Descriptions of the Stages of Faith
If you haven’t had a chance to read the introduction to the stages of faith, read here. If you have, a fuller description of each stage is below.
Stages 1-3
Stage 1 – Awakening to God
In this stage, there is an awakening to the reality of God. While this stage is experienced differently by each person, at the basic level, we come to recognize that God exists in this stage. This initial recognition may be accompanied by a great sense of God’s love for us, a realization that He is a marvelous Creator, or an acceptance that He is our rescuer and redeemer.
Stage 2 – The Life of Discipleship
In this stage, we have a great need to be in Christian community and to learn about the faith. At this stage, we may be very eager to join small groups, take classes at church, participate in every possible church activity we can, learn to pray, read the Bible, and understand Christian theology. We wish to soak up everything we can about the faith.
Stage 3 –The Life of Service
In this stage, our focus turns increasingly outward. We begin to recognize that we have desires, gifts, and unique calls to serve God, the Church, and others. We may begin to teach classes at church, lead small groups, do hospital visits, work on justice issues, lead mission trips, tend to the church grounds, be greeters at church, help with the church finances, organize the coffee fellowship at church, or do a wide variety of other activities that show our love for God and others. In this time, we may carefully consider our vocations and ask how God has uniquely gifted and wired us to serve in this world and to move towards living out those vocations. This is generally a time of great productivity and fruitfulness.
The Wall and Stage 4
The Wall
We call the next stage of the journey the wall because frankly, it feels like we are coming up against a wall or banging our heads against a wall. We have a sense that “things are just not working out anymore.” It can be a deeply frustrating, painful, disorienting, and even alarming place to be. We can feel confused and even out of sync with our church communities.
The Wall is often brought about by some crisis. In my case, the wall was brought about by the fact that I was nearly forty and still single. There are of course many other crises that can bring on the wall, including divorce, death of a loved one, job loss, a betrayal, a loss of a dream, an accident, sickness, an identity crisis, unresolved questions of faith, a hurtful experience in church, a sense of distance between us and God, “a dark night of the soul”, etc., etc., etc.
And it is not only negative experiences that can bring us to a wall. Sometimes positive things in our lives can usher us into the wall. As one example, for some people, having children is a wonderful gift but can also feel like an overwhelming experience that simply highlights their own inadequacies to parent, to love, and to provide for their children.
Whatever crisis we might face, the experience of the wall generally throws us into a time of deep questioning. We may question ourselves, God, the Church, the Bible, or the tenants of our faith. We might feel distant or angry at God, and we probably have no idea as to what He is up to in our lives. We may wonder where we will be after this crisis subsides, and in fact, we may wonder if the crisis will ever subside. It can be a profoundly dark, confusing and uncertain time in our spiritual lives.
For some of us, when we are at a wall, we may slip back into addictions and negative and sinful patterns of life that we had thought we had overcome for good. Or we might take on new sinful patterns and habits. To the outside world, we may look like we are “backsliding” or “losing it”. As a result, people’s responses to us may not always be the most helpful to us in these times. As Hapberg and Guelich say:
People at the discipleship stage (stage 2), secure with what is right for them and with a strong sense of belonging, may think that people who appear to be questioning or even losing their faith on the journey inward (stage 4) are not strong enough, not faithful enough, not willing enough, or just plain not Christian. Because of their present security in the journey, they find it difficult to comprehend the questioning on the inward journey as another step along the way. (p. 12)
The reality, however, is that when all these things are happening, we are not necessarily going backwards. Rather, we are being invited by God to take a deeper, inwards journey that will take us forward in the faith. Moving forward, however, requires that we press through the wall. There is a reason that questions of faith are arising, because in reality, our stated beliefs have not always been aligned with our unconscious beliefs that direct our lives. Moreover, some of our deepest beliefs about God (whether consciously or subconsciously) have been plain wrong. There is also a reason that old and new sinful patterns are emerging. By sheer willpower, we have been able to “do the right thing” in the past, but the crisis has thrown us off kilter. We begin to see that while our outward actions have been conformed to God’s will for us, our deepest desires have not yet been transformed. God is showing us that there is deeper work for Him to do in us.
Thus, what happens in our subsequent spiritual life depends on how we respond to the wall. At the wall, we can choose to abandon our faith all together (or significant parts of it), we can fall back into an earlier, more comfortable stage of the journey, or we can choose to press through the wall and go deeper with the Lord.
From The Critical Journey:
The Wall invites us to integrate our spiritual selves with the rest of us. And that involves facing our own and others’ demons. We must face that which we fear the most, and that is why it is so unsavory, and why so many people only enter the Wall under duress. At the Wall we are usually asked to embrace our illnesses and addictions and to relinquish that which we’ve clung to or which we worship. We encounter oceans of unresolved grief covered by anger, bitterness, martyrdom, hurt or fear. The Wall is a place where we confront the desire to deny or disguise the inner self and begin to mentor the true self- the self God intended for us- and recognize the meaning of our shadow.
The two qualities that are most helpful to have in the Wall, although difficult to ask for, are clarity to know the truth or the call in the Wall, and the courage to face the truth and to move forward. The Wall is the work of the heart but it is not for the weak of heart. That is why we have so many clever ways to avoid it. (p. 233)
Stage 4: The Journey Inwards
If we have the courage to press through the wall, we end up in Stage 4. (Or it could happen the other way too, as we move into Stage 4, we are led into a wall or I should clarify, walls, because we are likely to experience numerous walls throughout the Christian journey.)
In stage 4, God calls us to release many things into His hands, including self-centeredness and self-reliance, pride, a need to control, disordered attachments and desires, addictions, false images of God and faulty beliefs that we consciously or unconsciously hold, false images of ourselves, and many other things. God calls us to a place of “integrity” where we put away our false selves and embrace the true person that God has created us to be.
God also calls us to a place of deep emotional and spiritual healing, and He calls us into a place of “being with Him” rather than “doing for Him.” Overall, Stage 4 invites us into a place of deeper trust in and surrender to the Lord. When we emerge from Stage 4, we are different people.
Stages 5-6
Stage 5 – The Outward Journey
Once we emerge from Stage 4, we begin to be very active again for the Lord in whatever unique ways that God has called us. Again, we find ourselves in a time of great productivity and fruitfulness. Some of our activities for the Lord are the same as the activities we did before we went through Stage 4. Some of what we do is entirely new, emerging from a call that emerged in our inward journey.
While we may look outwardly similar to a person in Stage 3 (The productive life), the activity we do for the Lord now flows out of a new, grounded center found in the Lord and a deep sense of calling. In Stage 5, we are more surrendered to the Lord and we have a deepening sense of God’s love for us, as well as our love for God. We are much more other-centered and look out for the interest of others. We also have a deeper sense of calmness or stillness. Many things that would have rattled us previously have very little effect on us now. This is because we have a deeper trust in the Lord. This deeper level of trust leads us to a place where we can let go more easily, cease our striving, and just be “God’s person”.
It is important to note that not everyone we know will respond to us in a positive manner when we are in Stage 5. Sometimes, when we live out our journey in this stage, we begin to act in ways that perplex others who have known us for a long time. Our changed inner priorities and sense of call lead us to neglect certain activities that were once important to us or to other people, but are just not important to us anymore (and could in fact even be distractions to carrying out the call that God has given us).
Stage 6 – The Life of Love
Stage 6 is a fuller blossoming of Stage 5. We live deeply out of the overflow of God’s love for us. We are filled with His love, and then this love overflows out of us, poured back onto God and onto others. We live a life of surrender, obedience, and abandon to God. We are deeply compassionate and wise.
At this stage, we may or may not be as productive as we once were as we deeply rest in God’s love. When we inhabit Stage 6, we also live in ways that are increasingly detached from the things of this world. Much that has a strong hold on others just has no attraction for us, so some people may see us as “otherworldly” or “wasting our lives.” We, however, know that we are living our lives in the fullest way possible, as we live deeply surrendered to the Lord and dwell in His love.