Pastor Wayne Cordeiro
September 27, 2009 - W0939

Pastor Wayne is starting us on a new series about “Starting Points.” Before the message, a testimony by Patti Yasuhara was given and the lessons learned by her about “Starting Points.” Are you at that point in your life? Are there things that you have to make right with God?  Listen to what God has to say through the message today…

As we begin a new series called “Starting Points,” we are going to meet Abraham today. First, I want to ask you, are any of you still learning to hear from God? Raise your hand. Yes, me too. The real question is do you really want to hear God? Because I was thinking the other day, if God spoke out loud…I would die! Wow…it will scare the living day lights out of me. I thought…do I really want to hear what He wants to say? I am afraid of what He is going say.  Maybe He will say, “Wayne, give all of your possessions to the poor and live at Ala Moana Park and be homeless, or maybe He might tell me to go be a missionary in Portugal…uhmm. Or worst yet, He might say, “Be nice to Elwin!”  I know that is not from God…

 I know I don’t want to hear what God has to say. We have what we call selective hearing. We chose what we want to hear. My granddaughter Katie is going to turn three in a week. Some time ago, she was playing with her toys and it was getting lat so I told her, “Katie, it is time for bed now. Please, put away your toys. Time to get going.”  She kept playing. I repeated what I said. She kept on playing. It was like she was deaf so I decided to test her. I said, “Who wants ice cream?” She suddenly spoke up and said “I do!” I said, “Ah ha…Grandpa lied.  You heard me; you just don’t want to hear because you don’t want to obey.”  Then I thought…isn’t that a theological truth! The reason we only hear what we want to hear because we don’t want to obey.  It really has nothing to be with our hearing. Rather, it has everything to do with our heart and our willingness to respond to Him.

A story was told of this elderly man that went to a hearing doctor.  He was fitted with a space-age hearing aid. It was so advanced that you can’t see it. His hearing was restored to 100 percent. A month later, he went back to the doctor and the doctor tested him. Then, the doctor said, “This is fantastic that your hearing has been restored to 100 percent! Have you told your family yet?” He said, “No…No…No…I haven’t told them. I just sit around and listen to their conversations. And I have changed my will four times already!” When you hear God, there may be things you don’t want to hear.  Starting points…hearing God early on.

Today we will hear about the snapshots of Abraham and find out reasons why God chose him to be the “Father of Our Faith.” When God spoke Abraham, Abraham usually did what God said. When God speaks to us, we have a tendency to spin His words around, reshape them and fit them to what suits us and our lifestyle. Most of the time, we fit God’s voice to our behavior rather than our behavior to God’s voice. Abraham was different. He listened to God and obeyed Him. He did it regardless of whether he liked it. He listened to God’s voice and fashioned his life around God. I think that is why God chose him. Abraham listened to God even to a point of sacrificing his son, Isaac.

We will meet him at about 100 years old and he has son named Isaac. Because of having a son at his late age, his love shifted more to his son than God. God spoke to him and said, “Abraham we have so much to do. I really need your heart.” God will really speak to you if He wants you to listen. It’s not so much the volume of his voice that we need to hear but rather the sensitivity of our heart to hear what He is truly saying. God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Let us read Abraham’s responses to God in the following verses…

"So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled is donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him." (Gen. 22:3)

Please underline the first phrase Abraham rose early in the morning.

You see hear when God spoke, Abraham got up early the next morning to do God’s bidding. Sometimes when God speaks, we ignore Him and say that we will do it later. When God speaks, we often procrastinate, but Abraham got up early in the morning to obey. Abraham listened and obeyed right away.

You know the story. God didn’t want Abraham’s son. God just wanted Abraham’s heart. If your heart is in the right place, you hear God. If not, our hearing gets weird and so does our behavior.

There was a story told about three “hard of hearing” guys walking down the street. One of the hard of hearing guy says, “Isn’t it windy?”  Then the other one said, “No, it is not Wednesday. It’s Thursday.” The third one said, “Oh yes, I am really thirsty too! Let us stop and get some water!” Ha! Ha! Ha! Yes, when we don’t hear right, everything goes wrong. But if your heart is good, even though you go astray, when God speaks, you’ll hear Him and respond to Him early on. When God sees your heart…let us read the next point…

The three points to learning to hear God early on are:

1. The ability to SEE the direction of God.

Abraham didn’t know that God was going to send an angel to switch the sacrifice but he knew God’s character and he trusted God completely. It is like this saying I heard that goes like this, “I don’t know what my future hold but I know who holds my future…and that is good enough for me.” When you know God and trust in Him, you begin to have a faith that sees beyond what you can see and there is a trust. Abraham just needed to open his heart to God. Let us read the next verse…

"Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Thy Law." (Ps. 119:18)

Abraham just needed God to open his eyes. He didn’t know what was going to happen in the end. Remember faith is living in advance with what you will only understand in reverse.  Faith is living in advance because you know God’s character. Again, God didn’t want Abraham’s son but He required Abraham’s heart.

When I was in college, I use to love to ride motorcycles. When Anna and I had children, we had agreed that I would ride until the children were older.  Then when they were, with Anna’s permission, I bought a Harley Davidson motorcycle. I loved that motorcycle. I polished it. I hugged it.  I spent much of my time with it but one day God asked me to sell it.  I said “Oh, no…no.”

When God puts his finger on you, you can run but you cannot hide. One week went by and then two weeks went by. Finally I placed an ad in the paper. I felt so much trepidation. I made all the excuses when someone wanted to see it. I prayed nobody else would want to see it but one day, this guy who was interested in it came by to look at it and instantly fell in love with it too. He told me he wanted to buy it but that he would need to go to the bank to get a loan.  I told him that it would have to be quick because the sale would only last for a few more days. He assured me that he would be back.  I was so upset by the prospect of losing the motorcycle but I finally accepted that God wanted me to let it go and when I finally did…The gentleman didn’t call by the deadline as he said he would, but it was then that what had really happened:  God didn’t really want my motorcycle, but like with Abraham, He really just wanted my heart and my attention.

He had/has so much to do through me. I needed to pay close attention. I need my heart to be aligned with God’s ways. Faith is living in advance. (I guess it didn’t hurt that I had put the motorcycle up for sale at $45,000.00!  Nah, just joking  but you’re beginning to see…

Next point…

·     Increases your capacity for TRUTH.

Some of those truths are hard to swallow. God just wanted our heart!

"A false witness will perish, but the man who listens to the truth will speak forever." (Prov. 21:28)

You want to be a truth seeker…not only a listener.  Let’s read the next verse…

Oh Lord, who may abide in Your tent? Who may abide on Your holy hill? He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart." (Ps. 15:1-2)

Are you good in recognizing the truth when God shows it to you? In your pride? When you are wrong? And in various other ways? How do you respond when God shows you the truth? I remember once when Anna and I were in the middle of a heated argument and God told me that I was wrong and I needed to apologize. I was said no (because I was winning!) and I was unwilling to face the truth. Listening to the truth and recognizing it…those are the ways of God. If we don’t, it dulls us.  We ignore it, and then later we don’t even recognize it.

I remember when we lived in Hilo, we had this mattress that we have to turn over every week. One day as we were turning it over, we scraped the “popcorn” on the ceiling. It left an ugly gouge on the ceiling. The day it happened, I told Anna, “We need to fix this today!  That’s so ugly!”  I didn’t fix it that day but next day I said, “Oh yeah, I need to fix that, it’s so ugly.”  More days went by and about a week later, I said, “I need to fix that but it’s not that bad.” As time passed, we kept ignoring it and putting off fixing it. Months later when I looked at it I thought, “It’s not that bad; no one would probably even notice it.”  Until finally when we were getting ready to sell our house, I finally fixed it but it barely even noticeable, or so I had thought then.  You see sometimes when we don’t respond right away and we let things go for a while, we start to not even notice things that are so obvious to other people.  The same thing happens when we don’t listen to God right away and we ignore what He is telling us.  Our minds dull, we stop listening to God, and we don’t recognize truth anymore. That happens because we don’t recognize it early on.  This leads to the next point about listening to God early on…

2.  The STRENGTH of your mind.

"Set your mind on things above and not on the things that are on earth." (Col. 3:2) (1 Cor. 2:16)

When we start to see things as the earth/man does, we don’t recognize the truth and hear God. We start hearing the wrong things. We start being immune to the sin. Obeying God becomes an option. We have to remain in the truth of God. No one said sin is not fun but we need to obey God. We are designed to have His mind. When the Devil weakens your mind, his goal is to have you start considering things you would not have otherwise.

The devil is a headhunter. Your mind is his battlefield. And your imagination is his trophy. Like in Genesis, when Eve was tempted by Satan. When she was tempted, Eve considered what the serpent said. Read the next passage about if you start considering things other than God and what He says...

"And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return." (Heb. 11:15)

In Jeremiah’s times, the people were so corrupt… then the mind gets weak. Let us read…

"But now what are you doing on the road to Egypt? To drink the waters of the Nile?" (Jer. 2:18)

There was a man on the fishing boat that used to travel between the USA and the Mexican border.  He was approached by others to run drugs across the water.  He refused but they kept approaching him, each time with a better and better offer.  This went on for three years until he finally turned them in. When the border patrol asked him, “Why did you just turn them in now after three years?”  He said, “...because they were getting close to my price!”  Consider the life of Abraham and how he influenced others…

3. The shelf life of your INFLUENCE.

There are different kinds of Christians like the flash cube kind:  they are short-lived and burn out quickly.  Then there are the flashlight Christians who only shine for themselves. But then there are floodlight Christians that shine for the whole world to see and who provide light for others. I always think of Abraham’s influence as being of this sort:  floodlight.

There is a shelf life to our influence in our children’s generation and other people. This leads us to the next verse…

"You have not chosen Me but I have chosen you, and appointed you, that you should bear fruit and that your fruit should remain." (John 15:16)

Everyone knows about Abraham’s faith but have you ever considered Isaac’s?. He was a strapping 17-18 year old young man. He wasn’t clueless about things. He could take his father down in a heartbeat but with everything that was happening, he was obedient to his father. He never questioned when his father told him to carry the firewood on his back or even when Abraham told him to lay down on the altar. Why do you think that is?  Where did Isaac’s faith come from?  I believe it came from watching his father for 17-18 years trust in God and always seeing that God would not let you down. Isaac was influenced by his father’s relationship with God early on as he was growing up.

"And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together." (Gen. 22:6)

Today we talked about the faith of Abraham and how important it is to respond to God early on.  It is important to keep in line with God’s ways so we have the ability to see the direction of God, seek God’s truth, strengthen our minds and increase our shelf life of our influence. Along the way…we can and will influence the world.

DISCUSSION SUGGESTIONS:

1. In what ways does God speak to you?

2. Are you like Abraham when you respond to God? If not, share your responses.

3. Are there any starting points in your life that God is trying to get your attention?

4. In Pastor Wayne’s message, share an example that impacted you so much about

starting points in your life.