THE DISCIPLINES OF OUR FAITH

 

Hall of Fame coach, the late Vince Lombardi ,would begin every training camp with this statement, “Gentlemen, this is a football.”  Then, he would drill them in the fundamentals over and over.  These were professional athletes who had played football most of their lives. They were not going to win because they learned something new, but because they reinforced what they already knew.  That’s what makes a winning team. 

It is also what makes a championship church.  So many churches are looking for the latest fad and innovative method—a quick fix to take them to the next level.  

I am all about creativity and innovation, but we also must be aware that God never changes, His Word never changes, and there are some fundamentals of our faith that dare not change.  I am going to coach you in six disciplines this week that God will bless, in your walk with Him, in your family, and in the church. 

GOD IN FLESH

The mystery of godliness—God manifested in the flesh—made me think of these words by C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”