Have you ever suffered the same injury over and over again? After a few times, you probably know exactly what the healing process for that injury looks like. You know how long it’s going to take and exactly what you have to do to make sure that the process is as smooth as possible. That’s because healing is easier when you understand the process. It’s also way more difficult when you have no idea what the healing process looks like.
This is the last step in our Triage series. So far, we’ve walked you through a lot of the basic next steps that a person can take to move towards healing in the middle of a spiritual emergency. Keep breathing, find the right people, learn how to think, and build a worldview that produces trust. After you’ve done all that, though, how do you move forward? That’s what this last step is all about. Here’s the big question: Once you’ve stabilized yourself after a spiritual emergency, how do you keep moving forward? To answer that question, let’s look at three other questions: What does health look like? How do we get there? and What can I do today?
Jesus gives us an answer to the first question in the gospel of Matthew:
18 “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (Matthew 20:18-20)
At SMCC, we describe this same destination using the language of full devotion and full delight. We believe that Jesus invites us into the life that we were made for, and it’s also the life that is most marked by joy. Joy in Jesus produces further devotion to Him. Here’s how we break down the idea of devotion:
Full devotion is…
1. Authority: I delight in submitting to what God says and not what “I” say.
2. Identity: I delight in defining myself by what Jesus has done for me, not in what I do.
3. Activity: I delight in doing for others what Jesus has done for me.
Everyone is devoted to something, but usually this formula works backwards. You devote yourself to something so that you can produce an identity that’s worthwhile and win the respect, honor, or even love of some person or group of people in your life. Because their opinion matters more than anyone else’s, they’re your authority. You can see why that doesn’t produce delight because as soon as you fall short or their standards are raised or changed entirely, you’ve lost your identity, your significance, and your security.
We often see this scenario play out in spiritual emergencies because they usually involve shattered trust in an authority. This can be a religious leader or an entire organization. It doesn’t end there, either. In this situation, when you lose your authority, you also lose your identity, and you lose any sense of direction for your activity. But when we trust in Jesus as our authority, He defines our identity and directs our activity. This works because it doesn’t start with our activity. It starts with Him.
Moving forward involved trusting Jesus as your authority who defines your identity and directs your activity. This is full devotion, which produces full delight. Paul, who had a spiritual emergency of his own that we looked at earlier in the series, understood that, so he devoted his life to helping and instructing other people towards this same end. Here’s what he said about it:
11 “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” (Ephesians 4:11-15)
Here, Paul highlights the ideas of knowledge, love, and maturity. Another way of talking about those, as well as authority, identity, and activity, is Head, Heart, and Hands. Paul is saying here that the church was created to function like a workshop where people are developed, grown, and equipped to follow Jesus well with their Head, Heart, and Hands.
At SMCC, we want to equip people in the areas of…
1. Head: Biblical and theological maturity.
2. Heart: Emotional and relational maturity.
3. Hands: Role Maturity.
Head, heart, hands, full devotion, and full delight all describe the destination. This is what a life built on truth with Jesus looks like. The question, then, especially after a spiritual emergency, is how do we get there?
Think about a fish tank. There’s a ton of stuff that goes into making sure that the habitat stays healthy. You have to treat the water, plant the right plants, clean the tank out, and so much more. The same is true of spiritual health. If you want to grow spiritually, you have to know what produces spiritual health. It’s helpful for us to have an understanding of how spiritual growth happens. Pastor and author Andy Stanley has written about five significant catalysts that cause us to grow spiritually. We opt into some of these, but others just happen. Here’s the list:
1. Practical teaching: Biblical teaching that’s understandable and practical.
2. Providential relationships: Mentors, friend groups, and spouses who play a significant role in our growth.
3. Private disciplines: Beginning to have an alone time with God, Scripture and prayer, and giving.
4. Personal ministry: Serving in ministry, moving from consumer to contributor.
5. Pivotal circumstances: These can be hard things that will either make you better or bitter, or good things, like having your first child, that make you realize what’s important.
Spiritual emergencies can be catalysts for a significant amount of spiritual growth. While they happen to fall into the category of pivotal circumstances, you can see the other four catalysts at work within them as well. For example, the second step of Triage is finding the right people, those who can give you the care and support that you need. Another way to think about the right people for you in a spiritual emergency is providential relationships. God brings people into your life right when you need them, and they then go on to be catalysts for your spiritual growth as well.
Personal ministry intersects with spiritual emergencies, too. Paul writes about it in his second letter to the church in Corinth:
3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5)
Two things stand out from this passage. First, Paul honors God for the compassion and comfort He offers in their troubles. Here he recognizes that God is not absent even in our worst emergencies when things don’t go the way we’d like. Second, Paul guides them to a purpose beyond their suffering. He shows them how significant suffering can be even after it’s over. This leads us to an important truth…
Surviving a spiritual emergency gives you the ability to help others through their own. That doesn’t mean you can’t help if you haven’t been through one of your own, but there is a difference. There’s a difference when you can explain your struggles and challenges to someone who has faced the same thing. In this way, you can see personal ministry arises directly from the spiritual injuries you’ve suffered and healed from.
You can see practical teaching too, because it’s huge for continuing to build a life on truth. The private disciplines are all about investing in your personal relationship with Jesus for the sake of finding greater joy in Him. Spiritual emergencies may not feel constructive, and that’s because their very nature is deconstructive or even destructive at times, but they can be massive catalysts for spiritual growth if you know what the healing process looks like. Our final question then, is this: What can I do today?
You move forward by taking one next step of trust at a time. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the big picture, so just focus on your very next step. You don’t need to worry about where you’ll be years from now, just consider what your next step is right now. The framework of Head, Heart, and Hands makes it really simple to consider what that next step might be.
Many of us have scars. Perhaps you cut your hand in a friend’s backyard when you were little, and you still have a scar from it or maybe you had to have some kind of surgery once and the scars from that time still remain. Physical wounds can come and go, but they can leave scars that last a lifetime. The wound itself may be gone, but the scar that it leaves behind is evidence of the emergency that you once went through. The same is true of spiritual emergencies. Maybe we can’t see those scars because the wounds weren’t physical, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. They serve as memories and reminders of what you once went through. I don’t believe this is a bad thing, though, especially when you consider that Jesus, after He had been resurrected, still bore the scars from the cross on His body. More than that, He will continue to bear those scars for all eternity. Jesus chose to be wounded so that you could be healed. So that a spiritual emergency didn’t have to be the end of your story, but so that you could find life on the other side.
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