Your Christian Life Review - Part 2 - People & Primary Relationships Series

Your Christian Life Review - Part 2

Well we are into a new Millenium and I hope that you had a good night last Sunday in anticipation of the midnight milestone. We had some crazy neighbours who enjoyed themselves. You know that telephone add where two mates just scream down the phone to each other ¡§Mate¡¨ - well this is what some of our neighbours were doing through the night - I kid you not. It is amazing what people find funny when they have had a bit too much to drink.

Anyway that has nothing to do with what we are going to talk about this morning. If you were here last week, you might remember that we started to carry out a CLR. For those of you who weren¡¦t here - that is code for a Christian Life Review. We thought that it would be a good idea to review how our Christian life had gone in 2000 and what we needed to re-evaluate for this coming year.

New Year is typically a time when people make New Years Resolutions. That is, they will promise themselves that they will lose weight, stop smoking, go to church or something of that nature. Webster defines a resolution as: "a) a resolving, or determining; deciding b) the thing determined upon; decision as to future action; resolve." Now, this sounds good, and it makes people feel better about themselves to make a promise concerning something they plan to do, or something they plan to stop. However, the problem with resolutions is that they tend to be forgotten within just a few days, or weeks, at the most. In truth, what we really need is a revolution! Webster defines revolution as "a) a complete or radical change of any kind b) overthrow of a government, form of government, or social system by those governed and usually by forceful means, with another government or system taking its place." To my way of thinking, this is exactly what most Christians need to have happen in their lives. We need to experience a radical change in the way we think and in the way we act. We need a total overthrow of our lives until they are brought under the absolute Lordship and leadership of the Lord Jesus Christ. With that in mind, I would like for us to continue with our CLR to see what revolutions we all need in our lives.

We began last week by looking at the first of 3-P¡¦s to help us to focus on various areas of our life and activity. The three P¡¦s were Programming, People and Primary Relationship. We covered Programming last week. For those who weren¡¦t here last week, Programming was all about how we were serving God. We asked of ourselves How effective has your service been for God this year?

The church is like a body. A body has many parts, each with different functions. We need every part to be performing correctly its unique function if we are to operate effectively. You have a unique part to play in this church and a unique ministry which God has called you to. If you are not performing this ministry, you are letting the whole body down and probably hindering it doing other things. So the question we asked was - How effective has your service been for God this year?

And to answer this question we asked 4 other questions.

a) Have you been serving this year? There are some people in our church that are not doing anything. They are the pew sitters. They don¡¦t realise that they have an absolutely critical part to play in making this church run smoothly. It is like the body operating without an elbow joint. Every body needs to be playing their part ¡V no matter how small or large that may be.

b) Are you doing the right ministry? There are other people who are trying to do the wrong ministry. They are either pretenders ¡V wanting to be a part of the body that they aren¡¦t, or supermen ¡V wanting to have a finger in every pie. Neither are as effective as they might be because they are getting distracted from the right ministry which God has specially for them. ¡§Well what is the right ministry?¡¨ you ask. God has each given us a spiritual gift which he has given us to make us effective in his ministry. Know your spiritual gift and you will have a fairly good idea about where you should be serving. So the next question is

c) Do you know and are you using your spiritual gift? Sugar Ray Leonard, the boxer was speaking at Harvard once: ¡§I consider myself blessed. I consider you blessed. We¡¦ve all been blessed with god given talents. Mine just happens to be beatin¡¦ people up.¡¨ I¡¦m not sure whether this could be classed as a spiritual gift, but I¡¦m not going to argue with him. Do you know your spiritual gift? If so are you using it?