Spiritual formation becomes visible when a person’s private surrender begins to shape their public character.
You can often discern when someone has spent time in the secret place, not because they speak with spiritual language or appear impossible to offend, but because they have allowed God to confront what is unhealed,unformed , and unlike Him within themselves.
People that spend time in deep communion with God just move different.
They do not need to dominate every room.
They do not need to protect every perception others have about them.
They don’t need to make every conversation bend toward their importance.
They can receive correction without treating it as rejection.
They can celebrate another person without feeling diminished.
They can apologize without attaching an explanation that takes away their responsibility.
They do not make everyone around them feel the weight of their insecurity, jealousy, ambition, woundedness, or need for control.
This is what I mean when I say that someone has “done their work.”
I do not mean that they have perfected themselves through human effort.
The actual transforming work belongs to God.
Our work is surrender.
Our work is remaining open when He reveals what we would rather defend.
Releasing whatever is separate from His nature, and allowing Him to dismantle the protections, adaptations, and false identities we once needed to survive.
This part hurts but it’s also the birthplace of freedom.
God recently revealed something about me that I wasn’t consciously aware of that I needed to work through.
I mean yes I was.
But I didn’t want to.
It was a behavior I was using to protect myself.
In a new season I was looking through an old lens. In a new circumstance I was applying outdated assumptions. In a brand new space I was acting as if I didn’t just go through intense spiritual refinement.
But the beauty of the Divine Counselor is that you are never left to walk out your new identity alone.
God brought me through the last season with lessons and growth and I learned so much about His character, my character and how to deal with others and stay connected to both His love and my self respect when I’m being challenged.
Discernment is a gift because it helps us distinguish the voice of God from our own voice, our wounds, and the voice of the enemy.
I believe there is a process of healing…well actually there can be many processes but only one Source for true inherent healing.
This healing journey begins with knowing God experientially so that you can know His voice innately to discern rightly about Him, you and others.
That journey not only includes surrender but it is impossible without it.
Clear discernment reveals the voice of God inside of a surrendered heart.
It also allows us to see people and situations through a clearer lens. However, seeing someone’s character in the light of Christ is very different from evaluating them through the judgment of an unhealed soul.
Wounded judgment looks for evidence to confirm what we already want to believe. Mature discernment is willing to tell us the truth, even when that truth disrupts our preferences.
Spiritual maturity allows us to recognize good fruit in people we do not particularly like, while also recognizing unhealthy fruit in people we deeply admire.
That does not give us permission to condemn them, because determining another person’s worth or final condition has never been our responsibility.
Discernment simply helps us understand how wisely and closely we should move with someone, what level of trust their character can sustain, and what kind of access they should be granted.
I have tremendous compassion, patience, guidance, and encouragement for people who know they are still growing.
We are all under construction, and becoming like Christ is a lifelong process.
My struggle begins when someone’s platform has convinced them they no longer need the process, when their title protects them from accountability, or when their spiritual influence gives better camouflage to character that is still working through middle-school issues of comparison, self-promotion, jealousy, exclusion, and the need to be important.
I’m sorry.
Unhealed people give off middle school immaturity and it’s exhausting.
Gifting can create opportunity much faster than formation develops character.
And boom. 💥
Gifts and abilities can create opportunities faster than formation can develop your character to steward those opportunities.
A title can give someone authority without teaching them how to use it wisely.
This is how people get hurt by unhealthy leadership or influence.
A platform can amplify an unhealed person because it asks for status not stability.
An unhealed person that isn’t open to accountability on a platform is reckless and will eventually be exposed.
Spiritual language can make immaturity sound profound, but none of those things can produce the fruit that only surrender creates.
The evidence of time spent with God is not simply that someone can hear Him, teach about Him, or speak on His behalf.
It is that their life increasingly carries His nature. You encounter more humility, honesty, restraint, accountability, courage, gentleness, and truth.
You see someone who no longer needs other people to absorb the consequences of everything they refuse to examine within themselves.
You stop bleeding out on everyone else and…
Do your work.
At some point, we must stop calling our defensiveness discernment, our control leadership, our avoidance peace, our self-promotion confidence, and our unwillingness to take responsibility a personality difference.
I said what I said.
When I’m dealing with a person committed to the lifelong journey of sanctified growth and true secret place surrender I see it with my spiritual eyes, hear it with my spiritual ears and know it in my discerning spirit.
Even if we have a personality difference.
And literally that includes how I evaluate myself.
Ask anyone that deals with me…I can spot my bad fruit the minute it shows a dark spot on it.
When you are around a person that does their inner work there is something that follows them into all spaces. Every room every meeting, every conversation, every project, every relationship.
When you are a person that has done your own inner work you can see the mess around a person way faster and way clearer than ever before because you aren’t working through your own survival strategies… you are at peace with yourself and you don’t allow others to make you carry their unhealed wounds and your underdeveloped character.
If I don’t spend continuous time in the secret place the fruit of my character shows.
I say all of this so that we can focus on ourselves.
Not so we can continue to believe that our problems are because of others.
But here’s the thing…
If you don’t get it together…
It shows up in all things.
And you just make other people carry what you refuse to deal with.
And like I say…
That is a weak persons game.
Do your work people.