Good morning! I have to confess a couple of things to you. First, I must confess to you I’m feeling a little intimidated standing in this pulpit. Maybe you think that’s odd since I’ve been up here for eight years now.

Well, last Sunday we had the great privilege of having Rev. Dolphus Weary, preacher, author, community activist here from Mississippi, sharing from this pulpit about his (and our!) work in racial reconciliation. Such a remarkable man. And then tonight at the 5pm service, Dr. Jerry Sittser will be up here to preach at Todd’s installation service. Also a really remarkable person…professor, author, teacher, leader. I feel like I’m just keeping the pulpit warm for these folks!

Secondly, I must confess to you that today’s sermon title was plagiarized. Sort of.

“What We’re Looking For,” is what I called it. There’s a pretty well known guy who is almost 48 years old (which I must remind you, is not very old!) whose name is Paul David Hewson. He’s a singer with an Irish band you may have heard of…called U2. His nickname is Bono, and he’s what I would call an unorthodox Christian in some ways, in some pretty delightful ways. One of the early U2 songs that Bono wrote is called “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Thus my title “What We’re Looking For.” In the song, (my interpretation) Bono expresses an intense longing, a deep yearning for more of God. Listen to some of the words (that I will read, not sing):

“I have climbed highest mountains

I have run through the fields

only to be with you, only to be with you…

…but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

…I believe in the Kingdom Come

when all the colors will bleed into one…

You broke the bonds

and you loosened the chains

Carried the cross of all my shame, You know I believe it.

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

Love the song. And it strikes me that Bono’s cry speaks for a lot of us. We know things about God. We believe things about Christ. We’ve maybe tasted, even many times, being with God. We’ve seen God do some things. But…we want more. We want to go deeper. We sense there is more.

In the next eight weeks we will be talking about some helpful tools in exploring this longing for more of God.

Before we read the sermon text this morning, it needs a little background. The Apostle Paul is writing to the church in the city of Corinth. Many people there came from the Jewish tradition, as Paul himself did. And Paul is making the point that what God has done in Jesus Christ is so absolutely new and amazing that it far surpasses the old law.

To make the point, he references the Old Testament story of Moses (Exodus). When Moses had direct conversations with God, he would emerge with his face almost divinely radiant, shining so bright that it frightened people. And so Moses would wear a veil. What Paul says is that Moses actually wore the veil to conceal the gradual diminishing of the radiance on his face. The glory would fade away, just as the old ways of relating to God were fading away in comparison to the new thing God had done in Christ.

This morning’s text, then, comes from 2 Corinthians 3:12-18.

In these next two months, we will be talking about the following things. I’m going to list them slowly, simple words that you know. In fact, I’m going to encourage you to write them on the back of your bulletin. Seven words:

Prayer. listening, talking to God.

Scripture. sitting with God’s written word that consistently speaks.

Confession. telling God and one another the truth.

Sabbath. rest, setting aside of daily frenzy, a centering rhythm.

Worship. our response to God’s great love…we proclaim who God is.

Discernment. listening to and looking for God’s leading and presence.

Hospitality. living out God’s heart in our relationships and world.

Prayer, Scripture, Confession, Sabbath, Worship, Discernment, Hospitality.

Historically, these have been identified as some of what we call “Spiritual Disciplines.”

Oh-oh. I just lost some of you. Spiritual Disciplines. Sounds like a form of torture to some of us. Reminds us of our parents making us do our homework and telling us “Some day you’ll appreciate having good study habits.” Spiritual Disciplines. What do you think of?

Maybe you think about something like this. It’s the 5th century AD. There’s a man named Simeon the Elder who really, really wants to be close to God. He figures that the way to do it is to remove himself as much as possible from all concerns of the flesh, and from distracting contact with other people. So he begins to practice some rather extreme forms of discipline. In the end, he climbs a large pillar, and builds a small platform about 45 feet off the ground…and remains there for the next 37 years! Maybe that’s what you think of when I say “spiritual disciplines.” Really tough stuff for God.

Or maybe you actually despair. You listen to the list I just read, you sigh, you say “I’ve tried to do some/all of those things, and I just failed miserably. They must be for more spiritual giants, or professional Christians.”

Or maybe you get a little irked. “Dan, how on earth can I fit those kinds of things into my life? It’s already way too busy. It’s unreasonable. I don’t need those things to be a Christian.”

Here’s what I want you to consider. I want you to think about these spiritual disciplines not as things you have to do. Not as a way of proving yourself to God. Not as things only for very holy people. Not as add-ons to your busy schedule. But as things that we routinely do to respond to and cultivate our relationship with God.

Dolphus taught me last week to say “I’m going to repeat that, you might have missed it.” Think of spiritual disciplines as things that we routinely do to respond to and cultivate our relationship with God. To know him better. To go deeper.

In the last several years I’ve been to Central America, to China and to Africa. In every single place, the leaders of churches have said the same thing: “Faith here is an inch deep and a mile wide. There is evangelizing all over the place, but we’re not creating followers of Jesus. We need help with discipleship.”

Unfortunately, in general I don’t think our church in America is anywhere near ready to provide much help in discipleship. Discipleship is a lifetime journey, an enduring journey into deeper relationship with God. It’s following Jesus when we’re filled with tangible joy, and following even when it’s hard.

The problem is, we listen to scripture rather selectively. We spout Jesus’ words in Matthew 28, The Great Commission “Go into all the world…baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” And we skip over this little phrase “and make disciples.” Or we stop instead of reading the rest of the same sentence: “…and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Not just converts. Not just new Christians. But “make disciples.” Learners, followers. 269 times the New Testament uses the word disciples.

In my opinion, there are two primary reasons that discipleship is so hard in the United States. The first is that we are so stuck on getting instant results. “How to pray in 3 minutes to change the world” OR “Spiritual depth in one minute a day.” And usually when we can’t have results instantly, we don’t pursue it for very long.

The other thing is that we are so averse to legalism, so opposed to living life by the law or by a list of do’s and don’ts and shoulds, that we’ve gone completely the other way. We don’t want to “do” anything. It’s all about grace. We act as though we will somehow mature as followers by sitting and waiting for a lightning bolt to change us.

It is all grace. And because it is we respond, we do things. We discipline ourselves. We are obedient. We practice things. We do things over the long haul. Not for the sake of the discipline, not for figuring out if we’re successful or not, not because disciplines can transform us…but because they help us cultivate a relationship with God, the God who does transform us, by the Spirit. Which I think is what we’re looking for.

And so we practice these things. We don’t have to. We choose to. “Do I have to?” is the wrong question. We choose to because we want to know more of God, see more of God, understand more. I want to be with Christ.

And so we set out on this trail we call “spiritual disciplines” in order to be open to being formed by God. Most of us don’t need more information, more data. We need formation, to be formed, shaped, molded, changed, transformed. That is the work of God’s Spirit, and when we pray, worship, confess, read, etc, we put ourselves in a place where we can be formed. Where we can realize that God is already present all around us.

But - and this is pretty unpopular today - this is often not easy work. If you grow a garden, a miracle happens. Every year, through sun, dirt, water, weeding these little tiny seeds that looked dead blossom into enormous life. But somebody still had to till the ground, prepare the soil, make sure it’s watered, pull out the weeds. It’s a miracle, but some things had to be done. Sometimes it’s difficult. It’s why I put the G.K. Chesterton quote on the front of the bulletin:

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, rather it has been found difficult and not tried.”

If you commit yourself to being a person who prays. If you take confession seriously. If you practice hospitality over a long period of time, with consistency…you will go deeper with Christ. Because you’ll be with him. And what happens?

In our sermon text from this morning, Paul says “we are being transformed into his likeness.” John said “we will be like him.” Paul says in other places, “I’m in the pain…until Christ is formed in you (Gal.).” Or again “that Christ may dwell in your hearts (Eph).” Or again Paul talks about those who are being “conformed to the likeness of God’s Son (Rom).”

The more we are around Jesus…the more we’ll look like him. That is audacious, so presumptuous, isn’t it? Yet Paul says it 5-6 different times. We’ll be like Jesus.

We’ve seen something similar in different settings, haven’t we? Haven’t you noticed that the people you spend a lot of time with have a deep impact on you? You start to use some of the same words, pick up some mannerisms. Friends, spouses, bosses, people you are around constantly in life, you often start to sound like them. Honestly, sometimes I swear we can even start to look like them! Sometimes that’s good…sometimes not! But with Jesus. How can we be around Him so we’re open to being transformed, to growing to look like Him? We do things that will cultivate our relationship.

One of the great things about preaching is that somehow every week God brings together different threads of my life, things I’ve read or heard or seen or remembered and the sermon text and the music, just weaves them together.

So this week I remembered when our family was in England in 2006, one of the rich, rich experiences we had was to worship at All Soul’s Church in London, the church where John Stott was the rector for many, many years. John Stott is one of the most respected and admired pastors and scholars in the world, and has been very important to my own faith. He retired a few years ago, but we just happened to be in London on the one Sunday when he came back to preach at one service. He was in his early 80’s, sharp as a tack mentally but declining physically. He had to be helped up into the pulpit by a young friend. We were able to meet him afterwards.

Last week, a friend mailed me a copy of what they are calling John Stott’s last public address, from two months ago, July 2007, at age 86. Listen to what he said “I want to share with you where my mind has come to rest as I approach the end of my pilgrimage on earth and it is (this): God wants his people to become like Christ. Christlikeness is the will of God for the people of God.” That’s how John Stott summed his whole life’s work up: God wants his people to become like Christ.

The more we’re around Jesus, the more we’ll look like Him.

Now here’s one last thing. I’ve been talking about us wanting to go deeper with God, but God longs to be with us even more than our deepest longing to be with him. We see that clearly in the incarnation, God sending His Son Jesus to be in history, with people. We see that clearly in Christ’s willingness to go even to the cross to remove the barriers between God and his people. We see that clearly in the sending of the Holy Spirit to be with us each moment, each hour, each day. The heart of God is bent towards us. Our longing for Him is a faint echo of His longing for us.

One of the books I suggested you read this fall was Marjorie Thompson’s Soul Feast. In it, she tells the story of a friend of hers, a woman of deep prayers. Each morning as she prayed, the woman would put a question before Jesus: “What do you want me to tell the people?” And for many years, the reply she felt she heard regularly was “Tell the people that I love them.” And then one day a different word came. When she asked Jesus “What do you want me to tell people?” she heard “Tell the people that I miss them.”

We don’t have to talk God into being with us. He’s made it clear that it is His strongest desire. So we pray, we confess, we read, we worship, we practice God’s hospitality and open ourselves up to find more of what we’re looking for, to be with Christ. And as we do that, we are being transformed into His likeness.

One practical note. This is the pursuit, the journey of a lifetime. Please don’t call me and say “I’ve prayed three times this week and I don’t feel any closer to God.” We are in this for the long haul, to be followers of Jesus, to be disciples.

This week, please don’t sit down with a checklist and say “Am I doing enough? Did I pray enough? Did I confess correctly?” Instead, I’d encourage you to take some quiet moments.

Just sit.

See if you can identify a longing, a restlessness to go deeper with God.

See if you can identify where that comes from, or how it is manifest in your life.

And simply tell God that. Tell Him the desires of your heart. Tell Him you want to be with Him.

After all…I think that is what we are looking for.”

Let’s pray.