To Be Like Jesus
Hebrews 5:12-6:1
The greatest tragedy in life is not death, but people dying without ever knowing or living their life purpose. Last week we learned the first way to discover the purpose you were created for is to follow Jesus into God’s work in the world. You just can’t sit there and try to figure it out. You have to get off the bench and get in the game, in your neighborhood, your community, your church, the world. Go serve and your life purpose will begin to emerge inside of you.
Today we’re going to talk about the second key to finding God’s purpose and that is to become like Jesus. Being a follower of Jesus is not about just believing in Jesus, it’s about the life of Jesus invading yours and mine and transforming our thoughts, words and actions to become more like Him. But how do we become more like Christ? To answer that question, we first have to own where we are spiritually. As the church, you and I are supposed to be an army of selfless servants, but in reality Paul says the church is a nursery of self-absorbed infants. We have fallen under the idea that church is really about us, a place where we are ministered to and where we get our needs met. The problem is that that attitude means we always remain a child in the faith. A child is always about their needs. It’s like being a perpetual 1st grader. Can you imagine never getting out of the first grade? Being 47 years old sitting at this desk? The desk doesn’t even fit. You get the same old stories about Dick and Jane year after year: Up, Spot, up. Go, Spot, go. Good, Spot, good. Silly, silly Spot. You’re doing the same old things: finger painting, working on your ABC’s, cutting contruction paper into shapes. . . boring! Same old, same old! And what we find under these circumstances is that we start going through the motions. We never leave the elementary teachings.
The same is true in our spiritual journey as well. We are no longer trying to grow and learn for we are emotionally and spiritually unplugged. And the result is that you don’t ever gain the maturity to be able to understand the greater things of God, like your life purpose. You can’t explain physics to a first grader. They do not have the maturity to comprehend the abstract nature of physics. And spiritually, you can pray; you can fast; you can ask for God’s purpose, but you’re not going to understand it until you grow up in the disciplines of the Spirit. Not until you leave elementary things is God going to entrust you with your purpose in life.
Most of us in the church have been living on milk, and many of us not much of that at all. Milk is the Word of God. Only 18% of Christians read the Bible weekly and 23 percent say they never read the Word of God. The only Bible they ever get is in worship and they usually just wait for the preacher to tell them what to believe. And what most know of the Scriptures is usually the stories of the Bible: Jesus and the Good Samaritan, Jesus feeds 5,000, the healing of the blind man. But they never take the time to discover the deep truths of the Bible or to hear the voice of God speaking to them through the Scriptures. So the Word of God remains just that, the Word of God, and never becomes the Living Word of God which speaks to them. Hebrews 6:2 says the written word is our foundation. It is in here you discover and learn about the basic things like sin, repentance, Jesus Christ and forgiveness, but you don’t live in the foundation. The house that you live in is built on the foundation and the written word is just that. If you’ve never gotten beyond the written word, you’re still in elementary school.
Solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Solid food is to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit. Listen to what Jesus said in John 16: “There is so much more I want to tell you but you can’t bear it now. When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but he will tell you about your future.” Whoa! As long as I remain a child in the faith, I’m just reading about Dick and Jane. I’m reading what Jesus did 2,000 years ago, but I’m not hearing the voice of God for me today through the Word. It’s not becoming the Living Word for me. And until it does, I will never hear God’s will for my future. “He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will tell you whatever He receives from me.” Jesus said everything that belongs to God, everything God has, Jesus is willing to reveal to you, but it’s all dependent on your ability, through discipline, to discern and hear the Holy Spirit. That takes maturity.
So how do you grow to maturity? Through training. Just as a college athlete trains to become a professional, Christians train through the practice of daily disciplines. All leadership begins with self-leadership. Who is responsible for your spiritual growth? Say it with me: “I am!” Like I said, you just can’t come here on Sunday morning and expect to hear God’s voice on a regular basis in your life. Solid food, which is the voice of the Spirit, is for the mature - those who are constantly training and attuning themselves to the move of the Spirit. So what can you do to grow to maturity? Today I want to introduce you to 5 disciplines.
First is daily devotion to God. The great commandment is to "love the Lord your God with all of your heart." Devotion is an offering and the greatest offering I have to give back to God is who I am. I practice devotion through personal Bible study, meditation, journaling and prayer. So the first discipline of my day is being present to the presence of God. This is where you listen to God through His Word and through prayer for what He has for my day and my future. That’s why every day should start with listening to God. Every day I have to challenge my worldview against the worldview of Jesus. I am constantly tempted to use Jesus' name but to live out of that old soft secular worldview that is so predominant in our culture. This practice generates a passionate life focus and a clear understanding of God’s purpose for my life and the move of the Spirit throughout my day.
Second is lifelong learning. There is an old saying, “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” We are here to grow. To grow a muscle, you need to stretch it and you do that by lifting weights. To grow your mind, you need to stretch your mind and you do that by lifting new ideas. This is the practice of lifelong learning. Jesus says if you are going to enter the Kingdom of God you must maintain the attitude of a little child. Children are constantly learning by asking, "Why?" To become like children means we must continually strive to learn new things about God, ourselves and the world we live in. God is a God of new things. God is looking for people right now with flexible minds that he can put an idea into, who will let that idea be manifested in a physical reality. When I am stretching my mind, I am always looking forward to the next new thing. Lifelong learning is composed of three daily practices: read, observe and do. You should always be reading something and not Harlequin romance novels or ESPN magazine. Observing. Look for people who are pioneers, people who are older and wiser, people who are just a little bit ahead of me, people who are offering an honorable excellent offering to God. Get around them. Take them to lunch and pick their mind. Observe how they live their lives. And then finally, Do. We learn best through doing. Don’t stay on the sideline and in the same old rut and routine in your life. Continually try new things and learn from them.
Third is to invest in key relationships. You and I are created for relationships. We experience life through relationship. In a way, we always expect our relationships to remain the same. We take them for granted and let life get in the way. And so we end up missing the experience of deep, intimate relationships. People are what’s really important. Life isn't about our stuff or how much we can accumulate or even what we achieve. It is about people. You can replace stuff. But you can't replace people. You don’t ever want to get to a point after someone is gone and ask, ‘Would I have done anything different?’ So ask yourself: 'Am I spending enough time with my key relationships? Are they growing or are they stagnant? Am I investing in my relationships? How do you do that? You have to create margin in your life. Margins are the blank spaces that you do not allow to become all filled up. On any piece of paper, the margin is an empty space on the sides. So long as we don't fill up those spaces in our lives with other things, we will have time for relationships. Relationships are developed in the margins of our lives. Each of us is responsible for our own schedules and how we order our days. If I don't prioritize how I spend my time, circumstances and other people will decide it for me. I have to prioritize by creating and leaving margins for relationships and that is God honoring.
Fourth is visioning for the future. Life is not about you. It’s not about making a living. It not about seeking your happiness and comfort. It’s about doing what does God wants you to do with your life for His purpose. The essence of faith is vision, a vision for the future and where we are going. Vision is a promising picture of God's preferred future. Vision creates momentum in our life. It pulls us forward. It creates greater energy, bigger actions and enables us to take greater risks for the kingdom. Vision and that forward focus is about working with God together for a better world. That’s why we are here. With the power of vision, I can be my best in the world. With the power of vision, I can be my best for the world. Vision is about formulating a life picture. One way to do that is by starting with the end in mind. What does God want you to be remembered for at the end of your life? What mark does God want you to make on the world? What does God want you to contribute or to be known for in your life? God has a vision for your life. It’s up to you to receive it and then begin working towards it.
Fifth is Eating and Exercise for Life. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” We have to understand that our body is the dwelling place of God but it is also the instrument for God’s work. Some of you are sitting here thinking, "Diet and exercise are an option. It's my choice." No, it's not! You were bought with a price: the life and death of Jesus on the cross. He owns your body. It is not up to you what you put into it. Therefore, honor God with your bodies. Why is the health of your body is so important to God? To do his work! When I was in Haiti, we were moving rocks and sand to make cement. It was hot and hard work. The group I was in worked no more than 5 hours a day and were exhausted after just more than ½ a day of work. One day while I was on a handmade ladder lifting buckets of cement, one of the ladies asked me how old I was. I told her 46 and then realized that I was the second oldest person on the team but doing twice as much work. They thought they could go from their regular lives with no exercise and go out into the heat of the Caribbean summer and work. But the reality was they had not taken care of their bodies and thus did only 60% of the work they were capable of for the kingdom. What a shame! They had flown to a foreign country stricken with poverty and mired in destruction to give a helping hand and they couldn’t do all that God wanted them to do.
Training in these disciplines is a means of grace and spiritual growth. If all you are doing is coming here on the weekend to get fed spiritually and that’s the extent of your spiritual discipline, you’re not getting the nourishment you need for you to grow. God created you for a purpose and the greatest tragedy is not going to be your death. It’s dying and having lived below the purpose for which God created you and missing out on the blessing that comes with that. So start training. It is the fruit of disciplined maturity. Through constant, disciplined training, you will grow spiritually, God will expand the scope of your influence in the world. Jesus said, “The things I do and greater things you'll be able to do.”
God has great plans for you but first you’ve got to be willing to grow up. It’s not about just believing in Jesus; it’s about the life of Jesus radically infiltrating your life and my life. God is not looking for exceptional people, he’s looking for available people to begin training. It’s about training for where God wants to take you in the world and for what God wants to accomplish in the world. He wants to radically invade your life so then your life will follow Jesus in doing God’s work in the world. Amen.
