One Life to Live
Brian A. Moon
In an average lifetime, the average American spends 3 years in business meetings, 13 years watching TV, Spends $89,281 on food, consumes 109,354 pounds of food, Makes 1811 trips to McDonalds, Spends $6881 in vending machines, Eats 35,138 cookies and 1483 pounds of candy, Catches 304 colds, Is involved in 6 motor vehicle accidents, is hospitalized 8 times (men) or 12 times (women), Spends 24 years sleeping.
Another breakdown of the average life of 70 years goes something like this:
Sleep................23 years...........32.9%
Work.................16 years...........22.8%
TV....................8 years...........11.4%
Eating................6 years............8.6%
Travel................6 years............8.6%
Leisure.............4.5 years............6.5%
Illness...............4 years............5.7%
Dressing..............2 years............2.8%
Religion............0.5 years............0.7%
Total................70 years............100%
So what is life all about? Is life just spending time doing things like eating for 6 years, or dressing yourself for 2 years? If we only have “One Life to Live” is this list what our lives will look like when all is said and done? Someone once told me that the tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it. That is my theme for you tonight, start living life because we do only have “One Life to Live!” Have you ever scene the bumper sticker that says, “Life is too precious to waste?” Life is a gift that has been given to each of us in this room tonight and my challenge to you is to make the most of it! So how do we do that? How do we make the most out of the 60, 70, or 80 years that most of us will live? Well, it begins by asking the right questions and I would like to offer us three tonight that will get the ball rolling so to speak.
The first is:
What does God want from me?
Since God is the one who gave us this gift of life, then he is really the only one who can answer what is expected of me during my life.
The Bible says, “Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise, sensible, intelligent people, Making the very most of the time, buying up each opportunity… Therefore do not be vague and thoughtless and foolish, but understanding and firmly grasping what the will of the Lord is.” Ephesians 5:15 – 17 Amplified Bible
Circle the words “Live purposefully” in that verse.
This is the kind of life God expects us to live; a life that is lived guided by his purposes. A purpose is something that you live for, a reason for the things you do. Webster’s Dictionary defines purpose like this: Something set up as an object or end to be attained and then it has similar words like: Intention, and Determination. So what are the purposes that God has for me? God has given us 5 purposes that we are to base our life on, in fact these are the 5 purposes that we get our purpose statement from…these are the things that we are chase after with our “One life to Live.” These 5 purposes are what we are going to begin a 40-day journey on.
Beginning next week we will start going through these 5 purposes and reading a book based on them in our new small groups that will be beginning at the same time. It is going to be an amazing journey and an extraordinary time in the history of this group!
But to get ready for this amazing time we are going to spend the rest of tonight focusing on these three questions beginning with the one just asked, “What does God want from me?” In a nutshell what God wants is real simple… He wants your whole life!!!
The Bible says, “Give yourselves completely to God since you have been given new life. And use your whole body as a tool to do what is right for the glory of God.” Romans 6:13 NLT
Give yourself completely, give your whole body not just part of it, not 70% not even 99.9%, but give everything you are to God. That is what God wants from you. God wants it all. One time I had a friend who challenged me with this little test… He asked me if one day, one 24-hour period was 100% then how much of that did I simply think about God, or what God had for me to do that day. He wasn’t even asking me how much did I do for God in a day, he was just asking me how much I thought about him, or talked to him, or listened, that was it. When I began to think that through I really could only say maybe 7% or on a good day maybe 13 or 14%. How could I be giving my whole life completely to God if I was only “THINKING” about him less than 10%!
Popular theologian and Christian writer C.S. Lewis once wrote: “The only thing Christianity cannot be is moderately important.” What he is saying is that if Christianity is true then it deserves our whole life, but if it is not true, if it is just fiction then we should burn all our Bibles and live any way we see fit. Either way it is cannot be something that we ride the fence on. It either all or nothing!!! That might be a scary thing for some of you… and your right it is a big decision to go all out with God.
What will he ask me to do? What will it cost me? All of these are questions that we must wrestle through, but let me give you some perspective. God does not change, he says he is the same yesterday, today and forever, and if you just look at the stories of the people in the Bible from Moses to Matthew and from Paul to people today you will see that God is a loving Father who protects and provides for those who will say to him, “It is all yours God…” God wants it all though, he wants all your life, every area, everything that you are or will be.
The Bible says, "You cannot be a slave of two masters; you will hate one and love the other; you will be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Matthew 6:24 TEV
Circle the word “cannot”
What Jesus is saying here is that you cannot tell God that you will follow his plans for your life and at the same time follow your plans for your life. You cannot serve God and money. The question you have to ask tonight is who is going to be “number one” when it comes to your time, your plans, and your thoughts.
Are you going to put watching 2 hours of TV each day above spending 30 minutes praying and reading the Bible? Are you going to put earning money above helping and serving God in a church? Are you going to make sports a priority over hanging out with other followers of Christ? There is nothing wrong with any of those things by themselves, but when you put them above God, when you serve them, you make them your master and God says, “You cannot do it! You cannot give your life to more than one master!” Where in your life right now are you saying to God, I want to serve you, but I am going to put this above you for now. Where are you saying to God that this thing is more important? Here is an amazing little secret… When you say to God that “OK you go first, you are my number one priority above sports, and money, and people” then he takes care of the rest! When you do that he will provide what you need!
The Bible says, “Remember the Lord in all you do, and he will give you success.” Proverbs 3:6 NCV
If you want to know what God wants from you, if you want to be a success in your “One Life to Live” then put God first! So the first question was what does God want… and the answer was everything. The next question you need to ask is:
What does it take?
I can remember growing up in the church and hearing those words that I just gave you, “God wants it all, he wants your whole life…” Hearing those I first began to be inspired to do it and then totally discouraged because it was such a vague and mind blowing idea that I had no idea as where to begin.
What does it take to do it? Fortunately, when I was in college I found the answer, I found out what it takes to give my whole life to God. The answer came when I read a book by a man named Dallas Willard.
The book was called “The Spirit of the Disciplines” and it talked about working out our spiritual muscles.
When I was in High School in my sophomore year I made a decision. I was going to transform my 135-pound body into a 185-pound solid muscle. It seemed like an impossible task, much like giving my whole life to God, but I started by eating the right foods and lifting weights everyday. It did not happen over night, but by the time I was senior I was at 190 and could bench press 315 lbs.
The secret was those exercises that I did each day, and the same is true spiritually! There are spiritual disciplines or exercises that we can do each day that will make this enormous task of giving our whole life to God a lot more manageable.
The Bible says, “Whoever practices discipline is on the way to life.” Proverbs 10:17
I once heard about this old guy who was out on his front porch rocking away after a hard days work when his wife comes out and tells him she is going to bed.
He looks over gives her a wink and says, “Good night.” She thinks for a second and ask him, “Don’t you still love me?” He turns around and says, “I told you once when we got married, when I change my mind I’ll let you know…”
Just like with marriage, you have to tell God more than once you love him through practicing some of these spiritual exercises.
The Bible says, “Spend your time and energy in the exercise of keeping spiritually fit.”
1 Timothy 4:7 TLB
So what are some of those exercises? To begin with you can start by letting go of the things that aren’t important. I hear this a lot today… “I am just too busy, I have so many things to do that I just can’t…”
That “just can’t” is usually something to do with God! We are a fast paced society and often times it is not even bad things that we are spending all our time doing. But when these things fill our schedules so much that we don’t have any time left for God then they are bad.
The Bible says, “Let us strip off every weight that slows us down especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress.” Hebrews 12:1 NLT”
Underline the words “weight” and “progress”
What are the weights in your schedule that keep you from making real progress with God? What are some of the non-important things that you do every week that you could get rid of to make room for God? Next week when we begin our 40 Days of Purpose campaign we are going to ask you to make some commitments. And these commitments will require some time… like attending every Sunday Night during the campaign, and committing to go to a small group every week, and reading a small chapter out of a book we are going to give you each day. You must decide now what you are going to make a priority or you will not follow through with this unique opportunity to see God come and bless and change your life forever! You may have to get up 15 minutes earlier for the next 40 days or maybe not watch so much TV in the afternoons. Maybe you need to drop some activity that you do so that you can make your small group every week. Whatever it is that you need to do to make this 40 Days of Purpose work I am challenging you right now to do it!!! Make a mark on your eternal destiny; don’t waste your “One Life to Live.” The next thing you can do to get ready for this is to make first things first. What I mean by that is when it comes time to choose between what is a good thing to do in a day and what is the best thing, choose the best thing even if it is more work. If it comes down to lets say washing your clothes because you will not have anything clean to wear tomorrow and spending time reading your “Purpose Driven Life” book, or going to a Sunday Night here, choose the best thing! Choose the thing that will pay off not only in this life, but also in the next one! The best use of your life is to invest it in something that will outlast this world that we live on! It is a hard thing to do but look what the Bible says,
“God is always at work in you to make you willing and able to obey his own purposes.” Philippians 2:13 TEV
Ask God to give you the help you need to make the right priorities. Looking back now, what God wants from you is… everything, what does it take… it takes discipline, it takes spiritual exercises, and the final question is:
Why should I do it?
Why should you commit to the next 40 days? Why should you not waste your “One Life to Live?” The answer is because Jesus gave his all for you! When we had a problem that kept us from having a true relationship with God, when we had a sin problem that sentenced us to death, Jesus came and gave his all! Jesus came so that we might live. He came so that we can be forgiven and free from our wrong choices and mistakes.
The Bible says, “Through the blood of his Son we are set free from our sins.” Ephesians 1:7
Jesus gave us his all so that we can have a real, personal relationship with God. Without Jesus we have no life, we have no hope, we have no peace. Without him we have no way to God and no way to life with no end one-day! Jesus came so that each of us in this room tonight can know that God loves you, and that he has a plan for your life. And the plan that he has for us is to live for him and his purposes. Will you commit your life to this?
Prayer time ---------
If you are here tonight and you have always wondered about this God thing, you might have even asked what does God want from me, and tonight you know. You know that he wants your life, he wants your heart and your mind, if this is you and you have never given your life over to him and asked Jesus to come and save you and make you a new person then cry this prayer out to God as best you know how.
In your heart say to God, “God I know you want my life, and I lay it down for you right now. Come and save me from my sins and give me a new life and hope in Jesus. Help me to follow you from here on out.”
If that was you then God will come and pick up the pieces of your life and make you into a new creation that is guided by his purposes and alive to serve him. He will come and save you!
Others of you tonight are saved, you have a relationship with God and maybe it is your time tonight to turn over all your life to him and his control pray this with me in your heart, “God I know that I have taken back some of the control of my life and I ask for your forgiveness. I give my all to you tonight and want to serve you with all my heart, soul, and mind. Amen.
