New sermon up at TheoBlog.com: "Make Spiritual Victory a Habit".
It is the first sermon I've done that fully follows the Communicating for a Change model of "ME-WE-GOD-YOU-WE", in that for the first time, after study and prayer, I decided to go all out and actually use the dreaded first-person pronouns in the introduction portion of the message.
I'm posting my outline, for those interested in the method. It wasn't written to be read by others, so you might want to listen to the audio at TheoBlog.com while you read through it, so it'll make more sense.
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TITLE: Make Spiritual Victory a Habit
LESSONS: Matthew 11:28-30; Psalm 51; Heaven and Hell 528
TEXT: Matthew 11:30; Heaven and Hell 533
POINT: Make a mental habit of shunning evil, and the Lord will transform you into a better, happier person.
ME
• Leading a good life sometimes seems hard, but if we just make a habit of repenting then the Lord will do all the heavy lifting.
• “My yoke is easy, and my burden light”
• Love your enemies?
WE
• Sincerely, justly, faithfully?
• Talents? Light?
• By this will they know you… Do they?
• Committed adultery with someone in your heart?
• Ask yourself, “If this big stone building fell and killed me here and now, would I wake in Heaven Tuesday?”
GOD
• Good news: the Lord is Merciful!
• While on earth, he faced every one of these temptations, and more.
• Psalm 51:
• “Have mercy upon me, O God, According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions. / Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. // For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me….”
• So what are we to do?
• HH 528:
• IT IS NOT SO HARD TO LEAD A HEAVEN-BOUND LIFE AS PEOPLE THINK IT IS
• Some people believe it is hard to lead the heaven-bound life that is called “spiritual” because they have heard that we need to renounce the world and give up the desires attributed to the body and the flesh and “live spiritually”.
• All they understand by this is spurning worldly interests, especially concerns for money and prestige, going around in constant devout meditation about God, salvation, and eternal life, devoting their lives to prayer, and reading the Word and religious literature. They think this is renouncing the world and living for the spirit and not for the flesh.
• …In fact, people who renounce the world and live for the spirit in this fashion take on a mournful life for themselves, a life that is not open to heavenly joy, since our life does remain with us after death.
• No, if we would accept heaven's life, we need by all means to live in the world and to participate in its duties and affairs. In this way, we accept a spiritual life by means of our moral and civic life; and there is…no other way our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses....
• But how is that an “easy yoke”? A “light burden”??
• The key is HABITS:
• HH 533:
• We can now see that it is not so hard to lead the life of heaven as people think, because it is simply a matter of recognizing, when something attractive comes up that we know is dishonest or unfair, that this is not to be done because it is against the divine commandments. If we get used to thinking like this, and from this familiarity form a habit, then we are gradually united to heaven.
• To the extent that we are united to heaven, the higher levels of our minds are opened, and to the extent that they are opened, we see what is dishonest and unfair; and to the extent that we see this, these qualities can be dispelled. For no evil can be banished until it has been seen. This is a state we can enter because of our freedom, since everyone is free to think in this way.
• However, once the process has started, the Lord works wonders within us, and causes us not only to see evils but to refuse them and eventually to turn away from them. This is the meaning of the Lord's words, “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Mat. 11:30)
• WOW.
• Power of habits.
• Developing tastes for foods.
• Eating right.
• Brushing teeth.
• Regular exercise.
• Quitting smoking.
• Speaking of smoking, there’s a dangerous side to habits. HH 533 continues:
• It is important to realize, though, that the difficulty of thinking like this and also of resisting evils increases to the extent that we deliberately do evil things—in fact, to the extent we become used to doing them until ultimately we no longer see them. Then we come to love them and to excuse them to gratify our love and to rationalize them with all kinds of self-deceptions and call them permissible and good. This happens, though, to people who in early adulthood plunge into all kinds of evil without restraint and at the same time at heart reject everything divine.
YOU
• So what are you going to do about this?
• Repent: Examine, Acknowledge, Pray, Live.
• Make repentance a habit.
• Pick something and make shunning it a habit.
WE
• Imagine if every person in the world was making a habit of true repentance, of shunning something.
• Just imagine what your own life will be like.
• We make a habit of thinking, “The Lord said no,” and the Lord moves in us to fight evil and do good.
• He will give us the habit of spiritual victory, and with it, the joy of heaven.
• Truly, his yoke is easy, and his burden light.