Sermon from November 20, 2005
A lot people in this church play golf. Their good sense may be in question, but not their devotion to the game. Some of them are quite good, nearly scratch golfers. The better players get, the more they will tell you that it’s because they practice, practice, practice. And central to practice is repetition. If you watch professional golfers practice, you will see them hitting hundreds of golf balls with the same club from the same place. The repetition disciplines muscles and eyes to work together to make a crucial shot under the pressures of tournament play.

One of the delights at BVBC comes on those rare occasions, when Ben Shute can play his violin as part of our worship or in some other venue. One sign of Ben’s giftedness has been his willingness to practice. Just how willing became apparent, when his violin teacher at the New England Conservatory said to him a couple of years ago, “Now, Ben, don’t practice too much this summer.” The repetition of his practice pays off, when you watch his fingers move flawlessly over the instrument and hear him make the violin sing.

Any skill improves with repetition: roller blading, typing, dancing, deep sea diving. Why should we be surprised that the principle applies to spirituality as well? That’s what I’d like to explore with you today.

The Apostle Paul talked about his own spiritual discipline in physical terms in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Now, he gets personal. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

I don’t know what experience lay behind that statement; I beat my body and make it my slave. All of us who are good at anything, mental or physical, know what an obstacle our bodies can be to what we are trying to do. They get tired. They get hungry. They resist being pushed beyond what they are used to. They like being pampered. Spiritual disciplines also have to overcome physical resistance.

The good life is not an indulgent life; it is a disciplined life. If we are to live lives that are worthy of the Church’s vocation to be holy, then we need to take advantage of the time-honored spiritual disciplines of the Church. I have organized these disciplines into three categories for the sake of clarity: traditional disciplines, non-traditional disciplines, and disciplines for people in a hurry.

Traditional Spiritual Disciplines
When I talk about traditional spiritual disciplines, I mean the ones that are traditional among evangelical, Protestant Christians. A Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christian would have a list of traditional spiritual disciplines that looked somewhat different from ours. From our list I’d like to talk about two that are well-recognized and one that we practice but discredit as a spiritual discipline.

The place of honor goes to the spiritual discipline of Bible reading. Two of the first verses I memorized as a teenage boy were Psalm 119:9 & 11. How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

I remember hearing Billy Graham say, “Sin will keep you from God’s Word, or God’s Word will keep you from sin.” Inspired by such statements, I began what has turned into a lifetime of Bible reading. The question of course is: what kind of reading should we do? The short answer is: read something, every day, if possible. There are programs for reading through the Bible in a year. I’ve included websites where you can find such a guide. You can find them at the end of this sermon.

If you’re wondering where to start, start with the great stories of the Bible. Read the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. You can easily find them in Genesis 12-50. Read the heart-rending stories of Saul and David in 1 Samuel. Read the Psalms. Above all, read Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John; they tell us about Jesus Christ.

If you find yourself getting bogged down, or if something just isn’t making sense, stop reading there and go somewhere else in the Bible. Maybe in a year or two you’ll come back, and it’ll be clear sailing.

And then, there is the question of memorizing Bible verses. The idea intimidates many Christians. Maybe we’re trying to make it too hard. What you are looking for are memorable, meaningful lines that will stick with you on the go. For example, say with me: I can do everything through him who gives me strength. (Let people repeat it.)
It’s going to be hard for you to forget those words from Phil ippians 4:13. You may not remember them exactly, but you will remember the gist of the verse. It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember it letter perfect. Look for lines like that, as you read scripture. You’ll be surprised at how your repertoire grows, and because these lines from scripture are in your mind, you’ll be more likely to use them at important moments.

A second traditional spiritual discipline is prayer. Prayer pervades our life together. Here are a couple of suggestions of how to be more disciplined about praying. It helps me everyday to pray the Lord’s Prayer. Usually, I pray it just the way Jesus gave it to us in the Gospel of Matthew.

But from time to time I’ll stop on one part of the prayer and just let myself go in a burst of praise. For example: Our Father, who art in heaven. I have my life from you; thank you! I learn from you what a father is like, even though you are in heaven, and I’m on earth, and I can’t see you. I’m so glad you’re my Father. I’m so glad I’m your child. Because of you, a little piece of heaven is here on earth in me. And not just in me. You are our Father. Because of you the human family is connected to each other indissolubly. We Christians are even more connected with each other, because you are also the Father of Jesus Christ our Lord.” You get the idea.

Martin Luther had a good idea about how to turn scripture into prayer. He taught his barber to pray, using what Luther called a fourfold garland of prayer. He took a passage of scripture and turned that passage into praise, thanksgiving, confession, and intercession for other people. Let me illustrate it for you briefly with Ephesians 4:32.

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.  “O God, you have forgiven me for my sins. You are full of mercy. Praise your name!” That is praise.

“O God, I don’t deserve your tender mercies. I can hardly forgive myself what some of the things I have done. The more I know you, the more unworthy of you I feel. And yet, you have forgiven me. You reassure me of your forgiveness in the Bible and when I receive the Lord’s Supper. How can I say thank you for what you have done for me? Thank you, tender Lord.” That is thanksgiving.

“O God, I can’t stand brother so-and-so. No matter what I try to do, he seems to snub me. He makes me angry every time I am around him. I haven’t forgiven him each time. I don’t even want to forgive him sometimes. If you forgave me the debt I owed you, I can forgive him. I acknowledge before you my failure to forgive.” That is confession.

“O God, I love my church. Please help us to be forgiving to each other. This many people can’t live close to each other for long without tensions and personal offenses happening. May your Spirit fill us with kindness and tenderness toward each other.” That is intercession. I think you can see how Luther’s garland of prayer works.

A third traditional, spiritual discipline is the one we nearly discredit as a spiritual discipline. It is public worship together. Hebrews 10:25 says: Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

You don’t have to be here. There is no compelling social pressure to be here. Getting yourself and your family ready and out the door week after week is a significant discipline. It says that there is something in life that puts limits on the demands of work and the unending parade of diversions in this country. That something is the Lord our God. And because we don’t have to be here, we are more likely to come for the right reasons, to draw near to God, not only with our lips, but with our hearts as well.

Don’t underestimate the power of this discipline in our secular society, which is doing its best to forget the nation’s Christian heritage.

Non-traditional Spiritual Disciplines
I could say more, but we need to turn to the non-traditional spiritual disciplines.  When I talk about non-traditional spiritual disciplines, I mean the ones that are non-traditional among evangelical, Protestant Christians. A Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christian wouldn’t think of them as non-traditional at all.

I’ll mention two of them that have found favor among many evangelicals. One is fasting. The most famous practitioner of fasting was Jesus Christ. Matthew 4:2 says of Jesus that after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. Acts 13:3 says of the Church in Antioch : So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on Paul and Barnabas and sent them off.

There is no command in the New Testament to fast, but the practice was part of the early Church’s experience and worthy of imitation. A verse Jesus quoted to the devil helps us understand the value of fasting. Jesus, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3 said, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” You may fast for a month, a week, a day, or you may only miss a meal once in a while. But momentarily depriving the body of its means of survival in order to worship God or serve people is a powerful way of teaching the body about the priority of the spiritual over all the appetites of the body. 

A second non-traditional spiritual discipline is solitude and silence. Mark 1:35 says that very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. In a world of combustion engines, 300 channel TVs, cell phones, i-pods, and overwork, solitude sounds like a good idea in its own right. But just as the purpose of fasting is not to lose weight but to concentrate on God, so are solitude and silence intended to concentrate our attention on matters of the Spirit – prayer, meditation, reordering our life’s priorities before God.

It’s not easy to find solitude like that. Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not on the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines be glad, but one such place is a Catholic retreat center. It offers privacy, and you leave behind the frenetic pace of life.

Disciplines for People in a Hurry
I have called the last category of spiritual disciplines, disciplines for people in a hurry. These are disciplines you do on the run. There are three of them.

First, look for little ways to make someone else’s life better. The less the person knows you had anything to do with it the better. And as you do it, say, “Lord Jesus Christ, this is for you.” When I was a boy, Missouri Synod Lutherans had a television show on Sunday, whose name I no longer remember. But I remember the theme of every show. “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” Every act of kindness lights another candle in our world; and kindness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Second, look for ways to deny yourself something legitimate. Of course, it should never be done at someone else’s expense. But Galatians 5:23 says that self-control is part of the fruit of the Spirit. Voluntary restraint is a powerful way to practice self-control. And again, as you do it, say, “Lord Jesus Christ, this is for you.”

Third, learn to do the unglamorous, unsought tasks of life as acts of service to God. Brother Lawrence, in his little book, The Practice of the Presence of God, learned to delight in those tasks as a way of serving God in the grind. He said that holiness does “not depend upon changing” (what we do everyday), “but in doing for God’s sake that which we commonly do for our own” (p. 23).Whether cleaning up the mess in the family room for the tenth time or returning those necessary but grinding phone calls at work, wait a New York minute before you start and say, “Lord Jesus Christ, this is for you.”

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
On the eve of the Civil War, in Groton, CT , an African-American, Methodist minister, G. W. Offley, published a memoir of his life and labors. In it he offered sketches of African-American Christians whom he had met in the course of his travels and ministry.

One sketch gave a brief account of “‘Praying Jacob,’ a Maryland slave living under a vicious master. ‘Jacob’s rule,’ according to Offley, was ‘to pray three times a day, at just such an hour of the day; no matter what his work was or where he might be, he would stop and go and pray.’

“This practice infuriated Jacob’s master, who more than once threatened to ‘blow out his brains’ if the praying did not stop. Offley’s account went on to record a distinctly evangelical response:

“‘Jacob would finish his prayer and then tell his master to shoot in [and be] welcome – your loss will be my gain – I have two masters, one on earth and one in heaven – master Jesus in heaven, and master Saunders on earth. I have a soul and a body; the body belongs to you, master Saunders, and the soul to master Jesus. Jesus says men ought to pray, but you will not pray, neither do you want to have me pray’” (Mark Noll, America’s God, 172-173).

That is spiritual discipline on the run and under the gun. Praying Jacob reminds us that circumstances do not keep us from spiritual disciplines. They are disciplines of the heart. If our heart’s treasure is in heaven, we’ll find a way to practice the disciplines.

READING THE BIBLE THROUGH IN A YEAR – WEB SITES

http://www.backtothebible.org/devotions/journey/

This site offers several ways of reading through the Bible in a year. It is well-organized and has interesting links.

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/biblereading-1yr.html

This site offers one straight-forward, clear method of reading the Bible through in one year.

http://www.oneyearbibleblog.com/

This site is for bloggers. You can use their method of reading through the Bible in a year. The site offers understandable commentary on the readings for each day. You can also sign up for comments from others who use this blog and make your own comments.