God gladly

Scripture:  1 Thessalonians  2 : 4                                        Feb. 21st, 2011
Title:    God gladly                                                              Sunday Noon Service
 [1 Thessalonians  2 : 4]  4 On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts.
 A man developed a serious disease. The name of the disease was “ankylosing spondylitis.” It is an incurable disease that produces inflammation between joints. One of the symptoms of it is an unbearable pain. This fearful disease causes pain and death.  The man, who was just waiting for his last moment in life with pain, was resolved, “I will not die like this! Even though I will die, I will laugh as much as I can for the rest of my life!” He went to his vacation house with a bag full of comedy videos. He was resolved to watch all of them until he dies.  And he told his wife that no answer of the phone would mean his death. He stayed there with laughter bursting every day. Despite the situation that he would feel badly painful without a painkiller, he could reduce the amount of painkiller.
 
And he could sleep well. The symptoms gradually lessened and he ended up living with no painkiller. When he learned that laughter took effect on his disease, he was eager to watch those comedy videos. He even overacted and jumped around and laughed his head off.  He could move his fingers that had not been unfolded due to “ankylosing spondylitis.” When his wife and children saw this, they burst into tears with a sense of gratitude. His amazing story went on. When he got a diagnosis from his doctor, he knew something great happened to him.  The virus of “ankylosing spondylitis”, the source of the pain, disappeared. In a nutshell, he got healed all the way. His amazing story didn’t end here. His doctor, who made the diagnosis that he would die soon, could not believe it. It was also the first time for  the doctor to experience. It was worth a headline.
 
Furthermore, he did not stop here as the patient who had experienced those miracles. He formally requested the research into what he had experienced. However, the professors of a medical school ridiculed it. Even though they didn’t accept his request, he could not stop the research since he had gone through the healing effect himself. He persuaded them to study it. At last, the secret of laughter was revealed after the repeated research. They discovered that laughter has hundreds of powerful effects that heal cancer.  Anybody knows the name of the patient here? His name is Norman Cousins. His achievement through his own experience and research enabled him to enter UCLA medical school and to make a greater achievement in the area.  Anatomy of an illness as perceived by the patient, one of his best seller books, says that “Laughing is a bulletproof vest.” It says that laughing prevents any virus and germs to invade a person’s body. Hallelujah!
 
Everyone! Laughing is a miracle drug that stabilizes our mentality and maintains our health. Every time we laugh aloud, twenty-one hormones that are good for health including endorphin are generated within our bodies.  And laughing controls the sympathetic nerve related to anxiety, annoyance and fear, and stimulates the parasympathetic nerve to lower the blood pressure and help the circulation. Everyone! There are a variety of ways of laughing. One of them is called ‘laughing with claps.’ This literally means laughing aloud while you are clapping your hands. Let’s laugh this way all together! Another way of laughing is called ‘laughing waist-bent.’ When you laugh this way, your waist moves back and forth all the way so you get pain in your stomach. And your whole body moves sideways, and leaps for joy, and wallows. You might look like a crazy person. Why don’t we do this?
 
  The way of laughing gives us the same effect as when you move 650 muscles, 80 facial muscles and 206 bones for ten minutes in aerobics. A 15-second laughter with claps has the same effect as when you sprint 100m.  Especially, laughing with claps gives us the effect that helps the movements of inner organs such as large and small intestines so that constipation can be cured. And it is the best skin smoother. A beautiful woman needs to laugh and smile. Also, laughing with claps strengthens our hearts and stomach and provides our lungs with fresh air, which is effective in preventing cancer.    A survey says that those who laugh this way have two times the air supplied into the bodies. Everyone! We should laugh. When we laugh, the metabolism gets active and we can have a stronger confidence also. As a matter of fact, our bodies can be healthy and healed. Hallelujah!
 
Let’s go further. When we laugh, we can be energetic and healthy. And also, those who are around the laughing person can get the spirit and energy.  Everyone! A smiling guy always has people around him. Why? That is because laughing produces energy. Laughing gives energy to the laughing person as well as the people around him. Hallelujuh!  I am not lecturing about laughing. But I am saying that laughing is a blessing that God produces for us. God gives us the blessing of laughter through several parts of the Scripture. And the Scripture commands us to be joyful and teaches that laughing is a panacea.
 
This morning, you heard about the secret of laughing and agreed that laughing is the blessing that God gives us. And I hope that you may realize that laughing is the channel through which God’s blessings come to you, and that you should share the secret of laughing with those who don’t know it. When you understand God’s heart that wants to genuinely bless people, you are living a blessed and matured life. I pray that you may have and enjoy the blessing of laughing that God has given us. In addition, I think that if you and I please God it would be a more blessed life. One of the purposes that Jesus came to the world is for Him to serve for people. Living a joyful life is a blessed one. Moreover, when you please one another and add more joy to them, that would be what God desperately wants.
 
 Today’s scripture tells us that a mature Christian’s life is one that pleases God. Certainly, pleasing God is an indication of a mature Christian’s life. Pleasing others, rather than oneself, is the attitude which a mature person has.  Rather than living for one’s own interests, living and committed for the interests of others, is the life of a mature Christian’s life. If one devotes his life to please others, such life would be a fruitful one. 
What is a life that God is pleased with? Today’s scripture introduces to us God who tests us. Faith is a sincere change of heart. The essence of faith is living a life in which our life, our language, our behavior is changed because of change of heart. .
 
 Therefore, having a good heart is to make the foundation of faith firm, and to have a good conscience is to make the pillar of faith firm, and to train our mind is equivalent to spreading the wing of our faith.  What is more important than anything else is that God tests our hearts. Our heart must be good in the eyes of God who tests s.  Therefore, the Bible repeatedly emphasizes the consistency or the relationship between faith and heart. In Deuteronomy 30, it emphasizes, “when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today”.

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it”.
Moreover, Matthew 5:8 says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Thus, one of the most important things in our faith is our heart.
Why is it so? Because God is God who tests our hearts. Here, the word “test” means to examine and to train. The final test God had for Abraham after calling him was to sacrifice his son in Mt. Moriah.
  In that context, the word “test” was used with the meaning of training. Thus, our faith is not about something superficial, but about internal change and how God thinks of me.

 God who tests our heart can be interpreted as God who trains our heart. What does it mean that our heart becomes one that God desires?  When we describe David, son of Jesse, we use the term “man after God’s own heart.” Being after God’s heart could be understood as being coinciding with God’s heart. In other words, it means having a heart that God desires; being likeminded as God, and God’s desire is in David’s heart.  The author of the Philippians tells us to have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.
 What kind of mindset is Jesus’? When Jesus introduced himself, he described his mindset as “gentle and humble in heart.”
I pray in the name of our Lord that gentle and humble heart of Jesus will fill our hearts. What kind of heart is gentle?
The original word [Prauthes] carries many connotations.

 Examples are “gentlemanly, gentlemanlike” or “kindness, goodness, goodwill, a favor”. 
But the Biblical meaning of gentleness goes beyond the general meaning of gentleness or kindness. We often use the term “외유내강”. It means someone who appears to be soft outside but strong inside.
The meaning of gentleness in the Bible is probably closer to the meaning of “외유내강”. It may also mean that though we are outwardly wasting way, inwardly, we are gradually being renewed and strengthened.    Being strengthened here means being renewed. Being strengthened by renewal means a condition in which we were once away from God’s will but not now coinciding with God’s desire.
 
If we were to point out God’s heart in today’s scripture, we can say without hesitation that it is evangelism. When we consider the context of today’s scripture holistically, word evangelism can be expressed as the “deepest desire in the heart of God who tests our hearts,” rather than as a simple communication.  God’s desire is God’s heart. That heart is well expressed in the commandment Jesus gave to his disciples before he was ascended. “Go and make disciples of all nations,” “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
 “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season”  That is God’s heart, God’s desire. When God tests our hearts, he tests whether there is love in our heart for the spirit of others whom God love.
God wants to spread the gospel through you and I. But most of us think that evangelizing is too difficult. However, one cannot evangelize because he does not want to in his heart. If anyone has God’s heart, he can certainly evangelize.
There was an old lady who belonged to a church congregation. That church was interested in evangelizing and bringing people to salvation. But the old lady had a difficulty spreading the Gospel. It was because she never went to school; she could not read or write, and she could not talk eloquently to draw people’s attention.  She sought advice of the pastor, sharing her difficulties. The pastor advised her to pray to God to give her wisdom in evangelizing.  Since that day, this old lady fervently prayed, “God, I am illiterate. I cannot speak well. But if you give me wisdom, even I can spread the Gospel. God, give me wisdom, so that I can evangelize!”
 
 Then, something amazing happened. Because she wanted to evangelize wholeheartedly, God gave her wisdom. She started to bring new believers every week to church.  She became the one who evangelizes most in the whole congregation. People started to wonder. How does she evangelize, that so many people are brought to church?  So the old lady tells her story. “Actually, I am illiterate and ignorant and old. But when I realized that evangelism is what God is most pleased with, I decided to please God and prayed hard. As I was praying, an idea came to me.”  “The idea was that, I take leaflets on evangelism and approach students, youths, gentlemen, or housewives, using the method they would use.” For example, I would show the leaflet to a passing by student and ask him, “Boy, can you come over here for a minute? I am illiterate! Can you read me what is written on this paper?”
 
Then, eight or nine out of ten people do read that leaflet.” Now, this lady asks the passer-by to read the leaflet not just once, but twice or three times. Then she also asks the passer-by to explain the meaning of the leaflet. Then, the passer-by who naturally understands the content of the leaflet promises with the lady to come to church.  That is right. Dear everyone, what is more important to us is not evangelism itself, but whether we understand the heart of God who wants us to evangelize. If we do understand God’s heart, then we cannot help but live the life of evangelism that responds to God’s heart. God is God who tests our hearts. Do you understand the heart of God? Then you should surely know that what God wants the most is evangelism I pray in the name of our Lord that you will glorify God by actually going out and evangelizing.