Reflections on 2009
Welcome to the final Sunday of 2009. It’s a Sunday with a kind of unique feel to it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve not yet had time to fully recover from the rush of Christmas…it was great and I loved every minute of it…but I confess that I’m still in a bit of a post-Christmas fog. And, while I know that new year is just around the corner, again, I don’t know about you, but I’m not quite fully ready to jump into the rush that comes with the beginning of a brand New Year. So, this Sunday is a kind of a bridge Sunday that helps us transition out of the year that was and into the year to come. So, I want us to try and build that bridge, this morning, by looking back at some of the highlights of the spiritual journey that we shared together in 2009. My hope is that by reflecting on the way that God guided us through 2009 we can get ourselves just a little more prepared to continue the journey with Him in 2010.
FIRST THEME: Confirming Our Vision
To begin our look back at 2009 we actually have to leap all the way back to the waning weeks of 2007 because that was when I first sensed God sharing with me a new vision to guide us through 2008. The vision began with 4 simple words—Pressing In, Pressing On. Pressing in to a closer and closer relationship with God and Pressing on with the work that He has given us to do. We pursued that vision all the way through 2008 and as the year was coming to a close and I sensed God inviting us to continue down the same path in 2009. So, on the first Sunday of this year, I shared with you my sense of God’s call to continue following the vision of Pressing On and Pressing On.
The biblical foundation that this vision is built on is found in Philippians 3:7-15 which says this:
7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ…(So Paul is saying, here, that he has made a well-considered decision, namely, that there is absolutely nothing in this world that even comes close to the treasure of knowing Christ. Everything the world has to offer is rubbish when compared to the value of a personal relationship with Jesus)…9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on …(there are our key words)…to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
15 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.
So, to help sear this vision into our minds, I shared this visual aid with you 51 Sundays ago.
–Here’s where we were spiritually before we came to know Christ. We were living in the darkness of the world
–Then, here’s where we were when we came to know Christ. We trusted Him to be our Savior, He forgave our sins, the Holy Spirit came to live within us and opened our spiritual eyes so that we could now cooperate with God as He began the process of making us more and more like Jesus.
–And, one day, we’ll be here, being fully mature in Christ.
–But at this moment, every single one of us who know Christ is somewhere, here, in the middle.
Thank God all of us who know Christ have moved out of spiritual darkness and into God’s light. And, hopefully, most of us who know Christ can look back and see tangible evidence indicating the marks of spiritual growth that reveal the spiritual progress that we have made thus far. But it is a dead solid certainty that none of us have reached the full measure of spiritual maturity in Christ toward which God is ultimately growing us. We haven’t yet arrived. So our goal…our vision…is to keep pressing in and pressing on.
And we are greatly encouraged in this daily pursuit that lasts a lifetime by two wonderful Bible verses.
The first is James 4:8 which says, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.” Not, “he might” but “he will come near to you.” And that’s encouraging because it tells us that the serious pursuit of a closer relationship with God will result in a closer relationship with God.
And a second wonderfully encouraging verse is John 6:44 where Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…” And that’s encouraging because it means that if you find in your heart a desire to get know God better, you can know that God is the one who put that desire there and that means that God is already working in you to draw you closer to Himself.
Thank You, Father, for this wonderful vision of Pressing in and Pressing on!
SECOND THEME: EXPANDING OUR VISION
We took our second major spiritual step in 2009 during our Spring Prayer Conference under the leadership of Rick Astle. I was totally surprised when, in the midst of that Prayer Conference, I clearly sensed that God was giving the Petaluma Valley Family a new outwardly focused assignment. And many of you sensed it as well. God was calling us to move out of the church and into our communities with the compassion of Christ, being constantly alert for opportunities to join God in ministering to people in whose hearts He was already working.
And the scripture passage that became the foundation of this new assignment was Colossians 4:2-4 which says:
“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.”
So Paul was asking his Colossian friends to pray that God would draw him into encounters with people in whose hearts God was already working so that he could simply walk through a door that God had already opened. Then, he asked his friends to pray that, once that he had walked through that open door, that he would be able to share the gospel clearly.
And after studying that passage, we asked this question: Do you suppose that we could ask God to do that for us as well? And we decided that the answer was, “Yes.” And God gave us a new prayer to guide us in this new outwardly focused assignment: “God, lead me, today, to someone whose heart has been opened by you and let the Good News of Jesus shine through me.”
And after soaking on that passage and that prayer several weeks, I told you in May that I sensed that God was expanding His vision for us: From Pressing in, Pressing on! To Pressing in, Pressing on and Going Out!
THIRD THEME: COMPLETING OUR VISION
We took our third major spiritual step as the summer began, when God led us into an extended emphasis on his glory. And remember that the word “glory” speaks to all of the many ways that God reveals Himself to us. Everything that accurately reflects something of God’s perfect being and character is an expression of His glory. That emphasis on God’s glory carried us all the way through the summer and into the fall and it all started when we looked at one of the longest texts I’ve ever preached through with a single sermon—all of 1 Peter 1 and much of 1 Peter 2. As we made our way through that text we identified 12 amazing things that Christ has already accomplished for every Christian. I’m sure you remember them, but just to refresh my memory…here they are, again.
Our precious Lord Jesus has …filled us with a living hope; …He’s secured our eternal inheritance in heaven; …He’s filled us with a new life that is protected by God;
…He’s filled us with joy that is too grand for words to adequately express;
…He’s filled us with love for a Savior that we’ve never seen;
…He’s filled us with the absolute certainty that the salvation that God has now begun in us will one day be completed;
…He’s revealed the Gospel that makes salvation possible;
…He gave up His life so that we could live eternally;
…He committed Himself to our salvation before we were even born;
…He ignited in us the faith that made it possible for us to believe in God;
…He’s cleansed us so that we can love each other with a pure love;
…and He’s made us a holy priesthood to serve God and serve one another.
And, Jesus has done all of that NOT for some of God’s children…he’s done it for all of God’s children. If you have placed your faith and trust in Jesus as your Savior, then every single one of those statements is absolutely true of you. Christ has already accomplished all of that for you.
Which brings us to this critically important question: Why? Why did Jesus do all of that for every one of God’s children? And the answer is found in verse 9 of chapter 2. He did it so, “that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” In other words, Jesus did all of that for each of us, His children, so that our lives would become living testimonies to the glory of God.
Then, at the City Wide Worship Service at the Fairgrounds on August 2, God solidified His call for us to be glory-focused people as we studied the first chapter of Ephesians where Paul paints an absolutely dazzling picture of the completeness of the salvation that God has accomplished for each of us, His children.
–In verse 3 he tells us that we’ve been blessed with “every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
–In verse 4 he tells us that God “chose us” for Himself “before the creation of the world.”
–In verse 5 he tells us that God took great “pleasure” in adopting us into His family “through Jesus Christ.
–In verse 7 he tells us that we have been “redeemed” and “forgiven” “through” the “blood” of Jesus.
–In verse 13 he tells us that we have been “included in Christ.”
–In verse 14 he tells us that we’ve been “marked” and “sealed” by the “Holy Spirit” who “guarantees” the ultimate completion of our salvation.
–And, finally, at the end of verse 14, he tells us that God chose us, adopted us, redeemed us, forgave us and saved us to this end: that we would be “to the praise of His glory.”
And in the weeks that followed God led us through still more passages of scripture to show us that life, for us, is all about His glory. We are here to protect and declare God’s glory. We protect His glory by keeping our lives free of sin and we declare His glory by living the kinds of lives that show Him to be the great and awesome God that He is.
And God used this extended emphasis on His glory to complete His vision for us. Pressing in, Pressing On and Going out TO the glory of God!
FOURTH THEME: THE SPIRIT BENEATH OUR VISION
Then, in the weeks that led us into the Thanksgiving and Christmas Seasons, God led us to take one more step in our spiritual journey with Him in 2009 as He reminded us about the amazing treasure that we have in our fellowship…our life together as a church family. We studied a number of different passages and identified a whole series of very specific things that each of us can do to keep our fellowship strong and healthy, but it was in our study of 1 John 1:3 that we made our most important discovery about our fellowship.
In 1 John 1:3 we were reminded that. “Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” That means that we cannot create fellowship through hard work and determination. Fellowship only exists among people who are connected to the Father through strong personal relationships with His Son. If we break our connection with God, our fellowship with one another is doomed. And that means that the primary way to strengthen our fellowship with one another is for each of us to maintain our primary fellowship with God. And this spirit of fellowship is the spirit out of which we pursue that vision that God has revealed to us.
