Restoration of the Spirit

Our Theme for 2023 is “Life in the Spirit”

It is more than just recognizing the work of the Holy Spirit.

It is understanding that we live in two realities - natural reality and spiritual reality.

We live at the intersection of heaven and earth.

We are an altar where heaven’s business is transacted on earth.

Our vision at SCF is to “Encounter God’s Transforming Love.”

How do we do that? (Four R’s)

Respond

Restore

Release

Relate

That describes who we are and what we are about.

We are reviewing the 4R’s just as a reminder of what we have committed to do as a church, but we will be doing so in light of our life in the Spirit.

We will be recalling the commitments that we made on our membership form. If you want to see it, it is back on the information table.

Last week I started the series by saying that we need to respond to God.

God reveals Himself through a divine encounter and we respond, by our worship, our actions, our obedience.

This week is the second R- Restore.

God’s goal is restoration. We participate in this by allowing God to remove the hindrances in our lives.

This is a lifelong process of aligning our hearts with His.

Restore is represented by the stream that flows from the cross.

There is a prophetic picture in the scripture of a river of life that flows from the Presence of God.

Ezekiel 47:1–6 ESV

1 Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. 2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side. 3 Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. 4 Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. 5 Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. 6 And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?” Then he led me back to the bank of the river.

Did you get the picture? The river of life grows deeper as it flows!

But look at how this river is described:

Ezekiel 47:9 NLT

9 There will be swarms of living things wherever the water of this river flows. Fish will abound in the Dead Sea, for its waters will become fresh. Life will flourish wherever this water flows.

That is restoration!

When you respond to God, His life flows through you, bringing life to dead places!

How does ‘life in the spirit’ change the way we practice ‘restore’ at SCF?

Just like we said with Respond, this is not a self-help program.

Restore is about the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit renews our spirit to be able to live and interact in spiritual reality.

We become spiritually alive - that is the life of the spiritual river flowing in us and through us.

We must then learn how to nurture and grow that spiritual capacity.

It should change the way we view ourselves and the world around us.

And we learn that it is beneficial that we do this together with other spiritually-empowered people.

Feed your spirit.

You are a spiritual being.

John 3:6 ESV

6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

I won’t spend a lot of time on this because I have been saying it often - part of what it means to be a restored human being is that we have a capacity for spiritual awareness and functioning in that we were created for relationship with God.

We believe that the Bible teaches that we are body, soul and spirit.

Not everyone agrees - some scholars argue that the bible only depicts our inner life and our outer life.

In other words - that soul and spirit are the same thing.

Hebrews 4:12 ESV

12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

The writer to the Hebrews points out that even in our inner life, there are thoughts and intentions which originate from us, and those which come from God.

Knowing God’s Word - His self-revelation - helps us to know the difference.

Not every thought you have is yours!

This has some startling implications.

If you have the capacity to relate to spiritual reality through you inner life - then you can be influenced by spiritual forces - either good or evil.

If you are under the impression that all of you inner life is completely you - then you will also believe that every thought that passes through your mind is completely yours and originates from your own mind.

Every temptation becomes your own desire - “I must want that.”

Every off the wall thought becomes your own imagination - “I came up with this crazy idea.”

You become a victim of every urge or impulse - “this must be who I really am”

Now you know how people can “identify” as something that they certainly are not!

But spiritual reality means that my mind is attuned, like a radio or a TV, to be able to pick up certain wavelengths.

I was created with spiritual WiFi or Bluetooth, a capacity to communicate with the invisible world.

Sometimes we hear God speaking to us, not in an audible voice, but in our own thoughts.

We know it’s God because it is beyond what we know or would have come up with on our own.

Isaiah 55:9 ESV

9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

But sometimes our thoughts are also dark, in a way that is disturbing even to ourselves.

A mentally healthy individual learns to question even their own thoughts and push back at thoughts that would take them down a wrong path.

A spiritual alive and aware person discerns every thought, every feeling, and the general direction of their inner life.

Where is this coming from? From God? From me? From satan?

Is this in agreement with who God says I am?

You must cultivate your inner life.

If you know that you have a spirit, then pay attention to what you feed your spirit.

You will want to be intentional about participating in things that promote healthy spiritual growth and development.

In our membership agreement we make the following commitment:

1. I commit myself to grow spiritually by developing habits of reading the Bible, prayer, and reflection.

This should not be a chore - it’s just about healthy spiritual growth.

Imagine making a commitment like, “I will eat at least one meal a day which contains nutrients needed to sustain life!”

You laugh, but for a drug addict, a severely depressed person, or a college student - that might be an appropriate goal.

Some of us are just a bad when it comes to feeding our spirits.

We either don’t feed on the Word of God -whether Bible reading, listening to God’s voice or meditating on what we have already heard.

Without the Word of God we lose the ability to discern.

When we lose the ability to discern, we open ourselves up to believing things about ourselves that didn’t come from us or from God and aren’t even true!

I hope you understand that this is not about being a ‘good person’.

It is about survival as a spiritual being in a world of mixed influences.

Have a spiritual perspective.

Galatians 5:17 ESV

17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

Orient your life away from pleasing yourself.

We have established that we are spiritual beings and that our inner life requires discernment because there are both good and evil influences - the outer life is exactly the same.

The world around us is also sending us all kinds of messages.

Advertising is a great example.

Advertisers are trying to tell you what you should want or need.

They are trying to paint a picture of self- fulfilment.

The world is not telling you to follow the devil- it’s not overtly evil.

It’s telling you to follow your own desires.

And its hoping that your inner life is confused enough to not know which desires are really yours.

Living to please yourself plays right into the devils trap, because he will make you confused about what you want.

Living to please God, on the other hand may seem less fulfilling, because personal fulfilment is no longer the goal.

But it is actually more fulfilling because you are becoming the person that God created you to be.

You will see things backwards from the world.

Paul says that the flesh and the spirit are opposite.

What seems right from a self-centered perspective is going to seem backward to a person centered on the spirit- a person living to please God.

And the life centered on the spirit is backward to what the world says - because they are opposite.

Take for example the next item on our commitment form:

2. I commit my resources to God by practicing generosity, good stewardship, and tithing.

Why do we have this as part of our membership commitment?

And why is it under the heading “restore?”

Precisely because it is the kind of exercise that is directly opposite of what the world is telling us.

The world tells you to “Get all you can - can all you get - and sit on your can!”

The only reason any one gives, according to the world, is to feel better about themselves.

To feel less guilty.

To feel like they are doing a good deed.

Te get a tax write off!

When we give it is just the opposite - to show that we are not living for the world or for the flesh, but for God.

Romans 8:32 TPT

32 For God has proved his love by giving us his greatest treasure, the gift of his Son. And since God freely offered him up as the sacrifice for us all, he certainly won’t withhold from us anything else he has to give.

Everything we have comes from God and he is the rightful owner of it all.

When we give a tithe, it is a representative portion in recognition of that.

But we don’t stop there, we want to be generous because God is generous and we are becoming like Him!

Our giving is one of the best measurements of a life that is transformed by the spirit.

Because the flesh hates to part with money.

The good feeling wears off - guilt only works for a while.

A generous person is consistently generous because they have learned to live for something beyond themselves.

Here’s another measurement of restored spiritual vitality.

Turn your back on sin.

Sin is not a very popular subject these days, even in church.

Maybe its just a reaction to an overly sin-conscious focus in the past.

Maybe it’s because churches have used talking about sin to produce guilt so that people give their money.

We need to talk about it, because its a problem and its unavoidable.

We all have a human nature corrupted by sin.

But sin is not our main focus - our eyes are on God, not on sin.

3. I seek to walk in victory over sin by pursuing recovery, reconciliation, and restitution.

Spiritual reality is that our sinful nature is no longer our primary identity.

Romans 6:22 NIV

22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.

Restoration is a restored identity - God sees us, not as sinners, but as sons and daughters - His servants.

That’s spiritual reality!

The natural world’s reality however is that we are broken people living in a broken world.

Our aim is to be part of the solution rather than the problem.

We have to first confess that we have been part of the problem - we are sinners and we have been destructive in our thoughts our attitudes and our behaviors.

We are all in recovery.

Yes some of us are recovering addicts.

We have recovering workaholics, shopaholics, voyeurs and couch-potatoes.

But we also have recovering narcissists or egoists.

We have recovering codependents and enablers.

If you are the only person here who has never had a problem then you have a problem - you’re in denial!

We also have broken relationships.

We need to forgive and be forgiven.

We were all damaged in some way growing up with damaged parents and damaged siblings.

We had damaged teachers, coaches, friends and pastors.

And whether we are willing to admit it or not… we passed some of that damage on to our kids.

But when the river of life his those damaged places it brings restoration.

At first we begin to hurt, which may sound bad but it good because we have always been hurting, we just didn’t know it.

Then we begin to see the ways in which we hurt others.

That may not seem good either, but there’s grace.

And it’s in that flow of grace that we can become unbound and untwisted.

And as we are getting free we help other people work their knots out as well.

Make spiritual connections.

Spiritual growth does not happen in a vacuum.

Life does not exist in a vacuum.

Scientist have experimented with growing plants in space. The seeds can be a bit unsure of which end should be up without the help of gravity, but they can grow if they have the right environment.

But that’s just it. To grow things in space you need to create an artificial environment - one like what occurs naturally on earth. You need the right amount of oxygen, water and mineral nutrients and a surface to adhere to. Growth requires resources beyond those which are already contained within the seed.

Spiritual growth happens naturally too, but it also depends on the right environment.

Just as a seed has the full potential to become something much bigger and greater that what it is.

It also relies on resource outside of itself to reach its full potential.

You need others to reach your potential too.

Fellowship is part of restoration.

1 John 1:7 ESV

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

Notice how John describes the restoration process.

Walking in the light leads to fellowship which leads to cleansing.

You would think that he would put the cleansing part first and that it would result in fellowship.

It seems that relationship is the environment in which the cleansing takes place.

“We are wounded in relationship. we are also healed in relationship.”

That is why we want our members to be in fellowship - not just attending church, but being part of a group that is small enough to really know one another.

4. I will participate in regular fellowship and a small group where I can be accountable.

We don’t have a lot of small groups, but we all relate in small groups even if they are not a program of the church.

Our Sunday School/ Bible Study hour functions as a small group.

People who get together for prayer are a small group.

Going out to lunch after church with friends is a small group.

Anytime we get together is fellowship.

If the goal of being restored as a spiritual being is to be in relationship with God, then it can only happen in relationship to others.

Think about it - that person you hate is a person that God loves.

The person you can’t forgive is a person that Jesus died for.

The person you can’t stand to be around is a person that God wants to share eternity with.

Not being in right relationship with other people is going to be an obstacle to relationship with God.

Connection to others helps us to grow spiritually.

Ephesians 4:15–16 NLT

15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

Relationships are what makes us accountable.

When we are around other people, talking and listening we have the opportunity to see and observe the inner life of other people.

We get insight into what they are thinking and feeling.

You can see if the inner life fits with the outer life.

Are their actions consistent with their words?

How does what they share from their thoughts impact their lifestyle?

Is their professed faith consistent with what they seem to actually believe?

And they can do the same for us.

One of the best ways to sort out your inner life is to hear yourself say the things that are going through your own mind.

If you won’t challenge your own thoughts, maybe someone else will?

Maybe you just needed to hear yourself say it to realize that you were believing a lie?

And the best part is that when other people have grace and forgive you - it gives you the faith to believe that God also forgives you!

The river of life is described as containing ‘swarms of living things.’

Restoration is a group activity.

The more aware you become as a spiritual being, the more you realize just how interconnected we are.

If restoration of the spirit is like a metaphorical river flowing from the Presence of God, where are you in that river?

Are you in up to your ankles? - “Hey, technically, I’m in - don’t make a big deal of it!”

Are you in up to your knees? - “I can feel the current, but I want to make sure I can maintain my balance.” - I’m committed, but need to maintain control.

Are you in up to your waist? - “As far as I’m concerned, I’m all in. I’m taking risks and trusting God. But I’m not completely abandoned. I still have my own self-reliance to fall back on.”

Or are you swimming. - “There’s no touching bottom. If the water doesn’t hold me up, I’m drowning. I learn to move with the current. I’m not a fish, but I can float. I can thrive in spiritual reality.”