The Ultimate Spiritual Workout

Dave Steeves · Tidal Church Moncton · June 9, 2024 · Here's Your Sign series

Dave Steeves explores Romans 12:1-2, showing that worship is not just a Sunday activity but offering our whole everyday lives to God as living sacrifices. He encourages spiritual disciplines that help us lean against the pull of the world.

More from Dave Steeves · The Here's Your Sign series

Topics: Faith, Discipleship, Worship

Transcript

[0:01] Well, many of you in this room today, and those of you watching online, you've had a different church experience other than Moncton Wesleyan. Maybe you grew up in another church, maybe you were in a different city and you went to church there. And maybe others of you, like me, were from a different denomination, different worshiping styles. Some styles are a little more formal or traditional. And then there are other styles that are more lively and even more charismatic than here at Moncton Wesleyan. And so when I was a kid in St. John, I went to a church that would be considered very lively and very charismatic. And looking back, I remember that children would be sitting with their parents for the singing part of the service, and then halfway through the service, the pastor would release all the kids to children's ministry.

[0:58] How many remember that kind of style? What a bunch of chaos that was. Can you imagine? Well, where's little Johnny? I don't know. I just let him go after "Amazing Grace." Thank goodness for children's ministry. Check-ins and security. Well, my mom and my parents are here today. My in-laws are here. And two of my girls. And my mom tells the story that at this church when I was a little kid, I would love to stand up on the pew and just sing as loud as my little lungs could belt it out. And apparently on this one particular Sunday, I was singing so loud that people were actually looking around and just kind of politely smiling at me to the point where my mom thought, "Well, now he's being quite a distraction."

[1:51] And so my mom whispered to me, I'm sure it was ever so kindly, "David, could you just sing a little softer?" And it broke my heart and I cried louder than I sang that day. And she had to carry me out. And this church that I grew up in, it was not uncommon for me to notice people who were just exuberant, expressing themselves during the singing. I mean, full out, surrender, the goalposts, the holding the little TV, holding the big TV. I was just full out. And then there were spontaneous shouts of praise. Have you ever been to one of these churches?

[2:38] Like, "Praise You, Jesus. Hallelujah. Thank You, Father." And you just never knew where it was gonna happen. Well, it really kept a kid engaged in what was going on in church. I verified this next story with my brother to make sure that it was true. But at our church, the worship would get going sometimes. And I remember as a kid that there were people and a lady in particular, she'd kick off her shoes and she'd start to go and she'd run around the church and she'd just start going. And my brother and I, we'd be standing on the pew, we'd be counting the laps. "Two, she's gonna make it to three, three, oh, she's wearing out on four." Or sometimes the preacher didn't even preach the message because the worship would just keep going and there would be this very special Holy Spirit encounter.

[3:35] Don't you love that? God uses all different types of churches and all different styles, and God can move in the heart of people no matter where you choose to worship Him. But here's what I realized. I realized that as I got into my late teens and as a young adult, that I thought that all along that worship was only reserved to Sundays. Are there any teenagers in the house here today? Just give me a wave. Teenagers, young adults. And I used to think that, that if you sing during Sundays and whatnot, that was your spiritual act of worship. So there's physical expressions.

[4:23] And worship for me was still contained to just one day a week. It was a morning service and usually a nighttime service back then. And now to prepare for today and to make sure I connected with the series, I listened to Pastor Jerry's wonder- Jeremy's wonderful message last week. And in his message he said this, and this really got my attention. Faith is physical in nature, not just an intellectual idea. It's not just a Sunday morning thing. The common thinking often is, I do worship on Sunday, then I do my thing for the rest of the week. And that is exactly where I was as a teenager into my young adult years, which is why I am so passionate about the scripture that we are gonna go through today.

[5:18] And so I have titled this message "The Ultimate Spiritual Workout." Can you just say that back to me? Even in the balcony: the ultimate spiritual workout. And I'm just so thankful to be here with you today, Pastor Buckingham. I see him down here towards the front. In 2000, he and Pastor Kevin Matthews, who was the children's pastor at the time, took a chance on me. I was part of a different denomination, which I've just told you about. I did not attend Kingswood for my Bible college training and my experience with teenagers up to that point was a youth group of four kids at a United church in Fredericton.

[6:08] And I had just married a Baptist girl and I had come from a United church and I was applying for a Wesleyan church. I was all over the place. And it made no sense humanly speaking for the board at that time. And there's board members here that remember at the Crystal Palace boardroom in 2000 that offered me that call. And 24 years later, I am forever grateful that you took a chance on me. So here's the theme verse that I want to go through. And this connects with what Pastor Jerry, I keep saying Pastor Jerry, I work with a Pastor Jerry and I got a friend, a Pastor Jeremy. Here we go.

[6:57] "And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them, your bodies, be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him. Don't copy the behaviors and the customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good, pleasing and perfect." And so you guys are working through this for four weeks and this is week two.

[7:44] It's Paul who's writing this verse in Romans. Paul was an amazing missionary who went through a dramatic conversion, basically leading others to kill Christians, to then lead churches and plant churches. I would say that's a pretty dramatic conversion. And when I encountered this verse, when I truly read this verse, I remember thinking, "Hold it." You mean waving my arms on a Sunday? You mean running around church with enthusiasm? You mean spontaneous shouts of praise? You mean singing on the top of my lungs at church on Sunday morning and Sunday night and even Wednesday night?

[8:34] You mean that is not the full understanding of worship? And it was this significant moment for me. And perhaps you've had a significant moment too, where a scripture just comes alive for you. And it was around that time in my early twenties that Eugene Peterson put out a paraphrase of the Bible called The Message. And it was the Bible in plain English for ordinary people to understand. And so I thought, "Hey, I wanna read this. I need fresh insight." And The Message version of the same scripture we just read says this. See if this hits you any differently. So here's what I want you to do. God helping you, take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, your eating, your going to work, and your walking around life, and place it before God as an offering.

[9:32] Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him. Amen. It was starting to become clear to me, and I was realizing that worship is not just something that I do on Sunday, but it is something that I do every day everywhere. And in the Old Testament, you'll read many stories of people that used to bring their sacrifice or they used to bring their offering to an altar. Sometimes inside a temple, other times outside of the temple, they would bring their best fruit and their grain, or they would bring their best animal, an unblemished lamb, and place it at the altar.

[10:20] And it was their expression of thankfulness to God and a sacrifice for their sins. But now in the New Testament, God is switching things up a little bit. And He begins to say that if you wanna worship Me properly, I want you on the altar. I don't want your best fruit and your best grain anymore. I don't want your best livestock. I want you on the altar. Everything you are, everything you do is placed at the altar of God.

[11:08] Amen. Amen. And what's so special about the altar? The altar is this very special place. And there are many of you who remember times where you have come to the front of the church or the altar of the church and you have started your journey with Jesus. Maybe it was a church camp that you came to the front of the church as well, and you stood at the altar, and it's the best decision you can ever make to go from death to life. I surrender everything to You. And there were many people who came forward last Sunday as well when I was watching.

[11:55] And if you've not done that yet, if you haven't started at the starting line with Jesus, you're gonna have that opportunity today. And I know this church offers that opportunity many times. Yet scripture seems to indicate that it's not a one-time surrender. And let me explain about that. It says, take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, your eating, hallelujah, your going to work, your walking around life, and place it before God as an offering. This scripture is saying, don't just come once to the altar, but it's time for you and I to get on the altar every single day.

[12:47] And here's the news flash: Most of the time the things on the altar are dead. But scripture's saying that we need to be a living sacrifice. That's almost one of those oxymorons: holy and pleasing to Him. Scripture says, "I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind that He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to, what's this word, worship Him." And so God says, "I can use you in incredible ways if you just keep thanking Me for every single breath you take.

[13:37] When you sleep, it is worship to Me because I'm preparing you for what's next. When you eat, it is worship to Me. When you go to work, it is worship to Me. The way you treat your family members is worship to Me. The way you make decisions, those critical life-deciding decisions in your life, that is worship to Me." And that is how you become a living sacrifice. I want you to turn to your neighbor and just whisper this: "I am a living sacrifice." Make sure they hear you. "I am a living sacrifice." Well, when I finally understood that, when that finally started to compute, there were other verses in the Bible that became illuminated and just started to jump off the page for me.

[14:34] Here's some that you may be familiar with. "Love the Lord your God with all your and with all your and with all your..." That sounds like a living sacrifice. That sounds like somebody needs to be all in. 1 Corinthians is the next one. "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." Have you heard of that one before? That's the living sacrifice. You say, "What is worship?" Rick Warren, in his bestseller many years ago, The Purpose Driven Life. Some of you have done small groups on this. He says, "Anything you do that brings pleasure to God is an act of worship to Him."

[15:20] And I want to be all in. I desire to be a worshiper of the one true God, not just on Sundays but all seven days. Amen. And I hope you do too. But I want to be real with you. Here's the tough part. It is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life to be a living sacrifice every single day. And that is why I titled this message The Ultimate Spiritual Workout. You might say, "Well, why would you do that? Why would you scare us? I don't like physical workouts. Why would I want a spiritual workout?" Well, what makes this so difficult? Here it is. Verse 2 says, "Don't copy the behavior and the customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think." That's hard.

[16:24] And you say, "So why is being a living sacrifice so difficult?" Because of the behavior and customs of this world. Because of what we're surrounded by, because of what we are immersed in every single day. And I like to use the illustration of the Magic Mountain wave pool. Okay, it's opening up in a couple weeks. All right, the Magic Mountain wave pool. Now, some of you have spent your whole life trying to keep distanced from the wave pool, but I just want you to picture, just go on this imaginary journey with me for a second. That you are in that wave pool, you're up to your belly button, and there is a force from those waves that pushes you back.

[17:10] Sometimes it just gently picks you up and you're not where you started. And if we think about that wave pool a little bit, us being immersed in the behavior and the customs of our world that we are getting hit with waves of life's pain and trauma. We're getting hit with waves of life's disappointments, with life's temptations daily, with other people's opinions. The waves are hitting us, the waves of life's pressures and thought patterns. And it's not just enough to try to stand your ground against the patterns and the ways of this world. What you have to do is you have to actually intentionally make a decision to lean in and to push forward against those oncoming waves.

[18:08] And that is exactly what spiritual disciplines do, is they equip you to lean into those waves, spiritual disciplines that keep our focus on Jesus, to keep our eyes on the author and the perfecter of our faith. And to not get pushed back by, in some ways, the predictable patterns of this world. If you were to sit down and say, "What am I gonna be tempted with this week?" I bet you, you could list what's coming your way this week and I want to be all in. And so you say, "Well, how do I do that? How am I able to die to these selfish desires daily?" It's the old story, but have you really heard it?

[18:55] When you read or when you listen to the Bible daily, even for a short amount of time, if you're driving to work, if you're out walking your dog, whatever it takes to listen to the Bible or to sit in that chair and read, you will be leaning into the waves of that day because you will be anchored in the truth of the Word. If you take time to Sabbath and quiet yourself, even if you can't make it a full day, even just a half a day or a couple hours, and push against the pattern of this world of overscheduled and busyness. If you take steps towards simplifying when it comes to your stuff and begin to give things away in Jesus' name to organizations that can use it, then you'll be pushing against the wave of collecting and hoarding stuff for yourself.

[19:58] If you pre-decide, like Pastor Jim just said when he was here, what brings pleasure to God is when you steward your money well. And when you lean in and make sure that you are not living in this world of spontaneous overspending, but you're purposeful with your resources, you'll be worshiping God. If you serve others, your attention will be solely on other people instead of just yourself. You'll be able to lift others up. And if you value spiritual community, which I'm told over 600 of you are connected to small groups, which is absolutely amazing, then you will be intentionally having God conversations on a weekly or biweekly basis with other people.

[20:52] And you will lean in against the wave of boring, frivolous, superficial talk that just focuses on the weather and the news. And you're refreshed when you leave that small group because you had a conversation about God with somebody else who's striving to pursue Him better. Spiritual disciplines are what combat the ways of the world, and you need to lean into that. So the bottom line to this is that the hardest thing you'll ever do is to lay on the altar each day this dying to yourself and living for Him.

[21:40] A living sacrifice. We desire to worship. It's this universal urge that we have, but we are not hardwired to worship Him. That's the choice, you see. And if we're not worshiping God, we're worshiping something else. We often find a cheap substitute. We worship our time, we worship our feelings, we worship our opinions, sometimes thinking that everybody in the world needs to know our opinion. We worship our family members. Whatever you're giving all your time and all your attention to, that is what you are worshiping.

[22:27] Again, back to Pastor Buckingham, he was such a great mentor to me and I remember him telling me on a couple different occasions about a frustration that he had as a pastor. Now, can you imagine that someone as joy-filled and as positive as Pastor Buckingham, that would actually have a frustration? Well, he did. And he told me on several occasions that he would burn up inside when the occasional congregation member would say, "I'm not being fed. I think I'll go to another church." And I want you to know something about sermons and about this concept of being fed from the stage in a 29-minute spot.

[23:19] A sermon does not have to be complicated for you to be fed. Nor does one have to have a master's of theology insight to go deep. Dying to your own selfish needs on a daily basis, brothers and sisters, is as deep as it gets. You try putting that into practice and there is nothing more important and there is nothing that will move you closer to God than doing that each day. Now I have one more story for you. Pastor Jeremy, could you just put these bean bags here? Thank you so much. So when we're talking about the ultimate spiritual workout, I want you to think about the ultimate physical workout that you've ever had in your life.

[24:09] Just think for a minute. When you were at a point of exhaustion physically, okay, for me it was in elementary school. Now I'm gonna show my age here on this, but there used to be something in all of our schools in Canada called the Canada Fitness Program. If you went to elementary or middle school in 1970 to 1992, you saw these badges. Take a look at this. How many remember that? Okay, excellence in gold and silver. Some of you have post-trauma because of these badges. Okay? Now, for those of you that are of the younger generation, you have something now called the beep test, okay?

[25:02] And they make you run back and forth in the gym and to the point of exhaustion, and then you're embarrassed 'cause all your friends are watching you. Same thing here. So for the Canada Fitness Program, there was something called the shuttle run. Okay? And so you had to get down on the gym floor and you weren't allowed to put your hands like this to help you get up faster. You had to put your hands like this. And you would wait until the gym teacher blew the whistle. And then you would go and you'd get up and you would take this beanbag here and you'd stop. And you wanted to make sure that the exchange was really positive. You'd drop this, pick this one up, go a little bit further, drop this one, and then you would head for that finish line and boom, the stopwatch would get you and that would be recorded.

[25:57] And then there was this standing long jump. Oh yeah. So you had to get your toes on the line and you'd have to wind up, right? You do one of these funky things and you gotta remember the whole class is sitting there watching you, okay? And then you'd go, you jumped as far as you could and you didn't wanna fall back 'cause if you fell back, the gym teacher who's just following the Canada Fitness Program, right, to a T, would mark you back there. So you'd always try to lean forward. And then there was this hanging the bar. The hanging bar. I remember turning red in my face and making a decision that I was not gonna let go 'cause I was pursuing excellence and I just held on.

[26:52] And your body would start to shake and I just held. And then you'd start kicking. Like you were just hoping that there would be a chair magically there that could just boost you up. But there was no chair. The gym teacher long took that away 16 seconds ago. The point is, I had to give maximum effort and people were watching me. And if Scripture clearly lays out this posture that you and I should be taking each day, I want you to think about this. If there is something that I can do that brings pleasure to God, something that you can do to bring pleasure to God, something that, and I wanna make sure that you don't get this confused.

[27:46] I'm not talking about earning salvation in any way. I'm asking, are you giving maximum effort to be a living sacrifice, to bring glory to God, to honor God, to say thank you to God with your body, with your actions each day for what He has already done for you? Maximum effort is indeed with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my strength, with all my soul. That's maximum effort. And Scripture says that we will stand before God, someday face to face. And what are we gonna talk about?

[28:33] We're gonna give an account of what we have done and if we gave maximum effort or if we just said, "Ah, I was just kind of happy to give my life to You." And then we just see what happens after that. A living sacrifice. There are people here today that may want to start their journey with God. Every single one of us starts, and today may be your day. And if so, during this final song, you have the opportunity to come down. There'll be prayer team right over here and there'll be resources to help you with that.

[29:20] And they will pray with you and it will be a celebration moment. Very similar to baptism and us cheering. There are people here that love to know that new people are starting their journey with Christ. And you never know when somebody is ready to make that decision. But there is also a call today for those of you who have started your journey and you are a Christian and you do desire to be a living sacrifice, there'll be two options during this song. Some of you're gonna wanna stand and you're gonna want to posture yourself. Maybe just put out your arms just as a sign to say, "God, I want to be a living sacrifice, not just on Sunday.

[30:09] I want to be a living sacrifice on Wednesday, on that day that I don't want to wake up. I want to be a living sacrifice on Friday night, wherever that takes me." And we'll enjoy the song and you'll have a God moment right at your seat. And there's others of you that, because of the power of the altar and connecting the dots scripturally with that, you wanna mark this day to say, "Today's the day that I decided to be a living sacrifice." And you may want to come forward and just stand here at the altar and posture yourself the same way. Say, "God, I'm coming to the altar and I'm placing myself on it."

[30:58] And there are gonna be tremendous decisions made today that will change this city this very week when this many people decide to be a living sacrifice. I know that's your desire.