Below the Surface
(This is a post I wrote back in April, but thought I lost. The sermon was so good, I am going to go ahead and post my response here along with a link to the iTunes download. I’ll be gone for most of the summer, so will not be posting until August.)
Pastor Joe Novenson spoke to us on Friday, April 4 in chapel about the riptide (dangerous, under the surface, deadly) problem Paul mentions to the Ephesians in Ephesians 4 and that is also present in our own lives.
17Now this I say and testify in the Lord,that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
The problem is our futile thinking that separates us from the life of God. As we are deceived our desires begin to control us, and we don’t even realize it’s happening as we lose all sensitivity and become numb. The scary thing is that when we are numb, we can’t tell. As Rev. Novensen told us, we begin to use the Christian life as an air freshener, covering up the stench of our futile thinking and actions.
He took us to Psalm 51, where we see both a negative and a positive solution. David, a leader, a worshipper, a psalm-writer, a great king, became numb to the desires that controlled him. He had Uriah murdered, he didn’t repent of his sin with Bathsheba, for at least nine months. The negative solution he mentions is”the bones you have crushed.” When we become numb, God will crush the skeletal structure that holds us up–anything that is not Him, he will remove. Yet, when we are broken, and often think that God must despise us, the exact opposite happens: God draws near to our broken spirit.
Then, positively, God renews our thinking: at the core of who we are, we begin to understand the gospel. That our Christianity is not a bunch of ideas, but is reality. It transforms us deeply, internally and externally. Every time we fall, we are able to get back up, because we are wrapped in the armor of Christ–He defines us, he transforms us.
1. Are you using the Christian life as air freshener? What does that look like in your life? In your relationships?
2. What do you want more than Jesus? What structure does God need to remove in your life that is keeping you from depending fully on him?
The message is available on iTunes U, and I highly recommend hearing Pastor Novenson’s own words.
Published on 20 May 2008 by Christiana Fitzpatrick at 10:58 am.
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