Transcript
Speaker: Hey, welcome back to the Grove Hill Podcast. We enjoy having you with us every week. We've been enjoying the comments. We were just talking before we came online. yeah Lots of good comments, lots of feedback. We're excited that you're listening and hopefully finding some value in these conversations. Today we're going to talk about something really, really important for every follower of Christ Jesus. um Something I think too many times that, especially new believers, they feel too much pressure on. And then those who are a little bit older in their Christian faith kind of dismiss as not being real important. And it's ah both are unfortunate extremes there. I'm going to start by reading 1 Timothy 4. These are Paul's words to a young pastor named Timothy. He says... Have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths. Rather, train yourself in godliness. For the training of the body has limited benefit, but godliness is beneficial in every way, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. Our topic today is spiritual disciplines. and Spiritual disciplines. Something that probably, if you've been in the church any any length of time, you've heard somebody talk about it in some capacity. So let's start with the question, what is a spiritual discipline? John, you look like you're ready to roll with a natural. I'm ready to roll. ah
Speaker: This analogy came to mind. I've never met a good ah athlete, let's just go with the sports field, yeah where there's not disciplines included in their regimen. Their daily...
Speaker: waking up to the time they go to bed, there has to be something involved. So spiritual disciplines, whenever we look at our faith side, that just means the the ways that we commune with God, the ways that we sit with God every single day in those disciplines to know him more are things like reading his word. We discipline and set ourselves aside. And I would say do things that that that are outside of our normal rhythm of where we desire to be, because sometimes we're just innately Sinful. You know, sometimes those are very apparent in the way that we want to live. Man, sometimes we're lazy. Sometimes there's a ah selfish desire to be like, no, I really don't want to do those things because they're hard. So spiritual disciplines are the things that are outside of our normative sinful nature, and they are things that spiritually set us in a direction towards who God is. Yeah. I like that analogy because, um man, the time to prepare for the game isn't five minutes before the game. yeah The time to prepare for the game is months, years in advance leading up to that game. And so as a Christian, you want to be ready when life throws you the storm. You want to be ready when someone asks you the question of why you believe what you believe. And so the only way to be ready for that moment isn't to...
Speaker: do cheat sheet right before the moment happens is to base yourself in a rhythm and a pattern of learning who God is, spending time with him, praying to him, communicating with him to prepare for those moments. And so ah the idea of ah sports or athletic analogy is like perfect for this because you build your muscle leading up to that point, just like you would build your faith leading up to those situations. True or false, spiritual disciplines, earnest favor with God.
Speaker: Was not one of the answers. I would say yes. Okay. Tell us about it. I would say yes, because there are acknowledgments of when God sees his people's obedience. I think it's a a separation between salvation and sanctification it's not that we are saved by those works but i believe god acknowledges those people that man they're they're doing specific things for the kingdom that there are acknowledgements at the end of time when we hit glory when heaven becomes a thing where god acknowledges
Speaker: man The things that ah you did for the kingdom, hallelujah. Man. um I don't know how to answer that question. I see i see that. Yeah. um i also see that spiritual disciplines move us close yeah to God, and then we receive those blessings that are close to Him. Yes. Right? And and you're right about the favor in that, like, yeah, there's a reward there.
Speaker: There's ah there's ah a judgment at the end, and when we look at that judgment, it does play closely with how close we are to Him, right? And so um as far as like a straight yes or no or true or false, I'm not sure. right, let me make it easier. Yeah, go ahead. and True or false, spiritual disciplines make God love us more.
Speaker: False. Okay. False. Yeah, because the idea that we're moving closer to God through those things, it kind of comes down to this question, and this is a place where I think a lot of people get confused. There's a difference between having a relationship with God and having a strong fellowship with God. Yes. You can still be a believer and a follower in Jesus Christ and be out of fellowship with Him. That's what Paul talks a lot about in the New Testament is that you lose that fellowship because you step away from things that have you know kept you in line with Him and in line with His heart. So... Spiritual disciplines to that point are things that kind of bring us back into that place of close proximity to Him, help us to understand His heart better, to know Him better, which in turn makes us love Him more. I'm going to have to jump on board with you again okay about ah the favor because there's plenty of times in Scripture when people obey and they receive that blessing right because of the obedience. I'm the side of yeah, true. Yeah. But not true to the... I love the term the fellowship. Yeah, for sure. It makes... it it clicks in my brain where it is fellowship with God. And when you're obedient in these areas, then there's some other things that are going to open up thats as far as you seeing in line with who God is and how He wants you to live. Yeah. All right. So... um
Speaker: I have actually, a guy gave me years ago a book on spiritual disciplines. And I'm telling you, i know not everybody can see this. it It's probably about an inch and a half thick, the number of spiritual disciplines, how to carry out those spiritual disciplines. I had no idea in my mind that there were people... who considered certain things to be spiritual disciplines. We're to keep it simple.
Speaker: Right. Because we were talking about it before we came on, there are probably five or six just real solid spiritual disciplines that I would argue every Christian should practice. Sure, absolutely.
Speaker: ah You get into this book and and other under lists that are out there, and I would say there's some that probably not everybody has to practice. They're nice. They're wonderful. But I think if you're going to be a growing, thriving, abundant Christian, there are some spiritual disciplines that have to be part of what you're doing. okay So I'm going to throw some out there, and let's just kind of talk about them. So the first one, I think probably one of the most important is Scripture, and we talk about that regularly here. yeah So somebody dig into that a little bit for us.
Speaker: uh we need to know what true is and yeah scripture holds the truth of script of of who god is and so the more time we spend with scripture the more we realize who he is the more answers we get answered uh the more we fall in love with him um like you said before he loves us a generous amount and when we discover who he is we discover how much he loves us we love him in return and so um when the world is throwing us all these false things on gender and identity and who we should be as men and who we should be as women. um
Speaker: Scripture tells us all the true things, who we were created to be. Yeah. 2 Timothy 3.16, it's there for a reason. Scripture's there for yeah correction. It's for teaching. It's for all these things that...
Speaker: It's not just the help of, okay, my life's falling apart. Where do I read? you know It's for the the front end and the back end, yeah the joys and the sorrows. And for the the spiritual discipline to be there says, I want this as a baseline for my whole life, not just in the the ebbs and flows. And so it has to be a part of the discipline, the daily thing that that we work at.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, for sure. If you want to know the voice of God, you've got to read the Word of God. The more you read it, the more you know the voice. It makes it easier for you to yeah to discern His will for you. it kind of on a um Other than knowing who God is,
Speaker: it really is practical to life. Oh my. and You know, there's there's reasons why God says, ah don't sleep with someone before you you marry them, right? There's a spiritual reason, there's an obedience reason, but then there's also the flat out fact that if you have multiple partners before you get married, you're you're just stacking up the baggage yeah for for your future wife, right? yeah um And so there's like practical application to how scripture structures things on top of just the goodness of the truth that he saves us from darkness and brings us back to life. Right. Right. It's amazing. Yeah. So a couple of practical things there. Number one, when you're if you're just starting this discipline, don't try to take it too fast or too big of a chunk.
Speaker: Yeah. A verse at a time is good, maybe three or four verses at a time. You want to read it slowly and manageably so that you can comprehend what God is trying to say to you and in those verses. Yeah. And there's some key things when you approach Scripture you want to ask yourself. First of all, what is it teaching me about God? um Too many Christians today read the Bible like it's about us. yeah And it's not.
Speaker: It's about God. And so the first question you got ask is, what does this teach me about God? The second question is, what does this tell me I need to change about myself to be better in line with God? And if you can answer those two questions, that's a great place to start unpacking Scripture on a regular basis. yes So that's good. Number one, reading Scripture. Number two, prayer. Talk about something we just freak out about as Christians. we yeah We overthink it. Talk about prayer a little bit.
Speaker: John, go ahead. As a kid, i used to be terrified. I'd hear guys pray in public, and I thought... Oh, wow. I don't know all those words. yeah And we've talked about prayer around this, yeah around this group. And prayer is such a, um i was just reading a verse of scripture the other day. i think it was in Philippians four, ah that we pray constantly. Like that's the desire that we pray constantly and less focus on the verbiage, less focus on what kind of words you got and more focus on, okay,
Speaker: Who is God says, who who does God say he is? And what does God desire me to ah change about or appeal to him about how I change things in my life? So those real life conversations with real life words, um,
Speaker: By the way, just normal words. God, I don't get this. I'm trying to figure this out. I need your help. yeah And then even pray scripture. that's If you don't know the words to say, yeah pray scripture. I have this image in my head of ah me marrying my wife and then never having a conversation with her from that point forward. right right And where my relationship would be with her after after 18 years of marriage with no communication, ah there wouldn't be a marriage at all, right? And so the idea of prayer is just this this conversation with God. And you're like, what do you mean conversation? He answers back. And yes, He does. He answers back. And so to open up that dialogue, you said it perfect, John. God, I don't...
Speaker: I really don't know what I'm doing, yeah but I want to talk to you. I'm going through some tough stuff. Your word says you're with me during that so that tough stuff, right? Simple language, communication with God. um And you're right. It's kind of foreign. And you said we we kind of freak out about it. We do.
Speaker: But the more you get into it, the more you fall in love with your Savior, the more you just want to be at his feet expressing your gratefulness, thankfulness, concerns, pains, anguish, all the things. And he wants to hear all the things. I think you have to address almost the motivation before you can even start a prayer. Okay, why am I doing this? What am I going to get out of this? right yeah yeah And if you ask, okay, am I worried more about the person next to me? yeah Or maybe maybe it's our spouse. yeah I hear that many times. Man, I don't want to... Even the person we have committed our lives to
Speaker: I don't want to sound like I don't know what I'm doing. It's okay to not know what you're doing. There's plenty of people in this world over the last, you know, thousands and thousands of years that don't know what they're doing, but yeah just talk to God and just say, my motivation is not so I can sound polished. It's so I can sound transparent yeah and open. I'm going to borrow your analogy about marriage because it's funny to me that we talk to God the way we do. It would be like,
Speaker: going up to your your new bride the first night you're married going, I would like to make a formal inquiry as to what might be on the dinner menu for this evening. you know Why would you do that? yeah you know This is your best friend. God wants to have a friendship with you. yeah And for me, one of the things I've learned is because I used to try to do the 30 minutes of prayer and all that kind of stuff, I can't do that because my brain doesn't work that way. I am much more effective as a pray without ceasing guy throughout the day because yeah somebody gets brought to my mind and just throw a prayer yeah to God for it And I don't stop. I don't close my eyes. I don't go, oh, God of the heavens above. I just say, God, ah you know my friend, he asked me to pray for him. we got
Speaker: ah We have a mutual friend who last night asked us to pray for him. That's right. My prayer this morning is I was walking with my wife. I remembered this. i want pray for him. Yeah. yeah And ah I do certain things. like I look up um you know or I know where people in our church live yeah along my route, right? Right. And as I pass by their house, I pray for them, right? cool. And it's not like...
Speaker: Dear Lord, i intervene in their day. it's It's just, hey, God, I'm thinking of Mike today. I just pray that you're just with him. but you know Simple things. All right, so let's go to number three, worship worship. Worship is more than just singing songs on Sunday morning. And it's even more than just gathering with people on Sunday morning. So let's talk about what worship is. And then I want to hit that question that everybody asks, do I really have to go to worship to be a Christian? Right. All right. So who wants to handle what is worship?
Speaker: ah What is worship? It would be living your life in a way that constantly honors God. And so what that means is when you're faced with a decision morally, yeah um that you choose one that honors God because you have a reverent respect for God. um when you're standing in His presence is to lift His name up in praise. um Prayer can be worship, um but living a life that's honoring to God. And so that comes into every single area, your marriage, your parenting, how you are at school, who you are at work. It's really a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So the question that always gets asked, people are always poor it play it off different ways. ah I don't have to go to worship to be a Christian. No, but you can't be a very good Christian without going to worship. Sure.
Speaker: I'm just going to shoot straight with you. Why? Because the Bible over and over and over again says that we should be in fellowship with other Christians. Right. And it's hard to be a fellowship with a Christian in a fishing boat in the middle of water by yourself. Right. Yes. Or laying in your bed on Sunday morning. That's right. By yourself. Yeah.
Speaker: um there are i'm not a i'm not a legalist in the sense that i would say you have to be there every sunday or you're failing but i would say the majority of sundays you need to be in church with other believers wherever you go worship in the name of jesus christ and as as kyle put it reorienting your life around the character of god on a regular basis yeah i heard somebody say the other day kind of a similar analogy about the marriage deal uh how many think you can be a part of ah a marriage and say, oh I'm just going to FaceTime my wife. And you do that for years and years. Yeah. What do you think that's going to work? Right. It's not, you can't have a substitute for life on life. It is gotta be person to person, shoulder to shoulder and right there with each other. It's just, there's no, there's no similarity and you can't explain to me and say, Hey, this watching the TV screens, the same as, yeah.
Speaker: me looking at a person to eye and saying, Hey, how are you doing? And how can I help you? How can I walk alongside you on this journey? Yeah. So there's an interesting phenomenon that hurt happens with human beings.
Speaker: We become like the people we spend time with. Right. Right. I mean, the more the three of us spend time together, that's right the more I can look at Congo, I know what he's thinking right this minute. I know what's going through his head. I know what John's about to do. If John disappears, we know where he's at. That's right. We know what he's up to. So the same thing is true. I to know what this means. The same thing's true in our oh real, you know, our our genuine lives.
Speaker: If we spend an hour, hour and 15 minutes with brothers and sisters in Christ on a weekly basis, but the other six and a half days a week we're spending with people who are lost, unbelievers, don't care about Jesus, aren't worshiping Him, we act more like them. So it should be that our desire, because we want to be more like Christ, is to spend as much time with people who are in that genuine walk towards Him as anything else. Yes. So that speaks a little bit to friendships and acquaintances and stuff like that, but it also speaks to our worship. Yeah. And to give like backing behind that, Proverbs says multiple times that we become like those who we are around. yeah And so um you're right. the The percentage matters. And are your core people...
Speaker: You're like your people that you know and love and they're your best friends. Are they in the same wavelength of faith as you or are these people in the world? Because that's going to determine how you respond and act as well.
Speaker: I think another piece of the puzzle and and one that I just thought of right now, of family worship. you know, to have that element in there, because you mentioned we have so many hours throughout the day where it's either school or work or things that consume our time.
Speaker: But that even just lays on the element of strong church, strong family. That's why when there are issues in the home, there also are issues in so many other areas of our lives. So yeah, to have strong ties with those that we worship in the house of God, but also in the the homes that we walk into.
Speaker: All right, discipline number four. This is one that most people don't practice very often. Fasting. Fasting. Okay, so I'm going to let you start by telling us a little bit about what fasting is, and then I want you to come back and talk a little bit about why you think we don't do it. All right, go, bro. The biblical aspect of fasting is to give up food.
Speaker: um people fast in different ways these times. We fast from TV shows. We fast from things that are social media, social media, those fasts. But when it came to biblically, ah Jesus actually said that um um'm I get my food from the Father. Right. Right. And he had exchanged physical food at that time and set away bread and set away things. And he was relying on his strength from his Father. And so today, same thing.
Speaker: It would be to give up food and replace it with a desire to feed from the Father, right? um And it's... Physically, there's scientific facts behind it that fasting regenerates your cells in your body.
Speaker: It gives you clarity of mind. There's a purification process that goes on. And so there's ah days as you get into it that your body will change. It'll shed out toxins. it will um Your breath will smell because it's dumping ye toxins out of your mouth. like there's ah There's a lot of scientific facts behind it that gives you clarity of mind.
Speaker: And so if you look at scripture, a lot of fasting was done with prayer and when a big decision was coming up or big decision was being made because it gave the people clarity of mind and getting connected with the Lord in those times of making heavy decisions. Yep.
Speaker: Yeah. All right. I would say in that follow-up to it and why I think it's so hard for us, first of all, I would say a bunch of people, even in the Christian faith, don't know what fasting is. They're like, oh, what's this? They they understand prayer. They understand scripture. They understand some of these elements. But fasting is very, I would say, a foreign thing new thing to people. to And in that addition of why they don't do it, though, I think...
Speaker: they see sacrifice and they see, no, it I love food. i love these things. do i and in ah Throw my hand up there. I love a good meal. I love to sit down. ah My family, I grew up and having all of these different things as almost community aspects as family points. It's like you get done with one meal and before you can even put up the dishes. So what are we having for lunch? So it's this, it's this theme of it helps us live.
Speaker: It helps us exist. physically in our bodies. And so we we say, well, why would we want to give that up? What's the the motivation behind it? And then mainly, again, the sacrifice. wait We have to sacrifice something and we are very selfish people. That's just how we are geared. And so the aspect of us being asked to give up of something is just a very, very foreign and difficult thing. So we we are a culture that's driven by our appetites. Sure. Whatever we see, we want. Whatever we want, we go after. And I think that fasting in part is one of those things that helps us say your appetite shouldn't control you. Yeah. That's not what should be there. Jesus, when he was talking about fasting in Matthew, said when you fast, not if you fast. So I think more Christians need to hear that and need to be challenged that when you fast, it
Speaker: God's expectation is that some point, some place with regularity, you are fasting from certain things, primarily food. Yeah. A good practical um way to do that is if you fast for 24 hours um at breakfast, you will naturally get hungry at that time.
Speaker: replacing that desire for food with a desire for the Lord, right? And so at that point, you would dive into Scripture, you would pray. And so for the half hour that you'd normally spend eating breakfast, you you exchange that for time with the Lord. Guess what happens at lunch?
Speaker: you get hungry again, right? Your body knows what's what's coming around noon. yeah And so again, you're gonna exchange that desire for food for again, a desire for the Lord. yeah And you'll find that within the first few days, you've spent more time with the Lord in prayer and in his word than you have in you know the last couple weeks. yeah Now, I want to be clear about something. Fasting is not a way to manipulate God. No. It does not cause God to to have a willingness to listen to us better. In fact, if anything, it creates a place in our hearts for us to have a willingness to listen to Him better. It's an it's alignment with Him. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: All right, number five. Here's one that most Americans never get a taste of, solitude and silence. I don't think I'm going to talk to this. mean, we in world with podcasts. We live in a world with phones and notifications and entertainment at every corner. We can't even get out of our cars. You know, used to you could get in your car and drive for silence a while, but now we have videos and music and everything on our cars. Where do you go to get solitude silence?
Speaker: but And what's the purpose of it? Okay, tell us what the purpose is. anyone This will give you a, so I'll give you ah a story that gives you like a indication of what it does. um Have you ever sat around a campfire at night with other people? The conversation quickly goes deep. Yeah. Right. yeah yeah It's like every single time.
Speaker: And you're like, that's why we love campfire so much because it's place of silence. Right. And then all of a sudden the conversation just goes deeper than it normally would. A lot of times in Christian groups, there's confession of sin. There's expressing struggles struggles that they're going through, prayer times, things like that. And I think it's because we slow down, we pause, and we just look at creation, right? and Fire. And so um for you personally, I don't honestly do well at this at all, at all. Actually, I've been trying to work on Sabbath for about a year and a half. and I can't imagine you being still enough to enjoy solidity. And I'm terrible at it, right? Yeah. But when you go into nature and just pause, right? ah The Lord speaks. It's it's pretty incredible.
Speaker: i think that's a great point that you make, Kyle, because um this our church our church just completed a 24-hour prayer time from Friday night to Saturday. And my wife and I came out two or three times to be a part of the weekend. And on Saturday afternoon, we're sitting in our little rocker glider things that we brought and reading Scripture. And it's peaceful. It's quiet. It's a beautiful Saturday. The temperature finally dropped below 180 degrees.
Speaker: A gentle wind blowing. and I wasn't not sweating. yeah we We were there maybe 10 minutes and I looked at my wife and I said, why don't we do this more often? And she said, have a 24 hour day. I was like, well, not necessarily for the church. Just me and you. Just come sit in the backyard of the church or go sit in our own backyard. We've been blessed with a beautiful house with a great yard. Just sit and read. Um,
Speaker: It's really hard to hear when you've got all these distractions around. Yeah. You know? My wife and I have talked about it quite a bit because when you allow your mind to slow down, you then have to start facing reality. Right? Yeah. And so we're so busy with our schedules. We allow the conversation in our head. When we finally do have a moment to stop, we turn on the TV or we grab our phone and we scroll. And then we try to get to bedtime. And as soon as we go to bedtime, we're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. We set our phone down. We lay down and go to sleep.
Speaker: Right? We don't want the silence in our minds. One of the most reflective things you'll experience is an inmate in jail. Because they have time. they they have time yeah And they think.
Speaker: And they're really success so suspect just susceptible thank you to the gospel because they've reflected on where they're at spiritually and they see that they lack. And so those times of quiet and allowing your brain just to reflect, and that's the idea of a fire, is you're reflecting on what you're going through in life. Right. It's a time for the Lord to speak to you.
Speaker: What most Christians, I think, would find if they did this— So go to jail if you have need some help. Most Christians would discover if they did this that they're not that far from God. It's just that they're too distracted to pay attention to Him.
Speaker: you know um And it happens every time I— i mean retreats This is why we go on retreats, right? We go on retreats. We get away. We go stay in some lodge where the TV reception is so bad we won't turn on the TV. If we are willing to put away our phones for a second, we get some great moments yeah with God yeah and even with ourselves, our own hearts. yeahp so All right. So we talked about worship. We talked about about reading scripture. We talked about prayer, fasting, solitude, and silence. Now let's talk about a really important subject because this is where a lot of people get hung up. It's the the idea of discipline versus legalism.
Speaker: We get hung up on this idea, man, if I do these things, God's going to love me a whole lot better. going to be a better Christian, all those kinds of things. But grace tells us that the reason we do it is not so we can be accepted by God, but because we have already been accepted by God.
Speaker: Yeah. through this whole conversation, the theme has been like a relationship. Yeah. And we keep referring back to like your relationship with your wife or your spouse. And just think if it was a legalistic thing for you to have to meet with your spouse for a half hour every day, you'd sit down and say, Well, babe, I'm here for my obligated 30 minutes. Yes, let's get it over with and then we'll go back about our day.
Speaker: Right. But if I love my wife, I'm going to desire more than that 30 minutes. I want to spend time with her. I want to get to know her. I want to learn her. I want to have conversations with her. I want to sit in silence with her. And so if I'm looking at it that way,
Speaker: it takes the legalism out of it out of it, but there is a discipline aspect of it that we want it to be habitual in our life yes so that we come to it every single day, right? And we like to think of habits as bad, right? Because we always say associated with a bad habit. yeah But to have something that is a habit in our life that we know that when we wake up, we're grabbing our word and we're spending time with our Lord yes is a sweet thing. Yeah. That's good.
Speaker: Yeah, I think in the scope of whenever I look at disciplines and legalism, because I was i was all about that. yeah Like, man, how can I look the shiniest yeah in front of people? and Man, it was just horrible. yeah it was It was this, oh, man, I'm sorry I didn't look like this. And at the end of the day, I had to come to this conclusion.
Speaker: okay, I'm trying to... understand all of this world and understand how God sees me as what can I provide versus what he is and what he provides. And in that, it's I'm working at two different things. And what I realized was if I'm working with me in light of being the the big...
Speaker: focus, then yeah, i'll I'll try to look legalistic all day. But if I'm looking at who am I pursuing and who's my source, I'm looking at the Lord and I'm saying, okay, ah I have freedom and I know that I'm going to sin and I know I'm probably going to mess up, but there is grace. And that on this, i'm I'm looking at disciplines and achieving a relationship with my Lord versus giving credit and credence to myself. Yeah.
Speaker: So the whole purpose of all this is we're having these conversations is that spiritual disciplines enable us to do what Jesus talks about in John 15. That is to be branches that are connected to the vine that abide and create fruit. And the spiritual disciplines just ingrain us even more to the person of Christ and help us to produce the fruit and and really have the fulfillment of life that God promises us. So last thing, we talked about this, different aspects of it. We talked about what it is, why we do it, those kinds of things. But there's probably some of you out here today who are, even if you've been a longtime Christian, you're going, man, I read my Bible every now and then, but I just don't know. I haven't done spiritual disciplines. I've never engaged in them. And I don't really know where to start. What are some practical tips you guys would give them to say, hey, here's here's where you would begin this journey?
Speaker: Don't do everything at once. Okay. Don't try to perfect all the things at once. Just start out with consistency in one thing and then keep adding. Obviously, like prayer and scripture reading go together. Make it a habit to say, Lord, I'm going to read my Bible. Help me understand it. Those are beautiful things. And then seek out advice and start the other things. Maybe try fasting. Maybe seek someone who knows about it and and partner up with them. whatever it may be but um you build it's not like this sprint and you're done it's like this lifelong marathon of getting to know who Jesus is yeah scripture says that he who started a good work in you mm-hmm will carry it unto completion and so starting doesn't look like 100 miles out an hour out of the gate. You just start. Yeah.
Speaker: And so the start looks like ah the very simplistic and I tell people don't read chapters at a time. Don't you don't try to, you know, look at these people that have been following the Lord for 40 years and think, Oh, I need to be there. Yeah. No, just be where God's called you to be and understand the the simplicity, but also the complexity by just little bits and pieces at a time. And I would encourage, you know, from reading the word to to praying to start with, you know, a verse at a time. You mentioned it, Ridley. Yeah.
Speaker: and And combine those things. Start with the verse that you read on that day. Pray yeah that verse that you read. yeah and And start to mesh some of these things together. And I believe God will cultivate some really, really good things in your life when you start to just take the one step at a time. Just start listening to Him and let Him renew your mind. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Saturday, when I sat out here and and in the chair and was reading, I started reading 1 John 1. I love 1 John. it's just a it's a It's a brief book, brief letter from from Jesus, is one of His closest apostles. And in 1 John 1, He starts talking about fellowship with God, fellowship with God, fellowship with God. and how that turns into fellowship with others. That the more we love God and have fellowship with Him, it becomes more natural to love and have fellowship with other people. But as you read that closely, and I'm i'm not going to take time to do it because we're approaching the end of our time here, but as you read that closely, different aspects of disciplines are mentioned all the way through that. The discipline of confession and repentance. The discipline of worship with other believers. Just all those, the discipline of the Word. Because John says, all the things that we've heard, we're giving it to you so that you can have it. Yeah. All those things lead to greater fellowship with God. And I'm just telling you as a listener today, um wherever you are in your walk with Christ, your goal is to be more like the person that is behind this book we call the Bible. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: yeah these these spiritual disciplines are not for any other purpose than just to to work on that thing of transforming your mind to be more like that of the mind of christ and if you'll just put them into practice don't again don't be a legalist if if you're inconsistent start off with don't beat yourself up with it don't listen to the enemy who says you're not doing it right if you need encouragement reach out to your local church if you're here in town please reach out to us we can help you out come confirm some ideas for you, and again, encourage in some ways. But this is something you definitely want to, and I would argue must have as part of your life if you're going to grow as a Christian. yes
Speaker: So good words, guys. appreciate it very much. Thanks for listening to us today. We're going to close praying for you. I'm going to take opportunity to do that, and then we'll wrap up and give it to you for another week.
Speaker: Father, I thank you for your word that gives life. And your word very clearly instructs us that there's some other things that we can do that's going to draw us closer and help us to see and understand you better.
Speaker: And i can know from my own personal experience, those seasons when I have been disciplined, when I have um participated in these disciplines, Lord, my life gets much closer to you and I feel so much more satisfied with where I am and at peace today.
Speaker: By the same token, when my heart turns away and I get distracted and distant from you, i feel so unsettled and looking for answers. I want to pray for my brother and sister out there today who are in that place, the ones who feel like they are removed and distant, maybe even out of fellowship with God right now, that they would pick up the word, that they would slow down their heart, that they would deny their appetites, that they would look for those places of peace and those moments of silence where they can focus in on the face of God.
Speaker: It will absolutely change them. Thanks for giving us this topic for today for my brothers John and Kyle who come along and help me take these things apart and kind of examine them a little bit. And I pray that as we share them with the people who are out there, that they receive the encouragement and blessing they need to be better followers of Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Thank you again for the Word, but thank you most of all for the Word, Jesus Christ, and His sacrifice for us. It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Thanks again for joining us. Always welcome thoughts, comments, anything you want to share with us, maybe even a topic, a direction you want us to go. um Yeah, we we'll we'll talk about anything. We may not be right, but talk about it. Let's go. But we'd love to have you come and join us again next week. I would like, share, make sure you're following us so you can be a part of it. We have a growing audience, and we're thankful for you guys to listen consistently. And then again, if you're here in town, please come join us, 8, 9, 30, and 11 a.m. every Saturday morning or our live stream on Facebook and YouTube at 930. Until we see you next time, hope you have a great week.
Speaker: Bye.
