Dying to Self

The To-Do List Christian

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Buried under To-Do'sJust as Ecclesiastes says that "of making many books there is no end," so it is with the number of modifers that can be added to the beginning of the word Christian.

Casual.
Depressed.
Joyful.
Carnal.
And on and on.

But I want to add one I've never heard before, so maybe I'm coining it right here: The To-Do List Christian.

A To-Do List Christian is a believer in Christ who rushes around all day checking off each item as it is performed from his To-Do list. That list will vary from person to person, but it is usually complete enough to exhaust an entire day. For the To-Do List Christian, life is one vast list of demands upon his time that never gets completely met. And pity the poor person who falls behind.

"Let go and let God" is a phrase uttered by well-meaning people who deal with frazzled To-Do List Christians. This advice, however, is meaningless. The To-Do List Christian recognizes that God is not going to pay her bills, take out her trash, mow her lawn, homeschool her kids, or do the grocery shopping—at least she's not been able to locate any Scriptures that back up that contention. Ecclesiastes also mentions the many vanities of life, but for the To-Do List Christian there seems no way to avoid them. So letting go and letting God becomes an abstract concept relegated to mountain-top-sitting hermits who never have to balance a checkbook or deal with a 1040 form. In fact, God Himself takes on an abstract reality, demoted from His throne in the To-Do List Christians heart in place of a new master, Time.

To-Do List Christians are easily recognized by the perpetually stunned look on their faces. "Now what was I doing?" is their mantra, as they stand in the middle of a room wondering how they got there and where they might have been going. The fear that they have forgotten their next thing to do is almost overwhelming. "Our anniversary is in two weeks and I have no gift ready!" "Is it time to update my license plates?" "Did I remember to pay the doctor bill?" "When was the cut-off for preschool registration?" "Oh no, I missed the due date on my credit card and now I have to pay a $50 fine!" "My last quiet time? I can't remember when that was…but I do know I have a small group meeting, an accountability group meeting, and the Wednesday night church class—or was that canceled this week?"

To-Do List Christians are tired, run-down people. Some cannot say no to requests made of them, especially those made by their church, while others have learned the fine art of saying no and yet the to-do list does not subside even one item. Joy seems lost, buried under a pile of clamoring activities and must-do items of daily living. Drudgery becomes the norm rather than a life made more abundant. The spiritual world seems very far away, indeed.

This blog posting today is a confession of sorts for me, because I fear that I have become a To-Do List Christian. My list of things to do is so large that I ran it out on an Excel spreadsheet and it came to nearly two hundred items. Every day I feel like it grows faster than I can complete items on it. Yes, some are long-term to-do's, but many require immediate responses. Stack enough of those on top of each other and the load becomes almost unbearable.

I don't like feeling like that, but I have no idea how to get out from under the weight of things to do. I don't believe that God created us to live like this, rushing from one thing to another in a mad frenzy of checking things off a list. Yet as much as I have pondered this, I don't have a good solution. I believe that living in a more intentional Christian community can free us up somewhat, but the "world system" we have erected for ourselves in 21st century America is crushing the life—especially the spiritual life—out of most of us. Perpetually stunned people have a hard time praying, reading the Scriptures, and focusing on anything besides the conviction that a month-long vacation is needed—so long as all the bills somehow get paid during that time. (Even vacation time comes at a price.)

I have a full load of things to do in just the next two days. How much do you have to do? Are you becoming a To-Do List Christian? What can we do about it?

Please comment. I hope that many of us can recognize that we have added the modifier "To-Do List" in front of our main title of "Christian." I hate that. Do you?

The Christian Walk in a Nutshell

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Here is the classic conundrum that has boggled the church in the last fifty years or so.

The charismatics say, “Well, the Holy Spirit says….”

The doctrinarians say, “Well, the Bible says….”

The neo-“Jesus People” say, “Well, Jesus did….”

Here’s the only truth: They all reinforce each other. You can’t have one without the others.

Tongues of Fire at PentecostYou want the Christian walk in a nutshell? Here it is: Those who love the Lord Jesus and serve Him alone are led by His Spirit to speak the Truth of the Scriptures while reaching out to other people like He did. That’s it. Doesn’t seem too hard, does it? Here’s all we need to understand as disciples of the Lord Jesus: We must love and serve the Lord alone:

It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. —Deuteronomy 6:13

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. —Mark 12:30

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” —John 14:21

We must know Jesus and know His voice:

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. —John 17:3

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. —John 10:27

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. —Romans 8:14

We must know the Scriptures:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. —Colossians 3:16

And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. —Acts 4:31

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. —2 Timothy 3:16-17

We must get out there and reach people:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” —Matthew 28:18-20

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ —Matthew 25:34-40

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. —John 14:12

That’s it—the Christian walk in a nutshell. Now what’s it going to take for us to live it?

Is Spiritual Growth Measurable?

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A reader wrote me a thoughtful note in response to the post “What Constitutes Spiritual Growth?“. I started to write her an answer privately, but I thought I would instead share my answer with everyone.

Her question was the same one I asked six months ago: “How can we measure spiritual growth in people?”

This question is a profound one. I have asked many people how they measure spiritual growth and largely get blank stares and shrugs, and yet everyone agrees that it is critical. What is true discipleship if we cannot put a frame around it and how it should function? How can we teach or hope to train up people in righteousness without some defining standards? The fact that the comment section on that posting went empty was troubling to me.

Is spiritual growth measurable? Personally, I don’t believe you can measure spiritual growth like one measures IQ. Not all answers are found in pure science. A “scientific,” quantitative measure will always elude us.

Still, I believe the signs of growth are there:

1. Reproduction—I have had arguments with many Christians over this issue, but I cannot escape it. With spiritual maturity MUST come reproduction. We move from childhood to adulthood. Children do not reproduce, but adults do. We show people who do not know Christ who He is and ask them to come to Him. We teach the new in the faith so that they may grow up into adulthood, too. A parent can have a child, but part of parenting is raising that child to adulthood. So it is with the spiritually mature and the young in the Faith.

Some people are better evangelists and some are better teachers. I do not believe that one or the other is superior when it comes to reproduction. But we Christians must side on one of those two. I think a hockey analogy works here. In hockey, both the player who shoots the puck into the net and the player who passes the puck to the player who took the shot get credit for the goal. In our case, both the sower and the reaper rejoice together.

Growing Christians reproduce.

2. Fruit of the Spirit—Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Are they deepening in a person’s life as time goes on? We should be able to note this.

Stuart Briscoe of Elmbrook Church in New Berlin, WI is a prominent evangelical pastor. Briscoe once said something startling to me. He does not call anyone a Christian unless that person has demonstrably walked with the Lord for at least five years. Five years may be more than I would go, but I think it is a wise belief nonetheless for us to take care and to observe the fruits of repentance. A real conversion will “take” but a phony one will not.

Growing Christians progressively exhibit the fruit of the Spirit.

3. Gifts of the Spirit—I consider myself a charismatic, but a careful one. I think much of the modern charismatic movement has gone off the deep end. That said, I still believe that the gifts of the Spirit are an indicator of God actively working in a person’s life.

Now we know from Acts that many brand new Christians exhibited the charismata at their moment of conversion. This should not keep us from understanding that a mature Christian wields those gifts in a mature, wise way. You would not give a howitzer to a ten year old, and neither does God bestow true charismata to those who cannot handle them wisely. The Spirit of the Prophets is still subject to the prophets.

(A side note: Leonard Ravenhill, the great British revivalist, once said that a dove cannot fly without both wings. And just as a dove has nine primary flight feathers on each wing, there are nine Fruits of the Spirit and nine Gifts of the Spirit. I believe this is great wisdom and why I put both “wings” here.)

Growing Christians flow in the charismata with grace and humility.

4. Mirroring Jesus—If we know Jesus, then we know when people are becoming changed daily into His likeness. One of Jesus’ own will grow up to look like the Lord. We should be able to see that in the lives of people who are reaching maturity. He must increase as we decrease.

Growing Christians grow to resemble Jesus, their Lord.

5. Loved and Hated—People who are growing in Christ will be progressively loved by the true Church and hated by the World. This is a promise the Lord made to us. They hated Him and so they will hate us (see #4.) If we do not engender increasing opposition from the World as we live out the message of Christ, it is a sure sign that we have instead slept with it. Being a Christian costs something, and growing Christians cannot escape being hated for what they proclaim.

Likewise, the Church loves its own and recognizes its own. A person growing deep in the Lord will be loved by the saints. We Christians must also not fear being eclipsed by a younger generation if they are more vital than us in their love for Christ. Our body is not one of division, but wholeness, and we are always called to love the brethren.

Growing Christians will be loved by the Church and hated by the World.

So why do we do so poorly with this?

I believe that in large part the fault rests with leaders within the local church. I know that leaders are always an easy target, but ultimately the blame cannot go anywhere else.

We are failing in growing people to maturity largely because leaders are not actively watching their flocks. It is the responsibility of church leaders to guide the less mature. If we church leaders and are not involved in the active duty of watching to see if these five growth indicators are increasing or decreasing in our charges, then we have failed.

Deep calls to deep and the Spirit to the Spirit. Only the Spirit can discern growth in people; He is the measure of all things. But we leaders cannot do that discerning if we are not paying attention to the lives of our charges and the Spirit’s attesting to their growth (or lack of it.) It is not enough to preach a blistering sermon if we are not following up on how it affected people in their inmost Man. It is not enough to teach the Bible with authority if we do not take the time to ask the Lord to reveal the growth in the lives of our students.

With maturity comes responsibility. One of the responsibilities of the mature is to be actively involved in the spiritual growth of the less mature and to evaluate that growth against the Bible and the revelation of the Holy Spirit. If we do not do this, then we should not be shocked when so little comes of our ministry. The Church of Jesus Christ is a transformational entity charged with raising up the next generation of saints. We must know the standard and bring people to that point, drawing alongside to ensure the successful transition from childhood to adulthood in each believer. That calls for effort and discernment.

God help us all if we do not take that seriously.