The Fine Arts of Godly Living

You thought this past week would bring relief to something in your life, and it didn't.

You thought that recent doctors' prognosis would be positive, and it wasn't. You thought the problem that you had, that you were working with, would be resolved by now, and it hasn't been. Would you notice that Paul does not say in the text, persevering if tribulation. Persevering in. He is assuming we know it will happen, and he tells us how to act when it does. Persevering in tribulation is one of the hardest tests for the believer. The goal becomes doing what's necessary to end the trouble. But what if God simply wanted you to trust Him, instead of take action? The Apostle Paul describes persevering in tribulation as one of the keys to godly living. That's not easy. Would you like to know some of the other keys to godly living as well?

Well, stay tuned as Stephen Davey opens God's Word today with the lesson called The Fine Art of Godly Living. Psychology Today sent out a survey to over 50,000 of its subscribers asking them particular questions, specifically how they found happiness and what they considered happiness to be. They received responses from all over the country.

In fact, the responses are probably not going to be surprising to you, but they were insightful. Those on the poor end of the economy scale believed they would find happiness if they became richer. In fact, their most common hope was related to winning the lottery. Then again, the wealthier subscribers to Psychology Today admitted that they weren't happy either, even though they had all the things needed to sustain life and meet their needs. Geography and climate had nothing to do with happiness either. People were just as unhappy in Florida in the winter as they were in Minnesota in a snowstorm.

Whether or not they were presidents of companies or working for minimum wage, they basically all said the same thing. There was no consistent path or pattern to happiness. In fact, most of the people who responded were convinced that they would be happier or maybe that they would find happiness if something changed or they got something or things improved in their lives. I find it ironic that our founding fathers put into print what is nothing less than the frustration of the human heart. Signed on July 4th in 1776, some of the words include, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. And among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of what? Happiness.

In a way, they were prophetic, weren't they? You can have life, you may have liberty, but you can only pursue happiness. As if to say, you can pursue it, but you probably won't catch it. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not in the pursuit of happiness or things that you may believe will lead to happiness where you find it. The discovery is found in the pursuit of godliness for in the pursuit of godlikeness, you discover God and true happiness. Jonathan Edwards wrote several hundred years ago, with which our souls are satisfied is the enjoyment of God. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, these are but scattered beams of joy, but God is the sun. The company of earthly friends are but streams, but God is the fountain.

These all are droplets, but God is the ocean. I would submit that genuine life and real liberty and authentic happiness are not found by pursuing them, they are found by pursuing him. Now, what does this pursuit look like? And how do you measure progress as you pursue godlikeness?

Are there guidelines to help you on your way? Absolutely, yes. And today I want to wrap up our three-part series entitled Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Godliness. As we arrive at the end of Paul's sentence, he writes long sentences, doesn't he? In Romans chapter 12, beginning in verse 10 all the way down to verse 13, let's back up to verse 9 where the paragraph starts and pick up some speed. Romans chapter 12 verse 9, let love be without hypocrisy, abhor what is evil, cling to what is good, be devoted to one another in brotherly love, give preference to one another in honor, not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. And for today's study, rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, and practicing hospitality. These are several qualities that we pursue every true believer who wants to be godlike.

You could call these the fine arts of godly living. Go back and look again at the first one in verse 12 where he says, rejoicing in hope. Literally, in regards to that which you are hoping, rejoice.

This is the art of matching your emotions with your convictions. This is nothing less, I believe, than being in the state of spiritual optimism. How can we be in that state?

Why? Our theology is grounded in the promises of God and God who cannot lie has promised us these hopes, these things which we have bound our faith to. We have the living hope, 1 Peter 1-3. We have a dying hope, 1 Corinthians 15-55. We have the blessed hope, 1 Corinthians 15 verses 51 and 52. We have an eternal hope, Paul wrote to Titus where he said that being justified by his grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

This is our hope and it produces confident joy. Not too long ago one of our astronauts lay strapped in his seat in his capsule ready to be launched into space and he was interviewed by a reporter via radio. You can imagine that. The reporter asked him a number of questions. One of them was, are you worried? I don't know if he came up with that one but that would be a good question, I guess.

Are you worried? The astronaut replied, well, how would you feel if you were sitting on top of 150,000 parts, each of them supplied by the lowest bidder? It's not our faith constructed by the creator of the universe. Not some low bidder but the creator of the universe has fashioned our faith. It's not our hope built upon this everlasting rock. We are strapped as it were by our faith to the unchangeable purposes of God and we are ready according to the word to hurdle at any moment into outer space.

Afraid? Confident in the promise of God. Our belief in God gives hope and hope produces joy. I mean, what bride would walk down the center aisle of some sanctuary dressed in white preparing to meet her beloved with a frown on her face? That may come later but at that moment there's joy and a smile. You see, we happen to be wearing the garments of the bride of Christ. We are walking down the aisle of history toward our bridegroom who would never disappoint. Paul wrote to the Colossians, we have joy.

Why? Because we have Christ even now within us and he happens to be the hope of glory. You see, when Paul writes for us to rejoice in our hope, he simply means to look like we believe it, to match with our emotions, correctly so, to our convictions.

But I want you to notice that spiritual optimism does not rule out spiritual realism. The very next words Paul writes, look back at your text, persevering in what? Persevering in tribulation.

I mean, nobody's throwing any rose petals on this particular aisle you're walking on, right? The word tribulation could refer to trials of any kind. In fact, when Paul wrote this, the Jerusalem church was in the process of going through a deep famine.

He was part of a group of men raising money for the saints who were in desperate need. To make matters worse, believers had been disinherited from their families because of their belief in Jesus Christ. And Paul, ever the optimist, but ever the realist, would write in his journal, we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not despairing. We are persecuted, but not forsaken. We are struck down, but not destroyed. Rejoicing in hope is spiritual optimism. Persevering in tribulation is spiritual determination. Not only are we developing the art of matching emotion with conviction, we are developing the art of running the race no matter how often the goal line gets moved.

Running the race no matter how often or in what way the goal line gets moved. You thought this past week would bring relief to something in your life and it didn't. You thought that recent doctors' prognosis would be positive and it wasn't. You thought the problem that you had that you were working with would be resolved by now and it hasn't been.

It's as if the goal line keeps getting shoved out further and further in front of you. Would you notice that Paul does not say in the text persevering if tribulation, but persevering in. He is assuming we know it will happen and he tells us how to act when it does. You see, you cannot choose whether or not you will suffer. You can't choose in what way you will suffer. You don't get to choose how long you will suffer.

But you can choose how to respond. And he says, persevere. It literally means this compound word to remain under, to bear up under. That's the biblical concept of patience. In other words, the art of endurance is more than just hanging on and it certainly is more than running away. It is outlasting it.

It is a staying at it. It is, as one man wrote, ultimately defeating it by becoming better because of it. The trouble is the average Christian has somehow believed the lie that coming to faith in Christ provides a vaccination against suffering. Most Christians expect to get through life unscathed without ever being bruised, ignored, or rejected, or ridiculed because of your faith in Christ.

And then when it happens, we sort of howl as if some unexpected thing happened that shouldn't have happened. Take a stand for Jesus Christ. Make it known and you will suffer some form of persecution. I am deeply troubled by what has happened in the last 20 or 25 years in my own department as a pastor and a Christian leader. The average pastor is spouting the lie as well, being pulled into the current of accommodation. Whatever you do, God would never want you to be unhappy. And so if you're unhappy, run, get out of it, change, leave, do something.

It's God's will for life to be strewn with rose petals. And unfortunately we're diluting our doctrine because it is becoming more and more at a distance of what our culture believes. We're pulled into this culture of tolerance when it basically is simply a resistance to suffer persecution for belonging to Christ. I heard one internationally known preacher, I won't name any of these because they are family members, on Larry King recently being asked the question, do you believe homosexuality is a sin?

It's an easy answer. But he looked down and he stammered a bit and said, well, you know, I believe there are a lot of kinds of sin in the world, like the sin of pride, completely avoiding the question. One of the things I fear about this church in this particular generation in this particular culture is that we do not suffer persecution for our stand. Paul wrote to Timothy and said, Timothy, indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus are going to suffer persecution. See, the most troubling thing to the church in this generation is that we are not. Literally in regards to your tribulation, he says to them, endure it. How this text has brought great comfort to the believers even today in the Sudan and China and countries in Africa who are suffering today. They read a text like this where they're told, remain under it, don't run from it, accept it. And for you and whatever you may face the disengagement with your family because of your stand in Christ, endure it, face it, expect it. Your testimony on that campus or in that corporate boardroom or in that shop, expect it.

You are not winning votes. You are standing for Jesus Christ and declaring the truth that he is the way to the Father. The question would immediately come then to the reader, how in the world do you survive the pressure?

Thlypsis, this could be rendered the pressure of a stand for Christ. Well, he quickly has the answer in the very next phrase devoted to what? Devoted to prayer. These all go hand in hand.

These are like links in a chain. This is not simply an act of prayer. This is a life of prayer. In fact, the word translated devoted means literally to hold fast to, to give attention to, to be faithful in. Paul is literally saying in regards to your prayers, continuing.

And I love that fact. He understands the trouble that we have with praying. He is not exhorting us as it relates to your praying, be more eloquent.

God is counting the scripture references that you quote. He's simply saying continuing. Martin Luther, the reformer, wrote in his commentary on Romans, there is no work quite so difficult as praying to God.

This is not simply something devoted to a period of time in your day of five minutes in the morning or maybe 60 minutes or 30 minutes in the afternoon or at night. This is actually a reference to a way of life in regards to your praying continuing. It's a lifestyle of conversation with God. This is the art of developing a conversational lifestyle with God.

Talking to him. Some of you can remember coming to faith in Christ as an older believer not knowing how to pray. I've discipled many adult men who'd never prayed before and it's always at the light because of their transparency and their openness. I remember discipling one particular guy as a seminary student. I was the seminary student teaching a singles class in my little Baptist church where we attended and this guy had gotten saved out of a motorcycle gang just totally fresh in his faith. And I remember the first time he prayed in class. He ended it by saying, I'll see you later.

Broke the whole class up. You know what? I thought, man, it'll take about three months and it'll be cured of that by coming to church. Isn't this praying though? An ongoing conversation with God.

Ongoing devotion. At the time I read about in D.O. Moody's life, the great pioneer and leader of yesteryear, I read recently this story.

He was traveling with some colleagues. It was late at night. They'd worked all day and they'd finished their ministry tasks for the day.

And one of the men wrote that he observed Moody rolling into bed and saying aloud, Lord, I'm tired. Amen. There's a prayer for you.

I'm tired. Amen. The next phrase that would come would be when you would awake. It's just a conversation that continues on with the Lord. I read some time ago about a believer who lived a rich life for God.

He was marked by his close relationship with the Lord. He lay dying with cancer in the hospital. And the hospital chaplain stopped by to see him on one occasion. And he saw beside the man's bed an empty chair. He commented, oh, I see you've had a visitor. And this elderly gentleman said, lying there, no, I haven't had a visitor today.

But you see, when I became a Christian early in my young life, I was told that praying was like having a conversation talking to your friend. And when I heard that, I decided that every day I would pull an empty chair toward me wherever I was, whenever I could, and just have a conversation with my friend. I was reading the account provided by this man's daughter who wrote about her father's passing away. My father seemed so content in his hospital bed that afternoon that I left him for a few hours.

When I got back, I knew he was gone. He'd gone to be with his Lord. But the interesting thing was his head was not resting on his pillow. His body was turned and his head was resting on the seat of an empty chair he'd pulled beside his bed, as if on the very lap of Christ.

Paul writes in verse 13, contributing to the needs of the saints. It's a way of life. See, this is the art, then, of developing an open hand.

And you have to develop it. You know why? We were born with our fists clenched, weren't we?

Just tight as they could be. And then at about three years of age, we're running around the house and we're not saying yours, yours, yours. We're saying mine.

Well, you've got a three year old like I did. Mine, mine, mine. The radical reformation in the life of a believer occurs when you see them saying, in effect, what is mine is yours.

This is developing the art of an open hand. I received a letter a few weeks ago from an inmate who was listening to our program during the week on the radio. And he wrote these words. They so marked me. I'm not given money in this prison, so I can't contribute to help you in the Gospel ministry, but I do earn postage stamps and I'm going to begin sending you a portion of my monthly stamp allotment to help you spread the word.

And there were stamps in the envelope. These are the godly ones who happen to know what it means to fellowship financially. Just one more, the last part of verse 13, practicing hospitality. I want you to love the fact that he said practicing, because that means it's not necessarily easy to do. So you practice it and you get a little better at it. You don't wait around and say, Lord, as soon as I think I'm good at it, I'll do it.

You just go ahead and practice it. Somebody said that hospitality is the art of making people feel at home, even when you wish they were. Well, biblical hospitality is vastly different. It is developing the art of making people feel as if your home belongs to them.

Paul was challenging the early church then to practice opening your home to people in need. But the word used here for hospitality is a compound word, philoxenia. It literally means the love of strangers.

That really makes it interesting, doesn't it? Because we typically refer hospitality to our friends. We have people over we know and people we know we like. He's saying here to open your home to strangers who are in need.

Practice that. By the way, you can practice it every Sunday when you welcome people to your other home. Marcia and I remember attending the huge First Baptist Church Dallas on one Sunday. We attended the service and as we were dismissed, the gray headed couple in front of us turned around and introduced themselves and then said, we'd like to have you come to our home for dinner.

We were shocked, but so intrigued. We had family coming in from out of town and were unable to go. But I regret to this day not taking them up on their invitation. Well, we stayed and talked to them for a while and we asked them questions.

You know, do you do this often? And they said, oh, every Sunday we come looking for somebody we don't know. And I thought we go to church looking for people we do know and then we invite them over to our home.

We have extra plates already set out and the food is already in the stove and we're just looking for strangers to invite home. One day, by the way, Jesus Christ is going to welcome us to his father's home and show us incredible hospitality. Have you ever shown hospitality to another believer? Let me show you just a couple of stories of things that move me deeply.

I can remember being hot and tired in Chennai, India, in the middle of July, teaching a seminary class. As I was leaving the building, an Indian woman who had been in an earlier class was standing out on the walk and she smiled and waved and she was holding an umbrella, open and up. And I learned later that was the invitation for me to come and get under the umbrella because she had something to say. And so I went over and climbed under that umbrella. She said, I want you to come home and meet my husband.

We want to talk with you. We arrived at their little apartment. It was literally a cement block, cement floors, cement walls, cement ceiling, probably 10 feet by 11 or 12 feet. They had one chair.

They gave that to me. They sat on the edge of the bed. That room was everything, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and we enjoyed sweet fellowship there.

I've often thought we ought to have an icon or an emblem of an open umbrella signifying this is a place where you will be protected from the pressure and the heat of life. Later on, I remember visiting a small church in one of the villages. When we arrived at the auditorium, the small block church auditorium was empty except for rugs and mats, no chairs. They would sit or kneel there during the services. But people gathered from all over. They knew we were coming sometime that day, but not exactly knowing when.

And so they came running. All the children and middle aged and elderly made their way in and they found three chairs for the other two pastors and myself. And they sat us on the floor level.

There wasn't any fancy stage or anything. And everybody just sat around us. And we were asked to give spontaneous messages and we did.

And after a little while, the pastor disappeared with another gentleman and they came back carrying to us their treasure. Three glass bottles of Coca-Cola. Warm Coca-Cola. And they opened it for us and asked us to drink it. I had trouble drinking that warm Coke, not because it was warm, but because it was so costly to them. And those children that sat around near me with their eyes wide, I knew they'd never tasted it.

What hospitality. I can remember sitting in a darkened hut in the evening in Africa, a kerosene lamp that didn't put out enough light. I was supposed to preach and it was too dark to see my notes, which is a dangerous thing for me. And couldn't even see my Bible. I was making stuff up. I think that's biblical.

I hope it is, Lord, because, you know, I'm quoting something that I vaguely remember. I remember at some point the wife of the elder in that little house church got up and disappeared and she came back with a tray. And on the tray were tin cups, battered, dented, chipped. And she had boiled the tea leaves in the water and they have the custom of adding the milk and sugar and with it. It's actually very delicious and served us.

I can tell you, I have never drunk from anything finer than that tin cup. Practicing hospitality. By the way, there's a difference between entertaining and showing hospitality. Entertainment is the focus on the host or hostess and the plan and the beauty of the surrounding, the settings. Hospitality focuses on the guest, on their needs and who they are. This means you don't have to have it all together. Paper plates work well.

Plastic forks will work too. One of the marks of the person pursuing godlikeness is a desire to share hospitality. Are you in pursuit of godliness?

Well, let's check once again. Are you developing these spiritual arts? First is spiritual optimism, which is developing the art of matching your emotions with your convictions.

The second is mental determination, developing the art of running the race no matter how often the goal line gets moved. Third is private devotion, developing the art of a conversational lifestyle with Christ. Fourth is financial generosity, developing the art of an open hand.

Fifth and final one is physical availability, developing the art of making people feel as if your home belongs to them. I hope you found this practical message from God's Word to be encouraging today. The title of this message is The Fine Art of Godly Living and it comes from Steven's series entitled Grace Factor. I'd like to make you aware of some resources we have that might help you. Steven has a series of devotional books. Each one takes you on what we call a wisdom retreat through a section of God's Word. Call us for more information at 866-48-BIBLE. Then join us next time to discover more wisdom for the heart.