This week, Pastor Matthew continued on with our Take Me To Church Series with part 3 of Beneath the Surface Discipleship.

We as Christians bring the Kingdom of God wherever we go, and God wants people to meet Him through us.

God’s intention for us is a continued growth path upon which we grow deeper and deeper with Him and with others. The problem is that many of us have stopped going deeper.

In this world we recognize our brokenness, but we continue to attempt being our own saviors – redefining what is right and wrong, good and evil. In doing so, the world continues to break. Instead, we need to trust Jesus – we need to seek the Savior, we need to repent, and we need to live our lives in Christ. Part of this is a daily surrender, a daily taking up of our cross.

We are being transformed from one degree to the next into His image, back into the image bearers that we are called to be. This is the process of sanctification and requires a life of obedience.

Before Christ, we are dead because the Spirit of Christ is not in us. We are enslaved to our appetites, and to the flesh. But when we give our lives to Jesus He breathes life into us, and we are reborn. We are new creations, rooted and planted in Him.

However, being new creations does not eliminate the root systems of our prior lives – roots such as our family of origin and trauma that still produce bad fruit within our lives (such as depression, anxiety, anger, etc).

What we need to do is nurture the new root within us (being a new creation), and it will grow a new root system.

How do we do this? It begins with needing to know who we are.

When we don’t know who we are, we end up being tossed back and forth; with good days and bad days, times of uncertainty and times of certainty. But, when we begin to realize who we are in Christ, we discern what things should defines us, and what thing should simply affects us. This gives us courage to ‘go there’, take a deep look within ourselves, and deal with our baggage – because we know who we are, and we know we are enough.

If we have given our lives to Christ, we are His Sons and Daughters – and everything else in our lives is built on that foundation. We are also heirs of God – we have rights to inheritance, and our inheritance is everything. Everything that is Christ’s is ours. We have been given the Kingdom, and therefore we need not waste our time on earthly things.

Knowing we are His children, and heirs of the Kingdom of God changes everything. We need to allow God to take this message deep beneath the surface of our lives. The “stuff” within our roots doesn’t define us anymore, God defines us.

The Bible tells us that we a temple of God, we are chosen by Him to bear fruit, we are saints, we are members of His body. Our family of God replaces our family of origin, but it requires us tending to the root of being God’s new creation.

Join us and Pastor Luke as we discuss the battle of the flesh and the Spirit and our God-given appetites.

This week, Pastor Luke continued with our Take Me To Church series with Part 2 of Beneath the Surface Discipleship.

He spoke out of Galatians 5: 13-25, and the tension between walking in the Spirit and the flesh. He spoke on three levels of beneath the surface discipleship.

1.Level One

We live on a string of constant tension - on the one end there is walking in the Spirit and bearing fruit, and on the other end is dealing with the flesh and its desires. We are made up of two parts; physical and immaterial – our bodies, and our spirit/soul, and these two elements do not always agree with one another.

When we put our faith in Jesus, we die (Romans 6). Our immaterial self is born again, we receive the inheritance of the Holy Spirit, and we are redeemed (justified). However, we still live our lives in the flesh – caught in the in between period between justification and glorification. This time of living in the middle is one of sanctification whereby our choices and lives are making us more and more in line with the character of Jesus.

2.Level Two

Everyone has five God given appetites – food, knowledge, sex, status, and pleasure (comfort). We sin when we satisfy these God given appetites in a non-God ordained way.

We need to rule our flesh in order to walk by the Spirit, because if these appetites remain unchecked within our lives they become addictions, which Paul calls slavery. But we are called to freedom, a freedom in Christ that allows us to choose what is right.

3.Level Three

We face an uphill battle, because our cultural current pushes us toward sin and not sanctification. This is not helped by the message of “self love.”

At Waypoint we absolutely believe in self-care. We believe in counseling, freedom ministry, boundaries, etc. We want people to be whole and healthy, walking in the identity God has given them and truly becoming all that they can be in Him. However, self-love can become dangerous. In our current world we are told to speak our truth, follow our hearts, be true to ourselves, validate our greatness etc. The problem is.. what if speaking our truth is unkind? What if being true to ourselves leads us to sin? What if following our hearts leads to the destruction of others and ourselves?

As Christians, we need to operate as part of a different narrative – one that cares for others, shows restraint, and live in humble submission to the Lord, His truth and His purposes.
The fruits of the Spirit in us are primarily for those around us as we live in community.

Four ways to walk in the Spirit and away from the flesh:

·We have to belong to Jesus.
·We need to go to war with our choices. Every choice is a chance to become more or less like Jesus. Our decisions will eventually make us. Life is the sum of many small decisions over many small days, and in all things we need to do as Jesus would do.
·We need to crucify the flesh. This involves a continued lifestyle of confession and repentance, and fasting what is addictive to us.
·We need to walk in the Spirit. We need to slow down to be with Jesus, and allow the Lord to have full access to your life.

Join us as we discuss Inner Healing with Amanda Anderson. Amanda shares bits of her testimony and also how God moved in her life as she received healing.

This week, Amanda Anderson continued on with our Take Me To Church Series by launching our three part set on beneath the surface discipleship. She shared her testimony, specifically in relation to the different stages of inner healing in her life.

Inner healing is a counseling movement that engages the use of prayer, forgiveness and repentance to reject lies and replace them with Biblical truths. Inner healing helps individuals process their painful memories and bring about restoration within their lives.

Part of Amanda’s personal journey of inner-healing included seasons of not feeling God or experiencing God, learning healthy dependence on other people, and working on rewiring her thinking – changing her brain through the reorganization of thought patterns.

At Waypoint we are committed to seeing people whole, set free, healed, and living in the fullness of who they are, and part of this process includes inner-healing and beneath the surface discipleship. This can take many forms, including prayer, counseling, and medication.

Amanda then interviewed Dr. Brian Lubberstedt about the link between mental health and the church. Dr. Brian shared that science and the church are not natural enemies of one another, and as Christians we have to get away from the historical division of the neck – the understanding that anything below the neck is medical, and anything above the neck is spiritual. We need to be consistent, as God can and will use doctors. We can approach our bodies from both a medical and a spiritual perspective, without feeling shame or condemnation about that.

Join us as dig into the practicals of slowed-down spirituality with Pastor Matthew.

This week, Pastor Matthew continued on with our Take Me To Church series with Slowed Down Spirituality Part Two.

Waypoints vision statement is: Waypoint Church is raising up a people with a passion for Jesus and His purposes in the earth. We long to see a church multiplying movement in which the Kingdom of God comes. As a result, deep, authentic relationship with Jesus and with one another becomes a reality, and our city and the un-reached areas of our world are forever changed by His presence.

Deep, authentic relationship with Jesus and with one another is the goal of living a life of slowed down spirituality.

Our world is addicted to speed and hurry, which has resulted in shallow discipleship and mass distraction. If we are too busy to sit in quietness with Jesus, then we are too busy. We need to slow down to be with God, and be centered and still before Him – present to the Lord throughout the day. This process is a journey, and understanding our identity is a key part of the process.

Many of us are afraid to slow down due to fear of what we will discover within us, or what the Lord will reveal to us. We need to do the hard work of spending time with Jesus, and allowing Him to reveal to us who we are in Him – and thus who we are in reality. Part of this process will require us to go back into our past in order to move forward in healing and wholeness with Him. Until we are content with who we are, we will not be able to properly rest.

Several practices to nurture a slowed down spirituality:

1. Enter into silent prayer through quieting your mind.

Intimacy develops when we are able to be silent in somebody else’s presence, and it is the same with the Lord. Familiarity fosters comfortable silence. It becomes a relationship based on friendship, as opposed to demands.

2. Encounter God through slowed down Scripture reading.

Our consumption culture has influenced the way that we engage the Bible.

Meditation is the practice of slowly chewing on God’s word until it penetrates our hearts. There are several ways and tools to do this, including Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina involves attentive reading of a small passage of Scripture two or three times over. It recognizes that Scripture is alive and active. As we read, we ask the Lord to help us to locate a word or phrase. We ask, Lord, what is this saying? Holy Spirit, what are you highlighting to me? Spend time reflecting on the text. What is the Lord saying to you through this text? Then the third movement is prayer. This is about our response to God, and it asks the question, what do I want to say back to God in response to this? The fourth step is contemplation and rest in His presence.

Unless we are being immersed in the Bible for the purpose of encountering God, we will find our relationship with Him is limited. We must slow down in order to do this.

3. Establish new rhythms of the Daily Office and Sabbath.

Part of being created in the image of God is our ability, like Him, to stop. We need to move in that part of His image. We imitate God by stopping from our work and resting.

The Daily Office and keeping a Sabbath provide rhythmic and joyful ways of being in our hectic and fast paced society.

The Daily Office is a turning to God to be with Him, observed multiple times a day. It’s not a quiet time or a devotion, but a set, scheduled practice of turning back to God repeatedly. This practice helps to eliminate the division between the secular and sacred.

Four elements to the Daily Office:

• Stop to be with the living God – trusting that God rules and I do not.
• Centering – be still, move into and rest in God’s presence.
• Silence.
• Scripture. Read a short piece of Scripture.

Sabbath is another important practice – a 24 hour period each week devoted to rest, holiness, spending time with God and engaging in activities that help us to rest and feed our souls. It is a radical and difficult weekly practice that orients our lives around the Lord, and His sovereignty.

Join us as we dive in deeper on slowed-down spirituality with Pastor Matthew.

This week, Pastor Matthew continued on with our “Take Me To Church” series with a sermon about slowed down spirituality.

A shallow discipleship is working against us as we try to navigate the complex issues of the world today, and we need to fix that. We all have issues beneath the surface that influence the way we think, feel, and behave. God wants to transform us, in the deepest parts of us – and in order to do that we need to slow down to be with Him.

Jesus wants to form His life in us, and He wants to transform our entire beings – including the “roots” of who we are. The Bible has a lot to say about our inner-being.

“Christianity in the Western world is often marginalized as a life accessory rather than the means of powerful life transformation” – Rich Villodas

A huge part of the problem is that we live within a culture of speed, shallowness, and distraction. We live in a frenzy of hurry and exhaustion – and as long as we remain in that place we can not become the people that God is calling us to be. Our inability to sit in silence is keeping us from hearing God.

God invites us to a different way of being in the world. He is not in a rush, and if we want to meet with Him, it’s imperative we slow down to be with Him.

“It’s only when we slow down our lives that we can catch up to God” – N.T. Wright

We can not love people well when we are in a hurry. The solution to our hurry culture is to practice a slowed-down spirituality. We must slow down to be with God, to be centered and still before Him, and to be present to Him throughout the day. We are called to live life at a different pace, with different priorities.

The Bible is full of people who slowed down to be with God; Moses, Joshua, Mary, John the Baptist, and Jesus.

“Solitude is to be preserved not as a luxury, but as a necessity. Not for perfection so much as for simple survival in the life God has given you” - Thomas Merton

The rhythms of a slowed down spirituality empower us to not only survive in the world, but to thrive within it. God is inviting us into a reality that fosters deep, authentic relationship with Him and others. We must walk at His pace and develop rhythms of silence and solitude in prayer.