Football season is right around the corner and very soon
we’ll be seeing all the Friday night football highlights. And then we’ll see nothing but football on
ESPN when college and NFL teams kick off in a few weeks. It’s the most exciting and often game changing
plays that make the highlight reels, and there are only a few of those plays
each game. The only thing is that when
the ball is snapped, we don’t know which play is going to be the game changer. So how do we make sure that we’ve done our
part when that game changing opportunity comes up? By making sure that we do all the small
things each and every play. God may call
you do something big, something great, but in order to be ready to answer that
call we must be obedient in the small things.
The QB who made the perfect pass has thrown 100s of passes at practice,
the WR who got open for the touchdown has run 100s of routes and done speed
drills, and the lineman who blocked his man so the RB could score has spent
hours in the weight room, and probably the buffet line too. Those aren’t the things we see on the
highlights the following morning but the discipline to put in the behind the
scenes work is where you become great.
Most of the time we consider discipline to be related to
good behavior or dedication to something like physical fitness. But where do we stand when it comes to
spiritual disciplines? 1 Timothy 4:7-8
tells us “Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather,
train yourself to be godly. For physical
training is of some value but godliness has value for all things, holding
promise for both the present life and the life to come.”
Why do we need spiritual disciplines? For the purpose of Godliness. Without purpose there is no need for
discipline, so the key is to make sure that our focus and desire is set on
becoming more like God by becoming more disciplined in the areas of Bible intake,
prayer, worship, and evangelism. We
can’t become more holy simply by our own discipline and will, it is a gift from
God.
Bible Intake
The most important spiritual discipline is the reading of
God’s word. There is absolutely no
substitute for the daily reading and studying of the Bible. It’s in scripture where we learn about God,
the sacrifice he made for us by sending Jesus, and where we learn the law and
how we should live. But the sad part is
that so many people have Bibles in their homes that are never opened, they may
as well frame them and hang them on the wall.
It’s been said that the worst dust storm in history would happen if all
church members who were neglecting their Bible dusted them off
simultaneously. Regardless of how busy
we are with everyday life and being a Christian, we must remember that the most
powerful life changing practice available to us is the intake of scripture. In our summer light group we talked about
having an uprising. And for me, it
wasn’t like a light switch went off and all of a sudden everything I was
crystal clear and I knew how to be a Christian.
It all started a couple years ago when I decided to read the Bible in a
year.
The easiest sub-discipline of the intake of God’s Word is
simply hearing it. I wondered myself how
just hearing God’s word was a discipline, but if we don’t train ourselves in
hearing God’s word on a regular basis, we may only hear it occasionally, just
when we feel like it, or never at all.
The most common way most of us discipline ourselves to hear God’s Word
regularly is by attending a church where His word is faithfully preached. In Luke 11:28 Jesus says “Blessed rather are
those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
Just being in church, watching church on TV, or listening to a sermon on
Christian radio isn’t good enough; we are called to obey. It shouldn’t go in one ear and out the other.
A second sub-discipline of Bible intake is by reading God’s
word. There was a poll taken several
years back by USA Today that showed only 11 percent of Americans read the Bible
every day, and more than half read it less than once or month or never at all. This may not seem all that bad since it
includes all Americans but there was a similar poll taken that showed only 18
percent of “born-again Christians” read their Bible every day. Many times Jesus would ask people questions
beginning with “Have you not read…?” His
phrasing of questions that way implies that he expected those around Him to
have knowledge and a familiarity with the Word of God. John Blanchard wrote “Surely we only have to
be realistic and honest with ourselves to know how regularly we need to turn to
the Bible. How often do we face problems,
temptations, and pressure? Every
day! Then how often do we need
instruction, guidance, and greater encouragement? Every day!”
Donald Whitney uses the following analogy to describe the
next area of bible intake. If reading
the Bible can be compared to cruising the width of a clear, sparkling lake in a
motorboat, studying the Bible is like slowly crossing that same lake in a
glass-bottomed boat. To truly study
something we must have a desire and a passion to do so. In 2 Timothy 4:13, Paul sends word to Timothy
“When you come, bring the cloak that I left in Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls,
especially the parchments.” Paul is
sitting in a cold miserable prison, and the only two things he asks for are his
coat and his scrolls, which likely contained copies of scriptures. If we were stuck somewhere, and could have
two items, what would we ask for? Would
one of them be our Bible? If Paul felt
the need to study God’s word then how much more so do we. So why don’t we? R.C. Sproul said “Here then, is the real
problem of our negligence. We fail in
our duty to study God’s word, not so much because it is difficult to
understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or
a lack of passion. Our problem is that
we are lazy.” Taking on the task of
reading and studying the Bible can seem overwhelming, and we may often get
discouraged if we have failures in our reading.
But if we take a Philippians 3:13 approach “Brothers and sisters, I do
not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining
toward what is ahead” we can put any failures, misses and inconsistencies in
reading His word behind us and move forward.
When I decided to attempt to read the Bible that first year I didn’t
think I would make it when I got started.
But all of a sudden you start seeing that marker move a little deeper in
the Bible, then you make it halfway, then the next thing you know it’s August
and you’re on the downhill swing now.
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