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Sep 01, 2013

THe Disciplines of a Disciple, Part 2

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Disciple Making Disciples

Keywords: god's word, submission, spiritual discipline

Summary:

This message looks at several of the spiritual disciplines of a disciple of Jesus: reading the Word, memorizing and meditating on the Word plus the discipline of submission.

Detail:

Disciplines of a Disciple, Part 2

September 1, 2013

 

VIDEO:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwyAtgF8nxs

 

CONNECT QUESTION:  How have you seen discipline pay off in your life…or how have you experienced the lack of it bringing some negative results in your life?

 

Welcome to the last Sunday in this summer series on “Becoming Disciple-Making Disciples.” 

Recap:  Last week we talked about how to become followers of Jesus…disciples… who can say to other people as the Apostle Paul did, “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ” (I Cor. 11:1).  Obviously, Paul understood that we were to look to the life of Jesus as the model to follow for the maximal relationship with God the Father.  If we pursue the heart and actions of Jesus as Jesus pursued the heart and actions of His Heavenly Father, then we’re going to be able to be disciples/followers of Jesus who can say with Paul, “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.” 

 

Then we looked at the relationship of discipline to discipleship.  I mentioned that God, as our loving heavenly Father, does “discipline” us through both the people he puts in our life and the circumstances he allows and brings to us.  We usually don’t have a choice about either of those very formative and challenging “discipline agents” in our lives. 

Sure, we know that when we walk in obedience to God, we’re spared some of the painful consequences that come when we engage in sinful disobedience to Him.  But even for the person who is genuinely trying to obey God as much as they know and can, God will still keep growing us up more and more into the nature of His Son Jesus through people and circumstances we don’t always choose.

 

But there is that one category of the “spiritual disciplines” that God has given to us which we can choose to engage in or not.  Spiritual disciplines are actions we can take at any time in our lives in order to accelerate our growth and experience deeper connections with God. 

So I gave you a list of some of the “spiritual disciplines” that have helped followers of Jesus Christ through the centuries to “grow up” in Jesus.  Then I asked you to let me know which ones you are most interested in learning more about so that you can engage in them more.  Here they are in order of frequency requested in both the category of “disciplines of engagement” (engaging in something) and “disciplines of disengagement” (disengaging from something in order to engage with God more). 

Disciplines of Engagement

1)      Evangelism—1,2,3, 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12

2)      Prayer—1,2,3,4, 5, 6, 7,8,9, 10,11,12

3)      Bible reading—1,2, 3,4, 5, 6, 7,8,9,10,11

4)      Bible Meditation—1, 2,3, 4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11

5)      Bible Memorization—1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

6)      Confession—1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

7)      Journaling—1, 2,3,4,5,6

8)      Serving—1,2,3,4,5,6

9)      Hospitality—1,2,3,4,5

10)  Thanksgiving—1,2,3,4

11)  Bible study—1, 2,3,4

12)  Fellowship—1,2,3

13)  Worship—1, 2,3

 

Disciplines of Disengagement

1)      Submission—1,2,3,4,5,6, 7,8,9,10,11,12

2)      Silence—1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11

3)      Sacrifice—1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

4)      Simplicity/Frugality—1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

5)      Solitude—1,2,3, 4,5,6,7,8

6)      Rest—1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

7)      Fasting—1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

8)      Secrecy—1,2,3,4,5,6

9)      Giving—1,2,3,4,5

10)  Watching—1,2,3

11)  Chastity—1,2

 

For today’s message, I would like to take one of your top 5 in both categories to study.  Since we’ll be talking about prayer in a message in our next series, I’d like to actually combine the 3rd, 4th and 5th disciplines that all have to do with engaging the Word of God:  reading, memorization, meditation.

 

Story:  Not long ago I had a conversation with a man from a Muslim home recently about the advice he received from his father when he came to the U.S. to study.  He had grown up in a 100% Muslim culture where Sharia law is the law of the land.  He was depressed with life, with what he saw around him and how the worst people were the religious leaders who showed no love or grace or forgiveness or even real kindness. 

            His father gave him some completely unexpected advice before he left.  He said, “Use this opportunity to read the Bible, apply it to your life and you will be happy.” 

            I about fell out of my chair!  “Your father said this?” I asked.  “Yes,” was the reply.  This man, a Muslim, had also studied abroad.  Apparently his exposure to God’s word, the Bible, and probably some of God’s people, Christ-followers, had been such that he knew something of the power of the Bible to bring joy to a life. 

            Then I asked this student if his study of God’s Word during his time here had produced that same effect in his life.  His response was an emphatic, “Yes, it has.” 

 

No matter where I go in the world, no matter what culture or what religious tradition, no matter whether it is in a federal prison in San Jose, Costa Rica or Deer Lodge, MT…whether it is in a group of Christian film industry people in Hollywood or a group of judges and lawyers in Manila, the word of God has power to change people over and over and over again. 

 

There simply is nothing in this world that compares with the Word of God.  We can learn isolated truths about God from others who know Him.  But how do we know what they say is 100% accurate.  We can look at nature and pick up some things about who God is, but even nature is an imperfect filter.  And there is SO much we wouldn’t know about God’s love, His grace, his mercy, his justice and so many other amazing things about God without His Word. 

            I do not think you will find a well-rounded, spiritually fit follower of Jesus who doesn’t make the Word of God the milk and meat of their spiritual diet.  Is it possible?  Sure.  The early church didn’t have the fullness of the N.T. we have in our hands today. But they compensated for that by daily gathering together in places where people like the Apostles could teach them (see Acts. 2:42, 46).  And when the Apostles taught, it was always the Word of God they pointed to and commended the hearers who checked out their claims and how well they agreed with the rest of Scripture (Bereans, Ac. 17:10ff). 

            As challenging as the Word of God may be to understand sometimes, its divine Author, the Holy Spirit, lives in everyone who has put their faith and hope in Jesus Christ. (2 Pt. 1:21-- For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.)   And if the Author of a book is living with you, what is the most logical thing to do when you don’t understand some part of the book?  (ASK the author what it means.)

            This truth itself—the presence of the Bible’s author, the Holy Spirit, with us—should guide us in developing any spiritual practice connected to the Bible, the Word of God.  Whether it is Bible reading, memorization, meditation or study we’re talking about, one of the first things we should do in accessing these spiritual disciplines is to ask for help from the Author. 

Every time you take time to read, memorize, study or meditate on the Word, first ask for the Author’s help in understanding and obeying it.  I ask the Holy Spirit to open my spiritual eyes and ears to understand what God wants me to see and hear that moment. 

And when there is something you don’t understand, stop and ask Him for help. 

NOTE:  If every time you come to God’s word, it doesn’t make any sense, then you may need to take a step back and ask yourself, “Have I ever really surrendered control of my life to Jesus Christ, recognized that I need Jesus to save me from my sins, repented of those sins and asked Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit?” 

STORY:  Dad reading the Bible for years, a highly educated and religious man, not understanding or experiencing its power in his life UNTIL he personally asked Jesus to come into him by the Holy Spirit and personally surrendered the control of his life to Jesus Christ. 

 

So first, in any “discipline” involving the Word of God, pray and ask the Holy Spirit for understanding and life-change.  And there is something else that you may need to pray even before that:  pray for hunger for God’s Word.

            I hate to admit it, but there are many days when I find reading the newspaper…or the internet news…or another book…or just about anything is more attractive to me than reading the Bible.  It’s like I’m a junk-food reader!  I’d rather have an “order of news-fries” than a glass of the Word’s spiritual milk.  My soul’s taste buds are conditioned to like salty, greasy novel or magazine-burgers rather than the fresh garden salad of the Word of God. 

ILL:    This last week I was reading an article about how unpopular Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch program is with teens.  And while I’m not wild about some government policy-wonk telling our kids what they can and can’t eat (I think that’s the parent’s responsibility), I found myself a bit shocked at what all the complaints were about. 

Kids were complaining about things like apple and banana slices or yogurt cups.   “They taste like vomit,” one of them complained.  Well, when the natural food of fruits and veggies and dairy products taste like that to you, there’s a problem.  When you’ve got to have your processed chicken nuggets or cheeseburgers only, you really are simply a slave to your taste buds.  Which is why only 25% of children under 13 have a healthy diet.  And it doesn’t get better the older our kids get.  Only 6% of teens have healthy diets!  Where have all the parents gone?

So PRAY FOR SOUL-HUNGER for the word of God.

 

Secondly, let’s be very practical. You’ve got to make time for spiritual food. 

How many times a day do you eat?  Meals…snacks?  3? 4? 5?

What might it do to our spiritual life if, for even just a month, we read the Word of God as often as we ate? 

Ps. 119:97-- Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. 

So here’s the second recommendation I have for making time in God’s word successful:  Make time in every day to listen for God’s voice in his Word.  And make that time, not the leftovers or your day when you are exhausted or totally distracted, but the best part(s) of your day. 

  • When are you most alert?
  • When are you most creative and productive?
  • When are you least distracted by people, projects and responsibilities?

Try starting with some time in that part of your day. 

 

Third, use a version of the Bible that makes it easier for you to understand.  If you didn’t grow up in 16th century England, I’m guessing King James’ English is not the easiest for you to understand.  Try a respected version from the 20th or 21st century.  Here are some good ones on the spectrum from more “formal” translations (that try to keep the word order and word correspondence more rigidly from the Hebrew & Greek) to more “functional” (try to communicate the idea of the original in more language-friendly English). 

 

Formal                                                                       Functional

ASV, NKJV, NASV, NETB, NIV, NLT, Amp., MEV

 

Fourth, read according to a plan.  In other words, don’t just let your Bible fall open to whatever passage, using the “Columbus method” of “discover and land.” 

  • Use a reading plan that covers the whole Bible.  It doesn’t matter if you make it through in a year, 2 years or 5 years.  If you are reading God’s word every day, God will get you through when you need to be through. 
  • Use a plan that gives you something from the N.T. every day.
  • Use a plan that especially focuses on the Gospels. 

ILL:  Dr. Radmacher’s response to a student’s question at a Multnomah Men’s Retreat—What would you do differently in life from your perspective now?  “Spend more time in the Gospels getting to know Jesus.”  The older I am, the more I agree. 

APP: 

  • Take one of the printed reading plans we have at the grid.
  • See our Mosaic web site for links to Bible reading plans.

 

Fifth, look for one word, phrase or sentence that stands out to you in your reading every day. 

Underline it.  Color highlight it.  Write it on a note card.  Write it in your journal.  Do whatever you can to carry that word or phrase or sentence or command with you throughout the day.  God has a way of opening our eyes to what we need to see any given day. 

            He’ll do it if we won’t be like the man James spoke of in James 1:22ff who takes a look at his face in a mirror but then doesn’t do anything about what he sees—the hair that is sticking out all over, the stubble growing on his face, the smudge of dirt on his cheek, the food in his teeth, the pimples that need washing, etc.  We look in the mirror to make changes.  And we look into God’s Word to do the same—make changes that will improve not just our “appearance” that others have to look at all day long but our very souls that we live with for eternity.     

 

Sixth, ask questions of the text.  Let me give you 3 you should always ask.

What does this say?  (Observe)

What does this mean? (Interpret)

What does God want me to do with it? (Apply)

 

That’s what we should be doing as we read any passage of the Bible. (Review steps).

ILL:  Mt. 6:33--  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

 

Memorization and meditation simply take reading to a different level. 

BIBLE MEMORIZATION:

Find someone who you will report to, preferably someone who will do it along with you.  Better yet, get a group of people who meet regularly like a small group, to share verses they are memorizing and what God has been teaching them through that. 

ILL:  Chuck and “Bible Quizzing” as a teen. 

Put it on a card and carry it with you every day.  

STORY:  Dawson Trotman, founder of one of the best Christian organizations of the last century, the Navigators, started memorizing 1 Bible verse a day when he first came to Christ.  He was driving truck for a lumber yard in LA at the time.  While driving around town, he would work on his verse for that day.  During the first 3 years of his Christian life he memorized his first thousand verses.  Navigators still has the best “topical memory system” of the Bible that I know of. 

            There can be some great side benefits to memorizing too.  Our own Chris Buck came to faith in Jesus because some of the Navigator men on his ship would come through the chow line where he worked and ask him to test them on their verses.  Try that with one of your pre-Christian friends over lunch some day.  It might surprise you what kind of conversations result.

Which leads to the final step in memorization:  share it regularly with someone—a family member, friend, stranger, etc. 

  • See “32 Ways to Memorize Scripture” by Pastor Mark Driscoll—lots of apps for your smartphone.

http://pastormark.tv/2012/12/31/32-ways-to-memorize-scripture

 

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Some Christians get all freaked out when they hear someone talking about “meditation.”  Yoga and TM don’t have a monopoly on “meditation.”  The Psalmists told us thousands of years ago in Psalm 119:97ff,

“Oh, how I love your law!
    I meditate on it all day long.
98 Your commands are always with me
    and make me wiser than my enemies.
99 I have more insight than all my teachers,
    for I meditate on your statutes.”

Meditating on God’s word simply means that you take time, not to cover a large portion of Scripture, but to chew on a small piece of it.  Scripture that we’ve memorized will probably come to mind in needful situations a hundred times more and faster than scripture we’ve just read.

ILL: There is a scene in the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall, where Bond goes back to his childhood manor house in the country to hide out.  The only person he finds there is an old man, Kincade, who used to be the gamekeeper when he was a kid.  At one point in the movie, when the bad guys have found where he is and are coming for him, Bond asks Kincade to show him the “gun room” they used to have there.  When he opens the room, it is virtually empty.  There is just one old shotgun his father used to hunt with.  “What happened to all the guns?” Bond asks.  To which the caretaker replies, “They sold the lot to a collector from Idaho or some such place.”  J  Even England knows that lots of people in Idaho prefer several guns to zero or one when it comes to defending yourself and liberty. 

 

POINT:  God tells us that his word is “the sword of the Spirit” (Eph. 6:17), in fact a very sharp one, “sharper than any two-edged sword,” says the writer of Hebrews (Heb. 4:12).  When Jesus faced temptation, that’s the only sword he drew.  When he faced his critics, that’s the only sword he drew.  When he taught in the synagogues, that is the only sword he drew. 

            Too many of us, limited by how little of Scripture we’ve committed to memory, are left drawing a pocket knife…or a letter opener…when it comes to the size of our sword.  God has a host of swords in the Word itself.  But if you’re in a fight for your life, and you go to the “gun room” of your soul and all you see is a little pea-shooter, you’re not ready for the battle.  The more Scripture we memorize, the more battles we’re ready for and the more victories we’ll win. 

 

APP:  If you’re struggling with a particular issue, let’s say spending more than you have or just feeling like you have to spend do feel good about yourself or life, you probably want to memorize a few verses about the temporary nature of money, how it fades, doesn’t really make you anything, or some of the strong words God has for those who find their security in wealth. 

            Whatever the issue, God’s got the weapon of His Word.  But you have to “buy it” through memorization and put it in your soul’s armory.

 

Let me end discussing this spiritual discipline with a story that appears in Robert Sumner’s book The Wonder of the Word of God.  In it he tells of a man in Kansas City who was severely injured in an explosion.  His face was badly disfigured, and he lost his eyesight as well as both hands.  He had just become a Christian when the accident happened, and one of his greatest disappointments was that he could no longer read the Bible.  Then he heard about a lady in England who read Braille with her lips.  Hoping to do the same, he sent for some books of the Bible in Braille.  But he discovered that the nerve endings in his lips had been too badly damaged to distinguish the characters.  One day, as he brought one of the Braille pages to his lips, his tongue happened to touch a few of the raised characters and he could feel them.  Like a flash he thought, “I can read the Bible using my tongue.”  At the time that Sumner wrote his book, the man had read through the entire Bible four times.  [Told in Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, p. 35.]

            God give us hunger for your Word!!!

APP:  What is God asking you to do with His Word this month?  Read it daily?  Memorize a portion?  Take time out of your day to chew on/meditate on a passage? 

WHEN will you do it? 

With WHOM will you share what God asked you to do?

 

QUESTIONS about Bible reading, memorization or meditation???

 

Let’s take the last few minutes as I end this message to look at the #1 discipline of disengagement you expressed interest in last week:  submission. 

What is submission?  The practice of setting aside our own ideas and opinions as supreme and our own will as ultimate by willingly placing ourselves under the leadership/authority of another.

ILL:  Just a couple of weeks ago I was talking about this discipline with my Capstone class at Moody Aviation.  One of the students asked, “How do you practice submission as a discipline?” 

            God immediately brought to mind an area of my life that has been, rather regularly and frequently, NOT in submission to what is actually a God-ordained authority—government.  Of all the authorities in my life, I find myself least submitted, certainly in attitude if not in action, to government.  More specifically, I thought of the speed limit. 

So I said to this student, “If I wanted to practice submission as a spiritual discipline, I might want to start with reordering my life so that I drive the speed limit everywhere I go for, say, a month.”  And I didn’t give it another thought until …just last week when Yohannes and I were driving to the lake one evening, I was flying down a country road I’ve driven probably several thousand times in my life. 

Guess who was waiting for me at a bend in the road?  The local sheriff. 

Guess how fast I was going?  46mph. 

Guess what the speed limit was?  30mph. 

Guess who got a $90 ticket? L 

But guess how much more speed would have made it a $180 ticket?  1mph!  Even in discipline, God is merciful!

 

Just so you know that submission is something God values greatly in His children, let me remind you of 3 passages that teach us where our submission is to be rooted:

1)      Submission is at the very core of our discipleship.  It requires dying to and denying self which always wants its own way.  Mark 8:34-- “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” 

2)      Submission must be rooted in our faith in God, not fear of people.  I Peter 5:5-7-- 5 In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because ”God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you”  Without a deep trust in God and ongoing communication with Him, fear will overtake submission more often than not.

3)      God has designed submission into multiple arenas of life.  Ephesians 5:21-6:9.  I won’t read the whole passage.  But this section of Scripture starts with the command to all of us in vs. 21, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  Then Paul proceeds to talk about how wives and husbands are to practice that mutual submission (husbands with self-sacrificing love like Christ’s; wives with humble followership as they would to Christ); how children and parents are to practice mutual submission (children through obedience and honor of parents; parents through edifying training and instruction rather than crushing authoritarianism); how slaves and masters  (could we substitute “employers and employees???) are to practice mutual submission (with whole-hearted service as unto Christ for employees and with the realization for employees that they, too, have an “Employer/Master” in God himself.

 

God clearly calls us to submission in some specific relationships in life where He has ordained someone in authority over us (government, spouse, church shepherds, parents, employers, teachers). 

            But even in those relationships, submission does not mean we are to blindly do whatever that authority asks of us.  The boundary of submission ends where a God-ordained authority demands that we violate our first line of submission and obedience to God. 

Sometimes the limits of submission are easy to define:

  • A wife is asked to punish her child unreasonably.
  • A child is asked to aid an adult in an unlawful practice.
  • A citizen is asked to violate the dictates of Scripture and conscience for the sake of the State.

In each case the disciple refuses, not arrogantly, but in a spirit of meekness and submission.

 

But let’s ask a different question about submission:  What are some of the blessings of submission?

  • Submission frees us from the burden of having our own way and being all wise in our own eyes.  Richard Foster writes about this when he says, “The obsession to demand that things go the way we want them to go is one of the greatest bondages in human society today. People will spend weeks, months, even years in a perpetual stew because some little thing did not go as they wished, they will fuss and fume. They will get mad about it. They will act as if their very life hangs on the issue. They may even get an ulcer over it.
    In the Discipline of submission we are released to drop the matter, to forget it. Frankly, most things in life are not nearly so important as we think they are. Our lives will not come to an end if this or that will not happen.”     – Richard Foster, Celebration of Disicpline, p. 97
  • It permits us to benefit from wise council. Submissive people ask advice and direction.
  • It allows God to work in our lives through divinely ordained channels.  (That evening I got that ticket, while feeling like a little boy who just got spanked, I really saw that man as God’s hand in my life which allowed me to affirm him, acknowledge my wrong, repent of it and move on without shame or anger.  [I wouldn’t be telling you this if I still felt shame about it.]) 
  • It teaches us that we sometimes learn obedience through suffering.  But isn’t that the road our Savior took?  (Heb. 5:8—“…he learned obedience by what he suffered.”)
  • It invites us to walk by faith.  When we learn to be submissive, we learn to put ourselves in God's hands far more, which allows us to build our relationship with Him.
  • When we practice the spiritual discipline of submission we learn more about ourselves, we become far more patient, we learn humility, and we understand how to be honest with others and ourselves.
  • We are able to listen to others with minds that are open, and we break the cycle of always thinking of ourselves first.

 

How to Practice Submission as a Discipline.
We can build a life of submission by making it a chosen discipline for a definite period of time OR in a definitive relationship calling for submission. Ask God,

“WHO do you want me to submit to today and WHAT should that look like?”
“Who do you want me to voluntarily ‘give in’ to today?”
“Who do you want me to come under today?”
“Who do you want me to put ahead of myself today?”

 

APP:  Ask God to reveal at last 1 relationship in life where He wants you to learn to live a more submitted life in attitude and/or action? 

How will you live that out this week?

 

QUESTIONS about submission?