Spiritual Disciplines Night

Training for Godliness

Connect: Hey guys! It’s good to see you all tonight and to have conversations with you. If it’s your first time tonight we are excited you are here, my name is Abdiel I’m the youth director here at Faith Church Highland & Munster.

Now tonight we are going to do something different. I’m not going to talk to long because I just want to introduce what we are doing tonight so that you have enough time to do it.

Our main focus tonight is going to be on Spiritual Formation. You should have a packet with you and on the first page it says this to define Spiritual Formation:

Spiritual Formation is the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the glory of God and the benefit of others. Spiritual Disciplines are the internal work of the Holy Spirit (in our heart, our emotions, our thought processes), and result in transformation of the believer (someone who believes Jesus is their Savior). As the Spirit transforms us through prayer, Scripture, and community, we grow deeper (develop and mature) in our walk with Him. Spiritual formation results in a changed life.

So our goal tonight is to pick some spiritual disciplines in order for us to grow and to be transformed to become more like Jesus.

It’s easy for me and for anyone to stand up here and tell you to “read more” “pray more” but tonight we are going to really show you how to do it well.

We want to do this because we have natural desires to be away from God. Most of us would rather play video games or scroll endlessly through social media than read the Bible for 5-10 minutes a day or pray in the morning.

The purpose of Spiritual disciplines are to make ourselves vulnerable to God so that we can be continually changed to be more like Jesus Christ who lived a perfect life and exchanged His perfection for our sinfulness so that we can be known as righteous and perfect in God’s eyes.

We should not do this as an obligation or because we feel forced to do it, we need to do this as an expression of our need for God.

We need to do this because we can’t do life by ourselves, we need our God to help us, and He is faithful to help us.

Especially when we consider the times we live in right now.

We live in an age where Gender and Sex are being challenged and destroyed, Sex is a simple act rather than an expression of love between a married man and woman, where the idea of what it means to be human is being distorted, where. When you try and think about truth in our modern culture, you will only come to the conclusion that there is no truth and there is no absolute reason why we should care about what is right and wrong because it’s different for everyone.

So you take all that into consideration, we need to be vulnerable to God in order to know what truth is and how we can live in an age where truth doesn’t exist.

How do we do that? By training ourselves to be Godly.

1 Timothy 4:7–8 (ESV)

Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

Timothy was a young guy probably around my age, and he was facing these challenges. People who were calling themselves Christians were feeding into the culture’s thought process and worldviews and rejecting God’s truth.

So Paul writes to this guy Timothy to lead them back on the road to truth that comes from Jesus Christ. We need to live this out, have nothing to do with these myths, these worldviews of our culture, but train yourself for godliness. Put yourself in God’s hands so that you can know what truth is and how to live in it.

And the best way to do that is through Spiritual Disciplines.

So here’s what you’re going to do. You will get into your small groups, and read through these spiritual disciplines together, and pick one to do by yourself immediately. Then you will get back together after 15 minutes and set a goal as a small group by choosing another spiritual discipline together until Easter. After 30 minutes, you will take sometime to think about another spiritual discipline to do consistently until Easter.

For example: Tonight I will immediately memorize a passage, afterwards My group and I will choose a spiritual discipline we will do together until Easter, then I will choose a spiritual discipline to do myself until Easter.

Make sense?

PRAY