Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ "/“When he *came to his senses*, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here *I am starving to death!* /*/I will set out/*/ and go back to my father and say to him: Father, *I have sinned* against heaven and against you.

//I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ //So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him./"

(Luke 15:17-20, NIV) [1]

 

In my distant past I have been a sleepwalker.

That hasn’t happened for years.

Numbers of strange things have taken place in the night time.

Most all of those things would have been unknown to me except for those who witnessed them and later told me.

Primarily my wife and my mother.

They both seem to take special delight in telling these stories

 

My mother tells me that I’ve dragged my brother out of bed in the middle of the night, occupied his bed and left him sleeping on the floor.

I’ve tried to fly like Peter Pan and been inconsolable at my failed attempts.

I’ve crawled across the floor imitating an outboard motor.

Elaine’s strange encounters include some of the following:

 

Within the first two weeks of our marriage I frightened her repeatedly.

I asked her to wave to people in the middle of the night.

She awoke to the sound of my fingers flicking in front of her face to the mantra, “I think I’ll have a tuna fish sandwich, I think I’ll have a tuna fish sandwich.”

One night she caught me pressing a dumb bell shaped alarm clock to my ear, rocking back and forth and smiling as if I was listening to a radio.

I asked her apparently to look out the window in the middle of the night.

She refused to cooperate.

I crawled over her to pull the drapes back and say, “No cars are coming.”

I remember waking in the morning feeling frustrated and talking to Elaine over the breakfast table.

I told her about a dream that I had in the night.

We were driving somewhere in the car and the rain was so strong that I couldn’t see out the side window when we stopped at an intersection.

I asked her to look out the window and she absolutely refused to turn her head sideways to help me.

I had to climb over her to assure myself that it was safe to proceed.

I worked two years as a security guard for Pinkerton’s in Allentown Pa.

One of my assignments was a Champion Spark Plug factory in Bethlehem Pa.

I had to make a short round on the half hour and a longer one on the hour.

I carried a heavy clock to key stations at which I placed the key in the clock and twisted it to make some impression on an internal recording device that would indicate that the round had been made.

Many nights I would mindlessly do my round, come back to the guard shack, sit down and wonder whether or not I had actually made the round.

I had no recollection of having done it.

Ever have a dream that was so real that it left you struggling to remind yourself that it was only a dream?

I’ve come to consciousness crying in the middle of the night at the thought of losing someone that I loved.

Some go to sleep crying at the loss of a loved one and wake to the same reality.

Our hearts and prayers are with you.

We wish that it were just a bad dream.

Sooner or later the day brings and end to every dream, good or bad and reality replaces imagination.

From a scriptural standpoint truth and light are the same.

Truth replaces error and we are exposed, life is exposed for what it actually is.

Before a person can ever really come to know Christ, they must be laid bare before the truth or the light of God’s Word, both spoken and revealed.

It leaves us no room to hide.

It speaks mercilessly and impartially to each of us.

And until we can admit to it’s accuracy we can never */find our way/* forward in the spiritual life, whether we are saints or sinners.

"/But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, //for it is light that makes everything visible.

This is why it is said: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”/"

(Ephesians 5:13-14, NIV) [2] 

 

I’ve never enjoyed seeing myself in that mirror.

I’ve seen my pride, envy, bitterness, unforgiveness. . .

.

When I have seen the ugliness of these things, I have found help to change – to turn toward home.

The prodigal “*/came to his senses/*” Luke writes.

Other versions say that he came to “*/himself/*”.

As though he were sleepwalking, in some stupor – he woke up.

Almost like a sleepwalker, he left home and suddenly discovered himself in a situation that he never would have left home for.

How many of us share that shocking realization.

All that we anticipated from life as we have tried to structure or create it on our own has brought us to a place that we never set out for.

We would never have charted a course for the destination that we have reached.

We’d have corrected the course if we had been able to see the reality that confronts us today.

Isaiah the prophet speaks of the Christ to come:

 

"/The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death //a light has dawned./"

(Isaiah 9:2, NIV) [3]

 

And of himself, Jesus referred:

 

"/ //When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world.

*Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness*, but will have the light of life.”/"

(John 8:12, NIV) [4]

 

*/I find it so amazing that the escape that we seek, from the circumstances of life, comes from the truth that we are willing to face about ourselves.

The degree to which we are willing to allow God’s light to show us the truth about ourselves becomes our pathway home./*

For the soul lost in despair, the help that God sends comes in personal direction and guidance.

We have a tendency to think that God needs to change something else, someone else in order for us to be happy or fulfilled.

The answers don’t change though.

God’s agenda is not someone else – something else – His agenda is you.

/" //Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” //Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:5-6, NIV) *[5]*/

 

Have you lost your way – you’ve lost Jesus.

He’s the Way.

He is the direction that we seek in life – not in the necessity of things changing around us but in a greater vision of our Savior.

For the prodigal, this was an awakening, a shock to a sleepwalker’s system, suddenly to find himself at such a low point.

It was his “*/dark night of the soul/*”.

/The term "dark night of the soul" is taken from the writings of the Spanish poet and Roman Catholic mystic Saint John of the Cross, a Carmelite priest in the 16th century.

Dark Night of the Soul is the name of both a poem, and a commentary on that poem, and are among the Carmelite priest's most famous writings.

They tell of his mystic development and the stages he went through on his quest for holiness./

/The "dark night" could generally be described as a letting go of our ego's hold on the psyche, making room for change that can bring about a complete transformation of a person's way of defining his~/her self and their relationship to God. /

/The interim period can be frightening, hence the perceived "darkness".

In the Christian tradition, during the "dark night" one who has developed a strong prayer life and consistent devotion to God suddenly finds traditional prayer extremely difficult and unrewarding for an extended period of time.

The individual may feel as though God has suddenly abandoned them, or that their prayer life has collapsed./

/Rather than being a negative event, the dark night is believed by mystics and others to be a blessing in disguise where the individual is trained to grow from vocal and mental prayer, to a deeper contemplative prayer of the soul.

/

/Particularly in Christianity, it is seen as a severe test of one's faith.

The Dark Night comes in two phases: a first "Night of the Senses," and a second "Night of the Spirit."/

"The dark night of the soul" is not something bad or destructive.

On the contrary it is an experience to be welcomed as a sick person might welcome a surgery that promises health and well-being.

The purpose of the darkness is not to punish or afflict us.

It is to set us free.

--- Richard J. Foster (1942- )

 

*/God is faithful to meet us at the depths of our despair./*

How many times has my own experience with God been as shallow as my sense of need.

In so many areas of my life I would consider myself to be doing fine and would see my need as marginal.

Consequently my experience is marginal.

For many people within the church today, the need that we have felt has been marginal and our experience has been the same.

It’s been enough to stir our hearts because that’s really all we want.

We want God to “stir” us but not to set us ablaze for His Glory.