WYC 2010:  In His Image

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GYC West

Soul Thirst:  Going Deeper with God

Alan Parker

Jump Start Your Devotional Life

Nicole Parker

Sword or Sawdust

How to Pray with Passion and Power

Crystal Fountains and Slimy Cisterns

When Truth Meets Life

The Secret to Vibrant Spirituality

Father, we pray that you'll be present here as we think about how to improve our spiritual lives.

And you know that a number of us have faced challenges with our spirituality.

As we wrap up this session, Help us to make a commitment that we will have a different kind of spirituality, 1 that is focused on you, 1 that enables your power to be at work.

All right, we're taking a look at the secret to vibrant spirituality.

I'm sure there's more than 1, but I'm going to take a look at the secret that made sense to me.

I'm going to begin with a personal illustration.

That's not me, but I look something like that.

It was a, you had obstacle courses, a very unique kind of design motorcycle with a very high-centered engine.

And 1 day, I invited 1 of my friends to come out and watch me.

And I was still pretty new at the sport, so I really didn't know what I was doing.

But I would go towards a boulder and ramp my motorcycle over the boulder.

And the object was, don't put your foot down and don't fall off.

Well, that didn't work too well for me because I put my foot down all the time and I fell off a lot.

And I remember at the end of the day, we had a final obstacle where I had to go through this muddy section.

And most people were slipping and sliding all over the place.

And my particular motorcycle wasn't very powerful.

And so when I got into the mud, it just wasn't doing well.

And as I was sliding in the mud there, next thing I knew, I was headed towards the lake.

I don't know what happened, but I just shut down.

And so I kept going, and I went right into the lake until it was up to here.

We had to turn it upside down for like a week to get all the water out of it.

But I remember at the end of the day, he asked me a question, after he'd finished laughing.

But in the Christian life, I often feel like that's a critique that could be made of me.

Because you just seem to be doing it all the time.

What's wrong with your Christian spirituality?

I can seem to find victory over sins that keep pulling me down.

I just don't have fire that I once had, and I don't even enjoy church anymore.

When I go to church, it's just like, oh, do we have to sit through that again?

Other people are saying, I feel so burdened, and I'm plagued by guilt and remorse.

And he says, every day when I wake up, these thoughts rush at me of all the things that I've done wrong.

Other people tell me I feel like a cultural administ.

You know, you live in Happy Valley and eat veggie burgers.

I do all the right things, but sometimes I feel like I'm faking it and it's not real.

So something is going on here, and our spiritual lives are not where they need to be.

So we want to take a look at some myths about spirituality and see if we can find out what the secret is.

Here is the first myth, and that is that spirituality is the same as feelings.

Unless you feel close to God, unless you have a conscious sense of His presence, then you don't have a vibrant spirituality.

True spirituality is emotional closeness and intimacy with God.

So the idea here is, unless you feel it, you don't have it.

And I've seen people, I've been praying, and I play the music, and I'm waiting for the feeling.

You know the number 1 culprit of buying into this myth?

You know who's a famous person who really bought into this?

Many people don't know that she was extremely discouraged in her spiritual life.

And it was because she had had this dream where, in the dream, she had met Jesus.

She had had this incredible spiritual high.

And then nothing else in her life quite lived up to it.

And so she kept trying, and she was doing good works and doing different things.

But when you read her diary, her journal, she describes a period of incredible darkness and discouragement because nothing else in her life lived up to that spiritual high.

If you want to discourage yourself, try and compare all of your life to that 1 spiritual high that you had when you were incredibly close to God, you felt so close to him, and make yourself feel discouraged.

I mean, imagine if in my marriage I said, you know, my marriage is just not going well.

Because there was 1 moment in my dating relationship when I was on such a high, and I've never had that again.

So my relationship with my wife is worth nothing.

No, the problem is when you base your relationship with God on feelings, you're going to have several challenges.

A feeling-based spirituality does not work because it depends on these things.

It is based on perception rather than on reality.

Let's just say you were anxious about the way they thought about you.

And I had that experience where this guy preached a sermon, and I was convinced that he was preaching against a sermon that I'd preached a week before.

I was a young theology student, and so I was just pacing at the back.

And as soon as people had stopped milling around, I dragged him outside, and I said, listen, buddy, why did you preach that kind of sermon?

He says, I have no idea what you preached last week.

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Series

Soul Thirst: Going Deeper with God

The Secret to Vibrant Spirituality

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Plenary

Giving Up All

44m

Filled with What?

1h 10m

Is God Enough

57m

Lying in a Manger

29m

The Three Angels' Message for the Millennial Generation

2. Fear God and Give Glory

1h 23m

Surprised By Love

1h 5m

Unlock Revelation

10. Revelation’s 1000 Years

1h 8m

Restoration 2009: Expect It

Iron Mixed With Clay

31m

Do Justly

57m

Surrender is Not

1h 2m

The Marvelous Work of the Holy Spirit

57m

Tablets of Our Hearts

51m

Sound Doctrine