In focusing on the various qualities of God’s Father-like love, I hope to capture not only how much you matter to God, but the nature of how to relate to him accordingly…that is, How To Live In Response To God’s Love.
Let me begin by asking you: “Do you know why you are here today?”
• Some of us might respond that we’re here because: 1. worship of God is central to your life, 2. because you want to be a part of those seeking God and his purposes, 3. because a friend invited you.
• A variety of reasons…but my desire is to let that question fall deeper upon our souls…for I’m referring not simply to here in this gathering of worship, but of here in this world, of existence itself. Do you know why we’re here?
• HERE LIES THE GREATEST QUESTION OF THE HUMAN SOUL.
• a question which I believe carries 3 related and subsequent questions:
1. Am I Planned?
2. Am I Known?
3. Am I Wanted?
1. Am I Planned?
…Child of chance, or child of choice?
…Is my existence incidental or intentional?
…Am I a mistake left to live in the margins of life, or was I really “made to order” and given a special place?
• In answer to this question, many of us of course think initially of what was communicated to us by our parents…In my case, they had 2 girls, wanted a boy, said I started quiet as an infant…and have been making up for it ever since. My parents thought of having 4th, but I was enough energy.
• I was planned…yet I still brought many surprises along the way…In truth, no parent plans on who we really are, and this can leave unspoken doubts within our souls.
2. Am I Known?
Apart from the question of original intent, we may wonder if we are forgotten…
• Is there any ultimate knowledge of our inner existence: not the small portion we make known, but the vast unarticulated part that even we find ourselves challenged to really know?
And ultimately…
3. Am I Wanted?
Are we acceptable? of any ultimate value? Even if I am planned and known, can I be certain I’m still of any good…that I’m wanted?
If we are to really call God our father, a heavenly Father, these are the first and perhaps most formative questions we must consider.
For when we think of the quality of human fathering, the most fundamental failure is that of a father...
• for whom this relationship with their child was not intentional, but incidental
• one who doesn’t know their child
• one who doesn’t want their child
It’s been said: “Anyone can make a baby, but you must choose to have a child.”
• A true father is more than a biological parent…yet some of us have not realized deeply enough that quality in God’s relationship to ourselves. We know something of Him as a cause and contributor, but not of his conscious choice for our existence.
*God has been revealing to my heart just how far adrift our perceptions of His involvement can be…how uniquely he has designed, known, and destined us, both as a church and as individuals.
Our life as a church is the result of our understanding that God has formed us…called us into a unique relationship to one another, has called us to a unique role in our community, and a unique role with other churches.
• He’s planned for us…knows us…and is filled with desire for us.
• This is true of our lives as individuals as well.
One of the most beautiful descriptions of this knowledge comes from King David in Psalm 139 (vv.1-6, 13-18).
Psalm 139:1-6
O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
2You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.
5You hem me in--behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Psalm 139:13-18
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.
• Here the great quest of the soul is answered:
1. I Was Planned
v. 13: “You created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
• All life comes from God. At the beginning He created from nothing, including man from dust. Though now this life creating process is shared with human beings-through whatever human circumstances, fallen as they may be-He is still the sovereign God of life.
• His ultimate and ideal will for us was fallen from and awaits our full redemption in the resurrection, but he still has sovereignty, reigns over the forming of every life.
v. 14: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
• Recognizing God’s intricate involvement, we are left to embrace it…to declare ourselves His good work…and to “know it full well.”
• What a wonderful declaration of the soul: “I praise you because…”
• Let’s state it together…
vv. 15-16: “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body.”
• Both ‘the secret place’ and ‘depths’ are metaphors referring to the womb.
• And we thought the ultrasound was powerful!
• ‘nothing hidden’ – no surprises.
• ‘woven together’ suggests the intentionality of colors and patterns
• Planned Parenthood should be proud of God!!
v. 16 cont. “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
• David recognized that by God’s choice; his life had been created and planned.
• This is a profound truth we find revealed throughout scripture:
• Jeremiah-“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (Jer. 1:5)
• Samson (Judges 13:2-5, 24)
• Job (Job 31:13-15)
• Isaiah-“Before I was born the LORD called me…he who formed me in the womb to be his servant…” (Isaiah 49:1,5)
• Paul- “But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles…” (Gal. 1:15-16)
• All these texts reveal that there is nothing incidental about our lives; your existence is 100% intentional. God has been involved with your very existence in a personal way long before any of us were aware.
• You are one of a kind; original and ordained to be. You were consciously created and made to order.
• What does this tell you about your relationship with God?
• 2 related truths:
1. It’s incomparable…can’t think of ourselves in some kind of comparable sense. God’s love is indivisible.
• For there is only one “you” in God’s mind and heart. That’s why Jesus said he would leave the 99 sheep to go find the one that was lost.
• That one is as precious to God as if he had only created one, because in essence he has. That’s how He feels about you.
2. Similarly, this truth of our creation reveals how individually he wants to relate to us.
• Friends…began the practice of taking each child out…
• God looks upon you with the same precious desire for affirming your special place.
…There’s only one you…So often we perceive that God would like us to be more like someone else. His only desire is that we become more like us…or more accurately, that we become more like Jesus expressed through our unique personality and calling.
2. I Am Known
Even though we’re planned, does this make certain that we’re known?
• There is in fact a philosophy that denies this: “deism.” But David recognized how intensely involved God remains: Psalm 139:1-6.
David knew God was intimately at hand in his life. It gave him assurance.
It shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus, in sensing the fears of his disciples who would be faced with the challenge of extending the kingdom, assured them in a similar way: Matthew 10:29-31.
• Explain sparrow: 2 for penny, because one is thrown in
• in Luke: clearly 5 for 2 pennies.
• God knows the needs and cares about those given no value. He doesn’t miss anything. Even the hairs on your head are numbered.
What a difference it makes to know God knows us. What fortitude can fill us when we really recognize that He intimately knows and cares about us.
Far from forgotten, you are forever known.
…all of this leads to the realization that:
3. I Am Wanted
Sometimes we could still think that even though God planned us and knows us, we’ve messed up and now He’s not so sure he wants us.
• God isn’t stuck with anything!
• 2 Peter 3:9 “he doesn’t want anyone to perish”
• Crippled as we may be, his love only increases.
• Experience at Mt. Hood:
In a recent trip through Portland…drove up to Mt. Hood…man about 45 years old, clearly physically and mentally disabled…led by his father…later noted several similar relationships. My soul fell silent…no doubt they knew a sadness in ideals that couldn’t be met, but these heroic parents had reached down to an even greater depth of love.
• Purity of God’s unconditional love; not a love born of what was or wasn’t to be valued in these children, but a value of them born of love.
My wife once asked me a not-too-uncommon question: Did I feel that I needed her?
• I couldn’t say that in the absolute sense, but my point was I WANTED HER; I was choosing her.
• Isn’t that the real desire of our souls?
Many of us operate our lives toward being needed because we’ve doubted our potential to be freely and forever wanted.
God freely and forever wants you…that’s why he created you; that’s why He came for you in Christ.
That we would not walk as orphans in doubt, but as children…desired and destined.
More deeply and definitely than any parent or father has determined, God’s fatherhood has determined your existence.
If you’ve known doubt more than design? If you’ve found it difficult to recognize that you were planned, that you are known, and that you’re wanted…I want to invite you to come for a time of further ministry this morning.
• Perhaps these great questions of the soul have been hard to grasp because of the limits that surrounded your family.
• Perhaps they were made known, but you lost your parents, and your soul has felt at a loss apart from those anchors of unconditional love.
• Whatever your circumstances, God wants you to know…YOU ARE MEANT TO BE HERE.
