Changing the Climate
What do you value most in life? What would you be willing to sacrifice everything for? Is there anything? Many of us would have sung that hymn: All to Jesus I surrender, all to Him I freely give, but how true are those words for us as we sing them!
God has a purpose and plan for every person and for Him to be able to use you to His fullest desire, each of us have to prioritise what matter most, in other words we need to clarify our values, weigh up what is important to us and then bring them into agreement with our actions.
JOSHUA 1:8 (NIV) Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
We must realise that what we value affects our life. They control everything in our life.
v Our values affect our stress levels. When our values are unclear, there is confusion. When our values are in conflict, it’s because we haven’t clarified what’s important and what’s not. The result is stress.
v Our values control our success in life. Every time you make a decision, you’re filtering that decision subconsciously or consciously through what you value. If your values are right it will lead you to growth, success, development. If your values are wrong, you’ll eventually crash and burn. What you think is important in life not only effects your stress, it also effects your success.
v They also effects our salvation. Jesus said that it is possible to be outwardly successful – financially, socially and every other way – and be spiritually bankrupt on the inside. He said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?”
And listen! Your values can and should affect the people around you, hence the title of my message today.
How many of us have come home from work, school or wherever, grumpy as anything, having had the worst day ever and seen our mood affect those around us! In simple terms, that is how much your values can affect others also.
Today, I want us to look at how you live a value-based life?
There are four things that you need to do:
v Choose your source.
v Clarify what’s important.
v Change your lifestyle to match what you say with what is really important.
v Check yourself daily to see if you’re continuing to say and do what you value most.
1. CHOOSE YOUR SOURCE
Where are you going to get your values from? This is very important because the source of your values will determine the quality of your values. For instance, would you consider the New Zealand Herald a good source for values? How about TV talk shows?
Where do we get our values? We get them from a lot of places:
Parents, peers, magazines and books, from music, from society in general.
But today, one major value giver IS the media. The average New Zealander watches about 1000 hours of television a year. That means by the time you’re 65 you will have watched TV for 9½ solid years.
Sadly, if you went to church once a week for your entire life, that would only equal four months of spiritual teaching. Four months compared to 9½ years – tell me where you’re getting your primary values?
1 John 2:15-16 (NKJV) Do not love the world or the things in the world……For all that is in the world; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; is not of the Father but is of the world.
1 JOHN 2:15-16 (Mes) “Don’t love the world’s ways – wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important – has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from Him.”
This was written about 2000 years ago and it’s still relevant today because the world’s values have not changed. The world has always had three basic values in life. These 3 things are what the world says is important.
v Pleasure. Pleasure is a primary value in this world. (the lust of the flesh)
v Possessions. (The lust of the eyes)
v Prestige. That is: power or position or popularity. (The pride of life)
If you ask most people, “What do you want out of life?” They’ll say, “I want to have fun…. I want to be happy … I want to feel good.” That’s different ways of saying pleasure. We live in a pleasure-obsessed culture.
Possessions. Isn’t it true that we often fall into the category of buying things we don’t need, with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t know! For many people self worth is based on their net worth. Possessions is the second value in our society.
Prestige. In most western countries, image is everything. We’re very status conscious. We want people to look up to us. We want people to think we’re important and successful and when that happens, we have value. We’re very status conscious.
The problem is this: the media so bombards us with these values – pleasure, possession, prestige – over and over that even Christians get seduced by it. We buy into it. We think like everybody else that those are the ultimate values of life. And the result is that for many Christians their values are no different than those of an atheist? They’re just as pleasure-seeking, just as materialistic and just as status conscious.
ROMANS 12:2 “Don’t become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.”
If you buy into the world’s value system; that the ultimate value in life is pleasure, possession and prestige, you will miss God’s purpose for your life. I will guarantee it.
If you get seduced into the system that you should spend your entire life trying to get more pleasure, more possessions, more prestige, then you’ll spend all your time on that and you will have no time to fulfil the reason you were created for this world in the first place. You will miss God’s purpose.
So the first step in building a foundation is choose your source. Where am I going to get my values from? Now, obviously as Christians, the best place to get your values from is from the Word of God. Make a decision: The WORD or the WORLD?
2. CLARIFY WHAT IS IMPORTANT
I want to encourage you to make a list of your values. Make a list of what you consider to be the most important things in life and then attach a scripture to them (source).
Do this for a couple of reasons:
v You need to do this because most of the values that you have you didn’t choose. You didn’t choose them. You just assimilated them without thinking as you grew up. You picked them up from people all around you. Some of them you got were good and some of them weren’t so good. Some of them are self-defeating and some of them are actually hurting your life. But you didn’t automatically sit down and choose the value. You just automatically accepted it. You’ve never really thought them through.
v You need to write out your values because we rarely think about our values until we have a crisis. Then, all of a sudden, we get interested in, “What’s the purpose of life?” When you’re cruising through the world, going through life and everything’s going great, you don’t stop and ask the tough questions. What happens is, you wait until a crisis occurs and everything hits the fan …… bankruptcy, divorce, major illness, death of a loved one …… and, then all of a sudden, you start asking questions: “What am I here for? Or “What really is the purpose of life?”
Knowing what you value most is so important that we all need to do something about it.
With this general election coming up, you will vote for the person or party that is closest to your values – eg: if your sole focus is on making money, you will vote for the party that will best meet that value! Correct?
So here is some homework to do during the week. Sit down with a pen and paper and ask yourself these questions:
v What is important to you? Then try to make a list of the ten most important values that you want to build your life on.
v What is your definition of success? Success to me is…………… and have it written out.
Why is that important? Because if you don’t come up with a personal definition of success, other people will define it for you. And that’s a big mistake because automatically, you will define success and failure by the values you hold.
Success is a word we use all the time in our society. It’s probably a very overused word. But nobody ever stops to define it. Let me give you a definition of success: Success is the feeling I get when I live out my values. That’s what success really is. Success is not a destination. It’s not a goal, or an achievement. It’s a journey, a progression. Success is not an achievement. Why? Because if your success is based on an achievement, somebody is going to outdo you eventually. Every record is broken eventually. Once your achievement is topped, what happens to your success? It goes down the drain.
Real success is when you decide what values are really important to you in life and you bring your life into alignment with them.
When you have a personal definition of success based on your own values:
§ Nobody can ever take that feeling of success away from you and,
§ You can be successful at any and every stage of life.
The starting point is you have to decide what’s important to you. I hope you’ll do this assignment this week. Decide what matters most.
If you see this as a bit daunting and are not too sure how to start, try to think what your life is going to be like in ten years time, twenty years, and thirty years. Look at it from eternity, standing at the judgment day and looking back on your life. Ask this question, “What is going to last?” What’s going to last ten years from now? Twenty years from now? For eternity? How much of what I’m doing right now is going to matter in twenty years?” The things that don’t matter, maybe I shouldn’t spend so much time on them. Maybe I shouldn’t spend anytime on them.
If you apply that question, “What’s going to last?” to the world’s value system of pleasure, possession and prestige, HEBREWS 11:25 says Moses refused to be called Pharaoh’s son but align himself with the people of God rather than enjoy the passing pleasure of sin. Sin may be fun for a while but the pleasure of sin will soon fade – don’t we all know that!
Possessions aren’t going to last either. 1 TIMOTHY 6:7 ”We brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out.” You never find a hearse pulling a trailer. You’re not going to take it with you. It’s not going to last. The next time you hear about some millionaire dying and someone says, “I wonder how much he left?” – he left it all! He didn’t take any of it with him. Possessions aren’t going to last.
And prestige: MARK 10:31 Many who have the highest place now will have the lowest place in the future. And the next part of the verse says, and many who have the lowest place now will have the highest place in the future.
If you want to see the end result of building your life around the world’s value system of pleasure, possessions and prestige, I have a book to recommend for you to read. It was written by the wealthiest man who ever lived and he was also the most powerful man in the world at that time. His name was Solomon and he wrote a journal called ECCLESIASTES.
In ECCLESIASTES you’ll find Solomon says, “I have the money and I have the power to do anything I want to do in life and so I did. I experienced every pleasure, I amassed every possession and I gained all the prestige in the world that I could gain. I did it all. I tried it all. I tried food and I tried sex and I tried achievement.” Solomon had 300 wives. How would you like to have 300 mother-in-laws? He said, “I tried it all. But it’s useless, worthless. His conclusion: "Meaningless! Meaningless!" "Utterly meaningless!"
The bottom line is this, 1 JOHN 3:17 “The world and its desires [the values of the world] will pass away but those who do the will of God will live forever.”
1. You choose your source – where am I going to get my values, the Word or the World.
2. Then you evaluate what’s important and you make a list of the things that you really believe are valuable.
3. CHANGE MY LIFESTYLE
Now that you have chosen your source and clarified what is important, you next need to bring all of that together and, if necessary, adjust your lifestyle.
If you want to focus on changing your life, there are three main areas that you need to focus on: time, money, and relationships. If you really want to build a value based life you have to take your values and make sure they are applied to your time, your money and your relationships.
First, your time. You need to say, My time needs to reflect what I say is really important. If God is really important in my life, I should have a daily quiet time with Him. He should get the first day of every week – Sunday – in worship.
My money should reflect that He’s first in my finances and I’m giving back to Him first before anybody else gets paid.
My relationships. I need to look and see that I’m making time for the relationships I say are really important. Is my husband/wife/children getting me in quality and quantity?
PSALM 119:37 “Turn my eyes away from worthless things.” That would be a good verse to put on your TV. Eliminate the things that don’t matter. Once you know what does matter and you’ve got a list of those values, the first starting point is to stop doing what isn’t important in your life, what you don’t value, so you’ve got time and money and energy for the things that do count.
EPHESIANS 4:17 (NIV) I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.
THE MESSAGE translates it as, “Stop going along with the mindless crowd. That’s no life for you. Get rid of it. Then take on an entirely new way of life, a God fashioned life, renewed from the inside and working out into your conduct, as God reproduces His character in you.” It starts with a shift in values.
Now I know that some of you are thinking, “I’d like to change. I know that what I say is important to me I don’t make time for and the things I don’t think are important I spend all my time on. And all the things I want to do I end up not doing and all the things I don’t want to do I end up doing. I’m so confused and I’d like to change but I don’t have the energy or the power or the strength or the wisdom to do it.”
You’re right. That’s why you need God in your life. That’s why you need Jesus Christ. God gives you the power to do what He wants you to do. You can’t do this on your own. YOU NEED GOD’S POWER.
PHILIPPIANS 4:13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Another translation says, He gives me the strength and power. You get the power to choose the source, to clarify what’s important and then to begin changing your lifestyle.
But the tragedy is most of us never get serious about changes in our lives until it’s too late.
Please don’t wait until it’s too late to start looking at where the values you’ve been living by are taking you. Don’t wait until you say, “I wish I’d done that different.” Or “If only……”
Now to do this, you have to do more than just decide what your source is going to be and what’s important. To solidify the changes in your lifestyle, you need to do this final thing:
4. CHECK MY VALUES DAILY
PROVERBS 4:23 Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.
What does it mean to keep your heart with all diligence? It means you do the things that are true and right, the things that are of value and worth.
I suggest that you put aside five minutes every day to write down what you value most and then once you’ve got this list prepared and put some Bible verses with it look at those and review and hold yourself up to this plumb line and say “Is my life in harmony with what I say is important? Is my time? Are my finances? Are my relationships in harmony with what I really believe God wanted me to do with my life?” If it’s truly important, can you spare five minutes? I think you can.
1 TIMOTHY 4:16 "Keep a close watch on all you do and think. Stay true to what is right and God will bless you and use you to help others.” If you’re serious about changing, you’re going to have to look at and test your values on a regular basis.
The fact is, nobody knows what the future holds. Nobody in this room knows what the future is going to be like. If you were stranded in a desert and you had no idea where you were, a map of New Zealand would be worthless. What you would need is a compass because at least then you could know you were headed in particular direction.
You don’t know what the future holds but God has given you a compass. It is the values that are in this book, His word. They have been the same for 1000’s of years.
Situations and technology may change but what you value most should be eternal.
This morning, I hope you have been challenged. I hope that the Holy Spirit has challenged you to look carefully at your life and re-assess its direction and your priorities. Do not let this moment slip away. Do something with it!
In Paul’s letter to his disciple Timothy, he challenges him to be careful about something.
1 TIMOTHY 6:20 Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.
The Living Bible says, Some have missed the most important thing in life – they don’t know God.
I’m calling this series of sermons Changing the Climate, because I believe that as Christians we can change the climate of our work place, our school, our home, our town, our nation, and our world. But it starts first of all in here!
When the light comes on, darkness doesn’t get greyer…… light dispels darkness. If we want to see the light of Christ shine in all areas of our life and into everyone we influence, we must look at our values.
If you do not know Christ, now is the time to be introduced to Him!
If you have slipped away from Him, now is the time to come back!
