Last night we continued our series on Practical Spirituality, looking at how someone can live out the Christian life. Here are the notes:

Last week we saw that the only way to truly be a follower of Jesus in our time is to have and live off of the power of God’s Holy Spirit. This allows you to learn and live out the teaching of the Apostles found in the scriptures. Today we want to ask a related question, which is, how do you actually live this Christian life. If you asked the Apostle Paul this question, it seems his short answer would have been, “Walk in the Spirit.” …so, what if you asked him, “well, how do you walk in the Spirit?”

First, let’s remember what Jesus taught. See John 14:12-18, 25-26; 16:5-7, and Acts 1:4-8. He spoke about the Spirit of God as someone who would come and actually live inside his followers. If we turn to the letters of Paul, we can see how this Apostle taught on this mysterious truth Jesus spoke about.

What the Apostles taught:

First, see Romans 8:3-14, 26-27. Based on this passage, if you asked Paul, “How do you walk in the Spirit?” Here’s what he’d say:

1. Have the Spirit. (v.9)
2. Set your mind on the things of the Spirit. (v.5) Develop a life-long habit of thinking about the things God says are important. Another way to say it—we learn what “the Spirit” is thinking. We find those things in the scriptures, we learn them with other believers, and we prove them out in our daily lives by acting on them and finding them to be true.
3. Use that new way of thinking to unlearn old patterns. (v.5-8) This is what Paul means by “the mind of the flesh” or the “carnal mind”—he means that way people think when they leave out God’s commands, and the way it guides their life. He says, those things cannot please God, since they won’t listen to him at all.
4. This leads to lives which are practically shaped (decisions, habits, qualities) by the things of the Spirit. (v.12-13)
5. Be led of the Spirit. (v.14) That is, actively follow where the Spirit is leading—based on the things you’re learning and the new way of thinking you now have. Be “led” like following an experienced climber up a mountain. “Rise up and follow.”
6. Pray, with the Spirit’s help. (v.26-27) Use prayer to overcome weakness in your thinking (you don’t know what to think) and living (you don’t what to do or how to do it). While you pray, consciously depend on the depend the fact that the Spirit is going to help you pray and pray for you. Pray “in the spirit.”

Next see Galatians 5:13-26. Notice this passage has a lot in common with the Romans 8 passage, but it adds a few important things as well. 

1. Identify what the “flesh” produces (v.19) and be informed about the difference between flesh and Spirit. Be able to identify them.
2. “Walk in the Spirit.” (v.16) Order your daily details based on what you know of the Spirit.
3. Now, see 3:1-6 & 13-14.This is active obedience, but not “works”—i.e. not working simply out with your own strength. It happens by “hearing” and “believing” God’s message, and then God “supplies” the Spirit to us moment by moment. Of course, hearing and believing include daily living it out.

Takeaways: How do we live the Christian life? By walking in the Spirit. How do we walk in the Spirit?

1. Develop a daily, lifelong habit of examining yourself and your life by what the word of God says. In this way, learn what the Spirit of God is all about.
2. This is new knowledge. Those things are the way the Spirit is leading. So daily rise up and be led of the Spirit by putting those things in to practice.
3. Through the day—pray for the Spirit’s wisdom and power. Ask God to help you know and have the power to do what God wants done.
4. At each juncture of your day, pray “Lord, guide my words here,” or, “Help me resist this temptation,” or, “Give me the power to forgive,”
5. Understand and remember that it is the Spirit of God, and not your own efforts, which produces spiritual things.
6. Since it is the Spirit who does gives the wisdom and the ability, expect spiritual victory.

And this is key… The scriptures indicate that you cannot live the Christian life without the power of the Holy Spirit. You can not follow Jesus or live out the things he says without first receiving the Holy Spirit, having him come and indwell you, and then learning to live off his moment-by-moment supply of life and power. This is how God designed it all

Tonight we continued our study in practical spirituality, looking at an essential topic for anyone who wants to live the Christian life–How to resist temptation. Here are the notes:

First, a definition: What is temptation? A test where the test is an invitation to use the good things God has created to do evil. 

Why should we resist temptation? Why not just give in?
Because, to give in to temptation is to…

• …ignore God and act like he’s not there—it dishonors God.
• …hurt people and destroy things for the purpose of self-pleasure.
• …bring evil out of good.

How to Resist Temptation:

 and some things you need to do.

What to Know:

1. There is a tempter. (Matthew 4:3, 1 Thessalonians 3:5). So, this is personal.
2. You personally have inclinations that can be tempted. (James 1:12-16)
3. Temptation lies (Ephesians 4:22, Hebrew 3:13)
4. Temptation wars against your soul. (1 Peter 2:11)
5. It wants to bring you into slavery. (John 8:34)
6. Jesus was tempted too. So he understands. (Hebrews 4:15)
7. Jesus defeated temptation as a man. (Hebrews 4:14-16, Mt 4)
8. Jesus wants to help you when you’re tempted. (Hebrews 2:17-18)
9. There is a blessing in enduring temptation. (James 1:12, Mt 5:8)

What to do:

1. Be alert. Know your context and watch it. Know and watch yourself. (1 Thessalonians 5:5-8)
2. When you first smell temptation coming, pray. (Hebrews 4:16)
3. Rely the Spirit’s power to put to death these sinful deeds. (Romans 8:12-14) We rely on the power of the indwelling Spirit by praying—ask him to help you, in that moment, and rely on his help by doing the thing God commands.)
4. Remind yourself about what Scripture says about temptation.
   1. It lies. (1 Peter 2:11)
   2. It wars against my soul. (Ephesians 4:22) (it won’t bless me, it will break me. It will destroy others.)

The point here: Use the statements and promises of scripture to contradict the statements and promises of temptation.

5. Do what you can to get away from it.
   1. “Flee.” (2 Timothy 2:2). Like Joseph from Potiphar’s wife. Run away, regardless of the cost or embarrassment.
   2. “Abstain.” (1 Peter 2:11) (be distant from, avoid contact with)
   3. “Cut off.” (Matthew 18:8-9) Take any action necessary to get sources of sin out of your life. If something tempts you, and you give in to it, get rid of it, regardless of the cost.
   4. “Put off.” (Ephesians 4:21-24) Get it off you.
6. Look for the way of escape. (1 Corinthians 10:7-14)
   1. Notice it.
   2. Pray for help
   3. Then physically do what needs to be done. (walk away…turn your eyes…speak up…   do your duty…say the loving thing…click off…hold still…hold your tongue…)
7. Walk in the Spirit. (Galatians 5:16-21). Practice letting the desires of the Holy Spirit guide your life. This is a lifestyle.
8. Remember Jesus is with us by His Spirit always. (Ephesians 4:30) He sees and knows everything. If we want him to never leave us, we need to remember that he is with us when we’re being tempted. If we want him to hear the prayers we silently think in our heads, we must remember he hears all our thoughts, not just our “prayer” thoughts.

General Practical Thoughts:

1. Memorize scripture and use it during times of temptation. (i.e. Use verses to remind yourself—i.e. this temptation is lying, giving in will not produce the happiness it promises; this temptation wants to fight against me; this temptation will keep me from seeing God, this will grieve the Spirit, etc.)
2. Cultivate your vision of God. So you never want to lose it. (Matthew 5:8)
3. Diligently fulfill your duties. There’s almost always something in front of you that you need to be, or should be, or could be doing. Instead of just trying do nothing really and also trying to resist temptation, get busy doing what needs to be done.
4. Pursue good works. Above and beyond your basic life duties, what Good works are you pursuing in? A life full of active service to God stands a good chance of staying out of sin, because it is full of good things. David watched Bathsheba bathe because he wasn’t out doing what kings should be doing.
5. Avoid sparks. Your mind is made of tinder. Don’t get near things that set it on fire.
6. Stop at nothing to get rid of sin. Make war. Romans 8:13—put it to death.

Summing it up: Pray, trust, act, pray.

Smell the temptation coming. Pray for help. Then act on what ever you need to act on by physically making your body do the next non-sinful thing. Continue with a duty. Remove yourself from a bad situation. The result? You will have resisted the temptation, and no sinned. You must do this every time you are tempted. It may be 30 times in a day.

If you’re not currently a follower of Jesus:

Some thoughts…

• Everyone around us is living a life of totally discovering and giving in to their desires.
• That is our culture’s way of salvation. By giving in to all our desires we’re supposed to find life and happiness and beauty and freedom.
• Jesus preaches the opposite. Many of our desires are twisted, and will destroy us and hurt others if we give in to them. Jesus says that giving in to the twisted part of us will lead to death and misery and brokenness and slavery.
  (To see who might be right, there’s two important tests: 1. The Eye test—How’s everyone doing? How’s our world? Is this big party of giving in to every desire working? 2. The Eternal test—When Jesus comes, the verdict of God will reveal everything. Our witness to what that verdict will be is found in the pages of scripture. God has already told us what he’s going to say the. We can read it all now.
• And—Living this way will also make you guilty before God and incur his eternal judgment on you.
• Christ came to offer a better way.
• Since he died and suffered the punishment for all human evil, he now extends this offer to you:
  • Decide once and for all to turn away from living out desires God calls shameful.
  • Place your trust in Christ as your only hope for forgiveness and rescue.
  • Call on God to receive his Holy Spirit.

…Then begin a life of living righteously by God’s power.

Last night we continued our study of the Bible’s practical teaching on how to live the Christian life by looking at how we are taught to pray as Christians. Here are the notes:

1. What Jesus taught us to pray for (Matthew 6:9-13)

1. Talk to God. Out loud (or in your heart).
2. Acknowledge him as God and ask to get on his wavelength (v.9-10). Evidently, a main thing we need is to remember that our thoughts are not God’s thoughts, and that we need to get our thinking and our emotions adjusted to match his.
3. Ask for what you need. (v.11). In other words, acknowledge God as the giver of everything you need, and not something or someone else. This is how we “put our trust in God.” If I won’t ask God for something, it means I’m depending on something else to get it to me, whether myself or another person or thing. And that means I’m trusting that other thing, and not God. So I become a person of faith by asking God for the things I need. This goes for everything from the food I need every day to the empowering I need to serve the Lord. And if I don’t feel like I need to ask God for something, because it’s just so definite that I just know I’ll get it—I need to think about what Jesus teaches here. “To ask for such bread today is to acknowledge our dependence on God for routine provision.”
4. Talk to him about those who are “indebted” to you (v.12). What are these debts? In Luke 11:4 we see that Jesus also taught to pray “forgive us our sins,” and in v.14-15 the word “trespasses” is used, which tells us that this is not supposed to be thought of as monetary debts. Also notice that it is the people we’re claiming to forgive in 6:12, not the debts. So this is about praying for forgiveness from God, and acknowledging our duty to be forgiving people ourselves. So, ask for forgiveness from God when you need it, and remember your duty to forgive others as well.
5. Ask to avoid temptation (aka “testing”) in the future. (v.13) (So ask for forgiveness from past sin and protection from future sin.) What are tempting situations you have? Pray about those. What about all the unknowns in our future, and the possibilities of trials coming our way? Pray about those.
6. What Christian pray for. (This section was a bunch of verses on Power Point. Here are the verses: Pray for other Christians: James 5:14-15, Acts 28:8, Mark 9:29, Acts 12:5 & 12, Philippians 1:9-10, Colossians 1:9, Colossians 1:10; Ephesians 1:17, Ephesians 3:14, 18-19, Ephesians 1:16, 18, Colossians 1:11; Ephesians 3:16, Ephesians 1:16, 18-19, 2 Thessalonians 1:11, Colossians 1:10. Pray for yourself: Luke 11:13; Ephesians 3:19, Ephesians 6:17-18, Ephesians 6:18-19, Acts 4:29, Acts 16:25-26, James 1:5, Pray for the accomplishment of God’s mission in the world: Luke 18:7, 2 Thessalonians 3:1, Romans 10:1, Acts 4:29-30, Acts 9:40, Acts 14:23, Matthew 9:38, Acts 13:2-3, Romans 15:30-31, John 17:20-21.)

2. How to pray:

1. Pray with other Christians. (Matthew 18:19-20, Acts 2:42) This has always been a major part of the Christian life.
2. When you’re praying alone, pray secretly. (Matthew 6:5-7)
   1. …knowing He’s your father
   2. …knowing he sees and hears everything
   3. …don’t pray empty repetitions, respect God’s personal-ness.
3. Pray “in Jesus name” (John 14:13-14, 16:24). Pray on the basis of who Jesus is, not who you are. We can pray because of his righteousness, his death, and his resurrection. And because he told us to pray, and to use his name.
4. Pray in the Spirit. (Romans 8:26) That is, pray while you consciously depend on the Holy Spirit’s help.
5. Pray all the time. (1 Thessalonians 5:17) This means there will be all different kinds of prayer.

Challenges:

Christians: If we won’t pray, what does it say about us? God will educate us in how to use this important part of the Christian life. Jesus knew it wasn’t “natural”—that people weren’t born knowing how to pray. SO he taught us. Part of being his follower is embarking on a life-long journey of learning how to talk to God and how to depend on him by praying to him, all the time.

Non-Believers: What do you depend on in life, for your ultimate safety, and as the ultimate guarantee you’ll be taken care of in the end? Who’s there for you? The God who made you, and the Lord who died for you, are calling out to you—God commands everyone everywhere to turn from depending on themselves and trusting in other things, and to look to him as their provider and their sustainer. The bible calls this faith. If you trust him this way, he’ll be your Father. Anyone who refuses to trust him is called out for being a worshipper of idols. The bible is that cut and dry. God calls you to come under his authority and protection. He sent his son to die for us to prove once and for all his love, even for those who are sinful.

We saw last week, as we studied prayer, that Jesus singled out one issue in particular that seems to especially affect our ability to relate to God in prayer—the issue of forgiveness. (See Matthew 6:12-15 and also Mark 11:25-26 (where Jesus says, “Whenever you stand praying, forgive.”) So forgiveness (that is, learning how to forgive people, and actually being a forgiving person) is a centrally important thing to being able to walk as followers of Jesus and live truly spiritual lives.

Here is one of those areas where we see an important difference between what most people think of when they talk about “spirituality” and what a Christian experiences when they live a spiritual life. Most people outside of Christianity think spirituality is a personal (even private) thing. But in the Bible the Holy Spirit teaches followers of Christ that true spirituality is essentially relational—that is, it only comes from a right relationship with God, and it can only be truly lived out as we experienced healed relationships with the other people in our lives. True spirituality is in that sense communal—it is about a new family God is creating, where he is the king, father and head. He’s giving this new family a kingdom—and in that kingdom everything depends on everyone being changed by his own love. So if we ever get tempted to think that forgiveness and reconciliation in relationships is no big deal, we’ve fundamentally misunderstood what God is all about in saving us. We can’t ignore and destroy our relationships but just be excited to go to heaven. And we can’t neglect reconciliation with those around us (especially other believers) just so we can get on with the real work of “serving Jesus” or something like that. No, this is the real work, or at least, this is one of the main things we can’t ignore if we really want to know God and live our lives following Christ.

Theological and Historical Background: First, we need to remember that when we read Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness, he is operating with a certain view of the world that most people around us don’t share. That view is the one found in the scriptures, starting in Genesis 2:17 and 3:7-24, where we see that all of us humans are currently under a death sentence. This is true, first because we’re part of the family founded by Adam, who violated God’s commands and brought down the sentence of Genesis 2:17 (“in the day you eat of it you shall surely die”), and second because we’ve all personally sinned and become guilty ourselves. Thus, Romans 3:10-23 is true of all us us—we’ve all offended God and are justly under the penalty of his wrath.

But…God is patient and forgiving. The whole world continues to exist because he’d rather reconcile, fix and heal than destroy and walk away. Everything waited through the long years of human evil so that Jesus could come in the right time. When he came he provided a way to fix it all, and also demonstrated that God wasn’t simply looking the other way as people used his good world to do such evil things. So when we find commands to forgive in the scripture, we have to realize first that everything we do is in a world made possible by someone who is patient and forgiving. We owe our life to God’s big heartedness.

So, how do we actually learn to forgive?

Read Luke 6:27-38.

1. Take your cues from God (v.35-36). If you’re his child, you share his likeness.
2. Pursue a joyful generosity in all (27-love, 28-goodwill, prayer, 29-patience, 30-possessions, 32, love, friendship, 35-kindness) Notice, forgiveness is mentioned (in v. 37), but only once as one part of a larger way of being. Jesus teaches us here that followers of Christ are called to cultivate this large-hearted, open-handed generosity of Spirit across every area of life. The picture Jesus paints here is of a smiling, positive, loving person excited to bless others with things and time and love—in other words, someone like God. This must mean that it’s impossible to be a consistently, authentically forgiving person if I’m stingy, guarded or grudging in other areas of my life.
3. As you live this way, expect to be rewarded from God alone, and in the end, to get the things only God can give. (v.38)

Read Luke 7:47-50

4. Understand the depth of the forgiveness you live in.

Read Matthew 18:15-20 (Note: Forgiveness does not mean that sin cannot be dealt with. Christians are called to confront sin when it is injuring the church or others. This passage also teaches that forgiveness can look different based on what relationship is involved, and may still involve a change in the relationship.)

Matthew 18:21-35

5. Be ready to offer unlimited forgiveness(v.22)
6. Understand how much God has forgiven you. We always “owe” God more than others owe us (v.24). The distance between us and God is always greater than the distance between us and the person who sinned against us. I’m way closer to them, and way more like them, than I am to God. We should cultivate this awareness in our lives. It should change us and affect the whole way we move through life. (For instance, the person in Luke 6 sounds like a grateful person, right?)
7. Then, with a deep sense of your own indebtedness, identify with those who’ve sinned against you and see yourself as being like them.

Read Ephesians 1:7 and 4:32
Notice the movement: We live in forgiveness, offer it to others.

8. Care about the unity of the body of Christ for the glory of God, the spread of the gospel, and the health of other believers. Christians are people with totally new priorities. The ability to forgive flows out of this changed way of seeing the world. You want to pursue healthy relationships for the sake of the larger issues God cares about. (see Colossians 2:13-14 and 3:12-15 for the exact same flow of thought as Ephesians.)

The Process: Learn these things. Remember them when you need them. Pray for the Spirit’s help. Obey – what physical thing can I do to show forgiveness?

Summing it up, and seeing the Gospel of forgiveness: Read Luke 23:33-34
The center of the Christian message is right here—that the only true God is the one who came as Jesus Christ in order to let humans kill him—all so he could secure a just and real forgiveness for them. If you don’t know this God, and follow this Jesus, what forgiveness do you have? If you screw up, if you hurt someone, if you do something wrong—how will you ever deal with your guilt or the damage you’ve caused? How will you deal with the God you’ve offended? What about bitterness from what other people have done to you—do you have any answer for it? So many are living their lives totally dominated by pain other people caused them. Only Jesus Christ offers a way forward—and that way forward is to first receive the forgiveness he offers you for all the wrong you’ve done. As that changes you, he’ll show you the freedom of releasing your bitterness by forgiving others. All of us in who’ve experienced this invite you to become a follower of this Jesus, and to find true freedom—freedom from eternal guilt, and freedom from life-dominating pain.

1. Devote yourself to being part of it. (Acts 2:42 “They Devoted Themselves.”) This word means “persistence or perseverance in something.” (same word as in v.46.) Go with commitment. Athletes commit to working out. Musicians commit to playing shows. Christians commit to church.

2. Go to learn. (“the Apostles’ doctrine”)
The first Christians devoted themselves to learning—“What was true, and what to do.” They learned from the men whom Jesus himself had authorized and commissioned to teach—their job was teach people what was true about him, and to teach people to do what he had taught people to do. (see Matthew 28:20)

To be a Christian in 2017 is to have a fundamental shift take place in your mind, and it takes place in the area of how you think about truth. I don’t think this is to dramatic to say…Christians are people who have been confronted by the inescapable reality that there is one true truth about the world, that it exists, and that it’s knowable. In fact, Christians are people who’ve come to realize not just that we can find truth if we want to, but that truth has been revealed in such a way that, as men and women, we’re under an obligation to find truth. It’s not just out there, it’s right here, it’s come down to us, and it’s not just here as a matter of personal preference, but as something we need to find. So this new awareness of knowable truth which we must care about knowing creates a hunger to go to the places where the source of truth is being heard. God’s written word is that source of truth, and that includes what he revealed to the apostles (the same men who were teaching those first Christians). So we can’t go to hear Peter teach, but we can go read what he wrote, and we can hear his teaching that way. In other words, followers of Jesus today learn to devote themselves to the Apostles’ teaching in the same way as the first Christians.

This points out another major mind shift that takes place for followers of Jesus. One of the things that happens in our minds when we don’t believe in knowable truth is that we stop believing that there’s any real authority in the world. Everyone’s their own authority, and they decide what’s right and wrong for them. That’s so ingrained in us today that when I say it, we’re basically all sitting here thinking “yep.” Probably some of us here tonight actually feel way more at home with that kind of statement than a statement like, “God’s word is our unquestioned authority.” You know, cause we’re Americans. We don’t do “unquestioned authority.” But Christians do. Christians devote themselves to knowing and obeying this authority. And this is super important—the authority is not the authority of the church, but the authority of God’s word. But here’s another super important thing—Christians go to church to hear that word of God taught by…wait for it… humans—men who’s calling and gifting it is to read and explain what the Apostles and Prophets taught. (Ephesians 4:11-15 says that explicitly.) So a follower of Jesus doesn’t say, “I don’t need humans, I have God”—they say, “where are Christians getting together to hear men God has gifted explain what the Apostles taught. (see, for instance Hebrews 10:24-25.)

So we go to church to learn, and ultimately, to be under the authority of God’s word so that it shapes our thinking, our daily living, and the course of our lives.

3. Go to enjoy a shared life. (“fellowship”)
This word means “sharing” in its most basic form. Believers are people who have been “brought into existence by a shared experience with the Holy Spirit.” In other words, when you become a follower of Jesus, you receive new spiritual life from the fact that the Holy Spirit comes to live in you and give you new life, and then you realize that this experience is shared by all followers of Jesus, and that it’s the same Spirit of God who gives us all life. The One who’s living in me is the same one who’s living in my brother and sister in Christ. So He creates a new unity between us that nothing else compares to.

Christians join church to actually experience this unity. They devote themselves to sharing life with the people of God. That’s Sunday morning, but obviously it takes us way beyond a meeting on a Sunday morning, too. A follower of Jesus goes to church as part of a whole life of being enmeshed in the life of “the body of Christ.” That’s one of the Apostles’ favorite names for the church. And, if you are a Christian, you are part of the body of Christ—so devote yourself to experiencing, building up, and receiving from the community of Christians you’re a part of.

If you look at verses 44 to 46, Luke tells us that one of the ways these first Christians practiced their fellowship was by sharing their things—and practically, it doesn’t say they abolished private property, but that they sold things they could to help people. They made sure everyone in the community was taken care of and had what they needed. And I said this back in January—The point is not that Christians have always lived like ideal communists, because historically they haven’t. The point is that in every place where Christians have gathered and truly been God’s church, their shared life in God found concrete expression in shared daily lives, and in shared mission, and in practically caring for each other. So we see in this passage that they also were in each other’s houses—there was real friendship, and there was this general since of unity, gladness and simplicity.

One other essential piece to this shared life, which isn’t brought out explicitly here, but is brought out in other place in the New Testament—is that… because this whole new shared life is made possible by the Holy Spirit, we also devote ourselves to Christian community in order to share the gifts the Holy Spirit has given us. Every follower of Christ is someone the Holy Spirit will work through to bless the community—and so each of us needs to actually be a part of the community to receive those blessings. I need to go and be part of things so that God can use me to bless the body of Christ, but I also need to go so that I can receive that blessing. If you’re not part of that dynamic, you’re missing out. (see Romans 12:1-8 and 1 Corinthians 12-14 for some in depth teaching on this subject)

4. Go to different types of gatherings, and keep Jesus in the center. (“the breaking of bread”).
Some people think this refers to what we call “communion” since it’s called the breaking of bread. Some people think this refers to the meals Christians were sharing (like in verse 46). I read two books talking about this passage and they both took different positions—but they both agreed that it was because of something unique about Christians—these early Christians celebrated communion as part of larger regular meals they shared together. So the point seems to be that, for the early Christians, they were doing big worship services with thousands of people in a public place, including meals and celebrating communion, and they were doing lots of less formal meetings and even hang outs, meeting and eating together in their homes. In other words, this was totally natural community (on one level) with the supernatural element of the Spirit of God with them, and so they did they unnatural spiritual thing of explicitly remembering Jesus in the exact way he told them to. They would take time when they were together to break some bread and share a cup to remember his death.

I bet this gave their hang outs and meal times a totally unique flavor. They couldn’t simply hang out like other people, because they were always letting it all be colored by Jesus’ sacrifice. And so it set them apart.

5. Go to seek God together in prayer. (“prayers”)
Jesus had specifically promised his followers that when they got together, after he was gone, he would be there with them in special way. And so a major thing Christians did together from the beginning was to get together to pray. Part of their gatherings was praying together. It’s what all the followers of Jesus were doing. And we have to believe this means they were praying together in the big gatherings in the Temple and in the small gatherings in their houses. Prayer was one of their major activities together.

So… how do you go to church? Devote yourself to it. Go to learn what is true, and what to do. Go to experience a shared life. Go to all different types of meetings. Keep Jesus in the center. And pray with each other.

A few observations about all this.

First, this presents a really different type of life than the one our culture is pushing. Everything in our day is built to fragment relationships, to break down family, to keep us from really knowing our neighbors. It’s all designed to isolate us in our houses and in front of our screens, so that we think about ourselves as individuals connected to a big mono-culture that is curated by the elite and transmitted through media and technology. So here are Christians, and we’re like, we’ve got this 2000 year old thing that people have done since before there was America or the internet—and it’s real human community with real commitment and real authority…and we’re going to feel it more and more I think, that this is really out of step with the way most people think. Their first go to is going to be like—that’s a cult. But we say—no, cults are based on lies, and operate by people controlling each other. The church is based on Truth, especially the historic resurrection of Jesus Christ, and is based on the authority of God’s word and the shared Spiritual life on followers of Jesus have.

Now, because truly living as the church is so counter-cultural, we all have a lot of unlearning to do—getting old assumptions about what life is out of our heads, and then replacing those ideas with God’s truth. If we just bring our cultural assumptions to church, at best we’ll get frustrated and feel like something’s wrong, and at worst, we’ll become people who mess with the church or even corrupt it. So Acts 2:42 provides a great road map for us as we follow Jesus in this way.

But there’s a really good flip side to the fact that this way of life is really different from what most people are used to. And it’s right there in verse 47. It seems like God wants us to see a connection between the community the Christians were experiencing and the growth of that community. Maybe what’s going on here is that, while there was pretty awesome spiritual power going down like you see in verse 43, and it made people kind of like, in awe of the church, there was also such an attractive thing about their practice of community, that people wanted to join it. And the fact that Christian community is looking more and more strange in our context is just an evidence that people don’t have it. More and more they don’t even have functioning nuclear families or neighborhoods, forget anything bigger than that. So yeah it’s strange to them, but they’re humans—which means God’s wired it into them to want community, and to feel lonely and meaningless when they don’t have it. When they see it in action—when they meet someone who invites them along and they get to taste it—some of our friends and neighbors are going to realize it’s what they’ve been looking for. And they’ll join. God will add them to the number—He’ll make them part of the family. Just like he did for us.

That was the focus of the last time we studied the church. We are separate from the world, different from the world, for the world. And for God, of course. Primarily for God. But when we do what we do for God, the world benefits, and he uses it for the world.

Why does it matter? Because Jesus commanded us to preach the gospel. Mark 16:15-16

What should we say? 

First, see 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. When Paul summarizes the message he says this: the “Christ” has come. This means that “the King God promised, who will fix all the problems with the world” has come. And that King died, on our behalf, as a sacrifice for our sins, and he rose again. There were witnesses. It’s real. The message of Jesus, the gospel, always includes the essential elements of Jesus’ death on our behalf and his resurrection. It’s basically saying: “Good news, God took care of everything that separates you and him when Jesus died, and Jesus rose again to prove it.”

So this is the first key. When we obey Jesus’ command to tell the world the good news, what we’re doing is telling people about Jesus. Specifically, we’re telling people who he was, what he did, and why it matters.

Now, what does this mean? Well right off the bat, it means that we have to know some things about Jesus, at least some basic truths. You have to know that he was a real, historical man. That he did some amazing things, that he was killed, and that when he died he didn’t deserve to die, because he never sinned. He died in our place. And you have to know that he came back to life again—he rose, and so he’s still alive. You have to know these things to understand why faith in him would be a big deal—so you can communicate that to others.

So, if you know those things, and Jesus has changed your life—tell people. God will do the rest. He loves the people you’re talking to. Don’t worry about knowing everything. It’s better to get the basics out there, and let people grapple with it, then to not say anything at all.

In that sense—every believer is someone who should be sharing the gospel.

Should we “tell our story”?

A lot of times when we’re trying to encourage each other to be spreading the message, Christians tell each other things like: “if you don’t know what to say, just tell your story.” Of course, there’s going to be times when it might be better to say something rather than nothing. And, in our culture people might really benefit from hearing your story about how you came to know Jesus, or things about your personal experience with Jesus—especially because it lets them know that you’re authentic, in other words, this isn’t just some religious marketing program with some lines you’re getting paid to say or something. So that’s a strength to telling our stories.

But… I think we need to remember that our stories are simply stories about how powerful and beautiful Jesus and His message are. But our stories are not the message. Not to belabor this, but my story is not the story Jesus commanded his followers, even me, to share. If I never told my story, I could still be a totally faithful follower of Jesus spreading the message he told me to spread. I don’t necessarily ever need to talk about myself to spread the gospel—because the gospel is about Jesus. So our stories are great if they actually are helpful in getting a certain person to listen to or think about the message of Jesus.

There’s two reasons I think this can be good to remember. First: because as a culture we are each taught to assume that we are the center of our own stories. And the Gospel is all about learning that Jesus is the center of the story. If we’re not careful, we’ll never really get around to telling people all the great things about him, and we’ll kind of miss the main point.

Second, in our culture, when you tell people your story, even though that can earn you cred for being authentic, it’ll also mean that they’ll hear something that applies to you, but not to them. That’s like a cardinal rule in our culture, think about it—experience makes something real for the person who experienced it, but not for anybody else. So if they hear you talk about how good your experience with Jesus is, there’s a real danger today that they’ll hear it as being authentic, and so not intrinsically negative (which is good), but subjective.

Let me say that again. They’ll hear you saying something authentic, but subjective. They’ll hear it as being real, but only real “for you.” Our culture thinks truth is something that each person has for themselves, we don’t tend to think of truth as being anything that would have to do with everyone. I think sometimes, Christians, we get frustrated trying tell people about Jesus at just this point.

What’s the solution? It’s fact that Jesus’ message is universal. It’s for everyone, everywhere. People don’t see that right away, but it’s true. I might think I don’t have to file my tax return, but April 15^th is coming either way.

But since that’s like the hardest thing to actually communicate to people today, one of the things we need to do as Christians is be constantly learning—we want to be learning more about who Jesus is and what he did. We want to get clear on what was happening in his life and death. We want to work out issues that might be confusing.

Here’s the awesome secret—The message of Jesus is as simple to learn as the basic sentence, “Jesus died for your sins and rose again so you can be forgiven,” and simultaneously as huge and complex as everything He is and everything he does. A little kid can know it, and the world’s smartest people can’t exhaust it. So basically, the more we know about it, the better sharers we’ll be.

Four aspects of the Gospel, from the Four Gospels…

Luke 4:14-21, 24:44-48

Here in Luke’s account of Jesus’ life, at the beginning and end of his public ministry, we have passages we could sum up as saying something like this: “You have sin. You need forgiveness. Jesus is the one who provides it.” Or we could hear Jesus as saying, “You have sin. I have good news: release from what makes you poor, brokenhearted, captive, blind, oppressed.” The Message?: You need forgiveness, Jesus is the one who gives it. Whether you know it or not, you have an issue. This issue robs you of what you were meant to be—spiritually rich, whole, free, able to see. The issue is what Jesus calls sin. He is the one who provides forgiveness.

 John 1:1-4, 3:3-6, 20:30-31 

John brings out this aspect of Jesus’ message:  You don’t have life. Jesus is the one who gives new eternal life. And it’s significant that this is how he spoke to someone who probably wouldn’t have seen his need for Jesus’ message, if the message had been framed in terms of sin, or of needing to be helped or fixed.

Matthew 4:17, 28:18-20 

Matthew highlighted the fact that Jesus is the true king. His kingdom is in the process of coming to rule the whole earth. We might paraphrase the message from this perspective as something like, “You are in opposition to this kingdom, and must completely reorient yourself by bringing yourself under Jesus’ authority, and trusting and obeying him alone as your king.”

Mark 3:22-27 

In this passage in Mark’s account of the teaching of Jesus we see the part of the message that proclaims: “You are under the power of a spiritual strongman. You need someone stronger to rescue you. Jesus is the Son of God–so he can do it.”

…and that’s just the beginning. There’s so many benefits to committing to being a lifelong learner in this area. For instance, the more we learn, the more we’ll be able share the gospel with all different kinds of people. We’ll be able to reach people who aren’t like us, because we won’t have to rely on having things in common—we’ll just be able to talk about Jesus. We’ll be able to answer questions. The more aspects and different angles we see, the more approaches we’ll be able to use. We’ll be able to go into all different situations and pray for God to guide us and the Holy Spirit will be bringing all these different things to our memory that we spent time learning.

Some Practical Points from 1 Peter 3:8-17

We are to share the message of Jesus…

v.8-9 …from within a loving community.
v.13-14   …without fear (of people)
v.16        …with a clean conscience
v.17        …wanting to do God’s will
…with a willingness to suffer
v.15        …with God is His rightful place in our hearts
…with “readiness” (Preparation and Eagerness)
…in ways they people can understand (“reason”)
…with meekness and fear of God

Last night we continued our series in Practical Spirituality, this time looking at How to Work. If someone were to think, wait, I thought this was about spirituality? Like, Church and Bible reading and praying and stuff… not ordinary things like work–they’d be wrong. Of course, “spiritual” really just means “having to do with the Spirit,” and the Spirit is God, and God is… everywhere. In everything. In other words, everything is Spiritual–at least, everything that the Spirit makes and sustains and invigorates and loves. The only things that are not S/spiritual are things that the Spirit of God does not make or love or empower–things like sin and destruction and hatred and attempting to live as if God is not good and everywhere.

This means that, for the follower of Christ, all of life is Spiritual. And since our work will necessarily take up a large portion of our time and energy, we must see that work, too, is Spiritual. And so, here’s what we saw in the word last night…

First, we read Acts 20:32-35 and noted that, as Paul signed off in his final speech to the elders of the Ephesian church he had planted and loved, he spoke about the way he worked:

“So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. Yes, you yourselves know that these hands have provided for my necessities, and for those who were with me. I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

And we just noted it…it’s pretty interesting that Paul would choose that subject as the final part of his final send off. But then we read his letters to the Thessalonian church he had founded, and saw the same concern.

His teaching to the church in Thessalonica:

1 Thessalonians 2:9-12 – His Example:

1. Constant manual labor to earn a loving
2. Not burdening the church by requiring them to fulfill his physical needs—while he was spending his non-work time ministering to them.

He calls this “behaving devoutly and blamelessly” and he tells them they too should walk “worthy” of the gospel in this way.

1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 – His General Life Directions to them:

1. Desire to lead a quiet life
2. Busy themselves with their own work (not with other people’s affairs) (“mind your own…”)
3. Work with their own hands

The point: So that your daily life shows the good things about the Gospel, and so that you may lack nothing (…and not to be an unnecessary burden to others).

2 Thessalonians 3:6-15 – His specific Instructions to the church:

v.10    If you don’t work, you don’t eat.
v.11    Working will keep you from being “busy” in other people’s business
v.12    So…work in quietness. The idea seems to be, settle down, and don’t disrupt the peace of the community by “sponging off others” (Gordon Fee). In other words, eat your own bread.
v.13    Resist the temptation to get tired of a life of patient hard work that does good in the world
v.14    Notice this problem, and withdraw from people in the church who are “out of order.” In this instance, this word refers to those who insist on being “lazy” (see v.6, 11, 14-15), and refuse to work. In other words—don’t treat them like enemies, but don’t act like everything’s cool, either. Let them feel the awkwardness, and realize that something’s wrong—and honestly, it will probably prompt some conversation.

Two General Takeaways from Paul’s letters to the Thessalonian church:

1. Work is a big deal. If you see it as something optional, you’re wrong.
2. In the church an individual’s attitude towards work is important because of how it impacts the entire church community. The church has always been focused on caring for poor members—especially widows and others who can’t take care of themselves…But, in that kind of environment—where there’s a lot of generosity being practiced and everyone is getting taken care of—it can be easy for some people to think that work doesn’t matter, and that the church just takes care of anyone who needs anything at that moment. But Paul says, no, everyone in the church who can be working needs to be working—and that’s most people in the church. So the point of work here is so that the church can be freed up to take care of people who can’t work.

Points for Us Today—How Should the Christian to Work?

1. Assume that work is a necessary part of life that God designed. It’s not evil. We see this in Paul’s teaching to the church. He didn’t view work as a punishment, but just a basic part of life. And in Genesis 2 we see that work was part of God’s original plan for Adam and Even—It was part of his plan for humanity to spread out and cultivate the entire world. The language of “ruling” and “subduing” is used there in the beginning—it was going to take work for the humans to cultivate the earth and get to the place where it served God and Humanity’s aims. That’s important. The situation was not that Adam and Eve were laying around on long couches eating grapes in the Garden of Eden, and then work was some kind of punishment later on for their sin.

When they sin in Genesis 3, God doesn’t say, “Now you’ll have to work,” He says that now their work will always be messed up with futility, and that their work will be necessary to stave off immediate death, and even then it won’t work forever, eventually they’ll die anyway. In other words, the awesome reality of the good things God gave humanity to do were now bent—there would be sweat and tears in it all, and ultimately it would go back to dust. But then, as we look forward, the good future God’s bringing us seems to restore the original situation—and we can only imagine that there will be things to do in the New Earth.

2. Think about how to do your work in a way that will glorify God. (1 Corinthians 10:31) When the bible talks about our lives, we see that God thinks of our whole life as significant. He talks about things like, “Every word out of your mouth” matters. Sometimes we see people like public officials who have a lot of power, but they use their words and actions really carelessly. And we think, don’t they understand that what they do matters because of who they are? And this is the point of the bible’s teaching about humanity. Because of who we are—made in God’s image, appointed to be rulers over his creation, and created to be in friendship with God himself—everything we do matters. This means that nothing we do is outside of all that significance. Even jobs we might think we hate—even these matter—because we’re the ones doing them. And a Christian man or woman is someone who is having these ideas restored to them. We’re learning to live and work in ways that make sense based on how much we matter. King Solomon wrote, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might..”. (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

So when you work, remember—your job’s significance doesn’t come from how glamorous or exciting or fulfilling it is—it comes from the fact that you’re made in God’s image, and this is something God gave you to do. And so practically living this out is going to include all kinds of things like doing our work with excellence and skill, and working with honesty and integrity, and caring for people we work with and the people we serve as we work.

3. Work in a way that glorifies God–do it “from your soul.” (Colossians 3:23) So half-hearted work is sub-Christian. We all get tempted to slack and cut corners, but when a Christian lives that way it shows they’re giving in to the feelings of meaninglessness that pervade our society. And part of the message of Jesus includes the good news that life matters. And not just some lives. Or famous or exciting lives (why would we ever make those distinctions? Their total nonsense!) No every human life matters—because it’s a human life. So when you watch a follower of Jesus work—you’ll just see a visual message, and the message is, this really matters. And then you’ll talk to that person and you’ll find out, he thinks everything matters!

4. Do your work in the name of Jesus. (Colossians 3:17) Remember, everything we do as followers of Christ reflects on him. So when we work “in his name,” we do our work in ways that point to him and honor him. And then when people find out we’re Christians, they think better of Jesus because of the way we work. And then whenever it makes sense, we explicitly point to Jesus as we work.

5. Give thanks to God while you work. (Colossians 3:17) Isn’t there a lot of negativity and bitterness in the world? Aren’t most work places like totally permeated with that? When you watch a Christian work, you’re supposed to see someone who is thankful. And that’s just a totally different flavor than the one most people are bringing to the table.

6. Work with the aim of being able to help meet other people’s needs. (Ephesians 4:28) Paul said this to both the Thessalonians and the Ephesians—one of the reasons for Christians to work is so that we can have something to give to others. And collectively, work, and the giving of Christians to a general fund, enables the church to be able to care for members of the community who are struggling financially, and other struggling people as a way to promote the gospel. People who don’t follow Christ can work to make their own lives richer or easier, but a Christian works to promote God’s work and God’s

7. While you work, think: I’m doing this for God, and to God. (Ephesians 5:5)This is worship! Every kind of honest work can be offered up to God in worship. Or if that seems hard, because a job is repetitive or something like that, at least we can say… we can offer worship to God while we work. Along these lines, I love this quote from A.W. Tozer:

“It is my experience that the totality of our Christian lives—our entire attitude as persons—must be towards the worship of God! If you do not know the presence of God in your office, your factory, your home—then God is not in the church you attend, either! I became a Christian when I was a young man working in a tire factory in Akron, Ohio. I remember my work there—but I remember my worship there, too! I had plenty of worshipful tears in my eyes. No one ever asked me about them, but I would not have hesitated to explain them. You can learn to use certain skills until they are automatic. I became so skillful that I could do my work and then I could worship God even while my hands were busy. If the love of God is in us and the Spirit of God is breathing praise within us, all the musical instruments in heaven are suddenly playing in full support! Even our thoughts become a sanctuary in which God can dwell.”

But there’s one really big point to address in all this. As I started to say a minute ago, one of the big ideas about work in our culture is this idea that life is basically boring and meaningless, so you should try to live your life by finding your excitement and meaning in your work. So—discover your passion, and then try to figure out how to get paid to do that, and that’s how to find fulfillment in life. Otherwise you’ll be stuck in some dumb job and you’ll hate your life. Sometimes Christians get into telling each other we should think this way too.

But that kind of thinking is really not found in the teachings of scripture. First of all, it totally misses the fact that work isn’t meaningful because of our passion, or because of itself—work takes its meaning from the larger world God created. Its meaning doesn’t come from it, or from us, it comes from outside both it and us. It comes from God. God makes work meaningful because God made the world meaningful and gave us a meaningful role to play in the world. So when we get that backwards, and we grow up being told that we and our world are basically meaningless, we’ll try to make our jobs be containers for all this passion and meaning—and jobs can’t carry that kind of weight.

Not only that, but when we talk like that, especially to young people, let’s be honest—everyone will look into their hearts and find a passion for being artists or skaters or musicians or travel writers—everything fun and famous—but there’s like 98 percent of all other jobs that a society needs to run. The fact is only a very small percentage of people will get to do those “really cool jobs.” Everyone else has to do the normal jobs—the jobs everyone’s saying they hate right now. This is a recipe for a sick society. And it’s not real anyway. What happens is that 98 percent of people end up miserable with their actual lives, and then they spend their free time looking at pictures of people getting to do the fun jobs, and wishing and scheming to get a cooler life. There’s got to be a better way… And there is.

I think a biblical way to talk about jobs, and work in general would be something more like this:

“Everyone needs to work, because it’s what humans are meant to do, and also because we live in a fallen world, and right now, work is necessary to our survival. Christians have been freed up from idolizing their work, or finding their meaning in their work, but they’re also delivered from feelings of meaninglessness or laziness.

“So every believer should think honestly about a couple basic questions when it comes to work. Questions like, “What skills do I have, or what kind of raw abilities do I have that I could reasonable get training for—so that I can have a skill someone will pay me for?” God has made everyone with different skills and aptitudes. After we’ve honestly appraised these in ourselves, or even ask others in the church community to help us appraise them, we can next ask, “what actual opportunities do I have for training or work?” Then, we can pray, and use our circumstances to take the opportunities in front of us to find honest work to do—work that will actually pay our bills, so we can “eat our own bread,” and work that will put us in the position to have something to give to those in need, and support the church’s work to do the same.

“But we don’t need to burden ourselves, and our work, and the decisions we’re making for the future, with the idea that we have to find personal fulfillment in the work we do to make a living. We don’t. We just have to make a living. And as followers of Jesus we find our fulfillment from God, and from communion with His Spirit, and from doing his work in the world—often outside of our career. Work doesn’t fulfill us, work provides what we need to live so we can be freed up to pursue God’s work in the world however we have opportunity.”

First, we looked a point in King David’s life when I he got some very stressful news, and how he responded. See 2 Samuel 15:30-34. Then we turned to a Psalm that many people think was written by David in response to that news. Psalm 55. We especially looked at Psalm 55:22.

Psalm 55:22. Notice the logic. “Cast your burden on the LORD, And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.” (For context and connections with the episode in 2 Samuel 15, see see also 55:1-14 and 55:20-22)

So…do you have a burden? Cast it on the Lord. And then God will sustain you. How? He won’t permit you to be “moved.” That is, you won’t “be moved,” as in you won’t be “shaken,” you won’t “slip or slide” away from the path where you’re supposed to be. Allen Ross says it this way: “God will sustain the faithful in their integrity so that they will not waiver or move from the path.”

Finally, we turned to 1 Peter 5:6-7. In this passage Peter quotes from the Greek translation of Psalm 55:22: “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”

So…Do you have cares or anxieties? Cast them on the Lord. And then leave your situation to him. (In other words, things that stress us make us feel like they’re going to ruin our life, but Peter tells us that “we’ll be exalted in God’s timing.” The idea of being “exalted” is the idea of being lifted up or honored. It’s kind of what we mean when we use the word “success.” In other words, our life won’t be a wreck if we refuse to let stress or worry dominate us, because what we’ll be doing is refusing to think we have to run our lives and make sure they’re successful all by ourselves.

One note. How are we supposed to cast our burdens or stress on God? These verses imply it, and almost expect us to know, that we do it in prayer. Philippians 4:6 says it directly—“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”

What I realized about my own tendencies.

When something’s bothering me, my natural reflex is to talk about it with someone. For me, that someone used to be friends, but after I got married, my go to person to talk to became my wife.

So, you know, something’s stressing me, and I talk to her about it. It seems totally innocent. We talk about everything, so why wouldn’t we talk about this negative-feeling stuff too? But what I’ve discovered is that sometimes in these situations, maybe even most of the time, when I “get things off my chest” or just “talk it out” what happens is, I can leave the conversation feeling better, but she leaves it feeling worse. She might feel bad for me or angry at the situation, or just agitated by the stress I was describing. So what just happened? I took the agitation I was feeling and I used my words to unburden myself onto her. I just handed the burden or the stress to her with a conversation.

I kind of knew that I did this. Pieces of this realization had already been slowly coalescing in my mind, but recently they came together for me. I love how God does this when we’re actively following him. He’s really good at using all kinds of ordinary things to create this sort of daily school where he’s teaching us. In this case it was the “speaking” aspect of both conversation with other people and prayer that provided the connecting point for me, and gave me my light bulb moment.

Like I said, when I talk about my stress to my wife, I’m using words to unburden myself. And the Lord brought these two verses to my mind, from Psalms and 1 Peter, and I realized—this language of “casting my burden” or “casting my cares” perfectly describes what I do to Veronica. And of course, what do these verses invite me to do instead? They invite me to cast my burdens on God. In other words, God Almighty is asking me to use my words to talk to him about my stress. I think it has to mean, literally, in the same way that we might tend to use other human beings to unload on, God says, “Unload on me.” And when we see that, I think we have to also see that there’s probably an unspoken, silent acknowledgement of the other side of this coin. “Unload on me, and not so much on other people.”

And this leads us to a couple more insights. Both David and Peter tell us things about God’s ability to handle our burdens that show us why he’s really a superior burden carrier than anyone else.

David says, “Cast your burden on the LORD, And He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved,” and we might add, “and remember, whenever you’re talking to other people, they can’t sustain you, and they have no power, ultimately, to make sure you won’t be moved. Only God can do those things.”

And Peter says, “Cast all your care upon Him, for He cares for you,” and we can imagine him saying, “No one else has the same kind of love and concern for you that he does. His love is actually big enough to handle all of your stress, and his desire to help you isn’t limited by any human limitations.”

It’s not negativity; it’s just realistic to finally notice that no one around me can handle the stress of my soul. I can’t. So why do I keep expecting other people to be able to? In fact, what realizing this actually does for me is free me up from being disappointed with people all the time. It frees me up from feeling like people have let me down if I make them handle my stress and then (surprise, surprise) I don’t actually feel sustained and strengthened afterwards. Because you know what it’s like, at some point the stress comes rushing back and then you’re just looking for a few more minutes to make someone listen to it all again. And when I’ve relieved others of the duty of carrying my stress, it actually frees me up to love them with much more realistic expectations for my relationships.

The fact is that God did not make my wife to handle all my stress. That’s not why he led her to marry me. And it’s not what she’s for. And that’s the craziest part of this whole thing—God says that that’s what he wants us to use him for. God presents himself as Someone who understands that we live in a world filled with things that overwhelm us. And what he says to us, really through the whole bible, is that his solution for that reality is himself. It’s like he’s saying, “you were never meant to face the world without me. Come talk to me about that world that’s stressing you out.”

And so that’s it. The follower of Jesus learns to handle stress by telling God—unloading on God—about everything. And then we leave it with him. We get up from telling God about the situation, and we let the words of David and Peter shape our thoughts. We think things like, “Ok, I told God. He won’t let this destroy me. He’ll get me through. He cares about me.” And then we go about our day with that confidence.

This way of operating becomes our becomes our go to. God becomes the main person we think: “I can’t wait to talk to him about this. And think about it—he will never get tired of listening. We never have to worry about gossiping if we’re alone with him. He loves everyone else we talk to him about. He knows everything about us and about any situation we’re in, and he has total power and wisdom to do whatever should be done about the situation. And none of those things are true about any of our friends or family.

Does this mean we shouldn’t talk to each other about our problems?

Now, I’m not saying that any of this means we can never talk to another person about something that’s messing with our heads. That would just be weird. And of course, God does use other believers to bring his grace to us, and to help us with all kinds of things. That’s why Paul writes to the Galatian church, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” And if we love each other, we want to help each other out with hard things. That’s not the issue. The issue is what I do when I’m feeling stressed out. Yes I want to help other people. And they want to help me. But that doesn’t dictate what to do when the issue’s mine.

I think the key to see how all this goes together is to understand that, if we let Psalm 55:22 and 1 Peter 5:7 do their work on us, and we learn to use prayer as the way we handle stress, it’ll enable us up to use our relationships the right way. We will be the kind of people who can talk about difficult things, when necessary, without loading the burden on others. We won’t expect them to do things they could never do or bear weight they could never bear. We can ask for prayer, or advice, or help, and do it in a way that we’re actually asking people for things God will enable them to do for us. We’ll use the community of Christians in the right way. Our relationships will be healthy. We can go through hard things with each other, and, when we each let God be God for us as individuals, we can then be the body of Christ to each other.

I suspect that nailing this down early in life will save us a lot of relational pain down the line.

And there’s one more thing here. If you’re not a follower of Christ, can we just say to you that we’ve found that it’s better to live in a world where there’s someone who knows and cares about all our stress, and has the power to help us, than in a world where there’s no one like that, really, anywhere to be found. And it’s not only better to imagine that kind of world, but we’ve found that that world is the real world. There’s no such world where men and women are left to fend for themselves against cold hard impersonal reality—except where ignorance and evil have separated people from friendship with God. So we’re people who go around spreading a different message. God’s here. He’s close. Only our sins have blocked us from knowing him. And that’s the real source of our stress.

And we see that in both of these verses we’re looking at in this study.

In Psalm 55 it says, “He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.” Only “the Righteous” have this promise. Psalm 1 says that to be in the opposite state (there it uses the terms “ungodly”) is to be like chaff, which is just like a weightless plant husk. And chaff totally gets moved. It gets blown away by the wind.

In the bible, one thing it means for a person to be “righteous” is for them to be totally aligned with God’s purposes for the world. God is in the process of undoing every lie and all evil and sweeping it out of the world. Those who want and work for the same thing are called “righteous.”

But the bible is also clear that none of us actually think and live that way. We have this problem where we love evil. So God’s solution is that Jesus Christ came and lived this way. For his entire life. And then he died by being nailed to a cross like someone who hadn’t been righteous. So he took the penalty for our unrighteousness in that way. And then God raised him from the dead. So now, even though you and I, and everyone else, haven’t been righteous, anyone who places their trust in Jesus as the only hope for humanity—God grants them the status of “righteous.”

No matter how evil you’ve been, when someone turns away from evil and puts their faith in Christ, God calls that person “righteous.” And what happens next is that we consciously begin to let God actually make us people who someone would call “righteous.” When we start to follow Jesus we begin a lifelong process of having God make us actually good. We become people who want to align themselves with God’s purposes in the world. And those who have aligned themselves with him are invited to give their burdens to God, so that difficult things won’t ultimately move them.

Peter is actually getting at a similar thing from another angle in the first part of verse 6, when he says, “humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.” To really begin to know the peace of having God himself be your burden bearer, you first have to humble yourself before him. You have to acknowledge his presence in the world, and his total goodness and authority. You have to acknowledge that you’ve sinned and dishonored his authority, and so you don’t deserve a place in his kingdom. And you have to acknowledge that Jesus is the king, and that he’s God’s solution. You have to pledge allegiance to King Jesus. That’s what’s going on when someone humbles themselves before God.

And when you orient yourself toward Jesus that way, this is the word to you: “now cast your cares on him. He cares for you.”

You’re invited into a life with this kind of confidence and hope. It’s a life that nothing can ultimately ruin. And it’s a life God wants everyone to know.

What is repentance? When we talk about repentance, we’re talking about turning away from sin. We’re talking about a change of heart and mind and a change in lifestyle. When someone repents they change—they stop loving things God calls sin and they stop doing those things too. And then they begin to do other things God approves of.

Repentance is a huge, awesome gift. You actually can change. Your past doesn’t have to define you. You can get free.

How does someone repent? Back in the second study in this series we looked at how someone actually becomes able to live the Christian life. And it’s the same process when it comes to repentance. We hear and learn what God says about life. First we realize that a change needs to be made. Then, while we’re consciously and actively relying on the power of God’s Spirit, we do the practical things we need to do in order to make the change in our lives.

How do you get to the place where you can actually make that change? What kind of heart and mind do you have to have to really see a difference in your life? If you’re not a follower of Jesus yet, this is a totally crucial question for you, whether you know it or not. And even for those of us who are followers of Jesus right now, sometimes even we get into this routine where we do something, feel guilty about it, kind of want to change, but then just get tempted again and do it all over again. The process just keeps repeating. And then what usually happens is that people either get more and more guilty and spiritually powerless, or they get more and more deadened in general to spiritual things. Sometimes at that point it’s kind of hard to tell them apart from a non-believer. So how do we break out of those patterns?

Tonight we’re going to look at that question from this angle—how does a person who experiences repentance think? What kind of thoughts and feelings does God want to lead us to which will help us be able to experience the awesome gift of repentance?

We’re going to get into this by studying Psalm 51, because it gives a pretty detailed answer to our questions.

David, who was king over Israel, wrote this Psalm after a pretty horrible sequence of events in his life, and after his friend, the Prophet Nathan, had confronted him. It’s recorded in 2 Samuel 11-12, but the short version is, he stole someone’s wife (a friend and soldier in his army), got her pregnant, and then arranged the battle so the man would die before he found out.  Psalm 51 (along with Psalm 32) is what David wrote when he realized God had pardoned his sin.

Psalm 51 – The Mindset that Enables Repentance

v.1         Admit you don’t deserve anything, but that you want (undeserved) mercy.

Everything really starts here. We see this all through the Bible. It’s sort of like the baseline, starting point for any spiritual growth. Part of our distorted thinking as human beings is this sense of entitlement, that, because I exist, God owes me a certain life, and a certain set of comforts and privileges. But when someone asks for mercy, they’re admitting that they don’t have any claim on the person they’re coming to. The person’s not obligated to help them in any way. In fact, when you ask someone for mercy, you’re admitting that you actually deserve something negative—you deserve not to be helped, and even to be punished or excluded or something. So what do you have left then? Nothing—except an appeal to the person’s big heart or generous nature.

v.1         Depend on God’s good character.

That’s what David does. He knows that God is big hearted, hugely generous, and full of this thing called “hesed”—it’s this faithful, loving commitment that never fails the person God’s committed to. And so he doesn’t plead any goodness of his own, he just says “God I know you’re really merciful. So I’m asking for you to be merciful, in this case, to me.”

v.1-2   Desire to be clean. (“blot”, “wash”, “cleanse”)

David knew that his sin wasn’t just something God randomly got mad at, but that it was really dirty. God hated it because it was evil. And David wanted to be free and clean from that. Before he could repent, he had to not think of his sin like we sometimes think of sin—as something beautiful but forbidden, as something he wants really bad but it just happens to be off limits—he had to admit that it was dirty, beneath someone made in the image of God, and it was shameful. And he had to want to be free from it all so he could be clean.

v.3   Call sin sin …don’t hide it or make excuses for it.

This goes with the last point. For David to experience real change, he needed to just be honest—what he did was just sin. Just to admit, in our hearts and with our mouths, that what we did is sin, and that we’re the ones who did it—it’s our fault—this is huge. And sometimes it’s the thing standing in our way. But David’s honesty here is the pathway to blessing and repentance.

v.4   Know that your sin is really against God.

This is where David really helps us get to the heart of the matter. It’s a pretty shocking verse, since in his case, he had clearly sinned against someone’s wife by committing adultery with her and by her husband by using a battle to get him killed so he couldn’t find out about it. But David presses even deeper than that. Because who gave David life? Who made him king, so he had a palace with a tall roof, and the power to summon whoever he wanted and command their obedience, and command over the army? Who gave him breath in his lungs and strength in his body so he could carry out his plan? And then, who was there, at every step of the way, with David, seeing and hearing everything? One of the most powerful deterrents for sin in a believer’s life is to learn to always remember that when we’re alone, we’re alone with God, and when we’re other people, He’s there too. We always sin right in front of him. And that’s what David’s saying. To sin where someone can’t see you is one thing. But to sin right in front of them while they’re watching is another level of disrespect. And David’s admitting that level of disrespect towards God. To really repent, we’ve got to admit that our sin is a personal affront to God. Really feeling this leads to the kind of realization David expresses in verse 5 and 6.

v.5         Know that your problem is total and incurable.
v.6         Know that the issue is inward, in your heart.

When you really hurt someone you love, and you realize that it wasn’t just an accident, it’s one of those things that can make you almost despair. You can think thoughts like—I’m just messed up. And not in an excuse kind of way, but in that have an honest look in the mirror kind of way. When David says, I was born this way, he doesn’t mean it as an excuse, he means something more like—this wasn’t just an accident, or some random anomaly in an otherwise good life, no…this is who I really am.

This is really big, and I think all I can say here is that I’ve come to suspect that no one can really begin on the path of following Jesus until they’ve had this horrible experience. It’s the experience of really owning your sin, as an identity—I really am that big of a jerk, or I really am that selfish, or that egotistical, or that perverted or that calloused or that sadistic. I did that thing because that’s who I am. To own your sin feels like death, but I think that’s the whole point. I think it’s part of what Jesus meant when he talked about taking up your cross, and what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote about crucifying the flesh and dying with Christ. So in some sense it is a death. It’s the death of my old inflated views of myself, and then, when I repent, it’s the death of my old life and the old me. But the Bible is clear that this is a death that actually only kills all the things that were killing me, and that if I’ll undergo this death, I’ll find the new life that repentance leads to.

v.7-10    Desire the cleansing only God can give…

When we realize that the problem we have with sin is a problem on the level of identity, and that it’s an inward thing, we’ll start asking God to do a work in us that’s that deep. If our problem is that deep, we need him to grant us a cleanness that goes way beneath the surface.

So repentance is deeper than trying to make amends for the past. It’s deeper than just trying to change our behavior, even though it always does result in changed behavior. But like David here, to truly leave our sin behind, we’ve got to ask God for a real cleansing and change in our hearts. Or as he says it here, we’ll realize that we actually just need a new heart.

v.11       Care about your relationship with God more than you want the pleasures of sin.

This verse starts to get us to the heart of why David was asking for cleansing in verse 2 and 7 and 10. Why does David want to be clean? Because he knows, by experience, that the kind of cleanness he’s talking about, which is holiness, is cleanness in terms of being right in our relationship to God. It’s like when you and a friend are cool with each other because nothing’s in between you. David knew how great it was to have friendship with God. And he knew that his sin had messed it up.

But when David stood on the roof and watched Bathsheba bathe, what he wanted, was her. In that moment for him, he decided he wanted to be with her more than he wanted to be with God. And in every moment like that for us, when we sin, we decide we want whatever fulfillment or release or experience temptation offers more than holiness (what David calls cleanness here)—which amounts to wanting sin more than we want friendship with God. If we live our life like that, or engage in patterns of sin over time, then that amounts to a life that wants sin more than God. And to repent out of that situation—to really experience change—we have to get to the point where we want cleanness, and the connection to God it offers, more than we want sin.

v.12        Acknowledge that Joy only comes from friendship with God.

We’re ready to repent when we stop believing the lie of temptation that true fulfillment can come apart from God, and especially, that it comes from dishonoring God through sin. We come to want the joy we get in our connection to Him more than the joy that connection to sin offers.

v.13        Desire to help others know God and follow Him too.

Before we repent, we use other people to feed our sin. To get to the place where we can truly repent, we have to care more about people than that. We have to want them to know the joy of knowing God. In other words, we have to love people more than we love sin.

v.14-15   Desire to praise God.

David knew, by experience, how great it was to be in the presence of God, singing his praises, whether he was alone or with a crowd. He wanted it again. And we have to desire to praise God in order to be delivered from the deceitfulness of temptation.

v.16-17   Allow yourself to be humble.

Pride thinks that it has something to pay God back with. And it’s afraid of humility, because humility feels like death to pride. But if we’re going to repent, we have to be willing to humble ourselves. If I can’t know humility, I won’t escape sin.

v.18-19   Desire God’s will to be done in the world.

When we love sin, and we don’t repent, we can’t really care about what God wants to do in the world. We can’t care about justice and renewal and the right orientation of human beings towards God and each other. Because before we repent, what we really care about is using the world and people to feed our own desires. To repent, we need our desires changed. We need to become people who care more about God’s holy and loving desires than our own selfish destructive desires.

And this last point gets us to something that’s important to say before we end this. If you’re a follower of Christ, then in some sense, this study is already past tense for you. Verses 10 and 11 all refer to something that’s already happened to us. They say, “Create in me a new heart” and “Don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.” And if you’re born again, you’ve received God’s Holy Spirit, and you’ve experienced this inner washing, and God’s given you a new heart, and he’ll never depart from you.

So for all those of us who’ve already experienced this, what we need on a daily basis is to experience the parts of this we can sometimes get lax in. Sometimes we find sin hanging out in our lives. And we need to go through what David writes about here. We need to get honest about sin, and then get ruthless with it. We need to call it what it is and ask God to set our desires straight. And then we need to get up and obey what we know God wants, trusting him to give us the power every step of the way.