Hanging out with Dave Rolph
In our passage this week, in 1 John 3, we saw John exhorting us to look with amazement at the kind of love God has for us. Realizing how God loves us is the way we change, according to John.
The real issue comes down to the question, “From whom do I derive my value?” In other words, “Who tells me what I am worth?” If I allow others’ assessment of me to be significant, then I’ll live my life frantically trying to please others, and I’m doomed to failure. But if I focus on the love that God has for me, and the pleasure He derives from me, I become secure in that assessment.
Most of us think we self-evaluate. But in reality, our criteria don’t come from within, they are communicated to us from others. And we thus have a mixed bag of input: some from those who have tried to encourage us, and other from those who have discouraged us. Unfortunately the discouraging voices are the loudest most of the time. But there is one voice that is consistently and unconditionally encouraging. If we listen to Him, everything changes. And He is actually the only one qualified to assess people anyway, because He made them.
Just look at the kind of love our Father has for us!
You don’t have to be a Christian very long, especially if you are serving God, before you discover that it hurts. We are most like Jesus when we enter into the pain of others, making ourselves vulnerable, and sharing in the suffering of Christ.
This last Sunday we talked about what we need to remember in times of pain and abandonment. 1 John 2:18-29 reminds us to remember who the Almighty Trinitarian God is, to remember our salvation, to remember the Holy Spirit is inside us and speaking, and to remember that Jesus will return. Those things are the base we need to return to when our cage has been rattled.
Yesterday I was asking myself the question, “I know what we should remember, but what should we do?” That led me to consider what Jesus did, to deal with the pain and rejection. I came up with this list, which is certainly not exhaustive.
1. He paced Himself. Jesus never seemed to be in a hurry.
2. He prayed a lot.
3. He spent a lot of alone time with the Father.
4. He didn’t expect much from others.
5. He forgave constantly.
6. His nutrition was serving the Father.
7. He kept finding new people to minister to. No rut relationships.
8. He discipled a select few, with long term results in view.
9. Ultimately, He died. (Of course, His death saved, whereas our lives are more likely to save than our deaths.)
We must do more of 1-8. 9 will come soon enough.
This week as we looked at John’s statement in 1 John 2, that you can’t love the Father and the world, I thought a lot about how much competition God has in our lives. All the “things” in our lives push us and make demands on us. Our flesh, our eyes and our pride never get enough. They always want more, and they find newer, more creative ways to demand more from us. The car dealers come out with more incentives and creative ways for us to buy new cars. Banks come up with new ways to loan money to people who can’t afford conventional financing. Smut merchants find new ways to deliver their garbage. Television is all about creating the kind of discontent that drives the economy. And God just sits by and watches it happen. He silently waits for us to get around to Him. He won’t compete for our affection. He can’t sink to that level. He will not just be another vulture picking away at our carcass. He waits. He waits for the competition to come up short. He waits for the trinkets to rust. Then He accepts us when no one else even wants us. And when we finally open our lives to the love of the Father, all other loves look cheesy and worthless by comparison. Let Him love you.
I love the chapter we studied this week, 1 John 1. I have always loved it, and it was the first chapter I memorized after I accepted Jesus. But every time I read it I see a bit more, how important its truths are to my life.
When your eyes become accustomed to the dark, you can start to think darkness is light. We are so prone to redefine reality based on our present understanding. But God wants to shine His light in our hearts, so that we are able to see our own sins clearly, so that He can remove them and heal us. I can never grow unless I see the darkness for what it is, and admit that the biggest thing wrong with my life is me. But the greatest thing about identifying the darkness in our lives, and calling it what it is, sin, is that now I have taken the step that brings in light. Let’s walk in the light this week. We have a gracious Savior who makes it easy.
In considering Peter’s message in 2 Peter 3, regarding the fact that most of what we see will be burned up someday, and all that lasts will be the people God saves, I am thinking this morning about the significance of the stuff God will melt. It is all so unimportant compared to people and eternity, and yet, it still matters. God had a purpose in creating even the stuff He will one day destroy. And I think we need to appreciate the beauty of the temporal, even though we recognize its inferiority to the eternal. Every material thing God created, although temporal, has eternal purposes. The art of living involves connecting temporal things with eternal purposes.
Dave Rolph is the Senior Pastor of Calvary Chapel Pacific Hills in Aliso Viejo, California, and is the Bible teacher for the radio program The Balanced Word. He has been at CC Pacific Hills for seven years, and prior to that he was an assistant pastor at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa for 25 years.
