A Spiritual Journey

Every spiritual journey begins somewhere. Sometimes it begins with a question. Sometimes with dissatisfaction with a life that once seemed sufficient. It may come through Scripture, suffering, conviction, an encounter with truth, or a growing awareness that there must be more than the world we have learned to accept.

The important matter is not how the awakening comes, but what we do when God begins to disturb what has become comfortable.

Awakening is the recognition that God is not merely an idea to be considered. He is God, and His call demands a response.

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There is a profound difference between knowing about God and knowing God.

Scripture gives us knowledge of His character, His purposes, His acts, His promises, and His Kingdom. But the objective is not merely the accumulation of information. God calls His people into relationship with Himself.

Knowing God develops through Scripture, prayer, obedience, dependence, correction, experience, and time. What begins as belief must increasingly become a life lived consciously before Him.

The spiritual journey therefore asks a more demanding question than What do I believe about God?

It asks: Do I know Him?

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The Bible was not written in our century, our culture, our language, or our political and economic environment. Yet its truth speaks authoritatively into every generation.

Serious spiritual formation therefore requires more than collecting familiar verses. We must learn the Scriptures—their books, history, people, covenants, cultures, languages, circumstances, arguments, and relationship to the unfolding purposes of God.

We approach Scripture not merely to confirm what we already believe, but with sufficient humility to allow the Word of God to correct us.

Understanding Scripture becomes one of the principal means by which we learn to distinguish God's Kingdom from the systems, traditions, assumptions, and values that have formed us.

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The spiritual journey eventually confronts the question of authority.

It is possible to believe in God while continuing to reserve important portions of life for ourselves. Scripture, however, presents a Kingdom—and a Kingdom has a King.

Surrender means increasingly bringing our ambitions, possessions, relationships, decisions, habits, time, abilities, resources, and understanding beneath the authority of God.

This is not accomplished in a single emotional moment. There may be decisive moments of surrender, but the surrendered life is subsequently walked out through innumerable ordinary decisions.

We begin to ask not merely, What do I want? but What does faithfulness require?

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We were born into systems we did not create. They taught us what success means, what possessions mean, what power means, what security means, what status means, and ultimately what kind of life is worth pursuing.

Scripture repeatedly confronts systems organized in opposition to the rule and purposes of God. Babylon becomes one of its great representations of that reality.

Walking out of Babylon therefore involves more than rejecting particular sins. It requires learning to recognize the assumptions of the World System that have taken residence within our thinking.

Some things must be abandoned. Others must be relearned. Still others must be brought under entirely different purposes.

Leaving Babylon is not principally geographical. It is the difficult work of removing Babylon from us.

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Leaving something is incomplete unless we understand what we are entering.

Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God. Consequently, spiritual formation cannot end with separating ourselves from the ways of the World System. We must learn another way of living.

Kingdom life reaches into relationships, money, work, forgiveness, justice, authority, service, possessions, family, community, responsibility, generosity, speech, and our treatment of other people.

The question gradually changes from What am I permitted to do? to How does a citizen of the Kingdom live?

This is where biblical truth becomes visible conduct.

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Information alone does not produce maturity.

We may read extensively, attend Classrooms, hear Sermons, understand doctrine, and still remain substantially unchanged. Formation concerns what truth is producing within the person.

Character is formed through obedience, testing, correction, discipline, service, patience, failure, repentance, perseverance, and the continuing work of God.

This takes time.

D. Mass therefore does not measure spiritual maturity merely by how much someone knows, how long someone has participated, or what position someone occupies. The life itself must increasingly bear witness to what the person professes to believe.

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Formation eventually turns outward.

God gives gifts, knowledge, experience, resources, opportunities, and influence that can be placed in service to others. Service is therefore not simply an institutional assignment. It is one of the natural expressions of a life increasingly surrendered to God.

Some will teach. Some will encourage. Some will administer. Some will give. Some will build. Some will care for others. Some will perform work that few people ever see.

The significance of service is not determined by visibility.

The question is faithfulness.

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Greater responsibility should never be confused with spiritual status.

Within the Kingdom, responsibility is stewardship.

Those entrusted with people, resources, instruction, leadership, or institutional work assume greater obligations—not greater personal importance. Preparation therefore matters. Study matters. Character matters. Accountability matters. A life demonstrated over time matters.

D. Mass does not regard leadership merely as an appointment. Those who accept responsibility must be prepared to learn, serve, submit to appropriate accountability, and demonstrate that what they teach publicly is being taken seriously in the life they live before others.

The objective is not position.

It is to hear, at the conclusion of whatever has been entrusted to us:

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” — Matthew 25:21, KJV

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