I've been asked to sub in for someone on a panel at one of MTW's Living In Grace conferences next week. I was looking over the list of potential questions, and I really am excited to get to hear the other panelists responses! I'm also really encouraged to know that the new missionaries in training who attend this retreat are getting to grapple with these kinds of ideas! The questions are so good, I felt drawn to spend some time mulling over my own thoughts about each of them. They're such challenging things to think about.
Sanctification and
Disciplines of Grace/Suggested panel questions
1. What do you see as the relationship between personal holiness and self-discipline? Someone said, “Before you can advance in personal holiness you must have self-discipline.” What you think about that statement?
It’s been observed about humanity that 99.9% of what we do, is done out of habit. I think God made us this way, and it’s a beautiful thing because as long as we are intentional and disciplined about forming habits that sanctify us, the growth will continue to continue by default. Things like praying all day long, recognizing all interruptions as from Him, and celebrating His attentiveness to us become second nature once we’ve cultivated them as habits. The cool thing is that because of the mysterious way that the Holy Spirit works in our lives, prompting us toward growth, motivating us to work at it, and then empowering us to follow through, the whole process of sanctification is initiated by Him and continues by Him. Our role is merely to respond in faith, taking the next step toward obedience to the Spirit, even if we don’t see where the motivation or empowerment will come from for the following one.
2. What then is the role of the law for Christians?
It helps me to think about the law as wedding vows. When I stood before my husband I voluntarily committed to show my love for Him through doing x, y, and z. I continue to demonstrate my love for my husband both to him and before the watching world through fulfilling those vows. My fulfillment of those vows are not what make me married to my husband, but they are how I proclaim my marriage in practice. My husband knew me to be a sinner when he married me, and by God’s grace I trust that he would remain married to me even if I were to break my vow to him—though it would certainly put a serious strain on our relationship and my repentance would be absolutely vital.
When I accepted Jesus Christ as the Lord of my life, I was effectively committing to submit to Him in all things. By submitting to Him in all things I both demonstrate my love to Him personally and also demonstrate my love for Him to the world. My obedience to the law is not the basis on which I am betrothed to Christ, but it is the way I proclaim my love and commitment to the relationship in practice. When my divine groom chose me, He knew me to be a sinner, and knew that I would repeatedly demonstrate disloyalty to Him by breaking the law, so He preemptively atoned for my infidelity and also gave me the gift of the Holy Spirit so that I am empowered to keep running back to Him and slowly become more and more faithful.
3. What practices have you found personally helpful in helping to keep you faithful and consistent in your walk with Christ.Many years ago I cultivated two habits that have stuck with me: spending time in God’s word and prayer first thing in the morning, and also talking with God as I fall asleep at night. I think though my growth has been very slow at times, these practices have kept me aware of my need of Him. Another practice that I began as a teenager is journaling. For me, journaling has become a really spiritual and sanctifying thing. When I write, I discover truths about myself and about the ways God is working on me. I talk to God in my writing and He speaks back in my thoughts, putting scriptures on my mind. This practice really helps me refocus my heart and be intentional about the growth God is nudging me toward.
In the past couple of years by God’s grace I’ve worked to cultivate some other practices that have greatly bolstered my faith and daily delight in God. I do a weekly prayer run in which I worship and pray while I go for a run outdoors. This practice started as an effort to get in shape after having my daughter, but it quickly turned into my most joyous 20 minutes of the week and it as instigated a lot more awareness of God's affection and intention toward me.
Also I’ve been working to cultivate a more constant awareness of God’s presence throughout the day and constant conversation with Him as I go about my daily tasks. This is something that I’m still working on and because it isn’t as cut and dry as going for a run on Mondays I think it’s been a slower, more gradual habit for me to form. I’ve seen so much progress, though—it’s really cool!
Lastly, our family has been working to cultivate the habit of worshiping together. We’ve just started this this year—Covid has been so good for us in so many ways. We learn a new song each month and come up with hand motions for it together. We have a little devotional book we read together, and then we talk about how we’ve seen God during the day. This has been a really special time and it really has grown our delight in God together.
4. What tools have you found helpful?
I love the PrayerMate App for praying strategically. I always have my prayer list with me in my phone, and it makes it easy to keep notes about how to pray for each item as well as scripture verses to pray for each one.
The Getty Family Worship videos helped us get going and develop a simple model for family worship, though at this point we have made it our own and no longer use their videos.
Earbuds—one of my all-time favorite inventions. When I run, I’m able to participate with all of creation in the worship that my ears can’t otherwise pick up on. It’s really enrapturing!
5. We are to bring every thought, word, and deed captive to the obedience of Christ. How do you do that exactly?
I think learning to practice God’s presence every moment of the day is a big step in the right direction—constant prayer. I also think that clinging outlandishly to our theology and choosing to receive all things as part of God’s good plan—refusing to consider any inconvenience or hardship as a mere happenstance--can position us to respond correctly more often to the various forces that might otherwise trigger us to sin.
6. Have you ever been in a situation, or season of your life where you found yourself seeking personal holiness through the sheer exercise of your own will? What resulted from that, and what did you learn from that?
Since I was a little girl I’ve been told that pride was one of my besetting sins. I’ve always wrestled with the idea that being more spiritually oriented is a two-sided coin because with each spiritual victory I become aware of my own victory and thus solidify my own pride even more. For a very long time I sought to counteract this by minimizing my victories and refusing to speak about them with others. At every opportunity I was quick to confess my sin and struggles, but I was much slower to share personal growth with others because I didn’t want to become more prideful myself in sharing it.
Then one day I shared all of this with one of my mentors, and she made the observation that this practice must make it hard for me to celebrate my own victories. I realized that I probably needed to grow in my understanding of pride and humility, so I began praying about this, asking God to reveal truth to me about pride and humility. I listened to sermons and asked a few people close to me to pray for my growth in and better understanding of humility. And God answered my prayers! He did this through a variety of ways—partially through a group Bible study, partially through a Disney movie, and partially through giving me such deep delight in God’s attentiveness to me that I couldn’t bear not to share it.
My biggest take away from the experience is that if you feel like you’re running up against a wall in your walk with the Lord, don’t accept defeat, and don’t keep running at it the same way if that way isn’t working. Ask boldly for what you want and ask others to pray for growth too, and then expect God to respond and look for His answer.
7. Sometimes we have a sense that we are in a good place in terms of moving forward in our sanctification. Other times we are aware that something is off. What do you look for in your own life when you make that assessment?
I think our emotions are one of the most apparent ways God attempts to get our attention. He may not speak audibly to us to say that something’s up, but He’s created us to become sad, mad, frustrated, and apprehensive when something isn’t as it should be within us. When I’m feeling frustrated or generally discontent, I know that I need to spend some time with God to figure out what’s going on. For me, writing really helps me to get to the bottom of what is triggering my emotions, and then I’m able to look at how God’s word addresses my situation, and prayerfully seek repentance if it's needed, or seek empowerment and boldness to do whatever needs to be done in order to return to peace, joy, and right standing before God.
8. What consequences have you observed in your fields of ministry when there hasn’t been significant growth in sanctification? Is there anything you might do differently that might’ve been helpful in those situations?
When you aren’t being intentional about growth in your walk with God, you’ll quickly find yourself running after your idols. Just as a body of water is only pure and life-giving as long as it is ultimately running toward the sea but stagnant pools quickly become filthy and poisonous, Christians are made for growth and without growing we will never be satisfied.
I think for a lot of us in full time ministry this general dissatisfaction due to stagnation can make us look to our ministries for fulfillment. This often leads us to work harder and harder to accomplish or produce ministry fruit in our own power. Ministry success is a huge idol that cannot satisfy us like intimacy with God can. Sanctification must be more important to us than our ministries.
I think sometimes God allows us to be frustrated in our ministry so that we will recognize when we’re trying to find our joy there rather than in Him. Sometimes God even completely removes us from ministry one way or another in order to remind us where true fulfillment lies. In my own life God has used pregnancy to do this for an extended season. God’s commitment to each one of us is so deep that He’s completely willing to sacrifice our ministries for our own good if that’s what it will take to make us find our identity and fulfillment in Him. We must also be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of pursuing sanctification.
- Laura
