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  GOD AND I
  by Jenny Daniel
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the intimate relationship between an
individual and God, highlighting the importance of maintaining a close,
obedient, and submissive connection with God in all aspects of life. It
stresses the need for repentance, forgiveness, and a genuine
relationship with God, rather than just religious practices. The sermon
also warns against false confidence in one's salvation and the
significance of being in step with God, even in the smallest details of
life.

Topics: "Intimacy with God", "Genuine Faith"
Scripture References: Romans 1:20, Romans 14:12, Psalm 139:23, 1 John 1:8, Amos 3:3, Galatians 6:9, 1 John 2:28, Romans 12:1

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the intimate relationship between an individual
and God, highlighting the importance of maintaining a close, obedient,
and submissive connection with God in all aspects of life. It stresses
the need for repentance, forgiveness, and a genuine relationship with
God, rather than just religious practices. The sermon also warns against
false confidence in one's salvation and the significance of being in
step with God, even in the smallest details of life.

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CONTENT
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Now my subject for today is God and I. God and I. Now in my bedroom at
home there's a little picture of me, it's about this size, of me when I
was about seven years old, when I gave my life to the Lord. And there's
this very shy little face looking at me as I go into my bedroom. And
when I look at this picture of myself it's as if this little girl that I
was is saying to me, Jenny, how are things going between you and God? So
it's just as if as I walk into the room I see this little face looking
back at me, it's my face, and says if the question is coming back over
the years.

I personally believe that all that is part of our life, all we have gone
through and are going through, what we're experiencing right now, what
we are facing is all bound up in this relationship, relationship between
God and myself. No matter if we're a loner, no matter if we're a child,
a teenager, an aunt, a stay-at-home adult, a wife, a widow, a
grandmother, or a young working adult, life is essentially wrapped up
around the fundamental relationship of God and myself. Does that
relationship exist or doesn't it exist? Is it whole or is it fractured?
One day when we stand before God, the things that seem so important, you
know, I remember as a teenager at boarding school, we had to go to
boarding school, who are you going to marry one day? Where are you going
to land up? Are you going to marry a farmer? Are you going to marry this
or that? You know, all those things that are so big on the horizon, but
everything will fade into significance when we realize that after all,
life is just really about God and myself.

Now, first of all, we can't ignore the fact that God is. We all know the
verse in Romans 1 verse 20, which says, for the invisible things of him
from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the
things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they
are without excuse. So God says there's no denying, you can't doubt, you
can't doubt my existence.

When the airplane drops, who do people call on? Atheists and all. God
help us! That's what they call. I remember on a plane when it dropped
quite a bit with us, the people just started praying immediately.

Whatever the world says to the contrary, we are constantly reminded
through the splendor of creation that God is. It's an unavoidable
reality. This life is not really about me, but about God and me.

It automatically then makes me responsible for my conduct. Have you ever
wondered why people want to be atheists? Why they don't want to believe
in God? Why they want to say that they don't? Well, then they can do
what they like. You can do what you like if you don't believe there
isn't a God out there.

But the moment I have to acknowledge God's existence, I'm responsible.
I'm responsible for what I do. Every one of us shall give account of
himself to God.

Romans 14 verse 12. And the accountability is much more exact because
God looks in the heart. He looks in the reins.

He searches what we think deep within. And we all know the story of
David and when Samuel was sent to choose a king from all the sons of
Jesse and everyone came before him and they looked so beautiful on the
outside. They looked so godly on the outside.

Samuel said, this is the man. And God said, uh-uh. You look on the
outward.

And you know how time and time again we have been misled by what people
seem on the outside. What they present themselves as and what they are
inside can be rotten to the core. The Lord seeth not as man seeth, for
man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh upon the
heart.

We're not only accountable to God for what we say and for what we do,
but David says, thou desirest truth in the inward parts. Now there was a
little girl and her mom said to her, oh darling, you've been so good
today. And the little girl hung her head and she said, mommy, I have not
been good.

She said, I have not been good in my thinks. And God sees everything as
it is. He even sees our thinks, what we think.

And I might have told you this before as a child. I was fascinated by
the thought if we could see above everybody's head a little balloon and
what they are thinking right at this moment. It would be quite scary,
but it would be hilarious.

God sees below the surface each thought and hidden whim, though I may
not have done it, imaginings of sin. God sees below the surface, oh,
what a solemn thought, my heart exposed, not hidden, wrongdoing,
thought, all wrought, everything. Now we have no relationship to start
off with.

We're all born in sin. We know that so well, for all have sinned and
come short of the glory of God. Whether we have grown up in a Christian
home, no matter what we've done, we're all sinners to start off with.

There's a broken relationship between me and God. And God is ever
yearning and seeking to reach us and to restore this relationship
between Him. And remember what He said to Jerusalem, oh, Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, how often would I, but ye would not.

So God is reaching out to us. He's come to seek and to save that which
is lost. He wants to reach us, and we have to respond to Him.

God wants to break down the wall of sin that separates us. He wants this
relationship to be started, to be restored, for our hearts to be
cleansed so that we can have this fellowship, this intimate relationship
with Him. Now even in this select group, we may miss and ignore the
reality that without meeting with God, without an encounter with Him, we
are lost.

We are not a child of God. We are not a daughter of the King. Now I
might have told you this story before.

I'm not sure about Roy sitting in church with me. Roy is our middle son.
He's at the convention, and he kept me running through life.

And I never used to know what Roy would do next, and one day we were
sitting in church, and the minister was doing a sermon on all have
sinned. And the minister said, I want to stress every single one of you,
whether you attend a church all these years, whether you've done Bible
studies or whatever, every one of you has done sin. All have sinned.

Now I started seeing Roy get edgy. So I tried to be ready to grab him,
and then the minister said, no, is there anybody in this church that can
say they have never, ever sinned? And guess who jumped up? Roy, me! So I
said, oh, bowed him down. So the minister says, well Roy, no, that can't
be true.

Surely you've told him. No, I've never, ever told a lie. He said,
haven't you taken a cookie from the cookie, from the pantry? No, no,
never.

And the minister looked at me as if to say, Mrs. Daniel, you better keep
a hand on your child. So I literally kept Roy down, and I think I had my
hand over his mouth. Well, while the minister with great dignity says,
now congregation, I must stress, everybody has sinned, even young Roy.

And I said, shush Roy, I'll explain later. Anyway, so was the minister
right? Was the minister right? Have all of us done sin? Are we all
sinners? If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth
is not in us. If we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar.

So all of us have sinned. Now just before I came to America, there were
two wonderful, wonderful things that happened. One was with a very old
person, and one was with a young mother of little twins of two.

Now the old person was one of those people that achieve. You know, some
people, they just achieve. They like, what do you call it? They are
people that just, they like colonialists or whatever it is.

He started institutions, and the institutions are going to carry on
hundreds of years after he's gone. He created a blind school in South
Africa. He did all sorts of amazing things.

He was a religious man. He went to church. He went to Bible studies.

He prayed. He was an excellent example as a husband, as a father, as a
grandfather. He was loved and respected, but despite all these things,
his daughter said, I do not know if my father has got a relationship
with God.

You see, it's not religion. It's not Christianity. It's a relationship,
and so she was very worried about him, but he kept saying, my girl,
don't you worry.

Daddy's on his way to heaven. Everything's fine. Anyway, he ended up
with heart failure, kidney failed, and he was still confident, but he
ended up in hospital, and he had a collapse, and suddenly they realized
this man is at death's door, and so the lady said, please, to the
minister, can't you just go and speak to my father? Can't you just try
and just, because I am not sure that he is really safe, and so the
minister went.

Now, at this stage, the man couldn't talk anymore, so if he said yes, he
just nodded his head. If he said no, it's like this. If he didn't know,
he just went like that, so the minister spoke to him and said, sir, are
you right with God? He nodded his head.

Well, the minister thought, what could I do? He says he's right with
God. He can't even talk. What more can I do? So he prayed a prayer for
him, and he left the building, but as he was going through the door, God
said, how can you leave this man like this? Even if he nods his head,
how can you leave this man? He's at death's door.

How can you do that? So the minister thought, I'm going to go back in,
so he goes back in, and he told the family afterwards. He gently and
compassionately explained the way of salvation. He asked the man, when
did you turn? Where did you turn? What was the occasion that you turned?
What was the time, the place, the day that you turned from the wrong
direction to the right direction? Have you turned? Is there a point of
turning in your life where you've turned to God when he saved you
yourself? When you started walking with God, that's the relationship.

We walk with God. What was the time? What was the day? Was there a
counter? And suddenly the man did nothing with his head. He just stared.

He didn't nod his head. He didn't shake his head. He just stared, and
the minister said to him, was there a time, sir? I'm asking you, was
there a time? And the man said, there wasn't a time of turning.

And he said, listen here, would you like me to pray for you? I know you
cannot speak, but you can follow me in my words. You can just agree with
me in your heart. I'm going to pray the sinner's prayer for you, and
then you can agree in your heart.

And the man nodded his head emphatically, and the minister prayed. And
when he finished praying, the tears were just running down the man's
cheeks, and his face glowed. And the minister said to him, sir, where is
the Lord Jesus now? And he said he took that weak hand, and he tried to
get hold of the minister's hand, and he pulled it, and he put it on his
chest, as if to say my body is the temple of God.

He's living inside. That evening the son-in-law came to visit, and the
old man was so desperate. He wanted to tell him something, but he
couldn't tell him.

But the son-in-law said, he seemed so excited, and of course they
realized later he was wanting to tell them what God had done for them.
And the next morning, he was gone. God had reached him at that last
moment, in a real way, a true encounter.

Young and old, you thought to know that you were on a journey with the
Lord Jesus Christ. But was there a time of turning? Was there a
repentance of sin in your life? The day that Savior washed you clean,
even of the things that are wrong. When you became a daughter of the
King, we can all do the right things.

We can look like a beautiful Christian, chaste, everything looks so
perfect on the outside, but God looks on the heart, and he knows if
there is a relationship, or if it's all just a pretense. Now there was a
young mother. This is the other story.

She had two little twins. They were the cutest little twins. I in fact
lived after them not so long ago.

But a young mother, she went to church, Bible studies, religious, she
had a loving husband, life just seemed wonderful. Everything was panned
out perfectly. I mean, you've got a husband that loves you, you've got
these twin children, and you looked up to as a Christian, and you
consider yourself, you're on your way to heaven, what more do you want?
But there were those in the family that thought there is no real
relationship with God.

It's not real. There's no life. There's no life.

And so they tried to witness to her, but she didn't want to listen to
any of the witnesses. She said, I'm fine, I'm on my way to heaven. Don't
be worried about me.

You don't have to worry about me. But a friend of hers got saved, and
when the friend got saved, suddenly this friend became burdened for her
soul. And then this mother started thinking, my friend was exactly the
same as me.

I've always thought she was going to heaven. What's changed? And now
she's worried about me. And she became under conviction of sin, and she
got saved.

She accepted Christ as Savior. And you know, the thing that she said is
so interesting to me. She said to another family member, you know,
Christianity, it's not a religion.

It's a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not a religion.
It's a relationship.

I just want to please Him. I want to be pure and obedient to Him. And
you know what happened immediately? Immediately she was saved.

She was burdened for her husband, and she's trying to reach Him with her
life and with her witness. And that's to me a wonderful proof of
salvation. If when you get saved, you want other—remember the woman at
the well? What did she do when she got the water? She immediately ran to
get others and tell them about the water.

And so when we are truly saved, the first thing we'll want to do is for
others also to know the Lord Jesus. What a wonder, what a miracle when
we meet with God, when this relationship begins, when life revolves now
not only about me, what I want, what I plan, what I hope, but that life
is really about God, God and me. You know, it's so intimate.

It's so precious. The one was sick and ailing, a life of laurels one,
respected, loved, looked up to, for all achieved and done. The other
young, a mother with children small and sweet, with loving husband, life
seemed fulfilling and complete.

But both were on a journey that did not lead to God. Religiously their
footsteps towards hell nearer trod. And then precious encounter, God
stopped them on life's way.

They turned to him, surrendered, walked with him. From that day, the one
stepped into heaven, the other life ahead. But now each step she's
taking will be where God has led.

The relationship with God is a journey. We start a path together. It's
his way that I want to do.

It's his will. It's his direction. He is guiding.

I don't walk my own path. I'm going to walk God's path. When I turned
and God cleansed me from my sin, I took God by the hand and I let him
direct and I have to stay in step with him.

To stay in step with God as a Christian, we have to be submitted to God.
We have to remain submitted. If you had two little children and they had
their hands together with a string and they were walking together, I can
imagine Ruth and Clarissa and now they're walking together and suddenly
Clarissa says, I want to go this way.

And Ruth says, no, I want to go that way. What's going to happen? It's
going to tug. It's going to hurt.

And eventually that string can snap. We have to be submissive to God, to
stay in step. And that's what Amos says.

Amos 3.3, can two walk together except they be agreed? And to be agreed,
one has to bow to the other. For somebody to say, I want to go this
direction, I have to say, yes, I'll go this direction with you. And so
it is in our Christian walk.

God says, this is the way. Yes, Lord. Then I stay in step.

Total submission. Even if we are inch off course, we're going to go
further and further away. So too with obedience and submission to God's
will.

Now there was a missionary in Africa, her name was Elina Garrett, and
she had a dictaphone. Does everybody know what a dictaphone is? You
speak into this little machine and then it plays back what you say and
then the secretary types what you've said. Anyway, the dictaphone
stopped working.

So she tried to fix it. So she shook it, she banged it, she hit it a bit
like I do with some things when they don't work. But nothing worked.

Then she got a neighbor in, a nice neighbor, and he came and he said,
oh, is it not working? Are you sure it's totally not working? Whatever,
it didn't work. And then he took two screws out and he took a
screwdriver and he put it in and he did the minuscule twist, just a
slight. Closed it up, put the screws in, and the machine worked.

So she said, how did that happen? I mean, you hardly twist it. He said,
you know, your mechanism was a 16th of an inch out, one 16th of an inch.
And then she said, oh God, just a 16th of an inch and the machine
stopped working.

What about my testimony? What about my relationship with God? It takes
this smallest little fraction of disobedience to God to mar my
testimony. As a wife, as a mother, as a grandmother, granddaughter,
etc., it's so easy to let our little quick retorts, our responses, our
discrepancies, our disobedience slip in and mar our relationship with
the Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn't have to be big reactions.

We don't have to stamp our foot and say, I won't do that. It's just the
kind of attitude, a sulky face, a sullen silence. Have you ever entered
a room? I have many times where the atmosphere is so heavy, you just
don't know, you feel you have to cut your way through the room.

There's somebody in that room determined to be morbid, determined to be
negative, determined to be gloomy, but they're not satisfied to be
gloomy on their own. They want everybody else to be gloomy with them.
And so you try and lift up the atmosphere, you tell a little joke, you
do all sorts of things, but it's just this gloom is so heavy that you
just can't, you can't get it up.

It's a selfish attitude for us as Christians to not rejoice in the Lord,
not in our circumstances, to not rejoice in the Lord and to pull others
down with us. We need to moment by moment consciously guard our
reactions. To rejoice in the Lord Jesus Christ, even in the difficult
circumstances, even in the storms, because He's with us in the storms.

You know, when the things go wrong and things do go wrong, you just have
to cling all the tighter to Him. A Christian that is doom and gloom, who
spreads depression in a room, is not rejoicing in the Lord. She needs
her walk with God restored.

A matron once told me, she said to me, you either influence people
positively or negatively. Jenny, how have you influenced people today?
Was it positive or was it negative? Can you point to the spot in your
Christian life where you stopped tugging to go your own direction and
where you said to God, Thy will, only Thine. I want to submit myself
entirely to you.

Romans 12.1, I beseech you therefore by the mercies of God that you
present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God. The
Lord Jesus said, not my will, but Thine be done. And I think as a
Christian, as a Christian, it's important that we submit ourselves
totally to God.

We have to be careful to remain in step with the Lord Jesus and that we
don't lead others astray by the way we walk and by our attitude.
Remember Peter, when he said, Lord, Lord, shall I forgive my brother
seven times? And he thought God would say, oh no, no, no, I don't expect
you to forgive him seven times. Just two times will be enough.

What did God say? Seventy times seven. That's what we have to be. It's
too big a challenge, too difficult, but God expects us to be loving,
forgiving, compassionate and understanding.

Now Elena Garrett said there was an Irish missionary that said to her
and confessed to her, I realized sadly that I didn't please Christ with
my reaction to someone who did me wrong. She said, I regret my treatment
of the wrongdoer. She said, she, I was right.

He was wrong, but I forgot how much harder it is to be in the position
of one who had done wrong. She said, I made the return path for this
person so hard for the offender when I should have made it easy for
didn't God instantly forgive me when I pledged to him for forgiveness? I
was determined, she said, this lady said that there would be no
concession on my part, no halfway advance, even though the prodigal
father had run to meet his son that was on his way back, looking out for
him, eagerly greeting him. What do we do with people who offend us, who
do wrong, who treat us wrongfully? We're in the right, they're in the
wrong.

Do we make it easy for them to come back to God? Dear Lord, I was so
angry with someone close to me who failed and disappointed. I lashed out
constantly. Though she sought reconciling, I did not heed her plea.

I wanted her to feel how she'd made life hard for me. Somehow, I had
forgotten the prodigal who found his father watching, waiting with love
intact and sound. Dear God, make me so tender with someone who did wrong
that they may find it easy to seek God before long.

No matter what others do to us, we need to forbear one another, forgive
one another, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one
another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you. We need to keep
that relationship with God intact, and that includes our relationship
with others. Whatever happens to us, whatever opposition we face, in all
situations in life, even in the ordinary duties of life, do not let
discouragement, opposition, breaking down of others, every attempt we do
seems to be smashed.

Stop us being patient, forgiving, long-suffering, and kind. And God asks
us just to go step by step. God doesn't ask me tomorrow to pass all
those storms that are going to lash against me tomorrow.

He just asks me step by step. Step is just one step. The next thing that
God asks me to do, then it isn't as impossible.

But as you say, my husband breaks me down. I've got a brother or an
older sister or a daughter-in-law that breaks me down. Now, in the 2,500
fuller anecdotes, it says that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, there
was a man working and editing a dictionary, a very intricate dictionary,
and he had to add 33,000 words to this dictionary.

And he proved them and corrected them. And he spent eight years working
on this dictionary. And the article says his wife wasn't very happy with
all the time he spent on this dictionary.

So she malignantly, when he was out, she crept into his study one day
when he wasn't there. She took all those notes, everything, eight years
of work, and she threw it into the fire. He came home and he was
horrified, heartbroken.

It's all gone, eight years of work. And he says, who has done this to
me? And his wife says, I did. It's me.

And you know what he did? What his reaction article says? He just cried
out, Dinah, Dinah, thou has given me a world of trouble. And he quietly
worked another eight years to replace the papers that had been
destroyed. And he got the deserved well done of Queen Elizabeth.

May we in the same way not get weary and despondent, but just carry on.
Not be weary in well doing, Galatians 6, 9, for in due season we shall
reap if we faint not. Let's just carry on.

Do you know that we can be ashamed as Christians that the Lord Jesus is
coming? Because we haven't kept this relationship clear and intact. 1
John 2, 28, and our little children abide in him. Keep that relationship
intact.

That when he shall appear, we may have confidence and not be ashamed at
his coming. It's a close relationship. There's no place for a third
party.

There's no place for somebody else's opinion being more important than
God's opinion. Now a good measuring stick is to say, if I have the Lord
Jesus at my side, because if we walk with him, he is at our side, will
he be happy with this that I'm doing? Because we need to be practical,
as young people especially. What I dress like, if the Lord Jesus is
standing next to me in front of the mirror, will he be happy with what I
look like? And the one lady said she was asked to go to entertainment,
and she was very pressurized to go, and she sat at the entertainment,
and she said she couldn't enjoy a minute of it, because she thought, oh
if the Lord Jesus should come now and find me here, that would be
dreadful.

So was she in step with him? Was she walking with him at that stage? No,
she was grieving him. Now there was an evangelist who had backslidden
for a stage, and he'd come back to the Lord, and he said, I can show you
the point where I backslid. He said, I was walking down the road with
the Lord Jesus, and I got to a certain house, and I said to the Lord
Jesus, you stay right here, you can't come with me into this house.

And he said, I went into this house, and whatever I did in that house, I
came out. But he said, you know when I came out, the Lord Jesus wasn't
waiting for me. We have to, as the one missionary said, keep short
accounts.

We have to walk in submission and obedience with God every step of the
way, and that includes the small things in our life, and especially our
reactions as Christians. We need to be obedient to God in the small
details of life. Only then will we really be walking together.

Now let's look back. Have we been falsely confident that all is right
between us and God? Like that old man in the hospital that thought for
years he's on his way to heaven, and found at his deathbed that he was
on his way to hell. Are you sure that you have started that relationship
with the Lord Jesus Christ? Remember that old man, remember the young
lady, remember Roy in church that said, oh I'm fine, I've never sinned.

Is that what you're saying at the moment, even as a child? We need to be
saved. We need to be restored. We need to become a true daughter of the
King, and if you can point back to when you accepted the Lord Jesus as
Savior, are you walking in step with the Lord Jesus, or are you tugging,
are you tugging on the string to go to your own direction? The world is
tugging you.

Music is tugging you. Friends are tugging you, and they're tugging you
away from that perfect, submissive, intimate relationship with God. One
day we're going to stand before God, and everything that seems so
important, all those friends, all this prestige, all the other things
will fade into nothing, and we realize, life was really only about God
and me.

Why did I set such store on those things, when actually all that matters
is if I am right with God? In life, things seem important. They fill,
consume our life, achievements and acceptance. Who'll choose me as a
wife? Sometimes it is our children who are our chief concern, including
their appearance, our standards, loose or stern.

But one day at the great throne, those things will fade away, when I, an
individual, face God upon that day, one piercing glance confronts me. My
soul exposed, revealed, despite the outward chasteness, a sinful heart
concealed. Oh, awful words, so final.

Depart, she never came. Repentance sought as sinner, forgiveness in my
name. What matters? What the world thought.

Achievements, what of them? If on that day, the verdict, not life, but
to condemn. Today, if you're a Christian, God says, how can it be that
you have wandered slightly an inch or so from me? No major disobedience,
but just your attitude. When parents reprimanded, anger inside had
brewed.

Long suffering and kindness, patience and constant care has not been
there for others who wandered from God's care. Resentment for the
treatment of someone towards me have let my footsteps wander from
walking close to thee. Each day, I must be careful that each step that I
take is only at God's bidding, as other lives at stake.

Yes, little eyes are watching, and little feet come on. Will they be
safe to follow the path I walk upon? Amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/riSOoYVPTRc.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/jenny-daniel/god-and-i/
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