Live Free with Josh Howerton - Flee Self-Worship | Ep. 87 | Tuesday June 6, 2023

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Pastor Mike discusses the second posture of relating to God, "Life Over God." Rather than seeking a relationship with God, we can easily elevate ourselves as the primary focus. We should avoid using the Bible as a self-help book. Instead, use it as a guide to knowing Him. An intimate relationship with Him is far greater than a life of self-service. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit.com slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Hope your day is going great. My name is Mike Bro, and I'm so honored that you would tune in and excited we get to hang together for just a few minutes today.

And we're exploring some things about God that maybe we've been taught along the way, perhaps some things that have skewed our perspective a bit and prevented us from really getting to know the true and living God. So we're just trying to learn some new things and perhaps even unlearn some old things as well. And I told you the last time that we are borrowing the framework from a book called With by Skyde. Johan. He's such a good book where he lays out five different ways that people relate to God. And yesterday we unpacked the first posture, which is life under God. And we talked about how it's a very fear-based, don't screw up. You've really ticked him off now, way of relating to God. And I live that way for many years, thinking that God was mad at me, disappointed in me, even disgusted by me. It is a life of do this, don't do that, that results in a ton of insecurity and shame. And as we said

yesterday, it is a very, very heavy way to live. When I met Jesus, I finally saw what God is really like, that he loved me as is. He wasn't disgusted at me. He met me in the middle of my mess. In fact, he loved me so much that he wanted to embrace me. He wanted to forgive me. He wanted to do life with me and transform me into his best version of me. And man, I am so grateful for a new picture of God. So today, let's talk about the second posture of relating to God that people do. We'll call this life over God. Life over God. Now, this is the perspective of atheism or humanism that says there is no God.

We are. I call the shots. I chart the course. I make the rules. I control my destiny. I am self-sufficient because I am at the top of the org chart, for I am Mike Almighty. Seriously, man, I live that way for a while, too. Now, it might not be the same as full-blown atheism,

but there is a perspective commonly referred to as deism that many, even Christians, buy into that pretty much says, there might be, well, it probably is a God. But he started this world like a self-propelled lawnmower and is now kicking back on his heavenly front porch, sipping lemonade, watching this all struggle down here. He's a deadbeat dad. He's an absentee father.

He's inactive. He's uninterested. He's uninvolved in daily life. Therefore, someone has to be God. So might as well be me. In our culture, self seems to be the new God, which is really nothing new. It's been going on since the Garden of Eden when the liar slithered in and asked the question, come on, did God say that?

You could be God. I like what Robert Roberts writes. He says, we have been led to feel that self is sacrosanct. Just as in an earlier time, it was thought never fitting to deny God, so now it never seems right to deny one's self. That's life over God. I call the shots. I know what's best. I follow my heart.

I live my own truth because I am my own truth source. I have my hands firmly at 10 and 2 on the wheel of my life, and I am in control. You see, we can believe in God and at the same time live as if he does not exist. And with this view, our faith can get reduced to nothing more than some quote-unquote godly principles that work for us, that help us be God. For instance, rather than seeing the Bible as a way to get the next, know God, we can just kind of Google search it for some things that will make our life easier, some things that will help us achieve our goals and give us control over our lives and other people.

Now, please, don't get me wrong. I have a very high view of scripture. I hope you know that by now. Man, I read it, I teach it, I meditate on it, I try to memorize it, I try to share it with people, I try to stick it in my heart. I want to live by its God-inspired authority. I love God's word. The gang, the primary purpose of God's word is for you and me to get to know. know Him. And we can actually replace a relationship with God for a relationship with the Bible or a podcast that talks about the Bible. We can reduce faith to a series of five ways to a better marriage, raising kids God's way, managing your finances with kingdom principles, seven biblical laws of leadership, 12 steps to recovery. And we can say, I'm not sure about the

whole God and Jesus thing, but hey, this stuff works for me. I mean, if we have the book, do we really need the author? So we set God aside in order to remain in control of our own lives. You see, if we seek to take God's place by denying his existence, or by pushing him aside as irrelevant, or by

seeing him as a motivational TED talk speaker, then this life over posture only takes us to one place, and that's life without God. And that means really no life at all. Let me just close today by rereading some verse

that we share a few weeks back from a Colossian study. This is the Apostle Paul talking about Jesus, and he says this, Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created in his supreme overall creation. Through him, God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can't see, such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him.

He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead, so he is first in everything. For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross. This includes you and me who are once far away from God. Listen, the one who is at the top of the org chart is overall. That same God gave himself up on a cross just so we could do life with him.

Let that fill your heart today. See you back next time. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services. on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review,

and share this podcast to help get the word out? For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.compt.com. Church slash Daily Drive.