I spent some time over the weekend trying to think about what my life would be like if I just trusted Jesus as my Savior but not enough to let him be my Leader. Here’s a short list:

I would probably be cynical about church, and I probably wouldn’t believe that the Christian life actually works.

I would do everything I could to cover up the fact that I was spiritually empty, dry and unsatisfied.

I would be passive and apathetic.

I would have good intentions, but I would lack follow-through.

I would focus on my needs, my rights, my options.

I would arrange my life around my personal preferences.

I would rather be a spectator — observing meticulously (and frequently complaining) but never actually participating.

I would compartmentalize my life to make sure stuff in the church box stayed in the church box and didn’t bleed over into the work, home and leisure boxes.

I would become an expert at going through the motions, doing what is expected out of habit.

I would be barren, and it would bother me every once in a while — just a little.

I would be extremely frustrated, but I wouldn’t realize it’s because I’m serving two masters.

I would be proud of how self-sufficient and independent I am.

I would refuse to commit so I could keep my options open — just in case.

I would have no real clear direction or sense of purpose, drifting through life.

I would secretly hope that there could be more to it than what I’ve experienced.

Sound familiar? Sounds like a lot of people I know. This list didn’t take me long to put together at all — and the reason is because I’ve been there — learning but not doing, believing but not trusting.

Did I miss anything?

It seems to me that a lot of people think following Jesus comes down to exterior compliance. Performance. Behavior.

We tend to equate discipleship with activities first. Attend this event. Participate in this program. Learn this material. Practice these five steps to maturity. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

But, in teaching folks to work, give, go, do, we’ve neglected the simple fact that this is not how Jesus taught people. This is, quite simply, one of the most frustrating things about Jesus: He rarely gave us an outright command. More often than not, Jesus told us how things are and expected us to internalize that thought and adjust our behavior accordingly.

Jesus taught people to follow him from the inside out.

In that order.

Adjust the inside, address the disorder of your heart and mind first. Then, with a new heart and a renewed mind, allow that internal reality to work its way out through your behavior.

The sad truth is, performance-driven discipleship has not produced courageous, healthy, self-starting followers. Instead, it’s created disillusionment and apathy.

The gospel must first be allowed to impact the inside of us — the self, the ego, the libido, the imagination, the ambition, the passion, the soul — what Gordon McDonald calls “the life below the waterline” — if it’s ever going to provide the lasting change it promises.

We must wean ourselves from this obsession with superficial, performance-based cosmetic changes and learn to follow Jesus again from the inside out if we want to be that city set on a hill like Jesus wants.

But how do we do that? And why is that so counter-intuitive?

We’ve talked about this before around here, but let’s re-visit that conversation.

Why do so many preachers fail to teach the way Jesus did? Why are sermons so full of tips on how to change your behavior but so empty when it comes to new ways of thinking?

You might not be able to tell it from looking at my desk, but I’m a pretty regimented kind of guy. I like routine. My routine may not look like yours, and it probably wouldn’t work for you. But I like it. It brings me comfort to do familiar things in familiar, well-worn ways.

Over the years I’ve found that certain spiritual routines work well for me. I’ve gone through seasons where I prayed the Lord’s Prayer every morning. I’ve done the same with the 23rd Psalm. I’ve systematically read through the Bible in a year. Some may find these things boring, but they’ve been beneficial to me in the past.

But I went through a really, really rough patch in the last year. I’ve mentioned it before, but prayer was maddening. Reading the Bible was like eating stale bread. Nothing was working — especially not my normal routines. God seemed silent, distant, absent.

I trust you’ll excuse me for confessing that I began to pray less and read my Bible less. I began to journal more and listen to music and look at photographs of creation. Eventually, I chose to read smaller portions of the Bible — a paragraph each morning — instead of several chapters at once. I found that slowing down allowed me to think more deeply. The goal, after all, is not for you to get through the text but for the text to get through you.

And then, not too long ago, I felt God whispering something to me. It wasn’t a really big deal — the thing he told me that day. But it was huge for me. Since then, my routines have come back to life in a new way. It’s pretty exciting.

But it made me think about how Christians often talk about spiritual formation — as if there’s some kind of one-size-fits-all approach. Just recently, I heard someone say that if you’re not reading through the Bible each and every year, you’re just not taking your faith seriously. I also heard someone say that if you’re not having a daily quiet time of reading and praying (again, in a very systematic and routine sort of way), you’re just not taking your faith seriously.

Through the years, I’ve heard many variations of this theme. I remember when everything was about spiritual warfare and intercessory prayer. I remember when it was all about evangelism. I went through my contemplative and mystic stages — when it was all about worship and meditation.

But how much of this is really totally necessary? Is it absolutely essential to read your Bible if you want to grow spiritually? How much prayer do you need to make it as a Christian? Must you fast or intercede or spend an hour in solitude?

What are the mandatory items for spiritual growth?

Moses had his mountain top experience — literally. He went up to the top of a mountain and spoke with God. That must have been an amazing and overwhelming experience. Just imagine, sitting and listening to God and knowing that it’s really God and not just the leftover pizza you had for breakfast. It’s not your imagination. It’s not what you wish God would say.

You are sitting on top of a mountain listening to God, and — what’s more — you’re talking back and he’s listening to you!

That’s got to go down in history as one of the most spiritually formative event of all times, right?

It’s no wonder that Moses was glowing when he came back down to earth. Everyone must have noticed. There was a real, literal glow radiating from Moses’ face.

It certainly must have been more than a little distracting for people — trying to talk to a guy whose face is emitting light like that. Did they shield their eyes or make him face the other way? Did Moses’ wife ask him, “Could you bring your face over here to the corner? I dropped something and can’t find it.”

Was it his wife’s idea for him to put a veil over his face in the first place? “Moses, please, I can’t sleep. Can’t you turn that thing off?”

The veil was a good idea at first — helped people not think about the fact that his face was beaming while he was trying to talk about stuff. But, after a while, according to the apostle Paul, Moses kept the veil on even after his face had returned to normal.

What was that like? Did Moses lay awake at night watching the light grow more and more dim like a candle just before it goes out? Like an old TV set where the picture just gets darker and darker and darker?

Would people still think he’s special — even without the glowing face? Maybe it would be better to keep the veil on for a few more days. Maybe he could go back up to the mountain top and get another dose of whatever it was that caused this strange phenomenon in the first place.

When did he finally muster the courage to go outside without the veil?

It must have been when he finally realized the glow was gone and wasn’t coming back.

The apostle Paul says something interesting for those of us who live in this age where the Spirit of God is present and active in, among and through us. He says it’s possible for the mountain to come with us — at least the experience we had on top of the mountain. Jesus’ promise to never leave us, to never forsake us, the Immanuel presence of God, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit — all of that means the thing that charges us up isn’t in any fixed location. It’s not in the mountains somewhere waiting for us to plug it. It has plugged itself into us.

Any place is now a potentially holy place.

Any activity is now a potentially holy activity.

Spiritual formation doesn’t just take place somewhere “out there”. It can happen right here, too.

When I was growing up, spiritual formation was tied to a series of events. There were youth rallies and lectureships and retreats and, of course, summer camp (which always ended with a forced march into the darkness and a campfire and a story about a group of kids who were going home from this very camp a few years ago and died in a car crash so if there’s any unfinished business between you and the Lord you should make it right before you leave here).

These were our “Mountain Top Experiences”, and they were designed to charge us up enough to make it to the next event. It was like charging the battery on your laptop or your iPod. You knew the charge wouldn’t last forever; it just has to last until you can plug in again.

See, we knew that the “spiritual buzz” always fades. Moses experienced this in Exodus 34:29-35. He went up on a mountain to talk to God, and, when he came back down to earth, his face was actually glowing. I’m sure it freaked people out, so he put a veil over his face. At first, it was just to avoid freaking everybody out. But the Apostle Paul says it changed after a while (see 2 Corinthians 3:13). Moses started keeping the veil over his face longer than he needed to, because he didn’t want people to know that the glow had faded. He wanted them to think he was still charged up.

That’s one of the problems with events-based spirituality. It gets easy to fake that glow and pretend you’re still buzzed. But it fades. You know it. They know it. In fact, like your laptop, the charge starts fading more and more quickly over time.

In the end, you end up either faking it or looking for a bigger buzz, something that will give you a longer charge. If you went to one week of summer camp last year, go to two weeks this time. If your youth group had a fall retreat last year, add one for the spring this year and see what happens. What if we could have a youth rally every other weekend? Maybe that would give us the boost we need!

Yes, let’s have a retreat once per quarter and a mission trip and a youth rally and two weeks of summer camp! Let’s move to the mountain top so we never have to come unplugged!

Well, that’s not very realistic, is it? We have to live in our houses in our neighborhoods and go to our jobs and drive on these roads. We can’t spend every waking moment at an event designed to charge us up. We do not live on the mountain top, and, if we did, we’d grow weary of that life anyway. It’s unsustainable. Besides, someone some time would ask the inevitable questions: What are we getting charged up for? So we can say how charged up we are? You charge something for a reason, don’t you?

So, if real spiritual formation isn’t about super-charged events like these, how does it happen?

So, I’m a couple of days behind on this post, but I’m still interested in it. Monday, January 25 was the dreaded “Blue Monday” — the official most depressing day of the year — at least according to Dr. Cliff Arnalls. He’s been doing research on seasonal affective disorders (aka S.A.D. — I’m not making that up — it’s a real clinical diagnosis) and has determined — through an extremely complex formula — that the Monday that begins the last full week of January is likely to be the most depressing day of the year. Here are some of the factors he takes into consideration:

Weather. Interestingly, SAD is extremely rare within 30 degrees of the equator — where days are long and skies are bright all year round. Cold, damp, grey skies make many of us more introspective and melancholy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if left unchecked (and added to the other factors in the equation) it can lead to a full-blown bout of depression.

Debt minus monthly income. Anyone gotten the credit card bills from Christmas yet? Anyone thinking about paying the minimum? Anyone noticed that your minimum payment might not even cover the interest on your outstanding debt? That’s right — many of us will make the minimum payment and our balance will increase. Depressing indeed!

Time since Christmas. All that holiday cheer can pack quite a hangover. All the build up of Christmas — it starts earlier every year — leads inevitably to a let-down as we forget about all the peace-on-earth-good-will-to-men stuff and get back to the dog-eat-dog reality of life.

Quitting. Most people break their New Year’s Resolutions within the first week of January. However, most of the most tenacious have also broken down by the end of the third week. You may have noticed that the gym isn’t as crowded these days.

There are other factors, and I’m not a mathematician. I tried to figure out my depression quotient but couldn’t. However, I do know that most years I experience something like SAD in early February. It usually lasts about a week or so and then evaporates. I always attributed it to the fact that my birthday comes at the end of that month. I thought I was just mourning the passing of another year, but Dr. Arnalls’ theory probably makes more sense.

I also know that I’ve recently started to pull out of a 90-day funk that has had me bogged down in the worst writer’s block I’ve ever experienced. I told a friend of mine that finishing the book felt like lifting something really heavy without bending your knees. It was the worst I have ever felt. Prayer has been a chore. Reading the Bible is like eating stale bread. I’ve been irritable and have found little or no pleasure in the things that normally bring me joy. It’s felt like a dark night of the soul, and I don’t use those words casually.

But it feels like it’s lifting somewhat. Maybe I’m ahead of the curve this year.

How about you? Are you feeling the winter blues? What do you do to counter them? Do you suppose there’s some sort of spiritual component Dr. Analls is overlooking?

It’s hard to believe that one year ago today we loaded up the girls and the dog and drove out of our fair city, making our way westward, chasing a dream of building a new kind of church. We were so sure and so optimistic and so hopeful.

But things don’t always turn out the way you want.

It’s been a humbling experience, the past year, in many ways. So many things unrealized, so many dreams left unfulfilled. We’ve done our best to mask our disappointment — sometimes succeeding — probably failing more often than not — trying to hide from our kids the embarrassment and feelings of failure I’ve certainly experienced. I’ve had a hard time not feeling like I was coming back with my tail between my legs, a defeated man, a failed church planter.

Being a writer is a solitary occupation, and that solitude doesn’t do much to help those feelings of failure.

I know the facts. I know no one could have predicted the current economic tsunami that threatens to swamp the State of California. If we could have predicted it, we’d have done things differently. But we couldn’t, so we didn’t, and now we can’t so we won’t spend any more time worrying about it.

For now we move forward. Lessons have been learned (I hope). Lessons that will be put to good use wherever it is God finally reveals as our next destination.

I think I can honestly say that I don’t regret it. We did some good while we were out there. We made new relationships that will stay forever, and we deepened existing ones. I believe God had us out there for a season. I’m sad that the season wasn’t longer, but there it is.

I have an interview tonight with a church in Ohio. Who knows what’ll come of that? I had a meeting with a couple of elders from a church here in the Atlanta area yesterday morning. Who knows what’ll come of that? I had a phone conversation with a guy on the search team for a church down in Florida yesterday afternoon. Who knows what’ll come of that?

There’s a church in St. Louis, a church in Texas, churches in several parts of the country — who knows what’ll come of all that?

At the risk of stating the obvious, God does. He knew all this last year when I was driving out of my driveway. He reveals what he reveals, and I’m relatively sure he’s got his reasons.

One thing I do know: I am not the same man I was a year ago. Things are different. I think I’m more myself than I was then. I like to think I’m more like Jesus than I was then (I’m not one of those people who assume the two are mutually exclusive). As painful as the past year has been, the pain is redemptive. God has used that pain to forge compassion in me, to form a stronger character, a Christlikeness that wasn’t there before — or at least wasn’t there as consistently as it is now.

I know that I’m not who I was, and I also know that I’m not yet who I will be. God is in the process of transforming me, a process that won’t be done this side of eternity. He’s in control, and he has my best interests at heart. If I ever doubt that, I’ll just think back to a year ago.

In 1963, Harry Blamires popularized this phrase, “The Christian Mind”, in a book of the same title. He wasn’t talking about “The Churchy Mind” — where one simply thought about how the events of the world would impact the church; nor was he talking about “The Compartmentalized Mind” — where one schizophrenically jumped in and out of a Christian framework when the topic shifted from the Bible to the morning headlines.

He wanted a mind that could think about everything “Christianly” — a mind that could interpret everything from movies and music to politics and business from a Christian perspective. Blamires wrote that it would have “a framework of reference which is constructed of Christian presuppositions.”

What do you suppose would be the “marks” or anchor points of such a mind? What would be those “Christian presuppositions”?

After yesterday’s post, my wife and I had an interesting conversation about what it means to discern God’s will. It seems to me like we get really excited about discovering God’s will for our individual lives, and we all too quickly ignore what we know to be God’s will for the world at large. We want to know where God wants us to work or go to college, what God wants us to major in and who God wants us to date. Should I move there or stay here, God? Tell me what your will is for my life in this situation!

Meanwhile, God wants to restore shalom to our world and may not care all that much what you have for lunch today!

I wonder if it’s like having a conversation with your kids before the first day of school.

“Now, be sure to treat your teachers with respect, okay?”

“Dad, what do you think we’ll have for lunch?”

“I’m not sure, but you heard the thing about treating your teachers with respect, didn’t you?”

“Do you think we could find out what’s for lunch?”

“They’ll probably have a couple of different options for you. But when you’re on the playground, make sure you play fair with the other kids, okay?”

“I wonder if we could look it up on the internet.”

“Maybe. But I really want to make sure you hear me about respecting your teachers and being fair on the playground. Oh, and do your own work; no copying someone else’s paper.”

“Maybe it’ll be cheese pizza.”

It’s not that God doesn’t care at all about what you have for lunch. If you eat nothing but candy and ranch dressing for lunch, he may not be all that pleased. But get the pizza or the chef salad or a ham sandwich. I’m not sure he minds all that much which option you choose.

He’s more concerned with you treating others with respect, playing fair and being honest. You know…the things you don’t really have to pray about.

God, do you want me to do my own homework, or could I cheat on this one assignment?

You know the answer to that one, right? (hint: God’s not big on cheating)

We get so hung up on God’s will for the small things in our lives, but I wonder if we do so at the expense of the bigger picture.

God is actively at work restoring things to the way they’re supposed to be. He does this in individual lives through the painstaking (and often painful) process of character transformation. But he’s also working to do this in society and in humanity as a whole. He’s given each of us certain gifts, and he wants us to use those gifts to partner with him in this whole enterprise.

That’s the not-so-mysterious will of God. Any questions?

In the lone comment to last Friday’s post, Nick Gill suggests that what we’ve been talking about lately is a good summation of the instruction we find in Romans 12:1-2. Nick’s paraphrase comes to this: “BE transformed by the renewal of your mind,” not “Transform yourself by thinking better thoughts.”

The actual verses read like this: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Now, looking at this paragraph — especially if we look at it in its context — we can see some interesting thoughts. The first thing to note is that it is “in view of God’s mercy”, not God’s judgment, not God’s disappointment, not God’s potentially destructive power. It is God’s mercy that motivates this kind of change.

The second thing to note is that the author is moving into the more practical application section of this letter, and he’s interested in helping us understand how we can best be used by God in advancing his cause in this world.

We find two alternatives set before us. The first is to be conformed to the standards, values and goals of this world. The other alternative is to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” — especially with an eye towards learning to discern the will of God.

The assumption seems to be that it is possible to have your mind renewed, and this whole new mind will radically alter your behavior.

What kind of behavior might be a result of having a whole new mind like this? And how do you think churches could help people move from having been conformed to the mindset of this world to being transformed with a renewed mind?