Living In The Reality of Who We Are?
Sermon for June 5, 2005
1. Good Morning! Let’s pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
2. Opening Comments: God wants to remind us this morning to live IN the reality of who we really are for it’s the key to peace and fruitfulness!
Who are we then? Are we only what can be seen right now? Are we completely defined and in some sense incarcerated in what we are now or is God calling us out of this into new and exciting adventures?
You see, I’m convinced that God is calling you and me out of a limited Present into an unlimited Future and the key to accomplishing this is to get us to grasp who we really are and to begin to LIVE IN this reality!
What am I getting at here? Take a moment to reflect upon how you see yourself right now.
Do you feel in some sense “limited” or “captive?” Do you sense deep down in your gut that there are only a limited set of options available to you right now?
Are you perhaps a little or even a lot overwhelmed by your life – by a set of life circumstances that you feel completely captive to?
Do you feel so captive to these that when a dream is presented to you that seems to require of you more than you feel capable of giving - you find yourself frightened and therefore somewhat incapable of being able to respond to it with any sort of enthusiasm?
I’m convinced that our God knows that this is where most of us are right now and He wants to remind us that anything that smacks of bondage is an illusion – a deception, designed to keep us locked within the walls of our own limited visions and our own limited dreams. In other words, God wants to call us out beyond ourselves into the selves He has created us for and into the dreams He has designed us for! Selves that are not defined by themselves or others but by their Creator God!
God wants to draw us beyond the selves that have been defined by the “here and now” into the selves that have been designed for eternity.
3. Abraham: Now Abraham was a good and happy man living in Ur of the Chaldees. He was a man of his times and along came God and said to him:
Gen. 12:1 “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Now imagine you’re Abraham what are you going to say to God? It’s as if God were to come to you right now and say, “Leave your home, your family and get in this space ship and go to a land I will show you!”
Hey, leaving Ur and going into nowhere was like being launched into outer space for Abraham!
But God also said to Abraham, Gen12:2 “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Later on God also promised that Abraham and Sarah would bear a child in their old age and the Bible records that Sarah laughed!
Gen. 18:10 Then the LORD said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. 11 Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
But none of this daunted Abraham. Paul records in our Second reading this morning:
Rom. 4:18 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 19 Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. 20 Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.
Abraham was a faithful man and God is calling us this morning to remember what He can do with faithful people!
All is not what it seems! The world has one dream for us but God has another!
The question is this - whose dream do you want to become a part of?
God is calling us to become His “active and adventuresome” disciples but what does He promise us?
Matt 28:20 And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
John 14:16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Comforter or Counselor to be with you forever—
John 14:26 But the Comforter or Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
Rom. 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Rom. 8:39 . . . neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Lam. 3:22 Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
What are some of your favorite promises from God? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4. Now about me. Now all of this is my preface to what I’m convinced God is saying to me and to you this morning.
Last week I heard about Charlie Cote Jr and his worsening physical condition as his bout with cancer appears to be coming inexorably to an end. Some of us know Charlie. It’s a terribly sad thing to watch such a disease ravish a young life. Well I was awakened at about 3:30pm in the morning and Charlie was on my mind. I sensed God calling me into prayer for him.
As I sat up I was overwhelmed with the impossibility of his condition. I groaned in my spirit – “O Lord, give me faith to believe that You can heal him.”
Minutes passed and I continued to feel this overwhelming sense of hopelessness. My mind then began to wander to other situations in which I was also experiencing this same sense of hopelessness. An all too familiar sense of “darkness” enveloped me and I suddenly realized that I had been living with this sense for some time.
But as I sat there another feeling began to assert itself – it felt like spring rain falling or dry and dusty earth. The familiar smell of new rain encompassed my being. With this came a lightness to my spirit and with that came a thought – “I’m Yours Lord and You are mine and You are in charge of all of this. You’re calling me to pray for healing for change for miracles! You Are! And You are listening to me!”
I felt and continue to feel 5 days later a lightness in my spirit and a new determination to believe and trust in our sovereign God! And a new determination to pray – as I have never prayed before!
But with this also came the conviction that I must work at remembering who I am and whose I am! That I must live In the reality of WHO I AM – I am a friend of God Almighty. Jesus, who is God incarnate, said,
John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
Abraham too was a friend of God:
James 2:23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend.
Well we’re in good company aren’t we?
You and I are friends of God!
How do we live in this reality?
Our lives on earth are unfolding and sometimes we think that we can do a better job of unfolding our lives than God. Abraham himself fell for this a couple of time but in the end he came to entrust Himself completely to God.
I want to close with a story about a rose.
A young, new preacher was walking with an older, more seasoned preacher in the garden one day and feeling a bit insecure about what God had for him to do, he was inquiring of the older preacher. The older preacher walked up to a rosebush and handed the young preacher a rosebud and told him to open it without tearing off any petals.
The young preacher looked in disbelief at the older preacher and was trying to figure out what a rosebud could possibly have to do with his wanting to know the WILL OF GOD for his life and for his ministry. Because of his high respect for the older preacher, he proceeded to TRY to unfold the rose, while keeping every petal intact...It wasn’t long before he realized how it was impossible to do so.
Noticing the younger preacher’s inability to unfold the rosebud while keeping it intact, the older preacher began to tell the following poem...
It is only a tiny rosebud,
A flower of God’s design;
But I cannot unfold the petals
With these clumsy hands of mine.
The secret of unfolding flowers
Is not known to such as I.
GOD opens this flower so sweetly,
When in my hands they fade and die.
If I cannot unfold a rosebud,
This flower of God’s design,
Then how can I think I have wisdom
To unfold this life of mine?
So I’ll trust in Him for His leading
Each moment of every day.
I will look to Him for His guidance
Each step of the pilgrim way.
The pathway that lies before me,
Only my heavenly Father knows.
I’ll trust Him to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose.
...
Can you and I live daily in the sublime understanding that we’re friends of God and that we can trust Him to unfold our lives in whatever way He feels is best for us?
So . . .
Since God really is in charge of His creation!
and, since He has already won the war and Satan is ultimately defeated!
and, since He really is loving and has sent us His Son to show us how much He love s us, and
Since He has chosen you and me as His beloved friends and is calling us to join Him in ushering in His Kingdom!
Then we must join Abraham in his faithfulness to follow God wherever He leads us!
O Lord, teach us to rest, like the rose, in your sovereign hands and trust you to unfold our lives. Amen and Amen!