Presbyterian & Reformed

 

“In the early days, when Christianity exercised a dominant influence over American thinking, men and women conceived the world to be a battleground. Our fathers believed in sin and the devil and hell as constituting one force, and they believed in God and righteousness and heaven as the other. By their very nature, these forces were opposed to each other forever in deep, grave, irreconcilable hostility. Humans, our fathers held, had to choose sides-they could not be neutral.

For them it must be life or death, heaven or hell, and if they chose to come out on God’s side they could expect open war with God’s enemies. The fight would be real and deadly and would last as long as life continued here below. People looked forward to heaven as a return from the wars, a laying down of the sword to enjoy in peace the home prepared for them…

How different today. The fact remains the same, but the interpretation has changed completely. People think of the world, not as a battleground, but as a playground. We are not here to fight; we are here to frolic. We are not in a foreign land; we are at home. We are not getting ready to live, but we are already living, and the best we can do is rid ourselves of our inhibitions and our frustrations and live this life to the full.”

- AW Tozer

 

 

I Am Not An American

It may surprise you to discover that I am not, in fact, an American! I know it’s shocking since I have obviously integrated so well into society here and yes, there is barely a trace of any accent left!

Perhaps this may make you think less of me, but I have drug my feet (and by this you can tell I am assimilating. No self-respecting English speaker would ever say anything other than dragged…) on becoming a citizen.

Oh, I confess that in the early days, I could not WAIT to become an American Citizen. So why the change in my thinking? To be honest, because I submitted again to the Kingship of Jesus Christ, my Lord, My king, My Ruler, who – as Tozer points out – has gone ahead now that victory is secured, to prepare a place for His soldiers to retire to after they quit the battlefield.

My Citizenship is in Heaven. My Home is not the United States of America. My Home is yonder. My Home is across the Jordan. I love Scottish & Irish music and there is one song I learned in boyhood that now calls me on to my mature years that goes:

Because these green hills are not highland hills
or the Islands hills they’re not my lands hills,
as fair as these green foreign hills may be
they are not the hills of home.

But – I share a citizenship with all of you who are Christ’s today. More than merely Americans together, more than the sum of our parts, we are Citizens of Heaven. We share a common future, friends, and that makes me fascinated about how we should relate one to another in the present. And because my strengths are what they are, and my inclinations are what they are, I have a driving interest to see what connects us together, you and I, from our past. My past is your past now. And your past is mine.

Well – what does this have to do with Spiritual Discipline? I’m so glad you asked!

The point is, America much more than Australia, your sister, or even England, our mother, was founded by men and women committed to the life-view that Tozer gives us: that this world is a battleground. That we must commit to a cause. “Join or Die” was a revolutionary slogan of Franklin’s that spurred our forebears into action! “Join or Die” is Christ’s call to the Nations; join Christ and know life – or reject Him and suffer eternal death in separation from God for eternity.

The point is I have elected to challenge myself to adopt a War of Independence outlook on my life. But I don’t want to be tired, bedraggled, burdened, and green on the battlefield. As we will look at several Spiritual Disciplines over the next few weeks, I hope to use them in my life not as ends unto themselves, but as basic training, R&R and advanced combat techniques all rolled into one to make me a better soldier for Christ and a better citizen of the Country to which I go who’s founder and ruler is Jesus Christ.

So – one caveat: I am not up here because I am good at these things we will look at. I have not mastered one of them – not even close. I am not a ‘guru’ on meditation, if you’ll forgive the pun. Some of you will be far more accomplished than I at these things. But I am here as a sinner, forgiven by God, who has caught a glimpse of a City on a Hill – and while all of you will be better than I at various tasks we must perform along the way to that city, I nonetheless am grateful to have the chance to point. That’s all I am up here – a pointer, a signpost. Not a guide because I haven’t trod the path fully – just a guy saying “Go that way. I don’t know HOW we go that way – but we must go that way!”

Our Text

Our text is coming from Richard Foster’s ‘Celebration of Discipline.’ The book was written 30 odd years ago. Like all things of men and not of God, it is not perfect, nor infallible. It contains, I am sure, error and things with which we would not agree. Mr. Foster also comes from a different faith tradition than us. He is, basically, a Quaker. If not actual, then certainly in his development he was raised in Quakerism and he would stand quite comfortably in the Quaker tradition.

He runs too quickly, in my estimation, to the mystics of the faith and too slowly, by contrast, to Scripture. He would embrace; it seems to me, too closely the experiential aspects of our faith and too loosely the intellectual and reasonable nature of things. But, when read with caution, like all reading should be, he brings much to the table that we can learn from. So, this said, let’s look at where we will be going the next eight weeks or so.

Foster outlines Spiritual Disciplines into three main camps: Internal, Outward and Corporate. We will be looking at the first two of these three: the Inward and the Outward disciplines. Each week, we will take a discipline and unpack it, gather some tips from how it might work in our lives in the nitty-gritty, on a daily basis and then go out and, well, do it; practice it for the week. The following week we will share our experience with each other – where it worked, where it didn’t and what surprised or delighted or even concerned us – and then pick up with the discipline unpacking for the following week.

This week being our first week, we’ll cover our introductory material which we have largely completed, look briefly at what Spiritual Disciplines are and are not, and get into Meditation for the rest of the lesson. Next week, we’ll start by unpacking our experience with meditation and hopefully we can be vulnerable one with another during that time, before we pick up the next discipline we’ll practice together.

So if you look at your handout, you’ll see how things break down for the next few weeks. Study, practice, sharing. Rinse and repeat the following week.

Discipline: It Sounds So… Negative!

The term makes our kids shudder. “I’m gonna discipline you!” is not typically met with peels of delighted squeaking from our young ones. A disciplinary hearing at work on Monday, at which you get to ‘star’ is not something we would typically think of as making for a relaxing weekend.

What about you? What are some of the images or feelings that come to mind when you hear the word discipline. What about the phrase Spiritual Discipline. Does that alter your perception? What do you think?

–share- looking for sense of punitive versus orderly, to bring order.

At its root, the word discipline carries the sense of ‘order’. We discipline our children why? To punish? Not really. The punishment is not the goal right? We don’t drive children to sinful behavior so that we can punish them. Rather, we punish sinful acts to bring children back into a right ‘order’ – that is, a pattern of behavior and belief that is in step with the revealed will of God. That’s why punishing kids is so tricky! Why am I punishing here, you must ask yourselves. Is it because my children are out of the stated will of God – and not just in a ‘obey your parents’ kind of way so what I say goes – or am I annoyed by their .. childishness? Or the noise? Does my attitude need to change? Should I be disciplining … myself – to bring my behavior and attitudes into line here instead of assuming that ‘might makes right’ – so what I want is consequently necessary.

Anyway – that’s another topic- but for now, think of discipline not so much as the punishment act itself but the desire to bring a situation into order. Discipline is not the actual paddling the bottom with a rod – but the desire to restore the child to orderly relationship to the family and to the Lord.

And God desires HIS children to likewise be disciplined. Look, when we discipline our children, the goal is not to remove the need to discipline. Think about it. We’re not trying to shut our children down physically, emotionally. We’re not turning off parts of our children. But hear me here, we’re looking to instill into them the ability to self-discipline well!

I joined the Army at 17. I had no clue. I really was a child. But think of how we talk when we talk about the military. “Ah, we need to have everyone do two years military service, that will instill some discipline in them.” Or “I went to the Army as a boy and they really gave me a sense of discipline.”

The goal of discipline is NOT to carve out sin centers in people so that they CANNOT ever think, feel or act a certain way again; rather, it is the goal of discipline to show the boundaries of acceptable behavior and encourage, instill, infuse a sense of self-discipline. We don’t want “Stepford Children.” We want kids who are vibrant and alive and effervescent – but who learn to control their baser impulses – their sinful natures – by developing a sense of discipline. Firstly from loving adults to whom they have been entrusted – and then from within as they grow in wisdom and maturity.

So why the long speech about kids? Because, likewise, we have been instructed by God, or will be, with the goal of discipling us. Not so that we are ‘Stepford Christians” but so that we are fully human, yet able to discipline into subjection incorrect and non-pleasing ungodly thought, words, and deeds.

The battlefield is not just ‘out there’ The battlefield is here head and here heart and here mouth. That’s why these spiritual disciplines are important. They are the basic training for the Lord’s army. Justin hit boot camp, not Iraq – thank God for his mercy. If it was at all like my basic training, there was plenty of opportunity to exercise, to sweat. We need to hit our exercise facilities in the Spiritual sense and in the next few weeks, we’ll do just that.

Spiritual Disciplines are a gift from God. Remember the point Eric made last week - God changed our hearts before we had faith. There is a temptation to think that after we have faith, God withdraws and it’s then up to us. But the truth is, after we have faith, it is God again who gives us gifts to work out sanctification in us.

Robert Reymond has an awesome Systematic Theology. If you like to think, if you like to read – get it. Trust me! Anyway, Reymond writes this regarding the agents and instruments of sanctification:

Christians can no more sanctify themselves by their own efforts than can sinners justify themselves by their own efforts. The Scriptures insist that it is God who must effect the Christian’s sanctification by his own grace and power. … Although growth is grace is divinely energized, I would not suggest for a moment that the Christian is to be passive in his spiritual growth. To the contrary, he is to be fully and consciously involved in his sanctification. [pp 778-9. Emphasis in original]

He goes on. It’s excellent. But we must press on. The disciplines, then, are a gift from God. God works in us whether we will or not according to his good pleasure. But we not only can, but must participate in that process of sanctification. God does not just pour sanctification on our heads –we don’t get it from the Elders in allotted portions. We obtain it through conforming our person and lives to the image of Jesus Christ. The Spiritual Disciplines are practical ways to assist us in carrying out the transformation.

But the Spiritual Disciplines are not laws. They function to bring the abundance of God into our lives. But they are not magical. It’s not fast three times and you’re 6% more sanctified. It’s not don’t fast and don’t grow either. We’re not setting up a new pharisaical order here. We don’t manipulate our children with guilt. We don’t use discipline as a tyrannical force in the life of children. In some sense, we master these gifts – they must never be masters over us. Then, we are back under law and grace is lost.

Meditation:

What do you think of when you hear the word Meditation

· Eastern, yoga, empty mind, sleeping, zoning out etc

It is important to get a grip on what meditation is not. We are so infused with pagan and occult imagery and practice in our modern America, that perhaps some of us cannot even begin to conceive of meditation without the need to sit cross-legged on the floor in a leg numbing yoga pose while chanting ‘Om’ and seeking to rid our mind of all extraneous thought. This is the accepted and prevalent image of meditation in our society.

But this is not meditation! That we are called to meditate is beyond doubt. Psalm 1 is explicit:

Blessed is the man
who walks not in ?the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in ?the seat of ?scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his ?law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree
planted by ?streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its ?leaf does not wither.
?In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
but are like ?chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in ?the congregation of the righteous;
for the Lord ?knows ?the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish

Psalm 119:97, 101, 102
Gen 24:63
Ps 63:6
Ps 119:148

So if it is not eastern contortionism, with vain chanting of nonsense, what is it?

At one time, the Christian church was deeply engaged in biblical meditation, which involved detachment from sin and attachment to God and one’s neighbor. In the Puritan age, numerous ministers preached and wrote on how to meditate.

The word meditate, or muse, means to think upon or reflect. While I was musing the fire burned, David said (Ps. 39:3). It also means to murmur, to mutter, to make sound with the mouth. It implies what we express by one talking to himself. Such meditation involved reciting to oneself in a low undertone passages of Scripture one had committed to memory.

The Bible often speaks of meditation. Isaac went out to meditate in the field in the evening, says Genesis 24:63. Despite Joshua’s demanding task of supervising the conquest of Canaan, the Lord commanded Joshua to meditate on the book of the law day and night so that he might do all that was written in it (Josh. 1:8). The term meditation, however, occurs more often in the Psalms than in all other books of the Bible put together. Psalm 1 calls that man blessed who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night. In Psalm 63:6, David speaks of remembering the Lord on his bed and meditating on Him in the night watches. Psalm 119:148 says, Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate in thy word.

The Puritans never tired of saying that biblical meditation involves thinking upon the Triune God and His Word. By anchoring meditation in the living Word, Jesus Christ, and God’s written Word, the Bible, the Puritans distanced themselves from the kind of bogus spirituality or mysticism that stresses contemplation at the expense of action, and flights of the imagination at the expense of biblical content.

For the Puritans, meditation exercises both the mind and the heart; he who meditates approaches a subject with his intellect as well as his affections. Thomas Watson defined meditation as “a holy exercise of the mind whereby we bring the truths of God to remembrance, and do seriously ponder upon them and apply them to ourselves.”

Thomas White said meditation draws from four sources: Scripture, practical truths of Christianity, providential occasions (experiences), and sermons. Sermons are particularly fertile fields for meditation. As White wrote, It is better to hear one Sermon only and meditate on that, then to hear two Sermons and meditate on neither.

Meditation is, by way of summary, a serious applying of the mind to some spiritual or heavenly subject, talking or thinking it through with yourself to the result that our hearts are warmed, and we are awakened to a greater love of God.

How?

So this coming week, we want to practice this meditation thing. If you currently meditate – great. Keep doing what you are doing. This is not the definitive answer on all things meditative. Rather, it provides some framework for those us who may find the concept, let alone the nuts and bolts of how it works, a little foreign.

Choose Your Muse:

I have no doubt that the sermon you hear Sundays presents the absolute best ground for novices in meditation. James Ussher wrote, “Every sermon is but a preparation for meditation.” I agree.

Good sermons not only inform the mind with sound doctrine but also stir up the affections. They turn thoughts away from sin and toward loving God and one’s neighbor. When people stop meditating on sermons, they stop benefiting from them.

Richard Baxter wrote, “Why so much preaching is lost among us, and professors can run from sermon to sermon, and are never weary of hearing or reading, and yet have such languishing, starved souls, I know no truer or greater cause than their ignorance and unconscionable neglect of meditation. Some hearers have spiritual anorexia, Baxter said, for “they have neither appetite nor digestion,” but others have spiritual bulimia. “they have appetite, but no digestion.” Conscientious Puritans often took sermon notes to help facilitate meditation.

I say this not to swell my Pastor’s head, but good preaching is a rare and precious jewel in the church and we have it, brethren, in buckets. Let us not neglect it.

Time & Space – Your Private Place:

We live busy lives. We also, if we are honest, have short attention spans. So 45 minutes of kneeling whilst considering the beauty of ??????????, is not really for us. So we need to be honest, examine our day and see what works for us. Perhaps it is a 15 minute section of our lunch break at work twice weekly. Maybe it is 30 minutes sometime between 1:15 and 4:45 when the kids finally fall asleep for a nap. For one it might be an extra 30 minutes before bed; for another, it is getting up 20 minutes early on Saturday morning.

Being flexible does not mean being sloppy. This is still a discipline! Try and make it a routine and try and make it more than 5 minutes between phone calls on Sunday afternoon. You can do it!

In conjunction with this, perhaps give thought to a place where you will do this. I’ve tried in bed and usually end up snoring. I’ve tried on the floor and find it plays havoc with my legs. On the plus side, I meditate longer but only because I can’t get up! On the whole, the most effective place for me has been a quiet room where I have some expectation of not being disturbed unduly, with a sensible, straight-back chair I can sit in. I use my desk because I like to write as I go. You might prefer outside with Summer coming. Circumstances might dictate a quiet corner in the break-room. Find someplace that works for you and don’t be afraid to experiment a little. Perhaps you will be the exception to not meditating in bed after midnight with a full stomach and a milky drink!

Juggle the Ball – Don’t Let it Fall:

By this I mean that aside from the set deliberative time we invest into meditating on the thing that we have chosen, that we keep the idea alive by being sensitive to it at all times during the week. Hunt it out! Eric preached on xxxxx this morning. Look for that in the boardroom. Find it as you clip coupons. That moron cuts you off in traffic; how does the facet you unlocked affect that? This ‘occasional’ meditation can be just as rewarding as more ‘formal’ meditation times.

When In Doubt – Write It Out!

Purchase a book to record your thoughts in. If you are like me, you’re salivating over the idea of being able to go get another leather-bound, un-ruled journal with a silk ribbon between its crisp, slightly cream but not totally white pages. Or perhaps a $1 notebook from Target is good enough for you. Whatever you decide, I strongly encourage you to make enough notes at the end of you session to trigger your memory at the beginning of the next.

Don’t Fear – Persevere!

Your mind will wander. The thought of just how the Professor was able to make a radio out of coconuts, or who really should get voted off the island next, or if you re-seed the lawn Kentucky Bluegrass will be your seed of choice or perhaps Tide really is better than other leading brands – WILL enter your head. Pray for forgiveness, go back to your sermon notes, or Bible verse and re-read it. Get the train back on the tracks and keep going. Meditation is never effectively practiced apart from her sisters of prayer and Scripture reading.

Don’t Expect Earthquakes Every Time. Sorry This Point Doesn’t Rhyme

At least, not every time. It might be enough to simply come away rested. Or agitated over some aspect of your life you are finding is not in submission. Or excited that you finally get ?????????? and its significance in the Johannine Epistolary corpus. Perhaps your journal stays empty for a month. Perhaps it explodes with life. But if you are not ‘getting anything’ – stick with it. It’s a discipline, not magic. It’s basic training, not advanced combat techniques. Those may come – but if this is new, don’t expect the fireworks cavalcade from Disney’s EPCOT every time. You’re laying a foundation here, not the final brush-strokes on the Sistine Chapel.

The Inward Disciplines

Week 1:

· Introduction – I’m not American!

· What is A Discipline

· A study on the Discipline of Meditation

Week 2:

· Reflections on Meditation

· A study on the Discipline of Prayer

Week 3:

· A Prayer Share Circle

· A Study on the Discipline of Study

Week 4:

· Study Hall

· A Study on the Discipline of Fasting

The Outward Disciplines

Week 5:

· Fast Breaking News

· A Study on Simplicity

Week 6:

· How Hard Can It Be? A Discussion on Simple Living

· A Study on Solitude

Week 7:

· Getting Together on Solitude

· A Study on Submission

Week 8:

· Our Ruling on Submission

· A Study on Service

· Closing Thoughts

[www.davidmw.com]

Disciplines:

1. Is your life a _______________ or a _______________?

2. What are some things Soldiers require before seeing action?

· B_______________ T_______________

· E_______________

· D_______________

3. Why do we discipline?

? Because we want to shutdown certain things in ourselves or our children?
? Because we want to teach self-control in all of life’s circumstances?

4. Spiritual Disciplines are _______________

· John 17:17; Romans 8:13-14; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; 2 Corinthians 3:18

5. Spiritual Disciplines are not _______________

· They don’t work like m_______________

· They are not to master us but be m_______________

Meditation Guidelines:

· Choose a Muse – perhaps from the sermon

· Time & Place

· Juggle the Ball

· Write it Out

· Persevere

· Patience