Sunday, May 8, 2016

The One Truth That Enables You to Withstand Anything

Have you ever heard the phrase life verse?    It means that every person can have one verse from the Bible that most deeply connects with their life and personality.   For example, what do you think the life verse of Rick Warren is; the guy behind the bestseller, Purpose Driven Life?     It’s the first part of Acts 13:36.     “For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his generation, died.”    That makes sense doesn’t it?

Years ago I realized I had picked up a life verse too.  We’re going to read it in a few minutes.   “God works all things together for good for those who love God and who are called according to his purpose.”  Lots of people love this verse.   On one of the big Bible web sites, its No. 8 on the top ten verses searched this year.   Do you know what No. 1 was?  It’s similar.  It comes from Jeremiah.   “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, to give you hope and a future.”

Now I like that verse too, but do these verses make any sense?  It’s nice to think that God is working everything together in your life for good, but how can God do that, really do that?     And if God has plans for you, where do you fit in?  Do you have any choice about it at all?   It’s like that quote from the writer Isaac Singer.  “You must believe in free will; there is no choice.”   How is it possible for God, to both have plans for our lives, and still give us the freedom to choose, even choose wrongly?  

Well, not only can God do this.  God does do it.  In many of your lives, God is doing it right now.   And when you see that, truly see that, that there is nothing, not even your worst choices, that will defeat God’s love working in you and around you; that will give you a freedom, a confidence that nothing can shake.     But how does God do that?  In these verses God points the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.


In these words, God is telling you the one, essential truth that when you get it gives you a freedom and security that can literally withstand anything.   And what is that truth?  Nothing that you do or the world does to you can ever, ever take away God’s love for you.   And even in even the worst things life throws at you, that love will ultimately work them for good for you and for the world.  What does that look like?   Maybe this story a friend told me over lunch will help. 

Once upon a time, a king had a servant, who helped him whenever he went on a hunt.   The servant strung all his bows, sharpened all his knives, pretty much made sure the king had everything he needed.    But one day, when the king pulled his bow back, the string snapped, and it cut off the king’s thumb.   Furious, the king threw the servant deep into the dungeons.  He promised.  He would keep him there until he died.    Later that year, the king went on a hunt in a new land.   And in this land, cannibals captured them.   Now the cannibals ate everyone except the king.  Him they let go.  Why?  They believed eating a man without a thumb was bad luck.   So when he got home, the king immediately released the servant and said to him.   “I’ve gotta thank you.  If the bow you strung had not cut off my thumb, they would have eaten me.”   Now what did the servant say?  He said.  “No, I must thank you.  If you hadn’t put me in the dungeon, I would have been on the hunt, and they would have eaten me.”

It’s a clever story, huh?  But doesn’t it still beg the question?   If God does this, how does God do it?    More importantly, how does God do it, yet still give us complete freedom to choose?   How can God be orchestrating everything to move towards good in our lives, and at the same time, be giving us complete freedom to choose what we do?  How can that be possible?

We wonder that because we have a false assumption that things in the world have to be either/or.   It’s either God plans our lives and guides our future and we have no choice.   Or we can freely choose, and God has no real control over the future at all.   But in reality, the world doesn’t work like this at all.   The world isn’t either/or.   It’s both/and

Hundreds of years ago, Isaac Newton, came up with these rules for how matter works.  And up until recently, we assumed everything in the universe operated by those rules.   They had to. Otherwise nothing would make sense. But then we figured out how to see matter at the tiniest level ever.  And guess what.  At that level, Newton’s rules didn’t work at all.   Were Newton’s rules wrong?  No.   They still worked perfectly everywhere but at this super small scale.  Scientists realized, it couldn’t be either/or.  It had to be both/and.

Let’s take this table.  As we see it, this table follows Newton’s rules.  Yet this same table at the smallest level is operating by completely different rules.  Both rules are working at the same time on this same table.  How can that be?   It’s the way it is.  We live in a both/and world.

And just because we can’t figure out how we can both freely choose yet at the same time have a God who orders the direction of our lives doesn’t mean it can’t be.  It just means how God does it is way above our pay grade.    And whether we believe it or not, we live our lives as if this both/and reality is actually true. 

For example, if you believed that God was determining the plan of your life, and you had no choice in the matter, why would you do anything at all?   Wouldn’t you simply just sit around and do nothing?  But that would be ridiculous.  But on the other hand, if you believed, really believed that your choices determined the future completely, it would paralyze you.  

Ray Bradbury wrote a story called A Sound of Thunder. It’s about an illegal time machine that took you back to the time of the dinosaurs.  But when anyone paid the hefty price to ride in it, those who ran it had one rule.   They had this metal anti-gravity path that hovered six inches above the ground.   And you could not step off the path for any reason at all.   Now when the leader named Travis explained the rule, one of the passengers named Eckels, asked why. 

And Travis said…. "All right,say we accidentally kill one mouse here. That means all the future families of this one particular mouse are destroyed, right?"

"Right"

"And all the families of the families of the families of that one mouse! With a stamp of your foot, you annihilate first one, then a dozen, then a thousand, a million, a billion possible mice!"

"So they're dead," said Eckels. "So what?"

"So what?" Travis snorted quietly. "Well, what about the foxes that'll need those mice to survive? For want of ten mice, a fox dies. For want of ten foxes a lion starves. For want of a lion, all manner of insects, vultures, infinite billions of life forms are thrown into chaos and destruction. Eventually it all boils down to this: fifty-nine million years later, a caveman, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting wild boar or saber-toothed tiger for food. But you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So the caveman starves. …And from his loins would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization. Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race, a people, an entire history of life….. With the death of that one caveman, a billion others yet unborn are throttled in the womb. Perhaps Rome never rises on its seven hills….. Step on a mouse and you crush the Pyramids…. Queen Elizabeth might never be born, Washington might not cross the Delaware, there might never be a United States at all. So be careful. Stay on the path. Never step off!"

Now what happens?  Eckels steps off the path, and accidentally kills a butterfly.  And when they return everything has changed.   And Travis, the leader, shoots Eckels dead.   What Bradbury was saying is right.   Everything is connected.  Our decisions, even our most minor ones, affect countless other things, in ways we will likely know.   No way do we have enough knowledge or insight to evaluate the choices we make in light of that reality.   And if you tried too, you would be terrified to even get out of bed in the morning. 

But you don’t have to be terrified, because, if you are resting in God’s love, then God is working with your choices in ways that you could not foresee or even imagine.   Most of the time, you won’t see that, but every now and then you get a glimpse.  I got such a glimpse a few years ago when a man named Harold Phares died.   

You see, forty years or so ago, a young teenager named Greg Jordan started attending youth group here.  Why?   He heard we had the prettiest girls.  But once he came, God’s love grabbed hold of him.  The pastor, Roy Connor, began mentoring him.  He talked to him about going to seminary, about becoming a pastor.   And Greg Jordan did go to seminary, but he didn’t become a pastor.  Instead, he got his Ph.D and he became an Old Testament professor at King College in Bristol, TN.    And soon after he arrived, I attend that college. And he taught me, and become one of the folks who influenced me to go to seminary, where I did become a pastor.    

I learned all that because when Harold Phares died, I met his son-in-law, John Connor, Roy’s son.   John lived in Bristol, TN, and his wife, Harold’s daughter, whom he met here, worked at the college.   So I mentioned my connection to Greg Jordan, and John told me the whole story.     So because First Presbyterian had cute girls in their youth group, Greg Jordan came to know the gospel, and twenty years later, he mentored the student who became the pastor at that very church that nurtured him; quite a coincidence, one that reminds me that a coincidence is just God’s way of remaining anonymous.   And if I had a few minutes more, I could tell you more glimpses I’ve seen.    

But these glimpses don’t even touch a millionth of all that God is doing in your life and mine, working through our choices, in ways we could not begin to comprehend.   You can know, no matter what happens, God is working in your life for good.  Why?  Because God loves you, and nothing can ever change that. 

But that won’t really impact your life, unless you make it personal.  Lots of people go through life saying God loves them.  But it isn’t changing their lives.  It’s all too abstract.  It’s not real.  It’s not personal.   And, until it is, knowing it doesn’t change anything.   You have to apply it to you.

Do you have a relationship with God, a real, living, breathing relationship?  To understand what this means, think of a relationship with God like walking through a door.    As you walk up to the door, you see these words above it from Matthew 10.   Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.    In other words, as you approach a relationship with God, it doesn’t just happen.  You’ve got to make a decision.   You have a choice to make.    But if you make that choice, if you walk through that door, then the moment you do, you look back and over the top of that door you see written this from John 15.  You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.  Everyone who has walked through that door has discovered that reality.  They know that their connection with God doesn’t have anything to do with them being more spiritual or accomplished.   It has everything to do with a God who relentlessly pursued them even though at the time they couldn’t see it.   As Paul puts it elsewhere, For by grace you have been saved, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.   What makes me a Christian is not that I came to God, but God came to me.   And that means, God loves me period, not for anything I will do or not do, but simply because I am.   The preacher Bill Coffin put it well:  God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value.  It is not because you have value that you are loved.  It’s because you are loved that you have value.  It is a gift. It’s not an achievement.  It doesn’t depend on you, but only on God’s unshakable love for you.  


And if you ever doubt how unshakable that love is, look at Jesus.   When Jesus prayed in the garden before his death, he faced the reality that all evil was preparing to come down on him: that he would experience infinite suffering.  And right then Jesus could have punted.  He could have walked away.   He could have walked away from us.  All hell was tempting him to do just that.   But he didn’t.   He went to that cross, and he stayed.   He held on to us when all hell was trying to get him to let us go.    Do you really think if he did that, that if you have a bad week, or even a bad year, he is going to walk away from you?  Are you serious?  That’s how you know. No matter what bad stuff is happening inside of you or bad things happening around you, you can know.  Jesus has not abandoned you.  Because if he didn’t abandon you on that cross, then nothing in all of creation will cause him to let you go.   And that love that will not let you go, it will work.  It will work in even the hardest things in your life for good.  And this is the love you have been looking for all your life.   This is the love that enables you to withstand anything.   And all you need to do is say yes to it.   Have you?  

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