Make the Invisible God Visible
Tom Shrader explores Jesus' call for believers to be salt and light in the world, making the invisible God visible through their character rather than religious activities. Drawing from Matthew 5:13-16 and Galatians 5:22-23, he explains that people will see Christ in us when they observe the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He emphasizes that Christians must engage the world around them rather than withdraw, and that our good works must be accompanied by bold proclamation that points people to Jesus.
“You may be the only Bible that some people ever read.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World (2012)
Recorded: 2012
Duration: 39 min
Themes: salt, light, witness, character, boldness, fruit, engagement, proclamation, living in secular world, workplace witness, feeling isolated, new believer, parent, community leader, struggling with boldness, young adult
Scripture: Matthew 5:13-16, Galatians 5:16-26, Ephesians 2:8-10, Genesis 39:2-3, Isaiah 6, 1 Peter 3, John 3, 2 Timothy 3
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual fruit, christian witness, incarnational ministry, salt and light, fruits of spirit, biblical authority, great commission
Full Transcript
Today is week six in what is going to be 11 weeks. Let me remind you the title of this series is "How to Stay Straight in a Crooked World," and there are a couple of implications there, but the biggest one is: how do I stay focused on track when things around me are changing all the time? Some of that change is good, some of it not so good.
The illustration we've used every week is that there are things that were almost taboo 30 years ago that 15 years ago were kind of on the fringe, that are today mainstream, that will be passé 15 years from now. Things are changing. How do I stay focused? How do I navigate my way through this?
Building on Our Foundation
Here's what we've done so far. We started with the Bible being the final authority in our life. Then we said that we develop a lifelong pattern of learning—of the scripture obviously, but also staying in tune with the world around us—and then make good decisions, which are godly decisions. The fourth week was the idea of living life confidently. There's a sense of boldness in this, not because I have confidence in myself, but because everything that I would fear in life, Jesus becomes the antidote. Then we said last week to start turning the corner: I have to integrate by faith into my life. I can't segregate it, so my relationship with Christ is a deeply personal matter, but it's not a private matter.
Today and next week we look at the issue of you living life in such a way that God uses your life to draw people to Himself. In one sense, you can't separate this week and next—they go together. You separate them, you have issues, as I'll illustrate in a moment. But for purposes of just working our way through them, we're going to separate it.
Here's week six: the task we have, the duty we have, the privilege we have to make the invisible God visible. Then week seven: to speak the truth boldly.
Jesus' Blueprint in the Beatitudes
If you have Bibles, you can open them to Matthew chapter 5. The minute you hear Matthew 5, you think Matthew 5, 6, 7—that's the Sermon on the Mount. When you turn there, if you have a red-lettered Bible, the words of Jesus in red, you're going to see that almost all of the words in Matthew 5, 6, and most in chapter 7 are in red letters. This is Jesus speaking, arguably the most famous sermon that's ever been preached.
We'll pick it up in verse 3 of chapter 5. Verses 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 all begin with the word "blessed"—happy in Jesus' economy. "Truly blessed are those..." and it begins with "Blessed are those who are poor in spirit"—those who are spiritually bankrupt and they get it, they understand they are.
Max Lucado writes this: "The first step to joy is a plea for help and acknowledgement of moral destitution. Those who taste God's presence have declared spiritual bankruptcy and are aware of their spiritual crisis. Their cupboards are bare, their pockets are empty, their options are gone. They have long since stopped demanding justice; they're pleading for mercy. They don't brag; they beg. They ask God to do for them what they can't do without Him. They have seen how holy God is and how sinful they are and have agreed with Jesus' statement: salvation is impossible. Oh, the irony of God's delight—born in the parched soul of destitution rather than the fertile ground of achievement."
I wish I could talk like that. I wish I could write like that. The beginning of the relationship with Christ is me acknowledging that I'm spiritually bankrupt. I'm a spiritual beggar.
Understanding Spiritual Poverty
Even when we use those terms, we have to kind of qualify them because we tend to think of maybe the people we run into that are begging—"Hey, you got any spare change?" But that's not what you see in Jesus' culture. These would be people who would be on the corner, on the street somewhere, positioned wherever they are, and they're groveling. They won't even look up. They would consider themselves completely unworthy, totally dependent on people who they don't even know—in this case, probably—to support, to encourage them.
He said blessed are we when we start at that point where we understand. There's a great line Lucado has in here: "The options are gone. They've long since stopped demanding justice; they plead for mercy. The irony of God's delight—born in the parched soul of destitution rather than the fertile ground of achievement." They're no longer trying to find a way to make God happy with them. They've given that up. They've abandoned that.
It's that Isaiah 6 moment where they see God for who He really is, and then that begins this entire process here, which in a sense is kind of a progression and in many ways a picture of the Christian life.
Salt and Light
Verse 13 of Matthew 5: "You are the salt of the earth." Verse 14: "You are the light of the world."
Jesus uses two illustrations familiar really to people in all time, maybe more in their culture than ours. You're the salt of the earth—and if you've been with us at times, we've taken a whole week and unpacked that verse. Here's salt and here's what it does: it's a preservative and it creates a thirst. You're the salt of the earth; now go and create that thirst. You are that preservative in the world.
"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel basket. They put it on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house."
Verse 16—and here's where we're hanging today: "Let your light, your behavior, your life shine in such a way before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."
Making God Visible Through Our Lives
Jesus is saying there should be something visibly different about us. It is the idea of my working in such a way that they see your good works. They look at you, and just by observing you, they say there's something different.
Now let me make a couple of obvious points. For salt to work and light to work, it has to come in contact with whatever that other object is. If you're going to use salt as a preservative for meat, it has to come in contact with it. Light...
Has to come in contact with the darkness. So the call to you and me, we have to be careful here, the call to you and me is to engage the world around us. I don't know if it's as true now as it was 10 or 15 years ago. It may be it's just that I'm in a different place or dealing with different people, but 10 or 15 years ago it felt like within conservative evangelical Christianity that more and more those people were withdrawing from the world rather than engaging the world.
They would rather sit and criticize, which I got. Let's go ahead and criticize the government around us and the leaders around us, but the answer to that is to engage. Find your candidates, make your voice felt, make your opinion felt. It's right to complain about the level of journalism that you see, but then send your kids to school to get degrees in journalism to begin to affect the culture, not to withdraw from it.
When Jesus says let them see your good works, the implication there is proximity where they can evaluate you. They see you under the best of circumstances, but honestly, where they're going to see this difference is under the difficult times of circumstance.
Joseph: Making God Visible in Every Circumstance
So in Genesis chapter 39, here's Joseph. He's been sold to Potiphar. Genesis 39:2 says the Lord was with Joseph. Genesis 39:3 says that Potiphar could see that the Lord was with Joseph. Remember the story? Potiphar's wife falsely accuses Joseph. He lands in the dungeon in the bowels of the prison, the worst place, and the chief jailer we're told at the end of Genesis 39, about verse 23 or 4, says the chief jailer could see that the Lord was with Joseph.
Let your light shine in such a way that people see your good works. Make the invisible God visible and glorify your Father in heaven. They won't do that unless you tell them to. If they look at you and they see these good works and you don't say it's Jesus, they're just going to assume that's your personal nature. You're just a nice person. Your Myers-Briggs shows that you're one of these compliant, cooperative, congenial people, so you're going to have to tell them that.
The Only Bible Some Will Ever Read
My friend Larry Wright used to use a phrase, and you can argue with this, but the point he's making can't be missed. He would say, "You may be the only Bible that some people ever read." What he's saying is you're going to have people—it's more in our culture now than ever before. There's just a great study that was done that for the first time, and I don't remember the age group, I think it was like 25 to 40, when asked religious preference, this is the first time in history that "none" got the number one answer.
So more and more you're seeing that. They don't even think, as you talk to young people, you look at surveys, you look at what's done—that group, when they think of problems, "I'm having a problem in our marriage," most of you in here are old, so you got a problem, you tend to think church. I'll go to church, I'll get counsel there. They don't even think. They're as likely to go to Starbucks and ask the barista as they are to go to church and ask the pastor. It doesn't even occur to them. That's not even on their radar screen.
So it's even more important for the church to not be in that holy huddle, saying they're going to come to us. They're not going to come to you. Jesus' strategy was not bring them into church. Jesus' strategy was, you go to them. That's what He prayed the night before He died: "Father, just as you sent me into the world, I'm sending them into the world."
The Strategy Must Be Go, Not Come
And the strategy that basically says we're going to make the church really a great place and they're going to come in on Sunday and be swept away—it isn't going to happen. And the only way that's going to happen, majority of the time, like 90% of the time, is if you bring them.
So there has to be that thing in you that is provocative to the people around you, distinct, different. Not odd, not just weird, they're weird. Not that. I remember one Christmas, I'm at 7th Street in Missouri at a red light, and the guy on the radio is talking about something I heard this morning. He said, "And this just blows my mind." And he said, "Here's what I heard." He said, "This was a concept. A guy called in and he's thinking of this Christmas time, giving 10% of what he makes in December to help needy people." And he said, "This is phenomenal, this is above and beyond."
And to those of us that are around church, we're going, "Really? 10%? That's like the floor, not the ceiling, on giving." And honestly, it's kind of what you expect from anybody who says Jesus is Lord.
When the World Scratches Their Head
It's very odd when people look at you and think, "Saturday's get all the flowers planted and do all that, Sunday's kind of NFL and lay around," and you're spending it going to church and spending an hour and a half in a service, and then serving another one, and then giving them 10, 15, 20% of what you make? This is very odd. Why would you do that?
And it's your chance to say, "It's not duty, it's desire. It's not to pay back or reimburse God. It's my way of saying, listen, I'm grateful. Everything you have is yours. I wish I could give you more of my time, my energy, my effort, my money." And the world just scratches their head.
When the politicians release their taxes, look at the money they're giving away. Joe Biden averages, I can't remember the income, but the income was somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000, and gave away between $300 and $500 each year. But he's happy to take 50% of what you make. At least with Mitt Romney, you can go, "Here's a percent, here's something." If truly my money shows me where my heart is, I have to stand back and go, "There's a disconnect for me here." How you handle your money, your time, your energy.
Are Works Important?
Well, are works important? I had a conversation with a lady. It was a great conversation. I was teaching, and we were talking about Ephesians 2. Why don't you turn there, and that'll get us closer to where we're ultimately going to be.
The Foundation of Grace
It was a classic passage, a reminder to me that you never know who's in the room and who's here for the very first time, or maybe you've been around but never encountered it. And I just went through Ephesians 2 very quickly. So it begins in verse 1, Paul's writing to the believers at Ephesus, and you, past tense, were dead in your trespasses and sin. And then he tells them of what that meant.
Verse 4, but God being rich in His mercy, and here's why, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive. Verse 8, for by grace you have been saved. What's delivered me? Rescued me. Saved from what? Well, sin has separated me from God. That's that emptiness that you say you feel. Something's missing, something is missing.
And the answer is not to fill that something with a person, place, or thing, because this hole will just continue to suck every person, place, or thing you have. What's missing is a personal relationship with Christ. I'm saved by grace. I'm saved by grace through faith, not of yourself. It's a gift of God, not as a result of works that no one should boast. It almost seems to me that that verse is self-explanatory, really. He says I'm saved by grace. What's grace? Unmerited favor. And it's not by anything I can do. It's totally, utterly, completely, entirely a work that God does.
A Real-Life Conversation About Grace
So afterwards the lady came up and said, you know, you mentioned that verse. I had a discussion with a friend of mine this week, and I told her that I was going to go, and I don't remember where it was, somewhere, and she was going to do something very noble, a very good thing. She was going to feed hungry people. And she said, I made the comment to my friend, I'm going to do that because I want to make sure I'm going to heaven. And my friend took me right to this passage. And she said, I'm not sure what she meant there. Can you tell me?
And I said, yeah, you're saved by grace. What is grace? Unmerited favor. I said, think about this. Is there something you can do to earn or merit unmerited favor? And she said, I don't know. And that's when I knew she got a PhD from the U of A. Because I knew right at that moment, obviously this girl hasn't been around. This is a U of A graduate.
And I said, no, no, no, it's free. You can't earn it. It's given to you. It's not a result of any of this. Paul cannot be more clear. If Paul was going to hang out and say, there was something you to do, he would have said it right there. But he eliminates that.
The Role of Good Works
Now, the challenge is for us to go ahead and read verse 10. Do good works play a role? Sure, as a result of my salvation, not as the cause of it. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. And even those He prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. It becomes a picture of our life.
So now, all of a sudden, I'm in this personal relationship with Christ. And now my life's going to begin to change. So let me give you a warning and then take you in maybe a direction you wouldn't expect at this moment.
Don't Create a One-Size-Fits-All Christian Experience
Don't create a one-size-fits-all Christian experience. There are going to be some of you that you are just prayers. You just pray and pray and pray and pray. And there will be others that go, I pray, but it's like four or five minutes and then I'm drifting. How about those giants or whatever it is. My mind is gone. And honestly, how long are we going to pray anyway? When are we going to what? Do something.
And then there's some of you that you're doers and you're going. And there's others that are going, I don't have that. And I see it all the time because of church. People want their thing to be my thing and then it has to be our thing. So if they have a passion for the unborn, I get it. They want that to be something we lead with all the time and that needs to dominate the campus.
Typically, let me help you in your criticism. Typically, you're going to evaluate whatever it is through your giftedness. If you have a bent toward mercy, you're going to go to Jamie and you're going to go, there's not enough mercy in here. All you do is teach and teach and teach. We have hurting people, albeit not in Scottsdale, but we have hurting people around us that need to be ministered to. We ought to bust ourselves down to them. I'm teasing. But you get the drift of that. Or teaching. You don't teach hard enough. Well, I'm a teacher. It's not one size fits all.
God Made Us Unique and Different
I see it in parenting. I have two kids. So I don't have to go to three, four, two. And they are totally different. And I raised them differently. I had different expectations and values, in a sense, for each one. And I did not treat Sarah like I treated Haley.
God made us unique and different. That's the concept of the body of Christ. Some are a hand, some are a foot, some are a knee, some are an eye. And together, not individually, together, that's why you need to be in church, together we become what God wants to this world. So don't shove them into one size fits all. Should you be praying? Yes. How much? How's that look? It's going to be different. Just look at the twelve disciples. You just have different personalities there.
What About Good Works?
Well, now I should see good works. What are they? At this moment, you're looking for a list of things to do. I will see people all the time who are saying, I want to draw close to Jesus. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to go to another Bible study. I'm going to go to a Bible study on Tuesday morning, and Thursday noon and Friday and I'm reading through the Bible in a year and I'm going to get involved.
I'm going to start working in the nursery and if this doesn't do it, nothing will. I'll work with junior hires and I'm going to do all of these things. I'm going to do, but it's going to do. And that's our natural flinch. So Peter delivers a sermon, 3,000 people are moved and the first thing they say is what must I do? Well the reality is He does that to you.
The Battle Between Flesh and Spirit
You're in Ephesians 2, turn to the left to Galatians 5 and he tells you not necessarily what to do, but he does tell you what to be. He talks about being led by the spirit or led by the flesh. So you hang around Christian stuff for a while, and you say, "I'm led by the spirit." Well, what does that mean?
He tells us here. He says, first of all, Galatians 5:16, there's a battle, but I say walk. That word walk is used two ways, at least two ways in scripture. One is a primitive but effective means of transportation, walking, and the other is a lifestyle or the way you live. So here's what he's saying: but I say to you, live, walk by the spirit and you don't carry out the desires of the flesh. The flesh sets its desire against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh. There's the battle.
Well, how do I know? Here we go. Remember the context: make the invisible God visible. People are watching you. The only Bible that some people may ever read. What do they see?
People Are Watching Your Life
It's very fair for them, not necessarily to judge you, but it is fair for them to be fruit inspectors and say, "What do I see in your life?" Especially when you say Jesus is Lord. The minute you say that, you're putting yourself morally above everybody else and they're going to watch you. They're going to take their cue from you.
Well, what do they see? What Paul lays out here is what I would call the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. So rather than judge the person to your left or right or the person that, "Oh, I wish Bob were here today, he needs to hear this." Well, Bob's not here, so we'll assume that God has you here for a reason. Perhaps you could look at your own life.
The Fruit of the Flesh
He says in verse 19, the fruit of the flesh are evident. If I'm being driven by the flesh, it's evident, it's plain, it's open, and here's what I'm going to see. Immorality. That's the broadest possible word that Paul could use for, in most cases here, sexual perversion. And that's a long list of activities.
I was teaching at Cannon Beach, and I was making a point. I said, "Listen, I know I've done this enough. I know that this stirs up more reaction than anything, but we have to acknowledge, and it was in the context of working our way through a passage in 1 Corinthians, we have to acknowledge here that homosexuality is a sin and a perversion of God's plan." Now I said, "Listen, because I don't want to deal with a bunch of emails, and I don't want to ruin my trip to Cannon Beach by having to meet with each one of you individually to unpack this. So just listen, okay."
So is a man and a woman who aren't married having sex - that's a perversion. A man and a woman who are married and having sex with someone other than their spouse - that's a perversion. This is all a distortion of God's plan. It's sexual immorality of all types.
It's impurity. See the list? It's a medical term that speaks of a wound that's oozing pus. Sensuality - that's the idea of a lack of restraint in any area. So it could be sexual. It could be food. All of a sudden you face this crisis in life, and a 99 cent double cheeseburger looks pretty good. And if you're going to have one, you might as well have two. And you can't have two without fries. And if you're not in New York, you can get a big gulp with it too. There's nothing that's limiting me here. I just go and go and go.
In the culture, there's an epidemic in the church that people are using food in a sinful way. That's why I said I'm afraid to talk about it. You have to look at that, and again, not to single that out. I know this is all you heard already today. And it's not just sensuality. It's idolatry and sorcery. Idolatry is the idea of a man-made religion. Sorcery in that day and age involved drugs or mind-altering drugs.
Relationship Destruction
He makes a turn here, and he begins to talk now about relationships. Enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissension, factions, envying. So remember the context: people are watching you. What do they see? Do they see you at war with everybody around you?
I can think of a guy in particular, devout follower of Christ, who is at war with everyone around him over President Obama and deficits and all that goes with it. I've had him corner me and say, "Do you think you can be a Democrat and be a Christian?" I'm thinking, "Seriously?" Yes, I do. But politics, in a way, has become his dividing issue rather than Jesus. If you're going to have people divide over something, let it be over salvation, not over the balanced budget. Again, not to say you aren't engaged in that. You should be.
But all of a sudden, if all the relationships - you don't speak to your kids, your kids don't speak to you, you don't speak to your neighbors only through lawyers - listen, if I'm watching that from the outside, I'm thinking, "That can't be the way Jesus called me to live." And He said it isn't.
And then kind of the catch-all, I love the way he ends this in verse 21: drunkenness, carousing, and things like these that we've talked about before, that I forewarned you. So if you step back and you look at your life, again, making the invisible God visible, if I just see turmoil all around you, that is not compelling.
The Fruit of the Spirit
What is? Verse 22: but the fruit of the spirit. Let me just highlight them, make sure we get that. The fruit of the spirit is, and then he lists nine characteristics. If we were writing it, we might be compelled to say the fruits of the spirit are, but it's singular.
Either meaning one of two things, and I'm comfortable with either one. It's like a bunch of grapes. There are nine grapes on there. So he's either saying, "Here's the fruit of the spirit, it's these nine things," or "The fruit of the spirit is love, and these other eight kind of define what love is." Honestly, either one works, I don't care.
What he's saying is, in your life, here's what you should see: love, agape. Webster defines love this way: strong feeling or personal attachment, ardent affection. So Sandy and
I can't remember where we were going the other day, and had the radio on, one of the great love songs of all times. There she was just walking down the street, singing doo-wah-diddy-diddy-dum-diddy-doo. Before I knew it, she was walking next to me. And that's kind of how we see this idea of love. It's like a disease that I catch, which is really helpful, because then I can fall in love, and then what? Fall out of love.
I'm really experiencing all this again, and I don't know how candid to be, and I haven't figured this out. I don't know what Sandy's tolerance is, I knew Susan's, but I'm experiencing all again. It's very different to be married 22 years versus being married 22 weeks. It's just different, and it's coming back.
Love as Choice, Not Just Feeling
So I said to Sandy the other day, I really love you, do you know that? And her answer was, I do most of the time. Which either means she's very needy, or I haven't done a very good job of it. And I wrote her a note, and I said, I want you to see it, and I want you to know it, and I'm committed to do whatever it is. Whatever. Because I look at it, and I'm going, gosh, she's got, how does she not know this? I mean, what more do you want me to do?
When I was in college, we were part of a generation that says, we're going to dress the same, look the same, smell the same, to prove we're different. This is how we're going to do this. And so we wanted to obliterate, and probably the beginning of the demise of the nation, 1968, 69, 70. We're going to break down all systems.
So one of them was marriage. And here's what we said, marriage is just a piece of paper. Well, it's that piece of paper that keeps us together. It's that vow. It's interesting, the gay and lesbian community doesn't see marriage as just a piece of paper. They see it as something more than that. But it's that vow.
So I had this moment this summer. So Sandy and I get married, we had this great time, and then I'm just sick right away. I'm really sick. And there was a side of me that says, okay, hang on, you didn't sign up for this. But before I could really say it to her, I said, you didn't sign up for this, but in reality you really did. Because you're the one who said, fully aware of what's going on, for better or worse, rich or poor, sickness and health. That is the love. The love has feelings attached to it, for sure, but the love is a love that's a choice. It's not just emotion. There's a permanency to it.
A Story of Transformed Marriage
We had a couple, actually a lady in our church, husband didn't come, she hated him. And the only thing on planet Earth that had more hate in her than her was him for her. They hated each other. She said, here's my fantasy, is that he will die quickly, so it doesn't cost me anything, in some tragic way, so all the attention will come to me. And she said, I hate this guy, I can't stand him.
And so she came to me, and she said, I'm reluctant to come to you, what do I do? He's not a believer, I am, and so I took her to 1 Peter 3, and I said, here you go, here's what I think. I think you should make him a great big dinner and make love to him, which to me seems to solve about everything. I mean, if the world would, that's how I'd negotiate with Ahmadinejad. I'd feed him, and she said, I knew that's what you were going to say.
And so she had this moment where she's trying to love this guy, she hates him. She's doing it out of duty, which is better than not doing it at all, but it's not ideal. And finally, her husband comes to church with her.
And he comes, maybe you've heard the story, he comes the day that we're doing the introduction of the Gospel of John. And they're driving home, and there's that moment, some of you've been there, with your spouse or your significant other or friend, where you want to know what they thought, but you don't want to ask. Finally, she just said, what are you thinking? And he said, it wasn't that bad. I did not like him, meaning me. I did not like him, but everything else was okay.
And he was doing this John Gospel. Here's what I'll do, I'll throw you a bone. I'll go as long as he's teaching till he's done with the Gospel of John, which took us, and he was good to his word, by the way, took us three and a half years. Okay, that was a great, he didn't know. He figured, well, we'll breeze through this about as fast as we can read.
It was in John chapter three that God saved him, and if you saw them today, they're like newlyweds. They just tingle. Well, as much as she hated him, there was a commitment in there, and there was an action that went with it, and that's what often happens, not always happens, that's what often happens with feelings.
How Love Actually Works
So the way I illustrate it is I do it with Susan. I saw Susan, I had feelings. I acted on those feelings. I went up to her, I said, hey, would you like to go out with a really cool guy? And she said, yeah, if you know one, send him over. And so I said, well, I was thinking me, and so then we went out, and then we made a commitment.
Once the feelings are gone, and that's some of you in the room, you just flip back. You go, I'm committed to you. You're not going to get rid of me, and I'm going to act like it. I'm going to love you. And sometimes that's not so easy, and the person doesn't make it easy.
I've been with these guys, and going, I don't know what to do. If I take her flowers, she says I'm manipulating her. If I don't bring her flowers, she says, you don't even bring me flowers. You don't even love me. Well, you do the best you can do, and then you act like it. That's the whole idea about love.
Beyond Emotion to Spiritual Reality
Love's a feeling. Love, joy. Joy is that sense, really, of happiness, but not in a trite way, but it's based on spiritual realities. I'm with a guy yesterday. He's got cancer bad, and I wrote him a note afterwards saying that was so encouraging and inspiring to me, and what God's doing in your life in the midst of that, and he's saying, listen,
The worst thing that's going to happen here is I'm going to die. And he's exactly right. In a sense, cut me slack, the most joyful experience I can have is to be standing at the grave of a believer.
Finding Joy in Loss
So Susan died a year ago next Tuesday, and the girls and I are trying to figure out what we want to do, and it's kind of awkward. I'm figuring it out, trying, and it was before she went into hospice, because once she got to hospice, it was pretty downhill fast. But in those last days, there was a moment where she took her wedding ring and said to Sarah, "I want you to have it," and to Haley, "I want you to have this." She didn't give me anything. Now that I think about this, there were those sweet moments.
I think about this a lot. I don't know why, but when Susan died, we knew we were not going to do a viewing. That was going to be it, so we're at hospice. Hospice, by the way, was an amazing organization for us. When Susan had died, and it was perfect, because it was just the girls and me. None of the boys were around. It was just exactly how we wanted, and she died very peacefully. There wasn't any struggle. It was just, she was just gone.
I remember Haley having such a hard time leaving that room, and almost like dragging her. It was really difficult, and if Susan would have had the energy and been alive at that moment, she would have struggled, too. She really loved the girls, but there's not a chance in the world she'd come back today to be with the girls she loved, because joy is based on spiritual realities.
Joy Through Trials
So even in the midst of my cancer, there's a joy in the sense that I'm not going to waste this cancer. God's going to do something. I hear that testimony all the time. There's a peace. Jesus said, "I'll give you peace, but it won't be peace as the world gives. It'll be a peace that passes all understanding." There's a patience.
I wrote this: A willingness to endure painful situations frequently in the form of a person. Love, joy, peace, patience demand difficult circumstances for us to know whether we have them or not. You don't know if you're a person of love until you come in contact with somebody who's unlovable. You don't know if you have joy until you come in contact with a difficult circumstance around you that tests us. You don't know if you have peace. Peace is not the absence of turmoil. It's the presence of God right in the midst of all this. In a sense, it's regardless of circumstances. And the same thing with patience.
The Complete List of Spiritual Fruit
Well, let me give you the rest of the list. Kindness, that's just courtesy. Treating each other with respect. Goodness is kind of kindness in action. Now, here's what we're told in 2 Timothy 3 that in the last days, people will be haters of good. They'll mock what is good. "Such a goody two shoes."
Faithfulness is loyalty, trustworthiness. And what you want to do or typically do is think of great big things in these illustrations. It's the little thing. If you say you're going to meet somebody at nine, get there at nine. Don't come in at 9:10 like it's no big deal. If you say you're going to meet me at nine and you show up at 9:10, you need to have had a stroke along the way or a flat tire or something. Because showing up at 9:10 when you say nine tells me you don't give a rip about me.
Learning Faithfulness the Hard Way
And the way I learned that is I had a friend who called me on it and said, "Every time we meet, you're a half hour late. You obviously don't care about me. I'm done. If this happens one more time, I'm done." I said, "I never thought about it that way."
But I said, gentleness. Gentleness is also translated meekness. It's strength under control. Here's the illustration: Jesus on the cross. "He saved others, but He couldn't save Himself." That's exactly right. He couldn't save Himself and save others. Could He have come down at any moment? Sure, that's His point. "I gave My life voluntarily."
And then lastly, it's self-control. It's restraint. It's not eating everything that's on your plate because they put it there.
Making God Visible Through Character
Now, here we go. You make the invisible God visible not by carrying the world's biggest Bible or how many Bible studies you got. Those are all good. You'd never hear me saying bad things about them. But you're going to make the invisible God visible when the people around you see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
Now they're going to say there's something different about you and you have to tell them it's Jesus. That's next week. Let's speak the truth boldly.
Okay, let's pray. Father, thank You for that amazing truth. God, we want to make this either more difficult or complicated than it is. And sometimes we don't even like the idea that people are watching us. But You tell us to be the light of the world and let our good work shine in such a way that people see them. They're evident. They watch us. We invite it. We encourage it so that we in turn can say it's not us, it's Jesus. God, allow us to live in a way that's compelling and then to be bold to point people to You. We pray that in Christ's name, amen.