What Matters To God Should Matter To Us

We all have things in life that MATTERS a great deal to us.

• How we spend our TIME in life MATTERS to us.

• How we spend our MONEY MATTERS to us.

• How we spend our ENERY in life MATTERS to us. Especially if you are over sixty-five years of age because in the middle of the day you feel like you need to take a nap.

I want to ask two questions when it comes to what really MATTERS IN LIFE.

I will deal with this in two ways…

(1) What matters to you?

(2) What matters to God?

Again, we all have things in life that MATTERS a great deal to us.

But as we look at the life of some folks there are somethings that MATTERS to them if you examine these things closely, they really should not matter.

Let me give you two examples…

I am probably going to get in trouble for saying this but so be it!!!

(1) Take the game of football to some folks this game really MATTERS in their life.

But let me say this about football, it is called a GAME!

That is all it is, just a game that people play.

You would never know it is just a game as for as for some people.

Football game really MATTERS to them.

In a few weeks if their team wins or loses but WHAT DOES IT MATTER!

It will soon go down in the history books and forgotten.

Let me give you another example, I picked on the football fans, let me pick on myself.

(2) Take the example of watching cowboy movies.

I was raised around horses growing up. My dad boarded horses, and he had twenty-two horses he boarded.

So, I like horses, and I guess that is why I like cowboy movies.

I used to adjust my time schedule to watch certain cowboy movies because they MATTERED A LOT TO ME!

And as I was watching one of the movies one day I began to think about it was only grown men pretending to be cowboys and all of a sudden, I came to realize watching cowboy moves really does not MATTER THAT MUCH.

It was only a MOVIE!

Illus: When it comes to what MATTERS in life I thought about Clovis Chappell, used to tell the story of two paddle boats.

They left Memphis about the same time, traveling down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

As they traveled side by side, sailors from one vessel made a few remarks about the snail's pace of the other.

· Words were exchanged

· Challenges were made

And the race began!!!

Competition became vicious as the two boats roared through the Deep South.

One boat began falling behind. Not enough fuel. They had been plenty of coal for the trip, but not enough for a race.

As the boat dropped back, an enterprising young sailor took some of the ship's cargo and tossed it into the ship’s furnace.

When the sailors saw that the cargo burned as well as the coal, they fueled their boat with the material they had been assigned to transport.

They ended up winning the race, but they burned their cargo. (Max Lucado, In the Eye of the Storm, Word Publishing, 1991, pp. 97-98.)

A lot of folks have done the same thing with their life. God has entrusted them with life, and they have taken the one life God has given them and consumed it on things that REALLY DOES NOT MATTER IN LIFE.

Illus: For example, many believe that the god of sports is the number one God in America.

Think about it:

• This is all some talk about

• This is all some read about

• It is all some folks care about.

It is probably true that the god of sports is the number one God in America.

Many Americans can tell you all about the games, scores and the players, but cannot tell you very much about the God of heaven THAT CREATED THEM!!!

But generally, women do not play football, so they are illiterates when it comes to football and how it is played.

Illus: They are like the two elderly sisters who donated $5 to a charity and, to their surprise, won two tickets to a football game.

Since they had never seen a live football game before…

• One of the sister Madge thought the free tickets would provide an excellent opportunity for THEM TO ATTEND A GAME.

• The other sister, Mabel said "Let's go!"

• They soon found themselves high in a noisy stadium overlooking a large, grassy field.

• They watched the kickoff and the seemingly endless back-and-forth struggles that comprised the scoreless first half.

• They enjoyed the band music and cheerleader performance that followed.