Reflect on Your Conversion

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There are some things in our world that our so pervasive and so much part of the air we breathe that we hardly can imagine life without it. One such thing like that is the self-help movement. The self-help movement.

Now the self-help movement needs no definition. We all know the self-help movement is essentially an effort to improve our lives - to become our best selves. Self-help can focus on finances - you want to buy a house but you have to pay off some deb first? There’s a book or website who can help you. Self-help can focus on your emotions - do you struggle with depression or an eating disorder? There’s a book or a website or a therapist or a medication that can help you. Do you want to build your self-esteem? Plenty of resources out there to help you do that.

In fact, there are so many resources available to help us on our quest for self-improvement that the self-help movement is actually a massive economic stimulus in itself. In the early 200s, there were enough books, websites, seminars, therapists, stress management techniques - you name it - to equal almost a $2.5 billion industry. As of just eight years ago, in 2013, the self-help industry has more than quadrupled to be an $11 billion industry.

Now the self-movement isn’t bad per se. Many of us have been helped to overcome our problems and improve our lives. That’s a good thing.

What’s not a good thing is when the self-help movement intrudes into areas where it is not needed. If there ever was a place in which the self-help movement is not needed and in fact is not welcome, that place would be the church. Why is that? We’ll get to that shortly.

For now just consider this: go into a Christian bookstore, or open up the website of christianbook.com or even Amazon and search for Christian books. What you’ll find, in many cases, is not books for sale that expound the Bible’s truths and show us how to apply them to our lives. What you’ll find is not so much well-thought-out books that take the gospel and unpack it and show us how the Christ of the gospel can change our lives and make us more like Him. No, what you’ll find is actually books on how you can look within yourself, in order to find the inner strength you already possess, to overcome your eating disorder or your sexual compulsion or your resentment or bitterness.

It would seem as though many Christians have been deceived. My biggest problem, and your biggest problem, is not one that can be solved by looking within and finding my inner strength and forging ahead in my own power and with my own confidence and becoming the master of my destiny. My biggest problem and yours is that we are born into this world alienated and estranged from our Creator, and our greatest and most desperate need is to be reconciled to Him and then, having been reconciled to Him, to then grow in our knowledge of Him and our love for Him.

This morning we will see how Jesus meets this need for us by calling us into a daily relationship with Himself, and then He provides us with everything we need in order to do that.

How has Jesus provided all we need in order to walk with Him? We’ll get to that, but first notice with me the simple privilege and command of walking in relationship with Jesus.

#1: We are called to walk daily in relationship with Jesus

New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version Chapter 2

6 Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so bwalk in Him,

Paul writes, “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” Now he tells us to walk in Him. Why the word “walk”? This is one of those places where the influence of the OT has bled over into the NT. In the OT the main description of godliness is the description of walking with God. Think of Adam and Eve with God in the garden in the cool of the day. Think of Enoch, who walked with God. And Noah, who walked with God. “Walk” in the Bible means to literally walk but it also becomes a figurative way of describing how a person lives. Do we walk in holiness or do we walk in sin? Are we walking with God or are we walking with the devil?

Now here’s what’s really cool. Even though I phrased this first point “walk with Jesus”, notice he doesn’t actually say “walk with Jesus”. He says “walk in Him”. There’s a difference. I can take a walk with Shannon and the kids. We’re walking together. But my kids aren’t in me and I’m not in them and we’re not in her. And it would be strange for us to describe it that way if I were talking to them or you or anyone else.

But things are different with Jesus because our relationship with Jesus is different. How so? When we trusted in Jesus for our salvation, the Holy Spirit takes us and makes us one with Jesus. Theologians call this union with Christ. It’s having a personal relationship with Jesus, but it’s deeper than that. I have a relationship with Joel. Joel is one of my good friends. I genuinely enjoy spending time with Joel. But I don’t have intimate knowledge of Joel because I’m not united with Him the way Christ is united with Him.

When I was preparing this sermon, I did a simple search on my Bible study software. Just like you’d do a Google search. I search for the phrase “in Christ” in Paul’s letters. I found 87 occurrences of “in Christ” in Paul’s letters. When I searched the similar phrase “in Him”, I found 31 occurrences. Together they amount to 118. You’ll see that if open your NT. Everywhere you look practically you read Paul writing about “in Christ”, “in Him”, “in Jesus.” Now we’re used to talking about Jesus living inside us. But we’ve neglected the equally important truth that we are in Him, and He is in us. Because we are on with Him by His Spirit through faith.

So this helps us understand what Paul means when he tells us not to walk with Jesus merely but to walk in Him. He means that we are in Him and He is us. This isn’t just wishful thinking or something theologians have dreamed up. Jesus Himself said this during His high-priestly prayer.

New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version Chapter 17

22 “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; 23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.

So close is our relationship with Jesus that to say that we walk with Jesus is not saying enough; Paul says that we are to walk in Him. He is to be the sphere in which we live and move. What intimacy, what closeness with God is possible through Christ! The OT men and women of God, they walked with God and what a privilege that was. But under the new covenant, God has come and taken up residence in our hearts by the Spirit of His Son. And because we are one with Christ, we get to go deeper than merely walking with Him; we get to walk in Him. He is the air we breathe and the sphere in which we live and move. Never for a second are you away from God’s presence. He is in you and you are in Him.

But that’s not all Paul says. How does he say we are to walk with Jesus? He gives us a pattern to emulate? What is that pattern? It’s found in the first half of verse 6, which we skipped over earlier. Now we come back to it. He says “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” He’s saying you and I received Jesus. When did that happen? That happened at the moment of saving faith. You heard the gospel. Someone preached and you heard it. Someone told you about it and you heard it. You read it somewhere and you believed it. He’s talking about the moment of our conversion, the day you should lack back and say was the best day of your life, the defining day of your life. He means that the pattern for walking in Jesus now should be the way in which you received Jesus then.

“As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” In other words, he’s saying, “go back in your mind often to that day - the day of your conversion. Do you remember it? Do you remember the sweetness of it? Do you remember the simplicity of it? It was sweet and simple, wasn’t it? You see, the Colossians were being tempted by the first century version of the self-help movement. The false teachers were saying, “Yeah Jesus is good and all that and you should probably, you know, start with Him. But if you want to go on to maturity, if you really want to be spiritually complete, follow these regulations and observe these days and abstain from eating and stay out the in cold or in the heat. If you can achieve these things you can be part of our little secret, elite society, and that’s when you really find life.”

Paul is saying, “You don’t need any of that. Did you have any of that, were you doing any of those things, when you first received Christ? No, you had Christ alone. He was enough. Well, guess what? He was enough for you then, and He’s enough for you now. You don’t need this extra stuff. You just need Jesus. “Walk in Him,” Paul writes, “in the same way that you received Him.”

So that’s what it means to walk in Jesus. But the whole point, as I said earlier, is that Jesus Himself provides for us everything we need to walk and grow in Him. The first thing He provides us with is roots.

#2: We can walk with Jesus because we’ve been rooted in Him

New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version Chapter 2

having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.

Most of us in here this morning remember the Blizzard of 1993. I think they called it The Storm of the Century and truly it was. I’m not likely to ever see another one like that in my life time.

Now I was just a kid - I was 12. And it’s interesting what you remember from your childhood because, besides missing about two weeks of school, I only really remember two things.

The first thing, of course, was the amount of snow it brought. In fact there was almost too much to sled at a certain point. But that didn’t stop me and my buddies across the street from sledding down the hill in front of his house. My buddy Josh liked to do this thing where he would sled down, pretend to wreck, and then say, “Oh, my leg! My leg! I’m hurt.” He’d be doubled over, on his side, clutching his leg. Me and his brother Lucas the first three times it happened we made the mistake of going to him. It was a pain to get down the hill and then back up the hill in all the snow. We were pretty ticked off at him that he kept crying wolf.

Well, the third time he did it, we ignored him. And for good reason, right? He had fooled us. So Lucas and I went inside the house because the snow was blowing hard against your face; it was hard to see and actually painful for any exposed skin. So he and I go off and just left him there. And we’re sitting inside the house and we’re drinking hot chocolate and having some hot soup. And we look out and see that Josh is still laying in the snow. He had fooled us three times by pretending to be hurt, and we believed him. But the fourth time, the time we ignored him, just happened to be the time he snapped a bone in his leg. EMS ended up coming to his house in a Hummer because the ambulances couldn’t handle the roads.

It was also notable for its cold and wind. It was the middle of March. Nevertheless the temperatures were below zero in Asheville and in the single digits where I lived. The wind blew like crazy all night Saturday night when the snow stopped. The woods behind my parents’ house - still to this day - bear reminders of this storm. There are trees down everywhere. They weren’t snapped. They uprooted. You know the difference? You know an uprooted tree when you see it. The tree lays over on its side and the base of its trunk still is covered in several feet of dirt, with the roots hanging out of the bottom of it, with a big hole in the ground where it used to be. There were dozens of those trees uprooted like that in our woods.

A healthy root system is vital for a tree. No tree is completely safe from the elements, but God designed trees to dig down deep into the earth and root themselves there, find their security and stability there, draw their nourishment from there, and out of that rootedness they stand tall and strong against the winds. They may bend, but usually they won’t break.

Now it’s interesting to me that when Paul wants to describe for us how sufficient Jesus is for us, he uses the metaphor of a well-rooted tree. Christ is not the tree. We are. He isn’t the root system. He is the soil here, the place of stability and security and nourishment. He says in verse 7 that we have been “rooted in Him.” The NLT translation paraphrases it like this and they get it exactly right even if they do go beyond what’s in the original: “Your roots grow down deep into him and draw up nourishment from him, so you will grow in faith.”

So the first reason you and I can walk with Jesus, or walk in Him, and grow in Him, is that we are firmly rooted in Him. These roots that you and I have in Christ - they’re already there, already in place. You’ll notice this is a past-tense word. He’s not saying we must be rooted. He’s not saying we are being rooted in Him now. He says we already are rooted in Him. Old experienced believer, new believer - doesn’t matter. Once rooted in Christ, always rooted in Christ. We didn’t come to Christ by our own efforts. We didn’t receive Christ by our own efforts. We are not rooted in Christ by our own efforts. By grace we are kept near to Him.

So what does it look like when someone is firmly rooted in Jesus and learns to really live like they’re rooted in Him? It looks a lot like the picture the prophet Jeremiah gave us in Jeremiah 17.

New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version Chapter 17

Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD

And whose trust is the LORD.

8 “For he will be like a tree planted by the water,

That extends its roots by a stream

And will not fear when the heat comes;

But its leaves will be green,

And it will not be anxious in a year of drought

Nor cease to yield fruit.

We are planted in Him. And that means that you can walk with Jesus and you can know that because you are rooted firmly in Him, He’s got you. You’re not going anywhere. The winds of change and the breezes of sin that threaten to blow us off track don’t threaten us, because we are rooted deeply and firmly in Him. We are completely and ultimately secure in Him. He holds us firmly. And if we do stray from Him, He is faithful to pull us back in love, because the root system connecting us to Him is still there and is holding strong.

We are firmly rooted in Jesus. And from these roots that we have in Him we draw the nourishment of His love, His patience, His mercy, His kindness, His power, His own life, His loving discipline of us when start to walk away - all of these things are channeled by grace into our lives through our union with Him. We can walk with Jesus because we are rooted in Him.

#3: We can walk with Jesus because we’re being built up in Him

New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version Chapter 2

having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.

Paul uses another picture to show us the sufficiency we have in Christ. That picture is the picture of a building.

Now, being rooted was a past-tense thing and a once-only thing. You don’t get rooted in Christ twice because you’re not born again twice or converted twice. You and I were firmly rooted in Christ when we trusted in Him and were born again. One and done. Secure. But this one, this picture of a building, is an ongoing thing in our lives. We know that because the verb tense changes. In verse 7 Paul said we have been firmly rooted - past tense, but then he goes on to say “and now being built up in Him” - present tense, ongoing, still happening. And whereas that picture was a picture of going down beneath the ground, so to speak, rooting ourselves in Christ, this one, being built up in Him, this is a picture of us growing up into Him. Being rooted in Christ is the underground, the basement, the foundation. It’s secure and not going anywhere. Being built up in Christ is the house itself or the building itself, and it is a work in progress.

When Shannon and I were dating, and living in the nation’s capital, we decided to take a day trip to New York City. We took a bus ride, from Chinatown DC to Chinatown NYC. Back and forth in one day. It was a lot of fun. We ate an authentic Chinese restaurant and enjoyed some cooked Chinese duck. We went to the top of the Empire State Building. We looked at the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park. We walked through Central Park at night. Besides getting stuck in the Lincoln Tunnel under the river on a crowded bus for an hour, and besides being scared to death that our bus driver seemed like he would fall asleep driving us back to DC at midnight, it was a fun trip.

The last thing we did before we got on the bus, though, was we went to Ground Zero. Ground Zero, of course, is the place where the Twin Towers once stood. This was 2004, so the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were still very much fresh in our minds. We stood at Ground Zero, behind a chain link fence about 15-20 feet high, and peered down into what can only be described as a dark hole that was at least 40 to 50 feet deep. The rubble of wreckage from 9/11 had been piece by piece taken away, over the years, and leaving only the two spaces in the ground where the towers used to be. It was eerie to stand there in the dark and look down into the dark nothingness knowing that just a few years prior, where we were standing were the two buildings whose height and beauty symbolized American economic strength.

The thing about the World Trade Center Towers, and probably also most tall buildings, is that they go not only many, many stories into the air above; they also often go several stories into the ground. Parking decks, security offices, conference space. These buildings to maximize space go down into the ground as well as soar into the sky.

That’s the picture here. We’re rooted down deep in Christ. But at the same time we are being built up. Now we’re left with two questions. What does this mean, and how does it happen?

What does it mean to be built up in Christ? Well, the first thing to notice is that it’s in the passive. It doesn’t say we are building ourselves up. No, it says we’re being built up. Someone else is doing the building. Who? Paul says we are being built up in Him. We’re being built up in Christ. He is doing this for us.

But how is He doing it? He does it by His Spirit through His word. Sometimes we get caught up in wanting to hear a fresh word from God. Our Bibles become boring. “Give me something personal!”, we demand. Not realizing, of course, the immense treasure God has already given to us in His word.

300 Quotations for Preachers Give Thanks for God’s Revelation

Instead of complaining that God has hidden Himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.

The last few Sundays I’ve challenged you all to try coming to our Sunday evening and Wednesday evening Bible studies. Some of you have taken me up on that and you’ve been coming and you’ve gotten plugged in and you enjoy it. But I’m confident that more of you would enjoy it, too.

So I want reissue my challenge to you that I’ve given to you the last few weeks. If you’ve never been to Sunday or Wednesday evening Bible study, you need to come. We have a lot of fun together. You get to watch me make absolutely terrible drawings on the white board; you get to hear Joel pick on me; most importantly we go deep into God’s word and we discuss it. You don’t need to be a Bible scholar. You can sit there and take it all in or you can talk and ask questions. But I’m challenging you to come to Sunday or Wednesday evening Bible studies once a week for four weeks and see if, at the end of it, you want to keep coming. Take a leap of faith and see what God does with it.

Because, here’s the thing, church: you and I can never overestimate how crucial it is to be in the word of God if we are to going to grow in our faith. And it’s important to read the word on your own, but it’s equally if not more important to read the word and study it and discuss it with others in your church. There’s a reason why the people who come small group Bible studies at this church or any other church - those are the people who are rooted in Christ and who are being built up in Him. We were meant to grow in Christ. We are meant to do that through His word which shapes us and feeds us and encourages us and challenges us. And we were meant to do this in community - not just on my own, not just isolated, not just me and Jesus as important as that is - we were meant to study and learn and grow and worship together, as a church, as the body of Christ. That is how God has designed it, and it’s a beautiful thing to see it.

The reality is that if you’re not being shaped by God’s word, you are still being shaped and molded. The question is, by what?

I was reading an article about Oprah Winfrey last week. Now in what I’ma bout to say, I don’t mean any disrespect to any of you who like her. I think Oprah is probably a really nice lady. But when she starts talking about God, people tend to listen, because she has so much influence. The problem though is that when she talks about God and faith, she really doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And Christians are listening to her and being led astray.

Oprah has said things like this. “I have church with myself: I have church walking down the street. I believe in the God force that lives inside all of us, and once you tap into that, you can do anything.” That statement has enough of the truth to sounds convincing but is just vague enough to deceive. She has also said this: “God is a feeling experience and not a believing experience.” In other words, your convictions and what you believe about God and His word and Christ and the gospel - that’s not Christianity. She even goes so far as to say this:

“If your religion is a believing experience” - in other words, if you have convictions and beliefs about God derived from His word - “if you religion is a believing experience…then that’s not truly God.”

People in her studio audience clap and cheer at such comments, and doubtless many of them consider themselves Christians.

What’s even more dangerous than this is how wide her influence is when it comes to spiritual things. In fact there’s almost a deification of Oprah. Roseanne Barr once said to Oprah on her show, “You’re the African Mother Goddess of us all”. The magazine Christianity Today wrote this in an article called “The Church of O”: “Since 1994, when she abandoned traditional talk-show fare for more edifying content, and 1998, when she began ‘Change Your Life TV’, Oprah’s most significant role has become that of a spiritual leader. To her audience of more than 22 million…viewers, she has become a postmodern priestess - an icon of church-free spirituality.” [Wikipedia, Oprah Winfrey, accessed March 21, 2021]

Is Oprah a good person? I think so. Does she genuinely care about people? I don’t know her heart but it seems like she does. Is Oprah a Christian? From her comments it would seem as though she is not. Do people think that she is? Undoubtedly they do. Do her views influence Christians to pursue wholeness and maturity apart from Christ and His word? I’m afraid so. Do we as Christians need Oprah and her teachings to help us grow in Christ? Absolutely not. Paul says that we have been rooted “in Christ”, not a talk show host. He goes on to say that we “are being built up in Him”, not being built up in “The Church of O”.

If you’re not being shaped by Christ, you are being shaped by something, by someone. Who? Christ is all that we need in order to walk with Him.

#4: We can walk with Jesus because we’re being established in our faith

New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version Chapter 2

having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.

We’ve been rooted in Christ, we’re being up in Christ, and we’re being established in the faith. What is “the faith”? We’re used to thinking that faith is something that is ours. It’s my faith or her faith or his faith. That’s one meaning of faith in NT - faith in Christ, faith in God. But there’s another meaning of faith in the Bible - like here - where it simply called “the faith”, and here it means the theological content of the gospel.

What is “the faith”? Verse 7

It means a set of beliefs about God, ourselves, Christ, and salvation

This means we can walk with Jesus as we are established in the faith - as we grow in our understanding of the great doctrines of the Bible. You say, “Pastor Dustin, are you saying I have to become a theologian here?” No, I’m saying you already are a theologian. Everybody is. The minute you open your mouth to talk about God or the Bible or the gospel or anything spiritual, you are a theologian. The question is, are you a good one or a bad one?

Sometimes pastors get in trouble for talking about theology. At my previous church I had someone who always was telling me to dumb my sermons down. “They can’t handle all that heavy truth”, he would say. I can think of no better to answer to that objection than the one British author C.S. Lewis gave to the very same objection:

“Everyone has warned me not to tell you what I am going to tell you in this book. They all say “the ordinary reader does not want theology; give him plain practical religion.” I have rejected their advice. I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool. Theology means “the science of God”, and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You are not children: why should you be treated like children?” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 153)

He’s exactly right. There could be nothing more relevant for us than to understand God and His will and His ways and HIs character, because there is nothing more relevant for us than to know Him and love Him and worship Him. You don’t need to go to seminary. You don’t need a degree in Bible. All you need is your Bible, your church, the Holy Spirit.

Speaking of the church - what I’m about to say may seem a little bit fundamental, but I make no apology for it. You cannot and will not grow unless you are an active and present part of your church. You cannot and will not grow in Christ unless you are an active and present part of your church. We’ve got livestreaming going and we’re grateful to God for that technology.We’ve invested alot of money and time into that equipment so we can do it well. It has served us well. And it continues to serve those of us who are at risk and not able to come to church physically because of COVID.

The challenge for us going forward is this: each one of us is going to have to decide why we’re still staying home. If we’re staying home because we have genuine concerns about COVID, then by all means you should stay at home until you and your doctor think you should return. But if not, some of us may have retrain ourselves to think of church as a place we go to with real people and not as something we watch on a phone or TV. Because the reality is that if we want to walk with Jesus, we have to be established in our faith, and that’s unlikely to happen apart from being with your church family.

We can walk with Jesus because we have been rooted in Him, we are being built up in Him, and we are established in the faith.

Conclusion and call for response

Paul says in Col. 2:9-10, “For in Him all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete”. Now, if this is true, if we really do have all that we need to follow Jesus, if He’s given to us out of His sufficiency and His fullness all the resources we need to grow and mature and live for Him, then why don’t we commit today to seek all that we need from Him and from Him alone?

Now in what I’m about to say, I need to first say this: you know I love you when I say these things. If you don’t, that’s a problem and I want you to tell me that so we can work it out. We’ve gotten through a hard year and we’ve done it together and I think it’s made us closer. I truly love my church family. Everything I say to you comes out of that love, even when it’s hard to hear.

But many of us are finding help and strength from sources that that are not Christ, and they will let us down in the end and actually lead us away from Christ.

Some of us might need to repent for being more influenced by social media than we are by God’s word.

Some of us might need to repent because we have put politicians and government or a political party in the place of Christ, and we have bowed down and worshiped Caesar rather than Jesus.

Some of us might need to repent because we’ve let other things crowd out our involvement here at church. How can you grow in your faith when you’re able to be here and able to be involved safely, but for whatever reason, you aren’t here and you aren’t involved?

Perhaps some of us, repenting of these things will reveal our need to rededicate our lives to the Lord. Church, there’s no shame in that. All of us have strayed at one time or another. The song this morning said it well: “we’ve all turned to things that just ain’t right, but there’s a better life.” That better life is Jesus. And He is not disappointed in you for straying. He isn’t done with you. His grace isn’t exhausted. His patience isn’t depleted. He wants you back and He’ll receive you back with open arms. Today might be the day to come home.

Or, maybe, you need to join this church after attending for months or years. Or maybe, just maybe, some of us haven’t truly been born again. You’ve been going through the motions because it’s what you’re expected to do and you want to look like a good Christian. You can’t walk with Jesus if you’ve not received Him. Maybe you’ve become increasingly aware, perhaps, that you don’t belong to Jesus. Oh my friend, Jesus is not angry with you. He is not done with you. He is waiting for you receive Him. Today can be the day of salvation for you. Call upon His name, ask for His forgiveness, submit to His lordship over your life and receive His love. And be born again.