12-28-08 Goals That Cannot Fail

Nearly every year for the past quarter of a century

we have taken the last Sunday of the year

to do a little long-distance looking -

looking back at the past 12 months,

and looking forward as best we can at the year ahead.

It’s tricky business, of course,

especially when it comes to looking ahead,

but each year I’ve gained a little more confidence,

and, I think, a little more credibility

in my ability to guide us through this process.

And before we go any farther,

please know right up front

that I am not going to be talking about New Years Resolutions.

In fact those of you who have very long memories

can recall years when I’ve spent most of our final Sunday of the year

sharing with you how really stupid I believe New Years Resolutions are.

New Years Resolutions

are nothing more than our own private laws

that we write for ourselves in an attempt to bring about changes in our lives.

And like all laws,

they are only as effective

and only as enduring

as the emotions that drive us to make them.

No matter how well intended they may be,

they are, in the end,

simply our attempts to remake and reshape the flesh.

And as such

they will always ultimately fail.

Paul says it perfectly in 4 remarkable verses in Colossians.

COL 2:20-23 If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!" (which all refer to things destined to perish with the using)-- in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.

All such efforts fail

not because the goals in themselves are wrong,

but rather because no external, imposed structure

can ever transform us on the inside.

We live our lives on the surface,

looking at the externals,

looking at our actions, our behavior patterns,

telling ourselves that if we could just change our actions

it would change our lives

and solve all our problems.

But our actions

are simply the outward expressions of our inner belief system,

our heart attitudes,

and until the internal beliefs and attitudes are changed

trying to change the actions will accomplish nothing.

I was involved in a conversation with a friend some time ago

who was clearly in tremendous emotional pain.

I told him that the pain was simply an external indicator

of an inner belief system that God wanted to rework.

To attempt to attack the pain

would not solve the causes of the pain.

But he didn’t see it that way.

He said his problem was that he was too weak -

strong men didn’t hurt

and he just needed to become stronger

so that he could seal off his emotions

and then feel no pain.

That conversation brought back memories

of the words to a song written by my all-time favorite artists.

A winters day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

Don’t talk of love,
But I’ve heard the words before;
It’s sleeping in my memory.
I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

Now, it’s certainly true that if we exert sufficient effort

we can, for a while, hide from the feelings

that are trying to alert us to the lies we’re believing.

But nothing really changes on the inside,

and in the end it only postpones and intensifies the problems.

God’s approach to change

is very different indeed.

He says simply,

ROM 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

He tells us that all true change

begins with our thinking patterns.

The more we learn to think like Christians,

the more we end up acting like Christians.

But even that is not the whole picture.

You see, there is another step farther back,

the one that provides the foundation

upon which everything else is built.

What our God offers us

is not simply some form of the power of positive thinking -

teaching us to think better thoughts

so that we can then live better lives.

Nor is it some form of religious manipulation,

placing us within a religious sub-culture

that then exerts sufficient external pressure on us through fear, or guilt, or promised rewards

so that we can then alter our behavior patterns.

What He offers us through Christ

is true, total transformation of who we are at the deepest possible level of our being.

He literally recreates us at the spirit level,

placing within us

a new heart,

a new, righteous, holy center to our lives.

Then, and only then does He begin talking with us

about the need to be transformed through the renewal of our minds,

telling us that step one is our discovering and then believing who we really are -

the sons and daughters of God Himself,

His holy ones,

(1PE 2:9)... a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light...

The great calling of the Christian life

is not our trying to become the people we should be,

the great calling

is our discovering and believing who we already are.

And if you think that is something we can do

by reading a few verses

and jotting a few notes in the column of our Bible,

you do not yet understand the forces that war against us.

We are not unlike my Dell laptop computer in some respects.

It’s a few years old now

and feeling it’s age

so I recently decided to ease some of its problems

by purchasing and installing a larger hard drive.

But when I installed the new drive in the computer

the system simply refused to believe

that the new drive was any larger than the old drive.

There were codes imbedded in the system

that made it impossible for the computer to see the more than 80 gigabits of additional space

that were right there in front of it.

And with so much of what our God tells us about ourselves as His new creations,

we are exactly the same way.

We have codes imbedded in us,

thinking patterns and belief systems at the foundation of our reasoning processes,

that make it impossible for us to see and operate on the truth.

Want some examples?

God tells us that we are now His holy ones.

And the word “holy” He uses

is the same word He uses to describe Himself.

And we just don’t get it.

He tells us,

ROM 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

And we hear those words

and know that He’s really trying to tell us something

that He thinks will result in our being absolutely free from the power of sin in our lives,

but we don’t get it.

He tells us that, “ROM 6:18 ... having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.”

And again it just seems like words to us,

words that our minds cannot process,

because our thinking both about ourselves and God

is so corrupted that we cannot connect the dots.

It’s certainly not hopeless, of course.

Far from it!

Through the careful, patient working of the Spirit of God within us

He can and will help us root out and gradually rewrite our corrupted codes.

I can remember 40 years ago

in the early days of my walk with the King

telling people “What you’re looking for, hungering for is Jesus Christ.”

And I believed it...at some level...a little bit.

Probably it’s more accurate to say

that I wanted to believe it

and I chose to believe it as best I could.

Now, after more than 60 years of life

and more than 40 years with the King

what was once mostly a hope and a chosen belief

is now the certain foundation of my life -

what you’re looking for,

what you’re hungering for,

what your spirit longs for more than everything else is Jesus Christ.

He and He alone can give you peace with yourself

and fill that aching emptiness within.

But I really am getting way off track here.

Mostly what I wanted to say

was simply that writing rules or “resolutions” for ourselves

can never in themselves bring about enduring change in our lives.

All true change begins with our God recreating our spirits - placing a new heart within us,

and then with us discovering and believing

the truth about who really are.

The more correctly we see our true identity,

no matter what voices around us, or from our past tell us otherwise,

the more we will live out that truth.

But that isn’t really what I most wanted to share with you

as we look toward the new year ahead.

I think it is reasonable to say

that the year we’ve just completed

is not the year any of us had anticipated 12 months ago.

Things have happened in our nation and in our world,

things that have produced a level of uneasiness,

and stress,

and uncertainty

unlike anything I’ve known in my life time.

Many people have been directly affected by significant financial losses

if they had investments or retirement accounts tied in with the stock market

or with real estate.

But even if there were no direct personal financial losses resulting from what’s been happening,

there is now a sort of world-wide anxiety - an uncertainty

that can have a powerful affect on the way we approach the future.

And to help with this

I’d like to spend the rest of our time this morning

reminding us of just a few of the life goals given to us by our God

that are guaranteed not to fail,

goals that, if we accept them and pursue them during the next 12 months,

will allow us to look back a year from now

and know that it has been a very good year

no matter what may or may not have happened in the society around us.

Does that sound too good to be true?

You do know, don’t you,

that when you entered the family of God

you also entered the Kingdom of God -

a very real Kingdom

that operates on very different principles

than does any earthly kingdom.

And the more we can see our true citizenship and purpose

as being in this Kingdom of God

the more our life in this physical world will make sense.

The life our God offers us

and the principles He gives us as the foundation for our lives

are never ever dependant upon the cultural setting around us.

It doesn’t work that way.

And the more we select goals that are consistent with the principles that govern this unseen but very real kingdom we are a part of,

the more we can face both the present and the future with confidence.

So, to help us face the year ahead

with boldness and confidence

let me offer you my investment goals for turbulent times.

And let me say first

that my great concern with what I am about to do

is that you will fail to hear what I’m about to say

because, first of all, as soon as you hear it you will write it off

because it will sound to you like something a preacher is suppose to say,

and second, you’ll write it off

because it will at first seem as if it’s simply unrelated to the “real world” in which we live.

In other words,

you may feel as if I’ve just given you

a handful of platitudes that sound good but have no power to change anything.

So to help disarm that lie,

let me first take you a few years down the line

and then have you look back.

This is, of course, relatively easy for me to do for myself

because being REALLY OLD as I am

I have far fewer years in front of me than most of you do.

But let’s give it a try anyway.

OK, here you are - you’ve got just one life allotted to you

and you are right now, perhaps a third of the way through it,

or maybe halfway.

With all of us, it’s always a one way ticket -

no returns,

no do-overs.

And what we all want when we get to the end of this thing

is the ability to look back at where we’ve been

and say what Paul said when he was near the end, looking back.

You know what he said, don’t you?

When I first came across this statement,

now more than 40 years ago,

it came as a thrilling discovery - one that filled me with incredible hope for my own future.

What Paul said was this,

2TI 4:6-8 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

Do you know the one phrase that most powerfully impacted me

when I first really saw that passage?

...I have finished the course...

Just reading Paul’s words filled me with hope.

I was in my early 20's, with no clear direction for my life.

I wanted my life to matter somehow,

but I didn’t have a clue as to how to go about it.

And it helped me so much to know

that it could be done -

it was possible to live a life in such a way

that, at the end of it, a person could look back

and know that they’d done what they were here to do,

that they’d ...finished the course...

And before I say more

let me assure you that none of us in this room

are disqualified from this hope.

This has nothing to do with whether or not we have places in our lives

where we look back with regrets

at choices we made in the past.

Don’t you think Paul must have had regrets

over that time in his life

when he openly cursed the Son of God

and murdered and imprisoned the people of God?

But if we are here this morning

we are here because our God still has a future for us,

and a purpose He wants us to fulfill.

OK, so let yourself go there - to that point in the future

at which you are looking back on whatever time was allotted you here on this earth.

Now, ask yourself,

what is it you’re going to want at that point in your life?

Are you, more than anything else,

going to want to look back and say,

“I’ve been able to rebuild all of my assets after that crash of 2008

and my net worth is greater now than it’s ever been.”

Or will you most want to say,

“I really lived the good life by this world’s standards! I did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted,

and nobody kept me from doing anything I wanted to do.”

Will that give you the sense of completion and fulfillment you long for?

I can tell you what you’re really going to want.

You’re going to want to be able to look back

and know that you fulfilled the two great callings

that are assigned to every one of us when we enter this world.

First, you’re going to want to know

that you found your way back to your Creator.

And second, you’re going to want to know

that you have loved those entrusted into your care

in a way that protected them from evil

and made it easier for them

to live the life their God has called them to live.

In other words,

you figured out how to love God

and how to love the people He gave you.

That, and that alone will make sense out of this life.

My grandson is 4 years old,

my granddaughter is 2.

My grandson has had a rather rugged start to his young life in a lot of ways.

He’s had more than his share of physical problems,

and doctors,

and examinations,

and physical therapists already.

I don’t know if it’s because of it or in spite of it,

but already he has the most remarkable kind and gentle and compassionate spirit

I’ve ever seen in a child his age.

My granddaughter, on the other hand,

has had a far more typical first two years.

She entered the world

knowing that she was born to rule

and has done her best to communicate this to the rest of us since the day she was born.

Because of my granddaughter’s determination to conquer the world

it has become necessary, on occasion, for her to take time-outs in her room.

Joni places her in her room

and then closes the low gate across the door.

Several weeks ago during one of these time-outs

Joni noticed how very quiet and compliant her daughter had become

so she went to see what had caused such a dramatic change so quickly.

What she saw when she peaked around at the entrance to Anabelle’s room

was her big brother, Matty, standing on the outside of the gate,

talking quietly to his little sister,

telling her that everything was going to be OK,

and that she would be out soon,

and that he was going to keep her company until she was free.

When I heard that it reminded me of Hebrews’ exhortation to us to, “HEB 13:3 Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, ...”

But I mention this because in his own little way

I think Matty has already figured out a whole lot more about life than he realizes.

Everywhere we look

we are surrounded by people who are trapped in hard times,

sometimes because of their own stupid choices,

and sometimes through no fault of their own.

Most of the time we can’t fix what’s broken in their lives,

but we can profoundly ease their pain

by standing just outside the gate

and telling them it’s going to be OK,

and telling them that their God can and will bring them through,

and letting them know that we’re going to go through this with them.

So, with all of that as background,

let me give you my two investment goals for the coming year

that are guaranteed not to fail.

First, invest yourself in discovering the truth about your God.

He is in every way

what you hunger for more than all else,

and whenever you find yourself doubting that truth

one thing you know for certain - you are not seeing Him as He really is.

You’ve believed lies about Him,

lies that are blinding you to the truth that will set you free.

And second,

invest your time,

and your resources,

and your heart into learning how to love those God has given you.

It will pay returns beyond anything you could ever have imagined.

And then, just one final comment about the year ahead.

Never ever let fear take root within you.

To fear is to turn our back on our God,

and to deny who He is

and how He has chosen to relate to us as His children.

JOH 10:29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

This year, as every year, we rest secure in the almighty grip of our God

and no one and nothing will ever be able to take us from His hand.