Summary
Coming soon!
Transcript
Good morning. Oh, man. One clap. Thanks, Kat. I appreciate it.
Not for me. It was for the band. They got one clap.
That's all they need was one clap. Now it's just like a pitter patter at a sad comedy show. It's fine. It's fine. Hey, my name is Jonathan Lee, pastor here. So thankful that you guys are with us. Hey, just wanted to say thank you for Pastor Andrew and all the rest of the staff for covering services last week while me and my family are on vacation. We had such a great trip. We drove out to Myrtle Beach. Had a really good time at the beach. It was awesome. Had some just real relaxing time in the waves and everything else. And so, man, we thank you for your prayers. I didn't pop any tires on our camper this time. It was boring. You know, I like boring. That's great. It was just a lot of fun. So for those of you who don't know, we went the opposite because we went to California last year and I had two flats on my camper, which if you've ever changed a flat tire on a camper on the side of an energy car, on a camper on the side of an interstate, it's an experience of life altering proportions. So it was nice to not have to have that. But hey, we're going to get right into today's message. I'm super excited. We're continuing our spiritual formation series. We've been talking about this. This is actually the sixth week in a row that we've been talking specifically about this. And man, I'm so thankful for Pastor Andrew's message last week. It was such a great setup for where I'm going today. And if you missed last week or any of the weeks, I encourage you to go back, check them out. But last week, Pastor Andrew talked about something specifically about unintentional formation. And so we're going to look at some of that together. But before we do that, I do want to do this. I want to invite you to stand up with me to your feet for the reading of our theme text. We've read this one several weeks now. And I just want to kind of keep this in the presence of our mind as we think about this movement. Romans , verse , it says this, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve God's will, His good, pleasing, and perfect will." Father God, we thank you for today. Lord, we thank you as we continue to press into this idea of being formed by your hand and having our minds be transformed or metamorphosed into something new, Father. We just thank you that you're here in the midst of this process. It's in your holy name we pray, amen and amen.
All right, you may be seated.
So Pastor Andrew last week talked about, and he had a great graph, a great example of unintentional formation. Because the thing that he brought out so clearly is the fact that all of us are being formed in some way. And right here is the graph that I was mentioning. We're all have been formed by our society, by our culture. And there's kind of, there's six different things here on this graph that we get to look through. So there's four things that form us. Our habits, our relationships, our stories, and then our environment. Those are active things that we participate. He went through and kind of talked about what all four of those things happen. Those are things that we actively participate to some way or another. That those four things, coupled with time, the amount of time that you've lived here on this earth, and then the experiences that you have, those things will create what we could call the character or the formation of who you are. And so as we walk through this process, those things are happening. Whether you're being intentional about it or not, those things are happening. And today, we want to look at kind of the other side of the coin. We want to look at what it means to have an intentional formation process. What does it mean to be intentional about our spiritual formation? But before we do that, we have to ask ourselves this question.
It is this. In this relationship with God, because we're talking about being formed, there's this principle that I think is important for us to grasp onto.
And it's this. Sometimes, and I've heard people say this before, usually it's younger people, although sometimes it's not, is this idea that if God really wants to change something about me, He's just going to have to do it all by Himself.
Has anyone ever told you that? Like, if God really wants me to stop doing this or start doing that or get rid of this habit or this poor thing, God's just going to have to do it Himself. And the truth is, God absolutely has the power and the ability to start or to remove some kind of character trait or habit or thing in your life. Like, He is capable of doing that. He is capable of transforming you. And there are occasionally times in our lives that God will come through and will move in a very meaningful and powerful way to free us from a certain type of behavior or certain character traits or some kind of thing and to move in a different way. But there's a bigger overarching idea that we see through Scripture from the very beginning of Scripture in page one in Genesis, and we see this over and over again, which is God does not desire to have a relationship with a bunch of marionette puppets that He controls.
He does not want a bunch of robots that He programs. His desire is to be in a relationship with you. And not only does He want to be in a relationship, it goes actually further than that. He actually wants to be in partnership with you. And He desires for you to partner with Him in the ability to reign and to create and to rule over this world and in this place and to partner with Him in bringing new creation in heaven down to earth. We see that from the very beginning. When God created the entire heavens, when God in the creation narrative, He creates all of these habitats and then He creates these inhabitants. And the thing that He does with man after He creates everything is He then gives them the authority. He says that you're called to be fruitful and to multiply, to rule over all the things of the earth and to have dominion over them and to give names to everything. At this point, we can just look at this like, yeah, it's neat. And then we have these storybook pictures and like, and Adam called that one a lion and he called that one an elephant. Well, she didn't do any of that. Those are all new names.
What we realize is God who created and then out of creation, out of the breast of God gave names, then delegated that authority to the man and said, you now are in partnership with me and have the authority, the ability to name something. You see, God is so confident in His authority and His power, He is willing to give it away and partner with us. And He invites that to us. He invited that to Adam and Eve. He said, I want you to reign with me. I want you to find good and evil at the feet and through the relationship and wisdom of being in relationship with me. And we know the story they fell, they sinned, they fell short. But all throughout the rest of the Old Testament story, we see God desperately desiring to be in relationship with people and for them to rule and to partner with Him. We saw it with Noah, we saw it with Abraham, we saw it with Moses. We even saw the invitation to the entire nation of Israel when He said, I want you to be a nation of royal priests, a nation of my representatives here on earth. That was His desire. That was what He wanted. And this theme or this idea of God desiring to partner with individuals and say, hey, I'm going to do things that you can never do. I will do miraculous things, impossible things, multiplying things that you could never fathom, but I'm not going to do it apart from you. I'm going to do it with you.
And see, doing something with someone is very different than doing something for someone.
Do you parents know what I'm talking about?
I can do something for my kids. I can cook them a meal. I can clean something in their room. Or I can do something with them. Now, most times, and this just goes to show my failure as a father and as human beings,
I would probably say most of the time I just usually do it for them because doing it with them is harder, it's longer, it's usually more expensive, and it's more stressful.
Am I the only one who feels that way?
Like, I would rather just go and clean their room than have to stand there and ask them to clean their room and then watch them incompetently clean their room and just be like, do you not see this?
Call me when it's done. It's done. There's no way. It's impossible. No, it is. I promise. And you walk in and you're like, but what are all these things on the floor? I didn't see that. There's no way. There's no way.
There's no way.
We do things forI can just do it for them, but here's the problem.
When we continue to just do things for people, they never learn to be able to do it for themselves.
When you do it with them, that empowers them to not only learn how to do it, but to go and to do it for others.
So God desires to partner with man because he wants you to learn to do certain things and understand good and evil right and wrong for yourself so that you can partner with others and help them learn as well. You see, that's God's entire process from the very beginning that he doesn't desire to do things absent of you. He desires to do things with you.
And there's some great sayings like some different people, like there's this one quote that I think is so amazing. It's that, like, apart from God, you can't do anything.
Like Jesus said, "Apart from me, you can do nothing." Which is kind of, at first, demoralizing, and then the more you think about it, like, yeah, you're right.
Sorry.
But here's the thing. Apart from God, you can do nothing, but apart from you, God won't move.
He will move with you.
That's the invitation.
He wants to be in a relationship with you. And so when we think about spiritual formation, there is a process, there is a ownership that we get to take in this thing. And I'm telling you, it can seem like this thing, and I want to hyperfixate on it for just a second because if you're not careful, you can sit there and think that, oh, this is like some kind of religious works or like an earning mechanism of, like, for me to become a better Christian. And that's not what spiritual formation is at all.
Spiritual formation is the ability for you to take ownership and say, "God, I want to partner with you, and the small thing that I can do, I partner with you so that you can do the thing that's impossible in me because I can't change who I am.
There's things inside of my character, there's things inside of my, like there's hurts and there's wounds that need to be healed that I cannot do, I cannot fix on my own, no matter how often I go to church, no matter how much time I spend in prayer, no matter how much time I spend reading the Word, those things in and of themselves will not fix the things that I have inside of me.
But being in the presence of a loving God over time will transform me. And when I am intentional, when I decide, you know what, hey, I am being formed whether I decided that or not, just like that first graph shows, I am in the process of being formed. I'm either being formed unintentionally by what the world is creating around me or I can choose God, I want to be intentional about this process so that I can just place myself at your feet.
I think about Mary and Martha, and one got mad at the other because one was working hard and the other one just sat at his feet. And he said, "She chose the good thing because we just got to be with Jesus." You see, it wasn't the activity, it wasn't the social norms, it wasn't the ideas, it was the fact that we get to sit at our feet and in our society because of how we are created in the world that we live, if we are not intentional about our spiritual formation process, then unintentionally we will be being formed by things that are not from God's part towards us.
But when we become intentional, all we're doing is we're shutting away other things and allowing ourselves to choose the good thing, which is allowing Jesus and the Holy Spirit to move in our lives.
So here's the thing, in those six things in that graph that we had before, and we may reference both and back and forth and they can look at it, but here's the thing, there are ways that we can counteract some of those things. So the first thing that we talked about in unintentional is habits. Your habits are part of what form you. And Pastor Andrew did a great job last week about what habits are. And man, there's all sorts of things. There's good habits, there's bad habits, there's healthy habits, there's unhealthy habits, but habits are what form you. But here's the problem with a habit. Here's the example of a habit that I heard this a couple weeks ago and I haven't been able to shake it out of our mind. When we talk about our brain and we talk about our brain a lot here, like when we talk about this, the fast part of our brain that just makes decisions quickly, the right side of our brain, right? It has this idea where we create these neural pathways, right? These memory pathways that are happening and habits create a pathway. And the first time that you do something, imagine that some of you will know this, some of you and people maybe don't know this, but like when I grew up in Oklahoma and then especially where my mom's from in southeast Texas, there were still a lot of dirt roads. Anyone remember dirt roads? Anyone remember driving on dirt roads? They still exist, right? Dirt roads are great. Man, they're excellent. And here's the thing, if you've ever just driven on a flat, like a dirt road, the first time you drive on a dirt road, nothing really happens. At most, you maybe see some tire marks of what happens on the dirt road, right? Like we see it. It's there. It's like, look, I drove there. But if you've ever been on a dirt road that's had a lot of traffic and a lot of people drive through it over and over and over again, all of a sudden it's not just a flat surface anymore. Ruts begin to form in a dirt road. And on those roads that haven't been processed, they haven't been fixed, they haven't been repaired, those ruts get big. And the problem is with the ruts, and it's not necessarily a problem, is no matter where you actually want to drive, you're going to be driving in the ruts of that road.
You're going to be on that path. And hopefully that path has taken you where you want to go because you're not getting out of it. The first time, when you go a second time, if you want to drive slightly over to the left, maybe in the middle of a different site, like you can do it.
But after a while, those things, and that's how our brain works with our habits of our life. The first time it does something, it may be a little challenging, but over time, you begin to make these neural pathways and you create these ruts in the way that you're going. Some of you have ruts in the way you wake up, the way you eat, the way you exercise, like there's just routines. You have these ruts. And that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad, but they're taking you to a certain place. That's the habits. And for the habits that are good, that are healthy, that are wholesome, those things are great for you. But there may be certain habits, certain ruts that are in your life that you've realized those actually aren't from God and they're not actually good. But no matter what I do, every time I turn down that road, I go down the same ruts. Even if I want to do something a little differently, I can't seem to get off of it.
Like I can't seem to change that. That's why, like there's people, this is not meant to be guilty. Like the number of people who the first thing they do when they wake up is check their phone.
First thing, check social media, check text messages, check email, whatever your thing. Like the first thing they do, that's what they do.
And they do it and they say, "Oh, you know what? I'm going to stop that. I'm going to stop that. I'm going to stop it." And then the next morning they wake up and they grab their phone, and like without even thinking about it, they're right to their app of choice.
They're like, "How did I get here?"
We've all done that. You opened your phone to do something else, and all of a sudden you're on Instagram and you've been scrolling for five minutes, you're like, "How did I get here? I have no memory of this place."
Like you just did it and you don't even know. Or how quickly you have an idea. Like the number of times I'm going to get a recipe off my phone and I open my phone. And without thinking, all of a sudden, like by memory, by rut, that's exactly where these, like sometimes I move my app around just so I can forget where they are.
Which means I'll be opening something totally random regularly.
Because I just keep going to it. Like you put these ruts in your life.
And again, if that road's leading where you want to go, great.
The ruts are good. Some ruts are excellent.
But if it's not leading you where you want to go, then something needs to happen. And so those habits need to be replaced. And so the way that we counteract habits in spiritual formation, in intentional spiritual formation is practices.
Spiritual practices. And we'll talk more about each and every one of these, but these are, like some of these that we'll be talking about are the ones that we can see in the life that Jesus lives. So things like prayer and silence and solitude and fasting and reading scripture. Like those are practices that we can do because what that does is it retrains our mind. Although your mind may be in a rut in certain areas, with time and with a process, you can actually fill in those ruts and resurface that rut and create new neural pathways through practices. But we need something that anchors us so that we're not just going right back down the same path.
And spiritual practices are things that can rewire, repave our roads and our brains so that we can do something differently. So that we can get rid of certain habits and replace them with spiritual practices that will actually take us to the place in our journey where we actually want to go.
Because I can tell you this, and this is just me, maybe it's you, like Instagram is not going to get me where I want to go in life.
I'll laugh.
I'll get some good recipes.
I'll feel like I'm either really strong or really weak depending on which video I watch.
But I won't get where I want to go. And I'm not saying it's evil, but what I'm telling you is if that's the thing that's forming me and that's the habit that's in my life, it's not going to take me where I want to go. So I can replace these things with spiritual practices, or I can replace habits that exist in my life. I can replace those things intentionally with spiritual practices that can allow me to create new formations, new habits in my life.
So instead of waking up and first thing checking my phone to see what's going on, like, oh, was the square that game over there? Like instead of doing that first thing, I can replace that with, hey, the first thing I'm going to do when I wake up is I'm going to say a prayer.
And I know that means like, oh, like this lame, I'm just telling you, like these are the type of spiritual formation habits that change the roadwork of who you are. Did you stop me? You say, you know what, I'm just going to stop.
I made it a habit. The first thing when I do when I wake up is just to lay in bed for just a minute. And I'm usually like a guy like this my whole life. It's like the alarm goes off. I hit that alarm and I'm off to the races. Like the day has started. I'm already behind. Time to get stuff done.
Do I have a todo list? Yes. Am I ready to check things off? Yes. Like let's get on it. And so I don't want to linger in bed because I'm already behind. From the moment I woke up, I was late.
Some of you are like that.
But like when I just realized, hey, you know what, instead of going to my task, instead of going to my thing, instead of going, I'm just going to sit here.
And I'm going to say, God, thank you for letting me wake up one more day.
This was not a guarantee.
And then I get to pray. Maybe it's the Lord's Prayer.
Maybe it's the Lord's My Shepherd. Maybe it's Psalm there. Maybe it's another thing. Maybe I read a Psalm. Like just a moment, just a moment, just a slow down. It's like, God, I acknowledge you're here this morning.
I have things to do like everybody else. I have things to respond to, but Lord, you're here.
And I'm here. And this breath that I woke up with this morning is again.
That's a small practice. That's a small practice. It takes two minutes.
But it will change your daily output. It will change the way you think. It changes your thing as opposed to the first thing like Instagram, YouTube, YouTube, news, text, what, what, Tesla. It changes.
Right. It changes.
Small thing. It changes.
And there's so many things, silence and solitude and fasting. These are all little things that can change a current habit and replace it with something that's better.
So that's the first thing changing habits with spiritual practices. The second one is taking relationships and replacing relationships with community. So many of us are formed by our family of origin, our friends, our workplace, tribes that we belong to. And listen, those things are not in and of themselves wrong. But if those are the things that are shaping you and they're shaping you out of the context of the person you're called to be in Christ, then we need to replace current relationships and live in community who are called as a body of believers to be in community together. This is why church is important. We are a community that gives the whole each other accountable to God's identity of who we are. And so when we begin to exercise or walk out in a way that is contrary to the identity that we have as believers, we have friends in community who can say, hey, I just want to let you know you're in a little out of bounds right now. And I say that with love not to be judging but this creates a community. And the community can be what we are part of and what shapes us. So I can replace just outside relationships where I'm just trying to fit in with being part of a community that says you belong.
And that's very different.
You don't have to be perfect to be part of this community. But we are part of this community together and it shapes us. Me being in relationship with you shapes me. It makes me a better person. It allows me to grow as I'm in relationship with you. Hearing your stories encourages me. Being able to share my story with you encourages you. Like these things happen and we get to be in partnership and community together. And instead of allowing my relationship, my marital status, whether I'm dating or single or whether I've got a lot of friends or no friends, like whatever as opposed to letting those things identify us and say, no, we are a community that is actually part of a greater community called the church that is the bride of Christ that has an identity given to us by the creator of the universe. And that is who we are.
We are living in that community.
And living in community is not easy because we're humans.
And humans are faulty and have flaws. And sometimes people's humanness outweigh their Christlikeness.
Like you guys are great and sometimes you're annoying.
Not all the time, but occasionally.
And that's okay because I'd rather be in community than say, ah, just forget it. Sometimes people say, I go to church but I don't want to be in community because that's not what it is. No, no, no. You cannot be formed apart from community.
Community is an integral part of formation. It doesn't have to be , people, but I'm telling you, you need to be in a community, a group of people.
That is what helps shape you, to form you, to expose you. That's part of it. It's intentional.
You don't have to be in community with everybody. You have to be best friends with everybody. That's not what I'm saying. But you need to be intentionally in a community in which you can be fully known by those people and that they can be fully known by you.
That you can express your heart and you can be open with.
Super important.
It's super important. That's why things like small groups and serve teams and going out to coffee and having meals and inviting people over and you going over to their house, like, yeah, I get it. Sometimes it's nervous. Like, it's like, oh, I don't know. They invited me over. What else? They tried to sell me something.
I know that's your first thought. Like, oh, they invited me to dinner. They have a multilevel marketing idea. I know it. I'm going to get there. They're going to make me something that's not that good to eat. I'm going to be uncomfortable and then they're going to be like, have you ever thought about selling fill in the blank?
So I'm just not going to go. We have to break that idea.
The community needs to happen.
And the people that you're in are not going to be able to do that. They're going to be able to do that. They're going to be able to do that. Or else the relationships that you are in are forming you and shaping you. They're forming you and they're shaping you.
To look like them, to act like them, to respond like them. Our world is full of relationships, groups that all think and act and behave the same way. And not in a way in a path that leads you to where you want to go.
Third thing.
Things that you believe that if you believe that these narratives are true, they will shape you.
And there's stories that we have all things. Assumptions that we have believed. Cultural assumptions, identity assumptions, things about working hard and no days off and hard work paid. All these kind of things about money and relationships and time and all these different ideas. Like if you believe those stories, then they will shape the way you believe and the way that you act. And there are people who believe the stories of this world more than the teaching and the biblical truth of the Bible.
And so because of that, they are formed and they are shaped by the stories of this world which are made up as opposed to the truth and the reality that is God's word and his teaching and his goodness for you.
And so when you respond and you live chasing after the stories, then you're very shocked whenever the results are not actually good for you. They're actually bad.
But you see, teaching can replace stories. And what I mean by teaching is not just coming and listening to me on a Sunday or listening to a podcast. That can be something preaching and teaching or studying by God's word or being in a small group or going to coffee and just being a part of a book study that's on a theme that's about God. Like these are things that we can do where we can replace the lies of this world with the truth of God's word in our life. That I can be intentional saying, this is the metric. This is the thing that is upheld as truth in my life. And even if I don't like it, I still get to follow it as truth.
There are certain things that God says that I should do or not do that I don't like.
But that doesn't make it untrue.
It actually just points out my faults.
I want it to be like, love your neighbor, accept if they're real jerks and they keep knocking down your fence and then you can really let them have it.
But that's not what the Bible says.
So I can't be like, oh, I don't like this, God. They're not fair. They're not kind. They're not just.
Their cucumbers ruined my fence.
Something like, what are you talking about? It happened.
Cucumbers are invasive and they will take out your fence.
And then they have the audacity to be like, put your fence back up. My fence fell down because your cucumbers overwhelmed it.
And I want a scripture that allows me to behave the way that I feel.
And God's like, no, sorry.
And I don't like that.
But that's the reality. I get to replace truth with a story.
There's lots of stories we've believed over our life. Even things that reframe to you is true that are not true about the identity of who you are, about who you're called to be, about what the maxim and God has so much more for you than you could ever imagine. And here's what these three things do.
When we replace our habits with spiritual practices, when we replace our relationship with living in community, when we replace stories with the truth of God's word,
the thing that this does as opposed to that creates our environment, that allows us to place ourselves at the feet of Jesus and to become fully, inviting the Holy Spirit to say, God, I just want you to move in me.
Holy Spirit, do your work. Do what I can't imagine.
Because here's the thing about spiritual formation. Sometimes we go to God and be like, okay, God, I've done an analysis. I took a little test. And here are the seven areas of my life that I need to improve in. Only these seven don't touch anymore.
And I've ordered them an importance of which ones you need to fix. And then after those seven, I will be perfect walking like Jesus here on this earth.
I think we can get this done by next Tuesday if you do your part.
And then we're good for the rest of my life.
But here's the weird thing.
Being in relationship with God and the Holy Spirit, this isn't like, oh, here, I'm going to get to that. Like, He will take you on a journey into places and the ways and directions that you can never imagine. And He may not address the thing that you think is really important right away.
He may think, like, you may think that's the thing, but maybe there's another thing. And another thing, maybe there was some more root causes that you didn't know. We just came back from the ocean. And the way I think about it is this, like, while we were out there, there was a couple of days that there was some, like, riptides and currents and, like, red flag warnings and all this kind of stuff. And here's the thing. As long as you're standing on the shore, it doesn't matter where the current is. Nothing's going to happen to you. You're on the shore.
But the moment that you get in the water, the water takes you wherever the water's going to take you.
And now you can try to swim around and you can try to navigate. But when the currents are really strong, that water will take you where it wants to go. And it may take you places you never expected.
You wanted to go over there, and wouldn't you know it, I was over there.
When we allow ourselves to say, God, there's only a littleall I'm doing is buying in.
I'm walking through these practices just because I want to be more aware of your presence in my life. I want to be in community because I want to be fully known and I want to be able to be shaped by people who are in similar, like, beliefs. I want your word to be truth because ultimately, I just want to take my soul, my spirit, my mind, and I want to put them in the waters of your Holy Spirit, and I want the Holy Spirit to move me wherever you need to take me. And if that means dealing with some of these anger issues, great. But if it's something else, great. If it's dealing with a habit or an addiction or a secret sin or something, like, you have your way. I'm here in this place and you will be able to move wherever I go. All we're doing is placing ourselves in the water of God's grace and mercy.
And He will take us. That's all that this spiritual formation journey is. Is we just step in the water and say, God, have your way. But if you stand at the seashore when Jesus is saying, come out, come out and walk on the water,
the water, He won't come in to swoop you up.
These processes, this thing, spending time in God's word, it's not like, oh, why? Now God loves me because I spent time in God's word. It's like, no, not just shut up my mind and repave some thorns and replace some stories with the truth of God's word. So now in this moment, I can be aware of His presence and He can change the way I think about myself and others.
And the elements of this, the thing that's similar is we need time.
Your spiritual formation process is a time. I know some of you would like to have it done my next Tuesday, but it's not going to be done next Tuesday.
Imagine a construction project with many delays.
And then triple it because your spiritual formation process, your journey,
the journey itself is important in the formation of the character that God has for you.
And sometimes people are like, I've been doing this thing. I read my Bible for six days in a row and nothing changed.
I know. It's frustrating.
There's a reason that Jesus used examples like a mustard seed or a harvest.
He never used instant microwave oatmeal examples.
He did the opposite.
I think a modern example, and I've used this example before, is the idea of compounding interest. This is a modern thing that maybe because you're not farmers. I know I'm definitely not a farmer. You should see my grass.
It's bad.
Wasteland.
But there's examples, and I was thinking about things this morning. And here's a great example because sometimes if I were to ask, I'll even ask Rafa. This is his first Sunday being in sixth grade. So he's here this morning, my third son. And so Rafa, I got an option for you.
This is made up. You're not getting either of these. You can either, okay. I can either, in this make believe series, it's not real. That will never happen.
I can either give you $, every day for days, or I can give you a penny and double it every day for days. Which do you want?
Lucas, don't help.
Do you want a penny today or ,?
Need an answer today, bro. People are waiting.
$,. So at the end of that time, you would have $, in one month. That's pretty good. That's a lot of money.
And the penny is weird because the first day you had a penny, you had a penny. On the other one, I had $,. That's a lot of penny. And on the second day, you know how many pennies I have? Two pennies. You know how much money you have for $,? $,. Man, you're loaded. And you're way behind on the penny. But here's what's crazy. Go ahead and put that last graph up. When I take these pennies, I just keep going. At first, it doesn't seem like it's working out very well. And for the first years, I'm really in trouble because for years, at that point, as wild as it sounds, I'm at $,. But that's day one if I would have just taken $,.
At year , I'd be at $,.
But look what happens with time. You know, doubling from one penny to two pennies is really easy.
It's easy.
Doubling from two pennies to four pennies is easy. But when you realize that the process of doubling is not the end result, it is the thing that you have in multiplying it times two as doubling. And in our journey, what looks like something that's really far away, God's going to start taking from one penny to two pennies because that's all you actually have. And then you'll take it from two pennies to four pennies. But look, if you're looking closer, all of a sudden something happens around year and all of a sudden it goes from $, in year to $,. And we're like, okay, we're getting there. All of a sudden now I'm at $,, now I'm at $,. And it's still at year is the first year where it's like, wait a minute, that number is more than $, for days. But look, it keeps going. And it goes from , all of a sudden , ., ., ., all of a sudden it's day , we're at $ million.
All we're just taking the penny and doubling it over time.
Some of you are like, oh, if that math checks out, go do it.
It's just simple. As I learn time, value, and money, that's it. Compound interest daily.
You can't change your interest. Sorry, Rob. You're out. Why do I give this example? Some are like, I've been reading the Bible for a month and nothing changed.
Yeah, it looks like it. I went from one penny to two pennies.
I don't even know if that was worth it. I could have done something on my own and gotten a far greater return earlier on. And you're probably right.
You probably could do some habit stacking and some self whatever, and you could do a few things in the beanie.
And it would be short return. It wouldn't get you where you're running to go.
But you see, a journey with Christ who knows your soul and is not in it for one day to the next, but is in it for your entire life.
He knows how to take you from step to step to step. And what's wild is the greatest amount of change, the greatest amount of fruitfulness,
the greatest amount of freedom and experience you'll find. It won't be in your one and following Christ. It won't even be in your ten and following Christ. You will find the greatest fruitfulness in your and your and your because all of the sudden, it's the same amount of doubling. But what is changing inside of you is vastly different because you are not just something that has happened. You've become what Christ said, which you abided in Christ and you became deeply rooted in Him. And now the fruitfulness that keeps coming over and over exceeds beyond what you could have ever imagined.
And our relationship with God, these spiritual practices, you're not going to all of a sudden be like, I fasted for two weeks in a row and now I'm perfect.
It's not going to happen because the fast is actually not the thing.
The journey of being exposed to God's presence allows us to be transformed. It's a little bit, it's a little bit. And when I look at my own journey, when I look at my own life in this process, I can look and I say, man, I've been a follower of Christ my whole life. I was four when I was saved, but I've been actively in this process of having Him transform me probably for just short of years. And praise God, I'm not anywhere where I thought I would be.
I'm so far, but I truthfully, if I was being honest, I probably would have thought, man, I think I wish I was a little further along.
But all of a sudden I'm realizing that God's doing these things in me and these transformations, this doubling now is built on all the doubling that He's done in the past.
And I'm seeing new things and incredible things today.
Because the last thing, the time and the other thing is unfortunately what Jesus calls trials or tribulations with this graph called suffering, those things will happen.
And those things will be formative, but in the middle of that, you realize that God can take that suffering, that trial, that tribulation and add it to this process of forming you into His image. And listen, this class, this thing that we're starting here next Wednesday, the spiritual formation class, I know a bunch of you signed up if you haven't, I want to encourage you to go through this process. Even if you can't make them all, that's okay. That's not like the requirement if you're going to be out of town. For one, I know it's summer and people are traveling, it's okay. But this journey is such an amazing opportunity for you to just take a step and say, you know what, I want to be intentional about my formation. Everyone's at a different starting place. Everyone's at a different path. Everyone has a different thing that God's going to speak to them. This is just something where we can come together in community and be intentional about this journey. What you get out of it and what you walk away from it will be very different than what I get away from it. Not because I'm better or worse or you're better or what, no, because we're two different people at two very different places.
And God wants to meet you right where you are and to begin the journey and to speak to you.
And when we do it in community, we get to hear, oh, look, they're over there and he's over there and she's over there and they're walking through this. Oh, they found that hard. I also found that hard. I was supposed to be silent for two minutes and I made it two seconds.
That's hard.
And we get to do it together in a journey.
And we can walk to this place where we realize.
I'm doing these things. I'm walking through these things just because I want to get in the waters of his presence.
I'll close with this story. There's this story of an elderly farmer who was Catholic and this was in, I believe it was in the s. And he would every day go to his local church and he would sit on a pew and he would just sit there for hours.
Never would do anything and he would get up and he would leave and he would do it every day. He did it every day, every day, every day. And finally, one of the priests at the parish came and talked to him and asked him, what are you doing? Why do you come in here? Like what is your process? Like you're a farmer, like you've got things to do and you come in for hours. Like you're not praying, you're not lighting candles, you're not saying anything. Like what? There's no service at this time. What are you doing?
And he said, it's really simple.
I look at him, he looks at me and we're happy.
And that's it.
If you understand that all God wants you to know is how much he loves you and how much love he stares at you and how that staring of love is transformative to transform you into a person of love. And that that's all you need.
And that that's all you need.
You won't get to that gentleman's place the first time you sit down and be like, today's the day I'm going to be silent before the Lord. You will probably make it seven seconds and then you'll think about one of the , tasks that's going in your brain because that's what your brain does.
And the first year you won't get there, the second year you get there, but at some point in your life you'll realize, I can be quiet and be overwhelmed by the presence of God.
And he loves me.
I'm transformed by that.
And there's no amount of doing or achieving or striving that allows that gaze to transform who I am. So I want to invite you, if you haven't signed up for this class on Wednesday, do it. I cannot wait. If you're doing it and you know someone who's not signed up, invite them, invite friends, whether this church or not. They don't have to go to this church to come to this class. Invite people to come to it. Invite people to say, hey, we're going through this eight week course. It's going to be awesome. It'll create conversations.
It'll be a great thing to just try something new. Step out of it.
Invite someone. Invite another couple. Invite another single friend. Invite people to come and just sit down to be part of this group.
It's going to be awesome. I can't wait to walk through it with you. I'm looking forward to it. I cannot wait to hear how it goes. Let's pray this morning. Father, we thank you so much for today.
Lord, we want to be a church and a community of believers who are intentional about our opportunity to spend time with you.
We want to give our relationship with you, the value and the honor and the respect that it deserves, that honestly we can't even give it the dignity that it deserves.
Lord, we just want to step out into those waters and allow your current of your love and your mercy and your grace to overtake us.
So as we continue this journey, help us, Father.
Help us reorient our lives.
Around becoming a people who are transformed by your love.
So that when we become quiet, as opposed to being overwhelmed by things we have to do, guilty of things we've done in the past, anxious about what tomorrow will be, instead of being overwhelmed by the things that this world and our mind will sometimes bring on, instead, when we become silent, Lord, we are drawn back to true north, which is the realization of how loved we are by God. And we are the peace that that brings in our life.
And when we find ourselves straying from that true identity, we can recenter ourselves.
And your mercy and grace meet us there again and again.
We love you, Father. So Jesus' holy name we pray.
Amen and amen.
Amen, amen. Well, listen, churches.
We love you. We're very thankful for you. If you need prayer for anything, our prayer team will be down here afterwards. Don't forget, if you want to find a small group, check it out. If you want to sign up for one of the spiritual, for the spiritual formation class, there's information about it outside. It's going to be awesome. If we have not met you yet, my wife and I would love to shake your hand and hear a little bit about your story in the green room through those doors to the left. Other than that, you're dismissed. Have a great rest of your Sunday.
