What Does God What From Us?

This newsletter came this morning, and I thought it went along nicely to the last post. God is not looking for sacrifice or service; He is after our hearts because He loves us. Enjoy.

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What Does God What From Us?

11/04/2009

The gospel says that we, who are God’s beloved, created a cosmic crisis. It says we, too, were stolen from our True Love and that he launched the greatest campaign in the history of the world to get us back. God created us for intimacy with him. When we turned our back on him he promised to come for us. He sent personal messengers; he used beauty and affliction to recapture our hearts. After all else failed, he conceived the most daring of plans. Under the cover of night he stole into the enemy’s camp incognito, the Ancient of Days disguised as a newborn. The Incarnation, as Phil Yancey reminds us, was a daring raid into enemy territory. The whole world lay under the power of the evil one and we were held in the dungeons of darkness. God risked it all to rescue us. Why? What is it that he sees in us that causes him to act the jealous lover, to lay siege both on the kingdom of darkness and on our own idolatries as if on Troy—not to annihilate, but to win us once again for himself? This fierce intention, this reckless ambition that shoves all conventions aside, willing literally to move heaven and earth—We’ve been offered many explanations.

From one religious camp we’re told that what God wants is obedience, or sacrifice, or adherence to the right doctrines, or morality. Those are the answers offered by conservative churches. The more therapeutic churches suggest that no, God is after our contentment, or happiness, or self-actualization, or something else along those lines. He is concerned about all these things, of course, but they are not his primary concern. What he is after is us—our laughter, our tears, our dreams, our fears, our heart of hearts. Remember his lament in Isaiah, that though his people were performing all their duties, “their hearts are far from me” (29:13 italics added). How few of us truly believe this. We’ve never been wanted for our heart, our truest self, not really, not for long. The thought that God wants our heart seems too good to be true.

(Sacred Romanace , 90-91)

Inching Closer to the Goal

image courtesy of NFL

Many of us missed the Just Walk Across the Room discussion this week. We can discuss if we want to continue with this detour or whether to come back to Sacred Marriage. Please send me an email if you have a preference.

The discussion for this week focused on how many Christians over time pull away from contact with non-Christians. While this metric can be useful, it is not altogether accurate. The assumption behind that thought is that the more non-Christian friends you have is a sign of more spirituality. Or, you can't do the work of ministry if you do not have non-Christians in your life.

Hybel's does a great job of moving you away from the mentality that you need to share the complete gospel presentation to have an effective ministry to non-Christians. But, at least in our conversations on Sunday, the end goal was definitely to get the conversion. You may be patient with getting someone to that point, but that was the end goal.

Isn't salvation the main goal? Before you cry heresy, realize that God cares much more for you than just to get you into heaven. He wants you to be free! Free to experience every spiritual blessing in Christ. People can come to Christ but still be in bondage. The main goal is not salvation but sanctification - or in other words, for you to be conformed into the image of Christ, who you were created to be. There is much rejoicing when people come to Christ because it is the first step in a long journey. It is a celebration, but it is not the finish line.

Therefore when we think of the timeline analogy of people being at any point between negative 10 to zero with zero being salvation point. We not only want to get people to the goal line; we want to take them to Christ over and over again. So no matter who we are with Christians or non-Christians we are to be taking them to Christ and allowing them to have a new touch from Him.

God loves you. He does just want you to work for Him. You are not a pawn or a worker bee. He is looking for people to become His friends. To love Him. To look to Him constantly. To share our hearts with Him. He is wanting a spouse not a slave. Strive to enjoy Him and then desire others to know Him the same way.

Marriage Communication Follow-Up

This video is a follow-up to the previous about listening to your lady. Eventually, you wife will want you to respond to what she said, and these are things you don't say to her. The video is by Tim Hawkins. Enjoy!

Listen to Your Lady

I found this video from Central Church in Las Vegas. It has got a catchy tune and as you can see from the title it is about communication in marriage. Enjoy!

Listen To Your Lady from David Tate.

Walk By Faith

This past week we started the first class on Bill Hybel's Just Walk Across the Room. We looked at Hybel's example of his relationship with his son's soccer coach. The main lessons I took away from the discussion is being open to the leading of the Holy Spirit and trusting Him for the results. We need to be willing to step out in faith but not overstep His leading. It is a tough balance, but intentionally so. If it were easy, we would not depend on God's leading and that is what God desires for us.

I was listening to Jeremy Camp's song, Walk By Faith, which was not intended to be about sharing our faith, but the principles he ascribes to are the ones we can apply to the lesson from this week.

Walk By Faith
Jeremy Camp

Will I believe you when you say
Your hand will guide my every way
Will I receive the words You say
Every moment of every day

Well I will walk by faith
Even when I cannot see
because this broken road
Prepares Your will for me

Help me to rid my endless fears
You've been so faithful for all my years
With the one breath You make me new
Your grace covers all I do

yeah, yeah , yeah, yeah, ya

well I will walk by faith
even when I cannot see
because this broken road
prepares your will for me

Just Walk Across the Room

Tomorrow we will start the discussion on "Just Walk Across the Room" by Bill Hybels. For the next four weeks we will join the rest of the church in looking at this material. I have now had a chance to read the book and am getting excited about this direction.

If I had to summarize the heart of Hybels as expressed in the book, it would be that he loves God and loves people. Although it is book about evangelism, the measure of success is not winning converts but winning relationships. Hybels portrays Jesus' heart for people and meeting them where they are and not just getting them to where you what them to be.

At the same time you get the sense of Hybel's heart for God and wanting everyone to see and experience the fullness of His love for them. This motivates him to look for opportunities to move someone just another step closer to that love.

All disciplines of the Christian faith runthis tension. You do not want to be legalistic by making people DO things. Yet, you know that as they obey God they will experience more fully the love of God for them. Outreach is the same. Philemon verse 6 is great verse that explains this.

Leading our class for the next 4 weeks will be Karan Reavis. She is filled will passion for the Lord which will be contagious as we listen. Below are a three requests I have for these next few weeks.

1. First of all, please come. We are diverging from our normal topics, but this is a chance to trust the leadership that there is something God has for us in this new direction.
2. Please use the time to get to know some of the other people in the church. Our church is filled with saints who love the Lord. These next few weeks will give us a chance to know a few better.
3. Even though we are not talking about parenting, you will be able to make some easy correlations about this topic to raising your children intentionally. Please share any interesting connections with the rest of the class so that we all can learn together.
   

The class will meet whenever the first service gets out in room 227. I am looking forward to see what God has in store in this.

Forgiveness Makes Marriage Work

Source Unknown

Failure in marriage always has at its root, unforgiveness. Ok, I cannot be 100% positive about that since I have no research, but it has got to be close. (forgiveness class notes)

Forgiveness is not easy. It involves dying to yourself. But, we must trust that there is a reward in our obedience. We are not dying to ourself for no reason. We have to trust that God has a plan. He is able to work through all things for the good of those who love Him. If we are forgiving someone out of the obedience to Christ, then He has to have something good in store. We just have to release to God what those good things may be because they may not be what we were hoping for.

Thankfully God wants to help us out in the process. We can go to God and let Him know why we are having a hard to forgiving. We can ask Him for help interpreting the situation. We can allow Him to defend us. Let go and let God.

Forgiveness may not be easy, but it does build our faith. Since we know that it is impossible to please God without faith, we also know that as we build our faith we are pleasing God more. God understands our weaknesses and is more than willing to help us to do the things He asks of us.