Three

Today, I went to some friends’ sermon criticism thing where ministry students preach and get criticized on it. It seemed as if each of the three messages were written just for me.

I don’t know if I could ever serve God justice to what He spoke to my heart in my explanations, but I’ll try.

Number one: sermon about a monkey and a jar

There is a story about a monkey and a jar. In the jar, there is a little nut. The monkey wants the nut, but he can’t fit his hand in the jar. So he squeezes his thumb in and grabs hold of the nut. When he tries to remove his hand from the jar, it is stuck because his thumb is in the way again. He can’t squeeze his thumb over like before because he’s holding onto the nut.

In our lives, there is always that nut. We want it, so we make it possible by squeezing our way into grabbing it. We take hold and get stuck when we have acquired this thing we want. Maybe we only have this idea of what we want, but we hold onto that anyway, making it impossible to remove our hand from our life (the jar).

God could smash the jar to get our hand out, couldn’t He? Of course He could. But He doesn’t want to take control over our lives when it’s not the right time and He doesn’t want the glass to cut us and make us even more vulnerable to the disease of sin.

When we let go of what we want and allow our hand to be removed from our life, our hand is free, completely free to hold the hand of our Savior and let Him tug us along.

With our free hand, we will hold God’s Word, serve God and others, and grab the hand of the lost to bring them back home. (He used the analogy of the Resucers when there was a witch boat full of little orphans and how we needed to board that boat, grab the hand of an orphan, get off the boat, and take him home to Jesus so He can hold his hand, too.)

I had it all wrong. We shouldn’t cut our hands off from touching or grasping what we want in our lives, but rather, we just need to let go of what we want, let our hand come out of the jar (our life) and hold the hand of our Savior.

It sounds so simple, and it’s a message I’ve heard time and time again and surrendered to over and over. But the whole hand-stuck-in-jar thing was completely new and gave a completely different purpose to me.

It taught me that although I want a lot of things in my relationship with Christ and with other people and with life in general, they are not important as just letting go of them all, letting my hand slip away from my life, and just holding the hand of my Savior. My other hand isn’t to be held, either. Its purpose is TO hold various things. God’s Word, the hand of a hurting person, and the hand of the lost to bring them home.

Somewhere along the way, when my hand has become so calloused by over-use, my hand will meet the free and calloused hand of God’s created for me. Anything sooner than that would be a misuse of my hand.

I even found myself getting caught up in what I wanted my relationship with Christ to look like. No longer was it just about holding His hand but more so of what I wanted it to grow to, where I wanted it to go… I wanted it so bad that my hand was stuck in the jar and not free to just hold my Savior’s hand.

Simply living in the presence of God is far more important than anything your hand might want to hold inside that jar, even if your hand is holding onto what you want with Christ.

Want gets you nowhere. It’s when you let go and hold the hand of the God of everything that gets you somewhere. It gets you into a place where you can TOUCH the presence of God (because you’re holding His hand), not just be IN the presence of God.

And to take it even further, God is much more likely to mold something He is touching (i.e. holding your hand…). If you are IN the presence of God, it can affect you, but when it is TOUCHING you, it molds you.

Wow, see why writing is such a good thing? It allows you to make connections and take things further and let your mind develop ideas…

Isn’t it strange how something good can turn into sin? For me, wanting a certain closeness with God became my idol and with a little help from my preacher friend tonight, my hand is free and rests firmly and warmly in my Savior’s hand.

Number two: sermon about big vs. little

This sermon had less of an impact on me than the first one, but it held a very important point that hit home for me.

So many times, we Christians expect to find God in the big things. Like Elijah, we think we want God to show up in a great wind, an earthquake, or fire from heaven, but He comes quietly. And without knowing it at first, it’s for our good that He comes quietly.

Isn’t it at those times when we are waiting for God to answer that we are most vulnerable? We are easily broken. So what if God really did come in a big, big way like an earthquake or heavenly fire? We would crumble to pieces. He knows that we need His quietness in that time and that that kind of quiet, still touch speaks louder than any rumble of an earthquake ever could.

Lately, I have thought it would be so much easier for God to just scream His answers at me, but that would have only created a bigger mess to clean up. It’s His soft, gentle answers that sooth and heal.
Number three: even a little junk makes the pretty ugly

There are so many things that steal our attention from Christ and make us dirty. It is impossible to balance good and bad, because the outcome is always bad. Take a smoothie for example.

You start off with good things: different kinds of fruits, per say, yogurt maybe… You blend it all up and it tastes good. This is how it was when we first got saved.

Say those fruits were fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Some of those might be easy to swallow for us. But others are more of an acquired taste. Still, others may be even unswallowable because it’s just an unnatural taste to us. But, none the less, the fruit is good for us and sweet to the taste when others pick and eat it from your branches.

So back to the smoothie.

It is good tasting and full of all good things. But, as we live, there will be all sorts of things that we are tempted to add into our good tasting, healthy smoothie. Mountain Dew for example. It tastes good. It even looks good, but in reality, it’s just a body wrecker. But because it has “good” qualities in appearance, we add it to our smoothie, thinking, “What’s the harm? It’s just one little addition…”

Our smoothie might have a more exciting, bubbly taste with this new addition, sure. But will it be purely good for us anymore? No. We have tainted something healthy with something unhealthy. That is what sin does to our lives. It makes something good into something bad.

So as we continue living, in comes more yicky things. Add pepper, French fries, and maybe even some BBQ sauce. If the Mountain Dew wasn’t enough, these new additions make our once good smoothing into something disgusting. It doesn’t taste good to us, it is repulsive in every way, and is completely ruined. Even if we tried, we couldn’t separate the good from the bad. Everything is mixed and unable to be separated. Just one bad ingredient threw off all the good. The added bad ingredients just made it worse.

In walks Jesus.

By His grace, He is able to tell us, “I’ll throw away this mess you’ve created away, and we’ll start over again” (summary of 2 Cor. 5:17). He makes our blender empty, adds His own qualities, His own good things and makes us pleasing to Him first, nourshing to ourselves, and nourishing to others, all because of how He threw the yicky us away and gave us a new life in Him.

In the same way this good smoothie had been ruined by just one bad ingredient, I found the same to be true in my own life. And it ties back to sermon number one—I held my life in my hand and that was like adding all sorts of junk to my smoothie. I let my dreams, wants and hopes dirty my tasteful smoothie… before tonight, I was not in the right place to be pleasing to my Savior, have the right ingredients to be nourishment to my soul (Christ’s ingredients), and I wasn’t nourishing to others either. I was just a mess of blended heaven and hell that was unappetizing, repulsive, and worse yet, having a disgusting taste to my Savior.

But, praise God, as I let go of what I want, removed my hand from my jar, my Savior poured a new, good smoothie into my jar, covering up all my wants and dreams with Himself. In time, that little nut that the monkey wanted so bad might float up and resurface. : ) Time will tell.

And, for the sake of wonderful metaphors, consider this cat:

So, let’s say this cat’s name is Burlap (I don’t know…lol). Burlap does not like to be controlled. In this lack of control, he decides he wants to venture out into the vast world of his back yard. Burlap goes outside, is afraid an eagle will come and snatch him out of the grass, and eat him for lunch (dinner, maybe?). So, in fear, Burlap runs under his owner’s massive front porch and hides from what he is really afraid of. His owner, completely aware of his fear and his hiding, crouches down at the opening of the deck, telling him to come out, calling his name sweetly, trying to get his attention, hoping he’ll come out soon. Silly Burlap is still scared, aware that he would be safe in his owner’s arms but afraid of getting in trouble or getting too close to what he’s afraid of. But, in time, the owner grabs Burlap’s little paw and brings him out of hiding. Holding him in his arms, Burlap is now safe. The owner tries to make eye contact with his cat, but the cat makes every effort to not look at his owner. The owner says, “What’s your problem, cat?? I just want you to obey me! I just want you safe.”

Are we not an exact replica of Burlap the cat? I’m pretty sure we are…

Well, I hope you enjoyed these sermons as much as I did.

…and it was even better just being there letting my Savior speak to me through my friends. How beautiful is He, guys? I mean, really… how is our Savior able to use flesh to speak to hearts? He is so beautiful. So fulfilling. So…breathtaking. He’s mine. Aren’t you glad He’s yours, too?

(If He’s not yours, then oh man. It’s worth every amount of fear you may have in you to guts up and ask how Jesus can be yours… oh my goodness. So worth it.)