Living the Life God Blesses
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
March 30, 2008
Today I’m going to re-preach one of the most important messages I have ever preached at Wildwind. I originally preached this about three years ago, and will probably preach this sermon quite regularly as long as I am here. This sermon is called Living the Life God Blesses. The six things I’m going to share with you this morning come from my observations of the areas in which people seem to struggle the most often. These are not areas of obvious sin like lusting, lying, stealing, and things like that. People know when they’re struggling with those things. The things I want to talk to you about today are more subtle than that – areas where we can tell ourselves lies, make ourselves believe our motives are good and pure, and really be doing nothing more all along than spinning our wheels spiritually.
Psalm 1 paints a picture for us of the life that is blessed by God.
Psalms 1:1-6 (NLT)
1 Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers.
2 But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night.
3 They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.
4 But not the wicked! They are like worthless chaff, scattered by the wind.
5 They will be condemned at the time of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly.
6 For the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but the path of the wicked leads to destruction.
What this shows us is that God blesses a life that is lived in a certain way. If we live our lives that way, we will experience the blessings of God. If we do not, we will not experience God’s blessings, and this is true no matter WHAT behaviors we might be engaging in. See, our behaviors can be evil or they can be good and we can still not be living a life God blesses. We can do good things for bad reasons, right? But if we are living the life God blesses, there will be a purity of our lives and behaviors. This is because God looks for a person living a certain way with a certain kind of heart.
This morning I want to show you six areas where we often go wrong in living the life God blesses, and what we can do about each one. For each item I have stated first what we must do, and then what we must stop doing if we are to find ourselves able to do what we must do. Let’s dig in.
The first thing that must happen if you are to live the life God blesses is that you must realize that the joy is in the journey. In other words, you must stop waiting to arrive! I believe that God has placed a restlessness in the hearts of human beings that keeps us forever searching for something, forever sensing that we still haven’t quite found what we’re looking for, forever expecting that one day we’ll find something, become something, do something, and find ourselves safely home – that with that thing we found, or became, or did, we will have arrived, and we will experience a sense of satisfaction – a sense of knowing that we have found our heart’s true home.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
God has placed within us a recognition of our place in the scheme of things. Most people innately understand that God exists, and we instinctively know that there is a place we came from and a place to which we are going. But at the same time, the scripture says that we cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Our sense of eternity is vague; we have this sense of something huge waiting for us around the bend – but we don’t really know what it is. And because this sense is so vague, we keep looking for it in this life! And we do that because we don’t understand eternity – we can’t fathom how things really are.
1 Peter 2:11 (MSG)
11 Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourselves cozy in it. Don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul.
So this is the answer to this difficulty. We keep trying to get comfortable in this world. And the more we try to be comfortable, the more we find ourselves feeling restless, anxious, waiting for something that never seems to come. That’s because if our lives are controlled by God and his purposes, this world is no longer our home. We are just passing through. We must get used to the restlessness in our spirits and realize that it was put there by a God who is drawing us to himself. God-seekers here today, God is drawing you to himself. He is drawing all men and women and children to himself. That restlessness you have in your soul, that sense that maybe all is not quite as it should be – that’s a God-shaped hole in your life that will never be filled until it is filled with the presence of God – and never completely filled until you stand in the presence of God, face to face.
Second, if you are to live the God-blessed life, you must learn that whatever you actually have to give is far better than whatever you wish you had.
We live in a state of constant self-deceit. We fool ourselves into believing that we’re good people because of all we want to do for God, for our families, for other people, and because we don’t have the money or the time or the faith we wish we had, we will sometimes therefore do nothing at all. So there we sit doing nothing, believing we are spiritual because we’re so looking forward to that magic moment sometime in the future when all the conditions will be perfect and we will make some huge impact in the lives of others. Meanwhile, all around us, other believers are contributing in whatever ways they can, and we aren’t even ashamed to be sapping off of their energies and inputs. We claim to be living in Christian community with people yet don’t seem to notice that they are actually making an impact as they steadily do something. We simply don’t notice this because our good intentions keep telling us that someday we’re going to make a huge impact. We need to stop waiting to make a huge impact, and work to make all the small ones that successful lives are really made of.
Matthew 25:23 (NIV)
23 "…’Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things...
Those who are not faithful with whatever small opportunities they actually have will never receive from God the big opportunities they may want.
The third important thing to remember is closely related to the second, and it’s to act now on whatever you know now.
Philippians 3:15-16 (NCV)
15 All of us who are spiritually mature should think this way, too. And if there are things you do not agree with, God will make them clear to you.
16 But we should continue following the truth we already have.
You must not wait until your life is in a better place to act on what you know. If you know as a non-believer that you need God, you must go to church and seek Him now, not wait until after you have pulled your life together to come to church. And if you sense God drawing you to himself, you must give your heart to him and not wait. If you know as a Christian that you need to forgive someone, you must do it now, not wait until you get more information about how the other person might respond. You must act now on what you know now, and trust God to continue to lead you, exactly as Paul instructs in the passage we just read.
God will always tell you to do something and then, after you have responded in obedience, he will give you the resources to do it. Believe me, I understand that struggle. We want to say, “Yes God, I’ll start that new church in Grand Blanc as soon as you show me how we can make it succeed when almost 70% of all new churches fail in the first three years.” God says, “Get out there and get going. Trust in me to provide what you need.” We want to say, “God, I’ll give my life to you and serve you as soon as I get more confidence that I won’t fail.” God says, “Follow me. Your confidence should not be in yourself but in me.” We want to say, “God, I know this relationship isn’t good for me, so give me the ability to get out.” God says, “Get out and you will find that I am sufficient for you.”
You don’t have to read the Bible long before you see this characteristic of God. Read the story in Exodus of when God called Moses. Moses made so many excuses to not go to Egypt that God got angry with him. Read the story in Jeremiah of when God called Jeremiah to be a prophet and say things to the King that could get him killed. He made a ton of excuses, but God said, “You will go where I tell you to go and say what I tell you to say.” Gideon in the book of Judges kept testing God and testing God and testing God – it took him forever to finally do what he was told. If you are to make progress in the spiritual life, you must adopt a lifestyle of acting NOW on what you know NOW. You cannot sit around asking for more information. God gives us information on a need to know basis, and only he knows what we need to know when.
Fourth is you must you must lose your religion and embrace God’s grace in your life. I’m calling everyone here to lose their religion. God is found not through religion (all the systems and rules we set up to impress God), but through a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This means you must stop trying to be good and do good, and allow God to bring real change to your heart. This doesn’t mean we don’t need to try to do right things. But we cannot earn our way to God.
Religion causes us to think we are good – we’re good because we’re religious and follow the rules. But relationship with God causes us to see the truth – that we are sinners in need of a Savior. Religion actually exacerbates the worst things about human nature. Religion puffs up human pride, ego, and the tendencies to box people up and label them, and to compare ourselves constantly to others – scorning those we feel are spiritually ‘below’ us, and despising those we sense may be above.
Jesus died a bloody death to save us from all human and therefore insufficient ways of reaching God, and religion is the main one. So if you want to live the life blessed by God, you must lose your religion and plunge headlong into relationship with God that is found because of Jesus. Jesus himself was a man of much prayer and who very well knew the scriptures, and who was regularly found in the Temple. It’s not that he rejected those things – it’s just that he understood that they were worthless in themselves, valuable only in a heart that was open to God, hungry for the truth God may speak to it, and willing to act in obedience. Jesus spoke powerfully against all the religious people who had been puffed up into arrogance and pride by the practice of their religion.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t exercise care over our behaviors – all I’m saying is that we act sometimes like they are markers of our spiritual progress and they usually aren’t. If you are to live the life God blesses, you must lose your religion and embrace God’s grace in your life. You must stop focusing on trying to be good and do good and allow God to give you a good heart, from which good attitudes and behaviors naturally come.
Fifth, you must be willing to meet God where he is, and stop insisting that he prove things to you. Jesus did many miracles, but never once in response to those who challenged him to do a miracle in order to prove his identity as God. Jesus was humble, yes. Loving? Yes. Patient and kind? Yep. But God doesn’t dance. In other words, Jesus refused to be some dancing monkey putting on power displays for skeptics. Those who wanted to see who he was were able to see it. Those who didn’t wouldn’t be convinced by anything. In fact, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in front of a ton of witnesses and the Bible says in John 11 that it was after this miracle that the religious leaders began a serious plot to kill him. Seeing is not believing, believing is seeing – Jesus didn’t dance for the Pharisees of his day and God won’t dance for you either. But the Bible promises you will find him if you seek for him diligently.
Jeremiah 29:13 (NIV)
13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Occasionally you read about some smart-mouthed scientist or other skeptic who stands in a public square and challenges God to strike him with lightening if God really exists. God doesn’t ride the pony and play our little games with us, but reveals himself to those whose hearts are open and really seek Him. If lighting came out of the sky at that moment and struck a person like this, would he surrender to God? Or would he call it the most incredible coincidence he’s ever seen. God speaks only to those willing to listen and reveals himself only to those willing to see.
Sixth and last in living the life God blesses is that you must learn to hear God’s voice and obey it. This is closely related to acting now on what you know now, but learning to hear God’s voice is not easy. There are a million voices screaming in our heads every moment. Our parents, our false ideas of God, our own dreams and desires, the practical parts of us, our romantic sides – they all tell us different things. But the voice of God in us is there, calling softly. God whispers. He whispered in the form of a baby in a cattle stall in a small town two thousand years ago. He whispered in the humility of Jesus Christ. He whispered in a woman named Mother Theresa, a farm boy named Billy Graham. He whispers and guides the lives of his children all over the world, including in this church. God’s voice inside of you is quiet – you will not hear it unless you listen. And you will not identify it as God’s voice unless you place yourself in a position of learning from those who have already learned. Yet Jesus makes the promise in John 10, “I am the good shepherd. My sheep know my voice and they follow me.” Like I said last week, sometimes God will tell us things in dramatic ways, but usually he will work through what we read in his word, the way he leads us in prayer, the counsel of our believing and wise friends, and our circumstances. Other times he will expect us to use the talents, gifts, ability, and/or wisdom he has given us to solve our problems. But all the same, spiritual maturity comes when we learn to stop asking for dramatic signs and learn to listen to, identify, and obey the quiet voice of God.
Let me review these quickly because I want to make sure you get them.
1. Learn that the joy is in the journey (stop waiting to arrive)
2. Learn that whatever you have to give is better than whatever you wish you had (stop waiting to make a huge impact, and start working to make small ones)
3. Act now on whatever you know now (stop waiting until your life is in a different place)
4. Lose your religion and embrace grace as the standard for your life (stop trying to be good and do good and allow God to give you a good heart)
5. Be prepared to meet God where he is (stop insisting that God prove anything to you)
6. Learn to hear God’s voice and obey it (stop asking for dramatic signs)
As I said earlier, folks, these things are pure gold. In thirteen years of ministry these are the things I see creeping in over and over and over again, blinding people, deceiving them into believing things are fine when they are not fine at all, causing many to live spiritual lives that very much miss the point. God has great things to do among us, but we must grow up. The Apostle Paul wrote longingly of the day when we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.
Ephesians 4:14-16 (NLT)
14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.
15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.
16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
If you take a sermon summary today, hang it on your refrigerator, and begin studying these six things and asking God to shape your mind, heart, and life around them, I assure you you will find yourself increasingly living the life God blesses. As that happens, your actions and attitudes take care of themselves.
