[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Church. We are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes.newlifegeillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Good morning.
I am Sawyer and most often I serve down in New life kids. And so if you have elementary age kids you might recognize me from down there. But I am happy to be up here with the adults this morning.
And so when you walked in the sanctuary this morning, you walked under some big letters that were on the wall and maybe you've walked by it so many times you just don't even see it anymore. And it says become or come as you are. Become who God created you to be. And I love that message. I love that new life is shaped. Everything we do is around that messaging and we can break it into two parts. And so come as you are. I love come as you are. And I desperately needed to hear that message when I found myself at my rock bottom when I was 16 years old and found out that I was pregnant and and I was searching and I hadn't grown up in church and felt like my life was over and had discovered that there was a Jesus who was welcoming me with open arms. Come as you are. You do not have to get your life together to come to Him. You are not too far gone to come to him. All of that kind of message that new life is all about, come as you are. And so that resonates deeply with me. But today we are going to be focusing on that second part. Become who God created created you to be. And so who did he create us to be? You know oftentimes on this stage you've heard the quote, you were made on purpose for a purpose. I think I first heard that from Christine Cain and I love that. I love knowing that I have a purpose. And so what is that purpose? We were made in God's image and so our purpose is to become more and more like him. Become who God created you to be so so that we can be used for his glory. And so verse that oftentimes comes up with that is found in 1 Timothy 4, 7, 8.
So we'll start with that says do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives tales. Instead train yourself to be godly. Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better. Promising benefits in this life and the life to come. This is a trustworthy saying and everyone should accept it. And so it says train yourself to be godly. And so when we're talking about training, that takes intentionality, right?
We are intentional about so many different areas in our life, but for some reason, when it comes to our spiritual walk, we think it's just going to happen.
And we don't do that with our physical health. You know, I can't go from watching Gilmore Girls for the hundredth time to running a marathon without training, right? Like, it's not going to happen. We need to train. We know that. We know that. We need to move our bodies and train. And so just like with that, it takes intentionality with our spiritual life as well. And so it's not going to just happen.
And. And we are going to have to put the work in.
And so oftentimes in the church, the word that is used for that is called spiritual disciplines. And I know some of you are hearing discipline and you're like, no thanks, like you're already tuning out. And I get it. Like, I don't love the word discipline. In fact, I'm one of those people that prays about a word of the year. So at the end of the year, praying about what God would have me focus on for the next year and praying about a word. And you know, I've had lovely words like grace and rest and abide. And a few years ago I was praying and kept coming up with discipline.
And I said, no, thanks, God, like, that sounds horrible. I don't want to work on a discipline for a full year. And so I kept praying like, surely God will give me a different word. And he didn't. And that's okay. I'm stubborn. So I just changed the word and to consistency, which is, you know, a part of discipline. But we all know that my real word was discipline. So God has been working on discipline for me for a while and I'm still not there. Like, I am just not a super disciplined person. I'm kind of all over the place and my life reflects that. And so I get it. If you don't like the word discipline, I'm right there with you. Sometimes discipline has like a negative connotation. We think of discipline as punishment or strict rules. And. And that is not what he would have for us. But that doesn't like, that's still what I think about when I think of discipline.
And so as I was studying spiritual disciplines, I didn't grow up in church. If you grew up in church, you're very familiar with that word. But as I was studying it, I've heard it called different things. And one of them was Called Holy Habits, which sounded a little too corny for me. But if you like that one, you can stick with that. But I found a word that kind of resonated a little bit better with me. And it was called. And people call it rhythms and Practices. And I think I like rhythm. Cause it's a little bit more flowy. It doesn't sound so strict as discipline. Maybe a little bit more area and room for grace in that.
Or maybe, you know, I've been surrounded by music my whole life. When you think of rhythm, maybe you think of music. I grew up dancing. I was a band geek, like, love music.
But we are all surrounded by rhythm. You know, we have a creator who created with rhythm. And, you know, we have seasons throughout the.
We have seasons that are rhythms. We have the rhythm and the sun and the moon setting. And I.
We are just surrounded by rhythms. But we're also how everybody has a personal rhythm in here.
And that is everyone in this room has a heart beating at a certain rhythm. And, you know, we don't really pay attention to that rhythm until it's out of rhythm, Right? Like we're going to notice if our heart is beating out of rhythm. And so I love this picture that God is calling us to have rhythm, but it's not just to do just to have it, to have it. God is after our heart. And we talk about that often downstairs in New Life, kids. We talk about maybe it's generosity, you know, and we say, does God need our money? No. Is God poor? No. Then why. Why are we called to generosity? Because that's how we show God that He has our hearts. And so as we talk about these rhythms today, I love this picture that he is at the center of it. And it is about growing close, closer to Him. We want Jesus to have our hearts. And so we practice spiritual disciplines to have a deeper relationship with Jesus. It's not about rules. It's not about checking off the list to be a good Christian, right? Maybe, maybe you have this idea of maybe these rules and it's legalistic and I have to do these things for God to love me. That's not true. We were. We were saved by grace. So we don't have to earn his love after that. It's not about earning anything. He loves us unconditionally. But there's also not freedom in being undisciplined. And so we are going to focus in on that middle ground there of rhythms and practices to grow closer and closer to Jesus. John Mark Comer puts it this way. Disciplines based on the lifestyle of Jesus create time and space for us to access the presence and power of the spirit and in doing so, be transformed from the inside out. So we're going to talk a lot about the transformation, transformation that can happen through these daily rhythms. And so since we are in this healthy to the course series, we are going to be putting these rhythms to different areas in our life. And so to be healthy, you know, we were creating God's image. We were created with a mind, body and soul. And so we're going to go through some rhythms that Jesus modeled for us and put them with each category. So the first one that we have is mind, and it is reading God's word, the word of God and reading his word. And so I'm going to just start with a public confession. I have tried to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation in a year, many times. And the amount of times that I have successfully done that is zero. And so I tell you that because I am not an expert on these rhythms, practices, disciplines, in fact, I am a very undisciplined person. And so, you know, I'm going through a plan and I miss a day and then I miss a couple days and before you know it, I'm too far gone and I quit. And in fact, this year is the same. I started doing Bible recap with my daughter, hoping she would like spur me on and keep me on track. And I'm already way behind and she keeps nudging me along. So I'm up here to tell you that you are okay. If you are not awesome at these. There is grace. And God has been working on me in this area for a while. And so I, I saw this clip from a comedian the other day and it just made me laugh because some, sometimes reading the Bible is just very overwhelming and you don't understand what's going on. When, especially you know, if you're, if you're reading Genesis to Revelation and you get to, I don't know, numbers, Leviticus, and you're like, I don't know what's going on here. And so I saw this clip and I thought it was pretty funny.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: You just open it and you're like, what are you talking about?
I mean, and they don't let up every page, just more words.
How about you put some blank pages in there?
Why don't you let me get my head above water for two seconds.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: So maybe you resonate with that. I, I like that.
But even though reading the Bible is overwhelming, it can be confusing at times.
I still understand the importance of why we do it. Again, it's not to check off this list, like, okay, God, read my Bible today, check. It's not that. The reason that we're reading our Bible is to know who God is and to know who we are following. Like we're saying we're following Jesus. How do we know who he is and what he's about? The character of God. This is where we find that. And we have this beautiful redemptive love story just waiting for to be opened. You know, we live on this side of the Resurrection and so we have this complete Bible. Like we know how it's going to end. We, we don't have to guess. And we live in a country where we can have access to Bibles, multiple Bibles. I think in our house we have more than four Bibles. We have a phone that can download a free app to have the Bible. So what is stopping you from digging into the word of God?
I. Some of the things that I hear and that I have felt is the, is the confusing part.
And maybe just having an idea of what that looks like has kind of hung me up in the past. And so I think of. When you think of spiritual disciplines, you think, okay, I'm going to read my Bible. And the picture that comes to my mind when I do that is I'm going to wake up before the sun and I'm going to have this Bible open on the table with my coffee and my journaling. And the house is going to be so peacefully quiet.
Not right, like not happening. At least in my house. If that's you great, like goals, that's what I'm going for. But that's just not reality sometimes. And don't let that stop you from getting into your Bible. Create a rhythm where you are able to do that. And so, so don't get hung up by that. The second thing that I hear often is that confusing part, like, just don't understand what I'm reading. I don't know what's going on. This is confusing. Like reading the Bible is not like reading a novel, right? Like, I'm a big reader. I can get through a lot of books in a year, yet I have not made it through the Bible in a year. And so it's different. And that's okay. But I just encourage you to pray. Pray before you open your Bible. Pray for God to show you what he has for you, to show you what he is going to be teaching you. And he will give wisdom. We have a promise in the Bible that if we ask for wisdom, he will give us wisdom. And so just pray, pray before digging into the Bible. And then of course, some tools. I love Bible study and I think God has grown me a lot through Bible study.
And so finding a tool that works for you, whether that is a Bible reading plan like we talked about, that's great.
A Bible study. Me and my daughter are doing the Bible recap. And so I highly encourage the Bible recap. You read through a set number of verses and then she summarizes it for you. And it's just a really great tool. But there's a million tools out there. So find something that works for you. If you are having trouble opening your Bible, being consistent with that rhythm, I encourage you to find something that will help you guide in that you just.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: Open it and you're like, yeah.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: I mean, it's so good. We wanted to watch it twice. So I had put mind with prayer or mind with reading the Bible. And back in Romans 12:2, Paul tells us 2,000 years ago to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And. And that was way before a neuroscientist was around, right? And now we have studies of the brain to know that that is literally possible. It is possible for our brain to create new pathways based on what we are meditating on, what we are thinking of. And so what we meditate on shapes us. And so I want my brain to be shaped around Jesus. I want my brain to know truth. I want to be able to take every thought captive. I want to be able to see a lie and recognize it and replace it with God's truth. But in order to do that, I need to know what is God's truth. And so I need to open my Bible and learn what God's truth is. We live in a world where the world says, follow your heart and live your truth. And that is opposite of what Jesus said. Jesus says, follow me and I will show you truth. I just got done reading the Gospels in May with Annie F. Downs and she has a quote that I just love. It says, you don't have to be in the Gospels every day to be changed, but every day you are in the Gospels will change you. So as you dig in this week, I just encourage you to have that mindset. It is not about getting through it. It is not about having the highest streak on the Bible app. It is. There's not going to be a quiz after this. We're not going to make it to heaven and there be a quiz to enter into heaven. That's not what this is about. And so the reason that we're doing this is not to get through it. In fact, it's not even when you're doing your time. Maybe it's not even going through a book. Do it verse by verse. Maybe it's one verse, two verses a day, that's fine. It's not about getting through it. And so the goal is not to be informed, but to be transformed. We can be transformed by God's word, by His Holy Spirit speaking to us of what truth is. And so that is the goal. The goal is transformation. We're not all called to be theologians, like I'm not.
So that's not the goal. We don't have to have all of this head knowledge.
We want heart knowledge. I want to know God's character. I want to know what God is all about so that I am about what God is about. And he wants our hearts. And so I want that heart knowledge.
Okay, the second one that we're going to be talking about is prayer. And I put that with body. So we have mind, body, soul, and prayer is with a body.
And oftentimes we treat prayer like a crisis line, right? We are praying. When we're desperate, we're praying. God, I need this. God, I need a miracle here. I need this job. Will you take care of this? I need you here. And you know what? That is great. God is a prayer answering Father. He, he wants to answer those for us. He wants to hear from us. But if we are only praying at those times, we are the ones missing out on what he has to offer.
God is a relational God. And so he, he wants to hear from us. Nothing is too, too small, too big. Like he wants to hear from us. And so just like when we go to coffee with a friend, you know, we have these conversations. And so sometimes I picture prayer.
My prayer life has just been selfish. Sometimes, you know, you have that friend, maybe that only calls when you need something and you see their name coming through the call and you're like, oh, they're going to ask me for something.
They only, they only talk to me when they need something.
Or maybe you have that friend who only talks about themselves. It's all about them and they're, it's just very one sided. That's how my prayer life has been. It's just very selfish. Me doing all the talking and, and asking for my will, asking for what, what I want to happen.
And as I have grown in my prayer life, I have found that it makes me, me Less selfish.
And so prayer is just a conversation. Like, it does not have to be complicated. It does not have to be something that you only do at a certain time. But I encourage you to find a rhythm of prayer. And as we're doing that, it's not us doing all the talking. Prayer is just as much about listening.
And so we need to set aside a time to be able to make that happen. We live in a very noisy world, and so it's hard for us to carve out time in our schedules to be quiet, to be able to listen. And so maybe that means setting your phone down. Maybe that means when you get in the car, you're not turning on the radio or Spotify right away. Sitting in silence, preparing a space that you can hear from God. It's not just us always doing the talking.
It's us listening to hear from him as well.
And so if you are thinking, well, I just. I don't know what that looks like, that's a great place to be because the disciples said that to Jesus. And so they asked Jesus, teach us how to pray. And so if you're feeling a little stuck in your prayer life or have just never really had consistent rhythm of prayer, I encourage you to jump in to his answer there. It's found in both Matthew and Luke, and many of you are familiar with it. It's called the Lord's Prayer. And so many of you grew up memorizing it, you know, and that's a. That's a great thing. However, this can is also called the model prayer. And so we can use the Lord's Prayer to be an outline or a structure of how we pray. And so you're familiar with it. Our Father who is in heaven, may your name be kept holy. Remembering who we are praying to, we get to boldly approach the throne of grace because of Jesus. Remembering who we are praying to. May your kingdom come. Your will be done. Less selfish praying God, your will be done. Not Sawyer's will, but your will. And just go through line by line of the Lord's Prayer. Give us today the food we need. Forgive us our sins so we can forgive those who sin against us. And so just go through the Lord's Prayer. And it's not so much about memorizing. That's great. But also use it as an outline of how he would have you pray if you're feeling a little stuck in that.
So I have grown the most in my prayer life by having teenagers. And if you have teenagers, you're nodding like nothing will grow Your prayer life more than having teenagers. And I always knew I was a control freak, but I didn't know to what extent until I had teenagers. And things were just like, wildly out of my control. And a great example of this is teaching a teenager how to drive. I was not prepared.
I don't feel like they covered that in, like, parenting lessons. And I was not prepared. Like, I learned to drive. And I don't think it was that bad. And so you know that song Jesus Take the Wheel? Like, the prayer is Jesus literally take the wheel. Cause I think we're going to die. And so in all reality, I put prayer as to have a healthy body. And the reason is, of course, we can pray for healing, and healing happens through prayer. But even the act of prayer is healing.
When we are worried or stressed or carrying around these things that God isn't wanting us to carry, those have physical symptoms to it. Right. Our body is affected by worry and stress. And so I have found, especially through having teenagers, that my prayer life is full of surrender.
Surrendering my kids to him. He loves my kids more than I can love my kids. And surrendering that control. And so with that comes peace that can only come from him. And so prayer is good for our bodies and among other things. But also, it is just, of course, a way that we can have deepen our relationship with Christ.
Okay. The last one that we're going to cover is community.
And I put that one with soul.
A few weeks ago, Pastor C.J. talked about community. And if you didn't hear that, I encourage you to go back and listen to that, because had a lot of really great information.
In fact, it had some information that I had on mine. So I just. I crossed that out. And we're not going to go over it today. Go back and listen to it. It was really, really good.
And so our soul longs for community. Of course, our soul longs for Jesus. And then from that through, that longs for community. And it's really hard to. To walk the Christian walk without community. You think of verses like love one another, bear one another's burdens. And that's really hard to do if you are not in community.
And so we serve a relational God. You know, Jesus modeled this for us. You know, he had the masses, but then he also had a small group. And so in a church our size, it is really easy to come in on Sunday morning, grab your coffee, grab your donut, maybe say hi to a few people, and then leave until next week, which is great. Like, this is community. And I'm glad you're here. So I'm not just talking to myself.
However, he wants more, he wants a deeper relationship for you. And we get that through different ways here at New Life. We do life groups. You find those people that are also walking that path to grow closer and closer to Jesus, and you come alongside them.
And so Jesus modeled this. And so we are called to do this as well. And so one verse that I think about when. When we talk about this is John 13:35. It says, you love for one another will prove to the world that you are My disciples. And so if we are calling ourselves his disciples, if we are saying we follow Jesus, then we need to be a part of community. One of the common excuses I hear for not being in community is that I'm an introvert. And guess what? I am an introvert. I get that excuse. I want to use that excuse all the time.
However, if we hear that verse, if we are to show the world that we are his disciples by loving one another, then that means I am supposed to be doing that. And so if you are tempted to say that you are an introvert and so that you don't need to be a part of community, I'm encouraging you to remember this.
If you are a Jesus person, you are a people person.
I'm going to say that again. If you are a Jesus person, you are a people person.
I don't categorize myself as a people person. It does not give me energy to be around a lot of people. But guess what? Jesus was a people person. And so he will give us the Holy Spirit will empower us, equip us to be a people person for his glory. And so if you are following Jesus, you are called to be a part of community.
Now, if you have been sitting here and you're like, you know what, Sawyer?
I have all of that down really good. I have really good disciplines or spiritual rhythms, habits, whatever you want to call it. And I know many of you do. I know many of you in here have stellar examples of this.
However, if you have an example of this and you are not actively mentoring someone, I encourage you to have that as your next step. There are people that are farther behind on this journey, right? We are all becoming who God created us to be. And we're all at different spots on that. And so I encourage you. If these seemed very basic to you, and you're like, yep, I got these down. I encourage you to take someone and mentor them. And mentoring sounds super stuffy. I'm not saying like, you have to do Bible study with this person.
It can be super informal. It can be chatting, texting, praying for them, encouraging them. It doesn't have to be like, when we think of mentoring, it just, we might have an idea of what that looks like. And I encourage you that there's grace in others, flexibility of what that looks like. And so I encourage you to take that next step. Maybe for you, that means leading a life group. We are not in life group season right now, but maybe God will be prompting you to talk to Pastor CJ and say, I want to step up. I want to lead a life group. Maybe it's praying for God to bring someone into your life that isn't as far on this journey as you are so you can share your wisdom with them.
Lastly, we have a quiz questionnaire, and it'
[email protected] PSA we've talked about this from the stage a couple times. And you're like, me, I love a quiz.
So you can go to this. And it's all about spiritual disciplines. Way more than what we talked about this morning. There's a lot more. This is like the briefest overview, right? And it goes through asking questions kind of about what your rhythms are, and it gets sent to a new lifer. It's all confidential, and they will reach out to you and help you take those next steps if you are wanting to grow in certain areas. So I encourage you to. To go to the website, click on that. There's also a ton of information about spiritual disciplines online on our website, and so I encourage you to check that out.
So as you go today, I just encourage you to reflect on what your rhythms are. We all have rhythms. Whether they're centered around Jesus or not. We are all having rhythms. And I just encourage you to take inventory of what that is, what that looks like, like for you, and to make Jesus the center of those rhythms. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this morning. We thank you for this opportunity to come and worship you and learn more about you and God. I just. I pray that you would just stir in us a desire to know you more, Lord, we want to become more and more like you so that we can be used for your glory. Lord, I. I don't want to be a lukewarm Christian. Lord. I pray that you would stir in me to seek you more. We want to dwell in your presence. And I pray that you would open our eyes to areas that we are not doing that convict us, Holy Spirit, of areas that you want to grow us in. And ultimately, Lord, I pray that as we see revival happening around our country and we see growth in our church, Lord, we know that that revival starts in our hearts. And so Lord, I pray that you would just be working on our hearts, soften our hearts and and give us ways and show us open our eyes to areas that you are wanting to see us grow in. We want to do this for your glory and we thank you for your love and your grace. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.
