Spirituality

Good morning and welcome to another week of church here at the Bridge. I am so glad that we can be here together. What a crazy couple weeks it has been. I spent my ten days in quarantine with a 6 year old little girl. Let me tell you that is always an interesting experience. After a few days you start to get a little stir crazy. I know right now some of my introverted friends are like nope not me. Well sorry i was getting stir crazy.

One of the things that i was doing a lot of was some reading and i was also watching various videos and blogs and I noticed a couple times i was watching some videos or streams from different content creators out there and i kept hearing this common saying. Now, i just was thinking I may want to clarify what the idea of a content creator is. Entertainment has changed a lot in the last couple years. People find it enjoyable to watch people stream or play a video game, or play music, or just sit around and talk (podcast). Often in these videos they will also interact with a live chat of their followers or fans. For me I use it mostly as background noise as i do something on the computer from writing a paper, or sermon to playing a video game.

It was in these streams and pod casts that this phrase kept creeping up as these people would interact with their community. I kept hearing it over and over again and it started to bother me.

“I am spiritual, but i am not religious”

Now i have heard this before and it never really bothered me but I found it interesting that i kept hearing it over and over again. There was a clear indication that people are talking about “spiritual” Things but they don’t want to be associated with a religious organization.

Now we can start to dig into the many reasons why that people don’t want to associated themselves with a religious organization. Let’s be honest religious organizations yes including the Christian Church have not done the best in showing their best side. The Christian church has suffered multiple scandals from sexual abuses, to financial issues, to infidelity, and the list goes on and on. I could speak to other religions but i don’t want to this morning because frankly I don’t see the benefit of comparing our faults.

Now i know what your thinking Pastor Andy this is not a very positive uplifting sermon right now. Why are you talking about all these bad things. It won’t convince very many people to come to church. That is the thing, isn’t it. When we don’t talk about our problems and our faults nothing ever changes. We have to be honest. We have to be open.

The “Church” has screwed up.

You want to know another truth.

Everyone has Screwed up

Isn’t that the very nature of the message that we preach each or should be preaching each week. That it doesn’t matter what you have done, it doesn’t matter where you have been, if you confess that Jesus Christ is your lord and you seek his forgiveness that His grace is sufficient. In a practical sense though being honest about our faults can help us to learn and to grow and to prevent the same mistakes as before. This is important for the church. We are a place that is full of broken and sick people not perfect and sinless people but people who are seeking to grow in their relationship with God.

Back to the Saying: “I am Spiritual, but I am not religious”

If you haven’t noticed this mornings sermon is more topical than it is founded purely in the scriptures. There are times that this is an important practice for us because as a pastor I have a responsibility to speak to the culture of our world. We see Apostles doing it regularly in the Bible. In fact the Epistles are exactly that. Paul, Peter, John, or someone else hearing about a situation and speaking to it. There are a couple of problems with the statement i keep referencing. Let me share them.

What or which Spirit are you following?

What makes Spiritual so much better than Religious?

A Definition: Spiritual

As usual before we get into these questions i think it is important to look at our understanding of a word.

Spiritual can be defined as--of or relating to sacred matters; concerned with religious values; related or joined in spirit

Our understanding of this word and what it mean is how we come to the first question or problem that we have to deal with.

What or which Spirit are you following?

Spiritual things are tricky. There are Spirits out there. Many of them are not the kind of Spirits we want to be battling. Or this could also be viewed as a worship of ones self as Spirit. There are so many directions that this can be taken because it is very ambiguous. Everyone can define this in their own unique way. That is the problem though. The truth of the Gospel is that there is only one Spirit that leads to God. There is only one way to come to know Him. We can’t follow other “spirits” and think that we can come to knowledge of God. That is the danger of just simply saying i am Spiritual you open yourself to the dangers of the influence of the world and others instead of letting the creator of the universe to be your guide.

The Second problem

Spiritual vs Religious

I shared earlier that there is a lot of problems in the church. Again I can only speak for the Christian church because that is what I am. However, in recent years this idea of being spiritual and not religious has grown. For many the idea of being religious has negative overtones and they don’t want to be seen in that light so for them it is better to have the positive portrayal of being Spiritual which is more pleasing to our sensibilities.

D.A. Carson says it this way.

People think of themselves as “spiritual” because they have certain aesthetic sensibilities, or because they feel some kind of mystical connection with nature, or because they espouse some highly privatized version of one of any number of religions.

Religion sparks negative thoughts of legalism and oppression in many and guides people to think that holding to a set of ideals formed within the history of an organization can only lead to bad things.

The Third Problem

Now i didn’t mention this one because if i did you would see where i was going with all of this, and either wouldn’t want to listen any more or you would know the end and might miss it.

As a Christian we have an inherint problem with the idea of being spiritual without directly identifying with the Holy Spirit. Because...

apart from the Holy Spirit there is no such thing as Spirituality.

1 Corinthians 2:10–16 NIV

10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Spirituality

The life of the Spirit must come from the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy spirit there is no life int eh Spirit. There is only the “Spirit of the world and that is not the same thing. Without the Holy Spirit we can not even begin to know or understand the things that God wants us to know. We can’t come to faith without the Holy Spirit.

Now what does the church or being religious have to do with this idea. I am a proponent of the church and i believe that yes even our religious institution should not and can’t be ignored when it comes to understanding the Spirit.

But the church has done so many bad things.

Your right don’t deny it.

The Church has also done many great things.

The church delivers more humanitarian aid than any other organization on the planet. The church feeds the poor, cares for the widows, the orphans, and the lost and the broken.

Not only the physical needs though are important when we reject the church we push aside the history and legacy and the value of all of the saints who have come before us. We devalue their input and their guidance in helping us grow in our relationship with God.

Are we that arrogant to think that only we could possibly know the right answer?

Are we that arrogant to think that no one who came before and was a part of the church could possibly speak into our lives?

Are we that arrogant to think that we know better than Christ who regularly and notably made it a practice to participate in the worship of God at the synagogue and the temple despite the flaws that were found there?

The real message is not that the church is the answer but we must be careful when we start talking about Spiritual things because it is too easy to be deceived by the evil one and to be led astray if we are not building our foundation on the Spirit of God who was given to us. If we aren’t building our lives around the Spirit and the Word of God directing us and guiding us. We also must recognize that the church can help us make this a lot easier if we are active participants in a body of believers that work together to build each other up to teach and grow the word in each others heart.

This morning that is the Spirituality that I want. I want the Spirit of God to be the guide not my own desires or sense and to allow him to help me lead through my local church and through the larger church so that i can help share the message of the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Let’s Pray.

I am a