08-11-13 THAT I MAY KNOW HIM Pt. 6

More than a month ago

we began a study of a single phrase

in the 3^rd chapter of Philippians.

In Phil. 3:10 Paul tells us

that he has gladly exchanged

everything else he might have gained in life in order...

that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

And it has been that first phrase,

“that I may know Him...”

that has held our attention

during these past weeks.

We started out by recognizing that

one of the reasons Paul makes that statement

is because it is only through the knowledge of Christ

that any human being can gain

a correct,

accurate,

healthy knowledge of himself or herself.

Apart from Christ

the only reference points we have

for attempting to figure out who we are

and why or if we have value

are the people around us.

We look to them

to try and understand ourselves.

This approach has two major flaws to it.

First of all,

they don’t know who we are.

They have no knowledge of our unique,

special design,

and certainly no knowledge of our spirit or our soul.

At best they tend to believe

that we must be

pretty much like they are.

And second,

not only do they not know who we are,

but, in most situations, they don’t really care who we are

because they, like us, are frantically trying to figure out their own life

by looking at us.

I’ll give you just one example

to help illustrate what I’m trying to say here.

I have recognized for many years now

that we human beings

seem to divide up into two distinctly different groups -

there are the talkers

and the non-talkers.

Maybe it would be better

to say the verbal and the nonverbal.

Obviously these are not scientific terms,

but I’ll give you a little description of the two groups

and maybe you can better identify

which group you’re in.

The talkers or the verbal people

use speech as their primary tool

for emotional contact with their world.

They can and do articulate their feelings

and their thoughts quickly and easily.

But its more than just that.

They refill their emotional tanks

through verbal communication.

The greatest terror of the talker

is silence.

Three minutes of absolute silence

is a terrifying experience for them.

One minute of silence is terrifying.

If a talker is with another person

and a silence of more than a few seconds occurs

the talker will find something to say -

anything!

They’ll talk about the pattern of the carpet,

or the height of the tree in the front yard,

or the population of Anchorage,

and they urgently want

verbal response back

from the people around them.

And here is the important thing to remember about the talkers -

when they talk

they are not really talking

about whatever they’re talking about.

When the talkers talk

they are really asking two urgent questions:

1. Are you there for me?

2. Do you care about me?

In other words,

they are using a flood of verbal communication

to continually validate and reassure themselves.

And it is through that verbal communication

that they refuel their emotional tanks.

That, of course, is why silence is such a terrifying thing for the talker -

silence while in the presence of another person

gives the talker the message:

“I don’t matter,

I’m being emotionally abandoned,

I’m not loved or accepted.”

Then there is the other half of the world -

the nontalkers.

Whereas the talkers are refueled through talking with others,

the nontalkers are drained and exhausted by it.

For the nontalker,

not only is silence not an enemy,

it is actually a friend.

Silence is like a warm, cozy, soft blanket

into which a person can snuggle.

Silence is safe,

silence is friendly,

no risk to it,

no obligations to fulfill,

and no pitfalls for potential failure.

The nontalkers are drained by social contact,

and they must have blocks of isolation

built into their lives on a regular basis

or they quickly become emotionally exhausted.

One of the best ways to communicate love to a nontalker

is to be with them

without requiring them to talk.

Nontalkers stand in awe of the talker’s ability to think of so many things to say.

And, when nontalkers are with talkers,

they tend to view themselves

as rather dull,

uninteresting people by contrast,

sort of like God forgot

to equip them with a personality gene.

I brought all of this up

just to illustrate the massive problems

we face in attempting to understand ourselves

by looking to those around us

for validation.

I personally think

it is almost impossible

for the talker and nontalker groups

to understand one another.

Talkers will always believe

that nontalkers really could plunge into the exciting world of verbal communication

if only they would try a little harder.

They look at it as a growth issue,

a will issue,

a try-a-little-harder-and-you-can-do-this-too issue.

I was in a conversation a while back

with a talker

discussing a nontalker we both knew

and the talker made this statement:

“Well, of course that’s where they are right now,

and I can accept that,

but they need to have the courage to grow and overcome those fears.”

I responded by saying,

“NO! That’s not WHERE they are,

that’s WHO they are by God’s design.

It isn’t a flaw,

it is a beautiful part of God’s careful

craftsmanship of them

as a special and unique creative work of His.”

But the talker just couldn’t see it,

and certainly couldn’t accept it.

And apart from the work of God in their lives,

nontalkers are no better.

They will have just as much difficulty

accepting the talkers in their world.

They will have a strong tendency to look at the talkers around them

as compulsive noise machines

running in terror from the great Silence Dragon pursuing them.

The nontalkers cling to a secret hope

that the talkers in their lives will eventually run out of words

or find a few seconds of inner harmony with themselves

so that the endless flood of words will cease

and the world can finally know

just a few moments of peace.

(And the most amazing thing

is that the two groups

tend to marry one another...)

Now, those are obviously

exaggerated presentations

of the two groups,

but my point here is that

it’s no wonder we have such a terrible time

attempting to figure out who we are

by looking to those around us

because those around us

will tend to view us

as defective reproductions of themselves.

“If only you were a little bit more like me...”

It is only through the knowledge of Christ

that we can begin to gain an accurate knowledge of ourselves,

and of those around us.

And then through what we have studied so far

we have seen 3 major barriers

to a correct knowledge of ourselves,

three barriers

that Christ seeks to remove

in the lives of those who come to Him.

First of all He seeks to correct

our preconceived ideas about who we are.

We have spent our lives

staring into cracked and distorted mirrors,

trying to figure out who we are.

Our Lord seeks to tell us the truth,

about our eternal value to Him,

about our dignity

and our significance as His child.

The words sound strange

when we first hear them,

they sound like the are being spoken

to or about someone else.

We have heard so many other voices

giving us very different messages

and at first the truth is hard to hear.

This is getting a little off track,

but I just want to state

one of the most basic principles of life -

for the child of God the truth is always our friend.

There are times when the truth

appears to be terrifying -

something to run from,

to avoid at all costs.

That’s especially true

when it comes to the truth

about the wrong choices we’ve made

or lies we’ve believed

about who we are

or what we think we need

in order to be happy.

But for the child of God

the truth is always our friend.

It is the key to freedom

and the rock-solid foundation for hope.

Of course our Lord said it so much better:

John 8:32 and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. "

Some of you here this morning

are afraid to believe that.

There is some area of truth in your own life

that God has been nudging you towards

for some considerable time.

It may be some aspect of truth about your past,

or about some painful part of your life right now.

And from where you are this moment

the thought of facing that truth

strikes terror in your heart.

I can’t make that process any easier for you,

and I certainly can’t go through it for you,

but I can tell you with absolute certainty -

that truth is not the doorway to death,

it is the doorway to freedom.

You see, for the child of God

the truth is always our friend.

And our Lord not only tells us the truth about who we are,

He also tells us the truth about who he designed us to be.

He doesn’t carve out

a universal religious mold

and try to cram everyone of us inside it.

He skillfully creates for each of us

a place,

and a work,

and a set of gifts and abilities within us

that match His unique design for each of us.

Paul says it so well in Ephesians 2:10.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

I hope you can hear what’s being said there.

Before you ever came to Christ,

before you even entered this world

God was thinking about you,

carefully designing you for Himself,

and then designing a place and a calling

for you as His child.

It’s a little easier for me to teach that now.

There were many years when it was not.

Have you ever gone to the Home Show?

If so, you know how it is.

The sports arena is packed full of all these booths,

and each booth has someone in it

who’s all excited about their THING.

One person is all excited about this new heating system,

and another about a new foundation system,

and another about a unique septic system.

Well, for a number of years I felt like I was destined to live my life at the Christian Show.

I kept visiting all these different booths -

I went to the Presbyterian booth

and the Covenant booth,

and the Baptist booth,

and the Charismatic booth

and the Free Methodist booth

and the foreign missions booth,

and a bunch of others as well.

I tried so hard to make some of them work.

But they didn’t fit -

they didn’t fit me,

they didn’t fit who I was inside.

But in His perfect time,

in His perfect way,

He brought me

to the good works, which God prepared beforehand, that I should walk in them.

And what I discovered in the process

was that what my God had for me

didn’t suck the life out of me,

or leave me forever feeling like an utter failure,

driving me to try to be and do what I was never equipped to do.

In fact, what it did was to feed my spirit,

and flood me with gratitude to my God

for the life He’s chosen to live through me.

Mat 11:28 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

Mat 11:29 "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Mat 11:30 "For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

And He actively seeks to fulfill that same pattern

in every one of those who come to Him.

He alone knows who you are

because He’s the one who designed you.

And He alone knows the place He has for you

and the path that will take you from where you are

to where He wants you to be.

And then last week

we talked about the third step

in our Lord’s process of introducing us to ourselves.

We talked about the way He helps us

to face honestly the areas of evil within us.

And just to sum up what we did last week,

Paul’s teaching in Romans 7

is given to us to free us from the fear and self-condemnation

and from the accusations Satan uses

that so often paralyze the child of God.

Paul tells us in Romans 8:29,

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, ...”

In that verse Paul is telling us

that the primary life purpose

for every Christian who has ever lived

has already been predetermined by God.

We are predestined by Him

to enter into a character rebuilding program

that conforms us more and more

to the image of Christ Himself.

And the first step in that program

is allowing our Lord

to introduce us to the areas

that need rebuilding.

Or, in the terms we were using last week,

giving us eyes to see

where our body has been mistrained.

Where are our emotional responses

inconsistent with truth?

Where are my reasoning processes flawed?

Where are my priorities

and my life value systems messed up?

Where does evil dwell in me,

the one who wishes to do good?

And the concept we looked at last week

was given to us by our Lord

to free us from the terror

that so often accompanies

the discovery of that evil within.

Now a study like that

just naturally brings up questions

about how to fix the problem -

how do we go about retraining our bodies

so that the evil within them

does not dominate our lives.

Those are great questions,

and my answer to them may seem unsatisfying.

We retrain the body

by allowing our Lord

to lead us one step at a time,

one day at a time,

one issue at a time,

through our own personal growth program with the King for the rest of our lives.

Peter describes that process

in II Peter 1:5-8:

2 Pet. 1:5 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge,

2 Pet. 1:6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness,

2 Pet. 1:7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.

2 Pet. 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.

Obviously that passage

like many others in Scripture

is calling Christians

to a moral rebuilding process in our lives.

But that process cannot even begin

until we can first look honestly

at our own moral corruption.

As long as I’m content

to paste on my Christian facade once a week

and trot off to church,

or hide myself behind

my little pile of favorite Bible verses,

or keep my attention focused

on what other Christians should do

to improve their Christian life,

in other words,

as long as I am determined

to run and hide from my own growth issues

true, practical righteous living

will never become a reality in our lives.

And the teaching we looked at last week

in Romans 7

was given to us by God for just one purpose -

to free every child of God

to be able to say along with Paul,

Rom. 7:21 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good.

For only when we can honestly admit

the existence of that evil

can our Lord then begin

to break its power in our life

and bring us into the freedom

He longs for us to know.

And we will only dare to allow Him to move us into that discovery process

when we know for certain

that truth is always the friend of the child of God,

a friend who has the power to make us truly free.