Stalled Out pt 2                                9.2.07  morgan young                                                























































































































































































Now after we get to this point---maybe it's a year or couple years or so into our church experience---we usually start to feel the stall.

Why? Because up to this point, it has all been new & when experiences at a church are new they are energizing---we're learning new stuff every week & that feels exciting!

But now that it's not new any more----we start drawing wrong conclusions. We conclude:

"Services just aren't as good as they used to be."

"Mark needs to teach on something I haven't heard beforehe needs to take me deeper."

"This church is great for new believers but I need a church that can take me to the next level."

"This small group isn't teaching me enough about the Bible."

"Maybe it's time for me to find a new church."

And we draw those conclusions at the stall because we have false expectations of what church and the spiritual life should look likeand I would add that the church has in some ways has helped create these false expectations.

In short, our false expectation is:

1) "It's the church's job to continually feed me spiritually."

In the New Testament Paul talks about the process of going from a brand new believer, to becoming mature in Christ. 

And several times as Paul is talking to churches---he uses the analogy that we start out as spiritual "babies" who drink "milk" and as we grow in Christ, as we mature---we wean off of milk and become "meat eaters."(carnivores ;-) 
Here's just one:

"You are like babies who drink only milk and cannot eat solid food. And a person who is living on milk isn't very far along in the Christian life and doesn't know much about doing what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who have trained themselves to recognize the difference between right and wrong and then to do what is right." Hebrews 5:13-14 NLT

In the process of raising kids---do we as parents continually feed the child as he starts to get bigger?
If you came over to my house tonight would you see me scooping a fork into my freshman daughter Meghan's mac & cheese and saying, "Ok, honey--open up for the airplane!"? (no)

The process of raising kids starts out w/them being very dependant on us. And it slowly moves from dependence to independence. They go from kids we have to feed, to kids who won't starve if we come home late because they know how to feed themselves.

And in Hebrews 5 (& several other places), Paul tells us that the church has to go from spoon-feeding new believers to raising us up to where we are less dependant on the church for spiritual nutrition and we in fact become independent enough to feed ourselves.

2.) Paul says that the path of spiritual maturity involves going from a spoon-feeder to a self-feeder.

Let me clearly say what it means to self-feed: 

3.) To feed yourself is to take responsibility for growing ever closer to Christ.

Last week Mark taught out of Mark 4---about casting seed and how sometimes it doesn't take root. Colossians 2 tells us
what we should be rooted in:

"And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow Him. Let your roots grow down into Him, and let your lives be built on Him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness."            Colossians 2:6-7

To mature is become rooted in a real two-way relationship with Christ.

So many times what is happening at the stall is we're feeling like our spiritual activity isn't enough to sustain usthings in our lives are creating pressures that our faith can't seem to hold up.

Services don't seem like enough. Serving doesn't feel like enough. Maybe even our small group doesn't feel like enough.

And it feels like that because in many cases
4.) we're not engaging in those solo spiritual experiences where it's just me and God.

Not surprisingly the "REVEAL" study Mark mentioned last week showed that a large majority of people in the "stalled" group, were not engaged in one-on-One spiritual experiences with God.

And again--there were all kinds of churches in the study---big, small, ethnically diverse, seeker churches, believer-oriented churches etc.

So one way to get out of the stall is to have a Biblical expectation about spiritual growth:

5.)  "It is the church's job to feed me spiritually, but I must learn to feed myself---I must take responsibility to engage in 1 on 1 spiritual experiences that help me grow relationally ever closer to Christ ."

Here's another interesting learning from the REVEAL study:

6.) "Involvement in church activities does NOT predict or drive long-term spiritual growth."

I think this is amazingly powerful---and again, this isn't true of seeker churches, this is true of all the churches in the study.

This is a great example of how scientific data has confirmed biblical truth:

Colossians 2:6-7 doesn't say that if we are active in our church, we will mature in Christ. It says that if we sink our roots into
Christ, our faith will be strong and be able to weather everything life throws at us.


If you look at this chart---notice that the first 3 areas are mostly external-based or activity-focused.
(text version of chart on next line:)

1) exploring Christ        2) growing in Christ         3) active in the church     <STALL>      4) close to Christ         5) Christ centered


They are heavy on things like attending church, attending classes, taking in foundational information. In these first two areas especially, we're receiving a lot of information from Sun services, from a friend, from a small group, from a class. In other words, we're being fed milk in the Hebrews 5 since.

And what the church has not done a great job of doing, is before the stall---setting the expectation and setting us up for the transition from being spoon-fed to being self-fed.

To mature in Christ, we have to transition from focusing on what we DO, in and around the church to learning how to BE with God---

transitioning from the externals of DOING, into the internals of letting God examine us from the inside out---inviting Him into the intimate places of our mind and our soul.

Don't tune me out because I just got mysterious & vague!

To mature in Christ is to be transformed from our insides out, through a real relationship with Jesus Christ. The New Testament makes this very clear.

In Matthew 23:25 Jesus criticized the Pharisees & Sadducees for looking spiritually together on the outside, but being a spiritual mess on the inside.

I love how the Message paraphrases Matthew 5:8

"You're blessed when you get your inside world---your mind and heart---put right. Then you can see God in the outside world."       Matthew 5-8 The Message

This is a HUGE New Testament theme that we are transformed from the inside out through our relationship with Christ.

Engaging God relationally and asking Him to examine our mind and soul---our internal world---is where we have to transition to become self-feeders----it's where the "meat" of maturity is found.

Developing the intimate relationship with God is where we move from depending on the church to grow us up, to figuring out the mysterious dance of how we individually relate with our invisible God.

And it IS MYSTERIOUS. It's mysterious because God is not a logical equation---He is a relational BEING...a  relational Being that interacts with me in ways that I understand. And interacts with you in ways that YOU understand. He's not a "ONE SIZE FITS ALL" God---his relationship with you is tailor-made!

Very often when I start writing, God has a tendency to speak to me. Some of my most profound spiritual realizations about myself and encounters with God have been when I've had a pen in my hand or a computer in front of me.
Is that how God talks to everyone? No.

God talks to me that way because He wired me to receive Him that way.

No church can tell you how God uniquely speaks to you.
No church can tell you in great detail how to navigate and understand your relationship with Christ.

And it's at times like this when my heart breaks a little---
Because too many times, we in the church have made God seem so logical
We've made the life of a Christ follower seem like "these 3 steps" will do it for you...

The dance of you relating with the invisible Christ is not something Mark Malin or any pastor, Christian author, TV evangelist, or small group leader, can be responsible for.

Relating with Jesus day to day, moment to moment is what it is to eat meat. It's what it is to sink our roots into Christ. And it's something only YOU can do! And it is a mystery!

I was thinking about all this stuff and I wrote this incredibly cheesy allegory:

There's a man in my neighborhood named Fred who lives across the street from me. Fred is supposed to have the ability to unlock the mysteries of the human heartI've heard he can somehow offer peace to people who haven't known real rest since they were kidsI've heard he offers things that can be found nowhere else on earthgood thingsnot the bad kind of things.

On the other side of town is the Church of Fred. Everything they do seems to be in the name of Fred.
They know about Fred,
teach about Fred,
give money to Fred;
people say they even work for Fred, which I don't understand.

Get this---when I was at dinner the other night--- my server was wearing a WWFD bracelet---"What Would Fred Do?"

I've noticed The Church of Fred is pretty bignot only lots of people at the one across town, but apparently lots of franchises just in this county alone.

It's puzzling thoughas I sit on my porch and look across the street, I've noticed Fred doesn't get a lot of visitors at his house---granted, his foreign accent takes a while to understand, and he talks in the quietest whisper---but he seems like the nicest guy---and he's on his porch seems like every day. I just thought that with all the Fred fanfarehe'd get more visitors than he does

Don't get me wrongI'm not even into the whole Fred thing---I just kind of logically figured the Fred fanatics would want to know him for themselves instead of having someone else always telling them about Fred---but heck, that's just memaybe I'm weird.

My neighbor on the south side of my house---he goes to the Church of Fred. But he doesn't seem to be as hot about it as he used to be---he used to hit me up pretty big to come to their Fredmas Program...and every year they'd teach a series on how Fred could make my family work better & he'd invite me to those

But last time my neighbor and I were talking, he said something like the Church of Fred was kinda losing it's shine

Honestly---it didn't make any sense to meI couldn't figure out why he was talking to me about it----I meanwhy didn't he just walk across the street and talk to Fred about it?                    The End.

That cheesy allegory is about what happens if we don't get out of the stall.

How do we get out of the stall?

7.) We take responsibility to develop our relationship with Christ---the church can't do it. It's in Him we must sink our roots, not sink our roots into spiritual activity.

8.) We embrace the process of going from spoon-fed to self-fed; we engage in solo spiritual activities that bring us into the relational presence of Christ.

And to NOT do these things is to stay stalled---and for the Kingdom of God to lose it's shine...

I want to introduce one more way to get out of the stall (disclaim that this won't be in depth...)

Many times there are things in our past that negatively affect how we relate to God and interact with others---things that we may or may not even know are keeping us stalled.

Instead of trying to explain what I mean, I'd like to read an excerpt out of what may be a book I'm trying to write...

(setup the theme that my dad was super passive and his passivity fueled my anger---created a lot of resentment)

It's not that I don't think my dad loved me; I always assumed by what he did that he loved me. I assume he was proud of me. Did he ever say it? Did he not, or have I misplaced it in my memory somehow? I'm not sure he told me he loved meagain, I don't doubt it, but I can't say that I remember hearing it either. Heck, does it even matter?

Perhaps my doubt comes from an event that cast a shadow over everything that came after it:

I was probably seventeen or eighteen, close to graduating or just after, I'm not sure. Marlon and I were into it again. There was more volatility between he and I than any other combination of the five children. I had an undercurrent of anger towards him most of the time. When he was in middle school he started rebelling and there were lots of hellish scenes between he and my parentsusually he and mom because my dad would avoid it if at all possible.

I remember one knock-down-drag-out time when they were trying to cut his hair and Marlon wasn't going to have it. It was a bad scene in the kitchen: bodies moved or held against their will, yelling, and Marlon angrily crying, "You're not cutting my hair!!" I can still remember thinking, "What the heck, it's just your HAIRit grows right backget over it and spare everyone this crap!"

Marlon was a catalyst for tension and bad scenes. He also chose to stand for hippie causes like not cutting the lawn, bushes and "living things." My dad was absent to these things and always seemed to let Marlon be Marlon. I resented that and in my immaturity pushed Marlon's buttons in some attempt to pay him back for all the crap I thought he'd caused in the family.

I also resented him because he wasn't the big brother I wanted him to be. I wanted the one that fit my preconception, the one that I was naturally more attracted to and respected more.

When Marlon and I "got into it" we could and would easily get physical; not punches, but hard shoving, knocking downplenty of aggression short of black eyes and bloody noses. So Marlon and I are into one of our deals. We're in the kitchen and we're full on into it over who knows what this time.

And for the first time ever, my dad shoots into the room and yells at me in a way that seemed more forceful than I'd ever seen before. He immediately locked eyes with me and shouted, "GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!"

No checking to see what was going on. No checking to see who did what. I thought later, "You son of a Buck! NOW you choose to show your strength. Of all the times I've wanted and needed you to be strong only to be disappointed; you choose now to be forceful and assertive---to tell me to "get out". You son of a Buck!"

"GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!" His words hit me in the gut like someone knocking the wind out of me. Words never felt more physical. It was an iron first hitting me in the most tender and vulnerable part of my heart. I never ever saw it coming. I got sucker punched in the soul by the man who never stood up to anyone. He finally stood up. To tell me to get out.

His words left me too shocked, too wounded, too vulnerable to tell him where to stick it. I ran for the front door, emotionally bleeding all over the place.

I ran a block or so, sobbing. I had to stop. I couldn't breathe. I was sobbing and gasping too hard, too heavily to keep running.

It wasn't that "head cry" you get watching a sappy movie movie. It was one of those hideous uncontrollable crying from your gut things. If someone would have told me to stop crying or they'd shoot me they would have had to pull the trigger because I couldn't stop if I wanted to.

Up to that point in my life, my anger had been a cork for all the hurt, pain and disappointment I'd felt. Anger allowed me to be strong, to avoid being weak like my dad.

And ironically my dad's words ambushed me and blew the cork way the heck off, leaving me weak with my own gut sobs. It was a guttural wailing cry, like Michael Corleone in the last Godfather movie when he witnessed his daughter's accidental death. (Sorry, what's a guy story without a Godfather reference?)

I thought I had stopped long enough to get my act together, but I just couldn't do it. There's was too much emotional shrapnel in me to gather it all up. I kept running and I kept crying. I ran and cried to the other side of town to my friend Ray's house. Thank God he was home.

He was my best friend. The only other guy at that time who really knew me, really got me, really loved me. I could tell I'd caught him off guard. He'd never seen me like that. I'd never seen me like that---before or even since. Through deaths, disappointments and a divorce I have never experienced the heaving uncontrollable cry I did that day.

So many times I'd wanted my dad to rise to the occasion, to put my mom in her place, to give Marlon some boundaries---to just be strong for the sake that I could respect him.

And with unfathomable irony, he did rise to the occasion with angry eyes and unleashed what little masculinity he had left at me.

I always knew he liked Marlon the best. It made sense. He was his first son. They looked more alike than any of the brothers. They had more in common interests and personality traits

But the wound of that incident made me question if my dad really liked who he had allowed me to become

All the things that he and I didn't have in common received more space between that day. It had already been hard to love him before that, but afterward it stopped bothering me that I didn't feel love for him. I just didn't care. That's what I told myself anyhow.

And so now I wonder how that incident has eclipsed my ability to see a time when my dad thought of me as the beloved son. Maybe it matters. Maybe it doesn't. (end)

The truth about all of us in this room is we all have dark stories from our past.

And it is true when God saved us he did make us a "new creation." It is also true that when God made us a new creation, He didn't wipe our memory.

We are new creations, but we all have things in our past that affect our ability to love God and to love people.

It's hard for people who've been severely scarred by a father to trust God knowing God is the Loving Father---they can't put the words "loving" and "Father" together, and so you're stalled.

There are people who've had tragedy crash into their life and it's left you unable to feel or relate in some ways---and since maturing in Christ is all about relating with Christ, you're stalled.

There are people who have had life-altering incidents affect you and you're simply too new to Christ to know how in the world to deal with it and you're stalled.

There are people who are addicted... You know Jesus is your savior but you also know you can't get free from this thing that has a hold on you and you're stalled.


I can't tell you exactly how---because we're just now starting to figure it out---but we as a church are going to get better at figuring out how to help everyone break free from the stalled places in our lives!!

I can tell you this though: it will always be a bit of a mystery as to how God wants to free each of us from our stalled place. I don't always know How...

But I do know that God is more than able and He longs to be the Hero for us.

He is a warrior God and He is more powerful than any addiction.

Our God can conquer any childhood horror.

Our God can conquer the worst decision in our past.

Our God can conquer any lie the evil one is using to hold us back.

Our God will complete the good work in us that HE started (Phil 1:6)

And the most important thing about our stalled place is that God wants to use it!

He wants to use the stalled times to pull us closer to Him and makes us more loving to the world---if we will only engage Him

(setup song "This is Our God" by Chris Tomlin)




This is the story of Kokomo Ken.






















One day he comes to Oakbrook...
He finds after a while he likes the services---he's never to been to a church like this in Kokomo before...
He makes friends...
He starts to grow...goes to classes...starts learning the basics of the faith...
He comes into a relationship with Christ and gets baptized!
He gets involved serving at the Lakeside Cafe...