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Welcome to The Blueprint, a Bible study committed to extracting truth from God's Word that you can apply and implement in your daily life. We believe the blueprint to God's best is found in the Bible, and we're grateful to have you with us.
Tonight, we're continuing our series called Identity Theft. The premise is simple but significant: the enemy who comes to steal, kill, and destroy—as Jesus says in John 10:10—doesn't just come to steal from you. The enemy comes to steal you. The enemy is after the authenticity of your identity. He wants to steal you because he knows if he can confuse your identity, he can control your behavior.
This truth is articulated by Solomon in Proverbs: "As a man thinks, so is he." You and I will regularly behave in a way that is consistent with the way we see ourselves. This is why throughout scripture, God repeatedly articulates to His people who they are. He calls them holy, chosen, peculiar, special, beloved, the apple of His eye. In the New Testament, we find language like salt of the earth, light of the world, anointed, selected, elected, foreknown, and predestined.
Why? Because God realizes that a lot of our behavior flows not just from our belief about Him, but also from our belief about ourselves. God regularly and repeatedly attempts to align the way we see ourselves with the way He sees us so we can behave in a way consistent with His vision, not our own.
Many people think they have an activity problem when what they really have is an identity problem. Many feel they have a boundaries problem when they really have a belief-about-themselves problem. Many think they have a standards problem—"My standards are too low." No. Your sense of self is too low. When there's an elevation of your identity, consequently, there's an elevation of your standards.
I could prove this throughout scripture. In the book of Corinthians, Paul addresses people about the way they're managing their bodies. He doesn't just try to get them to do something differently with their bodies. He tries to get them to see their bodies differently. He says, "Do you not know that your body is a temple?" Because if he can get you to see it differently, if he can elevate the way you see it, then he can elevate the way you're managing it.
You and I will often behave in a way consistent with the way we see ourselves. And here's the truth: your behavior is telling you what you believe. You and I don't always accurately assess what we believe. Your behavior reveals it. If you want to know what you believe about prayer, look at how much you do it. The book of James says, "I'll show you my faith by my works." Your works are revealing what you actually believe—not what you think you believe, but what your behavior tells me you believe.
The believers in Ephesus were wrestling with the tension of who they want to be and who they used to be. They were being pulled—depending on the day—in both directions. Have you ever felt like your past and your future were calling you at the same time?
You find yourself in situations where you're pulled to behave consistently with your default orientation, which is the past, and then simultaneously you feel the tension and conviction of being pulled into your future self. One is aligned with the tendencies and practices of the flesh. The other is aligned with the preferences of our heavenly Father.
Have you ever felt disrespected, insulted, tested, overwhelmed, or stressed recently and felt immediately the tension of responding in a way consistent with your default orientation—your old self—while also feeling the pull toward responding in a way consistent with your future self, aligned with the heart of the Father? The past self is more reflective of the traits and tendencies of the flesh.
What's challenging with that tension is that what's old is often most comfortable. Not because it's absent of conviction, but because we feel most comfortable doing what we feel more competent at. Most of us feel more competent at the thing we got the most reps at. If you've done it a lot, you feel more comfortable with it because you're more familiar with it.
Consider Israel coming out of Egypt. This is why Israel had anxiety in freedom that they didn't have in bondage. When Israel came out of Egypt and faced unfamiliar things in the wilderness, they began to default back to their old practices. When Moses went up on a hill to spend time with God, they felt anxious. They told Aaron, "Build us a god because we don't know what happened to Moses." Their abandonment issues showed up in the midst of their freedom, so they resorted to idolatry—going back to what was familiar, possibly because they had seen golden calves in Egypt. They were new to this God, Jehovah and Yahweh. They were more familiar with the gods of Egypt, so their default was returning to what they knew.
When they dealt with uncertainty in the wilderness, they said, "We had it better back in Egypt. Let's go back." This isn't just their story in Egypt. This isn't just their story in Ephesus. It's our story in our environment.
Spiritual growth requires being able to manage the reality of your own inconsistency in a way that when you fall short, you don't fall off. Spiritual growth is not linear. It's not just a straight line of progression. There are setbacks and setups, recovery and repentance and restoration.
One day you may feel more pulled toward your future. Another day you may feel more pulled toward your past. You've got to manage the inconsistency of that pulling in a way that even when you fall short, you don't fall off. You didn't manage that interaction the way you should have. Get up. You didn't manage fear the way you should have. Get up. You didn't steward resources the way you should have. Get up. The past self got the best of your best self today, but get up.
The Bible says, "A just man falls seven times in a day, but rises up again." That is not permission to continue in dysfunctional behavior, but it is permission to get up every time you fall.
Some people allow an act of sin to turn into a sin binge because they allow falling short to cause them to fall off. This is the tension that believers in Ephesus were wrestling with.
They weren't only wrestling with who they were and who they wanted to be. They were also wrestling with trying to become who they were called to be in a cultural context where most people weren't like that. Ephesus was not Christian. Their context was not encouraging their evolution. This means their evolution was going to produce some isolation.
They had to deal with the tension of their own inconsistency—feeling pulled in two different directions, sometimes falling short, sometimes their old self getting the best of them. But they also wrestled with isolation because their evolution meant, in some cases, isolation. Not that they were completely isolated from their relational circle, but situations and circumstances arose where people in those relationships walked away from them.
When you're wrestling with inconsistency internally and wrestling with isolation externally because you made a decision to live a certain way, it can create insecurity about your identity.
Listen to how Paul ministers to this in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10. He says: "For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do."
First, "We are God's handiwork." What does this word mean? The Greek word here is poiema—and it's where we get the English word poem. You have to get this, family.
A poem is a masterpiece that is progressively produced. It's written line by line, stanza by stanza. No poet sits down and with one stroke finishes a poem. That's not a poem; that's a sentence. Many times they write a line, sit with it, reflect on it, refine it, reconstruct it, sometimes rewrite it, and then move on to the next one.
This means for a large part of the poem's existence, it's incomplete. Sometimes the first version of the poem isn't the final version of the poem. This is the topic of tonight's teaching: This Isn't The Final Version.
There's a long stretch where the poem looks unfinished because it is unfinished. This is where many believers get discouraged. You're reading your life and reading scripture, and sometimes you see inconsistency between scripture and your life. The gap you feel between who you are and who you're becoming should not just be interpreted as something's wrong. There may be things wrong, but that shouldn't be the only interpretation you draw. You also need to see: something's being written, right? Even if you've written something incorrectly, you realize sometimes you write, then you erase. You write, you think something fits, then you realize this doesn't fit.
When I was preparing this study, something came to mind: the imagery captured in Jeremiah 18. It reads:
"This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 'Go down to the potter's house and there I will give you my message.' So Jeremiah says, 'I went down to the potter's house and I saw him, the potter, working on the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands. So the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as it seemed best to him.' Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, 'Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does? Like clay in the hand of the potter, so you are in my hand, Israel.'"
The imagery here leaped out at me: the clay is in the potter's hands, but it is marred. This word means damaged, spoiled, ruined, distorted from the intent of the maker. Yet, the text says it is still in the hands of the potter.
I'm going to say it again. Marred means damaged, spoiled, ruined, or distorted from the intent of the maker. But it was still in the hands of the potter. And look what the potter did with it. The potter didn't throw the clay away. The potter didn't replace the clay. The potter formed this marred clay into another pot.
We are like the clay. We're damaged. We're distorted. But He doesn't throw us away. The question isn't, "Are you marred?" The question is, "Are you still in His hands?" And if you're still in His hands, the marred version of you is not the final version of you because the Maker knows what to do with damaged, spoiled, ruined, and distorted clay.
The imagery connecting Jeremiah 18 and Ephesians 2 is something called progressive formation—or, as I've said before, progressive sanctification. It means that you and I being conformed to the image of Christ will require constant and consistent shaping from the hands of our Savior. It's progressive.
Even when you're in His hands, His hands are perfect, but you and I are not. But He doesn't throw the clay away. He remakes us. He reforms us. He reshapes us. He reinvents us. You and I will endure seasons even when we're in His hands where we are sensing and seeing something's not right. And God is thinking: it's because I'm not done.
But if you will stay on the wheel, if you will stay in the Master's hand, if you will stay on the page of the poet, when He gets through, you will look like what He intended for you to look like. Don't confuse the rough draft with the final draft.
Shaping takes time.
Paul helps believers understand the tension they're facing between who they used to be and who God's calling them to be by saying, "Hey, you're being written. You're being shaped." All of the issues, distortions, and dysfunctions will not disappear instantaneously. There will be miraculous seasons of spiritual acceleration. But do not confuse seasons of spiritual acceleration with the reality of spiritual formation.
When it comes to you and I being shaped and formed, here's what God's going to use: Scripture. His Spirit. The saints—other people. You know what else? Suffering. The Bible says even Jesus learned obedience through the things that He suffered.
There are two types of spiritual growth:
Active spiritual growth happens when you actively participate. You study. You fast. You pray. You serve. These are the things God uses as a means of grace to produce growth on the inside of us.
Passive spiritual growth happens when you're being acted upon. That is betrayal, persecution, experiences that we could not predict and do not prefer. God is at work through them, growing us.
And you know what it takes for all of that? It takes time.
There are some things about us that we haven't fixed because we hadn't faced it yet. Part of progressive spiritual formation is what I call illumination—when the Holy Spirit shines a light on something. Whether the Holy Spirit does it directly or through scripture, you might be reading something you've read your whole life, and suddenly one thing just keeps leaping off the page at you. Gossip. Gossip. Gossip. And you realize you didn't even know until it was illuminated in scripture that this is something the Holy Spirit is highlighting in this season of your life that you need to address.
God's divine illumination is intentional. The season He shows it is the season you and I need to give attention to it, because addressing it is mission-critical. Addressing it in this season has consequences. Some dysfunction is like a domino. When that one thing falls, it can disrupt everything else in the orbit of our life.
When the Holy Spirit begins shining a light on a thing, saying "Fix this, adjust this, deal with this," it's because the next season of your life will require that being dealt with. When you don't deal with something in one season that needs to be addressed before the next season, you can step into the next season and what was intended to be a blessing will feel like a curse.
Let's say someone is struggling with slothfulness or laziness, and the Holy Spirit is highlighting: "Hey, you've got to deal with this." But for whatever reason, they don't. Then they get to another season where they're thrust into unimaginable increases of responsibility. Now you're managing responsibility that you never thought you would manage. All of a sudden, that responsibility, which would have been an opportunity for impact, becomes a major source of inconvenience. Because when someone is slothful, procrastinating, lazy, and undisciplined, the blessing of influence now feels like a curse.
It takes time. We can contribute to it taking more time than it should when we don't stay on the page and stay on the wheel. But Paul says to believers in Ephesus: "You're God's handiwork."
He didn't just stop there, though. Watch what he says: "You are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works."
You're not just a masterpiece to be a masterpiece. You're a masterpiece for ministry. We were created to do good works. We're not the only ones who benefit from this new creation. The consequence of this new creation is that you and I make a greater contribution. Salvation is not just a destination. It's your dispatch. God is saying: "I'm dispatching you into greater works."
Our recreation should lead to greater contribution. You and I have been given three things:
Spiritual gifts — special abilities distributed to you by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of making the contribution you're supposed to make to human flourishing and the common good.
Natural ability — that's talent, unique ability you possess independent of your salvation.
Acquired skill — competencies you acquire out of necessity or desire. These are things you learn to do because you had to or because you wanted to.
God wants to use all three of those for good works.
Many people confuse doing good works with what I call formal or scheduled ministry and miss the ministry of the informal. When someone asks, "What am I supposed to be doing with my life?" they often reduce it to a role or position: What am I supposed to be doing in church? What am I supposed to be doing with my job? They operate under the erroneous assumption that good works only come through formal roles and scheduled contribution.
But what we see in the New Testament, particularly with Jesus and the apostles, is what I call the ministry of interruptions.
Jesus's greatest miracles recorded in the New Testament were not scheduled miracles. Bartimaeus was on the side of the road screaming. Jesus was going somewhere else. The woman with the issue of blood—Jesus was going somewhere else. He was going to Jairus's house. When Jesus was at a house and people brought a man on a mat, they climbed up to the top of the house and dug a hole in the roof. That was an interruption. The two blind men that followed Jesus—that was an interruption. Some of Jesus's greatest miracles were interruptions.
Sometimes the interruption isn't an interruption. Sometimes the interruption is the assignment. The interruption is an opportunity for good works. Those of us who are scheduled, rhythmic, and sometimes regimented must get a revelation of the ministry of interruptions. Because sometimes what God is doing through interruptions is revealing to you the difference between your priorities and His. He is revealing the difference between what's on the top of your schedule and what's on the top of His schedule.
Your and my contribution doesn't just assist other people. It assists us. When we do good works, not only do other people benefit, we benefit. Sometimes your assignment assists in your evolution.
Many people are limited in their conformation to Christ-likeness because they don't understand the role that contribution plays in it. They don't realize that serving others actually shapes you. Serving others makes you a more generous person. Serving others makes you a more patient person. Serving others makes you a more empathetic person. There are things you see when you serve people that you don't see otherwise.
I see this sociologically, particularly when people take political stances and make bombastic generalizations about poor people. They assume all poor people are lazy, that all poor people don't want upward mobility, that poor people just want others to take care of them. That stance says to me: your life is void of proximity.
Is that the case for some people? Yes. The Bible says poverty comes upon laziness like a madman, like a robber, like a thief. So yes, that's the reality for some. Is that the reality for all? No. But you won't know that without proximity. You become a more balanced, empathetic person by serving others.
He says: "You are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared for us in advance to do."
There are some things that God has prepared that we just need to perceive. There's some work that God has already prepared. So there's a shift here. This should change how we frame purpose.
You're not trying to find your purpose. You're just trying to follow the One who prepared it. Because the believer's posture should not be invention. It should be attention. It means staying close enough to God to recognize a prepared work before you walk into it.
Jeremiah 1:5 says: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." The appointment came before the awareness.
So I'm not trying to invent purpose. I'm trying to understand and align. These are two different decisions. I've got to understand, which means I can't carry out what I'm confused about.
This is why spiritual gifts are important. This is why marketplace ministry is important. This is why I ran an event last year called the Uncommon Calling Conference—because most of us have callings to what church and culture don't have language for. You're going to be massively confused about your purpose if you limit your possibilities of purpose simply to the roles available to serve in a church.
I say this as a pastor of a church who loves the church and has given the majority of my life to serve the local church. I'm not anti-local church. I'm just telling you that what you've been created to do is bigger than the roles and responsibilities we have for you in church. You're not confused about your calling. You're confused about your category because you don't fit in the categories that church or culture created.
But even when you get understanding, there's got to be alignment.
One of the greatest hindrances to the accomplishment of purpose is not the lack of skill. It's the lack of submission. Remember I said: understand and align.
We often confuse submission and obedience. Submission is not submission to God until you and God disagree. This is important because Jesus's actions in the Garden of Gethsemane dismantle the myth that purpose is always going to be something you prefer.
Jesus's prayer in the garden of Gethsemane exposes us to the reality that there are going to be aspects of our assignment that feel agitating, overwhelming. For Jesus literally, for us metaphorically, it's going to feel like it's killing you. But we must be willing to surrender to God's prepared plan because that prepared plan is always in our best interest.
This version of you is not the final version of you. No matter how long you've been on the potter's wheel, no matter how long the poet has been writing your story on his page, you're God's handiwork that's been created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do.
This is not the final version.
For those of you who feel like "I should be past this by now and I should be over this by now," this is not the final version. "But Dr. Darius, I had enough scripture to have fixed this by now." Maybe you hadn't had enough experiences with the Spirit to fix it. Maybe you hadn't been confronted enough by saints to fix it. Maybe you hadn't had enough suffering to fix it.
He's still writing. But when He gets through, you will be exactly who He's called and created you to be.
I know when I talk like this, it makes some of us uncomfortable. It's almost like we feel if we talk too much about grace, people will abuse it. If we say "It takes time," we assume we're going to abuse that time. But what if it just takes time? What if what God wants to do is just going to take a little more time? Your job is not to get off the wheel. Your job is to stay on the page.
God's job is to keep writing until the poem that you are is exactly who He wants you to be. Your sanctification and your spiritual formation is progressive. Stay on the wheel. Stay on the page.
Welcome to The Blueprint, a Bible study committed to extracting truth from God's Word that you can apply and implement in your daily life. We believe the blueprint to God's best is found in the Bible, and we're grateful to have you with us.
Tonight, we're continuing our series called Identity Theft. The premise is simple but significant: the enemy who comes to steal, kill, and destroy—as Jesus says in John 10:10—doesn't just come to steal from you. The enemy comes to steal you. The enemy is after the authenticity of your identity. He wants to steal you because he knows if he can confuse your identity, he can control your behavior.
This truth is articulated by Solomon in Proverbs: "As a man thinks, so is he." You and I will regularly behave in a way that is consistent with the way we see ourselves. This is why throughout scripture, God repeatedly articulates to His people who they are. He calls them holy, chosen, peculiar, special, beloved, the apple of His eye. In the New Testament, we find language like salt of the earth, light of the world, anointed, selected, elected, foreknown, and predestined.
Why? Because God realizes that a lot of our behavior flows not just from our belief about Him, but also from our belief about ourselves. God regularly and repeatedly attempts to align the way we see ourselves with the way He sees us so we can behave in a way consistent with His vision, not our own.
Many people think they have an activity problem when what they really have is an identity problem. Many feel they have a boundaries problem when they really have a belief-about-themselves problem. Many think they have a standards problem—"My standards are too low." No. Your sense of self is too low. When there's an elevation of your identity, consequently, there's an elevation of your standards.
I could prove this throughout scripture. In the book of Corinthians, Paul addresses people about the way they're managing their bodies. He doesn't just try to get them to do something differently with their bodies. He tries to get them to see their bodies differently. He says, "Do you not know that your body is a temple?" Because if he can get you to see it differently, if he can elevate the way you see it, then he can elevate the way you're managing it.
You and I will often behave in a way consistent with the way we see ourselves. And here's the truth: your behavior is telling you what you believe. You and I don't always accurately assess what we believe. Your behavior reveals it. If you want to know what you believe about prayer, look at how much you do it. The book of James says, "I'll show you my faith by my works." Your works are revealing what you actually believe—not what you think you believe, but what your behavior tells me you believe.
The believers in Ephesus were wrestling with the tension of who they want to be and who they used to be. They were being pulled—depending on the day—in both directions. Have you ever felt like your past and your future were calling you at the same time?
You find yourself in situations where you're pulled to behave consistently with your default orientation, which is the past, and then simultaneously you feel the tension and conviction of being pulled into your future self. One is aligned with the tendencies and practices of the flesh. The other is aligned with the preferences of our heavenly Father.
Have you ever felt disrespected, insulted, tested, overwhelmed, or stressed recently and felt immediately the tension of responding in a way consistent with your default orientation—your old self—while also feeling the pull toward responding in a way consistent with your future self, aligned with the heart of the Father? The past self is more reflective of the traits and tendencies of the flesh.
What's challenging with that tension is that what's old is often most comfortable. Not because it's absent of conviction, but because we feel most comfortable doing what we feel more competent at. Most of us feel more competent at the thing we got the most reps at. If you've done it a lot, you feel more comfortable with it because you're more familiar with it.
Consider Israel coming out of Egypt. This is why Israel had anxiety in freedom that they didn't have in bondage. When Israel came out of Egypt and faced unfamiliar things in the wilderness, they began to default back to their old practices. When Moses went up on a hill to spend time with God, they felt anxious. They told Aaron, "Build us a god because we don't know what happened to Moses." Their abandonment issues showed up in the midst of their freedom, so they resorted to idolatry—going back to what was familiar, possibly because they had seen golden calves in Egypt. They were new to this God, Jehovah and Yahweh. They were more familiar with the gods of Egypt, so their default was returning to what they knew.
When they dealt with uncertainty in the wilderness, they said, "We had it better back in Egypt. Let's go back." This isn't just their story in Egypt. This isn't just their story in Ephesus. It's our story in our environment.
Spiritual growth requires being able to manage the reality of your own inconsistency in a way that when you fall short, you don't fall off. Spiritual growth is not linear. It's not just a straight line of progression. There are setbacks and setups, recovery and repentance and restoration.
One day you may feel more pulled toward your future. Another day you may feel more pulled toward your past. You've got to manage the inconsistency of that pulling in a way that even when you fall short, you don't fall off. You didn't manage that interaction the way you should have. Get up. You didn't manage fear the way you should have. Get up. You didn't steward resources the way you should have. Get up. The past self got the best of your best self today, but get up.
The Bible says, "A just man falls seven times in a day, but rises up again." That is not permission to continue in dysfunctional behavior, but it is permission to get up every time you fall.
Some people allow an act of sin to turn into a sin binge because they allow falling short to cause them to fall off. This is the tension that believers in Ephesus were wrestling with.
They weren't only wrestling with who they were and who they wanted to be. They were also wrestling with trying to become who they were called to be in a cultural context where most people weren't like that. Ephesus was not Christian. Their context was not encouraging their evolution. This means their evolution was going to produce some isolation.
They had to deal with the tension of their own inconsistency—feeling pulled in two different directions, sometimes falling short, sometimes their old self getting the best of them. But they also wrestled with isolation because their evolution meant, in some cases, isolation. Not that they were completely isolated from their relational circle, but situations and circumstances arose where people in those relationships walked away from them.
When you're wrestling with inconsistency internally and wrestling with isolation externally because you made a decision to live a certain way, it can create insecurity about your identity.
Listen to how Paul ministers to this in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10. He says: "For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do."
First, "We are God's handiwork." What does this word mean? The Greek word here is poiema—and it's where we get the English word poem. You have to get this, family.
A poem is a masterpiece that is progressively produced. It's written line by line, stanza by stanza. No poet sits down and with one stroke finishes a poem. That's not a poem; that's a sentence. Many times they write a line, sit with it, reflect on it, refine it, reconstruct it, sometimes rewrite it, and then move on to the next one.
This means for a large part of the poem's existence, it's incomplete. Sometimes the first version of the poem isn't the final version of the poem. This is the topic of tonight's teaching: This Isn't The Final Version.
There's a long stretch where the poem looks unfinished because it is unfinished. This is where many believers get discouraged. You're reading your life and reading scripture, and sometimes you see inconsistency between scripture and your life. The gap you feel between who you are and who you're becoming should not just be interpreted as something's wrong. There may be things wrong, but that shouldn't be the only interpretation you draw. You also need to see: something's being written, right? Even if you've written something incorrectly, you realize sometimes you write, then you erase. You write, you think something fits, then you realize this doesn't fit.
When I was preparing this study, something came to mind: the imagery captured in Jeremiah 18. It reads:
"This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 'Go down to the potter's house and there I will give you my message.' So Jeremiah says, 'I went down to the potter's house and I saw him, the potter, working on the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands. So the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as it seemed best to him.' Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, 'Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does? Like clay in the hand of the potter, so you are in my hand, Israel.'"
The imagery here leaped out at me: the clay is in the potter's hands, but it is marred. This word means damaged, spoiled, ruined, distorted from the intent of the maker. Yet, the text says it is still in the hands of the potter.
I'm going to say it again. Marred means damaged, spoiled, ruined, or distorted from the intent of the maker. But it was still in the hands of the potter. And look what the potter did with it. The potter didn't throw the clay away. The potter didn't replace the clay. The potter formed this marred clay into another pot.
We are like the clay. We're damaged. We're distorted. But He doesn't throw us away. The question isn't, "Are you marred?" The question is, "Are you still in His hands?" And if you're still in His hands, the marred version of you is not the final version of you because the Maker knows what to do with damaged, spoiled, ruined, and distorted clay.
The imagery connecting Jeremiah 18 and Ephesians 2 is something called progressive formation—or, as I've said before, progressive sanctification. It means that you and I being conformed to the image of Christ will require constant and consistent shaping from the hands of our Savior. It's progressive.
Even when you're in His hands, His hands are perfect, but you and I are not. But He doesn't throw the clay away. He remakes us. He reforms us. He reshapes us. He reinvents us. You and I will endure seasons even when we're in His hands where we are sensing and seeing something's not right. And God is thinking: it's because I'm not done.
But if you will stay on the wheel, if you will stay in the Master's hand, if you will stay on the page of the poet, when He gets through, you will look like what He intended for you to look like. Don't confuse the rough draft with the final draft.
Shaping takes time.
Paul helps believers understand the tension they're facing between who they used to be and who God's calling them to be by saying, "Hey, you're being written. You're being shaped." All of the issues, distortions, and dysfunctions will not disappear instantaneously. There will be miraculous seasons of spiritual acceleration. But do not confuse seasons of spiritual acceleration with the reality of spiritual formation.
When it comes to you and I being shaped and formed, here's what God's going to use: Scripture. His Spirit. The saints—other people. You know what else? Suffering. The Bible says even Jesus learned obedience through the things that He suffered.
There are two types of spiritual growth:
Active spiritual growth happens when you actively participate. You study. You fast. You pray. You serve. These are the things God uses as a means of grace to produce growth on the inside of us.
Passive spiritual growth happens when you're being acted upon. That is betrayal, persecution, experiences that we could not predict and do not prefer. God is at work through them, growing us.
And you know what it takes for all of that? It takes time.
There are some things about us that we haven't fixed because we hadn't faced it yet. Part of progressive spiritual formation is what I call illumination—when the Holy Spirit shines a light on something. Whether the Holy Spirit does it directly or through scripture, you might be reading something you've read your whole life, and suddenly one thing just keeps leaping off the page at you. Gossip. Gossip. Gossip. And you realize you didn't even know until it was illuminated in scripture that this is something the Holy Spirit is highlighting in this season of your life that you need to address.
God's divine illumination is intentional. The season He shows it is the season you and I need to give attention to it, because addressing it is mission-critical. Addressing it in this season has consequences. Some dysfunction is like a domino. When that one thing falls, it can disrupt everything else in the orbit of our life.
When the Holy Spirit begins shining a light on a thing, saying "Fix this, adjust this, deal with this," it's because the next season of your life will require that being dealt with. When you don't deal with something in one season that needs to be addressed before the next season, you can step into the next season and what was intended to be a blessing will feel like a curse.
Let's say someone is struggling with slothfulness or laziness, and the Holy Spirit is highlighting: "Hey, you've got to deal with this." But for whatever reason, they don't. Then they get to another season where they're thrust into unimaginable increases of responsibility. Now you're managing responsibility that you never thought you would manage. All of a sudden, that responsibility, which would have been an opportunity for impact, becomes a major source of inconvenience. Because when someone is slothful, procrastinating, lazy, and undisciplined, the blessing of influence now feels like a curse.
It takes time. We can contribute to it taking more time than it should when we don't stay on the page and stay on the wheel. But Paul says to believers in Ephesus: "You're God's handiwork."
He didn't just stop there, though. Watch what he says: "You are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works."
You're not just a masterpiece to be a masterpiece. You're a masterpiece for ministry. We were created to do good works. We're not the only ones who benefit from this new creation. The consequence of this new creation is that you and I make a greater contribution. Salvation is not just a destination. It's your dispatch. God is saying: "I'm dispatching you into greater works."
Our recreation should lead to greater contribution. You and I have been given three things:
Spiritual gifts — special abilities distributed to you by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of making the contribution you're supposed to make to human flourishing and the common good.
Natural ability — that's talent, unique ability you possess independent of your salvation.
Acquired skill — competencies you acquire out of necessity or desire. These are things you learn to do because you had to or because you wanted to.
God wants to use all three of those for good works.
Many people confuse doing good works with what I call formal or scheduled ministry and miss the ministry of the informal. When someone asks, "What am I supposed to be doing with my life?" they often reduce it to a role or position: What am I supposed to be doing in church? What am I supposed to be doing with my job? They operate under the erroneous assumption that good works only come through formal roles and scheduled contribution.
But what we see in the New Testament, particularly with Jesus and the apostles, is what I call the ministry of interruptions.
Jesus's greatest miracles recorded in the New Testament were not scheduled miracles. Bartimaeus was on the side of the road screaming. Jesus was going somewhere else. The woman with the issue of blood—Jesus was going somewhere else. He was going to Jairus's house. When Jesus was at a house and people brought a man on a mat, they climbed up to the top of the house and dug a hole in the roof. That was an interruption. The two blind men that followed Jesus—that was an interruption. Some of Jesus's greatest miracles were interruptions.
Sometimes the interruption isn't an interruption. Sometimes the interruption is the assignment. The interruption is an opportunity for good works. Those of us who are scheduled, rhythmic, and sometimes regimented must get a revelation of the ministry of interruptions. Because sometimes what God is doing through interruptions is revealing to you the difference between your priorities and His. He is revealing the difference between what's on the top of your schedule and what's on the top of His schedule.
Your and my contribution doesn't just assist other people. It assists us. When we do good works, not only do other people benefit, we benefit. Sometimes your assignment assists in your evolution.
Many people are limited in their conformation to Christ-likeness because they don't understand the role that contribution plays in it. They don't realize that serving others actually shapes you. Serving others makes you a more generous person. Serving others makes you a more patient person. Serving others makes you a more empathetic person. There are things you see when you serve people that you don't see otherwise.
I see this sociologically, particularly when people take political stances and make bombastic generalizations about poor people. They assume all poor people are lazy, that all poor people don't want upward mobility, that poor people just want others to take care of them. That stance says to me: your life is void of proximity.
Is that the case for some people? Yes. The Bible says poverty comes upon laziness like a madman, like a robber, like a thief. So yes, that's the reality for some. Is that the reality for all? No. But you won't know that without proximity. You become a more balanced, empathetic person by serving others.
He says: "You are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared for us in advance to do."
There are some things that God has prepared that we just need to perceive. There's some work that God has already prepared. So there's a shift here. This should change how we frame purpose.
You're not trying to find your purpose. You're just trying to follow the One who prepared it. Because the believer's posture should not be invention. It should be attention. It means staying close enough to God to recognize a prepared work before you walk into it.
Jeremiah 1:5 says: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." The appointment came before the awareness.
So I'm not trying to invent purpose. I'm trying to understand and align. These are two different decisions. I've got to understand, which means I can't carry out what I'm confused about.
This is why spiritual gifts are important. This is why marketplace ministry is important. This is why I ran an event last year called the Uncommon Calling Conference—because most of us have callings to what church and culture don't have language for. You're going to be massively confused about your purpose if you limit your possibilities of purpose simply to the roles available to serve in a church.
I say this as a pastor of a church who loves the church and has given the majority of my life to serve the local church. I'm not anti-local church. I'm just telling you that what you've been created to do is bigger than the roles and responsibilities we have for you in church. You're not confused about your calling. You're confused about your category because you don't fit in the categories that church or culture created.
But even when you get understanding, there's got to be alignment.
One of the greatest hindrances to the accomplishment of purpose is not the lack of skill. It's the lack of submission. Remember I said: understand and align.
We often confuse submission and obedience. Submission is not submission to God until you and God disagree. This is important because Jesus's actions in the Garden of Gethsemane dismantle the myth that purpose is always going to be something you prefer.
Jesus's prayer in the garden of Gethsemane exposes us to the reality that there are going to be aspects of our assignment that feel agitating, overwhelming. For Jesus literally, for us metaphorically, it's going to feel like it's killing you. But we must be willing to surrender to God's prepared plan because that prepared plan is always in our best interest.
This version of you is not the final version of you. No matter how long you've been on the potter's wheel, no matter how long the poet has been writing your story on his page, you're God's handiwork that's been created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do.
This is not the final version.
For those of you who feel like "I should be past this by now and I should be over this by now," this is not the final version. "But Dr. Darius, I had enough scripture to have fixed this by now." Maybe you hadn't had enough experiences with the Spirit to fix it. Maybe you hadn't been confronted enough by saints to fix it. Maybe you hadn't had enough suffering to fix it.
He's still writing. But when He gets through, you will be exactly who He's called and created you to be.
I know when I talk like this, it makes some of us uncomfortable. It's almost like we feel if we talk too much about grace, people will abuse it. If we say "It takes time," we assume we're going to abuse that time. But what if it just takes time? What if what God wants to do is just going to take a little more time? Your job is not to get off the wheel. Your job is to stay on the page.
God's job is to keep writing until the poem that you are is exactly who He wants you to be. Your sanctification and your spiritual formation is progressive. Stay on the wheel. Stay on the page.
