Mother’s Day brings to the surface a kaleidoscope of feelings. Our feelings about family and mother vary according to our experiences. There may be sadness. There may be anger and bitterness. There may be regret. For many, there is thankfulness and joy.
We did not choose the family to which we were born. If we were raised in a healthy family environment, we give thanks. If our family system was not so healthy, we recognize that as children we did not have a lot of power to positively influence the negative. Now as adults and older children, we are called to move beyond our past. God wants to use us in our present situation to help create an atmosphere of peace and joy.
The Psalmist began with a request. “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us...”
Is there anything you don’t like about that prayer? The Psalmist made this request for the nation of Israel. But it’s not a bad request for our homes. This summer our son and his fiancée are getting married. I make this request on their behalf.
The question I want to explore today is how God fulfils this prayer for blessing in our lives--and the life of our family. The question is important in light of Paul’s words in his letter to the Ephesians. Ephesians 1:3: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
Paul’s words tell us if we are new person in Christ, we are already blessed with every spiritual blessing. There is no spiritual blessing that we can request from God that he has not already made available through Christ.
Think about it this way. When it comes to blessings from God, the blessings I might request for myself and for my family God as already made available through His Son Jesus. Yet, for many of us, there is a disconnect. What we read about in Ephesians 1: 3 does not reflect our experience.
It is late spring. We are beginning to use the outdoor water faucets and garden hoses. Picture a tap with a full stream of water flowing from it. Now picture a disconnected hose. If the hose is a long ways from the tap, the running water is of little value. Let’s say the hose is underneath the running tap but not tightly connected. Some water may be going through the hose but there is still a lot going on the ground. Finally, picture the hose tightly connected to the tap. All the water is flowing through it.
If we picture God’s blessings as water flowing out of a tap, then what we realize is that we have to connect with God and stay connected to experience his blessings. When we connect with God and remain connected, his blessing flows into and through our lives to others.
If you have bought or shopped for a garden hose recently, you will notice there newer and simpler ways to connect a garden hose to an outdoor tap. God through his Son provided a new way to connect with him. Jesus took upon himself our failures, our sin. He cleared away the debris that stood between God and us. We now can connect with God through faith. The Apostle John puts it this way in John 3:16, 17: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
Connection happens through belief or faith. These two English words translate the same Greek word. True belief or faith takes the story of Jesus seriously. True faith involves coming to the place where we believe that, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we can experience forgiveness and know God’s love at work in our lives. Belief or faith or trust frees God to connect us to himself.
Connection is the beginning. It is like the marriage ceremony where two people publically exchange vows to “have and to hold from this day forward.”
The next question is staying connected. Every year, thousands of people, formally through a public ceremony say before God, their friends and one another, “ I will have you as my husband or my wife . I will stay committed to you until death separates us.” Yet even as people are making these vows, hundreds of peoples are going through a legal process to disconnect to end a relationship which began with joy and promise.
The answer to staying connected emerges in the gospel of John. Jesus is preparing his disciples for his physical departure. They are connected to him but he wants to show them how to stay connected. The reading starts in John 14: 23. Jesus says: "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me."
Let me review what I have been saying in case you are asking, “Where are we going with all this?” Here is the path: We want God to bless us and our home. Through Christ, God has already blessed us. To know God’s blessings in our lives, we have to connect with him and stay connected. As we stay connected to him he will bless us and our home.
A key to staying connected with God is found in Jesus’ words “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” These words tell us that love is more than just a feeling. Love involves action. In our relationship with God, love means obeying the teachings of Jesus.
Some of you may be saying. “I don’t like the sounds of that. Why should I have to obey God in order for him to makes his home with me?”
Imagine with me that Tiger Woods volunteered to be your golf coach for a month. He said to you, “I will spend five days a week with you instructing you, watching you, correcting you, encouraging you and helping you improve your golf game.” Some of you would be pretty excited by the opportunity. The first day begins. After observing you in action for a while, Tiger points out where he wants you to change your swing. You listen, attempt the changes he suggests but you feel uncomfortable. After awhile you begin to argue. You say. “ I don’t like doing it this way. I feel too uncomfortable or restricted when I swing the club the way you are suggesting. Besides, it is not working. I am not hitting the ball as well as I was before.” Tiger is patient. He tells you he understands that making adjustments in your swing is difficult. He has gone through the same thing but if you will hang in and keep working at your swing, your golf will improve dramatically. But you refuse. You say, “I want your help but I am not willing to listen to you. I think my swing is fine the way it is.” What do you think would happen?
Whether it is golf or hockey or piano or guitar or dance or acting or school or a job or marriage, if we don’t listen and if we don’t incorporate what we are hearing into our actions, we will not improve or benefit from the one who is trying to help us.
Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” A love for God that results in obedience will keep us in relationship with God. We will have the joy of knowing his presence in our life. With his presence, we experience his blessing.
If we are going to obey Jesus’ teachings, then we have to know what he is teaching. At our two small groups on Monday and Tuesday when we talked about “The Goal of Life” we looked at Jesus’ response to the question: “What is the greatest commandment?” Central to all of his teachings are two commandments found in Matthew 22: 37-40.
"‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
If after we have connected to God through his Son Jesus, we make it our goal in life to obey these two commandments, we will stay connected with Jesus. However making it our goal to obey these two commandments and obeying them are two different things. To do so, we need an action plan.
The first part of the plan is to recognize is that when we connect with God he brings a change into our life which makes obedience a possibility. To become a Christian is to receive the Spirit of God into our lives. Paul tells us that through God’s Spirit, he pours out his love into our hearts.
Going back to the garden hose analogy, connecting to God is like a hose connecting to a water tap. Once connected, the water (or the Spirit of God) begins to flow through us. His spirit fills us with his love and empowers us to be a true follower of Jesus.
Listen to Paul’s prayer for those who are connected to God in Ephesians 3:16 – 19: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
If the first part of the plan is to recognize that we are empowered through God’s spirit to love and to live in accordance with Christ’s teaching, the second part is to do it. God has given us power through his Holy Spirit to love but we still must make the decision to love. We are not passive participants in God’s plan to reshape our lives so that he can bless. We have choices to make. We have been empowered to make good choices but we are still able to make poor choices.
After Paul prays that people will be empowered and strengthened by the Spirit of God, he warns these same people not to grieve the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4:30-32: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
What happens when we grieve the Holy Spirit? Imagine the tap shutting off. Our source of life and love from God begins to dry up. We lose his energy. How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? We grieve the Holy Spirit by failing to obey God’s command to love. We fail to love when we hold on to bitterness, when we express anger in destructive ways, when we use words like knives to cut people up and when we refuse to forgive.
Do you want to know God’s blessing in your life? Do you want to know his blessing in your home? Then through his Son Jesus, connect to God and stay connected by obeying his teachings. We can do so because God, though his Spirit living within us, empowers us to do what we cannot do on our own.
Psalm 67:1 “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us.”
And why do we want God’s blessing? So we can be rich and famous? Psalm 67: 2-5 remind us that it is so “that your (God’s) ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples justly and guide the nations of the earth. May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you.” It is so that God will be known and revered everywhere on earth.
Our childhood homes may have been happy or sad. Whatever our experience, today we pray to God--who has already blessed us in Jesus--to bless our homes so that as people observe our lives and our family they will see God’s salvation at work in our homes.
Where do you see yourself this morning? Connected? Disconnected? Connected but the flow of God’s Spirit is restricted? Are there people and circumstances where you are failing to love? This morning God invites you to respond to his call to connect to him, to follow his instructions to love and learn in your life so that his blessings can flow through you to “water” the world around you. As we allow his spirit to pour through us into the lives of others, we bring his blessings to a world that desperately needs his love.