JR. Forasteros - February 1, 2015
Why God Speaks
When confronted with the possibility that God is speaking to us, many of us are afraid. We’re convinced God’s call on our life is at odds with what we want for ourselves. Others are apathetic – we’re not convinced God is able to achieve the plans God has for us anyway, so what’s the point? We see in the person of Jesus that God is speaking to us to give us true life, to restore us to our true selves and to transform us into agents of healing in the world.
From Series: "Is This On?"
Ask most people if God speaks to them and they'll wonder if you're crazy. Most people think God only speaks to the very religious or the not-quite sane. But what if God is speaking to everyone? What if - because Jesus has come - God's voice is all around us, in our every day lives? How can we hear God's voice? What does God sound like? What is God saying? In this series, we'll learn how to hear the God who is speaking to all of us.
Sermon Manuscript Discussion Guide Guide to Spiritual Practices
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God’s judgment is a scary thing to consider. Anytime a national tragedy strikes, there’re always people ready to claim it’s God judging us. So when 9/11 happened, Katrina or Sandy. The earthquake in Haiti. Or on a more personal level, we often think of the bad things happening in our lives as God punishing us. So if we get an illness or lose a job or something like that, we wonder, Did I do something wrong? Is God judging me?
And to complicate it more, some who experience those tough times, those personal or national tragedies claim they’re blessings. Some claim losing a job or getting cancer or losing a home was the best thing that ever happened to them, that their judgment was a wake-up call and they wouldn’t trade it for a million bucks.
So which is it? Are tough times blessings or judgments?
According to Amos, judgment is blessing. God sending judgment on us can very well be the best thing to happen to us. It makes sense if you remember that judgment in the biblical world was based in the world of the family, not of the courtroom. When God judges us, it’s correction, restoration. The point of God’s judgment is always to bring about repentance and restoration. So in that sense, God’s judgment is blessing.
But what makes the difference for us – whether we experience hard times in our lives as blessing or curse – has to do with our own character.
The question we want to ask ourselves today is, How am I preparing myself for judgment?
My cousin Tanner is a freshman at Ohio State. A couple of weeks ago, he decided to run a marathon there with a couple of his friends. He’s in ROTC, so he’s in pretty good shape – apparently good enough shape that he decided he didn’t need to train at all for the marathon. Then, as if that weren’t enough, he and his friends agreed to ride their bicycles to the race.
Which means they’d also have to bike home. After running 26.2 miles.
When he told his dad his plan, his dad said, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Why don’t you let me meet you at the finish line with my truck. I’ll drive you and the bikes home.
My cousin said, No thanks.
You know how this story ends, right? After the race, he couldn’t even walk for at least half an hour. And then he and his friends had to ride their bikes back home. He said it was one of the worst, most painful experiences of his life.
Now, compare that with many of my other friends who’ve run marathons. Sure, it’s hard. Their bodies hurt afterwards. But they consider it a good experience. Hard, yes. Painful, yes. But good. Why? What’s the difference?
Mostly, it’s the way they prepared themselves. It’s how their internal character was prepared for the external circumstances.
That’s not how we think of judgment. We think that judgment is something that happens OUT THERE, not something contingent on IN HERE. But that’s exactly how Amos tells us to think in chapter 7.
