When God created man, He had a deeper purpose in mind than merely to create a world and then someone to rule over it on His behalf. God’s purpose in the creation of man was fellowship: fellowship with Himself. This was in His heart from the very beginning.

This purpose has never changed. Although Adam sinned and plunged himself and his descendants into a state of alienation from their Creator, God graciously provided for the redemption of man – to open for man a way back to Himself. God’s purpose was to restore the lost fellowship.

…Christ also suffered once for sins… to bring you to God… (1 Pet. 3:18)

…God… reconciled us to Himself through Christ… (2 Cor. 5:18)

Now this is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent. (John 17:3)

The fellowship that was God’s original intent in creating and then redeeming man, is a real fellowship – an actual experience of fellowship. Just as Adam walked and talked with God in the Garden in the cool of the day, so those who have been graciously restored to a state of peace with God should not be content merely to discuss the Christian life and to theorize about it, but should be satisfied with nothing less than actually experiencing what Jesus died to make possible: a genuine communion and fellowship with the eternal triune God.

It is true of all of us that our knowledge exceeds our experience. To some extent in each of our lives, the things we know about God – His power, His holiness, His love, His being – go far beyond what we have personally experienced of Him. Many ears have heard of God, but few eyes have seen Him.

This breach between head-knowledge and heart-experience is a dissatisfying thing – or at least God wants it to be.

By offering glimpses of Himself to our mind’s comprehension, God intends to inspire us to seek after the experience of the same things that we understand – to long to experience intimate fellowship with Him as opposed to mere acquaintance. One of the reasons why God approaches our minds to give us a mental understanding in the first place is to direct our energy toward seeking. This seeking, when it is finished, will cause us to attain His desired goal for us, which is the true experiential knowledge of Himself.

God wants the discrepancy between our intellectual knowledge of Him and our heart experience of Him to frustrate us, in the sense of provoking us to dissatisfaction with a purely theoretical and academic Christianity, and prodding and goading us to seek an experiential and real Christianity.

At times, however, we have all made the mistake of receiving the knowledge – the mental comprehension – without also yielding to the divine impulse to seek. This omission is not so bad in itself, as it leaves open the future possibility of coming to a place of seeking. What is bad is when we have, for whatever reason, avoided the seeking altogether, while substituting the intellectual theory for the life-experience.

Then when we present the theory of a particular spiritual truth to others and do not ourselves yet possess the experience of that truth, we will only impart what we possess – the theory alone. If the theory has become an adequate substitute for the experience in our own lives, then that will be all we impart to others – a substitute.

This substitute is harmful and spiritually debilitating when we are satisfied with it, because we deceive ourselves, thinking that we have the genuine experience when all we really have is an intellectual comprehension of the theory about the experience. But since we mistakenly believe we already possess the experience, we find in our hearts no inspiration nor even need to seek for the reality of it. Thus enamored with our own religious ideas, we become lovers of philosophical doctrines more than lovers of God, all under the guise of “truth”.

Our knowledge, which should have been good in propelling us to seek the experience, turns on us and slays us, robbing us of the experience – robbing us and those we lead – of God!

George Whitefield declared: “I am persuaded the generality of preachers talk of an unknown and unfelt Christ. The reason why congregations have been so dead is because they had dead men preaching to them.”

This series of Leadership Letters will examine this problem, and propose some reasons for it as well as some remedies.

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In Romans 8, Paul contrasts the old inner life with the new inner life in Christ:

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. (Rom. 8:5-6, ESV)

Here is a clear description of the practical, internal “mechanics” of union with Christ. The maturing believer “sets his mind” on the Spirit and on “the things of the Spirit.” This means to inwardly turn away from the things of the old life (self, sin, the world, the devil) and to give our full inward attention to Him. This does not refer to our minds in a purely intellectual sense, but it means our entire inward lives – our minds, our hearts, our thoughts, our motivations, our affections, our love, our desires, our focus – “all that is within me…” (Ps. 103:1). It refers to the turning of our inward lives to Him. This is the internal mechanism of union with Christ, this is the internal activity of knowing God. Continue Reading »

Our last Letter looked at the first, and most important, element of transformational thinking: looking at God. Biblically, knowing the Lord Jesus is the gift from God of an inward experience of fellowship with Him, by His Spirit and through His Word, which results in the transformation of every aspect of life.

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

Knowing God is not merely an intellectual agreement about a “legal position” in Christ, but it is to be a conscious, inward experience of fellowship with Him: Continue Reading »

In the western church, Christianity is largely understood as an individual thing – a personal transaction between the individual and God. Consequently, leader development is also understood, largely, in individual terms – the individual learns and grows in an essentially individualized learning environment and then, once qualified, he performs his ministry and fulfills his personal calling.

In the New Testament, however, there is a very close relationship between the church and the leader’s maturing union with Christ. Continue Reading »

In our last Letter we began looking at the “Be, Know, Do” (BKD) model of leader development. This model is used by the U.S. Army but has also gained some measure of popularity in Christian leader development circles.

According to the Army, leaders lead others by their character, by their competence, and by their actions; therefore, effective leader development must focus on the leader’s character and values (“Be”), his competencies (“Know”), and his decisions and actions (“Do”). Continue Reading »

By definition, leaders have too many responsibilities on their plate. This is what distinguishes leaders from non-leaders – the ability to think it through and then act. And the courage to do so. Continue Reading »

If union with Christ is the core reality of Christian leadership, then time with Christ in prayer must be one of its core activities. Continue Reading »

In previous Letters we have discussed the centrality of Jesus Christ in Christian leadership. The following story, taken from Placebo by Howard Pittman, is a powerful expression of this reality. Continue Reading »

In response to our last Letter, one of our Asian friends wrote the following: Continue Reading »

In our last Letter, we saw that just as Jesus lived His life by the life of His Father in Him, so we are to live our Christian lives, by the life of Jesus in us. Continue Reading »