Quote from Forum Archives on April 15, 2002, 3:04 pm

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

RENEWAL AS A WAY OF LIFE #1/8
THE GOD-CENTERED LIFE
April 14, 2002

TEXT: Ephesians 1:15-23

Randy Reid. You probably don’t know him. I don’t either, but I know a
story about him. A 34-year-old welder, Randy was working near the top of
a newly constructed water tower outside Chicago when he slipped and fell
110 feet to the ground below. Barely missing rocks and debris, he landed
on a six-foot, soft pile of dirt near the base of the tower. Within
minutes rescue workers responded to the 9-1-1 call made by Randy’s
panicked co-workers, who had watched him plummet to the ground.
Amazingly, a bruised lung was the only injury the shaken welder
sustained. Can you believe it? Ironically, as he was being carried to the
ambulance on a stretcher - a mere three feet off the pavement - he looked
into the faces of the paramedics and nervously pleaded, “Please don’t
drop me!”
Can you imagine? A guy falls eleven stories to the ground and lives, only
to be almost paranoid about a stretcher ride barely three feet off the
ground? Had the near fatal fall deprived him of rational perspective?
Where was his trust in the ability of the professionally trained
paramedics? There is no way they would be careless with their grateful
client. Yet, here was a man who felt it difficult to trust his
caregivers. (Greg Asimakoupoulos, Promises Worth Keeping Implementation
Manual, Wheaton: Mainstay Church Resources, 1999, p. C255)
On second thought, though, do we realize how often we resemble Randy
Reid? How often do we find ourselves questioning God’s ability to carry
us and care for us? How often do we set aside the promises and provisions
that God has laid out for us simply because we are afraid of being
dropped a couple of feet off the ground when in reality, God has already
kept us from falling hundreds of feet? This is what we have learned as
Christians, isn’t it?
Having just completed our sixth 50-Day Spiritual Adventure, it is fresh
on my mind that the purpose of each Adventure is spiritual revival and
renewal. Each Adventure offers participants the opportunity to develop
the habits of specific spiritual disciplines such as prayer, Bible study,
reflection and meditation, evangelism and ministry outreach. The
development of all of these spiritual disciplines are supposed to be
ongoing. That is, they do not disappear after the Adventure comes to a
chronological end. I have chosen, therefore, to begin a series of
messages called “Renewal as a Way of Life.”
In order to experience Christian renewal as a way of life, we must start
with God - the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Very early in his letter to
the Ephesians, Paul makes it clear that knowing God is a priority. In
fact, he makes it a prayer request! From the version by Eugene Peterson I
read earlier, Paul writes, “…I couldn’t stop thanking God for you - every
time I prayed, I’d think of you and give thanks. But I do more than
thank. I ask - ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory
- to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your
eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is
calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he
has for Christians, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who
trust him - endless energy, boundless strength!” (1:15-19)
So, when was the last time you offered a prayer like that? The point that
Paul makes here, and every disciple of Christ since the cross and
resurrection, is that spiritual renewal can take place in our lives only
when we place God at the center of our lives. For almost every American
who calls themselves born again, I suspect that they believe that they do
just this very thing - place God in the center of their lives. However,
many who study the dynamics of churches, revival, and spiritual growth in
America offer other observations. Chuck Colson, in his second book Life
Sentence, has written, “I feel that too many evangelicals have become
unwitting victims of the societal trademark they so vehemently decry, the
‘me generation.’ It seems they get so wrapped up in this and that course,
and that method, tape series, etc., on how to be a better Christian that
it becomes the end rather than the means. Their concern seems mostly to
center around self, although they hope that their spiritual growth will
automatically osmose into those around them.”
In contrast to this, the goal of authentic spirituality is a life that
escapes from the closed circle of spiritual self-indulgence, or even
self-improvement, to become absorbed in the love of God and other
persons. The essence of spiritual renewal is found in Romans 5:5, where
Paul writes concerning peace with God: “And hope does not disappoint us,
because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit,
whom he has given us.” “Feeling good about yourself” may be a popular
goal of modern psychology, but for Biblical religion it is, at best, a
way station on the road to knowing God and, at worst, a deceptive trap.
Only by fixing our attention on God can we accurately know ourselves -
both the graces he has given us and the depth of our needs. If we compare
our lives with those of other human beings, it may be easy for us to say,
“I’m O.K.” But if we measure our goodness by the holiness of God, it is
another story.
But measuring our goodness by the holiness of God is exactly where we
must grow to if we hope to experience renewal as a way of life. I was
tempted to say that this is where we must start, but in reality, very few
are able to start there. Nevertheless, we can all grow to the awareness
of God’s holiness in our spiritual journey if we do not block God from
becoming our center. Encountering the Biblical God can be a deeply
unsettling experience because God always wants more for us and more from
us than we are usually willing to receive and give. C. S. Lewis once
remarked that “we may have come to Christ for what seems a toothache, but
find ourselves being wheeled into the operating room for major surgery!”
(quoted by Robert C. Morris, “Riding the Wild Ox,” Weavings, vol. XVI no.
4, Nashville: Upper Room Press, 2001, p. 7)
In the book from which I take my series title, Renewal as a Way of Life,
Richard Lovelace writes, “Awareness of God’s holiness and the depth of
our sin is the precondition of personal renewal… The spiritual goal of
the Old Testament is… called ‘the fear of God.’… Faith in Jesus that is
not built on the fear of God, upon a deep hunger and thirst after
righteousness, is shallow and fruitless. The shallowness of many people
who are ‘saved’ may be due to the fact that they have never known
themselves to be lost. Christian spirituality is not complete unless it
incorporates the essence of Jewish spirituality… God’s holiness is his
differentness, for the word holy means ‘separate or distinct.’ God is
different from all created beings. We may ask of anything else in reality
why it exists, but we cannot ask why God exists. He is the reason for all
existence, ‘the ground of being,’ as the philosophers say… Part of the
differentness of God is his nature… All intelligent beings are made to
worship and serve him and find their greatest joy and happiness in loving
him. God’s ‘jealousy’ - his insistence that all other beings must give
him supreme praise and honor - would be egoism in any other person. But
in him it is simply realism and justice, since he is infinitely worthy of
all adoration. All of God’s qualities or attributes are different in the
same mysterious way. God is not beautiful; he is beauty itself, the
fountain from which all beautiful creatures draw their excellence. God is
not loving; he is love. His attributes are the infinite standard against
which all limited perfections are measured.” (Richard F. Lovelace,
Renewal As a Way of Life, Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985,
pp. 20-22)
What does this mean and how does this apply, then, to Christians who
should be actively seeking to live a renewed life daily? It means that as
we nurture “the fear of the Lord,” we recognize daily two of God’s
particularly important qualities which are not always easy to reconcile
side by side: God’s holy justice and God’s holy love.
God makes it clear that He cannot be trifled with and will punish the
guilty. I’m not going to read from it this morning, but I invite you to
reacquaint yourself with God’s mighty, awesome, and powerful holiness
found in Exodus 19. God’s presence at Mt. Sinai was marked by trembling:
the ground trembled, the mountain trembled, and the people most certainly
trembled. They recognized beyond any doubt that if God showed Himself to
them, they would perish. They did not have a chance of survival in the
presence of the righteous God. So, in typical human fashion, they
implored Moses to go meet the Lord. Rather he perish than them. Of
course, Moses was already chosen by the Lord for such a meeting, so he
did survive. God took precautions to ensure that.
In every sense of the word, the Israelites feared the Lord. They were
struck with fear in every encounter with God because they had a very
strong, keen sense of God’s holiness and their unholiness. The Bible
clearly emphasizes the justice of God, His fatherly displeasure with sin,
and His holy anger against the rebellion and cruelty of those who are His
enemies. Those who seek to come to God and live a life of daily renewal
need to recognize clearly what an unsettling experience this is. God is
holy; we are not. God is righteous; we are not. God is judge; we are not.
Daily renewal recognizes how far apart we are from God, and we agonize
over that recognition.
To this point, it sounds like all bad news. In fact, it sounds impossible
to even hope to achieve renewal as a way of life. But without the
recognition of God’s justice, it is impossible to have a God-centered
life. Paradoxically, without the recognition of God’s love, it is
likewise impossible to have a God-centered life. Richard Lovelace
continues: “New Testament spirituality is still based on the fear of the
Lord. Most of us have difficulty nurturing that loving reverence, or
respectful love, which is the fear of God. We have been raised by parents
who have either spoiled or rejected us, or perhaps have done both. We
project their inconsistency and ambivalence on our picture of God. But
God is not an arbitrary and authoritarian parent. Love and justice, mercy
and anger are not struggling in his nature or flowing and erupting
unpredictably. His justice is always controlled and directed by his love…
Even with his enemies, God’s judgment is reluctant. He would have spared
Sodom for the sake of a handful of righteous persons. He delayed the
invasion of Canaan until the iniquity of its inhabitants was full (cf.
Genesis 18:32; 15:16)… The harmony of God’s love and justice is perfectly
symbolized by the death of Jesus on the cross. The crucifixion reveals
the strictness of God’s justice in requiring a propitiation for all our
sins. But it also shows the depth of his love because he himself offers
the required sacrifice… Jesus the Messiah is, as the Puritans understood,
‘the face of God,’ the fullest revelation of his love and justice. As we
focus on this revelation of God’s character, we are spiritually renewed.
God increasingly comes to dominate the center of our consciousness. Our
minds will turn toward him as automatically as the compass needle seeks
the north. We will want our thoughts to be informed by his wisdom until
they approximate the mind of Christ. We will want our emotions to respond
to events as he responds, and our actions to embody his will. This is
normal and renewed spirituality.” (Richard F. Lovelace, Renewal As a Way
of Life, Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985, pp. 26-27)
The type of spiritual renewal that flows from this recognition of God’s
justice and God’s love is the type that places God in the center of our
life: love for God. It is the type of respectful love that comes from the
fear of the Lord, for that is the only kind of love that is serious and
everlasting. When we love God this way, we are not in it for a one night
stand. A person in love with another places that other person in the
center of their life. A person in love rearranges resources of time and
money and even emotions all for the simple purpose of convincing that
other person that he or she really, really cares for him or her.
Our love for God, which is our daily spiritual renewal, is no less than
this. Richard Lovelace makes the simple observation that “much religious
life in the twentieth century seems to lose track of the one who is
supposedly at its center: God.” (Richard F. Lovelace, Renewal As a Way of
Life, Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985, p. 30) Augustine, a
leader in the early Christian Church, has written, “The whole life of a
good Christian is a holy desire”; that is, a desire for God. (Augustine,
Treatise on 1 John IV, 6, cited in Thomas Hand, St. Augustine on Prayer,
Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1963, p. 8). A life not centered on God is
driven by the desire of a displaced love in lesser things. Writing as if
he lived today, Augustine observes, “Many cry to the Lord to avoid losses
or to acquire riches, for the safety of their friends or the security of
their homes, for temporal felicity or worldly distinction, yes, even for
mere physical health which is the sole inheritance of the poor man….
Alas, it is easy to want things from God and not to want God himself; as
though the gift could ever be preferable to the giver.” (Augustine, On
Psalm 76:2, cited in Thomas Hand, St. Augustine on Prayer, Westminster,
MD: Newman Press, 1963, p. 51)
Returning to Randy Reid, the worker who fell from the water tower, do we
not want to be able to trust the ones who come to help us? To know that
we will not be dropped, whether from a hundred feet or three feet? Don’t
we want to be able to live a life of faith, daily, with that kind of
trust in God? It is possible, but only as we commit our lives and our
living to renewal as a daily way of life. “The God-centered life is
spirituality as it is meant to be. It is how we were made to live.”
(Richard F. Lovelace, Renewal As a Way of Life, Downers Grove, IL:
Inter-Varsity Press, 1985, p. 30). As Paul encouraged the Ephesian
Christians, so he encourages us: “I ask - ask the God of our Master,
Jesus Christ, the God of glory - to make you intelligent and discerning
in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can
see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of
this glorious way of life he has for Christians, oh, the utter
extravagance of his work in us who trust him - endless energy, boundless
strength!” (1:15-19)

Rev. Charles A. Layne, pastor, First Baptist Church, Bunker Hill, IN

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