HABITS OF HIGHLY INEFFECTIVE Christians
Set for Life
Part 3 of 3 03-20-11 Sermon
A number of years ago, on a mission trip to Nepal, Peg and I were in a group that went on an 8 hour bus ride to the city of Tansen. It was definitely not a tourist area. Along the road there were very steep drop offs and no guard rails. As you looked down in the ravines you saw the remains of other buses and vehicles that did not make it on the winding curves. It was clear why this was not a tourist destination.
We were going to Tansen because we wanted to see where the missionaries worked and we wanted to meet some of the Nepali Christians. We did get to meet some of these Christians and eat with them and share with them. We even got to go to a Nepali prayer meeting one night. The church we met in had no seating. We sat on the floor together and we prayed together, us in English and they in Nepali. I remember at one point the missionary leaned over to us and told us that the person praying was praying for our son, Luke.
When we left, the Christians there thanked us for visiting with them, sharing with them, and praying with them. They said, other Christian groups had come but they only snapped pictures of the Nepali Christians. They did not interact with them at all. They were just tourists.
I have also gone on mission trips with Appalachia Service project that go to Appalachia and sleep in uncomfortable settings and take showers in inconvenient places and during the day work in blistering heat and sometimes rain to repair the homes of the poor. There are other people, tourists, who drive by these homes and see their poor condition. They may see the people sitting out on their porches and they may slow down to snap a few pictures, but that’s it. They’re just tourists.
It seems to me that there is such a thing as a tourist Christian. There really is. The tourist Christian is someone who sort of looks at life from a safe distance, from a comfortable kind of environment, someone who lives an insulated life and who watches from afar as other people are elbow deep in ministry to help hurting people. They never get their own hands dirty serving other people in the name of Jesus Christ. So they never experience the joy and the fulfillment and the adventure and the satisfaction of living a Christian life as God intended.
So what I decided to do today was to bring a somewhat tongue-in-cheek message to those who may be tourist Christians, and who want to stay that way. How can I encourage you to remain living a mediocre Christian existence? If you want to be a fully ineffective, partially devoted, casually committed, completely stagnant, plain vanilla Christian then you’ve come to the right place. I'm going to help you do that today. Yes, it is a life that is unsatisfying. Yes, it is a life that will eventually bring regret. But it’s a safe life. It’s a comfortable life. And if you just want that, if you just want to stay comfortable, today I'm going to give you some ideas on how you can continue to do that. Of course, if that is not what you want, do the opposite of what I tell you this morning.
What are some of the habits that you can cultivate to make sure that you remain mired in mediocrity?
1. Highly Ineffective Christians edit scripture
Usually highly ineffective Christians don’t read the Bible. But everybody owns one. So the great fear is that some day we’ll have another earthquake and the Bible will fall off the shelf and open up to a very convicting verse. What do you do? You have to learn to edit scripture in your mind so you read it in a way that allows you to do what you wanted to do anyway and not what God wanted you to do. That’s the goal.
In the autobiography of Larry King, the talk show host, he talks about growing up in Brooklyn, New York. He said growing up in Brooklyn he and his buddies always wanted to go play stickball. Stickball is a game of baseball that you would play in an empty lot. They would look around for places to play stickball. The problem is all the property owners in Brooklyn didn’t like kids playing stickball on their property. So they would post signs that read, “Private. No stickball playing allowed.”
Is there any ambiguity about what that sign is trying to say? No. It’s clear. Whoever posts that sign does not want kids coming on their property playing stickball. But the problem was the kids wanted to play stickball and they wanted to get around these signs.
So they mentally edited those signs to give themselves permission to do what that wanted to do anyway. So this is what they would imagine a sign saying, “Private? No! Stickball playing allowed.” And they would play! What were they doing? They were just mentally editing that sign to give themselves permission to do what they wanted to do all along.
This is exactly what ineffective Christians tend to do when they read the Bible. They want to interpret it in such a way to give themselves permission to do what they want to do.
For example, in Revelation 3:15-17 God says, “I know you well. You are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other but since you are merely lukewarm I will spit you out of My mouth. You say ‘I am rich with everything I want. I don’t need a thing,’ and you don’t realize that spiritually you are wretched and miserable and poor and naked and blind.” If you’re a highly ineffective Christian you read it and go, “Yikes!” That’s a very convicting verse.” You want to edit that verse. There’s several ways you can do it.
One way is to do what Thomas Jefferson did. Thomas Jefferson, a former president, did not believe in miracles. So he literally took his Bible and took a knife and cut out every verse that talked about miracles. That’s one way you can do it. The problem is your Bible ends up looking like swiss cheese, inconvenient.
I have seen people go to great lengths to twist the Bible and edit the Bible to say, not what it’s intended to say, but what they want it to say. There are verses that you come across when you’re reading through the Bible that you sort of mentally edit out, just pretend they’re not there. Verses like, “Love your enemies,” I don’t like that one. Or “Turn the other cheek.” “Better to give than receive.” “The first shall be last.” These are difficult verses. Sometimes we just want to mentally edit them out and pretend they don’t exist.
I was talking with a woman who had a bad relationship with her father. She wouldn’t even talk to him on the phone if he called. Not only would she not forgive him, she wouldn’t even think about that possibility. She just ruled it out. What was she doing? She was editing the Lord’s prayer. Because Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” She’s saying, “I know better than Jesus does and I'm making the decision that I'm going to edit that out of my Bible and pretend it doesn’t exist.”
But the truth is the degree to which we refuse to apply to our lives the most difficult, the most challenging verses in the Bible, that is the degree to which we will be highly ineffective Christians. It’s the degree to which we say, “I'm going to live my way, go down my path, regardless of what God wants me to do.” If we should make that decision, that is the path to disappointment and to heartbreak and pain and regret.
If you’re a highly ineffective Christian, first you need to learn to edit scripture to your own liking. And then, second,…
2. LIVE AN UNEXAMINED LIFE
What does that mean? Living an unexamined life means you don’t peer down to the depths of your soul and come face to face with the unvarnished truth about who you are. It means you don’t look down deep inside yourself and ask the tough questions, what is it about who I am that compels me to keep committing the same sin over and over again? I know God doesn’t like it. I know I ought not to do it. But something inside me compels me to continue to go down this path. You don’t ask the question, What is causing that? What dynamics from my past or my personality or my pride or my self-will is causing me to go down that path time after time?
To live as a highly ineffective Christian, you don’t question your motivations. You don't confront your frailties. You don’t deal with the dysfunctional aspects of who you are. It means you don’t ponder the hard questions of life. You don’t ask yourself, “Am I really being a godly mom or a godly dad to my children?” Or you don’t ask yourself, “God, what is the next step You want me to take in my spiritual development?” You don’t say to yourself, “What is the legacy that I want to leave behind after I die?” Or you don’t ask the question, “What could God do with my life if I didn’t give Him ten percent of it but I gave Him 100% of my life? What would God do with it? What could God do with it? What will God do with it if I opened my life up that way to Him?”
You don’t ask those kinds of tough questions. Instead, an ineffective Christian decides to sort of doggie paddle around the shallow end of life. If you’re going to live an unexamined life whatever you do stay away from this verse. Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” Just take that black magic marker and blot out that verse. Get rid of that thing.
How can you insure that you will skim the surface of life instead of going deep? Three steps you can take to help you sink to true ineffectiveness.
1. Fill your life with noise.
It’s a very effective technique. Fill your life with noise. When you get up in the morning, have the radio blaring. Then when you sit down to breakfast, have the Today show blaring. Then on the way to work in the car, have the radio blaring again. When you get to work have background noise going all the time. Keep your door open so the commotion of your workplace is constantly present. When you get ready to go home put on the radio in the car so you’ll have that on the way home. When you get home, turn on the news while you’re eating dinner. Then sink into your favorite chair and channel surf until you fall asleep.
Why? Why would you do that? Because 1 Kings 19:12 says, “God often speaks in a gentle whisper.” And if you don’t have a lot of noise you may hear it.
2. Fill your life with activity.
Fill it with busyness. Fill it with tasks and action. Flit from thing to thing, from task to task without any margin as fast as you can so you don’t have time to take a breath. Why? Because Psalms 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.”
3. Fill your relational world with superficial friendships.
Friendships where you spend an inordinate amount of time talking about trivia. Avoid challenging relationships. Here’s another good verse to edit out. Proverbs 27:17, “For as iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.” You might as well just rip out the book of Proverbs from your Bible. It’s only trouble. Get rid of it. It’ll just cause you problems.
If you want to be an ineffective Christian, fill your life with superficial friends, with people who are stagnant, with people who are visionless, with people who are satisfied with sort of skimming the surface of life. When you hear people talk about opportunities to get involved in a small group, to take a new step, to get involved with new people, to do life together, friends that you can learn from and grow with and be encouraged by, be held accountable by, and develop together spiritually, and when you hear those kind of opportunities and something inside of you says, “I want that,” and you’re tempted to get involved, here’s my advice to you. Stick your fingers in your ears and hum that Simon and Garfunkel song from the 1960s “I am a rock. I am an island.” Just keep saying “I don’t need other people. I can do this by myself.”
That’s a great prescription, that kind of unexamined life – the noise, the busyness, the superficial friendships that will help you stay mired in mediocrity and keep you highly ineffective as a Christian. Here’s a third habit of highly ineffective Christians….
3. they treat God only as a pal
This illustrates a technique that ineffective Christians develop. That is they tend to take something that is true but they emphasize one spiritual truth while overlooking a whole bunch of other spiritual truths. They tend to get a very skewed and distorted perspective of the Christian life.
For instance, in this case, it is true to say, “Jesus Christ can be your friend.” He said Himself in John 15:14, “You are My friends if you do what I command.” Jesus told His disciples, “I no longer call you servants. Now I call you friends.”
It’s the truth. Jesus Christ has been my friend for over 40 years. He’s been my best friend. He’s been the most loyal friend I’ve ever had. He’s never left me. He’s never let me down. He’s been the most steadfast friend. He’s been the most intimate friend, the most loving friend that I’ve ever had. It is true. Jesus Christ can be your friend. And that brings us great comfort.
But sometimes it brings us too much comfort. That is not all that Jesus is. If you just see Him as a friend. Think about this. Friends don’t give commandments. Friends just kind of make suggestions. You can take them or leave them. Friends are not someone you worship. A friend doesn’t stand ultimately in judgment over you. A friend is someone you hang out with, you joke around with. You don’t give reverence to a friend. But while Jesus Christ is my friend, He is so much more than my friend.
Listen to the words of the Apostle John, his vision in Revelation 5, “Then I looked and I heard the voice of many angels numbering thousands upon thousands and ten thousands times ten thousands. In a loud voice they sang, ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.’ Then I heard every creature in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea and all that is in them singing, ‘To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power for ever and ever and ever.’”
That is my Lord too. He deserves my awe and my worship and my praise and my reverence. He deserves that because of who He is.
But, to be a highly ineffective Christian, don’t exalt God as Lord over all your life. Instead, you must bring Him down to your level. You must think of God as your heavenly pal, the good Lord, the man upstairs, my big buddy, Mr. Jesus. When you are tempted to sin do not picture God sitting on His throne surrounded by worshiping angels and beings too wonderful to describe. Do not picture Him in His blinding righteousness or yourself so filled with awe that you shrink back from His presence. Picture Him instead in a cardigan sweater and jeans like Mr. Rogers, putting His arm around you saying, ‘That’s ok, bud. Don’t sweat the little sins. I’ll take care of it.’ By doing this you will treat the sacrifice He made on the cross merely as something one business partner would do for another. Think of God as a loving, doting grandfather complete with rocking chair and beard. Pray casually without reverence. If you focus your mind on making the Almighty omnipotent master of the universe seem like just any other person you will be well on your way to a wonderfully ineffective life.”
There’s a fourth characteristic of highly ineffective Christians….
4. They live like CHAMELEONS.
You know what a chameleon is. They blend in to whatever their surroundings are. They’re the stealth reptile. Fully ineffective Christians learn to blend in with whatever their surroundings are.
On Sunday the chameleon Christian is in church. Then comes Monday morning at the office or at school. We sort of blend in to those surroundings and we laugh at the off colored jokes and the sexist remarks and we may make a few of our own. We participate in the backstabbing and in the office politics and in the gossip. And when friends swear and make a mockery of the name of God we find ourselves doing the same thing. And when we’re among racists, we’re racist.
The test of a chameleon Christian is this: Does anybody where you work or in your neighborhood even have one hint that you’re a Christian? If no one has a clue, you are on your way to being highly ineffective as a Christian.
If you want to live as a chameleon Christian one verse that you need to edit out of your Bible is what Jesus said in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” Forget that advice. What does Jesus know anyway? Who does He think He is? God? Just edit it out of your Bible. Pretend it isn’t there. Try serving God as your master when you are in these four walls and then when you go beyond these four walls try serving the world as your master. And you will live forever comfortably in the ranks of highly ineffective Christians.
A fifth habit of highly ineffective Christians is …
5. Ineffective Christians keep quiet about their faith.
Otherwise it’s going to blow their cover. How can you be a chameleon Christian if you’re telling people about Jesus Christ? You can’t blend in that way. Highly ineffective Christians will edit out of their Bible the words that Jesus uttered, His last directive to His people just before He ascended into heaven, The Great Commission, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” They just pretend Jesus never said it.
But sometimes even highly ineffective Christians sort of get guilt trips about their faith. They get into a situation where they can’t get out of it. My advice is, if you’re a highly ineffective Christian and you find yourself in that situation just seize that opportunity and talk about your faith in as inept and ineffective way that you possibly can.
Here are two examples, two illustrations, of being highly ineffective in the way you talk about your faith. I want to set up this scene. It’s at the Nashville airport. You have a highly ineffective Christian who has an encounter with a stranger. This first technique is called the “skirt”. This is how a highly ineffective Christian just sort of skirts the issue of talking about God.
“So you heading to Chicago today?
“Yeah…”
“We’re supposed to have nice weather there, you know.”
“I'm sorry?”
“Nice weather. We’re supposed to have nice weather.”
“Great, great.”
“I see you carry a Bible in your briefcase.”
“What? No. Maybe my wife put it there…”
“Are you a Christian?”
“Look! Can’t a guy carry around a Bible without getting the third degree?”
Excellent example! Notice how he skirts the issue of talking about God. And by the way, you get extra credit if you manage to make the other person feel guilty about bringing it up. Extra points.
This is another highly ineffective technique. The scare.
“So… are you going to Chicago on a visit?”
“Yes… hold on a second. … What God? Oh, yes. Thou art right.”
“Are you talking to me?”
“No, I was talking to the Lord. You see He’s called me to Chicago on business. He talks to me, you know.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes.”
“That’s very interesting. Did you know we’re supposed to have nice weather there?”
“Praise the Lord! Would you like to pray with me right now to become a Christian?”
“You know what? I think I have to change flights!”
The scare is a very effective technique. Like you go to a crowded movie theater and you’re looking for an empty seat so you ask, “Excuse me is that seat saved?” and the person next to it said, “I don’t know if that seat’s saved but the real question is ‘Are you saved?’” Either technique will be equally ineffective. The skirt or the scare will help you to repel people from a conversation about God.
Whatever you do, don’t think about the person’s eternity. Just block that from your mind. Don’t think about the emotional healing that God would bring into their life if they were to meet him. Don’t think about the destructive patterns in their life that are ruining their life and hurting their families that if they met Jesus Christ how He would lovingly begin to work with them to get them past those destructive patterns. Don’t think about their kids. Don’t think what would happen if a mom or dad met Jesus Christ and then began to create a godly environment in that home. Don’t think how those kids would benefit and generations to come how they might be effected. Don’t think about purpose and meaning that God would infuse into that person’s life. Don’t think of them as people.
Because the danger is if you begin to think about people as real human beings then you’ve got to think about the real places of heaven and hell and the real choices that people make and the real eternal destinations that people choose. Whatever you do don't tell people, “This is what I used to think about God and this is how I met Him and this is how He’s changed my life. This is what I’ve learned. This is what He’s done in my life.” Don't just in a natural way talk about what God means to you.
So whatever you do block out the words of the Apostle Paul from your mind and from your Bible where he said in Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” Block it out of your mind.
I would conclude this point and I would conclude this whole message with five words.
May it never be so. May it never be so!
Prayer:
Father, we’ve had some fun today talking about how not to live an authentic Christian life and may it never be so. May it never be said of us that we settle for the safe and we settle for the comfortable. Father, more times than I would like to admit I see a bit of myself in those habits. I see times when I like to pretend that a convicting verse isn’t there. I try to mentally edit it out rather than face it and apply it. There are times when I’ve been a chameleon Christian and I’ve just blended into the surroundings I’ve been in. I felt sick about it afterwards. There have been times when I’ve only treated You as a pal, as a friend and I’ve not given You the reverence and the worship and the praise and the awe and the wonder that You so richly deserve. All of us see a bit of ourselves in those habits. God, we don’t want to be highly ineffective Christians. Not one person here wants to someday look You in the eye and say, “It was safe the life I lived. It was uneventful the life I lived. It was comfortable the life I lived.” No. We want to look You in the face and say, “Jesus, thank You for this grand adventure that You had us on and thank You for the joy and the fulfillment and the satisfaction that You breathed into our lives because we didn’t flinch from Your teaching. But we gave ourselves to You unreservedly and said, “Use us 100% of who we are. Use us for Your purposes. You point the way and we will follow. You point the hill and we will take it. We want to be those kind of Christians. Give us the courage to live those kind of lives in Jesus name. Amen.
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