Steady | Part 2 | Angela Colyer | Gateway Christian Centre

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Gateway's Weekly Service. We are so glad that you are here. We pray that this message inspires you, it encourages you, and that God speaks to you in new ways. Now, on with the message.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Lord Jesus, we do bless you in this place. From our hearts. To heaven. Ever think about that line there? From my heart. To the heavens. He is the center. Life looks different that way. Life looks different when he's the center. Not you. Life looks different when he's the center. Not your children. Your husband. Your wife.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

They can't handle being the center of your world. Jesus is the center.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Not my ambitions. Not my career.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Jesus at the center. Not the storm. Not the problems.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Everything revolves around what you put in the center of your life.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Is Jesus at the center? Is Jesus truly at the center of your life?

SPEAKER_02 2:15

It works better that way.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

I can't handle that. Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

You see, that's something he literally craves from us.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

That we would put him in first place or right in the middle. The axis that our life, our meaning, our worship, everything revolves around him. That's how it works best. That's where you find the most peace.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

That's where you find the difference between joy and happiness. Jesus at the center, amen. Amen. You can go ahead and be seated. Thank you, team. Welcome afternoon, everyone. Are we nice and warm today? Praise the Lord. This month, John's actually in Liverpool this morning. Um, but this month, he last week, he started a series on it's called Steady. And it's all looking at how we can be steady, be unshakable in a world that's doing a whole lot of shaking. Anyone notice there's a whole lot of shaking going on? Yeah. Aren't you glad we have Jesus? Aren't you glad that we can put him at the center of all the madness and find peace? So we're gonna continue this morning just talking about how you and I can remain steady when everything around us is shaking. About I can't remember exactly when, maybe 17 years ago, I had a surgical manipulation on my coccyx. Yeah, it's about as fun as it sounded. And um I had done some damage to it as a teenager, and then having a baby seemed to have complicated that. And so they had it was a minor procedure, but it involved lots of nerve bundles. So the recovery of it was a little bit complicated and fun. But anyway, about a year after that happened, and um we as a family went to Florida, and one of the places that we took Levi, he was about, I think at that time he was probably about four or five years old, maybe. Um, we took him to the Kennedy Center. Uh, that's where all the astronaut stuff and spaceship stuff is. It's very interesting to a young boy. And so we were there and they had a couple fun things that you could do along with looking at stuff. And one was this ride that was a rocket simulation. So, of course, there was this big warning sign that you shouldn't be this, you shouldn't be this, you shouldn't be this. And I really think I should have sent them an email. Could you please add for future reference, anyone who's had their cocks manipulated should be on your sign. But anyway, I got on this ride with my son, and and John was there as well. And we get in and you get buckled in, and of course, you're in you're in a spaceship, and you're gonna go. I don't know if we were going to Jupiter, Mars, the Moon, I don't know where we were going, but we were off somewhere, somewhere in outer space. And so we're in and they've gotten us all ready, and then the ride begins, and they're doing the countdown. And as they're doing that countdown, I was thinking, oh Lord Jesus, where what have I done? Because the earth began to shake under my feet, and the chair began to, I don't even remember if I was in a chair or some kind of propped up in the but anyway, everything was shaking. And as it was doing that, I mean, my teeth were rattling. And of course, you can imagine how my coccyx felt about this experience, and so all the nerves in there were going, uh-uh, uh-uh, and sending these alarms to every pore in my body. And I didn't know whether I was going to faint, die, cry. I didn't know what was going on. But anyway, I cried out, I was like, Holy Spirit, help! And I'm looking for, you know, where's that get out button? And uh there wasn't one. But what I saw, I just instantly saw that there was like this line. I don't know if you've ever been on some of these simulator rides, but a lot of times there's a piece of the ground that is not participating in the experience, and it was well in front of me, but I did like this crazy acrobatic move thing to get my feet onto the piece of ground that was not being crazy like the rest of the experience was. And as I got my feet onto that, of course, then I stopped like everybody else was, at least as much as everyone else was. And I made it through to the end of the ride. Thank you, Jesus. And I got out of there, and then Levi turns to me and says, Again, like, oh, no way are we doing that again. But uh discovering that edge, I got my feet on that part of the ground that was not moving, and my brain stopped rattling, and my teeth stopped sending electric shocks through my body. Thank you, Jesus, for the edges. And as I think about that, it reminds me of this, what we're talking about today. How do we stay steady when everything we can see or everything you are feeling is telling you something different from what God has said? I actually was not flying to space, it felt like it, and I have now retired from my astronaut career. Uh, no more space travel for me, thank you very much. But despite rattling around like a bag of bones, I actually was still in Florida, and steady is good. Steady is good. It's so important that you and I learn how to live by faith and not by sight. I think it is the only truly healthy way to live in this upside-down world. But I do need to say this faith is not denying reality. What faith is, is interpreting reality through the lens of God's word and God's kingdom. Faith says, I was made redundant, but my God supplies all my needs. Faith says things like, the doctor has identified this in my body, but we need to see things differently. So today we're going to talk about how we develop a completely different way of seeing the world. And I have three points for how we see things differently so that we can stand steady. And my first point is natural sight is an unreliable guide. We have to learn to see from our spirit. We have to learn how to look at things from the perspective of his word. Sometimes our natural sight is like a mirage in a desert. It's simply untrue. Sometimes it's lying feelings. I was sharing in the first service that I received a text earlier this week, and it it seemed very mean and callous. And so I went into back into like teenage Angela, and this person didn't like me, and they were being mean to me. And and so, but about five minutes later, I think it was about five minutes later, I got a phone call from them, and it was evident that they are just the worst texter in the world. And everything that I was thinking and projecting that they felt about me was clearly entirely untrue. They just should be banned from texting. That's the actual truth. So my feelings were lying to me about how that person felt towards me and to the circumstance that we were dealing with. They were completely untrue. They were the mirage in the desert. And sometimes that's what natural sight does. It's just not enough. It's lying feelings. Sometimes, though, our natural sight is just incomplete. It is a fact that you don't have that you just got this huge bill. It's a fact. But it might be the incomplete version of your story. Amen. I remember when um back before SATNAVS, my dad, whenever we would go on road trips, he would always go to the Canadian version of the RAC. And they you would go to them and say, Here's my address if you were a member. Here's my address, here's where I'm going. Can you make me a map? And they would make these great maps for those of you who've ever seen paper maps. They would make this brilliant map that literally would take you on your journey and show you exactly everything that was going to happen. And uh it was great. And it was in the map, it was in the in the map part, but then there was also the written instructions underneath it. And we used these every year in places that we would go. Well, this one year we were going to Florida for Christmas because my grandfather had moved there. And so my dad went and picked up his map and he brought it home. Um, but he luckily he was looking at it fully before we left because they'd left out the last day. It's a three-day journey, it was. We swear, yes, because it takes a lot longer to get places on a bigger piece of earth canvas. But anyway, so it was three days to get from where we live to Florida. And they had only included the first days, two days of the trip in my father's map. So if we had set off on that journey, we would have stopped in Missouri and wondered where Disneyland was. But he went back in and said, you skip the last day. So everything in that map, it was called a trip tick. Everything in dad's trip tick was true. Everything that we needed to do, everywhere we needed to go, but it was incomplete. And our holiday would have looked very different if we'd stopped in Missouri rather than at my grandfather's house and at Disneyland. Sometimes there's more to the story. We have to see things differently to stand steady. You know who was really good at developing a completely different way of seeing the world? David. David was. When the world was doing its shake, shake, shake thing like a rocket simulator. I actually can find quite a lot of solace when I go to the Psalms of King David, because he had the ability to see beyond the shake. You know, his life was pretty complicated. We know that he had a hunger and a spiritual devotion, but it was also his life was also marked by exile and danger and huge personal flaws, deep family tragedy. David's life was pretty complicated. And despite all of that, you know, we we know that he he slayed, slayed, is that the word? Slain? I don't know what I'm gonna use as my word. He killed Goliath. After that happened, of course, David became very popular, and then he had some military successes. This is great, but that resulted in a really fierce jealousy in King Saul. And so after he had, there were several attempts on uh David's life, he was forced into exile. And for years that man lived as a fugitive in the wilderness, running from Saul. And the scholars tell us that that is most likely the season in which he wrote wrote Psalm 16. So can we just turn there for a minute? I want to go through that Psalm. Psalm 16. So, in that context of crazy mad king chasing me around, living in the desert, running for my life, he writes this. Verse 1, I'm gonna start in. Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, you are my Lord, apart from you, I have no good thing. I say of the holy people who are in the land, they are the noble ones in whom is all my delight. Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more. I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods or take up their names on my lips. Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup. You make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord who counsels me. Even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord, and with him at my right hand I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my tongue rejoices, and my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. You make known to me the path of life, you fill me with joy in your presence and with eternal pleasures at your right hand. Isn't that amazing? Psalm 16 is a deeply personal prayer, and we watch how it transitioned from a plea of protection into a celebration of God as David's source, David's safety, David's inheritance, David's future. We're seeing him express his trust and confidence, despite what it looked like naturally at that time. David saw what was going on in his life. He knew he was living on the run in a cave. He wasn't stupid, and he wasn't in denial, but he saw something else too. Verse 8, let's notice that. Don't you love that? David's life is in literal danger. He is being chased around the desert by an insane king. He has been, he might have been crowned king by the prophet of God, but he's living in exile, hiding in caves. But look at how he sees things. He says, My body will rest secure. You will fill me with joy in your presence. Eternal pleasures are at your right hand. You know, I read that my body will rest secure. He literally would go at bed to bed or to rock at night, you could say, in danger for his life. Yet he says, My body will rest secure. Would you and I sound like that if we were being chased around a hot desert by an insane king? Possibly not. But David somehow saw beyond his experience. He saw the eternal truths of his situation, and so he stood steady. You know, we are living in one of the most anxious periods in modern recorded history. Every day you and I are being bombarded with information. We're hearing about wars. Have you not noticed that there's a war on Monday, a truce on Tuesday, back in war on Wednesday, back in? What on earth? We've got economic uncertainty, political division, moral confusion, spiritual leaders are falling, social media outrage. Never have people had so much information but felt so insecure. The problem is not simply what is happening in the world, the problem is that our way of thinking is shaping the way we see the world and how we and what we see literally shapes our world. In other words, we are formed and we are being discipled by what we see and hear? Are you a news disciple? Does it tell you what to fear? Are you a social media disciple? Does YouTube tell you what to get angry about or what to believe? Are you a disciple of modern culture? Do the current trends tell you what really matters? Do your emotions interpret your circumstances? What do you see? And if we're not careful, what we see causes us to live exactly like everyone else. And we don't have to do that. I don't have To live anxious because I can see God. You don't have to live fearful because you can see what the word of God says about your circumstance. We don't have to live discouraged. We don't have to be shaken. David would say, I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. The other psalmists would write in Psalm 112 and verse 7, they will have no fear of bad news. Their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord. Isn't that wonderful? Doesn't that sound wonderful? How many of us have lived lives where that phone started to ring and fear rises up in your heart? What are they going to be saying? What's coming? They will have no fear of bad news. Their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord. And Psalm 125 and verse 1 says, Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken, but endures forever. And the apostle Paul, what would he say? Well, we know what he said in Second Corinthians 5 and verse 7, for we walk by faith and not by sight. And then in 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 58, he says this, therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord. You see, the Christian life is so fundamentally different. The world walks by what it sees. The believer walks by what God has said. And there is a world of difference in those walks. Because one is steady no matter what is happening. The world says, seeing is believing. The kingdom says, believing changes what you see. Second Corinthians 4, verse 18 says this well, we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. This isn't about denial. This is about having another perspective, another viewpoint. Like a rock climber coming to the mountain, to the cliff, and saying, Oh, do you see that? That looks impassable. So that they don't take their tools and go home. They move to another viewpoint and say, but it can be done from there. And off they go. Or so I've heard, because I'm too clumsy to climb mountains. It's not denial, it's another perspective, it's another viewpoint. Do you know Paul? We've been reading Corinthians here. When Paul wrote 2 Corinthians, it was around AD 56. He was in Macedonia on his third missionary journey. And he actually wrote that book at what you and I would have to consider a bit of a vulnerable time in his life. He had just experienced some extreme physical and even emotional hardships in Asia. He had just survived a really extreme persecution in Ephesus. In fact, he was driven out by a violent riot and they nearly killed him. He had even faced quite a bitter rift with the Corinthian church. We don't know everything about it. There are some lost letters. We do know from 2 Corinthians, this seems to have been resolved, but he's gone through that as well. So Paul isn't writing these words from a comfortable place. He has suffered. He has been persecuted. He has been beaten and imprisoned. He has known disappointment, betrayal, hardship, but he remains remarkably steady. Why? How? Well, this leads to my second point, and that is that we need to learn to see things in light of eternity. It really does change your perspective. 2 Corinthians 4, starting in verse 13, I'm reading in the New King James says, and since we have, so this is Paul speaking to the Corinthians. We just talked about the context of what he's writing. Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what is written, I believed and therefore I spoke, we also believe and therefore speak, knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus and will present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that grace, having spread through many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart, for even though our outer man is perishing, the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, you don't want to hear him divine hard heart affliction, do you? For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Do you see how he had a different perspective? You see, faith learns to see from eternity backwards, it sees the exceeding eternal weight of glory. It sees the inner man getting better and better every day. It sees the real goal line. Paul was so incredibly steady in really difficult circumstances, and that was because he lived from another reality. He saw what many others would not or could not see. He had settled eternity. Paul understood this world is temporary. God's promises are eternal. God's kingdom cannot be shaken. Hebrews 12 says that it's verse 28. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe. This book, Hebrews, we don't know who the author is, though many do think it was Paul. It was written to the Jewish Christians. It was written to these people because they were experiencing severe persecution. They were living where it was no people were losing their jobs because they'd professed Jesus as savior. People were being rejected by their extended family because they had accepted Jesus as their savior. People were starting to be beat up on the streets because they believed in Jesus. Stuff was going on, and it was getting really hard to meet as Christians, to be Christians. And so a lot of people were beginning to walk away from that faith. They were abandoning Jesus and going back to Judaism. And this book was written to encourage. Its purpose was to encourage these new believers to see, to focus on the kingdom that could not be shaken. And we remember we said it a minute ago, but those words Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians, for we walk by faith and not by sight. Paul and the Hebrew writer, they're not saying that visible things aren't real. Pain is real, bills are real. Just try not paying it. Wars are real. Grief is incredibly real and painful. Storms are real. They are the facts that you may be dealing with. But visible things are temporary, they are constantly changing. Economy changes, governments change, feelings change, opinions change, culture changes. The word of God does not. Truth does not change, it is eternal. So we need an eternal viewpoint. You know, when Paul wrote that phrase, walk by faith, that literally translates to say habitual way of living. This is our habitual way of living. He was saying, this is how we do life. This is our normal. You see, the believer is not called to have occasional moments of faith, occasional bursts of faith. Jesus' criticism of Peter on the water was what was it about? It was about the brevity of what happened in Peter's life there. We are called to walk in a constant and a consistent faith. We are supposed to build an entire life and lifestyle on our faith. Isaiah 40 in verse 8 says this the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. If you build your life on temporary things, you will constantly feel unstable. Many believers, many of us, we live emotionally, we live through what our emotions are telling us because we are interpreting everything about our life through our feelings. But feelings are terrible leaders. Some days I feel strong, some days I feel weak. Some days you feel close to God, some days you don't. Faith says, I can do all things through Christ. And I've been there, I've been there looking at the mountain, saying, I can't do that. What on earth? But then I remember I can do all things through Christ. So it's not about my strength, it's about his. When sight says everything is getting worse, faith says, like Paul, this affliction, it's going to be working for me an eternal weight of glory. You see, my God is a redeemer. And whatever this junk is that's trying to surround me and take over, and it just seems like it gets worse every day. I'm gonna look at it like Paul, and I'm gonna believe that not only is it working something eternal, but he is a redeemer. And this thing, God's gonna turn it around. The Bible says he makes all things beautiful in his time. He takes beauty for ashes. This is a God that can take whatever junk that you are dealing with, whatever it is that you are facing, and if you will go through it with him, and if you will trust him and you will follow his leading, you will have quite the masterpiece at the end of that. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you'll want to go through it again and again. I didn't say that. But what you will become, because God redeems everything. Everything, including your mess, including the mess you made. Aren't you glad he can redeem even those ones? When sight says, I'm alone, faith says, He will never leave me or forsake me. So a steady believer will always ask, What has God said? You see, the greatest battle in faith often, or the greatest battles of faith, I should say, often are not what is happening around you. The greatest battle is actually going to be you deciding which of the realities gets to have final word in your life. David understood that. David was able to walk steady because faith showed him something greater, and faith changed his perspective. You see, faith sees from eternity backwards. And like Paul said, our affliction is working for us a far more, he called it our light affliction is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Paul went through some stuff, but when he compared everything that was going on to what God was doing, to where God was taking him, to eternity, he saw it as a what is that, a gnat on an elephant's bottom, however that expression goes? That's what he was seeing. Paul wasn't minimizing suffering, he was simply comparing it with eternity. And you know, when you live thinking about eternity that way, I really believe it helps us with those attachments to the temporal things, doesn't it? It makes a big difference. I see it in a healthy perspective. You know, 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 1 says, For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. You see, the early church lived with eternity in view. They knew this world was not their home. They knew that another kingdom was coming, they knew resurrection was coming, and it made them fearless. So Paul said, We have a building from God, eternal in the heavens. This life is a tent, it's temporary, it's fragile, it passes away, but eternity is permanent, and you and I can become remarkably steady when we realize, when we see that this world is not all there is. Aren't you glad? I don't have to figure this out on my own. Ephesians 1, and starting in verse 17, says that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, I'm gonna fast forward, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation. And I fast forward, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened. You see, this is one of the great ministries of the Holy Spirit, that He changes how we see. David said this: truly, he is my rock and my salvation, he is my fortress. I will never be shaken. You see, Psalm 62 was a psalm of quiet confidence. That's what I just read, an unshakable trust in God, even amidst all the betrayal and the slander that was going on in David's life at this time. You see, David had come out of one mess, and now it's a later date, and oh my goodness, he's in another one. But how's he seeing it? The same as the last one. David sees something different, and truth will always prove to be greater than your facts, and it did for David once again, because facts are temporary, but truth is eternal. Facts change, truth doesn't. The Holy Spirit teaches us to interpret our lives and our circumstances through heaven's perspective. And you see, that is why God's presence matters so much. That is why prayer matters, that is why it's so important to meditate on scripture and build it in you. That is why being filled with the Spirit of God matters. Because the more time we spend with Jesus, the more we begin to see life the way he does. And when your perspective changes, your stability will too. You cannot be steady if you only see what everyone else sees. Faith sees another reality. The world says seeing is believing. We said this before, the kingdom says, believing changes what I see. The world is discipled by fear, so the church has to be discipled by faith. The world reacts to headlines, the church needs to respond to the word of God. The question is not what do you see? The question is which reality has the final word in your life? Because truth can change your facts. So are you gonna go with the facts or are you gonna go with the truth? I don't know about you, but I picked the second. Amen. I'm gonna ask you to stand up right now, and I just want you to say something after me. I think this is really important that you and I learn how to see things differently. Learn how to see things through the eye of faith, through the scripture, through the leading of the Holy Spirit. So I want you to say this. I may not understand everything that is happening in this world. And I may not know what tomorrow holds, but I know what God has said, I know his kingdom can't be shaken. I know his promises are true, and by his spirit, I will walk by faith and not by sight. So let's just pray. Heavenly Father, I just come before you this afternoon, and Lord, I just ask that those of us who desire to walk by faith and not by sight, those of us who desire to see beyond and into eternity, would your Holy Spirit help us? Holy Spirit, would you be the teacher? Would you illuminate things in the Word of God? Would you teach us the way to see with the eye of faith? Show us how to build and to fortify our lives on the Word of Truth so that we can stand steady no matter what we are facing, no matter what we are experiencing, no matter how much everything around us shakes. Holy Spirit, teach us how to trust in God and stand steady. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

Thank you so much for joining us for this week's message at Gateway. We were so glad to be able to share it with you. If you would like to find out more about what is going on at Gateway or when our weekly services are, you can visit our website at www.iegateway.org.uk. Thank you so much for joining us.