Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
Twelve Steps: Entirely Ready! (Step 6)
This is great for stage fright, I'll tell you. Let's just take all the fear out of speaking. This is great. In fact, I could do it like this, be even better. Yep. When the kingdom comes, I'm going to be tall. It's not here yet. And it's fullness. Anyway, we're working through the 12 steps this year, 2004, here at the Ann Arbor Vineyard. And because we're trying to press into Jesus' brand spirituality, which is all about the transformation of people's lives, making them different than they were because of their contact with Jesus and perhaps one of the most powerful programs of personal transformation known to the human race is the 12 steps made famous by alcoholics anonymous. And we're over halfway through, we're on step six tonight. So I'm going to just summarize, the first three steps should be up on the screen there for you. Alan Crow, by the way, is responsible for the PowerPoint and did a great job for us tonight. The first three steps are all about admitting defeat and surrendering to God. So the 12 steps are very much an approach to spiritual awakening. Steps four and five are all about honestly facing ourselves, warts and all, and sharing what we find with God, with ourselves, and with another human being. Sounds simple, but not necessarily easy. By comparison, step six seems like a cakewalk, compared to making a searching and fearless moral inventory and sharing that with another human being. Step six looks like a cakewalk. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. I call this the velvet brick step because on the outside it looks all warm and fuzzy and soft, but on the inside this is the step really that packs a wallop. This is the step that will be with you for your entire life, this side of the kingdom coming and its fullness. We're going to take this step in reverse order today just to keep it interesting. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Which defects of character? You may ask, well, this is step six built on step four. The ones we honestly face in our searching and fearless moral inventory, and then go on to speak out, admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being. So God and the devil, heaven and hell, life and death, sobriety, and insanity are in the details. We're only as ready to have God in our lives as we are ready to face and name our defects of character. Let me say that again. We're only as ready to have God in our lives as we are ready to face and name our defects of character. There is plenty of religion without that, but there is not plenty of God without that. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. All is a pretty big word for three little letters. All these defects of character, every single one, little ones, big ones, all the in between ones, all as in each and every, as in no exceptions, as in can't even keep one as a souvenir. Here with step six. Step six is a sneaky step. Step six is all about going for the big gahonam, and there's a certain kind of perfection, isn't there, behind step six. Jesus said, "Unless you are perfect as your heavenly father is perfect, meaning whole, meaning entire, meaning complete, meaning all that you were meant to be in God's sovereign purpose." And right here in step six, what we're smacking into is the difference between our agenda for our lives and God's agenda for our lives. Our agenda is to get rid of enough defects of character to make us happy, successful, or even just to look good. Some of us will just settle for looking good, but God's agenda is, shall we say, a little more sweeping than that God being God. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. You notice this is not just the language of forgiveness. It's not that God would forgive our sins, but he would remove our defects of character. An act can be forgiven in a moment's time, but the removal of a character defect is a whole different process. So that's why step six is a lifelong step. You never take step six and then you're complete. You're constantly working step six. It's a lifelong deal, step six. The step six Psalm, so far as I can tell, is Psalm 51, verse one through twelve. Essentially the first two-thirds of Psalm 51, a little bit of background to the Psalms. First of all, the Psalms were written as like the prayer book or the song book of the people of Israel. Jesus was a big fan of the book of Psalms. He quoted the lyrics from the Psalms all the time. In this particular Psalm, Psalm 51 is a Psalm of David, who was a great king of Israel. David brought Israel to its kind of highest point as a nation. But it was after the low point morally in David's life, after David had been busted big time. And what he had been busted for was this. One night David was out on his rooftop in the city of David. It's nice to have a town named after you because it was the highest palace in the city. He looked down and there in a lower elevation was Bathsheba taking a bath out on the rooftop. His eye was drawn, shall we say. Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah, who was, I believe, a captain in David's army. And they were even at that time out doing battle with the Philistines. And so David believing that because he's a king now, he can have anything he wants, calls for Bathsheba and he takes her and makes her his own. And then he, of course, she becomes pregnant. He seeks to cover up the sin by arranging for Uriah to be at a certain part in the battle so that Uriah is killed. So it's just, you know, one thing leads to another. Now the focus, in order to understand Psalm 51, you may know this connection that it's the Psalm of David after getting busted for his adultery with Bathsheba, is that the focus of Psalm 51 is not sexual sin. Sexual sin is like the least of David's evils. It was a matter, really, of weakness. But the focus is something more, it's a defect of character that underlay his sexual sin. And that was David's abuse of his God-given power. The prophet Nathan tells a little story to David, a little parable, and makes it clear that David's sin was really about his abuse of power. He was using his position for selfish gain. So let's read Psalm 51 with that in mind. "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions, wash away all my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin." So this is the Psalm in which David is step-sixing, as it were. He is longing for the removal of all his defects. "Blot out." That would refer to the process of removing ink from a leather scroll. Have you ever tried to remove ink from a leather scroll? This is a little bit more than just pushing the delete button on Microsoft. Word, this is a scrubbing process, a wash, and just elbow grease. Wash away is the other word that's used here. Wash away all my iniquity. You picture here a woman at a washboard with soap and water and plenty of elbow grease at that time. This is a process of removal. We read on in verse four, "Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you're proved right when you speak and justified when you judge." So David understands sin in its most tragic presentation. It's easy for us to think of sin in all kinds of ways that don't really touch our heart. We think of it as, "Oh, not living up to a standard, maybe, or accumulating some kind of a moral debt that has to be paid." We think of it in forensic terms, like crossing a boundary or disobeying a law of some higher power. But David understands what sin is at its core, which is a violation of his relationship with God. He understands that his own sin hurts God. This is one of the great revelations of the God, of the Bible. The God of the Bible is not above and beyond and untouched by human deeds, but the God of the Bible is so involved with us that our deeds can break his heart. One of the most poignant verses in all of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, it says, "God looks out on what had become of humankind, and his heart was filled with pain." The ultimate picture of this, of course, is the way that our sins can hurt God as Jesus on the cross. That's the realization, what kind of God who is not unaffected by us. So David puts his sin in very personal relational terms. That means he's come to deal with it at its core. He understands it. He's looking at it straight in the mirror now. We read on in verse 5 and 6, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place." So he's recognizing that what he's dealing with here isn't just a momentary slip, a mistake, kind of a moment of weakness when he was caught off guard. But this is really this abuse of power for personal gain was something that was deeply embedded in his personality. It was truly a bend. It was truly a defect in his character. Character means what you do characteristically. What you do characteristically, your tendency. And what David is asking for comes out in verse 7, cleanse me with hissep and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be wider than snow. He wants a deep cleaning. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed with joys. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God. And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Don't cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. And grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. This is the step six psalm. Grant me a willing spirit. Make me entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. What David is asking for here is he's asking for a radical surgery on his soul. To remove what is deeply embedded in him. And it's been with him for a long, long time. Now, to understand this, we have to make a few distinctions. First of all, this is not the prayer of a perfectionist. A perfectionist is someone and many of us have perfectionist tendencies. A perfectionist is someone who attempts to remove by himself all his defects of character so he can present himself perfect to God and to others. Can anyone identify with that tendency in us? Perfectionism. Perfectionism is a form of insanity, not unlike alcoholism. It comes from perfectionism, comes from being drunk on yourself. If you are drunk on yourself, you will feel that you have the power within yourself to make yourself perfect and in spite of every contrary evidence, just like an alcoholic will continue to drink in spite of the fact that it's killing him. It's the same kind of insanity, perfectionist. You're drunk on yourself if you're a perfectionist. This is not the prayer of a perfectionist. This is the prayer of a realist who understands he can't remove his own defects in his own character. He needs help and so his prayer is not. I've been very, very bad and now I promise to be very, very good. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. We're entirely ready to have God remove. It's the same trust we place if we were to think of a metaphor, a parable, pull it alongside kind of experience that we can apply to this. It's the same trust we have to place in a surgeon to remove a deeply embedded cancer, for example. I mean, just think of the trust that is required to submit yourself to major surgery. I mean, anesthesia is said to be the closest thing to being dead. Is anything any living human being will ever experience. Then the scalpels come out in an orthopedic surgeon's room. It's lined with tools, stainless steel saws, drills, hammers, screwdrivers. Incisions are made in one's body. The moving and removing of things never before touched by human hands. Think of the trust required to submit to the surgeon's skills. The first thing that is wrong with the first human in the book of Genesis, the first thing that preceded sin was what? It was isolation. It is not good, the Lord God said, for the human, for the man to be alone. And what was the, how was this problem fixed? This first problem, the one that preceded sin in the original garden. So, the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. And while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. This is the first surgery, isn't it? In fact, this is surgery written at a time when there was no such thing as surgery. This piece of writing is thousands of years old. Now, if you are going for cancer surgery, do you tell the surgeon, you know, get most of it if you can, doctor, but leave a little behind as a kind of souvenir. No, you say while you're in there, get all of it, please. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Now, does this mean that we have no role to play in our own recovery? Does the patient have no role to play in his own recovery? Of course, the patient has all sorts of important things to do as part of his own recovery, like showing up for surgery. Like this roving, like getting up on the gurney, like staying there when you feel like running. Then after the surgery, you get up. I worked as a registered nurse. Man, you've got to work those patients after surgery and they don't want to work, but you've got to work them because it's essential. You've got to get them up, you've got to walk them, you've got to make sure they empty their bladder that all systems are functioning. You've got to breathe into that little breathing thing, like in the right stuff, to measure your lung capacity so you don't get pneumonia from being down so long. You might have to go to physical therapy after surgery. I was rear-ended about three months ago on here on street. Man, it's shocking when you're rear-ended. I had to stop kind of quickly because the car in front of me stopped quickly, so I looked in the rear-view mirror, like you do. Naturally, braced myself for, you know, what are you going to do, brace yourself? Boom! You know, this young woman rams right into me. And, you know, it's just so irritated because it was Monday. It was my day off. It had been a real busy weekend. I was all ready to go to my little routine, my cave time, go to Starbucks and have a coffee and read the New York Times and not talk to a soul. I mean, I just treasure my Monday mornings and I'm out and I'm ready. I'd love Monday mornings and boom! The lady in front of me, I hit her from, you know, the blow behind. Fortunately, it took us a while to get off the side of the road because I was able to calm down. It turned out both people had connections with the vineyard. That was a good thing. Not direct connections. The one who had a mother who was a mother whose daughter had visited and liked the church. And the lady who had me was a girlfriend of someone who, Antos, and knew about the church. Anyway, so I was like, "Oh, thank you, God, that I was able not to just be a total idiot." You know, because I would just, this merged the reputation of all of you. And I know that wouldn't have been any good. But anyway, the poor lady that I hit in front of me, she was returning her lease vehicle that day. And it had a little, but anyway, so I was rear-ended. Okay. And about, I don't know, a week later I started getting some upper back pain, you know, neck pain. And actually, it's taken me about three months to ask for help, you know. So, finally, I went to my doctor and he sends me to get physical therapy. And I hear about this physical therapist named George at the St. Joseph's system, who's really good on neck and back pain, George's. You know, I got a lot of confidence in him from what I've heard. And the first time, or second time, my second visit with George, he wants to perform what he calls fast adjustment with force on my neck. Fast adjustment with force. Now, the one, the one absolute terrifying fear I have physically is of breaking my neck. Because I worked in pediatric rehabilitation with kids and teenagers who had broken their necks. And I just seen the devastation of that particular injury. And so I've always been just a little, and when he said he wanted to perform fast adjustment with force on my neck, I was like, "Oh, sure." You know? And I was, "Oh, sure." Inside, I was going, "I want my mommy." You know? So George may be sensing my apprehension, says, "All you have to do is relax." And then, you know, like he puts, he gets like his come all over me and he's around and, you know, pressing and relax, you know. And then, sure enough, it did a, it felt better. I guess he did me an adjustment or something. He wasn't a chiropractor, but he did fast, you know, something with force. Anyway, that took, the hardest work was the trust. And that's what step six is all about. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. You can skip ahead to the, "We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character." And that really is, that's all step six is asking of us, is that we're entirely ready. We don't have to change the character ourselves. We are, though, required to be entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character. God will not remove a single defect in our character without our permission. God is not a God who goes running around committing acts of unsolicited soul surgery on people. He won't go to work on your character defects until you're entirely ready for him to do so, until we sign the consent form, as it were. So if you're looking for a place to put your psychic energy into, when it comes to your character defects, forget about trying to strategize how you can be better and all the effort to, you know, try this and try that, put all of your energy into trusting, into being entirely ready to have God remove all these defects in character. I think one of the reasons that it has to be all these defects in character is that, you know, it's like we have to write God a blank check because we don't really know which defective character he's going to go after first. And so we have to give him permission to go after all of it. And then he'll decide which to start off with. You know, if I'm in charge of the process, I want this particular defect in character that's bothering me. But that may not be the way to untie the knot of my soul, so the only way forward is we are entirely ready for God to remove all our defects in character. And then that gives him permission to just do it in his own pace and his own time, start with what he wants to. And it's surprising how God will start with things that you don't really think are all that important, how he'll make a mountain out of molehills in your life, and how he'll treat as relatively insignificant things that you think of as mountains. But we have to sign the consent form. Now, here's where we need to be, we need to, in a sense, treat ourselves to a little honesty with ourselves. If we're being honest, we have to admit we are sometimes a little attached to our character defects, aren't we? Sometimes we're just a little bit attached to our character defects. In fact, I would even hazard a guess, if there's something that's really bothering you about yourself, that's probably symptomatic of an underlying character defect. And the thing that you are so bothered by, you're not making any progress with, even though you're bothered by it, because underneath it is the real character defect, and that may well be something that you're rather attached to. And because so many of our character defects we feel serve us so well. Here's one of my own that I have discovered over 34 years. One of my chief character defects is I prefer not to need other people. That's just like woven into my psyche. It is a defect, it is a way that my character has been bent. I prefer not to need other people. Now, this serves me pretty well, actually. It allows me to be fairly even tempered and even killed, and it allows me to perform at a fairly high level. I don't give off signals of being overly needy, so people aren't put off, so it's kind of a social grace, I suppose, so there's lots to be attached to. But it is a defect in character. I don't blame myself for it. I understand why there were factors beyond my control, but I have to take responsibility for it. It's my defect of my character, and nobody else's. You will find that with some of these core character defects, this is one of my core ones I'm pretty sure, is God will be on a long-term defect removal project with you in your life. You know, mine started at age 14. My character defect probably manifested at 14. I said, "God, if you exist, I don't need you." That had been brewing for a while, that little character defect had been brewing for a while, and it came out in that expression to God. Now, five years later, that had begun to be broken down. I finally admitted my need for God, and so we were off to the races, God, and me on this character defect thing. But, you know, the wear and tear of life reveals your need and your need for others. It's just over and over and over again. Now at age 52, it's just more and more clear to me. For me, it's at more the level of emotional needs. I would like to be pretty emotionally self-contained, but this is not good. I mean, it's a defect. It doesn't help with intimacy in your close relationships. It's something that just doesn't serve. And so, you know what it is with God and me right now? It's rub-a-dub-dub time, you know. He just is going deeper. He's going deeper to remove this defect in the character. I love the Jean-Pierre de Casade. It was a French Jesuit who wrote a little book called "Sacrum into the Present Moment." And he didn't get any credit for it because it wasn't discovered till long after he died. But it's all about God's work in and through the present moment of our lives. That we're always, like, looking beyond the present moment to find God. But, in fact, if we believe that God is sovereign, we must all end that he's, you know, the Lord of time. We must also believe that God is present in every moment of time, in everything that happens, in every experience. There is a presence of God in that moment, and out of this perspective he writes, "All that happens to me becomes bread to nourish me, soap to cleanse me, fire to purify me." Everything is a channel of grace for my needs. So, step six is good news and bad news. The bad news is this defect removal doesn't stop in this life. It'll ask you a whole lifetime. That's the bad news. It's not a stage that you grow out of. It's not like you become a Christian, and then you get a little bit, you know, he shapes you up, and then you're, okay, now, no. This is not something you grow out of. So, that's the bad news. The good news is that defect removal doesn't stop in this life. So, it's good news and bad news. Why is it good news? Well, it's good news because God loves me enough not to be satisfied until all that remains of me is truly me. Isn't that awesome? This God loves me so much not to be satisfied until all that remains of me is truly me. And that's what heaven is going to be. You know, all that remains of you in heaven will be what is only truly you. And there will be no corruption, there will be no distortion, and you will be yourself in a way that you've never been yourself before. I loved the song that we sang. I think I'm done, and the band, the acoustic worship team can come up. I like doing acoustic worship every now and again. It's fun, and it's just nice to have the change. But the last song that Rich had us sing was the heart of worship, and I thought, you know, this just says it, doesn't it, in a worship context. When the music fades, all is stripped away, and I simply come, longing just to bring something that's of worth that will bless your heart. And then what is that something? Well, I'll bring you more than a song. For a song in itself is not what you have required. You search much deeper within through the way things appear, you're looking into my heart. And so step six is really all about the sacrifice that God is looking for from us. It's that we come before Him entirely ready to have Him remove all our defects in character. And you know, you can bring them all sorts of other things, you can bring them money, you can bring them fame, you can bring them the high performance of your life in this area, or success, but nothing. Nothing will bless God's heart more than if we bring Him this sacrifice. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. And so how to say this, I have watched, I've been doing this Christian gig for a long time. I've been doing it professionally for a while, and I have noticed, and I've been part of Christian organizations and movements. I've seen things, just wonderful things happen through the church. I have seen moments of amazing success from a church point of view. But there is this tendency, it's like the futility that's woven into creation. There's this tendency for corruption to enter into things. And sometimes the more successful you are as a church, the more you're like a half an in church. The church that people want to go to and they're doing all these cool things, the greater your vulnerability is to this corrupting influence. And the thing about it is, the corrupting influence can be there for the longest time before anyone notices it. It's like a cancer in that respect. And I believe it's step six that is like the antidote to that corrupting influence that can come into something when it's successful. It's when the worship of said church really is something that is, at the middle of it, it's got some purity. And so if we want to bring that to our worship to God as a church, not just like, I'll be honest with you. I've been really pleased with just the worship of the church in recent weeks and months. When we first came to Ann Arbor, I say this to the Mylin folks, I was like, "Oh, I want to go back to Mylin." Because it was kind of a cold worship atmosphere in the Ann Arbor celebrations when we got started, especially like the 11 o'clock celebration where there's so many newcomers. And I was like, "God, I want to worship like we did back in Mylin." You know, there's nothing worse than having a glorious past, just awful, having a glorious past. No, no, no. All the glory is in the future, okay? So get rid of your glorious past, all the glory, the best is yet to come. But for worship, I was kind of stuck in my glorious past that worship has really been warming up in the Ann Arbor vineyard. I've been, "Ooh, I like coming to church." And the sense of the Lord's presence, the engagement in worship has really been rising. And that's one thing, and you can kind of be satisfied with that. And you can kind of measure your worship by that. But the thing that really makes worship worship is when we come before God with this broken spirit. We are entirely ready for God to remove all our defects in character. And we just stand before Him and say, "God, I can't do it myself, but I'm entirely ready." And you have my full permission to get started and you start anywhere you wish. And I'll go with it as painful as it may be. So let's stand and I want to just invite for ministry tonight anyone who's been suffering from the disease of perfectionism. And if you have a tendency inside of yourself to want to like put on like a really sharp exterior like you even work very hard to make yourself the best kind of person you can be. But it's all just a labor of self. I want to invite you to come on up for some prayer. And I just invite you to repent of your perfectionism because it's rooted more in pride than anything else. And to just renounce it and let it go. There may be some of us who are facing various particular character defects, things in our lives that we know are on the altar with God. And there are things that we are kind of attached to. And we need to join our prayer with the prayer of David. Grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. After you've been through a few rounds of this sanctification thing with God, it can get tiring. God, don't do any more character. Surely I have good enough character now. No, you grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. So if you're at one of those places, I want to invite you to come up and just release that as a sacrifice to God. And a sense and invitation from the spirit to sign the consent form one more time. Is there anything else that we should do in our ministry, Paul? You can share what you guys had. Sort of fits together. There's a way that when we start looking at our own sins and our own shortcomings that they become the focus of worship. And we really felt over and over that God wants us to set him before us. That's the Hebrews 12, I think. Fixurize on Jesus the author and perfect of your faith. So when you're coming forward for these things, look beyond what God's dealing with to the Lord. Yes, and there may also be people who are fairly new to the relationship with God thing. And God's just beginning to put his finger on some things. And I just felt for those people God wanted to just lavish, just mercy on, steadfast love and mercy on them. So if you're kind of in a scared state with God because he's putting the finger on some things in your life for the first time, we just want to pray for the mercy of God to kind of be like a sabb for that for you. for you. So come on up as we worship. [BLANK_AUDIO]