When Love Takes You In
Let’s turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 1:3-6. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will _ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves Jesus Christ. I want to talk to you today about what it means to be a part of God’s family and how important it is for us to find our family identity in Christ. Recently there was an article in the September 19 edition of the Washington Times entitled Aboard Flight 564. It reads, As it was a t most US Airports, last Saturday was the first near normal day at Denver International since the terrorist attacks. On United Flight 564, the door had just been locked and the plane was about to pull out of the gate when the captain came on the public address system. I want to thank you brave folks for coming out today. We don’t have any new instructions from the federal government, so from now on we’re on our own. The passengers listened in total silence. He explained that airport measures had pretty much solved the problem of firearms being carried aboard, but not weapons of the type the terrorists apparently used, plastic knives or those fashioned from wood or ceramics. Sometimes a potential hijacker will announce that he has a bomb. There are no bombs on this aircraft and if someone were to get up make that claim, don’t believe him. If someone were to stand up, brandish something such as a plastic knife and say, This is a hijacking or words to that effect here is what you should do: Every one of you should stand up and immediately throw things at that person_ pillows, books, magazines, eyeglasses, shoes _ anything that will throw him off balance and distract his attention. If he has an accomplice or two do the same with them. Most important: get a blanket over him, then wrestle him to the floor and keep him there. We’ll land the plane at the nearest airport and the authorities will take it from there.
Remember, there will be one of him and maybe a few accomplices but there are 200 of you. You can overwhelm them. The Declaration of Independence says We the people and that’s just what it is when we’re up in the air: we, the people’ and that’s just what it is when we’re up in the air: we, the people, vs. would-be terrorists. I don’t think we are going to have any such problem today or tomorrow or for a while, but some time down the road, it is going to happen again and I want you to know what to do. Now, since we’re a family for the next few hours, I’ll ask you to turn to the person next to you, introduce yourself, tell them a little about yourself and ask them to do the same. The end of this remarkable speech brought sustained clapping from the passengers. He had put the matter in perspective. If only the passengers on those ill-fated flights last Tuesday had been given the same talk, I thought, they might be alive today.” After I read this, I began to think about the pilots last word about being a family and how a crisis seems to bring out the family in us and in the event of a disaster we would do whatever it takes to save peoples lives
We too are aboard a flight we call life. A journey that is often sabotaged by hijackers and terrorists that attempt to take us off course towards a path of destruction and death. How do we live in a world where terror and evil exist? How can we bring out the family or the community in us so that we can survive the schemes and plots of the devil? Many folks live a life of lonliness and isolation never finding the support, or help or encouragement that they really need to make it. Some how the events of the past month have put a whole new perspective on what’s really important. We are living in an new age of uncertainty. When the people on the hijacked planes knew they had minutes to live, did you notice that nobody called their boss, or their stockbrocker or their banker. They called their homes to say, ‘I love you and I love the kids.’ If they couldn’t control the length of their life, at least maybe they could control the breadth and depth of their life. So what begins to come into focus when you think about living a life that matters are people. More specifically, family. I think the same thing is true about us that the pilot said about his passengers. We come in here week after week and for the next several hours, we are family. When I look around this room, I see people that matter, people that God may be able to use in helping and encouraging us, or praying or ministering to a specific need. I see family and community. Because I know that although we can’t see it physically, there also people in this very room who are being terrorized by fear, depression, being overwhelmed with thoughts of suicide, homosexuality, or any number of things. One of the core values of bc is that God’s dream is the home. He is called our heavenly father not our heavenly CEO or president. Home, whether our church home or natural home should represent a place where you can be accepted, welcomed, loved unconditionally.
There are some things that you can get at home that you just can’t get anywhere else. Although now days, I tend to eat as healthy as I can and juice and eat a lot of fruits and veggies and whole grain foods. I have one serious weakspot and that’s a good chicken fried steak with all the trimmings. I’m a chicken fried steak connoisseur. If those two words can be used in the same sentence. I mean fresh mashed potatoes and cream gravy, biscuits and gravy with fresh black eyed peas. Now I’m not talking about some of this imitation trash you can get down at Bubba’s Truck Stop and Café. The kinds of joints that have the sign with gas food. I’m talking home-made chicken fried steak. Now in my journeys across this great land and in the south, I have tried to find a chicken fried steak as good as my mama’s but it doesn’t exist. I have been woefully disappointed time and time again. Because there’s some things that you can get at home, that you can’t get anywhere else. Mom has some secret ingredients. For one thing, it’s got lots of love.
Home is the place where you’re known. For the good, the bad, and the ugly. The moment a woman and man say I do, they are a family. They have created a home whether they ever have children or not. A family is a place where unconditional love happens, it’s a place of rest. God designed families to be there for you as a source of strength, hope and encouragement.
And God, as your heavenly father, is longing to be intimately involved with your life and for you to be a part of his family. II Chronicles 16:9, says God is searching the earth so he can support, and be involved in your life. He’s looking for those whose heart are completely his. People who are looking for a home. A place to belong. There are some who have found there temporary home in the world of finance, of sports, career, fame, power, activity. Others are like the homeless, abandoned, lonely, despairing and still searching for a home, for a father who will love them, a mother who will care for them.
Listen to this promise in Psalm 68:5&6 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families. God has a place for us, In fact, the Bibe says right now that Jesus is preparing an eternal home for those who believe in Him.
The very reason for creation was that God wanted to be with his family. The reason God gave us each other, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, parents, husbands and wives and friends is because God wanted us to understand how we mess with his heart. There’s something about when a father or mother loses a child in death that tells us how God feels. Or when a son or daughter is straying from the Lord and is off in all kinds of trouble and pain and hurt. There’s something about that which captures how God feels about us. The way a man messes with a woman’s heart and a woman with a man’s. That’s why in Eph 5 Paul talks about marriage in the context of the church It’s a mystery. God in his fullness gives us the capacities to relate to one another so that we can understand when he says I want to be a Father to you, when Jesus says I want to be a friend to you, a brother to you. That’s why God says I will never leave you or forsake you like a mother wants to nurture her children and always be there for them.
But the devil wants to try and convince you that God loves others more than he loves you. That God has favorites and you’re not one of them. It’s like the Smothers brothers, an old 70’s TV satire and the one brother would always accuse the other brother with his classic line that Mom likes you best. The work of hell is to get you to believe that you’re nobody. That Father God likes everyone else but you best. That if you’re really somebody important then you’d have a PhD working at Harvard Or you’d be on TV, or have your own business or be a millionare. In God’s mind he doesn’t see some of us as doctors, or lawyers and others of us as only secretaries or only salesmen, or waiters. There are no onlys in God eyes. He a father. Listen, I have three brothers, one’s a farmer, one’s sell farm equipment, one’s in construction and then there’s me, the oddball. The preacher. The artist!. Now in my mom and dad’s eyes, do you think that they love one more than the other based on what we do with our lives. No. Absolutely not. We are loved by our mom and dad not because of what we do but because of who we are!!! You parents may be disappointed from time to time because they want the best for you and want you to maximize your life but that doesn’t mean that they love you any less and won’t invite you over for Thanksgiving. It’s about heart love. The father heart of God.
We live in a society that tries to depersonalize us and reduce us to numbers. Our social security number, driver’s license number, our cell phone number and our login id, nothing more than a set of characters and symbols. So we lose a sense of our specialness and the only way we can assess our lives is by what we accomplish outwardly and if we have more stuff than somebody else or if I’m in a position that makes me somebody special. These are doctrines of men and doctrines of demons which attempt to put men down and keep them from finding there place in this world. For example, Evolution: it erodes and degrades our thinking about mankind so that if we’re nothing more than an advanced species of animals, maybe my life has no purpose after all. Maybe, I’m not really unique but just happen to be an advanced case of primordial ooze!
That why abortion is so heinous. Because it’s about destinies. They’re not just fetuses. Those are creations of God with purpose and destiny. So there is a longing in the heart of God to reach a people.
We get a glimpse of this picture in Matthew 23:37 when Jesus cries out to Jerusalem and says, ‘how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. You see the problem is not God. The problem is us. Somehow, we buy into that thinking that God is not for but really against us. The experiences and storms of our life, the trials, the temptations all work to undermine one single critical idea that God flat loves your face. He wants you to be a part of his family. Until we understand that God is for us, God wants to be in relationship with us we’ll act like a wounded and rejected animal, cowering, cringing at every move God and others make at us. (Abby, we’d feed her, raised her from a pup, but she had spirit of rejection on her. No matter how hard we’d try to get her to come into the house or come to us she wouldn’t. Or Use the example of a dog whose just been abused and beat down and no matter how hard and how gentle you are, they still react and cower down.) You’re unwilling, to think differently. And Behold, verse 38, your house being left to you desolate. We start feeling like abandoned orphans.
But even though we separate and isolated, there’s still a deep longing in our hearts for a home, a family, a father. A place to belong. There is an aching in the heart of creation that longs to be with its creator. Look at this scripture in Romans 8:19-23 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. What’s he saying? There’s a groaning inside of us that longs for adoption. We’re like little orphans waiting for the day when someone will walk in and say I want you. If you’ve ever seen an abandoned child, it’s a sight you won’t forget. I will never forget the street orphans I met in Romania and the look in their eyes. The hopelessness and despair. Their innocence was lost in the fumes of spray paint they would inhale in a paper bag. I think back to my childhood days and so desperately wanted to belong especially when it came being chosen to be on a team. Remember that moment when everybody would line up and the two team captains would start choosing who they wanted to be on their team. Invariably, if you were chosen first or near the first it was because you were considered to be one of the better athletes or one of the in crowd. I, however, did not have the best physique in the world, I was skinny as a toothpick. So my chances were sometimes slim because I was so slim. I can still remember that feeling of wanting to be picked and chosen. On the outside we were cool and calm but on the inside we’re screaming, me me me, pick me, pick me. There’s something in our hearts that cries out God, pick me, pick me.
See the essence of faith begins when you come to understand that it’s not about trying to talk God into anything. We’re not trying to convince God to take us, to accept us, O God, I promise I’ll repent and never ever think another dirty thought again if you’ll just please give me eternal life, if you’ll just please not let me go to hell. One theologian says the Bible in its totality basically captures the heart of a God who created us and longs for us. The very reason for creation is that he wanted to be with his family. The philosopher Pascal says that there is a God shaped vacuum or hole in the heart of every human being, but I believe that there is a human shaped hole in the heart of God. There’s a Roger shaped hole, (not really a hole more like a long tall slit) in the heart of God and the spirit of adoption says “I choose you”. And when our longing for a home and God’s longing for a family connect, the miracle of adoption takes place. Listen, get this through your little fallen minds because this is the essence of adoption.
God loves you as much as He loves the Son who died for you. In fact the writer in Hebrews 2:11 says, both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. That word brothers is the word adelphos meaning from the same womb. What’s he saying here ? God has no favorites. The moment you are adopted into his family, he considers you as if you were his own flesh and blood. You are a child of God. The spirit of adoption says I don’t care what your history is, I don’t care what color your skin is, what your nationality is, I don’t care about anything that’s happened back there, all I care about is you.
Listen, I know what it’s it like to have an only begotten son. Joel was my only begotten son for 9 years. And though we loved him with all our heart, there was something inside of us that longed for more children. Why? Was it because we didn’t love Joel. No, we loved him with all our heart. In fact, he was one reason we wanted more children so that he could know the strength and joy of a large family. He didn’t like being an only child. Sometimes I wonder maybe Jesus didn’t like being an only child. So Donna and I began to search, and to pray much the same way that Jesus is praying for you today and that God is seeking out the lost, ) and about a year later and with the intervention of our own Susan Sealy a two month old baby boy came into our life as a foster child. He had been neglected and was almost listless with no expression. His cry was nothing more than a whimper. His eyes were dark and empty. But you know family when love take you in, everything changes.
Show video of Steven Curtis Chapman’s When Love Takes You In.
There are children all over the world who are waiting to find a home. Waiting to be loved and accepted. (By the way, that was Steven Curtis Chapman and that was his little girl that he just adopted) Family, there are people all over this city who are waiting to find a place they can call home. To experience the love of a father with arms stretched open wide. Maybe you’re one of them here today and you feel lost and abandoned. You have never embraced God’s love and forgiveness through the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on the cross 2000 years ago so that you could be adopted into his family. Or maybe you have at one time when you were younger, but somehow life and its circumstances has convinced you that this is just too good to be true and so you’ve walked away from his love. Or maybe, it wasn’t God that scared you off as much as it was some of his adopted family members who abused you or misused you or just turned you off altogether. Whatever, the reason, I encourage you to reconsider today. To say yes, God. I believe.
Maybe you’re a already a part of this family we call the church or the body of Christ and you’ve become disillusioned. You feel like giving up, you’re tired of stumbling and feeling like you’ve failed one to many times. Let his love draw you back in. When love takes you in, miracles happen, things change, but it can’t happen if you won’t open your heart towards him. Listen, Paul said we have received a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters which causes us to cry out Abba, Father. Meaning Daddy!!!!. When any of my children cry out my name, I come running. God will do the same for you.
Stop and Pray:
And finally church, we need to understand that we’re a family and we need to learn how to be a family. That’s what church is. We’re the family God has adopted. Some of you were adopted into God’s family when heck was a pup and he’s a big dog now. You’ve been around for awhile. As a mature believer and a part of this fellowship, God’s calling us to love people into his family, his kingdom. To help raise the little ones. I mean that both figuratively and literally. New believers need lots of love and support bec. they are like little children. Little kids are weird. They do stupid things. They pick their nose and stick it in their mouth. They need help. Do you think Mom and Dad do all the work of raising, disciplining and loving on all those kids. Not on your life. We are God’s adoption agency helping those who have no family to find a home. I don’t just mean that they start coming here. Listen every family has an identity whether they realize it or not. It’s important as a family to create a strong family identity. It’s what connects us to each other so that we know this is what we stand for, this is how we respond to one another. Your family identity is your set of values and beliefs that distinguish your family. And whether or not you think you have one, I assure you that you do. Churches are the same way, we have a family identity. Things we are known for.
