For the last few weeks, the Deer Lake staff have been going through the book, Strengthening the Soul of your Leadership by Ruth Haley Barton. 

Let me say upfront: this book is NOT for the faint of heart.  It is a step on your toes, confront your heart, and shed some light in the deep dark places of your soul sort of book.  That said, I highly recommend it!

What this book lacks in levity it more than makes up for in purpose.  Essentially, the aim of the book is to help us see the unseen sources of distortion in our lives so that we can heal from past wounds, grow in Christ, and in turn, become more effective leaders.

What I have found interesting from Barton’s book is that much of what distorts our thinking and identities are coping mechanisms that we, intentionally or not, have developed for our own safety.  What once helped us through our problems tends to become a problem when it exists without ever being surrendered to Christ. 

What might these once pragmatic now problematic ‘safety’ mechanisms look like?

• It’s the sense of humor we develop to mask the pain we don’t feel safe to express.
• It’s the sarcasm we use to keep others at arm’s length, especially when things get ‘real’.
• It’s the drink(s) we have each night that we tell ourselves we don’t need but have anyway.
• It’s the downplaying we do when facing disappointment, so that it appears to have no effect upon us.
• It’s the endless, mindless scrolling through social media because seeing what others are up to is somehow better than sitting alone with our own thoughts and feelings.
• It’s the way we shut down or lash out when things don’t go our way because at some point along our journey, we realized that apathy and anger were safer than actually expressing our needs.

Do any of those resonate for you? 

As Christians, many of us have developed a distorted understanding of the self – one in which the Christian is supposed to be so rooted in the joy of the Lord that there’s no time or space to consider what’s going on in our own inner world.  Or for others, it wasn’t that there was no time or space, it’s that the very existence of something 'not good’ in us was somehow seen as an indictment against our faith or worse – an indictment against God. 

So, what were we taught to do?  Shut up, shut down, and do your best to shut off those thoughts, but whatever you do - keep those things to yourself. Here’s the problem with this way of thinking – it ignores our experience of what it means to be ‘saved’. 

You see, salvation is both an event and a process.

The salvation event is what we call ‘justification’.  This is the moment we are made right with God by grace through faith.  In other words, this is the moment we receive the forgiveness God has made possible for us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  To borrow New Testament language, we are born again, made new, washed clean, set free, declared innocent, purified – justification. 

The salvation process is what we call ‘sanctification’.  Whereas justification is an event that makes us right with God, sanctification is the process by which we are made like God and learn to live rightly with God and others. 

Justification is an exchange; it's something we are given.  Sanctification is more like exercise; it's something we give ourselves over to.  Justification is God doing something for us; sanctification is God at work in us, shaping, molding, forming, and transforming us more and more into the likeness of His son.  Both are works of God’s grace, but one comes to us a moment (justification) and the other comes to us as a movement (sanctification). 

Hear me on this: if you never move beyond this idea of justification, your head and your heart will be in constant tension.  You’ll know you’re ‘saved’ and yet, you’ll simultaneously look at your life and still feel like a slave.  You’ll know you’re forgiven and yet still feel racked by fear.  Why?  Because justification opens the door to sanctification – because Christ came to save us from sin and save us for life, right here and now.

So, what does this look like?  That’s a much longer conversation than we can have here, but for now, let me share these words of encouragement and sanctification from 2 Peter 1:

“…make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 1:5-8)

Make every effort - those are words of sanctification.  Peter’s instruction to “add to your faith” isn’t because our faith is insufficient for salvation, but because salvation is a dynamic process in which our willingness and God’s grace cooperate to help us become more and more like Jesus.

Our effort is not a rejection of God’s grace – it’s the full embrace of God’s grace.  It’s an outward sign of our inner understanding that we’ve been saved from and for; that salvation is both product and process, a moment and a movement. 

I share this now because the holidays have a way of triggering many of these unspoken, unseen coping mechanisms we carry around in us.  Between the nostalgia and the eggnog, family gatherings and those “we don’t talk about Bruno” agreements, our coping mechanisms are in high gear.  But this also means that this season is an opportunity to make every effort.  To take a good hard look at what’s behind and beneath why we do what we do and in doing so, discover a fuller, freer life in Christ.

Hebrews 7:25 says that Jesus can save us completely – to the uttermost.  He doesn’t just want to make you right with God; He wants to make you like God – healed and whole, fully, wholly, and holy alive.  So, may you make every effort this holiday season to grow in Christ, may you embrace both the moment and the movement of salvation, and as always, may you do it all for the glory of God and the sake of the world. 

What to take this further?  Here are some next step ideas:

• Pick up a copy of “Strengthening the Soul of your Leadership” by Ruth Haley Barton
• Read through 2 Peter and take note of the several times Peter challenges us to “make every effort”. 
• Read through Psalm 139 and notice how the Psalmist invites God to “search” him – to get beneath and behind everything that’s going on in his life. 
• Finally, here’s some music recommendations that you might enjoy based on this conversation here:
• All My Good by Ry Cox
• I Am by Judah
• All Ye Lepers (the whole album) by Joshua Leventhal