4 Ways to Lead Yourself Spiritually

• Spiritual growth requires intentionality. While God provides everything we need for godliness, we have a personal responsibility to pursue spiritual maturity rather than simply hoping it happens naturally.
• We need others to help us identify self-deception. Honest confession, biblical community, and openness to correction protect us from blind spots that hinder spiritual growth.
• Living with eternity in view shapes our priorities today. Keeping Christ's return in mind helps us steward our time, resources, and opportunities with greater intentionality.

The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges

The Immortal Virtue Sermon | 1 Corinthians 13

Strengthen the Body Sermon | 1 Corinthians 14

My Mood Bible picture

There's a prayer that the psalmist is writing and he's he's basically praying keep me from lying to myself. It created a whole new category for me where I thought, wait a minute, if they're praying keep me from lying to myself, that means it's possible that I am lying to myself. And how would I know? Like how would I even know if I am self deceived? Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Greatest Church Podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Manus and I'm here with my Co host, Scott Mzengo.

Hey Whitney. Hey, see you. And in the studio today we have Daniel Moore. He has been here 16 years and has worn many hats in our church.

So he's got great perspective on just our church, our ministry, shepherding scripture and more. And we'll get to our topic here in a minute. But first, welcome Daniel. Thank you. Glad to have you. I'll have you just do a quick intro.

Tell us a little bit about your current role on staff, your family, and maybe a fun fact in there. OK. Yeah. No, we have been here at Grace for 16 years, three children, 1710 and eight years old.

So it is a busy season and we really enjoy it. So this last year I got to come out of the Pelham Campus pastor role to really work with our central staff. So I oversee all of our campuses and then oversee a good chunk of our central ministries as well. That's great, yeah. And we are. We're grateful for all that work that you do.

We're just coming out of graduation season and you'll have your first graduate in a year. In a year, yeah. Crazy enough, yeah. That's what happens when they get to 17. Yeah, I know. That's awesome.

It's going to be fun. It'll be a fun year, so yeah. Well, we hope you all are having a good summer and every summer we just want to talk about how we can continue to stay engaged spiritually. It's so easy with different changes of schedules to get off a little bit.

So today we're going to talk about leading ourselves spiritually. We know that the goal of a Christian life is to become more like Christ, but oftentimes it's easy to think like maybe the Holy Spirit will just sanctify me by osmosis, or if I'm under teaching and in community, then it'll just happen, right? But as my dad would say, our spiritual health is something that only we can be responsible for.

So Daniel got to teach a class to Spiro, which before we go too much farther, could you explain a little bit of what is Spiro and just how this even how this topic came about? Yeah. Spiro is a group of 20 somethings, typically young, 20s, young to mid 20s that are members of our church and leaders where they have full time jobs in the marketplace. And they make a one year commitment to serve at their campus for about 10 hours a week and take on some real leadership responsibility and then be developed between that responsibility and a weekly class.

That's great. And then did you get asked to teach this class or did you get to pick the topic? I did not get to pick the topic, so yeah, no, I was asked just to teach on what it looks like to lead yourself spiritually and it turned into a good exercise for me. Just have to think through that and even clarify exactly what that would mean.

So context is a big part of my personality. I like and need context in most things I'm doing. So with anything about leadership or I think about what you are leading towards, you have to know where you're going.

And so thinking about relationship with God, thinking about spiritually, where are we and what are we doing? And just one of the easiest ways for me to find an anchor in that is just to think about, even in reading Scripture, we are in between Acts 1 where Jesus ascends, and Revelation where he promises to return, and thinking about living in that in between time. That's the context from which I started thinking through. How do you lead yourself spiritually? And if you were going to try to put language to that, what were some ideas or some categories you would think through?

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense and it's helpful terminology too. We talk about spiritual formation and sanctification and all of these are kind of similar terms. But this idea of leading ourselves, of taking some ownership and even slowing down to make sure that that's a priority and and hectic life is great. Yeah. And to Orient our personal responsibility with the role that the church plays. And I think when you are a part of a, a healthy local church, which we're very, very proud of the work that we get to do here at the church, always trying to make sure that we're healthy, trying to define what that is, even as a as a corporate entity, as a church.

But still you have a personal responsibility to lead yourself. Like your dad said, no one else can do that. So I think it's a great, it's a great question, Daniel. And it seemed like a really receptive audience of, you know, young adults who are coming out of students in college and trying to figure this out for themselves.

So how did you begin to take this conversation and form it into something that was instructive? Yeah, I mean, I really looked at my own life and just try to think about how, how have I had to do this? What does this look like to lead our family and even just leading here at the church. What are the things I've noticed or things I've seen?

But so much of it for my story is just ways in which I have felt God kind of take different passages of Scripture and make them sit on me. It's one of those things where you're not just reading it, you find yourself kind of getting stuck there and having to stay there and meditate on it for days or weeks. So.

So this is biographical to a large extent, correct? Yeah, very much so. And I think that's what we would just ask the audience as they're listening to, not try to template necessarily anything that Daniel says.

But take the big ideas, the principles, then overlay them on your own spiritual experience and just kind of see, see where you're at. Yeah, absolutely. And before we kind of get further into some of those points, I think both of y'all mentioned this idea of the goal, like how would we define for us as believers? There's kind of a few tears to it, but like what is the goal on the wall that we're shooting for when it's not just knowledge for knowledge sake? It's not just to become a good person.

So like, as we're leading ourselves spiritually, like what are we trying to become? Yeah, Godly, I think that's really what it is, is a growth and godliness and being transformed more and more into the image of Christ. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I think about second Peter 1 is one of my anchor texts, you know, which says by his divine power, he's given you everything you need for living a godly life. And we often just kind of rush past that and we we substitute like eternal life, like salvation equals eternal life.

And that's not what that's not what he's talking about. So if we've been given everything that we need, then the question is how do we take the resources that God has given us, you know, through his word, through Spirit, through community, and put that into practice and respond to God so that this growth and godliness is actually taking place? Yeah. And it looks a little different for each of us, but there are some common denominators. And I think reflecting on personal experience, just like why we share life change stories, it's really helpful to to help others be catalytic in their thinking.

So that's that's really where we're trying to go today. Yeah, that's great. No, I love that. I'm still in my 20s, so all of this is still for me, too. Yeah.

So then what? What were some of those things that were helpful for you, Daniel? Again, like you said, some of these are personal. There's probably takeaways for all of us. And then at the end, we'll talk about what that could look like for us individually.

But yeah, where do you start? Yeah, the first one for me was communing with God through His Word. So more so than just reading the Bible, I think we always kind of hear this need to read the Bible.

But if you go back a couple of years, I was even feeling the need for us personally to read through all of Scripture again. This is where reading through Scripture came from. There are ways in which we do a lot of Bible study as the church and but they're also ways, and I mean, in the 16 years that I've been a pastor here, where we're noticing, we want everyone to be able to read the Bible on their own and feed themselves.

And so we created reading through Scripture as a way to just help us read on our own, but also show up to a group and be able to have reflected a little bit and then share with other people, Hey, here's what I'm seeing in God's Word. And here's, as I reflect on it, here's what God's showing me. And there's this, we see it in in our church, there's this desire for change, there's this desire for life change. And sometimes I think we wonder where the power for life change comes from. And we all know it's the Holy Spirit.

But at the same time, the felt experience of that is just lacking for a lot of people. Yeah. And So what I, what I started noticing was the more that we would read and just write a little bit each day and spend time, you would see these themes popping out of Scripture that I mean, I've read through the Bible before, but there was this rhythm of dependence and prayer and seeing like, just for me personally, like one of the big themes was seeing the fear of the Lord all throughout the Scripture, not just in a verse, but then you even see it in practice in other places.

And you're like, OK, God really does mean this. He is going to do what he says. Well, then even the practice of solitude like this is one of the things I noticed just as we're going through it ourselves and our group was there are these ways that we want to listen to God and we want to practice solitude, which I think a lot of people want to practice solitude right now. The world is so busy. We're, we're clamoring for some of that, but then once we actually go to listen, if we don't have God's word inside of us, what we find ourselves doing is listening to our emotions or listening to culture.

And in those moments of solitude, I was just noticing where even listening to God had become disconnected from his word. So this idea of communing with him through his word, there, there's a constant feeding. Romans 12 talks about how we should not copy the behaviors or customs of this world, but we should let God transform us into a new person by the changing the way you think. And I see you play out there, but the big one for me was Galatians 5 and the idea that we get to let the Holy Spirit guide our lives.

I mean, verse 25 actually says, since you were living by the Spirit, let us follow the spirits leading in every part of our lives. And learning to do that through His word and depending on him was was a really big deal. Did you find that it got easier? Was it difficult in the beginning and it got easier to think less of yourself and more of God as you were reading? Or are what were some ways that you tried to cultivate that self forgetfulness and really try to engage scripture as it was presented?

Yeah, when you read the entirety in that fashion, I think your curiosity gets stirred and you start to see how this is really not about me. Like this is all about God. He's revealing himself. He's revealing himself through his people. He's leading them. And then when you just start to connect those dots and trace that story throughout scripture, you realize how much we are a small part of his story, more so than us trying to fit him into our story.

Yeah. It's funny, I was I have a illustration that is very timely to this. I was with my mom and she likes to shop at a couple stores in town that I wouldn't normally shop out. And I'm not going to say what those are.

Well, I mean, they have a little bit of everything, put it, put it that way. And one of these stores has a lot of, you might call it like chinky kind of stuff. And some of it is Christian stuff and a lot of as seen on TV stuff, which is quite fascinating.

But one thing that I that I saw was this. It's called my mood Bible verse audio player. And so you choose a verse based on how you feel.

So your choices are happy, thankful, angry, anxious, lonely or sad. And you push a button and you get a preloaded spirit lifting Bible verse. So I feel like I'm showing it to you now. You can't see at home 'cause you're just listening.

But I feel like best represents our culture and and what you're describing is the attempt to get out of the me centered movement towards reading the scriptures. Yeah, very much so. That feels like, I mean, this is a, a, a, a pretty rough version of just reading the Bible, you know, even pulling certain verses.

But I think this notion of reading the Bible verses, communing with God, that is definitely worth reflecting on. And so Danny, you, you talked about Galatians 5 and like letting the Holy Spirit guide your life. And there's a contrast there in Galatians 5 between flesh and then being guided by the Spirit. How does that kind of factor into this idea that you had about understanding where we might struggle, where we might be deceived? Yeah, no. Understanding deception is a huge part of living and trying to follow Jesus in broken bodies and asking him to sanctify us.

So I mean it goes all the way back to the beginning with the way in which Satan deceived Adam and Eve. I think about Romans one and the way it talks about how we have traded the truth about God for a lie. And but where where it really hits me. Years ago we had a pastor's retreat and I remember there was a point, I think I was, I think I was 30 and I think I was the youngest pastor in the room. And all of us are out there. Jim Taylor was doing a devotional.

It wasn't even the main topic for the session, but he's doing a devotional to get to get the session started. And he talked about Psalm 1/19/29. And there's a prayer that the psalmist is writing and he's he's basically praying keep me from lying to myself.

But the way that Jim showed us that was, it created a whole new category for me where I thought, wait a minute, if they're praying keep me from lying to myself, that means it's possible that I am lying to myself. And how would I know? Like how would I even know if I am self deceived? Like there's so much irony in that of how do I know? Am I deceived right now? Am I deceived and thinking that I'm not deceived?

Exactly. No, that's exactly right. So when even when you're communing with God through his word, you know that you need other people around to help make sure you, you are thinking clearly, you're seeing yourself clearly the importance of confessing your sin. I mean, and even this is what region really helped me with a few years ago whenever I did it, being able to confess without control, like just being able to really confess. I think one of the reasons why I wanted to do Regen was I felt like there were some SIM patterns that weren't egregious, but they were just kind of staying on simmer and I really wanted to be free.

And through going through Regen, what I finally kind of realized was I had really confessed 95% of my sin and I just would round up. But then actually getting to the point of going, no, I want to be free. I'm going to confess this final 5%. That's actually what led to freedom.

But it is the deceptive schemes that allow us to kind of twist that and turn inward. And we need to know where we're blinded to those things. So how did holding on to that 5% allow you to control? I mean, controlling image a little bit, confessing generically but not specifically. And then in my conscience I would feel like I've confessed enough and then the Spirit would just kind of prompt me to go.

But you didn't really confess it all. So. But I think a lot of it really is around trying to be faithful and follow Jesus while holding on a little bit to our image. Yeah. No, that's good. That's good.

So communion with God and then understanding deception and particularly the deception that stands in the way of us fully being able to commune with God. What was the third big idea that you that came to you as you were putting this talk together? Yeah, this is a little bit of a turn, but the the third idea was around building the church and the way that God does that. And we think about how if we have the Spirit of God within us, then we also have spiritual gifts or we have personal giftings. And even Hebrews 9 hints at this.

But there's a passage in Hebrews 9 that talks about how much more will the blood of Christ cleanse our consciences and allow us to really serve the living God. Well, that's, that's what I'm talking about with building the church. Like we are free and we have new life in Christ and we're able to commune with him. We need to understand deception.

But if we have this context, then we know that our life is to be spent as an agent of reconciliation and building the church in these ways. So we've been studying First Corinthians this spring and particularly chapters 13 and 14. You know, you, you see these encouragements to like in 14, it talks about since you're so eager to have the special abilities that the spirit gives, seek those gifts that will strengthen the whole church.

So this this point around building the church in the unity that comes with it. Where it where it's really hit me personally is in chapter 13 with the idea of love. So it does not matter what type of gift you have. Like I like I would say some of my gifting is around leadership, but it does not matter how good of a leader I am if I don't love people. Like it doesn't matter what I could oversee or what I could organize or what I could empower or lead towards if I am not actually loving the people I'm leading.

And that that's another area where I think it's amazing that God invites us into this, living in between Acts 1 and Revelation, we get to be a part of building his church and having his Kingdom come onto earth like it is in heaven. Yeah. And it's, it's if you take what we just talked about, about deception, you can see how it applies here as we're talking about our giftings, because we often become deceived. And what I've got is the most important thing. Or oh, if like we convince ourselves, if I just had the gift that somebody else had, then that's what would allow me to be useful for the church.

And that's why we have to have both the Spirit and the community around us to help us see objectively the gifts that we do have. Well, and to put your identity in your gifts, you know, I, I learned probably several years ago from doing this that I was valuing gifts over grace.

Your gifts can really stand out and can hide sin like you're talking about and and maybe over shadow really the work of grace in your life for the short term, but over the long term it's you're going to your sins going to outpace your gifts. And if grace is not present in your life, God's grace, the goodness, the new life, then you will find yourself being exposed or hiding or whatever. And, you know, I thought Jim Taylor a few weeks ago when he taught on that passage, particularly First Corinthians 13, the first part, I thought he did just a, a great job of giving us some, some categories and some ideas.

And a couple things that came to to my mind that I like to do is I like to look at that list and grade myself on a curve, you know, and just think, oh, well, I'm doing OK. You know, it's like, let's let's do a totality roundup. And I'm doing better than I used to be.

So I don't really have a lot of application on that. And that's the first mistake. And then I think the second mistake is to look at that list and look at it through the lens of other people and like, oh, well, this is what Whitney needs to work on. This is what Daniel needs to work on. This is what my wife and my kids need to work on. And I just encouraged our congregation not to do that and to really just take, take the step, you know, and not be deceived and not, not let that diminish, but see the see the bigger picture of, of building, building up the church.

So then we kind of started this conversation talking about godliness as our goal. And but some of that has to be also rooted in there's this world that we're living in right now and there's complicated nature to all of that and trying to figure out how to be godly in the world that we're in. But then there's also something that we know as believers comes after that.

So ultimately, like how should we kind of develop this focus? Like what should we be focused on as we are trying to pursue leading ourselves spiritually and becoming more like Christ? Yeah, there's a there's a passage in Luke 12 that I was teaching back in the fall. I was actually teaching with Mev back in the fall. And the chapter is great. I mean, it is one that most people would know around the lilies of the field and where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

And right after it, the very next verse in verse 35, I think I'm seeing how much is connected to the same thing where Jesus is saying, hey, don't worry, seek the Kingdom of God above all else. And then it says and be dressed and ready for the master's return. He's basically saying, it's like your master has gone away and you should be prepared at all times for his return. You should keep the lamps burning. You should be dressed. And the what it alludes to is what happens if you're not prepared?

And what if you start to believe that your master's not going to be back for a while and you start to lose focus, or you start to enjoy the pleasures of this world too much? And that question is one that I I've thought about a lot. How am I living with a real anticipation of Christ's return, if at all? And I I think it's it's just easy for us to lose focus of this. It's not all bad things like it take saving like here's a a couple of personal examples for me, take the idea of saving. It is not a problem to save.

It is a wise thing to save and yet there are ways that I get consumed with saving and investing and start to just focus on that too much that then takes away from how much I'm anticipating Christ return. Or it's not a problem to go on vacation. I think vacations are great. I love to play golf.

So last summer I got to do a trip of a lifetime with with a golf trip with some friends. But it's amazing to me how quickly I can over indulge in that and let my imagination be captured by the next trip and the next trip and all of that at the expense of the ministry opportunities that are right in front of me. So that's what I mean. Thinking about and living in light of Christ's return keeps my focus on building the church, keeps my focus on communing with God, keeps my focus on growing and godliness.

For these purposes, and I'll just tell you a quick story, one of our members at one of our campuses is has become a friend of mine. He's about to turn 91 next month and I got to have breakfast with him this last week. And really even with his age, he is still so focused on this point that if he is alive, God has him here for a purpose and he needs to be disciple in people. And as we were having breakfast, there was this point that I even asked because he's, he's outlived a lot of his family and a lot, most of his friends.

And I just asked him about this passage and what he would, what he thinks about with Christ's return. And he actually stopped and said, sometimes I wonder if God is keeping me alive in order so that I could see Jesus's return and that that was emotional for him. And then it became emotional for me.

But but that is what I mean like this, this focus around I am not living for myself. I God is doing this work, I'm invited into it. But each of these, if you notice, have really been a different passage of Scripture that God has used to shape me and to help kind of drive some of these points home. Yeah, no, that's so helpful and encouraging.

But even that question of am I ready? Like I have to stand before the Lord? I mean that feels so heavy. Do you have any thoughts for us on just how do we know if we are doing this well or how do we know if we're not doing this well and to be self aware and not self deceived? Yeah, no, absolutely.

So I, I don't think these 4 categories are, you know, the only four ways that you can think about leading yourself spiritually. There are 4 categories that I have kind of taken passages of Scripture that have been important to me or God's used to shape me. And I've tried to zoom out a little bit.

But I, I don't think the response is just for everybody to go live all four of these out. I think the better response would be what are the passages that you have studied where God is using to shape you and change you and how have you been attuned to God through His Word? It is not a quick process and I think that's another thing that I really appreciated about reading through Scripture is stretching it out for a year and a half for sure. It's actually not as important that you read every verse as much as it's a long term rhythm of you reading and reflecting and sharing and how that starts to train you to commune with God and meet with Him there.

Couple of things I've heard you say as you've really been a, a, a proponent of RTS is taking something that can feel like a duty. If we're like you got to read your Bible, you got to read your Bible. Good Christians read their read their Bible. And how do you do that in a rhythm with the right perspective, focusing on God, the character and nature of God. That really turns it into a delight that seems to get at, you know, turning going from duty and delight to delight seems to get at this idea of reading versus commuting.

And then it seems like the, the, the cascade or the waterfall effect goes, goes down from there to your other points. And I love this idea of seeking first the Kingdom of God and everything else being added. And because we, we live, we, we like to live in a binary world where it's like good and bad.

So you talk about savings or you talk about a vacation or a hobby, like it's not good or bad. It's just, it's like, what's your perspective and what's your priority? And like seeking first like that takes some, that takes some real thoughtfulness around that, like where am I putting my time? Where am I putting my energy? Where am I putting my, my, my emotions? And that the promise that if I do seek first, then then everything else will be added in the sense I think that it just it, it, it falls in line in the priority that God has for us and that it has to be an individual.

It has to be an individual exercise, you know, And so I thanks for giving us a window into just kind of where you've been the last couple years. And I appreciate you sharing that with our Spiro group and now sharing it with us. So.

Now I agree. I think that's so helpful, such a good reminder. And again, just as we're in the summer, we we don't want to coast, we want to, we want to lock in as the kids say and really just use the time that we have. I mean, during the school year it feels like we're all running around and saying I'm just busy and I wish I had more time and if I had more time then I could do this. And then we get to summer and we're like, I kind of want that time to be for me. And that's just, we have a different choice that we we can make.

And I think that these are great thoughts. Yeah. And I will say we, we talk a lot about spiritual leadership and it can, it can imply taking responsibility for other people. And that's really important. And our church is built on just the, the, the nature that other folks will take responsibility, spiritual responsibility for others in community and in different leadership positions.

But I think that's why this topic is so important is like, if you're not leading yourself spiritually, then you're really not. You're really not fit. Yeah, really not fit to lead someone else. Yeah, it's complicated and tough, but that's why we would encourage all, Yeah, go find your passages, whatever the three or four things are for you that you need to go sit with, what you need to go bring to the Lord and commune with Him on. And even just looking for ways that we're self deceived, ways that we can use our guests to love others, and the ways that we can look forward and keep our focus on Christ's return one day.

So guys, thanks for this. Conversation. Thanks for coming in, Daniel. Yeah. Good to see you and thanks. So before we go, if you'd like to see the My Mood Bible that Scott referenced during today's conversation, we've included a photo of that in the show notes for you.

And if you're enjoying the Grace Church Podcast, we would love for you to follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, leave a rating and review, and let us know what topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.