Creating a Secure CHURCH
PART 2 : Secure in Relationships
Chapter 4 : Imperfect People
4.4 Change is so often slow
But, we said, not only do we expect people to be further on with Christ that they are, but we expect them to be clearly changing faster than they are! Look, we’ll come to how we can help them later on, but for the moment, can we lay down our expectations that we have of the pace of change we want to see taking place in them? We need to keep on saying this until we take it in.
Why are some of us slow changers? Perhaps it’s because of the way we are, perhaps it’s because we feel insecure and we’re frightened of change. Perhaps it’s just that we’ve never seen the need, nobody has explained it to us. Perhaps it is that we’ve got so much ‘baggage’ from the past that we feel we can’t move on like we’d like to.
Let’s look at that some of things in more detail. Perhaps it’s easiest to see them in people.
A Slow Learner
Here is ‘W’, a middle aged lady who came to the Lord a couple of years ago. She’s single but has a number of children. She’s received a lot help and a lot of counsel which seems to have been well received. Yet she’s not a lot further on. Various people who’ve been helping her feel frustrated. The fact is that ‘W’ finds it very difficult to learn. She has more trouble coping with life than most of the church put together – but Jesus still loves her! What is the answer? That we love her and accept her just as she is and get the wisdom of God to help her through. Will we succeed? Only the Lord and ‘W’ knows.
There’s a question mark you may have at this point: is her heart given over to the Lord? Yes, that is a very important question. We believe that that is an essential requirement for someone to receive from the Lord all that He wants to give them, but perhaps the most honest answer we might receive is, “Yes to the best of my knowledge.”
If that is an honest and genuine answer, there is no more we can ask of this person. All we can do is be there for them, loving them, encouraging them, helping them. Yes, at the end of the day the responsibility for change is down to them as they work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12), but we can be there alongside to help them move on – if that is what they want.
But suppose they cannot say they have given over everything to the Lord? Do we give up on them? Well, did we give up on them before they came to Christ? No, we had the goal of their salvation in mind. Now we have the goal of their ongoing sanctification in mind but, as we noted earlier, that is a gradual process, and part of the process is coming to the point of surrender – and that may happen again and again and the Lord works through our lives picking up on issues.
The reality is that we may think we’ve surrendered all to Him, and yet a while later we find there is an issue that has risen to the surface that we hadn’t realised was there and which needs laying down before Him, and we may struggle afresh with that.
In some circles I hear talk of “we’re wanting to be more surrendered”. For some of us this is an easy issue – we just lay down our lives and that’s the end of it. An issue comes up and we put it down straight away. Isn’t that how it is for everyone? No, it’s not. For many it is a case of regular laying down new issues and each one is a struggle. Why? I don’t know, I just rest in the knowledge that the Lord knows and He loves this person, so I’d better be there for them with all the grace He gives me!
Past Guilt
Here is ‘X’, a man for whom life went very badly wrong when he was younger. As a result he finds it incredibly difficult to trust people. He’d love to share his inner anguishes but feels nobody will understand, so that when they find out what he’s like he’s sure they’ll reject him, and he’s had enough of that.
What’s the answer? That we love and accept him just like he is, pray for him, bless him and bless him again, and one day perhaps he’ll feel there’s one of us there to whom, just perhaps, he can open up. At that point we’ll either be Jesus to him, or he’ll have his mistrust reinforced and stay even more clammed up. It could be a long haul!
For ‘X’ to come out from behind his mistrust it will probably need a combination of prayer and constant reaffirming. Why does the Lord wait until we pray. There are probably a number of answers, but let’s just rest in the fact that He wants us to pray and He seems to move when we pray. If we want ‘X’ to feel secure, we’re going to have to pray, but that is only part of it. ‘X’ is going to have to experience our acceptance, our love, our care and our compassion – again and again!
If we’ve never walked the same path as ‘X’ we may think he’s in unbelief, that he’s slow in believing all the things in Book One, but that’s because we haven’t got the scars or maybe even the inner pain.
I saw this once in respect of someone like ‘X’. The Lord showed me that if ‘X’ had just badly burnt his arm and I reached out to unthinkingly touch it, ‘X’ would jump away at the anticipation that I would hurt him even more. Now apply that to an inner hurt that hasn’t yet been healed up, and the same thing applies. You see the hurt that ‘X’ has, because the Lord has showed it to you. You go to reach out to minister to it in love, but ‘X’ shies away. In fact he flees.
So what is the answer? You love him and accept him and care for him without yet going near the pain and as you pray, maybe, just maybe, the Lord with anesthetise him with your love and enable him to speak about it, be open about it, and receive healing words and a healing touch from the Lord.
Maybe the Lord, in His love, will do it without you. Maybe, in His love for you, He’ll allow you the privilege of being part of the healing process, because “perfect love drives out fear” (1 Jn 4:18). Is that taking that verse out of context? No, it’s just another application of it, because it goes on, “ because fear has to do with punishment ” and you and I believe punishment has to do with pain and ‘X’ believes you touching him on this so tender spot will in fact be punishment, it will in fact be more pain!
So ‘X desperately needs someone who will be there for him through thick and thin, someone who will be consistent in their acceptance, love, care and compassion. ‘X’ needs you!
Living in Ignorance
Here is ‘Y’, another middle aged man who recently gave a testimony and who said as part of it, “I think I was just waiting for someone to tell me. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I just needed someone to tell me”. Somehow we often assume people know. We think we’ve told them but, for whatever the reason, they haven’t actually taken it in.
It’s one of the things we’ve been realising as a church, that actually people often don’t hear what you’re saying, and so it needs to come again and again until they do ‘hear it’! What’s the answer? That we love them and accept them as they are and keep on patiently sharing the truth until they do see and do respond. We all respond at different rates. We’ve got to hang on in for one another until the message gets through!
Why don’t people ‘hear’? Sometimes it’s just a psychological thing. I used to teach Law at one point in my life to Construction Students. They weren’t there to be lawyers and they were told that they needed some knowledge of the Law for their careers. So they turned up at my class and written all over their faces was, “This is going to be difficult. Law is hard. You have to be clever to be a lawyer!” Part of my task for the hours ahead with them was to show them that, at their level at least, it was OK, it was something they could do – and enjoy!
So it is in the Christian world; some of us have come into God’s kingdom and the enemy has told us that we’ve got to be good, we’ve got to be religious, the Bible is hard to understand, the Christian life is all “you must not” things. Just in case this is you, the truth is that NONE of this list is true!
You can’t be good, only Jesus is, and so him in and through you will be good.
You don’t have to be religious (my definition of ‘religion’ is man-made approaches to get on God’s good side), you just have to be real.
The Bible isn’t hard to understand when you ask God to help you understand it.
The Christian life is actually all about positive things. Yes, there are the “Do not” things (e.g. Col 3:9) but they are more than balanced by all the positive things (e.g. Col 3:12 -17).
Yes, the truth is that many of us have a bad feeling about the Christian faith either because we’ve come from a background that constantly denigrated it, and we haven’t got rid of all that negativity, of we haven’t received good teaching, or we haven’t had good role models.
If we have people with us who have come with this sort of baggage, let’s show them how wonderful it is being one of God’s kids, let’s show them how wonderful God’s word is, and let’s be as good a model as we can with God’s grace, of acceptance, love, care and compassion!
Constant Failure
Now here’s ‘Z’. She wants to go on, she wants to change but she’s got a history of failure. She’s tried and tried working at different areas of her life but she seems stuck. Frankly she’s given up. She’s resigned herself to being like she is for the rest of her life. Awkward, unloved and a nuisance. That’s how she sees it, and the church reinforces it, because she is awkward, unlovely and a nuisance. So what is the answer? That we love her and accept her like she is until, in the environment of Jesus’ love through us, she catches a glimmer of hope again and the word impacts her and she’s released to go on.
In Book One, I gave a chapter over to how secure Peter must have felt in Jesus’ presence. The picture of Peter that comes over in the Gospels could, not unfairly, be described at least as awkward and a nuisance. He’s the classic example of the guy who only opens his mouth to change feet – and yet Jesus loved him! And the result of that love? He became a great leader!
Why is ‘Z’ still like this? Possibly because she’s been focusing on the negative areas of her life, maybe she’s been doing it in her own strength, maybe she hasn’t fully surrendered to Jesus – oh, the list of things we use as “assessment criteria” is endless and when we do that, we’re often joining her in the boat of “A,B,C Religion.” You don’t know what that is? It’s religion that is reduced to nice easy principles or rules, a bit like a machine – so we don’t really need God! You know the sort of thing: if you do A and then B, then C will follow. Who needs God with a mechanical religion?
But that’s exactly what it isn’t! This faith thing of ours is all about relationship with God, about interacting with Him as a person, it’s all about loving Him and loving one another. The ‘rules’ are only there as helpful backup.
Any relationship that I have with my wife or my children isn’t based upon rules. I don’t say to my wife, “I’ll love you if you…”. I just do, regardless of what she does. The same is true of my children. Yes, we can be hurt when our children disregard us, do their own thing and even go the wrong way against our advice, but we don’t stop loving them because they are doing that.
If when my children were teenagers we had a rule about being in by a certain time in the evening, our love wasn’t conditional on that. The rule was an expression of our love to protect them, but we didn’t love them any the less if they broke the rule. Upset? Yes! Hurt? Yes! Not loving them? Definitely not!
So somehow we’ve got to convince ‘Z’ by our constant acceptance, love, care and compassion, that our love for her (and God’s) is not dependent on her keeping ‘our’ church rules. When she’s able to grasp that, change will come. Suddenly the areas of failure will no longer be a problem because the positive sides of her will blossom. As God shares His heart with her more and more, through us, she’ll start to see her potential and believe the possibility of what God has made her to be, and she’ll start reaching for it.
