Spiritual Health: Godliness

Today is a day that many celebrate as Halloween, but for those of us who are Protestants, it's another day that's very important. What is today? Important day in history. Somebody, anybody?

Okay, come on now. Did I hear somebody? Somebody shout it out?

Reformation Day. October 31, 1517, a guy named Martin Luther posts what are called the 95 Theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg. And it was the start of what is the Reformation. Folks, we probably would not be sitting here today were it not for the man named Martin Luther. Because he is the one who sought to reform day and out of the Reformation all Protestants came. So those of us who are Baptists should know about this guy. He's our spiritual, one of our spiritual ancestors and one of the key teachings of the Reformation was the teaching sola scriptura which means scripture alone. Luther stood on the principle that scripture alone was our highest authority. Not the Pope, not a church council, but scripture alone and we protestants those of us who are bible believing protestants still stand on that truth that scripture is our ultimate authority and is our guide for how we live our lives amen is that not true okay well great well we're continuing in our series assessing our spiritual health seven essential questions if we really want to know we've asked a number of questions so far here are the questions that we've asked as we have attempted to diagnose our spiritual health and these are questions we've asked of ourselves individually but also of ourselves as a church question number one are we broken and mournful over our sin it's an important aspect of spiritual healthiness to be mournful over sin in our lives and to seek to eradicate sin from our lives secondly are we increasingly governed by god's word and we looked at that great solemn and sacred assembly in the book of nehemiah when we studied that question question three are we quick to forgive if we are spiritually healthy we will be willing to give who have wronged us and we will do so quickly the fourth question we looked at last week was are we growing in our compassion for hurting people and today we go to question number five and question number five is this are we growing in godliness are we growing in godliness and the text that i have picked for today is just a short text from first timothy four chapters chapter four verse part of that verse which says train yourselves to be godly train yourselves to be godly and paul goes on to write and actually it's singular i've typed it pluralist train yourself to be godly for physical training is of some value but godliness has value for all things holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

Are we growing in godliness? It's an important question in assessing our spiritual health. Let's pray as we begin. This day, Lord, I pray that we will listen intently to your word. I pray that we will allow our lives to be examined by this word.

May we understand that your word is a light to our feet, a lamp to our path, that this word penetrates down deep into our souls to expose who we are before you. I pray that we will be willing when we see where we fall short, when we look at your word, that we would be people who are willing to change, who will seek to be what you want us to be. May it be our goal in life, Lord, to live in a way that honors you and that brings glory to your name. For it is in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

As Baptists and as Evangelicals, we have a very strong emphasis on the importance of personal conversion. If we want to inherit eternal life, we must come to faith in Jesus Christ. And you will often hear the question, our pastor asks it often. Have you had a personal life-changing experience with Jesus Christ? It's a crucial and essential question.

And there is hopefully for all of us in this room that moment when we have come to faith in Christ and had conversion. But that is just the beginning of the journey. And maybe sometimes as evangelicals, we have left the impression that once we come to faith in Christ, we have completely arrived in the spiritual life and there's really not a whole lot left to do. the reality is we're just at the base of the mountain folks and now we're going to start climbing toward the mountaintop once we come to faith in Christ and I really want us to focus today on this notion of growing in godliness it's something that is a daily journey but how do we do it the text tells us train yourself to be godly but how do we do it what does it take to train ourselves to be godly well the first thing it takes is it takes personal effort training yourself takes personal effort. You see the word in the NIV translation is the word train. It comes from a Greek word, gumnadzo. If you want to be technical, put a little long work over that O right there.

Gumnadzo is the verb form. The noun form, training, is gumnasia. What word do we get from that? What English word? Gumnasia. The gymnasium, right? It's the place where you exercise. It is the place where you train the new american standard says discipline yourself to be godly but there's a sense here of personal effort to grow in godliness now let me make a point here it is true that as believers in the lord jesus christ we have his spirit his spirit is at work in us to help us to grow in godliness but we are to put all of our effort into this as well and seek god's spirit to help us but we have here a command that calls us to continuous action train is a command that calls us to continuous action it is not something we do one day it is something that is to be a regular continuous part of our spiritual lives if we wish to grow in godliness now this is the difficult part quite frankly this continuous action but it's essential to be at it regularly

Effective spiritual training involves a number of things. Let me just throw these out here for your consideration. Effective spiritual training requires time. If you're going to train physically, if you're going to get your body in shape, it takes time to do it. You don't get rock-hard abs in two minutes a day.

You don't get rock-hard abs if you work out one time a month. It is something that requires time. It is also something that requires consistency.

The best athletes are those who have a consistent training program, a regular training program. And if we are going to grow in godliness, we have to have a regular, consistent training program in order to learn how we are to be and how to grow in godliness. Thirdly, it takes self-discipline. You know, there's so many products on the market to help you with physical training, for those of us who don't have self-discipline, right? You only need to do this three minutes a day, five minutes a day.

The reality is that both physically and spiritually it takes some self-discipline in order to grow in godliness, some self-control. Thirdly, it takes proper training methods. Just as the great Olympic athletes have a great training program, they use the right methods to train, spiritually we have to use good training methods grow in godliness. Fourthly, we should see progressive improvement. If we are giving time and consistently in a self-disciplined way using proper training methods, we should progressively improve in godliness. In other words, we should see a sanctifying process, a process of maturing in the Christian faith. Now to be sure, the Apostle Paul near the end of his life calls himself the chief of sinners. But I think that's because he was so mature in the faith that he saw even the slightest of sins as being something that was so far from what he should be in God's eyes that he called himself the chief of sinners. But the reality is he had been growing in godliness throughout his lifetime. We should see incremental improvement. It's not to say on we're improving. We sometimes take three steps forward and a couple of steps backwards, don't we?

But as we step back and see sort of the direction of our lives, if we are in Christ and if we are in spiritual training, we should be growing in this idea of godliness, developing a character that is more and more Christ-like. And if we're not seeing that, if we're not seeing that progressive improvement there's something wrong there's something wrong we need to go back and start to ask some questions about our spiritual health are we not devoting the time to this are we in christ is maybe the fundamental question the very first question but then are we devoting the time to it are we being consistent in our spiritual training it's very important to see this progressive improvement we train with a purpose in other words a good athlete training for the olympics Olympics is not just training to train. He's training for a purpose. He's training to be able to run the race. He's training in order to win the prize.

We have a goal when we are in training spiritually. The goal is godliness. And I'm going to talk about that more in just a minute. And lastly, effective spiritual training requires desire. You've got to want it.

You have to want it. Do you want to be godly? Do you want to be more Christ-like in your character? You've got to want it. If you really don't care, if it's really not a priority in your life, you're not going to get there.

You're not going to see the progressive improvement. There has to be a deep, down-in-the-pit-of-the-soul passion to be godly. So it takes personal effort. The training methods we use are often called the spiritual disciplines. The spiritual disciplines are a means to an end.

We don't just read the Bible to be able to check off at the end of the week we read the Bible. We don't just pray so at the end of the week we can check off. We prayed. We're doing those things for a purpose. We have a goal.

The goal is to grow in godliness. So we do these things as a means to an end. The spiritual disciplines, the training methods we use include a number of items, but particularly Bible study and meditation. If we want to progress in godliness, we must be in God's Word. If we are not in God's Word, we will not progress.

It is a foundation for this progressive growth. We need to be praying. praying for many things but praying for God's spirit to help us to give us the discipline to give us the desire to grow in godliness it's kind of mysterious to me that when we pray and sincerely ask God's help in this process he does it and you begin to see those things that were a real struggle progressively slowly we begin to to improve in those areas when we seek his help fasting is often a part of spiritual development at least as a part of our spiritual training confession worship and there are many other spiritual disciplines i'm going to mention a book in a few minutes called celebration of discipline a book by richard foster he lists 12 different spiritual disciplines that he suggests we engage in but i'm going to suggest to you the two most important are those first two i have on the list there bible study and meditation and prayer are the two most critical spiritual training methods that we must have in our lives okay so personal effort train the second aspect of growing in godliness is personal responsibility

train yourself train yourself there was a time in my life that i was very dissatisfied with the church a time when i was really seeking out about the things of the lord most of you know after i lost my son joshua i was really searching and as i began to search i found in my study my personal study I found there were so many things the church hadn't taught me so many things I hadn't learned about theology so many things I hadn't learned about the bible so many things I didn't know about the history of the church so many things I didn't know about personal spiritual formation and I was really angry at God's church the church for not helping me find these things but you know what at the end of the day you don't get to pass the buck the reality was it wasn't the church's fault so much as it was my own fault. And so this is something where folks, at the end of the day, we will stand before the Lord and give an account individually. So you may have had a difficult childhood. You may not have had godly parents. You may not have had friends who influenced you in the right way.

Maybe you have been in church settings that were not healthy or were not helpful in helping you grow in godliness. But you know what? You can't blame others, ultimately. Parents, church, all have a responsibility to help. But we must look at ourselves and ask, what are we doing to assure that we are growing in godliness?

with us. So if you've been making excuses for why things haven't been the way they should be in your spiritual life, the Lord may be brought you here today to hear. Stop looking to others to blame. Take personal responsibility and begin yourself to train. Now personal responsibility means that we must do some self-analysis. We have to be willing to look at ourselves and say, okay, hey, what am I really like?

You know, when nobody's watching, when I'm all alone, when no one would catch me if I did something, what am I really like? Where do I fall short of what God wants me to be? Now, many of us never do this. We don't want to take this responsibility of self-analysis. And why not?

because it's not much fun looking at all of our black spots of all the places we fall short. But it is critical to see the shortcomings if we want to improve. It takes self-control, and we've alluded to this, but if we're the ones taking personal responsibility, then we must exercise the self-control. That means we must be willing to plug into our schedules We must do whatever it takes to control our schedules, our lives, so that we can be engaged in this spiritual training. And I'm going to press again.

The buck stops here. Paul said to Timothy, train yourself, but go to the Lord. You can depend on Him to help you. Philippians 2 and 11. It is God who is at work in you to work for His will and for His pleasure.

depend on God. Lastly, personal effort, personal responsibility, but then a personal goal or personal desire. The reason we take the personal effort, the reason we have personal responsibility is so that we can achieve godliness. Now I've been talking about godliness, but I haven't defined it yet. So here's my definition of what godliness is. Godliness is character that reflects our relationship with reverence for and devotion to God. His character that reflects our relationship with reverence for and devotion for God. Godliness is an inward character that we express in outward behavior. Godliness combines both right belief with right behavior. Godliness is ultimately who but it's reflected in what we do.

How do we know if we have a godly character? If that's the goal, how do we know if we've reached the goal? Well, I think this is where we must measure our lives and our character against what Scripture teaches our character should be. And when we see what it should be and we fall short of that, then we work to achieve that character. Here are some places you can go, I think, to help you understand if you have godly character.

Go and read Galatians 5, 22, and 23, the fruit of the Spirit, which helps really define the sorts of character we should have in our lives or the sorts of virtues we should have. What's the fruit of the Spirit? It's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Wow. Now what I have found after many years is I have to usually take one of those and work on it.

I have worked for a long time on gentleness. I found myself so often, particularly earlier in my life, when I really got committed to the Lord, I would get somebody in a corner and I thought as a lawyer I could convince anything about the truth of the gospel, the truth about Jesus Christ. and when they wouldn't just see the truth, I would start really ratcheting down with cross-examination, you know, and really pinning them to the wall. And I finally realized, number one, that's not going to have much effect usually. Usually all that does is push people in the other direction.

And so I said, I need to learn how to talk about these things in a way that's gentle. Understanding I can't force someone to change their minds. Only the Lord's Spirit can do that.

be their friends be kind to them and maybe there would be another one of those characteristics that would be the one that you find most difficult and I would suggest pick one of those and begin to work on it another place you can go is to the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount where Christ really describes the types of traits we should have in our lives if we are one of his followers we should hunger and thirst for righteousness should be merciful we should be pure in heart and that's a great list of character traits we can then measure ourselves against it to see if we are godly and then lastly we can ask the question are we christ-like there is no better model for us than jesus christ and if we understand his life and his character we can then measure ourselves against it my wife louise teaches at the Greer Christian Learning Center along with Kathy Neely. A great program, folks. 400, is that right, Kathy? 400, approximately? 445. 445 Greer Middle School students for one hour a week leave the public school, go across the street to the Greer Christian Learning Center for one hour of biblical instruction. It's constitutionally permitted because they're not on school property, no school money but with parental permission they go for one hour of training it is a great program they touch more youth in our community for jesus christ in any in any week than any church in our community every church in this community if they're serious about reaching children for jesus christ ought to be supporting this ministry because they touch more youth than any single church in our community that's the reality but my wife louise was talking with her students and she said one way to know how you if you're growing in godliness is this at the end of the day when you're getting ready to go to bed and you're washing your face and you look in the mirror and see yourself you can ask yourself the question do i look more like jesus christ today than i did yesterday and if you have to answer honestly well no i don't then figure out why not and tomorrow with God's help say I'm going to improve in that area so that tomorrow when I look I can say yes today I look a little more like Jesus Christ than I did before you know those lessons for children usually are pretty good lessons for adults too do I look more like Jesus Christ today how do we know if we truly desire godliness we've defined what it is how do you know if you really desire it you know it's one thing to say our desire godliness but how do you know if you truly desire it The proof is in the pudding.

Our desire for godliness is demonstrated by our willingness to be engaged in the spiritual disciplines. You want to grow in godliness? Okay, I hear you. How many of us this past week spent regular time alone with God and the Word?

How many of us spent time meditating on the Word? How many of us spent time praying? you want about yes I want to be godly but if you really desire it it's going to be evidenced by the fact that you're in spiritual training you know you can tell me you'd like to win the 10k

what's the one down in Charleston the bridge run the bridge run you can tell me that but if all you're doing is eating Twinkies

and sleeping in the bed and you're not running and engaging that desire is a false statement. The reality is so often in the Christian life and this has been true in my own life I would talk about yes I want to be godly but then I would look back and I say what have I really done to pursue that? What efforts have I made toward being godly? let me make one last point before i go uh to a couple other things godliness is a penultimate goal that means it's the next to the highest goal the highest goal is to glorify god let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven whatever you do whether you eat or drink do it all for the glory of god we live godly lives godly we have godly character and do the right things not so that we get glory and not just so we can say oh we're godly we do it so he gets the glory when somebody says wow do you see what he or she is doing we want them to understand we're doing it because we serve a loving savior who has forgiven us so much and we are then returning back to him by serving him everybody got that what is the chief end of man or let's say it in a more modern way what is our chief purpose in life to glorify god and enjoy him forever first question the westminster catechism okay did i put preparing for eternity on your handout i did okay i want to just say one brief word about that i didn't put it on the screen paul says that physical training is of some value but godliness has value for all things holding promise for the present life and the life to come so physical training is good for this life it helps keep this body in shape but paul says spiritual training for godliness is good not only in this life it helps us to have right character here right behavior here but it's also good for the next life and i began to think about when we die and go to heaven aren't we all going to be transformed into sinless beings so what what what does my godliness now have to do with eternity to be sure if i'm following christ i should want that godly character but how how does being godly affect my time in eternity let me give i think there are two thoughts on that number one our affects rewards we will enjoy in heaven. All who have faith in Christ will enter into eternal life, but there will be rewards for those who were particularly godly.

So godliness now means additional reward there, I submit. Secondly, I think godliness here will give us a deeper experience of heaven there. that. Louise and I will sometimes go together to an art gallery. Louise was an art major. And we will go in and look at these beautiful paintings by these artists. And I think they are beautiful pictures. But the experience that I have in viewing those pictures is not as deep as the experience Louise has. Because when Louise looks at a piece of artwork, she already knows something about the artist who drew it and when she looks at the painting she knows about how that artist worked to get proportion into the picture and when she sees the picture she sees the perspective she sees the shading of the colors she sees how the shadows were used by the artist she has a much deeper and fuller appreciation of that painting than I do and it gives her a richer experience looking at the artwork.

So yes, I get to enjoy it, but she enjoys it at a deeper level. I'm going to submit to you, at least for your thinking, that those of us who in this life have given all we can to know the great master, to know what he's like, to know what he's done for us, I submit to you, those who have devoted themselves to godliness in this life will be like Louie standing before the piece of artwork. There will be a deeper, richer experience in heaven. No one will feel slighted. I don't feel slighted when I stand in front of the artwork in the art gallery, but those who have devoted themselves to godliness will get the deeper, richer experience of that.

So, now let's go to Lessons for Life. Find regular times each week, preferably daily, for Bible reading, meditation, and prayer. I'm going to emphasize meditation for just a moment because I think it is one area we often fall short in. Meditation, one writer said, is the soul's chewing. Or this is the way I define it.

Meditation is wrestling with the divine word with an eye to applying its transforming truth to our daily lives. so do you hear what i'm saying we don't just you know you don't just read two chapters and say boy i'm done for the day i would prefer us to find one or two important truths pause reflect on what those truths mean examine how we measure up examine how we can change to be what god's word wants us to be it's meditation is taking time to reflect and think through how we can be all God wants us to be. It takes time. It takes some applied thought, but it's so critical if we're going to see this progressive improvement. One comment on prayer, and this is another tidbit from Louise. Prayer has always been one of my most difficult spiritual disciplines.

I always want to do something, you know. Pray. I want to do something. I need to learn, right? Praying is the first thing we ought to do. But Louise said, you know what Louise does? This may happen to some of you as you get a little older. Sometimes you wake up during the night, have a little bit of a hard time going back to sleep. You know what Louise does? And she told me this one night, and I've started to adopt this practice. When she wakes up at night and she can't sleep, she lies in the bed and she prays.

She begins to pray for Caleb and for his new wife, Paige, and for Kate. She prays a lot for her husband. It is a great time. I have found this to be so enriching. lying there can't sleep so i begin to pray and some reason i find it's easier then to ultimately go back to sleep too but it's a it's a great time to pray second lesson for life be passionate in seeking after god and godliness a w tozer says in a book pursuit of god he says come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after god they mourned for him. They prayed and wrestled and sought after him day and night, in season and out. And when they had found him, the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. You know what I don't see among the church people so often today? I don't see this just passionate desire to know Jesus Christ, to know the Lord, this passionate desire to be more like him. I want to see that sort of all consuming, all passionate seeking after him. And that's what Tozer is pressing us toward. Thirdly, busyness, and distractions of life to make time for God.

It's a very difficult thing for us to do. The enemy majors in noise, crowds, hurry, and stuff. He doesn't want us to have time to even think about godliness or God. So he keeps us busy, keeps us distracted, keeps us running. You ever feel that way all day long?

You're just running, running. At the end of the day, you wondered, you know, All it was was a series of interruptions strung together. It is a battle. But we have to carve out space to get to know our Lord and to grow in godliness. And it is tough.

It is tough. But somehow we have to figure out how to do that. I would suggest you read, if you haven't read before, first the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7. And there are two books that are great. It's Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster and then A.W. Tozer's Pursuit of God.

Fifthly, consider a training partner, somebody else who is really interested in growing in godliness, who you can maybe share some of your reflections with, maybe somebody who can hold you a little bit accountable, how you're doing in your prayer time, how you're doing in your Bible reading. It may be your spouse, but sometimes I found maybe it's somebody beside your spouse who might be a good one to do that with. I know Louise and I, we started back jogging together back last December. And boy, it's a lot easier to get up and go running when somebody is right there saying, come on, let's go. And I think the same is true in our spiritual lives.

We need that partner to help us be disciplined to continue to go forward. It's hard to run solo, and I don't think our Lord intended us to. That's why he gave us brothers and sisters in Christ. Be a slogger.

that's louise's term again uh when we people would ask us are you running and i always felt bad saying i was running because if you saw us you wouldn't think it was running so louise came up with the word slogger it's a cross of slow jogger we're sloggers we're slow just a little step at a time but you know since december since we started back being a little more we're doing Okay.

We're not going to be in the Olympics, but we're making improvement. I want us to be sloggers in the Christian life. Every day, steady, a little bit. We may not be fast. We may be slow in our growth.

But you know what? If you are daily, steadily growing, day in, day out, five years in the future, you can turn around and look back and say, Wow, I wasn't moving very fast. But in five years, I've moved a long way. Don't try to do what I used to do when I would get out of shape training. I would try in one week to be back into peak conditioning.

We all know now we can't do that. If spiritually you haven't been where you should be in your spiritual training, don't get up tomorrow at 4 in the morning and try to pray for two hours. I would suggest you get up maybe 10 minutes before your normal time and prayer and start to develop a habit. I would rather see consistent small doses than one big dose infrequently. It will do better.

A chapter a day helps keep the devil away. Lastly, think more about heaven and less about earth.

When we think about heaven, when we think about eternity, it helps us keep things in perspective. We often get distracted because we don't remember what's really important in life. Remember what's important. Think more about heaven, less about earth.