©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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8/15/99
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All Your Needs Pt. 4
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Philippians 4:19
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8/15/99 All Your Needs Pt. 4
Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all
your needs according to His riches in glory
in Christ Jesus.
What does it mean for a person
to live in a Father/child relationship with God?
We come to Christ,
carrying our load of sin
and confusion
and fear
and failure,
and dump it all onto Christ,
accepting His offer
to take our brokenness
and give us His forgiveness,
His cleansing,
His righteousness in return.
2 Cor. 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin
to be sin on our behalf, so that we might
become the righteousness of God in Him.
And in that transition
a profound change takes place
in the nature of our relationship
with the God who created all that is.
With the barrier of our sin gone forever,
and all the wrath,
and all the judgement,
and all the penalty for our sins
having already been poured out on Christ,
and our account with God
now paid in full forever,
we enter into a remarkable new
eternal Father-child relationship with God.
We are not just one of a crowd.
We are not just a tiny speck in the mass of
humanity.
We become His special, treasured son or daughter,
someone about whom He thinks constantly,
and with whom He lives continually.
I know we sometimes feel as if we are all alone in
the world.
I know we sometimes wonder
if anyone knows
or cares what's happening inside us.
But I also know
we have no concept of what has really
happened
between us and our Creator
as a result of what He has done for us
through Christ.
He says it in words we can understand:
Heb. 13:5 ... He Himself has said, "I will
never desert you, nor will I ever forsake
you,"
In fact, if you want to know
how practical that promise is intended to be,
do you know the context in which
that promise is made to the Christian?
The first part of that verse in Heb. 13:5 says this:
Heb. 13:5 Make sure that your character is
free from the love of money, being content
with what you have; for He Himself has
said, "I will never desert you, nor will I
ever forsake you,"
and the very next statement is this:
Heb. 13:6 so that we confidently say, "The
Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.
What will man do to me?"
In context the author of Hebrews
is saying that the key ingredient
in breaking free from the love of money
is coming to grips with the reality
of God's promise to never desert us
and never forsake us.
In other words,
he is telling us that we can only begin to relate
correctly to money
when we first understand
that only God Himself
can offer us the kind of security
we long for in life,
the kind of security we think our possessions
can provide for us.
For the past several weeks
we have been in a study
of a single verse, Phil. 4:19.
The verse, as you know by now,
if you've been with us in this study, says:
Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all
your needs according to His riches in glory
in Christ Jesus.
And so far in this study
we haven't even gotten to the verse itself yet.
For the past several weeks
we have been looking at some baggage we bring
with us
as we approach this verse,
baggage that makes it difficult for us
to hear what God is really saying to us.
We have looked at 3 barriers to understanding so far:
#1. When we come to Christ
we bring with us a need framework
based upon our flesh-trained
mental and emotional operating
systems.
#2. We also bring with us
a basic distrust of God and His intentions
toward us.
and #3. We bring our fears
based upon all those areas
where we have seen other people fail us in
the past.
We begin our relationship with our God
firmly convinced
that what we want
and what we really need
is a Father God who will take from us
our twisted,
inaccurate,
often even self-destructive list of
needs
and stamp it "APPROVED!".
But the truth is
what our spirits really long for
is what we actually have through Christ -
a God who begins His commitment to us
to meet our needs
by leading us through the sometimes painful
process
of reshaping our understanding
of what we truly need for a fulfilling life,
prying our fingers off the lies,
and opening our hearts
to hunger and thirst for the truth.
Now let's jump back into this study
and look at a couple more problem areas
before we go on to look at what the verse is
actually saying.
#4. The fourth barrier to understanding
that occurred to me as I read Phil. 4:19
is the fact that every one of us
carry with us a list of what I like to call
our "non-negotiables".
These are certain aspects of our lives
that we consider to be
our inalterable bottom lines
in what we must have for happiness.
I don't know if this will help or not,
but I can give you a little test
that may be useful in recognizing
the "non-negotiables" in our lives.
If you find yourself thinking,
"I can trust God's leadership
just so long as He doesn't mess with this area
or this thing in my life..."
that is a non-negotiable.
Non-negotiables can be anything.
They can be a relationship
we are convinced we absolutely must have in
order to be happy.
They can be a relationship
we are convinced we absolutely
must get rid of in order to be happy.
They can be a life-style,
or a position we hold,
or any one of an endless variety of addictive
behaviors.
A non-negotiable can be some place we must live,
or some place we refuse to live.
The truth is,
any non-negotiable in our lives
has the power to blind us
to the reality of God's love.
I believe most of those non-negotiables
are not rooted in logic,
they are rooted in fear.
We cannot imagine how God could ever meet our
needs
if we let go of that non-negotiable.
Just the thought of Him dabbling with it
strikes terror within us.
Now we'll come back to this again
as we continue to move through this series,
but for now let me just say
that anything we cling to that tightly
will in the end become
a destructive, crushing weight in our
lives.
Not only will it not bring us
the richness and quality of life we long for,
but it will eventually poison the most
significant relationships in our lives.
It will poison our relationship with our God
because we are afraid to trust Him.
It will poison our relationship with ourselves
because we loose respect for ourselves.
It will poison our relationships with any other
person
who threatens or attacks our non-negotiable.
And in the end
it will poison our relationship
with the non-negotiable itself
because we have held it accountable
for making us happy,
a role it is powerless to fulfill.
#5. And then the last problem area I would mention
in our attempts to understand this statement in
Phil. 4:19
is the fact that when we come to Christ
we all bring with us
our external-based techniques
for establishing and maintaining
our self-identity.
And let me explain what I mean by that.
We are created beings.
As such, the only way we can ever
accurately and effectively understand
who we are,
and why we are here,
and why we have value
is through listening to our Creator
explain to us the answers to those questions.
However, every one of us enters this world
with a heart in rebellion against our God
which in turn makes us both unwilling
and unable to hear His voice.
The end result
is that every one of us is instantly plunged into
a frantic search
to find some other voices
that will answer those crucial questions
for us.
We almost never put the question into words,
but everyone of us enters into a desperate daily
search for the answer to the question, "Who am I?"
And we come up with all sorts of tools
with which to answer that question.
"I am what I do."
"I am where I live."
"I am what I drive."
"I am what you say about me."
Ex. This past summer my daughter, Joni,
has been living in Anchorage.
For the first time in my life
she has had her own place
and I have been a visitor in her home.
It has amazed me to notice
that I sometimes find it very hard
to just walk in and sit down and relax.
Instinctively I find myself looking around
for something to fix.
A leaky faucet,
a slow drain,
a problem with the car...
Part of it is simply a daddy desire to be helpful,
but part of it too, is the fact that I am what I do
and if I'm not doing something
I'm not always sure who I am.
And I bring this whole issue up
because much of our distorted perspective on
what we really need in life
grows out of all of these alternate voices we
have collected around us
to tell us who we are
and why we have value.
You see, the truth is, none of those voices
really know who we are,
and most of them don't even care.
And when we come to Christ,
and He assumes the responsibility
for meeting our needs,
one of the things He will do
is to begin replacing our dependence upon those
other voices around us
with His own voice.
He alone knows the truth
about who we really are.
He alone has the ability
to say to our spirits
what we desperately long to hear -
that we have an eternal value,
and tremendous dignity,
and a purpose and significance
that grows out of God's special,
personal, creative work within us.
We didn't just happen.
He made us,
first of all for Himself
because He likes us,
He enjoys being in our presence,
He delights is us,
and second for the special role He has for us
in this world.
And His voice alone
can tell us the truth about ourselves
in ways that begin to bring healing within us.
But this is not always an easy
or a painless transition for us.
And with all of us
there are some things we are clinging to in our
lives
that we are convinced we must have
because we are using them as a key
voice to tell us who we are,
things that actually interfere with our ability to
know the truth.
And sometimes God must silence the false voice,
or the inadequate voice,
before we are able to hear His voice.
We hear Paul saying,
Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all
your needs according to His riches in
glory in Christ Jesus.
In our minds we think of all those things
we are desperately clinging to
as tools with which we attempt to build our
self-identity.
I am what I do.
I need important
or impressive
or significant things to do
so that I can then feel good about myself.
I need other people around me
who will tell me how important I am.
I need victories
so that I can like myself.
I need to avoid defeat
so that I don't view myself as a failure.
I need to pray that our team will win,
our company will succeed,
our income will increase.
But the truth is
as long as we are looking around us
at what others are saying,
and using that as our foundation for self-identity
we have no foundation whatsoever.
And sometimes
when God, as our perfect Father,
begins to meet our needs,
when He begins to meet all our needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus,
He will reach into our lives
and silence some of those false voices.
In other words,
He will yank out a portion of the false
foundation on which
we have been attempting to build our lives,
knowing that only when the false voice is
removed
will we then be able to hear the truth.
And I do hope I am saying this
in a way that you can understand.
Sometimes what we need
more than anything else in the world is failure,
because only through failure
can we discover that God loves us
not for what we do,
not for what we produce,
not for what we bring to Him,
but simply because He loves us.
Did you know that you are infinitely more important
to God
than anything you'll ever do?
Who does God love more,
Who does He delight in more -
you
or Billy Graham?
If you think it's Billy Graham
then one of the greatest needs in your life right
now
is the need for you to hear the truth
about who you are
and why God loves you.
We are looking at a statement
in which Paul tells us that
God shall supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ
Jesus.
But we can't even begin to understand
what that verse is saying
until we first understand
how deeply flawed our own perceptions
are
of what we need for a truly fulfilling
life.
I tried this past week
to come up with some sort of mental image
of where I see us in this whole process.
I don't know if this will help,
but we'll give it a try.
We all start out this life
sort of like a group of children
all crammed into a huge orphanage.
We have our meals provided for us,
but no one to love us,
no one to tell us what our name is,
no one to tell us our family history,
or where we came from,
or who we are.
Each of us find our own techniques
for surviving in this orphanage.
Some of us are a little bigger,
or little stronger than the other children,
and we make ourselves feel important
by dominating them,
or by bullying them,
taking their toy away from them,
forcing them to do what we want.
Some of us are a little bit smarter than the other
children,
and we use our wits
to control the others
and use them for our own purposes.
Some of us survive
by hiding in the corners,
doing our best not to be seen,
surviving by becoming nothing
so that no one will bother us.
Some of us survive by frantically serving the other
children,
running here and there,
doing everything we can to please them so
they will like us
or so that they won't beat us up.
Some of us survive by becoming the clowns -
keeping the other children laughing
so they won't see the pain inside us.
Still others survive
by being a little bit prettier,
or a little bit better at the games.
But with everyone of us
everything we do is simply done
to fill the emptiness created within us
by the absence of a loving Papa
who could tell us who we really are.
When we come to Christ
its sort of like having our Father
walk into that orphanage
and stand there looking over that sea of
children,
until He sees us standing there, in the corner,
by ourselves.
When He sees us,
He calls us by name
and picks us up in His arms,
and tells us He has come to take us
home.
It is a grand reunion,
but when we leave that orphanage
we take with us
all those techniques we have been
clinging to for survival
during the years we were there.
If we were the bully,
always dominating the children,
we will continue to believe we must do the
same with the other children in our new home.
If we hid in the corner,
we will tend to continue to hide,
afraid to believe we are now truly safe,
and loved,
and valued by the Father.
And when our new Father
begins to meet our needs
in the new home He brings us into,
one of the things He will need to do
is to help free us
from all those destructive little techniques we
have been using
for our survival in the past.
And with each of us there will be times
when He asks us to let go of something
that we are absolutely certain
we must hang onto for our own
protection.
As long as we cling to our orphanage mentality,
we can never know
the security that comes
from a true Father/child relationship
with God.