Conformed to His Image - Relational Spirituality

Conformed To His Image

What we are going to study and review for the next 13 weeks is the book written by Kennith Boa – Conformed to His Image.

His book really reads like a text book in that it is so jammed packed full of principles and sound biblical doctrine.

Please pray for me as I prepare for these lessons. It takes a great deal of preparation time and study for me to get my thoughts down and get an idea of how the Holy Spirit wants me to teach each lesson. So again… please pray for me that I will be Christ centered and not self centered… that I will be obedient to His Word and my study time will be productive and time sensitive.

What Mr. Boa does in this book is he looks at the body of Christ and the revelation given to the body of Christ in Romans 8:29

Rom 8:29
(29) For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, for Him to be the First-born among many brothers.

Conforming to the image of Christ is a process but none the less it is His purpose that we as believers become conformed to the image of His Son. It is a journey that you will never obtain or reach while you are present on the earth. But you will obtain it one day…

Jud 1:24
Now to Him being able to keep you without stumbling, and to set you before His glory without blemish, with unspeakable joy;
What I hope we will accomplish by studying the Bible with the help of this book is that:
Develop a greater appreciation for the unique way God has made you
Become aware of a wider array of options for your spiritual journey
Get out of a possible spiritual rut
Desire to experiment with other facts of the faith
Appreciate the great examples faith by great saints who have gone on before us
Expand your horizons and be encouraged to move out of your comfort zone
Have instilled in you a greater passion for Christ and greater desire to participate in his loving purposes for you life

I would like to start out talking to you a little bit about this postmodern world that we live in. We now live in a world where our children are being taught tolerance and how important it is to be tolerant of all belief systems and conduct. Our children are being taught relativism in that what is one person’s truth is truth to them and they are not wrong for believing that… in other words that is no absolute truth and now absolute right and wrong. It is a personal truth or awakening.
This is absolutely wrong and it flies in the face of sound biblical doctrine. The sad thing is that our children are being affected by this. In the way they think and act. I heard about a preacher who asked his children what is the worst thing anyone could say about you that would hurt you the most… the kids answer was that they would be considered intolerant. They don’t want their friends to believe they are intolerant. This belief system is being ingrained into our children's minds and without Godly instruction, this sort of teaching will take root. The next thing you know these kids will be lawyers, judges, and work in politics and government. Then it will effect us even more... and it already has.

This is such a shallow belief!

No wonder there is a spiritual hunger in this world today. People are looking for something that will satisfy that emptiness they long for. Many in this world long for something and they have no idea what it is they are looking for.

Many believers are searching for something as well… we are on a quest for meaning, purpose and many would like to know their place among fellow believers in Christ. You will never be fulfilled until you completely surrender to Christ and begin the process of becoming conformed to His image.
We will be looking at concepts that describe a journey into spirituality… a Christ-centered biblical spirituality.

We will be looking at 12 facets of Spirituality.
I want to describe these facets like this… consider your spirituality like a fine gem or a real nice expensive diamond. They tell me if you look at a diamond from different angles it gives a different appearance because of the way the light shines on it. Looking at it from another angle offers another beautiful view of its stunning clarity. We want to look at our study of spirituality like looking at a beautiful and expensive diamond. We will look at it from many different angles and many different settings.
The first one we will study is Relational Spirituality. In this study we will learn what it means to:
Loving God completely
Loving ourselves correctly
And loving others compassionately

Relational Spirituality - Loving God Completely

What is man, that you take thought of him? That is a question for God... What is man, that you take thought of him?

God is infinite, God is personal, and God is triune. Why did God bother to create us... humans for? One of his purposes in creating us is to display his glory through us. He created us as intelligent moral creatures who are capable of responding to him and his call to has a personal relationship with us.

We all understand what happened in the garden when sin separated us from having a relationship with God... there became a barrier between man and God... that barrier was SIN. Because God so loved us he sent his only begotten son... God desired a relationship with us so dealer he allowed his son to suffer GREATLY for our sins to bring us back into a relationship with him.

Not only that but God wants us to grow our relationship with God. The purpose of us being created is to know, love, enjoy, and honor the triune Lord of all creation!

The better you know and understand God, the better you will know and understand yourself.

The Glory of God
There is a lot in the Bible concerning the glory of God. One of the best examples of this I in Psalm 8:3-4
Psa 8:3-4
(3) When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
(4) What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him?

What is humanity in deed... Isaiah 40:26 tells us that he created these stars and he calls them by name! God's wisdom, beauty, power and dominion are beyond human comprehension... but yet we are designed by God to seek intimacy with him. God thinks so much of us that he knew you from your mothers womb and knows the very number of hairs on your head right now.

God's Love for us

God's has a supernatural love for us.

God's loves is causeless - Romans 5:6 - You can not cause God to love you... He loves you because he created you and desires a relationship with you
God's love is measureless - Romans 5:7-8 - You can not define the limits of God's love because it knows no limits or boundaries
God's love is ceaseless - Romans 5:9-11 - God will never stop loving us... nothing can be done to make him love us more and nothing can be done to make him love us less
God's love is inseparable - Romans 8:35-39 - nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Loving God Completely

Loving God Completely involves our whole personality - our intellect, emotion and will.
Mark 12:30 says "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength".
The better we come to know God, the more we will love him. An the more we love him, the greater our willingness to trust and obey him in the things he calls us to do.

In our quite times of meditation and prayer with the Lord - time we spend developing our relationship with him... I would encourage you to consider these three phrases that we are going to discuss. Ask God ... that you may know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly!

How can we know God more clearly?

The apostle Paul wrote some great prayers in Ephesians 1 and 3, Philippians 1, and Colossi ans 1... all about his deep desire to grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. In Ephesians 1:17-18; 3:19 he prayed that the Lord would give them a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him... he prayed that the eyes of their hearts be enlightened and that they would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

Christianity is not a religion but a relationship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit!

What does it take to know God more clearly? Two essential ingredients... time and obedience. It takes time to cultivate a relationship... Our Lord invites us to the highest calling of all - intimacy with him - and day after day, we decline the offer, preferring instead to fill our lives with short-lived pleasures.

We need to set time aside each day for prayer, communion with God and reading scripture. By doing this we will develop an intimate relationship with the Lord.

How can we love God more dearly?

To know God is to love him! When we realize that the author of time, space, matter, and energy... for some reasons that are incomprehensible, chose to love us unconditionally. God did not love us because we were lovable, beautiful, or clever... because of our sins - we were unlovable. But God chose to love us... 1 john 4:19 says "we love, because He first loved us".

By God's grace we need to grow in love with him in our thoughts, in our emotions, and in our actions. We will talk more about love God more dearly later in our studies in the Devotional Spirituality section.


How do we follow God more nearly?

As we grow to know and love God, we learn that we can trust his character, promises, and precepts. Whenever he asks us to avoid something, it is because he knows that it is not in our best interests. Whenever he asks us to do something, it is always because it will lead to a great good.

John 14:15 tells us that if we love Jesus, we will keep his commands. In other words... by being obedient to his commands is the way we test and express our love and relationship with the Lord.


Loving Ourselves Correctly

In order to love ourselves correctly we need to gain a perspective on who defines us? Who defines you? It is so easy to let the world define us instead of God define us.

Many of us have shaped our self image by what we believe others think of us. It's only natural to shape our self-image by the attitudes and opinions of our parents, our peers, and our friendships.

But seeing yourself only through this approach is a distorted view of who you are. How do you think God sees you? Only when we define ourselves by the truth of the Word rather than the thinking and experiences of the world can we discover the truth about who we are in Christ, with is our deepest identity.

You know... we've all heard the psychology of looking inside yourself to for the answers to your problems. That song by Whitney Huston... learning to love yourself. That is a beautiful song and Whitney can really sing it well but it has the wrong answers. The scriptures tell us to look to Christ, not to self, for the solutions we need.

The biblical view of self-love is this: loving ourselves correctly mans seeing ourselves as God sees us.

How do we see ourselves as God see us? - See September 4th post.

Seeing ourselves as God sees us takes a knowledge and understanding of God's grace and his Word. The unique thing about grace is that it can humble us without degrading us... God's grace elevates us without inflating us.

God's graces tells us that apart from Christ, we have nothing and can do nothing of eternal value.
Php 3:3
(3)
For we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh;

Grace teaches us that we have been transformed from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, life and love. Our past has been changed... our sins are washed away as far as the East is from the West.

The most important think graces teaches us is that its not about us but its about whose we are!

Who does God say I am?

We get our understand of who we are by understand what God says about us through his Word. Please take a moment and look through your handout of these biblical affirmations about our identity in Jesus Christ. See September 4th post.

Loving Others Compassionately

Now we need to take our understanding of who we are in Christ and take it to the world. We need to go from the vertical to the horizontal.

How do we express God's love to a lost and dying world? How do we manifest God's love? The great commandment in Matthew 27:37 is that,"you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind".

The next great commandment comes two verses later in verse 39... "you shall love your neighbor as yourself".

Here are additional verses pertaining to loving people.
John 13:34
(34)
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. As I have loved you, you should also love one another.

John 15:12
(12)
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

1John 3:23
(23)
And this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment.

The more we love God, the more we will express his love to others by our actions and deeds... by the fruit we bare. It's impossible to love God and not love your brother and sisters in Christ. It's impossible to love God and not have a heart to see people come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and personal savior.

The quest for greatness in the sight of others.

Near the end of Jesus ministry here on earth, the disciples were arguing about who would sit on the right hand of Jesus and who would sit on the left hand, in Glory. Do you remember what Jesus told them... he told them that whoever wished to be great among them will be their servant and whoever wished to be first among them will be a slave to all. In that same chapter in Mark he goes on to tell them " For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many".

The Essence of True Greatness

Another lesson Jesus taught them about love, service and humility is he washed their feet. The lesson here is that if their teach and Lord became their servant, they should also serve on another.

Jesus had a awesome security about who he was... I like what Kenneth Boa had to say about this... let me read it to you.
He knew his dignity and power ("the father had given all things into His hands"), he knew his significance and identity ("and that He had come forth from God"), and he know his security and destiny ("and was going back to God")

Jesus got his identity from his relationship with his Father... he certainly did not get it from who the world thought that he was.
In John 1:46 - "can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"
Mark 2:16 "why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?"

And there are many, many other verses where the world tries to define Jesus by bringing him down to their level... but Jesus knew who he was and he knew from where he came and he knew where he was going.

Do we not have the same inheritance as Christ? Do we not have the same destination as Christ? Then we should not allow what our friends, or the world say about us to hinder our service to others.

When we find that security of whose we are and who we are in Christ then it will free us up to serve others as Christ served others. Then we will make a difference with our service.

Now... let's look at it from another angle. Do you believe that the people you call your friend defines who you are?

Gordon MacDonald observes that we encounter 5 kinds of people.
VRPs - the very resourceful people. They add to our life and usually tend to be mentors or older men and women who offer their wisdom and experiences to us.
VIP's - the very important people. They share our passion. These people love us enough to share our burdens and/or task. They love us enough to tell us the truth about their opinions without fear of loosing the friendship.
VTP's - the very trainable people. These people or generally new to the faith... they are still learning and you know and understand that they are looking and learning from you. They often come to you for advice and spiritual guidance.
VNP's - next we have the very nice people. These are what make up the large majority of the congregations in the United States. These people enjoy seeing the works of others but offer no help with the work. They sit in the pews and receive blessing but do not help with the work.
VDP's - the very draining people. These poeple will sap our passion by causing conflicts and constantly looking for comfort and recognition.

If we are not careful the VNP's and the VDP's will absorb the majority of our time. I'm not saying we should completely avoid these people... we are to minister to their needs and feed them the milk of His word... but the majority of our time should be spent with the VRP's, the VIP's and the VTP's.

Now I want you to do something for me this week. I want you to think about your friends and the people you spend the most of your time with... who fits into what category and how does that impact you and your service to others. Pray and ask God how to spend more time with the first three and ask God to help you to be more productive and helpful to the last two groups.

The last thing we are going to discuss today that will hinder how you love others compassionately is forgiveness.

It's a fact that there is no sin so great that God will not forgive, but there is no sin so small that does not need to be forgiven. God forgiveness erases the sin from existence. There is a song by Casting Crowns call "As far as the East is from the West". It is taken from Psalms 103:12 when the Psalmist proclaims that God removes our sins as far as the East is from the West... that is a long ways brother.

Still... many people find it difficult to understand or accept that God has unconditionally forgiven their sins. They believe that they must somehow work off the debt of sin to earn their forgiveness. These people need to have a better understanding of grace and the height and depth of God's love toward His children.

Next we have the hindrance of forgiving others.

William Blake has a quote - I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.

When we acknowledge those who have hurt us, we acknowledge that we too have needed forgiveness and that we are not as different from the offender as we might like to think.

In Christ we are to offer grace to the offender rather than justice.
Lewis B. Smedes states: "When you release the wrongdoer from the wrong, you cut a malignant tumor out of your inner life. You set a prisoner free, but you discover the real prisoner was yourself."

Sometimes long after you forgive the wound can linger in your memory... forgiving is not the same as forgetting or excusing, or smoothing things over. True forgiveness is costly... especially when there is no repentance on the part of the wrongdoer. But true forgiveness is a way that will release us from the guilt and bondage and to break that cycle of blame.

Here is an exercise I would encourage you to do... it only should be done alone between you and God.
Take a piece of paper and write down the names of those who have hurt you over the years through disloyalty and betrayal. Offer this list to God along with all the pain it rekindles, and make a choice through faith in Christ to forgive each person on the list. The crumple the paper and burn it before the Lord who forgave you from the cross. This can be liberating.

You need to be free from the bondage of unforgiving in your life to truly experience a greater and complete love of God, a deeper understanding of how to love yourself, and a love for the service of others.