Discovering the Real Me Part 3
The Doing Me verse The Being Me
Today we are going to plunge into part three of the series Discovering the Real Me
Let’s do a little review.
In part one; we learned that God fearfully and wonderfully made each of us.
Psalms 139:14 (NIV)
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made…
You have been hand crafted by God, unique, special.
Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)
For we are God's workmanship…
But sin has trapped us, preventing us from being this marvelous work of the Creator.
Romans 3:23 (NIV)
…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…
We again revisited the issue of faith.
Faith is the key that unlocks the prison cell of sin,
Setting us free to pursue righteousness.
Romans 3:22 (NIV)
This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
Faith is belief and trust that motivates us to action.
The action of faith is
Acknowledging our lives are full of wrong relationships.
Believing that only Jesus can set us free from the sin marring
damage that wrong relationships devastate our lives with.
Committing our self to learning how to do relationships right.
and then asking God to accept our little faith and receive us as
His own and enter into this partnership of transformation.
Just in case you didn’t know,
Life is all about righteousness,
Righteousness is all about right relationships,
Right relationships are all about love.
So life is all about loving the way God intended.
Matthew 22:37-39 (NIV)
"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'
Sin is anything that deters, damages or destroys right relationships.
Once God accepts your faith, pardoning your sin and empowering you to
live righteously you start your spiritual journey in righteousness.
In part one we learned that you are either languishing or
flourishing on your spiritual journey
It was my prayer that God would show you that there is a gap between the current
version of you and His intended version of you.
That brought us to part two of the series.
In part two you learned that God’s intended version of you is a unique expression
of Jesus.
2 Corinthians 3:18 (MSG)
All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
I sent you on a search to find out who Jesus is.
I asked you to read the Gospel of Matthew and John,
To read Galatians 5:22 and 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, knowing that you
would get a glimpse of who Jesus is,
and gain a better perspective on the gap.
Part two closed with discovering the unnatural way to close the gap.
The unnatural way to close the gap is to ask God to fill you with the Holy
Spirit and jump into the flow of living water.
Allowing the mighty current of the Holy Spirit to transform you
uniquely into the image of Christ.
The way you jump is by surrendering.
Galatians 2:20 (MSG)
The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Today I want to speak to you about life in the flow,
About being caught up in the current of the Holy Spirit.
We are going to compare and contrast the old way of doing with the
new way of being to gain insight into this process of
transformation that closes the gap between the current
version of you and God’s intended version of you,
all leading to the discovery of the real you.
I want you to jump into the Water of Life River (Revelation 22:1-2 (MSG)
And let the Holy Spirit sweep you away.
I am going to tell you what to expect as you are carried away in the
flow of the Holy Spirit in hopes that you leave here today with the
peace of God encouraging your heart.
Let’s start with something we all know,
I call it the Doing Me.
Doing pervades our lives,
In school you study hard “The A” in order to get good grades “The B.
We work at a job “The A” in order to get paid “The B.”
Guys pour on the romance “The A” to get the girl, “The B.”
Technically we can call this the moral Law of Linearity.
For you math wizards out there “If A then B.”
For the rest of us—“If This, then That.”
(Larry Crabb, The Pressure’s Off, p. 107)
We’ve all learned that what we do creates outcomes.
And generally we’ve come to trust in something called the Law of
Probability.
We trust that if we do the right things at the right time in the right way
that the odds are in our favor for a right outcome.
Because of the Law of Linearity and the Law of Probability we are all doers.
We know we have to do something to get the outcomes we want.
Doing is ingrained in us, its natural to us.
We know that by our doing we can influence outcomes.
When we jump into the flow of the Holy Spirit we expect that things will work the
same.
For instance in the Old Testament we read, do the right stuff and you will prosper.
Deuteronomy 29:9 (NIV)
Carefully follow the terms of this covenant, so that you may prosper in everything you do.
Our Doing Me hears this and thinks if I follow the right rules God will bless me
with what I want.
If I do the right things at the right time in the right way God will bless
me .
God will give me His goodies, His gifts, His presents
All to prosper me.
The Doing me understands prosperity as health, wealth, security.
The Doing Me thinks when things go well God is blessing,
God is making life easier.
God’s blessings take away pain and suffering,
Fear and frustration,
Because if I do the right things,
God will give me what I want.
But really--
The Doing Me maintains control.
The Doing Me attempts to manipulate God.
The Doing Me wants to be the author of its own sanctification.
The Doing Me wants to be in the driver’s seat.
If you are determined to Do, to be the Doing me, in the river of living water,
you’re going to get stuck in a hydraulic.
A hydraulic in a river is formed when water falls over a submerged object
and rolls back on itself.
River rafters call a hydraulic a hole.
Lets watch what happens to you when you are caught in a hole in the river.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Cpoqd0Els
When you are caught in a hole you don’t go anywhere.
That same thing happens in the river of life when you are determined to
do what comes natural.
I’m going to do this so that God will bless me.
But instead of blessing you get stuck.
The way the Doing me does life is by determining what the right things to do
are, doing them and expecting God to give you what you want.
The Doing me gets stuck asking God questions like:
“What must I do?”
“How must I pray?”
“You say You long to bless me, so what am I doing
wrong?”
“Tell me what to do?” (Crabb, p. 104)
The Doing Me is prone to abandon God when things aren’t going well,
The Doing Me tries to get out of the river because its just not working
out for them they way they expected.
Doing is not how to do the river of life.
Doing you want life to work,
Being you want God.
The Scripture tells us that the old way of Doing has been replaced by the new way
of being.
Hebrews 7:18-19 (NIV)
The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless 19 (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.
The former way is Doing to Get Blessing.
The better hope is Being to get near to God.
The Being Me has an entirely different focus than the Doing Me.
The Being Me desires the presence of God more than God’s presents.
The Doing Me is concerned with feeling good.
The Being me is concerned with knowing God. (Crabb, p. 97)
The Being me does right things not in order to demand some blessing from God,
But rather out of love for God,
so that right things lead to encounters with Him and not necessarily
what we commonly call the good life.
God will transform you from a Human Doing to a Human Being,
but this is an un-natural process.
By grace the Holy Spirit sweeps you down the Water of Life River.
A current of holiness moves you down stream.
As you move down stream transformation happens.
The gap between the current version of you and
the intended version of you closes.
What is so unnatural about this is that to go with the flow all you need to do
is surrender.
We naturally want to direct,
We naturally want to control.
We naturally want to do something,
If we do what comes naturally we get stuck.
We have to surrender and let the Holy Spirit take us down the river.
Being swept down stream is a unique experience.
Here are some of my personal observations.
The first observation is that The Water of Life River has gentle and placid spots
along its course of transformation.
It’s kind of like inter-tube floating down the river.
A nice easy current, gently changing you,
Peacefully revealing the Real You.
These are the times of things going well.
You don’t know what’s down the river bend but you are enjoying the trip.
God is meeting your real needs and you have an inner sense of His peace
and presence.
You realize that you are learning and growing and changing.
The second observation is best described by the title of our
General Superintendent Dr. Stan Toler’s book:
God Has Never Failed Me,
but He's Sure Scared Me to Death a Few Times!
When you are being swept down stream by the Holy Spirit in the River of the
Waters of Life you have no control over what happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm0DjcsyKEk&feature=related
Its like failing into the raging rapids.
You swallow water when you’re trying to breath.
You hit rocks and smack overhangs,
You get banged and bruised and tumbled.
You wonder if you’re going to drown.
Sometimes you scream for help.
You grab something to anchor to only to be pulled away.
The more you fight the more exhausted you become.
You try to keep your head above water,
arch your back, keep your feet off the bottom and point them down stream.
No illusions that you can handle it,
No big time plans for dealing with it.
No way for preparing for what’s next.
Its wild, its dangerous, its sometimes terrifying.
But all the time you have a deep abiding sense of God’s presence and some how
That makes it all right.
Doesn’t make it good,
Doesn’t make it easy,
Doesn’t make it without injury,
Yet you know that God is with you
All the craziness of the rapids motivates you to seek God with all your heart.
Its when you smash into a rock,
Go over the waterfall,
Get hit by an overhanging branch,
In other words, trials and tribulation,
Pain and suffering,
Motivate you to whole heartedly seek God.
What do you do during those times when you are in the wild rapids?
Nothing but surrender.
Trusting in God.
Releasing your expectations.
Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NIV)
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
The greatest prosperity God can give you is knowing Him.
That’s the real blessing God gives,
Knowing that He is in you and that you are in Him,
And that nothing can separate you from His love.
When you come the end of a particular stretch of rapids,
Its then you realize that you have been changed.
You know that all near death experiences of the rapids has matured
you.
The Doing Me does stuff to secure God’s blessing.
The Being Me surrenders and trusts to know God.
To change from a Doing Me to a Being Me all you have to do is allow the Holy
Spirit to sweep you down the Water of Life River.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=098PwlqHD-o
The
long awaited rains
Have fallen hard upon the thirsty ground
And carved their way to where
The wild and rushing river can be found
And like the rains
I have been carried to where the river flows,
yeah
My heart is racing, and my feet are weak
As I walk to the edge
I know there is no turning back
Once my feet have left the ledge
And in the rush I hear a voice
That's telling me to take a leap of faith
So here I go
I'm diving in, I'm going deep, in over my head I
want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my
head I want to go
The river's deep, the river's wide, the river's
water is alive
So sink or swim, I'm diving in
There is a supernatural power
In this mighty river's flow
It can bring the dead to life
And it can fill an empty soul
And give a heart the only thing
Worth living and worth dying for, yeah
But we will never know the awesome power
Of the grace of God
Until we let ourselves get swept away
Into this holy flood
So if you take my hand
We'll close our eyes and count to three
And take the leap of faith
Come on let's go
I'm diving in, I'm going deep, in over my head I
want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my
head I want to go
The river's deep, the river's wide, the river's
water is alive
So sink or swim, I'm diving in
Oh...Come on let's go
I'm diving in, I'm going deep, in over my head I
want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my
head I want to go
The river's deep, the river's wide, the river's
water is alive
So sink or swim, I'm diving in
I'm diving in, I'm going deep, in over my head I
want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my
head I want to go
The river's deep, the river's wide, the river's
water is alive
So sink or swim, I'm diving in
Are you going to jump in and allow the Holy Spirit to sweep you away?
I want you to know that you may well get thrashed to an inch of your life,
You may lose your life,
But you will know God.
John 17:3 (NIV)
Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.