Get REAL !

I have observed a fundamental trait in human nature. It is a trait which the unscrupulous and the devious exploit without hesitation or compassion.  In fact much of our modern consumerist and materialist lifestyle is predicated on this weakness. It is this.

Avoiding REALITY …

The reality of what we are. The reality of facing the questions about our selves and the world about us. The reality which belies all the distractions which are placed incessantly before us.

Having a “good time”; the assumption that this is the point of life. From television advertising to what the politicians promise to what the salesman says he can do for us.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that when such ‘values’ are placed constantly before us, that we lose sight of what we are and how we should behave.

The consequent problems are numerous. From broken relationships to drug addiction.

All because people start from the premise that reality is to be avoided at all costs. That reality is about being happy – and being happy is all about having money and possessions and even power over others.

It is all, of course, totally superficial and foolish.

Either life falls apart around us, or the gnawing knowledge that there is something more eats away inside us – and we suppress it with yet more of the same empty material indulgence.

In our current study, we have reached chapter 8 – and indeed chapter 9 and some of 10 – in our consideration of Matthew’s Gospel in the Bible.

In those chapters we read a succession of stories about people being healed of sickness and delivered from demons or desperate circumstances.

What, you may ask, has this to do with the opening paragraphs above ?

Everything.

Because what these individual stories in Matthew chapters 8 and 9 all tell us is this.

People got real with God …

Their desperate need drove them to Jesus Christ – God come in the flesh – to solve their problem, to fix their lives.

They recognised the reality of  where they were. They recognised the reality of what they needed. They saw that God alone could help them. So, they went to him.

Now, a serious problem in today’s economically developed world is that God is a joke. God is a crutch to lean on – an idea that helps you through life, but just an idea – a sort of psychological comforter; a conceptual ‘drug’ to ease the pain.

Not true.

God is not just a nice idea. God is not just a figment of historical and childish superstition which rational, civilised human beings have now outgrown.

In the accounts of healing and deliverance in chapters 8 and 9 of Matthew’s Gospel we see people brought face to face with their undeniable need – people brought face to face with the realisation that God is the only person who can meet that need.

Adversity  and life threatening circumstances brought these suffering people to the reality of God’s presence, and to the reality of God’s power.

God used their moments of utter desperation to meet with them, and to solve their need. He used such terrible circumstances to get them to listen – to get beyond the unreality of this life’s superficial distractions to show them that he is real.

God alone can calm the storm which threatened to sink the boat when the disciples crossed the lake – and God alone can calm the storm of adversity which threatens to overwhelm us in our lives today.

We think that such adversity is a bad thing, evil, horrible. But we should realise that God allows adversity for a purpose: to cause us to turn to him. To make us stop and realise that we need him.

Of course, in the deception of our pride and sin, we can refuse to heed God. We can continue to try and solve our problems by ourselves. We can continue to think that our sinful ways will get us out of trouble – another lie, another deceit, more money to buy our way out, or arrange for that awkward person to be moved elsewhere …

Not realising that God has so organised our circumstances to turn us to him; to cause us to rely upon him; to make us realise our need of him, and to get us to treat him as God in  our lives.

Those who came to Jesus for healing and for deliverance knew that he alone could answer the need. They got real about themselves and they got real with God.

They stopped looking to the resources and ways of this world to solve their problem. By doing that,  they met with God. They came to understand the fundamental importance and power of God in their lives.

They got their outlook into the right perspective. They sought God and they found God to be the reason and hope of their existence.

Christian Preacher