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ign:center'>*Prescription: Balanced Diet & Exercise**Sunday, January 3, 2010*
Various Texts
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Subject: Disciplines
Theme: Disciplines of the Xn faith
Proposition: The disciplines will help us /Know Christ/ and help us /Make Him Known/.
T.S.
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INTRO: Superbowl is coming up.
Since the Colts aren’t in it, many who are watching will be doing so for another reason—the commercials!
Have you noticed how the commercials have changed?
It’s not just during the superbowl.
Sometime when you are watching the evening news, count how many commercials are for some drug, pill, cream, lozenge, diet or surgery.
So much of what these are designed to do could also be accomplished by lifestyle changes.
We get in the habit of quick fixes to symptoms w~/o developing practices to support a healthy life.
What we often need isn’t a pill but a change in our habits.
When your doctor gives you a physical, if there are any problems, you may get a whole truck-load of questions.
One of the biggest will be about your lifestyle.
* What is your diet?
* Are you getting enough exercise?
Those are two of the most basic disciplines that will keep you healthy.
You need to eat certain foods others (and of course avoid others).
You need to exercise your heart and muscles regularly.
It doesn’t mean you need to go nuts and start training for the Ironman, but you do need to have some basic habits that help you grow and maintain your health.
TRANS: What is true for our physical life is also true for our spiritual life.
We need a nutritious diet that feeds our souls.
And we also need to exercise our faith, putting it into action.
Both are necessary to help us grow and must be kept in balance with each other.
PURPOSE: This morning we are going to look at habits we can incorporate into our lives to help us be healthy and growing spiritually.
TRANS: Let’s start by looking at our diet, then we’ll come back and look at our exercise.
Along the way we’ll look at some prescriptions that will put you on the road to a vibrant and healthy walk with God.
But these are not miracle pills or cosmetic surgeries that promise instant change.
These prescriptions are for a change of lifestyle.
These are not all found in one place in the Bible, so we’re going to look at several passages of Scripture.
First, let’s look at a staple of our diet—the Word.
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*DIET: WORD*
Look with me to 1Peter 2. Did you know that the several times in the Bible God’s Word is referred to as food?
Look at 1Peter 2:1-3.
*1Peter 2:2-3*
2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,
3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
The Christians Peter is addressing have tasted the goodness of Jesus in their salvation.
That’s where it needs to start for all of us.
It all starts when we are born again.
But as newborns we need nourishment.
The simple truths of God’s word get us off to a good start.
Truths like:
* God loves me, so I should love others.
* We need to tell others about our new life in Christ with our words and by being baptized.
* We leave behind our sins and start obeying God.
* Jesus is coming back one day to take us home to heaven.
That’s the pure spiritual milk of the Word, those simple truths that everyone, even a little child, can grasp.
But the Bible also contains truths that even after years of following the Lord may still seem profound, even hard to understand.
The author of Hebrews talks about this.
Let’s turn in our Bibles to Hebrews 5:11-14.
In the middle of one of these deep teachings, the author of Hebrews pauses to admonish his readers.
*Hebrews 5:11-14*
11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn.
12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again.
You need milk, not solid food!
13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.
14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
He doesn’t say milk is bad, just insufficient for maturity.
I’m concerned that many folks who have been believers for years are still on the bottle.
If you came to Jesus a few years ago and are still only using prepackaged devotionals like Our Daily Bread, it’s time to move on to something more nutritious.
It’s a great little devotional, but you can’t grow to maturity if you /only/ drink milk.
You need to /also/ be studying God’s word more deeply.
Daily: Regardless of our level of maturity, whether we are on milk or solid food, we need that food daily.
It’s not enough to eat once a week, only having a good meal on Sundays.
We each need to be in God’s word daily.
Now, for each one of the disciplines listed in your sermon notes there is a place for you to write your personal application.
Think of it like your prescription, that change you need to make to get on the path to better spiritual health.
I’ll put some suggested prescriptions up on the screens, but I can’t decide what is best for each one of you.
You pick which will help most.
Or write in something unique that the Holy Spirit is telling you to do.
PRESCRIPTION:
* Set Time – Short Time
Take just 10 min at the same time each day: Importance is consistency to develop a habit.
The time will lengthen once the habit is developed.
* Get off the bottle
Move on to solid food of deeper study.
Chances are, if you’ve never done something like this, you’d benefit from a structured study with other folks.
You might choose the men’s or women’s studies that meet midweek with folks from our church.
Or Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) might be a good fit.
It meets every week.
Even if you travel, the beauty of BSF is that every class around the world runs on the same schedule, so you can jump right in with people who have studied the same material.
If you know this is your prescription, but are unsure of the next step, talk to your Conx leader, or catch me after we’re done this morning.
We’ll be glad to point you in the right direction.
Remember, a prescription does you no good unless you fill it!
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(TRANS) The Bible is a great way to feed your soul.
But there are more.
Another part of a balanced spiritual diet is prayer.
*DIET: PRAYER*
Prayer is simply talking with God. “Talking” may be a bit of a misnomer.
(ILL) Have you ever been in one of those “conversations” where all you do is listen, where you could put down the phone, get a snack, come back, and the person would still be talking?
Prayer should be a two-way conversation, a combination of talking and listening.
We listen if we think the other person has something valuable to tell us.
If we don’t listen, it’s b~/c we think what we have to say is more important.
(APP) How important to you is what God’s saying?
I’m not saying, “How important should it be?”
Honestly, how important is it?
When was the last time you spent more time listening to God than talking to him?
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