2/10/08 Promises! Promises! Pt. 3

For the past two weeks we have been chewing on a statement

made by Peter in the 4^th verse of his second letter to us.

It is a statement in which he is revealing to us

the key ingredient in the changing process given to us by our God.

In that verse Peter says that,

2PE 1:4 ...(God) has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

In this statement Peter is doing

what all the New Testament writers do for us -

helping us to learn how to think,

how to use our logic and reasoning processes correctly

so that we can actually reach the right conclusions -

so that we can find truth.

Like much of our nation now days

I do most of my banking online.

I check my balances,

transfer money from one account to another,

and get my monthly statements all on line.

Several months ago the bank that handles our VISA account changed software.

As with most new software

it was suppose to be a bold new step forward

that in the end created endless messes and problems for everyone using it for months.

One of the problems it created

caused the last few lines of each page of the monthly statements to be deleted.

They simply were not there.

Four or five charges from each page just disappeared.

Now, it would have been great if the bank would actually have dropped those charges from their records as well,

but they didn’t.

They still held me accountable for the charges,

but they just didn’t give me a record of them.

The result, of course,

was that their bold new software made it impossible

for me to reach the correct totals.

Using their software,

I always got the wrong answers.

Folks, our minds are programed with faulty software.

We are missing a number of crucial pieces,

and we have added some reasoning assumptions of our own

that make it impossible for us to process the information we receive

in a way that leads us to the truth.

At the very core of our reasoning process

is the absence of the recognition

that we are created beings,

We actually believe we can take our little puddle of personal resources and abilities

and use them to successfully manage our own lives.

We think fulfilment and purpose in life

can be achieved through accumulating possessions,

or achieving control over others,

or exchanging pain for pleasure at any cost.

And even though our news media is almost daily filled with yet another account

of some wealthy/successful/popular person

who has just over-dosed on drugs

or been caught in some massive corruption,

still we pursue the same goals,

believing that they’ll work just fine for us.

And please understand that I’m not trying to be critical.

I’m just stating one of the fundamental facts of our human condition -

we’re all programmed with faulty software

and unless we begin an aggressive reprogramming process

we simply never can reason our way through to the truths

that will enable us to make sense of this life we are called to live.

When Peter writes his letters to us

he is offering us some of that much needed reprogramming.

We’ve already seen several crucial pieces just in the first four verses of his letter.

In the third verse of this letter

we heard him tell us that everything we need the most

for a truly successful and fulfilling life

will come to us through a growing personal friendship between us and our Creator.

And if you think what I just said

is that being more diligent and faithful in our religious duties

will make us better people

then you haven’t got a clue as to what I’m talking about.

Peter isn’t urging us to be more religiously faithful,

he’s simply supplying us with the most crucial missing piece

of our deeply corrupted human reasoning -

the truth that our growing personal friendship with God

is what creates the life environment

in which every other aspect of our lives makes sense.

The best one-line statement of what I’m trying to communicate here

is what Paul said to the Athenian philosophers.

ACT 17:28 ...in Him we live and move and exist, ...

It isn’t just that we need God as a resource.

The truth is that we can see nothing in life correctly

unless we see it, understand it, relate to it in the context of HIM.

And please, please, please don’t think I’m trying to suggest

that there are certain “Christian” things we do in our lives

and other “secular” things,

and the only ones worth doing are the “Christian” things.

There are no such divisions in life.

It isn’t what we do or don’t do that matters,

it’s whether or not we do what we do within context of our friendship with our God.

I was in Cincinnati, Ohio when I was writing some of these notes,

sitting in the corner of a Starbucks in a large mall.

I had my computer on my lap,

and a cup of my favorite coffee next to me,

and there was a business lady at the table right next to mine.

She, too, had her computer out,

and she was busy making phone calls in between entering data.

She gave the impression of being highly skilled in what she was doing.

I overheard one conversation in which she said something like,

“Well, just let him know that this is a one-time offer and it’s only good until the end of the day.”

I don’t know what she was buying or selling,

but I got the impression it involved lots of money.

I have no idea what she understood or didn’t understand about her relationship with God,

but I do know this,

that there were really only two possibilities open to her.

If she believed that making money was the goal,

and that having the money would then fill her life,

and give her a sense of significance and purpose and security,

then she, like so many others in our nation,

would end up with her pockets filled with money,

and her heart still filled with emptiness,

wondering why she still found this ache deep within.

If, however,

she understood both who she was and what she was doing

in the context of a growing friendship with her God,

she would do what she did to the best of her abilities,

but she wouldn’t look to it for either her purpose or her identity

because both of those would come to her from her King.

When Peter tells us that God has ... granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him...

he’s simply telling us that we cannot really make sense of anything in life

unless and until we relate to it within the framework of a living friendship with our Creator.

Well, from there Peter then goes on to tell us

that a major tool with which God grows that friendship between us and Himself

is the tool, the life-long project

of helping us to become “partakers of the divine nature”.

Now, he hasn’t told us yet what that involves,

but the next thing he does

is to tell us that a major tool in that whole process

is God’s precious and magnificent promises.

And it’s those promises we’ve been talking about for the past two weeks

and will spend just a little more time on this morning.

In the past two weeks

we’ve talked about the way in which we so often get it all backwards.

Having been trained through corrupted lies of religion,

we just naturally begin our pilgrimage with our God

with the assumption that this whole thing rests mostly upon our commitment to Him.

But then, into our sincere but deeply misguided thinking

comes the voice of Peter telling us

that it is not our promises to God that has the power to bring about changes in our lives

but rather it’s God’s promises to us.

2PE 1:4 ... He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature...

The foundation of the changing process that God accomplishes in the lives of His people

is not our promises to God

but rather His promises to us.

And in the past two weeks

we’ve seen that it is through those promises

that God seeks to restore our trust in Him.

Promises from the voice of God Himself,

promises designed to calm the terror inside us

and allow us to risk taking our eyes off of ourselves, and our problems, and our futile efforts to patch things up

long enough to turn them onto our Lord.

And remarkable as it may seem,

our God is involved in a great campaign

designed to restore our trust in Him.

The thought that a created being

would not trust his or her Creator seems ridiculous,

and yet we don’t.

We are the ones who have plunged off the trail

in frantic pursuit of those things we believed we must have

in order to meet our needs and find fulfillment in life.

We are the ones who find ourselves trapped,

stranded on a ledge from which we find no way back to safety.

He has the rope, the plan, the strength, the love, the means by which to bring us back.

All He needs from us is our willingness

to listen carefully to His instructions and obey what He says.

The crucial ingredient, though, is trust -

our choice to trust what He says, to trust who He is.

And the heart of His trust-rebuilding campaign

is found in His precious and magnificent promises to us.

It’s through those promises that He introduces Himself to us,

using them to quiet our suspicions of Him,

and to encourage us to risk following His lead.

The process of spiritual growth

is most of all simply the process

of growing in our ability to trust our Creator.

That trust develops one step, one ledge, one growth issue at a time

as we share with Him the adventure of becoming a partaker of His divine nature.

But the foundation of the whole process

is found in the remarkable promises He has given to us through His Word,

promises that call us to take our hands off the rock wall

and wrap them around the rope He’s placed beside us.

It’s the promises of God that separates true faith in Christ

from all the little religious systems in our world.

Religion calls to us on the ledge and encourages us try harder,

to climb faster,

to dig our fingers more deeply into the dirt and rock.

True faith has nothing to do with trying harder.

It’s that process of listening carefully to the voice of our Lord,

choosing to trust who He is,

and then on the basis of that trust, choosing to obey what He’s said to us.

And something else I’d mention here

before we take one more step in our thinking

is the unique and personal working of the Spirit of God

as we begin to listen to what He says to us through His Word.

Obviously, when Peter talks about the promises of God,

he is talking first of all and most of all

about the Written Word - the Bible.

He’s talking about words that were written several thousand years ago

by men we’ve never known,

initially to people we’ve never met,

in cultural settings sometimes vastly different from our own.

And yet, through those writings God reveals Himself to us

with brilliant clarity.

For, you see, cultures change,

but human nature does not,

nor does the true nature of our God.

And we can read about an event in the life of Peter,

or David,

or Joseph,

or Adam and Eve

and come away saying, “That’s ME!!” I’m just like them.”

And we are.

And when we see God’s response to them in their situations,

and His faithfulness to them in the face of their confusion or failure or rebellion,

we are seeing His response to us as well.

But there’s more to it than just that.

For there is also an active work of the Holy Spirit in our lives

in which He will at times take specific promises from His Word

and uniquely give them to us for very special purposes in our own lives.

I can’t explain this

except to say that it is part of what He does in the lives of His people.

There are times when we will read a promise in Scripture

and God’s Spirit will give it to us personally,

confirming to us in a way that only He can do

that what we are reading is not just something He was saying

to someone else several thousand years ago,

but it is something He is saying right now, right here, specifically to us.

You see, that’s all part of this remarkable living relationship between us and our God.

It’s not us learning a system,

it’s us learning one step, one day at a time

how to live in the presence of our Creator.

But there’s a second part of God’s promise-based plan of healing and restoration as well.

You see, He gives us His promises not just to restore us to a place of trust,

but also to restore us to a place of truth.

When my daughter, Joni, was still in grade school

she went through a time when she had vivid nightmares

about bees swarming in her bedroom.

More than once during that time of her life

Sandee, and I would wake up out of a deep sleep

to terrifying screams coming from Joni’s room.

I am not a morning person in the best of conditions,

and when I get suddenly woken up in the middle of the night

it’s not a pretty sight.

But the intense fear in my daughter’s voice

would catapult me out of bed and send me flying across the hall

to do battle with whoever was attacking my child.

I can remember one time especially

when I went flying into her room,

turned on the light,

and found my little sweetie huddled in her bed,

terrified of all the bees in her room, in her sheets, and under her covers.

What she wanted when I flung open the door

was a daddy who would plunge into a frantic battle

with all of the terrifying little critters she knew were swarming around her.

In her nightmare-filled mind

she believed her only hope was a father

who would launch into a frantic fight with the little pests -

swatting, smashing, searching every corner, and fold, and crevice.

She wanted to be able to see all the nasty bees lying dead in a pile on the floor.

That’s what she wanted.

But what she really needed

was not a daddy who would reinforce the lie

by flinging himself into battle with imaginary bees.

What she needed was a daddy

who could tell her the truth

in words and ways she could understand,

a daddy who could help her realize that there were no bees,

there never had been, and never would be.

We all enter the family of God

with our own private swarm of imaginary bees buzzing around us.

They take the form of inner fears of failure, shame, insignificance, unworthiness, or defeat.

We try to hide under our own little blankets -

piles of more or better or nicer or newer or more impressive things.

Or we try to fight them off with greater prestige or recognition or fame or control over others.

Or we try to find some other person who can rescue us,

someone who can make it all better and give us a place to hide from our enemies.

But when our Lord begins His healing process in our lives,

He sees our raging battle with the bees,

but He also knows the inner nightmare that fuels that battle,

the nightmare founded upon lies.

And in His love for us He doesn’t reinforce those lies

by strengthening our hiding places or swatting at our bees.

What He does do through His promises

is to turn on the light,

and pull back the covers,

and show us the truth - His truth that has the power to set us free.

The bees are not just dead and dying,

they’re not in the room at all.

He begins with promises telling us about His love for us -

‟For God so loved the world” (John 3;16)

‟I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.” (Jeremiah. 31:3)

‟... neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:38).

Step one is to assure us of His unfailing and eternal love

and at the same time, through that love,

introduce us to a sense of value and true self-worth

that can come only through seeing ourselves through the eyes of our Creator.

Then, with His arms of love wrapped tight around us,

He begins to tell us who we really are and what our true purpose in life is.

He has made us His ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20),

each one of us is equipped with special gifts (1 Peter 4:10)

and a special calling (Romans 11:29).

Through His promises He tells us that we have real purpose,

real significance,

and a real ability to impact the world in which we live.

And as we allow Him to fill our minds with the knowledge of who we are

and what we have become through Christ,

this knowledge begins to free us from our bondage to the lies

that once formed the foundation of our lives.

Through His promises

our Lord builds a whole new foundation for life,

breaking us free from our twisted, distorted, confusing, pain-filled self-concepts,

telling us the truth about who we are and why we have value.

It’s God’s intention that each of us who come to Him through Christ

be able to hear Him say to us, ‟My child, you have great and eternal value to Me, your Creator. I have always loved you. I always will. You hold a vital role in this world, a role I have carefully equipped you to fulfill. I have made you adequate as a servant of the new Covenant, and both who you are and what you do matters more than you could ever imagine.”

The pathway of true spiritual growth,

the one that leads us into an ever growing intimacy with our Creator,

is a path marked and lighted by the promises of God -

promises that deepen our trust in our Lord

and allow us to discover the truth about both Him and ourselves.

Frantic activity and fierce determination

may impress those who look on

and make us feel better about ourselves.

But they can never bring about

the inner life transformation we so desperately need.

Only when we cease striving long enough to listen to our Creator,

then choose to trust who He is by following what He says,

will He be freed to begin His recreative process of healing within us.

‟For ... He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

With our Lord’s promises giving us the solid footing we so desperately need,

having shared with us the goal of growing in the true knowledge of our Lord

through the project of becoming a partaker of His divine nature,

Peter then takes us one step further.

He breaks this project down into eight specific, progressive steps of growth.

In one of the most remarkable passages on Christian growth in the entire Bible

Peter shows us not only the eight specific qualities

that Christ seeks to build into each of our lives,

but also the progressive order in which He leads us through the building process.

That’s where we’ll pick up our study next time.

But let me add just one further comment here before we close.

It would be great if learning the truth about ourselves and our God

was simply matter of our hearing and believing it.

But the truth is it rarely works that way

and I just want you to be aware of what to expect.

You see, the lies we believe,

the bees in our own lives,

are often deeply imbedded in every aspect of our thinking.

They are not just incorrect facts we have accepted,

they are often the most basic accepted assumptions about life we possess.

And as such

it often takes our Lord years of rebuilding in His work with us

before we can begin to hear the truth.

I mention that not to discourage you,

but rather to prepare you for the true nature of the rebuilding process He assumes in His relationship with us.