Have you ever been so overwhelmed with things to do that in your
overwhelm you just like I got to sit down and write a list.
Anybody ever did that?
Who are my list people?
Who makes lists?
You are my people.
I am a list maker myself.
You get and when you made the list, did you ever feel at least a
little bit better once you made the list?
I do that all the time.
There's just things going on in my brain and you don't want to
know all that goes on in my brain.
But anyway, you get to the point where you are overwhelmed and
write down a list and you say, I got to do this and that.
And much of the time, who has ever done this, once you wrote it
down, you felt better and why did you feel better?
One of the reasons you felt better was because what came was
clarity.
You didn't get anything more done.
But you felt better because when you made the list, you got a
little bit more clear.
Some of you guys, this is like new revelation.
You need to write this down and this is how you need to do life.
Put it down on paper, externalize your thinking.
It's not rocket surgery.
Knowing what you need to do, yeah, I know, rocket, science,
brain surgery, I put it together.
Knowing what you need to do step by step helps, doesn't it?
First do step A, then B, and then C.
And that's exactly how so much of life works, isn't it?
You have to crawl before you walk and you walk before you run
and you have to run in order to play basketball well.
You can't start.
I was talking to a guy yesterday.
I got to know a little bit.
And he's around my age.
He's in his 30s and his 40s.
And he said he just took up hockey.
And I said, wow, hockey, that's like taking up golf, right?
Who here knows how to walk?
Okay, and swing things.
Right, so skating is a big part of what it means to play hockey.
And he was saying that's the toughest part.
There has to be a progression.
You have to do one thing before you can do another.
The Bible speaks a lot about progression as well.
It talks about progression spiritually.
It uses physical maturity as a metaphor for spiritual maturity.
What do I mean?
Jesus referred to being saved as being born again.
Who knows what I'm talking about?
That when you come to know Christ as your savior, the Bible says
that that's like being born again or born from above.
Paul tells us that know Christ as newborn babes desire the
sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby.
The Bible, the word of God speaks about spiritual babes, people
who are growing, people who aren't growing.
They talk about young men, about spiritual adults, and then
talks about spiritual elders.
All of those words are used, all of those kinds of concepts are
used in the word of God, and they're pointing to a spiritual
reality called spiritual maturity.
Spiritual maturity.
The Bible speaks of milk and then bread and then strong meat.
And babies drink milk, and then they lead to eating bread,
and eventually they eat meat.
They go from being fed to learning how to feed themselves.
And then to even paying for their own food.
Now when I go home and I hang out with my parents, like when you
go to the restaurants there's always a fight over who's going
to pay for the bill.
One day I'm going to pay for my bill when I go out to eat with
my dad.
It's going to happen.
But children then, once they get to adulthood, then they have
their own kids and the process starts over.
You have children and you feed them milk and then bread and
then meat, and hopefully you get them off the payroll and
eventually they pay for themselves.
And then they have grandparent.
Then you become a grandparent.
And the same is true spiritually.
God wants, here's what I want you to know today.
God wants us to grow spiritually.
God wants you to grow spiritually.
There are spiritually dead people.
The spiritually dead people don't grow.
They need spiritual life, amen?
And the Bible talks about that.
That you have to be quickened who are dead and trespasses and
sins.
So there's that spiritual life.
But once you get saved, that's not the finish line.
Becoming born again isn't the finish line.
Baptism isn't the finish line.
It's the starting line.
God wants you to grow spiritually.
Point to who God wants to grow spiritually.
That's right.
All of us including ourselves.
And the point of growing spiritually is not just to be
some specimen of God's grace.
God wants to use us then to help other people to come to
spiritual life and to grow spiritually.
This is God's desire.
Now, in the last couple of sermons, we've been in a series
that is a little bit different from me.
I'm used to being in a book of the Bible and we go verse by
verse through the Bible.
We just finished the ninth chapter of Hebrews and we started
that back in the fall of last year.
And I am still studying in Hebrews chapter 10 and I cannot
wait to share with you.
Like I'm so pumped about sharing that with you and we're going
to do that in the month.
We're going to restart that again in the month of August.
But this series has been so important because it's sharing
with you and the purpose of the series is to share with you
what I believe is God's vision for our church and it's what
we're trying to accomplish, what we're trying to do.
And I said in the first week at the beginning of July that
we have a problem.
Who agrees that our country, there's a lot of problems in
our country.
There are all kinds of problems in our country.
And that although they manifest themselves sometimes as
political problems and economic problems and financial
problems and that's how they manifest the fundamental issue
in our country is a spiritual problem.
That we have a spiritual problem.
And the solution to spiritual problems are spiritual solutions
that we need people to get saved.
We need people to repent of their sins and turn to Christ by
faith.
And God's called us as a church to help solve those problems.
And sometimes when you solve spiritual problems it does help
out with financial and economic and political issues.
But even if it doesn't, God's called us to do this mission
that we're on.
And that's what we talked about in week number two.
That the solution to our problems is this.
Our mission is the Great Commission.
And that's why we call it our co-mission vision.
We do this together.
The Great Commission is found in five places in the Scripture
although I believe it speaks of the whole of Scripture.
And it gives us a robust view of our mission as a church.
We reach people for Jesus by preaching the gospel of Jesus
Christ to the lost.
What is the gospel?
The gospel is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became flesh.
That he spent his life never doing wrong, always doing exactly
right.
He had no sin of his own to pay for.
And he died on the cross for our sins according to the Scriptures.
That he was buried and that he rose again on the third day for
our sins according to the Scriptures.
That God predicted what would happen.
That Jesus would come, that he would die and rise again.
And that's exactly what happened.
And that the purpose of that is for us to be forgiven of our sins
and have everlasting life.
Who agrees?
That's the gospel.
That's what I need as a safe person.
That's what the lost need.
That's how we have any kind of hope.
And when people believe the gospel, Jesus not only taught that
gospel, not only lived that gospel, he then had people that he
poured his life into, people that he discipled, and then commissioned
to go baptize people in his name.
And then to teach them to obey everything that Jesus commanded
them with the goal of helping everyone who is reached, say
everyone, everybody who is reached to join in that same mission.
The Great Commission is bigger than just pastors.
The Great Commission is bigger than just missionaries.
It's bigger than just deacons and Sunday school teachers.
Who are you with me?
The gospel to follow Jesus Christ is to become a fissure of men.
That's what God's called us to.
And so we help people believe, we help them be baptized, we teach
them to observe everything that God's commanded us.
And that process needs to happen in every corner of the world,
starting locally and then going to regionally and then nationally
and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Who agrees?
Not only does the United States need this, but every part of the
world needs this.
Paul said there's not Jew or Greek, male or female.
There's one Lord overall and this is for everybody.
That it's to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
So the Great Commission is a process.
And so last week we said, hey, if the Great Commission is a
process and if everybody needs the gospel because there's a
problem that everyone's sinned and we need to help not just
people know Christ but become disciples of Jesus Christ, if
that is our mission, we better have a process, a strategy for
seeing that mission come about.
And what we said last week just to review is that if we are
going to do that, one of the best people we can imitate in that
is who?
Jesus.
Not only was Jesus' words inspired, not only were they
inspired, but his methods were inspired too.
And we said since the Great Commission is a process, our
church's strategy should reflect that process.
And so we think at Trinity Baptist Church we think steps more
than we think programs.
We have a pathway that follows Jesus' method of ministry and
making disciples.
Jesus ministered to crowds.
Our crowds are the people that we have an opportunity with.
Amen.
Who believes that Hancock County needs to be reached with the
gospel?
And everywhere we can touch we need to do that.
But not just Hancock County, the state of Ohio and our country
and then into the undermost part of the earth.
Last week on Sunday night you got to meet Zeke Jezek who is a
missionary who's going to Vietnam.
This is a young man who, I probably shouldn't talk about this
on the Internet because it's a closed country.
But what we heard last week is that God has been working on
this kid's life for years to send him back to make disciples of
the nation there.
Isn't that amazing?
And so we get to interact with God with that.
So we're trying to reach the world and we're trying to reach
crowds.
And so there's a process.
We want people to go from crowds into our congregation.
They get saved.
They get baptized from our worship services into our
community and to Sunday school classes where they get to know
each other and love each other.
And where people, guess what we teach in the Sunday school
classes?
We teach the Bible.
We have a nine-year plan to go through every book of the Bible.
And then from the Sunday school classes there's going to be
people.
We have people that are starting discipleship groups.
And in those discipleship groups, men with men, women with
women, we're teaching people to feed themselves with the word of
God, to pray and to have a daily walk with the Lord and to know
how to share the gospel with people and all those things that
we're trying to do to help them to grow.
And then it's out of those, all of those environments that we're
saying we go from crowd to congregation to community to
core and then to commission.
And the commission is this, we're going to the neighborhoods
and the nations.
That's what we're doing, to reach people with the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
So I just preached the whole series to you up until now.
If our problem is fundamentally spiritual, do you believe that?
And if our mission is to share the message that opens people to
conversion and to growth, to sanctification.
And our church has a process to help us accomplish that mission.
Who agrees?
That's an important thing.
To help people go from not believing to believing to then
obeying everything God commanded and send out to make
disciples of all nations.
If that's what we're supposed to be doing, here's a question.
How will we know?
How will we know when our mission is being accomplished in
someone's life?
Remember I talked about steps?
What are the indications that this process is working?
Who wants the process to work?
How do we know that this is actually happening in someone's
life?
What's the target?
What do we think God will accomplish in someone's life once
they've been saved and once they've been, once they are being
sanctified?
Well the short answer is this.
The short answer to that question is spiritual maturity.
Romans 828 says this.
It will be on the screen.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that
love God, to them that are called according to His purpose.
Now in Romans chapter 8, Paul's been talking about all the
difficulty that people who know Jesus could experience,
persecution, all that.
And what he's saying to the Romans is God's going to work out
all this difficulty.
We know that those who know Jesus and are called to His
purpose, God's going to use all of these difficulties for good.
Is that exciting to anybody?
So what is His purpose in bringing about that good?
Verse 29, for whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate
to be conformed to the image of His Son that He, the Son,
might be the firstborn among many brethren.
You know what that means?
God's plan for your life is this.
He wants to make you like Jesus.
You're like, ah, that's great.
Are you kidding me?
God wants to make you like His Son.
And He wants to make you, you're in His family if you're saying,
you're in His family if you're saved.
And He's the firstborn among how many?
Many brethren, right?
Brothers and sisters.
God's plan for all who would believe in Him is to make them
like Jesus.
That Christ would be the prototype of a whole bunch of people.
And what did Jesus do?
He was on the same mission with the same character that He has.
Paul said it this way in Philippians.
This is so exciting.
He said, I thank my God.
Paul is writing to the Philippian church.
He says, I'm so thankful and I want to tell you what I've been
thanking God for.
That He which began a good work in you, He's talking to
Christians, this God who began this work of salvation in you
will complete it, sorry, always in every prayer of mine making
mention of a request by joy.
He says, from the fellowship in the gospel, from the first day
of salvation, now, being confident in this very thing that He
which began a good work in you will perform it in the day of
Christ Jesus.
Between the day of your salvation, here's what's cool, when you
get to heaven you are going to be ultimately like Jesus.
Who's excited about that?
Like, I can't wait to get to heaven and to be exactly who God's
made me to be.
So why am I still on this planet?
There's some things we can do here that we can't do there.
There's some people, you know, the one thing you can't do in
heaven is win sinners to the Savior.
There are people here, you know what you can't do in heaven that
you can do here?
Our commission vision.
There are people that, who is glad that someone gave you the
gospel?
I'm so glad that that happened.
And what Paul tells us and what God tells us is, and what's
clear is God's plan for us is that we would be saved.
If you're here today and you don't know for sure that when you
die you're going to heaven, I want you to know there is a
heaven and there's a hell.
Jesus talked more about hell than he did about heaven.
It's not a fun reality.
And if we were to just have a glimpse of what heaven would
look like or hell would look like, I think we would live
differently.
God's plan for us is that we would be saved and that once we
are saved we would grow to be like his son.
And so here's the truth.
This side of heaven we cannot be perfect, but we can be
perfected.
Let me say that again.
On this side of heaven we will not be perfect, but we can be
perfected.
On this side of heaven we cannot be sinless, but we can
sin less.
Are you with me?
We can't be sinless, but we can be sanctified, right?
We can become sinless.
And God's desire is for us to be growing, to be growing in our
walk with him.
It's part of the great commission.
What is it?
Make disciples of all nations.
Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy
Ghost.
What is it?
Teaching them to observe or to obey all that I've commanded
you.
These are the areas.
This is what God wants us to do.
So as we grow this will show up in our lives.
Here's the point of today's sermon.
The life of a mature disciple of Jesus Christ.
What's God's will for your life?
If you're not saved, God's will for your life, he is not
willing that any should perish but that all should come to
repentance.
God wants you to be saved.
Once you get saved, he wants you to be baptized, to go public
with what he's done inside of you.
And then he wants to grow you into maturity and get you on to
the same mission that found you to help you get saved.
That's what he wants.
So he wants you to grow in maturity.
The life of a mature disciple of Jesus, what did I ask the
question?
What will it look like if that mission is being accomplished?
Will it look like spiritual maturity?
What does that look like?
The life of a mature disciple of Jesus Christ is characterized by
continued growth in these five disciplines.
I'm going to talk about the first three disciplines this week
and then the last two next week.
Now, I've reflected for a long time, I've thought about what
these disciplines should be for like the last six months and
even further back in my life.
And I want you to know that as I present these to you, these
disciplines are not what we do in order to be saved.
Okay?
You don't grow in spiritual maturity to be saved.
You grow in spiritual maturity because you've been saved.
That's really important because there's whole systems of
theology that get that completely backward.
That the way you have spiritual life is by doing a bunch of
good stuff.
And what I can tell you is this, you can't do enough good to
transform yourself fundamentally.
That's what's called conversion.
That's what's called regeneration.
That's what Jesus has to do in you first.
Are you with me?
These disciplines are what happen when God gets his Holy Spirit
to live inside of you.
That's called conversion.
And then he grows you and as he grows, what is it that's going
to grow?
Well, that's what these five disciplines are talking about.
These are areas that God will grow in us as we walk with him.
And I also want to say that I believe that there's an order
here that's typical.
Each of these disciplines affect all of the other ones and are
used as a part of the whole to get the great commission
accomplished in the world.
Are you with me?
That was a long introduction.
Here are the five disciplines.
Number one, a spiritually matured disciple of Jesus Christ has
these five disciplines.
Number one, the discipline of faithfully assembling.
Faithfully assembling.
The word that's translated in the New Testament church, whenever
you read in the New Testament and it says church, that word, you
know, the Bible wasn't written in English.
Okay.
There's Hebrew in the Old Testament, Greek in the New Testament.
We, we, and we translate and that's how we got the translation
that we're reading today.
The word for assembly is the word for church is the word
assembly.
It's the New Testament Greek word eklasea and most literally
means assembly.
Here are just a few clear teachings about someone being a
disciple of Jesus and faithfully assembling.
If you look here, Bible, it'll be up on the screen.
You can write these verses down.
Ephesians 522, the Bible says this, wives submit yourselves
unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.
For as the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ, for
the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head
of the church and he is the savior of the body.
Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let wives
be to their own husbands and everything.
Here we go husbands.
Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the
assembly, the church, and gave himself for it.
Now that passage says a lot about husbands and wives.
And it uses this metaphor of Christ in his assembly.
Here's the point I want to make.
Christ loves the assembly.
Who agrees?
Christ loves the church.
He loves the assembly.
But he loves it so much he gave himself for it.
The word assembly speaks of people.
Baptized here, baptized believers in Jesus Christ, those who
have been saved and baptized in part of that local church.
It's not a building.
This is not the church.
Okay?
This building is not a location.
This location is not the church.
Christ's assembly is a people.
The people gather and go.
That's what we do.
They worship, then they serve.
That's what an assembly does.
They gather for equipping, and then they live out in the
world on mission.
You're not dismissed.
You're sent.
That's what we do.
This was the pattern of the early church's discipleship.
In Acts chapter 2 verse 41, it says this, then they that
gladly received His word were baptized and the same day were
added unto them, added unto the assembly, about 3,000 souls,
and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and
fellowship and breaking of bread and in prayers, and fear came
upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the
apostles, and all that believed were... where were they?
What constituted them being apart, believing in baptism?
Right?
All that believed were together.
They had all things in common.
They cared about each other.
They sold their possessions and good and parted them to all men.
Every man had need, and they continued daily in one accord in
the temple and from house to house to eat their meat with
gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favor
with all the people, and the Lord added to the assembly, the
church, daily, such as should be saved.
So do you see the pattern in the early church?
Once people became disciples of Jesus Christ, they were added
to the assembly.
A lone ranger Christian is not a biblical Christian.
A Christian is one who loves what Jesus loved and Jesus
gave himself for the assembly for the church.
And when Jesus sent his disciples out to make disciples of all
nations to observe all the things that he taught them to do,
what did they do?
Fundamentally, this assembly that he had brought together then
did that and added people to that assembly.
Are you seeing what I'm talking about?
That's why, like, we have the streaming online, and I'm glad
people get to kind of see what's going on here.
And if the gospel can get out of this building through a camera
and an internet connection, that's awesome.
And I want to say to you, if you're watching online, we're so
grateful that you can get something out of this, but it's
not the same as assembly.
You need to be with God's people.
They need to know you.
You need to know them.
That's what it means to be a part of an assembly.
That's why the author of Hebrews commanded us this way in
Hebrews 10, 23 to 25.
He says this, let us hold fast the profession of our faith
without wavering for he is faithful, that promise.
And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to
good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together
as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another.
And so much the more as you see the day approaching.
When we assemble, it ought not to be that we come just to consume
a product of some kind of entertainment.
That's not the point.
I don't want to make you guys go to sleep.
I want to keep your attention.
I hope you enjoy this.
I hope that this isn't difficult to listen to, but my goal is not
to entertain you.
I want the word of God to transform you.
And if the word of God is transforming you, you won't get
bored.
It's going to be awesome.
But the point of assembling is not to consume a product.
He says here, it's to provoke unto love and good works.
Anybody here need encouragement sometimes?
Is it hard out there?
Man, sometimes it is.
I have people this week.
I got phone calls this week where people's lives are going to
never be the same because of what they're going through.
You know people are icebergs, right?
There's a part you see that's called social media.
And there's a whole bunch that you don't see.
And what you don't see often doesn't match what you do see.
Are you with me?
And that's for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
We need people to know us and to love us.
And people need us to love them and know them and encourage them.
In Colossians chapter, so when we come together, part of what we
do is not just sit and listen to a sermon or sing a song and
worship, we do that.
But part of what we do is provoke one another to love into good
works.
We need to know each other and care about each other and love
each other.
That's what an assembly does when it comes together.
In Colossians 3 we are told that even our music, songs and hymns
and spiritual songs, that even that ought to teach and
admonish us who are being controlled by the spirit.
So what the writer of Hebrews is saying, and I'm going to get to
it in the next month, but here's what he's saying.
Hey assembly, don't stop assembling.
Don't stop assembling.
As the day of the Lord approaches, you need more teaching,
not less.
You need more provoking, not less.
You need more exhorting and admonishment, not less.
In fact, this is the biblical pattern of what ought to happen
in the context of the body.
In Ephesians 411 he says this, and he gave some apostles and
prophets, some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for
the perfecting or the equipping or the growing of the saints.
Now let me ask you a question.
Who's a saint?
Yeah.
There are some systems of theology that teach that a saint is
someone that does enough good work so that they reach some kind
of status as a super good Christian.
How many of you have ever heard saint use that way?
Right?
That's not a saint.
In fact, some systems of theology, they just took the old pagan
gods and made them saints.
That's a whole other thing.
Okay.
So not everybody, even in that system, that was a saint, it's
even a Christian.
That was free.
Okay.
That's not what a saint is.
The saint, biblically speaking, is a sanctified one or a
set-apart one.
And so those who have been saved are saints.
We've been set apart unto salvation.
What don't you know that your bodies are the temple of the
Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you're
not your own, you're bought with a price, therefore glorify God in
your body and in your spirit which are God's.
You've been sanctified, set apart.
And God gave leaders in the church to help equip those of us who
are in the church to do what?
The work of the ministry so that the body of Christ, the
assembly, can be built up, edified, encouraged.
How's it built up?
That people are grown in discipleship and people who are
lost get saved and are added to the body.
That's the plan.
And so the point of assembling is that the saints or the
sanctified ones would be equipped.
So if I were to sum up this discipline of the life of a
disciple, here's what I would say and I put it on the screen.
A disciple, a Christ follower, the first discipline of his
life, the first kind of mark of he's growing in his life is
this, a Christ follower prioritizes being part of a
local New Testament body of believers.
They are a baptized member of their local church and they
make it their priority to attend the services.
When they are there, they worship the Lord, who agrees.
When we sing, we sing to the Lord.
There is a vertical and upward direction.
We also, there's a man-word direction.
He says teaching to yourselves in Psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing and making melody.
There's also an inward direction, singing and making melody
in your hearts to the Lord.
So we worship God, but they also edify fellow members and
seek to grow in their relationship with God and other
believers.
You need the Lord.
You need to be equipped and you need to be edified and you
need to do that with other people too.
So the first discipline, not only is it growing in the
sense that you're, I'm actually attending, but when you
come, you're coming for the right reason.
It's the Lord's day I'm going to do, spend time with my fellow
believers.
So here are some application questions.
Are you prioritizing assembling with your local church?
Is your motive for attending to worship God and grow from
his word?
Is your motive for attending also to encourage and build up
others in the body?
Here's number two.
The second discipline that I want to talk about of a growing
spiritually mature person is this, obediently walking,
faithfully assembling, obediently walking.
Jesus Christ has made it possible for us to have a
relationship with God.
Now that might sound like, I've heard that a hundred times,
think about what I just said.
Jesus Christ has made it possible for you and I to
commune with the God of the universe.
To have an actual relationship with God.
He saved us and he sanctifies us and now we have the
opportunity to commune with him.
His spirit lives inside of us and indwells us.
And as we've learned from the book of Hebrews, Jesus is our
high priest representing us before God and interceding on
our behalf.
Not only can we know about God, we can know God.
Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life, no man
coming to the Father but by me.
Relationship then happens through communication.
Pretty basic.
No communication leads to little relationship.
Now when you get saved, the Bible calls that being born
again, right?
I am Dennis Jennings son because I've been born.
So there's a positional relationship.
Who agrees?
No matter what I do, I'm always going to be Dennis Jennings
son.
That's because of a birth.
When it comes to your spiritual life, when you get saved,
you become a part of God's family because there's a birth.
But to have a relationship with him, to get close to him,
right?
It takes communication.
How does that happen?
It happens number one through his word.
God speaks to us through his word.
Second Timothy 3.16 says this, all Scripture is given by
inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness
that the man of God may be perfect, perfected, mature,
growing, growing spiritually.
The man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished
unto all good works.
God gives us his word to help us understand what we,
what to know and how to behave.
It corrects the way we're thinking that's wrong and how
we're behaving that's wrong.
And when we think the way God thinks, we begin to behave
the way that God wants us to behave.
When the word gets into us, then the word of God is what's
going to come out of us.
That's the plan.
The word, the spirit that wrote the word of God controls us
as we submit to him.
The goal of Scripture is the goal of the spirit to equip us
for every good work.
Second Timothy 2.15 says this, study to show
thyself approved unto God a workman that needs not to be
ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
When we commune with God through his word, he uses his word
to speak to us.
God wants to speak to you.
Here's how he does it.
He wrote a book.
And the author of this book, when you get saved, comes and
lives inside of you.
And so God wants to help you to learn and to grow through
his word.
He speaks to us through his word.
We speak to him through prayer.
The disciples came to Jesus and what do they say?
Lord, teach us to pray.
I believe that a distinguishing mark of the ministry of Jesus
was his prayer life.
Christ gave himself to prayer.
Before he did ministry, he spent 40 days in the wilderness.
What was he doing?
He was praying.
Before he chose the 12 disciples, he stayed up all night.
What did he do?
He prayed.
As he did ministry all the time, what would he do?
He would pray.
In times of solitude, he would send away his disciples and he
would go be with his father and he would pray.
And Jesus did teach them to pray and it was present, these
disciples, it was present from day one of the church being
empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2.41 says, then they that gladly received his word were
baptized, the same day they were added into about 3,000 souls
and they continued steadfastly in the apostles, doctrine,
fellowship, breaking of bread and in, and in what?
Prayer.
I believe church will only get as far as our prayer life.
I believe God wants us to pray.
That's why the apostle Paul told the church in Thessalonica,
pray without ceasing.
Don't stop.
When we get into God's word and spend time with the Lord in
prayer, we can be transformed from the inside out.
This is how we walk with the Lord.
And as we abide in Jesus, he transforms us.
Jesus himself put it this way.
Now church, you're saying something and you're like, man,
I hope they're getting it.
That's where I feel like I'm at right now.
I'm sweating.
I'm chubby.
I'm so passionate about this.
The God of the universe wants to hear from you.
And he wants to speak to you.
And he says he wants to transform you and fundamentally he's
going to do that in the time that he spends with you and in the
time that you spend with him.
You're like, really, Ben, you're just talking about devotions.
Yeah.
You need more Bible than I can give you.
Because you're not going to grow because of me.
You're going to grow because of God.
And why is that so important?
Because God's got a mission for you to be on.
It's called parenting your kids.
It's talking about being a neighbor in your neighborhood.
And he loves you so much.
Like your relationship with God is so much better than NFL football.
It's so much, there's so much pleasure and satisfaction.
So much better than athletics.
So much better than entertainment.
Jesus said this, now are ye clean through the word which I have
spoken unto you.
Abide in me.
Remain in me.
And I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except
to abide in the vine.
No more can ye accept ye abide in me.
I am the vine.
And ye are the branches.
He that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much
fruit.
For without me ye can do nothing.
I believe this is such a key.
You can't eat once a week and be spiritually nourished enough to
do anything for the Lord of any eternal substance.
You need more than that.
I'm not saying that you can't do anything for the Lord if you don't
do your worship.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying the long-term health of your spiritual life is connected
to your walk with the Lord in His word and praying for Him.
So if I were to sum up this discipline in the life of the
disciple, I would say this.
A Christ follower stays in communication with God daily.
They do this through a consistent and close prayer life.
They also study God's word to hear from God to understand what
He's taught and to obey what He has said.
The word of God is used by the Holy Spirit to equip them for
every good work.
Do you get it?
So here's some questions.
Are you growing daily in your relationship with God through
prayer?
Are you growing daily in your relationship with God through
hearing and obeying His word?
Is your life becoming more like Christ through consistent
repentance and faith?
The life of a mature disciple of Jesus Christ is characterized
by faithful assembling, by obedient walking.
Here's the third one.
By generously serving.
Last one for today.
As people get saved and added to the church, the goal is to help
to continue steadfastly, help them to continue steadfastly in
the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, breaking of bread
and prayer.
We help them faithfully assemble so that then they can walk with
the Lord.
Do you get the pattern?
They're coming here to be equipped.
They're sitting out and equipped to do that.
I've seen those who get into God's word and spend time with God
in prayer growing away as it becomes a consistent part of
their life that God grows them in a way that they could not
have otherwise.
What seems to follow is not just incredible transformation of
their life, but incredible ministry from their life.
Do you get it?
The best ministry that I get to do comes out of the overflow of
what God's already doing in me.
Are you with me?
The best ministry that I'm able to do in the life of people comes
out of what God's already doing in me.
I want God to work in me so that when God uses me, it's really
me doing what God wants me to do.
I've done enough ministry in the flesh to know that I mess it up.
Right?
Every person, here's the thing, every person is gifted by God
with talents and abilities and spiritual gifts and resources
and opportunities.
Are you with me?
Everybody.
If you're saved, you have all those things.
And all these things came from God.
Every person is uniquely and especially gifted by God with
spiritual gifts.
Paul referred to this in Romans 12.5 when he said this.
So we being many are one body in Christ and every member,
everyone members one of another.
Having then gifts differing according to the grace that has
given us, whether prophecy let us prophesy according to the
proportion of faith or ministry let us wait on our ministry,
ministering or he that teaches on teaching or he that exhortes
on exhortation, he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity.
He that ruleth with diligence, he that showeth mercy with
cheerfulness.
Here's what I want you to get from that text.
God places people in the body of Christ and I believe in their
entire sphere of influence, why?
To use their gifting to serve him and to make him known.
God has gifted you with talents and abilities and resources
and opportunities and he wants you to use those things for him.
In Ephesians 2.8 it says this...
And that salvation, not of yourselves, it's a gift of God.
Not of works lest any man should boast.
You're not saved because of any good works, amen?
But then he says this...
That word workmanship is the word poema.
It's where we get the word poem from.
It's this idea that we are God's work of art.
We are God's craft.
God's working on you, Cheryl White.
You need some work.
Amen.
And he's gifted you with abilities and talents and time.
And he's placed you in this body and he wants, he's molding you
and making you by being equipped as you faithfully assemble, by
helping you grow in him and abiding him and bear fruit as
you're obediently walking with him.
And as you grow and as you are, as God does that in your life,
what's amazing is that God puts you in places, you in places in
the body where you can edify and help and build up and minister
to the rest of the body.
And what he's doing in Cheryl's life, he's doing in Dave Fawcett's
life.
And Dave Fawcett and Cheryl White are not alike.
Who's glad?
They're not the same person.
And Dave's different than Jeff back there and Jeff's different
than Chris and Chris different than Rob.
Right?
Rob's got a long beard, man.
That's awesome.
God's made him different.
Who's glad for that?
Does God know what he's doing?
He does.
And he wants to grow us as we abide in him so that then we can
be used inside the body and outside the body to accomplish
what he wants us to accomplish.
I'm so excited about this.
God has gifted us for service.
That was Jesus' mentality himself.
And Matthew, it says, Jesus called unto them and said, you know
that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them and
they that are great exercise authority upon them but it shall
not be so among you but whosoever will be great among you, let
him be your minister and whoever will be chief among you, let him
be your servant even as the son of man came not to be ministered
to but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many.
Who agrees that Jesus deserved to be served?
But he said, I didn't come to be served.
I came to serve.
What's the best way to serve?
He gave his life a ransom for many.
And so God equips people to serve.
He equips people to do music.
If you're equipped to do music and you're not doing it in the
body, shame on you.
It's not your gift to play with.
It's your gift to use to glorify him.
Christ loved and gave himself for the church.
You're making me feel guilty.
Good.
Time to grow up.
It ain't about you.
Amen.
I'll amen myself.
If God wants to use you to teach, the body will understand that
and know that and you learn that as you serve.
Go serve and we'll figure out what you're good at and trust me,
we need people, we need people.
We got Hancock County to reach.
I was told recently, your church is so big, you got plenty of people to
serve.
I was going, it's not about having enough people to serve ourselves.
That's a country club.
We're trying to reach the world.
Are you with me?
Let's be used in the body.
Second Corinthians 9-6.
Let's be servants to each other and care for each other and
administering the world.
Not only are we to steward our gifts and abilities well, our
resources too.
Second Corinthians 9-6 says,
he which sowed bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
Every man according to his purpose in his heart, so let him give,
not grudgingly or of necessity for God love it, the cheerful
giver and God is able, this is amazing, to make all grace abound to
you, that ye always having all sufficiency and all things may
abound to every good work.
The things you have aren't actually yours.
They're God's.
He's given to them to you for a time to steward.
So the question is not how much should I give, the question is how
much should I give to you.
How much should I give, the question is how much should I keep.
How do I use what God has given me to rightfully steward what he's
given me to do the most good, to abound unto every good work.
That's why Paul told Timothy, hey Timothy you have some rich
people in your church, people that have more than they need.
Here's what you need to tell them.
Charge them that are rich in this world and in that time it meant
anybody that had more than today.
Rich, rich historically speaking is that I have more than I need
for today.
Folks, we're rich.
We're rich.
A lot of people don't have cars.
We have a house for our cars.
Sometimes we can't get our car into our house for our cars because
we have too much stuff.
You ever know anybody like that?
We're rich.
Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded.
Don't be prideful because you think that because you have a lot
then you go worth a lot.
You're better than everybody else.
Nor trust in uncertain riches.
Who agrees that riches are uncertain?
They come and they go.
But in the living God who give with all things richly to destroy,
to enjoy, that they do good, that they be rich in good works,
ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store
for themselves a good foundation against the time to come,
that they may lay hold on eternal life.
You know what he's saying?
Tell those rich people, he's not saying to do a bunch of good
work so that if they do enough good work, it's got to let them into
heaven.
And they lay hold on their own eternal life.
And he is telling them that they have an opportunity to use the
temporary stuff that's going away to make an eternal difference in
the lives of people.
That's what he's saying.
You can get rewarded with what won't corrupt, what won't rust,
won't go away, Jesus said, by investing in eternity because
in eternity there is no rust.
There is no corruption.
When someone gets saved, they can't not be saved.
They can't lose that salvation, right?
So when we support a missionary to go overseas to share the gospel
with somebody and they get saved, that was money that is eternally
invested.
Are you with me?
It makes the case for giving.
It's not to lay hold on eternal life through good works for the
giver.
It's using the temporary resources I have now that are going away to
make an eternal difference and that which is going to last
beyond this life.
And so, if I were to sum up this discipline, this is what I would
say.
A Christ follower, a mature believer in Jesus, is growing in this
discipline.
They see themselves as a steward of all that God has given to them.
All of it.
Time, talent, treasure, opportunity, resources.
As a result of this perspective, they see their talents and
spiritual gifts as given to them by God to serve Him and others,
both inside and outside the assembly.
They give cheerfully, proportionally, and sacrificially
of the money and resources that God has given to them.
Here's some questions.
Am I using my God-given talent and spiritual gifts inside and
outside of the body of Christ?
Am I giving to the Lord through my local church cheerfully,
proportionally, and sacrificially?
And is my motive for giving and serving not for men but for
God?
Our mission that was handed to us with nail-scarred hands is to
make disciples of all nations in Jerusalem and in Judea and in
Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
That mission is to win people who don't know Jesus, help them put
their faith and trust in Jesus so that they don't go to hell but
they go to heaven.
But that mission doesn't stop there.
We help them go public with their faith through baptism.
And then God has called us to teach them to observe all things
that God commanded us.
And that means they are transformed.
They are growing.
How does that happen?
What does that look like?
It looks like they are part of the body.
They come and are equipped here for all kinds of good works.
They are equipped to minister that same great commission wherever
God has placed them.
It means that they recognize that the way that they are going to
grow is through abiding in Christ, through spending time with
Him, not just at church when we assemble but on a daily basis as
they feast on God's word and as they spend time with God and as
they talk to God.
God pours His life into them and transforms them and convicts them
of sin and equips them for service.
And as they walk with the Lord, then you can't read this book
and not realize that what God wants to do with us is not just
to be a bunch of monks, navel gazing about how good we are in
Jesus.
We would be like Jesus.
And what did Jesus do?
He says he came to seek and to save that which was lost.
He came not to be served but to serve.
And we start with our service here in the body.
But if we stop there, we make this thing a country club and
that's not the point.
We serve to help other people grow in that same process so that
God can use them who have different gifts than me, but God
can use them to go do the same thing to make disciples of all
nations.
Does that make sense?
So how are you growing?
How is your assembling?
Are you here for the right reason?
When you're here, are you just here to consume or are you here
to minister?
How's your walk with the Lord?
Was the last time you read the Bible last Sunday?
Now here's what's cool.
What we want to do with this discipleship pathway is to help
those of you who don't have a daily walk with the Lord, have a
daily walk with the Lord.
That you can get with other people and say, hey, if you've
never done this before, let's do it together.
Let's be in God's word every day together.
And if you go from spending zero time with the Lord to spending
a little bit of time with the Lord from week zero to week one,
guess what that's called?
Growth.
You're not perfect, but you'll be perfected.
Are you with me?
Yeah.
And if you mess up one week, you come back the next week,
because we're not doing this so we'll be saved.
We're doing this because we are saved.
He deserves it, doesn't he?
And it's what's best for us.
Let's assemble.
Let's walk with the Lord.
And as he grows us, let's start serving each other.
You know what, you know how awesome it would be to be in a
relationship with a bunch of people who are just like, you first,
not me first, him first, then you, then me.
Who wants to be a part of a church like that?
Yeah.
I believe God will use a bunch of people like that, because
that's exactly how Jesus was.
It's who Jesus is calling us to be.
Would you buy your heads and close your eyes with us?