Series - Maximum Impact, Life with a difference # 1
Ever hear of a ‘Cruise to Nowhere’? On Friday night people board luxury cruise ships for a 2 to 3 day sail on the seas that literally goes nowhere! The ship leaves port on Friday night, out to sea, sails in large circles, and returns to port on Sunday evening. These cruises are generally sold as ‘get away’ cruises, and they offer an escape in luxury for a couple of days. That might be fun for a weekend.
What about living life like a ‘cruise to nowhere,’ drifting aimlessly, finding diversions in food, fun, and sleep - passing time while accomplishing nothing? Not so great, in my opinion, and yet; that is how some people live - either by choice or because they just don’t know any better.
God did not design you or me to drift from birth to death, finding a few diversions in life along the way. In his best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren, opens with these words:
“The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal happiness, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even you wildest dreams or ambitions. ... you must begin with God. You were born by His purpose and for His purpose.”
Some of you are growing tense even as I speak:
“Pastor, I don’t need another guilt trip. I’m already buried up to my eyeballs in work.”
Or maybe you’re thinking:
“Yeah, right. Purpose? My life is so full of drama, obligations, and responsibility to even think about some purpose and meaning is a joke. I just survive.”
I have no interest, nor does the Lord, in laying a burden of guilt on you so that you will do more. I get the sense of frustration that we all feel from time to time when life seems to be out of But, He is deeply concerned that each of us is living in a way that pours our energy into the right efforts!
I am going to insist in this message that there is a better way to live than sitting and staring at you HD TV for hours every evening to escape the boredom or pressures of life. Sure, it is easy to find some happiness by turning into Sherlock Holmes, or Brad Pitt in the Bourne Legacy. Yes, even for just for a few moments, we can pretend to be rich, or famous, or thin, or beautiful, or powerful... but what happens when the screen goes dark?
There is more to life than a cruise to nowhere!
Over the next few weeks, God-willing, we will be exploring choices that help each one of us to live to make a maximum impact in the world. God will be honored by your life, and you will build a rich reward in Heaven, and you will be a happier person.
PRAY
Jesus, was walking through Samaria, a spiritually barren region. His disciples were with him. Samaria was nothing to them. They had written off the people there as being beyond help, unworthy of the least effort to bring them the hope of the Kingdom of God. Jesus got in their face and demanded that they change their perception - “As you look around right now, wouldn’t you say that in about four months it will be time to harvest? Well, I’m telling you to open your eyes and take a good look at what’s right in front of you. These Samaritan fields are ripe. It’s harvest time! “The Harvester isn’t waiting. He’s taking his pay, gathering in this grain that’s ripe for eternal life. Now the Sower is arm in arm with the Harvester, triumphant.”
John 4:35-36 Message
Is He asking us to see things differently, too?
Have you written off your family as being beyond redemption?
Have you decided that America is finished and destined for destruction?
Have you been tempted to give up on yourself, concluding that you will never be the Christian others seem to be?
Jesus is saying - “OPEN YOUR EYES and take a good look at what’s in front of you!”
TEXT - Judges 6. In your Pew Bible, you can find the story on page 381.
As you’re turning there, I want to remind you that
the Bible absolutely declares that God makes everyone of us with a purpose. Furthermore, He gives gifts to us through His Spirit, resources to us so that we can serve His plans and purposes effectively.
Several hundred years before the time of Christ, the people of God had failed Him in major ways. He removed His protection, allowing an invading army to carry the best and brightest among them away to Babylonian captivity in Assyria. Years later, when they were repentant, He sent this word through the prophet, Jeremiah!
29:11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD,
“plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Did you know that those are still promise words for you and for me? God has a destiny for you!
Some of you no longer believe that! You had dreams once, but ...they died when someone disappointed you or broke your heart.
Or perhaps your dreams died when a trusted spiritual leader failed.
Or maybe it was when you fell flat on your face trying and swore you would never put yourself in a risky place again.
Or perhaps your dreams just faded over time as they were put on the shelf and left untouched for too long.
Some of you excuse the death of your dreams as the result of maturity.
“I just grew up and realized the futility of trying to make a difference. Life is what it is.”
Yes, some of our youthful dreams (the sanctified ones!) weren’t really grounded in reality and were more fantasy than vision. But.... some of them might well have reflected our God-planned destiny. But just maybe we were too ready to believe the nay-sayers who beat the drums of “couldn’t, shouldn’t, never gonna’ happen, can’t afford it, get real, don’t lose your head in the clouds” until we settled for something much less than God planned for us.
Just maybe you’re here today and you don’t recall having a dream for your life. Maybe you were one of those people who were taught to reject dreams or whose life was so desperate you couldn’t afford the luxury of dreaming as you scrambled to survive poverty, abuse, or tragedy.
I repeat - God has a destiny for you!
Faith Discovery is guided by three words.
We are committed to being Authentic in our pursuit of God and His will.
We are committed to being Accepting, letting God love others through us.
AND, We are committed to being Accelerating, encouraging people start to do what God created them to do!
Gideon, whose story provides our Scripture lesson today, lived in a difficult time of Israel’s history. After settling into the Promised Land, the Israelites descended into a kind of political and religious chaos. A spiritual pattern characterized their lives which we observe and, hopefully, from which we can learn!
· The people began to SIN, forgetting God and following their own agenda.
· God withdrew His blessing and they fell into SERVITUDE, oppressed by their neighbors.
· This suffering caused them to turn to God with SUPPLICATION, seeking God’s help.
· God sent SALVATION, bringing leaders called judges who helped them win freedom from their enemies and get back to serving Him.
Gideon was one of those leaders, but when we meet him he is clueless about his God-planned destiny.
The people of Israel abandoned God and started to worship other gods. God allowed their neighbors, the Midianites, to oppress them for 7 years. They planted their fields and each year, just before harvest, these enemies swept in and stole their crops. In poverty, dying from hunger, the Israelis finally called out to God for help.
He answered with the call of Gideon, but getting this young farmer to step up was a major task. Why? Because he just could not imagine himself as a leader, as a man God could use.
Let’s pick up the story at 6:11-24 READ
Our very ordinariness, even our sense of sinfulness, can keep us from seeing what God has planned for us!
I love Gideon’s honesty with God’s messenger.
“God is with you, mighty warrior!” says the angel. Truth was, Gideon was hiding out from Israel’s enemies at that very moment. The text tells us he was threshing wheat, that is, separating the kernel of grain from the useless outer hull. What he’s doing is common, but where he is doing it is strange!
In normal times the wheat harvest was carried to a threshing floor, a large open space. There several people or even a large domestic animal would walk over the stalks and heads of grain to make those kernels drop away.
But what is Gideon doing?
He’s working in a small winepress, a small round stone item. He is afraid of the Midianite raiders that frequently stole Israelite grain. “Mighty warrior?” Besides fear, Gideon was full of doubt. “If God is with us, why are we having such a terrible time in life? God has abandoned us.”
You know how this feels, don’t you? So do I!
The very act of stepping into this pulpit and bringing a message to you each week fills me with a kind of fear. Who am I to teach others the Word of God?
Why would anyone listen to me?
Am I faithful to the Word even if it is unpopular and makes others dislike me, the messenger?
Sometimes when I am preparing a message, some sin or failing in me looms large in my mind and I ask the Lord, “I am too broken, too marred, to be of any use to You or Your people, Lord.” So, yes, I understand when you think that only someone else can live out their God-given destiny.
Images of failure can stand like walls that block the horizon, that keep us from seeing any hope for future.
The enemy of God and all that is good likes nothing more than to keep our focus on yesterday, especially the failures, for as long as we’re looking back, we can’t catch the vision that needs to shape tomorrow.
Gideon’s experience is a lesson for us all.
God’s estimate our potential is much different than our own self-estimate!
Gideon was hiding. He thought he was in great danger. Gideon was fearful because he thought he was weak. Gideon saw only defeat and destruction and himself as a victim of circumstances beyond his understanding believing God had abandoned His people.
God saw a mighty warrior, a man who could rally the people of Israel and break about the defeat of their Midianite enemies! God saw a people who were ready to serve Him once again and a man who was called and equipped for leadership.
Is there a gap between points of view? Sure is!
· Might that same gap exist between who you think you are and what you think you can do and who God is calling you to be?
· What identity is shaping your life; your perceptions of yourself or the vision of the God who created you?
Again, I so appreciate the honesty of the story.
Gideon very humanly cannot quite bring himself to believe what he’s being told so he asked the angel if he could go prepare an offering, which he did.
From the text, we can infer that this took some time, perhaps even hours! When he returned the angel told him to set the offering of goat meat, broth, and unleavened bread on a rock. Then the angel touched the offering with his staff and, in an instant, a fire consumed the offering right before Gideon’s eyes! He was convinced and went from that moment of encounter, a changed man, with a brand new identity.
When he took his eyes off of himself and saw God, Gideon gained a new vision. He started to live for maximum impact, making a difference!
Re-read v. 22-24
Let me ask you again - Is your life like a cruise to nowhere? Does one meaningless day flow into the next?
I can say with great confidence that God has something better for you. Will you believe it?
The very first choice is to see yourself as God sees you!
Christ Jesus, came to change our destiny and offers each of us a new life!
As human beings we have a big problem which we do not like to face; we’re sinners.
We have missed God’s plan and offended Him deeply by ignoring Him and doing our own thing.
Israel came under the judgment of God when they took up the worship of the gods of the nations around them, and so do we. No, our sin isn’t displayed by bowing down to little carved idols. But we do serve many false gods. We serve gods that go by the names: Success, Retirement Savings, Reputation, Sensuality, and/or Pleasure. We serve these gods no less religiously than the ancient people worshiped the fertility gods of the Canaanites! Somewhere deep inside we know our wrong. We may deny it. We may cover it up. We may excuse it way, but the guilt remains.
But, He reaches out because He not only sees who we are, but who we can be!
He offers us, at His expense, a brand new identity . Sinners, the worst and the least alike, find a brand new life in Christ. The Scripture says, 2 Corinthians 5:17
. . . if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
That’s not just a spiritual transaction, hidden away in our hearts. It’s about a whole new life!
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
And that is what some of you were. {Note the PAST tense!}
But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Many of us keep wanting to look back. Even though we know the old ways were leading us nowhere, we’re attached to them. They just ‘feel right’ because they are so familiar. The Bible uses strong language about dealing with the old ways - By “the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature.” (Ro 8:13).
We must stop coddling, comforting, excusing, cuddling up to the sinful nature! God pronounced a death sentence on that old way of life and tells us to carry out the execution!
We stop telling ourselves that it’s OK to be nothing, OK to hang onto that habit, OK to hide out from the Lord Then, as we focus Christ, we begin to break the patterns of who they were before.
Dr. Neil Anderson, a teacher and pastor, created a great tool. Who Am I? is a list of declarations that God makes about our identity. It’s not just happy talk, or self help jargon. It’s truth that changes us. Because when we change our thought patterns, we change our very identity.
What negative experiences have brought you pain or shame and prompted you to shelve the spiritual desires you once had?
Whether the problem was of your own making or the fault of others, it’s time to let God heal those wounds.
The following steps give you a good start.
1. Put a name to the way you have been living.
Is it Fearful Gideon, Resentful Mary, Wounded Curtis, Angry Sally, Disillusioned Dave, Negative Ned,
or ____________?
Don’t move on to step 2 until you have identified the false name under which you have been living.
2. Now ask the Holy Spirit to show you the new name he wants you to embrace.
“Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!” is the healthy new identity the angel asked Gideon to accept.
What new identity might God want you to receive?
If you haven’t embraced Christ as the One who forgives your sin, do that FIRST.
Face the fact that no matter how good you’ve tried to be, you haven’t met the standard of a holy God! Thank Him for settling the issues of your guilt and making it possible for you to ‘come home again.’
THEN, ask the Spirit of God to help you to begin to dream again, inspired dreams of the person He’s planned for you to become!
No matter how much success or failure you have known, God can give you a new tomorrow.
Your win/loss record doesn’t matter to Him.
Who loved you, who hated you becomes irrelevant when you know HE loves you.
Look up and adopt the attitude expressed by Paul, who found His true identity after many years of trying to live life on his own terms. He was a religious man, a man of incredible self-discipline. We would have admired him on the outside, but he didn’t know God. His life was an empty thing, without meaning until Christ met Him on a highway between Jerusalem and Damascus. Heaven issued a new identity to the Pharisee named Saul and he became Paul, the saint!
Many years later he acknowledged the up’s and down’s of life, and the faithfulness of God. He wrote,
"I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back. " (Philippians 3:12-14, The Message)
That is the first and most important step - becoming a new person, with a new perspective, and the life of the Spirit in you that allows you to hear the Spirit’s guidance. Respond to Him today!
In weeks to come - I hope to speak to you about...
• Learning to Walk WITH God.
• Planning to Succeed.
• Wiring Into Wisdom.
• Breaking out of the Boxes others build around you.
• Seeing past the edge of your yard!
• Taking a Leap of Faith!
Amen
