Could this be your problem?
It is wonderful to have a comfortable relationship with God, to read the Bible and desire His presence and action in your life. It is beautiful indeed to pray and praise with all your heart, soul, and voice. It is commendable to give your life to God and choose Him forever as your Lord and Savior, to eliminate the impediments to God from your life, and to keep godly company. It is critical to make time for God, to study, learn, read, analyze, journal, and contemplate. But, these are not enough…
Why do we plateau? What are we still missing?
Striving alone is not enough. Most Christians realize this. In fact, this fact has led most well meaning followers to believe the convenient, but actually, non-biblical conclusion that “that’s why Jesus came” to save us from ourselves, to save us though our pursuit of perfection is impossible, or, to use Luther’s analogy, to cover the stinking, manure pile of our imperfections in sparkling white snow. Using the verse from Romans 5:8 – “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” – as if that makes everything better. It is the magic catch-all solution for everything we can’t understand or achieve on our own.
But, the reality is, in this approach, we would remain stinking manure piles for all eternity. We cannot get to heaven as a manure pile! It is true that alone we are incomplete and incapable, but not true that it just stays that way. We are designed not to remain manure but to be aged, mixed with peat, and pressed down into carbon, then coal, and finally diamonds. But, this is not a passive process. As creatures with free will, there is something we can actually do about it, tools to help, and steps to take… but, we have to be willing to actually take them.
Why should God require our participation?
God requires action on our part to pursue Him now, because we must choose Him in freedom, not just with our words but with our actions. Words alone can be empty (Matthew 6:7, Ephesians 5:6, Matthew 12:36, etc), but, our actions are proof of where our heart lies (James 2:26). This is also what Our Lord spoke of when He spoke of “bearing fruit” (John 15:5-8, Matthew 7:16-20, Galatians 5:22-23).
It may be time to ask ourselves, if He is willing to die to pursue me, what am I willing to do to pursue Him back?
What does God require of us?
“ I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and dries up; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you remain in Me, and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.“ – John 15:5-8 (NASB)
What we all too often forget is that this passage is more than metaphorical. We must literally graft ourselves to Him, to allow His sap to run through our veins producing the fruit. This is not something we can do mentally, or by wish, whim, or fancy alone midst the emotional Jesus high of a moving musical performance. No. To be grafted to the vine in order to produce fruit is a very physical occurrence. We must pursue grace in a physical way and with intense passion. What is grace if not the sap itself, the divine life being infused into us, that enables us to bear fruit?
Without grace we can do nothing. We will be like the branch that dries up. We must, quite literally, seek out the source of Living Water (John 4:13), and the Bread of Life (John 6:48-51).
But, first and foremost, before we can ever experience the full inflowing of His divine life, we must graft ourselves to the vine in Baptism (Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. – John 3:5). Yes, I know, the Christian world will continue to argue until the end of time that, because the thief on the Cross did not receive the physical baptism of water, that Baptism is not necessary. This suggestion is illogical because it is to say that if God allows “exceptions” to His laws, then His laws should be disregarded entirely. After all, Jesus himself condemned the Pharisaical adherence strictly to the “letter of the law” while disregarding the “spirit of the law” (Matthew 12:1-8, 2 Corinthians 3:6).
Baptism is an outward gesture that is visible proof of an inward disposition, ie. our first “fruit”, if you will. It is the action that gives credence to the commitment we may feel with our heart or speak with our words. It is important because it proves the truth and the seriousness of our commitment.
But it doesn’t stop there…
Baptism is only the beginning. It is the grafting of ourselves to the vine. From there, the sap begins to flow, but, now begins the work of fertilizing and ensuring that we maximize the amount of grace, or divine life/strength, in us that we need in order to fulfill the law (also our ability to respond to and cooperate with this grace).
Christ said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). He explained that Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of people’s hearts but “from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8). Our Lord came to call us to even higher standards than the original chosen people, because now we have Him, we have the opportunity for the infusion of this divine life, this living water, this otherworldly strength, to course through our veins and make the perfection of Eden once again possible. He is calling us back to the original Paradisiacal relationship with Him.
Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect – Matthew 5:48
This is why Religion is important…
This is the only reason “Salvation cannot be found outside the Church”. It is not because we need community or prayer/bible study partners (though, of course, these are beautiful things). It is because Our Lord founded the Church essentially to “house” and supply all of His means of grace, most especially and primarily in the Sacraments.
The goal is God. The goal is perfection. The goal is the fulfillment of the entirety of the law and to enter heaven in the perfection of Eden once more. His death reopened the gates of Heaven for us, but it does not make us enter them. We are free. Free to choose Him or not. This is why we must pursue God, pursue grace, pursue with every fiber of our being the path He has chosen for us to take.
I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. – John 14:6
We may not “like” this plan…
because it doesn’t meet our expectations. Maybe it isn’t glamorous enough, “important” enough. Maybe it is “too simple”, or “too demanding”.
Naaman (a commander of the Syrian army who sought a cure for leprosy) was angry when the prophet Elisha sent a message by servant requiring him to bathe seven times in the Jordan without even “deigning” to show his face. Because of this Naaman almost refused to attempt the prescripted remedy (2 Kings 5).
God has ordained that we make ourselves part of His body by becoming part of His Church. Nowhere else exists such sources of actual grace. Yes, we can pray, and this is a good, and valid source of grace, but it is not enough. We must also back up our words with actions. We must participate in the Sacraments (of which, not coincidentally, there are seven).
We are given the tools we must use, the plan and the path are set in place for our benefit, that we can do the impossible that He requires of us (Matthew 19:26). But it requires us to submit to the reality of the Church and the authority that He set in place (Matthew 16:18), the sacraments and the means he set up to supply is with that divine strength/divine life we need to do what He calls us to, namely, complete transformation, true perfection, and not just covering a hopeless manure pile in snow.
Without His Way, we cannot succeed. We are desperate for grace. And it is ready at hand if only we would “stoop” to receiving it.
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