Don't Forget To Stretch | Spiritual Fitness | Nicky Gumbel | 3 February 2013

I want to speak today on some verses from 1 Timothy chapter 4 verses 7 and 8 I'm using the amplified version it's going to come up on the screen as we launch this series that we're doing on a spiritual and emotional health some Paul writes this train yourself towards godliness and the word that is used for train there to curse three times in this these two verses I looked it up this morning in the in the Greek and it's the word gimnasia from which obviously we get the name gymnasium gym so he says basically go to the gym in godliness for physical training physical going to the gym physically is of some value useful for a little but godliness spiritual gymnasium is useful and a value in everything and in every way for it holds promise for the present life and also for the life which is to come I've always been a kind of regular squash player and squash is one kind of exercise it's kind of an aerobic exercise and I've been playing squash for a few years when my friend Charlie Mackesy and I went to the gym and he looked at me he said you have got a puny body he said you need to do more strength exercises and he showed me all these weights since then I've done all these weights well a few weeks ago I was in the gym and I've been playing squash and this guy came up to me and he said he said look I'm a trainer they said and I have never seen anyone in my life as stiff as you are he said do you ever do any stretching so I said yeah I do a little bit of stretch I said no no no no you couldn't complete these are the stretches that you want to do and with physical exercise there's just so many aspects to it aren't there there's there's aerobic there's anaerobic there's there's strength there's stretching now I'm discovering this there's core trainee got to do Pilates and then that's just one bit of it Bear Grylls says that that that 80% of fitness is to do with nutrition only 20% is exercise it's about what you eat you have to eat the right things you have to do your final lesson or there's all that and then there's other things there's a rest and relaxation it's just so complex there's so much to think about and what Paul is saying here is the physical training that all that stuff it is a value you're supposed to look after your body God created your body Jesus died for your body God's gonna raise it one day it's important the Holy Spirit lives in your body your body is important it's of looking after your body is of some value but this is not a talk about a physic I'm not the right person to give you a talk on physical exercise it's not about that at all but but what all I'm all I'm saying is what Paul seems to be saying here is this is an analogy physical exercise physical health physical fitness is an analogy for something he says that it really is important that really matters in your life and that is spiritual training and that has value for this life and forever for eternity says for the life to come this is what really matters and the point is this that just as physical act training has lots of different aspects so does spiritual training it's not just one thing sometimes people say look it's that if you do this that will sort out your life but it's it's not like that that's why I call this this don't forget to stretch because what I want to do with you today is a kind of spiritual MOT I've had a physical mot recently but maybe we need to do a spiritual MOT just go through some of the things it's kind of checklist over the 39 years since I've been a Christian I've come across so many models of discipleship people say this is what you should do in terms of discipleship and they're good things but I think what I'm trying to say say today is actually they're they're all good we need all these things together they make up spiritual training and I want to talk about 10 models that really I've condensed because I wrote down to all the models and there were so many of them and I've condensed them into 10 which sounds a lot but I'm going to go through them very quickly but these are the things that have really helped me and as I go through these models I want you to make you the kind of spiritual checklist are these ones that I'm doing is that is this one because when I had my physical mot at the end of it they said look these are the things you need to focus on now and as you go through these just think is this one that I'm doing or is this one that I need to improve on there's one in this list that I'll tell you as I go through it is the one that I've realized I really need to focus on now so here's the ones here are 10 bombs that I found helpful over my Christian life here's the first one the faith model this is the one I started with I had an experience of putting my faith in Jesus Christ that moment changed my life it changed my personality my character changed it almost overnight some things in my life went I had a terrible temper and that basically went over almost overnight I had my language was interesting and it changed other things that I had to work on a great deal but the faith model is not just about your first step of faith the temptation is that's where you start but then it turns into oh I've got to work I've got to do this I've got to do that no no says faith is where you start and faith is where you end it's all about faith in Jesus discipleship is all about becoming more like Jesus that's what it is that's what we're aiming for become more like Jesus become more loving having the fruit of the Spirit in our lives and that happens through faith you start with faith and you end with faith that's the faith model second model is the repentance model there's stuff in your life you've got to get rid of if you're going to train yourself towards godliness you've got to get rid of ungodliness in your life there's some bad stuff you've got a root it out and this is a process certainly in my case it's an ongoing process it's like taking weeds out of gun I'm not again I'm not want to talk to you about garlic so I know nothing about it but but as I understand it you want to take the weeds out by the root get rid of them and this is my experience too that what we tolerate in our lives will eventually dominate we've got to get rid of it we got to get rid of that bad stuff and the more we get rid of it the more free we are and that this model which is you could call it the repentance model it's the kind of sometimes people talk about holiness model it's also often connected with a kind of prophecy model where where where people can have a prophetic word into your life about something some area that you need to deal with where it's helpful sometimes to pray with people and to pray through things in this kind of area but the key thing is if this is about making good choices wisdom is not about making good choices now that you will be happy with later this is the repentance model third the truth model this is about feeding on the truth good nutrition getting the right stuff in to our lives as someone has said healthy sheep multiply and if you get the right food in that is build up your strength what is the right food it's the truth that Jesus is the truth this book the Bible is all about Jesus it's getting that in that's why I encourage you to do to read the Bible in one year we do we try and do that as a church together each day reading bits of the Bible going through the whole Bible in a year getting the truth about who God is who Jesus is who the Holy Spirit is the truth about who we are in Christ this is this is we need to fill our minds with this through the Bible through coming together on Sunday to talk about these things through listening to to talk through through reading books we're just taking in the truth this is this is absolutely key fourth model is what you might call the encounter model encountering Jesus Paul says we are transformed into his likeness as we spend time in his presence and we do that through worship worship is absolutely key prayer sacraments all these ways in which we encounter Jesus we are gradually transformed to become more like Jesus and you have to do it it has to be a regular pattern I was walking by the certain time today and I saw this person swimming in the in the cemetery let his ice on the ground and they were swimming up and down up and down up and down how are they able to do that I bet they do it every day that's the only way you can do something like that you go in there and not having done it before for thirty years that's not a safe thing to do it's only if you do these things if you practice regularly that's why I encourage you daily exercise these disciplines the first thing in the morning I used to read the newspaper first thing in the morning I don't want to do that anymore I want the first thing I read to be the truth and you might get it in the newspaper but you know you'll get it in the Bible so that's where I like to start my day get the truth in before anything else comes in fifth model is what you might call the supernatural model that's the experience of the Holy Spirit this is key you know we're not on our own this is why that the weekends on alpha are so key because people have an experience of the Holy Spirit and often the test mates have a set free from alcoholism I was set free from drug addiction I was set free from a life of crime by the Holy Spirit filling me changing me again this is not one-off that's why we have ministry at the end of every service will have ministry at the end of this service maybe there's something in your life that today will be dealt with as you walk forward here here and somebody prays for you and the Holy Spirit deals with some issue in your life that is the power of the Holy Spirit that can transform a person's life six the servant model sometimes people say oh we need we need Meteor teaching we must just have more meat in the inner teaching John Wimber used to say this the meat is on the street the meat is on when you go out and you do the stuff that's how you really grow when you pray for the sick when you visit a prison when you feed the hungry when you help on Alpha when you tell people about Jesus that's when you grow in your relationship it you can't learn this stuff in a book or only in a book when when people and I first got married before the children came I said I really want to learn windsurfing and so I got this book on you know an introduction to windsurfing and he had great pictures and I studied it for about a month before we went I love all of it I knew everything about windsurfing we got to this place first it is really hot brie island I don't know why I did it but instead of putting on Sun cream I put on Sun oil I covered my body in Sun oil I thought it would protect me from any and then I went had a they did a demonstration on the beach then we went out into the sea I got onto the wind surfer and I as I felt like my body went across the board and all the oil that was on my body went on to the ball and from then on it was like an ice rink and as every time I got onto the ball I slipped that first I fell forward then I fell backwards and this little crowd began to gather on the beach to watch this idiot falling one way and then the other way that is the last time I ever went windsurfing it's one thing to read about it in a book it's another thing to do it and the way you if you want to be a good wind surfer don't read about it in a book get out there and do it day after day after day I imagine that's a way to become a good wind surfer I have never experienced myself number six and number seven sorry the time model there are no quick fixes to discipleship it's like physical growth you can't force a child to grow it's a it's a natural process it happens over time it's the experiences of life through which we grow it's the difficulties it's the struggles it's the challenges it's the wounds that's how we grow in wisdom and often it's through the worst experiences in our lives that we grow the most and sometimes so in my experience you look back at the worst things and you say actually those are the most important that's when I really grew God really is working everything together for the good maybe you're in a in a in a really difficult time at the moment but you may look back and say actually God was at work this was a time I really grew as a follower of Jesus this is the time I became more christ-like I became more compassionate I became more loving I became more understanding of the world through these trials that you're going through right at the moment this is one of the reasons why you know older people have so much to offer us so much wisdom at their disposal that's what I encourage you to get a mentor to look out for mentors look out for people who are further down the line you'd be through all these experiences in life or a little bit ahead of you yet mentoring doesn't have to be a big deal you'd have to say oh I'm entering a mentor relationship I'm gonna sign a contract with this person just this guy out for coffee that's all you need to do just find someone who you respect and say look would you go out for coffee with me I like to talk to you I'd like to ask you some questions how do you cope with this stuff what do you do how do you read but how do you pray how do you cope with this temptation and just get somebody and have coffee with them once and if it works meet up for a coffee in a month's time but gain from the experience of all the people who have the wisdom of years through the experiences of life that's the time model the eighth one is the ex you can call this the experiential model it's kind of connected with sometimes people talk about in a healing emotional health and and so on and this is the one where I have been learning a lot recently I read this book called the emotionally healthy church by Peter Skye's arrow and in this book there's a test that you can take it's like a kind of inventory of your emotional health and I filled it out with with my wife pepper and a friend and we went through through all the different things and I did okay and in most of them but there was one I really got a very very low score like at like an emotional child and it was the area of dealing with grief and loss and I realized that it's an interesting thing you know I was I had an amazing father amazing parents who really loved us and sacrificed a lot for us and really and my father is a kind of hero to me and often quotes and we often in our family would quote some of the things he said but he he he was a Holocaust survivor but his he was a German Jew he he hadn't been in a concentration camp himself but he he'd escaped from that world and he'd come over here and this whole area of the model I had for dealing with grief and loss was you don't talk about it you say nothing my mother took us by sister and I for a walk when we were 14 years of age and she said your father is a German Jew you're never to talk to him about it and I never did until he died and because he cut off that area there were a whole lot of other areas in his life which he couldn't talk about so the model for dealing with grief in our family was silence I realized now why it was a year ago the Judaica Museum in Berlin contacted me and said they were researching my family I knew nothing about my family so I said well tell me send me everything you've got and they sent me among other things my family tree it was a mate I'm so fascinated by it I discovered that my great-great-grandfather that was Abraham what not the Abraham but but my great-grandfather was Moses his brother was Isaac you know so fascinating but I also discovered where which concentration camp each of these cousins had died in and you realize that whole generation all his friends or his everyone had got it was too traumatic to talk I understand it now because I know how it is how hard it is to talk about trauma in our lives but the model I had was you don't talk and I didn't even realize it but but I read but people said you never talked about when your father died I never realized he didn't do it just assume that's what you did because that was a model I had and this began to I could see it was having an impact on my life and therefore I decided to get professional help and that's what I'm doing and I find it helpful to bring things out in even more you bring things out into the light the more that you're able to to deal with them and and and I initially I thought you know maybe I would just do it but not tell anyone about it you know just not tell the congregation but then I I saw a guy who's coming to speak at the Leadership Conference steven Furtick young guys only 32 years of age congregation of 12,000 and i said i was interviewing him and he said this that that he goes to he calls it preventative therapy because he doesn't want you know I think one of the things it says in this book is that as goes the leader so goes the church and it really matters the spiritual health of other a leader matters and I don't want anyone to be badly impacted by my own emotional health so this really matters he says so he's going for preventative therapy and he said it originally he went through the the back door because he didn't want to you know he didn't want people to know what he was doing they said no no no I'm gonna do this openly and so he decided he'd go through the front door and as he walked in the first time he went through the front door he saw a couple from his church sitting there so he said the yeah I'm crazy too so I decided okay well I'm gonna talk about this openly and my wife with disability I think you ought to talk to your family before you talk to the congregation so over Christmas I talked to my family and that they actually one of the things my son said very wise guy he said he said look it's like this dead if you there's a line here knowledge and in line here love you you you let people in you speak to the people closer to you more about the things that are going on in your life than for people you don't know so I I started to talk about it and to talk about it more openly what I'm finding is that the more you open up about one area the more freedom it gives you to open up about other areas and so something that I have found helpful but I decided that I would do it open it and talk about it you just talk about it openly but it's not something everybody has to do I don't think there's anything wrong it's like kind of you know you could use that game to as a physiotherapist which I'm also doing for the first time in my life it's just a different part of you that sometimes you need to get help but you don't need to do it I have a very good friend friend who is a Catholic monk called Luigi actually is a friend of my son's but he's become a friend of ours as well and he spoke at the Leadership Conference last year and Luigi says this or that he says our lives are like a lake and at the bottom of the lake is mud and silt but the water above it is is clear and you don't need to go to sort of digging around in the mud and the silt unless there's something of value down there that you want to go down and collect or unless something is stirred and there's a good reason for going down there and dealing with it but you don't need to be constantly saying something are constantly doing so in a healing and stirring and stirring and therefore the lake is always muddy because it's just constantly stirring you don't need to do that but if you do need to do it for any particular reason that's okay but I think most things in life most things in my life are dealt with by the other models and in particular by this next one which is number nine the community model the church is the place of healing most of our hurts come through relationships and so does most of our healing and that's why the commune there's nothing like the community of the church for healing it's the most amazing place to find it and then in a small group I have a small group of two other guys that I meet with every week this is a really really important part of my life the the past roots are a key I love the past roots to be a place where where we can really talk openly about these things had an interesting experience on about three or four weeks ago we have the ministry heads that's the people who head up the various ministries in the church like Nick insolently who had that family life Tim who heads up the worship you know it's Paul Callie it's a group of they're about 15 of us that meet we meet every Tuesday for three hours but once a year we meet for 24 hours and then we really talk about stuff and Nicky Lee had the idea that we would talk about what was really going on in our lives and in our ministries and I did something which I would not have done before I said okay I'm gonna stop I'll normally go lost but I said okay I'm gonna start and I just talked about what was really going on I talked about some things I just told you about that were going on in my life I could not believe what happened everybody started to talk about what was really going on in their lives it was fascinating and I I realized that we we may try and impress people with our strengths but actually we connect with people through our vulnerabilities and it's when we start to talk openly that we really connect and I love that to be happening in the past for its people if I think if we were really all talking opening openly about the stuff that was really going on in our lives taking off the masks just being ourselves and talking about the stuff we would really make these connections was amazing we we laughed we cried we had we discovered things about each other that we didn't know but that brought us closer together and I think this is where the the Christian community is is an amazing place and we and we need to become a little bit more I think like children jesus said we should become like tune on every aspect of children but one thing about children is they talk very openly about their feelings they don't disguise their feelings they're open they're vulnerable they're fragile but they are open and this is Jesus says you've become like chill and just be open with one another and in this community we find this healing and the final model is much the most important one of all and this is my favorite one and this is the one I want to leave you with it's the grace model all these other things they can it can make you feel sort of burdened down all these models I've got it's a bit like the physically aerobic anaerobic stretching wait I can't do it just too much stuff and I don't want you to think today oh you know I've got all these models and I you know and I've got this one this one I'm not good at this one I'm not that one and I hold you I think I only got fifty seven percent total it's not like it's not an exam which you have to pass the exam has been taken for you by Jesus and you have passed you know covered by the blood of Jesus you are righteous in his sight he loves you you're forgiven it's all grace it's not what you have to do it's what's been done for you by Jesus that's where it all is he loves you as you are not as you could become if you did a bit more exercise if you did a bit more of this if you didn't a bit more of that you're never gonna be perfect none of us are perfect you're never going to get perfectly you realize this I'm they're going to be perfectly physically fit so it's it's a complete revelation to me that they're going to be perfectly physically fit I'm never none of us are going to be perfect in our I'm not gonna be the perfect past I'm sorry to disappoint you I'm never even however immense of these things I do I'm not gonna be the perfect past if you're looking for the perfect pastor don't come to this church there's no perfect discipleship model no church has got the perfect discipleship program we certainly haven't there's no perfect Church don't go around looking for the perfect Church because if you join it it'll no longer be perfect it's it's we just have yeah I think so we live in it in a culture where people are going around and they're sort of saying you know this is the place amazing teaching here amazing well I'm gonna go here for the worship I'm gonna be here for the teaching I'm gonna get my fellowship over here when I can listen to this tape I'll get this is absolute nonsense this is not Church this is Fantasyland because you're never a contributor you're just a consumer this is not you'll never grow as a Christian in that way if you just consume you just get fat you have to contribute you have to do something you have to get involved you have to get in involved in a church and in my work church you've done oh of course I'd love you to join this church of course we love we love you we love you to be part of this church but I much rather I don't want to just see you occasionally because you're flitting from church to church I want to see you either book every week or every time you can be here because you're committed you're involved or I'd like you to be involved somewhere else where you can feel committed give to them serve them you know this this is the way you grow you grow by stretching that's what I call this this talk don't forget to stretch you stretch in your serving you stretch in your pray you stretch in your giving find a church you can give to generously not necessarily this church but if it's not this church join another church and give to it generously don't ration it there's one not so about your teaching I only give a little bit if give to it generously become part of it and that's the way in which your grow and if join a community the church is a community of grace the church is not a museum it's not a museum that displays these perfect Christians the church is a hospital it's a hospital where we come all of us come broken wounded with our stuff with our rubbish in our lives with our hurts and it's a place where we find healing and we find healing through grace through God's love and acceptance of us and the purpose of it this is why this really matters this is why I care so passionately about this is we need to become a healthy Church in order that we can affect the world if we become a healthy Church then we can have an impact on the nation because Jesus called us to be salt and light and as we become more healthy as a church we will be more effective in rear Vangelis in the nation and transforming our society may we pray lord thank you so much that you love us thank you that this is all grace from first to last thank you that you died for us to cleanse us to heal us to set us free help us all to grow in our discipleship to become more like Jesus to become more effective in our lives for Jesus sake amen you

Channel: HTB Church

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Keywords: Alpha, Nicky Gumbel

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Length: 31min 55sec (1915 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 05 2013