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Grace-based biblical teaching and sermons with Pastor Jason White. Messages that focus on Life in Christ and practical application as New Covenant believers.
When I was a freshman in high school, I remember hearing about spiritual disciplines for the first time. And I’m sure that there were other things said that I don’t remember, but what I do remember went something like this:
The spiritual disciplines are the things that you should be doing in the Christian life on a regular basis. God saved you by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but now these are the things you are supposed to be doing as a Christian.
And then they gave me a list, and on the list, it had things like:
1. Bible Reading
2. Bible Study
3. Bible Memorization
4. Prayer
5. Confession
6. Journaling
7. Fasting
8. Solitude
9. Giving
10. Witnessing
Ok, so here’s the deal…I’m a list kind of person. I love to-do lists. As a matter of fact, sometimes when I get my list out, I will write something on my to-do list that I’ve already done just because it feels so good to cross it off my list! I’m like, “I’m getting stuff done!”
So, I remember seeing this list of things that I was supposed to be doing, and honestly, I was like, “Yes! Finally, something I can do. Something I can measure to know that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing as a Christian.”
So, I liked the spiritual discipline checklist. I was already a pretty disciplined person, and so it made me feel like God was proud of me when I was doing all or some of these things.
And I know that there are some of you who are here today or watching online, and you are the same way. Where are my list makers? Yeah, see you are my people, lol…
But I’m sure a lot of you have felt the same way when it came to spiritual disciplines. You like the checklist. You want the list. It feels good to get things done and to be able to justify ourselves based on the things we are doing!
Now others of you are the exact opposite. You hate the lists. You just like to go with the flow. You don’t plan things. You just get up and go. Whatever happens, happens…and it drives us list makers crazy!!! How can you live that way? Lol
No, but seriously, so if that is you and it comes to spiritual disciplines, you are thinking, “Ugh! A list, seriously? I mean that’s not really appealing to me, but if that’s what I’m supposed to do as a Christian, then I guess I should try. I mean, I don’t want God to be mad at me.”
And so you try. And you work at it. And maybe you find a way to make it work, just get it done. Or maybe you don’t, and you’ve felt like the biggest failure in the Christian life because you can’t stay disciplined enough to read your bible, prayer, memorize scripture, and on and on and on.
Now the truth is… that even those of us who are more list makers, eventually begin to feel dissatisfied with the spiritual discipline checklist…
While it feels good to have done something and checked it off of our list, we don’t experience any lasting satisfaction. It doesn’t really feel like the ABUNDANT LIFE that Jesus said He came to give.
It’s just a daily discipline of checking things off of a list that someone said we were supposed to do. What good Christians do.
And the reason we feel that way is because the abundant life that Jesus came to give us wasn’t supposed to be found in a checklist…in a bunch of religious duties we perform.
Jesus (as we talked about last week) is the abundant life. He told Martha in John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life!” And He told Thomas and the disciples, “I am the way, the truth, and the life!”
Abundant life is found in Jesus and through a relationship with Him!
I want you to listen to what the apostle John wrote in the opening lines of 1 John 1…
From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us. We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!
John says, “We experienced a relationship with God through the Person of Jesus Christ, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ!”
We want you to experience a real, true, intimate relationship with Him…just like we did! Why? Because we want you to enjoy this and experience the true joy and abundant life that can only be found in a relationship with Him!
So…this is what the Christian life is. An intimate relationship with Jesus.
Here’s what author John Eldredge says about this…
“If you do not experience Jesus intimately, daily… if you do not know the comfort of his actual presence, do not hear his voice speaking to you personally – you have been robbed. If you do not know the power of his indwelling life in you, shaping your personality, healing your brokenness, enabling you to live as he did – you have been plundered.”
If you don’t experience Jesus intimately on a daily basis, you’ve been stolen from…robbed of the abundant life that Jesus came to give you.
And for a lot of us, that life was stolen from us through the spiritual discipline checklist!
Satan convinced us that the abundant life was found in checking things off of a list! The life is found in these religious duties…bible reading, bible study, journaling, fasting, confession, prayer, witnessing, etc.
And so we traded those for the life that was meant to be found in a relationship with Jesus, the One who is abundant life.
Now, are spiritual disciplines the problem? Should we not be doing them?
NO! Here is what I am saying…Spiritual disciplines are a means to an end, not the end themselves.
And many of us have made spiritual disciplines the end. “I did that thing on my list, check…done!”
But the spiritual disciplines are there to lead us to intimacy with Christ…deeper into the fellowship and relationship we can have with Him!
So, spiritual disciplines are not the problem…it’s the way we approach them that can be a problem.
I like the way, Steve McVey talks about this in his book, The Godward Gaze. He says…
Sometimes we may think of discipline as a negative thing. Discipline is what one does to a misbehaving child. Discipline is what we muster up when we're trying to do something we don't want to do. When you hear the word discipline you may associate it with something you ought to do as opposed to something you want to do, but when we understand discipline within the context of grace and as a fruit of the Holy Spirit, then we realize it's something like talking about the disciplines of marriage. Kissing, talking, dreaming together, serving each other, rearing children together, etc. These may not happen without effort, but they wouldn't be considered discipline in any negative sense of the word. They are all part of rhythms of marriage.
I love that phrase. “Rhythms of marriage.” There is a rhythm that you get into which allows you to experience intimacy in marriage together.
And that is what spiritual disciplines should be as well… rhythms that we get into that allow us to experience the life and intimacy we have in Christ.
Which is why we are going to call them “Rhythms of Grace” instead of spiritual disciplines.
As a matter of fact, this is the way that Eugene Patterson, when he was paraphrasing the Bible, wrote about what Jesus said in Matthew 11 about coming to Him and finding true rest. Here’s the way he paraphrased what Jesus was saying there…
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
“Unforced rhythms of grace.” As we walk with Jesus, He will lead us into rhythms of grace that allow us to live freely and lightly…unburdened by performance and checklists…into a relationship with Himself that is so rich and so intimate and so fulfilling and satisfying that we can truly rest.
So over the next several weeks, we are going to dive into and talk about rhythms of grace that lead us into actually experiencing the life and intimacy we have in Christ.
Now, make no mistake about it. You already have life and intimacy in Christ. You are in a spiritual union with Jesus, seated in heaven right now in this moment. (your life is hidden with Christ in God) You can’t have more life and intimacy than you’ve already got.
BUT something can be true of you and you not actually experience what you have.
And so when we talk about these, don’t think of them as things that will bring you life and intimacy but rather rhythms that lead you into experiencing the life and intimacy you have in Christ already.
Now today, we are going to just barely get into the first rhythm of grace. We’ll actually continue this next week and get into way more with it there, but I want to at least introduce it to you today as we get started.
THE RHYTHM OF AWARENESS
An awareness of what? Well, an awareness of God’s constant presence in our lives.
And when I say presence, I don’t mean like sitting in the corner just watching from a distant… like He is present in the room but not in an interactive way.
We are talking about His involvement in all areas of our lives, that He is constantly speaking to us, looking to interact with us, to participate in life with Him, and to experience His love and us loving Him back.
But that really does start with an understanding of God’s presence everywhere.
It’s easy to think about and associate God being here in church or with us when we are in a Bible study.
It’s even somewhat easy for us to think about God being present when we are away from church but are reading our Bibles, or in prayer, or listening to worship music.
But God is not just present during those times or in certain places.
The Bible tells us that God is omnipresent!
OMNIPRESENCE
Omni comes from the Latin word “omnis” which means “all.”
So in other words God is “all-present,” or “everywhere present.”
In Jer. 23:24 it says...
24 Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord.
Ps. 139 is another place that we see this truth. David says...
7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
David recognizes God’s presence is everywhere. All of Him is everywhere
A.H. Strong says… “God in the totality of His essence, without diffusion or expansion, multiplication or division, penetrates and fills the universe in all its parts.”
So it’s not like God is some vapor spread out across the universe where part of Him is present in this room and part of Him is present in another area…NO he is entirely present in all His being…we are not limited to part of God’s presence but have access to all of Him, all of the time!
God is not more present in a church building than He is in your own home. You don’t have more access to Him here than you do at the gym or at work or school or in the grocery store on a cruise or in the hospital or a cemetery or anywhere that you ever find yourself throughout ALL of life…
Because God is present everywhere, all the time.
And once you become aware of that, this changes everything.
When you get into a rhythm of being aware that God is everywhere you go and in every situation of life that you find yourself in, then you begin to think, “Maybe God is speaking to me in so many more ways than I think He is!”
And He is! Jesus is whispering to you every day in thousands of ways…
Through nature (sunrises, sunsets, rolling hills, the color of flowers/leaves)
Through music, other people, situations at work or school, in traffic, through your meals, the comfort of your home, and just the gentle whisper of his voice in your spirit.
God is speaking to you in all kinds of ways that most of the time we are not even aware of.
This is where the spiritual discipline of awareness comes in. Getting into a rhythm of watching, looking out for, and being acutely aware that Jesus is with you and speaking to you all the time.
Getting into a rhythm of being aware that He desires intimacy with you in all places at all times.
Now, there is more to this…being able to recognize Him and His presence in your life and that comes through understanding more about Jesus and His personality.
Intimacy in relationships comes through our personalities. And Jesus of course, has a personality. We read about the Person of Jesus all throughout the gospels as the writers recorded his words, actions, and interactions with other people.
And listen, the more you are aware of His personality, the more you can recognize Him speaking to you and the more you’ll know about how to interact with Him and speak to Him.
So next week that’s what we’ll focus on…The Awareness of Personality.
But let me just give you a taste. I read a quote from John Eldredge earlier where he was talking about much you’ve missed out on if you are not aware of and experiencing his presence. Well, there was more in the quote than I read. The rest of what he was saying was tied to being aware of the personality of Jesus. Here’s the full quote…
So if you do not know Jesus as a person, know his remarkable personality – playful, cunning, fierce, impatient with all that is religious, kind, creative, irreverent, funny – you have been cheated. If you do not experience Jesus intimately, daily, in these very ways, if you do not know the comfort of his actual presence, do not hear his voice speaking to you personally – you have been robbed. If you do not know the power of his indwelling life in you, shaping your personality, healing your brokenness, enabling you to live as he did – you have been plundered.”
And so that is what we’ll dive into next week…Getting into a rhythm of being aware of and recognizing His personality in your relationship with Him.
But for now, as we go into this next week together, I want you to focus on the awareness of His presence.
Getting into a rhythm of being acutely aware of Jesus being present everywhere you go.
Learning to watch for Him, to look for His presence and how He is speaking to you in ways that you might not be recognizing and therefore missing out on the intimacy He created you to experience in your relationship with Him at all times and in all places.
And so as we leave this week, I want you to just make this your prayer…
“Jesus, I want to be more aware of your presence in my life. Reveal to me all of the ways you are speaking to me throughout my day. Peel back my eyes to see your presence and the intimacy you want me to experience in my relationship with you.”