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Identity 7 - BIG GOD, small me
Peter vanderWal; 18/09/2011
1.There is an order in life, the way that God has designed it-for peace, fruitfulness, and happiness. A proper relationship between the Creator God and Man, His creatures.
Salvation is the restoration of this relationship. It effects all we do and we become. In the prodigal son story-the son leaves the proper father-son relationship and brings a whole lot of trouble upon himself. In the return of the son to the father, there is restoration of proper order and relationship.
God is the I am. He is the beginning and end. He is before all things, and in all things. He is exalted to the highest place and honour. He is the self existent One, giving life to all things. And all things exist from Him and for Him. We get our orientation from Him. He is the unchanging one. We are right only when we are rightly related to Him. We must take God as He is and adjust our lives according to Him. He is not the one who must change. We must not attempt to make Him in our ways, in our image.
Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure and plan. There is one relationship, Creator-creature. Lordship on His part, complete submission and humility on ours. We owe Him everything, all our life, all our time, energy, and resource. We owe Him every honour that is in our power to give Him.
Not just belief and mental assent, but in everyday life, exalting God to the highest place; a full surrender of our whole life to Him, submitting to the reality of the Creator-creature relationship. With our whole heart and mind, exalting God. God wants the whole of our being.
When we set our life to exalt God above all things, we step out of the conformity to, and dictates of, ways of the world. We get a new centring point, a new perspective.
2. To exalt God to the highest place; as Lord, our Creator; is the key to unlock the grace of God upon our life. Our life ceases to be complicated and becomes one of great simplicity. We find our place as a son, made in the image of our Creator. We find a place where the yoke is easy and the burden is light.
The place of highest honour is God’s by every right. While we attempt to take that place upon ourselves, the whole course of our lives is out of joint. The course of our life is upset by failure to put God where He belongs. We exalt ourselves instead of God, and trouble follows. There is a lack of grace. Nothing will or can restore order till our hearts make the decision to place God is His rightful place above all things.
3. In Christ, in His manhood, and in the weakness of humanity, He humbles Himself. He sought not His own honour, but the honour of God who sent Him.
“If I honour myself, my honour is nothing.” John 8:54
Philippians 2:7,8 “but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.”
Jesus emptied Himself of divine prerogative as eternal deity, and became a totally dependent servant. He embraced a life of absolute submission and trust and dependence upon the Father. He humbled Himself and embraced ‘smallness’ in His human capacity.
He knew He could do nothing of Himself. Submission and dependence.
He sought not His own will. He became a servant to do someone else’s will.
He sought not His own glory. He became nothing, a servant, so that God might be all. He allowed the Father to do in Him and with Him as He pleased.
He lost nothing by giving everything to God.
4. Big God. Revelation of God as He is.
Ephesians 1:17,18
Isaiah 40: 12-14, 15-18, 21-24, 25-26
Small Me. We are sons of God, more important to God than angels; and yet He calls us to a life of weakness and simplicity and utter dependence.
Phil 2:7, 8
Small God- small faith –small capacity in God-small life
Big God-big faith-big capacity in God –big life
Daniel 11:32 –those who know their God shall do great exploits.
5. Big God...................Small Me. Proper relationship.
James 4 - Opposes proud, grace to humble.
Allows grace to flow, God is free to work in us and through us, unhindered.
Humility is simply acknowledging our position as God’s creatures and yielding to His rightful place over our lives.
Change of proper relationship and the dynamics changes. We elevate ourselves to god-like level, and we block the work of grace on our lives. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Unbelief – we make God smaller than He is. There is a mistrust of God and trust put into ourselves, and trust put into man, and into our circumstances. Trust put into what we perceive with our own thinking, and with our natural senses.
Pride-we make ourselves bigger than we actually are. Our trust is put into ourselves-into our own natural ability and thinking to be able to live life and serve God, and walk with Him. We put our faith in our own strength to live and achieve. We trust that we are able to rightly evaluate and make decisions.
Pride is unwilling to bend to God’s ways, and prefers its own way to God’s way.
“there is a loss of the sense of who God is and an exaggerated belief about who we are”.
6. As we set our life in right relationship to God, we actually anchor our hearts in Jesus and nothing else. Our identity is found in Him. Our security is found in Him.
If we elevate ourselves to god-like status, making ourselves bigger than we actually are – we look for our identity in ourselves. We find identity and security in what we do, what we look like, in our family and friends, our job, our bank balance, our house and possessions, and our achievements. And our purpose in life is driven by stress, by striving, by manipulating, by competing, ambition, and self promotion.
As we exalt God to the highest place in life, we automatically put ourselves in a place of relative smallness. We embrace His completeness, and we embrace our weakness. He becomes our God, our Creator. Our life and identity are in him as His creation, His sons. Our purpose is found by Him living in us and through us. There is no burden to carry since our life is centred in God, and He must work and do and complete His purposes in us.
7. Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light”.
Two things here- ‘burden’ and ‘rest’.
The burden we can try to carry is heavy and crushing. It leads to exhaustion. We carry it on the inside of us, and it attacks our mind and our heart. As long as we set ourselves up as a little god, we carry a huge burden. Everything from having to make a way for ourselves and promoting ourselves –sweating, huffing and puffing and striving to live and move forward. Trying to achieve and make things happen, make things change. Living out of insecurity, and thus having to make and keep a self image, to protecting our image from criticism, to providing for ourselves and family....
But God calls us to a true estimate of ourselves-weak and helpless as God has declared us to be. God looks to the humble. God said we must become like little children. In humility we find rest. Rest is simply release from carrying that burden for living. Rest is not something we do; it comes to us when we cease to be our own god, when we cease from striving and attempting to be everything ourselves. We don’t carry the burden of this life, because our life is swallowed up in Christ.
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