Signs of Spiritual Maturity Part 1: Gratitude and Joy
"Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever!"
--1 Chronicles 16:34
New Series Part 1
We have begun a series on the process of becoming fully mature in Christ. For the next 10 posts we will look at Rolheiser's 10 marks of maturity from Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity.
Here is his list:
1. "Live in gratitude and thank your Creator by enjoying your life.
2. Be willing to carry more and more of life's complexities with empathy.
3. Transform jealousy, anger, bitterness, and hatred rather than give them back in kind.
4. Let suffering soften your heart rather than harden your soul.
5. Forgive - those who hurt you, your own sins, the unfairness of your life, and God for not rescuing you.
6. Bless more and curse less!
7. Live in a more radical sobriety.
8. Pray, affectively and liturgically.
9. Be wide in your embrace.
10. Stand where you are supposed to be standing, and let God provide the rest."
This week we are diving into the first one:
"Live in gratitude and thank your Creator by enjoying your life."
GOD IS FREE
But before we go there, I need to emphasize two concepts that will help us enter this process with proper expectations.
The first is that God is sovereign and free to act as He wishes. He has promised to complete the good work which He began in each of us but how He does it is up to Him. What I am laying out here is not a formula for maturity success. In this series we will discuss certain signs or markers of maturity, and I will offer ideas on ways to move towards them, but, in the end, God is the mover. Growing to full maturity is a beautiful, mysterious dance. We play a role. Paul makes that clear in Colossians. Yet God is the leader, He is directing the music and leading us in the dance. The invitation is to follow His lead. My number one recommendation is to learn to love to dance!
TRELLISES DON'T TRANSFORM
Secondly, as my pastor noted in a conversation recently, trellises are necessary but do not transform. Try to grow grapes or tomatoes or a trumpet vine without a trellis. The trellis does not make the plant produce ripe fruit or flowers, but without the trellis the harvest is poor. In a similar way the fruit of our lives is not a result of curriculum or content or even practices, but without these things the harvest is not what it could be.
If these two paragraphs feel in tension, they are, but I invite us to dig deeper. God is free and can do what He wants. He can bring amazing fruit out of a trellis-less vine if He wishes, but His normal way of working is to partner with us and to use certain means to bring about His ends. So, choose sturdy trellises and be intentional and experiment with different practices and curricula and read books (and blogs, smile) and learn, but know that God brings the growth.
GRATITUDE & JOY*
With that out of the way, let's dive into gratitude and joy...
Gratitude is a no-brainer. Science has discovered what has been obvious to Bible readers since time began. Our brains are wired for being thankful. In fact, research has shown that simply expressing thankfulness (even if we don't feel grateful) changes our brain chemistry positively. Gratitude breeds joy and more gratitude.
The Bible makes this clear. We see it in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, "...give thanks in all circumstances;" and Colossians 2:6-7 "As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving." and Isaiah 12:4-5 "And on that day you will say, "Give thanks to the LORD, call on His name..." and 1 Chronicles 16:34 "Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever!" and Hebrews 12:28 "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful," and Psalm 95:1-5 "Oh come, let us sing to the LORD! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;" and Philippians 4:4-7 "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." and 1 Chronicles 29:13 "Now therefore, our God, we thank You and praise Your glorious name." and Ephesians 5:18-20 "… but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your hearts to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to our God and Father." and Psalm 107:1 "Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever!" and 2 Corinthians 9:15 "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" and that is just a few of the numerous examples in the Bible.
Thus, the first step to becoming a grateful person is by expressing gratitude. Some people were trained from early to express gratitude while others were not. Which were you? My parents drilled it into my brother and I. Saying "Thank you" when someone does something for me is a natural response at this point because of my training. However, I have noticed a subtle entitlement mentality that harms my soul and is antithetical to being grateful as a way of being. At the end of this post, I will list some ideas for growing in this way. For now, I want to highlight that the first step is doing an honest self-assessment. Asking a few people close to you about how they perceive you in this area can be helpful as well. Knowing where we are starting is clearly important for moving forward.
Discussing gratitude is relatively easy. I find joy and enjoying life much more complex. How about you? Do you experience joy? Are you a joyful person? Do you enjoy your life?
Or maybe process questions would be more helpful:
· When do you experience joy?
· Would those close to you say you are growing in joy?
· When do you enjoy your life?
· What keeps you from enjoying life?
In addition, this topic forces us to deal with many more variables. I can live alone on an island or in a crowd and express gratitude. I can always find something to be grateful for even if I have to mention something desperate like, "I'm thankful I am slightly less miserable than I was yesterday." But when it comes to joy and enjoying life, I need to consider many more factors. Perhaps I have chemical issues in my brain and need medication. Also, relationships play a significant role in my joy levels. If I'm ill or in terrible pain, I can be thankful but enjoying life is probably not happening. Therefore, as we step into this part of the picture, we must be careful about expectations. This is why we are talking about signs of maturity and not signs of salvation or basic faith.
I have a 10-month-old grandson who is definitely one of the eight cutest babies of all time (Note: I have seven kids). His smile lights up a room. Does he enjoy life? When everything is going his way, he does, but when one small thing goes against his desires, he lets the world know he is not happy. All signs of joy disappear. I mention this to highlight how much each of us has matured in this area already! Things often don't go our way, but we are usually able to maintain our joy, nonetheless. Of course, many times we lose our joy as well.
Now, Rolheiser is not alone in saying there is a connection between the gratitude and the joy. Expressing all the things I am grateful for on a regular basis can't help but increase my awareness of the good in my life and thus increase my capacity for enjoying life. This is not a direct one-to-one causation, but there is no doubt a correlation between the two concepts. Also, I do not think an argument needs to be made that these are signs of maturity. Pointing to my grandson makes the point. If we met a 75-year-old man who was ungrateful and bitter and threw tantrums when he didn't get his way, we would not consider him mature.
PROGRESS IN THE PROCESS
With that clear (hopefully) let's discuss how to grow. I mentioned above that the first step is to take account of our current location on the journey towards maturity. As I write that I feel the need to mention again that maturity is not the goal, and we need to be careful not to make it an idol. Read this as going through the process of experiencing God's love, enjoying Him, and from that moving towards greater capacity to love Him and neighbor. Bringing glory to God comes through things like being grateful and enjoying life. When we are these kinds of people, we honor God and are contagious. I assume we each have been around people like this and therefore know what I'm talking about.
Okay, back to the flow...with our assessment in hand, we can take one simple step for gratitude if we are not already doing it:
1. Practice gratitude- Keep a journal or make a list or share what you're thankful for with someone each day. Creating habits requires repetition. When something is a habit, it bears lasting fruit in our lives. If you need to be inspired, I recommend Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts.
For joy, we must deal with a few more variables, and please bear with me for I'm going to dive into this in the deep end:
Sin - Experiencing joy will be nigh impossible while we are knowingly hiding sin. Unconfessed sin is a deadly virus that will eat away our soul. I assume this is obvious but wanted to state it explicitly. If you are engaging in sinful patterns and/or refuse to confess sin, then you are quenching the Spirit and lack of joy is the least of your concerns. I encourage you to humble yourself and run to Jesus and the freedom He is offering you.
Personality - Some people are just more upbeat and positive than others. They seem to more naturally enjoy life. Others tend toward a more serious or melancholy temperament. Understanding this can take a good bit of work. Regardless of our temperament, enjoying life is possible, but how we express it may be quite different. We must be careful not to require certain expressions, and, at the same time, be aware of how easily we can deceive ourselves and stay locked in unhealthy patterns. Enter the process with God and regularly have honest conversations about what you are experiencing in this area. Let curiosity and compassion reign and reject any sense of condemnation.
Brain Chemistry - Some of us experience depression or deep discouragement or other mental illness due to chemical imbalances. This is no different than any other illness we experience and needs to be treated accordingly. Taking medication is a viable option to help with this. I am aware that not all Christians agree on the use of medication for mental health issues. Each of us must stand before God with a clear conscience. Science still has much to learn about the brain and medication isn't always the answer, but sometimes it is. Regardless, we humans are fearfully and wonderfully made and still understand so little about brain health, so let's be gracious and humble in this area.
Community - As I wrote about in the last series – “A is for Attachment” - our brains experience joy relationally. When I am looking into the eyes of someone I love who loves me, my brain calls that joy. It shoots dopamine into my system, and I feel really good. This means that being joyful and enjoying life requires relationship and community. Of course, God intended this which is why He created a people, families, and churches. But here's the rub…in our broken world, in relationships and community are where we experience the most pain and misery as well. This makes the pursuit of joy risky and many of us do our best to avoid risk because of the potential pain. We each learned early on what caused pain and figured out how to avoid it. This is another area in which we need to be honest with ourselves. This is also a place in which the process is a gift. We do not need to get there now. We are free to move slowly, but let's step up and step out together.
What healing do you need in order to pursue community?
How can you get it?
What steps can you take to do the interior work, to recognize God can care for you, to have the real conversations with Him for letting you suffer, and then to take risks again?
Here is one thing I know for sure: If we are not in community, whatever joy we may be experiencing is miniscule compared to what it could be. The corollary is true as well which is why taking this step is so difficult: The pain we will experience will be much greater in relationship. Thus, we have the dilemma or challenge of obedience meaning greater joy and greater pain as we live for others. God is bigger and a maturing person, experiencing the love of Christ gains the strength to step towards joy and all the implications of that step.
Living out of Past Trauma or Addiction - The last point I want to make in this list revolves around the lack of joy due to trauma we have experienced or addictions in which we are trapped. Perhaps you were abused or oppressed or abandoned or your parents ignored you or fill-in-the-blank. Now you find yourself experiencing almost no capacity for real joy. This is so difficult and can feel so lonely, I know. This applies not just to the addictions we frown upon but all the addictions we use to cope which include eating, entertainment, religious devotion, service and on and on. I encourage you to seek healing. Jesus is capable of healing you. Don't let self-pity or fear or pride or shame keep you from the freedom that is possible. Prayer, EMDR, Counseling, Recovery Groups are available. Perhaps you have tried everything but are still "stuck". Don't give up hope. In fact, hope is part of joy for it is risky. Never fear crying out to God with all the desperation you feel. Desperation is a sign of life.
BIBLICAL REALITY
In closing this topic, I want to go through a quick look at some pictures the Bible paints to help us better understand these concepts. God is playful and invites us to be playful and enjoy life and yet life is full of pain and suffering. We are called to live in this tension knowing we will not fully experience all God has for us until we are finally with Him face-to-face.
The Proverbs are a rich resource for this subject.
Proverbs 14:10 says,
"The heart knows its own bitterness,
and no outsider shares in its joy."
This reminds us that even though we need community to fully experience joy, we will always experience it uniquely. One consequence of the fall is an ongoing inescapable sense of loneliness. Acknowledging this reality gives us the grace to be thankful for what we do have. Then a few verses later Proverbs 14:13 says,
“Even in laughter a heart may be sad,
and joy may end in grief.”
This sounds discouraging but helps us set expectations. We will not maintain a steady state of anything for very long. The opposite of this proverb is true as well. We can experience a deep sense of joy or happiness even when we are sad about something.
The Psalmist writes in 96:12,
“Let the fields and their crops burst out with joy! Let the trees of the forest sing for joy.”
God's intention for the world is abundance and joy and celebration. We experience shards of that in this age, but the fulfillment of all things is coming when this will be the norm. Acknowledging we are not there yet but being thankful for the good God gives us in the midst of our journey is part of the process.
Turning back to the Proverbs we see in 15:13,
“A glad heart makes a happy face; a broken heart crushes the spirit.”
We must do the interior work at a heart level to experience real joy. This is highlighted in the book of Lamentations as well as a thorough reading of the many psalms of disorientation through which we are encouraged to cry out to God with whatever pained emotions we are experiencing. In fact, I think the Bible makes clear that we cannot get to the place of gratitude and joy without a healthy ability to lament and cry out to God in our sadness and suffering and disappointment. However, as we grow in this, we develop more and more into the kind of people who exhibit what Peter and James call us to:
1 Peter 4:13:
“Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world.”
James 1:2-4
"Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing."
JESUS' EXAMPLE
In closing, let me point to Jesus' example. He partied with all kinds of people. We must be careful in how culture/society defines what is acceptable and what brings joy. Everything the marketing industry throws at us tells us that the road to happiness is paved with money, image, stuff, and comfort. These do not ensure joy. Matthew writes in 11:19,
"The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’…”
Growing in maturity is becoming like Jesus in every way which includes partying with all kinds of people. Jesus knew how to enjoy life.
In this post we have focused on gratitude and joy, two traits which Jesus explicitly exhibited in the midst of all kinds of sin and brokenness. May we grow to be like him.
*NOTE: I understand that joy is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) as are many other traits. I think this means that our joy grows as we abide in Christ and are more and more filled with the Spirit. These are also signs of maturing. I also believe that we can grow in specific areas like joy by diving into parts of our lives the Spirit shows us need work. In the end, there is a bit of semantics involved, but taking time to focus on something like joy or love or peace or kindness does not contradict the fact that these are aspects of the Spirit’s work in our lives. I think each of us when looking at the different traits listed would admit that they show up unequally in our lives. At the same time, I think an overemphasis on individual traits is not helpful in the long run. In this post my goal was more about signs we can observe as we mature than ways to create the signs although I recognize that I did include ways to grow in these areas. I’m good with that tension.
"The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy."
-- Jim Rohn