I and Thou
Hosea 11:1-4 and Psalm 18:1-3
Timothy Smith tells the story of Chris. Chris was in his mid-thirties, married and living in Pennsylvania with his wife and two high energy little boys. Chris was always physically fit, ate a healthy diet, but one day he went to the Doctor because of some pains he was having. That led to another Doctor, and another and he was diagnosed with a rapidly moving and deadly cancer. His only hope, really, was a miracle. A short time after he got his diagnosis, he emailed a colleague of mine these profound words. He wrote, “I had an interesting conversation with a University of Pennsylvania chemo nurse today. She said they treat several hundred patients each week. I was surprised to learn from her that many terminal cancer patients don’t face the reality that they may die, and stay in a state of, ‘It’s not going to happen to me.’ That reality surprised me and reminded me of something I read in a little book entitled, Tuesdays with Maury. It’s about a college professor who’s slowly dying of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. This professor meets with his former professor, Maury, each Tuesday to discuss various topics of life. In the chapter on death, he makes an interesting comment, ‘Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently. ’” Chris wrote: “Something that’s really been made clear to me through my cancer experience is that I’m going to die. And so, when I think about what matters to me now, it is my relationships; my relationship with God through Jesus, and my relationships with my wife, my boys and with others. Beyond that, everything is trivial. It’s through this realization I am finding more meaning, joy, and excitement in my life with cancer, than I ever did when I didn’t know I had it. Believe it. Do things differently. Your friend, Chris.” And then Timothy Smith writes, Chris’ miracle never came, he died at 37 but with his relational world intact. He got it. He got it about the fact that life is really about relationships.
You and I were created for relationship: with one another and with God. How does the Bible and our faith guide us in those relationships? How do we experience the fullness of those relationships? That’s what we’re going to be looking at in this series. Today, we’re going to be talking about the one relationship which impacts all the others, our relationship with God. Harry Staiti puts it this way, “Of all our relationships, God is the most important. Your relationship (or lack thereof) with God will influence all other relationships.”
Now we need to recognize that some of us have a very close and intimate relationship with God while others of us don’t really know what it means to have a relationship with God. What does a relationship with God look like? How do we connect with God? How do we experience that and grow into that so that we might experience all that God intended for us when he created us and chose to be in relationship to us. Video: How do you connect with God
A lot of people don’t connect with God. In fact, some religions teach that you can’t have a personal relationship with God, that God is a distant and impersonal deity. But that is not true with Judaism and Christianity. Throughout the Scriptures, God is a loving God who is always with us and desires a closer personal and intimate relationship with you, That, I believe, is one of the first messages of the Bible, that in the Garden of Eden God created man and woman to be in relationship to Him. God desired that and so each afternoon he would come down and walk in the garden in the cool afternoon breeze and just talk and be with Adam and Eve, It is also one of the last messages of the Bible, that God loved us so much that he sent His son to be with us, to love us and ultimately die for us on the cross so that which had separated us from God would be removed and we would once again have a close personal relationship with our Creator.
God wants more than anything to be in relationship with us. That is how we are meant to live out our lives and our faith. You will remember when Jesus was asked what was most important in life and faith, he answered relationally. You are to love the Lord your God with all heart, mind, soul and strength and you are to love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:35-40 Relationships are very important. We were meant for relationship. Not only that but God created a need and desire for relationships with us. None of us were meant to live out our lives alone. So God created within the very fabric of our being a longing to be in relationship with one another and God. Paul Jones writes “The Art of Spiritual Direction”, Deep within our souls, actually as proof that we have a soul, is a profound something that will not be quieted. Experienced negatively, this something seems an emptiness, an ache, an anguish, an incompleteness, accompanied by an innate cry for it to go away. Experienced positively, it is a yearning, a craving, a desire, a hope.” Karl Barth speaks of this active longing as our ‘universal homesickness.” All of us have a homesickness to be in relationship with the one who created us. And we try to fill that longing and need with many things from possessions and people, to drugs and alcohol. But they all leave us wanting because the only thing which will fill that void is a relationship with God Himself. This is why Mick Jaggar will continue to sing, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” because everything else leaves us feeling empty. U2 captured it in their song, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Because you won’t find what you’re looking for until you get an intimate relationship with God. Psalm 62 says “My soul finds rest in God alone.”
We all have restless hearts and we won’t find true rest and peace in our lives until we get that relationship right in our lives. And here’s the lagniappe, when you get your relationship right with God, it will transform all your other relationships in your life. Everything else changes when we have a relationship with God.
What might that relationship look like? In his book “I and Thou”, Martin Buber poses that all of us relate to everything in this world in one of two ways. First is the I-It relationship. Most of the time we relate on the I-It level which means to see someone else as an object, not consciously but more often subconsciously. I may not say it but we look at others as what they will do for us and how they will impact our life. Will you hurt me or help me? Will you help to me to achieve my goals in life and be happy or will you impede that? We also do that in our relationship with God. So we pray, “God help me!” What will God give me? In the I-It relationship we are the center of our lives. In the I-It relationship, we look or evaluate people in your life through a cost/benefit analysis. It is very transactional in nature. Is this person worth the time and energy and sometimes trouble? Do I get more than I give? We become the center of our universe and everything we do is for me.
The second way we can relate to others is through the I-Thou relationship which he says is the ideal type of relationship though we may never attain it. In this type of relationship, you have sacred value and worth. You don’t exist to be served but to serve others. The other people in your life are people you are meant to care for and serve. No longer do you look at them for what you will get from them but rather you begin to see how you can serve them, how you can meet their needs and what you might accomplish together. No longer do I look at you for what you might contribute to my life but rather I get to know you for you. The same is true in our relationship with God. No longer do we worship God because of what he promises or what he will do or what he will give to us, but rather we seek to know God as God and to do His will and seek His purpose in this world and for our lives. Buber says, when you have the I-Thou relationship with God in place, it affects all others. No longer do you see others as objects.
If we are honest, if I am honest, we spend most of our lives in relationships in the I-It realm, in superficial and even though I would not say it, a what’s in it for me perspective? I even apply that to my relationship with God. And yet that’s not what God has in mind for any of us.
What does a relationship with God looks like? Some of you grew up in a household of faith but never really knew or experienced a personal relationship with God. Some of the ways people talk about their relationship with God is totally foreign to us. It feels too vibrant or sappy. Or maybe we hear people talk about a personal relationship with God and then we see how they live their lives, and we think to ourselves, if that’s what a relationship to God is like and the impact it has on your life, then I don’t want anything to do with that.
All of us were designed to have a relationship with God. Now our relationship with God will look different to different people. How you relate to God will be different from perhaps how others relate to God. I had a friend in high school who had dozens of best friends. She could walk into a room of strangers have a conversation with any of them without the least trouble and feel very close to each one. I knew another girl who was more reserved and would talk to very few people throughout the night. She had 2-3 close friends with whom she shared her closest thoughts. Do you think those two people would talk about their relationship to God in the same way? They’re going to be very different.
For many of you, how your father raised you impacted your understanding of and relationship to God. One woman described her relationship to her father as one where if she accomplished something, he handed out praise and affirmation. But if she didn’t, there were no “I love you’s” or hugs or words of affirmation. When she went off to college and graduated, all he cared about was how much money she would make. In her eyes. his love was conditional. So for most of her life she saw God as judgmental and always needing to earn his love. If she prayed hard enough, read the Bible enough and served enough, then God would love her. It wasn’t until later in life that she came to understand God’s love as unconditional. Her problem had been that she had always seen her eternal father in the image of her earthly father. But now she sees her eternal father as he really is and only longs for her earthly father to be the same.
It is also important to realize that we have multiple relationships with God. If you read through the Bible you will see that God plays more than 200 different roles in our lives. You can see this in your own relationships. For example, Giovanna plays different roles in our life: she is my best friend, my wife, my helper, the mother of my children, my greatest source of feedback and constructive criticism. In each of these roles, we have different conversations and talk about different things. I feel differently about her when we are out on a romantic dinner than when she is my greatest constructive critic. We say and feel different things depending on the role she is playing in that particular moment. …..
This is the same with God. The different roles God plays in our lives is reflected in the different names of God. I’ve included an insert for you to study later and reflect upon the different nature and roles God plays in our lives. Let’s take a look at just 8 this morning If God is the creator, then what are you? The created. If God is the King, then what are you? The subject. If you are focusing as God as the creator, your prayers and expressions will be different than if you are focusing on him as king. If God is the Lover, then what are you? The Beloved. If God is the husband, then what are you? Wife. If God is the Parent, then what are you? The child. You will look at God very differently when you’re looking at God as the lover than when you are looking to Him as parent. If God is the potter, then you are the clay. If God is the Lord, then what are you? The Servant. So how we look at God not only impacts what we think about God but how we interact with God as well.
Now here’s the thing: most of us tend to focus on God in one or two of these roles. We always talk to God in the same way, look at God the same and understand God from the same perspective. JB Phillip’s wrote, If you only focus on one or two dimensions of God, then your God is too small. You need all of the dimensions to experience the fullness of God and all of God in your relationship to Him. We need God to be all His roles for us. If you focus on God as Divine, Lord, King and Master, then you need to experience Him as friend and lover. Which role do you focus on when you think of God? What role(s) do you need to focus on?
How do get to have a full experience and relationship with God? Adam Hamilton tells the story of Fannie, a lifelong Methodist whom he visited in the hospital. She spent her years of life faithfully raising her children in the church and serving the Lord. Fannie in her later years would go to garage sales and buy vases for 25 cents and then after church would split up the altar flowers and take them to first time visitors. She was the type of person who would do anything for God. As they were talking it came time to leave and Adam prayed and Fannie said, Adam and I hear you pray in such a close and intimate way to God. In all my life, I have never experienced that. I never felt the presence of God. I worshipped him and served him all my life but I have never felt close to him.” It is possible.
There are seven essentials Ingredients for a Personal Relationship with God. First you have to have faith in God. You not only have to believe in God, you have to believe that God loves and cares for you. There are times we are like the man who said to Jesus, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” There are also times when we need to reaffirm and say, “Lord, I believe and know you are right here with me.”
Second is knowledge. In order to have a close friendship with someone, you have to get to know them. The reality is when people first get to know each other, they share only the surface things. And as you get to know them better, you begin to reveal more and more about yourself until you really get to know another. There are people in your lives whom you see every day. You don’t know their last name, where they live, if they’re married or have children. The same is true for many. They have only a cursory understanding of God. This is why Bible study is so critical because with other Christians you come to know God better and gain a fuller understanding of not only who he is but who he can be for you.
Third is Prayer. We’ve said enough about prayer over the last four weeks. But just as you can’t develop and grow a personal, intimate relationship with another unless you talk with them on a regular basis, neither can you do the same unless you talk to God daily.
Fourth is listening. Dan Rather, CBS anchor, once asked Mother Teresa what she said during her prayers. She answered, "I listen." So Rather turned the question and asked, "Well then, what does God say?" To that Mother Teresa smiled with confidence and answered, "He listens". Listening is the heart of every relationship. A.W. Tozer writes, "whoever will listen will hear the speaking heaven. This is definitely not the hour when men take kindly to an exhortation to listen, for listening is not today a part of popular religion. We are at the opposite end of the pole from there. Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God." It is hard for us to be still before God and listen. To be alone with your bible opened and letting God speak to us through his words and through our minds and hearts.
Fifth is acts of worship. It is giving for the sake of giving. Gaither Bailey writes, When I was in college, I typed term papers and saved money so I could give my mother an expensive rocking chair she had admired for Christmas. There were many sleepless nights and tons of work to earn the money. But, on Christmas morning the rocking chair was next to the tree. Mom has always cherished that chair because she knew the sacrifices I made to get it for her. I have come to believe that sacrificial gifts are always the best. Acts of worship is placing the needs of others ahead of our own and then seeking to meet them, all in the name of Jesus.
Sixth is laying aside, laying aside things that separate us from God. I know there are things I do which irritate Giovanna. And any time she mentions something, I do my best to stop doing that particular thing. Now if I want to irritate her, I have a list of things which I can do. Now that’s a perfect thing to do if I don’t want to experience intimacy with her. The same is true with God. They don’t irritate God but they can push you away. We call them sins. But when you love someone, you set things aside. When I gather my things and put them on my desk, at least Giovanna knows I’m trying. And I get credit for that. I do that because I love her. The same is true with God. I set those things aside which separate me from Him and God’s sees and feels that as love and worship.
Seventh is time, spending time with God. Some of you are saying I don’t have any more time. I’ve got more things that I can handle right now. The thing is this: it’s not about setting aside more time as much as it is recognizing that God is always present and always with you. It doesn’t matter what you are doing: mowing, gardening, cleaning house or emptying the trash. The presence of God is a fact of life. Paul rightly said of God, "In him we live, and move, and have our being." Lorraine Pintus says that she realized that her spiritual life was in the doldrums because she was not making Jesus a part of her daily life. She wrote: "When I started taking Him with me wherever I went, then I started relating to Him and enjoying Him in a deeper way. I would ask God: `Would you like to go with me for a walk? And then we would go and I would just converse with Him. I would ask: ‘Would you like go to the grocery store with me? And then to the hospital to see Sherry?’" That for Lorraine was the beginning of changing from religion to a relationship. She, like David, began to seek God’s presence
The fact is God is always with you, the question is whether or not you recognize that presence and give that time over to him. This is what I think Paul means when he calls us to pray without ceasing. Andrew Murray put t best this way, "May not a single moment of my life be spent outside the light, love and joy of God’s presence and not a moment without the entire surrender of my self as a vessel for Him to fill full of His Spirit and His love."
