“Transformed by Love”
September 15, 2013
John 3:3-7
”Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’”
2 Corinthians 5:17-18a
”Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ...”
A few weeks ago I spoke on how Jesus called His disciples to follow Him- and they did. They left everything and followed Him. And for three years they were with Him being discipled. He taught them many things. In fact, He was often called “Teacher” by them. He was their example on everything from paying taxes to praying. A disciple is ‘discipled’ and I suggested that Jesus still is calling people to follow Him today and desiring them to be discipled today. I think the weakness in the Church in our day is because we have lost or neglected the need to be discipled by Jesus.
Paul, after his conversion on the road to Damascus spent three years in the desert being discipled by Christ through the Spirit (Gal. 1:18). I believe Jesus wants to do the same with us today. Through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts Jesus will lead us, guide us, and teach us how to be the men and women He wants us to be.
Ultimately, He wants us to be ‘seekers’. Too many people put there faith in a pastor or a church or a doctrine. And no matter how right on that doctrine or church is – it is not to be the object of our greatest affection. Many Christians and churches tell, or infer, to new converts (or Disciples of Christ) that “Believing on Christ” is all that is necessary. It’s not, no more than a wedding is all that is necessary for marriage. Believing and receiving Christ into your heart is just the first step on an eternal journey and an eternal relationship. After the new birth must come discipleship. Since that is not happening – most Churches are filled with immature, carnal, spiritually shallow Christians. There is back-biting and hypocrisy. Rather than the fruits of the Spirit being displayed – the fruits of the carnal nature is evident and too often manifested. And the world is turned off by the Church and by Christians. I remember when I said, as a new Christian, “If that’s the way Christians are – I don’t want to be one!” Thankfully, Jesus spoke to me and guided me into the truth – but I was almost lost because of a carnal Christian.
It is Jesus, Himself, that needs to be our heart’s desire. We need to fall in love with Him. We need to seek Him, the Awesome Creator of the universe. We need to get to know Him personally. We need to develop a personal relationship with Him. He needs to be our Life, our heart and soul. He needs to be the greatest attraction and affection in our hearts. And when He is – then we will spend time with Him and experience His love. We will learn to distinguish His voice from all the other voices going on in our heart. And when we do, Jesus, Himself, will disciple us into Christlikeness. That is His purpose. That is His goal for us. He will help us trim away the world and develop the fruits of the Spirit in our lives. And it will be an awesome journey.
Let me caution you that God will not take you out of the world. For sure, when you become a Christian, your life will be so much happier; so full of joy and love and purpose and all that kind of good, godly stuff. To experience forgiveness and love from God is an experience like no other. Life will be so much better as a Christian - but we are still here on this fallen planet, living among fallen people with a fallen nature. We will still encounter problems and trials and bad stuff. Bad things DO happen to good people. But the difference is that we will face it with Jesus. He will be our strength when we are weak. He will guide us when we are lost. He will comfort us in our loneliness. He will hold our hand in our pain. He will speak to us when the voices in our heads are clamoring for attention. And He will use every negative thing for good – if we will hear and listen.
In Revelation 3:20, Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”
I have used this Scripture many times to encourage people to invite Jesus into their hearts. But I want you to notice that Jesus is standing at the door – softly calling. He says, “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door – I will come in...” The inference is that many people do not hear His voice. So they do not open the door. Folks, we need to learn to recognize the voice of Jesus speaking to us. How do we do that?
My niece, Scarlet, just had a little baby girl this week. My sister, Wendy, said when she left the hospital, Scarlet was holding her baby and bonding with her. That baby was learning to recognize her voice. In a few weeks, Scarlet’s baby will be able to recognize her mother’s voice out of the clamoring of many other voices. We need to do the same with Jesus. How do we do that? We spend quality, one on one, time with Him. God’s instruction was, “Be still and know I am God.” We must do that. We must make time to do that. We need to ‘bond’ with Him. We need to be coachable. We need to be willing to be discipled. And if we will – we will be able to hear Jesus’ voice out of the many other voices. Jesus said,
“Let me set this before you as plainly as I can. If a person climbs over or through the fence of a sheep pen instead of going through the gate, you know he’s up to no good—a sheep rustler! The shepherd walks right up to the gate. The gatekeeper opens the gate to him and the sheep recognize his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he gets them all out, he leads them and they follow because they are familiar with his voice. They won’t follow a stranger’s voice but will scatter because they aren’t used to the sound of it.”
John 10:1-5 (The Message Bible)
The Sheep recognizes the Shepherds voice. They have learned to distrust all other voices. We must do the same. We have a whole lot of voices going on in our hearts and minds. We have a whole lot of advisors. Some of them are obviously evil. But most of them are advisors God has given us from the beginning. The problem is that they are spiritually fallen. They too often lead us astray. They often lead us away from God – not towards Him. We need to learn to recognize these voices for who and what they are and bring them to Christ. We need to see if they are compatible with Jesus’ voice or in opposition to His will.
Let’s start with the first and most important one. From very early in life you have listened to him. He talks and talks and talks. Sometimes at night we want him to shut up – and he won’t. We can’t sleep because he keeps talking. Have you recognized who he is? He is your mind. God made it. It is meant to be an awesome, wonderful helper for you. But because Jesus was not in our life from the beginning, our mind was unenlightened. It had no light. All we thought came from darkness and he was partially or entirely deceived. Our minds left Jesus out because it was ignorant of Him. And this was a problem because you were listening to your mind and it was not listening to Jesus. As one of your primary advisors – our minds ruled our life. What it recommended – we approved of because it made sense to us. But everything our minds thought and recommended left Jesus out and therefore was distorted and deceived and usually dead wrong. Consequently, when we listen to our minds and do what we ‘think’ we should do we make a terrible mess of our lives.
When Jesus comes in we are so used to doing things our way and doing what we think is best that it is hard for us to begin to listen and follow Jesus. And we need to remember that Jesus does not take our will away. I think that area that we are most like God; the area where we are created in God’s image is in the will. We have free will. We have the responsibility of choosing our own destinies. God wants us to learn how to correctly use our wills to make right choices. Life is all about making right choices. But often our minds lead us astray. That’s why Jesus says that we are to love Him with “all our minds”. That’s why the Word of God says,
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5
Jesus is our Lord and Savior. We better not trust our minds. We need to take every thought and bring it before Jesus for inspection.
A week or two ago, the day after I got out of the hospital, I got a letter from the VA saying they may not pay for part of my hospital bill. I immediately went into a panic. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about this problem. I tried and tried to think of a way out – but I couldn’t. Then I did what I should have done right away. I prayed and brought the problem to Jesus. He spoke Philippians 4:6-7 to me. Listen.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Don’t be anxious. Bring it to Jesus. If we do He will give us peace. And He did – after I brought my thoughts into captivity and made them obedient to Christ.
Our minds are fallen. We are enlightened when we come to Christ. We need to learn to distinguish between Jesus’ voice and our own minds. When they are in opposition – we need to make them obedient to Christ. We need to exercise out wills and make our minds obedient to Christ. Eventually, our minds will be a wonderful asset in our journey with Jesus. Our minds will be trained to be identical with Jesus. But it doesn’t happen overnight. We must be discipled in this. We need to get strong enough to put on the brakes, grab whatever our mind says and bring it to Jesus to find out what He thinks and wants. That is putting your faith into practice. This is a totally new way of living. You must be persistent in doing this. Eventually, we will have the mind of Christ.
Another voice clamoring very loudly for our attention is our emotions. Emotion is closely connected to our minds. Our minds talk and talk and talk. Emotion screams at us. It is loud. Our mind influences us. Emotions DOMINATE us. You have let your emotions boss you around and have its way. If that is going to stop – you are going to have to get tough. You are going to have to be strong. We are used to letting our emotions control us. We need to learn to control our emotions. Emotion has almost ruined us at times. We gave in to emotion and said or did the wrong thing – even when our minds may have been warning us, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” But we let emotion get in control.
When we listen to our emotions (sometimes we call them our heart) we hurt people. We get into wrong relationships. We cause all kinds of pain and hurt. We do all kinds of unwise things.
So how do we recognize emotion’s voice? We can recognize our minds voice because it is often begins with “I think.” Emotion’s voice often starts with, “I feel.” And we say things like, “If it feels so good – it can’t be wrong.” But it often is. When you say, “I feel...” realize emotion is speaking.
Mind and emotion are closely connected. When our mind whisper a thought about danger – emotion screams with fear. If our mind thinks of some injustice – our emotions get angry and hollers. If our mind thinks of a loss – emotion grieves deeply. Maybe even wails and weeps. In short – whatever our minds thinks our emotions feel.
Without Christ our emotions are warped and unstable. And we are used to letting our emotions govern our actions. We need to stop that. We need to control our emotions – not let them control us. When we get emotional we need to learn to bring them to Christ. We need to say, “Shhhhh!” We need to quiet our emotions down in the best way possible as soon as possible. Don’t do ANYTHING – don’t take any action until you get emotion in control. Get your mind involved and find out how it influenced emotion and bring them both to Christ. We have the responsibility of learning to control both our mind and emotions. When we do- our emotions can be a wonderful blessing. When our emotions are ‘in Christ’ they will make us feel peace and joy and love in the most wonderful way. Our emotions, working the way God designed them can empower us with wonderful, strong, positive feelings.
There some more voices demanding our attention. In our unregenerated state they can cause unbelievable harm. Surrendered to Christ they can be great blessings. We will talk about them next week.
This week, I want to encourage you to be discipled by Christ. He is speaking to you. Can you hear His voice? Can you hear His knock? You can learn to recognize His voice. And His Spiritual voice will never contradict His written Word. That is one of the tests of the spirits.
This week, find a still, quiet place and talk to Jesus. Invite Him in. Then allow Him the opportunity to speak to you. Like young Samuel you may not recognize His voice at first. But He desires to disciple you. Listen and follow.
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