©2002 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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6/23/02 |
Learning To Love The King |
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6/23/02 Learning To Love The King
As I thought about our time together last week
it occurred to me that I may have left that teaching unfinished.
If you were here
you will remember that we did sort of a Father’s Day thing.
We talked about the way in which
our Lord seeks to father the world through the Body of Christ.
We talked about the way in which each of us automatically reaches out to our human fathers
for validation,
and through that validation
for confirmation of our own value.
But then we also saw that the validation of our human fathers,
even if it is given clearly and repeatedly,
in itself is incapable of bringing us the peace with ourselves that our spirits long for.
Until our spirits have found peace with God
no human voices,
even the voices of our human fathers,
can give us the peace we hunger for.
And I’m not just talking here
about whether or not we have chosen to trust the death of Christ
as payment for our sins.
I’m talking about whether we
have chosen to rest in the goodness of God,
about whether we have fought our way through to the point
where we have come to understand and accept
that God is, indeed, absolutely and profoundly and eternally NICE,
that He is not just trustworthy
but utterly worthy of our trust.
Until that battle for the discovery of the goodness of God is resolved in our lives,
no human father
or father substitute
can ever give us peace with ourselves.
But, once that battle is resolved,
once we have accepted the genuine goodness of our God,
at that point God can bring into our lives
human voices that serve as spirit fathers for us,
voices that confirm for us the truth,
that we have great value,
and great dignity,
and great importance as unique creations of God.
And in the process
God uses those voices to bring tremendous healing into our lives.
OK, that’s were we were last week,
but as I thought about it afterwards
it occurred to me that it might be of value
for us to spend a little more time
talking about how we get to that discovery and personal acceptance of the goodness of God.
For the past few years now
I have seen the most fascinating shift
in my own thinking in this whole area.
I began both my own personal walk with God
and my own understanding of my role as a Bible Teacher
believing that the central theme,
the most important issue
was doing all that I could do to move both myself and those who listened to me
into greater and greater submission to the Lordship of Christ.
In the past,
if I would have been asked
what I saw as the central theme of God’s work among us on this earth,
I think I would have said it was His efforts to call us back to submission to Him
and trust in Him
through faith in Christ.
But more recently I have come to believe
that there is something far more important going on between us and our God,
something that He values far more
than just our submission to Him.
I believe what He is seeking most of all,
what He values most of all
is our discovery at the heart level
that He is absolutely GOOD,
and that His deepest longing is to be GOOD to us.
Every one of us here this morning
came into this room bringing with us
our concept of who God is.
We may have thought about it a great deal consciously,
or we may never have brought it to mind at the conscious level at all.
But, either way,
we have within us a highly refined concept of who we think God is
and how we think He responds and relates to us.
And that concept determines how we respond to everything He says,
and everything He does in our lives.
The problem, of course,
is that, with all of us,
there are places where our God-concept is deeply flawed,
and that flawed concept then causes us
to completely misunderstand
and misinterpret what He is doing at certain points in our lives.
Several weeks ago Sandee and I were driving along Beaver Loop Road.
If you know the road,
you know it has a lot of woods along most of it
with a number of turns
and narrow shoulders in some places.
We were whizzing along at the speed limit...
well, OK, maybe a little above the speed limit,
and as we came around one corner,
we suddenly came across a mother
with a toddler next to her on the shoulder.
The toddler was doing what toddlers do...
just wandering around looking at things,
completely unaware of even the possibility of danger anywhere.
And as we came around the corner
the little guy was right on the edge of the road.
As soon as the mom saw us coming
she immediately reached out,
grabbed her child
and yanked him back into safety.
Now, from the child’s point of view
I would guess his first response to mom’s iron grip
forcing him away from his little adventure
was one of irritation or anger.
He would very likely assume that mom
was either angry at him,
or in a very mean, irritable mood.
The truth is,
it would have been impossible for that mother
to love her child and not do what she did.
A number of years ago
I was working with a Junior High boy
who’d come out of an extremely abusive home situation.
I have a band saw,
and I was teaching the boy how to use it.
The saw was going so it was noisy,
and my young friend was cutting out a piece of wood,
focused intently on the line on the wood that the blade was suppose to follow.
What he didn’t realize,
and what I didn’t at first either,
was that he had griped the wood in such a way
that at one point one of his fingers was laying directly across the path of the blade.
But he was so focused on staying on the line with his cutting
that didn’t know he was about to cut off his own finger.
I was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder,
and when I finally realized he didn’t see what was happening
I suddenly reached around him, yanked his hands off of the wood,
and turned off the saw motor.
His first response was to assume that I was angry at him
because I thought he was doing a poor job of cutting the wood.
He was embarrassed,
and hurt,
and, I think, afraid that I had turned out to be just like the other men in his life -
mean, and demanding, and never satisfied with him or what he was doing.
But when he turned around,
and looked at me,
and saw the compassion in my eyes,
and I told him why I’d done what I’d done,
he suddenly wrapped his young arms around me
and buried his face in my chest.
Folks,
we are just like that toddler,
and just like my Jr. High friend
when it comes to our relationship with God.
We come to Him initially with all the wrong ideas.
We may have come from a deeply religious past,
with lots of church involvement,
and lots of Bible knowledge from our childhood.
We may have come from a past in which the name of God
was nothing more than a little bit of profanity with which to punctuate our sentences.
But prior to our personal entrance into the family of God
we all come with a deep distrust and suspicion of our Creator.
Most of us have invested huge amounts of effort
into trying to pretend that God either isn’t there,
or that He doesn’t matter,
or else simply hiding from Him behind any protective barrier we can find -
work,
good feelings,
co-dependent relationships,
achieving the good life,
addictive behaviors,
recovering from addictive behaviors,
hiding from the world around us,
impressing the world around us, and on and on.
We hide from Him
because we fear what He might do with us
if we ever truly submitted to His lordship in our lives,
and because we fear His disapproval, His condemnation
for all those times when we failed to cut exactly on the line,
or when we intentionally cut as far from it as we could.
If we had a difficult childhood
we may hide from God
because we assume He must be a lot like our human father,
only worse.
But most of all we hide from Him because we have always believed Him to be
the unseen but ever present enemy of our lives,
the One who must be controlled, confined at all costs.
And last week I mentioned
that, following our submission to Christ,
the next great step in our healing as human beings,
and the one upon which everything is built,
is our discovery of the goodness of God,
our growing discovery of His personal love for us
that is the motivation behind His every action towards us.
But how do we go about that?
In the terms of my illustration this morning,
how do we turn around
and see the compassion for us in His eyes,
and discover the freedom and the healing that can only come when we wrap our arms around Him
and bury our face in His chest?
Now, I know that in one sense
it is unwise for me to even suggest a question like this in a teaching situation
because it creates in you the belief
that there is some way I can teach you into a personal awareness of the love of God for you.
And I’ll tell you right now that I cannot.
I can tell you God loves you,
in fact God Himself can tell you He loves you...
in fact He’s already done so repeatedly -
JER 31:3... "I have loved you with an everlasting
love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness...”
JOH 3:16 ¶ "For God so loved the world, that He gave
His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have
eternal life.
but that knowledge alone
will not give us the living reality of that love.
You see,
it is not the giving of love that makes it a reality in our lives,
it is our receiving it that makes it a reality.
And receiving love never happens
without our being willing to risk
letting down our defenses enough
to let the one who loves us into our lives.
We are so desperate for His love,
and yet so afraid of it,
so afraid that what we will find when we find Him
is not acceptance,
but rather condemnation,
and rejection,
and disgust.
So how do we get there?
I’ll offer 5 suggestions that I believe can help.
1. The first is to encourage you to begin with an attitude of honesty before God.
Maybe it would help for me to put it in the form of a prayer.
“Lord, I hear this guy telling me that you love me.
I hear him telling me that everything you’ve ever said to me,
everything you’ve ever done in my life
or ever will do
is motivated by that love.
But the truth is,
I don’t feel loved by you at all.
I’m blinded to Your love by all sorts of things.
Please, God, give me eyes to see the truth.
Give me a heart that’s open to receiving what You’re really saying to me.”
In other words,
begin by admitting
that the God you are afraid of
is not the God who really exists.
He is not out to get you.
He is not a divine policeman.
He is not the principal.
He is not your dad.
He is not your boss.
He is not your brother.
He is not anything like any of them.
Here’s a little test to help you know
when you are seeing God correctly at some point in your life.
When you see Him correctly,
or when you see what He’s doing
and why He’s doing it correctly,
your spirit will hunger and thirst for what you see,
it will lunge out and eagerly embrace Him,
knowing He is what you long for more than anything else,
more than everything else.
Which means, of course,
that whenever we pull away from Him,
whenever we find that fear
or that doubt welling up within us
it is clear proof that we are not seeing Him or what He is doing correctly.
So, begin with honesty.
Begin by acknowledging that you have no idea who He is,
and your mind is filled with God-lies,
and you want to know the truth.
The greatest tool we’ll ever have here
is the record of the way people responded to God
when He disguised Himself in a human body
and lived on this earth.
What people saw
was so unlike what they expected
that, even after literally living with Him for several years
they still couldn’t believe it was true.
In one of His final conversations with His disciples,
just prior to His crucifixion,
one of His disciples put into words
what all of them had been wanting to say.
In effect the disciple said,
“OK, we know You. And because we know You, we love You.
You have loved us as no one else has ever loved us.
You have accepted us just as we are,
with all of our endless faults and failings.
You have always, only been on our side,
fighting for us,
for our healing,
for our victory,
for our future.
You we know.
But we’re still afraid of God.
So please, show us God.
Let us see God as you see Him.”
Now, those are my words,
but I believe they capture the heart of what was really going on.
And do you know how Jesus responded to him?
JOH 14:9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with
you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen
the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
Which means, of course,
that when we see God correctly
we will respond to Him
exactly the same way as the people around Jesus responded to Him.
They pushed,
and pulled,
and shoved,
and squirmed,
just to get near Him.
They went days without food
just to listen to Him teach.
So, when you find yourself
not responding to God
the way people responded to Jesus,
recognize that it is because the God you’re trying to respond to
is not the God who really exists,
and admit it,
and ask Him to show you the truth.
2. Then, from there,
feed your mind on the knowledge
that can help to reshape your twisted concepts of Him.
Listen to the words He’s spoken to you...
in the Psalms,
in the New Testament,
in the writings of others who have come to understand His love.
And look at His actions toward us.
ROM 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him
over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
ROM 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in
that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
EPH 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His
great love with which He loved us,
EPH 2:5 even when we were dead in our transgressions,
made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
EPH 2:6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him
in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
EPH 2:7 so that in the ages to come He might show the
surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
ROM 8:1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those
who are in Christ Jesus.
Feed your mind on the truth.
3. And then, my third suggestion,
choose to trust His words.
Few things have the power to build confidence in the love of our God
like choosing to trust what He says
and then seeing it transform our lives.
And let me just prepare you for the lie that will come.
When you seriously begin to consider
restructuring your life in some area
on the basis of what your God has said,
there will be a little...or maybe a huge voice within you that says,
“If you do that you’re needs will NEVER be met!!!”
That voice is the great lie
that stands between you and the discovery of the truth about your God.
4. And then,
be prepared for the catalysts - for the bandsaws in life.
I believe that, with all of us,
there are certain aspects of the love of God
that we cannot ever come to understand
until we see His love for us
and His compassion for us
in the midst of our own failure
and helplessness.
It is one thing for us to hear our God telling us about His love for us
when we are handling our lives pretty well,
and making mostly right choices along the way.
But it is a very different thing
to stand before Him
with blood gushing out all over
because of the stupid thing we’ve just done,
expecting His scowl,
expecting His judgement and condemnation,
and discover instead
that He cradles our wounds in His hands,
and bandages them for us,
and holds us close to Himself as He guides us through the healing process.
5. And then, finally, give thanks,
give thanks,
give thanks.
Give thanks for the incredible goodness in which God has chosen to immerse you.
If you break your toe,
thank Him that you did not break your ankle.
If you break your ankle,
thank Him that you did not shatter your knee.
If you shatter your knee,
thank Him that you still have life this day,
and that you can and will find Him adequate for whatever you face.
The act of giving thanks to God
is the way our spirit breathes.
It is that crucial act of the will
through which we affirm the truth
about the way things really are,
about the way our God really is.
Our God is absolutely and eternally good,
and He is more than adequate for us
for whatever we face in this life.
That is the truth about the way things are.
Every time we grumble,
every time we refuse to thank Him
we are living a lie,
because we are proclaiming the failure of our God.
Chronically negative people
are among the most profoundly ungodly people in our world
because their entire outlook on life
denies the most important truth there is about our God.
And then just one final comment before I close.
I know this will likely open up far more questions than it answers,
but I’ll say it anyway.
Whenever we get near the topic of the love of God for us,
it isn’t long before the question comes up
about how, if God really does love us,
He could allow so much evil to continue to exist in this world.
And in response to that I would simply say
that this world, as it currently exists,
is the only possible world He could create
in which true free will could exist
and yet in which we could also discover the heart of our God for us
and be able to enter into a true love relationship with Him.
The evil we hate so much,
all of it,
is the direct result of the rebellion of the human race against God.
He allows it
because He must allow it
in order to also allow us the freedom
to choose to return to Him.