The time comes when it is no longer good enough to know about something; you want to experience it directly. The moment comes when it just does not satisfy to have only an arm’s length relationship to something. The only thing that will satisfy is a first-hand, up close and personal, immediate encounter. An experience.
Margaret and I had been married for a good many years, and during all those years she had talked about her native land. She described the beauties of England, she spoke with eloquence about its quaint little villages, she told me tales about its customs and its people. I thoroughly enjoyed every story she told. She got me into reading books about England. We subscribed to a magazine about England. When there was a television special about England, I watched it and enjoyed it and felt that I knew something about a place that had helped to make my wife who she is. It was lots of fun to learn about England. It sounded as though it might be almost as good as Kentucky!
But after a while that began to pale. After a while reading and talking and watching TV no longer satisfied. After a while I wanted to go there, to see it for myself. So we scraped together our pennies and off we flew, to see England. Guess what! It was far better to experience the place than just to read about it. It is always far better to experience something than just to have second-hand information.
That’s always true. If you don’t think so, then, young men, instead of asking that lovely young lady out for a date, just spend Saturday night staring at her picture. See if that satisfies you. Or ask her about it, because she’s been staring at your picture! If you don’t think first hand experience beats anything else, then I suggest that on Thursday, instead of eating that turkey dinner, you just pick up the food section of the newspaper and read about turkey! Would that be good enough? I don’t think so! Or I suggest that instead of singing a piece of music, just pick up the score and read it. Next Sunday, I’ll just say, "Now let’s all read silently Hymn No. 44." Would that work? No! By no means! Knowing about something is far, far from experiencing it. The day comes when we just do not get satisfaction from talking about something; we want to experience it.
We have been talking for six weeks about experiencing God. We have talked and listened. But the danger is that we may still be substituting talking about God for knowing God. We may be doing theology but not doing prayer. We may dream of evangelistic strategies, but that’s not sharing our faith personally. We may come to see videos about missions and study issues about ministry needs, but nothing beats actually going somewhere where we are needed. It’s much too easy to let second-hand stuff get in the way of the real thing. It’s much too easy to substitute mere theory for the experience of God’s presence.
I tell you, that won’t do for me anymore. That just won’t do. I want to feel something. I want to sense something. I want to go beyond playing church. I want to know God. I want something authentic.
It does happen, you know. How can it happen?
There is a clue in what Paul writes to the Colossians:
I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel. I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known.
Paul says he was rejoicing. That’s experience. That’s real. How did it happen? He says, first, it came from suffering. From sacrifice. From serving according to God’s commission. That’s called obedience. And he says he was doing this to complete what was lacking for the sake of the body of Christ, the church. Completing what needed to be done for the church. That’s fulfillment. Experience, obedience, and fulfillment.
Listen to the seventh and final principle of the Experiencing God discipline: "You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you.” “You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you."
In other words, knowing God is not just a feeling. It’s not just a buzz. It’s something you discover when you give yourself to God’s work in His church. What is it that God wants to accomplish in His church through you and me? We created a vision statement that expresses it well. Let’s review it together.
VISION STATEMENT
When we first got our new heating system installed, because it is computer controlled, and the information is sent over telephone lines, the contractor monitored us for a while. Somebody somewhere was watching a computer screen, and, if something was going wrong, they could call is and tell us we had a problem.
Well, one Sunday morning we had had, as we did this morning, a baptismal service. I had gotten out of my boots and robe and was getting ready to come on into the rest of the worship service. But the telephone was ringing, so I answered it. The guy at the monitoring service said, in a panicky voice, "You’d better do something. You’d better do it right away. You’ve lost your hot water. The water temperature has dropped suddenly and I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you have a leak. Hurry! Hurry! Get down to your boiler room right away." I just laughed. I said, "Do you know anything about baptisms? The reason the system went into alarm is that we just used all the hot water filling our baptismal pool.” But he was still panicky, "Well, but, it’s gone. You need to do something. You have sacrificed your hot water." Sacrificed! Isn’t it interesting that he used the word, "sacrificed"! I said, "It’ll be all right. It’ll recover. It’s just the shock any system gets when we drain it of everything in order to do God’s work. But it will recover.” And, of course, it did.
Obedience to God’s commands always means sacrifice. It just does. I don’t think there is any way around that. But I will tell you that once you get over the initial shock of sacrifice, you do recover, and you find that it was all worthwhile. The trouble is that a lot of us go into panic at the first sign of hardship, and thus we cut off the experience. We short-circuit our experience of God because we get scared. We get scared of paying the price of sacrifice and obedience.
I wish I could tell you that experiencing God would be cheap. But it isn’t. And it won’t be. God’s grace is free, yes; you cannot possibly buy it. But until you and I sacrifice something precious to us, our experience of God’s presence will be faint and dim, only a hint of what it could be. Experiencing God requires obedient sacrifice. Maybe a shock at first. And yet, when we sacrifice, God replenishes. We do recover.
You remember the story of Abraham and Isaac? How Abraham felt he heard God’s call to sacrifice the thing most precious to him, his son? You remember how Abraham labored up the mountain, with his son Isaac behind him, knowing that he had to be willing to give up the one thing with which he thought he could never part? But in the end, God did not require the impossible. God required a willing spirit and a giving heart. There was a ram in the bushes, there was another way. The issue was not a son to be given, but a heart to be opened. It just meant that Abraham had to have the faith to see that the willingness to sacrifice was the way to experience God.
If you remember that story, then maybe you’ve discovered how the story of Abraham and Isaac points to the story of God and Jesus Christ. How God too took His Son up a mountain one day, and allowed Him to be sacrificed for us. How the very Son of God was taken into the rude hands of rough soldiers and slain, for us. It all seems like such a shock, such a terrible, awful loss. And it was. Until the third day. Until the day when God raised Him from the dead. Sacrifice is replenished, once the shock of it is past. That’s why Paul can speak of Christ as
the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
And that is why Paul even rejoices in his losses and his sufferings, for the sake of the church. He knows that whatever he spends, in one way or another, it will be repaid. Whatever he gives, it will be replenished. But the way to experience God is to obey Him. "You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you."
This past Wednesday night we voted to take a sacrificial step. In voting to employ a full-time staff worker, we voted to spend money we do not yet have and cannot foresee with normal human sight. I’m sure it will be a shock for a while. It will be tough for us to meet all our financial obligations. But I can tell you that, for me, I heard last Wednesday a call to obedience. I personally must obey God and God’s church, and I must therefore make a sacrifice of my resources to do what God’s church requires. But that’s all right. That is all right. Because I believe that in obeying I experience Him. And you and I will find that He fills us up with joy.
I’m saying that whether you agree or disagree with the decision that was taken, it does not matter. We are called to be obedient to the body. I will tell you this: I am so proud of a church whose members can disagree without being disagreeable, and of people who, when they lose a vote, do not pack up and leave, but stay to support. I ask you now to express the sacrificial spirit as we prayerfully and thoughtfully, make our financial commitments to the work of this church and its mission for the coming year.
COLLECTION OF PLEDGE CARDS
Humorist Erma Bombeck, writing in the last months of her life, when she knew she did not have long to live, asked herself, "If I had my life to live over, what would I change?" In her inimitable way, she put her finger on something important. She said that she would spend more time romping in the field with her children and less time washing out grass stains. That she would stop and admire the crayon squiggles on the wall instead of yelling about the extra housework they created. That she would attend more school plays and music-torturing recitals in which her kids performed, and less time standing around cocktail parties trying to impress people she didn’t know with knowledge she didn’t have. And, said she, she would tell her husband how much she loved him instead of urging him to pull in his paunch and comb his hair over his bald spot.
In a word, Erma Bombeck tells us, she would invest more time in love. Fulfillment comes from love. And love takes time. Love is the investment of time and energy, heart and hand.
This church will never mean what it can for you until you put time and work, love, into it. God will never mean what God should mean for you until you put time and work, love, into God’s purposes. Paul says that he did what he did for the sake of Christ’s body, the church. I make no apologies whatsoever, then, for asking you to invest time in this church.
It is not only that no matter how many staff people we employ, they cannot do it all. That’s true, but that’s not the main point. The main point is that God will not be real to you until you attempt to do God’s work. Our task here is to open up an experience with God for every person within our reach. Our vision is to be redemptive for every person whose life we can intersect. That can only be done with every one of you at work. And your experience of God’s grace and power is going to be measured, too, by how much time and love and energy you invest.
Some of us are just going to have to change some priorities. Like Erma Bombeck, we are going to have to look at what we are doing and find out that doing something for others in the name of Christ takes precedence over lots of other things. We have a friend whose house has always been a shambles. It’s so messy the vacuum cleaner needs to be vacuum cleaned. But, I tell you, when you go there, you feel welcomed, you feel at home, because she gives her time to others. To the things that matter. To the things that Paul is speaking of when
he says,
"So that we may present everyone mature in Christ, for this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.’
I too am looking at this thing of how time gets used. I’ve been assessing all summer long what my time can be given to. I’ll spare you the details, but I know that we have arrived at a time in which I too want to toil and struggle with all the energy that I possess to teach Christ, to preach Christ, to share Christ, and, yes, to experience Christ. Nothing else will satisfy. No more second-hand Christ, but Christ first. No more stories about God, but God at hand. No more church mechanics, church administration, church politics, church busy-ness. But instead the work of the church. Being the church. Being the body of Christ. Fulfilling God’s purpose.
For, ’You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you." Find something to do. Tell us about it. Are you experiencing Him, first-hand, up front, in His church? We have much to do. We need you. You need us. Together we need Christ. And we will meet Him, if we obey Him and let Him accomplish, fulfill, His work through us. Experience, obedience, fulfillment. "You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you."
