We are in between series right now. We are coming up on Easter, and then after Easter, we will start a series on the 12 steps which are not just for those recovering from drug or alcohol abuse. The 12 steps are a way of life. Theyre from the scripture, and theyre designed to help us break the patterns of sin and destruction in our lives. We did it years ago, and it has been by far the most used series weve ever done. So I encourage you to bring someone with you who will benefit from that. I was on a plane coming back from Arizona, reading a book called Courageous Leadership, a book Id been meaning to read for a while by Pastor Bill Hybels. He talked about spiritual pathways. He captured a concept or a teaching that Id understood, Id observed it, but never could quite capture it. So, what Im going to do is borrow that terminology and borrow some of the verbiage but add to it my own illustrations and my own thoughts. So I got the concept from the book and some of the verbiage from the book, but Im adding onto that some of my own illustrations and ideas. I want to share with you because I think what it will do for you is, Number 1: It will make you feel better about how God has made you, give you more of a freedom. Number 2: It will make you less judgmental of others who are not like you in these areas, more accepting of them. It will give us a freedom to be who God made us to be. Spiritual pathways. There are many spiritual pathways to experience God. Theres only one pathway to know God. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father accept through Me. I am the door that leads to heaven. God took on flesh and came to this earth, came to this earth, and told us what he was like-how we can approach him, how we can gain favor with him. Im not talking about many pathways to know God; Im talking about many pathways to experience God, once we know Him. Just like we have different gifts, different talents, different passions, different ways we give love, different ways we receive love, there are different ways that you and I connect with God. We tend to think we should all connect in one way. Everybody should love to go to Promise Keepers. Everybody should love to go to mens and womens seminars; thats not the case. Everybody should love to go by himself or herself and study the Bible somewhere in nature; thats not the case. Everybody should connect to God through praise and worship music; that doesnt happen. Everybody should connect through intellect and studying complex theological and philosophical questions; it doesnt happen that way. We all have different pathways that we experience God. Were going to share some of those pathways; see if you can identify your pathway. Youre going to see some, Oh, I can identify with a couple of these pathways, but there will be a prominent or dominant pathway, okay? I would encourage you to take notes because youve never heard a sermon like this before. Ive been a Christian for a long time, and Ive never heard a sermon on this topic. Ive never given a sermon on this topic. I thought it was great that Saturday night and the 8 AM service this morning, nobody had to take notes because they all knew what I was sharing with them. Im hoping thats not the case here, that Ill be teaching somebody something new today. The first pathway were going to talk about was introduced in our media, the pathway of Solitude. When Elijah was bombarded with the threats of Ahab and Jezebel and the context of all the people, when he was burned out, what did he do? He had to get away, he had to run, he had to leave. For some of us, the best way we recharge our batteries is to get away from people, be by ourselves and be alone with our God. Thats how we recharge. Thats how were wired; thats how we experience. One of the most peaceful experiences I ever had, ironically, was at the North Bridge in Lexington, Concord, where the Revolutionary War was started. The shot heard around the world was fired as Ralph Waldo Emerson called it. I lay there by that pond, and it was so relaxing and so peaceful, beautiful, golden leaves reflecting off the still pond. It was a fall day, we were on vacation, and I remember lying down thinking, I could stay here all day. I could stay here tomorrow too. I just remember we lingered there. The family wanted to go on, Lets continue our hike. I said, No, lets just stay. Lets just stay. Something about that solitude, something about that serenity, being able to talk to the Lord in that quietness was recharging my soul. I can identify with Henry David Thoreau in Walden Pond, not very far away from that spot. When he went through a hurt and pain and loss in his life, he then decided to go into nature. He decided to live in isolation. He built a little one-room cabin and wrote the book, Walden Pond. He says, I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. Its different for us, each one of us, to live deep. To live deep for you spiritually is different than to live deep for me. For some of us, its that solitude. Its the walk by ourselves, the time in our study when the kids go to bed. Its the time in the morning before everybody wakes up and before the phone starts ringing. Its going for a jog-that one Ive never understood. Im speaking from some of you whove said to me you have God-time when you jog. You pray when you jog. I cant relate to that one. All I pray when I jog is God, when will this be over? God, how much more can I take? My calves kill me; my lungs are dying. How long has it been? Five minutes! Oh! Please, Lord, rescue me. Come now, quickly, Lord Jesus! You solitude people, you resist. Lets go to Promise Keepers! Lets go to a mens retreat! Lets go to a womens retreat! Lets just fellowship all day long! and youre like, No, thats not going to recharge my batteries. Its going to drain me! If I go on a three-day retreat, Im going to need another three days of solitude to recharge my batteries from the three-day retreat. Im a solitude guy. Any other people, solitude people, out there? I love you!! Lets talk about the other folks, shall we? Lets talk about those Relational junkies. In Acts, Chapter 2:42-47, they talked about those believers who are recharged and energized and connect with God through relationships. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, and the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everything they did was together. Every day, verse 46, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Those of us who are relational, we read those verses, and we just start to drool. We say, Thats me! Everything we do has to be in community. When you serve, you want to serve in community; when you pray, you want to pray in community; when you study the Bible, you want to do it in community; when you eat, you want to eat in community; when you worship, you want to worship in community. Sometimes, youve wondered if youre not spiritual like some of the other folks because every time you sit down to read the Bible by yourself, your mind goes somewhere else. Every time you sit down to pray, your mind drifts to another place. But when youre in community, you can study the Bible for a long time. When you pray and there are other believers with you, you can pray and become engaged for a long time mentally because youre doing it in a community. When you serve in community, you get fired up. You watch the faith of others and the actions of some of the others, and it gets you excited and you stay in the game longer. But when you serve by yourself, you lose interest really fast. You think, Somethings wrong with me. To be really spiritual, youre almost monastic, right? You just like that solitude and quietness and alonetime. If I were really spiritual, I wouldnt always have to have other brothers and sisters with me all the time to connect with God. Id be able to do my God-time alone, like this brother or this sister. The truth of the matter is Gods made you relational. Dont feel bad about it-embrace it, lean in to it. Do what you do in community. Its okay. Thats how God made you to be; its how Gods made you connect. Go to camps and retreats and fellowship away! Thats awesome! Thats how you connect. Dont feel you have to be a spiritual monk to be mature. You dont. God has not made you like these solitude folks. Hes made you relational. Embrace that! Then there are those who literally feel more connection with God when they are in Creation. When they are out and about in Gods world, when theyre under a starry sky or when theyre by the water, when theyre by a garden or when theyre outside, they just come alive spiritually. They see God in Creation. One of the reasons I came to Christ, the dominant reason I prayed at age 17 to find out if God was real, was Creation. I wasnt buying what I was hearing at school, that I was an accident-that I had evolved over millions of years. I had a head to think too, and I started seeing design and the complexity of nature. I said, No way. Im not buying it. Ive got faith, but I dont have that much faith. You try to tell me all this came from nothing. I see the evidence of a God. I went to a park, and I got alone in creation, and I said, God, if Youre real, if You really exist and Im not sure He does, but if He really exists, please come into my life. Please change me. Please make me a new person. Im not happy with the person that I am. And I want to tell you something: from that day to this, my life has never been the same. God changed me. The scriptures opened up to me. I began to understand and be excited about what I was reading for the first time. I studied Biblical prophecy and became convinced that Christ was the fulfillment of those prophesies, and I gave my heart and life to Him. That was in 1978, before my 18th birthday. So, that was a pathway for me, creation. There is a slideshow I want to show you that is going to take us from 10 million light years away from our Galaxy, Milky Way, and its going to get closer frame by frame, 100,000 light years, 10,000 light years, 1,000 light years, in about a minute and 20 seconds. Then its going to take us to the Western Hemisphere, to Florida, to a city in Florida, to a tree in Florida, then to the top of the tree, then to a leaf on top of the tree, then into the leaf. Were going to see the vastness of God from the cosmos to the simplicity of a single cell. Lets watch. (Film shows exactly as Pastor Jeff described, frame by frame from 10 million light years all the way into the nucleus of the cell from the leaf.) How do you go from such vastness of the universe down to the most microscopic element of life to see that design and have that not bear witness to the Creator? Lets back up. Were still on creation. Lets turn in our Bibles to the Book of Psalms. It should not surprise us that we see God in creation because in the Book of Romans 1:19-20, it tells us that the glory of God is revealed in His creation and what can be known about God is eternal power to defy nature or clearly see what has been made. What thats called, if youre talking about philosophy, proving the existence of God, is the teleological argument. It says that when we see design, there must be a designer. When we see a law, or we see laws in nature, there cannot be laws without a lawgiver. In Psalms 104, the author of Psalms talks about this teleological argument, about seeing God in nature. Were not going to read the scripture in its entirety, but he begins by talking about the Heavens. He talks about what he observes. He starts talking about the laws of nature, the boundaries that were set in verse 9. And then he goes in to the ecosystem. He starts talking about how God uses grass for the cattle and then plants to cultivate to bring food and how everything works together, the balance of life, how God feeds the birds and provides for them. Pastor Jerry shared this week about a man who came to Christ from looking at a flock of geese. He said, in looking at the way the geese fly, There must be a God. And that led him to explore and investigate and eventually give his life to Christ. Psalms 104 talks about how God provides for even the fish of the sea, and then he looks at all of this-the heavens, on earth, and under the earth-and in verse 24, he says, How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom You made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Verse 33, I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my medication be pleasing to Him as I rejoice in the Lord. In other words, may God be as excited about me as I am about Him. What got this man so excited, so pumped up? What made him feel so energizing that he couldnt contain himself? Creation! Creation spoke of the greatness and the power of God. And just by observing His world and the laws of nature and the design of the world, the complexities of life, he said, God-you exist, and I celebrate you! Lets turn to the Intellectual argument, if you would please. In the Book of Acts 17:1 (pg 1097), Paul would relate through his intellect. It says, When they passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ, he said. How did he deal with those Greeks, those intellectuals? Paul was an intellectual. He proved, he reasoned, logic. With an intellectual, logic reigns supreme. Logic is it. Reason is it. They will never get excited. If somebody comes in, they come into the service, and theres a bunch of testimonies and its all warm, fuzzy stuff, that doesnt get him or her excited. Their connecting needle says uh-uh. But throw some theological questions their way, some deep philosophical kinds of thoughts, truth in the universe-all kinds of truth, and they get excited when theyre learning new things-when theyre engaging their lives; when the puzzle pieces start to fit, things start to make sense, they get excited about their faith. Theyre intellectuals. You know, sometimes we share Christ-this is important when it comes to Christ-because you want to share Christ according to the pathway of the person youre trying to reach. Notice that Paul didnt say, Lets hear his testimony instead. And then since I was knocked off my horse, I just never felt the same. Im so in love with God, and everythings changed. I just feel warm and fuzzy all over. I just know God loves me and my spirit. Thats not what Paul did to prove Christ existed to the intellectuals. Sometimes, if thats our pathway, our relational pathway, and we start sharing with an intellectual about mushy-gushy stories; and we wonder why theyre not crying and singing Kum By Ya with us; its because thats not how they connect with God. They need to engage their minds and challenge their minds. Try going to a person who is relational and tell them they have to isolate themselves and study. Thats not going to work. Find their pathway! How do they connect with God? If its a nature person, lets start there. Lets talk about nature a little bit. How did this world come into existence? How do we see design with our Designer? Deal with the pathway where theyre at. The intellectual gets excited by truth, all truth. I read an article in Discover Magazine about a woman named Dr. Schweitzer. Shes a doctor my age, 29 (congregation laughing), and she lives in… You think discover is funny? (congregation still laughing). She lives in North Carolina and Montana, and she goes to a church just like ours, a very committed believer. She is a biologist who converted to a paleontologist, so shes looking at these bones through a whole different set of glasses. She starts looking at these bones, not just as a paleontologist (minerals and all), she starts looking at it through the eyes of a biologist. She goes to Hell Creek, Montana, two years ago and starts gathering bones and thinking, They smell funny. She tells her boss, Those smell funny. He says, All the bones from Hell Creek smell like that. She says, No, no, no. They smell like the cadavers that I used to work on. So she takes these bones, and she begins to examine them. Do you know what she found traces of? Soft tissue. How does soft tissue exist on a bone 65 million years old? Thats a different story all together, isnt it? So she began to record these findings. The part I would recommend that you read out of that article, especially if you have any interest in dinosaurs, is where she started to repeat the process in different bones and was discovering all kinds of things. This is really going to change paleontology. Its a very revolutionary discovery. But if shes been a scientist I thought if you were going to become a scientist or believe in science, you would have to give up your Christianity because theyre incongruent. Not at all. Do you know what this woman as a biologist and a paleontologist says? She says, My God has gotten so much bigger since Ive been a scientist. He doesnt stay in my boxes. Through her intellect, through her knowledge of the world, God has gotten bigger to Dr. Schweitzer-not smaller-as she sees His greatness in the world around here. Lastly, lets turn to 2 Samuel, Chapter 6:14-16. Another way people connect is through the Arts. When we are expressing and creating, a person has a drawing or a canvas, and they begin to paint or they write a poem, they start to come alive inside. David was a man who connected with God through the arts. David was never more spiritually alive than when he was playing his harp, when he was writing music, singing music, or playing music. He wrote most of the Psalms, which were songs back in their day and still today, they are a big part of our music. Thats when he felt most alive. In fact, sometimes he would get so excited about God that he would dance. Dance is an expression-its one of the arts. He would dance before the Lord, something youll never see this pastor do (congregation laughing). Amen to that! Second Samuel, Chapter 6:14 (pg 301), David is returning the Ark of the Covenant. Theres music going on, people are singing, playing instruments, and David gets spiritually overwhelmed, and he starts to dance. David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the Lord with all his might… It didnt matter who was around him or who was watching. …while the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets. Now, somebody else is watching this whole scenario. It says, As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal-daughter of Saul-watched from a window. Thats his wife, and when she saw David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she was moved by his spirit, and she started to dance too. Uh-uh. She didnt like it. It says, And when she saw him dancing in front of the Lord, she despised him in her heart. She didnt like what he was doing. This is how God made David to be. She just thought that was improper. That was no way for a king to act. That was no way to be dignified, be a leader of Israel. If youre going to go around, expressing yourself like that like some idiot in the street…and she became very irritated. You know, sometimes we judge people in the Body of Christ because their gifts are different than ours. We can use the service on Sunday morning as an example. Sometimes we really get rolling in praise and worship, and those of you who relate to God through the arts, music is a thing that you get excited about. As far as youre concerned, we could have most of the service be music, and youd be happy. Just fill the whole service with music, and thats what gets you excited more than the Word. Theres never enough music for you. You just love music. You love to praise and worship through music, and you get excited about that. There are others of you who cant wait until its done, no matter how good it is, so we can to the important stuff. Lets get to the Word, right? You dont connect with God in that way. So if somebody is really connecting with God, and they lift their hands up and they worship, and a person around them looks at them and says, Look at that super-spiritual person! Who do they think they are? Look at them! Theyre pretending like nobodys around them, kind of like David dancing in the street. Dont they realize how silly they look? Dont they realize that this is Janesville? We dont do things like that in Janesville! Were proper here! They judge that person because the music makes them come alive in their spirit, and they connect to God. They think, They should just be like me, be an intellectual and be reserved or be excited about the sermon thats about to come instead of acting like that. A spiritual person might look around and say, Look at all these people who dont have their arms in the air. Theyre not connecting with God like I am. Theyre not as spiritual as me. If they were spiritual like me, their arms would be up in the air, and their eyes would be closed. Oh yeah! (how can I see them when my eyes are closed.) And they judge those around them because they dont express and connect in the same way. Hey, why dont you get excited about coming with me to mens retreats? I dont like mens retreats. Give me a Bible and let me go under a tree if you want to recharge my spiritual battery. Sometimes, Ive felt bad. People have judged me because Im not a retreat dude. Or the person who is a solitude person judges all the retreat people and says, You bunch of spiritual babies! You always have to have people with you! Why cant you be strong like me and do it yourself? We judge each other, and God says, You know what? Stop judging each other and accept each other. God has made each of you connect with Him differently. Rejoice in that! Watch what David does. He comes home, and hes all excited. Do you ever come home all excited, you had a good day, and your spouse is in a bad mood. I have! Ill know nothing about that in the 11 oclock service when my wife comes to sit down; but in this service, I can safely say it because you will not say a word. I trust you. I understand what this is like, and she does too. Back to 2 Samuel, 6:20, When David returned home to bless his household… Hello honey, Im home! …Michal, daughter of Saul, came out to meet him and said, in her sarcastic tone, How the kind of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would do! She is reading him the riot act. Youve embarrassed me! Youve embarrassed your kingdom! Youre not acting like a king, expressing in song and dance and music like that! You should be reserved and dignified like me! Whats Davids response? David said to his wife, Youre right. Im sorry honey. I will never dance again. I will not sing; I will not play instruments; I will not use the art that God has put in my life, but I will be a quite, reserved intellectual as you are, my dear, (sarcasm here) And thus, the Psalms were never written… No, this is what David says, It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father (ouch!) or anyone from His house when he appointed me ruler over the Lords people Israel-I will celebrate before the Lord. (Davids really saying) Im not going to stop being who God made me to be. I will become even more undignified than this… Honey, you havent seen anything yet! …and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. Theres a story of a guy who understood how he was made. You know what? I love you, but Im not going to stop being who God made me to be. I love the way God made me! Im going to celebrate God, and when I celebrate Him through the art, when I sing and dance, I feel His presence. So, sweetheart, I respectively disagree. Im going to get even funkier than this! You watch! Im going to get down again in the streets and boogie even more than this. You just watch and see. Sometimes you and I have allowed people to try to put us into their mold, and we think, Because I am not like that person, Im not somehow spiritual. Weve allowed others to judge us. Weve stopped being who we are in Christ. Be who you are! Walk the pathway God has given you to walk, In Jesus name. Lets stand together as we close: Father, I want thank to you for the fact that youve made us all differently, that each of us are a reflection of your image; that we would come to know our differences, know how youve made us. Let these palms (Palm Sunday) that we take home with us be a reminder of our spiritual pathway; to find, to walk in it, to celebrate, to allow others to celebrate and walk in the pathway that youve given them as well. In Jesus name we pray, Amen