Nov. 23, 2003 John 15
“Getting connected” (pt. 3)
NOTE: All quotes unless otherwise indicated are from Secrets of the Vine by Bruce Wilkinson
INTRODUCTION
Crystal Finley gave birth last week. For almost 9 months, that child has been abiding in her mother’s womb. They have been connected by a wonderful invention of God called an umbilical cord. Though the baby and mother are two totally distinct individuals, for 9 months, they have almost been one life. Whatever Crystal took into her body, the baby ingested the same thing. When Crystal ate ice cream, the baby cried out for more, and since that’s what Crystal wanted anyway, she gladly listened to the baby’s wishes. They have shared a circulatory system. The same blood flowed in Crystal and her baby’s veins. When the baby had waste products to get rid of, the waste came out Crystal’s body. Little Mikayla Lynn was totally dependent on Crystal, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Crystal will probably go through at least a little post-partem depression. The depth of the oneness that mother and child experienced is broken, and there is great pain in the separation. Now, as the child grows, they will build a new kind of bond – a relationship, a friendship that goes beyond sharing blood all the way to sharing souls.
Babies know how to abide. They have an advantage over us. We adults have forgotten how to abide. We have to re-learn it. That is what we have come here today to do – not to re-learn how to abide in our parents – but to learn what we have to do in order to abide in the One who gave us a new birth. Our heavenly Father.
What are the steps?
ABIDING: Consciously choosing to stay in the presence of God.
The Bible teaches us that God is everywhere. We call that God’s omnipresence. So what are we talking about with getting into the presence of God? We’re not talking about the fact of God’s presence, but the awareness, the recognition, the enjoyment, the blessing and the benefits of His presence. All of us are in God’s presence, but not many of us are enjoying His presence.
Over the holidays, many of you will have relatives who are present in your home. It will be an undeniable fact. But there is no guarantee that you will enjoy their presence or reap any benefit from their presence. And if you are in the middle of a spat with them, you might not even recognize their presence. You’ll avoid them and do everything possible to act as if they aren’t even there. You don’t want them to ruin your fun.
So how do you get from the fact of presence to the fun of abiding? It comes with becoming the friend of God – deepening your relationship with Him.
“Principle 1: To break through to abiding, I must deepen the quality of my devoted time with God.” – p. 106
Since abiding with Jesus is all about developing and deepening my relationship with Him, all the things that apply to other relationships apply here too.
Attraction / Desire – You will not choose to enter into a friendship with someone unless you are attracted to them. Most of you here are married or are in a relationship. What originally attracted you to that other person? The way they looked, the way they treated you, something that you had in common, a kindness that they did for someone else and that caught your attention. What was it? Now think about Jesus. Think about all the things that are true of Him that are extremely attractive. Especially as we approach the Christmas season, we hear this verse over and over again: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6 (KJV) [spend a little bit of time showing how each of those characteristics makes Jesus attractive (i.e. “Mighty God” – He’s strong enough to support me, “Everlasting Father” – He’s in the relationship for the long haul, etc.)]
Some of you have heard the story of how Tammy and I got together. I was a little backward and a lot shy when it came to girls. Tammy figured that out, I guess, and worked out a plan to get me to ask her out because she was attracted to me. She told one of the ladies that we worked with that she liked me knowing that this lady would tell me about it. I was emboldened with this piece of information, I asked her out, and we entered into a relationship that will never end. One of the things that attracted me to Tammy was that she was attracted to me. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love Him because He first loved us.” Perhaps the greatest reason for us to be attracted into a relationship with Jesus is because He was first attracted to us and gave Himself for us before we even knew He existed.
Did you know that there are some ways that you can tell if you are attracted to someone and that your attraction is leading you into a deeper relationship? I found these signs in a magazine a couple of weeks ago.
You think about that person more often than usual.
You’re tempted to find reasons to initiate contact.
You’re disappointed when you expected to see this person and she didn’t show.
You get excited when this person appears unexpectedly.
You start paying more attention to your appearance with the prospect of crossing paths with this person during the day.
When you’re in this person’s presence, you’re tempted to position yourself closer to him than to others.
There is usually more incidental touching. – For Faith and Family’s LIGHT magazine Sept / Oct 2003, p. 12
All of those are true of a growing attraction between a man and a woman, but they can also be applied to a growing attraction between you and Jesus. [read a couple of them in reference to Jesus] How much do you want Jesus? That will determine whether or not you are willing to do what it takes to get into His presence.
Do you want God as much as you want your football team to succeed? Think about your greatest pleasure, your most heart-felt dream, your life-long goal. Do you want God more than that? Are you willing to renounce that, to place it on the altar, to give it all away in order to gain the presence of God in your life? Some of you are content with your salvation. God wants to give you joy.
Listening – Read your Bible. It’s God’s primary way of speaking with you, and you cannot develop a friendship without listening to the voice of your friend. “When you read your Bible, receive and savor it like food, like a treasure, like a love letter from God to you. Remember, you’re reading in order to meet Someone. Ponder what you have read ... apply it to your present circumstances ... expect Him to commune with you.” – p. 108 Back at the beginning of the year, many of you ordered CD’s and tapes that have all or a portion of the Bible recorded on them. Use them. Listen to them. Listen to a Christian radio station.
Some of you have been reading your Bible for a long time, and you don’t feel any closer to God now than you did when you started. Part of that may be because you don’t understand it. Get a different translation. That will help. But part of it could be because of the attitude that you have when you come to the Bible. You’ve got to come to it expecting God to reveal Himself to you. “...we can [read God’s Word] for years without abiding. After all, reading a book about a person isn’t the same thing as knowing the person who wrote the book. The challenge in abiding is always to break through from dutiful activities to a living, flourishing relationship with God.” – p. 105
How many of you have a friend or relative that you are close to that does not live close by? How would you react if you went to the mailbox tomorrow and found a letter there from that friend? Would you set it down on the shelf and read it when you got a chance a couple of days from now? And when you did get around to reading it, would you be glad when that task was done or wish that the letter had gone on longer?
Listen to one lady’s experience and the growth that has happened in her life.
“‘When I started out doing devotional times, it was like I was getting my time card stamped by heaven – “Yep, she was here. A whole ten minutes!” Lately, I’ve had to drag myself away.’” – p. 106
Would you like for that to be your experience? It can be, if when you come to the Bible, you come there to meet a Person, to listen to His voice, and to get to know Him.
Memories – “Keep a daily written record of what God is doing in your life ...not a diary of your day, or an attempt at literature, but a living record of your very personal journey with God. ... I believe that men in particular need a tool like journaling to bring a sense of reality to their relationship with our invisible God.” – p. 108-109
Let’s try a little experiment. Think of a friend. Everybody got one in mind. Now, try to think of that friend without remembering an experience that you have had together. My best friend in college was a fellow by the name of Abel. So when people would see us together, they would call us Cain and Abel. When I think of my friend Abel, I think of the time that we drove straight through from Va. to Arizona at the end of our junior year and hiked the Grand Canyon together. I think of the night of the Jr./Sr. in my junior year. I didn’t go because I didn’t have a date (another evidence of my backwardness with girls). After they got back from the Jr./Sr. dinner, my friend Abel and his girlfriend, Kathy, who is now his wife, found me on campus and invited me to go out and get some dessert with them. I refused because I didn’t want to intrude on their evening together, but I remembered that they asked. It deepened our friendship. Experiences and the memories of them do that.
Do you know what the book of Psalms is? It is a memory book that David and other authors recorded about their experiences with God, what those experiences did in their lives and how it deepened their relationship with God. They wanted to remember those experiences, so they wrote them down and turned them into songs.
Have you had any experiences with God? Have you taken the time to write those down so that you will remember them?
O
Speaking – Prayer. Talk with Him like you’re talking with a person – not a stranger, but an intimate friend. We’ll talk more about this later, so I won’t say much about it now.
Time – “Set apart the kind of time that will build relationship. Set aside a significant time and a private place where you can read and write comfortably, think, study, talk to God out loud, and weep if you need to.” – p. 107
“People rarely drift into deep community. Psychologist Alan McGinnis notes that rule number one for entering into deep friendships sounds deceptively simple: Assign top priority to your relationships. Ironically, we tend to devote massive amounts of time to making money, running errands, and succeeding at our jobs, but we neglect giving our most valuable possession – time – to the experience for which we were created: community. ... We try to create first-century community on a twenty-first century timetable – and it doesn’t work. ... The requirement for true intimacy is chunks of unhurried time. If you think you can fit deep community into the cracks of an overloaded schedule – think again.” – p. 46 of Everybody’s Normal Until you get to know them by John Ortberg Right now, I have an appointment with God every day during my lunch hour. Some of you could afford to take your lunch hour and spend it getting spiritually fed rather than physically fed. Take the time to get into a relationship with God.
A couple recently brought home their baby from the hospital. One evening soon after they arrived home, the mother caught her husband just hovering over the crib with this look of awe and wonder on his face. This man was not usually the sentimental type, so she was surprised to see him standing there, just staring down into the crib. She walked over to where he was standing, slipped her arm around his and heard him say, “I just can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.” In the sweetest voice she could speak, she asked him, “What is it that you just can’t believe?” He replied, “I just can’t believe that they could make a crib like that for $99.95.” Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the facts, that we forget about the person that those facts point us to.
I have given you some steps to take, some methods that you can use to deepen your relationship with God. But don’t get so caught up in the steps that you forget the God that they are designed to point you to. You face the danger of reading God’s Word and praying to Him and writing in a journal for the sake of the activities themselves rather than for the sake of your friendship with God. It can become just a ritual to you.
God’s presence is not guaranteed by ritual (i.e. Israelites who took Ark of the Covenant into battle thinking that would guarantee victory; wearing a cross does not mean that you have God’s presence with you). Ritual is helpful though to bring a person into the presence of God especially for the immature (i.e. sacrificial system). But the more I mature, the less I need the rituals to bring me into the presence of God and the more freedom I have just to enjoy Him. (i.e. like the training wheels when a person is learning to ride a bike)
You will notice that these steps that I have given you spell the word “Almost.” Almost usually carries a bad feeling with it. “I almost won the race.” “I almost got the job.” “I almost grabbed the bouquet at the wedding.” But this “almost” is a good one.
Let me explain it this way. What do you think will be the greatest thing about heaven? [list some suggestions] I think that the greatest thing about heaven will be forever being in the presence of God.
Since the thrill of heaven will be to forever be in the presence of God, then enjoying His presence now is ALMoST like being in heaven!
When you get to heaven, you will finally experience the presence of God. And you will say, “You mean I could have had this on earth?” What is heaven on earth but the presence of God?!
When we finish in a few minutes, I’m going to ask you to do something. Most of you probably like the idea of being in the presence of God, it’s just the practicality that makes you hold back. Where will you find the time. I want you to try something this week. At the invitation, you will have opportunity to come forward and receive a time-log from me. On that log, there is a place for you to record how much time you spend doing the different activities of your week. I imagine that you will be surprised by how much time you spend on some things. And you’ll also discover that you can make some adjustments in your schedule in order to claim the highest prize.
INVITATION
Will you come and take one of these time-logs and lay it out before the Father even before it is filled in and say, “Lord, whatever you show me that needs to go or however my schedule needs to be changed, a growing relationship with you is important enough to me to make it happen.”
