Training Series

Debbie and I were blessed to be able to end our vacation on a seven-day cruise through the western Caribbean. Here is a picture of us enjoying dinner in the ship. It was a very enjoyable time. We actually got to swim with stingrays. But, you know what, all that food and sun and swimming is a little bit overrated. Nothing beats being back here at Bellevue to see all of your smiling faces. It is also good to be back because we are continuing on in this series on the topic of discipleship. For those of you who haven’t been here, we have defined discipleship as ordinary people learning to live everyday life like Jesus. When we say ordinary people we mean that discipleship is for everybody. Everybody is eligible to be a disciple. It is not something restricted to some sort of a super Christian or a super saint. The idea of learning implies that discipleship is not a one-time thing. It is an ongoing process. A lifetime activity. To live everyday life means that being a disciple is not restricted to what we do here on Sunday morning but should be part of your everyday life 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We are all doing this just so that we learn to live like Jesus. We live life as if Jesus was inside of us living our life for us. We have suggested that here at Bellevue Christian Church, in order to help you in this process of discipleship, we have identified three primary means of doing so that are identified by this simple little logo: gather, train, and go. The last few weeks Austin was here and he was preaching on this idea of gathering, and the idea here is that discipleship is not some sort of an isolated activity. It is something that happens best in community. I wasn’t able to hear all of his sermons. I heard the first one but I guess in the second one he said that one of the benefits of being in a community of people is it helps squeeze the sin out of you. I thought that was an interesting concept. We know that when we are in a community with other believers, a small group or home group class or whatever it is, that is a loving community of brothers and sisters in Christ that even though it can get a little bit messy at times where people can confess their sins and forgive each other, what happens is the Holy Spirit begins to work in that community, peeling off the parts of you that don’t look like Jesus and putting on the parts that do. Gathering is a very, very, very key aspect of discipleship.

Today we are going to shift from the gathering component to the training component. Training to look like Jesus and what that looks like. Next week, we are going to begin to look at some very practical things we can do that we refer to as the spiritual disciplines that help you being to look like Jesus. But I thought rather than jumping into those specific practical activities that we can do to train to live like Jesus, I thought first we have to be sold on the idea that we should train. It is difficult to engage in any sort of intensive training activity unless you are convinced that there is a need for that. In today’s passage out of 1 Timothy, Paul seems to suggest to Timothy that there is a necessity to training. He goes on to say “Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” What I like about Paul is he is using this athletic-type imagery to explain a concept that people might not understand. He does that often in his letters. That is what is good about Paul. He tries to find something that the people can relate to that can help them understand something that they might not be able to relate to. As I have learned, the people in his culture would be able to relate to this imagery of physical training because the gymnasium in Greek culture was the center of civic activity. In fact, the word training is a Greek word gymnasia ,which is basically where we get the word gymnasium. They would connect to this athletic imagery. Even though it might have been a few weeks or years for some of you since you stepped foot in a gym, I think most of us know what you do in a gym. You go there for physical training. In Paul’s day, that physical training would be to possibly prepare for some sort of a road race or possibly the Greek Olympics. We go to train for a variety of reasons. We train to get our body in shape and keep it in shape or maybe prepare ourselves for some sort of athletic competition or something like that. The bottom line is we know that, at least in America, people take physical training very seriously. They invest a lot of hours and a lot of money in training. I was reading this statistic that said the global fitness and health industry generates about $75 billion a year in revenue. That is a lot of money going to fitness and training. It is obvious that a lot of people see value in physical training. Paul was like that himself. Paul even goes on to say “For physical training is of some value.” He understood that there are benefits to physical training. Hopefully, even if we have not been in a gym for a while, we still understand that there are benefits to physical training.