Deeper into Devotion

Introduction:

How many of you enjoy cooking? I find cooking to be therapeutic. When you go through a day when your mind is “on”, and you aren’t allowed to turn your mind “off”, I find cooking to be an incredibly mindless activity!

But here’s what I’ve learned about cooking. The great ones use recipes as guides.

Do you know what I mean by that?

They have the recipe, but some things just come down to taste.

I don’t know if maybe the chicken you were cooking with was bitter or sweet, but you can’t control the emotions of that chicken! So you need to adjust according to taste.

Recently I was having lunch with Pastor Bobby, and he makes a delicious green soup. In Spanish it’s called Posole Verde, but today we are just going to call it Green Soup.

I asked him about his preparation process and he said that as it is cooking throughout the day he will come back and taste it to see how it’s coming along.

How many of you know that the real ones don’t use a recipe as gospel, but as a guide?

My aunt has this recipe for enchiladas that is undefeated. When we asked her for the recipe, she gave us the ingredients. She didn’t give us portions, she gave us ingredients. What a flex! She was like, “You can’t measure greatness.”

So what you have to do in order to learn from the great ones is you have to come alongside their process. It’s not overly prescriptive, because there are variables. How many of you know that in life there are variables. This is when you want a guide. I can’t anticipate everything, but show me how YOU anticipate changes.

I know you have a playbook, but show me how you make the necessary changes.

[Transition]

So today we are going to learn from the realest of the real ones. Can we lean into the life of Jesus and learn from him today? Can we lean into how Jesus had devotion?

Scripture Exegesis

Growing up in church we hear a lot of verses that are misquoted and misapplied. Now first off, I think we need more scriptures quoted, recited and applied in the church. I think that using the word is much better than using cultural phrases or cliches.

The verse we read today, “Don’t grow weary in well doing,” was a verse I heard a lot in the church. This was most used in the context of serving the church in some capacity. Maybe you were an usher, or perhaps you were helping park cars, or you led a Team. We would quote this verse to let everyone know that they were doing well and we didn’t want them getting tired in doing well. It’s certainly an application of the verse that you can make, but there is always only one interpretation.

The context of this verse is that we should not get tired in sowing to please the Spirit.

Paul is talking about a struggle between our flesh and its desires and our spirit. He urges us to feed our spirit. He tells us that whatever you feed, whatever you sow into, you are going to reap from that.

The language that we are adopting for this is spiritual formation.

What is Spiritual Formation?

We are all being formed by something.

“We are either being formed into the image of Jesus, or we are being deformed into the image of the devil.” John Mark Comer

That’s a weighty statement, I get it.

And I think that we’d like to think that our formation is more of a dimmer switch than an On & Off switch. But biblically speaking, we tend to see the opposite of that. If you aren’t feeding your spirit, you are in essence starving it.

Our endeavor is to become more like Jesus. We are followers or Jesus, who are made in the image of God, and we want to lead lives that model not just the impact of Jesus, but the rhythms as well.

Two such rhythms that I want to unpack are solitude and fasting.

Solitude

I am using the word solitude, but you could use the words quiet time as a synonym, or even devotion. What you call it is not as important as that it contains these actions:

A quiet place, alone

Prayer

Reading the scriptures

Some might even add silence or meditation (contemplative prayer) and scripture memorization to this time as well.

There is room for you to make this your own, but just know that solitude was a part of Jesus’ life.

In my bible reading this week I found the following passages in Luke where Jesus went away for solitude:

We first read it in Luke 4:1 as Jesus was led into the wilderness for a period of prayer and fasting. It was here where Jesus was tempted by Satan three times and he overcame the enemy each time.

Luke 4:42, Jesus departed and went into a desert place. It was after this time in the desert that he tells the multitude that he needed to go to other cities where he is being sent.

In Luke 5:16, Jesus retreats to alone into a wilderness to pray.

Luke 6:12, Jesus went to a mountain to pray. This was done before he chose his 12 Disciples.

Again, this is just reading the first part of Luke and the writer makes it a priority to show us how Jesus would retreat in solitude.

What are we accomplishing in these moments?

Solitude is rarely a quiet place. We are wrestling down our thoughts, and bringing them into subjection through the word of God.

“Solitude is the furnace of transformation.” - Henri Nouwen

2 Corinthians 10:3–5 NIV

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

When we open our Bibles in solitude we are combatting the lies of the enemy with the word of God. The enemy is constantly feeding us lies, becuase he is the father of lies, and the word of God exposes those lies.

Remember, that nothing that flows from the mouth of the enemy is a truth. Everything he says is rooted in lies.

But I also need for you to understand that the best lies have some truth in it.

So because the enemy is a liar, he tells good lies, and they usually contain truth within them that is distorted.

The more we are in solitude, the more we are exposing the lies of the enemy and our mind is being renewed to more quickly discern his plans.

This is what Paul tells us in Romans 12:2.

Romans 12:2 NIV

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

The more that your mind in renewed, the quicker you can expose lies and as sister Tay Tay taught us, shake them off.

But let’s go deeper...

The priority of solitude is not to change my situation, but to change me.

Do I want my situation to change? Of course I do.

Do I want this sickness to go away? Of course I do.

If I have a real problem, do I need a solution? Absolutely.

But what good is it if everything around me gets better and I don’t. Where does that leave me if my situation got better but I didn’t.

Now again, do we approach prayer for things to change, absolutely. Yes, and yes. But the danger of thinking that prayer is the place to go to twist God’s arm into making things the way that YOU WANT THEM puts you in charge, and not God.

What else is happening in my devotion?

Solitude brings clarity to my decisions.

I mentioned a couple of passages of scripture to you where Jesus went away to pray, but let me share with you some of the things that happened afterwards.

In Luke 4 when Jesus went into the wilderness to fast and pray for 40 days, we read that it was then that the tempter came to him. Now maybe you’ve heard it said that the enemy came to him when he was at his weakest, but can I tell you that is only true of his physical being. He might have been physically weak, but spiritually he was stronger than ever. Spiritually, the devil picked the worst time to come and mess with him because after 40 days of being in solitude he was ready to wreak havoc on the Kingdom of Darkness and that is exactly when he did for the next 3.5 years of ministry.

If the enemy wasn’t afraid to come and tempt Jesus, what makes you think you’re untouchable? And when he comes, what condition will he find you in?

In Luke 4:42 we read that Jesus went into a place to pray, and when he finished praying he was immediately swarmed with people in great need. He quickly heals them and then tells everyone,

Luke 4:43 NIV

But he said, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.”

He let’s everyone know that he needed to go. It’s a moment of clarity where he downloads this assignment from his father that he’s not supposed to just hang out in Capernaum all day and never leave. He’s got to leave Capernaum if he is going to fulfill his assignment here on earth.

Let me give you one more:

Luke 6:12–13 NIV

One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles:

Jesus didn’t just pick the 12 based on how they performed when they were around him. Luke tells us that there were several people who started following Jesus, but of those that followed him, he picked his inner circle to not just be with him, but to go with him to these other cities. They were traveling with Jesus as he was in ministry. But, he didn’t chose his 12 until he had first prayed.

This is why we PRAY FIRST.

We set aside time early in the morning, before the day gets going, and we have solitude. While there is still so much to say about solitude, let’s move on to fasting.

Fasting

It’s been said that prayer connects us to God, but it is fasting that disconnects us from the world.

We’ve said this before, but it is worth repeating, that Jesus’ ministry did not even begin until he had fasted. He’s the son of God. The express image of God. The fulness of the Godhead dwelling in him bodily, and yet before he does any public miracles he goes to the wilderness to fast and pray.

When Jesus selected his 12 disciples and they began to do public ministry there were certain people groups that they couldn’t help. When they asked Jesus why they couldn’t help this person Jesus replied, “this one requires prayer and fasting.”

Fasting is a discipline that in Western Christianity we have just about abandoned, simply becuase it doesn’t fit into our cultural truism to “do whatever makes you feel good.”

That, as we know, is insane. That line of thinking left unchecked is dangerous and puts me ahead of others, which is opposite of what Jesus teaches us to do. Imagine, if you put you ahead of your family all of the time. There wouldn’t be any more family around if you did that all of the time.

So how do we begin to break that down? Fasting.

Fasting trains our bodies to not get what they want.

If these feels like it’s counter cultural to everything you’ve been told, it is becuase you have been told that your desires and your feelings should be in charge of your life. The problem with that is your desires and your feelings are being fueled by our flesh which is bound by our sin nature. Because we live in a broken world, and with a broken nature, we cannot let our desires and feelings be in charge, but rather, we must subject our desires and our feelings to the truth of God’s word.

This is why following your heart is bad advise. I know it makes for a good Disney movie, but it makes for horrible advise. Our heart is wicked.

Have you ever heard of the saying, “The heart wants what it wants?”

Do you know what famous person tried to use that language to normalize inappropriate behavior?

Woody Allen when asked about why he began a romantic relationship with his adopted daughter.

Woah.

I get it. This is heavy on a Sunday. But that saying has become culturally norm, while the context in which it was said is abhorrent. We cannot normalize that stuff as a culture. And in the church, we push that back and say not in our house.

So we fast. We fast to tell our body and our broken desires that they are not in charge.

But, I need for you to get this about fasting. Fasting is a discipline that eventually becomes a delight.

When you have learned the discipline of fasting, your body becomes your ally in your fight with the flesh rather than an adversary.

Conclusion

You will never hear God more clearly, and you will never feel more connected to God, than when you are in a time of prayer and fasting.

We begin this today Lighthouse, and we are so excited for what is to come for you and your home.

If you were on the fence about doing this, I’m telling you, jump on this with us. Find the best option for you and your family, but make this a priority. Get your targets established, and make room in your heart for what God is going to do this year through you.