Born Free: 16 Principles to Help You Be FreeSample

Principle 7: There Are No “Super-Christians”

The seventh power principle that will help you be free is this: There are no “super-Christians.” If you have found one, you are diminishing yourself. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

In the church where I served in Boston, we sometimes had a time of testimony. There was once a man who stood up and gave God praise for bringing him into a position of conquering sin. God had removed so much sin from his life, he said, that his eyes welled up with tears whenever he talked about it. Now, let me tell you the truth. He was one of the most critical and mean-spirited Christians I have ever known. He had destroyed his son and was very close to doing the same with his daughter. He was narrow, negative, and nauseating. I almost stood up and said, “You hypocrite! Why don’t you tell them the truth? I’m not even sure you are saved.”

There was a man in that same congregation who had been a Christian for only two years. He came into my study the day after that testimony and said, “I’m not coming to church anymore. I just can’t be the kind of Christian I ought to be.”

I asked him how he had come to that conclusion. He replied, “Last night I listened to Sam talk, and decided I’ll never be as good as him.”

I told him, “I hope to God that you never are!”

God has allowed me to know and be friends with a lot of very public and well-known evangelical leaders. I spend my whole life looking for heroes, and I have often thought I had found them—until I got to know them. To my horror, I found out that they were just like me—afraid, sinful, and wounded. I didn’t like that at first, but it has become a wonderful gift. Because we have now become brothers. One of the reasons I don’t like the words discipleship or discipling is that those words imply something that ought not to exist in the church. I will be your older friend. I will teach your doctrine, but I will not be your discipler. Only God can be that.

Are you afraid? Everybody is. Do you worry about your sin? Everybody does. Are you worried about getting caught? Everybody is. Are you lonely? Everybody is. Have you failed? Everybody does. Or course, if you proclaimed that truth in most churches, people might make you feel like a weirdo. But you are not. You’re just a little boy telling the emperor that he doesn’t have on any clothes. Pretty soon everybody will know it and the church will be healthier for it.