WIDE BUT NOT DEEP

Seven of Seven

We have walked through the five-step cycle of renewal: Remind, Review, Refocus, Refine, and Reform. It is a powerful pathway. But if we stop here—if we rely solely on our ability to execute these steps—we are in danger of repeating one of the most tragic failures in biblical history.

The story of King Josiah (2 Kings 22-23) is the ultimate case study in the limits of human willpower. Josiah was the perfect reformer. He didn't just suggest change; he enforced it. He pulverized the idols, fired the corrupt priests, and re-instituted the Passover. He scrubbed the nation of Judah clean.

Yet, the biblical postscript to this golden age is devastating. Immediately after listing these triumphs, the historian writes: "Still the LORD did not turn from the burning of his great wrath" (2 Kings 23:26).

How could that be? The reform was wide—it covered the whole map—but it was not deep. Josiah changed the nation’s behavior, but he could not change the people’s hearts. The moment he died, the nation snapped back to idolatry like a rubber band. They had stopped the rituals, but they hadn't stopped the longing. God’s accumulated wrath in judgment came swiftly, just as Huldah the prophetess had warned.

Josiah’s story shows us the absolute limit of human-led reform. Don’t misunderstand me: It is vital. It is necessary. But it is not ultimate. It can clean the outside of the cup, but it cannot make the inside clean.

This brings us to the crucial question: Why does "white-knuckled" morality fail? And how do we find a change that lasts?

The Boy Who Tried to Undragon Himself

C.S. Lewis provides a great illustration of this Josiah Paradox in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

We meet a boy named Eustace Scrubb—a selfish, greedy child who, through a magical mishap, turns into a dragon. The external transformation merely reveals his internal reality: he had a dragonish heart, so he became a dragon.

Desperate to be a boy again, Eustace tries to fix himself. He scratches at his scales, peeling off the dragon skin layer by layer. He steps out of the old skin, feeling smooth and renewed, only to look down and see that a new layer of scales has already grown back. He does it again. And again.

"I could see my own reflection in the water... it was no good. The rough, scaly look was there all over me just as before."

This is the failure of religious reform. We can scratch off the "scales" of bad habits. We can stop drinking, stop yelling, or start reading our Bibles. But if the nature of the beast remains, the scales will always grow back. 

We are trying to cure a heart condition with a dermatology treatment.

The Need for a Greater King

Josiah was like Eustace scratching at the scales of Judah. He was a good king, but he wasn't a saving king. He could find the Law, but he couldn't fulfill it for the people.

We need a Greater King.

• Josiah found the Book of the Law and shouted, "Obey!"

• Jesus fulfilled the Law and whispered, "It is finished."

We need a King who doesn’t just tear down idols, but who becomes the ultimate sacrifice on a cross to bear the judgment our idolatry deserves. We need a King who doesn’t just read the covenant from an old scroll, but who establishes a New Covenant in His own blood, and who, by His Spirit, writes the Law not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshy tablets of our hearts.

Theologically, this is the difference between a mirror and a surgeon. The Law (Josiah) is a mirror; it shows you that your face is dirty, but the mirror cannot wash you. Jesus is the surgeon. He doesn't just demand a clean heart; He offers a transplant.

The prophet Ezekiel pointed to this thousands of years ago: "I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26). 

The renewal King Jesus offers is eternal and internal. He doesn’t just call us to reform our lives; He gives us a new life altogether. He doesn’t just call us to clean the house; He moves in and makes our hearts His home.

We don't need a remodel; we need a resurrection.

The Responsibility to Stand Alone

There is a sobering corollary to this truth. If we rely on external culture—a Christian nation, a good church, a godly family—to sustain our faith, we will crumble when those props are removed. When Josiah died, the people drifted because their faith was in the king's reform, not their own God.

We are called to possess a faith that stands even when the culture collapses. 

Please forgive me for another Chronicles of Narnia reference, but this idea is illustrated beautifully through the character Puddleglum in The Silver Chair.

Trapped in the dark underworld, an evil Witch tries to brainwash Puddleglum and the children, convincing them that the sun, the sky, and Aslan (the Lion) are just children's stories. She almost succeeds. But Puddleglum stamps out her enchanting fire with his bare foot and declares:

"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself... Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones... I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead."

That is the heartbeat of a true disciple. When the "Josiahs" of our world die and the culture reverts to darkness, the person with a New Heart says, "I will live for the King, even if I have to stand alone.”

Taking a stand is clarifying. But you may ask, “How do I get there?” My advice is to discover where you are now on the Cycle of Renewal. Once you know that, the next question is, “Where do you need to begin this cycle today?” Consider the following:

• Do you need to start by Reminding yourself of your true identity in Christ?

• Do you need the courage for a "mirror moment," to Review your life honestly in the light of His Word?

• Do you need to Refocus your cluttered life on His priorities?

• Is the Spirit calling you to Refine your heart by tearing down a hidden idol?

• Or is it time to Reform your habits and build new structures of faithfulness?

Wherever you are on that pathway, the first step is the same. Look honestly and turn decisively. Think of the Cycle of Renewal as a descending spiral. With each circular path traveled you go deeper with God, but as you grow deeper your influence widens. Terry Walling, in his book “Deciding” wrote, “God often needs to do a deeper work in our lives before he can do a greater work through our lives.” So, turn to the only One who can bring true and lasting change.

As with the other blogs, I’ve created a worksheet to help identify where you are on the Cycle of Renewal and to take the first steps in that location to move deeper with God. It is for those who suspect they are wide but not deep. You can download the worksheet at the end of this blog.

But for now, let us close by praying two prayers together. First, the prayer of the Psalmist, who longed for this kind of deep, internal cleansing that only the Lord can do. The next prayer is one in which you commit to being proactive in your responsibilities for changes in your own life. 

The Cleansing Prayer

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23-24, ESV)

The Commitment Prayer

Father, by Your Word and by Your Spirit, give us the honesty to see the rubble in our lives and in our church. Give us Josiah’s penitent heart to grieve what we see. We don’t want a religion, We want the true soul-changing experience of knowing Christ in the power of His resurrection and to share in the fellowship of His sufferings, even becoming like Him in His death. Give us His courage to tear down the idols that You reveal. And most of all, draw us and the church we belong to back to You, our great Restorer, through the grace of our Greater King, Jesus. It’s in His name we pray, Amen.

The Cycle Worksheet

REFORM – Building New Rhythms of Faithfulness

The Six of Seven

"You can win the war but lose the peace."

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr offered this warning to the Allied Forces after World War II. He knew that if the victors didn’t plan for a just and stable post-war world, conflict would inevitably return. His warning was a reminder of the failures of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919; the Allies technically "won" World War I, but they created conditions that led directly to the rise of Hitler and the devastation of WWII.

The lesson is simple but critical: After a purge, there is a vacuum. If you only tear down, the old weeds will eventually grow back.

This brings us to the final step in our cycle: Reform.

Filling the Vacuum

King Josiah understood this strategic shift. He knew he had to pivot from cleaning out and tearing down to adding in and building up. He realized that if he cleansed the land but left it empty, the idolatry would return.

So, Josiah filled the void with a new-old, God-honoring structure. He commanded the entire nation to celebrate the Passover. But this was no ordinary celebration. The Bible notes:

"The Passover had not been kept in Israel like that since the days of Samuel the prophet. None of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as Josiah kept" (2 Chronicles 35:18).

This was a massive logistical undertaking that reordered the entire nation around a central act of worship and remembrance. It involved priests, Levites, and citizens from every corner of the land. Renewal was no longer just a private feeling in Josiah’s heart; it became an embodied, corporate, and durable shared practice.

He reformed the nation's habits and its calendar around remembering God’s deliverance.

The Aggregation of Marginal Gains

We see this same principle at work in modern high-performance organizations. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, tells the story of the British Cycling team, whose reforms transformed them from mediocrity to dynasty.

For one hundred years, British cycling was stagnant. Since 1908, British riders had won just a single gold medal at the Olympic Games. Their reputation was so poor that one top European bike manufacturer refused to sell bikes to the team, fearing it would hurt their brand image. They had the intention to win—every athlete wants to win—but they lacked the system to support it.

That changed in 2003 when the organization hired a new performance director, Dave Brailsford. Brailsford didn't start with a rousing speech or a demand for more "willpower." Instead, he introduced a boring-sounding philosophy: "The aggregation of marginal gains."

His idea was simple: if you break down everything that goes into riding a bike and improve it by just 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put it all together.

So, the Reform began.

Brailsford and his coaches started with the obvious mechanical tweaks, redesigning bike seats and improving tire grip. But then, they went deeper into the "rhythms" of the athletes' lives—the invisible structures no one else was watching:

• They tested massage gels to see which led to the fastest muscle recovery.

• They hired a surgeon to teach riders the best way to wash their hands to avoid illness.

• They determined the specific pillow and mattress that provided the best sleep for each rider.

• They even painted the inside of the team truck white to spot dust that could degrade the performance of their tuned bikes.

They didn't just "try harder." They reformed the environment. They built new habits into the very structure of the team’s existence.

The result? Just five years later, the British Cycling team dominated the 2008 Beijing Olympics, winning 60 percent of the available gold medals. Four years later in London, they raised the bar again, setting nine Olympic records and seven world records.

Systems Over Intentions

Perhaps, like the British team before 2003, many of us—and many of our churches—have good intentions but failing systems. We occasionally purge the idols, but we leave a vacuum, and the old weeds grow back.

Josiah knew what Dave Brailsford learned: You cannot just decide to be better; you must build new systems, processes, and habits.

If we want to see a new rhythm of faithfulness in our lives or our churches, we can't just wish for it. We have to build the structure that makes it inevitable. As my friend and recovery expert Dr. Mark Denison says:

"You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems."

This is why so many New Year’s resolutions fail. A person has a renewed intention to get fit, but they don't reform their schedule to make time for the gym, reform their shopping habits to buy healthy food, or reform their social life to include active friends. The old systems eventually overwhelm the new intention.

Repentance that doesn’t lead to new habits is just regret.

Your Call to Reform

We must build new, holy rhythms into the very structure of our lives.

Personally:

• If you have repented of prayerlessness, you must reform your morning schedule to include a set time for prayer.

• If you have repented of greed, you must reform your budget to practice systematic, generous giving.

Corporately: A church’s true values are revealed not by its mission statement, but by its budget and its calendar. We must reform our structures to align with our refocused priorities.

• This means we fund disciple-making over mere entertainment.

• It means we schedule prayer gatherings as non-negotiable appointments.

• It means we create clear, intentional pathways for people to move from being a guest to becoming a fully engaged member of the family—pathways for membership, leadership development, and service that embody our commitment to the Gospel.

Do you know what reforms you need to make in your life? Do you know what reforms the church God has entrusted to you needs to make?

As with the previous posts, I have included a simple worksheet to help start a discussion and provide action items so that you won’t just win the people, but lose the disciple-making.

REFORM Worksheet

REFINE – The Necessary Purge

The Fifth of Seven

He had no choice. To remain faithful to Yahweh, King Josiah was compelled to make the agonizing, unpopular decision to set the people of God right. He knew a fundamental truth: knowing the right thing must lead to doing the right thing—even when it is painful.

And make no mistake: purging is always painful.

With the covenant renewed and priorities refocused on God's Word, the next step in our journey of renewal is inevitable and intense: to Refine. This is the necessary purge of anything that competes with our exclusive devotion to God.

What Josiah did next was shocking in its scope and violence. He unleashed a sweeping, methodical purge of every trace of idolatry from the land. This was not a symbolic gesture; it was spiritual surgery without anesthetic.

The Depravity of the Day

Reading 2 Kings 23 reveals the sheer scale of this operation. Josiah did not just preach against idols; he dismantled the infrastructure of hell. He dragged the sacred objects of Baal and Asherah out of the Lord’s temple and burned them to ashes in the Kidron Valley.

But he went further. Verse 7 tells us he tore down the living quarters of the shrine prostitutes who were operating inside the very courts of the Temple. Think of the horror of that image: for years, as faithful families walked into God’s house to pray, they had to navigate past rooms dedicated to ritualized sex and the weaving of occult tapestries. The holy place had become a brothel.

Josiah then marched to the Valley of Ben Hinnom—to the place called Topheth. This was the site of the ultimate nightmare, where parents, deafened by the beating of drums, passed their children through the fire to the bull-headed god Molech. Josiah did not just break this altar; he defiled it. He spread human bones and refuse over it, rendering it ritually unusable forever. He ensured that no child would ever scream in that valley again.

He traveled north to Bethel to desecrate the rival altar King Jeroboam had established centuries prior. He smashed. He burned. He tore down. He defiled.

To grasp the necessity of this purge, we must understand that this was not a "benign, multicultural spirituality." It was a demonic cancer rotting the nation from the inside out. Josiah’s violence was the inevitable expression of his love. He cut out the tumor to save the patient.

The Modern High Places 

A powerful modern parallel to this "tearing down of idols" is the process of addiction recovery. An alcoholic cannot simply decide to "drink a little less." True, lasting recovery requires a radical purge. It means pouring every bottle down the drain. It means deleting the phone numbers of old drinking buddies. It means avoiding the bars and parties that trigger the craving.

It feels like a death because it is a death. It is the death of the "Old Man." But this death is the necessary, refining fire that purges the dross so that the true gold of a redeemed life can emerge.

The Bible uses this same active, violent language regarding our sin. Colossians 3:5 commands us to "put to death" the deeds of the body. Jesus says if your right eye causes you to sin, "gouge it out" (Matthew 5:29). This is not a gentle negotiation. It is a declaration of war. As the Puritan John Owen famously wrote, "Be killing sin, or it will be killing you."

Identifying Your Idols 

So, what are the "high places" and "Asherah poles" in your heart? What rival loves compete for the worship only God deserves?

• The Idol of Comfort: Avoiding difficult conversations or obedience to maintain a false peace.

• The Idol of Approval: Living in terror of what others think, weaving tapestries of people-pleasing to cover our insecurity.

• The Idol of Control: Reacting with anger or anxiety whenever life doesn't go according to your plan.

• The Idol of Power: Trusting in political ideologies or career status more than the providence of God.

To refine means to name those idols and, with the power of the Holy Spirit, tear them down. It means deleting the app that fuels your lust or envy. It means canceling the subscription that drains your stewardship. It means ending the toxic relationship. It is active, decisive, and necessary.

Refining the Church 

And as a church, we must be willing to refine our practices. We must ask the tough questions and answer them truthfully:

• Do we cater to consumerism, treating the church as a vendor of religious goods?

• Have we allowed political ideologies to become functional idols that shape our fellowship more than the Gospel?

• Does our community resemble a country club more than the dangerous, sacrificial church of the book of Acts?

Refining means having the courage to prune ministries that look busy but don’t bear fruit. It means establishing clear, biblical guardrails for integrity, holiness, and purpose. It means we stop doing good things so we can devote ourselves to the best things.

Let us be like Josiah. Let us not tolerate the high places in our hearts or our houses. Let us invite the Refiner's fire, knowing that He burns away the dross not to destroy us, but to reveal the image of Christ within us.

As a practical help, I have created The REFINE Worksheet with biblical and insightful questions for you to first ask for yourself (the inner temple), and then, a second section for the church corporate (the outer temple). 

You can find it here. 

REFINE Worksheet