It is the nature of living things to grow.  Each living organism starts in the seed, egg, or embryo stage and then gradually grows to its genetic potential; not only that, living things work relentlessly at expanding the number of their own kind. Growth is both individual and reproductive.

There’s no surprise then to find that the life of God within us operates in much the same way.  LIFE germinates sprouts, matures flowers, bears fruit, and reproduces itself. The new life of the Spirit of Christ starts as an event then continues as a process.  All the ingredients that are present at the beginning continue to operate in an ever-increasing maturity.

The “old things have passed away, all things have become new” statement of scripture is true.  The regenerated soul is radically changed in its content and operational principles.  But it is seed-like.  It now must live out its changes in time and space as a growing spiritual life form.  This is the work of a lifetime.

This chapter seeks to understand the growth process as an ongoing “take-over”.  Salvation gives the Spirit the license to conquer every part of us. The Christian lifestyle is then the practice of ongoing cooperation with His management.

In my own Christian growth experience compartmentalizing has been my worst nightmare.  I have a diabolical capacity to section off parts of my life so I can operate them out-from-under God’s control.  I find that I do this unconsciously and instinctively, like an alarmed snail shrinks back into its shell.  Like the graphic on page 179, my development has been uneven.  Some compartments have seen radical change.  Others have been slow to comply.

One of the mistakes we often make is comparison with other Christ-followers.  We will always compare favorably in some sections but unfavorably in others.  Judging each other, which we are clearly instructed not to do, is so dishonest.  We can always find others who do not have the same degree of growth in areas where our compliance with the Spirit is strong.  The result of putting our strengths on display and hiding our weaknesses is hypocrisy.

Notice one more thing while we’re still thinking about the compartment diagram.  Those compartments where the Spirit hasn’t been able to establish much control are what I call “points of resistance”.  They are quite dangerous.  If I develop the habit of saying “No” to the promptings of the indwelling Spirit in a particular place in my life it will have a ripple effect into other categories.  Refusing the Spirit’s leadership is never static.  It always destroys the surrender that has already been established in nearby compartments. Saying “Yes” to God’s Spirit as a lifelong habit defines the growing edge of your life.

Faith involves more than believing that Jesus died on the cross for our sins.  It is a simple word that requires many other words to flesh it out.  If that were not the case, why would the New Testament use so many different words for the appropriate response to the gospel?

Saving faith includes:

Believe, Trust, Accept, Receive, Ask, Choose, Decide, Repent, Follow, Obey the Gospel, Humble Yourself, Come, Turn to God from…, Confess, Call upon the name of the Lord, Hunger and thirst for righteousness, Seek and knock, Draw near to God, Surrender

Confused?  Which of these clarifying words for faith are essential?  Which can be ignored?

The fact is all of them are important.  God intends that we get our mental arms around the whole list in order to understand “simple” faith.  This is the same kind of exercise we did with the subject of sin in chapter nine.

It should be no surprise that the diagnostic list of words defining our sin problem and the prognostic list of words describing how to access the cure, match.  The sum total of meaning involved in the word sin is fully answered in the sum total of the salvation response words.  Sin is an authority rejection problem.  Salvation is an authority embracing solution.

This takes us to the Roman centurion and the kind of faith Jesus praised.  Faith starts with who Jesus is – the Leader above all leaders.  Then it moves to trusting what Jesus has done to rescue us.  The submission part is essential to the receiving part of faith.  Willingness to follow is necessary to effectual believing.

“Cut to the chase,” Charles said, “Get to the bottom line.  What’s involved in becoming a Christian?” We were sitting in the nose-bleed seats of the new Seattle Mariner baseball stadium.  Ichiro, the Japanese batting superstar walked to the plate and I had a few moments to think about Charles’ questions. Ichiro beat out a bunt for another of his signature infield hits and after the crowd quieted down I answered like this:

“Let me tell you about a caterpillar named Stripe.  He found himself in a scrambling pile of other caterpillars trying to crawl to the top of a big mound of caterpillars.  It was a crawl-or-be-crawled on…every worm for himself situation.  Once in a while he heard voices asking, ‘What’s at the top?’  Other voices answered, ‘whatever it is, it must be good because everyone wants to get there.’  He thought that made sense so redoubled his efforts.  Finally arriving at the top of the squirming pile he and a few others looked around only to hear someone say, ‘There’s nothing here!’  ‘Shush up!’ said those at the top’.  Don’t let the others know that.  The very fact that they are trying so hard to get where we already are makes this the best place to be.’”

There was a long pause.  Then he asked, “So, what does that have to do with becoming a Christian?”

“Charlie, you are a successful, self-made man who likes being in control.  You run your life as it pleases you.  You have collected all the status symbols and toys offered to those who get to the top of the heap.

Now you are coming to the realization that your heart is still empty even after all your many accomplishments.  You are considering Christianity as a possible way to fill that emptiness.  But in the Kingdom of God there’s no more climbing, achieving, and acquiring.  Nor can you add God to your portfolio.

Becoming a Christian is about making God the CEO in the boardroom of your inner being.  It’s about you no longer maintaining control of your life.”

“I get it,” he grimaced, “It’s an all-or-nothing proposition, isn’t it?  God gets all of me and I get His ownership, leadership, and access to what He controls.  I guess I should have expected that.”

Our conversation then switched to the person of Jesus and the amazing sacrificial love He had demonstrated in the process of opening the door for each of us to enter the eternal Kingdom of God.

I’ve briefly reviewed the fact that Jesus never used a “one-size-fits-all” formula.  Each encounter with a seeking individual was tailored to the uniqueness of their kingdom of self-in-control.  I’m determined to follow Jesus especially imitating the way He structured His gospel.  Nothing makes more sense to me than sticking with the way He taught the good news.

Fuzziness is the best word I can find to describe the amazing indifference that exists among professing Christians when it comes to the importance of God’s Kingdom reign.  Since “Follow Me” was published in the fall of 1996, I’ve had the opportunity to speak on this topic all over the world.  Wherever I go there is initial enthusiasm for the message. Then a handful of hearers want more, while the majority yawn and turn their attention to some other subject.  As a result, I’ve become even more impressed with the parabolic method Jesus used to sort his hearers.

The seed of this message of the Kingdom will always be received in the ways described by Jesus.  That fact is hard to accept.  A message so beautiful and powerful deserves more.

The prophets apparently had the same experience.  Jesus uses their frustrated commentary to explain this parable to His puzzled followers.  Today we have a fresh way of coming to grips with the human behavior involved.  We all have a strong tendency to hear what we want to hear and see what we expect to see.

Recently I had a conversation with a man from my church family who has listened to me teach the message of the Kingdom for over 10 years.  He came running to talk to me after a Sunday morning service.  “Pastor Jan, I get it,” he said excitedly.  “I’ve always been puzzled about why you think the Kingdom is so important.  Somehow it has been hidden in the mist for me.”

“Did you offer Jesus fresh surrender recently? I asked.  “Yes, how did you know that?  He was startled.  “Your mental filters are just like mine,” I replied.  “As God gets more of our heart territory the Kingdom comes into focus.  The scales on our spiritual eyes fall off.  We see clearly when moments before it was all blurry.”

“So,” he said thoughtfully, “It’s like getting a new pair of glasses, isn’t it?”

Rebellion always obscures the Kingdom of God.  On the other hand, surrender always disperses the mental fog and brings the Kingdom into breathtaking focus.

Many of us have played the child’s party game, “Telephone”.  A message is started at one point in a circle that is then passed on by whispering into the ear of the person sitting next to you.  The last one to hear the message repeats it out loud.  Then the one who started the message gives the original version.  It is always intriguing and hilarious to see how the original has been altered during the various exchanges.  Obviously it is difficult, if not impossible, for a verbal message to be repeated often and yet remain accurate.

But when we are handling the ultimate message we must be careful to preserve its integrity.  One of the most common problems reported by missionaries is something called syncretism.  This is the tendency of young Christians to mix their old belief system with the message of the Christian gospel.  The sad result is a changed message that loses its original power.

The same thing has happened in western Christianity through the build-up of barnacles of tradition on the message of institutional churches.  Over the years novel and creative ideas have been added by well-meaning people.  The original message has become encrusted with these additions.  The result is a changed message.

Evangelical Christians have tried to stay “true to the Word.”  Yet, in our attempts to mass market the message of salvation we have modified the Word.  In simplifying and clarifying the gospel we have inadvertently forgotten to keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and best communicator of our faith.

Here’s the key question, can anyone communicate the gospel better than Jesus?  Shouldn’t we assume that His way of presenting His message is the best way?  His word choice, His way of framing the issues, His understanding of the basic definitions is not optional but essential.  We have a benchmark, let’s not try to recreate it or improve on it.

Our job as communicators of the Good News in our generation is to adjust the message to the way people around us think, not change it.  We interpret, illustrate, and contextualize the message so that today’s hearers can understand.  But it remains Jesus’ Gospel of the Kingdom!  (Matthew 24:14)

Simple gospel. That’s how most Christians describe the salvation message of Jesus.  We’ve gotten used to the idea that the eternal benefits of Christianity are easy to access and easy to understand.  “Why, even a child can receive Jesus!” we often say.

Most Christian believers come to faith within the first 15 years of their lives.  It’s a well-known fact that the older you get the less likely you are to believe.  That reality is much more about the nature of long-term rebellion than any inadequacies in the message.

The gospel is wonderfully complex, like a rose made up of many petals.  Each petal is beautiful in its own right, but must not be mistaken for the whole rose.  The loveliness of the entire flower results from the combination of petals.  The same is true of the message of salvation in Jesus.  You can pull the petals off and examine them individually, but by themselves none of them are an accurate picture of the whole message.  Getting our mental arms around the entire content of God’s revelation on any given subject is the best way to avoid serious error. So, it’s simple and yet complicated.  Easy to access and yet can take a lifetime to understand and appreciate.

When C.S. Lewis, with his scholar’s intellect, found faith in Christ credible, it was because he saw the marvelous way Jesus’ message fit together into a cohesive harmony of truth.  Simple magnificence!

When I trusted Christ as a child of six, the gospel was on my level.  Now, later in life, it is increasingly full of new discoveries and deeper levels. Shouldn’t we expect that to be the case if it is in truth God’s message to us?  A message that originates in the mind behind the universe should be both immediately accessible and infinitely more than what was seen at first glance.

In his book, “A New Kind of Christian”, Brian McLaren writes about the same issues that I address in chapter fourteen of my book, “The Safe King”.  The following quote comes from a dialogue found on pages 105-106.

“OK, you asked for it.  Dan, I don’t think Christians have any idea what the gospel really is.”  He paused, and I saw it coming: “For example, how would you define the gospel?”  I said something about accepting Christ as your personal Savior and justification by grace through faith, not by works, based on the finished work of Christ on the cross, and he said, “Yes, that’s exactly what most modern Christians would say.”  I protested and he said, “Does it bother you that Jesus never defined the gospel in this way?  And does it bother you that no Christians in history ever used the phrase ‘Accept Christ as your personal Savior’ until a few decades ago?  Does it bother you that our little gospel presentations are really just modern sales pitches that reduce the gospel to modern dimensions – laws, steps, simple diagrams, complete with a sales close?”  “OK then, how would you define the gospel?  Neo said it couldn’t be reduced to a little formula, other than the one Jesus used, which was ‘Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand.’”

My point is that others besides me are noticing the reshaping of the gospel message that has taken place in the past 60 years.  We need to return to the inclusion of the Kingdom concepts of Jesus in today’s gospel.  Let’s just assume that He is the best authority on the subject, end of discussion!  Now, it’s our job to understand and make sense of His message for our generation.  We do not have permission to modify or re-write the essentials of our Lord’s salvation message.

Repentance can be hard to grasp, especially when it has been stored in mothballs for many years.  The average Christian today flinches when the word repentance is used.  It has been wrongly associated with fanaticism and even legalism.  It is regarded as negative and “hard sell” to confront the issue of self-in-control with a “surrender-to-the-leadership-of-Jesus message.”

A gift-based message feels so much more user friendly.  We have massaged the gospel of Jesus into a gospel of culturally acceptable benefits that remove the sting of repentance.  The result? Professing Christians who come to Jesus for help or relief, but not for leadership.  Is it any surprise that they regard actually following Jesus as extremism?

All God-ward choices do not carry the same value.  The “sick of it” and “sorry about it” people are not yet ready for the cross bridge.  The work of Jesus on the cross is designed to disarm our obsession with control not just forgive us.  Until surrender opens the heart to new management, nothing changes.  But when the seeker cries out, “I need a new leader, Lord Jesus, your kingdom come, your will be done”, repentance has arrived.  Then the pardon and merciful grace of the Savior can flood over the heart that welcomes Him as Lord.

Father Cornelius was a Catholic priest in the Central District of urban Seattle.  The people of his parish loved him.  He was a popular community leader.

His ministry career came to a shocking finish in the Spring of 2002.  An enormous scandal shocked the Catholic Church to its core.  Father Cornelius was among the many priests who were removed from the clergy for pedophilia.  His was a case of sexual abuse of altar boys and other male children over the span of many years.  He was not alone in his compulsive behavior.

The church world and the non-churched world alike were rocked by wave after wave of shameful revelations of clergy misconduct.  Like the confessions of televangelists Jimmy Baker and Jimmy Swaggart a decade earlier, these new exposures of failure among religious leaders was disillusioning.  Many people abandoned their churches and their faith in disappointment.

Add to the religious scandals the fact that the world lives in fear because of religion-sponsored terrorism and you begin to realize why organized religion is regarded with distrust and disdain today.  The events of September 11, 2001 will live long in our memories.  Muslim extremists encouraged and trained by their radical mullahs (clergy) crashed passenger jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  Thousands of innocent people were killed in what amounts to a religious war. Religion is once again exposed as a well-used sanctuary for selfishness.

In fact, it is still one of the favorite playgrounds for egoism.  This tragic reality is nothing new.  Recent events vividly illustrate how deep and all-encompassing our self-in-control obsession really is.

The universal pattern of religion among all people groups indicates the memory of God. The need for God is still in us all.  What we do in our ingenious pursuit of self-will is tame God.  We open a file on the computer screen of our hearts for spirituality.  It’s a compartment, separate from everything else.  It pleases us to dabble in the realm of pious sentiments and inspirational uplifting ideas.  But, it’s only a file, to be opened and closed as needed.  We still control the God category.  That’s why religion always breeds hypocrisy.

Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany has become the 20^th Century icon for hell.  Intelligent, educated people in a scientific age perpetrated horrible atrocities upon their fellow humans.  It was a slice of hell.  The concentration camps.  The death squads.  The gas chamber showers.  The sweet smoke of the ovens.  The mass graves.

Horror, nightmare, monstrous evil.  Hell!  It stalks us.  It breaks out again and again. Libya, Sudan, Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria; terrorism, genocide, murder, rape, preying on the innocent to make a political statement, like the attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.  Like the silent screams of the dying infants in countless abortion clinics.

Let’s quit pretending.  Hell is already here.  It’s in us.  We create it with our choices.  All God has to do is place those who reject His Kingdom in a sealed location and the reality of hell will inevitably arrive.  Selfishness generates pain the way the HIV virus generates the breakdown of the immune system.  When injured people take their rage and revenge out on others, it always causes pain.  The Palestinian and ISIS suicide bombers may have suffered personal losses, but so have billions of others around the world.  The reality is that these fanatical young people have been groomed by their leaders.  Their adolescent minds have been callously programmed with hate and revenge so that they could be deployed as the ultimate “smart bombs.”  As a people group they see their “sacrifice” as necessary, even inevitable.  The logic of terrorism and the logic of hell are close companions.

Galatians 5 lists different categories of behavior within the “acts of the sinful nature.”  There is raunchy self-indulgence, demonic spirituality, and the abuse of addictive drugs.  But right in the middle of this list is the smoke and flame of hell.

Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy.

The coals of eternal fire smolder, right in our hearts!  We’ve already seen in Romans 1 that the wrath of God shows itself as the release to act out the desires of the sinful nature.  Hell then is profoundly logical.  Our out-from-under-God choices start the fires and then fan the flames.