Good Enough? - Fred Goodwin

Good morning, dear brothers and sisters.

That wasn't very robust.

Good morning, everybody.

This is an exciting day, isn't it?

We're in the midst of all sorts of things.

We we finally get to put on some sweaters.

And uh wow, that alone is pretty cool.

Cool.

Did you get it?

Okay.

Yeah, Justin asked me to uh continue or get back to uh the series we're doing on Galatians, in this series of uh not religion, but Jesus.

And as soon as he asked me, I went, oh boy, I guess I have to share a bit more of my testimony.

I know some of you have heard it before, and you can confirm whether what you remember is what I'm about to share, but it's my story and it sets the stage for why Galatians is such an extraordinary book.

I was raised in an Episcopal church in New England, and I knew a whole lot about religion.

I knew a whole lot about Jesus, but I didn't know about a personal walk with the Savior.

You know, kind of where many of us were in life.

Anybody else in that has been in that situation?

Yeah, lots of us.

Okay.

Uh went to the Naval Academy.

Jill kept waiting until we could finally get married when I graduated, went to flight training.

My entire dream and purpose in life was to be good enough to get into the space program.

And uh it part of that was probably my dad's encouragement, uh, because his nickname for me was Champ for Champion.

And while that sounds sweet and a whole lot better than some fathers, what they called their sons, um that was hard because I came to think, it may not have been true, but I came to think that I always had to win to please my dad.

I always had to be the champion.

It's a tough way to live.

Naval Academy did well, flight training did well, got in the squadron, things were looking good, I was getting the checks in the box, as many of us have to live, to try to get ahead, to be good enough.

But I need to mention to you there was a turning point in that journey, and that turning point happened on April 16th, 1978.

Now I know for some of you in this room that's ancient history, but that date was so significant that I can think about it like it was yesterday.

Just a few months before that, I had been named the nuclear weapons courier of the squadron.

My job at 24 years old was to deliver nuclear weapons.

I tried to resist that, and the operations officer said, No, Fred, you need to accept this because it's going to be good for your career.

And I said, Okay, where do I sign?

But God used that to kind of cause some turbulence on the inside and going, is that really what I am called to do in life?

And I began thinking of something other than the space program, but I didn't know what that something was.

Now, a week before this April 16th comes along, the priest in the Episcopal Church, where we were beginning to get active, came to pay a pastoral visit on his new couple.

He walked in the door of our little starter home in Mira Mesa, California, just north of San Diego, where I was stationed.

He walks in the door and says, You're going to become a priest.

I looked at him and had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, though I had thought about it since I was eight years old.

Everybody had discounted it in my life.

And I'd thought, well, yeah, that must be ridiculous.

I'm supposed to be in the Navy, but now I was really questioning why I would still be in the Navy if it's making me uncomfortable and it doesn't seem to be my call after all.

And here's this guy who I hardly know standing in my house saying, I'm going to become a priest.

So my training, math and engineering, I had to figure out the equation.

Guys, you know what that's like.

You have to figure out the equation.

How does this work?

And that next Sunday, April 16th, 1978, I'm in the folding chairs of an Episcopal church.

I'm on my knees going, oh God, what is going on?

How could he know what I don't talk about with anyone anymore?

You must be real.

You must have told him, but I don't know you.

I need you in my life.

Kalum.

Something happened.

In that moment, I was reduced to sobbing uncontrollably, feeling more joy than I'd ever known in my life.

Colors came alive.

Everything was new in that split second.

Something entered my body that had not been there before.

My wife Jill is on one side, my best friend Bill is on the other, and they're looking at me, sobbing on the floor, going, What's wrong with you?

And all I could think of was, I'm a lieutenant JG in the Navy, and I'm not allowed to cry in public.

I've obviously thought about God so much, I've gone off the deep end.

I've clearly had a nervous breakdown of some kind.

And yet I feel wonderful.

So after the service, Joe went home.

I went to meet with the pastor, the priest, and I said to him, What happened to me?

He smiled.

You know how pastors do when they think they know everything?

That smile.

He says, Oh, Fred, the Holy Spirit just entered your life.

And I screamed at him, What does that mean?

Which is pretty pathetic.

I was raised in the church.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

So he replied with, You've got a Bible, don't you?

I said, Yeah.

He said, Read it.

I said, Read what?

It's a big book.

He said, Read Luke, Galatians, and Ephesians, and you'll understand.

I went, okay.

So I go home.

And God then sent me to sea for the better part of the next year.

And what did I do?

Well, sure, I was a backseater in carrier-based aircraft.

Sure, and everybody thinks, oh, that's really cool.

Yeah, you average a flight about once every three or four days.

What did I do all the rest of the time?

I studied Luke, Galatians, and Ephesians.

Luke, I mean, oh, how can you not fall in love with Luke?

He wasn't an apostle.

He wasn't even a Jew, but a doctor who went back and interviewed people about this Jesus character.

And uh, yeah, because he was a doctor, he got into real specifics, interviewed some of the right people, including Mother Mary.

And uh, yeah, we got a great gospel about his relationship with women, his acceptance of Romans.

I mean, he seemed to love everybody.

You know, who is this Jesus?

He loves the blind, he loves the lame, he loves people who have died and brings them back to life.

I mean, who could not love this Jesus that I'm starting to get to know personally?

And I read Ephesians, and I have to admit, you have to work real hard to not love Ephesians.

The book is amazing.

I've known people who have come to faith just from that one little book.

I mean, you learn about who you are in the Lord and his blessing and who we used to be in our old selfish ways, but who we are now, and that God loves us, and Ephesians is so wonderful.

And then I got to Galatians.

Galatians?

Paul is clearly upset with the world.

He's angry at these people.

He's saying, Who has bewitched you?

He he brings a he calls a curse on those who are presuming to be sharing a different gospel.

He even in the letter explains how he called out Peter publicly for spending time, more time and eating with the Jews up in Galatia rather than the Gentiles.

And I'm going, what is this?

It's all about the law.

And I'm thinking, Jewish law?

I thought we were free from that.

And it's all about his frustration that they're not getting it.

And I'm going, I don't get this book.

I mean, it's right up there with Leviticus.

You know, he's going, what is this all about?

I figured my buddy, my friend, my pastor, was wrong.

He was just wrong.

He probably should have told me to read something else, but Galatians?

Yeah, it would take me a well, I was gonna say a few years.

It took me more than a few years to come to realize this is an amazing book.

It's an extraordinary book.

And I'm so grateful our pastor Justin has decided to do a series on it.

And I just happened to look at my uh study Bible.

That's the big ESV Bible I use, and I came to realize just on Friday that I had underlined 15 different verses just in Galatians.

Now, what I do is if I I get a sense that God's speaking to me, you know, if you're a student of the Word, every once in a while when you're reading a verse, jumps off the page at you.

It's like all of a sudden it's bold face print or it's the lights are on it, or something, you go, wow, this is important.

God must be speaking to me about this.

Anybody ever had that experience?

You know what I mean?

Okay.

So I have 15 places where I've underlined right out of Galatians.

And I'm like, oh, oh, this is this really is an important book.

And then I picked up this little book.

This is the prayer, our prayer Bible that Jill and I use in the mornings.

I went, I wonder how many times I've underlined here while I've been in prayer.

How many times the Lord has spoken to me in Galatians?

32 times.

And what was my first thought on Friday?

Oh God, this is so important.

Because it teaches us about whether we really can be good enough or not.

Good enough.

But I've come to realize when you're struggling to be good enough, you have to prove that you're better than everybody else.

And that they're not good enough.

And now after 45, 6, 7 years as a pastor and priest, I come to realize that you all wrestle with that as well.

You decide either you're good enough that God should notice you because you've been saying your prayers, or you're not good enough for his blessings because you haven't proven yourself yet.

That's what Galatians is all about.

This first letter from Paul, before any of the other letters are written that we read so often.

Galatians.

Written to some folks in a region somewhere in Turkey.

I say somewhere because a lot of little churches were started in Galatia, and we don't know specifically which church he was even writing to.

It's like writing to folks in Cherokee or Fulton, and you go, uh, which one?

And well, it's just the whole gang.

And he takes them on to say, you're living by the wrong standards.

You're living by the wrong standards.

So let me pick up at the tail end of chapter three, and we'll just get the context for chapter four and those first few verses Justin wants me to cover.

In chapter three, we hear in the very last paragraph of chapter three, Galatians chapter three, beginning at verse 26, for you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.

There's no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham.

You are his heirs, and God's promise to Abraham belongs to us.

Well, that's a different way of living, don't you think?

It's through Jesus that we become the accepted children of God, through Jesus, not through our efforts, that we're never good enough for God.

But we're also, as bad as we sometimes feel about ourselves, not outside of God's grace.

He says it's like putting on new clothes, and that's significant because in the Greek Roman Empire of the day, even the Hebrew world, what clothes you wore defined your identity.

The more robes, the more colors, certainly like blue or purple, the more things that cost a lot would demonstrate your identity, who you were.

And you're certainly worth far more than those people down there who are wearing rags.

So when he says putting on new clothes, this is a huge deal.

He's saying, like, you take off your old rags of being a human and struggling to be good enough and struggling to make it through life and survive another day.

And he says, You're taking all that off.

You're putting on the robes of Christ.

You're a child of God now.

You belong to the Father because of Jesus.

He then gives another statement.

He says, You're no longer Jews or Gentiles.

You're not insider-outsider stuff anymore.

It's not slave or free.

It's not even male or female, because we're all one in Christ.

It's not whether you're white or black or brown.

It's not whether you're male or female.

We're all equal.

We're all accepted.

And yeah, people who want to put down the Bible often are quoting 1 Corinthians about what Paul has to say to that unique situation about the role of women.

This is the first letter.

This is the standard.

We're all equal.

Nobody's better than anybody else.

And I got a little secret, I'll tell you.

I've been in Cherokee County a long time.

Done ministry in Georgia a long time.

Baptists aren't any better than us.

Oh, and guess what?

We're no better than the Catholics.

Or the Methodists.

Oh, can you imagine?

How revolutionary this would be.

How extraordinary.

How wonderful.

So, yes, when we go to India and minister to the lepers and the widows and the children, and the people who were looked down and said they're worthless.

The lowest of the low.

We go and minister to our brothers and sisters who are our equals.

And they love on us in a way we can't even imagine.

And we seek to love on them.

We're all one.

We're not trying to prove ourselves anymore.

He goes on and gives us yet another image.

He says, You see, it's God's promise to Abraham that now belongs to us.

What?

Father Abraham?

Yeah, we could do a whole series on Abraham.

Oh, that's right, Justin already has.

And what's the summation of that whole reality?

I am your God.

And you are mine.

Or put another way, Abraham is told, you are blessed to be a blessing.

That's how we are to live now.

We don't live for ourselves.

We don't live to prove ourselves.

We don't have to prove ourselves.

We already know we're worthless compared to God, compared to Jesus.

That's the wrong game now.

We don't do that.

We've taken on, we put on new clothes, we put on the royal robes of Christ.

And oh yeah, all the blessings of Abraham, blessed to be a blessing, they're ours.

So now, if we have the right heart condition, as I said, one I had to learn and struggle with and have struggled for a long time, we live for others now.

We don't live for ourselves.

At least what I found in my journey and with many of my dear friends, and it's a process we have to keep going over again and again and again.

It's the wonder that we don't have to prove ourselves, either to ourselves or to anybody else.

As I often put it, because we're now living for an audience of one.

God's promise to Abraham comes to us because the blood of the covenant has been shed.

His blood, Jesus'.

Because Jesus is good enough for all of us.

And now we get into chapter four.

Everything else I just shared with you was intro, so you can just let that go, okay?

Because now we're getting into chapter four.

Chapter four, listen to what he goes on and says.

Think of it this way.

That's how he starts.

Think of it this way.

If a father dies and leaves an inheritance for his young children, those children are not much better off than slaves until they grow up, even though they actually own everything their father did.

They have to obey their guardians until they reach whatever age their father set.

And that's the way it was with us before Christ came.

We were like children.

We were slaves to the basic spiritual principles of this world.

But when the right time came, God sent his son, born of a woman, subject to the law.

God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that we could he could adopt us as his very own children.

And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, Abba, Father.

Now, you are no longer a slave, but God's own child.

And since you are his child, God has made you an heir.

Do you hear what Paul is saying?

He's trying to give us many images to try to understand this crazy notion that God loves us so much we're already accepted to him.

And he says, think of it this way.

Just think of it this way.

Young children, if their father dies, are put under the care of a guardian.

They don't get the inheritance until they get to be a particular age.

It was that way in the Roman world, it's that way in Africa, it's that way in this country.

If the father or mother, whatever, if if the parents die, the little child doesn't get the full inheritance.

They will, but they have a guardian.

Somebody to help them to learn how to live.

He said, that's what the law was.

The law is our guardian.

It helps us to learn about what's good and what's bad and how to be better at life.

How to, if you will, get ahead.

We learn that from the guardian, the law.

Following rules, doing it right.

He says, but Christ has come now.

No longer under guardian.

Christ has set us free.

We now live a free life.

Not just restricted by rules and regulations, but now the freedom to live in the Spirit of God.

No longer just driven by, as Justin was challenging us a couple weeks ago, not just the flesh, but living through the Spirit.

It's a whole different way of living.

We're free.

We don't have the guardian anymore.

He goes on and says something extraordinary.

He says that God wanted to, therefore, adopt us.

If you've ever been adopted or part of an adoption, it's the celebration of choosing a child.

It doesn't just happen naturally.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh.

That which is born of the spirit is spirit.

John wrote that in the chapter three.

Do you get it?

God has chosen you.

And you may disagree with the decision, it doesn't matter.

He's chosen you.

We've been adopted.

What?

We belong to the Lord now?

What?

We have a different way of living?

Yes.

And what's remarkable is he said the same thing to the Romans.

Listen to what he said in Romans chapter 4.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point.

You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ.

He goes on in verse 6 and says, Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

In chapter 8, he says this.

Children of God.

So you've not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves.

Instead, you received God's Spirit when He adopted you as His own children.

Now we call out Abba, Father.

For His Spirit joins with our Spirit to affirm that we are God's children.

And since we are His children, we are His heirs.

In fact, together with Christ, we are all heirs of God's glory.

But if we are to share His glory, we must also share His suffering.

It isn't saying that life is going to be easy by any means.

It means we have a different set of values now.

We've been adopted.

And he goes on back in the Galatians portion of chapter 4.

He says, Because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, Abba Father.

I just read another place where we're taught in the Word of God that we can cry out in our prayers, Abba Father.

That's an extraordinary statement.

In fact, there's only one other place in Scripture of one calling out, Abba Father.

Anybody remember where it is?

Jesus in the garden before the kiss of betrayal.

He says, Abba, Father, take this cup from me.

Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.

The very prayer that Jesus used in the intimate relationship he had with the Father, that holy relationship, that unity, we're told that's how we're to pray.

Abba, Father.

Now those two are put together in each of those three places.

The Abba comes first, the father comes next.

Father is Potter, where we get um where we get the word father, but uh it's a more formal title, Father.

You know, he's my father.

If my dad came in the room and I and I was in trouble, I'd say yes, father, right?

I mean, you just father is a bit more formal.

The Lord's Prayer, our Father, it's that use.

It's a bit more formal, it's recognizing the authority and power issue and all the rest.

But the word before it, Abba.

That's a very intimate term.

I had only appreciation of it when Jill and I were visiting Jerusalem with a group of people, and I saw a little boy who got separated from his dad running down the street saying, Abba, Abba, Abba.

And I went, oh, I get it.

It's not necessarily translated daddy, but maybe dad.

Have you cried out to Abba, Father?

When you need your holy father to be present to you?

That's what Paul says.

That's what we should do, because we're living a new life now.

It's in relationship with the Holy One.

And we have every right, just like Jesus, to say, Abba, Father.

And what was Jesus praying about?

The suffering he was about to take on, all of our sins.

So let me just encourage you, in the midst of your struggles, remember Galatians chapter 4.

Galatians 4 · chapter mention

We have the right to cry out, Abba, Father, help me now.

See, what Paul is doing here is he keeps giving us images to help us to understand this extraordinary way of living life.

Not just pretending, not just saying, Oh yeah, I believe the Lord, and I said my prayers, and I've gone to church, but believing it on the inside.

And I gotta promise you, it's it's taken years and years for me to figure this one out.

I'm not sure I'm always there.

You can ask Jill.

It was only about 10 or 15 years ago, one of my prayer warriors, when I was uh a pastor here in Cherokee County, came to me one day and she said, Fred, I think you're striving too much.

And my first thought was, I hope she means that as a compliment.

And I said, What do you mean?

And she said, I think you're striving for God too much.

And I went, Oh, I didn't want to hear that.

Trying too hard to live the good life and be good enough.

Those are the old rules.

I may have been serving Jesus for years, living by the Spirit, reading the Bible every day, preaching every Sunday.

Still striving, still trying to prove it.

Folks, we may live that out with football.

Georgia wasn't good enough yesterday.

My son went to Auburn.

What can I say?

Tennessee fans, there's a few out here.

Yeah, others?

You know what?

Yeah.

I love when people say you lose, you you learn more for uh by losing than winning, and I'm going, you just haven't won enough to understand that.

Um, it is how we live life, isn't it?

It really is.

And and let me try what Paul does.

Uh think of it this way.

Let's say you lived in the north and you got very, very frustrated with all the snow, and you moved to somewhere, Georgia.

Where life is beautiful all the time.

The weather's perfect.

Uh in somewhere, Georgia, you you never, never have to deal with snow like Armageddon, Snow Armageddon, or Snowmageddon, what it was, Snow Mageddon.

You don't have to deal with that because you're you're in somewhere, Georgia, not Atlanta.

And oh yeah, you never have a hot summer.

No, that doesn't exist in somewhere, Georgia.

It's just beautiful all the time.

And you're raising your kids there, and you're teaching them from the earliest ages that they can be good and get rewarded, or they can be bad and may even get punished.

And fortunately, they eventually go to school, and you know, they learn as early as kindergarten that if they do what the teacher says, they get a little smiley face for the day.

Oh, but if they do bad, it's a little red sad face.

And you've got to have those green smiley faces if you're gonna be rewarded, right?

And then at home they begin doing chores as they get older and they get paid a little bit more if they do it well.

If they don't help, they get in trouble.

But then in somewhere, Georgia, of course, there's sports.

Every place and somewhere, every school that you go to, there's always sports.

And if it's not school sports, it's after activity sports, and if it's not that, it's various leagues and divisions because they're sports and they have to be good at sports.

If the coach isn't good, we find another team to join, and and because we want them to be good enough.

Because maybe, by God's grace, maybe by God, they've got gifts, and maybe they'll play for the SEC.

Maybe.

And of course, if they're really good enough, they could even be pros.

But let's just settle now on getting them through school, teaching them how they have to work hard in sports and in school and and at home and be good enough, because then they can get into good schools, even if it's not the SEC, good schools.

And then they'll get a good job.

Do you hear?

It's what we do all the time.

And in many ways it works.

We do want people to be good.

We do want our kids to be good.

We want our grandkids to be good.

But with our relationship with God, that formula does not work.

We're never good enough.

Might as well just stop lying to ourselves.

We're never good enough, and someone else isn't not good enough.

We're good enough because Jesus is good enough.

He's all we need.

He shed his innocent blood so we can be free of the games of this world.

Now, sure, it isn't like India here.

We don't write large that you're cursed or you're the worst of the worst because you're Christian.

You know, they have to they actually have to carry cards that identify them as a Christian.

That's on their identity card.

It means there's certain places they can't live, it means there's certain jobs they cannot get.

And in some villages, they can't get water once they commit to Christ because they're no longer welcome in the community.

But they're coming to realize there's a freedom that transcends the culture, and there's a freedom for our culture as well.

We can be free of all of that, even though it has its place, not in our walk with God, not in our heart condition.

We're good enough because Jesus says so, because he loves us.

Now, Paul has taken a whole lot of effort to try to help us to understand this very difficult concept.

He says we're children of God through Jesus Christ.

He says it's like putting on new clothes.

He says it's that we're all one, like one body, all in unity, facing life together.

He says the promises to Abraham come to us.

He says it's it's like a will for children that, but the guardian's gone now because Christ has redeemed us.

He goes on and says, it's because we can live by the Spirit.

We can even say Abba to the Father.

Abba, Father.

And I'm saying to you, it's like living in somewhere, Georgia, where the system seems to work until something happens.

And we all in this room know what that something is, don't we?

It's a loss of a loved one, a loss of a dream, a health condition we weren't prepared for.

And we cry out, oh God, because our system no longer works.

And we might even say, Am I not good enough, God?

Or you shouldn't treat me like this, God.

And we forget to just say, Abba, Father, I trust you.

How do we get there?

Yeah, I'll leave you with a word that Justin can explain later.

Humility.

It is about giving it up and not trying to play the game with God or with ourselves.

Our ultimate identity comes from Christ.

I first had to learn that word humility when I went off in the Hale Academy, and uh my dad, he was a wise man.

Um, he called me aside and said, Now, son, I know you're not used to this, but the first year you're gonna be called a plebe.

And you need to understand you're gonna be lower than a snake's belly for a year.

And you need to just become a wallflower.

Don't think of yourself too highly, because nobody there will.

And you shouldn't either.

Do what you're told.

Stop trying to prove yourself, hummus, the dirt.

That's where we get the word humility.

Just give up the games.

Accept the fact that you are blessed, the fact that you are the blessed of God, adopted into his family, purchased by the blood of the Lamb Jesus, and we're all in this life together.

God bless you.