Secrets of the Secret Place - Part 9

Welcome again, it's great to have you with us. This is our ninth session of the Secrets of the Secret Place course. A special welcome to those that are joining us, watching us on DVD. And tonight, in this session, I'd like to talk about the cross of Christ, which is one of my favorite preoccupations in the Secret Place. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, come. We ask that you would inflame our hearts with passion and love for Jesus Christ. Be with every one of us now as we look into your word together, in Jesus' name. Now, when you're suffering, there's a few places in the Bible that you just naturally gravitate toward. You gravitate toward the book of Psalms, you gravitate toward the book of Job, you gravitate toward Lamentations 3, and you tend to look at the cross. David's greatest honor was not that he wrote many Psalms in the Bible. David's greatest honor was not that he was king of Israel, or that he was given an everlasting throne. The greatest honor in David's life was being quoted three times on the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I thirst. Abba, into your hands I commit my spirit. And when Jesus was wanting to find language on the cross to express the depths of his heart, he reached back into the Psalms and found the language of King David to express his heart to God. What kind of journey would you have to walk in order to write the kind of thing that Jesus would want to quote on the cross? And in order for David to have this amazing honor. I mean, imagine if you had been quoted three times on the cross. For David to have this amazing honor, this identification and intimacy with Christ, for him to have that, he had to walk something out in his journey with God in order to have this kind of language. So there's something that opens to us through suffering and intimacy because of shared experiences with the heart of Christ in his suffering. When I don't know how to make sense of my journey, I just go back to the cross. When I don't know how to process my pain levels, I just go back to the cross. When I don't know, when it feels like he's withholding from me, I just go back to the cross. How many have ever heard that ancient accusation of the enemy against you? He's withholding from you. He could give it to you, but he's not. That one is as old as the hills, goes back to the Garden of Eden. When the enemy used that one on him and said, he's withholding from you, that which would make you everything you could be, and that same accusation, it's one of his favorites that comes against us. Whenever I hear that ancient accusation, he's withholding from you. I just go back to the cross because the cross nails that accusation. When I come to the cross, I don't see a God who's withholding from me. I see a God with a nail in this hand, a nail in this hand, a nail through his feet who stands on the nail and with his arms spread wide says, I give you my soul, I give you my strength, I give you my love, I give you everything that I am, I give you my last drop of blood, I give you my last breath. And when I look at the cross, I don't see a God who's withholding from me. I see a God who is giving me his everything, who is giving me his best. And I declare to you tonight, my God withholds nothing from me. He's already given me his best, and now I am his, and he is mine. Come with me, please, to Genesis 3:15, I invite you to turn to this scripture, Genesis 3:15, which is a verse that gives a unique perspective on Calvary. When I look at the cross, many times I look at it real close. I look at the torment, the horror, the trauma, the starkness of it, but in Genesis 3:15, we have a look at the cross from a heavenly bird's eye perspective. It's actually the first time in the Bible that the cross is mentioned. And interestingly enough, it's God the Father talking to Satan about the cross. And here's what God the Father says to Satan, looking ahead to the cross. He says, I will put enmity between you, Satan, and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He, now that's a reference to Christ, he, Jesus, shall bruise your head, and you, Satan, shall bruise his heel. This is the first statement from the heart of God regarding the cross. God is saying to Satan, Jesus is going to bruise your head, Satan, on the cross, and you will bruise his heel. Now I promise you, when Jesus was hanging on the cross, it did not feel like a bruising of his heel. It felt like every atom of his being was being pulled apart. Because it was. And the same thing is true for you. When you're in the vortex of your trial, it doesn't feel like a bruising of your heel. It feels like everything inside of you is being torn apart in the fiery crucible that you're walking through. But there is a heavenly, eternal perspective that God has on your crucible that he wants you to find too. When the Lord looks at your life from a heavenly vantage, and once you get his perspective on it, you'll look back one day on your trial and say, Whoa, I took it in the heel all right, but my adversary has taken it in the head. Beloved, when we look at the cross, we see blood everywhere. It's a spectacle of blood. But on the cross of Jesus Christ, when we look at that cross, Satan was more bloodied by the cross than Jesus Christ was. And God has the same purpose for you in your trial. He wants you to walk with him, abiding in his love, living in the secret place, in prayer, giving your heart to him, in fasting, in prayer, in the word, in the spirit. And there's a day coming as you persevere in your journey, you're going to look back one day and say, Whoa, I took it in the heel all right, that was pretty intense for a while, but my adversary has been bloodied in the head. Now as we talk about the cross of Christ and our identification with his suffering, we're actually looking at a topic that is at the center of the heartbeat of the word of God. The Old Testament and the New Testament both launch with the identical same theme. Quiz. What's the first book of the Old Testament, the first book put on paper? I'll give you a hint, it's not Genesis. It's the book of Job. The book of Job, the first book put on paper, the theme of which is enduring through suffering. I believe it's more than accidental that the Holy Spirit launched this thing we call scripture with the book of Job because the Lord wants us to have in the very fabric of the foundations of our DNA what it means to endure through suffering. Absolutely essential to our lives in God. Now when we come to the New Testament, the New Testament launches with the exact same theme. Quiz. What's the oldest book in your New Testament? I'll give you a hint, it's not Matthew. I'll give you another hint, it's the only book in the New Testament that mentions Job. Turn in your Bibles to the book of James. Here we go, the book of James. It's the oldest book in your New Testament. The first New Testament witness put on paper that was sent out to the churches and look how the Holy Spirit starts the New Testament. My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. What a way to start the New Testament. I call James 1 verse 2 the toughest verse in the Bible. If you can get James 1 verse 2 mastered, everything else is downhill from there. Count it all joy when your spouse comes down with cancer. Count it all joy when your spouse divorces you. Count it all joy when your child is born with a disability. Count it all joy when you lose your job. Count it all joy when your house goes into foreclosure. Count it all joy when you have a heart attack. I'm having a little problem with the verse. If it had said count it all depression, I'm there. I understand that. The foremost struggle I've had in the 17 years I've been walking with this affliction related to my voice, my foremost struggle has been with depression. I understand that struggle. But the verse says count it all joy. Finally I said to the Lord, I said Lord time's up. It's been all these years and I'm not getting James 1 verse 2. You have to give me the verse. The Lord said come to the next verse. Verse 3. Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. Number 3 in your notes. Here's a definition of endurance that I want you to make a note of. Based on James 1 verse 3. Endurance is faith sustained over time despite distress. Or pain. Endurance. That's a better word than patience. Endurance. It's really the word in the verse here. That says the testing of your faith produces patience. It should say endurance. Endurance is faith sustained over time in the midst of pain. This is the war of the secret place. When you are in a trial and you're fighting for air. And the enemy is after you and trying to take you down. The secret place becomes this battleground. Where you are devoting yourself to doing whatever you have to do. To stay in faith. And when you stay in faith over the long haul. In the midst of adversity. It's so powerful. Look at verse 4. It says but let this kind of endurance have it's perfect work. James 1 verse 4. That you may be perfect and complete. Lacking nothing. Endurance is so powerful. It has the power to do in your life what nothing else can do. Endurance that is staying in faith over time. Is so life transforming. It has the ability in the grace of God to bring you through the thing. Perfect and complete. Lacking nothing. Lacking nothing in holiness. Lacking nothing in righteousness. Lacking nothing in the knowledge of Christ. Lacking nothing in every good fruit. Lacking nothing in every good gift. Laying hands on the sick and they recover. Lacking nothing in good works. Lacking nothing in meekness, patience, self control. Start making your list. What does it look like to be perfect and complete? Lacking nothing. There's only one person that ever met that criteria. That was Christ. And when we look at the life of Christ, how did he handle trials? Well, if the boy is dead, you just go over, you touch the corpse and you raise the boy to life. And if you don't have food, well you just take some loaves and fish and multiply them for 5000 people. And if you don't have tax money, you just send somebody down to the lake, put a hook in the lake, pull up the first fish, open the fish's mouth, take the coin out of the fish's mouth and pay your tax. Perfect and complete. Lacking nothing. The verse says, if you will stay in faith, and that's what the secret place is all about. Abiding in his word. Abiding in the spirit. Pressing into the heart of God and fasting and prayer. As you stay in the secret place and give yourself to God. Staying in faith. This crucible you're in becomes a divine invitation to be so transformed in the grace of God that you come through the thing perfect and complete. Lacking nothing. And you look back on it and say, whoa, that was intense. I really took that in the heel. But my adversary is bloodied in the head because I walked the thing out with the Lord, enduring through suffering, buying gold in the fire, transformed by the power of God. Now it's in my heart to share a personal story with you tonight. To share this story with you, I'm going back now to 1994. This happened to me in 92. And I'm two years into it. My strength levels are plummeting. My pain levels are escalating. I'm trying to pass through the church where we're leading. And I'm reading the writing on the wall. It's over. And I'm in the crisis of my life. I remember this one weekend, I'm in so much pain. I've got this cloud of oppression over my mind. And I'm actually on a prayer sabbatical. The church is gracious. They've given me a six-month paid salary so that I can be on sabbatical and kind of work it out with God. So I'm on this prayer sabbatical. I brought the family to church Saturday night. And got up Sunday morning. And I'm like, okay, Lord. I got on my reading chair. Got out the Bible. And I'm like, Lord, talk to me. I've got to get a rhema from you. Give me something from your word. Because the only thing that would break through the darkness, the oppression over my mind, was when I got living understanding in the word of God. So I'm desperate to get something. I'm like, Lord, please give me something. And the word is just nothing. I tried praying for a while. It's dry as dust. Finally, I threw my Bible, literally threw my Bible on the floor. I said, that's it? If I'm going to hurt this bad, me, me, me, my, my, my little world of pain, self-center, pity, parties, I hate this. If I'm going to hurt this bad, my kids are going to have fun today. I'm taking them to a baseball game. Now, I was raised in a good Christian home. My parents, pastors, and the tradition. I was raised in, you didn't go to baseball games on the Lord's Day. So I'm breaking all the rules. I've never done this in my life. In fact, I've never been to one of these baseball games. We lived in the Rochester, New York area. Anybody ever heard of Rochester, New York? I like you. So we're living in upstate New York, Rochester's in Silver Stadium, Rochester. We're going to go watch the Red Wings play baseball, a AAA ball game in Rochester. So I threw the kids in the van, put a couple of neighborhood boys in the van, and off we took to Silver Stadium. I'm like a first timer in church. Where do you park? How do you get in? Where do you pay? Where's the bathrooms? I'm trying to figure out how to do this, but I'm pretending I'm cool with my kids. Come on kids, here we go. So we get set up, and I'm ornery. I'm like, everybody gets Coke. Everybody gets popcorn. My kids are sitting there stuffing their faces. It's a midsummer day, summer of 1994, 75 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, gorgeous Sunday afternoon, baseball in America. My kids have their hats on, they've got their baseball gloves, and we are doing this thing. And I'm sitting there absolutely miserable. The cloud hasn't moved an inch. And I start having this inner conversation. I don't know if I should call it prayer or self-talk. I start saying, God, do you even understand where I'm at? And I didn't mean, do you understand that I'm at a baseball game on a Sunday afternoon? What I meant was, God, they are paying me to pray right now. I'm coming after you. I'm living in the sacred place in your word and prayer and fasting, coming after you with everything I know to do. And I cannot break the oppression over my mind. God, am I going to lose my sanity? Do you understand where I'm at? And then it kind of changed, and it became like this. What have I done? I must have done something to get you really angry at me, to tell me what it is, and I'll repent of it. When you're hurting bad enough, you'll repent of anything. You'll repent of stuff you never did. And I'm like, Lord, I'm happy to repent, just what have I done? And I've got, I'm pretty convinced, I've got a demon parked on my shoulder. Because when you're in that kind of a war zone, you've got this megaphone blaring in your ear, abandoned, forsaken, you're a has-been, you're a casualty, buddy. You've been taken out. Time to wake up and smell the coffee. It's over. And I've got all this stuff blaring in my ear, and yet I've got this little tiny voice that's going, I think it's going, I'm not sure, am I hearing it right? I love you. I'm with you. I'm closer than I've ever been. It's not over yet. This is going somewhere. Well, when you're in that kind of a war zone, you desperately want to believe that that still tiny little voice you're hearing is the voice of God, but the other is so strong and it's reinforced by all the facts. And so I'm in this tug of war in my mind and I'm like, could it be, Lord, that you love me? You've chosen me. You're with me. Lord, if that's your voice, if you are that still small voice speaking to me, then, no, wait a minute, I am not going to ask God to catch a baseball as a sign that that's his still small voice. I'm not going there. I know the scripture, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. No, no, do not go there. I'm shutting that down. And so I'm trying to stop that voice. And I can't stop it. So then I started thinking like this, okay, I wonder if God would let me catch a baseball as a sign that he loves me and he's with me. And then I thought, no, don't go there, Bob. Stop that. And I'm trying to stop this ludicrous line of thought. And I can't shut it down. And being the analytical type that I am, I start calculating my chances. I'm looking at the ball field, pi r squared, counting the number of people in the stands, counting how many balls are being caught. They aren't catching baseballs. And so I did the math pretty fast. Besides that, we're under this overhanging ball. It couldn't even get to us if it wanted to. And I'm just like, stop this. Three quarters of the way through the game, this guy hits a fly ball with one motion. Hundreds of people rise to their feet. Baseball gloves appear out of nowhere. I've never seen so many baseball gloves at any one event. And I'm on my feet with the rest of the fools. I'm reaching into the sky. Here comes this ball. It comes up like this. It comes up under the overhang, hits a cross beam at the base of the overhang, careens off at this bizarre angle and comes down straight at me. It comes at me so fast it hits my hand, bounces off my chest and lands in my daughter's lap. My daughter, Katie, she says, I got a baseball. I'm looking at her. I'm thinking, that ain't your baseball, sweetheart. That's my baseball. I call it my kiss from heaven in one of my darkest hours. It was my interpretation of it. Heaven's way of saying, I am with you. This is going somewhere. Never relent. Give yourself to this secret place, Bob. You're doing it. Just keep on investing, keep on sowing in the spirit and fasting and prayer and the word and I will finish what I have started with your life. I am with you. Let's finish this verse very quickly, James. 1 verse 4 Let endurance have its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete lacking nothing. Now this is what my life is after. I want this verse. So, I've done a little bit of calculating on it. I feel like I've been on sort of a fast track with the Lord in these 17 years. The fire's been real intense. Sometimes you feel like when you're in that kind of a fire kind of an accelerated program with the Lord. So God's been changing stuff with me in an amazing way and I've looked at how he's changed me in these 17 years and I've kind of charted my trajectory and I figure if I keep on changing at the same rate that I've been changing these past 17 years if this continues I reckon I will attain to perfect and complete lacking nothing I reckon I'll get there in about 463 years. And then I got depressed all over again. I'm like, God I'm never gonna attain what you have for me in this life, in this journey. And then I realized James 1 verse 4 is actually a promise from heaven. If you will endure through suffering if you will buy gold in this fire, if you will stay in the bosom of the Father abiding in Christ and in his word he will do for you what you cannot do for yourself. There's a day coming when he will interrupt your trajectory and do for you what you could not possibly do for yourself. It's a promise that as you endure in prayer and in love and in good works he will interrupt your life and do for you that which only he can do. Lord Jesus I pray that you would empower every listener, everyone watching this session that you would empower us to endure in the word, endure in love, endure in prayer, endure in the secret place and never relent until we are perfect and complete lacking nothing and would you grant to us the perspective that we would one day look on this journey and say whoa I took it in the heel but my adversary has been bloodied in the head Lord Jesus would you bloody the head of our adversary because of how we have walked with you in the secret place enduring through suffering I ask this in Jesus name Amen