1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11

If you came here looking for a simple sermon, you are going to be disappointed. What I have to say tonight is not easy, by any means, but if you can grasp the message your relationship with God and consequently your entire life will be revolutionized.
This message is equally hard for me to give, because it is extremely personal. In fact it would be appropriate to say that this is my life story from the last couple of months. If you just hang tight with me for a while, I promise there will be a tie into the scriptures.
As I was doing my personal devotions a few weeks ago I was reading Phillip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew. As a whole the book was okay, but the part that impacted me the most wasn’t the main theme. In fact it was part of a small one page story where Yancey was speaking about complaining about a situation in his life, to which the older woman who had overheard his complaints turned to him and asked if he was letting God love him. Six simple words strung together to make a faith changing statement. It’s like God was crying out to me, “Michelle, are you letting me love you?” Brothers and sisters, I now ask you the same question this evening, are you letting God love you?
I think if most Christians were asked this question they would answer “But of course, God loves me” and nostalgically think back to their childhood memories of singing ‘Jesus Loves Me’. But friends, notice that the question posed was not DOES God love you but are you LETTING God love you. And that is not something most of us do willingly on a daily basis.
We all have roadblocks set up to letting God love us. One huge roadblock is expectation. Yes, it is good and right to rely on God because of our faith. But the majority of the time this isn’t in fact what we do. We throw faith aside because of our own pre-concieved notions of how God should work for our good in any situation, especially the challenging ones. We do this in our human relationships all the time. Some of you may have heard me speaking about the five love languages before. We each have a love language that speaks to us the most – for example mine is quality time spent, and we each have a love language that we express best to others, for me this is also quality time. In other words I’m good at giving what I deem to be important in my own life. But there’s a problem. There are four other love languages out there. I have a friend who I care about very much and we love one another, as uncomfortable as it is for some people to understand love inside of friendship. But often we would have mis-understandings and feel neglected because we expected the other person in our relationship to always give us love the way we wanted to receive it, the way we noticed it the most, and were blind to all the love that the other person was expressing to us, because we were expecting something else. How often is our relationship like that with God? We expect that things should go a certin way, that his love for us should look a specific way, and we blindly ignore the love he is pouring into us.
Like any human relationship we have expectations of how he should love us, mostly reflected in how he reveals himself to us, by what he can do for us. We come to him with this list of expectations, things that we desire, and some rightly so out of compassion or because we know he's God. But really, if we only expect God to give us things, we are missing the most intimate part of his love for us. The part that can rock our world. The love that comes when we just sit in his presence instead of seeking his hand. Someone very dear to me once summed this up by saying “we must seek God’s face and not his hand.” This is not to say that we shouldn’t tell God what’s on our heart and look to him to bless us and answer our prayers. But I liken this to my relationship with my parents. Mom and Dad appreciate the occasions when I come to them when I need something big that is outside of my capacity or I’m stuck. It is a sign of intimacy and trust and an ackowledgement of my high reguard for them in my life. But if I only ever asked for things instead of spending time with them, then we’d have a very poor relationship where they would feel unappreciated and neglected. So what are you seeking today? God’s ultimate presence, or his hand?
Another common road block is our own self gets in the way. We can't notice God calling our name, beckoning us to him because we are caught up in the noise inside of our head. As the noise grows louder, internally and externally, we feel like God isn't listening, like he's abandoned us.
So what do these road blocks look like in my life? When I was studying abroad in Australia I had many high notes, but there was a dark period for about a month and a half when I could not pray. When I try to explain this to people it tends to be misunderstood. It is not that I was too lazy to pray, or that I avoided praying. No, I felt as if my connection to God had been snapped. During this time I also went through some personal issues, times when I would have panic attacks from being around people. All I wanted was healing and God seemed so distant. I wondered if I wasn't worthy enough to talk to him and he was cutting me off, making it impossible for me to pray.
When I got home in December things seemed to look up for about two weeks and then I crashed. I was diagnosied with generalized anxiety and depression. I so desperately wanted God’s healing and he just seemed to have abanonded me.
But really in the midst of all of this mess, I wasn’t looking for God’s healing, because honestly, it was there, in his perfect timing. I was looking for my definition of healing, a maricle. I wanted it all to go away. But God doesn’t promise maricles. and his idea of healing isn't the same as mine. I wanted to feel self-sufficient emotionally, like I could function. But he wanted to use that time to draw me close to his face so he could whisper that he loved me in my ear. And those times I couldn't pray weren't punishment, but a time of my silence so that he could speak. I wasn't letting God love me the way he wanted to. I let my free will get in the way.I was too busy being distracted with my list of wants, as good intentioned as they were, to listen to him telling me he loved me. Really loved me. More than anyone else ever will.
When I started to get clued in on the bigger picture, and submitted my free will to him, my entire routine changed. When I just allowed God to love me as he desired, I realized that he delights in me. And I delight in him. I don’t know how many of you have ever constantly felt that God delights in you, but it’s beyond powerful. It’s like discovering intimacy for the first time. Before God and I were close, but nothing like this. And it wasn't like before I just knew about him, I knew him personally, but it's like the difference between knowing your friend and your best friend. Or between knowing the guy you work with and your husband.
I started to talk to God, as in just chat with God about my day. And about me. I asked him what he liked about me, and what he was calling me to change. And he answered. God loves me enough to answer me on some of the most intimate parts of our relationships. He delights in me enough to answer the questions that only he can fully answer because he made me. There is peace, and true wholeness, and true healing when we let God love us on his terms. It's like he takes the whole definition of what love should look like in my mind and just stands it on its head. And I am so much fuller because of that. It's amazing to hear him, like be so connected that he answers these crazy questions I throw out there like what he likes and doesn't like about me. Flooring. Because there really is an answer. Like he really does like something about me. We've lived in this place in the church where we've talked about sin and salvation exclusively for so long that we no longer know that God finds joy in us.
So what does letting God love you have to do with today’s scripture passage. Look closely at 1 Peter 4:12 – 13. Beloved, do not be surprised at the firey ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange is happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you are sharing in Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revelaed
Some where along the way we have let our expectations of who we want God to be, over shadow who he actually is. No where, I repeat no where, in the Bible does it say that Christians will not suffer. I can tell you countless personal and secondhand experiences of where Christians go through tragic, heart-wrenching times. But we’ve let fluff Christianity become our dream. We’ve essentially reduced God to our sugar daddy, instead of our Abba. God is bigger then any situation and can redeem anything. And yes, sometimes that means redemptive suffering. This doesn’t mean he’s punishing us, and it doesn’t mean that he has abandoned us. But sometimes the greatest love towards us are expressed in moments when we suffer. Times when God cries for us to come to him, but we turn away into our superficial defintion of love. We are not seeing his love for all that it is. We are not letting him love us on his terms!
Indulge me just a bit further. Once you understand letting God love you, and seek the ability to just sit in his presence blessings overflow. It’s like you see God through a whole new set of eyes. God is all powerful, he is the electricity that runs through us. And if we are apart from him, or not letting him love us on his terms, we are only running on brief little sparks. And when we actually let him love us, we don't have to worry about all of the requests in the praise songs. "Jesus be the center" - if you let him love you, he is. In fact, he's all you want to talk about. You just want to share this realization that Christ wants us to LET him love us with everyone. And you don't want to be apart from this love that is at your center of being. He is at the center, because nothing is apart from this love. I have told something to my friends that may not be sermon appropriate but is honest none the less. I feel like 75% of praise music would be obsolete if we said the truth. God wants to LOVE you with his presence. Shut up and let him. Get out of the way and stop being selfish and Let God LOVE you
I need to let go of my power and be filled with God’s power alone. A friend of mine shared something with me that’s profound. Independent people have such a hard time letting other people do things, including God. We tend to go to him as a last resort, or only a half hearted like "yeah, I know you should probably be on board here God" type of thing. Can I just tell you that there is so much freedom in letting go of that independence, both from other people and from God. Seriously, he's in control. And I don't need to try to fix things on my own. In fact, any attempt I make to do my own thing, if its outside his will, is only the second best and he doesn't want the second best for me, because he delights in me. And him guiding me by his holy loving presence is an act of love, and my act of love is to be submissive and attentive to his love. See how all of this fits together in this crazy crazy way?
Look at verses 6 – 8 of chapter 5 of 1 Peter. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxities upon him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves, keep alert.
Letting God love you might require effort at first. It might require setting yourself aside. Opening your mind to how big and powerful God is. It’s going to require discipline. But once you see how much he loves you, discipline will be replaced by second nature.
Do not deceive yourselves brothers and sisters. Satan wants nothing more then for us to be complacint in our relationships with God. To only seek him when times are trying. To think that he has abandoned us. Satan prays on us when we have separated ourselves from God’s loving presence being the center of our lives. When we have placed ourselves at the center of the world with no ability to see love outside of our narrow definitions and demands we have elimated all humility. Do not let Satan spell out your defintion of love.
I want to share just one more of the many things that have been revealed to me along this journey the past couple of months. God’s grace is so much bigger then I ever imagined. If you want to do something absolutely mortifying, think about your relationship with God in human terms. I have a friend named Shane and I am going to use our relationship to draw an illustration to my relationship with God. there are times when one of us just talks a lot. Like Shane can go 30 minutes straight if he's on the right topic without taking a breathe. I can do the same thing when I’m excited. And I can sit there, and just think, wow, there are so many things I want to say about what you just said, but before you can get a word in he's on to the next topic. And that is what I'm like with God. I just talk. And talk. And talk. Not breathing. Not listening. How is that communication? How is that a relationship that's healthy? God has to have so much grace towards me for treating him so poorly for so long. If I was in a relationship with anyone else who treated me like I treat God, I would not be a happy camper.
I think the spiritual writer Dag Hammarskjold might have summarized the message of what I’ve been trying to say tonight the best when he said “God may love us – yes – but our response is voluntary.” Brothers and sisters, what is your response to God’s love tonight? Are you letting God love you?