The Habit of Continual Coaching

February 19th 2023

Series: Habits of A Healthy Christian

Sermon Title: The Habit of Continual Coaching

Topic: HABITS are actions that are engrained, that have become natural because of continued repetition. They are the things we do without thinking but accomplish with skill and precision. This is a message on prioritizing the habit of surrounding ourselves with a Godly community. And, how that will lead to spiritual transformation in our own lives and in the world around us.

Key Passages: Luke 9:51-56, Luke 10:1-20, John. 14:16-17, 2 Timothy 1:6, 1 Thessalonians 2:10-12

Sermon Blurb: In order to become a healthy disciple who makes more healthy disciples we will need continual spiritual coaching. In this message, we will learn how Jesus was the Perfect Discipleship Coach in the lives of His original followers, and how He has provided all that we need today!

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Sermon:

Family Moment

Welcome back today to our FINAL teaching in our HABITS FC series!!!

We have spent this entire year focused on how in 2023 we can be a HEALTHY followers of Jesus!

We are spending so much time on this because it is our goal for everyone to be a healthy follower of Jesus.

And, our hope is that you will walk away from church every week with some additional things you can put into practice in 2023 to become a healthier disciple of Jesus.

And we chose to call them HABITS, not disciplines, for a couple of reasons;

First, we often think of discipline as a bad thing, so we wanted to rid our thoughts of any negative reactions…

But more importantly, we’re calling it HABITS because habits, by definition, are a better way to think about these spiritual tools that we are discussing.

PAUSE

SO... What is a habit?

We’ll ask this question every week......

Write this down:

HABITS are actions that are ingrained, that have become natural because of continued repetition. They are the things we do without thinking but accomplish with skill and precision.

So, by way of reminder, here is our Acronym for the series.

On the screen

H – Holy Fasting A – Abundant Prayer

B – Bible Learning I – Intentional Generosity T – Transformative Community

S – Sacrificial Serving

F – Fruitful Multiplying

Today we are closing out our HABITS FC series with a teaching on our need for Continual Coaching!

C – Continual Coaching

PAUSE

Let’s start with a question today….

How many of you have ever had a coach in life?

Maybe an athletic coach (baseball, basketball or football).

Maybe a musical or vocal coach.

Maybe a financial coach.

Maybe a diet or exercise coach.

Maybe a life coach.

And think about this…

Why do we have coaches???

Why do we allow others to speak into our lives? Why do we allow others to guide the direction of certain areas of our lives?

PAUSE

It is because we KNEW we needed help and that person was someone who was an expert who we think could help make us better….

PAUSE

Now, Webster defines a Coach as– one who instructs, directs or trains.

And we all sort of intuitively know that this is what a coach does, don’t we?

Coaches teach us things.

They train us up.

They push us and help us achieve goals.

And, when they are good, they help us become better.

Tom Landry was one of the best NFL coaches in history. He was the coach of the Dallas Cowboys for 29 seasons and won 2 Superbowl Championships. He was also a believer. So, he knows a thing or two about coaching!

Listen to how he defines a coach...it’s my favorite definition. He said,

Tom Landry: “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so that you can be who you’ve always known you can be.”

I love that so much because it’s so true!

But let’s be real….

Who here LOVES to be held accountable?

Who here LOVES for others to challenge their ideas?

Who LOVES people that point out your shortcomings?

None of us like to be pushed or held accountable, do we?

None of us like to hear the hard truth or see the reality of the junk in our lives!

But we all know deep in our hearts…..\

That if we are going to grow and become the people we really want to be…..

We will need people in our lives who will tell us the truth and push us past where we think we can go...

And, that’s the role of a coach!

So, write this down,

Coaches will MAKE us do what we don’t want to do so we become the best version of ourselves.

repeat

PAUSE

Isn’t this the heart of every parent?

The heart of every pastor.

This is the heart of God!

And today my goal is to help you understand why you need a coach in your spiritual life as well.

In the same way that we know, we need coaching in other areas of life….

To get physically stronger.

To get mentally healthier.

To get loose weight.

To get better at a sport.

To learn a new skill.

We also need coaching in our spiritual lives!!!!

Especially if it is our goal to be a healthy disciple who is making more healthy disciples of Jesus!

PAUSE

Now, you may be thinking, “That all sounds logical, but is it Biblical?”

Great question!

Quick admission....the word “Coaching” is not in your Bible, BUT the principle definitely is.

And, that’s what we’re going to be focusing on today.

Write this down...

Jesus coached His disciples.

(repeat)

Jesus spent time teaching, training, and modeling ministry for His disciples.

In Luke 10, Jesus sent them out on their first short-term mission trip...

Jesus also sent out 72 disciples 2 x 2.

But, BEFORE Jesus sent them out, He coached them!

He said things like:

- Pray

- Go

- Take nothing with them (no money, no extra clothes etc)

- Find peaceable people and stay with

- Heal the sick

- Preach about the Kingdom

- And if the people rejected them, shake the dust off their feet and say PEACE OUT….

Well, maybe I added the peace out…..

Doesn’t that sound like the role of a coach?

He had trained them up.

Then He sent them out to do what they were trained to do.

Even impossible things like heal the sick!

So, they went out on this impossible mission.

And let’s read about what happened.

Luke 10:17-20 “The 72 returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!”

Pause there for a second….

They come back to coach Jesus and they are PUMPED!

The mission was successful!

God did amazing things through us regular guys!

We stepped out in faith!

We did the crazy things Jesus coached us to do and it worked!

They are all fired up!

They even had power over evil!

Wouldn’t you be excited?

PAUSE

But Jesus saw a teaching moment...just like all good coaches do.

He took the opportunity to change the channel of their thinking to go higher and more heavenly.

And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall hurt you.

Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in Heaven.”

Do you hear coach Jesus?

Yes, I have given you power over the enemy…..BUT don’t get so excited about that!

Be focused on Your Heavenly Father!

Be focused on your relationship with Him.

That’s what a good coach does, right?

The game is over and everyone is excited...

BUT it’s time for a teaching moment!

Let’s not get too high.

Let’s NOT focused on the wrong things.

Let’s debrief and come away with a lesson to learn.

That’s the power of coaching!

And Jesus is perfect at it!

PAUSE

Share a personal story of being spiritually coached like this:

I remember one instance when I was a newer believer and really new in ministry. I was leading a small group and someone in the group was sick. So, another person in the group said, “I have some anointing oil, so why don’t we pray over our friend?”.

Well, as the small group leader, I said, “The Bible says that if anyone is sick they should call to the elders of the church and they should pray over them with oil. We don’t have any elders here, so we’re not going to anoint with oil.” Everyone looked at me like I was the Scrooge and a few people were pretty upset with me.

Well, the next day I went to one of the pastors at my church to get some coaching. I was quite sure that I did the right thing!

But, after I recounted the story, he looked at me sternly and said, “Erik, you did not do the right thing! In that small group you were the “elder” and you should have prayed over the sick person with oil.” Then the pastor gave me a small bottle of anointing oil and encouraged me to use it next time that situation arose

I was humbled, but I was coached up!

What I received was ministry coaching! And that’s just one example of many times in my life as I’ve stepped out in faith to serve others!

PAUSE

Let’s take a look at a different time in the ministry of Jesus when he coached His disciples, this flip back one chapter in your Bible.

Luke 9:51-56 When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem. And He sent messengers ahead of Him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for Him.

But the people did not receive Him, because His face was set toward Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from Heaven and consume them?”

But He turned and rebuked them. And He said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man came not to destroy people’s lives but to save them.”

The disciples had a blind spot.

They thought they were doing the right thing by defending Jesus and His ministry.

BUT

They needed to learn the lesson that Jesus came to save people, not destroy them.

No matter how good their reasoning.

That is the power of coaching.

As Tom Landry said, “It’s telling people what they need to hear, and helping them see what they don’t want to see in order to become who they’ve always wanted to be!”

And Jesus did it over and over as He discipled His followers.

PAUSE

Now, maybe you say, “That’s great for the first disciples...they had Jesus to coach them personally. But, what about us now?”

Great question. And, here’s the answer...

Jesus didn’t leave us alone.

He left us with Another Coach...

The Person of the Holy Spirit....

Turn to John 14:16,

Before we start reading, let me give you the context...

The disciples were upset because Jesus was talking about how He was going to leave them.

So, Jesus began to comfort them with the truth that He would send them the Holy Spirit.

John 14:16 And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.

Now, here’s what’s really cool...

Circle the word for “another” in verse16 and write next to it, “of the exact same likeness.”

So, Jesus was saying, “In the same way that I have been with you all and helped you in every way...

I will send another Helper who is exactly like Me!

And He, the Spirit of Truth, will live within each of you and be with you everywhere you go!”

And this is a MASSIVE change!

Jesus is saying….

Rather than only a FEW people that live around Jesus during His life time that get to learn from him…..

In the future…..

Jesus will send the Holy Spirit to LIVE within every follower of Jesus!

So, we are never alone!

Jesus will be always with us!

But, here’s what’s also really amazing!

That word for “helper” in v.16, in Greek actually means: “to come alongside as an advisor, a defender or a comforter”.

The worder “helper” here could easily be COACH!

So, in the same way that Jesus was a Coach in the lives of the first disciples, the Holy Spirit, is a Coach to each one of us today!

Here is the point…write this down,

The Holy Spirit is our resident coach today.

(repeat)

Here’s what that means.

That means that we can be coached directly by God via the Holy Spirit who lives within us.

And, that means that we can be coached by other Christians who also have the same Holy Spirit within them too!

How cool is that?

PAUSE

So let’s look in our Bibles for some of the ways we can see the Holy Spirit will coach us…

John 14:16 - He will help us

John 14:26 – He will teach us truth

John 14:26 - He will remind us of truth

John 15:26 – He will testify of Jesus

John 16:13 - He will guide us into truth

Acts 1:8 – He will give us power to testify of Jesus

So clearly, the Holy Spirit has been given to every believer to coach us toward becoming healthy disciples of Jesus.

PAUSE

But, God will also use other believers, Pastors, teachers, etc. to coach us...

So, you can write this down,

The Holy Spirit coaches us through other Christian leaders also.

We see this in the ministry life of the Apostle Paul to his “son in the faith” Timothy in

2 Timothy 1:6, For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self control.

Right here Paul comes alongside Timothy exhorting him to exercise the spiritual gift God had given to him.

He wants Timothy to walk in the fullness of what God had for him, and that meant coaching him towards doing hard things.

Things he maybe wouldn’t do on his own, but things he needed to do to be all that God had for Him to be as a young pastor and leader.

AKA the SAME thing we try to do every week with all of you!

PAUSE

Church….do you see your need for a coach in your life as a disciple?

Do you see that God has given you the gift of the Holy Spirit who is continuing the coaching ministry of Jesus in your life?

Do you understand that God desires for you to be coached by other spiritual leaders in your life, as well?

If we are to grow into healthy disciples of Jesus who will make more healthy disciples of Jesus, we will all need to employ Continual Coaching in our lives.

We ALL will need some spiritual coaches in our lives.

Let’s close our time with this charge from Coach Paul in

1 Thessalonians 2:10-12, You yourselves are our witnesses – and so is God - that we were devout and honest and faultless toward all of you believers.

And you know that we treated each of you as a father treats his own children. We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For he called you to share in His Kingdom and glory.

Amen?

So, here’s your Life Application for today:

Life Application: What is one way you will respond to your need for Continual Coaching? Write it down, share it with someone else and then step out in faith.

Pray

Offering