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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Letting God out of the Box

Help us to recognize that more day by day.

And I'm asking, Lord, that we would know the joy of walking in the path of life, living by Your example and through the power of Your indwelling presence.

Please bless these moments that we have together.

Anoint us as we seek the impress of the Spirit.

And now bless us, I ask in Jesus' name, amen.

This is the last in a series of sermons entitled The Healing Presence of Jesus.

And so I'm gonna talk with you this afternoon about transformation through prayer.

Packer, who was a theologian, English-born Canadian theologian, said in his book, Questing After God, that religion in America is 3, 000 miles wide and a half inch deep.

There's a reason, There was an old adage that used to say, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

But we have known amazing liberty and amazing Blessings.

And I'm afraid we've held on to 1, this side, not that there's anything inherently wrong with prosperity.

And until those things are brought together into a surrender to Christ, we really don't know the temporary joys of the worldling, and we really don't know the eternal joys of full surrender.

This morning, I want to capture a bit of the sense of God's transformation as He draws us out to Him in prayer.

I'd like to start with a quote from the Sermon on the Mount.

If you'll turn to the book of Matthew, Matthew chapter 7.

We're coming to the end of 3 chapters, and Jesus is attempting to strengthen the connection that can exist between us.

It says in verse 7, asking it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.

Everyone who receives, for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

What man is there among you who when his son asks for a loaf will give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, will he not give him a snake?

If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father, who is in heaven, give what is good to those who ask Him.

Some of you are going through your shelves in your basement, your garage, and other places, and you're looking in your drawers and your closets for things you don't need anymore.

And you're boxing them up, and you're bringing them here in the backs of your car or your truck or your trailer Whatever else it is and you've got a list of what it is because it's leaving your house going somewhere else Sometimes we drop these things off at neighbor to neighbor And at the Kellys it seems like a good thing especially at the beginning of a new year, to create a little order, get rid of some of that excess, make sure that you're not weighed down by the clutter that builds around our ability to buy.

And so this week, that's been going on at our house.

And so I don't know how many El Salvadorians wear size 13 shoes, but there are a few going down there.

But there's a pair that's gonna remain on my shelf at home.

I won't say I grew up poor, but I was on the bottom side of the middle class for sure.

4 kids, My parents put us in church school all at once before this happened.

So a lot of the marginal money, at least in obligation, was kind of evaporated out of the scene.

You add to that whatever financial challenges we just had growing up and you get to a place where you kind of stuck with the ordinary stuff.

My grandma would come by the house every once in a while with big black garbage bags.

And in those big black garbage bags would be all the clothes that she had picked out of the Dorcas, which we now call community service.

And it would be the most unpleasant experience.

But my mother would say, all right Ronnie, as she'd pull something out.

Now listen, big black bags is not how you market things to adolescents, okay.

I'm getting in the big black bag and I'm about to pull out another pair of pants, it's like you look at it, it's like oh my.

Go down the hallway, try them on, come back out.

I just want you to know that grandma wasn't coming over with the big black bags for no reason.

So against that backdrop, I want you to understand how in my adolescence, something caught my fancy.

And by the way, I have a book at home called Why We Buy.

So much of what we buy is about our identity.

And when you're in adolescence, it seems it's even more so.

So here I was as insecure, maybe way more than many adolescents.

Might be good sometime for adolescents to sit around.

If they could be as vulnerable as they needed to be, find out they all feel exactly the same way at exactly the same time.

But somebody gets to the top of the pack and becomes popular and everybody else kind of follows.

But I knew in my identity circle there was something that I'd always, that I wanted.

As a boy I can remember much younger, probably 7, 8 years old, getting a new pair of tennis shoes and saying to 1 of my friends, I can run faster than you now because I've got new tennis shoes.

But now, probably twice that age, I'm thinking to myself, I'd really like a certain pair of tennis shoes.

Now long before we had the fashion icons that put their silhouettes on the heels of shoes, the marketers were still looking to get more for a pair of leather and rubber than they should actually been allowed to get.

But you know, they'll get what you'll give.

And Adidas came out with a pair of shoes that, that they called the top 10, which was a pair that laced up over your ankle, and then they had the high 5, which cost less money.

But I'm guessing probably 40 years ago, these shoes still cost $60, which was like a whole nother universe for Kellys.

We might have been able to outfit all 4 of the kids for $60, maybe twice over.

But I did something that I didn't know was gonna set in motion a family fracture.

I said to my dad, Dad, I'd really like a pair of those shoes.

Now my dad made no religious profession in his earlier life, a good kind man.

But something settled in the back of his mind, and he thought, I'd like to get that pair of shoes for my firstborn son.

I can remember them sitting at the table, mom and dad, and my mom saying, he doesn't need those shoes.

And my mom and dad have a good relationship.

They've made it through 50 some years of marriage, some years better than others, which is probably how it is for all of us.

And you know, I think my dad ran out of arguments.

And 1 day he said, come on, Ron, we're going to the mall.

I don't think I've ever bought a pair of shoes since then like this.

We walked into the mall, into 1 of those shoe stores that only sold shoes, and my dad made the arrangements, and I sat down there on a chair.

This was nice, beautiful white shoes with a little band of red and a big band of blue, 3 blue stripes.

They're sitting on a shelf in my basement.

These shoes, these shoes will always be in my possession.

When I tried those shoes on and laced them up and walked around on that nice carpeted floor with the salesman waiting on us, I think I felt like I was in heaven when I tucked that box under my arm with that nice glossy plastic bag on it and the pull string pulled tight and we walked out.

Those shoes are this expression of Jesus.

If you then being evil know how to give good gifts.

When Jesus is writing in Matthew chapter 5 when he's telling this sermon, he says, look, even the Gentiles know how to love.

The love we have for each other is going to go beyond that.

The love that we have for each other is going to exceed that.

We're actually going to learn to love like God does, which can actually make those who are other our own.

But it requires a right understanding of God.

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Letting God out of the Box

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