Sermon Tone Analysis

/What Can I Expect From God?/

 

As a child of God is there any benefit – anything that I can count on him for in the event of trauma or terminal illness or personal tragedy?

(Is there anything that I can count on him for today?

If there is and if I am living in that vital relationship with Him today then I will find what I need in the rough spots.

What we are really interested in is that He would come good in the times of trouble.

If we don’t hear from Him otherwise it’s mostly OK.  Rarely do I hear people complain that God didn’t show up to speak with them in a given week.

He didn’t show up and spank me when I mistreated my coworker.

He didn’t make me mute when I chewed the Tim Horton’s waitress out. . .

.

It’s really not the idea that we want Him daily for the pleasure of His company but that we don’t like pain and we seem to be convinced that if God loves us He will spare us of pain and misfortune.)

Even the irreligious seem to come to him in these times.

They seem to run to God when all other options are closed and all hope is lost.

He is the last resort and they come to Him as though He has been the most important person in their lives all along.

They are upset and question His existence when He fails to come through in the clutch.

When the answer that they seek is not the answer that they receive, they are angered.

Most people live with a high expectation of God and very little sense of obligation.

q      The Bargain – if you do this for me then I will do this for you.

q      The Challenge – prove yourself to be God

 

q      The Genie – You owe me three wishes because I found the bottle

 

Would God be interested in prolonging your life based on it’s current value to His Kingdom on earth?

Personal understanding of God is related to our efforts to get to know Him not in our attempts to enlist Him to do our will.

Surrender to His will is a prerequisite.

My will must always be subjugated to His own.

The Christian way is different:  harder, and easier.

Christ says "Give me All.

I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work:  I want You.

I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it.

No half-measures are any good.

I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down.

I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out.

Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked -- the whole outfit.

I will give you a new self instead.

In fact, I will give you Myself:  my own will shall become yours."

n      C.

S. Lewis

 

I seek at the beginning to get my heart into such a state that it has no will of its own in regard to a given matter.

90% of the trouble with people is just here.

90% of the difficulties are overcome when our hearts are ready to do the Lord's will, whatever it may be.

When one is truly in this state, it is usually but a little way to the knowledge of what His will is.

n      George Muller

 

The effective prayer of faith comes from a life given up to the will and the love of God.

Not as a result of what I try to be when praying, but because of what I am when I'm not praying, is my prayer answered by God.

 

   -- Andrew Murray in With Christ in the School of Prayer.

Christianity Today, Vol.

36, no.

8.

 

See: Ps 143:10; Jn 7:17; Ro 12:1.

We live long lives with faith in our own healers.

In the days of Jesus ministry, they were old when they lived to be . .

.

Leverage – it seems that when Jesus healed people there were no strings attached.

He met their need without insisting on anything in return.

*/As we need God less we experience him less/*/./

We live in a society that has openly declared and we reinforce it that we barely need God anymore.

We rely on our talent, our ingenuity, our creativity and we have crafted a clever existence where God doesn’t routinely show up when we think he should.

He seems to be present in miraculous ways in societies today that we would see to be less civilized than our own.

The child like faith that characterizes the experience of Christians in third world countries tends to shame our own.

All the time, God wants us to move back to a position of simple trust in Him.

Our experience in the time of crisis is shaped by our experience when there is no crisis.

We will not know God better on the rough sea than we do when it is calm.

He does not change or adjust according to the circumstances of life.

He remains the same.

Get to know Him when there is no trauma or tragedy and then you’ll find His help more readily when you need Him most.

ISA 61:1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,

    because the LORD has anointed me

    to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

    to proclaim freedom for the captives

    and release from darkness for the prisoners

 

LK 5:27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth.

"Follow me," Jesus said to him, [28] and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them.

[30] But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and `sinners'?"

31 */Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

[32] I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."/*  33 They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking."

34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?

[35] But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast."

AC 17:24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.

[25] And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.

[26] From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.

[27] God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

[28] `For in him we live and move and have our being.'

As some of your own poets have said, `We are his offspring.'

Deuteronomy 4:25 After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time--if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the LORD your God and provoking him to anger, [26] I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.

You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed.

[27] The LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the LORD will drive you.

[28] There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.

[29] */But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul./*

[30] When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the LORD your God and obey him.

[31] For the LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your forefathers, which he confirmed to them by oath.

32 Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other.

Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of?

[33] Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived?

[34] Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

35 You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other.

[36] From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you.

On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire.

[37] Because he loved your forefathers and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, [38] to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.

39 Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below.

There is no other.

[40] Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time.

!

I Need Thee Every Hour

 

*/What trials tell us is the worth of our experience.