Episode 3: More & More

Erin Davis: There is a door inside the Davis house that is sacred to me. It looks just like an ordinary door on the outside, and if you open it, all you’re going to see is the inside of the closet where our water heater is stored. But you will also find a story that God has been writing for many years.

The inside of that door is filled with hash marks. Beside each one is a name and a date where we have marked the height of our four sons. In fact, just this weekend I lined the boys up and I grabbed the Sharpie and I drew a line above each one of their heads.

And then they always love to compare notes about who has grown the most since the last time we measured. Day by day, my sons look pretty much the same to me. They don’t go to bed at night and wake up noticeably taller.

But month by month, year to year, and pretty soon, decade to decade, my sons are growing . . . from tiny little babies who somehow once fit inside my belly to grown men, one of whom already towers well above his momma, and the others are on their way!

This physical reality that children grow little by little, inch by inch until they reach maturity, is a beautiful picture of a spiritual reality that God is doing in you right now, and He’s doing it in me, too.

Shannan Painter: This is The Deep Well with Erin Davis. I’m Shannan Painter. On our last episode, 

Erin reminded us that our lives are short, and we need to focus our attention on things that will last. But while we do that, we also need to remember that we can never do enough. That’s why we need Jesus! Erin’s about to explain as she continues the series “Stay Awake.”

Erin: We’re walking through 1 Thessalonians. This is a letter written by Paul, which I have come to see as our Christian manifesto of hope! It reminds us over and over and over and over again, “Stay awake! Jesus is coming back!” 

Our ultimate hope is in the return of Christ. It’s in the moment when He will turn the world He has made right-side up. But the book of Proverbs tells us that “hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12). So where can we put our hope today, right now while we wait?

I want to pick up our study of this little book in chapter 4, and I want to repeat my challenge to you, to read all of 1 Thessalonians every day that you listen to this series. It’s a quick read, it should take you about ten minutes.

Now, I’m not skipping chapter 3 because it’s uninspired or unimportant. That’s why I want you to read the whole book. I want you to catch all of it; it’s part of God’s perfect Word. Paul repeats his plea for Christians to live holy lives as we wait for Jesus’ return in chapter 3.

But as we consider how to stay awake, I want to drill down on one little phrase that’s repeated in chapter 4, and the phrase is, “more and more.” Listen to 1 Thessalonians 4:1–3: 

Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.

For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification.” 

Remember, these are commendable Christians. (Couldn’t we use some more of those!?) They weren’t like the foolish Galatians to which Paul wrote, “Who has bewitched you?” (Gal. 3:1).

Paul wrote in verse 1 of chapter 1 that the Thessalonians were already walking to please God. I love the listeners of The Deep Well! I love getting to meet you. I love hearing what God is doing in your life, and I love that you are already walking to please God!

You want to have your Bible open. You want to love your neighbor. You want to hear the voice of the Spirit and obey.You want to help your church thrive. You want to help the Church thrive. You want to be a woman of joy. You want people to look at you and see Jesus. Good!

Listen to what Paul wrote next, I’m still in verse 1. He said, “Do so more and more.” Now some of you are built like me, and when you read something like that in the Bible, your first reflex might be anxiety . . . like the Bible is telling you have to do more for Jesus.

So if that’s how you feel as you read the phrase “more and more,” let me encourage you to keep reading. Listen to verses 2 and 3 again: “For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification . . .” 

Sanctification is the process of progressively becoming like Jesus, and I have some great news. It’s not something you achieve in your own strength. It is something that is accomplished supernaturally by the Holy Spirit within you. That’s really good news!

Jump with me to 2 Corinthians 3:18: 

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. [I have that underlined in my Bible: from one degree of glory to another] For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

You are being transformed right this very moment! Now, you’re not transforming yourself. You’ve tried and I’ve tried. We can’t change even the smallest of habits without Herculean effort and a high failure rate! But you are being transformed, Paul wrote here in 2 Corinthians. You are being transformed into the image of God. 

And the text says that this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. The Spirit of God is transforming you into the image of God by the power of God! I want to say that again. The Spirit of God is transforming you into the image of God by the power of God! This is sanctification. 

And why is God sanctifying you? Our text in 1 Thessalonians 4 told us: because He wants to. It’s His will. It’s His plan, His desire, to conform you into the image of His Son while you wait for His return. 

Scripture calls us not to waste the wait, but God is not wasting the wait either. He will use every day between now and His return to sanctify you and to sanctify me. Sanctification is not a matter of will, and it is not a process of your own strength, but neither is it passive.

Listen to 1 Thessalonians 4:1 again: 

Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.

And then I love what he says next in verse 2: 

For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

I’ve already defined sanctification as the process of progressively becoming like Jesus, that’s the Spirit’s job. But knowing God’s Word and doing it, that’s our job. That’s how we participate in the transformation!

Paul was saying, “You already know what to do; it’s already been revealed to you. You just do it more and more as you wait for Christ’s return!” And that participation, that knowing what God wants us to do and doing it more and more, that is why The Deep Well exists—that we would know our Bibles, and when we know our Bibles we can live what the Bible says.

I met a farmer’s wife many years ago, and she told me that one night her husband turned to her in bed and, with tears in his eyes, said, “Baby, have I done enough?” What he meant was, “Have I done enough for Jesus?”

“Have I been good enough? Have I prayed enough? Have I read my Bible enough? Have I shared the gospel enough? Have I been to enough Bible studies? Have I volunteered at enough Vacation Bible Schools? Have I memorized enough verses?” I bet you feel that pressure, too. I do.

That very night the farmer died in his sleep. He fell asleep worried that he had not done enough, and he woke up in glory and realized that Jesus had already done all that counts! The call of Scripture here is not to run ourselves ragged trying to accumulate enough good deeds for Jesus.

This is why we have to know our whole Bible. This is why we have to be anchored in the true gospel. Paul is not saying, “Jesus is coming back so I need you to do more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more!” That’s not what he’s saying. 

But he is encouraging us to keep doing what we know, and to ask God to help us do it more and more. As a fruit of becoming more and more like Him, we do the things we know to do more and more. It’s like fruit that gets riper and riper and more juicy and more ready . . . until Jesus returns!

Paul went on to list some very specific evidences of sanctification; and again, I’m encouraging you to read this whole book. I would encourage you to read that whole list. It’s in 1 Thessalonians 4:3–8. But I want to pick up this epistle with chapter 4, verses 9 and 10.

Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more . . .

There are those words again: more and more.

Paul’s encouragement, again, in light of the big idea of this book—which is that Jesus is coming back, in light of Jesus’ imminent return—is walk to please God more and more, and love one another more and more.

Okay, sign me up! Plug in something to my spiritual USB drive and make me walk like Jesus fully today, right? Make me love others, like Jesus did, fully today. Let’s get this sanctification process finished already! I’m sure I am not the only woman in the world who is frustrated by the speed at which God is sanctifying me. That’s just not how it works. He doesn't do it automatically.

This “more and more” phrase, it means by a greater measure, a higher degree, a process. Don’t do it all today; you can’t do it all today. You’re growing. God is growing you, but “more and more.” It reminds of another song I used to sing when I was a little girl: Little by little, bit by bit, I am trusting the Lord . . .”

It’s a process. Remember from 2 Corinthians 3:18 that Paul describes the sanctification process as moving from “one degree of glory to another.” Little by little, moment by moment, sometimes—often—so slowly that it feels like you are not being sanctified at all! Why does Jesus sanctify us so slowly?

If we know that He wants us to be conformed into His image, if we know that He wants us to live and love like He lives and loves, why doesn’t He just download all of that into our hard drives when we surrender our lives to Him?

One reason is that we would stay awake to our need for God. I love how John Piper put it (you’re going to love this quote, too). John Piper said, 

You can get in God’s face about this [he was talking about God’s slow sanctification] and say, “I don’t like the plan!” 

I don’t like the plan that you leave me unsanctified and battling every day with depletion, having to be renewed on grace every day. I don’t like the plan! And I’d just like to be done with the battle! Now, it’s hard for me to imagine actually getting in God’s face and pointing a finger and saying, “Why won’t You sanctify me quicker!?” But we can feel frustrated, right? And Piper said this response: 

And God would say, “Well, that’s the plan! And the reason it’s the plan is, I’m going to get some glory in your life. If I didn’t do it this way, you’d get uppity about it. You’d think you had it made. You’d think your strength was coming from you.” 

And then, listen to this, soak in this for a minute. Piper said that God would respond to us by saying:

“The fact that you run out of gas every day puts you in the station, and the station is Me.” 

First Thessalonians isn’t just a letter that asks us to stay awake until Jesus’s return. It’s also a letter that reminds us to stay awake to what He is doing within us while we wait.

I know you’d like to be further down the line. I know that there are patterns of sin in your life that you desperately want to be free of. I know that you wish you spoke more gracious words. I know that you wish that you were sharing the gospel with others more often. I know that you wish your appetites for God were stronger than your appetites for the things of the world in some areas.

I know that because I feel those things too. But He is transforming us. He is shaping us into the image of His Son, and He’s doing it in such a way that reminds us how much we need Him!

When your flesh is weak and you must battle temptation again, sister, stay awake! He is sanctifying you! When you’re battling bitterness for a hurt that you thought you dealt with a long time ago . . . My pastor just this Sunday stepped up to the pulpit and said, “I’m going to teach on forgiveness.”

And I thought, Oh man! What’s the Spirit going to expose in my heart that I thought that I had dealt with? When the Lord does that for you, stay awake! He’s sanctifying you. 

As I said before, when your spiritual appetites are all out of whack and you don’t really want to keep walking to please God and love others more and more, stay awake! He’s sanctifying you.

When you feel enslaved to self—and isn’t self a terrible taskmaster?—and you feel you cannot be set free from your obsession with yourself, your narcissistic thoughts, stay awake! He’s sanctifying you.

When your mind is filled with doubts of His goodness, as mine often is, even though I know He is good, I know that I know that I know He is good! 

And still sometimes my mind plays tricks on me and I struggle to believe that’s true. If that happens for you, stay awake! He is sanctifying you.

When you are deeply discouraged and you cannot seem to focus on what is good and pure and true and lovely, stay awake! He is sanctifying you—degree by degree, hash mark by hash mark, moment by moment. He is conforming you into the image of His Son for His glory!

And if these thoughts about sanctification feel disconnected from our 1 Thessalonians theme of waiting for the return of Christ, hop with me to one more Pauline epistle: 1 Corinthians 15:51–52. 

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and [this is a promise, sisters!] we shall be changed.

If sanctification has a finish line, and it does, it’s the return of Jesus. Not before. I wish it was before, but it isn’t. But the trumpet’s going to blow, the dead are going to be raised, and we will finally—and forever!—be fully changed into the image of our Savior.

For now, your spiritual progress might feel like nothing more than a few hash marks on the door, but you are learning God’s Word more and more. You are living it out more and more. You are learning to love God and His image-bearers more and more.

He is doing a more miraculous, more transformational work in you than you can ever imagine! Let’s pray.

Lord, we thank You for the sanctification process. It is painful, and it is tedious, and it is slow! From our human perspective it seems that You are not doing much inside of us, but we trust Your Word. We trust that You are moving us from one degree of glory to another, and that is part of how You are using the weight in our lives. 

We trust that when You come back for us, the process will be complete, and we will finally be as we were made to be all along! Thank You for that promise. We trust You, and we trust Your promise. It’s in Your Name I pray, amen.

Shannan: It is so easy to fall into one of two traps. On one hand, we can be discouraged that we can never do enough to make God happy. On the other hand, we can stop doing the good works God has called us to do. 

Erin has been giving us a biblical view of sanctification to help us avoid those extremes. That teaching is part of this series “Stay Awake!”

Erin: Shannan, you are involved in helping women grow in their sanctification. Tell us more about that. 

Shannan: Erin, I get the opportunity to disciple women through body stewardship. We meet together, typically, once a week. We take a look at what God’s Word has to say about how we care for the bodies that He’s entrusted to us.

Erin: Any of us who have ever tried to learn to steward our body knows how slow that process can be! So that’s a pretty good picture for what we’ve been talking about—sanctification being so slow. You’ve had a tremendous impact in my life in that area.

In fact, we did a whole podcast series about it called “Embodied.” Have you heard feedback from the women you discipled related to that series?

Shannan: I have a lot of people that I got to talk to because of that series that we did. It was so exciting to see some of the fruit of how God used that to encourage, to challenge other women, and just to see some of the fruit of what He has done in my life and in your life as well. 

Erin: Yes, that’s why we do this. We don’t just talk into these microphones because we think we have something amazing to say in our own strength, but because we want to encourage women and point them to the Word . . . and remind them that, “God really is doing something in you,” when it doesn’t seem like it’s true.

So that series, you can find it at ReviveOurHearts.com/TheDeepWell. You can search for seasons there, and you’ll find Embodied. In fact, you can hear all the archives of The Deep Well at ReviveOurHearts.com/TheDeepWell ,or (this is my favorite way) subscribe to The Deep Well on your podcast app!

Erin Unscripted

Shannan: Alright, it’s time for the part of the program we call Erin Unscripted.

Erin: Okay! 

Shannan: Erin, a lot of things in life we want to have happen very quickly. But you mentioned that our sanctification—our being made like Jesus—happens as a process that God takes us through over a long period of time. But you also are not saying we should just, “Let go and let God.” Would you talk a little more on how we cooperate with the Holy Spirit and let that process happen.

Erin: Yes, you said we want most things in life to happen quickly. I want all things in life to happen quickly! There’s nothing I want to happen quickly more than I want to be transformed into the image of Jesus!

I want it for me. I want it for the people I love. I want it to give God glory. I just want it to happen quickly. It hasn’t happened that way, it’s happened slowly over time. But the other extreme is, “God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do.” It’s just a kind of, “Jesus, take the wheel” approach to it. 

It’s neither! This is why the Christian life requires walking in step with the Spirit. It’s true that the Spirit is enabling me to be changed, it’s true that ultimately God does all of the heavy lifting in our lives. But it’s also true that He invites us into the process.

I am fond of saying that something is only legalism if you’re doing it to earn salvation. If you’re doing something as a fruit or a byproduct of your salvation as part of the transformation that God’s doing, then it’s not legalism anymore.

So, I don’t read my Bible because God’s impressed with me when I do. I read my Bible because that’s a means of grace that God has given me by which He is transforming me. 

I don’t go to church because there’s some attendance chart in heaven where God is keeping track of how many Sundays in a row I’ve been to church.I go to church because that’s a means of grace by which God is transforming me. He’s using the preaching of my pastor, He’s using the prayers of the people I go to church with, He’s using their testimonies to change me.

And so, we get to participate with Him in the sanctification process. But if we try to do it in our own strength, it’s a nightmare! We will be frustrated. I will veer towards deep discouragement. I will convince myself that God’s not doing anything at all. 

Instead, He says, “Let’s walk this out. Let’s be on a journey of you knowing Me more and more, and as you know Me more and more, then you can bear My image more and more.” And so it doesn’t always feel like a gift or an invitation, but that’s really what God invites to in the sanctification process.

Shannan: I’ve thought before about gardening when it comes to our sanctification. When you plant a garden (and I wish I was a better gardener than I am) . . .

Erin: Well, come to Missouri! I’ll tell you how, I’ll show you the way.

Shannan: We just have rocks here in the soil in Texas. But, you can’t just go outside and throw some seeds on the ground and expect a garden to pop up. There are things that you have to do.

You have to till the soil, you have to fertilize it, you have to make sure it’s watered, you have to guard against pests and things that can threaten the life of your seeds. But ultimately, you can’t make the seeds come up and grow into plants. God has to do that, and He miraculously does that underneath the soil . . . which is something that is so cool!

So our participation in it is, like you mentioned, we get to do some of the work and develop the habits that help foster that growth. But at the end of the day, He produces that in us and makes it happen.

Erin: I love a good garden analogy! I think that’s a beautiful one. There are weeds that sprout up in a day. They don’t produce much; they’re weeds! So there’s that cultivating—that’s another word for maybe what God invites us to do in the sanctification process—being a part of what He’s cultivating in our lives and enjoying the process.

Marvel at what He’s doing instead of thinking that the goal is just to get to some finish line. Philippians 2:12–13 comes to mind, it says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling . . .” Now, I don’t think that means we’re supposed to white-knuckle our way to glory and be like, “I am going to sanctify myself!” It’s a process.

Verse 13 says, “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” So there’s a duality that can be a little bit hard to define. Yes, I am supposed to work out my own salvation, and I am supposed to be sober about it. But it is ultimately God who does it and ultimately God who gives me the desire to do it.

So, like so many things in the Christian life, it’s both/and. It is, yes, we participate, but, no, we don’t do it in our own strength. Ultimately, God is doing the work, but He invites us into the work. That healthy approach to sanctification, where we’re needy, we know that God ultimately does it, but we enjoy joining Him in the cultivation, that brings a lot of energy and health and vitality to the Christian life, I think.

Shannan: Yeah. Erin, I keep thinking of the story you told about the farmer and wondering if someone listening relates to that: “Have I done enough?” What would you say to someone who feels that weight?

Erin: Well, the farmer is real, and the farmer’s wife is real. I really did meet her, and we had a great conversation about the gospel. She felt like ultimately her husband did understand that it was Jesus’ work on the cross that saved Him. He didn’t earn it. He wasn’t responsible for his own salvation.

But in a moment of physical exhaustion or mental weakness, his mind kind of went on this hamster wheel of: “Did I do enough, did I do enough, did I do enough?” She had a lot of hope that he understood and responded to the gospel and he was with Jesus, but I can understand that hamster wheel.

At this point in my life, as we’re recording this, I’ve been walking with the Lord for more than thirty years. I can articulate the gospel more clearly than I could even when I surrendered my life to Jesus.

I love to use the adage from the Reformation: “It’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone” period. Or maybe we want an exclamation point there! We don’t earn it, we don’t deserve it, and I know that’s true. But I can certainly still have moments of feeling like the farmer did, which was, “Did I do enough, did I do enough, did I do enough?”

I find that it’s helpful to get to the answer I’m trying to avoid, which is, “No, I have not done enough. No, I am not good enough. No, I have not volunteered enough hours in kids’ ministry to balance the scale. No. The answer is no. I am not enough!”

That’s such a dangerous message coming at women right now, of: “You are enough!” The opposite is true. So, in facing that compared to Christ’s holiness, I do not deserve salvation, I can either go to total despair and wallowing, or I can go to what is true, which is despite my insufficiency, Christ is more than sufficient! 

And so, when you find your mind in that cycle of just questioning, “Does God really love me? Can God really love me? Have I done enough to get into heaven? Have I done enough to deserve His grace?” I would say to get yourself to what is true, which is, “The answer is no, you haven’t.” 

But His love for you is not based on you; it’s based on Him. And with everything, when we will look to Him, we will look to His character. When we look to what He has told us is true in Scripture, our eyes open, and we can see things as they really are! 

So that’s part of what the Bible does. It defibrillates our hearts when we’re in like code blue. We’re believing things that are just not true. We’re despairing over our current realities. The Bible says, “Ah, but remember the cross! Remember what Jesus said on the cross, which is, ‘It is finished!’” Remember how over and over in the New Testament we’re reminded that He paid the price for our sins that we might be free! 

I wish that farmer had done that that night. I wish he would maybe have gotten himself to the Book of Romans and been reminded that, “Oh, yes, but the free grace of God is eternal life because of what Jesus did!” He realized it when he opened his eyes in glory. He never asked that “Am I enough?” question again, because when we’re in the presence of Jesus we see that He’s taken care of it.

Shannan: That’s a good, freeing, beautiful reminder for us, especially those that are Type A, or as you say, the Type double-A personalities.

Erin: Type double-A, sister! Shannan, at the end of this episode, everybody had lumps in their throats. When I was preparing this teaching I wasn’t necessarily expecting the episode on sanctification to be the one that God used to stir our hearts.

What do you think it is about thinking about our sanctification and how slow it can feel that can make us feel sad and frustrated and happy—all of the emotions at the same time?

Shannan: I remember you talking about measuring your boys by your closet door, and I had this thought while you were talking about that: “Lord, sometimes I just feel like I’m going backwards, that I’m not making any progress.”

Because it can be so slow, and it can feel frustrating and discouraging, because you can’t see progress while you’re in it at times. That can feel really discouraging and hard and overwhelming!

Erin: Yeah, back to the hash marks on the door. I mean, my boys all want to be over six feet tall now! Ezra is five, so that would not be good for his development. They kind of peacock, like boys do, and stretch themselves up. They always think, I’m not growing! I’m not growing as fast as my friends. I’m not as tall as the other kids on the basketball team.

But then, when we line them up against that door, there’s hard evidence that, “Yes, you are, in fact, growing!” I think part of the hard part about sanctification is that our desire is good and right. We want to be like Jesus. We want to shed our sin nature and the things that make us not look like Jesus. We want to be made into His image.

We want to stop screaming at the kids—we really do want that! We want to obey Jesus quicker—we really do want that. It’s hard to understand, “Okay God, then why is that not your will that those things happen today? Because those are really good things?”

You mentioned going backwards. It doesn’t always feel linear, either. But day by day, year by year, I’m not who I want to be, but I am not who I was—all to God’s glory! And so, if we can keep that perspective.

For me, studying these passages was so helpful to realize that part of the reason He built the sanctification that way was so that we would cling to Him, so that we would depend on Him! It’s so we would not come up with some human system of like, Thirty Steps to Becoming Like Jesus and think that we did it in our own strength. He’s using it, of course.

Shannan: You mentioned we want our growth to be linear. That’s certainly something I come across regularly in my job as a personal trainer. We think that we’re just going to get stronger and faster and more fit in a linear fashion. 

The reality is: there are injuries, life happens, people in our family get sick, we have to put things on the back burner at times. So, it isn’t linear, and that can feel frustrating sometimes. I can see that is in our sanctification process as well. 

We think we should just continually go in a straight line to be more like Jesus all the time, and that we aren’t going to be human in the process and still make mistakes.

Erin: Where is our need for a Savior in that? It’s like, “Well, I just take one step and the next step and the next step and the next step, and then I arrive.” That causes us to forget that we’re just dust and that even the breath in our lungs is given by God. 

We are weak. We are conceived in sin and sinners since birth. These are all things that Scripture teaches us. And so, of course, it’s not linear or speedy because of where we start and because of how needy we are! 

But isn’t God gracious to never just throw up His hands and think, These puny children of mine just cannot get it right! I’m going to give up on them! ” Never! He continues to love us and shape us and grow us and challenge us into His image, even knowing how weak and frail we are. This is such a tremendous mercy!

Shannan: I think that’s where the spillover of emotions came for me, when confronted with feeling how inadequate and needy I am, that He’s still kind and shows us grace. It’s His kindness that leads us to repentance and causes us to continue to grow!

Erin: Yeah. There was a Piper quote that I read in the episode. The first time I read it, it was like my mind exploded! There’s a line (and Piper says it better than this) but, “The point of your frailty is to get you into the garage, and [God speaking], “I’m the garage!”

It’s realizing that even my weakness is a mercy if it gets me to the Lord. He is ready and willing to accept me and to change me and transform me. The moment that we’re not emotional about that, the moment that we take that for granted and that feels like no big deal, we need the Lord to soften our hearts again! So, I thought your emotion was really beautiful.

Shannan: Erin, this series has been so great so far. What can we expect on the next episode?

Erin: Well, you can expect me to get out a firehose of hope! We’re going to talk about why, in light of Jesus’ return, we need to stay hopeful.

Shannan: The Deep Well with Erin Davis is part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family, calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ!

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

 

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