life might very well be available to more of us as well—if we would learn to hope and dream in these categories.

The many people I’ve been meeting, interviewing, teaching, coaching and observing lately show me that hopes and dreams can fuel vision for almost anybody’s life—with very good results. To know what one most values and cherishes, to believe that God has planted dreams in our hearts to serve God’s purposes, and to pursue a vision for a more fulfilling and purposeful life, is powerful, motivating, and life-changing. No matter how hard the work, or how frustrating such a pursuit can be at times, I can’t imagine not living with hopes and dreams.

Next week I leave for the Democratic Republic of Congo, where over 4 million people have been killed in civil war in the past decade or so. I will be leading a Pastors Leadership Conference, teaching and speaking to people who have struggled with basic survival needs to an extent I have never known. Will I find people who still have hopes and dreams beyond survival there? Will suffering Christians still have a vision for a more vital spiritual life, for healthier churches, for caring for one another effectively, for love and friendship, and for other “higher” level needs and aspirations? I don’t know. My experience suggests, yes.

What do you think? Are hopes and dreams beyond survival and security just for the lucky few in our world?

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