JUST DO IT!

[Romans 6:5-14]

              Introduction to the Scriptures: In this section of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he has been talking about the fact that in our baptism, in our conversion, we have died with Christ. And he says in verse 5, “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.” He says, it is not just about death, it is ultimately about life. Verse 6: “For we know that our old self [that old sinful nature, that flesh that was bound for destruction] was crucified with him, so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” [Continue reading verses 8-14, then a bit further over in verse 19 through verse 22.]

Prayer for Illumination - This takes us to the heart of something we need to understand, Lord. And I pray that you would help us to be alert, help our minds to be clear, that we would perceive the truth; but more importantly that your Spirit would be unleashed in us, that we would take this truth and learn how to make it real in our lives. I pray that you would give me your words, more than that, your Spirit. We want to see you. We want to see your truth. We want to understand its application to our lives, so we pray that your Spirit would be unleashed in this place, in Christ’s name, AMEN.

Message

          Are you frustrated about the lack of progress in your life, as I am so often frustrated? Particularly progress in your spiritual life? I want to say today that there is no reason this day cannot be the turning point in your life! Maybe you are a bit pessimistic about sudden changes, but I want to outline a plan for us today that is found in God’s Word. And I do not believe I am exaggerating when I say that what we will have learned by the end of this service is everything you need to know to turn your life around. That should be good news. I hope you are alert. Over the last few weeks we have been learning about God’s design for successful living. We have learned that we humans consist of body, mind, and spirit. The way God designed us to work is that the spirit governs the mind and the mind controls the body. But the only way this simple formula actually works is if our spirits are in union with God’s Spirit. If that is true, then everything else can follow quite naturally.

          Two weeks ago we learned that this union takes place when we become a Christian – that is, when we surrender our lives to Christ. Without that, nothing ultimately good can happen because we have been cut off from God, our Creator, by our sin. But once we commit our lives to Him, we are still required to do a simple thing to keep that union healthy, and we learned about that – we are to meditate regularly, day and night, on God’s Word, studying it, chewing on it, reflecting on it, and accepting its practical application to our lives, a consistent meditation on the truth of God’s Word. Scripture’s image for this spiritual growth was a tree growing its roots down deeply to draw up nourishment from God’s Spirit. I hope that image of the tree has found a place in your spirit.

          If we don’t do that, our spirits will simply starve. But that consistent meditation will feed our spirit just the way we feed our bodies with three regular meals each day, making it strong and equipping it, in the spirit’s case, to overrule our mind. Last week we learned many very practical ways to direct our minds, the second step in our formula. The image for our mind was that of a garden which has to be weeded, pulling up the noxious thoughts, replacing them, planting that garden with excellent, noble, healthy thoughts. And of course as with any garden, it will have to be cultivated daily.

          I don’t know about you, but I have been trying to do my “field work”, if you will (trees and gardens!), making it a point to really focus on these practical habits these past few weeks, and not let this all be simply theoretical. I don’t mind telling you that I have gotten it right a number of days and began to notice a real difference, but unfortunately I have also ignored those basic steps a number of days and almost immediately stumbled and gotten myself into trouble. What I am learning in my field work is that this really works, for better or for worse. It works for better only if we make it work by being consistent in taking these steps and refusing to compromise. So this is not something which should finally find a resting place in our minds – you hear it and you understand it – but how do we translate it into our actions. And that is where we are today.

          In learning about the mind last week, we saw that the mind has incredible power to rule the body; and we can move the body toward what is good and healthy, or else toward what is evil and destructive, simply by what we choose to think about and dwell on day by day. Today we want to see how we can learn to move consistently toward what is good and right and healthy. But I want to be sure you see right up front that it is entirely possible for you to do this, regardless of the disappointment and failure you may have experienced up to this point in your life. All of us have established some bad habits. Those are the weeds we are going to have to pull up, and that will require some work from us. But it is not an impossible task. We can do it.

          Please understand that simply becoming a Christian does not make you strong and good. Most of us have learned that through our own field work to date. Becoming a Christian simply gives you the potential to become strong and good. After that, as Paul says in Philippians 2:12-13, you have to work out what God is working in you; you have to work out the potential He has given you by uniting you with His Spirit. The biggest mistake Christians have made is thinking that being saved is the end of the story instead of recognizing it as the beginning of the story. We know we are sinners, saved by grace, but the operative words for us are “we are sinners.” We have resigned ourselves to the belief that faith offers us forgiveness, grace, and mercy, but it doesn’t actually change our lives. Well, it must change our lives or it is worthless and deceptive. Ephesians 2:8,9 and10 says we are not saved by our good works, but we are saved in order to do good works. That was God’s goal, and it ought to be ours. James says if we don’t see any progress with this, then we better go back to the drawing board, we’ve not yet figured out what it means to be a Christian.

          So let’s get it done. The time has come to stop our whining and to stop making excuses for our failures (if you’re looking at the note sheet in your bulletins, you saw the slash over “whining and excuses” ), and instead to do what it takes to make things better. Never forget, Jesus did not call us to get people saved, he called us to make disciples. His goal is not to have us spend our lives wallowing in failure while we wait for a merciful last-minute rescue that takes us to heaven. His goal is to teach us how to live! And, as he says, to live abundantly. Sure its going to take some work, but the work makes it easier, not harder.

          How does Michael Phelps make swimming easier, to say nothing of more rewarding and more exhilarating? He works at it! How does Itzhak Perlman make playing the violin easier and more beautiful and more rewarding? He works at it! The same is true of writers and painters and surgeons and golfers and skiers. Sure the discipline is demanding, but it is what makes it easier to excel and experience the joy and the delight of a job well done. That’s why Jesus says, “My yoke,” (which we think of as a slavery), “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” If you are willing to work at this, he is telling us, it gets easier!

          What every one of us must learn is that there is an art to living the Christian life as well, and it must be learned through regular discipline just like anything else. Dallas Willard says in his book The Spirit of the Disciplines that the basic human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the process that would make that happen. Isn’t that true of us? We want what is right and important, but we don’t commit to the process that would make it happen. How many times have you said about something you desire, “I’d give anything to be able to play the piano like that (or whatever it is).” But of course if we really did give what it takes, we would be able to play like that, or to accomplish that. The fact is, we have not been willing to give what it takes.

          So let’s talk about how this works. One of the things which holds most of us back from accomplishment is our doubt that we really have the ability, no matter how hard we might work. And it is quite true that a certain amount of native ability will be required to accomplish what the great artists and athletes have accomplished. But God has already solved this problem for us. Remember 2 Peter 1:3 says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.” It is like being reassured that you have the DNA of the greatest athlete that has ever lived, or the native ability of the greatest musician. Indeed, he continues, through our initial connection with God’s Spirit, we have come to participate in the divine nature. Are there any limitations there? I don’t think so! We have come to participate in the divine nature, which now gives us the ability to “escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires,” Peter concludes.

          So, first of all, he says we do have the ability. You may not have worked at it yet, but you have within you the potential to deal with this. Our earlier study of Romans 8 pointed this out, much as Peter does in this wonderful passage. God’s unlimited Spirit, we have seen in the last couple of weeks, has been unleashed in us. The potential is there. So what happens next? Well, an athlete or artist or surgeon must commit to do what it takes to learn their skill. This takes us to the second step, the mind. With the mind we determine the regimen which will enable us to fulfil our potential. What process would make this happen? We decide that we will need to watch our diet, get adequate rest, and schedule our time to focus on the practical steps necessary to get to our goal. We determine to seek out the necessary resources to learn the skills which will be required – to do the exercises, read the books, take the classes, work with a mentor – whatever it takes to learn how to do this. And then we commit to practice. For most of us that means clearing our schedule and making ourselves accountable to actually be there doing it, whether it is practicing the piano, or lifting weights, or drawing, or swimming, or practicing holiness, whatever it is we have committed to learn to do.

          Obviously this will be the same for anything in our lives, for the Christian life and for anything else. We do not just walk in and start living an exemplary Christian life any more than we could walk in, no matter how talented we are, and pick up a clarinet and begin playing Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major, (one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written!) – or pick up a bat and hit the ball like Ichiro. We have the potential, you understand, to be that good, we really do! But from there we must make the commitment to work that out, and practice and discipline ourselves until we really do get good at it. We don’t start there; we progress toward that goal. And of course here we have arrived at that essential third step, getting out there and actually doing it. Spirit, mind, body – we have the potential, we must make the commitment, and then we just have to use our physical bodies to do it – again, and again, and again until the routine becomes a habit, and the habit becomes the essence of our character.

          You know I am not making this up. It’s exactly what the Bible says. It’s in your bulletins, from 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. Paul says:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. [You don’t get there without it.] They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. [Is that incentive?] Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I [discipline] my body and make it my slave [my slave – obedient to the mind] so that . . . I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

It is all there, isn’t it! That is how it works.

          Most of us, I believe, have over-spiritualized the Christian life. Yes, it is absolutely founded on the spirit, but it has to be lived out in the body. Everything about the Christian life is ultimately lived out in the body. Remember Jesus’ words to Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane? “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” No matter how well-intended you are, you are not going to get there until you build up the body. The flesh is weak, of course, because we have not been exercising, we have not been caring for the body. The whole point of the incarnation was for Jesus to come and show us how to live out our faith in the body. That is our task. Again and again in God’s Word he calls us back to the habits of the body. Romans 12:1 says our funda-mental spiritual calling is to offer our bodies to the Lord. There we have it; that’s the formula we have been talking about.

          So let’s look at the practical part of this final step. What is God’s Word actually asking us to do? Is He asking us to practice not sinning? No, that’s actually not it, and maybe that’s one of our problems. We keep trying not to sin, and we keep failing. But you can’t really practice not doing something. You can only practice doing something. I can’t practice not juggling, I can only practice juggling . . . or fail to practice juggling, but that’s different. You practice what you do, you don’t practice what you don’t do.

          And our problem with sinning is that we keep practicing sinning and then wonder why it has such power over us. Well, it has power over us for the same reason that holiness would have power over us if we practiced that instead of practicing sinning! It makes sense, doesn’t it! You get better and better at the things you practice.

          So the key is not to try to talk ourselves out of sinning – we already know we ought not to be doing that – but to substitute a good habit for a bad habit. And to set ourselves a course of practicing that good habit until we get so good at it that it crowds out the bad ones which we have begun to neglect.

          Our text this morning from Romans 6 states it very simply and straightforwardly. It says, since God’s living Spirit is in you, you don’t have to go on sinning. But it won’t be automatic. Here’s what you have to do. Verse 13, you have to stop offering the specific parts of your body to sin. The Old Testament hero, Job, made a covenant with his eyes not to look at the things which tempted him. He is working with what he is doing with his body. That’s what Paul is talking about here in Romans 6. Don’t use your eyes or ears, don’t use your hands or feet, to do what is sinful. But rather, he continues, use your body, offer the parts of your body to God as instruments of righteousness. Practice the good habits instead of the bad ones.

          This, of course, is where the classic spiritual disciplines come into play. Spiritual disciplines: we hear that phrase as rather negative. Everyone says, Oh, no! I was afraid he was going to get to this. But spiritual disciplines are not a bunch of crazy, austere attempts to punish ourselves by self-denial or pain. It got abused, and became that for a while, especially in the Middle Ages. But the spiritual disciplines are wisely chosen activities which teach our minds and bodies to work in concert with God’s Spirit. When Christ called us to make disciples, he said, teach them to do what I do. And what did he do? What he did was the spiritual disciplines. He wasn’t out punishing himself. This was not self-flagellation. He was doing what we are called to do – choosing activities which teach our minds and our bodies to work in concert with God’s Spirit. The Bible says that Jesus learned obedience from the things that he suffered. They are the routines which a good coach or mentor would require of us to help us get really good at the skills which are most effective in taking us to our goals. The spiritual disciplines are like scales to the musician or wind-sprints to the athlete. The more we practice the scales, the more nimble and accurate and quick our fingers become, and the easier it will be to play some fantastic and exciting piece.

          Likewise the practice of the spiritual disciplines gives us the spiritual skills we will need to perform at the next level, and begin to achieve the things we had previously only dreamed of. The first spiritual discipline most people think of is fasting, and since it seems so difficult and unappealing, it’s also probably the last spiritual discipline most of us think of. You probably shouldn’t start with fasting – that might be an upper division course. But you can see that it actually serves a terrifically important purpose once you understand what the disciplines are all about. It’s purpose isn’t to get you to lose weight or to cause you discomfort. It’s purpose is to train you to say “no” to one of your body’s most powerful demands. It’s not that eating is a bad thing. In fact we couldn’t live without it. But the point here is for the spirit and the mind to control and direct the body, not the other way around, so we begin by telling the body, “Not until I say so!”

          Playing games is not a bad thing either, but we must not let the desire for play control us, so you might try fasting from solitaire or some game on your computer, or (dare I say it) from a sport like golf so it won’t take over your life! Fasting isn’t forever. If you try to fast from eating, of course, you won’t survive. And I’m not asking you to fast from pleasure either, but does it control you, or do you control it? It’s the same with all our body’s desires. We have to learn to control our sex drive, or our anger, or our natural self-centeredness. Like all our desires, these have their place, but we must control them. We must not let them control us. That is what this is all about.

          Each of the other spiritual disciplines has the same goal. They provide what the Bible calls “training in righteousness” so that we can get better and better at the most rewarding and appropriate things. Worship is a discipline, as is prayer. Neither is accomplished by showing up on Sunday or saying grace before meals. What responsibility do you take to be sure that your spirit is being nourished in worship? We try to avoid this, but do you come to be entertained, or do you come with the responsibility for worship, to draw from whatever happens what it is that you need for your spirit in the coming week? How seriously have you practiced prayer? Not just when you get in trouble saying, “Oh God, help me out here.” Have you ever taken a prayer retreat? Or spent an entire morning in prayer? Have you thought through what are the essential ingredients in prayer and asked, “Can I practice this?” That is a discipline.

          Study is another discipline, as is solitude. How much and what do you read? Do you contemplate on what you are reading, examine and test it for truth? See what difference it makes in your life? Do you ever take time away from your demanding routine to be alone and quiet and to let God speak to you in a still, small voice? That is what solitude is all about. You know Satan doesn’t really need to work all that hard. He just needs to keep us distracted, as he is very good at doing, so we’ll never get around to the things which truly feed our souls. So we need solitude and meditation, to step back and let God’s Spirit go to work.

          Generosity and sacrifice are also spiritual disciplines. We, including we Christians, are both the wealthiest and the least generous people in history. It is not about what we can afford to give. It is about whether we have learned some-thing about generosity and sacrifice. We seldom give anything we would really miss – which, when you think about it, isn’t really giving at all, is it?

          But all these things, and many more which we have not mentioned this morning, are the very bodily practices which build Christlikeness and character into our lives. They are all quite doable, if we decide to do them and put them on our calendar or on our “To do today” (not our “To do sometime”) list. And all of them are tremendously effective in shaping us to be the people God created us to be, and to enjoy the life He has given us.

          Dallas Willard, once again, talks about how we have a tendency to groan and complain about “the cost of discipleship.” That was a great book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer who had to face off the Nazis and lost his life in the process. So there was a great cost to him. But, Willard says, stop and think about the cost of non - discipleship. That is a good perspective, is it not? He says we pay a far greater price for failing to do what is right. That route, he points out, leads to crushing burdens, costly and embarrassing failures, frustrating disappointments, and a life caught in the toils of endless problems which are never resolved. That is the cost of non - discipleship. No, whatever our discipleship costs us, the rewards so far exceed the cost that it’s not even worth calculating.

          This is where Paul ends this 6^th chapter of Romans. Verse 21, “What benefit did you reap . . . from the things you are now ashamed of?” What was the cost of non - discipleship for you? “Those things result in death. But now that you have been set free from sin [it does not control you any more; at least it need not control you anymore] and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.” Please remember, as we learned in our series of studies on heaven, eternal life is not some sort of free pass to heaven, some kind of escape from a corrupt earth. Eternal life is the abundance and the joy that God wants you to begin learning now, and continue learning through all eternity!

          Don’t settle for Satan’s cynical deception that all you are capable of is a life of disappointment and failure. God has given you, through His Living Spirit, everything you need for abundant life and holiness. He has! He says it again and again. Now you and I need to make up your minds, and “Just do it!”

Closing prayer - Father, your word gives us some very practical counsel. In some ways we are more at ease with some of the vague things we say about the Spirit. We can just kind of pray and say, “Oh God, let your Spirit flow through me and do good things.” But if I have to discipline myself, that grace becomes more costly. I have to spend something to make this happen. But that is the way you have created me, and it is really the way I will find the reward, if I have been able to participate with you and begin to see the results of living as you call me to live. But it starts with my feeding on your Spirit. It moves to being really careful about the things I think about, and from there it moves to establishing very specific habits that teach my body to conform to the commitments my mind has learned from your Spirit. That is not a difficult formula for me or for any of us to understand. But I pray you would help us not to just go away and say, “Well that makes sense,” but rather to go away saying, “What specifically am I going to do about this?” How will my life change as a result of what I have learned about the way you expect us to conform to the image of Jesus Christ? We pray this all in the name of Jesus and in the power of your Spirit, AMEN.