THE WOBBLE FACTOR
Most of us were handed a picture of the Christian life drawn as a line. You were lost, then you were found, and after that you climbed steadily up and to the right. For years I measured myself against that line. Some weeks I felt close to God and some weeks I didn’t. I kept running into the same struggle I was sure I had settled years earlier. The straight line has only one word for that, and the word is failure.
What if that’s the wrong word?
The Wobble Factor is my case that the course corrections don’t interrupt discipleship. They are what discipleship looks like. No sailboat reaches home in a straight line. The sailor works the ship home through hundreds of small turns of the rudder while the Holy Spirit fills the sails, and from above, the wake wobbles. The wobble is not a sign of failure; it’s the signature of growth.
What’s inside
- Three tensions that every disciple lives in at once: conviction and compromise, certainty and doubt, zeal and wisdom. An immature faith settles each one by picking a side. A maturing faith learns to hold both, like the father who cried, I do believe; help my unbelief! (Mark 9:24).
- The difference between a wobble and a drift. One of them is navigation, and the other only looks like it. Confusing the two costs a great deal.
- Six Pilocon Principles, which the rest of the series takes up one book at a time: Responsibility Before Response, Authenticity Over Performance, Process Over Arrival, Preparation Over Prediction, Consistency Over Intensity, and Community Over Independence.
- Fixed points and fluid practices. Some things don’t move: God’s character, the gospel, who you are in Christ, and the authority of Scripture. Other things are allowed to change with the season, like how you pray, how you read, and how you gather. A lot of shame comes from treating a fluid practice as if it were a fixed point.
Who it’s for
It isn’t written for the person who has it all settled. It’s for the one still looking. Maybe you know exactly who you’re supposed to be on Sunday and you’re less sure on Monday. Maybe you’re tired enough of performing to try something harder and truer.
I’m not writing from the far side of the finish line. I’m decades into the same wobble you’re in, still correcting and still pressing on: Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me (Philippians 3:12).
Where to get it
The Wobble Factor is available in paperback and on Kindle at Amazon.
It’s the foundation of the Wobble Factor Series, and the other books take their heading from it. If you’d like to start smaller, the first pocket book is You Cannot Navigate Alone. It’s free, and you can read it in one sitting.