For those of you who do not know me, I am Jim Bogdano. I am originally from California, but I make my home now in the Richmond area of Virginia.
I want to welcome all the Chinese Canadians. Why are you laughing?
I was with Roger Eng and noticed how the second generation of Chinese are becoming very Canadian. His son Isaac—how do you say “hello”? Ni hao, right? Something like that? Well, he says it, “Ni-hail.” So you are becoming accommodated quite well.
Let us read a couple of verses, and then we will go ahead. Turn to Matthew 16, verse 24.
Then Jesus said to His disciples,
If anyone desires to come after Me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
I would also like to read one other verse, from Hebrews 12:2—just part of it.
Looking unto Jesus,
Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You just for coming into Your presence today. We thank You for the way that was opened to us so wonderfully by Your Son, the Lord Jesus. We want to give Him all praise and thanks because He has brought us to You.
And Lord, it is not enough that we are simply in Your presence. We are asking now that You would speak to us in a way that will move us, that will cause us to respond to You. Only You can do this, so we give Your Word to You. We ask that You speak to us. We ask, Lord, that You will bring out from us that response that You desire, in Jesus Christ. Amen.
This is a scary verse—Matthew 16:24. I do not know how you view things, but I know how I view things. When I read these verses, my focus skips everything and goes right to, “Deny yourself and pick up your cross.” That is exactly where my eyes go.
And I miss the very beginning, where He says, “If anyone comes after Me.” I think that in my messages, in the things the Lord has put on my heart, there is something spiritual—perhaps theoretical, for lack of a better word—and then there is something practical. Theoretical is a great word for science, but it is not a great word for spiritual things.
A lot of us would like to go first to the practice, but the Lord does not want that. We cannot go to the practice unless we see. We have to see first, because if we do not see, then all we have is a work that we are trying to do to please God. And that is where we run into trouble.
As I was thinking about this, a couple of things came to mind—or the Lord brought them to mind. One was a Rolling Stones song. I know that sounds very spiritual, does it not? When I was growing up, I used to listen to the Rolling Stones. On one of their albums, they had a song called—where is it? Help me. Incidentally, I am computer illiterate. That is why I have Elk in here. He is the brain behind everything.
There we go. “No Expectations.” It is a song by the Rolling Stones.
Then another thing came to me. As we were driving from the airport, Roger was driving us home, and we passed a sign that said, “Expect more.” I do not know what company it was for. The thing that struck me was, “Expect more.”
I began asking, “How does this apply?” This is the way I think. I look at the Scripture, and it says, “Deny yourself.” Suddenly, I have no expectations of God or from God because it says, “Deny yourself.” Then I think, “Oh, I have to expect more out of myself.”
Then this does not become following the Lord; it becomes me trying to make myself into something. And I am not a very good maker of things. I remember Abraham Lincoln once claimed to be a self-made man. A heckler said, “A self-made man, huh?” Lincoln said, “Yep.” The heckler replied, “Well, you did a pretty bad job.” That is the way I do it too. I do a pretty bad job of making myself into something, and so there is a lot of failure.
So where is our focus? Is our focus to be on denying ourselves, or is our focus to be on following Him? Which comes first: the call to follow, or the command to deny yourself?
The call to follow comes first—the call to come after Him. When Jesus gave this saying in Matthew 16, in what chapter did He first call the disciples? It was around Matthew 4. This came much later. But the first thing was, “Follow Me. Come after Me.” That is the first thing.
That is what I want to deal with. This is what we have to see before we deny, because we need a reason to deny. If we have no reason to deny, we will fail. But we need a reason.
What does it mean to follow Him? Here is the spiritual part: to follow Him is to come into a whole new realm. I know you may think, “What in the world is he talking about? Is he talking about Narnia? Are we going to go through the closet door, or fade into some picture like The Voyage of the Dawn Treader?”
That is fantasy. We are not called into fantasy. That is allegorical. We are not called into allegory. We are called into reality.
In fact, you can look at the Lord’s calling as an interruption of the normal and a calling to the real. It is coming out of what we consider normal and coming into what really is the reality of the kingdom of God. It is a lot different. It is not the normal, but it is the real.
So we are stepping into this new realm. What is this new realm? What is this realm all about? What is its reality? Let us take a look at it. There are about seven things I want to mention about this realm.
The first is the realm of favor. We do not start by trying to attain the favor of God. We step into this realm of favor. We are already there.
It was mentioned in the prayers already: “Lord, thank You for the blood of Jesus. It brings me in.” We are living in a realm of favor. We do not have to try to win the favor of God for ourselves so that He will bless us. We step into this realm where we are favored.
When He chose the disciples and said, “Follow Me,” was He saying, “Hey, we are going to have some contests, and if you win, you can come after Me”? That is not what He said. He said, “Come and follow Me.” Is that not a sign of favor?
I remember when I was in sixth grade. They were lining us up to choose kids for basketball. I am a tall guy, but I was pretty geeky and really uncoordinated. These guys were choosing, and I remember Paul Culpepper—he was one of the captains, and he was a very popular guy.
He chose me ahead of Ron Lopez. Now, today you may ask, “Who is Ron Lopez?” I do not know who he is now, but back then he was a big guy—a big Hispanic guy. Ron Lopez was so mad that Paul did not choose him. “Why did you choose Joe’s Boggy?” And do not call me that; that is not me.
But he chose me. I did not have to do anything. He just chose me. Suddenly, I was in favor with a popular guy, and I had not done anything. I was just a big, geeky guy, and he chose me. Acceptance.
One of the most wonderful things that ever happened to me after I started following the Lord came when I was on an airplane. I became a Christian when I was seventeen, but I did not really start following the Lord until I was about twenty-one, a junior in college. About two years later, I was flying between the two New Zealand islands.
It was very stormy and cloudy, and the plane started going down over the middle of the ocean. People were freaking out, including me. We thought, “Oh, we are all going to die.”
The thought that came to me was, “Oh my gosh, I am going to die.” But it was not, “Lord, I am only twenty-three. I have not had a chance to live.” The thought was, “Oh God, I have not done anything for You. How can I get close to You?”
The Lord spoke into my heart and said, “You cannot get any closer to Me than you are.”
There is a precious hymn, and the chorus says:
Near, so very near to God,
Nearer I cannot be;
For in the person of His Son,
I am as near as He.Dear, so very dear to God,
Dearer I cannot be;
For in the person of His Son,
I am as dear as He.
The beginning of the realm that we are in is that we find out that we have the favor of God. We do not have to work anything. We do not have to do anything else. We have already been called. The price has already been paid. We do not have to make atonement for ourselves. We are already in this realm of favor.
Now, you may think this sounds contradictory. If we are in this place of favor, does that mean we do not have to deny ourselves? That is not really so.
For example, I am a married man. My wife married me, but she denies herself. She does not go out with other men because she denies herself that, so that she can know the fullness of my attention and the fullness of my affection. If she loved other men, would I give her all my love? No, because she would not be accepting all my love.
To find out the fullness of this favor, we do find ourselves pressing into that fullness by denying ourselves. But we will talk about that another day. We start in this place of favor.
Secondly, this realm is a realm of discovery. What is a discovery? I thought there were no worlds left to discover. Columbus—oh, wait, this is Canada—Cartier, Champlain, and nobody else, because you know your history. That is good.
The first thing you are going to discover is that you can discover a lot of things about yourself. This is not self-realization; it is self-discovery.
What do we discover about ourselves? Steve used this verse yesterday, Luke 5:1-11. We know the story of Peter launching out and the Lord calling him. But when the Lord called him, after that great catch of fish, what was Peter’s reaction?
In Luke 5:8, he says, “Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” One of the things you will find out as you follow the Lord is that you are a sinful person.
Now, this does not mean that you lose God’s favor. You are already in the realm of favor. But to find out how great that favor is, you are going to find out that you are a sinner.
For some of us who have grown up in Christian homes and have not really been out in the world, we may think, “Well, gee, I do not really think I am a sinner.” You are going to find out how sinful you really are, how rebellious you really are in your heart.
Look at the Pharisees. They did everything right, did they not? But their motives were wrong. Their thoughts were wrong. On the outside they were clean, but on the inside they were dirty. You are going to find these things out, and it is going to upset you—even to the point of saying, “Lord, depart from me. I am sinful.” But remember: we are also in this realm of favor.
Secondly, in Mark 10, the rich young ruler found out that he loved his stuff more than he loved God. Was that not in the devotion this morning? We love our stuff more than we love God. Some of us just do not want to give up our stuff.
Our stuff could be anything: the internet, video games, athletics, entertainment, a girlfriend or boyfriend, or our friends. Here is a good question: Will you follow the Lord if your friends do not?
What if your friends say, “We do not want to follow the Lord”? Will you follow? Will you let your friends go and say, “Okay, I am alone, but I will follow alone”? It is a good question. Do we love our stuff? We are going to find out what is in our hearts—what we hold onto, what we do not want to give up.
The man went away sorrowful. You have to find these things out. You have to discover things about yourself.
In Mark 9:33-34, the disciples argued over who was the greatest. You are going to find out how much ego you have, if you do not already know. Ego is real deep. “I am the greatest. My needs come above yours.” I am a speaker, so my needs come above yours, right?
But the Lord said, “You want to be the greatest? You have to be a servant.” We are going to find that in ourselves: “I do not do that. I do not follow. I do not bow down to that.”
In Luke 9:51-55, Jesus wanted to go through Samaria on His way to Jerusalem. The Samaritans said, “Since You are going to Jerusalem, we do not want You to come.” John and James said, “Do You want us to call down fire?” Sure, burn them up.
We are going to find out how sectarian and judgmental we are. “They are not with us. Let us burn them up. They do not deserve to live.” That is in our hearts.
Then, in Luke 22, Peter says, “Even though all forsake You, I will never forsake You.” Yet we find that Peter forsakes Him and denies Him.
You may ask, “Where is the good stuff? Where is the good stuff that we find out about ourselves?” What did Paul write in Romans 7:18?
In my flesh dwelleth no good thing.
You are going to have to find these things out, and you will. If you are going to follow the Lord Jesus, you are going to find that in your flesh there is no good thing.
You might put on some false humility and say, “Oh yes, I know. I am such a sinner.” But no, you are really going to find it out if you follow the Lord. Yet let us temper this by saying: you are in a realm of favor. It is not all gloom and doom.
You are going to find out how unworthy you are, not because you are being cast away, but because you have to see it in order to follow Him.
Then we are going to discover things about the Lord. The disciples did not merely need to know what the Lord could do or what He was willing to do. They needed to know who He really was.
Their ideas about Him as Messiah did not come near the reality. They were going to come to the place of saying, “Who is this Man?” Their contact with Him would bring them to ask, “Who is this Man, really?”
This Messiah was going to be much bigger than they thought. “Who is this, that even the sea and the winds obey Him?” “Who is this Man, that even the spirits obey Him?” Who is He?
It is like when Israel came out of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. That was when they really began to discover who God was. They knew God as Deliverer, and many of us know that God is our Deliverer. We believe that Jesus died for us and that our sins are paid for. Then we get out, and that is all we know.
But God led Israel through the desert, and they repeatedly came to places where they could not help themselves. “What are we going to do? What are we doing out here?” Then they found out that God provided water. “We do not have any meat.” God provided meat.
They found out all that God was for them. He was their Provider. He provided everything they needed to exist and everything they needed to get through the wilderness into the land He promised them.
Their eyes were opened to who this Being was, whom they had known only by name. Suddenly, they were beginning to experience who He is. This is the realm we are called into: the realm of experiencing who God is.
To the rich young ruler, Jesus said, “How hard it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. It is harder than a camel to fit through the eye of a needle.” The disciples said, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus replied, “With men it is impossible.”
When you see all these bad things about yourself, you may ask, “How can I even be saved?” With men, it is impossible. But Jesus finished by saying, “With God all things are possible.”
We come into a realm of the possibility of God—not the possibility or potential of us, but the possibility of God: who He is, what He is able to do, and experiencing all those things.
In experiencing Him, we are brought to the place where God shows Himself to be God. He is no longer a theory. He is no longer just a story. Suddenly, He becomes real.
As we follow the Lord Jesus, we come into this realm of discovering who the Lord is for ourselves.
Remember the Samaritan woman at the well. She said, “Come, see a man, who told me all things that ever I did.” The Samaritans went out, and later they said to her, “We no longer believe because of thy speaking: for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.”
They found out for themselves what He was like. And what did Job say? “I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee.” That is the whole difference. It is real.
It is not just, “Okay, we know the Bible story. We know this is what God says He does.” The emphasis changes: this is who God is.
When Abraham went through the land, he had different names for God because those names came from his experience of God. He is God Almighty. He is God the Provider. He is the God who sees. These became Abraham’s experience: “He sees what I am going through. He knows. He is the Helper. He is the Provider.”
Now I own that, because it is not just that I have heard about it. I am seeing it for myself. I am experiencing it for myself, because God wants me to know Him.
This is eternal life, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
So this is a realm where we discover the Lord.
I do not like this title that I have used before. I would like to rename it: we come into the realm of the Son’s joy.
Was Jesus joyful? Let me give you some Scriptures. Psalm 40 is a prophetic psalm that speaks about the Lord, and it is also used in Hebrews.
Sacrifice and offering Thou hast no delight in;
Mine ears hast Thou opened:
Burnt-offering and sin-offering hast Thou not required.
Then said I, Lo, I am come;
In the roll of the book it is written of Me:
I delight to do Thy will, O my God.
All these other verses have to do with this one verse. This is prophetic. It tells of His coming.
Look at Luke 2:41-52. It is about the Lord Jesus when He was twelve years old. He stayed in Jerusalem, His parents left, and then they came back and found Him. “Where have You been?” He said, “Knew ye not that I must be in My Father’s house?”
“I delight to do Thy will.” “I must be about My Father’s business.” Even when He was twelve or thirteen, this was His delight.
Then look at Luke 11, what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Some people do not want to call it the Lord’s Prayer because they think it is too Catholic, so they call it the Disciples’ Prayer. But the disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
He said:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
As in heaven, so on earth.
Give us day by day our daily bread.
Now I am going to be a good English teacher. If we were diagramming that sentence—and you guys do not diagram sentences anymore, do you? What you have missed out on!—before “Give us this day” would be, “Thou give us this day our daily bread.”
In other words, You give us this day what we need. The whole realm of prayer is not about me, except, “Father, You give me what I need.”
But if you look at the whole thing, it is delight in the Father: “Hallowed be Your name.” There is something wonderful about knowing the Father.
I remember my dad started as a cabinet maker, and then he became a business agent for a union. To me, he was just Dad. But I remember going out to a job site and seeing how important he was. People with ties would come up to him and ask him things. Workers would come up and ask him things.
I started thinking, “Man, my dad is pretty important.” It changed my image of my dad. You know how you look at your dad: he just makes you do stuff. That is all he does. But when you go to work with him, you find out, “Wow.” Suddenly, I had a new image of my father. I had a new respect: “Hallowed be Thy name.”
Then: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” This was what Jesus delighted in. “Lord, I do not want You to give me this or that. What is Your will? Let that be done. Let Your kingdom, let Your rule, come in here.”
There is nothing here for me except, “Lord, You give me what I need.” Not, “You give me what I want.” Give me what I need for the day—daily bread. Give me what I need for the day, and that is enough.
Then in Mark 14:36, when Jesus is in the garden, He prays, “Father, all things are possible unto Thee; remove this cup from Me.” But here He says, “Abba, Father.”
That really strikes me. This is the Gospel of the Servant, and yet He uses this very affectionate term for Father—the way we would say, “Dad.” He is looking to that affection. “If this can pass from Me, let it pass. But if not, I want to do Your will.”
It is not just that He says, “I am going to do Your will because God wants Me to do it.” It is out of the affection of His heart. He is saying, “Because I love You, I want to do Your will. You can save Me, if it is Your will. I do not have to go; that is fine. But whatever Your will is, I just want to do Your will.”
Brothers and sisters, that is one of the things the Lord is after in us. He is after our affection. And that is the hardest thing to give—our affection. I can give my service, but it is my affection that He seeks.
What did Paul say?
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
but have not love,
I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.
And though I give my body to be burned,
but have not love,
it profiteth me nothing.
It is the affection that the Lord is after. As we follow Him, we see His affection for the Father. That kind of affection rubs off. We see how He loves the Father and how the Father loves Him in return, and we are brought into that. We experience those same things.
Then we can say, from the verse I read in Hebrews 12:2, “For the joy that was set before Him.” What was that joy? “I have completed My Father’s will. I have done what My Father wanted. My Father is pleased.” That is the joy.
Because of that joy set before Him, He could endure. He could go through it because He knew it pleased His Father.
We come into a realm of faith. Faith is the currency of the kingdom of God. It is what we exchange to get things. When we want to buy something here, we use money—funny-looking Canadian money. But in the kingdom of God, we use faith.
I use two Scriptures because a lot of times we think of faith as simply believing. But in Matthew 10:1-8, the disciples are sent out. Jesus commands them, “Go out and heal the sick, raise the dead, and preach the gospel.”
We may say, “Well, those were the twelve apostles.” That is why Luke 10 is important, because there He sends seventy. We like to rule ourselves out: “Those were the apostles; they were important people.” But He sent seventy, and they are not even named. So they could be anybody—even you, even me.
The Lord sent them out. Some of us may say, “Oh yeah, I would like to have that power.” But can you imagine going into a city, and they bring a sick person to you? The Lord says, “Heal the sick.” What would you do? “Where are the other apostles? Redman, do you want to do it?” I would be scared.
But the Lord said, “Go and do that.” In fact, He gave them authority to do that. They went out, and Luke 10 says they came back rejoicing: “Even the spirits are subject unto us in Thy name.”
The reason I am saying this is that faith has to have expression. The expression of faith is obedience. If the Lord says, “Go out,” I cannot say, “Okay, the Lord has told me to go out. I have faith that He told me to go out.” How do you show that you have faith to go out? You have to go out.
You have to do the things. When I am talking about obedience, I am not talking about obedience to a set of rules. I am talking about when the Lord speaks to you. You will know when the Lord speaks to you.
People ask, “How do I know when the Lord is going to speak?” You will know. You will have that sense in your heart, in your spirit, that the Lord is putting something on you and saying, “Do it.” It will be confirmed in the Word. Maybe it will be confirmed by a brother or sister, or you will see signs that remind you of it. You cannot get away from it.
You either have to do it, or you have to run away like Jonah. But you have to express your faith. This realm of faith is where you go out and do the Lord’s bidding. When the Lord sends you out, you go.
Abraham was told, “Go out,” and he went out. Sometimes faith can be in very small things: “If you do not want to die, put the blood of the lamb on the doorpost.” It can be as simple as that.
Sometimes it can be hard: “Go to the Gentiles and preach to them. Tell them about Me.” “But Lord, they are unclean.” “Go to them.” Peter had to go.
Or consider Paul. In some ways, the Lord is interesting. He sends a Jew—a Jew of Jews—to be the apostle to the Gentiles. But Paul obeyed, and he found that the Lord was faithful also.
As we are faithful, we find the Lord faithful, because He is not going to ask us to do something that He is not committed to doing. That is the bottom line. You are not out there on your own. You are going with Him. You are doing His bidding. You are doing what He wants in your life. So we enter into this realm of faith.
We also enter into a realm of eternity. Do you ever think about eternity? It is weird to think about, is it not? Have you ever tried to think, “When did God begin?” When you were a little kid, did you not think, “Who made God?” You try to figure those things out. When does it end?
It is an open-ended question. I am a history teacher, and kids hate questions that have no right answer. You give them a history question, and they ask, “What is the right answer?” Well, it depends on how you explain it.
We are stepping into a different realm, one that we are not used to: eternity. We are used to this realm—where I am right now. But the Lord is trying to get us there.
It is a whole different realm. We limit ourselves to this little thing. Even our ideas about salvation are sometimes limited to worldly things.
Why cannot we get outside of this? Why are we stuck here? There are a lot of reasons, but I think the biggest reason is that we think the visible is all there is. We think this is all that exists.
Even the disciples, when they thought about the kingdom of God, thought about Israel: “Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” It was an earthly thing. Everything was earthly.
We look at our salvation as earthly, but our salvation is not earthly. It is eternal. It is heavenly.
I was talking with Sonny last night, asking about where he had lived. He made a statement that really made me think. He was talking about a very well-paying job that he had been in. The Lord had told him to get out of it, but it was very lucrative.
He came to this conclusion through the Lord: “I was not created for this.” I was not created for this. We were not created to chase the dollar. I know that is going to get me in trouble. We were not created to chase the sheepskin. We were created for God. We were created to please God.
We were not created for this world. We were created for Him.
In 1 John 2:15-17, it says something to this effect:
The world passeth away, and the lust thereof:
but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
Why do you want to invest in something that is passing away? I am not talking about your money. I am talking about your life—your eternal life. Why do you want to give your eternal life to things that are passing away?
It is a question you have to ask, because the Lord has brought us into a realm not of things that are passing away. Revelation 21 speaks of a new heaven and a new earth. Do we think about that?
The world is passing away. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18:
Wherefore we faint not;
but though our outward man is decaying,
yet our inward man is renewed day by day.
For our light affliction, which is for the moment,
worketh for us more and more exceedingly
an eternal weight of glory;
while we look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen:
for the things which are seen are temporal;
but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Why are we not fruitful? Remember the parable of the sower. One of the things Jesus says is that the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
This world is deceiving. We think it is the real, and it is not. It is very real to us, but there is something beyond. This is a training ground. This is where we are trained for something better.
So do not get caught up. It is not about how much you have. At the end, the Lord is not going to say, “Did you have a six-figure job? Oh, you did not? We will relegate you over there.” Or, “What kind of degree do you have? Oh, you only had a two-year degree? Okay, you are over there.”
As if those are the things that matter. They are not the things that matter. Those things can be good for training. I am not saying do not try to do well in school. I am not saying do not try to get a good job. I am saying, do not let that run you.
When I got my job, nobody looked at my GPA. I did not look at my GPA. They asked, “Do you have a piece of paper?” “Here it is.” “Okay, fine.”
What is even funnier, at least I think it is, is that in high school I was a C-plus student. I hope that does not make you feel bad about me or belittle me. In college, I was a history major, and I got one A in a history class.
You know who I teach? I teach gifted students. It is pretty funny, is it not? They are so concerned about a point here and a point there. At the beginning of the year, I tell them, “I got one A in a history class in college, but I am teaching you.”
Because it is not the grade. What did I learn? What did I acquire? I still acquired the same knowledge as other people.
Praise the Lord that there are gifts to do things. But it is not about getting straight A’s. I remember one girl who received her first B. It was as if I had killed her. It was as if I had given her a sentence of death. Tears were coming down, and she was only in eighth grade.
You want to say, “Get a life,” but you cannot. You have to be compassionate. “Well, you are almost there.” But really, that is what you want to say.
It is the same with us. We try so hard at things that, in the big scheme of things, do not matter. It does not matter how big a house you have. It does not matter what your salary is. What matters is whether you are walking with God.
That is what matters, because when all the other things are taken away, it is the eternal that remains.
We have heard a lot about shaking. The Lord is shaking. What is He shaking? He is shaking away all the things that do not matter. What are you going to cling to?
If you are clinging to things that do not matter, when the shaking comes, they are shaken loose. You are not losing your salvation, but you have lost out on something. You have lost out on something of reward.
But if you can let go and say, “Okay, Lord, You are the more important One. You want something. You want something wonderful,” then you come into the realm of eternity.
We also come into a realm of transformation. When you follow the Lord, this is where you are transformed.
It is a nice ugly caterpillar, is it not? If I gave you 1 John 3:2, it says:
Beloved, now are we children of God,
and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.
We know that, if He shall be manifested,
we shall be like Him;
for we shall see Him even as He is.
Here we are. It has not been revealed what we shall be, but we know what we are. Then the second part says, “When He is revealed, we shall be like Him because we will see Him as He is.”
I know that is the Jordan butterfly. It was manufactured in China.
But we look at transformation as though we transform ourselves, and that is not the case at all. The caterpillar goes into the cocoon and dies, and then it comes out as something different.
Transformation is not what we do. It is what has been done to us and what we see that transforms us. Let me give you an idea of what I mean.
I had a teacher who was my freshman basketball coach, Dino Mitchell. He was a bald-headed guy, and I know he loved me. He was my freshman basketball coach, and then he was my Latin teacher. I took Latin for three years because you did not have to speak it; you just had to translate it, which was really cool.
But I was a jerk. I will just be flat-out honest: when I was in high school, I was a jerk. In his class, I was a jerk.
One day—I think I was a junior in high school—I was goofing around, and he said from his desk, “Bogdanowicz, quit being such a donkey!” He used another word, but I will not repeat it.
That hit me right here. The reason it hit me was that I knew he loved me. It was not simply that he was fed up with me. I knew he loved me. He was saying, “Jim, you are blowing it.”
It took me a while to get over that, but the next year I was much better in class. The reason was that something had been done to me—or for me. Just a little word. A whole rebuke came to me, and it was transforming for me.
The other thing is something you see. You see something that enthralls you, and it transforms you. You see something so beautiful that, in order to have it, you change.
Some of you have not been in love yet. Some of you are in puppy love, and some are in real love. But when you are really in love, and you want that other person to love you, you find yourself doing things that you would never have done before.
I am not saying you are trying to earn their love, but in order to show your love and affection for that person, you change. You think, “Well, I just do not do that,” but then you find yourself changing.
I remember that in high school I did not comb my hair. I just did not comb it. But when I got my first girlfriend, I started combing my hair. Why? Because I wanted to please her.
It is the same thing. There is a desire in us to please. We see something so beautiful, so attractive, that it has that kind of effect on our lives. We want to look at it. We want to be like it.
When we come into the presence of the Lord, think about how wonderful it was for the disciples to be able to see Jesus, to see the kind of person He was. I do not think they were captured primarily by His teaching. I think they were captured by His person.
They saw in Him something they had never seen before. They saw His compassion. They saw His jealousy for God. They saw His willingness to let them come close. They were moved by who He was.
It is the same for us. That is what transforms us. The gruff old fisherman, the zealot, the tax collector—how were they transformed? Was it because Jesus said, “You have to do these things”? No. It was because they had been with Him.
They spent time with Him, and it changed their whole outlook. It changed their whole outlook on who God was, because Jesus was God.
So we are transformed as we come into this place of transformation. To get from here to there, there is a dying, but we will talk about that another time.
Lastly, we come into this realm of rest. Hebrews talks about His Sabbath rest.
The rest I am talking about is the rest that says, “I know I blow it a lot. I know that if I am left to myself, I will never make it to the place I need to go.”
But I rest in this: God is committed to His purpose in my life. God is committed to it.
I want to leave you with this example. How many of you have seen the movie October Sky? It is a good movie, is it not? It is about boys trying to make rockets.
There is a scene where they are trying to make rockets, and they show NASA’s failures. The rockets take off and blow up. They take off and go sideways. They go up and come back down. Or they start to go off and simply fall. That is us.
That is us. But the thing about NASA was that it stayed committed until finally, twelve years after Sputnik was put into orbit, the United States landed a man on the moon.
NASA was committed to it. Or rather, the United States government was committed to it. It committed its funds, its power, its manpower, its energy—everything—to the success of that purpose.
Do you know that God is committed to your salvation in that same way?
I am not saying, “Oh, I am going to ride free.” That is not the point. The point is that I am going to fail. There are going to be places along the road where I fail.
You look at the Gospels and see poor Peter. You see all Peter’s failures. He does this wrong, then that wrong, then the other thing wrong. Even in Galatians, Paul rebukes him. Even after all that, he is still blowing it.
But he finally reaches the end. Why? Part of it was because he knew God was committed to these things. Because he knew God was committed, he could lend himself to God even as he was.
There is a great hymn:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.
That is us. So what can we do? The hymn says:
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
It is not, “Well, I will take my heart.” No: “Lord, here is my heart. I cannot trust myself with it. You seal it. You seal it for Your courts above.”
God is committed. So when we look at these things, it is not to say that we do not do anything. But let us put things in perspective.
There are going to be places where we have to deny ourselves, but our focus is first on following Him. We follow Him first.
In following Him, we come into this new realm—this reality, this kingdom of God. That is what is real.
Once we are secure there, in this place of favor, let us dwell on that. Let us see that, so that we can deny ourselves. But let us see these things. Let us lay hold of these things.
Go home and think, and thank God: “Oh, thank You, Lord, that I am in the place of favor. Thank You, Lord, that I am in a place of rest, that You are committed to fulfilling Your purpose in me.”
“Thank You that I am in a place where I can be transformed, and it is not just my doing. You are working in me and through me. I am in a place where I can find out who You are.”
“I am in a place where I am going to find out who I am, but who You are is going to overcome and overshadow who I am. It is going to take me through.”
We have a tendency to say, “Tell me what I have to do,” and then we try our best. That is not the message.
The message is, “Follow Me. Follow Me.” Not, “Here is a list of things to do.” No—just, “Come and follow Me.”
It will be taken care of as you follow Me. Let us leave it with Him in that way, shall we? Let us pray.
Lord, we want to thank You for Your wonderful gift of salvation and for Your wonderful purpose for our lives. We want to tell You that we know what kind of people we are.
We want to be like the hymn writer and say, “Lord, we know we are going to fall here and there. We do not want to fall, but we know that is going to happen.”
We ask You, Lord, that when You come to pick us up, we will respond. Help us not to lie down so low that we cannot look up to You.
Lord, help us even now to look to You for all of this. Lord, You are our salvation.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains:
From whence shall my help come?
My help cometh from the Lord.
So, Lord, we commit ourselves to You, that You would do this work in us, that You would help us to follow You, that You would help us respond. Help us simply to arise and follow You, Lord, we pray.
Then, Lord, You take care of us. You lead us into the rest of these things. We give ourselves to You in this way, in Jesus’ name. Amen.