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1Wow! Vs. How?

Matthew 6:1-6; 16-18
October 14th, 2007
INTRODUCTION:

A. What is it in your life that makes you say Wow!?

Where in your life do you have those wow experiences?

1. Sports.
Does the wow come on Sundays or Saturdays when you are
watching a sport on T.V. and the people participating make
incredible plays and have tremendous talents displayed?

2. Events.
Does it come when you go to an event of some sort and things are
done that you have never seen before. Wow how did they do that.
We had that on Friday when I went for a little while with my Father –
in-Law and Brother-in-law and his Son and Josh and I and we went to
the model aircraft and saw the detail on some of these model
airplanes. Then we saw a guy fly a 40K jet that can go upwards of
200 mph flay around and do maneuvers.

Then yesterday there are those rides at legoland where the wow
turns into a wohw as you are falling on a ride.

3. People
Then sometimes we will say wow with and when we see or hear
stories of incredible ways in which people have helped other people
or really overcome tremendous odds in their lives. Those are times
that we say Wow that is incredible. When we think of what drives so
much of our culture and so much of the entertainment industry it is to
seek to get us to say Wow.

Now is that all wrong? Of course not. Those wow moments are
great and can be a great deal of fun.

4. Nature
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I love those wow moments in nature. Whether it is standing on top of

a huge mountain looking at the incredible beauty of the landscape
around you or whether it is standing at the beach observing a
tremendously gorgeous sunset or observing a storm coming or
appreciating the sounds of nature early in the morning. There are
many ways in which we can have those wow moments in our lives
through nature.

I have had some of those incredible wow experiences with nature and
I am sure you all have had them as well. I had a couple of those wow
moments this summer. We took a trip up to Huntington and on one
day early in the morning Josh and I drove way up to Kaiser pass,
went up a dirt road for a while and then hiked as high as we could in
that area. The sun was just coming up and then the morning smells
and the stillness with only a slight breeze brings the smells from the
pines and the dark green landscape all into your senses. You could
look over one shoulder and see Edison Lake and then look over the
other shoulder and see Huntington Lake.

We also had a wow experience when we took a hike up to Rancheria

Falls. It was the day that the bridge in MN collapsed because I heard
about it on the way back. We drove off the main highway and then
up to a parking lot before taking the hike up into the mountains. It
was great, it was beautiful and it was tremendous to take in the sights
smells and feelings that it had. It was Kim, Josh, Savanna myself
and a neighbor. We then were able to get up to the top of the hike
and play in the falls for a while. Wow. A great time and incredible
beauty. Images of a summer full of fun times.

Wow – experiences wow – people wow – nature wow - events wow.

B. What about your spiritual wows?

Sometimes it seems as though we can create these mountain top

images and experiences of wow in our lives, but can we have those
experiences spiritually?

Most certainly we can and those wow moments of spiritual

connection with God and his amazing grace for us can occur at any
moment and in any place because God is so amazing and incredible.
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Spiritual wows can come as we here of God working in people’s lives

and as we hear of how God is doing miracles in and through people
today. That is great but what about the spiritual wow where you have
connected with God in an amazing way and it carries you deep within
a realization that God is real and relevant to us today. Often we
forget those experiences and move on, but God desires us to bask in
those moments of wow.

We love those wow experiences yet so often we get bogged down in

the hows of life and the hows of worship and the hows of God
interacting and moving in our lives.

Being a pastor often it is easy for me to get caught up in the how of

worship. All of the details and logistics of what is going on in the
worship service. I mean I am supposed to think about those things,
but I have to be careful that I don’s let it crowd out those wonderful
experiences of wow in the presence and face of an almighty God.

C. The Text

Some of you may have read my most recent article in the Newsletter
and I dealt with this topic of Wow vs How. I hope that if you haven’t
read it you might take some time and read it not for my benefit but
that you might take a moment to step into the wow of our relationship
with Christ.

We continue in the beatitudes today and deal with three different

sections of Matthew 6 that can all be lumped together.

Reading the text.

We are basically dealing with three different sections. First of all it is

the giving and then prayer and then fasting. We did not take time to
read and will not be dealing a lot with the Lord’s Prayer because we
did a complete series on this portion of Matthew 6 earlier this year.

When we look at these three different areas they are great disciplines
in the Christian life. Sometimes they are referred to as “Acts of
Righteousness.” These acts are ways in which the inner work of God
in our hearts is expressed in an external action of our lives. These
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disciplines bring a connection between our spiritual relationship with

God and our living relationship in the real world. The movement
towards transformation that God has begun in our lives is manifested,
encouraged and grown through these disciplines.

An appreciation of what God has done for us allows us to give with

God’s love and enjoy the process of blessing others. The intimate
relationship with God is expressed through prayers and a personal
connection with God through conversation. A realization of our
sinfulness and the need for humility can be better comprehended
through the discipline of fasting and praying for specific elements
decisions where wisdom is needed or for the needs of the world and
our own lives.

Throughout the history of the Church the practice of the various

spiritual disciplines have been keys to spiritual growth and forming
the basis of and for those wow experiences with God. They help us
in our growth toward peace and resting in the presence of God. It is
essential for this process to be inside-out rather then outside-in.

Inside out means that our outward visual practices of spiritual

disciplines are in response to a thankfulness and a wonder of the love
of God. A relationship. If it is only the motions, sometimes they can
be so hollow and eventually cave in on themselves. Sometimes we
neglect the practices because we do not want to become legalistic.
This is not a great excuse as we see Jesus himself practicing these
spiritual disciplines. “We must develop an inside-out mentality so that
Spirit-produced growth of the inner person is in harmony with outward
obedience.”

These public acts of piety were condemned by Jesus here in Mt 6

because their motive was for self glorification. In other passages we
find that we are supposed to practice these disciplines publicly and
that is so that God can receive the glory. It is not the act that is
important but it is the motive and the end goal that is behind the act.
The purpose should be to praise God.

A saying over a hundred Years ago by A.B. Bruce fits here He said.
“Show when tempted to hide, hide when tempted to show. The
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Pharisees were exposed, and yielded, to the latter temptation.” They

loved to show off and that is what Jesus is speaking to here.

Jesus calls all believers to practice the forms of disciplines in

devotion to God. The inner motivation drives the outward actions.
When Jesus talks about giving secretively he is not saying that giving
should never take place in public. Back in those days all giving was
public it was before the days of anonymous checks, or mail or bank
transfers. Although the giving was in public the motive of the heart
was to be secrecy not desiring the public attention. Dealing with our
motives is a difficult issue because we are all human and our motives
consistently range from being great to being not so great. We all deal
with those growth areas in our motivations behind our actions.

What about prayer? Public prayer is to be part of the community of

worship so that is not what is being talked about here. “But when
prayers are offered in public, the one offering the prayer is to operate
out of the privacy of his or her heart, with God alone as the
audience.” The motivation of private prayer is the intimacy and
communion with God in our heart which is at the center of all prayer.

I fear that when we talk about these disciplines that you will go out
today with the ambition to pray a lot more. I fear that as you go your
goal might be to pray a lot as prayer in itself can be a lofty goal. But
millions of people around the world pray – especially when they are in
trouble. The Hindus pray and the Budhists pray and the Muslims
pray and they even pray in Congress. If the goal is to pray more then
the goal is to small. We need to be committed to connecting to the
Living God the creator of the universe through our prayers. The wow
of who God is can infuse our prayers and lead us to worship him in
spirit and in truth with our whole being.

The third practice that is dealt with in this passage is that of fasting.
This can be a great practice and done very innocently, but if we
broadcast the fact that we are fasting it can quickly grow to religious
pride and self-delusion. The condemnation is that of fasting to
receive the glory from people and not God.

We can expand from these three disciplines into many other areas of
our lives where actions and activities that we do which are great are
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clouded by our motivations as we go into them. It is an ongoing

process of asking God to work within us and to continue to fill us with
an awe and an amazement and a true sense of wow when it comes
to who God is so our response and actions are in response to his
love and mercy in our lives.

Conclusion.

The how of life and the how of how we live our Christian life can be
clouded by the hows of life and the hows of the Christian life and the
hows of our worship experience. Do we come to Church on a
Sunday morning to look at all of the logistics of how the service went
or do we come here to this place to come face to face with the all
loving creator God who created us and knows us and wants us to
take his presence from this place into every moment of our lives as
we live them out for him. God wants us to be wowed.

Sometimes in our Christian lives we get bogged down with the Hows.
Whether it is saying we don’t know how to pray or we don’t know how
to read the Bible or we cant share about Christ because we may not
kno wow to answer somebody’s question or finally I cant do that I
don’t know how to relate to kids any more or how to read that in
worship. There are so many exciting wows in worship that we can
allow the hows to take them away.

This past week I went out to lunch with a friend of mine and once
again fully appreciated this sense of wow. As I talked to him he
wants to be wherever God leads him and he wants to be right in the
center of the wow of God. God is working in his life and he does not
have to worry about all of the hows. Now certainly we can’t ignore
them but we need to have a balance, however this friend is being
filled with a deeper understanding of God’s love for him and how God
wants to work in and through him to bless so many other people.

Our passage today dealt with the how of the Pharisees and what they
were doing. They were not doing it right. They were doing the
actions just to get more notoriety and recognition – they wanted to be
noted for their giving, prayer and fasting. Sometimes they would
even put makeup on to make them look more sickly while they were
fasting so people might take pity on them. These actions can be
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done with legalism or with passion and fervor. If there is a wow of

God that is infused within the actions of giving, praying and fasting
and other things that we do to honor God, then God will be glorified.
We will grow and the wow of God’s reality can overflow in and
through us and through our actions. The more that happens the
more our actions will flow out from our love of God.

The more we seek to be amazed by God and see him at work in our
lives the more we will see the wow of God. We can pray and ask
God to fill us with his presence. The more we seek God and seek to
see him and to partner with him in the bringing of peace and joy to
the world the more of God we will be able to participate with. We
cannot do enough to please God into loving us but we can certainly
receive the awesome love he desires to flow over us. We can trust
that God’s love will always be there in our lives.

As we come to worship may we be filled with the wow of God and not
allow the various how’s to get in the way. This goes not only for
worship on Sunday mornings but other times in the week when we
worship and work along with God. It is amazing to think that the
creator of the universe wants to come down and be with us always.
“Wow” God has chosen to place his Holy Spirit within us to guide us
and help us. “Wow” The God who placed the cosmos into their
places and patterns is our God who lives in us and with us. “Wow.”
God who owns the world has chosen to allow us to participate in
bringing his kingdom to others and blessing others. “wow.”

May you be filled with the wow of God today.