LETTING GO & LETTING GOD
Getting Healthy Again
Matthew 5:5“God blesses those who are meek.”
It takes Meekness to be healthy.
The Bible lists many benefits of meekness.
“The meek shall be satisfied.”
“The meek He will guide and teach.”
“The meek will become wise.”
“The meek will be filled with fresh joy.”
The Greek word for meekness literally means “strength under control.” Meekness describes a wild stallion who was tamed and taught to be ridden. That stallion still has all the strength it had when it was wild but now it is strength under control. It is strength bottled up for the master’s use.
Definition “meek” - let go and let God.
How do you let go and let God?
The Bible tells us you do it four ways. (MEEK)
I. M – Make Jesus the manager of my life.
a. The problem is we want to be the manager of our own lives.
b. We argue and disagree with God
i. The reason why you’re under a lot of stress is that in your mind you’re fighting God.
ii. You think you know better than God so you argue with Him: “I know God says to do this but I want to do this!”
c. Job 22:21 “Stop quarreling with God. If you agree with Him you will have peace at last and things will go well for you.”
d. Romans, 9:21: “What right do you have as a human being to cross examine God? The pot has no right to say to the potter ‘Why did you make me this shape?’ A potter can do whatever he likes to with the clay.”
e. We say, “God, I don’t like the way You made me. You made me too tall or too short, too fat, too skinny. Why didn’t You give me different parents? Why didn’t You give me different talents? I don’t like the way You made me!” And God says, “I made you because I have a unique plan for your life and I made you that way so you can fulfill the plan I have for you.”
f. God says, “I made you and if you’ll let Me, I’ll manage you in a way that makes the most of what I made you to be.”
g. Matthew 16:24, the Message paraphrase, Jesus says, “Anyone that intends to come to Me has to let Me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat. I am.”
h. When we become believers in Christ we say, “Ok, Jesus Christ, You take over the driver’s seat.”
A couple named Curt and Jerrie went on an African safari. They learned a lesson about following the instructions of the guide. One day the guide took them out to find an elephant herd. But he made them promise in advance to obey his rules before they even went out. He gave them some very specific rules. He said, “First, if I say ‘Run!’ you run! Don’t pause. Don’t stop. Don’t take a picture. Don’t think you can hide. Don’t drop to your knees. You run! That’s law number one. Number two, when you run, when I say run, you follow me, the guide, exactly. Put your feet in my footprints. Follow me step by step. Don’t try to forge your own trial. Because in a panic, you’ll, one, get lost in the jungle, or, two, you’ll step on things you wish you hadn’t stepped on. You run when I say run and you follow my steps exactly.” Sure enough they came upon an elephant herd and it stampeded. The guide said, “Run!” and some of the people froze in their tracks from fear, panic. The guide said again, “Run!” Jerrie said at that moment in spite of my fear I had to move forward, I had to go forward. If I hadn’t obeyed I would have been trampled. If I hadn’t followed exactly in the footsteps of the guide I might have stepped on something or I might have gotten lost. The point was, she said, I had to make the decision to obey before I was in the circumstance.”
i. If you wait until you come to the moment of temptation and say, “Am I going to do what God says or not?” you’re already a goner. Spiritual maturity is deciding in advance to obey God
j. “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”
k. “Give yourself to the Lord. Trust in Him and He will help you.”
l. In many ways life is like riding a roller coaster. A roller coaster has got a beginning and an end and between the two are a lot of hills and valleys. There’s some times when it speeds up and there are times when it slows down. And you don’t have control over either of those. Your life is a lot like a roller coaster. What you need to do is you need to let God strap you in to the roller coaster and just go along for the ride.
m. God knows the beginning and the end of your life. He knows, Yes, you’re going to have some flips in life, you’re going to have some twirls, you’re going to have some mountains, you’re going to have some valleys, some fast and slow times. But He’s in control so you don’t need to worry. You need to set back, get strapped in and enjoy the ride. What is that called? It’s called meekness.
n. It’s called letting go and letting God.
II. E – Establish God’s word as the authority of my life.
a. Make God’s word the authority of my life.
b. If you don’t have an authority in your life you’re going to listen to all different kinds of conflicting opinions. Indecision causes stress.
c. If you decide that God’s word is going to be the authority of your life it’s real simple. It simplifies decision making.
d. Why do we have warning signs? To ruin our fun? To make our lives a big bummer? Why? For our own health.
i. We could say, “This is a stupid sign! I know better than this sign.
ii. Or I could say, “This sign is out of date. It was for another time and another age. And it really doesn’t apply to me because it’s out of date, I’m sure.”
iii. I could say, “This sign doesn’t really mean what it says. When it says Stay out, that’s just your interpretation. I interpret the words Stay out as meaning Go right ahead! It’s just your interpretation.”
iv. I could say “I’m sure God would want me to ignore this sign because God wants me to have fun.”
e. A loving God who knows more than you is saying, Here’s the rules for life. If you ignore them you only get hurt.
1. God gave us the Bible to be an authority.
f. God gave us the Bible for four reasons.
i. “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right.”
1. it’s useful to teach us what is true
2. it teaches us what is wrong in our lives
3. it straightens us out
4. it teaches us to do what is right.
g. Why should I follow God’s word? Because it’s dependable. Why is it dependable? Because it doesn’t change. Fads change, opinions change, even science changes. Everything else changes. But God’s word doesn’t change because the truth never changes. And God’s laws don’t change.
h. When Alan Shepherd, who was the first American astronaut in space, was interviewed by a reporter before the first space shot, the reporter asked him, “On what are you depending?” And Alan Shepherd said, “That God’s laws will not change.” Pretty good answer. What if gravity worked every other day? Would that kind of cramp your style?
i. God’s laws are unchanging.
j. David in Psalm 119: “I have made up my mind to obey Your laws forever no matter what.”
III. E – Embrace God’s Spirit as the power for my life.
a. When you take a look at God’s word and what it says and how we’re to live life are there some things on here that seem a little difficult to do?
i. How about the one “Don’t worry about anything.” Is that as tough for any of you as it is for me?
ii. How about “Don’t ever grumble about anything.” Do you ever struggle with that one? If you begin to look through this book you begin to think, “That’s impossible! I can’t love everyone. I can’t do that.”
b. If you’ve ever felt that way, congratulations! You’re in exactly the right spot. Because you’ve realized the power doesn’t come from you, it comes from God. It’s only what God can do. It’s His power that makes the difference. God never asks us to do anything without being willing to provide us the power to do it.
c. Ezekiel 36 “I will put My Spirit in you and I will enable you to live by My laws.” The secret of power in life, the secret of reducing stress in life is living life not by your willpower but by God’s power.
d. Galatians 3:10 says, “Anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure.” One of the reasons you and I face so much stress is we try to do it on our own when God is willing and able to give us the power that we need live life.
e. Meekness is really about two words that we don’t like.
i. It’s about submitting
ii. and surrendering.
f. You’re going to have to submit and surrender to God who knows how to do and can give you the power to do what you can’t do on your own.
g. Because we’ve been hurt in human relationships, people we’ve trusted have let us down. We feel like that maybe we can’t trust God either.
i. Do not let those human relationships that have let you down keep you from trusting the only one who will never let you down.
ii. You can trust Him in any and every circumstance to give you the power that you need. He will never hurt you.
h. We are saved by God’s grace – that’s how we’re forgiven. But we also live by His grace it’s the same grace that gives us the power to live.
i. Galatians 3 “You began your life in Christ by the Spirit. Now are you trying to make it complete by your own power? That is foolish!”
Suppose we got on a 747 headed to Dallas. About halfway to Dallas, up in the air, sitting in my seat I start flapping my arts, trying to help the plane along. That’s ridiculous. But we do the same thing. We try to worry a little bit to help God along. And when life gets difficult, instead of trusting Him more we just flap faster. Some of you are worn out from flapping. Exhausted.
Captain Howard Rutledge was shot down over North Vietnam while flying combat mission. For the next seven and a half years he was a prisoner of war in various POW camps, including the infamous Hanoi Hilton. The conditions were inhumane and unspeakable that he faced. He was tortured repeatedly. He was left in solitary confinement for five solid years. When he was finally released he wrote a book about how he and the other prisoners kept their hope alive entitled In the Presence of Mine Enemies. In that book he wrote, “Nobody can teach you to survive the brutality of being alone in the dark in a filthy, smelly, infested, cramped cell. At first you panic. You want to cry out. You fight back waves of fear. You want to die, confess, do anything to get out of that ever shrinking world. One time I was tortured continuously for twenty-eight days, then put back into cuffs and irons and solitary confinement. I couldn’t move for five days. The humidity was unbearable and I developed heat rash that turned into about sixty one inch boils all over my body. Day after day I sat in my own filth and odor, helpless to the insects and rats that crawled across my body. The sights and smells of death were all around me. But my hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak. I wanted to know about that part of me that will never die, to talk of God and Christ. But in the heartbreak of solitary confinement there was no pastor, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide me and sustain me. All I had was my relationship to Christ. The Bible verse that kept all of us going was “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”
i. Philippians 4:13 “I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me.”
IV. K – Keep Jesus the focus of my life
a. Hebrews 12:2 says “We must keep our eyes on Jesus who leads us and makes our faith complete.”
b. Remember when Peter was walking on water? As long as he kept his eyes on Jesus he’s doing the impossible, what nobody could do. But when he took his eyes off Jesus and he looks down at the water, he sank. And the reason why some of you are sinking today is you’ve got your eyes on your problem, you’ve got your eyes on the circumstance, you’ve got your eyes on the difficulty. You’ve taken your eyes off the Lord.
c. Some of us have spiritual ADD. It’s easier to get spiritually distracted even than physically distracted – to get your eyes off the Lord.
d. Proverbs 25:15 “If I keep my eyes on God I won’t trip over my own feet
e. “Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go. He is the one who will keep you on track.”
For centuries sailors used the Polaris principle. That means they would look for the North Star to navigate across the seas. The reason why they would always keep their eyes on the North Star is because it doesn’t change. They know where it is and they know if that’s where that is and I’m here and there’s where I need to go, they could navigate based on something unchanging in their life.
f. You need a North Star in your life. You need something that never, ever changes.
g. Now you don’t need the North Star, we have GPS units – Global Positioning Satellite Units. You can flip it on and because it’s connected to an unchanging point of reference then I can figure out where I am, where I need to go and how to get there.
h. Everybody needs a GPS for life. And that’s what Jesus Christ is. If you’ll put your focus on Him, He is unchanging.
i. Do you realize you trust your life to strangers every single day? You do it all the time.
A man and his wife were taking a vacation in Northern California. They were going up in the mountains on one of these windy roads where you couldn’t see behind the curve. They got behind one of these long semi trucks. There were about ten or twelve cars lined up behind this truck that was going slow up the mountain and nobody could pass because nobody could see around the curve to see if it was safe to pass. The one guy who could see was the trucker. So periodically he would motion outside his window to “come on around,” and one car would gingerly go around trusting that this guy could see what they couldn’t see. One car after another began to pass this truck. Eventually it came our turn. Here was this arm motioning him around so he pulled out around the truck to go around the curve. He said, “All of a sudden it hit me. I am trusting the lives of my entire family to a total stranger. I don’t know this guy. For all I know he could be on Quaaludes. He could have been up all night. He’s tired, his eyes are blurry, drunk. In fact I have never seen him. All I can see is this burly, hairy arm. I’m trusting a hairy arm with a “Mom” tattoo on it! I haven’t even seen the guy. I’m putting the lives of my entire family on the basis of an arm.”
j. You can’t live without faith. You all have faith, everybody has faith. It’s what you put it in. Why would you not put it in God?
k. Notice the benefits. “The payoff for meekness is plenty and honor and a satisfying life.”
“Don’t be anxious about tomorrow [in other words let go and let God] God will take care of your tomorrow too [let go and let God] Live one day at a time [let go and let God].”
