03-02-14 All Your Needs Pt. 4

Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

What does it mean for a person

to live in a Father/child relationship with God?

We come to Christ,

carrying our load of sin

and confusion

and fear

and failure,

and dump it all onto Christ,

accepting His offer

to take our brokenness

and give us His forgiveness,

His cleansing,

His righteousness in return.

2 Cor. 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

And in that transition

a profound change takes place

in the nature of our relationship

with the God who created all that is.

With the barrier of our sin gone forever,

and all the wrath,

and all the judgement,

and all the penalty for our sins

having already been poured out on Christ,

and our account with God

now paid in full forever,

we enter into a remarkable new

eternal Father-child relationship with God.

We are not just one of the crowd.

We are not just a tiny speck in the mass of humanity.

We become His special, treasured son or daughter,

someone about whom He thinks constantly,

and with whom He lives continually.

I know we sometimes feel as if we are all alone in the world.

I know we sometimes wonder

if anyone knows

or cares what’s happening inside us.

But I also know

we have no concept of what has really happened

between us and our Creator

as a result of what He has done for us through Christ.

He says it in words we can understand:

Heb. 13:5 ... He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you...”

In fact, if you want to know

how practical that promise is intended to be,

do you know the context in which

that promise is made to the Christian?

The first part of that verse in Heb. 13:5 says this:

Heb. 13:5 Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,”

and the very next statement is this:

Heb. 13:6 so that we confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?”

In context the author of Hebrews

is saying that the key ingredient

in breaking free from the love of money

is coming to grips with the reality

of God’s promise to never desert us

and never forsake us.

In other words,

he is telling us that we can only begin to relate correctly to money

when we first understand

that only God Himself

can offer us the kind of security

we long for in life,

the kind of security we think our possessions can provide for us.

For the past several weeks

we have been in a study

of a single verse, Phil. 4:19.

The verse, as you know by now,

if you’ve been with us in this study, says:

Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

And so far in this study

we haven’t even gotten to the verse itself yet.

For the past several weeks

we have been looking at some of the baggage we bring with us

as we approach this verse,

baggage that makes it difficult for us

to hear what God is really saying to us.

We have looked at 3 barriers to understanding so far:

#1. When we come to Christ

we bring with us a need framework

based upon our flesh-trained

mental and emotional operating systems.

#2. We also bring with us

a basic distrust of God and His intentions toward us.

and #3. We bring our fears

based upon all those areas

where we have seen other people fail us in the past.

We begin our relationship with our God

firmly convinced

that what we want

and what we really need

is a Father God who will take from us

our twisted,

inaccurate,

often even self-destructive list of needs

and stamp it “APPROVED!”.

But the truth is

what our spirits really long for

is what we actually have through Christ -

a God who begins His commitment to us

to meet our needs

by leading us through the sometimes painful process

of reshaping our understanding

of what we truly need for a fulfilling life,

prying our fingers off the lies,

and opening our hearts

to hunger and thirst for the truth.

Now let’s jump back into this study

and look at a couple more problem areas

before we go on to look at what the verse is actually saying.

#4. The fourth barrier to understanding

that occurred to me as I read Phil. 4:19

is the fact that every one of us

carries with us a list of what I like to call our “nonnegotiables”.

These are certain aspects of our lives

that we consider to be

our inalterable bottom lines

in what we must have for happiness.

I don’t know if this will help or not,

but I can give you a little test

that may be useful in recognizing

the “nonnegotiables” in our lives.

If you find yourself thinking,

“I can trust God’s leadership

just so long as He doesn’t mess with this area or this thing in my life...”

that is a nonnegotiable.

Nonnegotiables can be anything.

They can be a relationship

we are convinced we absolutely must have in order to be happy.

They can be a relationship

we are convinced we absolutely

must get rid of in order to be happy.

They can be a life-style,

or a position we hold,

or any one of an endless variety of addictive behaviors.

A nonnegotiable can be some place we must live,

or some place we refuse to live.

The truth is,

any nonnegotiable in our lives

has the power to blind us

to the reality of God’s love.

I believe most of those nonnegotiables

are not rooted in logic,

they are rooted in fear.

We cannot imagine how God could ever meet our needs

if we let go of that nonnegotiable.

Just the thought of Him dabbling with it

strikes terror within us.

Now we’ll come back to this again

as we continue to move through this series,

but for now let me just say

that anything we cling to that tightly

will in the end become

a destructive, crushing weight in our lives.

Not only will it not bring us

the richness and quality of life we long for,

but it will eventually poison the most significant relationships in our lives.

It will poison our relationship with our God

because we are afraid to trust Him.

It will poison our relationship with ourselves

because we loose respect for ourselves.

It will poison our relationships with any other person

who threatens or attacks our nonnegotiable.

And in the end

it will poison our relationship

with the nonnegotiable itself

because we have held it accountable

for making us happy,

a role it is powerless to fulfill.

#5. And then the last problem area I would mention

in our attempts to understand this statement in Phil. 4:19

is the fact that when we come to Christ

we all bring with us

our external-based techniques

for establishing and maintaining our self-identity.

And let me explain what I mean by that.

We are created beings.

As such, the only way we can ever

accurately and effectively understand

who we are,

and why we are here,

and why we have value

is through listening to our Creator

explain to us the answers to those questions.

However, every one of us enters this world

with a heart in rebellion against our God

which in turn makes us both unwilling

and unable to hear His voice.

The end result

is that every one of us is instantly plunged into a frantic search

to find some other voices

that will answer those crucial questions for us.

We almost never put the question into words,

but everyone of us enters into a desperate daily search for the answer to the question, “Who am I?”

And we come up with all sorts of tools

with which to answer that question.

‟I am what I do.”

‟I am where I live.”

‟I am what I drive.”

‟I am what you say about me.”

I can remember the first summer my daughter, Joni,

found a summer job in Anchorage

and got her own place away from our home.

For the first time in my life

she had her own place

and I became a visitor in her home.

It amazed me to notice

that I sometimes found it very hard

to just walk in and sit down and relax.

Instinctively I found myself looking around

for something to fix.

A leaky faucet,

a slow drain,

a problem with the car...

Part of it was simply a daddy desire to be helpful,

but part of it too, was the fact that I am what I do

and if I’m not doing something

I’m not always sure who I am.

And I bring this whole issue up

because much of our distorted perspective on what we really need in life

grows out of all of these alternate voices we have collected around us

to tell us who we are

and why we have value.

You see, the truth is, none of those voices

really know who we are,

and most of them don’t even care.

And when we come to Christ,

and He assumes the responsibility

for meeting our needs,

one of the things He will do

is to begin replacing our dependence upon those other voices around us

with His own voice.

He alone knows the truth

about who we really are.

He alone has the ability

to say to our spirits

what we desperately long to hear -

that we have an eternal value,

and tremendous dignity,

and a purpose and significance

that grows out of God’s special, personal, creative work within us.

We didn’t just happen.

He made us,

first of all for Himself

because He likes us,

He enjoys being in our presence,

He delights is us,

and second for the special way

that He can communicate Himself through us

and through the unique friendship we share with Him.

And His voice alone

can tell us the truth about ourselves

in ways that begin to bring healing within us.

But this is not always an easy

or a painless transition for us.

And with all of us

there are some things we are clinging to in our lives

that we are convinced we must have

because we are using them as a key voice to tell us who we are,

things that actually interfere with our ability to know the truth.

And sometimes God must silence the false voice,

or the inadequate voice,

before we are able to hear His voice.

We hear Paul saying,

Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

In our minds we think of all those things

we are desperately clinging to

as tools with which we attempt to build our self-identity.

I am what I do,

which means I need what I believe to be important

or impressive

or significant things to do

so that I can then feel good about myself.

I need other people around me

who will tell me how important I am.

I need victories

so that I can like myself.

I need to avoid defeat

so that I don’t view myself as a failure.

I need to pray that our team will win,

our company will succeed,

our income will increase.

But the truth is

as long as we are looking around us

at what others are saying,

and using that as our foundation for self-identity

we have no foundation whatsoever.

And sometimes

when God, as our perfect Father,

begins to meet our needs,

when He begins to meet all our needs

according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus,

He will reach into our lives

and silence some of those false voices.

In other words,

He will yank out a portion of the false foundation

on which we have been attempting to build our lives,

knowing that only when the false voice is removed

will we then be able to hear the truth.

And I do hope I am saying this

in a way that you can understand.

Sometimes what we need

more than anything else in the world is failure,

because only through failure

can we discover that God loves us

not for what we do,

not for what we produce,

not for what we bring to Him,

but simply because He loves us.

Did you know that you are infinitely more important to God

than anything you’ll ever do?

Who does God love more,

Who does He delight in more -

you

or Billy Graham?

If you think it’s Billy Graham

then one of the greatest needs in your life right now

is the need for you to hear the truth

about who you are

and why God loves you.

We are looking at a statement

in which Paul tells us that

God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

But we can’t even begin to understand

what that verse is saying

until we first understand

how deeply flawed our own perceptions are

of what we need for a truly fulfilling life.

I have tried

to come up with some sort of mental image

of where I see us in this whole process.

I don’t know if this will help,

but we’ll give it a try.

We all start out this life

sort of like a group of children

all crammed into a huge orphanage.

We have our meals provided for us,

but no one to love us,

no one to tell us what our name is,

no one to tell us our family history,

or where we came from,

or who we are.

We each find our own techniques

for surviving in this orphanage.

Some of us are a little bigger,

or little stronger than the other children,

and we make ourselves feel important

by dominating them,

or by bullying them,

taking their toy away from them,

forcing them to do what we want.

Some of us are a little bit smarter than the other children,

and we use our wits

to control the others

and use them for our own purposes.

Some of us survive

by hiding in the corners,

doing our best not to be seen,

surviving by becoming nothing

so that no one will bother us.

Some of us survive by frantically serving the other children,

running here and there,

doing everything we can to please them so they will like us

or so that they won’t beat us up.

Some of us survive by becoming the clowns -

keeping the other children laughing

so they won’t see the pain inside us.

Still others survive

by being a little bit prettier,

or a little bit better at the games.

But with everyone of us

everything we do is simply done

to fill the emptiness created within us

by the absence of a loving Papa

who could tell us who we really are.

When we come to Christ

its sort of like having our Father

walk into that orphanage

and stand there looking over that sea of children,

until He sees us standing there, in the corner,

by ourselves.

When He sees us,

He calls us by name

and picks us up in His arms,

and tells us He has come to take us home.

It is a grand reunion,

but when we leave that orphanage

we take with us

all those techniques we have been clinging to for survival

during the years we were there.

If we were the bully,

always dominating the children,

we will continue to believe we must do the same with the other children in our new home.

If we hid in the corner,

we will tend to continue to hide,

afraid to believe we are now truly safe,

and loved,

and valued by the Father.

And when our new Father

begins to meet our needs

in the new home He brings us into,

one of the things He will need to do

is to help free us

from all those destructive little techniques we have been using

for our survival in the past.

Certainly He will never ever violate the unique way in which He designed us,

He will never suggest that we should be more like this child

or that child.

This past week I happened across that parable

that our Lord told about talents,

with one servant being given 5 talents,

and another 2,

and another 1.

As I read through it I got to the place where the 2 talent servant

brought his two talents to the Master

along with 2 more talents.

That’s me, and I longed for that to be a reality in my life

when I stand before my Lord.

But then I kept reading

and heard the Master respond, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.

You shall be over 2 cities.”

And this thought crossed my mind,

“Oh no! I can’t rule 2 cities.

Now I have to be one of those 10 talent guys

who can do all that stuff I could never do

and there’s no way I can pull it off.”

Of course that’s not what the Lord was saying.

He was simply promising reward for faithfulness here and now,

but my point is that He knows us perfectly,

and He will never violate His perfect design of who He has created us to be.

But with each of us, when we come to Him, there will be times

when He asks us to let go of something

that we are absolutely certain

we must hang onto for our own protection.

As long as we cling to our orphanage mentality,

we can never know

the security that comes

from a true Father/child relationship with God.