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Pastor Sam
Chess
Do what he
tells you..
Isaiah 55:6-9 (NIV) Seek the LORD while he may be
found;
call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way
and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will
have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. "For my
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
I. Do what he tells you..
John 2:1-11 On the third day a
wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and
Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the
wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine."
"Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied, "My time has not
yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by
the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty
gallons. Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so
they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to
the master of the banquet." They did so, and the master of the banquet
tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize
where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water
knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, "Everyone brings
out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests
have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now."
I’ve used this illustration, in sermons, before… I’m
so intrigued by Mary’s response. She’s never seen Jesus perform a
miracle before.. This was the first one. Jesus had no track record yet…
for Mary to put her faith in.. Mary just had a gut level faith that
believed that Jesus had all the answers to life’s questions…. Do you
believe that?
Do you believe that Jesus has all the answers to
life’s questions? Do you believe that Jesus has all the answers to your
life questions?
I understand that in this room are people who will
confidently say, yes… of course; yet in the trenches of real life we
do not act like we believe that… How do I know that??? ….. because
I’m one of them.
On the orthodox church up the road is a sign that
says; If Jesus is your co-pilot.. slide over. That’s cute…we
understand the Biblical significance of allowing out Creator God to be
the Lord of our life.
I find, in any church setting, like this, that there
are some who know little, or nothing, of turning the control of their
lives over to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. They’re often the ones who
admit it. They often know they are in charge of their lives and make no
bones about it.
I have found over the years a few in church life who
believe themselves to be entirely under God’s control, yet those around
them looking on wonder if there is any control of God in their lives at
all…. I was cleaning out my files at home and found some hate mail
that myself and the Elders dealt with a few years
ago and the people painted many of us in this church as “bad to the
bone” and painted themselves as “clean as snow” but hopelessly
misunderstood. We told them we would be happy to sit down with them and
listen to all their complaints but when they were finished we wanted to
be able to speak into their lives what we saw in them… they were
horrified that we would even suggest that they had problems when
clearly it was all of us who were so blind.
But the group, that I’m actually talking to today,
which includes me, are those who have truly made a commitment to Jesus
Christ as our Lord and Savior… who have allowed God’s grace to bring
increasing transformation.
But I find that even though I am committed to Christ
in theory, and in fact,…. there are segments of my life that remain
very much under my own control. Oddly, the segments of my life that I
keep under my own control…. are the segments of my life that eventually
seem most out of control.
Isn’t that odd. When you become a Christian you
discover that as you allow God to be Lord over your life He molds your
character into a new you that is far more effective than what the old
you was. Yet many off us, perhaps all of us, find ourselves with inner
doors that we tend to close off to God.
Usually your areas of greatest temptation tend to be
focused around the areas that you have maintained control over.
Sanctification, in the Christian life, is the process of opening up
those inner doors and allowing God to have greater and greater control.
The paradox is; the more areas in our life God
controls… the free-er we become.
The more areas in our life we try to control… the
more we tend to live in bondage.
C.S. Lewis- What matters… what Heaven desires, and
hell fears is precisely that further step… out of our depth… out of our
control!
This inner struggle comes down to that single
sentence of Mary all those years ago. If you want to live a life of
complete commitment to God your marching orders are quite simple:
“Do whatever he tells you to do."
II. Surrender vs. Control
Steve Arterburn and Dr. Linda Mintle wrote a book
called “Lose it for Life” where they (both who used to be overweight)
discuss how weight gain can be so much more than simply eating too
much. It’s not just a function of your physical world, but also your
emotional and spiritual world. According to them, few people gain
weight just because they like the taste and texture of Little Debbies.
Many people’s wrong eating habits are linked to emotional or spiritual
issues that must be healed to “Lose it for Life.”
Arterburn gives seven steps to healing that would
apply to not just to out of control eating but out of control anything.
All of us have weaknesses, they’re just in different
areas.
A thin person can look across the room at a heavy
person and think how out of control they are… but I guarantee you, we
wouldn’t have to look too deep into that person’s life to find other
area’s that are out of control…. It’s the human condition. A.W. Tozer
used to say that God gave each of us some Achilles heal (area of
personal weakness) to keep us from feeling superior to others.
I told you about the lunch I had with another
pastor, one time, who rattled off his great accomplishments… which were
many. I told him what Tozer said and asked him what his Achilles heal
was. He said that as soon as he noticed any deficiency in himself, he
immediately moved to correct it… thus leaving him…well… perfect! I
knew, then, exactly what his Achilles heel was!
C.S. Lewis said in the book, The Great Divorce,
that there is coming a day when every person will have to adopt one of
two postures before God. Joyful surrender or defiant separation….. In
other words we all will draw a line saying:
Thy will be done… or …… My will be done
III. As you wish..
There is no greater expression of love to God than a
freely submitted will- John Ortberg
Gary Moon- At the heart of communion with God is the
whisper…
“as you wish!”
If you struggle with areas of your life that are not
under God’s control the worst response you can have is to demand more
control from yourself. That’s what we tend to do.
Let’s say you have a problem with pornography… you
tell yourself you must stop and will never do it again… and it works,
right?
You have an anger issue and after exploding at
someone you love you declare to yourself that it will never happen
again… so help you…. you!
You have allowed yourself to form an unhealthy
emotional attachment to somebody and you swear it will never happen
again…. But it does, doesn’t it?
How can you fix these nagging weaknesses in
yourself?????
Stop depending on you….Do whatever he tells you to
do."
2 Corinthians 12:7-10 To keep me from becoming
conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was
given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he
said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made
perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about
my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for
Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in
persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
1 Peter 5: 5b-7 All of you, clothe yourselves with
humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives
grace to the humble." Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty
hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him
because he cares for you.
The whole story of the Bible is a story of those who
either yielded control of their lives to God and lived lives of eternal
significance… or those who lived under the illusion of self-control and
sometimes lived with temporal significance, but forfeited eternal
significance.
When we reach the place where we realize that God
alone has the power to change of lives and we relinquish our control to
God, he then is free to release his supernatural power into and through
our lives.
Surrender/Submission to God means:
1) humbling our self-will before the King of the
Universe
2) admitting that all answers to our lives are found
in God
3) releasing our inner struggles to him and his
transformation
4) refusing to slide back into old destructive
patterns, habits, attitudes
5) no longer saying… I can handle this myself
6) submitting to God’s ways even when we don’t
understand them
7) getting past our fears and insecurities and
clinging to God’s grace
I wanted to apply this truth by using the concept of
electricity and those elements that conduct electricity and those the
resist. Both Reva and Adam gave me lots of material of resistors and
conductors which I read. I did find out that Mr. Ohm lost his job and
was harassed for 10 years about his discovery of facts that we now take
for granted.
The reality is that the electrical wires that bring
us these lights don’t generate their own power, they simply deliver,
(or don’t deliver) the power that is generated for them. The same is
true for us. We don’t generate our own power. When we realize that and
simply become a clear channel for God’s power to pour through, we are
able to deliver to the world energy, from the true power source, that
is life changing for all who come in contact with it.
However, so many of us play the role of a resistor.
We have so many of those little round banded orange things (like you
see in the back of your radio when you drop it)…. We are so filled up
with resisters that the original power source never gets through us…
out to the world where it belongs.
That may be a good thing if you are trying to reduce
power coming in the line so it will be just enough to run your radio…..
It is not good in the Christian life.
When I was in construction we used to run long
extension cords to run our power saws and sometimes there was so much
resistance the saw would just hum and not start. Then the motors would
mysteriously burn up. (fortunately they were Craftsman saws and Darel
Rhoades would return them back to Sears an armful at a time)
Is it possible that some of us have so much self/
resistance in our wires that when our motors are turned on; the world
is greeted with just a quiet hum… or worse yet a burned out motor.
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