The last time I spoke to you, the topic was the love of God. I used
some verses from the end of Romans 8 which began with, 'Who will separate us
from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?' As part of that exploration into
God's love, I posed two questions. Here's the first. If God loves us like this,
why is life so hard? And, as you may remember, we took a look at an assumption
that lies behind this question. That assumption goes something like this. God
loving us means that life will be comfortable. I showed you how wrong that
assumption is. Then, there was the other question that I posed. If God loves
His people in this way, then how is it that there are those who fall away from
the faith? And I dealt with that also.
You may also remember that I mentioned a third question about God's
love. What do you do when it feels like God has deserted you? I did not answer
that one but left it for you to work on. As I thought about what to preach
today, it seemed that it would be fine with the Spirit for me to take up that
question and to answer it. So, I spent some time thinking about it and praying
for insight. And one thing I concluded was that this question, like the first
one, also has an assumption that needs to be acknowledged and dealt with. This
is the assumption. Talking about God deserting you at some time or other,
assumes that, ordinarily, He doesn't. The question assumes that part of the
normal Christian life is an abiding sense of God, the sense that God is close
by, watching over His own.
I think that you can see how the assumption is built in to our
question. What is the opposite of God deserting someone? It's His being close
to that person, His ongoing comfort and care. If that closeness is not what is
normal, what could it mean for God to desert someone? As I discovered this assumption,
I found it quite interesting. I thought of it as something worth exploring
further.
Now, let me clarify things a bit. When I talk about how part of the
normal Christian life is an abiding sense of God, I'm not talking about how a
Christian should believe that God is close to him. A Christian should believe
that. After all, it's true. It's the Gospel. But what I'm talking about goes
further. It builds on that belief. I'm saying that a Christian who is believing
this part of the Gospel, should, therefore, have the feeling of God's
presence with him or her. So, I'm not talking about a doctrine to think about
and agree with, though that certainly is important. I'm talking about the
feeling that is to result from believing that doctrine, the sense of God being
close.
And please note that I'm also saying that what I've described, having
that feeling, is to be normal for a Christian.
At this point, I'm no longer working on answering that question about
God deserting you. Now, I'm working on the assumption behind that question
which goes like this. The Christian life includes this sense, this feeling, of
the presence of God. That's just a normal part of being a Christian.
What has to happen next is obvious. We need to see if that assumption,
what I've just described, is valid. What
I'm going to do now is show you that it is.
Let's take this in stages. First, consider this from Matthew.
“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a
son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). Matthew
1:23
Once again, we're considering the Immanuel Principle. This is basic.
It's what the Gospel is about. And that's because this is who Jesus is,
Immanuel, God with us. When someone believes the Gospel, he believes in
Immanuel, that God has become someone who is with him, that God is with him to
watch over him, to care for him, to be present with him every step of the way.
This is not something reserved for just a few. It is for every Christian. It is
what it means to be a Christian. It is a part of the normal Christian life.
That was the first stage. But it still leaves a question. Yes, we know
about Immanuel. We know that God is with us. But remember that I said that this
sense of God is more than a doctrine that we believe, something that we think
about. I told you that it is also something that we feel. Is that true?
One way to show you that this is something to feel is by talking about
feeling the opposite of God's presence, feeling alone, feeling deserted. Listen
to some Psalms.
As a deer pants for
flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for
the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? Psalm 42:1–2
How long, O LORD?
Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? Psalm
13:1
My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? Psalm 22:1
In each of these Psalms, we are reading about men who felt, deeply
felt, the lack of God's presence with them. They felt deserted by God. What
they were expressing makes sense only if experiencing His presence, feeling His
presence, was just a normal part of life for them. It wasn't something reserved
for some other, elite group. And it wasn't an occasional experience that comes
and goes. If either of those two possibilities were true, those men would not
have been complaining about the lack of God's presence with them. They would
have accepted their situations as a part of everyday life. Sometimes God feels
close, and sometimes He doesn’t. What are you going to do? They are complaining
because they are missing what they thought of as normal, a sense of God being
close.
That was looking at things from the perspective of the lack of God’s
presence. Now we're going to consider what the experience of God's presence
actually feels like.
What I'm going to do now is talk about one particular way that a
Christian can feel God's presence with him. This is just one way among many.
But I think that it will help you understand what I'm talking about. And it
will show you how this is to be part of everyday living.
I have three Scriptures to show you. These three have something in
common: the peace of God.
Here's the first. Jesus speaks.
Peace I leave with
you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not
your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. John 14:27
Jesus gives us His peace. And that is a choice blessing of the Gospel.
I want to remind you of some details about peace. For one thing, it's
not the same as a truce. In a truce, I'm not shooting at you and you're not
shooting at me. But things are still not good between us. We still don't like
each other. That's a truce. But when there is peace, things really are going
well between you and me.
That's peace as applied to one particular aspect of life: how you are
relating with other people. But a sense of peace is not limited to just how you
are doing with other people. It's also about how you are doing with everything
else. For someone who is experiencing, that is enjoying, the peace that Jesus
gives, life is going well, not just relationships but all of life. That
includes your experience of God, your sense of yourself, how you are dealing
with the various issues of daily living. A person enjoying Jesus' peace can say
that life is good.
And that's the feeling that you get when you have that sense of God's
presence. Life is going well, it feels like it's going well, and it is
that because God is near. That is what the normal Christian life is about, the
peace of God, the gift of Jesus, which touches every area of life. This doesn't
mean that there are no problems confronting you. But it means that you are
dealing with even those problems quite well. The peace of God.
Now, we need more detail so that we can understand this feeling of
peace, this sense of God with us. So, here's another Scripture. It's from
Isaiah, and I can't help but think that it will be familiar to at least some of
you.
You keep him in
perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Isaiah
26:3
This is a description of the person whom God blesses with His
presence. Here are some things I want you to notice. First, peace has gained an
adjective, 'perfect'. There is something to understand when it comes to how the
Hebrew is translated. It doesn't actually have the word 'perfect'. That's a
fine translation, but knowing some further details will help. In this Scripture,
Isaiah repeated the Hebrew word for 'peace'. It's like what the seraphim did
when Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up in the Temple: 'Holy, Holy, Holy.' Repetition
is the Hebrew way of emphasizing something. So, this peace that God grants is
peace, peace. That is, it's the real thing.
Now, connect that to what Jesus said about His peace. The peace that
He gives is not at all like the peace that the world offers. The world does
offer peace. But it is a shallow, fleeting counterfeit. Jesus offers the real
thing. He offers true peace. That's what Isaiah is talking about.
The next thing to notice in this from Isaiah is that two sides of a
coin are being expressed here. This is from the one side of the coin.
You keep him in
perfect peace…
It is God who keeps His people in the experience of His gift of
peace. Please note the stress on grace. Peace is not something that you can
work up. There is no telling yourself, 'I can have peace. All I need to do is
act peaceful. I can do this! I can do this!' There is no grace in that. That
is, once again, trying to save yourself. This time it's being saved from a lack
of peace. No, peace is God's gift to us. It's a gift of grace at the beginning,
and we continue to enjoy it because of grace.
But there is also the other side of the coin. Did you hear it? Listen
again.
You keep him in
perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you…
God gives peace by His grace, and He keeps us enjoying it by His
grace. It is all by grace. But there is something we are called to do, a
condition we are to meet. The mind needs to be stayed on Him.
Now, what does 'stayed' mean? It isn't even a church word. Let's try
another translation. This will help.
You will keep the
mind that is dependent on You in perfect peace…
The condition here has to do with your mind, with how your mind
understands life. The mind of a person who expects to be blessed, acknowledges
his utter dependence on God. His basic thought is that he is completely
powerless in the face of life. He is in great need. So, it's not a matter of
having turned your ankle a bit, and so you need a cane so that you can get from
here to there. No, it's about being so busted up that you're in a complete body
cast, head to toe, and the only things that you can move are your eyelids.
Completely powerless in the face of life. Or to use a church word, this is
humility, a clear understanding of the reality of your weakness. It is in the
awareness of this utter weakness that such a person looks to God and depends on
Him. A mind stayed on God thinks about life in these terms.
And here's the evidence of someone who really does get this. He's
always praying. And he does that because he knows that he doesn't have any
other options to make life work. It's the grace of God guiding him through
life, or it's total ruin. So, he is continually discussing life with the
Father. He's always praying.
Then, there's also this, another element on this side of the coin:
You keep him in
perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
This is always the condition of any promise of God: trust. God is not
obligated to keep any promise to a Christian unless that Christian can honestly
and sincerely say to God, 'I trust You. As I face this situation in my life, I
trust You. I know that You will do whatever is necessary so that this situation
will turn out well'. And, let's face it, there are times when that is awfully
hard. But how can it work to expect God to bless if we aren't trusting Him?
And that leads to this third Scripture that I want you to see. This
will show how trusting God works.
Do not be anxious
about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God.
Philippians 4:6
Paul provides a model for trusting God. He sets up the situation in
terms of being anxious. He could have picked some other sinful response to
life, but he chose anxiety. After setting up the situation, Paul then offers
his counsel. It's as if he were saying, 'You know, you really don't have to be
anxious. You really don't. Next time you're tempted to give in to those fears,
to those anxieties, do this instead. Pray. Ask the Father to deal with whatever
it is that confronts you. Trust Him with that problem.'
That's what trusting God looks like. It's not some generic notion.
It's responding with prayer when confronted by some particular temptation of
unbelief. Trusting God happens in the moment.
Paul, then, describes how the Father will respond to such a prayer, to
such an expression of trust.
And the peace of
God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds
in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7
God will respond to your trust and give you His peace, a gift of His
presence, something that you will feel.
We could also use that promise in Isaiah to describe how this works.
You keep him in
perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
And that brings us back to Jesus' promise.
Peace I leave with
you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not
your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. John 14:27
And all of that is an expression of what the Gospel is about.
“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a
son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). Matthew
1:23
The presence of God is something that you can feel. This is the normal
Christian life.
So, what do you do with all of this? For one thing, you are to believe
it. It's the Gospel. God is with you. That is just a fact. Jesus
actually gives real peace. It's His gift. It's already yours.
The question, though, is whether you are enjoying what is already
yours. Do you have the sense of the presence of God with you? I could have
talked about the blessing of feeling loved or of deep joy, but I talked about
the experience of peace. Do you feel that peace as the evidence of the presence
of God with you? If you do, great. Give thanks for that blessing.
But if not, then there are things for you to do. There is the
condition that Isaiah wrote about: the mind that is stayed on God, trusting
Him. How are you doing at that? Then, there are particular sins that interfere
with the sense of God's peace. We just looked at one: the sin of anxiety. But
Paul was clear on how to deal with the temptation to fall into that or some
other sin. How are you doing at that?
We all have work to do in this. We all falter at times. We all still
sin. But we can be very optimistic. God is with us. The Spirit walks with us
through life, and He has power to bring about change. And while the details will
be different for each of us, the basic plan is the same: repentance and faith.
When the Spirit points out some sin, repent of it and renew your belief in the
Gospel, in the particular part of the Gospel that you weren't believing as you
sinned. As you work at that, there will be progress. And you will grow in your
sense of the presence of God with you, something that will have a dramatic
effect on your life.