A Life-Giving Relationship with God

My prayer is I want to show you the four specific kinds of relationships that create a root system that bring life to you personally so that you can actually give life to your mate.

There is an awe when a man and a woman, in connection with the living God, accept and love one another and your minds and your hearts and your emotions and your bodies become one in windows and seasons that are awe-inspiring and what you realize that this is a taste of the kingdom.

And what I want to share with you is the four relationships that every marriage has to have to make it through the storms, you will have seasons of drought, you’ll have seasons of anger, when there’s death, when there’s cancer. Because marriage, fundamentally though it will be very fulfilling and very challenging, it’s really an image of Jesus and His Church. And it’s really a picture of a fulfillment and an intimacy that God longs for us to have and you are living in a world that is one hundred percent against that and trying to destroy it.

So, with that in mind, are you ready to go? The first relationship that you need to have that kind of a marriage is a life-giving relationship with God. You might underline “life-giving”. I don’t mean you happen to go to church, I didn’t say you read your Bible, not how many podcasts – there may be lots of means, but I’m talking about a life-giving relationship that you are experiencing life and power and grace and motivation to care, to forgive, to step out, to grow.

Great marriages are characterized by couples who give their mates what they need the most when they deserve it the least at great personal cost. I’m going to read that again. This is my personal definition of what love is. Great marriages are characterized by couples who give one another what they need the most when they deserve it the least. I mean, you’re thinking, Not now! Are you kidding? After what he said? After what he did? After what she said? …at great personal cost. And I think if you look at Jesus on the cross and you want to define love, Jesus gave us what we needed the most when we deserve it the least at great personal cost.

Translation: Marriage is not a fifty-fifty proposition. Great marriages are built on loving our spouses in the same way Christ loved us. I put it in your notes, John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than that he or she lay down your life for your friends.”

1 Corinthians chapter 13 says, “Love is patient,” you say, “I really love my wife, I love my husband.” “Love is kind, love is not jealous, it does not brag, love isn’t arrogant, it doesn’t act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit, is not provoked. Love does not keep an account of wrongs suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. Love believes all things, hopes all things; love never fails.”

We throw that word around quite easily and here’s the principle that I want you to get. What I just described is impossible. The principle is you cannot give what you have not received. Jesus said, John 10:10, “I came that you might have life and you could have it abundantly.”

But if you are not, not just that “are you saved” or are you forgiven or are you a follower or are you, you know Jesus personally? Great, you have now entered the family. I’m talking about are you receiving daily, moment-by-moment, the life, the grace, the power to actually have Christ live His life through you so that the man that shows up or the woman that shows up in your marriage is Jesus wanting to fulfill His agenda, to actually treat that person you’re married to exactly how Jesus would if He was living inside your body.

Memo: the Scripture says that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit and that when you prayed to receive Christ and repented of your sin, you were taken from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light and you were sealed with the Spirit. And guess what, so that means Jesus does live inside of you. Now, we all have that battle with our flesh and even after forty-two years, I’m just going to tell you, in my marriage, the way I want is my way. And when I try and get my way, or I try and manipulate my wife or I try to, trying to get things to work out so “it all works for me” – it never works.

So, I’m going to encourage you that the reason you need a life-giving relationship with God is you simply can’t, you can’t give your mate what they need. And it’s not a negotiation. It’s not a fifty-fifty. It’s you saying, “Regardless of how my mate responds, I’m going to be Christ to her. I’m going to be Christ to him.” Biblical marriage from Ephesians 5:22 to 33 requires sacrificial, others-centered love that is humanly impossible but supernaturally enabled as we see a steady flow of God’s love in us.

1 John 3:16 talks about not loving in word or tongue but in deed and truth. We love because He first loved us.

And so, what I want to talk about now is: Developing a life-giving relationship requires three things. Some of these I’ll go over rather quickly, because many of you will say, “Been there, done that, got it.” And others I’ll spend a bit more time on.

Developing a life-giving relationship with God requires, one, a spiritual birth.

Many of you probably know this, but I don’t want to assume it. One of the great passages in the book of John is a spiritual leader of Israel comes to Jesus by night and he wants to know, “Obviously You’re from God. You do all these miracles. What is the deal?”

And John chapter 3, if you’d like to follow along, “There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ‘Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher. For no one can do the signs or the miracles You do unless God is with him.’ Jesus responded and said to him…”

He’s a religious leader. He has probably the major portions of the Old Testament memorized. So, there’s no big introduction. “Truly I say to you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see,” or, “cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Literally the word is “born from above.” A spiritual birth. Nicodemus took it pretty literally. He said, “Well, how can a person be born when he is old? He can’t reenter his mother’s womb a second time to be born, can he?” And Jesus said, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless someone is born of water,” physical birth, “and the Spirit,” spiritual birth, “he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is the spirit. Do not be amazed that I say to you, ‘You must be born again.’”

And then He begins to explain it in language that an Old Testament Pharisee could clearly understand. But here’s what I can tell you. I went to church, a high church; I sit, kneel, stand. I could cite the prayers. God was very distant and I believed what I think a lot of even “Christians” think. I thought if my good deeds outweighed my bad deeds, someday, somehow, I’d get in. And so, I, like most people, compared myself with, like, axe murderers and people that were mass killers and thought, I’m better than most people and if you get in…

And my self-evaluation, I didn’t understand that I needed a spiritual birth, not religious activities. I didn’t understand that God is holy and if we put it, I’m an old coach, so let’s just say in your personal life you have to score a hundred percent, right? Make every free throw.

Make every shot in the game. Every single one. And no turnovers. One missed shot, you’re out. Or if you’re a math person, you have to get a hundred on the test, and the test is life.

So, no matter what you do, all fall short of the perfection or the glory of God. And so, it says the only way is you need to be born again and the gospel is not a repair job, a remodel job of trying hard to clean up your life and be a better, nicer person and go listen to someone talk and sing a couple songs.

The gospel is you are dead in your sin, separated from Christ, and God in His great love sent Jesus to die upon a cross to pay for your sin, absolutely, rose from the dead to prove it’s true, and comes to you and says, “I long to forgive you. I created you. Would you receive this free gift?”

Repent just means a change of mind. Those who turn from their sin and have a change of mind and recognize their need and say, just like the thief on the cross, “Save me. I need Your help. Please forgive me.” Jesus said, “Verily, verily.” When He says it twice, that’s sort of the Greek New Testament way to say, “Underline, underline.” “Verily, verily I say unto you, he that hears My word and believes on Him who sent Me, has,” present tense, you don’t guess, “has eternal life and has passed from death to life and will not come into condemnation.”

And so, the question I have for you that is so important is: Are you certain you are born again? And there’s going to be a sign in some endzone, right? And it’s going to say John 3:16. And if you never knew what it said, it’s, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever does,” what? Circle that word. “Believes.” It means put your trust in. Believe – it doesn’t mean intellectually agree with. “…shall not perish but have eternal life.” But no one quotes verse 17. Here’s the reason. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” God’s not down on you.

I grew up with a God whose arms were crossed, toe tapping, and, man, if it was fun, He was against it. Bad, bad, bad, wrong, wrong, wrong. That’s not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible, His arms are open, He understands, He was tempted in every way like us, yet, without sin. And He understands where you have messed up and He understands the consequences and the pain and the shame and He’s just saying, “If you would just be real and come to Me, I have already forgiven you. Will you receive it?

Second, a baby is born, right? Physically. You know, some of you, I was – I still remember when my wife turned to me and said, “My water broke.”

And that’s why He said, “That which is born of water,” He says just like there’s an actual birth, there is a spiritual birth the moment a person recognizes their need, turns from your sin, and asks Christ to forgive you and come into your life. Then you begin a journey where He begins to produce the life of Christ in you.

Developing a life-giving relationship with God requires, one, a spiritual birth. The second for a life-giving relationship, it requires a radical dedication. I won’t go through the whole book, but the whole book of Romans – is Paul on his way to Spain and there’s a mixed group of all these house churches from multiple ethnic backgrounds but you’ve got to get the context, right?

Chapters 1 through 3, he just makes one point, “All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.” Religious people, unreligious people. Chapters 4 and 5 is God’s solution to this problem of falling short or sin. It’s that by the death of Christ He gives grace or a free gift that can be received by faith.

Chapters 6 thorough 8 then is: How do you live out this new life? And the answer is: You can’t. Only the Holy Spirit can live out the life of Christ. And so, chapter 6 will talk about when you prayed to receive Christ and He came into your life, you died with Him, you were raised with Him, you have this battle in chapter 7, and thanks be to God, chapter 8. And he talks about the role of the Spirit in your life living it out.

And then chapters 9 through 11, you know, if you’re a Jew you’re thinking, “Now, Paul, this sounds pretty good, but what about all those promises to David? I thought, that seemed pretty clear. What about that throne that’s going to go on forever? And Abraham, didn’t He make some promises to Abraham about this land and your people and all of that?”

And chapters 9 through 11 will explain sort of that again, forgive all the basketball analogy, but Israel had too many turnovers and they are going to go to the bench. It doesn’t mean they are off the team, but we are going to have, we are going to develop a new team called the Church and it’s going to be empowered by the Spirit. And then at a little bit later time we are going to say, “Hey, Israel, you know. This is the game plan, this is where you guys get to come back in and I’ll fulfill all the promises to David and also to Abraham.”

And after 11 chapters of all of that, you have it in your notes, “Therefore,” now, just follow with me intellectually. This is not about how to become a Christian. That happened at the – end of chapter 3 describes what really occurs. And then chapter 4 and 5 we learned it’s by faith, right? Experiencing God’s grace.

But now he’s giving a whole picture of the Christian life and he is speaking to a group of people that have the Spirit living in them and now the question is, practically, what does this look like? What does a follower of Jesus actually look like?

What is the first step? “Therefore, I urge you my brothers and sisters, in view of God’s great mercy,” eleven chapters, “to offer your body as a living and holy sacrifice.” Then notice there’s a purpose clause. Why? “This is your spiritual service of worship.” Translation: This is what God really wants.

I had pretty much rejected the Church, didn’t – assumed there is some being that created everything. I don’t know who He is, if He was like the people in my church, I didn’t really want to get to know Him very well.

But I was, those of you that maybe have an athletic background, I was a gym rat. If you went to an outdoor basketball court, you would see in the inner city of Columbus, Ohio, all Black guys and one skinny white guy and one really tall white guy, because I always took one big guy with me. And I knew if I was going to get good, this is where you play.
And that’s why I got my scholarship in basketball.

Pete Maravich was my hero and everything he learned to do, I learned to do. And it got me in trouble sometimes with all the behind-the-back passes. But I loved it. And all I cared about was sports.

But I graduated and I remember sitting in a circle with a bunch of friends, about twenty-five friends. And we were passing a joint around. And so, it’s coming around and I’m, like, this disciplined off the wall. I don’t put anything in my –

And I’ll never forget, I gave it to Jacquie and Jacquie was a girl that was next to me in study hall. The first girl that became a friend and she was really pretty and the reason she was a friend, because she dated a guy three years older that was really big, really bad, and he would kill you if you messed with his girl. So she was safe.

And so, I got to know Jacquie and I passed it to Jacquie and she turned to me and said, “You must be really happy tonight.” And I said, “Why?” She goes, “Well, you know, we’re in study hall. I mean, think about it. You know, you date that really cute little girl, you have a basketball scholarship, you did really well in school, you graduated the top of your class.”

And it was the biggest sinking feeling. I had forgotten all about that and I had already gone to, tell you what I’m going to do with my life. I am going to go and I’m going to be trial lawyer, I’ll have three-hundred-dollar suits, I will have an Irish Setter, a beautiful girl, I’m going to have a luxury car and a station wagon. I’m going to live in the suburbs and by thirty-two I’ll be a leader in my community. Ready? Go. And one of the things my dad instilled was confidence. You want it? Work for it. You can do it. And so, I had already set the next set of goals and when she said that, it was the most empty feeling I had ever had. And you know, some of you understand what it’s like to realize it doesn’t deliver. It doesn’t deliver.
I had just graduated from high school, I had a basketball scholarship. Those of you that maybe have an athletic background, I was a gym rat. And all I cared about was sports. And a coach said, “There’s a conference. It’s not too far from here and all the best players from Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia will be there. And I’ll pay your way.”

And I show up and it was like I got dropped, this was 1972, and I thought I got dropped into the land of Jesus freaks. It was like, oh my gosh. I had pretty much rejected the Church, didn’t – assumed there is some being that created everything. I don’t know who He is, if He was like the people in my church, I didn’t really want to get to know Him very well.

And so, I thought these religious freaks, they would have a time in the morning, twenty minutes, and you got a Good News Bible – later I realized was pretty easy to understand. And you were supposed to read the Bible and I guess talk to God. And then you had breakfast and then you had a speaker and Tom Landry came. That was part of the thing, I thought, I was a Cowboys fan. How bad could it be if Tom Landry is there?

And then I met all these professional and college athletes that were talking about Jesus like He was a person. What? And then – I had never heard the phrase, “A personal relationship with God.” To me it was, you know, you go to church, good; you miss church, bad. Keep missing a lot of church, you go to hell. If it’s fun, it’s wrong. God is mad. You know? From Sunday school, Jesus seems kind of okay, but His dad seems like He’s really ticked off most of the time. You know? I mean, I had a completely warped view of God.

And I went to that camp and for three days I would not open that Bible because these dudes are not going to indoctrinate me into their Jesus stuff. But I saw their life.

And I remember just out of peer pressure, like, day number four, I just opened the Bible. And the Good News, my question: If God exists, what does He really want? “I urge you, therefore, my brothers and sisters, in view of how much God loves you and all that He has done for you,” what He really wants is for you to give all that you are and all that you have to Him, because that’s what’s really on God’s heart.

“And don’t be conformed to this current world and all its hypocrisy and all of its lust, but instead let your mind be renewed with the truth, that your actual life could prove and demonstrate what God’s will is, that it’s actually good and acceptable and perfect. And then through the grace given to me, I say to every one of you, don’t think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, but think of yourself the way God sees you, with sound judgement.”

And I had never heard of the Holy Spirit, or at least I didn’t know anything about it. But as I read those verses, literally, a video went on in my mind. And it was like I saw myself in my bedroom praying that prayer and verse 1 answered it. And then the video continued, “Don’t be conformed.” I saw myself, just in my mind in a little video of sweettalking a girl here and acting like a jerk in the locker room here and acting like the American boy over here and just…

And then, “Don’t think too highly of yourself.” I was pierced. That was the summer of 1972.

And then what happened is I went away to school and some radical changes. Two weeks into it, I have no explanation, because my mouth, I just stopped cussing and I couldn’t understand it.

And I came to the conclusion, the most miserable people on the face of the entire earth are not lost people. When I was sinning and when I was lost, I didn’t feel guilty. In fact, I mean, people who say, “Oh, all those terrible things,” I’ve got news, I really enjoyed a lot of those terrible things. I mean, the consequences are terrible, but I wasn’t going, like, “Oh, man, I feel so terrible about…” No.

But now that the Spirit of God was living inside of me, it was like I had one foot in the world and one foot – it was like this. And I think the great majority of Christians in our day are living that life.

One person at the base, another person at home, one person at church, another person on the Internet, a different person shopping, a different person drinking, a different person’s language. Guilt, shame, repeat, rinse, guilt, shame, repeat, rinse. Start not liking yourself.

And then at some point you either just fake it or you change your beliefs. That’s what is happening in our colleges. When you go away to school and everyone is sleeping with one another and smoking dope and drinking and having fun…”I’m not sure I believe in God.” You know why? It has nothing to do with intellect. It’s the tension in your mind and heart when you know this is right and you’re doing this. It’s crushing, as it should be, because that’s grace.

And it requires a radical decision and about two years in, I understood this verse and I got on my knees like this and it was basketball and a girlfriend and I said, “Father, I know I’m saved and on my way to heaven by Your grace. And on this day, in this moment, I want to offer my body as a living sacrifice. All that I am, all that I have, all that I’ll ever have. I don’t want You to be first place, I want You to be everything. If You say it in Your Word, I’ll do it. If I get flack for it, so be it. I can’t live a double life.”

What happened in my life afterwards and what I have seen happen in literally tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people is they experience a power in their life like never before. There are so many anemic Christians. The reason a lot of people don’t want to be Christians is they have met a lot of us. I’m dead serious.

But what I will tell you is, you find someone who literally, in the words of the great theologian, Texas Hold ‘Em, “I’m all in,” that’s what God is looking for. By the way, that’s not for pastors or missionaries. That’s for every single believer. You will never experience God’s power, you’ll never hear His whisper, you’ll never see dramatic, supernatural answers to prayer. You’ll never see the trajectory of your life or He use you in ways that you never dreamed until you say to Him, “I’m all in.”

The disciples changed the course of the world, not because there was a lot of them, but they were all in. “If any man will come after Me,” Jesus said, “let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow Me. For if you seek to save your life, you will lose it. But if you will lose your life,” let go of it, “for My sake and the gospel, you will find it.”

And so, if you want to have a life-giving relationship with God, it’s going to start with a spiritual birth and then a radical dedication.

And the question I have for you, are you all in? You! I mean, and you know what? This isn’t like on a scale of one to ten. It’s just, “Yes, I am.” Or no. And I think it’s good to be honest. I mean, I think the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and those who are crushed in spirit. The Lord is near to those who call upon Him, to those who call upon Him in truth.

I think we have really overrated having your life together and being moral and all this stuff. Jesus is looking for a man or a woman that you would just come and be ruthlessly honest. “This is where I’m really at. I’m not all in.” Well, why? “Because I’m afraid if I was, this and this and this and this would happen.” And Jesus would say, “Let’s talk about it.”

Really. Let’s really talk about it. Stop faking it. Stop acting. Stop. Get down to the core. Meet the person of Jesus.

Finally, there’s a daily battle, and I’ve already alluded to this. “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you’ll be able to test and approve, what is God’s will, His good, pleasing, and perfect will.” It’s a daily battle, right?

Do you remember when Jesus went out and He was tempted by Satan? It’s the very same three things that Satan tempted Adam and Eve and it’s the very same three things that 1 John tells us. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. In our vernacular, it’s sex, status, salary. Pleasure, power, position.

The world says those things will make you significant, make you secure, and give you happiness. And all I would say is let’s go to all the top athletes that we can think of and all the movie stars that we can think of.

If being pretty, being powerful, having lots of money would fulfill you, they would be the happiest people on the earth. Why do guys throw away twenty, thirty, forty million-dollar contracts to do absolutely stupid things? It’s because the enemy has a world system and none of us are immune and we are bombarded by it all the time and what I want to tell you, this daily battle is renewing your mind, putting good things in your mind, and recognizing it’s a struggle for all of us. But you progressively change. There’s power. And that God really wants to give you something very, very, very good.

But what do you need to believe about God’s character to experience His love and power? I’m going to suggest it’s His goodness. When I got on my knees and said that and meant it, here was my concern. If I do this it means this relationship I have with my present girlfriend needs to go. If I do this, I have spent my whole life trying to be this basketball player. What if, what if God says I can’t play basketball anymore? And you’ve got yours, right? I mean, if you’re all in, don’t you think of all the things?

You know, in my mind it was like, If I’m all in, God will make me be a missionary and go to some country where there’s a lot of snakes, and I hate snakes, right? I mean, here’s the premise. The premise is if you would turn with all your heart and all your energy and make Him the absolute focus of your life, bar none, that you are really going to miss out.

Fear of missing out. It’s the big FOMO. You know what’s behind your FOMO? A warped view of God.

Psalm 84:11 here, I memorized this verse and every time it was like, you know, okay.

And all I can tell you is I ended up being an RA and I ended up doing it God’s way and I watched the chaos and the shame and the brokenness and I had those guys come into my room asking me, “What do I do? I got her pregnant and now she is overwhelmed. Now she has had an abortion. When you go outside God’s bounds, hey, front end: pleasure. Back end: pain. When you do it God’s way there’s always front-end pain, long-term pleasure.

“The Lord God is a sun and a shield.” What is a sun? Source of energy and power. A shield: protection. “The Lord gives grace and glory.” What is grace? God pouring out what you don’t deserve – goodness. He knows your dreams; He knows your desires. And glory. The word literally, He wants to lift you up. Look at the last line. “No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” Man, I hung onto that, so I lived that out and made some hard decisions and, boy, took a pretty big dip in my little basketball journey because of some of those things.

And then it played out. And I got a letter from some group I had never heard of who asked me if I could join some other guys and I played more basketball in two summers in every country in South America and all throughout the Middle East with Olympic teams all over the world from a guy who was a skinny little point guard at an NAIA school.

God was saying, “It was never basketball, Chip.” And I got to share Christ. And after I broke up with that girl, yeah, I cried and, you know, and it was emotional and I thought I was going to marry her. And she was on this path and I was on this path.

And for about a year, a year and a half, I actually got to know women as sisters in Christ that I didn’t have to lust for, that I learned to be friends with, that I understood how women think and it prepared me to be a good husband.

And God brought me the best. God’s got your best in mind. Your very, very best. But what does it require? Faith. An invisible promise over against a lot of temptation.

The second thing you have to believe about God is His, are you ready for this? His gentleness. And the context of all these things, Jesus said, “Come to Me all you who are weary and burdened.” Anybody weary and burdened with shame and guilt and struggle and fights and, you know, junk in your marriage and some with your kids and some with where you are stationed and some…anybody have any of that?

Man, I have. What does He promise? “I will give you rest.” Christianity isn’t a set of principles to try hard, to be nice and be moral. It’s a person! God sent God the Son for you. He loves you! It’s a personal relationship. And the only requirement, “Come.” And it’s not clean your life up and come. It’s just come with your weary, your burden, your shame, your junk. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me.” In other words, let’s do life together like two yoke of oxen. And then what He says – this is the only time Jesus describes Himself. He says, “For I am gentle and humble.” The word “gentle” here is a fascinating word.

Have you ever had a moment where you shared where you have really, really blown it with someone and looked into their eyes and instead of getting judgement, get understanding? I mean really get, “I get it. I get it. I understand. Now, it doesn’t mean it’s right and there is stuff, but I…and it hasn’t changed my opinion of you that much.”

This word “gentle” means that when you come to Jesus and you are just honest, you’re not going to get, “Why didn’t you come earlier? You did this.” Your sin and your suffering– the heart of Christ, it is just drawn to your pain. It’s drawn to the things that you have never told anyone. And He’s just saying, “If you would just be real and come to Me, “I’ll lean in. I will be with you in the nightmares, I’ll be in with the shame. I understand where you were wounded, I understand where you have wounded other people.

And you know something? Bring it. Bring it. You’ll find rest for your soul.” And He’s not only gentle but He is humble. The word means lowly. Did you notice in the New Testament how often He is helping people that no one cares about? You know, five husbands here and the one you are living with. The prostitute here, the person who is marginalized. He understands you and loves you.

And the only prerequisite is to come. Where He says, “My yoke is easy.” That word is not easy as opposed to, like, “Oh, there’s nothing to do.” The word means delightful. “My yoke is fitting.” It’ll wear well. It’ll be when you and I do life together, I think the best translation I could give you is it’s pleasant.

“And My burden,” not your burden, He says, “My burden is light.” In other words, God has unlimited power, unlimited love. He is infinite, He spoke the galaxies and the universe into existence. And for reasons I don’t know, His heart, His initial response to your hurt and your suffering and your sin and your shame is just to want to help. And I don’t think most of us see Him that way.

And if you don’t see Him that way, you won’t go to Him. And if you don’t go to Him, you’ll have to make up your own little story and cast your – create your own little hologram. And maybe have a little religion mixed in, try hard to be sort of this good person, and even if you are successful, you will find yourself empty and hollow and broken, because as one great theologian said, “You have been made with a hole in your heart, a vacuum in your heart that only He can fill.”