Embracing Discipline for Spiritual Growth and Faith

Discipline, you know this. Discipline facilitates progress. There's no progress without discipline. This is true personally, professionally, academically. It's true corporately. It's true nationally. And discipline facilitates prosperity, financially, relationally, and even physically, but, and here's the rub, right? Discipline requires delayed gratification. And you all know what delayed gratification is. It's doing what we ought to do now, so we can do want to do later. [00:04:09]

Jesus was so clear in the first century that his goal and his agenda for his first century followers and for his 21st century followers is that we would be people of great faith, but not faith that resides in our head, just things we believe, but faith that's an active, gritty, in the real world, in the family, at business, at work, in the neighborhood kind of faith, faith that shows up when we show up, faith that changes things, faith that confronts things, which explains Jesus' early invitation, which was to follow me. [00:04:57]

Jesus did not invite us to simply believe things about Him or to simply even believe things about God. He invited us into a lifestyle that reflects deep abiding faith in our Father in heaven, because belief alone, if it just stays right in your head, it actually creates feeble, frail and fragile faith. Faith that is easily broken, faith that is easily lost. In fact, this is one of the reasons that some of you have lost faith, or some of you are losing faith. [00:06:31]

And for the first time in my life, I began to read the Bible. For the first time in my life, I began to pray, not reactionary prayers like God, please help me find a parking spot, and God, please don't let that be true. God, please let him call me back. Not those kinds of prayers. For the first time in my life, I sat down, I cleared out some space, I cleared out some time, and I sat down for the first time and I really began to pray. [00:12:00]

He would say, "Andy, the most important thing in the world, the most important thing in the world is your personal relationship with Jesus Christ." I heard this, my whole life. "Andy, the most important thing in the world is your personal relationship with Jesus Christ." And what he meant is this, that it's not about church, and it's not just about learning, and it's not just about principles, and it's not just about applications. There is a personal, intimate side to this. [00:14:01]

If there's not the internal part, if there's not some sense of you and God, you and your heavenly Father, you and the scriptures, you and prayer. If there's not some something personal about it, what happens over time? Over time, we lose the sense of personal connection. And when that happens, it just becomes routine. It becomes somewhat corporate. It can grow cold. We can become cynical. We can become judgmental. [00:15:36]

The personal side of Christianity is what releases the kingdom of God in your life personally. Big church word, let me say it a different way. The personal side of Christianity, intimate side of Christianity, is what releases God's rule in our lives. It allows us to answer the question and forces us to grapple with the question, is Jesus really the Lord of my life, or is this just something I believe if I was to be quizzed? [00:17:42]

Daily devotions, percentage giving and corporate worship. Now when people tell their story, or if you were to tell us your story, you would not use these phrases. You might use this top one, but not these other three, these other two. But essentially, these are the things that come up over and over, a personal devotional life. People talk about when they finally decided, okay, I'm going to become a proactive percentage giver. They had to wrestle that to the ground. [00:19:00]

And as we wrestle with this one, here's what we discover. And many of you have discovered this. It's not even about money. It's about priorities. It's about our confidence in God. It's about our faith in God. Jesus said this, and it seems so cavalier when he said this, especially to people living on the edge of starvation, in some cases. He says, hey, look, do not worry, saying, what are we gonna eat? What are we gonna drink? What are we gonna wear? [00:25:05]

Giving, giving, exercise percentage upfront, pre-decided disciplined giving, it exercises our faith because it involves letting go of what we are most inclined to put our confidence in rather than God. This is why it's a faith thing. It's not even a money thing. Jesus was so brilliant on this. I mean, it's so brilliant. He says, look, you can't two kings. Can't have two bosses, can't have two Lords. The word he used is you can't have two masters. [00:28:00]

Something happens personally when we gather corporately. It just does. There's a group dynamic that has a personal, private impact, and you've experienced this. You've experienced this sometime in the singing. You've experienced this sometime in just a story that's told. During 2020, Sandra and I kept saying to each other, I miss church, I miss church, I miss church. And what were we saying? We weren't missing the building. I have a key to the building. [00:33:30]

There is an aspect of the Christian faith that I can not experience apart from you. And we're all part of this community, but we have to choose to participate in the community. We have to choose, and at some point, at some time, it feels a little bit like a discipline. But it's a reminder every time we get together, you know what it's a reminder of? That God is up to something bigger than you that includes you. [00:35:46]