#145- There's More To You

Are you spiritually mature but still struggling to keep your life together? You're not alone. Many of us pray more, study harder, and attend more services, thinking that's the answer. But what if the problem isn't just spiritual?

This week we're launching a new series: "An Emotionally Healthy Faith." The truth is, we're not just spirit—we're spirit, soul, AND body, all deeply connected. Jesus didn't just minister to our spiritual needs; He fed the hungry, healed the sick, and wept with the grieving. He wants every part of your life.

As the Psalmist prayed, "Search me, O God, and know my heart" (Psalm 139:23-24). What rooms in your life have you locked away from Jesus? Your emotions? Your past? Your physical health? It's time to open every door and let His transforming love touch your whole being.

Join us as we discover what it means to be "sanctified entirely"—spirit, soul, and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

To learn more about the Trinity Church family visit our website at https://trinitychurchsugarland.org; or find us on Facebook and Instagram

Transcript

Transcript: There’s more to you

 Today I'm starting a new series called An Emotionally Healthy Faith.

We'll do this for four weeks and we're going to talk about how our lives are integrated and we need to be focusing on our spirituality, but how other areas of our lives affect our spirituality.

 This is greatly inspired by a book that I've read and highly recommend called An Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero.

And if you can get your hands on that book, I strongly recommend you do that.

And not all the thoughts in this are from the book, but this is what has inspired this.

And I believe there's some concepts we can take with us.

Our scripture will start with this from 1 Thessalonians 5.23.

It reads as follows.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely.

 May your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely.

As a pastor, I have challenges, personal challenges as a pastor, is that I am continually trying to and I'm invested in the spiritual maturity of congregants

 And whether I like it or not, there's a continual sense of saying, are we growing spiritually?

Are we maturing spiritually?

I'm deeply invested in the spiritual maturity of congregants.

In fact, I'm assessing it all the time and wanting to see people grow in faith and grow in God.

The problem is, is that I continually get mixed signals.

 Let me explain what I mean by that.

Mixed signals are you might have somebody who has been a Christian for a long time.

In fact, might even know their Bible really, really well.

And on the outside, I look at them and say, this is a mature person.

They are spiritually mature.

And then out of nowhere, they do something completely unexpected.

 You find out they have some kind of habitual sin that they've been wrestling with for years.

They might be happily married and you think it's got a happy couple, has a really healthy, strong married.

And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there's divorce, separation or some kind of things happening.

So these are the kind of things that you're continually dealing with.

 Even areas of conflict where people find themselves unable to handle certain things in their lives that you think in the power of God and with the level of spiritual maturity that they've got, that shouldn't be a difficult situation.

Yet they do.

 Now, the maturity of individuals in the life of the church as a pastor and as individuals, this is something that really is important.

It's important for us as individuals to grow spiritually, but it's also important for us as a congregation that we are growing together.

You know, if we want to look at the strength of the congregation, a church with immature members is likely to have far more divisions and dissensions.

 In fact, when we have spiritually mature people, we're likely to have a stronger sense of cohesion and sticking together.

So this is an interesting thing.

We are invested.

I am invested.

We should be invested in our own spiritual maturity.

Now, here's the interesting thing.

Why is it that some people who seem to be spiritually mature acting ways that are inconsistent with their supposed spiritual maturity?

 Why can some people quote the Bible?

They know scripture.

In fact, they are well-versed and have read through the Bible, done multiple studies on the Bible, but they struggle to keep their lives together, their relationships together.

Their lives are falling apart.

 And you know what people do when their lives are falling apart?

They say, I need to fix this.

And what do they do to fix it?

They do more.

They pray more.

They read more Bible study.

They try to attend more church services, more church conferences.

And they do more and more and more in this area of spirituality, believing that the problem they have in their life is they don't pray enough.

They don't know their scripture enough.

They don't come to church enough.

 We incorrectly believe that more Bible study, more prayer, even more spiritual warfare in our lives, maybe even more fasting, more and more spiritual practices will fix all our problems.

Now, to be fair, there is nothing wrong, and we should be striving to be fully immersed in God and the Spirit and the Word and in prayer.

 And there is definitely, I strongly encourage us to be praying fervently, pray always as the scripture tells us.

But if we think these things again to solve our problems, sometimes we need to be looking around.

There are other areas of our lives that might be impacting and touching our lives.

 Pete Scazzero's book, he starts off and he uses this illustration.

It's actually on the front cover of his book of an iceberg.

And it says an iceberg is about 10% of what we can see is the iceberg.

There's still 90% that's under the water.

 He'll go on to say that a small percentage of what is under the water is something that is touched by our spiritual practices and by what we do spiritually.

But there's a large invisible part of our lives that exists out of sight, but is deeply impacting and influencing who we are.

 So no wonder when Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely.

He said, well, there's many aspects.

It's not just one area of our lives.

We are more than just this one area, and we need to let God touch our entire life.

 Let me say one or two things about this.

The first thing is this.

There is more to you and it's all connected.

There's more to you and it's all connected.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely.

May your spirit, your soul and your body be kept sound and blameless.

The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 We are a connected whole.

Everything is connected.

We are not just spirit.

We are not just soul.

We are not just body.

We are spirit, body, and soul, and it's all connected.

 Now in the church, traditionally, as we go back in history, traditionally the church has been, well, the church is there for the spiritual side of humanity.

The church is there to take responsibility and to serve us, if we might call it that, or to serve the salvation, the salvation.

 of the soul of individuals, the relationship that they have with God.

These are things.

They might even say the church is there to baptize our kids and lead them through confirmation and to offer communion.

And in some ways, the church becomes a spiritual service provider.

 It's quite common as well when you see within the life of the church, people compartmentalize.

And you might say, well, what about your finances?

What about your relationships?

What about your work life?

What about your personal life and the things in your personal life?

For people to say, don't interfere.

That's none of your business.

You're the church.

You deal with the spiritual side of things.

Well, in contrast, Jesus ministered to and focused on every part of the human person.

 The woman caught in adultery, he spoke to her relationally, socially, he spoke into her, he spoke forgiveness, he spoke about repentance, all different aspects of who she was.

Even at one stage, when they ask him about money, he says, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.

 He speaks into that part of their lives.

He heals the sick.

He's dealing with a body of people.

This is a physical infirmity.

He could say, I'm here to deal with the spirit, not the body.

Yet he touches the body.

And when people are hungry, what does he do?

He feeds the 5,000.

When they're tired, he says, let's come aside and let us rest.

 And so as the church has evolved through history, the church has realized that it needs to minister to the whole person.

So it's not uncommon today.

In fact, it's very common to see the church feeding the poor, housing the homeless, looking after the widows and the orphans, dealing with different aspects of humanity like grief.

When we have grief, we even have causes like divorce, recovery, or care.

And we even have through the church things like financial wellness and health.

 And so the church has learned how to be a minister to and holistically approach people.

But have we as individuals allowed God to holistically minister to us?

So we've learned to minister to others in their entirety, be entirely sanctified.

But have we taken this to heart in our own walk with Jesus?

Why take a holistic view of God's work in our lives?

 Well, it's very simple, actually, because every area of our life impacts every other area of our lives.

 The spiritual of our life impacts the emotional.

The emotional impacts the physical.

The physical, the spiritual.

The emotional, the spiritual.

And so all these things are interrelated and working with one another.

We are not divorced, separate sections.

We are a whole.

And sometimes our problem is not so much our spiritual immaturity, but it's our emotional immaturity that is pulling us down spiritually as well.

 And so we have to surrender ourselves in our entirety to God.

Well, we might say, does it really matter?

Do I really need to work on these areas of my life?

And I say you should.

I believe you should because I believe Jesus wants every part of your life.

 When Jesus died on the cross, he died for your soul, your spirit, and your body.

And when he comes again to take us back, he will take us in our entirety, not just one part, but the whole.

Now, it's quite interesting.

We don't like to talk about the emotions.

We don't like to.

We like to compartmentalize and keep the spirit in one part and the soul and the emotions and everything else somewhere else because we feel vulnerable emotionally.

 In fact, there are things in our lives that we feel, I don't want to talk about that.

So feelings of vulnerability in our emotional and even our physical lives often prompt us or even move us to cover up things with spirituality.

It's kind of spiritual bypassing.

 When we go through emotional things, we just bring it in and say, I'll just pray that away.

No, we need to deal with it.

We need to invite Jesus into that part of our lives.

It's just something that we so often have learned to some kind of a self-protection thing is to cover it up, put a veneer of spirituality around it, but never deal with it.

Now, we need to take this seriously.

Let me tell you a couple of reasons why we need to take this seriously.

 If we look at that passage of Scripture in 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, Paul prays that we would be sanctified in every part of our lives, sanctify you entirely.

And therefore, Paul's prayer, most likely, and we can derive from that the will of God, is that we would have every part, our entirety, sanctify you entirely, something, the holistic part of our lives.

 would completely be sanctified, come under the Lordship of Christ and be transformed into the likeness of Jesus.

When Jesus gives the command, he says, to love God with your heart, your soul, your spirit, your mind, everything.

We are called to love God with every part of our lives.

Luke 10, 27, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.

 God doesn't say, love me spiritually.

That's it.

He says, no, love me entirely.

Every part of your life needs to love and serve God.

And so even the greatest command we have says we should surrender all parts of our lives, not just one part, all parts of our lives to Jesus.

 And then, as we've discussed as well, Jesus himself models this for us in the way he ministers, not just to the spiritual needs of people, which we know and understand are very important, if not of greatest importance, but he ministers to the whole person.

 He didn't more than educate people about God.

He brought the love of God to every part of their lives.

You know, there's this moment when Jesus works with Mary and Martha and he connects with them after Lazarus has died.

He even stands at the tomb and he weeps.

His heart is moved.

There's an emotional connection.

He's working with people on an emotional level, a physical level.

We even look at the way he connects and embraces people.

 or he entertains, and he's known to have been with, entertaining, sitting down and sharing meals with prostitutes and tax collectors.

This is, once again, he is speaking to them.

Spiritually, yes, but there are so many other layers of what he's doing as he ministers to these people.

 Heals the sick.

He's dealing with the body.

Feeds the 5,000.

He rests all aspects of his life.

He's not just ministering in one dynamic or one dimension.

He's opening himself up to many and saying, this is the whole person.

I don't just love your spirit.

I love your spirit, your soul, your body.

I love you for who you are, and I'm here to minister to you.

 In Luke chapter 4, as he comes out after the temptation in the desert, it says he goes into the synagogue.

He's given the scroll, the prophet Isaiah.

He opens up at Isaiah 61, and he says, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

There's a spiritual anointing because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, sent me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, the oppressed to go free, to proclaim salvation.

 the hearer of the Lord's favor.

Jesus didn't just come to love us spiritually.

He came to love every part of our lives.

And we are called to love others the same way, but we are also called to open up our lives to receive the transformative work of Christ in the same way.

If we're open to Jesus' work in our life,

 the work of Jesus in our lives, then we need to accept that He will work in every part of our lives.

And that brings me on to a final point I want to make.

The best place we need to start is with simple self-awareness, self-reflection.

As the psalmist says in Psalm 139 verses 23 to 24, Search me, O God.

 Know my heart.

Test me and know my thoughts.

See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

What a beautiful spirit.

We should all have that same spirit.

It's self-reflective, self-aware.

David's words represent someone who is incredibly self-aware, whose heart is desperate to please God.

 And so he says, search me, search every part of my life, know everything about me and lead me in your ways.

You know, in our lives, we've used this example before.

It's like our lives are a house with many rooms.

 And what we tend to do is we open up certain rooms and we give Jesus access to certain rooms.

And for the sake of our discussion, we might say we are given access.

We say, Jesus, you can come into the Sunday service room.

You can come into my Bible study room.

You can come into my spirituality room.

You can come into my ministry.

 prayer room in fact i'll invite you into the prayer room and together we can go pray but then there's these other rooms it has to do with our physical our body our health no no we don't want you in there except if you're coming in to heal me

 Then you can come in, but other than that, please stay out of that room.

What about our emotional areas of our lives?

What about the hurts, the pain, the brokenness, the things that we've had to work through, had to endure, had to process in our lives?

Do we open up those rooms and let Jesus into those, or do we say, leave that alone?

You belong in the spiritual room, not in that room.

With the help of the Holy Spirit,

 We need to trust God to identify areas of our lives that desperately need the loving presence of God.

So as we kick off this new series, the question is, is there something here for me?

Is this something I need to be paying attention to?

Now, well, maybe a better question is, are you in the process and in the habit of spiritually bypassing?

 Are you the kind of person that whenever hardship comes or pain comes or brokenness comes, instead of bringing it to Jesus, you just pray it away and you quote a few scriptures and you just kind of cast out the brokenness and you never deal with it?

Maybe you're ignoring anger in your life, sadness or fear.

Pete Scazzaro has a beautiful list that helps us to discern even how we approach these things.

 Maybe you find yourself running from your past, even though your past is defining your future.

You choose to deny the impact of what's happened in your life rather than opening that aspect up to the life and the love of Jesus.

Do you compartmentalize parts of your life away from God, locking certain rooms in your house?

Are you covering over brokenness and weakness and failure?

Things that you don't want people to see, God to see, and so you tuck it away.

 You know, when you do, these things do come up.

How do you actually deal with them?

Do you go into the, I need more, I need more.

I'm failing because I'm not praying enough.

I'm failing because I'm not reading my Bible enough.

I'm failing because, because more, more, more.

Or could it be maybe?

 that it's less about the mores and the mores.

And please hear me, please read your Bible and pray and immerse yourself, soak yourself, saturate yourself in the Holy Spirit and prayer and scripture.

But you know, sometimes the answer is yes, do that.

But maybe it's about opening up your heart, your soul, your spirit, your body more to the loving touch of Jesus, opening up more areas of your life,

 that the love and the transforming, the healing of Jesus can touch so many other parts of your life.

My prayer is as we journey together over the next couple of weeks, that God will touch your life, transform your life, and bring a brand new wholeness that you have never experienced in your whole life.

 of the soul, the body, and the spirit.

Together we can worship God with all that we have.

In Jesus' name, amen.