Pastor Wayne Cordeiro
December 16, 2007 - W0750

Christmas can be a hectic time with shopping and events that come together very quickly.  Finding Christ in Christmas can become a problem when so much is going on that we lose sight of what it is all about.  That’s when we need to be seeing and hearing again so we won’t miss the reason for the season.  Have you ever looked for something that was so obviously close, yet you couldn’t see it?  After a pastor’s meeting, I couldn’t find my pen.  I immediately blamed Pastor Elwin for stealing it.  Suddenly, I found it sitting behind my ear.  It was so close, but I didn’t see it.  The Pharisees were like this also.  They prepared for years to recognize the Messiah, yet they could not see him nor hear him.  We can also miss seeing and hearing God during the Christmas season, even when he is right in front of us.  Instead of asking, “God, are you speaking to me?”  ask, “Am I listening?” Hebrews, chapter 4, gives us some insight.

 “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts”  (Hebrews 4:7).

Even in the midst of Christmas, hearts can harden.  Take the story of a man who prays to God for a parking space and in return he promises to stop yelling at his wife, quit swearing and stop drinking tequila.  But, when a space miraculously appears, he says, “Oh God, sorry.  Forget what I promised.  I just found one.”  Even when God shows up, we harden our hearts.  Take time to find Christ in Christmas.  We don’t often see him through the congestion of traffic, shopping and other events, so we miss seeing him.  We don’t see nor hear him because we only see ourselves.  We don’t see him as much anymore, since becoming a Christian.  Remember how you saw Christ everywhere.  It was exciting to see him move and hear him through the voices of others.  We get involved with religious activities, but miss God’s presence.  It’s like recognizing the need to fix something.  If you don’t act on it right away, your eyes become dull to the problem.  Perhaps, that is what happens to our eyes when we get caught up in the events of Christmas and miss the presence of Jesus.  Here are some principles that I follow to keep my eyes and ears upon God.  To keep your eyes from getting dull:

1.      TRAIN YOUR EYES FOR SEEING HIS PRESENCE.

“Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law”  (Psalm 119:18).

You will always ‘see’ what you are looking for.  Train your eyes to see God’s presence.  Look for problems and that’s what you will see everywhere you go.  It takes much practice to train your eyes to see God, because we were trained to see only problems.  We read and watch bad news all day long.  We read about murders, deaths and what’s wrong with society.   We watch the 5 p.m. bad news and again at 10 p.m. before we go to bed.  We awake with a ‘bad’ attitude and go on to have another ‘bad’ day.  It’s a vicious cycle.  That is why you must train your eyes to see what is good because what you look for is what you will find.  If not, you will always see what is wrong with people.  Intentionally train your eyes and your ears to see what is good.  When you do, you will see God everywhere:  in a child’s smile, in the beauty of the trees, or the laughter of Christ in a child’s words.  Once you make an intentional search for His presence, you will see Him everywhere. 

When I was in Australia, I was tired and stressed from the trip.  Then, Anna sent me a picture of a rainbow from her camera phone.  It came to me at the moment of the day when I most exhausted.  I smiled and heard God say that His promises for me will not fail.  If you look for God, you will find him.  If not, you will miss seeing Him.  Train your eyes to find evidences of His presence.  Don’t get weird about it.  Don’t look for God in grilled-cheese sandwiches or cheeseburgers.  Just see him in real ways as a Christian physician from Denver tells us.  He wrote about seeing Christ and becoming a part of his plan. 

I had some car trouble and just managed to coast it to a nearby gas station.  Before I made the call to the tow truck, I noticed a woman had slipped and fell into a gas pump.  When I went over to her, I noticed that she overcome with sobs more than with the fall.  She dropped something so I picked it up for her.  It was a nickel.  She had an old, ancient suburban crammed with stuff and three kids in the back seat.  Her gas pump read $4.95.  She said she didn’t want the kids to see her crying.  Times were hard, she said, as they were making a trip to California.  I asked her if she was praying.  She backed away, until I assured her I wasn’t a religious fanatic.  I said, “God must have heard you because he sent me.”  I paid for her gas with my credit card, and then bought three bags of McDonald’s meals, a bunch of McDonald’s gift cards and a large cup of coffee.  She told me her boyfriend left her two months ago and, not being able to pay January’s rent, she had to call her parents whom she had not spoken to in five years.  She would live with them until she could get back on her feet.  I gave her a hug and asked if I could pray for her and her children.  As I walked back to my car, she asked me if I was an angel.  I cried and said, “At this time of the year, angels are really busy so sometimes God has to use regular people.”  It felt incredible to be a part of one of God’s miracles.  When I got into my car, it started up with no problems.  I plan to take it to the mechanic tomorrow, just to check it out, but I suspect there would be nothing wrong. 

God is at work everywhere.  You just have to train your eyes to see what he is doing this Christmas.  Even when you think he is silent.  His silence has a purpose, which is to teach us commitment.  Sometimes God removes feelings and emotions so that you will learn commitment.  You must learn commitments to your wife, your husband and your children, and to your faith.  If you always have good feelings, you will tend to rely and depend on those feelings to fuel your motivation in life.  The only way God can build commitment in you is to remove those good feelings.  You will learn to choose to follow God without those good feelings and gain endurance along the way.  Then and only then, can your commitment be built.  Unless God builds your commitment, it won’t be available to you.    Hebrews 10:36 says:  “For you have need of endurance, for after you have done the will of God, you will receive what was promised.”  Doing the will of God without those good feelings is when commitment is built.  If God never removed those feelings, you will never know what commitment is all about.  You begin to learn about commitment when you start making decisions that build enduring qualities.  James 1:2 says:  “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance (endurance).  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

There will be times when you think God is silent, but when that happens:

2.      UNDERSTAND HOW HIS SILENCE BUILDS THE TREASURE OF COMMITMENT.

When you see that God’s silence has a purpose towards building a treasure in your life, you will apply it to many areas of your life.  Without commitment, you will fail as soon as the fire gets hot because you will bail out of your faith.  Our Lord tells us:

“You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not” (Deuteronomy 8:2).

God wants to see what you will do when he takes you through the wilderness in certain times of your life.  He is testing your heart to see if you will continue to follow his commandments even in the face of adversity.  Will you need to have all those feel-good emotions all the time or can you endure the silence to build your commitment to God and all that he asks of you?  Will you only serve God when you have those feel-good emotions?  He wants us to serve him with or without those comfortable feelings.  In order for God to build your commitment, there has to be moments of silence.  It is in that silence where you will make that decision to continue following Christ so that God can build commitment.  Building commitment is the reason for the silence.  God is always there, as David describes in Psalm 139.

“Where can I go from Your Spirit?  Or where can I flee from Your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there”  (Psalm 139:7-8).

God is saying, “I’m not far from you.”  You will always be on the edge of bailing if you are only waiting for the good feelings in a marriage, in your children or in your job.  Don’t bail because God may be building within you a precious treasure called commitment.  Endurance can only be built when God removes the niceties of your life.  When dealing with your children as they join a sport or organization, like baseball, karate, or cub scouts, give them a finish line.  Give them a time limit to their commitment so they won’t quit when they grow tired of it.  When that date arrives, they can decide if they want to continue.  A time limit teaches them commitment.  When Aaron wanted to join Judo, he and I agreed he would stay with it until June.  At that time he could decide if he wanted to continue.  It wasn’t easy and after a few weeks, he hated it.  But, when June arrived, I praised him for his commitment because he had finished rather than quit.  Aaron can transfer that experience of commitment to his marriage, to a job or to a ministry.  If we don’t teach our children what commitment is about, they will bail out of them when the fire gets too hot.  It affects the relationships in every area of their life.  Teach them that:

COMMITMENT IS:

…STAYING TRUE TO A WORTHY DECISION LONG AFTER THE EMOTION OF MAKING THAT DECISION HAS PASSED.

It builds commitment and endurance.  Remember that even if God is silent, he is not far from us.  He is simply removing those good feelings in order to build commitment. The absence of those feelings will turn into a decision to choose an enduring quality.  It’s a goal you can apply to every area of your life.  The greatest way to condition your eyes to see God is to:

3.      CULTIVATE A SPIRIT OF GRATITUDE. 

It takes practice to condition your eyes and ears to see God and hear his wisdom.  Making wise decisions comes after you have developed a spirit of gratitude.  God is more concerned about our gratefulness than anything else.  Gratefulness conditions your eyes to see God everywhere so that when you find yourself sliding out of gratefulness, it isn’t something you did intentionally.  Sliding out happens when you start to wonder what’s in it for you or why you feel it is beneath your character to do something.  When that happens, you stop seeing God but it isn’t done intentionally. However, getting back a spirit of gratitude must be done intentionally.  It renews the condition of your eyes so you can see God again.  But, it takes practice.  One day, while jogging, I just stopped to thank God for the trees, the air, my life, the sidewalk and just about everything.  I began to feel great.  You see, gratitude isn’t just a response when someone does something nice.  Gratitude is a spirit or disposition that you cultivate regardless of what people do for you.  If you only have gratitude when someone does something nice for you, when you don’t get those niceties, you will cultivate a spirit of bitterness instead of gratefulness.  You will grumble and complain with fits of anger because things aren’t going your way.  The secret is that gratitude is not a response as much as it is a spirit constantly developed regardless of anything else.  If you can’t be grateful when things go bad, you will never learn commitment.  Understanding the ways of God will give you a spirit of gratefulness because you will know that he has an agenda.  He is up to something in your life.  Remember that slipping away from gratitude is not intentional, but getting back to it is intentional. 

“In everything, give thanks, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

‘In everything’ means that no matter what is happening, the disposition of your heart must be one of thankfulness.  You can be sad and still be thankful.  Even in your valleys be thankful because God is in control.  You may not know what is happening, but know that God does.  He is planning something good amidst your suffering.  We don’t suffer like those who have no hope.  We suffer in such a way that we know God will bring us out of the valley with a hope for the future.  God will never take you through a valley without replacing it with something of equal or greater value.  So, when hard times tend to make you ungrateful:

·        DEMOTE YOURSELF BACK TO HUMILITY OFTEN AS NEEDED IN ORDER TO KEEP YOUR HEART PURE.

Even when you are in the right to reprimand someone, don’t do it.  Return to humility, listen to God and demote yourself.  He will take care of the situation.  Don’t lose your humility to exercise your right to reprimand someone.  Instead, God tells us:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:9).

Take that humbler stance to keep your heart pure to see God and know what you should do.  Even when others are doing wrong, keep humble and let God do the rest.  My daughters have a warehouse at their home in Oregon to store books and other items before shipping them.  They have a neighbor who claims it is disturbing the peace and will file a complaint against them.  It got to a point where they wanted to get an attorney.  But, I decided that what’s more important is the quality of life rather than winning.  That it is better to have peace than victory.  We found a warehouse in an industrial area so the neighbor won’t be irritated with the traffic.  This way, we will bring peace to the neighborhood rather than war.  We will humble ourselves to keep our hearts pure.  Remember:

“…everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14).

Here is a story about a 13-year-old boy, Logan, who called his local Christian radio station to share what was going on in his life.  He sobbed as he spoke, but his words were full of wisdom far beyond his years.  Logan said to Mike, the deejay, “I want to tell you something that God just told me.” Logan had to put down an old cow that had broken her back after she had given birth to a calf.  Crying, he asked God why this happened because she was so special to him.  He said that God spoke to him, saying, “You know Logan, my son was special but he died for a purpose.  It’s kind of the same thing because that calf was close to me and God’s son was close to him.  I just wanted to tell you guys that it’s important to remember when you lose a loved one or a pet, always remember that God gave his son too.  And, he understands.  He will always understand.  Just run to him.  I just wanted to call and share this with you guys.  Love you.”  “Love you too, Logan,” replied Mike.  Logan had eyes to see God even when things were not going well. 

Gratitude helps you to see God and is so important because God always give you something of equal or greater value to replace the valley you are going through.  It’s not just a response when someone does something good for you.  It is a spirit that you cultivate in your heart regardless of what people do for you.  It conditions your eyes and your ears to hear him in the darkest of times.  Ask God to help you see Him always and not only during the celebrations in your life. 

DISCUSSION ITEMS

Q1: What have you been seeing lately?  Could you change what you are looking for and how would you do it?

Q2: Name a time in your life when God was silent and what you learned from His silence.

Q3: Share a commitment you made and how it impacted the quality of your life.

Q4: What clouds your gratitude at times?  How can you clear the air so that you can cultivate a spirit of gratitude?

Q5: Is there a situation in your life that requires a peaceful disposition and what can you do to bring about a peaceful resolution?

Q6: How will you practice seeing and hearing God?  How will you practice gratitude?