EVER GROWING
Noel K. Anderson First Presbyterian Church of Upland
Text: Romans 8: 1-6
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit[g] is life and peace.
Waking Up in the AM
Coffee or Complaints?
Every day we wake up. Who’s awake today (show of hands)?
How do you usually wake up? Are you someone who wakes up with an excitement for each day? Do you know such people? (I’m one, by the way, and we tend to be endlessly annoying to the second type—the slow-wakers—who slowly emerge and zombie about until they’ve had a couple shots of caffeine. Any of those here (show of hands)? God bless you. I’m married to one and have had to learn sensitivity over the years.
I’ve known a third category as well for which I feel deep sympathy. The third type includes those who wake up in despair thinking, “Oh my Lord, not another day!” I can think of few things that sadden me more.
Whatever your wake up pattern, there is a basic truth about your and my life and about our being here, and it is this: every day that we wake up at all, there is a reason and a purpose for our being here. Every day we wake up is a day for us to grow into Christ more completely. God could take any of us at any time, so if we wake up alive, it’s a school day and God is still teaching us how to live and love.
To say we’re “ever growing” is to say we are still learning and growing until the night God calls us home.
Let’s talk about how we grow: head, heart, and hands and see if it causes us to wake up any differently.
HEAD: Less Garbage
We are what we “eat”
Our minds are receptacles, constantly taking in and filtering the myriad messages that pour into us from the moment we awake. As if life isn’t work enough, we add to it the content of Netflix, HBO, Disney, Hulu, Fox, CNN, msnbc, and all our favorite internet sites. Can you even remember what it was like to have just one, daily newspaper and one or two hours of news per day? Were we even designed to take in as much information as we do?
I think the average person today takes in more information and stories in a day than most people did in a week a few decades ago. How good are we at storing all that and sorting it out?
In Mark 7:15, Jesus says:
There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.
Jesus was speaking directly to the Jewish purity laws, but it applies to our minds as well. As subscriber to cable tv, I have let plenty of garbage into my head. Does it defile me? Not necessarily, but if all your mind eats is garbage, it’s likely to become what you produce in your thoughts, words, and behaviors.
How do we know what a person’s mind has been consuming? By what comes out of them—head, heart, and hands. Garbage in, garbage out, the saying goes. We will grow in the trajectory of our diet and nutrition mentally as well as physically. Whatever it is we are taking in through our eyes and ears will find its way out of our mouths soon enough.
The opposite of garbage in, garbage out is good stuff in, good stuff out. The Book of Proverbs says it well many times—starting at the beginning:
2 For learning about wisdom and instruction,
for understanding words of insight,
3 for gaining instruction in wise dealing,
righteousness, justice, and equity;
4 to teach shrewdness to the simple,
knowledge and prudence to the young—
5 let the wise also hear and gain in learning,
and the discerning acquire skill,
6 to understand a proverb and a figure,
the words of the wise and their riddles.
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
—PROVERBS 1: 2-7
We all need a regular diet of God’s written Word. That’s pure gold in. The result is that we increasingly become a people who think, speak, and act like followers of Jesus. We are a people shaped by God’s will, not the world’s swill.
We should all love to study Scripture. Up early with a cup of coffee, parked under a quiet circle of lamp light, Bible open with pen and notebook beside it, morning prayer—I’m an oddball, but for me that is everything I desire for peace in this life. It’s what I do on vacation. It is my absolute joy.
But let’s acknowledge that knowledge alone puffs people up. Knowledge can be the source of superiority and arrogance, so knowledge alone is insufficient. We are after more than knowledge; we seek wisdom, and to have wisdom means more than just stuffing our heads. We need to increase our awareness—our spiritual awareness—and that requires the heart.
HEART: Deep Faith
Meaningful Mission Statements
Ever had mornings where you wake up and are two hours into your day before you even remember that you are alive? There’s bodily waking up and there’s spiritual waking up and the two don’t always go together.
The growing heart is that which wakes up the mind to deeper experiences—to the mystical, the magical, and the miraculous dimensions of God’s creation. It is with the heart, where deep knowing, intuition, and conviction—deep belief—occur. We’ve all known or heard of geniuses who are heartless, so we know head knowledge is nothing like sufficient.
The heart grows in two ways: prayer and risks. Prayer is the means by which our hearts are shaped and come into alignment with the heart of God. Whenever we pray, we acknowledge that God is indeed God and we are something far less. When we pray, we acknowledge that God knows all things and we no next to nothing. We also remember that God’s will is what we strive for and it is our best course and happiness. When we pray, we grow to want what God wants for us. That is part of the reason the Lord’s Prayer is perfect and perfecting of us—there is no improving upon it through elaboration—it is exactly what we need every day. The ultimate prayer of the heart is when we pray:
Thy will be done.
When we pray this and pray it from the heart, we surrender our plans, dreams, and ambitions to God. There is nothing wrong with having dreams, longings, and ambitions—just like there is nothing wrong with having lots of knowledge—but if these are not submitted to God in humility, they become decadent. Dreams, plans, and ambitions tend to turn men into little gods—autocrats and ultimately tyrants.
When we pray, we are accepting in our hearts that Jesus is Lord. Thy will, not my will. The more we pray that, the more our hearts grow into the likeness of Christ, who prayed that way in Gethsemane and on Golgotha.
Second is risks, which may surprise you. Our hearts learn and grow by taking risks (good risks!). Whenever we attempt something new or out of our ordinary, we give ourselves a chance to expand our awareness. There is no such thing as faith that is risk averse. All faith is risk-embracing.
Daring to reach out, daring to affirm someone else, daring to forgive—these are all heart-growers and heart-shapers. They are what we call stretches, for they stretch us out of what we know into what we do not know.
To spiritually stretch is to intentionally leave a comfort zone. Listen to C.S.Lewis from The Four Loves:
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
It is the large and growing heart that is our source of joy, gratitude, and devotion—these things are deeply felt and go all the way down. Deeply felt belief becomes real trust and faithfulness. Deeply felt gratitude is joy, peace, and happiness. The immature heart can know none of these; the mature heart can grow them, share them, and expand indefinitely. When our hearts wake up, we can say our souls have awakened and come into the light.
Even so, all these wonderful, deep feelings count for little-to-nothing if they do not result in the way we live our lives. Unless enacted by our lives and behaviors, they mean nothing.
HANDS: Make it Real
Devotion and the 3-legged stool
So what are we to do about it? What can we physically do—this week, today, even—with our hands in order that we grow into Christ? One answer is that we can act in ways that shape new habits. Habits of prayer, study, and risk-taking are things you and I can begin or upgrade today.
Morning devotions sounds like a Christian cliché, but it is critical to our ongoing transformation. Have a devotional time by yourself. Group devotions are lovely, and doing devotions as a family or couple are wonderful, but you must first have your own, personal, solo devotional life. Just you and God.
Get your coffee, find a quiet, uninterrupted space (turn off your phone), spread out your Bible, keep a notebook, pray, read, pray. There is no Bible study habit that can exclude prayer, and even the most fervent prayer life will go bad if not grounded in the knowledge of Scripture. Even these in balance can make a person self-absorbed if not challenged with risk-taking in the rest of the day. Share your faith, do good deeds, forgive your foes, love your neighbors and enemies.
Devotion is a three-legged stool of prayer, Scripture, and risks. Let us make them our habit. Stay hungry and curious and we can live every day of this life growing in Christ and making him known.
Waking Up: Day’s End
Every day is a deep blessing
The difference Christ makes is all about waking up in the morning. My heart breaks for that person who wakes thinking, “Dear God, NOT another DAY!” Our mission is for that person. If that person is you or sometimes you, know it doesn’t have to be you.
Remember, every day we wake up alive we can have gratitude. Every day we wake up alive means God is not done with us. God is still teaching us, growing us, and readying us for eternity.
No matter how hard your life is, you can wake up with joy, asking God:
• “Oh Lord, how will You reveal Yourself to me today?”
• “Oh Lord, how will you shape my heart today?”
• “Oh Lord, how can I serve You today?”
And when we live this way, we go to bed at night in peace, saying:
• “Thank You, Lord, for walking with me today.”
• “Thank You, Lord, for the entire journey of this strange life.”
• “Thank You, Lord, for whatever may come tomorrow.”
I hope we can pray this on the last night of our lives as well.
As when I was a child, I learned to pray:
“If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
That is still our hope and our prayer. . †