6 Transforming Truths God Wants to Tell You
A priest friend extended a challenge to his congregation the other day. “Let’s take a couple of minutes to pray and think about what the Lord might want to say to you.”
My response? “Ohhhhhh.”
My friend’s words intrigued me. When I preach, I tend to focus on what God wants me to say, not the other way around.
But I got still and listened.
What God said came from a very familiar passage: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do lean not on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him (God) and he will make straight your paths” (Prov. 3:5-6).
- I am good.
After I heard that, I relaxed. And that’s what I want to key in on. Because to be able to relax in that kind of promise says something about what you believe about God. You see, that scripture only makes sense if you believe God is a good God. He’s trustable. He knows everything about who you are. It reminds me of the way we often start our services: “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, from you no secrets are hid.”
Either that’s good news or that’s terrible news. I think it’s good news, that God is, in fact, trustable. And therefore I can say, “OK, Lord, that means I can trust you. I can trust you for the things in my life that I don’t understand. For the things in my life that I don’t know how to fix. For the things in my life that I wish were different but over which I have no control (isn’t that just about everyone?). I can trust you to work out your plan and purpose, and if there are things you want me to do, you’ll let me know.”
That’s exactly the opposite of a life that is focused entirely around management, control, protection, and self-preservation. You see, your only real alternatives are to either trust God or organize your life this way. If you choose the latter, your ultimate goal is safety. That’s what you want more than anything else. You want to be safe yourself; you want the people you love to be safe; and if somebody comes against your safety, you want them to get theirs.
I choose to believe what he says.
- I am a righteous Father.
So in the midst of that kind of climate, to try to reaffirm the goodness of God is all the more important. In John 17:25, Jesus calls God “Righteous Father.” And those two words, in fact, describe the goodness of God. He’s righteous, and that means he’s trustable. He doesn’t say one thing and do another. You can count on him, that the words that he has spoken through his Son are true and reliable. And even though they don’t always make sense from a human perspective, God can guide us and teach us the things he wants us to know in a way that allows us to live out the words that he says.
All of that can only be possible if we understand that God is good. Or, to use the New Testament phrase, he is “righteous.” In other words, I can count on him, he’s consistent, he is who he says he is. As it says in the book of James, there is in him no “shadow of turning” (James 1:17b KJV). Meaning, unlike “Star Wars,” there is no dark side. He’s all light. “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).
And that righteousness gets expressed in tender authority. That’s the biblical definition of fatherhood: it’s tender. It’s compassionate. It’s kind. But there’s also authority, there’s responsibility for what it means to be a father. And you exercise that responsibility. So to call God “righteous father” is in fact the summation in two words of the very nature and character of God.
Jesus could never have gone into crucifixion and resurrection unless he believed that God was in fact, the righteous Father: good, trustable, I can count on him, and he’s in control. Therefore, he is reliable, and I can, once again, “Trust in the Lord with all [my] heart, and lean not on [my] own understanding, in all [my] ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight [my] paths” (Prov. 3:5-6). There’s a kind of inner consistency here, all of which is based on the good character of God.
- I am trustable.
So I have to ask you: Is that what you believe about God? Do you believe that God is trustable? That he knows all of who you are, that he loves and he cares for you deeply, and that when he begins to break into your life, what will happen to you is in fact, according to his good pleasure and purpose?
Now that doesn’t mean you’re always going to like it. Remember, Jesus is praying this prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John, and where is he? He’s about to be crucified. He’s been asked to give the ultimate sacrifice: himself.
And the same is true for us, because trust is, in fact, an invitation to service and sacrifice. In other words, entering into this relationship with God, where we understand him to be good and righteous, caring and trustable, doesn’t mean that I get to sit back in my chair, and say, “Well, you know, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.”
- I want to use you in the world.
No. The world’s a mess. Right? Therefore, who’s going to do something about it? The call to say yes to this God as a righteous Father is a call to be available for God to use you in the lives of other people, in your community, among family, friends, neighbors, enemies, the places of business and service. It’s a call to be available for God to use you wherever you are. Because you see, Jesus, in this very prayer, says all of these things about who God is, and the key phrase is, “I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am to see my glory, which you have given me, so that the world may believe” (cf. John 17:23-24).
In other words, Jesus asks for the character and the goodness and the rightness of God to be manifested in the public square, in the places where you live and work and serve. He asks that you and I be the people that God has called us to be when he calls us the light of the world, the salt of the earth.
That’s sacrifice. That does not mean me living my life for me. Me living my life for me is, in fact, symptomatic of a life that’s built upon managing circumstances and personal control. And if you don’t do things the way I want, I need to get in the way and make it happen for myself. I won’t ever ask anybody to do something for me, because only I know how to do it the right away. All of these are symptoms of a life that’s built around me trying to get what I want.
- I will never let you go.
That is not the Christian way. The Christian way is sacrifice. It’s doing things you never expected God would ask you to do, going places where you feel absolutely over your head. And it’s God teaching you to trust him in the midst of incredibly difficult and deeply challenging circumstances.
And all this is why, more often than not, the Christian life feels like hanging onto God as an anchor in the midst of a storm. We like to use analogies like this one that describe life as difficulty but with God guiding and leading us through even the worst things.
That’s symptomatic of a life that says, “I trust God.” I trust that he is good, that he is reliable, and that he is a good, good Father.
But, if I believe that God is good, and that he is trustable, then I can say yes to him even in the face of enormous difficulty. Even in the face of my own personal mistakes, there is forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation, and I can keep going.
That is only true because I believe God to be good. And because he is good, he is trustable. He is a righteous Father.
See, it doesn’t mean that life always goes well. Often life is difficult and profoundly tragic. But if I believe that God is good and trustable, I can continue to step forward, perhaps even into some of the worst that life has to offer. I can hold onto my faith as an anchor, knowing he will never let me go.
- I will change your heart.
It is that kind of trust that opens the door for healing within us, for mercy to be imparted to us, because God is more than willing to give it. And even if the best you can do is say, “God, I don’t know what I actually believe about you, regardless of what I might say, but teach me. Open my heart to who you really are,” he will take that closed fist inside of each of us and, slowly but surely, begin to open the fingers so that there is room to receive what he, because he loves us, so deeply wants to give.
Do you believe God is good? And that even when he asks of you very hard things, he will give you what you need? That he is a righteous father? That he is trustable, and that he will never let you go? If so, this is a service of great joy.
And if not, know that as you give him the closed fist of your heart, he will open those fingers, if you ask him, and begin to change the heart of stone and make it into the kind of tender heart that will allow you to say, “Yes, he is good, and I can trust him.”
(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on May 8, 2016, at Grace Episcopal Church, Ocala).
Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked KJV are from The Authorized (King James).