Ryan Bassett

Christian Life
Kevin Greer

My Journey with God

My current walk with God is something that has been evolving radically as of lately.

There have been a few concepts that have radically changed my walk with Christ.

One concept that has made an earth-shattering impact on my life is from a book called

Dissident Discipleship by David Ausburger. The concept is called 'tripolar spirituality'.

Basically, there are three categories of spirituality that people live within. They are called

monopolar spirituality, bipolar spirituality, and tripolar spirituality. The first category, monopolar

spirituality, defines an individualistic walk with the self. As Ausburger writes, “Monopolar

spirituality, by definition, is the inner, subjective encounter with one's own inner universal self,

with essential humanness that is reverent towards the uniqueness of the spiritual core that is

universally present in all human beings.” (P. 11.) Monopolar spirituality defines a few years of

my adolescent life. A practical example of someone following a life defined by monopolar

spirituality (and this is a good picture of my life) would be someone who read an Anthony

Robbins book, wrote down some goals and ideas about how to change their belief system,

and walked through their life with their own single-minded goal of reaching those goals. This

is similar to the idea behind Ayn Raynd's philosophy of objectivism in her books Atlas

Shrugged and The Fountainhead, or possibly Nietzsche's idea of the superhuman from Thus

Spoke Zarathustra. The self is God, one finds God through a self-driven walk into their own

being. One may still have a concept of God, but not that of a loving Father who made His

children in His own image to live out their lives in worship and community furthering His

mission..
 The second category is bipolar spirituality. Augsburger defines bi-polar spirituality as

“[uniting] self and God and provides a referent outside the self. By defining spirituality as the

tension between individual solitude and union with the divine, it stimulates critique, reveals

our finitude and brokenness as persons, and offers a divine vision to challenge human

blindness. Crucial as these two poles are, the bi-polar quest fails to situate the self in

community and in vital, necessary relationships. When push comes to shove, it is

ultimately about the individual and the singular relationship to God.' (P. 14) Bipolar

spirituality defines the last year of my walk with God. I had found the Bible, understood that

God wanted to do great things in my life, but I viewed my walk with God as a strictly personal

relationship with Him. his caused me to view relationships with others as an unnecessary or

unimportant component of being a Christian. Tripolar spirituality smashes this idea by saying

that the love of God is only as proportionate as the love you have of your Friend or Enemy.

Tripolar spirituality, the third category of spirituality, is the category I have found myself

living in recently, and defines my current walk with God. I am extremely joyful and happy

about learning and growing into this category. Tripolar spirituality is about knowing the self by

loving the God that is in other people. It recognizes all as perfectly valuable images of God

and strives to love others more than our selves. As Ausburger states “I come to know myself

not alone, but in the company of fellow travelers; I come to know others not merely in

collusion, but in shared commitment to the One who brings us together justly and safely in the

triumphant surrender of ultimate trust. Inseparable, indivisible, the three poles of tri-polar

spirituality each define and determine the authenticity of the other parts.” (P. 13) Tripolar

spirituality is about community, about selfless service and sacrifice, about true discipleship.
 Another radical concept that has shaped my life recently is the idea of enjoying Gods

creation to the fullest. I've learned that in Genesis, God created the world and said it was

good. Genesis 1:31 states “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”.

Understanding this has enabled me to live a joyous life of enjoying Gods creation rather than

limiting myself to a life focused strictly on boundaries and taking away of what I can not

participate in. For example, it was a radical idea to me that drinking a single beer with a

Christian friend could be considered okay by God and was not a terrible sin.

Another radical change in my thinking was changing the way I looked at women.

Genesis 2:22 says “and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and

brought her to the man”. This has helped me understand that women are created for men and are

our helper in our journey with God. For a while I was hung up on a lie. I believed I could not

look at a girl without lusting in some way. Even if I was having pure thoughts, I felt fear of

sinning always. The fact that God created women so beautiful and sculpted her with His own

hands gives me a new understanding of God and this world.

I still find it extremely important to understand that sin is rampant in this world and that

everything that God created good has the potential of being altered for the worse in sin.

Pornography and promiscuity, for example, are sinful and a destruction of Gods original

intentions and His perfect creation. Something that I learned from a lecture from a Christian

rapper named DA TRUTH was that (and this is speaking about the culture of rap specifically,

but is evident and applicable to all cultures), that it isn't specifically the rap culture that is sinful

and evil. Rap, essentially, is beats, rhythm, and flow. A culture that embraces rap music and

enjoys that music is not bad in and of itself. It's as soon as you put promiscuous girls in music

videos, foul language, and lyrics full of idolizations of money, sex, clothes, and fame, that the
culture becomes sinful. This idea helped me tremendously because it meant that I didn't have

to ditch my love of music, movies, books, and the internet, just because there are some

aspects of those things that are sinful. It meant that I could enjoy these things as God's

creation. Of course, I'd have to have discernment, wisdom, and especially discipline by the

grace of God to know the difference.

Another life changing concept that changed me was from a sermon series by the

pastor CJ Mahaney. He said that they key to viewing others the way God looks at people is to

“discern and give thanks and appreciate the evidences of grace in other people's lives.” This

means that I can look at other people with eyes that are searching out the person's spiritual

gifts and evidences of fruits of the spirit. I'm now able to look at my friends with less criticism

and judgment because I'm not looking for everything they're doing that's sinful. I have eyes

that are looking for the manifestations of God in their lives. I'm more immersed with my friends

in doing things together as a community and not a holier-than-thou spectator and righteous

judge.

To come to my present position in my walk with God, there have been a few invaluable

resources that have shaped me into who I am. One author is CJ Mahaney, lead pastor of

Sovereign Grace Church. His sermons and lectures on idolatry have shaped my thoughts and

my walk with God in tremendous ways. He taught me what it means to have a healthy fear of

God and to, by the grace of God, diminish the idolatry of fear of man. Fear of man was

something that invaded my life and shaped my every waking moment—one of my prominent

sins. His idea that wanting an unhealthy amount of approval from others and having

overwhelming thoughts about what others think about you is not something that comes from a

lack of self-esteem but is rather an idolatrous problem in the heart and something that can be

renewed by applying the truths of Jesus Christ. He also greatly inspired my striving for the
ideal of humility from his book entitled Humility. For a long time I dealt with pride—I thought

that a healthy sense of pride was something to be respected. I strived for it. Now with an

accurate view of humility and pride I am growing in humility and diminishing pride as God

wants.

Another person that greatly influenced me was Francis Chan. He had a sermon series

called “Lukewarmness”. His idea that at the judgment seat of God, God will 'spit out the

lukewarm' from the body, radically changed my life. It gave me the push to fully dedicate my

life to God and His Will. I dedicated my life fully to Jesus Christ because of Francis Chan. I

prayed one night that I would do anything and go anywhere for Him. John Piper was also

influential in this aspect of “go all in”. His popular sermon “Don't Waste Your Life” had a similar

message that affected me deeply. He challenged youth to get off Facebook and do something

with their life. He taught me that God wants radical followers and especially young followers.

Another person that influenced me was Paul Washer. He helped me develop my

beliefs about understanding of Christian dating. He helped me understand what Biblical

masculinity truly was and what it meant to be a man. He helped me shed my belief that

“because everyone else is dating, so should I”. He helped me focus more on developing

myself into the image of Christ first. He also helped me solidify my dedication to God of purity

and abstinence.

For a while, I dedicated my life and my actions completely to God in a very hardcore

way. I was interested in pleasing God as much as possible and found every way I could

repent of my past sins. I went back to my high school and confessed to my teachers and the

principal that I cheated on some tests in my classes (which lead to a conversation about
Christ with my French teacher). I also confessed to my mom and my dad that I had lied to

them in the past in order to skip school. I found two places to serve, one was a horse ranch

and another was food shelter, and I went four times a week in order to please God. I also

deleted all the music from my Ipod and computer that I didn't buy, starting over with my music

collection, in order to repent of stealing music online. I also deleted thousands and thousands

of digital products that I had downloaded through private communities. For example, I had

many products from entrepreneur and business guru Jay Abraham worth thousands of

dollars, which I deleted. I deleted all promiscuous and pornographic images and videos from

my computer and confessed my previous struggle with lust (I have not seen a pornographic

image or video since that day over a year and a half ago). My walk with Jesus Christ was

strong during this time, but I was doing it in a way that made it hard to relate to others.

In conclusion, my walk with God has been great and constantly changing. I hope that in

the future, I will develop a specific understanding of what my spiritual gifts are. This will allow

me to serve Jesus Christ more fully. I hope to have a clear understanding of my “niche” is for

furthering the Kingdom of God. Mark Moore, my Acts teacher, has helped me with a strateg

for this already. He said that you can find your spiritual gift by walking into a room, looking

around, and asking yourself, “What can I do to make this room better?”. The specific thing you

see in that room that you could change will give you insight into what your gifting is. I believe

my area to be in computers and technology from this exercise. Another thing I hope that my

future walk with God includes is a deeper understanding and recalling of the Scriptures. I

have multiple classes with memory verse assignments and I hope to use these to their full

advantage. Also in the future, I want to do God's work. If God called me to do a missions trip,

for example, and I had take a semester off school, I would do it. I want some real world

experience under my belt. Lastly, something Id like to grow in is cultivating the gifts of the
Spirit. I'd like to cultivate the gifts of the Holy Spirit in every interaction with my friends and

with others, including peace, humility, patience, love, and kindness, and gentleness.