The fact I was born with teeth was little known until I got my first email address. When friends and teachers would see it, the same question always followed, “Were you really born with teeth?” Actually, my teeth cut when I was 8 days old, but for all intents and purposes, yes, I really was born with teeth. Interesting personal trivia as it may be, it set my life on an interesting trajectory. The rapid development did not stop there. Rather than crawling, I figured it would be more efficient to skip that step and go straight to walking (pun intended). At face value, the details of my early childhood development may seem a simple story, but as I have grown into adulthood, I have found the need to understand that all things, no matter how insignificant, are used by our loving Heavenly Father. Don’t miss the connection between your physical life and your spiritual life. When God says his word is “quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” (Heb. 4:12) make no mistake, it is God who links physical and spiritual things. As we allow his word to cut through the divide, we find this piercing to be a revelation of both the spiritual and physical dimensions of life.

Before proceeding, I will give a brief caution. While it is important to see life in two dimensions, both spiritual and physical, it can often lead to a near conspiracy theorist mindset of trying to make connections that may not need to be made. Looking at your life in retrospect is beneficial, especially to see the providence and loving guidance of God, but not all of life should be viewed as some spiritual allegory. The work of God in our lives can be confusing, mysterious, and even painful, but in all things, he has a purpose.  With this in mind, please take these snippets from my life, not as some special revelation from God, but as some ordinary lessons learned the hard way to encourage you in your walk with him.

Jumping Ahead | Falling Behind

Life with Christ is a marathon, not a sprint. This can be marked by seasons of rapid growth as well as seasons where it feels as though nothing is happening. The importance of this marathon is not the pace of others around us, but in progress before the Lord. After jumping out to an “early lead,” my childhood would prove to be anything but a walk in the park.

When you are born with teeth or go straight to walking, there is a certain assumption about your abilities. Likewise, when you are born into a Christian family, especially a pastor’s family, there are certain expectations around your spiritual maturity. I began my life with teeth in my head and went straight to walking, I was met with certain obstacles. The spiritual life for most believers is something like this. They gain so much traction and fervor for the Lord only to be tripped up by the first obstacle. In Sunday school, I knew all the right answers, could quote chapter and verse and sing every song like a parrot. Early on, I began skipping the children’s service in favor of attending the main service with the adults. By all outward appearances, I was a dedicated young believer, well ahead in maturity for his age. Yet, there were habits forming in my personal life leading me not to maturity, but to stagnation. When I was about nine I was taken to a podiatrist who told me I had flat feet, the arches of my feet were underdeveloped which would cause my ankles, knees, and eventually hips to cause great pain when walking. If I wanted to exercise my competitive nature, I would have to take up chess instead of basketball. Suddenly, the child who was so far ahead of all the other children was now going to be held back by his own advantage. Spiritually, I began to suffer the all too common complacency. Because I had been taught well, I did not develop a consistent habit of studying well. I was lazy in my Bible memory, resistant in my Bible reading, and nearly comatose in my prayer life. Which, when you look at it, happened in the reverse order; my relationship with the Lord was reluctant in prayer, which bore no desire to study, and without study, memory is a massive challenge no matter how good the AWANA program. All of this happened as I was secure in my position as the pastor’s kid. There is an advantage of being raised in a godly home; I was spared from much of the worldly influence and was trained in the things of the Lord, but as the saying goes, “an unguarded strength is a double weakness.”

As I progressed into my teens I began to find my peers exercising greater faith, resisting temptation better, and growing in their understanding of scripture much faster than I was. Christ’s command is to follow him, not to try to compete with others for the “best Christian award.” Even in this, there is a sense of community among the church where we are told to provoke one another to love and good works (Hebrews 10:24). How can you be provoked to love and good works? The next verse tells us, “not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” Herein lies my problem, I understood this to mean attending church. I was a pastor’s kid, I had no choice but to be in church all the time. Most of the time, I even enjoyed it. There was no way I could be neglecting the gathering together. Yet, my heart was still drawing to a place of apathy. How this happens is a gradual process. Very few people wake up one morning and find themselves stagnant in their faith. It is a process, springing up from either the unguarded strength or even the weakness left unattended. Let me observe, the two significant pieces of my own stagnation and expand into some cautions and encouragements.  

Outward Obedience | Inward Rebellion

There are two main factors which work together to the detriment of a believer. Outward obedience and perceived holiness contrasted with inward rebellion and unrepentant sin. Are we called to obey? Yes. It must not be for show and approval of man, and it must not be for the warm and fuzzy feeling of righteous deeds. The giving of life to obedience and death to rebellion will come from one and the same place, God changing our desire for the lusts of the flesh into the desire to be conformed to the image of his Son, the Savior who was perfectly obedient to the will of the Father.

Outward Obedience

Consider for a moment, the perspective of the outsider examining the fruit of a young person’s life. As mentioned before, all of the outward factors are there. By all appearances, this is a vibrant young believer growing daily. This puts a believer, whether man, woman, or child, in a dangerous place. A good place, but nonetheless dangerous. There is growth to be had in obedient faith; but the moment unchecked temptation enters the picture, there is a long way to fall. Outward obedience can help act as a deterrent from wandering off the path. It by no means ensures a humble heart, but it certainly contributes to a continued softening. More specifically, obedience can accomplish some very valuable things in our lives.

First, in order to obey, one must first know the standard that has been set. By knowing this and submitting to it, whether it is obedience to parents or other authorities or simple obedience of gathering together with other believers, you grow in maturity from the simple steps of obedience. When one knows the proper steps of obedience to God, it is easier to identify when they are not walking in obedience. This leads to the second advantage of obedience. Obedience to God does not always seem joyous or cheerful but even begrudged obedience is obedience. We do not follow the law of God just because of rules, when we do follow in this way it does indeed become a chore. Truly following the law of God means understanding his character and submitting to his holy authority. Though it may not feel joyous, we know true joy does not come from how we feel but from who we follow.

Obedience to God is the greatest ongoing testimony and maturation in the life of a believer. The world turns up its nose at following the commands of God and the idea of submission is foreign and repulsive to the unbeliever. But when believers set aside their desires, passions, and plans, and submit to the will of God there are two significant things that happen. First, the death of self takes place by surrendering personal desire and submitting to the divine will. Even when the act of obedience is begrudged and reluctant, our obedience to God deals small death blows to self. We bring our bodies into submission and take every thought captive, making it obedient to Christ (1Cor 9:27, 2 Cor 10:5) even when we do not want to. In this, you witness how he gives grace to his children and when we reflect back to our children, or to those who ask, we can recount all of God’s faithfulness even in our reluctant obedience. Second, obedience provides the world with a picture of the proper order of the world. God, as Creator and Ruler, has total dominion over his creation. By submitting to him, we signify with our lives a proper standing before God. This is true humility, the creature in right standing before God boasting in nothing but the holy righteousness of its maker. We obey not because we have to but because it is what we were made to do.

Though it is a sanctifying work, the Law does not make us perfect (Hebrews 7:18-19). Obedience is testimony but it does not fix the rebellious heart. When looking back on my life, I recognize and can testify to his goodness even when my obedience was not wholehearted. So what was it that was holding me back? Isn’t obedience supposed to get you out of the dry season? The plodding along is supposed to lead you out of the desert eventually, right? Why was my faith still so stagnant even though I was doing all the right things. While there was some obedience present, it was not total. Which is where problems arose and reared their ugly head.

Inward Rebellion

Obedience, while it has a sanctifying element to it, cannot mask the corruption of our hearts. The demand of God’s law is to “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:1). Holiness is not meant to cover up our corruption, nor is it meant to balance it out. True holiness eradicates rebellion. This was the flaw in my own thinking. I would hear in Sunday School and apologetics lessons that the unbeliever will say “I’m basically a good person.” The classes and teachers were right when they observed that no amount of so-called “goodness” in the life of an unbeliever could make up for the wickedness in their heart.  The good done in life cannot outweigh the bad. Why? Because we are not comparing our life against our own merits or the quality of another person’s life. We don’t weigh out our lives to determine if we were good enough. The bad in our life is a capital offense to a holy God and the good in our life is likened to a filthy rag.

Somehow, the church kid was exempted from these principles. It was not as though I actively thought I was balancing out the good with the bad, but the fruit borne in those times clearly showed that was where my heart was. I took the advantage of being raised in a Christian home for granted. Having been spared an “R-Rated” testimony, my righteousness was somehow a less filthy rag in the sight of God. It is like when Saul was sent forth to fight the Amalekites and was told to wipe them out completely and without exception. Yet Saul left the king of the Amalekites and a herd of sheep and goats alive. Saul at this point in his life was already in a tailspin of bad decisions. Yet, a rebellious decision with a good excuse is still rebellion. My stumbling came when I thought I could both get away with sin and be outwardly righteous. My intention was my exodus out of the sin would eventually make for a great testimony. This was a lifestyle of rebellious decisions with a horrible excuse. Paul said we should not go on sinning to receive grace (Romans 8:1), yet I wanted it to be that way. I now hang my head at the thought. What true desire for God would ever lead to a desire for the world? It was not freedom from my sin that I hoped for, it was God’s approval of it. Naturally, that approval never came. I will address this again in the next section, but I want to quickly peruse through some of the other, more subtle, ways that I found myself seeking to justify my sin in hopes it will cause the wheels to turn in your mind to think of the ways you may be justifying your sin.

In taking my Christian upbringing for granted, I thought I could skip steps. The sin that I fell into in my wandering years was not offset by my obedience. There are many ways I could try to justify my rebellion. If what I was doing was really offensive to God, he would let my sin be exposed. I continued to get away with it, so I must have been safe, right? I mean, didn’t walk away from my faith. I still went to church. I still knew the bible. All of these thoughts crossed my mind more than once. In seeking to be entertained through worldly and carnal desires, my awareness and contempt for the filth I was involved in had nearly completely been silenced. Maybe I had not walked away from my faith, but it had been relocated to the dusty unnoticed corner of my life; it was like a pair of shoes, not needed at home, but the thing you take with you as you go into the world. Church attendance was the greatest band-aid of them all; I loved going to church, and yet the issue of my rebellious heart had not been reconciled. I was treating festering cancer with Neosporin and a band-aid Understand this, there are no shortcuts to holiness. Your sin is your sin and must be reconciled before God. You can explain it away before men all your life, but the heap of rebellion acts is a repulsive offense to a Holy God. Against him and him alone can we sin, and in pretending we can rectify our sin without reconciling with God, is to fall into a wicked self-deception. 

The Boring Testimony

So, what does all this have to do with being born with teeth? Very little; yet, at the same time, it matters greatly. Born With Teeth is just a blog. It will pass away, but the eternal God who gives me the courage to write will never fade away. As I have grown in my walk with God, I hope to pass on those pieces of wisdom I have gained in the hope you will be spared from the mistakes I have made. Let us correct our thinking together. Maturity happens as we live our lives, the question is whether it is being expedited by our habits and practices or it is being hindered and slowed by them. My teeth and big head led me to be able to eat solid food sooner and walking earlier. Similarly, my spiritual upbringing gave me a head start on my walk with Christ. This does not remove the responsibility that falls on me to continue in those things I was graciously given. I did not actively nurture my faith, and my relationship with the Lord suffered because of it. 

Though there is a sting that comes when remembering the hypocrisy of my double life, I rejoice in the Mercy of God who continually reminds me of his goodness as he drew me back to himself. God has called us to be active, sober-minded, joy-filled followers of Christ. We cannot do this when the sin has not been dealt with. Let me charge you with this: Value and treasure your testimony. Your testimony is not your own, it is the story of how the God of the universe ransomed a wretched sinner. He did the saving, he gets the credit.

On that note, if you are a person with a “boring testimony,” treasure it. There are two responses we should have when we hear an “R-Rated testimony” and they should happen in this order. First, Weeping. Weep over the tragedy of sin. Weep over the people hurt. Weep over the world who believes they can find satisfaction in these things. Second, rejoice. Rejoice in the remedy for sin, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Rejoice, the Messiah came to heal the brokenhearted. Rejoice, people are saved to see the King satisfy every hunger of his people. If you are a person with an “R-Rated testimony,” your response is similar. Jesus saved you from the wickedness to walk in newness of life. You have been born again, it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you. You are born again with a clean slate before God, and you are born with teeth, so bite back when the temptation comes around.