Whole Life Discipleship

Intro: Eustace

The opening lines of novels can be really fascinating

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” —Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities

“Call me Ishmael” —Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Each week in this series I have made reference to one of the stories in The Chronicles of Narnia

This morning will be no different

Here is the opening line of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”

Eustace was exactly the type of boy that name suggests - obnoxious, entitled brat

In the course of the story, by magic, he is turned into a dragon

In that sense, his outer sense - the dragon - now reflected his inner self

Lonely, selfish and self-consumed, concerned only with himself

Fast forward to when his character is first introduced in the following novel, The Silver Chair

“His name unfortunately was Eustace Scrubb, but he wasn’t a bad sort.”

It is a great callback to the prior introduction of Eustace

But even more, it begs the question: what happened in between?

Hold that thought…

Values

We are continuing in our series, Foundations, working through our foundational values as a church

As I defined last week, a value is a fundamental commitment we use to guide decision making

Last week in our series we looked at our first value as a church, Conviction with Compassion

Rick Warren summarizes this value for us nicely

“Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.”

May we be that kind of people - a church that holds firmly to our beliefs and are kind toward people with whom we disagree

This morning, we want to look at two of our values: holistic transformation and beauty and brokenness

We will look at what these values mean and how we are seeking to live out those values as a church, but first, let’s look at our passage for this morning

Scripture Reading: Matthew 22:34-40

Matthew 22:34–40 ESV

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Pray

The Great Commandment

One of the more well known passages in the Bible

Jesus’ summary of all the law

The first and second commandments

Love the Lord your God with all your…

Heart

Soul

Mind

Strength (per Luke 10:27)

Luke 10:27 “And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.””

Ephesians 3 talks about being filled with Christ through all your being

That is, I believe, the call of the Great Commandment

That every part of you would be changed the work of the Holy Spirit in you

If I had to guess, we all know someone who is like super emotional in their Christian life, overflowing with passion

And then others who are very intellectual, seeking to understand the deep things of God

And others who have an inordinate ability to trust God in hard circumstances

Or others who pray without ceasing and you are kinda envious of it

Maybe as I mention those, you can look at your own life and see where you are inclined

Are you more likely to follow God with your heart? Your soul? Your mind? Your strength?

Now are any of those wrong? Most certainly not

The call is to love the Lord with all of them

But I have two presuppositions

First, there is an area (or areas) where you struggle to love God

Several years ago, I was working with a guy who specialized in pastor soul care

One day he asked me, “Steve, what is the great commission?”

Ok, I’m a pastor… that’s a layup

“Go and make discipleship all nations”

And he stopped and asked, “What are the ‘all nations’ of your own life?”

That is, where in you has the power and truth and beauty of the gospel not yet reached?

Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means that there is not one corner of your being - your thoughts, your actions, your longings, your words, your relationships, your scrolling on social media, the movies you watch - that remain untouched by the gospel of Jesus Christ

My Heart, Christ’s Home by Robert Boyd Munger

Take a copy this morning

Basically looks at the fullness of who we are through idea of a house

What is your relationship with God like in the living room, in the kitchen, in the closet, etc.?

Really simple… but powerful… read

Second presupposition: It will take a lifetime to grow in your love for God like this!

I wish the Christian life kinda went like this: we come to faith in Jesus here and every day take a step forward and up until we end up way up here one day (using hand to illustrate)

But, and this is important: it just doesn’t work that way

It’s closer to a rollercoaster that goes up, down, around, upside down and more

And yet, at every one of those moments, we are in the loving hands of God

Quick aside: this is part of why we take Communion every week as a church

It’s the reminder that our salvation is not about our worthiness, but about the work of God in us

No matter where you are on that rollercoaster, coming to the Lord’s Table provides an opportunity to renew your trust in Christ to hold you and sustain you

Holistic Transformation

With that, we can now explore the first of our values that we want to discuss today

“Spiritual formation is empowered by the Holy Spirit and pursues an ever-increasing Biblical maturity that flows from the grace and mercy of Jesus. In the context of relationships, the grace of God transforms all of our heads (knowledge and wisdom), our hearts (affections), and our hands (actions).”

3 things to highlight quickly from that value

Trinitarian: It is the work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to form you into the likeness of Jesus

Relationships: This transformation happens best in the context of relationships with others

We were not meant to do this alone

Do you recognize the irony that even the Lone Ranger had Tonto?

Whole Life: In line with the Great Commandment, we believe that spiritual formation will shape our whole beings (head, heart, hands)

1:1:1

One time weekly worship

One place where you are growing and being transformed as we are discussing this morning

One place where you are serving - and we will be coming back to that over next two weeks

Next Step: Community Groups

To the end of creating spaces for transformation, part of what we believe is that they happen in the context of relationships

So we are launching I think 3 new Community Groups in coming weeks

These are going to be informal, but also invaluable, times to be together outside of Sunday morning

Goal is to have 3 groups meeting different days of the week to make it as accessible as possible

Can’t say this strongly enough: join a group

It is there that you will experience ways to grow to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength more

We will be saying more soon about holistic transformation and this whole life discipleship of following Jesus, but step one is to get into a group

The Second Commandment

Which then brings us to the second greatest commandment

Matthew 22:39 “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

If the first commandment is focused on our relationship with God, the second is about how that relationship with God transforms our relationships with others

Even when we disagree with someone, or believe they have wronged us, we can look and see that person as made in the image of God, with great dignity and great depravity

This is so powerful and sets up our second value

Beauty and Brokenness

“We are able to celebrate the beautiful and mourn the brokenness that exists in both our own hearts and in the world around us as we eagerly await Christ returning to make all things new. “It will not be so in the Mended Wood.” While we long for that day, we courageously and humbly enter into the hard moments of relationships honoring the dignity of those made in the image of God because we believe the grace of God is sufficient to bring healing and to foster reconciliation and restoration.”

Have you ever heard the philosophical question: Is humanity inherently good or inherently evil?

Then lots of arguments on both sides

I want to suggest this morning, that is not a helpful question

Why? Because we live in light of Genesis 1 and Genesis 3

That is, God made man and woman, as we read this morning in the New City Catechism right out of Genesis 1, that we - everyone of us - is made in the image of God

And we are all products of Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve ate the fruit and rebelled against God

There is both great dignity… and great depravity

The phrase we have chosen to apply to that dichotomy is beauty and brokenness

We celebrate what is beautiful… and mourn what is broken

We can look at the world around us and celebrate the beauty

A Siesta Key sunset

A wonderful meal with friends

And we can look at the world around us and mourn the brokenness

Natural disasters that cause so much damage

Wars and unrest

So here is an interesting question for you: Where do you delight in the beauty of Sarasota and where do you mourn the brokenness of Sarasota?

We can also look at the people around you with that grid

Is the person who cut you off in traffic (deep brokennes!) really made in the image of God?

Can you celebrate the beauty of someone even while mourning the brokenness evident in their actions and beliefs?

I truly believe that we - Christians - are uniquely positioned to be hope to a dark world because we can hold the tension of beauty and brokenness

One of the specific applications of that is the ability to pursue relational reconciliation

Most of us are inclined, when we are at odds with someone, to only see the broken

What happens if we intentionally stop and ask God to help us see the beauty in that person?

How will that transform your relationships?

Conclusion (Eustice Reprise)

Want to close with the story of the transformation of Eustace

The great de-dragoning

“The cure had begun”

1 Thessalonians 5:23–24 “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”

Eustace couldn’t change himself from a dragon, either inside or out

Aslan needed to do it

And you can’t change yourself

Only the one true God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - can de-dragon you

It is the grace and mercy of Jesus that will bring you into that full Biblical maturity

And because it was the work of God, he alone gets the glory

Pray