Making Space for God
1 Timothy 4:7 (Phillips Translation)
To say that our nation is caught up in a fitness craze is an understatement and this time of year New Year’s Resolutions abound with losing weight and lifestyle changes. How many of you have made New Year’s resolutions to lose weight or begin working out? Physical fitness has become a billion dollar business in the United States and continues to grow. At any given time you can find the latest “infomercial” on television featuring the latest fitness product on the market. I especially like the creative names of the fitness equipment. For example: “The Thigh Master”, “The Abdominizer” and “The Gut-Be-Gone.” Most of the fitness products also come with a training video … but wait! There’s more! If you order now we’ll send you free our latest training videos on: “Abs of Steel” and “Buns of Steel”. And for our first 50 orders we’ll also include “The Elvis Presley Guide to Nutrition; the Later Years”. Whether it’s “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” with Richard Simmons or Billy Joe Jim-Bob’s “Country Line Aerobics”, they all promise the same thing: If you’ll follow their training plan, you can be physically fit in a matter of days or weeks.
But what about your spiritual fitness? How many of you made New Year’s resolutions to get spiritually fit this year? First Timothy 4:7-8 says: ”Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness (that is, soul training) has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” I like how the Phillips translation states it: “Take the time and the trouble to keep yourself spiritually fit.” 1 Timothy 4:7 In other words, it’s good to be physically fit, and it’s even better to be spiritually fit. Funny, but I haven’t seen too many “infomercials” on spiritual fitness. If they were, they’d be called: · “Prayers of Steel” · “Sermons of Brimstone.” What does it mean to be “Spiritually Fit”? And how do you get there? Over the next four weeks we’re going to be talking about specific ways you can get spiritually fit through soul training.
God uses soul training or spiritual disciplines to help transform us. Richard Foster in his book, “Celebration of Discipline”, writes, “The spiritual disciplines place us before God so he can transform us.” Of all the catalysts to grow spiritually, this is the one that you have the most control over. That is why Paul writing to Timothy says: “Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.” 1Timothy 4:7 (NASV) and why we are told to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you." Phil. 2:12-13 It’s also why Peter says, “Be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’" 1 Peter 1:15-16 (NASV) God wants us to work at becoming like Him. God is holy and if we are His children we are to be like Him. When we become more holy, we become more God-like. That is what it means to strive for godliness. That is what it means to become a disciple of Jesus. We are to become more like Jesus and our Father in heaven.
The church too often has reduced following Jesus and growing in your faith to doing: pray, worship, get in a Bible study, give, serve and witness. But to follow Jesus is as much about being in a relationship with Jesus, as it is about doing the things of Jesus. And that relationship with Jesus must be the most important thing in your life. Those closest to you influence you. They influence your actions, your attitudes and your behavior, who you are and who you are becoming. Is Jesus the most important person in your life? Does Jesus exert more influence in your life than anyone or anything else in your life?
The problem is time. Most of us are overworked and overcomitted and as a result, worn out and stressed! We have 168 hrs in the week and spend 56 hrs for sleep, 14 hrs for getting ready for work, 40-60 hrs for work, 21 hrs for eating - shopping, commuting, kids activities, yard work, etc. and somewhere we’re supposed to squeeze in worship, spiritual growth time and time for serving. No wonder, we need rest. When people try to do something new in their lives, they usually try to just add it on, making a small adjustment here and there. What we really do is just pile one thing on top of another and that creates very little margin or downtime.
One way we try to make up for being overburdened is with speed. We think if we just hurry up then we can get everything done! I see it every day on the hiway, people driving like a bat out of hell. That’s what we do. We try to increase our pace. We try to push more into a short amount of time. Hence, we get into accidents. We get irritable. We get angry at each other. Why? Because one of the incorrect ways to deal with being overworked and overcomitted is by going faster to do more. The fact is you can’t do it. It will eventually kill you! Hence the slogan: Speed Kills!
Hurry kills relationship. If you spend five minutes racing through a passage of Scripture and throwing up a quick prayer and wonder why you have a distant relationship with God and get little out of your time with God, then the answer is found one word: hurry. Let me say it again: hurry kills relationship. It kills our ability to listen. We have so much busyness and way too many distractions in our lives. The only answer is to make space for God. Jesus knew what it was to be busy and pulled in 10,000 different directions. One day He preached from early morning to late at night and when He finished, He had 5,000 people who were hungry. He fed them! The next day He got up before dawn and prayed. Before He finished, people were looking for Him saying, “Lord, where were you? Everybody was looking for you. They wanted to hear more.” Then a demon guy began chasing Jesus. He said, “Let’s get in the boat and go across the Sea of Galilee.” He got into the boat and a storm hit. Kaboom! His disciples said, “We’re perishing!” They finally got over to the other side and another demon guy came out of the tombs and chased Him. Then they finally said, “Get out of this place!” He went to another town and a man said, “My daughter is sick. Come and heal her!” On the way to heal her, a lady with a hemorrhage came and pulled on his garment. He was so busy that sometimes he probably didn’t know if he was coming or going!
Yet no matter how busy he was, Jesus always made the time to pull away from the crowds and the disciples to be with the Father in prayer. What you see in Jesus’ life is an ebb and a flow, where Jesus goes out into the community and serves God but then he pulls away from them to go to a garden or a mountain and have time alone with God. Jesus knew how important it was to create space for God in his life, time to develop and grow in His relationship to the Father. If he didn’t, he knew that he would never be able to accomplish the Father’s will in His life. So if Jesus was intentional about creating space for God, then we need to be doubly so. For the remainder of this message, I want to share with you some soul training exercises which will place you before God so he can transform you into His likeness.
The number one enemy of spiritual growth and transformation is exhaustion. We are living beyond our means financially and physically. We are getting less sleep than any other American generation. Studies have found that the average person needs 8 hours of sleep a night. Failure to do so results in damage to your physical health, a loss of energy and concentration and decreased productivity. Our sleep deprivation hurts others too through our irritability and a lack of patience. But did you know more people are killed each year by drowsy drivers than drunk drivers? God designed us to be stewards our lives: body, mind and soul. And if our bodies are tired, then our souls will not have the resources for soul training.
So your first soul training exercise is to sleep one day a week until you cannot sleep anymore and can say you are fully rested. The rest of the days ensure at least 8 hours of rest a night. To help with this, go to bed at a consistent time, don’t engage in activities which increase your stress just before turning the lights out. Avoid stimulants like caffeine. Work out daily which aids sleep. And if you awaken in the middle of the night, don’t have to get up, stay in bed.
The second soul training exercise is slowing down. Then fact is we are driven by speed and stimulants and thus what most of us need is to slow down, calm down and to make time for rest and contemplation. But we cannot slow down until we begin to practice margin. Margin is creating space and time between activities and commitments. Most of us rush from one commitment to the next but margin is building intentional space and time between obligations in life. To slow down, try leaving ten minutes earlier for your next appointment. Slow down the pace of your walk. In fact, do everything more slowly. Or drive more slowly. Choose to drive in the slowest lane of traffic or choose the longest and slowest lane at the grocery store. If you arrive at your next appointment early, take the time to rest and breathe, noticing the people and things around you. Rather than whoofing down your meal, take the time to savor it and have conversation with friends. Make a whole day of going slower. Get up a little earlier and linger over your breakfast or coffee. Work at a slower, more rhythmic pace. Take the time to enjoy a walk or watch a sunset. When you change speeds, your internal system will be thrown off of its usual pace and feelings of frustration will develop. You will need to die to the need of more intentional speed. Don’t worry, you can do this.
Third is silence and solitude. Our world is a noisy place. We are constantly stimulated from advertisements, the radio, TV, cell phones, texting and it goes on and on. The result is that God is often drowned out of our lives. So we need to, as the Psalmist said, be still and be quiet for God. Find five minutes a day to sit in silence alone. You can do this between activities or commitments, get up a little earlier or leave for your appointment earlier. A lot of people find thoughts running through their mind when they try this. That’s OK. Your mind is not used to being still and is just solving problems. To solve this: write down what comes to your mind, a call to make or errand to run and this will help quiet your mind. Then clear your mind and go back to your silence, slowly increasing your time of silence.
Fourth is fasting from Media. A Media Fast consists of abstaining from all electronic entertainment for a specified period of time: radio, TV, newspapers, iPods, the internet, email, DVD’s, cell phones, and texting. Most of us think that consuming vast quantities of media is a necessary condition of modern life because it’s how we get all of our news. The fact is most of us are really pretty addicted to using media. When it comes down to it, we over saturate ourselves with more information than we can effectively process, and we block out and refuse to give room for anything to actually flourish.
First of all, decide to cut yourself away from all media for a day or two. Work up to allocating a single day a week, every week, for this. This can be very difficult but whatever you feel like you can accomplish, do it. Use that time instead to draw up a list of projects to accomplish or just enjoy. Up your activity level. Schedule walks, runs, bike rides and trips to the beach or the woods. Leave the IPod at home, turn off the radio and really listen -- to the people around you, to the world around you, to your inner monologue. Learn a new skill, start ready a novel or connect with a new friend. get out and see the world, maybe even meet your neighbors. Or host an old-fashioned cocktail party; drinks and conversation are fun.
Too often we use media to drown out our inner voices. Listen to your soul, journal and listen for the voice of God. Once you're done with your fast, look back at your media intake and try to come back to it in a healthier way. And realize there's more to life than always being connected because in reality it’s really all about being connected to God which leads to being connected to others and the world God gave us.
