Lifetime Guarantee (29 page)

Needless to say, maturity doesn’t occur in one giant leap, but through a process: “But we all…are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Notice it’s “from glory to glory,” not “from garbage to glory.” You are already holy in Christ. Figure 12.3 depicts the evolution into the image of Christ for the believer. The escalating triangles represent the various growth stages Christians experience as they participate in the conforming process.

Once a person is born from above, his nature is already Christlike, but it’s infantile in maturity. He is like an oak sapling that can mature into a fully grown oak tree. He is not half oak and half briar bush. Just as an oak sapling does not get
oakier
as it matures, neither does a new creature in Christ get holier, more forgiven, more accepted, etc. By faith and obedience, as he begins to act consistently with his new nature, he will look more and more like Jesus.

Of course, a Christian can just as surely “walk after the flesh” and develop character that is completely contrary to his true nature. This will then be burned at the Judgment Seat of Christ, but the man himself will be saved, as we saw earlier. As this person ages, his character will evolve contrary to his godly nature. Such a person will be limited in his training for leadership in the future, heavenly realm, because his earthwalk was spent trusting in the arm of his flesh. He’ll be fitted into the “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1) as a sapling instead of as a mature tree.

The same will be true for the person with “good, socially accepted” flesh who misses the course on strength through weakness. Earth, not heaven, is the place for learning to walk in dependence. Such a person will automatically revert to dependency in heaven, but there will be no reward for it.

Those who develop Christian character here will occupy positions of leadership in all that our creative Father has planned in the future, eternal social order. Those who have been “faithful with a few things… will [be] put…in charge of many things” (Matthew 25:23). (For some exciting insight into our role in heaven, see Paul Billheimer’s
Don’t Waste Your Sorrows,
published by Christian Literature Crusade.)

I have no idea how many spiritual plateaus there are through which the Holy Spirit can lead the believer. But when the pilgrim chooses with his will to commit to the new step, God closes the door behind him. Slam. You cannot back out. You can act like you’re backing out, but if you really had your teeth gritted when you threw your will switch, He slammed that door behind you. It’s as serious as a marriage vow to Him. Later on, if you buy into sin’s temptations to back out, you leave God no alternative but to switch to Plan B. He’ll have to let a little “all things” come into your life.

One door we must pass through if we are to go on with God is total commitment (Figure 12.4). I used to think that total commitment was performance-based. For example, I thought preachers were more totally committed than truck drivers. Some years later, however, I began to counsel a pastor or two who weren’t totally committed and some truck drivers who were.

Total commitment is coming to the point where you are willing to place nothing between you and the Lord. “Lord Jesus, I give You my wife,” I prayed. “You may do anything that seems good to You with Anabel. She is Your property, not mine, and owners have the right to do whatever they wish with their property.” I must do this with everything.

“So here they are, Lord, my wife, my kids, their health, myself, my health, my house, my bucks, my career, my physical appearance, my will, everything! I will place nothing between me and You. I commit it all to You.” And He slams the door behind you. You are now totally committed. It’s a one-time decision that you make with your will, with your teeth gritted. It then becomes His job to choreograph the circumstances of your life to make your decision experientially real to you (see Philippians 1:6; 2:13).

Remember the pastor I wrote about who lost the big church, his reputation, and his future high denominational office because he was caught in adultery? He wasn’t totally committed. You see, he still had Jesus, but Christ was not number one. Those other things were more important to him.

I believe the Lord has shown me what the last major door is. It’s claiming the cross (see Figure 12.5). When the Lord said, “Take up [your] cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23), He didn’t mean you must become a preacher. The cross is not an instrument of service; it’s an instrument of death. When you step across
this
threshold on your pilgrimage, you have got to hold a funeral. Your own! And I don’t exactly see Christians lining up to die. Many seem to want just one more trip to the pizza parlor.

Let me reiterate, you do not attempt to crucify yourself. Nor do you attempt to “die to self.” That is a misnomer. There is no such teaching in the Word. You do not die to anything; you simply agree with God’s Word that you already
have.
But this is not just giving intellectual assent to some concept. This is as serious as getting married. You cannot enter into it lightly. You’ve got to grit your teeth and say, “I mean it, Lord.” For many, a house has to fall on them before they’ll give in. For others, it’s a quiet commitment. When you do, He will slam the door behind you. You will have entered into
claiming
your true identity in Christ.

Accompanying every new commitment by the believer is a time of testing. This time is not so God can determine how I am going to respond to my new commitment. He already knows. Rather, the testing time is for
me
to know if I am going to stay hitched. The only way I can really know that is when it gets hot in the kitchen.

Testing is purposeful. So when it happens, just praise Him and get with the program. If you kick at it, you flunk the course and He reenrolls you in the fall term. It’s easy to praise the Lord when everything’s cool, but you can “offer up a sacrifice of praise” (Hebrews 13:15) only when it’s not. A sacrifice costs something. It hurts to give it. Praising the Lord when you feel bad is not being a phony either; it’s being obedient. Your heart can be in it even when your emotions are not.

I have depicted these testing times from the cross toward your becoming conformed to the image of Christ as mini-crosses (see Figure 12.6). These are daily choices when you will be faced with choosing either Channel #1 or Channel #2. You can either buy into the deception and blow it, or you can say, “I know where that’s coming from! I’m dead to you! Buzz off!” Then you appropriate truth.

Anabel and I used to live in a house that had sliding closet doors. She liked those doors kept shut; I liked mine open. Anabel frequently made a poignant plea for me to shut my doors when I finished dressing. Sometimes I would, sometimes I wouldn’t. I hadn’t the faintest notion that there was any spiritual dimension to our door preferences.

I will never forget one particular Saturday morning in that house. I was getting a jacket out of my closet when something “said” to me, “The door.” I thought “Aw!” and walked out of the room and down the hall. Something again “said” to me, “The door.” Uh, oh. I figured that must be the Holy Spirit. Let’s face it, it wasn’t the power of sin.

So I stopped. Notice: I stopped. Nothing stopped me. I’m not a robot. I chose to stop and believe that the Lord was speaking to me, that He wanted to use me to close the doors for Anabel. It had never occurred to Delbert Dumb here that all those years Anabel had been saying, “Honey, please love me the way Christ loves His wife by closing the closet doors for me so the room will look pretty.” It actually says I’m supposed to do that right there in Ephesians 5:25: “Husbands, close the closet doors for your wives, just as Jesus also loved His wife.” But I never knew that! I didn’t know that was a way to love Anabel. I’m convinced I am mentally retarded when it comes to knowing how to love Anabel. But praise His wonderful name, He is teaching me how to love her, how to make restitution for all those years of hell that I dished out to her.

As I stopped in the hallway, however, sin said to me, “That’s
my
closet. If I want to leave the doors open, that’s my business. No woman is going to control me.” But there was that gentle knowing that Jesus desires to love Anabel through me. I was at a mini-cross. I was being given the opportunity to
act
“dead to sin and alive to God,” love Anabel, and pile up points for the Judgment Seat of Christ. Conversely, I could
act
dead to God and alive to sin, piling up more wood, hay, and stubble for the big wiener roast in the sky.

So I said, “Okay, Jesus, I’m going to let You close the doors for Anabel.” And I set one foot in front of the other back into the bedroom and slid the doors shut,
believing
it was Him doing it through me.

Now, I confess that I had closed closet doors on many occasions prior to this incident, but then my attitude was more like, “Dumb doors! Stupid wife! Okay, I’ll close the stupid doors if that’s what it takes to keep the peace!” I was living under law, the law of I should, I have to, I must, I ought to, it’s my duty.

There have also been those occasions when I have closed the closet doors this way: “Maybe if I do something nice for her today, she’ll do something nice for me tonight.” That’s the flesh for certain. It’s nothing but plying her with closet-door-closing. Lost guys do the same thing with their wives.

This time, however, I claimed the truth of who I am—that I am delighted to offer myself to Christ to allow Him to express love to Anabel through me. There was no animosity, no frustration, no hidden agenda for bedtime. I was resting and at peace within.

Some guy says, “I sure wish he’d get past these Mickey Mouse illustrations and get on to explaining how to experience the victorious Christian life.” Hey, that
is
the victorious Christian life. You would not believe how many hundreds of hours of my marriage I have wasted over such things as closet doors, but now I’m free. Free to obey the law of love. Free to close doors. You can’t believe how good it feels! And remember Jesus’ statement that, those who are faithful in little things will be entrusted with much (see Appendix J).