In the Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, the author writes, “When we are preoccupied with our own concerns, much of the world is simply invisible to us. Service is rooted in seeing—in seeing others as God does. God cares about productive and nonproductive people, poor people and rich people, educated and non-educated people. God cares about everybody.” God wants us to see people as He sees them. He wants us to have the same mindset as Christ—in humility He put the needs of others before His own. As Foster explained, “More than any other single way, the grace of humility is worked into our lives through the Discipline of service. Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is evidence that we don’t… Of all the classical Spiritual Disciplines, service is the most conducive to the growth of humility… a deep change occurs in our spirits” as a result of true service.
To avoid becoming a deformed disciple, Dr. Eugene Peterson suggests that we need a framework—and that framework should be worship. As we gather together week-by-week to worship God in this place, we experience this framework through the systematic teaching of God’s Word, through the people of God “sharpening” us and encouraging us, through lifting our voices in praise and adoration for who God is and for all He has done. Worship is that weekly reminder that provides us with a working definition for life.
Community is often under-prioritized, because we naturally tend to gravitate towards hanging out. But are we building the right community, the community God intends for us to have with one another. In this lesson, we are first going to look at how the early church (Acts 2:42-47) built their community together. Second, we are going to read through 1 Corinthians 13, at how the church at Corinth needed to shift the priority of their community from valuing talents and gifts to valuing Love above all else. A love the leads us back to Christ.
there are three primary aspects of the Christian walk: knowing God, abiding in God and obeying God. We cannot neglect any one of these aspects or we will be in danger of becoming either legalistic, heretical or a hypocrite. The Christian walk should be found in the conflux of these three thinks—knowing, abiding and obeying. As we maintain this balance and grow in all three areas, our Christian walk will be characterized as being mature. As I have evaluated all these elements of the Christian walk, I felt strongly that prayer and Bible study are the two spiritual disciplines that are absolutely indispensable. Beyond these two, I believe that there are four more disciplines that should be practiced daily, including community, worship, service and solitude. Those elements will be our focus over the next four weeks.
The Bible teaches us that the purpose of salvation is to be conformed to the image of God’s Son—Jesus. The process by which that transformation happens is called “the Christian Walk.” There are many elements that are essential for that transformation process to take place. This will be our focus
for the next several weeks. The first of these is the element of PRAYER!
In this message, we want to focus our attention on the effect of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. According to the passages we just read, what happened as a result of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection?
It did not take long in Scripture before God clearly communicated His plan for the salvation of the world. We cannot forget that the Bible says that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22b). And that is where we want to pick up in the Book of Genesis today, to see God reveal to His chosen people what His plan was for their salvation.
We have reached the end of “The End of the Beginning” sermon series. Our message this morning is the culmination of forty-one weeks that we have spent studying the Book of Acts over the past several years. In this last portion of this book, we see the Apostle Paul once again fulfilling God’s purpose and plan for his life. Once again, he is witnessing before rulers and Gentiles, but only after sharing the gospel with the Jews first. In a nutshell— this was God’s purpose and plan for Saul of Tarsus, even before he was born.
In our study last week, we last saw the Apostle Paul in the midst of an extremely dangerous situation—the ship he was on had been driven by a tropical cyclone across the Mediterranean. For fourteen days, the passengers and crew had no idea what their heading had been or where they were. The experienced seamen on board realized that they were nearing a land mass of some form. Trusting in what Paul had said concerning the deliverance that his God had promised to all who stayed with Paul on the ship, they all took a moment to eat something in order to be strengthened and encouraged for the events that were about to happen.
As we have studied the life of the Apostle Paul—as it is recorded in the Book of Acts—we have seen Paul endure many difficult circumstances. In every circumstance, Paul continued to trust in God and be content in every one of them (2 Corinthians 12:10; Philippians 4:11). Contentment is an outward demonstration of complete dependence upon God. When we rely on God, we are trusting that He has everything under His control—even when it feels like everything is out of control!