Ephesians #1: Who do you think you are?

Giving Moment:

2 Corinthians 9:6–11 (NIV)

6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.

7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

9 As it is written: “They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor; their righteousness endures forever.”

10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.

11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

Giving Moment:

When scientists wanted to determine which multiple sclerosis treatment would work best, they had no idea that recruiting others who suffered from the illness would lead them in an unexpected direction. One group of subjects would learn coping skills. The others would be able to discuss their illness with fellow multiple sclerosis sufferers. After two years, the results were clear. Neither group improved as much as those who offered help by listening. Giving — in this case, giving help — turned out to improve a person’s health more than anything else.

Perhaps the best thing scientists have discovered about compassion is that we can cultivate it. Our desire to give grows the more we give. And it turns out that we’re better off because of it.

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Who do you think you are?

Various ways we are known…Christian - liberal - generous - friendly - confident -

Encyclopedia boy

What negative label has affected how you see yourself?

As Christians, we know that God works in our lives transforming us… changing us.

It’s what we call sanctification.

It’s god making us more like his son Jesus… clarifying our understanding of God’s call on our life and developing God’s character in us.

Does God stop working in us?

No Scripture is clear

1 Thessalonians 5:23–24 NIV

23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

This is God’s desire for us to become holy… that’s where he is taking us.

But if I asked you today, are you there yet? Are you holy through and through? Many of us would hear those labels that we have been given scream out… no you aren’t holy… you are lazy… you are a mess...

The reality is that while we love Jesus, life tends to present us with seasons that seem to keep us from becoming the people God desires that we become.

What if though I asked you to believe for a moment that those seasons that you feel like keep you from becoming the one God desires you become were actually the way God wants to help you become the one God desires you to be?

What if what you saw as a road block was actually the express lane?

What if the dysfunctional relationship was actually a space to grow in grace. What if the financial hardship was space to learn to depend on God? What if your loneliness was the best place to build a relationship with Him?

What if your season of difficulty became a source of God’s blessing.

We begin a new message series today to help us see who we are to be… who God created us to be as a part of His church… not Raum, not Wesley, not Rock Hall church… but His Church the kingdom of God. We are going to learn some new labels. We are going to expand our identity as Christians in ways that apply not just to our good times.. but to our seasons of hardship as well.

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I was away last week with Michelle at a conference for Christian Counselors. They had a lot of training for Pastors and Christian Coaches as well. One of the sessions in my track was on book called Journey of the Soul. It sought to explain the journey of spiritual growth and lay out some resources to help people grow spiritually; to move along the path.

The authors presented spiritual growth as a cycle that we move through… maybe more like a funnel in that the deeper you go in the funnel… the closer you get to christ-likeness.

They gave the journey an acronym

C.H.R.I.S.T.

I had always thought of spiritual growth in terms of maturity. New, young, and mature faith. The problem is that we all hear labels and no one wants to have immature faith… no adult wants to have child like faith… even though Jesus said unless we come to him with the faith of a child we will never see heaven… there has been something negative about the way I looked at it.

So in this CHRIST model, things look a little different, but cover the same journey.

Confidence in Christ - coming to faith… step one… surrender… trusting him to help you… usually experienced in the church… and we look to be engaged

Help in Discipleship - God’s word… where we learn or better are taught God’s word… usually it means in relationship with someone… a mentor

When you are a new disciple, you love God for what he does for you. I’ve shared with you before that when I came to Christ, I couldn’t stop reading His word… it was all the time. I had a friend that when he came to faith, he went and cleaned out his bank accounts and gave the money away because all he needed now was Jesus.

As we continue to grow we begin to take on:

Responsibility in Ministry - You’ve been saved, you want to get involved in ministry. You want to give back. You are excited about this growing relationship because you found a place to be valued, a place to be used…

Inner Journey - allowing the Holy spirit to dig in and do the hard work of changing us inside… not just the things we do… but our heart.

We aren’t there yet… but we begin to love God because of our relationship WITH Him. We learn to love God in hard times. We overcome evil by relying on his word. We aren’t there yet… but we are well on the way to spiritual maturity.

Spirit Led Ministry - a sailboat… empowered by the Spirit… help up by the grace of God… where we found identity in serving, now we find Joy in sacrifice … Outcomes no longer matter… but doing it with God is all that matters

Transforming Union - in partnership with God…

Now we begin to love God for God. We submit to God’s will in all things. We stop questioning, doubting. Our prayer becomes Lord your will and your way in your timing. Our worship deepens as we serve to bless. We are now partners with God in His work

Spiritual growth is a process. Problem is, many of us run into a wall along the way.

It’s like having a filter in our funnel. I have one like that. It keeps me from letting trash in the fuel tank. But after a while the filter gets plugged up and instead of filtering the bad, it stops the good and the bad.

C.H.R. | I.S.T.

These walls can come up anywhere along the way in our relationship with Christ… but usually they appear when our ideas of what ought to be come into conflict with what is in reality… when all the stuff we believe and the things we do don’t fix all our problems … we run into difficulty in life… maybe a relationship breaks down… or we lose our job… or we are betrayed by someone we trust; maybe a pandemic comes and changes the way things are done - and I don’t like technology… maybe my friends leave my church… maybe someone close to me - my spouse- is going through a hard time and I get sucked down with them… maybe its because we experience an illness… or experience some sort of loss… what ever it is, we get frustrated and we find ourselves on a spiritual island… isolated and feeling all alone.

We've seen people do this right. They come to faith in Christ, get involved in the church and start to serve then they are gone.

The apostle John described the source of this distraction in our life.

He refers to it as

1 John 2:16 NIV

16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.

We might say them like:

“You are what you do.”

“You are what you have.”

“You are what people think you are.”

The problem with these identities is that they are a lie.

When we come to faith in Jesus, we realize they are lies. We come into a new relationship with Jesus, we start to grow… we believe and begin to change our lives… then difficulty comes and we realize that we had just spiritualized the lies the world tells us. We had been relying on our own abilities and resources. Sure we had good intention, we wanted to honor God, we were happy to serve because we loved Jesus and that’s what Christians do.

But we realized that that believing and doing, living out of our own abilities and resources are insufficient to produce real, lasting, change because the journey of faith is sort of like a roller coaster. it has ups… and it has downs.

What the early church fathers called

Consolation and Desolation

Consolation when we feel his presence… when spiritual practices allow us to experience his joy.

and Desolation when God feels absent. When we don’t experience his blessings through spiritual practices. We are spiritually dry, we are tired of the songs, all the sermons are boring, we aren’t motivated to read scripture.

If you haven’t experienced this, you will.

In these times we discover that emotionally we are disconnected from God… and we get tired trying to fake it. Since the greatest and 2nd greatest apply here, what does that say about me as a disciple? (Mark 12:30-31) I don’t have the energy to love my neighbor… or myself… what does that say about me?

In these times, we fall into patterns of sin, only to realize that our human will power can’t keep us from them… what does that say about our being a real Christian? Remember what Colossians 2:20 “20 Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules:” is my faith real… am I just like one of the Pharisees that Jesus rebuked all the time for doing the right thing but not knowing him.

The wall seems to grow and grow.

Have you gone through a period of spiritual dryness or darkness when God seemed far away, no matter what you did to connect with him? This is what is often referred to as a dark night of the soul?

Dark Night of the Soul - Who am I?

I’ve experienced at least 2 of them. One lasted several years… another for several weeks. The first when the church didn’t have answers for or concern for the difficulties I was going through as a young Christian… so I left the church. The second time when I felt the church left me.

It’s a season of feeling spiritually empty or lonely. It’s not something to be fearful of… because we have God's promise that he will never leave us nor forsake us… it’s something to persevere through.

But sadly, many people come up to these moments in the journey of faith and turn away because God isn’t there for them any more they think.

What does it take to get through these seasons?

I discovered it is a time to

Ask for Help

Like me, you may avoid being emotionally vulnerable with others or asking for support and prayer. But even Jesus asked people to pray for him when he was in desolation (Matt. 26:36–41). That’s what I did in my down time. Asked a trusted friend to listen me and and pray for me. I also enlisted a spiritual director who could help me find new spiritual practices.

Find Hope

In your journey of faith it’s normal to encounter The Wall. These maps on our phones are great… we know what to expect. So when I see it on the road i’m not surprised. Knowing that the wall is part of the journey of becoming who God created you to be can help you to resist labeling yourself when trials come… and they will come. You can set your hope on Jesus who is with you in your trial and continuing to renew you in deeper grace and draw you deeper in your relationship with God.

Unburden Yourself

Recognize that in seasons of difficulty, it can take a lot of emotional effort to overcome. We can burn out on what was once a source of encouragement. Praying through our list of requests, Bible study, and daily disciplines. In seasons of difficulty, we can give ourselves permission to step away from the things that become burdensome. It’s a season for God to teach us to rest in His grace in new ways.

Fix Your Eyes on Jesus

Focus on the solution… not your problem. Often times we get fixated on the problem and all we can see is how bad things are. Lift your eyes. See Jesus. The pioneer and perfector of our faith. One who’s been there and overcome.

My prayer is that this fall is going to be a season of spiritual growth in our church. I’m going to ask you to commit with me to letting the holy spirit do some work in us… in me… in you.

That we are going to lean in. We aren’t going to fade away and accept the labels that people give us… or that we give ourselves in times of desolation but instead we are going to hold fast to the labels that God gives us… who our Creator says we are when we are in Christ.

God gives us a new name

Isaiah 62:2 NIV

2 The nations will see your vindication, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow.

God gives us a new purpose

Luke 5:10 NIV

10 and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.”

God gives us a new future

Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Who do you think you are?

Hebrews 12:1–3 NIV

1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Who do you think you are?