“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.”
Over the last couple of months we’ve been exploring discipleship together. We’ve asked ourselves the question, “how close am I to Jesus?” We’ve thought about different ways in which we can get closer to Jesus – Helpful Habits of Bible reflection and prayer, Helpful Hands in works of service in and beyond the church, and Helpful Conversations about our faith with other Christians, and with those who don’t yet have a faith in Jesus.
Why have we been doing this? We’ve been doing this “So that we may know him better.”
As a church we talk about being Called to be Closer to Christ, and Sent to be Closer to others. We have these values of Loving God, Loving each other, Loving our neighbours, Celebrating, and Exploring. They aren’t just words on banners. They are at the core of who we are as a community. The only way we can live out these values is by getting closer to Jesus, so that we can follow him and learn from him better.
As part of this process, we asked people to complete surveys to tell us a bit about where they feel they are in their relationship with Jesus, and which of these things they are already putting into practice. I promised that I would share a bit of a summary of what we found out.
77 surveys returned
28 chose not to indicate an answer in the first section about “how close are you to Jesus” Of those who did answer:
1- Exploring Christ
8 – Growing In Christ
6 – Marked both Growing In and Close to Christ
30 – Close to Christ
2 – Marked both Close to and Centred on Christ
2- Christ Centred
I am intrigued about how many of us chose not to answer this question. Maybe none of the descriptions seemed to fit at all. Maybe it wasn’t something we’ve ever been asked to think about before, and weren’t sure how to answer. I’d be genuinely interested in hearing from people about this – please do email me or talk to me.
The other questions asked people to indicate, using a score from 1-10 how often they were involved in various activities. I am totally aware that this is a clumsy tool that only measures activity, not what is going on in people’s hearts, but I still believe it’s useful to help us get a handle on how we can get closer to Christ.
Taking average scores across the board for the other questions, from low to high we have:
4.0 – Sharing Faith (but over 75% of us have had at least one spiritual conversation in last 3 months with someone who isn’t a Christian)
4.9 – Service in Church (about half of us are serving in a church activity at least monthly)
5.7 – Small Group Attendance (reflects reality of about 50% of church members in small groups)
6.0 – Reflecting on Bible
6.1 – Service outside Church (over 65% are serving people outside the church at least monthly)
6.3 – Spiritual Friendships (almost all of us have at least one person we can talk about our faith with)
7.5 – Prayer (over 85% of us pray often)
I find this so encouraging, overall we are a prayerful church of people who engage with our Bibles, who serve those around us in the world, who support each other in our faith, and talk about it with each other. The areas we need to grow in are in sharing our faith and in serving each other in church. And it’s not as if we’re not doing these at all, we’re just not doing them quite as much as the others.
This is all interesting and useful, and the Mission and Discipleship Action Group will be using it in our planning of sermon series and small group material over the coming months. We will aim to run the survey again in a couple of years. Not because we like surveys, but because we take seriously our aim to get closer to Jesus, to get to know God better, and we want to know if we’re doing it.
But all the surveys and sermon series and small group plans won’t make a difference if the Holy Spirit isn’t at work. We believe that the Holy Spirit is in our thinking and planning, and will work in what we do, but we are completely dependant on him, the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, the Spirit given to us as a seal, the downpayment, the deposit of the inheritance that is ours in Jesus.
In our reading from Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus he describes three things that the Holy Spirit helps us to see: the hope of our calling, the riches of his inheritance, and the power of God.
The hope of our calling is the antidote to the despair that we may be tempted to feel when we look around the world and see a whole load of pain and difficulty. Before we came to Jesus, we had no future, we were dying. But we are not dying any more, we are living. When we turned from our sin and selfishness and decided that we would give our lives over to God, then we were freed. We were in darkness, now we are in light. We have been given hope, because we know what God has already done for us so we have hope that the same can and will be done for others. We cannot see it all yet, and that can be discouraging, but we do have strong grounds for expecting that we will see it. Our hope has strong foundations, the reality of what God has already done and of who God is.
The riches of his inheritance are in his people. That’s us. Have a look around you. These people, this community of faith, are the glorious riches of his inheritance. Later on Paul describes the church as “his body, the fulness of him how fills everything in every way”. This truly is a mystery. God is complete, fills everything in every way, but a head isn’t a head without a body, so somehow we are the fulness of Christ. We are the glorious inheritance. We know that we aren’t perfect, that we wind each other up, that sometimes we fall out, but for all that, somehow we are this glorious inheritance.
The power of God for those who believe. Christians tend to be unsure about power. We know that we are meant to be humble and that Jesus seemed to be pretty unimpressed with powerful people in his teaching, we heard that in the gospel reading. But we also have to recognise that Jesus wielded power. He healed people, he taught with authority, he freed people from the oppression of evil. God is so powerful that death could not hold Jesus, and he was raised to life again. That is the power that we are to recognise and to expect to work in our lives and in our communities. We are to be weak so that God’s power can work. We should not be ashamed of wanting to see God’s power work in our lives and in the lives of those whom we serve.
This is not power that dominates or pushes down, but it is power that frees and lifts up.
The hope, riches, and power are not just for us to taste and to enjoy. They are for us to share. They are for us to share with each other and with those outside. And as we share them we will be part of God working together all things for God’s purposes.
As we reach out to those in despair. Those who feel lonely, isolated, guilty, hurt, lost. As we reach out to them with the hope of love, forgiveness, healing and a home. As we bring the hope of the inheritance of the Kingdom of God into their lives, then we will see it even more clearly ourselves.
As we reach out to those who are poor. Those who feel that they are worth nothing, who have lost everything, who have a big hole in the centre of their lives that refuses to be filled with all the things that they shovel into it. As we tell them of the riches of the inheritance of the Kingdom of God, so we will appreciate their worth even more deeply.
As we reach out to those who are weak. Who cannot lift their heads, who have been trodden down and beaten up, who have no voice and no influence. As we invite the power of God to work in their lives, to free them and to straighten their backs, then we will be amazed at the things that can happen.
Discipleship, following and learning from Jesus, isn’t a leaflet or a sermon series or a survey. I believe that they can all help, but they’re not it. Discipleship is a way of life, a life that is focussed on getting closer to Jesus, and is shaped by that desire. As we walk that way together, let’s join Paul in praying for each other, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that we may know him better.
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