Sermon Tone Analysis

Unfeeling the Felt Need

During the last six days, Kara and I had an opportunity to spend a week with our ministry partners in Pennsylvania.

We went with a mission to help them assemble some training materials so we can start to teach people how to help traumatized people.

We were glad to see that a significant amount of progress had been made on the materials.

My intended reason for being there was to walk through the material, listen to how it would be used, and pull these threads together into a cohesive process.

And that is exactly what happened, except there were these moments where I would ask some questions, and those times would turn into counseling sessions for me, and we would simply fellowship together and love each other through life.

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But, something started to stir in me, I was curious as to why others could so easily experience love, yet I was having such a hard time with that concept.

At some point in my life I had learned to “Unfeel felt needs.”

Our culture is moving more and more in this direction.

With the advent of social media, more than ever, a person is able to interact without really feeling anything for the other person, and they are able to sit and seethe in their emotions.

They regulate by outburst against others.

We have learned to unfeel the felt needs of ourselves and especially of others.

This is not how the roots of our faith started.

When you read through the gospels you get the overwhelming sense that people connected with Jesus because he understood them.

He felt their need.

The writers of the New Testament tells us that Jesus is familiar with our grief and pain, that he experienced those himself.

Paul would go on to describe this in an amazing way when he wrote his letter to the church at Ephesus.

Paul is having a moment of reflection when he is writing his letter, and it is striking what he has concluded.

Let’s back up just a bit first.

Paul is explaining the plan of God to the Ephesians, and how they fit into this plan, in fact how all of us fit into this plan.

Let’s pick up at this explaination

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Does that sound like a good plan?

Yes! Gentiles and Jews include all people in all nations.

And everyone is equal, there is no one that is greater than or lesser than.

You wonder where we get the concept that all are created equal.

It comes from this Judeo/Christian background.

And together, we form this body, not exactly like a human body, but it serves as a good metaphor.

What part of the body can you remove where you don’t feel it?

It is all there for one reason or another.

And Paul has figured out that he has been given what he calls a privilege of sharing this news.

What a privilege too, left for dead, beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and on and on.

But that is not what bothers him.

I think he can live just fine with all of those bad moments.

It is the really bad moments that stay in his memory.

When he would stand around while others killed Jesus followers.

When he would go and arrest Jews who were following Jesus, bring them back to Jerusalem so they could be “dealt with.”

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He sees himself as the least deserving of all God’s people.

Yet, God chose him to tell the Gentiles about these endless treasures found only in Jesus.

And moreover, he was chosen to share this awesome plan of God with everyone.

Imagine, put yourself in his sandals, knowing what you did, yet still being chosen to tell the secret that God had kept hidden since the beginning.

For you nerds, now you know why Paul had been given a “thorn in his side” to keep him humble.

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We don’t have time this morning to fully unpack this, but suffice it to say, the elohim, the unseen beings have mucked this whole thing up, and drew us into this quagmire.

I think the plan of God to include humans in his family was too much for some of these other beings to handle.

That is speculation, but at some point they rebelled.

God decided to honor and glorify his human family above the unseen.

And that has been his plan from the beginning, plan A, so to speak.

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And because of that plan, because of what Jesus accomplished in his death and resurrection, we have this amazing privilege to come directly to Yahweh, into his presence.

This is such a big deal.

For Paul, someone who knew what it took to be in God’s presence, this was revolutionary.

More than that, he is aware that others feel bad that he has gone through what he has, and in Paul’s mind, all the trials and suffering he goes through are worth it.

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And it is this thought, these amazing, hidden things that Paul is sharing with others that causes him to just stop, be humbled and pray.

What does he pray for?

Watch carefully.

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Think about this.

Paul has given the privilege to understand this mystery.

He has gone through trials and suffering because of it.

It is worth it, and he turns and prays for the people.

You would think he would pray that they would understand it too.

But he does not.

He doesn’t have to, he just told them in the letter.

Rather he wants them to link up with this inner strength through the Spirit of Christ.

He wants them to know that Christ will make his home in their heart.

He wants them to trust Jesus.

More than that, he wants them to grow really deep roots into God.

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Specifically, grow deep roots into God’s love.

He could have picked from several words here, but he chooses God’s love.

That is where Paul wants them to live.

He wants them to live out of a heart of God’s love.

But he is not done!

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Paul prays that we have the “power to understand.”

It is an interesting translation.

The original would be read to say, “to be strong enough.”

Again, interesting choice of words.

He wants us to embrace the concept that accepting and understanding God’s love takes strength and courage.

And that can be true, simply because we have others and ourselves that are constantly saying “we are not worthy” of this love.

That is must be earned.

That we are not at the top of God’s mind, so to speak.

It is a constant wrestling match in ourselves to embrace this love of God.

Notice there are four dimensions to this love of God.

I like to think of this like a bathtub.

You can measure the bathtub, height, width and length.

But there is a fourth component.

The water.

And you don’t know what that is like until you get into the warm water and soak.

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May you “experience” the love of Christ.

Again, using that bathtub analogy, you can know the dimensions, you can even know what the bathtub holds, you can write papers about it, you can preach about it, but you won’t know it until you experience it.

And even then, our minds are not capable of fully understanding it.

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And it is only then that you will be made complete in all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

In other words, you can know all these things, do all these great works, but until you are utterly confused by the love of God, you will not understand.