Responding to God

Well, I told Justin if he would cut his hair like mine, he wouldn't have to wear that hat every Sunday.

He didn't go for that, but we'll see.

We'll see.

In time.

In time.

He may have no option, like I didn't have an option.

It is good to be here this morning.

I am uh beyond honored.

I told my family, I was like, I was praying, God, do not let me cry.

Because I have a tendency to cry.

And um, so even on the way here this morning, I was like, God, let's just get it all out right now.

Um, and so I was backstage singing and I was like crying.

I'm like, okay, God, just let it let it flow.

I don't want to get out there and start bawling and snotting and all that kind of stuff.

But I wasn't gonna say this, but I need to say this.

Um 15 years ago, this spring, um, I told God I wasn't ever doing this again.

And uh it's a whole part of my story of being in ministry for 18 years and being deeply hurt and saying I'm done with all that.

I'm not doing that again.

And um I didn't ask Justin to speak.

And yet I'm standing here.

And I told, I told uh Madison, I said, but God, but God, right?

Like, he.

So I want to tell you, I don't, I don't care where you're at this morning, I don't care what you're dealing with in life, what hurts, what frustrations, what anger, what resentment, whatever may be going on in you.

I want to tell you we have a God who changes things.

So, all right.

Grateful to be here.

My name is Mike DeRoge.

As he said, I've been married for 32 years this August.

I messed that up with uh Justin on Thursday.

I told him 33 years, and I went home and said that to my wife, and she says, We haven't been married 33 years.

Uh 32 years, and um uh love her.

She has been by my side and supported me through thick and thin, and grateful for her.

We have three kids.

Uh my oldest daughter and her family uh live in Louisiana, and they are here this morning.

I'm so excited.

And my son, who is in school in Texas, uh Michael, is here this morning as well, and I'm so excited.

And my youngest daughter, Sydney, didn't think I would shout her out from the stage, but she is a missionary in Guatemala, and she's watching online.

So good morning, Sidney.

So um, we have been going uh in a series, Getting to Know God.

And we've been looking at the life of Abraham in this whole aspect of getting to know God and looking at Abraham's life and his experiences and his encounters with God and what has transpired that helps us to see God better for who he is, but also to help us understand how we might respond to God.

And this morning we're gonna be looking at Genesis chapter 18, uh, verses one through eight, where Abraham has another encounter with God.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

And so I'm gonna be reading that.

I've got to put my glasses on.

Um it says in verse 1, and the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.

He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him.

When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass your servant by.

Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on, since you have come to your servant.

So they said, Do as you have said.

And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah, and said, Quick, three seas of fine flour, knead it and make cakes, and Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly.

Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them.

And he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your word.

Thank you for what it shows us about yourself, and Lord, thank you for what it even teaches us about us.

Lord, help us that we might respond well to you as we look at this passage this morning and understand the life of Abraham.

May we be challenged in all areas.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So as Abraham is sitting there, and it says, in the heat of the day, it says, three men appeared.

Um the passage even starts off, it says, the Lord appeared.

And that that that word there is Yahweh.

God shows up.

God appears to Abraham.

But there's three of them, and there's a big uh lots of discussion on who are these three?

Who are these three people?

There's some who say, um, could it possibly be the Trinity?

Is it is it God the Father?

Is it is it Jesus?

Uh Jesus said, Before Abraham was, I am.

Um and so there's discussions about who exactly it is.

I tend to lean based on some upcoming verses that we'll get into in the coming weeks, as there's two angels it says that go on to Sodom and Gomorrah, uh, that it is God the Father with the two angels.

You may disagree, but here's the part we can agree on.

God showed up.

All right?

God showed up.

And Abraham then responds.

And I want to look at some things that showcase how he responded in that moment when he encountered God.

The first thing is said that Abraham got up and ran towards him.

He ran towards him.

So Abraham moved toward God.

Now think about what we've learned already.

And if you know the story of Abraham, he's not done yet with some of his poor choices, we'll call him.

Right?

He's lied about his wife and said it's his who?

His sister.

And, you know, you can parse that all kinds of ways, but there was a fear-based decision, as we talked about in the previous weeks, right?

And then they even decide, well, God's not doing things in my timing, so let's try to have this kid another way, right?

And so Abraham has not been without some poor decisions.

And sometimes when we make bad decisions and we know we've made bad decisions, it can be difficult to approach God.

You ever have that?

Ever feel that?

Ever struggle with that?

Um, I know that I have.

I know that when there's times in my life where I've made choices that, ah, I wish I hadn't done that, or I know I should be doing something different or better.

That to move towards God can be a challenge.

But even in spite of all those things with Abraham, it says he ran towards God.

The next thing says that he humble is that he humbled himself.

It says that he bowed before him.

He humbled himself before God in bowing before him.

And then he welcomed God into his presence.

He said, If I found favor, come spend, come into come into my home.

Let me do for you.

And so he welcomed God's presence.

The next thing is that Abraham gave God his best.

It's interesting to me, and I don't know that Abraham would have been thinking this or not, but he brought him the best of his grain and he bought him the best of his flock.

Do we remember a story in Genesis prior to this where there was an issue of not bringing God your best?

Cain and Abel, if you might recall, we've we experienced that situation of bringing God your best.

And Abraham brought God his best.

And the last thing I notice in this passage is that Abraham served God.

They prepared a meal and he served God.

And so then the question as we look at that passage and think about our own lives, how is it then that we might respond to God when we have an encounter with Him?

And so I want to share some things with you that I think we can look at what Abraham did and how he responded, and how in turn we might be faced with the same opportunities, and we have a choice.

A choice in how we respond to God.

So as we look at the fact that the first thing that Abraham moved towards God, how would we respond?

The issue is that we might move towards God or we might move away from God.

To move towards God or move away from God.

And as I've just mentioned, there can be times in our life where we're struggling, uh, where there's things going on where to move towards God can be a challenge.

So the question is, will we move toward him or will we move away from him?

God is God is present, God is at work.

And here's the reality: every day we're making a choice.

Every single day we're making a choice about how we will encounter God.

The second thing is, will we approach God in humility or will we approach God in pride?

Will we humble ourselves before Him?

Will we recognize who He is and who we are and humbly come before God?

Or can pride get in the way?

One of the challenges I think sometimes too is that we sometimes can misinterpret pride.

Sometimes when we think of pride, we just think of maybe the arrogant person.

But did you realize that when you're self-loathing, that's also pride?

That it's also elevating myself, making myself more important, what's going on in me or things about me become more important?

And so the question is: how will I move towards God?

In humility or in pride?

Will I welcome his presence or will I reject or move away from his presence?

Well, I welcome his presence.

And you might say, hey, I last I checked, God's not like visibly walking by my house, like he's not showing up.

But here's the reality: Scripture tells us that if you're a follower of Christ, if you've put your faith in Christ, that the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead now lives in you.

So if the Holy Spirit is living within you, God is present.

God is there, He is with you.

Will you welcome that presence or will you reject it?

You know Scripture also says that we can quench and grieve the Holy Spirit.

So there's this whole aspect of what will we do when it comes to God and experiencing God and encountering God in our life?

Will we give him our best or will we give him good enough?

In this day and age, there's so much going on.

There is so much distraction.

There is so much that's demanding of our time, that's demanding of our resources, that giving God our absolute best is a great challenge.

I think sometimes that this idea, when I put it, I put, at first I put our leftovers.

But I think for many of us, we don't ever necessarily think, oh, I'm giving God my leftovers.

But I do think there's an aspect where we get into a mindset of giving God something that's good enough.

Abraham went to the flock and he could have just said, Yeah, that one will do.

Right?

He could have said, Yeah, just pick one of those.

Any of them will do.

Because I am, he, he, I am giving, I am providing in that moment.

Just as we talked about with Cain and Abel, right?

It's not that he didn't give to God.

He gave to God.

It's not that Abraham didn't serve God, but he had a choice in what he gave to God.

And I think so much with all the demands that come at us in this day and age, I just I think it's so easy to give God just good enough.

And I don't say that to put a guilt trip on us, I put it, I say that to say we have to, we have to step back and reflect on what's going on in life, what's most important to me.

As I was thinking about being up here and thinking about even like uh my job, I work in the furniture business.

I have for the last 13 years been over operations for a furniture wholesale company.

And we sell furniture to furniture stores across America, mostly the Southeast.

And I'm just so grateful for the job that I have.

Because one of the things that we say at work is uh we're more than furniture.

And we say that because we understand that our ultimate purpose is to glorify God.

We do it selling furniture.

And it really doesn't matter what you do or who you are, your ultimate purpose is to glorify God.

And so no matter what you're doing, that's just the means in which you get the opportunity to bring glory to God.

You could be selling furniture or you could be standing on the stage.

And either way, you can bring glory to God.

And in the midst of that, will that be our choice?

Will our choice be to give Him our best and bring Him glory in everything that we do, in all that we do?

And then it says Abraham served God, which sees us kind of the last thing for us in the parallel of this.

Will we serve God or will we serve ourselves?

What's first, what's most important to us?

As I mentioned, um, I was in ministry for 18 years, prior to the 13 years of selling furniture.

And I was in various roles.

And my wife and I got married while we were in college at a little bitty college called East Texas Baptist University.

Yeah.

And um we got married, and I was already serving in youth ministry.

Here's some crazy stuff.

I was, I had just turned 20, and I was a youth pastor of the high school, and so there were kids a year and a half younger than me that I was taking on trips in the church van, 15-passenger van driving all over.

And I'm thinking, I can't, I look back and think, I can't believe those parents let me drive their kids all over the place.

Like we went to a beach retreat in Florida from North Texas.

Just me driving them, you know.

And I'm like, wow, I don't I don't know if you could do that today with parents.

I I don't know if they would let them, their kids go with a 20-year-old.

But we were in ministry and we had a wonderful experiences uh at that church that we served while we were in college, and we graduated, and then we moved to Dallas, where I went to seminary, and she started teaching, and we served as I served as a youth pastor in that church, and uh we loved our time there, and just it we experienced God working and moving, and it was just a great, wonderful experience.

And uh when I finished seminary, we ended up moving to Louisiana, which is where I'm from, Go Tigers.

Um, I mean, if you can say Duke, I can say go tigers, right?

So um we moved to Louisiana to serve at a church there, and that was a crazy experience because I started out as youth pastor and took the youth on a trip skiing, and we came back one night, and uh the pastor said, Hey, we're having an emergency uh meeting.

This is on a Wednesday night.

We're having an emergency business meeting.

If you're having a business meeting in a Southern Baptist church, it's usually not a good thing.

I'm just gonna tell you.

And sure enough, I said, Well, okay, but I'm going home to sleep.

We literally just pulled in the parking lot and he said, he said, Oh, no, no, no, no.

He said, it's important.

He said, I'm resigning tonight.

I said, like tonight?

Like, like gonna be here tomorrow?

Yep.

Um, and so within a matter of weeks, I went from youth pastor to pastor in that church.

And it was crazy because that was a moment where I just like, God, what in the world are you doing?

And yet he moved and worked through that.

And boy, I'm stretching this story out.

So let's keep moving.

Um, we ended up from there moving to the Northwest.

Um, and I guess let me preface it with this all of our experience in ministry had been amazing.

Experienced good uh good times with wonderful people.

We had seen God work and move and grow the ministry, all these things.

And we moved to Oregon because we wanted to be a part of just church planning.

And um, so I went to my I went to my wife in Louisiana one day and I said, Hey, what do you think about moving to Oregon?

She goes, What?

Now we had just gone through Dave Ramsey and gotten debt-free and done the whole, woo-hoo, debt-free, you know, and she's like, No, we're not moving to Oregon.

And and yet, just a few months later, we're moving to Oregon.

And we're moving to Oregon, and we had an apartment rented that we had never seen, and I did not have a job.

Um, so wives, stick with your husbands.

It'll be okay.

Um, trust me.

Um and it was a challenge.

But we still saw God work and we saw God move, but then something happened.

The great philosopher Mike Tyson once said, everybody's got a plan till they get punched in the face.

And see, my plan had been working out beautifully.

I'd gone and got my bachelor's degree at Bible college.

I'd gone to seminary and got my master's degree, and I was serving in the church, and ministry was growing each and every place, and it was good, and God was blessing, and it was going perfect.

Until it wasn't.

And I got punched in the face.

Because the church that I was serving at ended up having some things that transpired that for the first time in my life, I had my question, my character questioned.

For the first time in my life, I had had things said about me like in a widespread public way that were not true.

Not that I ever never had anybody lie about me, but like it was a 12-page letter to the entire congregation on about me.

And I resigned on a spot.

And then the spiral began.

Because the truth of the matter is when we get punched in the face by life, our faith is challenged.

Our faith is challenged.

It's in those moments that we begin to go, huh?

God, can I trust you?

God, I know you're good, but are you good to me?

It's kind of, have you heard the phrase from the New Testament?

I think Mark chapter 9, where the guy said, I believe, help my unbelief.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

God, I believe you're real.

I believe you're all-powerful, I believe you're all these things.

But where my doubt comes in is, will you be those things to me?

Will you be those things for me?

And now I'm starting to question.

You might do it for somebody else, but I don't know.

I don't know.

And here's a guy who's been in ministry all these years starting to question the goodness and faithfulness and the trustworthiness of God.

Because hard times came.

And we moved back to Louisiana.

And I thought, what better for a guy to do who's struggling with the goodness and faithfulness of God than to try to start a church?

That's what he should do.

You should be laughing because in a in not a good way.

There's a lot of things getting.

Started in the name of Jesus, and there is not health behind it, I'm telling you.

And I was not healthy and had no business doing that.

Guess what happens when you're not healthy and you tried doing something in Jesus' name that wasn't in Jesus' name?

Right on my face.

That didn't last but a year or two.

I don't know, babe.

You'd have to, I'm horrible with time frames.

So that folded, and then I went into deep depression.

Anyone ever dealt with depression?

You know, if you've never had depression, you kind of dismiss depression.

You know what I'm saying?

You kind of like, yeah, I know you're down, but like, uh.

But when you've really been there, when you've been in the depths of despair, when it feels dark and there's no hope or no way out, when it feels overwhelming to you, man, it'll give you some new perspective on depression that you ain't never had before if you never dealt with it.

And I went into a deep depression.

We lost our house, and we moved in with our three kids and our rather large Doberman into an RV down by the river.

It wasn't a van, but it was an RV down by the river.

I've never felt like such a failure in my whole life.

I never questioned God more.

I mean, I've lost everything.

My family's living in an RV.

We left our house.

And I'm thinking, what were their my kids think of their dad?

Only to find out years later, they were like, Dad, we were at the RV park?

We thought that was the greatest thing ever.

We were fishing and going in the paddle boats, and it was just a big, they thought it was a big camping trip.

While dad's over there just soaked down in his depression, feeling like a failure, an absolute failure.

It got so bad, I would I was just going through the motions.

You understand what anybody just gone through the motions of life?

Like, I get up, it's time to make the donuts.

It's the old Dunkin' theme, right?

I get up, I do what I'm supposed to do, I come back home, I get my chair out, I go sit down and sulk until it's time to go to bed, and then I get up and do it all over again and just start running into myself, and it's just I'm just going through the motions.

Because I don't even want to deal with anything.

I became difficult to live with, to the point that my wife and I didn't know if our marriage was going to make it.

Neither one of us wanted a divorce, but I was miserable.

I was hard to put up with.

You know what happens once you're in depression and you're starting to question God, and then you get angry, right?

Because now I'm disappointed with God.

God didn't do what he was supposed to do.

And so now I'm disappointed, so now I move into anger.

And now I'm mad all the time.

I have no patience.

Michael and Kayleigh are here.

Amen.

That's my kids.

No patience.

No patience.

I mean, I was mad like that.

Was distant, didn't want to be engaged.

Anybody.

And thank God, by the grace of God, some friends that we went to school with ran a program here in Woodstock, Georgia.

For pastors who were worn out, struggling, burnout, had failures, oh, you name it, all kinds of stuff.

And we, my wife just had updated them on where we were at.

They said, it sounds like you guys need to be in this program.

But I was in such a state that they reached out to me to go, um, we need y'all to come up here and visit because we got to find out if you if you even really would fit.

And when I say you, I mean me.

Because you got to be ready to change, you gotta want to change.

And if you aren't ready and want to change, you just wasted everybody's time around you.

So they kind of needed to find out does he really, does he want to change?

Is he willing to change?

And I was at a point where I literally was like, I don't know what else to do.

I'm willing.

Because I don't know what else to do.

Because you know what?

I was trying it my way, and it wasn't working.

See, we can push God aside, we can reject God, we can not allow him into our presence, we can we can do all the negative sides of things.

We can do that, we can keep him at that arm's distance.

But the truth of the matter is that's choosing to go our own way.

And I'm telling you that when you go your own way, it never satisfies.

It always leaves you feeling like you're missing out, needing more, not enough.

And that's where I was at.

And I was at that point where I told you when I first came out here, I said, I'm not ever doing that again.

But God is faithful.

We're talking about Abraham being a man of faith.

You can't have faith without someone who is faithful.

God is faithful, He loves you, He finds favor in you.

He has a plan and a purpose.

Will you join Him in that?

Will you choose to set those things that hold you back?

What are some of those things?

I mentioned them in what I just shared with you of my story.

Fear, shame, hurt, disappointment, anger, these are the things that cause us to go, nope, nope, I believe, but yeah, no.

And if we don't move from a place of fear to a place of trust, if we don't move from a place of shame to one of experiencing the love and grace of God and the forgiveness of God, if we don't move from a place of hurt to a place of freedom, we're ultimately it always ends in misery.

It ends in discontentment.

So, whatever you may be going through today, because I want to tell you, our story doesn't end there.

Some of you who have been in my classes with HHU know that we went through all kinds of challenges with our family.

We went through things with our kids, we went through things in our marriage, and we had to work through those things, and we had to fight through those things, and we had to change the way we were thinking, especially me.

And choose, choose to trust God, choose to respond to God in a positive way, choose to understand his grace and his kindness, choose to see his character for who he is and trust his goodness, to receive his love, to understand my helplessness.

So, what are the things?

What are the things that you might be holding on to that keep you from responding to God in a way that allows him to do his best work in and through you?

I've always heard it said, right, that we should hold on to God.

But the truth is if we're holding on to something else, we can't.

We have to let go.

We have to choose to let go and take a step of faith and trust that God has a work to do in our life.

So, what is it for you?

What's that thing that's going on?

And here's the good news.

As we've talked about Abraham, right?

We've talked about Abraham.

He didn't always do it right.

We talked, we said that, right?

He didn't always do it right.

And yet we speak of Abraham as a man of faith.

Your failures do not have to define you.

I was talking with a young man at work last week.

And he said, Man, every time things start to go good, something bad happens.

Every time things start moving in the right direction, something bad happens.

And I said, Bro, I said, these are the moments that are gonna define you.

Let me tell you from my own story, these are the moments that are gonna define you.

You're gonna go back into this cycle of unbelief, this cycle of frustration, this cycle of anger, this cycle of bad choices, unless you decide and determine today.

I will keep pursuing God.

I will trust, I will hold on, I will fight because victory, the good is just around the corner.

And so many times we give up before we get around the corner.

Don't give up.

No matter how hard it is, no matter how frustrating it may feel, no matter when you wonder, God, where are you?

He is there.

Don't give up, don't give in.

What we're desiring and hoping for is just around the corner, and it's probably not going to be anything like we expected or we thought.

I never dreamed I would be standing right here 15 years ago.

Never dreamed it.

But boy, does God have a way of doing things that are way beyond our comprehension and understanding.

Amen?

He is good.

Even when life is hard, he is good and he's worth trusting.

I feel like every time, I don't feel like, I believe, every time we come here, we have an encounter with God.

Because where two or three are gathered in his name, there he is in their midst.

The Spirit of God lives within each one of us who have professed our faith.

God is here every time we come.

And so I wonder in this series where we're getting to know God, what is it?

What encounter have you had with God?

Now you can't be like that guy that the church I grew up in.

He went to the pastor after service and told him how many ceiling tiles were in the ceiling.

But sometimes, if we're not careful, we can walk out of here and we have not thought about, we have not engaged, we have not encountered God because we're too busy thinking about a million other things.

The phone buzzing in our pocket, who is that?

Right?

Is Justin gonna wear a hat again?

I don't even know that worship song.

Why are they singing that one?

Finally, they say three songs I really like.

Like we can get caught up in all these things, and yet God's saying, hey, hey, hey, I have something I want to tell you.

I have something I want to show you.

So over the last number of weeks, this is just for my own notes.

This isn't what specifically what Justin said or Fred said when he spoke.

Like this, these are the things that I gained from my notes.

So if you put that up there for me.

These are the weeks we've been in this series, right?

I'm just gonna, just a few of them.

God knows you.

What's your response?

Seek to know him.

Right?

God is not afraid.

Remember when he told us that?

God's not afraid.

And if God's not afraid, you do not have to fear.

He constantly tells us, do not fear.

God is good.

Do good.

God sees you and knows you by name.

You can trust him.

You could choose to trust him.

God, Jesus is the priest king.

You can boldly go before God.

These are just some of the things, takeaways from what we gather each and every week.

How will you respond to God?

What's going on in your life?

Let's take the Lord's Supper.

This thing done went red on me.

That means shut up.

I don't know you, but I can tell you because of the work God's done in my life these last 15 years.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

And I care about you.

I know what it is to walk a hard road.

I know what it is to feel like a failure as a husband, a father, a man.

But I know what it is to walk through that valley and experience God in the midst of it.

And Him love you.

Love you through it.

He is worth it.

He's worth it.

And I know I don't know you, but I say this at all my HHU classes.

If I can help you in some way, if I can spur you on, if I can encourage you on that journey, I'm available.

I travel a lot for work, so it might be by text.

But I'm available because I care.

We love because he first loved us and gave himself the sacrifice.

Heavenly Father.

I never thought I'd be standing right here.

But you are good.

You are so good.

You are faithful.

And you loved us enough to take care of all our foolishness.

Thank you, Jesus, for giving yourself, for giving your body as a sacrifice for us in Jesus' name.

Take the bread.

We say thank you.

Let us not take this moment for granted.

But we remember what you've done for us.

For the amazing, amazing grace showcased on that cross.

Thank you.

For your body given and your blood shed in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, I know Madison is going to come back out to finish this up, but I say this to you choose him.

Choose him.

Let's say thanks to Mike.

Thank you, Mike.