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(upbeat music) - Drive Time Devotions is a Saddleback Church podcast. We want to
invite you to one of our weekend services. Visit us online at saddleback.

com for locations and service times in your area. Please visit us this weekend.
- Let me talk to you for a minute about exercise as we take a look at First
Timothy chapter four, day three.

Few things that I know about exercise. Most of us hate it. Now, a few of us love
it and we hate you for loving it, but a few of us love it.

But most of us, we would rather do anything else when it comes to physical
exercise. But all of us know that we need it. And afterwards, when we exercise,
we see the benefit of it, the loss of weight, the greater energy that you might
have in your life.

Well, these verses that we're going to look at today as we come to the end of them
are going to be about exercise, but not physical exercise. And even more important
kind of exercise, spiritual exercise in your daily life. And these verses we're
looking at today, they are crucial verses in our walk through Paul's Holy
Spirit-inspired advice to Timothy about how to live this motivated life of
faith.

First, in these verses we're looking at today, Paul's going to give his son in the
faith a picture of what this motivated life of faith looks like for him. He's
saying, "Timothy, if you're going to live out "this life of faith that I'm talking
about, "here's what it looks like. " Verse six, "If you point these things out
to the brothers, "you'll be a good minister of Christ Jesus, "brought up in the
truths of the faith "and the good teaching that you have followed.

" Paul is saying in verse six, "This is the kind of life that I want you to
live. " And as he says, "You're brought up "in these truths of the faith," that
is the idea of nourished by or nurtured in these truths. Now, as Paul writes in
these verses, he's reminding us, and especially in verses seven and eight, he's
going to focus on the fact that this nourishment of our soul, it is not automatic.

Just like you and I have to choose to eat solid food, and when we eat solid
food, we have to chew on it for a while to get the nourishment out of it. God
made the food, we didn't make it. We have to chew on it.

There are truths in God's word that I have to be nourished by, and some of them
I have to chew on. In the book of Hebrews, we are warned very clearly that if
you and I don't decide to dig into God's word, we're going to remain baby
Christians in our lives. And what's a baby Christian?

A baby Christian is a believer who always seems to have so many needs that they
can never meet the needs of others. That's what babies are like. They just have
needs.

They aren't meeting other people's needs. They can't serve others. They have to
be served all the time, and that's what it means to be a baby Christian.

You have to be served all the time. God doesn't want that for your life. Oh, at
the beginning of your Christian life, yes, but then you start to grow up.

Now, how do you grow up? How do you exercise your faith? How are you nourished
in your faith?

Well, listen to verses seven and eight. Have nothing to do, Paul writes, with
godless myths or old wives' tales. Rather, train yourself to be godly.

For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things,
holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. Paul writes, and
he says, well, I love Philip's translation of 1 Timothy 4. 7, the last half of
the verse.

He says, take the time and trouble to keep yourself spiritually fit. Train
yourself to be godly. Keep yourself fit.

Train yourself. You read those words and you think, well, wait, I thought it was
all God's power that grows me. It is, and it is your decision to do things that
rely on the power of God.

You get to choose. God gives the food, we get to choose, am I going to be nourished
by it? God gives the ability to be exercised, we get to choose, am I going to take
him up on that opportunity to be exercised?

Now, Paul, at the beginning in this, verse seven says, don't have anything to do
with godless myths, old wives' tales. What he's saying is, don't waste your life
on empty speculation. What's an example of a godless myth, an old wives' tale?

Well, in our days, it's a lot of talk about angels focusing on angels and they
mean this and they're named this and this happened and things that aren't
anywhere in the Bible, but people make all these things up based on some poem
that Milton wrote. And instead of focusing on God's word, you're focusing on
this myth or conspiracy theories about the Bible or about politics or about the
church of some kind and you get all caught up in that and what does that mean?
Or second coming political speculation, what country's going to be in charge and
where all these things are going to happen?

You get so caught up in that, you're not exercising to keep yourself spiritually
fit. Those kinds of things can bring a certain energy to your life. Godless
myths, old wives' tales, they seem very important, but in the end, they don't
lead anywhere.

They're empty pursuits. So instead of doing this, Paul says, train yourself to
be godly. That same verse in the New American Standard Version says discipline
yourself for the purpose of godliness.

By faith, he's saying you practice the disciplines of growth. Growth takes time
and energy. It's a matter of discipline.

Now I say that with a caution because when you rely solely on your own
discipline, I'm going to discipline myself to growth. I'm going to do it, I'm going to do
it. That results only in pride.

But when you do the same things with the same energy, read God's word, pray,
spend time with God's people in church, when you lean instead on God to grow you
through your obedience to him, you find yourself growing in ways that you never
imagined. You do the things that God asks, trusting in God to grow you. That's
disciplining yourself for the purpose of godliness.

Richard Foster wrote about this in his book, The Celebration of Discipline. He
said, by themselves, the spiritual disciplines can do nothing. They can only get
us to the place where something can be done.

The disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform
us. What we're talking about is habits, the daily habits of our life. The
disciplines of life are the habits of life.

Do I make it a daily habit to spend some time in God's word? Read a few verses
at the beginning of the day or listen to them somehow throughout the day and
focus on what they mean for my life. Do I make it a daily habit to talk to God
just about what's going on in my life?

Now, that habit might be something you do at the beginning of the day. It might
be a habit that you do throughout the day. I often encourage people to pray the
first two minutes, first two minutes of what?

Of anything, first two minutes you're in the car, first two minutes you're
walking into a meeting, first two minutes that you're walking back into your
house after the long day. You pray those first two minutes. That's a habit.

So a habit doesn't have to happen at a certain time like somebody else does it.
It just means it's something you do throughout the day. What is a habit?

A habit is something that you have put into your life on a regular basis. And
you want to know how important your habits are? You become identified by whatever
you do habitually.

If you stop by Starbucks to get a coffee every morning, people would call you a
coffee drinker. You're in the habit of drinking coffee. If you're in the habit
of cutting quickly in front of other cars as you drive, that's the way you
happen to drive, then people would label you a bad driver.

That's because you're habitually doing that. Not it happened once, but every
time they're with you in the car, there's all these honking horns around you. If
you are in the habit of spending a lot of times with your kids, people would see
you that identify you as a good parent because you're spending time with your
kids.

What are you in the habit of doing spiritually? You build habits into your life
for your family. You build habits into your life for your business.

You build habits into your life for your schooling, your education. What are you
in the habit of doing spiritually? What is it in your life that gets you in
connection with God?

Listening to him through his word, talking to him in prayer. If you don't have
those habits in place in your life, don't even know what they would be, then get
around some other believers, maybe some people in your small group. Oh, there's
another habit you could start, meeting with a small group of other believers for
encouragement and spiritual growth.

If you don't have a habit in your life, then begin to build them. Now, I always
say the best place to start is with relationships. You start with your
relationship with God.

Spend a few minutes with him in his word on a daily basis and talk to him. Just
read five or 10 verses, listen to what it has to say. This daily drive time
devotions might be a part of that for you.

You're listening to what God has to say through his word. It's not my words that
are important in these devotions. We all know it is God's word that's important,
and all I'm doing is talking to maybe lead you to what God's word means.

Physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things,
holding promise for both the present life and life to come, verse eight. That's
the strength. And just like we exercise physically to stay strong physically,
you and I need spiritual exercise to stay strong spiritually.

And Paul is saying here is spiritual exercise, that's the one that's going to last.
Physical exercise, it's okay, it lasts for a while. It's a good thing.

But spiritual exercise, it's going to last forever. That is the value of building
those habits into your life. Now, you may be thinking, one final thing before we
pray, you may be thinking, I've tried, I've tried to discipline myself for the
purpose of godliness, and I just can't start that habit of talking to God on a
daily basis.

I just can't do it, it's just not me. Well, let me say two things. First, try
something different.

Don't just keep trying to do it the same way, try it a different way. Maybe a
different time of the day, or reading in a different way, or maybe journaling
more. Try it in a different way, do that.

And secondly, keep trying. And when I say keep trying, I mean specifically keep
trying for about six weeks. You know how long it takes to develop a habit?

About six weeks. Psychologists have discovered this and studied it many times.
It takes about three weeks to become familiar with a new habit, it takes about
six weeks for it to become a comfortable part of your life.

You know why a lot of believers don't have spiritual habits of reading God's
word, of talking to God on a regular basis? Never broken through the six week
barrier. Never even given it six weeks.

Yeah, it's going to feel a little uncomfortable at first. But just ask God and
maybe somebody else to check up with you and get six weeks under your belt and
watch what God does to develop a habit in your life. That same power in your
life that makes it so easy to develop a bad habit, ever notice that one?

God gave you that ability so you could develop good habits with that power.
Habits related, disciplines related to his word. As we talk to the Lord today,
let's just ask him in a simple prayer, Jesus Christ, show me how I can
strengthen my habits.

The habit of talking to you, the habit of listening to you. Show me how. Maybe a
new way to do it that I haven't tried before.

A new fresh way, a new fresh start. But also I pray from your spirit that you
would give me the discipline, you would remind me day by day these next six
weeks as I really work on this discipline, this habit in my life. So that at
that point, it would become not something I hope to do someday in my life, but
it would become an established habit in my life.

Do this in me, Jesus. Do this in me. I'm growing not based on my power, but on
yours.

So I ask you to do this in me. In your name, amen. Join us tomorrow, don't miss
tomorrow.

We're going to talk about the confident life of faith.