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(Re)Constructing Our Faith
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I want to talk about the Trinity — God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. But let me make a confession right up front: to explain the Trinity is above my pay grade.
How do we, in our little finite minds, grasp the infinite glory of God? The omnipotent God who is all-powerful. The omniscient God who is all-knowing. The omnipresent God who is ever-present.
He is the one who spoke the world into order. He is the one who waved his hand and planets filled the skies. With the greatest technology we have today, we cannot even begin to pierce the depths of our universe. And I'm supposed to explain God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit?
As we start thinking upon the dynamic of how God manifests himself in three persons to touch our lives, I wrote down this statement:
The doctrine of the Trinity is not merely a theological concept to explain God. It's a revelation of how God loves us, desires to restore us, and lives within us.
This is when we begin to understand God's plan to inhabit and indwell us, and to have relationship with us. From the very beginning of time, what did God say? "Let us make man in our image." When God was speaking the world into order, the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And John declares in his Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
So from the beginning, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have been with us and working together for the redemption of mankind.
When I thought about bringing a message on the Holy Trinity, I realized it's really about helping us understand the real character and nature of God and his love for us. The Bible reveals three simple things:
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Whether you know it or not, the Word of God teaches that you were created by God and for God. Without God fully moving and working within your life, you'll never fulfill your God-ordained destiny, purpose, and fulfillment.
The abundant life that Christ promised is a life fully immersed in the Father's love, walking redeemed by the grace and mercy of Christ, and filled with the Spirit of God who empowers and guides us every day to live the life — and enjoy the relationships — that God ordained for us.
I love the story of Jesus coming to the Jordan River to be baptized, because we have a vivid picture of the Trinity in this moment.
As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." (Matthew 3)
I absolutely love that the Father comes to affirm the Son. The Holy Spirit comes to anoint Jesus for his ministry. And Jesus is there validating John's message of repentance and baptism.
If you want to be restored to God, you must turn away from your sinful life, turn to God, and allow him to cleanse you from the inside out. Water baptism was symbolic of the spiritual baptism of the Spirit within us that cleanses us from our past and our sin — and, here's the key, restores us back into the Father's arms of love.
Jesus goes on to tell the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. The younger of two sons goes to his father and says, "Give me my inheritance now." He goes off, wastes all his money, and loses everything. Then he comes to himself and realizes, "I'm going to return to my father, even if I can only be a servant in his home, because I've walked away from him and dishonored him."
And the story is that the father is waiting. As soon as he sees his son far off, he runs to him. Here's the part I love:
Do you know who the prodigal son is? It was me. It was you. We're all prodigals. We've all sinned. We've all fallen short of the glory of God. We inherited that inner rebellion in our nature. And the great thing is that the Father had a plan to restore us — that's why he stands with his arms open to love us.
I've told you many times about the encounter I had in Israel in 1983 that changed the projection of my life. In that moment, the Spirit of God parted a curtain so I could see a depth of God's love I'd never known before. Something happened that an old hymnwriter captured:
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine... Perfect submission, all is at rest; I in my Savior am happy and blest... Filled with his goodness, lost in his love.
At that moment, I found myself in my heavenly Father's arms, lost in his love, and I saw clearly my true identity. Up to that point, I had found my identity in what I did — a coach, a collegiate football player, married to a beautiful woman, with a gorgeous family. All those things were my identity.
But in my Father's arms, lost in his love, I recognized: I am a son of the Most High God. I have the right to call him Abba, Father.
Do you realize how much God wants us to recognize him as our Father, to fall into his arms and discover that we were created by him and for him? When his love fills us, it completes us. And we are always incomplete until we're in his arms. The world is searching for it. People are desperate for what we have discovered in the Father's arms.
I was watching the Memorial golf tournament last week, and John 3:16 showed up on a sign. I hadn't seen that in a while. There was a guy from New York sitting behind me who said, "What is that John 3:16 sign?" He had no clue what it was.
So I turned around and said, "John 3:16 is this: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." Later I explained to him the plan of the Father who sent the Son, and I prayed with him. I wanted him to know that God loves us so much he would sacrifice his Son to pay the penalty of our sin.
That's the love of the Son for us — the Father sending the Son to take on the form of man so that we could capture the image of God. Because man was struggling to know God, Christ came through the virgin birth, conceived by the Holy Spirit, so that we could comprehend and see the invisible God through the visible person of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God.
And the Son is every bit as much God as God the Father is. That's what makes the concept of the Trinity so unique — God in three persons, working together for our creation, our restoration, our transformation, and the fulfillment of our divine destinies in him.
Jesus makes a bold declaration in John 10:30: "I and the Father are one." The Apostle Paul explains it further in Colossians:
For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins... The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
Redemption means we've been bought with a price out of our bondage. We were like slaves to sin, unable to free ourselves. Jesus came and paid the price so we could be redeemed, restored, and set free.
People struggle with what Jesus says in John 14: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." They ask, "Isn't that exclusive?" Here's the simple truth: Jesus is one with the Father. He is God. If you're going to come to God the Father, you must come through God the Son, because no one else can give you access to the Father. They are one Spirit. He came to lead us back into oneness with our Father.
What happened on the cross was personal. It was personal with the Father, and it's personal for you and for me.
Here's something I find so interesting about the Trinity: the Father is always affirming the Son. The Son is always affirming the Father. The Holy Spirit is always affirming the Son and the Father. And Jesus affirms the Holy Spirit. They're always affirming one another because they are acting as one for us.
One of the greatest testimonies of Jesus' love came in the garden, agonizing in prayer before Calvary: "Lord, if this cup can pass from me... but not my will, thy will be done." His submission was a testimony of his love for the Father and the plan of redemption.
After his death, resurrection, and meeting with his disciples, what's the last thing he says? "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Again, Jesus affirms the unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit — working together in our creation, redemption, transformation, and our mission to the world.
Now let's think about God the Holy Spirit. Jesus said in John 14:
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.
The Holy Spirit comes to fill us with God's presence every single day. The Word says the Spirit fills us with wisdom — the Spirit of truth guides us into all truth. And the Holy Spirit fills us with hope, joy, and peace. One of my life verses is Romans 15:13:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Everywhere in Scripture, the Holy Spirit is associated with joy and peace. "The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." The abundant life Jesus promised is a Spirit-filled life, because wherever the Spirit is, the fruit of the Spirit dwells (Galatians 5:22) — love, joy, peace, and all those wonderful things.
When Donna was diagnosed with cancer, that old spirit of anxiety tried to run in and take over. When you hear that word "cancer," I have to admit, I was fighting it. I got in my backyard where I pray, and I prayed and prayed. Then suddenly the Holy Spirit came over me like a warm blanket on a cold night, and I felt peace. I said, "Wait a minute — God, she's your daughter. You've got her under control."
Now, she had peace the whole time. She was never anxious — I was the anxious one. Even when we went in to talk to doctors, she was asking them, "How can I pray for you?"
When they rolled her down the hallway at Good Sam toward the operating room, we were singing praise and worship songs. The thoracic surgeon came out to greet her, and Donna's first question was, "I've been praying for your son today." She had been praying for him every day since we first met him, when she'd asked, "Doctor, how can we pray for you or your family?" Then she reminded him — right before surgery — that angels would be watching. "You'd better not mess up. It's my baby."
But where the Holy Spirit is, there's peace. And there's joy. We used to sing, "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart to stay."
We who have the Holy Spirit in our hearts have a source of joy and peace the world is longing for. And we need to let it shine out of us. Get your faces lit up. Get a song on your heart again, a little skip in your step. Don't walk like the world walks. We have the living Spirit in us!
Most of all, the Holy Spirit comes to empower us for our mission. Our mission is to testify of the love and goodness of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — and to let our lives speak of that in all we do.
Here's what I know:
One of the saddest things in life is to see people roaming through life trying to figure out why they're even here. But we who are in Christ know why we're here, because we have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit living within us — guiding, directing, enriching, and empowering our lives.
Here is my prayer for you, from 2 Corinthians 13:14:
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Embrace the Father's love. Surrender to the restoration the Son wants to bring in your life. And every day, walk with confidence in the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit within you.
If you've never fully surrendered your life to Christ, I want to give you the opportunity today. The Bible says that if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, something miraculous happens inside. God comes in and begins a work of transformation — you're forgiven of your past and given a new beginning. The old has passed away, and behold, all things have become new. That can be true for you today.
Would you bow your heads with me? Let's pray together.
Dear Lord Jesus, I ask you to come into my heart today. Forgive me of my past and my sins. From this day forward, I commit to live for you and serve you with all my heart. I receive the Father's love. I receive salvation from Jesus. I welcome the Holy Spirit into my life to empower me to live for you. I seal this commitment in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
