In the book of Philippians, we read about Paul “pressing on” in His relationship with God. Pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ! Yet, for so many of us, the word “stuck” would do a much better job describing where we are in our relationship with God… where all that is left inside is just a lot of frustration over the fact that you’re nowhere near where you’d like to be or where you think you should be in Christ. At the very least, we all fall into times of spiritual apathy where our hearts become dull and lethargic. And when we experience seasons such as these while also falling back into old sins, that frustration can often lead to self-condemnation… thinking of yourself as a hopeless hypocrite… and seeing yourself as not much more than dead weight in the Kingdom of God. So how do you get from feeling “stuck” to a place of “pressing on". Most foundationally, we do this by putting ourselves in contact with two powerful truths from Scripture… the reality of who God is… and who we are in Christ.
In Colossians 3:10, Paul exhorts us to "put on the new self who is renewed in the knowledge of the image of its Creator." The context here is of Paul encouraging the Colossians how they can live a more richer life in Christ… and with all Paul understood of the Christian life, he knew that nothing can come close to encouraging the heart as can the wonderful knowledge of the personality of God. You see, knowing who God is and what He is like is perhaps the most fundamental key to personal renewal.
I remember years ago, when feeling as though I were on a spiritual island, I went through the book of Psalms and highlighted every verse that spoke of the goodness of God. This in itself brought me to a whole new place spiritually. It renewed in me a new amazement of who is was. I would read of verses such as Isaiah 9:6, where Isaiah writes that the Messiah will be called "Wonderful". And the more my wonder for God grew, the more my life b/c centered on Him rather than myself. I wish I could say that I remained in this place. But now and then through my Christian life, I’ve let the circumstances of life to bring my focus back on myself, loosing the wonder I had felt toward God.
But this is why Paul writes that we are to "put on the new self who is being renewed in the knowledge of the personality of its Creator." The more we understand experientially who God is, especially in relation to who we are, the more we will be able to walk in intimacy with the Father. And it is b/c of this that Paul, in Ephesians 3:18-19, prays that the Ephesian church would "grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know and experience this love that surpasses knowledge-- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Paul knew that for them to walk in all the fullness of God, they first needed to truly grasp the depth of His love toward them.
As a father, there is no more profound truth that I try to pass down to Rebecca and Sarah than the simple reality that that God loves them… that they are the object of God’s affection. After watching some Christian video, Rebecca has come to me, maybe three or four times now, and told me that she never wants to disobey God. But even as I affirm her sweet statement, there is something in me that compels me to remind her that even if she does sin, God still loves her. Not b/c I’m passive toward sin but because I know that she’ll never really be able to fulfil her desire to walk in obedience until she is first truly grounded in His love and in who He is. By the way, she has never said, "I never want to disobey you, daddy!" She’s too smart for that. It just seems that nothing stirs the human heart more than the knowledge of who God is. And, as John says, "God is love".
Even Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, said to his disciples, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love." In Jude 21 we are told to "keep ourselves in the love of God". I know for me, I feel most satisfied, most energized as a child of God to the degree that I am taking hold of the reality of Song of Solomon 7:10, for example, which says, "I am my beloved’s and His desire is toward me." This truth causes me to marvel even more in God… and seems to have the secondary effect of making sin seem so much more foolish.
We just need to remember that God’s love for us does not depend on our ability to believe it or feel it. Our greatest obstacle to enjoying God’s love is our mistaken belief that we have to be a delight to ourselves before we can be a delight to God. The problem is that we know ourselves too well… we look at our faults and failures and say, "If I were God, I wouldn’t love me". We think that only after we have done those things, which enable us to feel good about ourselves spiritually, can God love and enjoy us. But God does not see us as we see ourselves. He sees us through the finished work of the Cross.
We need to find freedom from our striving to attain a certain spiritual level to convince God to love and enjoy us. He does love and enjoy us… even as we struggle to mature and grow in Him. And even though we know this, we continue to feel like hypocrites. Yet this very accusation against your own sincerity in God can have the effect shut down your heart, making it so much more difficult to receive His love and to walk in intimacy with Him. That is why the wonder of knowing that we, as individuals, are being pursued by a God who deeply desires us, even in our weaknesses, is an awesome truth.
One of my closest friends in Central Asia was a guy named Ahmed… Because of his inability to receive the truth of God’s unending love for Him in Christ, he never came back to the church.
* This is why we are planting this church, to build a house for our Father...
… a place where the Spirit would chose not simply to visit but rather to dwell.
… a place where God’s people, you and I, can come and find rest in His love.
… a safe place where we can open our hearts to God & express what is really
going on inside of us.
… a place of authentic, intimate interaction with the One who had loved each of us
from the beginning of creation.
But our understanding of who God is, isn’t the only thing we need to cling to as we hunger for personal renewal. We also need to understand who we are in Christ. In Ephesians 4:24, Paul writes, "Put on the new self, which after God, is created in righteousness and holiness." Here, Paul is not speaking of a process but our position as believers in Jesus. Paul is saying here, "You have been made holy and blameless in Christ, now walk in the reality of that… shed the old self which say that you’re unlovable, not good enough, not spiritual enough… and put on the new self, which say you are loved and accepted by God."
You see, to walk in intimacy with the Lord, we need to be able to make the twin confession found in the Song of Solomon, “I am my beloved’s and He is mine”. To do that we need to walk experientially in the knowledge not only that God loves us (I am my beloved’s) but we that He is our love as well. So many people would have a hard time recognizing that, in spite of the fact they are not walking with God, as they would like, they are still lovers of God. How can I say that I love God and spend so little time in Bible study and prayer each day? How can I still be struggling with this same sin and yet be in love with God?
Let me emphasize here that I am not speaking to those who might be in rebellion to God, whose hearts have become hard and have made a conscious choice to keep God out of their lives. This is not the sermon for you. I am speaking to those of you feeling stuck in your relationship with God, so frustrated where you are at that you think of yourself as unworthy or unclean... even though deep down you really do hunger to walk in deeper intimacy with Him.
Jesus illustrated this when He celebrated His last Passover with His disciples. He looked His disciples in the face and said, "and you are clean, though not every one of you." Here, Jesus is going to announce that one would betray Him, and this one He called unclean. Judas’ betraying, rebellious heart made him unclean. Interestingly, Jesus knew that Peter would soon deny him three times, yet, in spite of this, Jesus still considered Peter clean. Why? Because when God looks at us, he sees our the cry of our hearts. He saw Peter’s heart… and though Peter would and did deny Him, Jesus knew that this wasn’t the same as Judas’ rebellion.
Let my clarify again… I am not saying that Peter’s sin or our sin doesn’t matter… it does. Just because God’s affection continues in our weaknesses isn’t the same as His approval of the areas of your life in which you are sinning. Yet it is just b/c of this affection for us that He does discipline… not to write us off but b/c he wants intimacy with us. It is so important that we remember that God still sees the cry of your heart so that even when you stumble, He still knows that you have a willing spirit… and sees your love.
Do you see why this is important? Because when we stumble and come up short, we often make the mistake of labeling ourselves as rebellious. And once we do this, we give room to Satan to further accuse us… to the point that we could never feel worthy or able to walk in intimacy with God again. That’s when we get stuck. Through the holidays, I found myself pretty tired spiritually. B/c of all the shopping, in addition to my pipes breaking, my boiler breaking, my video camera breaking, my monitor on my computer breaking, and all the extra time it took to shovel… I managed to spend zero time with the Lord. I was frustrated by that… and had a difficult time entering back into His love and rest. We are always vulnerable to this. But what releases us from this experience of being "stuck" is to cling to the truth that not only are we loved and accepted by God in our weaknesses but that in spite of our struggles, God sees in us a deep love for His Son. (He should b/c He put it there! Rm 5:5 “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Spirit”)
Even after the Passover meal when Jesus confronted Peter at Gethsemane, Jesus recognized in Peter that while his flesh was weak, his spirit was willing. Jesus sees the same in us… the willingness, the hungering for more. Our love, though weak at times, is still seen as genuine by God.
This was an important revelation to Peter. You see, while Peter knew he had a willing spirit, he really didn’t know his flesh was weak. For example, when Jesus told him that he would stumble, he responds, "even if all are made to stumble b/c of you, I will never be made to stumble." I was a little like this in college. At times I felt indestructible... as did so many of us in Campus Crusade at that time. Those of us in Crusade would challenge each other who could share the Gospel with the most amount of people… so we’d crash parties, speak to professors… we were off the charts!" One time we managed to get our hands on an old coffin and put it right in front of the main doors to the student center… and we put a mirror in the coffin so that when people looked in, they would see themselves. We would then share the Gospel with them!
But as I grew spiritually, I became all too aware of my weaknesses. Our problem though, is that when we come to grips with our weaknesses, we often loose the confession that we have a willing spirit and that we really do love God. See, if Satan cant get us through the kind of pride I had in college, for example, he’ll get us by breaking down our confidence that we are His delight. Our hearts b/c so focused on our weaknesses or sin that we become unable to see in ourselves what God sees… the true cry in our heart. When we grasp this, that “I am my beloved’s and He is mine”, we will be set free to enjoy the kind of intimate relationship God intended to share with us.
Paul writes in Ephesians 1:18, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know… what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”
Go thru and highlight all the prayers of Paul… type them into the computer. We can see what He values. In college I thought I was being like Paul, that indestructible worker for Jesus… but in looking at Paul’s prayers I could see that he wasn’t an indestructible worker but an impassioned lover of God. His identity has nothing to do with evangelism or church planting… He was a lover of God.
Paul is now asking God that the eyes of their hearts would be opened so that they would know and understand the degree to which God has become rich because of them. God looks upon us as the source of His great wealth! We are His inheritance! How then could we possibly call ourselves dead weight when God calls us His glorious inheritance?!! In Malachi God calls us His “treasured possession”! Or, as the King James translates it, His “precious jewels”. We need to make this our prayer as we set our hearts to walk in greater intimacy… “open the eyes of our hearts Lord so that my heart can see what You see” Because we can’t do it ourselves.
Even Paul prays in 2 Thess 3:5, “May the Lord (Adonai) direct your hearts into God’s (Elohim) love.” Only God can lead us into God’s love. Yet we create obstacles. When we allow the enemy to fill our minds with lies about how God couldn’t possibly love you or that you couldn’t possibly love Him in your weaknesses. When I became a Christian, I was so excited… I shared with most everyone in my dorm and my fraternity. In a sad way, I kind of saw myself as God’s gift to God… that when I became a Christian, He got the deal of the century! Eventually, I tended to see this as being arrogant, but now I don’t think so. Maybe part of loosing one’s first love has something to do with loosing the excitement of what we mean to Him!
This is true in my relationship with Rebecca. The minute she forgets that, to me, she is the most special person in the entire world, something in our relationship will likely disappear. The pure “unconditionalness” and assuredness of her being able to say, I am the most special person to my dad, brings joy and security to the relationship and provides the perfect groundwork for an even deeper relationship as she matures.
We need to remember who we are… we are His inheritance. We are what His heart pulsates for. When you come to understand that you are loved by God, and that you truly love Him (in spite of your weaknesses), you will find renewal. Don’t be shy… get into a quiet place and shout it out… "I am the one He loves, I am the one He died for, I am the one He longs for, I am the one He waits for as His inheritance!" Embrace the words of Zephaniah 3:17, "The Lord my God is with me… He takes great delight in me, He will renew me in His love, He will rejoice over me with singing."
So, if right now you feel unable to receive the Father’s love… or just can’t accept the fact that the Father sees and takes pleasure in your love for Him, then what should you do?
First: Do a little inventory of your life… and if there are any unconfessed sins, just confess them to the Father and receive the forgiveness purchased for you on the Cross of Calvary. And, once you receive His forgiveness, move on! I used to do what I call, “evangelical penance” whereby, after I sinned, I would hit myself over the head with my Bible a bit, and then promise God that the next day I would have an extra long quiet time. God wants us to remain in His love.
Second: Worship the Lord in a quiet place. Don’t feel like a hypocrite just b/c you might feel empty or somewhat detached from the worship at first. At times, we will need to worship God to find joy rather than just worshipping Him out of joy. Nevertheless, He will come, and as Scripture says, inhabit your praise.
Third: Renew yourself, as Paul writes in Colossians 3:10, in the knowledge of who God is… regardless of whether or not you feel it. Bask in it, revel in it… that you are His delight! Ask Him to open the eyes of your heart so that, in spite of the issues you struggle with, you would be able to see that you really do love Him… He sees that He is your beloved. He rejoices everyday in your love for Him!
And Fourth: Just wait on the Lord. This can, at times, be the hardest part, but persevere till the Lord renews and reinvigorates you, reviving the flame that had once burned brightly. And meditate on His Word… on verses like Lamentation 3:21, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “the Lord is my inheritance; therefore I will wait for him”. It is so amazing… not only are we His glorious inheritance… but He is our inheritance as well.
This is how God designed our relationship with Him to be. An amazing interplay between our being His inheritance and He being ours… between “I am my beloved’s” and “He is mine”. And the more we can grasp this, the more we will get from the place of being “stuck” to a place of “pressing on”.
[Stand Up]
Prayer & Invitation
