Take What’s Yours
Love Without Limits, prt. 5
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
January 31, 2010
I am a pastor, a counselor, and a university professor. In other words, I answer questions for a living. As you might imagine, in my role as a pastor, I am constantly hearing questions about God. There are the hundred or so questions I’ve been asked that follow the form, “Is thus and such a sin?” or “Will I go to hell for this or that?” Then there are the questions about beginnings. Was the world created in 6 24-hour days? Do you believe in evolution? What do you think happened to the dinosaurs? Then there are the questions about the end: Can you explain Revelation to me? Are we in the end times, the last days? Is the Mark of the Beast literal or metaphorical? Who do you think the antichrist will be and is he/she already on earth? If someone held a gun to your head and dared you to confess your faith in Christ, would you do it? What did the death of Jesus on the Cross mean and what did it accomplish? How could Jesus be both God and man at the same time? How come I don’t feel anything when I come to church? How much sin sends a person to hell? How do I know I still have my salvation? Is Christianity the only way to God? (Answer – No. Christ is.)
I’ll stop now. I haven’t scratched the surface, but I’ll stop. Some of those are pretty deep questions, aren’t they? If I could give crystal clear answers to every single one of those questions, at the end you would have more information jangling around in your head – but you would not be closer to God because of the answers. And I’m not saying all the answers are unimportant. What I’m saying (and I’ve said it before) is that we live under the impression that the key to unlocking a deeper relationship with God lies in whatever we currently do not know. I will relate better to God if only I understand x, y, and z. By the way, there’s another equally dangerous and false idea we live under, which is that the key to our relationship with God lies in what we DO know. We’re in a series right now about God’s love and today I want to tell you how to receive and live in that love, but first I think it’s really important to help you understand what is NOT going to help, what you DO NOT need, so that as we seek, we seek after the right things. Let me illustrate for you how your relationship with God does not depend on how much or how little you know about him. To do this, I need to get you thinking about your relationship with your own children. For those of you who do not have children, I need you to turn on your imagination – the best way to think about how God relates to us is to think about how we relate to our own children.
Does your closeness to your children depend on how much they know about you? When you think about it, your children actually know very little about you. If you have little ones, they know virtually nothing about you. As they get older, they’ll tell you they can’t even imagine what your life was like before they were born. For me that means my oldest cannot comprehend 25 years of my life. My youngest cannot comprehend 28 years of my life. Now I’ve told them stories, they’ve heard a tale or two, and I hope that has helped them know me better. But our relationship is not determined by how much they know about me. Our girls knowing any of that stuff simply makes no difference whatsoever to our love and care for them.
Realize, parents, that vast portions of your life are unknown to your children and that in no way affects your relationship to them. Far more important than them knowing you is the fact that they are known by you. That is what actually creates that relationship. They were created by your initiative. They were birthed into your life, by your choice (most of the time!), and you prepared your heart and home for them. You rearranged your life to accommodate them, not just for a day or two, but forever. You permanently gave up the freedoms that come with not being a parent, and freely took on the perpetual servitude that is parenthood. You tend to them, give them what they need, withhold from them what is harmful, anticipate their fears and concerns and try to intervene. You support them, encourage them, pray for them, worry over them, you even think of them on those weekends where you’ve chosen with your spouse to get away from them. You literally lose sleep over them. That is what makes you a parent. You are transformed by that love as you give it, and the love that transforms you is the same love that forms them. The love of your child for you is, and can only be, a response to your love for him or her. You loved first. You almost literally loved your child into existence. And as a parent, you always love first. That is your job, your burden, and your blessing. The main text of last week’s message was:
1 John 4:10 (NIV)
10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us... and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
To that I want to add:
Romans 5:8 (MSG)
8 But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
And to that...
John 15:16 (NIV)
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you...
All of these speak to God’s initiative, and in Genesis we read of our loving Father, loving us into existence as he created us.
So far more important than your children knowing you is the fact that they are known by you. They will never know you in the intimate way a friend knows you, and this is proper. And it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever. They are not your children because they love you. In fact they are not your children because of ANYTHING they have done, and they will not cease to be your children because of anything they might do. If we do not know and understand God’s love in the same way, then we do not know who we are. And indeed, most of us don’t.
I’ve spent the first portion of this message this morning trying to communicate to you something huge, which is the fact that the closeness of your relationship with God is not determined by how much you know about him, just like the closeness of your relationship with your children is not determined by how much they know about you. The closeness of your relationship with your children is determined by how much you know and love your children. And the closeness of your relationship with God is determined by how much God knows you and loves you.
Now like I said, I’m not disparaging questions. Many of them are good questions. But we must not think that knowing the answers to these questions will draw us closer to God. It will not.
Now lest you think I’m way out in the deep end, let me bring in a guy who has some cred when it comes to this issue. If you’ve ever read The Message translation of The Bible, you have read the work of a man named Eugene Peterson. For thirty-five years he was pastor of a church he founded. He is a Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College. He is a Greek and Hebrew scholar. He is a writer. And one of the books he wrote is called The Message translation of the Holy Bible. Eugene Peterson knows, understands, and respects the role of the Bible in our lives. Check out what he said in this interview:
Mars Hill: One pastor has said that he hopes The Message will “smash through our comfortable thinking about the Bible.” Why do you suppose we have become so comfortable with the scriptures?
EP: I think it’s partly our sin. One of the Devil’s finest pieces of work is getting people to spend three nights a week in Bible studies.
Mars Hill: I’m sure that’s going to surprise a lot of readers!
EP: Well, why do people spend so much time studying the Bible? How much do you need to know? We invest all this time in understanding the text which [we think] has a separate life of its own and we think we’re being more pious and spiritual when we’re doing it. But it’s all to be lived. It was given to us so we could live it. But most Christians know far more of the Bible than they’re living. They should be studying it less, not more. You just need enough to pay attention to God.
If it is true that knowing more of the Bible will not of itself draw us closer to God, how much truer is it that knowing the answer to this or that question will not do it? If we are going to come to know God, we must abandon the idea that we will know God better as more and more of our questions get answered.
So let’s move forward. How does your child actually know you? Your child knows you NOT through your answering all their questions, but your child knows you simply by having lived in the center of your love. See you love your child, and your child is the object of that love and what your child knows about you is mostly how you have related to your child. Now what if you were to say to your child, “Hey, let’s go bowling tonight, just you and me.” And your child were to say back to you, “Can’t, I’m studying.” You say, “Studying what?” And he says, “I’m reading about you so that I can get to know you.” You’d probably laugh, go up to your child, take the book away gently, and look at him and say three words: I’m right here. They don’t have to read about you to know you and no amount of reading about you will ever compare to just taking your hand and going off to the bowling alley. True knowing happens in relationship, not in the classroom. So we know God not by reading about him, studying about him, singing about him, or talking about him (all of which are fine!), but by being with him.
I’m getting closer, but I’m still not ready to answer the question, “How do we receive the love of God.” There’s one more hurdle I have to get you over first, and that is the hurdle of being vs. doing. I’ve talked about this quite a bit and don’t want to go too deeply into it again, except to have you note this one thing. We’re such doers in our society that when I suggest to you a way of being, you will immediately look at it as something you have to do! We don’t have ears for BEING-language. Everything gets translated into DOING. And if we know God not through DOING but through BEING, and we don’t have ears for being language and it gets translated into DOING language before it even reaches our ears, then what is it we most sorely need? We need to learn a new language. We need to learn the language of being. We need to understand that BEING is not something you do. It is something you ARE. In a few minutes I’m going to tell you how to receive and live in the love of God. The answer will be related not to doing but to being. But if you hear it in the language of doing, you will simply add this to your list of things you have to do.
•Go to grocery store.
•Fix car.
•Take Johnny to practice.
•BE.
As long as being is just one more thing on your task list, your being will actually be doing.
And so I want to introduce you to a new language. The language of being is NOT DOING. Make sense? If you are going to become a person who lives in the love of God, this will not happen by doing certain things, but by NOT DOING things.
Here’s how we’ll start. I want you to think of everything you currently do – work, school, parenting, getting ready in the morning, Facebook, shaving – everything you do. Now imagine that you were to just stop doing all of it. Every last bit. What would be left over? The answer, my friends, is you. And that’s who God loves. That’s who God speaks to and cares for. You with me? All I’m saying here is that it’s who you are – the person you are – that God loves. Strip away all that stuff and there’s just you and silence.
Now, every religion teaches that God is found in silence.
Psalms 46:10 (NIV)
10 "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
Mark 1:35 (NASB77)
35 And in the early morning, while it was still dark, He arose and went out and departed to a lonely place, and was praying there.
The great mystic saints, in fact, teach us that the language of God is silence. And Jesus taught that God’s kingdom is already present in us:
Luke 17:20-21 (AMP)
20 Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He replied to them by saying, The kingdom of God does not come with signs to be observed or with visible display,
21 Nor will people say, Look! Here [it is]! or, See, [it is] there! For behold, the kingdom of God is within you [in your hearts] and among you [surrounding you].
So if the kingdom of God is in us, and God is found in silence, then is it any wonder that in order to locate ourselves fully within the loving kingdom of God, we must be silent? It is in that silence within that God dwells, and where he will meet with you. That is where God’s love is to be found.
And so I tell you that silence is a must – and periods of silence long enough not just to notice the quiet, but to be quieted – in your mind and in your heart. This will involve such things as being alone, being still, and being unhurried. If you try to squeeze this in between 11:30 and 11:45, you will not get into the silence. So at this point you might ask, “How long should I take?” My first answer would be that you know when you are at rest. My second answer would be ideally at least twenty minutes of total silence twice a day, but any consistent period of silence is better than nothing. If you start with five minutes twice a day, that’s a great place to start. I’m not going to prescribe this for you too much or you’ll end up just DOING again.
So can you sit and just be for twenty minutes? Can you turn away from all the stuff, the noise, the busyness, and just be with the one who loves you? You might think, “How boring. I’m not even DOING anything.” That’s true, and that’s the point. To get away from doing.
NOT DOING is the secret to knowing the love of God. For you are already as deeply loved by God as you will ever be, already as forgiven and accepted as you will ever be. God is the great I AM. That’s the name he gave himself when he spoke to Moses. This means not only that God is BEING, but that he is eternally present being. God is not the great I Was, or the great I Will Be. He is the eternally present one. He is always with us in every moment, and when we learn to sit in silence twice a day for a few minutes, we make ourselves present to the one who is always present to us.
The key to knowing the love of God is to learn how to live in the present moment. This happens as we cultivate silence, learning to be present always to the one who is present to us. Learning that all of our life occurs under his loving gaze.
This is how we come to live in the love of God. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It IS simple. But it’s not easy. It’s difficult to train ourselves to take the time for silence. It can be difficult to sit there and learn how to just be. But God is there and as we get more and more comfortable with the silence, a few things will happen:
First, we will come to know that God is with us in a way we never have before. For just as silence as always as close as saying STOP, God is always as close as saying,
1 Samuel 3:9 (NIV)
9 ... ’Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’"...
Second, you will begin to see, very mysteriously, the fruit of the Spirit beginning to grow in your life. It requires patience and self-control to sit in silence every day. Often your mind will wander, and you will simply keep returning again to the silence, repeating your word if you have chosen a word or phrase to say, such as MARANATHA, or “Come, Lord,” or “Peace,” or “Jesus,” or “Abba, I belong to you.”You just keep patiently returning again and again to your word or phrase and, low and behold, patience and self-control will begin to grow in you. Of course you cannot fear when you are in the present moment because fear is always about what might happen later, so as you learn to live in the present moment where God is, you will be learning to live in a place where there is no fear. You’ll be living more and more in the place of God’s infinite love.
1 John 4:18 (BBE)
18 There is no fear in love: true love has no room for fear, because where fear is, there is pain; and he who is not free from fear is not complete in love.
You might think I’m over-hyping the value of silence. I’m not. To begin to practice silence (which is not something you do, but what happens when you STOP doing and learn to just be) is to find all kinds of amazing fruits growing on the vine of your life. Others around you will see it. You will notice it yourself and you won’t quite know where it came from, but you’ll know that those fruits began to grow in silence and will continue to grow there.
Third, your presence to this immense love of God will slowly but surely begin to move from your times of silence outward into the rest of your life. You’ll find yourself more and more aware of that silence that is deep within you (which is God) even when things around you are hectic and difficult. As this moves deeper into your being, you will carry God consciously around with you more and more, and your heart will have the joy and lightness and peace you can expect when you are living in the presence of this love. Then you will begin to have moments where you feel anxious or upset, and you will instantly recognize that God is there even in that moment and, whether or not peace floods in, you will rejoice and be happy, knowing that though you may be anxious, you are not in any danger – you KNOW God is with you and you are perfectly safe. My friends, ultimate peace comes from not even needing to feel peaceful anymore. Simon Tugwell writes:
The truly spiritual person does not even seek tranquility, because he is in no way hampered by lack of it.
Look forward now to that day when you will experience greater peace than you have ever known, but also will no longer be troubled or seriously hampered by lack of peace. True peace, my friends, is found in knowing that even when our emotions have wavered, God does not, and that he is as WITH US then as ever. This assurance is what will settle deeper and deeper into you in the silence.
And you don’t have to wonder about whether this will happen. It is a law. You cannot escape it. It is a promise, from the one who loves you:
Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV)
7 "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
and,
Jeremiah 29:13-14 (NRSV)
13 When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart,
14 I will let you find me, says the Lord...
And all those questions I went through with you at the beginning? They will assume their proper perspective. They will become to you as peripheral as most of them actually are. And you will see that it was never something else you needed to KNOW before you could live in this love, it was – all along – your need to just be with the one who knows you. This alone will change you in deeper ways than any Bible study, any sermon, any small group meeting, any seminar, or any book ever could. Practice BEING (sitting in silence) twice a day and six months from now you will hardly be able to recognize the person you are today. I have nothing greater to offer you because what I am offering to you is simply to be – with God. And this great love – it’s already yours. So take it.
