What do you dream about? Think about your life, your family, your
friends, your relationship with God. What do you dream about? What do you desire? What do you pray for? Well, let me tell you what I dream about,
what I desire, what I pray for. It’s this, that I will be the best wife, the best mother, the
best pastor, and the best person that I can possibly be by the grace and Spirit
of God working in me. I
long to be a living example for my son of a person passionately pursuing Jesus
and living for Him. My heart’s
desire is to be used by God in such a way that everyone that I come in contact
with experiences the love and grace of Jesus Christ in a life-transforming
way. I dream of God using me and our
church to somehow turn every heart in this community toward Him, so that every
person in our community desperately seeks after God with a hunger to know Him,
to love Him, and to live for Him alone.
I believe that I am not alone in my dreams. I believe your dreams are similar to
mine. Perhaps some of our dreams have
faded over the years and have been overshadowed by the reality of our
day-to-day lives.
But my question this morning is
this: why aren’t these dreams a reality in my life? In your life?
Before I go any farther, I
need to say this: Not that I am ever in my comfort zone when I am standing
before you, but today I want you to know that I am especially uncomfortable,
only obedient. God has placed on my heart
a very difficult message to hear.
Believe me, I’ve been hearing it and struggling with it through prayer
and study for quite some time now ~ actually for several years. I believe with all my heart that this is what
God wants us to hear today. And even
more so, God wants an earnest response from each and every one of us ~ today! As I see it, there are really only 3 possible
responses: either you get defensive and take offense ~there’s nothing wrong
with me; or you let pride puff you up as you compile a list of those you think
should be listening, or you allow God to begin a mighty work in your heart
today.
Let’s pray. O God, I surrender this time and this message
to You. Please
pour out Your Spirit in power upon us today.
Open our hearts and minds to the receive Your
message for us this morning. Reveal Your truth. Cleanse
our hearts and revive our spirits. In
Jesus name we pray. Amen.
There is a scene in the movie
The Godfather Part III where Michael Corleone, a mafia chief, meets with the
Cardinal. Corleone reports to the
Cardinal that the Archbishop as well as several executives from the
Vatican bank are
involved in a massive case of fraud. At
this, the Cardinal walks over and picks up a stone from a nearby water
fountain. He says, “Look at this stone.
It has been lying in this water for a very long time, but the water has
not penetrated it.” He then takes the
stone and breaks it in half on the side of the fountain. He shows it to Corleone and continues,
“Look. Perfectly dry. The same thing has happened to men in
Europe. For centuries they have been surrounded by
Christianity, but Christ has not penetrated.
Christ doesn’t breathe within them.”
This is the same condition
that had befallen the church in
Laodicea when this letter in our
Scripture was written. Not even a
century after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven the
Christians in
Laodicea were dry.
Christ had not penetrated them. He was not alive in them. Rather, they were lukewarm in their
faith. They professed to be self-made
and self-sufficient ~ in need of nothing.
Yet, according to Jesus they were wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and
naked.
You see, at that time
Laodicea was a very important
city. The most important road in
Asia, the road to the east, ran
straight through
Laodicea. It was
a great banking and financial center, a great clothing manufacturer, and a
great medical center. Yet, Jesus
convicts the church in
Laodicea saying, you have great
material wealth but you are spiritually bankrupt, seek Me
for true riches of faith that will never tarnish or fade. You pride yourself on the beauty of your
clothing yet you are spiritually naked, allow Me to
cloth you with the finest clothing ~ purity of heart and character. You have created salve to heal the eye, yet
you are spiritually blind, allow Me to do what no
salve can do and open your eyes so you can truly see.
It is important to understand
that Jesus was addressing a church.
These people were Christians yet they were lukewarm in their faith and
they were caught up in themselves. They
were full of pride and far from God.
Now, you may be struggling with the same question I have struggled with
and continue to struggle with: How does this relate to me? How can we as individuals and us as the
church, the Body of Chirst, relate to the Christians in
Laodicea?
Consider these questions with
me. Are you lukewarm in the way you live
out your faith? Do your actions, words,
and thoughts turn people away from the Gospel?
Are you full of pride; do you think too highly of yourself? Are you critical and judgmental of
others? Are you selfish and
uncompromising in wanting your own way?
Do you look out for yourself, putting your own personal wants and needs
before the needs of others? Do you worry
about your reputation so that you live in fear of what others might think? Do you wear a mask because you are afraid to
be real, vulnerable, transparent before God and
others? Are you self-righteous with a
holier-than-thou attitude? Are you lazy
and complacent in your relationship with God so that you don’t seek Him
regularly and passionately? Are you more
passionate about sports, shopping, and music than you are about God? Are you uncompassionate and unforgiving with
others? Do you expect to be served
instead of seeking opportunities to serve?
Are you like the stone in the
fountain? You have been exposed to
Christ but He has not yet changed you.
Instead, are you dry inside? Perhaps
you have not let Him penetrate your heart and thus He is not alive within you?
I believe that if we are
honest, we can answer yes to one, two, many, perhaps even all of these
questions. Maybe you are feeling like I
felt after doing a similar self-assessment.
I felt pretty hopeless, worthless, useless. How in the world could God ever do anything
worthwhile with me? What about all my
dreams? How do I get from this wretched,
pitiful, poor, blind, and naked individual that I am to the person that I dream
of being for God, for my family, for the church, for the community? What does God want from me?
I believe He wants three
things and these three things are evident in our Scripture this morning. First, He wants our brokenness ~ that we open
our hearts to Him. Second, He wants our
repentance ~ that we acknowledge our sin and turn from it. And finally, He wants our passion ~ that we
become and remain hot in our relationship with Him.
I. Brokenness ~ Fall on our
knees!
Jesus said, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” When we hear this verse, it is usually in
reference to nonbelievers responding to the knock of Christ on the door of
their hearts to let Him in. To experience the saving grace of Jesus Christ and thus enter into
a relationship with Him as Savior.
Looking at the verse within the context of this letter to the
church of
Laodicea, it seems there must be more
to the knock of Christ on the door of our hearts.
That more is brokenness ~ falling on our knees before God and opening
our hearts to Him in complete surrender.
You see, many of us have opened the door of our hearts and let Christ in
just far enough to say He is in and so we have
entered into a saving relationship with Him.
But we have stopped Him there
and have not given Him free reign, complete control of our hearts. And thus He is still waiting to be invited to
come all the way in to our hearts.
That’s brokenness; that’s
what God wants from us. Psalm 51:17
says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart,
O God, You will not despise.” In Isaiah
57:15, God suggests that He has two places of residency: one is heaven ~ the
high and holy place and the other is in the hearts of
those who are contrite and lowly in spirit.
He lives with the broken to revive their spirit and their heart.
In her book Brokenness,
Nancy Leigh DeMoss says, that brokenness is not an emotion or a feeling; but
rather, it is a decision, an act of the will.
It is coming to the end of ourselves. It is dying to ourselves
and our selfish desires. “True
brokenness is a lifestyle ~ a moment-by-moment lifestyle of agreeing with God
about the true condition of our hearts and lives ~ not as everyone else thinks
it is but as He knows it to be.”
Brokenness is our recognition
that we don’t have it all together. That we can’t live the Christian life on our own. It is crying out to God like the psalmist,
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious
thoughts. See if there is any offensive
way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” It is asking God to open our
eyes and our hearts to see ourselves the way we really are ~ sinful, filthy,
prideful, selfish, stubborn. Brokenness is looking at ourselves against
the holiness of Christ, allowing Him to hold us up to the Light. Allowing Him to shine His
light into every area of our lives ~ especially the dark and shameful areas
that we’ve tried to hide even from God.
It is asking God to show us the stuff in us that we don’t see, the stuff
we can’t see because we are blind to it, numb to it. It is our longing to be holy as Christ is
holy yet knowing it is utterly impossible apart from God doing a supernatural
work in us. Brokenness is humbling
ourselves before God, and acknowledging that we are nothing without Him. That even our most righteous deeds are like
filthy rags in His sight (Isaiah 64:6).
It is saying of Jesus, “He must become greater; I must become less,”
(John
3:30).
I remember when God first
started breaking me, how much it hurt to see my sin. I mean to really see my sin against His
holiness. I began to realize how utterly
worthless and useless I was in my sin and ugliness of heart.
Why go through that? Why go through such pain? What’s the point? Because only through our brokenness can we
begin to experience true intimacy with God.
It is because of our brokenness that God is able to draw near to
us. He doesn’t leave us a broken mess;
He draws near. And in our brokenness we
find peace and hope for a new life in Him. But before we can rise up
to that new life, we’ve still got more lowering to do.
II. Repentance ~ Fall on our faces!
When we fall on our knees in brokenness and see the true condition
of our heart it leads to repentance.
After Jesus confronted the church in
Laodicea with the true condition of
their hearts He commanded them: “Be earnest and repent!” Repent means to turn ~ to turn away from our
sin and turn towards God. It is seeing
our sin the way God sees it and hating our sin the way that He hates it! Repentance is more than simply confessing our
sins. Repentance signifies a change of
heart. When we repent of a sin it
doesn’t necessarily mean that it instantly disappears but it does mean that our
attitude toward that sin completely changes.
Instead of overlooking it, trying to cover it up, rationalize it,
justify it, or compare it to the much more offensive sin of someone
else, we acknowledge it for what it is ~ sin: an offense against God. We hate it, we run from it, and we determine
by the grace of God to eliminate it from our lives.
If brokenness is falling on
our knees in recognition of our sins, then repentance is falling on our faces
in confession of our sins. It is crying
out to God for forgiveness, for cleansing, for healing. It is emptying ourselves
of all that stands in the way of our relationship with God, everything that
keeps us away from Him. Our pride, our guilt, our shame, our unforgiveness, our
self-righteousness, our complacency, our self-sufficiency, our desire for
approval, our deceit, our self-serving attitude. Repentance is nailing everything ~ all our
ugliness, all our baggage to the cross and leaving it there. It’s letting go of the things that haunt us. Letting go of the things we cling to so that
we can cling to God. It is crying out to
God with the psalmist, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love; according to Your great compassion blot
out my transgressions. Wash away all my
iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within
me,” (Psalm 51:1,2,10).
When we fall on our faces
before God, He can do a mighty work in us.
In Ezekiel 36:25-27, God tells us what He will do when we come to Him in
true repentance. “I will sprinkle clean
water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your
impurities and from all your idols. I
will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you
your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you.”
Remember the stone in the
fountain? Dry on the inside? Impenetrable? God promises that when we come to Him in
brokenness and repentance, He will remove our hard, dry, unreceptive,
impenetrable heart and replace it with a soft, pliable, responsive, willing
heart.
Just as brokenness is a
lifestyle, repentance is a lifestyle as well.
Brokenness and repentance go hand-in-hand, like a hamburger and French
fries. If we remain broken before God He
will continue to work on us, and reveal the areas in which He is working. As He reveals those areas we must repent ~
turn from our sin and turn back to Him.
III. Passion ~ Get fired up!
Not only does God want our brokenness and our repentance, He also
wants our passion. He wants us to get
fired up about Him!
In our Scripture this
morning, Jesus harshly rebuked the Laodiceans because of their lack of
passion. They were lukewarm in their
faith. Jesus said, “I know your deeds,
that you are neither cold nor hot. I
wish you were either one or the other!
So, because you are lukewarm ~ neither hot nor cold ~ I am about to spit
you out of my mouth.”
We may think, hey lukewarm is
better than nothing, at least I’m not cold. At least I’m not one of those people who has no faith at all.
But Jesus says ~ wrong! When we
are lukewarm in the way we live our faith it is more offensive to Him than
having no faith at all. Why? Because, when we live for Christ
half-heartedly, when we are lukewarm, we misrepresent Christ to a world
demanding proof that Jesus is someone worth following, worth trusting, worth
believing in. How many people have you
encountered who think Jesus and His church are irrelevant? That the church is full of hypocrites? It is because when the average nonbeliever
looks at the average lukewarm believer he sees very little that indicates the
God we worship makes a significant difference in our lives. In fact, Robert Lewis states in his book The
Church of Irresistible Influence, “In a recent poll, conducted by a
sociologist and research expert, the lifestyles of Christians and
non-Christians were compared, using 131 different measures of attitudes,
behaviors, values, and beliefs. His
conclusion: ‘In the aspects of lifestyle where Christians can have their
greatest impact on the lives of non-Christians, there are no visible
differences between the two segments.’”
Another scholar summed it up this way: “Our gospel is cancelled by the
way we live.”
When we are lukewarm, our
hearts are like the stone in the fountain.
Dry, impenetrable. Our passion for Christ is gone. When we are lukewarm, it’s because we haven’t
really opened the door of our heart so that Christ can come all the way
in. When we are lukewarm, we are blind
to the true condition of our hearts and even to our sin.
But when we humble ourselves
in true brokenness and turn to God in true repentance, God can do a mighty
work. When we fall on our knees and on
our faces before God, He has compassion on us.
He forgives us. He purifies
us. He gives us a clean, pliable
heart. He lifts us up. Just like any good father lifts up his child
when he falls down before him. James
4:10 says, “Humble yourself
before the Lord, and He will lift you up.”
He restores us to Himself. He
revives our hearts. He fills us with His
Spirit. He restores our passion for Him.
Remember those dreams we
talked about earlier? God wants those
dreams to become reality in our lives even more than we do. When we live a lifestyle of brokenness,
repentance, and passion, God can work in and through us to fulfill those dreams
and more ~ immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians
3:20)!
When I re-dedicated my life
to God in 1997, I said this to Him: “God, if there is more to you than I am
currently experiencing then I want it otherwise I give up.” The cry of my heart became: “I want to know You, to really
know You. I want to experience You, all of
You.” Since then I have been on my knees
and on my face a lot pursuing a lifestyle of brokenness, repentance, and
passion. Truly, there is nothing I want
more in this world than to know God intimately and to be used by Him for His
glory. That means allowing God to break
me, to purify me, and to put His passion inside of me. At my request, God has opened my eyes to the
true condition of my heart. I confess
that it has been a very painful experience, but one that I would not trade for
anything else in this world. At times, I
wish I wasn’t able to see so clearly all my sins and shortcomings. They are painful reminders of how far I am
from being the wife, mother, pastor, and person that I long to be. But as I allow God to change me; as I become
less and He becomes more, I see myself slowly becoming a more loving wife, a
more patient mother, a more passionate pastor, and a more selfless person. Not that I by any means think I have
arrived. I have so much farther to go;
God has so much more work to do in me.
Sometimes I just feel like giving up.
Yet, I want you to know this: every tear has been worth it and every
victory, no matter how seemingly insignificant transforms me more into the
image of Christ and brings my dreams closer to reality.
And so I ask you this
morning…Do you want to be broken? Are
you ready to repent? Are you passionate
for God? Do you want to be desperate for
Him? It starts by falling on your knees
in brokenness before Him and then falling on your face in true repentance. Ask Him to break you and to make you
desperate for Him. Allow Him to show you
the true condition of your heart.
Surrender your life to Him. Own
your sin. Confess it. Turn away from it and nail it all to the
cross. Acknowledge your unworthiness in
the light of His holiness. Empty
yourself out so He can fill you up.
Get real before God and pour your heart out to Him. Hold nothing back. Let Him break you. Let Him cleanse you. Let Him heal you. Let Him hold you. Let Him restore you. Let Him fill your heart with His Spirit. Let Him stir in you a passion, a desperation for Him.
Let Him begin a great work in you today!
I’d like to close by sharing these words with you from a song by
Trevor Morgan called Move in Me.
I’m not feeling
anything
My body’s numb
from my heart down
I need what only
you can bring
Cause nothing
else can turn me back around
And it’s more
than I can bear
Turn the pages of
my mind
I’m not sure what
you’ll find
But I need you to
move in me
Shoot your
healing through my veins
Strip away the
old remains
I need you to move in me
I don’t like what
I’ve become
And I don’t
recognize the man they see
It’s gotten
easier to run
Than to take a look
inside of me
But it’s more
than I can bear
Give me peace
that passes everything
Give me joy I
can’t explain
Fill me with a
love that never fades
And gently call
my name
I need you to
move in me
Move in me
I’d like to give you and
opportunity to respond to God this morning.
The altar is open and this time is for you and Him. He wants your brokenness, your repentance,
your passion. Fall on your knees, fall on your face before Him this morning. Give God your heart and allow Him to move in
you, to begin a great work in you today!