One of the positive effects of the recent tragedy our country experienced is that people appear to be shifting their priorities. People are centering their lives more on home and family rather than jobs and careers. We are looking again at the value of relationships, and even our relationship with God. We are thinking more about the big picture. Many are spending more time with their loved ones, according to a recent Gallup poll. There is hope that we are becoming less materialistic an self-absorbed. It is one of the good things that has come out of a very bad situation.
It is always interesting to hear what people are making resolutions about as the new year begins. Ann Landers has made some good suggestions in her column. She writes, “Call up a forgotten friend. Drop an old grudge, and replace it with some pleasant memories. . . . Free yourself of envy. . . . Resolve to stop magnifying small problems and shooting from the lip. . . . Lighten up. When you feel like blowing your top, ask yourself, ‘Will it matter in a week from today?’ Be optimistic. . . . Read something uplifting. Deep-six the trash. . . . Walk tall, and smile more. . . . Don’t be afraid to say, ‘I love you.’”
Some other resolutions I read are a little less serious. “I have resolved not to do drugs anymore, because I get the same effect just standing up really fast.” “I have resolved to live in my own little world, because at least they know me here.” “I have resolved to stay married, because it is so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” “I have resolved to not make any resolutions, because nobody is perfect. I’m a nobody, therefore I’m perfect.”
I even ran across a place on the Internet where you can make your new year’s resolutions online, and they will email you a monthly reminder of what your resolutions were — as if anybody wanted to know after the first month. It is called HiAspire.com. But what I found interesting was seeing what resolutions people were making for 2002. Not surprisingly, exercise and dieting toped the list. Also near the top were things like becoming a better person and a better spouse. But the one that caught my attention was the one that said, “Find Dreams.” People have dreams and they want to live them out. You might interpret that as wanting to live in a fantasy world, but I believe people have real dreams and it is important to reach for them. The problem is that dreams don’t just happen — you make them happen — and it takes work and sacrifice.
How can we move beyond just making resolutions and begin creating solutions for our lives? We do it by working on the core issues of our lives instead of just making cosmetic changes. We have to go to beyond the symptoms to the source of our problems. Losing weight may only be a symptom of the core issue of a lack of self-control in your life — around which there may be many other symptoms. Perhaps you are using food to sedate yourself. Controlling your drinking may only be a symptom of the fact that you are looking for something to deaden the pain and disappointment in your life, instead of finding your comfort and strength in God. Controlling your anger may only be a symptom of a deeper need you have to control life and the people in it with your rage. We focus on the core issues rather than the presenting problem.
This morning I would suggest three areas on which to place our focus. The first is: We focus on personal development. I am talking about something more here than running out and getting yourself a new ab exerciser so you can get ribbed. You can be the perfect weight and have a perfect body, and still miss the point of what it means to be a human being. You can read all the self-improvement books on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, and still be out of control. You can be the best educated person in the world, and still be clueless about how to live life. You might know a lot about a broad range of subjects, and still be ignorant when it comes to things that are ultimately and eternally important. You may have all the right investments and be set for life financially, but be bankrupt spiritually. On the other hand, you might be broke, out of shape, unattractive, in poor health and lucky to have graduated from the sixth grade, but you are in touch with things that have ultimate meaning. You are investing your life in eternity. You have joy because you understand your importance to God. You have accepted life for what it is and stopped demanding it be something different. You have learned to forgive. You have learned how to love imperfect people and live in an imperfect world. You have grown in your knowledge of God through reading his Word. You talk to him on a daily basis. There is joy in your life, and a peace that the circumstances of the world cannot take away, because your life is inseparably linked to the eternal God who holds your life in his hands. You trust him. You are conscious of his presence through the day. You want to do his will because of a love for him that has possessed your heart.
If you want to develop yourself personally, the first thing you need to do is see if there is any unsurrendered area of your life. If there is an area of your life that you are holding back from God there will be no growth in your personal life — no personal development. You cannot have victory and freedom in your life if you are holding some things back from God’s control. You cannot resist God and then expect his blessing in your life. It isn’t going to happen. Talk about core issues! If you are saying, “I will obey God in everything except this,” you are blocking God’s work in your life. This is not so much personal development as it is allowing God to do a work in you. The truth is that you cannot develop yourself — this is the reason that our resolutions usually fail. This is the work of God. Paul realized this when he wrote: “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” But then he answers his own question when he says, “Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:21-25). It is through Christ that we are delivered from our own wretchedness — not our own effort.
But what if you have failed so many times before that you have given up even trying? Take seriously the words of Paul when he wrote: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-14).
Forget the past with its failure, and press on toward the future where God has called you. Every day is a new beginning with God. Future failure can often be avoided by building holy habits into your life. Mark off a regular time every day when you can spend time reading God’s Word and talking to him. You will not always feel like doing it, but if you do it faithfully, regardless of how you feel, your life will take on a new power. Read good books. Throw away the mindless magazines and stop watching trash TV. Fill your mind with good things, positive things. Set goals for yourself. You have to live life on purpose. Too many people exist day after day, just letting life happen. Don’t let your life happen by default. Build purpose into your life. Don’t let your life be an accident. It is easy to avoid life, and just sink into our easy chairs and let life go by. Don’t let others be in charge of your life; give your life to God and let him be in charge. Let him develop your personal life.
Elie Wiesel, the eloquent Jewish author, once told this story: “A just man comes to Sodom hoping to save the city. He pickets. What else can he do? He goes from street to street, from marketplace to marketplace, shouting, ‘Men and women, repent. What you are doing is wrong. It will kill you; it will destroy you.’ They laugh, but he goes on shouting, until one day a child stops him. ‘Poor stranger, don’t you see it’s useless?’ ‘Yes,’ the just man replies. ‘Then why do you go on?’ the child asks. ‘In the beginning,’ he says, ‘I was convinced that I would change them. Now I go on shouting because I don’t want them to change me.”’ I have known many people who were easily influenced by others. Sometimes they did not want to hurt other people’s feelings by disagreeing with them, or not going along with what they said. Or maybe it was because they did not want to be rejected. They did things they knew were wrong, and went places they wouldn’t have gone otherwise. And because they had not taken charge of their lives, someone else did. Because they had not purposely made commitments they found themselves following the will of others. Since they did not have a strong sense of purpose, they found themselves being controlled by others. Build purpose into your life or someone else will do it for you. Personal development is important, because without it you will be adrift in life. The Bible says that we are to grow in our spiritual lives, for, “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4:11-14).
The second area of our focus is: We focus on building relationships. None of us can survive this world alone. We were not created to live in isolation. There are no spiritual superheros who can live isolated and insulated lives. There is no such thing as an army of one. We all know that the loner who needs no one else, and saves the world singlehandedly, is the stuff of movies only. To think that you do not need other Christians supporting and helping you is mere fantasy. To think you can survive emotionally separated from family and friends is a destructive illusion. The Bible says, “For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone” (Romans 14:7). The reality is that we need each other, and because we need each other, we need to build relationships. This is what the church is all about. The church is not an organization, it is an organism. Church is not a place, it is people. When we are together, God meets us in ways that he does not meet us when we are alone. That is why Jesus said, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20). When we come together, God comes to meet with us.
The Bible knows nothing of Christians apart from the body of Christ. Imagine a hand or an eye trying to exist alone apart from the body! It is ludicrous. It does not matter how important the part is, it cannot exist away from the body for which it was designed to be a part. But not only do you need the body, the body needs you. What happens to the body when it is robbed of the eyes? What happens when an arm is lost? The whole body suffers. The body of Christ needs you. You offer something that no other part of the body can offer in just the same way. By thinking you have nothing to contribute, you rob the body of something very important.
This leads to the third area on which we need to focus: We focus on a life of service. One of the great tragedies of the world is people who live only for themselves. Their whole world centers around them. Everything is measured on how it affects them. The only effort they put forth is on things which will benefit them. Their focus is on getting instead of giving. They want to be served rather than serve. But the mark of true disciples of Jesus Christ is people who want God to use their lives. They want to serve God by serving others. They have an outward focus rather than an inward focus. They want to express God’s love to the world around them, and have their lives make a difference.
When you allow God to build up your personal life, the whole body of Christ is built up. When you are working to build relationships, other Christians benefit. When you decide to let God use your life in service, the whole world profits. God’s plan is that we all use our special gifts for his kingdom. Our lives can mean something if we choose to live for something besides ourselves. There is a place for all of us, for the Scriptures says, “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-14).
Is your life being prepared for works of service? If not, you are missing God’s purpose for you as outlined in this scripture. You are missing God’s will and God’s blessing. J. H. Newman says, “God has created me, to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission — I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for nothing. I shall do good, I shall do his work. Therefore, I will trust him. Whatever, wherever I am. I cannot be thrown away.” You have a part to play in God’s plan for the world. Don’t miss it.
Rodney J. Buchanan
January 6, 2002
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (January 6, 2002)
1. Read Ephesians 4:10-16. Why did God give his people gifts?
2. What do these verses say about the purpose of our lives?
3. What does Paul mean when he talks about “maturity” in verse 13? Why is this necessary in the church?
4. What are some ways that you need to develop your personal life? What are some specific ways you plan to do this?
5. What happens in the body of Christ when one individual fails to grow?
6. Why is it important to develop relationships? How does this build the church?
7. Can a person be a Christian without relationships with other Christians?
8. What are the “works of service” that Paul is referring to in Ephesians 4:12?
9. What are the purpose of these works of service? How do these build up the body of Christ?
10. Why is it a tragedy when a person, consciously or unconsciously, decides to live only for themselves?
11. How will your life be different this year?
MY COMMITMENT TO GROWTH
My life purpose is:
My dreams are:
My goals are:
personal—
family—
social—
spiritual—
service—
physical—
financial—
intellectual—
emotional—
