From years of following Jesus and watching others following Jesus I should never really be surprised by how we, as humans, can mess things up. I don’t just mean the obvious sins, we are very good at that as well but I mean how we can take good things, even God instructions, and make them sinful. I remember a pastor once saying that Christians are so talented at messing things up that we can even make prayer sinful! The Pharisees show us one model of how to do that.

So I’ve decided to look at it further and in this post I’ve taken a few things that often start out as v good but often end up as something very different if we do not do them in a God centred, relationship first, kind of way.

1 – Expectation becomes Entitlement – As followers of Jesus we are meant to have an expectation that God will do incredible things through us. “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:24. I could point to many other places in scripture where a similar theme appears. That means that when we walk into our day to day we pray with faith for God to do things that would seem impossible for us on our own. Jesus even tells us that when we have faith the size of a mustard seed we can tell a mountain to move and it will (I’m taking that literally not figuratively even though I’ve never seen it happen). Therefore in our day to day we should be praying and moving in high faith with the expectation that God will move. This is the definition of faith right?

However I have seen how that expectation can turn into entitlement especially when we don’t see God do the impossible like we had hoped He would. We start to get frustrated that God didn’t ask our big prayers. We get angry if the healing we had hoped for doesn’t arrive or when the purpose we had prepared can remain unfulfilled. All of a sudden we look less like a faith filled disciple and become a huffy 6 year old who wasn’t allowed that second chocolate bar. We turn what was a gift from God into His duty to respond to us and think that we are being obedient.

2 – Commitment becomes Competition – following Jesus requires making a commitment to Him. It’s a reorientation of life as we once knew it. Where we once were the centre of everything in our world , Jesus now becomes the centre, He takes over that place. Before knowing Jesus I decided what to do with my time, my money, my career etc. Now that I am walking with Jesus all of things I now seek to submit to Him and allow Him to direct how they are used in my life. That requires a commitment that I previously was unused to. That’s a good thing and vital to a growing relationship with Him – the more we get to know Him the more we commit to Him which in turn results in us becoming more like Him.

However this can very quickly turn into some kind of shoddy investment scheme. We start to be driven by religion, not relationship, and we begin to give to Him in order to get which runs alongside our entitlement in point 1 – “God, I’ve given up this job and what did I get.” We can also begin to look around at others and see how they are doing and start to measure our ‘commitment’ in comparison to theirs. Are we giving more than them? Who attends the most prayer meetings? How does our church attendance stack up? Who’s the best worshipper? How come they have received more than me? Why have they seen breakthrough and I am still waiting? Why have they been awarded with a leadership position and they’ve only been here for two minutes? Before long our lives can look like they are committed to Jesus but the reality is we are in competition with ourselves or others but again we feel like we are in the right!

3 – Passion becomes Performance – following Jesus is an emotional journey. He’s not a hobby we pick up or someone who we can be mildly interested in. Truly following Him is an all or nothing deal, it takes all of us. That kind of devotion and the understanding of His love for us often elicits a passionate response. When we are singing, praying, serving we can find ourselves engaging in shouts of defiance, cheers of jubilation, tears of sadness, even moments of anger at the injustices we can see in the world around us. Even the most even personality can attest to the emotion and passion that is spent as a follower of Jesus. That’s not unique to us today. We see this displayed throughout the gospels by both Jesus’ followers and by Jesus Himself. This is life and death stuff, it involves passion. Often the passion by which someone worships, teaches, serves etc. can prove to be a mark of their walk with the Lord. I’ve watched driven businesses men tear up at a story of someone meeting Jesus. I’ve watched as ‘respectable’ people have abandoned themselves in worship to a humanly embarrassing level. I’ve watched older people pray in tears for the next generation to encounter more of Jesus than they ever did. When I watch moments like this I can’t help but realise that their passion is an outward sign of the depth of relationship they have with Jesus. I’m guessing you have too.

The temptation that comes here is for us to try to illicit a passion that we aren’t feeling to try and ‘perform’ for God or for the eyes of others. I’m not talking about worshipping through even when we might not feel like it, I’m talking about trying to appear a certain way in the hope that it will catch the eye of someone we respect or maybe even the false idea that we can fool God. I’ll fully admit that there have been times, especially when I was less secure in my identity, where I’ve pretended to look more moved by God than I really was in the hope that a gifted leader would see my deep passion and ask me to get more involved. There were times where I allowed my voice to crack a little more than it naturally would have in order to appear more emotional about a situation than I really was because I knew it would look more holy. Thankfully I don’t think this happened lots and lots but I know it has happened. I am ashamed of that but I’ve got to be honest right? The moment we start using ‘passion’ as a performance we have seriously missed something. Jesus made it really clear to His followers about the both the acts of certain religious leaders who would draw attention to their fasting, giving, and praying, and the consequences of those actions. The two can look similar from a distance but the Lord knows our heart.

4 – Serving becomes Slavery – Jesus modelled the life of a servant to His disciples and gives them clear instruction that although He called them friends and not servants that their posture in life was to be one of service. He tells them that they aren’t to lord it over others but instead should take the towel from around their waist and wash the feet of those who need it. The call to any of us fashioning our lives around Jesus is the same – we assume the role of servants. We serve others as we would like to be served. Jesus wasn’t just speaking about a model but also a mindset. The local church is one of the places where we should see this mindset and model play out as we sign up to serve in different places both as a reposes to Jesus’ call and our desire to help others. People who serve are doing what Jesus’ has told them to do. We serve where it costs, we turn up early so others don’t have to, we give up time because it is our offering as a servant.

However, have you ever watched how we can serve without having the heart of a servant? I have watched many people who serve not because they love Jesus but to try and in some way gain the love of Jesus. I have seen how serving has been waved over people as a way to prove their devotion to God and His church. I have seen people who ‘need’ to serve because without it they have no idea what their place is. I have been that person too. I have served somewhere with a stinking attitude because I thought it might gain me something. This is not the servant hearted example Jesus was trying to show us – this actually is slavery in its purest form. The motivation in these examples is not coming from a heart that knows it is a friend of Jesus and wants to respond to Him.

I think I’ll finish with one more.

5 – Experience becomes an Excuse – I’ve followed Jesus now for 27 years. I’ve worked in churches/christian charities for nearly 20 of those years. Over the years I’ve learned a lot about following Jesus and helping others to follow Jesus. At this stage of my life I have seen a lot more than I had at the beginning, I have experienced many things, encountered many people and lead countless ministry moments. I have seen amazing things and have experienced some horrible things. I have seen amazing miracles and experienced moments that looked like faith failures. I have watched leaders succeed and fail, including myself, and have watched ministries do the same. I think that over the years that experience has taught me wisdom. I still have so much to learn but in the church world there are often moments that crop up which I have seen before. That enables me to make better calls than I would have previously. I’m able to avoid costly mistakes that I have made in the past (mostly). I’m sure if you have been leading in any context for any length of time you will feel a similar way. This is helpful. Wisdom and experience are great. I have been so thankful for those who have more miles on the clock than I and how their advice has helped me greatly.

There is a warning that goes with that kind of experience though. I’ve noticed it can become really easy to use that experience as an excuse not to risk it again. A young leader comes with an idea of how to do something and because we perhaps failed at the same thing 10 years ago we encourage them to re-think because it might not work. A pastor encourages us to step out and share our faith with our colleagues and we dismiss it because we have been there, done that. We watch a new believer jump into everything 110% and instead of sharing in their joy we are quicker to point out the fact that their passion will likely subside when a tough day hits. Very quickly our experience can turn us into cyclical older brothers who find excuses to not push into whatever could be next.

The shadow mission

There are many people who have written about the shadow mission that often can be tapping on the shoulders of those of us who have followed God for a while. The theory goes that the devil rarely seeks to tempt us with a 180 degree situation. By that I mean he rarely comes with a completely opposite temptation to how we have been leading our lives. For example, I am seeking to love people well and not to hold anything against people. The enemy is unlikely to try and tempt me to murder someone – that would be way too big a jump for me and I would easily detect his deception because the thought would be a million miles away from what is natural to me. However, it would be much easier to tempt me to not forgive someone who has betrayed me. The enemy often gets us to think 1 degree off mission and each of these extremes that I have identified tend to work out like that. Whilst they appear extreme and far away in their title, how we tend to get to those positions is more subtle and achieved over time. For example my expectation becoming entitlement can appear imperceptible for a long time. Sometimes only time and an outside voice can point out the shift because we have so slowly drifted.

The only way we can lean away from these shifts is to lean in fully to Jesus. We must partner with the Holy Spirit in every decision, every moment, every day. We must allow Him to highlight to us where our thinking is moving off the correct base. We must also allow others the right to speak in where they have noticed a shift. I hope this post will prove helpful in our journey to keep away from the shadow mission!