[Part one is here, back in November 2007]
Read this a while back in John Eldridge’s Wild at Heart:
“The Modern Era hated mystery; we desperately wanted a means of controlling our own lives and we seemed to find the ultimate Tower of Babel in the scientific method. Don’t get me wrong–science has given us many wonderful advances in sanitation, medicine, transportation. But we’ve tried to use those methods to tame the wildness of the spiritual frontier. We take the latest marketing methods, the newest business management fad, and we apply it to ministry. The problem with modern Christianity’s obsession with principles is that it removes any real conversation with God. Find the principle, apply the principle–what do you need God for? So Oswald Chambers warns us, ‘Never make a principle out of your experience; let God be as original with other people as he is with you.” (p. 210.)
This quotation captures a lot of my experience of the last eighteen years. I have sought to live a life and engage in a ministry that continues to grow out of a conversation with God. I certainly haven’t always been successful in this endeavor. I find myself grateful for ways in which the Spirit is enabling me to grow here.
We must not take a Living God Who speaks a living word and invites us into a living relationship, and reduce it all into a god of principles who is more predictable and controllable. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit unless it is a attached to the vine, so I believe that principles separated from the life of God end up fruitless. We seek to manage our lives by Christ’s teaching without learning to draw on the mystery of His life in us.
Of course we seek to grow in wisdom, but we recognize that Jesus Himself has become wisdom for us (1 Corinthians 1:30-31). We seek to grow in knowledge, but we do so remembering that it is in Christ Himself that all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden (Colossians 2:2-3). We learn how to live our lives by what we learn from Jesus, but we learn from Him by taking His easy yoke upon us and walking with Him (Matthew 11:28-30). It all happens in relationship with Him.
A focus on principles appeals to our false sense of pride in thinking we can completely control our relationship with God and with others. We cannot and do not. There will always be mystery in our engagement with God. He will always be bigger even than our principles, even when we draw them from the Scriptures themselves.
Your thoughts?
I agree. I’ve been coming to a similar conclusion, but from a different perspective. Realizing that God doesn’t have to explain Himself to me–especially in the face of hardship–has been a hard lesson. But His ways are higher than our ways, and that means that I will never have a complete understanding of them. There will always be an element of mystery in relating to Him. In a way, that can be frustrating, but in another way, it is a comfort because it means that He is God, and I am not. It puts me in my place in the best way possible.
Well said. I think mystery can either feel like a scary, exposed place, or a spacious, adventurous place…depending on our perspective…
Great to hear from you…
[...] Read “Part Two“ [...]
The more I yield and surrender to Him in the morning, in the inner chamber, the more I begin to witness the invisible God in my surroundings. When I get up and don’t renew my mind, spirit and heart, my abiding in the Vine, I instead transition to autopilot, another word for the flesh. I grasp on the crumbs I have, my principles, traditions, previous victorious times. Deceiving myself to believe that I’m wise, I become a fool and a very open target for Satan. Ah, foolish man, He teaches the humble His ways. Am I fully convinced that, “Apart from Me you can do nothing?” Do I realize that nothing good dwells inside of me except His precious Spirit, His Holy Son, and that if I don’t consecrate myself to His Kingdom purpose then I’m just living for myself when my need is to me dead to self and alive in Him. Thank God that I’m not alone, but have pretty amazing company, the Apostle Paul to name one. But Thank you Lord that you understand how limited, finite, and plain simple I truely aim. Your forever loving presence and overflowing mercy, forgiveness, and grace always await me. That type of Love, that Agape Love, if truely embraced, wholistically, mind, body, soul, and spirit, cannot help but cause me to drop to my knees and with total humility acknowledge how great and mighty is He.
Thank you for writing fresh and new blogs that renew my day to day, moment to moment journey in Him Alan. May your ministry, writings, and life continue to help this generation that we so desperately need to get off of the treadmill of ministry and get on our knees and unhurriedly quite ourselves so that we might listen, draw near, and intentionally abide in His might, power and strength, His easy yoke, that we may truely impact this field that is white onto harvest through Him for His glory.
Dan – always appreciate your thoughtful responses to these posts. May you sense the guidance and empowerment of God’s Spirit richly present with you as you walk with Him and work with Him.