Me2Church
Thanksgiving Message
Wildwind Community Church
David K. Flowers
I believe that developing spiritual eyes – eyes that see God all around us – spot Him in things and in people and in world events and in circumstances good and bad – this is the key to thanksgiving. All over the world people get out of bed every day and face the day from one of a few possible perspectives.
1. This world is all there is. Everything is precisely what it appears to be. Bad things are always, eternally, and unchangeably bad.
2. There is more to this world than meets the eye. There’s something behind it all.
These are two vastly different perspectives with different implications for how a person lives moment to moment. And over the years I have learned that you can’t simply give an IQ test in order to determine the believers from the non-believers. It’s not as if all the smart people are materialists and all the stupid people are spiritualists. Dr. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, is a committed Christ-follower. So is Dr. Armand Nicolai – psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School. So is Dr. Timothy Johnson, recent ABC News medical correspondent. There is a pretty big list of very intelligent people who believe there’s something beyond this world – people who spend their lives looking at human cells, human genes, the human body, the human mind, and declare, “Everywhere I go I see you.”
On the other hand, we all know there are also some very bright people who are materialists, who might say, “There is no God but nature – this world is all there is.” Sigmund Freud was an atheist. Carl Sagan was an atheist. Many of our brightest scientists are atheists.
Why am I spending time on this? Because the spiritual world – spiritual reality – begins with a choice. No one is forced to believe what they believe. Everyone makes a choice. There are reasons to believe. And reasons not to. Believers tend to find a reason to believe in everything that happens around them. Non-believers tend to find a reason not to believe in everything that happens.
Key to the spiritual life – key to finding a relationship with God – key to entry into the spiritual Kingdom Jesus spoke so much about – is developing our spiritual vision. Several years ago there was a song by Queensryche called Silent Lucidity and there was a line in that song that said, “If you open your eyes to me, you won’t rely on open eyes to see.” I hear that line and think of God saying it. If God opens the eyes of our hearts, we will not need to rely on the things around us – there’s another kind of sight, another way of knowing.
In talking about MeChurch last week and this week, we are dealing with selfishness – with the things that deaden our spiritual vision – things that will undeniably prevent us from seeing beyond this world and the things of this world. Last week we looked at the human tendency to want to re-cast God in an image that is easy for us to worship, comfortable for us, and doesn’t ask much of us. We also looked at how easy it is for us to see people not as influences that God will use to mold us into his image, but as vehicles for the meeting of our own needs. We talked about how we must learn to see God as he really is, and have a proper view of relationships so that we can get out of ourselves in order to allow God to get in!
Giving thanks is an inherently spiritual act. It is transcendent by definition. Why give thanks if there’s no one to give thanks to? And if there’s someone to give thanks to what else might we be obliged to give to such a Being? We cannot give thanks without gratitude, and gratitude is a spiritual quality. It comes from that part of us that is more than food, more than sex, more than instinct, but aware – conscious – acting deliberately and willfully – able to understand consequences and recognize benefits – and feel grateful. Thanksgiving implies blessing, and awareness of having been blessed. When people give thanks to God, no matter their spiritual condition, they exercise a little piece of them that seeks God. Thanksgiving is an act of reaching out to God. The problem is how many do this without considering the possibility that maybe God is trying to reach back. And if God is reaching back, are there barriers in our world that might keep him from getting through? Do we want a God who forces himself on us, who will yell at us, or do we want a God who will approach if we are approachable, speak if we are listening?
Last week I said there are four areas where people are chronically self-obsessed. Religion, relationships, time, and treasures. If we don’t make specific efforts, we will approach all of these things from a completely ego-centric perspective. These can become barriers that will keep us grounded to the earth spiritually, so to speak. They will keep the eyes of our hearts tightly closed. Worse yet, maybe they’ll convince us our eyes are really open when they actually aren’t. That’s the condition many are in. The reason you’re going to laugh at what I’m about to show you is because of this man’s honesty. He is actually going to be saying out loud the things none of us would ever say – but he’ll be speaking a lot of truth about the way we often live our lives.
I can hear this guy now – “Everywhere I go I see Me.” Which song do you sing?
See this week isn’t just about Thanksgiving, it’s about to whom we are giving thanks. Who has given us what we have? Who deserves credit for it? Why have we been given what we have and is there any response from us that might be appropriate? Certainly we just saw one of many inappropriate responses.
God has blessed us with spiritual hunger, with a deep craving for something that goes beyond ourselves. We pervert it when we turn that desire inward and worship things other than God. God has blessed us with the people around us. We can learn patience and many other virtues by learning to love the people around us, but we pervert our relationships when we use them to meet our own needs. There are two other gifts God has given us and I want to look at both of those today and the way we tend to pervert them, keeping us from being able to be properly grateful for them, keeping us from seeing and acknowledging God, keeping the eyes of our hearts tightly shut.
The third of these four things is our time.
Area 1 – Our Connections (to God and others): Religion and Relationships
Area 2 – Our Contributions: Time and Treasure
Obviously, God has blessed us with our time. Our time is our life. When you run out of time, guess what?
What you do with your time reveals a ton about who you are. In fact, since your time is actually your life, perhaps what you do with your time reveals more about you than anything else. Everything that you do happens in time. You sleep and eat in time. You use the bathroom and get sick and go to work and tuck your kids in and travel and eat ice cream and watch movies and pray and go to church and worship God (or not) in time. You have sex (or not) in time. You laugh and cry and read and dance and sleep and dream and have babies and get groceries in time. You love and hate and win and lose and celebrate and mourn in time. You are bound to time, bound by it, made for it, and in some ways a slave to it. You are given a certain amount of it when you are born and that’s all you get. You can’t make up for it if you lose any. You can’t reclaim it if you waste it. You can’t undo the worst moments in it, and you can’t re-live the best moments in it.
So what you do with the time you have is literally what you do with your life. Women inherently realize the value of time, guys. That’s why most of the time they’d rather have you home in the evening than working extra hours. Because the clock is ticking.
That’s why it’s a good idea to spend some of your money on family vacations, because your kids are growing up pretty fast, and the clock is ticking.
That’s why so many men are staying late at the office trying to build a name for themselves and leave a legacy of some kind, because they too know the clock is ticking.
And deep down, usually buried in the back of our minds, we all know that one day the clock will stop.
And then, at last, time and how we use time will no longer be an issue. But until then, I think time is pretty important. I think most people put a high value on their time. And I think God knows that if you don’t honor Him with your time, then you do not honor Him with your life. Your time is your life.
What is the result of honoring time and spending our time wisely?
Ephesians 5:15-20 (NLT)
15 So be careful how you live, not as fools but as those who are wise.
16 Make the most of every opportunity for doing good in these evil days.
17 Don’t act thoughtlessly, but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do.
18 Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, let the Holy Spirit fill and control you.
19 Then you will sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, making music to the Lord in your hearts.
20 And you will always give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thanksgiving is the result of a life spent making the most of every opportunity. The New International Version says we are to “redeem the time,” that’s another way of saying to make the most of every opportunity – redeem the time!
Wildwind asks its members to serve in a ministry in our church. Of course they are welcome to serve in other organizations as well, but we ask them to make a contribution of their time to this church. Why? Because if we want to ensure that we have members who are moving the church forward, who are faithful to it, and really want what’s best for it, we have to ask them to give a slice of their time to it. You will invest your time in the things you care most about. No one HAS to serve at Wildwind. We can’t MAKE anyone and we wouldn’t if we could. But for those who seek to join up with us and help us make Wildwind happen, they need to give us some of their time. You give your time to what is most important to you. Again guys, that’s why your wives get nervous when you want to be at work more than you want to be at home. Where you place your time speaks to where your values really are. By the way women, that’s equally true for you. When your husbands are home, what are you doing with your time? Is some of that time reserved for them so you can invest it in them and in your children, or do you spend all of your time cleaning, cooking, getting stuff organized for the kids? It works both ways. You communicate value by how you use your time.
Time invested in doing God’s work, in living for God as God would want us to, results in a lifestyle of worship and gratitude. If we spend all our lives on hobbies, pleasures, making money, and other things this world offers us, we will not grow spiritually, will not develop a lifestyle of worship, will not become truly invested in the things of God. You will nearly always connect most deeply to what takes most of your time.
Finally is money.
We’ve covered religion and relationships, in other words the tendency we have to be selfish in the way we approach God and people. We’ve just covered the contribution of our time. And this message could not be complete if we didn’t also cover money.
Folks I asked last week but I want to ask again – can you imagine any four areas that tell more about who you are than how you approach religion, relationships, time, and treasure? Can you see how we often use all of these things simply to meet our own needs?
