Spiritual Disciplines

Good morning and welcome to another week of church here at the Bridge. I am so glad we can be here and gathered together. What a week it has been. Lots of snow in just a couple days. Now many people don’t enjoy snow because well its cold its wet and it just makes a big mess. I personally love snow it is beautiful and i enjoy it. There is one other thing about snow that creates challenges for many people. Snow forces us to slow down. That is something that we struggle with as a society. Our culture has dictated the need for drive and instant satisfaction. We want things how we want them and we want them now. We see that in the way we consume goods, the way we eat meals, and so many other things.

Think about it for a moment. You walk into a restaurant and you get the the podium to be seated and the hostess tells you it will be 20 minutes. I don’t know about you but when I hear 20 minutes i think, “what other restaurant can i go to?” That is the nature that many people have because we can’t stand to wait.

One of the big problems with this is the need for instant gratification leads to a lot of life becoming superficial. We don’t repair things anymore we don’t wait for the few minutes because we can’t be bothered. In many ways this instant gratification creates in us a superficiality in our lives.

One of the problems with this instant gratification is it is in many ways in direct competition with what our relationship with God is. Yes, faith and grace are recieved in a moment but true growth and building our relationship with God is not done in the moment. It is something that requires time and effort. It is that effort that we are going to start looking at this morning with the Spiritual Disciplines.

What are Spiritual Disciplines?

To help clarify we need to understand that our relationship with God are not just a moment and then we are all done. Like any good relationship we have to work and build that relationship. This is done through time tested practices that have history in the church and from the Scriptures. These are important for the life of a Christian because they help us to build that relationship to transform who we are and help us to draw closer to God.

It is through these disciplines that we set our mind on Christ. Let’s look at some scripture to help us see this.

Romans 8:5–11 NIV

5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

Set our Mind on Christ

The mind that is focused on God is in step with God. IT is the person who is seeking to live in relationship with God. This cannot be escaped for those who confess Jesus. It is through this focus of the mind and the heart that we are able to grow in our relationship and it is at this point that the Spiritual disciplines come in.

The Path of a Spirit led life

Imagine with me a mountain path. As you approach it you notice that this path goes to a section that you aren’t so sure you want to cross. The path while it seemed nice and pretty at first came to a point that it becomes narrow and there are two chasms one on each side of the path and you have to cross it. You can see your goal across this path though the place that you want to be. One chasm is all about your effort to say devoted to God. It is being active and trying to take everything into your hands. The other chasm is sitting back and doing nothing in your spiritual life. The problem is that both chasms lead to moral bankruptcy. They just get there different ways. The path is the only way that leads to a deeper relationship with God. it is finding that balance between our efforts and the work that God will do in us. We know that only God can transform us bet that doesn’t mean we are free of responsibility or the work that comes with it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said “grace is cheap but it isn’t free”

This is a reminder that we are to be seeking God and working on our relationship but we also must remember that it is God who transforms who we are. We connect we grow through the practices of Spiritual disciplines.

Letting God transform us

Spiritual disciplines push us to a place of inner transformation. They help us to connect to the Spirit of God like nothing else. Now you may be asking what are some of the practices that are involved with Spiritual Disciplines

Prayer,

meditation

fasting

study

solitude

service

worship

celebration

These are just a few of the most commonly practiced ones. Each of these has their own unique ways that they can help us draw to God and help us be transformed in our relationship with him. Some of these activities are focused on the internal works and acts of God and others are external that help us to grow through the work of the Spirit in this world. Some of these are also about the whole church and the growth of the corporate body of believers. All have their merits and we will be talking about each of them in the coming weeks and how they help us to grow in our relationship with God.

A word of warning

I debated over and over again if i should include this portion of the sermon. It is not that i didn’t want to talk about it i was just unsure if this was the right time. Yet, i think we can’t escape the truth one of the dangers of Spiritual disciplines is that many times they can be taken to the point of Legalism. Or they can be so contrictive that we lose sight of what their intention is. We don’t want to create habits that become “soul killing laws”. This in many ways was one of the problems the pharisees faced with their rigidness of following the “rules”.

Spiritual Disciplines are to lead to freedom not to oppression.

Why Spiritual Disciplines

With all the good and yes even the dangers of Spiritual disciplines why is this such an important idea for us to pursue as Christians. The reason is that when we come to faith in God we need to recognize that our old life is being done away with. We are fundamentally changed. Nothing is the same. This is something that doesn’t just stop at our faith but goes on beyond that. In many ways we want God to come to change and transfomr us and this is one of hte main ways that scripture tells us we can do that.

We want to come to the point that we are not just saying we are a Christian but our faith is lived out in every bit of who we are. We want the Spirit of God to mark our lives for our witness to be such that the Spirit is seen in who we are and what we do. We want to live out..

Galatians 5:22–25 NIV

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

We need to recognize more and more we must and need to live by the Spirit and we are able to do so by living out our faith and growing in our faith if we open ourselves to these disciplines.

Let us pray.