Are You Plugged In?
CCCAG April 1st, 2018
Scripture- John 4:31-38
Introduction
Purpose unfulfilled
Early days of being a Paramedic
I started working full time as a paramedic when I was in my mid 20’s, and as with everyone who starts in Fire or EMS, you start at the bottom. At the company I worked for, that means you started at Station 1.
Station one was a transfer station. No 911, no rescue. You did nursing home runs and interfacility calls all day long. What that means is you took people home from the hospital who could not walk or sit in a wheelchair, or to the doctor’s office, or from a small hospital to a big hospital.
No rescue, no lifesaving, and no cool stuff you went to school to learn.
After about 6 months of that, I was getting pretty fed up. I started to feel as if I lost a year of my life going through a very tough school, learning to save lives to do nothing but transfer people from one place to another.
My partner at the time noticed that my once awesome attitude was beginning to show signs of deterioration. I was complaining, not really excited about coming to work, generally grumpy with everyone. He said, “You need to get a few shifts out at Station 3”
Station 3 was our rescue station. They were pretty busy as they covered most of the southern end of Walworth County, and did paramedic intercepts with Western Kenosha and Racine Counties. 90% of what they did was 911 rescue and they only did transfers when no other crews were available. The problem is that station assignment was based on seniority, of which I had none.
Well my partner worked it out so he did a trade with one of the more junior guys out at 3, and because I was still considered too new to work without a senior partner, they moved me out to station 3 for a couple of shifts.
During those two shifts, I delivered my first baby, had a level one trauma, and 2 cardiac arrests, one of whom was brought back to life and eventually left the hospital completely normal.
I remember sitting on the bumper of the ambulance outside of Lakeland Medical center writing my report, watching the sunset and rejoicing that God let me follow my dream of being a lifesaver.
I was reenergized. I was on top of the world- I loved my job again. I had reconnected with the reason I became a paramedic in the first place, and that energy carried me through the long shifts at Station 1 until I had earned the right to have a permanent station 3 assignment.
I learned a valuable life lesson from that time-
There is something powerful about connecting with the reason that you exist.
For a long time I thought it was to be a paramedic. I thought that was God’s call on my life, and the reason HE molded me and shaped me and my strengths and personality the way that HE did, and I saw that as my life mission.
Until I got called into the ministry, and realized paramedic was only a stepping stone for a higher plan God had for me.
Now- I get just as much of a rush seeing people get saved or watching them grow in the LORD. That’s part of what feeds my spirit and enables me to keep the proper perspective on being a bi-vocational ministry- that what I am doing for God and the sake of the Kingdom is never in vain.
Last week in John 4 we read the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well. We saw how Jesus ignored the religious rules of His time to seek and save one woman who had been used and abused by the men in her life, and was a social outcast from her own people.
She accepts the truth, and is moved from death to eternal life, and Jesus is basking in her salvation when his disciples return from finding him some food. I have this picture in my head that Jesus is like me sitting on the bumper of the ambulance, rejoicing in what God has called HIM to do.
That’s how His disciples find Him in John 4:31
John 4:31-38
31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Prayer
Premise- I want to explore a premise today being resurrection Sunday. On Easter Sunday, we talk a lot about the benefits of what Jesus enduring on the cross, how he paid for our sin through his suffering and death, and how it affects our eternal destiny.
All of these things are completely true and worthy of our attention, study, and they also give us a reason to follow and worship Jesus with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength.
But there is another facet of what Jesus did on the cross that I want to look at this Easter morning, and that is that Jesus also changes our power source. In essence, our appetites for the things found in life change.
We are not just talking about food. It’s not like you couldn’t stand Brussel sprouts before you got saved, and now you love them. If liking Brussel sprouts is the evidence of salvation, I’m in a lot of trouble.
I’m speaking to what the source of
your strength,
your joy,
your purpose,
Because IF you are a Christian, one of the proofs that Jesus is your Lord, God and King is that each one of these should only come from one place, and that is the resurrection power of our Lord Jesus.
Let’s explore that today.
Jesus had some interesting things to say about this
I. “My food is to do the will of God”
Obviously, Jesus is speaking spiritually here, but this thought can be expanded to everything in our lives.
Anyone who knows me knows that I like the outdoors. I love to hunt, fish when I can, and shoot guns. In fact, I have a few friends from work that have similar likes that talk about times on the range as “lead therapy”- that thing we do to relieve stress and feel alive again when life is beating us down.
All of us have that thing in our lives that helps us cope with the stress of life. Some people it’s computer games, some people it’s hanging out with close friends, others it may be food. Some people rely on substances or medications to help them get through the day and deal with stress.
The reason we so often turn to the physical is because we forget that we are spiritual beings living inside a body instead of the other way around. We receive all the stuff from our lives here and it’s processed inside our brains from an earthly point of view.
So the stress we feel is our mind and body reaction to dealing with something outside of our control.
Stress causes worry. Spiritually speaking, worry is a lack of faith whose only remedy is faith believing prayer.
If left unchecked, worry causes anxiety,
Anxiety causes us to seek something outside of ourselves in order to deal with the uncomfortable emotions that come with it.
Since most of our time is spent looking and experiencing life through our earthly senses, we turn to earthly things to help us deal with the affects of stress, worry, and anxiety.
The bible has different words for stress, fear, and anxiety.
They are fear, doubt, and unbelief. All of these are caused by being plugged into the wrong power source.
Let me illustrate
Most things in your house are powered by 120 Volts of electricity. Something that is intended to be powered by 120 V has a specific plug that matches a specific outlet so that you don’t accidently plug your reading lamp into another power source available in most homes, and that is a 220 volt power source. 220 powers your electric stoves, electric dryers, some window air conditioners- things that require a higher amount of electricity power to work correct.
When you get saved, your spiritual plug in changes. You go from the fleshly 120 volt to the 220 volt. You can’t experience the resurrection power of Jesus if you are trying to plug your 120 plug into a 220 power source- it doesn’t work that way. The plugs don’t match the outlet, so you can’t receive the power promised to you.
I’m going to say a provocative statement, but in my 25 years of being a Christian I have found this true in my own life and the lives of other that I have come into contact with- if you are saying that you are saved- that you have surrendered your will, your heart, and your life to Jesus Christ and made him LORD and Savior, and still struggle with excessive stress, worry, or fear I ask you this-
Are you actually a Christian? Maybe you did become a Christian at some point, but now you have fallen back into old habits and are struggling with the same things all over again- then you need to get on your knees and surrender again.
Or as the ladies in the PUSH prayer group in my old church used to say, “Pray until something happens”
Most of these issues exist in your lives because you are not doing the will of God.
God will not give His divine power, His strength, His prosperity, or His regeneration to a person existing outside of HIS plan. God is a good father and will not help you dive further into something that is going to destroy you.
That is why it is essential to ask ourselves constantly-
Am I existing within God’s perfect will and plan for my life? Is what I am desiring line up with the plainly revealed character of God found in His word.
If you can’t answer that with a firm yes, then you need to seek Him and ask what His will and Plan is for you.
The reason is because-
II. Our source of spiritual vitality and strength are the result of doing God’s will
Last week we studied the Woman at the well, and a conversation about water took place. Jesus told the woman at the well that
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
At the beginning of the message I described feeling frustrated about not being able to fulfill what I believe my mission was in life- to save lives. Because of that, everything that happened during a shift at that transfer station bugged the heck out of me. I was grumpy, had a bad attitude, and probably wasn’t very nice to work with for a few months.
That period of my life showed me something about myself- As the KJV of the bible would say-My attitude stinketh because my focus was on the wrong things- I wanted the exciting stuff not because I wanted to help others, but to experience the thrill of dealing with life and death.
I was an adrenaline junkie.
When you have a critically sick or injured person in front of you, and it’s you making every decision in those split seconds that will determine if they live or die, it’s a rush.
When I didn’t get my rush, I got grumpy.
It’s because my focus was outside of God’s will for my life- which was to help and serve other people, so the wages or consequences of that fleshly unfulfilled need was a bad attitude.
What that showed me, and what it shows all of us is this-
The law of sowing and reaping in the bible is a spiritual law that is absolute.
You can’t fool God.
You can’t con God.
You can’t put 50% spiritual into something and expect 100% blessing.
Jesus used an example that I will paraphrase a little
Giving is a spiritual exercise. However, if you give generously to someone or something and then post a video of you doing it to Facebook showing how much you gave and how awesome you are in doing it, who is benefiting?
If you are sowing to your own need to feel good about yourself, you should not be surprised when you ultimately reap dis-satisfaction about your life.
Every single time we try to assume the throne of our life, we reap the consequences of our own stubbornness and stupidity.
That’s why we are spending this time today studying Jesus’s words. Jesus’ source of strength was to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
The beginning of that work was to seek and to save that which was lost, like this Samaritan woman at the well, and the end of that work was the cross
On Easter we focus on the cross and the empty tomb because it shows you a different way to live- die to oneself.
The cross and the empty tomb calls us to put aside your own selfish ambition and needs for the sake of the Kingdom.
The cross and the empty tomb leads us to put God back on the throne of our heart, and let Him rule and reign in every part of our lives.
The best part about this is it doesn’t require any great deed on your part, because
III. Jesus has done the work (religious thinks do, Jesus said Done!)
I don’t know if you have been to a book store lately, but one of the larger sections in non-fiction is the self-help section.
In there you can find books like
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
• The Magic of Thinking Big
• The 48 Laws of Power
• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• The Art of Happiness (Dalai Lama)
All of these books give you some sort of recipe or exercises to do that help to improve your motivation, outlook, or effectiveness in life. The all say, “Do what I tell you to do, and this incredible result will happen”
This is what religion also says- “if you do this, God has to do that”
Religion says do but JESUS SAYS DONE!
One the last things Jesus said on the cross was “It is finished”
No greater statement has ever been made, because as he uttered these words, the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom.
That curtain separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. No one except he high priest, once a year, could enter that area. That curtain was 4 inches thick, and the great Jewish Historian Josephus said that teams of horses could not have torn it.
The curtain represented our sin, our rebellion, our pride, our stubbornness to yield to God’s law and His will and that separated us from the presence of Almighty God.
When Jesus paid the price for sin on the cross, that curtain was torn in two from Top to Bottom. When Jesus said, “It is Finished!” God reached down and ripped it in half, showing us that we have access to God the Father as long as we are surrendered to Jesus Christ.
No longer by the works of the law you will be justified, but it is by grace through faith that you are saved.
Are you surrendered to him today? Or are you playing at religion?
Is Jesus your sole source of strength, passion, and hope
I am not talking about becoming more religious-
Religion is your attempt to come to God on your terms. That’s that’s the ultimate pride and God will not receive you in your pride.
Jesus is the only way.
I beg of you today, surrender to Jesus because it is the only name given to men by which we must be saved.
Altar call
Conclusion
Communion- Remember Jesus’ work on the cross, and the resurrection power he has given us
John 6:55
44 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.
