Focal Point

Pastor Mike Fabarez: You can sing all your songs about He walks with me, He talks with me and all that, and that's great and it's poetic language, but you and I do not walk and talk with God. And until then, I got to have the kind of faith that knows my life is somewhere else.

What does Paul say to the Philippians? Our citizenship, it's not on earth, it's in heaven. And the Bible says we need to have the kind of faith that Enoch had to walk with God even when he didn't see Him face to face.

Dave Druey: Welcome to Focal Point with author and pastor Mike Fabarez. I'm Dave Druey. We spend much of our day running from one place to another. We rush off to work, hurry to pick up the kids, and race home. We're always on the go.

But in all our rushing about, are we chasing after what truly matters? Today, Pastor Mike offers a biblical example of someone who made walking with God his primary pursuit. The message is called "Ardently Seeking a Deeper Relationship with God."

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Let us understand that if you're looking for a motivation, a template, an example to follow as it relates to making God and the pursuit of your relationship with God the template of your life, then here's Enoch. Take a look at it again, Hebrews chapter 11, verses 5 and 6.

By faith, Enoch was taken from this life, for before he was taken, that's the process of sanctification, he was commended as one who pleased God. That's what I want to do. If I'm going to follow the example and conquer the challenge of Enoch, if I want to be like Enoch, if I want to do the things that he did and grow in my relationship with God, then I've got to be one who pleases God.

What does that involve? Faith. Verse 5, first two words; verse 6, without faith, I can't please him. I've got to have faith. I've got to have a bolstered and growing confidence and trust in God because I can't even please God without that. Anyone who comes to Him, first of all, you've got to believe that He's there, and secondly, you've got to believe and trust that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

You and I need faith, bolstered confidence, to really seek Him. And by that, add whatever adjective you want—to earnestly, ardently seek Him. We need to be people who are trying and moving into a deeper level of devotion with God. Let's start with that one, letter A on your outline. You and I need faith, bolstered confidence, to really seek Him. And by that, add whatever adjective you want—to earnestly, ardently seek Him.

We need to be people who are trying and moving into a deeper level of devotion with God. That's what, if we're going to be like Enoch, we need more faith to do that. We need to have that bolstered confidence to say it's all about following God, and I need more faith to make that happen. Turn to one passage in the Psalms. I had several listed, but I'm just going to give you one.

Psalm 73. If you don't know Psalm 73, it's a great Psalm by a guy named Asaph. And if you're ever bummed out about the injustices of life, that's a homework assignment. Just start at the beginning of this Psalm and travel emotionally, cogitate your way from the beginning to the end of this Psalm. It's a great attitude adjustment.

But when he gets to the end, without reference to the context of all of his feelings and his emotional roller coaster, the end of the story is this for Asaph. Look at verse number 23. Psalm 73, verse 23. When it comes to him coming to his senses, here's what he says. "Yet," he says, "I know this. No matter what's going on in the world, no matter what craziness is out there, I am always with you."

That's a good place for us to start. You cannot have a growing, deepening, seeking after God kind of life if you don't have that mental discipline to know I'm always in God's presence. There's an old classic by a guy named Brother Lawrence. He wrote about practicing the presence of God. Have you ever read that old classic book?

He says, whether I'm peeling potatoes or whatever I'm doing, I ought to have my mind as Tozer said about my mind always coming back to settling on my relationship with God. I live in the presence of God. I am always with you. And then you want to talk about the analogy of walking with God? Look at the next phrase in verse 23. You hold me by my right hand. You picture this pedestrian illustration here? I'm walking and God is holding my hand.

We need the faith to do that, to reach out to God, to always know I live in His presence. God, I need to seek You. I need to hold Your hand throughout my day. That's how You uphold me. Verse 24, You guide me with your counsel. I'm checking out Your word. I'm opening your Bible in the mornings. And afterwards, my hope is pinned on this, like 1 John chapter 3. I'm hoping in the glorification level, the fact that You're going to take me into glory.

There will be a closer relationship at the end of this life with You. And then he says, whom have I in heaven but you? When it comes down to my priorities, it's all about You. Earth, by comparison, he says, has nothing I desire besides You. Does that sound like a godly standard to put up in your life? Can you imagine having the kind of Asaph relationship to say, God, that's where I'm at.

I really nothing on earth is of interest to me but You. Now, we've got to live in the world. I understand that. We've got jobs to go to. We've got stuff to do. We've got to go shopping. We've got to feed the kids. I get it. But the Bible says that when we're really learning to walk by a kind of faith that says, God, I want to seek you.

You're the primary reason I live, we get to the place where we say every other interest pales by comparison. We say, God, there's nothing else really. Earth really's got no real bread to satisfy like when I really ingest and connect with You. That's what it's about. And in our hearts, man, I want to get there. Don't you? Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, there's nothing on earth that I want.

There's no desires. There's no idolatry fighting for my attention. Idolatry, by the way, don't picture the guy with the little incense burning, bowing down and hugging a gold idol. That's just an expression of ancient idolatry. Idolatry is simply exalting any priority in your life above the priority of seeking God. You recognize that? That is idolatry.

And that's why in the New Testament, when a lot of people weren't bowing down to golden images, he says, guard yourselves. Guard yourselves from idols. We've got to make sure that our one consuming priority is knowing God. And when we taste and see that God is good, we'll realize there's nothing better to do with our time or our minds or our efforts than trying to cultivate a deeper, more intimate relationship with God.

Verse 26, hey, everything can go wrong here, which was the context of this Psalm. Everything seemed to be going wrong for this guy. My flesh, my heart may fail, but you know what? God is the strength of my heart and he is my portion, my allotment forever. Those—now look at the spatial analogies here—those who are far from you will perish. You destroy all who are unfaithful to you. They don't trust you.

Verse 28, but as for me, look at the resolve here. Underline this phrase of relational space here. It is good to be near God. That is the heart's desire of someone who's bolstering a faith that says, I want to make God and seeking Him my primary priority and objective of life. It is good to be near God. And then look at this resolve. I've made the Sovereign Lord my refuge.

My kids have their little hideout. They go to their little hideout in the afternoon. That's the place they want to go back to. It's the place they go and they regroup. And the Bible says that Asaph says we've made God that for us. Our minds keep going back there. It's the place we go. We find refuge. We find repose. We find strength. We find energy. We go back to God. I've made the Sovereign Lord my refuge. I will tell of all your deeds.

I'm so stoked about the growth and the sustenance I find in my relationship with God, I'm talking about it all the time. Here's some diagnostics on the level of our faith. And Asaph says it well. Be a great section to memorize, verses 23 through 27 or 28. Faith to really seek Him. We could preach a whole series of sermons on that, but suffice it just to say, yeah, we need that.

And then we need to know if we're going to seek God here, we've still got that last barrier we're never going to conquer until we die. So I've got to have the kind of faith that sees this, secondly, as a distant kind of thing. A long-distance relationship, if you will. And I get people that deny this, but it's a reality. As long as I'm in this body, I'm away from the Lord. That's just the fact.

So my faith needs to be the kind that can look across the horizon and can bridge the distance that now exists. I don't see Him face to face. You can sing all your songs about He walks with me, He talks with me and all that, and that's great and it's poetic language, but you and I do not walk and talk with God. His Spirit convicts us. His Spirit may guide us and give us counsel. His Word may be a lamp to our feet, but I can't wait to see Him face to face.

Then I'll have the realization of my Christian life. And until then, I've got to have the kind of faith that knows my life is somewhere else. Is that a New Testament theme you've heard before? What does Paul say in Colossians chapter 3, verses 1 through 4? We ought to set our minds on things above, not on things on the earth. What does Paul say to the Philippians? Our citizenship, it's not on earth, it's in heaven.

Your great hope and the culmination of everything that you desire is there. It's not here. And you ought to live with that sense that my faith stretches beyond the horizon, that I am in a real sense heavenly minded. And when we're heavenly minded, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, then we start to be some earthly good. But until then, we're just a drone in the planet, going around just trying to be happy.

And the bottom line is, our happiness and our hope is over there. And the Bible says we need to have the kind of faith that Enoch had to walk with God even when he didn't see Him face to face. And the reward for his walking with God was what? He got to see Him face to face. Right? The tube at the bank drive-through. He gets to go up and be with Him.

And the bottom line is, that's why in chapter 11 of Hebrews, verse number 6, it says He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. And the ultimate payoff for Enoch was he got to stand in His presence. His heart's desire was fulfilled. And I know a lot of us, we hope for the return of Christ, but we do it when our lives are going terrible. Right?

"Oh, I can't wait. I got that meeting next Tuesday. I hope Christ comes back on Monday." That's how most of us think. And you know what? It's not just a relief valve. It shouldn't be when we see bad days on the horizon we want to go home. We should have as a growing kind of faith in our life to cry out with the early church and that little Aramaic phrase, Maranatha, come quickly, Lord. We want to be with you.

That is our hope. The Bible says when we fix our hope on that, we purify ourselves. The synergistic relationship between sanctification and hoping for glorification is all over the Bible. Start putting your hope in the return of Christ. That's what it's all about. And the Bible says we need that kind of faith to bridge the distance. 1 Peter chapter 1 would be worth jotting down, verses 8 and 9.

Peter tells his audience, it's great. You guys are cultivating a love for a person you've never seen. Remember that verse? Though you've not seen him, you love him. He says, though you don't see him now, you trust in him, and because of that growing trust, he says, you are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. We need to have faith to bridge the distance.

Then I know a lot of us, I certainly have fallen into this pattern of wrong thinking. I think, well, you know, Enoch, I kind of picture him on a flannelgraph. He's got this nice beard and this glowing smile, and you know, he's kind of walking with the bird on his shoulder and everything's cool and it's rosy because it's Bible times. And in Bible times, everything's cool and everything's conducive to godliness in Bible times. Right? No.

And I know we think our world's a lot worse than theirs, but do you know who Enoch's great-grandson was? You know him: Noah. You know what the Bible says about the days of Noah? Jesus kept saying, the last days are going to be like the days of Noah. And the days of Noah were all about what? Every thought and inclination of man's heart was continually evil.

Which means that all their recreational outlets, everything on the "radio" of the ancient world, all the entertainment, all the books, all the magazines, everything that was going on, all the discussions at the city gates, was always continually compromising and evil. It was sinful. Enoch died only 69 years before Noah was born. He was his great-grandson. 69 years.

Now the world didn't go to hell in 69 years. Enoch surely lived in a day walking progressively with God in a world that was progressively getting worse. How bad was it? Jesus said it was really bad. I mean, this was a bad situation. God's commentary in Genesis 6: everybody's heart always evil doing all. It said it grieved God's heart that He even made man. Think about that.

This is not a force. This is not a creed. This is a person grieving over the loss of fellowship with His creation. Only two people, antediluvian, before the flood, that were commended as righteous people. Only two people in the scripture: Noah and his great-grandfather, Enoch. Enoch was a righteous man when the world was about as unrighteous as it gets.

And you think the world's bad today? I guarantee if you compare our day to that day, though there may be some comparisons, he had to have a faith, third on your list, letter C, to buck the culture. He was not going to get any help from his world. None. Enoch sought God in a world that didn't. He sought God in a day that mocked seeking. Does that sound familiar?

And I guarantee it was a lot worse. Their church services were a lot more sparse than ours are. This guy was on his own, and he was seeking God when it wasn't popular. One last passage. Let me turn you to this one, 2 Timothy chapter 3. It's important to recognize this because we live in a day that's a lot like that.

Because the Bible promises in 2 Timothy 3, things are moving from bad to worse. It's not getting better. He says this, as a matter of fact, about the last days, which I know stretch from the days of the New Testament to now, but they're getting worse. He says it goes from bad to worse. But he says this: "Mark this." Verse 1. Are you there? 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse number 1.

Mark this. There will be terrible times in the last days, which again, I'm sure was just like Enoch's day. But let's see if this list, any of it, may apply to our culture. People will be lovers of themselves. Hmm, let's see. Any of that going on? No, not today. Anybody lovers of themselves? You know, it is so bad on our culture that we are to love ourselves that even in the church, pastors are standing on platforms today telling people that they've got to learn to love themselves.

We got no problem with that. As a matter of fact, the Bible says that'll be a part of the terrible times of the last days. People are obsessed with loving themselves. You're wired to love yourself. That's what is the foundation of sin. Right? God wants me to love you more than I love myself. He wants me to love Him so much that Luke 14 says sometimes it looks like I'm hating myself.

But this is our day. People are even putting cloaks of religion around that. Lovers of money. Hmm, anybody doing that in our day? No, don't think so. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I think so. Didn't get as many laughs because it's infiltrated our hearts too, hasn't it? We just want the stuff, man. We just want the stuff. Open up the magazine, "Oh, that'd be nice. I like that. I want more of that."

Boastful, proud, and abusive. There's a nice trio. Boastful, proud, and abusive. I was watching TV. They interviewed this modern entertainer, this musician, if you can call it music, and they were there being interviewed, and I thought, if there's three words that characterize the interview that I just saw, it's boastful, proud, and abusive. And yet what we do for them?

We roll out the red carpets. We have guys chase them with cameras because we want their pictures, and we put them on the front of magazines. These are our heroes. We love these people. We like to be like—show us their crib. We want to check out their house. You know what? We celebrate the boastful, proud, and abusive among us. They're our heroes today.

God hates it. He hates it. When the world is lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents. Any of that going on? Ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control. We could be here all day. Brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited.

Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Now, we've already said if we're going to conquer this middle layer of sanctification, we've got to be willing, as Galatians 5 says, to not do what we want because our flesh is going to be programmed to do what God tells us not to do, to be drawn away from God. And we're going to say we're committed to drawing near to God.

That's going to create a problem. And the Bible says people just give in. Just do whatever you want to do. No churches then? Right? No, no, no. Verse number 5. Don't miss this. Having a form of godliness but denying its power. Do you see that? Oh, there's churches. We've just kind of redefined what church is all about. It's okay.

What kind of power are we talking about? Is this some charismatic license here? No, no, no. We're talking about the power to transform lives. Taking the list from verse 2 to verse 4 and changing those into people that love God and honor others above themselves. That's the power of the Christian gospel to change our lives and our behavior.

Well, the people like that, he says, have nothing to do with them. Timothy, you're going to have to be counter-cultural. You're going to have to buck your culture. Drop down to verse 10. He now gives a positive example, which is the apostle Paul. He says, "You, however, you know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, my faith, my patience, my love, and my endurance."

Which, by the way, didn't get a nice round of applause from the world. Verse 11: "It brought on persecutions and sufferings. All kinds of things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. The persecutions I endured. Yet, you know, God was good. He rescued me from all of them. But in fact, everyone, Timothy, who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be what? Persecuted."

There's going to be a cost. If I tell you this morning, seek God with all your heart, cultivate a deeper relationship with God, you are going to encounter problems. The world not only not going to help you, they're going to oppose you in that. They're going to insult you. They're going to say—you think they did that to Enoch?

The Bible says he was one of the very few prior to the days of the flood that were seeking hard after God. Yeah, we're going to have to buck the culture. Verse 13: "While evil men and impostors, they go from bad to worse." It gets worse. Deceiving and being deceived. Do we have any of those in our day? Absolutely. Lots. Lies infiltrating all kinds of even religious circles, just deception.

I love this, verse 14: "But as for you," I love what Paul says to Timothy here, "continue in what you have learned." Go deeper. Cultivate a deeper, more intimate relationship with God. And you've become convinced of it because you know those from whom you've learned it, and how from infancy you've known the—here's the key now.

The focal point becomes the Word of God. You've known the holy scriptures. You've known that book which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture, it's inspired. It's God-breathed. It's useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. What does that do for us?

It makes the man of God or the woman of God thoroughly equipped to do the right thing, to do every good work. Isn't it interesting how it always gets back to the text of the Bible? You want to grow in your relationship to God? You've got to spend less time with your eyeballs on the Wall Street Journal and more time with your eyeballs on the pages of Galatians and Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians. Do you see the difference?

We've got to reach in the morning, not for the remote to watch the news. We've got to reach for our Bibles and say, "This is the Word of God. This is the lamp for my feet, the light for my path. This is the thing that is going to give me the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

And yet, as Dr. Kaiser came last week and off the record, not here on the platform, he sat there and lamented the fact that as he goes from church to church, in state to state, and shares the Word of God with people, he says it's amazing how many people don't even carry their Bibles to church anymore. How pastors in churches don't even open the Word of God anymore.

And I'm saying to myself, here is the world we live in. Jesus said, "Am I even going to find faith on the earth when I return?" Things will go from bad to worse. But our focus needs to be on a knowing God, and that's always going to bring us back to the Word of God. You've got to buck the culture, even the church culture, unfortunately, to conquer this current challenge.

Please don't confuse what I've said this morning about seeking God. There is a distinction between justification and sanctification. Do you understand that difference? Seeking God does not make us a Christian. Seeking God is what we do when we become a Christian. We seek God to the point of salvation, yes.

We need to learn about the gospel. But once we put our trust in Christ, now we begin a relationship with God so that we might know Him better. It's not just about being adopted into the family; it's about getting to know our Heavenly Father. And Jesus said, John 17, "That's what eternal life is all about: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ the one that you've sent."

Jesus says it's about them through the power of the Holy Spirit knowing the Father and knowing the Son. That's what the Christian life's about. Let's get at it this week. I mean, let's make this our top priority. Nothing could be better for your soul. Stomach for food, food for stomach, your life for knowing God, and knowing God for your life. Let's pray.

God, please help us cast off all the interest in the scintillating idolatry of our world, telling us it's about looking better or feeling better or having more money or being popular or whatever the world's trying to tell us we need to invest our lives in. God, I know we've got to live here. We've said it many times. There's certainly a reality to living in this world.

But the bottom line is, the one consuming desire of our life needs to be to know You. And that's going to change our priorities. That's going to mean that we're serious about gathering and assembling together to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. We're going to be serious about the Word of God.

We're going to open it up. We're going to roll up our sleeves and we're going to learn to know Your Word because in so doing, we'll learn to know about You. And God, our prayer life isn't just going to be some obligatory scant statements at the end of the day. Our prayer life will begin to be a response from our study of the Word and our knowledge of You, and we'll begin to express to You our heart.

God, help us to have a heart to love You, even though now in this body, we are in a very real sense personally away from You. We want to be as spiritually close to You as we can possibly be. So God, give us a heart that resonates with a passion to know You better. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

Dave Druey: We're taking a hard look at what it means to chase after God with everything you've got. Pastor Mike Fabarez is in a series called "Ambitious Faith" here on Focal Point. And if you stepped away during any part of today's program or want to go deeper, head over to focalpointradio.org or grab the free Focal Point app and carry it with you wherever you are.

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These were personal pages, the unfiltered thoughts of a young man bearing down hard after God, hammering out his convictions before anyone else was reading. These journals bring you close to a life that was given over completely and without reservation. Request *The Journals of Jim Elliot* when you make a donation to Focal Point today.

Call us at 888-320-5885 or give online at focalpointradio.org. If you'd rather mail your gift, just write to Focal Point, Post Office Box 2850, Laguna Hills, California 92654. And if this is your first time reaching out, ask for Pastor Mike's booklet, *Offering Our Best*, a candid, no-filler look at what it actually means to bring God your genuine best.

It's yours at no cost just for getting in touch. Call 888-320-5885 or go to focalpointradio.org. Well, I'm Dave Druey, and that wraps it up for today. We'll see you back here tomorrow when Pastor Mike Fabarez puts the question on the table: Do we actually take God at His word? We press on in "Ambitious Faith" Tuesday on Focal Point.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Hi, Pastor Mike here. God's Word promises it'll never return void. So I wonder how is God's Word moving in your heart right now? Drop us a line. Let us know. We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to be praying for you here. Just go to focalpointradio.org. And then be sure to join us again tomorrow right here as we continue to explore the depths of Scripture. We'll see you then.

Dave Druey: Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.