The Training of our Soul (II): Putting Off
Welcome. Our vision is to renew lives in Christ and transform our city and the world. We want to see people transformed by the Gospel. We do not just start in the Gospel, we live in the Gospel. And as we’re transformed, we have joy, freedom, love and grace of Christ to give to our city and the world.
Last Oct to June we had studied what Gospel Living means as we studied the book of Galatians. And then these last couple weeks we’ve been considering the effort we need to exert to live in the Gospel.
We’ve been saying that it is not natural for us to turn to Christ, to rest in Him, to live by faith. Instead, we are intuitively and instinctively self-focused, performanced-based, and self-reliant, and it takes a major paradigm shift to become God-focused, grace-based, and God-dependent. This is why we need to train our souls.
Another way to put it would be the distinction between trying and training.
If I urged all of us right now to put on running shoes and run a marathon [picture], my guess is that most of us would really struggle. You may indeed put in great effort, you may try your honest best, but you’ll fail to complete 26 miles. Completing a marathon is not about effort alone.
What we’ll need is not just trying but training. We need to start building up our endurance; we’ll need to get in shape. Training involves taking steps we can do today to accomplish something tomorrow that we can’t do today.
That’s the picture I’d like to give us for our souls. To say we’re going to turn to God, to rest in His goodness and promises, to delight and find our security in Him, is like telling our souls to run a spiritual marathon. Despite our best efforts, we’re probably not going to be very successful. Of course, God can work miracles, but for most of us, this is going to require soul training.
Willard (The Great Omission) expresses these ideas:
Indeed, the spirit or heart may even be eager (Matthew 26:41), but unless the flesh or embodied personality as a whole is trained to go with it and support it, the follow-through in action will not occur, or will not reliably happen, or may even be in direction conflict with the spirit or will: “I do the very thing I hate!” (Romans 7:15). . .
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Willard is very honest about the weakness, limitations, rebelliousness of our flesh. He deals with the fact that our flesh cannot carry out what the Spirit desires. It’s like asking us to run a spiritual marathon. Despite our best intensions, we can’t. So Willard emphasize that we have to train our soul.
This is an important point: we need to be honest about our spiritual weakness. We may underestimate the strength of our sinful flesh, we may overestimate our spiritual abilities and spiritual condition.
[Putting off the old person and putting on the new] is an active, not passive, process, one that requires our clear-headed and relentless participation. It will not be done for us; however, we cannot obey Christ, or even trust him, by direct effort.
We’re to follow Christ, to live as Christ calls us. We are not passive, but we cannot accomplish this by direct effort. We don’t become a loving person just by trying to love others. We don’t become a loving person just by receiving the Spirit by faith (raising the sails and catching the wind). We start by training ourselves to receive the Spirit by faith.
We had talked about how the Christian life is not a kayak [picture] where we paddle our way to the other side of the lake. This is self-reliance, self-salvation. The power of the Christian life is not within us. Instead, the picture is that we’re a sailboat [picture], and we need to “catch the wind.” The power of the Christian life is outside of us, it is in God, and our task is to “catch the wind”
To restate: the answer is not for us to trying to row ourselves to the other side. The answer is not for us to raise the sails. That would be beyond our spiritual abilities. The starting point for us is to begin sail-raising training. We do not naturally trust Him, see Him, enjoy Him.
What, then, are the indirect means that allow us to cooperate in reshaping the personality—the feelings, ideas, mental processes and images, and the deep readiness of soul and body—so that our whole being is poised to go with the movements of the regenerate heart that is in us by the impact of the gospel Word under the direction and energizing of the Holy Spirit?
So how do we do that sail-raising training? What are the indirect means so we can position ourselves to be under greater impact of the gospel Word and the HS?
These means are, primarily, the disciplines for life in the Spirit: solitude and silence, prayer and fasting, worship and study, fellowship and confession, and the like. These disciples are not, in themselves, meritorious . . . They do, however, allow the spirit or will—an infinitesimal tiny power, in itself, that we cannot count on to carry our intentions into settled, effectual righteousness—to direct the body into contexts of experiences in which the whole self is inwardly reconstructed to follow the eager spirit into ever-fuller obedience. . . .
Our wills are not strong enough to get us to the other side of the lake. Our wills are not strong enough to lift the sails. But our will are strong enough to begin sail-lifting training.
We had spent months on the content—the Gospel from Galatians. And now for these 3 weeks, we’ve been addressing a bit of this conveyor system.
There were some introductory comments I made last week that I want to remind us of.
If this is your first time and you’d like to hear what we’ve been talking about, you can look on our website for the last 2 weeks. If you’re only going to look at one, look at last weeks.
Let’s beware of legalism.
Do we really want training?
Self-discipline is a transferable strength
I’d like to help us understand the strategy of spiritual practices. Spiritual disciplines have a negative and positive aspect: they try to remove hinderances/obstacles and show us more of Christ. We need to get rid of the obstacles and gain a clearer vision of Christ. Today we want to look at the “removing obstacles” and next week we want to look at the “seeing more of Christ.”
There is an honest acknowledgement of the idols of our heart and the weakness of our flesh. It’s being honest you’re an alcoholic and getting out of the bar. It’s being honest you’re addicted to gambling and getting out of the casino. It’s being honest you have lust and getting off the computer when you’re alone. It’s being honest your addicted to shopping and getting out of the mall. It’s being honest that we’re addicted to sin.
Last week we talked about getting off the merry-go-round (slowness and solitude). For many of us one of our main obstacles is that we’re too busy and distracted. Our lives and our minds do not have the space, the time to be still with God. To think that we’re going have a sweet hour of prayer with our cell phones on, internet access on hand, the TV on, our to-do list right in front of us, a messy kitchen and pile of laundry in sight—we’re just fooling ourselves. We’re too addicted to productivity and entertainment. Our hearts are too weak. It’s very much like telling the alcoholic in the bar to not think about beer. So we need to get away, be by ourselves, and set aside hours and hours.
Let me address another aspect of Slowness and Solitude. Some of us have an unhealthy dependence on people and their approval. We have a deep need for people’s approval, acceptance, and love. Our lives are spent trying to gain people’s love and acceptance. We’re constantly worried about what people think about us, we’re obsessed with our reputation.
We were made for community. We were made for deep and loving relationships. Christ calls us to deep and genuine community, we’re to love one another.
But our sinful souls have twisted this so that we’ve made it an idol. We have an unhealthy dependency. And that is what keeps us from being able to have true community. We’re so self-consumed with wanting love and acceptance that we’re not free to genuinely love others. We don’t really care about others, we care about what they think about us. We don’t really love people, we just want people to think we’re loving.
The discipline of solitude is to get away from people, to be alone so that instead of being tempted to find your significance in the approval of people, you can focus on finding your significance in the gracious approval of God. You remove the temptation/obstacle of other people’s eyes, and bend your soul to look through God’s eyes.
For some of us, maybe it’s hard to deeply and freely worship God here because we’re so distracted by what other people might think of us. We’re inhibited or we’re showy. Maybe we need to be honest about that, and learn to worship God in privately until we’re able we are then able to freely worship God corporately.
This strategy of weaning ourselves off of people’s approval can take various forms:
serving in non-spotlight ministries, doing secret acts of service (transparencies with Alpha Omega)
I recall asking someone who had returned from a summer mission trip what he got out of it. One of things he mentioned was how freeing it was to not worry about what to wear, whether he showered, how he looked. Everyone was dirty, no one wore trendy clothes. It was freeing, and for some of us, that environment would really help us focus on God.
For me, so much of my life is about church; sometimes it’s really good for me to be in settings when I’m not Pastor Paul. With old friends or relatives, I’m just Paul—and that helps remind me that my first identity and significance is not being a pastor, but being a child of God.
Then after having our souls freed from our addiction to people’s approval, having our souls satisfied with God’s gracious approval, we can re-enter community/relationship in a much healthier way. We are freed to love people, not use people to prop our self-esteem.
Pause and consider in what ways we might be living for the approval of different people: trying to gain our parents’ approval, our boss/professor’s approval, small group leaders/pastors trying to gain their members’ approval; some constantly thinking about what their spouse or children might think; some constantly worried about their reputation, obsessively image conscious.
I challenged us to schedule something in last week, but I realize that many of us might not be proactive and disciplined enough to carry this out.
I think it will be a great exercise to be by ourselves, without left alone to our own thoughts and see what surfaces.
We didn’t originally have it on our church calendar, but we’ve decided to have a half day of slowness and solitude. Saturday, Sept 6, 9 am – 1 pm.
Let me give one more discipline that I may be relevant for us, and that is the practice of Giving.
For many of us (probably all of us), another big hindrance to our spiritual growth and formation is money and materialism. We love money and we love what money can give us. And we think about these things. Some of us meditate on this day and night.
Some of us are spenders, and we’re constantly thinking about all the things we want to buy (iPod, cell phone, laptop, shoes, cars, house or home project). Others are more savers, and we’re constantly thinking about how to save more money (constantly checking our accounts, reviewing our budget/cashflow, constantly looking for bargins).
What I’d like to suggest to remove this spiritual hindrance is give away your money. Give lots of it away. Jesus himself said, you cannot serve both God and money. And so by giving it away, you’re declaring I will not be ruled by money, I do not serve money, I serve God.
Janette and I try to set aside money each month for various budget items, and now with these online banks (like ING), its really easy to do this. Beside our regular tithes and offerings to the church, we have a charity/gift fund where we’ve set aside additional money that we’re planning to give away. It’s been a lot easier to give, a lot easier to say I’m not trying to hold on to all my money. It’s good for my soul.
As you give up that money, you cling to God and declare, You are my treasure, my inheritance, my reward, my hope, my security, my joy!
As with the dependent relationships, if our souls are satisfied with God, then we can handle money (and relationships) with greater health and freedom. Money doesn’t control us. We can deny our purchases or we can spend freely, all with God-honoring freedom.
You can see how this would also work with Fasting from food. For some of us, food is an obsession. We’re always thinking about food. And so fasting is a way of directly dealing with that spiritual obstacle.
I think some of us practice this kind of approach during Lent. We give up meat, TV, ESPN, shopping, video games, movies, etc. We identify those things that have become too distracting, too consuming, and we try to remove these spiritual obstacles. My encouragement for you right now is to consider this more than 40 days of the year.
Spiritual disciplines have a negative and positive aspect: they try to remove hinderances/obstacles and show us more of Christ. We need to get rid of the obstacles and gain a clearer vision of Christ.
In trying to remove the obstacles, there is an honest acknowledgment of the weakness of our hearts. It’s being honest you’re an alcoholic and getting out of the bar. It’s being honest you’re addicted to gambling and getting out of the casino. It’s being honest you have lust and getting off the computer when you’re alone. It’s being honest your addicted to shopping and getting out of the mall. It’s being honest that we’re addicted to sin, and that if we’re going to get serious about soul transformation, we have to deal with these sin addictions.
Lord willing next week we’ll take a look at the positive practices that help us see Christ. The purpose of getting rid of these obstacles is so that we’d be more freed to see Christ. We want to deepen our view of God. We want to see who He is and what He does.