Luke 9:57-62
57 As they were walking along, someone said to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
58 But Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head.”
59 He said to another person, “Come, follow me.”
The man agreed, but he said, “Lord, first let me return home and bury my father.”
60 But Jesus told him, “Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead![l] Your duty is to go and preach about the Kingdom of God.”
61 Another said, “Yes, Lord, I will follow you, but first let me say good-bye to my family.”
62 But Jesus told him, “Anyone who puts a hand to the plow and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.”
I love being non-denominational and charismatic. I could not imagine what it would be like to be bored in Church as is customary in most (but not all) denominational settings. I love how we have the same zeal for the works and the acts of Scripture that the founding apostles did when they walked the earth. I love that we are perpetually expectant for the Kingdom of Heaven to come crashing into the earth around us. I love that we pray for the sick, cast out demons, and boldly preach the Gospel fearlessly in the midst of the most broken parts of our culture. Though at the same time, I am also aware that although the Charismatic movement is great, we also fall short in many qualities among its participants regarding character and maturity development. Where we thrive in excitement, boldness and zeal, by-and-large in many ways we lack in personal growth, maturity, and spirit empowered character development.
While excitement and zeal might get us moving in the right direction, it does not do a great job sustaining us when we are faced with the hardship and suffering that is inevitable living in this world while serving Jesus. The ability to have joy and perseverance in the face of adversity cannot rely solely on excitement. Perseverance is a result of strong character and deep commitment to something greater than yourself, in our case Jesus and His Kingdom. Because we Charismatics put an emphasis on excitement and zeal, and put very little emphasis on commitment and character, we often find ourselves surrounded by disciples who have a history going from one short-stint, exciting call and event to the next, but largely have no resume of having accomplished anything meaningful over long periods of time.
It's this very reason why I believe we have had little impact discipling our communities in our Charismatic convictions. It’s hard to trust flaky people, especially when they are asking for permission to lead your soul…
Unfortunately, the uncommitted stay excited, but also un-accomplished, un-satisfied, and restless in their faith.
This may be a personal bias but, one of my least favorite qualities of the Charismatic movements is our lack of commitment.
There is always a good reason to not do what you know God is calling you to do. This can be hard to hear, but we often quit a commitment right when we start feeling uncomfortable and realizing what it truly costs to stay obedient to what God calls us to do. It’s this moment where excitement wanes and where lack of character is exposed as we quit what we are called to, so we can then look for another “Call from God” to rekindle our sense of excitement once again. Even worse, we blame God for the reason we gave up on what we were called to. We say this like, “God told me”, or “the Holy Spirit showed me”. We pretend we are being obedient to a new word from Jesus to cover our disobedience to His last command for our lives.
My friends, Jesus does not give us commitments to follow through only half way. He does not call us to do things until we are no longer interested or begin to feel uncomfortable. He does ask us to give our lives away for the call He places upon us. He does use uncomfortable moments in our call to grow us and mature our character.
So then why do we do this? My suggestion and in my experience, working through disappointment and exposed lack of character is painful and unexciting. We, like the rest of the world, don't want to abide by the law of delayed gratification. We aren’t willing to give up what we want now, to gain something better later. Instead we want what we want, and we want it now.
We want to cover our insecurities and lack of trust in God with excitement. We want to find meaning for life in a perpetual sense of adventure. We don’t want to lean into what God said to do when we are in the valley. That's not glamorous, that doesn't look good to our peers. We don’t want to deal with who we know we are when we don’t get what we want. So, we subconsciously decide we will only hear what we want God to say to us, and then tell others we faithfully follow the voice of God.
It’s a human condition, it’s something we all struggle with, but it’s also something that needs to be said out loud and addressed. It’s something that we as Charismatics need to be honest about and find healing for. Jesus was clear in the Scripture above, there is no good excuse for not being fully surrendered and committed to God’s call for your life. For three reasons:
It does not honor Jesus. Of course, God changes the direction of our lives from time to time. But there is a difference in being obedient to the voice and leadership of Jesus, and just being a flake. If you have a history of half finished commitments and perpetually moving from place to place looking for something new and exciting from the Lord you have a serious problem. You might be walking in what is perceived as spiritual obedience, but is actually commitment aversion and rebellion to God.
It is impossible to serve your neighbors in a meaningful way without being committed to those you are serving. To truly serve another person you have to discover their needs. The only way to really discover someone’s needs is to do life with them. Oftentimes when we don’t have relationships with people we are serving, we try to serve them in a way that feels gratifying to ourselves, but doesn’t actually meet the needs of the person we are trying to serve. I call this transactional service. I am not serving you to bless you, I’m serving you to feel good about myself. And so in many ways, I’m buying affirmation from you with my service. This is ok in settings like short term missions trips and spontaneous moments of helping someone in crisis in which the Holy Spirit has put in front of you. Those instances of serving do feel gratifying and are good and right for the soul. Though also we should be surrendered and committed to serving a community of people that we have been called to do everyday life with. This type of service is not based on what we want to do but is determined by what the community needs. This type of service causes our flesh to die and our spirit and character to grow the quickest.
It will keep you in a dis-satisfying cycle of extreme excitement and extreme dissatisfaction. If you live in a constant state of noncommitment your joy is probably connected to what has you excited at this moment. Unfortunately, as many of us have discovered, once the task is no longer exciting, and expectations are not met, or someone offends you, disappointment sets in. Disappointment is just as powerful a motivator as excitement. Except disappointment likes to bring along its friends...depression, anger, bitterness and rejection. Once one of those potent feelings sets in, we are on to the next commitment. Of course we say we are following the voice of God however in reality we are actually running from how we feel about our last disappointment.
There are only so many moments of excitement and adventure to dull the feelings we are running from, until we no longer have anywhere else to turn and we have to live resigned to feeling dissatisfied and disgruntled in our faith. Friends, this is not the abundant life Jesus promised. In fact, He uses the commitments He calls us to, to teach us to grow in that abundance and become more like Him in our faith walk.
We have to learn to keep our hands firmly grasping the plow even when the world and our flesh tell us it would be better to simply let go. If you're reading this, know that I have no agenda other than to share what the Lord has told me to share. I have no desire to offend anyone, or to cover anyone with shame. No, I want to exhort, but if what I have written has been the story of your faith life, I want to encourage you to repent. I want to humbly ask you to plug in whole heartily where God has called you and watch Him accomplish things through you that you never knew were possible. I want you to know it’s never too late with Jesus, but don't let another moment pass by without being fully committed to where He has called you to be.
Love,
Pastor John
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