KNOWING WITHOUT A SHADOW OF DOUBT?

Today, my heart is to point you to a place where you can put your mind, your heart, and your soul at ease. You will hear within my voice a sense of urgency along with frustration. You will leave here today asking yourself these questions: Do I know God (Rom. 1:20)? Do I know the benefits of knowing God (Ps. 9:10)? Do I know my eternal existence (1 Jn. 5:1-13)? These are real questions, real concerns.

With that said, I will begin with a story. When I was twelve years old, I rode the bus to school every day. At 7 a.m., Monday thru Friday, from the moment I arrived, I would be pushed and picked on until the bus came. This went on for months. I dealt with it the best way I knew how. I talked to my parents. They went and talked to his parents. They got the school involved, and nothing worked. When their seemed to be no other way to deal with my problem, I turned to my dad and said I’ve had enough. I remember we sat down in our back yard, and we decided that I would have to stand up to this guy. Taking his advice, the next morning I challenged this guy to meet me at the hockey rink at 4:30pm. This seemed to be the thing to do, sense any fight you heard of during those days, happened at the hockey rink. So, the bully agreed, and of course it was spread throughout the school within the first hour. I remember getting home that day thinking, maybe he won’t show up, maybe he will forget. That next hour I spent waiting for my dad to get home felt like forever, but when he finally arrived I received a sense of peace. After arriving at the rink, almost half of the kids left because my dad was with me, but the bully stood in the middle of the rink waiting to give me the beating of a life time.

Now, I will stop there to describe what was going on within me. Please note that this story is very real for me, I was a kid going through life, one day at a time, enjoying it even, and one day, one kid decides he doesn’t like me, as a result my whole life changed. At first I thought it would eventually just go away, but it didn’t. In fact, it just kept coming and coming, and it even got worse. I thought that I had done everything to solve the problem. But finally, I turned to my parents, and they did everything. Nothing worked. It came down to a knockdown, drag out, fight.

Today, God will use this story to say to you what he longs for us to know, and when I say know, I mean know Him just like you know that my shirt is gray, or when I speak, you know the voice that comes into your ear is my voice, or when I shake your hand, you know that I am real because you touched me. He wants us to depend on Him just like I depended on my father. The Bible talks about this first step that we must take. It says, “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence” (Eph. 3:12).

The “in Him and through Him” refers to God’s Son. You see the moment we accept/acknowledge Christ as our personal Lord and Savior we become adopted children of God (John 1:12). God at that moment sees us through His son and we become spiritually alive. He also accepts us into his family forever to stand with Jesus as one of His kids (Romans 8:14-17). Our ability to stand with Jesus and call God, Father, was made possible through our trust in Jesus Christ and what he did for us on the cross (Galatians 3:23-26). Again, through this we are children of God (1 John 3:2). Part of our adoption into this new family is the promise to one day spend eternity with God (Rom. 8:23). Please know that if you’ve placed your trust in Christ and what he has done, then these are not just words that I speak, but this act comes with power. Romans 8:14-17 says, “(14) Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (15) For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ""Abba," Father." (16) The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. (17) Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ…

We read here that “we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ". That means we receive all the privileges and responsibilities of a child in God’s family. Right away, I can tell you that one of the privileges of my family was that I knew that my dad was bigger than any other dad, and because I was born into this family I received the privileges of that.

When I look back, I can’t remember my dad and me talking on the way to the arena. We didn’t have to. We knew the mission. We knew each other. We knew the love that we had between us, and how that brought us to a place where we knew that this love would get us through anything. So, when I got to the arena. I didn’t care how big the guy was, I didn’t care if I got pummeled, I knew my dad was there. I knew what he was capable of, and I knew he knew me. I knew that my dad loved me with everything in him. So, no matter what happened, he would never leave me, he would make sure that it didn’t become more than I can handle. With that knowledge I had confidence, I was bold, I could endure the weight of my emotions, the blow of a fist against my face, and the mockery of those on the other side. I knew that I was a child of a dad that was willing to die for his son!

Today, God wants to ask you to come to Him. He wants you to know that He loves you. He wants you to know that He has done everything for you to have this same relationship. You can trust Him. He wants to take care of you. He wants to share his love with you. Listen to this song by Tenth Avenue North…

In this song God says, “My love, I will keep you by my power alone, I don’t care where you've fallen, where you have been, I'll never forsake you, my love never ends, it never ends.” Psalms 9:10 says, “Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken/abandon those who seek you.”

We must come to a point in our lives where we choose to reach out for God, just like I did with my earthly father. God sent His son to die for you, which means he has done everything. He wants you to meet Him in the backyard. The point is there is point where you/we must stand up and accept His invitation to become one of His kids. We must choose to invest in our relationship with Him. Through that, when we are faced with the hardest battle of our lives we won’t even need to talk before the fight, because we will just know; know without a shadow of doubt.

(“Know” is one of the key words within 1 John) Knowing God’s Word shows us that “God has the power to do what he promises” (Rom. 4:21).

God wants us to come to a place in our lives where:

• 1 John 2:5 says, “We know we are in Him.
• 3:14 says, “We know that we have passed from death to life.”
• 3:19 says, “We know that we belong to the truth.”
• 3:24 says, “We know that God lives in us.”
• 5:13 says, “We will know that through our love for Him we will have eternal life.”
• 5:15 says, “We know that God hears us.”
• 5:19 says, “We know that we are His children.”

Now we just read about the privileges, let’s turn to our responsibilities. Paul says in Colossians 1:23 that all believers will be saved on the last day, “provided that we/you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel which you heard.” The author of Hebrews says, “We share in Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end” (Heb. 3:14) and he encourages his readers to be imitators of those “who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Heb. 6:12). In fact, the most famous verse within the Bible says, “whoever continues believing in Him” may have eternal life (Jn. 3:16).

We must understand that eternal life WITH GOD begins when we accept His offer for us to be His kid, and it never ends!!! God wants you to know without a shadow of doubt, that through Christ He never leaves you, and he promises that through Christ He will be with you on this earth every moment of everyday (Matt 28:20). I’ll tell you what. What did I learn from this fight? That I am one tough dude with my Dad around!

Let me ask you something. Could my dad have fought the battle for me? Could he have taken that burden from me and beat the living tar out of this advisory. Sure, but he knew that that would have taught me nothing.

You see, once you accept Christ into your life it is important to know that the Holy Spirit takes residence in your heart. This Spirit accepts you just as you are, but through God’s love he progressively changes you from the inside out. I know that what I am getting at is a hard concept to grasp. But listen, we must understand that our acceptance of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection causes us to be complete in Christ (1 Cor. 15:1-4). This means we are God’s children and nothing can change that. At the same time we are growing in Christ. That means we are also becoming more and more like Him. That doesn’t mean that we will not have fights to face, but when we face our daily problems they will help us grow. If we remember this concept, we will not grow discouraged as we face temptation and problems. Just like my story, I had confidence, I was bold, because I knew my dad was with me, and I knew that no matter what happened, he would never leave me, he would make sure that it didn’t become more than I can handle. We must realize and then depend on the power available to us from Christ, who lives in us by the Holy Spirit.

This leads me to tell the rest of the story. After arriving at the rink, half of the kids left because my dad was with me, but the bully stood in the middle of the rink waiting to give me the beating of a life time. I walked into that arena strong and courageous, ready, willing to fight, hoping that this would stop this struggle in my life. Punch after punch, blow after blow, the pummeling continued until I came to a point when I endured all that I could handle. At that very moment, I felt the force of my father’s arm lift me out of the dirt. He carried me to the car, and said you did good son. Now let me take care of this. I remember thinking, dad don’t kill him. He approached this kid with a calm voice and said if you ever touch my kid again you will deal with me, and he walked away.

We must understand that eternal life WITH GOD begins when we accept His offer for us to be His kid!!! God wants you to know without a shadow of doubt, that through Christ He never leaves you, and he promises that through Christ He will be with you on this earth every moment of everyday (Matt 28:20). So, do you know that no matter what happens God will never leave you? Do you know that he will make sure that your life will not become more than you can handle? It is with this knowledge that you can have confidence, be bold, endure the weight of your emotions, the blow of a fist against your faces, and have the strength to with stand the mockery of those on the other side. I know that the Creator (Yahweh) sent His son to die for us! Go back to the I know… Do you know the benefits of knowing God? I will end with this, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

Notes from Joe Hannah’s March 1, 2009 message; to get a free CD of the complete message, contact Christ’s Family Church @ 651.437.2340.