Today I’m starting a new series that I’m naming Deviation from Design. We just ended a previous series called Wholeness by Design, and now we’re moving into the next phase of the journey.
This is where we begin to examine how we’ve deviated from the wholeness God designed for us: what has shaped that deviation, how it shows up in our lives today, and how awareness of those patterns becomes a way forward.
The goal is to help us become more intentional as we cultivate a life increasingly oriented toward God’s design for wholeness.
It will probably get uncomfortable, even painful, as we work through this.
However, gaining a deeper understanding of how we’ve deviated from God’s vision for wholeness gives us the clarity we need to move forward. It enables us to cultivate a life increasingly aligned with God with greater intentionality and purpose.
Just a few weeks ago, we were celebrating Easter. Rightly so.
The death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is central to our faith. It is powerful, and we should continually remember and celebrate it.
However, if our entire Christian narrative revolves around redemption and what it means for us, then the story is severely incomplete.
Even as we reflect on redemption, we have to seriously consider the factors that made redemption necessary.
We don’t think enough about those factors. And I believe that’s part of the reason spiritual growth stalls.
If we don’t understand the gravity of how deeply sin has shaped our nature, then we don’t truly respond in a way that matches that gravity.
If we don’t understand the gravity of how deeply sin has shaped our nature, then we don’t truly respond in a way that matches that gravity.
For example, I can think about my own experience.
I gave my life to Christ at a very young age. I knew I had prayed the sinner’s prayer. But even after that, I continued to respond to altar calls again and again.
Every time there was an altar call, I would go up and give my life to Christ all over again. Because it always felt like the previous time didn’t take.
I would give my life to Christ, and then I would still see myself doing many of the same things I used to do. I would still see myself committing actions I knew were clearly sin.
And so, I felt the need to reset—to start over again.
In my mind, after giving my life to Christ, those things were not supposed to remain. And the fact that they were made me feel like something was missing.
Maybe you can relate. Or perhaps your experience has taken a different shape.
You may have seen this depicted in a movie: someone is deep in addiction, gives their life to Christ, and immediately becomes completely free, fully transformed overnight.
The subtle message becomes that spiritual transformation is dramatic and immediate.
It could be that way for some, but for the majority of us, it is not.
Many of us come to Christ and are told:
“You are forgiven.”
“You are a new creation, the old has passed away.”
“Your life will not remain the same.”
These statements are biblical. They are true.
But there are also several other biblical statements that add nuance and complexity to this truth, and we don’t often hold them all together.
Consider this:
Even though the Apostle Paul stated that when we come to Christ, we are a new creation—our old life is gone, and new life has begun (2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT),
Yet he also speaks of himself:
“And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t… I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway… I love God’s law with all my heart, but there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.”
(Romans 7:18–23 NLT)
This does not sound like a person who has completely broken free from the past.
I relate to him so very much. I think you do too.
But does this reality then negate the passage that says we are a new creation?
Absolutely not.
The truth of each of these passages is fully revealed when held together and not in isolation.
However, because we often explore Scripture in fragments, we miss the deeper revelation that is only evident when held in cohesion.
The reality of our life with God is this:
Even after clearly giving our lives to Christ, we still struggle.
Old patterns don’t disappear as quickly as we thought. Certain desires remain. Certain reactions persist. Internal conflicts continue.
And now we’re caught in this tension:
I am a new creation in Christ, so why am I still struggling with sinful tendencies?
I am a new creation in Christ, so why am I still struggling with sinful tendencies?
This dissonance is real and carries great consequences.
When we do not fully understand how deeply sin has shaped our nature, both our interpretations of our experience and our responses to it become distorted. This may show up in various ways.
When we feel this dissonance between how we believe our lives are supposed to be and how they actually are, our immediate intuition is to cover up.
So when we come together, it becomes performative.
We say the right things. We present ourselves the way we believe we’re expected to.
We don’t actually talk about the struggles we’re facing—because we’re not supposed to be facing them.
When our experience doesn’t match the narrative we’ve been taught, we reinterpret it.
Have you ever come across ideas that suggest that because Christ has already paid for sin, there are no real consequences to our actions—that everything is covered, so long as we ask for forgiveness?
And while there is a level of truth in that, what this way of thinking begins to do is quietly remove any real sense of responsibility.
It reduces grace to something that enables our sinful behavior.
Grace is no longer understood as something that meets us and forms us, but as something that explains why change is not required.
Grace is no longer understood as something that meets us and forms us, but as something that explains why change is not required.
And in doing so, it gives us a way to make sense of the dissonance—we are not living in alignment, but we no longer feel the weight of that misalignment as strongly.
On the other hand, we may also reinterpret sinful behaviors themselves.
If I am a new creation, yet I persist in these actions, perhaps they are not really sinful.
Perhaps this was always God’s will for me to teach me something else.
I recently read a post that says:
“Perhaps God allowed you to hit rock bottom so you can discover that he is the rock at the bottom.”
This phrase may sound inspiring, but it subtly reframes what is actually happening. It turns the consequences of our actions into something divinely intended, rather than something we are meant to confront.
Prayer becomes performative.
We say what we believe we should say. We use the right words.
We say, “God, I submit to your will,” even when that’s not actually what’s happening within us.
When what we say doesn’t align with our true thoughts, emotions, and will, then who is actually standing before God?
Is it our whole being—or a constructed version of ourselves?
If it’s the latter, how can that be a real relationship?
The place where we should experience wholeness becomes a place of fragmentation—between who we are and who we believe we need to be before God.
The place where we should experience wholeness becomes a place of fragmentation—between who we are and who we believe we need to be before God.
I’ve also seen people become isolated because of this.
The gap between expectation and reality creates disillusionment. People begin to feel judged. They feel like they’re the only ones struggling while everyone else appears to have it together.
Conversely, others believe everyone is being pretentious because at different points the mask will drop and you will see telltale signs that this supposed perfect Christian is just as imperfect as you.
We know this logically but experiencing it makes it all too real.
So, if we are all lying to ourselves and judging each other at the same time, why bother being together? So, some believe, “I’d rather just focus on my ‘personal’ relationship with God, alone.” So, they withdraw and become lone Christians.
Ironically, this is exactly where the devil wants us: Alone.
Scripture says the devil prowls around like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8). And the lion knows that the easiest prey is the one that is already isolated.
Yet, on the other hand, when we come together but remain performative or pretentious, this is not much different from being alone. The devil also thrives in falsehood—Scripture says lying is his nature (John 8:44).
So, whether we are isolated or coming together in falsehood, the result is the same: we open ourselves up to the devil’s attack.
In the parable of the sower, Scripture describes how a seed, representing the gospel, falls on shallow soil, and although the seed sprouts, the plant soon wilts under the hot sun because the plant was not deeply rooted (Matthew 13:5–6).
Here, the hot sun represents pressure. This describes a faith that wilts when it encounters pressure.
I can relate to this experience. As I mentioned earlier, I gave my life to Christ at a young age. At that age, everything seemed simple and straightforward. However, around the time I graduated from college and really began entering adulthood, I found that many of my Christian teachings did not adequately explain the realities of life I was now encountering as a young adult.
And somehow deep inside, I began to wonder if the whole idea of God was a myth. Or perhaps, the teachings weren’t quite correct.
In essence, it seemed to me like there were holes in the claims of our Christian faith, and that quietly destabilized my trust. Deep inside, I would say that I became agnostic for a short period of time. I still went to church. I just wasn’t sure what to believe.
By God’s grace, this did not last for very long. God, in his mercy, helped me out of my confusion and brought me into a deeper relationship with him.
However, there are other situations where people embrace the faith, and certain experiences do not quite align with their expectations, so questions arise, and soon the entire faith feels unstable.
Some drift toward other frameworks that feel more coherent. In essence, they begin to construct a version of spirituality that feels coherent to them, but is divorced from the tenets of our faith. This is actually quite prevalent today. You may have noticed this. For others, they slip into agnosticism—not entirely giving up on the idea that there is a God, but just feeling a bit too confused, so it feels safer not to engage at all.
There are many contributing factors to the tension we encounter as we seek to progress in our faith, but I do believe one of them is this:
We don’t fully grasp how deep the corruption of our human nature runs. And we never completely will. But we also don’t spend enough time even considering it.
Sometimes it is because we are trying so hard not to slip into a work-based type of spirituality, which is another wrong end of the spectrum. Other times, we want to remain in this optimistic view of ourselves, and we co-opt the Holy Spirit and the story of redemption to help us stay in this place where we are feeling good about ourselves.
And this is how we come to emphasize the idea of “It’s all in the past. That’s why you have a large windshield and a small rearview mirror.”
Well, if it were fully in the past, then why are we still struggling?
So if this is true—if the tension we experience is, in part, because we have not fully reckoned with how deeply sin has shaped our human nature—then we cannot move forward by simply trying harder or by reinterpreting our experience to make it more comfortable.
We have to look at it more closely.
Over the next few weeks, I want to invite you to journey with me as we examine how this corruption actually plays out in our lives today—how it shapes the way we think, what we desire, the choices we make, the actions we take, how we move through our environments, and even how we engage God.
Some of what surfaces may feel familiar.
Some may be uncomfortable.
Some may reveal patterns you have not previously considered.
But the goal is not to condemn or discourage.
The goal is to develop a deeper awareness of what is already at work within us, so that we are no longer navigating blindly.
Awareness allows us to begin responding with intention.
And my hope is that as we grow in that awareness, we will also grow in clarity and be better able to orient our lives toward God’s design. In this way, we pursue God’s wholeness with greater honesty, greater intentionality, and greater coherence.
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