11-4-07 Lies I Have Believed Pt. 3

For the past several weeks

I have been sharing with you

some of the lies I have believed in my life,

lies about God,

lies about myself and the way life really operates.

And we’re going to take a few more weeks with this topic

before we return to our study of the Gospel of John.

I mentioned last week

that so many of these lies

are so deeply rooted in our thinking

because we all enter this world separated from our Creator,

unable to hear His voice telling us the truth about ourselves,

or about Himself,

or about the way He has designed our lives to work.

And even after we come to Him

it is often a major work of His Spirit within our lives

to bring us to the point where we can recognize some of these lies in our lives.

Once we have accepted something as being true,

even if it isn’t working for us in our life,

we will continue to operate as if it were true

unless our Lord accomplishes a major reworking process within us.

I’ll just offer one simple example to show you what I mean.

I want you to think for a minute about all of the people you know,

and I want you to mentally select the one or two or three

that you honestly believe are the happiest, the most fulfilled in your group of acquaintances.

If you had to choose the ones you think

truly have the best quality of life on the inside,

the ones who are most at peace with themselves,

the ones who truly seem to enjoy the gift of life the most,

who would they be?

Do you have them?

OK, now I want you to think about that same group of people -

all the people you know personally,

or at least know of personally,

and I want you to mentally line them up in your mind

on the basis of their income - how much money they have.

Now, take the few at the top of that list.

Are they the same people who were at the top of the other list?

Are the ones who have the most money

the ones who also have the richest, most fulfilled lives?

Or maybe it would be easier to come at this from another direction.

I want you to think of someone you know

that you think has twice the annual income you have.

They make twice as much money each year as you do,

they have twice the toys you have,

their house is worth twice what yours is.

Do you think they are twice as fulfilled in life as you are?

Do you think the intensity of their joy

as they face each new day

is double yours?

And right now some of you are wondering

why I’m asking such stupid questions.

When we put it that way

I think all of us would acknowledge

that there is no direct correlation between our net worth and how happy we are.

And yet...

And yet that belief is deeply imbedded in our culture as a whole.

The more we have, the happier we’ll be.

The richer a person is

the happier they are.

Do you remember a few years ago

when some unknown person

took the $1,000,000.00 winning McDonalds game sticker

and put it in an envelope

and dropped it into a Salvation Army donation bucket?

Someone had just won a million dollars.

And they gave it all away anonymously.

Would you have done that?

I’ll just say that the Lord certainly knew what He was doing

when He chose not to face me with that decision.

But my point here is simply that

even when we are surrounded by clear, obvious logic

telling us that some deeply ingrained belief is a lie,

still we hold onto it until our Lord is able to break its power in our lives.

And during the past two weeks

I’ve shared with you the first two lies I jotted down on that list while on vacation.

The first is the belief that dependance and submission are signs of weakness,

and the second is that there is something I can own,

something that I can possess that will bring me happiness.

The next lie I jotted down will need a little explanation.

It is the belief that God is a resource,

that is, that His primary role in our lives

is to provide us with a means to an end.

Now certainly there is a correct sense in which our Creator

is, indeed, our great and absolute resource in life.

Throughout the Psalms

the writers proclaim this truth over and over again.

PSA 46:1-3 God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; Though its waters roar and foam, Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.

PSA 18:1-3 "I love You, O Lord, my strength." The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies.

PSA 62:1-2 My soul waits in silence for God only; From Him is my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation, My stronghold; I shall not be greatly shaken.

In fact, much of the history of the human race

that we have preserved for us in Scripture

is the history of desperate or helpless people

crying out to their God and finding Him there,

and finding that He cares,

and finding Him more than adequate for their need.

But that is not what I’m talking about with this lie.

What concerns me here

is not whether we cry out to our God when we hurt,

or when we desperately, urgently need answers beyond ourselves.

What concerns me here

is that when we enter this world

our perspective on the true nature of life is so twisted,

so distorted,

that we actually,

honestly believe that our Creator is an optional resource to life,

or that He is simply a means to an end.

We are not unlike a fish

who views water as a helpful resource at certain critical times in the life cycle.

And I’ll tell you right now

that I honestly don’t know

whether or not I can communicate what I’m seeing here

in a way that will be of any value to you personally,

but it’s become such a major part of my own life in recent years

that at least I want to try.

I want to try because,

if your walk with God

follows a similar pattern as my own

I want you to be prepared for what’s coming

and, in the right sort of way, to be comfortable with it, at peace with it.

I didn’t realize it at the time,

but for many years following my entrance into the family of God

I believed that a growing Christian life,

a growing walk with God and growing knowledge of Him

would produce a growing competence and strength and capableness in life.

The more I learned,

the more I knew,

the more I would become a sort of self-reliant tower of strength,

a sort of invincible solid rock in the sea of humanity.

I’m not saying this very well

so let me try this.

I became a Christian in the fall of 1966.

I was 19 years old.

At the time I knew almost nothing about life.

I knew nothing about the true nature of my God,

and almost nothing about those fundamental principles of our existence

that have the power to bring about a deeply fulfilling and productive life.

The truth is

I didn’t know anything about anything that really mattered.

But during the early years of my Christian life

I came in contact with a number of men who,

though I didn’t realize it at the time,

etched into my thinking a lie that it has taken me years to recognize.

Now, in their defense,

let me just say that I never knew any of these men closely,

certainly not well enough to see their soul-life,

and if I would have

I might have gained a very different message.

But what I did see

set me up for a misunderstanding

that has taken me years to unlearn.

I’ll use Pastor Anasdale as an example.

I graduated from high school in 1965.

At the time I graduated the draft was still in place

and I was given the choice of going to college

or going to Viet Nam.

I chose college.

During the last year of my college experience

I came in contact with Pastor Anasdale.

His daughter went to the same school I did,

but I came to know him first of all and most of all by reputation.

He was the pastor and driving force behind a large,

thriving,

very impressive church just outside of Seattle.

He had a commanding, powerful voice,

a massive knowledge of Scripture,

and an obvious teaching gift that drew people literally by the thousands.

And through circumstances I now no longer remember,

he became aware of me

and took a special interest in me,

at one time offering me a staff position in his church.

I didn’t take the position,

but I can remember thinking,

sensing that this man was the perfect expression

of who and what I could one day become

if I continued to grow in my Christian life.

He was invincible -

a sort of all-knowing, all-powerful source of strength and wisdom and life.

He was a mighty rock among men.

And there were a number of others, too,

who reinforced in me this vision of my future, my life goal.

There was John Braun,

and Hal Lindsey,

and several other men who were teaching for Campus Crusade For Christ at the time.

And there was Pastor Wendt,

and several other pastors who seemed to be carved out of the same mold as Pastor Anasdale.

They all knew so much,

and they all seemed to be so strong,

so absolutely competent and secure in life.

And through them I just assumed that if I accumulated enough knowledge,

and enough experience,

I, too, would become an invincible tower of strength in the sea of humanity.

And right here is the tricky part -

the root of the lie.

I assumed that God was the ultimate resource,

the great supplier of the truth, the knowledge

that would one day make me strong, and mighty, and capable and rock-like in life.

But I assumed that the strength,

the security, the competence in life

would come from the accumulated body of knowledge and experience that I would gain.

And I assumed that this was the goal -

use what God supplies

to become strong, secure, capable.

And here again I’m not saying this the way I want to.

What I really assumed

on the basis of the role models I’d chosen

is that the goal in life is to trust God as the ultimate resource,

the resource through whom I can then move into a life of inner strength and independence.

And here’s the crucial thing -

though I never said it to myself in these words,

I assumed that my relationship with God

would be very much like a child’s relationship with his parents.

The older a child gets,

and the more he learns and grows,

the less he needs his parents

until he finally reaches the point where he doesn’t need them at all.

And I think I assumed that our walk with Christ

would follow very much the same pattern.

The more we listen to Him,

and learn from Him,

and grow in His ways

the less we will need HIM.

The more God-like we become in our own lives,

the less dependant we will become on God Himself.

God is the great resource that can lead us into strength

and the stronger we are

the less dependent we will become on the great resource.

But the problem I’ve run into

is that what I expected,

and what I believed would and should happen

is exactly opposite from what I’ve actually experienced.

Rather than needing Him less

I have found that I’m needing Him more and more and more.

And rather than my accumulating a greater and greater wealth of knowledge

that then makes me less and less dependant upon Him,

I actually seem to be going the other direction.

I think probably I peaked out on the knowledge thing

sometime during my early 40's.

It might even have been a little earlier.

There was a time when I really felt as though

I had most of the most important “right” answers -

I had pretty well figured out life.

Certainly I had done it under the direct leadership of Scripture -

the answers I possessed weren’t my ideas, they were God’s -

but they all fit together so nicely.

It was easy to write talks during that time of my life

because the vast body of truth I possessed

just all worked together so nicely

and one truth lead to another and another and another.

And I’m not saying that those things I knew were wrong.

I still believe most of them today.

But something huge and utterly unexpected began to happen during those years,

something that gradually utterly destroyed my nice, neat, packaged life.

Maybe I could say it best

by saying that God began to teach me how to love,

and what it meant to care deeply about the people He brought into my life.

And nothing messes up our lives

like caring about people

because so often what they need are not “answers”,

so often what they need is just to be loved.

But loving is frequently a messy,

confusing,

pain-filled business.

And once that process really began to take root in my life

two huge things began to happen.

First of all, I began to know less and less.

I had far fewer answers

because so often the answers I had

simply didn’t bring the results I wanted -

they didn’t heal,

they didn’t comfort,

they didn’t restore the soul,

they didn’t touch and sooth and fix what was broken inside.

Answers didn’t dry the tears,

or calm the fears,

or give hope.

They helped, certainly.

But they became only a part of the whole,

and a rather small part at that.

Interesting, isn’t it,

that when our Lord gave us His one new commandment

He didn’t say,

“A new commandment I give to you, that you teach one another; even as I have taught you that you also teach one another.”

There are some comments that Paul made to the church at Corinth that I want to share with you

because it says well much of what it took me so long to understand.

Paul was talking about the accumulation of wisdom and knowledge

and where it fits into our walk with the King.

It’s a rather long passage,

but I want us to read it

because I especially want us to see

where Paul ends up in his comments.

1CO 1:19-2:5 For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside." Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified...

The truth is that there is only one thing we have to offer the world around us.

It’s the same thing our God offered us - Himself.

Not His system,

not His answers,

just Himself.

Which brings me to the second huge thing

that began happening in my life-

rather than my needing my God less and less,

I found myself needing Him more and more and more.

Rather than His being simply my great resource,

I found within myself a growing desperate dependance upon Him

until He became the air I breathe.

Every day of my life now

I begin with an intense awareness

of my desperate dependance upon my God.

Either He is real,

and I am His,

and He is adequate for me and for those I love this day

or there is no hope.

And, to be honest, from a logical point of view it makes perfect sense.

I started my life as a created being

who was desperately trying to live a life independent from my Creator.

But if I’m really moving more and more toward the truth

doesn’t it seem reasonable

that I would find myself moving into a growing awareness

that not only can I not live independent from Him,

but in reality, as Paul said,

ACT 17:28 ... in Him we live and move and exist...