Christians Practice Spiritual Disciplines. Amen!

Introduction
The Bible is the Word of God and contains everything necessary and sufficient for our salvation.  The Bible teaches that Jesus Saves us from sin when we have faith.  The Bible also teaches that faith without good deeds is dead. Today, I want to explain some of the spiritual disciplines the Bible teaches Christians to practice.

1 Timothy 4:7-8
⁷ Do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives’ tales. Instead, train yourself to be godly. ⁸ “Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.”

Explanation
First of all, this Scripture warns Christians: “Do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives’ tales.”  The Bible is a fascinating book full of intriguing stories.  There are a lot of things that are hard to understand.  There are even many things that have caused people to scratch their head and speculate what the original writers meant.  There are stories about giants and even angels having intercourse with the daughters of the earth.  We wonder:  How did Noah fit all those animals on the Ark? Could Jonah really survive living in the stomach of a giant fish for three days?  These are interesting ideas that capture our imaginations and people love to speculate on them.

However, a quote often attributed to Mark Twain says, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”  It may be “fun” to speculate about the intriguing parts of the Bible, but Paul writes to Timothy (and us), “Do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives’ tales.  Instead, train yourself to be godly.”

Living a godly life takes work.  It’s hard enough work that we don’t need to waste our time on unfruitful speculations.  Paul writes:  “Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.”

We all know the benefits of exercise.  In our comfortable and prosperous world, we eat too much and don’t exercise enough.  This leads to all kinds of health problems.  People who exercise regularly, tend to be healthier, happier, more energetic, and productive.  We know the physical benefits of exercise.

But Paul says, “training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.”  No matter how much we exercise, our physical bodies are eventually going to wear out and die.  This Ash Wednesday we remembered how our physical bodies will be buried and return to dust: “Remember, you came from dust and to dust you shall return.  Repent and believe in the Gospel!”  We will be given new and perfect bodies for eternal life.   The gains of physical exercise are for this temporary lifetime, but the gains of spiritual exercise are for eternity.

Spiritual Disciplines
Spiritual disciplines are spiritual exercises found in Scripture that promote spiritual growth and health.  Just as physical exercise develops your body and muscles, spiritual disciplines develop your spirit so you become more like Christ.  Spiritual disciplines nurture the growth God wants to give us. 

It is not enough to know about the spiritual disciplines.  We must actually practice them in order to experience the benefits God wants us to have.  There are many spiritual disciplines, but I want to mention just seven for your today, and challenge you to practice them between now and Easter.

First, there is prayer.  Prayer the most basic element of Christian living.  Prayer is like breathing for the Christian.  Some people say, praying is talking to God, but it is even more basic than that.  Last night, Kelly and I went to see the movie “The Jesus Revolution.” It’s a wonderful movie.  Of course, we didn’t talk during the movie.  That would be rude.  We sat and held hands and watched the movie together.  Even though no words were spoken, we chose to be together.

Prayer can be like that. Prayer is spending time with God.  There are many different ways to pray.  You can ask God for help for yourself or people you care about.  Other times, prayer is just sitting quietly with God on purpose.  Sometimes prayer is listening to God while you read Scripture.  Sometimes prayer is writing a prayer or reading someone else’s prayer or even reciting a prayer you have memorized—like the Lord’s Prayer.  Whatever way you pray, you should pray.  It is the most important Spiritual Exercise for Christians.  Prayer is an essential part of all the other spiritual disciplines.

Another spiritual discipline is fasting.  Fasting is voluntarily giving up food (or something else) for a time as a way to humble yourself before God. Fasting enables the Holy Spirit to reveal your true spiritual condition, resulting in brokenness, repentance, and a transformed life. Most often, fasting is associated with going without food.  (Jesus fasted for 40 days before he officially began his earthly ministry.)  Many Christians give up something for Lent—like chocolate or coffee.  Fasting could also be giving up TV or social media or something else for a time.  Anything you give up is meant to help you focus more on God and less on yourself.  Fasting and prayer go together.  Fasting amplifies your prayers.  It turns every fiber of your being into a prayer.  As you long for the thing you are without, your longing becomes an unconscious prayer of longing for God.

Next to prayer, study is one of the most essential ways the Holy Spirit changes us.  Our mind is the center of our thoughts and our thoughts lead to our actions.  When we study the Holy Bible, we allow God to transform our minds.  The Bible is the Living Word of God.  If you want to hear God’s voice—the Voice that gives Life—you must study the Bible.  Study can also include reading other books, attending classes, or other forms of study.  All these can be beneficial.  However, studying the Bible is the most essential form of study.

Human beings were designed to worship.  Worship means to show reverence and adoration for God.  It centers on God, not ourselves or our feelings or our own particular preferences.  When we worship God, we point our spirit toward God in worship, we begin to see, hear, feel, and experience God at a deeper level.  We must worship in spirit (heartfelt, intimate closeness, and submission to God) and in truth (based on right understanding).  Worship works best when we prepare properly.  If you expect to get the most out of Sunday morning worship, be sure to get enough seep the night before and prepare for worship on Sunday morning by praying on Sunday morning before worship for God to make worship meaningful.  Come hungry for the Lord and with the expectation that something important will happen.

Christian meditation is listening for God’s voice so we can obey His Word.  In meditation, we use our imagination to spend time with God in the Scripture.  We look for God to come to us and fill our minds with His feelings, His ideas, and His insights and welcome Him to transform our wills.  We are not so much searching for God as letting Him find us as we watch, listen, and wait patiently.  Often it is helpful to read a passage from the Bible, pray for God to speak to you through it, and then just meditate on the passage for a time, letting God speak to you.

One of my favorite spiritual disciplines is solitude.  To practice solitude is to step away from the world for a little while to focus on interacting only with God.  You silence the inner turmoil of your anxious mind and cease striving to control people and situations by your own force of will.  You learn to trust God to work things out according to His plan and His timing.  For introverts like me, it doesn't take much convincing to get us to seek alone time.  We need it!  But when you are alone, make sure to intentionally focus on God's presence with your.  If you are an extrovert who loves to be with people, being alone can be way out of your comfort zone.  But I encourage you to try it regularly.  It may be even more important for you to get away from people occasionally and to only rely on God's presence to to fill you.

Service is helping others.  Jesus said in Matthew 23:11, “The greatest among you must be a servant.”  Service is a spiritual discipline that is good for both you and for others.  Service is really about recognizing we are servants.  We let go of our right to choose who and how we will serve.  Instead, we learn humility as we shift our focus from ourselves and onto others.   This is the main way Jesus taught his Disciples in the Bible.  Instead of sending them off to Bible college to get trained, Jesus gave them on the job training.  And He wants to do the same for you.  You may not feel qualified to serve.  But Jesus may invite you to serve anyway.  He will teach and equip you to serve as you serve.  You have to trust Him and answer the call when He asks you to serve--even if you don't feel ready.

I Challenge You to Practice Spiritual Disciplines
I’ve been giving you challenges throughout this series.  First, I challenged you to read Genesis and Matthew before Easter arrives.  Then, I said focus on one category of good deeds (see the list here).  Today, I challenge you to practice these 7 spiritual disciplines.  There are 42 days until Easter. Let’s get busy.

Are You Having An Identity Crisis?

Introduction
In the movie “Finding Nemo”, a clown fish named Marlin goes on a frantic search and rescue mission to save his son Nemo who was captured by a scuba diver and put in a dentist’s fish tank.  Marlin meets a blue reef fish named Dory who saw the address on the diver’s mask and knows where they took Nemo.  Unfortunately, Dory has short term memory loss.  She can’t remember her own name, let alone the address P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sidney.

The plot is a clever twist of a common theme in  many movies and TV shows.  It’s the
“Who Am I?” plot, in which a lead character has amnesia and can’t remember who they are. 
It’s an identity crisis.

Life is not a movie, but people do have an identity crisis in real life when they don’t know
they belong to God.  God’s Word reminds us our identity is greater than the superficial things of this world.  Our true identity is in Christ.

1 Peter 2:4-12
⁴ You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor.

⁵ And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God. ⁶ As the Scriptures say,

“I am placing a cornerstone in Jerusalem,
    chosen for great honor,
and anyone who trusts in him
    will never be disgraced.”

⁷ Yes, you who trust him recognize the honor God has given him. But for those who reject him,

“The stone that the builders rejected
    has now become the cornerstone.”

⁸ And, “He is the stone that makes people stumble,
    the rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they do not obey God’s word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them.

⁹ But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

¹⁰ “Once you had no identity as a people;
    now you are God’s people.
Once you received no mercy;
    now you have received God’s mercy.”

¹¹ Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. ¹² Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.

Who You Are in Christ?
“You are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple…” (verse 5)  The Holy Temple in Jerusalem was the most important place on earth to Jews in New Testament times.  They believed it was where God’s Spirit dwelled on earth.  Some had even come to idolize the Temple.  But Jesus reminded people God’s Spirit is not confined to the Temple.  In fact, people who put their faith in God through Jesus are the real residence of God’s Holy Spirit.  Therefore, Christians together make up the true Holy Temple.  What an honor and privilege!

Further more, verse 5 says “You are his holy priests…”  A priest is someone who intercedes to God on behalf of people on earth.  A priest prays for people and performs religious rituals that help people find healing and wholeness and forgiveness and purification so they can reconnect and be at one with God.  In the Old Testament, only one a certain tribe from the twelve tribes of Israel could be priests.  And even within that tribe, anyone who had a blemish or a defect was disqualified.  Only perfect people could be priests.  So for example, if you were born without a finger or lost eye in accident, you couldn’t serve as a priest.  But when we put our faith in Jesus, it is different.  We are all priest of God Most High—even if we aren’t perfect—because Jesus makes us whole.

Verse 9 says, “You are a chosen people…”  In the Old Testament, only Israelites were consider the chosen people.  Everyone else was a Gentile.  And in Jesus’ day, Jews believed only Jews were God’s chosen people.  But Jesus shows us that anyone who places their faith in Christ is God’s chosen.  So we could paraphrase verse 10 to say, “Once you were nobody; now you are God’s somebody!”  In Christ, everybody is somebody special.  Sinners become saints.  Heathens become priests.  The lame are made whole.  The blind can see and deaf can hear.  Those who were damned become holy.  This is what it means to be Christian. 

Why I Am Methodist
There are many different denominations of Christian churches in our world.  I believe God uses them all to serve a special purpose.  Communities need Baptists and Presbyterians and Pentecostals and Methodists.  

Unfortunately, when a church struggles with an identity crisis, it may begin to look around at what all the churches are doing.  They may think, "Well that church is on fire and really growing.  They must be doing something right.  Maybe we should just copy what they are doing."  Sometimes individuals have them same identity crisis.  They forget who they are or for some reason aren't happy with their life.  They look around at some other people who seem to have their life all worked out.  The temptations, the easy fix, is to just try to copy someone else.

The trouble with both of these quick fix situations--for a church or and individual--is that God created us the way we are for a reason.  God made the Methodist church Methodist for a reason to fulfill a specific need in a community.  God made you as an individual for a specific reason.  If you try to copy someone else, you won't be you and something important God wanted to give the world will be lacking.  The same true in the case of a church.  If my church just tries to copy some other church, we won't be who God wants us to be.

I am a Methodist minister, but I was not always a Methodist.  I grew up going to Baptist churches.  My grandparents and parents were Baptists and so I was a Baptist.  I started attending a Methodist church when I was 18.  My girlfriend (now my wife) and I started attending Wesley United Methodist Church in Macon, GA with her friend Laurie Stewart.

Now, I was skeptical when I started with the Methodist church.  The Baptist churches I attended as a kid taught me to be wary of churches that were overly ceremonial and ritualistic.  These, they warned, were superstitious innovation that were not necessary or biblical.  So I was concerned when the first thing I saw happen in the Methodist worship service was acolytes lighting candles on the altar table.  I eventually learned that this wasn't some magic ritual, it was a symbol to remind us that Christ, the Light of the World, is with us when we worship in church and that His light goes back out into the world as we leave (symbolized by the acolytes carrying the flame from the candles out at the end of the service).  Churchgoers follow the light out back into the world.  This is a tradition that teaches us about our faith and our purpose as followers of Christ.

I learned that the Methodist church is a church that values tradition.  We have many.  We believe we can learn from the traditions of Christians who've gone before us and wrestled with the Bible and with the Christian faith.  These tradition help us be better Christians today and help preserve the hard lessons of those who've gone before us.  But Methodist are not only a church that values traditions.

We also value reason.  Jesus told us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37).  So Methodist use the brains God have us to understand Him and how we should live.  Our intellect helps us to mature in the faith Jesus gave us.  And our intelligence keeps our traditions from becoming superstitions.  We understand that Jesus is not literally in the candlelight on our altars.  The candles are symbols for our minds to interpret.  And sometimes our reason also concludes that some tradition have outlived their usefulness and we can change them.  At other times, reason leads us to know a tradition is wrong and needs to be changed.  Methodist value tradition and reason.

Methodist also value experience.  Our relationship with God is not merely intellectual.  It is an personal experience that includes feelings and emptions and an actual relationship with God.  our relationship must be more than intellectual--just as a relationship with another person must be more than intellectual in order to be real.  So we experience God as a relationship and we learn about God and our faith through personal and communal experiences.

Methodist value tradition, reason, and experience.  However, Scripture is the foundation of all our beliefs and practices.  We understand that our experiences and feelings are limited and very subjective. We may have feelings of great love for someone today, but tomorrow we feel quite irritated with them.  And then the day after that, we may feel great love once more.  That is the subjective nature of experiential feelings.  Traditions change, reason may evolve, and experience is subjective, but the Word of God in Holy Scripture is always the same.  The Bible is an anchor that keeps our faith from floating away into the oblivion of our own human subjectivity.  Methodist have always been a people grounded in Scripture and we must always be so if we are to be true to Christ our Lord.

Thankfully, Methodists are not a group who accept Scripture blindly as fundamentalists often do.  No, Methodist read Scripture intelligently--seeking to understand the historical and cultural contexts.  We use our reason to mine the depths of God's Word.  We use traditions to remember the lessons of God's Word.  And we experience God through the lens of what Scripture teaches us is true about God.

Tradition, reason, experience and Scripture are all distinctive parts of the Methodist way of Christian living.  They are some of the reasons I am a Methodist and I think our way of following Christ may be helpful for you too.   But there is another distinctive features of Methodism that is important for our world.  I will share some of these in the coming weeks, but I want to end with one more thing today.

The Methodist church is a sacramental church.  We believe that Jesus gave the Church some sacred ceremonies that He uses to help His people.  For instance, we typically celebrate Holy Communion once a month in a Methodist church because we believe it is a sacred and special ceremony Jesus told His followers to practice.  

We call it Holy Communion while many other denominations prefer the term The Lord's Supper.  We prefer Holy Communion because of the notion of communing with Jesus.  You see, some denomination would prefer to call Holy Communion an ordinance, while we call it a sacrament.  An ordinance is something you are supposed obey (sort of like a city ordinance).  So some denominations practice the Lord's Supper primarily out of obedience to the ordinance Jesus gave that they such celebrate the meal.  Methodists, on the other hand, celebrate Communion as a sacrament.  We believe it is a sacred moment when God is actually doing something.  So yes, we practice Communion out of obedience, but also because God does something.  We base our believe that God does something on several passage from the Bible where God acted through the celebration of Holy Communion.  For instance, the understanding of the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) was illuminated when Jesus broke the bread of Holy Communion. 

Methodists believe Holy Communion is sacred, but we also believe it is accessible to anyone.  We practice an "open table" where anyone can receive Holy Communion even if they are not a mmber of the church or even if they are young children.  We believe God is infinitely sacred, but He is not something that must be kept separate from people.  Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross--shedding His blood to purify us--God has torn the veil that separates us from in two.  We can come boldly into his presence and so we do this symbolically by welcoming everyone to His table in Holy Communion.  It is a beautiful sacrament that nourishes the spirit just as food nourishes the body.  God impart grace to help His people through the celebration of Holy Communion, and we want everyone to receive this blessing if they are willing.

I hope you will follow this series as I continue over the next few weeks to discuss the identity of the Methodist people and what I believe we have to offer the world.  Perhaps, you may also discover your identity and maybe even choose to be a Methodist Christian as well.

A Bible Paraphrase vs. Translation

Is there a difference between a Bible Paraphrase and a Translation?   If so, what is it?
Great question!  I'm glad you asked!  Yes, there is a real difference between a paraphrase and a translation.  Modern paraphrases like The Living Bible and The Message by Eugene Peterson have become quite popular in recent decades.  And since I have been posting my own personal paraphrases of selected verses from Proverbs, I thought it important to explain the difference between a translation and a paraphrase.

With a paraphrase, the author takes a translation of the Bible and puts it into his or her own words.  The author of a paraphrase usually does not start with the Bible in its original languages--Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic.  It is more common for a paraphrase to come from an English translation that is rephrased into the author's own words.  A paraphrase does not do the more difficult and scholarly work of studying all the most ancient fragments, manuscripts, and copies of the Bible that exist in their original languages and translating the Bible into English.  Therefore, a paraphrase is not as accurate as a translation.  A paraphrase can be helpful in seeing the Scripture from a different perspective or shedding more light on a passage, but a paraphrase should never be relied on to replace or change the meaning of a passage.  A translation is just more accurate and reliable than a paraphrase in almost every way in almost every case.  Furthermore, the risk of a paraphrase is that it can introduce the author's own ideas, perspectives, theology, and bias into the Scripture.

A translation, on the other hand, is a far more accurate and reliable source than a paraphrase.  A good translation starts with the most ancient and accurate copies of the Bible available in the original languages and then carefully evaluate differences and translates them into English (or whatever language is desired).  Emphasis is on accurately translating the words and meanings of the original authors into English.  The struggle of the biblical translator is that words and phrases from ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic do not always translate directly into English.  For instance, Jesus and his father Joseph are called carpenters.  In the original Greek, Mark 6:3 calls Joseph a 'tekton'.  A tekton is a builder, usually of houses.  Most houses today are made of wood so it makes sense to translate 'tekton' as carpenter.  But in Jesus day, a builder of houses usually worked in stone or mud and there wasn't much wood around with which to work.  So maybe it might be better to say Jesus and Joseph were stone masons, but that doesn't really get it either.  And this is just one of the easy translation problems.  The work of translators can get really, really tricky. Add to this that other languages use words in different orders than the way we use them in English.  For example:

• In English, the verb follows immediately after the noun.
• In German the verb at the end of the sentence comes.
• Appears the verb in Greek at the beginning of the sentence.

So, translators can't translate the Bible word for word from the original language to English or we wouldn't be able to understand it.  Translators have to strike a balance between making the translation as accurate as possible and as readable as possible.  Modern translations fall somewhere between two ideals.  There is the word for word translation, which tries to keep everything as literal as possible and sacrifices readability for accuracy. On the other end of the spectrum is a thought for thought translation, which tries to translate the thought or idea and sacrifices word accuracy for readability and to make the passage easier to understand.  Here are some examples of different translations of Proverbs 10:4.

Interlinear Bible
(Hold on, this is a literal translation of the original Hebrew into English!  It's rough!)
"(Becomes) poor he who deals (with) a palm lazy; but hand the hard workers' makes rich."

[Wow!  See what I mean!  That's hard to understand!!!  Now, moving toward more readable versions step by step.]

New American Standard Bible (NASB)
(This is a dedicated word for word translation, but it's much better than a literal translation.)
"Poor is he who works with a negligent hand,
But the hand of the diligent makes rich."

New American Standard Version (NRSV) 
(This one is about middle of the road between accuracy and readability.)
"A slack hand causes poverty,
    but the hand of the diligent makes rich."

New International Version (NIV) 

(A popular version that leans more toward thought for thought translation.)

"Lazy hands make for poverty,
    but diligent hands bring wealth."

New Living Translation (NLT) 

(This is one of my favorite thought for thought translations.  I find it very accurate and readable.)
"Lazy people are soon poor;
    hard workers get rich."

A good example of how a paraphrase can alter the meaning of Scripture and/or introduce the paraphraser's own agenda's into the Scripture is found in a reading of Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 in The Message.  He paraphrased the verses like this:  "Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom."  The NLT translated the Greek like this:  "Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God."  The two sentences sound similar at first glance, but a closer looks shows Peterson cut out a lot, including: homosexuality, idolatry, greed, and intoxication.  And then Peterson added in a phrase that is not there at all, but sounds good to the modern ear that wants the Bible to be ecologically sensitive:  "use and abuse the earth."

The folks who translated the NLT guarded against introducing their own biases into the texts by using a team of 90 biblical scholars from various Christian backgrounds who collaborated on the translation.  Much care was taken to be loyal to what the original biblical texts said and avoid introducing anyone's personal political, theological, or denominational views.  That is much better than one man reading the Bible and putting it into his own words.  As much as I appreciate Eugene Peterson's The Message, it is only one man's thoughts about what the Bible says, not what the Bible actually says.

So, when reading a paraphrase--mine or anyone else's--keep in mind that it is not a translation.  Read it for what it's worth, but don't mistake it for more than it is.