©2006 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

06-25-06

Feeding The Hunger, Healing The Soul Pt. 4

Feeding The Hunger Pt. 4

We took a bit of a side-track last week,

looking at the difference between the kind of submission in our relationship with God

that grows out of our discovering and responding to His love for us,

and the kind law-based submission

that our man-made religious systems try to produce.

But I want to return us once again this morning

to the major theme of this study

that we’ve been involved in for four weeks now.

And given the number of side-tracks I’ve taken since we started,

it would probably be good if I get our minds back on track

by reminding us of what got me into this study in the first place.

You see, I believe that there is a huge theme in God’s work

that forms the central focus

of so much of what He is trying to accomplish in our lives,

but it is a theme

that we frequently don’t even see

because of the religious clutter that sometimes surrounds us.

We all enter this world with two huge opposing forces within us.

First, we bring with us a deep hunger for true love and the soul intimacy it brings,

a love that is based on our being known honestly

and accepted fully on the basis of that knowledge.

And second,

we bring with us a deeply corrupted spirit

that drives us into actions and attitudes

that bring about a sense of shame within us

and a longing to hide and protect ourselves

from the very ones from whom we hope to receive love.

Simply put,

we long for love from those around us,

but at the same time we have a desperate desire to want to hide ourselves

from the very ones we hope will love us

because we are convinced that if they knew us honestly

they could never love us.

Part of our desire to hide

comes from our awareness of our own inner moral corruption,

but part of it also comes

from some of the messages given to us by our parents

or other significant adults or peers during our childhood,

messages that tell us we are unworthy of being loved.

In a perfect world

on the day of our birth

our father should hold us up before the world

and proclaimed with pride,

“Look world! Look!

This is my child in whom I rejoice!

This is the one in whom my soul delights.

This is my great and wonderful contribution to the world

and I am rich beyond measure through this child’s birth.”

And that message should be reinforced again and again throughout childhood.

Every child should know what it’s like

to look into their parents’ eyes

and see absolute and unqualified delight at their existence.

But far too often children grow up in an environment

in which the repeated message they’re given

is one that proclaims,

“You fall so far short of my expectations.

Mostly you just clutter and complicate my life,

and my soul finds no joy in you at all.”

And then

when we add to this our sense of shame

over our own moral failures,

is it any wonder

that we find ourselves hiding from one another,

longing for love

but terrified at the thought of allowing anyone to see us honestly

for fear they, too, will find us worthless and toss us aside?

Which brought me, then, to that huge, central theme of God’s message to us

that I believe we so often failed to see.

Because I believe that one of the central works God seeks to accomplish in our lives

is to resolve these two huge opposing forces,

to bring a level of healing within us

in which we can find freedom from both the fear and the shame we feel,

and through that freedom

find a true intimacy of the soul through which we can both give and receive love.

And I say that because of this:

JOH 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

That commandment given to us by our Lord

is not simply a call to some religious duty

we are suppose to attempt to fulfill.

It is most of all His promise to us

that He both can and will

bring deep healing into our lives

as we trust Him and allow Him to lead us through the healing process.

I mentioned earlier in this study

that relationship is at the heart of all that God seeks to accomplish

both between us and Himself,

and between us and one another.

It is what He’s doing - seeking to rebuild His relationship with us

and to teach us how to rebuild our relationships with one another.

In fact He states clearly

that this relationship rebuilding

is at the heart of what He is seeking to accomplish in our lives through Christ.

I wonder if you have ever noticed

the final words of prophecy given by God

prior to the Christ’s entrance into the world.

It was a prophecy that was followed by 400 years of silence

before John the Baptist finally appeared on the scene.

And it was a prophecy that contains within it

the most remarkable insight

into what God was...and is still seeking to do

through Christ’s entrance into the world,

and through His entrance into our lives.

The prophecy is found, as we would expect,

in the final two verses of the Old Testament,

a prophecy that I believe was given to us

in part to provide us with a remarkably accurate litmus test

of the difference between a person’s entrance into religion

and a person’s entrance into true, living, redemptive faith in Jesus Christ.

In those final two verses

the Prophet Malachi says,

MAL 4:5-6 "Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. And he will...

He will what?

He will establish a great,

world-wide Christian empire

with mighty cathedrals reaching to the sky?

No.

He will establish a detailed and intricate doctrinal system

filled with fascinating concepts and revelations?

No.

He will call countless thousands into more fervent and intense observance

of all of the religious service and duties

involved in faithful worship?

None of the above, folks.

Do you want to hear that final prophecy,

the one that points the way

to what God will accomplish in the hearts and lives

of those who truly enter into the salvation He will bring?

MAL 4:5-6 Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. And he will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse."

He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children...

When God really begins to work in the life of a man,

He doesn’t make him a great evangelist,

or a great church man,

or a great preacher,

He begins by teaching him how to father,

He begins by teaching him how to love.

Many years ago now

I officiated at the funeral service

of a man who, during his life, had created a reputation

as quite a Bible scholar.

He was always among the first to offer testimonies

and insights into Scripture.

But when it came time for people to share comments about this man at that service

I stood there in shocked amazement

as each of his children went up to the mic

and shared how painful it had been for them to have this man as their father.

And I came away from that service realizing

that I was burying a man who’d found that religion was the best place in all the world

to hide from his God

and run from the redemptive work His God wanted to do within him.

I was in a conversation just recently

with a young man who was trying to work through the pain

and the anger he was feeling

because of the cruel words of rejection

spoken to him by his father,

a father who had skillfully smeared a thick religious coating all over himself,

speaking the language,

and following the form,

while at the same time brutally crushing his son’s spirit.

And as I talked with the boy

I remembered that prophecy of what the real Jesus Christ does

when He enters the life and heart of a man.

He doesn’t make him religious,

He doesn’t create an external facade of piety.

What he does do is to restore a father’s heart to his children.

And as long as I’ve wandered into this

let me just mention again

a principle of maleness

that I discovered many years ago,

and one that I have found to be of more value

than nearly any other life principle I’ve ever come across.

And let me preface this by saying

that I know that what I’m about to say

will likely cause strong reaction in some of you women here today,

partly because of the culture in which we live,

and partly because some of you have been deeply wounded

by a painful and abusive relationship with either a father, or husband, or brother,

or some other man who claimed authority over you

and then used that authority for his own selfish interests.

If that’s true in your life,

please know that any such actions

on the part of any man against either a woman or a child

is as anti-Christian as anything in human experience.

Any man who claims Biblical authority

as the basis for a domineering relationship with either his wife or his children

understands nothing about the true nature of male leadership in the home.

When God tells the husband that he is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church,

He is not telling the husband that he has the “right” to control her,

He is telling him that he has the responsibility to die for her,

and to die to anything in his life

that works against her deepest fulfillment and growth as God’s child.

But having said that,

let me then say that God has wired men in such a way

as to make them kingdom rulers.

A huge part of maleness

is bound up in a man’s search for his kingdom.

And once he finds and claims his kingdom

his sense of fulfillment and satisfaction and purpose in life

grows out of how well he fulfills his kingdom leadership.

This pursuit of a kingdom

is directly related to the fiercely competitive nature

that is so often seen as such a strong male characteristic.

Though Sandee handles it extremely well,

I know she sometimes wonders why I seem to have this driving need

to pass every single car on the Sterling Highway before we reach Anchorage.

From the day a little boy enters the world

he begins looking for some kingdom to conquer

and some dragon to slay.

And in God’s design for us

I believe He has a kingdom specially designed for every man who comes to Him,

a kingdom perfectly matched to his unique personality,

skills,

and abilities.

This kingdom is at the heart

of the life calling given to him by his God,

and to the degree that a man recognizes his kingdom

and then handles it well,

to that degree he will find true, deep, enduring fulfillment in life.

In other words,

his life will make sense

and he will know the greatest satisfaction in life he can ever know.

And to the degree that he fails to recognize his kingdom,

or fails to govern it wisely,

to that degree he will find himself frantically looking for something to give life purpose,

or something that will dull the pain

that comes from knowing he failed the life calling assigned to him by his God.

I know, of course, that one of the great driving desires of our modern culture

is to obliterate even the suggestion that, apart from the obvious physical differences,

there really are any significant differences between male and female.

And it is among the stupidest concepts our culture has ever come up with.

I don’t care what age you look at in childhood,

the difference between male and female is obvious.

Watching my grandson, Matty, at two years old

is nothing like the memories of my daughter, Joni, at two years old.

Even with all the struggles he’s had with his low muscle tone,

Matty is already looking for his kingdom

and doing his best to conquer his world.

Several months ago Joni discovered to her horror

that Matty had figured out how to open the front door.

In fact she was on the phone with us one day

when she suddenly had to drop the phone and head to the front door

because her young son had just flung the door open

and was trying to bolt and run.

The next morning they installed a chain lock on the door,

and that afternoon Matty once again tried for a jail break.

He was able to unlatch the door

but couldn’t figure out why it would only open a couple of inches.

He looked at for a few seconds,

then went over to his toy tool box,

found his little plastic hammer,

and then came back to the stuck door

and began to wail on the thing with that little hammer

trying to get it to open all the way.

He knows there is a kingdom out there to be conquered,

and he knows, too, that he’s the man to do it.

When I taught Joni to drive during her teen years

she did great learning the skills.

Of course we had our share of near-death experiences in the process,

but for her the great attraction of the car

was knowing that it was going to give her

a whole new freedom and control over her own life.

It was a tool with which to get from point A to point B,

or maybe just to get away from point A.

But when I taught my young friend, Joey, to drive,

from the very beginning it was kingdom-conquering time.

Speed was (and still is) a crucial ingredient in every driving experience

and he couldn’t wait for me to teach him how to spin brodies

and peal out on gravel.

We’ve gotten stuck more places

and left more rubber

and more skid marks around the Kenai

than I would dare admit,

and earlier this year

we somehow found ourselves balancing on the edge of a little pond

with the right front tire bobbing in the water.

(And then our society tries to suggest

that there’s no real difference between male and female

apart from the obvious physical differences.)

For Joni driving was a doorway to freedom,

a means by which to get from where she is to where she wants to be.

For Joey it’s a kingdom to be conquered,

and every other car on the road is a potential rival for that kingdom,

no matter what the cost to my poor little Ford Ranger.

And the really troubling thing is that I understand perfectly

where the kid’s head is at.

The worst part of our driving lessons

aren’t really the adrenalin surges that come

at those times when I’m screaming “ NO!!” or “STOP!!” or “WATCH OUT!!” or “SLOW DOWN!!”

The worst part is when he turns to me after or most recent near death experience and says,

“Ya, Larry, but you thought it was fun, too, huh?”,

and I don’t dare admit the truth.

Now, of course this kingdom-conquering mentality

plays itself out differently in each unique male personality,

but no matter how it finds expression,

it is bound up in the heart of maleness,

designed into us by God Himself.

And we know within ourselves

that we are, by design, kingdom rulers,

but what we don’t know is what that kingdom is suppose to be.

And when we enter this world

we also don’t realize

that we have been dropped into the middle of a raging warfare,

a warfare in which the enemy of our souls

is continually seeking to deceive us into pouring our lives

into attempting to conquer some alternate kingdom to the one our Lord really has for us.

And if he succeeds in his deception,

we can easily invest our lives

into lining our pockets with money,

and lining our walls with plaques,

and lining our shelves with trophies,

and spend our days forever retelling

the stories of our greatest conquests,

and wonder why, with so many conquests,

and so many victories,

we still feel so alone, and so empty inside.

When I was in my early 20's

a large men’s organization held their national convention in Seattle

and through a strange series of events

I was asked to give the benediction at their Saturday night banquet.

Most of the men attending were in their 40's and 50's,

and the organizers had invited 10 or 15 famous athletes from past years

to share their greatest moments.

Few events during that time of my life

made a more indelible impression on me

than did that banquet,

and all the more because it was so unexpected.

I guess the banquet was intended to be

a nice little piece of nostalgia,

but it turned out to be

one of the most painful

and pathetic things I had ever seen up to that point in my life -

a group of sad old men

still clinging to that one day 20 years ago when they made the goal,

or the touchdown,

or the basket that won the game,

and who then spent the rest of their lives

trying to recapture the glory of those few seconds.

False kingdoms.

And I got into all of this today

because of that prophecy in Malachi,

and because of what I see our God doing for us through it.

I still understand very little about my God,

and about what He says to us,

and how He relates to us as His creation.

But one thing at least I have come to understand.

Our God truly does love us with an everlasting love,

and what He seeks to offer us through Christ

is everything our souls long for

in our desperate pursuit of true fulfillment in life.

He will never cheat us,

never demand from us what He is not both willing and able to do through us,

and what He seeks to do in our lives

He does because He longs to give us true wealth.

And when God tells us through Malachi,

Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. And he will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children...,

I see Him telling us

that one of the things the Messiah will accomplish in the life of a man

is to give him eyes to see the true kingdom appointed for him in this world,

the one that has the power to deliver

the kind of fulfillment that will feed a man’s spirit for a lifetime.

Our true kingdom

is the people that God entrusts into our care,

and for the man who marries

that kingdom is first of all, most of all, his wife,

and then his children should God choose to give them.

Now that may seem like really basic stuff to many of you,

but I never cease to be amazed

at how few men ever seem to get it,

or if they do,

they get it too late.

Solomon said it with an almost brutal clarity when he wrote,

PRO 11:28-28 He who trusts in his riches will fall, But the righteous will flourish like the green leaf. He who troubles his own house will inherit wind...

And once again my introductory comments consumed me

so next week, at last,

we will both return to and conclude this study we’ve been in.