08-18-13 Finding True Fulfillment In Life

How do you feel about life?

I mean generally...how would you describe it?

Is it frightening?

Does it take all of your mental and emotional reserves

just to face one more day?

Is it boring?

Do you have to continually find

some new project,

some new destination,

some new hiding place

from the otherwise dreary monotony of daily living?

Is life intensely good?

Do you find yourself generally deeply satisfied with the experience of living?

Perhaps life for you right now

is deeply painful,

filled with a constant battle

to find the strength

to take one more step

or live one more day.

Or maybe you find life rather disappointing-

perhaps you have not obtained or achieved

what you wanted in life,

or, even worse, perhaps you have conquered all of your goals

and you have discovered

that it doesn’t satisfy.

Maybe for you right now

life is just terribly confusing.

There seem to be so many choices,

or there seem to be none at all,

and you just don’t know what to do.

I’d like to read for us once again

a passage from the writings of the Apostle Paul,

a passage in which he shares with us

a snapshot of his own life experience,

and through it offers us insight

into what we can expect from our own.

For those of you who show up here on a regular basis

this passage will be familiar.

It’s found in Philippians 3:8-14

Phil. 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,

Phil. 3:9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,

Phil. 3:10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

Phil. 3:11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Phil. 3:12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

Phil. 3:13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,

Phil. 3:14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

In those verses

Paul tells us that he has found a life

that is intensely worth living.

It is certainly not a life

that is free from pain -

he talks about “the fellowship of His sufferings”

and he talks about being

“conformed to His death”.

But two things are clear from the passage.

1. What Paul had found

was a life that was deeply satisfying.

2. And that satisfaction

was not the result of what he was doing,

or what was happening to him,

or around him,

or in him,

but rather that satisfaction

was the result of what was happening

between him and his Lord Jesus Christ.

OK,

we’ve been together here for maybe five or six minutes so far in this teaching.

We all know that I have

another 20 or 25 minutes allotted to me.

I could take more than that if I wanted to,

but I would lose many of you in the process.

In fact,

I’ve already lost some of you.

You’ve settled into your “sermon mode”

to the point where your mind

has already drifted back

to whatever project

or fear

or fun thing it was chewing on

earlier this morning.

The problem is

that I just made a statement

that I consider to be among

the most significant things

I have ever shared with you.

And many of you didn’t really hear it

and probably none of you realized

how important I felt it was...

that is, none of you until now.

So, with that reintroduction,

let me state for us again

what I see to be the heart

of what Paul is sharing with us

through these words

from the 3^rd chapter of Philippians.

He is saying two things -

1. Paul had found

a life that was deeply satisfying.

2. And that satisfaction

was not the result of what he was doing,

or what was happening to him,

or around him,

or in him,

but rather his satisfaction

was the result of what was happening

between him and his Lord Jesus Christ.

As we’ve studied this passage together

we’ve seen Paul break that thought down into smaller pieces for us.

He talks about “knowing Christ”

and knowing “the power of His resurrection”

and knowing “the fellowship of His sufferings”

and even about being “conformed to His death”.

But his basic message is clear -

for us as human beings

true satisfaction in life

is directly related to what’s happening between ourselves and our God.

That word “satisfaction”

may not be the best selection

for what I’m trying to say.

I thought about using “quality of life”,

and I considered “fulfillment”,

then I went to “satisfaction”,

and to be honest

I don’t really like any of them.

What I want is a word that says,

“Deep within my spirit,

at the very center of my life,

I know this is good,

and this is right,

and this truly is what I long for more than anything else,

more than everything else.”

And I hope you understand

that I am not talking here

about being “happy”.

Happiness is an emotion.

It’s a nice emotion,

but it is only an emotion.

All sorts of things can make us feel happy.

Something as trivial as a song

or a movie

or finding a $5.00 bill in the pocket of an old fishing coat can make us feel happy.

The problem with happiness, of course,

is that it can be replaced just as quickly

by some negative emotion

like the emotion we feel

when a gust of wind suddenly

pulls that $5.00 bill out of our fingers

and drops it into the Kenai River

and we stand watching it float on out of sight.

That’s the way with emotions.

They’re fine in their way

so long as we never forget

that none of them ever last -

neither the good ones

nor the bad ones.

But Paul isn’t talking about how Jesus makes him feel in this passage.

He’s talking about what has really made his life worth living,

what has brought a true sense of gratitude,

and thankfulness,

and fulfillment to his life.

And he tells us

that gratitude is a direct result

of his having been able to share all of life with Christ.

There’s something I have been seeing in this passage

as we have been studying it

that I want very much to try to put into words.

Obviously Paul is proclaiming

his own deep satisfaction with life

in this passage,

and through that proclamation

offering us the assurance

that each of us can know

that same depth of satisfaction.

But I want us to think about that for a minute.

You see,

unless we listen very carefully

to what Paul is saying,

a statement like that can sound like nonsense to us

BECAUSE our minds just naturally associate fulfillment

and satisfaction

with circumstances.

Being the good Americans we are,

we assume that fulfillment in life

comes from getting what we want

or achieving what we want

or going where we want to go.

But then look at this...

here is Paul speaking to every Christian

who has ever lived

throughout all of human history.

He’s talking to Christians

who have lived in extreme poverty,

literally praying each day,

“Lord give us this day our daily bread.”

He’s talking to Christians

who have been tortured,

and executed for their faith in Christ.

He’s talking to Christians

who are struggling through the confusing years of high school,

or college.

He’s talking to Christians

who are sick, or dying.

He was talking to me

when I was 26 years old,

all alone,

living on the Island of Trinidad,

teaching the Bible in a chicken coop

where we literally had to scrape the poop off the benches before we sat down.

And He’s talking to me now,

at 65 years old,

with my life filled with people I love,

people who love me.

And here is Paul assuring every one of us

at every period in history

and every point in our lives

that we can know true fulfillment

and true satisfaction in life.

How can that be?

If fulfillment and satisfaction

is in any way tied to our external circumstances

that would be impossible,

because our circumstances can rarely be controlled.

And yet, here we are

with Paul telling us

that true life fulfillment is available

to every Christian.

Why?

How can that be?

It can be because true life fulfillment

is not the result of what we are doing,

or what’s happening to us,

or around us,

or in us,

but rather true life fulfillment

is the result of what is happening

between us and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me try to rephrase that

and maybe it will make more sense.

Every day we live

we are confronted with a constant stream of things that enter our lives.

Some of them we have sought,

many of them we have not.

At one point in my preparation for this morning

the phone rang and a friend

I’ve known for more than 30 years

called.

During our conversation

I found out that, as we talked,

he was laying on the living room floor,

unable to move because of an injury to his back.

I’ve been there.

So have many of you.

I remember the first year Sandee and I were married

we were visiting the Carlsbad Caverns

and I went in to use the public restroom there.

My back had been giving me problems for some time,

but when I finished my business there

and tried to stand up

and I couldn’t do it.

The pain in my back was so intense

I couldn’t move.

I want you to know,

that’s an extremely awkward situation.

Sandee must have been waiting outside for me for at least 15 or 20 minutes,

wondering if I’d been mugged,

or died of a heart attack.

For obvious reasons

I was hesitant to call out for help.

I mean, who know’s who’d come.

If you heard someone asking for help

from inside the stall of a public restroom,

would you go?

Eventually I managed to claw my way to my feet,

by wedging my arms along the walls,

made myself somewhat presentable,

and made it back to my wife.

I didn’t ask for that event to enter my life,

It just did.

Sometimes physical pain

jabs itself into our lives.

Sometimes its emotional pain.

Sometimes it’s nice things that crowd into our lives.

Sometimes it’s an endless routine,

or monotony,

or confusion,

or loneliness.

But my point is this:

with everything that enters our life each day

we are faced with a choice -

will this be something we choose

to share with our Lord,

or will it be something we use

to hide from Him.

And the choice really is ours.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a new friendship,

or a new car,

or problems with our children,

or problems with our parents,

or a salary increase,

or the loss of our job,

or fears over the future,

or regrets over the past,

or a leaky faucet,

or a driveway full of snow,

or a vacation we’ve looked forward to for months,

or a test in Algebra,

or getting stuck in the stall of a public restroom.

With each thing that enters our lives

we face a choice -

do I choose to share this with my Lord,

or do I choose to use it

as a hiding place from Him.

And here is the amazing thing -

when we choose to share it with Him,

even the bad things,

the painful things,

the things we would not have chosen for ourselves for anything in the world,

even those will be reshaped

and reformed by our Master’s hands

until He will actually turn evil

into good in our lives,

and pain into rejoicing.

These words were spoken by the prophet Isaiah to describe the work Christ would accomplish

in the lives of those who turned to Him:

Is. 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners;

Is. 61:2 To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn,

Is. 61:3 To grant those who mourn in Zion, Giving them a garland instead of ashes, The oil of gladness instead of mourning, The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

And at those times

when we choose to use the things that enter our lives

to hide from our Lord

rather than sharing them with Him,

even the things we knew

would make us happy

will leave us feeling empty inside.

Because it is not what life brings

or doesn’t bring that makes life good,

it is what happens

between us and our God

in the process of dealing with those things.

For, in the end we will find

that everything is temporary,

everything, that is,

except our God,

and the love we allow Him to bring into our lives.

What’s in your life right now?

What fills your hands,

and your heart,

and your mind,

and your emotions?

Whatever it is, bring it to Him,

share it with Him,

go through it in His presence, in His love.

If you do, He will give you the strength and the courage to carry the pain,

and His presence with you will intensify the joy.