This morning we are beginning a new series that I have titled “Sacred Rhythms.” Over the next several months (to the end of August) we are going to be examining 6 different spiritual disciplines or sacred rhythms. Today I want to talk about why the spiritual disciplines are important. To do this we need to look at the big picture of what it means to follow Christ.
G.K. Chesterton wrote this very insightful thought:
“Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting, as it has been found difficult and left untried.”
Why do you think he was moved to make this very serious statement about Christianity? It seems that there is almost a universal belief that it is almost impossible to be a Christian, a real follower of Christ. Many think that the cost of discipleship is too high when they are told to count the cost (Luke 14:25-35). We constantly hear the grim, high cost of being a disciple and of discipleship and many fear it or are not willing to pay the cost. Many at times feel that what they have to give up is too high a price to pay to be a disciple. But what we have to realize is this: the higher cost is the cost non-discipleship – not following Christ. Søren Kierkegaard reminds us,
“It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, exceeding narrow is the way to perdition!”
Proverbs 13:15 says: “Good judgment wins favor, but the way of the unfaithful leads to their destruction.” We can learn this just by observing life. Actually, a large part of the book of Proverbs records the results of such observation. The whole book is a song of praise for the path of the righteous over that of the wicked, leaving no doubt in which life, joy and strength are to be found. Dallas Willard once said:
“To depart from righteousness is to choose a life of crushing burdens, failures, and disappointments, a life caught in the toils of endless problems that are never resolved. Here is the source of that unending soap opera, that sometimes horror show known as normal human life. The ’cost of discipleship,’ though it may take all we have, is small when compared to the lot of those who don’t accept Christ’s invitation to be apart of his company in The Way of life“.
How is the cost of discipleship actually small? Matthew 11:28-30 which says:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Unfortunately, many Christians find Jesus’ statement here to be more of a “hope” or even a mere “wish” than a statement about the essence of their lives. To many, Jesus’ words here are perplexing. We hear them often quoted, because the idea they express is obviously one that attracts and delights, but there seems to be something about the way we approach them, something about what we think it means to walk with Christ and obey Him that prevents most of us from entering into the reality which they express. Many of us rarely enjoy the ease and lightness and the power of these words in our every day lives.
Because we have ignored the words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30, we do not have the strength that we should have. Many of us believe that the commandments of Jesus are overwhelmingly burdensome to us. In fact, many Christians cannot even believe Jesus actually intended for us to carry them out. So what is the result? Jesus’ teachings are treated as a mere ideal. An ideal that we may better ourselves by aiming for them but we know we are bound to fall utterly short of them. Because of this belief that it is too hard to do what it takes to be a Christian and being afraid of really giving it a try, many have responded as I have at times, “I am only human, what do you expect of me? Isn’t it human to err? Anyway, aren’t we under grace—aren’t we saved by grace and not by anything I can do? It is so hard to obey Jesus. And isn’t all this commandment keeping legalism anyway?” So we reason that obedience to Christ is actually not necessary or expected of ALL the time.
All our reasoning’s though cannot remove the thought that Jesus calls us to follow Him – to follow Him through obedience in there and now. No one denies that we would be better off and our world would be an immeasurably better place if we were to conform in deed and spirit to who Jesus is and what He taught. And all of our lack of understanding does not cancel His offer of an easy yolk and a light burden in which our souls can find rest. The offer, like His call to follow Him, is clearly made to us in the here and now, in the midst of this life where we labour and bear impossible burdens and cry out for rest. It’s true. It’s real. We only have to grasp the secret of entering into that easy yoke.
What then is the secret? There is a simple answer to this all important question. It is one that can be introduced and even made completely clear by comparing some facts with which we are all familiar. Imagine for a moment a kid who idolizes Roberto Luongo. They desperately want to be like him.
So what do they do? When they are playing in a hockey game, they try to behave exactly like Roberto Luongo. Roberto Luongo is a butterfly style goalie, so the kid takes on the butterfly style. Luongo likes to stay deep in his crease, so the kid does this too. Luongo likes to hit each post before he starts the game, so the kid does this too. The kid tries anything that Luongo does hoping to be like him – they even buy the same types of skates and goalie pads.
The question we need to ask though is this: Will this kid succeed in performing like Roberto Luongo? We all know the answer to that quite well. We know that they won’t succeed if all they do is try to be like him in the game – no matter how gifted they are in their own way. And we all understand why. Luongo (or any other professional sports star) didn’t achieve his excellence by trying to behave in a certain way only during the game. Instead, he chose an overall life of preparation of mind and body, pouring all his energies into that total preparation, to provide in the body’s automatic responses and strength for his conscious efforts during the game.
Luongo’s superb responses, his amazing timing and the flexibility we see aren’t produced and maintained by the short hours of the game itself. They are available to Luongo because of a daily regimen no one sees. For example, the proper diet and rest and the exercises for specific muscles are not a part of the game itself, but without them Luongo certainly would not perform as his does.
- Some of these daily habits may even seem silly to us but the successful athlete knows that all his disciplines must be undertaken and undertaken rightly, or all his natural talents and best efforts will do down in defeat to others who have disciplined themselves in preparation for game time.
And what is true of specific activities is, of course, also true of life as a whole. As Plato said long ago: “There is an art of living and the living is excellent only when the self is prepared in all the depths and dimensions of its being.” Also, this is not a truth to be set aside when we come to our relationship with God. Yes, we are saved by grace and by grace alone and not because we deserve it. That is the basis of God’s acceptance of us. But grace does not mean that sufficient strength and insight will be automatically “infused” into our being in the moment of need. Abundant evidence for this claim is available precisely in the experience of any Christian. We only have to look at the facts. A hockey player who expects to excel in the game without adequate exercise of his body is no more ridiculous than the Christian who hopes to be able to act in the manner of Christ when put to the test without the appropriate exercise in godly living.
Jesus understood this well and lived accordingly. A lot of times we forget that being the unique Son of God clearly did not relieve Him of the necessity of a life of preparation that was mainly spent out of the public eye. And it was out of such preparation that Jesus was able to lead a public life of service through teaching and healing. And in this truth lies the secret of the easy yoke: the secret involves living as Jesus lived in the entirety of His life – adopting His overall lifestyle. Following in Jesus’ steps cannot just be equated with behaving as He did when He was “on the spot.” You know asking the question: “What would Jesus do?” To live as Christ lived is to live as He did ALL His life. Our mistake is to think that following Jesus only consists in loving our enemies, going the “second mile”, turning the other cheek, suffering patiently and hopefully – while living the rest of our lives just as everyone around us does. This is like the young hockey player who wants to be like Roberto Luongo. It’s a strategy bound to fail and it will make following Christ, “difficult and untried”. In truth, it is not the way of Christ anymore than striving to act in a certain manner in the heat of a game is the way of the champion athlete.
Whatever may have guided us into this false approach, it is simply a mistake. And it will certainly cause us to find Jesus’ commands about our actions during specific situations impossibly burdensome (or “grievous as the KJV puts it). Instead of an easy yoke, all we’ll experience is frustration. This false approach to following Christ also has counterparts throughout human life. We see it all around us. It is part of the misguided notion of our world. Our world devoutly believes in the power of effort-at-the-moment-of-action alone to accomplish what we want and completely ignore the need for character change in our lives as a whole. The general human failing is to want what is right and important but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of the human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right but we avoid the life that would make it reality. For example, some people would genuinely like to pay their bills and be financially responsible but they are unwilling to lead the total life that would make that possible. Others would like to get in shape and be healthier but they are unwilling to stop eating the chips and the cookies and get out and walk.
So, ironically, in our efforts to avoid the necessary pains of discipline we miss the easy yoke and light burden. We miss the blessing of the life that want. We then fall into the frustration of trying to do and be the Christian we know we ought to be without the necessary insight and strength that only discipline can provide. We become unbalanced and are unable to handle our lives. So, those who say we cannot truly follow Christ turn out to be correct in a sense. We cannot behave “on the spot” as Jesus did and taught if in the rest of our time we live as everybody else does. The “on the spot” episodes are not the place where we can, even by the grace of God, redirect unchristlike but ingrained tendencies of action toward sudden Christ-likeness. Our efforts to take control at the moment will fail. We’ve all seen this happen.
So, we should be perfectly clear about one thing: Jesus never expected us to simply turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us and so forth. These Christ-like responses were set forth by Him as illustrative of we might expect of a new kind of person – one who intelligently and steadfastly seeks, above all else, to live under the rule of God and be possessed by the kind of righteousness that God Himself has, as Matthew 6:33 portrays. Instead Jesus did invite people to follow Him into a life from which behaviour – such as loving one’s enemies will seem like the only sensible and happy thing to do. For a person living that life, the hard thing to do would be to hate their enemy, or to curse the curser, just as it was for Christ. True Christ likeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard NOT to respond as He would.
Oswald Chambers once said:
“The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of principles to be obeyed apart from identification with Jesus Christ. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting His way with us.”
In other words, no one ever says, “If you want to be a great athlete go vault eight feet and run the mile under four minutes,” or “If you want to be a great musician, play the Beethoven violin concerto.” Instead we advise the young artist or athlete to enter a certain kind of overall life, one involving deep associations with qualified people as well as rigorously scheduled time, diet and activity for the mind and body.
But what do we tell someone who aspires to live well in general? If we are wise, we would tell them to approach life with this same general strategy. So, if we wish to follow Christ we have to accept His overall way of life as our way of life totally. Then, and only then, we may reasonably expect to know by experience how easy is the yoke and how light is the burden.
The secret of the easy yoke, then, is to learn from Christ how to live our total lives, how to invest all our time and our energies of mind and body as He did. We must learn how to follow His preparations, the disciplines for life that enabled Him to receive His Father’s constant and effective support while doing His will. What we need to do is to be prepared for whatever might occur before it happens. And we accomplish this through practicing the spiritual disciplines.
Let’s return to the question I asked at the beginning: Why are Christian disciplines important? Because they help us to live a Christ-centered life all the time, when we respond to the crises of life that response comes from deep within us, this response will be natural because it is who we are. So over the next while we will be looking at the spiritual disciplines of: meditation, celebration, prayer, service, stewardship and silence.
