To be the king of understatement, it's been a pretty crazy week. And it light of the craziness that has unfolded, I thought it important to look at some specific portions of the text this week that relate to our identity. We may be inclined to focus on fear or hatred or pride or a need for vengeance disguised at justice when things happen like what happened this week. But our identity is so much more than those emotions; out identity is so much more than a specific geography or nationality or ideology. So today I zero in on verses 27-30:
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”
There are other manuscripts with translations of verse 29 which say, “What the Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.”
We belong to Christ. We belong to God. Jesus is saying, either, “We are so great a treasure to God that he would never, ever let us get snatched away” or he is saying, “There is nothing so powerful, not even death, that can snatch us from our Abba’s hand.” Good news no matter what, don’t you think?
One song writer pens these words:
Save your sermons for someone that's afraid to love.
If you knew what I feel, then you couldn't be so sure.
I'll be right here lying in the hands of God.
I am in love with nothing less.
I am in love with nothing less.
Tear drops of joy runs off my face,
I will rise for someone that's afraid to love.
If you knew what I feel, then you couldn't be so sure.
I'll be right here lying in the hands of God.
What might it mean for us to live out of the confidence and trust that we are in the hands of Christ and cannot be snatched away?
And if you think that’s old knowledge, if you want to say, “Tell me something I don’t know, Chaps,” then I have to wonder if you’ve let that little nugget crawl up inside your heart and really change you the way God wants it to change you.
One author says:
“When I become so sophisticated that ‘Abba’ is old hat, then the Father has been had, Jesus has been tamed, the Spirit has been domesticated, and the Pentecostal fire has been extinguished. Evangelical faith is the antithesis of cozy, comfortable piety. Faith means you want growing intimacy with Jesus Christ. Cost what it may, you want nothing else. The moment I conclude that I can now cope with the awesome love of God, I am dead.”
What might it mean for us to live like we can’t be snatched away from our Daddy’s hands? Maybe it means that we want nothing more than to stay there in his embrace; maybe it means that being in the presence of Jesus gives us more joy than anything else; maybe in means that we want to be in his presence the way an addict wants a fix.
I quit smoking in July of 1996, tossed the better part of a pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes into a trash can at a rest stop in Mendocino County on my way to a new life in Eureka. 1996 is the year I quit smoking. For whatever reason, a few weeks ago, in the year 2013, I felt like it had been less than 24 hours since I quit smoking. I was literally pacing the floor, figuratively climbing the walls of my office. In the years since I gave up smoking, I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.
A few days later, I found myself craving the presence of Christ more than I was craving that cigarette and it was such an awesome feeling. David in the psalms writes about longing for God like a deer longs for streams, and I have experienced that in the area of spiritual thirst from the dry and desert place, probably you have too, but in the midst of plenty there I was yearning to have Jesus with me in every moment, or to be with him in every moment. I wanted to ponder him, more than just in a mystical or contemplative sense, but to find out how I could make him as real to those around me as he was to me in that specific moment.
Maybe you’ve noticed that we have a very particular tradition and liturgy with the children. It involves the Bible and this phrase, “I believe I can be everything it says I can be; I’ll never be the same in Jesus’ name.”
Look at Romans 8:14 and following and I’ll show you why we say this; Paul says, “All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters. You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “Abba, Father.” The same Spirit agrees with our spirit, that we are God’s children. But if we are children, we are also heirs.”
So we have them say, “I believe I can be the adopted Son or Daughter of God.” I believe I can be in the hand of Jesus’ Abba and my Abba, and never, ever be snatched away.
This isn’t just a navel gazing way of life, or a pie in the sky in the sweet by and by understanding of the Gospel. It means something right now, today, and applies every single day. You want the gospel to be relevant? It can’t get any more relevant than our core identity as Abba’s Child.
I may be going out on a limb, but I bet everyone here has made some kind of decision, some sort of mistake, that—even if you don’t explicitly regret it—you would seriously reconsider if you had the chance to do it all over again. Everybody makes mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes impact our lives and the lives of those around us. Depending of the gravity of the impact, we may be inclined to carry the weight of that mistake around with us day after day after day. The worst mistake we could ever make is to be owned by our sins instead of by our Abba.
If you are in a place where you are carrying around the guilt or the shame or the spiritual and emotional burden of having messed up somewhere along the line, please, please forgive yourself. And by forgive yourself, I mean know that nothing can snatch your from the hand of the Shepherd; nothing can snatch you from your Abba’s hand; you are too precious of a treasure, and God is too powerful for anything to stand between you and Him. You are Beloved and you are forgiven, so let it go and let yourself be loved.
I counsel too many people who cannot forgive themselves, or who cannot believe that God will forgive them for this mistake or for that mistake, because that’s what it means to not forgive ourselves. To not forgive yourself means you don’t trust that God forgives you, and if there is one thing my past has taught me it is the Truth that there is nothing, absolutely nothing that God won’t forgive. Or as Paul says, “For I am convinced that (nothing) will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So let me end where I began; with the words of Jesus: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”
No comments:
Post a Comment