Spiritual Disciplines

Looking for the Dec. 25 at home worship guide? It’s here.

START HERE

For the first followers of Jesus, the home was the central gathering place for worship (Deut. 6:4–9, 1 Cor. 16:19, Col. 4:15). Friends and family gath- ered to read the scriptures, sing songs, reflect on the goodness of God, and share a meal. For the earliest followers of Jesus, worship began in the home.

A few times each year, we like to take the opportunity to get back to our roots. On Sunday, December 25th and January 1st, Ethos Church will not be gathering at the regular times for worship at the Cannery. Instead, Ethos Church will be meeting in hundreds of homes throughout Nashville and beyond.

In fact, wherever you are on December 25th and January 1st is where Ethos Church will be meeting.

INSTRUCTIONS

We have provided a few ideas to give you some direction as you wor- ship at home. Feel free to use as many of these ideas as you would like. Our goal in this time is to help us love God and love people, and if these can help you do that, wonderful. If not, feel free to be creative and think about how to draw your family into loving God and people.

SETTING

As you begin your time of family worship, we encourage you to find a place that is comfortable, where your family often gathers. Gather around the dinner table, brew a cup of coffee and sit on your back porch, or find that perfect spot on your couch. The choice is yours.

WORSHIP IN SONG

We believe very few things prepare our hearts to encounter God like wor- shipping Him through song. We have provided a cd with several songs we recorded specifically for this worship time at home. You can sing along with these songs, listen and reflect on the words, or sing your own songs.

REFLECT

There is something about the beginning of a new year that creates the perfect environment for self reflection. Read Psalm 139:23–24 as a prayer over your time of worship and reflection. Give each person a blank piece of paper and pen. Ask each person two write down these two things:

1. As you think back on this past year, what things caused your heart to be anxious, bothered, or distracted?

2. As you think about the new year, where do you hope God will help lead you in the way everlasting and closer to Him?

ALL THINGS NEW

For some, the start of a new year is filled with hope. It is the time to let go of the past and start fresh. For others, it carries as bit of sadness. Christmas is over, winter has fully set in, there are no leaves on the trees, and weather can be rather bleak. Regardless of how you may feel, each new year can serve as a powerful reminder that Jesus alone can make things new. During the days of Isaiah, the people of God felt as though they were in a proverbial winter. The days of God’s favor seemed like a distant memory. But in the midst of those times, God promised them that better days were coming. Read Isaiah 65:17–25.

1. What images come to mind when you read this promise that God will make all things new?

Jesus’ birth ushered in the beginning of a new era. His birth signaled that things were forever going to be different. For those who had been wait- ing on the Messiah, this brought great hope. Read Romans 15:13. Pass the communion and take the bread and the cup as you discuss Jesus.

2. How has Jesus’ arrival filled you with hope and peace?

3. How would this new year be different if you were filled with hope that came from the Holy Spirit as you trusted in Jesus?

FAMILY PRAYER TIME

Finally, we invite you to close your time of family worship in prayer. Spend time as a family praying for the people you know who are in des- perate need of hope. Pray that God will breathe new life into their world this year. Pray that the God of hope will overflow their lives with reality of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

START HERE

For the first followers of Jesus, the home was the central gathering place for worship (Deut. 6:4–9, 1 Cor. 16:19, Col. 4:15). Friends and family gath- ered to read the scriptures, sing songs, reflect on the goodness of God, and share a meal. For the earliest followers of Jesus, worship began in the home.

A few times each year, we like to take the opportunity to get back to our roots. On Sunday, December 25th and January 1st, Ethos Church will not be gathering at the regular times for worship at the Cannery. Instead, Ethos Church will be meeting in hundreds of homes throughout Nashville and beyond.

In fact, wherever you are on December 25th and January 1st is where Ethos Church will be meeting.

INSTRUCTIONS

We have provided a few ideas to give you some direction as you wor- ship at home. Feel free to use as many of these ideas as you would like. Our goal in this time is to help us love God and love people, and if these can help you do that, wonderful. If not, feel free to be creative and think about how to draw your family into loving God and people.

SETTING

As you begin your time of family worship, we encourage you to find a place that is comfortable, where your family often gathers. Gather around the dinner table, turn off the lights and sit in front of Christmas tree, or sit on the couch in front of the fireplace. Just get comfortable.

WORSHIP IN SONG

We believe very few things prepare our hearts to encounter God like wor- shipping Him through song. We have provided a cd with several songs we recorded specifically for this worship time at home. You can sing along with these songs, listen and reflect on the words, or sing your own songs.

JESUS IS LIGHT

In this package, you should have received a candle. We invite you to turn off all the lights in the room. Sit in darkness for 1–2 minutes and then light the candle. If you are sitting near your Christmas tree, feel free to use your Chrismas tree lights as a substitue. By candle light, pass the communion bread and the cup. Have someone from your family read John 1:1–18. As you read the text and think about Jesus, eat the bread and drink the cup.

Here are a few questions to help you focus on Jesus with your family & friends.

1. What do you notice about the power of one little light in a dark room?

2. John tells us that Jesus is light that shines in the darkness. How have you seen Jesus shed light into some of the dark places in your life this year?

3. Where are you praying that Jesus will bring light in your life in the year to come?

4. On the night Jesus was born, angels appeared to shepherds in a field to announce that Jesus had arrived. With Jesus’ arrival came the promise of good news and peace on earth to all people. How has the birth of Jesus (the light entering the darkness) been a source of good news and peace in your life?

FAMILY PRAYER TIME

Finally, we invite you to close your time of family worship in prayer. Start by taking a couple minutes to sit in silence.

Here are a few suggestions for your time of family prayer.

1. Begin by having each person, if they feel comfortable, give thanks to God for someone or something specific.

2. Have each person pray for someone they know who needs the love of Jesus.

3. End your time of prayer by thanking God for the great gift of sending Jesus.

ACTION

As you go about the rest of your Christmas Day, look for specific ways in which you can be a light in the midst of your family and friends. Holidays can often be stressful. At times it is easier to survive the holidays than it is to enjoy the holidays on mission with Jesus.

Here are a few practical suggestions to help you make the most of your time with friends and family.

1. As you give people gifts, go the extra step and tell them how much you love and care for them.

2. As you receive gifts, take a few minutes to just think about the great gift that God has given you in Jesus.

3. As you enjoy the glow from the Christmas lights, pause to reflect on Jesus being the light that came into the darkness of our world. You might even choose to talk about this with your friends and family.

Prayer has been something that is always so fascinating to me.  I have always thought of it as a way to be instantly connected to God.  There is something wonderful about knowing that anything that is on your heart can be said to him and he is there to listen, love, praise, comfort, be understanding, be disappointed, but in the end ultimately he still loves us unconditionally.

Each morning on my way to work, I like to take the first few minutes of my drive to talk to God.  It started a couple of years ago, because I needed to ask him for something, but as I continued to do it each day I began to realize spending each day by starting it off in prayer effected how my day turned out.  I found this time with God to be more and more enjoyable each day.  Often times when prayer becomes a daily, hourly (or however often) routine….it becomes exactly as worded – a routine.  Routine is something that I never want if it means that I am going to be stagnant in my prayer time with God.  I’m personally looking forward to this month’s challenge, because it helps me to ask deeper questions and refocus my thought and to make sure I am being purposeful in my prayer.

I love this verse, I think it sums up prayer perfectly:

Phillipians 4:6 – Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything.  With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God.

Dear Heavenly Father, I am coming before you to pray for our church.  I pray that we are loving our city the way you would love our city, that we are seeking to spread your word uncontrollably, and that we are glorifying your Name in all that we do.  We love you and thank you for your sacrifice that you made and I pray that we honor your name.  In Jesus’ Name Amen!

As we near the end of the month of September, we will be wrapping up our blog discussions on the discipline of study.

I don’t know about all of you, but the 30 Days of Red Letters has made such an impact on how much time I’ve spent in the Word these past 27 days. To have a certain verse that I can concentrate on or look back on throughout the day has been so helpful in bringing me back to what is most important in each day. There have been so many times when I have felt rushed, stressed, and tired–but looking at the red letters for that day put everything in perspective and brought me back to why we are given a chance to start over each day.

As we venture out of the discipline of study and move into the discipline of prayer during October, I encourage you to find a way to hold onto a certain verse each day of the month of October, and make scripture something that you can hold onto each day of the year, instead of just diving into the word on Sunday and Wednesday nights.

One of my favorite verses was the red letter verse of the day for September 22nd, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent,” John 6:29.

If we are going to believe in the one that He has sent, I want to be able to know and take cover in the words that He spoke while walking on this earth, and I think one of the best ways to really know the word of God and His Son is to be in it each and every day of the year.

I typically give studying a bad rap because it takes time, discipline, and quite frankly, I don’t like the idea of reading for understanding. I’d much rather be talking with real people.

I’ve thought really hard about what it means to me to “study”.  There’s definitely more to it than just reading.  One thing that’s really fun about studying is how you can read something one time and it means nothing. Then, when you read it again, it means something so powerful it moves you.  I often try to interpret what the Bible says and apply it to my life before I even understand it.  So my first mission while reading ought to be determining what it actually says.  Only after I understand what it’s trying to say should I even attempt to ask what it means to me. I had heard of people going on personal spiritual retreats, but had never done one myself.  Preface to this story: I am in no way a Bible scholar or a mountain of spiritual knowledge.

This past weekend I spent two days at a monastery called the Abbey of Gethsemani.  By myself. No phone. No iPod. I had only my journal and the books Crazy Love, Fathered by God, and the Bible.  Over the course of a normal business day I probably send and receive over 100 emails, 100 texts, and spend upwards of 6 hours on the phone.  This Abbey was quite the contrast to my life. I was silent for two days.  I read intently, took notes, and prayed.

It’s so tough getting past your own sin to concentrate on the word of God when you’re in that intimate of a setting. I prayed and confessed to God on the drive there, and it was pretty relieving to feel that slide away as I read scripture. I wanted to give Him my time, not Satan. To combat the tendency to wander I had a separate sheet just to jot down stray thoughts and get them off my mind. While I read, I wrote down explanations of verses and thoughts of what they might mean.

It was a great experience, and I can’t wait to do it again.  Getting away from my apartment and Nashville was definitely instrumental in the whole process.  It was, however, difficult to commit and say I wasn’t going to all the happenings in town. Study has a whole new meaning to me now, and I’m so happy I was able to leave normal life, if only for a brief moment, to hear some of what the Word is trying to say to us today.

Being completely transparent, studying scripture is probably the one thing that I struggle with the most. And the truth is I have no excuse, I have a bible app on my phone so it is literally accessible to me everywhere I go. So why is it so hard for me to just open it up and read? The truth is I am still a very immature Christian and let laziness reign more often than discipline. Also, sometimes I just get overwhelmed. The bible is so stinking big that it sometimes discourages me. But as Sydney said in the last blog, it’s great to just take it a verse at a time if you have to. It’s actually very beneficial to do so in my opinion. Memorizing a verse a day can be very productive to your spirituality because it gives you a chance to meditate and dwell on the scripture at hand and actually apply it to your life.

Why read scripture and study? It’s funny how much of a ‘coincidence’ it is when I don’t spend time in God’s word one week and I encounter great doubt, lack of faith, and discouragement. But when I do spend regular time in God’s word for some strange reason I’m able to face each day with purpose and ambition. I know, crazy right? Romans 12:2 states, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” The bible isn’t a 2000 year old outdated document that dinosaurs read because they’re out of touch with reality. Rather we out of touch with God if we don’t spend time in his word because the bible is the LIVING, BREATHING word of God.

The other day I was talking to Dave about struggles of mine and spirituality in general and as we were talking I had this thought. So often I see “spiritual giants”, so to speak, that seem to have it all figured out. They’re in tune with God’s purpose. They derive exponential amounts of joy through doing God’s will. Everything they do produces fruit 10 fold what they have sewn. I see these people and think, “why can’t I have what they have?! This isn’t fair!” But then I realize that they have spent years, even decades, devoting countless time in prayer, studying, meditation, fasting, and other spiritual disciplines to get to where they are in their relationship with God.

If you’ve never worked hard or applied yourself in any way, would you take a drive down Tyne Boulevard and say, “that’s not fair that they have those nice houses and I don’t”. No. That would be childish. The truth is those people have worked very hard to provide nice homes for their families. The same is true with our spirituality. We have to spend time with God in prayer, meditation, and in his word. In doing so we are building our house upon a rock!

I would like to leave you with this thought. So often I get discoursed when things don’t go my way or I don’t feel God working in my life like I’d like him to. But then I remember that we were made to serve God, not the other way around, and I will serve him no matter what the outcome! I hope you guys have a great week!  God Bless!