Spiritual Life of the Leader - Lesson 8

Dr. Stephen Martyn
Spiritual Life of a Leader
sf502-08
Living Dispositionally
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:00] Want to welcome everyone back. And I particularly want to say thank you to those who are in our studio audience who are praying through this presentation. Literally, we want to submit this to the Lord ahead of time. This is for Him, for His glory, for his kingdom. Asking Him to send the Holy Spirit to guide and direct and even to prevent a falling off of any cliff this morning. No one speakers the way the truth in the life, only Jesus. And so we want to depend upon him today. Heavenly Father, we bow humbly in our hearts, asking for your help. For those who are listening, I ask in your mighty name that you will speak words of life in freedom this day. Lord, I pray that you will literally direct my steps, direct my thoughts. Hand me in on the right and on the left with your protective care. Give me your strength this day to proclaim your praise. And for all of us, we ask for your help. To be women and men of Thanksgiving and praise. And we ask this in Jesus name a man. What I'd like to do is review the last several sessions and just to make sure we're okay, We're that you're picking up on the major outline of what I'm doing and on the content and seeing it. So we really talked yesterday and gave the illustration about the big rocks and big rocks, or are the those elements of life that need to be in place in our lives on a daily basis. It's what we love, it's what we cherish, and gave the illustration of of my son brushing his teeth as a seven year old. He'd brush his teeth seven times on Saturday and count it good for the week, you know, but that's not a disposition.

[00:02:15] And so what we're what we're asking for and I thought, well, what the Lord is asking for is, is disposition. All living and disposition says, this is who I am, this is what I'm about on a daily basis. And understanding those big rocks, I, I suggested the big rocks are not going to always be the same for everybody, but that there are some fairly historic, basic Christian big rocks. And so let's just summarize them real quickly right here. One of the first has got to be loving to love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength. And I'm kind of shortening that to devotional living. Now, keep in mind, I didn't say devotional time, but devotional living where ideally will allow the Holy Spirit to get us to a point of content to be people of continual prayer with prayer is literally our living. So this devotional living is fulfilling the great commandment of loving God. And then clearly another big rock has got to be this issue of relational strengthening. I grew up in a day and in a time and in a culture and in a locale where it was quite common for me to leave my house 6 to 630. Sometimes earlier, I would be out on the range, quite literally all day long, either riding a horse or a four wheel drive, pick up running fence lines or plowing. And it was normative for me to never see another human being during the day. And to be honest, I rather loved that kind of life. However, when the Lord Jesus got a hold of my life, I realized that you cannot live in isolation from others. And so yesterday we talked about the kingdom being a we plural to be we, not a me.

[00:04:58] So this whole business. Of living in in Christian community with one another. Talked about how Jesus spoke to the crowds. Huge masses. But he lived in community with just a few. Maybe there might have even been up to 150 close disciples following, but certainly we know the 12. And then within the 12 there was the words the three. Yeah, I mean. So if our Lord modeled that type of community for us, then there's got to be something there not just to talk about, but to emulate. To live. To live in this type of ongoing community with others. Or I don't know if you're familiar with the name Howard Hendricks or not. Howard is in the kingdom now in heaven, but he was a famous professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. And Howard Hendricks would would say, okay, all of us need a what? A pall over us. Someone who's disciple in us. All of us need who beside us, Barnabas beside us. And then all of us need who that were Timothy that were raised in Up in the faith is loved love. Howard Hendricks So we're walking together as families, literally. We are. We are the family of God. And so this whole business here of relational strengthening is fulfilling the second half of the commandment, first half loving God, second half loving others. So we're we're living this out, loving others. Clearly a big rock has got to be this issue of vocational serving valkyrae to call to call to call. The Lord calls and he asks for obedience. Obedience, obedience comes from the in the Latin. It comes from two words put together audio, audio or diary to listen. You put the robe in front of it and that, that and it comes out.

[00:07:29] It's obedience. So I'm listening with the intent of following what I hear. And so vocation really has a fairly broad meaning to it, a lot broader then than what we commonly tend to think of today. Really vocation. Ultimately this was approximately and immediately is is following Jesus and it is serving God's kingdom. So we're going to we're going to I want to talk a little bit more about this here in in a bit. So then we talked a little bit, not a lot, but some about temple nurturing. If you are the body of Christ and if your life is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, then clearly it's to be honored. For God's sake, we love, we love God. We love others in that order. And it's okay to say that we were called to love ourselves for the sake of God. Now that can get really messed up really quick. If you love yourself for the sake of yourself not talking about that. But we're talking about. So really, we're talking about a responsible sense of self care. Why? So that I can be healthy, wealthy, whatever. Know a responsible sense of self care, for God's sake. It's so important to qualify what we're talking about now. Loving God, loving others. The great commandment serving this whole deal, vocational serving. That's founded on what the great commission that we are to go. We are literally to go into the world of temple nurturing rests on the fourth commandment. And so you could turn into Exodus and find the fourth commandment and be blessed with with understanding that, you know, there's there's a time to work. There's a time to be engaged. And then there's a time for what? Yeah. I mean, rest for Sabbath.

[00:10:25] So the best of of of the Christian tradition, a tradition is kind of a loaded word. It can, if you look at the tradition of man is talked about that that can be really negative but but traditions of beautiful word in that we've got 2000 years of people really trying to faithfully follow Jesus and we don't we don't toss that 2000 years out the window. Our the best of our tradition, the Christian tradition tells us that when these big rock are in place and then others that we talked about yesterday, then the reservoir of our lives that's filled by the Holy Spirit really maintains a fairly steady level. And we're giving then and serving out of the overflow without draining our basic relationship with Christ. We're in other words, we're that relationship of love with the Lord of love with others relationship are really seeking to be vocationally obedient. That that big rock of taking care of ourselves for the sake of the Lord, you know, that that that just creates a reservoir of God's love in our lives and that allows us to be present to others. It allows us to truly minister out of a sense of God's presence in literally God's word, within speaking to others. And it allows us to speak into the situations where we are placed, circumstances that we find ourselves in, and it's overflow. Remember, there's one stream coming out of it, a whole bunch of streams coming into it, but one primary stream coming out of it and it's year round. There's a ebb and flow to all things, but it's it's year round, so. We're doing these things. We're doing these things out of faithfulness to Christ. Out of gratitude for Him. Now, what happens then? What happens if some negatives get get a hold of us? What happens? Well, we need to look at that.

[00:13:26] We need to be aware that things can go awry very, very quickly. That's why I want to do everything I can before we before we look at how that reservoir can can drop so quickly. Let me just sum it up before we talk about how it can drop. Probably most of you are familiar with the name Dallas Willard. He just went on to Glory and he was a philosophy professor at Southern Cal, but an amazing man of God, an amazing biblical scholar, really. I think he's one of the great prophets of this day and age. He wrote a text entitled The Divine Conspiracy. I think it was. He wrote it in the late nineties. It took me a year to work my way through that text. It was just so packed with the goodness of God. Clearly, it's one of the all star text that I've ever read. So Willard said this on page 276 of the Divine Conspiracy to follow here meant in the first place. In other words, to follow Jesus meant in the first place to be with him. Will wrote, If I am Jesus disciple, that means I am with him to learn from him how to be like him. Don't you love him? If I'm going to follow after Christ, if I'm going to be Jesus disciple, if I am Jesus disciple, he wrote, that means I am with him to learn from him how to be like him. And so all of these are facilitating conditions that help us to be with him, to learn from him how to be like him. Now, let me just say another thing, particularly, especially for those of you who are in pastoral ministry, in other words. Now, I know that not all of you are going to be leaders or are leaders of congregations.

[00:15:55] And thank God we don't want everybody to be a leader of a congregation. Let me just tell you from personal experience of having done that for nearly three decades, that it's not an easy calling in this day and age at all. But part of the big rocks for anyone working in the church, whether you're a pastor, a youth minister, worship leader, huge part of the big rocks for leadership in the local church is realizing there's really a calling within the calling. Now, what in the world are you talking about calling within the calling? Well, I don't want to trip anybody up with any kind of tricky language, but what we pastor types tend to think of as our primary calling is to be pastors. And indeed, we held up a book and recommended a book yesterday on that type of calling by Eugene Peterson. And there really is a vocational calling there. But I need you to hear about the calling within the calling. There's a deeper calling. There's a deeper truth. More than likely, most of us will not be pastors all of our lives. More than likely we will retire. But here's the calling within the calling my primary calling, My primary calling. And I refer to us Guinness here. My primary calling is to follow Jesus. And I'm doing that within another calling of leading the church. But if I. I get my primary calling the following Jesus confused and I put my my functional calling of being a youth minister or worship leader, children's leader or lead pastor thinking. That's the primary calling of my life. I'm setting myself up for not only disappointment but huge collapse. Now my primary calling is to follow Christ, to submit my life to Him, to be his either man or his woman, his child, and to be like him.

[00:18:41] And he may move me into one particular outlet for that or another particular outlet for that. But wherever he moves me, if I miss this primary calling, then I'm going to mess up secondary callings to position to place to particular time in a particular time making sense here, kind of looking at my studio audience to make sure here primary secondary, don't get them mixed up. Being a pastor's secondary calling. It's just like people of my students will always start out mostly out of respect, I think, by calling me Dr. Martin. And in the very first session of class, I just look at them and say, Now look, I need to share with you. I really don't think we will call very many people Doctor in heaven. Maybe some. I'm not real sure we'll find out. But even if we do call somebody doctor in heaven, pretty sure I won't be in that. Right? So let's just. Let's get rid of pretenses titles. And so I invite my students to call me Steve. Let's just be who the Lord created us to be. And to do that without pretense and to know that also projects to them that, you know what, I'm a sinner and just as much need of grace as anybody else. I need help and I need strength all along the way to make it home. All right. So let's let's let's just say now that our tradition issues numerous precautions, warning against stepping away from these kinds of things, huge precautions because it says our tradition tells us what will happen is the reservoir will dry up. And and when that reservoir dries up, some really, really negative things start to happen. Let's just let's just look at what what begins to happen.

[00:21:26] So one of the things that begins to happen in in the let's let's do this in a in another color just to to to show the negative that's going to take place. When I stop loving God, then what happens is a Pauline term starts to kick in. It's a it's a really it's a terrible Pauline term. It's it's the term Azerbaijan and it's false worshiper. No worship actually put a in front of it and I think it means no worship so so what what starts happening here is no worship. And then of course when when, when I stop worshiping the Lord and and let me just say once again, especially to those of you in the church, you know, people do what they assume. They assume because we are in leadership in the church, they assume that we're walking close with the Lord. They assume that we are staying in the word. They assume that we're being accountable to our elders or to our governing boards or to our. Even at groups, bands, whatever you name those small discipleship groups, the people will assume these kind of things and. And what does that make it for? You? Makes it incredibly dangerous because you can go four years without doing any of those kinds of things. And the people will still think you're doing that. Then the slope becomes a rather tragic, rather slippery and rather quick. When when I stop loving God as the leader of his church, when I stop loving others, then what happens? It it devolves into what? Using others. We will talk about this a little bit more today. But. But my heavens are the sheep. They're to be preyed upon. P pr e Why are they there to be preyed upon? Are they there to promote my career or are they there to make me look good or are they there to to float my projects financially, emotionally, whatever, you know? Or are they there to be prayed, pray wide, prayed for, to be loved, to be truly shepherded as Jesus would have them be shepherded, which means at times there's firm words, loving and gracious words always.

[00:24:36] But but it can be firm as well. And we're speaking life into them, not cultural of nonsense, of of of having all things dumped in your lap because you're following Christ. No, we're speaking life mainly. We're speaking the gospel into him. And let me just share. Look, I don't care what tradition you're out of, in, in, in your leadership, what do we proclaim? I mean, when we're leading the sheep, what do we proclaim? Three points, a few illustrations. God save us from that. We proclaim the Gospel. The Christ delivered that He was. He is and he ever shall be. So we hold up the Word of God without compromise. Now, listen, we live in a cultural time when lots of things are being revised. In that sense, let us hold firm to the fact that for us in the Gospel, there is nothing new. It's the ancient word, it's unchanging, it's solid, it's stable. So I am loving others by helping, by being a co laborer with the Holy Spirit in leading them into the fullness of the kingdom. Now, what happens then in a vocational serving when I get my vocations mixed up, Oh my goodness. Then it devolves into a vocation, then becomes of course. What do you think? It's a rat race. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Another more refined word for rat. Rat race. Courier? Yeah. A courier. That in which basically they're to promote. Who? Myself. In other words, is this thing's ultimately all about me. And of course, in others, including systems and all of that are used, abused. And then when temple, you know, when this whole self care, for God's sake. Collapses. Then either I'm just completely neglecting. Sanity. Now. Now, let me speak. What I consider to be a hard and difficult word.

[00:27:56] And let me lead into this. Let me lovingly lead into this. When the Lord God created me in his own image, He gave me a West. He gave me a genetic structure. From the south, western part of the nation of England. So that structure was a tall, skinny is a tall, skinny structure with long, thin face that is genetically predisposition to be thin. Now, within that, does that mean that I cannot break what we're going to cover later? Can I not break this whole business of overeating and we'll get into the early church called it Gorme dies in that terrible word. Gorme dies, and we'll explain that later. But does that not mean that that I can be a glutton? Cause I can be a glutton. I just happen to be, you know, genetically predisposed with a skinny body. So, you know, the one thing I can say that my wife and I can certainly say it did produce some beautiful children and beautiful tall girls that we love very, very much. I do a lot of conferencing, a lot of conferencing, not just in the United States where I'm working with pastors here globally. Now, pastors just just hear it. All right? This whole business of blowing yourself up through overeating is got to be reckoned with. You know, we're going to we're going to get to it later. I mean, you're you're denying the temple the God created. You're you're destroying it, literally destroying it. So let's just hear a loving word here for us all culturally, whether we're pre whether we're naturally skinny or whether we are naturally predisposed to be larger people. And whatever we do, let's don't put out some kind of nonsense about an idealized body type. Does that not destroy children? How does that not destroy people in the kingdom? We do not do that.

[00:30:41] Yesterday we talked about Thomas Aquinas. And why was he called the Dumb Ox? Because he was predisposition. He was a huge man and he was overweight, but he was used greatly in God's kingdom. So this is here, the word here about nutritional sanity, nutritional sanity. And let's hear the word about temple care that will involve dress and will involved will involve exercise. And you'll you'll add in all of these things that need to be a part of your life. And when we understand that exercise can be just can be a phenomenally godly thing, and sometimes even taking a nap can be exactly what the Lord would want you to do at this point, even if it's just a little nap, you know, because the Lord doesn't want us to to to operate on our own drained, you know, on a gas tank. When the gas goes down and you're getting down to the bottom, you don't know unless it's an emergency situation. And really there's not all that many true emergencies in life. Now a lot of your parishioners are think we'll think there's true emergencies. But, you know, we talked yesterday about sometimes we have like Jesus did we have to let Lazarus die, leave for God's greater glory later. But we're saying, all right, if if my body say we're not do all this, if my body, which is an incarnated soul, is a gift from God, then throughout my life I'm called to take care of it. Now, don't make an idol out of it, okay? It's. It's not like, you know, I'm I've, I've got to to worship it that. That would be deep sin. But I am called to take care and to exercise proper temple care. Now, when these things devolve, when these things devolve, then we can fairly well say.

[00:33:05] We can actually fly to Saint Augustine and we can use Augustine's language he wrote. He wrote to the first Christian. The first really great Christian autobiography was written by Augustine, and he wrote in his autobiography, These words You have Loved Me. Oh, Lord, with a severe. Mercy. You have loved me, O Lord, with a severe mercy. It's in his text called Confessions. Now, a severe mercy simply means when when these things devolve, I'm going to end up in a crisis. Let me give you an example. I will often tell my students, you know, God gave us the commandment about taking the Sabbath rest. And part of the reason I hold out the Eugene Peterson work is because Peterson such a wonderful job of talking about Sabbath and sometimes even sabbatical, taking a sabbatical every few years. What I tell the students, I say it first you get you get some say about whether or not you're going to take your Sabbath day off. You get some freedom in that, but only at first. But then I say, inevitably, what will happen is if you break the Sabbath, you're going to take it one way or the other. But if you break it, then down the road it's going to be determined for you how you take it. You get what I'm saying? You don't take Sabbath then down the road. You're going to be on your back and out of commission one way or the other. That's just how God made us. He didn't. He didn't make us to run on empty. He made us to run, being filled with his Holy Spirit. And he also made us to rest in him and to let whatever work I do for his kingdom flow out of my relationship with him and not be grounded in my own natural abilities.

[00:35:44] See, the more natural abilities I have. In other words, I may be naturally charismatic. I may have long flowing, wavy hair. I'm talking about the man, you know. You know, so cool how you can just sweep it back. I can only dream about such things. But. But anyway, you know, and I may be naturally charismatic, you know, drawing people to me. I might be really smart and. And people just want to follow. Let me tell you, the more gifted you are, the more danger there is of all of this kind of stuff collapsing in your life. It's why I try and try and warn people with people with the greatest gifts. Stand in need. I'm in in danger of the greatest fall. So we don't ever want to promote our our our you know, we just don't want to promote those gifts. We we for you know, we've got one child who's so deeply blessed in worship leadership with a voice vocal capacity. But when I work with worship leaders, you know, I said, listen, listen, you're not there to be the spotlight on the stage. That's not why you're there. You've got to be invisible. You are successful when you point people beyond you in worship. But when you fold people in upon yourself, that's idolatry. Well, all of us, Sir Tim did for that. I mean, every person will face that temptation. Well, it's called vainglory will explicated a little, little bit later. So this severe mercy is is is is a real deal for us. And then what will happen when this stuff collapses? Then we give Satan a foothold in our lives. Just a little corner. My mentor in the faith used to talk about a mini am I in I obsession where Satan gets a hold of just a corner of my life because I allowed it.

[00:38:10] He can't overpower the blood of Christ and he cannot overpower any woman or any man who stands in the Lord. That's not that's not going to happen. But when I allow it, then then some fairly negative things happen. Now, for Saint Augustine, the severe mercy was a very positive thing. It was the crisis that came because, I mean, he was a total heathen. I mean, he was the playboy of the three hundreds. Smart, good looking, incredibly intelligent. He was the equivalent of a professor and he taught upper class Roman children. Now, he was African. He was from North Africa. He was a Berber. But he. He was a handsome, good looking, profoundly gifted man. Total heathen. Does it not say a word to all of us? To all of you listening, Let me tell you. I get. I get more and more every year over the years. I'll have students come in who have been totally rolled by, either by the by the the the flesh, the devil or the world, you know. And yet God's gotten a hold of their lives and they they're redeemed in Christ and they're flourishing. So in the new birth, there is newness and there is goodness in ways that we don't honor. No one's diminished from following Christ to being in the bowels of their hearts and dedicates their life to following him. Yet all of us are in danger of collapse here. Now, the early church felt that it was really, really important to study the game plan of the evil one. We even have somewhat contemporary people who did the same thing. Have you ever read any from C.S. Lewis and particularly The Screwtape Letters or The Great Divorce? That's exactly what he was doing. I think he said those are some of the hardest texts he ever wrote because he had to get behind the thought of evil in order to predict how the evil one would try and get us all down.

[00:40:49] The early church said, basically Satan is going to try and get us in eight different avenues. They were called a deadly sins. And the first person that we know of in the Christian world who wrote about them was a man by the name of vag. And you can look at various. Various of depending on how the Latins translated either Pontus or Pontic as p o in t. I see you as he's the first one who wrote about him. He died in the I think in 399. But the one who really, really explicated them is an early father called John Carson. Now, I need to just share some of my thoughts here, at least with Carson. John Carson is my mentor in the faith. I love the old man, John Carson, and I'm greatly thankful for him. He he wrote the texts we're going to refer to in the early four hundreds. I think he died around 425, something like that. So we're going to take a look at these things. But let me before we jump into let me just say this. The axiom that emerged out of Luke ten yesterday, remember the axiom the Mary in US has to rest at the feet of Jesus If what if the master in us is to do her work? In other words, the Marian US has to rest at the feet of Jesus receiving all that He has for us. If the Martha the vocation, in other words, if vocational fidelity, if vocational fidelity is going to unfold, I've got to be defeated. Jesus not in no worship, but in great worship. It has got to be dispositional. It's got to be who I am, not just one time during the day, but throughout the day.

[00:43:24] But in order to get it throughout the day, normally it's going to have to be in one time as well in specific set times of of being with our Lord. But remember, we build our lives on the theological truths, on the theological truth. Union precedes Kenosis Union with Jesus Union, which Jesus precedes or goes before self donating love for him, Union precedes Kenosis oneness with Christ comes before serving Christ. You get him flipped and you end up in a ditch. And then we rest on the foundational word from yesterday that essence precedes existence. In other words, who I am as a gifted child of God, made in the image of God, the essence of who I am. I'm a incarnated soul. I'm be sold, I'm given, I'm given a I'm and it's it's it's one here. You know, we don't want to buy for anything. The gift of who I am is the major definition of who I am, not what I produce, not what I do, not what I accomplish. We do all of those things for God's glory. And Jesus said, Hey, you'll even be doing greater things. I mean, how inconceivable is that? So we we serve, we work, we follow. We want to see not only fidelity but fruitfulness. But the fruitfulness is meant to give praise to God not to define who I am. Do you see how it gives us freedom then, for true vocational fidelity? Now, how we're going to take a break here. But before we take a break, when you go into these things called the deadly sins, it is not an easy path. But I'm telling you, if if if we're going to triumph over evil, which the church will triumph over evil, then we've got to know the game plan and understand just exactly how will the evil one try and take me out.

[00:46:12] One thing I do kind of to get people prepared for looking at these things is is in either in a small group or or. Or one on one or even personally. Some of this might be so intimate to you can only do it with with yourself. You ask a basic question and say, All right, if I were to get taken out of ministry right now, how would the evil one do it? And you got to be brutally honest here. You can't back away from it. You know, what is it in my life that he's going to hook? What is it? That I'm tempted. What tempts me now? Now the temptations not. Hey, that's all people are to, you know, temptation is common to all people or it's is. And we can resist. But we're given the power to resist, to overcome that. But nevertheless. So we're thinking ahead of time. If I were to get taken out. How would that be accomplished? And then we're 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. So before we go into that section, be thinking, well, if I were to think, yeah, what how to Satan get most people out of the church. Where would what would you say? What would you think? But most of all, we're going to ask for covering going through this, that even though we're going to go through a valley here, the Lord Jesus is going to walk with us and help us. So, Lord, we commit this session unto you and we ask for your help, even as we go into the next session on the deadly sins, that it will be your Holy Spirit that will be leading us your name, that will be honored most of all, or Lord your Holy Spirit to break the chains.

[00:48:21] Ask it in your Holy name, and for the sake of your holy freedom. A man.