INTRO.- Prepare for action. Prepare for what? It could be anything.
ILL.- My dad was born in 1910 and our family didn’t have a car until the late 1940‘s. The first car I remember we had was a 1947 or 48 Chevy. When I was very small we took a trip in that car to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and what a long trip that was. I checked recently. It was 766 miles and well over 10 hours of hard driving in that old car. Mom and dad had friends there that we visited. In 1957 we took a trip to Anaheim, CA, to visit friends in our fairly new 1955 Chevy. That trip was even longer at over 1,500 miles and 20 plus hours of driving.
One thing I remember that my dad did before we ever took a trip was to get his car serviced and check the air in the tires; get the oil and filter changed and air up the tires and make sure they were ready for the road. My dad believed in preparing for a trip. I wish he had believed in preparing for eternity as well, but he didn’t. My dad died without ever confessing faith in Jesus or being baptized. That was a very sad day for me and my heart still aches.
PREPARATION is important for most things in life.
ILL.- In the 1969 movie "PAINT YOUR WAGON," Lee Marvin plays a drunk named Ben Rumstead. During the closing scene, Ben Rumstead is standing in the rain on a muddy street talking with the proprietor of a local store. The store owner looks at the passing wagons, loaded with people and furniture moving out of town and says, "There are two kinds of people in this world. There are those who move on and those that stay. Ain't that the truth, Ben Rumstead?"
"No, that ain't the truth," Ben Rumstead replies, with a swagger enlarged by the half-empty bottle in his hand. "There are two kinds of people in this world. Them that is going someplace and them that is going no place. That's the truth."
It's true that some people are going somewhere and some are going nowhere. This is especially true spiritually. Many people are going nowhere spiritually. Many people leave Christ and the church out of their lives and then hope they’ll be saved when they die. That’s like sowing your wild oats and then praying for crop failure.
ILL.- One Boy Scout motto is what? BE PREPARED. BE PREPARED which means you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your DUTY. And to me, there is only way to be prepared in life and that's in the Lord!
ILL. - Henry Ford: Before everything else, getting ready is the secret to success.
- John F. Kennedy: The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
- Abraham Lincoln: If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first hour sharpening the ax.
- Someone said: You don’t have to lie awake nights to succeed. Just stay awake days. And I say, seek the Lord. That's always the right way and the best way to prepare for anything life.
PROP.- Our text speaks of preparation for living a successful Christian life. Prepare what? 1- Prepare your mind 2- Prepare your body 3- Prepare your heart
I. PREPARE YOUR MIND
13Therefore, prepare your minds for action.
ILL.- Albert Einstein was interested in almost everything, and gave every topic and visitor his undivided attention. But sometimes he would rise abruptly—even in the middle of a sentence—and say apologetically, "I have to work now." He would get up and go to his study, leaving it to his wife and secretary to entertain the guest a while longer. There was nothing offensive about this; it was obvious that Einstein's brain had started to spin, and that he had to work.
It’s obvious that Einstein was a thinking man and we all need to be thinking people. Someone once said, “When God called for brains some people thought He said ‘trains’ and headed for the train station.” Admittedly, we don’t always use the brains that God gave us. Sometimes we act like we don’t have any brains.
13Therefore, prepare your minds for action.
And right thinking doesn't happen without thinking in the right direction. People are thinking all the time but that doesn’t mean they have right thinking. It’s like that stupid statement I’ve heard some people say, “Let’s go do something even if it’s wrong.” THAT IS DUMB THINKING!
Romans 1:27-29 "27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice..."
Why do people do perverted things? The answer is simple. They think that way. Yes, and most don't even think!
V. 28 "Since they did not think..." "Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God.”They don't think and they don't think about God. That's why people do perverted things!
Now the other side of the coin is this: Philippians 4:8 "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
ILL.- I heard a sermon one time in college in which the professor said, “The doing will never be right until the thinking is right.” Right thinking will produce right actions. When a person thinks about things that are true and right, they seek after those things. They will DO those things. This is why we need to set our minds on God’s Word every day.
Proverbs 23:7 "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." You are what you are because of your thinking. Your thinking has brought you to this point in your life, be it good, great, or otherwise. But we all must prepare our minds for action in the future.
ILL.- President Nixon once told that while talking to Winston Churchill's son, he told him how much he admired the prime minister's great ability at giving 'extemporaneous' speeches. Churchill's son replied, "Oh, yes. I've watched my father work for hours preparing those extemporaneous speeches."
Most worthwhile things take time to prepare. We MUST prepare our minds for this worthwhile adventure we call life. How do we prepare our minds ? With scripture and prayer!
Ps. 1:1-3 1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
Ps. 119:11 "Thy Word have I hid in my heart..." Prepare your mind with God’s Word.
II. PREPARE YOUR BODY
13Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. Be self-controlled. To me, this suggests control yourself, your body, and use it for the Lord.
I Corinthians 6:19-20 “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
I think we realize that we belong to the Lord. Our bodies belong to the Lord which means we should take care of them as best we can. And I also realize that’s not always easy.
Some people have said:
- Aerobics: a series of strenuous exercises which help convert fats, sugars, and starches into aches, pains, and cramps.
- Neil Armstrong said, “I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm not going to use up mine running up and down a street.”
- Every time I get an urge to exercise, I sit down with a bag of chips and wait until the urge goes away.
- Inside me there's a thin person struggling to get out, but I can usually shut her up with four or five cupcakes.
- We all get heavier as we get older, because there's a lot more information in our heads. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Our bodies do belong to the Lord and we should try to take care of them as best we can. To honor God with our body also means to demonstrate a certain amount of self control. And if we are going to be self-controlled as the scripture says, then we must prepare our bodies as well as our minds. Self-control is a two part deal: our part and God’s part.
We must learn a certain amount of self-control for ourselves. It takes self-control to get up in the morning and go to work or do anything worthwhile.
ILL.- From the age of 42 to 50 years I ran 14 marathons, including the Boston Marathon. A marathon is 26.2 miles. And it takes a lot of time and preparation to be able to run that far. I didn’t run 26 miles overnight or the first time I tried it. In fact, when I stared running I could only jog a half mile. I did that every day for two weeks and then I could do a mile. When I got to where I could jog 5 miles a day for 5 days a week I began to lose a lot of weight and running got easier and I got faster and faster. PREPARATION is the key for running a marathon. Many miles in preparation.
I had to prepare my body to run that far. We have to prepare ourselves to go to work or play sports, etc. We must take care of ourselves and learn self control. Self-control is hard thing to learn. Practice makes perfect. If nothing else, practice will make us better at whatever we do, self-control or otherwise.
I Tim. 4:7-8 "Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come."
Physical training is of some value. Taking care of your physical body is important for living the Christian life. And most of us know how to do this. We just need to do it! We don’t have to kill ourselves with exercise, of course, just observe good health principles.
Self-control is also God’s part. Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
We must walk in the Spirit or live a spiritual life in order for God’s Spirit to produce His good fruit in us. If we don’t spend time in prayer and reading God’s Word then the Holy Spirit will have a hard time to producing self-control in us. We must cooperate with Him so He can operate on us!
III. PREPARE YOUR HEART
14As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."
Be holy. This should be our heart's desire in life: to be holy, to grow in the likeness of our holy God. To become holy we must prepare our hearts. Holiness is a matter of the heart.
Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”
Matthew 5:28 “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” We often sin in the heart first.
Matthew 6:21 “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Matthew 12:34 “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” And out of the abundance of the heart the person lives and does and speaks. Most people don’t have a speaking problem, they have a heart problem.
Matthew 15:19 “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.”
Do you see now how important the heart is? And, of course, I’m not talking about the physical heart but rather the spiritual heart that we all have. God wants us to be holy and it starts on the inside. Holiness in the heart doesn’t happen by itself. If we want a beautiful flower garden we have to work at it. We have to plant and water and remove the weeds to make it beautiful. And what makes us think the human heart is any different?
ILL.- Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a brilliant theologian whose sermons had an overwhelming impact on those who heard him. One in particular, his famous 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," moved hundreds to repentance and salvation.
That single message helped to spark the revival known as 'The Great Awakening" (1734-1744). From a human standpoint, it seems incredible that such far-reaching results could come from one message. Edwards did not have a commanding voice or impressive pulpit manner. He used very few gestures, and he read from a manuscript. Yet God's Spirit moved on his hearers with great conviction and power.
Few people know the spiritual preparation involved in that sermon. John Chapman gives us the story: 'For 3 days Edwards had not eaten a mouthful of food; for 3 nights he had not closed his eyes in sleep. Over and over again he was heard to pray, 'O Lord, give me New England! Give me New England!' When he rose from his knees and made his way into the pulpit that Sunday, he looked as if he had been gazing straight into the face of God. Even before he began to speak, tremendous conviction fell upon his audience."
Holiness was Jonathan Edwards' heart's desire in life. And so should it be in ours but it won't happen without work, without preparation.
CONCLUSION----------------------
ILL.- "Mamma," said a little child, "my Sunday-school teacher tells me that this world is only a place in which God lets us live a while, that we may prepare for a better world. But, Mother, I do not see anybody preparing. I see you preparing to go into the country, and Aunt Eliza is preparing to come here; but I do not see anyone preparing to go there. Why don't they try to get ready?"
This life is but a preparation for another life. Are you preparing for that next life? That better place that God has prepared for us? It’s a prepared place for a prepared people. What do you need to do to get ready?
