Title: Purpose in the Process (Timeless Truths Wk 1)
Text: Galatians 5:16-26
Bottom Line: There is a reason and purpose why God doesn't change us overnight. There's Purpose in the Process.
Intro
Welcome to our first service at our new permanent, temporary location!
Where are all my 1st service people at? How about 2nd service?
Now I a bone to pick… Ever since i’ve gotten here I’ve noticed a big difference between 1st and 2nd… Whenever I told a joke at the 9am service everyone would laugh. But when I told the same joke at 11am service maybe a chuckle, maybe… So one one the things I’m excited for is for you normal 2nd service people to learn to loosen up a bit.
I’m guessing as you look around you probably see a lot of faces that you do not recognize. This is a great opportunity to get to know some people that you would otherwise maybe not see regularly. So while we are here I rather than glaring at that person for the other service that’s sitting in your seat, go meet some new people!
To go along with our new location we are going to be starting a new series.
You probably do not know this about me but I love growing things. I like looking flowers, growing my own veggies. Well maybe I should say I like having a nice garden, but sometimes the effort required not so much… And I’ve been like this since birth, my mom is a huge gardener, her backyard is amazing and since I was little it’s always getting featured in some kind of magazine.
I even have a picture of me when I was 4 featured in an article with my mom… (show picture) I know, I know, I was a good looking kid.
But I’ve grown up around gardening and growing things… So when we moved here and we bought a townhouse with a small backyard I figured I would start a vertical garden. That way I could hold more stuff and take up less space. Now what I should have done was hop on the internet and find a blueprint. What I did do was grab a wooden pallet and just start building with absolutely no plan. In my mind I would have this amazing looking, rustic vertical garden. That everyone would think wow… That guy knows what he’s doing. That was not the case…
My no plan, plan ended up costing me as I constantly ran into problem after problem and was constantly undoing my work so I could make progress. Eventually I just basically had to toss the pallet and just used 2x4s and plywood. Moral of the story is start with a better plan…
So this spring I filled my garden up with dirt and planted a variety of veggies and herbs. (show picture Keep up until next one)
But this is were my lack of foresight again came into play, again… Because I decided that the recommend distance to plant the plants away from each other was more of a guideline that I could adjust.
So I packed the plants in as tight as I thought I could. And I thought this would work since they were so small…
This worked for about a month. Until they grew and grew and grew. And then they started to look like this… (next picture)
That’s the last picture I took. But the tomato plant on the left ended growing over top the fence and way over the tomato cage support. What you need to know is this happened because I’m such a good gardener and not because of lack of planning.… Fast forward another week It ended up choking out several of my other plants and then in a wind storm was snapped in half. We got a few tomatoes but it was never quite the same after that…
Gardening takes planing and work to maintain. I was good at one, but not at the other. If you’ve ever gardened maybe you’ve experienced this. You have to have a plan and you have to execute the plan.
I think many our relationships with God is kinda like that story I just described… We start with this grandiose idea of how much we are going to grow our relationship with God, but with no real plan we just wing it. And a few months later we realize that didn’t work so we move on.
And what we want to do in this series is we want to look at specific ways that we can grow. How can we in practical ways, connect with God through pray, rest, worship, fasting. If you’ve been around church you’ve probably heard these referred to as spiritual disciplines. In reality these disciplines are actually timeless practices that have been around for many many years.
So what we want to do over the next several weeks is pause and look at how we can individual grow our relationship with God through these practices.
Just like in gardening it’s going to take some planning and some work to maintain. It’s not going to happen by mistake or overnight. You don’t plant seeds in your garden and expect to have food the next day. The same principle is true in your walk with God.
You have to put something in, to get something out. And we want to look at specific ways we can put something into our relationship with God.
?Here’s my hope, here’s my challenge for you. Over this year, put something into your walk with God that is worth getting out. Because you aren’t going to grow by accident.
You won’t grow a tomato plant unless you plant a seed. You won’t build muscle unless you go to the gym. You won’t find a date unless you ask someone out. You won’t get a job unless you apply. You won’t pass your classes unless you study. You aren’t going to heal that relationship until you deal with the problems… We know all this to be true. And the same principle is true in our walk with God. We won’t grow in our relationship with God unless we put forth some effort. And that takes time.
Tension
Throughout this series we are going to be looking at timeless practices people have used to connect and grow their relationship with God. We are going to look at prayer, fasting, mediating on his word. Some of these things maybe we do, and some we’ve kinda forgotten about. And we are going to reexamine them and see how they can help us.
But for today I want to take a step back and really evaluate why we should even do this. What is the value in even trying? So today’s going to look a little different than the rest of this series and here’s the question I want to ask… What could our life look like if we were rooted in real Jesus?
What would your life look like if you were rooted into the real Jesus? Not the fake Jesus that culture often sells us. But the real Jesus. What would your life look like if you were tapped into him?
In Galatians 5 Paul gives us a snapshot of some of the characteristics, some of the fruit, that comes from being rooted in Jesus. If you’ve grown up in the church you are probably going to recognize this passage I’m about to read.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23 Nobody makes a law against these things. Nobody says yeah being patient is bad… Why are you so self controlled, you shouldn’t be so kind, nobody passes a law like that. We all recognize that these are good things.
But if you use this passage as a mirror and hold it up to yourself it can be kind of disheartening right? Depending on how your day is going or how your feeling you might be thinking I don’t have any of that in my life.
I don’t have any of the fruit of the spiritual in my life because I don’t FEEL loving, I don’t feel joy, I don’t feel peace, I don’t feel kindness, I don’t feel any of those things. But this is not a list of feelings or emotions. This is a list of actions that are rooted in something much deeper.
And maybe you look at your life and again it doesn’t feel like you are growing in any of these areas… You are still impatient, you still yell at your kids, honk at that annoying car, you still worry about work, lack self control. Maybe it seems like in your life that you still don’t have these things… ?
Here’s a principle that we recognize in almost every aspect of our lives, except our spiritual walk. And that is Growth takes time. You don’t plant a seed in your back yard and walk out the next day expecting fruit. You don’t get mad at your 5 year old for not knowing algebra. Because growth takes time.
But we often approach our spiritual lives differently. We expect to see results, right now. We all do this don’t we… Why should we have to wait? If God is all powerful, why can’t he just snap his fingers and skip the process? Why can’t the moment we decide to follow Jesus, he just forms us until these full grown people, these full grown trees that bear bushels full of fruit? Why does it have to take time?
There are some things that don’t take time… Our salvation isn’t something we have to work for. It just happens instantly. The bible tells us our salvation is a free gift from God. We don’t have to anything for it, and we don’t have to wait on it. It just happens instantly…
So why is it that growth has to take time. Why is it this fruit of the spirit takes time? Maybe you’ve wondered that before… Maybe you’ve wondered why after following Jesus for years you still aren’t perfect…
Could it be that the process exists because there’s Purpose in the Process. Could it be that there is purpose in this slow growing process that God puts us through.
I think there’s something there. I think we’ve missed something about the process. We’d rather just go to the store and buy the already grown apple rather than taking time to grow it ourselves. And that same mentality has been brought into our spiritual walk. There’s purpose in the process. There is a reason that growth takes time.
Teaching
So let’s look back at this Galatians 5 passage. We are going to start several verses BEFORE we look earlier.
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfuln ess, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
Galatians 5:16-26
Here’s what I want you to notice about this passage. And that is that this passage starts and ends with similar phrases.
Paul starts by saying Walk by the Spirit. And he ends with Live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. There’s a reason he bookends this passage with these two similar phrases. And what he’s referring to is the holy spirit.
And if you recall back to before Jesus went into heaven he said that he was going but a helper was coming. And that’s the HS. We recognize that there is one God, in three parts. God the father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And it is now the HS that helps us in this life. The bible describes the Spirt with the words Helper, Counselor, Guide.
What Paul is trying to get across is that everyone that follow Jesus has God in them. Guiding us, helping us, and counseling us. In this growth process we are not alone.
But at the same time Paul also says we have the desires of the flesh. Which I think we can all attest too… I, in my life, I have desires to do things that I know are not good. I have desires to do things that I know will damage my relationship with those I care about and with God. Listen I have done things that I know are wrong, and I do them anyway! This is how bad it is… Sometimes when I’m having maybe an argument with my wife. I’ll have something pop into my head, something I could say that would really show her and prove her wrong… And I’ll think woah… Shouldn’t say that… But than I say it anyway! Anybody else? Anybody else feel like they have this war going on inside them?
And some of us we look at that laundry list of the works for the flesh. And it’s not just theoretical, we are living those out. And their fun aren’t they? Some of those things are fun…. for a little while. Some of those things are fun in the moment. But in the long run, in the end, they lead down a destructive path in our lives.
Here’s how I like to think about it. One one side we have these Fleshly Desires. These are those things that are kinda surface level. I think the reason Paul describes them as fleshly is because they are often the desires of our actual body. But we also have Deep Desires. These desires are deep in us, we want to be good we want to follow God, we might get caught up in something else for awhile. But really our desire is to follow God.
I think most of us want to follow God, we do. We want to do what is right. But we get caught up in these fleshly desires, we get distracted.
So we have desires in us, these competing desires. On one side we know what is good, true and right. But on the other side we have these fleshly desires. There seems to almost a war inside us… If you go read Romans 7 Paul describes this war by saying. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Does that sound like anyone’s life?
Here’s what we need to recognize… The Holy Spirit is far more powerful than our sinful desires. So in Christians life you have these two things at war. But one of them is dying and is on the way out. And the other one is growing and producing something good. One is on it’s way in and one is on it’s way out.
Paul describes it the passage we looked at…
And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Galatians 5:24
Paul says crucified… Not beheaded, cut out, or some other quick death. He says crucified. Which was a long and painful process, it’d didn’t happen instantly, or even in a day. Crucifixion could take days sometimes a week. So the picture is our sinful desires are dying this long and slow death.
So this is where we live. This is our lives. In-between our dying fleshly desires and our growing desires of the spirit.
And the question still remains, why is there is this process? Why is there this waiting period between the immature christian we once were and the fully mature Christian we will one day be?
I think what we need to recognize is the that it is a privilege to participate in the process. We GET to participate in the process. God is the one that is doing the work in our lives, not us. He’s the one leading us, But we get to participate in it with him.
We walk by the spirit, we keep in step with the spirit. This is implying that we have to put forth some effort in this process. We get the opportunity to do that.
Here’s the way I like to think about it… We’ve all seen that kid in the store, or at the park, in the restaurant, or at the beach. And their parents are about to go and the kid says NO. They aren’t having it. And they throw a fit. They scream, they cry, they run away. All because they don’t want to leave, they don’t want to go where their parents are trying to take them. For some of you that moment might be coming later today…
Now no good parent is going to just leave right? I mean you might pretend. But even if it means you have to physical pick your kid up and place them in the car they are coming with you. That’s not an option. They don’t have a choice, they are leaving. They are going home.
The child doesn’t get to make the decision on where they are going. They only get to participate in the process. They get to decide how it’s going to go. They get to choose if they want to hold your hand and skip. Or kick and scream the whole way.
And I think that’s a picture of your and I’s walk with God. God is leading us, we don’t get to decide where. But we do get to participate in the process. We do get to set the tone.
And here’s why I think this is important… It’s through this process. Of God leading us. of us walking with the spirit. That God reveals himself too us. You see it’s in that process that you get to see God’s love. You get to experience Joy in your walk with him. He brings peace in the midst of the chaos. He’s patient with us when those other desires come up… Those sound familiar don’t they? They sound like the fruit of the spirit.
It’s in the process that we get to see who God really is. We get to experience his patience, his love, his kindness, and goodness. The purpose in the process is not that we just become a better person. It’s that we can see and experience who God is. If it was an instant switch we would miss all that.
There’s just something built into our human nature that we are designed to earn and not get instantly. Think about the lottery winners. Most of them our broke within a few years. Why? Because they never learned how to handle that much money, they didn’t earn it. They skipped the process.
It’s in the process that we don’t just know in our head that God is patient, loving, kind, but we actually experience that.
Application
Let’s tie this all back together. Remember our original question, What could our life look like if we were rooted in real Jesus?
Here’s how I would answer that… You’d probably find more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and goodness in your life. If your life were rooted in Jesus these things would start to be more evident. And that’s good. But more than that you will experience God. And that’s more important. The process is just as important as the destination. Because it’s in the process that you grow closer to God.
Most of you know I moved here from Colorado. And one of the major difference between here and then is here we have the ocean and there there is mountains. I often joke we traded he mountains for the ocean. Now there’s something you need to know about the mountains of Colorado… They are real mountains. I spent the first 10 years of my life in New England which is part of the same mountain range that is just north of here. And listen these mountains are incredible beautiful. Some of the most stunning views anywhere. But they aren’t the same as the mountains of Colorado…
Colorado has over 50 14,000 ft mountains that they call 14ers. And a buddy and I decided in college we wanting to start climbing so over the course of the next 5-6 years we would climb a couple a year.
When you climb a 14er you start at about 9000ft of elevation. At that altitude there’s less oxygen, which I thought was a joke at first. But you legit run out of breath a lot quicker than normal. Basically what’s happening is since there’s less oxygen in the air you need more breathes to get the right amount. So it makes it a lot harder to breath. If you stay at high altitude long enough your body will actually produce more red blood cells so that each breath is more efficient.
This is why a lot of olympic athletics go to high altitude centers to train. That way they produce more red blood cells and when they go to compete at low altitude they preform better.
All that to say when you start hiking a 14er you are already at a disadvantage. An other issue you face is the weather. Typically you want to be off the peak by 10am. Because after that the peaks are high enough where they will produce their own storms. And a deadly lightening storm can roll in without warning. These are well above tree line so there’s no place to hide.
So when you hike a 14er you aren’t going to breath and you have to start hiking at 4-5am. All this before you to the actually physical hike. Which can be exhausting. The longest hike I did was a little over 15 miles on a mountain called Longs Peak. It’s one of the more difficult hikes and takes about 15 hours to complete. In order to summit in time before the storms roll in we had to start around 1am… IN THE MORNING. It took about 9 hours for us to get from the bottom to the top and it was literally some of the WORST hours of my life.
After you get above 10000 feet there are no trees and at 3am it was freezing and windy. I have never been so cold. there were about 2-3 hours we didn’t stop moving a single time because we were so cold and just wanted to stay warm. It was miserable. The last 2 miles is climbing over boulders and walking on ledges with a 500 ft drop off. I have never been so tired. And then you get to the final ascent. About a 500ft rock wall that you just barely can pull yourself up.
But once you get to the top and you look at the views you instantly forget the pain, the bruising, the tiredness that is in your body. You can see for miles and miles and miles. You are higher than any other mountain and it is breath taking. All of a sudden the hike becomes worth it. When you are on the top you would instantly do it all again. I always find a rock and sit there and just soak in the beauty. The hike, as difficult as it was, is worth every second.
There are a handful of mountains, not the one I just described, but a few others that you can drive up. And many families and tourists will just drive to the top. But you notice a stark difference between the people that drove and the people that hiked. The people that hiked arrive at the top exhausted, but satisfied. Their reward was worth the effort. And they sit there content and satisfied willing to stay there and enjoy for awhile. But the people that drive aren’t the same. They hop out of their car, complain about the wind and frigid air. Frantically snapping a few pictures to prove they were there and promptly run back to their car and drive down the mountain. They have little to no appreciation. Why? because they didn’t have to put in any effort to get there.
In life you will never be as appreciative of the things that come easy. It’s the tough paths that will make you appreciate the mountain tops.
Our walk with God is kinda like hiking a mountain… It can be really difficult sometimes. But if you take the easy road, if you just drive up the mountain, you will miss out on a lot of things. And I think that’s why God doesn’t instantly make us like him. Because there’s purpose in the process. It’s the process that teaches us and shows us who God is. And that’s something you just cannot fake, you can’t take the short cut. You have to go through it. It’s the process that makes us more like Him and teaches us who God is.
Conclusion
Here’s why all this is important. You might be thinking what in the world does this have to do with any timeless practices… There’s a reason we didn’t start this series off with a spiritual discipline. We wanted to start this series off showing you WHY you should give this a try. And not just once, but to recognize that if you want to grow your relationship with God, it’s not going to happen over night.
Over the course of this series we are going to be talking about all this Spiritual Disciplines and you and I are going to have to opportunity to try out, maybe for the first time you will try some of these timeless things to grow your faith. And if you are like me you will pray one prayer and fast for one meal, and sit in silence for 15 minutes and wonder why God hasn’t changed you yet. I mean I prayed, once… I dusted off my bible and cracked it open… I mean I listened to Klove ALL the way to work. Why am i not a super Christian yet?
You’ve done this right? I can’t be the only one. After one prayer, one quiet time, after reading 1 chapter in the Bible for 5 days I expect God to reveal everything to me. But that’s not how it works.
Growth times take. There’s purpose in the process. If you rush you will miss it.
?Here’s my hope, here’s my challenge for you. Over this year, put something into your walk with God that is worth getting out.
If you want to grow. If you want to actually give some of these timeless practices a try. Here’s what you need to do this week. Find some time, find some space in your life. Carve it out. Sit down this week and figure out where you can find 15minutes, 20minutes, a day. Maybe not 7 days a week, maybe 5 days, maybe 3 days. But find time were you can regularly put time and effort into your relationship with God.
It’s important that before we even look at these timeless truths that you have space in your life to try them. Because if you don’t create that space you know what’s going to happen? You are going to hear about some of the things we are going to talk about and think, wow, that’s such a great idea. But if you don’t have any space in your life you will never be able to try it.
So this week, later tonight. Sit down and figure out when and where you can regularly connect with God. Set a reminder on your phone to do it, put a note up on your mirror to remind you, whatever it takes. Set aside a time and commit to it. And remember there is purpose in the process. Don’t expect for everything to change over night. You won’t instantly develop those fruits of the spirit we talked about earlier. Just like when you plant a garden you don’t get fruit the next day. But if you commit, if you water your plants, if you regularly connect with God. You will start seeing fruit in your life. It will be small at first. But it will grow and grow and grow. If you put effort in you will get something out.
So what are you going to put in this year? What space can you carve out? The next few weeks you will be challenged and stretched. And if you want to grow your relationship with God you need these things. But if you don’t have any room you will not have space for them.
Find that time… Put that effort in… Recognize that there is purpose in the process.
