THRIVE – The Discipline of Service (part 5)

The Discipline of Service – Sunday, Feb.17th, 2019

Sunday February 17th Pastor Eric continued in the series: Thrive – Spiritual Disciplines that Will Enrich your life. This weeks Discipline was – Service.

“train yourself to be godly”1 Timothy 4:7

Consistency is a principle that must be applied when we seek to enrich our spiritual lives. Spontaneous growth is a myth. Exercising these disciplines are essential to our development and growth in our walk with the Lord.

Joshua 24:14-15 “chose for yourself whom you will serve… as for me and my house we will serve the Lord”.

Video Transcription

Welcome to part 5 of our series THRIVE, a series of messages that explores spiritual disciplines that helps us prosper spiritually. That helps us thrive.

1 Timothy 4:7

Have nothing to do with godless myths and old
wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly.

This series provides different ways that we can train ourselves, because as mentioned in past weeks, godliness and spiritual health doesn’t just happen. You don’t wake up Godly, you don’t wake up spiritual healthy, godliness does not get zapped into you, you and I need to do this for ourselves. We must discipline ourselves and implement these spiritual disciplines:

-in our habits
-in our routines
-in our lifestyle and even purposely plan for them.

And not only spon·ta·ne·ously
Spontaneous is good. But spontaneous is not a discipline, spontaneous is not consistent, spontaneous is not guaranteed because spontaneous depends on how I feel that day. It depends on the circumstances.

And so if I only pray when I feel like praying or if I only read the Word when I feel like reading the
Word, if I only lift up my hands towards heaven and worship God with my mouth and praise Him only
when I feel like it, if I only give when I feel like it, I’m not going to grow. The true Christian faith is not going to work for me, because my Bible says that Jesus is calling “Disciples” not “spontaneous Christian” who will only obey His word when they feel like it. My Bible says that Jesus is calling Disciples not spontaneous Christian who are hot one day and cold the next.

This is why we must exercise, develop spiritual disciplines in our lives to be Godly.

So far we looked at the:

The Spiritual Discipline of Fasting
The Discipline of Devotions
The Discipline of Stewardship
The Discipline of Worship

Today, I want to talk about The Discipline of Service.
In Joshua 24:15, Joshua declared.

“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”

How many thats your prayer ? “Lord, let me and my house serve you”

In this scene, Joshua called all the tribes of Israel, he summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.

This was a Divine RDV. Joshua had a message from the Lord to give to them. And the message he had for them that led into the verse we read was a couple of history lessons.

He begins by telling them that some of them had fathers who didn’t serve the Lord
(2) NKJV

2 And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Your fathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the River in old times; and they served other gods.

So in other words some of you come from a home where your fathers followed different gods. Some of you don’t come from a Christian family, so your fathers served other gods. Even Abraham’s father Terah.

But then he gives them another history lesson and that is to tell them all that God has done for their nation. How God delivered them from Egypt. How God protected them in times when some people had bad intentions towards them. How God gave them things that didn’t even work or labour for. How God protected them when enemies rose up to try to harm them how God gave them victory in their battles.

And then he ends with a call to action. He gives them a choice
(15)

choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

I love what he says “choose for yourselves”. This is not a choice your parents can make for you, they can train you, they can teach you, pray for you even drag you to church but ultimately the choice is yours This is not a choice your spouse can make for you, this is not a choice even I can make for you. “choose for yourselves this day”.

In other words, don’t procrastinate this, don’t put it off. Tomorrow is not guaranteed make your choice now
while you can. Maybe up until that day some we’re not sure.

Some may have not given much thought to it or maybe some had kind of a spiritual buffet where they practiced a little bit of their fathers religion, and a little bit of the faith in the Lord and it was kind of spiritual new age a mixture of different religion all packaged in one. But Joshua says “choose for yourself this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house we will serve the Lord”.