Good morning. Welcome to The Edge. My name is Brandi, and we’re so glad that you’ve chosen to join us this morning as we continue our series in The Blueprint: Spiritual Disciplines For a God-Filled Life. The Blueprint is an exploration of the habits and the spiritual disciplines exhibited through the life of Jesus.
I just wonder how the words “spiritual disciplines” hit you. Ironically, those words are not actually dubbed in Scripture by Jesus. We just kind of came up with them as a way to identify the habits of Jesus, and sometimes I wonder how those words hit you. Sometimes when I hear the word discipline in particular, it feels kind of negative, almost like a punishment. Immediately when I think of discipline, I’m thinking of a child getting a spanking, or I’m taken back to the elementary classrooms that I was in and the kid that would have to get sent to the principal’s office with a pink slip. Or maybe for you, it’s not as much associated with punishment, but it’s still kind of like intense or this harsh thing that you have to undergo to get a certain outcome, like an athlete in training that’s going through certain disciplines to achieve his goals. And the problem is, if we think of spiritual disciplines in a negative or a punishing light, then we’re getting it all wrong. That’s not the point at all.
In fact, for those of us who are Christians, who have decided to follow Jesus, our goal is not just to obey him and to follow him but to become like him, and so in order to do that, we want to observe his life. We want to look at his habits, his life rhythms, and by adopting those habits and those life rhythms, we will experience his presence and his power on a whole new level, both now and in eternity. And so, if it helps you like it does me, think of the spiritual disciplines as really just Jesus’ life rhythms, and we’re just learning how to go through life in that same way, better connected to God, our Creator and our Father.
You know, I don’t know about you, but I just hate restrictions. It’s funny because I am a rule follower by nature, but I hate restrictive rules. The second that I tell myself that I have a restriction, I immediately want to break it. So, for example, if I’ve been going to bed too late at night, and I tell myself all day long, you know, “You’re going to go to bed earlier tonight.” Well, you can probably guess that’s usually the night that I’m up the very latest of all. Or maybe I’ll have a day where I’ll tell myself, “You’ve had too much sugar, just lay off on the sugar today, Brandi, you know, back off.” Well, of course, you know, that’s the day I’m going to be driving through McDonald’s and getting two McFlurries that day. I’m going to probably go overboard on sugar if I tell myself to have less. And so that’s why, for me, I had a New Year’s resolution this year that I was going to make 2021 a year where I was healthier and, by doing that, I was going to eat healthier.
I know healthy eating is like not exactly the most original or unique resolution, but what was unique was going to be my approach. This year, instead of trying to eat less bad things or cut this out or cut that out, I decided to make my healthy eating journey about bounty and expanding — expanding what I was going to eat. And I was going to do this by giving myself what I’ll call the Rainbow Challenge, where I was going to see how many colors, just natural colors of mainly fruits and vegetables that I could get in a day. I figure if I could get all these fruits and vegetables in a day, maybe it would kind of adjust my palette, and maybe I would start having a taste for fruits and vegetables that I’d never had a taste for before. And then I was also kind of in hopes that maybe if I’m filling up on these fruits and vegetables so much, then I won’t have as much desire or as much room for the bad. So my focus was actually on adding and, to tell you the truth — granted, we’re only in February, I know I’ve got a ways to go — but so far, I have loved this approach. I love getting creative. I love adding the colors and trying new fruits and vegetables. It’s fun. The kids are eating more things. It’s satisfying to look at all these different colors on your plate. And when I kind of compare that to what these spiritual disciplines are supposed to be, it is supposed to be these bountiful things that we can add to our plate to get full on the real stuff that’s going to nourish our souls.
You know, Jesus said that he prepares a table for us. There is a feast, and Jesus is the one inviting us to it, and he’s the one preparing the table. You know, those aren’t just nice, poetic lyrics. I want to really think about this for just a second. Think about what it must be like to be invited to a feast that Jesus himself prepares for us.
I wonder if you have someone in your life that would pop in your mind if I asked you to think about the best host or cook that you could possibly think of. Do you have someone in your life like that who’s just like the hostess with the most-est? It’s just, you know, no matter what is on the menu, no matter what day of the week, if you get invited to this person’s house to a meal, it’s going to be good. Everything about it is going to be good. We have friends like that in our lives.
My friend, Sarah, it’s the whole thing — yes she’s a good cook, but what I love about going to her house is not just the meal that she prepares, but it’s so evident that she has thought so much about the people who are coming, and even though she’s always in the kitchen and busy with the preparations, she just has this aura about her that says I’m listening. She asks great questions, and you can tell by her countenance and her body language and her patience that she wants to know the answers, and so she’s asking questions, and she’s listening, and there’s music on, and it smells good, and then, on top of that, there’s just food on top of food, on top of food, on top of food. And we always linger. We stay so long. The time just flies.
When I think about going to their house, it’s not the food that I walk away thinking about. It’s everything that we experienced, and the table just represents everything that we were going to experience in that fellowship and friendship with her. And let me tell you, if that’s how I feel about my friend, how do you think it feels when we come to the table that Jesus, the lover of our souls, our Redeemer, our Savior, made for us? This just blows my mind, and here’s the thing: we don’t have to wait till heaven to get there. Yes, there is going to be a real feast in heaven, and it’ll be mindblowing, but at the same time, he’s talking about the here and the now, and I want you to imagine that all of the different pieces that make up this feast that he invites us to are the pieces that we’ve been talking about. The feast and the parts of the feast are the disciplines.
Think about this: prayer isn’t a have-to in order to be a good Christian. Prayer is an invitation to connect, to talk, to pour your heart out, to lay out your burdens, to be heard, to hear from God, to be seen. That’s what prayer is, and fasting — it’s an invitation for spiritual breakthrough. It’s an invitation to have a satisfied hunger that is soul-deep. It’s an invitation to become more aware of the things that are holding us back from God or experiencing him in a brand new way. And study — studying the Word — it’s an invitation of understanding. It’s an invitation to have wisdom where we otherwise wouldn’t, and probably best of all, it is an invitation to have your path lit by God himself. His words are a light unto our path. And solitude — it’s the invitation that Jesus even spoke to his disciples when he literally beckoned them and said (a paraphrase of Mark 6:31), “Come away with me and let’s go get some rest. Let’s get quiet for a while and get rest for our souls.” And in the same way, he beckoned them to come away and get solitude with him, and he still beckons us to do the same thing. Who doesn’t need rest for their souls?
And now we move on to talk about the topic of simplicity. Simplicity. Now that might seem contradictory because I just named all of these different pieces, but it’s not difficult, and it’s not contradictory when you understand that simplicity really just means singular. It’s about not being divided. It’s very similar to being pure. A lot of times, when we see the word pure in the Bible, you know (in a paraphrase of Matthew 5:8): “Blessed are the pure in heart for they’re going to see God more. They’re going to perceive God more.” That word pure is just like the word simple. It means being devoted to one thing. It means unity between what we think, what we say, how we act. In other words, who we are on Monday and who we are on Saturday, who we are at work and who we are at home — it’s all the same; we match. I think, deep down, we all long for our insides and our outsides to match. We long for the simple life. Don’t we?
It may not be our natural speed, but simplicity is something that I think we all really desire, and I think that’s one of the reasons why the whole minimalist movement is so popular. You can’t go on social media without scrolling just for a little bit to find somebody’s immaculate, almost-empty room, but it’s not empty. What it is is it’s mainly empty so that it can highlight the one or two pieces that they really want you to capture instead of getting all muddled up by all the other things that are distracting from the thing they want you to see.
In fact, for Christmas, I got a minimalist book. It’s called The Cozy Minimalist, and it’s right there on my coffee table, and so when I was working on this message, I actually opened it up because there is a definition for minimalist right there in the book, and here’s what the definition for minimalist is, “Intentionally promoting the things we value most and removing everything else that distracts from it.” I’m going to say that again, “Intentionally promoting the things in your life that you value most and removing the things that distract from that.”
So the question is: What is it that you value most? How will you promote that, and what needs to go away because it’s distracting from that thing? What is your one thing? Spiritually speaking, Jesus was the ultimate minimalist, and I want you to hear me because this took me a little bit to get through in my head, that you can have a busy schedule. In fact, this week, I hardly know where I’m at right now. It’s been such a busy week, and some of us, we can’t help that. Our calendars are packed. And simplicity does not mean just having a dull or empty schedule. You can have simplicity and have a full calendar, and you can also lack simplicity or singular devotion and have not much going on in your calendar because it’s all about what is driving you. What is your purpose? And if that purpose shares the same focus, it can inform all of the things that you do or you don’t do, and Jesus really got that.
We see an ebb and flow in his life of what seems like a very power-packed, busy, very tiring type of timeframe, and then we also see times where he seemed very lonely and it seemed like there wasn’t a ton going on. It ebbed and flowed, but his focus, his devotion, the simplicity never changed. In fact, the Pharisees were really good about making sure that people were burdened by all of these hundreds of laws that needed to be kept, and they were really proud of themselves for keeping them. But then, of course, they were self-righteous and prideful in doing so. But Jesus set the record straight when he told them (a paraphrase of Matthew 22:37–40), “Hey, it’s very simple. All of the laws and the prophets hang on these two things: Love God and love people.” Can’t you just imagine if you were to talk to Jesus in human form now? I’d love to hear what he’d say about the politics talk and all this because he just had a way of just simplifying it. Love God and love people. He didn’t get off focus. One thing, one devotion, one purpose — to do God’s will, to live for him.
We see this — there was a time (the very first words recorded of him) he was 12 years old, and his parents had just lost him in a big event that was happening in town, and they’d started to leave town, and in the flurry of it all they didn’t know where he was. And it took them like a few days to find him, and then when they go back, they actually end up finding him in the temple or what we would call church. And when his mother found him and was freaking out, like, “Where have you been? We’ve been panicked.” And his very first recorded words were, “Didn’t you know that I would be here? Didn’t you know that I would be in my Father’s house?” Those were his first words at age 12. For those of us who have kids that are right around that age, it’s like, wow, he knew his purpose.
And then some of his final words that were recorded in a private moment just between him and God when he was praying — he said (a paraphrase of John 17:1–4), “Father, I brought you glory on Earth by completing the work that you gave me to do.” He knew the work that God had given him to do, and I think that’s fascinating because I’m trying to imagine — can you just imagine if Jesus was a human here, like in America now in today’s day and age? I’m just thinking of all the things that he would be encouraged to make his ambition. I mean, you know, clearly he could heal. Imagine the people that would have encouraged him to be a doctor. He could clearly cook. We see him multiplying fish. We see him making wine. It’s like, “Man, Jesus, think of all the money you could make with that.” He was a great counselor, right? He could have been a teacher, a theologian.
There were so many ambitions he could have had, and don’t you imagine that there was side-talk from time to time of people letting Jesus know all the things he could do to make a bunch of money? And the reason that I talk about money is because, so often — and God knows this, this is why he writes about it in his Word so much — is that money is one of the huge things that deter us from our singular focus. We crave the security, right? We crave the success. We crave having enough, and this is why God says you can’t serve two masters. You can’t serve money and me. For those of us who want to follow in the path of Jesus and be singularly devoted and live the simple life, we have to know that godliness with contentedness is great gain like Paul says.
Jesus didn’t lose his focus, and I think it’s so interesting because Paul was concerned at one point in time with the Corinthians. In 2 Corinthians 11:3, he says:
I am afraid that you just as the devil deceived Eve by his craftiness that your minds will also be led astray from the simplicity and the purity of dedication to Christ (NASB).
I don’t think it’s just the Corinthians that need to worry about that. He was referring to Eve, the very first deception in the Bible, when someone was deceived and distracted and taken away from the simplicity and the purity of why they were here. And you know what? That same craftiness and that same deception works its way into our life every single day. Let’s face it — most of us are scattered. Most of us are divided about who or what we’re living for.
There’s a story in the Bible that, pretty much my whole adult life, I’ve just cringed anytime people approach this story, and it’s the story of Martha and Mary. And some of you ladies right now already know where I’m going with this, but I’ve always cringed because it always felt like, geez, well, I know what character I am in the story. Because here she is, you know, Mary’s sitting here listening to Jesus and being patient and enjoying the moment, but here’s Martha doing all the preparations and all the chores. And in my mind, I always heard this story as if Martha was bad for being busy, as if Martha was bad for trying to be an excellent host, and I always in my mind imagined that Jesus was like reprimanding her for being kind of a task-oriented, multitasking, busy person. And so, in my mind, I always felt like I’m the bad person in this story. But you know, I have a new understanding of this story now, as I reread it because when I go back to read it, I see that it says that Martha was distracted by her chores, distracted by all the preparations that needed to be made.
See, the purpose was to have Jesus there. She could have continued with the chores and still made him her focus, but instead, she was distracted from him by the chores. And you can hear that it’s not a reprimand in Jesus’ voice, nearly as much as it’s an ache for her to see what it is that she needs the most. What she’s missing is being near Jesus. He says (a paraphrase of Luke 10:41–42), “Martha, Martha. You are worried and upset about so many things. Mary has chosen what’s better.”
I wonder if you would see, too, that there’s this correlation between distraction and being worried and upset. Distraction and being worried and upset. We kind of know it, don’t we? But that Greek word there for distraction actually translates to “being drawn away” — drawn away. Eve was drawn away from God. Paul was concerned for the Corinthians that they were going to be drawn away from their pure devotion, and here’s Martha, she’s drawn away by all the preparations. Jesus doesn’t want us to be drawn away because he knows that’s where worry and upset are going to come in. He knows it’s not healthy for us — emotionally, socially, or even physically — when we try to do things outside of him. He says (a paraphrase of James 4:8), “Draw near to him and he will draw near to us.” This is Jesus beckoning for Martha to come near to him because when she is near to him and focuses on him, everything else falls into place.
Promoting what we value most and eliminating all that distracts from that. So how do we do that? We seek first the kingdom of God, and then all of these things will be added. You know, seeking the kingdom first is not an easy thing, and I’m not trying to pretend like it is, but I do know this: When we really want something, we know how to seek it, right? In the middle of the afternoon when you need a pick-me-up snack, you know how to find it. In the morning when you’re crawling out of bed and you know that you need that first cup of coffee, you will seek it out no matter what it takes. Jesus knows that if we will learn to live in his presence and experience his love and his power, we’re going to want it more and more. We’re going to understand how much we need it and we will seek it. And like David who prayed in Psalm 27:4:
4 One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
See, he asks and he seeks. He asks and he pursues.
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple (NIV).
You know, we should never think that what David is saying is that he just wants to like, just lay around and, you know, stare at God. This was a man that still had a lot of life to live, and you can bet he had a very, very busy schedule. It wasn’t that he was trying to shirk his tasks and get out of his day-to-day stuff, but he wanted the simple life — that whether he was a king and on top of the mountain, or whether he was in a valley and in hiding because his betrayers were in pursuit of his life, whether he had everything or whether he had nothing, he wanted to know that God was near, that God had him, that God had a purpose for him and he was fulfilling it. And this is why we crave the simple life, and this is why we want to adapt and adopt those rhythms, those spiritual disciplines of God’s.
The past weekend or so, maybe it was two weekends ago now, we had the Elders’ Retreat where we annually go away and do some planning and some praying, the elders and their wives. And we had a wonderful time as usual, but one of the things that we go around and do about midway through is we just talk about: How was your year? And you can imagine the discussions whenever it was like: How is your 2020? You know? So, of course, we had a lot of things to process. We talked about the good and the bad, but one thing I noticed was consistent with every single person that went around the room, and that was that there was something of a reordering, something of a reprioritizing when all of these extracurriculars and extra meetings and extra practices and extra stuff was taken off of that calendar for now — almost up to a year it’s been this way — that there was more time with family, that there was more time to slow down, that there’s more time to consider what is it that really matters to me?
And so, in conclusion of today’s message, I would ask you to kind of think through the same thing and evaluate, you know, when this pandemic lifts and life sort of resumes as it was, how will your life resume to more accurately reflect the simple life, the pure devotion that you have to God? Perhaps you could take a look at your calendar, maybe your budget, what your sources of entertainment are, who’s influencing you, who are you befriending? What do your diet and lifestyle look like? What are your habits? What of these things can you promote, and what of these things do you need to take away so that it more accurately aligns with the simple, pure devotion of living side by side with your Savior.
As you go into your time of discussion, I want to give you a few things to consider. There will be a practical guide that will be sent out through email that’ll give you some books and some resources and some ideas of how to kind of put this simple life in practice. But for now, these are the questions that I want you to consider.
What is your biggest takeaway from today? What hit you? Whatever hit you is what God wanted to hit you, so explore that, lean into it, think about it, discuss it.
What can you promote? In other words, what are you doing that you can do more of? Because in that thing, you’re seeing God, you’re seeing him move, you’re experiencing him. How can you promote that more?
What might need to go? What distractions need to go that are drawing you away from God?
Well, I know today is Valentine’s Day, so let me just say Happy Valentine’s Day to each and every one of you — you are so loved.