Episode 179: Why and How to Become a Spiritual Self-Feeder | +Quigg Lawrence

Introduction

Well, today, I have an agenda. I have an agenda. For any of you guys who don't regularly have time with the Lord, but maybe you want to or maybe you used to. I am going to make an argument for why you should, and more importantly, how you can do it. How you can do it. I want to lower the ramp for you, so it doesn't have to be I need to read an hour a day of Kings or Chronicles, but just an entry point where you can step on and start doing something you thought was impossible, spending time with Jesus.

So, my story is, I came to faith in 1980. I had two friends that were Christians, but they did not live in the same city I did. So, I quickly realized if I was going to grow in the Lord, if I was going to grow, and I wanted to grow, I would have to learn to feed myself. My church had no Bible studies. Nobody in the church I grew up in was there waiting for a young 20-year-old who fell in love with Jesus. Nobody was there ready to disciple me.

That's fine. I went to the Christian bookstore. I remember the first time I went to the Christian bookstore. Oh my gosh. Now I think they're kind of creepy. Back then, the little things with Jesus mints and all that stuff. Back then, I felt like I was walking in the presence of God. I remember tiptoeing into the Christian bookstore like, wow. I got a Ryrie Study Bible. He's a dispensationalist, I probably wouldn't recommend it, but I got it. Charles Ryrie, great study notes, and I read it almost every night for about an hour, not because anybody told me to, not because anybody was yelling at me, no guilt. Heck, I wasn't even telling anybody I did it.

Then I thought, well, I need to learn more, so I got Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Isn't that 1970s? Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. And so the reason I did that is because I wanted to. That's it. The reason I read my Bible at age 20 is because I wanted to. The reason I studied God's word and theology and these other books is because I wanted to. You tend to do what you want to do.

The Process of Spiritual Growth

I want to take a look at some babies. My wife culled these pictures because she thought a couple of them were creepy. So I didn't put the nursing picture on there. I don't think nursing is creepy. I thought you would be great with it. She said that, not in church quick. Okay, not in church. Okay, fine.

So you can imagine, first a baby nurses their mom, and I think that's awesome. Eventually, they'll go nursing. Right? They go off nursing. And what's the next thing to come along? I'll go back one. Go back one. Go back one. So the mom's feeding the baby. Isn't that cute? That's just as it should be. There's a time in your life where you need somebody to feed you. Mommy, daddy, feed me. Okay. Great.

Next one. Look at this little chap. Don't you love this? Now you could go, you wicked little child. You wicked little beast. Why do you put peas all over your face? But you don't say that. You go, great job. Way to go. I'm so happy for you. Isn't that precious? This kid is learning to feed himself. And you know what? He's having some fun. And what I want to say is, if you don't currently spend any time with the Lord, if you don't know how to have a quiet time or any of that, even a small step. Literally, if you did three minutes a day, four or five days a week, that's way more than you're doing now. Let's don't despise humble beginnings, much like we don't criticize this unless you're sick. You don't criticize a child for eating like this.

Next slide, please. This is weird. I admit it. What I really want to do is get Tim up here in a diaper and feed him baby food. Tim said that was going to cost $500. Anyway, friends, the point being, if you see an adult in a kiddie chair eating food, that's super weird. It's super unhealthy. Would you not say there's something wrong here? Turns out this guy was trying to get social security benefits, and he did. But it's just weird. Would you agree it's weird? If you see an adult doing that, that's weird. So I think if you see those pictures, if you can imagine a child nursing, a child being fed by his or her mom, a child trying to learn to be a self-feeder and have peas everywhere, versus the adult in diapers having mommy feed them. That's just strange.

That's a visual picture of what it may be like when we spend time with the Lord or don't. Do you have somebody that feeds you? There's a time when you're beginning your walk with Jesus that you need somebody to feed you. I get it. Pretty quickly, as you start to grow in Christ, you self. Tim and I can only give so much if you're here every Sunday, which most people are not. But if you're here every Sunday, great, you get twenty minutes in a sermon, you get about forty-five minutes in adult teaching, either in his class or in the newcomers class. That's not enough. Tim and I are taking a piece of steak, a la Saturday Night Live, Charlie's Steakhouse. We're taking a piece of steak, we're chewing it up, we're feeding it to you. That's precious and it's needful. But if that's all you get, you're getting ripped off. You're getting so ripped off.

I love this. The picture of the next guy is learning to become a self feeder. Let's go there. From Hebrews, it says,

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the basic principles and oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. — Hebrews

I would say for a lot of us, you need milk. We can start where we can start. Don't ever yell or shame or berate somebody because they're not there yet. Just invite them to the party.

Why Become a Self-Feeder?

Why should we want to become a self feeder? Because Scripture makes it clear there's blessings. I mean, who wants to always be eating food that Tim has digested or I've digested? We've chewed up. We've masticated. Big word, masticated. But do you always want to be dependent on us? I don't think so.

And so, Psalm 1 says:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. His delight is in the law of the Lord. And on God's law, he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. — Psalm 1

Do you see the picture painted in Psalm 1? Blessed is the man. I remember maybe twenty years ago, we had Shelly Prado, who was a young life leader. She was all of 23. And it was kind of like youth Sunday, and she was giving the sermon or the message. And she did Psalm 1, and her message was, be the tree. Isn't that amazing you remember a sermon from that long ago? But she's painting the picture that the psalmist did. It's like, if you want to be blessed, if you want to have deep roots, if you don't want to wither, then you got to spend time with the Lord meditating on his word.

It's not that you have to, it's that you get to. And you'll be blessed in all that you do, you're going to prosper. So according to Psalm 1, we all have a choice. Like you're special. All right, everybody gets a trophy. You're special. You're special. And because you're special, you have a choice in life. You can choose to prosper and be blessed or to wither. Wither or prosper? Prosper or wither? The way that you decide that choice is, do you spend time with the God who made you and love you? Or do you spend your time watching TV and Instagram, TikTok, whatever, whatever, whatever?

You have a choice. Item next, Psalm 119. It's a great Psalm. Oh, boy, don't ever pick this in a scripture memory because as far as I know, it's the longest psalm in the entire Bible, maybe even the longest chapter. I'm not sure. It's super long. Psalm 119 says this, verse 11:

God, I have stored your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. — Psalm 119:11

I've stored it there. I remember when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he didn't go, hey, Siri, hey, what was that scripture about? No, he didn't do that. He didn't phone a friend.

I think of my friend, Noble Alexander, who was arrested at age 26. He was a youth pastor in Cuba. I mean, 26, he wasn't that old. And he was in prison for, I don't know, about seventeen, eighteen years, unmercifully, brutally beaten, stabbed. I mean, oh my gosh. Get his book. But what he did is, while he was in prison, he had already seen, he didn't know the bad guys were coming for him. He didn't know that ahead of time.

But what he did is he stored God's word in his heart and his mind. So then, when he was put in prison, he took a shard off the plate that his dinner was served on. Dinner was maggot-infested gruel. He said, I'll never eat that. They said, yes, you will, and he did. But what he did is he took a little metal shard off his plate. He got his own blood and he wrote the scriptures from memory. Literally, I've seen it. I've seen the papers, four-point type. Whole chapter of the Bible from memory. He he drilled out bars of soap. He he rolled up the little scroll. He stuck it down in there, put more soap there, passed it to the next guy who opened it up. He read the scriptures, passed it to another guy. 236 people came to Jesus. I stored your word in my heart.

Psalm 19 goes on:

I will meditate on your precepts. Oh, God, I'm going to fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word. — Psalm 119:15-16

And so, we do want to be in the daily feeding process, putting God's word in our heart and our mind.

Matthew 4, Jesus says:

Man does not live by bread alone. — Matthew 4:4

Really? I thought so. Anybody here love to eat? I never like to tell you to raise your hand, if you like seriously love to eat. Right. Okay. But the Lord says, I have food you know not of. Food is awesome. I'm a foodie. Man, let's do it. But there's I need more than just food. I need Jesus' word. He says,

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. — Matthew 4:4

That's why so many of us are starving. We're starving spiritually because we're just coming once or twice a month and letting Tim and Quig feed you already masticated food. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's a good start. It's not enough.

Now, to 2 Timothy. Again, we're answering the question of why. Why would we make time for the Lord on a daily basis? It says,

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness — 2 Timothy 3:16

that the servant of God, that could be you, may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Scripture is a light and a lamp. It's God-breathed and it's useful. It's useful so you can be thoroughly equipped to be a follower of Jesus.

Friends, bottom line is you have a choice. Can I say this is one place where I am pro choice? You have a choice. You can choose to be blessed, prosper, avoid sin, live life with a capital L, and be thoroughly equipped. You can make that choice, or you can choose not to. In fact, right now we're all making that choice. You're making a choice every morning, every day to be blessed and prosper or to wither and to be starved spiritually.

Excuses and Motivation

Now, what about excuses? I'm great at excuses. I'm a master of them. This week, not shaming anybody, man, I love the fact that our parishioners tell me things. Sometimes I think, Oh my gosh, I don't know if I'd have told my pastor that. Steve, they tell me things. I love it.

This week, three different times, I heard some version of this. I used to read my Bible and have daily time with the Lord, but now I don't. The way he said it was just kind of like, Oh, it's done. There's nothing I can do about it. I used to read my scriptures, have a daily quiet time, but now, you know, I'm not in that place of desperation anymore. Now, I just don't.

Friends, what I want to tell you is that's spiritual starvation. You're setting yourself up to be tossed by every wind of doctrine. The Bible says we're tossed to and fro. But God wants us to be established in his word, equipped in him. Maybe if you're new at this, think, gosh, one guy actually said this, he goes, I need to do better. I'm thinking, oh man, don't even start that way. I need. I'm going to try harder. I'm going to strive harder. I want to say, bro, it was a public setting. Want to say, no, it's not a matter of trying harder or doing better. Be good, do good. That's just a burden. No, it's not that at all.

What you need to pray for is internal motivation. Internal motivation, which is actually a gift given by God. Maybe some of you have had habits that you knew you shouldn't have. Like I dip snuff forever. I liked it, and I know it's disgusting, I know it's nasty, I don't do it anymore. People would come to me and go, You see this guy in this picture? He dipped snuff and he lost his lip in his jaw. I'm like, stinks for him. I'm good. I like dipping. You ain't taking my dip from me. I like it.

You ever had something like that? You know you shouldn't do it. You know it's bad for you, but you're not internally motivated. Friends, what I want to tell you is if you have friend or family member, they're not internally motivated, leave them alone and pray that the Holy Spirit would internally motivate them. That's the only thing that works. It's the only thing that lasts.

So this whole thing of like, I can't do it. I used to do it. I can't do it. Pray for internal motivation given by the Holy Spirit. That's the only way you'll ever enter the flow.

Building Habits and Reframing Mindset

Now, you guys already are doing things regularly. You already have daily habits, don't you? Let me guess. What time do you wake up? Go. Say it. Go ahead. 04:30. I wake up at four every morning, walk about 10 yards over, come back to bed. I think of Bob Williams and all these doctor types and people at the rack at five, bless your hearts.

Here's what I know, morning, man, every morning you do some things. Already you got a habit going. You've already proved no matter how undisciplined you are, what your Myers-Briggs is, you've already proved that you can get habits. Like in the morning when you wake up, my guess is one of the first things you do if you like caffeine is you go downstairs and you prepare the sacred bean. Oh, man, I do it. I roast my own beans or get Matty's mud. Have like big time. I have about five coffee things. The right temperature, the right filtered water. It's a it's a sacred ritual. I don't miss it. It is a sacred ritual.

How about this? Every morning I check my email because I want to know what's going on. Is anybody in church having a problem with something? I check my email. Do you check your email early in the morning? Probably. Or how about this one? I hope you do this. Seriously. Do you brush your teeth in the morning? Oh, no. I just do it on Sundays. No, no, no. You brush your teeth. Do you shower? I mean, I can't speak for y'all, but I shower literally every day. I like being clean. Even though I'm ADD and undisciplined, I still get up every morning. I get up in the morning, I brush my teeth, I shower, I do the emails, I fix the sacred bean. You know why? Because it's now become a habit. I don't think about it. I don't wake up in the morning and go, should I or shouldn't I? Should I or shouldn't I?

What I want to say is, even the most undisciplined us are already we're already walking in habits. You can do this. By God's help, you can do this. If you can brush your teeth in the morning, you can have quiet time.

Now, there has to be a mind shift. If what you hear me say today is, You're bad, you need to have a quiet time. Come on, man. That's just like more bricks in the back. It's just a heavier load. I just got to do this. I need to go to the gym like all these good people are doing. I need to stop eating butter, I need to do this and stop doing that. It's just one more thing. Lord, I'm already exhausted.

If you have that mindset, you're never going to have time with God. Instead of looking at it as like you've got to because you're a bad person if you don't, maybe we reframe it, different mindset and say, No, it's not that I have to. God's not going to love me more if I do it, but I get to. I get an audience with the man.

In spite of politics, I'm guessing most of you, if you were called to the White House by the President of The United States, just his office, his office, or to the mayor or somebody big time like that, You would go because you respect his office and it's kind of a big time audience. Right? What I'm telling you is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords is going to stop his day to make time for you. Isn't that a ridiculous notion?

How many of you have ever played on Google Earth? You ever seen Google Earth? So cool. It's like you put in your address, and all of a sudden from Mars or someplace out in outer space, oh, there's planet Earth. Oh, look, there's United States. Oh, look, there's Virginia. Oh, look, there's twenty-four thousand and eighteen. Oh, look, there's Church of the Holy Spirit. Oh, look, there's my car in the parking lot. You think, Wow, God, you made all that? You know all those people? You can hear all their prayers? Wow, what an amazing God.

But the truth is God is able to do that because he is the Lord. I've never once gone to a quiet time where God wasn't there. There have been lots of times I didn't show up. He always shows up. It's an amazing thing that he would do that.

There's a mind shift. You to have time with the Lord. He always shows up. My tendency is to be like an academic kind of nerdy reader guy and just get facts. Put facts in my head. Read the story. Put the facts in your head. You know, but quiet time is not all about reading. There are plenty of atheists that read Scripture. Part of a quiet time or being with the Lord is, in fact, being with the Lord. It's talking. It's also receiving.

What I will tell you is if you've never experienced the presence of the Lord, you are cheating yourself. There is nothing more powerful. There's nothing more beautiful. God's not a microwave. But when you're in silence before the Lord and he shows up and you are aware of his presence, I promise you, there's nothing sweeter. And there are a lot of sweet things in this world. Nothing sweeter than the presence of the Lord. That's why we're all chasing things. Because we don't have the sweet presence of the Lord.

Oh, boy. So where are we? Don't rip yourself off. I want to get you angry today. There is righteous anger. I want you to be righteously angry that Satan has been ripping you off. Some of you for forty years, you haven't had a time with Jesus. You don't know the presence of God. You don't know the scriptures at all. I'm not saying you're a bad person. I'm saying that let's reframe it. It's not that you're a bad person. You're a person that's being cheated from. It's almost like somebody got your checking account information and put it on Instagram and Facebook for the whole world and said, Hey, take all their life savings, and you're just sitting there, oh, that's fine with me. You should be hacked off. Have a literal righteous indignation that Satan has stolen this amazing grace from you.

How Do We Do This?

Now, how do we do this? We talked about mind shift, how do you do it? Why you should do it, having a mind shift. Now, the simple thing is, well, Quig, I don't know how to start. Don't yell at me. Tell me to do something. How do I start? Well, it's simple. You need a time, a place, and a method. A time, place, and a method.

A time. When I first started following Jesus, my time was late at night because I was a late-night guy. Now that I'm in my sixties, I'm like, I'll be asleep. I'm falling asleep, I do it early in the morning. I do it early in the morning after I fix the sacred bean. I go downstairs and I used to have a chair, but that got removed, so now I have a small sofa near the gas logs, which are incredibly important. And I light a candle. I'm an Anglican. I light a candle, and I have this space that is quiet, that's my place with Jesus. I have a time, I have a place, and I have a method.

My method does not have to be your method. We're wired differently. For me, the thing that works is the one-year Bible. It gives you four lessons a day. Four. Old Testament, Psalm, Proverb, Old Testament Psalm, who knows? I've been doing it for thirty-four years. I just show up and it's there. It's four lessons. Here's the thing, I take my pen and if there's something cool there, I underline it. If I have questions, I put stuff there. I'm not just reading it, I'm interacting with it.

Here's the thing, if you have four lessons and one of them is really dry, there are some parts of Chronicles and Kings and a few other passages, few places in Isaiah that take courage to keep pushing through. But if you get one of those tough passages and you just can't handle it that day, just go to the next one. You've got four lessons a day. Maybe you're like, Quick, I tried the one-year Bible. Didn't work for me. Okay, that's cool. It's all a method. Maybe you could do a proverb and a psalm a day. Maybe you could do one chapter. I would suggest the New Testament first. Do one chapter a day.

There's a method Wayne Cordero from Hawaii is an amazing pastor. He teaches his people to soap. SOAP. You like soap, don't you? SOAP is, one, read the scripture. Even if it's a little passage, you read it, and he actually encourages you to write the passage out. Because there's something about not just seeing it, but actually doing it. It's kind of a kinesthetic learning. Right? So you read it, you write it down. That's the scripture, that's S. O is you make observations. What is the Lord saying in this little passage? What truths are in there? What nuggets could we mine from this passage? Thank you, Lord. Man, I need some nuggets.

So S O A, it's great to have the word of God and to know facts, but if you don't apply it, it's kind of a waste of time. Are we just taking in information so we'd be smarter? No, we need to apply it. Lord, show me how to apply these truths in my life. The last thing Wayne says is when you're reading that little passage of scripture is just pray over it. Like the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. God, I thank you, Lord. I thank you that you're a Lord that you're God and I'm not. I'm thankful that I have the good shepherd. The only true shepherd is my shepherd. I'm thankful, God, because I have a lot of needs. I need you in my life. The Lord is my — you're my shepherd. God, thank you so much. And you start praying the verse you've just read.

So there's the one-year Bible, could do Proverbs and Psalms. You could soap a chapter of the Bible a day. Maybe you don't like reading. Great. I have a solution for you. This kind of really cool, you know, what do you call those guys in East Nashville? Those are cool guys. He does this thing called the Daily Audio Bible. You can push that button and it'll read to you in the most cool East Nashville hipster voice. Okay? The other one is use an app. You can use YouVersion. You can use the Daily Office app. You can play worship hymns and songs.

Now, what I would tell you is don't promise today, quit. I'm going to read an hour a day. Don't do that. Baby steps, baby foot. Let's say we're going to do four to five minutes a day, five days a week for starters. But what you'll find out is once you start doing it, you'll want more. You'll be internally motivated. You'll want more. And so don't despise humble beginnings.

Friends, I want to tell you this. I'm scattered. I'm undisciplined. I'm lazy and I am super busy. By God's grace, he has given internal motivation. If he can do it for me, I promise you, he can do it for you. If you would ask him, Lord, would you give me this motivation? Yes, it's a time, it's a place, it's a method. But really what you need to pray for is internal motivation. God, that I would know you. I would be in your presence. I can't live as a Christian without this.

The Righteous Vine

We'll end here. John 15 says this:

As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. — John 15:4-5

It is he that bears much fruit. And apart from me, you can do nothing. I'm so serious about wanting you guys to have this gift of grace, that I actually will publish my cell number. And if you need help figuring out a method, the time and the place is up to you. But if you need help figuring out a method, call me, text me. I will make time in my schedule to teach you the things that I've learned.

Or Tim's here, or Brian's here, or Barbara's here, or another Christian friend. It's that important. Get mad from what Satan has stolen from you. Dive into the presence of the Lord. In the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.