Lancaster First United Methodist Church
February 7, 2010
Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 138; I Corinthians 15:1-11; & Luke 5:1-11
Rev. Robert McDowell

“Cross Training – Soul”

When I first put this sermon series on “Cross Training” together, I didn’t realize that the final sermon in this series would actually fall on Super Bowl Sunday. I can’t think of a better Sunday to conclude this series.

Think of how much training it took for the players and the coaches of these remaining two teams to make it all the way to this big game. These teams started their pre-season training camps way back in late July/early August which just goes to show how much training and preparation is involved to make it to this final game.

Bill Hybels, the pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, just outside of Chicago, tells about a time several years ago when he was staying at a hotel in Dallas. That night in his hotel room, he turned the TV to ESPN and they had a story about the tennis legend Martina Navratilova who had just won a grueling match in Florida that day.

He woke up early the next morning and was down in the hotel gym by 5:30 to get a work out. And to his great surprise, into the gym walked Martina Navratilova who had just been in Florida the day before. She had flown to Dallas and was up at the crack of dawn to hit some tennis balls.

Now that’s dedication.

We’ve looked at the importance of training our minds and our bodies. And today, we conclude our sermon series by focusing on our souls.

John Wesley, the 18th century founder of Methodism was known for a question that he would often ask those early Methodists. He would make it a point to ask each of them, “How is it with your soul?” Wesley believed this question to be so important, that he would have his Methodist leaders ask this question in every class meeting.

And what Wesley meant by that question was, “How are you doing in your growth as a follower of Jesus Christ? Are you moving closer and closer toward loving God and your neighbor? Are you becoming holy as God is holy? Are you growing in being a fruit bearing Christian?”

So let me continue this Methodist tradition by asking you this morning, “How is it with your soul?

Regardless of how you might answer that question, there’s probably some room for growth for all of us in making the care of our souls more of a priority in our lives. And like the care of our minds and our bodies from the first two weeks of this sermon series, the care of our souls also includes an intentional training work out on our part.

What are the ways that we can care for our souls and grow as disciples of Jesus Christ? What kind of cross training are we really talking about here?

We’re going to look at four scripture readings which are the appointed texts for this particular Sunday to help us strengthen our cross training as we seek to care for our souls.

Here’s the first way to care for our souls. It’s important to get a check-up. A lot of times, we’ll see a little message that tells us to see our doctor before starting a rigorous exercise program. Maybe this is where we should begin.

A check-up helps us to see what our soul is like before we start any intense training.

Several hundred years before the time of Christ, God called Isaiah to speak a word to the people of Israel about the state of their soul. The people of Israel had neglected to care for their soul and because of this, they were being threatened by a neighboring kingdom and the people were living in fear and anxiety over what might happen to them.

But before the nation of Israel would be willing to take a hard look at themselves and how they had fallen away from God, the person that God had called to speak a word of truth first needed a check-up himself. And that person was the prophet, Isaiah.

And Isaiah receives his personal check-up through a vision. All of a sudden, he sees himself in the Temple and he’s worshipping. And this becomes a time of worship he will never forget because all of the sudden, he sees the Lord sitting on his throne right there in the Temple and winged creatures begin to fly all over the place and they are crying out, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is full of his glory!”

He feels the place beginning to rumble and smoke fills the Temple. Isaiah is receiving a vision of the way the world is meant to be – a place where God is worshipped and where God’s glory is over all the earth.

And as Isaiah sees this vision, he can’t help but notice that this vision doesn’t reflect the current reality.

But instead of putting the blame on his own people which he could very well have done, he first confesses how he has fallen away from God. In the midst of this powerful vision of God displaying his glory in the Temple, Isaiah confesses, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Isaiah’s check-up through this vision in the Temple helped him to see who he really was in the presence of the Lord. At the end of this vision, the Lord calls out for someone to speak to the people of Israel and Isaiah responds by saying, “Here I am. Send me.”

Before Isaiah was able to begin his important task of being a prophet to his own people, he first needed a check-up himself to examine his own soul and where he had drifted away from God.

So today, as we focus on the cross training of our souls, the first thing we want to do is reflect on where we are in right now in our relationship with God. How close are we to God? Some of us might be at a point in our lives where we feel really close to God and today is an opportunity to give thanks for that close relationship and find ways that we can strengthen that relationship even more.

Others of us may find that we are disconnected from God and our check-up might reveal that we have a long way to go if we want to get to a point where we are really living out our faith at a high level of effectiveness.

No matter where we might be in our check-up, Isaiah shows us what all of us can do. We can confess our sins to God and open ourselves to what God wants to do in and through us.

To best care for our souls, we first need a check-up. The second thing we need is to check our attitudes. We all know what a big part attitude has in any kind of training. If our attitude is negative and pessimistic, we will probably find it difficult to consistently care for the feeding of our souls.

Psalm 138 a wonderful Psalm of praise and thanksgiving. Listen to these words.
“I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise; I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness; for you have exalted your name and your word above everything.”

Now listen to this next verse; “On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.” Having an attitude of thanksgiving is directly connected to increasing the strength of our soul.

It can be so easy to be negative as we look at all of the problems in our world and in our own lives, but this Psalmist reminds us that there is also a lot of good that we can easily miss. When we offer our prayers to God on a regular basis, those moments of thanksgiving become increasingly frequent and they begin to roll off our lips, often times surprising us.

A while back, I was dealing with a difficult situation and I felt that I had every reason to gripe and complain, and believe me, I had done my share of both. And one day as I was thinking and praying about the situation I was facing, I thought to myself that things could be worse and just that one little thought unlocked my negative attitude. I was surprised to find myself turning my thoughts of negativity into a prayer of thanksgiving that God would see me through during that difficult situation.

Having a good attitude and remembering to give thanks to God is a second way for us to care for our souls.

Here’s a third part of a good cross training program to care for our souls and this comes from our I Corinthians 15 scripture passage. To care for our souls, we need to maintain a healthy diet. But instead of a food type of diet, the Apostle Paul is thinking more about the message of the gospel.

Writing approximately twenty years after Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, the Corinthian Christians had been ignoring Paul’s earlier teachings about Christ’s resurrection and the good news of the gospel. And in this letter, Paul is reminding them of what he had already handed down to them.

Paul tells them to hold firmly to the message that he proclaimed to them. Evidently, they were holding this message so loosely that they almost weren’t holding it at all.

A couple of years ago, I attended a continuing education event for pastors from various denominations in Dayton. And before the start of this event, I ended up meeting some pastors from out of state who were gathered in a circle near the book table. We introduced ourselves by sharing our names and our denominations.

So while I was standing there with these pastors, engaging in small talk, I noticed that one of these out of state pastors was holding a book pinched between his arm and his chest, because he was also holding a cup of coffee at the time.

And so to continue the conversation we were having, I asked this pastor with everyone listening in – “What book do you have there with you?”

Everyone went silent because they knew what book it was.

With quizzical looks on each of their faces, and after a few moments of awkward silence, this pastor, just looked at me, and with a grin on his face, said, “Uh, this book is what we Baptists call, the Bible. Maybe you Methodists have heard of it.”

Now, you would have thought that the black leather cover with the gold lettering, and the letters K-J-V would have given me a clue as to what book he was holding.

Two weeks ago, Jerry Lucas spoke about ten things to strengthen our family relationships. Do you remember what number five was? Five was dive. And he said, picture a diving board where you are about to dive into a pool that contains a large bible.

Part of our cross training for the care of our souls is to have a healthy diet of the scriptures in our lives. The scriptures tell the story of how God loves us and wants us to be the people we were created to be and the more we hold fast to the scriptures, the more we will be able to care for our souls.

One of the reasons why I include a sermon outline each week is to give us another resource to use during the week to reflect on the scriptures that were used in worship. We also have our own denominational resource, “The Upper Room” which many people in our congregation use. You can pick up a copy today if you’d like.

I have mentioned that my routine is to use what is called, “The Daily Office,” which comes to us from the Anglican and Episcopal traditions and provides a two year cycle of readings which includes a daily Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a New Testament reading, and a Gospel reading that connects with the church season we are observing. I’ve included a website that has these daily readings. The important thing is to utilize some type of approach that will help you in the daily reading of scripture.

Our worship time provides a way for us to hear the scriptures on a weekly basis and there are also bible studies and classes held each week here in our church. These are all great ways to hold firm to the message of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Cross training for our souls needs to include a check-up and an honest assessment of where we are in our relationship with God. It needs to include an attitude of thanksgiving for what God has done and wants to do in our lives. It needs to include a healthy diet of taking in the scriptures on a regular basis.

And the fourth part of our cross training. We need a training coach to help us along the way. And our training coach is Jesus Christ. If we look at the story from the Gospel of Luke when Jesus called Simon Peter, James, and John to become his disciples, we are told that when they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

One of the most important parts of our cross training is to make the very important commitment to have the care and growth of our souls the highest priority in our lives. Those first disciples show us this when they made the decision to leave their fishing nets and follow Jesus.

One of the biggest reasons why people get frustrated in the care of their souls is because they haven’t made a commitment to follow Jesus Christ.

Notice what Jesus tells Simon Peter just before they all decide to leave everything to follow him. He tells them two things. The first thing is to not be afraid. And the second thing is that he will help them not to catch fish, which they already knew how to do, but to catch people and bring them to Christ.

Jesus will walk with us every step of the way. Jesus Christ wants to be our companion, our friend, and our trainer as we follow him. And as we make this journey with him, we will be amazed at all of the things that God will do in and through us; things that we could never have imagined doing before we met Jesus.

Later today, Drew Brees, quarterback of the New Orleans Saints, will take the field at the Super Bowl. Drew Brees is a Christian, who, in a recent interview, talked about his faith.

When asked when he first accepted Jesus Christ into his life, he said that he was in church one Sunday morning. He was seventeen years old at the time and had been to church many times in his life. But he said, this time in worship was different.

The sermon was about how God was looking for a few good men and the pastor was using this movie title to offer this challenge to the congregation. And Drew Brees said it was like a light bulb turned on for him and he thought to himself, “Hey, that’s me, I could be one of those few good men.”

And then, a little later in the interview, he talked about the importance of spending time in prayer and the scriptures, and trusting in God in every situation and experience, knowing that God is there to help you and how God wants us to make a difference in the people around us.

Like that day along the lakeshore so long ago, Jesus continues to look for a few good men and women, who are willing to leave everything in order to be one of his disciples.

But it takes a lot of training along the way. It involves loving God with all of our mind, body, and soul. It means confessing to God that we have not been the people God has called us to be and become. It means having a thankful attitude each day and it means diving into the bible on a regular basis. And it involves waking up each day, inviting Jesus Christ to continue to be our Lord and Savior, our trainer, our guide, and our strength.

And as we continue our cross training, let’s encourage one another along the way by constantly asking each other the question, “How is it with your soul?”

And may we all join the Psalmist in saying, “On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.”


Thoughts/Actions Steps for the Week

1. How is it with your soul? Cross training our souls begins with this important question which John Wesley frequently asked the early 18th century Methodists. See point #1 above.

2. Of the four areas of cross training our souls, which one needs the greatest attention right now?

3. “The Daily Office” approach to personal devotions can be found at www.satucket.com/lectionary/