Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] So vacation Bible camp is this week. Vacation Bible camp is that celebration?
[00:00:08] I agree. I think that sounds.
[00:00:14] Okay.
[00:00:16] So this is being recorded. So it's vacation Bible celebration.
[00:00:20] All right.
[00:00:22] This week. And for the preschoolers and elementary school kids, not the high schoolers, but for the other groups, the theme for the week is God is always with us.
[00:00:34] God is always with us.
[00:00:37] When you hear God is always with us, how does that make you feel? Like, what's your first thought or feeling when you hear God is always with us?
[00:00:51] Comforting. That's comforting.
[00:00:54] Yeah, could be comforting.
[00:01:00] Could be scary, huh?
[00:01:04] Love. Feel loved.
[00:01:06] Yeah. That's good that you matter. You're not alone. What's that known? He knows you. Yeah. God always being with you means that he's like, he's with you in all your parts. He really knows you. There's no part of you he doesn't know.
[00:01:22] That's good.
[00:01:25] Accountable. Yeah, that's true. There's not. Like, you don't get to hide.
[00:01:30] Hide stuff you wish you could hide. Maybe Accountable.
[00:01:34] Yeah.
[00:01:36] Powerful that he is with us. Makes us, means that we are powerful.
[00:01:43] Yeah.
[00:01:44] Yeah. That being. It's kind of like.
[00:01:48] It's kind of like when I was little and I was with my dad, I didn't feel scared.
[00:01:54] There was more power than when I was on my own. Right. Yeah. That's good.
[00:02:00] Yeah. You know, just the phrase God is with you could mean a lot of different stuff. And all during the week, the kids are going to have different stories that they're going to look at and see what it was like for different people in the Bible to experience what it was like to have God with them. One day, they're going to be looking at what it was like for Jonah to be God with them when he, God, told Jonah what to do. And Jonah was like, nope.
[00:02:26] And then Jonah got to experience what it was like to be with God when you told God no. You know, which is different than some other times you might want to be with God. He was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when they told God yes. And he told the king no, and they got dumped in the fiery furnace.
[00:02:44] He was with Daniel in the lion's den. He was with Queen Esther when she had to go to the king and tell him that she wanted the king to make a change, the way he was treating the Israelites, putting her life in danger.
[00:03:03] He was with Elijah when he was totally worn out and felt alone and. And thought he would just be better off dead.
[00:03:12] These stories this week, we're Gonna be looking at all these people who experienced what it was like to have God with them in real life, in like, actual life circumstances. Not just theoretically, not just like, oh, it must be like this to have God with me. Like, no, experientially, like in a moment when you're dealing with something hard or difficult or good, when you've done something that's powerful and good, or when you're at your lowest, when you're at your.
[00:03:40] At a high point. Either way, what is it like to have God with you?
[00:03:46] I don't want to look at any of the stories right now because the kids are going to be looking at all that during the week. But I do want to look at a couple of things that Paul had to say about what it's like to have God with you.
[00:03:57] He had a very strong sense that God was always with us. And I want to start looking at Romans, chapter 8.
[00:04:05] When he throws simply as hard as you can. Chapter 8, verses 38 through 39. He says, I am convinced.
[00:04:13] Like, I know, as if. As if I know that gravity exists, that up is up and that down is down. I am convinced that nothing ever can separate us from God's love. Then he does this thing that's like, really poetic. He says, neither life nor death, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow. Not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love.
[00:04:42] No power in the sky above or in the earth below. Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[00:04:57] If I. If I just read that first sentence, I am convinced that nothing could ever separate us from God's love. My first thought would be like, well, okay, let's test, like, poke at it, you know, like, well, what, what could separate, like, he's convinced of that? Am I convinced of that? And if I wasn't convinced of that, what would I think possibly could separate me from God's love?
[00:05:18] Maybe it's.
[00:05:19] Maybe it's my unwillingness to listen to him or to obey him.
[00:05:28] Maybe it's my selfishness.
[00:05:33] You know, I know that I'm supposed to. That if I'm really working right in the world, I'm managing my stuff, my resources, I'm loving people, and I am placing my faith in God.
[00:05:45] But maybe I've got that twisted around where instead of placing my faith in God, I've placed my faith in people or I've placed my faith in things.
[00:05:52] And maybe that would separate Me from God's love. Like, poke at it. Like, would I experience the absence of God's love?
[00:06:01] But everything that I poked at it, I always kept thinking, like, well, that's a thing I would do. That's a thing I would do.
[00:06:08] As I was poking at it, what my mind went to were things that I would do.
[00:06:14] But Paul here is saying neither life nor death. Like, literally all your world experiences now and in the future, the powers of the unseen realms, lies and truths, the spiritual world, the world that we experience without our five senses, both angels and demons. There's nothing in that realm, he says, that can separate us from God's love.
[00:06:44] Nothing down below or nothing up above.
[00:06:47] Paul's mind went to things external to him, things that, like, are working on him. None of that stuff can separate us from God's love. And I think that's interesting. Whenever I read something like that, why does my brain go to something different than what Paul goes to? And I think it's because Paul is looking beyond.
[00:07:04] Like, I'm oriented towards thinking that I am the master of my thoughts when the reality is that my spirit and mind are formed by the world around me.
[00:07:15] We often think that we are.
[00:07:17] We are these agents where we're just like, I have decided these things, and this is what I think is true. You think those things are true because that's what your culture has told you is true. A lot like, it's wild how if you can go experience some time in different cultures and see how people do different things, and you'd be like, how did they come to the conclusion that this is okay? Well, they have different needs and they had different resources and they had different values, and then they came up with different things that they thought were good.
[00:07:44] And you realize that a lot of what you perceive, you're not as good at being the agent of knowing right or wrong than you think you are.
[00:07:58] You're being worked on. Your spirit is being worked on. It's either being malformed or reformed constantly by the environment around you.
[00:08:07] And I think Paul is right to look outside of himself instead of inside of himself when he's thinking about what might be working against God's love in him.
[00:08:19] But either way, he looks at it all and he says, I am convinced. I've thought through it all, not just internally, but all the things outside of myself that have formed me. And none of that stuff is able to separate me from God's love.
[00:08:37] Now, this is Paul who was persecuting Christians.
[00:08:45] He thought he was doing the will of God.
[00:08:47] When he was helping Christians get captured and killed.
[00:08:53] Can you imagine living the rest of your life with the knowledge that you had participated in the death, the pain of people that you now consider your brothers and sisters?
[00:09:09] So say you weren't a part of Horizon at one point, and when you weren't, you did something specifically, not just to hurt people here, but like to destroy their life.
[00:09:21] Then you change, and then you come and be a part of that church, and you see that person every day.
[00:09:26] I wonder what it's like to live your whole life knowing that you've done something like that, not to somebody out there, but to the people you consider that are your brothers and sisters. Now you live the rest of your life with the knowledge that you have done these evil things to people that you've loved.
[00:09:45] What does it take to restore a person for a person's spirit to be reformed after having been malformed in such a way? When we talk about the spirit of God, the will of God, the presence of God is restorative. I don't just mean, like, it makes us a little better. I mean, it takes somebody like Paul and brings them to the point that they can not only function in a church that they used to persecute, but they can come to be a leader in that church and that the other people's spirits are such that they don't see those things in the past as who they are. They see Paul for who he is, and they accept him as a leader in the church. Can you just.
[00:10:23] Can you just imagine what it takes to be the kind of person and to be the kind of church that is so invested in the presence of God that all of us can be transformed as a result of that presence. That way Paul is convinced that even the worst.
[00:10:41] The worst things I could possibly have done weren't enough to keep me from God's presence.
[00:10:51] When Rachel was young, she.
[00:10:58] She had a hard time disappointing us, you know, and so she figured out that lying was very helpful.
[00:11:10] Like, if you don't want to. If you want. If you do something that might disappoint somebody and you lie about it, and then they don't find out that you disappointed them, that's very helpful. That lie was very effective in helping you accomplish what you wanted to accomplish.
[00:11:28] It was a very big help. In times of trouble, lying was the problem is when you do that and people find out you're lying, then they don't ever know when you're telling the truth.
[00:11:44] And then every. You're thinking like, well, I'm telling The truth this time. But they're thinking like, well, maybe you're telling me the truth 1 out of 10 times. 9 out of 10 times. But I don't know if this is the one time or the nine times, you know.
[00:11:57] And so it created some problems with us. I was angry. Like, I felt.
[00:12:04] You know, I was like, why are you still doing this? You know?
[00:12:09] And we had a really tough talk one time, and I told her.
[00:12:14] I said, rachel, I love you, and I need you to quit lying to me. And she said, it doesn't feel like you love me.
[00:12:24] And that was interesting. Like, she's very empathetic. Like, obviously the emotions were strong. It was big. That experience of being in opposition to me felt to her like I didn't love her when she was lying. And I didn't know she was lying.
[00:12:45] She did feel like I loved her because I wasn't angry with her.
[00:12:50] But when I found out, getting caught and then me being angry with her was when she felt unloved.
[00:13:00] And I realized there's a big difference between being like, percept, like perception, and empathy.
[00:13:10] Like, she was very empathetic. She felt strongly. That was why it was important for her to. It felt very.
[00:13:17] It was hard for her to disappoint us, you know, she felt very empathetic, but she wasn't able to perceive what she was experiencing.
[00:13:27] I told her, rachel, if I didn't love you, it wouldn't matter to me that you were lying to me.
[00:13:33] What matters to me is that I'm close to you. And as long as you're lying to me, I don't get to know who you are.
[00:13:40] I would much rather you do whatever you're going to do and me know it. And to me, know who you.
[00:13:47] That I can know who you actually are so that I can love the real you instead of a fake version of you that feels closer to you because I'm not angry with you.
[00:14:00] It was a learning experience for us as parents and Rachel and all that.
[00:14:06] She listens to my sermons still, which is really weird.
[00:14:11] So I didn't tell her. I was going to say this. I can't wait till she listens to this one. She's going to be embarrassed, but she has.
[00:14:18] It's been remarkable how much she's grown up. I can't wait to go see. I'm going to go see her soon.
[00:14:23] And I remember those times because I remember how distant it felt while she was lying and how close I feel now being able to trust her.
[00:14:38] So we felt distance, but Nothing separated her from my love.
[00:14:47] What was separate was her experiencing my love.
[00:14:51] For her, my presence didn't feel like love.
[00:14:55] For her, that presence felt like wrath.
[00:14:58] And at best, she would prefer not to be separate from my presence, to not be aware of my presence. It would be better. It was better for her to be unknown by me than to be known and to know that she was disappointing me or doing things that were wrong.
[00:15:19] And so, for her, being known by me wasn't desirable.
[00:15:24] She wanted to lie. She preferred to lie than to be known by me.
[00:15:32] She thought that that was the absence of love.
[00:15:35] But the truth was that what she was experiencing was love. And a person that she had separated herself from.
[00:15:45] James addresses this.
[00:15:48] James is tough. James is the literal, physical brother of Jesus.
[00:15:52] He is the pastor of the church in Jerusalem. And Jerusalem has undergone some insane persecution.
[00:15:59] And things that I would say, like, it makes sense to me that they are.
[00:16:04] If you were ever going to be empathetic towards people that are making poor choices, it would be the church in Jerusalem because they suffered such great persecution.
[00:16:12] James, the pastor, when you read that, you don't think, like, you don't read James and think, oh, this guy is really empathetic towards these people. He's like. He throws hard balls from chapter one to chapter five.
[00:16:23] And here he's doing the same thing. But you gotta understand, he is.
[00:16:32] As you're reading James, you need to read James with the mindset. This man is desperate for these people that are dealing with persecution to love and to place their faith in God in the hardest moments of their life. Okay? This is what's going through his head from the first jot to the last jot of his pen.
[00:16:49] So this is what he says.
[00:16:51] Don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again.
[00:16:57] If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy to God.
[00:17:03] You will experience God's wrath like you're putting your face against God.
[00:17:12] Do you think the scriptures have no meaning? They say God is passionate and that the spirit that he has placed within us should be faithful to him. He doesn't just have, like, a cold, like they're there. Like it's some dispassionate sort of, like, when you're good, I'm happy that you're good, and you lied to me, and that's okay. Like, he has a passionate relationship in which he is. He is joyful when you are.
[00:17:37] When you come to him. And he is angry when you place yourself as an Enemy against him.
[00:17:45] It is an emotive relationship.
[00:17:48] It's one that you actually bring him joy and you actually bring him pain. And there's actual results of that pain in that relationship. It's not just like a hypothetical relationship.
[00:18:00] Your actions mean deeply to him.
[00:18:03] He's passionate and he gives great. This next part is important. And he gives grace generously. As the scripture says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
[00:18:17] So he says all that. He's like, look, you guys are placing your face against God. You are making yourselves an enemy to God. It's going to fail to you as if he's your enemy. God. It might even feel to you like God doesn't love you. That is a result of the passion that he has for you. You have taken this love of God and you have placed yourself against this love. And when a person loves you that much and you betray them, that response is going to feel hurtful to you. It's going to feel painful. Yes. What you've done is caused great pain to that other person. And they respond, and you're going to feel the weight of.
[00:18:56] Is a reaction that people that love each other have when they are betrayed.
[00:19:06] At camp this last week, vacation Bible camp, several of the teenagers, when they came back and they testified, they said, several of them mentioned this thing that I thought was really interesting. The pastor. So when you go to youth camp, it's very often like, you have, like, they call it like a mountaintop experience. Like, you go away for a week and you're worshiping God and you're reading the Bible and you're with people who are, like, focused on God and you're having conversations about God and it feels everything. Your faith just feels very awake and alive. And then you come back home and it feels like a letdown. It feels like, what happened to that experience? Like, did that really happen?
[00:19:43] Was that fake? Was that all just emotion? And now I'm back in the real world, and that wasn't real was going on.
[00:19:49] But the pastor said God didn't show up at camp. You did.
[00:19:54] And the way that the different teenagers expressed it was something like, what changed wasn't God's love for you or his attention towards you or the amount that he has focused on you, but the amount that you are focused on him.
[00:20:12] You spent this week having let go of whatever was distancing you from God. And you prayed a lot this week. You read your Bible a lot this week. You talked about God a lot this week. You worshiped God. You listened to sermons twice a day about God. You were doing things every day to help other people, to serve other people in God's name. You were living a life attentive to God and you experienced God as a result of the changes you made, not because of the changes God made.
[00:20:46] As Paul said, I am convinced that nothing can separate you from God's love.
[00:20:51] But you will experience God's love radically differently depending on the way you are ready to receive that love. I think for those of us who aren't prepared, experiencing God's love will happen something like this.
[00:21:06] If I experience the love of God, my choices are either to be in awe, like if I am literally in the presence of the God that created the universe, the natural response is worship. It's not like I need to worship. I just need to pay attention to God. Worship is the natural result of being in God's presence. It's just like anything. It's like if you, if you see your kid or a friend of yours, do something like totally selfless and kind and good for another person, you know what that does? Like you get this like, like that thing happens in you. You don't like, oh, I've decided. You don't think, like, I'm going to be proud of you right now. It just like, like you don't decide that like you're just present to, to your kid doing something beautiful and that thing happens in you.
[00:22:04] You don't decide to go do it. It just happens because you were present to your child when it happened.
[00:22:13] The same thing with God when you were gone at camp that week and you were present to God and you were listening to the truth of God. Not just like ideas about God, but deep truths about who God was and you were communicating to through worship expressions of love. These worship songs are like prayers to God. Expressing your deepest heart's desires. Things that you don't think about all the time. I'm busy, whatever I'm doing, digging ditches or whatever you do all day, and I'm not thinking about God, but here I am, I'm thinking about God. And the more I think about, I'm like, oh, right now that I'm thinking about you, I can't help but be in awe of you. Like this is what happens when you go away to camp. Not because it's fake, because it's the most real.
[00:22:55] You have stopped ignoring the God that is always present and never leaves you. The difference isn't that God has changed his presence to you, it's that you have changed your presence to Him. So if you are present to God, this is what's going to happen. You will be in awe or you will be petrified.
[00:23:14] To be present to God while you are in opposition to God in is devastating.
[00:23:22] It causes deep fear. I don't know if fear is even the right word. It's like dread maybe.
[00:23:33] It's like, I think probably what Rachel felt when she realized that the choices that she made had become present, become like it was out in the open.
[00:23:46] And she felt just this awful feeling of being exposed to us. And such a hard thing to witness a person being a person that you love being exposed that way.
[00:24:03] And all you want to do is just tell them, like, I love you, you know, But that person can't be who you are.
[00:24:15] I love you and I need you to not be that person anymore because I love you.
[00:24:23] But it's dreadful when you feel the weight of your choices when you are an enemy to God.
[00:24:30] So my choices when I come before God are either to be worshiped, either to worship him, not because I choose to, but because I'm in the presence of the good and beautiful, or I am in dread because I'm in the presence of the good and beautiful.
[00:24:46] The only other option is to simply ignore his presence, which I think is by far the preferable experience to the dread of God.
[00:24:58] It is so exposing and it's such a terrible feeling to have placed yourself in opposition to God and to experience that, to be raw before God.
[00:25:11] It makes a lot more sense to simply pretend he's not there to whether or not it makes sense. Like a kid hiding their face. I'm going to pretend that you're not there and live my life as if I don't even I'm not aware of your presence.
[00:25:27] I think that's like a safety mechanism.
[00:25:30] If we are unwilling to be restored to God, to be with God. I would rather pretend he's not there than to feel the dread of God.
[00:25:39] And I think we're all living in one of those experiences with God, various combinations of those experiences with God.
[00:25:49] We are in awe of him, we are in dread of him, or we are ignoring Him.
[00:25:54] Those are our choices. Because he is. I am convinced that his love is always present.
[00:26:00] My experience to his love is going to be one of those three things in any given moment.
[00:26:06] So James says this. If that's the reality, here's what we need to do.
[00:26:12] You must humble yourselves before God.
[00:26:15] Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
[00:26:21] Come close to God and God will come close to you.
[00:26:26] He's not looking to hold anything over your head or to, like, make you feel. His interest isn't in participating in your bad feelings about yourself.
[00:26:36] He wants to be close to you. His whole desire is to be close to you.
[00:26:41] You come close to him and he will come close to you. He's not going to participate in your evil, but he always wants to love you. Come close to him.
[00:26:51] He will always come close to you. Paul says. I'm convinced of that. Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you've done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let the sadness. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up in honor. What a weird thing to say.
[00:27:15] To be close to God, what you need to do is to be sad and to be.
[00:27:20] To be like. To cry.
[00:27:23] To be close to God, you need to cry.
[00:27:26] Obviously what he's saying is, you need to quit pretending that your poor choices don't matter. You need to quit laughing about putting yourself against God, about making your choices something that you think are your own and are in opposition to who God is. You need to quit pretending that he's not there.
[00:27:47] You need to experience what it's like to be with Him. And in that, you need to be sorrowful of the distance that you've put between Him.
[00:27:55] If you repent, he will always lift you up. His goal is that you are with Him. And so when you quit being his enemy, he will be your father.
[00:28:07] He is constantly loving you.
[00:28:11] And you will feel the love when you quit being his enemy, when you quit placing your face against him.
[00:28:19] Just like with Rachel.
[00:28:21] I guarantee you that the love of your heavenly Father way, way, way more pure than my love for Rachel.
[00:28:30] His love is constant and it's burning hard for you.
[00:28:34] He is always with you.
[00:28:37] He desires a closeness with you.
[00:28:40] That closeness will either be the most beautiful thing you experience and you can't help but just be in awe of him, or it will be dreadful and it will feel terrible that you've placed yourself against Him.
[00:28:55] That's what it means to be close to God.
[00:29:00] I recommend taking James advice.
[00:29:03] Be sorrowful for the things that you should be sorrowful for.
[00:29:06] Repent.
[00:29:08] Apologize.
[00:29:10] Lay it down.
[00:29:12] Just say, daddy, I'm sorry.
[00:29:15] I don't know why I did those things.
[00:29:17] I love you.
[00:29:19] Just do that. See what happens.
[00:29:23] Experience God's love, His presence, not as his enemy, but as his son and as his daughter.
[00:29:31] This week you're going to hear all kinds of stories about people who experienced God's presence. Very different situations. Some of them, they were heroic and they were right on God's side. Some of them, like Jonah, they had some rough times that they could have avoided if they hadn't put their face against God.
[00:29:51] Either way, recognize that all of these stories are about God with us.
[00:29:58] God always with us.
[00:30:00] And you are one of those stories, too.
[00:30:03] Let's pray, Father. God, I am. I just want to pray now for everyone in this room. All of the adults, all of the teenagers, all the kids who will be participating in helping in various ways during the week.
[00:30:22] Lord, I pray that we are aware of your presence, that we are steep in your presence, and God that we have repented ourselves. God, that we come to this week aware of your presence, in awe of you, worshiping you, grateful that you are our father and God. I pray that as all of these kids experience you with us this week, that they see the truth of you in the words in the Bible, but they also see the truth of you lived out among the adults with them all morning.
[00:31:02] And that they come to trust and to believe that you are present with us always and that that presence is always good and loving, and it can always be beautiful and it can be a wonderful experience.
[00:31:17] In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
