Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The speaker emphasizes the importance of prayer in one's life and encourages listeners to cultivate an effective relationship with God. They compare the concept of airplane mode on a phone to spiritual discipline, which allows individuals to disconnect from stress and responsibilities. The speaker mentions various spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, worship, and serving, and highlights the benefits of incorporating these disciplines into one's life. They stress that discipline is necessary for growth in Christ and becoming more like Him. The speaker also mentions that Jesus frequently sought solitude to be alone with God. They conclude by discussing the significance of prayer and fasting as a spiritual discipline. But as we're looking to grow in Christ this year, I really hope that you will get a hold of your prayer life and really cultivate that effective relationship with God, because there's no substitute for prayer in your life. Not skill, not talent, not intelligence or wit or savviness. None of it is a worthy substitute for prayer in your life. Welcome to Elevate from Authentic Life Church in Mobile, Alabama with Pastor John DiQuatro. We hope it builds your faith and helps you to live a life for God that you've always wanted to live. We hope it inspires you to be a fully devoted, authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the message and welcome to Elevate. We are launching into this year with a sermon series entitled Airplane Mode. Now, everybody has an airplane mode on your phone, and you know how to flip that on. When we hit this button, it turns off our Wi-Fi, it turns off our cellular, it turns off our Bluetooth, and basically disconnects us from all the things in our life that are pulling at us. So we can't get our texts when we're in airplane mode, we can't browse our social media, we can't check email, we can't stream our favorite videos on YouTube or TikTok, we can't do any of those things. And when we are asked to turn airplane mode on, when we get onto a plane and the pilot says, alright, put your phone in airplane mode, oh, how uncomfortable that is. We hate that, we hate all of a sudden having to disconnect. And then for the next two or three hours on a plane, we learn to disconnect from the anxiety of what might be on the phone. Right, who might be trying to reach us while we're 30,000 feet above the air and trying to contact us, and during those few hours that we have, we have to learn to just be. Be with our thoughts, be with a book, just take a nap. And after a couple hours of that, it's like a cleansing. I don't know, I feel great after a plane ride, I feel like my thoughts are clear. Airplane mode can be a wonderful thing for our mental health. And I'll give you a little tip. You don't have to be on an airplane to use airplane mode. You can turn that thing on anytime you want and disconnect. But we have an airplane mode for the rest of our life. We have moments where we can disconnect from the stress and the frustrations and the responsibilities and cares of our jobs and our family and our finances and our children and our education and our burdens. And that airplane mode that we have is called spiritual discipline. Spiritual discipline, now that may sound like a really hard word to hear, maybe it sounds like an oppressive phrase to you. But let me tell you something, and we're going to learn about this, but the idea of spiritual discipline is what's going to keep you from repeating the same sins over and over and over again. It's going to keep us from frequently wandering away and then feeling as though somehow God has matted us and then we've got to get resaved and we've got to try to please God. Once again, it's going to keep us from wandering around that same mountain. It's going to keep us from that fear and give us a complete peace in our relationship with God. And ultimately it brings the real transformation in your life that you desire. And that is to be more like Christ. So let's see real quick what the Bible has to say about spiritual disciplines. And this is not the only place in the Word where we find scriptures like this. But in 1 Corinthians 9, beginning in verse 24, it says this, Don't you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize. So run to win. All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away. But we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I'm not just shadow boxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others, I myself might be disqualified. Paul is talking about and comparing the training that an athlete goes through to become the best and to finish well to the training that we must do spiritually in training our bodies to come in line with the Spirit of God. Now, the word discipline simply means this. It's to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. Brushing your teeth and showering daily. That's a discipline for those of you that do that. Some of you haven't figured out this one yet either, Gideon. Getting up on time for work is a discipline. Practicing an instrument or training for a sport, those things are a discipline. It is training yourself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. We can't expect to have good hygiene and health, keep a job or get good at an instrument or a sport without the intentional effort that it takes to accomplish these things. Your growth in Christ is the same way. It's intentional. You know, our mission statement for Authentic Life Church is to build a community of fully devoted, authentic followers of Jesus Christ. In a word, as a church, we are committed to being and making disciples. Now, if you look at that word discipline, you notice the root word is disciple. These things go hand in hand. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ, a fully devoted follower, these things go hand in hand. That discipleship cannot really exist without discipline. Because growing in Christ is a very intentional thing. And like these other areas of discipline that we've discussed, we cannot expect to grow in Christ by saying a prayer and coming to church once a week. That's not going to do it for us. There are disciplines that we must embrace and employ in our daily lives in order to grow in Christ and become more like Him. It says here in Galatians chapter 6, beginning in verse 7, Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction. And when the Bible talks about flesh, it's talking about you, your desires, your cravings, your wants, all that sin nature that's just compelling you to do things that are opposite from what God would have for you to do. So whoever sows to please that flesh is going to reap destruction. But whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. So let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. You know, in the areas of fitness and wealth and parenting and school and health and personal growth and other things, we reap the benefits or the consequences of our discipline or lack thereof. Whether it's good or whether it's bad, something that we do habitually over and over and over again, right, is going to produce something in your life. It's going to produce a benefit or it's going to produce a consequence. I promise you this, if you eat four donuts and a pound of bacon every single morning for breakfast, you're going to reap the consequences of that in the area of clogged arteries and your scale is going to not work and it's going to tell you that you weigh more than you think you do. Right, there are consequences to the things that we do. But if we do things, right, like eat healthy, right, and take care of our bodies, then the benefit that we reap is we weigh what we want to weigh, our arteries are healthy, right, so there are consequences and or benefits. So the question is, what do you want with regards to your relationship with God? What is the benefit that you are looking for? Do you want to have a frustrated and fearful relationship with God whereby you always think that somehow you've lost your salvation? Or do you want a deep, peaceful, abiding life in Christ? You'll reap what you sow. If you want the latter, if you want that peaceful, abiding life in Christ, then in order to do that, you've got to sow discipline, spiritual discipline into your life. Now listen, don't be afraid that you don't have enough time or energy to incorporate spiritual disciplines in your life. I love what Richard Foster, the author of a really incredible book, if you don't have it, I encourage you to get it, it's called Celebration of Discipline. He says this, God intends the disciplines of the spiritual life to be for ordinary human beings, people who have jobs, who care for children, who wash dishes and mow lawns. The primary requirement is a longing after God. We can do it. So as we continue this series, we're going to look at the varying disciplines of the Christian life, such as fasting and prayer and worship and serving and giving and rest and solitude, simplicity, confession, some or all of these things we're going to discuss. Now some of these disciplines that we get to, they may not sound very spiritual to us, but they are very important, because the goal is to get this flesh in line with the Spirit of God, with the principles of God's Word. Remember what Paul said to the Corinthians, right? He said, I discipline my body like an athlete so that it will do what it should. It takes discipline to get our flesh under the Lordship of the Spirit of God. And as we incorporate disciplines into our lives, we take on the nature of Christ. We learn how to hear His voice. We begin to understand more what is important to Him. And most importantly, as we incorporate spiritual disciplines in our life, we squeeze out the sinful and evil desires of our flesh so that we can become more like Christ. So that's an introduction to what spiritual disciplines are. But today we're going to look at a particular area of spiritual discipline called prayer and fasting. And I'm putting these two things together, and you'll see why. But we're going to talk about prayer and fasting today as a spiritual discipline. And I'll try to get through this in as short amount of time as possible. But I want you to get the truth of God's Word. Amen? You know, Jesus frequently sought time apart to be alone with God all throughout the gospel narratives. He's not seeking solitude for the sake of solitude. That this solitude for Jesus created the necessary space for Him to have communion with God, His Father. So He would steal away from His life to be alone with God. And what we'll find is that when we separate ourselves from all the distractions of life, that is a place where prayer can flourish. In fact, when Jesus was talking to His followers about prayer, He tells them this in Matthew 6 beginning in verse 5. He says, when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that's all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father who sees everything will reward you. What's Jesus saying here? Well, first of all, He's saying that your prayers are not reserved for public spaces, only so that people can see how spiritual you are. If you don't pray all throughout the week, and then you come in here on a Sunday and you're like, Oh God! And you just, you know, blurt out those lofty prayers so everyone can hear you, the Bible says you're getting your reward. Your reward is that everybody can hear you and see how spiritual you are. That's your reward. He's saying that prayer is meant to be an intimate time of communion with your Father, a secret, solitary time when you shut everything else out. Not in front of the TV, not with your phone in your hand so that you can respond to notifications, not while you're distracted, but that it would be a time where it's just you and God alone and in solitude. And this type of prayer will be rewarded. How will it be rewarded? With closer union and fellowship with God, your Father. Now let's look at Jesus' discipline of prayer, because a lot of these spiritual disciplines we're going to talk about are the patterns that Jesus lived while he was walking on the earth. And so let's look at Jesus' discipline of prayer. Luke 6, beginning in verse 12. One of those days, Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose 12 of them, whom he also designated apostles. Simon, whom he named Peter, his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, son of Alphaeus, Simon, who was called the Zealot, Judas, son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. So here we can see that Jesus takes a little personal retreat, an overnight retreat on the side of a mountain to talk to God. This is not the kind of quick prayer that is being thrown up while he's driving to work or walking down the hall in his school or in his office. Although those prayers are important. We need to have those little quick 30-second, two-minute prayers with God, right? That's constant communion with him. But what Jesus is modeling here is something completely different. It's specific, designated, intentional time to simply commune with his Father. That's it. Nothing else going on. Not a quick, Lord help me as I go about this. It is time to sit and to talk and to listen. And what does it say here in the Scripture? It says that he prayed all night. All night. And he was able to do it without a stack of devotional books. And he was able to do it without worship music in his AirPods. No, he simply got with his Father and talked to him and listened as God spoke to him. Now, I'm not suggesting that in order to have good prayer discipline, that you have to pray every night, sleep, you know, never sleep and just stay up all night and pray. But we'll see that in this particular prayer, that it was a particularly pivotal moment in Jesus' ministry. But I think that what we glean from Jesus' prayer discipline is that this was not considered extraordinary or fanatical or crazy to spend that amount of time with the Father. It was a matter of fact. I need to talk to my Father. Let me go into the solitude of night with just me and the crickets without anybody pulling at me, trying to get my attention, without the distractions of what's happening all around me and just pray. Now, thank God today we do have the help of worship music, right? I love just when I'm going to pray and I spend time with the Lord, I say, Alexa, play praise and worship music. Try that if you have Alexa. But we do have the help of devotional books and we do have the help of a codified Bible that we can read to direct our prayers. Just don't let those things be the substitute for your prayer life. If you're not praying, don't think that just listening to worship music makes you more spiritual. That's just something to facilitate you to have a relationship with God. At this point, in Jesus's ministry, where we see it here, Jesus had followers, but He did not have His 12 closest disciples who later would become apostles. And it was in this time of prayer that we just read that Jesus received His instructions about who to select and how to do it. Now, we'll look in the other Gospels and you'll see that it wasn't as simple as just walking into a crowd going, you, you, you, you, you, you, and you, and you come follow me, right? And then leaving. The other Gospels give much more detail about the circumstances surrounding how Jesus went about calling the 12. But what Luke gives us is an insight into how Jesus knew who to pick. Now, let's think about this. For Jesus, the picking of His 12 was not something that was to be taken lightly. It wasn't just so that He had an inner circle. It wasn't just so that He had people that He liked around Him that could tell good jokes and keep His travels around the countryside a little bit more interesting and light. It wasn't about their oration skills. It certainly was not about their ministry experience or their administrative prowess or any of the criteria that we would place on choosing somebody of such importance. He simply got on His face before His Father and talked through it with Him. All night long. So why were the 12 so important? Because Jesus had three and a half years to teach these guys. And then after that, He was going to send them out to be the carriers of this Gospel all throughout the world. These guys had to be courageous and selfless. Guys who would keep moving in the face of persecution and fear, who would yield to the Holy Spirit in order to carry the message of Jesus to all the surrounding countries and into the world. This was an important decision, one that could only be made through prayer. I think about, as I was reading this and preparing this, I began to think about how many important decisions in my life that I made without even consulting God. Whether it was a big purchase or some kind of family decision that we made, and something big, something monumental. And how many times in my life I've gone through something like that and just never sought the wisdom of God. Think about how many life choices you have made without really consulting God about the matter. Maybe it's the person that you chose to spend your life with, or the house that you purchased, or maybe a big move to another state. The career that you chose, the college that you went to, and the studies on which you focused. These are not light moments in our lives. And if we're devoted to living the life that God has marked out for us, we need to make sure that we're committing all things to God in prayer. There's so much happening in every single one of our lives, I promise you, you shouldn't ever run out of things to pray about. If we can say, this is something for God to help me with. If we can say, this decision, my parenting, my job performance, my finances, my decisions that I'm making, that we put them before the Lord. I've seen the power. I personally have seen the power of regular solitude and stealing away for a time of prayer during the time just before we moved here. And we had left our church in Pennsylvania, and I had seven months of not having a job, being unemployed. And God, throughout this time, I didn't know what to do. I was just like, I'm putting my resume out there. I put it out for accounting jobs, and I put it out for ministry jobs, and I put it out for marketing jobs. And I did all kinds of stuff that would draw on the different skills that I had, and I didn't know what to do. And the Lord, through a time, this is what I did. I tell you almost faithfully every day, there's some days that I miss, but at 9 o'clock p.m., I would go through a walk. The town I lived in was called Emmaus, and I would go through a walk, and I marked it out as 3.1 miles. And I would walk that same walk, and as I walked, I would just talk to God. I would just lay everything out before Him, and I'd just let Him speak to me. And it was through those times where God said, pull all of your corporate resumes. You're staying in ministry. All right, Lord. Through these times where God gave me the emails to send, and the phone calls to make, and the messages to send to people. And it was through that time that ultimately God was able to lead me and my family into what God had called us to do. And it was one of those times in my life where it was like an aha moment. I said, wow, really just getting into regular discipline, the same thing every day. God can speak in those familiar places in your life. And I didn't understand why people always told me, they're like, if you're going to have a good prayer life, you're going to have a good prayer time with God, go pray in the same place every day. Whether it's on the side of your bed, or in your living room, or in your office, or wherever it is, that it's the same place every time, and that familiarity God will speak to you. But as we're looking to grow in Christ this year, I really hope that you will get a hold of your prayer life. And really cultivate that effective relationship with God. Because there's no substitute for prayer in your life. Not skill, not talent, not intelligence or wit or savviness. None of it is a worthy substitute for prayer in your life. Let's be people of prayer this year. It's a discipline, but as we do it, we will train ourselves. We will train our bodies. And you will reap the benefits of such close communion with God. And if you are not sure what to pray about, or how to pray, I encourage you to come. Every time we do a first Wednesday worship and prayer, come to that. Come and spend an hour and a half in the presence of God, in worship and in prayer. And if you never thought that you could do it, you'll quickly realize that you can. So now I want to turn our attention to a part of a discipline that goes hand in hand with prayer, and that's fasting. This is a discipline that has been neglected by many, yet is an extremely powerful spiritual discipline that will enhance your spiritual life and make your prayers even more effective. Fasting. Chances are that you are among the massive majority of Christians who rarely or never engage in fasting as a regular spiritual discipline in their life. It's not because we haven't read our Bibles, or sat under faithful preaching, or heard about the power of fasting. It's not even that we don't genuinely want to do it. It's just that we never kind of actually get down to putting down the fork. Part of it may be that we live in a society where food is just everywhere, right? We eat not only when we don't need to, but sometimes even when we don't want to. We eat to share a meal with others. We eat to build or grow relationships. There's times where I accidentally book myself for two dinner meetings. Of course, we all have our own cravings. We want to be comfortable. We don't really want to go through that discomfort of what fasting will bring to us, of being hungry. But here's what fasting is in a nutshell, and I want you to understand this. It's voluntarily going without food or any other regularly enjoyed good gift from God for the purpose of getting closer to God. And it is markedly countercultural. It's not what our culture sees as being beneficial in our lives. I believe that we can learn to embrace the lost art of fasting and make it a regular part of our walk with God. And you'll see when you do it that it's powerful. In fact, Jesus, when teaching on fasting to his disciples, said, when you fast, right, it is assumed by Jesus to be a regular part of the life of a believer. But fasting is not something that we approach in a flippant manner. So as we talk about fasting, I want to give you three reasons why you should not fast. But then I'm going to give you three reasons that you should. Because fasting is a wonderful and powerful discipline in the life of a believer. But it's got to be rightly motivated. It's got to be rightly approached. And not everybody's ready for it. And that is okay. We're all growing. We're all learning. So three reasons not to fast. The first one is this, to be noticed. God never has and never will be impressed by our shows of piety to others. It's very clear in scripture that God is concerned about your inward condition before he is about your outward appearance. He says in Matthew 6, beginning in verse 16, when you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do. For they disfigure their faces to show others that they're fasting. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face. He's just saying clean up. So that it will not be obvious to others that you're fasting. But only to your father who is unseen, and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Fasting is not an opportunity to show off your spirituality to anybody. If your reason for fasting is not pure, but it's being done for show, then just don't do it. Because other than that, if that's why you're doing it, you're just starving yourself. And it's displeasing to God. The second reason why we shouldn't fast is for selfish gain. Now fasting is not like blowing out your birthday candles, and then your every wish will come true. There's plenty of teaching out there that suggests that a person can fast for a few days and get whatever they want from a deep-pocketed God. Hey, go on a fast and ask God for a boat and God will provide. Fast for a few days and you'll receive the money that you need to cover all of your debts. Fast for a few days and you'll get the job that you really want. I don't find that in Scripture anywhere. While fasting may make us ready to hear from God and know His will and pray accordingly, it was never to be the means of manipulating God to conform to our will and desires. So if you fast as though you're blowing out the candles, hoping that your wish will come true, you will soon be disappointed in God and disillusioned about the whole idea of fasting. So if it's just for selfish gain, if you're just trying to get a new car because you just want something better, don't do it. And the third reason why we should not fast is if we don't understand it. See, there's nothing more miserable than to fast from purely a sense of duty. You'll be hungry, constantly fighting to resist temptation and just generally under the burden of fasting. If the discipline of fasting is not something that you feel that you're ready for, that you don't understand, then hold off. Let's talk about it. Let's read a book about it. Let's consult Scripture together about it. So make sure that you can fast successfully before you decide to just simply starve yourself. Thank you for listening to Elevate. We hope this message encouraged, inspired and challenged you. Authentic Life Church is located at 3750 Michael Boulevard in Mobile, Alabama. Visit our website authenticlife.tv for more information about Authentic Life Church. To find out what we have going on or to make a donation, you can also find us on Facebook. We'd love for you to join us on Sundays at 10 a.m. for our weekend service. We have excellent children's, nursery and youth programs, so bring the family. For Pastor John DiQuatro, I'm Scott Chestnut. Thanks again for listening and God bless you.
