God wants to speak with you. He longs for the ability to communicate clearly with you. For some of you it may be that God will take a spiritual q-tip and clean out the build-up that is inside your spiritual ears. He may need to implant a hearing aid, spiritually speaking, to allow some of us to hear more clearly what it is that He is trying to say.
How does God speak? What do you and I have to do to get our hearts in a place where we can hear what God is trying to say. We are going to talk about this today.
Know this: God wants to speak with you more than you probably want to hear Him. He is not trying to hide His will. He wants to empower, support and use you. He wants to use you just as you are to fulfill His agenda in ways that are beyond what you could ever imagine.
“For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” 2 Chronicles 16:9 NASB
Why is God searching? He is looking for people to support. He is looking for someone whose heart is fully His. When your heart is fully surrendered to God, know that He speaks louder to you.
This series is about what it takes to make a difference for God. We are looking at six conditions or perquisites. In the first sermon we talked about having a dislocated heart. We talked about letting God stir around in our lives until we find a mission that dislocates our heart.
This series is based on the story of Nehemiah. Remember the story:
“1 The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, 2 Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. 3 They said to me, "Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire." 4 When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven”.
Nehemiah was living the good life as an aid to the king. He realizes that God’s agenda is failing in Jerusalem and he begins to care about something that he really doesn’t have to care about. His heart becomes dislocated. His heart is dislocated because he cares about something he doesn’t have to care about.
The definition of a dislocated heart: “A God-given concern for others that moves or propels us out of our comfort zones. It is a passionate concern for God’s agenda that supercedes our own desires for personal peace and prosperity.” (Definition is from the book Developing Holy Ambition by Chip Ingram)
Jesus is the ultimate model of a dislocated heart. He left heaven to come to a stable. He left adoration and worship to come to earth to be rejected and despised. Why, because He needed to fulfill God’s agenda on this earth and because He cared.
Let me say it one more time, this notion that Jesus wants you to always be fat, happy and healthy is nonsense. He wants you and me to follow Him and the last time I checked He was still saying, “pick up your cross.”
The Second Prerequisite: A Broken Spirit
There are two things you need to know about God’s character. These are timeless truths. You must understand them to be able to grasp the concept behind this whole series.
There is something that God really hates. He has always hated it. Since the beginning of time He has hated it. He hates it every day, 365 days a year, seven days a week, twenty four hours a day. He is not upset or disturbed by it. He really hates it. He rejects it totally.
When He sees it in an individual or in a nation He hates it. When He sees it in an angel He hates it. When He sees it in you or me. . . He hates it. In the Old and New Testament He hated it. He hates it 100% of the time. Are you ready to know what that is?
1. God rejects pride
Pride is reliance on yourself; it is preoccupation with yourself. Pride is focusing everything on yourself.
“To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.” Proverbs 8:13
It can’t be much clearer than that. At least two or three times in the New Testament we are reminded of what God thinks about pride.
“But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." James 4:6
God is opposed. . . that is serious. 100% of the time when God sees pride in my heart or my life or your heart or your life He hates it and He is against it. That’s the bad news. Now let’s look at some good news.
There is something that God responds to 100% of the time. He does it for anyone and everyone. Your race doesn’t matter. Your heritage doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how far you have drifted away from God, He will respond to this every time because it is in His nature.
2. God loves and responds to a broken spirit.
Whenever you come to God, no matter how low you have sunken in your life, with a broken and contrite spirit and He will respond. He will meet you with mercy.
The Hebrew word that is used for broken is found a couple of places in the Old Testament. It means to be bruised or to be crushed. One dictionary says it denotes a religious bruising or crushing, a broken spirit and heart are associated with a contrite heart, a brokenness from being deeply contrite and humble before God.
In Psalm 51, there is a prayer that is prayed after King David has blown it about as bad as you can blow it. He was a godly man who knew right from wrong. He was a man after God’s own heart, but in a moment of weakness and humanness he really messed up.
One night in a weak moment he committed adultery and after the fact, and after finding out she was pregnant he tried to get the ladies husband to sleep with her and her husband was so noble that he would not do it because he was in the middle of doing battle. Later he had him killed. He played games just like people do today. He was living in denial. He had convinced himself that he had done nothing wrong and had nothing to repent of.
God sent a prophet who uses a word picture to help the king examine himself. He tells the story of a rich man with thousand of sheep who wanted a sheep to eat and went over to a poor man with one sheep that was a pet and took that sheep and devoured it. He asked David, what would you do with that man? David was angry and immediately in his wrath said the rich man should be killed for doing such a thing. He was very mad.
Nathan the prophet says at that point. You are the man.
David at that moment did something that God will always honor. He let the word from God reveal his heart for what it was. The word pierced him and he got honest and real and he got a broken spirit. There was no more ego. All of the sudden his kingdom and greatness didn’t matter.
In Psalm 51 we have the prayer of repentance that David prayed after the fact. He admits his sin. He acknowledges that God wants only truth in our inward parts. He admits his denial.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 The sacrifices of God are [a] a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Psalm 51:16-17
He owned his stuff. He came broken and contrite. The amazing thing is that God forgave him.
I have no idea where you are in your life or what has happened to you in the last few years or months or even just this past week, but you are spending an unbelievable amount of energy trying to hide your past or hide your sin. Why don’t you just stop it? The time and energy that you are wasting on trying to cover it could be used by God in ways that would blow you away.
For some it is sexual issues, or temper issues or neglect of your kids or a double life. For others there is a subtle arrogance and you image cast and project yourself to be something that you aren’t.
God wants you to hear something. He wants to use you but all the energy that you are using to pretend is putting a barrier between you and God, between your effectiveness and you spending your life wallowing or wading in the shallows. God so wants to use you. He has been trying to give you direction and empower you but you can’t hear because there is stuff in your life that blocks out the presence of God. You need to address some of these things but it is easier to get something from the refrigerator or turn up the music or television than it is deal with it.
The good news is that if you will come clean God says He will never cast you out.
3. God rewards a lowly and contrite heart.
15 For this is what the high and lofty One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15 God is saying that He lives in two places: He dwells in the high and lofty heavens where He is the center of everything and all attention and worship is given to Him. There is no limitation for God to dwell in heaven.
Listen to this. He also dwells in the heart that is lowly and contrite because there is room for him there as well. He wants to revive and restore you.
We need to realize these two very important principles about God. They never change, they are always true 100% of the time.
1. God hates and rejects pride 100% of the time. 2. God responds to a broke spirit 100% of the time.
Let me ask you some questions this morning. How many of you would like to hear from God in a fresh and a new way? How many of you would like to be able to open the word of God and read it and get something out of it in a new and fresh way? How many of you would like to pray about something and have a renewed faith as you watch God work on your behalf?
God would say to you, If you come to Me with a broken and contrite heart I will respond to you.
There is a huge question that is begging to be asked and that is, how do I get a broken spirit? You don’t do it by chanting or trying to get emotional. We are talking about a work of God in your heart that moves you to be broken and bankrupt before God. This is a work of God based on your honesty and authenticity.
Nehemiah is a model for us to follow in this pursuit.
Three keys to developing a broken spirit:
A. A broken spirit begins with a high view of God. Worship
A broken spirit begins with a high accurate view of God. This is something that is so missing in our day. In much of the evangelical church, God has become some kind of little genie or everybody’s buddy or some kind of a cosmic vending machine. I think we somehow believe that He is always going to work our life out, make our marriage better, provide for our finances, make your kids perfect, and take care of every little thing. He very well may do those things but they are not God’s agenda for your life.
His agenda is to have an intimate relationship with you to such a degree that you would be radically transformed by His grace from the inside out. You would become such an authentic Christian and worshipper that you would automatically fit into His agenda on a daily basis. There is this weird American thing that we do. We think the whole world revolves around us and you know what, the whole world revolves around Him.
A broken spirit doesn’t begin with you. It is not about you.
Remember what happened when Nehemiah heard the bad news from home. God’s agenda was in flames. Walls were broken down and gates were busted. The city was in ruins. People aren’t worshipping, priorities are out of whack. The whole culture was in chaos and disarray. 4 When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.” Nehemiah 1:1-4
Ever wondered what He prayed?
"O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands. . .” Nehemiah 1:6
Breakdown this prayer and you will see a high view of God.
That is a high view of God. Too often we let our focus be on our problem or on us or the world around us instead of on the God who is the greatest. He is awesome. When we see Him for who He is our problems will seem smaller.
You have the choice to look at God through your problem or through a great God. When you look at it through your problem it’s going to look all bad but when you get a high view of God your problem will seem a lot smaller.
When you close your eyes and bow your head and start to pray the most important thing about you is what you think of God!
A.W. Tozer: “What comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people have ever risen above its religion and that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. The gravest question before the church is God himself and the most portentous fact about any man is not what at any time he may say or do but what he or she in her deepest heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”
That’s why you need to read great books and spend less time watching T.V. That’s why you need to pray God centered prayers so that your faith rises to the level of the God you are speaking to.
Isaiah 6 is a great example of what I am talking about.
“ 1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory."
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
A right view of God will lead you to the second key to developing a broken spirit.
B. A broken spirit leads us to an honest view of ourselves. Confession
Maybe it should be an “accurate” view of ourselves.
“I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you. 7 We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.” Nehemiah 1:6-7
Those that walk with God the longest often are the filled with the most humility because they have the closest, most accurate view of God and their standard is so much higher than what most of us are aware of. An accurate view of God will lead to an accurate view of yourself. That will lead to repentance. Genuine godly sorrow that leads to a change in behavior when you see the distance between God’ holiness and your life. This deep and godly sorrow will lead you to a realigning of your life, your priorities and your behavior.
You want to know how to do this. James gives us a way in James 4:7-10,
“7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”
Humble yourself so that He can restore you and forgive you and lift you up. You know what happens when you do this? You will hear Him. The stuff, the build up in your spiritual ears will be cleaned out and you will think He is shouting to you but in reality He is still speaking in the still small voice He’s always been using. This will lead to:
C. A broken spirit results in a humbling surrender to God’s agenda. Intersession
He worshipped God and He confessed and now he reaches all the way back to the time of Moses.
8 "Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, 'If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, 9 but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name."
Promise centered praying. Notice his focus as he begins to intercede.
10 "They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. 11 O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man."
I was cupbearer to the king.”
His commitment is totally to God’s agenda not his own wants and wishes. He is praying for God’s agenda to work out.
If Nehemiah were here today I honestly believe he would watch about 25 minutes of MTV, an hour of channel surfing, watch a couple of movie channels and walk into the average evangelical church and see all this evil, chaos and pollution that has effected God’s people, and I believe that he would go home and weep and mourn and fast and pray. He would get before the God of heaven and say, “These are your people and they are to be your light and your salt and in America they have been so taken with the culture that they have become marginalized as the body of Christ. Your church doesn’t represent you. God almighty do something in your church.”
“16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”
Revival has always started with ordinary people who are willing to be honest and open and who will turn to God with all their hearts. God is wanting nothing more from you and me than a broken spirit that will lead to a focus on Him.