Heartland Family Productions
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The Power of the Cross - Part Four
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Now, God’s ways do not always seem right to human reason and sense. Sometimes God’s ways are hard, painful, confusing, confusing to us, not to Him. Well, we stand in a long line of sisters who have been faced with the inscrutable ways of God.
You see them all through Scripture:
- Sarah, whose husband’s wavering faith on two occasions that we know of put her life in jeopardy.
- Ruth, being widowed, living in a strange land, becoming the object of racism and hardship.
- Hannah, years of infertility, unfulfilled longings, month after month after long month, longing for a child. Then to top it off, ridicule from a rival wife who delighted in tormenting her and a husband who didn’t understand her longings for a son. Then, getting the son, and giving that son back to God.
The inscrutable ways of God!
- Mary of Nazareth. She would have not scripted that teenage pregnancy, a sword piercing her soul, offering up the one who would be offered up for the sins of the world.
God’s ways for you will not always make sense to your human reason. They may mean physical challenges, weakness, weariness, the challenges of aging and cancer. I have a friend right now who is suffering in the late stages of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It’s a horribly debilitating, painful way to die.
Inscrutable ways of God. It may mean for you financial hardship, family difficulties, infertility, a special needs child. There’s a woman who I believe is here whose daughter has been in a coma for over a year, if I’m not mistaken, as a result of a tragic accident. Inscrutable ways of God—you’d never have scripted it this way.
Caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s, unfulfilled longing for a mate, loss of a mate, loss of a child, prodigal sons and daughters. And on and on the list goes. We stand in that line with Jesus, for whom the ways of God meant divesting Himself of His rights, experiencing rejection, ridicule, and ultimately death on a Cross—the inscrutable ways of God. We would have never come up with that script.
Your circumstances may seem difficult. They may be hard to understand. They may be incomprehensible to your feeble sense, but be assured God has an eternal purpose and plan for the display of His glory throughout all of this universe and every other universe, and He is working out that plan.
And though at times it seems as though the plan is not working, or the outcome seems in doubt, some parts seem strange to us, it may not be the way we think the script should be written. We can’t know; we can’t comprehend the details.
We know that His ways flow out of the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. He doesn’t make mistakes. That mother with a prodigal daughter that I talked to in recent weeks said to me with tears in her eyes, “If I hadn’t been through this, I wouldn’t know God the way I do. I wouldn’t desire Him the way that I do.”
And then verse 36—here’s the heart of the matter. “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” Here we have a call for a God-centered life and perspective, a God-centered worldview, tethered to who God is and His eternal purposes.
If you don’t have that, you will be set adrift on a sea of shifting emotions and wild ways of thinking. You will be depressed; you will be angry; you will be bitter; you will be perplexed; you will be confused; you will have no reference point for your life if you don’t get this: “From Him are all things.”
He is the source of our existence, the origin. All things were created by Him. We have no life apart from Him. He is the ultimate cause of every circumstance that touches your life and mine.
Ladies, the ultimate issue is not your husband, your kids, your singleness, or your health. In fact, to resist or to resent the circumstances, the situation in which you find yourself, is ultimately to resent and resist God Himself.
And by the way, that’s a battle you can’t win. “From Him are all things.” He is the source. If you stop and realize, “This situation isn’t from that person ultimately.” Ultimately, all things are from Him.
“And through Him are all things.” Not only is He the source, but He is the sustainer. Scripture tells us that He upholds the universe by the word of His power. What a word!
“And in Him all things hold together.” Do you realize that apart from His power and His word sustaining the planets, the sun, the moon, the stars, sustaining us, that it would all fall apart? It would be unmitigated disaster.
He sustains it. Through Him are all things. You say, “That’s lofty. What does that mean?” Well, one thing it means is that when you think you can’t hold things together any longer, and we all get to those places, the fact is, you can’t hold anything together!
We can’t even hold ourselves together! But He can hold us together. “Now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling,” means we are upheld by Him. He will enable you to do His will in whatever circumstance you find yourself in.
From Him are all things, through Him are all things, and to Him are all things. He is the source; He is the sustainer, and He is the supreme purpose and sense and goal of all things, for all things were created for Him and for His pleasure. That is so contrary to our natural perspective, isn’t it? Our natural way of thinking is, “It’s all about me.” We live as if all things were from us, through us, and for us.
That leaves us fearful, angry, proud, bitter, confused, and depressed. God is the source of all things. He is the sovereign Lord and director of all things. He is the sustainer of all things, and in the end, all things—even the sinful choices of fallen human beings, some of whom you may live with, and all of us fall into that category—even the sinful choices of human beings in the end will glorify God and demonstrate the greatness of His wisdom, His power, and His grace.
So what’s the response? Paul tells us, “To Him be glory forever. Amen.” Paul says, “The response is, we put God in the spotlight where He belongs.” We praise Him; we worship Him; we give Him glory, and we say, “Amen, let it be so.” We make our affirmation that we agree. We believe this. We submit our lives to God’s holy, eternal purposes.
Now, before we wrap up tonight, what does all of this have to do with being a true woman? How does this apply to where we live?
It has everything to do with being a true woman of God. This passage, these truths, and I have not begun to do justice to them, and I pray God will work them into your hearts by the power of His Spirit, but these truths bring comfort; they bring courage; they bring conviction to our calling as women.
There are many implications, many applications we could touch on, but I want to leave you with three tonight. I pray that you will remember them and that you will begin to orient your life around these realities.
1) A true woman lives a God-centered life.
We live in a self-centered world, but a true woman of God lives a God-centered life. She lives for His glory and His pleasure and not her own.
Ladies, a little bulletin here. It’s not about us. It’s all, all, all about Him. A true woman who is living this God-centered life can embrace the purpose for which she was created, to reflect the beauty and the wonder of His ways, and to join every created thing in heaven and earth and under the earth in glorifying and worshiping Him eternally.
As God-centered women, we will embrace that as our supreme calling and purpose in life, and it’s not just something way out there. It’s something that ought to get us up in the morning and keep us going through the day and be with us as we go to sleep at night.
Every day, every moment of the day, living with that supreme purpose at heart. It means having a God-centered perspective, turning our eyes upon Jesus, in whose light the things of this earth grow strangely dim. Am I right?
When you see the magnitude of His greatness, that gives us a context for our puny, little problems and challenges. You say, “You don’t know how big my challenge is.” You’re right, and I don’t mean to minimize it, because compared to everyone else in this room, it might be huge. But when we get the perspective of the greatness of God, every challenge we have is swept up in the torrent, the river of His love, His mercy, and His grace.
This gives us hope in the midst of a pain-filled world with loss and uncertainty. We can talk about, and we will, about being a godly wife and mother and friend and daughter. We can talk, and we will, about the need for repentance and holiness and service, but the primary core issue of this weekend and our lives is a call to be enthralled with the Lord Jesus Christ who is the pearl of great price, the supreme treasure.
Next Time: A True Woman is a God-centered Woman