A Losing Equation or a Winning Combination
I have always enjoyed math - because it just make sense (not like grammar with all it’s exceptions) and it always adds up. People who choose to love money and use people will always end up corrupt and ruined - always. People who choose right living and a fighting faith will always have a secure grasp of life - always.
The Losing Equation: ((Love + Money)*Evil) – Faith = Much Sorrow
Envy: I recently read about South West Airlines. After the tragedy of September 11th, South West has been THE only big carrier to still be making money (although they are still making about ½ what they had last year). All the other airlines are swimming in red ink and have either declared bankruptcy or are thinking about it – in order to try to avoid their creditors. So, in an atmosphere where most airlines are struggling to survive, SW’s employees have relative job security.
And yet, some of the workers in one of its unions is threatening to strike for higher wages. Why? Because comparable employees in one of those other airlines (that’s failing) make more per hour than they do.
Does anybody besides me sense the insanity of that? These union workers were not content, because somebody else (in a failing and potentially bankrupt airline) was getting more than they did.
Solomon wrote: “And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind” Ecclesiastes 4:4
Some people stop trusting God and start trusting things – and when they start trusting things they are capable of doing most anything thing – even the most despicable of crimes.
It seems that an elderly grandmother had been given a gun by her son in which to protect herself. On day after, she did her shopping and when she returned to the car where she found four white males seated inside. She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun, proceeding to scream at them at the top of her voice that she has a gun and knows how to use it: so get out of the car.
The four men hopped out and ran like mad, whereupon the lady proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and get into the drivers seat. And there she discovered that her key wouldn’t fit the ignition. Upon inspection she realized that her car was identical and parked four or five spaces farther down. The sergeant to whom she told the story pointed to the other end of the counter, where four pale white males were reporting a carjacking by a crazy old lady with a gun.
Now that’s funny but it is also points out how important things are to us.
It is our attachment to things that drives so many into crime or just in life. And so it damages our priorities our relationships and leads to all kinds of evil.
The most toured home in America is the white house. But does anyone know where the second most toured home in America is?
The second most toured home in America is in Memphis Tennessee. It’s the 23 room home of the King of Rock and Roll - Elvis Presley. Graceland is toured by hundreds of people every day. It is a combination of the home, an amusement park and an historic site. 15 million dollars a year is brought in by those visiting and looking at the cars, clothes, airplanes, records. And few people in his time made as much money as quickly as he did. Certainly no one else had so much fame and popularity.
Elvis seemed to have it all. money, airplanes, cars, mansions. But what is all that stuff? It’s T H I N G S.
And if you go fifty yards from the back door of Graceland you find a tombstone. Aug. 16, 1977, 42 years old. An overdose of pills. Depression. He was so drugged in the last days of his life that he passed out while he was eating dinner alone and he nearly drowned when his face fell in his bowl of soup.
THINGS did not do it for him. And though he had as much as anybody, he said at one point, "I would give a million dollars for one day of peace."
The Winning Combination: Run from “all those things” + "Living right“ + Good Fight of Faith = Forever Life
Run from what things? Well the love of money. Envy. Grasping onto stuff.
Hold loosely to things and watch out for the dangerous things really are.
Learn to be watchful and aware at how easily you can be led down this path.
Paul uses the term “trap”. The root means snare: translates as “snare” five times. 1 snare, trap, noose. 1a of snares in which birds are entangled and caught. 1a1 implies unexpectedly, suddenly, because birds and beasts are caught unawares.
Let me give you an example of a powerful and simple snare that can catch you… It’s at the temple of the golden arches…
John Ortberg, a Christian author, lives in Chicago with his wife and three small children. As you might guess, when they go out to eat, there is only one place they ever want to go, "the shrine of the golden arches." He said his children seem to be convinced that they have a McDonald’s-shaped vacuum in their souls.
He said the kids always want the same thing. And you know what it is, the same thing your kids want and my kids want and It’s a combination of the food--about which they really don’t much care -- and a little prize. It’s not much of a prize, really, just some cheap little plastic thing.
But in a moment of marketing genius, the folks at McDonald’s gave it a particular name.
The Happy Meal It is "the meal of great joy." You aren’t just buying chicken McNuggets and a tiny plastic Hercules ring. You’re buying happiness. He says that every now and then he tries to talk them out of it.
He tells them to order whatever they want and he will give them a dollar so they can buy their own toy and everyone will come out ahead. But the chant goes up, "We want a Happy Meal. We want a Happy Meal." Other customers stare at the skinflint of a father who won’t buy his kids the meal of great joy.
So, he buys them the Happy Meal. And it makes them happy, he says, for about a minute and a half. The problem is that the happy wears off. He says that you never hear of a young adult coming back to his parents and saying, "Gee, Dad, remember that Happy Meal you gave me? That’s where I found lasting contentment and lifelong joy. I knew if I could just have that Happy Meal, I would be content for a lifetime, and I am. Thank you. There’ll be no need for therapy for this boy.”
In fact, the only one that Happy Meals bring real happiness to is McDonald’s. You ever wonder why Ronald has that silly grin on his face? Twenty billion Happy Meals, that’s why.
Now, you would think, kids being fairly bright these days, that sooner or later they would catch on to this deal and say, "You know, I keep getting these Happy Meals and they don’t give me lasting happiness, so I’m not going to be a sucker any more. I’m not going to set myself up for disappointment any more." But it never happens. They keep buying Happy Meals and they keep not working.
Now here’s the question, only a child would be so foolish. Right? Only a kid would be so naive as to think that contentment could be acquired through some kind of external acquisition. Right?
But The truth about human beings is that as we grow up, we don’t get any smarter; our Happy Meals just keep getting more expensive. [And] the world around us tells us that happiness is always just one more Happy Meal away.
I hope you start from this day on seeing the traps and that you start running from them. Does that mean you can’t go to Mickey D’s any more? Of course not… Just snicker a little when you do!
The Winning Combination
All those things: love of money and stuff ruling your life.
Mark 8:36 says "What good is it, to gain the whole world, and forfeit your soul and what can a man give in exchange for his soul."
Give - Circulate the wealth. Even though God is all powerful & even though God owns everything, God cannot spend His silver & gold unless we give it back to Him. He gives it to us. He will not take it away from us. He gives it to us either to give or to hoard. And if we hoard it, God can’t use it.
God wants us to give it back so He can bless it & multiply it & use it over & over & over again. And He intends for the cycle to continue so that His wealth can be constantly circulated.
He says, "Trust me, I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry about the food you’re going to eat. Just trust me to provide for all your needs. My wealth is to be circulated."
And wealth isn’t wealth until you circulate it. And the real blessing comes when that wealth is circulated.
Do you know, one of the by-products of giving some of it away? It teaches us that we can get by on less. It teaches us that we don’t need those things to be happy.
By letting go of our money and some of our conveniences we find that we don’t need all that junk to be happy. We can get by on less.
γωνίζομαι [agonizomai /ag·o·nid·zom·ahee/] Seven occurrences; translates as “strive” three times, “fight” three times, and “labour fervently” once. 1 to enter a contest: contend in the gymnastic games. 2 to contend with adversaries, fight. 3 metaph. to contend, struggle, with difficulties and dangers. 4 to endeavour with strenuous zeal, strive: to obtain something.
Practice Faithful priorities in living If you want to be content you need to start in the right place. You don’t have a material shaped hole on the inside, you have a God shaped hole that only he can fill.
The Apostle Paul tells us the secret to true contentment in Philippians 4:11. He writes, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.”
The Bible says the secret to contentment is to focus on Christ and to seek first the Kingdom of God, and everything else will take care of itself.
But I’ve got to tell you, that doesn’t happen without a decision. If you just drift along, there is enough pressure and influence from society, advertising, inner greed, that things will soon occupy our focus. We need to make a decision that I’m not buying into it anymore. I don’t need those things to make me happy, because they aren’t going to anyway.
I will not serve things, I will serve the Lord. I will focus on that which is most important. And I will rearrange my activities to match that new priority.
The beginning point is Tithing and Offering Giving. It is here we set and live by our priorities. People so what they want to do. They value what they want to value. The beginning is the decision to put your treasure – return 1/10 of your increase to God. Giving offerings to his work and ministry.
Have you ever done that? Have you sat down and thought about what is going to be the primary objective and focus in my life. What am I living life for? What are my goals?
The prize is Forever Life
If we are caught up in coveting, in driving for the accumulation of things, at some point we have to ask ourselves the question, WHY? Why are we trying to get it all? What do we think it will bring us? Why do we work 12 hour days, all to accumulate things.
Luke 12:15 says, “A man’s life does not consist of the abundance of things he has.” Possessions do not make you happy.
Marty Seligman is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and he conducted a study of depression. He found that there has been a sharp increase in depression since World War II. People born after 1945 are 10 times more likely to suffer depression than people born earlier.
The Amish of Lancaster, Pennsylvania – showed depression occurring at roughly one fifth the rate it occurred among the people of Baltimore, Maryland.
And In an attempt to explain why depression is so much more common today, Seligman acknowledge that people today are caught up in the middle of almost complete self-centeredness.
It’s time to turn to God. It’s the winning combination.
