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Letting go: Falling into God We’re in a series about getting healthy. We’re looking at the eight beatitudes of Jesus which are the eight steps to physical, emotional, social, financial, personal health. We looked at the first step a couple of weeks ago, which is the reality step. You stop denying that there are areas of your life that are unhealthy. You admit that you tend to do unhealthy things and your life tends to be unmanageable. Last week we looked at the hope step. Even though I don’t have the power to change God does. He has the power to help me change. There are five reasons for hope.

This week we’re looking at the commitment step where Jesus gives us the third Beatitude in Matthew 5:5. He says, “God blesses those who are meek.” Meekness is the third step to getting healthy again.

The Bible lists many benefits of meekness.

      “The meek shall be satisfied.”
      “The meek He will guide and teach.”
      “The meek will become wise.”
      “The meek will be filled with fresh joy.”

The problem is, we misunderstand this term. Meek sounds like weak. And nobody wants to be weak. And so nobody wants to be meek.

The truth is meekness and weakness, are at the exact opposite ends of the spectrum. Meekness is in no way weakness. In fact the Greek word for meekness literally means “strength under control.” It is the exact opposite of weakness.

If I were to give you a simple definition of the word “meek” I would give you this phrase: let go and let God. That is the essence of meekness. It is surrendering, submitting, agreeing to what God wants to do in your life. It’s letting God be God in your life.

Today I want us to look at how you do that. The Bible tells us you do it four ways.

The first way you can let go and let God...

M – Make Jesus the manager of my life.

The problem is we want to be the manager of our own lives. So we argue and disagree with God. We think we know what’s best, we think we know better. Every morning you get up and you have a decision to make, whose going to be in charge of my life?

Remember the old TV program Who’s the Boss? That is one of the fundamental questions of life, who’s going to be the boss in your life. Who’s going to be the manager of your life, you or God? Who’s going to be in control, you or God? Who’s going to call the shots, you or God? Who’s going to be the one who directs and leads in your life, you or God?

Everyday, moment by moment you are making that decision.

Job 22:21 “Stop quarreling with God. If you agree with Him you will have peace at last and things will go well for you.” Circle “peace at last” and “things will go well.” How many of you would like to have peace at last and have things go well? This verse tells us: stop quarreling with God.

Romans, 9:21: “What right do you have as a human being to cross examine God? The pot has no right to say to the potter ‘Why did you make me this shape?’ A potter can do whatever he likes to with the clay.

We are the clay and God is the Potter. He simply wants to take our lives and shape us into His image.

The stress comes when you try to be the manager of your life and you don’t understand the way that God made you. You start trying to plan your plan for you life, you get under stress, you do not let go and let God and you’re up tight all the time. God says, “I made you and if you’ll let Me, I'll manage you in a way that makes the most of what I made you to be.”

Matthew 16:24, the Message paraphrase, Jesus says, “Anyone that intends to come to Me has to let Me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat. I am.” Here’s what Christians do. When we become believers in Christ we say, “Ok, Jesus Christ, You take over the driver’s seat.” We then promptly hop into the back seat and then do back seat driving.

A couple went on an African safari. They learned a lesson about following the instructions of the guide. One day the guide took them out to find an elephant herd. But he made them promise in advance to obey his rules before they even went out. He gave them some very specific rules. He said, “First, if I say ‘Run!’ you run! Don’t pause. Don’t stop. Don’t take a picture. Don’t think you can hide. Don’t drop to your knees. You run! That’s law number one. Number two, when you run, when I say run, you follow me, the guide, exactly. Put your feet in my footprints. Follow me step by step. Don’t try to forge your own trial. Because in a panic, you’ll, one, get lost in the jungle, or, two, you’ll step on things you wish you hadn’t stepped on. You run when I say run and you follow my steps exactly.”

Sure enough they came upon an elephant herd and it stampeded. The guide said, “Run!” and some of the people froze in their tracks from fear, panic. The guide said again, “Run!” They all ran and they ran like they had been instructed to run. If they had not followed directions they would have likely been trampled to death.

If you wait until you come to the moment of temptation and say, “Am I going to do what God says or not?” you’re going to lose. Spiritual maturity is deciding in advance to obey God. “God, You’re the manager of my life. You created me, You formed me, You shaped me. You’re the potter, I’m the clay so I’m going to trust You. I’m already telling You up front, I'll do whatever You ask me to do.” If You say, Go there, I'll go there. If You say, Do this, I’ll do this. You make it in advance.

“Give yourself to the Lord. Trust in Him and He will help you.” When it says “give yourself” what’s it talking about? It means to abandon yourself. It means to let go. It means to surrender, submit, to say, “I’m all Yours, God. I’m going to bend with You.”

The trees that survive the major wind storms, are those that are able to bend and sway. In your life, you can be rigid and you can reject the will of God and say, “I’m not going to go that way!” and you’re going to break. Eventually, you’re going to break. On the other hand if you give in and you submit and you say, “God, You know what’s best for me. You love me. I’m going to trust You.” Then you will last throughout the lifetime without all these breaks and hurts and pains in your life.

It’s called meekness. It’s called letting go and letting God. That’s the first step to reducing stress in your life. Make Jesus the manager of my life.

E – Establish God's word as the authority of my life.

I make Jesus the manager of my life and I make God's word the authority of my life. Why is this a stress reliever? If you don’t have authority in your life you’re going to listen to all different kinds of conflicting opinions. One day you’ll decide this and another day you’ll decide that and then one day you can’t decide and indecision causes stress. But if you decide that God's word is going to be the authority of your life it’s real simple. It simplifies decision making. We all need authorities in our lives for our own health.

If you went to a beach and realized after you got into the water that there was a sign that clearly stated that the water was contaminated what would you do? Why would someone post such a sign?

Why is it there? It is there for your own health. How should I react to that authority? How should I react to that sign? I have a lot of options and you have a lot of options when you react to God's authority.

I could say, “This is a stupid sign! I know better than this sign. So I’m going to go ahead and play in the water anyway.” And I just reject the authority. It’s dumb. I don’t like it. So I’m going to do my own thing.

Or I could say, “This sign is out of date. It was for another time and another age. And it really doesn’t apply to me because it’s out of date, I’m sure.”

Or I could say, “This sign doesn’t really mean what it says. When it says Stay out, that’s just your interpretation. I interpret the words Stay out as meaning Go right ahead! It’s just your interpretation.”

Or I could say “I’m sure God would want me to ignore this sign because God wants me to have fun.”

All through the Bible God has said things like don’t have premarital sex. If you say, “That’s out of date. That’s wrong. I don’t like it. That’s your interpretation.” It doesn’t matter. It’s still the truth. Why is the sign there? To keep me from disease, from danger and possibly even death. It is for my own benefit.

The Bible is filled with all kinds of rules, commands. God says do this, don’t do this, make sure you do this. Why does He do that? Because He is a loving God and everything that’s in this book is not there to make your life miserable. It’s there to protect you. It’s there for your own health. It’s there for your own good.

God gave us the Bible to be an authority. You say, “But I don’t want an authority in my life!” I hate to tell you but you’re already controlled by something. Bob Dylan used to sing years ago, You’re going to have to serve somebody. Right now you’re controlled by something. You may be controlled by popular culture so you buy a certain kind of car because everybody else buys that kind of car. You may be controlled by the opinions of others or the approval of your parents. You may be controlled by your husband or your wife. You may be controlled by your own desires, appetites and drives. You may be controlled by an addiction or a habit. You may be controlled by a memory. But everybody is controlled by something. You may even be controlled by your own ego. Everybody’s controlled by something.

God gave us the Bible for four reasons. “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right.” Notice the four things this scripture says.

Why should I follow God's word? Why should I make this book my standard – if God says do it, I do it. If God says don’t, I don’t.

Because it’s dependable. Why is it dependable? Because it doesn’t change. Fads change, opinions change, even science changes. Today by the time a science textbook is in print it’s already out of date. But God's word doesn’t change because the truth never changes. And God's laws don’t change.

You need to commit the commitments David did in Psalm 119: “I have made up my mind to obey Your laws forever no matter what.” Have you made that commitment? To obey God's laws forever no matter what?

“I will never lay aside Your laws for You have used them to restore my joy and health.” God says, I'll restore your joy and health if you’ll just do what I say to do – follow My instructions. Meekness, letting go and letting God is saying, “God, I really believe You’re smarter than me so I’m going to do what You tell me to do.”

The second E in Meekness is...

E – Embrace God's Spirit as the power for my life.

When you take a look at God's word and what it says and how we’re to live life are there some things on here that seem a little difficult to do? In fact, even some that seem impossible. How about the one “Don’t worry about anything.” Is that as tough for any of you as it is for me? How about “Don’t ever grumble about anything.” Do you ever struggle with that one? If you begin to look through this book you begin to think, “That’s impossible! I can’t love everyone. I can’t do that.”

If you’ve ever felt that way, congratulations! You’re in exactly the right spot. Because you’ve realized the power doesn’t come from you, it comes from God. It’s only what God can do.

Ezekiel 36 “I will put My Spirit in you and I will enable you to live by My laws.” The secret of power in life, the secret of reducing stress in life is living life not by your willpower but by God's power.

Galatians 3:10 says, “Anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure.” One of the reasons you and I face so much stress is we try to do it on our own when God is willing and able to give us the power that we need live life.

Meekness is really about two words. It’s about submitting and surrendering. Those are scary words for us. If you’re going to get healthy you’re giving to have to submit and surrender to God who knows how to do and can give you the power to do what you can’t do on your own.

One of the greatest tragedies of life is the fact that, because we’ve been hurt in human relationships, people we’ve trusted let us down, times that we’ve let somebody’s promise begin to change our lives and we’ve found out that they didn’t mean it at all, we feel like that maybe we can’t trust God either. The truth is, do not let those human relationships that have let you down keep you from trusting the only one who will never let you down. You can trust Him in any and every circumstance to give you the power that you need. He will never hurt you.

The fact is, you and I are saved by God's grace – that’s how we’re forgiven. But we also live by His grace it’s the same grace that gives us the power to live.

Galatians 3 “You began your life in Christ by the Spirit. Now are you trying to make it complete by your own power? That is foolish!” As we grow older and older as Christians, the longer you’re a believer in Christ, the more you struggle with trying to do God's will on your own power.

In a couple of weeks I will make a quick trip to Kansas City. What if about halfway to Kansas City, while up in the air, I start flapping my arms, trying to help the plane along. That’s ridiculous. But we do the same thing. We try to worry a little bit to help God along. And when life gets difficult, instead of trusting Him more we just flap faster. Some of you are worn out from flapping. Exhausted.

You need to lean back and rely on God's power to do what you cannot do.

Captain Howard Rutledge was shot down over North Vietnam while flying combat mission. For the next seven and a half years he was a prisoner of war in various POW camps, including the infamous Hanoi Hilton. The conditions were inhumane and unspeakable that he faced. He was tortured repeatedly. He was left in solitary confinement for five solid years. When he was finally released he wrote a book about how he and the other prisoners kept their hope alive entitled In the Presence of Mine Enemies. In that book he wrote, “Nobody can teach you to survive the brutality of being alone in the dark in a filthy, smelly, infested, cramped cell. At first you panic. You want to cry out. You fight back waves of fear. You want to die, confess, do anything to get out of that ever shrinking world. One time I was tortured continuously for twenty-eight days, then put back into cuffs and irons and solitary confinement. I couldn’t move for five days. The humidity was unbearable and I developed heat rash that turned into about sixty one inch boils all over my body. Day after day I sat in my own filth and odor, helpless to the insects and rats that crawled across my body. The sights and smells of death were all around me. But my hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak. I wanted to know about that part of me that will never die, to talk of God and Christ. But in the heartbreak of solitary confinement there was no pastor, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide me and sustain me. All I had was my relationship to Christ. The Bible verse that kept all of us going was “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”

If God and His power could keep a man going for eight years in a POW camp, don’t you think that God and His power can help you face what you’re having to face today? He has the power to make a difference. He has the strength to do what you cannot do. Philippians 4:13 “I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me.”

The fourth way to let go and let God is...

K – Keep Jesus the focus of my life

I make Jesus the manager of my life, I establish God's word as the authority of my life, I embrace God's Spirit as the power for my life and I keep Jesus Christ as the focus of my life. That is a stress reliever. Hebrews 12:2 says “We must keep our eyes on Jesus who leads us and makes our faith complete.”

When I’m driving I tend to get distracted very easily. My wife sometimes says, “Keep your eyes on the road!” Of course I can’t remember the details but I know that somewhere in our twenty-one years of marriage that I probably got distracted while driving and took us a long way out of the way. Some things you need to repress! Some of us have spiritual ADD. It’s easier to get spiritually distracted even than physically distracted – to get your eyes off the Lord. Some of you have started with God in the past, you’ve started down the road to recovery, you’ve started getting healthy but you’ve relapsed into your old patterns of grief, of guilt, of shame, of habits and hurts and hang-ups. You’ve relapsed because you’ve took your eyes off the Lord. You put them on yourself. You put them on another person. You put them on a job opportunity. Whatever! But you took your eyes off the Lord and you started sinking again.

Proverbs 25:15 “If I keep my eyes on God I won’t trip over my own feet.” You won’t get distracted. You won’t get off course. “Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go. He is the one who will keep you on track.”

These four secrets of letting go and letting God – make Jesus the manager of my life, make God's word the authority of my life, make His Holy Spirit the power in my life and make Jesus Christ the focus of my life, they’re all summed up in step three on this road to getting healthy:

Step 3: Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control. This is the commitment step to getting healthy again. If you don’t make this one, you can’t take any of the rest of the steps. There has to be a point where you say, I’m going to do it. I’m going to commit all of my life and will to God.

There’s one thing that will keep you from doing that – a lack of trust. It takes trust to take step three. Why wouldn’t you trust God? Why wouldn’t you trust the creator who made you, who loved you and sent His Son to die for you? Why would you not trust God?

Drama: Let Go (Willow Creek)

You can’t live without faith. You all have faith, the question is what have you put your faith in? Why would you not put it in God?

Are you ready to take this step? Notice the benefits. “The payoff for meekness is plenty and honor and a satisfying life.” But this decision has to be made over and over. Some of you have made this step three. You’ve consciously chosen to commit your life and will to Christ’s care and control. But it is not enough just to do it one time in your life. You’ve got to do it every single day of your life. Step three you do over and over and over. On a moment by moment basis if you need to. You have to do it on a daily basis because it’s a constant decision: who’s going to be in charge, me or God?

“Don’t be anxious about tomorrow [in other words let go and let God] God will take care of your tomorrow too [let go and let God] Live one day at a time [let go and let God].”

Are you ready to take step three in this journey to health – emotional, physical, spiritual health? Now is the time.

Invitation to respond:

The truth is you let something or someone control or lead your life all the time. You may have surrendered your life to the goal of making money. You may have surrendered your life to another person and their approval. “If I don’t do this my spouse or my girlfriend will break up with me.” You may have surrendered your life to a habit, to a memory. Your life may be controlled by a hurt you can’t let go of, a resentment you can’t let go of, a hang-up. You may be controlled by the opinion of your parents or popular culture.

Here’s my question: Has what you’ve been living for up to this point made the life that you’ve always wanted? Or has it betrayed you and left maybe an emptiness that you really don’t like to admit? This is a daily struggle. Who’s going to be in charge of your life. You may think you’re the rock but you’re up against the Rock of Ages and you’re going to lose. Your arms are too short to box with God. Why box with somebody who loved you, made you, sent His Son to die for you and knows what will make you happy more than you do.

Are you ready to take step three? Then I invite you to pray this prayer in your heart. “God, I want to stop quarreling with You. I want peace at last. I want things to go well. I want You to be in the driver’s seat, Jesus. I give myself to You. I want to learn to trust You. I want to place myself under Your authority. I want to do what Your word says to do. I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to obey You from this day forward no matter what. You will be my standard for right and wrong. I ask You to put Your Spirit in me to enable me to live by Your principles. I know I can’t live apart from You. But I ask You to give me the strength to face all conditions by the power of Jesus Christ. Help me to keep my eyes on You Jesus. Help me to listen to Your voice. Keep me on track. I consciously choose to commit all my life and all my will to Your care and Your control, Jesus Christ. And most of all I ask You to help me to live this one day at a time. In Your name I pray. Amen.”

2004/10/17