Understanding Spiritual Growth - Lesson 6

Dr. Stephen Martyn 
Understanding Spiritual Growth  
sf304-06
Living by Covenant 
Lesson Transcript

Welcome everyone to our sixth session in this Foundations course. I'm so glad you have hung in there and stayed with us this long. In this session, I want to give you an overview, at least, of what it means to live by covenant.

Now, covenant is an ancient reality that people from early, early on have lived by. What's a covenant? Well, a covenant is here's who the Lord is, and here's what he promises, and then here's what he asks of us, and we covenant, make a commitment, a promise with him to live by what he asks of us. It starts very early on in the Old Testament, Suzerain Treatise.

You'll see it if you go through the Sandra Richter materials on Epic of Eden, but I want us to look at covenant, and let me draw out for you just some major categories in contemporary language of what covenant might look like. So, we can start at the top with what I call devotional living. Big picture here is all of life is to be lived in devotion to the Lord our God, and then we can follow it with the big picture covenant idea of relational strengthening, and by relational strengthening, I mean knowing that, I mean, what do we have in terms of our Christian faith if we don't have good relationships with others? We don't have anything.

So, the Lord definitely wants to strengthen who we are in our loving, caring relationships with others. Clearly, he wants us to live in the reality of vocational, vocational serving, and with vocational serving, this is that big picture idea that the Lord calls us to serve in his kingdom, and then we want to be aware of such issues as temple nurturing. Now, what is temple nurturing? Temple nurturing is an acknowledgment that our bodies, the physicality that the Lord has given us is sacred, and we are called to be a good steward even of the physical bodies that we have been given.

Now, don't mistake me here. There's no dualism, but we don't want to come at this with a dualistic understanding, but we are an incarnated soul, is the medieval church understanding of this from Thomas Aquinas, and the soul is always seeking to form, he used the word formata, is always seeking to form our physical bodies, and this temple nurturing is going to include exercise and rest, and it's also going to include, oh, I'm sorry, nutritional sanity. Unfortunately, we live in a day and time of what the early church called gormadizing.

You've heard of the French word gourmet, as in a nice rich food, which we all enjoy occasionally, but in gormadizing, you're way overdoing it, excessive consumption, and then we want to have this big category of re-creational, restoring. Now, by that, I mean that we are creatures, and we need the restoration of the Lord coming in our lives, and he may have a very unique way of restoring you. You know, if I can sit, if I can walk on the ocean beach a couple of times a year, which the Lord has already fulfilled that this year, that's deeply restoring, and then if I can match that by going up into the Rocky Mountains in the western part of the United States, then it's kind of a complete cycle for me.

Also, good movies can do that. There are still a few good movies left. A wonderful book can do that.

You may have hobbies that restore you. My wife and I, very recently, the last few weeks, were blessed, I mean deeply gifted, with a miniature golden doodle. We love that puppy, and a little puppy just brings sheer joy to our lives.

You know, you're talking unconditional love. Yeah, there's messes involved with it, but still. So, re-creational, restoring, there's all sorts of ways.

Now, in our last session, when we were talking about combining doctrine and practice, you know, Ed brought up this whole issue of listening to the Holy Spirit, and why that's so important, and how in the world do we get the doctrine truly integrated into our daily lives. I mean, look, here's where the rubber meets the road. If it can't get integrated, we don't have it.

We may know about it, but we're not living the reality and the fullness of the Word of God. So, to look at that, let's look at this whole issue here of devotional living, because that's the area where we want to be really intentional about how the Holy Spirit works, transforming mercies in our lives. When you gather a group together with devotional, and you want them to think in terms of these major doctrines, you want them to think about what they are called to do, and how they are called to incarnate these major doctrines.

I don't know of any other way to do it other than to first, in our covenant together, we're going to talk about prayer. And this prayer is going to be day in and day out. We're going to ask them to, first of all, pray for one another as we journey together.

Everyone's going to have unique circumstances, unique challenges, and they need to hear from the Lord. We're going to ask the group to pray for one another so that that person can hear directly from the Lord. Prayer is going to permeate everything, and we want to have times of prayer, where daily times of prayer, where not only are they speaking to the Lord, but much more importantly, they're listening to the Lord.

Listen, the greatest gift our Father has given you is the gift to receive his word. And how are you going to receive that word in the midst of a overcommitted, insane life? It's really hard. Now, there's times when all of us have to enter into those times where it's an emergency kind of thing.

But if you're living in that type of existence continually, then it's going to throw you off and you're never going to be able to hear. So a part of prayer is, okay, Lord, what do you have to say to me today? Now, I want you to couple this with the next key ingredient that comes along here, and that is I'm going to be in the word every day. I've found that when I take a small group of people and I put them on the same page of scripture every day, you following what I'm saying here? In other words, all of us are going to read the same exact scripture every day.

Now, that wouldn't keep them from reading more. Of course, they could do that. But I'm going to ask them to be on this two-year reading track with me, and I'm not going to overload it.

There's not going to be huge chapters at a time every day, except Sundays. Now, Sundays, we're going to ask everyone to be in church and in worship. And so Sundays, we're not going to have the reading plan because they're going to hear the word of God in worship.

But six days a week, we're going to be in the same psalm, praying that psalm. And we might even pray some weeks, we might pray the same psalm for six times. That would be the only psalm we'll cover, but at least one psalm per day.

That's the prayer book, the p-s-a-l-m-s, the psalms, that's the prayer book. I'm going to have them in an Old Testament reading. And then I'm going to have them in a New Testament reading.

And so, everyone's going to have their prayer assignment or their scripture assignments. Whether you print that out or you buy them a text, one of the Reuben Joe, Bishop Reuben Joe wrote five wonderful texts about how to do this, a guide to prayer for ministers and other servants is the first one. And then I'm going to have everybody have a notebook.

And so, I'm going to ask them to listen to what the word is saying to them. Now, what's the presupposition here? The presupposition, which is based on not just 2000 years of Christian history, but all the way back to the beginning, is that God speaks to his people. And so, I'm going to listen after reading the word.

I'm going to respectfully enter the word, not to master it, but to be mastered by it. And I'm going to ask the Lord to speak his word. Now, you say, well, Steve, you're just promoting individualism here.

No, I'm not. Because I'll tell you why. You're listening to his word, not my word to him.

Get the difference? Plus, if you're doing it as a group and everyone is writing down maybe a little insight, maybe they only get one insight or two insights a day or a week, even that's all right. We're reading the same scriptures and we're going to come back and share what did the Lord have to say to us through those scriptures. So, we're tying, we're going to tie the word and prayer together.

That's how we start tuning our spiritual hearts and putting our spiritual ears close to God's mouth. We're going to allow him to speak and we're going to ask, directly ask the Holy Spirit to help us to hear so that I can hear all of the invitations through his word that he's sending me. And we're going to keep it from craziness by saying, you know, this got to match up now with the word.

You can't go off on your own with individual insights or revelations here that changes the word. You don't need to change the word. It's so rich.

It's so full. It's got your whole life. Your whole life is right there, and it will lead you your whole life.

So, I'm developing this listening through reading the word, then we're going to be, we're going to ask them to be regularly in worship. Now, worship is going to be a way of living. So, to worship the Lord, to praise him, to adore him and to follow him every day and to come to the corporate time of praise and worship every week where in that place, also I listen, I hear, I'll hear in the music, the music of eternity flows through our minds.

When we sing these beautiful praise songs and songs that are about him, the hymns, I don't care if you're doing old hymns or contemporary praise hymns, songs, it just doesn't matter if it's focused on him. So in worship, I'm adoring and I'm listening. I'm waiting.

I'm bowing before him in bowing. That's an open posture of subservience to the Lord. And I'm saying, speak, Lord, your servant listens, your servant listens.

I'm going to, I'm going to ask them to uphold the discipline of fasting. The early church for hundreds of years fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays. They'd eat a normal meal on, let's say Thursday night, and then they'd fast until three o'clock in the afternoon on Fridays.

And it's kind of funny in England, high teatime is always three o'clock in the afternoon. But the thing was in practice long before there was high teatime. So in that time, I'm going to have extra time to listen and extra time to focus on the Lord.

And if I can't fast from physical food, I can still enter into the discipline. We can turn off those insane little devices we have. Is there one of those nice little insane phone devices that we have? Mine's turned off in a way.

So yeah, we're going to turn off these things. Okay. This is a national disease.

I use it. I use, I've got the word on it. I've got, you know, I keep in touch.

I can do almost everything on it, but there are times when I've got to turn it off so I can listen to something greater. I'm going to limit my consumption of media and I'm going to limit my consumption of television. Um, why to hear the greater word and fasting is going to help me do that.

I'm going to commit. I'm going to commit to meeting with a small group. This small group every week is going to be my first priority.

Why? Because I believe we believe that the Holy Spirit speaks through other people in our lives. Why else? Because friends, you're not strong enough to do it all on your own. No one is strong enough to do this.

Why else? All of us are prone to miss judgment. All of us are prone to make mistakes, to miss the way of God's holiness for us. I need the body of Christ speaking into my life on a regular, regular basis.

We're going to insist now that I'm also going to listen to God with my overall stewardship of my personal life and of my finances. He is first in all things. He's, he is called to be first.

And then I'm going to listen to God in how I'm called to serve. Now, that sounds like a lot and to some of your people, it will be a lot. So, there have been times when I've said, can you let me ask you, can you pray for three minutes and we're all going to pray for you this week.

Every one of us is going to pray for you that you get in three minutes this week of prayer every day. They come back the next week and say, I just couldn't do it. It was too much.

I'm not going to condemn them. I'm going to come to a point of saying, can you pray for one minute a day? I've done this a number of times and everybody in the group is going to be praying for them to pray for one minute a day. And we just stay with them, encouraging them.

And what you're going to find is members of the group then will start calling each other and say, I just want you to know I'm praying for you for this issue, for you to be able to be able to be still and listen. And I'm praying that you'll be able to stay in the word and to read these assignments. It'll be a great adventure for you, a wonderful, wonderful adventure for them.

I'm going to pray also under this temple nurturing business that they get an appropriate amount of exercise in during their daily lives and throughout the week, three times a week, at least to get into exercise. Now, here's another surprising finding I've had in doing all of this in walking and in exercising and in pulling out the earplugs and doing that, people find it to be a phenomenal time of prayer, a blessed time. And I've seen this whole thing of exercise do more transformation than almost anything in all of this.

So, you see where I'm going with all of this, a slow, slow process. You're not cascading people, you're not shaming people, you're encouraging people. I'm going to pray every day and we're praying for you to be able to pray every day.

I'm going to be in the word every day and we're praying for you to be in the word every day. We're praying that you'll see and listen to how the Holy Spirit wants you to serve. And you may not see it all together right now.

So you just trust it. You walk in faith knowing that he is going to show you we're going to take care of our bodies, including rest and exercise and nutritional sanity. We're going to seek out time to do those things that restore our spirits.

People's lives become dramatically different, but it's going to take a while. This is not a fast-food mentality. We'll talk about this in the upcoming session.

Let me ask now if there's any comments about, you know, listening to the Holy Spirit through all of this and why that's so important and how these means of grace any, any comments now here. So, would you say that this is the idea that Christianity or being a Christian is more than just a decision that you make at one point in your life? It's more of a way of life. It's more of being a disciple than it is just making a decision at one point in your life. 

Sure. You know, we need the wisdom of God on all of this. I do think that there are times when people have made a decision and it, it, it may be right before they die.

I don't know, but I found it's never my place. And Ed, this is not your, your question. I'm adding input here.

It's never my place to decide who's in and who's out. But maybe that was all that could come. And in the Lord's graciousness, you know, those workers who only worked at the last part of the day, they get paid the same amount.

We don't like those, those parables, but clearly, clearly this type of listening to the word of God, who is Jesus, the living word of God and allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to me. And, and, and as I listen and as he speaks, and then the most important thing is, as I'm obedient to what he shares with me, that's the key right there. And it may just be a little tiny obedience, but oh my gosh, you rejoice at that little bitty obedience that was clearly given by the word.

And you may not understand it, but you still walk in it. That's the, that's the, that's the point where heaven and earth, you know, intersect. And so of course we want that increased through a lifetime of obedience. 

So, thank you, Ed, for the, for the question. Any other comments? So, we're good. All right.

Well, this is a covenant structure. I encourage you to think what is going to be your core covenant. Don't make it long.

The shorter it is, the better it is. I've made the mistake of having engineers make covenants for me, and they come out with three pages, single space. Don't do that.

You just want a few short phrases like this, and you're asking the Lord to help you set it up. God bless you as you set your hand to the task before you. Amen.