Why “Treasuring God, Experiencing Life?” – 02

My Ordinary Christian Life

What does an “ordinary” Christian life really look like? In this second episode, Rick shares honestly about his struggles with sin, disappointment, and success, and how the Holy Spirit has patiently worked over 50 years to transform his heart.

My goal in this second episode is to be transparent about the hard, slow, beautiful process of being changed by God’s Word and the Holy Spirit—so you can judge for yourself whether I’m someone you might want to listen to as you grow in your own faith.

This isn’t the story of a spiritual hero—it’s the story of how God works through weakness to build trust in His goodness.

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Transcript

My Ordinary Christian Life

While the prior section explained how I became a Christian, this section explains who I am as a Christian—what my experience has been like since being saved.

Since it’s my goal to bless others with the insight that God has given me over the years, it’s important that they’re able to trust me as being credible. It’s also important that they see me as someone they can relate to. The more insight I provide into the details of my life, the more likely those two things can happen. So, I want to be honest and transparent about who I’ve been and who I’ve become.

How We Often Perceive Others

No one is perfect. Still, I also think that many of us—knowing how “dirty” we are on the inside—often assume that other people have their lives a lot more “together” than we do.

People like Christian pastors, speakers, or authors are sometimes seen by others as experiencing life on some higher, less-sinful level. These “special” people are thought to have somehow figured life out—at least to a significant degree—while other, “ordinary” people continue to struggle.

But, even though the ordinary people might feel a certain respect for these special people, they’re often not drawn to them in any relational way. In fact, there’s an almost automatic sense of alienation that happens with the ordinary people thinking, “There’s no way I’ll ever be that holy.” Or something to that effect. Rather than feeling encouraged and inspired, the insecurities of the ordinary people are intensified and their relationships often remain superficial with people they consider to be “special.”

Because of this dynamic, whatever it is that the special people might be wanting to share, it’s often discounted as being at least somewhat unobtainable by the ordinary folks. In this way, the perception of being “special” ends up hindering the ministries of the those special people.

I really hope that doesn’t happen with me and with the things I hope to share and encourage you with. I want to clearly state that I’m an ordinary Christian. I’m pretty certain no one has ever looked at me and gone, “Wow, there goes Rick Carmichael!” (At least not in a positive way.)

The truth is, we’re all ordinary. No one will ever be “special” to the point of being above sin—or “figuring life out”—this side of heaven. All those chosen by God are simply “earthen vessels” of clay. Including me!

2 Corinthians 4:7

7But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.

Our attempts should always be to focus other people’s attention on God, and not on ourselves. As John the Baptist said:

John 3:30

30 He must increase, but I must decrease.

Why I’m Not Special

As I already mentioned, I’ve been a Christian for 50 years. During this time, I’ve experienced many highs, but also many lows in my spiritual journey—which I believe is consistent with a normal Christian experience.

This section is meant to provide an honest and open confession of my struggles as a Christian to show that I’m definitely not among any special group of “successful” and “mostly sin-free” Christians.

This section is also about the power of the Holy Spirit—using the Word of God—to bring about a sense of conviction about the areas of sin I’ve struggled with, and to slowly-but-surely transform my life to become more like Jesus.

My Struggles with Sin

I grew up in a home where my father often expressed a severe anger over circumstances he didn’t like. Seeing that expression of anger modeled for so many years, I unconsciously adopted the belief that expressing strong feelings of anger was the normal way to act when someone did something you didn’t like.

I also suffered from a low self-esteem as a kid, which I tried to compensate for by developing an arrogance that often expressed itself through a very big mouth. I “needed” to be the center of attention.

In addition to anger and arrogance, as I entered my teen years, I also started a long-term struggle with sexual sin.

The Convictions About My Sin

Once I became a Christian, God began working in my life to bring a sense of conviction over the sinfulness of my expressions of intense anger. The Holy Spirit revealed how I was using anger as a way of controlling others—trying to force them to stop doing whatever it was that I was offended by. And, that almost always  happened when someone said or did something that—in my mind—meant there was something wrong with me. That I was defective and without value.

While it actually took many years, the Holy Spirit’s conviction finally allowed me to  realize that underneath my intense anger, there was a lower-level, “root” sin of pride, which revealed my true brokenness: I wanted everyone to see me as good, and yet, at the same time, I was desperately afraid of them seeing the bad that I knew was really there.

The convictions about my anger and pride helped me see the ugliness of trying to forcefully control others who did or said things that I interpreted as threatening my sense of value and meaning as a person. As though I was God!

As for my sexual struggles, the Spirit convicted me that I was guilty of a range of horribly sinful thoughts in how I often viewed females: at times treating them as objects to be manipulated for my pleasure, and at other times setting them up as idols, who I thought would make me “whole.”

After many years of struggle in this area, God helped me see that what fueled my sexual sin was the (wrong) belief that if I could find someone who was willing to be involved with me in sexually, that would prove that I wasn’t a bad person.

(I suspect that many people reading that last sentence will think something like, “what a crazy thought that is!” And I admit, it truly is a crazy thought. But according to the Bible, behind all sins are crazy, wrong, thoughts and beliefs.)

The convictions about my sexual and relational sin helped me see the ugliness of trying to deceitfully use others to enhance my sense of value and meaning as a person—as though others really had the power to impart the kind of meaning that only God could give.

To be honest, even after 50 years as a Christian, I still have times of struggle against these—and other—sins. But the more I’ve studied and sought to understand God’s Word, the more the Holy Spirit has used the truths of the Bible to bring about significant transformation in my life in these areas.

My Struggles with Disappointments

There have been a number of challenging disappointments in my life that I’ve struggled with, in addition to my struggles with specific areas of sin.

This started with my mom dying when I was only five years old. For much of my life, this one disappointment severely limited my ability to relate in truly loving ways to others, especially females.

Another challenging disappointment I’ve experienced includes divorce. Actually... two divorces—neither of which I wanted. An additional, severe disappointment has been the complete estrangement from my daughters, my sons-in-law and my grandchildren, as well as from my siblings and relatives—seemingly as “fallout” from my first divorce.

These circumstantial disappointments have often led to sinful thoughts and actions on my part, attempting to totally remove the source of the disappointment and/or to dull the pain I felt.

The Conviction About My Disappointments

Again, through God’s Word, the Holy Spirit has consistently worked to convict me that disappointments for Christians aren’t bad.

In fact, Scripture is clear that we’re to rejoice in our struggles knowing that God is working—for our good—using those struggles to more completely transform us into the image of Jesus.

This conviction about the good role of bad circumstances is one of those truths which is easier to acknowledge in thought, but more difficult to apply to actions. It took years of the Holy Spirit working through disappointments for the conviction of this truth to work it’s way from my head down into my heart, and then out through my actions.

My Struggles with “Success”

There’s nothing about my life which would indicate great “success” from the world’s perspective. (Though I confess to having often longed to achieve that very thing in my life.)

Work Struggles

I graduated university with a degree in Forestry—but never actually worked as a forester. My first career was as a high-school and junior-high science teacher, which I think I was good at, but which wasn’t very rewarding from a financial perspective.

After teaching, I switched to real estate sales to try to achieve a higher level of income for my family. But that hope was never realized as I ended up earning far less than I would have if I’d remained in teaching. Next, I left real estate sales for a brief career in construction—building houses. While that was an incredibly fun and satisfying experience, it brought nothing resembling success, in terms of income.

After construction, I worked in the computer industry for 16 years. I held a wide variety of positions in that field: training, support, marketing, sales, and business development. Even though I worked for much of that time for one of the world’s most innovative technology companies, I was never able to experience any success in the form of career advancement.

For the last 21 years, I’ve worked freelance, providing professional photography and web design services primarily for luxury resort, hotel and villa properties based out of Bali, Indonesia.

During this time, I’d always hoped to be able to grow from a one-man operation into a real agency, able to offer photography jobs and expert photography training to many employees. But, that hoped-for personnel growth never happened and I also never experienced any form of significant financial success.

Ministry Struggles

Even as a Christian with the natural talent of a teacher and the spiritual gift of exhortation, I haven’t experienced what others might think of as signs of being spiritually successful.

I’ve shared my faith in Jesus as Savior with many people, but only a few actually became a Christian as a result of my testimony and sharing. None of the Bible Studies or home Cell Groups I’ve led ever experienced significant growth in numbers.

I’ve always had this desire to be “successful” in serving God, but those desires generally relied on worldly measures of success and not on spiritual measures.

The Conviction About My Desires For Success

This is another area where the Holy Spirit has used God’s Word to bring conviction. And His Word is clear: we’re not to desire the kind of success the world promotes.

Spiritual “success” is much more important than worldly success, and it’s never measured by numbers or by any results that we might see.

Actually, God doesn’t look for us to be successful. He looks for us to be faithful. In the spiritual realm, results are God’s doing, based on our faithfulness. Whenever we act in faith, giving ourselves in service to Him, He’s pleased with that faithfulness, and with us.

The Main Point

The main point is that God has persistently been at work in my life, actively using the struggles, sins, and disappointments to mature me in my faith. And—most importantly—to increasingly reveal the immeasurable goodness of His nature, character, plans, purposes, and works on my behalf, as well as the immeasurable greatness of His love for me.

Again, as these stories of my struggles hopefully reveal, I’m definitely not among any special group of “successful” and “mostly sin-free” Christians. I’ve gotten bogged down in sin just like most other people. I suspect, just like you.

He’s patiently worked through the Holy Spirit to transform me more and more into the image of Jesus. And, in doing so, He’s also developed in me a passionate love for Him and for His Word, and a corresponding passion for helping others develop their own love for Him and for the Bible as the words of Life.