Hello, my name is Jack Lockaby. I'm the director of discipleship here at Foundry in Stirlington, Louisiana. So this scripture we just looked at, Mark 12, tells us two things that are very important to Jesus. The first is loving God above all, and then loving others as we would want to be loved, or as God has loved us.
So for me, growing up inside of the church, I've always heard, you know, love God, love others, the golden rule, and they were kind of always these abstract ideas that were floating around. It was kind of like the question, what would Jesus do when making a decision? And the idea of loving God is always kind of been more of this emotional idea of what we think love is in America. And so with that, and then just the stress of trying to make the best decision as a Christian caused me a lot of anxiety.
But as I've grown in my faith, and as I've started to read scripture and dive deeper and deeper, I've realized that Christianity is so much more and so much more vibrant than a list of do's and do not's. See, when we look at Jesus, when we look at loving God, when we look at loving others, what it is is it's like a filing cabinet. When we click on these things on the computer or open it in our office, there are so many more activities, so many more things to our faith than just this. But we can't have a conversation about these two incredibly important commandments without also having a conversation about discipleship.
So if we look at Matthew 28, 16th or 20, it says this, and this is called the Great Commission, then the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, all authority and heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.
See, when we look at these three things together, not only does it give us a way to act, to give us a way to be able to relate to one another, but also how to engage the world around us. And we can use this to form and shape what our lives as Christians are supposed to look like. So as we dive into this, I want to give us a quick framework to think about this. Let's think about like a crossfit gym.
Another might sound a little confusing, but there are two aspects I want to talk about. The first is what makes a crossfitters. See, I like going to the gym, I like working out, and I know how to talk all the talk, I know the foods that I'm supposed to be eating, and I own a lot of the clothes, I still have a membership. But at the end of the day, I don't get any benefit from any of that unless I'm actually going to the gym and working out.
So the same can be said about our faith. You know, we can know the lingo, we can even show up on Sunday mornings, but unless we are actively engaging in our faith, we are going to struggle to get the benefits needed to thrive in this life, to receive those promises that we read about in scripture. This also gives us a reason, a point. You don't just go to a crossfit gym because it's fun, you go to a crossfit gym because you want change, you want transformation.
There's something else that you do not have that you realize you need. For me, I want to lose weight, I want to be in great shape, I want to be able to run and play with the youth and just be able to participate in things that I was not able to do as a kid. And I can also say from personal experience that when I only go to the gym one hour a week, the workouts get harder, but I stay the same. It is a lifelong commitment.
It is a daily commitment to do all of the things that are going to improve my capabilities. And again, the same can be said about our faith. So C.S. Lewis wrote, Christianity, if false, is of no importance and if true of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
I say this for us to understand the weight of faith, of Jesus, of the impact that we can have on the world. This isn't just a ploy for us as individuals to think of how important Jesus is in our personal life, but how important he is for the world around us. So now that we have this framework, I'm going to break it down into three parts, which is love God or holiness, loving others, which is community, and honestly, it's kind of a dirty word, but accountability, and then discipleship, which is transformation. So loving God, loving God isn't about an emotional state that we might have for someone special in our lives.
Loving God and love as described in the Bible is an action. Loving God is about a relationship. It is about building trust between one another. To put it simply, it's like your best friend or your parents or someone that you know personally, unless you have that one-on-one relationship with them and y'all communicate often, we honestly don't know that other person very well.
It is about intimacy and inviting them deeper into our lives. And we get there through things like prayer and things like scripture and spiritual practices and disciplines. All of these things aren't for us to be bored or to do the Christian thing, but to drive us closer to Jesus and have that community and that communion with Him. This is so important that if we look at the early church, they were uncommonly committed to forming the habits of members before they were even baptized, that people's first interactions with God and Jesus in the community that we call church were actually formational practices that were going to set them up for the rest of their life.
John Wesley, who started the Methodist Movement, also found that this was drastically important. If you look at how their communities were set up, they had three rules to follow. The first being do no harm, do good, and then finally attend to the ordinance of God, which again are spiritual disciplines. But if we're being honest, like going to the gym and doing the workouts and these disciplines, when we get busy and I'm the first to admit to this, when I wake up late because I was stayed up late the night before, the first thing I start to cut out is my scripture and my prayer time.
Or if I have to get up and get to work because again, I didn't take care of my needs for sleep, I will cut these things out, which is kind of ironic because I do work out of church. But we also have to have honesty. Some days it's easy to wake up in the morning and not go to the gym. It's easy to start cutting things like prayer and scripture out of our daily habits because personal experience here, if I stay up to late the night before, I'm going to sleep in late and then try and get them to work on time, they're just certain things I'm going to cut out and that's usually at the top of my list, which is a little ironic because I work out of church.
But I just have to be honest about who I am. But this is where community comes in. This is where community has its true power and potential. See, community helps shape who we are.
If you spend any time at Foundry, if you've ever been around Chad, you're going to hear the phrase, you're the sum total of the five people you spend the most time around. And so we can look at this and say, okay, well, the five people that I spend the most time around, what does that say about me? And then we can flip that and inverse it and say, what impact do I have on the people that are around me? This is very important to know who we are.
Toser writes this, has it ever occurred to you that 100 pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard, which each one must individually bow. You see, the spiritual disciplines is talking about Jesus. So 100 worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart, nearer to each other than they could possibly be where they become unity conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.
Now this next part is very important. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. It is when we love God above all else, and we push into that world of spiritual discipline that our community becomes healthier and starts to thrive. This is when revival happens, when we push into the presence of God and that we demand that we see his miracles and his actions and answers to prayer together.
And this is where accountability comes into play. See, it's not about doing something wrong and showing up and somebody reprimanding you or turning in a report late and getting a bad grade because of it. No, this is as Christians saying, we have decided that we want to grow closer to God, we want to push into his presence, we have a goal and in the point that we want to reach, and we are going to help each other get there. We are going to encourage one another, we are going to celebrate in each other's victories and cry with each other in our losses.
See, that is the power of Christian community that is centered on Jesus when the individuals are praying to be closer to him. Now, lastly, we have to talk about discipleship. We have to talk about the idea of the church reaching out and interacting with the world around it, because all of these things are so far internal. Now, we can talk about how loving one another is a mission, it is reaching out and feeding the poor, it is, or feeding the hungry and clothing the poor.
But ultimately, we are not out there trying to buy people's affection for Jesus. We are out there simply doing it because that is what Jesus would do, because he simply loves them, we are asking nothing in return in those settings. But discipleship, that is how we get people in the doors. That is how we, if we just want to use a metric, have people on Sunday morning.
See, the thing about discipleship is about inviting someone into a personal relationship. In Allen Creeders, the patient firm of the early church, he writes this, When challenged about their ideas, Christians pointed at their actions. They believed that their habits, their embodied behavior was eloquent, their behavior said what they believed. It was an enactment of their message, and their sources indicate, and these sources indicate, that it was their habits more than their ideas that appealed to the majority of non-Christians who came to join them.
As Paul would say, imitate me as I imitate Jesus. It is about inviting people into a personal relationship. It's not just about trying to get someone to come to church with us on Sunday morning. It's about inviting someone over for dinner.
It's about developing friendships and relationships. It is about seeking out mentors and being a mentor. This is what Jesus called to do through discipleship, but this can only be done through community, which can only be empowered by the Holy Spirit. Now, all this is good.
All of this is beautiful. If we look at this, we can see there are many layers here. But ultimately, and if we're being honest, and we look around, there are many people who call themselves to be Christian. This is a huge part of my testimony if you've ever heard it.
But when the wife is examined, there is no difference between them and anybody else. Now, I'm not just saying that they're out committing tremendous sins and doing all these horrible things. They might be a fantastic and great person, but just because they have a good diet doesn't mean they're working out. It doesn't mean that they're being developed into the image of Jesus.
That is why it is important for us to do these things. But it is okay that, for being honest, we have fallen short. It is okay that we have missed the mark and missed the goal. Because at the end of the day, the important part is God.
And if we know anything about God and his track record, that is perfect. That is when we fall short, he makes up the difference. That he does this not so that we stay where we are, in total our thumbs, knowing that he's got it, but so that we can get started, so that we can march forward into his presence, and so that we can have more than we ever thought we could deserve with the creator of the universe. And that is a beautiful image of who God is and what he has given us in this opportunity.
So I'd like to encourage you, pray, grab a friend, read through the Bible in a year. Over the next year, we are going to be doing prayer courses, and we're going to run through emotionally healthy spirituality. I'm going to teach that. Join in on these things because they will bring incredible value to your life and your faith.
And then we're going to break this down over the next couple of weeks, and go in depth on how we can deepen our love for God and our community and discipleship. I invite you to join in on all of these things. I invite you to participate in your faith with us. Thank you for joining us today.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for the stay that you have given us. I thank you that through everything that has happened this year, that we are still able to meet together, even though it is not what we initially thought it would look like or hope that it would be. Thank you for allowing us to still be able to share your good news and the worst that you have done in our lives. So in your name I pray, amen.