A Danish Philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, said the following quote in his book entitled, "Sickness Unto Death", which is here paraphrased by Timothy Keller, "Sin is building your identity on anything but God".
Timothy Keller went on to say in his sermon entitled, "The Excellence of Jesus":
“ Making anything, making anything about yourself, making any relationship, whether it's family or achievement or your work or your talent, or making anything more central to your sense of worth, your significance, your purpose, your definition, your meaning in life, your hope, anything that's more central to your identity than God, if you do that, your identity's always in meltdown. Your identity is always like a house in an earthquake, it's always fragile, it's always unstable, it's always in a form of melting down, because all sorts of things bother it, because anything, circumstances can affect it. But what is this? This is what you need. This is what heals your identity. This is what puts it on a completely different footing. In other words, the Bible says, you will not, your own identity will not be healed until you have in one form or another, deep in your soul, hear this, you have the sound of this ringing in your soul, "You are my child whom I love, with you I am totally satisfied." You need a parental residence, you need a voice, you need an assurance deep in the center of your being and it says, “You are my beloved child whom I love...” and until you get that, from God Himself, you'll never have the transformed healed identity you've gotta have, you'll always be in a form of meltdown. ”
Here are notes from a sermon by Timothy Keller entitled, "The Upper Room":
“ Is there anybody here who is haunted by their past? You just can't get over the past, something you did, some terrible failure that you did. The cross wipes that out. You know the old hymn - "Well may the accuser roar of things that I have done, I know them all and thousands more, Jehovah knoweth none." Why? The cross.
Are some of you going through some suffering right now? Amazing suffering? And you're mad, and you're saying, "I don't see how God could bring anything good out of this."
Well imagine how many people were sitting around the cross as Jesus Christ, the most wonderful man that they ever knew, was dying, and they looked up, imagine people saying, "I don't see how God could bring anything good out of this", and lost their faith looking at the cross which is the most incredible thing that God ever did for the human race, and they may have lost their faith because they couldn't work it into their little categories, their little mind, their little understanding.
This is one of the reasons; here's how the average person looks at suffering, they say, "Because I can't think of any reason why God would let this happen, therefore, there can't be any reason why God would let this happen. Because I can't think of any good reason for this, there can't be any good reason for this.” Oh, that's logical. The cross says the greatest failures and the greatest suffering could be a way for God to do something incredibly good, something on the surface looks like a disaster, could end up being something that's turned to gold. Do not judge a book by its cover. Do not judge a circumstance by its cover. Do you understand the cross? You bring the cross in, you can handle your past. You bring the cross in, you can handle the suffering. Another thing, bring the cross in and you never lose hope. Never. ”
Timothy Keller went on to say in his sermon entitled, "The Excellence of Jesus":
“ Making anything, making anything about yourself, making any relationship, whether it's family or achievement or your work or your talent, or making anything more central to your sense of worth, your significance, your purpose, your definition, your meaning in life, your hope, anything that's more central to your identity than God, if you do that, your identity's always in meltdown. Your identity is always like a house in an earthquake, it's always fragile, it's always unstable, it's always in a form of melting down, because all sorts of things bother it, because anything, circumstances can affect it. But what is this? This is what you need. This is what heals your identity. This is what puts it on a completely different footing. In other words, the Bible says, you will not, your own identity will not be healed until you have in one form or another, deep in your soul, hear this, you have the sound of this ringing in your soul, "You are my child whom I love, with you I am totally satisfied." You need a parental residence, you need a voice, you need an assurance deep in the center of your being and it says, “You are my beloved child whom I love...” and until you get that, from God Himself, you'll never have the transformed healed identity you've gotta have, you'll always be in a form of meltdown. ”
Here are notes from a sermon by Timothy Keller entitled, "The Upper Room":
“ Is there anybody here who is haunted by their past? You just can't get over the past, something you did, some terrible failure that you did. The cross wipes that out. You know the old hymn - "Well may the accuser roar of things that I have done, I know them all and thousands more, Jehovah knoweth none." Why? The cross.
Are some of you going through some suffering right now? Amazing suffering? And you're mad, and you're saying, "I don't see how God could bring anything good out of this."
Well imagine how many people were sitting around the cross as Jesus Christ, the most wonderful man that they ever knew, was dying, and they looked up, imagine people saying, "I don't see how God could bring anything good out of this", and lost their faith looking at the cross which is the most incredible thing that God ever did for the human race, and they may have lost their faith because they couldn't work it into their little categories, their little mind, their little understanding.
This is one of the reasons; here's how the average person looks at suffering, they say, "Because I can't think of any reason why God would let this happen, therefore, there can't be any reason why God would let this happen. Because I can't think of any good reason for this, there can't be any good reason for this.” Oh, that's logical. The cross says the greatest failures and the greatest suffering could be a way for God to do something incredibly good, something on the surface looks like a disaster, could end up being something that's turned to gold. Do not judge a book by its cover. Do not judge a circumstance by its cover. Do you understand the cross? You bring the cross in, you can handle your past. You bring the cross in, you can handle the suffering. Another thing, bring the cross in and you never lose hope. Never. ”
0 comments:
Post a Comment