January 21, 2018 Sermon - Approaching God with Freedom and Confidence
These are sermon notes, numbered and expanded upon during the message
INTRO ILLUSTRATION
001
Start by holding guitar; it’s out of tune. Play out of tune chord.
Do you ever feel like your life is out of tune? Maybe you’re out of tune with life. Out of tune with God.
It’s not a good sound. Not a good feeling.
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When the guitar is out of tune, most likely it’s flat. Sounds nasty.
It’s flat because one or more of the strings are too loose.
A precise amount of tension is necessary on the strings in order for them to sound good.
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If they’re all good, but one is out, it makes the whole guitar sound bad.
Reminds me of something Jesus said: A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough.
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Sometimes our lives go flat. They don’t sound good. They don’t feel right.
Sometimes something creeps in to our lives and puts everything out of whack. It’s a problem.
When we’re not in sync with or in tune with God, when we’re actively doing things we know He disapproves of, we don’t want much to do with him.
004A
When we’ve experienced something bad, when something hurts us...
We shut Him out. We go deeper into our addictions, if addictions are a problem for us.
We don’t feel we can go to God. We’re not free. We’re not confident to approach Him.
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Tune guitar, play chord pattern. Put down guitar.
INTRO OF TODAY’S THEME: APPROACHING GOD WITH FREEDOM AND CONFIDENCE
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Today I want to talk about approaching God with confidence and with freedom, because today’s scripture tells us that “in Jesus and through faith in Him we may approach God with freedom and confidence..
Freedom: open, frank, with boldness, unreservedness in speech
Confidence: based on trust
It Starts with Knowing God
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My dad (photos)
Dad was an artist who did: Political cartoons, Children’s books, newspaper/magazine ill.
Larger commissions of paintings and murals
Self-employed artist, worked 18 hours a day; had studio at our home for a while
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I was the baby of the family I remember as a ten year old knowing how busy Dad was, knowing how focussed he could be on his work, sometimes excluding anything else from his thinking
But I also knew that when I had a reason to see him, to ask a question or get help on a project, he would always stop right away when I entered the studio. He’d give me his full attention for as long as I needed it.
I didn’t appreciate that until years later when I learned of how the stresses of his work led to a heart attack. We often don’t appreciate what we have.
08A
My point is that whereas others in the family who ‘knew better’ because they were older and understood better the pressures dad was under to do his job, make a living and support all of us, I was clueless and only knew that I needed my dad.
So I always knew I could bug him. I knew and because I knew I had the confidence to burst in to his studio, while he was creating worlds on his canvases.
I had confidence because I knew my dad. I knew that he loved me. I knew that he had time for me.
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Approaching God with freedom and confidence starts with knowing God
010
We’ll look at what it means to know God,
Then we’ll explore understanding God’s nature and His attitude to you.
Then we’ll ask how we can approach God with freedom and confidence
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It Starts with Knowing God; if we don’t know God through faith in Jesus, we don’t know God in His fullness. His fullness is found in Jesus.
For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, Col 2:9
011A
We talk a lot about Jesus here at church, if you meet with me or other mission staff members one-on-one. Every Sunday really we grow in our understanding of Jesus, if we’re paying attention.
We come into relationship with God as His redeemed children when we believe that Jesus died for our sins and we receive Him into our lives. We accept Him as our Lord and Saviour and then...
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We carry on as we please; we do whatever we feel like doing; we stay exactly as we were
Is that right? No! We begin to change from the inside out
God gives us a desire for Him, a desire for holiness, a desire to learn and grow to be like Jesus; a desire to bless others; a desire to live for God.
These are the things that accompany salvation. That is part of what it means to know God
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And we grow to know the nature of God.
Sometimes even when we trust Jesus as our Saviour, we can have a distorted view of God the father.
Is He a judge to you? Is he pointing the finger in condemnation at you? Is He counting your sins against you?
If that’s your idea of God, you need a more accurate understanding of God.
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He is the universe Maker, creator
He made you, formed you in your mother’s womb
He loves you with an everlasting love
He is your strong tower of safety and refuge Ps 91:1-6
1 Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. 2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
His plans for you are amazing: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:11-13
015
You are loved by the universe Maker.
God wants to spend time with you every single day.
Jas 4:8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.
He wants you to take him with you consciously throughout your day, to call on him, to sorrow with him, to rejoice with him.
To talk to others, with him inspiring your words.
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God is love. That is His nature. His plans are to bless and prosper you in life, not to harm you. He is the Lover of your soul.
God is after your joy, not your begrudging submission
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How Godly Change Happens in Us
Sympathetic Vibration Illustration
Play bass guitar and make snare drum rattle
Ask: Do you know why this bass guitar is causing the snare drum to rattle?
There’s a sympathetic vibration happening. The bass note is causing the snare to rattle
The way the snare is tuned is at or close to the frequency of the sympathetic vibration
018A
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever tried to encourage someone else? Put up your hand if you have.
Have you ever tried to encourage someone else, but they didn’t respond at all. The good things you said about them or the hope you expressed to them fell flat. They just couldn’t be encourage.
I have found when trying to encourage someone, that if I say something, no matter how true, if there is not something already in them that sort of knows or understands what I’m saying before I say it, my words do not connect with the person. There must be something in the person that my encouragement sort of amplifies.
Nothing happens. And you walk away wondering why.
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The reason is to do with resonance. If an idea or a thought that is presented to us is completely unfamiliar and strange, never before being explored, it most likely will be rejected by us.
When I first heard someone imply that God was real, I rejected that thought completely. Because at the time there was nothing in me, nothing in my family upbringing or culture that had planted that notion.
020
What God Does
God does something very beautiful for us to enable us to become more like Jesus. It is really quite extraordinary.
And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. Ezekiel 11:19-20
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For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Hebrews 8:10
"But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day," says the LORD. "I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. Jeremiah 31:33
“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” 1 Cor 3:16
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So what is it that God does for us, His redeemed children?
God gives us his Holy Spirit on the inside. The Spirit of truth. Who guides us into all truth.
How does this impact becoming like Jesus?
When we read the Bible, the Word of God, it resonates with us because the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth, is inside of us BECAUSE we have trusted in Jesus.
When we read and we are challenged or corrected us or we see that something we are doing or something we are believing is not right, is not aligned with God, what happens is the word of God, the truth of God is being spoken
and
it is resonating with the reality of God that is inside of us by his Holy Spirit.
The Word of God rings true because the Spirit of God is inside of us.
This is a beautiful thing that God does. And what is the effect?
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Our hearts of stone, that were dead to God, dead to righteousness, dead to the promises of God, are transformed into hearts of flesh.
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Then...we are able to live our lives more and more according to God’s will. Or as the Scripture says, God enables us to walk in His statutes, His wisdom...and we are able to obey.
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And when we are living in a way that is pleasing to God, that is unshackled to sin, that is no longer in bondage...what does that do for us?
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He makes us FREE.
God wants us free.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Galatians 5:1
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Confidence
We we are free, unchained, unfettered, no longer bound; no longer walking in shame and humiliation and embarrassment.
Then we have the confidence to approach God.
To draw near to the One Who loves us.
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But it’s better than this. Because, while we have responsibility to grow and become like Jesus, to deny ourselves and take up our crosses, God knows that we are weak.
029
Is anyone else here weak? I sure am! Does anyone else here sin? I sure do!
So what are we to do?
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The Apostle Paul asked this very thing in Romans chapter 7:
18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing...22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am!
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Can you relate to Paul? Can you hear his heart’s cry? Can you feel his confusion and frustration with himself? Can you hear how he is a confusing mystery to himself?
He is all those things, this truly great man of God. but he doesn’t stop, as we should never stop, with the problem. He sums his problem up in 6 words: What a wretched man I am!
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But then he asks an incredibly good question. Sometimes it’s about asking the right questions: Here’s his question: Who will rescue me? From this body that is subject to death? Who will rescue me?
And his answer is brilliant. His answer is the truth: 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
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It is by the grace of God expressed through Jesus Christ, ultimately as He went to the cross to suffer for us and to redeem us to God, that we find healing, that we find hope, that we find freedom and confidence to live in intimate communion with God
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God wants us to approach Him in freedom and confidence. Yet we sometimes find ourselves out of sync, out of tune with Him. But He has given us His Holy Spirit that dwells in us and guides us into all truth.
The Spirit of God within you will always resonate with the truth of God’s Word in the Bible. That’s how he gradually makes us more and more like Jesus, which is more and more the absolute best versions of ourselves that we can be.
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And we will spend our whole lives on this journey of transformation, but we will never be alone. In Jesus our Messiah we triumph, because He...has won the victory.
036 Let’s consider these things as we spend time now at the table of our Lord.
