Articles By: Dave Johnson

This place is different, I thought as I sat for the first time in the bleachers of a high school gymnasium that transformed itself every weekend into Church of the Open Door. The worship session filled me with hope, and David Johnson began to preach from the book of Matthew with passion and authenticity. I instinctively knew I was home.

Over the years, I’ve discovered something. Maybe you have too. It’s relatively easy (and somewhat enticing) to talk about spiritual formation—the hope of becoming more attuned to God’s work in and around us, the hope of shedding bad habits and self-serving attitudes like so many pounds after the holidays, the hope of experiencing even just a smidge of God’s ever-present, never-failing, nonstop love for us. Yes, it’s easy to talk about it. Just like it’s easy to talk about diets and exercise regimens, New Year’s resolutions, and the like. The hope of becoming something new—something better—is usually the silent driver behind marketing and advertising. Better abs, better hair, better tires, better life, better wife (yes, that’s what my husband asks for). It’s pretty easy to get us imagining our “better selves.” It’s easy to talk about spiritual formation, but it’s so much harder—so much more confusing, requiring so
much more hope—actually to hold myself open to change.

When we’re talking about the possibilities, especially if it relates to what other people should be doing—how they should be transforming—we can talk all day long.

But hope is the most dangerous thing in the world. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but here’s what I mean. I believe most people eventually give up hope. Somewhere along the way they resign themselves to “life as they know it.” Hoping for a better life, a better relationship, a better job, a better retirement, a better church, a better relationship with God has all fallen flat. The striving has stopped; the surviving has begun. Like a drowning victim exhausted from effort, they give up. They stop trying. They stop hoping. It’s just too painful. It never works. If their soul-injuries happened early enough in life, they stopped hoping long before they reached adulthood. They’ve learned better. They may be dutiful soldiers, hard workers, devoted spouses and parents and employees, but inside they do not hope. Their souls ache with the haunting words offered to an incognito Jesus on the road to Emmaus: “But we had hoped…”