Week after week in this church and in thousands of other churches in hundreds of languages across our world we will say the words “Heavenly Father.” In most cases it will mark the beginning of a prayer. It is a form of address to God. It reminds us of His place and our future home. It also speaks of our relationship to God.

I wish I could understand the purposes of God. If I am His and I will live eternally with Him, why in the world do I have to experience all these negatives?

Proverbs 24:3-4: "By wisdom, a house is built, and through understanding, it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures."

But what if the things we put on our list are pointless? What if some of those items make no difference whatsoever? What if they take so much time that we neglect the most important things? Rather than have a “to do list” what if we had a “stop doing list” for all the things that are so far outside our purpose that they actually became both a distraction from good goals or a deterrent from reaching life’s important objectives. Jesus had something to say on the subject.

She'd reached the age in life where national emergencies didn't constitute personal meltdown.

When I'm drivin' in my car
And a man comes on the radio
He's telling me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination ...

here are likewise personal spiritual considerations where we cannot afford to be wrong. Has a bitter loneliness possessed your soul? Perhaps you serve the Lord in a solitary condition in your family. Perhaps you are misunderstood by everyone you know who is close to you. You are never forsaken. You are never alone. God is present, as He was with Jacob, even in the unexpected places.

Jesus’ first destination was south to a region of the Jordan where His cousin, John, was baptizing those he had called to repentance. There was a fresh consciousness of sin and need that followed John’s preaching. He was preparing the way for the Messiah. He was the new Elijah right down to his camel’s hair sport coat and his lunch of fresh locusts in honey sauce.

Death leaves us struggling for perspective and it is no doubt that the ugly face of terror has made us long for the Messianic age spoken of in Micah 4:3: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Against the backdrop of mass murder in Egypt it is easy to understand how the disciples and the friends of Jesus must have felt as they recalled their helplessness and the brutality of the crucifixion. They felt they had watched the final act of the life of Jesus and it had ended in tragedy.

Despite its gruesome quality, its obvious conflict and its raw violence, the cross was an instrument of peace. The Anglican scholar, Bishop Stephen Neill, stated, “In the Christian theology of history, the death of Christ is the central point of history; here all the roads of the past converge; hence all the roads of the future diverge.” The cross is God’s way of reconnecting us to Him. The Prince of Peace gave His life to create our peace with God.

We need a newness of life before we can presume to do a work for the Lord. For Jesus to accomplish his work through us today, he first has to renew us. If Israel had received him they would have become a new nation. Instead they prepared their plots to kill the Prince of Peace and brought desolation down upon their own heads and their nation. God wants to put new wine in new bottles.

As the cab ride unfolded he knew he’d not make it for the 11:00 a.m. start time of the service. Fire trucks and ambulances and traffic accidents all played their role to have him deposited on the church steps just at the moment when the sermon was being announced. He burst into the church and to the surprise of everyone was able to get into the pulpit right at the exact moment he had to preach.

God’s purposes for you and me flow out of His love for us. It is just that simple: God loves His creation. When He breathed into our nostrils the breath of life, we received a life-giving spirit. We have been distanced from Him by sin, but we are not unloved. Paul makes it clear that even though we were “dead in trespasses and sins” God loved us. So many people have tried to plumb the depth of logic for God’s reasoning in loving us.

Haugland said that although he was lost, he knew God was there and that back home friends and family were praying for him. He said, “I knew God was my Shepherd.” He gave this, in his own words, as the secret to his survival:

It was amazing how it worked. I would be at the point of complete exhaustion and ready to give up and just fall down and die. I felt I could not lift even one foot in front of the other any longer to hold onto the struggle of life. Then I would say, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” And it would happen! God would provide. I would look, and there – just within my reach on the next step – would be edible berries or chewable grass. Just beyond the next tree, I would stumble onto a little stream of pure water. And thus God sustained me and kept me going.

It is amazing the kind of lengths God will go to in order that we find him. In this case, He diverts the efforts of an evangelist to meet one solitary traveler who was spending the hours of a long journey by reading the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. It’s a familiar story of passing a long trip with a good book. It also illustrates that God is never stuck for a way to reach people.

We run the same kind of risks today. We can lapse into the ritual performance of spiritual duty and be robbed of the joy of serving the Lord. There is a world of difference between coming to church and following the order of service as opposed to experiencing the touch of God as the Spirit moves in all our lives and a body of believers responds to the inner working of the Spirit. The difference is as graphic as the difference between a funeral and a family reunion. Somehow Paul had to point them back to the core of the faith and get them back on the road to growth rather than the descent to spiritual death. So he took them back to their roots, literally to the beginning of their life as a people under Abraham.

Hawking provides the answer in this manner, "When life's expectations are reduced to zero, one really does appreciate everything that one does have." Stated another way it's this, "contentment in life is determined in part by what a person anticipates from it." So how great are your expectations? To a man like Hawking, who thought he would die quickly, everything takes on meaning. Whether it's a sunrise or a walk in the park or the laughter of children and suddenly, each small pleasure becomes precious. By contrast, those who believe that life owes them a free ride are often discontent with the finest of gifts and the most active of lives. 

I believe there are well-meaning people who feel they know the Gospel. They have a grasp of the truth and its power, but it’s something that is largely inactive. It’s tucked away for a time of greater convenience. Can we grasp what Jesus is saying? Truth that is not acted upon will be lost to us. It applies to countries and churches and individuals and the examples are too numerous to count. 

I am always amazed at how people view themselves. They satisfy their desires as they celebrate their birthdays and their milestones along the way. The body gets its way all the while the soul insists that eternity is most important. We seek education and refinement and improvement. People seek to satisfy the physical and sometimes totally neglect the spiritual part of them that lives on forever.