©2002 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

6/30/02

Divine Love Blockers

6/30/02 Divine Love Blockers

We started something two weeks ago

that I think we are still not quite finished with

and we need at least one more week

before returning to our study of Romans.

For the past two weeks

we have been talking about discovering the goodness of God,

discovering that our God is truly GOOD.

If you haven’t been here the past few weeks

that may sound like a rather strange thing for me to say.

But if it does,

let me just say that,

even though most of us would never consciously question the goodness of God,

the truth is that we all begin our interaction with Him

with real questions about Him

and about His involvement in our lives.

We have all sorts of incorrect assumptions and beliefs about Him.

We’re not at all sure how He really feels about us personally

or about the way we’re handling our lives,

and we all have a number of things in our lives, tucked away out of sight,

that we’re pretty sure He wouldn’t be all that excited about

if we were to ask Him what He thought.

And then, to complicate things further,

we are continually bombarded

by the input of the religious world around us

that is forever linking our acceptance by God

with our performance for God.

Religion tells us that God loves and accepts good people,

nice people,

people who know and obey what He says,

and He rejects and condemns bad people.

And even though most of us try very hard

to convince ourselves and others

that we really are on that “good” list,

we know ourselves well enough to realize that God’s evaluation of us

may not exactly line up with our own.

And all of this can so easily go together in our minds

in a way that makes us uneasy,

unsettled in our relationship with God.

We know He’s there.

We know He has every right to ask and expect our submission to Him,

but we are not at all sure He is a God we want to have deeply involved in our lives.

As we’ve moved through this study the past few weeks

I have suggested that every one of us enter this world

having been given one calling above all others - the discovery of the absolute GOODNESS of God on a personal level.

Last week I offered you five suggestions

that can help us with that discovery.

1. Begin by being honest with Him

about your own doubts and fears of God.

2. Feed your mind on the truth.

3. Choose to trust what He says.

4. Run to Him with your disasters, not away.

5. Give thanks.

Five tools to help us

in our on-going discovery of the GOODness of our God.

But there is one other step I want us to take with this whole thing

before we set it aside for a while.

I want us to talk this morning

about some of those things

that have the power to blind us to the love of God in our lives.

The fact of God’s love for us

is the greatest single fact of our existence.

He truly does love us with an everlasting love.

But it is equally true

that many Christians live their entire lives

with an intellectual awareness of the love of God,

but with no practical, personal, living awareness of it at all.

It’s a little bit like what happened

in my relationship to food

for nearly a month earlier this year.

Some of you may remember

that there were several Sundays in May

when I nearly lost my voice.

It was the result of a really nasty virus that possessed my body for more than a month.

It attacked my sinuses,

my throat,

my ears,

and generally drained me of energy.

And one of the fascinating side-effects of the whole thing

was the almost total loss of my ability to taste food during the worst of it.

Food had texture,

but almost no taste whatsoever.

I would sit at the table,

and see all the wonderful dishes,

and hear those I was eating with comment on how wonderful their food was,

but when I put it in my mouth

it was little more than just a bit of texture.

There are times when the same thing happens in our relationship with the love of God.

There are certain viruses of the spirit

that have the ability to block our ability

to, well, as David put it, “... taste and see that the Lord is good...” PSA 34:8

There are three such viruses that came to mind immediately.

The first two will be familiar to those of you who have listened to me teach for any length of time,

and because they are familiar,

I’ll mention them,

just so that we keep our teaching organized,

but then we’ll spend most of our time on the third.

And, just so that there’s no misunderstanding here,

let me state clearly what we’ll be looking at.

These are not things that have the ability to stop God from loving us.

There is nothing that could stop Him from loving us.

He has already told us

that there is nothing we could ever do

that would cause Him to stop loving 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...

He loved us when we were at our absolute worst,

when every thought,

every action,

every impulse within us was utterly offensive to Him

because it all flowed from a heart that rejected Him as our God.

No, what we are going to look at with these three

are not things that cause God to stop loving us,

what we’re going to look at

are three things that have the ability

to make it impossible for us to sense that love in our spirit,

three things that make it impossible for us to enter into the reality of that love

until they are corrected in our lives.

OK, we’ll start with the two that will be most familiar.

1. And first on the list is religion.

Few things have the power to more effectively seal us off from the reality of God’s love

like man-made religious systems.

And we’ve been here often enough

so that you don’t need me to say a great deal about them.

You will recognize religion most of all

because, in one form or another,

it hands you a list of things you must do in order to make yourself acceptable to God.

The particulars on those lists

differ widely from religion to religion,

but the underlying message is always the same -

if you keep the things on the list God will “love” you and accept you,

if you don’t do the things on the list

then He will reject you.

Paul tells us that these religious lists

“COL 2:23 ... have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body...”,

but in reality they are powerless

to bring true change into our lives,

and rather than bringing us into the love of God,

they actually blind us to it.

And when we look at religion logically,

it’s no wonder it does so.

If we are successful at our religious efforts

and manage to keep the rules,

we still don’t feel loved by God in a way that brings healing to our spirits

because in our minds it isn’t really US He loves,

it’s our performance.

We delivered the goods,

and received the little trophy.

But next year,

if we don’t do as well,

we’ll receive only a scowl.

And if we don’t keep the list well enough, of course,

we have only a sense of rejection and condemnation from our God.

Religion is the first great enemy of the personal discovery of the love of God

because, by its very nature,

it establishes a foundation in our relationship with God

that rests upon our ability to perform,

and any relationship between God and man

that rests ultimately upon man’s ability to perform for God is destined to fail.

2. The second blocker to the awareness of God’s love that I would mention

will also be familiar to many of you.

It is wilful moral disobedience.

And here again, it isn’t that our moral disobedience stops God from loving us,

it’s that it blinds us to the reality of that love.

In fact, that is what all moral disobedience is -

it is the conscious rejection of the belief that God really does love us.

In order for the Christian to enter into moral disobedience

he must go through an inner process

in which he comes to the conclusion

that, when God gave us His moral commandments,

He gave them not to protect us from pain,

not to show us His love,

but rather to wall us off and deprive us

of the things we really need in order to meet our needs and be happy.

And once we accept that lie

it becomes impossible for us to hear the love of our God

until we once again return to trust in the love of God that motivated Him to give us the commandments in the first place.

Do you remember that fishing lake illustration?

The fisherman is walking along through the woods with His Lord

on an incredible Alaskan afternoon.

He comes around a bend in the trail

and finds a fence along side the path.

On the other side of the fence

he can see what appears to be

the most perfect fishing lake in the world.

Then he hears His Lord saying,

“My son, I know how it looks from here.

But I want you to know all is not as it appears.

I built this fence here to protect you.

Trust Me.

What you really long for is not there.

Follow Me and I’ll take you where you really want to be.”

But there are times in our lives

when we climb the fence anyway,

times when we are certain

that fence is really the great barrier between us and what we need most of all.

And when we do,

when we climb over the fence

and start heading out toward our goal,

by the very nature of the act,

we seal off our spirit to the love of our God.

That kind of rebellion takes a tremendous about of energy and concentration on the goal we’re after,

making it impossible for us to hear the voice of our King.

And it isn’t until the ground gives way,

and we suddenly find ourselves sinking up to our neck in muck and mire

that we once again reach out to Him.

Religion and moral rebellion...

the first two blockers of the love of God.

But there is a third one as well,

and it is this one most of all

that prompted me to extend this series one more week.

3. The third hindrance to receiving the love of our Lord that I want to share with you,

the third thing that has the ability

to make it impossible for us to hear His love,

is choosing to live with an unforgiving heart towards someone who has hurt us,

or wronged us,

or abused us,

or cheated us,

or in any other way failed to treat us with love, or dignity, or respect.

The 3^rd blocker of God’s love

is our refusing to forgive someone who has hurt us.

Every one of us have been wronged by another person at some time.

Every one of us have been hurt by another person.

The more significant the person is or was in our lives,

the more painful the hurt is.

Sometimes the hurts against us were unintentional,

but the most painful ones

are those that grew out of the other person’s wilful,

selfish,

and uncontrolled sin nature.

If we chose to this morning,

and if we felt sufficiently free and safe to do so,

I could open up our microphones to anyone who has been deeply hurt

by a significant person in their life,

and the line at the mics would go out the door.

And in the process

we would hear people talk about their parents,

about their brothers or sisters,

about their husband or wife,

about their son or daughter,

about a teacher,

or a preacher,

or a business partner,

or employer,

or a very close friend.

We would hear about abuse,

or dishonesty,

or neglect,

or unfaithfulness,

or spitefulness,

or indifference,

or extreme selfishness,

or nastiness,

or cruelty.

Being injured by another person

is an absolutely universal human experience.

And understanding how to handle that injury

in a way that allows us

not just to recover from the pain,

but to actually grow through it

is essential knowledge for every believer.

And I bring this up for us today

because of what happens within us

if we fail to handle these injuries correctly in our own lives.

Simply stated,

if we fail to forgive those who have sinned against us

it makes it impossible for us to hear

and experience God’s forgiveness for us.

It makes it impossible for us to experience the reality of His love in our lives.

Now, when our Lord talks with us about this whole area

He addresses it from both the negative and the positive.

He talks with us about what not to do,

and He talks with us about what we are suppose to do.

The negative perspective is found in Hebrews 12:15 where the author says,

“ See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;...”

He tells us that,

if we fail to forgive those who have sinned against us,

it will turn to bitterness within us.

But it’s fascinating to see the way in which he describes the power of bitterness in our lives.

He creates a visual image for us

in which bitterness becomes a living thing within us,

a hideous growth or cancer

that takes root within us,

and then begins to grow and grow until it springs up,

breaking into the light,

becoming clearly visible,

with the power to defile

not just our own lives,

but the lives of many others as well.

Rather than our lives spreading the sweet fragrance of the life of Christ

to those we come in contact with,

the person infected with bitterness

carries with them the foul stench of rottenness and death.

And our Lord warns us

to be on guard against the power of bitterness within us.

And then He also addresses the same issue from the positive side.

In both Ephesians and Colossians

He calls us to forgive those who have sinned against us.

EPH 4:32 Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.

COL 3:13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.

In fact He tells us

that, because we have freely received forgiveness from God for our offenses against Him,

we are called to freely forgive those

who have sinned against us.

And just so that we understand what He’s saying to us here,

let me offer a few comments

both about what true forgiveness is,

and what it is not.

First, what it is.

True forgiveness is, at its heart,

a choice,

or rather an ongoing series of choices we make about the other person.

1. First of all, it is very simply, a conscious choice on our part to forgive the one who has injured us.

And in that choice

we are choosing to let go of what we believe is our right for revenge,

or for restitution,

or even for an admission of guilt from them.

2. To forgive is to choose to stop blaming them for our problems,

and start thanking God for His ability

to bring true good into our lives

out of the evil they committed against us.

And, folks, that is exactly what He does

when we will let go of our blame

and place the injury into His hands.

ROM 8:28 ¶ And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

3. To forgive is to choose to end the battle between ourselves and the one who hurt us.

We choose to stop fighting against them,

to stop seeking their destruction,

to stop seeking our victory over them.

4. To forgive is to choose to confess to God our own sin -

to confess our own hatred and bitterness,

accepting it as the sin it is,

and recognizing that in God’s eyes

our sin of bitterness is every bit as evil as the offense the other person committed against us.

5. To forgive is to choose to pray for the one who has injured us, not against them.

6. And to forgive is to stay actively on guard against the bitterness

that will seek to continue to take root within us again.

And then, what forgiveness is not.

1. It is not denying the offense.

It is not pretending that evil is good.

To forgive does not mean

we try to pretend that the other person’s actions against us didn’t matter,

or weren’t evil,

or didn’t cause us very real pain.

2. To forgive does not mean that we then feel warm fuzzies toward the one who wronged us.

3. To forgive does not mean we suddenly

or perhaps ever again enjoy spending time with the one who injured us.

Sometimes God brings about that kind of healing in a relationship,

but sometimes He does not.

4. To forgive does not mean that we choose to trust the one we have forgiven.

The truth is,

we may choose to forgive a person

and yet still know they are unsafe.

5. To forgive another person

does not mean we then allow them

to injure or abuse us further.

If we are able to establish boundaries

that prevent the injury from continuing

we do so,

both for our sakes and for theirs.

It is never an act of kindness

to allow another person to sin against us if we can prevent it.

The key here, however,

is that we seek boundaries between us and them only as needed to protect us,

never as an attempt to get back at them.

At its heart,

to forgive is to choose to end the warfare within our heart,

to lay down our emotional weapons of aggression against the other person.

And let me just say here, too,

that it is not at all uncommon

for us to find we are still fighting battles

with people who are no longer actively in our lives,

perhaps people who are no longer even alive.

Our God calls us to forgive

most of all because of the devastation the lack of forgiveness brings into our own lives.

If unattended

it has the ability to blind us completely

to God’s love for us,

to make it impossible for us to hear His voice,

or to taste and see that He is truly good.