The Fundamental Disciplines of a Christian

All right, just about have the logistics taken care of here. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our visitors. Good to have you here with us, especially in a week like this, as Mr. Thomas was saying, when some of our wives and other female significant others are gone at the women's weekend.

So, we'd like to talk today about the topic that you see in front of you, the fundamental disciplines of a Christian. And as a starting point, let's turn and look at what's written in the Bible in 1 Corinthians 9. 1 Corinthians 9, and we'll read there verses 24 through 27. Paul uses analogy here to sports.

A lot of commentators believe what he's referring to is something called the Isthman games. A lot of us are familiar with the Olympics, and the Greeks had not only the Olympic games, but other games called the Peloponnesian games. There were different athletic contests that went on. At the time of Paul, when he would have written this, the Isthman games would have been going on already for 500 years. And so he writes in 1 Corinthians 9, 24, So Paul, using a sports metaphor, and basically, since some of the ladies are gone today, this was my excuse to talk about sports today, and to prove that it comes out of the Bible. But really, what Paul's referring to here is two different sports that were popular at that time, running and boxing. And he's using an analogy to talk about the way that an athlete, somebody who needs to perform at the peak level of physical condition, how an athlete trains, and likening that to the way that we need to train as Christians, the way that we need to have certain fundamental disciplines in our lives in order to perform as Christians and to live in the way that God expects us to.

Now, when we think of it purely in athletic terms, I think we're pretty familiar with the fact that fundamentals are an important thing for athletes. If you've ever, well, most of us, all of us, have been children. I was going to say if you've ever been a child. But we've all been children at some point in time. If you've ever had children and taken them to sports practices, I can still remember when Stephen was young and going to a clinic, and it was all about throwing a baseball. And you don't really think about it if you've not played a sport, but the mechanics of a sport, the basics and the fundamentals, are extremely important, and that's what they teach to children early on. Exact things to do, and I can still remember how they would teach. A 90 degree angle, right, with your arm, get it back behind your head, how you move your feet, how you use your shoulders to follow through in the throw. Fundamentals are key to learning any sport. Batting is another thing. The game of football is another. I always find it interesting how some great athletes, Tim Tebow, comes to mind as somebody who won the Heisman Trophy several years ago, and as he was getting ready to play in the NFL, what was the big knock on Tim Tebow? His mechanics, his throwing motion, was not as disciplined and not as clean as what it should have been. And Tim Tebow has kind of bounced back and forth trying to get back into football after being out for a couple of years, and what has he done in between? He's devoted countless hours and spent tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, on professional coaches in order to hone his throwing motion in throwing the football. Fundamentals and basics are incredibly important. Now, some of you might recognize Tom Brady. You probably have different associations with Tom Brady, depending on what you think of the Patriots and how inflated football should be.

So now I know who the sports fans are out there. But Tom Brady is 38 years old. He spent the last 10-plus years training with a trainer named Alex Guerrero. Tom Brady believes that he can cheat time, and he can play well into his 40s. He believes he can play until he's 45 or even 48 years old and stay at the top of his game. And those of you who have seen him play this year know that he's playing probably better than most quarterbacks that are significantly younger than he is, showing no signs of lack of arm strength that many quarterbacks of his age end up showing. But why is that? If you read at all about Tom Brady and what he does in his regular regimen, it's extremely strict. In fact, one article I was reading says he'll occasionally have some ice cream as a treat, and then they explain the fact that the ice cream is usually made out of some sort of fresh vegetable, like avocados, which he says is great. But he trains with this trainer, and he spends every day, he's got a regimen that he goes through with great discipline. He's very careful about what he eats, the type of exercise he does, how much he sleeps, and all the time that he spends, in his case studying and performing the game of football and keeping his body at peak condition. And he and this trainer have not only a plan for what he's going to do for the next week, but they've laid out a plan for what he's going to do for the next three years, so that they can alternate training that has to do with strength, with other training, which he puts a lot of faith in, which manages the suppleness and the softness of the muscles, which he thinks keeps him in good shape. Tiger Woods is a golfer, someone else that we all know, who's played at the peak of his game for a lot of years. But again, fundamentals are incredibly important, even if you're playing at this level. It's not just for beginners. In reading up on a little bit about his practice regimen, the things that I read were, number one, every day he spends two hours hitting balls on the driving range. He also does on-course, on the golf course, swing work in the morning, followed by 30 minutes to an hour of putting practice, just being on a green putting the ball. Around noon, he then plays nine holes of golf, and then in the afternoon, another three to four hours of on-golf course work, focusing on his swing, on his short game, and sometimes in the afternoon playing another nine holes of golf. Now, I don't know how much you guys like playing golf. I enjoy getting out occasionally, but that would be work for me. And I think for most people, at some point, it's a job, and he treats it that way. And he focuses hard on it. He has a regimen, and that's what's allowed him to not only get to the top of the game, but to stay there. So discipline, fundamentals, basics are incredibly important to anything that we take on in life. So, this isn't just a sermon about sports. Christianity has fundamentals as well. And none of us will be surprised to see and think about the ideas that praying to God, studying His Word, and meditating or thinking on His ways are the fundamentals of a Christian life. And they're embedded by repetition, and they're embedded by discipline. It's not different, just as Paul pointed out in 1 Corinthians, it's not different than an athlete. An athlete who knows what his or her goal is, what they want to accomplish. In the case of his time, it was that wreath that was given to the winner, that they could see that they had won above all their competitors.

And the things that they were willing to do at that time, that athletes are willing to do today, to train and to drive themselves beyond what most of us physically would be willing to do, all results from that goal and that vision that they have out there in their minds. And so, in the same way as Christians, we have a goal and a vision, don't we, in our minds. Continuing to strive to fit the ideal of Jesus Christ, thinking of His kingdom that's coming, and the way that we can play a part, hopefully a very active part, in His plan and taking His word out to mankind. And all that does rely on these fundamentals, these basics of Christianity. So, in the short time that we've got today, I'd like to go through these three. Again, it's not anything stunning or desperately new, just like throwing a baseball or swinging a club at a golf ball. In the end, in one respect, it's not terribly complex. But in another, it's about repetition, it's about discipline, and it's continuing on in those regimens and in those disciplines. So, let's start and spend a little bit of time reflecting and thinking about the fundamental discipline of prayer. The fundamental discipline of prayer. When we think about prayer, what is it that we think about, and how is it that we approach it? For those of you who have been here over the past few months, you know, I've given a few different messages about different aspects of prayer. Let's start here in Romans 12. Romans 12 is a chapter that talks about a lot of the basics of a Christian life, how we go about doing things. Romans 12.1 is a scripture many of us are familiar about, about being servants.

But let's start down in verse 9 and see how prayer comes up as a fundamental and a basic of our Christian lives. Romans 12 verse 9. Let love be without hypocrisy, abhor what is evil and cling to what's good. Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another. Here we see all of the things that we know that we need to do as actions as Christians. Not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. Verse 12. Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, and continuing steadfastly in prayer.

So, as one of the basics of Christian life, one of the basics that we need to do, prayer is there as a fundamental item.

We know, of course, that Jesus Christ, as he lived his life on earth, was our example in terms of the way that we should live our lives. There are a lot of different examples of Jesus Christ when he went out and prayed. I'll just turn to this one in Luke 12. This was a section that happened after a time when he had done some healing. He had healed some lepers, if you recall, people who were sick and diseased. He asked them not to tell anyone about it. They'd gone and told people, and mobs were just coming from everywhere and were all over him, wanting to be healed. Understandably so.

Then he went away and withdrew himself. It talks here about the fact that he often withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed. Jesus Christ set an example for us in terms of how he lived his life. The way we live our Christian lives should emulate that as well. Prayer was something he did regularly and as a priority in his life. I'd like to pause and talk briefly about two elements of prayer, two dimensions of it.

One is being constant in prayer and one is having focused time that we set aside for prayer. These are two very different elements of prayer when you think about it. Both of them are laid out in the Bible. Both of them are things that we as Christians need to have in our toolset, in our disciplines, as things that we do. Pause, reflect, and think a minute about those two dimensions and how those operate in our lives.

To what extent are we constant in prayer? To what extent do we have focused time that we set aside to go to God in prayer on a daily basis? Let's look at the first dimension about being constant in prayer. Ephesians 6, we'll read verses 17 and 18.

Ephesians 6 uses an example of a fighting man. It talks about a fighting man wearing armor and the different elements of the armor that's on. A lot of people refer to it as the armor of God. At the end of the section, verse 17, Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. So, talks here about praying always, being frequent in prayer. Not just occasionally when we get around to it, not just when we're thinking about it, but always. How often is prayer something that's in the forefront of our mind as things are going on during the day? As we encounter situations, maybe they're good situations, we just want to raise our eyes up, or voice up, even just inside of our heads to God, say, God, that was terrific, thank you. Or as we walk out of the house in the morning and see a beautiful sunrise, or drive down the road and see a deer running across the field, we all have those moments as we see these incredibly beautiful things. We pause and thank God for that and acknowledge it. And of course, when we have needs, when things aren't going so well, when we're facing troubles or tribulations or trials of different sorts, temptations, again, being constant in prayer as those things come up, bringing those things immediately before God, not waiting until we get home in the evening, but as those things come up, thinking about them, and raising our minds and our voices to God. Let's look at 1 Thessalonians 5 on the same theme, being constant in prayer.

1 Thessalonians 5. We'll read verses 16 through 18. Here it talks about things we need to be doing always as Christians. Rejoice always. And then what does it say? Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. So one of the elements of the discipline as Christians is to be constant in prayer, not ceasing. It doesn't mean that we've got to be walking around, walking down the hallways at work, mumbling to ourselves because we're praying. But what it means is that as things are happening, where does our mind turn? As we have needs, as we have things that are going well, whatever it is, are our minds turning towards God, offering those things up to God, bringing them before Him and talking to them, talking to Him about them? We should be in a constant mode of prayer to God as things are going on day to day throughout our days.

The second bullet point there comes from something that was raised to us at work. At work, often, as probably a lot of you have, we get performance reviews. And one of the things that was emphasized to us was this idea of feedback on the run is better than none. And it comes, actually, I think from one of the investment banks, Goldman Sachs, I think it is, that had that as sort of a mantra that they always used. And the reason they did that was because they found that people, when they were working with others, were not giving formal feedback to them in a timely way. And they were waiting until six months later at the end of a performance period, and then they were trying to think, what did this person do well and what did they do poorly? And so they came up with this phrase, feedback on the run is better than none. And what it meant was, if you're working with a colleague and they do something well, tell them right away. Pat them on the back or her and say, you know, I saw how you did this and this and this, and that was fantastic and see the impact it had. And on the flip side, if something wasn't going so well and somebody working for you wasn't doing the job quite right, exactly the same idea, pulling them aside and saying, you know, I saw how you did these things, did you see the result of that? Now, if we do it differently the next time, here's how we can get a better result out of that, giving that feedback real time. And prayer on the run, I would say as well, is better than none. And in fact, it's what we should be doing. Again, as things are going well for us, as things happen with us during the day, as there's a pause in our time, we're getting in our car and going to the grocery store, it's a time to offer up a quick prayer to God. Let him know we acknowledge him, share with him the things going on in our day, as we would and do with our spouses, with our good friends, as we're developing those relationships. Let's think of the second element, then, of prayer as a fundamental, and this is focused time, related to prayer. So we heard quite a bit in the sermonette about Daniel, and I'll use him as an example here. So we know that Daniel went through a number of trials when he and his friends were there in the Babylonian Empire, and actually a succession of empires that he lived under. And at this point in time was when some of his rivals that were fighting for influence within the government had convinced the king to sign a decree that anyone who prays to any other god would be put to death. And Daniel, of course, as we read here, was in the habit of regular prayer. Let's read in Daniel 6, verse 10. This is where he knew that even if he did pray, or if he did pray and was caught, he would be put into the lion's den, and he would be fed and presumably die, being maimed and killed by the lions. In Daniel 6, verse 10, when Daniel knew that this writing, putting a decree against prayer, was signed, he went home. And in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knee three times that day and prayed and gave thanks before his god, as was his custom since early days. So we see that it wasn't just this day that he went and he prayed three times to God. This was his custom.

An example to us, again, of taking regular focused time out for prayer. Now, our schedules might be such that three times a day might be very difficult to do if we're on the run during the day working and so forth. But the point here is a regular time, a regular set of times, set aside for coming before God. It's different in purpose, it's different in substance than being constant in prayer during the day.

As you're sharing small things that are going on, as you're asking for help, as somebody who is in need or sick might come into your mind and you offer up a brief prayer. This is a different type of prayer as you're focused, as you're disciplined, as you have a period of time that's set aside for prayer and you, in a more structured way, bring things to God and talk with him about them and share them with him.

Jesus Christ also, again, set an example in this way. In this case, in Mark 1, verse 35, it talks about Jesus Christ going out in the morning and he rose, in his case, a long time before daylight. And he went out and he departed there into a solitary place and there he prayed.

Now David in the Psalms as well writes that he got up before the dawn to pray for his hope was in God's word.

And so we see different examples, but what I want to key on in these examples in this section is the fact that in addition to being constant and frequent in prayer, having time that's set aside as a structured time to pray is important and something that we should focus on.

It's okay as well to start small, especially for children. I mean, prayer, again, all these fundamentals are as important for those who are experienced and have been around for a long time as for those who are beginners. And so for our children, for people who are new in the faith, prayer is every bit as important a fundamental. But, you know, it's interesting. If you read through the Bible, I'll lay out a challenge for you. I wasn't able to find it. I don't think you'll be able to find a place in the Bible that tells you how long you should pray.

Now, different standards have been set up by different people at different times, but I'd be interested if any of you find an indication in the Bible of how many minutes or hours we should spend in prayer, whether in a day, a month, or in a year, let me know. From what I've seen, it's pretty open-ended. But what God does say is we're supposed to be constant, and we're supposed to be structured in coming before and regularly in prayer.

And so if it's difficult to get on your knees at a regular time every morning or every evening and come before God, start by spending a minute. Just spend a short time and build up from there and spend the time and the focus. And as you do that, just like practicing a sport, you won't go out and run a marathon the first day that you work out. You'll go out and you'll run a short distance, and you'll come back and you'll rest. And you'll work up to it week by week and month to month. And so it is building a habit of prayer.

You start slow, you make the time, you make the discipline, and you expand it, and you develop that relationship with God in that way.

So taking action. Let's be practical briefly here as we wrap up this first point about prayer as a fundamental. Prayer on the run is better than none. Be constant in prayer.

Think about areas and ways that you can put this more into your life. I know, as I've reflected sometimes at the end of a day and thought about things that went wrong, where I really needed God's help, I think, you know, why didn't I just pause and offer that up to God and explain the situation, ask Him for His help, or ask Him for His wisdom?

It's incredibly important, as we're working on and thinking about weaknesses that we have in our lives. Whatever it might be that we struggle with, whether it's covetousness, whether it's lusts, whether it's thievery, whatever it might be, whether it's anger, when we feel these things coming up within our minds, we feel those temptations coming, a perfect time to be connected to God and telling God, I feel this human weakness coming on. I know it's not of you.

I know through you I can conquer it, and asking for His help, being constant in doing that, and then making time for regular daily prayer. The thing I really want to emphasize here, like any fundamental in sports, the earlier you start, the better. For our kids out there, we have many of them, you're never too young to start praying.

You know who God is, you know He listens to you, He promises that He hears your prayer. Take that time, even if it's 30 seconds, even if it's a minute before you go to bed. I can still remember those times myself as a young person, as a teenager, 12, 13 years old, lying in bed before I was going to sleep, and just taking time to pray to God, and asking Him, as I was confused about different things in my life, as it seemed like my life wasn't going anywhere, or things weren't working the way I thought they should, and all the feelings of self-worth, and all the things you struggle through as a child growing up, and imperfectly, but I would take time, and I would bring those things to God, and I would tell Him what was going on in my mind.

I'd encourage all of you young people to do that. The earlier you start, the better, and God hears those prayers, and He will answer them. But don't wait for tomorrow. It's like anything that we want to accomplish in life. It's not about a resolution that we decide, you know, after a certain date, we'll go ahead and start doing this.

Start now. Don't wait for tomorrow. But just do it. Let's move on to the second fundamental. A fundamental of Bible study. Again, a fundamental discipline for us as Christians. We'll turn here, as our first scripture, to 2 Timothy 2, verse 15. 2 Timothy 2, verse 15. It says here, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God. A worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. So something we're supposed to be able to do is go into God's word, and, as the translation has here, rightly divide it.

Now, what does that mean to divide up God's word? There are different theories and viewpoints out there on it. After looking at different sources, I found this to be pretty much dead on as far as I could tell.

It talks about the Greek word orthotomeo that was used to translate into the word for dividing. It's not a word that's used very often at all in the Bible. In fact, I think this is the only place where it's used. And it explains here, in New Testament times, orthotomeo was primarily a civil engineering term.

It was used, for example, as a road-building term. The idea of the word was to cut straight or to guide on a straight path. The idea is to cut a roadway in a straight manner so that people who will travel over that road can arrive at their destination directly and without deviation. Orthotomeo was also used as a mining term. It meant to drill a straight mine shaft so the miners can get quickly and safely to the motherload. If you think about that, we think about how that applies to reading and working with God's word, the Bible.

The idea being that we should be able to learn how to make a straight path through the Bible. Not weaving around to all kinds of different side roads and distractions along the way, but being able to understand God's word so we can see a straight path to His way and His will in different areas of our lives. As we understand what it is that God says and what He reveals about different parts of His plans, what He expects from us, how we should live as people, and cutting a straight path through that and being able to understand it.

And that takes time. It takes discipline. It takes a lot of reading. It takes time to pray and asking God to help you understand His word. Let's talk a little bit about the sufficiency of God's word. If we read in the Bible, the Bible tells us that God's word is enough for us. God's word is able to give us all of the instruction that we need to live a godly way of life.

2 Timothy 3, verses 15 through 17. 2 Timothy 3, verses 15 through 17. Many people have referred to the word of God, the Bible, as the trunk of the tree. And you probably sometimes heard people use this analogy of staying close to the trunk of the tree and not getting too far out on the branches or on the twigs. So if you're up there in a tree with a chainsaw and you're going to work on chopping down or trimming the tree, you want to be close to the center, don't you?

You want to be close to the trunk. Because the farther you get out on the edge of those branches, the less support you have, the more precarious it gets and the easier it is to just fall off. And God's word is that trunk of the tree. All of our beliefs, the things that we do, need to come back to His word as the center.

As we see here in 2 Timothy 3, God tells us as well, my word is enough. This is what you need. You don't need extraneous things beyond that. Telling Timothy here in verse 15, from childhood, you've known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Jesus Christ.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. So what do we see here? Do we need additional things beyond the Bible? What it's saying here is God's word is able to do these things for us, when coupled with His Holy Spirit, with God working in our minds.

It's able to make us wise for salvation. It's able to give us the doctrine to reprove us and correct us as we compare the way that we live to what's written in the Bible, to give us instruction for righteousness, and to thoroughly equip us to do every good work. Do we think of God's word that way? Do we think of it as being the center of our lives, the thing that gives us the essentials that we need in order to live our lives?

Or do we think of it as something that's extra and kind of out on the edge there when we have time for it? If we need extra input, and it's not really clear from my textbooks and the people I'm working with, I'll go turn to the Bible and see if maybe it has a last-ditch effort that has something to say. Or do we put it at the center of our lives as the essential guiding force of our lives?

God's word also sanctifies us. That word always has a lot of different connotations depending on what you've been exposed to in the past, but the word sanctify simply means to set apart, to set apart for a different purpose. And so God's word sets us apart. We see the example here in Ephesians 5, verses 25 and 26. It says, So God's word, as we read it and we take it in, it starts to cleanse us. It cleanses the way that we live, the way that we focus our lives. And it does begin to set us apart and make us different from the world around us. Because as we're dealing with people who don't use the Bible as their centerpiece and to give them their direction, it does in some ways set us apart from them. As we live lives that are different, as we have priorities that are different from the others that we're dealing with from day to day in the world. And that's the way it should be. It should be sanctifying and setting us apart. So the world is a battleground of ideas. If we look out there on television, if we listen to the radio, if you listen to talk radio, you know that as you flip the dial, as you look at different television channels, what are you most likely to see? You most likely see some sort of panel, some group of talking heads, and whether they're talking about politics, whether they're talking about social issues, or occasionally even issues of religion, you've got people from two, three, four different viewpoints that are out there battling it out and talking about their viewpoint. Or if you turn to another station or channel, you'll see one person talking, and he or she will be trying to convince you of the viewpoint that they come from. So the world these days is a marketplace of ideas, and everyone is trying to influence the way that we think, to get us to think along the lines of the philosophies and the beliefs that they have, some of which are in line with the Bible and some of which are not.

So the most important thing that we have to do is stay close to the trunk of that tree and believe what's written in the Bible and not what people tell us about what's written in the Bible. I'd like to play a short YouTube video that I think will give you a bit of a humorous example of what I'm talking about.

This video made the list of the top internet hoaxes, and according to a website called Mashable, it ranks number two as the greatest web hoaxes of all time. It was posted on the Household Hacker website, and I'll just play it and you can see what you think of it.

I'm not getting sound here. Let me see if I can get this thing to work.

I'm going to give you a narration of this video. This is an oldie. It's from 2007. What someone did is they made this video, and what they're laying out is how you can use an onion and Gatorade to charge your iPod.

What they're talking about is the fact that there are electrolytes in Gatorade and other sports drinks. For those who've worked with batteries before, we'll have to talk with Gene Weber in detail about this after services. Electrolytes are one key ingredient to have a battery that's functioning.

The idea of this is that you take an onion, take a screwdriver, ram your screwdriver all the way through the onion, and then you set it in this Gatorade or other sports drink so it can soak in all the electrolytes. What we'll do is we'll fast-forward a little further as they put some calipers in there because that looks very scientific.

They take the onion out, and now comes the big reveal. As you take out the onion, you set it up somewhere high, and then you take your electronic device. You're going to take the USB plug from your electronic device and you're going to plug it into the onion, which is now soaked in electrolytes. It takes a little work to push that USB in there, but you've got to make sure it's in there real snug. Then we're going to look over to our iPod, and voila! Our iPod is charging. You can try this at home. If the energy ever goes out, just make sure you have an onion and some Gatorade nearby. You can plug your iPod into the onion and charge it. See that? We can see it's charging. They're showing it to us on the Internet. How can this not be true?

What's the point here? There's a little bit of science involved here. Do any of you watch the Mythbusters? That's a great show to watch. This video that I showed you, and I apologize, the sound didn't work. I forgot with an HDMI connection it wasn't going to work. The Mythbusters went ahead and did a show that in part used this because it was such a big thing back seven or eight years ago when it came out on the Internet. It's like so many hoaxes that are out there, because there are elements of reality involved in it. We know an iPod needs a charge. We know that batteries use electrolytes. But as the Mythbusters showed, you need two dissimilar metals, right, Gene?

You need a flow of current going from anode to cathode, or cathode to anode. But you need those things flowing through with the electrolytes in order to get the current moving. You don't have that inside of an onion. But when you see it, and when it's put in front of the screen like that, it looks very plausible, right?

It's drawing on elements of science. You can see it happening in front of you on the screen, but it's not true. And if you talk to anybody, you talk to an engineer, like we've got back here, somebody who's worked with batteries, and they can very quickly tell you why it doesn't work according to laws of physics. How similar is that to things that we see related to religious belief?

How often do we see the religious equivalent of charging your iPod with an onion coming up on our radar screen? And if we believe simply what somebody tells us about the Bible, rather than going to the Bible and going to the source, and seeing if it actually says that as you go into the Word, you can easily be led astray by these things, because they have an element of truth to them. They have an element of, in this case, science to them. But unless you go back and look to the center and look to the Word, you're not going to know for sure.

So the simple point there is, go to the Bible. We need to study God's Word, in addition to listening to what other people say about God's Word. We need to go directly to it as the source. 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 21 and 22 tells us this in a different set of words. It doesn't talk about iPods and Onions back in the Bible.

Although maybe if we took apart prophetic language and revelation, we could find the iPod in there somewhere. 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 21 and 22, test all things, and the older translation, like the King James Version, says, prove all things and hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil. What it's talking about, and the way that we go about doing that, is going back to God's Word. That's the arbiter of what's good. We spend so much time today in our society because we no longer have a society where, broadly and completely, we believe in the Bible as the underpinning of the moral code and what right and wrong is.

And as a result of that, we start taking all of these incredible flights of fancy in terms of what's good and what's bad, what should be allowed and what shouldn't, what's legal and what's not legal. God has blessed us with His Word, the Bible, and by going back to it, we can test things, we can prove things, we can understand what's good, and we can hold fast to it.

Psalm 119, verses 9 through 11, another element of going to God's Word, it can help us to resist temptation. Having God's Word inside of our minds can help us to resist temptation. Psalm 119, verses 9 through 11, how can a young man cleanse his way by taking heed according to your Word? With my whole heart I've sought you, and let me not wander from your commandments. Your Word, David says, I've hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you.

By hiding God's Word in his heart, he said, he would not sin. So again, we take in God's Word directly into ourselves, we study that Word, so that we can resist temptation, so we can live according to God's true and right way. Again, going back to the example of Jesus Christ, we can see how he used this. We're not going to read the entire passage in Matthew 4, but I think we're familiar with the fact that the devil came to Jesus Christ and tempted him, took him out in the wilderness, and he tempted him.

And the first portion of this chapter, I think through verse 11 or 12 in Matthew 4, talks about the temptation of Jesus Christ by the devil.

In verse 3 it says, when the tempter, Satan, came to him, he said, If you're the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. And what did Jesus Christ do? He answered by quoting the Scriptures and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And if we read through the rest of that passage, every time that Satan approached Jesus Christ and tried to tempt him in another way, Jesus Christ quoted Scriptures. He pulled Scriptures back from his memory and he quoted those. Another way of showing the fact that within our own minds, as we're facing temptations, as we're facing our own difficulties in trying to make our way through life, hiding those words of God within us gives us that instruction, it gives us that guidepost as we make our way forward in life. So we think practically in terms of taking action and making sure that we're focused on Bible study as a fundamental Christian discipline, make time daily to go to God's word. Sounds very basic, very simple. But it's a matter of priorities, it's a matter of time, it's a matter of habit, it's a matter of discipline. And we do need to go to His word daily. Some ways that we can do that, consider using study aids. So for those of you who have mobile devices, there's a fantastic app out there called UVersion. U as in Y-O-U and then version. And it's a Bible, it's put out by a church, I think, down in Texas. And you can get it for Android, you can get it for iPhone. Some of the translations in the Bible, it has audio as well as having the written word, so you can listen to it in the car. And they have plans on there. We went through as a family about a month ago and picked out a daily reading plan. And so if you go in there, there's a button at the bottom, you can click for plans, and it has different plans that will take you through the entire Bible in a year. What I've been doing is plugging it into my sound system in my car, and when I drive to work every morning, I do that week, that day's Bible verses, which is usually three or four verses, and I can listen to it on the way to work. There are plenty of other ways out there you can do that as well. There are plans that are written down for how to get through the Bible in a year. And there are other topical study programs as well.

Scripture memorization is another area that a lot of people have used. I know when I was growing up in the church many, many years ago, the church was very big on memorizing scriptures, and my mom, being the strict German that she was, had us as kids learning our scripture memory cards. The first scripture I can remember learning was Ecclesiastes 9-10, whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. There's no works or devices nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave where you're going. My mom repeated that to me often as I was cleaning my room to make sure I got it done thoroughly. So that one's well embedded in my mind. But there are others as well as we think about it. I remember reading a book about Gerald Ford. His favorite Bible verse was in Proverbs 3, I think it's 5, verses 5 and 6, which talks about, commit yourself to God and all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. He talks about how that was a verse that guided Him as He was in the Navy, almost getting swept off the deck of a ship in World War II, and that's the Scripture that came to His mind as He was praying to God. To what extent have we got Bible passages of that sort that we've memorized, that we've committed to our minds? There are entire books that are written out there about ideas about committing Scripture to memory. Now, that's not necessarily for all of us. You're not going to find a verse in the Bible that says, thou must have at least a thousand Bible verses memorized. But it's a way that many people have used in terms of bringing God's Word and hiding it in their hearts so it's there and it's available and it's ready. If there are weaknesses that you struggle with, whatever those weaknesses might be, spend time and look for the Bible verses that talk about those weaknesses and how to resist them. And those verses will be inside and let them be in your mind, in your hearts. They're surfacing and they're coming out as the temptations come, as you feel those weaknesses coming that you're trying to work through.

And again, if you have children, read the Bible with your children. We spent a lot of time in children's Bibles and children's Bible story books. And one of the things that we did as our kids got a little bit older was, for us, a night snack was always a ritual in the house, and the kids would have a snack before they went to bed. And for a couple of years, we spent every night, we read through all of the Gospels and the Book of Acts one chapter at a time.

Every evening, we just got out of chapter, read it while the kids were having their snacks. Sometimes it would end up resulting in a discussion for 10, 15, 20 minutes. Other times it wouldn't. But we got through and we read through the Gospels. We read through the Book of Acts. Another way, if you have children, to work on hiding the Word of God in their hearts and teaching them directly from the foundation of God's Word. And as we said before in all of these disciplines, don't wait for tomorrow. Just do it. In the time that we have left, let's talk lastly about the fundamental discipline of meditation. Meditation. Now, I'm always amazed by the power of the human mind, what people have been able to do long before there was any technology like what we have today. So we look at the pyramids and how they're so perfectly aligned to the movement of the sun, not to mention the incredible structure that they are and how they were designed and built in a way that they would stand up. Long before we had computers and technology, all done with the power of the human mind, as people were working through calculating things and figuring out how to do it. Think of ways that people navigated around the world using stars as their guides. And when you look at some of these old astronomical charts, and you start thinking about how many years it would take to figure out the movement of the stars, the movement of the sun, the movement of the moon, the phases of the moon, all of these things that with time spent looking, observing, and thinking about it, the human mind is able to work out incredible puzzles and figure these things out. Now today, it's good that we have computers and smartphones and everything else that can help us do those things. It's also crutch, and it stops us from thinking because we can just say, hey Siri, and we can get our answer, right? Waiting to see if anyone's phone is going to go off when I said, hey Siri! No? Okay. Mark Graham's not here today. But there's a lot within the mind in terms of the power of what it can do. Going back to an athletic example, I found this website of an athletic training program, and I think the great quote here, elite athletes understand that victory is not achieved between the lines, it's achieved between the ears.

So even sports, most people will tell you if they've played a lot of sports, it's mental as much as it's physical. You have to know the rules. You sometimes see the craziest things done, whether it's in a basketball game or a football game, by somebody who just doesn't know the rules, or he forgot that it was fourth down and not third down, or a baseball player catches a fly ball and they forget that there's only one out, not two outs, because they don't worry about throwing the ball in. A lot of it has to do with what's going on between the ears to effectively play a sport. It's the same way for us as Christians. Now, meditation has all kinds of different connotations as well, so I think it's good to center ourselves on a definition of what is Christian meditation. And it's essentially reflection on God's word, on God's greatness in His plan, and it includes reflecting on how closely our thoughts and our actions are aligned with Him. So we're not talking about going into a dark room and lighting incense and trying to, you know, blank your mind out or picture different things. Meditation, as it's described in the Bible, is very focused. It's focused on God, it's focused on God's way, and it's focused on our lives and how they match up with God. And it's time that we need to spend. It ties in, just like fundamentals in a sport, with prayer. It ties in with God's word, because without having those inputs, it's hard to truly meditate on His way if you don't know what it is.

Psalm 1, verses 1-3. So what does it say here in verse 2?

So again, it's showing here very clearly that when we meditate, we think about God's word, we think about God's way. It's not just blanking our minds out and kind of letting it roam, but it is focused on understanding and thinking about His word. Meditating on God's greatness is something else that's brought out in the Psalms. Psalm 8, and we'll read verses 1-6.

So David is talking in this Psalm about how when he meditated, when he thought about it, he said, So David is talking in this Psalm about how when he meditated, when he thought about and looked at the creation that God made, and how wonderful and incredible it was, it really put him into that he had called us into the Lord. So David is talking in this psalm about how when he was reading God's word, As human beings inside of this creation, because of your wonderful greatness. Again, showing another aspect of meditating. And when we think about God and what He's created, it puts the things that we have as our day-to-day struggles, our day-to-day achievements that we want to make into perspective. We start to see what the size of our life is, compared to the size of the universe and the creation that God has put together. Meditating on our own spiritual condition, 2 Corinthians 13, verses 5 and 6. Here it says, Examine yourselves as to whether you're in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, indeed, you're disqualified. But I trust you will know that we are not disqualified. So it's talking here about the fact that we need to look at our own spiritual condition. So as we're thinking, we're thinking about God's Word, what it is that He expects of us as people. We're thinking about His greatness and the fact that He owns and created this marvelous universe. And then we look at our own lives and we say, There's this incredible God out there who's created everything that we see around us. He's put this all into motion. He's given us His Word. How is that word acting within my life? There's plenty to think about there, isn't there? I know there is for me. There's never a lack of things to reflect on. Today, though, we're plugged in all the time, it seems. If we're in an elevator, there's music on. Nowadays, a lot of elevators you get into. There's also a video screen. And as soon as there's a video screen, where do our eyes turn? Of course, they turn to it. In fact, sometimes you can see at sporting events, I catch myself doing this sometime. If I'm at a sporting event or I'm at a seminar and there's a video screen there and there's a live speaker or there's a game going on, I'll often catch my eyes going to the video screen and I say, Well, wait a second, why am I watching a video screen? I'm at a game. I can watch the players on the field. There's something about that. We're conditioned. We're so used to looking at those screens now. And we fill our minds with so many different inputs.

One of the big things that we can do is just take some time apart from it. Think of ways to get away from it. Now, for some people, being a little more active helps. Going out for a walk. And as you're walking, thinking about things, observing things, looking around you and thinking about it. For other people sitting back in a quiet room and just relaxing in a chair, and maybe with a snack or something and just taking some time to unplug and think, whatever it is, find some time as part of your regular spiritual discipline for meditation and thinking about God's way. And as in all these other areas, let's not wait for tomorrow. Let's just do it.

So, in conclusion, fundamentals are not just for beginners. I doubt I've told you much of anything that's brand new to anybody today. We know that we need to come to God in prayer. We know we need to study His Word. We know we need to think about it.

But so much of it is taking these fundamentals and putting them to use in our lives. Just like a football player, you know, you can... Some of you might recognize a name like Ryan Leaf, a guy who was an incredible football player when he was in college. I think he went to college up in Washington. He got into professional football, and he thought he was so great he didn't have to practice. And he left football within a year and became almost a joke for a lot of people. And it was because he didn't care about the fundamentals. He didn't focus on them. He had no discipline left. He thought he was deserved a rich and prosperous career in professional football. And he realized that if he wasn't willing to study as hard, to work as hard, and be as disciplined as the people around him, it wasn't going to work out. And for him, it didn't. So we look in our lives, we think about the Christian fundamentals and the discipline that we have to have in our lives. Again, we say, don't wait for tomorrow. Just do it.