February 13, 2011 Sermon

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FOCUSING YOUR LIFE

From Burnout to Balance

Restoring Margin to Overloaded Lives

Part 6 of 7 02-13-11 Sermon

The past five weeks we’ve been in a series on “Restoring Margin to Overloaded Lives”.  We defined margin as the space between your load and your limit.  If you have more to do than you have time and energy you get overloaded, so you have to have margin – margin in your time, margin in your checkbook and every other area.  And in this series we’ve looked at the effects of this hectic hurried lifestyle and the value of slowing down and some ways to do that.  We’ve looked at the benefits of living with margin and some of the ways to build some space into your life.  We’ve looked at the antidotes to workaholism and how that can make a difference.  And last week we looked at Jesus’ strategy for lowering the stress level in your life and having more rest in your life.

Today I want us to look at the purpose for margin.  Why have margin in your life?  The purpose of margin is not to live a life of selfishness but to live a life of significance.  Margin is not just about cutting things out of your life and schedule.  If that’s all you got, you missed the point.  Margin is about making time for what matters most.

There’s a natural reaction that when we talk about slowing down and adding space to your schedule that you’ve overloaded you tend to swing the pendulum to the other end and go, “I ain’t doing nothing!  I'm going to sit at home all summer and pop bon-bons in my mouth, watch soap operas, take it easy.” 

You were made for more than rest.  God did not just put you on this earth to retire.  You were put here for a purpose.  God has a plan and He has a purpose for your life.  You need rest in your life.  Many of you need far more than you’re getting.  That’s why we’re doing this series.  But life is more than just rest.  And margin is about cutting out the superfluous things, the trivial things that don’t really matter so I have more time, more energy, more money for the things that really do matter most in life. 

The key to an effective life is focus – like a laser, the stronger the focus, the more concentrated the focus, the more power the laser has.  And when you focus your life on one or two or three things that really matter most, your life will be effective.  The problem is most of us have very unfocused lives.  So we’re trying to do a hundred things at the same time and think they’re all of equal value when they’re not, not at all.  So an unfocused life causes you to get overloaded. 

My prayer for you is this verse.  Ephesians 1:18 “I ask God to make your eyes focused and clear so you can see exactly what God is calling you to do.”  Today we’re going to look at how to focus your life.  Ephesians 5 says, “Don’t be foolish with your lives.”  Don’t waste your life.  Don’t use it up on things that really don’t matter.  Make your life count. 

How do you do that?  How do you live life wisely?  The answer is by asking the right questions.  So today I want us to review life’s four most important questions.  If you can get these clear in your mind, your stress level will go down and your satisfaction will go up.  You will live a life of significance and meaning and purpose. 

1.  WHAT WILL BE THE CENTER OF MY LIFE?

In other words, who or what am I going to live for?  That's the starting point.  Obviously there are a lot of options.  You can center your life around a career.  You can center your life around a sport.  You can center your life around a hobby.  You can center your life around making money.  You can center your life around who’s my next date.  You can center your life around having fun.  You can center your life around collecting collectibles. 

There’s nothing wrong with any of these things.  They’re all fine and good but they all make a lousy center for your life.  They’re not strong enough, they’re not solid enough, they’re not secure enough to be the center of your life.  You need something at the center of your life that is absolutely unchanging, that can never be taken away from you.  If it can be taken away you will lose your security.  You will always be under stress.  You need something that is unchanging and secure. 

The Bible tells us in Psalm 62:10 “If your wealth increases don’t make it the center of your life.”  Why?  Why should I not make wealth or the acquisition of wealth the center of my life? 

Because you can lose it all.  There are hundreds of ways you could lose it all, instantly, overnight.  If you build your life around money then you’ll constantly be tense because you’ve got to keep it, hold on to it and what if you lose it?  It’s not a good enough reason to be the center of your life.  On top of that, it’s not what life’s all about anyway.  Jesus once said, “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of things he possesses.”  Your net-worth and your self-worth are not the same thing.  Besides, you’re not going to keep it anyway.  You’re not taking any of it with you.  Why would you spend all of your life trying to acquire stuff that you’re not going to take with you into the next life anyway?  That is not the purpose of life.  And contrary to the popular bumper sticker, he who dies with the most toys just dies!  In fact, he loses because he’s invested in the wrong thing.  He thought that the goal was to get more.  It’s not.  So the Bible says don’t make that the center of your life. 

When you become a Christian, a believer, a follower of Jesus Christ, the center of your life changes.  Being a Christian means Jesus Christ is at the center of your life.  The Bible says “Christ’s love has the first and last word in everything we do.  Our firm decision is to work from this focus center.”  A lot of people imagine their life as a pie with different pieces representing different segments of their life.  So you’ve got a work segment of your life, you’ve got a retirement segment and you’ve got a financial segment, you’ve got a sexuality segment and you’ve got other relationships, a social life, and then, over here we’ve got Jesus as a piece of the pie.  

No.  Jesus is not a piece of the pie.  Jesus is the filling.  He is the whole pie.  And He wants to influence every segment – the financial segment, the sexual segment, the relational segment, the goals and ambitions and dreams segment, your career.  He is the glue that holds it all together.  He is the pie if you’re a believer.  He’s not just a segment.  He’s at the core.

You remember years ago they used to have these things called superballs.  You hit it on the ground and it’d go thirty, forty feet high.  Why?  Because the center of a superball was so tightly compacted it was a solid core not some mushy center like a tennis ball, which is very mushy.  But a superball had a very solid core and that gave it its bounceability.

When your core is solid in God you have bounceability.  You bounce back from stress faster.  You bounce back from problems faster.  You bounce back from grief faster.  You bounce back from crisis faster.  You have something solid in your life that doesn’t change.  When you have that you don’t worry.

The bible says“Instead of worrying, pray.  It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”  That means that the most basic fundamental decision of life is this: Am I going to live a life that is self-centered or God-centered?  Make a decision this morning.

The apostle Paul in the Bible says it like this, “I want God at the center.  I want to know Christ.  I want to really know Him.  I want to know the power in my life of having God at the center.”  I hope you’ll settle that one right now.  Make this your prayer: I want to really, really know Christ. 

After you have settled that question – Who is going to be at the center of my life?  – the  second of life’s most important questions is this…

2. WHAT WILL BE THE CHARACTER OF MY LIFE?

What kind of person am I going to be in this life?  What is on your business card doesn’t really matter in the end!  It’s not really what you do, it’s who you are.  God is far more interested in who you are than what you do.  Why?  Because you’re not going to carry your career into eternity, but you will carry your character into eternity.  This life, the life we’re living right now, is preparation.  All of this life is just preparation for eternity.  God is developing our character now so we can carry it with us into that eternity He’s prepared for us.

The Bible is very clear about His plans for our lives after we have make Him the center of our lives.  Romans 8:29 “From the very beginning God decided that those who came to Him should become like His Son.”  God wants us to be like Jesus Christ.  To have the values that Jesus Christ has.  To have the character that Jesus Christ has.  To have the kind of interests at heart that He has.

Philippians 2:5 ”In your lives you must think and act like Jesus Christ.”  God wants to help me become more like Christ.  It’s a lifetime project.  We’ll never totally reach it.  But He wants me to grow in that direction.  Doesn’t it make sense that He’s going to put you and I in the exact same circumstances that Jesus was in while He was on this earth?  Jesus faced loneliness and we’ll face loneliness.  Jesus faced heartache, we’ll face heartache.  Jesus Christ faced temptation.  He never said, “yes” to the temptation but He faced it and so will you and I.  If Jesus Christ had to face times of disappointment who am I to think I'm not going to face that as God grows us to be like Him.  He wants to grow in us the character of His Son so we can carry it into eternity. 

Every situation that comes into your life, good and bad, He wants to use for the purpose of developing character in you, whatever the circumstance.  The kind of character that it talks about in 2 Peter 1:5 “Don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love.”  God is working to do that in us to make us like His Son.  I don’t know any better description of what Jesus was like in character than in Galatians 5 where it talks about the fruit of what God’s power does in us as He grows us.  As it describes that it’s a description of what Jesus is like.  The fruit of God’s Spirit is love, joy and peace and patience, kindness, goodness.  That’s what Jesus was like and what God wants to do in us. 

But here’s the secret: The way that God does that is very different than we might expect.  God does that in us, works a new character into us – like love or patience or peace – by putting us in the exact opposite circumstance.  If you say to God, “I want to become a more loving person,” do you think He’s going to put you around a lot of lovable people?  It doesn’t happen that way.  I hate that but it doesn’t happen that way.  When you say, “I want to be a person of love,” God puts you around a lot of unlovely people because that develops the character of love. 

He puts us in the exact opposite situation.  He wants to develop new habits in our lives.  Character is really the accumulation of good habits.  If you have a habit of being kind to people, people will look at you and say you are a kind person.  And God is developing those good habits in us to develop good character. 

We all know it is tough to develop good habits.  It’s not easy.  It’s easier to develop bad habits than good habits.  Because of that, the second question we have to face in these important questions of life, the choice we have to make is, is it really going to be all about my comfort or am I going to allow God to develop a new character?  What do I care more about?  Am I going to choose what’s easy or am I going to choose what’s right?

The third question that will focus your life is this…

3. WHAT WILL BE THE CONTRIBUTION OF MY LIFE?

In other words, how am I going to use my God-given talents, my abilities?  Am I going to use them just to benefit myself or am I going to use them to help other people? 

The scripture says “God has given each of you some special abilities.  Be sure to use them to help each other, passing on to others God’s many kinds of blessings.”  The Bible says in Ephesians, “It is God Himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus.  And long ago He planned that we should spend these lives…” in living for ourselves?  No. “… spend these lives in helping others.”  We’re meant to help each other.

There’s one thing we all have in common.  Everybody here wants to make a difference with our lives.  You may have given up and thought I'm never going to do it.  But down deep you’d like to.  You’d like to leave an impact.  You’d like to leave your mark.  You’d like to influence others.  You’d like to make a difference in this world.  Where do you think you got that desire?  You got it from God.  God wired you to make a difference.  God wired you up to make a contribution in this world.  You were not put on this earth just to take up space, to breathe, to use resources, to retire and die.  No, God put you here for a very unique reason.  And God has uniquely shaped you so you can make a unique contribution. 

There are five ways God has shaped you.  SHAPE—Spiritual gifts, Heart, Ability, Personality, Experiences.  And God has uniquely given you certain experiences – painful and pleasant – some of them good, some of them bad to make you, you.  God uniquely gave you your personality.  Some of it you like, some of it you probably don't like.  He did it specifically to make you you!  And He gave you a heart.  Some things turn you on and some things you couldn’t care less about.  Some things you’re passionate about and some things you’re totally bored with.  God gives us all a different passion, different hearts so that everything in the world gets done.  If we all like to do the same thing then we’d all compete for that and a lot would be left undone.  So God makes us all different so that everything that needs to get done in the world gets done.  God uniquely shaped you for a reason, to make a contribution.

What you need to ask yourself is, “Based on my S.H.A.P.E, based on what God has made me to be, how He wired me up, what is the greatest contribution I can make?  How can I make a difference?   

You say, “My contribution would be so small.”  You never know what your contribution is going to be.  Great huge doors hang on very small hinges.  Sometimes, if you know anything about history, history has been changed by seemingly insignificant events.  Who would have guessed that a baby born in a stable in Bethlehem would change the world?  Nobody.  And often you never know how one little thing that you say to somebody or one little thing that you do may not only change their life but change all of history.  You just don’t know.  You can’t evaluate it until you get to heaven.

A good example of somebody in the Bible who had margin in his life in order to make a contribution is the Good Samaritan.  Remember the story?  Jesus told it.  He said there was a guy walking from Jerusalem to Jericho and he gets mugged.  They beat him up, rob him of all his stuff and leave him for dead at the side of the road.  The first guy comes walking by.  He’s a religious leader and he has no margin in his life.  He’s in a hurry and says “I don't have time to help this guy,” and he walks on past him.  “I’ve got a meeting to make, a deadline to meet.  I can’t help a hurting person beside the road.  I’ve got to keep going.” How many times have you driven past somebody with a flat tire on the highway and thought, (a) “I don't have time,” and (b) “I might get hurt I f I help a stranger.”  That’s what this guy is thinking so he goes past him.

The second guy walks by.  He’s another religious leader.  He says, “I'm not going to have anything to do with that.  I’ve got my own agenda.  I’ve got my own goals and ambitions.  I'm too busy.  I don’t want to be associated with that guy anyway.”  And he actually switches over to the other side of the road.  He changes lanes and drives on past.  He totally ignores the guy in his pain. 

The third guy comes along and he’s a Samaritan.  You need to understand that the Jews and Samaritans hated each other.  They are two different ethnic groups and did not like each other at all.  This guy had every reason to pass.  He was a stranger and there was racial conflict between these two people.  But what did he do?  He stops.  He helps the guy.  He gives him something to drink.  He bandages up his wounds.  He puts this total stranger on his donkey, takes him to the nearest “Holiday Inn”, leaves his “American Express” card and says “I’ll be back later.  I’ll cover all his bills.  You feed him, you clothe him, you restore him to health and I’ll pay for it.” 

This guy had margin in his life.  First he had time margin.  He had time to stop.  Evidently he planned to get to wherever he was going early enough that he could stop along the way to help somebody in desperate need.  Second, he had financial margin.  He actually had some money to give to help this guy.  He had energy margin.  He wasn’t so stressed out – “I can’t deal with this guy!  I’ve got my own problems!”  And as a result he was able to help.

Every day of your life you walk by people who need you, people who you could help.  But if you’re so focused on your life, your thing and you’re overloaded, you can’t stop to help anybody, you can’t make a contribution.  When you boil it all down in life, there are only two kinds of people – givers and takers.  What are you going to be?  A giver?  Where your whole life is “I want to make a contribution today, God, to somebody in the world.”  Or are you going to be a taker?  No one is ever recognized for what they take out of life.  We’re only recognized for what we give.  You make a living by getting.  You make a life by giving. 

One day you’re going to stand before God and God’s going to say, “What did you do with what I gave you?  What did you do with your life, your talents, your abilities?  Did you make any contribution?  Or did you just live for yourself?  What did you do that was totally unselfish, that was just a contribution to other people?”  This is the third important decision in life you have to make.  Am I going to focus my life on getting or on giving?  Is the rest of my life going to be, “Get all you can, get as much as you can, get it as fast as you can and hold on to it for as long as you can.”  Is that going to be your life?  Or is going to be “How, Lord, can You use me to give?  Use me, I want to be a vessel.  I want to make the world a better place because I was here because of the time that You granted me.”

Here’s the final question that will focus your life:

4. WHAT WILL BE THE COMMUNICATION OF MY LIFE?

What does God want to say to the world through me?  Did you know God wants to do that?  Did you know that God put you on earth for a special reason because He wants to say something to the rest of the world through you?  It’s called your life message. 

The Bible talks about it.  1 Thessalonians 1:8 “Your lives are echoing the Master’s Word.  The news of your faith in God is out.  We don’t even have to say anything anymore.  You’re the message.”  Anytime you say, “This is what God’s doing in my life,” you’re giving your life message.  Anytime you say, “I was praying about this and here’s what’s happened,” you’ve given a life message.  Anytime you say, “I’ve got this problem and I'm struggling with it but God is helping me,” you are sharing your life message.  Only you can share your unique life message.  Nobody else can do it for you.  If you don't share your life message that God put you on earth to share, the world gets cheated.  God wants to use you.  Why? 

Because the best messages are personal messages.  The most powerful message comes through a person.  I'm so glad that when God wanted to share His message of love He didn’t e-mail it.  He came in person.  The Word became flesh.  Jesus Christ came to earth so we could see what God’s like.  Now I know what He’s like.  I can mentally and physically figure this thing out of what God is like.  He came in person.  God has a message He wants to share with the world, and instead of writing it in the sky, He wants to put it through your personality.  He wants to put it through you.

There are two important parts.  There’s the audio part and the visual part – a walkie and a talkie.  He wants you to show the message with your life and He wants you to share the message with your mouth. 

First you’ve got to live your life message.  Philippians 1:27 “Live in such a way that you are a credit to the message of Christ.”  God wants people to watch your life and see His love.  You say, “Wait a minute!  I'm no preacher!”  Good!  You’ll be more effective not as a preacher.  The words “preach” and “preaching” are always used as negative terms in today’s society.  “Don't preach at me!…  Don’t give me a sermon! …  “  Really, God doesn’t want you to be a preacher.  He wants you to be a satisfied customer.  “This is what God did in my life.  This is what God’s doing in my life right now.  This is a problem I'm facing right now and this is how God’s helping me with this one.”  You tell me--To a skeptic who has more credibility -  the salesman or the satisfied customer?   No doubt!  You actually have more credibility with many, many people than I will ever have.  I'm the hired holy man.  I'm paid to be good.  You’re good for nothing!  When I talk about God they say, “Of course Frank’s going to talk about that.  He’s the pastor.”

What about you?  When you say, “This is what God’s doing in my life,” you’re sharing your life message and that is more powerful, far more powerful. 

You’ve got to live the life.  “Live in a way that you give credit to the message of Christ.”

Second, you’ve got to tell your life story.  You’ve got to tell people why you’re different.  “Life is worth nothing unless I use it for doing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus – the work of telling others the good news about God’s mighty kindness and love.”  You have to tell people why you’re different.  But first, do people notice any difference in your life, or do they just think you’ve got a couple extra meetings each week to go to?  God wants them to see the love of Christ in you.  But then you’ve got to tell them why you’re different.  They may just think you’re a vegetarian or something!  A nice person! 

You say, “I don’t ever tell anybody about my faith.  I just kind of try to live it in front of them.”  That’s saying, “I'm such a godly person people look at my life and automatically fall down and worship God.”  I don’t think so! 

You don’t have to be perfect to have a life message.  You just have to be honest.  You’ve got to be real.  You’ve got to be authentic.  You say, “I don't have it all together but here’s what God’s doing in my life.  Here’s the difference Jesus Christ has made.”  God wants you to share it.  And there are people God has put in your life that if you don’t share it they’re not going to hear it.  What will be the communication of my life?

We’re often more concerned with what people think about us than we are concerned about getting them into heaven.  So here’s the fourth question: will I use my life to promote myself or share Christ?  What’s it going to be?  Call the shots.  Make the decision.  Am I going to promote myself or am I going to share Christ?  It’s kind of hard to do both at the same time. 

These are life’s four most important questions.  What’s going to be the center of my life?  The character of my life?  The contribution of my life?  And the communication (the life message) of my life?  God is watching you to see how you’re going to answer.

Prayer:

      The purpose of margin is not so you can live a life of selfishness but so you can live a life of significance.  It’s about making time for what matters most.  There are probably some things you need to add into your life.  Do you have any ministry?  Do you have any time with the Lord?  What is at the center of your life right now?  Why not Jesus Christ?

      Father, we spend so much of our lives living without focus.  We bounce around from one activity and job to another.  We waste time and energy on things that really don’t matter.  And because we lack focus we get overloaded with less important issues.  We need Your help today. 

      Why don’t you pray?  Say, “Father, I don’t want to foolishly waste my life.  I don’t want to get to the end and look back with regrets.  And I don’t want to overload my life with things just because other people are doing them.  From this day forward, I want to center my life around You, Jesus.  I want to be God-centered not self-centered.  I want You to guide me in setting priorities.  I want to get serious about growing spiritually.  I want to choose character over comfort because I know that’s what’s going to last for eternity.  Help me to do the right things not the easy things.  And Father, I want my life to make a difference.  Please show me how You have uniquely shaped me to make a contribution.  And help me not to compare myself.  I want to be a giver not a taker.  Help me to have margin for ministry.  Please use my life to communicate Your love to those around me.  Show me some ways that I can share the love of Jesus instead of just promoting myself.  In Your name, I pray.  Amen.” 

 

February 6, 2011 Sermon

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HOW TO LIGHTEN YOUR LOAD

From Burnout to Balance

Restoring Margin to Overloaded Lives

Part 5 of 7

A pet store delivery truck was driving down the road. As the driver was making his rounds delivering pets, at every stoplight he’d stop, get out of the truck, take a 2x4 and start banging on the side of the truck.  He’d go to the next stoplight where he’d stop, take the 2x4, get out, bang on the side of the truck.  He was doing this at every light.  Finally the guy behind him, his curiosity got the best of him and he asked, “What are you doing?”  He said, “Buddy, I’ve got two tons of canaries in this truck.  It’s a one ton truck so I have to keep half of them in the air all the time.”

Some of you are like that truck driver.  You’re on overload.  You’re batting at everything because you’ve got stuff in the air all the time because you’re on overload.  Today we’re going to look at “How to Reduce the Load in Your Life.”  Jesus summarizes the secret of stress management in one sentence.  In Matthew 11:28-30 He gives us the secret of stress management.  Three things to do.  If you do these things your stress will go down, your satisfaction will go up, the overload will be lightened.  This is what you need. 

“Come to Me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  Jesus says three things.  Circle “come,” “take”, and “learn”. 

1.  Turn to Jesus

“Come to Me all you that are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.”  So the first point is turn to Jesus.  Come to Christ.  In the Bible people came to Jesus for many different reasons.  Some people came for forgiveness.  Some people came for answers.  Some people came for healing.  Some people came to Jesus for salvation.  Some came to Him for eternal life.  But Jesus says “You could come to Me for rest.”  Release from stress, release from overload.  He says, “Are you weary?  Are you overloaded?  Come to Me.” 

He says “I will give you rest for your souls.”  This is much deeper than physical rest.  Your greatest problem is not overloaded muscles.  In fact some of us need to use our muscles more.  You’re overloaded in your mind.  You’re overloaded in your spirit.  You’re overloaded in your emotions.  You need soul rest far more than you need physical rest.  You need release from worry.  You need release from tension.  You need release from stress, from guilt, from fear, from bitterness, from anxiety.  This is soul rest.  And He says, “If you’re worn out, if you’re tired, overloaded, come to Me and I will give you soul rest.” 

Who or what do you naturally turn to when you are exhausted, when you are depleted, when you’re overloaded?  You may be a Christian but I doubt that your first choice is Jesus.  You may turn to food when you’re exhausted.  You may turn to television and prop your feet up.  You may turn to a drink or a pill.  You may turn to some other form of escape.  But none of these things can give you soul rest.  Only God can give you that.

Notice what the Bible says, in Isaiah 40:29, 31.  “He [God] gives power to those who are tired and worn out and He offers strength to the weak.  Those who wait on the Lord will find new strength.”  It says new strength. It’s not just strength you had and you didn’t know about.  It’s strength from God, supernatural strength, strength from outside yourself.  How do you get it?  It says, “Wait on the Lord.” 

The antidote for your overloaded soul is not a plan for time management.  It’s not a program for stress reduction.  It’s not a philosophy on how to simplify your life.  It’s not a pill.  It’s a person.  Jesus does not say, “Come to church.”  He does not say, “Come to a small group.”  He does not even say, “Come to the Bible.”  He says, “Come to Me.”  The answer for your overload is a person.  None of these other things can give you soul rest.  What you really need is that deep down soul rest when you’re exhausted emotionally, spiritually, mentally.

This is the exact opposite of what the world teaches.  The world teaches when you’re empty inside, do more.  If I could just do more then I’ll be at rest and peace.  If I could just have more then I’ll be at rest and peace.  If I could just be more then I’ll be at rest and peace.  

Jesus said, it’s not a matter of do.  It’s a matter of come.  “Come to Me,” Jesus said.   No other qualifications.  Come to Me.  There’s a song they sing at the end of every Billy Graham crusade “Just As I Am, I Come”.  That’s how you come.  What you really need, the first thing you need in your overloaded condition, is more time with God.  “Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength.” 

How do you do that?  Mt 6:6 in The Message says: “Find a quiet secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role play before God.  Just be there as simply and honestly as you can.  And the focus will shift from you to God.  And you will begin to sense His grace.”  Get alone by yourself so you’re not pretending, you’re not acting in front of other people and you will begin to sense His grace. 

2.  Give up control 

Jesus says, “Come to Me if you’re tired and you’re weary and you have heavy burdens and I’ll give you rest,” and then He says, “Take My yoke upon you.”  The reason why you get so tired, the reason why you get so overloaded is because you think you have to be in control of everything.  You think, “It all depends on me.  I’ve got to pull all the strings.  I’ve got to make it happen.  I’ve got to be in control.  If it’s to be it’s up to me.”  Wrong!  It’s up to God if it’s to be.  You need to let go of control.

The greater your need to control things, the more your life will be prone to overload and stress.  You have to have your finger in all the pies.  You have to have everything under control.  You have to do this and that because you want to control it all and that’s why you’re stressed out.  You need to turn to Jesus and then you need to give up control to Jesus.  You give up control. 

This is Jesus’ second solution to your stress.  He says, “Take My yoke upon you.”  You say, “Wait a minute!  That doesn’t sound too relaxing.  That sounds like more of a burden.  It sounds like I take something else on my shoulders.  You don’t know what I'm already carrying.  I'm carrying way too much.  How can I take Jesus Christ’s yoke on me?” 

Many of you didn’t grow up on farms where you saw animals used to plow and haul things rather than tractors.  A yoke is a wooden beam that attaches two farm animals together to lighten the load so they can work together as a team.   A yoke is when you put the beam over two animals so the burden is shared and the load is lightened.  The purpose is to make it easier for the animal.  They can carry more because they are working together.  The load is halved and the load is shared and the load is lightened. 

Jesus says, “I want you to take My yoke upon you.”  Why does He use that symbol?  Because first, a yoke is a symbol of partnership.  There are two of you working on it and not just one.  Jesus says, “I will help you out with your problems.  I will help carry your load.”  He doesn’t add to your load.  He says, “I’ll share your load.”  He doesn’t have a load.  He’s God!  He says, “I will share your load.  Stick with Me.  Go shoulder to shoulder with Me.  Work with Me and I will be your partner and I will carry a part of your load.”  He says, “My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  Why?  Because we’re sharing it.  Psalm 55:22 says:   “Pile your troubles on God’s shoulders.  He’ll carry your load and He’ll help you out.”  God has a stronger back than you do.  Jesus says “Join up with Me, connect with Me, get attached to Me, put on the yoke with Me and I’ll carry the load with you.”  

If you are overloaded this morning it’s because you’re not yoked to Christ this very moment.  If you are overstressed this morning is because you are not yoked to Jesus t this very moment.  You can be a Christian and take that yoke off.  You’ve got to put it on moment-by-moment and say, “Jesus share this with me.”  Every time I get detached from Jesus Christ my stress level goes up.  Every time I get reattached to Jesus Christ my stress level goes down.  It’s that simple.  “Come to Me - Give up control.”  Those are the first two things.  The yoke is a symbol of partnership.  God says, “I will help you out.”         

It is also a symbol of control because farmers use the yoke to guide and direct and control the farm animals.  Where oxen are yoked together they are controlled by the master.  When you are under the yoke of Christ you are controlled by God.  You have given up control. 

When I'm yoked with Christ we move together in the same direction and at the same pace.  When you are yoked to Jesus Christ you can’t go in a different direction than Jesus.  And when you are yoked with Jesus Christ you can’t go any faster than Jesus goes.  He sets the direction and He sets the pace. 

You do need direction in your life but you need far more than that.  You need a pacesetter.  All of us have a tendency to go faster than we really should or slower than we should.  And Jesus knows better than you do what is the adequate, accurate pace for your life.  Every time you get away from the yoke of Jesus and you start going another direction you get in trouble.  Every time you get out from under the yoke with Jesus and you start going at your own pace you get overstressed.  That’s why He says, “Come to Me,” and then “Take up My yoke”.  Give up control. 

How do you do that?

Galatians 5:25 “Since we live in the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”  Follow God step by step.  How do you do that?  Romans 3:28 says:  “Our lives get in step with God by letting Him set the pace.” 

Who’s setting the pace in your life right now?  Your agenda or God’s agenda?  If you’re setting the pace it’s no wonder you’re stressed out because you’re looking around at everybody else, seeing they’re going fast and you think you’ve got to catch up.  They’re burning out too.  Why do you want to let other people set the pace in your life?

You need more than direction.  You need a pacesetter.  When Jesus is connected to you and you are connected to Jesus, you’re going to slow down.  Why?  Because Jesus was never, ever in a hurry.  He took his time getting to the house of Mary and Martha where he heard their brother, Lazarus, was sick.  Why?  He knew God had a plan.  God didn’t want to heal a sick man.  He wanted to raise a dead man.  So He wasn’t in a hurry to get there and in those three days the man died and was buried.  A greater miracle.  God had a better idea.  God had a plan.  You’ve got to give up control if you want to lower the stress in your life.  You have to let Him be the pacesetter.

The Japanese version paraphrase of Psalm 23 goes like this, “The Lord is my pacesetter, I shall not rush.  He makes me stop and rest for quiet intervals.  He provides me with images of stillness, which restore my serenity.  He leads me in the way of efficiency through calmness of mind and His guidance is peace.  Even though I have a great many things to accomplish this day I will not fret for His presence is here.  His timeless all importance will keep me in balance.  He prepares a refreshment and renewal in the presence of my activity by anointing my mind with His oil of tranquility.  My cup of joyous energy overflows.  Surely harmony and effectiveness shall be the fruit of my hours for I shall walk in the pace of my Lord forever.”

The truth is you’re going to be yoked to something in life.  You may be yoked to your career.  You may be yoked to the desire to acquire great wealth.  You may be yoked by the expectations of other people.  You may be yoked to baggage from the past.  All of those are heavy burdens.  They’re heavy yokes to carry on your shoulders. 

Jesus said, “Why don’t you get rid of that yoke and wear Mine.  It’s light and it’s easy.”  “My yoke is easy.”  In the original Greek that word means, “perfectly fitted,” a custom fit, sized just for you.

We know Jesus was a carpenter.  Back then carpenters didn’t build houses they built farm implements.  So I'm sure Jesus made many yokes in His day.  There’s a legend that over His carpentry shop was a sign that said, “Our yokes fit best.” They’d look at the actual animal that the yoke was going to be on and they’d customize the yoke so it fit the oxen perfectly so it didn’t rub against their shoulders; it was comfortable.  They were customized yokes. 

Let me tell you why you get overloaded.  You’re trying to do things you were never shaped to do.  God has wired you up with certain Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality and Experiences to make you you.  And when you try to do things that you were never shaped to do but you’re doing them because everybody else is doing them, you’re going to get under stress.  You’re going to get overloaded.  You’re going to get out of control.  You need to take Jesus’ yoke because it fits perfectly.  It matches your shape.  It’s well fitted. 

This is an exchange.  Jesus says, “Take My yoke upon you.” So what do you do?  You take off your heavy yoke, the burdens that are on your shoulders – you drop those – and you put on Jesus’ yoke, which is light and easy.  The truth is you don’t have one yoke on you.  You have a dozen.  You’re carrying expectations of a lot of different things and people and events.  You’ve got a community yoke.  You’ve got a family yoke.  You’ve got a business yoke.  You’ve got a church yoke.  You’re a big yoke!  You’re a yoke to somebody else.  The yoke’s on you!  You don’t have just one yoke.  You’ve got a dozen.  If it were a cartoon there would be a dozen of them piled up on your back.  Jesus said, “Throw all of those things off and put on Mine.  It’s easy and light and well-fitting.” 

If your burden is heavy, if your load is not light you’re not yoked to Jesus right now.  You’re doing something that is out of God’s will for your life.  You may be doing the wrong things.  You may be doing the right thing in the wrong way.  We think the answer to our stress is escape.  I'm overloaded – I need a vacation.  God says, no, that’s not it because when you go on vacation you take you with you and you’re the problem.  You can go to Tahiti but your mind is going with you.  We think the antidote to stress is escape.  God says the antidote to stress is give up control.  Every time I give up control, God gives me His peace. 

There’s one more thing.  He says, “Come to Me… give up control.  Take my yoke,” and then He says,

3.  Learn to trust

That’s the third key to stress management.  Matthew 11:29 “Learn from Me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.”  Jesus is the outstanding model of history in how to live a life of purpose and peace.  He is our model.  The third step is learn to trust by following Jesus’ model.  Watch how He lived and then do it. 

Study how Jesus lived and do what He did and you’ll have the same kind of peace that He had.  If you want balance, if you want health, if you want sanity in your schedule in your life follow the model of Jesus.  Learn. 

Learning is a process.  Learning doesn’t happen instantly.  Learning takes time.  The mess you’re in right now didn’t happen overnight.  You messed yourself up over a long period of time.  Those habits of hurried, worried lifestyle, they didn’t just start yesterday.  You’ve had years to practice this.  You have developed a lifestyle of overload, a lifestyle of stress, a lifestyle of hurry and worry.  You’re not going to get over it overnight.  There’s no pill you can take.  You’ve got to unlearn some things.  You’re going to have to relearn some new things.  You’re going to have to learn from Jesus.  That means you’ve got to be willing to learn if you want to lower the stress in your life.  You’re not going to continue to do the same thing you’re doing right now.  You’ve got to learn.

What can we learn from Jesus?  He tells us. 

“Learn from Me for I am gentle and humble in heart.”  Gentle and humble.  How is that going to help me in stress?  I can think of a lot of other things I’d like to learn from Jesus about stress management but gentle and humble don’t seem to coincide with my needs for stress reduction.  I’d rather learn how to have courage and stamina.  I’d rather learn how to have confidence and strength.  I’d rather learn how to have power and self-assurance. 

But God says, If you’re overloaded you need to learn gentleness and humility. 

Why of all the things that Jesus can teach me when it comes to needing soul rest do I need gentleness and humility?  Because the two greatest causes of overload in your life are aggression and arrogance.  That’s what causes you to get overloaded.  Aggression and arrogance. 

Aggression – we get in a hurry.  I’ve got to have it now, even if I can’t afford it.  So we overextend.  We buy things we can’t afford so we have to hustle to pay for them.  We don’t want to wait.  We don’t want to pause, we don’t want to delay, we don’t want to consider.  We want it now.  We want to be assertive.  We want to be aggressive.  We jump into things and we get way over committed before we could possibly fulfill all those commitments simply out of assertion and aggression.  We get in a hurry.  I’ve got to do it now!  We only go around once in life.  So you’re out there pushing and not in a gentle way.  In an aggressive way – dog eat dog, competition.  We’ve got to do it now.  We’ve got to do it first, we’ve got to do it best.  You’re overloaded because of aggression.

You’re also overloaded because of arrogance.  Ego is responsible for a lot more stress in our lives than we want to give it credit for.  We go out and think, “I can handle this!” and we take on another responsibility.  Ego and arrogance is why you try to control everything because you think you know better than everybody else.  You think you know better than God.  You try to do it all.  You try to have it all. You try to be it all.  And you try to please everybody.  You think you’re Superman or Superwoman and you’re not.  It’s pride.  It’s ego that drives us to buy more than we can afford, to attempt more than we can possibly fulfill in terms of commitment.

Jesus said, “If you really want soul rest here’s the antidote – gentleness and humility.”  You need to remind yourself daily that you are not everybody’s savior.  You can’t solve everybody’s problems.  You can’t even solve all your own.  You need to remind yourself that you are not the manager of the universe.  Jesus is.  You need to remind yourself that you’re just a tiny cog in a very, very, very big universe.  Let’s put it in perspective.  Have a degree of humility, which brings sanity, which brings release from stress.  Be gentle, be humble.  How do you learn that?  By watching Jesus.  Jesus was gentle and humble.  He said that.  “I am gentle and humble…” 

What does that mean?  He was totally dependent upon God.  What was Jesus’ secret of peace?

In the book of John you find twelve times where Jesus says, “I only do what the Father tells me to do.  …  I only say what the Father tells me to say…  I think what He wants me to think…  I go where He wants me to go…  I stay where He wants me to stay…  I do what He wants me to do…” Jesus lived a life of simple humble obedience to the Father.  He said, “All I do is what the Father tells me and I don’t worry about anything else.”  He said I'm not into crowd pleasing.  I only do what the Father tells me to do.

Do you think that would change the stress level in your life if you began to live that way?  Would it change things if you were you say, “I'm only going to live for an audience of one.  I'm not going to try to please everybody in the whole world because I can’t.  I'm just going to work on doing what God wants me to do, what God tells me is most important, what matters most and not worry about the fact that I can’t get it all done, be in all places, have all things.”  That will be a breath of relief to every one of our lifestyles.  When you only focus on doing what God wants you to do you don’t have to know the answers to life.  You don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen in the future. 

Proverbs 20:24 “Since the Lord’s directing our steps [and I'm yoked to Him] why try to understand everything that happens along the way?”  He’ll get me where He wants me to be and He’ll get me there at the right time, with the right direction and at the right pace.  What about when I get tired?  Psalm 142:3 “When I'm ready to give up, He knows what I can do.”

This is so important – learning to trust and learning to let go are the secrets of stress reduction. 

People say:   I can’t remember the last time I felt rested and refreshed.  My life has been on overload for years.  There are too many expectations, too many responsibilities, too many activities and too many decisions.  It seems like it all has to be done immediately.  I often feel like I'm putting my finger in a hole of a dam that’s leaking but I don't have enough fingers to stop all the leaks.  I am tired of always rushing to the next activity.  But when I look around I see that this feeling is not unique.  Everyone is overloaded.  Nobody has any margin in their lives.  Everyone is trying to do too much, so much that we don't have time to do what’s most important because every moment is packed.  This is madness.  It can’t be God’s will for us to live this way.  I really want to learn how to rest and relax in God’s plan, not just for my own health but I can see how my kids are learning the same crazy lifestyle.”

As your pastor I want you to learn before it’s too late.  I want you to learn to let go, to turn to Jesus, to give up control, to learn to trust before it’s too late. 

We are coming into the time of year where we start to get a lot of invitations – wedding invitations, graduation invitations, dinner invitations.  This is the greatest invitation you’ll ever get in your life.  “Come to Me all you who are weary and overloaded, stressed out and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me for I am gentle and humble of heart.  You will find rest for your soul for My burden is easy, My burden is light.”  Where are you going to get a deal like that? 

Turn to Jesus.  Give up control. Learn to trust.  If you have to say that a thousand times a day, memorize it.  Turn to Jesus.  Give up control.  Learn to trust.  You will find rest for your soul.

Prayer:

      What’s weighing you down?  Problems with your children?  With your finances?  Aging parents?  Difficulty with your business or your health?  God brought you here today so He could say this to you “Come to Me!”  Have you ever done that?  Have you ever come to Jesus?  It doesn’t say, come to a seminar, come to therapy, come to church, come to a small group.  He says, “Come to Me.”  The starting point is to unload by talking to Jesus about the things that are frustrating you, telling Him exactly how you feel.  Sometimes even your best friends don’t want to listen to your burdens.  It’s a little too much.  They’ve got their own.  But Jesus will never ignore you or tell you to shut up.  Jesus wants to bear the burden.  He wants to be your partner.  He wants to be the pacesetter. 

Pray this prayer in your mind:  “Dear God, I am tired of being tired all the time.  I'm tired of trying to control everything.  I'm tired of a life without rest and peace and margin. Please forgive me for all the times I’ve turned to other things for release instead of turning to You.  Today I come back to You.  I want You to be the pacesetter of my life.  I want You to set the direction and the pace.  I want to stop trying to control all the things I never could control in the first place.  Forgive me for my arrogance.  Forgive me for allowing my insecurities and my ego to take on more activities than I can possibly manage.  Forgive me for pridefully overloading my schedule.  Forgive me for filling my life with less important things so that I have no time for what matters most.  I want to learn from Your model, Jesus.  I want to be gentle, humble like You so I can have the peace that You offer.  In my overload, in my darkest hour, I ask You to fill me with Your power, let the light of Your love shine on me.  In Your name, I pray.  Amen.” 

January 30, 2011 Sermon

To listen to the sermon click here. To read a manuscript of the sermon, see below.

WHEN YOUR WORK DOESN’T WORK FOR YOU ANY MORE!

From Burnout To Balance Series -Part 4 of 7

The last few weeks I have been teaching on how to bring margin and balance into overworked, overcrowded, overscheduled insane lives.  If you’re like I am, there seems to be more demand for my time than I have time.  You can relate, I think, to this item called “The Essence of Survival.”  Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up and knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it’ll be killed.  Every morning the lion wakes up and knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it’ll starve.  So whether you’re a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up you’d better be running. 

We feel that accelerated pace in our lives.  We feel it in the work place.  Some of you work very, very hard.  And you know the myth of a 40-hour workweek.  We have e-mail to answer, fax machines are humming, the phone is ringing.  You get in your car and your cell phone is ringing.  It’s just crazy.

And then we try to crush ourselves with a little more hyperactivity.  A round of golf, we have to get to the gym, we have to engage in all the social things in our lives.  We’re really involved in our church life.  Then we tighten it just a little bit more.  If you have kids you’re running to dance lessons and Little League and soccer, piano lessons and all that.  And if we can eek out a vacation we go to a national park called Rushmore.  What’s that about?

This morning I want us to spend a few minutes thinking about how you can bring sanity in your insane work world. 

I want to say right up front I am in favor of work.  I think a strong work ethic is noble.  I think God’s wired us up to work.  He gave us work to do as a component to help bring fulfillment and levels of satisfaction in our lives.  You read`the Bible and you’ll see work all through it.  The Bible says t(at God instilled that desire for work within you.  The Bible says God worked to create the world.  He worked for your salvation and redemption.  He works to meet your needs.  And He calls us to be coworkers with Him.  You go back to the time when the world was paradise there in the Garden of Eden and one of the first things God did was give man a work assignment.  “I want you to manage this Garden,” He said.  Work was good.  Work was noble.  It was pure.  It was satisfying.  It was only after men and women violated God’s standards for living that work became a pain and a drudgery and a source of irritation. 

A man in the Bible, in the Old Testament, was supposed to be pretty smart but he allowed his workload to get way out of whack.  He wrote in Ecclesiastes, “I hated life because the work that is done under the sun is grievous to me.  I hated the things I had toiled for under the sun because I must leave them to the one who comes after me so my heart began to despair over all my toils of labor under the sun.” 

Do you love your work?  A newspaper article about two families that cashed in on a 353 million-dollar lottery said, “It’s not a matter of if they’ll leave their jobs.  It’s a matter of if they’ll give a two week notice.”  I think many people here would just love the chance to walk away.  As a matter of fact statistics show that one out of six workers think about quitting every week.  What’s wrong?  How can we fix it?

1.  GET IN TOUCH WITH THE REAL REASONS FOR OVERWORK

I'm not suggesting we’re lying about why we tilt toward workaholism but I think many people if asked this would say, “I work because I'm a person of integrity.  I want to give a good day’s work for a good day’s pay.  If I have to go the second mile, that just proves my level of dedication.”  We’d like to think that’s the only thing driving us into a workaholic frenzy. 

But maybe there’s something a little bit underneath that’s adding to this as well.  How about a consumption lifestyle?  I just want more stuff.  The more stuff we get the more we have to work and the more we work the more we can afford to get more stuff.  Julia Shore contends in her book The Overworked American that we’re not spending our money so we can have more leisure time.  We’re spending our money on more and more stuff.  God even addresses this issue of selfishness and consumptive lifestyle in the Bible.  He says it’s the source of many of the problems we have in life. 

James 4 “What causes fights and quarrels among you?  Don’t they come from your selfish desires that battle within you?  You want something and you don’t get it.  You kill, you covet and you can’t have what you want.  You quarrel and fight.  You do not have because you do not ask God.  When you ask you do not receive because you ask for the wrong motives.  What are the wrong motives?  That you spend what you get on your pleasures.” 

It’s all about pleasure and it’s all about wanting more pleasure.  So our consumptive lifestyle leads to enormous debt.  Debt drives us to increase our workload.  Our workload has to stay high so that we can feed our consumer mentality.  That might be what’s driving us.

There’s another possibility.  Deep down there might be a sense of insecurity.  Fear.  I have to work harder.  I have to climb higher.  In this era of corporate downsizing if I'm not at the front of the pack when they start to lay people off…. I don’t want my name on that list.  Every junior executive feels if she will work hard – ten hours a day, every day – then she can be promoted to a secure position as senior executive.  Then she can work hard, fourteen hours a day. 

When are you going to be secure?  When do you know you’ve landed and you’ve done enough?  Here’s what insecurity does: It makes us work like we can control the future.  If I work hard enough my destiny remains in my control.  I can control the outcome if I just work hard enough.  I can secure my place in the market as long as I'm working.

You ought to just resign your job as God.  He’s the only one who can control the future.  I can’t control the future.  You can’t control the future.  Only God can.  We work when we can but there are just things we can’t stop. 

Let’s dig a little deeper.  There may be something a little more insidious, a little more cancerous that’s driving you toward workaholism.  Maybe you’re doing so much work because you’re trying to earn the love and approval of others.  I’ve met people like this.  They want to be impressive.  They want to be liked?  They try to build a level of affluence.  If I am affluent enough then people will accept me, include me, love me, like me.  If my net worth goes up then my self-worth will go up. 

Ted Turner, the man who owns more real estate than any other living American, talks about what drove him.  He said he chose the university his father disapproved of.  He ended up dropping out and that disappointed his dad.  He was already in his second marriage when his father committed suicide in 1963.  Almost 20 years later in 1982 in front of Georgetown University students, Ted Turner exposed deep heartbreak.  In the middle of a rip-roaring speech about entrepreneurship Ted Turner pulls out a well-worn copy of Success magazine, a journal his father used to read to him whenever they were traveling together and Ted Turner’s picture was on the cover of that particular issue.  His booming voice trickled to a whisper.  He looked up to the rafters of that university and he said, “Is this enough for you?  Is this enough for you, Dad?” 

As hard as it is for me to say, this is the truth.  Some people are working themselves to death trying to earn the approval from someone who will never give it. 

You know who will get hit hardest in wanting approval in today’s culture, wanting acceptance, wanting to be legitimized?  It’s women.   

A few years ago there was a stigma if you held a job outside the home.  Now you’re stigmatized if you don’t.  You can’t win for losing.  This has enormously added to the burden of women who are so overloaded, feeling so overwhelmed, feeling their self-worth at a new levels of low because they think, “I have to do it all, be it all, have it all!”  And their level of exhaustion is way off the roof. 

What are we chasing after all?  I think at some level, some people are trying to gain acceptance and love from God. 

Are you trying to impress God?  Trying to earn His acceptance and love?  Let me clear this up right now.  God decided before you were born that He was going to love you with every ounce of His being, and there’s nothing you can do that will make Him love you more.  And there’s nothing you can do that will make Him love you less.  There’s nothing I can do that will make Him love me more, nothing I can do that will make Him love me less.  God loves me as much as He’s going to love me because he loves me completely and unconditionally.

2.  BEWARE OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF OVERWORK.

I'm not going to belabor this point because we’ve talked about the consequences of marginless living for a couple of weeks now and we will in the weeks to come.  This is not rocket science.  We’re bright people here.  If we continue to live marginless lives something has to give.  We feel it in so many realms of our lives.  Our credit cards are maxed out, our relationships are stressed out, our schedules are blown out and our colons and our hearts are worn out.  Think about it.  We are paying a huge price for this insanity. 

Productivity suffers.  Quality control managers tell us that in a predictable way after about fifty hours the quality of someone’s work slides in an amazingly predictable pattern.  That means all the overtime, all the work you carry home in that bulging briefcase, all the time you spend working in the office when everyone else has gone home, you are not getting nearly as much done as you think.  In some ways you’re probably even going backwards a little bit. 

We also know that relationships fall victim to overwork.  Relationships matter to God.  I spoke on that last week.

One more word about relationships.  A former chairman of AT&T had a million employees.  Heads of government called this guy just to consult with him about communication issues.  He was very wealthy, very influential.  But he fell into a pattern of long illness and near the end of that he had his leg amputated.  Here’s what he said, “With millions of employees and lots of people I knew, no one except my wife visited me in the hospital.  I received no phone calls.  Not one person sent me a card.”  His wallet was full but his life was empty. 

A truly rich person is one whose friends run into his arms even when his hands are empty.  He has nothing to give but if your arms are full of relationships in God’s economy you have love.

Something else that would be a consequence of overwork, a victim of overwork, would be your health.  Years ago the Japanese culture so honored the habit of overwork that suddenly they had workers literally dying at their workstations.  This was happening to such a degree they had to invent a new word just to describe this phenomenon.  They called it death by overwork.  Here’s what’s sobering.  The Japanese do not lead the world in work hours.  The United States does. 

Let’s get on to the solution side to all of this…

3.  CREATE A LIFE WHERE YOUR WORK WORKS FOR YOU.

How do you do that?  First:  Avoid extremes in your work.  Here are the two extremes.  You could say, “All I'm going to have is leisure”, or “All I'm going to have is work”. 

Leisure without work is wrong, and it equals Burn Down.  You’re going to Burn Down if all you do is play.  It’s like an unattended house that’s on fire.  There’s nobody there to put water on the fire, nobody there to pay attention, so the house burns down from inattention and inactivity.  There’s nothing wrong with having leisure in your life.  I think you should. 

The Bible tells us about Jesus.  He went sailing.  He took long walks with His friends.  He spent the night at the home of friends.  He would get alone by Himself for prayer and rest.    But His life was also marked by purpose, doing God’s will.  Leisure is not laziness unless it gets out of balance.

The other extreme is equally damaging and dangerous.  That’s all work and no play.  All work without leisure.  That equals Burn Out.  I think most of us here have a clue about this one.  We know what it feels like to be a candle in the wind and the flame is about gone.  One guy said, “I would rather burn out than rust out!”  But, either way you’re out!”  That’s not smart.  Like I said earlier: there’s nothing wrong with working, nothing wrong with working hard.  As a matter of fact the Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 3 “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.  We hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life with no work at all.”  We ought to be working but our lives shouldn’t be only work. 

So what do we do?  We find a balance between these two extremes.  You have work and bring it into balance with other parts of your life.  That equals Burn On.  That way you continue to burn brightly over the long haul.  Stay away from the extremes and find that place of balance. 

There’s a second way to have your work work for you:  Define yourself differently.

Let me ask you a question.  Do you realize that your worth is more than your work?  You are more than what you do.  This is especially true among men, I can’t say how much this is true among women but I know it’s true among men.  A group of guys together that are just meeting each other for the first time.  The testosterone starts flowing, the pecking order is getting established, the competitive juices are abundant.  Then somewhere about five minutes into it,  the question is asked.  “So what do you do?”  Behind that is a sharp edge.  “Is your work big?  Is it profitable?  Is it prominent?  Is it significant?”  The central message, that seizes control of this confrontation between men like gunfighters on a dusty noonday street, says, “Mister, you are your work.” 

Is that who you are?  Let me ask it in another way.  If you lost your job, who would you be then?  Would you still be you?  In any sense or on any level?  What if your whole world was wrapped up in your work life and then the boss walked in and said, “You don't cut the mustard.  The financial picture around here necessitates your downsizing.  You’re out of here.”  Who would you be if you didn’t have a job? 

You say, “I’ve spent most of my adult years being defined by what I do.  If I'm not defined by what I do how should I be defined?”  That’s a great question.  You’re not defined by what you do.  You are defined by who you are.  You want a clue about who you are?  Take a look at what you want.  What you want will go a long way in telling you who you are.  What you desire most in life will tell you a lot about who you are. 

You know what the Bible says should define our existence?  A passionate and fully orbed love for God.  It is so easy to get sucked into the American dream that we put our affections, our desires in the wrong place.  We want the wrong things.  You know what God wants from you and me?  That we should seek Him first.  That we would desire Him most.  That He would be the object and the person of our greatest affections.  The discontent and evil of this world has not come because our desires are too strong.  The discontent and evil have come because our desires are too weak.  We will settle for fleeting pleasures that ultimately don’t satisfy.  The root of evil is we are the kind of people that will settle for the love of money or the love of work instead of love of God. 

We ought to seek God hedonistically the way a thirsty deer seeks water in a stream.  The thing that hinders us is not that we are pleasure-seeking people but that we’re willing to settle for such pitiful pleasures and halfheartedly fool ourselves with ambition at work while all the while infinite joy is being offered to us.  We have a longing in our souls that we try to satisfy with accomplishments, promotions and managerial excellence. 

As Christians, we remember our lives before Christ.  Sure we enjoyed food and friends and family and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and sports and art and travel. God was an idea.  He was even a good idea.  But He wasn’t our treasure.  He wasn’t our delight. 

Then faith came, the confidence came, that Christ made a way for someone like you and someone just like me to live in friendship with God forever.  The confidence came that if I come to God through Jesus Christ He will make me a new person from the inside out.  You remember that day when there welled up something within us like a cry to God.  “Make me new!” 

And when Christ came into our lives He brought with Him a new taste, a new desire.  It was no longer for health or wealth or prestige.  It was a hunger for God.  A genuine relationship with Jesus is the heartfelt knowledge that Jesus Christ is not only reliable, He’s desirable.  Can you imagine a child in the slum making mudpies in the street only because he has no idea that a short distance away, there’s the ocean and so he settles for a muddy street.  He’s too easily pleased and so are we.

We settle for a career with a corner office, a well-funded retirement plan, a company car, a salary that will allow us to own our own home, an occasional night out.  Because we’ve grown accustomed to such short-lived pleasures our capacity for joy has shriveled.  These are mudpies and God offers us the ocean.

Paul was a man in the Bible who had all the signs of success.  He had sterling credentials, a stellar education, community prominence, civic leadership.  He was even hot in his local religious organization.  But when he met Christ he was no longer defined by his resume.              “All the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life.  Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant.  I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by Him.”                               

Desire a relationship with God that grows increasingly deeper and be defined by that. 

How can you make your work work for you?  Here’s a third way…

Maybe some should consider a career change.  I know this is not an option for everyone here.  But I know that some thought it was not an option either, until you were laid off or the company was sold or your finances demanded a change.  All of a sudden you were looking at a blank space where once the future was so clear, then all of a sudden you discovered the most exhilarating time in your life.  Your creative juices started flowing once more.  You began to reshuffle the deck of cards called your priorities.  You started envisioning a life where work was fulfilling and exciting again but it was no longer going to consume you

Your next step does not have to be up another rung on the corporate ladder.  You may need to just change ladders.  We’ve been conditioned to believe, “I have to move up!”  Moving up is not always best.

I love the story about the Harvard MBA who was in Mexico for his company.  He saw a small Mexican fishing boat pulling up the dock and one solitary fisherman got out and held four huge fish on a stringer.  The Harvard guy was amazed at the quality of the fish.  He asked the fisherman, “How long did it take you to catch those?”  He said, “About three hours.”  “What are you going to do with them?”  The fisherman said,  “They’re going to feed my family.”  The Harvard guy was intrigued and said, “What do you do with the rest of your time?”  The fisherman said, “I sleep late.  I play with my children, I have a siesta with my wife.  I fish for a while then I go to bed.”  The business side of this Harvard grad kicked into high gear.  He said, “You could work nine hours a day and catch three times the number of fish!  Then you could buy a second boat.  Teach someone else to catch those fish.  You could buy a whole fleet of fishing boats.  You could ship your fish to restaurants all over the world.  You could move to New York, and put your fish catching business on the stock market.”  Before he even realized what he was saying the Harvard guy said, “If you work hard enough, and long enough you can eventually retire by the coast, sleep late every morning, play with your children.” 

Up is not always best.  Right now for some of you that kind of change isn’t possible.  But I would like to suggest with some careful spending patterns, systematic debt reduction, prayerful planning, you could find options you never dreamed would be yours.

I know that most of you are going to wake up in the morning and go back to the old job, back to the old grind.  What are you supposed to do?  A fourth way to have your work work for you is to…GO TO YOUR OLD JOB AS A NEW PERSON.

Here’s the deal.  Imagine your workplace as your ministry location.  Imagine the men and women around you as people needing a touch of God’s love.  Imagine that it’s God who placed you in that corner of the building, on that floor of the office, in that classroom at school and He wants you to be His representative, His minister right there.  Imagine how that could transform the experience you have at work even this week. 

Colossians 3 “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord.”  I know what’s going to happen.  You say, “Frank, that would be great.”  But tomorrow morning you step back on the treadmill, the tasks of life jump on you, competition is demanded.  Push comes to shove.  You get dinged a little bit and the lure and temptation of nonstop action can be addictive and like all addictions it can be destructive. 

You think,  “I have invested so much to get where I am.  I have to lock in on that with laser-like focus.  I’ve invested in education.  I’ve invested years.  I’ve invested in sweat equity.” 

That may be so, but God has invested in you too.  1 Peter 1:18-19 reminds us what God says “It   was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed [“bought out of”.  That’s what the word “redeemed” means.  You were bought out of…] the empty way of life handed down to you by your forefathers.  You were redeemed, bought out of that futile way of life by the precious blood of Christ.”  If you’re a Christian you are a new person because Jesus Christ gave you forgiveness for your past, a purpose for your life, a promise of a home in heaven.  You can approach your old job as a new person, a representative of God at your work place.   

You might be saying, “Me?  A minister?  I don’t think so.”

A multi millionaire who said yes to Jesus wrote in a book:  “God, I want my life to really matter.  I want what I do to have significance and eternal impact in the lives of other people.”  Here’s a brief excerpt from his book.  “I used to think that if I ever said a complete yes to Christ I would become a completely different person.  I would have to wear polyester and drive used cars.  [I kind of resented that.]  I’d have to ride a donkey in a AIDS infested third world country doing things I’d never enjoy doing.  This is not to denigrate those who fit those descriptions but to point out they just weren’t me.  I couldn’t figure out why God would have put me as an entrepreneur, a conceiver, a starter, a team building, a manager and leader and then put me some place where those things are worthless.  I was relieved to discover that God does not waste what He’s built.  I'm the same me.  Now He’s just applying me in a different way.”  The guy goes on to write, “After God made you He stepped back and said, ‘That’s a good one!’  He planted in your soul a desire to connect with Him and then He provided a way for you to do it.  God’s desire is for you to serve Him by being who you are, by using what He gave you to work with and, I would add, to do that where you work.” 

So who’s taking the time in your work world to pray with a sad employee or listen to a hurting person.  Who’s taking the initiative where you work to befriend the lonely or encourage the weary or hug the neglected?  Who’s inviting people to church?  Who’s telling them about the free gift of forgiveness that God makes available?  Who’s working for eternal causes, not just for a paycheck?  It could be you.  You could start this week.

Some senior adults were asked one time what they would do differently if they could live their lives all over again.  I think that’s an important question to ask people nearing the sunset of life.  Among their many great answers here’s one thing they said.  “We’d do more things that lived on after we were gone.  We’d spend less time on the temporary stuff that’s going to pass and spend more time on those things that carry some sense of eternal significance.”

Let me ask you a question: are you replacing a relationship with Jesus Christ with your busyness?  Are you letting intimacy with God fade while you’re filling that spot with activity?  If so I’d ask you to stop.  Stop relating to God at a distance.  Stop running a race that is ultimately futile.  Stop living a life that has no meaning and come to grips with what matters. 

Slow down long enough to hear God say, “I want a relationship with you, not based on what you do but based on what you are.”  Slow down long enough to hear God say, “You matter to Me.”  Just be still long enough to listen.

Let us pray.    As I pray this prayer you may find yourself saying, “That’s my prayer, Frank.   That’s how I feel, that’s what I want.”  If this rings true in your heart, quietly whisper to God, “Me too.” 

God, let the work I do be more than just busyness.  Let it be the work of thoughtfulness.  Let the work I do last for eternity, not just to get a paycheck.  May I work hard enough to be diligent, and slow enough to be wise.  God, give me moments that I can be still and get to know You better.  God I want a relationship with You.”  If that's your prayer, why don’t you just whisper to God, “God, me too!”