At some point, we’ve all felt like we didn’t quite belong. But God wants to show us a place where we’re surrounded by love and approval, a place where we can find rest, protection and hope. What is it like to be at home? Because of an ancient tragedy that occurred in our family lines, our default mode of operation is living as abandoned orphans. But that can be changed—God’s greatest desire is that we would all come Home.
As we continue in the third week of our Journey Home series from John 14-15, we will see how Jesus invites us to move from a life of desperate striving for approval, acceptance, and significance to a life of freedom, hope, and love. What if you could wake up every morning confident in your knowledge that you are a beloved son or daughter of God, ready to step into his mission, observing his works and doing what he does—not to earn his love—but because you already have it?
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Brian Krawczyk
Series: A Journey Home
June 23, 2013
Trust Your Dad
John 14:12-18; Ephesians 3:14-21
You’re going to want a Bible this morning and one of the A Journey Home books. If you don’t have a Bible or a book, we have professional Bible cart drivers who will get one to you. So in your Bibles, you can go on and turn to John, chapter 14. If you don’t have one of these, you can grab one, or we just have the sheets printed that we’ll be using today. In your book, it is pages 43-45.
So the last few weeks, we’ve been digging into this A Journey Home. It started out the first week talking about…What does that even mean, this idea of home? Jesus gathers with his closest friends in an upper room hours before walking out that door to betrayal and abandonment and intense pain, agony, suffering to death.
So he is gathered with those closest to him and knows he is has precious little time to share the most important things on his heart. He looks at them across the table as they’re sharing this meal together and says, “Don’t be afraid. Trust God. Trust also in me. In my Father’s house, there are many rooms, and I’m going there to prepare a place for you. When I tell you I am going to prepare a place for you, also I’m going to come back and take you to be with me, that you also might be where I am.”
We looked at that idea that Jesus’ way, his going to prepare a place wasn’t him going to go build a mansion in the sky or to renovate a house in Monroe. The cross was the way to this reconnection with the Father, this restoration of relationship. His preparation he had to go through to open up the way to home was by his suffering and death and the resurrection. So we looked that first week at this idea of home.
I know a lot of us can hear this description not just of heaven one day as good and glorious and beautiful as that is, where there will be no more tears and no more death or bloodshed, pain, but also the presence of God available now, to be at home, a place of peace, acceptance, belonging, joy, hope. We all look at this description of the ways of the kingdom and say, “Yeah, I want that. I want a heart at rest. I want a heart that is at home. I want this hope that there is a home, a place just for me where I can be fully known and fully loved. Home.” We can all resonate with that.
Then last week, we talked about that Philip looks at Jesus and says, “Just show us the Father. That will be enough for us.” The same question many of us ask: “What is God like? Show us what he is like.” Then Jesus turns and says, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I’ve been among you for so long? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Don’t you believe I am the Father and the Father is in me?” In other words, there are a lot of different places we pick up ideas about what God is like.
For a lot of us, we can hear this idea of home. “Yes, I want home, but I’m not so sure about Dad.” We can pick up some ideas from our upbringing, from even teaching we’ve heard or our own fathers or lack of. “If God is anything like that, I’m not sure I want that. I want the home piece, but I’m not so sure when I walk in the front door I’m going to like the one who is looking at me or the way he is looking at me.” Anyone who comes to the Father… “I’m not so sure I want to go. So I know it’s a good home, but what about Dad?
Jesus says, “If you want to know what God is like, if you want to know what this Father, the Father is like, look at me.” If we want to know what God sounds like, how he talks, what he talks about, the way he responds, we look at Jesus. If we want to know what brings him joy and what he spends his time on and what he enjoys, what he values, we can look at Jesus. If we want to know what God is like, if we want to know what this Father is like, we look at Jesus.
So we have a good home and we have a good Dad. This week as we dig in, I keep going into Jesus’ conversation with his friends. We’re going to look at what it means to trust this Father, to open up our hearts to him, to be with him. What does that mean for us to live in that reality? So let’s continue on in John 14. We’ll start with verse 12.
Jesus continues on, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:12-18)
Now what’s interesting about this passage… There’s so much gold in this. We’re spending a whole summer on two chapters, but even in these little chunks we’re taking, there’s so much to dig into. It’s interesting that in the first part, as Jesus is talking, there are several interruptions. Thomas says, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. We don’t even know where you’re going. How can we know the way?” Then Philip follows up with that question about, “Well, just show us the Father. What is he like?”
Honestly, as I’m reading this little chunk, there are some pretty significant, interruptible moments. You would expect Peter to chime in and go, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second, Jesus. I think you might have just misspoken there.” This is crazy, so check this out. It’s in your Bible. I’m not just making it up.
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus says. “[I’m not lying to you.] Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.” (John 14:12a) So they’re listening. “Yeah, I know that’s good. You’ve just told us you’re going away, but you’re going to come back and take us to be with you. We’re cool, so we just need to keep doing what you’re doing. Got that. Yep. Okay, that makes sense.”
Jesus goes on. “He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12b) That would be a prime interruption moment. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. Sorry. Jesus, did you just say greater? Greater things than what we’ve seen you do? We watched you give sight to the blind. We watched you put your hand on a guy’s ear, and he could hear.
There was a guy lying there. Jesus, you might have forgotten this. It was a couple of years ago, but he was lying there next to this pool. Do you remember that? You walked up and asked him, ‘Hey, do you want to get well?’ The guy was like, ‘Well, yes, I’ve been lying here for 30 years.’ You told him just to get up, and he stood up and started leaping and praising the Lord. That’s cool. Greater? Jesus, a few months ago (you should remember this, because this is not that long ago) you raised a dude from the dead. Greater things?”
We have a temptation here. We can read this and skirt it over. It seems almost like the disciples might have right here. Or we can raise our expectation to the level of Scripture. Is this true? Do we believe it? I think it’s okay to pause and go, “Well, wait a second, God. That doesn’t even make sense. How is that even possible?”
In fact, it’s interesting. Augustine, who is one of the early church fathers and wrote lots and lots and lots of manuscripts and studies on the Scripture, had these series of teachings through the gospel of John. He gets to this verse, and if you read in the sermon what he is teaching his disciples, this is what he says: “There’s too much there. I’m going to have to come back to that one.” He ends. It stops right there.
He does come back later and spends an entire teaching just on that one verse, which we’re not going to do today. This is a huge statement. Greater things. This is for everyone who believes. This is normal Christianity, not just for the missionaries or the pastors and the spiritually significant and empowered, the water-walkers. This is for us. For us.
I wonder if part of it is Jesus knew his body, while he was on earth, was one body in one space at one time, but there’s something about this body of Jesus. There’s no longer just one set of hands doing his work. There’s no longer just one set of lips revealing his heart or one pair of feet walking where he would go. His body is a whole lot bigger now.
He goes on, and he kind of digs in a little bit, explains it. Jesus continues and he says, “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.” (John 14:13) Anything? That would be another point at which somebody surely would have stepped up and said, “Wait, wait, time out, time out, Jesus.”
I don’t know. Have you ever had this experience where you’ve said something and then you realized, “I don’t actually mean that. I really wish I could put that back in my mouth”? I remember saying something to Sadie. As soon as it got here in the air, I was like, “Agh.” It doesn’t work that way unfortunately.
It wasn’t like Jesus was like, “Oops. Well, I’ll keep moving. Anything in my name…” No, he actually repeats it so he makes sure they get the point. “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” (John 14:13-14) “You may ask me for…” What? “…anything. Anything.”
Surely those disciples are standing there going, “Now wait a second, Jesus. We’ve asked, hinted at. We’ve talked about. We would really love for you to overthrow this Roman government. We’ve been kind of clear on this a few times.” James and John are sitting there and go, “Jesus, we asked… Remember that time we were walking down the road? We asked when you do come into power if we could sit at your right hand, if we could be next in charge. Then you said something about the least will be the greatest or something. We weren’t really paying attention, but you didn’t give us what we wanted then. ‘You may ask me for anything…’?”
It was amazing at 9:00. I was standing out front. All of a sudden, I heard applause. I was like, “There’s something exciting happening.” I saw Buddy and Jody standing here. The miracle we’ve watched transpire over the last couple of months has been beautiful, but there are some who are sitting here who have asked God for similar miracles. “You mean ask anything?”
He does go on. “…in my name…” (John 14:13) This idea of name is not just identification, the way we think of name, something you write on a nametag. The Greek is actually the word onoma, like onomatopoeia. It carries with it this idea of not just an identifier, but the substance of, the totality of it, the essence of, all that goes with.
So to do something in Jesus’ name is this idea that… It’s not just a magical phrase we would say that makes our prayers come true. In Christian circles, that’s a pretty common way to end prayers: “In the name of Jesus,” or, “In Jesus’ name.” If we just get the phrasing right, then… It’s not a magical phrase we just say. “In my name.” It’s this idea that if we speak in line with the heart of God as revealed in Jesus, if what we ask for is of the substance, the essence of who God is, the ways of his kingdom, the ways of Jesus…
One way to think about it is (actually, if you have little kids, this is the example they’re giving over in the Tree House) if you had a granddad who loves animals. He was a veterinarian for 50 years, always the one that if you had a sick horse, you would take your sick horse to (for all those who have had issues with sick horses). He always had his favorite dog. He loved animals.
He dies, and in his will he leaves you a check for $5,000. Attached is this little note, a memo that says, “Here’s $5,000 for you to spend in my name.” In other words, “Spend this the way I would spend it. Spend this in a way that reveals my heart, who I am.” You would know that because you know your grandfather. There is a way of taking what he is giving you that actually lines up with this heart and what he has revealed and what he would value.
It’s not like you would say, “Okay, all right, Pops knows. Pops loves me. He knows I would love a Wii. That’s exactly how he would want to spend this money.” No, it’s about him, not about us. So what Jesus is saying (he is very clear) is, “In my name, in my name, in my essence, my being, my substance, who I am, all I carry, all I have revealed, ask anything.”
This begs another question…How? How in the world do we know what to ask for? There are some thing I really want to see happen. If I were God, which I would like to be sometimes, I would have my list of this, this, this, and this. That sounds good to me. How in the world do we even know what to ask for?
Jesus goes on, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” (John 14:12-17)
So how? How does our heart line up with the heart of God in a way that we can ask for things of the substance of Jesus and our lives begin to reveal things even greater than what Jesus revealed in his thirty-three years here on the earth? The Spirit. He gives us the Spirit. So all of a sudden, Jesus says, “It’s actually better for you that I am going away because unless I go away, the Spirit won’t come to you.” So there’s this idea in the Scriptures that it’s better to have the Spirit in us than Jesus standing next to us.
It’s the Spirit that comes into the lives of God’s sons and daughters and invades our hearts and begins reshaping our being, who brings who we are in line with who God is. As we walk in step with the Spirit, as we learn to recognize the voice of the Shepherd by his Spirit, we begin to ask for, desire, to want to see the things that line up with the heart of God.
The other day Sadie was driving past our house. This really is a huge answer to prayer. We’re renovating a house in downtown Monroe. It literally sits right at the crossroads. If you drive a quarter mile east of our house, it’s one of the wealthiest areas of Walton County. If you go into our backyard, you are in literally some of the poorest areas of Walton County.
So we love the fact that we’re sitting right at the crossroads of these two different worlds and on the edge of a really rough and broken side of town and then a side of town that feels like they have it all together, but really, on the inside, they are just as rough and broken. They all need Jesus.
Sadie was driving down this road behind our house, and there was a man who was walking with a little boy. I don’t know whether it’s an older brother or a father or what, but all of a sudden, he slapped the little boy really hard on the back of the head. It kind of knocked the boy forward. You could tell it really hurt him.
Sadie is driving by just right as that happened, and Ben, our 3-year-old, is looking out the window and sees it happen. He is really affected by that. So he says to Sadie, “I pray for him.” Sadie is like, “Oh good, baby. Let’s pray for him. Why don’t you pray for him now?” He said, “Jesus, bring fire and burn him up.” A heart for justice, amen?
So Sadie is so taken back by that. It’s like James, Son of Thunder. “God, he wants to call fire down from heaven? I didn’t teach him that. I promise.” Then he goes on. He says, “Don’t kill him. Just burn off the bad stuff.” Isn’t that good? So what does it look like as we begin to walk in step with the Father, as we begin to experience his heart in a way that begins to shape our hearts by his Spirit inside of us?
Then Jesus closes with this phrase: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:18) Everything he has just spoken is built on that. It’s possible to have received Christ as Savior and to truly believe he has gone to the cross and his blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins and to stand righteous before him because of what Jesus has done, for the hope of heaven one day, which is a beautiful hope, yet to never receive or encounter the unconditional love of God, to have an orphan heart. Being saved doesn’t necessarily equate to feeling secure, loved, accepted as a son or a daughter.
For just a moment, move past what you know theologically in your head. How are you living? What’s your reality? Do you wake up every morning excited about what is in front of you for the day, knowing and confident as a beloved son or a daughter, accepted, embraced by your Father who sends you out on mission? You know he’ll provide for you. He’ll care for you. He has what you need. He is with you. He is for you. He is in you, eager to do his works. You’ve watched your Father, and you just want to do what he does as part of the family.
Or do you wake up anxious, worried, striving, trying to make a difference in this world, hoping it all comes together? If you do your best and try hard enough, maybe you can piece enough together of this life that when you come before God, he’ll say, “Okay, you did good enough,” hoping if you try hard enough, you’ll make it work. You can earn and get what you need to make it through today.
You’re anxious about, “What happens if it doesn’t all come together? What if my world I’ve built falls down around me, or it is already falling down around me, and I’m alone in this thing, stuck, and it doesn’t look like there’s any hope on the other side?” You’re working your hardest to try to get in the family, a heart at rest, a heart at home.
An orphan heart never truly feels at home anywhere, afraid to trust, afraid of rejection, afraid to open up their heart to receive love. We may know God has made a way for us and we have made a step into that way, and yet never opened up our hearts as sons and daughters. This matters, not just for this morning, not even just for your life, but for generations this matters.
I was just talking to somebody after the 9:00, and they were saying that their mother was adopted. They watched her in this process of literally learning what it meant to be family and to be transformed out of an orphan experience and then seeing how in her own life she’s carried so much of that, that self-sufficiency, that need to make it work, of trying to keep what I have and keep it safe for as long as I can because you never know if anything else is going to come around.
Is that your life, your reality? Is Matthew 5 and 6 kind of a joke when it talks about, “Don’t worry”? “Yeah right, God. That’s great.” An orphan heart or sons and daughters? It matters because the universal longing of every human heart is to be looked in the face by their father and told, “I know you and I love you. I am with you and I am for you. My arms are wide open to you.”
Most of this world doesn’t know that, but we will never know what it means to be a father, for those who desperately need fathers and mothers, until we learn first what it means to be a son or a daughter. In fact, whatever it is we believe we have to do to earn the acceptance or approval of God is what we will require others to do to earn our acceptance or approval, especially dads. If we live as orphans who don’t trust Dad and don’t know home, we’re not going to be very comfortable with the Spirit in us.
Erin Burchik has been a part of this movement here at Grace and in some other churches with a vision that there would no longer be any foster kids in Gwinnett County. Followers of Jesus who love God would open up homes and bring in orphans to provide safe space where they can learn what it means to be a son or a daughter.
She was sharing that as she is going through this process of adoption and as they’ve adopted and are looking to adopt again, as they’ve studied this, they’ve learned this idea of the healthy child attachment cycle or the orphan attachment cycle. I began to parallel the healthy child attachment cycle with the way we relate to God our Father.
In the healthy child attachment cycle, they cry. The need is met. Trust is built. Attachment happens correctly. They cry, a need is met, and trust is built. An orphan heart comes out of a place that they cry and nothing happens, and so they learn not to trust, not to ask, not to attach. They cry; nothing happens. So we learn not to trust, not to ask, not to accept.
Many of us have learned what it means to forgive and to be forgiven. Think about it this way. If I was walking down these steps right here and I stomp on Justin’s foot, he is not going to be happy. I say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” He tells me, “Hey, I forgive you.” He releases me from that pain in his heart.
The next time I walk by, he is probably going to have a tendency to withdraw his foot. There is a difference between forgiveness and trust. Many of us have learned what it means and know what it means to be forgiven by God, but because of the baggage we carry, we have yet to truly open up our hearts to him as sons and daughters.
In Ephesians 3, Paul is praying. He closes his prayer. Now think about what Jesus has just promised his friends. In 3:20 he says, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations…” (Ephesians 3:20-21) This great power that is at work within us that will do more than we can ask for or even imagine. Jesus who says, “Greater things than these…”
Right before that, Paul writes, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17-19)
For many of us in this room, we don’t need more head knowledge. We don’t need more facts about God or verses memorized. What we need is an encounter, an experience with the Father who looks at us as sons and daughters and to begin to open up our hearts to him because he has opened up himself completely to us.
As we live as sons and daughters and we are able to come to the Father and ask, by the Spirit, the Helper, the Counselor, the Advocate who stands with us and is in us, we begin to see these greater things, more than we could ask for or even imagine. Follow that back up through the verse. Orphans reject help because they don’t ask. They don’t trust. So they’re only able to do and make happen what they can do on their own in their own power. Sons and daughters receive help because they ask, and they do what God can do.
So this morning, we just wanted to create a little bit of space as we continue on in worship, as we take Communion and remember Jesus went and prepared a place. He made a way. He was that way. As we take this bread Jesus held up before his friends at that same meal, this same conversation, he said, “This is my body broken for you,” and then took this cup and said, “This is the cup of a new covenant for the forgiveness of sins. Take. Eat. Take. Drink. Do this in remembrance of me.”
We remember Jesus made a way by his body and his blood for us to be reconnected with our Father. Maybe for some of us this morning what we need is to open up our hearts to receive the love of that Father who calls us sons and daughters, who calls us home. First John 3:1 says, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1)
So my encouragement would be open your heart to how you’re living beyond what you just know in your head to be true. Are you living a life striving for acceptance and approval, of self-protection, or in confidence as a beloved son or daughter? You’ll see on the back of your sermon notes a place to kind of just begin processing with God some of the ways we look to others for the things only God can give.
I want to do this. I want to just pray for us. If you’ll stand with me, then we’ll continue on in worship. I just want to pray for us as a church these words out of Ephesians 3. So just close your eyes. You can hold out your hands if you’d like in sort of a posture of receiving. I’m just going to read Paul’s words.
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell [make his home] in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and [sons and daughters] to know [encounter, experience, embrace] this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!” (Ephesians 3:14-21) And the church said, “Amen.” You may be seated.