©2006 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

02-26-06

Hearing The Heart Of God

2/26/06 Hearing The Heart Of God

I told you last week

that I wanted to use this morning

to share with you some things that have been going on in my life personally,

things that I very much need to try to put into words.

In some ways

what I will share with you in the next few minutes

goes as deep within me

as anything has ever gone.

I don’t apologize for that

because in the end all any of us ever really have

as we attempt to proclaim and illustrate the reality of our God

is our own life -

our own experience with Him

as we understand that experience within the light given to us by His Word and His Spirit within us.

Of course those of you who have listened to me teach for any length of time

are well aware that experiences from my own life

frequently show up in my teaching,

but most of the time I share those experiences

from more of an emotional distance,

as a teacher.

For the next few minutes, however,

you’re going to get more “Larry” than I usually let you see.

I’m still in a very active process

of thinking and then rethinking through some of what I’m learning,

but I realize now that this will likely be a process

that will continue on for the rest of my life

so I’ll just go ahead now with what I’ve learned so far.

Early in my Christian life

I once heard a man say that,

if you want to know what a preacher is weakest in,

listen to what he preaches about the most.

Though I know that’s not always accurate,

there are times when I have been forced to realize

that in some areas of my own life

there’s more truth to that then I’ve realized.

I know, of course, that there are some major themes

that are deeply imbedded in nearly all of my teaching.

One of them is the message of the grace of God -

what it really means

for us to live with God

not on the basis of our performance for Him,

but rather on the basis of His grace poured out on us through Jesus Christ.

ROM 5:1-2 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.

Not only do I reject the idea that I’m weak in this area,

in truth

my understanding of His grace

is the air my spirit breathes daily

and the only solid foundation under my feet.

Another huge area of emphasis in my teaching

has been the destructive power of religion in the life of a Christian.

And here again,

I truly do know the stench of religion,

I know its power to corrupt the life of the Spirit of God within us,

I know the ease with which men and women in positions of leadership

can use religion to manipulate,

and dominate,

and spiritually abuse those under their control.

And I hate it

and will continue to war against it

as long as my Lord gives me His permission to speak.

But there is a third area of emphasis in my teaching

that may be more closely aligned with a major area of weakness within my spirit

than I have ever realized until recently.

It’s one that I have been driven into by Scripture itself,

one that absolutely screams at us

every time we look honestly at what our God says to us about Himself in His Word.

Simply stated,

it is the truth of the intimate, personal love of our Creator

for each one of us.

To attempt to offer examples from Scripture of what I’m saying

would lead us into every book in the Bible, if we were to take the time to do so.

JOH 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

ROM 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

How many times have I quoted and requoted Paul’s prayer for us in Ephesians

that we would be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God...?

It isn’t just a theme of the Bible,

it is the theme,

the one at the very center of everything we read.

As my own teaching has evolved over the years,

I reached a point a year or so ago

where I told you that, on the basis of everything I’ve learned during the past 40 years

about God

both through His Word and through His own interaction with me personally,

I am now convinced

that God’s entire plan for the human race,

with all that was involved in the Garden of Eden -

the forbidden fruit and Satan’s temptation and man’s disobedience,

and then all that was involved

in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ,

the whole thing has been carefully designed by God

so that He could create for us a framework in which we could understand

the true nature of His love for us.

It is what is.

It is the central theme in all of life.

God knew that we would never see into the heart of our Creator

until we saw His response to us

in the face of our rebellion against Him.

And that is exactly what we are seeing

when we see Christ.

When we look at the cross

and see God Himself nailed to it,

paying our debt for our sins,

we are seeing the way God responds to us,

and the way He feels about us

while we are still in rebellion against Him.

“Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made

Were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry,

Nor could the scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky.”

God’s communication of His love to us

is the central, defining issue

of everything He has ever done

or ever will do throughout all of creation.

But it goes beyond that,

and here’s where it starts to become more personal for me.

For, I have come to realize

that not only is the communication of this message

the defining issue of creation as a whole,

but it is also the defining issue

of God’s personal interaction with each one of us throughout our lives.

From the day we’re born

until the day we die

with each one of us

He is seeking to communicate to us

the depth of His love for us.

And this communication is taking place

against the backdrop of two huge forces

that are screaming exactly the opposite message at us.

One of those forces is our own rebellion against Him

and all of the evil,

and corruption,

and pain,

and perversion,

and hatred,

and accumulated moral filth for thousands of years

that has resulted from that rebellion.

I don’t care how we dress it up, folks,

this is a profoundly corrupt,

pain-filled,

evil-driven world in which we live.

And all of that evil

and all of that pain is used by Satan to attack the idea of a God who loves us.

We are the source of the evil.

We are the source of the pain.

And yet Satan tells us

that, if God REALLY loved us,

He would never allow such things to exist.

And because we want to believe his lies,

because blaming God eases our own guilt,

we nod in agreement, as if some wise thing has just been told to us.

And the second great force

warring against our discovery of God’s love for us

is Satan Himself.

We talked just a few months ago

about the way in which he seeks to wound each of us in the early years of our lives

in ways that make it extremely difficult for us to see the love of our God for us.

And though we are so often so blind to what’s happening,

we live our lives daily immersed in a very real warfare,

one in which our minds and hearts are the battlegrounds.

Now, I have known all of this for years.

I’ve known it in my doctrine,

and I’ve known it at some level in my heart as well.

But the human mind

does not easily grasp

the true nature of God’s involvement in our lives.

Having willfully blinded ourselves to that truth

prior to our submission to Him,

even after we meet Him

it often takes us years

for God to begin opening up our minds

to what’s really going on.

And one of the thoughts

that I have been wrestling with in a new way recently

is the realization that everything that God has ever done in my life

has been done as part of His ongoing efforts

to communicate to me His love for me.

From a purely logical point of view

I should have seen this from the very beginning,

but true logic rarely enters into our interactions with our God.

We’re too intensely emotional,

and far too blinded to the truth.

Logically, of course,

if I really am a created being,

created by God for friendship with Him,

and if what He has been seeking for me from the very beginning

is my personal discovery of the true nature of his love for me,

then logically everything He does in my life,

and everything He brings into my life,

and, in fact, His every action both in me and toward me

will be designed by Him to move me into greater and greater awareness of that love.

And I want to be sure

that I say this in a way

that allows you to see what I think I’m seeing myself.

I’ve understood almost from the beginning

that what my God has offered me through Christ

is a life lived in His presence,

a life bathed in His grace,

a life in which growth in friendship with Him

is the central theme of my life.

But what I’m beginning to realize

is that there is far more purpose to God’s actions toward me,

far more purpose to absolutely everything He brings into my life

than I ever realized.

When Joni was about five years old

Sandee and I took her to Disneyland.

At that time Disneyland had a ride designed for small children

in which the child drove a car around a curving course.

The car had a gas motor,

and a real, working accelerator,

and a steering wheel that really turned the wheels.

But what I don’t think Joni realized at the time

was that, running down the center of the track

underneath the little car

was a strong metal rail,

and, whenever Joni would drive too far one direction or the other,

the steering mechanism would hit that rail

and automatically turn the car back into the direction it was suppose to go.

Folks,

there is a metal rail underneath our little cars.

We all think we’re driving.

We can hear the engine roar when we step on the gas,

and we can see the wheels turn when we move the steering wheel,

and we just know we’re running the show.

But there is a rail under our little car,

a rail designed by God Himself,

a rail that always moves us, as much as He can move us within the context of real free will,

back toward the discovery of His personal love for us.

PRO 16:9 The mind of man plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.

And from the very beginning

He’s always known exactly where He wants to take me -

and it’s directly into the growing discovery at the heart level

that His love for me is just that - for ME,

for LARRY,

on the deepest, most personal level imaginable.

He knows exactly how to move me toward that knowledge,

and He is carefully orchestrating everything He can orchestrate

within the context of my free will

to bring me into an ever greater understanding of the truth.

I have come to realize recently

that there has been a work going on in my life

for more than thirty years now,

a work that, if I could see it clearly,

most certainly stretches all the way back to the fall of 1966

when I first came to the Lord,

or more likely back to the fall of 1947

when I made my entrance into this world.

It is a work that my God has been seeking to accomplish within me,

a work I didn’t even know needed to be done,

a work that I’m just now beginning to get tiny glimpses of,

a work that has involved some deep wounds within my life,

wounds that, from early in my life, have made it impossible for me to hear

what my God has been wanting me to hear

about Himself

and the true nature of his love for me.

It’s also a work

that has involved His bringing into my life

what I can only describe as a kind of mirror

in which I could see reflected

the true nature of my own relationship with Him.

But until very recently

I had no idea what He was doing.

I’m still not saying I’m seeing the truth with any clarity,

but at least now I know that the mirror exists,

and what I am seeing in it is remarkable beyond belief.

I do think, at least from a human point of view,

some of the roots of my struggles in this whole area

trace back to my relationship with my dad when I was a child.

My dad is a very nice man.

He’s always been a nice man, as long as I’ve known him.

But throughout my childhood and adolescence

he had absolutely no idea how to enter my life on an emotional level.

I certainly don’t fault him for that.

No one ever entered his life on an emotional level when he was a child,

and he simply had no idea how to go about it in my life.

But as a result,

the father concept I grew up with

was a person who was nice but emotionally inaccessible to the extreme.

Whatever world he lived in on a feeling level

was no world I could ever hope to have any access to.

And when I came to the Lord in the fall of 1966,

the God I came to

was a God who was nice, but distant to the extreme.

And for nearly forty years now

my Lord has been on a carefully orchestrated crusade

to bring me into the knowledge of the truth.

And, though I have not realized it until very recently,

repeatedly throughout the years

He as sought to position mirrors in my life

in which I could see reflected the true nature of His heart involvement with me.

Communicating real love

is a very tricky thing.

There is nothing in all of human experience

that requires more of a surround-sound approach

than does the effective communication of true love.

This is true both in our human relationships

and in our relationship with God.

In our human relationships

certainly it requires words - content.

It requires us hearing the words spoken - “I love you!”

But it takes much more than just that.

It also requires that the message be demonstrated

through the other person’s actions toward us.

To say we are loved is one thing,

but those words have no real power, no real meaning

unless the other person’s actions toward us validate it.

But even that isn’t enough.

There is also a third aspect of love communication,

one that goes beyond the words,

beyond the actions,

one that allows us to enter into the other person at the feeling level,

allowing us to actually see in them

their strong emotional affection for us.

In human relationships

that third kind of love communication

takes place through a multitude of non-verbal tools.

Eye contact is a big one.

Touch is another.

Body language is yet another,

along with a multitude of other subtle

yet extremely powerful communication techniques that,

if they are successful,

allow us to actually see the heart of the other person toward us,

and to see their deep emotional connection with us.

But how about with God?

Well, the same principles apply

in our being able to receive His love, as well.

We need the words.

JER 31:3 ..."I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.”

HEB 13:5 ... He Himself has said, "I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,"

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world...”.

And we also need the actions.

We need that clear image of our God nailed to that cross,

along with the endless personal daily evidences of His love in our lives.

But that alone is not enough.

Unless we are able to see into His heart

and discover there

that, wonder of wonders,

this God of ours actually emotionally delights in us,

and treasures us,

and rejoices in His friendship with us,

unless that happens,

we will not know the truth in a way that frees us to respond to that love.

So how does that happen?

How can you see the heart of God for you?

Well, to be honest, I don’t have a clue.

I don’t know how God will go about that communication process in your life

because I don’t know what things will make it possible

for you to be able to hear and receive that truth.

But I do know He is working for that communication in both your life and mine right now.

And at last I am beginning to understand

a big way in which He has been seeking to communicate it to me personally.

Throughout most of my adult life

God has at times

brought into my life

what I suppose observers would call “mentoring” or “discipling” relationships with young Christians.

And for most of my life

I have viewed these friendships

as something God was doing mostly for the benefit of those I was working with.

I saw it as something that God was seeking to do in their lives,

and I saw Him allowing me to be a part of what He was doing.

But something happened just recently

that has suddenly made me realize

that from the very beginning

it has never been about me and them,

it has been about me and my God.

Through these friendships He has been trying to give me mirrors

in which I could see reflected His heart toward me

and I’ve never been able to see it...until now.

During the past few years

I have been working with a young man who is now in his mid teens.

He has a real, deep, genuine commitment to Christ,

but he’s also had a rather rugged start to his life,

and during the past year or two

he has at times made some really stupid choices,

some of which could have had potentially devastating consequences in his life.

One of those choices recently got him into some trouble

with an authority figure in his life

and he ended up being called into a meeting he really didn’t want to go to.

It was kind of a scary meeting for him,

and he asked if I would be with him for that interview.

Of course I agreed, and as I sat there with him,

listening to the revelation of some of the junk he’d gotten into,

seeing at first the pain and the fear in his eyes,

and then the rather remarkable courage he displayed as he talked honestly about what had happened,

rather than being offended by what I was hearing,

or furious at him for his childish stupidity,

I found myself flooded with this incredible love for him,

and a longing to stand with him and fight for him in any way I could.

And as the interview drew to a close

I turned to the interviewer and said,

“I just want you to know that I see tremendous good in this boy

and I will do anything within my power to help this young man.”

Now there is no way those words

could in themselves ever communicate to you

the intensity of what I was feeling at that moment - this overwhelming longing

to bring healing and freedom and a future and a hope into his life.

The interview ended and I went home,

but the next morning I was sitting in my office,

remembering the intensity of my longings to help that kid,

fascinated by the memory of it

because it was exactly the opposite of what I would have logically expected to feel,

and all of the sudden I knew -

what I felt for that boy at that point

and the way I responded inside

to the mess he’d created for himself,

is exactly what my God feels for me!

My feelings for him

were...are my God’s feelings for ME!

That is His response to me.

That is His heart for me.

That’s what He feels as He walks next to me in life.

“Larry, I see tremendous good in you, my precious son,

and I will do anything within my power to help you,

and to heal you,

and to free you

because I love you with a love that consumes Me.

It’s not just the world that I love, Larry.

It’s you.

I always have, and I always will,

and everything I’ve ever done

or ever will do

I have done in an attempt to reach your heart with that truth.”

And I looked in the mirror

and saw the love of my God for me.

I’ll forget again, of course.

In some ways I already have.

But He’ll keep talking to me

using words He knows I can understand.

And at a level I’ve never known before

I’m finally beginning to hear what He’s saying.