Renewing Your Passion For Life IV, A Passion For Reality

I want to encourage you as you come every Sunday, some folks say, oh, I forgot my pen. Well, there are always pens in the back if you need them, but it's helpful if you bring your pen or pencil so that you can keep notes and refer back to the things that God speaks to you. Someone stopped me after the service last week, we were still here at the church, and they said, well, Pastor Jay, how are you going to follow up last week? I mean, it was awesome. I hope you learned to preach as long as Mark did. If you weren't here, it was about nine minutes. I rebuke that. By the way, the message every Sunday, by the way, is on the Internet, and if you happen to miss it, you can download the message and get it up on the Internet. Some people say, well, great, that means I don't have to go now, I can just, you know. But I told them, you know, all that energy, all that excitement, and all that life that we saw up here on the platform, friends, it really is what this whole series is about, which is renewing your passion for life. And I'm a little bit excited about this. I've been excited about this series because I believe that God does not want us to live a humdrum, get by, hope I can make it to the end kind of life, but he wants us to live life, and life to its abundance or fullness, John 10, 10. And so, that's what this series is about. We have made life so complex. We've added so much sophistication. I call it pride, but that's what it is. We've made it all so complex when God wants it to be simple, childlike. In fact, Jesus even said, if you don't receive the kingdom of God in childlike faith, you can't enter into it. And so something of what you saw up here last week is what God says is necessary to fully enjoy what it means to be a member of his kingdom. And try as we might, however, I don't think you can generate that. You see, we can't turn the clock back 20, 30, 40 years. We can't get that physicalness about us. But you know what? God can do something spiritually to renew our passion. His Holy Spirit can touch us and stir in us a desire to be hungry and go hard after God. And that's what I want to talk about just a little while today. A passion for reality. A passion for reality. True passion is a work of the Holy Spirit, not of you, not of your efforts, not of your quiet times. Look what your outline says. I want to give you three foundational biblical truths about this matter of reality. The first point, and you should jot this down, is that nothing is more important in life than relationships. Nothing is more important than relationships. Jesus was approached by someone in his earthly ministry, and he said, what's the most important commandment? And he said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself. I think you better study up on that one. Very important. I mean, if someone says, summarize for me the whole Bible, that's it. It's relationships. Relationships. That's what the Bible really is all about. We were created for relationship with God. Jesus came to restore our relationship with the Father that was lost by sin and to give us the power to love others in relationships. Relationships are far more important than money, success, achievements. Those things are okay. There's nothing wrong with those things. But relationships are far more important than any of those. I went back a few weeks ago for my 30th college reunion. I didn't go back to celebrate my degree, to look at the buildings that have been there for 150 years, to just kind of meditate on all the great memories that I had going to classes. I went back to see my friends and to just see what was up with their lives. Why? Because life is about relationships. Life is really about the people and the God that we've come to know. And I'll tell you what, you can mess up big in every other area, but if you do okay in relationships, your life will be fulfilled. And the opposite is true. You can do great. You can have the billions of a Bill Gates. You can have the preaching skills of a Billy Graham. You can have the power of a Bill Clinton and life still be a failure without love and relationships. Look at your outline. If I have not love, I am... Say the word. Does that penetrate you like it penetrates me? If I have not love, I am nothing. I was stopped short by that verse this week. It's so simple, and yet how many of us are consumed with watching the stock market, dealing with our professional responsibilities, taking care of our kids, and yet it can become just works if we have not love. We have nothing. Now, how do you know if you're doing okay in this matter of loving others? Well, the answer is simple. Does anybody in your life feel loved by you? And you know why that's important? It's because it's opposite of how we're trained. We are pretty much trained to want people to love us. We want to know that we're valued, we're respected, and we're loved. But it should be the other way. We need to see how we're doing in making others feel loved. Why is this a problem? Well, number two, relationships are difficult. Number two. Relationships are difficult because we're all sinners. Not a word we'd like to hear in 1999, but it's true. Look at Ecclesiastes 7.20. There is no one on earth who does what is right all the time and never makes a mistake. Is that true or not? That's certainly true for me. We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We want love. How many of us really want... I mean, I want to have good relationships. Don't you? I want people to like me. I want you to like me. I want my wife to like me. We want relationships. I mean, we write poetry about it. We write music about it. We call Delilah at night and say, Delilah, say something about love for me tonight. Right? But our feeble attempts are so often inadequate and very difficult to sustain, are they not? How many of us who are married have asked this question, what was I thinking? We're so different. I mean, we really have anything in this relationship to build on. I'm going to ask the question. Don't put your hand up because it could be beside your spouse right now. But let me help you a little bit. I've asked that question. I've asked that question this week. Carol's not here to defend the situation. But I said the same thing in the first service. We got into a silly argument over something that we both saw entirely differently. Husbands and wives, you know what I'm talking about? You can't imagine how she doesn't see it your way. And she can't imagine how you see it that way. And what do you call that when you see it and you can't move and she sees it and she can't move? War. That's what you call that. That's war. And it happens. Now, if you're shocked by the fact that, you know, this admission of my struggle, let me just free you up and let you know that I don't think anybody has it right all the time. In fact, if you're out there and you say, you know what? I get along just great. I never have a moment with my spouse when we differ in the least. I get along with all my employees and my employer, my neighbors, my kids, my friends. In fact, my relations are great. Then please come up right now and just take right over and preach the rest of this sermon because I need to learn from you. I don't have it that way. I have found that the Bible is true when it says, look at the next verse, the old sinful nature loves to do evil, which is just opposite from what the Holy Spirit wants. Look at it. And the Spirit gives us desires that are opposite from what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other and your choices are never free from the conflict. Now, how many say that's true for your life? If you're 75, if you're 55 or 35 or 15, your natures are going to war. I wish it could be another way, but it's a consequence of the fall. Things that ought to be a certain way don't seem to go the way we want. We see potential without promises happening. We see the ideal and live in the real. We just yearn for this perfectness that never happens. Some of you idealize this thing of the family. We have made a priority, a focused mission of reaching families and nurturing families because they're the core of this nation. But some of us think that family should be this ideal thing. The James Dobson family comes to dinner and all the kids come with clothes that are clean and hair that's combed and they sit down at this perfectly set table and Mother comes out, nicely dressed and lays the perfectly prepared meal down on the table and serves. And the children say, Thank you, Mother. Thank you, Mother. And then James comes out and says, Welcome to dinner, Father. Sit down and enjoy dinner with us. And they open up the family Bible in the middle of the table and they have wonderful fellowship as they share together the day's events. And the son turns to James and says, Father, I had this theological question to share with you. I was witnessing to an atheist in my class and I was just wondering. And then it just goes on from there and the family helps clean up the dishes and then they gather around the table and join hands and sing Kumbaya. Nobody's family is like that. Don't go there and beat yourself up if your kids naggle each other and you have hassles. Because that's normal. Dobson doesn't even live that way. Normal life is a life where the old nature and the new nature are at war. The question is, who is winning? The root of every problem, number three, here's a tough one, is self-centeredness. Every relational problem is self-centered. Every conflict, every argument, every relational meltdown, self-centeredness. Look at James 4. Do you know where your fights and arguments come from? Does God read our mail or what? Do you know where your fights and arguments come from? They come from selfish desires that war within you. Am I reading anybody's week? Some of you are looking at me like, you know, I don't like what you're saying. It was her fault. You know what, dear one? There's no doubt. There's no doubt that incidents will occur in our lives that don't make sense and don't fit and, you know, other people do hurt us and it's not our fault. But nonetheless, we are responsible for our response. If you want to be able to love difficult people, whether they be friends, employers, husbands, kids, neighbors, whatever, it starts inside of you. Not your girlfriend, not your husband, not your parent, not your child, but you. And it takes a major realignment of your inner motivation. I want to say it again. It takes a major realignment of your inner motivation to understand how things are going to change. One of the problems that's true in many of our lives is that we even do good deeds in a selfish way. A while back, Carol was coming home. It was in the afternoon. I was working on a couple of messages and getting ready for some other material I had to present. I was working at my desk at home and she drives in with this carload of groceries. She sticks her head in the door and says, Honey, can you come and help me bring up the groceries? I was doing the work of God. I was working on messages. I was exegeting the Bible, finding out the meaning of the Greek words and making outlines to prepare messages that will change thousands. And she says, Honey, will you help me bring in the groceries? Being the godly man that I am, I laid aside my work of God and went down and helped her lug up all the groceries and pile them up on the island. And then I went righteously back to my work of God. You know how I felt inside? I felt noble. I mean, I had left the work of God to help my wife do the groceries. What a guy. What was that? It was pride and self-centeredness. That's right. It was nothing more than sin. Now, I kind of embellished it a bit, but in fact, that's what's going on in my head. This was a nuisance. This was an interruption in what really mattered to me. That's what I was saying. And I wasn't thinking about her. I wasn't thinking about the fact that all these groceries piled in there and she would have had to make like eight trips and all that kind of stuff. You see, even in trying to help her, my attitude, my motivation was wrong and I was sinning. Sometimes we can't even be humble without being proud of it. It's just the way we are. Every area of our life is stained with this. This scourge of self-centeredness. Looking out for me. Putting my concerns first. Praying for me. Looking out for what I can do better and how I can feel better and how I can look better and all the rest. You know, not one of you stayed up this week. Listen, not one of you stayed up this week late into the night concerned about my problems. But I bet some of you stayed up late at night concerned about your problem and your life. That stain of self-centeredness is so deep, listen, that what you think about most in all the world is you. Did you know that? You think about you more than anything else in all the world. How do I look? How am I coming across? How do people see me? Am I at my best? What's my image? Am I saying things right? Am I getting the right portfolio? Am I doing the right thing? Am I loved? Am I accepted? Am I affirmed? I was getting my haircut this week and on the mirror, which is a difficult place to look at this point, on the mirror, this little sticky was posted and big black magic marker that said, it's all about me. I was tempted to ask what that was there for but I just couldn't bring myself to do it for fear that the answer would go over my head. But I thought, it's all about me. Even with people you really love, you still think about yourself. If they just see it my way, then they'd get it right. And friends, even though we may present a smooth, sort of, gloss exterior, inside, our hearts are still focused on me. Cleaning up our external behaviors won't get it done. In fact, we're powerless to really change much of our external behaviors unless there's an internal change. Interesting editorial in the Post-Gazette this week, it actually was a letter to the editor, and a person from the city was writing and saying, we need to introduce educational curriculum in our schools that will teach students all about human dignity and how the human being should be considerate and caring for one another and how they have value as people and how they should be true Americans in the way they act. Well, duh. You think they don't know that? They know it up here, they just don't have the power to do it. That's the problem with America. It's not an intellectual problem. It's not a knowledge problem. You can't teach someone how to love somebody else by external behaviors. It takes a heart change. Look at Matthew 15, 18. The things that come out of a man come from the heart. These make him unclean. The wrong things that are sinful, the sinful self does, are clear. Being sexually unfaithful, hating, making trouble, being jealous, being angry, being selfish, making people angry with each other, causing divisions, feeling envy, being drunk, and doing things like these. You say, I didn't do all those. Neither did I, but I did a couple of them. And if you do one of them, you're just affirming what I've been saying all along. You're a sinner, like I am, who needs God to bring about a change. We're living in a nation, friends, that's on its decline. It's on its moral decline, and we're watching it slowly erode around us because we're consumed with it's all about me as a nation. And the key truth of this morning is, if you don't hear nothing else, the primary task of life is learning to be unselfish. I'm going to say that again. You might want to write it down. It's not on your own. The primary task of life is learning how to be unselfish. If you do nothing else, if you can begin to orient yourself around God and others, and not you, you'll make an enormous difference in this life. Well, how do I change? Well, let me tell you one way. I don't know. I'm going to give you a couple of ideas. But one thing I do know about change is this. You don't change by just trying harder. That doesn't work. Come on, people now. Smile on your brother. Everyone get together. Try to love one another right now, as the old song goes. Get on the love train, and let's just give peace a chance. Well, you know what? It didn't work 20 years or 30 years ago when I did this song, and it doesn't work now. People are more selfish now than they've ever been. Human effort always comes up short. So what do you do? Well, you need to take some SOS on your life. That's some surgery on sin. Here they are. Very quickly, number one, turn your outline over. You need to face up to your sinful nature. This is a crucial starting point. In recovery circles, there's this thing called denial. Denial is when you won't admit that you have a problem. You know what the problem is with some of us today is we don't think we have a problem. I'm standing up here and telling you today, I have a problem. I hope you'll have the courage to look clearly at yourself and say, Lord, do I have a problem with this? And one of the things that I think is most deceiving about this, people, some of you who have been Christians 20, 30, 40 years, you don't think you have a problem with this. Oh, I just love the Lord, Pastor Jay. I'm a servant of the Lord. I minister at different places, or I do this, or I'm part of the children's ministry in the first service, and one thing I've discovered, it's interesting, over time, some folks with lots of Bible wisdom, lots of great spiritual experiences, lots of stories to tell, and different things that they've been around and seen. In the end, when you listen to them, it's all about them and their stuff. And when you walk away from those conversations, you don't say, wow, Jesus. You say, wow, them. I'm not sure that's what God wants. I find myself many times saying, Lord, help me to be aware of how often I'm presenting myself and not you. A wonderful prayer to pray is in Psalm 139. This isn't on your outline, but jot it down. 139, 23. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me, and see if there be any wicked way in me. Pray that every day. Pray it many times a day, so God will alert you to things that are getting out of kilter. Number two, face up to the major disappointments in your life. Face up to the major disappointments and what's that have to do with it? An awful lot. Let me tell you why. One of the reasons why people get very obsessed with themselves is because they believe they've been given a bum deal in life. God wasn't fair with me. I didn't get the scholarship. I didn't get to go to college. I didn't marry the person I really should have married. Whatever it is, I didn't get the job. I didn't get the promotion. I got sick. And we get disappointed. Look what Jesus said on your outline. He said, in this world, you will have sweet victory every single day. In this world, you'll have abundant prosperity, unending blessing. Is that what he said? John 16, 33. In this world, you will have trouble. Turn to your neighbor right now and tell him. In this world, you're going to have trouble. Tell him. Oh, I don't even want to hear that. I don't want to hear it. By the way, the Greek word there, I did do a little word study. The Greek word, in the Greek, means affliction, pressure, trouble. In this world, we're going to have some tough, tough times. I love the fact that Jesus knew what the real world was like. In a little bit, we're going to have communion, which demonstrates how much trouble he faced in the real world. We're taught as Christians, you know, I can't, I can't acknowledge that I'm having difficulty. Why not? We all have it. You know, some of us are in denial and we won't face our disappointments, so therefore, we can't be healed of them. Some of you have been disappointed since the day you turned around and walked away from the altar because your marriage never lived up to the expectation that you had. Expectation minus reality equal disappointment. You might want to write that down. E minus R equal D. Expectation minus reality equal disappointment. Some of you never faced the reality of your disappointment about your marriage and it's haunting you. It's a shadow in your life. Some of you have been very disappointed in your children and you would never say that to them, of course, but they didn't make it as an honor student or a great athlete or a wonderful musician or whatever. They didn't make it as a class president or a great achiever than maybe you were and they know you're disappointed in them even though you don't say it. Some of your parents, you have parents that you're, they really let you down. They weren't there for you or they were abusive or neglectful and you have great hurt and disappointment. Some of you have friends that have walked away from you. All of us have circumstances of just plain hurt, but you've got to face them. Two ways you face them, number one, you've got to face them, number one, because if you don't, you will go on believing that someone else can meet your need. This isn't on your outline, but number one, you've got to face your disappointments because you'll realize then that you've been looking to other people to fill the gap that only God can fill. One thing I've discovered in life is when I look to people, as much as I want to love them, as much as I want them to be all that they can be, as much as I might expect of them, they can't be God. They can't always come through. They can't meet my yearning. Only God can do that. You've got to face it and let God be God in your life and not another person. Number two, you need to face your disappointments because it lets you move on. As strange as it may seem, there are scores of people in this service today who are stuck in the past and the disappointments of three, five, ten, twenty years ago. And people, listen, we get comfortable nursing our past hurts. We get comfortable reminding someone who left us or hurt us or said something about us how they messed up our lives and doggone it, I'm going to keep living my life reminding them of that. And all we do is create a prison of our own disappointment. We need to look beyond our pain, look beyond our hurt and understand. You say, well, you know what, Pastor Jay, it's easy for you to say, but you don't know how bad I've been hurt. You don't know what was said about me. You don't know what it felt like when my spouse left. I mean, he ripped me up. You don't know what it was like to be let go after twenty years of being faithful at a job just given a pink slip and out the door. That was my life. I don't know. You know, I do know this. I do know that some of you have been through some things in life that no human being should have to face. Years of abuse, pain, heartache. I don't know what that would be like. But I do know that Jesus knows. I do know that he says that he'll never fail you nor forsake you. And I do know that he says he'll be with you in your suffering. And though he wants to stop your suffering, more than that, he wants to remove from you the power of sin. Don't be stuck in your pain and self-centeredness. Let go, forgive. Listen, here's a word. Release. Everyone say that. Release. Release the pain. Release the disappointment. And you receive, say receive, you receive a new life. Number three, focus on the person and grace of Jesus. You see, it's not enough, it's not enough just to face up to these things. You've got to turn your focus outward. You've got to turn it to the personal grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. When you find out what life is really like and all of its pain and disappointments, you need something more. John 1.16 says, Jesus came full of grace and truth. Don't you look forward to seeing him one day and seeing what a person full of grace and truth looks like eye to eye. John said his face was so brilliant, it was like a sun on a day. How many of you looked up at the sun yesterday and said, oh man, this is unbelievable? Well, the face of Jesus is brighter than that sun, more glorious. That's what John said. And the amazing thing about the grace of God is this. Every time I sin, every time I get caught up in me, every time I make bad decisions that are self-serving and self-centered, the incredible grace of God is that Jesus comes along and says, if you repent of that, I'll forgive that. Isn't that amazing? Five, 10, 30 years later, I still do dumb things and God still forgives. What an amazing God. The secret to loving other people is first of all, looking to Jesus and then resting or relaxing in his love for me, not presumptuously, but with gratitude. My entire mood, everything about me shifts when I look at who he is and take my eyes off of what I'm not. Look what David wrote in Psalm 51. Have mercy on me, oh God. According to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, what are those last four words? Blot out my transgressions. How many of you are glad God blocks them out? He takes white out over your sin. The things that you do that irritate. I know you don't think you're irritating, but you are. How many of you would just agree with that? You are irritating to somebody. Not to me, I think you're wonderful, but somebody thinks you're irritating. And God says, I just blot out your transgressions. Look at the next verse. God in Christ canceled our debt. Let me pause right there. Those are words that I say easily, but don't put your hand up. But how many of you have a pile of debt? You have financial debt. You have a home mortgage. You have credit cards. You have a car loan. You have college loans. You have all this debt. What would it be like if someone walked into your house today at two o'clock and said, I'm going to cancel all of your debt. What would you do? Well, I'd be very reserved and I'd say, well, thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Goodbye. What would you do? If you had serious debt, you'd be what? I mean, you'd be seriously happy. You'd be like these nuts that they have, that they give money away to on the radio. Oh, I just won $100. That's not going to change your life. No. God cancels the debt of your sin. Think about it. It's a staggering truth. All that we couldn't do, he took away and nailed it to the cross. And then those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of the sinful nature of His cross and crucified them there. Deaths will return. We shift our focus to Him. And number four, then we begin to look to heaven. I want to talk about this at length at another time because I think this is a motivation that's lost. We look to the hope of heaven. Number four, we put that up. There we go. Focus on the hope of heaven. What does that mean? Listen. Someone said to me, well, that doesn't seem real to me. I mean, I'm 31 years old. I'm not going to die for another 50 or 60 years. I can't think about heaven now. Let me just say this. How many people would help me by, in a moment, lifting your hand and saying, this life picks up speed as you go and gets increasingly short the older you get? Now, put up your hand if that's been true. Holy cow. All right. Total agreement then. This is the preschool. Eternity is the real thing. This is over in a flash. And if we live life just to acquire and possess and secure and gain prestige and all the rest, we're missing the point of life. Life is to prepare us for eternity, our position in God. And you know, the Bible says in Matthew 25 that specific rewards will be given for all of eternity based on how you do in the preschool. Do well in the preschool. Enjoy it for eternity. I'm going to think that's a pretty good investment. I mean, I'm not a big investment guy. I don't have a lot of investments. But I know this much. If someone said, you know, if for this little period of time I can guarantee you an infinite payout at this level, I think I'd probably put the money in. Well, how much more does God say about our lives? Put your hope in heaven, not just this life. And finally, face up to your sin and your disappointments. Focus on the person of Jesus and hope in heaven. And follow, number five, follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. You see, the Holy Spirit is a day-by-day experience. It's not a once-and-for-all thing. It's not one time I open to the Spirit and, you know, get filled with the Spirit and, you know, move in the gifts and all. It's a day-by-day moment of relationship. The Holy Spirit of God is given to give you the power to break free from the strength of sin in your life. And where we get into trouble, listen carefully, because this is very difficult for some people. You talk about the Holy Spirit and people immediately get like, I mean, that sounds weird. Especially when you do it in the King James and you say, Holy Ghost. Now, that's 100-year-old language or actually 350-year-old language. But the Holy Spirit, this quote helped me a lot. Listen to it. This is by Larry Crabb in his book, Finding God. He says this. The Holy Spirit is neither an impersonal force to be used, like electricity, except you're on the overhead, nor a divine bubble machine that transforms dreary lives into an exciting party. Rather, the Holy Spirit is a person who works in our lives. He is a person every bit as real as our spouses and kids, but a supernatural person who haunts our lives with a strange presence that seems eerie only because, in our dullness, the world we can see seems more real than the one He inhabits. That's true. In other words, we just don't understand His world. Next paragraph. We are given to excesses in opposite directions. This is very true. Either we shy away from the supernatural. Some of you grew up in churches where you never talked about the supernatural. You never talked about the move of God. You never talked about the power of the Spirit. You never talked about the miraculous because, well, I mean, that's weird. We're given to excesses, or we expect its manifestation on demand. We say it, and we say some specific code, and the Spirit falls. And boom, there's the great move of God. Friends, those two excesses are not what the Bible means. Perhaps the balance lies in an eager openness to the Spirit's movement. Get that, eager openness? An anticipation of His presence that listens for the sound of blowing wind, but never shakes the tree to get the leaves moving. May the Spirit of the Lord, may the Spirit of the Lord move in us that way. We don't need to shake Him to get Him to move. We need to just listen, respond to Him, and He'll restore, day by day, our passion for God and our ability to love one another. Would you stand up? Lord Jesus, I thank You for Your very presence here today. I thank You, Lord, for the power of Your life at work in us. Oh God, I thank You that You are near in this moment to everyone whose heart has been softened today to hear Your Word. With heads bowed, please, listen carefully. Just listen to my words. I know in a room this size, with this many people, there are some of you who are not really sure about where you are with God. Maybe you're here for the very first time, maybe you've been coming for several weeks, for months, kind of trying to understand all this, but listen to me. Friend, it all begins by you acknowledging your need for a Savior. In other words, the problem of self-centeredness you're dealing with cannot be fixed by you trying to be a better person. It gets fixed by coming to a supernatural God. And I want to invite you today, if you've never opened to the grace of God in Jesus, to pray a prayer with me. I'm going to lead you in a simple prayer. The Bible says, if you ask with your lips and believe in your heart, then you will be saved. And I'm going to encourage you right now to pray a prayer that invites Jesus Christ to become the Savior of your life. Pray this with me, wherever you are. Say these words. Heavenly Father, I open to you through your Son, Jesus. Say the words to me. And Lord, I ask you to forgive me of my sin and create in me a new hunger for you. Receive me into your family and give me a brand new start. I receive you now. In your name I pray. Amen.