"A Disciple named Tabitha" (Acts 9:36-43)

Sunday, September 29, 2019

            “Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha.”  Luke, the writer of the book of Acts, does not go out of his way to explain why a woman could be a disciple.  Yes, he knew that the 12 were all men.  But we know, because we’ve read his two works, Luke and Acts, that there were many women who followed Jesus with devotion and at great personal cost.  They were among the most crucial in his circle.  It was this way from the very beginning.  Luke offers no qualifiers or any word that minimizes what he’s said.  There was a disciple; a passionately devoted follower of Jesus.  Her name was Tabitha.

            Luke does tell us she was “devoted to acts of charity.”  When I started at HillSong, our mission statement was “we exist to make passionately devoted followers of Jesus.”  We understand devotion.  The word Luke used that is translated “charity” literally means “good works;” works that help people who need help.

            The picture comes into focus.  In Joppa, this disciple stood out for her care for people, especially the most needy of people.  She did not do it to be recognized and admired.  No one seeks glory by devoting their time to serving the poor.  No, Tabitha, also known as Dorcas, followed where Jesus led.  Jesus led her to poor widows, among the most vulnerable people in a society without any form of social welfare.  Once Jesus led her there, she loved with action, out of her own abilities. 

            Then, the story takes a drastic, unwelcome turn.  Dorcas the Jesus-following caregiver died.  The heartsick community so blessed by this disciple did what we’d expect them to do.  They washed her body and prepared her.  The women who followed Jesus intended to do the same thing with his body upon his death.  They went to the tomb with spices to clean him and bury him properly.  These women around Dorcas, the Jesus follower did the same – except, they knew the story.  They knew Jesus rose from the grave.  So, after the washed Dorcas, they didn’t bury her.  They laid her body in an upper room.

            Then they sent for the disciple, one of the 12, Peter, the miracle worker.  They knew Peter’s power came from the Holy Spirit.  These Joppa Christians had been in Jerusalem and seen the Spirit’s power themselves.  Or, if they weren’t present at Pentecost, they came to faith in Jesus through the preaching of some who were.  Either way, they knew Peter was connected to the Spirit of God.  And they knew whatever Peter did came not from himself but from the power of God.  So they sent for Peter.

            He was, Luke tells us, going here and there among the believers.  His agenda was whatever God set before him.  Oh, a disciple devoted to acts of love for the poor has died and the grieving community wants me to come?  Peter went.

            He was greeted by weeping widows.  The text says they showed Peter the tunics and clothes Dorcas made with her own hands.  The English doesn’t indicate as clearly as does the Greek: the women were wearing these clothes.  They reason they could be dressed in nice garments instead of filthy rags was Dorcas made the clothes herself.  They didn’t show the wardrobe to Peter.  They displayed it on their bodies thus giving witness to how much Dorcas had blessed their lives. 

            Having taken in the scene and absorbed the sorrow, he put the mourners outside.  Then Peter did what he had seen his Lord do.  He knelt by the body of the deceased woman and channeled the life-giving breath, the Holy Spirit of God.  “Tabitha, get up,” he said.  She opened her eyes and he helped her to her feet.  When he expelled the weeping widows from the room, it was not done out of insensitivity.  He had to do God’s work, just as Dorcas had done God’s work by caring for them, and they had done God’s work by calling him. 

            The final act in the drama is verse 42.  The raising of Dorcas, verse 42 says, became known throughout Joppa.  We tell stories from scripture to testify that the power of God saves us.  The church has been testifying in this way from day 1 of its existence.  As followers of Jesus, as his church, we are a story-telling, testifying people.

            In recent weeks, we have looked at the S.H.A.P.E acronym, originally found in Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life.  S= spiritual gifts; H = your heart’s passion (what really motivates you); A = is your abilities; P = personality; E = experience; it all comes together to describe each of us as disciples.  Furthermore, as we live into our shape and then out of our ministry shape, we serve God and love people and do so working out of our strengths. 

            Peter possessed spiritual gifts that are easy to see.  In Acts 2 – 5, he preaches with transforming power.  He exhibits leadership and clarity of vision.  Now, here in Acts 9, he demonstrates miracle-working in the most dramatic way, bringing someone back to life.  Spiritual gifts are very important.  We can see Peter’s easily.  Yet, Spiritual Gifts are just one facet of the S.H.A.P.E. picture. 

            Peter’s experience also comes into play.  He was willing to hang around the city Lydda, being present to the nascent church there.  He was then available when believers from Joppa called him.  We know Peter was married.  We don’t know if he had children.  We don’t know if his wife was back in Jerusalem or traveled with him.  Whatever happened in that aspect of his life, his experience made him available to God. 

            What excites me more than just Peter in this story is the way God speaks through Tabitha’s shape.  Tabitha, Dorcas, had a heart for God.  We become devoted to something when it grabs us.  That was Dorcas when it came to caring for the needy.  She was a disciple, active in the church.  When she met poor members, she didn’t need the pastor or anybody to tell her how to care for them.  She just knew and jumped in.  There’s some aspect of church life or ministry or community life that just comes naturally to you.  Susan Dunn and record-keeping and history is something that immediately comes to mind for me.  She just knows how to keep the minutes and keep track of the church’s story.  If I had a dime for every time I tapped into her institutional knowledge, I’d pay off our mortgage.  That’s one example of a passion matching a ministry need.  I could offer many other examples.  And that it certainly not Susan’s only passion.  Dorcas was passionate about helping the poor.  That’s the ‘H’ in her shape.

            We also see the ‘A’ displayed on the bodies of the women who loved her so much.  Can you sew and make your own clothes?  Some of you absolutely can.  You can identify with Dorcas better than me.  She used her ability to meet a very practical need for impoverished people. 

            The story of Dorcas is not important because she was raised by Peter’s miracle. She would go on to die again and, then, like all of us who are in Christ, be raised when Christ returns at the end of time.  The importance of this story is the way we are invited to retell it in the living of our lives. 

            Acting out of her heart’s passion, Dorcas offered what she had and God’s church was blessed.  What do you have to offer?  What is your ministry shape?  This summer on the youth mission trip, some of our teens were exceptionally outgoing.  They easily befriended kids from other groups.  Others in our group were shy and falling into isolation.  I am glad I was there to witness what happened.  The kids with the outgoing personalities almost literally dragged the shy kids into interactions with other students.  By the end of the week, those shy students sat at the center of the crowd, enjoying the ministry.  They got there because their fellow students loved them enough, acting out of their outgoing personalities to include them.

            Recently, we had families with teenagers visit and our youth group went out of their way to welcome these families.  One of our members commented to me, “I was so glad to see our youth go over and speak to those visitors.”  That’s an example of a young person leading the way by living out of his ministry shape, specifically his personality. 

So, what do you have to offer?  What are your spiritual gifts, your heart’s passions, abilities you’ve developed in your life, your personality, and your experience?  Put this all together.  It’s not for the sake of you or me brilliantly leading people to Christ and building up the kingdom.  It is God’s kingdom and God doesn’t need us.  We bring our ministry shape to God as an offering.  The story of Dorcas invites us to do what she did. We offer ourselves to God for God’s use in the kingdom.    In Philippians 2:17 Paul writes “Even if I am poured out as a drink offering … I rejoice.”  We offer our very selves to God to be poured or used as God sees fit.

One of the ways churches are critiqued is with this question: if the church disappeared would anyone notice?  If HillSong suddenly stopped existing as a church, would Chapel Hill notice?  I think so.  When Dorcas died, the people around her noticed.  Dorcas was caught up in serving God and people wept at her passing.  Our Chinese Pastor, Hong Zhou puts it this way.  When she’s trying to get people involved in ministry, she incredulously asks, “Don’t they realize this work of God is the most amazing thing they’ll ever be part of?” 

Do we see that?  Do we see that when we serve God, especially when we serve out of our shape, who we truly are, we will know the greatest joy that can be known?  They noticed when Dorcas was gone.  God worked through her.  She was passionate.  And lives changed.

Her story begins “A disciple whose name was Tabitha.” 

Now, it’s time for your story and mine.  What we’ve read in the Bible comes to life when we walk of here following Jesus, serving him out of our shape.  We are passionate.  God works through us and people are blessed.  And lives are changed as they turn to Jesus.

The opening lines of this story are “A disciple whose name was _________.”  

Your name fills in that blank .

AMEN

"Spiritual Gifts" (1 Corinthians 12:4-13, 27-30)

Sunday, September 15, 2019

            I know a Christian couple that has spent much of their life together hosting people in their home.  Sometimes their guests stay overnight.  Sometimes they come for dinner.  This couple has a pool in their backyard.  They have had numerous groups from the church and from the neighborhood over for pool parties.  Sometimes their guests are very close friends or family.  Sometimes, they host people they do not know well.  Once, most of the cast of a play that was running in their town came to their home for Thanksgiving dinner.  They did not know these actors but they gladly opened their home on that special day that is often for family time. 

            This couple loves music.  With a piano instead of a TV in their living room, often they will host times of singing with their guests, be it show tunes or worship music.  Having all these people into their space is a lot of work, but it is a labor of love.  They keep photos of all the guests who have stayed with them on the guest room wall.  After almost 4 decades in that house, they’ve run out of space.  In this work of hosting and singing and playing, they serve God by serving and loving others.  In doing so they exercise two spiritual gifts God has given – music and hospitality.

            Would you enjoy hosting people the way this Christian couple does?  Maybe, maybe not; but, like them, you too have spiritual gifts.  As a part of your unique make-up and your relationship with Jesus, you have special gifting God has given in order to build up the church and help others grow in their relationship with Him.  God wants to work through you. 

            The key word in the phrase “spiritual gifts” is spiritual.  The gift is a manifestation of the work of the Holy Spirit in your life.  What do we mean by the idea of spiritual or spirituality?  If a worship service is full of loud, lively, excellent music; if it is spontaneous; if it includes speaking in tongues; it is “spirit-filled.”  Some people think that only if it is loud, spontaneous, and charismatic can it be called Spirit-filled.  Does the Holy Spirit only work in Sunday morning spontaneity? 

First Corinthians 12:1 reads, “Now concerning spiritual gifts.”  But the word ‘gifts’ is not in the Greek text.  The Greek word in verse 1 is ‘pneumatikwn,’ a plural adjective that could mean ‘spiritual things,’ ‘spiritual matters,’ ‘spiritual persons,’ or based on context it could mean ‘spiritual gifts.’ 

One mistake people make is focusing on the gift instead of the giver.  The most important idea in 1 Corinthians 12 is that in Christ we have a relationship with the Holy Spirit.  As that relationship grows strong through prayer, worship, and the practice of spiritual discipline, we come to learn our gifts. 

The Christian couple from the opening story expresses the gifts of hospitality and music.  Neither gift is found in any of the classic spiritual gift lists in the New Testament.  These passages are 1^st Corinthians 12:7-11 and 27-30; Romans 12:3-8; Ephesians 4:11-12; and 1^st Peter 4:9-12.  Some readers insist that these are exclusive lists.  I met a retreat leader years ago who had done a PhD on Romans 12.  He believes every Christian must possess one of those gifts cited in that passage.  I think those are ‘for instance’ lists and the Holy Spirit can use supernaturally empower countless other personality traits or abilities as gifts. 

I also don’t think gifts are fixed.  If, 15 years ago, you took an assessment that said your gift is ‘working miracles,’ 1 Corinthians 12:10, does that mean you’ll be a miracle workers all your life?  Maybe.  But maybe in this season of life, the Holy Spirit works through you in a different way.  The Holy Spirit of God is dynamic.  We live in deep relationship with the Spirit, and our lives are dynamic too.  That means we see new things all the time, including new discoveries inside ourselves.  We more and more become who God is calling us to be.  Newness is the story whether you follow Jesus at 15 years old or 85 years old. 

We, as a church will take a spiritual gifts inventory in order to guide us, but I want to offer this.  Take the inventory and do so with hope and enthusiasm.  Just don’t be handcuffed by the results.  Maybe in your pursuit of the Holy Spirit, it will be revealed to you that you are gifted by God as a scientist or as political leader or in some way not specifically mentioned in scripture.  Maybe your gift is courage and you work in a profession that puts you in danger.  Scientist and courage are not things that will turn up when you take the gifts inventory and that’s ok. The inventory is simply a tool we’ll use to help people serve God in ways that bring joy and enable them to excel.  You are gifted; everyone is.  What you do with your gift and the results of your use of it, the fruit of it, will reveal whether or not the Holy Spirit is in it.

We will not let spiritual gifts be divisive in our church.  Some Christians who exercise the gift of speaking in Heavenly tongues insist that only those who speak in tongues are full of the Spirit.  Tongues is an example of one gift, and Paul devotes an entire chapter – 1^st Corinthians 14 – to warnings about misuse of that gift.  The people I know who speak in heavenly tongues do so to grow close to God and they never use that gift to disrupt the work of the church.

Pentecostals, Christians who exercise the gift of tongues, and Christians in churches that do not express that gift must work side-by-side to build up the kingdom of God on earth.  In a church like ours, we must not be uncomfortable with our brothers that speak in tongues; and, they can’t see us spiritually inferior when we don’t. 

All true disciples are charismatic Christians.  Charisma means gift of grace.  God gives that one be a teacher, another have the gift of knowledge and use that gift in some type of research, and another the gift of tongues, an so on.  Living the spirit-filled life ought to lead to unity among passionately devoted followers of Jesus, not division.

Remember why we receive spiritual gifts.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:7, “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  We are gifted to glorify God, advance His kingdom, and build up his church, the Body of Christ.  We know we are using the gifts properly when they produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  When what we do produces the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), then it is likely we have been exercising gifts of grace, Spiritual gifts.

Why do we put such an emphasis on the relationship with the Holy Spirit?  The Holy Spirit was sent by God to be God’s presence with us.  The purposes of the Spirit are (a) to show us the truth, (b) help us recall all Jesus said and did, (c) help live by His leadership, (d) help us know that all we’ve been taught about Jesus is accurate, (e) function as the point of connection in our relationship with God, and (f) glorify Jesus.

In Jesus’ conversation with the disciples at the last supper, recorded in John 16-17, he emphasized the importance of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot follow Him without the Spirit being active in our lives.  Union with Christ – that’s what the Spirit-filled life is; and, the church is the body of Christ, so union with Him includes union with each other. In leading people to Jesus, in establishing new ministry, in helping those in need, and in sewing love, we see that the Holy Spirit at work and we are a part of it.

            To live in the Spirit, we have to open ourselves to God and trust God.  God is the initiator.  We don’t attain the Spirit, we receive the Sprit.  A gifted preacher does not convert people to Christ; the Spirit does.  A gifted healer does not make the wounded whole; the Spirit does.  A gifted servant does not bless the church by leading us all to humility; the Spirit does.  The preacher, the healer, the servant, and all others who use their gifts are God’s instruments.  God gets it going and sustains everything.  Through the Spirit, God empowers us.  Living the Spirit-filled life is turning inward, meeting the Spirit, and then facing the world in the Spirit’s power and following the Spirit’s agenda. 

            I began by telling the story of a couple I know who express their spiritual gifts of music and hospitality.   Through their love, the Holy Spirit ministers to people.  How can you find out your gifts, express them, and become a conduit through which God’s spirit moves? 

            Our spiritual sensitivity is heightened as we live an active faith life.  Volunteer in the church and in local mission opportunities.  Be involved in several ministries, and reflect on your own how you experience God as you serve in the church.

            In addition to ministry, grow close to God by studying the word.  Make the Bible a huge part of your life.  Read it daily so that the content is at the ready in your mind.  Prayerfully meditate on passages that speak to you.  Be involved in Bible study with other Christians.  We learn from each other.  It sound basic to say we learn about the Spirit by coming to worship, serving in the church and in the community, and studying the Bible.  Basic as it may be, building life around these spiritual disciplines awakens us to God’s voice.  We grow in our sensitivity and are thus able to hear the Spirit, receive what the Spirit gives, and respond when the Spirit calls. 

            As a church, we will be taking a spiritual gifts inventory.  We’ll roll this out through the small groups, and make sure it also available to folks not currently in a small group.  We’ll let you know what gifts you might have.  As you participate in church life, we’ll try to help you find ways to maximize your expression of your gifting.  We want everyone to feel that incredible joy that comes in serving God together with the church family. 

            God invites us to live a Spirit-filled life.  We give control of our lives over to God, and in doing so, we get to see who God is.  The Christian couple I talked about to open the message; they see God when they open their home, have people in, and sing with them.  You might see God when you teach or serve or speak Spiritual knowledge of prophecy.  The gifts come from the Spirit, and when we live in our gifting, we are drawn closer to God.  That is a really good place to be.

AMEN

Maturity in Christ (Ephesians 4:1-5:2)

Sunday, September 28, 2014

          Imagine you are in the city of Ephesus on the west coast of what today is the nation of Turkey and you are looking out over the Aegean Sea.  It is 60AD.  You feel good because it is Sunday.  There will be a guest speaker, one familiar and beloved in your church.  His name is Tychicus.  He has traveled with the great apostle Paul.  Today, he will share something Paul wrote, a message about life in Christ.

You smell the bread that has been baked for the Lord’s supper.  Everyone in the church is a dear friend of yours and you all sit close together in the courtyard of the house.  People have mocked you for your faith in Jesus.  Some say he is a weak god or no god at all.  Some dismiss you for taking this time on Sunday to worship.  Some accuse you of distorting Judaism and preaching bizarre doctrines.  It is not always easy to live in this town as a Christ-follower, but you and your friends in the church have leaned on one another. 

The church is not perfect.  Sometimes a new member wants to be both Christian and pagan and it is uncomfortable when he has to be confronted.  Sometimes traveling evangelists accuse you of being too Jewish; other say your Ephesian church is not Jewish enough.  Much of the time, you aren’t sure.  There have been arguments among the members.   But you love each other.  Through the turmoil, you all huddle together, build each other up, and now are her together again on a Sunday.

Tychicus has promised that this word from Paul will bring clarity to the divisive issues.  What he will share, will show the church how to live as the people of God, to be human the way God always intended humans to live.  Everyone is here for this.  Friends have greeted each other.  Songs have been sung, prayers prayed.  Now as Tychicus stands to speaks everyone leans in. 

(And we pick it up in Ephesians 4).

Ephesians 4-5:2 (NRSV)

4 I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

⁷ But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸ Therefore it is said,

“When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
    he gave gifts to his people.”

⁹ (When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended^[a] into the lower parts of the earth? ¹⁰ He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) ¹¹ The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴ We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

¹⁷ Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. ¹⁸ They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. ¹⁹ They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. ²⁰ That is not the way you learned Christ! ²¹ For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. ²² You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, ²³ and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴ and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

²⁵ So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. ²⁶ Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷ and do not make room for the devil. ²⁸ Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. ²⁹ Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up,^[b] as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.³⁰ And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. ³¹ Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³² and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.^[c] 5 ¹ Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, ² and live in love, as Christ loved us^[d] and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

          What jumps out at you?  Upon hearing this, what do I carry that empowers me to obedience and effectiveness in my own witness?  What sticks with you?  What will you remember?

          Fortunately, we live in the 21^st century.  There weren’t pens available in 60AD.  There was not a lot of paper.  You could not sit and take notes.  Tychicus did not have copies of the letter from Paul to pass out to all in attendance at the Ephesian church.  Today, we have enough Bibles for everyone to have multiple copies.  You can, on your own, go back and read and reread Ephesians 4 and I think doing so would benefit you greatly.

          One thing note is where Paul discusses the reason we are given spiritual gifts.  In Verse 11, he says some are gifted as prophets, some apostles, and evangelists, and pastors.  Most people are not any of those.  This is an incomplete list as are the lists of spiritual gifts in 1^st Corinthians, Romans, and 1^st Peter.  The point is everyone who is in Christ is gifted by the Spirit – but why?

          In verses 12 and 13 it says our gifts are meant to build up the body of Christ.  When the members of the church are using their gifts in harmony with others also using the gifts, the church comes to fully know Jesus.  When we live in our gifting and those around us live in theirs, all of us help each other become mature in Christ. 

          I also like verse 24 which says for us to clothe ourselves with the new self.   This is similar to Romans 13:14 where we are told to clothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and Colossians 3:14 which says “above all, clothe yourselves with love.”  How do put on the new self and put on Jesus and love as if we were putting on a shirt?   This is hard.  We still get tempted in sin.  Keeping our focus on two realities is essential.

          First, we look to Jesus, not the cultural values of the world around us.  Ephesians 4:17 mentions Gentiles.  Here ‘Gentiles’, means people without God in their lives.  In v.19 it says of them that they “have lost all sensitivity.”  In other words, they have completely lost the ability to feel sin. 

Whenever we want to be acceptable to our peers outside the Kingdom of God, and whenever we long for pleasures that are not Godly, we begin to rationalize.  It’s OK to have sex without marriage.  It’s alright to watch videos that are dehumanizing, lewd, and violent.  It’s OK to smoke things and drink things that blur our vision and kill our brain cells.  It’s OK to hoard goods for our pleasure.  We stretch the categories so that what was a sin yesterday is seen as acceptable behavior today. 

Jesus did not fall for this because he was always focused on the Heavenly Father.  He was always driven to show people what Kingdom life is like.  One example is in how Jesus used power – the power of God.  Andy Crouch describes Jesus as being incredibly disciplined.  He went away for silence and solitude.  He fasted for 40 days.  He always observed Sabbath.  He is a role model when it comes to living a spiritually disciplined life. 

Yet, Crouch also points out where Jesus allowed himself to be interrupted.[i]  One telling example from Mark chapter 5 is when Jesus went to heal the daughter of Jairus.  Jairus was the synagogue leader.  Healing his daughter would be a high profile miracle, sure to garner much credibility for Jesus. 

Along the way to his house, a woman with uncontrollable bleeding, stole behind him in the crowd.  She believed if she just touched him anonymously, she’d be healed.  She was right, but she did not count on Jesus knowing.  He immediately felt the power go out of him.  He summoned her in front of the crowd.  He was on a very important mission of healing for a very important man and he just stopped so he could heal an unclean woman, a nobody.  He gave attention.  He called her “daughter” so everyone could hear. 

In the delay, the daughter of Jairus died.  Still he went and he raised her, but behind closed doors.  Only Peter, James, and John and her parents witnessed Jesus bring the girl back to life from death.  He ordered them not to talk about it (Mark 5:43). Jesus performed an act that would do very little for his reputation, the healing of the bleeding woman.  He did this in full view of the public, showing them that this cast-off person was an image bearer, a child of God made in the image of God.  The healing of the powerful man’s daughter was done in private because Jesus does not seek public acclaim.  He did not court influence.

We read Ephesians 4:20 where are chastised to not succumb to the gradual degradation that comes from continually minimizing sin and justifying sin.  Rather we are to walk in the way of Christ.  Ephesians 5:1-2, “be imitators of God [and] live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”  To be mature in Christ is to realize that the power and the influence and the fame and the wealth valued by the world is nothing to God.  But worship and building up the church and restoring the image of God in broken people is everything.

First we look to Christ.  This includes staying constantly connected to Christ through prayer and worship.

Second, we realize our weakness.  We cannot be faithful; we don’t have the will power.  But the Spirit at work in us can do all things.  To stay in step with the Spirit, we have to make Spiritual disciplines a way of life. 

This is hard.  I fall into stretches where I lead a spiritually undisciplined life.  In those seasons, I don’t think God is far from me.   I believe the Spirit is always close and also whispering God’s love to me.  But most of the time, the Holy Spirit will not compete for my attention.  In a relationship, we give the other – a friend, a parent, a spouse, the Holy Spirit of God – our attention.  We don’t squeeze in a few minutes here and there for those we love.  Too often in my life, I have crowded God out, only squeezing in a few moments.  God is speaking, but I miss the message because I am only half listening.

Spiritual disciplines open us up for what God is preparing to do in us.  God empowers us to walk in the way of Christ.  Spiritual disciplines tenderize us and make us receptive to God.  The disciplines remind us how much we need God.  And though disciplines may seem challenging, when we step to the challenges we step toward blessing – the ultimate blessing of seeing, hearing, and feeling the very real presence and love of God in our lives.

I am starting again.  If you have tried disciplines before and it did not seem to work, try again.  If you want ideas or someone to just pray with you and for you, come see me.  I mean it.  This time, I have started small.  I am giving something up, completely, something that has sucked up way too much of my time and emotions.  And I am doing some modified fasting.  It kind of feels like Lent in September, but not really.  It is my awakening that to live “in Christ” and to grow to maturity in Christ, I have to give him more of myself.  I simply must. 

Look to Christ.  Practice spiritual disciplines.  Living in your spiritual gifting.  There is a lot more in Ephesians 4.  Read it throughout the week.  As you pray read it, waiting to see God will do in your life.

We are now at the end of a journey that really does not end.  Since June, we’ve focused on the idea of life in Christ.  Go back and again read Colossians, 1^st John, and Ephesians.  Maybe reading those letters and praying in those letters is your first step in the disciplines.  Read imaginatively, placing yourself in Colossae and in Ephesus.  Imagine you are a first century Christian hearing these messages for the first time.  Listen closely and allow God to speak through word, as He draws you to himself, and shapes your life.

We are in Christ.  We close with a word from Ephesians, chapter four, verse 4-5. 

⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

AMEN

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[i] Crouch, Andy (2013).  Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power.  IVP Books, Downers Grove, IL, .242-245.