A pastor friend calls me and confesses his ongoing struggle with pornography. A high-achieving student tells me about her never-ending battle with self-doubt and procrastination. A young missionary shares how his temper and desire for achievement keeps wreaking havoc on his family. A veteran church leader quietly opens up about the nagging doubts that have chased them for decades.
Doubts. Fears. Worries. Sin. Character flaws. Addictions. Brokenness.
To put it painfully blunt, many secretly feel like they’ve fallen for a bait-and-switch scam that promised something that turns out to be unattainable. (But we’re good Christians, so can’t admit that we feel that way.)
Maybe it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but transformed lives are more elusive than we’d hope. According to Barna Research, only 1 in 200 Christians are reaching maturity in their faith. Perhaps you’re a bit sceptical of specific claims like that, but I think we can agree that something is clearly wrong.
Our Christian faith is all about transformation. At its core, it’s an acknowledgment that something’s not right in the world – and not right deep within us – and that God is on a mission to do something about it. God reconciles us to himself, because something needed changing, and the Spirit works within us to continue that change. Many passages come to mind, such as Romans 12: In the light of God’s mercy, we’re to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds” (v 1-2, lightly paraphrased). Our faith is all about real and deep and authentic and lasting transformation.
So why is change so elusive?
One answer might be that our assumptions about how people change are flawed. As an example, I think we often assume that what people need is more information. Therefore my job as a Christian leader is to tell people things. Yes, knowledge is important, and Bible teaching and preaching are essential... but despite being pretty great at dishing out information, people aren’t changing as much as we’d expect.
Another assumption is that people need to be reminded of what they ought to do. That sounds fine, but I think it often results in heaping on pressure. After a decade in a church, a friend of mine was frustrated and burnt out. Before leaving she wanted to try talking things out with her pastor. When the topic of why people in the church weren’t changing came up, he had an answer at the ready: “It’s because everyone is just lazy!” And his solution: if I can just shame them enough – heaping on pressure, telling them that they’re failing – then they’ll change.
That’s a pretty extreme example, but it’s more common than we’d think. Think of the conclusion of a sermon about evangelism. The message that often comes across is: “You should be sharing your faith more.” Or one on prayer: “You should be praying more.”
Shame, guilt and “shoulds” are actually terrible motivators for deep and lasting change. They make us feel bad, so we do something without passion for a short while, and then find ourselves exactly where we started.
Let’s test that right now.
Think of an area of your Christian life that you’re not satisfied with. Something like your Bible reading, prayer, character, sharing about Jesus with friends.
Pause. Think specifically about that thing. About how many times you’ve tried it. About how it’s gone.
How do you feel about that thing? What words come to mind?
If you’re like me, you might be thinking of words like Pressure. Frustration. Guilt. Shame. Disappointment. Failure.
Now try this. Read these questions slowly (out loud if you can):
What’s wrong with you?
Why are you such a failure?
Why bother trying again?
Pause. What do you feel in your body now? Has your breathing changed? Your posture, your mood, your facial expression? What thoughts are now running through your mind?
Chances are you stopped breathing for a moment, your energy dropped, or you’re now feeling pretty hopeless… And you’re mad at me for writing this!
Let me ask: do you think increasing the pressure is going to help you make progress in that area? I don’t think it’ll help much at all! You’ve identified an area that you want to grow in – there’s already a pressure there. Clearly something is holding you back, so what’s needed isn’t more pressure, but to step back and explore with self-compassion and a whole lot of curiosity.
The topic of how people change covers so many areas: spiritual formation, discipleship, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, theological anthropology... With a thousand possible directions we could go, I want to hone in on just one:
Why? Because the research is showing that joy is an essential precursor to change. And for 2,000 years we’ve been saying that joy is essential. Science is saying what we’ve said all along!
But I wouldn’t say that we Christians have a reputation for being joyful. Ask someone on the street their unfiltered view of Christians, and I’d expect to hear words like nice, disciplined, strict, perhaps grumpy or judgmental. But not joyful. In fact, I’d go further to say that, while telling people to be more joyful, we’ve often created spaces that are joy deficient.
A good first question then is: What is joy? I used to think the answer was really obvious until I heard the definition being used by neuroscientists:
Far from being a vague idea, joy is a concrete experience. Joy is relational. It’s what I feel when I see another person’s face light up when they are with me.
Knowing how neuroscience defines joy, turning to Scripture is fascinating. Think of the blessing in Numbers 6:24-26: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.” Isn’t that remarkably similar to the language of the neuroscientists?! We could even paraphrase the blessing as “May you feel the joy of God’s face shining on you because he is happy to be with you.”
In fact, this idea of God’s face is in Scripture far more than we might realise, but sometimes gets lost in translation. For example, Psalm 89:15 often reads as “Blessed are those... who walk in the light of your presence, Lord.” But in the Hebrew, “light of your presence” is literally “in the light of your face.” We’ve accidently removed joy from Scripture!
God designed our brains to run on joy like a car runs on fuel. Without fuel, the car won’t run.
I’ve found it helpful to think of joy as a muscle that I can exercise and grow. And a great place to start is with gratitude and thankfulness. As Paul tells us in Philippians 4, “Rejoice in the Lord always” (v4) weave thanksgiving into your prayers (v6), and focus your mind on whatever is true, noble, good, lovely (v8).
The thing is, I used to do this in a very “left brained” kind of way: trying to come up with lists (logic) of things I’m grateful for (words). We’ve often neglected more “right brained” spiritual practices, but as it turns out, the right brain is far more crucial in the transformation of our character.
Try this exercise designed to help you grow your joy capacity, using a right brained exercise developed by neuro-theologian Jim Wilder. What it’s doing is re-training your brain to recognise joy, and in doing so, is increasing your capacity to be transformed.
And here’s a challenge: make an effort this week to let those you meet know that you’re delighted to be with them. Your smile is literally increasing their capacity to be transformed by the gracious work of God’s Spirit!
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
We have invited these writers to share their experiences, ideas and opinions in the hope that these will provoke thought, challenge you to go deeper and inspire you to put your faith into action. These articles should not be taken as the official view of the Nelson Diocese on any particular matter.
A pastor friend calls me and confesses his ongoing struggle with pornography. A high-achieving student tells me about her never-ending battle with self-doubt and procrastination. A young missionary shares how his temper and desire for achievement keeps wreaking havoc on his family. A veteran church leader quietly opens up about the nagging doubts that have chased them for decades.
Doubts. Fears. Worries. Sin. Character flaws. Addictions. Brokenness.
To put it painfully blunt, many secretly feel like they’ve fallen for a bait-and-switch scam that promised something that turns out to be unattainable. (But we’re good Christians, so can’t admit that we feel that way.)
Maybe it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but transformed lives are more elusive than we’d hope. According to Barna Research, only 1 in 200 Christians are reaching maturity in their faith. Perhaps you’re a bit sceptical of specific claims like that, but I think we can agree that something is clearly wrong.
Our Christian faith is all about transformation. At its core, it’s an acknowledgment that something’s not right in the world – and not right deep within us – and that God is on a mission to do something about it. God reconciles us to himself, because something needed changing, and the Spirit works within us to continue that change. Many passages come to mind, such as Romans 12: In the light of God’s mercy, we’re to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds” (v 1-2, lightly paraphrased). Our faith is all about real and deep and authentic and lasting transformation.
So why is change so elusive?
One answer might be that our assumptions about how people change are flawed. As an example, I think we often assume that what people need is more information. Therefore my job as a Christian leader is to tell people things. Yes, knowledge is important, and Bible teaching and preaching are essential... but despite being pretty great at dishing out information, people aren’t changing as much as we’d expect.
Another assumption is that people need to be reminded of what they ought to do. That sounds fine, but I think it often results in heaping on pressure. After a decade in a church, a friend of mine was frustrated and burnt out. Before leaving she wanted to try talking things out with her pastor. When the topic of why people in the church weren’t changing came up, he had an answer at the ready: “It’s because everyone is just lazy!” And his solution: if I can just shame them enough – heaping on pressure, telling them that they’re failing – then they’ll change.
That’s a pretty extreme example, but it’s more common than we’d think. Think of the conclusion of a sermon about evangelism. The message that often comes across is: “You should be sharing your faith more.” Or one on prayer: “You should be praying more.”
Shame, guilt and “shoulds” are actually terrible motivators for deep and lasting change. They make us feel bad, so we do something without passion for a short while, and then find ourselves exactly where we started.
Let’s test that right now.
Think of an area of your Christian life that you’re not satisfied with. Something like your Bible reading, prayer, character, sharing about Jesus with friends.
Pause. Think specifically about that thing. About how many times you’ve tried it. About how it’s gone.
How do you feel about that thing? What words come to mind?
If you’re like me, you might be thinking of words like Pressure. Frustration. Guilt. Shame. Disappointment. Failure.
Now try this. Read these questions slowly (out loud if you can):
What’s wrong with you?
Why are you such a failure?
Why bother trying again?
Pause. What do you feel in your body now? Has your breathing changed? Your posture, your mood, your facial expression? What thoughts are now running through your mind?
Chances are you stopped breathing for a moment, your energy dropped, or you’re now feeling pretty hopeless… And you’re mad at me for writing this!
Let me ask: do you think increasing the pressure is going to help you make progress in that area? I don’t think it’ll help much at all! You’ve identified an area that you want to grow in – there’s already a pressure there. Clearly something is holding you back, so what’s needed isn’t more pressure, but to step back and explore with self-compassion and a whole lot of curiosity.
The topic of how people change covers so many areas: spiritual formation, discipleship, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, theological anthropology... With a thousand possible directions we could go, I want to hone in on just one:
Why? Because the research is showing that joy is an essential precursor to change. And for 2,000 years we’ve been saying that joy is essential. Science is saying what we’ve said all along!
But I wouldn’t say that we Christians have a reputation for being joyful. Ask someone on the street their unfiltered view of Christians, and I’d expect to hear words like nice, disciplined, strict, perhaps grumpy or judgmental. But not joyful. In fact, I’d go further to say that, while telling people to be more joyful, we’ve often created spaces that are joy deficient.
A good first question then is: What is joy? I used to think the answer was really obvious until I heard the definition being used by neuroscientists:
Far from being a vague idea, joy is a concrete experience. Joy is relational. It’s what I feel when I see another person’s face light up when they are with me.
Knowing how neuroscience defines joy, turning to Scripture is fascinating. Think of the blessing in Numbers 6:24-26: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.” Isn’t that remarkably similar to the language of the neuroscientists?! We could even paraphrase the blessing as “May you feel the joy of God’s face shining on you because he is happy to be with you.”
In fact, this idea of God’s face is in Scripture far more than we might realise, but sometimes gets lost in translation. For example, Psalm 89:15 often reads as “Blessed are those... who walk in the light of your presence, Lord.” But in the Hebrew, “light of your presence” is literally “in the light of your face.” We’ve accidently removed joy from Scripture!
God designed our brains to run on joy like a car runs on fuel. Without fuel, the car won’t run.
I’ve found it helpful to think of joy as a muscle that I can exercise and grow. And a great place to start is with gratitude and thankfulness. As Paul tells us in Philippians 4, “Rejoice in the Lord always” (v4) weave thanksgiving into your prayers (v6), and focus your mind on whatever is true, noble, good, lovely (v8).
The thing is, I used to do this in a very “left brained” kind of way: trying to come up with lists (logic) of things I’m grateful for (words). We’ve often neglected more “right brained” spiritual practices, but as it turns out, the right brain is far more crucial in the transformation of our character.
Try this exercise designed to help you grow your joy capacity, using a right brained exercise developed by neuro-theologian Jim Wilder. What it’s doing is re-training your brain to recognise joy, and in doing so, is increasing your capacity to be transformed.
And here’s a challenge: make an effort this week to let those you meet know that you’re delighted to be with them. Your smile is literally increasing their capacity to be transformed by the gracious work of God’s Spirit!
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
