Sunday, May 22, 2016
Pastor Joe Wittwer
The Listening Life
#3—Listening to Scripture

Introduction and offering:

Would you like to hear God’s voice more clearly? What if I could give you a simple practice that would guarantee that you would hear from God? Would you do it? Here it is:

The Big Idea: Scripture is God’s inspired Word. Listen to Scripture and you’ll hear from God!

Simple! But honestly, some of us don’t feel that way. We read the Bible and come away scratching our heads. I want to teach you how to listen to the Bible so that you can hear God’s voice. And I thought it would be good if we practiced together. So you’ll notice that your outline looks different—more about that in a minute.

This is week 3 of our series, The Listening Life, which is inspired and informed by Adam McHugh’s excellent book, The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction. If you want to dig deeper, get the book. I’m borrowing some ideas from it, and adding some of my own—but all of it is based on Scripture.

This series is about whole-life listening: listening to God (who listens to us), listening to Scripture, to creation, to other people and to our own lives. And really, all these other “listenings” are all potentially listening to God, because He speaks in many ways. The Listening Life is whole-life listening to God who is speaking all around us. The universe crackles with the sound of God’s voice! I want to learn to Him better—don’t you?

Last Sunday, I asked you to pray this prayer from 1 Samuel 3 every day: “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” When you pray that prayer, you are making space to hear from God. We’re going to pray it right now. Speak Lord, for your servant is listening. I believe that God will speak to you today.

Your outline looks different. Instead of fill-in-the-blank points, there are three short passages of Scripture: one from a New Testament letter, one from the Old Testament law, and one from the Gospel of Luke. Each of these passages speaks to our subject—listening to Scripture. We are going to practice listening to Scripture together. Here’s how it will work.

• I will read each passage slowly, twice.
• The first time we read for observation: What does it say? And we read for interpretation: What does it mean?
• The second time we read for application: What will I do?

So I’m not going to just tell you how to listen to Scripture; I’m going to do it with you and hopefully show you how to do it.

If you brought a paper Bible with you (and I encourage you to do that each week), open it to 2 Timothy 3. I love digital Bibles and use them; but if you are new to the Bible, it’s helpful to start with a paper Bible. It helps you to see the Big Picture, see where you are in the story. For example, my Bible is open to 2 Timothy. You can see that it is toward the end of the book (95%). The Bible is laid out in roughly chronological order. It starts in Genesis with God creating the universe and ends in Revelation with the second coming of Christ and the restoration of all things. So right away, I can see where 2 Timothy falls in the story—it’s toward the end. You can’t see that on your phone screen. As I read, please underline or mark words or phrases that strike you. You can do this in your Bible or on the outline.

We’ll start with a passage from 2 Timothy. This is a letter written from the apostle Paul late in his life to Timothy, a younger pastor whom Paul has mentored. The letter is filled with wise practical advice from an older pastor to a younger one.

2 Timothy 3:14–17 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Observation: What does it say?

Here, Paul gives Timothy a command or charge: continue in what you have learned. Here’s what you have learned: stick with it; don’t leave it. It’s possible to wander away from what you’ve learned. Paul says, “Don’t do it. Park right here. Continue on in what you’ve learned.”

He tells him why he should continue: because you know those from whom you’ve learned it. You learned from reliable sources. Who taught Timothy what he knew? First, his mother and grandmother.

2 Timothy 1:5 I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.

Timothy first learned his faith from his mom and grandma: Eunice and Lois. And he learned it from his mentor, the apostle Paul, with whom he traveled and planted churches.

Paul tells him what to do (continue in what you’ve learned), why he should do it (he learned from reliable sources) and what he learned: “from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures.” This is what he is to continue in: the Holy Scriptures. When Paul wrote this, the Holy Scriptures were the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. Later, the New Testament was added to the Scriptures to form what we call the Bible. The word “scripture” means “writings”. The word Bible means “book or scroll”. The Scriptures or Bible tell God’s Big Story: Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration. Our personal stories are part of God’s Big Story, so when we read the Bible, we begin to make sense of the universe and our place in it.

So Paul says, “Continue on in what you have learned from the Scriptures.” Then he says some very important things about the Scriptures.

First, he says the Scriptures “are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Second, he says “all Scripture is God-breathed,” or inspired.

Third, he says that all Scripture “is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Interpretation: What does it mean? Let’s focus on this idea: what does it mean that the Scriptures are God-breathed or inspired? It means that God is the ultimate Author of Scripture. The Bible was written by human beings—in fact, it was written over 15 centuries by dozens of authors. But behind all these human authors stands a Divine Author, breathing His word into them. I don’t have time to discuss the scholarly debates about the nature of inspiration—how God did it. But somehow, God inspired these authors to write down what He wanted. He breathed His words into them and through them, so that when we read the Bible, we are reading God’s Word. God is speaking through the inspired Scriptures. So when we come to the Bible, we come to encounter God. We aren’t reading a dead book, but a living Word whose Author is speaking to us. The Bible is a place of encounter; we’re invited into a conversation with God. Listen to the Bible to encounter God!

Because the Bible is God’s inspired Word, it can “make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

ILL: A couple months ago, I was in LA for meetings. On my way back to the airport with a friend, we had a conversation with our Uber driver. She asked what we did, and we said we were pastors, and asked about her faith. She had none and waxed eloquent about it. I asked if she had ever read the Bible. No. Are you curious, I asked her? Of course. I recommended she read the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—the story of Jesus. “Just get acquainted with Jesus and see what you think,” I told her and left her my card. I haven’t heard from her, but I know that if she reads the Scriptures, the story of Jesus, she will know what she needs to be saved.

God’s inspired word can make you wise for salvation—it can lead you to Jesus.

It is also useful to teach, rebuke, correct and train in righteousness, so that we will be equipped for every good work. God’s Word can equip you for every good work! Have you been in a situation and not known what to do? God’s word can equip you for that situation—for every good work. It equips us for service, for our mission.

So what does it mean? It means that the Bible is God’s inspired Word and very powerful! Let’s read one more time—this time ask God to speak to you: what will you do?

2 Timothy 3:14–17 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Application: What will I do? Take a minute and tell someone!

Here are a couple things that speak to me as I listen to this Scripture.

First, I want to continue on in the Scriptures. I have been reading the Bible almost every day for close to 50 years. I don’t know how many times I’ve read through the whole thing, but it’s dozens of times. And I’m not about to stop. I’m going to keep reading every day because this makes me wise for salvation, and this equips me for every good work, and God speaks through this to teach me, rebuke me, correct me and train me. When I read God’s inspired Word, God speaks to me—and works in my life. I encounter God! Sometimes I learn new things; often I’m reminded of what I’ve learned and need to continue in. But God speaks every time. We never read the Bible alone; God meets us there; it is His Word and He is speaking to us. So I’m going to keep doing it! And I hope you will too.

We have a Bible reading plan; it takes about 15 minutes a day to do the reading, and it takes you through the OT once and the NT twice every year. We have a 5 minute version too. God can speak in 15 minutes or 5 minutes. Get started, then continue on. Keep going. Build a steady diet of Scripture into your life.

Second, I want to teach the Scriptures to my kids and grandkids. Paul told Timothy that, “from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures.” Timothy’s mom and grandma gave him a great gift. Are you giving that give to your kids and grandkids? We started with our kids when they were infants. They have been hearing the Scriptures from us since they were babies, through childhood and adolescence and into adulthood. We’ve built it into their lives, and they’ve continued on. Find a way to read and talk about Scripture with your kids. Make it fun, practical, lively—don’t make the best news in the world boring! You want your kids to learn it, love it and live it!

Next passage: Deuteronomy 17. This is in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy is the fifth book in the Bible. It is toward the front of the story (16% in). The name “Deuteronomy” means “second law”. In it, Moses restates the law, God’s covenant with Israel, in the form of a long story. Here, Moses predicts that when they are settled in the Promised Land, they will want a king, so he gives them some rules for the king.

Deuteronomy 17:18–20 When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. 19 It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees 20 and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

Observation: what does it say? As each king assumed the throne in Israel, they were to write their own copy of this law. That could refer to the entire book of Deuteronomy, or to the entire Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament).   This copy of God’s law—God’s inspired Word to Israel—was to be with the king, and he was to read it “all the days of his life”: every day! He was to do this for three important reasons.

First, so that he would learn to revere the Lord. Keep God first!

Second, so that he would learn to follow carefully all the words of this law. He was to learn to obey, and not “turn from the law to the right or left.”

Third, so that he would not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites. In other words, he was not above the law, but was under God’s law like everyone else. This was God’s word to him too.

Interpretation: what does it mean? Why did every new king have to write his own copy of the law? By writing his own copy of the law, it guaranteed that the king had read the law and was familiar with it. It also meant that the king was giving his assent to the law and covenant, acknowledging that he accepted the law and covenant. And he was acknowledging that his authority was derivative: God was Israel’s true King, and he ruled only under God’s authority.  

Israel’s leaders were to be led by God and submitted to God’s Word. They were to be people of the Book, who read God’s Word every day and did what it said. They were never to think that they were above the law. Reading God’s Word daily would keep them humble and obedient. And if they would do this, the kings and their descendants would rule a long time over Israel.

By the way, did Israel’s kings do this? Did they follow this teaching? No. They ignored God’s Word; they didn’t make their own copies, they didn’t read it every day, and they didn’t obey it. In fact, 2 Kings 22 tells the story of the king’s secretary finding a copy of the law in the temple. It was the 18^th year of King Josiah’s reign, and he had never even seen a copy of the law, much less read it every day! The law had been lost for decades. This neglect of God’s word resulted in the eventual overthrow of the kingdom. Israel was taken into captivity and was no more because they ignored God’s word.

Let’s read one more time—this time ask God to speak to you: what will you do?

Deuteronomy 17:18–20 When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. 19 It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees 20 and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

Application: what will I do? Take a moment and tell someone.

Here is what speaks to me as I listen to this Scripture.

Listen to God’s Word every day—all the days of your life. God is telling the king that he needs to do this; I think God is telling me the same thing. I need to listen to Scripture every day so that I revere the Lord and obey Him. The Scripture is a like a compass pointing me back to True North. Without it, I wander. So for me, it’s an every day deal. Each day, I listen to Scripture and recalibrate to True North, correct back to Jesus. Jesus said in John 5:39-40 that all Scripture testifies to Him—it all points us to Jesus. He is our True North. Make it an every day deal. Listen to God in Scripture and let him recalibrate you back to Jesus.

In the book, The Listening Life, Adam McHugh explains the ancient practice of lectio divina, or sacred reading. We use a modified version of that called PBJ: Prayer, Bible and Journal. This is a simple structure for a daily time with God—a time to connect with God and listen to God. I read the Bible (I use our Bible reading plan and it takes me about 15 minutes to read it). I ask God to speak to me. I pray that prayer, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” I expect God to speak to me through Scripture. To help me listen to God in Scripture, I use the SOAP method, which is explained in our journals.

• Scripture. I read the Scripture.
• Observation. I observe and interpret. I ask, “What does it say? And what does it mean?” It’s what we’ve been doing today.
• Application. I look for the impact—what strikes me, what impresses me—and ask, “What will I do?” I ask God for one thing, and then I write that one thing down in my journal. “Give me one thing for today that I can do.” Listening to God’s Word will always lead to obedience. We aren’t just accumulating Bible knowledge; we are building a relationship with God and learning to obey. Remember, the king was to read every day so he could “learn to revere the Lord” (learn to love God) and “carefully follow all the words of this law” (learn to obey). If you listen and don’t do, you haven’t really listened. Eugene Peterson wrote: “The most important question we ask of the text is not, ‘What does this mean?’ but ‘What can I obey?’ A simple act of obedience will open our lives to this text far more quickly than any number of Bible studies and dictionaries and concordances.”
• Prayer. I finish with prayer. I pray my one thing back to God and then pray about whatever else is on my mind. And I try to listen for God’s answers.

SOAP: Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer. That’s how I do my daily Bible reading and listen to Scripture. All this is explained in our Life Center journals.

Listen to God’s Word every day, all the days of your life.

The final passage is in Luke 10. You’ll notice in your Bible that it is in the New Testament, about 80% through the Bible. Luke is one of four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—that tell the story of Jesus. Luke is the only gospel that includes this story of Jesus paying a visit to Mary and Martha. When you read a story like this in the Bible, try putting yourself into one of the character’s shoes and imagine the story from their perspective.

Luke 10:38–42 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Observation: What does it say? Martha, who probably has the gift of hospitality, opened her home to Jesus and his 12 disciples. Imagine having 13 men drop over for lunch unexpected! Martha was busy—so busy that Luke says she was “distracted by all the preparations.” This is understandable: she had a large meal to prepare and she could have used some help. But her sister Mary, instead of helping, was sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to what He said. Frustrated, Martha bursts in and interrupts Jesus and Mary, protesting that Mary has left her to do all the work by herself. “Tell her to help me,” she demands. How many of you have had a sibling fight like this in your home? We had them all the time growing up—fighting about doing the dishes or cleaning up. “Tell her to help me!”

You’d expect Jesus to send Mary into the kitchen to help—that would be fair. But that’s not what he does. Instead, he tells Martha that she’s worried and upset about many things, but few are needed, really only one! Mary has chosen what is better and it won’t be taken from her. What was the one thing that Mary had chosen? Listening to Jesus.

Interpretation: What does it mean? Did you notice that Martha was “distracted”? The word implies that she should have been focused on something and wasn’t. What should she have been focused on? Jesus! If Jesus showed up at your house what would you do? I hope you’d drop everything and pay attention to Him! Everything else is just a distraction compared to Jesus!

Only one thing is needed; what is that one thing? Listening to Jesus. Some scholars say that Mary was being a disciple, and that is the one thing: be a disciple, be a follower of Jesus. But how was she being a disciple? She was listening to Jesus. Listen to Jesus. What if the most important thing you did all day was to listen to Jesus?

Let’s read one more time, and listen for what God might say to you. Speak Lord, for your servants are listening.

Luke 10:38–42 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Application: What will I do? Take a moment and tell someone.

Here is what speaks to me as I listen to this Scripture.

Only one thing is needed: listen to Jesus. The most important thing I do is to listen to Jesus, to pay attention to Jesus. I do that when I listen His Word in Scripture. I do that when I listen for the Spirit’s whisper during the day. I do that when I listen for the voice of God all during the day, knowing that He may speak to me through anyone or anything.

Listen to Jesus.

I hope you’ll make a habit of taking time to listen to Scripture each day. Sit at Jesus’ feet and let Him speak to you as you open God’s word.

 
Sermon Questions

1. Do you wish you could hear God’s voice more clearly? What do you think is a relatively simple practice that could help you to do just that?
2. Is it part of your daily practice to spend time in the Word? When you do spend time reading Scripture, do you think you are able to more clearly hear God? Give an example of a time you heard the Lord pointedly speaking into your life.
3. Do you tend to read out of your paper bible, or use a digital version? In your opinion, what are the benefits and drawbacks to each?
4. What does it mean that the Scriptures are God-breathed or inspired? Is this evident to you when you get into the Word, or do you still have some questions? If you feel comfortable doing so, please share about your experiences with reading the bible. Has it been easy or difficult? What could make it better or more understandable for you?

Application

Try to make it a daily habit to read and listen through Scripture each day. Sit at Jesus’ feet and let Him speak to you as you open God’s word. You might just hear Him more clearly than before!

Sunday, March 13, 2016
Pastor Joe Wittwer
What does God want for me?
#2—God wants to change me.

Introduction and offering:

Two weeks ago, someone approached me after the first service and told me that she looked at the handout and sighed. She read it, “What does God want from me?” Then she realized it actually said, “What does God want for me?” She said it was like an epiphany. She realized that she tends to approach God as a demanding boss, that God always wants something from her not for her.

This is what religion does to us. Religion is about what we do for God—what God wants from us. It becomes a burden. Christianity is about what God has done for us in Christ—what God wants for us. It is a joy! This is the good news: God wants something beautiful for you! God wants for you to follow Jesus and experience life to the full. We’ve summarized what God wants for you in these four things:

• Relationship with God: God wants to know you. He wants for you to have a love relationship with Him.
• Christ-like character: God wants to change you. He wants for you to become a new person, more like Jesus.
• Relationships with others: God wants to socialize you. He wants for you to have healthy relationships with others.
• Service to God and people: God wants to send you. He wants for you to serve effectively, to live a meaningful life.

The whole thing starts with a relationship with God. As I know and love God, the first thing that changes is me—I become a different person, more like Jesus. Then as I change, my relationships with those around me are transformed. I become a better spouse, parent, friend, employer, employee, and neighbor. When you have a relationship with God that transforms you and your relationships with people, you have something worth giving away, so God sends you into the world to serve.

A relationship with God, a new you, transformed relationships with people, and service to God and people. We summarize it with “God, me, we, world.” Or you could say, “Up, in, around, out.”   I kind of like my latest sumary: “know, grow, yo, go.”

Two weeks ago, we kicked this series off saying that God wants a relationship with you, and everything else flows out of this relationship. Today, we’re talking about the new you—God wants to change you. He wants for you to become a new person, more like Jesus. And this flows out of your relationship with Jesus. The more you hang with Jesus, the more you love God, the more you’ll become like Him.

The Big Idea: When you have a love relationship with God, the first thing that changes is you! God wants to make you more like Jesus.

So let’s unpack this idea that God wants to change you, and then we’ll talk about how He does it.

1. God wants to change you.

Right away, someone might object, “But doesn’t God love us right now, just as we are?” Of course He does. And He loves you so much that He won’t let you stay there. He wants us to grow.

ILL: I loved my five kids at every age, just as they were. I loved them as 2 year olds, but I didn’t want to them stay there. I loved them as 10 year olds, but I didn’t want them to stay there. I loved them as 13 year olds, but I didn’t want them to stay there—please! I loved them as they were and I enjoyed every age and stage, but I wanted them to grow up and become productive adults.

So of course God loves you right now, right where you are. Life is a journey; spiritual life is a journey; and God loves us at every stage along the way. He loves you too much let you get stuck where you are. He wants you to grow up, and keep growing. God wants to change you: He wants to make you new.

1. He wants to make you new.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

In Christ, we become new people—the old is gone, the new is here. This happens in Christ, that is, in relationship with Jesus, as we know Him, love Him, follow Him, and live in Him. The relationship is first—the newness follows.

This makes sense. When you connect with God, it should change you! If you grabbed a live electrical wire, would something happen to you? It would knock you on your keister! In the same way, you should expect something to happen to you when you meet Almighty God.

ILL: Think of the Old Testament story of Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord. He came away with a permanent limp and new name—he was a different man. Goodbye to Jacob the shyster; hello to Israel, the man who prevails with God.

Or in the New Testament, think of Saul, hellbent on destroying Christians. Saul had an encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus that literally knocked him on his keister and blinded him. He came away a new man, totally transformed. Goodbye to Saul the terrorist; hello to Paul the apostle.

Or my story: I was only 13 but already in trouble with the law, rebellious, a thief and a liar, running from God as fast as I could. Then I met Jesus and everything changed. I became a new person. Goodbye to Joe the troublemaker; hello to Saint Joe!

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.

This is the meaning of baptism. Easter is just 2 weeks away, and we’re going to be baptizing at all our Easter services. In the early centuries of the Christian faith, most converts were baptized on Easter. It seemed appropriate because of the meaning of baptism. Paul wrote:

Romans 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

The word “baptize” means “to immerse, dip, plunge, saturate.” When we baptize someone, we immerse them in the water; we put them all the way under, and if they’re really bad, we hold them there a little longer! Here’s the symbolism: our old self has died with Christ and is being buried with Him, and now we are being raised with Christ to live a new life! The old you is dead and buried, a brand new you is raised to life—new life in Christ! What better day to say goodbye to the old you and be raised to a new life than on Resurrection Sunday!

If you haven’t been baptized yet, you can attend a short baptism class that’s available after every service next Sunday. Then get signed up for Easter baptisms and be raised to live a new life!

Also, I want to encourage you to be praying for the people you want to invite. When we pray, God works!

ILL: An organization called the Lighthouse of Prayer Movement decided to perform a test on the effectiveness of praying for strangers. The organizers randomly selected two sets of 80 names from a certain city’s phone book, and listed them on two separate pages. A group of Christians began to pray, faithfully, every day, for the first group of 80. But no one prayed for the names on the second list. The prayers continued daily for six weeks.

At the end of the six weeks, they called all 160 names they had selected from the phone book, and invited them to church. In the second group of 80, the ones who had not been prayed for, not a single person responded to the invitation. Within the first group, however, sixty-two out of the eighty people on the list said that they would come to church. And they did!

Morris, Robert (2016-01-05). Why Keep Praying?: When You Don’t See Results, Pg. 43 (Kindle Locations 382-388). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Start praying today for those you want to invite. You have friends and family who may be one invitation away from a new life!

Jesus wants to give you a new life! We often say it this way: you can’t follow Jesus and stay where you are. You change! You become a new person. If you haven’t changed, you probably don’t know Jesus yet! We’ll give you an opportunity to do that in a few moments—to say yes to Jesus and start following him and begin a new life.

ILL: Rich and Renee Stearns, in their devotional He Walks With Us, tell the story of stopping in a village in Malawi. Immediately their car was surrounded with children, including a group of boys that had been playing soccer. One of the boys was carrying their “soccer ball”: a bundle of old plastic bags tied up with string. “Can we trade?” asked Renee. “If I give you a brand new soccer ball, will you give me yours?” The boy pondered this, then realized that this meant giving up his ball. He ran back to his buddies to discuss this offer, and only after they’d all weighed in did he come back and make the trade.

It seems like a no-brainer: trade a homemade soccer ball for a real one! But he was familiar with that ball; he was comfortable with it; it was his and it was hard to give up.

People feel that way about their lives. Change is hard. The old is familiar, the new is…well, it’s new, it’s different, it’s scary. Maybe the idea of change intimidates you. Let me assure you that it’s good: you’re trading in your old ball of bags for a real ball—your old life for a new one that’s full of promise, love, peace and joy.

He wants to make you new—and not just any new, but like Jesus.

1. He wants to make you like Jesus.

What does God want for you? God’s stated goal for you is to make you more like His Son, Jesus.

Romans 8:28–29 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

God has a destiny for you: to conform you to image of His Son. He wants to make you like Jesus. Don’t be put off by the word “predestined.” It simply means to pick a destination ahead of time. You do it all the time. You did it today: you got in your car and came here. I’m pretty sure most of you did that on purpose! Maybe a couple of you just got in your car with no idea of where you were going, started driving around and ended up here totally by accident. But most of you predestined it. You chose your destination ahead of time.

Want to know where your life is headed? If you love God and are called according to His purpose, He is making you more like Jesus. God chose this destiny for you: to be like Jesus. Day by day, little by little, we are being transformed into His image.

2 Corinthians 3:18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

We are being transformed every day into the image of Jesus, from glory to glory. Eugene Peterson in The Message, translates it:

And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.

This is God’s destiny for you: your life becoming brighter and more beautiful as you become like Jesus. John writes:

1 John 3:1–2 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

We shall be like him! One day we shall see Jesus as He is, and we shall be like Him. This is our destiny! To be like Jesus. Between now and the day you see Jesus, God is at work in your life changing you, slowly, steadily, making you more like Jesus. Everything that God does in our lives is to draw us closer to Himself and to make us more like Jesus.

What does being like Jesus look like? Do I wear a robe and sandals and grow an awesome beard? I wish! No—it’s about character; it’s about virtue. Let me read two Scriptures:

Galatians 5:22–23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

The Holy Spirit produces this fruit, these virtues or character qualities in you. They are the character of Jesus, and they are beautiful. Would you like to be more loving, more joyful, more peaceful, more forbearing, more kind, more gooder, more faithful, more gentle, more self-controlled? Who wouldn’t? This is the good and beautiful life—a life of virtue—to be like Jesus.

I’m reading a book right now with my mentor groups by that title, The Good and Beautiful Life. The author’s thesis is that becoming like Jesus is the way to live a good and beautiful life. So many people think of Christian faith as negative, boring, stifling, and restrictive. Nothing could be further from the truth! It’s the way to love, joy, peace—a good and beautiful life. Becoming like Jesus makes you a better person and so makes your life better.

So God wants to change you—He wants for you to become more like Jesus. He wants a good and beautiful life for you.   How does He do it?

2. How does God do it?

I want to finish by giving you four components of change.

Notice I asked, “How does God do it?” not “how do you do it.” God changes us. This is His work. We cooperate—and our cooperation is essential. But it is God who changes us. Christianity is not a self-help tool. It is God’s work, not ours.   But we cooperate and here are four ways God makes us more like Jesus.  

1. By the Holy Spirit.

When you become a Christian, the Holy Spirit moves into your life; He lives in you and goes to work changing us from the inside out. He is the power for Christian living. This is why we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 5:18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.

This is a command and it’s in the present continuous tense: keep on being filled with the Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit is not optional; it’s not a gift for a few holy people. It’s commanded for all of us, and it’s essential to be filled with the Spirit because He is the power for the Christian life.

ILL: How many of you keep your car filled with gas? What happens when you run out? Pushing your car is no fun—imagine if you had to do this all the time! It would be really hard to get anywhere.

Trying to live the Christian life without being filled with the Spirit is like trying to drive your car without gas—you end up pushing till you’re exhausted. You need to be filled with the Spirit!

So ask, and be surrendered. God will fill whatever you give to Him. If you give part of your life, He’ll fill that. If you give all of your life, He’ll fill that. I ask every day to be filled with the Spirit. I leak! And I’m always finding new ways to surrender.

It’s the Holy Spirit who changes us.

2 Corinthians 3:18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Where does the change, the transformation come from? The Spirit!

Galatians 5:22–23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Who produces these fruit in us? The Spirit.

Friends, the Christian life isn’t difficult—it’s impossible. You can’t do it on your own. You need the Holy Spirit. Let Him fill you. Ask. Surrender. God will fill whatever you give Him—give Him everything!

So the Holy Spirit changes us. And we cooperate. That’s next: God makes us more like Jesus…

1. By training.

The second component of change is spiritual training or exercise.

1 Timothy 4:7–8 Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. 8 For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

The Greek word translated “train” is gumnazo; we get “gymnasium” or “gym” from it. Paul is using a very common athletic metaphor. Jerry Sittser told me that athletic metaphors are used 25 times in the New Testament, and the early church fathers often wrote about being spiritual athletes or champions for Jesus. The 1 Corinthians 9 passage on your outline is another example.

Train yourself to be godly. Exercise yourself. Get to the gym—spiritually! How many of you go to the gym? How many of you work out at home? Physical training is good. I wish everyone exercised—it’s so good for you. Paul says that here: physical training is valuable—but it’s limited value. Its value is for this life only. All that running and pumping weights—it’s good for now, but it does nothing for you after you die. But spiritual training is valuable “for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” Spiritual exercise has a double benefit: this life and the next.

What is the purpose of spiritual training? “Train yourself to be godly.” We train to become closer to God, and become more like Jesus. What will you take with you into the next life? You’ll take your relationship with God and the person you have become. These are the very things that change as you train yourself to be godly.

So how do you train? What are the spiritual exercises that bring us closer to God and make us more like Jesus? Just like there are dozens of kinds of physical exercise, there are many spiritual exercises as well. This is what Sister Mary and I are teaching up at Whitworth this Saturday: a class on the spiritual disciplines or exercises. Here are some of the classics:

• Reading the Bible.
• Daily time with God: PBJ.

There are many more. I wish I had time to talk about all these. I’ve done whole series spiritual exercises, which we’ll feature on our website and the app this week, and we’ll include a list of recommended books too.

But here’s a great starting place: PBJ—that daily time with God that I talked about all the time. Of all the spiritual exercises I’ve done, nothing has had more impact than my daily time with God. If you were going to start exercising and doing one thing, I’d say walk—it’s the most universal and essential exercise. If you want to start spiritual exercising, I’d say have a daily time with God where you pray, read the Bible and journal.

Then experiment. Try different spiritual exercises. Some will fit you better than others, but all of them will benefit you.

When we practice spiritual disciplines, we connect with God—and when you connect with God, you change.

1. By renewing your mind.

The third component of change involves your mind. How you think, what you value, the stories you tell yourself—these make you who you are. And many of us have been telling ourselves the wrong stories. We need to a change of mind—we need to see our story as part of God’s Big Story.

Lots of people tell themselves that God is against them, or at best, God wants something from them. It’s time for a change of mind: God wants something for you. John 10:10 Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it to the full.”

Lots of people tell themselves that they are worthless and they have nothing to offer. It’s time for a change of mind: God created you for a purpose.

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

What is the false narrative you’ve been telling yourself? We need a change of mind. When our minds are renewed, we are transformed.

Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Let God renew your mind, change the way you think, change your values, change your stories.

The best way to renew your mind is to fill it with Scripture. When you read the Bible, you see how God thinks, what God values, and how your story is really part of God’s big story. The more you read, the more you know God. The more you read, the more you change. You will be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

I have read the Bible dozens of times—some parts, hundreds of times. Yet every time I read it, I see something new, or I’m reminded of things I need to know or do. Each day, little by little, God is renewing my mind and changing me. This is why I read it every day, and will keep reading it until the day I vacate the planet. My mind needs to be renewed! Page by page, verse by verse, He’s renewing my mind and changing me!

1. In community.

The fourth component of change is community. Christianity is a team sport. We can’t play it alone. We need other people. God uses other people to encourage us, correct us, train us, and challenge us.

Hebrews 10:24–25 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Let us spur one another on.

How many of you have discovered that you’re more likely to go to the gym, or go running, or stick to an exercise routine if you have a partner or are part of group. This is why there are so many gyms! We need others to spur us on, to challenge and encourage us. Left to myself, I’ll be a fat couch potato!

It’s true spiritually too. I’m better because of being with you. I need others to be all that God wants me to be.

ILL: Several years ago, someone said something in a staff meeting that ticked me off and I reacted. I didn’t yell, but it was obvious to everyone that I was angry. The room went silent. My anger dropped a wet blanket over the whole meeting.

Afterwards, my lifelong friend and associate, Pastor Rick, pulled me aside and said, “Joe, you can’t do that. When you get angry, you stop whatever God is up to in the meeting. You must keep your anger under control in our meetings.” He was kind, but clear and firm. I got the message.

It was a turning point for me, a transforming conversation. And it happened because I had a Christian friend who loved me enough to spur me on, to challenge me.

Do you have relationships like that? Are you in a Life Group? Do you have Christian friends who spur you on? Do you want to become more like Jesus? You can’t do it alone—we do it together.

Take a step toward God this week! James 4:8 “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” Take a step toward God and you’ll start changing!

• Ask Him to fill you with the Holy Spirit.
• Train for godliness: practice a spiritual exercise. If you’re not already doing it, start with a daily time with God.
• Renew your mind. Read the Bible and let God rewire your thinking.
• Be in community. If you’re not in a Life Group, get in one. Christianity is a team sport.

So pick something and take a step toward God.

Sermon Questions

1. What do you believe God wants for you? Is it something you embrace or do you often find yourself dragging your feet?
2. Are you put off by the word “predestined” when it comes to what God has for you? Since you love God and are called according to His purpose, do you think that you are currently fulfilling that purpose, or taking steps to be obedient? Please elaborate.
3. What does being like Jesus look like? Do we need wear a robe and sandals and grow an awesome beard? Describe what you think life would look like if you tried to be a little more like Jesus.
4. How are you doing in the four components God uses to turn our hearts towards Jesus:

• Being filled with the Holy Spirit
• Training yourself to be Godly using prayer, PBJ, solitude, fellowship, worship, serving, fasting, Sabbath, meditation, study & confession
• Renewing your mind by filling it with scripture
• Being in community with Christians who you spur you on

Application

Take a step toward God this week and you’ll start changing! Pick one of the components from question 4 and focus on that for now. If you work on one thing at a time, you can develop some new habits that will strengthen your spiritual life. Watch how God shows up when you make time for Him!

Introduction:

Have you ever wondered, “What is God’s will for my life? What does God want for me?” Well, in the next four weeks, I’m going to tell you! I’ll answer all your questions! If you believe that, I’ve got a set of steak knives I want to sell you! Ok, I can’t answer all your questions, but I’m going to answer some of the most important ones and get you pointed in the right direction.

What does God want for me? That’s the question I want to answer. Of course, God has specific and unique things that He wants for each of us. We are each gifted and called differently. But God also has some things that He wants for all of us. I think we can get so hung up on the particulars that we miss the universals—the big things God wants for all of us. And I think that when we focus on the big things, the little things begin to sort themselves out and become clear.

So here is the universal, what God wants for all of us: We are called to be disciples of Jesus and to make disciples.

Matthew 28:18–20 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

This is called the Great Commission. Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus. And of course, our calling is to be disciples of Jesus.  

So this begs the question, “What is a disciple?” A disciple is a learner, or a follower. But what does that look like? Years ago, a group of us asked that question, and we scoured the New Testament and created a list of characteristics of a disciple of Jesus. It was a long list that had about 40-50 things, and we thought, “Oh no, that’s a little overwhelming!” But as we looked at it, the list sorted itself into four broad categories:

• Relationship with God: God wants to know you. He wants a love relationship with you.
• Christ-like character: God wants to change you. He wants to make you more like Jesus.
• Relationships with others: God wants to socialize you. He wants your relationships to be healthy.
• Service to God and people: God wants to send you. He wants you to serve effectively.

The whole thing starts with a relationship with God. And as I know and love God, the next thing that changes is me—I become a different person, more like Jesus. Then as I change, my relationships with those around me are transformed. I become a better spouse, parent, friend, employer, employee, and neighbor. When you have a relationship with God that transforms you and your relationships with people, you have something worth giving away, so God sends you into the world to serve.

A relationship with God, a new you, transformed relationships with people, and service to God and people. We summarize it with “God, me, we, world.” Or you could say, “Up, in, around, out.”   Or “know, grow, yo, go.”

This is what we’re trying to do here at Life Center. We are making disciples—helping people find and follow Jesus. These four things are what we’re working toward together: we’re helping each other get closer to God, become more like Jesus, have better relationships and serve the world in Jesus’ name.

I want to take four weeks to unpack these, to cast a vision for what God wants for you, and to challenge you to take your next step and keep growing in each area. So let’s start at the beginning.

The Big Idea: The first thing God wants is a love relationship with you! He wants to love you and be loved by you.

We’re look at what God wants for you, and how it happens.

1. God wants a love relationship with you.

This is the theme of the whole Bible, cover to cover.

It starts in Genesis. God created you in His image—like Himself—to have a relationship with you. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that God was lonely—He wasn’t. If He was, He would have been better off making a puppy. God wasn’t lonely. God is a relationship—this is the mystery of the Trinity. Father, Son and Spirit have always loved each other. God is love, and that love was shared and expressed long before God created us. God didn’t create us because He was lonely, but because He is love. We were created for His pleasure, to be loved by Him and to love Him back.

God placed the first humans in an earthly paradise where they enjoyed personal relationship with Him. But here’s what happened after Adam and Eve rebelled:

Genesis 3:8–9 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

God is walking in the garden—He has come to walk with Adam and Eve, to enjoy their company in the cool of the day. Imagine yourself sitting on your porch on a warm summer day, enjoying lemonade or iced coffee and conversation with good friends. That’s the picture here—God is dropping by for evening coffee. This is what God wants—face-to-face fellowship with us; this is why God created us. God comes calling, but Adam and Eve are nowhere to be found. They’re hiding. “Where are you?” God calls. Don’t think hide and seek: “Where are you?” Hear this as God saying, “I’ve come to be with you; where are you?”

ILL: A couple months ago, I scheduled to meet a friend at Starbucks near Shadle. Unfortunately, I got my wires crossed and went to the Starbucks near Northtown. I waited and waited, and finally my friend texted me and said, “I’m here; where are you?” I texted back, “I’m here, where are you?” We were in looking for each other; I was just looking in the wrong place!

“I’m here; where are you?” I think God’s sending that message to us. He wants a relationship with you. He’s come to walk with you through your days. But because of our sin and shame, like Adam and Eve, we hide. We run. Here’s the good news: Jesus came to take away our sin and shame, and to restore us to a relationship with God.

The Bible says that our sin pushed us away from God; we became God’s enemies. Jesus came to take our sin away and reconcile us to God, to make us God’s friends again.

2 Corinthians 5:18–21 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

To reconcile is to turn enemies into friends. God reconciled us. He sent Jesus to take our sin that had come between us. God was never our enemy; we were God’s enemies, even though it was our problem, not His that broke the relationship. Yet God took the initiative to reconcile us.

ILL: A few years back, I had a friend and I made the mistake of loaning money to him. At first, everything was kosher. But then I noticed a distance growing between us. When I asked him about it, he got angry and defensive. It turns out that he wasn’t able to repay me. He soon stopped talking to me and avoided me altogether. I could tell that he was angry with me.

What had I done? I thought I had done him a favor—I tried to help him. And I hadn’t demanded the money back—in fact, I hadn’t even mentioned it to him. But suddenly, I had become his enemy. What was going on? His anger toward me was coming from his guilt. I had become his enemy not because of what I’d done, but what he’d done.

When I figured this out, I contacted him and forgave the debt. I told him, “I don’t care about the money; I care about you. You’re my friend, and I want to keep you as my friend, and not lose you because of some money. I don’t care about the money. Forget about it.”

I wish I could tell you that he accepted my forgiveness and everything was cool again. Instead, he still insisted that he would pay me back, even though I said he didn’t need to. And the coolness persisted between us, despite my efforts to reconcile.

This is what God did for us. It was our problem, not His. We were His enemies, He was never ours. Yet He took our problem—our sin—on as His own, and reconciled us to Himself. You have a choice: to accept His forgiveness and be reconciled, or insist on paying your debt and remain alienated.

God wants a relationship with you! And He has gone to incredible lengths to reconcile you, to make you His friend. Cover to cover the Bible shows that God wants a relationship with you. “I’m here; where are you?”

When Jesus was asked the most important or greatest of all the commands, He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. This is the first and greatest commandment.” So what does God want for you? Or more accurately, what does God want most for you? That you love Him with all you’ve got. He already loves you with all He’s got and now He wants you to love Him back. He wants a love relationship with you! “I’m here; where are you?”

Cover to cover—Genesis to Revelation—God wants a relationship with us.

Revelation 3:20 (Jesus says) Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

Jesus is inviting Himself over for lunch! He’s knocking on your door because He wants to hang out with you. In Biblical times, to open your home and share a meal was a sign of true friendship, deep fellowship. Jesus wants you to invite Him in for a meal—He wants to fellowship with you. The Bible starts with God dropping by for an evening walk and coffee on the porch; it ends with Jesus knocking on our doors, hoping we’ll invite him in for a meal. God wants a relationship with you. “I’m here; where are you?”

Christianity is fundamentally relational. Religion is all about what we do for God; Christianity is about what He has done for us so that we can know Him. Religion is about rules and regulations; Christianity is about a relationship with God—a relationship that God Himself made possible. This is the gospel: in Christ, God has done everything necessary for you to have a relationship with Him.   How much does God want a relationship with you? Enough that He would take on human flesh and die for it.

“I’m here; where are you?”

So how do we get to know God?

2. How do we get to know God?

There is more to this than I can cover in the next 15 minutes, so I’m going to simplify it and talk about three things that we do with anyone we want to get to know.   First, spend time together.

1. Spend time together.

There is no shortcut to spending time together. The more time you spend with someone, the better you know him. If you don’t spend time with someone, you don’t know her. It’s that simple.

Mark 1:16–18 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him.

When Jesus called His disciples, what did He call them to do? “Follow me.” What did they do? They dropped their nets and literally followed him, meaning that they went wherever He went. They were with Him all the time. They followed Him around and hung out with him.

The call to follow Jesus is a call to relationship. It’s a call to live with Jesus 24-7, be companions of Jesus all day every day.

ILL: There is no better way to get to know someone than to follow them around, to be with them 24/7. When you are with someone 24/7, you see the good and the bad; you see who they really are, because it’s pretty hard to fake it 24/7.

It’s one reason I love to go on mission trips with people from our church. You get to know each other; you see each other under stress; you see each other without your makeup—raw and unvarnished. I always come back feeling bonded with my trip mates. We know each other—it’s that 24/7 thing.

“Follow me!” It’s an invitation to a relationship—to be with Jesus 24/7. It shows up again when Jesus appointed the 12 apostles.

Mark 3:14–15 He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach 15 and to have authority to drive out demons.

Jesus chose 12 to be His apostles, and notice the first thing they were to do: “that they might be with him.” Job 1 was to be with Jesus. Before they were sent out to preach or heal or help people, first, they had to be with Jesus. All ministry flows from your relationship with God. If you are hanging with out God, you’ve got something to offer others. Job 1 is to be with Jesus.

So how do we spend time with Jesus? I’m going to give you three very practical suggestions.

First, practice the presence of God.   Being with Jesus is 24/7—he is always with you. But if you’re like me, I can breeze through my day without ever being aware of His presence. I can live like a Christian atheist, as though God’s not there at all. I can be oblivious to His presence. I think God is often saying to me, “I’m here; where are you?”

ILL: I’ve tried all kinds of things to help me be more aware of God’s presence. For awhile, when I did my daily time with God, I would pour a second cup of coffee and set it next to the chair opposite me. God never drank the coffee, but it reminded me that He was there and we were having a conversation. For awhile, when I went places, I would open the passenger door of the car for the Lord. I’m sure the neighbors thought I was a nut case! I’ve set reminders on my watch or phone to beep and remind me to pray through the day.

The ancient Christian practice of praying the hours is another way of reminding yourself that God is there and communicating with Him. I also use “arrow prayers”—short in-the-moment prayers about whatever I’m doing right then. The most common prayer: “Help me Lord!” Many people use the Jesus Prayer: “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The whole point of all this is simply to remind yourself that God is there, and to live in His presence 24/7. That’s what He wants—He wants a 24/7 relationship with you. Practice the presence of God.

Second, have a daily time with God. We call it PBJ time—prayer, bible and journal. Some call it the quiet time; others call it daily devotions. Whatever you call it, the purpose of this daily time with God is to know Him, to love Him, to be with Him.

ILL: Laina and I spend lots of time together—we live together 24/7. But every day, we make time for focused conversation. We stop doing together, and we just “be together.” Without this focused time, you could be around each other but still not connect deeply.

The same is true with God. You can practice God’s presence, but you still need times of focused attention and conversation.

Each day, I read my Bible—I use our Bible reading plan which is on our website, on the app, and available in our journals and at the info center. I read my Bible and I ask God to speak to me and give me one thing. I write that one thing down in my journal with a response: here’s what I am going to do. And then I pray it back to God. I go on to spend some more time in prayer and listening.

ILL: Many years ago, when I was first learning about the importance of this daily time with God to build our relationship, I missed a few days. When I showed up again at our meeting place (a small room in my college dorm), I felt like God spoke to me. “I’m glad you’re here; I’ve missed our times together.” It blew my mind! God really wanted to spend time with me! It’s kind of like He was saying, “I’ve been here; where were you?”

This changed the way I looked at that time. It wasn’t a law—something I had to do or I was in trouble. It’s an opportunity to be with God and get to know Him better—and He wants it more than me!

Third, come to church.   I come to church to be with all of you, and to meet with God. I expect God to meet me, to speak to me and to work in my life every time I come to church. Jesus said:

Matthew 18:20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.

Church is people meeting together in Jesus name—because of Jesus. And every time we do that, He is here. Jesus is here. He is with us always, everywhere. But the fact that He promised to be with us whenever we meet suggests that something special happens—we experience His presence among us differently than we do alone. In a very real sense, every time we come to church, we come to Jesus. I hope you come every week to meet with Jesus and expecting Him to do things in your life!

How do you get to know God? By spending time together. There are two more…they are going to be quicker.

1. Observe Him.

How do you get to know God? You get to know anyone by observing them. This is a natural result of spending time together. When you’re with someone 24/7, you get to observe him in the wild, in her natural habitat. You see what she’s really like.

The disciples followed Jesus and observed all He did and said, and they got to know Jesus really well. This, by the way, is why the early church only accepted gospels from the apostles. They wanted the story told by the people who knew Jesus best, who observed Him and all He did.

So we want to know Jesus—how do we observe Him? He’s not here where we can see and touch Him. This is where the Bible is so important. God has revealed Himself in creation, in Jesus and in the Scriptures. When we read the Bible, we have the opportunity to observe God. We see God at work, we hear God speaking. We are observing God. The more we read, the more we know. Most importantly, the more we read, the more we know Jesus.

John 5:39–40 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

Jesus corrected the religious leaders of His day who read the Scriptures as an end in itself. The Bible points to Jesus. The Scriptures all testify about Him, and the point of reading the Bible is to come to Jesus to have life.

At one point early in my Christian life, I read the Bible so that I could win arguments. I used the Scriptures like a club to prove I was right and others were wrong. Later, I read the Bible so that I could know it really well. I used the Bible to show how clever I was—that I knew lots of verses. Later, I read the Bible so I could be a theologian—deep and profound. Now I just read the Bible to know Jesus.   He said that’s the point.

If you are new to the Bible, let me help you get started. Read the gospels—the first four books of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They are the story of Jesus. Read the gospels and get to know Jesus. When you finish, read them again. Then again. The whole Bible points to Jesus, so why not start with Him.

Set aside some time for God each day and read the Bible to observe Jesus and get to know Him. The more you read, the better you’ll know Him. You’ve got a Bible. Maybe God’s saying, “I’m here; where are you?”

How do you get know God? Spend time together; observe Him; and:

1. Listen to Him.

How do you get know anyone? You have conversations, and you listen. When I’m talking, I’m not learning anything—especially about you. If I want to learn about you, I need to listen to you. Ask good questions and listen. This is so important that it’s all over in the Bible—so much, that I’m going to do a whole series on listening later in the spring. Jesus said,

John 10:27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me.

Jesus used the metaphor of a shepherd and his sheep to describe our relationship with Him. Jesus is the good shepherd who cares for and leads His sheep. He knows each of us by name, and when He calls us, we listen to His voice and follow. Listening to Jesus is essential to know Him.

We listen to Jesus in the Scriptures. He speaks to us through the Bible.

We listen to Jesus in church. He speaks to us through the Word, the Worship, the Sacraments, and most importantly through people.

We listen to Jesus in prayer. Prayer is not just talking to God; it’s talking with God. Prayer is a conversation, and good conversation is both talking and listening. If you want to know God, learn how to listen. Develop a conversational relationship with God. I try to end my prayer times by simply listening. “Lord, is there anything you want to say to me? Anything you want to talk about?” I’ll be honest. It’s hard for me. It’s hard for me to be still and just listen. I’m not a great listener—just ask my wife. But I’m working on it. And the more I listen, the better I know God.

God wants a relationship with you. He loves you and want you to love Him back. He knows you and wants you to know Him. He’s calling, “I’m here; where are you?”

 Word!

How to Do PBJ

Opening (Please take a seat.)

Good day! I have a story to tell, so go ahead and take your seats. Have you noticed that it’s a pretty instinctive thing to pray when a crisis pops up in your life? It’s the old military adage that there are no atheists in fox holes.

The first memorable crisis I had that drove me to instinctively pray was when I was a kid in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Cheyenne was in tornado country. We had tornadoes so often that my dad and I would sometimes go up on the roof to watch them form and touch down. We lived across the street from a golf course, so it was a great view! We knew when to go up there because in country like that, tornado warnings go off on radios and TVs and electronic alert devices in the home and around town.

One summer while I was swimming with a friend at his neighborhood pool, the tornado warnings started blaring. For some reason we decided that instead of riding our bikes to his home and the safety of his basement a couple blocks away, we’d ride to my house a couple miles away in a whole different neighborhood! My general brilliance was evident even at an early age.

As we rode to my house, these heavy, dark clouds rolled in and started to swirl very low in the sky. And as we topped the hill that then sloped down to my street, we saw a funnel cloud form, touch down on the golf course in the distance and headstraight for my street. It was spitting out dirt and debris everywhere, and we could feel the rumble of the air and earth as the monster came roaring right towards us. It was a serious Wizard of Oz moment.

My friend and I grew up in a strict Southern Baptist church and households, so we knew not to use the Lord’s name in vein. And we didn’t.But I can tell you what both our heartfelt prayers were at that moment: “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” That’s all we could get out. My mom saw us, and I could see prayers on her lips as well.

She shewed us into the front door and down into the basement. We thought the house would be flattened, but the tornado bounced right over us, as tornados often do as they touch down and lift off. Even though it didn’t hit us, the noise it made was unbelievable. The winds were roaring, and all the vents in the house were making an insane clickety-clack racket. It sounded just like a gigantic locomotive was racing along tracks across our roof!

You’ll never guess where that tornado touched down again…. Right in my friend’s neighborhood! The houses across the street from his were all flattened. And his had a two-by-four sticking out of the roof and the windows were blown out. I don’t know if God directed us or we were just stupid, but by going a couple of miles instead of a couple of blocks, all things did work for the good of those who love God on that day!

So like I said, it’s common to pray in a crisis. And God answers those prayers! But it’s not common to develop and sustain a genuine relationship with God only through the random crisis episodes of our lives.

A genuine relationship with anyone is not just about going to them when you have a desperate need for something. That’s like a teenager going to mom and dad only when they need gas money.

A relationship is about being with someone because you like their company, their presence. You value what’s happening in their life as well as your own. You want them to speak into your life because they give you insights that make your life better and more joyful. And they help you discover and understand who you really are.

That’s the kind of relationship God wants to have with you. He doesn’t want to just be your personal 911 dispatcher. He wants you to develop a genuine, daily relationship with Him. God came to us as a man, Jesus Christ, to fulfill both these purposes. Jesus came as our Savior and our friend, as He says in John 15:15. Jesus came so the human race could experience that kind of relationship with God firsthand to see how it works.

And now through the Holy Spirit, each of us can not only access the salvation Jesus offers, but also engage in the friendship He wants.

But as with any relationship, we have to make ourselves available. We have to include God in our daily lives. As Christians, one important way we do that is through prayer, Bible study, and journaling, what we like to call PBJ here at Life Center.

So PBJ is the very practical idea we’re going to focus on today. Let’s begin where PBJ begins, in prayer. Let’s pray.

Prayer

Lord, help us to seek you always, every day, and not reduce you to a mere cosmic 911 line. You have so much more in store for us if we will only make room for you in our lives. Help us explore how to make time for you in our daily lives and then actually do it, starting this very week. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Greeting

What’s an experience you’ve had that made you instinctively cry out to God?

Message/Offering

If you brought a tithe or an offering, you can prepare that now as the ushers come. Today we’re continuing on with our series about learning, loving and living God’s Word, the Bible, as followers of Jesus. So far in the series we’ve looked at why we need to read the Bible and how to think about what we’re reading more deeply.

For this talk we’re going to focus on the nuts and bolts of having a daily devotional time that’s centered on God’s Word through a practice of prayer, Bible study, and journaling. We affectionately call this devotional practice PBJ. Think of it as a child’s regular staple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! As children of God, we like our PBJ!

As I mentioned at the beginning of the service, in John 15:15, Jesus, God the Son, invites us into a friendship with Himself. What both starts and sustains a relationship is the time we spend together. No time, no relationship. So our beginning point for PBJ starts right there, which is the first point on your outline:

1. Make a standing time and place to be with God.

What’s the number one reason we don’t spend focused, dedicated time with God each day? Hands down, we’re too busy.

If you want to know God, you have to set aside a time and place to be with Him. Even Jesus recognized His need for carving out focused time with His Father. What the Gospels tell us is that as Jesus’ preached and healed, He got wildly popular —as we can well imagine! So people began filling up His whole day. Let’s look at what He does in response to that urgent need:

Luke 5:15-16
¹⁵ … the news about him spread …, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. ¹⁶ But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (Let’s make Luke 15:16 our memory verse this week; repeat it with me.)

When Jesus’ days started filling up with activity, He “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” He withdrew despite the fact that the people’s needs were important and urgent.

Jesus didn’t just assume that what He was already doing was too important to make time meet with God the Father. He didn’t assume that healing people trumped time with God. He didn’t assume catching a game on ESPN trumped time with God. He assumed all His reason for living flowed from the Father. Here’s how Jesus describes it:

John 5:19
“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

Jesus sees that if there’s no time for a relationship with God, there’s no genuine and powerful life in and for the Kingdom of God. Why would we—who have no divine power of our own—presume anything less for ourselves? So what can we do to carve out some time for God? 

Let’s start with timing:
Jesus was intentional about making regular time to spend with God the Father. The Gospel of Mark gives us some detail about how Jesus made this happen:

Mark 1:35-37
³⁵ Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. ³⁶ Simon and his companions went to look for him, ³⁷ and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”

There are a couple of things I want us to see here: First, Jesus didn’t leave to chance when He would meet with His Father. He didn’t think, Well, if the time comes up, I’ll take it. He knew better. He intentionally chose to wake up before the crowds could get to Him, before even His own disciples could get to Him, to meet with God!

ILL: I can relate to Jesus on this one in my own humble way. I wake up before Leslie and the kids to meet with God in PBJ. I don’t actually leave my bed right away, because I’ve found that if I start creaking around the house, the kids wake up, and then the game is over! So I just lie there and use either the backlit Bible on my iPhone or a regular print Bible with a book light.

In fact, I started to use a devotional practice we see first in the Old Testament. Moses is giving a speech to the Israelites as they’re preparing to enter the Promised Land, and he says something interesting to them in Deuteronomy 6:6-7 about the earliest Scriptures that we now have in the Bible. He says to them,

Deuteronomy 6:6-7
⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

He’s basically saying, “From the time you get up to the time you go to bed, let God’s Word be part of your conversations and what you’re doing.”

If you use Life Center’s daily Bible reading plan, you know it’s generally three to four chapters a day. I don’t know about you, but that takes me some time to get through! So following Moses’ lead, I read a couple of chapters in bed at night, and then I read a couple of chapters in the morning. 

Then during that morning time with God, once I’ve read and once the furnace has kicked on and is warming the house and making some white noise— I creep quietly to the dining room to write and pray in my journal.

Usually just around the time I finish my conversation with God on paper, the kids are starting to wander out, and they then get at least two benefits: 1) a dad who’s modeling a daily relationship with God, 2) a dad who’s had an attitude adjustment with God and gotten past at least some of his morning grumpiness!

I wish I were a lot more like Jesus. But like Jesus, I do make intentional time to be with God each day. If you haven’t already made such a time or times, you need to as well if you’re going to have a true friendship with God.

Your best time may not be in the morning. It could be that you’re so grumpy in the morning, not even God wants to be with you then. Maybe a break time or lunch time would work best for you. Maybe in the evening after the kids have gone to bed or you’re relaxed after the day’s work would be best.

To each his own. I’m confident God likes company all day round! Just pick a time, or times, and make it happen.

So what about the place?
As you can tell from Jesus’ example of slipping away, one key thing about the place is that it leaves you uninterrupted. I’d also recommend picking a place that makes you comfortable. Bed works great for me! And I also like my dining room table because there’s a heat vent that blows a nice stream of warm air right over me. It’s not quite the breath of the Holy Spirit, but it sure sets the stage for feeling His warm presence! Joe likes his hot tub, so I hope God likes total hedonists.

When we meet with friends to enjoy conversation, we meet with them in comfortable places in our homes or in coffee shops or other places that set a relaxing, inviting environment. Where is that place going to be for you and God on a daily basis? So here’s what I want you to do right now:

Action
Write down on your outline the time and place you’re going to start meeting with God on a daily basis, starting today or tomorrow.

For those of you who already have a time and place, pat yourselves on the back! But also think about how optimal those are. Now that you’ve been thinking about them a little, is it possible another time or place would work better?

Okay, I’ll give you about 17 seconds to make a date and write it down… Doesn’t it make you feel important to have just scheduled a meeting with God? Think how you’d feel if you’d just scheduled an appointment with the governor or the president…. You just scheduled a time with the God of the universe….

Trans: So you’ve just set your date, and today or tomorrow you’re going to suddenly find yourself “stuck” with God. If you’re new to this, it can almost be like going on a blind date. You’re probably asking yourself the question that’s in the second point on the outline: 

2. So what are we going to do?
… the “we” there being you and God.

I can tell you this: as with any relationship, if you don’t say or do something, in most cases the loooong pregnant silence is going to get awkward. Thankfully, God has written you that big, long, juicy letter we call the Bible. And He’s actually going to sit there and read it with you. And He’s going talk with you about it if you’ll let Him.

The first thing I recommend doing is preparing the place. 

a. Prepare the Place
Set out the following things:

a. Prepare the Place [Bible]

• Your Bible—use one that you don’t mind marking in.

a. Prepare the Place [Pen]

• Your Bible

• A pen—get one that won’t smear or blot in your Bible

a. Prepare the Place [Journal]

• Your Bible

• A pen

• Your journal—we’ll talk more about what to journal in a little while

a. Prepare the Place [Coffee]

• Your Bible

• A pen

• Your journal

• Something to eat and drink—whatever you’d have with a friend,

have with God. Did you notice the graphic we’re using for this series? That coffee cup in the place of the O is no accident! Having something to drink or eat while conversing is deeply human. Why do you think the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was originally wrapped around a meal with bread and wine, which were the common foodstuffs of the day? Get some coffee or tea and help break down your own barriers and defenses as you meet with God.

Some people like to have a symbol of Jesus’ presence with them. If you’d like, you could set out another cup of coffee for Jesus. (As a side note, if God ever drinks the coffee you offer Him, please let Heidi at the Common Cup know about it. She’d like to find out what you’re serving.)

a. Prepare the Place [Checklist]

• Your Bible

• A pen

• Your journal

• Something to eat and drink

• A checklist or note paper—not everyone needs this,

but if you’re type A and you get distracted by tasks that pop into your head while you’re reading or praying, just write them down, and then you don’t have to keep worrying that you’re going to forget about them!

Once you’ve written them down, either let them go, or if they’re really occupying your attention, talk with God about them. After all, He’s right there, He’s your friend, and He’s interested!

Trans: So the first thing to do is set up your meeting place. The second thing I recommend doing is letter b on your outline:

b. Follow a Reading Plan

You have a lot of options here:

• The standard Life Center reading plan takes you through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice a year. We’ve had it attached to our bulletins the last few weeks, we have it at the Info Center on book marks, and it’s embedded in the journal that’s available at the Info Center. You can also get to it on our website.It takes your through 3-4 chapters a day and takes about 20-25 minutes.

• We also have a shorter 5-minute reading plan available on our website. It follows the same books and chapters day by day, so it keeps you in the conversation with others, but it gives you selections from them each day. It’s the Reader’s Digest version!

• I know people who choose to just do the Old Testament portions one year and the New Testament portions the next and alternate them. Their idea isn’t to skimp on time, but to spend more time in the passages and go deeper in prayer, thought and study.

• You can also try other plans or methods that you find suit you better. For years I used a three-bookmark plan: one marker starting in Genesis, one in Job, and one in Matthew. Then I’d just read three chapters a day, and that would take me through the law and history, the wisdom books and prophets, and the New Testament every day across the year.

I ended up switching to the Life Center plan for two reasons:

1) Many others are on the Bible reading plan, so it’s fun talking with them.

2) The Life Center plan goes through the New Testament twice, which is nice. The New Testament gives us our fullest knowledge of the Old Testament Messiah, the Christ, in the person of Jesus Christ. And we know God best and get to know God best through Jesus. 

If you miss a day here or there on your reading plan, don’t let it derail you! Joe likes to say that if you miss a meal it two because you get busy, you don’t just throw up your hands and say, “That’s it. I’m giving up even trying to eat!” If you miss a meal, what do you do? You just eat the next meal!

Just do the same thing with your reading plan. If your plan has specific dates, like the Life Center plan does, just pick up on the day everyone else is on so you can keep being part of the conversational community.

The Bible is highly redundant on purpose. God knows His creatures learn through redundancy. So you’ll eventually pick up what He wants you to know whether you’ve missed some days here or there or not. If you get curious about what you missed, just go back to it when you get some free time.

If your reading plan isn’t linked to a calendar, like the three-bookmark plan, just start diving in again wherever you left off. The key is not to give up. The goal isn’t to maintain a perfect record. The goal is to develop a daily relationship with God.

So if you miss a day or two … or thirty, don’t just slink away. Come back and re-engage, and keep on engaging until it’s like any other habit you build: it’s pleasurable to do and distressing to miss.

Trans: God—the Creator of the Universe, the Pioneer and Perfecter of your faith [Heb. 12:2]—has told us in person that He wants to be your friend if you’ll simply spend time with Him and get to know Him. Given that proper perspective, the third thing I recommend in letter c is to

c. Enter each time with a prayer of expectation
Relationships take work, they take effort on our part. So there’s a part of us that resists starting and maintaining them. And that’s not even to mention the darker spiritual forces in this world that want to keep us apart from God. The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 6:12 that “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

(To get a fascinating imaginative view into that world, I recommend reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis sometime.)

We don’t always know exactly what drives our resistance to meeting with God, but what we do know is that the resistance is there. Don’t try to employ just raw, cold willpower to overcome it. You might be successful in getting the task of PBJ done, but your time will lack the relational spark that will make you look forward to your next get-together.

ILL: I have a men’s Life Group that meets at o’dark-thirty each week. I’ve already indicated that I’m not a morning person. Yet I’ve been a faithful member of this group for 6 or 7 years now!

Most nights before group I start feeling a resistance to having to get up, and this little voice in my head says, Why do you keep doing this? Just quit. Sleep in! No one’s even going to notice you’re gone. (You should know, by the way, that I lead the group.) 

Given this weekly internal resistance, why do I still go? I really enjoy these guys and the conversations we have about the Bible! My expectation for experiencing a great time with them overrides my longing to skip it and do something else, like sleep in!

With your daily devotions, think about what it is you’re doing: You’re meeting with the God of the universe. Do you think He might just have something there for you to make it worth your while? We skip time with God because our expectations are so out of whack with the reality of what’s possible when we encounter the living God.

So when you sit down to begin your PBJ time, come in with high expectations. I recommend starting with a short prayer along the following lines:

“Lord, I never cease to be amazed that you want to spend time with me. I’m thrilled to be here, and I look forward to being with you, learning from you, and having You rub off on me. Thank you for this time!” 

We don’t say such a prayer for His sake, although I’m sure He appreciates it! We do that because it helps remind us that when we’re with God, He changes us. He forms us more and more into all He created us to be. We need to come to God with expectation. 

Trans: So how do you now go about having that expectation fulfilled?

d. Use SOAP

This isn’t so you’ll smell good for God. SOAP is a simple but powerful approach to reading the Bible. It will help you engage with whatever Scriptures you’re reading and hear something from God to take away. Here’s the down and dirty on how to use SOAP:

d. Use SOAP

Scripture: read the Bible.

After your short prayer of expectation, just jump right into whatever Scripture readings your Bible reading plan has laid out for you. As you read, use that pen you brought along to underline ideas that grab your attention.

While reading the Bible, look for [Keep up until “remove slide” below]

• Lessons to be learned

• Examples to be followed

• Promises to be enjoyed

• Jesus to be revealed (Foursquare Life Journal, 2013, pg. 16)

Pay attention to ideas that cause you to reflect on your own thoughts, attitudes or actions, particularly in relation to who God is and what He wants for you and the world.

Once you’ve done your readings and underlined some ideas that stuck out, ask God what one thing He’d like you to take away and mull over until the next time you meet. [Remove slide.]

This is where your journal comes into play. Take one thing that strikes you as being the most important to ponder for your life that day, and move to the “Observation” stage of your devotion.

d. Use SOAP

• Scripture: read the Bible.

• Observation: what does it mean?

Taking that one idea that really sticks out for you, think about what it probably meant for the original writer and audience. I highly recommend you use a study Bible, such as the NIV or NLT Study Bibles we have at the Info Center.

ILL: Joe’s Administrative Assistant, Penny Kafflen, told me just the other day about something in Jesus’ teaching that didn’t make much sense to her until just recently when she read some background in her study Bible footnote. Jesus talks about how if salt loses its saltiness, it’s no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled upon [Mt 5:13].

The type of salt we have today is fairly pure, so it doesn’t lose its essential saltiness. So metaphorically, that would mean Jesus is setting up a hypothetical that would presumably never happen. His choice of metaphor would be conveying the idea that Once we’re God’s people, we’ll always be God’s people doing God’s work in the world. Of course, that would be gross misinterpretation of what Jesus was conveying then and now.

During Jesus’ time, “salt” was a mixture of compounds from the Dead Sea, and it would indeed go stale and lose its saltiness. In a world without refrigeration, salt was a preservative as well as a seasoning. But once it lost its saltiness, it was simply tossed out on the streets.

With that understanding, we realize Jesus is telling us that even as believing people, we can get complacent about our relationship with God, and we can lose our vital connection with Him and our usefulness in expanding His kingdom. Instead of being a preservative in this world and adding savor to it through God’s power in our lives, we end up marginalized and good only for the world to trample.

If you think about why many people don’t like the church, a good part of it has to do with professed Christians being hypocrites. We’re not truly living out Jesus’ call to love God and love people. When we profess Christ, but live like … the rest of the world, we leave ourselves and the Lord’s good name in the position of being trampled.

1 John 4:16 tells us that “God is love.” It’s only by loving others through God’s power that they can then see His work through us and glorify Him. Only true saltiness will work.

Penny was able to travel down this line of thought because a simple, timely footnote in her study Bible gave her insight into how Jesus’ audience would have understood His meaning about salt losing its saltiness.

So taking the time to better understand the original context of the Scripture you’re interested in is important. Oftentimes that’s obvious just from the passage you’re reading—it provides its own background. For instance, Mark often explains Jewish customs and terms for the Roman audience he’s writing to. But sometimes the footnotes in a study Bible or a Commentary will become your best friend. Let your curiosity and your questions drive you to answers.

Once you’ve observed what’s happening in the text you’re reading, briefly jot those observations down so you’ll better remember them. Such notes will also prove handy to come back to when you run into related passages and you remember you had come across something important along those lines before.

When you write down your observations, don’t feel like you need to write a whole essay a class: you’re just making a little journal note to jog your memory. Take the saltiness issue again. Something along the following lines for the observation we made would work great:

Observation
It turns out that in Jesus’ time salt really could lose its saltiness! Those listening to Jesus would have understood that being “salt,” being “God’s people” as Jews, didn’t guarantee they’d be a preservative in the world and add savor to it. They needed to maintain a close relationship with God to do that.

Trans: Once you have your observations thought out and jotted down, you’re ready to apply that Scripture that caught your attention to your own life. That’s the next step in SOAP:

d. Use SOAP

• Scripture: read the Bible.

• Observation: what does it mean?

• Application: what does it mean to me? 

This is not the time to journal a nice little generality or platitude:

Application

I need to be salt in the world.

Well, duh! …That’s some pretty bland salt if you ask me. It has all the power and potential of a titmouse. It’s going to change little if anything in your life.

Here’s the question to answer for your application: what’s the Holy Spirit telling you about your life? I can think of times when I was teaching in public schools and a public university when my application to this passage may have read something like this:

Application

My colleagues seem to be getting irritated with me and my faith. The truth is they’re irritated far more often than they are asking questions and having conversations with me that would indicate my life stirs some kind of interest in Jesus in them. What might Jesus be leading me to do or say today and throughout the week to show Bill and Mary, in particular, what His love is like? What would His “salt” look like in the way I relate with them? 

Remember that we’re having a conversation with God while we read and ponder and write, so asking questions as I’ve done above is fair play. In fact, I often write directly to Jesus in the application and simply recognize that I’m praying as I write.

Either way, expect that if you ask questions, and you then listen, the Holy Spirit is going to move your heart and bring ideas to your mind as you go about your day.

On the other hand, sometimes as you write your application, the Holy Spirit will say something very clear you can act on. If so, then write that down. Here’s what it might look like:

Application

Mary and Bill strike me as being all work and no play, and it seems to me that they’re lonely. (They’re certainly grumpy!) Lord, I sense you’d like me to invite them to lunch and just listen to them about their lives to get to know them better. You showed your love for people many times simply by being with them, by making time for them. I want to be like You.

Trans: Once you’ve made an application from reading Scripture and listening to a nudge, or perhaps a push, from the Holy Spirit, don’t assume your own good intentions and willpower are going to get you to act! The Christian life is a life empowered by Christ. Jesus is pretty pointblank about this issue in

John 15:5

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

That need for empowerment takes us to our final step in SOAP devotions:

d. Use SOAP

• Scripture: read the Bible.

• Observation: what does it mean?

• Application: what does it mean to me?

• Prayer: pray it back to God.

As I noted at the beginning of the service, left to our own devices, we often pray primarily for our perceived crises. We want God to intervene on our behalf for something we urgently want for ourselves or for others. There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself. Jesus Himself teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer to ask God for our daily needs.

But the way we pray in this SOAP method reminds us that we go to God primarily so He can work in our lives and make His image and purposes dwell in them. Our primary relationship with God shouldn’t be defined as Him being that Great Santa Claus in the sky who gives presents to all the good boys and girls. Jesus has invited us into friendship with Him so He can influence and mold our lives. He says the kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17:21). How do you think that happens?

Earlier in the talk I mentioned picking up the novel The Screwtape Letters

by C.S. Lewis if you’d like to explore various ways Satan distracts us from staying close to God. Lewis himself is a genius and a well-loved Christian writer. Many of you are familiar with him and his Christian novels, books and essays.

What you may not know is that he married an American writer named Joy Gresham fairly late in his life. Regrettably, Joy was fairly quickly overtaken with an aggressive cancer, and he lost her.

There’s a movie titled Shadowlands in which Anthony Hopkins does a marvelous job of portraying Lewis’s courtship and marriage with Joy.

There’s a point after Joy’s first round of treatment when her cancer goes into remission, and it’s interesting how Lewis responds to his close friends who are encouraging him about answered prayer. Let’s check it out: Shadowlands clip.

Do you suspect Lewis prayed for Joy to be healed? He’s human, and he loved her deeply, so I imagine so! But regardless of the answer God gave, notice how Lewis himself views prayer: it’s not a way for him to get what he wants from God.

From Lewis’s perspective here, prayer—at all times, at its very core—is a conversation in which we’re allowing God to change us. That change doesn’t mean God erasing who we presently are, but God making us everything He created us to be.

Even when we’re facing desperate need, even when crisis beckons us to pray, we need to remember that we come to God not first and foremost for blessing, but to know the Blesser and to be transformed by Him. He often uses crises for just those purposes. In truth, He uses everything for those purposes!

So what might our prayer look like given the scenario I provided with my hypothetical colleagues Bill and Mary? I might pray and write something like this in my journal.

Prayer

Dear Lord, as I’ve already noted, my work relations haven’t been the best with Bill and Mary lately. And I don’t think they’ve been getting a good savor of what faith in You looks like from me! Help me to love them as You do. Give me inviting words and give them open hearts today as I try to set up a lunch date with them. Please make inroads for all of us to get to know each other—and You—better as I follow your lead. Amen.

Conclusion

The whole point of PBJ is to get you to this kind of prayer. It’s a prayer in which you’re letting God speak into your life every day through His Word, and you’re asking for His help in living out His purposes for you each day.

As Jesus teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer, we’re in essence praying, “May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and we’re paying attention to specific ways God wants to make that happen in our lives.

So as we do with PBJ, let’s close by asking for God to help us carry this desire.

Closing Prayer

Dear Lord,

It’s a tremendous honor that you want to meet with us daily, that You describe your desired relationship with us as a friendship. Draw us to You, and help us to develop our daily relationship with You so that it becomes the true core of our lives now and into eternity. Amen.

Benediction

Your assignment this week is to do your daily PBJ! May God bless your time.

Pastor Joe Wittwer

Word!

Learn it, love it, live it!

#2—The Meat of the Word

Opening:

    Word!  Learn it, love it, live it!

    This is week two of our series on the Word of God and what it can do in our lives.  Each week we’re memorizing a verse, so here’s this week’s verse:

Psalm 119:11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

I have hidden your word in my heart.  That is something we do with God’s word.  We are going to look at 7 things we do with God’s word, and each one takes us deeper, helps us grow more.  

Greeting:

    What do you think it means to hide God’s word in your heart?

Worship and communion

Introduction and offering

    Word!

    Last week we talked about the power of the Word: what happens when you receive God’s Word and it goes to work inside you.  It’s powerful and you grow and change.  

This week we’re going to talk about 7 ways to do that.  This is “the meat of the Word: how to go deeper in God’s Word.”  The Bible uses the metaphor of going from milk to solid food.  (The King James translates it “meat”; the better translation is “solid food”, especially if you are a vegan, like my wife and avoid meat.)

Hebrews 5:11–14 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

This is a metaphor we all understand: infants start on milk and graduate to solid food.  It’s really fun when your child finally starts taking solid food—they don’t eat it, they rub it on! An infant needs milk; we expect a baby to be on the bottle, but it’s disturbing to see this: a grown-up still on the bottle!  This guy is 30, still lives with his mom, wears diapers, sleeps in a crib, and drinks from a baby bottle. He has a condition known as paraphilic infantilism. One look and you know something is wrong.

Many Christians have this same condition–spiritually.  Many of us stay in perpetual babyhood; we need milk; we can’t handle solid food.  It’s time to grow up, and as we saw last Sunday, one of the ways we grow up is by feeding on God’s word.  

Jeremiah 15:16 When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty.

Eating something involves a series of processes: tasting, chewing, swallowing, digesting, absorbing, and using nutrients to build, repair or energize.  I’m going to give you seven processes in eating God’s Word, and examples of each from the Bible.  Each of these builds upon the ones before it, and takes you deeper.

The Big Idea: There are seven ways to go deeper in the Word, from the milk to the meat.

Here are 7 ways to go deeper with God in the Word.

1. Hear the Word.

The first thing most people do is to hear God’s Word.  For centuries, people didn’t have Bibles to read, so they heard God’s Word read at church or heard it quoted in conversations or sung.  In fact, there are many more references in the Bible to hearing the Word than reading the Word because that was the main way people received it then.  This is why Paul told Timothy:

1 Timothy 4:13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.

One of the primary things done in the early Christian church meetings was public reading of Scripture.  The primary way then people received God’s Word was by hearing it.  But hearing it is enough to bring us to faith.

Romans 10:17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

This is still the way most people initially receive the Word and come to faith: they hear it.  Someone reads it or tells it to them.

Today, we can hear the Word read and explained in church, just as our ancestors did—and that’s a good start.  But we also have the added advantage of hearing it read through CD’s or MP3’s or online.  

• You can use products like The Word of Promise, which you can buy as CD’s or as an MP3.  

• You can use online Bibles such as YouVersion, which allow you read or listen to the Bible.

I know people whose preferred way of reading the Bible is to hear it, and they listen to their daily Bible reading on the way to work.  Other people like to listen and follow along in their Bible.  

    Hearing the Word is where most of us start.  But if you stop there, you’re stuck in the milk.  There’s more…

2. Read the Word.

Many of us are visual learners and are used to learning by reading.  There are some advantages to reading over hearing, such as being able to underline, make notes, and easily revisit the text.

As I said, many people in Bible times either couldn’t read or didn’t have access to written copies of Scripture.  So most of the verses about reading the Word are in a corporate setting where God’s Word is being read out loud to a group, such as:

Exodus 24:7 Then Moses took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.”

1 Timothy 4:13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.

However, there are some examples of individuals reading the Word, and an expectation that if you had the Scriptures, you should read them.  

Deuteronomy 17:18–20 When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. 19 It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees 20 and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left.

The king of Israel was expected to have his own hand-written copy of the Scripture that he read every day!

Jesus expected those who had the Scriptures to read them.  In each of the verses listed in Matthew, Jesus asks people, “Haven’t you read in the Scriptures…” and then quotes the Bible.  In each of these instances, Jesus was responding to questions or criticisms from the Pharisees, who had access to the written Scriptures. Since they had the Scriptures to read, Jesus expected them to read it!

    Unlike millions of Christians before us, and millions around the world today, we can read and we have Bibles—lots of Bibles! What if we go down in history as the Christians with the most Bibles but we didn’t read them?  I wonder how often Jesus would ask us, “Haven’t you read?”

    I recommend that you read the Bible through every year.  It sounds daunting, but it takes about 15 minutes a day to read it or listen to it.  Our Bible reading plan will take you through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in a year. If you stick with it, it will stick with you—you’ll start to know it.  Why read it more than once?  So you can learn it, love it and live it! Read the Word!  But we’re still in the milk.  Time for a little solid food.

3. Study the Word.

Now we start going deeper.  When we study, we dig into what we have read.  We start asking questions about the text; we look up the meanings of words; we compare what we read to other Scriptures; we may look up what others think about it in a commentary.  Study is digging deeper to really understand what is being said.

    Ezra was a priest in the mid-fifth century BC who returned to Jerusalem to help with the rebuilding after the Exile.  His primary purpose was to teach people God’s word.

Ezra 7:10 For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the Lord, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel.

Notice the progression of the verbs: he studied, he observed (obeyed) and he taught.  Ezra was part of a long and proud Jewish tradition of studying the Scriptures; this tradition was very much alive in Jesus’ day.

John 5:39–40 You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

Scholars are divided whether the word “study” is imperative (a command: “study the Scripture”) or indicative (a statement: “you study the Scripture”).  The NIV takes it as a statement; other translations treat it as a command. If it is imperative, Jesus commanded them to study the Scripture to possess eternal life. Either way, Jesus says a remarkable thing: “the Scriptures testify about me.” Jesus is claiming that the Scriptures point to Him, that He is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises.  The Old Testament is to be read through a Jesus-lens.  The early Christians saw Jesus all over in the OT Scriptures.  So a careful study of Scripture will lead us to Jesus and through Him to eternal life.

Acts 17:11 Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

When the apostle Paul preached in Berea (a city in what is now modern Greece), the Jews there had this commendable response.  Rather than stoning him, beating him or driving him out of town, they studied the Scriptures to see if what he was saying was true.  

    There is a Berean Bible Church in Spokane Valley; if you ever wondered where they got their name, it’s right here.  There are lots of churches named after this noble group of folks who “examined the Scriptures every day”.  

    Study the Word! You can study the Bible alone, or in groups.  Many of our Life Groups do Bible studies; they read and dig into a passage of Scripture.

    If you want to study the Bible personally, it starts with asking questions and pondering, thinking about what you’ve read.  Then get some help. I recommend the following basic tools.   (We’ve posted this online: lifecenter.net/biblestudy.)

• A study Bible: ESV Study Bible, NIV Study Bible, Life Application Study Bible.

• A Bible dictionary: Eerdman’s Bible Dictionary, New Bible Dictionary.

• A concordance: Strong’s (although it is much faster electronically).

• A Bible commentary: Bible Knowledge Commentary, New Bible Commentary.

If you want to read and study on your device (phone, tablet or computer), check out:

• Olive Tree

• Pocket Sword

And there are lots of Bible study tools available online for free.

• Biblestudytools.com

• Blueletterbible.org

• Ntslibrary.com

There is a more complete list on our website: lifecenter.net/biblestudy. When you make the leap from reading to study, the Bible will come alive in some new ways!  It’s fun to dig a little!  Learn it, love it, live it!

4. Memorize the Word.

The word “memorize” is not in the Bible.  But the idea is.  

Deuteronomy 11:18–20 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Fix God’s words in your hearts and minds: memorize them.  And what follows are some mnemonic (memory) devices: tie them as symbols on your hands and forehead; teach them, talk about them; write them in places you’re sure to see.

It was very common for Jewish people to memorize Scripture; in fact, some of them memorized it all!  In Jesus’ day, Jewish boys memorized the Torah (the first 5 books of the OT) by the time they were 10 or 12.  The best students memorized the whole OT by the time they were 13!  Remember that they didn’t have books; if they wanted to know the Scripture, they had to memorize it.  So they hid God’s word in their hearts.

Psalm 119:11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

This was also true of Christians for centuries.  The only Bible most people owned was the one they had memorized.  

ILL: Jared Roth is my brother-in-law.  A couple years ago, his father, Jake, died.  Jake spent over 40 years working in a lumber mill in Oregon.  It was hard physical labor, and very repetitious and boring.  Jared once asked his dad how he could do such a monotonous job for so long.  Jake thought, and then said, “Well, I memorized the New Testament.”  He spent those long hours memorizing the whole New Testament—and it showed.  Jake was one of the wisest and most godly men I know.   

You may not memorize the whole Bible or even the New Testament, but every verse you memorize will go to work inside you.

Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.  Let God’s word be at home in you, live in you—richly, abundantly, lots!

    Notice the emphasis on singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.  This is one powerful way to memorize Scripture: sing it!  For centuries, the church sang Scripture; it helped them memorize it.  In the early years of the Jesus’ movement in the 1970’s, most of the songs we sang were Scripture.  Forty years later, I read Scripture and often burst into song!  Those Scriptures are burnt into my memory as songs.

The secret to memorization is repetition.  Say it over and over.  I said last week that I like to recite my memory verse while driving.  Repetition.  Memory is a muscle that gets stronger with use.  The more you memorize, the easier it gets.  Repetition.  

Psalm 119:11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

Let’s go deeper:

5. Meditate on the Word.

When you hear the word, “meditate”, what do you think?  Most of us imagine someone sitting in lotus position and emptying his mind of all thought.  That’s not what the Bible means.  Biblical meditation is more like this: like a cow chewing its cud. The cow eats grass and swallows it, but later regurgitates it and chews on it and gets all the nourishment out of it.  That’s meditation.  We chew on the word and get all that nourishment!  We’re not emptying our mind, but filling it with God’s thoughts.  

The basic meaning of the Hebrew word for meditation is a low sound, like the moan of a dove or the growl of a lion over its prey.  It means, “to mutter”.  Meditation is musing, thinking, pondering on something so deeply that you are muttering, talking to yourself.  

    I do this all the time.  Laina will hear me muttering to myself because I’m so deep in thought about something.  (If it’s the bills, it’s a different kind of muttering!)

    The Bible attaches great promises to meditating on God’s word.

Joshua 1:8 Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Don’t let God’s word depart from your mouth—meditate on it day and night.  Think deeply and mutter!  This will allow you to obey it, and will make you prosperous and successful.  How many of you would like to be prosperous and successful?  Meditate on God’s word and do what it says!

Psalm 1:1–3 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. 2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

There it is again: meditate day and night.  If you have memorized Scripture, you can meditate anytime, anywhere.  Just start thinking about it, mulling over each word and idea, chewing on it. And the promise?  You’ll be like a tree planted by water.  You’ll stay fresh and green and fruitful, and whatever you do will prosper!  

Psalm 119:97–100 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. 98 Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. 99 I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. 100 I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts.

One more time: meditate all day long.  If you have God’s word in your heart, you can think about it anytime.  Chew on it.  And it will make you wiser than your enemies, give you more understanding than your teachers and the elders.  In other words, you’re going to be very wise—thoroughly equipped for every good work.

    Hear, read, study, memorize, meditate.  This is the hand illustration.  I was taught that these are the five things you do with the Word.  But as I did them, I realized that two are missing, and those two are the real meat of the Word.

6. Obey the Word.

    You really don’t get to the meat of the Word until you do it.  Put it into practice.  Obey it.  The reason for hearing, reading, studying, memorizing and meditating is so you can do it!  

Joshua 1:8 Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.

If you do the first five and don’t do it, it’s all for naught.  Noel used to tell me that it’s better to know one verse of the Bible and do it than to know it all and not do it.  Jesus put it this way:

Matthew 7:24–27 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Hearing the word without putting it into practice is like building your house on sand.  You think you’re fine because you know so much, but that knowledge is useless if you don’t put it into practice.  Some of us, myself included, know far more than we do.  

James 1:22–25 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

Don’t just be a hearer of the word; be a doer of the word.  It’s in the doing that you’ll be blessed!  

    This is the real meat of the Word.  If you want to go deep, start with one verse and do it!  Then another, and another.  

    One more…

7. Share the Word.

I started by saying that eating is a process: taste, chew, swallow, digest, and then use.  It’s also true with God’s word.  You’ve got to take it in, chew on it, digest it and let it become part of you.  Then you use it—put it into practice.  And then you’re ready to teach it, because you’re teaching it from the center of your life.  You’re teaching what you live.  If you try to teach before you digest it and live it, it’s like chewing your food and spitting it on people!  People don’t want to be spit on!  But if you’re teaching what you’ve learned by hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, meditating and doing, then people can receive it.

I think you know that if you really want to learn something, teach it.  Whenever you learn something, pass it on to someone else.  If you do, you’ll benefit them and cement what you have learned in your own life.  

2 Timothy 2:2 And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.

I would love to create a “pass it on” culture here at Life Center.  I’d love each week for you to take what you hear on Sunday, study it, chew on it, and do it—and then pass it on to someone else.  “Let me tell you what I learned today, and what I’m going to do about it.”  Talk about it with your kids.  Tell a friend or classmate or co-worker what you learned and how you’re putting it into practice.  You can do it with the sermon; you can do it with your daily PBJ time.  It’s why I post most of my journal entries on Facebook or my blog—I’m passing it on.  But if each of us passed on what we learned from the Word with just one or two people a week, we’d spread the Word all over Spokane and beyond!  

    God could use you in remarkable ways by just doing this one simple thing.  Go deep in God’s word, let it shape your life, and then share what you learn.  Pass it on.  

    Let’s say them together: Hear, read, study, memorize, meditate, obey, share.  Put a check by the ones you are going to start doing.  Just to be clear: I don’t do them all every day, but I do them all.  Every minute you invest in God’s Word will grow you closer to Jesus, make you more like Him, transform your life and your relationships, and make you a blessing to the world.

January 27, 2008

Only One Thing

Part 3: The benefits of feeding yourself

Opening:

          Today we’re talking about the benefits of feeding yourself, the benefits of reading the Bible every day and letting God speak to you.  And here is one great benefit: parents who use Bibles have children who use Bibles!  Christianity is more caught than taught!  Are your kids catching it from you?  Your example will always speak louder than your words.  Your values—what’s really important to you—will bleed through to your kids.  So if you value a daily time with God, if you value your relationship with Jesus, your kids will catch that value from you.  And if not, they may catch that too.  I hope to convince every one of you to value your relationship with Jesus—it’s the one thing we need most—and to make a habit of daily time to feed yourself on God’s Word.

Offering and announcements:

          REVEAL survey.

Nicaragua missions trip–info night on Wednesday.  

Upcoming classes–back of tear-off tab.

Service change for Super Bowl Sunday: 7 PM on Saturday, Feb. 2 instead of 6 PM on Sunday, Feb. 3.  Back to normal schedule on Feb. 10.

Introduction:

          In this series, Only One Thing, we looked at the story of Jesus visiting Mary and Martha in Luke 10.  Martha was so busy preparing dinner for Jesus that she was distracted from spending any time with Him, while Mary sat at His feet and listened.  When Martha protested that Mary had left her to do all the work alone, Jesus said, “Only one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen it.”  What is that one thing that is needed?

The one thing we need most is a relationship with Jesus.

          This is what being a Christian is about.  It is about following Jesus, knowing Jesus, loving Jesus.  It is about a relationship with Jesus.  And to have a relationship with Jesus, we need to do what Mary did: listen to Him.  So we’ve been talking about making a habit of having a daily time with God—a time when we read the Bible and ask God to give us one thing for the day, and write that in our journal, and pray.  Make a habit of sitting at Jesus’ feet and letting Him speak to you from His word. 

          We talked in first week about “the need to feed”, why it is so important for us to make this time with God a daily habit.  Treat it just like you do physical food: you feed yourself every day, and you need to feed yourself every day spiritually.

          In the second week we talked about “how to feed yourself.”  If you are going to grow spiritually, you can’t depend entirely on me or anyone else to feed you; and eating once a week on Sundays won’t cut it.  You must learn to feed yourself.  We talked about what you need to have a daily time with God and how to read the Bible so that you can hear God speaking to you.  Use the SOAP: scripture, observation, application, prayer.   Ask Him for one thing each day, and write that in your journal.  We have journals available with a Bible reading plan built in.

          Today, we’re going to finish by talking about “the benefits of feeding yourself.”  I want to show you how this can change your life and help you grow more than almost anything I know.

          Once again, I want to acknowledge my friend, Wayne Cordeiro, and his fine book, The Divine Mentor, which is available at our cost at the resource center.  It’s a worthwhile read; and you’ll get to meet the author when Wayne speaks here in June.  So if you want to read more about it…here you go!

          So let’s start at the top: what are the benefits of feeding yourself.

1. The benefits of feeding yourself.

          There are many benefits to having a daily time with God; I’m going to give you four of the biggest.

A. You will know Jesus better.

          This is the biggest because the one thing we need is a relationship with Jesus and that is what the daily time with God is all about.  I read my Bible and pray and journal each day not because it is my spiritual duty, but because I hear Jesus speaking and it helps me to know Him better.  I said this the first week and want to say it again: the reason for all of our spiritual practices is to know Jesus.  It’s about a relationship with Him.  When we lose sight of this, our spiritual practices can become just another duty, one more thing to check off our to-do list.  But when you do it to know Jesus, it becomes a delight.

ILL: I was in Long Beach this week for 3 days of meetings, and I called Laina a couple times each day.  Why?  It’s my duty.  I didn’t want to…but it’s expected if I’m going to be a good husband.  “Call your wife.  Call your wife.”  No!  I looked forward to those calls.  It wasn’t a duty; it was a delight, because I was talking with the person I love most of all.  I called because I love her and we talk every day to keep our relationship close.  It’s all about relationship. 

This is the first and biggest benefit of this self-feeding daily time with God: it keeps me close to Jesus.  It’s all about a relationship with Jesus.

John 17:3 Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

Jesus said that eternal life is knowing God, knowing Jesus.  It’s all about a relationship with Jesus.  And you can’t build a relationship without spending time together, and talking together.  And if you really want to know someone, you spend more time listening to them than you do talking.  If I want to get to know you, I don’t talk the whole time; I let you talk and I listen.  The more I listen, the more I get to know you.  If eternal life is knowing Jesus, then I need to listen to Him.  This is what Mary did: she sat at His feet and listened to what He said.

          When I read the Bible with this prayer—“Lord speak to me”—I get to know Jesus.  I don’t read the Bible quickly—I read slowly so I can hear Him speak. 

James 1:25 But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

Notice the words “looks intently”.  The Greek word literally means “to stoop over to look into, to bend over to get a closer look.”  (Bend over to look at something.)  It’s a picture of someone making an effort to look into something, to study it carefully, to look closely.  This isn’t a passing glance on your way by, a hurried look. 

ILL: How many of you have taken a speed reading course?  Those can be helpful for school or when you want to skim a novel.  But it’s not what you do with the Bible.  You look intently.  This is the Slow Reading Course for Serious Disciples. 

Look intently.  Slow down and take a closer look, and let God speak to you.  If reading 4 chapters at once is too much for you, read 2 or 1, and take the time to look intently.  Slow down and let God speak to you, because it’s all about getting to know Him. 

The highest form of prayer is not you talking to God, but God talking to you, which happens when you read his word.  Each day, open your Bible and pray, “Lord, speak to me.  Help me to know You.”  And then look intently.  Read slowly and thoughtfully and He will speak to you and you’ll get to know Him better.

Would you like to know Jesus better, be closer to Jesus?  Make a habit of a daily time with God.

B. You will become more like Jesus.

ILL: How many of you know married couples who have become more like each other over the years?  Laina and I run together six days a week.  Rain, sun, snow, wind—it doesn’t matter—we’re out there pounding the ground.  Last Monday morning, we ran and the wind chill was -25!  Here’s what you should know: I am not naturally a highly disciplined person.  I am married to one!  And after years of hanging out with Laina, I’ve become a little like her…crazy!

Did you know that God’s plan for you is to make you like Jesus?

Romans 8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

God wants to make you like Jesus, conform you to the likeness of His Son.  We’re talking of course about character.  God doesn’t want to give all the women beards and deep voices.  God wants to make us like Jesus in terms of character: that we would love God and love people like He did.  How do you become like someone?  You hang out with them. 

ILL: When I moved to Spokane, people would visit our church and ask me, “Are you from Eugene?”  When I’d say yes, they’d say, “I thought I heard Roy Hicks Jr. in you.  You’re one of Roy’s boys.”  It was true.  Being around Roy for 5 years, he rubbed off on me.  I picked up his mannerisms, expressions, and caught his values.

You become like those you hang out with; they rub off on you.  So hang out with Jesus and let Him rub off on you. 

ILL: I play guitar…poorly.  But if I wanted to play well, what should I do?  Take lessons.  Now, let’s say I took a class at the community college.  Roy Jackson, one of guitarists here at Life Center, teaches a guitar class there.  So I’m one of 20 students that meet a couple times a week; it would help me.  But what if Roy, a master guitarist, said, “Joe, you have potential.  I would like to give you private lessons, an hour a day, every day.  What do you say?”  I’d jump at that—then I might get really good.

          After a year or two, you might hear me play and say, “Wow, where did you learn that?”  And I’d say, “Oh I took a course at the community college.”  And you might say, “You may have, but that’s not where you learned that.  Your phrasing, breathing, intonation and voicing—I recognize those.  That’s the way Roy Jackson plays.  You’ve been taking lessons with Roy, haven’t you?”

What might happen to you if you hung out with Jesus every day?  Maybe people would start to say, “You’ve been with Jesus, haven’t you?”

Acts 4:13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

I’d like that to be said of me.  I’d like people to see Jesus in me, to see His influence and mark on my life.  It comes from being with Him, letting Him speak to you.

          Would you like to be more like Jesus?  Hang out with Him and let Him rub off on you.  Make a habit of daily time with God.

C. You will be authentic to the core.

We live in a veneer world—a world that values outward appearance more than authenticity, reputation more than character, image more than reality.  Veneer looks like the real thing, and it costs much less, so many people settle for veneer.  But if you want an heirloom that you can pass on for generations, then you look for something solid to the core. 

Our veneer world affects the kind of people we are as well.  What kind of person do you want to be: veneer or solid oak to the core?

ILL: A hurry-up father once approached future U.S. president James A. Garfield while he was still the president of a local college.  “Is there anyway you can get my son through this institution faster than four years?  Time is running short and the business world is waiting!”

          “It all depends on what you want,” Garfield replied.  “Squash will take only three months, but if you want oak, that requires four years.” 

If you want to be authentic to the core, it requires time—daily time with God that builds your character and makes you slowly and steadily more like Christ. 

          Here’s a great definition of “slowness”:  “Slowness is God’s optimum speed in bringing about His likeness in you.”  We live in a microwave culture that wants everything fast.  “God make me like you, and do it now.”  You can make superficial changes fast, but to be changed inside, deep in the core of you are, takes time—daily time with God, day after day, year after year.  There are no shortcuts to authenticity.

          I’ve listed three verses on your outline that use the world “sincerity”; we’ll read just one.

2 Corinthians 1:12 Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God.

Paul said that he had conducted himself with sincerity, the sincerity that comes from God.  The Greek word literally means “tested by sunlight”, and was used to refer to someone who was genuine, authentic to the core. 

ILL: When someone made a statue, he started with a piece of marble.  Good marble was solid all the way to the core.  But some marble had imperfections or blemishes; or the sculptor might make a mistake.  These blemishes were then filled in with wax, usually so skillfully that they were almost impossible to spot.  But if the statue was left in the hot sun, the wax melted and the fraud was exposed.  So sculptors would say that their statues were “sincere”: tested by sunlight, and proved to be authentic to the core.

Each day as we make time for God and sit at His feet and listen to His word, we are exposing ourselves to the sunlight of His Word.  We are being tested by sunlight, and made authentic to the core. 

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

When I read God’s word, it reads me.  It fillets my heart, exposing what is really there, so God’s light can melt and purify me. 

ILL: One of the most important turning points of my life came out of my daily time with God in February 1986.  For four years, I had been unhappy about the growth of our church.  I would go home depressed every Sunday, and go to the basement and read the want ads, looking for other jobs.  “There has to be something I can do better than this.”  No matter how good things were, it was never enough.

          On this day in February, 1986, I was reading in Luke 14, where Jesus healed a man with a withered hand, and the Pharisees were upset about it.  I thought about it, and then I wrote in my journal, “The difference between Jesus and the Pharisees is that Jesus really cared for this man, but the Pharisees cared only about their institutions: the law, the Sabbath, the synagogue.  Jesus had a personal agenda—he cared about people.  The Pharisees had an institutional agenda—they cared only about their institutions.” 

I put my pen down, and in that moment, God spoke to me and said, “You are more like the Pharisees than you are like Jesus.”  That floored me.  I asked how, and began writing down all the examples that came to my mind.  For almost 2 hours, I thought and wrote and prayed and repented.  I asked God to forgive me for caring more about building a church than just building people.  I realized that people are what last, not institutions.  There won’t be a Life Center in heaven; buy you’ll be there.  I vowed I would stop trying to build a big church, and focus my energy on building big people, who love God with all they’ve got.

Guess what happened.  My joy came back.  The church stayed the same size, but I was happy again.  And I was loving people again.

God’s word filleted my heart.  He spoke to me and changed me in the core of who I was. 

          God wants to make you more like Jesus, not in a quick and superficial way—He doesn’t want to veneer you with Jesus.  He wants to change you all the way to the core, make you authentic through and through.  This doesn’t happen in a hurry.  Authenticity comes from a systematic accumulation and application of wisdom.  It comes from slowly and steadily changing as we spend time every day in God’s presence, feeding ourselves on His word, and letting Him speak to us.

          Would you like to be authentic to the core, not just veneered?  Make a habit of spending time with Jesus every day in His word.

D. You will be free.

John 8:31-32 Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. ³² Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

The truth will set you free.  I know lots of people who think God’s word is restrictive, binding. 

ILL: One of my best friends from high school stopped following Jesus in college, so I went to visit him.  He told me that being a Christian was way too restrictive.  He wanted to party; he wanted to drink and do drugs and have sex whenever he wanted.  He wanted to be free.

          I told him that real freedom comes when we obey God’s laws not when we flaunt them, and used this example. 

          You and I might be backpacking, standing a cliff looking down at our campsite 1000 feet below.  You say, “I want to get to camp the fast way; I’m jumping.”  I explain the law of gravity means you will get there fast, but you’ll splat at the bottom.  You say, “I’m tired of the law of gravity; I want to be free.”  And you jump.  You’ll be free—for about 10 seconds.  Then you’re dead.  

Knowing and obeying God’s laws will set you free, not restrict you.  By the way, I saw my friend years later at a class reunion.  I was happily married; he had been through several relationships and was bitter and unhappy.  You tell me who was free.

The truth will set you free. Knowing the truth frees you up; not knowing is what binds you. 

ILL: Have you ever been behind someone at red light who had their blinker on for a right hand turn, and nobody was coming, but they just sat there?  They wouldn’t turn.  Then you noticed their license plate—out of state.  They didn’t know the law, that a right hand turn on a red light was legal in Washington.  IT IS, dipstick!  If they had known the law, they’d be free to turn.  But because they didn’t know it, they were all bound up…and so were you!

The truth will set you free. I see lots of people living in bondage.  They believe the wrong things about themselves, about God, about the world we live in, and they live in bondage and misery.  You don’t have to.  The truth will set you free. And you can spend time each day listening to Jesus, knowing the truth and being set free.

          Would you like to be free?  Make a habit of daily time with God, listening to Jesus and learning the truth.

          Here are four benefits of daily time with God—there are many others, but here are four big ones.

• You will know Jesus better.
• You will become more like Jesus.
• You will be authentic to the core.
• You will be free.

I’m going to finish with a suggestion and a challenge.

2. A suggestion: a 20-20-20 group.

          In his book, Wayne describes a 20-20-20 group.  It is really a type of Life Group that simply does it’s time with God together.  It’s simple.  You spend the first 20 minutes reading the Scripture, the next 20 minutes thinking and journaling your one thing, and the last 20 minutes sharing what you heard and learned.  So the first 40 minutes is spent in silence: reading the Bible, pondering and writing in your journal.  The last 20 minutes is spent talking together about what you read and learned.  20-20-20. 

          Another variation would be to do the first 40 minutes alone, and then meet for the sharing time.  Everyone brings their Bible and journal and shares today’s “one thing”. 

          Wayne’s group meets in a coffee shop.  Why a coffee shop?  Lots of people see them; some stop to talk. Wayne estimates that over 100 people walk by while his little group has their Bibles and journals open, and that is multiplied many times all over Honolulu into thousands of quiet opportunities for Christ. 

          I am suggesting this because this is a very easy kind of Life Group to start and run.  If you are not in a Life Group, here’s one you can start very easily.  Just invite a couple friends to join you once a week for devotions, for your daily time with God, and do it together.  I know a number of you who are doing this already with great results.  Start a 20-20-20 group.

3. A challenge: make a habit of a daily time with God.

          I’ll finish with a story from the The Divine Mentor. 

ILL: Wayne writes that he made a trip to China to teach 20 leaders of the underground church there.  These 20 leaders endured a 13 hour train ride to get there, then sat cross-legged on a wooden floor in a small stuffy room from 8 AM to 6 PM while Wayne spoke.  They did this for three days straight.

          At one of the first meetings, Wayne asked some questions to get acquainted with these leaders, most of whom were humble farmers with deeply weathered faces.  One man reported with joy that he had just been released from a 3 year prison term…for the fifth time!  His crime?  Faith in Jesus.  Wayne asked how many of them had spent time in prison for their faith: 18 of the 20 raised their hands.

          Wayne asked, “If government officials discovered this unregistered meeting, what would happen?”  They answered, “We would each be given a 3 year prison sentence and deported within 24 hours.”

          “Aren’t you afraid?”

          “No,” they said with quiet confidence.  “We are not afraid.  And if you will teach us another day, we will stay.”

          Since Wayne knew that each of these veteran leaders oversaw large numbers of house churches, he asked, “How many people do you oversee in all the house churches, combined?”  After a moment of quiet calculation, one spoke up: “22 million.” 

          “22 million?” Wayne stammered.

          “Yes, 22 million.”

          Wayne had brought 16 Bibles, so some of the leaders had to share.  When Wayne instructed them to open up to 2 Peter 1, he noticed one woman handed her Bible to another leader.  Wayne discovered why.  She quoted the whole chapter from memory.  Wayne learned that she had memorized much more, so he asked her how she did it.  “In prison.” 

          “But if you had a Bible, wouldn’t they confiscate it?”

          “Oh yes.  So people brought me scriptures written on little pieces of paper.”

          “And what if the guards found those?  Would they confiscate those too?”

          “Yes, so I learned to memorize very quickly.  They can take away the paper, but they can’t take away what is in my heart.”

          At the end of their time together, Wayne asked how he could pray for them.  They said, “Pray that we can become like you?”  They explained, “We don’t have freedom of religion.  In your country, you can gather whenever you want.  Pray that we become like you.”

          Wayne shook his head sadly.  “I can’t do that,” he said.  When they asked why, Wayne explained, “You came here after riding 13 hours on a train.  In America, if church is more than 30 minutes away, people won’t go.  It’s too far.  You have been sitting on a wooden floor without air conditioning for 3 days.  Where I come from, if people can’t sit on cushioned chairs and be in the comfort of air conditioning, they’ll find other things to do.  You don’t have enough Bibles, so you memorize Scriptures from pieces of paper.  In American homes, we have multiple Bibles but we don’t always read them.  No, I won’t pray that you become like us.  But I will pray…that we become like you!”

Friends, you have a Bible, and the freedom to read it wherever and whenever you want.  I challenge you: make a habit of daily time with God.  Sit at the feet of Jesus and let Him speak to you.  It’s a habit that will change your life.

January 13, 2008

Only One Thing

Part 2: How to feed yourself

Opening:

          On Friday, Laina was feeding Jenna, our 5 month-old granddaughter some rice cereal.  It’s her first semi-solid food; and you know what she does with it!  Picture of Jenna.  Laina would give her a spoonful, and she’d spit it out and Laina would spoon it back it in, and Jenna would spit it out.  But eventually, Laina got it all in her.  Very cute…in a 5 month-old.  But if she’s still doing that when she’s five, or 25, we’ve got a problem.  We know that she will learn how to feed herself.

          I know people who have been Christians for 5 years or 25 years who are still being spoon-fed by someone else; they’ve never learned to feed themselves.  And it shows.  So today, I’m going to share some very practical ideas about how you can feed yourself spiritually.

Offering and announcements:

          The Reveal survey.  We are participating in a nationwide survey that measures your satisfaction with your spiritual growth and what we as a church do to help that.  We need at least 800 people 18 and over to take the survey.  I think you will find it thought-provoking and helpful; it will make you think about what you are doing to grow spiritually.  And of course it will help us know how to help you better.  You can go to our website—www.lifecenter.net—and click on Reveal.  It will take you about 30 minutes to complete the survey and you have to do it in one setting.  Thanks!

          Life Center Women Live: Monday at 7 PM in the MPR.

Pic of Jenna.  I love babies!  Don’t you love babies?  We have lots of babies here at Life Center.  So we have a fabulous nursery with caring volunteers and staff who would love to hold your baby so that you can come to church without worry.  Our preference would be that you trust your child to our nursery.  If you want to bring your child in here, we understand; but when your child makes noise, please take them out.  We have a parents’ room in the Commons where you can take your child and still hear the service.  As a courtesy to everyone around you, please take your child out when he/she makes noise.  If you don’t, then an usher will come and ask you to take your child out, and honestly, that’s awkward for everyone.  It’s awkward for the usher and for you and for everyone around you.  So please, as a courtesy to everyone—including me—take your child out if he/she makes noise.  Deal? Thanks.

Introduction:

The title of this series, “Only One Thing” comes from a story in the Bible, in Luke 10. 

Luke 10:38-42 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹ She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Martha was so busy preparing the meal that she didn’t have time to sit and listen to Jesus.  When she asked Jesus to tell Mary to help her, Jesus said that only one thing is needed and Mary has chosen it.  What is the one thing we need above all else?

The “one thing” is a relationship with Jesus.  It’s obvious from the story that a relationship with Mary and Martha was more important to Jesus than a meal.  He wanted a relationship with them, and Mary chose that.  Being a Christian is having a relationship with Jesus.  To cultivate that, we need to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen, like Mary did. We need to feed on God’s word every day.  We talked about this need last Sunday—the need to feed.  And I promised you that I would tell you how to do that today. 

Again, I’m indebted to Wayne Cordeiro and his book, The Divine Mentor, for many of the insights that I’ll share with you today.  If you want to read more about it, you can buy this at our resource center—it’s a terrific book. 

ILL: In his book, Wayne tells the story of a mighty sequoia tree that was almost 400 years old and 240 feet high—as tall as the highest building in Spokane!  But a few years ago, it toppled over for no apparent reason.  No windstorm, fire, flood, or ice.  No insect damage.  What had felled this giant?  The conclusion: foot traffic.  According to ranger Deb Schweizer, foot traffic around the base of the tree had damaged the root system and contributed to the collapse.  Park officials are now fencing some of the oldest and largest trees “to keep the public from trampling the root systems of these giants.” 

          Wayne writes that when he heard this, he thought, “Even these great trees that have lived for hundreds of years can’t survive when there is no protection—no sacred enclosure around their root systems.”

Wayne goes on to explain that we need a sacred enclosure too—an inviolable time with God when we can, like Mary, sit and listen to what He says.  That sacred enclosure is a daily time with God, a time when can feed on God’s word, talk and listen to Jesus, and build that relationship.  Without that, our roots get trampled, our relationship with Jesus is threatened.

          So I want to talk about how to have a daily time with God.  This daily time with God is the sacred enclosure that protects our roots and keeps us growing spiritually.  Here’s how to do it. 

1. Make it a habit.  Luke 5:16, 22:39, Mark 1:35

          I like to eat.  In fact, I’ve made of a habit of it!  I eat every day, and usually several times a day.  Just like you make a habit of eating every day, I’m encouraging you to make a habit of eating spiritually, of meeting with God every day.  A daily time with God.  Perhaps you’ve heard the saying:

Sow an act and you reap a habit.

Sow a habit and you reap a character.

Sow a character and you reap a destiny.

Your habits, good and bad, shape your life and your destiny.  And I can’t think of a better habit than a daily time with God.

          Jesus is our example.

Luke 5:16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

When did Jesus withdraw from people and get alone with God?  Often.  This was His habit.

Luke 22:39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.

The Mount of Olives was a place Jesus went to pray, a favorite place to be with God.  Note that it says He went “as usual”; or “as was His custom.”  This was His habit.

Mark 1:35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.

This is just one example of Jesus getting alone with God, but I think it’s especially significant because He had been up late the night before teaching and healing people.  And when He finished, He started another busy day of teaching and healing.  But in the midst of the busyness, in the midst of all the demands upon His time and energy, Jesus deliberately got alone with God.  This was His habit.

          Here’s the kicker for me.  I think no one has ever been closer to God than Jesus.  So if Jesus needed this daily time with God, how much more do I?  If God’s perfect Son needed this daily time with God to help Him navigate His way through life, how much more do I need it? 

          Make it a habit.  An inviolable habit.  It’s inviolable; it’s unbreakable; it’s a sacred enclosure.

          A. Make time.

          Notice I didn’t say “find time”.  You make time for what’s important.  You find time for everything else. 

ILL: I learned this as a new Christian, when I was in high school.  It was hard for me to get up early enough, since I had five younger sisters and we had one bathroom!  Think about it!  You know how long it takes a teenage girl to get ready for school?  Till they’re 21!  So early morning didn’t work, and there was school all day, sports after school, then homework.  I couldn’t find the time. 

I learned I had to make time.  I had to decide this was important and assign it a place in my schedule where I could give my best and not be interrupted.

In high school, that was at night, the last thing before I went to sleep.

In college, it was first thing in the morning, the first hour before I went to class or the cafeteria.

In most of my married life it’s been early in the morning, before the kids got going.

Look at your schedule and decide when you could give your best to God, and make the time.  Make it an appointment with God that you keep every day.  When I have an appointment with another person, I rarely break it; it takes an emergency or sickness before I’ll cancel.  Treat your time with God like that—a daily appointment with God.  Make time.

          And if you want to turn it into a habit that you do every day…

          B. Link it with something you enjoy.

          Habits are much easier to build if you look forward to them, if they are more than just acts of pure willpower.  So link your time with God to something you already enjoy.

• Every morning before my time with God, I make myself a caramel latte: two shots of espresso, 12 ounces of soy milk heated to 180 degrees, and one pump of caramel.  I put my latte into thermos mug that keeps it warm for a long time, then I sit down with my Bible and journal and get started…as I sip my latte.  I look forward every morning to my latte and my time with God.
• I’ve said before that I love the outdoors and it’s one of my favorite places to pray.  In the summer, I often do my daily time with God outdoors on the deck.

Those are just a couple ideas.  Wayne does his daily time with God early each morning at a local bakery where he gets a coffee and a scone.  The idea is that linking your daily time with God to something you already enjoy, it makes it easier to make it a habit.

          C. Keep at it.

          Experts agree that you have to keep at it steadily to make a habit.  Wayne cites experts that say 21 days; I’ve heard 28 days.  Either one, you have to keep at it.  You can’t go a few days and quit. 

ILL: To use another area where this is true, think of exercise.  How many of you have started an exercise program, and quit after a few days?  Why?  You were sore.  It hurt!  You didn’t see results like the pictures in the ad!  For exercise to do you any good, it has to become a habit!  And to build a habit, you have to keep at it.  You can’t quit the first time it hurts, or you don’t feel like it.  In fact, you have to do it even when you don’t feel like it. 

The same is true in your daily time with God.  You have to keep at it even when you don’t feel like it.  And I can guarantee there will be days when you’ll feel that way, especially at first.  Do it anyway.  No matter what excuse comes up…do it anyway!  Keep at it!

          So this is first: make it a habit.  An inviolable habit.  Daily time with God.

2. The tools: five things you need.

          Here are the tools, the five things you need to have a daily time with God.

          A. A Bible.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The Bible is unique; it is God’s inspired word; it is God-breathed.  Many people read devotional books or booklets each day that contain a verse from the Bible and a corresponding thought.  That’s good.  But how much better if they read the Bible itself and let God speak to them from His inspired word.

ILL: Two scenarios: which would you rather have?

          Scenario one: I go to a fabulous restaurant and have a great meal.  I tell you all about it, raving about the food, and then say, “Oh, I saved one bite from my meal.  Here, try it.” 

          Scenario two: You go to the fabulous restaurant and have the great meal yourself. 

          Which would you prefer?

This is the difference between reading a devotional book and reading the Bible.  Why not go to the source and have the full meal deal yourself? 

          First you need a Bible.  And I recommend that you get a version of the Bible you can understand.  The King James Version is lovely, but it was translated in 1611 in what we now call Victorian English.  Most of us don’t speak Victorian English, so it’s a hard to understand.  There are many excellent modern translations from the original Greek.

• The New International Version.
• The New Living Translation.
• The New American Standard.

They all say “new”—they are new translations, but all from the old original Greek, so they aren’t changing the Bible, just translating it into our language.

          Get a Bible you can understand.

          B. A Bible reading plan.

          I recommend a plan that takes you through the whole Bible.  Many people get stuck reading their favorite book or chapter over and over and miss out on so much.  I can’t imagine anyone just watching one scene from a movie over and over, or reading only one chapter of a novel over and over!  The movie is so much better if you watch it all; the novel is so much better if you read it all.  Same with the Bible: read it all!  That’s why we need a plan.

          We have a Bible reading plan that will take you through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in a year.  You read about 4 chapters a day, which takes about 20 minutes.  This plan is in our Life Journals, and is also available at the resource center, and online at our website.  On December 31, I just completed this reading plan again.  On January 1, I just started it again.  It’s a great plan!

          If 4 chapters a day is too much for you, cut it in half and make it a two year plan.  Or if that is too much, read one chapter a day and make it a four year plan.  Reading one chapter a day is way better than reading none.  So if you can’t do four, read two, or even one.  But read it every day.  Make it a habit. 

          What if you miss a day (or 3 or 4)?  First, don’t quit.  Keep at it!  There are several things you can do (depending on your temperament).

• You can double up your reading for a day or two till you catch up.  This is what I usually do, but I’m a little obsessive about keeping on schedule.
• You can pick up where you left off and read that today.  You’ll be off schedule, but it’s no big deal.  So it takes you 13 months or 15 months instead of 12…you’re reading the Bible and that’s what counts.
• You can read today’s reading, and skip what you missed, and then make it up another time.

Do what works for you.  But whatever you do, don’t quit!  Keep at it!

ILL: Think of it like you do eating.  What do you do if you miss a meal?  Do you get discouraged and just quit eating.  “Well, that’s it for me.  I tried eating 3 times a day, and I just can’t do it.  If I can’t do all three, I quit.”  No.  If you miss a meal, you just eat again at the next meal time.  You don’t quit eating.  And while you may be hungrier than usual, you probably don’t eat 2 meals or 3 or 4 to make up for the ones you missed.  You just eat the next meal.

That’s what I’m encouraging you to do with your Bible reading plan.  If you miss, go to the next meal and enjoy it.  Just don’t quit.

          First a Bible, then a Bible reading plan.

          C. A pen.

          Why a pen?  So you can mark up your Bible!  Is that sacrilegious?  Nope!  When you read your Bible and a verse jumps out at you or speaks to you, underline it.  Or put a star or an asterisk by it.  Or make a note in the margin.  I’ve got a pile of marked up Bibles; after one gets read and marked several times, I get a clean one and start over.

          A Bible, a Bible reading plan, and a pen.  You’ll also need a pen for the next tool.

          D. A journal.

Jeremiah 30:2 This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: “Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you.”

A journal is a notebook in which you can write down what God says to you.  That’s all journaling is—writing it down.  It is you taking notes on what God says to you.  I know a lot of people who don’t like to write.  How many of you don’t like to write?  Lots of people tell me that they read the Bible and God speaks to them, but they don’t write it down.  Why would we write it down? 

ILL: Imagine that we take a physics class together.  I’m furiously taking notes in class, writing down what the professor says.  You ask me, “Why are taking notes?  I just listen to the professor; I don’t need to take notes.”  My question is: Who will do better on the test? 

Taking notes helps you retain what you hear.  You learn more when you write down what you hear. And you will have a written record of what God has said to you that you can review and remember. 

ILL: Last Sunday, I asked you to pray for Dave Compogno.  The surgeon successfully removed a cancerous tumor from his colon; in a few weeks he will begin a regimen of chemotherapy.  Medically, Dave’s chances for a full cancer-free recovery are good.  We’re thanking God and praying for him.

          When the surgeon and the oncologist each came to visit Dave and Annee, friends were there with them.  Can anyone guess what one of the friends did?  Took notes—careful notes.  So that after the doc left, and they wondered, “What did he say about this?” they could consult their notes and remember.

God is speaking to you.  Write it down and remember.  We have these Life Journals with a Bible reading plan in them available at our resource center.  We sell them at our cost.  If you can’t afford one, we’ll give you one. 

          A Bible, a plan, a pen, a journal, and…

          E. A daily planner.  (or a to-do list, or piece of paper)

          Why this?  Because when you begin to read or pray, some unfinished task will pop into your mind—guaranteed!  How many know what I’m talking about?  You sit down to read your Bible and suddenly you start remembering things you’ve got to do!  This is why you have your planner.  When these things come to your mind, write them down, and then forget about them and get back to your time with God.  (Or if you need to, you can pray about.)  Without this, you’ll be continually distracted.

          Five tools.  Now how do you use them for a daily time with God?  How can you feed yourself, and hear Jesus speaking to you? 

3. Use the SOAP!

          Here’s a very simple plan for feeding yourself God’s word, for hearing God’s voice.  S-O-A-P: soap.

          Scripture: As you read the Bible, ask God for one thing for today.  Only one thing.  What is the one truth, the one idea, the one verse that stands out above all the others?  What is the one thing that God is saying to you today?  Don’t look for 5 things or 3 or 2: only one thing.  If you write down too many things, you won’t remember any of them, so focus on one thing.  This is the genius of this particular way of doing your daily time with God.  Make it your goal to hear one thing from God for the day.  Only one thing.

          Write that verse down, word for word.  That’s the S: Scripture.

          Observation: The O is observation.  Observe what the verse says.  Think about it, ponder its meaning, let its message sink in.  What’s happening, who is affected, what is the message or meaning?  What’s the big idea?  What is God saying to you from this verse?  I talked with someone this week who admitted that he often reads several chapters of Scripture a day, and walks away unchanged because he didn’t take the time to think about it.  It would be better to read less and think more.  Stop and take a few minutes to ponder, consider, think about what it means.

Write down your observation in a few sentences. 

          Application: The A is application.  Observation is “what does it mean?” Application is “what will I do?”  How will I be different today as a result of what I’ve just read?  What will I do because of this?  This is where hearing turns into doing.  God speaks to change us.  He wants to transform you, not just inform you.  So we read the Bible not just for information, but transformation; and that only happens when we get to this point of application, of doing what we hear from Jesus. 

          Write down in a sentence or two what you’re going to do today.

          Prayer: The P is prayer.  Finish by turning what you have learned and will do, your one thing for the day, into a thoughtful prayer.  Writing out your prayer forces you to be thoughtful about it.  Going back and reading your prayers can be a very inspiring thing. 

          Here is an example from my own journal.  The date is this Thursday, January 10.  I was reading Luke 10, and the verse that stood out was v. 40.

          Scripture: Luke 10:40 “Martha was distracted with much serving.” 

          Observation: Distracted with much serving.  What a phrase!  How many Christians are so busy serving Jesus that they don’t have time to listen to Jesus?  Like Martha, I’m easily distracted, and usually it’s by doing something good.  This morning, I was late to this time with God because I’m meeting my son at the end of the day to print pictures, and I had to edit and transfer the images.  It’s easy for good things, like serving others, to keep me from meeting with God.  Only one thing is needed.

          Application: Don’t let yourself get too busy for God.  Make time!

          Prayer: Lord, help me this year make my time with You my top priority…and make it rich!  Let’s get closer!  Speak to me, and help me hear and do what you say.  Don’t let me get “distracted with much serving.” 

Communion

          We’re going to finish by taking communion.  Let’s take a few minutes to be with God, to worship Him and listen for His voice. 

Only One Thing

Part 1: The need to feed

Luke 10:38-42

Opening:

          Ok, moment of truth.  How many of you gained a few pounds over the holidays?  I went in weighing 182 and came out weighing 190—that’s almost a 5% gain in less than a month!  I got out my calculator and figured that if I maintain this pace for a year, I’ll be 341 pounds by next Christmas!  How did do it?  I ate…and ate…and ate.  I didn’t just eat three square meals a day, I ate a couple round ones in between—round cakes and pies and cookies—and pounded down other snacks around those!  I love Christmas!

          If you eat all the time you get big.  But what if you only ate one meal a week?  What if you only ate for an hour on Sunday, and didn’t eat again all week?  Before long, you would be gaunt, thin, weak and sick…maybe dead!  That describes the spiritual state of many!  There are a lot of malnourished, weak, starving Christians.  You have to eat every day spiritually; to do that, you have to know how to feed yourself.  So we’re going to give you a plan for feeding yourself.  Today we start with “The need to feed.” 

Announcements and baptism:

          Love and Respect Live: Over 700 registered, and they’re coming from all over the country!  It will fill up soon, so don’t delay.  Go to our website to register.

          Introduce baptisms.

Introduction: (offering here)

          Some of you recognize that sketch as a light-hearted modern male version of a story in the Bible.  It’s the story of when Jesus visited Mary and Martha, and it’s found in Luke 10. 

Luke 10:38-42 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹ She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Martha is your classic task-oriented person.  Jesus is coming to visit, and all she can think about are all the preparations: making the meal, setting the table, cleaning the house, fluffing the pillows and filling the wick dispersers with fresh scented oil.  Martha is so busy bustling from the kitchen to the dining room that she doesn’t have time to listen to Jesus.  She is busy, worried, distracted.  How many of you relate to Martha?  I can.  I can get so busy on my task that I’m oblivious to people around me…and to God.  I can get too busy for God.

          While Martha was busy with the preparations, Mary took a seat at Jesus’ feet, and listened to what He said.  It wasn’t a fair distribution of labor, and eventually Martha, frazzled and frustrated, protested to Jesus.  “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?  Tell her to help me!” She didn’t say, “It’s not fair!” but you know that’s what she was thinking.  Martha must have been surprised by Jesus’ reply. 

          “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” 

          Only one thing is needed.  That’s the title of this series: “Only one thing.”  Only one thing is needed, and Mary discovered it.  What is that one thing, and why is it so important.  Much of what I’m going to share with you in the next three weeks can be found in this book, The Divine Mentor, by my friend, Wayne Cordeiro.  If you want to read more about it, you can get a copy at our resource center.  By the way, Wayne will be our guest here at Life Center in June.

          Now before we dive into the one thing, I want to make it clear that Jesus isn’t saying there is only one thing we should ever do, to the exclusion of everything else.  No, the meal still has to be made.  The house still has to be cleaned.  We still need to go to work, pay the bills, go to class, do the laundry, fluff the pillows and fill the wick dispersers.  So what does He mean?  Watch this.

ILL: clip from “City Slickers”.

What’s the secret of life?  One thing.  One thing that rises above all the others.  One thing that gives meaning and purpose and direction to all the others.  One thing that gets top billing in your life.  What is that one thing?  Jesus tells Martha that Mary has discovered it.  It’s listening to Jesus.  It’s a relationship with Jesus.

1. I need a relationship with Jesus.

          It seems obvious that a relationship with Mary and Martha was more important to Jesus than the meal.  Martha focused on the meal, Mary on the relationship, and Jesus said, “Mary has chosen what is better.”  The one thing, the better thing, is a relationship with Jesus.

          Jesus wants a relationship with you.  This is why He came and lived and died and rose again.  All for one thing: He wants a relationship with you.  This is the one thing that gives life meaning and purpose and direction: having a relationship with the Living God. 

ILL: In my daily time with God this week, I read that Enoch walked with God, and Noah walked with God, and this is what distinguished them among their contemporaries.  They walked with God.  I love that phrase. 

          Do you ever go on walks with someone?  Laina and I love to go on walks.  We hold hands and we talk with each other.  We commune.  We enjoy being together.  I walk with Laina.

          Occasionally, when I meet a friend for an appointment here at my office, I’ll suggest we go for a walk, instead of sitting in the office.  Not long ago, I went for a walk with Tim.  We didn’t hold hands, but we talked as we walked.  We communed.  I walk with friends.

God wants to walk with you.  You should try going for a walk with God.  It’s one of my favorite ways to pray.  God wants to walk with you.  In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, it says “they heard the sound of Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord.”  Why was God walking in the garden?  The implication is that God was there to be with them, to visit them; God had come to walk with them.  I’ve wondered what the sound of the Lord walking in the garden was.  Maybe He was humming or whistling while He walked.  But it was a sound they recognized because they had walked with Him…and now they were hiding instead. 

          What are you doing?  Are you walking with God, or hiding from Him?  Our sin makes us want to hide.  But that is why Jesus came and died and rose again.  He paid our moral debt and forgave us completely so that we can walk with God in deep gratitude rather than hide from God in shame.  Come out of hiding and walk with God. 

          You can walk with God all day every day.  You can walk with God at home.  You can walk with God at work or at school.  This relationship with God, this give-and-take, this talk-and-listen relationship happens all day long, if you’ll let it.  God wants to walk with you.  God wants a relationship with you.  And it’s what you and I need more than anything else. 

          Being a Christian is all about relationships.  It is about loving God with all you’ve got and loving others.  It is not primarily about doctrine, although what you believe is important.  It is not primarily about keeping the rules, although what you do is important.  It is primarily about relationship, who you know and love.  The “one thing” is a relationship with Jesus.

          For three Sundays, I’m going to talk with you about how to feed yourself spiritually; how to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to what He says, like Mary did; how to go for a walk with Jesus every day.  But you must remember this.  The purpose of all that we’ll do is to know Him, to love Him.  The one thing is a relationship with Jesus.  If we forget that, then our spiritual practices—reading the Bible, praying, listening, journaling, and obeying—all become religious calisthenics, more things to check off our to-do list like Martha did.  If our spiritual practices don’t bring us closer to Jesus, help us walk with God, then we’ve missed the point.

          What’s the one thing?  A relationship with Jesus.  That’s the one thing.  And to have that…

2. I need to feed on God’s Word.

          This is what Mary was doing.  She was sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to what He said.  She was feeding on God’s word.  In Matthew 4, when the devil tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread,

Matthew 4:4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

We feed our bodies with bread, and we feed our spirits with the words of God.  If you don’t eat food regularly, you will grow weak and sick and die.  If you are not feeding on God’s word, you will grow weak and sick and die spiritually.  We live on every word that comes from the mouth of God.  Would you say that with me: We live on every word that comes from the mouth of God.  We have to feed on God’s word.

          Each Sunday when you come here, I try to feed you with God’s Word.  But if this is the only time you read the Bible, or feed on God’s Word, you will be a weak and sickly Christian!  If you ate only one meal a week on Sundays, you’d be weak and sick and eventually die.  You have to eat every day to stay healthy.  In the same way, you need to feed on God’s word every day if you want to stay spiritually healthy, if you want to have a growing relationship with Jesus.         

ILL: To use a different illustration: if I want to have a great relationship with my wife, we need to talk every day.  If we only talked once a week, for a few minutes on Sunday, our relationship would suffer.  We talk every day, all through the day, and we often have extended conversations, time when we give each other our undivided attention.

You’ve got to eat more than once a week.  You’ve got to talk with your spouse more than once a week.  And you’ve got to listen to God’s word more than once a week.  You’ve got to feed on God’s Word every day.  And that means…

          A. I need to feed myself.

Occasionally, someone will tell me, “Joe, I’m leaving Life Center and going to another church.”  And when I ask why, he’ll say, “Well, I’m not getting fed.”  I have two responses to that.  First, if you really are not getting anything out of the messages, if they don’t feed you spiritually, or challenge you, or move you closer to God, then by all means, find a church where that happens for you.  If I don’t feed you God’s word, find someone who does, with my blessing.  I’d rather you be fed and grow at another church, than starve and die at this one.  That’s my first response.  Here’s the second: if you are depending entirely on me (or anybody else) to feed you, you are in deep trouble.  You must learn to feed yourself.  One meal a week won’t keep you strong. 

ILL: Imagine that one day my wife notices I’m looking very thin: hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, bones sticking out everywhere.  She says, “What’s wrong with you?”

          I say, “I’m starving to death.  I’m not getting fed around here.  No one is feeding me.”  What do you think she’ll say?

          “Feed yourself!  There is the refrigerator, there is the pantry; they are full of food.  Go get ‘em, big boy; feed yourself.” 

That’s what my wife would say to me!  And that’s what I say to people who say, “I’m not being fed.”  You’ve got to feed yourself.

          Whose responsibility is it to make sure you are fed physically?  Yours!  Whose responsibility is it to make sure you are fed spiritually?  Yours!  You are responsible for your own spiritual health and well-being.  No one else can do it for you. 

ILL: Someone said that 80% of what you do, anyone could do.  15% of what you do, someone else could be trained to do.  But 5% of what you do, only you can do. No one else can do it for you.  Only I can be a husband to Laina, and a father to my children.  Only I can keep my body healthy.  Only I can feed myself spiritually.  It is my responsibility.

Only you can keep yourself healthy spiritually by feeding yourself, by making time to sit and listen to Jesus’ words.  No one can do it for you.  It’s the last 5%.  It’s the better part that Mary chose.  It’s the one thing that’s most important.  You need to feed yourself, and next Sunday, I’m going to spell out how to do it, how to read your Bible each day so that God speaks to you.

          You might be thinking, “But I’m not a Bible scholar or Bible teacher.  I don’t know how to understand or interpret the Bible.”  You have the same teacher that I do: the Holy Spirit.  He is the most gifted Bible teacher ever!  He can take God’s words and speak them to you and teach you what you need to know and feed you.  And the Bible promises that He will.

John 14:26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

John 16:13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would teach us and guide us into the truth.  The Holy Spirit is our Divine Mentor, and you can spend time every day with Him in the Bible, letting Him teach you and guide you into the truth. 

ILL: Have you ever wished you could have regular time with someone you admire and respect and let them teach you and mentor you?

          How many of you golfers would like to be personally mentored and coached by Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus?

          How many of you activists would like to be personally mentored by Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mother Teresa or Ghandi?

          How many of you gardeners would like to be personally mentored by Phyllis Stevens?

You get the idea.  Wouldn’t it be cool if we could be mentored by someone who was way ahead of us, someone way smarter than us, someone who know the way far better than us?  We can.  You have a Divine Mentor, the Holy Spirit, who is ready to teach you and guide you into all truth.  So open your Bible with confidence and let Him teach you. 

          I need to feed on God’s word.  Like Mary, I need to listen to what Jesus is saying.  And I need to feed myself.  I am responsible for this; I can’t delegate it to anyone else.  I need to make time every day to open my Bible, and let Jesus speak to me.  Next Sunday, I’m going to give you some very practical ideas about how to do this—how to read the Bible every day and hear Jesus speaking to you. 

          Let me point out some of the benefits of feeding on God’s word every day.

          B. God’s word will:

1. Equip you.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

God’s word will equip you for every good work.  You will be prepared for whatever life throws at you. 

          In Matthew 13, Jesus told the parable of the soils.  A farmer scattered seed, and it landed on four different kinds of soil.  Later, he explained to His followers that the seed is the word of God.  When you plant a seed, it takes time for it to sprout and grow and bear fruit.  There are times when I read the Bible and God speaks to me, and I wonder, “Why would I need that?”  Then a week later or a month later or a year later, I’m in a situation and “ding”—the light goes on.  Remember, John 14:26 says that the Holy Spirit will “remind you of everything I have said to you.”  Our Divine Mentor brings to mind that verse, that truth, right when we need it.  God’s word has prepared me; I’m ready to respond, to make a good choice.

          This daily time in God’s word is like an athlete or musician practicing every day, so that they are prepared at game time or for the concert. 

ILL: James Dobson wrote,

On a trip to Washington, D.C., a few years ago, my hotel room was located next to the room of a famous cellist who was in the city to give a classical concert that evening. I could hear him through the walls as he practiced hour after hour. He did not play beautiful symphonies; he repeated scales and runs and exercises, over and over and over. This practice began early in the morning (believe me!) and continued until the time of his concert. As he strolled on stage that evening, I’m sure many individuals in the audience thought to themselves, “What a glamorous life!” Some glamour! I happen to know that he had spent the entire day in his lonely hotel room in the company of his cello.

All those scales so that he would be ready for the concert.  When you make a habit of spending time at Jesus’ feet every day, reading the Bible every day, you are preparing yourself for life.  God’s word will equip you.

                   2. Make you fruitful.

John 15:7-8 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. ⁸ This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

In John 15, Jesus says that He is the vine and we are the branches.  We must remain in Him if we want to be fruitful.  If we don’t remain in Him, we will wither and die.  All of us understand this.  Cut a branch off an apple tree and it will never bear apples.  It will wither and die.  Jesus is saying that if we remain in relationship with Him, we will be fruitful.  And then He adds this: if you remain in me and “my words remain in you.”  Letting God’s word remain in us is an important part of this relationship that makes us fruitful.

          What do I mean by fruitful?  I mean that your life is producing what you were made to produce.  An apple tree is fruitful when it produces apples.  A berry bush is fruitful when it produces berries.  You are fruitful when you produce what God made you to produce, when you fulfill your God-given purpose.  How many of you would like to fulfill your God-given purpose?  That happens when you remain in Jesus and His words remain in you.  God’s word will make you fruitful.

                   3. Enable you to recognize His voice. 

John 10:4-5 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”

John 10:27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.

Mary had an advantage we don’t have.  Jesus was physically there.  She could sit at His feet, ask Him questions and listen to His answers.  We don’t have a physical voice to hear, and that makes it hard.  When I try to listen to Jesus, how do I know it’s Him, and not just my imagination?  How can I recognize His voice? 

We don’t have a physical voice to hear, but we do have His word, written for us in the Bible.  And as we read it every day, it enables us to recognize His voice when He speaks to us.  “That sounds familiar…like something I read in the Bible.”

Jesus compared us to sheep and He is our shepherd.  How do sheep recognize the shepherd’s voice?  By hearing it over and over.  

ILL: Have you ever seen a mom get up when she hears a baby cry because she knows it’s her baby?  How does she know?  She’s heard that cry…a lot!  In the middle of the night and all during the day, she’s heard that cry, so she recognizes her baby’s voice.

          You could blindfold me and have 1000 ladies talking and I could pick out Laina’s voice.  Why?  Because I have heard it so much…and it’s like music to my ears!

When people ask me how to recognize God’s voice, I tell them to read the Word every day.  You’ll hear God speaking and soon come to recognize when that voice speaks to you.  God’s word enables you to recognize His voice.

                   4. Help you make wise decisions. 

Here is a rule for the kings of Israel:

Deuteronomy 17:18-20 When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. ¹⁹ It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees ²⁰ and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

I love that.  God commanded the kings of Israel to each make their own hand-written copy of God’s word, and read it every day.  He gave four reasons:

• So that he learn to revere (love and worship) the Lord.  Read it for relationship with God.
• So that he would carefully follow all God’s laws.  Read it to obey.
• So that he would not consider himself better than his brothers.  Read it to remember who you are and stay humble.
• So that he would not turn from the law to the right or left.  Read it to make good decisions, and stay right on track.

Did you know that you make over 300 decisions a day?  About 10% of those have the potential to be life-changing.  How will you make those decisions?  Where will you find the wisdom to make good decisions?  God’s word will help you chart the right path, make wise decisions.  Are you reading it every day, storing up wisdom every day? 

ILL: By the time you graduate from high school, you will have watched more than 16,000 hours of television.  If you go to church for 2 hours a week, you will have 2,000 hours of spiritual help.  So when it comes time to make a decision, you will have 8 times more input from TV than from God’s word!  Are you happy with that ratio?  8 times more input from TV than from God’s word…unless you know how to feed yourself.  

Next week, I’m going to give you practical ideas on how to do that, how to read God’s word every day so that you’re hearing God speak to you. 

          Only one thing.  That one thing is a relationship with Jesus.  We grow that relationship by listening to Him, by making time every day to feed on God’s word.  And if we do, God’s word will

• Equip us.
• Make us fruitful.
• Enable us to recognize His voice.
• Help us make wise decisions.

January 8, 2006

God is speaking…are you listening?

Part 1: God is speaking through the Bible

Opening:

Today, we start a new series: “God is speaking…are you listening?”

Tell people that you talk with God and they’ll think you’re spiritual. Tell people that God talks to you and they’ll think you’re crazy! But you’re not! God speaks…are you listening?

If God called you on the phone, what would He say? Take responses from the audience. What wouldn’t He say?

I believe that God speaks. He speaks to me. And He speaks to you. The question is: are we listening?

Offering and announcements:

This Friday at 7 PM, Life Center will be hosting a benefit concert featuring Joel Weldon and his band, and a band called Catalyst. The concert is a combined effort of many churches to help support the Nichols family, a mother with seven young children and one on the way who recently lost her husband to a sudden heart attack. The concert is free; an offering will be taken for the Nichols family trust fund. This Friday at 7 PM, here.

Alpha is a terrific ten week course on the basics of the Christian faith. It starts on Friday January 20, and runs for 10 weeks on Friday nights. You can register today at the Information and Resource Center. It is offered only once a year, so don’t miss it.

Wednesday nights are changing. About four years ago, we decided to make Life Groups a core part of what we do; we began to encourage everyone to be part of a Life Group for friendship and spiritual growth. Since that decision, our Wednesday worship service attendance has been in steady decline, and Life Groups have been growing fast. So, for now, we have ended our Wednesday worship service and will continue to put our energy into Life Groups.

Several things are still happening here on Wednesday evenings at 7 PM. Junior High Impact will continue to meet in the Multi-Purpose Room. College Life will continue to meet for worship and teaching here in the auditorium. And Pastor Noel will offer his discipleship class in the upper room. Noel’s class starts this week. I didn’t know that last Sunday and about 25 of you showed up here last Wednesday for Noel’s class. My humble apologies! So every Wednesday: Junior High, College, and Pastor Noel’s class, here at 7 PM. However, there will no longer be a Wednesday worship service or childcare.

If you have been a faithful Wednesday night attender, we hope you’ll get into a Life Group. Which brings me to the next thing…

If you’re not in a Life Group, have we got a deal for you! Starting in mid-February, we’re going to give those of you who aren’t yet in a group a chance to taste group life for four weeks during a new series I’ll be doing called Communication for Dummies. It’s like test driving a Life Group! At the end of the four weeks, participants may either say, “That was great! See you at church in the future!” And that will be fine. Or they may decide they love group life and keep going. And that will be fine, too!

But here’s the deal. In order to make room for all of you who want to try a group, we need lots of people to lead brand-new Life Groups for the four weeks. I know that “Leadership” often sounds daunting. But we make it easy and fun! We provide a weekly study guide for the groups, and a quick orientation meeting for potential leaders to get you ready to go. Those orientations are today, and each of the next two Sundays—they are listed in your program.

Let me introduce you to Dave and Kimberly Beine, who have been part of many small groups over the years and are currently leading one at Life Center. Dave and Kim, let me ask you a couple questions about leading a Life Group.

• What is so enjoyable or valuable about Life Groups? What makes it worth these good people’s time?

• How did you end up leading a Life Group? Was it easier or harder than you first thought?

• Tell us about just one experience you’ve had in a small group that showcases why you love them so much.

Dave and Kim, we appreciate your leadership here at Life Center! Thanks for talking about Life Groups with us. I hope you’ll consider leading a group—it’s easy and fun and we’ll help you. Check out the Life Group Facilitator Orientations to choose from listed for tonight and the two weeks in the Upcoming Events in your bulletin.

Introduction:

If you were marooned on an island and could have only one book with you, what would it be? Someone once asked this question of G. K. Chesterton. Given his reputation as one of the most well-known Christians of the first half of the 20^th Century, most people expected him to say the Bible. He didn’t. If he was marooned on an island, Chesterton’s choice was Thomas’ Guide to Practical Ship-Building.

That makes sense. If we’re trapped on an island, we want a book that will help us get home, a book that will show us how to be saved.

The truth is that we are trapped. Eugene Peterson says we are trapped on an “I-land”, stuck in our sin and selfishness, far from God and home and with no way to get back on our own. And the one book that can get us off this “I-land” is the Bible. This book tells the way home—it’s God’s message to us.

God speaks in many ways. In the next few weeks, we’ll look at several ways God speaks: through the Bible, in prayer, through other people, and through life. God is speaking—and I think God speaks more than we listen. Our prayer is found in 1 Samuel 3:9-10: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Would you say that with me? That’s our prayer.

So for the next few weeks, we want to think about the ways God speaks and how we can listen better. We’re going to start with the Bible.

1. God speaks to us through the Bible.

Exodus 20:1 And God spoke all these words: (the Ten Commandments)

Hebrews 1:1-2 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.

In the past, God spoke. God spoke to Moses and gave Him the Law; Moses wrote down what God said and did. God spoke to the prophets, and the prophets wrote down what God said and did. God spoke and people wrote it down—they called it “the Law and the Prophets”—we call it the Old Testament.

Then God spoke again—“by His Son.” In fact, John called Jesus “the Word”. God’s ultimate Word is Jesus. God spoke through His Son, and people wrote it down—we call it the New Testament.

God spoke and acted in history; this is the written version. It is God’s word to us. And when we read it, God speaks to us. He is still speaking through His written word.

ILL: Last year, I read St. Augustine’s Confessions, written around 397 AD. Augustine wrote his biography in the form of a prayer to God. It’s brilliant and it’s beautiful. He wrote it 1600 years ago, but Augustine is still speaking to us…because he wrote it down.

God has spoken in history and was good enough to make sure it was written down so we can read it. He is still speaking through His written word.

How many of you have read the Bible and experienced God speaking to you?

ILL: I mentioned Augustine. In the best-known passage of The Confessions, Augustine describes his conversion. This brilliant man had been living an immoral life, and running from God. One day he was sitting under a fig tree in a garden.

“Suddenly I heard a voice from a house nearby—perhaps a voice of some boy or girl, I do not know—singing over and over again, ‘Pick it up and read, pick it up and read.’”

“I…rose to my feet, believing that this could be nothing other than a divine command to open the Book and read the first passage I chance upon…I snatched it up, opened it and read in silence the passage on which my eyes first lighted:

‘Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. ¹⁴ Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.’ (Romans 13:13-14)

I had no wish to read further, nor was there need. No sooner had I reached the end of the verse than the light of certainty flooded my heart and all dark shades of doubt fled away.”

God spoke to Augustine through the Bible and he was converted.

ILL: John Ortburg tells about a friend named Eileen who was disappointed with her life, but wanted nothing to do with God. In fact, when her daughter told her that someone had been talking to her about God, Eileen was so upset that she couldn’t sleep that night.

At midnight she went downstairs and picked up a Bible. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been to a church, nor had she ever opened a Bible on her own. When she opened it now, she noticed it was divided into an “old” part and a “new” part. She decided to start with the “new” part, figuring the book may have been updated.

So in the still of the night she sat on her living room floor and began to read the gospel of Matthew. By 3 a.m. she was in the middle of John’s gospel and found, as she puts it, that she had fallen in love with the character of Jesus. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she prayed to God, “but I know you are what I want.”

God spoke to Eileen through the Bible and she was converted. If you are investigating the Christian faith, I would encourage you to do what Eileen did: read the gospels, the first four books of the New Testament. They are the story of Jesus—our faith is all about Him. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Get acquainted with Jesus, the Word, and see if God speaks to you through the Bible.

God speaks through the Bible, not only to convert us, but to help us grow and to direct us. I’ve given you a list of Bible verses that describe how God uses the Bible to speak to us, to shape us and direct us. We’ll look at just a couple.

Deuteronomy 17:18-20 When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. ¹⁹ It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees ²⁰ and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

This was what every king of Israel was supposed to do. First, he had to write for himself a copy of the law—the first five books of the Old Testament. Imagine writing out a hand-written copy of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. That would take awhile! Then the king was to keep it with him, and read it…how often? All the days of his life. Every day!

Why was he to do this? First, so he could learn to revere the Lord—to know, love and worship God. Second, so he could carefully follow God’s law. And third, so he would not consider himself better than his brothers and sisters. Reading God’s word would keep him humble, keep him from thinking he was a big shot! God speaks through the Bible.

John 8:31-32 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. ³² Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Here’s another way God uses the Bible to speak to us. When we read and follow the teaching of Jesus, we will know the truth, and it will set us free. First, it may make you miserable, but it will set you free. The truth will set you free.

John 17:17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

Here’s another way God uses the Bible to speak to us. His word sanctifies us—that means it makes us holy, set apart for God and His purposes. It cleanses us and changes us.

Ephesians 5:25-27 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Paul uses Christ’s love for the church as an example for husbands and wives. Notice how Jesus cleanses us: “by the washing with water through the word.” He washes us with His word. Here’s another way God uses the Bible to speak to us. He cleanses us with His word.

Some people think Christians are brain-washed. I hope so! My brain needs a good washing! What happens when something doesn’t get washed as it should?

ILL: When I was in college, I washed my sheets once a term, when I went home at break.

The other day, my wife walked by me after we got home from jogging. She stopped and said, “You need to wash that shirt…now.”

It’s not pretty when something goes unwashed. My brain needs a good washing! You would probably be horrified if you could see some of the thoughts and feelings that race through my mind! All of us come to God with hearts and minds cluttered with false beliefs, bad attitudes, wrong thoughts, and misguided emotions. How does God wash us? With the water of His Word. Every time you read the Bible, God is washing you, speaking to you, cleansing you with the washing of His Word.

2 Timothy 3:15-17 and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

God speaks to us through the Bible not only to save us, but to thoroughly equip us for every good work. He not only speaks to cleanse us, but to equip us. God uses the Bible to teach us, rebuke us, correct us and train us for righteousness.

God speaks to us through the Bible.

ILL: Many years ago, when Laina and I were praying about moving to Spokane, God used the Bible to speak to us. We had been praying for several days, and it seemed like God was leading us here, but we were reluctant. All our friends and family were in Eugene, and we loved it there. We were part of a great church, and the church here was in sad shape. We didn’t want to come. Finally, the deadline arrived—we had to have an answer. So we knelt together by our bed, and I told Laina we were going to pray until we had a clear answer. As I prayed, I felt like God spoke and told us to go to Spokane and He gave me a verse.

Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; ⁶ in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

I told Laina that I had heard from the Lord, and she said, “Wait, before you tell me, I just want to say: I don’t want to move to Spokane.”

I told her that I thought God said we were to go, and gave her the verse. And I focused on the last part: “He will make your paths straight.” What’s the straight path from Spokane to Eugene? By air! I thought the Lord was saying that He would provide so we could fly home whenever we needed. It was the comfort I needed to pull the trigger and make the move. In fact, that wasn’t God’s point at all—it was that I should trust Him and not lean on my own frightened understanding. But God used that verse to give us courage, and we moved.

In our first week here, we had dinner with a lady in our church who had a gift for us. It was a hand-made plaque, with a Bible verse she had written in calligraphy. And the Bible verse was…Proverbs 3:5-6. She had no idea that was the verse that gave us courage to move. We felt like it was God reminding us again to trust Him—speaking to us through His word.

God speaks to us through the Bible. How can we listen better?

2. How to hear God speaking through the Bible.

If you want God to speak to you through the Bible, you need to read it! And it’s best to read it every day, just like the kings of Israel did. We’ve provided a Bible reading plan—it takes about 20 minutes a day to read through the whole Bible in a year. It takes a little more time to reflect on what you read and let God speak to you. But it starts here. Read the Bible…every day. It’s amazing how many people who say that they believe the Bible cover-to-cover have never read the Bible cover-to-cover. Read the Bible…every day. Here at Life Center, we encourage everyone to have PBJ time every day—Prayer, Bible and Journal. We have Life Center Journals to help you with this, and this is a great time to get started.

Here are some practical suggestions for hearing God speak to you through the Bible.

A. Ask God to speak to you through the Bible.

Pray first. Ask God to speak to you through the Bible. Ask Him to wash you with His word. A good prayer is found in 1 Samuel 3:9-10. “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” This is where I start each time I read the Bible. “Speak to me, Lord.”

When you ask God to speak to you, then expect that He will. This is why I like to have my journal open when I read: I expect God to speak to me through the Bible. And when God speaks, I have found it helpful to write it down. When I listen to a speaker, I take notes so that I can remember what he said. When God speaks, I take notes so I can remember what He said. That’s why I journal.

When I read the Bible, I expect God to speak to me, to say something to me that teaches me, challenges me, corrects me or directs me (2 Timothy 3:16). I don’t read the Bible as a religious duty, just one more thing to check off my list. I read the Bible to hear from God. I expect that God will take His eternal word and apply it to my heart and life. As you read, certain ideas may strike you. You may be moved in reading about God’s love, or feel convicted about some sin, or be prompted to take some course of action. Expect God to speak to you.

So when I read, I start with this prayer and expect Him to speak to me.

B. Read the Bible with a humble heart.

Luke 8:18 Therefore consider carefully how you listen.

This second idea is all about how you read the Bible and how you listen to God. When it comes to Scripture reading, the key question is not how much, but how. How should you read?

James 1:21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

How should you read? Humbly. Read the Bible with a humble heart. A receptive heart. A teachable heart. A heart submitted to God. Read the Bible to know God and love Him. Read the Bible to hear from God and obey Him.

Read for transformation. “Wash me, Lord.” Reading for transformation is different than reading for information. I read the Bible so that God can speak to me, wash me and change me, not just so I can get more information, more knowledge.

Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

We are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. I believe that when we read the Bible with a humble and hungry heart, God renews our minds and transforms us. Read for transformation. “Wash me. Change me.”

Of course, it’s possible to read the Bible without being washed by the Word. Jesus challenged the religious leaders of His day who knew the Bible, but weren’t changed by it.

John 5:39-40 You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

They read the Bible, but missed the message because they were proud. Read the Bible with a humble heart.

C. Read slowly: Meditate.

I hope that all of you will read the Bible all the way through. Actually, I hope that you’ll read it all the way through many times. But the goal is not to get through the Scriptures, but get the Scriptures through us. We’re reading for transformation, to give God a chance to speak to us and wash us and change us. And that means we have to read slowly. We have to meditate.

When I say the word “meditate”, some of you picture a yogi sitting cross-legged, emptying his mind and chanting a mantra. “Oohhmm.” That’s not what the Bible means by meditation. Meditation is mentioned over 50 times in the Old Testament. The word literally means “to mutter.” It’s a picture of someone thinking about something so deeply that they are muttering, talking to themselves. To meditate is to think deeply, to muse, to ponder; it is sustained attention.

Joshua 1:8 Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Notice four things about meditation.

1. How: Don’t let God’s word depart from your mouth. Meditation means “to mutter”. It involves your mouth and your mind. You keep saying God’s word as you think about it.

2. When: Meditate on it day and night. Meditating on God’s Word ought to be part of our daily life—every day.

3. Why: That you may be careful to do everything written in it. So you can obey. Transformation, not just information.

4. Result: You will be prosperous and successful.

How many of you would like to be prosperous and successful? Let God’s word wash and transform you!

So if you are using our Bible reading plan, today you would read Genesis 20-22 and Luke 8. That’s four chapters. You can read them in about 20 minutes, even if you read them out loud. Now, you’re not going to meditate on all four chapters, but one section jumps out at you: let’s say, the story of Jesus calming the storm. Maybe you’re going through a storm, and you were struck by Jesus’ ability to sleep through the storm when everyone else was scared spitless. Lately, you’ve felt more like one of the disciples, scared and bailing for all you’re worth, than like Jesus, who was so trusting that He was asleep. Jesus’ words, “Where is your faith?” resonate in your heart. So you meditate on this brief passage. You take a few minutes and read this section, Luke 8:22-25, out loud, slowly, repetitively, stopping to think about individual words and ideas. “God, what do you want to say to me?”

By the way, one way to read more slowly is to read out loud, especially when a passage strikes you. Reading out loud slows you down, and you retain two to three times more of what you read aloud than what you read silently. I don’t read all my Scripture aloud, but I do read significant portions of it aloud. Remember, the root meaning of “meditate” is “to mutter”—reading slowly and out loud and repetitively is the start of meditation.

Most of what God says to me from the Bible comes this way. Some word or thought stands out to me, and I take time to read it out loud, slowly and ponder it. The operative word is time. It takes time to meditate. John Ortburg says, “You can’t meditate fast. There are no Evelyn Wood courses in speed meditation. ‘I can meditate at 700 words a minute with a 90% comprehension rate.’” It takes time to meditate. The cool thing is that you can do it anywhere. I’ve done a lot of meditation while I’m driving, muttering to myself and pondering some idea in God’s word. If that scares you, do it at a red light. Or while you’re waiting in line at the store. Or just add 10 minutes to your 20 minute reading time. You won’t regret it. God will speak to you as you read slowly and meditate.

D. Focus on one lesson and do it.

When I read several chapters of Scripture, I often have several Big Ideas that jump out at me. But I try to pick the biggest, the one that impressed me most, and make that my focus for the day. Sometimes I underline that in my journal, or write it in all caps so it stands out. The BIG IDEA for today—what God said to me.

Take that one thought or verse with you through the day. Focus on one lesson and do it. Remember we are reading for transformation. So don’t just get a great idea and write it in your journal: do it! Pastor Noel always says that it’s better to know one verse and live it, than to know the whole Bible and not do it.

James 1:22-25 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³ Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴ and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵ But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

Do it!

God speaks through the Bible. If you want to hear Him:

1. Ask Him to speak to you through the Bible.

2. Read with a humble heart.

3. Read slowly: meditate.

4. Focus on one lesson and do it.