An Heir to God, How To Evangelize, Your Microevolution of the Self
The Disciple-Leader Newsletter #68
Discipleship
“Read the Scripture, not as an attorney may read a will, but as the heir reads it, as a description and proof of his interest.”1
John Newton
Paul taught, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.2
One writer, commenting on this verse, wrote, “Not subordinate heirs, not junior, not contingent, but joint, equal heirs with Christ Himself, to share in all that He shall share.”3
You are an heir to God. Read that again.
You are an heir to God.
And as an heir to God, with the potential to inherit all that He has, you should read scripture to learn what your future will look like.
“The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. . . . The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.”4
You can receive all that the Father has. And what is that?
“(You) shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths … to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.
“Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them.5
This is how much God loves you: that He wants to transform you—through your faith and by His grace— into a fully exalted being. This is how much power God has: that He can transform you, yes you, into someone like Him.6
Leadership
“You can’t evangelize someone you hate.”7
Esau McCaulley
One of the most important yet misunderstood principles in life is that you can not influence without great love. Love is what people respond to.
Abraham Lincoln understood this principle. One biographer wrote, “In order to ‘win a man to your cause,’ Lincoln explained, you must first reach his heart, ‘the great high road to his reason.”8
Lincoln was obviously anti-slavery. But he lived in an America where slavery was legal. How did he go about trying to influence or evangelize people to his cause? “Rather than upbraid slaveowners, Lincoln sought to comprehend their position through empathy. More than a decade earlier, he had employed a similar approach when he advised temperance advocates to refrain from denouncing drinkers in ‘thundering tones of anathema and denunciation,’ for denunciation would inevitably be met with denunciation, ‘crimination with crimination, and anthem with anathema.’ In a passage directed at abolitionists as well as temperance reformers, he had observed that it was the nature of man, when told that he should be ‘shunned and despised,’ and condemned as the author ‘of all the vice and misery and crime in the land,’ to ‘retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart.’ Though the case be ‘naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel,’ the sanctimonious reformer could no more pierce the heart of the drinker or the slaveowner than ‘penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him.”9
You can’t evangelize someone you hate.
The most important quality to possess as a leader who hopes to influence others is charity, the pure love of Christ. And the clearest outward manifestation of that love is the ability to really listen.
One essayist wrote, “I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all - which is so important, too - to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. Think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays.
“This is the reason: When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. You know how if a person laughs at your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does not, every tiny little joke in you weakens up and dies. Well, that is the principle of it. It makes people happy and free when they are listened to. And if you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society (because everybody around you becomes lively and interesting), of comforting people, of doing them good.
“Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice? Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest, least censorious, least bossy people you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then know what to do about it yourself.”10
Mental Performance
You are the sum total of all that you have thought, done, said, seen, heard and felt in this life and before. You change immediately with each good thought, each good act, every good word changes you for the better. When you willingly obey the principles of the gospel, you are changed by the Spirit of God to become incrementally more like Him. The degree of change with each small act of obedience may be small, but it is real and immediate. The full, cumulative and perfect realization of this process of change or sanctification happens only over time, but make no mistake that you are always changing, and that the effects of your obedience are immediate, whether for better or for worse, depending upon the voice you chose to follow.11
Lawrence Corbridge
This idea, in a nutshell, is that you are constantly changing. As one author put it, “We are constantly undergoing microevolutions of the self.”12
There is scientific evidence for this. Our thoughts emit electromagnetic signals, gradually rewiring our patterns of thinking. Hebb famously wrote, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”13 Each thought triggers an electromagnetic signal that travels through your neurons.
“Our thoughts are actual protein patterns that alter the form and function of our brain. Our mind is like a muscle. The thoughts that we repeat, that we exercise, that we train, grow stronger. The thoughts we eliminate, do not use, and avoid grow weaker. Thoughts are mental reps for the brain. Just like a muscle, the thoughts we exercise grow. The thoughts we don’t, atrophy.
“This is called neuroplasticity. In a nutshell, it is that new neural connections and pathways can be formed or reformed purely based off our thoughts.”14
Therefore, the quality of your thoughts determines the quality of your life. If you want to have a beautiful life, think beautiful thoughts. If you want beautiful thoughts, you need to have the right inputs.
James Clear said, “The quality of your thoughts is determined by the quality of your reading. Spend more time thinking about the inputs.”15
God, who wants you to have the highest and most excellent of thoughts, cares deeply about your inputs. He said, “Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom.”16
The Doctrine of Non-Stasis
Here, I’ll just share a few doctrinal statements that support this idea as well.
“Our leisure, even our play, is a matter of serious concern. [That is because] there is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.” - C.S. Lewis17
Dale G. Renlund has likened our faith to a car driving on a long road ascending a mountain peak. With that visual in mind, he taught: "Note that nowhere on the upwardly spiraling road is it perfectly horizontal; nowhere is the slope zero; there is no plateau; there is no place to pause and rest; and the course either goes up or down. Similarly, faith is either becoming stronger or weaker."18
"For whosoever receiveth, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever continueth not to receive, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.”19 - Jesus Christ
He doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you…”20
You can’t control whether or not you change. Whether you like it or not, that is happening. What you can control is how you change.
So, how will you change?
First Look: An Interview with Matt Smethurst, Author of Before You Open Your Bible. Article by Kristen Wetherell.
Our Identity and Our Destiny. Talk by Tad R. Callister.
C. S. Lewis, “Counting the Cost,” Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1960), 174–75.
I like this thought from Terryl Givens: “I could never worship or adore a God who recoils in jealous insecurity because ‘man has become as one of us.’ I could never desire to emulate the divine nature of a sovereign who does not save all of those who are in his power to save. And I could never love a God ‘without body, parts, or passions,’ who does not himself feel love, or grief, or joy, or gladness. Christianity gave us the only God who was willing to die on behalf of his creation, as my wife has taught me. Joseph Smith added to that conception a God who intends our full participation in ‘the divine nature,’ who will bestow upon every single one of his children all that they ‘are willing to receive,’ and who made himself vulnerable enough to weep at our pain and misery. That is a God I am powerfully drawn to and gladly worship.”
Team of Rivals. Book by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Team of Rivals. Book by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
The Art of Listening. Essay by Brenda Ueland.
The Fourth Missionary. Talk by Lawrence Corbridge.
Idea from Atomic Habits by James Clear.
Hebb, D. O. (1949). The organization of behavior; a neuropsychological theory. Wiley.
Winning The Mental Game. Book by Amber Selking, Ph.D.
3-2-1 Newsletter by James Clear on March 6, 2025
C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (1967), 33.
To add an authoritative stamp of approval to this statement, Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland commented on this quote, saying, “I believe that to be absolutely true.
Lifelong Conversion. Talk by Dale G. Renlund