Out There Doesn’t Matter So Much // Your Road to a Stunning Life, Part 2

So many people who believe in Jesus find their lives are falling well short of what they expected. And all too often that’s because they’re so immersed in their culture that they believe more of what the world has to say, than what God has to say. It’s easy to do.

DON’T LET CIRCUMSTANCES CONTROL YOU

This is a tough one for me today because it doesn’t matter who we are: Our circumstances influence us to a greater or lesser degree. When you lose a loved one, of course, you’re going to mourn that loss; that’s natural. Of course, when you get a promotion or a pay-rise at work, you’re going to feel like celebrating. When someone treats you badly, you’ll be hurt. When someone treats you well, you’ll be delighted. None of us is divorced from the day-to-day realities of our lives, and sometimes our circumstances are for us; other times they’re against us. That’s just the way it goes.

Rudyard Kipling was a well-known writer and one of his most famous poems is called If. We don’t have time to read the whole poem, but it’s all about doing the right thing, irrespective of your circumstances. In fact, two lines of that poem are inscribed above the players’ entrance to the centre court at Wimbledon. Those two lines are these: If you can meet triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same. Interesting isn’t it? Kipling calls both triumph and disaster what they are: Imposters. Now, Kipling wasn’t a Christian, but he was the son of two Methodist ministers, and no doubt his parents’ beliefs had a lot to do with the shaping of his philosophy and life.

Think about it. When you have a triumph, you win a race or you get a promotion or you succeed in some way, how long does that last? In Australia where I live, no sooner does a Prime Minister win an election than the press and the electorate are chasing after him or her with a pickaxe. It’s so easy to be seduced by success that pretty soon, you start believing your own propaganda, but success is by and large a fleeting thing. Even those who amass great fame and great fortune, they often find themselves struggling in their lives, so much so that many of them end up taking their own lives. What is success really, other than a narcotic – an imposter?

Jesus, when He was walking this planet, He drew massive crowds to His rallies – four, five thousand at a time, and in those days, that meant that whole towns and cities would all but close down, as people flocked to hear Him. They were amazed at His teaching. They marvelled at His miracles. Jesus had rock-star status across Israel, so was He intoxicated by the adulation of the crowds? John 2:23-25:

When he was in Jerusalem for the Passover festival many people believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing but Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to any of them because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about him for he himself knew what was in everyone

And just as well because just a few chapters later, in the same gospel (6:24, 66), we read this:

The Jews began to complain about Him because He said, ‘I am the Bread that came down from heaven’. They were saying, ‘Hang on. Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can He now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’ And because of this, many of His disciples turned back, and no longer went about with Him.”

And then of course, there’s John 19:16-18:

So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross by Himself, He went out to a place that is called the Place of the Skull (which in Hebrew is called Golgotha). There they crucified Him, and with Him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.

There’s such a fine line, isn’t there, between success and failure? Yet we seem to become so swept up by success, when the adulation of the crowd is really just a fleeting aspiration, and so overcome by failure when failure is (after all) one of the most common occurrences in life.

We have this fairly floss-sugary expectation that our lives should always be fine, with never a cloud in the sky, let alone a howling storm. It’s a complete fantasy, yet we somehow cling to it like nothing else. We milk it when it’s going our way, and we beat ourselves up when it’s going the other way.

You have to ask yourself, "What’s the matter with us when we let our emotions swing up and down based on a fabrication like that, I mean really"? And if the truth be known, some of our great so-called failures can in point of fact be the greatest time of growth and learning and development in our character that we’ll ever experience. I mean, look at Jesus. When He was hanging there, nailed to that cross, crying out, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani" (which means My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me), didn’t Jesus look like the biggest failure in all of history? Yet the moment of His death was in fact the greatest triumph of all time. Colossians 2:13-15:

When He forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands, He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the end.

See, if we believe that God is, that He exists, that He rewards those who seek Him, if we make Christ the foundation stone of our lives, if we start making our love for God and for those around us our decision-making litmus test, then little by little, circumstances matter less and less.

When I told people that I was writing a book called "Your Road to a Stunning Life", many of them immediately leapt to the false conclusion that it was just another one of those prosperity doctrine, get-rich-quick-under-God books, but that’s not what God promises. What He promises us is this (John 16:33):

I have said this to you so that in Me you may have peace, for in this world, you are going to face persecution, but take courage, for I have overcome the world.

See, what Jesus promises us is that in the middle of the worst times in our lives, we can have peace. We can have courage. What Jesus promises us is His blessing, despite and irrespective of our circumstances, good or bad, and that’s the real thing. It’s not an imposter.

So what circumstances are you going through, the good or the bad or the ugly, that are causing you to believe in them rather than in God? If you’re riding the crest of a wave, have you started to forget the God who blessed you and put you there? Deuteronomy 8:12-16:

When you’ve eaten your fill, and you’ve built your houses and you live in them, and when you have herds and flocks that multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, don’t exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; who led you through the terrible and great wilderness and arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. God made the water flow for you from the flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors didn’t know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good.

And if you’re down in a dark valley, what do you believe – the awfulness of your circumstances, or do you believe in the might and the power and the love and the presence of your God? Psalm 23:4-6:

For even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil and my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life.

The overriding reality of your life is not your current set of circumstances, good or bad, because they come and go. The overriding reality of your life is your God, who poured His love out for you, through Jesus Christ His Son. So which one of those do you choose to believe in: Your circumstances or your God? Because your choice is going to make a huge difference to the life that you end up living.

BE DELIGHTED WITH WHO YOU ARE

Yeah, so how do you react to seeing yourself or hearing yourself? I used to hate seeing myself in a photo. Now part of that was the fact that I was carrying so much extra weight. That bit’s changed over the last few years as I’ve slimmed down by rather a lot, but isn’t it funny how we can cringe when we see what we look like or hear how we speak?

I remember when I first started this whole radio gig, way back I think it was in 1998, so it’s been quite a few years. I’d go into the recording studio feeling quite uncertain about myself. Max (my producer back then, who still incidentally is my producer today), one of the most preached-at people on the planet (poor fellow), he’d record what I said and then edit out the stumbles, and turn it into a radio-program.

I distinctly remember the first time I listened to one of them. I was horrified. "Is that what I sound like? You’re kidding me". See, to me, my voice and how I spoke the words, it didn’t seem normal (the way other people speak). When I finally heard myself played back, I thought I sounded … well … weird, odd. Surely people wouldn’t want to listen to this stuff.

Now of course, we do all sound different; we all look different; we’re all distinctly different from one another, but layered over the top of that when you think about it is this sense of inadequacy, through which we judge ourselves. Haven’t you ever thought about how funny that is, that we can see ourselves in the mirror bleary-eyed every morning, and yet when we see ourselves in a photo, we cringe? Or the fact that when we’ve been talking all our lives, hearing our own words as we speak, but then you might hear a recording of yourself and you’re horrified by what you hear.

This phenomenon that ninety-nine percent of us are all too familiar with speaks about a sense of inadequacy, a sense of poor self-esteem. It’s fed a lot by the fact that we don’t match up with the images of beauty that we see in the magazines and on television. I frankly am never likely to have one of those rippling muscular bodies like the guys plastered across the front of the men’s health and men’s fitness magazines, and for you women, that sense of inadequacy can be even worse. Society tells you what you have to look like: Something that’s pretty much impossible to achieve, and in fact, as I’ve said a few times before on this program, it’s this gap between those ideal images of success and beauty on the one hand, and who we perceive ourselves to be on the other, that advertisers exploit ruthlessly to drive sales for their products.

Next time you watch an ad on television, watch it really carefully. Critically. There’s an implicit brand-promise on the ad. Buy this product or service, and you can look like this or have this or be this, or have other people think of you like this. And then, when that doesn’t work, having spent your money, they dangle the next carrot under your nose. Is it any wonder that so many people just don’t like themselves that so many people are so unhappy with who they are and what they have and where their life’s headed?

Now just stop and think about this for a moment. When you look at you, how happy are you with you? Are you falling into this trap of comparing yourself with those false, unattainable images of success, trying to achieve them but knowing that you never will? Come on. On a scale of zero to ten, how happy are you with you?

How comfortable are you in your skin? Now I know that none of us is perfect and of course, we need to think realistically and soberly about our flaws and our weaknesses. We should never stop growing and maturing and we should always be ready to make the changes we need to make, but that’s entirely different to having this nagging sense of inadequacy that so many people, so many people, live with day after day.

We’re chatting at the moment on the program about living a stunning life. What sort of a life are you going to be living if you’re never happy with who you are? The Bible, God’s very Word to you and me, tells us this about ourselves. Psalm 139:13-18:

For it was You, God, who formed my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works; that I know very well. My frame wasn’t hidden from You when I was being made in secret, intricately woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance; in Your book were written all the days that were formed for me when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are Your thoughts, o God; how vast is the sum of them. I can’t count them; they are more than the sand. I come to the end, and I am still with You.

You know, the Psalmist who wrote that, he saying to God: "I’m completely amazed, totally gobsmacked at who I am, at who You’ve made me to be. I just can’t get my mind round it, Lord."

What a different view that is to the one that’s reflected back from those distorted mirrors that the advertising industry holds up before us. God made you. He didn’t make a mistake. He wasn’t churning out sloppy work that day. The same hands that flung stars into space, the same hands that worked the timbers in that carpenter’s shop in Nazareth, the same hands that were nailed to the cross for you, were the hands that laid down every strand of your DNA: Every gene, every chromosome that defines who you are is the sovereign choice of the living God who sent His Son to die for you, and you … You are utterly amazing.

You are who God made you to be, and you have a choice here. You can either believe what the world’s telling you about you, or you can start believing what God’s telling you about you. Which one of those do you think’s the more reliable? Which one do you think is telling the truth? Which one is going to set your feet on the road to living the stunning life that God planned for you to live, do you think exactly?

I remember one of my lecturers at Bible-college, Doctor Barry Chan, talking about this to me years ago and he implored us to ditch our self-image and replace it with a faith-image. Well, such great advice when you think about it, and what happens when we start doing that is that little by little, we’re set free from this burden and sense of inadequacy, and it’s replaced with a quiet confidence in who we are and who we aren’t, and it’s that second part that’s just as important.

You know how it feels when you compare yourself with someone else? You’re not as good-looking; you’re not as smart; you’re not as articulate; you’re not as wealthy or whatever it is, but then, you were never meant to be anything like that other person. God made you to be you. I used to feel so inadequate because of all the things I wasn’t good at, until I started to wrap my mind around who God made me to be, until I let the Word of God (and let me tell you, Psalm 139 is still one of my favourite passages) do its mighty work in me.

I realised just how much I’d changed when I started shooting TV-programs, and I saw myself for the first time on television. When the producer played the first program back, I was steeling myself for that awkward feeling of seeing myself on the TV, but it didn’t come! I really liked what I saw: Yeah, ok, a tweak here; an improvement there, but I realised in that moment how wonderful it is for me to accept me just as God accepts me: For me to see myself through God’s eyes, rather than through this nonsensical distorted false view that the world wants to reflect back at me. It totally transforms your life. It sets you free to be who God made you to be.

Listen to me. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are God’s unique creation. He loves you so much that He’s prepared to have His Son die to save you, so that you can spend eternity with Him. Wrap your heart around that, and you are on the road to a stunning life, let me tell you.

FAITH + LIFE = LIFE

You see, all He asks us to do is simply to believe: To believe in Him; to believe that He is; to believe that He rewards those who diligently seek Him out. So can I ask you this: Do you believe? And before you answer that question, let me say that I’m not asking you this as a theory-question. I don’t want to know whether or not you give intellectual assent to the existence of some supreme being. No, that’s not what I’m asking you at all.

Churches are full of pew-warming Christians that benignly believe in the existence of a God. It turns out that the devil is entirely happy for them to take up a place there in that nice, warm church that’ll keep someone else out in the cold, because he knows that when it comes to the things that really matter, their lives won’t count for anything. The devil knows that the person who ticks the box marked: "Yeah, I believe that there’s a God’ will never do anything of eternal significance in someone else’s life, nor are they themselves likely to spend eternity with Christ, because faith without works is dead" (James 2:17-26), and Jesus said:

Not everyone who says to Me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven. (Matthew 7:21)

So that’s not what I’m asking. What I am asking you, is do you believe in God with your very life, with everything you are, with everything you have, with every hope and with every dream? Are you seeking Him out? Are you seeking to approach Him, to be with Him, to know Him? Do you long for Him with all your heart? Well, do you? Because when you seek Him with all your heart, you will find Him, and when you do, you will discover that He is the God who accepts you and approves of you and rewards you, and sets you free from death, and gives you the most amazing eternal inheritance. That’s a complete game-changer. That’s why believing in Jesus with your life is so important in living an utterly stunning life.

What I mean to say is, your faith in Jesus: Is it the sort of faith that causes you to arrange every aspect of your life around Him as your foundation stone, or is it more the wishy-washy insurance policy kind of faith that believes in God … well … you know … just in case?

Perhaps you’re not quite sure. Perhaps you’re wondering: ‘How can I tell the difference’? That’s not unreasonable. Well, here’s how to tell the difference. When you make a big decision, is your primary concern whether God wants you to decide this way or that, or are you more concerned about what’s in it for you?

When you hear one of the tough sayings of Jesus – things like: ‘Love your enemy’ or ‘Anyone who’s angry with a brother or sister is subject to judgment’ or ‘If somebody strikes you, then turn the other cheek’ or maybe ‘If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away’, when you hear those sorts of things coming out of the very mouth of the Son of God, does your heart struggle to figure out: ‘How am I going to live that out’, or do you dismiss them as being for somebody else?

This, people, is where the rubber hits the road. It’s in the decisions, the life-decisions; in each relationship-decision; each work-decision; each financial decision, big or small, that we either set our lives out around the Cornerstone of Christ, or we choose to go our own way.

Is deciding in favour of Jesus, is going His way always easy? No, not at all. In fact, Jesus promises that it would be anything but. It oftentimes requires sacrifice and suffering, but going our own way, rejecting the Cornerstone, setting our lives out and building them according to our own plan, is the road to destruction. Yeah, it’d be as easy at the time, but the downhill run always seems easy.

The reason that so many people aren’t living the stunning life that God has planned for them is that they believe in Jesus with their heads; maybe even with their hearts, but not with their very life. How about you?