Lecture 8: Living dispositionally

The Lord desires that we live dispositionally. Important elements include loving God, living devotionally, relational strengthening, and vocational serving (listening with the intent of following what I hear). Dallas Willard wrote, “If I am a disciple of Jesus, I am with him to learn from him, how to be like him." The primary calling of a pastor is to follow Jesus, within the calling of leading a church.

I. Review

We want to submit this to the Lord ahead of time as this presentation is for his glory and kingdom. We ask him to send the Holy Spirit to guide and direct and even to prevent us from saying things that we shouldn’t say. We want to depend upon Jesus today. I would like to review the last several sessions just to make sure that you are picking up on the major outline of what I am doing and its’ content.

A. Love God and Live Devotionally

Yesterday, we gave the outline of the big rocks, those elements of life that need to be in place in our lives on a daily basis. These are the things we love and cherish. What the Lord is asking for is a dispositional living of saying who you are and what you are about on a daily basis. It is an understanding of those big rocks. I suggested that those rocks are not going to be the same for everybody, but there are some fairly historic and basic Christian large rocks of which the first would need to be the 1st Commandment, to love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. I am summing this up into devotional living, but not necessarily devotional time. In devotional living, ideally we allow the Holy Spirit to get us to the point to be in continual prayer, where prayer is literally our living. This devotional living is fulfilling the great commandment of loving God. Clearly, another big rock is the issue of relational strengthening. I grew up during a time and culture where it was common for me to leave my house at 6 or 6:30 a.m., out on the range literally all day long running fence lines or plowing, or looking after the cattle. It was normal not to ever see another person while I was about this. I rather loved that kind of life. However, when the Lord Jesus got a hold of my life, I realized that I could not live in isolation from others. Yesterday, we talked about the kingdom being a ‘we’ and not a ‘me.’ Being a Christian is living in Christian community with one another. Even though Jesus sometimes spoke and dealt with large crowds, even huge crowds, he lived in community with his disciples, not just the twelve but others who were following him. We know there were three others that tagged along with the twelve if not more.

B. Relational Strengthening

If our Lord modeled that type of community for us, then there has got to be something there in that example that we need to learn, not just to talk about it but to emulate it. To live in this type of ongoing community with others; Howard Hendricks, a famous professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, would say that all of us needs a Paul over us, someone who is training us in the ways of the kingdom and perhaps a Barnabas beside us and then perhaps a Timothy also. So, we are walking together as a family and we are the family of God.

C. Vocation Serving

In relational strengthening, this if fulfilling the second half of the commandment. The first half includes instructions on loving God and the second half is about loving others. We are living this out with loving others. Clearly, one of the big rocks is this issue of vocational serving. The Lord calls and asks for obedience; in Latin it is of two words: audio, to listen with the intent of following what I hear. Vocation really has a fairly broad meaning. It is a lot broader than what we commonly tend to think of today. Vocation ultimately and immediately is following Jesus and it is serving God’s kingdom.

D. Temple Nurturing

We talked a little about temple nurturing. If you are the body of Christ and if your life is the temple of the Holy Spirit, then clearly, it is to be honored for the sake of God. We love God and we love others and we are called to love ourselves for the sake of God. You need to be careful here, this can be a problem if you love yourself for the sake of yourself. We are talking about a responsible sense of self-care for God’s sake. So, we have loving God and loving others, the great commandment and we have this vocational serving which is founded on the great commission. We are to go; we are literally to go into the world. We have temple nurturing that comes from the fourth commandment which can be found in the Book of Exodus. We can be blessed with understanding; there is a time to work and a time to be engaged and there is a time for rest. The best of the Christian tradition, understanding that tradition can be a loaded word. If you look at the tradition of man, that can be really negative. But tradition can be a beautiful word in that what has come in the past two thousand years with people trying to faithfully follow Jesus. We just don’t toss that time out the window, as the best of our Christian tradition tells us that when these large rocks are in place, then the reservoir of our lives that is filled by the Holy Spirit, maintains a fairly steady level. In this, we are then giving and serving out of the overflow without draining our basic relationship with Christians and that relationship with the Lord, with others seeking to be vocationally obedient. That big rock of taking care of ourselves for the sake of the Lord; this creates a reservoir of God’s love in our lives. It allows us to be present with others and ministry out of a sense of God’s presence and literally God’s work within us speaking to others. Remember there is only one stream coming out with many streams flowing into the lake. There is a primary stream coming out of the lake and it is year around. We are doing these things out of faithfulness to Christ and out of gratitude for him. What then happens when some negatives get to us?

II. How to Respond to Negative Experiences

A. Dallas Willard

We need to understand that things can go a different way very quickly. One person, Dallas Willard who has since gone on the glory, was a philosophy professor at Southern California. He was an amazing man of God and an amazing biblical scholar. I actually think that he is one of the great prophets of this day and age. He wrote a text entitled, The Divine Conspiracy. I think he wrote it in the late 90s; it took me a year to work my way through it as it was packed with the goodness of God. Clearly, it is one of the all-star texts that I have ever read. Willard said, on page 276, to follow Jesus meant in the first place, to be with him. If I am a disciple of Jesus that means that I am with him to learn how to be like him. If I am going to follow after Christ, if I am going to be a disciple of Jesus, this means that I am with him and to learn how to be like him. All of this is facilitating conditions that help us to be with him; to learn from him and how to be like him. For those of you who are pastors or in pastoral ministry, this is not an easy calling first of all. A part of the large rocks for anyone working in the church whether being a pastor, youth minister, worship leader; a large part of the big rocks for leadership in the local church is realizing that there is a calling within the calling.

B. Calling Within the Calling

I don’t want to trip anybody up with strange language here, but what we pastor types tend to think of as our primary calling is to be pastors. Indeed, I recommended a book yesterday on that type of calling by Eugene Peterson. There really is a vocational calling there. But again, I want you to hear about the calling within the calling. There is a deeper calling, a deeper truth. Now, more than likely we will not be pastors all of our lives; we will eventually retire. So, my primary calling is to follow Jesus and I am doing that within another calling of leading the church. But, if I get my primary calling of following Jesus confused and put my functional calling of being a youth minister or worship leader, etc., thinking that is the primary calling of my life, I am setting myself up for disappointment and possibly a huge collapse. My primary calling is to follow Christ and submit my life to him and to be his child and to be like him. He may move me into one particular outlet for that or another particular outlet for that, but wherever he moves me if I miss my primary calling then I will be mistaken in my secondary calling to the position of a particular place and time. So there is a primary calling and then a secondary calling, a calling within a calling. It is just like my students, they will always start out, out of respect by calling me Dr. Martin. In the very first session of the class, I just say that we will not call very many people doctor in heaven! Maybe some, I am not really sure, but even if we do, I don’t think I will be in that rank. So, we don’t have to use pretenses or titles; I invite my students to just call me Steve. So, our tradition issues numerous precautions, warning against stepping away from these kinds of things. Tradition tells us that the reservoir of water will dry up and when that happens, some really negative things start to happen.

C. When I Stop Loving God

When I stop loving God, a Pauline term comes to service, Osabayan; this has to do with false worship or in fact, no worship. When I stop worshipping the Lord and people assume that we are walking close to the Lord. They assume that we are staying in the Word and being accountable to our elders and governing board or to our covenant groups, whatever you name those small disciple groups. People will assume these kinds of things and this makes it dangerous for me. You can go for years without doing any of those kinds of things, but the people will still assume that you are being faithful in doing what you need to do. The slope becomes rather slippery and this happens rather quickly when I stop loving God as a leader of his church.

D. When I Stop Loving Others

When I stop loving others, it devolves into using others; are the sheep there to be preyed upon? Are they there to promote my career and make me look good? Are they there to float my projects, financially and emotionally, etc. or are they there to be prayed for, to be loved and to be truly shepherded as Jesus would have them to be shepherded. This means at times firm words, loving and gracious words where we are speaking life into them, not cultural nonsense of having all things being dumped into your lap because you are following Christ. We are speaking life; we are mainly speaking the Gospel into them. I don’t care what tradition you come out of in terms of leadership; when we are leading the sheep, what do we proclaim, three points, a few illustrations? I hope God saves us from that! We are proclaiming the Gospel that Christ was and is and ever shall be. So we hold up the Word of God without compromise. We live in a cultural time when lots of things are being revived. In that sense, let us hold firm to the fact for us and the Gospel, there is nothing new. It is the ancient word; it is unchanging, it is solid and it is stable. So, I love others by being a co-laborer with the Holy Spirit in leading them into the fullness of the Kingdom. What happens in vocational serving when I get my vocation mixed up; then it devolves into a career; a career in which I am basically there to promote myself.

E. When Self-care for God’s Sake Collapses

It then becomes all about me. Of course, systems are used and abused and then when this self-care for God’s sake collapses, either I am completely neglecting sanity. Now, when God created me in his own image, he gave me a genetic structure from the southwestern part of nation of England. That structure represents a tall skinny structure with a long thin face that is genetically predispositioned to be thin. Within that, does that mean that I cannot break this business of over-eating and being a glutton? Of course I can be a glutton. I did a lot of conferencing, not just in the United States where I’m working with pastors globally. This whole business of blowing yourself up through over eating has got to be reckoned with. You are denying the temple that God left you with; you are destroying it. Let us hear a loving word here; whether we are naturally skinny or whether predisposed to be larger people. Whatever we do, we shouldn’t put out nonsense about an idealized body type. Does that not destroy children and people? We don’t do that in the kingdom. Yesterday, we talked about Thomas Aquinas and when was he called the dumb ox; it was because he was predispositioned, a huge person and overweight. But he was used greatly in God’s kingdom. So we have this word, nutritional sanity.

F. God made Us so that We Require Rest

We also require rest and exercise and all these other things that need to be a part of your life. When we understand that exercise can be a phenomenally godly thing and sometimes just taking a nap is what the Lord would want you to do at this point. The Lord doesn’t want us to operate on an empty gas tank. There are not all the many true emergencies in life and sometimes, like Jesus did, we have to let Lazarus die. We are not dualists; if my body is an incarnated soul, a gift from God then throughout my life, I’m called to take care of it. Now, I don’t make an idol out of it, okay? You don’t worship it which would be deep sin, but I am called to take care and exercise it. When these things devolve, then we can fairly well say and going to Saint Augustine in using his language. He wrote the first good Christian autobiography and said, ‘you have loved me oh Lord, with a severe mercy.’ It is in his text called concessions. Severe mercy simply means that when things devolve, I am going to end up in a Crisis. I often tell my students that God gave us a commandment about taking a Sabbath rest and part of the reason I talk about Eugene Peterson’s work is because Peterson does such a wonderful job of talking about the Sabbath and sometimes about taking a Sabbatical. What I tell the students, first, you get that some say whether or not you are going to take your Sabbath day off; you get some freedom in that. But what will usually happen, if you break the Sabbath, you are going to take it one way or the other. Later on, it is going to be determined for you in how you take it for you will be on your back and out of condition. God didn’t make us to run on empty; he made us to run being filled with his Holy Spirit. And he also make us to rest in him and let whatever work I do for his kingdom flow out of my relationship with him and not be grounded in my own natural abilities.

The more natural abilities I have; I might naturally be charismatic, being able to draw people to me. I might be really smart with people just wanting to follow me. The more gifted you are, the more danger there is for all of this to collapsing in your life. I try to warn people with the greatest gifts stand in danger of the greatest fall. We don’t want to promote those gifts, for example for music leaders; I tell them that they are not there to be the spotlight on the stage. You must be invisible while you are there. You are successful only when you point people to Jesus in worship, but when people focus on you, then that is idolatry. We are all tempted with that, every person will face that temptation. It is called vain glory and we will describe it a little later. Mercy is a real deal for us and then what will happen.

G. Satan Gets a Foothold in our Lives

When this stuff collapses, then we give Satan a foothold in our lives. My mentor in the faith used to talk about a mini obsession where Satan gets a hold of just a corner of my life because I allowed it. He can’t over power the blood of Christ and he cannot over power any person who stands in the Lord. That is not going to happen, except when I allow it, and then negative things can happen.

H. Augustine Describes God rescuing him as a ‘severe mercy.’

For Saint Augustine, the severe mercy was a positive thing. It was the crisis that came out of Augustine being a heathen. He was smart and good looking and intelligent; he was the equivalent of a professor. He taught upper class Roman children. Well, he was a Berber from North Africa, very handsome and good looking and a profoundly gifted person and a total heathen. You know, I have had students to come in who have been totally rolled in the flesh, the world and the devil, and yet God has gotten a hold on their lives and they are now redeemed in Christ. They are flourishing in the new birth where there is newness and goodness. We don’t want to diminish anyone from following Christ. Yet, all of us are in danger of collapsing.

I. The Eight Deadly Sins

Now the early church felt that it was really important to study the game plan of the evil one. We even have somewhat contemporary people who did the same thing; what about C.S. Lewis and the Screw Tape letters? That is exactly what he was doing? He said that this was the most difficult text that he ever had written because he had to get behind the thought of evil. The early church said basically that Satan is going to try and get us caught into eight different avenues which were called the eight deadly sins. The first person that we know in the Christian world who wrote about them was a man by the name of Vagarious of Pontus or Ponticus. He died in 399 AD, but the one who really explicated them is an early father called John Cashion. Well, John Cashion is my mentor in the faith. I am greatly thankful for him, he wrote text that we are going to refer in the early four hundreds. I think he died around 425 AD. The axiom that emerged out of Luke 10 yesterday, the Mary in us has to rest at the feet of Jesus if the Martha in us is to do her work. The Mary has to rest at the feet of Jesus receiving all that he has for us if the Martha, the vocational fidelity is going to unfold; I have to be at the feet of Jesus in great worship. This has to be dispositional; it has to be who I am not just one time during the day but throughout the day, but this also has to be at specific set times of being with Jesus. We build our lives on theological trues; remember that union precedes kenosis. So, union with Jesus goes before self-donating love for Jesus. Oneness with Christ comes before serving Christ. If you get them flipped, you will end up in a ditch or rather off the straight and narrow. And then, we rest on the foundational word that essence precedes existence; in other words, who I am as a gifted child of God, made in the image of God; I am an incarnated soul. The gift of who I am is the major definition of who I am. It is not what I produce or what I do or accomplish; we do all of those things for God’s glory and Jesus said that we will be doing even greater things. How inconceivable is that? So, we serve and we work and follow; we also want to have fruitfulness, but the fruitfulness is a means to give praise to God, not to define who I am. Do you see how this gives us freedom for true vocational fidelity?

J. If Satan Would Take Me out of Ministry now, how would he do it?

When you go into these things called the Deadly Sins. It isn’t an easy path, but I am telling you, if we are going to triumph over evil which will happen with the church. We have to know the game plan and understand just exactly how the evil one will try and take me out of ministry. One of the things I do in order to get people prepared to look at these things, either in a small group or one on one or even personally is to ask a basic question. Okay, if I were to be taken out of ministry, how would the evil one do it? You have to brutally honest here. What is it in my life that the devil will get at me with? What tempts me now; Jesus says that temptation is common to all people, but we are given the power to resist overcoming that. We are going to look at two primary ways that especially hit those in the church, in leadership in the church and it may surprise you as to what you think might be the primary one. Before we go into to that section be thinking about it. First of all, we are going to ask for a covering in going through this. Even though we will go through a valley, Jesus is going to walk with us and help us. Lord we commit this to you; help to honor you in all of this and sent your Holy Spirit to break chains. Amen.

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