Life With God

What do you want for Christmas? You know, when we're kids, the answer to that question might be a toy or a gaming console, maybe a puppy, a Daisy Red Rider Range model air rifle. But it isn't just kids that like toys for Christmas either, is it? Like we adults have a lot of toys we get into, they look a little different. We're TVs or iPads or power tools, foot massagers, air fryers, drones, Weathertech car mats, electrified fly swatters.

But there are all sorts of toys. And yet there are certain things that we all long deep down to have that you can't find at a store. We want to feel safe. We want to feel loved. We want to find belonging.

We want to experience peace. We want to have a sense of purpose. So over the last few weeks, with some help from Sky Jotani's book called with, we have examined several different postures that we sometimes assume in our efforts to relate to God. We've talked about life under God, which tries to appease God by following rules and rituals. We've talked about life over God, where we attempt to live all by ourselves, just implementing biblical principles.

We talked about life from God, which puts us squarely at the center and expects God to do what we want. And then last week we talked about life for God, which prioritizes all the good works that we ourselves can do. Now, we probably all live in each one of these places at times, but as we've said throughout this series, we can adopt each and every one of those postures all by ourselves. We can live in all of those ways without any involvement from God in our lives at all. Life under or over or from or for God.

These are all ways that we seek to leverage God in pursuit of some other thing. Achievement or safety or wisdom or wealth or perhaps just bragging rights. But to understand our true purpose, we have to understand the nature of God who created us. So I want us today to go all the way back to the beginning for just a moment. Scripture says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

But after introducing God to us as the Creator who existed before anything else existed, the Bible adds this now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. See, before the earth took shape, before God brought light from darkness, God's Holy Spirit was present. And the Father and the Spirit were not alone. Jesus the Son was also present.

The Gospel of John begins like this. In the beginning was the Word. The. The Word the Logos is How John introduces Jesus to us. So in the beginning was Jesus the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning, through him, all things were made with. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. So right from the start, Jesus existed alongside the Father and the Spirit, and Jesus participated personally in creation. Now, from these and other biblical texts, we form the concept of the Trinity, the idea of one God who exists eternally as Father and Son and Spirit. Before anything else existed, God existed in eternal relationship with Himself.

God is relational, but not in the same way we are. See, we often seek relationships out of a sense of need. People sometimes adopt pets because they're hungry for companionship. People sometimes pursue casual sexual hookups because they feel lonely. Couples sometimes have babies and hopes that that will fix their dysfunctional relationships.

But God didn't create us out of a sense of need. God didn't create because he was bored or lonely or desperate to be loved. God created out of the overflow of the perfect loving community in which he has always lived. God the Father with God the Son with God the Holy Spirit. Now, many of us know that Jesus said that God so loved the the world, right?

And that's a true statement. But God doesn't just love the world. Jesus also said, the Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Jesus said, I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. Jesus prayed, father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

See, all by Himself, in and of himself, God lives in an eternal, loving community. And he invites us, you and me, to be a part of that community. We are created for life with God, not to use God to acquire something else, but to be with God himself. That's why Christmas exists. We, what we celebrate at Christmas is what sets Christianity apart from all other belief systems.

The incarnation that Jesus put on flesh. You know, a lot of people believe in notions like God above us, that God is the authoritative ruler of the universe. And while that's true, we sometimes also morph that into the idea of God apart from us, that God is distant, aloof and unapproachable, and that that sometimes morphs into the idea of God to us, that all God really does is issue commands that we had better follow or else. But the prophet Isaiah underscored God's heart for us 2,700 years ago when he wrote these words that the Lord himself will give you a sign. And here's the sign.

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel. Now, the Gospel of Matthew describes how a virgin named Mary was pledged to be married to a man named Joseph. But then Mary miraculously became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph logically initially assumed that she had cheated, and he was ready to break things off. But an angel explained that Mary's pregnancy was a miracle from God and that she would give birth to a son they were to name Jesus, which means the Lord saves.

And then Matthew summarized all of this in this way. He said all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, through Isaiah, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel. And then the New Testament translates that for us, which means God with us. Jesus embodies, and his name conveys the God's desire to be with us. In the beginning, God lived with humanity.

Remember, he walked with Adam and Eve. But Satan prompted them to question God's goodness and his honesty and his love. Satan cannot tear us away from God. So he suggested to Adam and Eve that if they were to step away from God, they could find something better than God. And by embracing that lie, they broke our world in ways that centuries later, we still experience every day.

Pain, hatred, conflict, disease, death. So Jesus, God incarnate, meaning God in flesh, came to earth to restore what was broken. Case in point, Gospel of Mark, chapter 5. Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee by boat. And when he gets out of the boat, on the other side, he meets a man whose life had been hijacked by demons.

Now, these evil spirits gave this man amazing strength, but people were afraid of him. So they had tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to shackle him, to chain him up. Nobody wanted this guy around, so he lived his life alone in a cemetery, shrieking and cutting himself with sharp rocks. But then Jesus shows up, packing the full authority of God, and he orders the demons to leave the man. And they have no choice but to obey.

Word of this traveled, and people came to see for themselves. And Mark tells us that when they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons sitting there, dressed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. See, before, the locals had been afraid of this superhuman, wild man in the graveyard. But after Jesus stepped into the picture and he flexed and demonstrated an even greater power, the people were now more afraid of Jesus.

So the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. And Jesus honored their request. But as he climbed into the boat to leave, we're told that the man who had been demon possessed begged to go with him. I mean, that man could have come to Jesus and said, what else he got? I mean, that demonic thing, that was pretty cool, but what else can you do for me?

But rather than treating Jesus like a magic lamp that he could just get things from, this man, more than anything, wanted to be with Jesus. He had experienced Jesus power and his compassion and his goodness, and he wanted to be where Jesus was. He recognized that the greatest prize wasn't what Jesus could do for him. It was Jesus himself. Now, Jesus told a lot of stories as he taught, and we've looked at a number of those even in recent weeks.

Some of those stories were very short. We recently looked at this one, Matthew 13. Rather, he says, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy, went and sold all he had and bought that field. And Jesus followed up that story with another one that's very much like it.

He said, again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. See, in both of these stories, someone discovered a treasure that was more valuable than everything else they owned. And rather than try to add that treasure to everything else they already had, they traded everything for that one most valuable thing. Here at Greenwood Christian Church, we talk a lot about three words.

Those words are love, grow, and inspire. You'll see those words in print a lot. You'll see them on our website. When you walk out the doors after the service, there's a sign across the commons. There's a that just says that our mission is to love God through a life of worship, to grow together as disciples of Christ and to inspire others to follow Jesus.

And when we talk about loving and growing and inspiring, what we're really saying is that we want to present a compelling vision of Jesus. Our goal at the end of the day, isn't just to play great music. It's not just to share engaging talks or even to build medical clinics. As exciting as that is, our church's mission is to help as many people as possible see the treasure that is Jesus. See, when we see Jesus clearly, when we see Jesus as he really is, our natural response will be to trust and follow and love him.

We will want more than anything to be with him.

But the story of scripture is that There's a barrier because, like Adam and Eve, we have all decided in various ways, in different seasons of our lives, that other things look better and more satisfying to us than Jesus does. And we have pursued those things instead as our highest goal. The gratification of success, the comfort of wealth, the pleasure of sex, the numbness of addiction, the indignation of self righteousness. And when we pursue other things instead of God, Scripture uniformly calls that sin. And just like sin fractured Adam and Eve's fellowship with God, it also separates us from him.

And that's why God isn't primarily in the education business or the inspiration business. God is in the reconciliation business. We need to have our broken relationship with God restored. The Apostle Paul talked about that in Second Corinthians. He wrote that if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new is here.

All this is from God, Paul says, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. See, because God wants a relationship with us, he had to deal with the sin barrier between him and us. And he did that by putting on flesh in the person of Jesus. Before Jesus began his public ministry of teaching and working miracles, John the Baptist, his cousin, described him like this. He saw Jesus and called him the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Jesus himself said that he came to give his life as a ransom for many. And he did that at the cross. Now we can't fully grasp how painful and how difficult it would have been for the perfect, sinless Son of God to take the world's guilt upon himself and experience the condemnation that our sins deserve. But we get a glimpse because from the cross Jesus cried out these words that he quoted from Psalm 22. He said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

As Jesus suffered and died under the weight of our sin, he personally experienced the separation from God that he came here to save us from. That's what Paul meant when he wrote that God made him Jesus, who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Now, maybe you've heard all that before. Maybe you've heard the work of Jesus compared to a free ticket to heaven or a pass out of hell. I mean, I certainly have.

But is that the point? Is that the main thing? When I preach funerals, more often than not I share from Revelation chapter 21, which describes what awaits us when Jesus returns and brings about the final renewal of all things. John writes, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth. The flawed, fallen, broken ones had passed away and there was no longer any seat.

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them them and be their God. And then John says he will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

Now, friends, when you think about heaven, what is it that you long for the most? Do you look forward to a place that's 100% cancer free? That sounds pretty good.

Do you look for a place where we get to be reunited with loved ones or perhaps with pets who have died? Do you look for a place where the Colts no longer choke and miss the playoffs? Or a place where nobody ever again ruins a good pizza by putting black olives on it for all eternity? That sounds glorious. I mean, when we read Revelation 21, we often latch onto those words in verse four.

We love that in heaven there'll be no more crying or dying or grieving or hurting. And that all sounds great, but those realities are not the point. They're simply the outcome of God's presence there. What God highlights about heaven is that he will live with us and we will be with Him. Which means the Bible comes full circle and ends right where it began, with God and people living in close relationship.

Only this time, in a world that sin can never corrupt, we get to be with God again. John Piper writes, the Gospel is not a way to get people to heaven. It is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.

What do you want most? God wants to be with us. God wants us to want to be with him. And not just after we die. The apostle Paul wrote that now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face.

Paul says, now I know in part, but then I shall know fully. And even as I am fully known, a day is coming when we'll have an unobstructed view of God in a World uncontaminated by sin. But God also invites us to be with him right now. And that sounds inspiring. I mean, that would make a great Christmas card.

But what does life with God actually mean? I mean, are we talking go to church and read a few Bible verses each day and listen to Caleb and toss up an occasional prayer and hope that somehow it all makes a difference, or is there more?

When we look at the life of Jesus, one of the things that we'll see is that Jesus consistently modeled life with God. Jesus frequently and intentionally got away from the crowds. He often got up early, and he went off to quiet places where he could pray. And his disciples noticed that Jesus prayed very differently than other Jewish rabbis. So at one point, they came to him and.

And they asked him to teach them how to pray. And in response, Jesus introduced something that we often call the Lord's Prayer. If you grew up in certain church traditions, you might know this as the Our Father, but this is what Jesus said. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Now, maybe you've memorized that prayer. I mean, I have for a couple of years. Second, third, fourth grade, I lived in rural Oklahoma, in a public school system, where every day we began our classes by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's Prayer.

I've done that prayer for years. But I'm convinced that Jesus didn't teach us that prayer so that we would have exact words to say over and over and over again. His purpose was to teach us about life with God, relating to God as our Father, honoring God as holy, valuing God's desires above our own, depending on God for our daily needs, seeking God's forgiveness for our sins, and. And his help in forgiving others, and asking God to help us steer our lives clear of the sin that separates us from him. What God wants with us isn't just occasional communication.

What God desires is ongoing communion. He wants us to experience the community that he, as father, Son, and spirit, enjoys within himself. Jesus said, the Son can do nothing by himself. He can do only what he sees his father doing. Because whatever the Father does, the Son also does.

And he wants that life for us too. Jesus didn't touch base with God on the Sabbath or on certain holidays and then do his own thing the rest of the time. Their connection was Constant. And in the same way, when Paul wrote in First Thessalonians to pray continually, I don't think he was talking about getting on our knees and bowing our heads and closing our eyes and reciting certain memorized words. He was urging us to live in that same state of constant communion with God that Jesus lived in.

Treasuring God above everything else. Being united with God through the work of Jesus, experiencing His presence in our daily lives. Not just talking to God, but being with God. You know, communication is important to relationships, but talking is not the only way we connect. You ever held a sleeping infant?

No conversation, but a lot of connection? Or have you ever sat in silence with friends while you just watched a beautiful sunset? Or hugged someone without words as they wept? Or held hands with someone while you watched a movie or listened to a song? Most mornings I wake up with a gold retriever plastered against my back.

And those are all forms of bonding and connection. This past Tuesday, I got home from the office, I don't know, 5, 30, 6 o' clock that night. And Allison asked if I would help her run some errands. So we hopped in the car and we dropped a gift off to some friends at a local retirement home. We went to Costco and we bought a few things.

We ate burgers at five Guys. Then we went to Kohl's and we made some Amazon returns. And then after that, we drove home and I assembled a new vacuum cleaner while Allison brushed dog fur off of our furniture. It was a nice evening. Not because of the specific activities, but because of who I got to spend the evening with.

It wasn't the most dramatic or romantic evening we've ever had, but just being together is. Is great. The relationship that God desires with us is a lot like that. He's. He's not looking for a transactional relationship with Him.

We don't earn his acceptance with our obedience. We don't earn his blessings with our busy work. We don't earn his salvation with our donations. He simply wants us to be with Him. He wants to live in us.

He wants us to remain in Him. He wants to work through us. When we live in communion with God the way that Jesus did, it changes everything. Our identity is secured in what he declares about us and not what other people think. When we live in communion with God, we find the strength to love others in the same way that we ourselves are being loved.

When we do life with God, we experience the peace that comes from knowing that we are held by God no matter what. We learn to face uncertainty and chaos with courage and hope. And we learn to live with purpose and joy, regardless of our circumstances. Life with God is the life we long for. That is the life we're looking for in everything else that we desperately claw at.

Life with God is the life we long for. A few weeks ago, a young lady who lives out of state visited our church with some friends that she was staying with. And after her visit she. She sent a text to the friends who invited her. And it was a really long text.

I just want to share you a little bit of it. But this is what she said. She said, I've not had the best experience in churches until now. I truly see God's light and love within your church. I felt connected to the music and the atmosphere at gcc.

It didn't feel like a basic message that I'd heard before. The people were all kind. They were all real. It didn't just seem like a bunch of people playing dress up and pretending to be holy. They were authentic.

There was joy. But I also sensed sorrows and tribulations and sin and everything Jesus calls us to bring to him. Not just the picture perfect forced versions of happy Christians that people pretend to be. It was real and raw. It was a beautiful experience.

I'm glad I got the chance to attend. I'm glad too. And so can I just say for a moment, thank you, Greenwood Christian, for being a church that affords people experiences like that. We don't do anything that we do around here perfectly because none of us are perfect people. But I love that someone had the opportunity, with no prior introduction, to come in here and, and experience the gospel in that way.

Getting a message like that reminds me that life with God is not a status that we achieve. It's. It's simply a gift that we receive. And life with God means that we recognize that we desperately need him in a way that nothing else will satisfy. Life with God means that we acknowledge that we have jacked up our lives looking for meaning in all sorts of other things.

Life with God means that we trust that Jesus put on flesh and he paid for our sins at the cross and he rose from the dead. And life with God means that we declare our faith in Jesus and we surrender our lives to God, which is what baptism symbolizes.

Life with God means that we seek God daily and that we share this journey with others who are also seeking God daily. And we all do life with God together. Life with God is the life we long for. It's the life we're made for. It's the life that God wants for us.

It's the life we want you to experience. It's not a perfect life. It's not an easy life. It's not a mistake free life. It's not an uninterruptedly happy life.

But it's a real life with God now and forever. And we have the opportunity, we have God's invitation through Jesus to experience that life together. I want to ask you to pray with me in just a moment and then we'll talk briefly about just some next steps that we would love to help you take as a follower of Jesus. But before we get there, I want to ask you just to join me for a moment in just being still. This is a busy, busy time of year and I know that between now and Christmas, many of us have a lot of things we're still trying to knock out.

And that can be stressful. It can be hurried, we can feel rushed. There can be a huge weight that ironically we feel resting on our shoulders as we celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace. So let's take a few moments together just to be still, to be quiet, quiet before God, and then I'll lead us in prayer.

Sa.

Father God, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, we're grateful for the invitation that you give us to do life with you.

Thank you for the compassion that you showed by not abandoning us to our sins, but putting on flesh and coming here to give your life in our place at the cross, to remove that sin barrier and allow us direct access to come to you and to be a part of the relationship with you that you designed and created us for. God in the middle of this busy season where we are excited about celebrating the arrival on planet Earth of that baby in a manger in Bethlehem. God, we ask that you would help us to find stillness, to find rest, to shut off our work, to put down the phone, to turn off the television, to create moments where we can just be still before you and be grateful for who you are and what you've done and listen to the promise promptings of your spirit to our hearts. Lord, we look forward to celebrating many of us coming back together here in just a few days on Christmas Eve. And we do look forward to that.

But God, more than an impressive experience, what we need from you is your presence. God, we want to know you, we want to do life with you, we want to be filled with you. And we ask that you would draw us to yourself again and again and again. And God help us to identify and to the best of our ability eliminate some of those factors in our lives that so frequently get in the way of that God, we're grateful for your love and your compassion for being not only our God but our Savior. We pray all these things in Jesus name.

Amen. So good to be with you. We're grateful to start this week with you and we just want to let you know that if there is a next step that you sense God prompting you to take, we'd love to come alongside you in that way. We we see God prompting us all the time this side of heaven. We never run out of next steps to take.

There will always be a new layer of obedience or a new level of surrender that we can strive for and we'd love to come alongside you and help. I'm going to invite our Next Steps team up here to the front and want to just let you know about a couple of very specific things. One of those is that every month we offer a three part series of classes called Next Steps. We'll begin the next cycle of those on the first Sunday in January, January 4th. That very first class is called Next Steps Discover.

And if you are relatively new to Greenwood Christian and you've been thinking about what does it mean to get more connected here, those classes would be a really important way for you to get some clear direction on what that looks like. And we'd love for you to come and be a part of that at the 11am Service on Sunday, January 4th. And at any time this is true, whether you're here in the room with us or whether you're with us online, you can text the word next to the number that you'll frequently see on your screen. It's 317-707-9997. You could let us know in a few words what God is stirring within you.

We'd love to reach out and begin that conversation. And as always, there are going to be several of us down here in front of the stage after the service. If we can pray with you or answer questions or help to connect you to to Jesus or to people. We would love in any way we can to help you as you join us in pursuing this life with God that we're created for. It's always a blessing to start my week with you.

We have some great things coming up this week. Christmas Eve Service, Wednesday night 4 and 5.30pm we'd love for you to be a part of that. Grab some invite cards at the Connection center and bring somebody with you. We have great news to share and great news to celebrate gcc. We love you.

We're grateful to be with you. Have a blessed week.