Rearview Mirror Series

DRIVEN BY ETERNITY

Opener: What are you driven by?

1 Peter 2: 1 So get rid of all malicious behavior and deceit. Don’t just pretend to be good! Be done with hypocrisy and jealousy and backstabbing. 2 You must crave pure spiritual milk so that you can grow into the fullness of your salvation. Cry out for this nourishment as a baby cries for milk, 3 now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness. 4 Come to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by the people, but he is precious to God who chose him. 5 And now God is building you, as living stones, into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are God’s holy priests, who offer the spiritual sacrifices that please him because of Jesus Christ. 6 As the Scriptures express it, "I am placing a stone in Jerusalem, a chosen cornerstone, and anyone who believes in him will never be disappointed. " 7 Yes, he is very precious to you who believe. But for those who reject him, "The stone that was rejected by the builders has now become the cornerstone." 8 And the Scriptures also say, "He is the stone that makes people stumble, the rock that will make them fall." They stumble because they do not listen to God’s word or obey it, and so they meet the fate that has been planned for them.

Everyone is driven by something… for you either know what you believe, why you believe it, and act on those beliefs…. OR you are either led or victimized by those who do know the answers to these questions.

What do you believe? Why do you believe it? What don’t you believe… and why…?

For no real decision of understanding is made in a vacuum… nothing is truly knowable in a vacuum.

Ideas have consequences and thoughts have or will lead to actions….

So I ask again…What are you driven by? What are we driven by?

But the next step in even knowing what is why… for there is a large difference between knowing something and acting upon what we know…

What do you act upon? For it shows what you are really driven by…

Time, energy, finance… look over this past week… what did you spend you time doing? Look in your checkbook, online registry, what did we spend our $ on?

What are you driven by?

Over the next weeks I hope to make the case of what it means to be driven by eternity. That our beliefs and convictions lead to compassionate action… by which we know what we believe and why we believe…

What are you driven by? Everyone is driven by something… for you either know what you believe, why you believe it, and act on those beliefs…. OR you are either led or victimized by those who do know the answers to these questions.

Define Driven:

It is the force by which we move forward. It is the focused thing we given attention to that drives us, moves us, forward in life…

What gives you meaning? Force… strength… reason for living? What are we driven by…

Throughout the series we will use the metaphor of a car…

I have often thought of my Christian life through this metaphor…

o the idea of God being my co-pilot as I drive through life… then the realization that I need God to drive at times…

o and then I realize that prayer is both the gas that runs the engine, and the ability to press the gas pedal…

 and if I stop praying I can coast on the momentum from before but eventually my wheels will stop…

o I realized the Holy Spirit is the engine… the power and ability to move forward in life… and He is my GPS system… the direction I need to know where to go… and

o my body is like the body of a car… I can polish it all I want, but one day it will rust and fall apart…

o The key to start the car (to start life well) is God’s word…

Today I want to talk about the rear view mirror… and the windshield…

For these two places of site are our vantage points for life… how we see the road behind us… and the road ahead of us…

THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

1 Peter 2… 9 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are a kingdom of priests, God’s holy nation, his very own possession. This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

Driven by eternity is about our focus, like the rear view mirror and the windshield… where do you spend much of your focus… looking ahead… but why do we often try to drive backwards… for there is a reason the rear view mirror is smaller… it is meant to give a reference point for safe travel, to know what was… but we are meant to drive forward… not in reverse…