Bible Study Series

1. Spiritual Disciplines Series

April 05th, 2009

Bible Study

In high school I turned down an opportunity to make $500 in a night because of I had principles and was unwilling to dance at a club, I wouldn’t sell my body like that. So now rather than selling my body for $500 a night I sell it for $200 a month donating plasma. Those principles cost me a lot. One of the things I have noticed is that you learn some interesting things about people donating plasma. When people are donating plasma the color of their plasma is sometimes different. It is supposed to be pretty clear and often has a light orange-brown color. As I looked around I noticed that the clarity and color varied a lot. So I asked one of the people who worked there what made the plasma color different. It turns out that you can tell a lot about a person’s diet by the color of their plasma. Certain foods turn it a greenish color others turn it more brown. The lighter a person’s plasma the better hydrated their body is. I thought it was interesting that when looking at someone’s plasma you can really see how what a person puts into their body effects what comes out.

So let me ask you something: do you ever feel like you truly want to know Him but don’t really know how? Getting to know God can seem so complicated sometimes but it doesn’t have to be. Man is not an independent entity, the Bible calls us vessels. Vessels are designed to be filled with something. We were designed to fill ourselves with God but we sometimes stray from that design. Our lives are filled with one of three things: with ourselves, with God, or with Satan. Sin is essentially when we fill our lives with something other than God. What we put into our lives effects what we get out of them. Man is designed to be filled with God. So then it is important for us to learn how to do that. How do we fill ourselves with God while keeping out the subversive forces of our enemy and our own selfish nature? How do we fill ourselves with God?

If we want to fill our lives with God we need to invest ourselves in the Spiritual disciples. So for the next few weeks taking a break next week for Easter we are going to study Spiritual disciplines and the key aspects that we as Christians should invest our lives in. Our lives need more God and less us. When we follow Him, act like He acts, and obey His commands, we open the door for Him to fill our lives that we may become vessels of God. If we want to know God we have to be filled with Him and that takes more than one day a week. We cannot be filled with God simply by attending church on Sunday morning and doing nothing else. If the only dose of Him we get is on Sunday mornings then we cannot hope to be filled with Him. Consider your eating habits. Some people prefer to eat a few big meals a day while others are ‘snackers’ and will eat a little bit all throughout the day. Most people however, are not comfortable eating once or twice a week. Physically you probably wouldn’t starve to death if you ate once or twice a week but you would be able to really accomplish anything because you wouldn’t have the energy for it. The same is true in our Spiritual lives. When we are content being Spiritual fed once or twice a week we may not die but we are not healthy. By investing in the Spiritual disciples we enable ourselves to be filled with God by taking in the nature God. In order to know God we need the Spiritual disciplines.

Of all the things a doctor can have what would you say is the most important? (ASK) For me the most important thing a doctor can have is an understanding of medicine. I want to know that the doctor I go to knows what he is talking about because if he doesn’t know what to do to fix me no skill as a surgeon, no bedside manner is really going to matter. The most important thing a doctor can have is an intimate understanding of medicine. Just as a doctor should know medicine so Christians should know God. One of the most important ways to know God comes from investing ourselves in the training manual that He gave us in His word. Bible study is perhaps most important Spiritual discipline. Honestly if we truly want to know God where better to start than with the love letter He wrote us. The Bible is one of the key elements we must have to fill ourselves with God so that we may become His vessels.