©2004 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

05/30/04

Being Loved By God Pt. 5

5/30/04 Being Loved By God Pt. 5

When I looked over my list of Life’s Greatest Surprises 5 weeks ago

I almost decided to end this series at that time.

Then I noticed my brief comment to myself

about how surprised I have been

at what it really means to be loved by God,

and I decided that it would be well worth our time to spend a week on that topic.

And now, here we are five weeks later

and I’m still talking about it.

I had no idea I had so much I wanted to say

until I got started.

If you are new to this study,

let me just say that for the past five months now

I have been using our times on Sunday mornings

to share with you some of the areas in my Christian life

that have turned out very differently

from what I had anticipated when I first met my Lord in the fall of 1966,

places where I now recognize that my preconceptions about life with Christ

were completely wrong.

And the surprise we have been looking at most recently

is that of my discovering

what it really means to be loved by God.

Having never known God’s love before,

I went into my Christian life

anticipating that the love of God

would be sort of a generic, love-for-humanity type of thing.

And one of the first huge jolts

was discovering that God’s love for us

and His relationship with us

is always intensely personal.

I’m not surprised that we so easily miss this

when we are still on the outside

looking in at the family of God.

I’m not surprised that I missed it

prior to my own personal introduction to the King.

It’s the logical assumption

given the nature of religious practice in our culture,

or, for that matter, in any culture.

Here we all are this morning,

a gathering of several hundred people

all here to “worship God”.

I went to countless “worship services” as a kid,

many of them in gatherings of people far larger than this one.

And, in my mind I always pictured God

seeing all of us gathered together in this great mass,

and Him being in some way pleased at the size of the group

and the sound of our singing,

and the way we all professed in unison our allegiance and submission to Him.

I felt as though I was in some way gaining a measure of value in my relationship with Him

by identifying myself with the “right” side

in this eternal conflict between good and evil on the earth.

It was sort of like my attendance was duly noted

and would be recorded in my permanent record,

but the really important thing to God was the group,

the congregation all gathered in worship and adoration of Him.

It’s so strange for me to look back at that time in my life,

knowing now what I had not even a remote concept of then.

If I could have heard His voice then,

as I stood with my family in the balcony of the University Presbyterian Church,

He would not have been saying to me,

“Your attendance at this service is duly noted, Larry. It’s good to have you in the group.”

He would have been saying,

“Larry, my precious creation, what I want, all I have ever wanted, since I first brought you into being, is you.

I am seeking you now,

and I will continue to seek you until I finally break through all of your fears,

and find ways into all of your hiding places

so that you can at last hear My voice,

and come to Me.

Whether you are here in this group,

or someplace else altogether

in no way changes anything between you and Me.

I don’t want your membership,

I want you.

I want you to know Me

and to live in a friendship with Me forever.”

What do you think is going on between you and God right now?

Do you think He’s pleased because you’ve gone to church,

because you’ve joined the group?

What He wants is not your attendance,

not your service,

not your affirmation of His truth

or your acknowledged respect for His Word.

What He wants is you.

Not YOU corporately,

but you personally.

And when His Spirit is finally able

to break through that protective barrier you have so carefully constructed between yourself and your God,

when you are at last able to hear His voice

you will discover to your utter amazement

that He is not blasting out a plea to the world,

He is speaking just one name - your name,

calling you to Himself.

And for me,

the first great shock

in this whole discovery of what it really means to be loved by God

was the shock that it was,

and is always so personal.

God doesn’t want one more convert.

He doesn’t want one more member in the congregation.

He wants you.

I should have known this, of course,

even from my limited knowledge of the Gospels before I met Him.

Even a casual reading of the accounts of the life of Christ

proclaim a Person who was always relating exclusively to individuals.

He taught the crowds, of course,

because that is the nature of teaching.

But He always related just one-to-one.

Why didn’t He ever do mass healings?

Why didn’t He stand before the multitudes,

raise His hands to heaven,

and proclaim, “YOU ARE HEALED!!”?

Why did He always,

only go from one individual to another,

one at a time,

touching each one,

speaking to each one,

communicating His love to each one individually?

He did so because, when it comes to our relationship with our God,

it is always, only personal.

It was the same way in His dealings with His disciples.

Do you remember that meeting between Jesus and His disciples

on the beach that morning just a few days following His resurrection?

When I put the words into Peter’s mouth in The Fisherman,

it went like this.

I must have dozed off for a few minutes as I let my soggy clothing bake in the sun, because I remember suddenly opening my eyes and looking up at the Master sitting next to me on the beach. I sat up, and for a few seconds we looked out across the Sea of Galilee. Then he turned to me and spoke.

“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” As he spoke, he motioned toward my boat and the net still bulging with fish.

Hearing him ask the question flooded me with a tremendous sense of relief. He knew the answer to his question already, but he also knew I needed to say it.

“Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”

Then he said, “Tend my lambs.”

He stood, and I stood with him. Together we walked along the shore in silence. Then he said a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

It surprised me a little to hear him ask the question again, but I responded immediately, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”

And he said, “Shepherd my sheep.”

Only a few seconds passed before he questioned me a third time. “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

At first his words brought me pain. Why, three times, would he ask me this same question? Could it be he didn’t believe my words? I felt an agonized tear tumble down my cheek. Then I remembered that awful night and my three vehement denials of my Lord. He was offering me this opportunity to replace each of those lies with the truth.

“Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

And Jesus said, “Tend my sheep.”

Then the Master continued to speak. “When you were younger, you used to dress yourself, and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you, and bring you where you don’t wish to go.”

I knew what he was saying. The time would come when my allegiance to him would bring about my own execution. But if you think the prophecy he offered that morning created fear within me, you are wrong. On the contrary, it filled me with hope and with assurance that I would never again deny my Lord, even to the point of death. The great fear of my life was put to rest. Both my calling and my faithfulness in that calling were assured. He knew I understood. He smiled and spoke once again the two words I’d heard him speak to me three years earlier, by this same boat and these same nets. “Follow me!”

I heard the sound of someone approaching from behind and turned to see John coming our way. Because Jesus was offering glimpses into the future, I couldn’t resist the urge to ask, “Lord, and what about this man?”

The Master’s gentle rebuke brought with it... truth that has served me well ever since. “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!”

Jesus wanted me to know that no man ever has either the right or the ability to understand God’s dealings with anyone but himself. No man is ever told another man’s story. No man can ever have the faith to live another man’s calling. The implications of Jesus’ words were obvious. He would lead John in the path that fit him perfectly, just as he would me. But the only path I am qualified to live, and the only one I can relate to with trust and understanding, is my own.

In the years since I heard the Master speak those words, I have seen countless men and women living and dying in circumstances that would have shaken my faith to the core. Yet I have seen them face their callings with boldness and confident assurance in the love and living reality of their Lord. And each time, when I have found myself tempted to question the Lord’s dealings with others, I have heard his words once again in my mind: “What is that to you? You follow me!” He provides each of us with the faith we need for just one calling in life—the calling he has given to us alone.

You see, the first great and amazing surprise of my life

when it comes to the love of God

is that it is always, only personal, individual.

Have you been looking around you at the lives of others,

trying to understand the love of God

as you see their lives.

How’s it going?

God will never give you the faith

or the grace for another person’s life.

You can only understand His faithfulness from the inside out.

And only when we stop looking around us

trying to understand the love of God

on the basis of our perceptions of what we think is going on in the lives of others

and reach out to our God

for the grace

and the faith to face the life He shares with us,

only then will we be able to understand the love of our God correctly.

“If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” (Jn. 21:22)

Two things I can assure you of with absolute certainty.

First of all,

no matter what your circumstances,

no matter what your background,

no matter how your life has been impacted by the sins of others against you,

or by the evil in this world,

every person who reaches out to Jesus Christ

will, in Him, find the grace and the strength to handle all that He has given you to bear.

Do you want to hear it directly from the mouth of your God?

You’re going to love what He says.

MAT 11:28-30 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light."

And second,

whenever we attempt to evaluate the faithfulness

or the love of our God

by examining from the outside

what we see going on in another person’s life,

we will open ourselves up to doubt,

and to fear,

and to an utter inability to correctly interpret the work of God in their lives.

Now, when we were in this study two weeks ago

I had just begun to share with you’

what I have recognized as the four greatest barriers

to our being able to hear and respond to the love of God in our lives.

We looked at the first of those four two weeks ago,

our strong natural human resistence

against seeing ourselves honestly apart from the redemptive work of God in our lives.

When Paul wrote his masterful unified statement

of what he called “the good news of God”,

in what we now know as the New Testament book of Romans,

do you remember how he began that good news?

In the first two and a half chapters

he painted for us a vivid, terrifying portrait

of what the world looks like without Christ,

a portrait of what you and I look like without Christ.

With perfect, flawless logic

he drives his readers,

both Jew and non-Jew

to the same inescapable conclusion,

that on the basis of our performance

every single person who has ever lived

stands justifiably condemned and without hope before God.

ROM 3:10-18 ... "There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one. Their throat is an open grave, With their tongues they keep deceiving, The poison of asps is under their lips; Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; Their feet are swift to shed blood, Destruction and misery are in their paths, And the path of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes."

And THAT is the beginning of the GOOD NEWS Of GOD??

That is Paul’s introduction to the greatest statement of the love of God for us that has ever been written?

Yep!

Because the true nature of the love of God for us

can only been seen clearly

when it is seen against the backdrop

of our rebellion against Him

and our own utter moral corruption apart from His recreative work within us.

It is in this same book of Romans

that, just a few verses later,

Paul gives us that remarkable single sentence statement

of the kind of love our God has for us.

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

And two weeks ago

I concluded my comments about this first barrier

to our discovering the true nature of the love of God for us by saying that,

if we have never felt loved by God,

really, truly, personally loved by Him,

it may be because up to this point

we have refused to allow His Spirit

to show us ourselves honestly before Him.

I don’t know if this will help,

because I don’t know if it would have helped me

at that point in my own life

when God, in His love, gave me eyes to see my own moral corruption,

but I’ll give it a try.

If the Spirit of God has been working in your life

to give you eyes to see some area of moral corruption within you,

if He has been convicting you of your own sinfulness in some area of your life,

and you have been trying to close your eyes to what He’s showing you

and stopping your ears to what He’s been saying,

I want you to know

that what He’s doing

you will one day come to recognize

as the greatest single doorway into your own personal discovery of the love of God that you will ever know.

He is not doing what He is doing

so that He can crush your spirit under a mighty weight of condemnation.

He is doing what He is doing

so that He can set you free

and in the process demonstrate the depth of His love for you.

Don’t run away from Him,

run toward Him,

and embrace what He is speaking to your spirit.

And then let me share with you

the second barrier I have seen in many lives

that has the power to complicate our ability to discover the love of God for us on a personal level.

And before I tell you what it is

I need to warn you that it has the ability

to trigger two potentially destructive responses within us - blame and guilt feelings.

The barrier is the Father concept that we brought with us out of our childhood.

And as soon as I say that

you can probably see where the blame and the guilt feelings come from.

If our own fathers were less than skillful in the way they handled their role in our lives,

we can waste huge amounts of emotional energy

in blaming them

for our struggles now.

And if we are fathers ourselves

having me point out the significance of this role in the lives of our children

can trigger a tremendous sense of failure, and guilt, and inadequacy.

Before I conclude this morning

I’ll share just a few thoughts

that I hope may help with both of those destructive responses.

But I want to state first of all

the way things are.

In His design

God has structured the family unit

so that the father provides each of us

with our childhood introduction into the concept of God.

To the mind of a child

DAD is quite simply huge.

He’s not just huge physically,

he is huge in his ability to conquer and control life.

To the mind of a child

Dad knows everything.

Dad can do everything.

Dad can fix everything.

Dad possesses the ability to exercise absolute control over the child’s entire world.

Now, of course I realize

that our society is in a constant and intense process

of redefining male and female roles in every aspect of society

and especially within the family structure.

But no matter what society does in that whole area,

it can never

and will never change the fact that to the mind and emotions of a child

dad is God.

He is the biggest,

the strongest,

the most dominant and forceful and godlike being in the child’s world.

And as we move into our adult years

we will tend to anticipate from God

the similar responses to us that we saw being played out in our relationship with our human fathers.

If dad was all about control and discipline,

then we will tend to believe that God is most concerned about control and discipline.

If dad never entered our world on an emotional level,

then it will be difficult for us to anticipate God entering our lives on an emotional level.

If dad abandoned us either physically or emotionally in childhood

then we will find that it is much more difficult for us to believe our God really will never leave us

and never forsake us.

If dad made promises he never kept,

or if the project was always more important than the people,

or more important than their relationship with their child,

then we will anticipate similar responses

and similar values from our Creator.

And in response to this second potential barrier to discovering the love of God for us,

let me say first of all

that as adults we must consciously choose to recognize

that with all of us our God is not our dad,

nor will He respond to us like our dad

in any of those areas where our father’s actions toward us

were inconsistent with perfect love.

For five weeks now

I have been talking about the deep, intimate, personal nature of God’s love for each of us

and some of you have had an extremely hard time

even hearing what I’m saying,

much less believing it

because you’ve come into this study with a concept of God/dad

that makes that kind of a relationship seem impossible,

beyond understanding.

If you have been fighting those battles,

know this for certain - your God is not your dad.

Then, for those of you who instinctively look back with blame,

I will simply say this -

no matter what you experienced throughout childhood

from either your father or your mother,

if you bring those experiences to your God

and place them into His hands

He both can and will reshape them for good in your life now as an adult.

If you choose to focus on blame

and allow bitterness to consume your life,

you will allow your life to be shaped and driven by a force that will eventually poison every significant relationship you have.

What our God offers us

and what He calls us to

is not a life shaped by bitterness,

but a life reshaped by His grace poured out on us,

and in turn poured out through us on those who have sinned against us.

The choice we make at that point

will determine the quality of the life we live.

And then, finally,

for those of you who are fathers

or have a father role in the lives of others

and find yourself filled with a sense of fear, or anxiety, or inadequacy,

let me just say this.

First, what your children long for most

is what we long for most from our Heavenly Father -

unconditional love and acceptance.

They long for clear evidence of your approval of them, your wholehearted validation of them.

And then second,

I would strongly encourage you to choose

to always, always, always make the relationship more important than the project

whenever you are relating to those you father.

The toy boat will never turn out as good as you would like.

The saw will never cut exactly on the line.

The spray paint will get all over your tools even though you carefully showed them how to hold the can.

This is just a tiny bit off track,

but our children are one of God’s greatest tools

in freeing men from our great Male substitute to finding our true identity and value in Christ.

The great Male substitute to true identity

is “I have value on the basis of what I do. I know who I am on the basis of what I do.”

“What do you mean I don’t love you?!! I’m working 14 hours a day to prove how much I love you!”

And by extension,

when it comes to our children,

“I have value on the basis of what my children do.”

But if we are ever to effectively fulfill our fathering role

in the lives of those we have been given to father

in those crucial relationships

we must recognize and defeat that false basis of identity

and consciously choose to make the relationship more important than the project.

By the way,

do you know what the great Female substitute to true identity and value in Christ is?

“I have value on the basis of who loves me.”

“If my husband loves me, I have significance, I have value.

If my children love me I have significance, I have value.”

When men get together, what do they talk about?

How’s work going...what project are you working on...what have you been doing recently?

When women get together where does the conversation go?

Relationships - those relationships that we believe validate our value.

But, lest I get forever lost in another whole talk,

when it comes to fathering

what we really want,

what our spirit longs for

and what our children so desperately need

is not a project done well,

but what we want is the heart of our child when the project is all over.

If we recognize this going in

and make our choices on that basis in the parenting process

we will admirably model for our children

an accurate image of their eternal Father God.