Heart of Relationships: Sacrifice

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

This podcast is brought to you by Sage Hill, a social impact organization. Our mission is to help people be who they're made to be so that they can do what they're made to do. Find more resources to live fully, love deeply, and lead well at sagehillresources.com. Love. Right? And then he went, obedient. And then, he went sacrifice. Okay. And love is the ability to delight in the presence of another human being. Child. To delight in the presence of another human being is love. Remember Dan Allender saying these four things and so a lot of you Dan Allender is a good guy to trust. If you don't know him, he's kind of like A. W. Tozer in terms of you can trust. Delight in the presence of another, To be curious about the heart of another. To be willing to stand in the way of another. In other words, to say, this is this is who I am, where I am, and what I believe. This is a willingness to delight, a willingness to be curious, to ask questions, a willingness to stand in the way, and a willingness to be hurt. That's a child. They come out like that. They do everything they can to stay like that until they learn this most magical power, the capacity to use their faces to hide their hearts, feelings. And at that point, we become cave like. We watch from within our caves, outside our orbs that have eyes in them, nerve endings, and we're observing the possibilities of danger. And I want you to know that once love is rekindled, reawakened, re returned to it through our need, we wind up experiencing God. There are two economies that function on the earth. One is the earth economy and one is a world economy. The earth that God created has an earth economy and the currency of God's economy is neediness. Isaiah fifty five two and three, most amazing thing, for all of you who are thirsty, come to the river. For all of you who are hungry and have no money, come and buy. All of you who don't have any money and you're hungry, come on over here and purchase the food that is the richest affair that will feed your very soul. Well, either that is a massive contradiction in language, so we'll just skip it. That doesn't make any sense. Let's move on. For all of you who don't have any money, come and purchase this. Come buy without any money. Well, what's the currency? Because they are buying. Well, we know what the currency is. God's currency is neediness. The better you are at neediness, the greater your God. The more you know what you're looking for that you can't do, the greater there is for God to do, which makes you more and more of a God sized project. The more you know that you were created as created by God and become a child of God, the more you're gonna need the father. And when the building starts shaking, you're gonna run to him quickly like Jeff said his son would. You turn and say, where'd you go? Where are you? Where are you? Moses got it good. Moses was doing that all the time because Moses kept saying, Look. If you don't go, I'm not going. I got it. Because I really want to be with you. I want to be with you so much that I'm good I can even be mad at you. We can just we can like have it out, so to speak. Alright? And there's a reason for that, that God has supported us in doing that. So the word obedience doesn't mean what we've been taught. I want you to hear this. Obedience, Jeff redefined it for us. Obedience doesn't mean that you do what you're told. It doesn't mean that at all once love is reintroduced. The word literally Go look it up in your dictionary. You look it up in your biblical dictionary. Look it up in the the dictionary of the English language. The word obey means to listen. Literally, it means to listen. To listen to what? To listen to that which will feed you so you can go and do what you're made to do. I want you to know that Sage Hill, a social impact organization, I want to mention in just a bit, but it is it has one simple mission to help people see who they're made to be so they can do what they're made to do. And that's every single thing we do, whether it's in the consulting or the talking or the teaching or the training or the counseling or the projects or the productions or wherever we're heading. We pray that God will bless that because we're desperately in a time where we as a people or world's people need to see who we're made to be so we can do what we're made to do. Okay. So the word obey means to listen so that you can have what you're made to have, so that your life will go well with you. Because you if you listen, you're gonna get information, knowledge, power, capacity, direction, a know how so you can go that way. To listen but who you gonna listen to? Let me tell you something. I only listen, truly listen. I'm talking about listen within myself. I only listen to somebody cares about me. I do. And see, we have been taught poorly about what authority means too. We don't know that there's unhealthy and healthy authority. We we've been learned to say, you know, if a person's this, then they tell you that, then you go do it. It doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what you feel. It doesn't matter what your opinions are. It doesn't matter. Now, there is a part of it, like, I've got twenty seven years of experience in this and you've got maybe none and you're telling me, no. It doesn't matter what you think. I got it. Tell me what you're looking for or what you need. I'm listening. You follow? I'm not talking about some eradication that everybody's opinion is equal because they're not. You know, in terms of like, well, I want my say. It's like, well, first learn what's in the textbook and then you have all the say you want. Have you read the textbook? No. But I want my say. Okay. Well, anyway, let's move on. But authority. There are two kinds of authority in this life. There's the authority that desires control over you. It's all about power. And let me ask you something. Can you give your heart to a power that wants nothing but control over you? No. We can't. Now that speaks to how God made us. It doesn't mean you're disobedient. It means that you're well made. And God is so smart that God knows that that you cannot give yourself to him unless you know that he wants your good. If all God wants is power over you, we can't give ourselves to God, not in heart. Can't. It's impossible. It's like, I want to give myself to somebody who's mean to me. I can give that whatever power my body. I can give them my brain. I can give them my survival mechanisms but I can't give them me. I can't give them me. To God, it's so brilliant. Authority to God is a desire for our good. There are two kinds of authority. There's unhealthy authority, which is a desire for power, and there's healthy authority, which is a desire for another's good, desire for good. God has great desire for our good. Right? Now that's where we get the word author. That's when authority doesn't mean power anymore. It means the words of an author. I have the words that I want to give you so that you can learn them and have what it is that I want you to have so you can have more than you had before. You have received an education. The word education means to lead out of that which is already in you so it can grow. Education doesn't mean input. It means to meet in the middle, lead out of you what's already in you so you can grow into more. And it's amazing. I want you to hear that the words we've been taught That's the point of this is the words we've been taught don't mean what God designed them to mean. We're following bad definitions for words and we wind up in the wrong places. And on that treadmill, doing for God, like Jeff said, and all of a sudden it was beautiful. It's so, so hilarious. He said, All of a sudden, woof! Somebody just gone off the treadmill. It's not because they didn't want it. It's not because they didn't want it. It's not because they didn't want it. It's because where they were running, why I'm going to take them there. It's not because they didn't want it. It's because It's because where they were running, why I'm gonna take them there. Because they weren't getting to run with heart. They were running with should, running with have to, running in terror fear, not running in confession, not running in the most beautiful word, I believe, in the English language out of the Hebrew language is this word. I think that's the word that's amazing. So anyway, and the word sacrifice, we've been made we've made the mistake that we actually give up something. See, sacrifice to us who have been raised in the world of obedience means do what you're told and that love is something we give instead of something we receive so we have it to offer. Love is something we should do instead of having received God God, we love God because God first loved us. Because we return to the need of being loved because I got nowhere to go and if you don't care about me, I can't go. I can't do it anymore just because I should. I can only do it more because I know that there's a purpose reason for it that you'll touch me with life. I'm made to live. So sacrifice does not mean give up something. Sacrifice means opportunity to participate in the sacred.