Getting Back to Basics

Our spiritual slumps can often be corrected simply by getting back

to fundamental practices of Christian life.

 

by John Blattner [i]

 

 

I CONFESS,

 

I am a baseball fan. I am, in fact, a year-round  baseball fan. I follow the league standings from opening day through the World Series, and even read about the sport through the off-season. I have, of course, learned a fair amount about baseball. But I can also say with a straight face that I have learned some things from baseball about the spiritual life.

 

 

I am not alone in drawing spiritual lessons from athlet­ics. I proudly point to the apostle Paul, whose letters refer to "running the race," "not boxing as one who beats the air," and so on. There was no baseball during Paul's life­time, but if there had been you can bet he would have drawn some pithy spiritual lessons from it. Take, for example, the concept of fundamentals. Every March during spring training, baseball managers tell reporters, "We're just going to concentrate on the funda­mentals. That's what pays off over the course of a whole season." Every August, players struggling through batting slumps tell interviewers, "I've just got to focus on the fundamentals. If I can do that, everything else will fall into place." Games lost, championships missed, disap­pointments of all kinds are unfailingly attributed to a failure to execute the fundamentals.

 

The Christian life has its fundamentals too, and they are every bit as crucial to the Christian as stepping into the pitch and throwing to the right base are to the baseball player. Careful attention to the fundamentals of Christian living is the best way to remain effective for the Lord over the course of a lifetime. And even our spiritual slumps can often be corrected simply by getting back to basics.

What are the Christian fundamentals? - My favorite summary is expressed in the simple "wheel diagram" shown in The Life in the Spirit Seminar Team Manual (Servant Books).

 

 

 

In this diagram the Christian life is represented by a wheel. Any wheel has three components: the outer rim, the hub, and the spokes. The rim is the part of the wheel that meets the road, that encounters the bumps, potholes, puddles, and sharp turns. In our diagram the rim represents daily Christian life, in which we try to apply God's truth in the midst of our own (often bumpy) circumstances.

Ø      The hub is the part of the wheel from which the power emanates to the rim. In this diagram, the hub is our Lord Jesus Christ, and the power is that of the Holy Spirit.

Ø      Finally we come to the spokes. The spokes transmit the power from the hub to the rim. In terms of Christian experience, the spokes transmit the power of the Holy Spirit from Christ to our daily experience.

 

The diagram shows four spokes: prayer, study, service, and fellowship. Two of the spokes – prayer and study – ­are vertical and have to do with the relationship between the individual and the Lord. The other two spokes – ­service and fellowship – are horizontal and have to do with the relationship between the individual and other people.

è These spokes are basic ways in which the power of God can be brought into our daily lives.

è When all four spokes are in place, our lives are solid and well-rounded.

è When one or more spokes are broken or missing, we go "out of round" and our life with the Lord becomes a rather bumpy ride.

For a new Christian the first priority must be to put these spokes solidly into place. More mature Christians experiencing difficulties in their daily walk with the Lord will do well to examine their spokes, to make sure all are sturdy and firmly connected.

 

PRAYER

 

The Christian life is first of all a personal relationship between ourselves and our Lord Jesus Christ. It is, of course, many other things as well: a call to mission, a prescription for living, a motive for loving others. But first of all it is a deep, loving relationship between two persons: ourselves and the Lord.

 

 

PRAYER  1.      Decide to spend time with the Lord every day. A faithful daily prayer life will not “just happen.” We must actively set our wills to the task. 2.      Get the practical details settled: when, where and for how long. Leaving these details “floating” from day to day can result in our daily prayer time “floating away”! For help on this point, see Ralph Martin’s book Hungry for God: Practical Help in Personal Prayer (Doubleday). 3.      Adopt a format to begin. Provide time for praise and worship, for petition, for listening to the Lord. 4.      Be ready to change your format as the Spirit leads. “The format is made for the prayer time, not the prayer time for the format.” Eel free to vary your pattern when in a rut. 5.      Find a prayer partner. Make arrangements to pray occasionally with another person, or ask a friend to check up on you periodically as a spur to faithfulness. 6.      Keep a journal. Many people find it helpful to record their prayer requests, to note when their prayers are answered, and to include personal words the Lord speaks to them in prayer. 7.      Do it.

 

 

Prayer-communication with God – is the primary means for establishing and maintaining that relationship. In my opinion it is the most important of the Christian fundamentals – if you will, the most "fundamental" of all. It is the spoke whose absence will most quickly make the wheel unstable and unruly. When we are experiencing difficulties in our Christian life, our first question should be, "How is my prayer life?" When my prayer life grows weak or faulty, I have learned that I must attend to it before I can expect other "repair efforts” to succeed.

A successful prayer life involves three important prin­ciples. Our prayer must be faithful, it must be led by the Holy Spirit, and it must be centered on a relationship with the Lord.

 

Faithfulness in Prayer

 

We must be faithful to prayer. We must make our prayer life a priority and make adequate provision for it among our many other responsibilities. For most of us, most of the time, prayer should be a regular daily activity. In many cases this will mean setting aside a regular time, in a regular place, protected from distrac­tion and lesser priorities. Many people find it helpful to follow a regular format during their prayer time, assuring that time is spent appropriately in praise, thanksgiving, petition, intercession, and listening to the Lord.

 

Prayer in the Spirit

 

Our prayer must also be led by the Holy Spirit. It can happen that diligence in observing a scheduled, structured prayer time can make our prayer time dry and mechani­cal. Schedule and structure are helpful, but many times the Holy Spirit will want us to break out of the mold we have built. He will lead us to spend our time with the Lord in different ways. We should always be open to such promptings. Sometimes deliberately varying our routine can shake us out of a period of dryness.

 

A Relationship with Christ

 

Prayer is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Our goal is not "to pray," or even "to pray well," but to grow in our personal relationship with the Lord. This is the balancing factor between the structure we need in order to maintain faithfulness and the freedom we need, in order to follow the Spirit.

I suppose more words have been written about prayer than any other Christian topic. We have all read books and articles on how to pray, when to pray, where to pray, how often to pray, and so on. It can become overwhelming: If there is that much to know about praying, no wonder we sometimes find it difficult!

Actually, though all of these topics are important, prayer really is very simple. It is a matter of loving God and being loved by him, of speaking to God and letting him speak to us. What is so complicated about that?

Ø      I recently had an experience that helped me grasp this truth. I had not been very faithful to daily prayer lately, and I awoke one morning determined to "have a good prayer time." I set aside an hour, walked resolutely into the study, closed the door, sat down, and began to pray.

Nothing.

Undaunted, I reached for my Bible. I thumbed through it from front to back, looking for a passage to inspire me or for 'just the right psalm."

     Nothing.

 

Perhaps, I thought, I should try a different location. I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, closed the door, and promptly got distracted by some work-related papers I had left on the dresser the night before. Finally, in quiet, pious desperation, I picked up a book that promised to arouse in me an unquenchable thirst for prayer, marched into the guest room, knelt down at the bed, opened the book, and fell sound asleep. Half an hour later I woke up and left for work, stewing about my inability to "have a good prayer time." That night, after my wife and children had gone to bed, I stretched out on the family room couch to listen to a Christian music album. My thoughts drifted toward the Lord, and before long I found myself effortlessly pouring outdo him all the things I had meant to bring up that morning – and hearing him respond in the quiet of my spirit.

 

I learned an important lesson that day: God dwells not in my study or my guest room, but in my heart. In my eagerness (anxiety?) to "have a good prayer time," I had· forgotten that the goal was simply to be with the Lord. He had been right there all along, but I had been too busy "praying" to notice him! Often this simple shift in focus is what hinders our prayer life: we are concentrating on our prayer instead of on our Lord.

 

 

STUDY

 

I hesitate to use the word "study" for the second spoke of our wheel, because for many of us the word suggests long hours spent cramming our heads full of bits and pieces of information, to be forgotten as soon as the next examination is past (and, we hope, passed). Study means dry, tedious, unrewarding effort – the kind of thing we were happy to be rid of when we got out of school

Well, study is work. It is the deliberate, focused exer­cise of the intellect. But it need not be dry or tedious, and it can be very rewarding indeed. In the sense in which I am using it here, study does not refer primarily to scholarly or academic endeavor, but to the wider process of understanding more about God and his will for us, so that we can love and serve him better. The late Frank Sheed made the case well in his book Theology and Sanity:

"To many the idea of bringing the intellect fully into action in religion seems almost repellent. ... Many ... regard it as at least unnecessary – at any rate for the layman – and possibly dangerous. One can, they say, love God without any very great study of doctrine. Indeed, they say, warming to their theme, some of the holiest people they know are quite ignorant. Plenty of theologians are not as holy as the old Irishman they have seen saying his rosary. All this is so crammed with fallacy as to be hardly worth refuting .... It would be a strange God who could be loved better by being known less .... If a man loves God knowing a little about him, he should love God more from knowing more about him: for every new thing known about God is a new reason for loving him."

We study, then, that we may know God better and thus love him more. But how do we study God? What means do we have for finding out more about him? I will mention three: the scriptures, spiritual reading, and preaching and teaching.

 

STUDY 1.     Set a goal of 15 minutes of Scripture reading each day, perhaps as part of your daily prayer time. Helpful advice on getting started can be found in George Martin’s book Reading Scripture as the Word of God (Servant). Mr Martin’s magazine God’s Word Today (P.O. Box 7705, Ann Arbor, MI 48107, U.S.A.) provides a daily reading, meditation, and prayer starter, and is an excellent way to incorporate Scripture into your prayer time. 2.     Either individually or with a friend, pursue a more deliberate study of a portion of Scripture. Recommendations for how to pursue a group Bible study can be obtained from Word of God Institute, 487 Michigan Ave., Washington D.C., 20017 – U.S.A. 3.     Note Scripture passages that that speak to you most strongly and memprize them. A more rigorous method is provided by the Navigator’s Topical Memory System. For information on ordering this material write Nav-Press, P.O. Box  6000, Colorado Springs, CO 80934 - U.S.A. 4.     Compile a reading list of helpful and ispiring spiritual books. New Covenant’s Great Christian Writers series offers guidance to outstanding works of the past. New Covenant book reviews and recommendations from friends can help identify more recent works. 5.     Buy a sturdy notebook and begin the habit of making notes of talks from prayer meetings, days of renewal, conferences, and so on.

 

The Bible

 

Next to a vital prayer life, nothing is so crucial to the Christian as thorough, sustained immersion in the Scrip­tures. No other study will reward  us so richly or so reliably as the study of the Bible. How good is God to have given us such ready access to his revelation, his thoughts, his plans! How tragic that we so often fail to take advantage of this great gift!

1. The first step, of course, is simply to read the Bible. Select a translation you can understand readily (for this purpose, even the modern paraphrase versions can be helpful), find a comfortable chair, and begin to read. The starting point for a Christian is the gospels, the story of the life and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Later you can read what others had to say about Christ, in the New Testament, and still later explore the Old Testament, the prologue and context of the gospels. All scripture, Paul told Timothy, is inspired by God and profitable to God's children (see 2 Tim. 3: 16). Where we begin matters less than that we begin.

2. The second step is more concentrated study of selected topics and sections of scripture. Sometimes it is helpful to be led in this by someone who has already scouted the territory, A wide variety of Bible study materials is available, ranging from daily reading-and-meditation formats, to question-and-answer exercises, to fully devel­oped commentaries.

 

 

 

SERVICE 1.     Make a list of the basic responsibilities the Lord has given you. This zould include your job, spouse, children. Church, prayer group. Neighbourhood, and community groups. Next to each area of present involvement, list things you do to be a more effective servant, and ways you could perform these duties “as to the Lord.” 2.     Become alert to opportunities to share your faith with neighbors, friends, and coworkers. Resolve not to shy away when opportunities to discuss spiritual matters arise. 3.     Suport through prayer and financial giving sound Christian ministries that further the spread of the gospel. 4.     Learn a simple, brief presentation of the basic gospel message that you could share with an interested person. The Life in the Spirit Seminars outline for “The Explanation Session” provides a handy model. 5.       Look for opportunities to give your time and energy, on a regular basis, to service within your church or prayer group. Often these same groups can steer you to worthwhile charitable and civic groups in need of volunteer help.

 

 

Often, however, the most fruitful study of scripture is the study we do on our own or with a few friends. Simply outlining a chapter of scripture, listing its main points, and selecting a specific action to take in response to its teaching can be more valuable to us than reading a learned essay. In this way, over a period of time, we develop our own scripture commentary, recording all that the Lord has taught us through his word.

3. A third step is to memorize scripture. Changing our mind's diet from the sensory overload of the media and our own worries to the unshakeable truth of God's word can have dramatic effects on our thought life and our spiritual life. Each of us knows of scripture verses that have capsulized for us important lessons from God. Committing them to memory – learning them "by heart" – ­can greatly multiply their impact on our life.

 

Spiritual Reading

 

After reading what God has said about himself, we should also read what faithful, learned, holy men and women have said about God. Many Christians find regular spiritual reading a good complement to scripture study and daily prayer.

What to read? Christian friends can provide some guidance here, as can a number of Christian books and magazines. Two thousand years of Christian history have produced a gold mine of sound, helpful spiritual reading. Our efforts to mine this treasure can richly reward us.

 

Preaching and Teaching

 

We can expand our understanding of God and his ways by learning from those who preach and teach among us. Sunday homilies, talks at prayer meetings, tapes from conferences-all can provide a continuing source of wisdom and knowledge. I recommend taking simple notes so that later we can refresh our memory of the insights and lessons presented.

 

SERVICE

 

Service may be the most overlooked of the Christian fundamentals. Christianity is sometimes presented as the ultimate self-improvement program, and many Christians busy themselves almost exclusively with their· own spiri­tual development to the neglect of the service of God and God's people.

Jesus Christ, through his Holy Spirit, is at work in us not just for our own personal development. He also wants to equip and energize us for effective service, to turn us outward, to work through us to affect the world for himself.

 

"As to the Lord"

 

Most of us already have numerous built-in oppor­tunities for Christian service, though we may not recog­nize them as such: the simple, basic responsibilities of our daily lives. Being a husband, being a wife, raising children, working at a job, being a responsible citizen, a faithful church member, a good neighbor-all these routine duties can be done "as to the Lord" (see Eph. 6:7) and become excellent opportunities to build the kingdom of God. 

The first step, then, is to take on a mentality of service, to see our whole lives as given over to God's work, and to see the various aspects of our lives as avenues for advancing God's kingdom. The routine of daily life changes dramatically when we approach it from this perspective.

 

Evangelism

 

Beyond faithfulness in daily responsibilities, every Chris­tian is called to take a part in spreading the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.

To begin with, we are all "witnesses" (see Acts I :8). A witness is one who gives testimony to what he has experienced. Note that we are already witnesses: It is not something we become, not something we choose to be at some times and not at others. Our life, our words, our example, continually give testimony to those around us of the impact our faith has on our life. There is no question of being or not being a witness. There is only a question of being a good witness or a poor one, a fruitful witness or an ineffectual one.

Beyond this, any of us may from time to time be called upon to "do the work of an evangelist" (see 2 Tim. 4:5), to go beyond the silent testimony of example and tell other people what Jesus can do for them. I believe each of us should be able to share, simply and naturally, what the Lord has done in our lives in a way that attracts others to the life of Christ, and to explain in simple terms the salvation and new life offered to all men and women in Christ.

Finally, though not all of us are equipped to be evangelists in the full sense (see Eph. 4: II), we can all advance the work Of evangelism through prayer and financial support.

 

Good Works

 

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10).

I enjoy biographies of famous Christians. One thing that often strikes me is the degree to which great men and women of God, through their dedicated service, have left his mark on their world.

James, in his letter, points out that a healthy faith will inevitably express itself in works and service:

“What does it profit, my brothers, if someone who has never done a single good act claims that he has faith? Will that faith save him? If one of the brothers or sisters is in need of clothes and has not enough food to live' on, and one of you says to them, 'I wish you well; keep yourself warm and eat plenty,' without giving them these bare necessities of life, then what good is it? Faith is like that: if good works do not go with it, it is quite dead" (James 2: 14-17).

Through our churches, in our prayer groups and communities, through any number of worthwhile service agencies and organizations in our area, we can. find a wide array of good works waiting for God's workman­ship to be applied to them. We may invest ourselves as individuals, with one or two others, or as groups. It will require discernment to know which of the available good works are the ones "prepared beforehand" specifically for. us, and wisdom to accommodate our legitimately busy schedules. But it seems clear that a call to this kind of service awaits many of us.

 

FELLOWSHIP

 

"Fellowship" is something of a jargon term. But like all bits of jargon it provides a simple, brief name for a many-faceted reality.

We use the word fellowship to refer to almost every­thing that Christians do together: praying together, serving together, spending social time to­gether. Whatever its particular form, whether formal and "spiritual" or informal and "natural," fellowship with other Chris­tians is the concretization of a spiritual real­ity: that we belong to the same family, that we are all members of the body of Christ. 

 

 

Christianity, someone has said, is not a do-it-yourself kit. None of us have the wis­dom or the strength to succeed in the Chris­tian life without the help of others. When we commit ourselves to following Jesus as our Lord, we do not become "complete Chris­tians," nor do we embark on a process that will make us complete Christians in this life. Rather we become, by God's design, in­complete Christians. We must be joined to others to experience the fullness of Christian life.

I remember as a young boy visiting a jeweler's shop where the jeweler was work­ing on a fine pocket watch. Spread across his work table was a multitude of tiny springs and cogs and wheels, each one so small, so delicate, so precise, so seemingly perfect in itself. But by themselves these parts were useless. Only when they had been pains­takingly put together, with all the balances and tensions properly adjusted, did they become useful.

 

FELLOWSHIP 1.     List the Christian fellowship opportunities you al­ready have. This could include church membership, prayer group participation, and Bible study involvement. For each of these. opportunities, ask how you could par­ticipate more effectively. 2.     Think of three people .from your church or prayer group with whom you would like to get better acquainted. Take the initiative to invite them out to lunch or to your home. Use the opportunity to share your Christian experiences and simply to get to know  one another better. 3.     Suggest a weekly lunch-hour Bible study with Chris­tian coworkers, or a regular Bible coffee hour with Chris­tian neighbors.

 

The Christian life is like that. Each of us is one small part of a reality far greater and more complex than we can know. We can become better parts than we now are-cleaner, stronger, more finely crafted-but by our­selves we are of limited usefulness. (Note the distinction: of infinite value, but of limited usefulness.) It is only when a master craftsman fits us together that we become      what we were ultimately meant to be. 

There are many different ways to experience Christian fellowship. I will mention only a few of them here.

 

Worship

 

The worship of God is in essence a corporate work. We are each to have a personal devotional life, and yet our glimpses of heaven reveal "the voice of a· great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder-peals, crying, 'Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory'" (Rev. 19:6-7). Liturgies, conference sessions, prayer meetings-all are foretastes of the fellowship of praise that awaits us.

 

Mutual Support

 

A radical decision to follow Christ changes our outlook and greatly influences how we live our lives. We have much to learn and much to unlearn. We have become new creations, "babes in Christ," with a new life inside us that must be nurtured, a spark that must be fanned into flame.

Someone has observed that a campfire can burn well enough when the logs are close together, but pull the logs apart and each will slowly die out. We are the same way. Our hearts are "burning within us," but we must be joined together to keep the fire from going out.

 

Encouragement and correction

 

When I began following the Lord, I had a number of strange notions about the Christian life. I am not sure where they came from, but I am sure that had I con­tinued in them my growth as a Christian would have been much slower and more painful. Many times a helpful word from a brother or sister clarified my think­ing, adjusted my attitude, straightened my path. "Iron sharpens iron," the Proverbs say, "and one man sharpens another." This mutual "sharpening" is one of the blessings God gives us through fellowship with one another.

 

Service

 

Our individual incompleteness is nowhere more appar­ent than in our efforts to serve the Lord. The Lord gives each of us gifts and opportunities to serve him, but those gifts and opportunities are maximized only as we join them with those of other Christians. None of us can do it all, but together we can do a great deal.

A word of warning. Christians have always placed a great emphasis on fellowship and have developed a myriad of forms to express it. With this can come the notion that our success in the Christian life is solely dependent on "the right kind of fellowship." There is no perfect church, no perfect prayer group, no perfect Bible study group or sharing group or service team. When we realize that God works through the imperfections of our brothers and sisters as well as through their better qual­ities, we will be better able to receive the blessings God has for us through Christian fellowship.

It should be obvious that these four fundamentals are interrelated, even interdependent. Study undergirds ser­vice and inspires prayer; service motivates prayer and provides fellowship; fellowship sets a context for prayer, for service, and for study; prayer fuels and sustains all the others; and so on. If one is lacking, the others will inevitably suffer to some degree.

It should also be obvious that adequately providing for each of the fundamentals will require some effort. Daily prayer and study, regular service and fellowship, all require" commitments of time and energy. The Chris­tian life is an exacting one, demanding our best effort.

But it is worth it. No one who has made the effort to build these fundamentals into his life has been disap­pointed. God works through them and through us as we make use of them. It has been said that if the Christian life is worth living, it is worth living heroically; that if Jesus Christ is worth anything, he is worth everything. Let us not -hold back in giving ourselves to him and in allowing him full access to our hearts and minds.