Tim Keller - Human Race: The Pursuit Of More?

hello again yes I'm here all the way from the US every time somebody says us on reminded of a joke that said thousands of years from now when the archaeologists dig up our civilization over North America they're going to say this the most self-centered civilization we've ever heard of they just call themselves us what else is there to say there may be some truth in that every night this week we're looking at something that everybody whose living life has to get a hold of we're talking about things like meaning and purpose and satisfaction identity hope things that you can't live without and everybody regardless of your beliefs not only do you have to you actually have to have working theories a working theory of how to get those things because they're all lifelong pursuits now tonight we're going to be taking a look at one in particular I'm going to each night though trying to be fair I hope and respectful of all points of view I'm here to make a case that Christianity gives unequaled resources for those who are seeking these things and tonight we're going to look at one if we're honest it's pretty much the mainspring of all we do yes you're here you're at Oxford you want to make a contribution to a field and yet ultimately why to a great degree almost everything we do is in the pursuit of something we call fulfillment happiness we're all looking for a life with satisfaction deep enough to be there through the ups and downs of changing circumstances so we're actually all trying alternately to pursue happiness to pursue contentment fulfillment satisfaction whatever you want to call it and maybe what you call it matters because there are some people some some thinkers that don't think there's any crisis and happiness at all so two atheist Raiders who I take oh I learn a lot from one is julienne beginni who is British Tom Nagel who's a professor philosophy at NYU and both of them in various places not too long ago said they don't think there's any there's really not a happiness crisis and they you can show you can look at at surveys there's all kinds of surveys now in which people are asked are you happy and the great majority of people usually say yes I'm happy and so beginning and and nagel they both say look most people are happy nobody's happy all the time nobody expects to be happy all the time and there's really not much in the way of a crisis here but there's another writer Terry Eagleton some of you may know he's a literary critic he's Irish at one point he says perhaps the magnitude of the problem we have is masked by using the word happiness and he says here he says happiness means quote a feeble holiday camp sort of word evocative of manic grins and cavorting about you know we Americans come over here so you can teach us how to speak the English language no American would ever say anything as good as that happiness is a feeble holiday camp sort of word evocative of manic grins and cavorting about and he goes on to say well most people think of when they think of the word happiness it just means if are you happy means are you okay are you happy means are you having any fun and Eagleton goes on to say when you ask that of course most people are gonna say they're happy but then let's look why do people explode an outrage the way they do why is there so much anger coursing through all of our public discourse look at the statistics on depression and suicide look at them they're always startling and this is actually I'm continuing Terry Eagleton's way of talking about that he says when you begin to look at all that you begin to realize a sustained satisfaction and contentment is extremely elusive and actually you know the artists have been singing about it for years you know that wonderful track on the classic u2 you know album the Joshua tree I've scaled the city walls I've kissed many lips and I still haven't found what I'm looking for Eagleton is saying no there is a problem there is an elusiveness to satisfaction and contentment and it actually is you can find it in statistics no not in the in the questions how many of you are happy Oh 65% of people say I'm happy no not those statistics there's a lot of other ones that we there is a problem of satisfaction now let's take a look each night we're looking at a text from the book of Mark I'm gonna read you the text and I'm gonna show you I'm going to reflect on the subject but then ultimately show you how the text brings the Christian resource to bear on this very very big problem that we haven't really found fulfilment the text actually is from mark chapter 2 I'm just going to read the first few verses of it when Jesus entered Capernaum they gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left not even outside the door and he preached the word to them some men brought to him a paralyzed man carried by four of them since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd they made an opening in the roof above Jesus digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on when Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralyzed man son your sins are forgiven some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking why does this fellow talk like that he's blaspheming who can forgive sins but God alone immediately Jesus knew in his spirit what they were thinking in their hearts and he said to them why are you thinking these things which is easier to say to this paralyzed man your sins are forgiven or to say get up take up your mat and walk but I want you to see I want you to know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins so he said to the man I tell you get up take up your mat and go home he got up took his mat walked out in full view of them all this amazed everyone and they praised God saying we had never seen anything like this three questions what are we looking for how are we looking for it and where can we find it what are we looking for how are we looking for it where can we find it what are we looking for notice that Jesus sees a paralyzed man the paralyzed man and his friends are going to dramatic lengths in order to get him in front of Jesus why to be paralyzed what a terrible condition and so this man obviously believes with with perfectly understandably that if he could get to this miracle worker he's heard about and if this miracle worker could enable him to walk again finally he would be happy finally he would be happy so Jesus stupefies the man and his friends and everyone else by walking over and saying what's he do as I said take apply but no he doesn't say anything about the man's physical condition he says son your sins are forgiven now then we're gonna get back to why that's astounding on many levels but you could certainly expect that the paralyzed man is sitting there going thanks not really why I've come are you looking at me that's really not what I'm looking for and in a sense Jesus is saying are you sure that's not what you're looking for Jesus is asking him to go deeper actually if you think about it think of all the people who are walking around who aren't at all happy there's quite a few people walking around who are not happy and in a sense by Jesus going deeper he's saying of course there's gonna be an enormous exultation when you get a pick up your bed and walk but I'm trying to show you you need to weigh more than that to find fulfillment to find the happiness you're looking for look my wife knows this I would really like to live in a house with a fireplace for the last 35 years I have not lived in a house with a fireplace and she knows that this is such a sustained desire on my part that if I ever got a house with a fireplace or if I got a fireplace in my house I would be extremely delighted nevertheless I can say and I don't think anybody would doubt me here that even though that's an abiding desire and I would get great joy in that you know if you're your family's doing well I'm a minister so if your church is doing well the fire the lack of a fireplace cannot really cast a shadow over my life why because there's a hierarchy of desires right so wanting a fireplace is a more superficial desire and therefore if my more fundamental desires my deeper desires are satisfied at the time then a frustration of my more superficial desires I can handle that so what do we think are the deepest desires huh well we have a tendency to say well health this man thought health of course and of course that's a much more foundational than having a nice home you know with a fireplace or you might say career or maybe we should just say success success in career or success in public service or whatever or success in romance and love I found love I found my career I'm doing well I'm being paid well so those are being that's much more fundamental desires than something like a fireplace or things like that right here's a problem what happens when you find out that those desires are being satisfied and yet you still feel there's something missing what would be more deep than that what could be more deeper what would be deeper still than such fundamental desires here's three people that bear testimony to that number one is Horus Horus was a Roman poet and Horus was actually reached the top evidently from what I can tell he he he was personal friend of a guy who ended up becoming Emperor this guy named Caesar Augustus who was personal friend and of course when your best friend becomes the Roman Emperor you really have reached the top of your profession you've reached the top of society and yet Horace wrote quote no one lives content unquote he couldn't possibly mean you're never happy nobody's ever happy can't mean that but what he is speaking to is I got to the top and I'm not content I got all I got all the needs that I would have thought would have been the most fundamental of these if you get your most fundamental needs met then the more superficial needs their frustration you can handle but I got those needs met and I was there still something obviously there's something deeper a second person that I just love quoting I can't help but I've been doing it for years that when I first when captain I first moved to New York City I used to read The Village Voice which is now defunct but it was a kind of downtown arts radical left-wing publication and there was a woman who used to write a column in there named Cynthia Haim wall and what happens in a place like New York is if you stay in New York long enough you meet people who show up they're trying to break into their field and you know them when that is to say you know them when she actually had a list I I have lost the list because I've had this quote from so long ago but she had a list of famous people who became celebrities in movies and she remembered when one of them was worked behind the cosmetic counter at Macy's department store and she remembered another guy who used to be a bouncer at a nightclub in in the village and then she saw them rise to the top and she knew them well enough to know this she says that giant thing they were striving for that fame thing that was going to make everything okay that was going to make their lives bearable that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and haha happiness had happened and nothing changed they were still them the disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable and then she added and she's not a religious person at all she said I think if God really wants to play a rotten practical joke on you he grants your deepest wish and then giggles merrily as you suddenly realize you want to kill yourself she's not a religious person she's getting it something absolutely right and of course the argument here that she's making is exactly the same argument as CS Lewis made and his maybe most in my mind his most famous and best chapter in Maher Christianity which were radio talks the BBC during what war - and he puts it like this most people if they really learned how to look into their own hearts would know that they do want and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world there are all sorts of ways that the world can offer to give it to you but they are they never keep their promise the longings which first arise in us when we fall in love when we first think of a foreign country or first take up some subject that excites us our longings which no marriage no travel no learning can really satisfy I am NOT speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages or trips and so on I'm speaking of even the best possible ones there is always something we grasped that in the first moment of longing that fades away in the reality the spouse may be a good spouse the scenery has been excellent it has turned out to be a great job but it capital IT and he doesn't mean by the way technology IT it has evaded us it was a great marriage was a great job it was a great scenery it was a great trip and yet it has evaded us this is what Horace is talking about this is what Cynthia homo is referring to what CS Lewis is talking about is guess what there is something deeper than what we consider the most foundational needs and desires that you can get those and the sooner you get there and I would say oxford students you may be living this is this is a hard message for people at Oxford because if you've made it to Oxford from anywhere in the world you say wow my life is being set up for something great and you do believe what CS Lewis said what Horace said what Cynthia Haim will said you do believe that it will not evade you that that deeper satisfaction you say if I get this and this if I get this career if I get this love partner if I get this marriage if I get this then I will be happy if you could if I could get out of this Matt as a paralyzed man and walk around then I'd be happy and yet there's there's there are centuries of testimony just read biographies not you know to read the Bible to find this out testimonies to say there's something deeper than all any of this those kinds of success can ever get to I mean not to trivialize it there's a niche that none of those things can scratch and it's a hard message but it will evade you now eventually I don't know how many of you are there eventually you're gonna find out that your wildest dreams if they're fulfilled will not deliver what you think they will deliver some of you are halfway to it some of you actually don't believe what I'm saying all right well then just please file what I'm telling you tonight because I would like you to believe that you're gonna need it later once you decide once you realize I mean that the that it has evaded you even in the best possible success and the satisfaction that content mean you've been looking for you still haven't found what you're looking for then what do you do point two there's two basic ways and I'm gonna break it down there's two basic ways to pursue it here I'm following a book by Jonathan Hite who's a social psychologist at NYU and he's written a book some years ago now called the happiness hypothesis and he very wisely lays out the fact that was an ancient approach to the problem of happiness he admits unlike some that there's a huge problem with it and he says there's there's an ancient approach on a modern approach now what are they the ancient approach is something that he lays out very well and the ancient approach was and we're talking about everyone from the Greeks and the Romans all the way to people in the east the Chinese the Indians the the people in the east and and all those cultures believed that it Capel IT it was not out there that the important thing was through contemplation or various disciplines and now here I'm throwing everybody in the same boat but Jonathan Hite actually says basically the wisdom of the Ancients was do not attach yourself to anything in this world don't let your heart get too attached to anything because first of all you got to lose it all and secondly even if you get something it will not really satisfy you the epictetus it was a famous stoic teacher put it like this he said what harm is there while you are kissing your child to murmur softly to yourself tomorrow you will die so Epictetus is actually saying now he was a stoic well no he wasn't yeah he was a still excuse me stoic philosopher and maybe the Stoics were maybe the the quintessential versions of the ancient way but basically he was saying don't let your heart get too attached to your son your little boy your little girl don't do that because first of all father love will never give you all the satisfaction you want what do you see and secondly the child could die so if you don't attach yourself to anything because the thing you're looking for is really not out there so everything from Buddhist meditation to the stoic contemplation was all about and Jonathan Hite some sort of it was all about making sure that your heart didn't invest itself too much in anything in this world because it will disappoint you it will it will bring you down and then height says the modern way is exactly the opposite for example can you imagine ancient Greek philosophers hearing what almost every University tells you and that is look into your heart find out what you're passionate about and go out and do it can you imagine the philosopher is in the past but they're listening to people saying you're telling people to follow their passions and not control their passions see the ancient way was control your passions don't don't set don't give them vent you know self control don't get your give your heart to anything but modern people say app absolutely not you decide what's going to find your passion what is gonna fulfill you and you go out there and you don't let anything stand in your way now the problem of course with that is what we've already seen and that is that when you actually do get a hold of it or you get near it under you at least you get your initial successes in life you'll find that they actually do not really give you anything like what you thought and when that happens if you're still a modern person and it's almost no way to avoid it then there are several things that can happen to you you've got here's four different possibilities when you expense that initial disappointment what are you going to do here's the four ways for if these are four modern ways one is we call it you'll live in perpetual you'll live in perpetual frantic how'd it guess is the right way to put it perpetual driven this the second way is to be living in perpetual outrage the third is to be a self hater and the fourth has become a disillusioned cynic what I mean by this self their perpetual driven is if you're unhappy and here you're married here you have a career things are going well and you're still unhappy you blame those things you say I need a better spouse I need a better career and you are frantically driven for Oh a good number of years and you say it's not me it's not the world it is out there I just haven't found the right spouse I haven't found the right career and so it's it's exhausting and it's a state of perpetual driven as a second possibility is a state of perpetual outrage perpetual outrages you decide the reason I'm unhappy is there are social forces in the world there of groups of people there are people that are keeping me from being fulfilled and you become an activist because you're filled with outrage because the reason I'm unhappy is it's got to be something out there it's not it's not he's not these things that I've got it's not my career it's not my spouse that's it's it's these social forces out there but for petrol outrages also quite exhausting the third way is a self hating approach which is the most dangerous you see instead of blaming your spouse in your career that I haven't found it or instead of blaming so forces because I haven't found yet I blame myself I must be a failure you look around and you see other people with manic grins cavorting about and you say oh there's other people are happy and of course we hide our unhappiness from each other but you might be one of those poor people that think everybody else is really pretty content I'm not and it must be me to be self-hating which is which I believe is one of the possible fruits of the modern way of saying go out there it's out there it is out there follow your passions and then of course you don't find it is to hate yourself you feel like a failure so you can blame the things you can blame social forces you can blame yourself or you become no this is from CS Lewis's a great talk on hope you can become what he called not using gender-neutral language but he what he called the disillusion sensible man which I do think by the way I think once if you're an Oxford graduate an Oxford person and you get out there you will probably start by being pretty frantic but I do think you may end up this way and what he means by the sensible man and this is actually a quote he says the disillusion sensible man is a person who says by my time about bite by my age you've given up chasing rainbows end so the disillusion sensible man settles down and learns to not expect too much from life and to repress that part of himself which used to say as he would say cry for the moon now I it sounds like the ancient way doesn't it it sounds like the old way of saying we'll just detach but I would say when modern people finally come to realise it is not out there after spending years looking for it there's a bitterness there that you don't find in Epictetus and besides that even though when you just harden your heart like that and that's what you're doing when you say well you just stop trying to expect happiness out of life you are dehumanizing yourself Martin Heidegger the German philosopher at one point says that what makes us different than animals is we don't just want to survive we don't we want joy what meaning so you we went fulfillment and to say well there is no joy in meaning and fulfillment it's everything's going to disappoint so just become cynical and just make jokes about everything and just become ironic you're actually destroying the part of your heart that makes you human it's very very dangerous because if you say okay I'm just not gonna get all that attached to anything do you know what you're doing again this is Louis CS Lewis's love anything and your heart will be wrong and possibly broken if you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one not even an animal wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries and avoid all in entanglements lock it up safe in a casket or coffin of your selfishness but in that casket safe dark motionless airless your heart will change it will not be broken it will become unbreakable impenetrable and irredeemable the only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of a lot as hell now if it's true that the ancient way or the kind of modern version of the ancient way which is the disillusioned cynic ironic person or if all the other ways end up bring us to a place of frustration or maybe self-hating or exhaustion or hardening is there a way forward in the text why does Jesus say my son your sins are forgiven immediately a couple things happen he obviously wants to be healed but Jesus doesn't do that he says my son sins are forgiven first of all he's pointing to himself oh he's pointing to himself because as you know you can't forgive somebody unless the sin is against you so if Tom comes in here and punches dick in the nose Harry says Tom I forgive you for punching dick in the nose Harry will say through his bloodied nose excuse me Tom his punch dick Harry says I forgive you dick will say to Harry you can't forgive Tom only I can forgive time you can't forgive time only I can do it because his sin was against me not against you for Jesus Christ to walk out to a man who's never met and say my son your sins are all forgiven the reason the religious leaders were so upset it was he was pointing to himself he's saying he's God the only person they could say that would be the creator of all but more than that here's the other interesting thing about it did the paralyzed man say I repent he didn't say a thing and everywhere in the Bible it is an absolute law God does not forgive unless you repent so how in the world could Jesus come up to a man who hadn't repented and said I forgive you unless and there's a reference in the text Jesus could read hearts remember he's actually says he could tell it with what the religious leaders were thinking in their hearts that means he could read that man's heart too and there must have been some inchoate inarticulate certainly it was unarticulated desire for mercy and grace and Jesus responds to it even though it's not as yet on his lips that's how gracious he is that's that's how quick he is to embrace us and it that's how gracious he is he's not sitting there waiting well are you gonna do it alright and if you come and you'd say it right and you lay it out properly I might forgive you oh no this is Jesus way of saying to this man I'm what you're looking for you don't know but I'm the one you're looking for let's just mention again san agustin last night we talked about st. Augustine's theology of human nature and pointed out that it explains why we do evil tonight I'd like if you were here last night fine this isn't the same as what I'm telling you tonight because tonight San Agustin says this he says the ancients are wrong it is out there but the modern people are wrong because it is not in any material thing st. Augustine says famously our our hearts are restless Lord till they find their rest in you and here's what he's saying the ancients were wrong to say suppress your desires moderns are wrong to say you indulge your desires Augustine says and the Christian way is you reorder your desires which is that say if you love God the most that's the deepest desire of the heart a love relationship with God that's that deepest as I have been looking for that's the thing you're after that's the thing it's deeper than success in romance than anything else that's what you want a quick example years ago I didn't do it at the same time but as a pastor over a period of two years I ended up counseling with two women who had were devoted mothers they had one adolescent son each that is each one had one child and one adolescent son they also had a remote husband at least a husband who was remote distant emotionally from both the wife but also from the son and in both cases the sons were doing very badly in school they were beginning to misbehave in a number of different ways and both of the women were getting quite angry at both the husband and about at their son and I remember very clearly being a rabbit relatively naive young minister at the time was a long time ago a long time ago I counseled both of the women I said well you gotta at least start by forgiving the men in your life just forgive them they you know your husband is being remote he's being a jerk forgive him your son is being a fool forgive him and then go work on the other things well it was interesting to me that there was one woman who was a fairly new Christian believer and it was another woman had been in my church for many many years and the first woman the crisp new Christian believer was able it was a struggle but was able to actually forgive and get past the bitterness and anger the second woman could not I'm saying this so I don't want anybody to think that once you become a professing Christian you automatically everything works out well because it came I became it became clear to me in this in the case of the second woman that she loved her son so much that her son was essentially her savior deep in her heart she had made this decision she said if my son grows up okay if my son is happy and he loves me then I'll know my life is significant her son was their highest love and as a result because things were going wrong and because he was getting alienated from her and alienated from her from the father and all that she began to become incredibly bitter against her husband and also bitter at her son because her son in a sense held her soul in his hand the other woman dug deep and realized that now that I have a relationship with god I've got to love God and know his love and that has to be more important to me than the love of my son or my husband and here's what's strange do you see what's happening here because you love God more than her son she began to love her son more or as the other woman because she loves her son more than God began to hate her son and Saint Agustin is saying only if you know God as your supreme love will you love anything else well Augustine says don't suppress your desires but don't indulge your desires the problem is not to love your child less like Epictetus said but you must love God more in relationship to your child and if you love God more in relation to your child your child you will love far better than before and therefore that's the thing that you're looking for it's a love now and you say how do we get that when Jesus said I have power to forgive sins and he heals the man like that in order to show that he is not just another human miracle worker that he's able to do something that miracle workers and even in those days couldn't do but what he's actually saying I am the son of man which is a term in the Bible that means a divine figure he's already been pointing to himself as a divine figure even in in doing the forgiveness son of God okay so he's pointing to himself later on only in the book of Mark will we see where he that's the authority to forgive sins he doesn't forgive sins only in the authority of who he is he also forgive sins on the authority of what he does because he goes to the cross and he pays a debt and so you can't just decide even last night somebody asked this you can't just decide oh I think I will love God now to be happy got it thank you very much I now I see I have to love God more to be happy wait a minute if you say I'm gonna love God in order to be happy you're not loving God you're using God if somebody comes up to you and says I'd like to be your friend you know why I believe you can open doors for me I think you can get me into this in that Club I think you can introduce me to important people that's why I want to be your friend and you would say you're not loving me you're using me if you go to say I'm going to if you aim for satisfaction and use God as a way of getting there you won't get satisfaction or God because you're not loving God you're using him to love God is no way to get satisfaction but to love him for who he is it's the love him for a beauty when I was in college I had to learn to listen to Mozart to get a degree in music appreciation or to get a Bachelor of Arts in order to get a good job so I listened to Mozart in order to make money but today I spent a lot of money just to listen to Mozart because Mozart wasn't means to an end but now Mozart is a beautiful thing in himself how does God become that to you that's the only way you'll ever be happy you have to see Jesus Christ dying on the cross for you you can't just see an abstract God up in the air and just say oh he's wonderful and just try to make yourself love him you've got to see him paying a debt for you there's a story probably not true I've been trying to get to the bottom of it but I've heard it from several accounts then in the old days of Russia there was the Tsar and the Tsar had a friend who died pretty young and as the man was dying he said would you please take care of my young son so this are raised the son as his own and he gave him a good education eventually the man went into the army and had a high administrative post but as time went on the man had both a drinking problem and a gambling problem and he began to lose money and he began to embezzle funds from the coffers of the army in order to make up you know to pay his debts one night he was looking at the ledger books and he realized that jig was up he saw there was absolutely nothing that he was going to be it was there's no way he was gonna be able to hide it and he said it's going to come out I will be Dishonored I'll bring dishonor to the Tsar and so I might as well kill myself so he had a revolver he was going to kill himself but he kept drinking in order to get up the courage to kill himself but he over drank any passed out now the Czar was a man who upon occasion sort of like Henry the fifth in the Shakespearean play Henry the fifth would dress up as a common man as an enlisted man and go out amongst the soldiers just to see what the morale was like and so here's his are dressed up as a common man who goes into the tent and sees his adopted son passed out over these books he takes a look at the books and he figures out what's happening and when the young man wakes up from his drunken stupor he sees a letter and the letter says I the Tsar will make good the debt with us our seal on it and the young man said the Tsar saw everything the King has been here and he looked at me and he saw everything I'd done wrong he saw me to the bottom but he still loved me to the skies and he paid my debt now that's the gospel Jesus Christ is God come among us dressed up like one of us really became a human being and looked into us and he saw everything and yet he said I'm gonna forgive you I'm gonna forgive you I'm gonna do it by my grace that's beautiful that's not just useful that's beautiful and that will fill you because that's what you've been looking for first question is this should we attach ourselves to God as he might not fulfill our satisfaction so I guess how can we be sure that God is different these other things okay so should we attach ourselves to God in order to as he might not fulfill they might not yes well Blaise Pascal has a pond say I can never remember what number my favourite Ponce's are of course it's a where he says that before you will probably spend the time determining whether Christianity is true or not you first ought to see why it would be great if it was true he says nobody for example I wrote a book reason for God which is I don't know in two or three hundred pages long why why it's reasonable to believe in Christianity but it's a long slog I mean why would you why would you sit down and read something like that unless you actually had this idea that ah Christianity I see what it offers it would be great if it was true but I don't know if it is only when you get to that point it would be great if it was true I don't know if it is will you take will you probably do the hard work of figuring out whether it's true or not you must not ultimately come to God because you hope he'll satisfy you I tried to say it rather quickly and I maybe went by too quickly well I said if you do that you're using him makan Sept and you're not loving him I try to say if somebody says I want to be a friend to you to open doors to make me satisfied basically you want people to love you for who you are and God of course deserves to be loved for who he is but the only way that's going to happen is if you believe the other things I mentioned at the very end were true do you believe that there is that that we are cut off from God because of many things we do that in Jesus Christ God came and actually paid a price that was remarkably sacrificed much in order to be able to embrace us those are all matters of Christian truth if I believe Christianity is true then it will bring me satisfaction but I must not just decide I'm going to leaving God in order to get satisfaction it's a aim at God and you'll get satisfaction thrown in aim at satisfaction you'll get neither and the only reason I was in the end there are plenty of times in which I'm not satisfied in God and those times but in those times I say but he's real I'm not following him simply because it makes me happy at the moment I'm following because you know what even if he doesn't make me happy at the moment he made me he redeemed me I owe him strangely enough it's only when I say I need to follow him regardless whether he satisfies me or not do I even begin to get satisfaction that that order is very difficult for modern people because we all want transactional relationships so in order to say if I if I give myself to God how do I know he'll really satisfy me that's transactional that's a way of saying well I give myself as long as that by the way that's like well that's that's like saying I will be in the relationship if that's a vendor relationship you might say it's a it's a consumer relationship it's not a covenant elationship which is a committed relationship and when I get into a relationship with God it can't be consumer so the answer is you will get satisfaction if you follow God because of who he is the beauty is what he's done whether you get immediate satisfaction or not only when you put satisfactions second to just honoring God will the satisfaction grow and grow and grow and grow but it will great and so our second question and this person says I do not perceive being loved by God on a daily basis even after 15 plus years of regular church attendance faithful prayer life consistent Bible reading serving the church building loving Christian community around me how do you perceive God's love when you've been seeking but not finding yeah maybe the first the first phrase I have what I do not perceive being loved by God on a daily basis ah neither do I next question great well no way I mean I know I mean the the I'm glad for the questions because you can't say everything and there but this is this this builds on what I just said if if my the the Bible tells me that when God begins a good work in me eventually he'll bring it to completion at the end of time but in the meantime I don't know of anyone who could possibly you would have to have your your I do love my career too much I do love my wife too much in relation to God I am NOT going to in any way diminish my love for those things I want to love God more how do you do that you do it through and then some of those things were mentioned here you do it through disciplines of worship and prayer it is interesting to me that the Bible actually commands that you sing to God I do know that very often singing well sometimes unites your head and heart so that there's more of a sense of God's love but if I if I have somebody telling me I have never experienced God's love or I haven't experienced God's love in years I am concerned but again I become like a physician it's almost like someone's saying I've got a fever and a rash there are so many possibility possible reasons for that why someone is that i I used to feel loved my god I'm not feeling it now and I don't think I'd go into the list it's a long list if somebody says I have never perceived the love of God a daily basis I would say over my during my lifetime when that happened they were in their episodes their seasons where I was perceiving the love of God a daily basis but it it waxes and wanes because we're living here we're both in the image of God yet we're fallen we both have the Spirit of God in us but we still have our remaining the remaining idols of our heart that wreath a tree assert themselves in some ways when you become a Christian you like you you cut down a lot of trees but the roots are still on the ground and very often they bring up they come back so they're there it's a journey and if you were telling me and I can't tell from the question if you're trying to tell me you make it sound like you should always perceive the love of God every day the perception the sense of the love of God on your heart is so powerful that even episodically it changes you it's changed me and in some ways probably God doesn't want me to be experiencing it every day just so I continue to pursue him but if there's a real lack of it completely then there's a number of issues I would look at it ask what your your expectations are something about your beliefs something about whether or not your conscience is bothering them because you're doing something in a sustained way that's bothering your conscience sometimes there are I think physical and physiological reasons why there been times in my own life in which I had a chemical imbalance after I lost for example my thyroid for the thyroid cancer I never forgot the period of time after that in which we were having trouble calibrating the amount of thyroid I should have in me to get to the place where I wasn't either to like this or to like this and during that time my prayer life was terrible I remember afterwards saying my goodness the the spiritual and the physical are more linked than I think there's all kinds of reason why you may feel say I'm a precedent professing Christian I'm not experiencing the love of God there might be all kinds of possibilities but if you're only experiencing intermittently the brother/sister that's normal thank you so we've had a number of questions coming through about Jesus dying you spoke about Jesus's forgiveness and obviously connected to that is the crucifixion so we'll go with does the concept of Jesus dying for our sins make sense how can guilts for our sins be transferred to some somebody innocent why does God need this act of self-harm to forgive us why can't he just yes now by the way I was a repairing my talk for tonight I did realize that though the I had to say that it's love for God doesn't come I think in the abstract you have to see the sacrifice of Christ nevertheless tonight I didn't do anything last night I did and other nights I will I didn't do anything to really give you a rationale for why that had to happen so it's perfectly right for you to ask the question in brief last night I said that in German the word shoeld is both it's the same word for both debt and for guilt and if you think of debt in a guilt in terms of debt then debt can't be can be transferred because I heard that in the question so for example if you do something to me I give you a piece of property and you recklessly use it and damage it and it's going to cost me a thousand pounds to repair to replace it and you say to me oh I am so sorry there's only two things that can happen there either you can pay that thousand pounds or I can forgive you but if I forgive you if I say don't think about it don't worry about I don't want you to repay me or anything I really forgive you what that thousand pounds doesn't go up into the air it means I either have to come up with it myself to repair or replace the piece of property or even if I say I'm not gonna repair or replace the paper piece of property that's now now I lack that piece of property in other words when someone does a real serious wrong either they can pay or you can pay but forgiveness always means somebody pays I can only forgive in a sense if I if I absorb the cost of myself right so if there is a God if he's created us and sustains us every minute and we owe him everything everything we owe sure we owe our parents something we owe our friends something but for God we him supreme allegiance but nobody on the face of the earth gives in that supreme allegiance which means we're doing an injustice to our Creator if that's the case then there's a debt and how can he forgive us God only forgives the way everyone forgives which is he absorbs the cost and the way he did that was he went to the cross in Jesus Christ there's a lot of other ways of going at that because the idea of God absorbing the cost and paying our debt that's in the word in the biblical word Redemption which means to buy back and Jesus redeemed us there are many other ways of explaining what happened on the cross which I'm not going to go into now but at least that would be probably the fastest way to understand why that happened you just say how can guilt be transferred to somebody else but debt can be and I think let's leave it at that for now great we've got time for one more question to finish on and then if you've got questions from the talk that haven't been covered do feel free to come forwards at the end and grabbed him and ask them please don't hesitate to do that so just to finish with and this person says what if I do feel fulfilled by my life I don't think I'm missing anything tell me why I feel I'd say they say I do feel fulfilled by my life I don't think I'm missing anything why do I need Jesus I think I told you that then then file what I've said to you tonight I I'm not sure whatever it is it's fulfilling you right now will I don't know how old you are I'm old and I am I used to hate it when people my age looked at young people and said you'll learn so this might be very irritating to you whoever asked a great question so right now I'm fulfilled in my life well just here's the slightest bit of pushback first of all you you just might be you will grow that is to say it's almost like it's almost like your stomach will grow spiritually speaking and you may find that which seems to satisfy you now we'll not in the future secondly in some cases I found in places like Oxford or Manhattan where people get there they feel like oh my future is great you may not be as happy as you think you are but you're anticipating being happy I've discovered a lot of younger people actually aren't happy now they're not as fulfilled as they think they are but they're they're so sure that what they're doing now is going to lead to fulfillment that they're they're happy in anticipation that might be your case I don't know if it's true but it might just be you are fulfilled right now and therefore everything I say is irrelevant to you but please keep it in mind because you may find it's much more relevant than you think later on I would certainly not want to push anything on somebody who right now said I don't need Jesus then I said please just file this away and and we think as time goes on you may find what Cynthia hi mol what Coris what Luis said is true in which case then you might want to get this out and look at it again put in well thank you Tim that's what we have time for [Applause] you

Channel: OICCU

Views: 52,460

Rating: 4.7083335 out of 5

Keywords: OICCU

Id: tLFsRmGmRM4

Length: 52min 1sec (3121 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 19 2019