©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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01/18/04 |
Life’s Greatest Surprises |
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1/18/04 Life’s Greatest Surprises
We are going to pull out of our study of Ephesians briefly
to give me an opportunity to share some thoughts with you
that I do hope you will find helpful in your own walk with the King.
For a number of weeks now
we have been hovering around a statement in the book of Ephesians
in which Paul offers us the calling that we, “...walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called...”.
I don’t honestly know to what degree these words of Paul triggered the thoughts that formed the basis for what I want to share with you today,
but I think, at some level at least,
they must have had some impact on it
because I do know with certainty
that this “worthy walk” we have been called to
has, in so many ways,
turned out so much different from what I had expected
when my Lord first entered my life in the fall of 1966.
I have chosen to title this talk “Life’s Greatest Surprises”,
and even though I’m certain our Ephesians study has had some impact on it’s existence,
the actual list of surprises came to me this past Christmas Eve.
Our son-in-law, Matt, is in the Coast Guard,
stationed in Petaluma, California.
Our daughter, Joni, is now just a matter of days (we hope) away from giving birth to our first grandchild.
She was too pregnant to travel at Christmas time,
so we used that as our excuse to fly down to spend Christmas with them.
Peteluma is in the wine country just a few miles north of San Francisco.
It is a beautiful part of California,
just far enough out of the city
so that the area is truly rural.
Matt and Joni live on the Coast Guard base,
a large section of which is also a designated wildlife preserve.
The country is rolling hills,
with patches of trees,
and then long, open expanses of fields and cultivated farmland surrounding the base.
There is a wide path running along the perimeter of the base
that climbs a steep hill and then stretches along the crest of the hill for about a mile
before it circles back down into the developed part of the base.
On Christmas Eve Matt had gone to town for some last minute shopping,
Sandee and Joni were both in the kitchen baking pies and other goodies
in preparation for Christmas dinner the next day,
and I used the time to hike that trail.
Twice along the way I looked out through the trees to the fields beyond
and saw small herds of deer
resting and grazing in the open fields along the path.
There was a strong breeze blowing,
and the sound of the wind in the trees lining the top of the ridge,
and the absence of any sign of another human being in any direction
made me feel completely isolated from the rest of the world.
I have always had a strong philosophical streak in me,
a characteristic that is definitely becoming stronger the older I get,
and as I walked along that trail,
listening to the wind,
watching the deer in the distance,
wondering if they would trust me or bolt in fear,
I got to thinking about how dramatically my perspective on so many things has change during the past 35 years.
First one thing came to mind,
and then another,
and then a third,
and then a forth and a fifth,
and then I got the urge to make a list of all of life’s greatest surprises,
but I didn’t have any paper.
I looked around for some little piece of liter I could use
and discovered that there is no liter whatsoever anywhere on a Coast Guard base.
Then I noticed that the trees lining the pathway
shed their bark in long strips.
I found a nice long strip along the side of the road,
took out my pen,
and began jotting down my list of life’s greatest surprises.
By the time I got back to the house nearly an hour later
I’d covered both the front and the back of my bark
and I had a list 18 things jotted down.
I want to share some of them with you this morning for several reasons.
First of all,
I want to share them with you
with the hope that my own discoveries
may be helpful to you in your own pursuit of the truth.
Though we may not realize it consciously,
every one of us brings with us into our walk with God
a broad range of assumptions that we believe to be true
about the Christian life.
Some of those assumptions are correct.
Many of them are not.
But all of them sit in our minds just below the conscious level
and serve as the standard with which we evaluate what we actually experience on a day-to-day basis.
If what we experience
lines up with those assumptions we hold,
then it feels right to us
and everything goes fine.
But if what we experience
does not line up with those assumptions and expectations,
then it can create tremendous tension,
or confusion,
or frustration,
or a sense of failure or self-condemnation within us.
For example,
if you come into your Christian life
believing that now, because your heart has been submitted to Christ,
because you have now died to sin
and been resurrected into new life in Christ
you will never again experience the intense pulls toward evil
that were so much a part of your life before Christ,
and then, all of the sudden,
one of those old evil drives exerts itself with tremendous force within you,
somehow your mind has to deal with that gap
between what you assume to be true
and what you are actually experiencing.
And, because our assumptions are already in place within us just below the conscious level of our thinking,
our first response is always to assume
that the problem is with us, with our experience.
We may assume that there was something flawed or incomplete about our salvation.
We may decide we need some deeper experience,
or some added gift or anointing from God,
or even that we are no longer a child of God and must seek God’s redemption all over again.
Or we may condemn ourselves for being different from other Christians,
for being a second-rate follower of the King.
Or we may pour all of our efforts into attempting to create an external “Christian” facade
so that no one will know about the corruption we’ve discovered within us.
But what we will very likely not do,
at least not at first,
is to doubt or question the validity of the assumptions we brought with us into our Christian life.
To do so is frequently no easy process,
and in fact one that I believe can only be accomplished
under the careful guidance of the Spirit of God in our lives,
and then only when He drives us into it.
It is an unsettling process,
a disruptive process that will, at times, leave us feeling confused and unprotected.
I mention this to you now
because some of the surprises that made it onto my list
are really simply my own assumptions that, in the end, I have found to be incorrect.
And I share them with you
with the hope that it may give you mental permission
to re-examine some of those assumptions in your own life
that are not consistent with the truth.
I also want to share some of my greatest surprises with you
with the hope that it will help reinforce within you an attitude of fluid growth in your walk with our King.
If the belief system that you hold right now was perfectly correct in every way,
if all of those assumptions that sit just under the conscious level were right,
you would know it because you would live each day in perfect righteousness and perfect love,
radiating absolute freedom,
having experienced a level of healing in your life
that would have rendered every past injury you’ve ever received
powerless over you now.
The fact that none of us live that way
is simply evidence that there are areas in all of our lives
where we continue to operate on deeply flawed assumptions
that in turn gives birth to deeply flawed actions and reactions within us.
Now how can I say that?
I can say it because our Lord told us that (JOH 8:32)
“... you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free...”,
which means, of course, that where ever we fall short of true inner freedom in our lives,
that lack of freedom is clear evidence that in some area of our lives we are still operating on lies.
And I can say it because Paul tells us that we will “...(ROM
12:2) be transformed by the renewing of our mind...”,
which means, then, that where we have not yet experienced true transformation in action,
it is proof that our reasoning processes as they now exist are corrupt, flawed.
And I can say it because John tells us that, “(1JO 3:2)
...when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He
is...”
which means, of course,
that where ever we are not yet like Him
it is an indication of some area in our life
where we have not yet seen Him as He really is.
So, with all of that to help you understand why I’m going to do what I’m going to do,
let me share with you at least a few of those things
that made it onto my own personal list of life’s greatest surprises.
1. And I might as well start
with what has been by far the greatest surprise of my life, God Himself.
And at the top of the list of my God-surprises
is the shock of discovering that He is really there.
Have you ever walked into a darkened room certain that it was empty,
flipped on the light,
and then suddenly realized that someone else was in the room with you?
My initial encounter with my Creator affected me a little bit like that.
It wasn’t that I rejected or denied the existence of God in theory,
it’s just that prior to His introduction of Himself to me when I was 19 years old
I had no personal awareness of His presence with me whatsoever.
But then, all of the sudden,
there He was,
with me in the room that I had been certain was empty.
And He has been in the room ever since.
And I must tell you
that I honestly do not know what to do
with this first great surprise of my life from a teaching point of view.
I know that there are some of you here this morning
who hear me talking about my constant awareness of God,
about my life now lived in His presence,
and you tell yourself that I possess that awareness because I am a Bible teacher,
and because I have spent the past 35 years learning about Him,
and studying His Word,
and accumulating a growing knowledge about Him.
Well, it’s simply not true.
My awareness of the presence and reality of God
was every bit as intense and powerful the day I met Him in the fall of 1966 as it is now.
In fact, in some ways it was even more powerful then
because of the sharp contrast that existed between His sudden entrance into my life
and His complete absence in the 19 years prior to that entrance.
The awareness of the presence of God with us
is not the result of gaining competence in Christian doctrine,
it is a communication that takes place at the spirit level
between the Spirit of God
and our eternal spirits,
a communication that is initiated by God,
a communication,
or perhaps more correctly, a communion that forms the basis for everything else that takes place between us and our Creator.
It is that communication that Paul was talking about in Galatians 4:6 when he said,
And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit
of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!"
He also referred to it in Romans 8:15-16 when he wrote,
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God...
The Spirit of God Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are His children.
It is this personal spirit communion that Christ Himself was talking about when He said,
REV 3:20
'Behold, I stand at the door (of your heart) and knock; if anyone hears
My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and
he with Me.
Fascinating wording, isn’t it?
He doesn’t just say He will redeem us,
or forgive us,
or reveal to us His truth and His ways.
He says He will give us Himself,
His presence with us,
not as the Divine Moral Judge of the universe,
not as some distant Deity before whom we cower in fear,
but as the best Friend we’ve ever known,
the Friend who comes to us just because He wants to be with us,
the Friend who sits in our presence,
as we sit in His,
and shares with us the best meal we’ve ever had.
That discovery of the reality of God
was the first truly great
life-altering surprise of my life.
And before I move on here,
I would just say that
if you do not understand what I just said,
if all you have known of Christianity is doctrinal belief,
and religious routine,
and obedience to the moral values outlined in Scripture,
do not stop your pursuit of God
until He has brought you into the reality of His presence.
And having said that,
I know I am suppose to offer you six steps,
or four laws,
our two principles that will show you to do that.
I cannot.
I can only tell you
that entering into the living reality of the presence of God with us
is the reason we are here,
it is the reason for our existence,
and for the existence of everything else.
We were created for friendship with our Creator,
and our spirits are forever empty
and restless until we enter into that union with Him.
The one thing I will offer you is a prayer.
“God, I don’t just want to know about You,
I want to know You,
no matter what the cost,
no matter what the consequences.”
And it isn’t fair for me to offer you that prayer
without also offering you this warning -
God will only enter our lives as God,
which means that His introduction of Himself to us
is frequently preceded by His requiring our willingness to turn over to Him
whatever it is that we have been clinging to as our God-substitute.
With me
what He wanted was my willingness to acknowledge
that He had the absolute right to determine my future,
no matter how distasteful I might find His goals or direction for me.
Those of you who have listened to me for any length of time
know the question I wrestled with
prior to my God’s entrance into my life.
Would I be a preacher?
At 19 years old
agreeing to that divine request
meant the end of any life worth living.
But it certainly did establish the ground rules between me and my God.
I mention this only because
I don’t want you to be surprised
if your own pursuit of God
brings you face-to-face with some question
that you will find equally as offensive.
Will you give God control over you finances?
Will you allow Him to fill your heart with forgiveness for that person who wronged you so deeply?
Will you trust His leadership in which of your relationships are healthy
and which ones you must walk away from?
Will you let your friends know that you are a Christian?
Will you let go of your crusade to change your mate
and allow God to do whatever He chooses to do in his or her life?
I’m just shooting in the dark here, of course,
but it’s only right for me to warn you
that, if your discovery of the reality of God in your life
requires the removal of some alternate god you have been clinging to,
the removal of that alternate god
will look and feel like the loss of what you need most in all the world.
Well, at the head of my list of life’s greatest surprises
was the shock of discovering
that God was really there.
2. And the second greatest surprise
was the discovery that God was nice.
Unlike the discovery of His reality,
which came into my life in an instant,
the discovery of His niceness
has been a slow,
gradual,
progressive discovery that continues to this day
and will not end as long as I remain on this earth.
It is a discovery that has come into my life
in more ways than I could ever name.
It began in my infancy with Him
when I would disobey Him
and, to my shock and great confusion,
discovered that He did not walk away from me in disgust.
It is a discovery that has been profoundly impacted
by what I have discovered about Him through His Word.
ROM 5:1 Therefore having been justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
ROM 5:2 through whom also we have obtained our
introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand...
ROM 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those
who are in Christ Jesus.
JER 31:3 ... "I have loved you with an everlasting
love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.”
ZEP 3:17 "The Lord your God is in your midst, A
victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His
love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.
And on, and on, and on.
The discovery of His niceness
took another huge leap forward
when, after years of somehow missing the most obvious truth of all,
I finally realized that the clearest, most vivid image of God we will ever have
is found in the Person of Jesus Christ.
Which means that,
if we want an absolutely reliable
and easily understandable picture
of the way God relates to us,
all we need to do
is to look carefully at the way Christ related to His disciples.
By now you already know
that all those thoughts and words I placed into the mind and mouth of Peter
are really my own thoughts,
and my own words,
and my own discoveries about my God.
And so I had Peter say,
“You don’t understand why my recognition of Jesus as Messiah was such a revelation to me, do you? You can’t figure out why, with all his miracles, and all his power, and all his authority, it took me three years to see the truth. Well, you see, it was because . . . because he liked me, and because I liked him. I knew Messiah was coming. I knew Messiah was the hope of our nation, the hope of our world. But who could have guessed that Messiah would be my best friend? Who would have guessed that Messiah would love me and that I would love him? Who could ever have imagined that Messiah would laugh at my stupid jokes, and sit and talk with me for hours about nothing, and clearly delight in my friendship and my presence with him? Messiah was not supposed to like me, and me like him. Messiah was supposed to rule and conquer and judge and command great armies. Messiah was supposed to be absolute power. But no one had expected him to be nice, to be kind, to be gentle. Of course Messiah would care about the nation, but how could I have known he would care about me?”
Well, look at this -
our time is all gone
and I’ve only shared with you two of my greatest surprises in life,
which means, of course,
that we’ll spend one more week on this.
We won’t go through all 18 things I scratched onto that piece of bark,
but in case you’re interested,
I’ll close by reading the list
just so that you can get some idea as to where we may go next week.
My greatest surprises in life.
1. God (which I divided into two parts this morning.)
2. The true nature of the church
3. The true nature of spiritual warfare
4. The nature of righteousness
5. The nature of temptation
6. What real success as a Christian means
7. The real nature of sin
8. My calling
9. The real nature of healing
10. The true source of happiness/fulfillment
11. God’s real goals for my life
12. God’s reasons for His goals for my life
13. The right and wrong reasons for making right choices
14. The things that bring me greater peace with myself
15. The things that bring me greater awareness of my peace with God
16. What it really means to be loved by God
17. The type of people I really feel comfortable with
18. The type of people I really do not feel comfortable with