Monday, May 26, 2014

Experiencing God: Returning To God

"Experiencing God:  Returning To God"
Matthew 15:17-18; 22:37; Proverbs 4:23


I've mentioned before how I had been watching the back episodes of the show, "Bones."  It's about an FBI agent named Booth, who is teamed with a forensic anthropologist, who Booth has nicknamed, "Bones," to solve crimes.

Bones is a pure scientist and takes nothing figuratively.  Thus there are some sometimes amusing miscommunications between the two.  Booth is this tough guy FBI agent, but who's passionate and, though emotional, doesn't like to talk about his emotions.  When he does, he talks about his heart as the seat of his feelings.  Bones constantly reminds him that there are no feelings in the heart.  It is merely a pumping organ that distributes blood around the body.  Without it, we would die.  She doesn't understand when Booth talks about the heart as the center of a person's feelings.

In the Hebrew language, there is barely a word for heart.  Yet the word, "heart" shows up repeatedly in the Old Testament.  If you were to translate the Hebrew word literally, you would come up with the English word, "bowels."  The ancient Hebrew people felt a person's feelings came from the deepest part of them, which, physically speaking, would be your guts, or bowels.

See, again, as I've said before, there is no literal translation of the Bible, because it just wouldn't be understandable to say, "Love the Lord your God with all your bowels..."  Even Bones wouldn't have gotten that one, or approved if she did.  She would give you a lecture about the gastrointestinal tract.

           If you want to do something fun, go to the greeting card section at Dillons, look at each of the "romantic" cards, and replace the word "heart" for "bowels."  Here's one I found:
In my bowels, are the memories we've made, that I know time will never fade. the whispered secrets in the dark, the way your touch can light a spark. In my bowels is all the love I have for you, for making all my dreams come true. I knew right from the start, you would always be... in my bowels. You're in my bowels forever and always.

That's what people who don't have a life get to do for fun.

But that's why I like the Message's way of putting this verse:  "Love the Lord your God with all your passion...".   It is interesting, isn't it, despite Bones' protestations, that humanity has been linking the seat of their emotions to an internal body part.

So, whether it's the heart or your guts or your bowels or even your bones--what ever internal organ you want to use--what we're describing is this intangible thing called passion.

Conventional wisdom favors passion.  “Follow your passion!” commencement speakers have been urging in the last couple of weeks. “Whatever you do, do with all your heart!”  Passion is the key to the good life, these advisors advise.  Pursue passion with a passion, and everything else will follow. As far as popular culture is concerned, there’s no doubt about it; passion is in, it’s hot, passion is what gives life meaning.  Passion, the current literature seems to be saying, is the secret sauce on the hamburger of life.

One area of your life you have to have passion about is God.  In fact, your relationship with The Lord has to be your top, all-consuming passion.  Certainly people may have a few passions.  But if you have prioritized your list of passions and God isn't at the top, you will not attain what you want your passions to get for you--happiness.

We assume that once we find our passions, it isn't the finding that gets us revved up.  It's that once we find our passion we will at last be happy.  That may be partly true, but I need to adjust your thinking a little.  There is a proper order your passions have to take in order for true and authentic happiness to be experienced.  As I said, your relationship with The Lord has to be your topmost passion.  If that is so, all other passions will then fit and find their proper place in your life, as well as bring the fulfillment and happiness you are really looking for.

All of your passions, no matter how important you think they may be, have to be subject to your top passion, which is your relationship with God.  If you don't have your passions thus correctly ordered, what you've done is create idol worship.  Your top passion, whatever it is, has become your idol.  And you probably know how God feels about idol worship.

It isn't that God is trying to eliminate all your other passions.  Or the passion you think you are trying to attain.  God just wants to make sure that your passions are topped by your passion for Him.  Then all the other passions, under God's preeminence, will make sense.  But the more you try and search for that which you are passionate about, without even considering God, and especially keeping God down the list, the more you will miss the secret sauce on your burger of life.

Let's look at the three Scriptures I've chosen this morning and how they relate to what I'm talking about concerning passion for God and our relationship with The Lord.

The first, I've already mentioned.  Matthew 22:37 says, in the Message translation, "Jesus said, 'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.'"  The first thing I'd call your attention to is the little word, "all."  There are two words in Greek for all.  One describes a limited all, such as, "All the people in this room."  The other all is a universal, all-inclusive all, which when you'd use it in the first example would be "All the people in the world--everyone."  The "all" in Jesus' statement is the second use of all.  He means ALL.  Not just a collection of your passion, or a portion of your passion.  All your passion.

One of the daily scriptures I read this week in my morning prayer time read:  "Let all (again this is that same all encompassing all) the details in your lives--words, actions, whatever--be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way" (Colossians 3:17, MSG).

That's the kind of passion God desires from us in our relationship with Him.  ALL!  Everything about who you are, everything about your actions, everything about what you say, coming out of your passion for God.  Brian Schwartz, author of the award-winning "50 Interviews" series once said, "A consuming passion is the last thing you think about before you go to bed at night and the first thing you think about when you wake up."  That's what God wants to be in your life.  That's what God wants your relationship with him to be--an all-consuming passion.

There's something that I need to point out about this ALL, in an all-consuming passion.  If we think about this in terms of math, we may get frustrated.  If we have ALL our passion here, and we subtract ALL our passion and give it to God, then that means there's no passion left over for anything or anyone else.  But God doesn't work according to our mathematics.

It's like saying to one of your children, "I love you with ALL my heart."  Well, does that mean you don't have any love left over for your spouse, or one of your other children?  No, because love, like passion, doesn't work that way.  Love and passion multiply when you give them away, rather than subtract.  If you give ALL your passion to God, God has a way of multiplying that, and transforming that passion, so that you have even more to spend on other things.  And, when you give ALL your passion primarily to God, God then transforms that so that anything else you give your passion to will be under the direction and for the service of God, and brought into the passionate relationship you have with God.

In the second verse from Matthew (15:17-18) Jesus is teaching.  He evidently was asked a question about what makes a person ritually unclean.  And the question had to do with food.  For the faithful Jew, they couldn't eat certain foods.  If they did, they would be considered ritually unclean.  They would have to do certain purification rites, then go to the priest at the temple and be proclaimed ritually clean.  Only then would you be allowed into the Temple to worship.

Jesus turned that around and said it wasn't what goes into a person's mouth (like certain kinds of foods) that makes a person unclean.  It's what comes out of the mouth.  Jesus said, "Don't you know that the food you put into your mouth goes into your stomach and then out of your body?  But the words that come out of your mouth come from your heart.  And they are what make you unfit to worship God." (Matthew 15:17-18)

I think part of what Jesus is saying is that our passions come from our heart (or bowels, or whatever), but that if our hearts aren't right, neither will our passions be right.  Our passions, if they come from an evil or misguided heart, will be similarly tainted.

John Maxwell, motivational speaker and author on leadership, describes passion as "fuel for the will." Passion, says Maxwell, turns "have-to’s into want-to’s."  He takes the position that if you want something badly enough, you will find the willpower to achieve it and you won't stop trying until you do.

I think Maxwell is right, but what he doesn't mention is that if our passion is, indeed, "the fuel for the will," then if our passions are skewed because our heart is skewed, then our will will be fueled by something destructive.  Our hearts have to be right.  And the only way to have our hearts right is to make sure that our whole hearts are God's.  That all of our heart, and thus all of our passions, are bound up in and by our relationship with God.  That way we know that anything that comes out of our heart and passions will fuel our willfulness for God's best.

And the final verse is Proverbs 4:23.  "Keep vigilant watch over your heart;  that's where life starts."  What ever you use to describe the seat of your passion, whether it be the heart, or the mind, or the spirit, or the guts, the thought that ties all that together is that what directs your life is an inside out process.  The most vital part of you is internal, and then all the externals are directed by the vitality of that inner you.

Life.  Vitality.  Passion.  All that begins inside you.  That's why, wherever that place is in you, it has to be God's.  If it's not God's, your life, your vitality, your passion is going to be messed up.  You have to give the heart of you over to God, and your relationship with God.  If you don't do that, you will be filled and directed by a sense of a lack of vitality and passion.  You will be on a constant search for passion, and it will always elude you, as long as you haven't given that over to God.

Life coach Jan Gordon describes passion as "the essence of commitment." She says, "Passion is that which deeply stirs us. It's the fire from within and that which motivates us. When passion is missing, our actions lack meaning and we don't get the results we want ... passion is the seed from which commitment blossoms!"

I would go one step further than what Jan Gordon states here.  The main reason our "passion is missing" and our "actions lack meaning" is because we haven't yet given over that heart of ourselves to our relationship with God.  What Gordon describes is what we gain when our heart is God's and not ours.

Filmmaker George Lucas said, “You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over hurdles, and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don’t have that kind of passion for what it is you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”  That "something" isn't your passion.  It's your relationship with God, that then gives you the passion and the strength to bust through the walls and hurdles that are in front of you.

If you've strayed from God and your relationship with God; if your relationship with God is not where it should be; if your heart is still looking for that passion that is an overcoming passion; then I'd like to say, "return to God."  Give God your whole heart, and let God set that fire of passion in your heart from which all life starts.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Experiencing God: God Accomplishes His Plan

"Experiencing God: God Accomplishes His Plan"
Isaiah 46:9-10

I am GOD, the only God you've had or ever will have--
incomparable, irreplaceable--
From the very beginning
telling you what the ending will be,
All along letting you in
on what is going to happen. (Isaiah 46:9-10)

How many of you read the last chapter of the book before you start reading at the beginning--or after you've read the first chapter or two?  One author (Diane Chamberlin) wrote in her blog about a real life incident that got her thinking.  She wrote,
But it made me think about writing fiction and how hard I work to “reveal all in good time”, to keep the suspense building until the end–and how it makes me crazy to hear from readers who tell me they read the ending first. I would never do this. I want to learn everything in the order the author chooses to tell me.

I wonder if it isn't the same with those who are so enamored with the book of Revelation in the Bible.  They read the last book of the Bible over and over, trying to figure out, in all the imagery of that book, how it's all going to end.  The problem with that, as the author of the blog quote I just read pointed out, is by concentrating so much on the ending, you miss all the good stuff that leads up to that ending.  You miss the present moment, and all the wonder of the present moment, and all the drama of the present moment, by concentrating on what you think will be the last moment.

And to get to that last moment, you have to go through a lot of present moments--moments that unfold with each tick of the second hand of the clock.

God has seemed to allowed for those of you who like to read the last chapter first.  As this statement God makes in the book of Isaiah, God has given us a clear idea about "what the ending will be."  But as you find out in the book of Revelation, it isn't a very clear glimpse.  God has played a trick on you last chapter types, by making that last chapter cryptic and mysterious and for the most part, undecipherable.  You get to read the last chapter, but God, the Author of the world's story, has written that last chapter so that you still have to hang in there, and read all the stuff between the beginning and end to understand the end.  You're going to have to live it, before you really get what the ending is all about.

The other thing is, with books, as well as the history of the world, you have to plan.  My daughter has written the first book of a three book series.  The first book isn't published yet, and if it does get published I'll let you know about it.  But in working on a three book series, she has to do a lot of planning.  She has to plan out the whole story, from beginning to end.  And she has to plan out each book, and what will happen in each book, to move the reader not only to the end of that individual book, but also to the end of the story that won't happen for three books.  That takes a lot of planning.

Same with God's story of the world.  God has a beginning of the world's story.  We've all hopefully read that in the book of Genesis.  That first part of the story has set up the drama that is woven in and through the whole rest of the story.  The creation of all that is.  How that creation went bad, misusing its God-given freedom of choice.  All the attempts God has made to help creation set things right.  And the final attempt by God to set the world right, not by judgement and coercion, but by grace and love through the Son.  God's story is being written by God to move along to that end, where God looks at creation again and is able to say with a certain finality, "It is all good."

But that takes a lot of planning on God's part.  In order to work a plan, you first have to have a plan.  Imagine how much planning it takes just to work on a novel, or a series of novels.  Now multiply that thousands of times to get a glimpse of how much planning God has to do as God moves this world toward God's desired end in the story God is writing about this world.  And with God, God's story isn't fiction.  It's a dramatic, biographical, non-fiction, involving billions of real people--real characters--who come and go throughout God's story.  So much planning.

There are a lot of elements involved in planning.  Two general elements of planning are called "analysis" and "synthesis."

In analysis, it's basically establishing your dots.  What are the dots you have to have taken care of to get to your desired goal.  This may be a more fluid and free flowing process than you think.  I'll talk about that in a minute when I describe the synthesis part of the planning process.  At this point you are just putting dots, or round circles on your page, and filling those round circles with all the things that have to happen or be taken care of in your planning.  It's the what, at this point of your planning, not the how.

I can't imagine all the circles that God must have on his "page" as God is planning what has to happen to get from the mess that is started in early Genesis, to the healing of the world that happens by the last chapters in the book of Revelation.  Imagine, on God's master plan paper, hundreds of millions, if not billions and billions of circles of things that have to happen, that God has to make plans for to heal the world from its brokenness.

What's even more phenomenal is not all those circles, but how they're connected.  That's the synthesis part of making plans.  Remember, analysis is creating the dots.  Synthesis is connecting all those dots.  We tend to think of events going on in a linear way--that is, a straight line.  This happens, then that happens, which then causes something else to happen.  Or, we do this, which leads to that, which leads to something else.

But more often, isn't it the case that we connect one dot to another, then to another, then to another, then we go back to one we were already connected to, then on to a new dot, then back, then to another dot, and a new one, and another new one, then back to one we already had connected, and on and on, like that.  Life, and connecting all the dots of our plans is more messy than a straight line.  Keeping it all organized, and at least in a steady direction is much more problematic than we first assumed.

Thus, making our plans, and seeing them through to the end, calls us to be flexible and adaptable.  So making our plans, and our hope to accomplish them, work better when we are less rigid and controlling.  Rigidity and the assumption that plans must work themselves out in a straight line fashion will only end up in our frustration and depression.

That's what amazes me about our God--how flexible and adaptable God is in working out God's plans with we human beings.  God makes God's plans happen in spite of us and because of us, and sometimes both of those at the same time.  Often, in making my own plans, I think I've got all the dots on the page, and start the process of connecting them.  Then I find out I left a few dots out that are necessary.  I've got to add them in, and then connect them in some how.  I marvel at the detailed mind of God who makes plans for the world and each individual life, and forgets no dots.  None get left out.
  In order for analysis and synthesis to happen--when God is creating the dots and then connecting the dots--God can't do that unless God knows what God wants to accomplish.  In God's plan--in all of our planning--we need to know where we're going with all these plans and what we hope to accomplish.  Some call this forecasting.  Forecasting is predicting what the future will look like.

You aren't going to make a plan if you don't know where you are going in that plan.  All of the Financial Peace teachings that Ted and M'Kala teach have a very certain goal in mind.  It's not just about reducing your debt.  If you think Financial Peace is just about eliminating your debt, you've missed the point.  It's about making money.  But you are making money so you can give it away.  Make all you can so you can give all you can.  Using your wealth to advance God's kingdom on earth.  That's the vision.  That's the end.

So in your planning, you have to start with where you want to end up.  Start with the end in mind.  And then in your planning, you work backwards from that place of final accomplishment.  God wants to restore the world and restore humanity to a place that God first intended.  That didn't happen as God had hoped.  So God pulled together a vision in the immensity of God's mind, and came up with a new world with people who are redeemed and restored in that new world.  That is God's end.  Everything that is happening in the world is happening so that end can be reality.   What do you hope to accomplish?  That question has to be a big part of your planning.

The hard part of planning is making the tough choices.  Once you have the end in mind, and you start planning backwards from that end, creating all the dots--the details of the plan--and then connecting the dots, you have to make some tough choices.

Probably one of the toughest choices you'll make in your planning is asking what are you willing to sacrifice to make your plan happen--to reach your desired end?  For example, if your desired end is to have the happiest, closest family, then you can't work 70 or 80 hours a week.  You'll have to sacrifice that, because closeness happens by spending time together.

Warren Buffett is great at making money.  He has a passion for making money.  He's working on money making almost every waking hour of his life.  That's his end--make as much money as he can.  But he made some choices that we might call tragic.  He ended up estranging his wife.  They remain married, but she lives out in California with some other man.  He lives with a mistress.  I'm not sure about any kids, and what their relationship is like with their father.  But Buffett made his choices to reach his desired end, and it cost him.

For God, there has been one major cost.  In order that God's plan towards God's desired end was going to happen, God had to make the toughest choice anyone could make.  God had to make a huge sacrifice in order to make that plan work.  God had to sacrifice himself in Jesus Christ.  We believe that Jesus was God in the flesh.  So it wasn't just Jesus dying on the Cross.  It was God in self-sacrifice.  God had to make it appear that evil had finally overpowered God, when God allowed himself to experience death in self-sacrifice.  What a huge choice to make in making sure God's plan for the world would become reality.

In your own planning, you will have to make some tough decisions about what you must give up in order to attain your end in mind.


These are just a few of the elements in planning.  You have to start with the end in mind, and work backwards in your planning to reach that end.  As you work backwards, you have to see all the dots that need to happen, and connect them in some fashion so you are always moving forward towards your end.  And you have to make some choices, some of which will be sacrificial choices, if you are going to make it where you want to go.

And we are part of God's plan, moving towards a new heaven and new earth, populated by redeemed and reclaimed people.  As we think about that, may we see where we fit in God's plan, and play out our part to move God's plan one step closer to the new Kingdom of God.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Experiencing God: Joining God Requires Obedience

"Experiencing God:  Joining God Requires Obedience"
Matthew 21:23-32

I hated chores when I was growing up.  Being second oldest, a lot of the chores fell to my older brother and me.  I especially hated the outdoor chores.

Like mowing.  Our father taught my older brother and I to walk by mowing the lawn.  He would duct tape our hands to the handle of the mower giving us something to hang on to and balance ourselves while we attempted to walk back and forth across the yard being pulled along by this smoke belching behemoth.  And it was a big yard.  He'd sit on the front porch, watching every now and then to make sure we hadn't fallen down and let the mower get away from us.

Later, he got the hair-brained idea that it would be better to get a manual push mower.  You know, the kind with no motor.  My older brother and I would find some way to disappear on Saturday mornings before our father woke up and ordered us to push the manual push mower back and forth across our immense back yard.

At least I thought it was immense, until I took Ryan and Kristin there, when they were younger, to show them where I grew up.  I had told them stories about this huge back yard, and when I took them there, magically the backyard had shrunk to about a fourth the size I remembered it to be.

The other outdoor chore I hated was weeding.  Our house was built on a hillside, so we had this huge retaining wall in the front made of big rocks.  We called it "the rockery."  Digging weeds out from the crevices between the rocks was sheer torture.  The only time it was fun to weed the rockery was when my older brother made some homemade firecrackers with his chemistry set, and we blew the weeds out.  My youngest brother, when he was finally old enough to do outside chores, picked up quickly on the same method of weeding.

At the top of the rockery, along our long driveway, my mother had a rose garden.  The most dreaded words to be heard in our house, besides, "Go out and mow the backyard," were, "Go weed the rose garden and the rockery."  Because of all the rain in Seattle, weeds grew prolifically.  Which meant that once all the weeds were pulled, within another week, new ones were starting to grow, and they would laugh at us.

My older brother and I got out of these chores several times because of a little phrase we were sure our mother and father really meant to add to their orders.  That little phrase was, "...by the end of the day."  Certainly when we were told to go weed or mow, they didn't mean "now."  So we figured we had the whole day to goof off.  We would get the work done, sort of, "by the end of the day."

So, kids and parents alike should be able to relate to the story part of the parable Jesus told.  Even though Jesus had no children, he certainly had an astute awareness of the ways of children and chores.  And it's nice to know things evidently haven't changed much with kids and parents and doing chores.

So let's look at this parable.

The parable starts out describing a man.  The man has two sons.  We aren't told any more about the man other than the fact that he had two sons.  That's because the parable is about the sons, not the father.

The first son is an Eddie Haskell type.  You remember Eddie Haskell from the "Leave It To Beaver" TV show.  Eddie would come into the Cleaver home and start his schmooze routine:  "Hello Mr. Cleaver, Hello Mrs. Cleaver; you are looking very nice Mrs. Cleaver..."  Eddie was an apple-polisher.  That's how he got through life, telling people what they wanted to hear in order to get by.  So this first son, let's call him Eddie, after being asked to go work in the family vineyard, gives the schmoozy answer:  "Well, yes sir, I'd be happy to go work in the vineyard, sir."  But then doesn't do a thing to lift a finger in that direction.  And he probably had no intention of doing so.

The second kid was the brutally honest kind.  Like Jim Carey's character in the movie, "Liar, Liar."  Carey plays Fletcher Reed, an incredibly successful lawyer who has built that success by habitually lying in the courtroom.  And also lying to his divorced wife and their son.

At one point in the movie, his son makes a birthday wish while blowing out his candles, that his father will never lie again.  And the wish comes true.  Fletcher can't lie anymore, and becomes brutally honest.  At one point he walks into his office.  The receptionist has her hair in mini pig tails all over the top of her head, and she's wearing an awful houndstooth dress combo.  She says, "Hello Mr. Fletcher, do you you like my new dress?"
Fletcher replies, "Anything to distract from your face!"

That's the kind of person the second son is.  Let's call him Fletcher.  When asked to go work in the vineyard by his father, Fletcher, in effect says, "No way, old man; I've got better things to do, like play video games or chat with my friends on Facebook."  But then Fletcher obeys, and goes and works as he's asked.

Note that the father had to ask both sons to go work.  Neither of them volunteered to go work in the vineyard.  Neither saw that it was just the course of the day to go out and work in the family business.  "Who did what the father asked?" is the question asked.  But this question is not part of the parable.  It's asked by Jesus of the chief priests and elders, who were the listeners.

Being obedient to God is not determined by the first response to the father's bidding.  Saying "yes" but doing nothing is not what the father, or Jesus, is looking for in terms of obeying.  Saying "no," initially, and being disobedient, but then relenting and following through, seems allowable.  And the reason seems to be that we show our commitment and obedience by doing, not just by assent or denial.

The whole parable turns on one little phrase.  It comes up twice.  It is the word "repent."  Other translations use the phrase, "changed his mind."  The word usually means, when you're going in one direction, you decide it's the wrong direction, and you make a complete U-turn, and head in the opposite direction.

But the way Jesus is using this word, there is a different meaning:  it means to feel regret, or to experience remorse.  A person changes their mind, and decided to act obediently, because their regret acts as a motivator to make some changes.

Bobby was staying with his Aunt Mary.  He said, "Aunt Mary, I love the way you make pancakes.  Could you make me some, and can I have as many as I want?"

So his Aunt went to work and started piling the pancakes on Bobby's plate as fast as he could eat them.  After a dozen or so, he started to slow down.  Then with a sick look on his face, he stopped eating completely.  "What's wrong?" Aunt Mary asked.  "Don't you want any more pancakes?"
Bobby replied, "No, I don't want anymore.  I don't even want the ones I've already had."

That uncomfortable feeling of regret and remorse can be a powerful motivator for change.  Especially when that change is moving a person to become more obedient.

Rudolph Hess, the awful henchman of Adolph Hitler, in his last public statement at the Nuremburg trials, said:
I was allowed for many years of my life to work under the greatest son that my people produced in their 1,000 year history.  Even if I could I would not want to erase this.  I am happy to know that I have done my duty to my people as a loyal follower of my fuher.  I regret nothing.

Repentance and a new obedience never happened for Hess because there was no regret or remorse.  The older son who said, "No," and sounded totally disobedient, felt these pangs of regret, and allowed those pangs to change his behavior and make him more of an obedient son.

A person can feel remorse but not allow that feeling of remorse to lead to obedience.  Remorse and regret is a deep, almost torturing sense of guilt.  Judas' remorse led to a self-destructive depression.  If you can move from this deep regret to a deeper obedience to God, that allows God to take care of that remorse.  Peter's remorse at denying knowing Jesus, lead to obedience, which lead to leadership in the church.  It was an obedience and leadership that was marked by doing.

In the opening chapter of the book Robinson Crusoe, Defoe told how, in spite of the protest of his father and the tears of his Godly mother, he ran away from his home in York and went to sea.  On his first voyage he was wrecked off Yarmouth and barely lived to tell about it.  He regretted the course he had chosen for his life but was too ashamed to go back home and face the possibility that his friends would make fun of him.  Or his parents say, "I told you so."  So, wrote Defoe, "Men are not ashamed to sin, but are ashamed to repent and become obedient; not ashamed to do that of which they ought to be ashamed, but ashamed to do that which is their only hope and rescue."

The priests and the elders were the ones who were saying yes to God with their mouth, but showing a real lack of strength of conviction by doing nothing.  The tax collectors and whores were the ones who originally said no to God, felt the remorse of their no and let that remorse lead them into obedience to God.  Even when the priests and the elders saw the real power of remorse and regret lead the whores and tax collectors to obedience, they still did nothing to change their lives.

The priests and elders felt no regret about being two-faced.  Being two-faced ultimately keeps a person from ultimate obedience.  Who and what are you going to be obedient to, if your face is divided?  Jesus didn't want the kind of obedience exemplified by the priests and elders--just giving Jesus a nod and a thumbs up, won't cut it.

There's an old story about a young angel who was expelled from heaven and told the only way to get the gates of heaven to open back up for her was to search the earth for the gift most valued by God.

She brought drops of blood from a dying martyr.  She brought back the coins that a destitute widow had given to the poor.  She brought back a page from the Bible owned by a tireless evangelist.  She brought back a nail from a coffin of a missionary who had given his life for Christ in a remote place.  But none of these opened the gates of heaven for her.

One day, she saw a small girl playing by a fountain, singing hymns to herself as she played.  A man rode up on a horse and dismounted to have a drink from the fountain.  He saw the child and heard her singing.  He suddenly thought back to his boyhood innocence.  He looked in the fountain and saw the reflection of what he had become.  He suddenly saw a picture of what he had done with his life.  Tears of regret and remorse began streaking his face.  The young angel caught one of his tears and took it back to heaven, whereupon the gates were opened to her.

Is there an angel waiting by your cheek for that tear to drop?  Have you said, "yes-yes" to Christ but your lack of obedience said, "no-no"?  Are you saying all the right words so it looks like you are a religiously obedient person, but deep down, both you and Christ know the truth?  Are you looking at your reflection, and more and more you don't like what you see?  Are you hearing the wooing, childlike hymns of heaven, calling you to pay attention to your regrets, and begging you to live more obediently to Christ?

If so, bow in prayer with me:
Lord Jesus, we have made promises to commitment to you we haven't kept.  Everyone thinks we're religious, but we know in our hearts we haven't fully made the next big step into obedience.  So here we are again, Lord.  We are so sorry.  We have said "yes" to you so many times.  But now our lack of obedience is turning into regret, and the regret is turning into remorse.  We're ready to become fully obedient.  Accept us who are ready to turn their lives over to your loving control.  Please don't give up on those who aren't quite ready for that kind of obedience.  Amen.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Experiencing God: Joining God Requires Making Adjustments

"Experiencing God:  Joining God Requires Making Adjustments"
Luke 3:7-17

On Thursday mornings, I eat breakfast out at Rick's with three guys from church.  Rex and Rod and Alan.  We pretty much order the same thing each Thursday morning.  I don't know why the waitress, who is as tall as I am when I'm sitting down, asks what we want.  It's usually the same.  When our plates come they are like a Rorschach Ink Blot Test, telling you something about our personalities.  I won't tell who, but one of us orders just three egg whites.  Or oatmeal.  It isn't hard what that plate says about him.

Rod and Rex have to get to work earlier than Alan and I, so after they're gone to unlock doors or pick up donuts, Alan and I are left to have another piece of an ongoing conversation that's become a great part of our Thursday mornings.  We talk about the great questions of life.

Lately, Alan and I have been talking about change.  Can we really change, or are we stuck with the accumulation of all the choices we've made in life up to this point?  We've been talking about whether change is difficult or easy.  Or even doable.  Can a person really change, significantly?  We've been talking about, if change is doable, how quickly can we make a change--shift the course of our lives if we were to so choose?  Can we change with the snap of our fingers, or is change more like shifting the course of an aircraft carrier at sea:  a maneuver that has to happen in a wide arc turn that takes great distance and time?  Is change really easy or really hard?

And it's not just about Alan and I as individuals.  Can we bring about change in a business?  Can the mission of the business change, and is it possible to get everyone on board with that shift?  The same is true with the church.  Can a congregation change in terms of what's been happening in the long history of that congregation?  Can a congregation that has a 100+ year history, and has thereby created a certain DNA, change that DNA so that we are church differently?

It's interesting to me, that in our conversation about change, Alan and I never question or discuss whether change should happen.  I think both of us assume that change is something that has to happen at strategic times in our lives.  If we don't change we will stagnate, atrophy, get stuck in ruts that are detrimental to our professional or personal lives.  Sometimes life forces us to change with some catastrophic event, or illness, or diagnosis.  But most of the time it's just a certain antsy-ness that gets into our spirits, and we realize we've got to do something different.  Be someone different.  Be a business different.  Be a church different.

One of the problems, when facing change, is we end up sabotaging ourselves.  We want change, we decide to make changes, either personal or professional, then we see what it's really going to take.  We begin backpedaling.  We sabotage our intentions, and end up just staying the way we are.  It's easier.  We think it takes less energy to just stay the same, but I think we don't realize how hard it is to tread water in the ocean of our sameness, because we've been doing it so long.

The question we have to ask ourselves is, what's behind this antsy-ness to make a change in our lives?  Or rather, Who is behind this antsy-ness.  It's my estimation that God is the one who puts the ants in our pants, creating just the right amount of anxiety to get us thinking about making some personal changes.  When we first get to know Christ, we understand that God accepts us as we are.  But we also quickly understand that God wants us to make some changes.  The more we are around God, the more we find out what needs to be changed, what needs to be worked on in the way we are living.  Sometimes those changes are minor tweaks.  Other times a minor tweak won't do--even though that's what we try to negotiate with God.  Instead, God wants us to make a major shift in who we are as a person, a business, a church.

As we begin to understand the changes God wants us to make, we begin to ask ourselves the kinds of questions Alan and I have been talking about.  How much can we change?  How quickly does God want us to make this change, and is that doable?  Do we want to change, or do we want to just keep walking in place, getting no where--and even though we're not getting anywhere, we're too comfortable getting nowhere.  Are we going to get up and get moving with change, or are we going to drag our feet?  Are we going to keep making the same old sad excuses, or are we going to allow God to energize us about new possibilities?  Are we going to let God work on us or not?

I'm not sure about some of the changes God may want you as individuals to make.  As I get to know you better and better, I see some things I think could be worked on by a number of you.  I certainly see some changes our church needs to make if it's going to continue to exist over the next 25 years.

For the remainder of this message, I'm going to introduce you to a book that can help you devotionally wrestle with this whole thing about making changes.  As a book, it is probably the second most read book besides the Bible.  It has helped people make the kinds of changes in their lives that God may desire.  The name of the book is The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a' Kempis.  It was written in the early 1400's.  No one knows if Thomas a Kempis even existed.  All we know is we have this body of Christian devotional work that has become the second most beloved book in the world, next to the Bible.

I'm going to throw a few excerpts from the book up on the screen, and talk about each of them for a few minutes.  As we go through these, think about our change questions and if these intersect with where you're living.  Think about the kinds of changes you'd like to make as a child of God.

Here's the first quote:

Deliver me from all evil passions, and heal my sick heart from all earthly inclinations, so that I may be inwardly healed and purged from all inordinate affections and vices, and be made ready and able to love You, strong to suffer for You, and firm to persevere in You.  (Book 3, #5, page 110)

I want you to concentrate on two words in this quote:  "passions" and "affections."  The ancient monks thought and talked a lot about passions and affections.  There is a light side and dark side to these two words.

Here, Thomas a' Kempis is talking about the dark side.  "Evil passions" are what give us a sick heart.  So, in pondering change, you have to ask yourself, first, what are my passions.  What am I really passionate about?  But then, according to Thomas, you have to ask, Are my passions evil or good?  Do my passions build up my heart, and the hearts of those around me, or do my passions break my heart into pieces, as well as the hearts around me?

And thus, what kind of changes do I need to make about my passions?

The kinds of sabotage we work on ourselves in terms of our passions and affections have to do with what the ancient monks called our "wouldings."  Our wouldings are those weak inclinations that lack conviction.  Instead of making great changes in our hearts in The Lord, we, because of our wouldings, only raise ourselves a little above indifference.  "What would happen if I really made some changes?  Would people still like me?  Would it take too long?  Would making changes ask too much of me?  You know how all these "wouldings" get in the way of us making the changes we know we need to make.

Paul said in Romans 12:11, "Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving The Lord."  It's this fervent, vigorous engagement of the heart that keeps the wouldings away, as well as making sure our passions and affections aren't overcome by evil.

The great preacher, Jonathan Edwards, once said in a sermon:
I am bold in saying this, but I believe that no one is ever changed, either by doctrine, by hearing the Word, or by the preaching or teaching of another, unless the affections are moved by these things.  No one ever seeks salvation, no one ever cries for wisdom, no one ever wrestles with God, no one ever kneels in prayer or flees from sin, with a heart that remains unaffected.

If we are going to make the kinds of changes God wants for us, we need to make sure there is fervor for God and the ways of God in our affections and in our passions.  And that's a matter of the heart.  Make sure your heart is impassioned and has the right affection, and the changes will be easier to make.

Here is the next quote from The Imitation Of Christ:

Every perfection in this life has some imperfection attached to it, and there is no knowledge in this world that is not mixed with some blindness or ignorance.  Therefore, a humble knowledge of ourselves is a surer way to God than is the search for depth of learning.  (Book 1, #3, page 35)

Nobody's perfect, is basically what he's saying.  We flip that little two word phrase out, and we laugh.  "Nobody's perfect."  But the tone of our laughter is such that what we really mean is, "Nobody's perfect, except me, and if you'd just do what I said you'd be perfect too."

All of us in this sanctuary think we have an idea of perfection or what is perfect.  The problem is, if we started telling each other what that is, all the ideas would be different.  Because when you come down to it, what we think is the perfect is only what is most comfortable for us--what makes us most comfortable.  It doesn't have anything to do with some objective perfection out there.  Figuring that out is the beginning of wisdom.

So, in this quote, concentrate on the two words "blindness" and "ignorance."  Isn't it easy to see other people's blind spots?   But one of each of our own blind spots is seeing our own blind spots.

When I was out in California, I had just gotten done with a pre-marital counseling session, in which the prospective bride's jaw got increasingly slack.  The prospective groom had talked about how his bride-to-be would get half the refrigerator for her stuff, and sleep in her own room on the other side of his house from his bedroom, and on and on.

I don't know where he got the idea that that's what married life is.  It was a total blind spot in his thinking.  And he was totally ignorant to how he was coming across to his fiancĂ©, and how his talk was affecting her.

They left, and I leaned back in my chair and thought, "Wow! That was amazing."    But then I thought, "I wonder what my blind spots are?  What are the ways and behaviors I have that are kind of whacked out that everyone else sees but I'm totally ignorant to?"  That's when I started praying, as Thomas a' Kempis suggests, for humble knowledge of myself that wouldn't let blind spots and ignorance of my self get in the way of my relationship with God and others  A large part of being willing to make some changes in your life is this kind of humility--a humility that is willing to make a fearless inventory of your self, and allow others in on that inventory to point out things that you might be blind to.

The third quote from The Imitation of Christ is this:

There is, therefore, no peace in the heart of a carnal man or in the heart of a man who gives himself all to outward things.  But in the heart of spiritual men and women who have their delight in God great peace and inward quiet are found.  (Book 1, #6, page 38)

We usually don't describe a person as being "carnal" any more.  A carnal person is someone who has an overactive desire to satisfy some bodily appetite.  It's a passion for the physical, or things that have to do with the body.  If you're struggling with an attraction to pornography, you would be described as carnal.  Or eating disorders.  Or body image issues.

But it's more than just the sensual pleasures.  It has to do, in a more general sense, with things that are worldly and temporary.  It's being overly passionate about outward things, surface things, things of no depth.  It's the quick fix mentality that leaves you unsatisfied and always wanting more stuff, or different stuff, or better stuff.  And once you have it, how long does that sense of pleasure last?  Not very long.

That's why Thomas a' Kempis wisely states that the only cure for being a carnal person is a change of heart.  If you're going to change, really change, then you have to go for the heart.  You can't just make some surface tweaks here and there.  It has to be a change that is deeply internal and heart felt.

The two great terms in this quote are "great peace" and "inward quiet."  I think the main problem of carnal type people is they have so much internal noise, so many internal voices clamoring for attention.  There is no quietness in your heart.  No great peace in your spirit.  It's the pursuit of the external, the surface quick fixes, that create all this internal noise.  Doesn't it seem that those who approach life with the most confidence and composure are those who are doing so from a sense of inner peace?  They've found a quiet place within, a place from which they have taken a constant deep breath, where the noise just cannot encroach.

And, along with that, a' Kempis rightly states it is one's simple "delight in God" that creates that inner peace and quiet, and therefore stops all that noise, and shuts the mouths of all those other voices.  Then comes the great peace and inward quiet.  That's a change I see so many people trying to make:  that stability of quiet and peace that comes from the deep inner self.  But they just can't quite make it.  Maybe that's a change you'd really like to make.



I'm not sure what kinds of changes you would want to make in your walk with God.  Or in your walk with your self.  But I think you do.  I think you know what kinds of adjustments, and shifts you feel would be best.

Would making those changes be easy or hard?  Could you change like that (snap fingers), or will it take time?  And if you know, deep down, what you need to change, and how to change, and how quickly you can change, what's holding you back?