Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 20, 2018 | Patty Diliberto at intentionalMom - Discover Jesus
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_00: Have you ever noticed that once you um find something that you thought was lost, that you stop looking for it?
- 0:08SPEAKER_00: Usually you stop looking for it.
- 0:10SPEAKER_00: Once you find your la lost van keys, you um you stop, you you grab all the kids, stuff them in the van, and go to wherever it was you were gonna go.
- 0:23SPEAKER_00: Once you find the baby's lost binky, you stop looking for it and she stops crying.
- 0:29SPEAKER_00: Once you find your husband, you stop looking for another one, or you should.
- 0:34SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, you've stopped looking for another one.
- 0:37SPEAKER_00: Most of the time when we discover the thing that we're looking for, we stop looking.
- 0:42SPEAKER_00: Last week I was in Neosho, Missouri, to visit my father.
- 0:48SPEAKER_00: On Friday, I went to the Walmart in Neosho, thriving metropolis of Neosho to get groceries, and I purposefully parked right next to the cart return because there was a space there.
- 1:00SPEAKER_00: I was pretty proud of myself.
- 1:01SPEAKER_00: I'll remember exactly where it is because I'm not used to this to that uh Walmart.
- 1:07SPEAKER_00: So I did my shopping, went in, came back out, and I can't find my car.
- 1:12SPEAKER_00: It's not there.
- 1:13SPEAKER_00: And it's not in the row right next to it where the return cart is, also.
- 1:19SPEAKER_00: And I look and I look and I look.
- 1:22SPEAKER_00: And then the cart guy who was out in the parking lot, I said to him, My car's been stolen.
- 1:27SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Really?
- 1:30SPEAKER_00: Like Neo, Neo Show, Missouri.
- 1:32SPEAKER_00: So he takes my keys and walks around, hitting the panic key to try to find it.
- 1:39SPEAKER_00: He comes back, he doesn't find it either.
- 1:42SPEAKER_00: So I call my poor husband Nat and I say, Um, our car's been stolen.
- 1:48SPEAKER_00: And this is actually the second time that our car's been stolen.
- 1:51SPEAKER_00: The first time was in the church parking lot right out over across the street in the middle of the day, where some kids took it and did a joyride and totaled it.
- 1:59SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, how can this happen to me again?
- 2:03SPEAKER_00: So I call the police and I report that my car has been stolen out of the Walmart parking lot.
- 2:11SPEAKER_00: While I'm waiting for the police to arrive, I call my poor brother who's with my dad, my 92-year-old dad, and say the car's been stolen.
- 2:20SPEAKER_00: So he's getting my dad ready to come and get me because I have no transportation, and I'm pushing my cart all around looking for my car.
- 2:29SPEAKER_00: Um, so in the meantime, while I'm waiting, the Walmart personnel and security, all females, go out to the parking lot to also look for my car.
- 2:40SPEAKER_00: And three minutes later, they come and say, Do you have a silver Chevy Traverse?
- 2:46SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Yes, with Kansas license plates, yes.
- 2:50SPEAKER_00: It's over here, three aisles away from where I was, parked in front of the pharmacy, not the grocery side of Walmart.
- 3:02SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
- 3:05SPEAKER_00: I so I call the police and say, you know that stolen car at the Walmart.
- 3:10SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not stolen, it's here.
- 3:13SPEAKER_00: And later my brother, my brother told me what you should have said to the police was, can you believe it?
- 3:19SPEAKER_00: The people who stole my car brought it back and put it three rows away.
- 3:23SPEAKER_00: How ridiculous is that?
- 3:26SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, my blonde, my my gray hair was definitely showing through, and I can just hear them saying, some senior citizen lost her car.
- 3:36SPEAKER_00: We've been out in the sweltering heat trying to find it.
- 3:40SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
- 3:42SPEAKER_00: So um sometimes in life we stop looking for what we have lost way too soon.
- 3:48SPEAKER_00: In my case, that was true, because I could have I should have kept looking.
- 3:52SPEAKER_00: Most of the time when we discover the thing that we're looking for, we stop looking for it.
- 3:59SPEAKER_00: There are probably many exceptions to this, but um the biggest exception is Jesus Christ.
- 4:06SPEAKER_00: Because once you find Jesus, you should not stop looking for him.
- 4:11SPEAKER_00: You should keep looking.
- 4:14SPEAKER_00: God has been called the hound of heaven, meaning that he is always, always pursuing us and looking for us, looking for who whomever has receptive spiritual receptivity to him.
- 4:31SPEAKER_00: Um I'm grateful that God is that persistent, that he is so persistent that he doesn't give up.
- 4:40SPEAKER_00: Even when he finds one, he's not satisfied because he wants more.
- 4:44SPEAKER_00: He wants more of us.
- 4:45SPEAKER_00: And he will search until we find him.
- 4:48SPEAKER_00: He's a much better searcher than I am.
- 4:50SPEAKER_00: He's much more persistent than I am.
- 4:54SPEAKER_00: God's pursuit of us led him to send his own son into the world in search of us.
- 5:01SPEAKER_00: At a specific, God-appointed time, the invisible God became visible.
- 5:07SPEAKER_00: The eternal one became constricted to time and space of his own choosing.
- 5:14SPEAKER_00: The all-knowing God became a simple dependent infant, and the all-powerful creator of the universe whimpered at his mother's breast.
- 5:25SPEAKER_00: The holy God visited the unholy and changed us forever.
- 5:31SPEAKER_00: Jesus is unlike anything or anyone that you will ever pursue.
- 5:37SPEAKER_00: He is unique, and he should be the one thing in your life that you never stop discovering.
- 5:44SPEAKER_00: And I love that.
- 5:45SPEAKER_00: One of the things that thrills me the very most about God, or maybe not the very most, but definitely thrills me beyond belief is that it doesn't matter how much I have discovered about God, there's still more that I can discover.
- 6:04SPEAKER_00: Always in Scripture, there is still more.
- 6:07SPEAKER_00: I've probably read through the Bible conservatively 15 times in the last 23 years.
- 6:13SPEAKER_00: And just when I feel like I have some understanding about who he is or what he's done or how he works, God blows me away by revealing even more of who he is and what he's done.
- 6:30SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is because our God is inexhaustible.
- 6:34SPEAKER_00: I first discovered Jesus on a snowy winter's day at a camp up in the Colorado Rockies.
- 6:41SPEAKER_00: I was standing on a mountaintop, literally on a mountaintop, and I had a 360-degree view of these gorgeous snow-capped peaks.
- 6:51SPEAKER_00: And I remember standing there and understanding for the first time that the God who had created all of this that I had practically worshipped for my whole life loved me, loved me enough to die in the cross for me.
- 7:07SPEAKER_00: That was my first discovery of He really did love me.
- 7:13SPEAKER_00: And that discovery changed my life.
- 7:16SPEAKER_00: After my freshman year of Bible college, Bible college, conservative Bible college, when I went back at the end of the year back to Colorado and back to my partying lifestyle that I had left, I discovered that Jesus gives second chances.
- 7:35SPEAKER_00: When I met my husband and had our four wonderful children, I discovered that Jesus gives really good gifts, even when I don't deserve them.
- 7:44SPEAKER_00: When I had trouble getting over the wounds of my past and the hurt from a poor relationship with my mother, I discovered that Jesus possesses the power to heal.
- 7:54SPEAKER_00: When God called me to do some really difficult tasks of writing and teaching, I discovered that Jesus is sufficient to the need.
- 8:04SPEAKER_00: You know, I can list those things and those ways of those discoveries that I've had.
- 8:10SPEAKER_00: And I can list them, but behind every one of them is great emotion.
- 8:17SPEAKER_00: If you were to list the ways Jesus has worked in your life and the discoveries that you've made of him, there would probably be great emotion, right?
- 8:29SPEAKER_00: There's just something about the way he touches us that brings us to love him more and more and more.
- 8:37SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons that we are always discovering new aspects about Jesus is because there's just simply so much to know about him, about God, about the Holy Spirit.
- 8:49SPEAKER_00: I mean, could we ever completely figure him out?
- 8:53SPEAKER_00: We can't.
- 8:54SPEAKER_00: But another reason we are always discovering new aspects about Jesus is because we are always changing.
- 9:02SPEAKER_00: Our circumstances change, our needs change, and we need a different and a new and a fresh view of God to match those circumstances and those needs.
- 9:15SPEAKER_00: And I'm so grateful that Jesus is up to the task of meeting all of our needs and challenges that we have.
- 9:24SPEAKER_00: No matter how great or how small those things are, he is up to the task.
- 9:29SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite Bible illustrations of this, of this kind of discovery, is when Moses asks God to show him his glory.
- 9:39SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Moses has already experienced the burning bush, where the bush is on fire and he hears God speaking to him out of it, but the bush is not consumed.
- 9:51SPEAKER_00: He has already experienced and seen God inflict one wave of disaster and plague upon the land of Egypt and the people of Egypt.
- 10:02SPEAKER_00: He has already seen God provide water from the rock.
- 10:07SPEAKER_00: He had met God in the tent of meeting, where he experienced the cloud of God's glory descend on the tent and fill it up.
- 10:17SPEAKER_00: He had spoken to God face to face as a man speaks to his friend.
- 10:23SPEAKER_00: And he had been on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights, where he received the Ten Commandments written with the very finger of God.
- 10:33SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of discovery.
- 10:35SPEAKER_00: And for most of us, that would probably be enough.
- 10:40SPEAKER_00: But not for Moses, not for him.
- 10:43SPEAKER_00: After all of this, he dares to ask for more.
- 10:47SPEAKER_00: And we read about it in Exodus 33, 18, where he says, Now show me your glory.
- 10:53SPEAKER_00: Now show me your glory.
- 10:57SPEAKER_00: Show me something that eclipses all the other things that I have seen and experienced by you.
- 11:03SPEAKER_00: Do you hear what he's asking for?
- 11:06SPEAKER_00: Moses wants more.
- 11:09SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad that we see this here because I want more.
- 11:16SPEAKER_00: I want more of God.
- 11:18SPEAKER_00: It's like it gives us permission.
- 11:21SPEAKER_00: God's response is very interesting.
- 11:23SPEAKER_00: We read it about it about it in Exodus 33, 19 through 23.
- 11:27SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord.
- 11:34SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
- 11:35SPEAKER_00: I can't wait till we get to heaven until we hear that name.
- 11:42SPEAKER_00: He says, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
- 11:48SPEAKER_00: But he said, You cannot see my face, for no one may see my face and live.
- 11:53SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord said, There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock.
- 11:59SPEAKER_00: When my glory passes by, I will put you in the cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by.
- 12:08SPEAKER_00: Then I will remove my hand, and you will see my back, but my face you must not see.
- 12:14SPEAKER_00: The drive to discover more drove Moses to ask, to make a bodacious ask of God.
- 12:21SPEAKER_00: Moses is a great example to us of this.
- 12:24SPEAKER_00: He really is.
- 12:26SPEAKER_00: No matter how much you know God, you should always be wanting more of him.
- 12:32SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that you can't exhaust God.
- 12:36SPEAKER_00: There's just no way you can exhaust God with talking to him.
- 12:40SPEAKER_00: I am pretty sure that I would have exhausted him by now with talking to him if I could have, because I talk to him all the time.
- 12:47SPEAKER_00: And he listens all the time.
- 12:50SPEAKER_00: You can't exhaust him in that way.
- 12:54SPEAKER_00: I love that our love for Jesus can go deeper than any other love, and that it does not become idolatry.
- 13:03SPEAKER_00: I love that our experience of God's Spirit is just the very tip of the iceberg, and there is unfathomable things we could experience from the Holy Spirit and through the Holy Spirit.
- 13:24SPEAKER_00: That bodacious ask of Moses led to God revealing more knowledge of who he is.
- 13:32SPEAKER_00: This process of discovery that we are, that you are entering this year with IMOM, and that I'm talking about, is what our human earthly experience is really all about.
- 13:46SPEAKER_00: Jesus is right now, and Jesus will always be the focal point of heaven.
- 13:52SPEAKER_00: That is who he is.
- 13:55SPEAKER_00: We will know all that we need to know, and we will know it perfectly when we are in heaven.
- 14:02SPEAKER_00: But it's here where we do the seeking and the finding.
- 14:08SPEAKER_00: That's where it takes place, is right now.
- 14:11SPEAKER_00: Now is the time that we look and discover who Jesus is and what he can do.
- 14:16SPEAKER_00: This is the time we get to have our breath taken away by glimpses of our amazing God.
- 14:25SPEAKER_00: The amazing thing is that how he reveals himself and deals with us is unique to each and every one of us.
- 14:35SPEAKER_00: I love that.
- 14:36SPEAKER_00: And because of that, we all have our own stories of discovery with Jesus.
- 14:42SPEAKER_00: He's not a one-size-fits-all.
- 14:44SPEAKER_00: He is specific, unique, and intimate with each one of us.
- 14:50SPEAKER_00: Or at least he wants to be.
- 14:52SPEAKER_00: For years I have said that when you discover who God is, you discover who you are.
- 14:58SPEAKER_00: If you want to figure yourself out, your time is best spent discovering who Jesus is.
- 15:04SPEAKER_00: I don't know exactly how that works, but I am telling you experientially, I know that that is true.
- 15:13SPEAKER_00: We discover Jesus most beautifully through the scriptures.
- 15:17SPEAKER_00: Nowhere is Jesus more majestically displayed than in the pages of your Bible.
- 15:24SPEAKER_00: His method of discovery is understanding truth.
- 15:28SPEAKER_00: And it's truth upon truth upon truth upon truth, and that truth develops knowledge, and that knowledge becomes the basis and the foundation for your most precious faith.
- 15:41SPEAKER_00: Our knowledge of who Jesus is should grow more and more and more.
- 15:45SPEAKER_00: That's what the Apostle Paul says in Philippians 1 9.
- 15:48SPEAKER_00: He says, and this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and insight, depth of insight.
- 15:57SPEAKER_00: More and more.
- 15:59SPEAKER_00: That's the directive.
- 16:01SPEAKER_00: That's what he wants.
- 16:02SPEAKER_00: And that's what he wants us to want.
- 16:05SPEAKER_00: We don't just discover Jesus and be satisfied with that knowledge.
- 16:08SPEAKER_00: We should want more and more and more.
- 16:13SPEAKER_00: God in his graciousness has given us a four-part portrait of Jesus in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
- 16:21SPEAKER_00: About 23 years ago, a desperate set of circumstances led me to my knees, drove me to my knees and to God.
- 16:31SPEAKER_00: I was really honest with him, incredibly honest with him, and I told him that I really did not know who he was to a place that it made a significant difference in my life, and I absolutely didn't know who I was.
- 16:48SPEAKER_00: And there may have been a lot few cuss words in that sentence with him.
- 16:54SPEAKER_00: That desperation drove me to scripture, though.
- 16:57SPEAKER_00: I read all four of the gospels and then I read them again and I read them again in a two-month time span.
- 17:06SPEAKER_00: I started each day reading and asking God to reveal himself to me.
- 17:10SPEAKER_00: Please, God, let it make a difference.
- 17:13SPEAKER_00: And it did.
- 17:15SPEAKER_00: Then I read through the whole New Testament and I read it again and I read it again in a three-month time span.
- 17:23SPEAKER_00: What started out as desperation ended up in revelation.
- 17:28SPEAKER_00: God revealed himself to me and it changed me completely.
- 17:33SPEAKER_00: I mean, completely.
- 17:35SPEAKER_00: I read for hours a day and I discovered a Jesus I had never known.
- 17:41SPEAKER_00: The change that came to me from discovering him was astonishing.
- 17:46SPEAKER_00: Jesus was with me through the Spirit as I dealt with some of the difficult issues like sexual abuse from my childhood and not having a good relationship with my mother and feeling very rejected by her.
- 17:59SPEAKER_00: The knowledge and the insight that I received from him changed me completely.
- 18:46SPEAKER_00: In the past 20 years, there's been a shift from Islam to Christianity.
- 18:52SPEAKER_00: Twenty years previous to this, uh the um the shift was from Christianity to Islam.
- 19:02SPEAKER_00: In the past 20 years, that has gone the other way.
- 19:06SPEAKER_00: It has switched.
- 19:07SPEAKER_00: Why this change?
- 19:09SPEAKER_00: A lot of fact factors, actually.
- 19:12SPEAKER_00: But one of them is um is war.
- 19:16SPEAKER_00: War has been relocating people and putting them in a place where they can hear and and understand the gospel of Jesus Christ and come to discover who he is.
- 19:27SPEAKER_00: Another factor is that they people are disenfranchised.
- 19:31SPEAKER_00: Muslims are disenchantised, just disenchantized, did I say that?
- 19:35SPEAKER_00: Franchised with their communities.
- 19:39SPEAKER_00: And they see the Christian community and they compare that and they see how much more life-giving that is.
- 19:45SPEAKER_00: But many, many, for many, that one of the biggest reasons is because they are God is giving them visions of himself, visions of Jesus.
- 19:56SPEAKER_00: They have these visions, they know when they have these visions that it is Jesus who is giving it to them.
- 20:02SPEAKER_00: And he's doing amazing things.
- 20:05SPEAKER_00: Christine Darg, author of The Jesus Vision Signs and Wonders, in the Muslim world says there is an end-time phenomenon that is happening through dreams and visions.
- 20:19SPEAKER_00: Jesus is doing in going into the Muslim world and revealing particularly the last 24 hours of his life, how he died on the cross, which Islam does not teach, how he was raised from the dead, which Islam also does not teach, and how he is the Son of God risen in power.
- 20:37SPEAKER_00: There are many stories of discovery of this, and if if you want to see that, just Google it and you will see all these videos that different organizations have done that explain this phenomenon.
- 20:51SPEAKER_00: But the Muslims who accept Jesus face persecution, discrimination, and sometimes even death.
- 20:58SPEAKER_00: But what they discover of him is so deeply personal to them that they are willing to go to this extreme of helping themselves grow and others grow.
- 21:13SPEAKER_00: The Hindu faith.
- 21:14SPEAKER_00: The Hindus are really very their faith is very mystical in nature.
- 21:20SPEAKER_00: And so dreams and visions don't really work very well with the Hindus.
- 21:25SPEAKER_00: So how is God reaching the Hindus around the world?
- 21:28SPEAKER_00: We recently a couple years ago we had a couple go over there and I asked, What I know how he's working in the Muslim world, but what is he doing in the Hindu world?
- 21:39SPEAKER_00: And she she answered and said, He's doing physical healing.
- 21:42SPEAKER_00: He is giving his people, his servants, his pastors in in India the ability to heal people because it is such a tangible way, concrete way that he works.
- 21:54SPEAKER_00: And when they are healed, they they know that it is Jesus who has done it.
- 22:00SPEAKER_00: So God is at work in huge ways of having people discover Him.
- 22:08SPEAKER_00: Acts 2, 17 and 18 says, In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people.
- 22:15SPEAKER_00: Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams, even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.
- 22:29SPEAKER_00: There's several things that we need to understand about those two verses.
- 22:35SPEAKER_00: First, it's the young and the old, the men and the women.
- 22:39SPEAKER_00: It's everybody.
- 22:40SPEAKER_00: Everyone.
- 22:42SPEAKER_00: God says in the last days, He's going to be working hard to make sure that they discover Jesus.
- 22:48SPEAKER_00: And notice the time in the last days.
- 22:51SPEAKER_00: This takes place in the last days.
- 22:53SPEAKER_00: Now listen to me.
- 22:56SPEAKER_00: The fact that we are seeing this take place around the world today, right now, today.
- 23:05SPEAKER_00: And the fact that he said that this would happen in the last days should wake us up to understand that we are probably in the last days.
- 23:15SPEAKER_00: The third thing we see is who is poured out.
- 23:18SPEAKER_00: It's God's Spirit that is poured out in dynamic ways.
- 23:22SPEAKER_00: And people will be discovering Jesus in powerful ways in this time before the second coming.
- 23:31SPEAKER_00: It's very possible that we are living in the last days of history.
- 23:35SPEAKER_00: And if this is true, and I I really tend to believe it is, then we need to get serious about discovering who Jesus is for ourselves and for our families.
- 23:50SPEAKER_00: If we are living in the last days, then we need to make sure that we get in a position to help others in their discovery of Jesus as well.
- 24:00SPEAKER_00: And how do we get into that position?
- 24:03SPEAKER_00: How do we get in that position to be used by God to help others?
- 24:08SPEAKER_00: I think we first have to get under the spigot that God is pouring out so that we can be filled.
- 24:14SPEAKER_00: We can be filled with a knowledge and be filled to overflowing with the knowledge of who God is so that we can help others.
- 24:22SPEAKER_00: In other words, get in the Bible, the Word of God, and get filled up with the knowledge of who He is so you can pass it on.
- 24:33SPEAKER_00: Our time for discovery is short.
- 24:37SPEAKER_00: Our time for discovery is now.
- 24:42SPEAKER_00: Have some of you discovered that Jesus gives second chances.
- 24:57SPEAKER_00: Have you discovered that Jesus gives wonderful gifts?
- 25:02SPEAKER_00: Have you discovered enough?
- 25:06SPEAKER_00: Or do you want more?
- 25:08SPEAKER_00: Because each discovery should leave us wanting more.
- 25:13SPEAKER_00: Because we have an inexhaustible God.
- 25:17SPEAKER_00: Amen.
- 25:18SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
- 25:20SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you that you are inexhaustible.
- 25:23SPEAKER_00: We thank you that at a set time you sent Jesus to seek and to save the lost.
- 25:31SPEAKER_00: And that was us.
- 25:33SPEAKER_00: At a set time you pursued us until we turned and embraced you, and we give you praise for that.
- 25:42SPEAKER_00: Father, for if there's any in this room that have never done that, I pray that you would set them, their hearts on pilgrimage towards you.
- 25:52SPEAKER_00: That you would you would be wooing them and drawing them.
- 25:57SPEAKER_00: Because knowing you and discovering you is the greatest thing we can ever do in this life.
- 26:06SPEAKER_00: Helping others discover you and reaching out with the hands of Jesus is the second greatest thing we can ever do.
- 26:16SPEAKER_00: God, give us a hunger and a thirst.
- 26:20SPEAKER_00: Give us a bodacious ask like Moses had.
- 26:24SPEAKER_00: Give us what we need to make a difference in this world.
- 26:31SPEAKER_00: Give us Jesus more and more and more.
- 26:37SPEAKER_00: We thank you and we praise you in your most holy and righteous name.
- 26:44SPEAKER_00: Amen.
- 26:47SPEAKER_00: Thank you.