We are currently in a series looking at our need to grow spiritually. Growing spiritually means we receive God’s grace to know him better (in other words it’s relational) and we mature to be more like him (we reflect Jesus’ character and actions, doing what he would do). God loves us the way we are, but God has created us for so much more. We live so far below where we could live in Christ. Even as Christians we tend to accept our self-centeredness, pride, anger, lack of joy, peace, love, when God has created and saved us to live a whole different way. To live more like Jesus. We accept status quo because it’s safe and predictable and we don’t have to change. What if we determined that we want to have all that God wants for us? What if we were to decide change was a good thing in our life? Then we would make a choice to grow spiritually. As the Apostle Paul said, we would send down our spiritual roots in Christ, we would allow God to change us to be the person he wants us to be. Growing means changing, so you have to decide if you are ready for God’s best life now?
Listen to what people who have grown spiritually report in their life:
• They feel a genuine sense of the presence of God in their lives
• Their religious experiences are a source of strength, personal growth, and the healing of inner conflict.
• They have a greater sense of inner peace, feel joyful and happy and less depressed
• They are more humble
• They find themselves far more engage in compassionately helping others.
• They are far more capable of forgiving people
It’s no secret on how we grow spiritually. Those who grow spiritually closer to God and reflect God’s character are those who are willing to practice what are called spiritual disciplines or as I am calling them practices. These practices are the same ones Jesus did when he walked this earth, which helped him grow closer to his heavenly Father. These practices include: Praying, reading and reflecting on God’s Word, following the guidance of the Spirit, slowing, servanthood, and worship to name a few.
These practices help make us receptive to receive God’s help, his grace, to have the life we were meant to live. Without them, quite frankly, we will not mature spiritually, no matter what age we are, or how long we’ve been a Christian.
Today we are looking at the practice of reflecting on Scripture, the Bible.
The Bible is more than just a record of history of a group of people called Israelites, and a specific Israelite or Jew named Jesus. The Bible is God’s self revelation to us. When I say revelation I am not talking about the book in the Bible, I am referring to God revealing himself to humanity. God interacted with people and then inspired authors to write down what happened and what God said. It is, as the Apostle Paul said, the inspired work of God. God inspired people to write down his interaction with humanity, beginning with Adam and Eve, later making a covenant relationship with Abraham and his descendents the Israelites, the whole purpose of which was to restore a relationship with all people on earth lost in sin, that’s all of us. Later God was to come to earth himself as a human being, God the Son, Jesus, in order restore a relationship broken by sin with all people. In the Bible we have a record of everything we need to know about how to be return back into a relationship with God and to live the way he created us to live.
By reading God’s Word we know who God is.
Through reading the Scripture we come to know who God is and what God does. I said at the beginning that the first part of spiritual growth is knowing God better. How do you know God better? Last week we looked at prayer. Through faith in Jesus we are able to go right to the throne room of God and have a direct personal relationship with God. Another way we know God more is through reading, studying, AND reflecting on his Word, the Bible.
Too often we make our impressions of God based on what other people tell us or model for us, the pastor, the radio or television preacher, the saintly person a church, but God has revealed himself in his Word. If we rely on other people, we are getting only a partial picture or possibly even a false picture of the God who wants to know us better. I just finished reading a fictional book called The Visitation, where a man entered a small town doing all sorts of miracles, and allowed himself to be called the Messiah, and he began gathering his own followers. By the end of book you discover he received his powers not from God but from the demonic and he was very evil and he got that way because his father, a pastor, a representative of God, treated him horribly, and in a desperate attempt to straighten him out, he did the unthinkable he crucified his son to a fencepost. The son rejected God and turned to the devil. Why? Because his picture of God was warped, it was shaped on a fallen person rather than the God of the Bible. Where do we turn to know God better? We must look in his Word because eventually people we look to for our understanding of God will disappoint us or fail us because they are not perfect. Are you looking toward that person or are you going to the source.
What we know about God directly affects our relationship with him. I have heard it all, from people who believe God is a stern Judge wanting to smite all the sinners who step out of line to God being like a loving grandparent who doesn’t care what we do as long as we love each other, get along and sing kumbaya around the campfire. These are incomplete or inaccurate pictures, people have because they don’t go to the source, and read for themselves and get to know God. It would take me hundreds of sermons to describe God. Someone once figured out that God is mentioned by over a 1000 different names in the Bible. God is multifaceted, are you getting to know this God you love and worship through his love letter to you called the Bible?
By reading God’s Word we know what God does
Remember the second definition of growing spiritually is to be more like Jesus Christ, our character, including our actions, what we do and say, need to reflect Jesus’. How can God form our character and actions to reflect His if we don’t even know what that looks like because we’ve never opened the word of God.
If we are going to grow spiritually and have our character and actions reflect God’s we need to know what that means. There used to be a phrase used a few years back from an old Charles Sheldon book called In His Steps, WWJD, what would Jesus do. People wore these bracelets that said WWJD to remind them to pray about what they should do in any given situation. We felt really spiritual wearing those bracelets. The problem with this line of thinking is that we can’t know what Jesus would do in our situation right now if we haven’t read what Jesus actually did? If we don’t read for ourselves we are just basing it on what we heard from someone else, or on a hunch, or on our feelings rather than going back and reading what Jesus actually did and said.
This week I found an astounding figure, although not surprising, that 65% of all Christians have never read through the entire New Testament, and to be honest with you until after college I myself had never read past the gospels, the accounts of Jesus’ life. At about the age of 24-25, Amy and I were in a Bible study which went through the entire Bible. As I read I realized I wasn’t as familiar with the Bible as I thought I was even though I grew up in a Christian family and went through Sunday school my entire childhood and my parents were even Sunday school teachers. I knew many of the stories of the Bible, particularly the OT ones; Noah and the Ark, Abraham and Isaac, David and Goliath, Daniel in the lions den, but I really had no clue about the big picture of God’s Word. I was particularly unfamiliar with the letters written by the Apostle Paul. During that time in my life I grew more spiritually than probably any other time because I got to know God more through reading his Word, and I realized that my life was not on track with his, I was being self-centered not God-centered. My faith began to soar. I remember reading Ephesians for the first time only ten years ago and I read Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, by faith – and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God, not by works so no one can boast.” It opened my eyes, there was nothing my good deeds or good works would earn me in heaven, it is only by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. I guess I always knew that, but for some reason in that moment it really sunk in for me, and I renewed by faith in Jesus Christ.
The amazing thing is, ten years later, with a seminary degree, and having read through the Bible several times, and yet even with all of that God is still revealing new things every time I open the Bible to read and reflect on God’s word. We are arrogant to think we have been there done that, and we don’t really need it.
The Bible is one of the primary ways God speaks to us, challenges us, and helps us to grow spiritually.
NLT 2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right. 17 It is God’s way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to do.
When we are not reading God’s Word, we are not allowing God to speak to us. If the only Word of God you receive is what you hear on Sunday morning, than you are starving yourself spiritually, and I can assure you, you are not growing spiritually. When Jesus had fasted in the desert for 40 days, the devil tempted him by saying turn these stones into bread. Jesus could have done it, but instead he responded by quoting the OT, "It is written: ’Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Mt. 4:4).’" We eat a meal three times a day, sometimes with snacks in between to fill our bellies, but how often are we feeding on the Word of God? It’s impossible to grow spiritually without feeding on the word of God.
The Word of God transforms us
NIV Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
The Bible is not an old fashioned piece of literature written thousands of years ago which does not apply to our lives today. The Bible is the inspired word of God which is living and active. When you open the Bible, God is speaking to you! God’s living Word penetrates into your heart and soul like a sword, like a scalpel cutting into us with precision. When we read God’s word, we read about people just like us, sure they lived thousands of years ago and didn’t have the technology we have, the wealth we have, but they were just like us, they were self-centered the same as us, they were prideful just like us.
Are you reading the Bible? And when you do read it, are you reading it to allow God to speak to you and transform you or are you just reading it to get through it?
Reflecting on the Word
Reading God’s Word is a waste of time if we are just reading it to get information or knowledge. Anyone can crack open a Bible and read it, but what we need to do to grow spiritually and allow God to transform us is to meditate or reflect upon it.
In Psalm 119 the Psalmist writes several times, “I will meditate on your statues,” “I will meditate on your decrees,” “I will meditate on your commandments.” Meditating is like worrying. What do you do when you worry? You think a lot about something, you ponder it constantly. Meditating is reflecting or thinking about God’s Word, allowing God to speak to us, to fill our thoughts, and to mold our thinking to his. Have you heard the phrase, you are what you eat? Well this is even more true, you are what you think? The more our thoughts are changed to be more like God’s, our character and actions will follow. God will change those too.
There are the two basic questions I try to always reflect on with whatever Bible passage I am reading.
1. What is does this passage mean? What is going on? What point is the author trying to make?
This first question gets to understanding the passage of Scripture. Who are these people, what are they doing, why is it significant, how are they relating to God, what is being taught? What was God doing in the lives of the people in the Bible, and what was he saying to them.
People have said to me, I don’t read the Bible because I just don’t understand it. It’s so archaic, it’s hard to relate to because it was written about people who lived a long time ago. I know the Bible can be challenging at times, but some of the difficulties can be eliminated. So my first suggestion is to get yourself an easy to read Bible like the New Living Translation which puts it into simpler language. Perhaps you have a hard time understanding how something two thousand years ago relates to you today. Get a Life Application Study Bible with notes on the bottom of the page to help you understand how God’s word applies to your life.
But even more importantly than these, the first thing we need to do before reading the Bible is to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth in God’s Word. The Bible tells us we can only understand what God reveals to us, because the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth. When you sit down to study the Bible pray first for the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s truth to you, and he will. He is our guide and teacher he opens to God’s truth.
The second question gets to reflecting, ask:
2. What are you saying to me God?
What is God trying to share with you? Is God revealing something about himself that he wants you to know or respond to? Perhaps God wants to comfort you through the passage or challenge you. I have included in your bulletin outline nine questions from Rick Warren (author of the Purpose Driven Life) that gets to the heart of what God is saying to you and may want you to do as a result of this passage of Scripture.
(Rick Warren’s SPACEPETS questions)
S - Is there a Sin to confess?
P - Is there a Promise to claim?
A - Is there an Attitude to change?
C - Is there a Command to obey?
E – Is there an Example to follow?
P – Is there a Prayer to pray?
E – Is there an Error to avoid?
T – Is there a Truth to believe?
S – Is there Something to thank God for?
The prophet Isaiah, speaking on God’s behalf once said:
NIV Isaiah 55:11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
God’s word does not come back empty? Will you give time to get into God’s Word and allow him to penetrate your heart and soul, to help you grow deeper in Christ?
