1 HOW CAN I GROW SPIRITUALLY? The second week of this series we asked the question: How can I begin a relationship with God? I want to end up by asking what may be the second most important question you ll ever ask: How can I grow spiritually? Spiritual growth? What does it look like? It looks like a life that s becoming more like Jesus. It means to grow so that we think like he thought, love what he loved, seek what he sought, and do what he did. And that means spiritual growth requires change. The problem is: real, intentional, positive change in how we think and how we live is rare. We get our lives to where we think they re working. Our career is going fine, our marriages are ok, our kids don t mind having us around, and doggone it, people like us. When we get our lives to that point, we almost never change. Why would we? Why mess with a good thing? Why? Because the goal of your life is to become more like Jesus. Fail at that and you fail at life. Fail at that and you will never be who God created you to be.
2 So how do we do it? Become more like Jesus. Two options: Try harder or train better. The typical male solution to most problems is the willpower solution. Gut it up, work hard and keep trying until you get er done. Sometimes that works. But lots of times it doesn t. A friend tells you he s going to run a marathon this weekend. And you think I d love to do that. You show up Saturday morning, determined to give it your best and try as hard as you can. How do you think you re going to do? Chances are you won t finish. And if you do, you won t have run a marathon. You will have run, walked, and crawled a marathon. Willpower alone is not enough to run a marathon. You need something more than to try hard. You need to train right. Same is true of learning to play a Bach fugue. Or hitting a curve ball. Or finishing a round of golf at par. Or anything that s really hard. You don t go out and do it by the power of your will. You grow into it through the power of proper training. We hear a sermon and we think, this time I m going to do it. I m going to live full out for Jesus.
3 And then when we fail, we end up condemning ourselves and even doubting if we re true Christians. Maybe, the problem is not with your trying. Maybe, the problem is with your training. I Timothy 4.7-8: 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. Paul didn t tell Timothy to try to be godly. He said train to be godly. Training: doing the things I can do now that will enable me in the future to do what I cannot do now. Men, this should give us some hope. Our ultimate goal is to be conformed to the image of Christ. But the way we get there is by training, that means engaging in certain activities that over time change our hearts so they become more like the heart of Jesus. Let s make our example more realistic. Say, you can t run a 10k race right now. But you can begin a walking program. You can do leg strengthening exercises and work on your core. You can move into jogging. You work into longer, slow distances and later you add a regular day when throw in some sprints. You work on your mileage and eventually you are able to do what you can t do now run 6.2 miles. That s an example of physical disciplines. What about a spiritual disciplines? Here s a definition. A Spiritual Discipline: Any activity I can do now that will help me in the future live more like Jesus lived.
4 In other words, a spiritual discipline is what I can do now that will change my heart so that it comes to resemble the heart of Jesus. What are some of the spiritual disciplines that will enable us to grow spiritually, change our hearts, and ultimately transform our lives into the image of Jesus? I m going to mention four of these this morning. None of them as deeply as I d like. 1. Read and Meditate on God s Word. There are many promises given in the Bible to the man who will be faithful to read, meditate on and act on God s word. Psalm 1.1-3: Blessed is the man who(se) delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Read and meditate on God s word and the promise is what? You will have a source of life feeding you and nourishing you. In good times and in bad, you will find strength and you will flourish. Psalm 119.9-11: How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. The purity that we desire the heart transformation that we long for it comes about as God s word is placed and kept at the center of our being. 2 Timothy 3.16-17: All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. God s word teaches us what is true and right; it corrects us when we need correcting, and it equips us to do God s work God s way.
5 Finally, Jesus said: John 8.31-32: If you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The promise here is freedom. Continue in the words and the teaching of Jesus and we will experience freedom: a growing freedom from the passions and the thoughts that enslave us to the old life, and a new freedom to live a transformed life that looks like Jesus. Those are the promises. And if they are true, we need to be in the Word of God, daily. Here s a plan for reading the Bible. First, 1. Still your heart and mind. Turn to God in your spirit. Breathe deeply and slowly. And open yourself to the presence of God. Lord Jesus, I come before you with an open heart to meet with you and to hear your voice. Speak to me, Lord, as I read your word. 2. Read slowly and do not read much. Most guys, being goal-oriented and performance based, try to see how much of the Bible they can cover in the least amount of time possible. But the goal is not to see how much we can read. It s to encounter God and hear his voice.
6 Madame Guyon wrote: Madame Guyon: If you read quickly, it will benefit you little. You will be like a bee that merely skims the surface of a flower. Instead, in this new way of reading with prayer, you must become as the bee who penetrates into the depths of the flower. You plunge deeply within to remove the deepest nectar. When you re reading the Bible devotionally, for transformation, read a short passage. Immerse yourself in it. Read it over several times. Notice the words that are used. And allow them to sink into your heart. As you do, ask God, What do you want me to hear. John Ortberg: The goal is not for us to get through the Scriptures. The goal is to get the Scriptures through us. As you read, you listen for God s voice. What is he saying to me through his word? Here s a suggestion for making SPACE for God to speak to you. As you read, ask God: Is there Something I need to confess? Promise to claim or to trust? Attitude to change? Command to obey? Example to follow? All I want you to do is to make space for God to address you and to speak to you about you and him. You may not realize it, but this is what we mean by meditating on God s word. In Eastern thought, meditation is emptying the mind. In Christian thought, meditation is filling the mind with God s word.
7 And we don t usually fill our minds by rushing through large amounts of material. We fill it by focusing on a passage and spending enough time with it that it actually sinks in. 3. Respond to God in Prayer. After you have read and you feel that you have heard from God, talk to him about what he has spoken to you about. If you have learned something about God, praise him for that attribute. If you have learned something about yourself, or if you feel convicted of some past action or a recurring attitude, bring to God, ask for forgiveness and for the help to change. 4. Leave with a take-away. Decide what you are going to do with what you have learned. How you re going to apply what you have learned. Spending time with God is the point of prayer and reading the Bible. But what flows out of that is transformation and transformation means acting differently because of our encounter with God. James 1.22-24: Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. Don t merely listen to the word, don t just read it and so deceive yourself. What s the deception? The thought that information is enough. The idea that you re growing spiritually because you ve listened to or read the word when you re not acting on it or putting it into practice.
8 James says if you don t act on what God shows you, it s likely to disappear from your mind, and you ll forget what God has spoken to you. The way we don t forget something is to act upon it. After reading a passage, decide here s one thing I will do based on what I have read. And then do it. The whole thing can be done in 15 minutes. If you re just starting set that as a goal. It s a goal you can keep and feel successful about. And you ll be more likely to keep it up. Also, get a Bible you can understand. New Living Bible (Study Edition) is best if you re just starting. 2. Prayer. Most men don t feel like they do well at prayer. And most Christian men feel guilty about not doing well at prayer. If I loved God, wouldn t I pray more? we wonder. And when I prayed, wouldn t I know what to say better than I do? You can t always pray like a preacher. At least not like this preacher. Clip: NASCAR Prayer If that s you, it s nothing new. Brother Lawrence lived from 1614-1691 and he spent most of his life in a Carmelite monastery, assigned to one of the lowliest and most mundane jobs in the monastery. He spent most of his life cleaning pots and pans. But he learned to open his life to God in a remarkable way.
9 And the presence of God in his life attracted many who sought him out for advice about the spiritual life. After his death, many of his thoughts were combined in book form. Four centuries later it is still one of the most read classics on living the spiritual life and inner transformation. It s titled: The Practice of the Presence of God. In it Lawrence states Brother Lawrence: For many years I was bothered by the thought that I was a failure at prayer. Then one day I realized I would always be a failure at prayer; and I ve gotten along much better ever since. In a way, you (and I) are always going to be a failure when it comes to prayer. That s not to put you down, that s to take the pressure off. We may never become the pray-ers we think we should be, but we can get better. In fact, we can all grow in our prayer lives to the point that prayer is one of those spiritual disciplines that God uses to make us more like Jesus. In Revelation Jesus speaks these words to the Christians in Laodicea. Revelation 3.20: Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice And opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. You probably know that in the time of Jesus people in the Middle East were very particular about whom they ate with. Breaking bread together meant that you had established a relationship of trust and commitment. It meant you were friends and brothers. And Jesus says in Revelation 3.20, if you will open the door, I will come in, and have that kind of relationship with you.
10 Often people think of prayer as God s ordained way of getting what we want for ourselves or for others. We pray to get God s guidance or his blessing or his provision. And, the Bible does tell us to pray for those reasons. But the most amazing reason we are told to pray, and this reason, if you really get it, will change your prayer life forever is this: God wants a close, growing relationship with you. That s what Revelation 3.20 is about. Open the door, Jesus says, so we can have a relationship and know each other. And in the 20 th century Trappist monk Thomas Merton: Prayer is an expression of who we are. We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment. The restlessness within our hearts, the emptiness within us that is looking for fulfillment, is our soul seeking a deep relationship with God. We were made with that need and it will remain until it is fulfilled. There are many reasons to pray. All of them good, but the primary reasons are:, God wants a real relationship with you. and you need a relationship with him. And it is that relationship, the presence of God growing within you, that will transform your heart and your life. And that happens only when you spend time with him and share your heart with him. How do we open the door for God to come into our lives more deeply? Be honest with him about what s going on inside us.
11 Nothing you confess to God will shock him or surprise him or cause him to turn his back on you. When you are honest with God about your life, you do not push him away you open the door and invite him into the real you. That s how close relationships begin and continue. Clip: Confessional Philip Yancey: Prayer allows me to admit my failures, weaknesses, and limitations to One who responds to human vulnerability with infinite mercy. So, when you re ticked off at your wife, tell him. When you have doubts, tell him. When you want to wring some guy s neck, tell him. When you re lusting, tell him. If it s honest, tell him. These things going on within you they can either be a barrier to your relationship with God, or they can be a bridge. It depends on whether you try to hide them from God or whether you open the door and let him in. Be real, be open, be honest. That gives God a place within you to do his work of transformation. 3. Serve God by Serving Others. Look at these two passages. John 13.3-5, 1-17: Jesus got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. I have set an example for you that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one ho sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. Matthew 27.22-26: "What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?" Pilate asked. They all answered, "Crucify him!" When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands
12 in front of the crowd. He said, "I am innocent of this man's blood." Within a 12 hour period two men called for a basin of water. One had great earthly power and authority. The other had none. One commanded an army of 5000 men. The other stood alone. One represented the greatest military force the world had ever seen. The other represented a beaten people, living in a conquered land. One was pragmatic and brutal. The other was called an idealist, whose teachings seemed irrelevant and out of touch with the way the real world works. In the deciding moment of his life, one called for a basin of water and washed his hands of the responsibility before him. A few hours earlier, the other called for a basin of water and washed the feet of his disciples. One lived as a ruler. The other as a servant. And today, one is a footnote in a textbook. The other is the dividing mark of human history, every date marked by the number of years it occurred before or after his birth. One is universally despised. The other is worshiped by billions. And even those who do not believe him to be divine view him as an example to live by. Jesus believed that the way to change the world was the way of being a servant. And we have to decide if we believe he was right.
13 And he believed that the way to personal transformation was the way of servanthood. And we have to decide if he was right. And if we do, we wrap a towel around our waists, and ask for the grace to serve as he did. There are always two basins before us. The basin of indifference and self-protection. And the basin of sacrifice and service. And our lives, what we do, who we become, and whether or not we are transformed into the image of Jesus depend on which basin we choose. There are two reasons to serve. One is because (A). People are in need. People are lost and hurting and blind and broken. And God wants to use us to bring others to the grace and truth that will bring them life, wholeness and freedom. But there is another reason. And that is: God wants us to serve (B) So we will be transformed. John Ortberg: The primary reason Jesus calls us to servanthood is not just because other people need our service. It is because of what happens to us when we serve. Clip: Got Service? We ve said before that the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. And at the heart of the human heart
14 we find pride and self-centeredness. And God has a remedy for that. It s called service: serving how we can now so that over time our hearts are changed and we become not just people who serve but servants. How Should We Serve? A. In Ways that are Small We live in the era of the huge splash, the monster deal, and the high profile. That s another way of saying that we live in a time of image and ego. And if we can pull off something big, we feel validated and worthwhile and, if we re not careful, we begin to think we re something special. And when you pull off something big for God, some act of service that s high profile and huge impact, you are in as much danger as when you pull of a similar feat at work. Maybe even more so because you ll be able to fool yourself and believe that you did it all for God s glory not your own. Yes, the Kingdom of God needs men who step up, do big things and lead. And you may be asked to perform that kind of service from time to time. But if you want a heart that is transformed into the heart of a servant, it s best to serve in ways that a small. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The second service that one should perform for another in a Christian community is that of active helpfulness. This means, initially, simple assistance in trifling, external matters. Nobody is too good for the meanest service. One who worries about the loss of time that such petty, outward acts of helpfulness entail is usually taking the importance of his own career too solemnly.
15 The best cure for a big ego is small acts of service. B. In Ways that are Secret. Richard Foster wrote in The Celebration of Discipline; Richard Foster: Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like service in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service, but kicks and screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honour and recognition. It will even devise subtle, religiously acceptable means to call attention to the service rendered. If we refuse to give in to the lust of the flesh, that is when we crucify it. Every time we crucify the flesh, we crucify our pride and arrogance. C. In Ways that are Recurring. Most guys can rise to a challenge. Most guys will serve when there s a crisis or huge need. And that s all good. What s much harder is serving day in and day out. Like any discipline, it s the regular repetition that brings about transformation. Whether we want to or not, whether we feel like it or not, whether it s convenient or not. Luke 9.23: Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. It s serving daily that crucifies pride and transforms our ego. There are two ways to do this. 1. Daily look for opportunities to serve. 2. Be involved in some ministry that causes you to serve regularly. If not daily, then weekly. A way of serving that recurs enough to get in the way and become inconvenient. A way of serving that reminds you that you are a servant on someone else s schedule,
16 not the master who decides when and what and where. Here s the promise Jesus made. John 13: Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. What s the promise: you will be blessed. Take up a towel, become a servant and you will be blessed. Blessed doesn t necessarily mean happy. It means approved. Being a servant may make you happy. But the point is not that serving will make you happy, but that over time it will transform your heart and make you the kind of person that God can approve and call a good and faithful servant. D. In Ways that are Uncomfortable. As I said earlier, we work hard to get our lives to where they are predictable and safe and comfortable. But that doesn t produce growth. We grow only when we are stretched to the point of being uncomfortable. Muscles grow when they are stressed and made to do something that is challenging and difficult. And I think that s how it is with us spiritually. You know the old line: if you keep doing what you ve been doing, you ll keep getting what you ve been getting. Here s the real problem: If you keep doing what you ve been doing, you ll keep being who you ve always been.
17 You and I need to be uncomfortable. You and I need to get into situations that raise questions that don t allow for easy answers or a shallow spirituality. We need to have experiences where we don t know what to do and we don t know what to think, and we have to depend on God in ways we haven t had to before. We need to step into the lives of people who are struggling and hurting so we will feel what we ve never felt, ask what we ve never asked, pray like we ve never prayed, and experience God like we ve never experienced him before. The same routines that keep us in our comfortable, predictable worlds where our ideas are unchallenged, our skills are adequate and our knowledge is sufficient, will never produce a life that is big or grow a heart that is wise. They only create lives that are complacent and hearts that are small. Keep doing what you ve been doing, stay comfortable and in control, and you ll keep being who you ve been. But take a chance, step into something where you really need God to come through, and you might just might be changed and transformed. 4. Share Life with Others. When Jesus wants to change the world and transform the lives of men, one of the first things he does is what? He forms a small group. He calls twelve guys to hang out with him and to experience life together. Jesus knew that if the 12 were going to be transformed so that they could transform the world, they would have to do it together.
18 And the same is true of us. Why? Lots of reasons. Let me give you two. 1. You can t be transformed without deep relationships. Often the only thing in a man s life that is more shallow than his relationship with God is his relationship with other men. But it s only in relationships with others that we learn love, patience, kindness, self-control, and the other traits that are required to look become like Jesus. The Bible tells us to love one another (John 15.12), serve one another (Galatians 5.13), bear one another s burdens (Galatians 6.2), instruct one another (Romans 15.14), comfort one another (1 Thessalonians 4.18) and encourage one another (Hebrews 10.25). You can t do any of that unless you have relationships with others the kind of relationships where someone allows you to step into his life and you allow him to do the same for you. The kind of relationships where you walk through life with someone when it s easy and when it s hard. The kinds of relationships where you can tell each other the truth about each other and about yourselves. We need someone who loves us like a brother and who will tell us when we re blowing it and when we re self-centered and when we don t love our wives the way Christ loved the church. And we need someone we can be honest with. So many men live alone. Even surrounded by guys at work and guys in the neighborhood and guys at church they re alone, wondering why they feel what they feel and do what they do. And down deep many, maybe most guys are lonely.
19 It s only in open, honest relationships that we find out that we are not alone. And it s only in that security that we find the freedom to talk about our lives and get the help we need to change. 2. You re going to need help. Clip: Bagger Vance Here s what I can tell you. Before our lives are over we re going to be hurt and/or were going to mess up. And most of us, our tendency will be to withdraw, cover up and hide. Some of us will experience deep disappointments at work. Others will go without a job for a long period of time. Some of us will suffer incredible pain because of our children. I hate to say it, but some of us will divorce. Some of us will bury our wives. And some of us will make tragic moral mistakes. And when it happens, whatever it is, you ll feel like a failure, you ll feel weak, and you ll be ashamed. Or you ll feel so angry that you don t want to talk to anyone or be around anyone. You re likely to do what men do. Go into your cave physically or emotionally, and lick your wounds. That s what some men do. And some never come out. And often men like you and me get stuck spiritually and fail to be transformed into the image of Christ.
20 Do you know what you ll need then? You ll need someone to come into the darkness and get you. You ll need someone who knows you and loves you enough that he won t leave you there. Because your brothers, he feels that he can and he must keep coming for you until he brings you out. And that happens, becoming brothers like that, that happens before you go into your cave. I am a rock; nothing gets to me. No, you are a man. You bleed, you hurt, your struggle, you need a brother. And those relationships are not created when the crisis comes. They are created beforehand in small groups.