Staying with Jesus

Putting Down Roots • Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

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The next part of this series is about being "built up" in Christ. This is an ongoing process that includes the importance of community and the church. Too often we consume church rather than participate. Maybe this is an opportunity for us to take the next step.

Notes

Transcript

Scripture

Theme Verse:

Colossians 2:6-7

Colossians 2:6–7 NIV

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

Supporting text today:

Colossians 4:2–6 NIV

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Colossians 4:

Colossians 2:6–7 NIV

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

(Leave up text)

First week: “Just as you received Christ”

Move to town, Jesus is Lord, Baptism.

Second Week: “Continue to live your life in him”

Live the life....truth proclaimed in baptism becomes truth acclaimed in life.

Third Week: Rooted.

Communal. It is done. Redwood Forest analogy.

This week is a shift. The very same sentence… Rooted and built up. Rooted is a complete verb and built up is a in process work. Now it is time to follow Him.

This week is a shift. The very same sentence… Rooted and built up. Rooted is a complete verb and built up is a in process work. Now it is time to follow Him. This is about the ongoing work if discipleship.

Rowan Williams, Welsh Anglican Bishop, and prominent theologian writes about discipleship.....

“Discipleship, is a state of being. Discipleship is about how we live; not just the decisions we make, not just the things we believe, but a state of being.”

Williams, Rowan. Being Disciples (pp. 1-2). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.

It’s very telling that, at the very beginning of John’s Gospel (), when the two disciples of John the Baptist come to Jesus they say, ‘Rabbi, where are you staying?’ Jesus says, ‘Come and see’, and they stay with him for the rest of the day. The Gospel teaches us that the bottom line in thinking about discipleship has something to do with this staying.

We see this kind of language all throughout the gospels. Abide, remaining in me and I in you. Come away with me to a solitary place, and the unity of believers to Jesus will be a witness to the world.

Student of Jesus

Discipleship is about being a student and staying with Jesus. Again Rowan Williams:

In other words, what makes you a disciple is not turning up from time to time. Discipleship may literally mean ‘being a student’, in the strict Greek sense of the word, but it doesn’t mean turning up once a week for a course (or even a sermon). It’s not an intermittent state; it’s a relationship that continues. The truth is that, in the ancient world, being a ‘student’ was rather more like that than it is these days. If you said to a modern prospective student that the essence of being a student was to hang on your teacher’s every word, to follow in his or her steps, to sleep outside their door in order not to miss any pearls of wisdom falling from their lips, to watch how they conduct themselves at the table, how they conduct themselves in the street, you might not

Williams, Rowan. Being Disciples (p. 2). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.

So why is this important? Well besides missing out on maturity and being built into the image that God created us, the potential that is secured in baptism, our current strategy of church consumerism is failing us....

Well because largely we have become consumers likened to my own experience as a student mentioned before. Let me challenge you a little bit…think about how you describe your experience at church and this wont be everyone but I know this challenges me.

Sermon was so good, sermon was so bad, the music was moving, oh did you see so and so…? I didn’t like the way those decorations/slides/or advertisements. I wish they would have announced X. They went too long today. Too cold. Too hot.

If you can replace church with a restaurant or a play you go see at the theatre, or a movie. then you are consuming church.

Milfred Minatrea describes the consumer mentality of many Christians who have adopted and adapted to a consumer culture in, “Just as they count on Wal-Mart meeting their material needs, they expect their churches to provide religious goods and services.” (Shaped By God’s Heart, p. 7)

PEW Research

Truth is the consumer mentality is not working. PEW Research

Show chart

Frequency of feeling spiritual peace and wellbeing

At least once a week

Once or twice a month/a few times a year

Seldom/never

Don't know

Sample Size

At least once a week

49%

30%

21%

20,955

Once or twice a month

25%

44%

31%

< 1%

5,093

Several times a year

17%

47%

36%

< 1%

3,223

Seldom/never

10%

30%

60%

< 1%

5,262

Don't know

30%

28%

35%

538

49% of Christians that attend church at least once a week feel spiritual wellbeing and peace at least once a week. Thats good, but the other side is 51% of church goers do not experience spiritual wellbeing and peace 1 time per week. 30% a few times a year, 21% seldom.

Why? Because we are consuming church rather than putting down roots and being the church.

Fourfold Discipleship

4 fold discipleship

Love: Growing in the love of God and love for God

Is your life in God? Is it a life of forgiveness and fellowship. Intimacy with God. A life of surrender

What about God’s life in us? Victory and freedom, obedience and service.

Are you seeing God? Spiritual awakening, vision, attention. A life of praise.

Discipline: How is my life in training?

Prayer

Scriptures

Lord’s Supper

Fasting

Acts of kindness

Mission: How is my life in the world?

How am I serving the least, the last, and the lost?

How am I joining God in what He is doing in the world?

Evangelism: How is my life testifying to the hope of Jesus?

Am I welcoming strangers? Am I sharing my faith?

Do you know that the majority, 54% of millennial Christians actually think its wrong and oppressive to share faith?

We can see this in Colossians....

How do these relate to text?

Paul writing to the Colossians has very specific instructions in our text today…but it has these elements right there. He is giving the closing instructions to the Colossians here of how to be the church, how to lean in.

Look at it again:

Colossians 4:2–6 NIV

Colossians

Love of God and God’s love flowing through you, prayer and devotion as you lean in, mission as Paul goes out but also how you treat the outsiders, evangelism as you season your conversations with salt of grace. Paul following the model of Jesus modeling for the Colossians and for us.

How do I move from consumer to student.? How do I stay with Jesus?

1. Stop Consuming:

Just stop!

“Discipleship and spiritual formation are less about erecting an edifice of knowledge than they are a matter of developing a Christian know-how that intuitively understands the world in light of the Gospel.”

― James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation

Church is not about just learning as much as you can, nor is it what you sprinkle over your life so you feel a little bit better, (which does not work by the way).

Again James K.A. Smith:

“Jesus’s command to follow him is a command to align our loves and longings with his—to want what God wants, to desire what God desires, to hunger and thirst after God and crave a world where he is all in all—a vision encapsulated by the shorthand “the kingdom of God.”

― James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit

Which leads me to my next point...

2. Be a student wherever you are

Stop thinking about Christianity as an abstract and start following Jesus wherever you are. Rowan Williams:

There’s the catch: if you want to be holy, stop thinking about it. If you want to be holy, look at God. If you want to be holy, enjoy God’s world, enter into it as much as you can in love and in service. And who knows, maybe one day someone will say of you, ‘You know, when I met them, the landscape looked different.’

Williams, Rowan. Being Disciples (pp. 54-55). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.

Work, school, family....pray this prayer. Rabbi, Jesus, Teacher, here I am following you.

3. Community

This is formed in community. You cannot do it alone. To go alone is to be a tree in the redwood and move into a clearing by yourself.

Small groups. 14, 150+ people involved.

Testimony from small group, formational.

“Mondays have taken on a new attitude since I became part of a More to Life group! I can’t wait to hear how God is working in everyone’s lives on Monday nights, and I wouldn’t miss it for anything! The Holy Spirit meets us in that space each week and we hear an encouraging message, a hard truth, or an affirmation He knows we need. Building a strong small community within our larger church community also helps me feel more connected to the body of Christ. I feel like an actual Christian! Knowing that we are praying for each other throughout the week, and that I have a place where I can be vulnerable without fear is life-giving!”

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