That’s the title of the new book by our friend and mentor, Jeff Floyd. It’s the third and final book in a series called The Warfare Trilogy. Previous titles in the series include Neither Give Place and A New Look at an Old War.

Jeff has had a very long ministry helping people break free from the bondage of the past. His materials are thoroughly biblical, and they are grounded in decades of hands-on experience as a pastor, evangelist, and teacher. More importantly, they deal with the root issues affecting so many in our society today. Those who have struggled for years can find real, lasting freedom as Jeff gently challenges them to examine their belief system and have their minds renewed.

Confident Obedience continues this tradition, focusing specifically on the nature and practice of faith. Jeff views faith through the perspective of spiritual warfare, and this leads to many new insights. Those who view faith as merely holding the right beliefs about God will have that viewpoint expanded as they see how faith is an absolutely essential part of an ongoing walk with Jesus. They will begin to see faith as a daily, active, and interactive relationship with God.

While the whole book is worthwhile, the appendices alone make this book worthy of investing both your time and money. Highly recommended!

One of the best chapters in the book is entitled “The Leader’s Vision.” He deals with three areas:

1. Where do leaders get their vision?
2. How does vision inspire and move people?
3. How do leaders communicate vision?

After giving a long (but very helpful) list of wrong places where leaders go for vision, Blackaby sums up the idea of vision this way:

• It’s not the leader’s job to set the vision. Vision comes from the revelation of God and from no other place.
• It’s not the leader’s job to sell the vision.
• Instead, it’s the leader’s job to share in story and in symbol how God has been working in the past, present, and future.

The leader’s goal is to demonstrate that God, not the leader, is the author of the vision.

These insights have been a huge help to me in my role as a church leader. I’ve always hated the idea of painting this picture of the future and then trying to sell them on it. But telling God-stories? I can definitely get into that! God has been and continues to do amazing things in our church, and it’s no problem at all to tell those stories.

• When it comes to evangelism, we need to be after people’s hearts and not their behavior.
• Regarding discipleship, the focus needs to shift from information to transformation.

He writes, “The only way we will ever be different is if the practice of Christianity is more important than the instruction. The gauge is not how much a person knows but how that person lives.” (Pg. 68, emphasis mine)

He says that the secret to this is not more information, but more imitation. In his church, they integrate the Sunday morning teaching with both small groups and people’s personal worship. He doesn’t say it specifically, but my guess is that reducing the content of instruction to just one thing per week almost automatically shifts the focus to application.

He closes this chapter with a strong focus on the role of the Holy Spirit in real transformation, and suggests that we settle for conversion because we don’t really expect that much from Jesus — that we’re content with what Dallas Willard calls the “gospel of sin-management.”

This chapter closes the introductory material of the book. The rest of the book focuses on the how of transformation, both for individuals and the world.

1. Conversion means making a better me. He sees this (rightly) as a contradiction to the biblical teaching on our lostness and depravity apart from God.
2. Conversion means praying the “sinner’s prayer.” No, it’s more than words – it’s about coming to know God.
3. Conversion is the epitome of spirituality. He says it’s just the beginning. He writes, “Churches who gauge themselves by baptisms, attendance, and membership do not emphasize what we are producing as much as how fast we are producing it.” He challenges us to think about which numbers we talk about most often.
4. Conversion means going to church and jumping through hoops. His focus here is on the extrinsic rewards we often use to help people grow in faith (awards, certificates, pins) and how these tactics often undermine our real goal of transformation.
5. Conversion is nice but not total. This is the old sacred/secular split. He uses Islam as a contrast to this Western dichotomy.
6. Conversion is primarily fire insurance. This is a benefit, not a motivation.

One of the things we picked up when first moving to Bakersfield was the prevalence of this-kind of event-driven spirituality. For people with an evangelical background, that event was conversion; for those from a charismatic/Pentecostal background, the event was the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

We encountered a number of people who would say things like “The problem is obedience. If Christians were just more obedient, we wouldn?t have a problem with ______.” Or, “Ever since I accepted Christ I?ve never really had any problems dealing with ______.” Somehow, justification got elevated far above sanctification. This kind of truncated faith has left a lot of people here frustrated, feeling like they can?t be real about their struggles and challenges. And it’s neglected the role of the Holy Spirit in the transformation process.

Not everybody, of course, believes this. But it does seem to be a negative effect of a culture with a strong evangelical tradition. That’s why we’ve chosen to place greater emphasis on what we call “journey thinking” – helping people determine the very next step that God wants them to take in their faith journey, both before and after conversion.

Right now I’m in chapter three “Why are we growing churches apart from transformation?” The chapter title itself is pretty challenging – are we really growing churches if we’re doing it apart from transformation, or are we growing something else?

Bob argues that “Our understanding of personal transformation is inextricably tied to our understanding of evangelism. Misunderstand evangelism, and we?ll misunderstand the end results of our effort.” (page 60) I can already hear the echoes of Dallas Willard and his critique of “bar-code Christians,” and indeed just a few pages later he is quoting Willard on the mistakes of preaching “the gospel of self-improvement.”

Roberts that there is a difference between conversion and transformation, and that transformation is a process that takes time and struggle: “We must instill the truth that evangelism is not just an event where someone prays the sinner’s prayer. It is a process of awakening and understanding that come only through the Holy Spirit.” (62) This isn’t a new or undiscovered truth, but he sums it up well when he says:

“When that process is short-circuited, rushed, or streamlined for the sake of church industry and production, we often get the stat but lose the soul.” (63)

I’m pained to admit it, but I’ve often been guilty of this in the past. The transition to what we call “journey thinking” has been (surprise!) a process. It’s been as much a process of un-learning the old event/decision model as it has been discovering that transformation is a journey.

Our church’s mission statement: “Helping People Take Their Next Step Toward God” is an attempt to articulate this Spirit-driven process of transformation.