Hearing God Better

SERMON: 2011-03-13--sam05--hearing-god-better-part-3 SOURCE DURATION: 00:43:00.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The material transitions from a pastoral application/theological exposition (candidates 1-3) into repetitive devotional lyrics or hymn responses (candidates 4 onwards). Candidate 3 is the last segment belonging to the main sermon discourse. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:39:24.500-00:42:58.560 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, I want to begin this morning by inviting Steve Rainey to come forward and share with you a little bit of his story. Don't know how many of you know Steve. He is a first-time elder. Steve has been coming here for close to a dozen years or so, met his wife Janet here, and was sharing with us Ed Council just a couple of weeks ago. His history of hearing the Lord speak and trying to step into that in a new way. And so here is Steve. Give him a warm welcome, folks. Good morning. Pastor John asked me to talk about the times when God has spoken to me. So I'll recount a few of the more profound times when it has happened. When I was 17, my mom died of cancer, and shortly afterwards, my dad, whom I looked up to all these times, kicked me out of my house. I could understand my mom's leaving, but struggling with why my dad did what he did. You know, I remember sitting in my bedroom and stuff and just feeling, yeah, alone I guess. And at the time, I heard God clearly tell me that I may be without an earthly father, but I would never be without a heavenly one. That really hit me, and it really got me through a lot of difficult times and struggles in my life, you know, being fatherless. But I thank the Lord that he was faithful to me during that time. But God has been looking after me like a father throughout my life. When I was 22, I was in a motocross accident, lying there on the motocross track. I had no feeling in my body. I thought, I'm 22 years old, and I'm paralyzed, and I thought, this is crazy, you know. I should have listened to my sisters and not got into that kind of thing, but I remember praying to God, you know, God, just help me get out of this situation, and I remember laying there. I couldn't feel nothing. And then on my whole body, God, it's just like, you know, if your leg falls asleep, whatever, that tingling sensation, it all came right through my body. I could start to move my fingers, my limbs, my legs, and everything, and then when I went to the hospital, I found out that I fractured my C1 and C2 vertebrae, which are my very top two vertebrae, and if you guys would remember, they're the same ones that Christopher Reeves basically broke, and he actually did the same thing that I did, except I was on a bike and he was on a horse, and it was basically the same week. And when that incident happened, I remember being obviously thankful that the situation in him didn't happen to me, but I'll be honest with you, it took a few years before I really realized how God does look after you. You kind of take those kind of things for granted, and you kind of think, well, I was the lucky one. It really hit me that God does really love me, and He really looks after me. And about eight or nine years after my mom died, I was feeling restless about the situation with my dad. So, through Bible reading and church sermons, I knew that this wasn't what God wanted in my relationship with him. So, God opened doors through friends who had contacts with my dad, and though I wasn't sure I wanted to, I went to see him. I went to my dad's knowing that I might experience the same rejection I had as a teenager. I knew that I was doing what God wanted me, though, so I went ahead. I asked my dad for forgiveness for anything I had done wrong, and told him that I forgive him. My dad was accepting of me, and I'm glad to say that I and my family can now build a relationship with him, and that's been probably about eight years now. Did I want to do that? No, I did not want to do that. It was obviously coming out of my comfort zone, and after being away from him for about eight to nine years, you kind of had your life kind of already situated on how you wanted things to go. And by throwing him back in the picture, you know, you just didn't know if you really wanted that at that time. But I obeyed what God wanted me to do, and thank goodness I did, because obviously relationship is good, and I'm thankful for that. And then more recently, coming to church each week, I felt there was something more God wants for me. I felt restless about my place in the church, and I know that God has more in store. Speaking with my wife about it after church one Sunday, I told her I was feeling like God was leading me towards visiting with seniors or with people who are alone in some way. Just to hear the stories and to be companions and a servant for God in that way. I told her this feeling had been in my heart for a while now, maybe a year. She just looked at me and said, "Steve, you've been talking about this for over ten years now." Yeah, I know you guys might wonder why it took me ten years, but first of all, yeah, scared is one thing. Stepping out into something that you don't know really anything about, or even if you're really hearing what God really wants you to do. I believe God's been preparing me for hopefully these last ten years. I mean, He probably could have done it sooner, but I'm just thankful He's patient with me, right? And I also, I'll be honest with you, sometimes I think it's almost a little bit of embarrassment because sometimes you feel that your own life, what do you really have to offer other people, and you think, "Who am I to be, you know, for instance, up here telling my story kind of thing," right? But I think for me, it's listening to God, I still can't say for sure exactly what God wants me to do, but I can say that I don't think it will be another ten years before He shows me. I think this is a stepping stone. I think each step is, I grow closer to Him and grow closer to the area He wants me to be working for the community and for other people in the church. So that's everything I have to say. How many of you this morning in some small way can identify with what Steve is talking about? Can I see a show of hands? I asked Steve to tell his story to you, not because it's so unique, but because it's kind of what you can expect to happen if by faith you're joined to Jesus. The Holy Spirit begins to work in our hearts, begins to communicate the burden of God. We've talked about that for some two weeks now, that God speaks to His people, not just to satisfy our curiosity or even to make us feel better or in some cases feel worse, but to share His heart with us, to share His kingdom purposes with us, with a view that we could get on board with Him and be the hands and the feet of Jesus to carry out the great commission, whatever that might look like for each one of us. And if your life is at all like Steve's or mine or sort of average, then most of the time we struggle with that for a long time and eventually, maybe, hopefully, the Lord gives us grace, makes us miserable enough that we begin to step out in those places in obedience. Isn't that true? And then as we do, we grow. Now I share that with you because that's the way it ought to be working. But as I shared with you two, two weeks ago, there are instances where it does not work that way. In particular, we identified two issues that keep us sometimes from hearing God, certainly hearing Him clearly. One is brokenness and the other is immaturity. Brokenness blocks the revelation from God as surely as a blind eye or a deaf ear blocks vision or blocks hearing. If my eye is blind, it doesn't matter how much light you're shining at me, I may feel the heat, but I won't see any better. And you can make all the noises you want, but if I'm deaf in my ear, I cannot hear. The antidote to brokenness, as we're going to see, is healing and restoration. By nature, we're all broken and dead to God, as we'll see. But if we've been broken developmentally, it's that much more difficult. Now immaturity is different from brokenness. Immaturity is a lack of development that skews the message of God as it comes to us because we interpret it through our own lenses and through our own level or degree of maturity. Quick illustration just for my own life to clarify that, and I think you'll probably be able to identify with it, perhaps. As many of you know, when I first went to college and through the witness of some friends really met up with Jesus in a real and in a personal way, my spiritual life began to take off in ways that it had not before. God became more real than he had ever been. Scripture came alive. I remember old hymns that I had sung for years and years and years suddenly took on a meaning and a power that I had not previously noticed. In fact, even nature, and I remember that so vividly, even nature looked brighter for a season. Anybody here ever have that? It's like when your spiritual eyes are opened, then all of a sudden everything is different. And as part of that journey, I began to experience what I felt for the first time in my life was the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And I remember I'd come to a place where I would want to make a decision, and there were times when I would feel a check in my spirit. And then there were other times when I sensed the Holy Spirit leading me in a particular direction, and I had to make the choice, "Is this of the Lord? Will I step into it, and will I obey?" That took me a little while to sort out. And so at one point along the journey, I sensed the Holy Spirit saying to me that he wanted me to apply to be a resident advisor in one of the dorms of our college. If you're familiar with Calvin, then you will know that the dorms are arranged with three floors to a building. Each floor had two student counselors, and each unit of three floors had a resident advisor. And by this time, I had been chastised enough by the Holy Spirit in places of my disobedience that I thought I better step into this, and so I applied fully confident that this is what the Lord wanted me to do, and that this was the position that therefore he was going to give me. In fact, I was so sure and so determined to walk by faith that I failed to make provision for housing that next season. Because if you're going to go to a prayer meeting and pray for rain, well, then you ought to take your umbrella with you if you're going to walk by faith, isn't that true? I was young and inexperienced, okay, so cut me a little leeway here. So you can imagine my dismay when I didn't get that position. And it bothered me not because I had my heart set on that position, that I didn't care about that much. It threw me for a loop, because if I was going to try to follow the Lord and listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit, then how could I trust him when I thought I had heard him? And clearly, it did not pan out. Anybody here ever been there? You see, that's one of the reasons it takes us, like Steve, 10 years to step into obedience, because we're always second guessing because we know how badly wrong we can be and how stupid we can look. Now, thank God my friends did not have my faith, so to speak. And my friends saved me a room in their house so that I had housing to go to that fall. But you know, it took me two years to figure out what had really happened. It suddenly began to dawn on me that what the Lord had said to me, and I'm confident it was the Lord speaking to me, what the Lord had said to me was apply for the position. He had not said I would get the position. It was my conclusion that if he told me to apply for the position, he must have intended for me to get it. But you see, that was my interpretation. And I tell you that story because that's what immaturity does. God's will comes to us sometimes in a moment of revelation, a moment of insight. And then we bring our own temperament, we bring our own desires, we bring our own longings, we bring our own history, we bring our own thinking of how God ought to be working into the picture. And then when it doesn't pan out the way that we thought it ought to pan out, then we have problems with God. But you see, the issue isn't so much with God, is it, as it is with our own immaturity? And so if we want to hear God better so that we can obey him more closely, then places of brokenness need to be healed, but places of immaturity need to grow up. And Lord willing, this week and next week, however long it's going to take us, I want to walk us through those two things beginning this morning with a question of immaturity. God wants us to grow up so that we can hear him better. Now there are many scripture passages that address this particular issue, but one of my favorite passages is the one that we've just read together from 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Let's read the verses 1 to 3 once again. Read them with me out loud if you will. "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?" Give you the history here. The Corinthian church was established by the Apostle Paul on his second missionary journey. And the church was founded sometime between AD 49 and AD 52. Corinth was a very prosperous city. It was also very wicked. And though the Corinthian church abounded in spiritual gifts, they were rather immature. In fact, in this passage, you will notice, Paul calls them babies. "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but worldly, mere infants in Christ." And then he goes on in the passage to give us two reasons for that. The first reason, he says, is your ability to absorb spiritual truth is limited. Look at the next sentence. "I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it." Indeed, he says, "You are still not ready. You are babies that I have to feed with a baby bottle." And then he goes on to describe a second characteristic that makes them like babies, and that is their behavior. "Your behavior," he says, "is still of the world." He goes on, "You are still worldly. You behave like worldly people." And then he gives two defining characteristics of what that worldliness consists of. He says, "There is among you jealousy and quarreling. Are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?" I love that expression, "mere men," because the implication is, by now, you ought to be a lot more grown up than a bunch of spiritual babies that need to be fed by the bottle and whose behavior is worldly. And you demonstrate that worldliness by the jealousy that you have among each other and by your quarreling. You are, he says, "mere men." And the context, of course, in which this occurs is the divisions that are being experienced in the Corinthian church over, of all things, their spiritual leaders. Paul introduces it to us in chapter 1, verses 11 and 12, when he says these words, "My brothers, come from Chloe's household, have informed me there are quarrels among you." What I mean is this, one of you says, "I follow Paul," another, "I follow Apollos," another, "I follow Cephas," still another, "I follow Christ." And then he repeats that, again, in chapter 3, verse 4, in an abbreviated version, when he says, "When one says, 'I follow Paul,' and another, 'I follow Apollos,' are you not mere men? Are you not behaving like a regular, ordinary human being?" See, these Corinthian folks were demonstrating a preference and causing divisions about their spiritual leaders. Some of them said, "You know, I like the apostle Paul. He may not be much of a speaker, but I'll tell you, whatever he says stays with me. He knows how to give me solid meat, and I can chew on it all week long." And somebody else says, "You know, I like Apollos. Apollos is a golden mouth orator. I could sit and listen to him all day long." And then some said, "Well, we like Cephas. That's another name for Peter. I like Peter because, you know, he's a down-to-earth dude. He was in the presence of Jesus. I love to hear him tell stories about Jesus. His illustrations are practical. They're not as high andfalutin and theoretical as the apostle Paul. I like Peter, and I'm going to follow Peter." And then there were some, and I love this group. They pull their spiritual card out, and they say, "Well, you know, the rest of you, you're just following after people, but me, I follow after Christ. I have a direct line to heaven, and I don't need anybody else." Know anybody like that? And Paul says, "You're behaving like a bunch of children. You're thinking like worldly people because making divisions, following individuals, elevating them into a position that is of undue significance and importance, that is a worldly practice." He says, "In the kingdom, God picks all these different leaders, gives them all different gifts, gives them to you for building up the body of Christ." And so he says, "I sow, I preach the gospel." Apollos comes along, and he waters it. Everybody contributes their own particular gifting, their own particular calling before God. But guess what? Where does the growth come from? It comes from God. And instead of picking and choosing and letting your carnal preferences get in the way, what you ought to be doing is thanking God that all things have been given to Christ, Christ gives all things to you. If you read the rest of the chapter, that's how it goes. And one of the gifts that he gives you is the gift of leadership so that you can grow up, stop being babies. You are mere men. He says, "I want you to grow to spiritual maturity. People who can eat solid food and people who no longer exercise jealousy and quarreling." So, make good sense? So a big question then, of course, is what does this process of growing up in Christ look like? And I wish we had a lot more time, so I've got to walk you through this pretty quickly. But let me try to give you the big picture, and all of this you've heard me talk about before, but you know, every so often it doesn't hurt to review the basics. Because if we get the basics wrong, if you get the foundation wrong, everything you build is going to be flawed and will eventually come falling down before it's time. So very quickly, each one of us when we're born, we're born into what the Bible calls the kingdom of the world. And the kingdom of the world, where all of us are born by nature, can be distinguished by at least the following six characteristics, and I will just run them by you very quickly. We are dead to God, Ephesians 2.1, you were dead in your transgression and sins in which you used to live. We are dominated by sin and Satan. You follow the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit that is now at work in those who are disobedient. You have no spiritual understanding. The man without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the spirit of God. They are foolishness to him. If you ever wonder why most people in the world have no interest in Jesus, would much rather sleep in on a Sunday morning than ever come to church, think Jesus is irrelevant. That is why spiritually they're blind, they're deaf, and they're dumb. It doesn't connect with them. That is the natural condition. We're governed by self. That's what the S represents in the small circles. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious. Cruel immorality, impurity, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, and factions. See when you're separated from God, when you are influenced by Satan's wisdom, then you cannot believe that God is there to care for you. You can't even trust other people to truly care for you, so you always have to take matters into your own hand. And the world is characterized by selfish people who place their own needs ahead of everybody else. That is one other characteristic. We live therefore in conflict and tension. I've often said if there's one dollar to go around and there's two of us that want that one dollar, guess who's going to get it? Whoever is the strongest, the most powerful, the most manipulative, that's war in the world. Conflict and confusion arise out of everybody trying to grab limited resources. And so in the world, there are wars and rumors of wars that always get worse and worse and worse until the whole shooting match eventually falls down and falls apart. And then the final one, of course, is the world is destined for wrath. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men. Let me say it again, this is you and me apart from Christ according to God's revelation. Sometimes we have a hard time buying into that. We look at ourselves, we look at other people and we say, "We're all fine and dandy and we're nice and good. Yes, I've got some flaws, but I'm not that bad." No, no, let's get it straight. Apart from the saving work of Jesus, that's who we are. People who are cut off from God, people who live for the here and now and who will do whatever needs to be done, basically speaking, in order to get our needs met and our desires fulfilled. Are you with me? Can you believe it? Can you see yourself in it? If you can't see yourself in it, I'm sure you have all kinds of friends in whose lives you can see this really clearly. We're often the last to see it in our own lives. Well, in contrast to this then stands what? Well, it's the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God can be defined by six opposite characteristics. They are like this in the kingdom of God. We are alive to God because of Jesus. God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. We're freed from the dominion of sin and Satan's sins shall not be your master. You're not under the law. You're under grace. Because we receive the Holy Spirit, we are entitled to understand the spiritual things. We have not received the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we may understand what God has freely given us. In the kingdom of God, because we're joined to Jesus and we're crucified with Him, the Bible says we have died with Christ to self. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and with its desires. Because we are in harmony with God and in harmony with each other, there is shalom. There is peace because I can trust God to take care of me. I can take what I have. I can give it to you. I don't have to worry about running out of things because there's always more with my Father who is in heaven. That's the kingdom of God. And then, of course, in the kingdom of God, we are destined for eternal life. And if in the kingdom of the world we live for the here and now and we're governed by the passions of body and mind and we end up with conflict, pain, and confusion, in the kingdom of God we're looking for the city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God and we are destined to reign forever with Christ at the Father's right hand. Now, that is what the scripture teaches about the kingdom of God. And here's what I want us to understand about this. By the way, we had to go through that very quickly, of course, but what I want us to understand about all of that is this. The only person who ever lived this way, that is the kingdom way, is Jesus. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, didn't share our original sin, had a perfect relationship with God the Father, always obeyed him, loved him with all of his heart, loved his neighbor as he loved himself and has been raised from the dead by God as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, he is heir to all God's kingdom. Only Jesus ever lived that way. And why is that significant? Because it means that only Jesus can bring us from the one circle to the other. Only Jesus can save us. There is no other name given among men under heaven whereby we can be saved. And salvation, as you know, happens not because we go to church all our lives, doesn't happen because we read the Bible or we pray or any of the religious things that are part of the Christian life. No, it happens when by faith we're joined to Jesus. And by faith being joined to Jesus just very quickly has three very distinct steps. It starts, as our Heidelberg Catechism tells us, with an awareness of our sin and misery. That is to say, an eye-opening insight that I am a sinner, I am alienated from God, I cannot get back to him, my goodness is not good enough, I am under his wrath and under his judgment. Now that conviction comes to us in very different ways. For some people it happens because the rug gets pulled out from underneath us and our whole life falls apart and we say to ourselves, "There's got to be more than this." For some of us it's just a gracious, convicting work of the Holy Spirit whereby we begin to see what sin is and how even the best of my deeds are colored by sin and how I cannot save myself. And for some people it just takes the form of this sense of restlessness that Steve was talking about, this sense of, "I've got everything that I ever wanted to get in life. I've got money, I've got a beautiful wife, I've got lovely children, I have a successful career, but why do I feel empty on the inside?" Well that's the convicting work of God's Holy Spirit and God always begins by showing us our sin and our misery. But he never stops there. He goes on, of course, and he shows us that Jesus saves. Jesus came into the world to pay the penalty for all of my sin. He is perfectly righteous before God and He is my way out of this dilemma to be received then, number three, by repentance and faith. Repentance means I stop trusting in my own goodness, I stop thinking that if I climb enough steps, go through enough spiritual hoops, do enough good things that somehow God will be pleased with me, I acknowledge my sinfulness, I acknowledge my misery, I acknowledge that God is justified in every bad thing that ever happens to me or that could ever happen to the world because I have offended Him to the core of my being with my independence, my pride, and my arrogance. And so I bend my knee and I say, "Lord, I deserve your judgment." We call this the sinner's prayer, don't we? I deserve your judgment, I deserve your wrath, but I receive by faith your love for me. I believe that Jesus died for me and because He died for me, I claim forgiveness of sins not only, but I lay hold of His righteousness. And it's at that point, by faith, we move from one kingdom into the other. Listen to how Paul puts it in Colossians chapter one, the verses 13 and 14. I love this passage. He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Theologically, we know this as justification. We are justified by faith, just as if I had never sinned. God looks at me and He sees only the righteousness of Christ. If you've prayed the sinner's prayer, if you've given your heart and your life to Jesus in faith, then God declares you righteous. And in that righteousness, you will never be more righteous than you are when by faith you've been joined to Jesus. It's as good as it gets, but it's not the end of the journey because when we are thusly born again, which is sort of the common terminology that we use, we're still only born as children, as infants, and as babes in the family of God. And the challenge now is to grow up in Christ and become everything that He wants us to be until Christ be formed in us. And I think, Lord willing, next week we'll pick it up then at that point. And I want to leave you with this question. In view of what we've just covered, has there been a time in your life when you knelt at the foot of the cross, and you said, "Lord, I know from a heart position that I am a sinner. I do not know how to save myself. I believe that Jesus died for me, and by faith I receive His forgiveness and His righteousness." Apart from that reality, God will always remain fuzzy. You will never understand spiritual things. And for those of us who have been brought up in the church, there sometimes is the danger of thinking that simply by virtue of what we know, that that automatically makes us the children of God. And a lot of you have heard me tell this story, how in those same years in college and my own life, there came a point where I saw among a number of guys at a men's retreat a spirituality that I knew was lacking in my own life, an enthusiasm for God, a love for God that wasn't present in my own heart. And in conversation with them, they expounded to me more clearly the good news of Jesus and the need for personal repentance and personal faith. And I've told you this story, how one night I knelt at my bed and I said, "Lord, I think I've done this before, but just in case I haven't, this is too important to take a chance on. I acknowledge my sin, I repent, and I surrender my life to You, and I put my hope and my faith and my trust in You." And the bells didn't ring, thunder didn't crash, never felt a thing, but I knew in my spirit that something had changed, I will tell you, because as I said, the grass was greener. Scripture became alive, I had a hunger and a passion for God that I had never had before even though I was already then studying for the ministry, and things came alive in a way that I knew that I knew that I did, that God was my Father and I was His child. Many of you here can testify to that, if that's not your journey or not a part of your life, then would you please make sure, because you cannot grow unless you first are born, and [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:39:24.500; remove through 00:43:00.000] you cannot grow in Christ unless [CUT] you first in Christ are. And so there are plenty of people around here who would be glad to help you, who want to stick around after the service, get some people to pray with you, but let's settle that issue once and for all, because you see, unless your baby is alive when it comes home from the hospital, it'll never grow up into the man or the woman that he or she is intended to be. And my experience is that one of the big issues that we sometimes face in Christian church is that we skip over the essentials, we forget the foundation, and then can't figure out how come we're not growing up in Christ the way that we need to. Open my eyes, Lord, I want to see Jesus, to reach out and touch Him, and say that I love Him. Open my ears, Lord, and help me to listen. Open my eyes, Lord, I want to see Jesus. Create in me, Lord, a heart that can love you, a spirit to serve you, and joyfully praise you. Teach me in ways done, cleanse me with His Son, create in me, Lord, a heart that can love you, cause me to see, Lord, the glory of Jesus, know that He loves me and gave Himself for me, cause me to grow up into His image, cause me to see, [CUT] Lord, the glory of Jesus, [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:43:00.000; resume after this marked segment] open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus, to reach out and touch Him, and say that we love Him, open our ears, Lord, and help us to listen, open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus.