It's Not About You...

Transcript S2E6

It’s Not About You …

[00:00] 

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

 [00:13] 

I often say that all relationship with God is experiential … and it is. But I want to go a bit further today and say that all relationship that you have with yourself is also experiential. In other words, I'm talking about what goes on inside you.

Because your relationship with God – if you have a relationship with God and if you live in that relationship with God – is an inward experience, or an experience within you. And all relationship with yourself – your self-awareness, your thoughts, your feelings – all those things are also things that go on within you.

 [00:57] 

But now, speaking as I am to people who do know God, I'd like to say to you that you … through every moment of your life, from the time you come to know God … you are either experiencing yourself or you are experiencing God.

Now you might say to me, “Well, what about people who don't know God already?” Well, yeah, I can allow for the fact that because God is always seeking to draw us to Himself, you can be experiencing God without recognizing that you're experiencing God. 

When I look back over my life, I'm sure that there were many times, and I could pinpoint some of them, when God was making Himself known to me. It's just that, back then, I didn't know it was God and I didn't know what was happening. If God didn't have any access to me on the night when I actually gave my life to Him – when I opened my heart to Jesus – He would not have been able to draw that out of me.

 [02:00] 

But going back now to the fact that, okay, you were made to experience either God or yourself. And that's the whole point that I'm wanting to make here. I came across a very neat term a few years ago by the Christian writer George MacDonald and it's this word self-unconscious. Not unselfconscious, but self-unconscious, which simply means not being aware of yourself.

Now that might seem to you, to any of us, as something beyond our natural ability. How can I ever be at that point? So I want to go right back to the beginning, when God first made Adam and Eve. And it says in the book of Genesis: “The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame”. In other words, both Adam and Eve were self-unconscious, because shame is when you see yourself, or anticipate how you are seen in the eyes of someone else, and you feel something concerning yourself. You feel guilt, you feel awkward, you wonder what they're thinking.

 [03:28] 

Adam and Eve had none of that self awareness. Why? Because their awareness was all about God. God created them. He was their Creator. They were the work of His hands. He breathed His life into them. And they were living in this most wonderful relationship with God. So that when God … because God made them for one another … they loved … they were aware of one another externally. And when I talk about, about experiencing yourself or experience of God, I'm talking about the things that go on inside you.

Of course we are aware of people and things all around us, but it's what goes on inside us that really count.

 [04:13] 

Now, at the time when the serpent – the devil in the form of that serpent – tempted Eve first and then Adam to eat of the fruit that God had told them not to eat, he put doubt in their minds. And the doubt that he put in their minds when he said to Eve, like, “Did God say don't eat of the fruit? And she said, “Yeah, He did, because He said that when we do, we'll die.” And he said, “No, you won't die,

but God is keeping something from you. God knows that when you eat that fruit, your eyes will be opened and you'll become like God and you'll know good and evil straight away.”

 Because Eve gave credence to that straight away, her self was awakened to the fact that it wasn't enough just to have God as the centre of her life … of her whole being. Because this God, who up until now she thought was everything – and all loving and all being, all caring, and the whole purpose of her life … her Creator, to be totally trusted … she suddenly bought into the lie.

 [05:29] 

Now, we all know the term ‘FOMO’. And FOMO goes right back to the Garden of Eden. That was the first FOMO. The devil succeeded in awakening in Adam and Eve something that was never part of their being.

Now you might say, “Well they hadn't been around for very long before that happened”. And that's true – which even makes FOMO a very, very early issue to human beings!

But you know, we often use FOMO as a pretty light term – but this is no light term, because the minute you think there is something that you can have that you haven't got, or you desire it or whatever, then you are not self-unconscious. You are very self-aware of what you might be missing out on!

It's, you know … we talk about FOMO, but really I'd rather talk about it as lust. Well, it's not really a definition about lust. It's actually a statement about lust. And it's a statement about why you end up sinning.

 [06:43] “

James wrote that everyone sins when they are drawn away by their own lust and enticed. And so what's lust? One of the simplest definitions of lust that I know is that lust is me saying, “I want that, I've got to have that.” Usually it says, “I've got to have that now!”

Now lust is when I go after something because a desire for that is awakened in me … and I haven't got it and I feel I should have it … and that becomes desirable to me. It can be sexual lust. It can be any lust. When you go after something for yourself, at the heart of all this is self. And the point of it is that you know very well – I hope, if you know your New Testament at all, that the New Testament, from Jesus on, talks a lot about self.

 [07:41] 

Jesus gave an entry-level invitation to the people who wanted to follow him. And I say ‘entry-level’ because He wasn't saying it to people who'd followed Him for a long time, like His disciples. He was saying it to people who were gathering … who loved to hear what He said and drawing closer to Him. But He was looking for people who would follow Him.

So He said: “If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself … deny himself … take up his cross and follow me.” 

What He was saying was: “If you want to follow me, you have to say no to yourself.” And He said, “If any man will save their life, they will lose it. But if any man loses their life for my sake,

they will save it.

Now that's not a very smart invitation to give to people if you're looking for followers. But it's a very valid invitation if you are looking to bring people to God.

 [08:50] 

The simple truth – and it's the truth that's at the very heart of why Jesus came. Jesus came to bring people back to God. To do everything, from talking to them about God in the … in the early days of his ministry … to finally dying for the whole world, to finally rising from the dead to accomplish everything that God wanted- to make it possible for people to come to God, short of one thing that no one else could do but they themselves. And that is finally make up that … make that decision that you are laying your life down for God so that God can be glorified in you. You were made for God. You were not made to live in the experience of yourself. You were never made to be self-centred. You were never made to be focused on yourself. You were made to live in the most wonderful, most complete relationship with God.And, in that regard we come right up against – particularly against – contemporary society that talks about it being about you.

 [10:05] 

That goes right back … I talk about contemporary society … that goes right back to the Garden of Eden. That's where it began. That's when things went wrong.

When those, those first two people, Adam and Eve, bought into the horrible lie that God is not enough… there is something that they could have, beyond what He provided and who He was to them, and that cut them off from God. And that's why Jesus had to come, to bring us back to God. But there's no getting around it. You know, you can't get over it. You can't get under it. You can't get around it. If we are going to live in relationship with God, our lives have to be about God, and they cannot be about ourselves.

 [10:55] 

I could say to you – I and I will say it: it's not about you. And you could say, “What? Like, isn't the Christian Gospel about me? Isn't the Christian Gospel about me being saved? Isn't it about me being forgiven for my sins? Isn't it about me getting the gift of eternal life?” 

Yep, it is, but it's not about you going after those things. It's about you putting your life in God's hands, on God's terms, because you believe that God is your total provider and everything that pertains to your life comes from Him.

 [11:34] 

So summing it up, I'd like to say that your life is not meant to be about you – because God is all about you. So you make your life about Him, in the belief that He is all for you.

Adam and Eve started with that. God was their everything. He made them, He was the centre of their whole being … their whole existence … until they believed that there was something that He was keeping from them.

 “You cannot serve two masters,” Jesus said – and believe me, you can't! You can't live a life for God and care for yourself.

Unfortunately, for many Christians, that doesn't become an issue, because they're not led into these things. They are told, “God is there for you.” “God is like big Daddy in the sky who'll look after you.” It starts off with forgiving your sins, and He'll look after you, and He'll care for you and everything like that. And then eventually you'll die and you'll go to Heaven – and they never have to die to themselves.

 [12:40]

I go right back and say, what Jesus did, what Jesus said – you deny yourself. “You take up your cross and follow me.” 

And believe me, in those days when Jesus was saying that to the people who were listening to Him, those people knew exactly what ‘taking up your cross’ meant. Because if you saw anybody walking along shouldering a cross, you knew that that person only had one destination … his execution.

The Romans invented crucifixion because it was the cruelest form of death that they could dream up. Before they started crucifying people, they used to skin them alive as a form of suffering and execution.

Anyone dragging his cross along the road was heading for the place of execution. So that, that was like … you know … because the cross has become a holy symbol. We think, ‘oh, isn't that nice’. And people will … you know, there are some Christians who, as a witness to Jesus, or even at certain times at Easter … but some people do it at other times. They make a point of going along and publicizing the fact that they're a Christian and trying to draw attention to Jesus by carrying a cross. That, I'm afraid to say, is almost a parody – because there is nothing attractive or desirable about carrying a cross, unless you are following Jesus and that cross is you saying, “I am dying to myself”.

[14:24]

That's why Paul the Apostle said that he gloried in the cross of Jesus because he was crucified. He was crucified. He crucified himself. He died to himself so that he could live for God.

[Now, that can sound heavy, but really it's the truth. And it's not meant to be heavy. It's meant to be freedom. If Jesus had not gone to the cross, He would not have risen from the dead. And when Jesus said, “If you're going to follow me, take up your cross… or … deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me.” But then He said, “If you try and save your life … you try and hold onto your life, because you figure that you're not going to let go of this life that means so much to you – your life, your ways – then you're going to lose everything.” But if you lose your life for His sake, you save it. 

If you say, I'm not living for myself. The guy, the person, the woman, whoever you are, who has lived for themselves … whose main experience is of themselves, even though they try to experience God alongside of that. God is not going to share you with anything else. He's certainly not going to share you with yourself!

[15:50] 

When the Israelites, during their history – whenever they began to turn their backs on God and they set up idols and they tried to worship God on the one hand, but also the idols that they decided they wanted to worship as well – God was very unhappy. 

In fact, the first commandment of all the ten commandments is, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Because when your life is focused on you, you become your own idol, you become your own God. And when your life is focused on God, on His terms, then you die to self and you live to Him.

[16:35] 

If you believe that Jesus is who He says He is. If you believe that He came to bring you back to God. If you believe that the Father – the Father of Jesus – your Father and my Father, if you made him your God – is the King of all the Universe. The King … God … the Creator of everything, and He made you with a purpose that He would be glorified in you and you would find your total fulfillment for eternity in Him.

Then you cannot walk two paths. It's like walking along with one foot in the gutter and one foot up on the sidewalk. You decide which you're going to walk in. You decide which life you're going to live. You decide whether your life is going to be about God or about you.

Believe me, you cannot experience yourself and God, but you will experience either of those to the exclusion of the other.

You should not be even contemplating living some sort of dichotomy – some sort of double existence where sometimes you're living for God and sometimes you're looking after yourself.

[17:57] 

When Jesus said, “Seek God's Kingdom and everything else will be added to you,” He meant it.

When you carry the burden for your own life and always are always anxious about … yeah, sure, it's good … good to have God … but I've got to look after myself too.

Then you're pushing God out of the picture and you're relegating yourself to life on your terms.

You can't just pick God up and put Him down when it suits you. You can't have God when you kind of feel like you need God's involvement in your life, and then push Him out of the way a bit while you have what you want. It's impossible.

Ultimately, it's got to be one or the other. It's just natural. It's a life you cannot live. You cannot walk two paths. You can't live two lives. You are never meant to live two lives.

[18:53]

You're only ever meant to live as someone whose total being is united with God. That's not fantasy. That's the whole reason, the whole purpose, for which you were created! And Jesus made the way for you to have what Adam lost.

But the choice is yours, whether your life is about him or about yourself. And if you say, but isn't there a third choice? Can't it be about me as well as about God? You can fool yourself that that's valid … but it isn't. 

Jesus made that very clear for those who wanted to follow Him.

Jesus made it more than clear Himself by going all the way, laying down His own life so that we would have life.

[19:47] 

The Apostle Paul, who was so dramatically drawn back to God by that experience that when he was persecuting the Christians and he was the arch-enemy of that early Christian church, and God pinned him down in that dramatic conversion when he was on his way to Damascus to gather more Christians and drag them … and throw them into prison, and some cases have people killed.

And then Paul later on wrote these words: “I've suffered the loss of all things and I count them but dung that I might gain Christ.”

He said, “…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings”. 

And if you're tempted to say, “Yeah, well, that was for people like Paul. You know, some of the guys had to be people like that who took it all that seriously, that they just made their whole life about Jesus.” 

If you say that – I'm afraid you're wrong, because we are called to live in the same way as Jesus lived, in the same way as Paul lived … but in the same way that life with God is lived.

[21:06] 

This is not some fantasy. But neither is it something that has to do with religion. It is to do with you. It is to do with your essential being. For you to come to God … for you to come to Jesus … in that simple way and say, “I want to follow you. I want to know you on your terms. I trust you with my life. I don't want to live life on my terms. I believe what you say. Therefore I know that you carry me, you want me, you love me. I can trust you with my life. So I will take my focus off myself. I don't want to be experiencing myself. I want to experience you.”

(That's you talking to God. But now, I'm talking to you.) But to do that, you have to let go and abandon your right to yourself, and say, “God, I want my life to be what you always meant it to be.”

When you do that and you trust God with your life, then you free Him to be your God. And when you free him to be your God, not only are you truly free, but you discover who He really is. And when you do, then you don't want to experience yourself.

All this world can offer you – all this world offers – is more and more self-focus. Our society has never been more self-focused and made an … I was going to say, made an art-form of it. They’ve made a religion. This society has made a religion of self-focus. But that won't change the fact that it will never work, because you were made to be God-focused.

[23:12] 

It's very simple, but you have to mean business with God. And you'll discover that instead of going around your life … going through your life … always being focused and your life revolving around yourself, you can have the freedom of a life that revolves around God.