Spiritual Disciplines part 2

Series Intro:

Foundations

Sermon Intro

The author Harmut Rosa says we have a problem. We are moving too fast. He diagnoses our cultural disease as “social acceleration. Where our technological means (technique) allows us to exhaust more possibilities in the world, which in doing increases the options before us and creates “more world” options that leads to exhaustion.

Meaning because we can go faster we do go faster.

Technology allows us to move faster and faster. AI tells us that we can move so fast that we don’t even have to show up. We have lapped ourselves.

history is changing at a speed unknown to any other point in history

The value is to move fast and not miss out. Create more options and not miss out.

The problem is the faster you move

The faster you move the less you can pay attention to. Everything flies by the window.Really we only have time to pay attention to the self.

When we move fast we have to leave stuff behind. We can’t take everything with us in our culture when we are moving as fast as we are. What is it we are leaving behind?

What if instead of being shaped by the God who created and saved us, we are being shaped by the technology that starves us? What if instead of becoming more and more like the image of Christ we are becoming more and more like the image of culture?

for about 1000 years there was a cultural norm in ancient China that formed people to culture. Foot binding was a cosmetic procedure that was done to millions of Chinese women between the 10th century into the early 1900s. In order to make the foot as small as possible, to look cosmetically appealing, a womans foot, over time (sparing details) was basically folded in half and then the woman was made to walk long distances in shoes that were half her size. Toes were bent over into the beds of the feet permanently and women learned to walk with pain all of their lives.

A cultural tradition, in the name of cosmetic appeal, formed the body against itself. People had to break bones in order for the shoes to fit.

This is what is happening in our accelerated age. It’s not with our feet, but our souls, our lives are being bent and forced into certain frames and forms that look like the culture.

And it is easy to fall into. We are being formed because things are so fast now we don’t even know what we are being formed by.

We aren’t given much choice if we continue to move at the pace we are moving. We will be shaped and formed but not at our own choosing. What we have made as a culture will end up making us into its image.

It makes us angry, quick tempered and reactive. Our accelerated age doesn’t make us missional people proclaiming that God has stepped out of glory to do a work in humanity no one else could in ourselves and our neighbors. Our accelerated age makes us annoyed that we have to wait for someone else to finish in line before us

Our pace only allows us to focus on one thing. Our own self. Who we are and what we bring to the table. It allows us to focus on the primacy of who we are, what Andrew root calls the magnificence of the self. But all the while ignoring everything else and everyone else.

When everything is accelerated everything is an obstacle. Including God.

Everything else but the self is the obstacle. That is not a picture of the life that is offered in Christ.

But we are given a means to find our focus and form our lives around God Himself. He has given us practices to engage in that are intended to engage with Him as we do them.

I want to revisit the central passage for the spiritual disciplines.

It holds the promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

1 Timothy 4:6–10 ESV

If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

Our culture trains us to see everything but self as as an obstacle

But In training for godliness, we have no obstacle. Not even death or sin gets in the way of our our understanding of God in Christ.

These practices remind us that God is greater than our own version of the self. The disciplines move us from self to God. And they keep us there

You can trust that what God has set up as practices God will use to deliver on His promises. He will meet you in those disciplines.

Lets look at 4 of them.

Sabbath

Sabbath is a spot on the calendar. It is an OT word that was the period between sunset on Friday and the sunset on Saturday. During that 24 hour period, the Israelites would rest. They would stop their work and thier work would stop in order to recognize God. Both parts are one and the same. The work ends, because God is the One to be recognized.

Sabbath is a reminder that God is the finisher of our faith

We are intended to rest.

Sabbath is the commitment to stay our hand for a short season to commit to the Lord’s hand as provision and perfecter of our lives

Exodus 20:8–11 ESV

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

This is hard for our accelerated age. It is difficult to stop anything for any reason. We can’t slow down. Sometimes we don’t want to slow down.

Sabbath is a gift. It allows us some time to be able to stop. It is a recognition that we are not the ones holding up the world. We are not even the ones holding up ourselves.

Sabbath is the act of stopping your work specifically as a profession of faith that God is the finisher of our work.

Find a day during the week that you can stop. It may be Sunday. It may be another day. But stop your work. Stop your house projects. Stop answering emails. Find some time to get away. As an individual. As a family. Have a long meal together. These things never happen automatically. That’s why God tells us early on to practice Sabbath. You have to find a way to schedule it.

Service

Service is the confession that the Lord has given us, through His Spirit, something to offer another.

Serving reminds us that our most important asset is not the self.

We are Created by God we are given meaning in what we do. We have purpose in relationship to God. But then redeemed in Christ and part of the church we are given something to offer another.

Service is part of the normal life in Christ. We are intended to take what we are given in Christ and to offer it to another.

Service is not a part of the accelerated age. Transaction is. I will do for you as long as you do for me.

Service is I will, do for you as long as Christ does for me.

1 Corinthians 12:4–7 ESV

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

We are each called to exercise the gifts God has given us. Many of you are. You are serving, teaching, leading, equipping. You are keeping the church safe or sturdy. You might serve with babies, kids, adults. But many of you are serving. We have had a number of families who are going through some difficult things. You as a church have stepped up and stepped into it. You are serving.

Serving is one of our core values because it is the call for Christians to serve God by serving others. So if you are new to faith or new to the church we would love to talk about taking the next step in service.

Find a way to respond to God through caring for or supporting others.

Community

The church as a whole, cannot be done individually. We need one another and are needed by one another

We are intended to be with one another

1 Corinthians 12:12–13 ESV

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

Relationships are slow. And they cannot be rushed. The way into finding community is through quantity time.

In community quantity time can equal quality time. So the invitation is to show up. Show up to services. Find a small group to join.

We were intended for community and cannot accept a substitute. If you don’t know where to begin, start at 9am on Sundays for faith foundations. your kids can enter a class and there is a class for adults. Or join Alpha. It is a way to get involved with a smaller group of people and get to know someone.

Worship

Worship is a whole life activity. It is taking who we are as individuals and entirely turning over to God, offering our lives as “living sacrifices”

Romans 12:1–2 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Worship is expressed in the songs that we sing but it is not fully completed in the songs that we sing. But what we sing is a good example. Because worship songs are an expression of a posture of the heart. They are an expression of the place that God occupies in the world and the place that we occupy. To worship is to say to God that He is the One who is worthy. And our role is to be able to give and grant Him that worth.

Worship Him by the expression of your lives and how you live. “a living sacrifice” means doing something that conforms to the way God calls us to live. So when you are practicing sabbath you are worshiping, or praying or gathering . You worship by offering to God your life in your actions

Conclusion:

We are being formed. We can’t help it. Our beliefs reach out into the world and they are met with the environment we are in and we are formed.

God is breaking into our world all the time. And our role as Christians is to meet Him in these places. The Spiritual disciplines are those places.

in the book Wild Silence a couple comes to the Abbey to look around after having spend some months hiking all over the UK,

“They make it to Iona Abbey in Iona in Scotland. Since the 1200s Iona has been a sacred place for people to come and worship God.

They are met by a resident of the abbey. He asks them if they are here to pray. “No just looking,” Winn responds.

The retort is direct. This is not a place to just look. There are no tourists here, no passengers. It’s a place to surrender in faith and pray.

The Iona man of the abbey says, maybe too boldly in the memory of Winn, “There is no spirituality without God. You won’t find a thin place out there; it’s here in this building, where humans have worshipped God for centuries. This is where you’ll find what you seek.”4

We live in a culture that is always just looking.

Christians are called to surrender in faith and practice the disciplines. To meet the in breaking God there and be formed by Him

You can trust that what God has set up as practices God will deliver on His promises. He will meet you in those disciplines. Making them a part of your life and allow God to form you in the way of Christ our Lord.