Being Established - Do We Know God Intimately?



John 17:1-3

Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

What is the pervasive and glaring problem with churches, and more specificity individuals in the churches today, is that they do not know the God of the Universe, the Creator of all things made without hands, personally and intimately, lacking any kind of relationship at all.

 I’m starting a series of post called “Being Established.” In this series, we're going to learn how to be rooted and established in the love of God. More specifically a love relationship with God. So many churches are struggling and declining because as Jesus told in Revelation, “that they have left their first love.” (Rev 2:4-5)

 My prayer is that, by the end, all of us will be more rooted and established in this relationship of God’s love. Truly living the lives that God has intended for us from the beginning of time. But we can’t do this without being examples and products of the image and character of our Lord.

 There was a time that people, even the simplest of peasants, would spend time learning and studying the matters of God. They would take the time to read and consider God’s word, the attributes of God, and apply the commandments to their lives. But in this post-modern culture that we live in today, people are unconcerned with such things. One thing that people, including the church member, is the departmentalizing life, and it has become the norm.

Our work is separate from our homelife, and our homelife is separate from our church life, and we don’t dare mix our church-life with anything. We have become so disconnected in the different parts of our lives that we are naturally uprooted and not stable or established in our lives. Ultimately, we are disconnected from God. Then we wonder why nothing makes sense in our lives, or that we can’t live victorious lives. Churches that are in desperate need of revitalization, regardless weather they admit it or not, has quit doing something somewhere that has caused them to suffer.

Some are going to stop reading now because you are offended that someone would say that about your church but it is true, even if you don’t admit it.

John Chapter 17. Jesus is soon going to be going to the cross to die for our sins, and he's praying here for future believers. He's praying for all the people in the future that would put their faith in him, and here's what he says.

Read verse 3: “Now this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

Why did Jesus come? What's life all about? What's Christianity all about?

Christianity is about more than just heaven and hell. That's a big part of it, but it's broader and bigger and deeper and wider than that. The Christian life is more than not sinning. The Christian life is more than the hereafter, the afterlife. It's also about the here and now. Churches that need revitalized forget this. They turn their attention in on themselves, and literally to hell with everyone else.

 Christians today, are living an existence and not living healthy established lives. Because of the lack of knowledge and the lack of fortitude to acquire it many here are weak, helpless and powerless.

·         You see no fruit in your life.

·         No power is demonstrated in your life.

·         Your prayer life is nonexistent.

·         Your devotional life consists of blurbs from Facebook.

·         And your spiritual guidance is from the talking heads on your favorite cable news channel.

You only believe what your political affiliation tells you as the gospel or the truth to believe.

 There are three main things here in these few verses of scripture that we just read.

 #1 Jesus came to give us eternal life. This begs the question, why did Jesus die on the cross? The usual answer, if you've been in church, is that it was about paying for your sins. Yes, but why do you need your sins to be paid for? Answer: so that you can have eternal life.

 Does this make sense? The whole purpose of Jesus’s arrival, the whole purpose of the cross and the resurrection is so you may have eternal life. Life is what it is. Eternal is the adjective that describes how long it lasts, which means the whole reason that Jesus came, died on the cross, and rose again, is so you could have life.

 Let me correct some of our thinking here. Some of us, because we watch teachers and preachers on TV, have this idea that Jesus came so we could have “stuff.” We think the purpose of this existence is to be happy and to have stuff and to never be sick. Our idea is: “I’ll give God a try. I’ll get in enough points in the right system so I get paid back with an easy life.” (you can not collect enough S&H green stamps to get you to heaven)

 You don’t believe you think this way? Then let me ask you this. Have you ever had something bad happen in your life and you think to yourself, “God, are you kidding me? I've been to church like six weeks in a row.

 There's this idea being propagated that if you give your life to Jesus, that all of the sudden, in this existence, everything is smooth and fine. That's not why Jesus came. Jesus came so you could have real life. Life and life eternal.

#2 Eternal life is, as Jesus defines it in what we read, two words: knowing God. Eternal life is knowing God. This is massive. Jesus taught that eternal life is not about a destination. It's about a relationship. Jesus said: “Now this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” When he says that eternal life is knowing God, he's not talking about knowledge about God. He's talking about knowledge of God.

 Declining churches have forgotten the place of their relationship with God. There’s a massive difference in believing things about God and actually trusting in God. Trusting in God is a relational exchange. Believing things about God is an educational event. Trusting in God is transformational. When Jesus says that he came, died on the cross, rose again, his whole deal was about you having eternal life. Eternal life is knowing God.

 David, the man after God’s own heart, had the supreme desire to know and enjoy God himself, and he valued knowledge about God simply as a means to this end. He wanted to understand God’s truth in order that his heart might respond to it and his life be conformed and transformed to it. Jesus came to offer you a relationship—not just in the hereafter or heaven, but in the here and now. The purpose of life is to know God and walk with God. To know him. The things that you've heard about in the scriptures, whether you're a church person or not, all of it's about knowing God. The greatest thing for David was not when he defeated Goliath. The greatest thing for David was that he knew God.

The greatest thing for Moses was not when the Red Sea parted. The greatest thing for Moses was that he knew God. He had a friendship with God.

The greatest thing for Simon Peter wasn't when he walked on the water, but that he had a relationship with God through his faith in Christ.

For many people who grew up in church, the whole thing was about the afterlife, but that's not actually what the Bible teaches. Churches we must turn our attention back to God and rekindle that relationship of love again.

 Jesus taught that the reason you're breathing right now, the reason that God knit you together in your mother’s womb, was so you can know God, have a relationship with God, and walk with God. When you were growing up, did you ever think that heaven was heaven because you were going to be rich there? You get a mansion and pearly gates and streets of gold. Does this sound familiar? But heaven is heaven not because of the shiny stuff. You know why the streets are made of gold? Because gold is irrelevant.

What makes heaven heaven is that God is there, and we will know Him completely and we will fellowship with Him completely. Listen. And our souls will be satisfied. Heaven is heaven because heaven is about Him. For some of us, we're doing what's right. We're living a good life and really, what we're after, what we're hoping for, is what God will give us. It could be that we're trusting in some outcome, we're trusting in some blessings instead of trusting in Him, the One who actually blesses.

 Life is about God. It's not about getting His stuff. It's about getting Him. If you and I are going to be established in the Christian faith, we've got to start right there. It's the cornerstone of the whole thing, that through my faith in Jesus I have eternal life. Which is what? A relationship with God that never ends.

 #3 Christianity is about having a relationship with God. That is what it's about. It's about relationship. Knowing God and walking with God. Over the next few weeks, we're going to talk about how that works. If you're going to have a relationship with somebody, you've got to learn to talk to them and you've got to learn to listen to them. In fact, next week we're going to talk about how to hear from God and how to communicate with God and we're going to grow and be established in our relationship with Him and in that, be rooted and established in His love.

 There was a time when the subject of God’s attributes was thought so important that it part of every child’s learning in church and all adult members were expected to know. Do you have a love relationship with God or is He just an acquaintance that you bump into on Sundays when you decide to go to church? Do you hear His voice, feel His embrace, or sense His stirring within you? How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.

 A relationship without knowing Him is no relationship at all! You can if you get to know Him.

 I hope you will join us for this important journey.

Pastor Rob Beckett, Shepherdsville First Church of the Nazarene, Shepherdsville Kentucky

“Restoring “the Image of God” to the Broken and Hurting.”