WHY AM I HERE?
INTRO.- ILL.- A man was walking along a road and saw an Indian lying with his ear to the ground. He went over to the Indian and heard him speaking, “Large wheels, Ford pickup truck, green color, man driving with large police dog next to him, Colorado license plate, and traveling about 75 miles per hour.”
The man was astounded. He said to the Indian, “You mean to tell me that you can tell all that just by listening with your ear to the ground?”
The Indian replied, “Ear to ground, nothing. THAT TRUCK JUST RAN OVER ME.”
Brothers and sisters, I’m sure there are times in life when you feel as though someone has just run over you with a truck or maybe even something bigger, like a tank! It may have come from a friend, a fellow-worker, or even a family member, etc.
ILL.- One lady said, “I’m married to the perfect man. The problem is, my husband expects me to be perfect too. After twenty-three years of marriage I’m not sure I can take any more of his criticism and rejection.” Talk about being run over by a tank.
ILL.- Another person said, “My boss is a nit-picker. When something goes wrong, it always has to be someone else’s fault - and that usually means mine. He calls it ‘constructive criticism’ and claims that I’m overly sensitive. But his criticism wears me down. I come home each night exhausted from his complaints.”
Another person run over by a truck or tank.
ILL.- One lady said of her husband, “I am sure that when we spoke our marriage vows he added ‘to have and to hold as long as I’m the boss.’” She said, “He believes he knows how to do everything, and by natural right, he is boss of anybody found standing in his vicinity.”
There’s another person/woman/wife just run over by a tank named “control freak.”
ILL.- I read last week some words about the infamous Osama Bin Laden, “Although he may live in a cave or some similarly primitive lair, he’s a master at manipulating people.”
Brethren, God did not put us here on earth to manipulate people! He didn’t put us here to control or conquer people! He didn’t put us here to use and abuse people!
Some people in our world are spreading poison and I’m not talking about Anthrax! They are spreading all kinds of verbal poison in order to hurt others.
God didn’t create us to hurt people. He created us and put us here to help people! To bless people!
Why am I here? Why did God put us here on planet earth? Some children have discovered the answer to this question.
ILL.- President Bush last week called on American children to donate $1 to Afghan children. Bush said that since his call for donations, the White House has received 90,000 letters. He said the American Red Cross and the U.S. Agency for International Development are channeling the money to needy Afghan youths.
"Winter arrives early in Afghanistan. It’s cold, really cold, and the children need warm clothing and they need medicines," Bush said. "And thanks to the American children, fewer children in Afghanistan will suffer this winter." He said, "One way to fight evil is to fight it with kindness and love and compassion, and the message stands in stark contrast to the message of hate that our boys and girls have seen on TV."
There it is! Those children have discovered why we are here! God put us here to care for others! To minister to people! To do whatever we can to help others! To demonstrate kindness, love and compassion!
Jesus came to “seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:10. He went about doing good to others. Acts 10:38 Jesus was moved with compassion for hurting people. Luke 7:13.
Is not this why God put us here on earth? YES! ABSOLUTELY YES!
Someone put it this way: “What Jesus did in His body, we as His body should do in life!” What Jesus did on earth in his fleshly, physical body, we should do on earth because we are His body. We are Christ’s body!
Christ has no hands but our hands to do His work today. He has no tongue but our tongues to tell men how He died. He has no heart but our hearts to love people!
We should minister to others! We should love others! That’s the name of the game of why we are here.
PROP.- I want to consider some specific things that we can do to help hurting people. To minister to people.
1- Love liberally
2- Laugh loudly
3- Convert quickly
I. LOVE LIBERALLY
We should love people liberally, abundantly, graciously. As much as possible and as often as possible.
ILL.- Reaching the end of a job interview, the human resources person asked a young engineer fresh out of MIT what kind of a salary he was looking for. "In the neighborhood of $140,000 a year, depending on the benefits package."
"Well, what would you say to a package of 5-weeks vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental, company matching retirement fund to 50% of salary, and a company car leased every 2 years...say, a red Corvette?" "Wow! Are you kidding?" "Yeah, but you started it."
Brothers and sisters, most people in our world are interested in what they can get out of life, not what they can give. They are more interested in gaining than giving, more interested in being loved than demonstrating love.
It’s human nature, but it’s even more than that. It’s our sinful nature. It’s our selfish nature. We are self-centered creatures. But we who are in Christ are supposed to be somewhat different. We are supposed to be people-centered, people-servers, people-lovers! We are supposed to be more interested in others than ourselves!
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.”
Rom. 12:10 “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. HONOR ONE ANOTHER ABOVE YOURSELVES.”
Put others above yourself! Honor others over yourself! Put them ahead of you!
Obviously, we have to take care of ourselves and our own families, but there are times when we need to go beyond ourselves and our own families to minister to others and demonstrate love to them.
ILL.- A lady said, “I was standing in the grocery line in somewhat of a daze and I noticed the guy being checked out had to put back his Ramen noodles because he didn’t have enough money. It really melted my heart, I guess because my kids dearly love Ramen noodles. I had a loose quarter so I said ‘hey, let him have his noodles.’
“At that point the lady behind me said she would pay for some of his groceries too. I hadn’t noticed but he had a big pile of groceries that he couldn’t pay for. The lady behind me paid for about $8 worth of groceries. The guy was wiping tears from his eyes and the clerk was too. The clerk said that she hadn’t had that happen before. It was neat how the kindness became contagious and everyone in the line was saying sweet things. For a brief moment we weren’t strangers but helpmates.”
It’s not often that something like that happens, but if you had been in that grocery line, what would you have done?
Instead of helping, many people would have been disgusted because they were in a hurry to get through the line and get home.
DON’T WE HAVE TIME FOR PEOPLE ANYMORE? Don’t we have some time and money and energy that we could share with others?
We need to love people any way we can, any where we can. We need to lavish love on people. We can smile at people, speak to people, listen to people, help people, serve people, take time for people, etc.
ILL.- Take smiling, for example. A little smile goes a long way to bless people. Do you realize this? Someone said, “The most powerful single thing you can do to have influence over others is to smile at them.”
ILL.- A SMILE
A smile is cheer to you and me
The cost is nothing - it’s given free
It comforts the weary - gladdens the sad
Consoles those in trouble - good or bad
To rich and poor - beggar of thief
It’s free to all and any belief
A natural gesture of young and old
Cheers on the faint - disarms the bold
Unlike most blessings for which we pray
It’s one thing we keep when we give it away
ILL.- Someone else said, “The smile on your face is the light in the window that tells people that you are at home.”
I’ve seen a number of people who were not at home and needed a face lift in order to get a smile on their faces.
A smile is just one small thing we can do to bless others. There are many other things we can do and should do.
ILL.- The story is told of Franklin Roosevelt, who often endured long receiving lines at the White House. He complained that no one really paid any attention to what was said. One day, during a reception, he decided to try an experiment. To each person who passed down the line and shook his hand, he murmured, "I murdered my grandmother this morning."
The guests responded with phrases like, "Marvelous! Keep up the good work. We are proud of you. God bless you, sir." It was not till the end of the line, while greeting the ambassador from Bolivia, that his words were actually heard. Baffled, the ambassador leaned over and whispered, "I’m sure she had it coming."
Another way to demonstrate love for people is to listen to them. ARE YOU A GOOD LISTENER? Most of us aren’t. We are better at talking than listening. Listening shows that we care.
ILL.- Teenage prostitutes, during interviews in a San Francisco study, were asked: "Is there anything you needed most and couldn’t get?" Their response, invariably preceded by sadness and tears was unanimous: "What I needed most was someone to listen to me. Someone who cared enough to listen to me."
ILL.- Writer Charles Swindoll once found himself with too many commitments in too few days. He got nervous and tense about it. "I was snapping at my wife and our children, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day," he recalled in his book Stress Fractures. "Before long, things around our home started reflecting the pattern of my hurry-up style. It was becoming unbearable.
"I distinctly remember after supper one evening, the words of our younger daughter, Colleen. She wanted to tell me something important that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, ’Daddy, I wanna tell you somethin’ and I’ll tell you really fast.’
"Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, ’Honey, you can tell me -- and you don’t have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly.’ "I’ll never forget her answer: ’Then listen slowly.’"
Are you listening to people? We all should be doing this. Christ was a listener as well as a teacher. I’m sure He listened slowly to people.
Ps. 5:2 “Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray.”
Ps. 3:4 “To the Lord I cry aloud, and He answers me from His holy hill.”
People are hurting. They need a listening ear. God listens to them, BUT DO WE? Listening is a matter of loving others.
If there is one thing that people need more of than anything it is love.
ILL.- Dr. Karl Menninger of the famous Menninger Clinic for the treatment of the mentally ill, once said, “Love cures people - both the one who gives it and the one who receives it.”
People need to be loved more than anything. They need to be loved liberally, lavishly. GOD PUT US HERE TO DO THAT.
II. LAUGH LOUDLY
Are you winsome? Are you a winsome person? Generally, a winsome person is someone who has a winning personality. They are perhaps charming, delightful, fun to be around.
ILL.- Preacher Wayne Smith is such a person. He is retired now, but for forty years he preached at the Southland Christian Church in Lexington, KY. One time Wayne and some friends were eating in a restaurant and Wayne spoke kindly to the waitress and invited her to church. She indicated that she might come to church that next Sunday. And she did!
Wayne happened to recognize her as she left the services and asked her if she liked the sermon. She said, “The sermon was okay, but I really came to hear you laugh.”
Wayne has the kind of laugh that is absolutely contagious. When you hear him laugh you can’t help but laugh along with him. And there is no doubt, that his laughter and his cheerful spirit helped the Southland Christian Church to grow. During his 40 years as their preacher they grew from 182 people to 7,000.
Somebody was doing something right. And I guarantee you that Wayne’s delightful spirit didn’t hurt the church.
ILL.- When my kids, Holly and Shane, were small I used to play Wayne Smith’s sermon tapes in the car all the time. They heard him a lot. They loved his humor and laughter as much as I did.
One time we went to hear Wayne preach and after the service we went to the platform and I introduced my family to Wayne. I told Wayne, “While in the car I asked my children if they wanted to hear you preach or Sandi Patti sing. And they said, ‘We want to hear Wayne Smith preach.’” Wayne said to me, “Your kids are not normal, however, they deserve some Kentucky candy.”
And about two weeks later they got some Kentucky candy in the mail. Wayne Smith is a winsome preacher. I want to be a winsome person/preacher! But I don’t have any candy with me today! I prefer to draw people rather than run them away. I prefer to build people up rather than tear them down. WHAT ABOUT YOU?
LAUGHTER IS CONTAGIOUS. Laughter is generally a sign of something good in a person’s life.
Prov. 17:22 “A cheerful heart (or laughter) is good medicine...” I want to dish out good medicine, don’t you?
ILL.- She was a homemaker who became a nationally known author, speaker, and syndicated columnist. Among her bestsellers were The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank and When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It’s Time to Go Home.
A woman who could write that way must have had an easy life, huh? All she had to do was think up jokes, write them down, and collect her royalties, right? Wrong. Bad wrong!
Erma Bombeck’s father died when she was only nine years old. At 20 she was found to have a hereditary kidney disorder that would eventually lead to kidney failure. (Two of her three children have inherited the problem.)
In 1991 she had breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. In 1993 she started four-times-a-day dialysis until a kidney transplant April 4, 1996. Complications from the transplant took her life that month.
When fans wrote to say, "Things like this shouldn’t happen to you," she had an answer. "Why not me?" she said. "I had a good long ride with it. I have written all these books with kidney problems. … It doesn’t affect your brain. It doesn’t affect your sense of humor."
I suspect her sense of humor was a coping device. It helped her deal with her pain. It kept her from getting brittle and grumpy. It helped her live 69 years in a positive rather than negative way, with joy rather than self-pity.
People who succeed with life tend to have a great sense of humor. It gets them through the tough times.
ILL.- Remember when Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981? "Honey, I forgot to duck," he told Nancy at the hospital. To the surgeons about to operate on him, he said, "Please tell me you’re Republicans."
A sense of humor is great therapy when you hit a bump in the road -- and everybody’s road has some bumps. Laughter may well be one of the best ways we can help people over the bumps in their lives.
Where there is laughter in a person, you know they have a heart and they are dishing out good medicine.
Do you want to bless people in a very good way? Learn to laugh. Learn to laugh at yourself. Let laughter fill your life. It’s contagious. It’s winsome. It’s good medicine.
III. CONVERT QUICKLY
We need to convert people to Christ as quickly as possible. People need Christ because Christ is the Savior of the world!
ILL.- Norman Cates shared the humorous story of a guy who prayed this prayer every morning: "Lord, if you want me to witness to someone today, please give me a sign to show me who it is." One day he found himself on a bus when a big, burly man sat next to him. The bus was nearly empty but this guy sat next to our praying friend. The timid Christian anxiously waited for his stop so he could exit the bus. But before he could get very nervous about the man next to him, the big guy burst into tears and began to weep.
He then cried out with a loud voice, "I need to be saved. I’m a lost sinner and I need the Lord. Won’t somebody tell me how to be saved?" He turned to the Christian and pleaded, "Can you show me how to be saved?" The believer immediately bowed his head and prayed, "Lord, is this a sign?"
What about you? What does it take or would it take to convince you that people need Christ?
I Pet. 3:15 “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”
The Greek word apologia means "answer," or "reasonable defense." It does not mean to apologize although we tend to do that at times.
ILL.- In the early 1960’s I worked for the Safeway grocery company in Joplin, MO. They had two stores in Joplin and I worked in both of them. I was a fairly new Christian and was concerned about witnessing to others for Christ.
I remember leaving one store around 10 one night, along with the manager and a few other employees. The manager had a six-pack of beer and had opened one in the parking lot. He asked me, “Steve, do you want a beer?” I said, “No thanks, I am sorry, I don’t drink.”
That manager offered me that beer, knowing that I was a Christian and was attending Ozark Bible College to become a full-time minister of the gospel. DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE SAID TO ME? He said, “What are you sorry for?” He was right.
He was essentially saying to me, “Why are you apologizing for not drinking a beer. Aren’t you a Christian? You shouldn’t have to apologize for your faith.”
AND HE WAS RIGHT. I was humbled. And I did not need to apologize for my faith in Christ. If anything, I needed to express it, but do it with gentleness and respect.
ILL.- Howard Hendricks said, “In the midst of a generation screaming for answers, Christians are stuttering.”
People need the Lord Jesus Christ! What are we doing to give Him to them? We need to make some advances in our converting and evangelizing efforts! We need to stop stuttering!
Eph. 5:15-16 “Be very careful, then, how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.”
It seems like our days in America are becoming more evil all the time. And this is why we must make hay while the sun shines! WE MUST EVANGELIZE, TESTIFY, AND CERTIFY THAT JESUS IS THE CHRIST AND THE WAY TO FORGIVENESS!
Col. 4:5 “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.”
How’s your action? Outside the church? At the ball game? On the road? In the mall? At work?
ILL.- It was said that when William Sangster was the pastor of the Methodist church in Scarborough, he had an eccentric member who tried to be a zealous Christian. Unfortunately, the man was mentally deficient and usually did the wrong thing. While working as a barber the man lathered up a customer for a shave, came at him with the poised razor, and asked, "Are you prepared to meet your God?" The frightened man fled with the lather on his face!
Brothers and sisters, I wouldn’t recommend trying to convert people that way, but we do need to do something, to say something, to invite some people to church and better yet, invite them to give their lives to Christ.
ILL.- A woman of high society in Boston was embarrassed and somewhat angered when a complete stranger asked her about her relationship to Christ and need for salvation. She went home and told her husband about the situation and in anger he said, “If I had been there, I would have told him to mind his own business.”
She replied, “If you had been there you would have realized he was minding his own business.”
Brothers and sisters, our business in this world is to point people to Christ any way we can, any time we can, any where we can!
CONCLUSION----------------------------------------
ILL.- One time a man asked Will Rogers, “What’s wrong with the world?” Rogers replied, “I dunno. I guess it’s people.” And let me add that what is right with the world is also people. People are God’s greatest creation and God put us here to minister to them. We must live for people!
ILL.- OTHERS
Lord, help me to live from day to day
In such a self-forgetful way
That even when I kneel to pray
My prayer shall be for others.
Help me in all the work I do
To ever be sincere and true
And know that all I’d do for you
Must needs be done for others.
Let “self” be crucified and slain
And buried deep and all in vain
May efforts be to rise again
Unless to live for others.
And when my work on earth is done
And my new work in heaven’s begun
May I forget the crown I’ve won
While thinking still of others.
Others, Lord, yes, others
Let this my motto be
Help me to live for others
That I may live like Thee.
