Work These Words Into Your Life

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

The difference between an apprentice and a journeyman in a field is the level of instruction, training and supervision one needs. I want to thank our congregant brother Jim Stagg for that illustration, as it is a helpful one indeed when it comes to our walk with Jesus.

We will always be apprentices of Jesus. Meaning, we will need his instruction, training and supervision at all times. We will never move past it. That is why our values as a congregation are PRESENCE, PRACTICE and PROCLAMATION. We want to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did. That is what it means to be a disciple here.

But so much of our teaching within the church ends with instruction or information, and falls short of application. It falls short of helping people intentionally walk out what its teaching.

And Bryan Chappell says in his book Christ Centered Preaching that:

Information without application yields frustration.

Bryan Chapell

So many Christians are walking around in this frustration.

I have all of this information, but my life feels far from God. I hear you.

When I am at odds with my wife, for whatever reason, I don’t need to know the marriage passage in Ephesians 5 better, I need to be able to apply the truth of Ephesians 5 to my life.

That is what Jesus is telling us in our passage. Those who hear my words and practice them will be like the wise who have built their house on a firm foundation.

TRANSITION

We don’t just need to hear the word, but we need to create spaces as a church where we can do the word.

Because where information without application leads to frustration.

Information plus consistent application always leads to transformation.

We need information. Think about when you started driving, you were tethered to the information. Hands on ten and two. Check your mirrors, put on your seat belt, etc. And then years later you are able to drive somewhere, thinking of something else the whole time, because what began as information, transferred into an engrained habit. Information plus consistent application always leads to transformation.

And that is what we are praying for here at the Garden, transformed lives. Not just informed lives. Or lives that know how to read the Bible better, but transformed lives.

Some of us are spiritual infants, some of us are spiritual parents and some of us fall somewhere in between. We are all growing in spiritual maturity, none of us have made it.

But Spiritual maturity is not knowing more about Jesus, or doing more for Jesus, it is living more like Jesus. And we will only know where we are on our journey as we train for godliness with one another.

That is why Jesus is so big on fellowship. He is preaching the text that we are in today to not just one person, but to a group of people with different wirings and different giftings, on different timelines within their journey.

This is what makes the church unique. It is so diverse, yet intended to be unified.

The church is where apprentices of Jesus, can receive instruction, training and supervision from one another, and where spiritual infants can become spiritual parents.

The church is where we, not only hear the word of God, but also learn how to work those words into our lives.

TRANSITION

And at the Garden we do this through what we call the rhythms of grace.

These are ancient practices on full display in the life of our Lord. They are also known as spiritual disciplines, spiritual practices, or holy habits. No matter what you call them, these rhythms are intended to shape our individual and communal lives as followers or apprentices of Jesus.

At the Garden we focus on ten specific rhythms, but our list is not exhaustive by any means. In fact, we are going to talk about fasting today, which is not on our list.

There are many more we will employ and talk about throughout our time as a church, but these are the ten we will come back to again and again. You can see them displayed along the wall and they are:

DEVOTION - we have his word.

PRAYER - we have his ear.

FELLOWSHIP - we have his people.

WORSHIP - is our life lived in response to his word.

REPENTANCE - or turning away from sin and self and towards him.

GENEROSITY - all we have is a gift from him. We should be willing to give generously because we have a father who gives generously.

SERVICE - by serving we impact those around us and reveal his glory.

WITNESS - or share your story. Your story matters. People need to hear how God came into your story, so that they can be set free in their own.

PARTNER - We want to build kingdom partnerships with churches that worship differently than us, pray differently than us and look differently than us. Believers are not to be in competition, but partnership.

MULTIPLY - We join Jesus on mission as we multiply disciples.

And here is how these rhythms attach to our values

(CREATE IMAGE)

Presence: Through the rhythms of Devotion, Prayer, Fellowship and Worship we will create spaces where we can be with Jesus. Practice: Through the rhythms of Repentance, Generosity and Service we will create spaces where we can become like Jesus. Proclamation: Through the rhythms of Witnessing, Partnering and Multiplying we will go out and do what Jesus did.

These are how we will not only hear the words of Jesus, but put them into practice.

This helps us to continually live out the Christian story.

TRANSITION

Some of you were not here when we began our prelaunch services but we began in the season of Advent. We talked about how we are a story formed people who have joined the saints throughout history as we wait on the coming or advent of our Lord.

By doing that we remember that God is writing a story and has invited us to be a part of it.

The world is also writing a story that it is inviting us to be a part of.

One is a story focused on our selves.

The other is a story focused on the kingdom of God. And that’s the story we are living out together.

A story of waiting with faith and hope.

A story of fasting and feasting.

My family and I live this story out each week on the Sabbath day. Which for us is a Friday.

And on the Sabbath we fast from something and we feast on something. We give up something that we desire, so that we might focus our hearts and minds on the only one who can provide our lack.

And we also partake in something that we enjoy and we celebrate it as a good gift from the Lord.

When we do this we are living out the Christian story.

And we are a story formed people. It is why I cannot just get up here and begin listing facts and expect you to retain them.

But this is how so many try to teach.

But stories take information and change it into an engaging narrative, that gets to our hearts and allows us to connect on a deeper level.

So we remind ourselves of the story we inhabit as Christians. And the most consistent way we can do this is through living out the Christian year, through the lens of the Christian calendar.

TRANSITION

The Christian calendar is where we get the holidays of Easter and Christmas, but it views them both as seasons. There is an Easter season and a Christmas season as well as the lesser known seasons of Advent and Lent.

And by acknowledging and celebrating these seasons with one another, we inhabit the Christian story every year.

That is what we are going to begin doing this Wednesday.

It will be the start of vine groups where we will learn to engage in the rhythms of grace with one another.

But it is also known as Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent.

Ashes and dust have historically always been a reminder of what we are apart from God.

Genesis 2:7 ESV

then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

And again after sin entered into the world through the disobedience of man, God reminds us of this,

Genesis 3:19 ESV

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

We are finite and sinful. We are ashes and dust.

Dust speaks of our dependence and Ashes speak of our repentance.

We just saw as we studied the book of Jonah that Nineveh repented by covering themselves in sackcloth and ashes.

Ashes have always been a sign of repentance, or turning away from what is keeping us fully dependent on God.

Ash Wednesday is intended to remind us of this. We are but ashes and dust.

And so we humble ourselves before the eternal God who created us, and before the holy God, who alone can redeem us.

This is the beginning of Lent.

Lent was also historically a time where those who were considering being baptized could take a season to count the cost of what it means to become a disciple of Christ.

They would create space to communicate with God, and then would be baptized at Easter.

So for any considering baptism, this is a great season to prepare your hearts and count the cost.

As advent was a fast before the feast of Christmas.

Lent is the fast before the feast of Easter.

There is no lent without fasting.

TRANSITION

Now fasting might be one of the most misunderstood spiritual disciplines found in Scripture. And like many other things in the church, it is because we have made it more complicated than it needs to be.

Fasting is simply denying our flesh to strengthen our spirit.

Jesus thought that fasting was important.

When he went to the wilderness for forty days, (the length of Lent btw) he fasted during that time. And when the devil tempted him with food, Jesus quoted scripture from Deuteronomy 8:3

Deuteronomy 8:3 ESV

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

So we fast, first and foremost because Jesus did.

And as we fast we are humbled and reminded that God is the only thing that satisfies us permanently.

TRANSITION

And strictly speaking fasting deals with food, but we can extend the concept to many other things.

When my family fasts on our weekly sabbath, we give up a variety of things like food and drink, but also things like video games, the internet, social media etc.

We live in a consumption driven society so giving up anything for a period of time can loosen the hold of unhealthy appetites and destructive addictions.

Christian author Marjorie Holmes says,

“More than any other spiritual discipline, fasting reveals our excessive attachments and the assumptions that lie behind them…Fasting puts us face to face with how we put the material world ahead of its spiritual source.”

And this is the reasoning behind why we give up something for Lent. To slowly wean ourselves off of things that we become more dependent on for our joy than God.

Here is a small list of some ideas of things to lay down.

Eating desserts or sweets.

Buying cups of coffee, or just coffee in general, which is what I am laying down.

Drinking alcohol.

Drinking sodas.

Watching tv.

Reading books.

Listening to music or watching movies.

Eating overprocessed foods.

Shopping.

Social media.

And the list can go on and on. And none of these in themselves is bad, but anyone of them can become overly important in our lives. But what if you laid one of these, or something like them, down for a season in order to understand that we do not live on these things alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

TRANSITION

Incredible things happen as we make it a habit to lay things down and recenter our focus on God. Here are some things we can do in order to make this time intentional and special.

We can take this season and memorize a Scripture. This gets it into our mind.

We can take this season and meditate on Scripture. This gets it into our heart.

We can pray individually. We can pray as a family.

We can listen to worship music.

We can read a devotional.

We can read the Bible and discuss with our family.

This does not need to be anything complicated, only intentional.

TRANSITION

I also ask you guys to pray specifically for the Garden Church in this season.

Pray for our leadership to humbly walk with one another. To seek long term, Jesus focused discipleship and not short term excitement focused conversions.

Pray that we would be fully committed and submitted to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Pray that the Lord would use this church to further his kingdom in Parker County and beyond.

We want to make disciples and model the gospel, not just to have a catchy slogan, but we want it to be the very reason we exist.

We want to create leaders and pastors. We want to send missionaries and plant churches. We want to practice the words of Jesus, not just hear them.

His word tells us that he is a rock. But it also warns us, that he can be a stumbling block of offense, or he can be the cornerstone that we build this house upon. Blessed are those who do not take offense at the words of Jesus, but instead practice them.

Jesus is absolutely a rock and that does not change. But our perception of that rock does.

He can either be tripping us up, and keeping us from the life that we want to live. Or he can be the firm foundation that keeps our house from falling apart when the storms of the world come at us.

And the difference is, are we just hearing his word, or putting it into practice?

Matthew 4:1–2 ESV

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

Jesus went away into the wilderness and fasted for forty days and forty nights, and Scripture says he was hungry. Think of how distracted and disoriented he must have been during those forty days. Sometimes I eat and am hungry 40 minutes later, I couldn’t imagine doing 40 days without food.

And I used to think that Jesus must have been so weak when the devil came at him in these moments.

But throughout Scripture, especially in the life of Jesus, he demonstrates that our dependence on God is best revealed in the wilderness.

Luke 5:16 ESV

But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

Matthew 14:13 ESV

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.

Mark 1:35 ESV

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

John 6:31 ESV

Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”

The wilderness helps us to understand our reliance on God. And because of that I think in these moments, when Jesus is being tempted, that even though he was surely weak in the flesh, he was strong in the Spirit.

And remember that is all that fasting is. Denying your flesh to strengthen your spirit.

Helping you to be with Jesus, become more like Jesus and do what he did.

So write something on a piece of paper, and bring it this Wednesday to lay down before the Lord for the next forty days and forty nights. Bring something that you turn to for joy and comfort, so that you might more fully depend on God this season.

We will lay it here at the altar and give it to God as an offering.

No one wants to freely go into the wilderness. It is only by the Spirit that we can be led.

So that is what I am inviting you to do.

Allow the Spirit to lead you into the wilderness this season. Into uncomfortable places.

Because once we allow him to lead us there, we can more clearly see God’s provision, and our need for him.

As we go from here I invite you guys to not just be hearers of the word, but be doers.

Work his words into your life. Information plus consistent application leads to transformation.

Entering into Lent, we enter into the Christian year, which helps us to remember that we are part of the Christian story, not just listeners of that story, but participants in that story. And when we understand that, it is then that we can help people not only know who Jesus is, but actually see who he is, as we live lives that practice his words.

What is one thing you might fast from this Lent to show your love for God?

How can we better create community spaces where we practice the teachings of Jesus together?

What one thing do you think might help you grow closer to God during this Lent season?

What specific fast can you commit to this Lent to grow in dependence on God?

What is one way you can show that you trust God this week?

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