Spiritual Discipline #2

We live in a time where we don’t need more intelligent people, more deep people, or even more talented people. We live in a time when we need more DEEP people.
The curse of our age is superficiality and an age of instant gratification.
Everyone wants a quick fix and New Years is a time when people are trying to loose weight, do better financially, etc.
Many fad diets and exercise programs promise results without much sacrifice.
We know deep inside that these are empty promises of success. We know that success comes with hard work and that has always been the case.
Why do you think some coaches are more successful than others?
They make their players work harder.
Talent can take you so far in sports but hard work kicks in and usually the team that works harder will defeat a team that doesn’t work hard. Coaches know that the more skin you have in the game, the harder it is to quit.

Psalm 42: 1-2
1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God ; When shall I come and appear before God ?

God is the fuel that our souls run on. Whether we realize it or not we cannot run properly without a steady dose of God in our spiritual tank. This eliminates any notion of Sunday only Christianity. Christianity is a life style. It is not a mental set of ideas. It is not an ideology like Communism or Socialism. Christianity is a way of life.


"The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived."
-Thomas Merton, "

"Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself."
--Leo Tolstoy
Last week I pointed out that one of our motivations for the beginning of spiritual discipline in our lives is the seriousness of sin. I want to pick up on that theme as we get a little more practical this morning about how one goes about this battle.

I.) Sin is a very serious ingrained matter that must be dealt with.

Many times we think of sin as just personal disobedience to God and that is true but Paul elaborates a little more on sin in Romans. Paul goes as far as in a sense speaking of sin as a powerful force at work in our bodies.
The Hebrew people took sin so serious that they had 6 nouns to describe sin and 3 verbs to describe sinful action.
In Romans 3 Paul lays out how sin is a plague of the entire human race that is ingrained in almost every aspect of the human life.
Paul in Romans 7 speaks of a war that is going in the human being that is under the subjection of the Law. Without the life in the Spirit of God one will continually loose the battle with sin.
I think we can all concur that many times when we meet sin in our lives we try various approaches to get rid of the sin that plagues us. Many times we will go on a full frontal assault on that sin and declare that we will stop having problems in that area.
It may be anger, fear, bitterness, or gluttony that we war with in our flesh.
We say at a times like New Years, that we will no longer have problems with this just a few days later to fall right back down on our face and fail miserably in that area of our life.
II. Goal of Spiritual Discipline


Many people see this battle with sin as a dilemma. They feel that God’s salvation is a free gift and that we can do nothing of ourselves to change the condition that we are in. That is true. God’s transformation of our lives is a gift from Heaven. But that does not mean idleness or mean that we should wait for God to come in and just transform us as we wait.
There is a path that God has laid out for us once we have received His grace. It is a path that will place our lives before Him so that He can transform us into the image of His son.
Imagine someone leaving the big city to become a farmer. They purchase a field in the winter.
They wait until the spring and until harvest and the only thing that their field grows is weeds and dandelions.
They wonder what they did wrong.
They never cultivated that field, they didn’t plow their fields, plant seed, and weed out the unwanted plants.
Many people come to church their entire lives and wonder why they are no different.
They think, I am a Christian, I go to church services but I struggle with sin.
I am not much different than I was before.
Paul talks about this type of sowing in Galatians 3:7-9.

Galatians 3: 7-9
7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked ; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9 Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.

Paul makes it clear that the development of the spiritual life is one that takes some effort on our part. We must use the disciplines that God has given us to shape our lives.
God has blazed a path in Jesus for us to follow. We can look at the example of the farmer and plug in what Paul is talking about. What if those same people came to the country to plant a field and did everything right. They cultivated, plowed, planted, fertilized it, and weeded it.
They would still be dependent on the natural events of rain, sun, and all those things necessary to grow a plant.

In our own spiritual development we can put all things in place but God will do the work. We have to believe that or we are no better than atheists.
We must believe that God will work in our lives and give us the grace to overcome what besets us if we open ourselves to the path of spiritual discipline.

The way that we recapture the image of our Creator that has been marred and misshaped is by allowing God to transform us into the image of His Son.

In Romans the 8th chapter Paul tells the Romans that God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. God’s ultimate purpose is to mold us into the image of Jesus.
We can think of the spiritual disciplines as a path that must be walked.
It is a path that has deep drop offs to the right and to the left. As we walk the path the chasm to our right would be trying accomplish virtue by our own efforts.
Making the Spiritual disciplines a work or Law to be obeyed. This leads to works righteousness and death.
The other drop off or chasm is hedonism. This is just giving up the struggle with sin and allowing sin to reign supreme in our bodies. This also leads to death.
The path that we are called to walk is one that we must work toward but realize that it is the work of God and it is path on which grace will shower our lives.

We can never let this degenerate into a sense of just trying to become moral people. This must be an inward change of heart that leads to a pure life.

2 Corinthians 3: 5-6
5 Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, 6 who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit ; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

This can never become an external change like the Pharisees.

Jesus said that we must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees. They had neglected the heart and the inward man.

This is the very place that the spiritually disciplined life goes to.

We have to put ourselves on this path and stay on it to allow God to work on us and conform us.



What we are looking for in the transformed life:

Galatians 5: 22-25
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control ; against such things there is no law. 24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

When we set our hand to the plow of becoming a mature Christian, this is what it will look like.

LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS, SELF CONTROL.

Why do we not have all of these? Do we believe God wants to give us these qualities? Who doesn’t want to live like that?

Who in this room doesn’t want a spouse that acts like this? Children that grow up to look like this? How many of us have children that we want their future spouse to have these qualities?

This morning let us look at one avenue that will start to lead us on this path and that is PRAYER.

III. Prayer will help God in his endeavor to mold us into the image of His Son.

1) Prayer means communion with God.
Part of the task of prayer is communion with God. That communion was ruptured in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned. We witness Adam and Eve hide from the presence of God.
God wants continual fellowship with His creation and part of the task of prayer is to restore that bond of communication.
The Temple in Judaism stood as a symbol of God’s presence but it also reminded the people of their sin.
There were zones of holiness. Only the most holy place could be entered into by the high priest and that was only once per year.
The holy place in the Temple is just a copy of what is in Heaven.

The Hebrew writer tells us something fascinating.

Hebrews 10: 19-20
19 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,


We are told that we now can enter the most holy place of God but this holy place is the true throne of God in Heaven. This is not a copy but the reality.

One of the main differences between Judaism and Christianity is that the Jews felt that what they did was a copy of what was in Heaven where the Christians knew that we actually participated with Heaven.

When we pray we, through Jesus, are allowed access to the very Holy Place of Heaven.

That should form our entire attitude about prayer.

We are lifted into Heaven as we talk to our Creator. Either we believe that or we are wasting our time as Christians. That was one of the benefits of the cross of Jesus is that we have access to the Father by one Spirit.


2) God wants to redeem time.
God wants to redeem all things. That is why he gave the Israelites feast days to help them remember their Creator in the ebb and flow of time.

The Hebrew calendar was set up on feasts that happened throughout the year and a weekly schedule that included the Sabbath.

Their entire calendar reminded them of their Creator.

Even their day was claimed by God.

In Psalm the 55th chapter we read David exclaim that evening, morning, and noon I cry out to you.

These were the typical three times of the day that the Jews would stop and pray to God. They set specific times in which the prayed.

We can see the Jewish times of prayer all throughout the Roman Empire.

In a Roman city the bell would sound at 6 am for work to begin. The bell would again toll at 9 am - This would usually be the first time of prayer for a Jew and it was called the 3rd hour by the Jews.

The bell would toll for a siesta at 12 noon which was the 6th hour for the Jews and would be another time of prayer.

The bell would toll at 3pm for work to continue and this 9th hour also marked a time of prayer for the Jewish people. A bell would finally toll at 6pm, the 12th hour for a Jew, and it would end the work day for Romans.

Some might look at these fixed times of prayer and say, “Well that is just a Jewish practice that was abolished with Christianity and our freedom in Christ.” If we assumed that we would be wrong.

One just has to look at the New Testament and see that the first Christians continued to observe hours of prayer.

In Acts 10: 9 that Peter went on the housetop to pray at the 6th hour, which was noon. I also find it fascinating that the angel appeared to Cornelius earlier in Acts 10 during another hour of prayer for the Jews the 9th hour or 3pm.

In Acts 3:1 we read that Peter and John were going up to the Temple at the 9th hour for the hour of prayer or 3 pm in the afternoon. Peter and John were specifically going to the Temple for the hour of prayer.

In Acts 13 we see this idea of set time of prayer again. In this passage we read:

Acts 13: 1-2
1 Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and teachers : Barnabas, and Simeon who was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2 While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them."


Leitourgeo- in Classical Greek this word meant the work of the people but in Judaism it had a specific meaning.

It specifically meant the liturgy of the Temple of the Levites but also the Liturgy of the time of prayer.

Paul and Barnabas are not going out and door knocking but are fasting and praying. They are in a time of worship when the Holy Spirit sets them apart.

In Luke 5 we read that when Jesus fame had spread about his healings He would still go into the wilderness to pray alone.

In the example of Jesus and His earliest followers we see that they set certain parts of the day apart to pray.

This is one of the first practical things that I believe that we can implement to start conform to the image of Christ.

It seems simple but we must start.

We must set specific times of the day to pray. We MUST do this if we are going to try to order our lives to the way of Jesus.

Prayer is a powerful tool. If we don’t know what to pray, just pray the Lord’s prayer until you get comfortable with praying during the day.

Let us as a Church commit to setting time throughout our day to pray. It might just start with just praying in the morning and the evening before bed.

As we progress we may take on the way the Jews prayed and do so three times per day. Let us start to order our lives. Many of us have ordered our weeks by being here on every Sunday but I believe that God wants to order every day.

Let us commit to praying at set times daily to develop this relationship with God that he so desparetely wants to have with us.

Next week we will focus on the content of prayer and how to pray as we continue to look at how one is to develop a spiritually disciplined life in this New Year.