4 Levels of the Christian Life

Have you ever wondered why some Christians are so passionate about Jesus, and others just mention Him once in a while, or worse yet,  only when they’re cussing?  Yes, even some Christians use the Lord’s Name in vain.  If you are on the “not ready to get into it” side of things, you might look at full blown Christians with an idea like, “If I looked like that, talked like that and lived like that, I would lose all my friends, and maybe even my family.  Plus, I would look like a Bible thumper, and that would embarrass me.”

If you were on the “Jesus saved me and I owe him my life side”, you might look at the non-committed Christian and say, “now why can’t they overcome whatever is holding them back, or why can’t they see the principles that are so plainly laid out in the Bible?”

There are levels in between, as well.  In the book, From Woodstock To Eternity, Morgan’s parents were devoted Christians who faithfully went to church, but he seldom, if ever, heard a conversation about Jesus during the week.  He may have been a part of their thinking at times, but they did not make the presence of God a part of their normal family life.

“They talked to Jesus and about Jesus all the time, as if He was a real person, living in the air all around them.  This was a different attitude towards God than what he grew up with.  He had always gone to church on Sunday with his parents, but during the rest of the week, Jesus was not in the picture.  Mom and Dad were moral, ethical, hardworking people, but they didn’t talk to Jesus on a regular basis.  They didn’t act like there was someone else in the room, so Morgan had no reason to think there was such a thing as a living Jesus watching over them. 

Now, this new reality was being forced upon him.  Not harshly, or menacingly, but by default.  This is how his sister and brother-in-law saw it, this is how everybody in the church saw it, and so he was being inundated with the presence of Jesus.  He didn’t mind, everybody was extremely nice, and he was making friends that were in another world from the friends he had back in Virginia.  It’s just that everything was so, well, so straight.” 

There are 4 levels of Commitment to the Word – Which one are you?

Barely There

This is someone who has heard the Gospel, is intrigued by it because it has a grain of truth to him, but considers the effect it will have on his life and says, “not for me.”  It could also mean that the person actually believed it and got saved, but has no desire to to anything about it.  He continues on like nothing happened.

Enthusiasm then Apathy

This person receives the Gospel with great joy, thinking it will solve all their problems, but

applying pressure

when they start to live it, they don’t receive the “help” they perceived, but instead,pressure.  This opposing pressure comes from friends, family, situations, etc.  They get discouraged and shrink back from being a vibrant, upbeat, energized Christian.

Loving the Old Life

This is the one that ensnares most “middle of the road” Christians.  Even in this category there is a wide range.  It could be your average good ole boy who is ashamed to let his rough and tough buddies know he is a Christian.  He goes to the bar after work, he cusses on the job.

It could also be your average “good Christian” who regularly goes to Church, and even sees the Church family as their body of friends.  However, if they did anything as radical as home school their kids, got rid of their TV, or quite their jobs to raise their kids at home intead of Day Care, they would be ostracized.  Their church family friends would say, “We didn’t expect you to go that far!!!!  What are you, some kind of fanatic?”

Total Freedom

This is the realm, in our culture today, where you are walking in strength and confidence and joy, but everybody else thinks you are nuts.  Not to worry, Jesus has given us a promise.

“Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you

Treasure in Heaven

falsely for My sake. “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”  Matthew 5:11-13 

“But I don’t want to be reviled and persecuted”, you say.  No, that is not for this level.  That’s what the people back on level 2 say.  On this level of total freedom, you embrace the persecution and see it as a badge of honor.  When you get here – You are FREE!!!

Transformation has many phases.  No one wakes up one day, and says, “you know what?  I have been wrong my whole life about such and so, and so today I am going to change.”  No, friends, we all know that we will hang on tooth and nail to any idea, opinion, thought, or behavior that we have adopted as part of our lives, even if we know deep down inside that they could be wrong.  Or even a teensy weensy bit wrong.  Or even a lot wrong.

It all has to start with some inward realization that things are not going right.  In the book, From Woodstock To Eternity, Dustin Morgan has achieved a level of success in the high flying drug dealing, hippie lifestyle, and should be relishing all the benefits of “The Kingdoms of this world and their glory.”  But, a gnawing reality start to impress itself upon his conscience, even in his drunken, hallucinating stupor.

“… Morgan quickly slides back into a continuous stupor of all day drinking and partying.  He starts losing his grip in many ways, spraining his ankle, stumbling around and cutting his bare feet on broken glass, forgetting where he put his money.  He does one more run with Agent Orange only to misplace thousands of dollars; stashing it where he thought he would never forget.  He starts shooting up cocaine until it becomes an uncontrollable addiction, draining money and energy from him like a big, black hole.

He is trying to satisfy all the goals of life with the full time pursuit of pleasure.  What is the

Work

goal of dealing dope?  Isn’t it to escape the lifelong curse of man to work for a living?  Now that you don’t have to work, what’s the goal of that?  To free you up to do what you want to do all day?  And what do most people want to do if they don’t have to work?  Party, party, party!!!  Right? 

After a few months of running around doing nothing all day, eating out at dinner, drinking the night away, Morgan starts to get bored and disillusioned.  Is this all there is to it?  Is this what life is all about; the end

Champagne on Ice

game?  Getting to the point where you don’t have to work so you can eat in restaurants, drink champagne, get high, and have steak and eggs for breakfast? 

When he left Woodstock, he had an obsession to escape forever the beans and rice syndrome of handouts and communal living.  Once he had enough money, he ate steak

Can you get tired of steak?

every chance he got.  But after a while, his “high on the hog” lifestyle gave him a totally unexpected revelation:  No matter how good something is, if you have enough of it, it gets old and routine.  The startling conclusion hits him,

“You get tired of steak.” 

The point here is that our earthly bodies are wired to become complacent with whatever becomes routine.  This is why people can adapt to living in homeless conditions or on welfare day after day, giving up any goals or dreams, and accept their reality.  It is also why highly successful people can begin to feel so accustomed to their opulent lifestyle that they are no longer grateful for it, or no longer think it gives them any satisfaction.

So, what is the solution?

You have to think it terms of Eternity!  You must become an Eternal Pioneer!  Everything

Seeing into Eternity

on this earth has an end and can come to the point where you can not get any more.  In Eternity, in Christ, we have an unlimited existence with Him that will continue forever.

Colossians 3:2 -4 …Set your mind on things above,

not on things on the earth.  For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. 

From Woodstock to Eternity Excerpt:

When he was fourteen, he wanted to mock the rules of society and got his picture in the

From Woodstock To Eternity

paper for having long hair.  When he was sixteen, he snuck out of the house to hang out with the beatniks in Georgetown.  When he was eighteen, he went to Woodstock.  By the time he was twenty two, he had his own marijuana distribution network.  He got saved and started flying, but he never changed his stripes.  Everything he did in his adult life developed into a master plan to pursue the pleasures of the old world while reaping the benefits of the new.  Now, his plan is on trial, and the final verdict is obvious.  With a slab of sheet metal for a bed, and four walls of cinder blocks for a room, he has to admit to himself,

“It’s not working.”

Most Rehabilitation programs start with the acknowledgement that you need help.  Whether it is AA, Drug rehab, or Christian Ministries like Celebrate Recovery or Regeneration.  This is because, the One who is the power behind all Recovery, Jesus Christ, described the process in The Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.

Luke 15:17-19

17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have

In the Pig Pen

bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18 ‘I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 “and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.” 

Before you can fix something in your own life, you have to admit that something is broken.  You will never move on to finding help and solutions without first coming to the conclusion that what you have been doing is not working.

Unfortunately, this process forces the difficult conclusion that we were wrong, and it sometimes takes a big hammer to break our pride enough to admit that.  For Dustin Morgan, God had to put him into a jail cell, with the threat of even greater jail time ahead if he didn’t change.

This is not a bad thing.  When you humble yourself and admit that what you have been doing is not working, God gives you grace and power and light to see the new direction.  That is why humility and brokenness is the Spark that ignites the Transformation.

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

From the old ways

The one question radio interviewers seem to want answered concerning the book, From Woodstock to Eternity is:  “In one word, what would you say the main message of this book is?”

The answer is – Transformation

But not just any old transformation.  Dustin Morgan doesn’t go down easily.  His transformation is not a simple makeover like a visit to a make up artist or a plastic surgeon.  No, the reason this story can touch any one of us, is he fights tooth and nail to keep going his own way before he slowly makes the change from old to new.

Dustin has to come to a point where he realizes that the partying, drug dealing lifestyle, which he thought was the right way to go, was in fact destroying his life.  So, even though

New Man – New Wife

he resisted giving up his old ways, God stayed with him and ultimately brought him out of that lifestyle.

When God did finally bring him out of that lifestyle, what did He transform?  Just his heart?  Just his mind?  Did he change on the inside only to stay the same on the outside?  Did he insist that nobody judge him, but value him for what he truly was inwardly?

No.  Like the Scripture says, ALL things had to become new.  His heart AND his clothes.  His mind AND his speech.  Jesus doesn’t just transform one little bit of us – He transforms ALL of us, and every bit of our being should radiate the light of his glory.

2015  New Beginnings – Walking in Eternity

2 Corinthians 4:16 – 5:2

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. 17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, 18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

5:1 For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven,

In a New Year, we like to put away the old and look forward to the new.  We usually think of what will be new in our earthly lives, but God wants us to see a new beginning as to how we can walk in his eternal life.  He wants us to “earnestly desire to be clothed with our habitation from heaven.”

Mansion in Heaven

This does not mean waiting for our mansion in the sky – as if it is some tangible thing in heaven that we get to inherit.  The phrase, “a house becomes a home” is about all the house represents and exemplifies.  The memories, the victories, the emotions, the love, the decorations that set the tone.  The same is true for our heavenly home.

Strangers and Pilgrims

Hebrews 11:13-16

13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 14 For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. 15 And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

To earnestly desire our habitation from heaven is to desire less out habitation here.  The first requirement is to change our perspective to see with eyes of faith that we have a city prepared for us.  Our job is to transform our earthly lives so that the ways of the heavenly country become our ways on earth.

My grandparents came into this country through Ellis Island from France.  When they set up residence, they made themselves “strangers and pilgrims” as far as France was

Ellis Island

concerned.  They no longer acted as though they were from there.  They stopped speaking French and doing French things, would not teach them to their kids, and put all their soul into living like Americans.

Press Toward the Goal

This is not to say we should disavow our ancestors, or our good earthly upbringing, but it is an analogy to show that while we are walking on this earth as representatives of Christ, we should do all we can to shun the ways of the world and put on the character qualities of Jesus.  He laid hold of us to live His life through us.  We are to press on to make that happen on a daily basis.

May He give all of us the wisdom and power to do this in this coming year.

Philippians 3:7-14

7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain  to the resurrection from the dead.

 12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. 13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus

Copyright © 2015 John D. Cooper