A few weeks ago, I spoke about what it means to believe in Jesus and to accept his invitation to become a member of his household. Today we will take a very high-level look at the next step, which I am calling “Training to Know Jesus”. We could easily spend 30 hours on this topic! My goal today is to present some new ideas, which will give you food for thought. I will be sharing:
a. What “knowing Jesus” means to me.
b. How the message from Hebrews has helped me.
c. Some thoughts about the Spiritual discipline.
What “knowing Jesus” means to me
I am going to use this picture to help me describe several different phases of our spiritual lives, because words alone are not sufficient.
1. When we first decide to follow Jesus, and become a member of His household, the new life inside of us is very fragile, like this little plant. It is very young and small. Surrounding this young life is soil, which represents the Holy Spirit, who wraps around us and supports us, almost like the womb of God. And the soil connects us to the hands of Jesus. Jesus came to earth and as he lived among us, his hands became dirty and calloused like the hands of a human, to support us in our life in God.
2. As we mature in our faith, one of our jobs is to nurture this seed of God’s love in other people. We need to live in community and help others grow in their faith also. So that little seedling is someone else’s life of faith. The soil is still the Holy Spirit, but the hands are our hands. The Holy Spirit is working through us to support the life of another person. Ministry is messy, dirty work. To minister to another is to share their pain and sorrow and joy, allowing Jesus to use your own brokenness and joy as the path to healing. It is a process that is fully engaged in life, like the hands in the picture.
3. The last phase is what I will talk about more in a few minutes, and that is training for our life of faith. That little seedling can’t just be left alone, without any additional care, or it would die. It needs intentional, repeated care with fresh water, fresh air, sunlight and maybe a trellis when it gets bigger. This is just like the spiritual disciplines that are available to us, to nurture the life of God inside of us. And as our spiritual lives grow, we need to add more structure, such as worship and Bible study.
Just like the plant, soil and hands are real and engaged with life, our understanding, or “knowing” of Jesus needs to be the same thing. We need to know Jesus as a person, not know about Jesus, like a picture. Jesus needs to be real to us, as he supports us with the power of the Holy Spirit, wrapping us in God.
How the message from Hebrews has helped me
Hebrews 12:1-3 is one of the Bible verses that I lean on, when the life of God inside of me feels fragile and needs to be strengthened. Pastor Rom preached from this section of scripture on Easter 2007, two days after my friend Lon died after a yearlong battle against brain cancer. Before the service, Pastor Rom approached me and said I should pay special attention to the sermon, because he thought there was a message of encouragement in it for me. He knew that I was very young in my faith and how I was struggling with Lon’s death.
Hebrews 12:1-3 (NLT) – “12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. 2 We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. 3 Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up.”
The words “keeping our eyes on Jesus” have given me strength and helped me focus when the demands of the world have pulled at the life of God in me, when I “become weary and want to give up”.
Some thoughts about the spiritual disciplines:
There are habits that have been passed down in Church, generation after generation by the “crowd of witnesses”, which are proven ways to train for a life guided by the Holy Spirit. These Spiritual Disciplines help us train for, or “run with endurance”, this life of knowing Jesus, of being tuned to the power of the Spirit of God. It is only when we are connected to the Holy Spirit that we can know Jesus in an intimate way. A few weeks ago, at Pentecost, Pastor Rom gave an amazing sermon about the power of the Holy Spirit. It is on the Dodgeville United Methodist Church website (www.dodgevilleumc.org), so please make some time to watch the video. Pastor Rom has also been doing some newsletter articles focusing on some of these habits over the past few months.
Here are a few examples of the categories of spiritual disciplines:
- Doing or engagement: Worship, study, fellowship, giving, prayer.
- Not doing or abstinence: Fasting, solitude, silence and prayer.
c. Prayer fits in both categories, because it is our relationship with God…
John Ortberg, in his book “The Life You’ve Always Wanted”, provides some valuable guidelines concerning these habits that I would like to share with you today. This is an introduction to the world of the spiritual disciplines. If you would like to know more, please read John Ortberg’s book. He has this amazing gift of making somewhat complicated topics easy to understand and funny too. These are from his chapter “Training vs. Trying: The Truth About Spiritual Disciplines.”
1. Spiritual disciplines are not:
a. A barometer of spirituality: Spiritual disciplines are to life what calisthenics are to a game. Once you have loosened up, you stop the calisthenics and start playing the game. The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to grow closer in our relationship with God, not to do the spiritual discipline.
b. Necessarily unpleasant: If we are training for a life characterized by joy, peace and affection, we should assume that some of the practices will be enjoyable.
c. Not a way to earn favor with God: They are simply a way of growing toward the life that God graciously offers.
2.
A few key questions:
What makes something a spiritual discipline?
Spiritual discipline: Any activity that can help me gain power to live life as Jesus taught and modeled it. If we are sleep deprived, which makes us cranky and unable to pray, a nap could be a spiritual discipline. A nap would allow us to live our lives closer to the model Jesus gives us.
How do we know what spiritual disciplines to practice?
We must understand clearly what it means to live in the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is a huge topic. What I am referring to is life here on earth, here and now, as opposed to the Kingdom of Heaven, which is life after we die. The spiritual disciplines will help us live a life of love, bringing glory to God in our daily lives.
We must learn what particular barriers keep us from living this life. We are each individuals, and the barrier for me will probably not be the same as the barrier for someone else.
We must learn what particular practices, experiences or relationships will help us overcome these barriers. A spiritual discipline that helps me overcome a barrier might not be the same thing that someone else needs to practice to overcome their barriers. Some of it is trial and error and if your life is not growing in grace and peace, then stop and try something else.
Signs of Wise Spiritual Training: I find this very helpful, because the world is of full of self-help books that teach us how to be a wonderful person in the ways of the world. But these ways may not be Gods ways.
Respects the freedom of the Spirit. Think of the difference between a motor boat (control) vs. a sailboat (with the wind): We may aggressively pursue it, but we cannot turn it on and off. We can open ourselves to transformation through certain practices, but we cannot engineer it. We can take no credit for it. It requires discernment. We must learn to respond to the fresh wind of the Spirit.
Respects our unique temperament and gifts. Whatever your natural temperament may be, it is not a barrier to your spiritual growth. God created us with a wide variety of emotional and intellectual characteristics, each person unique and wonderful. God will use each of us to share God’s love in the world. God does not make mistakes or people that should be thrown away. We need the freedom to discover how God wants us to grow, for God’s design will not look quite the same for everyone.
Takes into account our season of life. A spiritual discipline for someone who is 18 is different than what works for someone who is 55 or someone who is 85. As long as we are alive, we need to keep growing. We just need to be aware of changes and evaluate our spiritual practices as we grow and change.
Respects the inevitability of troughs and peaks. There are times of consolation and times of desolation. If we forget the rhythm, we assume the current time will last forever, whether it is consolation or desolation. It is a mistake to assume that one “spiritual routine” will cover us for the rest of our lives.
Begins with a clear decision. Jesus confronted people directly about the choice to become a follower. This is the race for which we were born. But we will not drift into such a life. We must decide.
4. How do we know which Spiritual disciples to practice?
Sins of omission (not doing) are generally helped by practicing disciplines of engagement (doing): Worship, study, fellowship, giving and prayer.
Sins of commission (doing) are generally helped by practicing disciplines of abstinence (not doing): Fasting, solitude, silence and prayer
The whole purpose of the spiritual disciplines is to help us know Jesus better, to live our lives guided by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is a gift from Jesus, sent to help us have the power to live out the life that God called each and every one of us to live, which is a life of joy! If you are not experiencing joy in your life, and joy is different than happiness, no matter where you are, then it is time to look at the spiritual disciplines. God will send us joy. Even in the darkest times, the joy is a possibility. We can ask God for the Holy Spirit to be present in our lives.
Oswald Chambers, in My Utmost for His Highest from yesterday, states this very clearly:
“You cannot bring yourself to the point of spiritual reality anytime you choose. The best thing to do, once you realize you are not spiritually real, is to ask God for the Holy Spirit, basing your request on the promise of Jesus Christ, as in Luke 11:13. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes everything that Jesus did for you real in your life.”
We need to ask for our relationship with Jesus to be real, like in the picture. The plant is real and the soil is real and the hands are real. Life is dirty and messy, but it is engaged and involved. This is the life God wants us to live and this is the life the Spirit of God will guide us to. We must ask out of our poverty, our understanding of who we are in relationship to God, not out of desire for a certain outcome. We must know we are not in control, and that our lives rest in Jesus…