Get the People Going
God created your to produce good fruit. To produce this fruit you we are supposed to walk with the Spirit. As the movie, Blades of Glory, stated: "What does that even mean?"
I’ve found good communication usually includes the perfect quote from a movie. But great communication includes the perfect quote from a Will Ferrell movie.
You know this will be a great bit of writing.
In the Will Farrell movie, Blades of Glory, there is a scene that always seems near the front of my mind. Ferrell’s character, Chazz, is preparing for the big figure skating competition. He’s in discussion with his coach and skating partner (Jimmy) about what song they will skate to. This is how the conversation goes:
Jimmy : So, Coach, I was thinking about the music for our routine.
Coach : Oh, really?
Chazz : We're gonna dance to one song, and one song only: "Lady Humps" by the Blackeyed Peas. "What you gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk? I'm a get you, get you drunk, get you drunk off my lady humps, my humps, my humps, my lovely lady humps."
Jimmy : [disgusted] I'm not skating to anything with references to lady humps. I don't even know what that means.
Chazz : No one knows what it means, but it's provocative...
Jimmy : No, it's not, it's gross...
Chazz : ...It gets the people going!
It gets the people going!
Last week, I shared how the Bible, Genesis through Revelation, compares humanity to trees. It is a deep and multi-faceted comparison, but there were three main takeaways for us:
God created us to produce fruit (Genesis 1-2).
The fruit we consume is the fruit we produce (Genesis 3).
To produce good fruit, we must say ‘no’ to ourselves, say ‘yes’ to Jesus, and walk with the Spirit (Galatians 5).
It’s the very last phrase, walk with the Spirit, that reminds me of that scene from Blades of Glory.
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“No one does, but it gets the people going.”
Two Sundays ago, I preached those words, walk with the Spirit, and I saw a lot of heads nodding, I heard a few ‘amens’, and even a few hand claps.
It got the people going.
But did anyone know what it meant?
Let me be honest. I’ve been a follower of Jesus for years - well over 30 years. If you had asked me the question 15 or 20 years ago, “What does it mean to walk with the Spirit?”, I wouldn’t have known. I could have given an answer - read the Bible, pray, have a quiet time. But I didn’t know. Keep in mind I was a pastor - someone designated to lead others in their own faith journey.
I didn’t know what it meant to walk with the Spirit.
Over the past fifteen years, I’ve been slowly learning and understanding what that phrase means in a very practical sense. Today I want to share a portion of what it means to walk with the Spirit. When I say, “a portion,” I don’t mean I’m holding anything back, but this is a deep topic. There is always more to know, so this is an intro article to walking with the Spirit.
3 Steps to Walking with the Spirit
In three sentences, here is an overview of what it means to walk with the Spirit:
Repent: say ‘no’ to myself and ‘yes’ to Jesus.
Abide: a one-word answer to what it means to walk with the Spirit found in John 15.
Prune: to produce the best fruit, we must let God cut away areas holding us back.
If that sounds too simple, it’s not. The steps are simple, but the follow-through is a lifetime of walking and repeating these steps. It’s what Paul wrote to the Philippians church:
“…work out your own salvation…” -Philippians 2:12 ESV
I am constantly working out what it means to submit to God, follow Jesus, and walk with the Spirit. The older I get, the more realize how difficult it is to daily walk with the Spirit.
So let’s see what this practice looks like for your life.
Repent
To be truly repentant, you can’t be like my dog, Charlie.
In Galatians 5, Paul outlines what both bad and good fruit looks like, and then defines what we do to produce good fruit in our lives:
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. -Galatians 5:24-25
This is my own paraphrase: say ‘no’ to myself (sinful nature) and say ‘yes’ to Jesus. The beginning step of repentance is saying ‘no’. Church people use the word ‘turn’ to describe repentance. I turn from my sin and walk toward Jesus.
This is where my dog comes in.
Repentance = Turn + Rethink
Each morning, I wake up early and feed Charlie. However, I’m not just greeted by Charlie, but by one of our three cats, Perry, too. So after I feed Charlie, Perry lets me know he needs to be fed too.
Here’s the problem, Charlie is a dog and Perry is a cat, which means Charlie eats all of her food immediately. Perry doesn’t, so when Charlie is done with her food, she heads straight for Perry’s food next. When I tell Charlie ‘no’, she is quick to respond; Charlie turns away from the food. However, as soon as I turn my back, Charlie quickly runs back to Perry’s food.
Charlie isn’t truly repentant.
Repentance is more than just turning. It is also rethinking. This means we don’t just turn from our sin, but we rethink its hold on us. My natural inclination is to be like Charlie and run back to my sin when the moment is right. In that moment, I must rethink sin’s hold on me.
Repentance is saying ‘no’ to my own desires AND saying ‘yes’ to Jesus.
Repentance = Lifetime
And don’t be fooled, repentance is not just for that one big moment we come to Jesus. Repentance is a lifetime process. God will consistently identify areas of your life that need to be refined.
"Repentance is not a once-for-all event at the beginning of the Christian life. It is a lifelong attitude and activity." - R. C. Sproul
Remember that repentance does not produce fruit in and of itself. However, if we don’t deal with our sins, they will keep us from producing fruit. Even worse, if we remain in an unrepentant state we’ll begin to produce the bad fruit that Paul talks about in Galatians 5.
Is there an area you need to repent of in your life? if so, don’t wait to turn. Do it today. It’s the first step to walking in the Spirit.
Abide
Jesus saved the best and most important for last.
The night Jesus was betrayed, arrested, and sentenced to death, he gathered with his twelve closest followers. In the final moments he had with these men, Jesus chose his words carefully. This is one of the things he said:
Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father. -John 15:5-8
The word ‘remain’ is translated as ‘abide’ in other versions of the Bible. It can also mean ‘rest’. How important was this thought to Jesus? In these few sentences, he told his friends to remain with him four different times.
So what does it mean to abide?
We are Human Beings
One of the traps for a Christian is falling into ‘doing’ the things a Christian should do - going to church, volunteering with the church, being kind, and watching what you say (in front of other Christians). The list could go on and on, and there is nothing wrong with those actions, but it reminds me of something one of my professors said to us over and over:
We are human beings, not human doings. -Dr Larry Fine
To abide, remain, or rest means to be with Jesus. Another way to put it, we are to have a relationship with God. Doing good things for God doesn’t create a relationship with him. We create a relationship with God by spending time with Him, which is where I struggled for years in my walk with the Spirit. I was perfectly comfortable in the doing, but the being was much harder for me.
This is hard to admit, but as a pastor, I had a hollow walk with God.
I didn’t know what it meant to abide with God. But this began to change about 15 years ago.
Walking with the Spirit
Before I share the specifics of my practice of abiding, let me encourage you. It may seem overwhelming, but this began process 15-20 years ago, and it’s developed and deepened over those years. If you don’t have any of these practices, choose one and start simple. If you have one or two, add another or deepen one of what you are already practicing.
This is what my practice of abiding looks like:
1. Reading the Bible
This was the first practice I added to my life. Over the years, I read the Bible off and on. I had moments in my walk with God that were really consistent for weeks or months, and then it would drop off for weeks or months. When I began again 20 years ago, this practice was almost non-existent.
So I started with baby steps. I read a few verses and a devotion. This was a 5-10 minute practice. After a few months of consistency, I increased this to a full chapter of the Bible, and I read through entire books over weeks or months. This moved to reading the whole Bible in a year (3-5 chapters a day).
There are two big takeaways I learned from re-introducing this practice to my life.
Grace. One of the things that kept me from being consistent was the shame of missing a day (or week). While consistency is key to success in your walk, there is always grace. God wants a relationship with you, not perfection.
Scripture teaches me how God thinks and acts. This helps to interpret and decipher the loud thoughts I have. It teaches me what is God and what is my own emotion.
What does your practice of Scripture reading look like? How can you deepen it?
2. Early Morning
Some people believe it is imperative to connect with God in the morning. I don’t agree. However, I am a morning person, so the best time for me to meet with God is in the morning.
The key was that I carved out a specific time to meet with God. I didn’t leave it to chance - will I wake up in time? So I woke myself up early to make sure the time was available.
Use your creativity and be flexible too. There were times when my commute was 30-45 minutes, so that was my time to meet with God.
When will you make time in your schedule to meet with God daily?
3. Solitude + Journal
Years ago, in the 1980s, Richard Foster wrote The Celebration of Discipline. It is a how-to book on developing spiritual disciplines in your life. He partly developed this book through the practice of solitude he began as a young pastor. For Foster, this meant staying at a local monastery for a week with just a Bible, a journal, and his thoughts (pre-internet or cell phone days!).
A current writing partner of Foster is pastor Brenda Quinn. In a recent interview, Quinn said she didn’t have that luxury of leaving for a week at a time, so she learned to snatch moments here and there for small blocks of solitude. This is what I’ve learned to find in my own life.
It began about five years ago when I found one of the problems of waking early to read in bed…falling back asleep. So I began to get out of bed and go into our kitchen to read and to meet with God. This allowed me the opportunity to be completely alone for 30-45 minutes — a rarity in our busy home of six people.
In this time of silence, I also began to journal, which I had never been successful at before (see the stacks of journals lying around my home with one page written in). I began to forget about what I was ‘supposed’ to journal about, and I simply wrote a line or two about what God had shown me that day.
When and where can you find a few moments to be in solitude during your day?
4. Meditation + Prayer
The most recent addition to my own set of spiritual disciplines is the practice of meditation. I’ve shared what this looks like recently, but here are two important takeaways for me.
Meditation is a form of prayer for me.
As I meditate on what I read and think about that morning, I also drift to the things in life pressing on me. This act of meditation allows me to turn these concerns over to God, and let him speak into my life.
The Holy Spirit is a person.
Maybe the most important aspect of meditation is beginning to see the Holy Spirit as not just a force or energy around me, but an actual person. He is like God the Father and Jesus the Son. I’m interacting with the Spirit as a person. I’m asking him to fill me and anoint me for the day ahead of me. I’m listening to him.
How are you growing in your own prayer life?
What does your interaction with the Holy Spirit look like?
Bearing Fruit
As I’ve incorporated these disciplines into my life, the fruit of the Spirit has increased in my life. I’m not ‘acting’ more loving, kind, or peaceful. As I spend time with God (walk with the Spirit), his fruit simply flows through me. I’m far from perfect, but fruit is more abundant in my life.
Believe it or not, this actually leads to problems. Which is what the last step of walking with the Spirit is for.
Prune
I want you to imagine your life for a moment. Take some time to think about this. First, see yourself truly repenting of the things God has been challenging you in over the last weeks, months, or years. You don’t just turn for a moment, but you truly rethink and truly change.
Now, I want you to imagine you begin to add, increase, or deepen the spiritual practices I mentioned above (and others too). These two acts lead to the production of the fruit of the Spirit in your life. You naturally are more loving, kind, and patient. Which leads to opportunities to do good things for God — maybe some of the things you’ve dreamed about. They now are just dropping into your lap.
And finally, more and more and more opportunities come your way.
Lifted and Cut
In John 15, Jesus actually begins his command to abide with these words:
“I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. -John 15:1-2
Notice, the phrase, “He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit…” This can be translated as “He picks up…” God sees the parts not producing fruit in your life. They lying on the ground, so he picks them up in order for the sun to reach them. They will be protected and have the opportunity to produce fruit.
When we think about parts being cut away from us, it doesn’t sound pleasant. In fact, sometimes it isn’t very nice, but notice who is doing the cutting — God the Father. He knows what is best for you, and as he begins to cut away things that are fruitful in your life, you’ll actually have more opportunities to do the things you really love and care about.
God created you to produce fruit, and he works to see that happen in your life.
In my neighborhood are three apple trees side by side. I drive by them each time I enter or leave the neighborhood. As far as I can tell, these trees have never been pruned, so they are overloaded with apples. We are at harvest time, however, these apples are small, hard, and inedible. They will fall to the ground or rot on the tree.
The trees are pretty, but their purpose has been blunted.
Don’t let your purpose be minimized. I encourage you to ask God to prune you, so you can reach your full potential.
Will you be brave enough to ask God to prune you?
Fruit to Flourish
A few years ago the Barna Research Group joined the research of Harvard to determine what causes a person to flourish or thrive in life. They boiled down their findings to five areas: faith, vocation, relationships, finances, and well-being (mental, emotional, physical). If you are really flourishing in life, those five areas will be in a good, if not a great, place. In addition, they found that those who flourish in faith tend to rank higher in the other four areas of life too.
Tim Keller, who has been called the C.S. Lewis of our generation, was asked about flourishing in these five areas, and his answer was fascinating. He listed off all nine fruit of the Spirit and tied them to those five areas of life. In other words, when we walk with the Spirit, we produce the fruit of the Spirit, which leads to a flourishing life.
Today I’m calling you up. I calling you to a deeper walk with God - the Spirit. I’m calling you to develop the fruit of the Spirit in your life. Because when you do, you will flourish. Your life will be full, not just inwardly but in every area of your life!
Writing Playlist
I don’t know if we have the same taste in music, but here are some songs to explore. All the links go to Spotify. While writing this post, this is some of what I was listening to:
Don’t Give Up - Will Reagan, United Pursuit
STEPPIN - Miles Minnick
Missing - Dru Davis