Sermon Tone Analysis

*Bending Toward God*

*John 8:1-12; Psalm 63:1*

 

 

“Bending Toward”

In his book /Soul Cravings/, author Erwin McManus would have us consider those things which are our heart’s deepest desires.

God made our souls to crave things … these are things toward which our souls gravitate, toward which are lives are bent … Like a tree in a forest bending toward a sunlit opening, a tree leaning out over a lake to receive full sunshine, so we will grow toward spiritual health when our lives bend toward the Son of God who is the Light of World.

What do you crave?

For me the very word “craving” conjures up a particularly enticing food or refreshing beverage.

Particularly in the last couple years, I’ve craved olives.

At a recent funeral for a man who was a decades’ long employee at Megafoods, I mentioned that he likely served me through his work as a manager of the Mega liquor department; for while Lynette does almost all the grocery shopping, I do shop for two things:  beer and olives.

You see, Lynette doesn’t like olives and so she doesn’t think to buy them.

But I have come to crave them as a snack so now when I’m a grocery store … I find my way to the olives.

On the beverage end, my morning craving is for one of these … a cup of decent coffee.

This represents for me so much more than just a little caffeine boost to start the day.

It is usually connected with a time of focused work, reading, or conversation.

Sitting down with a cup of coffee is often for me the beginning of the most productive part of my day.

My life “bends toward” coffee.

Then beyond our taste buds, we have cravings that reflect our inner “wiring” as people … we crave that which inspires us and brings joy to our hearts.

One example for me is represented by this volleyball.

I crave competition … whether its competing against the computer in Scrabble or on the volleyball court against a team half my age, there is something that is totally absorbing about competition and being able to test yourself against an opponent.

Your cravings might also be in athletics, or in the arts, or in business achievement, or in relationships.

At their best, cravings reflect the way God made you to be and bring a lot of energy and motivation to life.

Our lives will bend in that direction.

Take a moment and tell someone next you one of your pet cravings [G rated please!].

It would be great if our cravings were all good, but like everything else in human life, so our desires can be misdirected by sin.

There are obvious examples of cravings that are unhealthy in and of themselves … think drug addictions or sexual desires involving children.

Or cravings can become unhealthy if they are unmanaged and lead to addictive behavior … for example, if I started to drink 8-10 cups of coffee daily instead of 1 or 2.  And part of life’s reality is that cravings aren’t always easy to manage.

For they don’t stay satisfied for very long!

Ice cream lovers, does a trip to Cold Stone satisfy you for the next year?

Not likely … not for a person who really craves ice cream.

Having some great ice cream may satisfy for a few days, but we always tend to want more.

And there is that addictive “voice” in us that suggests:  “If a visit every few weeks to Cold Stone is enjoyable, how much more pleasure would I get if I went every week … or every day … with some “take home”?

The most likely result of this craving “take over” would be unhealthy cholesterol levels and lots of extra pounds.

Restless Souls finding Jesus

See something about us is problematic… Many of the things we crave, toward which our lives bend, don’t really satisfy us for every long and if we give into them too much they hurt us.

It’s the tale of the human condition and has resulted in our day in the need for lots of different recovery groups and treatment programs.

A 4th century Christian leader named Augustine understood that our souls constantly seek after things that don’t satisfy us.

He concluded, “Our souls are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Say those words with me…”Our souls are restless until they find their rest in you.”

He is on to something isn’t he?  Modern translation:  my heart seeks all kinds of things and none of them will satisfy me until finally I find my rest in you God …..

And once I am there … once my life is bent back toward that thing that it was created to crave, only then do I find rest … only then do I experience personal peace.

So what leads us to crave God, to seek rest in him?

The human tendency is to try to stack up a lot spiritual practices with the idea that if do enough right things then we will climb right up to God and crave him.

But I think if we start there, we are less likely to desire God and more likely to see him as the Great Cosmic Taskmaster.

A far different starting spot is beginning with Jesus.

In John 8, we have the religious leaders of his day, the Pharisees, trying to trap Jesus.

They bring a woman who is guilty of adultery before Jesus.

They care nothing for this woman … in fact, it is likely that they set her up in order to use her against Jesus.

We read of Jesus’ response, */“But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger [we’d love to know what he was writing].

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.

Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said.

"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared.

"Go now and leave your life of sin."

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

/*[John 8:1-12 (NIV)]

 

Here we find the kind of God we will crave … a God who does not condemn us in our sinfulness … a God who has mercy on those who have committed adultery whether in action or in thought … and how many of us haven’t done so at least in thought?

… a God who brings hope and new direction to living:  “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

We crave a God who will light up our life now and forever.

It’s the God who has shown himself to us in Jesus Christ.

The coming of Christ into the world is the central piece of evidence that before we could desire God, God craved a relationship me and you.

“For God so loved the world …”  He has this deep desire to walk with us through life and into eternity.

Because our lives were bent away from him, he had to come to this earth in Jesus.

Jesus became our Way back to God by giving his life on the cross.

We don’t start bending toward God by climbing this ladder… We start bending toward God when we realize that he has come down here to be with us.

We experience his magnetic love in Jesus and it is the power of that forgiving love that pulls in a divine direction, away from all those things that we can crave more than Him… and toward the Triune God who is love.

Practices of Bending Toward God

Three spiritual practices which lead us toward a greater desire for God include confession, discernment, and wholeness.

*Confession* is the practice of acknowledging our guilt in craving the wrong things or in craving things too strongly … cravings which then separate us from God.  Catch the fact that I said, crave “too strongly” ... See there are all kinds of things in the world that God wants us to have and thus in themselves are his gifts….

Money is a gift from God; you can do lots of good with money.

Sex is a good gift from God; none of us would here without it!

Cold Stone is a good gift of God … sweet cream with coconut.

The problem is when we misuse those things; they tear us away from God and make us un-human.

A story to illustrate both the power of sinful craving and the power of confession:  in his book /SexGod/, Rob Bell talks about a friend of his who was really good at seducing women.

This guy could have written articles for men’s magazines because he knew all the right words to say to get women to drop their guard and their clothes.

He particularly sought out women who had poor relationships with their fathers because he could come off looking like he was this perfect guy that would never leave them.

Then he would have sex with them and … leave them.

In the eyes of some, he should have been the happiest guy in town.

But he didn’t feel that way….

He looked at himself one day and said, “I am becoming a monster.

I have given in so often to this craving for sexual gratification that it has lead me way away from God.”

So the guy humbled himself before God and simply prayed, “I am wrong … I have messed up.”

That’s what confession is… it’s acknowledging to God that we have blown it and that we need what only he can give … forgiveness, release from guilt and shame.

We read in 1 John 1:9.   */“If we confess our sins, (Jesus) is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

/*

 

I don’t see this ladder as something that we climb to have salvation and everlasting life….

I see this ladder as process of growing closer to God… The first step is to confess our sins, our false cravings… and in the process we see how much we need God and how much he loves us … that he would forgive people just like us.

Confession leads to a heart that craves a God of merciful love.

The second spiritual practice is *discernment*.

Discernment is the practice of seeing God’s work in our world and determining his will for our lives.

We look at life with theological lenses believing that even in the mess of everyday human affairs, God is still bringing good around us and in fact, that he wants to bring specific good things through our actions.

Discernment is seeing both more clearly.

Remarkable theologian Karl Barth in the previous century had an interesting way of increasing his level of discernment.

He would get up in the morning and grab the morning paper and lay it right next to his Bible.

He’d find something in the news that was kingdom focused and demonstrated God’s hand in the world – generally the more difficult challenge.

The he would flip the other direction and find something that clearly ran against the Word of God … and I suppose if he wasn’t sure, he would seek out what God’s Word had to say on this kind of issue.

In the process of daily evaluating current events and culture on the basis of God’s Word, Barth found that he was growing in his ability to see God at work and to discern what God’s will was in His own life.

So perhaps one more step up the ladder would be to grab your Bible and newspaper, or these days watch CNN or Fox News or go on the Net … and compare and contrast what you are seeing out in the world with what you are reading in the Bible.

What you will find is that the ancient text does still speak today … that you will look at the world differently, that you will look at your life differently and gain even greater craving for the wisdom and will of God for your life.

One final practice and that’s *wholeness.*