©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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03/28/04 |
True Success Pt. 2 |
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3/28/04 True Success Pt. 2
EPH 1:2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Those are the words the Spirit of God gave to Paul
for the introduction to his letter to the Ephesians.
Some of you may remember
that when we began our study of Ephesians about two years ago
we spent a whole morning on this one sentence.
We saw at that time
that nearly every one of the New Testament letters
opens with those exact words or ones very much like them.
I mention this again this morning
because I know how quickly we forget,
and how easily we slip back into those lies being fed to us by Satan.
The battle we face each day of our lives
is not a battle in which we must attempt to win the victory over the forces of evil around us,
it is a battle in which we must once again rediscover
the victory that our Lord has already won for us,
and in us through Christ.
We are going to spend the next half hour
listening to some things our God has said to us.
Of course the words you hear coming from me
will be clothed in my personality,
illustrated by my life,
but all of that is just the packaging,
it’s just the little bits of styrofoam peanuts surrounding the treasures,
helping to transport them from me to you safely.
It certainly isn’t me you’re here for,
and if it is
I’ll tell you right now
you’ve set yourself up for tremendous disappointment.
What you’re here for
is insight into the voice, and mind, and heart of your God.
You want very much to hear Him.
You want to know what He’s saying to you,
you want to be reminded that there is something,
there is some place in this life that is both solid and good,
and that place is in the palm of His hand.
You want to be reminded
that your God cares what’s going on in your life,
and that He is more than adequate to bring you through it.
I was talking with one of my nephews a few days ago
and he was churning over how he could be certain
that he wouldn’t make a wrong career choice,
a choice that would take him away from what God is really seeking to do in his life.
I asked him what he wanted most of all,
and he said he just wanted to know and follow his Lord.
Then I told him this is the way it works...
You are standing on the almighty hand of God Himself.
He holds you in the palm of His hand,
and nothing and no one can take you out of His hand.
You can run all over that hand as much as you want,
go anywhere you want,
explore your options as much as you desire.
But all the time that hand is moving you perfectly,
purposefully,
securely in the direction you need to go.
And you will end up exactly where He wants you to be.
PRO 16:9 The mind of man plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.
Do you remember that fascinating statement
made by the author of Hebrews
to describe the certainty and security of the salvation and love we have received through Christ?
The imagery he creates never ceases to thrill me when I recall it.
In Hebrews 6:19-20 he says,
This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both
sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has
entered as a forerunner for us...
The power of what he is saying
is mostly lost to us
without a little explanation.
The writer is drawing a parallel
between our relationship with God
and a huge transport ship entering a safe harbor in the first century.
It was impossible for those ships to enter the crowded harbors under their own power
because their size made them unable to maneuver safely among the docks and other ships so close to shore.
So, when those ships would approach the entrance to the harbor
they dropped all their sails
and waited at the entrance for a small boat called a forerunner
that would come out to meet them.
The forerunner would then pull up next to the great ship
and allow the ship’s crew
to lower their anchor onto the deck of the forerunner.
Then, as the ship’s crew let out line,
the forerunner carried the anchor all the way into the harbor,
dropping it onto the shore
right at the dock reserved for that ship.
From that point on
all the crew needed to do
was to pull in the rope
bringing the ship safely home.
This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us...
I love that imagery so much
because it fits perfectly
with what we so often feel in our lives.
Here we are most of the time still feeling completely at sea.
We may be able to get a glimpse of the security and protection of the harbor somewhere off in the distance,
but most of the time we don’t even have time to look
because we’re still trying to cope
with wave after wave of real life surging around us.
We know all too well
that, if we had to somehow maneuver ourselves into the safety we long for
we could never do it
because we would destroy ourselves in the process.
We don’t have the power,
we don’t have the skill,
we don’t have the ability to get ourselves from where we are
to where we need to be.
And then our God comes along side of us
and he lets us drop our anchor, our great weight onto Him.
Then He takes it all the way into the presence of God Himself
and secures it there forever.
And then He starts drawing us bit-by-bit,
day-by-day,
wave-by-wave
closer and closer into Himself.
The truth is
we are already, right now anchored forever in God Himself.
Our security,
our ultimate victory is an inalterable certainty.
It’s just that each day we still feel ourselves bobbing around on the open sea
and it doesn’t feel secure at all.
That’s why I began our time together this morning
by reminding us once again
of that remarkable phrase with which our God so often opens His conversations with us...
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I think some of you have come in here this morning
having forgotten what it is your God is seeking to bring into your life.
You’ve come through this past week
having once again lost sight of the heart of your God.
The truth is, you’re not real pleased with yourself,
and you’re pretty sure your God must feel the same way about you.
Of course there are areas in your life
where He is working to bring you into greater freedom
from those things that war against the life of Christ within you,
and sometimes that freedom does not come easily
or without pain or turmoil.
But that is never where His communication with us starts.
He never starts by talking with us about the projects,
He starts by talking with us about the relationship,
His relationship with us.
He always starts with His allowing us to look into His heart
so that, before He says anything else to us,
we know how He approaches us,
and what kind of relationship exists between us and Him through Christ.
And so the first words we hear from His mouth are these...
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace...
His grace poured out on us,
not because we deserve it,
not because we’ve earned it with our good behavior,
not because we have any claim to His kindness,
or to His compassion,
or to His love,
or to His forgiveness,
but simply because
from the instant He brought us into existence
His heart has always been turned toward us,
and His eyes have been upon us,
and He has been seeking ways of revealing to us the depth of His love for us.
And peace...
a peace that now exists between us and Him forever
because the sin is gone,
the debt is paid,
the total account of our immorality has been transferred to the account of Christ
and with His own blood He has written across it, “Paid in full.”
Do you think the battle is still raging between you and your God?
Well, I can tell you for certain,
though you may still be fighting against Him,
He is now and will forever more be fighting FOR you.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, none of that has anything directly to do with what I want to share with you during the rest of our time together,
but I just thought maybe
some of you may have forgotten the basics
and needed to be reminded again.
And now, with the rest of the time we have together,
I want to step back into something we were looking at two weeks ago,
something I feel as though I left unfinished.
We are involved in a series
in which I am sharing with you
some of my greatest surprises
about the true nature of life with God through Christ.
Two weeks ago I shared with you
some of my discoveries in the area of what it really means
for us to find success in our walk with Christ.
Toward the end of our time together I told you that
what I saw over and over again
was my Lord telling me
that there is only one correct measure for success in life,
and only one ultimate goal
that has the power to deliver the quality of life we long for -
it is the goal of our own personal growth
in our relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ,
and in our trust in Him,
and our faithfulness to His leadership in life.
If we see success there,
then He will use our growing understanding of Him
to touch the lives of others in ways that He knows is right,
and He will do it in ways
that protect and guard us
from influences and attacks that we are not equipped to handle.
But what He chooses to do through us
is entirely up to Him.
Our security,
our solid ground is always, only found
in keeping our eyes focused exclusively on what’s going on between us and our Lord.
I even came up with a one line phrase
that I used to communicate to myself what I was seeing.
“If I focus on my character growth,
He will take care of my career.”
Before I leave that topic altogether
I want to take those comments one step farther
because, shortly after I came to that understanding of success,
I also came across a passage in the writings of the Apostle Peter
that became a major foundation for my life then and ever since.
It takes the whole character growth concept
and lays it out for us in the most remarkable way.
It is a passage in which Peter outlines for us
the seven progressive steps
that the Spirit of God will seek to lead each of us through
once we have accepted His priorities for our lives.
It is a truly remarkable section of Scripture
because, in just a few verses,
Peter provides us with a roadmap for our lives,
a map that shows us both were we are right now
and where our Lord will be taking us in the months and years ahead.
And it does much more than that.
It helps us to see so much more clearly
what God is doing in our lives and why.
I sometimes think we spend much of our lives
like a person who has gone to a parade.
We have found a perfect place for viewing,
with the street on one side of us
and a brick wall on the other.
But then, as the parade gets under way, we take up our position
with our back to the street
and our nose pointing at the wall,
and from that point on
we complain because nothing is happening.
So often we fail to appreciate what our God is doing
because we are so focused in the wrong direction
that we don’t even see His remarkable parade in our lives.
We don’t understand what He’s seeking to do
and how He’s seeking to do it,
and as a result we fail to recognize or appreciate some of His greatest accomplishments in our lives.
This passage reveals to us the parade.
I realize I only have a few minutes left
and most of all this morning
I simply want to make you aware of this passage
so that you can look more closely at it on your own.
I’ll offer you my own suggestions
for what I see as being the heart of each of these steps,
but most of all
I just want to complete what I started saying two weeks ago
by giving you the specifics of the projects our Lord shares with us,
His tools with which we then grow in our friendship with Him.
The passage is found in II Peter 1:5-8 and it reads,
Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in
your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge;
and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance,
and in your perseverance, godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly kindness,
and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are
increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The passage offers us 8 progressive steps of grow.
The first step, FAITH, is assumed because Peter has already told us
that he is writing his letter to Christians.
He is talking about that simple faith in the death of Christ for our sins.
and from there Peter then moves us step-by-step
to the ultimate expression of the life of Christ within us - LOVE.
And between those two
Peter reveals to us the progressive steps our King seeks to lead us through,
the steps that ultimately build for us a foundation upon which we can truly love.
I remember well
the two huge jolts this passage brought into my life
when I first discovered it.
The first was the sobering discovery
that, not only was I not soaring along to great heights in my Christian life,
I was just sort of barely balancing on the first step.
Before I came across this passage
I’d thought that a life of moral excellence
was the height of Christian maturity -
the crowning achievement of the truly spiritually mature.
And then all of the sudden I was forced to realize
that it is the most basic level of all,
equivalent to learning how to tie my own shoelaces,
and dress myself,
and use a fork and spoon instead of my fingers for eating.
Moral excellence - living our lives consistently within the protective moral boundaries given to us by our God -
is no great height of spiritual maturity,
it’s the first basic step of growth,
the step upon which everything else is built.
This is just a tiny sidetrack,
but I find it fascinating
that Paul warned his friend Timothy in I Tim. 1:5-7
that Christians who refuse to allow God to lead them through the sometimes painful process
of building this first foundation into their lives
will frequently hide behind a religious facade that looks great to the world.
Our religious landscape is littered with “Christian leaders”,
some of whom have developed great followings,
whose lives have collapsed when it was discovered
that under all of the showmanship
there was a life of moral sewage.
If we build a house without a foundation it will collapse.
If we build a life without a moral foundation it will collapse.
And the second great awakening I remember from my early exposures to this passage
was the realization that true love
wasn’t even remotely like what I thought it was.
I was the product of a culture and a generation
in which “love” was a feeling we felt for another person.
But then here was Peter telling me
that true love - the real thing
could only exist in our lives
when it rested on a solid foundation of
moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, and brotherly kindness.
And anything that we tried to pawn off as love
that was not built upon that foundation
was simply a game we were playing.
Just that one truth answered a lot of questions, of course.
On one hand I heard my God telling me, 1CO 13:8 Love never fails...
but then on the other hand
I was surrounded by a culture filled with people
who were saying “I love you!” to each other one day,
and then walking out on their marriages a few days later.
But when I saw what Peter was saying,
when I realized that true love is not a feeling,
that it is a way of acting toward another person,
a way of acting that is built upon unshakable moral integrity
combined with self-control, perseverance, godliness, and kindness,
that kind of love would not fail.
But it was only possible in our lives
as the end result of God’s major reconstructive work within us.
Selfish, self-centered people
are simply incapable of true love
because their actions are not driven by moral courage,
but rather by their feelings,
and their desire to get what they want from those around them.
Well, my time is nearly gone
and I promised you some practical definitions of these seven progressive steps.
Moral excellence is choosing to live our lives
within the boundaries of the protective moral framework given to us by our God.
Knowledge, as I see it being used in this passage,
is understanding gained through hands-on experience.
This is not gathering Bible facts and doctrines,
it is the discovery of the basic operating principles
of life in the Kingdom of God
through the practical application of those principles.
I have met countless religious folk
who have their minds filled with Bible knowledge
and yet who know nothing about the basic principles of daily life with Christ.
Peter is talking not about gaining facts,
but rather about discovering truths that transform our lives.
Self-control is the ability to do what is right
at those times when our emotions are lying to us.
Perseverance is the ability to exercise self-control
as long as God asks us to.
Godliness is the ability to do what is right
even when there are no external reasons for doing so.
The godly person chooses what is right
not because it gets him what he wants
but because it is the only choice that is consistent with the truth.
Brotherly kindness is the ability to seek to meet the needs of our fellow Christians
even when it conflicts with our personal rights, our possessions, or our ideas and beliefs.
And when all of those qualities are active in our lives,
then, and only then will our actions toward those around us reflect true love.
And then Peter ends this passage
with one more amazing statement,
a statement in which he reveals to us the relationship
between who we are
and what we do.
It comes in the form of a promise.
2PE 1:8 For if these qualities are yours and are
increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That’s his way of telling us
that true productivity in our Christian lives is never a goal we pursue,
it is simply a byproduct of our becoming more conformed to the image of Christ.
As we focus on who we are,
He takes full responsibility for what He chooses to do through us.