What is the Point?: Discovering Life's Deeper Meaning and Purpose (10 page)

This is where the battle begins. God is often seen pleading with His people, because their hearts were far away from Him. He is after our hearts, and He wants us entirely. There is a war on the inside, and it is the theater where we can demonstrate love. We make choices to live in meekness and servanthood as demonstrated by Jesus and taught in the Sermon on the Mount. It is more than just the setting of my mind and my affections. I have the arena of life to demonstrate love. Every time I choose righteousness and humility, He calls it love. I now had something to “do” to demonstrate love.

A tool that has helped me to grasp this sermon is an outline by Mike Bickle. He says:

The Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) defines love on God’s terms. It calls us to live out the eight Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3–12) as we pursue hundredfold obedience (Matt. 5:48) by resisting the six negative influences related to our natural lusts (Matt. 5:21–48) and by pursuing the five positive nutrients (Matt. 6:10–18) that position us to receive the Spirit’s impartation of grace. We measure our ministry impact by the extent to which those we minister to live out these values, not by the number of people who receive our ministry.
¹

There are many books written on this great sermon, and I will not take time to break it all down for you here. I encourage you to make it one of your life aims to search it out and to live it. Here are some commentaries that I recommend on the Sermon on the Mount:

•
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

•
The Message of the Sermon on the Mount
by John R. W. Stott

•
The Sermon on the Mount
by R. T. Kendall

•
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and His
Confrontation With the World
by D. A. Carson

There are many more you will find if you make this a treasure you seek.

If you try and live this 100 percent and combine it with seeing how He feels about you in your immaturity, you will be transformed. You will not be transformed instantly. Remember, life and love are a process, and Jesus likes the process. You will fail many times, but even the failing produces the heart attitudes He wants if you are sincerely reaching for 100 percent obedience. Stay with it, keep reaching, and don’t give up. If you don’t quit, you’ll win.

Do not measure your growth in one or two years, but over decades you will see how you have changed. Don’t get caught up in how far you have come or the ground that you have lost. Just keep your eyes ahead and let Him measure you in the last day; don’t measure yourself. You must see how He feels about you in the process in order to sustain the reach. When we first start to try and love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and when we first set our hearts to live the gospel generously, even before we have attained what we set our hearts on, it moves Him deeply. (See Song of Solomon 4:9.)

F
REEDOM OF
H
OLINESS

The clearer picture I had of the answer to what He was looking for and the more confident I became that He liked me while I was in the process of maturing, the more I found freedom in reaching to live wholeheartedly. I found the demands of Jesus were bringing liberation to me because I was becoming unmovable. You cannot touch a person who lives this way. Most of what binds us in this life are things that cause anxiety or darkness, and most of our anxiety is addressed by acting in the opposite spirit, according to the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus gives us a clear path to freedom from anxiety and sin. It is the freedom of holiness. When you live like this, you have a purpose that transcends pleasing man or even pleasing your own pride and lust, and you become untouchable. I am not saying that you are not affected by the opinion of man or by sin, but you overcome them little by little, and your primary life dream is untouchable. My goal became humility, my road map became the words that Jesus spoke, and every circumstance became an arena to demonstrate love. Even loving my enemies, who at that time were reduced to people who simply annoyed me, became a platform to love Jesus. I wanted to go out of my way to go the extra mile, because I knew He was watching, and He called it love. I wanted to wage war on the desire for comfort, ease, and lesser pleasure, because I wanted to feel more of His superior pleasure. My life began to come alive before His eyes, and there was no one who could touch this vision. It is the unbreakable dream.

It is the upside-down kingdom, and those who live it often look like fools or weak in the eyes of man, but this kind of wisdom will be justified. There are many shining examples throughout history of men and women who have lived this message to extremes, and their lives scream transcendence and point to someone greater. Their very lives are prophetic oracles that declare life is more than meets the eye and there is someone watching who will measure us in the end. I want to have a life that prophesies. I want to actually
be
the message, not just preach it. What compels a person to live this way when it all seems so upside down? Everyone in life is running in the rat race trying to get to the top of the success ladder. We don’t want to run the rat race; we want to run the real race—the one that has an eternal prize. That race is found in the words of Jesus. People who live the gospel generously go to extremes in love, and they touch Jesus’s heart deeply. The Sermon on the Mount will help to set you on fire, if you live it before the eyes of the One who loves you, with the aid of the Holy Spirit.

“L
OOK AT
J
ESUS
O
NLY
”

When I was a teenager, I read
The Hiding Place
by Corrie ten Boom. I was struck by how often she and her sister Betsie quoted the Sermon on the Mount. You all know the story of Corrie and her family. They were Dutch Christians, living in the Netherlands during World War II. During the Nazi occupation, several members of the ten Boom family got involved with aiding Jews who were in hiding. Corrie, her sister Betsie, and their father, Casper, took in Jews who were trying to escape from the horrors of the Nazis. Eventually Corrie, Betsie, Casper, their brother, Willem, and a nephew were taken to concentration camps where Betsie, their nephew, and Casper died. Willem died after the war from spinal tuberculosis, which he contracted while in prison. Corrie alone survived to tell the story.

The terrors of a concentration camp cannot even be imagined, and their story has pressed my heart to question the purpose of suffering and love. Yet these ladies were burning and shining lamps, unrelenting in devotion to Jesus, eager to please Him. The story that Corrie recalls in her book that is painted on my heart the most is the story of a day when Betsie was carrying rocks, one pile to another. Everyone in the camp was starving and sick. Betsie was especially frail and ill, and she was struggling to keep moving. One of the guards saw her struggling and came over to her and began to give her a hard time and shout out degrading names, demanding that she work harder. The guard then took part of her leather belt and slashed Betsie across the chest and neck. Corrie watched this whole thing feeling helpless and angry. Corrie loved her sister dearly and could do nothing about this injustice and pain being afflicted on her.

Without knowing what she was doing and with murderous anger in her heart, Corrie seized her own shovel and rushed at the guard. Betsie stopped her and said, “Corrie! Corrie, keep working!”

Corrie then saw the welt on Betsie’s neck, and Betsie said, “Don’t look at it, Corrie. Look at Jesus only.”
²

She appealed to Corrie to look to Jesus, to choose love despite what the guard had just done to her. Right then and there, at the point of severe human suffering, the reality of Betsie’s relationship with Jesus made her untouchable. Yes, her body ached. Yes, her heart hurt, but she refused to be brought to the level of evil. She chose to live above it.

In another scene Betsie encouraged others in the Lord:

Jesus knows every one of your feelings. He prays with you when two or more get together to pray. He promised He would be there, even in Ravensbruck! In our lives before, we were separated by so much, but here, all of that has been stripped away, and we see the truth. Jesus in each one of us. Light in this darkness, and we can praise Him together!
³

Then they begin to pray together. Betsie prayed for her persecutors as Jesus commanded us to do: “Father, bless the German people from Your great storehouse of love. Forgive them, for Jesus’ sake. Do not hold this place to their charge. Forgive them, even before they know to ask.”
⁴

I would have loved to have seen the look on Jesus’s face as His heart was so deeply moved by the devotion of this woman. She believed He was watching her, and she believed her heart responses mattered to Him. She believed life was bigger than a momentary suffering, and she had allowed true compassion and true love to be formed in her heart, to the point where she felt genuine love for a real enemy. This is a work of the Holy Spirit and a testimony of transcendence. These are the kind of men and women the world is not worthy of.

There are a multitude of stories throughout history when men and women lived the gospel generously and to the fullest of their capacity. These are the stories I love to feast on and mediate on. These are the people I want to run the race with. I don’t want to compare myself with the people in my generation and feel good about how godly I am because I give a little more money or spend a little more time in prayer than my neighbor. I want to run the race with men and women such as John the Baptist and all who have followed him who take the words of Jesus at face value and truly become people the world is not worthy of.

We cannot do this in our own strength. It is impossible to please Jesus and to transform ourselves without divine help. We are in great need, and the longer I press for a life of wholeheartedness, the more I see my need. The older I get, the harder it gets, not easier. I want to run the race with endurance, but I need the aid of someone bigger. It takes the help of God Himself in order to stay in the furnace of transformation. We often start off with a lot of zeal and then run out of steam very quickly. We need the fire of God Himself to energize us, sustain us, and keep us steadfast to the end. We need Him to help us.

6
FIRE OF LOVE:
SUSTAINED BY GOD

A
WISE MAN ONCE
said, “It takes God to love God.” The longer I am on this journey of loving Him, the more I realize what a true statement this is. It is impossible to sustain a genuine love for Jesus and for others without the aid of the Holy Spirit. We do not have the capacity to live the gospel wholeheartedly or to have hearts that are full of affection for Jesus without a supernatural Helper to guide us into that love (Rom. 5:5).

Jesus told us to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Matt. 22:37), but it is an impossible command unless we combine it with what Jesus taught us in the Gospel of John. He tells us to abide in Him (John 15:4–5). We are in great need and desperately dependent. We never outgrow our constant need to be helped, guided, taught, and counseled by God Himself. This is yet another statement of His great zeal for us as individuals and how He wants us to lean on Him, daily relying on Him. This requires a regular encounter with God.

Many people today talk about encountering God, and I am not sure what they mean by that phrase. Sometimes they are talking about having manifestations, such as shaking or falling over in a prayer line. Others are talking about getting a breakthrough in provision or healing. I believe in these kinds of encounters, but there is something even greater, even more exhilarating, even more sustaining and addicting; it is when God Himself reveals God to our hearts. When we feel love for Him and from Him, if even for a moment, we feel the heat of His heart touch ours. This holy kiss is enough to set us on a ravenous treasure hunt the rest of our lives. We will do anything to just experience that touch once more. In this holy exchange we are touching our primary life purpose, which is to be with God. All humans were created for this divine exchange.

A
BIDE IN
L
OVE

We must abide in His love. This is not a one-time deal, like once you get it, you move on. To abide in love means a perpetual returning to love. I have seen many people who started out on fire for Jesus, radical in their obedience and eager to give Him their all, but in a short period of time they faded out because they lost their current heart connection with the Person of the Holy Spirit.

People burn out not because they work too hard but because they work with the wrong motivation. When you work to get Jesus’s attention or you are trying to earn something from Him, you will burn out. If you work to gain affirmation from people, you will burn out. We must continually return to the fountain of love and drink deeply if we are going to survive the turmoil of life, both the boredom and the busyness.

Many Christians who start their journey with the Lord full of great zeal end up feeling empty and disillusioned. They continually think there is something missing in their lives and wish they could fill the void. Throughout history a lot of very successful men and women in both the secular and religious arenas have reached the top of their success ladder only to go to bed at night in painful emptiness because they were not satisfied. They were longing for a genuine connection with someone or something that will fill that reservoir within, but no one and nothing can.

This is true, even in the lives of those who serve the Lord. On and on we go from one thing to another, trying to answer the longings of our hearts. Only the “superior pleasures of the gospel” can ever answer the longings of the heart, and only coming into contact with the living God will satisfy us. This is by design. This emptiness is meant to draw us to Him, because our primary life purpose is in Him.