03-23-14 All Your Needs Pt. 7

Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Learning to think about ourselves

as God thinks about us

is the core of Christian growth.

This, by the way, happens to be

one of the most easily recognizable differences

between man-made religion

and true Christianity.

Man-made religion

focuses on changing external behavior

so that the adherent can then become

the person God wants him or her to become.

THE LIST is a crucial ingredient in this process.

There must be a written

or an implied list of duties

and behaviors to accomplish

or to avoid

that will then assure good standing with God

and with the group.

The focus, however, is always centered upon changing behavior

so that we can become

what we are suppose to become.

That, of course, is NOT the truth

offered to us through Christ.

That is NOT true Christianity.

In Christ

we are not called

to attempt to change ourselves

so that we can then be accepted by God.

Rather, we come to God openly acknowledging

our absolute inability

to make within ourselves

the changes that need to be made,

accepting our Creator’s offer

to pay for our sin with His own death,

and to transform us into His new creations,

His saints,

His Holy Ones,

through His placing a new heart within us.

And here is the crucial distinction -

religion seeks to change our outward behavior

so that we can become who we should be,

true Christianity seeks to reveal to us

who we already are in Christ

so that we will then

live consistent with our true identity.

Does that sound confusing?

Do you remember Clark Kent -

mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper,

trying to look wimpy and passive

inside his reporter’s clothing?

Who was Clark Kent, really?

Of course, Clark Kent was REALLY SUPERMAN!!!

When Clark Kent

suddenly got caught in the cross-fire

of the nasty bank robbers

shooting it out with the police

when they were trying to make their get-away,

why didn’t Clark Kent

drop to the floor in sweat-soaking terror like everyone else?

Because Clark Kent knew who he REALLY was.

Clark Kent knew that

bullets bounced right off of him.

Clark Kent knew he was really Superman.

The only concern Clark Kent ever had

was finding a phone booth

in which he could make his super-fast clothing change

so that he could then save the day.

So what in the world is my point?

Simply this -

Clark Kent did not have to try to become brave and super-strong

so that he could then be Superman.

All he had to do was to remember

who he really was

underneath his white shirt and PRESS badge.

Religion would attempt to take the terrified teller from behind the counter

and convince him to act brave and super-strong

so that he could then become Superman.

True Christianity

simply reminds Clark Kent

who he really is

under that external facade.

Perhaps you don’t think my analogy is fair

because Clark Kent really WAS Superman,

and he knew it,

where as we, of course, aren’t REALLY the Holy, pure, sinless saints of God,

freed forever from the power of sin,

indwelt and empowered by the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead,

divinely designed and equipped

to serve as God’s ambassadors here on earth, are we?

I mean, we’re just marginally effective,

failing but forgiven sinners,

trying our best to hang in there until the Lord comes back...aren’t we?

Well, one thing I can tell you for sure -

we will always live consistent

with who we believe ourselves to be,

even if what we believe is no longer true.

And because of that

much of the work God seeks to accomplish within us

centers in His commitment to reshape our minds into a correct understanding

of who we have become through Christ.

Rom. 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

God does not call us to become His children

through improving our behavior.

Through Christ

He makes us His children forevermore,

and then calls us to discover what that means.

What does it mean

for us to be a child of God?

What does it mean

for us to have God Himself as our Father?

We are nearing the end of a study

of a statement Paul makes

in the 19^th verse of Philippians 4.

It is a verse that says:

Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

It is a truly remarkable statement,

but it is also a statement

we cannot correctly understand

without a great deal of relearning.

We spent our first four weeks in this study

looking at a whole bunch of barriers

we bring into our relationship with Christ,

barriers that complicate

and confuse

and corrupt our concept

of what we really need

for a truly fulfilling life.

These barriers are the residue

of our former life lived without Christ.

And when I say that

please don’t think I’m simply referring to

all of those sinful acts and impulses from our past.

The heart of the problem we face

stems from the fact that every one of us

trained ourselves to think

and feel

and operate on a daily basis

with the assumption that God wasn’t there

or that if He was

He was Someone to be avoided at all costs.

The end result is that we have each created for ourselves

all sorts of life patterns

that we think will meet our needs

and make us happy.

With every need we have encountered

we have looked through what we have seen as our available options for meeting that need

and then pounced on the solution

that seemed best to us.

I mentioned two weeks ago

that the beginning of all correct understanding

of what Paul is saying

when he says ...And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus...

is understanding that what we need

more than anything else

is God Himself.

Much of what we frantically attempt to cram into our lives,

in a desperate attempt to fill the emptiness,

or quiet the fears,

or bolster our egos,

we do so in order to meet the hunger within us

that only God Himself can fill.

I also mentioned

that one of the things God will do

in the lives of His children

is to place us in a situation

where many of the things

we think we must have in order to be happy

are suddenly removed,

and all we have is HIM.

Only then can we sometimes discover

that if we have Him,

then we have all we need.

But that isn’t the whole picture.

And to help us take the next step

in our understanding of this verse

I need to share with you again

an illustration some of you will recognize from The Grace Exchange.

It is the best way I know of

to quickly explain

why we sometimes run into

such confusion in this whole area.

I want to tell you a story about a very good king.

This king loves his people deeply

and does his best to rule his subjects with wisdom and compassion.

But our good King has a problem.

He’s growing old and has no son, no heir of his own

to rule in his place after he dies.

He wants very much for the one who rules after him

to share his heart of compassion and love for the people he rules.

He wants a man who can understand

the problems, concerns, and needs of even the most lowly of his subjects.

So one day the king comes up with what he just knows will be

the perfect solution to his problem.

He’ll go to the poorest part of his great capitol city,

and he’ll find a boy, perhaps 11 or 12 years old,

who has no mother or father,

a kid who’s been forced to live by his wits on the streets.

He’ll then legally adopt this child and raise him as his son,

teaching him the skills he’ll need to one day rule in his place.

The boy's deprived heritage will give him

a strong identification with the people he’ll one day rule,

and his careful training under the king's guidance will equip him for the great work.

The king commissions trusted members of his staff

to find a boy who meets the qualifications he has in mind.

They come back in a few days

telling the King they’ve found what he’s looking for.

The king gets into his royal limousine and tells his chauffeur

to drive to a certain poor part of town.

When he finds the boy loitering on the street

the king has the chauffeur stop and orders his guards

to bring the kid to him.

When the kid sees what’s coming

he’s understandably terrified.

He’s been busted lots of times

for petty theft and shoplifting,

but now the king himself has come after him

he’s sure he’s into it big time.

The king tells the boy to get into the limousine.

promising him that he is not in trouble, not being arrested,

and that he doesn’t have to be afraid.

The two of them sit and talk

-the king in his royal robes and the orphan in his rags.

The longer they talk, the more they begin to relax

and the more they find themselves enjoying one another.

After some time, the king is confident that this kid is exactly what he’s looking for.

He tells the boy he has a proposition for him,

and then he king explains exactly what he has in mind,

and ends by saying, “I want to be sure you clearly understand what I am offering you.

If you agree to my terms, you will become my legal son forever.

You will live in the palace with me.

I will personally take responsibility for meeting all of your needs.

I will feed and clothe you,

train and educate you, and prepare you for the day when I die

and you’ll rule in my place as king of this great nation.

Will you accept my offer?”

The boy gives the proposition about 10 seconds of thought

and says, “Congratulations, King! You've got yourself a son!”

They go back to the palace and, at first, everything goes fine.

The boy spends hours just wandering around the palace and the grounds,

utterly overwhelmed by more wealth and luxury

than he has ever seen in his life.

He starts his schooling,

and the king is pleased because his new son has a sharp mind and learns quickly.

The plan seems to be working out great.

But then the king begins to notice some weird behavior in his son.

At the dinner table, when the boy thinks no one is looking,

he takes a piece of meat or a roll and some cheese

and slips it into his pocket.

When he’s walking down a hallway,

his little hand quickly lunges out

and grabs some shiny object sitting on a table

and then slides it under his coat.

Then he takes his little treasures

and stashes them under his bed.

At first the king can’t figure out what’s going on.

The boy has everything he could ever want in abundance,

and yet he seems compelled to hoard a small pile

of little portable treasures in his room.

Then the king finally realizes what is happening.

His son has the clothes, the food, and the legal position

of a prince and a future king,

but he’s still got the mind and emotions of a street kid.

Sure he’s been told that the king is now his father

and that he’ll never ever again want for anything,

but in his mind he still sees himself as a boy on the streets

who’s only real friend is himself

and only real resource is his own wits.

Through a weird turn of luck

he’s ended up in a king's palace for a while,

but he just knows that something is going to go wrong

and he’ll be back on the street.

All of his life he has survived

by taking what he can get when he can get it

and, in his mind, nothing has really changed.

And this, of course,

is why we run into such huge problems

when we encounter a statement

such as this one in Phil. 4:19.

We, just like this street kid,

bring with us into our union with our Heavenly Father,

a highly refined system of tricks

and techniques

through which we have been attempting to meet our needs.

Many of them don’t work very well,

but they are a part of who we are.

Our little adopted street kid

didn’t need the food and trinkets

he crammed in his coat,

but he thought he did,

and his every survival instinct

told him he has to take and grab

whatever he can get his hands on.

When we come to Christ,

we are just like that boy.

We are told that God has “raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places”

We are told that our God “shall supply all our needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus”

We are told clearly that

we now share an eternal Father-child relationship

with the God of the universe,

and “He Himself has said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you’”

We have heard the words,

and yet, like that boy,

we do not really believe it is true.

We have the legal standing of a prince,

but the mind of a street kid.

All of our lives we have believed

that we are responsible

for governing our own little world,

meeting our own needs,

taking care of ourselves

without the involvement of our Creator.

Then, in an instant,

all of that is changed forever.

Our spirits know it has changed,

but our minds, emotions, and memories do not.

When our King

begins His re-creation process in our lives

there will be some areas

where we are locked into highly self-destructive behaviors

and some disciplinary measures will be needed.

But He knows that

what we need most of all

is to learn to think like the children of the King we really are.

The problem is not

that we continue to cling to

all our ineffective techniques

for meeting our needs.

The real problem is that

we believe we still need them.

Our King will find ways

of helping us understand

that we no longer have to take

and hide

and hoard to get our needs met.

Through our Father, we already possess

everything we need for the life our spirit longs for.

Three weeks ago I started

to offer you a list of statements

to help us pull this study together.

So far I have offered you two statements.

#1.There are no qualifying limitations

placed on the word “needs” in this verse.

Even the needs we have caused within ourselves through our own sin

are included in Philippians 4:19.

#2. The beginning of understanding

what God is saying when He says

“I will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus...”

is understanding that what we need most

is God Himself.

This morning I offer you #3 in that list.

#3. The second major step in our healing process, then,

is allowing God to rebuild our understanding

both of what our needs are

and how those needs can be met.

In the terms of our illustration,

He seeks to replace our street kid mentality

with the mind of a true child of the King.

We are going to spend one final week in this series,

and we’ll pick it up

right where we are leaving it off today,

but just so I don’t leave this

totally hanging in mid air,

let me conclude with just one example

of the type of thing I’m talking about.

We’ll do this in a before-and-after format.

OK, before we come to Christ,

we encounter someone who hurts us,

or attacks us,

or acts in an unkind way to us.

This encounter creates a need within us.

We need to respond somehow to this person.

Depending upon our personality,

and our relationship with the person,

and the way we saw conflicts handled in our home background,

and a lot of other factors as well,

we have to decide

what we will do.

There are a number of options available.

1. We can run away from them.

2. We can beat them up.

3. We can find some way of manipulating them,

or humiliating them,

or avoiding them,

or conquering them.

Then, when we have selected the option that seems best to us,

we implement our response

in the best way we can.

And we also reinforce within us

whatever technique we have selected

for dealing with such people when we encounter them in the future.

Then we come to Christ.

As a Christian we encounter

another person,

or perhaps the same person

who again hurts us,

or attacks us,

or acts in a thoughtless or unkind way to us.

Once again, this encounter creates within us a need to respond in some way.

But this need is complicated by the fact

that we already believe we know

how that need should be met

given our past experience.

“Of course, I need to run away.”

“Of course, I need to get even.”

“Of course, I need to hurt them back.”

That’s the street kid in us

instinctively cramming the silver ash tray into his pocket.

Now, when God tells us

that He has committed Himself

to meeting all of our needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus,

the first step in his fulfillment of that commitment

is to help us reexamine

the technique we have selected

for responding to our enemy.

Maybe running away,

or hitting back

is not the response that will bring the result we truly long for.

Maybe what we really need

is to discover how we can redeem that relationship

through actively reaching back to them

in kindness.

Matt. 5:43-45 ‟You have heard that it was said, ‛You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.’

But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven...”

So, where have we gone so far?

When God assumes responsibility for meeting our needs through Christ,

the first thing He seeks to do is to show us that what we need more than anything else is Himself,

and then the second thing He does

is to help us rebuild our twisted perceptions of what our needs really are.