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Sermons and messages from Pastor Jason White and others at Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Tyler, TX
Oh, today we are starting a brand new message series on spiritual disciplines. I remember the first time that I learned about spiritual disciplines. I was in high school. I was probably a freshman or a sophomore, and I don't remember everything that was taught to me during that time. But what I do remember about spiritual disciplines was something like this. The spiritual disciplines are things that you should be doing in the Christian life on a regular basis. I mean, God saved you by grace, alone, through faith, alone in Christ alone, but now that you are saved, these are the things that you are supposed to be doing as a Christian. Now and then they gave me a list, and that list looked something like that. It had things like you should be reading your Bible on a regular basis, not just reading it, though, you should be studying it at times and really taking a deep dive into the things that are there in the context and trying to interpret it accurately. You should be memorizing Scripture and pouring that into your brain to be able to recall at times. You should be praying on a regular basis, confessing your sin on a regular basis. You should be journaling the things that you're learning or writing out prayers. You should spend time fasting on a regular basis and in solitude with you and the Lord alone, listening to him and for his voice. You should be giving regularly of your resources and your time and energy and and of the talents that you've been given and you should regularly be witnessing, telling other people about Jesus. Now here's the deal. I am a list taker, like I love my to do list. I spend every Monday morning, writing out a to do list for the week. And I enjoy getting everything on paper and seeing it right there and crossing things off my to do list. As a matter of fact, there are some times when I am writing things on my to do list that I will remember that I've already done something that I was supposed to do that week, and I will still write that down on my to do list, just so I can cross it off, because it feels so good to be able to do so I know I got at least one amen on that right there. And so when I came across the spiritual discipline checklist. Then I remember honestly getting excited. I was like, Yes, finally, something that I can do, something that I can use to measure how well it is that I am doing in the Christian life. I liked the spiritual discipline checklist. It made me feel like God was proud of me whenever I was doing things, and I could put a little check mark by the things that I was doing, or cross one of them off because I had completed what it was that I was supposed to be doing as a Christian. Now, again, I know some of you are like that. You love making list, you view this kind of the same way, and you feel good about those. Sometimes it feels good to be able to get things done. And honestly, whenever we do this, it's kind of feels like we're justifying what it is that we're doing in ourselves before others, and even the Lord now others of you are the exact opposite. You loathe the lists. You don't ever make a list. You just wake up and you just go with the flow wherever the day takes you. You just get it and you go and US list makers, we don't understand you, right? We're thinking you're supposed to live life in an orderly way. You write it down, and then you do it, and you drive us crazy when you don't follow the lists. We pray for you regularly, and we ask the Lord to reveal Himself to you, because clearly you have not met him yet. That is not true. Just kidding. But a lot of you guys, if you don't really like list, and you live your life just going in that way, and you come across a list, like,
really, like, like, that's
what I this is the Christian life. That's, that's what I gotta do, is a list. But people talk about the list, and they keep talking about the list, and here's the spiritual disciplines, and these are the things you're supposed to be doing. And so you go, Well, I'm not really a list person, but if these are the things that I'm supposed to be doing is following a list, I don't want to be a bad Christian. I don't want God to not like me. And so I guess I'm going to try to do. The list, and you do try, and you work at it, and maybe you find a way to make it work, and you just kind of get it done. And maybe you don't, maybe you failed miserably in the past with spiritual discipline check list, and you just aren't disciplined enough to be reading your Bible consistently and praying consistently and memorizing Scripture and and on and on and on,
and
you feel that feel guilty about that. Now, the truth is that even those of us who are list makers eventually kind of begin to feel dissatisfied with the spiritual discipline checklist, even though it feels good to sometimes check things off of our list, it doesn't really provide any real lasting fulfillment or satisfaction. I mean, it really doesn't feel like the abundant life that Jesus said that He came to give us. It's really just a daily discipline, just being able to check something off of a list that someone said we should be doing in order to be good Christians. It's just what good Christians do. The reason that we feel the dissatisfaction with that often is because guys, the abundant life was never meant to be found in a checklist. It was never meant to be found in a bunch of religious duties that we perform, Jesus said that He is the life, I'm the Way, the Truth and the Life. He told Martha, I'm the resurrection and the life. When he said he was the life, maybe he really meant that he was the life. He didn't say the life was found in religious duties and being able to check things off of a list, he said he was the life, abundant life is found in Jesus, and in a relationship, an intimate relationship with Him, the disciples experienced that firsthand. They experienced Jesus in the flesh, up close and personal, and experienced an intimate relationship with him, and then inspired by the Holy Spirit, they wrote things down about him to be able to communicate to us who he is, so that we too could have an intimate relationship with him. That's what John says at the beginning of First John, he says guys, 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. Who's he talking about? There? Jesus, the Word of life. Jesus 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. This is God in, excuse me, God in the flesh. He goes on it says we saw it, we heard it, and now we're telling you why, so that you can experience it along with us, this experience of what communion with the Father and His Son, an intimate relationship With the God of the universe. Our motive for writing this is simply this. We want you to enjoy this. When's the last time you thought of the Christian life as something you enjoy? When you see a spiritual checklist and the duties of it you're going feels like all such I gotta do, or just gotta, we gotta do it right, even the list takers right. We want you to enjoy this, the communion with the Father and the Son to your joy, they say, will double our joy. John says, we have experienced this kind of relationship with the God of the universe, and we want you to be able to experience it too. That's why we're writing this, so that you can experience an intimate relationship with God, and a lot of us miss it. Here's what John Eldred says about us missing it. He says, 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. He says, 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. He says you have been plundered, some strong language that he is using because, again, the writers Apostle John in First John says, This is what he came to provide you, this is what we're writing. About. And so if this is not been your experience, then you're being robbed. This is what Jesus came to give you, and you have been robbed of that abundant life if you trade it in for something else. And for a lot of us, we've traded that in for the spiritual discipline check list. We've been robbed of the abundant life through the spiritual discipline check list. Satan convinced us somewhere along the way that the abundant life was found in checking things off of a list. The life is found in these religious duties, reading your Bible. It's Bible study, journaling, fasting, confession, prayer, witnessing, and on and on. And so we traded in the life, which is Jesus himself and the intimate relationship with Him, for a checklist of things that we're supposed to be doing. Now the question could come up, then, are spiritual disciplines? The problem? Are you trying to say, Pastor, that we shouldn't be doing those things that were on the checklist. We shouldn't be doing these spiritual disciplines? No, of course, that's not what I'm trying to say. What I'm saying is, is that spiritual disciplines are a means to an end, not the end themselves. Many of us have made spiritual disciplines the end I did that thing on my checklist, done. Scratch it off, put the check mark by it. But the spiritual disciplines guys are there to lead us into intimacy with Christ. They're there to lead us into a deeper fellowship and relationship with Jesus that we can have with him in much the same way that the disciples had with him. So spiritual disciplines are not the problem, but the way that we approach them can be the problem. I like the way that Steve McVeigh talks about this to some degree in his book called The Godward gaze. And honestly, much of this series was inspired by a lot of what he wrote in his book about the spiritual disciplines called the Godward gaze. But he says this. He says sometimes we may think of discipline as a negative thing. He says discipline is what one does to a misbehaving child. Right? 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, oops, within the context of grace. And as a fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 522 tells us that is a fruit of the Spirit. Then we realize something again, that he produces in and through us. Then we realize it's something like talking about the disciplines of marriage. Disciplines of marriage, yeah, kissing, talking, dreaming together, serving each other, rearing children together, and on and on. Now, 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 there's these rhythms that we get into in a marriage relationship that allow us to experience the intimacy that the marriage relationship was designed for right? And honestly, that's what the spiritual disciplines are as well. Rhythms that we get into that allow us to experience the life and the intimacy that we have in Christ and so that's why we're calling this series rhythms of grace. We're going to shy away completely from the term spiritual disciplines. I'll use them interchangeably, but I really want you to get this phrase and start to think of them within that kind of context, that these are rhythms of grace. Eugene Patterson, when he was paraphrasing the Bible. Even used this phrase when he was writing about what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 11 about coming to him to find true rest. So this is what he says, or paraphrases that Jesus said, Are you tired? Are you worn out? Burned out? On religion? Well, then 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 UN forced rhythms of. Grace, love that I won't lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me, and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. Are you living freely today?
Are you living lightly? Would you describe the Christian life as a life that is free and light and unburdensome as rhythms
of grace,
if not, this is the opportunity for you to step into those rhythms and begin to experience the abundant life that Jesus said that He came to give. And so over the next several weeks, we're going to be talking about these unforced rhythms of grace. And this is the first one that we are going to be talking about today, the rhythm of awareness, right? We're going to dive deeply into a lot of these things. But before we get into this, what I really want you to see is that when we talk about experiencing the life and the intimacy of Christ, when we get into these different rhythms and these spiritual disciplines that we're going to be talking about and this rhythm of awareness today, don't think of them as the things that are going to bring you life. Don't think of them as the things that are going to bring you intimacy. Guys, you already have life in Christ. You already have intimacy in him. The moment that you said yes to Jesus, he completely forgave you of all of your sins based on his finished work on the cross and His capital as spirit came to dwell in you and united to you in your lower cases, as spirit making you into a new creation. In Christ, you can't get too much more intimate than that. If you're united in relationship with the one who said he was the resurrection and the life and the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE, you can't have more life than that. So the spiritual disciplines and these rhythms aren't going to bring you the life, but they're going to allow you to experience the life that you already have, the intimacy that you already have. Because it's possible, it's possible that something can be true of you, that you can have something, but not yet experience what you have. We each have cell phones, and we know how to experience using our cell phones, right? But you take one of these off, and you drop them off in some remote village in Africa somewhere, and someone picks it up and starts carrying it around. They may have it in their possession, but they have no idea to experience what a cell phone really even is and what it is for. And the same thing is true. You can have the life in Christ. You can have the intimacy in Christ, but you can still not experience the intimacy in Christ if you didn't know you had it or how to enter into and experience those things that that's what Jesus came to do. So this is the first rhythm that we are going to talk about the spiritual discipline of awareness, awareness of what, well, awareness of God's constant presence in our lives. And listen, when we talk about God's presence. I'm not talking about God like He's present in this room, but he's kind of over there, somewhere in the corner, behind the booth, over there, like in a distance, right even though he's near, he's still kind of far away from us. We're talking about here, right here with us, all of him in an interactive way, being present in our lives. And so we're talking about his involvement in all areas of our lives, that he's constantly speaking to us and revealing Himself to us and looking to interact with us and participate in life with him and to experience His love, and for us to love him back. But that doesn't really start, or can't really start unless you have an understanding of God's presence everywhere. And the thing is, is while some of us are aware of that, it's so easy to think that God's presence is more like here in church than it is in other places that we go throughout life, because that's what we come here for, right? We come here to experience God and to for him, to reveal himself and to feel more of His presence. And I'm not saying that something powerful doesn't happen in corporate worship. It does when we gather together in the Lord is among us and he's revealing himself and leading us to worship. I mean, it is. That's why we keep showing up every single week, right? Because this is such a powerful time that we spend together. But when we get under the mindset that God is more present here. And in these moments than he is when we're walking through the grocery store later on this week, then we've missed the truth and reality of who God is in relation to his presence, because the Bible tells us that God is omni present. What does omnipresent mean? Well, Omni comes from the Latin word omnis, which means all we know what present means, and so it means all present, or being present everywhere. Where do we see this in Scripture? Well, let me just highlight a few places. Jeremiah, 2324 who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them, declares the Lord. Do I not or do not, I fill heaven and the earth declares the Lord. And so he asks these and of course, the implied answer is nowhere. You can't hide anywhere without the Lord knowing where you are at he fills all of heaven and all of Earth. David, in Psalm 139 even says this, where can I go? Where can I go from your spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence? Again, the pot? Answer, there is nowhere. If I go up to the heavens. Well, you're there if I make my bed in the depths. Oh yeah, you're there too. If I rise on the wings of the Dawn if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there, your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast if I say, surely, the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me. 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 that God's presence is everywhere, like all of him is everywhere. Age strong gives us this definition for God's omnipresence. He says, God in the totality of his essence, without diffusion or expansion, without multiplication or division, penetrates and fills the universe in all its parts. In other words, God is not some vapor, right? He's not like some vapor spread out across the universe where part of him is present in one area and part of him is present in another. And when you add them all up together, God's present everywhere. That's not what he's saying. He's entirely present in all of his being, wherever we are. He's not limited, right? We have access to God all of the time, and so again, God is not more present in this church building than He is in your home. He's not more present here than at your school. He's not more present here than at work or in your neighborhood or in the grocery store or if you are on a cruise in the middle of an ocean somewhere, right? He's not more present here with us right now than he is with you on the middle of the ocean on a cruise somewhere. The totality of his essence is everywhere all the time, and you have access to all of God all of the time in whatever situation or circumstance or place that you find yourself in, and once you become aware of that, that can change everything, right? I mean, when you start to become aware and get into this rhythm of being aware that God is everywhere you go that he is in every situation of life that you find yourself in, then oftentimes we'll find ourselves thinking, oh my gosh, if that is true, then maybe God is speaking to me in so many more ways than I typically think that he is speaking to me and He is I think Jesus is probably whispering to you every day in 1000s of ways. He's whispering to you through nature and sunrises and sunsets and rolling hills and the colors of flowers and in leaves and all the above. He's whispering to you through music and other people and situations at work and at school and in traffic and through the meals that you eat and the comfort of your home and just the gentle whisper of his voice that you sometimes hear in your Spirit, God is speaking to you guys in all kinds of ways, and most of the time We aren't even aware of that, and that's where the spiritual discipline of awareness comes in, getting into a rhythm of watching, of looking out for a rhythm of being acutely aware that Jesus is with you and that he is speaking to you all. All the time, getting into this rhythm of being aware that he desires intimacy with you in all places that you are, and at all times in those places where you are, whatever the situation, whatever the circumstance. I was sitting at a football game the last couple of Thursday evenings watching my son play, and a couple of Thursdays ago, we're just sitting in the stands, and all of a sudden this breeze begins to kick up, and it hits me in the face, and it's cool, and it like awakens me, and it feels so good. And the first thought in my brain was, thank you, Jesus. Jesus, you are so good to me, to allow me to even experience just the fresh blowing of wind right now in this moment, and then it caused me to even begin to reflect on him and the blessing it was to be able to sit there and watch my son play and enjoy something that he loves and surrounded by my wife and my daughter and my parents who had come over, and even some of his friends from our youth group who were there and going, we're going to give up part of our night and maybe stay up later to do our homework, to support and encourage him. And it all started just from the wind hitting me in my face in a recognition that God is present everywhere, and he's with me as much in that moment why I'm sitting there watching a football game as he is right now in corporate worship. And this has been my experience. Over the last several weeks, many of you have stopped me in the hallways and you've encouraged me, or you sent me encouraging emails, or you've called me and and mentioned all kinds of encouraging words to me, and each time I'm going, Oh Jesus, you're just too good to me, because I know that's him. That's him, and the intimate relationship, then the communion that I get to have with him. Now it's your voice and it looks like you, but I know, I know that's Christ in you and through you, and it's drawing me into him even more, going, Ah, thank you that I get to experience you in and through other people. Just yesterday, I'm mowing the yard. I'm cranking it out. It's 90 something degrees, and I'm pushing in the rows and going, and all of a sudden I just find myself going, Jesus, thank You that I have a yard to mow. Thank you for the home that I have, and the next thing I know, for the next 30 minutes, I'm praying. I don't know. I'm just being honest. I don't know if I spend a total of 30 minutes all throughout the rest of the week praying, but I spent 30 minutes praying while I was mowing the yard, because Jesus, even in my front yard. Maybe it was the back, I don't remember, but he was there too. He got my attention. He was like, I'm here, all of me, and we're in relationship. And so let's enjoy this time together. This is getting into the rhythm of being aware that Jesus is with you in all situations and wants and desires intimacy with you in each of those situations, in each of those places that you are in. Now, listen, there's more to this, and honestly, I'm going to be talking about this a little bit, you know next week. I think that what else comes with This Rhythm of awareness, is being more aware of who Jesus is, coming to more of a complete and full understanding of who Jesus really is and even his personality. I mean, let's think about it. When you enjoy intimacy in your relationships and even with your pets, right? It's through relationship, I mean, through personalities, right? It's through their personalities that we're engaging with each other and beginning to experience that intimacy. And Jesus, of course, being fully human along with being fully God. But being fully human has a personality, right? As we begin to see that, as we read about the person of Jesus throughout the Gospels, and what the writers of those who spent time with Jesus in the flesh writing down so that we could see more about what he said, what his actions were, what his interactions with other people were like. And the more that we become aware with him and his personality, the more you can recognize him speaking to you through his personality, and the more we recognize how we can speak to him through our personality as we share this relationship together. And so next week, this will be kind of part two of this rhythm of awareness and the awareness of his personality. But let me just give you a taste. I read a quote to you earlier from John Eldridge. It was from a book called Beautiful outlaw that he wrote many years ago. And I left out part of the quote intentionally so I could share it with you now as we begin to end and kind of tease. With what is coming next week, if you will. The rest of what he was saying was tied to the personality of Jesus, and so this is what he says. He goes, guys, if you do not know Jesus as a person, of course, he's fully God, right? We know he's fully God, but if you don't know him as a person, because he is fully man as well, if you don't know him as a person, if you don't know his remarkable personality, and he begins to draw out some traits of his personality that he's recognized in Scripture, that Jesus is playful and cunning and fierce and impatient with all that is religious and kind and creative and honestly a little irreverent at times, and that He is funny,
he says that you have been cheated. Did you know that Jesus is playful? Did you know that Jesus is funny? Have you ever experienced Jesus being playful with you, being funny, being creative, being kind, being impatient with all that is your religious these are things that we're going to talk about, and we're going to dive into that we see in Scripture. And I think the more that you become aware of those things, the more that you're going to get into this rhythm of being aware that Jesus is speaking to you in all kinds of ways that you aren't even looking for him to speak to you, but that's next week. This week, we're talking and focusing on the awareness of his presence, first and foremost, getting into this rhythm of being acutely aware of Jesus being present everywhere you go and in every situation of your life, and desiring intimacy, learning to watch for him this week, looking for his presence this week, listening for how he's speaking to you again in ways that you may not have been looking before and haven't been recognizing. And so this is what I hope and pray that we'll be focusing on this week. And as we do, I want to invite you and all of us together to just make this
our prayer together.
To just make this our prayer together, Jesus, I want to be more aware of your presence in my life. Reveal to me all the ways you're 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. Why do we make that our prayer? Because it starts first and foremost with him. He's the one who will enable us to see his presence in ways that we haven't been seen. He's the one who reveals Himself to us. He's the one who speaks to us. And so we make this our prayer. Lord, do this in our lives together this week, and so let's make this our prayer right now as we close together today, you.