End Of Year Stuff

END OF YEAR STUFF

Romans 13:11-12

INTRO.- End of year stuff.

ILL.- A young wife said to her husband, "Don’t forget to bring home another mousetrap." Her husband said, "What’s the matter with the one I bought yesterday?" She said, "IT’S FULL."

End of year stuff. Get rid of full mousetraps. No, end of year stuff deals with more than mousetraps.

For many of us it’s a matter of taking down Christmas decorations and Christmas lights and packing them away. My wife has and our neighbor, Bill Lenkner, who has about 10 million lights hasn’t!

End of year stuff deals with taking down, packing away, and cleaning up. And some other things.

ILL.- A woman walked into her bathroom at home. As she did, she saw her husband weighing himself on the bathroom scales, sucking in his stomach. The woman thought to herself, "He thinks that he will weigh less by sucking in his stomach." So, the woman rather sarcastically said to her husband, "That’s not going to help." Her husband said, "Sure it will. It’s the only way I can see the numbers."

End of year stuff. It could mean making a commitment to shape up the old bod. Most of us realize that we’ve lost some ground in regard to our health, gained weight, and we’d like to regain that ground and lose that weight!

So what do we about this? We make a decision to eat right or eat better and get some exercise. We drink more water. Eat less fat and more fiber. We walk. Jog. Ride stationary bikes. Do the stairstepper. Do pushups, deep knee bends, and situps. We do "Curves" or "Jazzer-cise."

End of year stuff. Take down. Pack up. Clean house. Shape up. Eat better. Exercise more. Do better. Be better.

Prov. 23:7 KJV "As a man thinketh, so is he."

Our first line of action is thinking. If we don’t think, we won’t do. We must think in the right direction in order to do in the right direction. Our thinking has brought us to where we are today and our thinking will take us where we are going tomorrow.

Think about what you would like to do in order to improve your life. Make a list. Sit down and think about it. Make a plan of action and go for it.

Clean your house. Shape up your body. These things will make you feel better about yourself and you’ll be better for doing them.

End of year stuff should also deal with the spiritual side of life. We are not just flesh and blood beings. We are also spirit. The eternal part of man and woman is spirit. Spirit lives forever. This means we should attend to our spirits. We should attend to the spiritual side of life even more than the physical.

I Tim. 4:8 "For physical training (exercise, etc.) is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come."

Godliness or attending to spiritual matters will do more for us than any exercise program or diet! Godliness can help us in this life and give us the promise of the life to come!

The healthiest people in the world can’t go to heaven without Christ! The richest people in the world can’t go to heaven without Christ! The cleanest people in the world can’t go to heaven without Christ! The neatest people in the world can’t go to heaven without Christ! WE MUST ATTEND TO THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF LIFE MORE THAN THE PHYSICAL!

ILL.- A marriage counselor asked a housewife, "Do you feel that your role as a mother and homemaker is beneath you?" "No," she replied, "I FEEL IT’S BEYOND ME."

Sometimes we feel like certain things are beyond us in life. We feel like they are unobtainable. Like spiritual progress.

ILL.- Preacher/author Charles Swindoll wrote a book entitled, "Three Steps Forward - Two Steps Back." I think he could be wrong. For some of us, it’s more like "two steps forward and three steps back." About the time we think we are making some spiritual progress something happens to knock us down or take us backwards.

Somehow we need to forge ahead! We need to make some spiritual progress! We need to climb the mountain and stop sliding downhill!

Phil. 3:14 "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

I press on. Isn’t that what you want in your Christian life?

PROP.- Let me give you some spiritual end of year stuff to do.

1- Clean up

2- Shape up

3- Spruce up

I. CLEAN UP

Nothing like a hot shower or a hot bath to clean up the body. Gotta get clean and wear clean duds before we can go anywhere. Not so with some people. They wear the same old clothes, the day before clothes, the dirty clothes and it shows.