The God You Meet Through Others

A Teaching for the Church on Spiritual Dependency, Personal Encounter, Discernment and Maturity

There is a question the church rarely asks itself.

Not because the question is complicated.
Because the answer may make us uncomfortable.

How much of what we call spiritual life is actually personal encounter with God—and how much of it is simply participation in a religious community?

There is a difference.
A person can attend church for twenty years and never learn how to stand alone before God.

A person can know the language of Scripture, recognize worship songs within their first few notes, know when to say "Amen," know when to stand, know when to sit, know which preacher to follow, know which prophet to consult, know which conference to attend—and still remain spiritually dependent upon other people.

They can be surrounded by religion and remain strangers to transformation.

That is not an accusation against the church.

It is a question the church must have the courage to ask.

Because Christianity was never intended to produce people who merely know about God.

It was intended to produce people who know God.

And those are not necessarily the same thing.

1. THE DANGEROUS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BELONGING AND BECOMING

Human beings have a profound need to belong.
We form families, tribes, communities, political movements, professional associations, cultures and religions partly because isolation is psychologically difficult.

Belonging gives us identity.
It gives us language.
It gives us social confirmation.
It gives us people who understand our symbols, our values and our worldview.

Religious congregations can provide something genuinely beautiful: fellowship, encouragement, mutual care, teaching, accountability and shared worship.

The problem therefore is not belonging.
The problem is what happens when belonging replaces becoming.

A congregation can become a place where people continually feel spiritually reassured without becoming spiritually mature.

They can leave every Sunday feeling encouraged without ever being transformed.

They can hear powerful sermons without developing personal discernment.

They can participate in collective prayer without learning how to pray when nobody is leading them.

They can worship loudly in a crowd and remain completely unfamiliar with the silence of their own soul.

This creates one of the great paradoxes of religious life:

A person can become highly involved in religion while remaining personally underdeveloped in spirituality.

That distinction deserves serious attention.
Because attendance is measurable.
Transformation is not.
Membership is measurable.
Maturity is not.
Titles are visible.
Character is not.
Public activity is easy to observe.
Private obedience is not.
And therefore, religious institutions can sometimes reward what is easiest to measure rather than what is most important to God.

2. THE CROWD CAN BECOME A HIDING PLACE

There is something psychologically powerful about being surrounded by people.

When everyone is singing, you sing.
When everyone raises their hands, you raise yours.

When everyone says "Amen," you say "Amen."
When everyone falls silent, you become silent.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this.

But there is a deeper question:
What happens when the crowd disappears?

What happens when there is no worship leader?

No pastor.
No prophet.
No microphone.
No keyboard.
No congregation.
No one watching.
No one telling you what the sermon means.
No one giving you the next prayer point.
No one interpreting your circumstances for you.

What happens when it is simply you and God?

That is where spiritual maturity begins to reveal itself.

Because a person can borrow the faith of a congregation for a long time.

They can borrow the language of their pastor.

They can borrow the convictions of their denomination.

They can borrow the interpretations of their spiritual leader.

They can even borrow the emotional atmosphere of worship.

But borrowed conviction eventually collapses when personal testing arrives.

There comes a point when another person's faith cannot carry you.

There comes a moment when another person's revelation cannot substitute for your obedience.

There comes a season when the question is no longer:

"What did my pastor say?"
but:
"What have I personally learned before God?"

3. SPIRITUAL OUTSOURCING
This is where we need a new term.
Spiritual outsourcing
Spiritual outsourcing occurs when an individual gradually transfers responsibility for spiritual discernment, relationship with God, moral development and inner transformation to another person or institution.

It sounds innocent at first.
"My pastor will explain it."
"My bishop knows."
"My prophet will tell me."
"My church believes this."
"My spiritual father said..."
"My denomination teaches..."
Again, none of these statements is automatically wrong.

The danger begins when the individual can no longer distinguish between receiving guidance and surrendering responsibility.

A mature Christian can receive teaching without becoming intellectually or spiritually dependent upon the teacher.

A mature believer can respect a pastor without making the pastor the permanent interpreter of God.

A mature disciple can listen to spiritual authority without surrendering conscience, discernment and personal responsibility.

This distinction is absolutely critical.
Because the purpose of a spiritual teacher should be to help a person mature.

Not to make that person permanently dependent.

4. THE TEACHER AND THE GATEKEEPER
There is a profound difference between a spiritual teacher and a spiritual gatekeeper.

The teacher says:
"Let me help you discover."
The gatekeeper says:
"You need me to access."
The teacher develops discernment.
The gatekeeper develops dependence.
The teacher eventually becomes less necessary.

The gatekeeper continually makes himself more necessary.

The teacher points beyond himself.
The gatekeeper continually redirects attention toward himself.

The teacher says:
"Follow Christ."
The gatekeeper subtly communicates:
"You need Christ through me."
Those sentences may sound almost identical.
They are not.
One produces maturity.
The other can produce dependency.
This is why the church must periodically examine its own leadership culture.

A pastor should not measure success merely by how many people follow him.

A prophet should not measure success by how many people cannot make decisions without consulting him.

A bishop should not measure spiritual influence by how dependent the congregation has become upon his presence.

The deeper measure should be:
How many people have become capable of knowing, discerning, obeying and serving God faithfully?

A spiritual leader should be building people who can stand.

Not people who can only stand when the leader is present.

5. JESUS AND THE PROBLEM OF PROXIMITY
Now we come to one of the most fascinating realities in the New Testament.

The disciples were physically close to Jesus.

They walked with Him.
They ate with Him.
They travelled with Him.
They heard Him teach.
They witnessed miracles.
They saw His compassion.
They saw His confrontations.
They witnessed His suffering.
They were physically closer to Jesus than almost anybody else on earth.

And yet physical proximity did not automatically produce spiritual understanding.

They misunderstood Him.
They argued about status.
They struggled with fear.
They failed to understand some of His teachings.

They misunderstood the nature of His kingdom.

They even struggled to comprehend what His death meant.

This gives us a principle that the modern church desperately needs:

Proximity to a spiritual person does not guarantee intimacy with God.

You can sit beside revelation and still misunderstand it.

You can hear truth every Sunday and still resist it.

You can live around holy things and remain unchanged.

You can sit at the feet of a great teacher and still fail to become what the teacher was trying to produce in you.

Physical proximity is not spiritual transformation.

6. BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN

After the resurrection, Thomas struggled to believe the testimony of the other disciples.

Jesus eventually appeared to him.
Thomas encountered the risen Christ.
And Jesus gave a statement that deserves far more attention than we sometimes give it:

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

— John 20:29
This is not an argument against evidence.
It is not an argument against community.
It is not an argument against teachers.
It is a statement about the nature of faith.
The Christian life cannot ultimately depend upon physical proximity to Jesus.

The generation that physically saw Jesus would eventually die.

The church therefore had to become capable of following Christ without physically standing beside Him.

That means something extraordinary:
The absence of physical proximity did not mean the absence of spiritual possibility.

The person who did not walk beside Jesus could still encounter Him.

The person who did not sit in the original circle could still be transformed.

The person who did not witness the miracles with physical eyes could still become a disciple.

This is important because Christianity was never supposed to create a permanent spiritual aristocracy of people who were physically closest to Jesus.

The invitation eventually became universal:
Whoever believes.
7. "GREATER WORKS"
John 14:12 takes the argument even further.
Jesus says:
"Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these."

Notice the word:
Whoever.
Not:
"Whoever travelled with Me."
Not:
"Whoever sat closest to Me."
Not:
"Whoever knew Me physically."
Not:
"Whoever belonged to My inner circle."
Whoever believes.
The implication is profound.
Spiritual capacity is not permanently monopolized by physical proximity.

Jesus was not creating a system in which divine access belonged exclusively to a small group of people who had physically known Him.

The possibility of participation in the work of God was being opened outward.

That principle should make the church uncomfortable in the best possible way.

Because if the believer can genuinely encounter God, discern God, obey God and participate in God's work, then the purpose of Christian leadership cannot be to create permanent spiritual dependence.

It must be to cultivate mature disciples.
8. PAUL: THE OUTSIDER WHO BECAME AN ARCHITECT

Paul is particularly interesting here.
He was not one of the original Twelve disciples who accompanied Jesus during His earthly ministry.

But we must be precise.
Paul did not lack an encounter with Christ.
According to Acts 9, Paul encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.

The significance is therefore not that Paul never encountered Jesus.

The significance is how different his path of encounter was.

Paul did not spend Jesus' earthly ministry sitting among the Twelve.

He did not learn Christianity by physically accompanying Jesus through Galilee.

He encountered the risen Christ and subsequently underwent a radical reconstruction of identity, theology, purpose and mission.

In Galatians 1, Paul emphasizes that the gospel he preached was not merely something he had received as ordinary human instruction but something he understood as coming through revelation of Jesus Christ.

That should make us think.
Because Paul illustrates something the church sometimes forgets:

God can develop a person outside the conventional route without making that person independent of the body of Christ.

Paul eventually engaged with the wider Christian community.

He taught communities.
He corrected communities.
He served communities.
He suffered for communities.
He built communities.
But he was not simply a product of congregational conformity.

He became a transformational force within the community.

That is the difference between being shaped by a community and being absorbed by a community.

9. PAUL DID NOT USE REVELATION TO BUILD A THRONE

There is another reason Paul's example matters.

If Paul had believed that personal revelation made him spiritually superior, he could have built a personality cult around himself.

Instead, much of his teaching repeatedly redirects attention away from personality and toward Christ.

He warns the Corinthians about personality divisions:

"What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants..."

— 1 Corinthians 3:5
That is extraordinary.
The man who possessed enormous influence refused to make influence itself the object of worship.

This gives the church a test for spiritual maturity:

The more spiritually mature a leader becomes, the less they need their own greatness to become the center of the message.

A truly mature leader does not continually need to announce:

"I am the most anointed."
"I am the most powerful."
"I hear God more than everybody."
"I am God's special vessel."
The mature leader can possess authority without turning authority into identity.

Paul's ministry provides a powerful model:

Receive → mature → serve → build others.

Not:
Receive → become important → make everyone dependent on you.

10. THE CHURCH MUST NOT CONFUSE MEDIATION WITH DESTINATION

Pastors matter.
Teachers matter.
Prophets, where biblically legitimate, matter.

Elders matter.
Mentors matter.
The church matters.
Community matters.
Scripture matters.
None of this needs to be destroyed to make room for personal encounter.

The issue is hierarchy of purpose.
A spiritual leader is a means, not the destination.

A congregation is a community, not God.

A sermon is a vehicle, not revelation itself.

A worship service is an opportunity, not the totality of worship.

A pastor can point toward Christ.
But the pastor cannot become Christ.
A teacher can explain Scripture.
But the teacher cannot become the believer's conscience.

A spiritual mentor can guide discernment.
But the mentor cannot permanently replace the believer's own responsibility before God.

This is where healthy Christianity differs from spiritual dependency.

11. THE CONGREGATION SHOULD BE A GREENHOUSE, NOT A CAGE

This may be one of the simplest ways to understand the entire argument.

A greenhouse creates conditions for growth.

A cage prevents movement.
A healthy congregation should provide:

• teaching;
• fellowship;
• correction;
• encouragement;
• accountability;
• worship;
• service;
• protection;
• opportunities for spiritual development.

But eventually the individual should become increasingly capable of:

• prayer;
• discernment;
• obedience;
• Scripture study;
• moral responsibility;
• service;
• spiritual reflection;
• resisting temptation;
• recognizing manipulation;
• making mature decisions.

If a person has been in a congregation for twenty years and is more dependent upon the leader than when they started, the church must ask a difficult question:

Did we produce maturity—or dependency?

That question should not be answered defensively.

It should be examined honestly.
12. WHEN CONGREGATION BECOMES CAMOUFLAGE

There is another uncomfortable possibility.
Sometimes people do not go to church primarily because they are seeking transformation.

Sometimes they go because they are seeking belonging.

And belonging is easier.
Transformation is painful.
Belonging says:
"You are one of us."
Transformation asks:
"Who are you becoming?"
Belonging gives identity.
Transformation challenges identity.
Belonging gives acceptance.
Transformation exposes contradictions.
Belonging gives community.
Transformation demands self-confrontation.
Belonging can make you feel safe.
Transformation can make you uncomfortable.
And this is why genuine spiritual development can be frightening.

Because eventually God may confront the person beneath the religious identity.

Not the church member.
Not the choir member.
Not the pastor.
Not the bishop.
Not the prophet.
Not the theologian.
Not the generous donor.
Not the person everybody calls "man of God."
The person underneath all of it.
13. THE QUESTION GOD EVENTUALLY ASKS
What happens when the congregation cannot answer for you?

What happens when your pastor cannot pray the prayer for you?

What happens when your mother cannot believe for you?

What happens when your spouse cannot discern for you?

What happens when your denomination cannot tell you what your next step should be?

What happens when your spiritual mentor is unavailable?

Eventually, every human being encounters moments where they must stand alone.

And that is not necessarily abandonment.
Sometimes it is development.
The wilderness is not always punishment.
Sometimes it is the classroom.
Silence is not always divine absence.
Sometimes it is where borrowed voices become quiet enough for discernment to develop.

Solitude is not always loneliness.
Sometimes it is where the individual discovers whether their faith exists independently of the crowd.

This is why personal encounter requires something the congregation cannot manufacture for you:

inner responsibility.
14. EGO DEATH: THE COST OF PERSONAL ENCOUNTER

Personal encounter with God sounds beautiful until we understand what it can demand.

It can require the death of the identity we have constructed.

It can expose pride.
It can expose religious performance.
It can expose our desire to be admired.
It can expose our dependence upon approval.
It can expose the difference between what we say we believe and what we actually obey.

This is why genuine spiritual development requires humility.

Not the theatrical humility of saying:
"I am nobody."
But the deeper humility of being willing to discover:

"I may be wrong."
"I may have misunderstood."
"My motives may not be pure."
"My religious environment may have shaped me more than I realized."

"My desires may sound like God's voice because I desperately want them to be true."

"My fear may be disguising itself as discernment."

"My ego may be disguising itself as spiritual authority."

That level of self-examination is difficult.
It is much easier to remain inside a system where everybody already agrees with you.

15. BUT PERSONAL ENCOUNTER HAS ITS OWN DANGER

Now we must confront the other side.
The answer to spiritual dependency is not spiritual narcissism.

Someone who says:
"I don't need the church."
"I don't need teachers."
"I don't need anyone."
"God speaks directly to me."
has not automatically become spiritually mature.

They may have simply replaced institutional dependence with personal certainty.

That can be equally dangerous.
Personal spirituality without discernment can become:

• ego;
• fantasy;
• confirmation bias;
• emotional projection;
• spiritual grandiosity;
• impulsive decision-making;
• self-deception.

Therefore:
Personal encounter does not eliminate the need for discernment. It increases it.

This is why the mature Christian must learn to hold three realities together:

Personal encounter.
Scriptural grounding.
Community and discernment.
The individual must encounter God.
The individual must test what they believe they have encountered.

And the individual must remain humble enough to allow their understanding to be examined.

That is maturity.
16. COMMUNITY SHOULD TEST MATURITY, NOT REPLACE IT

The healthiest congregation is not one where everybody thinks identically.

It is one where people can grow without losing their conscience.

Where questions are not automatically treated as rebellion.

Where learning is encouraged.
Where leaders can be questioned respectfully.

Where Scripture is not weaponized to silence thought.

Where spiritual authority does not become personal ownership.

Where members are encouraged to develop their own relationship with God.

Where the pastor can say:
"Don't believe this merely because I said it. Search the Scriptures. Pray. Think. Test it. Seek God."

That is not weakness in leadership.
That is confidence.
A leader who fears mature disciples may not actually be leading disciples.

They may be managing dependents.
17. THE REAL PURPOSE OF SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP

Perhaps this is where the church needs a complete philosophical correction.

The purpose of a pastor is not to become the believer's permanent spiritual intermediary.

The purpose of spiritual leadership is to equip the saints.

Paul himself writes about equipping believers for ministry.

That changes the leadership model.
The question becomes:
"How can I make them dependent upon me?"

No.
The question becomes:
"How can I equip them to mature in Christ?"

That is leadership.
A parent who never teaches a child to walk has not demonstrated love by carrying the child forever.

A teacher who refuses to let students think independently has not demonstrated mastery by making them permanently dependent.

And a spiritual leader who requires permanent dependency has misunderstood the purpose of spiritual formation.

The goal is not perpetual infancy.
The goal is maturity.
18. THE FINAL TEST OF A CHURCH
Perhaps we should stop asking only:
How many people attend?
Ask:
How many are becoming mature?
Stop asking only:
How many people follow the pastor?
Ask:
How many people can follow Christ faithfully when the pastor is absent?

Stop asking only:
How powerful was the service?
Ask:
What changed after the service?
Stop asking:
How many miracles happened?
Ask:
What happened to people's character?

Stop asking:
How many people shouted?
Ask:
How many people learned obedience?
Stop asking:
How many people came forward?
Ask:
How many people went back into their homes, workplaces and communities and became different human beings?

Because spiritual activity is not necessarily spiritual maturity.

19. FROM FOLLOWING A LEADER TO FOLLOWING CHRIST

The ultimate goal is not to create Christians who have no leaders.

The ultimate goal is to create Christians who know why they follow their leaders.

There is a difference between:
"I follow him because he said so."
and:
"I respect his teaching, but I have learned to seek God, examine Scripture, exercise discernment and take responsibility for my own spiritual life."

The first is dependency.
The second is maturity.
The first produces followers of personalities.

The second produces disciples of Christ.
And perhaps this is the uncomfortable question the modern church must recover:

Are we producing disciples who know Christ—or congregants who know their leaders?

Because the two are not necessarily the same.

20. THE CHURCH IS NOT THE DESTINATION
The congregation matters.
But the congregation is not God.
The pastor matters.
But the pastor is not Christ.
The sermon matters.
But the sermon is not the Holy Spirit.
The fellowship matters.
But fellowship cannot substitute for personal obedience.

The church can introduce you.
It can teach you.
It can encourage you.
It can correct you.
It can walk with you.
But eventually, there is a place where every believer must stand personally before the Creator.

And there, titles disappear.
Denominations disappear.
Crowds disappear.
Reputations disappear.
And the only question that remains is:
What happened inside you?
Did you merely belong?
Or did you become?
Did you merely attend?
Or did you encounter?
Did you merely repeat?
Or did you understand?
Did you merely follow a leader?
Or did you learn to follow Christ?
Did the congregation become your spiritual home—

or did it become the place where you hid from the difficult work of becoming spiritually mature?

The church should not be afraid of that question.

It should welcome it.
Because the strongest church is not the church that produces people who cannot function without it.

The strongest church is the church that produces people who can walk with God wherever they are.

That is not the destruction of community.
That is the fulfillment of community.
The congregation becomes the place where people are equipped to encounter God personally, mature responsibly, serve faithfully and return to the community—not as spiritual dependents, but as mature sons and daughters capable of helping others grow.

The greenhouse has done its work when the plant can stand.

The teacher has succeeded when the student can think.

The parent has succeeded when the child can walk.

And perhaps the spiritual leader has succeeded when the believer can finally say: "I do not merely know what my pastor believes about God.

I have learned to seek God myself."
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