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Making Your Heart a Home
A sermon preached by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Father’s Day, June 19, 2005
On a Sunday past we recognized our graduating high school
seniors and they, as you remember, were across the front of the auditorium, the
sanctuary. What a wonderful group, so gifted and so talented. I always look
upon them with a little bit of a lump in my throat not only because they have
been part of us for a strategic part of their lives but also because they have a
huge transition to make spiritually speaking. You know it is the same
transition you have to make. Most of you have at least bumped into it but I
would hope that as I point out what that transition is you could begin if you
haven’t to make your heart your spiritual home. You see our graduates have had
as their base for their spiritual homes the home in which they were raised and
the church of which they have been a part of, many of them since birth. It is
centered in here and inevitably so for you see your church home ultimately
becomes your second family. But the trouble with making a church your church
home is that this church doesn’t move and you do. This church has its own
stresses and strains building wise but you’re the one who suffers the stresses
and the strains of life, the ups and the downs, the relationships. What you
need is a spiritual center that goes wherever you go, that is your spiritual
home wherever you are, that is nourished by what happens here but isn’t centered
in what happens here. Heart is the word that the Bible uses for the invisible
inner spiritual part of us where God lives. God doesn’t live in this house, you
would agree with that, wouldn’t even hesitate. So if He doesn’t live in this
house even though we call it a house of worship, where does he live? And the
answer to that is God seeks to live in your heart.
There is no place that can give us the plan of how to bring
this about better than Psalm 103. While you’re turning a missionary once said
to me the big difference between third world housing, the slums, the shanty
towns is that that which they put together is done with castoffs, leftovers.
They’ve gathered the wood and the tin and sometimes the cardboard from the
dump. They have taken what other people have thrown away and they’ve made for
them a place however ugly it might look it’s their place. But, said the
missionary, they are never built from a plan. They are built from what you can
find leftover. People’s relationship with God is often that way with the
leftovers, the discards of time, other things always taking priority, putting
God in shantytown. In Psalm 103 David who took God everywhere he went,
sometimes in battle, sometimes fleeing for his life and sometimes in great
forgiveness for David who was capable of great faith was also capable of great
sin. But God and David were partners in the living of it all and as we turn to
David and his Psalm in 103 he gives us a plan, a plan for building a spiritual
home in your heart. First thing you are going need or you’re going to have to
take care of you have already, most of you, almost everybody here has taken care
of already but I mention it. You need an address. Shanty homes, slums, they
don’t have addresses. You need an address for your heart. You need an address
that says this is who I am.
It’s about a year ago, a little farther, up in the fall
when all of us who are baseball fans were wondering if the Red Sox, the Boston
Red Sox would be able to shake off the Bambino Curse and finally win a World
Series. And we watched with great interest. Well their was one day in which
Curt Schilling pitched and let me speak of it theologically and say he stunk, he
was awful, and the broadcasters, the telecasters blamed it on his ankle, which
if you watched any of that you remember it was bleeding and it bled through his
socks to where they could get a picture of it. Well after it was over a
reporter cornered him before he was going into the locker room and he just asked
him a question and what was wrong today. And Curt Schilling said well you know
I didn’t prepare today. I just didn’t get a good ready. And then he paused and
then he said you know I’m a Christian and I didn’t spend any time with the Lord
getting ready for this game. I’ve been pitching so well I didn’t think I needed
Him and He just showed me that wasn’t true. Now listen I did a double take,
this is on nationwide television. If I wore a hearing aide and I don’t, maybe I
need to I don’t know but I don’t, I would have adjusted it. Did I hear that
right? Now I’m sure Curt Schilling has lots of faults, that happens to be true
of all of us isn’t it, but there were two things he said in that little brief
paragraph, he gave his address. I’m a Christian you know.
How often do you give somebody your address? Sometimes you
can give it in ways that might be more acceptable by saying I hear you’ve been
going through a tough time and I just want you to know I’ve been praying for you
and I love you very much and the Lord’s helped me through some tough times and
I’m praying He’ll help you. But it gives your address. Second thing Schilling
did which fascinated me was he just frankly admitted he hadn’t spent any time
with the Lord and he and the Lord hadn’t gotten ready for that game, time. Two
things, two things that are prerequisite to building a spiritual home, first off
you’ve got to declare your address. You’ve got to say I’m not in shantytown
anymore. I’m not going to give God the leftovers. I’m not going to give the
Lord the throwaways. Second thing is time. You’re here today because you’ve
given the Lord some time to get ready, to get ready for the next week, to get
ready for the rest of your life. Do you not know and you do today’s the first
day of the rest of your life. Have you spent any time with the Lord getting
ready for it? Those are the two prerequisites but let’s assume both of those
are in place.
First thing you need is a key; a key to get in the front
door and when you forget yours or mislay it all of a sudden it becomes very
important. One of ours locked her keys in the car the other day with the car
running in her driveway, no way to get in the house, well I won’t even give a
name, what’s interesting is she called the church. Now what’s the key to get in
your house, your spiritual home of your heart? Paul as well as David would
agree a thousand percent it’s praise. It’s praise, you say? Well listen to
this: Psalm 103:1 – “Praise the Lord oh my soul all my inmost being praise His
holy name. Praise the Lord oh my soul and forget not all His benefits.” When
you turn to another translation, for example, Eugene Peterson puts it this way:
“Oh my soul bless God from head to toe I bless His holy name.” A favorite
translator, paraphrase of Psalms is given to us by Leslie Brandt: “My heart is
bursting with praises to God. Every fiber of my being reaches out in
rejoicing. How can I ever forget His blessings”? Now he’s paraphrasing the
following verses: “He forgives all of my sins. He touches my afflictions with
healing. He snatches me back from the gaping jaws of Hell. He covers me with
concern and love. He fulfills my deepest desires and gives me meaning, purpose
for living.” You begin with praise and it’s brother and sister, thanksgiving
and gratitude.
I want to ask you something. Is it possible that praise
has come to be for you uncomfortable? I want you to make it comfortable to just
thank the Lord for just about everything. I told you once the experience of
Louie Evans, Jr. who was pastor of a Presbyterian church in D.C. I knew of him
when I was growing up on the west coast and he was such an outstanding person,
went to UCLA, outstanding student, outstanding athlete but he was also the son
of one of the famous preachers of that day, Louis Evans, Sr. Then he married a
Hollywood star by the name of Colleen Evans. Well now that made the press,
media loves that sort of stuff. Lo and behold he decided to give his life to
Christ to be a minister and I remember some of the articles said how in the
world is a movie star going to be a pastor’s wife. There was a lot of print
about that but he did such a superb job and she fit right in and eventually
wound up in D.C. But you know he gave his life wholeheartedly, 24/7. Finally
he began to get migraine headaches. One day when he was having a Bible study in
his home he got a migraine headache, he had to leave, he had to go to the back
of the house and stretch out on the bed while he was there just trying to get
some relief from his pain. He heard the words: just praise me. And he looked
around to find out who was coming into the house, into the room, nobody was
there. He waited a little while: just praise me he heard it again. He looked
around nobody was there. And all of a sudden it dawned on him, maybe that was
the Lord talking to him and so he just started praising the Lord for everything
he could think of. It just came out of his mouth praising the Lord for this and
that and past, present, even future. It took a while. It wasn’t instant. It
didn’t happen on that very day but in the days that followed that were woven
together by praise a new discovery of spiritual energy happened and his migraine
headaches went away. I want to say to you have you picked up the key to making
your heart your spiritual home and the key is praise, put it in the lock and
turn it and make it your own.
But when you walk into a house generally there’s a hall and
then there are some big rooms. What are the two big rooms, the biggest rooms in
the house of your heart making your heart a spiritual home? Well there are many
rooms but may I mention the two big ones that David mentions and the first one
is love and the second one is mercy. The Bible loves to illustrate love with
space terms. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians says: “Oh that you may know the love
of God, the length, the breadth, the height, the depth of the love of God”. And
now David does the very same thing back in the Psalms when he says: “As high as
the heavens are above the earth so great is His love, so great is His love for
those who fear Him”. Fear here, fear not the anxious, anxiety fear of our time
but reverence, dependency, trust, those are to trust Him.
A little boy said to his father, do you know how much I
love you? And the father answered appropriately no tell me. And the little boy
said do I love you this much? No. Do I love you this much? No. Do I love you
this much? No. Here’s how much I love you, as far as he could reach out. Love
needs measurement. I know it can’t be measured. I know it’s invisible. I know
that it’s relational but love calls somehow for measurement. What the Apostle
is saying and what David is saying is that God’s love for you is as vast as the
distance from earth to heaven. Now David didn’t know all the galaxies we know
about, they say there are a billion of them, it should be even more awesome to
us. It is that God’s love is so vast that it is as vast as the distance from
our planet to the farthest point and the farthest galaxy, that’s how much love
God has for you. And mercy, mercy is the arm around the shoulder. You see
David says as far as the east is from the west so far has he removed our
transgressions from us. Peterson puts it like this: as far as the sunrise is
to the sunset so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
And four let me also mention that every place needs a
medicine cabinet. In your house you probably have a medicine cabinet, a place
where you keep the stuff that makes things well. There are some Band-Aids in
there I would guess and perhaps a thermometer and something for the scrapes and
fevers of life. My grandchildren call the band aides “ouchies”. I expect you
have something like that in your medicine cabinet. What’s your spiritual
medicine cabinet? What is your spiritual healing place? David comes to us and
he says: “When you need healing listen to this the Lord has compassion on those
who trust Him. He knows we are formed out of dust, we are not gods we are
humans. And He remembers us and He loves us.”
If you’ve ever read Jan Karon’s novels you know that it’s
about a little small Carolina town, Father Tim is the central character; he’s an
Episcopal priest. He has many adventures but one of the most interesting is the
one he has with a throw away boy by the name of Dooley. Father Tim takes Dooley
in to live with him. The way it happened was that Dooley was born into a family
he didn’t know his father, was never told. His mother was an alcoholic and so
finally the grandfather took him in. The grandfather was the caretaker of the
church but the grandfather suddenly became critically ill and there was nowhere
for Dooley to go and so Father Tim took him into his house. What a pair, Dooley
from a dysfunctional family who had no social skills and had anger coming out
everywhere and Father Tim who had been an only child and had never lived in a
house with children or teenagers. But you know they began to be family for each
other. Father Tim enrolled Dooley in school. He hated it, Dooley did,
complained about it all the time but he was bright. One thing that Dooley did
at school, he was a fighter, and he picked out the school bully whose name was
Buster and they would have fights virtually everyday. They’d call Father Tim in
and the administrator, the principal would stand as Father Tim would sit she
would stand and she would complain about Dooley and they didn’t know what they
were going to do with Dooley. And Dooley had no obedience, he didn’t do
anything they asked him to and so forth. Father Tim would say ok, we’re working
on it. Well one day it was close to the end of school or else he’d been
expelled, they were in the lunchroom and Buster was sitting across from him and
all of a sudden Dooley picked up his plate and he threw all of the mashed
potatoes right in the face of Buster and if that wasn’t enough he took the gravy
and let it follow. Well you can imagine what happened. Dooley was sent home,
Father Tim was called in and the principal, arms folded, we cannot put up with
that. We will not put up with that. You do something about Dooley or else we
won’t let him in next fall. And then turning, no she turned back, you do know
why he did that, don’t you? Father Tim answered no. Buster called you a
preacher who is a nerd. And Tim went home, and he called up his friend and said
what’s a nerd? And she told him. He put down the phone, went up to see Dooley
who had cried and still snubbing a bit, he had decided that he would pray and he
prayed what the Lord said. On occasions he said when you are brought into trial
don’t worry about what you are going to say it will be given to you. He claimed
the promise went up the steps, went into the room and sat there listened, nobody
said a thing. Finally Father Tim got up and he said Dooley I want you to know
one thing I thank you for standing up for me. If you know the books you know
that Dooley graduated from high school, went on to college that was the turning
point. You see he realized he and Dooley really cared about each other and he
realized what Dooley needed was not condemnation but compassion. Dooley I want
to thank you for standing up for me. Do you realize, do you realize that the
Heavenly Father comes to you and says thank you for standing up for me and I
want you to know how much I love you. If you were to ask the Lord how much do
you love me the Lord might answer do I love you this much? No. This much?
No. This much? No. I love you this much and I proved it on a cross a long
time ago.
Is it time for you to begin making your heart a spiritual
home?
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