Are You More Focused on Losing Weight than Losing Sin? Gaining Muscle than Gaining Grace? Looking Younger or Looking More Like Christ?

While vacationing in Colorado, my wife Lisa and I spent an early evening at the Iron Mountain Hot Springs. We heard a group of women in another pool discussing a surprising number of medical options to keep women looking young (even though none of them were past their mid-thirties). What they did to their faces, injected into their bodies, paid to undergo treatments, and the effort they spent investigating and researching new options (“This is what all the Kardashians are doing now,” one woman opined) astonished us.

As we climbed into another pool, Lisa asked me if I wished she were more into that stuff. “What were you thinking listening to them?”

“All I could think of was William Law’s admonition”—Law was an eighteenth-century Anglican writer. “Women and men should earnestly pursue humility, patience, generosity, faith, compassion, courage, kindness and forgiveness with the same intensity that those in the world pursue wealth, fame, worldly achievement, and physical beauty.”

The deception is that looking like you’re twenty-five when you’re fifty, or fifty when you’re seventy, is somehow worthy of more time and money and attention than growing in Christlikeness, whatever your age may be. But in all honesty, most of us as Christians can fall into seasons where we spend far more time and energy trying to look our best, lower our golf handicap, increase our social-media followers, lose weight, regrow hair, and increase the size of our financial investments far more than we think about growing in humility, surrender, discernment, and patience.

This, even though Scripture teaches us:

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins (2 Peter 1:5-9).

Linguistically, it is nearly impossible to define “make every effort” apart from an affirmation of human cooperation in spiritual growth. That understanding is buttressed in Romans 6:11-14 and Philippians 2:12-13, among other places.

The Glorious Pursuit—that is, the spiritual call to practice the virtues in the same way that a body builder lifts weights to shape his or her physique—is a cherished ancient practice in the Christian tradition, though it has grown out of favor as of late. Growing in the virtues won’t save us; but salvation must lead to growing in the virtues or one could question the reality of our salvation experience.

Elsewhere William Law tells the sad tale of a man who wore himself out so that he could die with a thousand pairs of boots and spurs. He sacrificed his health, relationships, sleep, recreation, everything, in a zealous pursuit to finally obtain one thousand pairs of boots and spurs. Eventually, he reached his goal—and when he died, everyone remarked how utterly ridiculous, foolish, and misguided his life turned out to be. Who could wear a thousand pairs of boots and spurs to begin with?

But then—and this is where it gets convicting—Law asks what the difference is between socking away a thousand pairs of boots and spurs or a thousand dollars. You can no more spend a dollar in eternity than you can don a pair of boots and spurs.

The Glorious Pursuit is a call to live the truly abundant life as God defines it—a life made possible by God’s grace, empowered by God’s Spirit, and modeled by God’s Son. It’s a pursuit that matters in every age, without regard to “fashion.” When Christians become more concerned about demonstrating generosity, compassion, and kindness than we are about gathering a huge pile of money, impressing others with our looks, or getting lost in nonstop entertainment, we witness the reality of another world. In fact, it’s a competing worldview altogether. If we take the virtues seriously, we should be more concerned with humility than fame, even fearing the fame that could jeopardize humility, which is far more valuable in the sight of God. We must pursue compassion and kindness and patience, even being thankful for the opportunities to grow in these virtues, rather than resent the frustrating people who are necessary in order for us to display and grow in compassion, kindness, and patience.

Practicing the Christian virtues is an ancient journey, well-attested to in Scripture and in the most beloved Christian classics, yet it is also a modern highway to spiritual growth and discipleship. Though I first wrote this book two decades ago, ancient Christian practices have a way of finding new relevance with every generation of believers who embrace the glorious opportunity of growing in Christlikeness. I pray you will find freedom, direction, and inspiration in the pages that follow.

P.S.

Because virtues aren’t necessary for our salvation, some have questioned the pursuit that I believe Scripture says is essential, but let me make this clear: I don’t practice the virtues to get into heaven. In a sense, I practice the virtues so my wife’s life doesn’t feel like hell! Consider this: our family bears the highest cost for our lack of sanctification. With God’s word and the Holy Spirit within us, we tolerate so many sins and neglect to cultivate the positive virtues simply because we choose to live in a less than Christ-like state. None of us will reach perfection—least of all me. But we can make much more progress than we do.

The Glorious Pursuit examines the ancient discipline of cultivating virtues by focusing on key ones, including humility, surrender, detachment, generosity, patience, thankfulness, gentleness, fortitude, and others.

Many recovery groups have utilized this book over the years as a means to focus on positive growth while attempting to replace a negative habit. The men’s group at Cherry Hills went through the book this past Fall as a way to take spiritual growth more seriously.

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