Change Your Heart ⇔ Change Your Life

Sermon Series: Getting It Together, Part 6

October 16, 2011

Rev. Dr. Craig Strobel

Basic Idea:

As we seek to become whole persons in Christ, adopting a set of spirit-guided practices reinforces our new lives fashioned by faith.

Philippians 4:4-9

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

Opening Joke:

An actress, a costumer and a stage manager found an old bottle in a pile of junk backstage. The actress rubbed it against her sleeve, and poof! A genie appeared.

"You got me fair and square," the genie said. "So you each get one wish."

"I want a world tour in a starring role," the actress declared.

"Granted," said the genie, and poof! The actress was off on her tour.

"I want a yacht and unlimited funds to cruise the exotic ports of the world," wished the costumer.

"Granted," said the genie, and poof! The costumer was off on his cruise.

The stage manager rubbed his chin, thought for a minute and said, "I want them back after lunch."

I have spent over half of my life doing things in the theatre in one way or the other. One of the hallmarks of life in the theatre is the amount of time spent going over and over things. In order for any actor to be prepared for an actual performance, they must run through their lines and movements on stage many, many times in order to memorize their part. This is called “practicing.”  Similarly, athletes on a team practice together as a team over and over so that they develop their skills and learn how to work as a team. They have certain “plays” that they need to know as a team in order to compete in a game. In order to compete well and effectively, these plays must be so well-rehearsed and practiced that they are second nature to each player and to the team as a whole. In essence, through repeated practice and rehearsal, actors and athletes each internalize their lines, parts, routines and plays to the extent that the actor fully embodies their character such that they seem to actually be that character, and the athlete executes their plays so well that they seem to have been born to the game, or such that they are football or baseball itself.

We all have this same capacity to shape our lives according to something we wish to achieve or be by the constant repetition or practicing of those actions or thoughts that embody that change we want. Of course, it isn’t easy. It requires discipline, and we don’t always appreciate discipline. Tom Landry, the football coach, has said, “The job of a football coach is to make men do what they don't want to do, in order to achieve what they've always wanted to be.”  This is the purpose behind any sort of discipline.

Throughout the last several weeks we have been looking at the wisdom path to wholeness and healing in our lives. This is how I’ve described this path:

Wisdom as a process:

·      Know your Big Picture, how the universe is put together, Who put it together. Our Destination in life:  To become whole persons in Jesus Christ, to “...grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

·      Tell the truth of your life in context of that Big Picture

·      Identify experiences of injury, trauma and seek healing in order to become whole persons.

·      Integrate these experiences into your life and help others from your unique experience.

Last week I talked in depth about the power of ritual to enact and embody some of the inner healing we seek. By doing these physical rituals, we help unlock the painful grip these events have upon this, and work with the healing power of God’s Spirit.  These rituals help mark or enact the big changes or transitions in our lives. Today we are going to look at how spiritual practices and disciplines cement into our consciousness the changes we want to make.

Think of it this way: It’s like after surgery or an accident, when you have broken bones or had something replaced, like a joint, you have to regain your strength. You do therapy, which consists of small activities repeated daily over and over. Spiritual practices are therapy for the mind and heart.

But in order for this therapy to have lasting effects, we must find ways of acting that are in accord with this new direction. We must redirect our thoughts and attitudes along lines that are in concert with this new direction. What we need to do is to adopt a set of practices that serve to reinforce our new life and to help establish the change as permanent. These practices are called spiritual disciplines.

THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICES OF JESUS

Jesus was a practicing Jew in first-century Palestine. The Jewish spiritual disciplines for which we have evidence that he practiced include the following:

·   Prayer and meditation,

·   Study of the Scriptures of his time,

·   Acts of charity,

·   Devotional practice and worship,

·   Observance of religious rituals and festivals. 

·   Time alone in the natural world,

·   Fasting,

·   Urged repentance (basically continuous self-examination),

·   Performed works of mercy and justice as well as works of love and compassion.

·   Simplicity of life,

·   Acts of forgiveness and reconciliation, and

·   Worked to establish a new form of community among his disciples and followers.

(For a fuller discussion of these disciplines go to "A Life Disciplined" in the Journey to the Heart of God section of the Pocatello First United Methodist Church website.)

The power of prayer arises from the fact that it is first and foremost an activity of the will of God. Because God is holy, prayer needs to be grounded in God’s will for the world. That is, our intentions, as voiced in our prayer, must be rooted firmly in God’s intentions. Prayer is a way of attuning our wills to the greater Will that pervades the universe. Thus, the discipline of prayer focuses our own individual wills on the Big Picture of God’s will and love for the world. We come to know and understand that will more closely through careful, guided study of the Bible, which is another spiritual discipline. Devotional practices such as reading The Upper Room, daily prayer, even doing a form of what’s called the Daily Office, are forms of devotional practice. By gathering every week for worship, we literally put our bodies where our intentions are. By gathering in worship we:

• ·      Acknowledge our dependence upon God
• ·      Conform ourselves to God’s will who has commanded us to observe and hallow the Sabbath
• ·      Give praise to Jesus Christ and seek to be his disciples by gathering to learn about his Way
• ·      Support one another as members of the Body of Christ by holding one another in prayer
• ·      Confess our need to remold and remake our lives after the image of Christ.

Fasting is a means to purify oneself and prepare for a deeper encounter with God. The constant need for food occupies much of our time and energy as humans. By temporarily stepping away from the all-consuming need to consume, our mental energy and attention can be directed to practices such as prayer, meditation and contemplation. As the body no longer needs to direct its energy resources to the acquisition, preparation, eating and digesting of food, it has more energy available for the work of the brain as it engages in these exercises of the mind.

Jesus lived a life of simplicity that was free of the craving after riches and material possessions. He urged this lifestyle upon his followers. The rapacious greed, rampant materialism and wanton exercise of power of his day and ours has always resulted in wide disparities in wealth, in the oppression of whole segments of society, and the need to use military force to protect the vested material interests of the rich and powerful. Jesus knew this and urged a different lifestyle and a new community of people. Jesus did not simply provide a critique about the failings of the social systems he found around himself – he showed people an alternative way to live and be. At its best, the Christian community is just such a community of love, justice, mercy and compassion in the world. In order to adopt this new way of being and acting in the world, we need to have the support of like-minded people who will assist us in our journey.

These are all examples of the time-tested things the church has used over the years to help the followers of Jesus to become whole persons in Christ, to “...grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

One final note. Ted Williams, baseball superstar of 40's & 50's was known as a "natural hitter." Once was asked about this natural ability and replied, "There is no such thing as a natural born hitter. I became a good hitter because I paid the price of constant practice, constant practice." (Ted Engstrom, The Making of a Christian Leader, p. 95.)

Our growth into wisdom takes just such constant practice. The integrated life that can be ours, even after being buffeted by trauma and tragedy is an ever-present possibility, but it requires that we do our part. But that is the point of being a community of the followers of Jesus Christ. We sow the seeds of new life through the spiritual disciplines Jesus practiced and the church has nurtured for 2000 years. By carefully nurturing these practices and disciplines, we can reap a harvest of wholeness.