Vince Vitale [00:00:42] Hi friends, welcome to Ask Away. I'm Vince, and I am almost always here with Jo, my wonderful wife. And I'm sad to say that she's not in the studio today. It's been a hard week, most significantly because of a cancer diagnosis, still waiting for detailed results of someone very close to Jo and to both of us. We would just appreciate your prayers this week, and Jo just needed a bit of extra time and space. And so you can help us by putting up with my accent for the entire show rather than getting Jo's excellent accent. We'll make it up to you sometime in the future we'll do a show with just Jo which I'm sure y'all enjoy even more. But there is something that God had on my heart this week and I think it's really significant, and so rather than just skipping a week I wanted to share it with you. It's around the question how much time should you spend with God and at church in an average week? It's an important question because it's one that we all need to answer. You need to figure out. You need to make a decision or at least you need to move forward in such a way where you're spending a certain amount of time with God and at church in an average week. 

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[00:01:55] But I actually think it's a significant question for a different reason which might not be the one that you would expect. What motivated this topic was I was with a group of about 30 Christian leaders teaching them a couple weeks ago. And at one point I asked the question and I asked them to answer this question anonymously by just writing down an answer on a piece of paper folding it up putting it in a bowl. The question was how much time do you spend with God in an average week? These were the answers that I got back: three hours, not enough, 1 to 2 hours if I'm generous, 10 hours, 3 to 7 hours, 2 hours, 7 hours, less than 2 hours, 7 hours, 5 hours, 6 to 7 hours, less than 2 hours, 1.5 to 2 hours, 5 hour, 3 hours, 2 hours, 2 hours, 1 hour, not enough, 6 hours, 3 hours, not enough, maybe an hour, 7 hours, 7 hours. And then there were maybe four at the end that said something like 24/7 or ninety four hours, ongoing, abiding with him throughout the day. One person said I've lost track. There was always somebody with a funny answer. 

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[00:03:05] But there were maybe four people at the end who expressed some sort of understanding of this idea of continuing with God, communing with him throughout the day in an ongoing way. Everyone else gave a very discreet answer that probably averaged around three hours and I found this really concerning because people heard that question, how much time do I spend with God in an average week? And they obviously read the question and immediately thought of it in terms of their quiet time with God. And, look, quiet times with God are really valuable. Don't get me wrong, they're essential. But they are also a very narrow understanding of what it means to spend time with God. And this got me thinking about how we can so easily fill our lives with Christian stuff without actually spending time with God, without actually living our lives with him, which is of course the very thing that he wants most. We can so easily assume that of course if we're Christian, well, of course, we're living with God. But that doesn't just automatically follow. 

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[00:04:16] And this became really clear to me recently when I was reflecting on the great theologian, Taylor Swift. And Travis, of course, he gets some credit as well. Finally, something good came out of all the articles that I can't get to stop popping up on my phone every morning. And so I actually felt I had received some understanding on this topic by thinking about the phenomenon of Swifties. Now, I don't know a lot about this phenomenon. My goddaughters are Swifties, so I know a little bit, but it got me thinking about different ways of relating to someone, of relating to a person. If you're a Swiftie, you think a lot about Taylor Swift. And you also do a lot for her. You join all the apps, you vote on everything, you spread the word. You also feel a lot toward Taylor Swift, right? An extraordinary amount. You think a lot about her, you do a lot for her, you feel a a lot in her direction. But what about being? How much time do you actually get to spend with Taylor in an average week? Well for your average Swifty, I'm going to say no hours. 

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[00:05:31] It's a silly example, but it's a really serious point. Because in a similar way many Christians or people who go by the name Christian I think actually spend very little time with God. Many Christians live as fans of Jesus rather than actually living with him. And somebody might object here, they might just say, but what do you mean? I think about God all the time. I do things for God all time. I feel strongly toward God. And again, all of those are good things. And different churches emphasize those things, right? You have some churches that are really strong on doctrine, really strong on how they think about God. Others really strong on service and social justice, what we do for God. Others have this really passionate worship and we have these strong emotions that we express towards God. These can all be good things and they can all be ways of living with God. But here's the thing, it's also perfectly possible for all of that to be true and yet to spend very little time with Jesus. And this, I believe, is where the Biblical theme of abiding is so important because it invites us to completely reframe the question of this episode, to completely reframe our thinking about what it means to live with Christ. 

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[00:06:54] John 15: Abide in me as I also abide in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain, that's what abide means, it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. And so abiding is this invitation to spend all of your time with God, to remain with him, even in the middle of the most intense board meeting or the most intense day at home caring for multiple children. Even in those moments to be consistently aware of his presence in conversation with him, actively relying on him, listening to him, telling him you love him, experiencing him, delighting in you, walking side by side with him through all of life. We are not intended to spend less time with Jesus than the apostles. And sometimes we have that mindset, lamenting that we can't be together with him like they were, so we'll just settle for a daily quiet time. But the Bible actually says the opposite. We now have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, and therefore it's fully possible to be communing with God in a deep way no matter where you are or what you are doing. 

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[00:08:23] And this is not just another thing to put on our spiritual to-do list. Don't hear it that way. Abiding is not about doing more. It's about paying more attention to the one you are all of life with. Jesus is our model here, constantly attentive to his Father. Living together with him even in and especially in the hardest and most intense moments of his life. Those are the moments when he needed to abide more not less and this has become so important for me personally I mean concretely what does this look like for me? Part of what this looks like is I've just gotten into the habit of just expressing my love to God regularly. In the middle of the day if I'm driving whatever it is, I just say I love you. When my sons say I love you to me, there's just no better part of the day. It delights me, and I just think, wow, I can delight God. What a gift, I could delight God through something so simple by just telling him I love him. I have a specific song that I love to sing to God, and he's the only person I sing for because I don't have a very good voice, but I just sing to him in random times of the days. I love turning my face to the sun and there's something about feeling the warmth of the sun on my face. Whenever it hits me I just have this deep sense of God shining his face down upon me and just a sense of his approval, a sense of being his child. 

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[00:09:53] I realized over time in my Christian life that that physicality is very important to relationships for me. I come from an Italian American family where there's a lot of back slapping and hugging and I kiss my brother on the cheek when I see him just to greet him. And for a while I felt like my spiritual life was actually really devoid of any kind of physicality. But now these ways of turning my face to the sun, expressing my love to God and song, getting on my knees when I pray, all of these things are really significant for me and I just talk with God throughout the day. Especially sometimes when I'm watching other things unfold. I'm watching other people speak or act in a certain way and I just start to pray and I'd just say what are you doing here Lord? Help me to see it. Help me see it with your eyes. Not the eyes of the world. Give me courage. Show me the next step. We know we were not made to be a car returning to the gas station on empty once a week, right? So busy that you're constantly running on empty, stressed out of your mind that you are not actually going to make it to your next opportunity to fill up. You're just going to break down on the side of the road. That's how some of us feel spiritually. That is not what you were intended for. 

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[00:11:08] You are a branch that was made to always remain on the vine. And then as a natural result of that abiding, without trying to, but just abiding with God, then you would just naturally bear much fruit. Your heart and your life will look more and more like God intended it to look. A verse that I cling to as I seek to live this out is 1 Thessalonians 5, 16-18: Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. I find that so encouraging. We spent so much time fretting over what is God will for my life? I need to figure it out. I need think harder. I need to somehow strategize, uncover the secret of what God's will is for my life. The Bible tells us explicitly, it's to rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances. This is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. And every one of those things is really just a call to abide, it's just a called to remain with God, moment to moment, to live life with God. To rejoice always. Well, rejoice in who? Rejoice in Christ. To pray continually. To pray to who? To God. To give thanks to who? To God. In all circumstances, living life with God. We are branches called to remain in the vine. 

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[00:12:36] And many Christians, I'm really concerned, spend almost no time actually with God. They think a lot about him. They do a lot for him. They might even feel a lot toward him a couple of times a week at worship services, but they're not actually remaining with him through all of life. And that's what he longs for most. And that's the only way we can be truly nourished by him and truly bear fruit. So how many hours should I spend with God each week? It's not the right question. It actually reveals that we've already misconceived what it means to spend time with God. And likewise, and this is the second part of what I want to share with you, if I ask how many hours do you spend on church in an average week, I hope that question makes you just as uncomfortable as the question about how much time you spend with God in an average week. But my suspicion is, if I ask that question to the same group of Christian leaders that I asked the first question to, I bet that the answers would have been pretty similar. One hour, two hours, three or four hours, maybe, for the real Kinos. But again, it's a similar problem. The question itself should immediately strike us as problematic. And we can start to see why by asking another question. 

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[00:13:59] What is our ultimate calling? As human beings, what is our ultimate calling? What were we made for most fundamentally? Maybe go ahead and give an answer in your head. If I have that conversation with a group of Christians, I find that sometimes the initial answer might be salvation. It's a good answer. That's a component of what we're called to, but it's still not our ultimate calling. It's still on the way to something else. Somebody might then say, what about personal holiness? Personal holiness. We need to live a holy life that evidences the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Yes, absolutely true. Important, we are called to that, but that's still not our ultimate calling. That's still on the way to something else. This is a point that Kevin Kim made preaching at my church not that long ago, and I thought it was so significant. He said, "Our ultimate calling is to be the church." And once someone says it then it becomes obvious. You think, of course, well that's the whole history of the Old Testament. God pursuing a people for himself. And of course it hasn't changed. This continues into the New Testament. The church is established at Pentecost when they were all together in one place and all of the nations could hear one another in their own language in a united way. 

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[00:15:34] And this of course foreshadows eternity, which will not be a bunch of isolated souls interacting with God individually in their own little rooms. No, it's going to be a place of perfect community of the church being who the church was made to be. It's actually incredibly obvious, the answer to that question. Our ultimate calling is to be the church, but we can somehow miss this because in our individualistic culture, we so often read the Bible for what it says about me and my life and my challenges and how I'm going to through my day. And you know modern reading plans don't always help here. Write a little bit of this book, a little of that book, a little a bit of a psalm, so we can just find the nugget of wisdom out of context that applies to our individual lives. But sometimes it can even lean towards navel gazing. And in the process, we miss the obvious overarching story of God's plan to gather a people into community that he is going to live with for all eternity. 1st Peter 2: We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession. That's what he's after. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. That is what you were made for. That is the primary calling on your life. 

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[00:17:02] And all of the primary metaphors in scripture confirm this. We're called to be a family. A body, the body of Christ. A building, we are all stones of a building in Ephesians two with Jesus as the chief cornerstone. And you can't be any of those things on your own. You can't be a family just as an isolated individual. You can't be a body just by being a single body part. You need them working in unison. You can't be a building as a single stone. You need other stones. That's why it's not possible to live. Let me say that again. It is not possible to live the Christian life outside of Christian community. Because the community is not a means to an end. It's not a tool for our personal sanctification. It is the end. It is our ultimate calling to dwell with God in the community of the church for all eternity. And that's why there are 59 one anothers scattered all over the New Testament about the way we as believers are supposed to live together in unity. Love one another, honor one another submit to one another, bear with one another, carry one another's burdens. That's why we were created to live out the one another as the church and you cannot one another by yourself. You need others around you and close to you. 

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[00:18:25] Now some of us might say yeah, I get it. That's why I go to church. But as soon as we say that, our language is very telling. I've recently realized how strange so much of our language is around the church. "Where do you go to church? I'll see you at church. We're meeting at the church." All of this language would have been, I think, very foreign to the early church. Biblically, the church is not a building. It is the community. We don't go to church. We are the church. And it can be so easy to go to church without being the church, to go to church while completely missing God's vision for the church and so you hear people talk about church shopping. Man, I feel like I get punched in the stomach every time I hear that phrase. Bringing the same consumer mentality to the church that we're told to bring to everything else. There's just something so wrong with that phrase because the church is not an object, right? It is the people and you don't shop for people. Another question I hear often, what service are you going to? I was a Christian for about 20 years before I ever thought to ask. If I go to a church service, who's serving who? Where's the service? Why is it called a church's service? 

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[00:19:44] And if I follow the one who came not to be served but to serve, do I go to church services to be served or to serve? And when I attend church, there's another interesting word, do I attend in the more traditional sense of the term of being an attendant? Of attending to someone, attending to God and to others in a posture of service? Or do I just attend in a modern sense where as long as my backside hits the pew, that is sufficient for me to have attended, even if I didn't attend to anyone. I prefer some of the older language around church like when church gatherings were referred to as assemblies, as in an assembly line where each part needs to be functioning in unison to produce its intended end. Every specific component of the line, essential for it to be productive. And that's exactly the way the New Testament describes God's vision for the church. Every part essential. Every part working together in perfect unity. First Corinthians 12, 7: Now to each one the manifestation of the spirit is given for the common good. A couple verses later, but in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be in that assembly line. 

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[00:21:07] Two chapters later, after continuing with his instructions, Paul concludes, Therefore when you come together, each one of you has a hymn or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. Everything must be done by each person functioning in their specific way so that that church may be built. Or we turn to Ephesians 4, another beautiful passage about the church. But to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. And then further down, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head that is Christ. From him, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. It's the same vision. But in many churches today, easily 80 to 90% of the people don't understand themselves to have been given any particular gift for the body and don't see themselves as an essential part of the functioning of the body. We think that there's three to five essential leaders up front, and then the rest of us who can simply come and go and just attend, just get our backsides in the seat. I don't say that anywhere in scripture, and this is a really big deal. 

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[00:22:31] Eighty percent of our churches don't identify as having one or more gift for the corporate body, for the common good. Such that it's essential for that gift to be functioning and for them to serve the church in that way. The Bible says this is how the church is built. And so that is really problematic if that is not our experience. Now it is scary to accept God's vision for the church. I absolutely get that, okay? It's scary because it makes things harder and less convenient and less comfortable and a lot more messy. And sometimes it leads to significant hurt. I get that. I've experienced that. But as the body of Christ, we are called together to work together as a single functioning body with many parts, with each part being essential. And you when a body is just sitting on the couch binging on Netflix, you feel fine. You've got your popcorn and you don't notice the parts of your body that are misaligned, that are hurting, that needs some stretching, right? It's actually when you get up and begin to walk, when you begin to do something, when you begin to exercise, all of a sudden, you feel the misalignments. You feel the things that are off in your body. But counterintuitively, that's actually a step not away from health, but toward health. It's harder and it takes more effort, but it is the necessary step towards living in a healthy way and the same is true spiritually. 

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[00:24:08] When we stop just attending just sitting in our seats, but get up and begin to live with those around us, it is harder at first, but it is the first essential step towards spiritual health. You can very easily go to the same building for an hour every Sunday for years and years and years and watch a good show while fulfilling none of the one another's in scripture. But if that is your approach to church, you will never experience the fullness of the Christian life that you read about in the scriptures. One way to understand the entire story of the Bible is that God is seeking a people to inhabit. He's pursuing a dwelling place that he can then fill with his spirit. And so first it was the Tent of Meeting or the Tabernacle. And once it was constructed, once it was unified and complete, all the parts were in their place, then God filled it with his Spirit. And then there was the temple. And once the temple was designed and built to its specifications, and it was complete and unified, then God filled his temple. And what is the temple now? Ephesians 2: Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 

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[00:25:40] In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the lord. And in him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. Same story, same narrative. Now we are the stones being built together by Christ into his temple. And when we do that, when we live together as the church was called to live, then we become the temple of God and that's when God fills us. Yes, there is a sense in which we individually are temples of the Holy Spirit and the Holy spirit fills us individually, but the primary sense in scripture is this corporate sense in which we become the temple together as a community and then God fills it with his spirit. That's where we live out the one another's, where each part of the body functions together, living life together as God's people. And here's the tragedy. So many Christians are trying so hard to live the Christian life on their own and it's not working and they don't understand why isn't it working. I look to the scriptures; I read in the scriptures of this filling of the Holy Spirit and this incredible fruit of the Spirit that comes and I'm not experiencing it even though I'm trying so hard to lead the Christian Life. I'm thinking about God, I'm doing things for God, I'm feeling towards God. 

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[00:27:09] But they never experience the empowerment. And for many, this is why. Because biblically there is very little power in the Christian life lived outside of the church. You cannot be who God created you to be unless you are living life together with God's people. That is what you were made for. And so many Christians right now are living outside the church, so many not even attending church since COVID. I can't tell you how frequently I have that conversation. I used to go to this church and then COVID happened, and we started watching online, and now we just watch online once in a while. We're planning to get back into church at some point. We just haven't found the time. Man, if that is you, let this be the last week where you give that answer. It's not just like some extracurricular that you dropped. Church is the Christian life. It's not an add-on to the Christian life. It is the Christian life. It is what you were called to. You cannot live the life that Jesus made you for outside of the church. And then even those who do go to a church building on a Sunday, often they're not living within a community of believers in a way that reflects anything like what we see in Acts 2 or 1 Corinthians 12 or Ephesians 4 or the history of the early church. So don't go to church, be the church! 

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[00:28:31] Church is not a building that you visit; it is what you are, what you were made to be. It is your ultimate calling as a human being and a follower of Jesus. And so the question, how much time do I have for church already reveals that we don't understand what the church is. It's like asking how much time do I have to be Vince. Being Vince is not something I do. It's who I am. You cannot successfully live the Christian life outside of the church because the church is the Christian life. So please don't miss this because this is as fundamental of an identity question as there is. Biblically, we are called to a corporate life with individual implications, not to an individual life with corporate implications. I'll say that again. I heard that somewhere and I can't find exactly where, but I read it somewhere. We are called to a corporate life, a community life with individual implications, not to an individual life with corporate implications. When we think about our identity, it's so easy for us to think, me, I, how am I doing? What should I do next? What am I getting out of this? Is this good for me? Yeah, and then of course that has some implications for how I interact in community and I should be kind to people, etc. But it has to get completely reversed because everything in the world is going to push you to me. 

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[00:30:03] But that idea, I think, is so foreign to the Bible. It would have been so foreign to the ancient church. Of course, who I am first and foremost is a part of the body of Christ. I am, first and foremost, a community member, a church member. And then because this body is who I am, then that has some implications for how I walk around specifically day to day. It has to be a complete inversion. And when we decide on a church to join based on whether there's a dynamic preacher, or a certain type of preaching, or certain style of worship, or what the service time is, and if that's convenient, or whether they have a high quality youth and children's ministry for the kids, which is important, or a political leaning, like whatever, none of that is what God cares about most. What we should be looking for in a church is a group of people who have the courage to live together because that's what God is looking for. And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. 

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[00:31:19] So often I hear that verse from Hebrews 10 quoted and the focus is just don't give up meeting together. In other words, just go to church. Get your backside in the seat on a Sunday. But it's so much richer than that. Let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds. In the context of your meeting together, in the context of you being church, can you say in your community that you are spurring one another on towards loving good deeds? There are other people in your community who are doing more loving deeds, more good deeds. They are living differently because of the way you are spurring them on. You're close enough to them and living in intimate community to such an extent that that is true. And they are living in your life in such a way that you are more loving, that you're pursuing good deeds in a different way and you're encouraging one another. You're giving courage to one another. You are courageous because they're in your live. They are more courageous because you are in their life. 

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[00:32:15] And all the more, as you see the day approaching, is that increasing in your life. Not COVID hit and so I backed off of church. No, the day is approaching, so increasingly we are encouraging one another. We are spurring one another on towards love and good deeds. That's what it means to not give up meeting together. So my charge to you if this is not already true in your live, find people to be churched with. If you don't know who, pray for them. Pray tenaciously for that. Be completely uncompromising about that. It doesn't matter if they have your interests or if they're your type of people. And living with them, yes, will be hard and messy and inconvenient and uncomfortable, but you will be building and becoming the temple of God which God will then fill with his spirit and you will experience the fullness of the Christian life. And that is so worth it. If I can just leave you with one thing for now, do not settle for believing in God and going to church. If you think that is what the Christian life looks like, you have been deceived. 

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[00:33:23] The enemy is so happy for you to believe in God and go to church. He's so happy for you just believe in God and go church as long as he can keep you from living with God as the church. Because that is what God desires, and that is where all the power is. So live with God, and live with Gods people. That was what was on my heart for you this week. It sounds basic, but tragically, many people who go by the name of Christian are not doing either. Live with God and live God's people. Those are the two greatest callings on your life, and they are the most generous invitations that God is extending to you. And if you trust him with them, I promise you, he will fill you with his Spirit and you will know the peace and the joy and the deep satisfaction of living the life that you were made for. 

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