Reconciliation Beyond the Ledger: Finding True Peace in Christ

Tim Miller: Good morning. I want to start out by saying I know exactly what you're thinking. If your
last final is on December 12th, you are 53.4% of the way through the semester. And finally,
we're going to get to talk about net present value of future cash flows and asset valuation.
Now before we go, we'll calm down. Before we have meats and potatoes like net present
value, we got to get rid of that salad first. So we're going to start out with bank recons.
How many has ever heard of a bank reconciliation? Like four. So back in the day, well, let me
start with by saying that when we got, we moved here about 15 months ago. And in that
process, you've got to kind of figure out what you're going to bring with you and what
you're going to throw away and not bring. And we started by going through the house.
And there we go. We started by going through our house and finding the things that we didn't
want to take with us. And that is the doorway to the basement. And that is not photoshopped.
When you open the door and see that, it's a little bit unnerving. But it's a little
bit like doing an archaeological dig. And what I discovered in boxes that were in the
basement was ancient bank relics that included clear checks and bank statements. And to understand
that, you need to understand that back in the day, checks were the primary way of paying
for things. And you actually wrote a check and gave it to a person who put it in the
mail. And there was a monthly process that you actually did a bank reconciliation. Now,
my process was that I got paid once a month on the first of the month. So I sat down and
wrote all my payments out for my student loan, for my rent, for my electricity and water,
and paid all those things and put them in the mail and sent them off. And then every
month you would receive an envelope that had all the canceled checks. And you would sit
down and do the bank reconciliation. And this was not just a subculture of the cool kids.
This was kind of everybody did it. And it was not just accounting majors that did this.
It was everybody. Because you didn't know how much was in your bank account unless you
did this. So September 1991, I had a rude awakening. I went through and did the bank
recon. And in my bank statement, I had about $900. And if you don't, some of you have already
seen it, but if you didn't, there was a huge unrecorded debit that was about $840. So for
the remainder of the month, I had $53 to my name. So like 23 days in the month, I had
$53 to my name. Now, I had some choices to make. I could not call my parents and say,
can you give me some money? A, they didn't have the money to give me. If you looked at
my family, I was the 13th of 28 grandchildren. I was the first person in my family in any
generation to go to college. So here I was, college graduate, CPA, working at a bank,
and I can't control my debit card. And I've got, I can't call my parents and say, you
know what, I'm going to go bankrupt because I eat at San Antonio Taco three times a week.
And I'm going bankrupt because I eat 48 Dunkin' Donut munchkins three times a week. That's
just not something you call your parents and admit to. So as I was going through this,
talking to my wife about this, she said, you need to bring a relevant today conversation
to this. So let's say you're at, let's say you're at Starbucks and you're about to get
that joyous pumpkin spice latte. And I, there's no judgment here. I do not own a pair of Uggs,
but I will tell you that I love me some pumpkin spice. But let's say you get up to the line
and that $7 drink, you go to pay with your phone and it doesn't have enough money. And
you look at your bank account and you realize that Xbox Live has auto renewed and, and debited
your account. Now I just saw all the e-sports teams heads come up. Let me rephrase. National,
reigning national champ e-sports team just raised their head and said, there's a hack
for that. You don't have to go through that process. But the situation is now you don't
have enough money to buy that pumpkin spice. What are you going to do? So here's, here's
the options and this, we're going to take this from a real life event down to what is
this like in the real world of the spiritual world? We can live in a re in this area of,
okay, I've got some really bad news. I've got, I've got some really bad struggles. I'm
going to white knuckle through it. I'm going to, with my willpower, I'm going to quit doing
that thing that I've always done. Or I'm going to put a mask on and pretend like there's
nothing wrong here, folks. There's nothing to see. And I'm never going to let people
know who I am or I could choose to live in misery. I could choose to live in the sense
of I'm going to clean up the outside and nobody's going to see my problems from an external
viewpoint, but I know who I am on the inside and it's not a pleasant person. How many of
you have seen, well, okay, I was going to say how many of you seen this artwork and
obviously nobody has seen it because I've spent hours doing this just last night. So
this is brand new. But how many of you have this image of God in your head? This image
that God's angry at us and he's just waiting for us to slip off the tight rope from the
cauldron, the boiling cauldron of our sin and God's ready to punish us. So we have to
go back and start over again. I got to tell you, I lived that way for a very long time
and it is not a fun life and is not what we're told that we should be experiencing. Romans,
thank you Claudia for reading, Romans 6 says in the same way, count yourselves dead to
sin but alive to God. And our experience doesn't match that because the sin feels very alive.
And that word counts. My good friend Brian Cologne tells me that that word, the Greek
word for that is lok etes estes and he told me to emphasize the etes, I-T-Z. Lok etes
estes is the same word that we get our word logic from and it's also an accounting term
for reconciliation, reconciling to the greater truth. But my experience tells me that, that
I am a failure. That I haven't been dead to sin, that the sin that I felt before is still
strong in my life. And I get that sense that God is angry because I know I'm not worthy
and I see the way I live. But what if God isn't who we think he is and neither am I.
There's a great book called The Cure and the subtitle was, "What if God isn't who you think
he is and neither are you?" And it talks about this idea of people putting masks on, I don't
know if you can see up there in the upper left hand corner, true face is the original
version of the book and it talks about wearing masks and never allowing people to know who
you really are. So what if God's economy is upside down? What if he calls things true
that go against our experience? Our experience is we have failures, we have loss, but God
calls true, you are my beloved, you are my child and regardless of what you've done,
regardless of what you're doing today, I still love you. I'm not going to leave you in that
mess but I still love you. You are good enough. What if this is the better image of our relationship
with God? Not like from an artistic standpoint but what if God is so happy that you've accepted
Christ that he embraces you and he says that all that struggle that you dealt with has
been redeemed. That is the true God. That is the good message and that is where peace
comes. See, eternal life is not a destination across a tight rope of white knuckling that
you've got to be afraid of. Eternal life is for today. It's not a long off until you die
thing. It is, in John 17, Christ says this is eternal life that they know you. That's
present tense. He's saying you can experience, you can start experiencing eternal life now
in Jesus Christ. Truth isn't a bank account number, it's not a grade, it's not a score.
Truth is a person and the person of Jesus Christ and the reconciliation that he's talking
about in Romans chapter 6 is being reconciled to the truth who is Jesus Christ. When you
reconcile to Jesus Christ, you are being made holy. He says make them holy by thy word.
Thy word is truth and in John 1, 1, in the beginning was the word and the word was with
God and the word was God. Jesus Christ is the truth that we need to reconcile to. And
the truth says you are mine. I have redeemed you. There is no reason to walk around in
this tight rope sense of doubt and fear that you're going to fall off the tight rope and
you have to go back to the beginning. God is angry with you. So just, I want to share
from you a personal life story, not the poor bank reconciliation process or the lack of
control of a debit card. I'm speaking to you from six decades of experience that willpower
fails 100% of the time. You might last a day, you might last a week, but willpower fails
100% of the time. Putting a mask on and pretending like things are okay denies the possibility
of living out loud, living in community with other people and just pretending like everything
is okay prevents you, causes you to have to isolate. And that's not what God has for you.
What God has for you is a life of community, living out loud into his reality and his truth
of who you are. There is no peace without knowing Jesus Christ and knowing him personally
and walking with him in community. We're about ready to be dismissed, but I want to take
just a second and I want you to think about where you are. Lubbock Christian University,
Christ-centered university. And there are people in this room who have the same experience
of me that they've tried all the things that didn't work. They've lived in misery and I
hesitate this, but if you would be willing to walk with students, maybe you're not a
professor, maybe you're not in a teaching in the faculty position, but if you're willing
to walk with students, would you stand up? Maybe you're a student who has been through
difficult things and you have come to know Christ in a real way. I want you to look around.
Maybe there's some students that would like to stand up too and say, "Hey, I would walk
with you. I will, I will come, I will let you know me personally and I will get to know
you personally." Are there any students that would stand up and say, "Hey, I want to be
someone that walks with people." This is how community happens. This is where the tight
rope goes away. This is where the masks come off and Christ is sensed and real. The Holy
Spirit moves among us in ways. I can tell you I'm blown away by everybody standing up.
I'm an accountant, I got to get under control. I got to tell you folks, seeing you stand
up and say, "I want to walk with each other," blesses me and I hope it blesses you. So go
out today in peace knowing that Jesus Christ has walked across the cauldron. He's done
away with your sin. He's got his arms around you and loves you in ways that you've never
understood. I don't want to hear anybody say, "I can't be good enough. I'm not worthy."
Because Jesus Christ says, "That is not truth. Reconcile to the truth, Jesus Christ, and
be dead to sin and live in peace with each other." You're dismissed.
: (applause)