Reaching up
Illusion to prayer
Review- Reaching in- Loneliness to Solitude
- Movement from an eternal void to an eternal God.
- Avoidance
- Distraction
- Injury, that injury we experience causes hostility.
Answer; Stop avoiding, walk towards your pain, your loneliness and find healing & God on the other side.
Reaching out- Hostility to hospitality
- Our injuries that have been done to us and we have done to others causes hostilities toward one another.
- Jesus tells the story of what it means to “love our neighbor” and he defines our neighbor as the Samaritan; one who is opposed to us racially, politically, religiously, and even a heretic (opposing religious truths). And yet, this is who Jesus calls us to love.
Answer- Be hospitable, listen to others and create space in your life to invite others in.
SLIDE- Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. Romans 15:7
Reaching Up… to our God.
Our solitude and our hospitality are incomplete and do not make sense without God. We can “reach in”, and only find a deceitfully wicked heart, we can “reach out” and never be know what it means to know and be known, if we never “reach up” to make sense of all of it.
Are you deceived? Do you believe lies?
- By definition, can you know when you are being deceived?
- That every human relationship, war, hunger, etc.
- Eve was Deceived. Did she know what she was doing?
- No, she didn’t. She was deceived.
- Can we be deceived?
SLIDE- But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 2 Corinthians 11:3-4
Do we have illusions about God?
Illusion: Wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses.
- A wrong interpretation or way of seeing, that effects are experience with God?
- The story of my dad.
- I believed that God wasn’t there, but I had no idea.
- How do we know if there are things in our soul that our causing illusions of who God is? Who we are? and How that effects us?
The Illusion of Immortality
- No one says, “I am God” out loud (actions)
- “I’ll do it my way”
- Every time we sin
- How often do we live like we are the masters of our destiny?
- We give others immortality over us
- Power struggle. Who wins today?
- How? By allowing them to define us.
SLIDE- but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Get. 3:3-5
The Illusion of Control
- I do not want to rejected, so I will reject you.
- I don’t want to be hurt, so I will hurt you.
- Or self destruct the relationship before you do.
- I don’t want to loss somebody, so we manipulate them to make them depend on us. (Unhealthy parenting)
- I want to be wanted. Therefore I find someone who needs me.
- Co-dependancy, abusive relationships
- All of it is an illusion to avoid pain, or fulfill a core desire of the soul by means that never can.
Immortality, control… over time our experience let’s us know neither are true, leads to the last illusion.
The Illusion of Fantasy
- Pornography or any shade of gray, wining the lottery,
- The soul gets what the soul needs.
- If we can’t get it reality, we find it in fantasy.
- It’s an illusion. It’s like a drug.
- I often counsel by asking the question, If you have a blank piece of paper and anything you write will happen, what do you want?
- It’s a good question because it exposes true desire, which is often repressed because we are unable to attain it.
- -It begs the question, how are you attaining it?
- What we desire, is what we pursue
How do we move from illusion to prayer?
Immortality to reality
Immotality to reality Look, open your eyes. Wake up!
SLIDE- But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise. Ephesians 5:13-15
Control to Surrender,
You are not in control, but you are loved by a God who is.
Fantasy to truth
How? We pray. We commune with God.
Please turn in your bibles to Luke 11:1, page
SLIDE- “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen” Matthew 6:9-13
Sermon Slides
