Spiritual Excercise

It’s the middle of February and spring is beginning to peak its beautiful head around the corner. At the tail end of a frigid winter, a glimmer of sunshine carrying with it the warmth of a new spring creates all manor of different inspirations and thoughts. For some, the warmth means they can finally crawl out of the layers upon layers of clothing they don over the winter months; for others it means that they will enjoy the flowers and birds as they share their beauty. For me, one of the inspirations that I experiences was the motivation or the urge to become physically active again. With the spring weather comes memories of baseball games, outdoor escapades such as camping or catching a game of Ultimate Frisbee on the quad after class. The call to be active is strong, and I know that it will be fun and refreshing, but I also know with that fun and refreshment will come frustration; frustration at the limitations of my body which has been relatively inactive all winter. Almost instantly upon prolonged physical acitivity, I will feel the strain of physical activity on my cardio-vascular system as I hear my heart in my ears and begin to breathe hard and my sides begin to ache. My legs begin to turn into jelly and my muscles will be sore for days afterwards. Even though I love the activity outdoors, my body just can’t keep up with the demands that I put on it.

There is a way around this problem however. That solution involves being physically active all the time; some call it training, others ‘working out’. When spring comes and I have a desire to be more active, if I’ve been active throughout the winter, keeping my heart and lungs in shape, and maintaining the endurance of my muscles, I will have no problem (or at least less of a problem) when spring comes around and I want to participate in those things that give me great joy, such as baseball/softball and Ultimate Frisbee. If I’ve been consistently active; if I’ve made an intentional effort to exercise on a regular basis, when I do those things that tax my body, I will be able to enjoy those things longer, and I will be able to make a greater contribution to my team (if it’s a team sport), or otherwise be more able to ‘win’ what ever game it is that I’m playing.

In 1 Timothy 4:7-8, Paul is instructing Timothy to “Have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness [because] while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” Paul is telling Timothy here, that while physical exercise is a good thing (don’t stop); spiritual exercise is a better thing. In much the same way that you or I would exercise or train our bodies so that we can effectively and joyfully participate in activities that come in the spring, Paul instructs Timothy (and us) to exercise our spirits as well, so that when a season of spiritual activity comes around, we will be able to take full advantage of it. If we don’t exercise our spirit, when a spiritual “spring” comes about, we will long to participate in the activities that are able to be done in that season, but like my experience with physical activity after a season of inactivity, we will try to do the things needed to be done but will become frustrated by the lack of ability, the lack of stamina, the lack of training to really excel at what we are attempting. Our spirits will begin to give out. Impatience will begin to creep in; the taxing of our spirits will leave us sore and aching, unable to be effective in the spiritual arena.

The author of the book of Hebrews echoes this encouragement to spiritual fitness in chapter 12 when he says in verse 1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” If you are among those that make an effort to keep your body in shape, or to be fit, I say to you how more should you strive to exercise your spirit and maintain its ‘fitness’. The spiritual ‘spring’ is here. Jesus tells us the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. We are among those few laborers, let’s make an intentional effort to maximize our effectiveness by maintaining our spiritual fitness so that we can “run and not grow weary”; so that our spirits can better keep up with the demands God puts on them. I encourage you (and myself), the next time you ‘workout’ or exercise, to think about how you are exercising your spirit. There are many different ways; no one right way, but many effective ways. Just as everybody has their preferred method of physical training, find your preferred method of spiritual training.

Make yourself uncomfortable, force your spirit to grow by stretching it, by breaking it, and by coming back to Jesus to let it rest and heal. Whatever you need to do to make that happen, get it done for the purpose of spiritual exercise, knowing that someday you will enter a time of spiritual activity and you will be able to endure and win the prize, whether that be your own faith, the faith of another, or even the salvation of others. Train yourselves during the seasons of spiritual winter so that you can run with endurance in the spiritual springs in your life.

WITH

This weekend, I attended the Navigators Midwest Laborer’s Conference where I heard Jim Rinella, the Rocky Mountain regional director and campus director of the Navigator ministry at Colorado State University. During the Saturday morning ‘rally’, he delivered a message about discipling, specifically Jesus’ strategy for discipling. At the beginning, he illustrated the importance of discipling (which comes from the root word “disciple” which is a follower or believer who is learning through the instruction of the teacher (or rabbi) they are following) in when ministering to the lost (those who haven’t believed on Christ for their salvation and therefore are outside the redemption found therein).

Discipling is a process by which a follower and disciple of Christ (a.k.a. Christian) both learns from a person more mature in their Christian walk than themselves, while simultaneously teaches someone that is less mature the principles, tools, lessons, and passions needed to be a follower or disciple of Christ (a.k.a. Christian). His illustration came from a famous article written by Dawson Trotman (the founder of the Navigators) called “Born To Reproduce” which lays out the principles of spiritual multiplication. Spiritual multiplication uses the mathematical model of exponential growth to provide a way in which the followers or disciples of Christ (a.k.a. Christians) can evangelize (and bring into redemption) the entire population of the world in a relatively short period of time (around 30 years). What happens is one person (follower or disciple of Christ…) invests their life into another person for one year, teaching them, helping them to grow in their spiritual walk, equipping them to teach others, and instructing them so that they will grow into a mature disciple themselves. At the end of that year, the new disciple will go out and find his own protégé to mentor teach and equip, and the first discipler will find another person to disciple. So now, instead of one disciple making one disciple, there are now two disciples, each making one more disciple. These two disciples teach, equip, love, and instruct their new disciples, and at the end of the second year, each new disciple finds a new disciple of his own to teach. Now instead of four disciples, there are now eight. I’m confident you see a pattern here. Eight become sixteen, sixteen become thirty-two, thirty-two become sixty-four, sixty-four become one-hundred-twenty-eight, so on and so forth, until in about thirty years, the entire population of the world (a ridiculously huge number) will have been reached and given the redemption found in Jesus Christ.

The Navigators Midwest Laborer’s Conference is for students on the Leadership Teams of the Navigator ministries around the Midwest, so being very familiarized with the principles and the mission of the Navigators, we had all heard about and were familiar with the principle of spiritual multiplication. The message Jim delivered that morning was about how to best go about investing your life in the life of another. After he had given his short exposition on spiritual multiplication, he began to talk about the ministry of Jesus (who was the first to use spiritual multiplication). He (one man) started by teaching and training 12 disciples, entrusting and charging them with the task of teaching and training others. So if you have any doubt about if spiritual multiplication actually works, think about this, Jesus (one man) started with twelve men and now there are nearly one billion disciples of Christ around the world… It works. He summed up the ministry of Jesus in one word: With. Mark 3:14 says “And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach.” Jim related the story of how he was discipled as a young man. A man took him under his wing and taught him, equipped him, and mentored him, spent time with him every week. Met with him every week, and encouraged him to start doing the same with a young man of his own at a very young spiritual age. If you’ve ever seen two people that spend a lot of time together, you know the power of “with”. Those two people sound alike, they think alike, they act alike in some cases, have the same idiosyncrasies, the same expressions, the same views on life, etc. Jesus did everything (when He wasn’t praying by Himself) with them; they were even with Him when He died on the cross. Jesus did teach them, and He did give them to tools they needed, but in order to truly shape their lives to be like Himself, He spent almost all of His time with them.

A lot of people, including me, put such a complicated framework and substructure in the principle of sharing our faith, of discipling (even if you don’t call it “discipling”, if you’re a follower or disciple of Christ –a.k.a. Christian–, you do this). We think that to properly confer the knowledge, faith, tools, wisdom, ability, and everything else it takes to be an effective disciple, we need this complex set of instruction or rules to make sure that everything gets transferred. That absolutely is not the case. Jim, in his story, said that after four days, four days, of being a Christian, Allen, his friend and discipler, took him to the shopping center to share Christ. Four days! It doesn’t take large amounts of time, or an extensive network of training principles and lessons and workshops to prepare someone to be a disciple (and a discipler), it just takes another person, another disciple to come alongside them, teach them the basics, and do it with them. As long as you know and are able to teach the basics of the Christian walk (which are things pretty much straight from the Bible), you can make disciples simply by walking with them; by sharing your faith to others with them; by making disciples with them. The entire life is based on imitating others. We learn to walk by watching others, we learn to talk by listening to others, we learn our values from those around us, we learn our behaviors from watching others. So why not learn to make disciples by simply doing it with others. You can teach all the knowledge and the wisdom in the world, and you can give somebody every resource there is on sharing their faith and making disciples, but the most effective and the surest and most lasting way to make a disciple is to do it with them. It’s so incredibly simple! When I heard this message and let it sink in, I was struck and overcome by the beautiful simplicity of it. I think this is something that every follower or disciple of Christ needs to hear, because we’ve made Christ’s mission so complicated, so difficult that we are paralyzed by the complexity of it. We don’t know where to start because we have put so many extra steps in it that don’t need to be there. All that needs to happen to make a disciple for Christ is to do it with someone else. To get into God’s Word (the Bible) with your disciple, to pray with your disciple, to witness (or evangelize) with your disciple, to walk with Jesus with your disciple. No “twelve easy steps”, no complicated theorems, not even a formula. All a person needs to become a effective disciple is for an established to disciple teach them all that they know, and do it with them.

I hope that what you’ve just read has inspired you or has rejuvenated your desire for Christ and your desire to reach the lost; it has mine (it’s so simple, how could it not!). My prayer for you, whoever you are, is that the words I have written above will change your life, just as the words that I heard on Saturday morning have changed mine. God bless, and may Christ be with you.

Navigators Midwest Laborer’s Conference

This weekend (Friday and Saturday), I had the privilege of attending the Navigators Midwest Laborer’s Conference (held in Manhattan, Kansas), which is a time for students on the Leadership Teams of Navigator ministries around the Midwest to come together and learn about leading and laboring for Christ from a series of ‘rallies’ in which a speaker delivers a message (the same speaker all weekend for 3 rallies) and through various workshops and times of meditation and reflection. This year’s conference we had the privilege of hearing Jim Rinella, the Rocky Mountain regional director and campus director of the Colorado State University Navigator ministry.

For weeks before this conference I was looking forward with anticipation to this time of fellowship and growth, as well as the opportunity to serve for an entire weekend by helping set up when necessary, tear down when needed, and helping with anything else that needs to be done throughout the weekend. As the conference grew closer (like the Thursday before) I prayed that God would use this conference to show me ways in which I can better serve and honor Him, to open my eyes to more of what He wants from me, and for God to rejuvenate my soul and my spirit. The Laborers Conference has come and gone, and I can confidently say that that prayer has been answered.

The first rally of the conference (Friday night), Jim spoke about three fundamentals of living a life like and for Christ. These three fundamentals are “Prayer from the heart, Care from the heart, and Share from the heart.” You might think to yourself, “well, that makes sense,” and it does; but the cool thing was that how he spoke about those three things really lead me to think about how these three fundamentals are related, or how they come together to form a life that is one, honoring to God, and two the life Jesus called us to live. The way in which these three do this is as follows: When you lift up prayer for someone, I mean really pray for someone about anything (prayer from the heart), you will naturally want to check up on them to see one, how they are doing, and two, how God is working through your prayers. Through prayer from the heart, automatically created in you is care from the heart. You will always be asking them how they are, how whatever you are praying for them is going; you will always be interested in their life. As a result of your prayers, care will immerge, and more than likely, whoever is the beneficiary of your prayer and care, will be attracted to you because you have shown an interest in them. They will want to spend time with you because you make them feel loved (which they are), and you make them feel like you actually care (which you do). From this attraction will come, naturally, an opportunity for you to share your heart with them; to share Jesus. To put it into a simple and more portable phrase,

With prayer from the heart, comes care from the heart. With care from the heart comes an opportunity to share from the heart.

So that was just the Friday night rally, which is the main focus of this entry, but there is more. At the Saturday morning rally, Jim delivered another stellar message that again inspired me to praise and wonder. Simply put, he spoke about the ministry and strategy of Jesus, and summed it up with only one word: With. I won’t go into that right now, because I believe that that deserves its own entry, which you can get to by clicking the link above.

I’m always amazed by how much God speaks through these conferences. My last two conferences have been absolutely incredible, and this one most definitely has lived up to the standard. I have a lot to chew on and meditate over. God has challenged me through Jim and has used Jim and the men that he brought with him from Colorado to encourage me and refresh my spirit. The faithfulness of God never ceases to amaze me, that he would meet me in such a powerful and intimate way, even though I consistently fall short of even my own standards and sometimes even turn my back on Him completely. The grace of God through Christ is extremely evident to me when I experience the loving instruction of God in such a powerful way in events such as the Navigators Midwest Laborer’s Conference. As we say here at KSU Navs to close our weekly rallies on Thursday nights, “God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.” I Praise the Lord my God, for He is good!

A Sobering Reminder

February 20, 2007

This morning while reading in Romans, I came across an interesting passage that caught my attention. In chapter fifteen, verse three, Paul writes “For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written ‘the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me’.” That to me was interesting because I read it to mean that those who reproached me, their reproaches fell on Christ, and that is a God honoring thought… I think; after all, God’s wrath for my sins (which I’m finding are more in number as I see more and more of myself) fall on Christ. So it made sense to me that the reproaches of those who would reproach me for my faith would fall on Christ. That being the case, I can, without shame, declare His message to everyone.

While that is a good thought, as I looked closer at the words on the page, I saw a tiny letter referencing a footnote where Paul quotes scripture (…as it is written…). That little quote comes from Psalm 69:9, which carries a different meaning than what I had originally interpreted. In Psalm 69, David says “I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood has come over me.” He goes on describing in various metaphors his situation (which is everyone wants to kill him), and then in verse 9 he says “for zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.” So while I interpreted that passage quoted in Romans as a promise of deliverance from reproach, it turns out that it is almost the complete opposite. Romans 15:3 promises not deliverance from reproach, but rather the rise of reproach. Those who reproach God will, because of my affiliation with God, reproach me as well. This passage is located in a section of scripture that is sub-labeled “The example of Christ.” The word “example” implies that it is meant to be followed.

Christ was met with the ultimate reproach: The people’s hatred of Him and their desire to take his life. Their reproach for God (the real God that Jesus represented, not the god represented by the Pharisees and their legalistic rituals and traditions) fell on Christ because He was the son of God. In Christ, my sins have been forgiven and I am now a co-heir with Christ; a child of God. As those who hated God dumped their reproach on Christ, so too will those who hate God now dump their reproach on me and anyone who proclaims rebirth into the family of God in Jesus Christ.

This passage is a sobering reminder of the price that comes with the redeeming grace and forgiveness of sins that’s found in Christ. In being joined with Christ, having our hearts and minds transformed into the likeness of His, there also comes with that the reproach of everyone who hates God (those who hate God will hate anything that resembles or is like God).

A Beautiful Harmony

The song by Michael W. Smith called “Prince of Peace” is an absolutely beautiful song. It not only is a wonderfully composed and beautifully harmonious composition, it also displays the beauty that is manifest in the relationship between men and women as they relate to God. The song begins with the men singing, and the women echoing the same things that the men are singing, and then the men and women separate into two very different choruses that, when put together, creates a gorgeous expression of worship through music that highlights how men and women were meant to relate as God’s sons and daughters; brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.

In Genesis, God created woman because “It is not good for the man to be alone (Genesis 2:18).” He created Eve as a helper to Adam, but more than that, a companion that was to share both in his work, and in his admiration of God. Throughout the Bible, men have a distinct role as the head of the woman. However, just because man is placed as the head of the woman, that does not, by any means, diminish the role of women in God’s Kingdom and the body of Christ. Women have also ,throughout the Bible, often played a redeeming role in their relationship to men. Without Sarah, Isaac would not have been born to Abraham (Genesis 17), and the Messianic line would never have been. Without Ester, the entire Jewish nation would have been eradicated (Ester 1-10). Without Rahab, the spies sent by Joshua would have been found out and never been able to report back about Jericho (Joshua 2). Without Ruth, the Messianic line would have been cut off (Ruth 1-4, Matthew 1:5). Without Hannah, Samuel, who was responsible for putting David on the throne of Israel, would have never been born (1 Samuel 1). Without Abigail, David would have, in his anger, sinned and lost the Lord’s favor (1 Samuel 25). My point is, though men have an immensely important role in God’s plan and Kingdom, so do women.

As both men and women seek to follow and glorify Christ, it is also our respective responsibilities to help each other glorify the Lord even more than we could ever do on our own. For men, this means leading and serving those around us; honoring women as our sisters and letting them speak encouragements and exhortations into our lives. For women, this means encouraging, serving, and letting men do their part by letting yourselves be served. Of course, these aren’t the only roles that we have, and these distinctions are by no means black and white, but as a general picture, I believe that this is what it will look like for men and women to live together for the one purpose which we were meant for, which is to honor and glorify God in Jesus Christ.

When this happens, the result is a beautiful harmony created by each party doing what they were meant to do, and receiving what the other was meant to give. Both men and women, when living as they were meant, will naturally fit together like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. Each has a space that the other was meant to fill, and each has a role that the other was meant to compliment. Together, we get a fuller picture of both the love and character of God, and what it looks like to follow and glorify Christ.

Just like in Michael W. Smith’s song, both men and women, up front, have the same goal, to worship and follow Christ, but as the song goes on, they separate into their respective parts and create a beautiful tapestry of God-glorifying words and melodies that complement each other and fit together perfectly, each melody filling spaces in the other. Each chorus, by itself would be a wonderful song and a Christ-glorifying statement, but only when they are sung together do we see the beauty of how the song is supposed to sound. Sung separately, the melodies are nice; kind to the ear. But only when they are sung together, when the one fills the other’s empty places, and the other compliments the one, do we see just how beautiful the song really is.