Training Vs Trying Series

Good morning. We are continuing to look at this theme of discipleship. Discipleship at Bellevue Christian Church has been defined as ordinary people learning to live everyday life like Jesus. We decided that there are three ways that we become a disciple at Bellevue Christian Church. We gather, we train, and we go. As you might have guessed from the skit, we are continuing to look at this idea of training. Specifically, the importance of training to be like Jesus rather than simply trying to be like Jesus. Last week, I introduced the concept of training by looking at this passage out of Paul’s first letter to his mentoree Timothy where he wrote “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.” If you were here last week, you know that the major emphasis was the need to train in godliness. This training would not simply be something you would do once in your spiritual life. It would be something you would do throughout your spiritual life, throughout your life as a Christian to keep you from becoming too spiritually sluggish, so to speak. I suggested that even though many of us in this room have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and taken self off the throne of our life, we still carry residual parts of our old self within us. Things possibly like greed or lust or impatience or possibly negativity. These are things that are often left over from what I would call the me-centered life. We talked about that the only way to get rid of some of this stuff and begin to look more like Jesus is to take this idea of training, specifically training in godliness, seriously. Because it is training in godliness that is able to pop the lid off of our interior self and begin to work on those places that we need to remove from ourselves so we begin to look more like Jesus. I suggested that one of the biggest obstacles of doing so was really the lack of self-awareness. I mentioned how some people just don’t feel the need. They don’t see their own flaws. They might see the flaws of others, but they forget that we all have some sort of flaw going on inside of us. Some sort of character trait that we need to work on. I suggested that if somehow we could all become totally transparent for the day and somehow peer into not only the other person’s soul but into our own soul, we might see that when it comes to godliness, we all fall woefully short.

Today, I want to suggest that even though we might become self-aware of our character issues, for many people just trying to be like Jesus is just too impossible. It is just too difficult. It is too hard. They have tried it, and it just does not work out. In that regard, the words of this English theologian from the 18th century, a guy named G.K. Chesterton, rings true when he writes “Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting as it has been found difficult and left untried.” I think a lot of people just say Christianity is just too difficult. It is too hard. I was hoping when I became a Christian that there would be a burden removed from me. But I feel as I have become a Christian it just seems like there are all these expectations that have been placed on me. Christianity becomes this heavy burden that it was never meant to be. In fact, we know from Matthew 11:28 that Jesus himself said “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” These words of Jesus, if we were to meditate on these words for the day and reflect on these words, we would see that they don’t sound burdensome. In fact, they sound quite refreshing. It gives the impression that following Jesus should be a relief from the burdens of life, from the weariness of life. Following Jesus would end up in a place where we would find total rest for our souls. The rest sometimes we don’t find because we are caught up in legalistic traditions.

I like the way Eugene Peterson translates this passage in the book The Message when he writes “Are you tired? Word out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” When you read these words, you say those words are nice, but they just don’t seem to match my experience. Because many of you grew up in maybe legalistic homes or legalistic churches where you viewed your Christian faith as not grace-filled but law-filled. Your Christian life became simply a long list of dos and don’ts. Do this and don’t do that. You have these expectations placed on you that are pretty much impossible to meet, at least in this particular culture. But just because Jesus’ words don’t match your expectations doesn’t cancel out Jesus’ offer to you. Come to him if you are weary and he will give you rest for the soul. He will give you that easy yoke. As Eugene Peterson said “those unforced rhythms of grace.” We find that there is really no secret to this. What we are talking about here as far as locating this rest is really based on a simple principle that applies to all of life. A principle that you hopefully picked up on in the opening illustration. The importance of training to be a Christian rather than simply trying to be a Christian. Mark Andre is a very good violin player. He performs with ease and excellence. So much so that it just looks like he has this natural talent. And he does have a certain amount of natural talent, but if he was just to get up the first day he decided to play the violin and just get up in front of you guys and start playing, things wouldn’t go too well. He would make a fool of himself. Kind of like the fool that I made of myself being up there. We get that. We know that he didn’t do that. Rather than simply just showing up on stage and trying to play the violin, he developed a pattern of life. A pattern of life that allowed him to adjust his life so that he could train his mind and his body to be able to play the violin with excellence. So when he does step up on the stage, it looks so natural. It looks like he is just performing something he has done all his life. We forget about the training that has gone into that. What is true of a musician is true of really any sort of a performer or really anybody who in front of the public or really any sort of profession. Even a teacher or a doctor. I imagine that some of you know the name LeBron James. Whether or not you like Cleveland sports, if you have ever seen this guy play basketball, you know that he is pretty good. In fact, when he plays, he seems to demonstrate this rhythm. He seems to do this thing with a sense of ease and excellence. So much so that it just looks like he is filled with natural talent. When you think about his on-court movements and timing and strength, you should know that he didn’t just step onto a court all of a sudden and magically become a pro-basketball player. You know that behind the scenes there is a lot of work going on. There are a lot of drills and exercises. He was probably watching NBA film clips. He was probably working on certain exercises to try and make sure that he would become a good basketball player. In other words, he was doing things off the court so when he finally stepped on the court, he would do them with excellence.