More Business Than Time

A common statement is all too often we run out of paycheck before we run out of month. For many people who have little if anything left in their bank account at the end of the month, this happens on a regular basis. They make up the shortfall by doing without or borrowing for an emergency. What if we substitute time for money?

Each of us is given 24 hours in a day and not a minute more. We are each given seven days in a week and not one day more. Unlike money, there is no borrowing time from the future to handle the moment’s crisis. When the time is filled, we have nowhere else to turn. In the process we will have been burning the proverbial candle at both ends and found ourselves exhausted, frustrated, and disappointed.

Several years ago a pastor friend of mine found himself in just such a situation. His church was in a part of town where the population was growing at a tremendous rate. Their attendance went from 125 to nearly 2,000 in a few years. The staff of the church was increasing in size and responsibilities. The pastor found himself occupied with meetings nearly seven days a week.

The pace came to a halt when his wife confronted him and said, “Your family or the church. You don’t have time for both.” Wisely the pastor confronted both his staff and his church with the fact they could only minister effectively to the church and community if they were ministering effectively to their own families.

Where meetings and programs had dominated the lives of the church staff night after night, a new rule went into effect. Every staff member, including the pastor, was restricted to seven evening meetings related to church work in each two week period. These meetings included the Sunday and Wednesday evening worship services. The pastor told the staff this would be their only warning. If he learned they were spending more evenings out on church business than the restricted seven in a two-week period, they would be immediately terminated. He would not be responsible for causing them to lose their families.

Why does anyone drive themselves so hard as to risk the relationships which should mean the most? Two particular forces are at play. They are greed and worry. We want more, and so we push ourselves to gain it. In the process we are blind to the heavy price we pay for what we are seeking.

The pressure may be from worry. Will we have enough? Will we be able to survive a crisis? Will there be enough resources to allow us to retire? We worry about the amount of material resources we may need and so we push ourselves to get ahead. Such an attitude reflects the thought we have no one upon whom we may depend except ourselves.

Jesus assures his listeners this is not the case. Placing our faith in our heavenly Father instead of our own plans and strength is the key.

Mat 6:31-33 "So do not start worrying: 'Where will my food come from? or my drink? or my clothes?' (These are the things the pagans are always concerned about.) Your Father in heaven knows that you need all these things. Instead, be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what he requires of you, and he will provide you with all these other things.

The Apostle Paul writes to the Philippian church words of reassurance.

Php 4:6-7 Don't worry about anything, but in all your prayers ask God for what you need, always asking him with a thankful heart. And God's peace, which is far beyond human understanding, will keep your hearts and minds safe in union with Christ Jesus.

We as believers are called to find rest in our faith in our heavenly Father. He knows what we need. We must align our desires with the priorities of the Kingdom of God. We will find rest for our weariness and peace instead of anxiety.

We All Can Use Some Appreciation

Sometimes it doesn’t take much for us to start beating up on ourselves. Generally we have disappointed someone else or ourselves. We didn’t come up to expectations. We didn’t meet the standard. We didn’t succeed when we felt we should have. We just blew it.

Anytime we compare ourselves to others we will meet situations in which we come out on the short end of the deal. Someone else is more gifted, has more material resources, more opportunities for advancement, more success in school or on the job, etc. When we focus on this attitude long enough, the dark cloud of depression settles upon us and the sense of worthlessness begins to overwhelm us.

We must avoid the other extreme as well. We will always find someone who has less going for them than we do. When we allow that perception to dominate our thinking, then it is prideful arrogance that will make life miserable for us and everyone around us.

In this writing, however, it is the former situation that is my focus. Every individual has a personal value that cannot be compared to that of another. No matter how good life looks for someone else, we each have something special in our favor. It may not be obvious to the world, but that superlative value is within us nonetheless.

Forces that would make us think less of ourselves are all around us. They may be as spirit quenching as that coworker who gets the promotion. We would like to have had it, but we also recognize that other individual’s educational achievements, work habits, and general office skills. They deserved it and you didn’t! Now there is no way for you to catch up or gain the needed requirements for the next promotion. Your sense of worth just got shot down.

Maybe you feel that sense of worthlessness in relationships with others, especially with members of the opposite sex. You’re not tall enough. You’re too tall. You weigh too much or not enough. You don’t have the right physique or personality. You don’t have the needed conversational skills or talents that will impress someone special. Your job is nothing to brag about and your income certainly won’t let you share pictures of world cruises you have taken. You see nothing about yourself that would make you have value or be appreciated in the eyes of others.

There are those people who always seem to have it all together. They are the most creative. They are the ones who can outline the challenge, describe the solution, and identify all the necessary resources in one meeting. Everyone is impressed, including you, and in the process you tell yourself you could never have thought of all those details. You have nothing to add to the meeting or even life.

We will always find someone who is better at whatever we want to do. If they are not present now, they will come along. We know they will and we question our own value and role around such people. What we think we are worth gets smaller and smaller.

Then Jesus comes along and tells us what we are worth in the eyes of God and that lasts for eternity.

Mat 10:29-31 For only a penny you can buy two sparrows, yet not one sparrow falls to the ground without your Father's consent. As for you, even the hairs of your head have all been counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth much more than many sparrows!

God sees you. God knows you. God cares about you. When you don’t think you have much value, God knows you are very valuable. When those others around you cannot see the value in you, God knows it is there. When you don’t live up to your expectations or the expectations of others, God still thinks you are worth the price he paid to make you his own, the life of his Son. Our value is obvious in the eyes of God, and he thinks each of us is uniquely special.

How Big Is Your Stage?

Shakespeare called the world a stage and referred to everyone having a time to play their part upon it. What he didn’t clarify was how big the stage might be for each of us and who was sitting in the audience. He sure didn’t know what part each of us was to play. We all have our role on the world’s stage, yes, but mistakes are made as we misjudge the size of our part, the size of the stage reserved for us, and the size of the audience or even who is the audience. Perhaps life would be more of what God intended if we got straight on those questions.

One problem we have is understanding our part may not be as important as we think. We look at our wealth or social standing and sometimes get an inflated image of the importance we have in life. We forget that what we have once belonged to someone else and will again someday. Jesus told a parable to get people to see power and importance can be transient. His summary statement was blunt.

Luk 12:20-21 But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."

At the same time we should not fall into the trap of believing we are small, weak and therefore of no value. Our role on life’s stage may be more important than we realize. A young boy was in the crowd when Jesus said those present needed to be fed, a mass of more than 5000 people.

Joh 6:9 "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?"

Jesus took the small offering and multiplied it to meet the needs of the many. When placed in the right hands, our seemingly minuscule two cents worth becomes all that God needs.

Not every good deed is immediately forgotten or punished. A woman who spread perfume on the feet of Jesus did a deed important enough to be remembered for over 2000 years. Jesus said of her,

Mat 26:12-13 “In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial. Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her."

The woman was criticized for wasting an expensive ointment valued at nearly a year’s pay in that day. To honor Jesus for her it was worth it. Her sacrifice earned her a place in Christian history.

There are no insignificant roles. Paul told his readers their stage was far greater than this world. Our purpose is more than just to play out our role and move from the scene. All the world may be a stage, but the audience is far greater than the mortal and time-constrained world around us. The eternal God is always there to see how his creation reacts to the circumstances of the moment. He is not the only one present either.

Narrow is the vision of the one who deems his five senses are the only doors into the created universe. The spiritual realm exists for those who have the eyes of faith to see beyond what can be put on scales or in a test tube.

Eph 3:10 “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

The audience we have watching us is far greater than the people we meet each day. In a sense the spiritual realm is holding the Church up to a set of standards to see if it will accomplish what its Savior intended. Will the Church succeed or fail in the plan God has laid before it? God is counting on his people to fulfill their role upon the stage of the world.

Victory Through Surrender

No one wins a national basketball tournament by giving up. No one wins an election by refusing to seek votes. No one wins a race by walking when everyone else is running. You just cannot win by giving up.

Yet that is what we as believers are called to do. This is nothing original or new. It follows the example given to us by Jesus himself. Is it easy? No, it isn’t. It is diametrically opposite to what we sinful human beings tend to do or want to do.

As we approach Easter, Resurrection Sunday, we must first go through Good Friday, the goodness being recognized in the willingness of Jesus to surrender his life and his relationship with his heavenly Father for the sake of the redemption of mankind. For six hours Jesus suffered the agony of a Roman crucifixion. Those six hours on the cross included three hours we humans experienced as darkness.

Jesus experienced something else. Our only hint as to what was happening to the Son of God was the cry of dereliction, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” During those hours of darkness the union that had existed for all eternity was broken. Jesus had surrendered to curse of the cross and the burden of the sins of all humanity. The result in that moment was he faced it all alone.

Two actions followed to indicate that was not the end. The first were in the last words of Jesus from the cross, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” Even in the moment Jesus felt the weight of our guilt and the absence of his Father, he found victory.

The second confirmation of this victory would come later. An empty grave on the first day of the week proved the power of redeeming love over the curse of death and the grave. In surrendering to the will of the Father and the suffering of the cross and abandonment, Jesus found the ultimate victory.

Resurrection Sunday is a believer’s confirmation of victory through surrender. Such victory never comes without a price. For Jesus there was the Gethsemane experience in which his own humanity was so clearly revealed. That was followed by the betrayal and desertion of his disciples. Then came the Jewish and Roman trials and the condemnation to a crucifixion. Yet through it all, he never lost faith in his Father to bring about the final victory.

For the Apostle Paul the lesson of victory through surrender came in a different way. Surrender did not come easily. It was not automatic. Through the process, however, Paul did learn the believer is at his strongest and victory is most assured when surrender is complete.

2Co 12:7-10 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

When Paul recognized his strength came from a surrender to the power of God within him, then he was able to know power never before experienced. Victory had come through surrender.

So it is with every believer. To die with Christ, to surrender to Christ, is to be raised to a new life which only he can provide. Jesus’ surrender to the will of the Father was the victory God needed to bring salvation to man. Our surrender to the will of the Father makes that victory personal to each of us. Good Friday is the surrender we will never have to face. Resurrection Sunday is the victory which is now our guarantee.