Hey, this is John Ortberg. I wanna start with a question today. Where do you find God? I don’t mean so much. What do you think about him? Or how do you believe about him in your actual life, in your mind, in your experience in our time, from one moment to the next, where do we actually find him? Now? We’re thinking about these questions. Uh, this week based on a book by, uh, loose Meads called my God and I, Lou is a person of very gritty, realistic faith. I used to sometimes think when I would listen to Dallas Willer talk or read him, I hope what Dallas says is true. I hope God is that way with Lou. My sense always was that’s how life is. Um, that’s the way that I experienced the world. He, he, he would never, uh, express things in a flowery way.
And he had a hard time finding God. I mentioned yesterday, uh, he did not find God in prayer meetings easily. And then when he was a young man, he went off to moody Bible Institute. He, he grew up in an immigrant family and didn’t think he would ever be educated. And so he finally went there because the tuition was free, but he had a real hard time at moody Bible Institute because it was a place where there was a kind of piety that came naturally to moody that did not come naturally to Lou. He said he was never able to say praise the Lord to make it sound like there was an exclamation point at the end. Um, he was kind of a rebel there at one point. He was the editor of the school newspaper. And he said he used to write, uh, editorials that were real safe.
And then he would also write anonymous letters, um, that were white, hot criticisms of the school and the editorials and the faculty advisor said to him one time, you know, Lou, I know you can’t help getting these letters, but you don’t have to publish them. Having no idea that Lou is the guy that was writing them. And eventually he left there and he went to a school in Michigan called Calvin college. And there, he found God in a very unexpected place. And I love this. This is what he writes about it. First day of the, uh, first class, my first semester was English composition. The teacher was Jacob Vande BOSH getting along in years, gleaming, bald, head rose, uh, top his shoulders, his voice nasal and thin wearing a practice, grin that conveyed a worn patients more than he did a happiness of spirit.
Jacob Vande BOSH introduced me that day to a God. The likes of whom I had never heard about a God who liked elegant sentences and was offended by dangling modifiers. Once you believe this, where can you stop? If the maker of the universe admired words, well, put together, think of how he must love, sound thought well put together. And if he loves sound thinking how he must love a Bach concerto, and if he loved a Bach concerto, think of how he prized any human effort to bring a for taste, be it ever so small of his kingdom of justice and peace and happiness to the victimized person, people of the world. In short, I am at the maker of the universe who loved the world he made and was dedicated to its redemption. I found the joy of the Lord, not at a prayer meeting, but in English composition 1 0 1. And then Lou goes on later, I would hear a theologians say that sinners need two conversions. First, a conversion from the world to Christ from all that we find wrong in temptation from mismanaged desires, from our ego, our self wellbeing on the throne. First, a conversion from the world to Christ and second, a conversion from Christ back to the world
To be able to remember once again, God so loved the world. This is my father’s world. This is the world that God made and intends to redeem, not just redeem us from the world, but to use us in his project of redeeming the world. Calvin college was where I had the second conversion. I began to see a vision of Christ, not as the world’s enemy, but as its best friend, not as one who’s coming would spell the end of human civilization. But as one who, when he came, would heal all its grave diseases and make it over into his kingdom of peace and justice to do it so thoroughly that it would be called a new creation. And that’s where Lou found God in English composition 1 0 1, a God who loves beauty.
One of the books that he wrote was called, how can it be so wrong? Uh, how can it be all right when everything is so wrong, I mentioned Lou’s honesty is a great guide for us. As we think about our lives together with God, his books reflected this, um, they were never, um, uh, pretentious. They never over oversold the topic. They had titles like, uh, mere morality, not morality, just mere morality love within limits. Not unlimited love, just love within limits. A pretty good person, not a great person, not even a good person’s pretty good. And then, uh, one of his best, how can it be all right when everything is all wrong. And he wrote that one after the death of his best friend, they had walked together for 30 years.
And I think in the first chapter of that one, he tells the story in the gospel of John, where Jesus meets Nathan and Nathan of course, was quite skeptical in a way that I’m sure Lou would resonate with of ever being able to find God. Somebody tells him come. We found the Messiah from Nazareth and Nathan says, how can anything good come from Nazareth? And Jesus meets Nathan. And he knows Nathan’s story. And, and he tells a little bit of it to Nathan tells Nathan where he was. And Nathan comes to believe and is amazed at Jesus and says, and Jesus says, are, are you amazed at such a little thing? Truly. I tell you, you will see the heavens open and the angels of God descending. Now Lou points out when Jesus says that
It’s a, uh, reference way back to the old Testament. When there’s a character named Jacob in the book of Genesis and he is left home and he’s a skeptical and troubled man. And he comes to a certain place. We don’t know where it is just a certain place. And he has a dream. And in the dream, there is a latter and the heavens open and the angels are descending upon him. And when he wakes up, he says, surely God was in this place. And I did not know it. And so he calls it Beth L L for ahe God Beth house, the house of God, this place is the house of God. God is in this place.
When Jesus says you will see the heavens open, you understand, that’s not talking about there’s gonna be a hole in the physical sky. Someplace that language, the heavens open means that spiritual reality becomes visible, manifest apparent to us. We see what normally we don’t see, even though it’s always true, which is God is present in all times in all places. This is Bethel. This is the house of God. And that’s the story. Lou wrote that we find that in ordinary places so that it can be all right, even though everything is all wrong, we find God in the most unlikely places, we find him not just at prayer meetings, maybe there, but in English composition, 1 0 1 where you work, where somebody is suffering. See, it’s not just that we find God in this world. We are to bring God to this world. And we find him, especially in people, whatever you do for the least of these you’ve done for me, wherever two or three are gathered together there Ammi
Lou writes about how, when his mom was 86 years old, she’d broken a hip. And she was, uh, a heroic character in his life, but also very, very troubled and very, very anxious, lots of negativity. And Lou struggled with those complicated dynamics and, uh, right towards the end of her life, she was laid up in a hospital and he was giving some seminars nearby. And so he had a chance to spend every afternoon with her. And they talked about a lot of things. Oh, Lewis. She said to me one day, I’m so glad the Lord forgives all my sins cuz you know, I’ve been a great sinner, great sinner. He said you never had time to do any real sinning mother. Tell me what sins do you have in mind? Oh, Lewis, you must not talk that way. I know I’m a terrible sin and God forgives me and that’s all I can say deep into one afternoon.
When we were just about talked out, I had an impulse to ask her something I’d often wondered about. Never thought a decent ask. Why had she never gotten married again? You were so young when you were widowed. He said only 30. Good looking woman. You must have been awful only didn’t you ever want a man in your life, man, to take care of you, Amanda, to talk to you at the end of the day, Amanda, to sleep with you. Oh yes. You said I felt so tired and so alone. I sometimes wished I had a husband, but I was afraid if another man came into the house, he might not care for my children as I did and Louw rights. I knew then that I had found the love of my heavenly father tucked into the love of my earthly mother.
And so we are the people of two conversions. We are converted from this world to God. And then we are converted from God, from spiritual isolation or spiritual quarantine back into the world. And we find God in every place, that’s your job today? That’s my invitation today to find him right here, right now in this moment. And in the next one in the goodness of the earth, in the food that we eat and the beauty of nature that we see and the task that we’re given to do and the challenge that we have to overcome and the problem that we try to solve and the words that we get to hear and the goodness that we get to be participants of. But especially in people, especially in people, we find the love of our heavenly father tucked into the people that he loves. So make this day and day of living at Bethel, the house of God today, the heavens will open up and you pay attention and I will too.