Journey of Hope | Week 2

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.

I think my body, my mind's almost caught up with my body. So

the place that we were just a few days ago, it's

09:00 p.m. Right now. So I was up at about three this

morning. So I'm finishing my day, so I'm doing

all right. Yeah. This trip that I got to

take here last week, last couple of weeks,

I took my nine year old Jack with me,

and that was a really awesome experience,

if you've been tracking with me at all. We went and

supported this group in Thailand

there at the end of the year, last year, November 1 December.

And his twin sister Darcy went with

us, and she loves watching kiddos. And so she went

and she did childcare during these meetings. And

when we did that, I was like, all right, jack, man, I've got this trip

coming up in March, and I want you to go with me. And

your superpower, her superpower is watching the kiddos. Your superpower is making

people laugh. So just get ready, and if you've been around him, you know,

he will at least attempt to make you laugh.

And it was really interesting, for one, just

because it's worth sharing. And he's not in here. Sometimes he's in here and he's

not today. For the longest, twins are

just interesting to me. So for the longest, he didn't really

talk. He just didn't really want

to walk. None of the things. He just let his sister

tie his shoes. Like, all the things, she just fills all the space and he

just is kind of there and you remove her from the equation and,

boy, he was out of control. I just didn't know he had that much

personality. He was big as life and seemed to manage

all the things pretty well. It's interesting because for

them, our family, their two older brothers, who are now

21 and 18, we lived in this

place in South Asia for three years, from 2007 to 2010.

And so we've got all these experiences, and we've got these

pictures, and I go often, and so they hear me talking

about it, but they haven't personally experienced it. And so

it was pretty cool because this trip in particular, we went back and did some

of the things, and we're around some of the areas that he's heard stories

about. And one of those things, there's this place

way up in the mountains, really beautiful place

where we would go, and there's a school there where we would learn language, do

a little bit more language intensive. And it

is. It's a five hour passenger train ride up

in the mountains. And then you get in a taxi, and there's these little

windy little roads that you get up there to where the school is, and then

up there, it's basically, you're walking everywhere, and it's just real steep little trails

and things. And at the top of that hill, there's this place

where there are four stores, and in a local language that's

called Char Ducan. And the four stores basically

sell the same thing, which is something that I always think is kind of funny.

How do you compete when there's. Anyway, it's an interesting

little setup, and one of them

has chocolate pancakes. Now,

I know that's probably not what you expected me to say. There's a lot of

really good food that's very. But this place does a

pancake, like, I can't even explain to you. I'm not even sure if

it's like, if you would call it a pancake. It's like, folding

over the side of your plate, and it's about that thick. I'm sure they

use, like, maybe some cake batter or something, because it's not just your normal

pancake. It's chocolate, and it's got chocolate syrup, and it's got

chocolate chips. And one of the things I was really excited about was

to get back to this place. I knew we were going to be nearby and

have this chocolate pancake. The people there are so welcoming and

so nice, and this pancake's incredible. The one sad thing about it,

Jack doesn't eat chocolate. So I was trying to introduce

him to this beautiful thing, and because he doesn't like chocolate, he just kind of

didn't really appreciate it. We got him a banana pancake, and now, I found out

all he wants is banana pancake. So he did at least get to experience it

a little bit. But I promise you

that I'm not just pulling your leg like that place actually

exists. Sometimes I wonder when I tell stories, like, I'll talk to somebody later. Are

you just making that story up? I promise you I could take you

there right now. Now, I've got other witnesses. You could

ask Jack. He's experienced it. We even got some pictures while we're up there. So

I could say, hey, this is what this place looks like. And I could introduce

you to this place and tell you that it's there, that it exists, and

that the people there are pleasant and would invite you in and take care of

you. Well, but it's still going to be my experience.

And at some point, for you to experience it, you would have to have

the belief that it's there. And that it's so incredible that it is

worth the two hour flight to the two hour flight to the 16 hours flight

to the five hour train ride to get to that place and

enjoy that pancake. Now, I'm not saying you should do that because it's not

that good, but it's pretty close. But in the

same way, this question that we're going to be dealing with this morning is,

is God even real? Does he exist

and does he care? Does he want to be known and want to be

involved in what's going on and in your life? And

I feel as I've prepared for this morning and thought about this for several weeks

now that a bit like that. I can tell you how incredible it

is. I can tell you the experiences that I've had, the reasons

why, man, I love him

so much and want to know him so badly. But that would be my

experience. And I think a critical part of this is

just the invitation. So I'll kind of start with the end in mind here. The

invitation for you to believe

it. And then what does it mean if you

actually believe that? What

actions, what perspective

is an automatic knee jerk to the

belief that there is a real God and that

he wants to be in relationship with you? Because those implications

are pretty massive. And

if I go back in my journey a little bit. It was

fall of 1997. Terry and I had just gotten married that

summer. The next semester of my

junior year had started. We were in a full swing of

football practice and games. In a kind

of a strange, peculiar set of events. This guy gets my name

and calls me up and asks me to go grab some chinese food.

And in this town that we were in, there was no good chinese

food, but he was buying, and I was a college

student that was just married. And so I was going to let him buy my

lunch especially. He was talking about some Jesus stuff and some Bible

studies, and I had been to church enough that I was willing to

go let him buy my chinese food and talk about Jesus for a little bit.

And so we get there and I'll just say,

God has really used this guy. Now he lives in

northwest Arkansas, and we still meet together. He has continually

used him. And as I try to process what is

it that was different in this encounter and the

way that this guy had approached truths about God than

anybody before that? Because I had grown up around church, my parents

faith is vibrant. And so when I meet this

guy, it's not that I didn't know things, and it's not that he

necessarily taught me any new information that I didn't know. Maybe little bits,

but I had pretty much gotten the big picture. But what

I found out was much of that was a hand me down

kind of faith. I had it, but I

hadn't really thought that deeply about it, been that thoughtful

about it. And most of these interactions with

this guy, as we were looking at passages or we were talking about different things,

passages of scripture or talking about different things, he brought me

to a decision point. If

this is true, then this is the automatic reaction to that

truth. If there is a God that exists

and he created everything, he created you,

then the reaction to that is to worship

him. Big right, and to give him the worship that

he deserves. It affects my things that I

do, the things that I don't do. I mean, if that is true, what

pursuit could be greater than to

pursue to know that living God, if eternity is

real, if it really isn't just we live and we die and we go back

into the ground. And if there is this everlasting life

that also had massive impacts on my moments,

my days, my minutes right now,

if this Bible really does contain

answers and truth, then my

pursuit of knowing it, of memorizing it, of

meditating on it, it becomes not

just a kind of side hobby, it becomes a

core pursuit for me. It just felt like

every time I get around this guy, even today, it's like these decision

points. Instead of being on the

roundabout and just continuing to drive in a circle. This is something

I've noticed that's happened a lot in northwest Arkansas. Now we're

getting these roundabouts everywhere. In fact, somebody the other day showed me a picture of

a car that was trying to take it and was going too fast and slipped

and ended up in the ditch. And I don't know if you've noticed

this, but people don't know how to do roundabouts. They

don't. I think we're getting better at it, as if I'm judging us as a

whole. Now that they're everywhere, people tend to do better at

we. When we were living overseas, roundabouts were a commonplace.

And big, huge roundabouts, too. I'm talking. There would be,

like eight or nine different offshoots from this big

roundabout. And Terry and I were laughing about this last night on this

trip. I was with this younger person who was living there, and he just

finally, it's like, it hit him. He's like, man, because we're driving and we're using

Google maps, and he says, man, when you

guys lived here, you didn't have a smartphone, did

you? And I said, man, actually we

didn't. And he's like, well, how did you navigate driving around

this megacity with all the roads and all the things? I was like,

man, we had a paper map.

And let me explain what it looked like. It was called an iker, and it

was about this thick, and it was the whole city. But then there would be

a page that was know zoomed in on one part of

the city, these few streets right here. And Terry would sit

in the passenger seat, and she would try to work the book and

figure out where we were going, and I would drive. And

it became commonplace that the boys in the backseat would say, oh,

daddy, another uturn, dad. Because we would make so many

uturns. And I love roundabouts because

we could just get on a roundabout and just keep on

circling, and we could look at the book and try to figure out which one

of these offshoots we were going to take, and we could be on that roundabout,

y'all. No joke. I mean, there were some times we wrote a roundabout a long

time, but that was okay because we weren't making a mistake.

We weren't going the wrong way. We're just hitting pause

while we tried to make the right decision. And I feel

like on some of these things that are just true and people of

faith, me, sometimes we get in this place that we're just

on the roundabout. We don't want to

commit too much and make some sort of wrong decision.

We don't want to think that deeply about the difference

between what is true and what is false. And so sometimes

we can just kind of get on the roundabout and write it. And when I

met this guy, I think that's exactly where I was on most of the

things of faith. I was just on the roundabout kind of

holding my ticket to heaven and waiting it out, and then really

making most of my decisions just based on what felt good to me or what

made sense to me. And he just wasn't going to put up with

it. He brought me to these decisive moments

where I had to decide whether I believe this stuff reals or

not. And proverbs says this, it

says verse 20, I mean, chapter 23, verse

23, buy

truth and don't sell it. Buy

wisdom, instruction and understanding.

Buy truth and don't sell it. When you

find truth, you hold on to it with

everything that you've got. You look for it,

you search for it. And when you find that something is true,

you respond to that with a death

grip. And one of the things, just as

an example, one of the things that I found true is

that if this good news that we have the

gospel, if there really is a creator God and

he really does want to know us, and this thing that we're celebrating

in a few weeks, that man, he sent his son

God in the flesh, the image of the invisible God,

he displayed the character and the nature of God before us,

and he gave up his life and then he was

resurrected from the dead. And my faith in that,

your faith in that is possible to make me clean of my sin and

righteous before God. And in that faith I can know him

and be in relationship with him. If that's true,

that good news demands to be told,

it demands to be proclaimed. It can't be something that

I just say, oh, I believe this, but I don't really ever talk

about it. I kind of keep it hid that I believe it. If I believe

that that's true and it's the answer and hope for me for life

and peace, and it's the answer and hope for you, and it's the answer and

hope for the whole planet,

then I can't keep that quiet.

In Romans, chapter one. I love the way that Paul says

this. I am not ashamed of this good

news. I'm not ashamed of this

truth. For it is the power of God for

salvation to everyone who believes. For in it

the righteousness of God is revealed, beginning and ending

from faith to faith, as it is written from

Habakkuk, the righteous shall live by

faith, that this righteousness is possible from God

by faith, and that this good news is the very power of

God. And I'm not ashamed of it. In fact, I can't stop

talking about it, and I believe that it's powerful,

that it can't be stopped. There's this

poet that I listened to a few years ago, and

he talks about this and know the gospel is like a

lion. You don't have to really help it out.

You just have to unlock the cage and unleash it.

That's what I believe about truth. And I think that's what

Paul's talking about here with the gospel. It is the very power of

God. It leaves no doubt. It just needs

to be let out. And so I don't have to do any great

sales job, or I don't have to beat anybody over the head

with something. I can simply let the truth reveal

itself and ask the questions

that demand to be asked.

The truth doesn't have to be argued or defended,

just experienced. And

this truth about who God is, I love the

fact that I can be in a conversation. And I

watched this guy that was helping me

the first time. He took me to a college campus, and he

started to talk to somebody about Jesus. I got real

scared, and I thought, man, this is making me uncomfortable, and I don't want to

be at this table, and I don't want to be around this guy. And then

I started to figure out that what he did was very different than what I

had experienced in the past. Basically, he

had this conversation where both people were offering up their

questions about God and offering up the way

that they understood things worked. And both sides, both he

and the person that he was talking to, were offering up questions to

one another to try on these different beliefs and to

see is there truth there. Because, again, truth reveals

itself. The power of God doesn't need any help.

And so I kind of have always just taken that

there is a lot of incredible truth. In fact, I was thinking about this this

morning. I've got this bracelet I've been wearing for a while now, and on it,

you can't even hardly read it, but it says asatoma

Sadgamaya. And that's

in the dialect of India. And what it's saying is,

pursue truth or

God, please take me to truth and away from untruth.

And it's a part of a chant that's been said in India for a long,

long time. And that statement, that

prayer, wouldn't you say that prayer as

well? Oh, God, please lead me to

truth and away from

falsehood. And so in my personal devotion, this

has just become a part of my prayer, my day in and day out.

It's something that I want to ask for, that I would know the difference between

truth and untruth, and that he would lead me to

truth. And so

I challenge you with that. If truth is

something you buy and you don't sell,

then you go looking for it and you ask all the questions.

And so when it comes to this question of is God real?

In Romans chapter one, a little bit further on, it says, for the

wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness

and unrighteousness of men, who, by their

unrighteousness, suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God

has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely

his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly

perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things

that have been made so that they are without

excuse. So God

has revealed himself.

This intricate design of the universe points to

a creator God. And the deeper you get into

science, the deeper you get into whatever study you want to go after,

the deeper you get, the more it reveals that there is this

crazy, intricate design and this insane amount

of very detailed nature of

creation, and it points to a creator.

And he says he's revealed himself. It's interesting, all the things that it calls out,

his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power, his divine nature.

And it has been clear. It is

there. It is plain,

not complicated, to the point that he says, there's no

excuse, and you could travel the world over,

and people have noticed this. That's the

reason why there's a natural tendency to worship

something, because you look at creation and you go,

man, this didn't just happen.

One of the things that happened with Jack, we're driving through this crazy

hustle and bustle of a city, and there's a cow right in the middle of

the road. And he's not used to seeing cows in the middle of the road

anywhere, much less in the middle of a big city.

And so we had to talk about, why is this cow in the middle of

the road? And it's been a big, huge

learning thing for me to get that these ancient cultures, a

native american culture, you go where you want to. This

cow, for an ancient civilization, this

cow provides milk. This cow

provides dung that's used for heat,

both to warm yourself, but also to cook your food.

This cow is a provider of the things that the culture

needs. The river is also worshipped, and the

river, it provides water to the land to grow the

crops that provide the food. And if you look at it, you go, yeah, it

would be very easy to look to these things and to go, oh, these things

are providing for me. These things are my

God. And to miss the fact that there is a God

that created those things, right? And so that's what he

says here. This is the natural tendency that people move

from man. It's clear it's there,

but they begin to suppress the truth

and push it down. It goes on to say in verse 21, for although

they knew God, they did not honor him as

God or give thanks to him. That would be the natural reaction.

He's revealed himself. The reaction would be man to,

yes, I want to worship this God. I want to honor him. I want to

give thanks to him for all that he's done. But instead, they

became futile in their thinking, again, suppressing

truth. And their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to

be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of their mortal

God for images that look like mortal man

and birds and animals and creeping things. This is another

thing. Probably the first time that Jack has ever seen an idol, a

statue that is there to

represent something that I give my worship to. And this is what we

do. Mia, maybe you don't have a wooden statue or a

metal statue in your house that you're giving worship to or

that you're focusing your attention towards, but

we give our attention to the things that we think provide for us.

Maybe it's the worship of a job or a relationship

or something beautiful that God, creator

God, has given to you. But instead of giving

him the honor, instead of giving him the thanks, you've begun to worship

the thing that you can see, that you can touch, that you can feel,

that you begin to forget that he's

the one that provided it. Truth is

this incredible God has revealed himself and wants to be

known. But we're real quick to just reduce it to

idols and not to worship him in all that he

is. I don't know what that is about us. I don't know if it's just

too big to get our mind around this element of faith

that we can't fully get in. So there's this distance between what we

know and what's plain to us and what is unknown. And so

that distance, that faith that it requires is really

difficult sometimes, I think when the tough things

of life come, I know this has been true for us. I mean, the

tough things make me stop and go, is he really

involved? Is he really even there?

When is he going to show up? Or where did he go? Which is

interesting, really, because from the perspective of now, being a

parent, I know that I have

a tendency and a desire to protect my children from every

possible bad thing that could happen to them in every hardship and

everything. I don't want to have any scrapes or bruises. I don't want them to

have to get their feelings hurt. I don't want any of the tough stuff. I

want all the easy stuff. And at the same time, you and I both

know that a life with no bumps and bruises, a life with

no tough stuff, results in a very weak person.

That it is the tough stuff that grows them. It is the

difficult things that make them strong. And when it comes to

faith and believing in this big God, it is the hardest

times. I bet we could share stories. This morning I look back

at the hardest times and coming through those, those are the moments that that faith

muscle for us. For me, that's when it grew.

If you look at Hebrews, the chapter about faith, chapter

eleven, it says this, and without

Faith it is impossible to please him.

For whoever would draw near to God must believe that

he exists and that he rewards

those who seek him.

Right? He loves faith.

Our faith in him is the thing that God, it makes him happy,

it pleases him. The thing that we can't necessarily see,

the thing that we can't put together on a spreadsheet

for. Whoever would do that though, would draw near to him. Must believe

that he's real. And not only that he's real, but that

he's actively involved and he rewards those who seek

him. He's not know this

chapter. It's interesting talking about the tough stuff because it gives

a list of all these different people, Noah and Abraham

and Sarah and Enoch and all these different people

of faith. And it has this statement in there where it says

they died not having seen the end of their

faith. It's hard circumstance after hard

circumstance. Tough decisions that they made, believing that God was

real in the face. I mean, I can't even imagine what it would be like

to be Noah. Anytime I try to put my mind, I'm supposed to build this

know, and everybody thinks I'm crazy. I'm not so sure I'm

not crazy. I mean, how many days do you wake up and go, man, I'm

going to do this again today. This crazy thing that doesn't make any

sense because I believe and then get to the end of it and not really

ever see the end of that. And

yet these are the moments that these

people made God really happy in the way that they

believed and took action to their faith.

And so I guess that's the question this morning. When you look at

your life, does your life reveal a

person that believes that God exists

and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him? You

know,

I told this story to Jack many times before,

and I don't think he really knew how big the monkeys

are up in this hill place that we went, but they're not little monkeys.

They're like, up this tall,

big monkeys. There's

this story that he's heard me tell about going up to this charducon from

the place that we were staying with his older brothers. And at

Chardukon, I got some mango

juice boxes and some crackers, gave him some snacks,

and we were making our way back down the trail from the

stores. And on the trail, a monkey met us. And I'm

talking about this big, ugly monkey, and he

looked at me and he made his teeth, which

is, let me know I'm coming after you. Be scared of

me. But I was looking at him like, all right, we're fine. They're

behind me. I'm between them and the monkey. He's going to end up going away.

I just need to stare him back down. But then I saw him go like

this and kind of glance over to the side. Oh, no. I

looked over, and there was another monkey over here. And so the two of them

had a plan. I don't know if they were just hanging out, waiting for somebody

to come down the trail. I don't know how thought out their plan was, but

they were definitely about to get my attention and then get the boxes from

the boys. And I had to make a decision

which one of those monkeys I was going to go after.

I couldn't go after both of them.

My point is, I promise there's a point,

is that instead of just being on the

roundabout of faith,

not willing to really make a decision

and go for it, to follow him with your

whole heart, to make known his gospel

with everybody that, you know, an all in kind of thing,

instead of just being on the roundabout and not really choosing and

just standing there in decision.

I'm going to challenge this as we walk through this Easter,

to choose the monkey of faith and to charge it.

Go all in. And that's what happened. I charged this one monkey, and the other

one ran away. But I had to make a decision.

And I think that truth is found in those

moments that we do. We don't just continue to

pretend like two things can coexist.

There is a God. He is real.

He wants to know us. And even went through all the trouble to send his

son to live and to die, to be raised again so that we could be

made clean. He loves us that much, that kind of love. God so

loved the world that big

that y'all demands a response, and not just a half

hearted one, an all in kind of response.

I had a friend one time that I was

sharing these things with that looked

at me and said, man, I think you actually believe this stuff,

which I thought, you know what? You could have talked to me a few

years ago and maybe said the opposite. I'm not so sure you really believe

it. If I spent some time with you,

would I walk away? Say, man, I think this person actually believes

this stuff is real. Not just a Sunday

activity, but that it's real.

It earlier, in Hebrews, chapter eleven

says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for,

the conviction of things not seen.

It's going to require some faith,

even though we can't put all the pieces together.

But man, in that moment of

believing big and following wholeheartedly, our

God meets us there. We have to believe that he

exists, that he wants to and

loves to reward those who earnestly seek

him. Let me pray that we would father, I am

just convicted that

it is easy to get distracted or to

suppress the truth, because

some of these truths require things from me

that may be uncomfortable.

And so it's easy for me to suppress it, to dumb

it down to something that's very manageable for me,

instead of letting the truth

that you exist, that you reward those that earnestly seek you,

letting that be huge in my life,

honoring you, giving thanks to you, not bringing

you down, but in truth, worshipping you and following

you as you really deserve,

proclaiming you as you would with something

that's this good of news.

So, father, I pray that these days, these weeks, building up to Easter, that this

would be a special time where we pull

back all the fog and all the clutter, and we

look at you in truth and we respond appropriately

to your glory.

Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast, and you can learn more about

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the lead pastor at the grove, and thank you so much for joining us.