What have you been told is the secret to the Christian life? I have asked that question of thousands of Christians all across the English-speaking world, in traditional churches, in home churches, and in conferences. What were you told you were supposed to do to be a good Christian? What were you taught about the secret to the Christian life?"
Do you recognize the answers I have received? They are presented to new Christians as standard issue. In fact, they are standard issue to all Christians. I present them here more or less in descending order:
Do these sound familiar? They are the most 'frequently heard. But here are more!
There are yet more: spiritual warfare, submission and authority, miracles, powers, obeying prophecy, reclaiming the gifts, head covering, peculiar dress, strict morals, (even) vegetarianism, becoming a covenant people, and the ever-familiar "Join our group because we are it."
If those last ones seem a little out in left field, please know that there are a lot of other things growing out there in left field! Take a fresh look at what is taught by some of the most respected movements in Christendom, the denominations! They can scare the daylights out of you with their "secret to the Christian life." Often they will tell you that you absolutely must believe a certain doctrine because this doctrine is "essential." Other denominations will tell you there is but one way the Lord is going to come back to earth, "and you had better believe it, brother." or (we get the distinct feeling) it may be that when he comes you will get left behind because you did not believe he would come in that particular way. And so it goes.
Of course, I must not forget Southern Baptists (I am one). I can still hear preachers scaring the socks off of us, thundering about all sorts of plagues that might befall us if we did not "move our letter"!
Anyway, if any one of these "secrets" works for you, stick with it. None of them work for me. And for most of those to whom I minister, none work for them either. In homes, over lunch, on the telephone, in letters by the boxful, and in conferences I have listened to seemingly endless numbers of believers recount how they have "tried everything and none of it works." Many tell their story with copious tears and speak from a broken heart. Christians of our era, as of every age for the last seventeen hundred years, are not and have not been equipped to answer the simple question:
How can I know Jesus Christ internally, personally, intimately, daily?
Most of us could hasten to add: "And don't tell me to read my Bible and pray; I read my Bible more than you think, and I pray longer than you think. I want to know Christ."
I cannot tell you the secret to the Christian life, but I can tell you this: For a large number of us, the previously mentioned lists do not work. For us, the answer lies somewhere else. What I will do in this book is introduce you to the possibility of a whole new vista from which to view the Christian life and practical ways to experience your Lord. But let me be quick to tell you, even this is not a cure-all for many of your Christian aches and pains. The aches and pains come with the Christian life.
Let me go on record. I do not believe anything on that list even comes close to the issue of how to live the Christian life. All have one inherent flaw.
The fatal flaw? Every item on the aforementioned list assumes that it is possible to live the Christian life. Can you live the Christian life? The answer is no, a resounding no! Don't faint. Read on! If that simple statement turns out to be true, then everything, absolutely everything ... you have been taught concerning the "secret" will not work!
This book is written not so much to give you a cure-all as it is to move you completely away from the proposition that you can live the Christian life and to open up to you a whole new way to experience your Lord. Learn this simple, profound fact: You cannot live the Christian life. Learn that, and liberation is near.
This book is written to Christians who cannot live the Christian life. This book is for failures! (That, dear reader, is all of us ... including a few folks out there who are masters of the bluff!)
That list you read a moment ago takes for granted you can live the Christian life. Also note that you are the center of every item on that list. That is the mountain you stand on today. Call it you-centeredness. You out there living the Christian life. We will move off of that mountain. In the pages that unfold, we will not only move off that mountain, we will go to a wholly different mountain, with a totally different vantage point. That is the purpose of this book, to get you off the mountain from which all those lists come and place you on the mountain you are supposed to be on . . . a mountain where ... well, let's wait and see.
But there is one other purpose of this book. it Will reveal to you "the secret to the Christian life" as it was known and experienced by two very important Ones! (In fact, you might say they were the first two Christians.) I make that statement without reservation or qualification!
As we turn from considering tithing and witnessing and going to church and being moral and, yes, even "Pray and read your Bible" as the secret to the Christian life, let us begin our search for something higher by asking a very simple question.
How did the first Christian live the Christian life? can he teach us something we do not know? Does he know something we have overlooked? And that second Christian-of him we could ask the same question.
After that, we must ask an equally important question: "Have I been sentenced to live the Christian life by a means that is different from the way the very first Christian lived the Christian life?" That is, did the first Christian have an inside track, some way of living the Christian life that I do not have and cannot have? Are we second-class Christians who have to live the Christian life by a set of rules different from the first Christian?
You may not have recognized this, but you have been taught that very thing! It has been strongly implied that the very first Christian had an advantage over you. He lived the Christian life by one means, but you must live the Christian life by some other means. Your "how to" list and his "how to" list are different.
How do you feel about that? I will tell you how I feel. If it is really true that I have to live the Christian life differently from the way the first Christian lived it, I feel cheated!
So to begin our search, let us find that first Christian. When we do, we will ask him: "Did you live the Christian life by (1) going to church, (2) praying, (3) reading your Bible, (4) witnessing, (5) speaking in tongues, (6) tithing? If that is how the first Christian lived the Christian life, then it follows that this is the way you must live the Christian life. But if that is not the secret to his daily walk, then that whole "how to" list you were taught is suspect. And if that turns out to be true, then this list is not for you either!
Here we go. Expect some major surprises. And expect a revolution!