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This Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. Lent is a period of preparation that lasts from Ash Wednesday (2/22) to Easter Sunday (4/8). The forty days of Lent is believed to be inspired by the forty days Jesus fasted in the wilderness in preparation for His public ministry. The early church set aside forty days before Easter as a season in which we are attentive to the work of Christ on the cross. Of course we should be aware of the death and resurrection of Jesus every day but the ancient church recognized that God has ordained rhythms that enhance our lives. We have day time and night time. We experience seasons; winter, spring, summer and fall. We laugh and we cry. We win and we lose. God uses all these experiences to bring us life. Lent then is a season of preparation for Easter, a time to tune our hearts to the heart of God.

Different traditions have their own particular practices but let me encourage you to think about how you might practice Lent. Practices include disciplines of engagement or disengagement. For example, you may want to disengage (abstain) from something for the purpose of making some space in your life for Jesus. Or maybe you engage a new practice for forty days to gain a better appreciation of the life you have been given by God. Next week I will ask you to write down what you plan to do as we observe Lent as a spiritual discipline.  

The Lenten season is a great time to have a discussion about spiritual disciplines. I hope you are in a community group to be able to discuss this subject over the next few weeks because there is a lot to discuss on this subject and a lot of misunderstanding as well.

Spiritual disciplines are important because no one expects to make progress without discipline – do they? “But here is the strangest thing.  We do expect that.  We expect it of ourselves and we expect it of others all the time.  We expect it, not with the violin, not with marathon running, not with mountain climbing.  But we expect it in spiritual matters.  We honestly think that we ourselves and those around us should be proficient with spiritual power, moving and acting with agility and endurance, wisdom and purity, able to conquer long-established habits of sloth and rebelliousness, simply on the basis of our desire and effort and sincerity.”  Mark Buchanan, (YGITS, p. 126). TRYING to be proficient in the Christian life is no substitute for TRAINING.

In chapter 3 of his excellent book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted, John Ortberg points out that trying to be like Jesus will only get you so far. Trying will never transform but training will. In Paul’s second letter to Timothy he uses three vivid word pictures to instruct Timothy to arrange his life around certain practices that will enable him to succeed both in his personal life as well as his public ministry.

2 Tim. 2:2 is a job description of sorts. It is not only the task Paul entrusts to Timothy as a pastor but it is a restatement of the Great Commission. To “make disciples” is to deposit the Gospel in the lives of the next generation of Christ followers. We can be transformed and used to transform the lives of others if we pay attention to spiritual disciplines.

Transformation is a work of grace…v. 1. We cannot make ourselves more spiritual. “It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (Phil. 2:13). All we can do is to put ourselves in the best position to receive God’s grace. That is what a spiritual discipline does. “A spiritual discipline is an intentionally directed action, which places us in a position to receive from God the power to do what we cannot accomplish on our own.” Richard Foster (Life With God, p. 135).

As I said a couple of weeks ago, there is no growth without effort but spiritual formation is not the product of self-effort. It is very important to understand this as we move into the area of spiritual disciplines because if we forget about grace we will practice these disciplines in a legalistic way. The disciplines are simply a means to help us experience the life God graciously offers. “Spiritual disciplines are simply a means of appropriating or growing toward the life that God graciously offers.” Ortberg, p. 46. When we arrange our lives around practices that train us to do what we cannot currently do we grow. But any practice can become legalistic if we think it changes the way God sees us.

Jesus focused on the transforming of the heart while the Pharisees focused on the conforming of behavior. They were famous for their “boundary oriented” approach to life. They used circumcision, food restrictions and Sabbath keeping not so much to transform hearts but to separate “insiders” from “outsiders.” We were saved by grace. We are sanctified by grace.

Transformation is hard work…v. 3. Paul likens the business of transformation to giving birth. “My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.” Galatians 4:19. Spiritual formation is like child birth - it is not an easy process. But wait, isn’t this a contradiction? Grace vs. hard work? No, but it is a paradox. The grace Paul speaks of in v. 1 is “disciplined grace.” When you pastor a church that flies the banner of grace it sounds foreign to talk about discipline. That sounds like work. But we are discovering that the Christian life is a partnership. In the partnership that God seeks, He provides the grace while I provide the discipline.

Discipline is necessary because, in the physical realm we grow stronger by encountering resistance. Swimmers resist the water, runners resist gravity, weight lifters resist heavy loads, there is no other way to train our muscles and get stronger. The same is true in the spiritual realm. When I resist the urge for food or set my alarm clock a half hour earlier I encounter self-imposed resistance in order to train myself. Of course some resistance comes to us uninvited like temptation or suffering. But if I have the right attitude toward these things they can be the means of real progress in my life with Christ. What is the right attitude?

Transformation requires the disciplined attitude of a soldier…v. 4. A soldier has to know when to engage and when to refrain from engaging. In Paul’s example, a soldier refrains from enjoying many creature comforts. Spiritual disciplines that allow for margin in our lives require us to abstain from something. If we are not experiencing life with God the answer is not to “try harder” but to eliminate those things in our lives that compete with our attention to the things that matter most.

The soldier who refrains from entanglements with “civilian life” inspires John Piper to call for a “wartime lifestyle” which he distinguishes from a simple lifestyle.

“In wartime you may need to build a B-52 bomber, which costs millions and millions of dollars, in order to win the war. In a simple lifestyle, however, you wouldn't fiddle around with bombers. Instead you would just move out to Idaho, plant potatoes, and be irrelevant. In a wartime lifestyle you always ask yourself, ‘How can my life count to advance the cause of Christ?’ And if it means buying a computer to keep in touch with your missionaries through email, then you're going to invest several thousand dollars into a computer and software. That's a wartime lifestyle. But you might not eat out as often, or you might buy a used car so that you can buy that computer. That's what I mean by wartime lifestyle. The alternative is to just go with the flow. Everybody gets his toys: bigger house and car, more clothing, more fine food, etc., without even thinking about how the war effort is advancing. Personally, I must battle everyday against drifting. It isn't about making choices so much. The battle is primarily against becoming comfortable with things that aren't essential to the war effort. So you have to check yourself. Sit down with your wife and ask, ‘How are we doing with our spending? How are we doing with the use of our discretionary money for leisure? etc.’”

But soldiers don’t just practice disciplines of abstinence. They also engage at the proper time.

A soldier engages by seeking to please his commanding officer. Discipline and devotion go together. Let’s never forget that the point of spiritual discipline is to grow a relationship with our commanding officer. Divorced from that, these disciplines are nothing more than “holy habits” which have no power to make us righteous or holy. They can be practiced by men and women who are more devoted to self than God. But the object is to position ourselves so that Christ can be at home within us. James says, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8).

Next week we will spend some time explaining the disciplines of engagement and disciplines of disengagement; emptying and filling.

Transformation requires the disciplined attitude of an athlete…v. 5. An athlete keeps the objective in view. (2 Tim. 2:7-8). A football player is preoccupied with the goal line. A baseball player keeps his eye on the ball. A basketball player focuses on the goal. A runner is thinking about the finish line. I wonder if most Christians have a goal in mind. I wonder if they have an all-consuming objective that they carry with them 24/7. Paul did. 2 Timothy 4:6-8  ⁶ For I am already being poured out as a drink offering (spendo), and the time of my departure has come.  ⁷ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith;  ⁸ in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

Paul’s dominant motivation was the “crown of righteousness” that would be awarded by Jesus. There are two words for crown; diadem and stephanos. This is the latter, not the king’s crown but the crown or wreath won by the athlete who has finished the race and run well. No athlete runs well who has not trained.  

An athlete plays by the rules. There are some irrefutable laws that God has built into the universe. We reject these rules at our own risk and usually to our own harm. I recently heard about a man who was drunk and got into an accident. His response was, “Why is God punishing me?” That’s like jumping off the roof and asking why you fell down and got hurt. You will be punished by rejecting the immutable laws of God.

Transformation requires the disciplined attitude of a farmer…v. 6. Growth requires patience. And there is nothing easy about patience. I want patience but I WANT IT NOW! There is so little reinforcement for patience in our culture. Jana and I took our granddaughter to a new pizza place in town. Apparently they are doing well and I think I know why. Remember when you had to order a pizza and wait for it to cook? This place runs it through the oven while you are strolling through the line and it’s ready for you before you get to the cashier. It is to pizza what Subway is to sandwiches. Perfectly suited to an impatient culture that hates to wait.

But the farmer knows something that we often forget. He can’t “grow” anything. Only God can give life, all we can do is to prepare the soil, water the plants, pull the weeds, and life happens – automatically. That is exactly the word Jesus used in His parable about the kingdom in Mark 4:26-29  "The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil;  ²⁷ and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows-- how, he himself does not know.  ²⁸ The soil produces crops by itself (automatos); first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head.  ²⁹ But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come." You were made to grow. It is built into you and it will happen by disciplined grace.

Don’t be discouraged when you feel like you are making little progress in the faith. Be a good farmer. Be patient. “It is God who is at work in you.” Plant yourself in good soil, drink in the water of the word, be ruthless about the competing weeds that will inevitably spring up and slowly, imperceptibly, over time you are being conformed into the image of Christ.

The farmer is the first to receive his share of the crops. What a blessing to know that God has a profit sharing plan. “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” Titus 3:5-7

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