I want to talk to you tonight about the theme you are what you love and the way I guess part of what has has pressed me to think about this I've been spending some time in the Gospel of John recently and one of the things that strikes me in John's portrayal of Jesus is how often Jesus is the one posing the questions it's the teacher who's asking the questions and if you were to read the Gospel of John with a highlighter pen and sort of highlighted the questions that Jesus puts to his followers to those
who he encounters you would find that they are often very incisive and rather uncomfortable questions so while he'll ask questions like do you want to be healed or he'll encounter someone and say to his disciples do you want to go away as well or of course at the end there is that sobering encounter with Peter where he asks him heartbreakingly in some ways do you love me I'm intrigued by the sense of Jesus's encounters with us posing questions that come to us as challenges and in fact if you open the Gospel of John and you
don't do it right now but if you if you were to open the Gospel of John and especially if you have like a red letter Bible I think one of the things that will strike you is that the first words that Jesus ever utters in the Gospel of John are a question and they are the question I want us to think about tonight there are these disciples these followers of John the Baptist's who are getting sort of caught up in the frenzy and they're excited about what's happening and they want to sort of join the
gang and they want to join the crew and they're starting to trail along and they're trying to get up close and they want to get in the picture and they're they they want to join something and what's intriguing is that Jesus wheels around on them and he points through them with a question and he says what do you want I think this is such a suggestive question at the very opening of the Gospel of John what do you want when Jesus encounters a Matthew or a John when Jesus encounters you and me that's the question
he puts to us he doesn't ask he doesn't turn around and say what do you know what do you think what do you believe he turns around on them and he puts this question to them he puts this question to us what do you want I think it's the most incisive piercing question that Jesus can ask of us I think it is in some ways the fundamental question of discipleship what do you want it's the most crucial big question because we are what we want our wants our longings our loves our desires they are the
very core of our identity our loves our wants our desires our cravings are actually the wellspring from which our actions and our behavior flow our wants you could say sort of reverberate up from our heart which is the epicenter of the human person and so it shouldn't surprise us then that scripture counsels for example in Proverbs for above all else guard your heart for everything you do flows from it so can you see when Jesus asks this question what do you want he's actually piercing through to the very core of who you are because it's
actually a question that is posed to your heart it's not just a puzzle that is posed to your head so discipleship then following Jesus is more a matter of hunger and thirsting than merely knowing and believing jesus's command to follow him is a command you could say to align our loves to align our longings with God's we are made to desire God to enjoy God and to want what God wants to desire what God's desires to hunger and thirst after what God craves for in his world as we long for himself but if that's the
question what do you want and if that's the question that is at the in some ways so fundamental to discipleship because it pierces through to the core of who we are then I also think it means we kind of need to rethink discipleship a little bit do you ever experience a gap between what you know and what you do anybody with me in that my alone and that that experience of that frustrating experience where you understand something you believe something you know something and you do something else we've all had that kind of frustrating experience
that we've all had the experience of say hearing this incredibly illuminating lecture on a Wednesday night at Biola on the lawn and being so brilliantly illuminated and then waking up the next day with all this great resolve yes I'm gonna change my life I'm gonna be a different person I know I learned something last night I know what to do now everything's gonna be different till about Friday you're hungry for knowledge you're drinking up all these ideas and yet somehow something keeps failing and you start to realize that you can't think your way to holiness
oh that we could because in some ways knowing is relatively easy but you can't think your way to holiness why why not why is that is it because you forgot something is it because you don't know enough yet is there some other piece of knowledge that you need is it because you're not thinking hard enough that you can't think your way to holiness no no no that's not it the problem is that we falsely assume that we are just thinking things as if knowledge and information and the acquisition of sort of doctrinal belief would be
enough to transform us but we are more than that we are other than that and so the problem here with that notion that one of the reasons I think we get frustrated with not being able to think our way to holiness is because we overestimate the power of thinking in some ways we actually fail to appreciate that we are more than thinkers we are not just as Descartes put at thinking things so the problem isn't just your individual knowledge or your lack of resolve in fact your best thinking often gets you to very frustrating places
so to call it now I'm I'm not I'm a philosopher I make my living inviting people to think about things in fact that's what I'm doing for you tonight I I want you to put your thinking caps on with me and rethink discipleship but at the same time I uh I want us to recognize the limits of thinking and come to appreciate what I want to call now the power of habit the power of habit I think that many of us as evangelicals have underestimated the power of habit and therefore have a sort of stunted
understanding of what discipleship looks like if we are going to appreciate the spiritual significance of the power of habit I think we need to embrace a much more sort of holistic biblical embodied picture of who we are we we in strange ways we kind of implicitly imagine that we're just brains on a stick dude I mean like we kind of think we're just these thinking things and if I can just deposit all the right information into that intellectual receptacle well then that should translate into the kind of way of life that Jesus is calling me
to but we all know that gap between what we know and what we do the gap is the power of habit and so I want to invite us this evening to think about and come to a deeper appreciation of this power of habit the Scriptures I think one of the reasons why because we tend to think of human beings as these thinking things we almost miss read the Bible we sort of read that thinking thing is and back into the scriptures let me give you one example in Philippians chapter 1 there's a beautiful prayer that
Paul prays for the Christians in Philippi and it simply goes like this and in many ways it's almost like a manifesto for what a Biola education should be Paul says this this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God now what's interesting to me is if you listen to
that prayer and if you sort of if you have the habits of mind that we tend to have you might imagine that Paul is actually praying that we would know right that we would increase in our knowledge increase in our wisdom so we know what to do but actually that's a sign that we're reading too fast because listen again to what Paul's prayer is this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight do you get that we almost don't even know what to do with that Paul
isn't praying that you would know what to love his prayer isn't foreknowledge so that you would know what to love his prayer is almost the exact opposite I pray that you would love in order to know what does it what does that even mean what does that even mean that love precedes knowledge I love in order to know well I think this is this gives us an insight a signal into what the scriptures how the scriptures understand the very nature of who we are as creatures made in the image of God it Paul you could
say appreciates that in a way the center of gravity of the human person isn't so top-heavy it's not centered up in the mind in the intellect the center of gravity of the human person is centered in the heart in our kardia in our this sort of visceral center of who we are the seat of our longings and desires and loves that's why Paul when he's praying for us to be transformed he actually begins by praying for our loves so what difference would that make for how we think about the Christian life how we think about
discipleship what what if the center and seat of the human person is found not in the kind of heady regions of the intellect though that's important but is actually in the kind of gut-level regions of the heart the seat of our wants remember the question Jesus is posing to us is what do you want well what difference would that make how would that change the way we sort of think about who we are and who's we are and what we're called to be I think one way that I want to suggest a metaphor for you
to sort of rethink what your orientation to the world looks like one way to do that would be imagine that every human being is on a quest we're all kind of little Frodo's or something right we're all we're all on this journey to be to be human is to be created as pilgrims who are on their way to somewhere we are on a journey we are we are headed towards a destination and and one of the things I want to I'll talk about this a little bit more tomorrow afternoon is this is true of every
single human being to be human is to be on the move we're like existential sharks do you know do you know this deal that sharks actually don't have gills they have to like keep swimming to breathe and I think human beings are kind of like these existential sharks who have to keep moving it's like we live our lives leaning forward because we're after something we're on to something we're longing for something we're journeying towards some some destination someplace and philosophers of habit like Aristotle or Aquinas or others would say that that kind of goal that
place that we're journeying towards they gave it word called tell us that's your you can impress your parents with your one Greek word that you'll take home but it's the tell it's a great shorthand because it's actually to say that every human being is sort of wired to be journeying towards a Telos is to really say that to be human is to be the kinds of creatures who are leaning towards questing for some vision of the good life something that we think is worth living for it's what we want it's what we long for it's
what we crave and what's interesting is it's actually that kind of implicit vision of the good life that pulls our action out of us we are sort of we are pulled towards it's like a tractor beam or something right and it gets sort of a hold on your heart and now you become the kind of person who is headed towards that tell us that vision of the good life you become oriented in a certain direction not this is something I want to talk about a little bit more tomorrow as well not so much because somebody
convinces you with an argument or puts ideas in your head but rather because somebody has painted a picture of a sort of vision of flourishing and you're like Liz Lemon you're like I want to go to there I mean like that is just like no no that's that's where I want to be and all of this is happening on very very sort of subconscious and unconscious levels because it's less that a picture of the good life has convinced your intellect it's more like it has captured your imagination and now you're pulled towards that end so
it's not a question of whether you long for some version of the good life or some version of the kingdom the question is just which and this is true for any human being this is what it is to be made as humans it's it's a structural feature of being a creature made in God's image that we are longing for some kingdom you can't not love to be human is to be a lover is to want it's why the heart is this seat and the fulcrum of the human person it's the it's the engine that drives
our existence we don't think our way through the world we long our way through the world we're pulled by a vision that attracts us we are lovers first and foremost so if we ran with the journey metaphor then maybe what you could say is the human heart is like a compass or the human heart is like it's like a compass and homing beacon all in one because on the one hand your heart your what you love what you longed for is giving you an orientation to things but it also has this magnetic attraction of pull
that is now pulling you towards that and so think of the heart as this compass it's kind of part an engine that's driving you and part homing beacon and this is the important piece your loves your longings your cravings your desires your wants are often operative under the hood of consciousness we're not often very aware of this especially if we have fallen prey to sort of thinking thing ism and we imagine we are just what we think then what happens is we just become completely oblivious to all of these dynamics that are going on under
the hood but you are what you love so in this this sort of more holistic picture the human person where we see the center of it in the heart the center of gravity then is this visceral region of our loves and longings but here now is the crucial question we will really only appreciate the significance of this for the life of following Jesus for a life of discipleship if we recognize that love is this kind of subconscious desire that operates without thinking about it when I say that its operating on what I mean is you
might not even realize the way you've learned to love you might not even realize the way that your compass has been oriented to a certain end so in a certain sense what we need to appreciate is that we are lovers but now the next question is we need to appreciate how is our love shaped how is our love aimed how is it is it oriented to this good life and this is where I think one more crucial biblical insight again from Paul is to appreciate how love is a habit let me let me highlight this
one more theme from Colossians chapter 3 just a very brief passage to try to get our head around this sense what would it mean to say that love is a habit if you are what you love but love is a habit what difference would that make here's what Paul says to the Colossians this is in Colossians chapter 3 therefore as God's chosen people holy and dearly loved clothe yourselves with compassion kindness gentleness and patience bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against against someone forgive as the Lord
forgave you and over all of these virtues put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity so notice what's going on in this passage is Paul uses this clothing metaphor he says I want you to put on compassion put on forgiveness clothe yourselves in kindness and then he says over all of these things it's like the big belt that pulls together the whole ensemble right over all of these things put on love but notice the NIV is actually super helpful here because it articulates and says over all of these virtues put on love
over all of these virtues put on love what did why what worked what our virtues why might that make a difference virtues very very simply are good moral habits good moral habits and what at what are habits habits are something that we often call second nature do you ever use that phrase all that second nature for her right what does that mean when something is second nature for us it means we can do it without thinking about it right it comes to you automatically you it's so woven into the character of who you are that
now it sort of bubbles up from your person and it's not like you're sitting there consciously thinking about how to do it because it's something that you do sort of automatically that's what a habit is therefore good moral habits virtues have that sort of feature about them what significance does it have then to say that love is a habit what it means is is that your loves can be so trained and shaped and formed by the power of the Spirit that you start to become the kind of person for whom christ-like life bubbles up from
the very character of who you are and you start to become the kind of person who does this without thinking about it as it were right this is woven into your character if you are what you love and love is a habit what is discipleship discipleship is rehabilitating your loves it's recalibrating that compass of your desire and longings so discipleship then isn't just a matter of inquiring information it's not just coming and filling up your intellect with all of the right beliefs and ideas and doctrines although that's absolutely fantastic and important it's just it's not
less than that it's more than that because what it also has to do is spill over into a way of life that reforms my very wants Jesus doesn't just ask me what do you know or what do you think he's asking me what do you want and what he wants is for me to want differently to want what he wants that kind of learning that is fundamental to Christian formation is actually a way of recalibrating our loves re retraining our longings and here's here's the kind of messy frustrating part of this learning to love takes
practice learning to sort of form the habits of my longings and wants in a certain direction isn't something I'm sorry you can't think your way to it not even after brilliant talks on the lawn not even that is enough to enable you to have fully reformed your loves what needs to happen is our loves are trained by the rhythms and routines and practices and communities that we place ourselves in that we immerse ourselves in that we submit ourselves to and here's the scary part you can be learning how to love without even realizing it you
can be learning to love the wrong things without even realizing that your heart is being trained in a disoriented direction you might not even realize all of the subconscious and unconscious ways that you are are sort of immersing yourself in rhythms and routines and cultural rituals that aren't trying to convince your intellect but they are very much trying to get hold of your heart that are taught that aren't trying to change your mind they're trying to change what you want and if they can change what you want they've got you that's why Jesus comes and
says what do you want we can learn to love in unconscious ways our hearts can end up getting aimed and directed and bent elsewhere our orientation be can become askew our compass begins to malfunction it's giving us false bearings and all of that sort of Miss calibration happens often without our being aware of it I remember reading a story some time ago this is back in the early 20th century shortly after the Titanic sunk there was another terrible nautical disaster off the coast of the Carolinas and it was so significant that Congress convened this hearing
just sort of figure out why these two ships the Nantucket and the Monroe had collided with one another in the fog off of the Carolina coast and they were as they're trying to get to the bottom of it what they found out was that captain Johnson of the Monroe had been steering his ship with a compass that deviated two degrees off of its right orientation now you might say out of 360 degrees two degrees is not much right that seems like a pretty minor miss calibration of orientation but we all know that what starts as
two degrees here can have disastrous consequences when you keep going in that direction what might look like a tiny little minor insignificant disorientation or missile orientation at the beginning when it becomes a habit when it becomes a way of life that you pursue and by the time you get to the end you are way off course and in fact you can have disastrous results of collision I think this is there's a spiritual reminder in that that if the heart is like a compass this kind of homing device that is made for Christ and to and
find its aim and end in him then actually we need to regularly recalibrate our hearts we need to retune this orientation of our love to be directed to our Creator who is our true magnetic north and we need to realize that just because we are in Christ is not any guarantee that the habits of our love's aren't being bent by the other rituals and practices and conforms of secular liturgies that we are immersed in we need to be awake to all of the ways that our heart compasses can be miscalibrated it's crucial for us to
recognize that our ultimate loves our longings our desires our cravings are learned and they're not learned just by what we know they are learned by what we do because love is a habit and habit is learned through practice so we learn to love then not primarily by just acquiring information about what we should love but rather through the practices the rhythms of a community that train us how to love so I think the crucial insight for Christian discipleship and formation here is that this learning by practice isn't only how our hearts are correctly calibrated it's
also how our loves and longings are Mis calibrated misdirected not because our intellect has been hoodwinked by bad ideas sometimes I think we sort of go out into our cultural immersion and we sort of turn up our kind of cultural discernment radar but our cultural discernment radar is all calibrated and attuned to pick up on ideas but if all you're worried about is bad messages and ideas you will completely miss you'll just not even see the blind spot of all the cultural practices and rituals and rhythms that aren't trying to put bad ideas in your
head but they are trying to get you to love rival gods and get you aim towards rival kingdoms because they're training your wants those kinds of what we could call almost call secular liturgies right that are shaping us and forming us they're not just something that we do they do something to us they're not just neutral things that we go about doing they are forming us in important ways but positively that also means that spirit lead formation of our loves is going to be this recalibration of the heart this reorienting of our loves that will
help us to unlearn those tacit bearings we've absorbed from the world to say no to the world is actually not enough you have to unlearn the habits you've learned there you have to roll back the dispositions and inclinations that we've absorbed there now thanks be to God our gracious Lord knows that we are creatures of habit this is not a surprise to him we we sometimes function as if we've forgotten that we are creatures of habit but God has made us as creatures habet knows that we are creatures of habit meets us where we are
as creatures of habit and so what he does is he gives us the gifts of worship as a way to recalibrate our heart compass it's the way that he invites us to retune our hearts to sing the song of his kingdom I was recently reading in Saint Agustin saying some of you might say st. Augustine who I know gets good play here at Biola and I was reading and so saying st. Augustine is a fourth century fifth century North African church father one of the one of the great doctors of the church as we put
it incredible witness to the gospel and to the power of Christ and I was recently had opportunity to be reading in his sermons on the Psalms he did a whole series of sermons throughout the Psalms and there's the stunning passage in which he meditates on the crucifixion and he sees how the crucifixion points towards the church and it comes actually in this context in which he describes the church as a hospital the church is a healing center the church is this hospital where God invites us in so that our loves can be healed so that
the body of Christ extends the healing work of Christ it's actually this really friends I I think this is such a revolutionary concept you know we often talk about the church as the body of Christ but we act as if it's decapitated we act as if Augustine always emphasized what he called the totus Christos the whole Christ that the Christ who is the head is are the same Christ who is the body and so the church that is his body is Jesus it is the hands and feet of Jesus and so when he is reading
the psalm and he's meditating on the on the the crucifixion he sees the body of Christ is extending this healing work of the risen ascended head and he says this listen to one snippet from this sermon Adam he says was a type of Christ God sent a deep sleep upon Adam in order to fashion a wife for him from his side in Christ's case a bride was made for him as he slept on the cross and made from his side with a lance his side was struck as he hung there and out flowed the sacraments
of the church out flowing from Christ's side is the sacramental power of the church friends God knows we need the hospital of Jesus salvation I mean think of it this way salvation is surgery right salvation is surgery and because it is really a heart transplant thanks be to God it's what makes it possible for us to love a right it's what makes it possible the grace of a new heart is precisely what makes it possible for us to love God so salvation is surgery but after surgery especially after a transplant you need a lot of
post-operative care you know what I'm talking about there you don't you don't sort of walk in get this new heart and everybody's like see you later there has to be post-operative care we need to be protected from infection we need to exercise we need therapy we need to change our habits we probably need to change all the bad habits that gave us the bad heart that put us in the operating room in the first place and just because you have the new heart doesn't mean that you yet have the new habits what you have is
the capacity and the possibility for those new habits we need to learn to live with new hearts the church then you could think of the church as the sort of post-operative care center for people with new hearts sanctification that's what we're talking about when we say you can't think your way to holiness we're talking about sanctification sanctification is rehabilitation it is this recalibration that is also healing our hearts and the church is the place where Christ's healing power flows do you want to recalibrate the orientation of your heart here's the remarkable yet simple message of
the Spirit lay it on the altar of worship worship is the space is the incubator is the the the the gymnasium if you will in which we are invited to learn how to love again to learn how to love anew to learn how to love the right things in the right way so that we love God and we love what God loves that's the invitation that we have this week to think about that to lay yourself on the altar is precisely how you will be altered let's pray together bye you
