©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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01-01-06 |
Godly Goals For Life In The End Times |
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1/1/06 Godly Goals for Life in the End Times
Happy New Year!!
We’ve made it
through another year,
and another
Christmas.
One year ago some of you were not at all sure you’d see this
day.
Some of you felt
sure there was no way
you could
make it another month
much
less another year.
There was so much pain,
or some much
confusion,
or so much
fear that the thought of facing 2005
seemed
like a burden far too great for you to bear.
But one day
and one step at a
time you kept going,
clinging
tightly to the hand of your Lord.
And now, one year later,
things are so
very much better
than you
ever dreamed they could have been.
The marriage you almost walked out on
is beginning to
work in ways
you never
dreamed possible.
The pain you thought would overwhelm you,
and engulf you,
and destroy
you
has drawn you closer to your Lord
than you have
ever been before,
and now the
hurt has subsided some
and
deep inside you know
by God’s grace - you can
and you will
survive.
For some of you
2005 has not been
a year
you would
ever choose to live over,
but neither is it a year you would exchange for any other,
because it has
brought about changes in you
that
nothing else has ever done,
changes
you never believed were possible.
And for some of you here this morning
2006 looks like a
terrifying enemy
looming up
before you.
Right now, as you sit here,
listening to my
pastoral voice droning on,
you only
half hear what I’m saying
because
your heart is so filled with pain,
or
confusion,
or
fear
that you don’t really know whether you’ll be able to make it
another month,
much less
another year.
And, if the truth were known,
it was desperation,
more than anything else,
that
brought you here this morning.
You’ve never needed answers more
than you need
them right now.
You’ve never needed healing more
than you need it
right now.
You’ve never needed a real live God
Who hears,
and Who
heals,
and
Who literally brings beauty out of ashes
more
than you do right now.
And you’re being here this morning
is mostly your
own private cry of hope
that such a
God really does exist
somewhere under all of the form,
and image,
and
routine,
and
ceremony
that
hangs about those who gather in His name.
There is nothing I can say or do this morning
that will make
the pain go away.
But I can tell you with absolute honesty,
that there have
been times when I have hurt like that,
and I have
found my Lord, Jesus Christ adequate for my pain,
and
you will too.
I’d like to offer you a prescription
if you’ll allow
me to.
It’s one I have taken myself in the past
and found that it
really does help.
The danger with pain
when we are going
through it
is that it
so often narrows our perspective
until
all we can see
is us,
and here,
and now.
And then nothing at all makes sense.
The prescription I would like to offer you
is in the form of
some words that were written by Peter
to his
fellow Christians
who
were experiencing intense suffering in their own lives.
I would strongly suggest that you memorize Peter’s words
because they have
the ability to offer you both hope
and true
perspective.
They are found in I Peter 5:6-11.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of
God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon
Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your
adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to
devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences
of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And
after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called
you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen
and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.
I’m not going to teach that passage this morning,
because I have
something else I want to do,
but, for those of you who are hurting,
I do want to make
you aware of the passage
and point
out just a few things about it.
1st, I want you to notice that first phrase...
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of
God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,...
I want you to notice it
because in it I
see Peter telling us that,
at those
times when we are hurting,
we
don’t have to be afraid of the pain.
We don’t have to think that it means
God has left us,
or turned
His back on us,
or
given up on us
and we certainly do not have to think
that pain is
proof that we have failed
in our walk
with our Lord,
or that we have somehow missed His will for our life.
When Peter says, Humble yourselves under the might hand of
God,
I see him telling
us that there are times
when we
will hurt
and the best
thing we can do
is to
mentally accept it as part of what our sovereign God
has
permitted in our life,
not investing all of our emotional energies
into asking,
“Why? Why? Why?”,
knowing
that He has
allowed it for His purposes
and that
it is only for a season.
Just as certainly as there is a time
when we feel the
heavy weight of His hand upon us,
there will also come the time
when that same
hand will turn
and slide
under our feet
and
lift us up and exalt us,
restoring our hope,
and our vision,
and our
spirit once again.
It is not be accident that Peter’s very next statement is
his open invitation
that we “cast all
our anxiety upon Him,
knowing
that He truly does care for us.”
The next thing I would point out in Peter’s words
is his assurance
to those who hurt
that you
are not the first to have felt this pain,
and
that, just as others have found their Lord adequate,
so
will you.
And finally,
I want to point
out the absolute certainty
of the
promise God makes to us through Peter’s words
that
the time will come when our God
will
Himself restore us to the joy of our salvation.
And after you have suffered for a little while, the God
of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself
perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and
ever. Amen.
This is not a game we are playing,
and these are not
just religious platitudes.
This is real life,
and we are
dealing with a real Creator,
who can and
will bring strength
and
healing to His people.
But that isn’t really what I intended to focus on this
morning.
This being the very first day of the new year,
I wanted to offer
you some Godly Goals for life in the End Times.
I know that some of you are rather fond
of making New
Years resolutions.
And you’re welcome to do it
if you’re really
into guilt,
frustration,
and
failure.
But what I have to offer you
are not in any
sense resolutions.
In the past I have taken whole Sundays
to share with you
God’s perspective
on
attempting to change behavior
through
writing little rules for yourself,
and I’ll not do it again today
except to read
Paul’s very relevant comments in Col. 2:20-23.
If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles
of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself
to decrees, such as, "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!"
(which all refer to things destined to perish with the using)-- in accordance
with the commandments and teachings of men?
These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in
self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are
of no value against fleshly indulgence.
What I would like to offer you
are not rules,
or
resolutions,
but rather three mental attitude-goals
that I hold for
myself personally
and see as
being of tremendous value
given the time and place God has chosen for us in human
history.
We who are Christians
at this point in
history
have been
given
a
unique calling
from
any who have come before us.
We have been called upon to operate
in a Post-Christian
society,
a society
that once held a strong emotional allegiance
to
the moral standards revealed to us in Scripture,
and
to the general look and feel
of
a society based upon Christian principles.
But now, in our
generation,
we have
seen our society turn its back on that Christian heritage
to
the point where
those
who identify themselves as true Christians
are
viewed as a fanatical,
irrational,
out-of-touch
fringe minority.
We are perceived as being legalistic,
judgmental,
and
hypocritical as a group.
Whereas our brothers and sisters in the 1st
century
faced the
challenge
of
communicating to their world
the
weird and radical new message
of
a God who entered a human body
in
order to offer Himself as a human sacrifice
for
the sins of His creation,
and
then rose from the dead in bodily form after He had died,
we are now called to re-communicate
what is viewed by
most of our society
as just
that old time Bible-thumping religion
filled
with a long list of rules to follow
if
you want to “go to heaven” when you die.
Given the unique nature of our calling at this point in
history
I see three goals
as being of exceptional value
in helping
to increase our credibility and effectiveness
in
communicating the message of Christ
that
we are called to offer to our world.
And the first on the list is this -
I want to become
more and more of a real person.
Peter said it better in I Peter 2:16
where he commands
us to,
“Act as free men...”
One of the many destructive Satanic lies
floating around
about true Christianity
is the
belief that a person’s submission to Christ
involves
accepting and conforming to
a
certain type of religious facade
in
which we all end up looking the same,
thinking
the same,
dressing
the same,
living
basically the same life-style,
voting
the same,
and
laughing at the same jokes.
In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth.
There is no way to overstate the value
that God places
on our individual uniqueness
as distinct
creations of His.
He has invested no small effort
into forming each
one of us into absolutely one-of-a-kind creations
because He
wants it that way.
The one thing that truly has the power to free each of us
to become the
unique people we were designed to be
is
submission to the leadership of Christ.
When our Lord said in John 8:36,
“If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be
free indeed...”,
He was telling us
that,
not only will our submission to Him not turn us all into
vanilla,
but it will
actually open us up to a world of human flavors, and textures, and fragrances
that could
never have existed before.
Do you know the things that have the power
to deprive us of
the ability to be the real people
God created
us to be?
Sin addictions that rob us of the freedom to choose.
FEAR - fear of failure,
fear of
rejection,
fear of
death,
fear
of someone knowing the truth about us.
Guilt feelings,
regrets or past
failures that paralyze us.
Lack of purpose,
a feeling of
being worthless,
feeling
like we have no significance,
no
real value.
Do you know the type of things
our Lord begins
to work on
once He
enters our lives?
He begins to fight for our freedom from our addictions to
sin,
He seeks to free
us from our fears,
He gives us
a certain basis
for
finding freedom from our guilt,
He offers us a purpose for life
and a role of
true significance.
In other words,
He begins doing
what He promised He would do -
freeing us
from those things that deprive us
of
the ability to be real -
to be the unique creations He designed us to be.
As I look to the coming year,
one of the
conscious goals I have
is that of
learning how to become more and more real,
how
to become more and more the unique person
my
Lord created me to be.
A second major tool we have
in effectively
displaying the truth of Christ to our world
is found in
our enjoying the freedom that comes
from
living within the moral framework of God.
And my second attitude-goal for the coming year
is to live in
such a way that my life
affirms
that security.
We live in a world of people who,
in the name of
freedom,
have thrown
out all allegiance to
any
kind of absolute moral boundaries.
But, rather than finding freedom,
the result has
been a generation of people
sentenced
to an endless, agonizing
trial-and-error
search for some sort of solid footing
and
secure foundation in life.
There is no way to overestimate the incredible advantage the
Christian has
at this point in
history.
Through God’s Word we are the few
who have access
to the knowlede of how life is truly designed to operate.
We have, given to us by our God,
the protective moral framework
that will
free us to find
true
security in life.
The more our lives can radiate that security,
the more
effective we will be in communicating the truth to those around us.
And the final attitude-goal I hold for myself during the
next year
is the goal of
growing in my understanding
of how to
actively rest in the reality of Christ’s commitment to live through me.
When it comes to living the Christian life,
knowing where God
wants us to head,
and what He
wants us to do,
I think all of us tend to be self-doubters at times.
Why doesn’t my Christian life
look like that
guy’s?
Why don’t I see the external results that he sees?
Is this stuff going on inside me really His leading?
Maybe I should just do it like that person does it over
there.
We’ve been here lots of times in the past,
and we’ll come
back to it lots of times in the future,
but the foundational principle
for daily
Christian living is learning to rest in Christ’s commitment
to live His
life through us.
Paul said it so perfectly in Gal 2:20
“...it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me;
and the {life} which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of
God...”.
There is no way I can explain how our Lord does that,
I only know He
does.
He is living in each and every Christian
and is actively
seeking to express Himself through us.
There are no observers in the true Body of Christ,
and as we
approach this new year,
I think the
healthiest way we can begin each day
is
with the mental attitude that says,
“Lord, thank you for the reality of Your life within me -
this day I will
trust You to express Yourself through me
in the way
that you know is right.
I will not second-guess You.
I will not
diminish the effectiveness
of what You
are seeking to do through me
by
endless, fruitless self-examination.
I will simply choose to rest in Your commitment to live
through me this day.
And at those points where I begin to make choices
that work against
what You are seeking to do in me,
and through
me,
let
Your Spirit give me eyes to see the trap
and
the courage to choose in harmony with your goals for me as your child.”
What our world needs more than anything else right now
is a group of
real people
who know
and love a real God
and
who are living in the freedom that His truth has brought into their lives.
Good goals for the year ahead.