(Our staff team meets for devotions and prayer each morning from Monday-Thursday, and this week I'm leading those devotions. I'm reflecting on some of the themes of Advent, and I thought I would share those reflections here. This is the second post in the series.)
We saw yesterday that this season of Advent calls us to be forward-thinking, prepared for the day when Christ comes again. But what does that mean for how we live now? It calls us to pursue righteousness as we recognise that when Christ does return, he will come in judgement, "like a refiner's fire," Malachi says.
John the Baptist was the messenger Malachi spoke of, preparing the way for Jesus by calling people to repent and to seek forgiveness for their sins. It was a warning that the judgement of God was coming, but also a call for the people to prepare their hearts. The unrepentant heart would not be ready to receive Jesus.
This is no less true for us today. When Christ comes again, he expects us to be ready to receive him, to be holy and blameless, to be "filled with the fruit of righteousness" (Phil. 1:11). We need to undergo that process of refining even now, turning away from sin and seeking to live according to the rule of our King.
But God does not leave us to our own devices here. He has given us the Spirit to begin that refining work already now. When we submit ourselves to him, we begin a lifelong process of refinement, one that God carries out in us by his Spirit. He breaks down all of our idols, ambitions, and impurities so that, as Paul says, "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6).
This process won't be easy. It may come with trials and pain. The Spirit's work of purifiying us can hurt as he breaks our grip on the things of this world that we cling to and worship. But when we accept his refining work, it opens us up to the joy we find as we cling to and worship Jesus instead.
We live in expectation of Christ's return, and in expectation of one day dwelling in his presence in the Kingdom. As we wait, then, we pray that God will continue to refine us by his Spirit, that he will continue to prepare us for life in his Kingdom. We pray that he will continue that process of making us pure and blamless until the day of Christ.
When we submit ourselves to him, we can be confident that because of Christ's finished work, by which our sins our forgiven and by which we are raised to new life with him, and because of the Spirit's work to sanctify us, we will be able to "endure the day of his coming" (Mal. 3:2), and we will welcome him with joy.
Towards the end of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, writes honestly about the reality that Christianity requires a transformation that is very difficult business:
Christ says 'Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.'
...The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self – all your wishes and precautions – to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call 'ourselves', to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at teh same time be 'good'. We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way – centred on money or pleasure or ambition – and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs.
...That is why the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.
We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a day or stain which soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder – in fact, it is impossible (197-198).
Eugene Peterson will be here at RTS next week for the annual Kistemaker Lectures. I don't know too much about Peterson, aside from having read an article or two by him in the past, but I'm looking forward to hearing him. He has a reputation for possessing a great deal of wisdom in regards to pastoral concerns and various issues that arise in ministry.
Part of the reason I'm looking forward to the lectures is because of Peterson's commitment to Christian formation and discipleship (his title while at Regent was Professor of Spiritual Theology), and his recognition that the church is to be intimately involved in the lives of believers. The American church, both historically and presently, has demonstrated a great interest in saving souls and seeing people converted, but has not often invested in their lives as they subsequently learn what it looks like to have a life transformed by the gospel. Peterson addresses this in the introduction (and presumably the rest of the chapters) of his latest book, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing up in Christ:
We cannot overemphasize bringing men and women to new birth in Christ. Evangelism is essential, critically essential. But is it not obvious that growth in Christ is equally essential? Yet the American church has not treated it with an equivalent urgency. The American church runs on the euphoria and adrenaline of new birth—getting people into the church, into the kingdom, into causes, into crusades, into programs. We turn matters of growing up over to Sunday school teachers, specialists in Christian education, committees to revise curricula, retreat centers, and deeper life conferences, farming it out to parachurch groups for remedial assistance. I don't find pastors and professors, for the most part, very interested in matters of formation and holiness. The have higher profile things to tend to.
Americans in general have little tolerance for a centering way of life that is submissive to the conditions in which growth takes place, quiet, obscure, patient, not subject to human control and management. The American church is uneasy in these conditions. Typically, in the name of 'relevance,' it adapts itself to the prevailing American culture and is soon indistinguishable from that culture; talkative, noisy, busy, controlling, image-conscious.
Meanwhile, what has in previous centuries and other cultures been a major preoccupation of the Christian community, becoming men and women who live to 'the praise of God's glory,' has become a mere footnote within a church that has taken on the agenda of the secular society—its educational goals, its activity goals, its psychological goals. By delegating character formation, the life of prayer, the beauty of holiness—growing up in Christ—to specialized ministries or groups, we remove it from the center of the church's life. We disconnect growth from birth, and, in effect, place it on a bench at the margins of the church's life. Wendell Berry, one of our most perceptive prophets of contemporary culture and spirituality, wrote, 'We think it ordinary to spend twelve or sixteen or twenty years of a person's life and many thousands of public dollars on "education"—and not one dime or a thought on character.'
It takes a serious amount of effort to invest that much in someone's life, but Peterson obviously stands as an advocate for the essentiality of this fully-involved discipleship. And the Bible, of course, is replete with examples of this—one only need look to the three years Jesus spent in forming his disciples.
If we truly believe that all of life is to be lived under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we as the Church need to ensure that we become fully invested in each other's lives as we learn together what that looks like.
Towards the end of 
