Proverbs
25:28, I Corinthians 9:24-27 – Going with Jesus series #6
August
28, 2005
First Presbyterian Church Carson City
Pastor
Bruce Kochsmeier
The athletic metaphor in this passage is not lost on me.
From my earliest days I have loved athletic pursuit.
I love the discipline and self-control that is demanded as Paul describes
here not because I love pain, but because I love the pure result it brings.
Nothing is so satisfying after disciplining one’s body as to cross a
finish line having run your best or to walk off a pitching mound after retiring
a major league prospect. But I have learned that what makes these great is not
the athletic accomplishment in itself, but far more importantly the focus and
self-disciple of putting anything less aside to attain that one pure, goal.
This morning as we continue in the journey of following Jesus Christ we
focus on the subject of self-control as it leads us to be distilled by the power
of God’s Holy Spirit; clarified by the heat and compression of this
disciplining presence until we truly belong to no one else but God.
And as we do this we are invited to discover as a joyful experience the
rigor of self-denial that leads us to know the clear, pure air of realizing how
good it is to trust Jesus Christ no matter what he calls us to do.
This will take some work. As
Dallas Willard describes in his book, “The Spirit of the Disciplines”, “A
baseball 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.”
I never had the privilege or honor of serving in the United States Armed
Forces, but I have been blessed to be nurtured by some great people who have.
I regularly spend time with them in Bible study and meals.
None of them have ever told me that they sent brownies to their boot camp
drill instructors, but all of them say that they would never have been prepared
to serve without the discipline that these people demanded of them.
They knew that the day would come that the come when the self-control
they were teaching would save the life of the recruits.
I think this is perhaps our dilemma spiritually (and maybe physically and
even fiscally) today. We don’t
realize that the self-control to which we are called can save our life.
God will not remove the salvation of Jesus Christ from our lives if we
have said yes to it, but we still have to live in this life and there is much
that will happen; many miles to be run, walked, climbed, and pedaled.
If we have not subjected ourselves to the discipline to which we are
called, when the miles get long or steep or hot or dark, we will not handle them
well. We may hurt.
We may lose sight of the finish or fall down or have to crawl.
The invitation God issues to us to be spiritually disciplined; to be
self-controlled is one that calls us to see this as a joyful opportunity to
learn how strong and capable we can be as we let ourselves be trained and
nurtured by God’s Holy Spirit in the will of God.
The Self control to which God calls us often means we need to hold back;
to wait before speaking, spending or acting.
In this waiting God calls us to ask, “Will this draw me closer to God?
Will this help the other person know the love of Jesus Christ?”
Lance Armstrong has been in the news a lot this week owing to accusations
that he used drugs to win the Tour de France in 1999.
I don’t know the answer, but I do know that he nearly died from cancer
before he ever won and when he came back from cancer to challenge the tour he
came back with a new understanding of self-control; that he would have to be a
new person literally. And this is
who he became not just for the tour but in all of life.
Nearly dying changed his body. It
took away muscles and strength and power be relied upon before.
Coming back he learned that it would be training more than anyone, eating
differently, being a whole new person who understood and accepted the rhythm and
strategy necessary to win the tour. I’m
not sure it can be proven if Lance Armstrong used drugs or not.
But what can be proven is that he changed his life and exercised a
self-control of mind and body in order to win.
And this is exactly what Paul is describing in this letter; that to
follow Christ means we need to be changed by a disciplined self-control that is
real.
Listen to this passage from Lance Armstrong’s bio, “It’s Not about
the Bike” that tells of his learning to get back on and ride with a
self-control that went beyond where he had ever been.
His trainer Chris Carmichael did a wise thing and took him back to where
he had been before, just as God calls us back to repeat the disciplines of trust
to renew us. They went back to Beech mountain in North Carolina where
Lance had won the Tour Du Pont and the crowds had years before painted on the
road, “Go Armstrong”. Here’s
what Lance describes happened that reflects our own call to spiritual
self-discipline as God calls us back up the mountain.
He writes,
“We set out on yet another cold, raining, foggy day with a plan to ride
a 100-mile loop before we returned and undertook the big finishing ascent of
Beech Mountain.
We rode and rode through a steady rain, for four hours, and then five.
By the time we got to the foot of Beech, I’d been on the bike for six
hours, drenched. But I lifted
myself up out of the saddle and propelled the bike up the incline.
As I started up the rise, I saw an eerie sight: the road still had my
name painted on it.
My wheels spun over the washed-out old yellow and white lettering.
I glanced down between my feet. It
said faintly, Viva Lance.
That ascent triggered something in me.
As I rode upward, I reflected on my life, back to all points, my
childhood, my early races, my illness, and how it changed
me. Maybe it was the primitive act of climbing that made me
confront the issues I been evading for weeks.
It was time to quit stalling, I realized.
Move, I told myself.
If you can still move, you aren’t
sick.
I looked again at the ground as it passed under my wheels, at the water
spitting off the tires and the spokes turning round.
I saw more faded painted letters, and I saw my washed-out name: Go
Armstrong.
As I continued upward, I saw my life as a whole.
I saw the pattern and privilege of it, and the purpose of it, too.
It was simply this: I was meant for a long, hard climb.”
Before cancer Lance Armstrong trusted in one
thing – his extraordinary ability. But
he was never any good at really long stage races.
He couldn’t ride in the rain. He
gave up when it got cold or he came in last.
The mountains killed him. He
sprinted all the time and was always out front until he got sucked up by the
strategy and power of peloton; the body of the whole.
When he nearly died he had to learn to live and ride again in a whole new
way. This is the Christian journey.
It is not a sprint. It is a
stage race of a life time that goes over mountains, through rain, and needs to
be run strategically waiting for the right time to stand on the pedals and climb
for all we are worth in the power of the one who leads us in the same way to the
finish line of faithfulness.
If we do not let our lives come under the
control of God’s Holy Spirit the walls of our lives, as the city described in
Proverbs will be breached and all manner of poison will find its way in.
We cannot hold the walls up ourselves.
We need the power of Jesus Christ at work within us; a life that us
willing to go to the cross and be changed, because this is the only power that
can hold back the powers of this world. When
we are not letting the mind of Jesus Christ train and transform us all the
things that want to disqualify us from running the joyful, life-giving race with
Jesus Christ will come in to poison our path.
One of the main reasons we are called to the discipline of knowing
God’s word and to prayer is because it is so easy to lose self-control when we
are tired or not spiritually fit – in a moment we can cave in because we are
relying on strength we don’t have. We
can “Bonk” – run out of nutrition. We
need to stay fed – stop to eat, to rest to wait for God to work.
We need to learn to lean on the Holy Spirit so we don’t let your city
walls become breached.
Jesus lived self-control and knew more peace and courage than anyone who
has ever lived. He taught us by example that self-control is the willingness
to do whatever it takes long enough to let God bless us BEFORE resorting to our
own solutions that never work.
All the steps of following Jesus up to this point, intimacy, simplicity,
solitude and silence, surrender, prayer, and humility, are means of grace that
flow from the self-control to LET ourselves trust God enough to fill our EVERY
space with his perfect will.
Self-control is self-knowledge, which interestingly often takes someone
from outside to help us discover. But
only as we exercise self-control will we be open to allowing God’s Holy Spirit
to expose who we are, albeit through the insights of others, to ourselves.
It is through this exercise in self-control that we discover what we need
to let go and what we need to hold on to and how.
Self-control is learning again and again what really matters and learning
in each chapter of life how to be disciplined to make this central in our
journey with Jesus Christ.
This is what Jesus taught us in his willingness to give himself up for
us. It is only through this gift of
his life and the power of his resurrection that we are able to experience the
true control over our lives.
We use the term “control freak” to describe others or ourselves when
we grope to manage every little detail of our lives.
The irony is that “control freaks” are most often the least truly in
control of their lives. This is
because what we really are when we do this is “anxiety or worry freaks” and I
think it describes us all. It
certainly was the case for Paul when he spoke of himself in the struggles of
Romans 7 and the thorn in the flesh of II Corinthians 12.
In both these situations he speaks of the captivity of our spirits until
Jesus Christ is given full reign in our lives.
We inspire one another in Christian self-control.
It is positive peer pressure. When
someone is “running” for all they are worth with Jesus Christ it inspires me
to do the same.
Augustine spoke of this when he said as I so
often quote, “Until we have Jesus as Lord of our lives we have ourselves as
tyrants.” We can spend our lives
trying to have control or we can spend our lives giving Christ control, but we
really can’t do both. This
doesn’t mean we won’t try. But
until we daily acknowledge this struggle and take not just three seconds to
think before acting or speaking, but as long as it takes to let God’s will
settle in upon us, we will be trapped in our own hollow, but horrible tyranny.
Chuck Swindoll states it so clearly, “…either we’re operating from
the realm of the Spirit and under His control or we’re operating in the realm
of the flesh and under its control.”
So I want to share four clear steps Chuck outlines that can teach us the
power of self-control
First, appreciating the nature of the battle is essential.
Just because I ran a marathon once doesn’t mean I’m ready for it
today. I need to shore up the walls
of my city every day by letting God strengthen me.
I can’t do it myself.
Second, we need to
remember that we are powerless to win the battle against our desires without the
Spirit of God. We need to let
God’s Holy Spirit fight the battle on our behalf – whatever it may be simple
or huge.
Third, we need to make this discipline a personal matter.
Paul writes, “I box, I run, I discipline my body.
Only I in concert with God’s Holy Spirit can do it.
If someone has to do it for me it’s not self-control!
And if someone has to do if for me in this case it likely won’t get
done! I may and should ask for
help, but I need to do it.
Fourth, ignoring the consequences invites disaster.
When we ignore the need for self-control we let our relationship with God
grow cold. We disqualify ourselves
and God is forced at times to put us on the sidelines until we get ourselves
back on track in submission to his will.
It all comes down to trusting that God’s will for us is perfect even
when we can’t see it perfectly. It
comes down to giving our hearts and our wills perfectly to our Father.
It’s like something I read last week.
Phil Mickelson is the most popular golfer in America because he is
genuinely a nice guy – and also a GREAT golfer.
They call him “Lefty” but other than golf Phil is right-handed.
Do you know why he plays golf left-handed?
Because when his dad was teaching him he wanted so much to mirror what
his dad was teaching that he followed him literally, which turned
him around. And that’s what needs to happen to us. We need to be so mirroring Jesus Christ; so giving our
control to him that it turns us around.
I’m extremely left-handed except for golf – I play right-handed!!
Do you know why? Because I
was given right-handed clubs as a child and I figured, This must be how you do
it.” God puts the tools in our
hands for self-control and ours is to use what he gives us even and especially
if it means we need to be changed.
Listen, I know many of you are struggling with something really hard, but God wants to empower you with the self-control to keep going. I know it’s hard and that you have patterns and fears that make it feel impossible to keep the sin out of your life. But the good news is that Jesus Christ is here NOW in the power of his Holy Spirit to equip you; to keep you going; to say, “Keep going” “Go Ruth, Bob, Roy, Don, Mary” “Allez” “Charge”, because God wants the very best for you. Today trust God. And no matter how hard it may seem may we realize that the strength is God’s and that in the power of his Holy Spirit we will be given us what we need when we need it as we let our self-control come from him. Amen.