The 180 Church Podcast with Dr. Sammy and Friends

There is no sugar-coating that the pursuit of holiness is fraught with difficulties, resistance, and heartache. When we accept and follow Christ, we can expect discouragement and loss of confidence during our spiritual walk. However, the resistance that we face, the enemy we battle against, and the fight for our faith provides evidence that the Father's will is at work. It leads to breakthroughs in light of the trials and discouragement. For believers, discouragement through the lens of faith is an encouraging direction, and for seekers, the gospel is an invitation to realize their destiny in Christ who has overcome darkness.

We often struggle in our spiritual journeys because we lack the critical frameworks with which to examine our lives. The parable of the sower teaches us three lenses we can use to examine our lives: the spiritual lens, the external or worldly lens, and the internal or character lens. Unless we cultivate spiritual wisdom and nurture the seeds God plants within us, we remain in a spiritual fog and either analyze our lives through the wrong lens, or fail to analyze our lives at all. Spiritual growth is not the result of chance, but instead is the fruit of being deliberate in our walk with God. It is when we put in the hard work to follow God that we break free from spiritual fear, grow in spiritual confidence, and flourish as the versions of ourselves God has destined for us to become.

Our beliefs are not always reflected in what we say our values are, but are ultimately reflected in our actions. In the church -- where pursuing a life led by Christ and becoming more like him is of utmost value -- competing commitments, implicit personal beliefs, and sin come into conflict with God's values via self-sabotage, conscious or subconscious ignorance, and rationalized excuses. How can the church come together to create a palpable culture of Christ-likeness when our values generate friction with Christ's values? It is through the wholehearted pursuit of Jesus with community, the unedited verbalization of the friction we feel to allow it to spark change, and the leading of the Spirit who comes to confront, correct, and guide us in pursuing the person of Christ.

Dr. Calvin Brown serves as a co-pastor for Destiny Church and a leadership partner for Arrow Leadership, an organization dedicated to the global development of Christian leadership. Dr. Brown concludes his "Q5" series by asking us how we can finish our lives well. As we embrace the whole of our stories and better understand how our stories fit into God's overarching plan for us, Dr. Brown invites us to consider that a life lived well means a life lived sacrificially for others and with a purpose oriented towards eternity. It's through understanding that our lives are trivial compared to what God has in store for us, that we can fulfill God's callings for our lives.

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." John 10:10 

From the believer’s personal pursuit of holiness and sharing the good news whilst navigating life, oftentimes we encounter a clash between vision and the reality of culture in the scope of the larger community. Discipleship extends from ourselves to the pursuit of holiness of the community as a whole, but how can we create a culture together that aligns with the mission of the kingdom? In this two-part series, “Creating a Culture of Holiness,” Dr. Sammy examines how the church can reconcile the collision of a disparate culture and the vision that Christ has for the church by paying attention to the wind of the spirit, identify our cultural silos, and center our lives around a community culture that seeks to do the work of the Lord.

Dr. Calvin Brown serves as a co-pastor for Destiny Church and a leadership partner for Arrow Leadership, an organization dedicated to the global development of Christian leadership. In part 4 of his “Q5” series, Dr. Brown helps us consider the question of “What is My Plan?” for the vision and calling that God may have in our lives. Through collaboration in prayer with the Father and a four-step strategy sourced from the book of Nehemiah to help us execute God's plans through us, Dr. Brown leads us through a macroscopic and practical framework for seeing God's work unfold in our lives.

Sometimes the greatest enemy to the spiritual life is not evil, but good. 

Dr. Calvin Brown serves as a co-pastor for Destiny Church and a leadership partner for Arrow Leadership, an organization dedicated to the global development of Christian leadership. In the third installment of his “Q5” series, Dr. Brown discusses the question that follows naturally after reflecting on our stories: “What is my dream?” It is often at the disruptive moments in our lives that we pause and encounter the Father’s holiness and brilliance, and we learn just how wide the chasm is between His perfection and our own brokenness. Dr. Brown invites us to pay close attention to these moments where we learn more about who God is and who we are, for by doing so we can hear more clearly where God is calling each one of us to go, and see how each of our stories is a meaningful, precious part of the glorious narrative that He is writing.

In the Christian journey, the pursuit of holiness can often feel like a lofty ideal or an impossible pipe dream of a cliche. We tend to believe that a dichotomy exists between those few who are chosen to champion the gospel and the inherently mediocre masses disqualified from pursuing God for various reasons. However, the story we find in the New Testament is not a highlight reel of the accomplishments of so-called spiritual giants, but rather a pursuit to be Christ-like that points to the one and only hero of our stories. Holiness is a daily choice to surrender to the Father despite life’s detours, twists, and turns, and a pursuit of progression towards the grace that makes us grow closer to the image of Jesus.