July 26 Sermon for CATM - Destined to Win
You were made to win. You are destined to win. God has given you everything you need in Christ in order to excel, to succeed at life, and for all eternity.
This message is entitled “Destined to win”, and I hope that by the time we finish here today that God gives you a new vision for your life, a new passion to serve Him with all your being, and a grateful acceptance of all the potential that exists in you because you belong to Jesus Christ.
If you have not yet received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, my prayer is that today God will move in your heart and perform the miracle of giving you saving faith today;
so that you can know that you know that you know that your life is both safe in God’s hands, and so you know that you are here for a purpose far bigger than yourself, a purpose that God intends to engage your whole life with.
I’ve spent the last 3 weeks serving as a chaplain at the Pan Am games, in the Multi-Faith Centre at the Athletes Village at the foot of Bayview avenue.
So I’ve been spending a lot of time both with athletes who are pushing themselves in many cases to the limits of human endurance, and with an awesome team of chaplains from the Americas, most of whom, unlike me when I started, have a significant amount of ministry experience working closely with athletes.
What do chaplains do? They help to lead Athletes to Jesus and to motivate those who already belong to Him to give Jesus their absolute best, to be mindful that their whole lives are an act of worship and adoration, and that in their sport they can feel God’s deep pleasure as they give their everything.
So as chaplains we’ve been working together to encourage athletes - many of whom come from poor neighbourhoods in poor cities in poor countries.
These athletes bear the weight of the hopes of their families, friends and countries, and they are here to find out how they rank in the world of athletes.
They are the best of the best in their cities. And they’ve come here to find out where exactly they stand on the globe.
Many of the Pan Am sports are qualifiers for the Olympics next year in Rio De Janeiro. Barb and I hope to join the chaplaincy team over there next year to, again, serve the athletes as they push to discover their abilities and their ranking in the world.
And as I’ve served at the games, some Scriptures have come to have new meaning to me, and I hope they will have an impact on you as you consider what God is saying to your heart today.
In 1st Timothy, Paul is writing to a young disciple of his who has been serving as a leader in his church. Timothy has not been at it for too long, and he’s had some troubles.
He’s been misunderstood, and he’s been underappreciated for what he is: a strong young leader in Ephesus, where Paul had planted one of the first churches. [I’m glad we don’t take for granted the young leaders we have in our congregation.
Faith and James are two of our strongest leaders, both of them youthful, both of them full of the Spirit of God. And I’m so glad that we have others, perhaps not quite so young, who are passionate about growing and serving God with their whole selves. If you’re wondering, yes...I mean you.]
Paul’s had to tell Timothy something that I would echo to James and Faith and to any other young person here serious in their pursuit of God: “12 Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.”
And to them and to all others who would seek to glorify God with their whole lives in service to Him and to people, I would also echo the rest of what Paul says: “13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. 14 Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you. 15 Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress”. 1 Timothy 4
A bit later on Paul writes to the same young leader Timothy in his second letter an important summary statement that is the heart of why we are destined to win : “7 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. 2 Tim 1:7
And I want to say that these three things that Paul says are the keys to winning, to succeeding in life the way that Jesus wants you to succeed. Power, love and self-discipline.
Power
The key to everything to do with living in God and with succeeding in life is to do it on His terms. Based on Who God is. And based on a key aspect of Who God is: We don’t start with ourselves, with our limitations and frailty and failings.
No, rather we start with God and with His power at work in us. How will God work in us so that we win at life, so that we succeed in what He has called us to? It is by His power. Both for eternity and for right now, the power that we need to succeed is available to us through
Philippians 3:20-21
20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
The same power that Jesus has to bring everything under control is available through Jesus in your life to enable you to accomplish God's purpose in your life: that means The power that it takes to sustain the vast universe and all of its cosmic complexity, it means the finest subnuclear microorganism-all of the things that Jesus sustains by the word of his power.
Christ in you, the hope of glory, gives you the power that you need-authentic power, true, holy power-to succeed in doing the will of God in your life, which is your highest calling.
It has to be said, that we need to understand that our personal stories are part of God's story.
And when we first believed in the Gospel, and we were adopted as God sons and daughters into the kingdom of God, as his sons and daughters, we became subjects of the kingdom.
And the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. 1 Cor 4:20
So God's kingdom is not primarily about talking about God's kingdom, it's not passively sitting around and contemplating the things of God. It's not a matter of talk at all, it's a matter of God's power.
Jesus said:
49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Luke 24:49
Does God's power to come instantly, as soon as we demand it? No, of course not. We must learn to wait.
We must be committed to doing God's will according to God's timing. If we don't do that, we will be frustrated and we will find ourselves not succeeding.
Imagine yourself in your life right now. Everything is the same, except that, at the right time, you become clothed with God's power.
What change for that bring to your life? I'm asking. Can you describe in a couple words the change that we come to your life when God's power comes upon you?
For the follower of Jesus Christ, our success in life, our success in doing God's will, directly corresponds, frankly, to our level of commitment to the gospel of God.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. Rom 1:16
Is the gospel an old, old story that has only vague relevance in your life? Then I want to suggest that your access to God's power is limited because of the gospel is the power of God-God's power to bring salvation to everyone who believes, which is the ultimate miracle.
And the gospel is also the power of God that we need to be profoundly committed to, in order to be in the will of God, in order to achieve the things of God wants us to achieve, in order to win, in order to succeed.
Love
Of all the things that can motivate us: desire for being in the spotlight, money, enhanced self-esteem, just trying to justify our existence, nothing comes closer as a motivator than love.
Think about it for a minute. What you love doing the most? Or who do you love the most? When you love what you do, you give it your all. You give it everything.
God is the central passion of my life. But there are three other great loves of my life. The first and most important is my wife, Barbara. I love every second we spend together. I love everything we do together. And being with her makes even things I don't like to do, like gardening, like other typical stuff that people don't like doing, being with her makes that stuff quite OK. Quite tolerable. Actually, even enjoyable, because Barbara is there.
Doing things with Barbara is the ultimate thing in my life. It doesn't matter for traveling, going to see a movie, having dinner at home, sitting around watching TV. Because I love Barbara, with all of my heart, anything and everything connected to her is a joy. Love is my motivation.
Ministry is a huge passion for me. Ministry is all about serving. The community I get to serve is you guys. Because I love you, because you are my community, because in many or most cases I know you quite well, you have allowed me into your lives, I want to serve you.
When one of us hurts, when one member suffers, we all suffer. We just lost Sharon O’Brien early on Saturday morning. That impacts Jerry her husband and Claudette and Penny and Candy and so many others in the family. (They have a huge family...had the privilege to meet them on Thursday night as they waited on Sharon).
Sharon was a part of the Yonge Street Mission for a great many years, as has been her family. In times of grief and times of trial we serve one another, we minister to one another as a way of honouring Jesus.
And I always want to improve my service to you. I'm always thinking about how we can grow as a community, how we can be better disciples of Jesus, and how we can be disciple makers, we can draw near to God and near to each other as the body of Christ.
But you have your passion. You have the things or things or person that you love. That love is from God because God is love.
When love is your motivation, if positions you well to succeed at what you love. God wants to be our first love. So do other things and other people. Challenge for us, if we want to be genuine followers of Jesus Christ, is to be motivated by love, and to make sure that our first love is always God.
Jesus said everything, everything, everything comes down to love. Loving God and loving one another.
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Mt 22:37
Love is a great motivator, and when Jesus talks about love, he's not talking about sentiment, he's not talking about warm, fuzzy feelings. Jesus says:
15 “If you love me, keep my commands. Jn 14:15
Loving Jesus means obeying Jesus. Loving God means obeying God. Obeying God means doing what he commands. It means obeying what he says to do, and it means obeying what he says not to do. There is no way to get around this and still be in authentic follower of Jesus Christ.
20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. Jude 20
Self-discipline
So to succeed at life, to win at life - life which is not a game, but rather a testing ground, a place of preparation and discovery - to win at life we need self-discipline. A big part of self-discipline is sound thinking. Sound thinking leads us to take life seriously.
In my youth I was content to goof around, to get high, to drink and do those things which you do when you don’t know why you’re here. When I thought life had no purpose and that I had no purpose in this life, wasting time and energy and brain cells made sense. That way of living, of course, leads nowhere.
The biggest shock to my system ever came when, after being thoroughly convinced that life had no real purpose and no point at all, I discovered Jesus. I discovered God. Or should I say that God revealed Himself to me in Jesus.
And when I learned about Jesus, and why He came - to die for my sins and to reconcile me to God so that I could have life - abundant life - FULL of meaning and full of purpose - when I learned this it changed everything.
Instead of passing meaningless minutes and dreary days and yawning years until I died, I learned that every moment of every day is an opportunity to love God and love people. But to do that, I had to change. And to change I had to go into training to be a disciple of Jesus. And I had to train with discipline, self-control and a thought-out, coordinated activity.
Paul speaks directly about this in 1 Corinthians, and he uses an Olympic metaphor
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. 27 No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
So we don’t run aimlessly. That’s actually kind of a funny play on words. Can you imagine someone running aimlessly, running in circles, being a fighter who fights the wind? Of course not. You only run, you only compete when there’s a reason to do so. Paul says we need to run in such a way as to get the prize. Athletes compete for a reason.
They have their goal in mind. It’s to get on that podium, to have placed around their necks that heavy bronze, or silver or maybe, just maybe that gold medal. Actually, they all strive for the gold. They strive to win.
All of the athletes at the Pan Am games have lost lots of games. The difference between the athletes that made it to these games and those that never got close to their dream of winning is that the Pan Am athletes got up one more time than they fell down.
And the ones on the podium (an awful lot of Canadians won and awful lot of bling!) - those men and women were all, at one point (I discovered working at the games) they were all tempted at one point to give up. To throw away their dreams. But.
They managed their emotions, they didn’t give up. they had a mature understanding of what failing is for. We fail in order to learn how to do it better next time. In that way failing is our friend, as long as we don’t give up.
Notice Paul doesn’t imply that winning at life is fate or fortune or any such thing that is outside of us. Thinking that way is a great way to not take personal responsibility for the way we conduct our lives.
God’s will is for you to succeed. He is for you and not against you. In fact the Word of God says that “his divine power has bestowed on us everything necessary for life and godliness through the rich knowledge of the one who called us by his own glory and excellence”. 2 Peter 1:3
A critical part of self-control is how we manage our thoughts about our past. You know why we don’t like to talk about our pasts - particularly the hard parts, the tough times, the failures we’ve experienced? It’s because no one wants to be defined by their past failings.
Paul the Apostle had done a lot of things. He’d learned and grown a lot. He had a ton of baggage, including the fact that he once hated and persecuted and sought to destroy the church. He’d been a part of imprisoning and murdering Christians. That’s a lot of baggage that totally could have weighed him down and kept him from doing anything constructive with his life.
But here’s what Paul said: “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus”. Philippians 3:13-14
He forgets what’s behind. Why? We leave behind our past mistakes because if we don’t, we will define ourselves by those mistakes. And that will make us timid. It will make us fearful of ever taking healthy risks again. We will be timid if we will with an inaccurate understanding of ourselves, based on what we used to be.
We are a new creation in Christ Jesus. We are a changed people who have been apprehended by Jesus, adopted into God’s family through the shed blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We experience His mercies fresh, brand-spanking new every single day. You woke up today? You experienced God’s fresh mercy. Amen?
Brothers and sisters, you are destined to win. Everything that you need to win is available to you. The power of God. The love of God and the motive of love.
And God’s call upon your life to live a self-disciplined, purposeful lives. Let us run the race before us, knowing that the very wind of God, the Holy Spirit is at our back.
And let us give all glory and honour and praise to the One who has revealed Himself to us as God-in-the-flesh, the king of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ. Amen.
