5 Stages Of The SoulSample

Obedient Love—Learning the Ways of Godliness 

OBSTACLES TO GROWTH

In this second stage, where we are learning the ways of obedience, our hearts and lives are being shaped into the heart of God. However, a number of temptations can occur at this stage that can detour a person from appropriating and allowing God to form in us the qualities spelled out in the Beatitudes. Consequently, we will not continue to grow.

First, we may be tempted to avoid reflectively examining our lives and hearts before God on a daily basis. We can become so busy with “doing” the Christian life that we fail to practice the daily examination of our souls to see if we are actually “becoming” more like Christ. We can deceive ourselves with the notion that if we speak about the teachings of Jesus, study them, memorize them, and talk about them, then somehow we are actually living them. We can default to the misconception that our external behavior and beliefs are the sole measure of what is in our hearts. Although the “fruit” of our faith can be such a measure, we also need to be aware of our motivations.

Laura was a student in one of my classes. She was industrious and consistently received high grades. I was lecturing on Jesus’ command that we must die to ourselves and remarked that many of us need to die to our religious pride, often displayed in “doing things for God.” Laura found me after class and was clearly agitated. “Are you saying,” she asked, “that the way I serve God is about pride?” While I wasn’t directing my lecture toward her specifically, my comment prompted a troubling revelation for her. She had been working so hard for God she had never considered her motivations. She saw herself as faithful and serving God sacrificially but had not begun to exercise interior reflection before God.

As we have seen, Jesus is clear that the formation of the soul at this stage is to allow God to form and shape our inner hearts. The test for every believer is a constant recognition of our sin, pride, and pain. We must see a continual daily need for redemption and, at the same time, recognize the breadth and depth of the love of God.

The spiritual practice of confession then becomes a daily part of our lives. God is always bringing forth, on increasing levels, the fruit of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is realized as He brings His light to bear on the dark places and attitudes within our hearts. Caution is in order if we find it has been days since we have recognized a need to confess anything.

The daily practice of examining one’s soul can be helpful in this regard. Taking time at the end of the day to review our attitudes, actions, and activities in the presence of Christ can help us to slow down and see where we have acted out of wrong motivations or our own self-serving pride.

A second obstacle is black and white thinking. Small children see the world as the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Some of us continue to carry that childlike thinking into our belief systems. Out of fear and a need to protect what we perceive as “right,” we use our beliefs as a weapon to determine who is “in” the kingdom and who is “out,” who is “bad” and who is “good.” We then judge people according to our standards and, on behalf of God, assess the spiritual lives of others. This is the sin of the Pharisees that Jesus condemned. (See Luke 11:37–54.) This is in contrast to the believers in the church of Berea who had a positive and faith-filled attitude to God’s world that was curious and open. (See Acts 17:11.) To follow Jesus is to take seriously His admonition that  we must take the “log” out of our own eye before we address the “speck” in someone else’s eye (Matthew 7:5). If we don’t see a need to confess anything, we must seriously question if we are following God or if we have put ourselves on the throne. 

If we fully attend to our own sin first, we will have little time or interest in judging the lives of others.