Sola Christa: Part II

Here is the first part of my thesis.  I will continue to make postings in bite size pieces over the next few days and weeks.  I pray you will enter into a conversation with me regarding the content.

There is no lack of answers in spiritual leadership conversations. More information is available to learners and leaders now than in any time in history. Answers are bountiful. The problem is not found in the answers, as they are full of both wisdom and truth. The problem is the questions. It is possible to spend a lifetime searching for the right answers to the wrong questions. My prayer is that my life would be spent asking the questions that lead to the only answer: Sola Christa.

The ancient practices of spiritual disciplines have not made their way, largely, into the contemporary, western, Pentecostal Church. The challenge for spiritual leaders today is one of restructuring the ancient wisdom, modeled through the spiritual disciplines, into a framework that would challenge, inspire and lead the above-mentioned church into a deeper understanding and experience of Christ. The church of today has been lulled into a deep sleep by the repetition of practical and organizational exercises that yield quantifiable, external “results”. The unfortunate casualty to the new systematized spirituality is an altogether lack of spirituality.

The ascetic nature of the disciplines is repulsive in a “quick fix” and “user friendly” culture. There is much to overcome in introducing disciplines into a community of faith. The cost of this type of leadership is high with miniscule external results (initially). However, the leaders who brave the turbulent waters of deeper spiritual formation will reap the eternal reward of lives awakened in the fullness of Christ.

The first challenge in introducing the spiritual disciplines is a semantic problem. There is a problem getting to the concept because of language. We have become removed from language that captures the beauty and power of the Disciplines. Technologically, the contemporary western church has lost its ability to experience silence and solitude with any level of sophistication that can be observed in church history or by the early church fathers. Part of the problem would be that saying the word “silence” or “solitude” still allows no access for the contemporary believer toward understanding ancient disciplines.

The second challenge is theological. Because the Reformation made God so accessible with the proliferation of the “Priesthood of all Believers” doctrine (Martin Luther), the contemporary western church lost the transcendent attitude toward God that birthed disciplines. People lost the ability to maintain the fire on the altar maintaining the presence of God on a continual basis.

I. Human Effort vs. Spiritual Formation

It is impossible to use external human metrics to measure the depth and maturity of the human spirit. Paul says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:16-17 ESV). The Biblical Metric for spiritual maturity is the testimony of the Holy Spirit in the inner life of a Christ follower. That testimony is conditional. The condition is that those disciples must suffer with Christ.

Pain in the Process

“So if your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution. First, you cannot achieve them without suffering, and second, insofar as you do achieve them, you are likely to be called on to serve in ways more painful to you, or at least demanding of you, than you can now imagine.”[1] M. Scott Peck continues by saying, “…There are many people I know who possess a vision of evolution yet seem to lack the will for it. They want, and believe it is possible, to skip over the discipline, to find an easy short cut to sainthood. Often they attempt to attain it by simply imitating the superficialities of saints, retiring to the desert or taking up carpentry. Some even believe that by such imitation they have really become saints and prophets, and are unable to acknowledge that they are still children and face the painful fact that they must start at the beginning and go through the middle.”[2]

There is little hope for those who wish to grow deeper in relationship with Christ yet refuse the painful processes that spiritual formation demands. Oswald Chambers says it like this: “God gives us a vision, and then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of that vision. It is in the valley that so many of us give up and faint. God has to take us into the valley and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the point where He can trust us with the reality of the vision. Ever since God gave us the vision, He has been at work. He is getting us into the shape of the goal He has for us, and yet over and over again we try to escape from the Sculptor’s hand in an effort to batter ourselves into the shape of our own goal.”[3] If one will subject him/herself to the suffering that accompanies true discipleship and the testimony of the Holy Spirit, they can expect to count themselves in the company of men and women like St. Symeon The New Theologian. Through a story, he characterized his own spiritual awakening by saying, “Wounded thus with love and desire for the Lord, he expectantly sought His primal beauty, however hidden it might be.”[4]

“Instead of a select few making religion their life, with the power and inspiration realized through the spiritual disciplines, all of us can make our daily lives and vocations be ‘the house of God and the gate of heaven.’”[5] Every spiritual leader should have as their goal the empowerment of all who call themselves Christ Followers. That empowerment should be one of freedom to know the love of Christ. Not with knowledge alone, but with the knowledge Paul prayed the Ephesians would walk in, “to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Romans 3:19 ESV).