What Does a Real Encounter with God look like? It Looks Like This....

Back when I was a kid in the 70s, I saw these bumper stickers and buttons everywhere.   I had them.  Our church had them.  And we weren’t the only ones.  15,000 churches were doing the same thing.  What did the bumper stickers and buttons say?  They had just three words.  I found it with a big exclamation point.    I We put these stickers on our cars, any surface where we thought people could see them.  We wore the buttons hoping someone would ask the question.  What did you find?     

Now it turns out, before this whole campaign finished, over 85% of Americans had seen this slogan.  But I gotta tell you.   I don’t remember anyone ever asking the question of me.   That may have been because I lived in a city known as the buckle of the Bible Belt.   In that town, you either had already found it or if you hadn’t, you certainly didn’t admit it.   

And I don’t know how much success the campaign had, how many folks found it so to speak.   It did spawn other bumper stickers to spoof the message, like “I lost it” or “I wasn’teven looking for it.”  So why am I talking about a campaign that ended 40 years ago?  Because, no matter how successful or unsuccessful, it was, that slogan pointed to a crucial truth.  People are looking to find it.    They do want a real encounter with God, one that will change their lives forever.   

But what does that encounter really look like?  How can you know you’ve actually encountered God; that the creator of reality has reached out to you?   Here, in this story of just such an encounter, God shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say. 

Genesis 32:22-31

What does a profound spiritual encounter with God look like?   Lots of people like to think such an encounter would fill them with peace or serenity, a sort of beautiful warm fuzzy.  But does that happen here?  No.  No warm fuzzies here; just two guys wrestling in the desert.  But here God is telling you.   That’s how it happens.   It happens when you’re alone.  It happens when you’re weak.  Why?  Only then, do you see what you really need, what God alone can give.   

Before God shows up here, what happens first?  Jacob has to be alone.   And Jacob is about as alone as he ever has been.   You see.   Many years before, Jacob had betrayed his brother, Esau.   He had to flee his home in fear that his brother would kill him.  Now, he has become a wealthy man, and wants to come home.  But he has just learned that his brother Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men.   So what does Jacob do?   He tries to bribe him.  He pulls together the best of his herds, and sets them up into three groups to go ahead of him.   And he tells his servants, “Tell Esau that these are gifts from Jacob.”    Then finally, he sends his wife and kids.  He figures.  If the goats and camels don’t save him, maybe the women and children will.   And with all that done, Jacob has no one left but himself.   And that’s good, because in that type of aloneness is when God comes.

Each Christmas and Easter, we get a lot of folks who show up here.   I’m glad they come.   But why don’t they come back?   Many times, it’s because they’ve really never met God alone.  Their connection to God, it’s sentimental, maybe even emotional, but it’s not yet real, not yet personal.

Or on the other hand, I’ve seen folks who have been going to church every Sunday, even become church leaders.   Some even built a political career off their faith.  Then it all comes out, the mess that they’ve let their life become behind that shiny religious façade.    Christianity might have made them feel good, even superior.  They might have liked being part of the group, doing all the churchy stuff.   But down deep, where they really lived, it hadn’t gotten real.   It hadn’t gotten personal.    

There’s an old gospel song that I’ve never really liked.  The folk singer, Woody Guthrie, kind of made it famous.   It goes like this.  

You got to walk that lonesome valley.  You got to walk it by yourself.  Nobody here can walk it for you.  You got to walk it by yourself.

I’ve always thought.  Sheesh, that’s such a downer.  Why do you have to walk it alone?  That’s so well lonely.   But after reading this story, I finally got it.    When it comes to really meeting God, nobody can do that for you.   Your family might start you out.   Your church might help you along.  Other people may come alongside.  But in the end, It’s gotta be just you and God.    Only then, does it become real.     Only then, does it get personal.

You see up until this moment, Jacob had a sort of transactional relationship with God.  God, you help me.   I’ll stay loyal to you.   For Jacob, this whole God thing has been about business.  It had never gotten personal.   But now, he is faced with what could be the end of everything for him.   And this journey home.  It’s opened up some old wounds, some really deep ones. 

And in that moment, that’s when God comes.  That’s when God shows up.   Why?  It’s because Jacob is finally alone.  He’s vulnerable.  He’s open.    So what does God do?  Does he hug him?  Does he put an arm on his shoulder?   No.  God jumps him.  God wrestles him to the ground.  

And God doesn’t just do this for a few minutes?  No, God and Jacob wrestle all night.  Have you ever seen a wrestling match?  I’m not talking the WWE.  I’m talking the real deal.  Do you know how long a match lasts, even in the Olympics?   It lasts about six orseven minutes, and that’s with two breaks in between.  That’s it.  Why?  Because wrestling is really hard.  It is brutally exhausting.   But God and Jacob don’t go wrestle for a few minutes.  They wrestle all night long.   Why?

Because, to see what you really need, what God alone can give, it’s not enough to be alone.  You usually gotta be worn out too.    This isn’t the first time, God had shown up in Jacob’s life.  He had come decades before, right after Jacob had fled for his life.   But Jacob hadn’t gotten it.   He wanted what God could give him sure, but God, just God?  Not so much.

Too often, when I’ve been in the lonesome valley, all I wanted from God was to get me out.   But the reality was, it was only by walking that valley, by walking it until I was worn to the bone, would I be ready for what I really needed, what God alone could give.  

And only as day breaks, does Jacob get to that point.   Heck, only then, does he get it.   He hasn’t just been wrestling some bandit in the dark.  Jacob has been wrestling with the creator of the universe.  What gives it away?  Well, first it’s that whole hip injury.  The translation here really doesn’t do what happens here justice.   The word here they translated as struck is way too strong.  The word actually means touch.  Basically, God touched his hip, and ripped the whole thing out of joint.  And then God says.   I can’t be here when the sun comes up, because (he’s implying), no one can see God’s face, and live.  

But what does Jacob do?  Beaten, injured, Jacob holds on.  You are wrestling with God, and you hold on?  That’s a pretty risky move. Why did he do it?   He finally gets it.  He finally knows what he really needs, what he’s always needed, what every human being needs.    He needs a blessing.  

What did Jacob do to his brother, Esau after all that was so awful?   What caused the rift?   You see.  Growing up, Jacob knew.   His father, Isaac, loved Esau best.   Jacob was a momma’s boy.   Esau, well Esau, and Isaac, just clicked.   Jacob knew it.  He knew he didn’t have his father’s love, not the way he yearned for it.    And a wound like that, you can carry for a lifetime.

This past week, I was talking to a young woman, whose grandparents raised her for the first 12 years of her life.  Her mother had gone to work in another country.    Eventually her mother brought her over, but even so, the daughter never felt the love.   She told of a time, when her mother served all her siblings food.  But then her mother said.  You, you go get it yourself.  It had been decades since that conversation.  And she still carried the wound.

How did Jacob deal with his wound?   He did a pretty bizarre thing.   Since Esau was the older brother, he would get the lion’s share of the wealth when the father died.   But with the wealth, came a special blessing, given to the eldest son.    So Jacob figured.  Since his dad was blind and pretty deaf, he could trick Isaac into giving Jacob, Esau’s blessing.  And his deception worked for like five minutes.   But why did he do it?    Sure he got the blessing. But it didn’t entitle him to the wealth.  In fact, his trick took away whatever wealth he was going to get.    And he didn’t just lose that.  He lost his family, his home.   He almost lost his life.  So why did he do it?   Because, even if it was for only a few minutes, even if it was under false pretenses, he wanted to hear those words of love, of affection.   He wanted a blessing.  But even then, it didn’t work.   His wound remained.

So he fled to his mom’s cousin, Laban.  He fell in love with Laban’s beautiful daughter Rachel.  He worked 14 years to win her hand.    And he thought.   If I get her love, her adoration, her blessing, that will heal my wound.   But it didn’t. 

And now, alone and worn out, he gets it.   Here is the blessing he always needed.   Here is the love he yearned for.    Here is the love everyone yearns for, to hear the creator of the universe speak love to your hearts, to hear…  You are loved.   You are loved.   And nothing can ever take my love away.      Because, everyone has this wound.   Everyone wants an unshakeable love, a blessing that nothing can take away.   Everyone wants to know in the deepest part of who they are that beneath all the mess: you are beautiful and you are beloved.      

Jacob knew he didn’t deserve that love.   He had done some pretty awful things.   But he yearned for it anyway.    He knew that’s what he needed.  And God gave it to him.  We don’t know what blessing God said.   But it changed Jacob’s life forever, so much so, he was never called Jacob again, but Israel, the one who had wrestled with God.    And that limp he carried proved it.  It reminded him, of how in that wound, God’s love had healed the deepest wound of all.

But not only did Jacob have to become weak to get the blessing, God had to become weak too.   After all, do you really think the creator of reality couldn’t win a wrestling match with a 70 year old?   So God feigned weakness so that Jacob might finally find the blessing he had needed his whole life.   And in that weakness, God points to the weakness that makes us all whole.

For in Jesus, God didn’t just  pretend to be weak.  No, God became weak, vulnerable even unto death.   And where Jacob risked his life, to get the blessing for himself, In Jesus, God gave his life, to get the blessing for us.   Jacob was wounded so that his heart might be healed.  But in Jesus, God was wounded unto death, so that we might be healed.    And why did God become weak and wounded? Why did God hold on, even to death?   He held on because he loved you.  Because he wanted to bring you home.   He wanted you to know.  You are loved.  You are loved.  

Do you know that?  Has it become real for you?  Has it become personal?   If not, make this the day it does.              

Are You Talking to God or Just to Yourself? How Do You Know?

According to the researchers, over half of Americans do it every day.    Heck, even among those who call themselves nones,  who don’t affiliate with religion at all, even there, one out of five pray every day, even a few atheists    

But whatever the numbers show, what do they tell us?   Yes, people are praying, actually praying a lot.   But are people really connecting to God?  Now I’m not saying God doesn’t hear their prayers.    I believe God hears every prayer.    But are people hearing God back?    Sure, God may be listening in, but how many folks are really connecting with God versus just talking to themselves?   How do you know the difference?    In these words between God and Abraham, God shows us the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say. 

Genesis 18:16-33

How do you know you’re really connecting to God when you pray, and not just talking to yourself?     How do you tell the difference?    In this story, God shows us the way.   In real prayer, you’re not actually starting the conversation.  God is.    Real praying isn’t you starting a conversation with God.   Real praying is God starting a conversation with you.  

In order to see how this works, let’s dig into this story.   This conversation with God all began when Abraham was sitting outside his tent, and these strangers walked out of the desert.   Now in desert culture, when folks walk up to your tent, you don’t do a wave and send them on their way.  No, you invite them in.  You feed them.  You provide a place to stay.   Why?  In that environment, you might find yourself out in the desert one day, and you sure hope someone would do that for you.   So Abraham and his wife Sarah welcome them in, and as they are sitting and talking Abraham gets it.   He realizes in these strangers, God has come.  

But when Abraham and God start the conversation about Sodom and Gomorrah, who begins it?   God does.    God even says out loud.  Hmm, shall I tell Abraham about this?  Now when somebody says out loud something like that, you know what it means.  It means they really want to tell you.    But beyond what God says, what matters is that God talks first.  

In reality, when anyone prays, they never pray without God prompting that prayer, without God so to speak, talking first.   But even with that prompting, you can still miss the real conversation. Why?   You don’t recognize God’s voice.   Human beings have a terrible tendency to think they’re talking to God when they’re actually talking to themselves.   This past week, I read an awful letter that someone had sent to a pastor I know.   I can’t remember when I had read such a vicious, brutal letter to another human being.  But what made it more awful is that the person who wrote it said she had done so after her afternoon time of prayer.    Let me tell you.  I guarantee that God had nothing to do with that letter.  But she sure thought so.   

It can be perilously easy to think you’re talking to God, when you’re actually just talking to yourself.    That’s why in those statistics, another number really disturbed me.  It said while one out of two people are praying every day, only one out of three are reading the Bible even once a week.    And sure, God can speak to you through nature or through other people, but, it’s all too easy to get those signals crossed.  But if you believe what the Bible says about itself, that God is speaking there, what better place to start than there.   Now you can still miss it, sure.  But at least there, you’re going where God says he is always speaking.  When God is going to talk to you, God is going to do it there more than anywhere else. 

So if you’re not going there on a regular basis, you’re likely not hearing much from God at all.  You could just be talking to yourself.  

And as you actually connect to God, the more three things will happen in those conversations, the three things that happen here.          

First, you’ll get both bolder and humbler with God than you could have ever thought.

Second, you’ll pray to God for things you would never have prayed for before.

And third, you will understand who God actually is in ways you could never have come up with on your own.   

Each of those things happens in this conversation between God and Abraham.   Do you see how bold Abraham gets with God?     Abraham bargains God all the way from 50 down to 10.  Sheesh, I get intimidated when I return a product to Target.  Yet here Abraham pushes God again and again, and again.   Abraham won’t let it go.   But do you see how he does it?   He doesn’t come to God like he’s entitled.   No.   He says.  “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.”    He doesn’t arrogantly demand, but he boldly and humbly asks.   

So many folks get confused when the Bible talks about fearing God.  They wonder.  Why should I be scared of God?    Well, let me tell you, even when I’ve had a chance to chat with Hollywood’s mayor, Peter Bober, I get a little nervous.  I have a bit of fearful awe.  Why? Well, he’s the mayor after all.  I feel that a bit around anyone who has power, a very wealthy person or a celebrity, heck, even a great chef or brilliant musician, even a large church pastor.    So if you’re talking to the Creator of reality, of the infinity of the universe, doesn’t feeling a little awe make some sense?   And clearly, Abraham knows that is who he is talking to.  

In your own prayer life, could you stand to have a bit more awe, and a bit more boldness?  Just this past week, I was talking with someone, whose spouse has not become a Christian.   And she said, even though I’ve been married to this wonderful man for years and years, only recently did I start praying for God to work in his life.   And she said that a few weeks ago, her husband said, “Well, you know I was christened so technically I am a Christian.”    She couldn’t believe her ears.  This came from a man who had hardly wanted to be associated with Christianity, much less admit any affiliation with it.  It gave her a little bit of awe.   Are you praying boldly for your family, for this church, for this community?  Are you praying with a bit of awe, with the realization that you are talking to the most powerful being in existence, who actually sustains existence?  

And as you pray, what are you praying for?   It’s a bit shocking what Abraham prays for.  When God talks about the great outcry that has come from Sodom and Gomorrah, the word outcry means the cries of the poor and oppressed.   God is telling Abraham. I have heard how awful these cities have become, how the innocent suffer at their hands.   And so I am going to bring justice.   And Abraham knows God’s right.    He has dealt with these cities, even fought them.  He knows how bad they are.   But he doesn’t say.  “Oh, yeah, God.  Take those people down.”  No, he says to God.  Please spare them.     He literally prays for his enemies, for people who richly deserve the justice God will bring.   Now, if you know more of Abraham’s story, you might say.  Well, Abraham does have a nephew there, who has a wife and two daughters.  So he’s really concerned about them.  Really?   If that was the case, couldn’t he have just said?  “Ok, God destroy them, but get my relatives out first.”  That would have been a far simpler prayer.   But no Abraham pleads for thousands of people who he doesn’t even know, who not only care nothing about him, but who may even be his enemies.   When you start having real conversations with God, you’ll pray for folks you might never have thought to pray for before, even your enemies.

But more than how Abraham pray or who he prays for, what is most mind-blowing is how Abraham argues his case.    In Abraham’s day, if someone in your family did an evil act, the whole family felt the responsibility for that evil.    They felt a collective guilt.  I’m sure it’s what many Muslims felt when they first heard about Oman Mateen, the shooter in Orlando.  

But Abraham makes a remarkable leap from there.   He asks God.   Could that work for the righteous?  Could the righteousness of say 50 people make up for the evil of thousands?    Could the credit of their righteousness cover the debt of the others’ wrong?   Would you save the evil for the sake of the righteous?   And what does God say?  God says yes.  Yes I will  

You see, Abraham knows that God has to see justice done, but he also knows God has shown forgiveness again and again.   Abraham has failed God a lot.    He has done pretty ugly things, and God has not walked away.   God has loved him in spite of that.    So, knowing that about God, he pushes the envelope, to see how far God’s compassion goes.   He gets God down from 50 to 45 to 40 to 30 to 20 to 10.  Will God save the cities for the sake of ten righteous people? Yes!  But hold it.  That’s when he goes home?  Why does he stop there?  Why doesn’t he go all the way?    Why doesn’t he go to one?  Why doesn’t he ask?  God would you save these cities for the sake of just one righteous person, just one?  

Why?   Because, Abraham realizes something.  There isn’t even one righteous person there.   He knows his nephew, Lot doesn’t make the mark.  More than that, Abraham knows he doesn’t make the mark either.   He realizes. No one on the face of the earth makes the mark.  Abraham has discovered the way to save not simply these cities, but everything and everyone.  After all, God has to deliver justice, and no one is innocent.  Yet, Abraham now knows.   For the love of just one righteous person, God will save everyone.  Yet even so, no one can open that way.   Because, no one is righteous, no not one.    

But what Abraham pointed to in that conversation God actually did, thousands of years later.    Since no one righteous could be found, in Jesus God became the righteous one.   And so while Abraham prayed for people who might kill him, in Jesus God prayed for people who were killing him.   Abraham risked his life before God for people who didn’t deserve it, but in Jesus God gave his life for people who didn’t merit at all.   Abraham represented the undeserving before God, and in doing that, he risked God’s anger.   But in Jesus, God represented us, and on that cross he didn’t just risk the cosmic wrath of God’s justice, he took it on himself for us.   So, we can ask the question that Abraham couldn’t.  God will you save not just these cities, but will you save everyone, all of us, for the sake of one, for the sake of one righteous person.   And we will hear God say.   Yes, I will.   No, more than that.  We will hear him say.  Yes, I have.       

As that beautiful old hymn put it:

On the mount of crucifixion Fountains opened deep and wide
Through the floodgates of God's mercy Flowed a vast and gracious tide
Grace and love, like mighty rivers Poured incessant from above
And Heaven's peace and perfect justice Kissed a guilty world in love.

And above all that is what God is saying to you.   You are far more flawed and messed up than you dare admit.   But you are infinitely more loved than you dare dream.   And if you listen, every word of this book proclaims that truth.   And if you listen, you will become humbler and bolder at the same time, as you realize how far you have fallen away, and how far God came to bring you home.  And as you see that grace, you will pray for everyone, even your enemies, as you realize how God prayed for you when you were his enemy.   And in that grace, you will come with confidence, knowing that God’s righteous love has covered everything for you.  

What gives you the power to pray, to really pray?  Knowing what God has done for you.  Do you know that?  Do you really know it?  

What Is the Secret to Triumph in Even the Toughest of Relationships? The Grittiness of Grace

What do you think most helps people succeed in life?  Is it your gifts or your grit?   It turns out.  Success has way more to do with grit, with your ability to persevere the face of tough things.   You can have all the natural gifts.  But if you don’t have the grit to strengthen and develop them, then those gifts aren’t going to really matter.

And we’re not just talking about how you perform at work or how many healthy habits you keep.  No, grit leads to success in something more crucial, in how you relate to others, not only your spouse or children, but the most difficult people you will face.   Too often, people don’t know what grit looks like in those places. They get gritty about the wrong things.  Then they wonder why things aren’t working, why things go so far south.  What is it that you need to succeed in dealing with others, especially the others who irritate or hurt you the most?    Here in these words, God shows the way.  

Romans 12:9-21

How do you deal with difficult people, from folks who just irritate you to folks who actually are out to get you?   If you do what comes naturally, you’ll do this.  You’ll get back at them. You’ll counter punch.   You punch me.  I’m going to punch you back, and maybe harder.   Yet, here, in these words, God presents a profoundly different perspective.   God says.  When others offend you or even try to hurt you, the grit that truly transforms can’t be about aggression.  The kind of grit that transforms can only come from grace.  

God says here not only that you don’t repay evil for evil, but you overcome evil with good.   And this word, overcome, comes from the military.   God is saying that you actually defeat evil by returning evil with good.    

Now, before we dig down into how this sort of gritty grace works, let’s take a moment to focus on why aggression, why hitting back doesn’t work.  After all, before Christianity, no other philosophy or religion took this position that doing good defeats evil.   Everybody agreed on the counter punch method.  So what makes that such a bad option?

First, let’s look at it practically.   When someone does evil to you, and you simply return the evil, you’ve become part of the problem, not the solution.   Evil has conquered you.   Only when you counter evil with something that isn’t evil, do you win.   And returning the evil, can happen in two ways, and both destroy you and others.    First, you can simply hit back, give as good as you got.   Or second, you may not hit back, but still you hope that in some way a hit back occurs.   You may not do them evil, but you sure hope evil happens.  And in both cases that way of dealing with evil twists you up.   How?    

First, it distorts not just that relationship in your life, but every other relationship like it.   Let’s say, you have a man who is mistreated by a woman.   She does him wrong.   And he carries anger and bitterness towards her over it.   Well, that anger and bitterness, won’t only distort that relationship, it will distort any other relationship he has with women in the future.   He will carry that chip on his shoulder maybe his whole life.  And it works vice versa too.  Or it could be an issue you have with someone of a different class or ethnic group.   Heck, it could be people in general.   Someone hurts you, and in your anger and bitterness, you stop trusting anyone at all.   You view the whole world with a defensive posture.    And that’s not good. 

And second, it distorts you deep inside.   The gospel tells us that the two issues that lie at the heart of the human problem are self-centeredness and self-righteousness.   Self-centered tells you that you’re more important than anyone else.  And self-righteousness says, you’re better than anyone else.   And beyond these messages being totally wrong, they lead to all sorts of disastrous consequences.   Where do you think war ultimately comes from?   And when you wish evil on others, you feed those two messages.  To stoke your indignation, not only do you make yourself better than you are, you make them worse.   And the more you do it, the more self-centered and self-righteous you become.   And when that happens, you can give yourself permission to do all sorts of evil.  And it so blinds you, you convince yourself that you’re doing good.

And beyond what it does to you, and to your relationships, hitting back further distorts the person who hurt you in the first place.  Your hitting back only validates for them that they did the right thing.  After all, you did it right back to them.    Evil wins in you, in them, everywhere.  And it leads to a world where everyone is always delivering pay-back perpetually generation after generation.  What does that look like?  If you want to know, look at one of those lands that has enshrined the payback, like say, Afghanistan.    

Now before, we dig down into how good overcomes evil, let me make it clear.  I am focusing on how this plays out in individual relationships, not in relationships between nations.  That’s a sermon for a different day.   But this principle of overcoming evil with good you will find again and again throughout the whole Bible.  

But how do you practically do this?  How do you overcome evil with good?  You engage in five practices. 

First, Paul tells us, you bless those who persecute you.    Another way to put this might be, you pray for them.   Why?  Because it is very hard to hate someone for whom you are praying.   Even if you pray that God might straighten them out, you’re still praying for their good, that they’ll wake up from their wrong path.

Second, forgive them.  And let’s be clear about what forgiveness means.  It doesn’t mean that you minimize the wrong, you just let go of the desire to deliver retribution for it.  As Paul puts it, you don’t go for vengeance.  And when you forgive, you need to understand.  Forgiveness is always granted before it is felt.   You don’t feel your way into forgiving.  The forgiving comes first, and then over time the feeling follows.  Forgiving simply means, that you stop carrying the grudge, nursing the grievance.    After all, it isn’t really harming them.  It’s harming you.   Holding a grudge is like drinking poison, and expecting the other person to get sick.  

Third, you don’t avoid them.  As Paul puts it, if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.    That means if they don’t want to see you, fine.  But you don’t avoid the relationship.   Why?   Because let’s be honest, if you are avoiding them, it because you want to pay them back.  You’re saying.  You hurt me, so I am taking away any relationship I have with you.  You are repaying evil with evil.

Fourth, you will their good.   As Paul puts it, if your enemy is hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.    Now this may not happen literally, but basically you seek the best for them.

And finally, you oppose them humbly.  Right after Paul says these words about feeding your enemy, he follows it up with this.  He says. “For by doing this, you will heap burning coals on their head.”  What does that mean?   It probably comes from what folks in a walled city did when they were defending it.  When the enemies came up, they poured hot coals or tar down on them to push them back.   In other words, when someone does evil, you don’t lay down and take it.  You stand against it.  You stand against it by not paying them back with the evil they did to you.  And in doing that, you win.  This is how Gandhi won independence for India.  This is how Dr. King and his fellow leaders brought about racial justice.   And in both cases, they didn’t do it with an attitude of superiority or self-righteousness.   Just read Dr. King’s letter from a Birmingham jail to see how you can stand for good in a way that is both powerful and profoundly humble. 

And when you do these things, you do overcome evil with good.   But for this to happen, you need to do all of them.   If you read Dr. King’s letter from that jail, it becomes clear.  Before he wrote it, he had prayed for his enemies.  He had forgiven them.  He had not avoided them.   And he had sought their good.   Only when you do those things, are you ready to oppose.  But let’s make it clear, you do need to oppose.   Overcoming evil with good does not mean laying down and letting people walk over you.  It means opposing them, but in a way that can truly transform them, by opposing them in love and humility. 

But how do you do these things?  How do you get the power to pray and forgive?  How do you get the power to not avoid those who want to hurt you but to seek their good, even as you lovingly stand against them?   The power comes when you gain the perspective you need, and that perspective comes in two ways. 

Why does God say, “Vengeance is mine?”    Why does God get to do payback, but we don’t.   Because God knows, and we don’t.   When someone hurts you, you think you know why they did it.   But you don’t.   You don’t know all the things in their life that led to that moment.  Heck, you don’t know all the things in that day that led to it.  Only God knows that.   And when we judge, we always use a double standard.    When I’m driving along, and I see someone driving and texting, I get all judgy.  Don’t they know how dangerous that is.  But when I do it, oh, it’s because I really need to respond to this person immediately.  As one writer put it.  We judge others by their actions.  But we judge ourselves by our intentions. 

But more than that, what did God do with the power to judge?  He took the judgment upon himself.  The judge of the universe became the one that was judged.  And he did it for us. As God in Jesus suffered on that cross, what did he do?  He prayed for his enemies.  He said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  Even at the end, to his own executioners, he willed their good, even as he opposed them calling them out for the evil they did.    And in that agony, God had the ultimate victory over evil, and he did it by overcoming it with good.  If Jesus could pray for his enemies, even there, how can we hold grudges against the people who have wronged us?  

If God had done that, had held the grudge, then all of us would be without hope.  But God didn’t.  God took the judgment that belonged to us so that by his punishment we might go free. What gives you the power to overcome evil with good?  That does.   Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small.  Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all.   What gives you the power?  That.  What God has already done for you.  That gives you the power.  

Is Your Ladder Leaning Against the Right Wall? Here's How You Know.

I really like quotes.   Heck, I have over 200 pages of the things I've collected over the years.  But I found something surprising in that list this week.  One quote was missing.  You see, years ago, I read this quote that I haven’t been able to forget.  Its words come to me all the time.  And yet, I never added it to my quotes list.  I checked.   Maybe it’s because the tragic image it gives so haunts me that I hadn’t needed to write it down to remember it.   So what is the quote?  The monk, Thomas Merton said it.   He said:  “People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”

There were times in school when I got an assignment wrong.  I read the wrong chapter or did the wrong set of problems.   I hated that.   I had spent time and energy for something that didn’t even matter.    But what if you do that with your life?  To get that assignment wrong, how devastating would that be?   Who wants to get to the end and realize that?   

But every day, I see people do it.    I see them pursuing things that in the end don’t ultimately matter.  At the same time, they ignore the things that do, things that in the end will give them the very life they seek.  How do you make sure that isn’t you?  How do you make sure that your ladder is leaning against the right wall?   In these powerful words from Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, God shows the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

Romans 12:1-8

So how do you make sure that your ladder is leaning against the right wall?  Here, the great Christian leader, Paul, tells you.  You make your life, body and soul, a living sacrifice to God.  In the end, in Paul’s words, God is telling us that is the only right wall there is.  But what does that even mean, a living sacrifice to God?    In Greek, it sounds even weirder.  The word for sacrifice Paul uses here, actually means killing.   So how can you be a living killing?   Isn’t that a contradiction? 

Let’s talk first about what the words don’t mean.  In ancient times, everyone knew about sacrifices.  Every religion did them.   And in every case, they did them for pretty much the same reason.   They used them to deal with guilt or wrong, to placate the divine, to avoid the gods’ wrath.  But this sacrifice doesn’t mean that at all.  Paul knows.  Jesus’ death ended the need for those sacrifices forever.   Because of what Jesus has done, our guilt is gone.  When God looks at us, all God sees is beauty and goodness, all our wrong has literally been washed away.   Paul with this sacrifice talk, doesn’t means an offering for guilt but an offering of gratitude for God’s infinite love and grace.

And that gift means this sacrifice doesn’t end in death, like all the other sacrifices did.  No, it opens you to life like never before.    Still, Paul does use the word sacrifice.   And that has to mean that something dies.   And something does.   To be a living sacrifice, means you take your hands of your life.   You give over the right to live your life as you choose to God.   You die to that.  Why?  You trust that whatever God will do with your life will be way better than what you could do.  Now what does that look like, to take the hands of your life?

I remember hearing a story about a young man who joined the army during World War I.  He ended up fighting in the trenches.   Now his mother, as she listened to the news, heard how awfully muddy these trenches became.  She wrote to him, concerned for his well-being, how he was dealing with the mud and mess.    And the son wrote back.  “Mom, I belong to the U.S. Army now.  And if they want their feet to get muddy then so be it.”    That man realized.   He didn’t belong to himself any more.  He had given that over.   While in that army, others determined the direction of his life, even if it cost him his life.  And it did many.  We will remember that next weekend.    

And Paul is saying much the same thing.  Do you want a life that is truly a life?  Then let go of it.  You have to give that life over.  You have to lay that life down, in trust that God will do more with it than you ever could.

But come on now, why would anyone do that?   Why give your life over to God when you can keep it for yourself?    Because you can’t keep it for yourself.  Nobody does.  If you are not giving your life over to God, you are giving it over to something.   

No one said this better than the writer, David Foster Wallace, in his speech to the graduates of Kenyon College.            

He began that talk with a joke.  Two young fish were swimming along one day when this old codger fish swam by.   He called out to the young’ uns.  Howdy there! How’s the water, boys?   The two young fish nodded and smiled and swam on.   After a moment, one of them turned to the other and asked.  What the heck is water?   Why did Wallace tell that joke?  He was making a point.  He was saying.  We are those fish.   We don’t see the water in which we swim, and the water in which we swim could be killing us.  How?  Here is how Wallace put it.  

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, Wallace said, there is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship – Wallace said, a non- Christian ……-- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. ……Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.  Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship, Wallace said, is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings.  

In other words, they're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

Right now, if you’re not sacrificing your life to God, you’re sacrificing your life to something.  You may be sacrificing it to your parents’ ambitions or to your own.  You may be sacrificing it to your fears or insecurities.  You may be sacrificing it to the opinions of your peers or some image of success.   But none of those things give you life.   They drain your life away.  They consume you.   Only when you give your life over to God, do you get more life.   That is what makes it a living sacrifice.   This death opens you to life, to a life more abundant than before.   But this taking your hands off your life, it can’t happen through fear or compulsion.  Paul calls it an offering.  That means you give it freely, not because you have to, that it’s some duty.  No you give it freely.    What does that look like?

The preacher Martin Lloyd Jones tells a story of a man who had a dog that he dearly loved.   But he wondered.   How much does this dog really love me?  So one day, he decided to find out.   When they went on their walk in the park, he took the dog off the leash.   Immediately the dog dashed off, running who knows where.   The doctor began to grieve, fearing he had lost the dog he dearly loved.  But within a few minutes or so, the dog came dashing back to walk by his master’s side.   From that day forward, the doctor and the dog walked in that park, but the dog never wore a leash again.

What did that dog do?  He offered himself.    He gave his life over to his master.   No leash held him.  He gave it willingly.   Why?   He trusted the master, his love, his commitment to him.

Now why would you offer yourself to God like that?  Because God has offered himself like that for you and more.  Jesus didn’t have to lay down his life.  He freely offered it.  In John 10, he put it this way.  “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.”     Now why did he do that?    Why did he go through infinite suffering?  Why did he become not just a living sacrifice, but a destroyed one?  Why did he take his hands off his life?  Hebrews 12 tells us that Jesus, endured the cross, disregarded its shame for the joy that was set before him.   What was that joy?  That joy was us.   He offered himself so he could bring you home, so he could give you life.   He took his hands off his life and became a dying sacrifice, so that when you take your hands off, you become a living one. 

That’s why Paul calls this offering a reasonable worship.  If God, the infinite creator of everything, has given his life for you, how can you not do the same?   This God laid down everything so that he might give you everything.   And when you trust him with your life, he will renew you, your mind; your soul.  And he will shower you with gifts to bless you and others.   

That’s why being a Christian isn’t a spectator sport.  It means laying down your life for others, every day, in any way God tells you to.   And if you’re here, and you haven’t found a place to do that in this community, that’s a problem.   For this is one of those places where God calls you to lay down your life for God and one another.  But if it isn’t here, where might it be?  Where are you holding on?  Where do you need to take your hands off your life?  What do you need to die to so that you may live?    

  

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.

Romans 8:28-39

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?