Split

Title: Split

Place: BLCC

Date: 8/20/17

Text: Daniel 2

CT: We are to live as it all belongs to God.

[Screen 1]

FAS: Good morning. How are you all doing this morning? Everybody back in school and getting back into the routine. I pray everybody is settling in to a great new year.

Had this buddy of mine graduate from college a while back. I ran into him and asked how he was getting along. He said he was doing all right. I said have you got a job yet. He said man I’m not real proud of what I got going on. I’m working at the zoo.

I went to apply at the zoo and they hired me. Trouble is when I showed up, what they had planned for me was a little bit out of the ordinary. You see I was expecting to work in the office or something. But the guy I reported to had something totally different in mind for me.

He told me the chimps had been sick and were not acting right. They wanted me to get in there with them and perk things up.

You know I needed the job.

He gave me a suit to put on. (A chimp suit). I was going to be far enough away from the people that they wouldn’t be able to tell I wasn’t really a chimp. So I tried on the suit. It felt pretty good. I actually kind of enjoyed what I was doing.

I got really good at swinging on the vines and even did some chimp dancing for the kids. The kids love it. They are clapping for me and I am starting to really like his job. This went on for four days.

The fifth day I was really feeling good. I was swinging on the vines. I just kept going higher and higher until I slipped off and fell into the lion’s den.

This was crazy. He realized what he had done. He starts screaming HELP. Help. Somebody come get me out of here. (In full chimp guard).

Then he really freaked out because the lions started running toward him.

He started screaming again. Help somebody get me out of here.

Then the lion said, “Man if you don’t shut up you gonna get both of us fired”

Hope you are having a better job finding a job. Don’t want to see any of you at the zoo. Now you see that was a made up story but….

As Christians we find ourselves in all sorts of jobs or vocations. We spend our time here at church all about God and Jesus, but we spend the rest of our time on whatever. We find ourselves in a split. We struggle with giving enough time to church but feel so pulled toward our job or other activities we deal with outside of church. One way to describe this is a Sacred Secular divide. We often as Christians see our job as Christians is to work enough so we can tithe and give to the church. You know we want to do our part if we are truly followers of Christ. Right. That is why we work so hard?

I believe there is a better way. We need to break this split. There are there things we need to do.

[Screen 2]

1. Engage. We need to engage our community our workplace our school. Engage the culture of your place.

2. Love. Love the people. Love the place. Love the culture you are in.

3. Rehabilitate. Change the environment to better serve God.

These three things are crucial to break this split we feel in our lives.

I heard a story of a young man who became a Christian. He wanted to go into ministry. But his advisors told him he was too up there to be a minister. He needed to go into law. He wanted to serve his Lord though, but he went into law. He did OK until he got into the heart of learning law. He begins to feel he is selling out because he is not as involved with the ministries he had been in before.

After he became a lawyer he became depressed. He said to God I feel I have let you down. He was in the Sacred Secular divide. He believed his church was sacred but his work as a lawyer was secular. [Screen 3]

Let me tell you about a young man from the Bible. Daniel. He is found in Daniel 2.

In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep. So the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed. When they came in and stood before the king, he said to them, “I have had a dream that troubles me and I want to know what it means.”