LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL! Part 2 Grasping a Full Life Series
January 25, 2004 GIBC, Vancouver, BC
And the LORD God formed a man’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life. And the man became a living person. Genesis 2:7 (NLT)
If you could tap Jesus’ phone line and hear His conversation to God the Father regarding the people He wants to redeem, what do you think He would say? Would He say, can you believe of all the moronic idiotic things they would do, did you see that? Oiii, what lunacy, what are they thinking?
In John 17:25-26 (NLT) , Jesus says,
25 “O righteous Father, the world doesn’t know you, but I do; and these disciples know you sent me. 26 And I have revealed you to them and will keep on revealing you. I will do this so that your love for me may be in them and I in them.”
Did you just over hear what Jesus said to the Father? “Your love for me may be in them” wow! Hold the phone, did you get that thought there, can you hear the desire of Jesus? It was Brennan Manning that pointed out to me the very same love that the Abba Father, God the Father has for Jesus, is the same love he has for us. Can this be true? The same depth of love, the same quality of love that the Father has for the Son is for all who are disciples, followers of Jesus Christ.
I wonder how many of us are truly aware, really conscious of this reality that Life is Beautiful… It is meant to be so beautiful. It is to filled with the beauty of God’s amazing and wonderful love. Our lives are not the result of random forces that just collided together by chance. We are not caught up in some impersonal mechanistic universe where only the fittest survive. That is - we are not here just to fill up space. We are not here to provide more taxes for the government. We are not here to chase after the next fad, or some jackpot lottery. We are not here to keep a tidy house, buy the next newest toy in the market. We are not here to fill up the time-sheet and punch out of life with nothing. We are not here to hope in the dark that perhaps some body would love us and care deeply for us. There is someone who loves us already even when we don‘t feel it, know it, or believe it.
God made life and God made it intentionally and with a purpose. How do I know? Read Genesis 2:7. will you? The Lord formed a man’s body… That simple statement of the Bible speaks powerfully and magnificently of a master technician, a master craftsman who took the pain, and the time, and the energy to form something gorgeous, something called “a person”! God did not by accident, or just for the fun of it, kinda like oops while he was kicking some dust, not knowing what to do with all the time in the world, make people.
And if you hear what Jesus said to the Father “your love for me may be in them”, there is a desire, a longing, a special and unique experience that God wants people to come into contact with. What we are hearing about a personal relationship, about love, about the very thing that inspires Shakespeare to write Romeo and Juliet, or Tolkien to write about tiny Hobbits who will endanger their lives to save Middle Earth. And if you hear Genesis 2:7, God breathed into the body of human beings the breath of life and that my friends relays to us that that the imagery that the LORD God is closely connected at the closest possible contact point, the very breath that invades our being. How close can anyone get? Everywhere we go is air…
This one verse is so profound. God could have just said, “why bother?” If He is as powerful and all-knowing as He is, He knew that that the body he formed from the dust would turn against him. God knew that. Vancouver – bank robbery capital of North America? Illustrate from today’s news:
Death
Suffering
Disease
Lawsuits
Anger
God could have just stopped the whole thing right there… don’t breathe life into that lump of dust, Sept. 11th, the famine in Africa, AIDS, the Nazi concentration camps…
Yet He formed that body breathed life into it and that body became a living breathing person with his own mind, heart and will. Only being created that has a touch of a heaven, that can connect with heaven on earth! Let’s hear the Bible speak again the purpose of God…
26 From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand which should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.
27 “His purpose in all of this was that the nations should seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. 28 For in him we live and move and exist. Acts 17 (NLT)
George MacDonald once asked this question at the beginning of his sermon: “Did the fact ever cross your mind that you are here in this world just to understand the Lord Jesus Christ, and for no other reason?”
Larry Crabb (1993,p.2) in his book Finding God said, “We are here to know the Lord Jesus Christ – there is no other reason for living.”
“The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” –Westminster catechism
A. FOUR AFFIRMATIONS regarding life:
1. PURPOSEFUL: It is not an accident!
2. PERSONAL: God “formed” a man’s body, artist design, breathe life People are not worthless but are dependent beings… depend on God’s breath for life. Image of lifeguard with kiss of life. Made for God to dwell in. Until we find God we will be breathless, heading to death!
3. PLEASURABLE: 4 Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him GREAT PLEASURE. Ephesians 1:4-5 (NLT)
4. PRO-LIFE: God is for life… that’s for sure… he never made people to get some sadistic pleasure of murdering, mutilating, condemning people. “As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live.” Ezekiel 33:11 (NLT)
We believe that human life is of inestimable worth and significance in all its dimensions, including the unborn, the aged, the widowed, the mentally handicapped, the unattractive, the physically challenged and every other condition in which humanness is expressed from conception to the grave.
We believe life is sacred. – www.family.org
I affirm that… do you?
Today, when you look at another person… see that life is sacred… look beyond the surface of things, look beyond the ugliness of their sin, look beyond the fact that they don’t wear the latest fashion, look beyond the fact they don’t smile at you, look beyond the fact they may be angry at you, look beyond the fact that they are honking at you, pestering you, they did not comb their hair, breath is bad, and see the beauty that God had formed from the dust of the ground, as He breathe life into them…
God has a Plan for that person… he was purposefully made and therefore worthwhile and not be treated like garbage, thrown out, abused, aborted, murdered, taken advantage of.
One man shared this story:
I making a delivery on Paducah’s North side in what would be considered a predominantly African-American part of town. I was looking for a street that is only a couple of blocks long and is difficult to find. I know it’s "a guy thing" that we’re not supposed to ask directions, but I saw a black gentleman who appeared to be in his 70’s ambling down the sidewalk and pulled over. I figured he’d be nice enough not to tell anyone I stopped to ask directions. I asked where I could find the street. He said, "It’s the fourth or fifth street up here to your left."
I said, "Thank you, sir," and started to drive off. He held out is cane to stop me and said, "Wait a minute, what did you say?" From the unusual look on his face, I thought maybe he had misunderstood me and somehow taken offense at something he thought I said. I recited clearly, "I said, thank you, sir." A satisfied-looking smile came to his face and he said, "I thought that’s what you said." Without me having to ask for an explanation he added thoughtfully, "You know, this is maybe the fourth or fifth time in my life that a white man has ever called me ’sir.’ I want you to know that I appreciate it." We both smiled and I drove off.
Does this speak to you? A kind word, a word that honors another person, a word that does not demean, but appreciates the fact God has formed that man that woman, that child!
It is when we cannot see the worth of people, the hope that they too can find God, that we begin to let all hell break loose, monsters are created, fetuses are aborted, bombs are exploded, but if we see that people truly matter to God…if we see people are formed by God to know God to respond to Christ, to love, to be filled with the beauty of God’s love…
B. Regaining the Christ-centred worldview
1. Capturing a Stunning View of the God of love
Let’s come back to this Stunning revelation of a God: a God who love people who hated him. Here is a God worthy to be honored above everyone and everything else. To God, “the splendor of a human heart that trusts and is loved unconditionally gives God more pleasure than Westminster Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, the sight of 10,000 butterflies in flight, or the scent of a million orchids in bloom. Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it” - Brennan Manning
In John 17:26, Jesus says, "Father, I have made your name known. I continue to make it known. And I pray that the same love with which you love me may be in them and I in them."
Have you been captured by this prayer of Jesus. Jesus wants to make this known to us, God loves you!
2. Banishing Fear
Banish the fear that if I don’t get it right no one wants me.
Banish the fear that if I am not pretty enuff, not smart enuff, not hunky enuff, not loving enuff, not perfect enuff, that I am set out on the street like garbage to be collected and my destiny is the landfill or garbage dump. Hear God’s word of affirmation he formed us, not an accident, not a mistake, not an afterthought, not a freak! He breathed life into us, he wants to be close to us, as close as the air we breathe, as close as we allow God to be in us… One story from the Bible…
9 That evening, on the first day of the week, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. 20 As he spoke, he held out his hands for them to see, and he showed them his side. They were filled with joy when they saw their Lord! 21 He spoke to them again and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 Then he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you refuse to forgive them, they are unforgiven.”
Here is a bunch that betrayed Jesus, they are now fearing for their lives. Yet these disciples turned the world upside down. What banished their fear? They knew God was with them and in them, breathe of God was breathed on them. They experience this… He will not abandon, nor leave them alone, nor tell them to get lost, nor require them to get a visa to come near Him. They will never be lost! THE COST IS PAID UP IN FULL! Through the cross! And now they are recipients of life and the one to release that good of news of sins forgiven, they are sent to tell the world God is ENOUGH when world is NOT!
3. Allowing faith to rise from the ashes
Brennan Manning was asked: “Why are we afraid that God won’t love us as we are?” And his reply is:
My sense is this, that if I let the love of God run wild in my life, what is he going to demand of me? Is he going to say I’ve got to spend 10 years in Calcutta with Mother Teresa’s missionaries? Is he going to give me cancer? Is he going to tell me I’ve got to leave my spouse and just go live in a cave for him alone? All these crazy fears have nothing to do with the real God who takes delight in his people.
To me, it’s more important to be loved than to love. When I have not had the experience of being loved by God, just as I am and not as I should be, then loving others becomes a duty, a responsibility, a chore. But if I let myself be loved as I am, with the love of God poured into my heart by the Holy Spirit, then I can reach out to others in a more effortless way.
Have u allowed yourself to be loved? Risk letting God breathe on you… risk letting God go wild within you? God really wants to come close,empower with His life…
Faith is a code to accept that Jesus knows my whole life story, every skeleton in my closet, every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty, degradedness darkening my past. Right now he knows my shallow faith, my feeble prayer life, my inconsistent discipleship, and he comes beside me and he says, I dare you to trust. I dare you to trust that I love you, just as you are and not as you should be, because you’re never going to be as you should be. - Manning
AW Tozer said this in the Root of the Righteous:
It is most important to our spiritual welfare that we hold in our minds always a right conception of God. If we think Him as cold and exacting we shall find it impossible to love Him, and our lives will be ridden with servile fear. If again, we hold Him to be kind and understanding our whole inner life will mirror that idea.
The truth is that God is the most winsome of all being and His service one of unspeakable pleasure. He is all love, and those who trust Him need never know anything but that love. He is just, indeed, and He will not condone sin; but through the blood of the everlasting covenant He is able to act toward us exactly as if we had never sinned. Toward the trusting sons of men His mercy will always triumph over justice.
The fellowship of God is delightful beyond all telling. He communes with His redeemed ones in an easy, uninhibited fellowship that is restful and healing to the soul. He is not sensitive nor selfish nor temperamental. What He is today we shall find Him tomorrow and the next day and the next year. He is not hard to please, though He may be hard to satisfy. He expects of us only what He has Himself first supplied. He is quick to mark every simple effort to please Him, and just as quick to overlook imperfection when He knows we meant to do His will. He loves us for ourselves and values our love more than galaxies of new created worlds.
That’s why I believe life is beautiful… because God is beautiful. He made us knowing the grief we will bring Him but He made us still, in order to love, commune, and Jesus was sent to the earth, to die on the cross, to redeem the world… so He made us, with care and design and purpose, to know Him who is beautiful, personal, with pleasure and pride He would show us off as His bride the centrepiece of passionate love.
God made life beautiful… because of His love… He wants us to find Him and know deep in us the stunning reality of God who loved the world that He gave His Son whoever believes in Him will grasp a full life, life that will be eternal, where we will never stop breathing the fresh wind of His Spirit.
Eve made a mess of world for us, when she distrusted God’s kindness…
We will continue to make a mess when we do not trust God’s view that Life is beautiful with Him. No need to rearrange life frantically, stressed your life to point of your heart giving out, rest in His love….
What can I do?
•Remind myself my life is purposeful.
This is meaning in life – I am sent, like Jesus, to offer forgiveness of sins… I am not here make life miserable for others, or make it difficult for them to find the love acceptance of God. hrough Christ there is life, eaning for life! Jesus said “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
•Get intensely personal with God.
Place faith in Christ – he made me to know Him…
Worship in private and in public (church)… Get to know God, prayer, study the Word of God, not know about Him, but experience Him, let the word sink in dwell inwardly, Col.3:16 (NLT) “16 Let the words of Christ, in all their richness, live in your hearts and make you wise. Use his words to teach and counsel each other. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.”
•I find most pleasure when I am in touch with God.
8 If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. 1 John 1:8,9 (NLT)
If not in touch with God, get in touch. Confess all that’s wrong, be real, God will do the unnatural thing –forgive!
•God expects me to be pro-life.
No murderous thoughts allowed… see the beauty of every life especially when this world gets to you. Service to others!
