Showing Up to Learn

Several of my blogs lately have reflected something that I have been learning: that we grow not through our own self-effort but through the Holy Spirit’s effort in our lives. Yet as soon as I think I have grasped that truth, I am bombarded with teaching about how we need to work at our spiritual growth. Elisabeth Elliot’s devotional and Keswick’s Victory Call today both hammered home the work-at-it idea. Even the book I am reading, Mike Flynn’s How To Be Good Without Really Trying, despite its title, starts out with a longish discussion about how Christian faith is about doing and not just hearing!

So what am I to think? I come back to the idea that spiritual growth is about putting forth the effort necessary to put ourselves in the place that God can do the work in us (i.e., making sure we remain attached to the vine so the sap can flow and walking through the door into the room where God is working). I looked around for a way to explain this more fully to myself and God brought the following example to mind.

This time last year the school district told us that our daughter could start Algebra I in the fall if we were willing. Saying yes took a scary leap of faith since it would mean Callie would skip a year of math instruction—the Pre-Algebra year—that her soon-to-be classmates had already had. Although she had been a decent math student, she is clearly not a natural whiz at the subject. She could fail miserably. But we went ahead and in the fall I spoke to the Algebra teacher about our concerns that Callie did not have the necessary background to keep up with the class. The teacher told me to relax. “If she comes to class and does the homework, I will fill in any gaps. I am aware of her current level of understanding and I will keep an eye on her. If she has any problems, she can come to me during recess or after school. I am always available to her. I will make sure she gets through this class if she wants to.” At the time I remember feeling surprised that the teacher took on so much of the responsibility for Callie's learning the subject--and that she was so confident Callie would succeed--so long as Callie demonstrated a willing attitude.

And so began a year in which Callie demonstrated her willingness. She did the homework everyday. If she didn’t understand something, she went in during recess. I would estimate that she monopolized the teacher’s lunch hour at least twice a week all year long. She spent many hours over the course of the year alone with the teacher.

Callie not only passed the class, she got an A. Did she teach herself Algebra this year through the strength of her own efforts? No, there is no way she could have learned this material on her own or by natural instinct—she just doesn’t have that level of ability. But she deliberately put herself in the position that the teacher could teach her Algebra. Slowly, she was transformed from a person who didn’t even know Pre-Algebra to a competent Algebra problem solver--all she had to do was put herself into the hands of that teacher.

You get the point right? What God wants for us is to become Christ-like, but we don’t have the ability to achieve this transformation on our own. Our inability is not a problem because He is the one who is going to transform us--but He can only do so if we put ourselves in a position where He can do it. We have to make ourselves available to be taught.

This month, evaluate how fully you are putting yourself in a position to be transformed. Are you showing up to class everyday? Are you doing the assignments? Are you referring to the textbook frequently? Are you asking the teacher for individual help? How often? Use the Algebra example as a guide to asses whether the level of your efforts truly demonstrates a willingness to learn. I can't tell you how much effort is "enough" for you--it really is more a matter of how willing you are and how you translate that willingness into determined action that overcomes natural laziness and your desire to do other stuff like watch TV, etc. If Callie had shown up to class only half the time and opened her book only once or twice a week, what would the teacher have thought of her efforts? Would the teacher have made herself so available to help a student who skipped homework assignments because she was too busy IMing or watching American Idol? Callie probably would have ended the year knowing more about Algebra than when she started but I doubt she would have developed the cooperative and dynamic relationship with the teacher that enabled her to really triumph in the class.

We’ve got an incredibly competent and available teacher, but we have to show up in order to learn.

Walking through the Door

I’ve been chatting via email with my aunt for several days on the difficulty of writing about spiritual habits. It can sound like I'm saying we have a check list of things we must do each day in order to be “good” Christians. Encouraging people to pray and read their Bibles daily can be misinterpreted as pretty legalistic. Worse, it can set up those of us with performance mentalities for discouragement when we fail or--conversely--for feelings of pride and self-righteousness when we “succeed.”

My aunt described the spiritual disciplines in a way that was helpful to me and so I thought I would share it. She said that we need to think of spiritual disciplines (like prayer and Bible study) as a simple choice to walk through a door. “Through that simple choice we enter a 'room' where we shift our focus from daily stuff to God, from earth to eternal--our choice did not DO anything but open us up to what God is doing all the time.”

This month, try to approach your daily prayer and Bible reading as a choice through which you are going to open yourself up to all God is doing and all He wants to let you in on. When you feel like quitting, just tell yourself, “I can make this choice one more day.”

If you are the guilty type, try to drop nagging feelings about whether you are doing “enough” or whether you are doing it “right,” and just picture yourself making a simple choice to walk through a door to the place where God is. If, on the other hand, you have been patting yourself on the back for your progress in developing good spiritual habits, back up and put them in perspective. You are not earning your way into heaven or making yourself into a good Christian or really doing anything at all except putting yourself in the place that God can get to work.

"I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture....I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." John 10:9-10.

Letting the Sap Flow from the Vine

I’ve been reading a book by V. Raymond Edman (President of Wheaton College from 1940-1965) about Christians who “found the secret” of abundant life in Christ. In the very varied experiences of each person profiled there seems to be one common theme. Early on they tried hard to follow Christ and become more Christ-like only to become dissatisfied and discouraged, sometimes bitterly so, by their lack of progress and a feeling of fruitlessness. Ultimately, however, each came to a deep understanding that Christ was literally living inside them and they began to rely on Him to live out His life through them. Then they found peace, joy, fruitfulness and all the promises we read about in the New Testament. J. Hudson Taylor wrote of this experience, “But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.”

Expressing a similar thought, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote:

“How does the branch bear fruit? Not by incessant effort for sunshine and air; not by vain struggles for those vivifying influences which give beauty to the blossom, and verdure to the leaf: it simply abides in the vine, in silent undisturbed union, and blossoms and fruit appear as of spontaneous growth.

How, then, shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given; by meditations on watchfulness, on prayer, on action, on temptation, and on dangers? No.”

But how does all this thought of letting Jesus do the work fit in with developing good spiritual habits, making sure we set aside time for prayer and Bible reading? Aren’t these examples of the kind of self-effort that ultimately discouraged people like Hudson Taylor as they fell short of their own ideals? How does this idea fit in with Paul’s teaching that we should be alert, train ourselves spiritually, pray diligently and study to show ourselves approved unto God?

I think there is a clue in a comment of Hudson Taylor’s, “How great seemed my mistake in having wished to get the sap, the fullness out of Him.” If we go about prayer, reading our Bibles, and filling ourselves with good teaching with an attitude that we are collecting resources with which we will construct a Christ-like character in ourselves, we will fail. Our spiritual disciplines will seem like drudgery and begin to feel completely pointless as we see only a little change in ourselves. However, if our attitude is that prayer, Bible reading and time with God are not sap sucking but rather the ways we can make sure that the branch is still attached to the vine so that the sap can flow freely, we will be relying on Him to do His work in us. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about Christians who have learned this truth: “Their hope and trust rest solely on what He is willing and able to do for them; on nothing that they suppose themselves able and willing to do for Him.”

This month, as you pursue your daily habits of prayer, Bible reading and stretches of quiet time in which you can think and hear God speak, try to do it with a sense of openness, a sense that you are opening up an airwave through which God will communicate with you and change you--rather than a sense that you are checking off items on a builder's punch list that will result in a new and better you. Take the pressure off yourself to do all these things "the right way." Just show up and start to do them, asking God to take control of the results.