I miss the late David Powlison (1949–2019).
I was recently reminded of the section below adapted from his 2017 book, Making All Things New: Restoring Joy to the Sexually Broken. It has stayed with me and encouraged me and instructed me.
The key to getting a long view of sanctification is to understand direction.
What matters most is not the distance you’ve covered.
It’s not the speed you’re going.
It’s not how long you’ve been a Christian.
It’s the direction you’re heading. . . .
Some people, during a season of life, leap like gazelles.
Let’s say you’ve been living in flagrant sexual sins. You turn from sin to Christ, and the open sins disappear.
No more fornication: you stop sleeping with your girlfriend or boyfriend.
No more exhibitionism: you stop wearing that particularly revealing blouse.
No more pornography: you stop surfing the net or reading the latest salacious romances.
No more adultery or homosexual encounters: you break it off once and for all. Never again.
It sometimes happens like that. Not always, of course, but a gazelle season is a joy to all.
For other people (or the same people at another season of life) sanctification is a steady, measured walk.
You learn truth.
You face your fears and step out toward God and people.
You learn to serve others constructively.
You build new disciplines.
You learn basic life wisdom.
You learn who God is, who you are, how life works.
You learn to worship, to pray, to give time, money, and care.
And you grow steadily—wonder of wonders!
Other people (or the same people in another season) are trudging.
It’s hard going.
You limp.
You don’t seem to get very far very fast.
Old patterns of desire or fear are stubborn.
But if you trudge in the right direction—high praises to the Lord of glory! One day, you will see him face-to-face. You will be like him.
Some people crawl on their hands and knees for a long or short season.
Progress is painful.
You’re barely moving.
But praise God for the glory of his grace, you are inching in the right direction.
And there may be times when you’re not even moving—stuck in gridlock, broken down—but you’re still facing in the right direction.
That’s Psalm 88, the “basement” of the Psalms. The writer feels dark despair—but it’s despair oriented in the Lord’s direction. In other words, it’s still faith, even when faith feels so discouraged you can only say, “You are my only hope. Help. Where are You?” That kind of prayer counts—it made it into the Bible.
There are times you might fall asleep in the blizzard and lie down, comatose and forgetful—but grace wakes you up, reminds you, and gets you moving again.
There are times you slowly wander off in the wrong direction, beguiled by some false promise, or disappointed by a true promise that you falsely understood.
But he who began a good work in you awakens you from your sleepwalk, sooner or later, and puts you back on the path.
And then there are times you revolt and do a face-plant in the muck, a swan dive into the abyss—but grace picks you up and washes you off again, and turns you back.
Slowly you get the point. Perhaps then you leap and bound, or walk steadily, or trudge, or crawl, or face with greater hope in the right direction.
We love gazelles. Graceful leaps make for great stories about God’s wonder-working power.
And we like steady and predictable. It seems to vindicate our efforts at making the Christian life work in a businesslike manner.
But, in fact, there’s no formula, no secret, no technique, no program, no schedule, and no truth that guarantees the speed, distance, or time frame. On the day you die, you’ll still be somewhere in the middle. But you will be further along.
When we lengthen the battle, we realize that our business is the direction.
