Proverbs 1:1-7
Blow Up the Dams
Woodlawn Baptist Church
August 27, 2006
Introduction
This morning as we have celebrated the promotion of some of our young people up to their next classes I think it would be worth our time together to consider the subject of knowing God. I love the Lord’s churches and find it helpful from time to time to reaffirm God’s love for and plan to work in and through these local bodies we know of as churches. I say that because when you boil it all down this church and every other church exists for the one simple purpose of helping people know God and to help people know and experience God as they never have before.
In Proverbs 1, Solomon wrote that one of the greatest priorities of our lives ought to be the pursuit of wisdom and instruction. Listen to what he wrote. I’ll be reading from the New King James.
“The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel: to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, judgment, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel, to understand a proverb and an enigma, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
It’s been rightly said that when we quit learning we die. Some people commit themselves to a lifelong habit of learning new things right up to the time they die. But there are many who quit learning long before they draw their last breath, and yet a different sort of death takes place. It is the death of vitality, imagination, passion, zeal and of dreams. People that quit learning are filled with memories rather than goals. They look back and long for days gone by instead of looking at the opportunities that still lie ahead.
While there are a lot of great things out there to learn, nothing could be more important than learning the things of God. There is nothing so beneficial to a believer than to have the mind renewed and transformed by the living Word of God: to have our thoughts and actions and attitudes to be at their core immersed in the heart and mind of God. In short, there is nothing more important in your life than knowing God.
As I speak, I realize that a great part of you are not involved in one of the Bible studies provided by your church family, whether that be a Sunday morning Bible study, a Wednesday evening Bible study or one of the others currently being offered in homes. I also realize that while others of you do attend or used to attend, what you’ve heard hasn’t really resulted in what you were looking for. You’d think that after attending church all the time God would help you out more, but hopefully what you’re discovering is that more church doesn’t get you closer to God. Attending more classes won’t do it. Praying more prayers and reading more verses hasn’t done it and hopefully it has all been very frustrating.
For me to say that I hope it has all been very frustrating may sound odd to you. But I want you to understand today that more than you know God wants to manifest Himself to you, but it won’t come from church attendance and Bible studies per se. God’s not going to reward you with more blessings or love just because you were faithful to attend. But here’s what He will do: if you will make your first priority and life’s pursuit to know Him, then He’ll make sure that you do.
Attending worship and the Bible studies offered to you will provide an outlet for that to happen, and that’s what I hope and pray will happen, so my appeal to you today is to do three things. Number one, make it your life’s greatest pursuit to know God. I mean really know the God we read about in the Bible. Second, make the renewing of your mind a real priority in your life by allowing the Holy Spirit the opportunity to transform your thinking, and thirdly, give one of your church’s study groups an honest try in that pursuit.
Some of you think I’m just talking to the people that don’t attend Sunday School, but I’m not. The Lord’s churches are filled with people who attend Sunday School and other studies for no other purpose than to earn God’s favor. Some of you are doing that. You come because you want God to stay happy with you. But I want to say to you that unless you come with an earnest desire to know God and exalt His Son Jesus Christ in heartfelt worship you’re coming for the wrong reasons.
It’s been said that there are two things most difficult to get people to do: to think – and to do things in the order of their importance. Armies of activities cry for our time, and carelessness about our priorities can soon leave our lives like the little boy who fell asleep with gum in his mouth – a tangled mess.
Solomon said that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” In other words, before we can understand anything about life, we’ve got to start at the beginning. Life apart from God is empty. But knowing God as your Savior isn’t enough either. When we enter into a relationship with God our knowing Him must become our greatest priority.
Have you ever heard of the River Principle and the Pond Principle? Each of us works on one of these two principles. A river is characterized by fresh, living water flowing in and washing out the old and the dead. But most of us don’t work on the River Principle. We work on the Pond Principle. Ponds become stagnant, but rivers flow. Ponds become puddles, but rivers become oceans.
I took my girls out to Loy Lake Friday evening to go fishing. When I backed down to launch my boat the water was so low I buried my trailer in the mud and got my truck stuck. I went to work wading out into the mud and the muck to pull the boat off the trailer, pushing and pulling it through that slimy mess. As I did I thought about the smell and the mess and realized that that’s exactly how many of God’s people get when there’s not enough fresh water coming into our lives to keep us replenished. You were made to grow spiritually. “From your innermost being shall flow rivers of living water” Jesus said.
Unlike the lakes around here, we don’t go dry because of a lack of available water. God is at work around us every day. His fresh and living water is flowing all around us. The problem is that we allow things to damn up the flow of that water so that it can’t flow into our lives and replenish us. There are at least four things that damn up the rivers in our lives so that we become stagnant ponds.
Busyness
I think there is nothing that hinders the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives so much as the damn of busyness. The slogan of our society ought to be “hurry, scurry and bury.” We’re in a rat race to where? Listen, this is serious stuff! Too many of God’s people…too many of you know that while you’ve been busy with life and attending to the duties of your faith you still don’t know God like you know He wants you to. You still are not experiencing Him like you read about in the Bible. That God and your God seem to be two different Gods. But they’re not. What needs to take place is the renewing of your mind so that you can begin to sort through the issues of life and church to discover the God that created it all – but you’re just too busy. From daylight to dark you run, run, run. And when you do get time? You’re too tired to care.
Unsorted Priorities
There are countless things competing for your time and energy. Education, recreation, church activities, exercise routines, marriage, kids, friends, social outings, jobs, community activities, school, vacations, family trips, entertainment, hobbies, work around the house and more!
Multiply all that times 365 and add it to the arguments, last-minute cancellations, funerals, weddings, baby showers, whims, worries, driving time and all the escapes we have to have to unwind and before you know it your life has become a dirty-clothes hamper. Unless you keep the piles sorted and in the washer all the good and necessary priorities of your life are going to crowd out the best and most-important priorities, like knowing God.
Jesus said it this way, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” First things must be kept first. Spending your time as you see fit and giving God the leftovers is a sure way to waste your life. On the other hand, put the Lord first and make the renewing of your mind through group studies first and watch as the rest of your priorities become easier to manage.
Blahs
We would all agree that there are some things we want to do, like to do, but don’t have to do. There are other things that don’t exactly appeal to us, but they are important nonetheless. They must be done, and it is those things that begin to wear us down, and as a result we get a good case of the “blahs.”
What’s the answer? You need to keep balance – be responsible. Do the important things and make them priorities first, but throw in enough play time to maintain balance. If you play too much, you’re out of balance. If you don’t play enough, then again, you’re out of balance.
Trash
I don’t know how to put it any other way. We put so much junk in our heads we’ll never be able to experience the refreshing waters of life that God has for us. It may be trash from what we watch, what we hear or even read, but regardless, those things allowed to stack up and pack in over time have a damning effect that prevent us from receiving what Christ has to offer.
Listen, you’ve got to blow up those damns. You’ve got to enter the daily battle for your heart and mind! There’s a war going on to keep you from becoming what God wants you to be and from knowing Him as you can. “The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus came to give you life: abundant life.” He came to make you a flowing, living giving river. Satan wants you to stagnate and dry up.
There is absolutely nothing in this life that will lead to abundant life like knowing God. Paul said it this way in Philippians 3:8-15.
“Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, let us, as many as are mature, have this mind…”
His greatest desire was to know God, to know and experience His resurrection power living and working through Him. Paul’s greatest desire was to be like Christ, and it began with a transformation of the mind. If your desire is that – to know and become like Christ, and you’re willing to have the dams blown up in your life, then I want you to know the process really is simple. In fact, it’s as easy as ABCs.
Aim
What are you aiming at? If I were to take a bow and arrow and aim for that clock back there, what do you suppose I ought to look at? The clock! But between me and it are countless things fighting for my attention. Paul spoke of the matter as running a race in Hebrews 12:1-2.
“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
What was the writer’s aim? Jesus! And do you see what he did? He had to fight the distractions: laying aside every weight and sin. Sin is obvious. You know what that is – though you may not always recognize it working in your life. But the weights – those are not always so obvious. These are the other things that distract you and divert your focus from your aim. And they’re not always bad things. In fact, more often than not they are the good things that keep you from the best thing.
So aim! Make your life’s greatest pursuit to know God and experience Him in the fullness He desires for you to know. “I have come that you might have life, abundant life.”
Backup
The writer of Hebrews said that while we ran there’s a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us. I can imagine them sitting in some great arena cheering us on – chanting our name. These are the folk who are backing us.
Who has your back? Certainly you have the saints who have gone on before, but what about here and now? As you make it your aim to know God, who’s got your back? Who’s cheering you on? Who’s chanting your name? I believe that’s what Hebrews 10:24 and 25 are really all about. When God’s churches and the small groups that they offer are functioning properly we’re going to find that cheering section in them.
“And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”
In other words, as a church family we ought to have one another’s backs. I ought to have your back, you ought to have mine, and certainly God has ours.
Commit
If my aim were to be a great runner and my backup was another great runner who could mentor and challenge and encourage me, what good would it do for me to stay in bed? Or what good would it do to show up for practice runs and not remember why I was running?
If your aim is to know and experience God, to be like Him, and you’ve surrounded yourself with the kind of backup you’ll need, then commit yourself to the right race. The race is not public recognition. The race is not peer approval. The race is not what I think about you or what your church thinks about you. The race is to know God – to really know Him in this journey we call life.
Commit yourself to helping others in the journey. That’s body life. Sitting in the pew is not body life. Attending a class is not body life. But entering into relationships with one another: relationships built on the principles of trust and love and grace and forgiveness is body life. The church and the small groups it offers are simply the context God has provided to experience that sort of body life – commit to that experience.
Sprint
Remember, I said it was as simple as your ABCs, not as simple as your ABC. So “S” stands for sprint. I don’t normally tell you to sprint. After all, the journey we’re on is more like a marathon than a sprint. However, I’ve come to see that because it is a journey, a marathon, folk get the idea that there’s no urgency to it. But there is!
Why wait for abundant life? Why put off knowing God? Why hesitate and procrastinate when the life God offers is just waiting? Sprint! Whatever it is that God has impressed upon you to do today do it now!
Some of you know that you’ve been stagnating. Like Loy Lake your life has dwindled down until people have to wade through the mud and the muck to get to what you really have to offer. You miss the life giving flow that you once experienced and now there are not wells of living water springing forth out of you. You feel like you’re drying up.
The answer is to blow up the dams that are stopping the flow. Christ is working around you and in you every moment of your life, but you’ve allowed some things to stop the flow. Today you need to reevaluate your priorities. Have you been too busy? The blahs got you down? Have you allowed the trash and clutter of life stop the flow? Then take aim on those dams today and allow the Holy Spirit to blast them right out of your life!
Give yourself to Him. Make it your prayer to live each moment with the simple desire to know Him, to experience Him and trust Him in each of those moments. You begin there and watch how those living waters will begin to flood into your life, dislodging some of that old junk that God wants to wash away. It won’t be easy – but it will be worth it.
