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Tag: #fakechristian

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Inner Work

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence! You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too.

~ Matthew 23:25-26 (NLT) ~

If you want to grow, you must do the inner work. Inner work is the washing of the inside of our cup. It is facing our dirt and finding the root cause of how it got there and why it keeps coming back. It is getting healing from trauma. It is confronting our shame and facing our fears. It is bringing our selfishness and greed and pride to the cross to be crucified with Christ. This is the most sacred type of work and the most neglected.

I think there are three reasons why inner work is so neglected by Christians. Firstly, it is unseen, especially in the early stages. As you first begin to tackle your inner demons, not many will come up to congratulate you or encourage you on the excellent work you are doing. There will be no acclaim or reward for taking up that broom and mop and getting down in the muck of your inner life. The motivation to do inner work must come entirely from within (ultimately from God)… the militant commitment to give up your fake-life to follow Christ. Your sight of eternal life (not in heaven but here and now) must be larger… more attractive… more valuable… than the Pharisee-life of religious superiority and praise of men.

Which brings me to the second reason that inner work is so neglected. It requires us to be honest about our mess and that type of honesty will not win you many friends in the church. The vast majority of the church is in the business of cleaning the outside of the cup – managing sin – modifying behaviour. Jesus says we have to clean the inside first. Transformation, Jesus’ way, cleans the heart first and then (after some time) the outside becomes clean. This type of transformation is lasting, genuine and Christ glorifying. The problem is that while we are doing the inner work, our mess is visible and that is uncomfortable to our ego. Often, to really sort out the inside of our cup we will have to seek professional help, confide in family and close friends and generally be OK with not being ‘blessed and highly favoured, praise God’. For many, that price is too high.

The final barrier to inner work is the lack of tangible results. We are driven to perform. ‘Only results matter’, says the management adage, and we have bought it wholesale. Inner work is slow, and tangible results are not evident for a long time. You have to be more committed to the process than the results. This was my greatest challenge to my inner work. I saw men and women of God walking in great purpose in their 20s and, “What was I doing in my 40s?” my inner critic said. Nothing much. Decades of just trying to know God better and confront my own depravity without much evidence of the greatness I felt called to. There is this pressure to achieve something… anything… to exit the process prematurely.

This performance culture is a delusion and a distraction. Why are we more inclined to listen to a pastor who has twenty books, leads a mega-church and has hundreds of thousands of followers on twitter than the little faithful old ladies in our church? I’m a big fan of little faithful old ladies. Without these pillars, there would be no successful pastors. Often, they are full of the wisdom of inner work gurus. Our eyes and ears need recalibration. Success defined by numbers of followers and size of empire is not a kingdom definition. I’m not saying that these things are bad, just not a good goal for your life. They are better achieved as a byproduct of more of Christ in us. There are men and women with big outward success that have cleaned the inside of their cups and some that have not. To the uncalibrated eye they may look the same, but the former are such treasures while God takes no pleasure in the latter.

I invite you to recalibrate. At this time many of us are on a break from work. Spend some quiet time with God. Re-focus on the inside of your cup. He is looking for those who will carry His Living Water, undefiled, to a world in drought.

Copyright 2021, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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Dissonance

My novel Authentic Joy is now available on Amazon for $0.99 USD on Kindle or $0.00 Kindle Unlimited. Click here to read it now.

Authentic Joy is about dissonance. Dissonance in music theory occurs when there is a clash between two notes or tones. As a Christian, for many years I experienced an internal dissonance. There was the person that I wanted to be and then there was the person I actually was on the inside where nobody could see. I believe many believers have experienced this internal incongruity at one time or another. In a sense, there will always be a gap between what we espouse as Christians and where we are on the journey toward that Christlike ideal. That is normal. What I am talking about is something deeper. It is a deep sense that our internal reality does not accord with who we believe we are supposed to be right now.

I grew up in Trinidad, the home of carnival and bacchanal (drunken revelry and licentiousness). This was the culture that shaped my youth. Added to that, I was naturally a free-spirited person. I was a pleasure-seeker. As far as I knew, the aim of life was to experience and enjoy everything that it had to offer to the fullest.

Then, at the age of twenty, I made the decision to give my life to Jesus and started attending church regularly. I’m sure you can see the impending clash. I changed my external lifestyle rather suddenly but inside I was experiencing increasing levels of torment. Nobody else in my church seemed to be having this issue so I kept up the appearance of ‘normalcy’ for a few years until one day I cracked, and all hell broke loose. I unceremoniously exited my fake Christian life, followed my hedonistic tendencies full throttle and wrecked my life spectacularly.

Authentic Joy, is an autobiographical novel that chronicles twenty years of my life from discord to internal harmony. (Spoiler alert) God found me amidst the wreckage of my life. He pulled me out. I made a few discoveries along the way. I discovered that external behaviour modification is a dead end. I discovered that all men are flawed. I discovered that nothing less than a real encounter with Jesus can change those internal parts of our personality that are as familiar as our skin. I discovered that there is no greater joy than the fellowship of Jesus Christ. I discovered authentic joy in Christ.

To read more about my story get Authentic Joy now on Amazon for $0.99 USD on Kindle or $0.00 Kindle Unlimited. I promise you won’t be able to put it down 🙂.

Joyfully,

Copyright 2020, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.
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How To Spot A Fake Christian

Newsflash! There are fake Christians. Yep. This is no surprise I’m sure. There are lots of people who call themselves Christians but within that group there is a subset that I refer to as the true disciples of Christ. So how do we tell the sheep from the goats or the wheat from the tares? Let me introduce you to the Acme Christian Test.

But before I do that, sniffing out fake Christians doesn’t in itself seem very…well..Christian so let’s change the question… How can I tell if I’m a real Christian? I’m so glad you asked. Here’s how:

I’m going to bring together a few concepts from the bible that hinges on this passage:

John 15:1-8

1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

Voila! I’m sure you see verse 8 jumping right out at you. Jesus’ disciples bear much fruit which is proof (evidence) that they are:

  1. Connected to the vine (Jesus), and;
  2. Being pruned

Let’s focus on the fruit first. What is this fruit? For that we will turn to another passage:

Galatians 2:22-23

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

So, the first part of the test of a real Christian is to ask yourself if you are exhibiting the following qualities:

  1. Love
  2. Joy
  3. Peace
  4. Patience
  5. Kindness
  6. Goodness
  7. Faithfulness
  8. Gentleness
  9. Self-control

Spend some time on each word. Do some introspection. I find that some of them make me wince a bit (or a lot) while others I feel I’m ok with. That last one, self-control, always makes me cringe. Ouch. But we need to be bearing all the fruit not just a few.

However, bearing fruit is not enough, we also need to be pruned. The second part of the test is to ask yourself if you have been increasing in these qualities. We may all start at different places so a snapshot of a point in time is not really the acid test. Let me illustrate. If I came from a really bad home situation where all the examples around me contained very little of these qualities, I might be quite impatient. Maybe it’s so bad that a single badly chosen word triggers a violent response from me. On the other hand, if Jane was raised in a wonderfully loving home it might take quite a lot to even get her to become angry. Now, Jane and I both convert to Christianity at the same time and after a year through the work of the Holy Spirit I’ve stopped beating up people, but I still get angry pretty easily compared to Jane. But the comparison with each other is irrelevant. The true comparison is with our former selves.

The true disciple is in a constant process of transformation that leads to more and more fruit. Jesus calls it pruning so that we bear more fruit. All true disciples (branches that bear fruit) are pruned. So, you want to know if you are a true Christian? Look back and examine yourself. Do you have more joy, more peace? Have you become gentler, kinder? The moment you stop growing is the moment you were a Christian. You see, a person living in constant contact with Christ cannot help but be transformed. Relationship with Christ changes you at the most fundamental level.

I have found that these are not the questions that trouble most Christians and that troubles me. We are caught in a quagmire of doctrine and religion. The fake tests for fake Christians are for the fake fruits:

  1. Church/mass attendance
  2. Bible verses memorized
  3. Doctrinal accuracy
  4. Spiritual gifts
  5. What church/denomination you belong to
  6. Not going to parties
  7. Political affiliation

None of these are fruit. They are not evidence that you are being transformed by Christ. They are not even evidence that you have any relationship with Christ. Measuring yourself by such external attributes leads to destruction:

Matthew 7:15-23

15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Every day I have to ask myself, am I a real Christian?

Copyright 2019, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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