The sermons ofPeter McKnight

My Life is not My Life

Lessons from a Hospital BedErindale Bible Chapel, Mississauga, Ontario

It is good to be back with you – it feels like forever since I have had the privilege of speaking with you from the pulpit. Thanks for your prayers, your encouragement, and your support while I was in the hospital in December, and afterward as I recuperated at home.

Sometimes I am tempted to look on these past weeks of inactivity as “lost time”; down time; time when nothing much was happening and I wasn’t getting much done. But then I remember how God spoke to me during those weeks. I had a lot of time to read and reflect and just think about life. Although I was physically confined for much of that time, my mind and my spirit were free to roam, and God directed my thoughts in specific ways.

Starting today, and in the coming weeks as the Lord gives me strength, I would like to share with you some of the lessons that he has been teaching me. Ever since I learned that I had cancer, I have been convinced that this new turn in the road wasn’t meant just for me – God intended it to be a learning experience for all of us as a church. I believe that God has important things for all of us to learn along the way, and even though some might think that I have been climbing this mountain alone, the truth is that you have been climbing it with me.

Here are five lessons I have been learning, in non-theological language:

  1. My life is not my life

  2. I’m part of a bigger story that God is telling

  3. I’m related to the people I read about in the Bible

  4. God lives in me and works through me

  5. He has the whole story figured out, and it ends well

The first lesson that God has impressed on me is that MY LIFE IS NOT MY LIFE. The thing that really hammered this home to me is that God didn’t ask my permission to make the kind of radical changes to my life that I have experienced over the last several months.

Some people get angry with God when bad things happen, when pain or disaster or tragedy strike. They say “God, you’re not fair! Why are you doing this to me? I thought you were supposed to be a kind and loving God. How could you treat me this way?” As though God owed them an explanation for what was going on.

This is precisely how Job felt when he found himself in the midst of a confusing crisis. He demanded an answer, an explanation from God for what was happening to him; for why he was suffering so.

But as I look at what has happened to me in the past half year, I don’t recall that God ever asked my permission, or gave me a choice in any of this. One minute, I was living a normal, comfortable, enjoyable life, and the next I was just swept up by a massive and very scary tidal wave that has changed the direction of my life forever, because my life is not my life. It is God’s to do with what he wants.

Think about it for a minute…

  • If I had a choice, do you think I would have chosen to come down with terminal cancer?

  • If I had a choice, do you think I would have chosen to undergo chemotherapy, which involves ingesting toxic chemicals in the hopes that they will kill more bad cells than good cells?

  • If I had a choice, do you think I would have chosen for the cancer to block off my digestive tract so that I had to have emergency surgery just a few days before Christmas and be laid up for weeks?

  • If I had a choice, do you think I would have chosen to have my strength ebb slowly away until I now feel more like 80 years old than 50?

Of course not! I wouldn’t have chosen any of those things. But I wasn’t given a choice, you see, because MY LIFE IS NOT MY LIFE.

Several years ago, Billy Joel came out with a popular song called My Life. In it, he assumes – as most people assume – that this life is MY LIFE and I can run it however I want. He sings…

I don’t need you to worry for me cause I’m alright

I don’t want you to tell me it’s time to come home

I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life

Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone

And we develop thousands of little strategies to make sure that our lives will be orderly, predictable, safe, comfortable, and happy. And we begin to develop this delusion that we are in control. Some of us even pride ourselves on being control freaks.

But nothing could be further from the truth! Just because everything seems to be running on an even keel right now doesn’t mean that that can’t change in a heartbeat, because my life isn’t my life. It is not under my control. I am not the one calling the shots.

Q. Is that a truly biblical idea? Yes, it is. The Bible, from the very first page, tells us that our lives are not our own. We are not here because of anything that we did; we are here because God created us. He made us in His image.

Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

God put within us the stuff of life. Everything that makes you YOU and me ME is not of our own making, nor is it the product of genetics – God gives our personhood to us. He is the author and sustainer of life.

Isaiah 46:4 Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

So right from the “get-go” this IS NOT MY LIFE. I am not a “self-made man”; because there is no such thing. I am a creature of God having life, consciousness, self-awareness, personhood, and humanity because God has given them to me. He is the source of my being, and not only the source, but the sustainer as well. I depend upon God for each and every breath I take.

Acts 17:28 … in him we live and move and have our being.

So the very fact of creation tells me that my life is not my life.

There is an excellent example of this in the OT story. It’s the story of Joseph – a young man who came from a dysfunctional family, whose life went off the tracks from a young age.

Joseph was one of twelve sons, but he was the favorite of his father. In fact, his father gave him a splendid coat of many colors, which aroused the ire and jealousy of his brothers. To make matters worse, Joseph, who seemed not to have a lot of tact at this point in his life, shared with his brothers dreams he was having in which all the brothers would symbolically bow down to Joseph. Clearly this boy had delusions of grandeur! And that deepened his brothers’ hatred of him.

One day, when Joseph came out to the fields, the brothers decided that they had had enough. They planned to do away with him. Some wanted to kill him. Others did not want to go that far – they started by stripping off Joseph’s ornate robe and roughly threw him into a dry water cistern – a deep hole in the ground. Then they came up with the idea of selling him as a slave to some Ishmaelite merchants who happened to be on their way through by caravan, heading for Egypt. So that’s what they did.

They sold their bothersome brother into slavery to the Ishmaelites. Then, to create an alibi, they took his robe and tore it, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. It looked for all the world as though Joseph had been mauled by a wild animal. The brothers took the robe to their father Jacob and told him that they had found the robe in that condition in the desert. Jacob drew the obvious conclusion; Joseph, his beloved favorite son, must be dead. Jacob was inconsolable.

Meanwhile, how do you think Joseph felt about this turn of events? One minute he is the favorite son, the next he is a slave among strangers, heading to a strange land, cut off forever from his family. Do you not think he would have been saying “Wait a minute! This life is not my life. Somebody handed me the wrong script. This isn’t the way the story was supposed to go. Stop the world, I want to get off.”

But unknown to Joseph, things were about to get worse. When the caravan arrived in Egypt, a wealthy army officer named Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh’s bodyguards, purchased Joseph to serve as a household slave.

At first things got off to a good start – even though Joseph was a slave in a strange country separated from his family. Joseph proved to be a capable administrator, and Potiphar grew more and more confident in him as a manager.

Genesis 39:2 The LORD was with Joseph and he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.

There was just one problem, however: Potiphar’s wife. Since Potiphar was away from home much of the time, Joseph caught her eye – he was young, well-built, handsome, and above all, discreet. She began to entice Joseph into having an affair with her. The more Joseph rebuffed her advances, the more determined she became. Until one day, when they were alone, she caught him by his cloak to drag him into the bedroom. Joseph managed to twist out of her grip and ran from her presence, leaving his cloak behind.

They say that hell hath no fury like a woman spurned. Mrs. Potiphar was enraged and she concocted the story that Joseph had made improper advances on her and so she screamed out for help, startling Joseph into running away and leaving his cloak behind – which she now displayed as a trophy. Once again, a cloak is Joseph’s undoing.

When Potiphar heard the story, he was enraged and had Joseph stripped of his duties and thrown into prison. How do you think Joseph was feeling about his life now? He was saying “This can’t be me. This can’t be happening to me. I’ve tried to do the right thing, and look at how God is treating me.”

Little did Joseph realize it when he was led in chains through the entrance of that jail, that his next career move would be to the Prime Minister’s office. In the jail, Joseph befriended two men from the palace who had fallen out of favor with Pharaoh – his butler, or cup-bearer, and his baker. Both these men had strange dreams in prison that Joseph had been able to interpret with God’s help.

The day eventually came when the two men were released from prison. The baker was executed, but the cup-bearer was re-instated to his former position beside the throne. He was back in Pharaoh’s good graces. Joseph, who was still languishing in jail, had asked to be remembered by him, but…

Genesis 40:23 The chief cupbearer, however, did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.

So Joseph was left to languish for the another two years. How do you think Joseph was feeling during those two years? He had started out as a slave; he had been the victim of a frame-up; now he was a prisoner with seemingly no hope of release. The only man who could have helped him had forgotten about him entirely.

His life was not his life, was it? He had no control over events. There was zero possibility of his changing his circumstances by what he said or did. He was totally a victim.

That’s when God stepped in. Pharaoh had a dream one night. His court magicians and wise men couldn’t interpret the dream. That’s when the cup-bearer remembered Joseph. Joseph was brought before Pharaoh to interpret the dream. (The Bible says that He had to shave and change his clothes first)

Pharaoh dream was eerie; he saw seven fat cattle coming up out of the Nile followed by seven lean cattle. The lean cattle devoured the fat cattle. Then he saw seven good heads of grain followed by seven bad heads of grain. The bad heads of grain devoured the good heads.

Joseph, with the help of God, interpreted the dream to mean that there was a terrible famine coming upon the land of Egypt. There would be seven good years when the cattle would be fat and the grain would be ripe. But that would be followed by seven years of utter barrenness, when the cattle would die and the grain would not grow.

Joseph recommended that Pharaoh find a wise man who could oversee preparations for the coming famine to make sure that enough food was stockpiled during the good years to see them through the coming bad years.

Pharaoh was so impressed by Joseph’s discernment and wisdom that then and there, he appointed Joseph to be that man. In fact, he made Joseph the Prime Minister of Egypt – the second in command to the king. Imagine! Just a few minutes before, Joseph had been an unshaven, forgotten prisoner, dressed in rags. Now he was Prime Minister of the country.

And it was from that position just a few years later that Joseph was able to rescue his whole family who had been caught in the great famine. He literally became the Savior of the Jewish people, although he could scarcely understand how.

Joseph said something that indicated that he had learned that central truth we’ve been talking about – MY LIFE IS NOT MY LIFE. Joseph forgave his brothers and welcomed them into his house. Joseph talked about the ordeals he had gone through at the hands of those brothers.

Genesis 50:20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Other OT characters could attest to the truth that MY LIFE IS NOT MY LIFE. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea – they all saw hardship, pain, suffering because God was doing a work in their lives that would have great consequences on the world around them.

There’s a NT reason why MY LIFE IS NOT MY LIFE. It stems from my relationship with Jesus Christ.

When we put our trust in Jesus Christ as Saviour, He becomes our substitute. We are exchanging our unrighteousness for His righteousness; our spiritual deadness for his eternal life.

Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us

The word “redeemed” is a commercial word; it means to be bought with a price – just as you would buy something in a marketplace. So what are the implications for a Christian?

1 Corinthians 6:19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

A Christian’s life is twice owned:

  1. God owns me by dint of his creation of me.

  2. God owns me by dint of the fact that Jesus’ blood has bought me

So there is ample reason for saying MY LIFE IS NOT MY LIFE. My life belongs to God. He created me and He bought me. And he can do whatever he wants with me.

I have lived for 50 years and have never had any serious health problems – never broken a bone, never been in the hospital. Until this year. Now I find myself in a struggle for life and death. I find myself in a position where I cannot even predict what my body is going to do from day to day. Simply climbing a flight of stairs is a major undertaking.

Some guys my age, their main ambition is to have a BMW. Me – my main ambition is just to have a regular BM every day. I’m on a first-name basis with half the staff over at Trillium Hospital.

And as I experienced all this, it began to dawn on me that, although I certainly didn’t want to be in this position, for some reason, this is exactly where God wanted me to be at this point in my life. Because MY LIFE IS NOT MY LIFE, it is His.

And I have found that when we get that truth nailed down in our lives, it makes all the difference in the world because my life, my family, my calling, my future then become God’s responsibility, not mine.

You say, “Wait a minute, Peter. Are you saying that we should just deliberately turn our backs on responsibility for our lives? Isn’t that precisely what’s wrong with our society today – people don’t want to take responsibility for their actions?”

I am not saying that we abrogate responsibility – I am saying that we must deliberately place responsibility for our lives into the hands of God. That way, when disaster strikes, we can say “God is in control of my life, so he is going to take care of this.”

Paul said in Gal. 2:20… I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Paul was living an exchanged life – Jesus gave himself for me, so I give myself to Him. Did that mean that Paul had a trouble-free life? Of course not; Paul went through incredible suffering, imprisonment, natural disasters, and persecution from the enemies of the Gospel. But he went through all that with a peace in his heart that came from knowing that his life was not his life; it was God’s.

You may think that letting God have complete control of your life is a scary thing. When you look at me, you see a man struggling with cancer. But I am here to tell you that in spite of the hardships and suffering that that has involved, there has been tremendous blessing come out of it as well. Look at our church. Look at how people are praying. Look at how people are loving and sharing with one another. There’s a deeper, richer fellowship and unity than we’ve ever had. And outsiders are being drawn closer as they sense something remarkable going on.

This makes suffering meaningful. God always brings good out of suffering. We may not see it right away, but it will come. Just as Jesus’ suffering brought us redemption, so our sufferings can have a healing, redemptive effect on others.

But we have to remember to start with the premise that MY LIFE IS NOT MY LIFE – it is God’s.