"I never realized just how important it was until I’d lost it." He shared it with me while laying in a hospital bed some years ago. As a result of an accident, disability and slow therapy there had been huge changes in the life of a man who was once strong, independent, well travelled, and quite accomplished.
        "Can say one thing for sure - it really drove me back to the Lord. Kind of scary, actually, when I think about it" he said. "Did I really depend on all those things so much that I’d begun to crowd God out?"

What a realization for that fellow!
One way that God took what was a most difficult situation, and managed to work a real spiritual blessing into his life.
        What he was used to, and had plenty of, suddenly was gone. And as his life was rearranged, he came to discover what really mattered.

While I certainly don’t pray for that kind of loss and tragedy to happen in any of our lives, I do pray that we could come to experience what this fellow did -
        leaving aside all that which so quickly fills and consumes our time and energy, and come to realize in new, fresh ways what really matters.

And that as we come to realize this, that we can order and control all the experiences and opportunities and things that beckon for our time and attention and resources, and give them only that space and attention that is appropriate for children of the Living God, devoted followers of Jesus Christ, people with the indwelling Holy Spirit.

In Luke 12 Jesus tells a parable of a rich ruler who became fascinated, sidetracked and eventually derailed by his riches.
William Boice reflects on this parable with this prayer:

Dear Lord, I have been re-reading the record of the Rich Young Ruler and his obviously wrong choice. But it has set me thinking. No matter how much wealth he had, he could not ride in a car, have any surgery, turn on a light, buy penicillin, hear a pipe organ, watch TV, wash dishes in running water, type a letter, mow a lawn, fly in an airplane, sleep on an innerspring mattress, or talk on the phone. If he was rich, then what am I?

In The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen retells a tale from ancient India:
        Four royal brothers decided each to master a special ability. Time went by, and the brothers met to reveal what they had learned.
        "I have mastered a science," said the first, "by which I can take but a bone of some creature and create the flesh that goes with it."
        "I," said the second, "know how to grow that creature's skin and hair if there is flesh on its bones."
        The third said, "I am able to create its limbs if I have the flesh, the skin, and the hair."
        "And I," concluded the fourth, "know how to give life to that creature if its form is complete."
        Thereupon the brothers went into the jungle to find a bone so they could demonstrate their specialties. As fate would have it, the bone they found was a lion's. One added flesh to the bone, the second grew hide and hair, the third completed it with matching limbs, and the fourth gave the lion life. Shaking its mane, the ferocious beast arose and jumped on his creators. He killed them all and vanished contentedly into the jungle.
        Says Nouwen, "We too have the capacity to create what can devour us. Goals and dreams can consume us. Possessions and property can turn and destroy us -- unless we first seek God's kingdom and righteousness, and allow him to breathe into what we make of life."

And so, as we continue our evening series studying the growth of Christian character we come to the topic of "renunciation"
        RENUNCIATION - a "giving up" for a "better good";
C.S. Lewis once remarked: "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ’thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done’."

Renunciation, doing without, helps to shape us into characters and beings that can, within the context of much and plenty - far more than the mere daily bread we need from our Father in heaven --
        --- that we can honestly pray, "Thy will be done."

It is in that context, then, that we hear the words of Christ:

"If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.... And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away...." (Mt 18)

W.R.Inge writes:

"if we feel that any habit or pursuit, harmless in itself, is keeping us from God and sinking us deeper in the things of earth; if we find that things which others can do with impunity are for us the occasion of falling, then abstinence is our only course. Abstinence alone can recover for us the real value of what should have been for our help but which has been an occasion of falling.... It is necessary that we should steadily resolve to give up anything that comes between ourselves and God." (W.R.Inge)

Lee Atwater, former American Republican Party chairman, said this before he died: "The eighties were about acquiring: wealth, power, and prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth and power and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty."
        Frank Pollard, Do You Like Where You Live

Sometimes you need to empty everything out in order to feel full again.
That is abstinence.
But that is a truth so hard for us to grasp.
        Doing without, well, just about anything is seen as ascetic. And if there was a way we could spell ascetic with four letters we would - that’s what we think of it.

        We fail to understand that asceticism comes from a Greek word related to training, athletic training for a race. It is refusing to allow ourselves be dominated by something, to keep controlled and focused in our identity and our living as servants of Jesus Christ.

And sometimes working that control means doing without.
There may be very normal and legitimate desires for basic drives and motivations that we have as human beings - things like food, sleep, bodily activity, companionship, curiosity, sex.
        It could include things like desires for convenience, comfort, material security, variety, acknowledgment.
        Some of these things may be take it or leave it, some are luxuries, and some are rather basic to life and health.

        Not a single one of these desires are wrong.
        And yet every one of these desires is subject to the reality of what we know as the doctrine of total depravity. That’s the doctrine that tells us that there isn’t anything in creation, or anyone, who is totally free of sin’s tarnish.
        "There is no one who is righteous..... all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God...." (Romans 3)

        Because of that we can’t afford to become lax about any human desire, for just like suckers on a tomato plant, these desires will send out all kinds of side shoots into wrong directions of our life that can sap energy and strength away from the main plant and reduce the quality and quantity of fruit.
        Doesn’t take much to look around and see how this has happened today, with basic desires having been allowed to run a rebellious and harmful course. It easily gets to the point where some of these desires can actually become a parasitic host to sin that eats away at and cripples our personalities.
        Some of you have heard of the seven deadly sins. Gregory the Great (c.AD 600) said that these were a "classification of the normal perils of the soul in the ordinary conditions of life." In other words - they are legitimate desires gone wrong.
        [Dallas Willard, Spirit Of The Disciplines p.159]

Think about it for a moment, and you can figure it out:
        pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, lust.

        Just like with a tomato or some other plant, the pruning happens now here and then there, first in this amount and then in that - practicing abstinence, introducing a level of asceticism into our lives isn’t always the same. Sometimes it happens in this area. And sometimes in that. Sometimes to a greater degree. And sometimes in lesser amounts.
        There is no fixed list of areas that all Christians need to practice doing without, abstinence.
And for each Christian there is no fixed list that works for their entire life. It is a changing, moving thing. For our lives, our characters, keep changing and moving.

        So it is that sometimes Christians, who need to be with other people, and who are commanded by the Scriptures to be with others and form community with others - sometimes Christians need to come apart and choose for a time to be alone; to experience isolation from other human beings; to have distance.
        That is the development of the discipline of solitude.
        And in solitude the noise stops, the demands of others fall away and we are forced to confront our own souls with all the forces, challenges, peculiarities that we can push away when we’re in the busyness of daily life with other folks. It sheds conformity and makes us look at what we do, and why. It takes the space that we often cram full with other people and other things, and empties it, allowing God a chance to invade.

Doing without.

Sometimes we go beyond solitude and practice silence. Henry Nouwen says, "silence is the way to make solitude a reality." It strips away as nothing else does, reminding us of death, which cuts us off from this world leaving only us and God.
        Hearing is said to be the last sense to go when we die.
        Yet hearing is also one of the senses that is dulled by noise.
        Sometimes, for the sake of our souls, and the ability of our souls to hear God’s still small Spirit voice, we need to practice silence – do without the voices of radio and TV and conversation on cell phones. And we come to learn that "in quietness and trust is your strength." (Is 30:15)

        Silence stops our tongues from wagging, incessantly and instinctively. It teaches us to listen and pay attention to others. God gave us two ears and one mouth that we may listen twice and talk once - silence helps us get that ratio right in our lives.
                [Dallas Willard, Spirit Of The Disciplines p.164]

        Then there’s the whole matter of food - a hard one to let go of in our gluttonous society, with grocery store shelves stocked with more variety than anywhere else in the entire world. We’ve grown used to it. We are jaded by it.
        Fasting - reminding us that humanity does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Mt 4:4). It turns us to Him who is the Bread of Life, our Saviour.
        Often when people are down, or stressed, or in crisis, one of the ways they cope is by munching, or gorging. Most of us have done it at one time or another. Fasting points us to our Father in Heaven, who is the true source of strength.
        It teaches restraint and moderation by working through one of the most basic functions of human living - eating.

        Right on the heels of food comes money.
        Here, too, doing without can be important.
        Times and seasons when we say "no" to spending, and turn the nickle over twice before letting go; holding back and measuring carefully to spend only on that which is truly necessary for living. It frees us from getting all giddy over getting and consuming things that really don’t matter.

        And chastity - here’s probably one of the toughest in North America. So called social experts scoff when anyone suggests that we call each other to chastity - to reigning in and controlling sexual desires, rather than being controlled by them. They laugh when we suggest that sexual expression be kept within marriage, and there as a shared gift, rather than an item for personal satisfaction and pleasure. Chastity, as controlled expression and abstinence where called for, helps us to keep relationships with persons of the opposite sex in their proper framework. It helps us understand the deepest dimensions of true love.
                [Dallas Willard, Spirit Of The Disciplines p.172]

        You could talk about secrecy - we did here a few weeks ago.

        Ah, the list could go on, but you get the point.

We deliberately control and direct the elements, desires and passions of our lives, rather than allowing them to pull, tug, control and direct us.

It is precisely what the Catechism talked about in Q/A 124 regarding the petition of the Lord’s Prayer, "Your will be done...":
        Help us and all people to reject our own wills
        and to obey your will without any back talk.
        Your will alone is good.
It guides us into a living reality of what Q/A 125 expresses regarding the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread...." as we seek the Lord help to:
        ....come to know
        that you are the only source of everything good,
        and that neither our work and worry
        nor your gifts
        can do us any good without your blessing.
        And so help us to give up our trust in creatures
        and to put trust in you alone.

If you want to read more on the topic, two books I heartily recommend are:
        The Spirit Of The Disciplines by Dallas Willard
and
        Celebration Of Discipline by Richard Foster.
Both, I believe, are in the church library.

Letting go, sacrificially doing without.
And so discovering again the truly important elements of life.
Hearing Christ, who surrendered all for us, as He calls to us:
        Whoever finds his life will lose it,
        and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
                (Matthew 10:39)