REFOCUSING OUR PRIORITIES
INTRO.- ILL.- A boy said to his girlfriend, “Ah, look at that cow and calf rubbing noses in the pasture. That sight makes me want to do the same.” His girlfriend said, “WELL, GO AHEAD. IT’S YOUR COW.”
Brothers and sisters, what’s your focus in life? Rubbing noses with a cow? Sometimes our focus in life seems about as important as rubbing noses with a cow. At least, to God it does!
ILL.- When I was in high school my focus was two-fold: lifting weights and girls. I was interested in both, but more interested in lifting weights. My schoolwork was not a priority. My twin sister Sharon and I both graduated. She graduated at the top of our class. I graduated.
ILL.- After high school my focus changed somewhat. My focus was cars, girls, work, and beer. Weightlifting was out and beer was in. I was 18 years old and Kansas was only about 10 miles away where I could buy beer at my age. My focus was wrong.
ILL.- When I became a Christian at the age of 20 my focus changed again. I focused on Christ, the church, Bible study, prayer, my girlfriend, and my work at Safeway. My focus had improved greatly in God’s eyes.
ILL.- Nine years into marriage and my daughter Holly Lynn came into the picture and my focus changed again. I fell in love with my baby girl. Six years later Shane was born. My focus changed again. I had to focus on both my children.
I loved my children back then. They were a big focus in my life. I love them now. They are still a part of my focus. As yours are to you. But my focus is on many other people as well.
ILL.- As you know, last week I put my poor mother in a nursing home in Joplin, MO. I didn’t want to do that, but that seemed the best option available. I love my mother. My focus was on her much of the week. She still is and will be. I think about her, call her, pray for her, and express my love to her.
I got home late Wednesday night and knew that I had to get my sermon ready for Sunday. I figured that sermon would be a big part of my focus on Thursday and Friday and perhaps even Saturday. IT WAS NOT TO BE.
On Thursday, Elaine got a phone call from the doctor telling her that she had to have a heart catherization on Friday. No ifs, ands or buts about it. MY FOCUS CHANGED VERY QUICKLY. From sermon to serving. Serving my wife. And I was very happy to take her, be with her, pray for her, etc. Of course, I had company with me to keep me in line.
I thought, “The sermon will come somehow, some way.” And it did. I work well under pressure, but please, not this next week!
Last week when New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania were hit by terrorists, our country’s focus changed! AND WELL IT SHOULD HAVE!
Most went from laughter to weeping! Especially, the people in New York and Washington and the families who lost their loved ones.
James 4:9-10 “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”
That’s the focus we witnessed last week. Not many laughing. Most weeping. Most humbled and many praying to the Lord.
ILL.- One lady wrote, “I grew up in Manhattan. The World Trade Center towers were completed the year after I was born. They have been, to me, a symbol of the safety and security of home, my hometown, for as long as I can remember.
“Now that they’re gone, demolished with a quick, insane deliberation that I still can’t fathom -- like toy blocks, knocked down in a fit of rage -- it’s as though some part of the underpinning of my life has crumbled. Now I, too, wonder where I stand.
“The day after the blast I woke up thinking, what is my life worth? What have I done of value? Does anything I’m doing have any real meaning? Or am I just slouching through adulthood, waiting for my cues, cashing my paychecks?”
Brothers and sisters, our focus in life must change and change for the better. Our focus must change for our own sake and for the Lord’s sake.
PROP.- I want to consider some areas where we need to refocus our priorities in the light of the recent tragedy.
1- Faith, not fear
2- People, not pleasure
3- Seeking, not sitting
I. FAITH, NOT FEAR
ILL.- There is a story about a monastery in Europe perched high on a cliff several hundred feet in the air. The only way to reach the monastery was in a basket which was pulled to the top by several monks. Obviously the ride up the steep cliff in that basket was terrifying.
One tourist got extremely nervous about half-way up as he noticed that the rope by which he was suspended was old and frayed. With trembling voice, he asked the monk who was riding with him in the basket how often they changed the rope. The monk thought for a moment and answered, "Whenever it breaks."
As we all know, some things have been breaking apart lately. And it seems that more is breaking apart all the time.
We Americans are afraid! We are afraid to fly. Many people are either canceling their flights and not making any plans to fly at all. “We ain’t flying no more!” That’s what many are saying.
We are afraid to buy anything, especially anything big. We are afraid to take trips anywhere. We are almost afraid to walk across the street. It seems like we are afraid of our own shadows. We are afraid of loud noises. We are afraid of what is happening to the stock market. We are afraid that we will lose our jobs.
ILL.- Boeing Aircraft Co. said last Tuesday it would lay off between 20,000 and 30,000 workers in its commercial jet unit by the end of 2002. One article stated that by Wednesday, airline and aerospace companies alone had eliminated more than 100,000 jobs since the attacks, but the impact was being felt well beyond the aviation industry.
ILL.- My sister’s husband, Michael Hughlett, is a computer engineer for Bell Helicopter near Dallas, TX. NO MORE. NOT NOW. He has worked for them six years and got laid off last week. My sister just went back to work two weeks ago after being laid off for 3 months. She said, “When it rains, it pours.” And that’s how many of us feel. When we get dumped on, it seems like we get dumped on royally!
We are afraid of war, of having one and losing our loved ones in a war. We are afraid! And depressed.
ILL.- One article stated that SEVEN IN 10 people said they have felt depressed since the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, nearly half report having trouble concentrating and a third said they have had trouble sleeping, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. “Clearly, people are devastated by what happened,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.
Somehow, our focus needs to change from fear to faith.
II Cor. 5:6-7 “Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight.”
Even though America has been devastated by what happened last week, it is time for us to look up! It is time for us to walk by faith and not by what we see! It is time for us to put our trust in the living God, and not in America, not in the President, not even in the American people!
The people of God in the Old Testament believed God. They believed in His ability to save them and protect them and provide for them.
ILL.- Just before those three Hebrew boys (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) were thrown into the fiery furnace, they said to King Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel 3:17 “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to saves us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.”
After God delivered them, King Nebuchadnezzar said, Daniel 3:28 “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! THEY TRUSTED IN HIM...”
I would love to have been there to watch that show! To watch those boys walking around in that fiery furnace, thumbing their noses at old King Neb! What a sight that would have been!
What those old boys did, we need to do! Trust God for deliverance from the fiery furnace of the trials in this life! WE NEED TO LIVE BY FAITH AND NOT BY FEAR!
Daniel 11:32 one version reads, “...the people who know their God will display strength and take action.”
I like those words. Those are words of trust in God. When we trust in God, good things happen.
ILL.- Dr. James Boice said it this way. “We do not have a strong church today nor do we have many strong Christians. Why? It is because they have allowed their minds to become conformed to the spirit of this age, with its mechanistic, godless thinking. They have forgotten what God is like and what He promises to do for those who trust Him.
“Ask the average Christian to talk about God. After getting past the expected answers you will find that his god is a god who would like to save the world, but cannot. He would like to restrain evil, but somehow, he finds it beyond his power.”
James Boice further said, “Such a god is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is not weak; He is strong! He is all-mighty! Nothing happens without His permission or apart from His purposes - even evil. Nothing disturbs Him or puzzles Him. HIS PURPOSES ARE ALWAYS ACCOMPLISHED. Therefore those who know Him, rightly act with boldness, assured that God is with them to accomplish His will...”
Brothers and sisters, that’s the kind of faith and trust that we need to have and exemplify in our lives! We believe God! We trust in our all-wise, all-powerful, all-loving God, believing that He will act! That He will do something to thwart the evil of this world and take care of us!
We must live by faith, not by fear. This must be our focus. How do we get this kind of powerful and active faith? Well, we won’t get it by watching TV! That’s for sure! And we won’t get it by playing games either!
It’s one thing to watch TV and feel compassion for those hurting, suffering people in New York and Washington. It’s another thing to stay and watch TV all day long and night, hoping for good.
There is only one way to increase our faith in our living, all-powerful God!
ILL.- Dwight L. Moody once said, “I suppose that if all the times I have prayed for faith were put together, it would amount to months. I used to say, ‘What we want is faith. If we only have faith we can turn Chicago upside down or right-side up.’
“I thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read Romans 10:17 ‘Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.’ I had closed my Bible and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible and began to study, and my faith has been growing ever since.”
We need to read more Scripture. We need to be in church, Sunday School and Bible study groups more! That’s how to strengthen our weak and sometimes, watered down faith! Victory does not come by looking into the face of enemy, but rather by looking into the face of God! And we do that by studying Scripture!
We need to refocus our priority and walk by faith, not fear.
II. PEOPLE, NOT PLEASURE
ILL.- A group of friends went deer hunting and paired off in twos for the day. That night one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under an eight-point buck.
"Where’s Harry?" he was asked.
"Harry had a stroke of some kind. He’s a couple of miles back up the trail."
"You left Harry laying there, and carried the deer back?"
"Well," said the hunter, "I figured no one was going to steal Harry."
Sometimes our pleasure is more important than people. What we want to do in life is more important than people.
But we must realize that people are God’s highest form of creation and God’s most important creation! WE MUST INVEST OUR LIVES IN PEOPLE! We must love people most of all, not our pleasures!
ILL.- Ron was a fifteen-year-old teenager, a tenth-grade student at Granger High School. It was game day, and he was the only sophomore suiting up with the varsity team. Excitedly, he invited his mother to attend. It was her very first football game, and she promised to be there with several of her friends. The game finally ended, and she was waiting outside the locker room to drive Ron home.
"What did you think of the game, Mom? Did you see the three touchdown passes our team made and our tough defense, and the fumble on the kickoff return that we recovered?" he asked.
His mother replied, "Ron, you were magnificent. You have such presence, and I was proud of the pride you took in the way you looked. You pulled up your knee socks eleven times during the game, and I could tell you were perspiring in all those bulky pads because you got eight drinks and splashed water on your face twice.
“I really like how you went out of you way to pat number nineteen, number five and number ninety on the back every time they came off the field." "Mom, how do you know all that? And how can you say I was magnificent? I didn’t even play in the game."
His mother smiled and hugged him. "Ron, I don’t know anything about football. I didn’t come here to watch the game. I came here to watch you!"
Brethren, the moral of this story is: PEOPLE COUNT MOST OF ALL! Football is fine. Football is fantastic for some people. But people are supreme! People are more important than football. People are more important than all our pleasures and treasures.
I think when those planes hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and that field in Pennsylvania many people suddenly realized that people were more important than many things in life: sports, hobbies, TV, material things and a host of other things.
Things are just things, but people are the living, valuable, eternal creation of God! And God wants us to value them and focus on them more than on anything else in life!
Jesus lived for people! He loved people.
Peter characterized Jesus in Acts 10:38 as one who “went around doing good” to others.
Rom. 12:10 “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.”
Gal. 5:13 “Serve one another in love.”
Gal. 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
Gal. 6:9-10 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”
Phil. 2:3-4 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
We need to refocus our priorities. We need to stop being so near-sighted. We need to stop looking at ourselves so much and thinking about pleasures and treasures and start looking at people and loving them.
III. SEEKING, NOT SITTING
(or preaching, not perching)
ILL.- There was once a young, energetic preacher who had a thriving country church. He was always prodding his people to do greater things for God. However, there was one deacon who did little and seemed to care less. It caused the young preacher much concern. The deacon never seemed to get the point of the sermon.
One Sunday, the preacher made his point even more clear as to what he was talking about and to whom. When the deacon walked out of church he said to the preacher, “You sure told them today.”
The next Sunday the young preacher made himself even more clear. Again, the deacon walked out and said, “Boy, you sure told them again today.”
The next Sunday the weather was so bad that only a handful of people showed up, including that deacon. The preacher thought surely he will get the point today. In fact, he made his sermon even more pointed. When the deacon walked out he said to the preacher, “Preacher, you sure told them if they had been here.”
Brothers and sisters, I never point my sermons to one individual in the church, but I do point to the church as a whole and I expect you to get the point! And one point that I have been trying to make lately is church growth! And personal evangelism! Each one, reach one. Each one, witness to one. This is the main way the church will grow.
And in the light of what happened last week in New York and Washington, we need to be reaching out to people more than ever! People are open to help right now. Some people are very open to the gospel of Christ and we need to give it and give Him to them!
We need to be seeking, not sitting. Preaching, not perching.
Luke 19:10 Jesus said of himself, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
ILL.- President George Bush had an excellent speech last Thursday evening. One thing was clear in his speech: HE CALLED FOR ACTION FROM THE WORLD AND ESPECIALLY, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE! He said, “The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud,” he said. Bush also gave a choice to the world’s leaders: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
Brothers and sisters, the time is now for us to act! I’m talking about acting in regard to witnessing to people about Christ.
I’m talking about inviting anybody and everybody we come in contact with! Neighbors, friends, relatives, service station attendants, cashiers, butchers, bankers and candlestick makers, etc.
The apostle Paul said in Ephesians 5:16 that we must make the most of every opportunity because the days are evil.
There is a lot of evil in our world and some people are just now waking up to this fact. BECAUSE OF THIS EVIL, WE MUST WITNESS NOW! WE MUST SEEK THE LOST NOW AND NOT BE FOUND SITTING, DOING NOTHING!
ILL.- The article in Christianity Today was entitled: Active Christian on Flight 93 Hailed as a Hero
By LaTonya Taylor | posted 9/19/01 Todd Beamer will always be remembered as a national hero. But members of Princeton Alliance Church in Plainsboro, New Jersey, say they thought of the 32-year-old father of two as a hero long before he and others on United Flight 93 confronted hijackers on the Boeing 757 on September 11. The flight was the only one that did not hit a target. Instead, it crashed in rural Pennsylvania
Vice President Dick Cheney said Beamer and the others kept the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history from having an even greater impact in the nation’s capital. "What they did was to foil, I think, the attack on Washington," he said on NBC’s Meet the Press. "Without question, the attack would’ve been much worse if it hadn’t been for the courageous actions of those individuals on United 93."
On board Beamer called a GTE Airfone operator about the hijacking, recited the Lord’s Prayer, and said, "Let’s roll." Beamer and the others, investigators believe, then somehow interfered with the terrorists’ plans and kept the jet from hitting a target presumed to be in Washington.
"To the world they were ordinary [but] they figured out how to do extraordinary things…. to overcome the worst adversity I could ever imagine," Beamer’s wife, Lisa, told Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America. Lisa Beamer, also 32, is expecting the couple’s third child in January. Lisa Beamer says faith and family were always her husband’s priorities.
"They realized they were going to die. Todd said he and some other passengers were going to jump on the guy with the bomb," Lisa Beamer said.
Todd Beamer dropped the phone after talking to Robinson, leaving the line open. It was then that the operator heard Beamer’s words: "Are you guys ready? Let’s roll!"
"Are you guys ready? Let’s roll!" is an expression Todd Beamer used whenever his wife and two young sons were leaving their home for a family outing.
Brothers and sisters, we are going to die some day. ARE YOU GUYS READY? LET’S ROLL!
Let’s roll for Christ. Let’s roll in the direction of the lost and unchurched! Let’s roll! Let’s invite, witness, testify, teach, preach, and reach out! This should be the focus of our priority.
CONCLUSION---------------------------------------
ILL.- Golf immortal Arnold Palmer recalls a lesson about overconfidence: Palmer said, “It was the final hole of the 1961 Masters tournament, and I had a one-stroke lead and had just hit a very satisfying tee shot. I felt I was in pretty good shape. As I approached my ball, I saw an old friend standing at the edge of the gallery. He motioned me over, stuck out his hand and said, "Congratulations." I took his hand and shook it, but as soon as I did, I knew I had lost my focus.
On my next two shots, I hit the ball into a sand trop, then put it over the edge of the green. I missed a putt and lost the Masters. You don’t forget a mistake like that; you just learn from it and become determined that you will never do that again. I haven’t in the 30 years since.
Brothers and sisters, occasionally we all lose our focus in life. Ours should be:
1- faith, not fear
2- people, not pleasure
3- seeking, not sitting
Let’s make these a matter of commitment to Christ.
