Crystal Cathedral

Come & Grow

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Praying Psalm 23

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5

Fear Not

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4

About the Series Leader
William Gaultiere, Ph. D., is the Director of Spiritual Formation Ministries at the Crystal Cathedral. Learn more about Bill and his ministry at his
"Christian Soul Care Blog."

 

Wednesday Nights

Welcome to "Come & Grow" Wednesday Nights! We invite you to come join us at the Crystal Cathedral to grow closer to Jesus. Here are the most recent notes from the current Wednesday night series:

Fear Not
Led by Bill Gaultiere
& the Spiritual Formation Ministries Team
Crystal Cathedral, Family Life Center 470
Wednesday, 7 to 9 pm

WEEK 1: Learning to Sleep in the Storm with Jesus
October 21, 2009

It's Halloween time and so it seems that everyone is celebrating ghosts and goblins and bloody skeletons. Scary movies abound in the theatres and television.

Even Disneyland has moved the creepy stuff out of their haunted house and throughout the park on Space Mountain and the fireworks show. They're competing with Knotts "Scary Farm." At Knotts this time of year they have people throughout the park, not just in a haunted house, that are paid to scare people! They hide in the bushes or behind walls and jump out at people, letting out blood curling howls.

This time of year there is a lot of hyped up fear. But the truth is that everyday we face real threats. We probably have too much to do. We probably don't have enough money. We may have pain and health problems. We know we will die. People hurt us. We see our loved ones suffer. And in our news we are constantly reminded that there are murders, rapists, and terrorists living nearby.

Here are the Crystal Cathedral our church and ministry is in a storm. We're hurting financially. We've been through a church split. We've lost many of our members and leaders. We hear the thunder cracking. The wind is howling and the rains are pelting down on us. Our faith is being tested.

Jesus endured storms even more fierce than yours and mine and that of our church. He lived a life with more stress, injustice, hardship, and temptation to fear in it than you and I experience. And yet Jesus continually overflowed with love, joy, and peace continually and he was extraordinarily effective in all that he did. How did he do this?

Don't say, "Because he was the Son of God." That's not a good answer. Jesus was also fully human. Luke tells us that Jesus had to grow in wisdom and grace. And Hebrews tells us that Jesus learned obedience in his lifetime.

Jesus did not live his life in terms of the visible world. He didn't look to people for approval. He didn't look to his circumstances for peace. He looked to the kingdom of God in his midst.

And so Jesus says to you and I: "Fear not little flock for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32).

By apprenticing ourselves to Christ – walking by faith in him and his kingdom, not walking by sight or by emotions – we too can learn to "Fear Not."

Apprenticeship to Jesus
Apprenticeship to Jesus is what our "Come and Grow" meetings on Wednesday night at the Crystal Cathedral are about. Just like...

• An apprentice plumber learns from an experienced plumber how much to tighten the pipes
• A basketball player trains with his coach
• A student artist learns from her master how to use lighting in her artwork

We're meeting to encourage one another in our growth as disciples of Jesus - here-and-now and in our daily lives...

• We are learning to be with Jesus in order to become like him
• We are practicing abiding in Christ as branches in a vine so that we can bear more fruit for God's kingdom - the fruit of sharing the love, joy, and peace of the Lord with people in our lives and fruit like last weekend in which many of you answered phones for the Hour of Power Altar Call, caring for 450 people in need and leading 102 of them to pray to follow Christ as Lord and Savior or to re-dedicate their lives to him!

In our apprenticeship to Jesus the most important thing we can do is to keep our eyes on him! We need to watch what he does and how he does it! We need to do the things he did - starting with the things he did out of the spotlight, behind the scenes when nobody was watching...

• Going off into silence and solitude for prayer
• Keeping a Sabbath
• Fasting
• Memorizing Scripture and Meditating deeply on it
• Quietly, even secretly, serving and ministering to people
• Waiting to act until the Father directs him

Jesus was the first apprentice. He was an apprentice to the Father. Like us, he had to learn obedience. Jesus shows us how to live an apprentice life!

Jesus had to practice spiritual disciplines to grow in his own apprenticeship. Spiritual disciplines are simply "means of grace" or ways to put ourselves into a position to interact with God.

We can't grow spiritually without practicing ways of prayer. St. Macarius, one of the early church fathers, wrote:
Spiritual subjects cannot be grasped by those who have not experienced them (Philokalia, p. 265).

Where is God in the Storms we Face?
Our theme for these weeks of apprenticeship to Jesus is "Fear Not!"

We like to see God calm our storms. And of course we do! But we need to appreciate that before we can see God calm the storm we need to see God in the storm.

Storms are frightening, upsetting, disruptive, painful... But they are not bad - if you're participating in the kingdom of God - submitting to and interacting with the rule and leadership of Christ - then storms have good purposes for us.

As I pray the Psalms I notice that God is in our storms. Listen to the Psalmist...

• "The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the stormy waters" (Psalm 29:3).

• "O Lord, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves. Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea - the Lord on high is mighty" (Psalm 93:3-4).

How does the Psalmist respond to the storms that God sends (or allows)?

• He skips with joy like a calf! And cries out, "Glory to the Lord!" (Psalm 29:6, 9)

• He meditates on God's Word that stands firm for endless days (Psalm 93:5).

Here's another example of a storm in Psalm 107:23-31:

Others went out on the sea in ships;
they were merchants on the mighty waters.
They saw the works of the LORD,
his wonderful deeds in the deep.
For he spoke and stirred up a tempest
that lifted high the waves.
They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths;
in their peril their courage melted away.
They reeled and staggered like drunken men;
they were at their wits' end.
Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble,
and he brought them out of their distress.
He stilled the storm to a whisper;
the waves of the sea were hushed.
They were glad when it grew calm,
and he guided them to their desired haven.
Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for men.

The Psalmist is teaching us that God is doing a "wonderful" and "deep" work not only in the calming of the storm, but first of all in the raging of the storm.

We need to accept our storms and listen to what God is saying to us in them.

Jesus in the Storm
Jesus fulfilled all the Psalms - their prophecies and their teachings - and that includes these stormy Psalms. He was in some storms on the Sea of Galilee.

Two years ago Kristi and I went to Israel on the Crystal Cathedral's "Walk with Jesus" tour. We helped lead one of the buses in a spiritual pilgrimage. A real highlight for me was sailing on the Sea of Galilee. And when our tour stopped for lunch I stealed away for a quiet walk along the shore with Jesus. Those were sweet hours of prayer for me.

And I found a special rock at the shore of the Sea. It was in the waters that Jesus walked on. I use it for prayer and to meditate on Jesus.

Let's consider Mark's story of Jesus with his disciples in their boat on stormy seas (Mark 4:1-2, 35-41):
1 Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water's edge. 2 He taught them many things by parables...

35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, "Let us go over to the other side." 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?"

39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

40 He said to his disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"

41 They were terrified and asked each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"

When the ferocious storm hit the Sea of Galilee as Jesus and his disciples were rowing in their boat to the other side the disciples screamed out in fear of drowning while Jesus slept.

Jesus slept in the storm - resting in Abba's arms of love, listening for what God said and wanted to do, inviting his disciples to trust God with him - and then he went to work with God on calming the storm.

Where is God in the storms we face? Where is God when the waves are crashing in on us? He is in the storm with us. He offers us his peace, love, and joy as he uses the storm to teach us, to mature us in our apprenticeship to him.

One day he will calm our storm at the Crystal Cathedral. One day he will calm your personal storm and my personal storm.

But it's best for us - and our capacity to minister God's kingdom to other people - if we will first learn from Jesus how to be at peace in the middle of the storm.

I live near a lake in Irvine and I enjoy meditating and praying there in the early mornings or even before the sun rises. It's quiet and the lake is still. God helps me to absorb the stillness of the lake. It's a beautiful picture of God's peace.

A better picture of God's peace is if the waves on the lake are whipping and the winds are blowing and rain is pelting down and right next to the waters in a tree are some birds in their nest singing happily to God.

And even with the scene of the still lake in the morning, the thing that makes it a good picture of peace is when you or I come to it to pray to God and we pour out all our fears and troubles and we absorb God's peace as we meditate on the lake and on his word: "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10).

Real peace - God's peace - is found in the midst of a storm.

Storms test our faith and show us what we're relying on for our security. And we may learn that we've been relying on our circumstances more than Christ to make us feel at ease.

"Fear Not" Scripture Memory
To learn to be at peace in storms we need to guard our minds with God's Word, to think on Scripture. The best way to be thinking on Scripture is to memorize it so it's in your heart and you can call it up to meditate on at any time. And the way to memorize a Scripture is to carry it in your pocket and keep bringing it out to go over and over a line.

Over the next five weeks I want to ask you to join me in discipleship to Jesus. Disciples practice disciplines. That's how we learn and grow and change.

In the last series we memorized Psalm 23. For this series let's memorize Luke 12:22-34. These are beautiful and important words of Jesus on getting free of fear and worry by participating in God's kingdom.

When you memorize a whole passage of Scripture you get into the healing, transformational flow of God's life. Memorizing single verses is good too, but you can miss the flow of life. Also, we're prone to manipulate single verses to say what we want them to say.

To memorize a whole passage of Scripture is to let God's Word form us on the inside. It's to submit ourselves to God.

Memorizing Scripture is easier than you think - you just need to learn how to memorize and then exercise your memory muscles. Here are the keys to Scripture memorization:

1. Work with one chunk at a time.
2. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.
3. Concentrate to understand the meaning.
4. Visualize the words and activate emotion.
5. Try speaking the words out loud or writing them down.

Memorizing Luke 12:22-32 will be our spiritual experiment for this five-week series on "Fear Not." What will God do in you and I if we memorize Jesus' words in Luke 12? How might this help us overcome our fears and worries and to trust God more? Let's see!

Kristi memorized this passage about a year ago and it's really helped her...

Prayer Practice / Weekly Experiment
And each week we will also have a simple prayer experiment to try. This week I want to invite you to practice a little Breath Prayer using the words of Jesus, "Peace. Be still."

Take a few minutes or more while lying in bed, in a quiet chair, while you're driving, or as you take a walk and breathe in and out Jesus' words, "Peace. Be Still." To help you focus you may want to imagine the Gospel story of Jesus sleeping in the boat on the stormy seas and then calming the sea.

Let's try this Breath Prayer together now: "Peace. Be still." (Jesus in Mark 4:39)

Breathe in slow and deep. Hold your breath. Exhale...

Fill your lungs with the Spirit. Hold the Spirit around your heart. Release and relax...

As you breathe in whisper or think, "Peace." Hold God's Word in your heart. Release as you say to yourself, "Be still."

Small Group Questions

1. Briefly introduce yourself, e.g., where you live, your family situation, your job (past or present), or a hobby.
2. Share why you are participating in "Come & Grow" on Wednesday nights.
3. What is an example of a storm in your life? What would it mean for you to rest and be at peace with Jesus in this storm?

 

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