This is the Getting to Know You, God
class. And this is lesson number five in this brief series - the final
lesson in this particular series. And the title of this lesson is,
The God Who is Able.
I want to go back to the beginning here - just to kind of review a little bit - if you
remember the beginning lesson, the purpose for this particular series was to help
us get a better grip or feeling about God and who He really
is, because there are a lot of misconceptions. People laboring under different types of ideas
which are not quite accurate about God.
And when you do this, you lessen your ability to know who He is. And lessening your ability to
know who God is, lessens the joy and lessens the
satisfaction that you can attain in your
personal faith. So the point was to not just get head
knowledge or religious knowledge - religious rules, theological
ideas or doctrines about God,
but getting to know God from your belly, from your
guts, so that He can be real to you. Knowing God on an emotional
level. Now there's something we have to be careful. We can't
just know God on an emotional level, that can be dangerous. But it
is good to know Him from that level along with
understanding Him from an intellectual level. So we're trying to get a kind of
balance here about our knowledge of God.
So with this in mind let's review some of the aspects of His character and being that we've talked about
in the previous lessons. First of all we said God is a spirit
but He uses male and female, as well as material objects to reveal
Himself to us. We say "He", God, He did this and He did that. But
we understand He's not a male. Because we've read
passages where God is referred to as female. Right?
The most accurate reflection comes in the person of Jesus. We learned that.
We also learned that the best way of knowing Him is to imitate Him. And the
way to imitate Him is to separate ourselves often for
spiritual things like prayer and worship. The service in the name
of God, in the name of Christ. Separate ourselves
to study, and to learn, to read, to meditate on His Word.
If you want to know God you have to go where He is.
And He is in all those things. He is there when you are praying. He is
there at worship. He is there when you are serving. He is
there when you are studying. So if you want to know Him, you want to imitate Him, you have to go
where He is at. And also we have to separate ourselves from the
impurities of this world - impurities of thought, impurities of word and
deed. This is how to get to know God.
Then a couple of weeks ago we studied Psalm 139 and we saw that our relationship
with God is a two way street. He knows us
inside out and He wants us to know Him as well.
So it isn't that our God is a mysterious God -
unwilling to allow himself to be known - high above. Our God wants
to know us personally - does know us personally - but He wants us also to
know Him personally, because therein lies our joy.
Our joy, spiritual joy, is based on the idea that
we know God more and more and more and more and more deeply.
As we grow in Christ, we get to know God. And the knowing of God is what
provokes the joy in us, and the peace in us, and the happiness
in us. And then finally we learned three important things about
God, especially when we're in trouble. So we learned that God is sometimes
silent, but He's never absent.
Just because our prayers, at times, are not answered does not
mean that they're not heard. Just because God doesn't provide us with
a reasonable explanation for the troubles we suffer doesn't mean there
isn't one.
It doesn't mean that one day, at some particular moment we'll understand
why something happened. There's no guarantee of it, but it doesn't
mean that it isn't there.
Let's not mistake God's silence for a lack of love or caring.
Just because God doesn't answer your prayer doesn't mean He doesn't love you.
We also said that when we're in trouble, we need to let God know about the trouble.
Sometimes we need to get the hurt out before we can go on with our lives.
And we understood that God encourages us to pour out our
hearts and souls before Him in order to relieve us of worry and pain.
He doesn't say that He'll answer. The promise is that He'll
listen. And that's very comforting. That He listens.
That He hears what I am saying. That He is aware of my
condition. And then we said that God has His
purposes in life.
In other words, God uses all things good and bad in our lives for His own
purpose. And his own purpose is good. God doesn't throw anything away.
He uses everything. He uses events in our lives but not
always to serve us and not always to serve us now.
We're temporal beings. We live a certain amount of time. There is a beginning and a pretty quick end.
So we want to see things working out in our lives so that we can see the
beginning and the end. But sometimes something begins at one point in our lives and the
ending will only be in another life after we are gone.
Why? Because it's serving God's purpose, not our purpose.
So it's not so much, "God has a plan for my life." I hear people say that all the time, "God has a
plan for my life." It's not so much God has a plan
for my life, but rather, God has His plan and my
life fits into His plan. That's a little more accurate.
And if I give my life to Him, that plan will benefit
me eventually. If not here, in heaven.
if not here and now, somewhere down the line.
Because God may use my life, an event in my life, something - He may
use my ministry, my marriage, my suffering - He may use that,
but He may not use it for me. He may use it in the service of someone else that I
don't even know.
Gutenberg, the inventor of moveable type in the first - we all know, the first Bible was printed on his
press and so on and so forth. And a
small historical fact that not a lot of people know is that Gutenberg eventually
had his presses seized because he couldn't pay for them.
He went bankrupt.
He went to jail. He died in jail.
In debtors prison.
Imagine his thinking - wait a minute, I went into debt to get the printing
thing and I'm the one that printed the first Bible and I'm the one in jail!
God, what's up with that?
And yet, look where we are today. Look how many
millions and millions of Bibles, millions and millions of books
about Jesus, about the faith - the impact
that printing has had on our faith.
Surely, Gutenberg - he did not see
all of this. And certainly from his prison cell,
he couldn't imagine.
Why didn't God free him? Why didn't God let him go? He had done a good thing.
So you see, our life, our suffering doesn't always serve
us. Sometimes it serves someone else further down the line.
And we need to remember that and have faith. That's why we walk by faith not by sight.
So in today's lesson I'd like to add one more final thought about God and His relationship
with us when we're in trouble. And that is, our God
is able. We've said a lot of things about God. He's this, He's that.
He listens. Our God is able.
Do you know why sometimes our prayers are not effective? Why sometimes
we stay in the same fear, the same mess, the same
sin month in and month out. There's a reason for that.
A lot of times we know about God. But we don't believe what we know
about God.
We know all the things. Yeah, i've heard it. I know. People say, "I know
about God. Don't tell me. I grew up in the church.
We know about God but we don't believe the things that we know about God.
There's a big difference.
A good example of this is in the Old Testament, Numbers, chapter 11
where the Israelites were complaining about their diet of mana.
And they longed for the food they had back in Egypt, especially meat.
And so Moses pleads with the Lord, knowing that the Lord can do something.
So if we go to that passage we read in verse 19 and 20.
Numbers 11, 19 and 20. He says, "you will not eat it for just one or two days
you will not eat it for just five, 10, or 20 days. Instead, you will eat it
for a whole month. You will eat it until it comes out of your noses. You will eat it until
you hate it. The Lord is among you but you have turned your back on Him.
You have cried out while He was listening. You have said, "Why did we ever leave
Egypt?" So God tells Moses that He is going to supply them
with meat but not just for one meal. He's going to give it to them every day
for a month. So notice Moses's response in verse
21 and 22. But Moses said to the Lord, "Here I am
among six hundred thousand men on the march and you say "I will give them
meat to eat for a whole month." Would they have enough if flocks and herds were
killed for them? Would they have enough even if all the fish in the ocean were
caught for them? So Moses's response here
demonstrates that he knew God. I mean, he was talking to Him. He
was talking - he knew he was talking to God. And he knew that God was talking to him.
But Moses didn't really believe what he knew about God. Moses acknowledged elsewhere that God was all-
powerful and he worshipped Him as such, but now that God said what
He would do,
Moses doubted. He doubted.
Take a look at God's answer in verse 23. The Lord answered Moses,
"Am I not strong enough? Now you will see whether what I
say will come true for you."
So God turns around and He challenges Moses to believe what
he knew about God.
You've been talking to me, and you believe that I am who I am, and you've seen the miracles and
so on and so forth. Let me show you that I can do what I say I can do.
We spend a lifetime storing up information about Go
We go to Sunday School, Bible
classes, retreats, Bible reading, church attendance. We hear thousands,
thousands literally if you grew up in the church and you're a regular member. I mean regular
in the sense that you attend regularly. You'll hear thousands of
sermons and you'll be in
class - all kinds of classes always about the Bible,
always related to God in some way or another - to Jesus -
all of that stuff. But when trouble comes
we refuse to believe what we have learned about this God that we say we know so well.
And the result is that we pray with knowledge that God hears, but
without the conviction that He can and He will do something.
And the main issue with "He will do something," a lot of times is,
we only count it legitimate if He does what we have ask Him to do for us.
And sometimes miss the things that He does, just because it's not what we wanted.
So God is able,
if we are willing.
Mike Cope, in his book, One Holy Hunger, I've mentioned this book
in other lessons. A lot of this material comes from this wonderful book, One Holy Hunger.
He says that the answer to this dilemma, of knowledge and faith,
is to understand that God is able, if we are willing.
In other words, He provides the power, if we provide the willingness
to believe. And sometimes that belief is like that
father whose son was possessed and being thrown to the ground.
And he said to Jesus, "I believe, but help my disbelief."
He acknowledged he had faith, but it was weak.
The great and wonderful, merciful thing about God is that God -
He'll accept even weak faith. A beginner's faith, a
tentative faith, a step forward. Maybe not ten steps, but one step.
I'll take one step forward.
So God will provide the power, if we provide the willingness to believe.
I'm willing to believe, Lord.
And with every incramement of faith, God reveals another measure of His
power in our lives. That's the problem - we want - it's like,
God you go first.
You go first and you show me. Wasn't that the attitude of the Jews?
Show us a sign, give us something and then we'll believe. Well then, is that belief?
Well, no. That's walking by site. Our whole lives,
our whole Christian lives, the one thing that God is
trying to teach us, is to walk by faith.
It's the only thing. Everything boils down -
I've said to our children, when we talk about issues of faith and issues of
our Christian lives around the dinner table - conversation
kind of tends to go in that direction - I've said to them many times, listen, try to
remember it's always about faith. Stuff that's going on in your life, it's always about faith.
Will I have faith to do this thing? will I have faith to not
do this thing? Will I take a step of faith when I'm not sure? It's always about our
faith, because that's the thing that God is trying to teach us all the time -
to walk by faith.
Paul the Apostle talks about this connection in Ephesians one,
verse 18 and 19. He says, "I pray that you may understand more clearly.
Then you will know the hope God has chosen you to receive. You will know
that what God will give His holy people
is rich and glorious. And you will know God's great power. It can't be
compared with anything else. His power works for us who believe."
It works for us who believe.
That's always the bottom line.
So Paul is saying, the blessings that await those who are Christians -
well, what are the blessings that await those who are Christians? Well, he has described them
previously. The blessings that we're awaiting are resurrection from the
dead, the glorification of our bodies.
Meaning, we get the new body. This body here, this flesh and blood body -
it's designed to exist in this world with air and oxygen. We eat food,
we need water, we need exercise. Our body is designed to exist in this
material dimension. The glorified body is designed
to live in the purely spiritual dimension. Another body is required there.
We see movies - the Martian, or movies about spaceships. What
happens when they leave Earth? They leave this dimension, they go into outer space, they need
a different kind of suit to enable them to exist there. Well, we need a different kind of
suit, a different kind of body in order to exist in the spiritual dimension.
The Bible calls that body - this is the "flesh and blood body". The Bible
calls the body for the spiritual dimension "the glorified body". The glorified body.
So that's another of the things we're anticipating - resurrection,
end of death, the glorified body, and then
exaltation. Resurrection, glorification, and exaltation.
What's the exaltation? Well, we will be with God at the right hand with
Christ. We will participate in the Trinity, in the Godhead.
We become grafted to that in some way.
What we can't even get our brain around that idea.
That is what is awaiting us.
So that's one thing - the blessings that await. But listen to what
else he says. He says, the power that is available to guarantee these
blessings is what? Faith.
We cannot obtain these blessings through good works, through extreme knowledge.
You memorize the bible from beginning
to end. That task, that feat doesn't guarantee
these blessings.
What guarantees these blessings is faith. Why do you think God
is continually training us to believe?
Because faith is the only way to access the things that He's
promised us. That's why.
Note that at the end of verse 19 he says that these
things, these revelations, are made to those who believe.
You get to understand.
You get to see, you get to grasp the
resurrection, the nature of the glorified body. The
experience of that exaltation, you begin to taste that,
begin to see that, begin to understand that through faith.
This is why people who don't believe in God, don't see Him.
He's hidden from them because of disbelief. Have you ever tried to share your faith
with someone who is absolutely clueless about God, doesn't want to know about God?
Is just totally focused in this world and nothing else. And you
begin to share your faith. It's as if the words coming out of your mouth are nonsense even to
yourself. You're going, it's like throwing sand against the wall.
Nothing sticks.
Why?
Because they not only don't believe, they just don't want to believe.
Period.
What is so plain to believers,
escapes their notice. Not believers, but unbelievers, because they
either are ignorant altogether or they refuse to believe what they do know.
They know some stuff about Christmas, this and that, but they don't
believe what they know.
So regardless of the reason why they reject faith, the net result is always the
same - blindness. They don't get it. They just don't get it.
But the opposite is also true. If we're willing to believe
what it is that we know about God. That belief will translate into
greater knowledge. Which will in turn produce greater faith.
Which in turn will produce greater insight, which in turn will - it's like
your faith gets stronger and as your faith gets stronger you begin to know God and understand
these things more deeply, more richly. And because of that, your faith is strengthened. And because your faith
is strengthened you can go deeper and deeper and deeper. There is no end to it.
Now in this world, no end to it is rather discouraging.
But in the knowledge of God, no end to it is actually a wonderful thing. You mean
there's no end to this wonder? There's no end to this Joy? There's no end to how much I can
know, how much I can take in?
I tend to think that glorious body, one of the things about it is that it enables us to be
present, and to begin to take in God without limits.
I've said this to you before, have you ever been "in the spirit"? You're praying or you're
reading or something in it. Oh man, the word is so clear I can
so get it. It's so great. You're praying and it's
marvelous, it's wonderful - in sports I say, you're in the zone.
Well, spiritually you're in the zone and what happens? You've got to go to the bathroom.
Your bladder calls.
Poof! There goes the zone. There goes - or the doorbell rings, or your phone goes off.
The kid comes in and says, "mommy, Johnny hit me." You know what I'm saying? In this physical
body there's just so much we can -
The whole point of monasticism was to try to eliminate all of these
other things so people could focus completely on
meditating and so on and so forth.
So the net result of all of this will be not only a greater knowledge, but the blessings that come with the
greater knowledge of God. And the blessings that come with a greater knowledge of God are
peace, confidence, joy, power, love, hope, all those things.
Now, when we read the Bible and especially those passages where God is doing great things
it seems that He's always doing something, but for somebody else.
And I think our problem is that we sometimes lack the willingness to believe that this
great, all-powerfull, all-knowing God will do something for me. Just little old me.
In order to build both our knowledge and our faith.
I want to share with you two things that God can do, and most especially will
do for you.
For me.
Number one, He can deal with anything you bring Him.
He can deal with anything you bring Him. I tell people -
they come for counseling and so on so forth. If you've been a minister for any length of time,
for me 38 years, that's a long time to do the same thing.
People come into counseling for a particular thing
and they're nervous at the beginning. They're going to share their
lives, their secret lives, their troubled life with someone, well, they know
kind of. How will I react? The preacher, oh my
goodness. I don't want to shock him. And I tell them from the beginning, there's nothing you
can tell me that I have not already heard and seen.
What do you think you can do? You're a pedophile. Been there, seen that, heard that,
know people. You killed somebody? Sure, I've
been in jail talking to you on double murderer. You beat your wife,
you consume porn, you're an alcoholic, you're a druggie, whatever, it doesn't matter.
You can't tell me anything I haven't heard live from somebody else, so go ahead.
I won't be shocked. I won't be disgusted. I won't think ill of you.
Well, God is like this, I mean,
to an nth degree.
He can deal with anything that you bring Him. Your hopes, your fears, your illness,
your failures, your sins, your doubts, your plans, your family, your joy, your activities,
your loneliness - whatever.
Think back over all that you know about God.
Was there ever a person or situation where God did not answer or did not
know how to answer?
So what makes your problem so special?
None of the people God dealt with ever expected Him to answer their prayer
the way that He did. Moses wanted to lead an
insurrection. Right?
I'm your leader. He breaks up a fight, he kills one of the Egyptians.
I'm your leader. I'm ready. I am educated. I've got position. I'm going to be the leader of my
people. My people are down - set my people free. He's ready to go.
What happens? God sends him into the desert for 40 years to tend sheep.
Paul,
he wanted to preach the gospel to the whole world.
Talk about a dynamic guy.
Brilliant, zealous, courageous, fearless.
I'm ready, Lord. I'm going to go to China. No, no, I want you to go West, He says.
West? Sure, the Empire, sure I'm game. Rome, Spain, and
beyond. So what does God do? He puts him in
jail for two years. in a jail for two
years and then even more years after that imprisonment.
That wasn't part of his plan. His plan was, man, I'm going to do it. I'm going to get out there and
preach the gospel. I'm going to do it. I wonder what his thought was when
he was chained?
This summer we went to Switzerland to do a
seminar in French there. We had a little vacation time and we
visited a castle that was a thousand years old.
It was built in like 800 or 900 very - in Europe there are a lot of ancient things and we
visited the dungeons in the castle, underneath.
All rock and stone and everything. And there in the ground was a
spike with a chain on it.
And the guide was telling us this is where such and such a person was chained
for six years. And I mean
talk about damp. And there were just cut- outs in the wall, you know what I'm saying.
The lake was there, Lake Geneva was there.
And six years
chained to a pillar. He didn't die, this guy. Eventually he was freed and did other things.
And I'm thinking this is the kind of thing that Paul suffered. We always think prison - we're thinking
McCalister. We're thinking prison where the guys have a room that is air-conditioned.
They got closed-
circuit TV, they get a radio, they get a bunk bed. I mean, it's not great.
But Paul was chained to a pillar in a dungeon for a
couple of years.
With a bucket in the corner for his business. I mean think about that. This was not
exactly the worldwide evangelism plan that he was thinking about.
And yet while he was in jail, he wrote the prison epistles. While he was in jail, he wrote things down.
Where would we be without First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, First, Second Timothy? Where would be
Titus, without Philemon? Where would we be without the book of Romans?
Where would we be?
So we're not always sure of the way our life works out. But do any of us
doubt that God knew and knows what He's doing? That God
cares or that He's not sure of succeeding in his overall plan?
That's always the problem. It's because His plan is interfering with our plan. So there must
be something wrong.
But even if His method is not our method, His timing not our timing,
Do we doubt His plan is better than our plan?
So let's keep on believing, even when our prayers are not answered in the way we
wanted. And at the time we expect to think about it.
Perhaps what God wants is your faith.
And your continued prayers in the face of insurmountable odds.
And maybe that, in itself, will accomplish His purpose without your knowledge. Have
you ever thought that maybe the only thing he wants to accomplish in your life is to make your faith strong and
your prayer life strong, period? That's it.
So that in the middle of your prayers and the struggle of your faith to remain
strong He just cut your life off right there, boom. But wait a minute God, you're making me die here. I thought
there was going to be an ending over here, where there would be a happy ending in everything.
Like the conclusion after the last commercial of a TV show, they have the last
commercial and then the conclusion. Oh, that's why he shot the guy and he was the
mole, I get it. In the middle of our struggle, in the middle of our fighting
to remain faithful we die. Have
you ever thought the only thing that God was wanting was you to struggle in prayer
and remain faithful? That was
the end game.
In the end it's His will that counts, not ours. Our will counts for
nothing.
So here's what God is able to do. He can deal with anything you bring Him - anything.
Number two, there's only two, He can save you.
You can save you. In baseball the relief pitcher is called the saver.
Right? And when he wins the game, he's got so many saves. The relief pitcher's got so
many saves because he's the one who will try to maintain the lead or hold
on so the batters can score some more runs. If the team
is too far behind, however, they won't bother using their best relief pitcher.
They'll save him for another day.
Well, our God is the ultimate reliever.
We are never too far behind in the game of life for Him to be called in
to win and for us. The only thing that keeps Him out of
play is our refusal to call on Him by faith.
Faith to believe. Not just that He'll play, but faith to
believe that He'll win for us.
But remember He'll win on His terms, not our terms.
I want to be healthy all my life, and have everything go okay,
and then be 95 years old - healthy 95 years old - then go to sleep
in my nice comfortable bed, and then wake up and be in heaven. That's pretty much the way. Right?
Isn't that what we want? I want to be 95 and healthy, go to sleep, die, and wake
up in heaven and that's it. That's my scenario. That's what I want.
Is that what happens? No.
Because if you live much beyond 85, 90 and you're falling down a lot. You're hurting yourself a lot.
Stuff doesn't work anymore.
You're probably not in your own bed. You probably wouldn't even know your own bed if you were in it.
That's how it goes.
But know one thing, no matter what happens in our physical life, what the process of our
demise is.
God can save you. God will save you.
So the last couple of weeks we've learned a lot of things about God in order to know Him better.
If you remember anything about Him, remember, He is
able if we are willing.
And the question is, are we willing to believe that God is able to forgive us - any
sin we've ever committed? Are we willing to believe that God is
able to take us back even if we've denied Him and been unfaithful?
Are we willing to believe that God is able to comfort us? To give us
direction, to hold our hand steady, or to do what it takes to help us through
one more day of our suffering, of our disappointments.
If you're willing to believe, then God is able to do these and greater things for
all of us.
And I leave us with Luke, chapter 50. He says, "hearing this, Jesus said to
Jairus, "Don't be afraid.
Just believe. She will be healed." Speaking of his
little girl who had passed. Don't be afraid.
Amazing thing in the New Testament, how many times Jesus says, "don't be afraid." Don't be afraid.
We're always so afraid.
"Don't be afraid," he says. Just believe. Believe in the God who
is there and who is able to save us, if we're willing.
So that's our lesson, our final lesson in the series number five.
We are dismissed. Thank you for your attention.