Not Forsaken

by Louie Giglio

  But there’s a problem. You don’t have any teeth!

  Hey bud, you have any mushed-up peas, or something I can eat from a baby food jar?

  How ridiculous would that be? Yet, so many sons and daughters of God have never grown up in their faith. They are still in spiritual infancy. Can’t walk. Can’t chew solid food. Can’t withstand high winds of adversity. Don’t know the truth. Can’t help someone else grow stronger in their faith.

  god participates in our life. He’s saying, “here, let me show you how to do that.”

  It’s great when we fully own the initial blessing of knowing God as our perfect Father. Then we are offered the additional blessing and opportunity of growing up to look and act like our heavenly Father. But if we simply stay at the level of the first blessing, then our lives stagnate. We miss out on the blessings of becoming spiritual adults and tapping into all the potential that is woven into us at the moment of spiritual birth.

  We’ve already cracked open the first verse of Ephesians five, but let’s look at it more deeply and keep reading. “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:1–2).

  Be imitators of God. Just let those words sink in. That means we are to follow God’s example. We are to do what God does. We’re to think what God thinks. We’re to care how God cares. We’re to place our feet in His footsteps. We’re to imitate God our perfect heavenly Father the same way children imitate their earthly fathers. We have a responsibility and an opportunity to grow up and look and act like God.

  Think about it from God’s perspective. God is saying to us, “I want you to continually shape your life in such a way that you look like Me, sound like Me, talk like Me, act like Me, and think like Me, more and more.”

  Be Imitators of Abba Father

  Maybe you’re scoffing at this as impossible—imitating the Divine—but imitating God is not out of reach for us. God isn’t telling some sort of cruel joke. He’s not throwing down a monumental challenge that we can never rise to, while He sits back in heaven and laughs at us, knowing we’ll never be able to accomplish that calling. No. God has something far greater in mind. Look closely at the end of verse two. God says, “Be imitators of God therefore as dearly loved children, and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us ” (italics added).

  Notice the progression in Ephesians 5:1–2. We start our spiritual growth by knowing we are dearly loved children—and then we move on from there and live a life of love. And it’s not just any old love; it’s getting into the rhythm of loving the same way Christ loved us. Our modeling after God is not based on our behavior. He bases the foundation of our spiritual change on our identity as beloved children of God.

  In fact, one Bible translation delivers that first part of that verse this way: “Be imitators of God as beloved children” (Eph. 5:1 nasb ). I love the word beloved ! That’s a word used at weddings and funerals, but not many more places. Traditional words at a wedding include: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God and these witnesses to join these two people together. Or we hear at a funeral: He was a beloved husband and father, and we’ll miss him.

  In Ephesians 5:1–2 the word beloved is an identity word for us, a word to rest in and soak ourselves in every day of our lives. We are beloved children! And once we have our new identity in mind, we are “to live a life of love just as Christ loved us.” That means we are to imitate God by doing what Jesus did. We don’t start imitating God by deciding one day we’re going to become more spiritual. We don’t start imitating God by reading a book of character traits and trying to hammer our habits into new shapes. We start imitating God by knowing we’re born spiritually into a new relationship with God, where we know we’re the beloved children of God. From there, we look to Jesus. We live a life of love just like Jesus loves us. And, having received His love, we seek to reflect that love to others.

  This modeling our lives after God by loving others is at the core of spiritual maturity. Colossians 3:14 talks about how we need to “put on love” almost like it’s a jacket to be worn, and let me tell you, the garment of love works for every event we ever need to show up for. It’s for office use and daily use and weekend use and evening use. We can sleep in it. We can celebrate in it. We can work out in it. We can get married in it. The garment of love is all-purpose, and the garment of love is ready to wear.

  Then we let this love “guide our life” (The Living Bible), or “bind everything together in perfect harmony” (English Standard Version). So, say somebody is in your life, and that person is really hard to love. If you don’t know God, then it’s easy to push that person aside. You conclude that the person is a jerk, and while you might be outwardly polite to the person (or maybe not), you don’t feel a responsibility to love jerks. If you’re a Jesus-follower, however, then you’re called to love that person, and that calling can feel difficult to live out.

  The key to maturity isn’t that you summon the effort by yourself and try really hard to love the guy. The key is to remember your new identity as a beloved child of God, and then proceed from there. God loved you first, even when you didn’t deserve it, even when you might be a first-class jerk. And because you are loved by God, you can let God’s love flow through you and out from you to the jerk who’s in your life. You aren’t going to hoard the love of God. You’re going to release it.

  Becoming a Channel

  Early on we introduced the image of standing under a waterfall of God’s love. Let’s dwell on that a little further, and I invite you to linger in this image for a while: imagine the love of God pouring down on you from a huge elevated river source. You’re standing at the foot of a waterfall. It’s the biggest waterfall you’ve ever seen. You’re drinking in this love. You’re being washed and made new by this love. Then the love that goes out from you is like a pipeline that carries the water from you to all the people in your life, even to those who are acting like jerks. You’re vitally connected to the river source, and you simply let the water flow from the source to the other person.

  Maybe you say to the other person (jerk or otherwise), Hey, do you want to stand underneath this waterfall too? Because there’s compassion splashing up all around me. There’s patience in my life that’s falling on me so fast and so hard I can’t even try to stop it. All I’m going to do is hold my hands above my head and worship the God who’s sending this waterfall of love. When I do this river of God’s goodness can pass right through me to impact you. Here—this waterfall is for you, too. Come, and experience the blessing.

  Did you notice that Ephesians 5 begins with the word “therefore,” a word which always relates back to something stated earlier? In this case, “therefore” refers to the encouragement Paul gives in the previous chapter. There, we are taught “to put off [our] old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitudes of [our] minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22–24).

  That “old self,” the one we are to put off, is who we were before we started following Jesus. Our old self is bent toward destruction. It loves to be selfish and lustful and rageful and impatient. The old self is guided by our earthly desires that falsely promise to lead us toward goodness but actually lead us toward evil. So, it’s like Paul is saying, Hey, do you want to become mature? Then you must realize you have a new identity. You’re a beloved child of God now. Throw away your old identity, the one that hurt you, and start living out of your new identity, the new self. Your new self is created to imitate God in His righteousness and holiness, in His justice and compassion.

  Did you catch that? In Christ you are “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” Wow! It’s right there in black and white. Growing up like our perfect Father is the most natural thing we can do.

  Sadly, there is a strain of teaching in the Church�
��actually it’s more like a virus—that goes like this: we’re all sinners, and sinners are gonna sin. It’s who we are and what we do.

  While it’s true that we all still have the capacity to sin (no one needs to be convinced of that!), we also have the capacity to follow in the footsteps of our Father. We were born with a purely sinful nature. But, now, in Christ everything has changed. We are not identified any longer simply as sinners . We are God’s children, created to be like God in righteousness (right things) and holiness (God-honoring things). In Christ we are made righteous, holy and new.

  As such, your Father is leading you to change the way you think! To put off the old and put on the new. Living this new way is your opportunity and responsibility. That’s how you grow up so that you can stop eating mushed-up peas and start eating barbecued steak.

  The phrase in Ephesians 4, “be made new in the attitudes of your minds” is key, because our transformation toward spiritual maturity not only happens in our hearts but in our minds too. Being made new is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, yet we have the responsibility to partner with the Holy Spirit in this transforming work. Our responsibility is to deliberately feed new thoughts into our minds. We become good thinkers—and I don’t mean we need to be super brainy. I mean we must plow and weed our minds like the soil of a healthy field is plowed and weeded.

  Maybe we’re prone to lustful thoughts in our heads, or angry thoughts, or downcast thoughts. That’s our old self at work. To become spiritually mature, we have to soak our minds constantly in the truths of Scripture. First Peter 1:13 tells us to “prepare our minds for action” (esv ). Psalm 101:3 encourages us to “set no worthless thing before [our] eyes” (nasb ). Philippians 4:8 challenges us to constantly dwell on thoughts that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, excellent, and admirable. Isaiah 26:3 promises peace to those people whose minds are steadfastly fixed on God.

  So, the case is logical. We imitate God by first understanding that our identity is changed, and we are now children of a perfect Father. We model after God by receiving the love of Christ into our lives and then letting this love flow through us to other people. We grow in learning how to imitate God by putting off our old self that’s corrupted by things that harm us, and by putting on our new self.

  Embracing our identity as a “new self” is key. As we talked about earlier, when we follow Jesus, we are given a new DNA. Our essence is changed. We are born again. And since we are children born of God, we have God’s spiritual DNA now. That doesn’t mean we become Gods. It means we have God’s life inside of us. We imitate God by becoming the mouth of God, the eyes of God, the ears of God, the hands of God, the feet of God, the heart of God, the thoughts of God, the compassion of God, the justice of God, the love of God. That’s how we mature. That’s how we grow up.

  Remember the aunt at Thanksgiving who declared we were starting to look like Mom or Dad? A similar sort of thing happens in our spiritual lives. Old habits fade away and are replaced by good ones. We learn to set harmful things aside. We learn to embrace helpful things that are good for us. Pretty soon someone comes to our front door, someone we haven’t seen in a while. That person is around us for a while and can’t help but exclaim: Man, you’ve changed so much. You’re not as angry as you used to be. You seem less depressed. You’re not drinking like you used to.

  Eventually, we hope they will say, Wow, you’ve grown spiritually. You’re starting to look just like your heavenly Father!

  Participate in the Divine

  This process of maturing spiritually is often described by the word discipleship . That word indicates that as we become followers of Jesus, imitators of God, we become disciples of Jesus, people who stay connected to Him, who go where He goes, and do what He does. One of the central verses that points us toward this path of discipleship is 2 Peter 1:3: “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

  We have everything we need for a godly life. His divine power has given us everything. Everything! Perhaps we haven’t learned how to use everything to the fullest extent. But the working parts are already in place. Thanks to our new birth, Christ actually lives inside of us, as it says in Colossians 1:27: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” We have everything we need for godliness. We have Christ!

  We read further in 2 Peter 1:4, “Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

  Wow! Look at that phrase—we “may participate in the divine nature.” This is our new spiritual DNA at work. Thanks to our spiritual birth, we can share in God’s divine nature. We possess a new spiritual genetic makeup within us. That helps set us on the road to being imitators of God, because the life of God is flowing through us. Jesus is a “life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). The Holy Spirit changes our hearts (Rom. 2:29). We are made alive with Christ (Eph. 2:4–5), and because of Christ, “now we really live” (1 Thess. 3:8).

  Is this becoming clear to you? It may be easier to think of the process of discipleship in steps, even though discipleship is not so much a step-by-step process as it is a relationship lived out in real time. As we walk with God, God shows us how to truly live. Yet, for those of us who like things laid out, let me offer three markers on the road to spiritual maturity. Three steps in the pathway of discipleship. As we imitate God, as we grow up to be like our heavenly Father, these are the markers we’re looking for. These are the things we should expect to see in our lives. Conveniently, all three of these markers begin with the letter A.

  1. We Awaken

  We awaken to who we are, and to whose we are. The more spiritually mature we get, the more we constantly remind ourselves of the truth of our new identity. We are not merely followers of beliefs about God, we have a new essence thanks to our new relationship with God. He is our perfect heavenly Father, and we are His beloved children. That’s our identity!

  Our understanding of our new identity changes everything for us. By nature, we are not lost spiritual pilgrims. We are not simply churchgoers. We are not trying to be “do-gooders.” We are not merely shined-up sinners. Who we are now at the core is this: we are born of God. He is our perfect Father. We have received Christ, and we believe in His name. We lean in to the truth that Jesus Christ is the sacrifice for our sins. He is the Savior of the world, the life-giver, the life-healer, the life-changer, the deliverer, and the redeemer. With an understanding of this new identity, we are given the opportunity and responsibility of growing up to look like our heavenly Father. We must constantly remind ourselves of our new nature, our new DNA. The further we get in our Christian walk, the more we look and act and sound like our heavenly Father.

  It’s like waking up after being asleep, where we wandered around in a nightmare of lostness. The more we awaken to who we are and to whose we are, the more we constantly watch our Father. We listen to Him. We observe Him at work. Why? Because in our wide-awake new life we want to model after Him. And as we’re imitating our Father, He’s constantly shaping and teaching us. It’s a two-way street. God participates in our life. He’s saying, “Here, let Me show you how to do that.” He’s showing us how to be imitators of Him.

  2. We Accept

  The second marker of spiritual maturity is that we accept the implications and possibilities of our new genetic makeup. It’s one thing to believe in Jesus, to acknowledge that God is our perfect heavenly Father and that we’re beloved children of God, and it’s another thing to truly live out those realities.

  If we’re truly living in light of our new identity, then our lives will change, and we will lean toward that change in conjunction with the power of the Holy Spirit working inside of us. By grace, we will deliberately walk that new direction with our minds and hearts and wills and whole beings. We put off the old man and put on the new man, and we won’t tolerate the
stink of sin in our lives anymore.

  Far too often, even though we’re believers, we develop a comfortable tolerance of our old ways. We walk in fear or shame or unconfessed sin, and we just stay that way. But as beloved children of God, it’s up to us to shout, Enough! to the old ways of living. By faith, we can claim the light of Christ to guide our pathways. We must not settle for second-rate living anymore. We want to truly live, in Jesus’ name. So, we “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And [we] run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus” (Heb. 12:1–2).

  In time, we learn to do nothing apart from Christ, (John 15:5). We abide in Him; we dwell in Him; we stay close to Him, because we learn that if we don’t, then our lives are a mess. We learn that God has given us unlimited resources, as Peter told us, everything we need for life and godliness. In Him, we are enriched in every way (1 Cor. 1:4–5), and thanks to God, we are blessed abundantly, “so that in all things at all times, having all that [we] need, [we] will abound in every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8). We simply accept the bounty.

  3. We Adopt

  The third marker of spiritual maturity is that we’re called to adopt the behavior and character of God. We model after Him. This means we pattern after Him, copy Him, emulate Him, shadow Him, echo Him, mirror Him. We model after Him and model after Him again. When an actor is getting ready to play the part of a historical figure, they study that figure—how they move, how they gesture, their expressions, their values. They look at any film footage that may exist of that figure. They read everything that they ever wrote. Through the close relationship we have with God through Christ, we constantly study how God works and moves, and then we study Him some more. The change doesn’t happen all at once. It happens bit by bit, through the trueness of our walk with Him.

  This progression actually takes pressure off us, knowing our lives are transformed bit by bit. We don’t learn from our earthly fathers all at once, and our heavenly Father doesn’t expect us to figure everything out immediately either. In our spiritual walks, we “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18). The key word is grow . And growth is gradual.