'Following Jesus is not a Better Version of your Old Life'

There's a reason a lot of people keep faith at a safe distance. It's not that they don't believe in God. It's that they have tried to be better — really tried — and it didn't work or only lasted a short time. They know their record. They know the patterns that keep repeating, the things they meant to stop doing, the person they keep intending to become. And somewhere along the way they concluded that faith is just one more version of trying harder, one more performance system, and they're already exhausted from the last one.

The apostle Paul — one of the most spiritually serious people in the history of the Christian faith — wrote something in his letter to the Romans that has resonated with people for two thousand years. He wrote: "I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep doing the very thing I hate." (Romans 7:19) That is not a confession of unusual failure. That is the human condition in one sentence. Every person who reads it knows exactly what he means. The philosophers of Paul's era had an answer for this problem: discipline yourself, willpower, mastery of desire through mental strength. Try harder until the pattern breaks. It always falls short. You cannot perform your way into a transformed life. When Paul speaks to the Roman governor Felix about self-control as part of the faith in Christ Jesus (Acts 24:24-25), he is not describing a more rigorous version of the same effort. He is describing something entirely different. He writes elsewhere: "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." (Galatians 5:25) The image is not striving. It is following. Walking with someone who is already moving in the right direction. Dallas Willard put it this way: there is a difference between trying to do something and training to do it. You don't try to play piano at Carnegie Hall. You train. The spiritual life works the same way — not by white-knuckling effort, but by practicing the presence of the one who is already transforming you.

The result is not a better version of the old life. It is a genuinely new one. And over time, the people around you notice — not because you announce it, but because something changed in you that caught their attention.

Where are you still trying harder, willing yourself to be better? How about talking with God and getting in step with the Holy Spirit? Being led by the Spirit is more important than trying harder.

Blessings Jonathan