"Love that surpasses knowledge." (Eph 3:19)
I was recently preparing to speak to a small group of believers I didn't know. Their pastor and his wife are friends, but I had never spoken to anyone else in the congregation. As I sought the Lord for His word to those people He asked me a rather probing question, "if this were to be the last sermon you had the chance to preach, what would you want to say?"
What Really Matters
Most of us do not know the day or hour of our departure from this world to the next, but it appears that the apostle Paul believed he knew when his life would come to an end and he set about writing some of the most moving passages of Scripture. The letters to the Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians are full of the heart of a man who wants believers to understand what really matters in the Christian life. Through these epistles he preached what he considered his final words to the church.
Interestingly, the great apostle to the Gentiles didn't focus on the importance of preaching the gospel. Instead his primary emphasis was on the potential of the individual believer to have a deep, personal, intimate relationship with God. He tells them there is nothing to compare with knowing Christ (Phil 3:8), he prays that his readers may know the Lord's unknowable love (Eph 3:19) and he instructs them to set their hearts and minds on heavenly things (Col 3:1-2).
Knowing Love
One line in a song by Pink Floyd says, "hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way." Too many Christians are living that kind of existence because they haven't yet understood that the abundant life which the Lord Jesus describes in John 10:10 is for now. We are meant to be full of joy because of our overwhelming experience of being truly, deeply and fervently loved by the God who is love.
As human beings we express love in a variety of ways. In fact recent studies have shown that different people want to have love shown to them in different ways. There are those who like to be told in words, some prefer to receive gifts, while loving touch is more important to others. Our God expresses His love for us in all these ways. He has given us a book full of words which speak of His love and He has given us the gift of His Son to redeem us. But He also wants to touch us deep in our spirits with a tender and profound love that we can actually feel.
Prayer College Assignment
We all know what it is to love and to be loved. Paul says that he wants believers to know the love of God that is so vast it is unknowable. Our experience of the love of the Lord is meant to be far superior to our experience of any human love. If it isn't, we need to take the words of Eph 3:16-19 and pray them for ourselves until we receive that revelation of divine love.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Friday, May 02, 2008
Joy of Prayer
"You fill me with joy in your presence." Psalm 16:11
Childish Joy
This week I had a somewhat unsettling experience. Later this month I'm scheduled for some routine surgery and will be relying on the rest of the family to take on some of my responsibilities while I recuperate. My 10 year-old son is eager to be helpful and has asked to be taught how to use the washing machine.
Always keen to encourage my children to learn new life skills, I talked him through doing a basic load of laundry which he accomplished successfully. He went straight to his elder brother and told him, "I'm going to do all the laundry while Mom's in hospital." When I reminded him I expected only to be away for one night he looked desperately disappointed. I added quickly that I would still need help for a couple of weeks after that and his face lit up. It's sobering when you realise that your child is more interested in a kitchen appliance than in you.
Are You Really Happy?
Does God sometimes feel like that about the way we pray? Do we come into our prayer time full of our own needs and desires, asking Him for what we want, without making our relationship with Him our top priority? Do we express our love to our heavenly Parent or do we just want the opportunity to ask Him to do things?
Human beings tend to think it's "stuff" which makes us happy. We expect that the bigger house, the new car, the promotion, the relationship, or the holiday will bring us happiness. We see the world running after these things all the time. But Christians do this too.
Look at your own prayer life. How much of it is asking God for things you believe will make you happier? Are your prayers motivated by thoughts that you will be happier when God has healed you, when a family member is saved, or when the church has grown?
Filled With Joy
David said, "you will fill me with joy in your presence." He also said, "apart from you I have no good thing" (Ps 16:2). He had learned the secret of true happiness - being with God. If we are looking for happiness we have to look to the Lord, to seek His face for who He is and not for what He can do for us.
When we do this we begin to understand that joy is not dependent on our circumstances but on the degree of intimacy we have with Jesus. Whatever is going on in our lives we will be able to say with David, "the boundary lines for me have fallen in pleasant places" (Ps 16:6). We will learn, as Paul did, that even in a dungeon it is possible to rejoice because, "the Lord is near" (Phil 4:4-5).
Captive Joy
Paul was in a physical prison. Some of us are kept captive by our past and feel we can never truly have happiness because of what we've suffered at the hands of others. But there is nothing so powerful that it can separate us from the overwhelming love of the Lord Jesus. There is a spiritual dimension to our lives which cannot be constrained by any prison bars, physical or mental. It is possible, in the presence of the Lord Jesus, to find a true joy which takes us beyond our cell and into another world where we can begin to live above our circumstances.
Released to Joy
This week five year-old Felix saw the moon for the first time in his life. With his mother and brother he was rescued from their basement prison under an apparently ordinary house in Austria. We are not surprised to hear that he gazed up into the night sky in complete awe and wonder. This is a powerful illustration of the change we can experience if we take our eyes off the material things that crowd our lives and fix them on Jesus. We too can step into a new world, leaving our prison cells behind us, and discover a joy unimaginable to those whose hearts are set on finding happiness in "stuff".
Prayer College Assignment
David said, "I have set the Lord always before me" (Ps 16:8). Think about your own prayer life. To what extent are you waiting for answers to prayer to make you happy? Or do you know the joy of simply gazing on Jesus? If you want to be happy, do as David did and make the Lord your priority.
Childish Joy
This week I had a somewhat unsettling experience. Later this month I'm scheduled for some routine surgery and will be relying on the rest of the family to take on some of my responsibilities while I recuperate. My 10 year-old son is eager to be helpful and has asked to be taught how to use the washing machine.
Always keen to encourage my children to learn new life skills, I talked him through doing a basic load of laundry which he accomplished successfully. He went straight to his elder brother and told him, "I'm going to do all the laundry while Mom's in hospital." When I reminded him I expected only to be away for one night he looked desperately disappointed. I added quickly that I would still need help for a couple of weeks after that and his face lit up. It's sobering when you realise that your child is more interested in a kitchen appliance than in you.
Are You Really Happy?
Does God sometimes feel like that about the way we pray? Do we come into our prayer time full of our own needs and desires, asking Him for what we want, without making our relationship with Him our top priority? Do we express our love to our heavenly Parent or do we just want the opportunity to ask Him to do things?
Human beings tend to think it's "stuff" which makes us happy. We expect that the bigger house, the new car, the promotion, the relationship, or the holiday will bring us happiness. We see the world running after these things all the time. But Christians do this too.
Look at your own prayer life. How much of it is asking God for things you believe will make you happier? Are your prayers motivated by thoughts that you will be happier when God has healed you, when a family member is saved, or when the church has grown?
Filled With Joy
David said, "you will fill me with joy in your presence." He also said, "apart from you I have no good thing" (Ps 16:2). He had learned the secret of true happiness - being with God. If we are looking for happiness we have to look to the Lord, to seek His face for who He is and not for what He can do for us.
When we do this we begin to understand that joy is not dependent on our circumstances but on the degree of intimacy we have with Jesus. Whatever is going on in our lives we will be able to say with David, "the boundary lines for me have fallen in pleasant places" (Ps 16:6). We will learn, as Paul did, that even in a dungeon it is possible to rejoice because, "the Lord is near" (Phil 4:4-5).
Captive Joy
Paul was in a physical prison. Some of us are kept captive by our past and feel we can never truly have happiness because of what we've suffered at the hands of others. But there is nothing so powerful that it can separate us from the overwhelming love of the Lord Jesus. There is a spiritual dimension to our lives which cannot be constrained by any prison bars, physical or mental. It is possible, in the presence of the Lord Jesus, to find a true joy which takes us beyond our cell and into another world where we can begin to live above our circumstances.
Released to Joy
This week five year-old Felix saw the moon for the first time in his life. With his mother and brother he was rescued from their basement prison under an apparently ordinary house in Austria. We are not surprised to hear that he gazed up into the night sky in complete awe and wonder. This is a powerful illustration of the change we can experience if we take our eyes off the material things that crowd our lives and fix them on Jesus. We too can step into a new world, leaving our prison cells behind us, and discover a joy unimaginable to those whose hearts are set on finding happiness in "stuff".
Prayer College Assignment
David said, "I have set the Lord always before me" (Ps 16:8). Think about your own prayer life. To what extent are you waiting for answers to prayer to make you happy? Or do you know the joy of simply gazing on Jesus? If you want to be happy, do as David did and make the Lord your priority.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)