04-26-09 Hard Times - High Calling Pt. 2

Peter knew that many of those who would read his letter

would, at times, face very difficult circumstances.

He knew their faith in their Lord would be tested,

he knew they would be distressed by various trials.

In fact, that’s why he wrote the letter -

in order to prepare us for those hard times.

He wanted to be sure we had the knowledge,

the attitudes,

and the tools necessary

to cope with life

when life isn’t going the way we want it to go.

For the past several months

we’ve heard Peter giving us the knowledge and the attitudes we need.

He began with knowledge about our God

and especially about how our God feels about us and how He relates to us.

We learned that He chose each of us for Himself

because of the high value He places on us.

We learned about the way He works in our lives

to protect and guard us,

and about His commitment

to rebuild our lives through the sanctifying work of His Spirit within us.

Mostly what we learned

is that our God’s love for us and commitment to us has no limits and no end.

From there we then learned a little bit

about the way our God uses the hard things in our lives

to build and strengthen our faith in Him.

Then Peter offered us some of the attitudes we need

for facing this life we are called to live each new day.

1PE 1:13...gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And then, most recently,

we’ve entered the section in his letter

in which He begins giving us the tools we need,

the practical choices we can make

to help us live an offensive life

even at those times when we find ourselves under attack.

We heard him tell us that our moral choices during hard times

matter more than at any other time in our lives.

He knows how vulnerable we are

to slipping back into those old, destructive hiding places,

to those former lusts which were yours in your ignorance.

And basically he’s telling us

that the last thing we want to do is to shoot ourselves in the foot.

We’re at war

and whatever wounds we inflict

should be inflicted not on ourselves

but on the enemies of our souls.

And every act of immorality

is simply inflicting wounds on ourselves,

making our own life more difficult to live.

Which brings us, then,

to Peter’s next key weapon in our arsenal,

the one that has the power to do more to help us through hard times

than perhaps any other thing we could ever do.

And I think you may find it surprising

when I share with you what it is.

At 7:30 one morning a few weeks ago my phone rang.

Phone calls at 7:30 are almost never good calls.

It means that someone somewhere had been waiting,

trying to figure out the earliest reasonable time they could call

and finally decided 7:30 was acceptable,

which also means it’s more than just a social, “How’s it going?” type of call.

When I picked up the phone

I heard the voice of a man I’ve only met a couple of times in person,

but a man with whom I’ve developed a good friendship by phone over the past decade.

Every month or two he calls

and invites me into his life.

This past week as soon as I picked up the phone

he said, “Would you please be praying for my son today.”

As we talked

it was evident that his son, now in his late teens or early 20's,

was having a very difficult time.

And I did pray.

I prayed because I cared about this man and about his son,

and I prayed because I have intense memories of a year

when my daughter was in her late teens,

a time when she, too, was going through an extremely hard time,

and I knew what my friend was going through.

I knew the feeling of helplessness,

and the desperate need for a very real God

who could do some very real things that I was powerless to do myself.

OK, I mention this phone call

because it helps me to explain why Peter says what he says

in the context of this letter.

Remember that what Peter wants to do

is to give us the tools,

the anchors,

the solid places we can build into our lives

that will equip us to cope with the worst that life on this planet will bring.

As we’ve seen, he’s talked with us at length about knowing correctly

who our God is and how He really feels about us.

And he’s talked with us

about the strength and security

that can only come from having built a strong moral foundation into our lives.

And then, in the last few verses of this first chapter

and the opening verses of the second chapter

he gives us two more huge gifts -

two more absolutely essential weapons in our warfare.

The first one is found in 1^st Peter 1:22-23 where Peter says,

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, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God.

OK, there is a lot going on in these two verses

and I want us to stay with the passage

long enough to see clearly what Peter is saying to us.

If we just step back from it

the central message he’s giving us

is that one of the things we are going to need during hard times

is a foundation of strong, healthy love relationships.

We are going to need people we love,

and people who love us.

That’s what was going on with that phone call I mentioned a few minutes ago.

This man was hurting

and what he needed in that pain

was the freedom to pick up the phone

and invite a fellow Christian into that pain

knowing that the person he was talking with understood and cared deeply.

Do you know what gets us through this life more than anything else,

more than everything else put together apart from the constant presence of our Lord with us?

It’s not those answers we got from the latest seminar.

It’s not our systematic theology,

or some recent intense spiritual experience,

or one more book with all the answers neatly divided up by chapters.

It’s not even a courageous recommitment to our Christian value system.

What gets us through more than anything else

is someone standing next to us who knows us,

and who knows what’s going on,

and who is absolutely committed to loving us and walking with us through whatever is coming.

I was in a conversation with a friend recently

who was fighting some hard battles in his life,

battles that, up to that point, he’d kept all to himself.

But then he decided to let me know what was going on,

and in the process

he found a freedom unlike anything he’d ever known before,

not so much because I had a whole bunch of great answers for him,

but mostly because first of all he no longer felt alone in his struggles,

and second because I was able to do something for him that he could never do for himself-

I was able to reflect for him the mind and heart of his God

and what he saw in that reflection was very different from what he’d expected.

Funny how that is -

we can tell others the truth about our Lord

but rarely can we tell ourselves.

And during the hard times -

whether they are hard times brought on by the circumstances around us,

or by the actions of others against us,

or by confusion or bondage or turmoil within us,

what we often need so desperately is to be shown the truth

or reminded of the truth.

We need to see things -

we need to see our God

and to see ourselves correctly.

We need to know that no matter what we may be feeling,

or what may be going on around us

our God is absolutely for us, with us, bathing us in His grace and kindness and compassion.

Which is one of the huge reasons why

we so desperately need strong love relationships with at least a few other Christians

during the hard times.

We need those relationships

because they can often tell us those truths that we cannot tell ourselves,

not so much with their words, but with their attitudes toward us.

I do love Peter’s wording in this sentence.

There is nothing casual or passive about the kind of love relationships he’s calling us to.

He calls us to fervently love one another from the heart.

He’s talking about our building a few relationships

that go way beyond the superficial,

a few relationships in which we allow the other person to go beyond our facade.

It’s risky business,

and sometimes we will get hurt

but it’s worth the risk.

In that conversation with that friend I mentioned a few minutes ago

he told me later that he’d been so worried about what I’d think of him

if he chose to let me past his facade

and let me know about the turmoil in his life.

But when we’re hurting

the only ones who have the power

to tell us the truth about God’s love and kindness and grace

are the ones that we have allowed to see us honestly.

If all we’ve allowed them to see is our facade

their words will have no power to heal or to give strength or freedom

because inside we’ll be saying,

“Ya, but if they knew the REAL me they wouldn’t be saying these things.”

But let me back up a bit

and help us look more closely at Peter’s comments to us.

OK, he begins by saying, 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...

And what he says right there

give us remarkable insight

into the nature of true love relationships.

He begins with a closed-circuit comment just to the people of God.

He tells us that something huge,

something truly redemptive took place within us when we came to Christ.

He’s talking to all Christians

and he tells us that our union with Christ has purified our souls for a sincere love of the brethren.

Now, what’s he talking about?

Well, obviously he is telling us

that our submission to Christ

and His presence in our life right now

has equipped us to love

in a way and at a level that was simply not possible before our union with Christ.

And here’s why.

Because we all enter this world

with spirits separated from our God,

blinded to His love for us,

we have no way of knowing who we are

or whether we have true significance and value

apart from the feedback we get from those around us.

From the day we’re born

we are absolutely focused on our father and our mother,

looking at every verbal and nonverbal message they give us

asking them to validate us in some way, to confirm to us

that we matter, that we have value.

If they love us,

and if they are able to communicate that love to us

in a way that is not tied to our behavior or our performance

it helps to quiet the fears and the doubts we have inside us about our own value.

The problem, of course,

is that even in the best parenting situations

“love” becomes all bound up with performance.

Dad and Mom seem to love us a whole lot more

if we get A’s than if we get C’s or D’s or F’s on our report card.

And all too often

parents clearly favor one child over another

or openly reject their offspring because they’re the wrong sex,

or the wrong temperament,

or simply because they didn’t want one more child.

And the second and even bigger problem

is that, apart from God in our life,

the only source we have for proving to ourselves that we have value

is the response of other people

who are turning to us looking for love from us in a way that proves to them that they have value.

We’re using them to prove that we have value

and they’re using us to prove that they have value.

And left to ourselves

love becomes our greatest emotional bartering commodity in life.

A parent loves their child

because the child’s love for them

proves to them that they have value, purpose.

But let that child turn on them, or fall short of their expectations

and see what happens to the love.

And as we get into our adult years

we all understand

that most of what we call “love”

is simply something we give to others

in exchange for what they will then hopefully give us in return.

We tell ourselves that we marry the person we love,

but that isn’t exactly true.

What we really do

is to marry the person

that we think will meet our love needs.

And left to ourselves

our ability to love

is limited to those who can give us equal or greater return on our love investment.

As long as I’m getting from you

the actions and feedback and validation and love

that I need in order to feel good about myself, everything is fine.

But if I don’t get from you what I need,

my natural instinct is to withdraw my love from you

and find some other place to invest it where I can get the return I want.

In other words, apart from our God

we give love to get love in return

with the hope that what we get

will somehow prove to us that we have value

and quiet all those doubts and fears we have about ourselves.

So then what is this purifying process Peter is talking about

when he tells us that we have purified our souls for a sincere love of the brethren?

Well, the root of this whole love problem within us

is that we are asking the people around us to do the impossible.

We are asking them to validate us

in a way that will prove to us that we matter.

But no human being

can ever do that for another human being.

The only one who can do that

is the One who created us,

the One who knows us perfectly, totally,

the One who takes us just exactly the way we are,

requiring nothing from us in order to somehow justify His love for us,

the One who simply, clearly, unconditionally invites us into an eternal love union with Himself.

You see, only God can love us in a way

that frees us from our desperate dependance upon receiving validation and affirmation from those around us.

Only our personal encounter with the love of God for us

can free us to begin loving others

no matter how they may respond to us in return

because once we know who we are in His eyes,

we are no longer nearly as dependent upon what others may think.

If they reject us it will still hurt, of course,

but it will not destroy us

because our God has already told us the truth about who we are.

This, of course, is why Satan invests so much effort

into creating and sustaining our religious systems,

because nothing has more power to blind us to the discovery of God’s love for us,

and therefore strip us of our ability to love others

than does religion.

Religion always ties God’s love for us

to our performance for Him as measured by the religious system.

Religion constantly reinforces the belief

that God loves those who do what He wants,

and He doesn’t love those who fall short.

But that kind of love has no power to heal the human spirit.

Being loved for what we do

is not what brings us peace with ourselves.

Only when we discover

that our God loves us simply for who we are

can the healing begin.

Well, Peter wants us to know

that our personal encounter with God’s love for us

when we accepted His offer to pay our debt for our sins through His own death

accomplished a cleansing process within our souls.

Because we heard the voice of our God telling us

that He really does love us,

not because of anything,

but simply because He loves us,

for the first time we are equipped to start reaching out in love to others

without requiring them to love us in return.

But Peter also knows

that loving another person never ever just happens.

It requires our choosing to do so.

Which is why he goes on to say,

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...

Since you can love,

do love.

It is what we’re here for, you know -

to love our God

and then to love those He places around us.

JOH 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

There it is again -

our Lord saying, “Because you have experienced my love, I now ask you to reach out in love to others.”

And how about those who don’t?

Our religious world is filled

with very fervent,

very committed,

very devoted folks who keep the rules ever so well,

and yet just don’t seem capable of loving the people around them.

How can that be?

Well, on the basis of what our Lord is saying to us here,

the most obvious cause

is that they may know a great deal about their chosen religious system,

but they have never really entered into the personal discovery of God’s love for them.

And what would prevent that?

The most common cause is that they have never allowed the Spirit of God

to show them their own moral failures.

Funny how it is -

the first step into the discovery of God’s love for us

is our allowing His Spirit to show us honestly

where and how we have fallen short of what He asked of us.

Only when we have allowed the Spirit of God

to show us the wounds we have inflicted on others

through our immorality,

or our arrogance,

or our pride,

or our judgmental spirit,

only when we have grieved over our own sin

can we hear the love in our Creator’s voice

when He calls us to Himself,

and forgives all our sin,

and calls us His child.

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind but now I see.

And then just two final comments before we close.

The first concerns a special work of the Spirit of God in the Christian,

a work in which, in certain circumstances,

He sovereignly gives us the ability to love someone who by all human standards

is completely unlovable.

God simply fills us with a supernatural love for the other person.

It’s part of what He does through us at times,

but I mention it here

because that sovereign work of God

should not be confused with what Peter is calling us to here.

What Peter is calling us to

is very much of a choice,

and should not be confused with that sovereign work of God loving through us.

Certainly both types of love should be a part of our life,

but by far the more difficult one

is the one Peter is calling us to in this passage.

And then, finally,

let me make just a brief comment about where I would suggest you start.

Start close to home,

and start where you feel reasonably safe.

Learning to love is never without risks,

and at first it will drive us out of our comfort zone

because it will require us to choose acts of kindness,

and to speak words of affirmation,

and to risk allowing the other person into our lives past our facade.

But nothing in all of human experience

can compare with the rewards,

and nothing can give us support in the hard times of life

and joy in the good times

like having those near us with whom we have built true love relationships.