Willy Reimer’s Blog

I have the privilege of spending this week with 70 church leaders from around the globe for a week of training and inspiration.  It’s so wonderful to listen to leaders from Africa, South America, Europe, Asia and Canada.

Yesterday we spent the day listening to Gordon McDonald. All I can say is “Wow!”  Gordon spoke us about spiritual and character development. I want to share a few of his thoughts with and hope they inspire you as much as they inspire me.

The great question: how does one build a life which grows to be more satisfying, more strategic, and more pleasing to God every year?

There are 4 ways that we choose to live:

1. Reaction: we wake up and have to go to work or school.
2. Conformity: people pleasing.  People take their cues from what everyone else is doing. If you don’t know who you are you try to find out from others by basically look to them for approval.
3. Compulsion: somewhere in life we experienced deep wounds so we vow never to get trapped again and we have something to prove.  I.e. we never felt we rec’d the approval of father or mother so we live to meet/exceed parental expectations to prove that we were worthy to receive their love.
4. Intentionality: the ability that God has given to human beings to view ourselves from outside of ourselves and monitor our thinking and choices and can see where the impurities are and where God is doing good work.  The “us” that is standing outside of ourselves can manage the real “us” and bring about or move towards positive change.  Most people live by the first 3 categories rather than living intentionally.  How can we maximise all of our potential to be the man or woman of God and who leaves a God honouring legacy behind?

Gordon then took us through 5 realties about spiritual growth that he has observe and experienced over the years.

1. There is a tendency for people to talk passionately about spiritual growth but never follow through.

We have not changed anything just because we talk about it. This is the fatal flaw of most small groups…nothing changes and no one holds each other accountable to change.

2. Spiritual growth is difficult…usually done in secret, is humbling and is rarely fun.

Spiritual growth is hard…that’s the bottom line.  The other reality is that most people don’t really want to hear about each other’s successes as much as we want to hear about each other’s failures. We learn most from failure so for us to help each other grow spiritually we need to share our failures and aspirations with each other.

3. Spiritual growth is a life-long, calculated necessity for anyone who wants to live a fulfilling walk with God and effective life of ministry.

We should know where we are on our growth track, where we are headed until Jesus shows us something different.  Christ-followers have false assumptions about spiritual growth.

False assumption: if I’m doing ministry, I will grow automatically.False assumption: if I’m doing ministry, my family will grow in health and safety.False assumption: if I am doing ministry, I will be immune to catastrophic sin or failure.

In other words spiritual growth cannot be assumed. [You know what happens when you assume!]

4. There is little growth in the life of anyone who depends only upon his/her human skills and abilities.

This is simply stating the reality that if you work off of your God-given gifts rather than your relationship with God who leads you by His Spirit to do the things that he has planned for you to do.

5. Growing is usually quite gradual and difficult to observe on a moment by moment basis. It requires patience and tenacity.

It’s like an oak tree.  You can’t see it grown but you realize year after that it is a little bigger.

Gordon challenged us to live intentionally and to surround ourselves with the people, the habits that contribute to our growth rather than just waiting for growth to happen or getting mad at God or the church because we are not growing.  Many people have a “spiritual victim” mentality that blames others for our lack of spiritual growth while not taking any responsibility for ourselves…sounds like most of society (but that’s another blog).

I’ve spoken with probably hundreds of people who are clinically insane. Why do I say that? One of the definitions of insanity is to “do the same things while expecting different results.”  I’m inviting you to different results. To freedom from insanity. To intentional living. So, all this to ask you, “are you up to growing spiritually?” I encourage you to read MacDonald’s “A Resilient Life.”  Let me know what you think.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.