Belief>Feelings

SUMMARY

Karl Ihfe continues the "Expectation Gap" series by exploring why we believe God is loving but don't always feel loved. Drawing from Steve Cuss's insights, Karl explains that every "gospel" has three elements: a path, a promise, and a payment. While worldly gospels make us pay for empty promises, Jesus's gospel reverses this - God pays the price and we receive the benefit.

Karl identifies how our "inner critic" preaches false gospels, telling us we're frauds, disappointments, or incapable. This voice condemns our identity rather than convicting our behavior like the Holy Spirit does. Using 1 John 3 and Romans 8, he emphasizes that "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Karl shares personal stories, including his experience with an elder's harsh criticism and his obsession with painting a perfect red wall, to illustrate how we often condemn ourselves before others can. He concludes by challenging listeners to let God have both the first and last word in their lives, silencing the inner critic with the truth of God's unconditional love.

TRANSCRIPTION:

I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I'm not enough Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low Remind me once again just who I am because I need to know you say I am loved when I can't feel a thing you say I am strong when I think I am weak and you say I am held when I am falling short and when I don't belong you say I am yours and I believe I believe what you say of me I believe It's a song that Lauren Daigle first shared with us in 2018. It's a song that's been echoing in my mind and heart this week. My prayer is It's a song that I pray will echo in your heart this week we're in week two of the expectation gap, thinking together about what it means that we believe things about God, but we don't often experience them or don't always experience them. It creates this expectation gap, as Steve Kess likes to call it. He also reminds us of some good news.

Just because we have a gap in our faith doesn't mean we're failing at faith. It means we're human. I've been wanting us to think together about what are some of these gaps that exist in us as followers of Jesus, Those places where we know we believe something, but we don't always experience it, we don't always feel it. You know, last week we looked at three general ones, and over the next couple of weeks we're going to dive deeper into each of these. The first one is this.

We believe God is loving, but we don't feel loved. We're going to dive deep in that one. If you have that passage in first John open, if you don't invite you to turn over to 1 John 3, we're going to return there in just a moment. The second gap is we believe God is near, but we don't experience his presence. And we believe God wants us to grow is the third one, but we're disappointed by our lack of progress.

Shouldn't we be further along? I've been following Jesus for a while. How come I'm so far behind? We're going to take the next couple of weeks and dive deeper into these gaps to wonder and to think about what is it that we are really listening to and believing about ourselves. We believe this morning that God is loving.

We know that God loves us. His Word tells us that over and over and over again. And we believe that don't we. I mean, that's one of our core beliefs. And yet there are billions of people in the world, and sometimes it feels like we're just one of them and we're just another one.

We don't experience that particular or that specific love of God in our lives now. I'm so thankful. Again, I've shared with you the power that this book, the expectation gap that Steve Kus has written, how important it's been, and just helping me stretch and wonder and think more intentionally about what it means to encounter this gap. Sometimes I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel it. I know God loves me, but I don't always feel it.

What do I do then? You know, it's interesting Steve writes about. He began his career as a chaplain and he would work with trauma situations. He said, time and time again I would have families approach me and just beg me. Would you pray on behalf of my loved one?

Would you pray that God would do an amazing thing that God would do in a miracle and save them or help them or heal them or restore them, whatever the case may be? And he says, you know, over the years, I noticed that sometimes God answered those prayers. I also noticed that the odds weren't really great. In fact, it became too vulnerable for me to stand before God and ask him for something that I really wasn't sure was going to happen. And so I just kind of quit asking those prayers.

I started praying safer prayers, prayers that didn't quite cost me so much. He says, I sort of gave up asking and expecting anything out of God. The issue, he says, though, is comes back to our core beliefs. What is it that we really believe? You know, it turns out we hold a lot of different beliefs, not just that Jesus loves us.

Right? There are some other beliefs out there that we hold as well, and sometimes we're not really aware of them. But those beliefs actually turn into a gospel, he says. And those gospels have three elements. He says every gospel, every belief that we have that becomes a gospel, actually has three parts to it.

He says, there's a path, there's a promise, and there's a payment. There's this promise that each gospel gives. If you'll just do this, then here's the promise, here's what you'll get, and here's how you do this. But here's what it's going to cost. Did you know that gospel really isn't a church word?

I know it is. Said a lot in church, but actually it didn't begin as a church word. The Roman Empire used this word. Rome had a gospel. You know what their gospel was?

Caesar is Lord. Now why did they have that gospel? Well, Caesar Augustus, his nickname was the son of God because he would tell people, my father Julius was a God and I am his son, the son of God. Caesar had this poet that would follow him around and said nice things about him. Just show you how weird my brain is.

If you're Monty Python fan, you might be thinking of Patsy following Sir Brian the Brave, right? Something like that. Akin to that. But he would say all these wonderful things about Augustus, who he was and what he did and what was coming, because he was a part of the world. Virgil proclaimed that Augustus birth was a day of glad tidings and great joy for all people.

For through the birth of Augustus, the world would experience peace. Does that sound familiar to anything we've heard? Does that ring any Christmas bells for us? The birth of Augustus means there's peace, right? Part of Rome's gospel was the Pax Romana, a peace of Rome.

But if you start to dig in deeper, what you learn is what all had to happen in order for that peace to come. That it actually really wasn't very peaceful for many people. And most people had to be subjugated. They were enslaved. Most people had to pay heavy taxes.

There weren't. Wasn't a lot of peace there for those. As a teenager, I believed in what you might call the notice me gospel. I just wanted to be noticed. The promise was to belong, to be a part of something, to have some friends around me who would help me become me.

And the path was pretty clear, right? Do something good. Be good at something. Be good at grades. Be good at school.

Be good at athletics. Be funny. Or the piece, piece de resistance. Make a girl smile. Bah.

The gospel of belonging and man. I dedicated myself to it. Of course, there was a price and I was willing to pay it. But what I discovered, maybe some of you have encountered this too, is the promise was never quite what I thought it was going to be. The things that I was willing to do to myself in order to achieve this gospel really never quite measured up.

You see, every belief, every gospel that we believe offers us a promise. It tells us what to do to get it. And then it extracts a cost, right? A path, a promise, a payment. Can you think of a gospel that you've been chasing recently?

A gospel that's made a promise to you about your life will just be better if you would only it's given you a path, it's given You a promise and what's the payment? What's it costing you? Steve says we can test our gospels by asking who's. If we're actually getting a promise, is there something paying off? You see, all gospels throughout history, every single one of them have sounded in a particular way.

Whether it was an ancient religion of Moses Day or the Roman Empire or the teenage boy like mine. You have to pay something, but every time you paid, the God got the benefit. See, it's only in Jesus that this equation begins to reverse, isn't it? That God was willing to pay and we would get the benefit God was willing to do to pay for us what we couldn't pay for ourselves.

You see, I know this is difficult to believe sometimes because our entire world works in the opposite direction. But every gospel we encounter in our world, humanity pays and God gets the benefit, right? Lower G, God. Except for the gospel of Jesus, where God pays and humanity gets the benefit.

One of the ways that Steve offers us to evaluate our gospels, the things that we're chasing, those beliefs that we're allowing to run alive, he says, who's paying? Who's the one who pays? Too often we think of gospels as something out there, like this reality kind of out there. And we stop thinking about those gospels that live in here and in here, and how they impact and shape us. You see, anxiety has the gospel.

And that gospel is, you can worry your way to peace. Just worry about it. Are you anxious? Just worry. Now, may not say it that way specifically, but that's essentially.

That's the path, worry. But have you ever noticed worry doesn't seem to work? It doesn't bring us more peace. It actually creates more chaos. So we hear Jesus say things like, don't worry about your life.

And it's confusing to us because we think, well, all I ever do is worry. What do you mean, don't worry about my. If I'm not worrying about my life, who's gonna worry about it? We've been sold this bill of goods. If you'll just worry, peace will come.

Our inner critic has a gospel, you know, that voice inside of us that reminds us time and again how we don't measure up. You're not who you should be. You should be somebody else. Why can't you be more like that voice? It has a gospel, and it keeps promising.

If you'll just try a little harder, if you'll just work a few more hours, if you'll just save a few more dollars, if you'll just study a little bit longer, if you'll just do a couple of things, if you'll fill in the blank, then. Then you'll achieve what your heart desires. You'll get that love that you've been waiting for, that acceptance or that contentment or that hope or that peace or that freedom, that fulfillment that you've been longing for. Only here's the thing. It's a false hope.

It's a false gospel. It makes us pay and it never provides.

It never works. It never leads us to freedom. It never brings contentment. It never allows us to experience peace. We may believe that God loves us, but man, by that gospel, we never feel it.

We never experience that deep, soul, soothing love knowing God loves us.

Instead, we're left feeling angry and resentful and dissatisfied and disillusioned. And even though we believe we can worry our way out of peace, we never feel peace.

What gospel does your inner critic tend to preach to you?

What's that voice say to you? What does it proclaim, if I may be so bold? Here's a couple of things that my inner critic likes to tell me. Number one, you're a fraud. People really knew you if they knew you, right?

My critic likes to say, your disappointment. I thought things would be different. I thought you'd be better at this. I thought you'd be farther along. I remember when I first started in ministry, I had this grand illusion that I would be teaching and college students would just flock to sit at my feet.

Oh, please, Carl, tell us more, please.

You're such a disappointment, man. You're such a disappointment. The third one is, you can't do it, okay? You can't do it. If we had the ability to time travel, I could take you back in time to one of my earliest elders meetings when I was a part of my first church.

And they had given me the job to present my plan for the year of ministry. And I presented it and I had my deacons there, and they were like, yes, we believe. And my wife was there, yes, I believe. Right? I presented it.

And I remember this one elder in front of everybody, including my deacons, and my wife says, you know, Carl, I don't think you can do it, man. I don't think you can do this. And he looked over at the elder who was over my ministry, and the elder went, hey, don't look at me. This is his plan. And I remember hearing this voice, told you, I told you, you can't do it.

It's not going to happen.

Ouch. Right? I don't know about you, when you hear the voice of my inner critic, what thoughts come to mind to you? How does it sound? How would you describe this voice if this voice were talking in your head?

Right. Harsh, unrelenting, cruel. Yeah, I would agree. But if I'm going to be honest with you, and I'm hoping that you'll be honest with me, that's a voice that's in my head, and here's a problem with that voice, is when I don't fact check, when I don't stop and go, wait a second, is that really true? Is that true of me?

I mean, does that voice sound like Jesus? Is that the kind of thing Jesus would say to you, Carl? Now, maybe your voice says something different, but my guess is you have a voice too. And so I would just invite you to consider. Does that sound like the voice of Jesus in your head?

Does that sound like the kind of thing he would say? Does that sound like his gospel?

See, this is where it's important that we recognize our inner critic. It's offering a different gospel, Right? My inner critic is trying to convince me of a different gospel. He's trying to convince me that it's up to me. Like it's my job to save people.

It's my job to preach such a wonderful sermon that you'll walk out going, my life has changed. Oh, Carl, please do it again next week. And I go, no, no, don't. It's not. No, no, no, say it again.

Say it again. Right? Because the gospel, if it's to be, it's up to me. It's not. No, no, no.

They already have a savior, Carl. His name is Jesus. They don't need another one. They need a servant. Yeah, the Savior just sounds a little more tada.

You get a little more likes with that. It's a different gospel. It isn't giving me peace, but it sure is making me pay. Right? And when I'm not on my game, this inner critic, he likes to talk to me.

And so I'm so thankful for the words that Laura read for us just a moment ago. This reminder of the gospel of Jesus, right? Here's what John, who's one of Jesus, first disciples who followed Jesus closely for three years. This is how he would shape and reshape this idea of what is the gospel. He says, this is how we know that we belong to the truth.

This is how we set our hearts at rest in his presence. If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts.

He knows everything.

God knows everything.

John's Reminding us there's a difference between the voice of the Holy Spirit in your life and the voice of the inner critic in your life.

The Holy Spirit convicts us. The inner critic condemns us. If the Holy Spirit tackles our behavior, the inner critic tackles our identity. I love the message translation of the same passage that Eugene Peterson put together. He says this.

This is the only way we'll know we're living, truly living in God's reality. It's also the way to shut down debilitating self criticism, even when there's something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts, and he knows more about us than we do ourselves. God's greater than our hearts.

Here's one of the crazy things that Steve pointed out. He says, this inner critic, it's actually trying to help you. Now, you may think, how in the world is that actually helping you? Well, I think it's trying to protect us from outside condemnation. If I can beat you to the punch, then nobody else can wound me.

Nobody else can hurt me. You see, being vulnerable before God and before others, it's scary. It's really tough to be honest. And so instead, I have my inner critic who just acts like this soldier. But instead of protecting us, it turns on us.

It may mean well, but it's totally misguided. When Kayla and I bought our first home, we bought a townhome. And we bought it from this young couple. They were in graduate school and graduated and moved on to the next stage of life. And so we purchased this townhome from them.

And they loved color. In fact, every room was a different color. Literally, every room was a different color. So we set about kind of going, all right, we're more normal than that. So we're going to repaint everything and kind of start over.

But we still wanted a little splash of color here and there. And so one of the areas we were going to repaint was this wall in our dining room, between our dining room and our kitchen. And Kaylee wanted a red wall. I don't know if you've ever tried to paint a red wall, but it's kind of an overwhelming task. It's not like painting any other color.

So you have to start with primer. And you're like, I know, but you can't start with white primer, because if you use white primer and put red on top of the white, it's just gonna show through. So you have to use pink primer. And so once you've primed it a couple of times, then you start adding coats but if you ever notice, when you try to paint red, you can sometimes see the streaks. And so you gotta do another coat, then you gotta do another coat, and then you clean it up and do another coat.

Some of you are going, well, probably because you were a novice as a painter. Very true, very true. But after the third coat, there was steam coming out of my ears because I can see every streak of the stinking paint. You know, Kaylee kind of walks up and says, hey, bud, why don't you let's quit here? It looks good enough, right?

It looks good enough. And if you don't stop, you're never going to want to go into that room. And that room's got our dining table in it, which is a really important piece of furniture. So let's just quit while we're ahead. It looks good enough.

Now, you can imagine when people would come over and see our new house, and we're kind of showing them, guess what's one of the things I would take them to see? My red wall, right? And I would say, can you see the streets? You know, can we get you? And you think, why in the world would you do that?

Well, because I knew it was safer if I could point out my flaws. And I didn't have to hope you would point them out, right? It's safer for me to go, well, I know it's not that great. And they go, oh, no, Carl, it looks nice. And I'd say, no, no, it doesn't.

It's easier for me to kind of point out, condemn myself, because it's a pretty vulnerable thing to be open before another person, before God, and say, tell me the truth. My critic likes to help me with that.

It's better to condemn myself than someone else condemn me. That's the gospel, right? That's the gospel that I had bought into. I just didn't know it. That's how I was living.

But see, that's the gospel of the world. That's not the gospel of Jesus. I'm hoping this morning I'm not the only one who's had to fight that gospel. You know, I think Paul was writing to the church in Rome, who in some way, shape or form, they were battling a similar kind of gospel. And so here's what he wrote to them.

He says this. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because through Christ Jesus, the law of the spirit, who gives life, has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh. And God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.

And so he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

I don't know about you. I've tried to fire my critic a number of times, and he keeps showing up for work. He just shows up the next day. So I've since had to learn, well, how do I contain him? How do I contain him?

Because my inner critic still likes to talk to me. But I'm learning he no longer gets the last word. The last word belongs to the living Word, the only one who really knows. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Now, that's not to say the Holy Spirit doesn't get the room to convict me. He doesn't get the chance to actually hold a mirror up and say, let's take a look. Let's be honest. Let's listen.

That's different. He's saying, I want to help you change. I want to help you grow. I want to help you become who you were created to be. Not, I want to beat you down so that you can't look at anybody in the eye because you're so ashamed.

It's not. I want to make you feel so bad about yourself that you don't think you're worth caring for. That's a different voice. It's not the voice that says, you can't do it. You can't make it happen.

You're not enough. If you're smarter or prettier or funnier or more wealthy or more popular or whatever that voice likes to say. The Holy Spirit says, oh, no, no, no. Oh, God loves you. Not some future version of you.

Not some version that maybe one day has it all figured out. He loves you right here, right now, in this moment. But not only does he love you, he likes you.

He likes spending time with you. He thinks you're so important that he would not let anything come in the way, being in a relationship with you. Nothing. Not even his own life.

So, Church, let me ask you a question. What would your life look like if you intentionally lived where God had the first word and the last word in your life? How might your life be different?

See, God speaks. But we live like we know better.

At least I do.

I sometimes believe that my view of Myself is more important, more true than what God's view is. You know, God says things like, we're fearfully and wonderfully made. If you're with us on Sunday mornings, we have a Bible class on Genesis, right? God has made us fearfully and wonderfully made. And we say, it could be better, it could be better.

God says there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And we say, If you knew.

When Jesus was teaching his disciples how to pray, Matthew 6, he gives them this phrase. He says, as you're praying to God, asking God, your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I think too often we think of as on earth, as out there on earth. We forget that we're made of earth, that perhaps part of the meaning of that phrase is not just God, your will on earth, it's on my earth in me that your will be done on earth. It's my earth in me. You see, God holds the vast universe and our inner world in his hands. He created us and he loves us and he likes us.

What if that were the thing that was most true about you and not the lie that the inner critic likes to say and not the false promises of those other gospels, those lesser gospels, those lesser dreams?

See, I wonder sometimes if the gap that exists between, well, I know God loves me. I just. I don't always know that God loves me. It's maybe an invitation to say, well, what gospel have you been listening to lately? What gospel has been running through your mind?

What word has been spoken to you, over you, in you.

It could be a pretty difficult thing to stand before the living God. Vulnerable, open, honest, no pretense, no walls, no self condemnation, no God. Would you come look at this red wall? And I'm going to point out all the flaws. You're going to see them and still here.

I know. And I love you.

I love you deeply.

I love you so much that the thought of being without you was unbearable to me. And so I sent my son to create a way that there would never be a place too far that we couldn't find our way back to one another.

The only thing that matters now is everything you think of me. In you I find my worth. In you I find my identity. You say I'm loved when I can't feel a thing. You say I am strong when I think I am weak.

You say I am held when I'm falling short and when I don't belong. You say I am yours and I believe Church. I invite you to have a practice this week, a weekly challenge, and that's this. Would you practice silencing that inner critic? And would you choose a gospel that's been running in the back of your mind, that kind of operating system, and confront it with.

God loves you. He cares deeply about you. He longs to be in a relationship with you.

Would you choose a gospel that you've been believing and confront it with God's word? Because I think if you do, what you'll discover is that gap between what I think and what I believe and what I feel actually starts to take a shrink, it starts to lessen. May God bless us this week as we once again listen to the Gospel of Jesus. Oh, Father Matt, it's my prayer for our church that we would be convicted once again by the gospel, the real gospel. That God, you love us so much that you sent your only son, that whoever believes in him wouldn't perish, but would have eternal life.

Not just life when we die and are in heaven with you, but God's life beginning here and now. I pray that you would give us the courage to pray the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray that that your kingdom and your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. And by that God, not just the people around us, our family, our co workers, we want that to happen in them, but God, may it happen in us first, that you begin with us, that your kingdom and your will would be done in our life, in our hearts and God, would it begin with this reminder that it's in you alone, Jesus, you alone, that we find our hope, that we find our truth, that the truest things about us are told to us. So Jesus, would you speak powerfully to us this week, remind us of your incredible love for us, and would you help us to live differently in light of that love? In light of that love, would we follow that gospel?

We pray in Jesus name, Amen.