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ALTARations Part 3
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I want to start with a statement I share regularly in my preaching, and I say it frequently not because I've forgotten, but because it's important for us to continually hear it:
The God you see is the God you get.
In other words, my perception of God affects my reception of God. My outlook on God affects my experience with God. The way I see God doesn't change Him, but it does impact my experience with Him.
This is why the scriptures are regularly and consistently reminding us and reintroducing us to who God is. According to the creation narrative, a strategy of Satan has always been to infect, impact, and pervert our perspective of God. If you listen to the conversation Satan has with Eve in the garden, he is calling into question God's character: "Did God really say...?" The enemy knows that you live at the level of your revelation. Sometimes our revelation of God produces limitations in our life. So God throughout Scripture keeps reintroducing Himself to us because the God you see is the God you get.
I want to inform some and remind others that the God of the Bible is not just a God of salvation. He's also a God of alterations. In Exodus 31:13, He introduces Himself as Jehovah Madesh—the Lord who sanctifies.
This is good news for God's people. All of us have issues, struggles, and challenges that seem constant and chronic. What Jehovah Madesh reveals to us is this:
If you learn how to bring it to Me, I'll do what your eyes haven't seen, your ears haven't heard, and your heart hasn't conceived.
God alters stories—He turns tests into testimonies. He alters situations—He turns your setbacks into setups. He alters seasons—He gives you the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
He even alters souls. He turns sinners into saints. He alters character—He turned a deceiver like Jacob into a nation builder like Israel. He alters conditions—He turned the bitter water at Mara into sweet water for His people. He alters circumstances—He turned the Red Sea into a roadway. He alters careers—He turned fishermen into fishers of men.
And He alters crosses. He takes the instrument that the enemy wanted to use to assassinate you, and He elevates you with it. What the devil meant for evil, God meant for good.
Here's the test: It's one thing to know that He is the God of alterations. Do you believe He's the God of alterations? If you don't believe that, you've assigned sovereignty to your struggles. Your struggles are not sovereign.
Many of us have gone through seasons where it feels like struggles are sovereign—like they have the last say, the last word. But I want you to know that your savior is sovereign and your struggle is not sovereign.
Consider the Bible's records of people dealing with certain issues: the man at the pool of Bethesda for 38 years, the woman with the bent-over back for 18 years, the woman with the issue of blood for 12 years. No matter how long you've been dealing with it and no matter what it is, it does not change who He is.
I need somebody to get an attitude and tell the devil: "Let me go. This is God's property. This is God's mind. This is God's body. These are God's children. This is God's business. Take your hand off of God's property."
In John 4, we meet a woman from Samaria who is stuck in a cycle. What's a cycle? It's a reoccurring pattern of suboptimal or self-destructive behavior. When the problem becomes a pattern, then the problem becomes a prison.
Notice what I said: it is suboptimal and self-destructive. Suboptimal means I can be in a cycle where every time I'm in it, it doesn't mean I'm down bad. It just means I'm not where I should be. I'm underneath what's optimal.
This is why it's easy to stay stuck—in many cases, we're comparing our position to somebody else's position. But God doesn't compare people to people. He wants you to compare you to your potential.
Consider Matthew 25, the parable of the talents. A man distributed five talents to one person, two talents to another, and one talent to a third. The person with one talent buried it. They didn't lose it; they just didn't multiply it. They didn't maximize it. Jesus called that man wicked and lazy.
But the one with two talents flipped his two and made four. The one with five talents flipped his five and made ten.
Here's the crucial point: If the one who had five talents did nothing—if he buried his talent—he would still have more than the one who had two talents who flipped it and made four. You can't look at how somebody else is doing and gauge how you're doing. God gave you so much that you still have more than some people, and you're not even maximizing what you got.
I pray this over your life: God pushes you into flipping season. I'm talking about you getting ready to flip your potential. You're getting ready to flip your anointing. You're getting ready to flip your life.
This woman appears to be in a relational cycle—five husbands. But Jesus makes diagnoses before He writes prescriptions. Diagnosis must precede deliverance.
The reason some people stay stuck in cycles is because they misdiagnose the cycle they're in. So you're fighting the wrong thing and applying the blood to the wrong thing.
Jesus is a need assessor before He becomes a provider. When the disciples brought a man who couldn't walk to Jesus, they thought the issue was his legs. Jesus looked up and said: "Your sins are forgiven." But the friends were confused—"I didn't carry this man here for his sins to be forgiven. He can't walk!"
Jesus was saying: God will use what you think you need to drive you to Him so He can show you what you really need. "Now that we're here, let's talk about the real issue."
The woman from Samaria seems to have a relational cycle, but Jesus never talks to her about relationships. He never says she needs to make better choices or stop assigning value to people who can't value her. He never addresses her relational decisions.
Instead, He talks to her about thirst.
Jesus says: "You think your issue is your choices, so you keep trying to fix your choices. But the issue is not your choices. The issue is your thirst. Your thirst keeps affecting your choices."
It's dangerous to choose when you're thirsty. Discernment is diluted when you're thirsty. Faith gets suffocated with fear when you're thirsty because you'll believe that if this door closes, it's the only door that can give you access to where God wants to take you.
But I came to tell you: when God gets ready to put you in a room, if they close the door, He'll open a window. And if they close the window, He'll open the roof.
The woman was thirsty—probably for security, love, acceptance, and protection. And Jesus said: "I'm Him."
He said: "When you get this Man, then you'll know how to get the other things." He never deals with her relationship. He deals with her thirst, because the thirst keeps perpetuating the cycle. Until He fixes the thirst, He can't stop the cycle.
Cycles have an anatomy:
The longer we stay in it, the less hope we have that we can get out of it.
But we can't fix the cycle until we fix the thirst. And Jesus says: "I am what fixes the thirst. I will give you living water, which is a metaphor for My Spirit."
My Spirit quenches your thirst for love. My Spirit quenches your thirst for acceptance. My Spirit quenches your thirst for protection.
Now you're choosing out of want, not out of need. Out of discernment, not out of desperation.
How do you get access to this living water? The answer is in the text.
When Jesus gave the woman a word of knowledge—a logos—and talked to her about those five relationships, she said to Him: "I perceive you're a prophet." But later she says: "I know that the Messiah called Christ is coming. And when He comes, He will explain everything to us."
She saw Him as a prophet, but she didn't see Him as Messiah. And Jesus had to tell her: "I'm Him."
The God you see is the God you get. If you only see a prophet, you can get a word. But if you see the Messiah, you can get salvation.
When she got a revelation that this was the Messiah, she left her water pot. She came to the well thinking she was getting one thing, but when she had an experience with Jesus, she valued Him more than her water pot.
This is an expression of worship. She was saying: "I'm leaving something I value for something I value more. I came thinking I wanted one thing. But now that I've had an experience with You, I value this more than that."
Worship begins with affection first, and actions are an expression of that affection.
Jesus says in John 4:24:
He's a Spirit, and His worshippers must worship in the spirit and in truth.
This woman experiences an alteration because she has an authentic encounter with Jesus, not just an emotional experience in church. The question becomes: How do we have authentic encounters with Jesus and not just emotional experiences in church? That only happens when the kind of worship we're offering is worship done in spirit and in truth.
This whole series is about reframing worship from something we do on Sunday together to what's called a spiritual discipline that we do not just on Sunday, but on Monday. A spiritual discipline is what Dallas Willard calls a means of grace—something God uses to give you something you don't deserve.
Some people go to the gym without understanding the importance of doing the exercise not just hard, but correctly. I can be working hard and not working right because I need to do the exercise consistently and correctly.
In the text, Jesus is teaching the correct way to exercise the spiritual discipline of worship. Prayer is a spiritual discipline, but only praying and never studying the Bible is like working upper body and never working legs. When the wind blows, you get knocked down because you don't have a foundation. All the spiritual disciplines serve our spiritual growth in different ways.
Worship is one that must be done consistently and correctly. How do we do it correctly? Jesus says it must be done in spirit and in truth.
Worshiping in spirit can mean:
Worshiping in truth means:
God not only instructs us to worship Him, but He tells us how He desires to be worshiped. When we look in the Bible, we see all these different expressions of worship—not because everybody's supposed to do everything, but because there's something for everybody.
There's something I call spiritual temperaments—the way you have been wired by God to respond to God and to seek and pursue God. The Bible says "praise Him in the dance." That doesn't mean everybody's got to dance, but it means it's okay for somebody to dance.
When He says, "I want you to worship Me in truth," He's saying: You need to worship Me as I reveal Myself in the Bible. Sometimes we're worshiping a god we created, not the one that created us. God says: "You stop worshiping Me when I don't give you what you want. But if you look in the Bible, I give you what you need."
Technically, you're never instructed to worship God in your own way. You have a unique way to worship because you're drawn to certain expressions of worship in the Bible based on your temperament. Some of us are more prone to hands raised, some to dancing, some to reflection—that's fine as long as it's in Scripture. But sometimes people step outside the bounds of Scripture to unapproved, non-biblically sanctioned expressions of worship. The Old Testament would call that strange fire.
But when we worship God in spirit and in truth, you have regular encounters on a daily basis with the manifest presence of God. You live a presence-driven life. You're not spiritually dry. Some people are studying Scripture but dry, praying but dry, because they're not completing the circuit of disciplines.
When you worship in spirit and truth, here's what happens:
You can experience His presence to degrees. There are greater degrees, greater measures of His presence. When your worship aligns with spirit and truth, and when you practice it as a spiritual discipline—not just a corporate exercise—you really learn.
Your practice should be in private because it's harder to learn here in public. It's too distracting. Perfect it in private and express it in public. But I want more of God. I want to experience increased degrees of His manifest presence because I'm a different person when I'm in it.
Fish need water. Birds need the sky. Cattle need land. You need Him. You need Eden—unbroken communion and fellowship with Him.
Life's too hard to not have more of Him.
In Acts 13, there are prophetic gifts and teachers and apostles who were worshiping at Antioch. The Bible says they were worshiping and fasting. And while they were worshiping and fasting, the Holy Spirit said: "Set apart for Me Paul and Barnabas for the work that I've assigned them."
They're in the presence and they get a message—because sometimes the word is in the presence.
Paul was already prepared. He was competent. But preparation doesn't mean permission. When he was in the presence of God, God said: "It's go time."
Sometimes we need answers. We need guidance. We need direction. And it's in the presence.
Consider the ark of the covenant—the furniture that represented the presence of God in Moses's tabernacle. The ark was like a box with items inside: Aaron's rod that budded, and manna. And the Ten Commandments.
So there was a miracle in there. There was manna in there. And there was a message in there—the Ten Commandments.
The word from God you need is in His presence. The words are in the ark. If I'm missing the ark, I'm missing some words. I'm missing "don't sign that." I'm missing "back out of that deal." I'm missing "start it now." I'm missing "write it now." I'm missing "do it now."
We need a message from God because there's a large degree of anxiousness tied to a lack of clarity. I'm not talking about anxiety, but anxiousness. We're anxious because we're not clear. "I don't know what to do. Should I do it? I don't want to mess it up. I need a word from God."
After you get through talking and texting, after you get through consulting people, you've got to hear from heaven. More of God, message from God.
In Acts 16, Paul and Silas were in a Philippian prison. The Bible says: "And at midnight they prayed and sang praises unto God and suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's bands were loosed."
When you start worshiping, God starts moving. Doors start opening. Freedom starts happening.
