Christian Development- Hud

Believers have Blind Side issues we need to get rid of. –not dark side- old man is dead. New man must learn to live.

Both a light and a dark side to all stages

0. Behavior-Human Doing
a. Relational but not making deep connections.
b. We hold on to a life that can not bring life
c. Behavioral change will not drive the change your soul longs for.
d. At this stage, peace to us is the absence of conflict.
e. Usually there is a deep sense of need
f. We are moving from being worthless to being worthy, if God is working in us.

1. Acknowledging that God exists
a. We think:
i. That we are too bad to be loved. “If you really knew me, if you really saw my heart, you wouldn’t love me. If we are abused by our caretakers/parents we think the reason they treat us bad is because we deserve it.
ii. Without faith, it is impossible to please God
iii. If I please God, then I will have his love
iv. I’m too good to be loved; I don’t need it. I’m in charge.
b. Motivations can be fear, comparison, competition, guilt, or striving. Most people can’t get past the fact that we are truly loved.
c. Loving God for self’s sake
d. Learn the way
2. Rules and dependency
a. Discipline + Discipleship
b. Power by association –teacher/listener
c. Trying to get it right
d. Look for systems
e. Attractional—association with a place
f. Argues out of righteousness
g. Listening
h. Study
i. Children built to play—do we make them study before relationship?
3. Production + Serving
a. Doing
b. Power by achievement
c. Programs
d. Not ok to be vulnerable
e. Performance
f. Perfection
g. Tired and proud
h. 85% of people don’t get past here
i. Motivation by winning and competing
j. Goal of personal success

Now we move to:

Human Being
Taking out the trash in our lives
We don’t start here unless we believe God is absolutely good.
We don’t naturally jump into 4-6.
We need to create an environment around ours and other people’s 4-6.
We can’t create a program for 4-6.
You are being drawn.
Motivation- Cease striving. If you loose your life for my sake you get it back.
In the garden we wanted to be independent. That will try to get in the way. We are moving from independence to dependence on God.
We can’t make this leap based on experiences. Experience causes us to believe that we are in an impossible situation. Trust over doing. How do react if our experience does not line up with what we expect. We have been faithful, why is God doing this??
We need to know what God is doing and why in order to trust Him and that is backwards.
Inner growth and maturity takes place here. Here peace loves anxiety.

Start to understand that I breathed my last breath because God is pleased to do so.
None of these steps come naturally.
Ego is removed in 4-6. We are still not confident and don’t believe that we are truly loved by God.
No one is in just one stage. We move all the time. Like manna it rots the next day. We need our daily bread.
Disciplines- We sometimes want to use the disciplines on the 2-3 side as a vehicle to push us through the others. Should do 1 thing to us: give us presuppositions. (I think to create space for God to move too) Legalism reigns here.
We will never be in a circumstance where we cannot love.
The transformative change comes from the Spirit of God working in us.

4. Inner Work
a. Unsettling stage, answers are no longer satisfactory
b. We have to give up the dream that 1-3 will bring us life.
c. Motivators are Hope and Holiness
d. We must let go of what we look at as success—not a failure to have anxiety
e. This is where shame, fear, guilt, hurt, and pride are disarmed. Some people call it the dark night of the soul, but that’s not a good name for it.
f. Refining
g. Exploring the unresolved psychological and theological things in our lives
h. Disarming shame, fear, guilt, hurt, pride
i. Relies on grace
j. Needs to be reminded of God’s unconditional love
k. Grief starts the process
l. Anxiety is embraced for peace
m. Moving from independence to dependence
n. Inner growth + maturity take place here
o. Let the interior questioning come
p. Spirit working in the heart and mind
q. Praying through desert experiences
r. Pruning and refining
s. Making pure
t. Sanctifying
u. Purging
v. A key step to maturity
w. Identifying core lies
x. Returning between 2 shores
y. Most people turn around ½ way and retreat to familiar territory
z. Don’t try to bring up trash, it will come up w/out us looking for us (if we shelter ourselves, it comes up quicker)
aa. We don’t have anything that we shouldn’t put into the light
bb. We have this wellspring of things inside of us just waiting to get out
cc. I Timothy 4:4 Redeeming and not getting rid of ourselves
dd. We think God breaks us, but that is not how He operates. He won’t give us anything we can’t handle.
ee. Circumstances don’t make or break you, they reveal you

Healing is necessary for our souls. In this stage, we start outward again. The power is the power of purpose. Our calling is to Jesus not a place or an action or talent. We need to be independent from our circumstances. Powered by purpose. If our purpose is to further the kingdom why can’t we yield to something bigger than us. We are also to bow to marriage and not have marriage bow to us.

5. Healing
a. Yielding to God for kingdom transformation
b. Reliant on God’s goodness
c. Wholeness
d. Surrender, submit, slave,
e. Many people call this transformation.
f. Power by purpose
g. Empathy
h. God is good
i. Uncompromisingly, He is the center
j. Motivator- to empower others.
k. We move from being worthy to being unworthy.
l. Gratefulness.
m. More substance in relationships
n. Have others in mind
o. Quiet waters run deep
p. No striving
q. A calmness to people in this area
r. Serve because we have been served and God’s grace is sufficient
s. Serving from purpose and wholeness
t. Bringing trash to the Cross
u. Embracing truth and disarming lies
v. Purified
6. Learning how to love
a. Humor—The ability to laugh at yourself is the most unmistakable behavioral characteristic of humility
b. Joy- a perspective i.e. death, you face blindside issues (the believer does not have a dark side, he or she has a blind side)
c. Confronts most issues without anger
d. Power by wisdom
e. Motivation is peace
f. Inside-out
g. By faith, not by sight
h. Trust
i. Compassion
j. Contentment
k. Open hand-All is God
l. His presence
m. Calmness
n. John 14: We don’t have to strive to know the Spirit. God is present—a call to awareness of His presence
o. We choose to draw and influence and encourage, as opposed to forcing and coercing and demanding
p. Job- not about suffering, about trust
q. We need to gain the confidence that God is able to care for us
r. Your obedience needs to come on basis of relationship
s. We need to learn to be a drawn by the Spirit
t. Peace
u. We are most like God in how we think and least like God in what we can do
v. Discovering true self
w. Working out of the image of God in us
x. Boundaries- love waits, not controlling, depends on the other person to move forward
y. God is not a child abuser; he won’t make us do things that are bad for us
z. cf. Henri Nouwen’s In the Name of Jesus or Moving from Solitude to Community to Outreach (look for his references to healing)
aa. From a healed place we start outward again

Source: Hud Mcwilliams Field Orientation