Replacing Destructive Patterns with Healthy Ones

Effective churches in the twenty-first century—the churches that will draw many people to the knowledge of Jesus Christ and will be appealing churches that spark the interest of people out there—and effective Christians, the people of the Kingdom who will be effective workers in bringing others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, will have to be keenly aware of how arduous the journey of sanctification and Christian growth is.

One of the most important skills needed in Christian life today is understanding how the soul is renewed and transformed, replacing destructive and negative patterns of behavior with healthy patterns that produce healthy, balanced people. We must understand, too, that this process is delicate and complex, requiring a long-term vision and people who gradually join those involved in the journey of Christian life as they go through it.

If, on the other hand, the Church is full of impatient people who believe holiness must come overnight, and that as soon as someone enters the ways of the Lord they must immediately leave behind everything that characterized their sinful behavior in the world, we will produce neurotic churches, churches unable to reach people in the world who, like Zacchaeus, whom we spoke about in the last program, want to enter the ways of God but think they are too far behind and have so many bonds holding them that it is probably too late for them.

But when these people find a merciful, compassionate, welcoming, generous, patient people of God, they experience hope being born in their hearts and dare to set out on the arduous path of sanctification and personal transformation.

That is why we pastors and Christian leaders must continually study some Christian psychology, counseling, and principles of how the soul and mind change and are transformed so that old patterns can be abandoned and replaced with new ones. And that is why I strongly encourage believers today to study and read about these aspects of human transformation and how they take place in the brain and the human nervous system, because, after all, God uses biology. God uses the workings of the brain, and emotions, and memories, and the will.

God does not violate the patterns of the human soul; rather, He respects them and works through them. That is why, although people often have very powerful encounters with the Holy Spirit at the beginning and very significant changes take place, there will always be things that require a great deal of time to come about in the process of their sanctification and their becoming people who truly reflect the character of Jesus Christ.

So we need leaders, counselors, disciple-makers, and pastors who are keenly aware of this process and give people time to get where they need to go. That is why we see the apostle Paul say in one passage, “My little children, for whom I suffer labor pains until Christ is formed in you.” That expression of the apostle Paul conveys what the process of Christian growth is like: it requires pastors like Paul who feel the pain and pay the price of walking with the sinner along that long road of falling and getting up again, who suffer through that process in their own being, you know? But who do so patiently.

As Paul says, suffering labor pains while waiting for Christ to be formed in them. Because that is what a disciple-maker does, and that is what a pastor does: walk with the sinner; walk with the child, in the case of family and parenthood; walk with the friend or the disciple little by little, step by step, as the Holy Spirit does with us. The Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, the one who stands beside us and walks with us and encourages us, instructs us, informs us, educates us, until we attain the fullness of the Person of Christ Jesus.

The Christian disciple-maker, the Christian parent, the Christian counselor stands beside the person, walks with them, bears the inconveniences of that process of sanctification until the day comes—a day that will never come fully, because we will never be perfect here in the world—but until the day comes when the person being discipled reflects the values and principles of the character of Christ Jesus and of the Kingdom of God.

That is the kind of counselor and disciple-maker we need in this time; that is the kind of Church and leader needed to bring so many people in the twenty-first century into the House of God and the ways of the Lord. May we become people like that.