Title: Closing the Loose Ends of Your Life: Preparation for Revival: 08/31/03
West Side
A.M. Service
Text: Matthew 8:18 and 19:16-22 Labor Day
Purpose: A sermon of preparation for revival, as well as a message dealing the all the loose ends of life that tend to zap our energy, leaving nothing behind for revival. What can you do to change it?
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Introduction:
1. Richard A. Swenson, M.D. writes in “Margins,” “The conditions of modern-day living devour margin. If you are homeless, we direct you to a shelter. If you are penniless, we offer you food stamps. If you are breathless, we connect the oxygen. But if you are marginless, we give you yet one more thing to do.
a. Marginless is being 30 minutes late to the doctor’s office because you were 20 minutes late getting out of the hairdresser’s because you were 10 minutes late dropping the children off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from the gas station- and you forgot your purse.
Margin, on the other hand, is having breath left at the top of the staircase, money left at the end of the month, and sanity left at the end of adolescence.
b. Marginless is the baby crying and the phone ringing at the same time; Margin is Grandma taking the baby for the afternoon.
c. Marginless is being asked to carry a load five pounds heavier than you can lift; margin is a friend to carry half the burden.
d. Marginless is not having time to finish the book you’re reading on stress; margin is having the time to read it twice.
e. Marginless is fatigue; margin is energy1
Work No Longer Has Clear Boundaries (David Allen begins when writing in "Getting Things Done)
“A major factor in the mounting stress level is that the actual nature of our jobs has changed much more dramatically and rapidly than have our training for and our ability to deal with work. In just the last half of the 20th century, what constituted ‘work’ in the industrialized world was transformed from assembly-line, make-it and move-it kinds of activity to what Peter Drucker has so aptly termed ‘knowledge work.’
In the old days, work was self evident. Fields were to be plowed, machines tooled, boxes packed, cows milked, widgets cranked. You knew what work had to be done- you could see it. It was clear when the work was finished, or not finished.
Now for many of us, there are no edges to most of our projects. Most people I know have at least half a dozen things they’re trying to achieve right now, and even if they had the rest of their lives to try, they wouldn’t be able to finish these to perfection. You’re probably faced with the same dilemma.
a. How good could that conference potentially be?
b. How effective could the training program be?
c. How inspiring is the essay your writing?
d. How motivating the staff meeting?
e. How much available data could be relevant to doing those projects “better”? The answer is, an infinite amount, easily accessible, or at least potentially so, through the web.
On the other front, the lack of edges can create more work for everyone.2
Allen continues: “Little seems clear for very long anymore, as far as what our work is and what or how much input may be relevant to doing it well. We’re allowing in huge amounts of information and communication from the outer world generating an equally large volume of ideas and agreements with ourselves and others from our inner world. And we haven’t been well equipped to deal with this huge number of internal and external commitments.3
“You’ve probably made many more agreements with yourself than you realize, and every single one of them- big or little- is being tracked by a less-than-conscious part of you. These are the ‘incompletes,’ or ‘open loops,’ which [is defined by] anything pulling at your attention that doesn’t belong where it is, the way it is.
Open loops can include everything from really big to do items like, ‘End world hunger,’ to the more modest ‘hire a new assistant’ to the tiniest task such as ‘replace the pencil sharpener.’”4
The vast majority of people have been trying to get organized by rearranging incomplete lists of unclear things; they haven’t yet realized how much and what they need to organize in order to get the real payoff.5
Many of the things you have to do are being collected for you as you read this. Mail is coming into your mailbox, memos are begin routed to your in-basket, e-mail is being funneled into your computer, and messages are accumulating on your voice-mail. But at the same time, you’ve been collecting things in your environment and in your psyche that don’t belong where they re, the way they are, for all eternity. For example, a loop to be closed, something has to be done. Strategy ideas loitering on a legal pad in a stack on your credenza, ‘dead’ gadgets in your desk drawers that need to be fixed or thrown away, and out of date magazines on your coffee table all fall into this category of stuff.
As soon as you attach a ‘should,’ ‘need to,’ or ‘ought to’ to an item, it becomes an incomplete. Decisions you still need to make about whether or not you are going to do something, for example, are already incompletes. This includes all of your “I’m started moving on it yet.” And it certainly include all pending and in progress items, as well as those things on which you’ve done everything you’re ever going to do except acknowledge that you’re finished with them.6
Now why did I spend so much time setting up this introduction? Because if you think about it, this concept creeps over into our spiritual lives. Our minds are so full of “stuff” to do, those “open loops” of the never ending unfinished business, that we no longer have time for God to refresh our spirit.
Romans 12:1-2 says, [The Message] “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life- your sleeping, eating, going-to-work and walking around life- and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so-well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well formed maturity in you.”
With this in mind, I want us to focus on two biblical examples this morning. Each dealing in some respect to the “Open Loops” of life.
Here are the principles God will teach us:
1. The road to discipleship is NOT paved with good intentions
2. A conflict of desires will leave you searching
I. Pursue the Process
A. The danger of not counting the cost is a call of sincerity. V.19
1. Jesus had been busy doing miracles
a. Finished the Sermon on the Mount
b. Healing a man with leprosy
c. Healed the Roman soldiers servant
d. Healed Peter’s mother-in-law
2. After a busy day, and just before they left, a man approaches Jesus and says I will follow you wherever you go.
3. It sounded sincere and sounded like complete consecration. But the road to discipleship is not paved with good intentions.
4. Point of application: Many times we are swept up with emotion, so wanting to be in the Lord’s presence that we make rash statements without counting the cost.
Have you ever made a decision on impulse. Impulsive buying.
a. Why do they put the milk in the back of the store?
b. Why is there candy in the checkout lines?
c. Why do they want you to test drive a new car?
All for the same reason. Impulse. Make a decision now, get hooked in, before you change your mind. Researchers know that if you “think” about it, you may change your mind, and that once you’re in, you are less likely to take the trouble to change.
Well wouldn’t that be desire-some for people coming to Christ? NO. Because coming to Christ is not about a rash decision you might think you’ll regret later. It’s about intention. I choose to follow….
The call is a call of sincerity, not impulse. You must count the cost. Counting the cost is where the rubber hits the road. It’s where we live. This is the nitty-gritty.
It’s being intentional about closing some open loops so that you can more effectively follow Christ.
B. The danger of looking back is a call to priority. V. 21
1. Another disciple (not of the 12) said, “Lord, first let me return home and bury my father.”
2. That seems like a reasonable request.
3. Jesus is not negating the importance of family, nor of following protocol. For we know that in Palestine, the tradition was that a person be buried the very day that they died.
4. What we learn from studying the Scripture was that this man’s father, probably wasn’t dead, and may not be in the process of dying. He’ll die eventually, so I want to stay around until he does, and then I’ll follow you.
5. The danger is of looking back.
a. There will be time.
b. Let me do my thing first, then I’ll come
c. It’s the issue of ‘self’ all over again
d. Lord, let me check my day-timer, I’ve got several open ended things going on. When it’s convenient, I’ll come.
e. He was putting off the decision of commitment to another time.
C. The danger of un-seized moments is a call of faith
1. The door of opportunity stood right at the door step.
2. All they had witnessed in the miracles, and all that God would offer them, stood there in that moment of opportunity.
3. To turn away now, would make it that much more difficult in the future.
4. Without a surrender, the chances of closing enough open loops to return begins to diminish.
It’s important to pursue the process. To begin to count the cost, make a sincere decision, reprioritize and seize the moment.
When we don’t count the cost, we leave no margins in our life. And when we have no margins in life, then serving God becomes a chore and “just another thing to do….”
Illustration:
Recently the whole North East USA was effected by a power outage. Over 50 million people were effected. Safeguards failed when the power loop remained opened. What should have been a local problem, effected 50 million people.
Don’t just pursue the process, but
II. Buy all means, settle the question
Matthew 19:16-22
A. Notice that it begins with a desire
“Teacher, what good things must I do to have eternal life?”
1. It’s an expression of a hunger for a deeper desire and relationship with the Lord.
2. When we’ve counted the cost, and we want to create margins, our first logical question is then, “What do I need to do…”
3. Jesus points to the Scriptures: v. 18 and 19. Interesting that he quotes the second half of the 10 Commandments first. Because Jesus knows that the real issue is with the first half. Loving the Lord, and not having any other gods before God.
4. The issue at hand was about the replacement of idolatrous gods, with the True God.
a. Just changing “things” with other “things” does not necessarily fix the problem. Some things are more important then others.
b. And it’s not always about “doing” as it is about “being.”
B. When all else fails, we ask the question
1. What do I lack? What else do I need to do?
a. I’ve taken an internal survey, and I’m not sure I like everything that is required, so is there any thing else I can do and still get what I want?
b. He felt that he lacked something inside.
c. The emphasis was on “me.”
Be careful when you ask this question. Is there anything else. Because God will reveal it to you.
C. For when we ask, God will answer. Verse 21
1. Rid yourself of that which is your god…
2. It’s about surrendering that which is most dear…
3. This man’s problem was the love of money…
D. Point of Decision ~ verse 22
1. Refusing to surrender, the young man went away sorrowful.
2. He was plagued with an inner Conflict of Desires
3. God does not grade on a curve
4. Jesus attempted to drive him to see his real need.
5. Identifying the real need will expose our conflict of desires, and bring us to a point of decision.
6. We must obey, or we will leave still searching.
Illustration:
In the movie “City Slickers,” Billy Crystal plays a confused, dissatisfied thirty-something character with a vague sense that life is passing him by. Jack Palance- ancient, leathery, wise to the ways of the world (“a saddlebag with eyes”) – asks Crystal if he would like to know the secret of life.
“it’s this,” Palance says, holding up a single finger.
“The secret of life is your finger?” asks Crystal.
“It’s one thing,” Palance replies. “The secret of life is pursuing one thing.”
Somehow this resonates deeply with Billy Crystal’s character. His life is scattered. He is torn between his obligation to his family and his desire for career advancement; between his need for security and his appetite for excitement. He is divided somehow. His life is about many things, and so, he senses, it is about nothing.7
Jesus spoke about the “one thing.” He said, “seek first the kingdom of God.”
Clifford Williams writes, “We possess singleness when we are not pulled in opposite directions and when we act without wanting something further for ourselves. Our inner drives do not conflict; they are aimed in one direction. The motives we appear to have are the ones we really have. Our inner focus is unified and our public posture corresponds with it. We are not, in short, divided.”
Seek First the Kingdom of God:
Think of Mary and Martha. Martha “was distracted by her many tasks” and resented her sister, Mary, who had chosen simply to sit in the presence of Jesus. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.” The secret of life is – one thing.8
There is unbelievable relief in being delivered from double-mindedness, in finally deciding on the focus of life…Imagine having a mind cleansed of all the debris that blocks our best intentions. Imagine if each time you saw another person your first thought was to pray for him or bless her. Imagine what it would be like if, any time you were challenged or anxious, your reflexive response would be to turn to God for strength.9
In our time, the great quest is for a “balanced lifestyle.” As most people in American society today what they are after, and they will say something about the need for balance. But the problem with just wanting a balance lifestyle is that it is not an adequate goal to which to devote our lives. Balance tends to carry with it the notion that we are trying to make our lives more manageable, more convenient, more pleasant. After all, we ultimately decide for ourselves what balance looks like.10
We must seek after what one writer termed, “the well ordered heart.” The balance paradigm assumes that our problem is external- a disorder in our schedule or our job or our season of life. But the truly significant disorder is internal.
What does it mean to have a well ordered heart? Augustine suggested that to have a well ordered heart is to love
1. the right thing
2. to the right degree
3. in the right way
4. with the right kind of love
William Paulsell advises us,
“It is unlikely that we will deepen our relationship with God in a casual or haphazard manner. There will be a need for some intentional commitment and some reorganization in our own lives. But there is nothing that will enrich our lives more than a deeper and clearer perception of God’s presence in the routine of daily living.”
Paul writes to the church at Colossae, as the climax of instruction on transformed living: “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:17)
Conclusion
Point of Application:
1. Realize that there will always be something to be done, time limit
2. Seek first the kingdom of God,
3. Let God help you achieve a well-ordered life
4. Begin to close the open loops
5. Pursue the process
6. Settle the question
End Notes
1. Margin, by Richard A. Swenson, M.D., (Navepress, Colorado Springs, CO. 80935), pg. 13
2. The Art of Getting Things Done, by David Allen. (Penguin Books, New York, NY, 2001) Pg. 5
3. Ibid., pg 7
4. Ibid., pg 12
5. Ibid., pg 18
6. Ibid., pg 26
7. The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg., (Zondervan Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI., 2002), pg. 175
8. Ibid., pg. 177
9. Ibid., pg. 177, 181
10. Ibid., pg. 194, 195
