-welcome to Drink Deep on this fine Sunday evening. I know, it’s weird to be here in January without the Colts playing but life goes on.
-for the next two weeks we’re going to look at attitude. Now I want to make this a little bit clear, I don’t mean “attitude” [SNAP]. If you want to learn about that, watch Jersey Shore. No, please, don’t watch Jersey Shore.
-but we’re going to ask some questions for you to think about. Maybe you haven’t thought about some of these things before, but take a second and see what you come up with. Like this one?
1. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT GOD?
-and I’m serious about this one. If someone were to ask you about God, how would you answer? And where did you get that from?
-it’s a fair question. Where have you found out what you know about God?
-from my experience, it seems like a lot of people know what they know about God not through prayer or reading their Bible, but from things other people have told them. Kind of like here. Some of you, most of what you know about God is not what you have read about yourself or talked with God about, it’s stuff you’ve heard me or other adults here say.
-now I want you to think about this for a second, what kind of a relationship would you have with someone if every single thing you knew about them came from someone else? They never told you anything for themselves, it all came from a secondhand source?
-trust me, I’m glad if you listen to me and I try my best to make sure I’m telling you what I find to be true, but it can’t all come from me or from Pastor Mike or from whoever it is. Nothing takes the place of knowing God for yourself, like Paul found out:
**Phil. 3:9b-10 -> 9I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness. 10I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience His resurrection power, be a partner in His suffering, and go all the way with Him to death itself. (MSG)
-Paul figured it out. Following the rules, hearing what to do, who God is from someone else, not good enough. He wanted to know God for himself. He didn’t want to hear about Christ’s resurrection power, he wanted to experience it, to be a partner, or teammate, in Christ’s suffering.
-second hand information isn’t the same as knowing. I’m pretty sure everyone in this room has heard of Peyton Manning, the basketball player. No, we live in Indy, we hear about that big headed quarterback all the time. But you can hear on the news what he’s like, you can read on Wikipedia where he went to school, what he majored in, you can even hear from the hotel staff at a game what he had for breakfast but guess what, I dare you to walk up to him and give him a hug since you’re such a good friend and know so much about him. And prepare to be tazed.
-is your attitude that you want to know about God or that you want to know Him?
-or here’s another question. When you actually do read your Bible and you see something that doesn’t fit with what you think about God, what do you do?
-I remember a few years ago talking about angels here in this room, and a student told me how she was so at peace when her grandma died because her grandma was now her guardian angel. And I had to explain to her, when we die, we don’t become angels. And in the Bible, there’s no mention of us having personal guardian angels, it’s all myth and legend we’ve come up with in our culture.
-but then, I showed her in Scripture where it says God values us higher than the angels and we will do greater things than them. And you know what she said? She was upset and didn’t want to see how we were better, she wanted her grandma to be her guardian angel because for years she had believed that and she wanted to one day be her grand-kid’s guardian angel.
-see for her, she wasn’t discovering who God was, she was deciding who God was. With the truth in front of her, Scriptures and everything, she was not changing what she believed based on the Bible, she was choosing what she wanted to be true.
-guess what? You can choose all you want what you would like to be true, it doesn’t make it true. If God is a real person, than what you believe about Him doesn’t affect Him at all. It affects you because it affects how you see God, but it doesn’t magically change God into what you want Him to be. If God is real, and God is Who God is, then what you believe about Him doesn’t matter to Him. It only matters to you. So we have to be doing all we can to find out the truth about who God is and have a right view of Him.
-one more for or attitude about God. We may know Him first-hand, we may be discovering who He is and not deciding what He’s like, but do we actually trust Him when we get there/
-do you believe that God has a plan for you, and that it’s a good one, probably better than you can come up with?
-David wrote this a long time ago:
**Ps. 138:8a -> 8The Lord will work out His plans for my life— for your faithful love, O Lord, endures forever. (NLT)
-do you believe that God has a plan for your life? And if I were to look at how you’re doing would I think you are trying to discover, not decide that?
-because let’s be honest, there are a ton of people in the church who say they trust God, who say He’s got a plan, but they sure aren’t banking on it. They aren’t giving up their plans or the things they find important to follow that plan.
-really the question is do we understand that God knows more than we do and do we trust Him with that?
**Is. 55:8-9 -> 8This plan of Mine is not what you would work out, neither are My thoughts the same as yours! 9For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than yours, and My thoughts than yours. (LB)
-if you want to talk to someone who understands this better than most people, talk to Kyle. One simple reason, he’s in the military.
-people in the military are trained to think this way, different from our society. If Kyle is on patrol in Afghanistan, which may happen next January, let’s say he’s responsible for a couple of city blocks and to report what he finds to his higher up. But Kyle will only ever know what he sees in his couple of blocks.
-now the general in charge of the command, he sees the reports of all the patrols. He gets satellite photos. He gets intelligence from cell phone chatter. He gets a lot more information, so that when something may go wrong he can call Kyle and say “Get out of there, there’s a bomb.”
-and here’s where the military mindset kicks in. Kyle, when he hears that order, doesn't’ argue. He doesn’t ask for proof. He doesn’t say “let me see for myself”. He doesn’t ask, “but why?” In fact, he doesn't even hesitate. He’s gone. Because he has been trained to understand that you don’t trust the little bit you know. When a superior officer with way more intelligence tells you to do something, they know why and that’s all you need, you do it.
-I personally don’t see a lot of blind faith like that here in the church. We like to know why and how it affects me.
-that scenario with Kyle, it may not even affect Kyle. He may have to evacuate his team simply to cause the enemy to question why and stop their attack on someone else. Sometimes God may ask you to do things that aren’t even for you or you never see the outcome for. That’s okay, He’s God. His ways are higher, He sees more, knows more, is more.
-but maybe the reason the church acts like this isn’t because they don’t get who God is, maybe we don’t really understand who we are.
2. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT YOURSELF?
-because let’s be honest, what someone thinks about an artist’s creation tells a lot about what the person thinks about the artist. There are beautiful paintings by artists you’ve never heard of and know nothing of their life and I would show you their work and you’d be like, “It’s alright.” Or, I could take a picture you drew when you were three of an elephant with six legs two trunks that’s yellow and green flying over the moon. And what did you mom say about it? She loved it. Why? Because she loves you.
-think of this description of you:
**Eph. 2:10 -> 10For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago. (NLT)
-there’s a lot in that verse. Do you see yourself as God’s masterpiece? His crowning achievement?
-on the back of your sheets there’s a whole list of verse that tell about who you are. You are God’s temple, you are God’s child, you are complete in Christ, there’s a whole list of them there.
-all sorts saying that you are God’s masterpiece.
-but then, you’re not only God’s masterpiece, you’re even better! You’re made new in Christ.
**Col. 3:10 -> 10You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. (LB)
-think about that for a second. Think about that, about you. You are God’s masterpiece, the best thing He ever created and He is giving you brand new life so you can be even better, be more like Him, living a life that helps other be more and more like the masterpiece God made them to be.
-and that’s the third part of that verse. So we can do the good things God planned for us to do. But we’ll get more into that next week.
-but your attitude about yourself, is it the one God has about you? Do you see yourself even close to how God sees you?
-here’s another one to think about. You are God’s masterpiece. Yes, that’s great, but how does that start? You are God’s. Do you see this life you are living as only your, doing only what you want to do, or do you see it as God’s life, living as His, doing what He wants you to for His glory?
-I won’t read it, but in John 15 there’s this famous section. God is the vine, and we are the branches. Branches don’t live without the vine. Branches don’t grow without the vine. The vine decides which way a plant will go, not the branches.
-think back to the military analogy. How would an army do if every soldier, thousands of Kyles, all thought to themselves, “I have a gun, I know what’s best for me, I’m going to do what I think is right.” How well would that work out?
-there’s a reason they listen to the commanding officer and try to work together. They don’t see things as me, they see them as we.
-in your attitude about you, do you see your life as your life or as God’s life?
-because with all these questions, how you view God, how you view yourself, they will dictate how you live. Someone who sees God as a far-off deity and their life as only living for themselves is going to look at a question like “Where should I go to college” much different than someone who sees their life as God’s and trying to live out the plan that God has for them.
-and there’s one more thing I want to add to all this. Something that came up the other day.
-Lorie and one of her best friends were out for dinner just a few nights ago. I was sick, so she was out partying while I’m in bed dying, just to make sure we all have the story straight. But she was talking to her friend and God came up. This friend, still working through things and trying her best to understand who God is, so Lorie was just honest with her. Lorie flat out said, “sometimes I doubt God.”
-and you know what, so do I!
3. IT’S OKAY TO DOUBT
-it is okay to have doubts. I know for some people you’re hearing all this and thinking about God’s will and how do I know and I’m God’s masterpiece but I really don’t feel like it right now.
-guess what? It’s okay to feel like that.
-this list of who you are, that’s why it’s here, written down. That’s why God’s Word is in black and white. Because as much as we can all do our best to have a Godly attitude and be all that we can be for Jesus, there are going to be days, weeks, whatever where you just go “are you sure?”
-we mentioned it in passing in the winter retreat. This is one reason we sometimes need things in black-and-white, because you can’t always rely on what you feel. Just because you’re having a bad day and feel crappy doesn’t mean you’re suddenly a bad person and God loves you less because you feel His love less. The key to the whole attitude thing is pushing through those times.
-doubt is not a bad thing. It’s a great thing. It makes you re-evaluate and look at what you believe and why. What makes it bad is when it starts to take over and cripples you.
-doubt is good as long as you don’t live in it all the time and let it stop you from doing what God wants you to do. Tonight, Andy led worship. He did great. The first time he led he was not all confidence like he was tonight. He had doubts. Did he know the songs well enough? Would people sing? What am I doing? Where am I? What day is it? And I knew it. So I gave him the inspirational words of encouragement that have been passed on from generation to generation. “Suck it up, Buttercup.”
-okay, I didn’t say that, but I say it all the time. Because sometimes you just have to trust and do it. Trust doesn’t mean you have it all figured out. Real trust is moving forward even when you’re not sure. That’s real faith. That’s real trust. Indiana Jones and that chasm with the leap of faith. Yeah, that’s what trust is.
-I don’t know where you are with God or what you believe about Him, but I can tell you this. He loves you. He wants the best for you. He wants’ to know you better and for you to know Him better. And no matter where you are with Him there is more of Him to discover. But your attitude will make a big difference in that. Think about some of the questions we mentioned, what can you do to get your mind right to understand both God and yourself better?
