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Take
my lips and speak through them. Take our thoughts and think
through them. Take our hearts and set them on fire with love
for you. Unless you speak, nothing of significance will be
spoken. Bring us your word, Lord Jesus. Amen.
I like
to think I'm a creative shopper. Sometimes I'm even daring.
The problem is, being a creative shopper is not what you ought
to be when you shop for groceries. Leigh does not need me
to be creative when I run to the store. What's worse is shopping
on an empty stomach. I bet that almost all of us have gone
grocery shopping on an empty stomach without a shopping list.
Everything that tastes good looks especially attractive, and
the shopping cart ends up filled with random things, and usually
too many snack foods. I've come home with coconuts, a horseradish
root, pork rinds, the expensive Campbell's soup like Scotch
broth, yogurt-covered anything, chips, cookies, desserts and
Mounds bars. (Except for the Campbell's soup, I don't even
know what to do with all that stuff! How do you break into
a coconut? What do you do with horseradish? You have to wear
goggles just to cut the thing!)
When the
cashier rings up the final total and announces the bill, I'm
amazed and move into a state of shock at the cost of my unplanned
shopping spree. The worst part is coming home and explaining
to my wife how I spent so much money and still didn't get
what we really needed!
My new
theory is that the object of grocery shopping is to purchase
a nutritionally balanced diet for our family. Shopping without
a list, no matter how creative, risks spending my time and
money on the wrong food.
Life's
many options compete for our priority just like the well-stocked
shelves of a grocery store. To have any control, whatsoever,
over our lives, we must decide in advance what we will give
ourselves to. Today I want to talk to you about setting priorities:
the object is to allocate limited amounts of time and money
where God directs us. Too often we choose our priorities with
the same foresight as our trip to the grocery store, and the
things we give priority to are simply not what our family
needs or what God wants.
Webster
defines a priority as something that we give precedence by
assigning a degree of urgency or importance to it. The problem
is that most people, men especially, have not settled the
issue of what their priorities should be. And among those
who do know, too few live according to those priorities. The
possible choices of what our priorities could be are like
the well-stocked shelves of the grocery store. Unless we know
exactly what we are looking for, we will load ourselves down
with "snack foods" that don't provide us with the
nutrition of a balanced "priorities" diet.
Paul echoes
John's writing in 1 Corinthians when he admonishes the Christians
there. "Now we have received not the spirit of the world,
but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand
the gifts bestowed on us by God." (1 Corinthians 2:12
) No wonder we are frustrated! We do not have the spirit
of the world. We have the Spirit that is from God. Yet our
constant diet is nothing but that which is of the world: our
entertainment, our goals, our attention. What we spend our
disposable income on. How to get ahead. How to make more.
How to get what we want when we want it. How to fill our lack
of contentment with anything and everything.
It leaves
us skimming through life. Do you feel as though you are just
skimming through relationships, home life, or your job? It
seems the more we get, the more we want. In our pursuit of
the world we leave a trail of broken relationships. Understand
that in this context God and the world are opposites. If you
have received Jesus Christ into your life and it is your desire
to follow him, you cannot surround yourself with the priorities
of the world and expect to be satisfied, because you have
the Spirit that is from God.
My greatest
fear serving in Birmingham and living in Birmingham is that
we are being handed our priorities by the world, and because
we are surrounded by the best the world has to offer, we are
in danger of becoming spiritually bankrupt. Because of our
success, we think we are immune to this sophisticated form
of peer pressure. We think we can call the shots. We put our
faith in our fortunes. We try to control our destiny; which
can only leave us competing with the One who truly does control
our destinies. This subtle shift only leaves us more blind.
We are spiritually Christian and practically atheist. It is
as though we are grocery shopping on empty stomachs. When
this happens, it is more than just our stomachs that wind
up empty.
Throughout
this first letter, John calls Christians to walk in the light
and to know Jesus. John didn't question the people's relationships
with Jesus. He knew they made an initial commitment to Jesus,
and their sins had been forgiven. He knew their relationship
was with a God who had demonstrated Himself to be stable and
trustworthy from the beginning of the universe. He knew they
had been challenged in their faith and their strength in God
and God's word had enabled them to overcome the threat (2:12-14).
John then challenged these believers to apply these truths
to their lives and let them shape their motives. We can look
within our lives for the value system we live by. The world's
value system competes with biblical priorities.
Gertrude
Stein, the American writer, owned two Picassos. She always
used to tell her friend, "If the house were on fire and
I could only take one picture, it would be those two."
It's tough work, but it's where we see tangible evidence of
our interior lives.
Our top
two priorities are clear: "Love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,
and love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:37)
When we can saturate our minds with the Word of God, and devote
every ounce of our strength to loving God, our lives will
take on a new dimension. Love, joy and peace begin to enter
in more fully, affecting our minds and our relationships and
our work. We will continue the tasks God has given us or will
give us, at the same time remembering that our most important
work is to love God. God deeply longs for a personal relationship
with us. There is a place in God's heart that only you can
fill. That's the whole reason for the season! God came to
earth searching for that relationship with us. From beginning
to end, the Bible is about a missionary God. The old hymn
reminds us: "O, how I love Jesus, because he first loved
me."
We demonstrate
our priorities through obeying God, daily Bible study and
constant prayer. Whom do you talk to during the day? Do you
talk to yourself, or do you talk to God? The Bible tells us
that worshiping God with others is important. It's hard to
love God and choose not to attend church. Sharing our gifts,
contributing to God's work is another way we demonstrate our
priorities. As I drove by Baldwin Library a month ago, I thought
about Martha Baldwin - a good Methodist - and how she donated
that land for the library. I got to thinking, when you boil
it down, we can spend our money on ourselves, or on a cause,
which could be anything. Obviously we need to take care of
our needs or our family needs, so we set a certain financial
level for that. Anything above that is what we give. There
are many wonderful causes out there, but the hill I would
choose to die on would be the church. The cause I would defend
would be the cause of Christ. So that's where my extra goes.
Our second
priority, to love others, revolves around relationships. The
highest among these others, if we are married, is our spouse.
In the eyes of God, a husband and wife are as one. Relationships
with our children and parents are also tops, given their placement
in the commandments. Jesus also calls us to love the outcast,
to befriend the stranger, to care for the disenfranchised.
We need to make this change in our priorities. Tolstoy puts
it well: "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody
thinks of changing himself."
John reminds
us that it is difficult to know and love God with a divided
heart, and the world's value system seeks our allegiance.
John uses the common word for world, "kosmos," and
gives it a moral slant. The word "world" refers
to the fallen state of the universe. The cumulative effect
of sin, which supports attitudes and values, oppressive and
unjust systems "under the control of the evil one."
(1 John 5:19)
In our
passage, John gives us the three things that make up love
for the world:
1. The
desire of the flesh. The cravings of sinful man. Pursuing
life self-sufficiently independent of God, which cannot help
but set us in opposition of God.
2. The
desire of the eyes. The lust of the eyes. Not just sexual
temptation, but everything that entices the eyes. Greed, consumerism,
lust. Do you see how TV (or any screen for that matter) becomes
a great vehicle for this particular temptation? If you ask
my children why we mute the commercials when we watch TV,
they will tell you: "Because they only want your money."
3. The
pride of wealth. The pretentious hypocrite who glories in
himself or his possessions, which also cannot help but set
us in opposition from the One who has given us our place in
life. Status symbols, which we all have, bring us a form of
identity. Many of us build our lives around this, which simply
leaves us loving the world.
John reminds
us that these things of the world are passing away. We can
never leave a mark for God through worldly pursuits. "One
life will soon be past, only that which is done for Christ
will last."
A Christian
cannot live with a divided heart, responding one moment out
of love for God and at the next turning to the world for pleasure.
Jesus himself said: "No one can serve two masters ...
You cannot serve both God and money." (Matthew 6:24)
If we want to demonstrate that we know and love God, we need
to make a clear-cut commitment to do the will of God rather
than respond to the world's priorities.
How empty
the world's value system becomes when we realize its direct
opposition to God's priorities! We need to decide today what
our priorities will be, and act on them, lest we wind up at
home with nothing but empty calories and empty lives. Let
us take time to thank God for giving us priorities and direction.
As we launch into the holiday season, let us lay hold of God's
priorities, lasting priorities, and live for Him today. Amen.
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