Energy Conservation Series

Series: Get Energized –

sermon: “Energy Conservation”

Introduction:

The subject of today is buzzing across the air waves of the world – We hear “Energy conservation” being discussed and debated.

Energy conservation means to reduce the quantity of energy that is used for different purposes. This practice may result in the increase of financial capital, environmental value, national and personal security, and human comfort.

Individuals and organizations that are direct consumers of energy may want to conserve energy in order to reduce energy costs and promote economic, political and environmental sustainability. Industrial and commercial users may want to increase efficiency and thus maximize profit.

On a larger scale, energy conservation is an important element of energy policy. In general, energy conservation reduces the energy consumption and energy demand per capita. This reduces the rise in energy costs, and can reduce the need for new power plants, and energy imports. The reduced energy demand can provide more flexibility in choosing the most preferred methods of energy production.

By reducing emissions, energy conservation is an important method to prevent climate change so we are told. Energy conservation makes it easier to replace non-renewable resources with renewable energy. Energy conservation is often the most economical solution to energy shortages.

From http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conservation

So I want us to focus on “Energy conservation” today – the premise here is “How are you using the energy which God has given to you in your life?”

Thesis: What are you spending your life’s energy on? Are you wasting your energy? Are using the energy God has placed in your life for eternal things?

America is overtaxed in everything and they burn countless hours of time and energy on many temporal things in life with not eternal value.

Scripture Text: James 4:13-17

Boasting About Tomorrow

13Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”

14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

15Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

16As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.

17Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.

Life – yours and mine has been given energy by God – He placed within you the ability to do something with your life – he has given you energy to use for eternal things not temporal things in this life. He wants us to use our energy wisely. To invest it into eternity, to spend it on things that will count for eternity rather than to throw it away and spend it away on things that do not matter.

The Bible was given to us to make one point – We all have a relationship with God – and we need to choose to use our life for God and for the purpose of God.

“All of Scripture is presented to us as a sequential narrative of the God/man relationship ¾ from the very beginning to the very end of the created world.” Sergei L.Golovin

We do so many things and yet we are becoming more and more unhealthy as a nation physically, emotionally and spiritually. We have been told we are the most obese nation in the world, the most depressed nation in the world and lately the most spiritually inept nation in the world. We seem to be spending huge amounts of energy on items that mean nothing in the context of eternal time. We live in the here and now generation. I don’t care about tomorrow! I don’t care about the impact of what I do today has on the environment tomorrow. I don’t care if eating fast food burgers and junk food affects my health tomorrow. I live for today with no thought or care for tomorrow. I spend money today I do not have to buy things I will hardly use and give no thought about the economical repercussion of my action. I want something and I want it now. This has also created the most indebted nation in the world from what I can tell from my research. We seem to be “impulse driven” we do things today without weighing, thinking, or evaluating the consequences of how this will impact us tomorrow, the next week, or even the next year.

In a sense our nation fails to live or plan for the future. Instead our motto to me seems to say this, “Live for today, do what you want, live high on the hog, because tomorrow we die!”

Video Illustration: In Time by Blue Fish TV – “Value of Time” This clip reveals to us how valuable our time is and how it should not be wasted but lived.