Holiness Takes Practice(s)

Romans 6:15–23 NIV

15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. 19 I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In the movie Hoosiers, Coach Norman Dale has a line that goes: “My practices aren’t designed for your enjoyment.” This line was said after the players were not thrilled with how coach wanted them to practice.

What about Karate Kid? Remember “wax on, wax off?” What about “Paint the fence?” Or “Sand the deck?”

Things that are worthwhile take an investment of time and practice. We won’t ever get good at something without practice. Not many people can sit down at a piano and play a complicated composition without significant practice. Professional sports players didn’t get to be professionals without significant practice over years.

Have you ever been part of a fire drill? When I worked in manufacturing, we would have practice drills every so often. They wanted to make sure we were trained and knew what to do, so that if something happened we would rely on our training versus the emotions of the moment.

We practice to get used to something - to know how to react - to get better at something. Anything worthwhile takes time and practice. I recently hired a new project manager and one of the things he has said when asking a question about how we do something is “I don’t have the muscle memory for it yet.” He means that he hasn’t done it enough so it just becomes second nature - we know what to do because we’ve done it before. We build muscle memory for something through practice.

In the movie examples I mentioned, muscle memory was being built into their lives. Likewise, we need practices to form the muscle memories of our hearts so that we not only learn our story and tell our story but also live our story.

This morning, I want to focus for a few minutes on those things

Soren Kierkegaard has a parable credited to him that Dr. Daniels uses in his book and that I think is helpful for us today:

There was once a village of ducks. Every Sunday they waddled into their duck church with their duck choir and their duck preacher.

The duck preacher got up and told them: “Ducks! God has given you wings! With wings you can fly! With wings you can mount up and soar like eagles. No walls can confine you! No fences can hold you! You have wings. God has given you wings and you can fly like birds!”

The ducks all shouted “Amen!” and marveled at the wonderful sermon. Then they waddled home on their two legs.

You see, it is so easy for us to come and hear a sermon, be blessed by it and not allow God to change us through hearing his Word. I have a question for us to consider: If we are only hear to come hear a sermon and be blessed, why are we here? I can do that on my tv or my favorite podcast. Why do we come to worship together each week? It is because coming together in corporate worship is a formative practice that should have the result of God changing us through his word, to be encouraged by fellow believers, and to corporately worship the only one who deserves our praise! I think all too often, we have minimized church to come for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and be blessed and go on with our week. We don’t allow what happens on Sunday influence what we do and how we act during the week.

James K. A. Smith wrote a book Desiring the Kingdom. If you want a good read on worship that will likely rip down your thoughts on worship and help you to reform them, this is it. In his book, he argues that our hearts are shaped by various pictures of what we believe are most important, good, and true in our lives. In other words, we are shaped by the things that we hold most important and invest in - whether it is time, energy, money, or something else.

not just humans are driven by their desires, but further that those desires are formed in us through various practices, which Smith calls “cultural liturgies.”

He argues that these liturgies are forms of worship

Almost every activity has some kind of vision of the good life - what is worth loving most - built into the practice.

the practices form our desires by teaching us to worship or make ultimate particular visions of the good life

Cultural liturgies in our lives that we might not be aware of

we might call it pursuing excellence or mastery

routines and disciplines that are repetitive in our lives - these are formative whether we realize it or not

Smith uses several examples of liturgies that I think are helpful for us to consider to help us understand this idea of cultural liturgies - here are a couple of these:

Department Store or Shopping mall - temple of consumption

Entertainment - sporting events - Packers, concerts

Here is another one - personalized technology - phones, watches, etc.

We are a people who are deeply shaped by the practices that we participate in. What we do in worship and what we do as the people of God not only form us to be the people of God but in some ways counterform us to not be people of the culture.

The tradition of Protestants is to interpret “justified by faith” and “by grace alone” as believing with our heads, and practices as “works-righteousness,” but faith is not just believing something in your head but also doing something with your body.

It is not enough to just believe - being a follower of Jesus calls us to action

The Great Commission is not a suggestion

Paul is saying that you used to present your bodies over and over to greed, lust, and other sins and that the result was bondage, death. Now, because of Jesus’s death and resurrection, you present your bodies as a living sacrifice and the members as instruments of God, and the result is freedom, life.

We need to intentional about our spiritual disciplines and practices - if not, it is all too easy for these things mentioned

Living sacrifice - instruments of God

Illustrations of counterformative practices in a church worship service (call to worship, reading of Scripture, songs of praise and adoration, tithes and offerings, preaching, Eucharist, benediction, etc.).

We are a people who, day after day, moment after moment, have to say to God, “I am yours, I am yours, I am yours. Here are the members of my body. Re-habit my life by your grace and mercy.”

Kingdom of God - counter-cultural to any of the other narratives or cultural liturgies

Something is forming us and shaping us - are we being shaped by God and His Word or by one of these other cultural liturgies?

Invite for altar call during I Surrender All