I love this sermon. It summarizes what I want to achieve in my Faith right now. She puts everything point by point. But she really nailed it when she quoted Max Lucado,
Max Lucado says "To know God's will we must totally surrender to God's will. Our tendency is to make God's decision for him. Don't go to God with options and expect him to choose one of your preferences. Go to him with empty hands - no hidden agendas, no crossed fingers, nothing behind your back. Go to him with a willingness to do whatever he says. If you surrender your will, then he will 'equip you with everything good for doing his will.'
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GB!
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Trusting to Listen
By Joy Mounts --> http://www.christchurchsummit.org/Sermons-2003/031109-TrustingToListen.html
November 9, 2003
Hebrews 11: 1
Let the words of my mouth and the mediations of each heart here be acceptable in your sight, oh, God.
Listening for God in our lives is something that we have hard time doing. God may be presenting us with answers to prayer and we dismiss it because we are expecting something else. We forget that God is unexpected, mysterious, eternal, and intimate. We forget that God may be standing right in front of us and we do not see God because we are looking up or down or sideways. We do not always trust ourselves or God enough to listen.
For example, a man heard that his neighborhood was flooding due to a heavy rain storm. He got down on his knees and prayed to God: "Dear God, save me from the coming flood!" The waters began to rise and a truck came by and the driver said, "Get in and I'll drive you to higher ground." The man said no, God would save him. The waters continued to rise. A woman in a boat rowed by. She called, "Jump into the boat and I will row you to safety." The man said no, God would save him. The floodwaters continued to rise. The man was perched on the roof of his house. A helicopter flew by and let down a rope for the man to grab onto. "I will fly you to safety," yelled the pilot. "No." the man said, "I am waiting for God to save me." The man drowned. He got to the heaven hopping mad. "What are you doing here?" God asked. The man said, "God! I am mad at you! I asked you to save me from the flood and you did not!" God smiled and said, "I sent you a truck, a boat and helicopter? How much more saving did you need?"
Trust is like that. We want to trust God. We want to agree with the Psalmist to "Trust God all the time."We want to say with Isaiah "I will trust God at all times and not be afraid."But we want God to appear and tell us to trust God. It is like parachuting, in theory it sound fine, but to get the parachute to do what it is designed for, we have to jump out of the plane first! Our lives are hard to figure out! So, we make bargains. "God if such and such happens then I will know it is really You talking or showing me the way and then I will trust You and do what it is you would have me do. But if I don't see this or hear that, then I will think it is only what I had for dinner last night and not listen." I will not trust what my heart is telling me. I will not trust what my soul is telling me. I will fail to trust God and lose the opportunities that God is showing me. What I really want God, in order to trust you is a memo of some kind. An e-mail would be nice or a few lines floating down from on high to help me out. But God does not send e-mails!
Frederick Buechner tells of a time when he was terribly depressed. He parked by the roadside to pray, a car appeared and passed him. The license plate said TRUST. He says, "What do you call a moment like that? Something to laugh off like the kind of joke life plays on us every once in a while? The Word of God? I am willing to believe it is something of both but for me it was an epiphany."The owner of the car turned out to work for a bank as a trust officer. After he read an account of the story he sent Buechner his own license plate. It sits on his shelf, and as he says "it is a little rusty around the edges but as holy a relic as I have seen."Trust alone is not always easy. We all want that sign. We all want our own license plate. After all to trust God is to throw caution to the wind. To leave ourselves open, to be vulnerable.
Trust can be defined as a confident expectation. Isn't the point that as believers we have a confident expectation that God is inter-tangled in our lives? That God is watching out for us, with us? We can look to a loving God who wants only the best for us, even when we sometimes do not understand what the best is? Even if it is painful? Trusting God is not always taking the road we think we should. Sometimes, trusting God means doing what is unknown and all the risks that entails. Abraham and Sarah stared in astonishment when told they would be the parents of a great nation. They knew they were too old. Sarah laughed at this cosmic joke! But the promise was fulfilled despite their uncertainties because they put their trust in the Messenger. Moses was told to go back to Egypt and lead the people of Israel out of slavery. He was to demand Pharaoh release them! Demand to a Pharaoh? He sputtered and muttered and challenged the burning bush to give him the plan, in full. God simply said "I am who I am! Now go!" Moses listened with doubts of all kinds and finally trusted God would be present with him as promised. Trusting does not mean you do not have doubts. Indeed it may be that doubts are what propel us to trust. The disciples gave up their ordinary lives to follow one who they knew was the Messiah. They were not turned overnight into angels but remained men and women who questioned, bargained and wanted to know - "where are we going? What's in this for me? Can't you let us in on the plan Jesus?" Jesus said: "Follow me and I will make you fish for people."In other words trust me, let's go, we have work to do! They went.
Even Jesus seeing that the stakes had been raised to the point of certain death hesitated. His eleventh hour prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is a man trying to grapple with all that is before him. How many times have we prayed similar prayers! Yet Jesus also trusted God that would see him through, his reply to his own question. "Not what I want but what you want."After an internal struggle, Jesus trusted God, who, he knew, would not abandon him. A God whose plan to be completed required a great deal of trust on Jesus side. Jesus could have said "you know God; I am not too sure about this, look where it has gotten me. I mean, I am doing the work you asked me to do, but the stakes have suddenly gotten higher than I bargained for. I know you said you would stick with me, no matter what, but I think all this is leading to my death, in fact, I am sure of it. Death! So if it is all the same to you, I think the boys and I will head back to Nazareth where I have a nice little carpentry business and we'll call it a day?" Of course, Jesus did not say that. Jesus, with the sweat and blood on his brow, listened, trusted that despite the way it looked, this was his part in the plan. Jesus surrendered his will to God's. He gave his life to fulfill God's love for us.
In order to truly trust God, we must be open to what God lays in front of us. We must accept that we do not have all the answers. We must accept that maybe God knows a thing or two more than us. This is hard. After all our culture tells us that we have all the tools we need to make all the decisions we can ever need. Can't I yahoo or google God and come up with the same answers? Unfortunately not.
Max Lucado says "To know God's will we must totally surrender to God's will. Our tendency is to make God's decision for him. Don't go to God with options and expect him to choose one of your preferences. Go to him with empty hands - no hidden agendas, no crossed fingers, nothing behind your back. Go to him with a willingness to do whatever he says. If you surrender your will, then he will 'equip you with everything good for doing his will.'"This is not what our intuitions tell us to do. Surrender does not come easily. I have lived this and so have you. We all have our Gethsemane moments.
For years I had felt God calling me to another life. But I was busy with a career I loved. Then through the workings of the corporate world, I found myself in a position to fulfill this dream. I came to Drew. Yet I was tentative, shying away from the reason my heart was telling me I was there. I was a teacher not a minister! But....in the back of my mind, a voice I was shaking away kept calling me. "Why aren't you fully listening?" I replied "I am here aren't I?" "Yes," the voice replied "you are but are you there for the reason I want you to be?" "Leave me alone," I said, "I have papers to write and tests to study for - do you have any idea how long it has been since I took a test?" "I think I might have a general idea," the voice replied. "What are you afraid of my child?" "Me afraid?" I said quaking. "I am starting a whole new chapter of my life. Of course I am scared. But I am not scared of being a minister; it's just that I think I am supposed to be a professor!" "Trust me," the voice said; "the plans you have made are not what I want you to be." And so it went for a whole year. I refused to lean into the trust of God and throw caution to the wind and accept that I really should be a minister. My friends and family and advisors, patiently listening to me arguing with God and let me argue.
Until finally, I broke. I felt the storm welling up inside of me and I knew that the voice had been right all along. I had not wanted to trust God and come to Drew as a minister. Frankly it scared me. Where would God lead me? Where would I go? I like to know these things. I like to kid myself into thinking I am in charge. However, in order to fulfill what God has for me - I have to trust God. So one day at 3:00 o'clock in the morning, I called out: "God, you win!" And God said, "No you do." I changed my degree program this summer and with Augustine I can say "My heart was restless until it was at rest in thee."
Isn't that one of the biggest elements of trust - listening to God? Trust is listening. Listening for God in your life. Listening as God speaks however softly or loudly that may be. And not just hearing that God is speaking but really listening. It may be surprising whose mouth the words of God come from and in what experience. Frederick Buechner wrote "The question is not whether the things that happen to you are chance things or God things because of course they are both at once. There is no chance thing, which God cannot speak through. He speaks, I believe, and the words he speaks are incarnate in the flesh and blood of our selves and our own footsore and sacred journeys. We cannot live our lives constantly looking back; listening back, lest we be turned into pillars of longing and regret but to live without listening at all is to live deaf to the fullness of the music. "
In order to be open we have to get out of own way to hear what God is saying in the small crossroads in our lives as well as the big junctures. This is not easy. We need to step outside of ourselves to be open to the possibilities. We need to step outside of the obstacles we set before ourselves and trust. Listening is part of the creative process of living. Madeleine L'Engle wrote "When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens. Before he can listen, paradoxically he must work. Getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily, either in art or in prayer."We want to be the ones making all the decisions. We forget somehow that trusting God is all about letting go.
"Let Go and Let God."How easy to say that to others, how hard to hear it ourselves. In trusting God we need to learn to trust ourselves to trust God. To really let go is to open the door for God to be there with us, around us. We are stubborn. And this stubbornness becomes a wall of not trusting. The wall become thick as our refusal to trust solidifies. Not trusting can turn into fear. And fear makes us smaller. Fear robs us of the joy of living life to its fullest. Trust restores. Trust lifts us up. "I will trust and will not be afraid for the Lord God is my strength and my song"Isaiah shouted. "I can do all things through God who gives me strength"Philippians 4 verse 13 is what got me through cancer six years ago. But I can only do all things through God if I trust that God will get me through all things. If I rely only on my own strength I will falter and be weary. As Julian of Norwich proclaimed Jesus "wants us to trust that he is constantly with us, in heaven.., in earth..., .....And in our soul."If I do not then I will never make it off the shore into the waters of life. How often have I said okay God, watch me I am diving in where you leading me only to realize that my while my hands are in the water, my feet are firmly planted back on the shore of my will. How much of life will pass me by if I do so? How much of life am I willing to let pass me by?
There is a sign that my sister Julie gave me that used to hang in my office and now hangs in my apartment. She gave it to me after a particularly hard time in my life. It says "Joy, Trust Me. I have everything under control. Jesus." I put it where I pass it every day. It is my reminder to be open and listen and not get in my own way. To listen for that still small voice and trust God's will for my life. I am still learning not to fight but to trust. I think that in this I am part of a large crowd! We all have trouble really trusting. Really letting go and jumping into the ever-lasting arms! We are all still learning to lean into God's love and trust what God has planned. But we are also learning how much God loves each one of us. It is this love that let's us shout with Isaiah that God has given us strength and we will sing God's praises for the wondrous things God has done! It is this love that God has for us that helps us to slowly learn to lean into God's trust, love, and hope for us all. Learning to totally trust God and be vulnerable may be a lifetime of learning for each and every one of us. But it is as we strive to do so that we may be able to say with conviction - let go and let God. Amen.
