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“Reduce belly fat with this one old trick.”
“How to build muscle using this one neat tip.”
“This woman lost 8lb in ONE WEEK using this one simple trick.”
We’ve all seen these kind of posts—which, of course, turn out to be adverts—on our social media. And they work. Clearly someone, somewhere keeps paying to run them, because someone, somewhere is clicking on them and actually buying the products they promote. And sometimes, that someone is me.
Why? Well, for exactly the same reason you’re reading this right now. You saw the headline, you felt intrigued, you clicked it.
In many ways, that’s good. It’s right that you want to become more like Jesus. To be “conformed to the image of God’s Son” is one of the great aims of the Christian life (Romans 8 v 29)—so that we increasingly reflect him in our character and in the way we relate to others. Spiritual health is so much more important than a flatter stomach. (And, given that the Holy Spirit promises to help me, for me it’s more attainable, too.)
The problem comes when we allow our “quick-fix, change your life now without cost” to infiltrate our view of Christian growth. It means we are always looking for the easy way to become more joyful, or more godly. Always anticipating fast change. Always expecting to find a way to witness without being rejected, to increase our Bible knowledge without getting up any earlier, and so on. And when we don’t find it—well, we give up, or move on to the next silver bullet.
But becoming like Jesus isn’t easy. It doesn’t happen overnight. It does involve cost, and time.
That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it, though. After all, I bet the thing in your life you’re most proud of achieving didn’t come easy, didn’t happen overnight, and did involve cost on your part. It’s why we laud (clean) Tour de France winners and love the rags to riches, hard graft stories. The best things we do are usually hard, and the hard things we do are usually best.
It’s no different with becoming like Jesus. The way isn’t easy. But the way is always worth it.
We allow our “quick-fix, change your life now without cost” culture to infiltrate our view of Christian growth
But having said that, there actually isn’t just one way, either. Doing a quiet time is not a silver bullet. 15 minutes with your Bible each morning is so often presented as ‘one easy trick’ to become like Jesus. But the irony is that the Bible itself points us to a variety of ways that God grows us. Some of them are fairly obvious. Some of them are surprising. All of them, as we grasp hold of them and let them go to work in our lives, are surprising, and, yes, successful.
What are they? Well, we look at six of them (and a lot more besides) in one little booklet, Spiritual Healthcheck, which promises that it contains sixteen steps to a thriving Christian life (and delivers on that promise, too, though admittedly I’m biased).
So if you want to enjoy them, then I’d suggest shelling out the price of a high street coffee to buy a copy and discover what they are. Because this blog won’t tell you.
It’s clickbait, you see.
Carl is Editorial Director at The Good Book Company and is a member of Grace Church Worcester Park, London. He is the best-selling author of The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross and God's Big Promises Bible Storybook, and also serves as series editor of the God's Word for You series. Before joining TGBC, he worked as a journalist and then as a teacher, and pastored a congregation in Hull. Carl is married to Lizzie, and they have two children. He studied history at Oxford University.
