In last Sunday’s sermon, Pastor Wil gave us some tips on maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Speaking from his own experience, one thing he focused on was maintaining a healthy diet. During a time when he did not watch his own diet, he gained weight and could notice a difference in his health.
Then, just about the time you started thinking you were attending a health seminar, rather than a church service, he shared with us some scriptures that speak of the relationship between the body, mind, and spirit. According to the Bible, our spiritual and mental health have an impact on our physical health. Likewise, our physical health has an impact on our spiritual and mental health. Not only does the Bible declare this to be true, but science and modern medicine have also testified to these facts.
To give just a couple examples from the Bible, Proverbs 3:7-8 says, “Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. Proverbs 14:30 says, “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.”
In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus taught us not to be anxious about anything, Why? His focus was on our need to trust God to meet our needs. But doctors and psychologists everywhere will tell you that anxiety can have a very negative effect on your physical health. And as Wil testified to, poor physical health has a negative effect on one’s ability to handle stress.
All this leads us to the conclusion that God is just as concerned with our physical health as He is with our having a right relationship with Him—our spiritual health. This conclusion is validated by I Corinthians 6:19-20: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
Now, these words were written within the context of avoiding sexual sin. However, they can also be applied to other areas of our life, particularly how we take care of our bodies. If my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, then I need to take care of it. I need to take care of God’s temple.
But we do need to be careful not to go to certain extremes. Sometimes it seems our society is obsessed with diet and with health. Many late-night infomercials are advertising their new wonder diets or exercise equipment that you can buy “for just three easy payments of $49.99!” Watching these programs, not to mention the countless commercials throughout the day, as well as listening to all the experts on television and talk radio programs, can lead you to think that if you don’t look like a super model, then you are unhealthy, or at least unattractive.
The problem is that our society worships the body. It idolizes those who have the perfect physique, are athletes, and superstars. Some magazines annually rate and report on who is the “Sexiest Man of the Year.”
The difference between society’s obsession with health, diet, and good looks, and the Christian’s efforts to maintain a healthy lifestyle lies in motivation. Society worships the body and good health because people think this life is all we have to live, as well as the fact that they do not believe in God or recognize Him as the One who gave us our very lives in the first place.
From the Christian perspective, there is an eternal life that awaits us in heaven. And while we should not be foolish enough to think a healthier body in this life will equate to a healthier body in heaven, we do recognize that our bodies, like our money and material possession, truly belong to God. We ourselves are God’s property, and God has charged us with the responsibility of taking care of His property.
QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND APPLICATION
1. Read I Cor. 6:19-20 again. What does Paul mean when he says that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? How often are you cognizant of that fact? If you were aware of it more often, how would that change the way you take care of your body?
2. Take a brief look at Matthew 15:1-20 (brief, because it is several verses). In light of what we learned in Wil’s sermon and this study, how should we apply what Jesus teaches here?
3. Passages like Romans 14 and I Corinthians 8 have a lot to say about Christian liberty—our freedom to do things the Bible does not specifically identify as sin. In light of that, how can we apply the principals of a healthy lifestyle without becoming legalistic about such things as eating junk food or red meant, or using alcohol and tobacco? Or should we be “legalistic” about them?
Friday, January 27, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Viral #2: Jesus Died to Save Marriages
The Bible says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The Bible also says that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). However, the good news we find in the Bible is that “`while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
Those of us who have been involved in church for any length of time are familiar with these truths. We understand that Jesus died to save us from our sin and give us the hope of heaven. But this is applied to the individual. No one gets to heaven riding on the coattails of another.
So what has this got to do with marriage? Everything. For Jesus also died to save our marriages.
Marriage was instituted by God way back in Genesis 2. And in light of the fact that Paul exhorts husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church (Ephesians 5:25-33), we see that God wants our marriages to mirror the relationship Christ has with the Church.
So think about the relationship each of us, as Christians, ought to have with Jesus. That relationship in which He is loving us, we are loving Him, we serve Him, He blesses us, we experience more of His love, and we continue to love Him more and more. This is the kind of relationship God wants us to have in our marriages.
The problem is that without Christ, we are all broken, selfish, sinful people. And what happens when two broken, selfish, sinful people come together in a marriage? Their brokenness comes through, they both behave selfishly, and they sin against each other. This is not the recipe for the dynamic, healthy, happy marriages that God wants us to have.
The solution to this problem—the key to having a successful marriage—is having Jesus at the center of your lives as individuals, and at the center of your marriage. Because it is only through having a dynamic relationship with Him that any of us can overcome our brokenness, selfishness, and sinfulness.
A week ago, we learned that Jesus prayed for His believers, that “they may be one” (John 17:11, 21, 23). This oneness Jesus prayed for should be evident in our marriages to an even greater extent than within the more general company of the Church. Dynamic, happy, healthy marriages are very important to God. This is why we can say that Jesus died to save our marriages, as well as to save us individually from our sin.
As we learned on Sunday, our marriages can go through seasons, just as individuals go through seasons of life. Of course, we describe these seasons in a similar way to how we describe the seasons and weather patterns of the calendar year. During the Spring, you’re planting things, and they’re beginning to grow. Within the animal world, lambs, calves, foals, and kittens are being born. There’s a fresh sense of life and excitement in the air. In Summer, the sky is clear, and the sun is warm. It is the time for barbecues, picnics, parties, fun, and games. Everybody loves Summer. Fall has an ominous feel to it. the days are shorter, darker, and cooler. The skies are gray. The heavy rains come. In Winter, it’s cold and icy. Many animals hibernate. Others scrounge around in the woods, looking for what little food they can find. Winter has a dead feeling to it.
From Gary Chapman’s book dealing with the four seasons of a marriage, Pastor John gave us some examples of how to apply these analogies to our marriage relationships. The one thing I would re-emphasize is this: Our calendar year has twelve months. Naturally, each of the four seasons is about three months long, and we cannot change that. In December, January, and February, when we’re complaining about how cold and dead everything is, we’re also aware that it’s just going to be that way for a while. We can’t do anything about the weather.
Within a marriage, however, while you may not be able to do anything about the fact that your marriage will enter those winter seasons, you can do something about how long it lasts. In fact, I will go even further and say you need to do something about it. From personal experience, I can tell you that if you don’t do anything to pull your marriage out of the season of winter, everything in your marriage may die. You could end up divorced.
How do you do this? First, as Pastor John said, learn your spouse’s love language and begin to “speak” that language. Second, I would say begin to act as if it were already Spring. Hasten Spring by planting those seeds of love, kindness, gentleness, etc. (see Gal. 5:22-23) that you want to be growing and flourishing when Summer comes back around. I think if you do, you’ll see Summer coming much sooner than you expected.
QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND APPLICATION
1. Read Ephesians 6:25-33. What do these verses say about how Christ loved the Church? What did He do for her, and for what purpose? How does this apply to how husbands should love their wives? How does it apply to how wives should respond to their husbands?
2. How can I apply the truths of the gospel, namely the death of Jesus and the forgiveness of sin, to my marriage?
3. What is my spouse’s love language? Do I know his/her love language? Does he/she know my love language? How good are we at speaking one another’s love languages?
4. What season is my marriage in right now? How can my spouse and I prolong the Summer and/or shorten the winter? If we are in a Fall season, how can we best prepare for the Winter in order to hasten its passing?
5. As an individual, single or married, what season of life am I in? Answer the same things from Question #4.
Those of us who have been involved in church for any length of time are familiar with these truths. We understand that Jesus died to save us from our sin and give us the hope of heaven. But this is applied to the individual. No one gets to heaven riding on the coattails of another.
So what has this got to do with marriage? Everything. For Jesus also died to save our marriages.
Marriage was instituted by God way back in Genesis 2. And in light of the fact that Paul exhorts husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church (Ephesians 5:25-33), we see that God wants our marriages to mirror the relationship Christ has with the Church.
So think about the relationship each of us, as Christians, ought to have with Jesus. That relationship in which He is loving us, we are loving Him, we serve Him, He blesses us, we experience more of His love, and we continue to love Him more and more. This is the kind of relationship God wants us to have in our marriages.
The problem is that without Christ, we are all broken, selfish, sinful people. And what happens when two broken, selfish, sinful people come together in a marriage? Their brokenness comes through, they both behave selfishly, and they sin against each other. This is not the recipe for the dynamic, healthy, happy marriages that God wants us to have.
The solution to this problem—the key to having a successful marriage—is having Jesus at the center of your lives as individuals, and at the center of your marriage. Because it is only through having a dynamic relationship with Him that any of us can overcome our brokenness, selfishness, and sinfulness.
A week ago, we learned that Jesus prayed for His believers, that “they may be one” (John 17:11, 21, 23). This oneness Jesus prayed for should be evident in our marriages to an even greater extent than within the more general company of the Church. Dynamic, happy, healthy marriages are very important to God. This is why we can say that Jesus died to save our marriages, as well as to save us individually from our sin.
As we learned on Sunday, our marriages can go through seasons, just as individuals go through seasons of life. Of course, we describe these seasons in a similar way to how we describe the seasons and weather patterns of the calendar year. During the Spring, you’re planting things, and they’re beginning to grow. Within the animal world, lambs, calves, foals, and kittens are being born. There’s a fresh sense of life and excitement in the air. In Summer, the sky is clear, and the sun is warm. It is the time for barbecues, picnics, parties, fun, and games. Everybody loves Summer. Fall has an ominous feel to it. the days are shorter, darker, and cooler. The skies are gray. The heavy rains come. In Winter, it’s cold and icy. Many animals hibernate. Others scrounge around in the woods, looking for what little food they can find. Winter has a dead feeling to it.
From Gary Chapman’s book dealing with the four seasons of a marriage, Pastor John gave us some examples of how to apply these analogies to our marriage relationships. The one thing I would re-emphasize is this: Our calendar year has twelve months. Naturally, each of the four seasons is about three months long, and we cannot change that. In December, January, and February, when we’re complaining about how cold and dead everything is, we’re also aware that it’s just going to be that way for a while. We can’t do anything about the weather.
Within a marriage, however, while you may not be able to do anything about the fact that your marriage will enter those winter seasons, you can do something about how long it lasts. In fact, I will go even further and say you need to do something about it. From personal experience, I can tell you that if you don’t do anything to pull your marriage out of the season of winter, everything in your marriage may die. You could end up divorced.
How do you do this? First, as Pastor John said, learn your spouse’s love language and begin to “speak” that language. Second, I would say begin to act as if it were already Spring. Hasten Spring by planting those seeds of love, kindness, gentleness, etc. (see Gal. 5:22-23) that you want to be growing and flourishing when Summer comes back around. I think if you do, you’ll see Summer coming much sooner than you expected.
QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND APPLICATION
1. Read Ephesians 6:25-33. What do these verses say about how Christ loved the Church? What did He do for her, and for what purpose? How does this apply to how husbands should love their wives? How does it apply to how wives should respond to their husbands?
2. How can I apply the truths of the gospel, namely the death of Jesus and the forgiveness of sin, to my marriage?
3. What is my spouse’s love language? Do I know his/her love language? Does he/she know my love language? How good are we at speaking one another’s love languages?
4. What season is my marriage in right now? How can my spouse and I prolong the Summer and/or shorten the winter? If we are in a Fall season, how can we best prepare for the Winter in order to hasten its passing?
5. As an individual, single or married, what season of life am I in? Answer the same things from Question #4.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
VIRAL #1: "That They May Be One"
I can’t remember his name, but I recently heard of a theologian who once said, “I will never speak of a man’s vices, except to his face. And I will never speak of a man’s virtues, except behind his back.”
This kind of attitude can go a long way in protecting the unity of the church, as PJ talked about in his opening sermon for 2012. As Pastor John indicated in his sermon, few things can so damage the unity of a church as gossip, backbiting, and looking for the negative in others. So we need to be careful and deliberate about building up the body of Christ, rather than tearing it down or allowing anyone else to tear it down.
Interestingly enough, though, as we looked at John 17, which contains Jesus’ final prayer for His followers before going to the cross, one thing that jumped out at me was the fact that He was asking the Father to protect His followers. This chapter does not contain any instructions Jesus gave to His disciples. It contains a prayer, and so what we read here is what He was asking God to do on our behalf.
This does not absolve us of any requirement or obligation. Certainly, such passages as Philippians 2:1-4 tell us to be “of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
In his various letters, Paul actually says a great deal about what we need to do in order to build up and protect the unity of the church. However, as I said, the focus of John 17 is on what Jesus was asking God to do, which means the two go hand-in-hand. God does His part, and we are expected to do ours. And when we struggle with how this all works out, I think it best to simply say that God does His work in us and through us as we strive to obey the commands given throughout the Bible.
Another significant point to consider is the purpose for which Jesus asks the Father to protect His followers. Most immediately, it is so that we might be one. Four times in His prayer, he mentions the unity of the church (vv. 11, 21, 22, 23). But why is it so important that we be unified in this way?
Two answers are given within this passage. We find the first in verse 13, where Jesus prays, “But now I am coming to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.” Unity within the church is one key element to experiencing joy as a Christian. If you doubt that, just speak to someone who has been part of a church where there was little or no unity; a church where there was much gossip, backbiting, and arguing amidst various members of the church. They will tell you there wasn’t much joy to be experienced in that kind of setting.
The second reason Jesus prays for unity in the church is found in verses 22-23. Here, He says, “The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one…”—watch this now—“so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me.”
Oneness within the church draws people’s attention to God and to Jesus Christ. The same concept is stated in John 13:35, where Jesus told His disciples, “By this all people will know you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The antithesis is just as true. If we are not united; if we do not love each other within the church, then the world will not know we are His disciples. The world knows that one of the foundation stones of Christianity is love, particularly the love of God. So if outsiders look in at a church and see that the members of that church are not loving one another, then those outsiders will say, “They claim to be Christians, but they sure don’t seem to act like it.”
So how do the instructions of Paul tie in and relate to the prayer of Jesus. Quite simply, to tell the truth. As I’ve heard one pastor often say, “God initiates. We respond.” This is the pattern of the Christian life. With respect to oneness within the church, it starts with God placing His love within our hearts—His love for us, our love toward Him, and then His love toward those around us. As He gives us this love (in answer to Jesus’ prayer), we express it by following the commands we find in the Bible. And the more we act in obedience to God, loving each other by obeying God’s commands, the more He fills our hearts with love for Him and for one another.
QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND APPLICATION
1. How much am I striving for unity within the church? Or am I someone who may be causing division? Do I gossip and talk about people behind their back? Do I listen to gossip? If I hear someone gossiping, am I willing to address the matter with them?
2. How’s my attitude at church? How’s my attitude toward the leaders of the church? How quickly do I get angry about decisions I don’t understand or don’t agree with? When discussing church matters, publicly or privately, what tone of voice do I use?
3. Read Philippians 2:1-4. To what degree am I exhibiting these characteristics? Where do I need to improve?
4. How often do I, like Jesus, pray for unity within the church?
This kind of attitude can go a long way in protecting the unity of the church, as PJ talked about in his opening sermon for 2012. As Pastor John indicated in his sermon, few things can so damage the unity of a church as gossip, backbiting, and looking for the negative in others. So we need to be careful and deliberate about building up the body of Christ, rather than tearing it down or allowing anyone else to tear it down.
Interestingly enough, though, as we looked at John 17, which contains Jesus’ final prayer for His followers before going to the cross, one thing that jumped out at me was the fact that He was asking the Father to protect His followers. This chapter does not contain any instructions Jesus gave to His disciples. It contains a prayer, and so what we read here is what He was asking God to do on our behalf.
This does not absolve us of any requirement or obligation. Certainly, such passages as Philippians 2:1-4 tell us to be “of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
In his various letters, Paul actually says a great deal about what we need to do in order to build up and protect the unity of the church. However, as I said, the focus of John 17 is on what Jesus was asking God to do, which means the two go hand-in-hand. God does His part, and we are expected to do ours. And when we struggle with how this all works out, I think it best to simply say that God does His work in us and through us as we strive to obey the commands given throughout the Bible.
Another significant point to consider is the purpose for which Jesus asks the Father to protect His followers. Most immediately, it is so that we might be one. Four times in His prayer, he mentions the unity of the church (vv. 11, 21, 22, 23). But why is it so important that we be unified in this way?
Two answers are given within this passage. We find the first in verse 13, where Jesus prays, “But now I am coming to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.” Unity within the church is one key element to experiencing joy as a Christian. If you doubt that, just speak to someone who has been part of a church where there was little or no unity; a church where there was much gossip, backbiting, and arguing amidst various members of the church. They will tell you there wasn’t much joy to be experienced in that kind of setting.
The second reason Jesus prays for unity in the church is found in verses 22-23. Here, He says, “The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one…”—watch this now—“so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me.”
Oneness within the church draws people’s attention to God and to Jesus Christ. The same concept is stated in John 13:35, where Jesus told His disciples, “By this all people will know you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The antithesis is just as true. If we are not united; if we do not love each other within the church, then the world will not know we are His disciples. The world knows that one of the foundation stones of Christianity is love, particularly the love of God. So if outsiders look in at a church and see that the members of that church are not loving one another, then those outsiders will say, “They claim to be Christians, but they sure don’t seem to act like it.”
So how do the instructions of Paul tie in and relate to the prayer of Jesus. Quite simply, to tell the truth. As I’ve heard one pastor often say, “God initiates. We respond.” This is the pattern of the Christian life. With respect to oneness within the church, it starts with God placing His love within our hearts—His love for us, our love toward Him, and then His love toward those around us. As He gives us this love (in answer to Jesus’ prayer), we express it by following the commands we find in the Bible. And the more we act in obedience to God, loving each other by obeying God’s commands, the more He fills our hearts with love for Him and for one another.
QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND APPLICATION
1. How much am I striving for unity within the church? Or am I someone who may be causing division? Do I gossip and talk about people behind their back? Do I listen to gossip? If I hear someone gossiping, am I willing to address the matter with them?
2. How’s my attitude at church? How’s my attitude toward the leaders of the church? How quickly do I get angry about decisions I don’t understand or don’t agree with? When discussing church matters, publicly or privately, what tone of voice do I use?
3. Read Philippians 2:1-4. To what degree am I exhibiting these characteristics? Where do I need to improve?
4. How often do I, like Jesus, pray for unity within the church?
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