Free for God

Transcript S3E8

 Free for God

 [00:08] 

Hello, I'm Tony Kostas and welcome to Led into Love.

[00:13] 

One of the things that I often have in the back of my mind when I'm sharing with you like this is the fact that I don't want to be just giving you a thought to hold onto for a while, or something that might inspire you or encourage you, and that kind of gets left behind … just another thing along the way.

Because when God speaks to us – when God speaks to us … and my prayer always, and my belief, is that when I speak to you I'm bringing you God's words for you. I wouldn't be making these podcasts if I didn't believe that. I believe with all my heart because I know He's called me to do that. And I'm sharing with you from my heart because I want you to know God like I know Him. And I want you to see the desirability … the beauty … the joy … the wonder … of a life that is lived for Him on His terms.

It's not narrow. Yeah, in a way it is narrow, but it isn't narrow in reality. It's the most wonderful, widest, broadest life you can imagine. But in the same way as, you know, if you talk about focus, yes, focus has a narrowness about it. Focus has something very specific. Because if it's going to be focused on a particular point, there's got to be a sharpness about it. But that sharpness is actually what decides what matters and what doesn't matter.

[01:41] 

When God takes us into His ways and into His life, there's a lot of things that suddenly become unimportant. But if you think of the God who created the whole Universe – and the immensity of entering into a relationship with Him: a full-on relationship with Him that then takes you into the wonder and the infinity of God Himself, and life with Him, and into the very purpose for which you were created – you realize that the stripping away of anything in your life, or anything of your life, or anything that matters to youthat you think is important, so that you can have that with Him – isn't to deprive you. It is to free you.

When Jesus once said, “If you continue in My word, then you are My disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free…” Now if I ask you: what's the truth? To start with, we know Jesus Himself said that He is the Truth. So, you don't even know what's true and what's not true, if you don't come into this sort of relationship with Him, where you decide that your life is going to be all about Him.

[03:01]

I love the fact that those first men that Jesus called to follow Him, did it knowing that from then on their lives were to be all about Him. Their lives were focused on Him. There were so many things they didn't understand about Him, but when He gave them the opportunity to follow Him, and they willingly dropped everything and followed Him, they soon got the idea that this wasn't for a day, or for a week, or anything like that. It was to be their whole lives.

And yet for those men who later, many years later – the ones like Peter, James, John, who wrote about Jesus … wrote letters to the early church. Those men wrote about Jesus, with the background of the time when they'd been fishermen – ordinary people doing what they were doing – until Jesus came along and called them to follow Him. And their lives had taken on like … you wouldn't know! 

I mean, sometimes I read some of the things those guys wrote, and I think, “This is the same man that was a fisherman! I'm talking about Peter, James and John. We know that they weren't …all the disciples weren't, fishermen but thinking about those: he was a fisherman and then one day his life changed completely. But it didn't just change because he started to believe a few things differently. It changed because He completely gave himself to follow Jesus.

Now to be a follower of Jesus is to be a follower of Jesus! Do you know the early Christians never actually called themselves Christians? They didn't take a label for themselves. All they knew was that Jesus Christ meant everything to them. They knew He had come and loved them and died for them, and laid down His life for them and given them new life. They didn't know it because they learned about it. They knew it because they experienced relationship with Him.

[05:10] 

I have never seen God with these eyes of mine. I haven't heard His voice with my ears. But I know Him … the reality of Him. Not based on something that my mind conjures up, or that my imagination creates because I read things about Him in the Bible or I've been taught things. And I don't hear His voice because I have to have an audible voice … because He speaks to my heart.

Now that can seem a bit ethereal. It can sound a bit subjective – and it's very subjective! But it's not thoughts. It's not feelings. It's reality! The more you yield yourself to Him, the more He will be real to you. But God looks for that in anybody who claims to be wanting Him ... to know Him.

The desire of my heart is to bring the things that are on my heart to your heart. I want you to know that there is no reality, no fullness, no completion … no completeness – unless you live by everything that He makes known to you about Himself. 

Now I want to emphasize that because this life with Jesus is intensely personal, there's no ‘generic Christians’ – I and, I mean, I'm talking about born-again Christians.

What I discovered when I came to know Jesus at the age of 17 and began to mix with Christians, and then to go to Bible college and so on, was that you’d think there were … that being a Christian was a generic thing. You know: ‘Christians look like this, sound like this, believe these things, do these things.’ It's kind of like a ‘cookie-cutter’ approach to religious life … to Christianity … to being a Christian. But there are no ‘cookie-cutter’ followers of Jesus!

When you open your heart to Him, if He has the freedom and you give Him that freedom, to reveal Himself to you personally … to speak to your heart personally … to show you His way personally  (by that I mean His way for you) … you enter into a life that yeah, sure, will have a lot of similarities with other people who experience Him – but it will be unique to what exists between youand Him.

[07:50]

Now, within the context of a Christian system, not only is that not really acceptable. It's dangerous, or it's suspect. And yes, I agree that the more people there are who are free to have their own experience of God that doesn't line up with some prescribed, set or understood parameters, the greatest danger there is … if you want to preserve a system.

But for God to have you and to be able to lead you in your life, the very basis of your life must be that you have decided – not only just to come to Him to receive forgiveness of your sins and the life that He promises, being born-again – but that you are given to him, and you say: “Here I am, and here's my life”. And then you discover step by step with Him, in relationship with Him, what that means … that you take God so seriously that you decide that your life is only going to be about Him. You take him so seriously that you decide that nothing is going to get in the way of your relationship with Him. That you so want relationship with Him to go on and on, because you so want to develop in your relationship with Him … you want to grow in your relationship with Him. You want to be more and more of what He wants you to be.

But the Bible talks about maturity. Going from your Christian babyhood, your childhood, into your adulthood, into a mature life with God. So that you are a person of God – someone whose life is simply a true expression of God. Someone that knows God. Someone who has given themselves no other priority in their lives … but God.

[09:59] 

The devil is the master of distraction and I guess modern life, in ways that we all know, is full of potential distractions. So, as if there wasn't always plenty of distraction in life, there's more than ever now. And when you want to live a focused life for God … when you want to lead a life for God that is all about Him … there's going to be a lot of things, both inside and outside of what we call Christianity, that will distract you, and try and distract you, from this one single desire. But God loves those, and loves to respond to those, who live like that with Him – where nothing else is allowed to impinge.

And when I talk like this, I know, I know, I know, the connotation that can be given is that this is kind of unreal. It's something that is kind of otherworldly, that can't be fitted into real life. But I want you to also remember that it's written in the Bible (and it was Paul who said it): “The things that are seen are temporal,” or we would say temporary. In other words, the things that we say that we see, smell, touch, hear. The things – not the permanent things, not the solid things we think they are – they're actually the things that are passing away. The things that you don't see – which is all the things of the real world … the world … God's world if you like, are eternal.

[11:39] 

This world is passing away. Everything about it. This life is passing away. I mean, even your own life … you know you've got a mortal life, if you live a span of life, then that's it. You'll pass away too, physically. But the things that are unseen are eternal!

If you're living for God now, then you live in the reality of what many people cannot see, and do not understand, and do not experience – because they haven't entered into a relationship with God. But if you have entered into a relationship with God, then these things are real to you because they are of the God that you know. And He's the God who dwells inside you.

This is very tangible. When I talk to you about these things I'm talking to you about things, not that I've just learned, not just things that are theories, or not even things that inspire me. I'm talking to you about things that are real to me in my personal relationship with God. A personal relationship with God such as He wants to have with you. I want you to know that with God … to know Him like that. That will bring your life down to something that's pleasing to God.

You know, even when the apostle Paul wrote about your life being a living sacrifice – actually he spoke about your body as a living sacrifice to God, so that everything that you live through this body … through this human body … this human life … will be only what is an expression of God. You relinquish the right to have a life in this world that kind of just suits you, and you make it a life that glorifies Him. 

But then he goes on to talk about: “and don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. 

By the renewing of your mind. I love that! That's not just you changing your mind. It's not even you putting yourself through mental gymnastics – or visualization, or anything like that where you sort of concentrate on being a certain way. It's letting God's Spirit from within you transform you so that you see things differently – you feel differently about things, because you are yielding yourself to God.

[14:00] 

You're a human being. You have a body, a mind (or a soul) and a spirit. Now, the spirit is where God lives in you, and you've opened your heart to Him. But the way you are – the outlook you have, the way you think, the things you think about, the things that matter to you – and then how you express yourself in this life through this human form – this body that you have – can be a lovely expression of God. But not if you try and juggle some kind of ‘Christianity’ with all the things in your life that you would like.

 You have the privilege of either living for God or living for yourself. Now, living for yourself is not a privilege, believe me. Living for God is the privilege. But you have a privilege to choose what you do. You don't have the luxury of having it both ways, believe me. If you looked at the lives that many Christians live, you'd think that it was so. You’d think that you can kind of tailor-make your Christian life to suit yourself. And I know you can find lots of churches and so on where you'll find other people who want it to be like that. You know: the kind of Christianity that just fits you. Well, that's nothing to do with God. Belonging to God has nothing to do with what fits you. It has everything to do with doing His will and what matters to God … because that's all that matters.

I love this verse. It's from Isaiah 66:2:

“This is the one I esteem. He who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

When you open your heart to God and God starts to speak to you, He speaks so that you will take Him seriously. He doesn't speak for your information. He doesn't speak for your inspiration. He doesn't speak for any other reason than for you to take him so, so seriously that it can be said of you – when God speaks, you tremble. You take it that seriously.

[16:20]

It's another way of describing the fear of God. “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”  If you take God seriously … We often take everything seriously but God!

I once heard a man say that the more seriously we take ourselves, the less seriously we take God. Conversely, the more seriously we take God, the less seriously we take ourselves. But you know, it shouldn't be a matter of degrees. It should be a matter of: am I going to take God seriously or myself seriously? If I take God seriously, and I make up my mind only to take God seriously, God will speak so much to me. God will bring so many things to me, because He'll know that I just want to live for Him.

If there is such a thing as ‘Christian Life’ – which is … again I say it's a bit of a man-made term – a godly life, if you like … a life for God … but call it ‘the Christian life’. It's a total life in which your focus is narrowed by your choice, and you are living in a relationship with God that you know. 

Even when I talk about relationship with God, when I talk to you about my relationship with God, I know what that is to me. I know what that is like. It's to experience God like that. I know that you can't know it just because I talk about it. And you will never know it unless you enter into it. You cannot know it unless you enter into enter into it. But if you do … even, you know, whatever that means for you now. 

Wherever you are in your walk with God. Wherever you are in your own personal life. Wherever you are in your church life. Whatever the situations are that you come up against. Whatever age you are, whatever stage of life. I want you to know that our God, the God who sent Jesus for you, has got everything covered. And all He asks of you is that you yield yourself to Him.

Not by degrees. Not with limitations that you set. But you trust Him with your life. Open your heart to Him. Let him show you what matters to Him. Whatever you're facing right now, let Him show you. Talk to Him about it. Let him show you what matters to Him.

[18:52] 

But believe me, if you've got a deficit in your relationship with God right now – because you know that there's sorts of things, all sorts of things, He's been talking to you about, He's convicted you about. You know, He brings them to you. Don't hold out on God. This is a terrible, terrible thing – to resist God. 

When God is speaking to you, let Him be your God in every way … and He will. And keep letting him be your God in every way. He'll delight in that. And you'll find immense delight in living like that - free of so much, and free for God!