Spiritual Practices

Awesome.

Well, welcome to Church at the Grove.

If I didn't know better, I would have thought that I'd walked into a Presbyterian church this morning.

Y'all feel a little bit like the frozen chosen, okay?

And so when I say that, I don't mean that in a derogatory way toward my Presbyterian brothers.

One of my one of the young men that I discipled years ago is a Presbyterian pastor, and he is faithful to the word, but they tend to be a bit more stoic and uh and and you know rigid a little bit, but uh that's not how I would normally describe our church, right?

We're we're uh we we love excitement.

It's okay to say amen.

It's okay to say hallelujah, it's okay to lift your hands in worship, especially when we see what God has done in the way that he worked this past weekend and this past week.

And we look forward and we believe that he will continue to work, that he will work today.

Amen.

Amen.

And so listen, if I want to be better at something, if I want to be better at something, I must practice it.

If I want to be better at something, I must practice it.

If you want to be better at golf, you must practice it.

You want to be better at pickleball, you should practice it.

If you want to be better at a sport or an activity, you must practice it.

You want to be better at your health, you must practice.

You must exercise it.

So here's a question I have for you.

Here's a thought.

Experiment, if you will.

Imagine yourself 10 years, 15 years, 20 years in the future.

There may be those of us that would say, I will probably be in the presence of God.

Amen.

But for those of you that are here 10, 15, or 20 years, what will you have become?

What will your life be?

Will you be more loving, more joyful, more full of the spirit?

Will the fruit of the spirit be evident in your life?

Or will you be more cynical, more angry, or more bitter?

If we want to be good at something, we must practice it.

Right?

So this is the time of the year where baseball players are experiencing what we call spring training.

And so these are young guys and veterans that go back to the fundamentals.

Take a look at this with me.

There's no perfection in baseball, but we work for perfection.

And if you're doing the technique right, well, you're gonna see all day is perfection on the feed.

Do it early like this here with the hands, so they can feel what they're doing.

They don't have to be rushing.

They can feel what they're doing.

And the rhythm will pick up in the technique.

The rhythm, the quickest and all of that, it happens in the technique.

I've been working with Von for the last three weeks, and most of that thing that impressed me is the consistency of his application.

After we finish on our knees, then we get set in our backhand, and then we just work in our backhand.

Ready?

All stimulation is one hop.

This is a smash to the backhand in position, smash to the backhand.

Stay on your feet, play the ball with your hand.

Middle.

That was number 96 right there.

Clockwork.

How we do it.

Clockwork.

The last three weeks working on a wash have been game-changing.

Here he said that was number 96.

96 repetitions of the same thing over and over.

And we we think this is necessary for someone who is beginning something, but this is a professional.

This is a professional.

Professionals go to spring training.

It's not the beginners, it's not the rookies that go to spring training.

It is the five, 10, 15-year veterans that go to spring training.

Now Vaughn Grissom is a he's a he's a younger veteran.

He's a younger guy, but think of all the years.

20, he's probably 22 years old or somewhere in there, give a take a year or two.

But but probably all of his life he has spent uh taking ground balls and throwing, and then he has spent the majority of the summer with his trainer, uh Coach Ron Washington, um going over and over and over the simple fundamentals, hoping, hoping that he can step in and go 162 games and maintain a high level of excellence.

It's amazing, right?

It's amazing.

You find these veterans, old, older than him, that will go back over and over and over.

Um they when they were five or six years, they couldn't catch a cold.

Five, six years old, they couldn't catch a cold.

But at 22, they are they are professionals doing the same thing that they did at five and six years old.

Now, what about us as followers of Jesus?

Practicing our faith.

If you want to get better at something, you need to practice it.

We're in week three of this transformation series.

We took a took a little uh break last week as we celebrated United Weekend, and Jonah came and brought an incredible message centered around uh the the the gospel, uh Jesus, uh Jesus and and the and the Trinity, God three in one, and he he closed out that series or that weekend with a gospel message.

We're back into this series called Transformation, and it's basically about how we change.

How do we change?

How do we change?

Week one, we we talked about, uh we asked the question, how do we change?

How do we change?

And we said spiritual formation, transformation happens through spiritual formation, and it happens through an intentional strategy where there's the teaching of the word, living in community, and through spiritual practices.

And it is, listen, it is an intentional strategy.

It's not just a strategy that happens by chance, it is an intentional strategy.

If you are not being intentional in how you are being formed into the image of Christ, then what will happen is you will be formed into whatever the world wants to form you into.

So having no strategy is giving the world a strategy.

And so, week two, we learned about how transformation happens in community.

Spiritual formation occurs primarily in the context of community.

It's in community that you learn that you're selfish and that you need to be selfless.

That's why marriage is such an important tool for sanctification.

You can't grow spiritually, you can't become aware of your need in isolation by yourself.

And so when you move into a house with another person, all of a sudden, you become aware of their faults.

But if you are smart, you must be aware of your own faults.

Amen.

And you're like, I never knew a person could live this way.

They are disgusting.

But as we as we grow together, and then and then you let's talk about community, a family, a biological family or or a family of God, we know we're not going to be perfect.

We're going to encounter shortcomings.

We're going to encounter what the Bible calls sin.

Sin.

And sin needs leads to the need for confession, and and confession leads to reconciliation.

And so long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life.

And so today we're talking about spiritual practices.

Spiritual practices.

How spiritual practices can form us into the image of God.

Spiritual disciplines is another way to say it.

Spiritual practices.

What you do, if you want to be good at something, you must practice it.

Personal practices can help keep our hearts in check.

Our hearts can be finicky, deceptive, and lead us astray.

That's why Proverbs 423 says, guard your heart, guard your heart, for from it flows the spring of life.

And Justin Earling, his book called Habits of the Home, he says this.

He says, Personal practices, also known as habits, they form our hearts.

They form our hearts.

And he says there is a neurological reason for this.

Modern neuroscience has shown us that habits occur in the deepest part of our brains.

It's called the basal ganglia, which are parts that churn on autopilot while the higher order thinking does its complex acrobatics.

He goes on to say the downside of practices are also the same as the upside.

The feature that allows us to form practices also makes it hard to change a bad habit.

Picture a wagon wheel in a rut or a tire in a rut.

It takes no effort to stay in the rut.

But it takes incredible effort to pull the wheel out of it.

Good or bad, a rut is a rut, and our brains love ruts.

When it comes to spiritual formation, our lives and hearts are not simply products of what we say and do.

They are products of what we practice and do.

There's often a gap between the two.

Here's the big idea: who you become is a product of what you do.

Who you become is a product of what you do.

Now, I know, I know it is Christ.

It is Christ that does the forming.

Christ does the forming.

But is the human effort also involved?

We've talked about this.

We said the kingdom of God is opposed to earning.

We cannot earn our way into heaven, but the kingdom is not opposed to effort.

That is our part that plays a role in who we become.

So we know when we say this big idea, what who you become is a product of what you do.

We have this underlying understanding that it is the gospel, it is the work of Jesus, it is the Spirit of God that is responsible for forming us, but there is a human responsibility, and so we we understand that.

Spiritual practices are the foundation for our training that grows us into the character of Christ and godliness.

Now you want to look at scripture, let's look at scripture.

1 Timothy 4, 1 Timothy 4, verses 7 through 16.

1 Timothy 4:7–16

1 Timothy 4 verses 7 through 16.

1 Timothy 4:7–16

So this is Timothy.

I'm sorry, this is Paul writing to Timothy.

Paul is the mentor, Timothy is the mentee.

He is um he is the young up-and-coming pastor, and Paul is speaking to him, but but we are all priests, we are all prophets, we are all we are all equal in the eyes of God.

We're all called to proclaim the gospel.

We are all called to take part.

We all have responsibility in loving and pastoring one another.

Here's what Paul says to Timothy verse 7: do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives' tales.

Instead, train yourself to be godly.

Train yourself to be godly.

Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better.

Promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.

This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it.

This is why we work hard and continue to struggle.

The literal word would be agonize.

Agonize as you work out or agonize as you are in physical training.

For our hope is in the living God, who is the Savior of all people and particularly of all believers.

Teach these things and insist that everyone learn them.

Don't let everyone think less of you because you are young.

Be an example to all believers and what you say in the way you live in your love, your faith, and your purity.

Until I get there, and Paul is saying, Hey, I'm coming to you.

Timothy, I'm going to be physically, I'm going to, I'm on my way.

Focus on reading the scriptures to the church, encouraging the believers and teaching them.

Do not neglect the spiritual gift you received through the prophecy spoken over you when the elders of the church laid their hands on you.

Give your complete attention to these matters.

Throw yourself into your task.

Task, what you do, so that everyone will see your progress.

Keep a close watch on how you live and your teaching.

Stay true to what is right for the sake of your own salvation and the salvation of those who hear you.

Now, just a couple of things I want to highlight in this passage.

He says, physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better.

That word training, it is the word gym, gymnasio.

It is where we get the word gem or gymnasium, and it's probably a little different than what we would picture a gymnasium to be.

I think of gymnasium, I think of a place where basketball is played, and we go watch high school players play basketball, but in this culture, in this Hellenistic Roman culture, um athletics was absolutely a god.

In the Roman, Hellenistic, Greco-Roman culture, it was it was it was it was like a religion.

Unlike today.

They had people who trained them that were on the same level as a priest or a prophet.

They had physical trainers, nutritionists, gurus like today, that are through Instagram, through YouTube are giving you training in how you should physically be better.

And so that word gymnasia is a place where they would train, a place where they would work out, they would perform their athletic um uh gifts and use their athletic gifts.

And so Paul is saying, Timothy, physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better.

And so I would tell you this our taking care of your physical body is a good thing.

But let me tell you something.

We don't have to look far to see how our culture has neglected our spiritual training.

We have neglected our spiritual practices, and we are reaping the fruit.

We are reaping what we are sowing or what we haven't sown.

And so I want to talk about three anchor practices, three anchor practices that really anchor us, they root us, they anchor us in our spiritual growth.

And the and one is spiritual reading or scripture reading, but I'm using the term spiritual reading, and I'll explain it in a second.

The second is living in community.

We've already talked about that, so I won't talk about that in great detail.

And then the third is prayer.

The third is prayer.

We know that prayer should be a part of that.

And so the first anchor practice is spiritual reading, this classical spiritual discipline of spiritual reading.

It brings us into conflict with the informational priorities of our culture.

Modern American secular culture has rapidly changed with the advent of computers and the world wide web.

And I'm telling you, this is the cocaine of our generation.

I'm telling you, you just go up, go somewhere in the public, go somewhere in public, go to a ball game or a mall.

I don't know, are there any malls left?

Go to somewhere where young people are hanging out, I just and just observe.

Just observe.

Or you want to discipline your teenager, discipline your teenager.

You want to see what happens.

If they're addicted, you take their phone away.

And they lose their minds.

I mean, it's it's I'm I'm telling you, it's a sad, it's a sad reality.

More information is available currently to an individual in a moment now than has been in the entire history of civilization combined.

Abundance of information is taught, often taught to bring freedom, but what has actually happened, it has enslaved those outside the church and now inside the church when it comes to knowing God through Scripture.

See, Scripture reveals the key to eternal salvation.

And the key to eternal salvation is knowing God through Jesus Christ and the revelation of Jesus.

How does it come to us?

It comes to us through Scripture.

That is the revelation.

The practice of reading Scripture opens the individual and the community of faith to an encounter with God and his purposes for life.

The challenge for the individual on a daily basis is this to either reach for a multitude of information at your fingertips.

I'm going to reach.

For God's word.

Now, you know that God's word is available to us electronically.

We have devotionals.

But you know what?

Sometimes there are those of us that struggle with this addiction, and so what we should do is maybe go back to the old paper and leather version of God's word.

You do what it takes.

The practice of scriptural reading finds its classical roots in what liturgically is known as lectio divina.

And it's a Latin phrase that literally is translated, spiritual reading.

And many in the what we would call liturgical background, liturgical churches, they practice a form of reading the scripture that is in a liturgical calendar.

Now there's benefits to that, versus just grabbing the Bible and reading wherever you want to.

Because I know my human, my humanness, my fallness, I'm going to open the Bible to my favorite verses.

Those verses that make me feel good.

And so let Teo Divina, or let me put it this way: a systematic way of reading the Bible, where you read it through a section, and the text speaks to you rather than you imposing what you want to hear from the text.

Do you see the difference?

A systematic way.

It leads us, listen, reading scripture is a way to encounter God and it combats the double-mindedness and the divided loyalties that the culture throws at us.

James says, we are like a wave on the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.

James 1, 6 through 8.

Reading scripture leads to simplicity of focus on the one thing, the one thing that matters most.

And Jesus, what did Jesus?

He said, seek first the kingdom of God.

And all these other things will be added to you.

So that first anchor is scriptural reading, spiritual reading of the Word of God.

The second anchor is living in community.

And we talked about that a couple of weeks ago.

I'm not going to go into great detail.

I know I will tell you this that living in community is a discipline, it's a practice, it's something that we need.

As a matter of fact, Timothy Keller wrote in an article I read recently, he speaks about the social history of the United States and how the United States has become the most individualistic culture in the world.

American culture elevates the interest of the individual over those of family, community, and nation.

We need community.

As a matter of fact, these other other practices, the practice of slowing down what we would call Sabbathing, it's where the community comes together and has fun and celebrates and rests.

We recreate.

People would say, I've heard people tell me I'm good with God.

I love just to be alone, and that's great, but that's not biblical.

We're called to be together, congregational worship, singing together, praying together, the rhythm of serving others.

You can't serve others alone.

You can't confess to others alone.

I mean, you can look in the mirror if you want to.

You can talk to yourself all day long.

I mean, I talk to myself all the time.

Probably why I need help.

We could talk about confession, and and Reese mentioned another practice that we don't really talk about.

It's not necessarily considered an ancient part of a practice or discipline, but journaling.

Journaling is a practice where we can grow.

We grow in the gospel, we grow in Jesus.

The third anchor is this prayer.

The third anchor is prayer.

Prayer is a personal practice, but it's also a corporate communal practice.

It's deeply personal, but it's meant to be experiencing community.

Timothy Keller referred to the article he wrote.

He writes in the article, he said, he says in his article, he said, it is possible, it is possible for the United States to experience another great awakening.

It is possible.

But he says all the great movements, all the great movements and revivals have been marked by an extraordinary amount of corporate communal prayer.

Just a recent move of God in the country in South Korea.

Go back to the 70s and 80s.

God began to work.

And part of the revival in that country that is still even happening today was through prayer.

At times, they had all night prayer meetings.

And so these three anchor prayers had the potential, the potential to work in your life to form you into the character of Jesus.

But also the potential to see God work in a way in our community, in our culture.

Beyond what we could imagine.

And so could we close this morning?

Can we close this morning with just a time of prayer?

We're going to have our team come and sing a song over us.

It's a new song.

So it's not a song we know.

So it's a song.

I'm just going to have you remain seated.

You just remain seated and let them sing this over you.

But I want you to pray.

I want you to pray.

And I want you to ask God to reveal to you your shortcomings in these areas, areas of practice, personal practice.

Ask God to work in your heart.

Listen, ask him to deliver you, deliver you from addiction to technology and information.

And to help you focus on the simplicity and single-mindedness of Jesus.

So can we do that this morning as we close?

Let's pray together.

Father, we come asking that you would work in our hearts, that you would work in our being.

God, we would we would be convicted about how we live, about how we practice our lives, about how we how we form habits and form actions.

And Lord, may we be motivated and led by the Holy Spirit to use our effort, our human ability to form these practices, these habits, these disciplines that will work together with community, work together in an intentional way to form us into the image of Jesus.

Lord, we thank you for the gospel.

We thank you for the fact that we cannot earn right standing before our Heavenly Father by our human works, our human earning ability.

We thank you for what Jesus did in coming and living and dying and through his bodily resurrection.

We have, we have through our faith, through our belief, we have the ability to boldly come before the throne of our Heavenly Father.

And so let us, God, let us in our human effort and our human strength make decisions to let go of what pulls us away and to hold on to these practices that will bring us and form us into godly people.

God, we thank you for how you have worked.

We move forward in faith, believing that you will continue to work and that you will make us like Jesus.

You will form in us the character of our Savior.

It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.