12-27-09 The End Is Near Pt. 2

1PE 4:7-11 The end of all things is near; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaint. As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

In these 5 verses Peter gives us 4 specific instructions

in view of the fact that the end of all things is near.

Most of all what he’s offering us

are attitudes and priorities

that will help us approach the few years we are given on this planet

with effectiveness and purpose.

We’ve looked at one of Peter’s instructions so far.

It was his call to prayer,

but as we looked more closely at what he was saying

we saw him calling us to a life lived in the conscious presence of our Lord.

We are not called to live for our King,

we are called to live with Him -

in His presence,

sharing ourselves and our lives with Him each day, each step of the way.

And then the second calling given to us by Peter

is that we be fervent in our love for one another...

Don’t you find it remarkable

how everything our Lord says to us

keeps coming back to our friendship with Him

and our friendships with one another.

Here we are in a passage in which Peter is sharing with us

the 4 things he most wants us to know

in view of the very limited time we have on this earth

and the incredible significance of our lives in this world,

and what does he say?

Well, basically so far we’ve heard him say,

“Stay very close to the King,

and stay very close to one another.”

Share your life with your Lord,

and stretch yourselves in your love for one another.

And the last two instructions he gives us,

simply give us more specific guidance in how we go about doing this.

Next week we’ll look more closely

at Peter’s call for us to keep fervent in our love for one another,

and then two weeks from now we’ll spend some time with Peter’s last two instructions,

but this morning, in preparation for what we’ll look at next week

I just want to share a little personal observation

about this whole ongoing battle for love.

I have been a close observer to human relationships for most of my life.

I listen to the way people talk to one another.

I listen to the way husbands and wives talk to one another.

I listen to the way parents talk to their children.

When I watch a movie or a TV show

part of my mind is enjoying the diversion, the entertainment,

and another part of my mind is busy analyzing the relationships between the people,

seeing the things that bring healing and the things that bring destruction and turmoil.

And through all this observation,

through all these years

I have come to the conclusion that the basics of truly healthy human relationships

are not nearly as complicated as we allow ourselves to believe.

Though I reserve the right to expand this list in the future,

at this point in my life

I now see six essential pillars upon which love relationships can be built,

six foundation blocks that must be in place

in order for us both to find the depth of love we so desperately long for ourselves

and for us to be equipped to give the love

that the people near us so desperately need.

And before we go any farther in our study of Peter

I want to share them with you.

The first one I’ll share with you

is the one upon which all the others are built,

the one that must be in place

before we can ever begin this amazing love adventure our Lord has called us to.

And because it’s the foundation of all the others

it’s also the one that’s the hardest for us to achieve.

You see, the problem we face in virtually every human relationship we enter into

is that our separation from God when we enter this world

has made all of us terrified in spirit, desperate to find some way

of proving to ourselves and to others

that we have significance, value, importance.

We are terrified that those around us will see the corruption within us,

and that they will reject us when they see it

so we frantically look for some hiding place.

We may hide in the shadows of society,

doing everything within our power to make sure that no one notices us,

no one looks our way,

no one remembers our name.

Or we may hide behind a carefully crafted external image,

finding one thing that we can do very well,

and then making certain it is the one thing everyone sees, everyone remembers.

Tiger Woods can hit a little white ball into a hole in the ground

better than anyone else in the world,

and he hid his life of personal moral corruption behind that one skill.

The entire entertainment industry

is populated with people hiding behind their pretty faces,

or exceptional voices,

or fascinating personalities.

Or perhaps we can make lots and lots of money,

or we can play bridge extremely well,

or we are highly skilled in our chosen profession,

or we know every Star Trek episode ever made.

But no matter where we’ve chosen to hide,

we’ve done so because we are all deeply wounded people

terrified of what would happen

if anyone ever saw past our hiding place

and discovered the real us.

Which brings me to my first essential pillar for building healthy love relationships in our lives.

The first step is for us to enter into personal spirit healing

through allowing God to love us

and allowing others to love us as well.

Peter described this as purifying the soul

when he said, 1PE 1:22 Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart...

Until the human spirit has entered into the discovery of God’s love for us

our inner terror of rejection will remain,

and that terror will keep us in hiding,

fearing discovery,

and viewing all others as threats to the survival of our souls.

We will become fiercely competitive,

desperately trying to prove over and over again that we are the best.

Or we will refuse to compete at all

to make certain we never loose.

Or we will cling to any one of a thousand other techniques

for hiding from the pain and from everyone around us.

The simple truth is

that until we have heard the voice of our God saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”,

we can never begin reaching out in love to those around us.

And I’ll tell you, too,

that I think we have made a tragic error

in the way we so often present the message of Christ to the world around us.

We have taken God’s offer of salvation through Christ

and somehow we have managed to strip it of the very heart of what God is saying.

We talk about submitting to Christ’s lordship in our lives,

and receiving His offer of salvation through trusting Christ’s death for our sins,

but we have done it in a way

that side-steps the central message God is screaming at us through all of it.

Do you know what He’s saying to us?

“I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!”

For God loved the world so much that He gave His Son...

I’m to the point in my own thinking now

where I believe it would be far better

for us to say to a person we are seeking to lead to Christ,

“Have you come to understand that your God loves you very, very much?”,

rather than asking them if they are willing to receive Christ as their Savior.

Without the discovery of God’s love for us

there simply is no basis for us ever reaching out in love to others.

And in recent years

I have become aware of a second aspect of this healing process as well.

I think our ability to love others

also requires our willingness and ability to receive love on the human level.

I think we have to experience

what it’s like to be loved by another person

before we are sufficiently healed

so that we can then give love to others.

In other words,

we cannot give to others

what we have not yet received and experienced ourselves.

And the problem with my saying this

is that it sounds like a simple, straight-forward choice we can make

when it is, in fact, perhaps the most difficult healing process God ever seeks to accomplish within us.

Shortly before my dad’s death

he told my mom that he felt he had never really been loved by another person his entire life.

And I think he was probably right.

He was the forgotten child in a large family

raised on a poor farm in northern Minnesota.

No one in that family structure connected with him or entered his world

and from his earliest days he lived in emotional isolation.

And because no one entered his life,

as he moved into his adult years

he had no idea how to enter anyone else’s life,

and it became a pattern that was never broken as long as he lived.

I can remember during my early adolescence

wanting very much to know this man -

wanting to know what he felt, who he was,

wondering if he ever thought about me or felt anything for me.

I wanted to connect with him emotionally,

but by then he was so emotionally sealed within himself

I honestly don’t think he felt anything for me

and if he did he was utterly incapable of communicating it.

And that brief window that opens up in early adolescence

soon closed in my life and was gone forever.

I share that with you

because I don’t think my dad was some rare exception.

I think he was far closer to the norm.

The specific events that bring about the emotional wounds

that then keep our lives sealed,

making it impossible for us to receive love from others

differ in every situation.

But the end result is the same -

we simply cannot receive love from others

because we cannot risk allowing them into our life.

And I tell you honestly

that I believe God’s ability to break through the fear and the lies

that form the bars on this all too common emotional prison cell

is among the greatest works He ever accomplishes in our lives.

And until it is accomplished

we simply do not have an adequate foundation within us

to reach out in love to those around us.

And having said that,

I suppose I should say just a little more

about how He seeks to accomplish this work within us.

And here again,

it’s really not all that complicated.

It’s not complicated,

it’s just terrifying.

Frequently what our Lord will seek to do

is to bring us to the place

where we will have the courage

to share our brokenness, or our wounds, or our failures, or our fears

with the person whose love we need to receive.

We need to let them see

the very things we are certain

will cause them to never ever love us or respect us.

Do you want to hear an absolutely remarkable statement,

a statement made by God to His people in the first New Testament Epistle ever written,

a statement made nearly two centuries before human behavioral psychology even existed?

JAM 5:16 ...confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.

The healing he’s talking about

is most of all the healing of the human spirit,

the healing that can only be accomplished through experiencing

what it’s like to be loved by another human being.

Well, that’s my first and most important pillar

for building healthy love relationships with those around us -

we need to experience both being loved by God

and being loved by another human being.

And we won’t take near as long on my remaining 5 pillars,

but I do want to touch on them.

And with these last five

let me say first that they are in no particular order.

The first one, the one we’ve just looked at,

must be the first one,

the beginning place.

But even it is very much of a life-long progressive learning process.

Discovering God’s love for us is not a point, it is a process that never ends,

just as is our ability to receive love from those around us.

But then, building on that growing foundation

the second pillar I would mention

is that of choosing to treat each person God brings into our lives

with respect and dignity

no matter what value our society may have placed on them.

And do you know where this needs to begin,

and yet so often is the last place we find it?

In the family structure.

The respect and dignity I’m talking about here

is not something we bestow on those that we think have earned it.

It is rooted in our recognition of them

as unique creations of God.

And yet so often parents approach their children

as if they were possessions who deserve no respect or dignity

unless they fulfill the parents’ performance expectations.

I can say what I’m trying to say here best

by offering you a question that, if we apply it to both our words and actions toward others,

will help us know whether or not we are bringing respect and dignity to others.

And here again,

I give my Lord the credit for this question.

How would I feel

if someone did to me what I just did to them?

How would I feel

if someone said to me what I just said to them?

Would I feel respected as a person,

or would I feel used, or controlled, or belittled, or devalued?

My daughter is an absolute genius at this.

She has the ability to relate to an out-of-control three year old

in a way that still communicates respect and dignity.

I’ve mentioned to you before

that my granddaughter, Anabelle, is fully convinced

that she was born to rule the world.

This misconception on her part

leads to a multitude of confrontations between herself and her parents.

Anabelle may be sitting on the couch

watching her favorite TV show

and her mom will give her a cookie as a treat.

But then Anabelle decides that she should have two cookies rather than just one

and instantly starts heading into one of her total melt-downs.

More than a few parents would respond

by immediately grabbing the child and disciplining them for their outburst.

But Joni will gain eye contact with her daughter

and then say something like, “Anabelle you can choose what you want to do now. You can choose to stay here quietly and finish the cookie I gave you and watch your TV show, or you can choose to go up to your room for a little while. Which do you choose?”

And with those words,

even when this tiny creature is totally wrong in what she’s doing,

Joni still communicates an attitude of respect,

giving her daughter the right to make choices about her own life.

Certainly there are times when Anabelle will choose the melt-down,

but even then she knows it was her choice to do so.

And my point here is simply

that no healthy friendship,

and certainly no strong love relationship can ever be built with another person,

unless we approach that person with the respect we owe them as a fellow creation of God.

And let me just say here too,

that I have discovered that the less they expect respect

the more powerful an impact it has on their lives.

When we show respect and bestow an attitude of dignity

on someone who has been told by our society

that they have little or no social status whatsoever

it can dramatically impact their lives for good.

The third pillar I’d mention

applies exclusively in those relationships where we know the other person is a Christian,

and it is simply this - trust Christ in them and let them know that you do.

So often we go into a relationship convinced that we’re right and the other person is wrong,

or we know more or know better than they do what should be done.

Certainly, if another person asks for our advice, or our guidance

we should have the freedom to offer it,

but we do so knowing that Christ has committed Himself to dwelling in every one of His children,

and our respecting His life in our fellow Christians

is an essential foundation of any healthy friendship.

Trust Him in them and let them know that you do.

My forth pillar for healthy relationships

is to always look at the heart intent of the other person, not at their outward actions.

Everyone we will ever meet,

ever know,

ever build a relationship with will do stupid things at times.

And that list begins with ourselves.

Sometimes our stupidity is the result of acting on impulse,

sometimes it’s ignorance,

sometimes it’s just because we’re tired or fearful or confused.

The more we can train ourselves to look not at the actions of those around us

but rather at their true heart intent

and then respond to them accordingly

the healthier our friendships will be.

My fifth pillar should, perhaps, have been moved farther up the list

simply because I really do think it has more importance

and more power than some of the others.

It is this - take ownership of our sins against others.

And perhaps I can explain what I want to say here best

by stating it this way.

Everyone of us will at times mess up in our actions toward someone else.

We will sin against them.

Our natural flesh tendency when we become aware of this

is either to ignore it

or to try to atone for our sin by doing something nice to make up for it.

But it just simply never ever works that way.

If we have offended another person

no amount of nice actions

can ever remove the offense

or remove its destructive power in the relationship.

The only thing that can ever remove the destructive power of our offense

is for us to acknowledge it, take ownership of it, confess it to the other person and ask their forgiveness.

And here again,

this principle applies just as much within the family structure

as it does in every other relationship.

I’ve mentioned to you in the past

what happens between a parent and a child

when the parent acts toward the child in a way that has offended them.

The child’s spirit simply closes up,

making it impossible for them to drink from the parent as God intended.

And the only thing that has the power to reopen the child’s spirit to the parent

is the parent admitting the offense to the child

and asking their forgiveness.

And the same principle applies to everyone of our relationships.

And here again we find that God’s pattern for healing

works exactly the opposite from what we would expect.

We just naturally assume

that our admitting our failure to another person

would cause them to loose respect for us

and to diminish our credibility and authority in their life.

And in reality the result is exactly the opposite.

When we take ownership for our sin or our weakness or our failure or our offense

it builds a level of trust and credibility

that gives us access to the other person’s spirit

as nothing else can do.

And my final pillar for building and maintaining strong love relationships

is one you’ve heard from me for the past 25 years.

Always keep the relationship more important than our rights, our possessions, or our ideas.

We’ve spent whole mornings on that statement in the past,

and there’s an entire chapter on it in The Grace Exchange if you’re interested,

but at the heart of it

is simply our commitment to God’s priority system.

Absolutely nothing in life matters more

than the people God has given us to love and care for.

Nothing else has the ability to make sense of our lives

or to give us a sense of purpose and fulfillment,

allowing us to look back and say with Paul,

2TI 4:7-8 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

Which brings us back to Peter and the statement we’ll pick up with next week,

1PE 4:8 Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.