Latest / The Grove Church / Journey of Hope | Week 2

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Journey of Hope | Week 2 · The Grove Church

0:02
Hello and welcome to the Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Lofton, the lead pastor
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All right, well, hey, good morning. I'm Mark.
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I think my body, my mind's almost caught up with my body. So
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the place that we were just a few days ago, it's
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09:00 p.m. Right now. So I was up at about three this
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morning. So I'm finishing my day, so I'm doing
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all right. Yeah. This trip that I got to
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take here last week, last couple of weeks,
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I took my nine year old Jack with me,
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and that was a really awesome experience,
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if you've been tracking with me at all. We went and
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supported this group in Thailand
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there at the end of the year, last year, November 1 December.
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And his twin sister Darcy went with
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us, and she loves watching kiddos. And so she went
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and she did childcare during these meetings. And
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when we did that, I was like, all right, jack, man, I've got this trip
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coming up in March, and I want you to go with me. And
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your superpower, her superpower is watching the kiddos. Your superpower is making
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people laugh. So just get ready, and if you've been around him, you know,
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he will at least attempt to make you laugh.
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And it was really interesting, for one, just
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because it's worth sharing. And he's not in here. Sometimes he's in here and he's
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not today. For the longest, twins are
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just interesting to me. So for the longest, he didn't really
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talk. He just didn't really want
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to walk. None of the things. He just let his sister
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tie his shoes. Like, all the things, she just fills all the space and he
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just is kind of there and you remove her from the equation and,
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boy, he was out of control. I just didn't know he had that much
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personality. He was big as life and seemed to manage
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all the things pretty well. It's interesting because for
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them, our family, their two older brothers, who are now
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21 and 18, we lived in this
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place in South Asia for three years, from 2007 to 2010.
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And so we've got all these experiences, and we've got these
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pictures, and I go often, and so they hear me talking
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about it, but they haven't personally experienced it. And so
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it was pretty cool because this trip in particular, we went back and did some
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of the things, and we're around some of the areas that he's heard stories
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about. And one of those things, there's this place
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way up in the mountains, really beautiful place
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where we would go, and there's a school there where we would learn language, do
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a little bit more language intensive. And it
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is. It's a five hour passenger train ride up
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in the mountains. And then you get in a taxi, and there's these little
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windy little roads that you get up there to where the school is, and then
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up there, it's basically, you're walking everywhere, and it's just real steep little trails
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and things. And at the top of that hill, there's this place
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where there are four stores, and in a local language that's
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called Char Ducan. And the four stores basically
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sell the same thing, which is something that I always think is kind of funny.
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How do you compete when there's. Anyway, it's an interesting
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little setup, and one of them
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has chocolate pancakes. Now,
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I know that's probably not what you expected me to say. There's a lot of
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really good food that's very. But this place does a
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pancake, like, I can't even explain to you. I'm not even sure if
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it's like, if you would call it a pancake. It's like, folding
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over the side of your plate, and it's about that thick. I'm sure they
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use, like, maybe some cake batter or something, because it's not just your normal
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pancake. It's chocolate, and it's got chocolate syrup, and it's got
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chocolate chips. And one of the things I was really excited about was
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to get back to this place. I knew we were going to be nearby and
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have this chocolate pancake. The people there are so welcoming and
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so nice, and this pancake's incredible. The one sad thing about it,
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Jack doesn't eat chocolate. So I was trying to introduce
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him to this beautiful thing, and because he doesn't like chocolate, he just kind of
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didn't really appreciate it. We got him a banana pancake, and now, I found out
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all he wants is banana pancake. So he did at least get to experience it
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a little bit. But I promise you
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that I'm not just pulling your leg like that place actually
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exists. Sometimes I wonder when I tell stories, like, I'll talk to somebody later. Are
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you just making that story up? I promise you I could take you
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there right now. Now, I've got other witnesses. You could
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ask Jack. He's experienced it. We even got some pictures while we're up there. So
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I could say, hey, this is what this place looks like. And I could introduce
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you to this place and tell you that it's there, that it exists, and
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that the people there are pleasant and would invite you in and take care of
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you. Well, but it's still going to be my experience.
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And at some point, for you to experience it, you would have to have
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the belief that it's there. And that it's so incredible that it is
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worth the two hour flight to the two hour flight to the 16 hours flight
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to the five hour train ride to get to that place and
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enjoy that pancake. Now, I'm not saying you should do that because it's not
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that good, but it's pretty close. But in the
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same way, this question that we're going to be dealing with this morning is,
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is God even real? Does he exist
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and does he care? Does he want to be known and want to be
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involved in what's going on and in your life? And
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I feel as I've prepared for this morning and thought about this for several weeks
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now that a bit like that. I can tell you how incredible it
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is. I can tell you the experiences that I've had, the reasons
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why, man, I love him
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so much and want to know him so badly. But that would be my
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experience. And I think a critical part of this is
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just the invitation. So I'll kind of start with the end in mind here. The
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invitation for you to believe
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it. And then what does it mean if you
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actually believe that? What
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actions, what perspective
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is an automatic knee jerk to the
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belief that there is a real God and that
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he wants to be in relationship with you? Because those implications
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are pretty massive. And
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if I go back in my journey a little bit. It was
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fall of 1997. Terry and I had just gotten married that
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summer. The next semester of my
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junior year had started. We were in a full swing of
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football practice and games. In a kind
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of a strange, peculiar set of events. This guy gets my name
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and calls me up and asks me to go grab some chinese food.
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And in this town that we were in, there was no good chinese
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food, but he was buying, and I was a college
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student that was just married. And so I was going to let him buy my
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lunch especially. He was talking about some Jesus stuff and some Bible
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studies, and I had been to church enough that I was willing to
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go let him buy my chinese food and talk about Jesus for a little bit.
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And so we get there and I'll just say,
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God has really used this guy. Now he lives in
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northwest Arkansas, and we still meet together. He has continually
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used him. And as I try to process what is
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it that was different in this encounter and the
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way that this guy had approached truths about God than
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anybody before that? Because I had grown up around church, my parents
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faith is vibrant. And so when I meet this
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guy, it's not that I didn't know things, and it's not that he
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necessarily taught me any new information that I didn't know. Maybe little bits,
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but I had pretty much gotten the big picture. But what
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I found out was much of that was a hand me down
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kind of faith. I had it, but I
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hadn't really thought that deeply about it, been that thoughtful
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about it. And most of these interactions with
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this guy, as we were looking at passages or we were talking about different things,
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passages of scripture or talking about different things, he brought me
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to a decision point. If
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this is true, then this is the automatic reaction to that
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truth. If there is a God that exists
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and he created everything, he created you,
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then the reaction to that is to worship
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him. Big right, and to give him the worship that
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he deserves. It affects my things that I
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do, the things that I don't do. I mean, if that is true, what
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pursuit could be greater than to
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pursue to know that living God, if eternity is
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real, if it really isn't just we live and we die and we go back
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into the ground. And if there is this everlasting life
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that also had massive impacts on my moments,
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my days, my minutes right now,
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if this Bible really does contain
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answers and truth, then my
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pursuit of knowing it, of memorizing it, of
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meditating on it, it becomes not
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just a kind of side hobby, it becomes a
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core pursuit for me. It just felt like
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every time I get around this guy, even today, it's like these decision
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points. Instead of being on the
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roundabout and just continuing to drive in a circle. This is something
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I've noticed that's happened a lot in northwest Arkansas. Now we're
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getting these roundabouts everywhere. In fact, somebody the other day showed me a picture of
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a car that was trying to take it and was going too fast and slipped
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and ended up in the ditch. And I don't know if you've noticed
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this, but people don't know how to do roundabouts. They
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don't. I think we're getting better at it, as if I'm judging us as a
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whole. Now that they're everywhere, people tend to do better at
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we. When we were living overseas, roundabouts were a commonplace.
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And big, huge roundabouts, too. I'm talking. There would be,
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like eight or nine different offshoots from this big
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roundabout. And Terry and I were laughing about this last night on this
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trip. I was with this younger person who was living there, and he just
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finally, it's like, it hit him. He's like, man, because we're driving and we're using
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Google maps, and he says, man, when you
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guys lived here, you didn't have a smartphone, did
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you? And I said, man, actually we
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didn't. And he's like, well, how did you navigate driving around
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this megacity with all the roads and all the things? I was like,
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man, we had a paper map.
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And let me explain what it looked like. It was called an iker, and it
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was about this thick, and it was the whole city. But then there would be
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a page that was know zoomed in on one part of
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the city, these few streets right here. And Terry would sit
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in the passenger seat, and she would try to work the book and
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figure out where we were going, and I would drive. And
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it became commonplace that the boys in the backseat would say, oh,
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daddy, another uturn, dad. Because we would make so many
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uturns. And I love roundabouts because
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we could just get on a roundabout and just keep on
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circling, and we could look at the book and try to figure out which one
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of these offshoots we were going to take, and we could be on that roundabout,
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y'all. No joke. I mean, there were some times we wrote a roundabout a long
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time, but that was okay because we weren't making a mistake.
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We weren't going the wrong way. We're just hitting pause
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while we tried to make the right decision. And I feel
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like on some of these things that are just true and people of
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faith, me, sometimes we get in this place that we're just
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on the roundabout. We don't want to
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commit too much and make some sort of wrong decision.
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We don't want to think that deeply about the difference
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between what is true and what is false. And so sometimes
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we can just kind of get on the roundabout and write it. And when I
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met this guy, I think that's exactly where I was on most of the
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things of faith. I was just on the roundabout kind of
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holding my ticket to heaven and waiting it out, and then really
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making most of my decisions just based on what felt good to me or what
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made sense to me. And he just wasn't going to put up with
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it. He brought me to these decisive moments
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where I had to decide whether I believe this stuff reals or
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not. And proverbs says this, it
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says verse 20, I mean, chapter 23, verse
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23, buy
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truth and don't sell it. Buy
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wisdom, instruction and understanding.
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Buy truth and don't sell it. When you
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find truth, you hold on to it with
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everything that you've got. You look for it,
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you search for it. And when you find that something is true,
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you respond to that with a death
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grip. And one of the things, just as
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an example, one of the things that I found true is
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that if this good news that we have the
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gospel, if there really is a creator God and
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he really does want to know us, and this thing that we're celebrating
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in a few weeks, that man, he sent his son
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God in the flesh, the image of the invisible God,
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he displayed the character and the nature of God before us,
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and he gave up his life and then he was
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resurrected from the dead. And my faith in that,
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your faith in that is possible to make me clean of my sin and
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righteous before God. And in that faith I can know him
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and be in relationship with him. If that's true,
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that good news demands to be told,
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it demands to be proclaimed. It can't be something that
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I just say, oh, I believe this, but I don't really ever talk
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about it. I kind of keep it hid that I believe it. If I believe
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that that's true and it's the answer and hope for me for life
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and peace, and it's the answer and hope for you, and it's the answer and
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hope for the whole planet,
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then I can't keep that quiet.
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In Romans, chapter one. I love the way that Paul says
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this. I am not ashamed of this good
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news. I'm not ashamed of this
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truth. For it is the power of God for
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salvation to everyone who believes. For in it
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the righteousness of God is revealed, beginning and ending
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from faith to faith, as it is written from
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Habakkuk, the righteous shall live by
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faith, that this righteousness is possible from God
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by faith, and that this good news is the very power of
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God. And I'm not ashamed of it. In fact, I can't stop
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talking about it, and I believe that it's powerful,
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that it can't be stopped. There's this
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poet that I listened to a few years ago, and
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he talks about this and know the gospel is like a
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lion. You don't have to really help it out.
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You just have to unlock the cage and unleash it.
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That's what I believe about truth. And I think that's what
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Paul's talking about here with the gospel. It is the very power of
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God. It leaves no doubt. It just needs
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to be let out. And so I don't have to do any great
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sales job, or I don't have to beat anybody over the head
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with something. I can simply let the truth reveal
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itself and ask the questions
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that demand to be asked.
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The truth doesn't have to be argued or defended,
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just experienced. And
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this truth about who God is, I love the
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fact that I can be in a conversation. And I
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watched this guy that was helping me
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the first time. He took me to a college campus, and he
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started to talk to somebody about Jesus. I got real
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scared, and I thought, man, this is making me uncomfortable, and I don't want to
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be at this table, and I don't want to be around this guy. And then
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I started to figure out that what he did was very different than what I
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had experienced in the past. Basically, he
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had this conversation where both people were offering up their
17:32
questions about God and offering up the way
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that they understood things worked. And both sides, both he
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and the person that he was talking to, were offering up questions to
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one another to try on these different beliefs and to
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see is there truth there. Because, again, truth reveals
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itself. The power of God doesn't need any help.
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And so I kind of have always just taken that
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there is a lot of incredible truth. In fact, I was thinking about this this
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morning. I've got this bracelet I've been wearing for a while now, and on it,
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you can't even hardly read it, but it says asatoma
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Sadgamaya. And that's
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in the dialect of India. And what it's saying is,
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pursue truth or
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God, please take me to truth and away from untruth.
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And it's a part of a chant that's been said in India for a long,
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long time. And that statement, that
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prayer, wouldn't you say that prayer as
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well? Oh, God, please lead me to
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truth and away from
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falsehood. And so in my personal devotion, this
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has just become a part of my prayer, my day in and day out.
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It's something that I want to ask for, that I would know the difference between
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truth and untruth, and that he would lead me to
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truth. And so
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I challenge you with that. If truth is
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something you buy and you don't sell,
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then you go looking for it and you ask all the questions.
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And so when it comes to this question of is God real?
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In Romans chapter one, a little bit further on, it says, for the
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wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
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and unrighteousness of men, who, by their
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unrighteousness, suppress the truth.
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For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God
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has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely
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his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly
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perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things
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that have been made so that they are without
19:48
excuse. So God
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has revealed himself.
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This intricate design of the universe points to
19:59
a creator God. And the deeper you get into
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science, the deeper you get into whatever study you want to go after,
20:06
the deeper you get, the more it reveals that there is this
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crazy, intricate design and this insane amount
20:13
of very detailed nature of
20:17
creation, and it points to a creator.
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And he says he's revealed himself. It's interesting, all the things that it calls out,
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his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power, his divine nature.
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And it has been clear. It is
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there. It is plain,
20:34
not complicated, to the point that he says, there's no
20:38
excuse, and you could travel the world over,
20:42
and people have noticed this. That's the
20:45
reason why there's a natural tendency to worship
20:49
something, because you look at creation and you go,
20:53
man, this didn't just happen.
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One of the things that happened with Jack, we're driving through this crazy
21:00
hustle and bustle of a city, and there's a cow right in the middle of
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the road. And he's not used to seeing cows in the middle of the road
21:06
anywhere, much less in the middle of a big city.
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And so we had to talk about, why is this cow in the middle of
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the road? And it's been a big, huge
21:18
learning thing for me to get that these ancient cultures, a
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native american culture, you go where you want to. This
21:25
cow, for an ancient civilization, this
21:28
cow provides milk. This cow
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provides dung that's used for heat,
21:36
both to warm yourself, but also to cook your food.
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This cow is a provider of the things that the culture
21:44
needs. The river is also worshipped, and the
21:47
river, it provides water to the land to grow the
21:51
crops that provide the food. And if you look at it, you go, yeah, it
21:54
would be very easy to look to these things and to go, oh, these things
21:58
are providing for me. These things are my
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God. And to miss the fact that there is a God
22:05
that created those things, right? And so that's what he
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says here. This is the natural tendency that people move
22:13
from man. It's clear it's there,
22:17
but they begin to suppress the truth
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and push it down. It goes on to say in verse 21, for although
22:25
they knew God, they did not honor him as
22:29
God or give thanks to him. That would be the natural reaction.
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He's revealed himself. The reaction would be man to,
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yes, I want to worship this God. I want to honor him. I want to
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give thanks to him for all that he's done. But instead, they
22:43
became futile in their thinking, again, suppressing
22:47
truth. And their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to
22:51
be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of their mortal
22:54
God for images that look like mortal man
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and birds and animals and creeping things. This is another
23:02
thing. Probably the first time that Jack has ever seen an idol, a
23:05
statue that is there to
23:08
represent something that I give my worship to. And this is what we
23:12
do. Mia, maybe you don't have a wooden statue or a
23:16
metal statue in your house that you're giving worship to or
23:19
that you're focusing your attention towards, but
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we give our attention to the things that we think provide for us.
23:27
Maybe it's the worship of a job or a relationship
23:30
or something beautiful that God, creator
23:34
God, has given to you. But instead of giving
23:38
him the honor, instead of giving him the thanks, you've begun to worship
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the thing that you can see, that you can touch, that you can feel,
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that you begin to forget that he's
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the one that provided it. Truth is
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this incredible God has revealed himself and wants to be
23:56
known. But we're real quick to just reduce it to
23:59
idols and not to worship him in all that he
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is. I don't know what that is about us. I don't know if it's just
24:07
too big to get our mind around this element of faith
24:11
that we can't fully get in. So there's this distance between what we
24:15
know and what's plain to us and what is unknown. And so
24:19
that distance, that faith that it requires is really
24:22
difficult sometimes, I think when the tough things
24:26
of life come, I know this has been true for us. I mean, the
24:30
tough things make me stop and go, is he really
24:33
involved? Is he really even there?
24:37
When is he going to show up? Or where did he go? Which is
24:41
interesting, really, because from the perspective of now, being a
24:44
parent, I know that I have
24:48
a tendency and a desire to protect my children from every
24:52
possible bad thing that could happen to them in every hardship and
24:55
everything. I don't want to have any scrapes or bruises. I don't want them to
24:59
have to get their feelings hurt. I don't want any of the tough stuff. I
25:02
want all the easy stuff. And at the same time, you and I both
25:06
know that a life with no bumps and bruises, a life with
25:09
no tough stuff, results in a very weak person.
25:14
That it is the tough stuff that grows them. It is the
25:17
difficult things that make them strong. And when it comes to
25:20
faith and believing in this big God, it is the hardest
25:24
times. I bet we could share stories. This morning I look back
25:28
at the hardest times and coming through those, those are the moments that that faith
25:32
muscle for us. For me, that's when it grew.
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If you look at Hebrews, the chapter about faith, chapter
25:41
eleven, it says this, and without
25:44
Faith it is impossible to please him.
25:48
For whoever would draw near to God must believe that
25:52
he exists and that he rewards
25:55
those who seek him.
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Right? He loves faith.
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Our faith in him is the thing that God, it makes him happy,
26:08
it pleases him. The thing that we can't necessarily see,
26:12
the thing that we can't put together on a spreadsheet
26:16
for. Whoever would do that though, would draw near to him. Must believe
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that he's real. And not only that he's real, but that
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he's actively involved and he rewards those who seek
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him. He's not know this
26:30
chapter. It's interesting talking about the tough stuff because it gives
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a list of all these different people, Noah and Abraham
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and Sarah and Enoch and all these different people
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of faith. And it has this statement in there where it says
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they died not having seen the end of their
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faith. It's hard circumstance after hard
26:53
circumstance. Tough decisions that they made, believing that God was
26:57
real in the face. I mean, I can't even imagine what it would be like
27:00
to be Noah. Anytime I try to put my mind, I'm supposed to build this
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know, and everybody thinks I'm crazy. I'm not so sure I'm
27:08
not crazy. I mean, how many days do you wake up and go, man, I'm
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going to do this again today. This crazy thing that doesn't make any
27:14
sense because I believe and then get to the end of it and not really
27:17
ever see the end of that. And
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yet these are the moments that these
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people made God really happy in the way that they
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believed and took action to their faith.
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And so I guess that's the question this morning. When you look at
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your life, does your life reveal a
27:39
person that believes that God exists
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and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him? You
27:47
know,
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I told this story to Jack many times before,
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and I don't think he really knew how big the monkeys
27:59
are up in this hill place that we went, but they're not little monkeys.
28:02
They're like, up this tall,
28:06
big monkeys. There's
28:09
this story that he's heard me tell about going up to this charducon from
28:13
the place that we were staying with his older brothers. And at
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Chardukon, I got some mango
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juice boxes and some crackers, gave him some snacks,
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and we were making our way back down the trail from the
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stores. And on the trail, a monkey met us. And I'm
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talking about this big, ugly monkey, and he
28:35
looked at me and he made his teeth, which
28:39
is, let me know I'm coming after you. Be scared of
28:43
me. But I was looking at him like, all right, we're fine. They're
28:46
behind me. I'm between them and the monkey. He's going to end up going away.
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I just need to stare him back down. But then I saw him go like
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this and kind of glance over to the side. Oh, no. I
28:57
looked over, and there was another monkey over here. And so the two of them
29:01
had a plan. I don't know if they were just hanging out, waiting for somebody
29:03
to come down the trail. I don't know how thought out their plan was, but
29:07
they were definitely about to get my attention and then get the boxes from
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the boys. And I had to make a decision
29:14
which one of those monkeys I was going to go after.
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I couldn't go after both of them.
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My point is, I promise there's a point,
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is that instead of just being on the
29:30
roundabout of faith,
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not willing to really make a decision
29:39
and go for it, to follow him with your
29:43
whole heart, to make known his gospel
29:47
with everybody that, you know, an all in kind of thing,
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instead of just being on the roundabout and not really choosing and
29:55
just standing there in decision.
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I'm going to challenge this as we walk through this Easter,
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to choose the monkey of faith and to charge it.
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Go all in. And that's what happened. I charged this one monkey, and the other
30:11
one ran away. But I had to make a decision.
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And I think that truth is found in those
30:19
moments that we do. We don't just continue to
30:23
pretend like two things can coexist.
30:27
There is a God. He is real.
30:33
He wants to know us. And even went through all the trouble to send his
30:36
son to live and to die, to be raised again so that we could be
30:40
made clean. He loves us that much, that kind of love. God so
30:43
loved the world that big
30:47
that y'all demands a response, and not just a half
30:51
hearted one, an all in kind of response.
30:56
I had a friend one time that I was
31:00
sharing these things with that looked
31:04
at me and said, man, I think you actually believe this stuff,
31:09
which I thought, you know what? You could have talked to me a few
31:13
years ago and maybe said the opposite. I'm not so sure you really believe
31:16
it. If I spent some time with you,
31:20
would I walk away? Say, man, I think this person actually believes
31:24
this stuff is real. Not just a Sunday
31:27
activity, but that it's real.
31:35
It earlier, in Hebrews, chapter eleven
31:38
says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
31:43
the conviction of things not seen.
31:48
It's going to require some faith,
31:52
even though we can't put all the pieces together.
31:55
But man, in that moment of
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believing big and following wholeheartedly, our
32:03
God meets us there. We have to believe that he
32:06
exists, that he wants to and
32:10
loves to reward those who earnestly seek
32:14
him. Let me pray that we would father, I am
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just convicted that
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it is easy to get distracted or to
32:26
suppress the truth, because
32:29
some of these truths require things from me
32:33
that may be uncomfortable.
32:37
And so it's easy for me to suppress it, to dumb
32:41
it down to something that's very manageable for me,
32:45
instead of letting the truth
32:49
that you exist, that you reward those that earnestly seek you,
32:53
letting that be huge in my life,
32:57
honoring you, giving thanks to you, not bringing
33:01
you down, but in truth, worshipping you and following
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you as you really deserve,
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proclaiming you as you would with something
33:11
that's this good of news.
33:15
So, father, I pray that these days, these weeks, building up to Easter, that this
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would be a special time where we pull
33:22
back all the fog and all the clutter, and we
33:26
look at you in truth and we respond appropriately
33:31
to your glory.
33:37
Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast, and you can learn more about
33:41
us@thegrovechurch.org. And if you go to thegrovechurch.org
33:45
connect, there's a form you could fill out. Just let us know that you've been
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listening. And if you want to dig deeper on some of these topics that we
33:51
cover in our sermon podcast or just in other issues of
33:55
dealing with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out our
33:59
cultivate podcast, which is on the same feed. However
34:02
you found this particular podcast so, again, this is Charlie,
34:06
the lead pastor at the grove, and thank you so much for joining us.