Spirituality In Jesus
A few people approached me after Sunday, sharing their intrigue and excitement from Sunday’s sermon, “What was Jesus’ Spirituality?”
In fact, there was way too much in Jesus' life and relationship with God to summarize His Spirituality in one sermon!
Watch Sunday’s Sermon “What was Jesus’ Spirituality?” From our series Messy Spirituality.
Spirituality, in Christian terms, is really the expression of our relationship with God in real, everyday living.
Your Christian Spirituality arises from your relationship with God, and becomes actions that shape your life.
So if you have quiet time, that’s an expression of your spirituality.
If you listen to worship music in the car, that’s an expression of your spirituality.
If you go on walks through the forest to connect with Jesus, that’s an expression of your spirituality.
If you love deep conversations about the heart…
If you serve the needy or broken…
If you pray for the hurting or oppressed…
If you study the scriptures…
If you attend a small group…
If you love communion…
If you’ve been baptized…
If you've forgiven and reconciled with another...
If you’ve created artwork or poetry with God…
If you’ve been through a season of victory in faith…
Or endured various sufferings in faith…
If you've prayed hard for a friend...
Or you've grieved and mourned in hope...
If you've found deep rest in Jesus...
Or trusted Him in the darkness...
All of this and more is an expression of your spirituality in Christ.
There are millions of expressions of Christian Spirituality, for it is the expression of the Holy Spirit through us in our everyday living.
And though these expressions of your spirituality may change or shift over your lifetime, they are distinctly Christian as long as they remain sourced in your relationship with Jesus.
In Jesus, we have freedom and potential to engage everything as an area where God might meet us.
In Jesus, we have freedom, to learn, grow, to experiment, to experience, to struggle, to confess, to doubt, to re-trust, to wonder, to bask, to think, to search out different Christian traditions, to look at the wisdom of the ancient writers, to prayerfully anticipate the movement of God in the present and the future. All this, and more, is Christian Spirituality.
There is a wonderful living flow, a momentum in Christian Spirituality alone, in which we experience the presence of God in us and seek after His ways in the world around us.
As Christians, we are as free as the world is wide to explore our spiritual life (John 3:7-8).
For our spirituality doesn’t arise from a certain practice or philosophy or achievement or ritual or guru…
Our spirituality is in Jesus alone.
“These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God…Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God….’For who has understood the mind of the Lord as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” 1 Cor 2:10-12.
Join us this Sunday, as we continue Messy Spirituality and notice the pitfalls that lead to, at times, a truncated, diminished, or disconnected Christian Spirituality, so we can engage a full bodied Spirituality in the Church today.
May the Lord lead us into all he intended for us in Jesus,
Pastor Dave