Forming Disciples

Sermon by John Turner

September 13, 2009

Discipleship Is Bursting Out All Over

This fall, this congregation is bursting with new developments in its discipleship ministries. We have new facilities, programs, and leaders for youth and for elementary-age children on both Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings. We can now begin working on new or improved facilities, programs, and leaders for middle school and pre-school. We are resuming our adult education programs on Sunday mornings and evenings. We are adding a new adult spiritual growth curriculum on Wednesday evenings and attempting to offer a small group aimed at men. In all this, we are stretching ourselves and trusting that God will provide the human and material resources needed to accomplish our purposes. In all of this, we are furthering our goals to grow spiritually in the 9 ways that are displayed on our walls.

Fundamental to Christian spiritual growth is teaching about Jesus and strengthening our ability to live in a more Christlike manner. This is a major theme in the Letters of the Apostles. I want to show this in the Letters of the Apostle Paul.

Growing in Christlikeness: A Major Theme in All Paul's Letters

Our New Testament includes 13 Letters written or co-written by Paul. I will run through quotations from each of them in approximate chronological order to show Paul’s consistent interest in forming our lives to show our likeness to Christ. I assure you that I could list many more and much longer passages from Paul’s Letters to prove my case. I am doing just enough to make the point.

Letter Number 1. In Galatians 4:19 Paul addresses his readers as “my little children for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.”

Letter Number 2. In 1 Thessalonians 3:12-13. Paul prays for his readers, “and may the Lord (Jesus) make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all…so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”

Letter Number 3. In 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12, he prays for his readers, “that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of the Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in him, according to the grace of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Letter Number 4. In 1 Corinthians Paul addresses a wide variety of problems in which the new Christians are conforming to the world’s values rather than to the redeeming, self-giving love of Jesus Christ. His bottom line in 10:31 and 11:1 is, “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God….Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

Letter Number 5. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul writes, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord (Jesus), are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Letter Number 6. In Romans 12:2, Paul writes, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Letter Number 7. Abridged from Philippians 3:7-14, Paul writes, “But whatever gain I had…I count as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that …I may attain the resurrection from the dead….Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Letter Number 8. In Ephesians 4:13, Paul states the goal of our life in Christ and in his church, that we may “all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Letter Number 9. In Colossians 1:27-28, Paul celebrates the greatness of the riches of the mystery which God has now made known to his saints, “which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” We proclaim Christ, warning and teaching everyone, that “we may present everyone mature in Christ.”

Letter Number 10. In Philemon, Paul instructs Philemon to receive his returning runaway slave Onesimus, now a committed believer, no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother in the Lord. Paul’s prayer for Philemon is, “that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.”

Letter Number 11. I abridge Titus 2:11-14, “The grace of God has… brought salvation, training us to renounce ungodliness… and to live… godly lives…, waiting for … the appearing of the glory of Jesus Christ, who gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

Letter Number 12. In 1 Timothy 4:6-11, Paul urges Timothy for the benefit of people who read over Timothy’s shoulder, “…train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”

Letter Number 13. Finally, in 2 Timothy 1:13, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

The Point

From beginning to end, all thirteen of Paul’s letters are designed to encourage his readers to live their lives with ever-increasing Christlikeness. There is no doubt that Paul believes that salvation is by grace through faith, and not by works: we do not earn salvation by good deeds. But the point of grace is to produce good deeds. Paul’s most persistent theme is that saved believers are to live their lives in Christ, being ever more fully transformed into his likeness, and letting their Christlike deeds show to the world who Christ is.

My point today is that we are to live and teach in such a way that we convey the Holy Spirit-inspired truths set forth by the Apostle Paul, that salvation is by grace through faith and that salvation expresses itself in an ongoing process of our being transformed into Christlike people.

Our Opportunities to Grow Spiritually

Christian spiritual growth can be largely defined by the degree to which we are becoming more like Jesus. The purpose of The 9 Ways emphasis of this congregation is to help us grow toward the stature of the fullness of Christ. The purpose of The Apprentice Series curriculum we are beginning to use on Wednesday evenings is that we might learn to think more and more with the mind of Christ.

Congregational Mission and Vision

The current version of our congregational mission and vision that we are previewing with the congregation has three components: Evangelism, Spiritual Growth, and Hands-on Mission to Make Life Better. We may find more attractive ways to express those components, but, if we have done our job right to this point, they are likely to remain the key components. In any case, Christian spiritual growth is basic to what we are about. If we are not growing spiritually, we will not be effective or enduring in our evangelism and hands-on mission.

The Costs of Failing to Grow Spiritually

and the Benefits of Growing

Failure to grow spiritually shows up in so many places: at home, at work, at school, in our friendships and recreational activities, and in our church life. If we are not growing spiritually, we are paying a heavy cost, whether we know it or not. Conversely, if things are not working right in any part of our lives, it may be an indication that we need to pay more attention to our spiritual growth.

I am not saying that spiritually mature people have no problems. Jesus, the model of spiritual maturity, had problems, lots of them. I am saying that spiritual immaturity adds a lot of unnecessary problems.

When we are not spiritually mature: We stress out. We over-react. We lose focus. We fail to endure. Either we are too easily blown this way or that, or we get stuck in unproductive ruts. Either we are filled with rage, or we are depressed, or we are obsessive with activity. Either we are autocrats, or we are people-pleasers. Either we are isolated, or we cannot stand to be alone. A life of spiritual growth in Christ helps us to find ways out of those traps. Spiritual growth helps us live more creatively, more productively, more satisfactorily, more contagiously.

I have seen people grow spiritually and then suddenly several of the people who know them want to grow spiritually too. “If God can change old so-and-so, then maybe God can help me, too. After all, I’m not quite as bad as he was.”

Two True Things About Spiritual Growth

I want to say two true things about spiritual growth that may seem contradictory, but I am convinced that they fit together.

1. Spiritual growth is the work of the Holy Spirit. We cannot make ourselves like Jesus by our will power. Only the Spirit of God at work within us through our faith in Jesus Christ can get the job done. So, when we are transformed, we cannot claim the credit.

2. If we want spiritual growth, we must make ourselves consistently available for the Spirit’s disciplined training. Jesus says that, if we abide in him through the Spirit, we will be fruitful. But he also tells us to present ourselves for a good pruning! And he will not prune us unless we offer ourselves for the job to be done. The spiritual disciplines we learn in our Wednesday evening program are simply the ways in which we present ourselves for the Spirit’s work in our lives.

Spiritual Disciplines

Most of the spiritual disciplines that James Bryan Smith presents in The Good and Beautiful God are remarkably pleasant and seemingly easy: get more sleep, silence, solitude; create more margin in your life. It turns out that it is not so easy. We have to battle to free ourselves from our addictions and compulsions, from the demands of the rapid pace of life that our culture expects of us in order to find the time to present ourselves to God for his transforming work.

The Discipline of Sleep

I have been working with some diligence and discipline at getting more sleep for about two months now. I am making a bit of progress. This past week, I made my highest weekly sleep score for the two month period. But I find that I still let too many sleep stealers dominate my evenings and consequently I don’t get enough sleep. My goal has been to add about an hour of sleep per night and I appear to have added about half that. That’s progress, but there is more to come. Why is sleep important? James Bryan Smith suggests that exhaustion is the number one enemy of Christian spiritual growth today.

Once we can stay awake in the presence of God, what changes can we expect? We can expect to hear more of God's guidance.

Speak, O Lord

We are learning this month the new hymn, “Speak, O Lord.” I have been using it each day this past week to guide my devotions. What power it has to shape the aspirations of my heart!

You can see videos of the hymn at these sites:

The writers/composers talk about the hymn, playing and singing the first verse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckhjcIOfV88

Full song performed by Keith and Kristyn Getty with the words on the screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGg40zKRvAg&feature=related

College choir: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iKPa45GVOg

What I heard as I meditated on that hymn is that, as we open ourselves to the Word and Spirit of God, God will renew our minds and shape our hearts so that our acts of love and deeds of faith will show forth the light of Christ, so that the church will be built up, and so that our lives will add up to the glory of God. O may it be so! For that is the goal of our spiritual growth toward the maturity of Christ. I want that aspiration to be at the heart of our church!