And so what I try to do in the book is set up what it means to have a biblical view of God. What does it mean to have a biblical view of our identity in Christ? Then out of that belief, as we change that belief, now how does that begin to change our behavior as well? So I think behavior follows belief, and first you've got to deal with the belief side.
But when it comes to change, I see change not in growth—not so much like this sort of continual incline where we're getting more like God, and more like Christ, and we're just going up the mountain. I see it like a spiral. Remember a spiral-bound notebook? You start on the journey and you have high moments and low moments. You have moments where you're making great progress personally and you're experiencing change, then moments where it feels like you're back down at the bottom and you wonder
what happened. But all of it is on a spiral, moving toward a destination. And we're moving toward this destination of
becoming like Christ, but we have our highs and our lows.
That's just the normative spiritual experience with ups and downs. What I try to do is talk about how we can keep moving in that spiral as we become more like Christ.
Preaching: I think most pastors can definitely relate to that whole idea of the highs and lows.Wilhite: Oh yeah. Its either Monday or Saturday night, you know? If the sermon isn't going well, Saturday night's bad. And no matter how it goes, Monday's usually tough ...
Preaching: On Monday no pastor should be allowed anywhere near a knife or a computer to type a resignation letter!Wilhite: (Laughs) Oh, that's right, that's right! You hear that, and it's cliché and we laugh; but when you're in it ... Isn't it amazing how we all wrestle with the reality of how our emotions just go up and down? Every pastor's got his Monday daydream, right? Mine for a long time was like a Starbucks, where I can just take your coffee order, make it, and then give it to you and we're done. You're going out the door, and we'll move on to the next one.
Preaching: Where life is simple.Wilhite: Yeah.
Preaching: You had an amazing Sunday recently related to baptism.Wilhite: We really did. The year 2008 for us in the Las Vegas valley was a good year. But I felt like with all the things going on in the economy, with all the things happening culturally, it didn't feel like our city was really reaching out to God like I would've thought it should. It just felt like people were holding back. I didn't really understand it.
And then 2009 came. It's not just our church—I've talked to pastors of many churches around the nation who have seen this in different pockets—but boy it seems like in 2009, it finally let loose. People just started returning to church, opening their hearts to God, searching again; realizing that with all the stuff we're going through, there is no temporal, earthly solution for this. So we've seen a great spiritual harvest in the Winter-Spring of '09.
