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Essence of the Core: Intention
February 17, 2008 Rev. William “Buck” Day
Let’s turn to God’s word. We are going to be looking at Ezekiel 11 and then Luke 6.
So God’s word for us this day:
Ezekiel 11:19-20 I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people and I will be their God.
Then, moving on to Luke 6:46 “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?”
Would you pray with me, please?
Mighty and holy God we do give you the glory. We give you the glory for everything, everything that we have, everything that we are we owe to you. So God we come before you because we want to worship you. We want to hear what you have for us this day. So Lord with that attitude we ask that your Spirit would quicken our hearts that we might hear what your Spirit is saying to us this day. We ask it because of our Lord and our Savior Jesus. Amen.
Well Rachel Everett was a high school student who had been through a lot. At the age of fourteen she learned that her mother and her live-in boyfriend both had AIDS. She remembers them fighting on many occasions over who gave who the AIDS. In addition to that it was not uncommon for her to come home to wild drunken parties that were given by her mom and boyfriend. At that point she could think of nothing more than the pending death of her mom because of AIDS, even in the midst of living in that chaotic and that destructive household. When she became a senior in high school, the boyfriend had died and her mother had continued her binge drinking ways, being away from home multiple days at a time. In spite of all of that, Rachael maintained a 3.7 grade point average. She was part of a magnet school that helped her prepare for college. She had dreams of becoming a teen counselor. By the time she had graduated she had received a scholarship for school, from the Children’s Defense Fund. Her story actually made the front page of the Minneapolis paper.
That was ten years ago. As I was reading that story again this week, I was struck by what she said, and I want to read you a couple of her quotes at that time. She said, “I told myself, ‘You will never be anything. You will never be anything without an education.’” She said, “I saw my mom on welfare and it may sound bad but I said to myself that I didn’t want to end up like her.” And the kicker then, for me, is when she said, “I always have dreams and I have decided to never let anything get in the way – the partying, the drinking, the fighting, nothing. I held on to them. You can’t let a situation take control over you.” When I read that I went, “Whoa! Here’s a powerful young lady.” That was ten years ago. I tried to do a little follow-up to see if I could see where she is today. I did a little Googling, followed up with the Children’s Defense Fund, and couldn’t find anything. So I don’t know where she is today. But I’m guessing, wherever she is today, whatever she is doing right now, she is doing something significant.
Rachel is an example of living with intent based on a vision for what she wanted to accomplish. That’s our focus today, as well. We are talking about living with intention based on a vision for what we want to accomplish. Rachel made a decision that she was not going to end up like her mom. That was her vision and getting the education was the way to avoid becoming like her mom. The decision that she made (and all the other little decisions that added up to that over time) was the completion of her intention to avoid becoming like her mom. That is the beginning key for us today, I think, as well – the decision that we make to become Christ centered. That’s the final point of our intention. In other words, we must intentionally choose to become Christ centered if we are ever actually going to become Christ centered. Now that is the end of the story. That is the end of the message. How many of you want me to stop right now?
That’s the end of the story. Let’s back up and see how we get there, O.K. Christ centeredness is that vision that we laid out last week. We laid that out as the way for Christian spiritual transformation. It is part of that VIM – vision, intent and means. We are on the ‘I’ today. That is a process of change that we are talking about, a process of change that is part of our series, the Essence of the Core, Taking on Christ’s Character. The vision that Christ calls us to is to take on Christ’s character, to do the things on earth that Jesus did. It is a co-operative effort between us and the Holy Spirit and we will talk more about that, and how that might work, in a couple weeks. But today, we focus on intent. I must intend to do the things that Jesus did, and that comes by choice. Becoming Christ centered will not happen unless I act. It is not going to happen by accident but rather by choice. Let me give you an example. If I want to become a gourmet chef, one of my secret ambitions, if I just want it bad enough and I try hard enough, then it will happen, right? Right? No. No way, right? There is no way; but if that is my vision, then I must intentionally decide to do things that will help me become a gourmet cook, right? That’s where we are going; I hope you are tracking with me at that point. Now, let’s apply that to intentionally deciding to take on Christ’s character. Let’s start by saying it is not about trying; it is about trusting. That comes from our belief and trusting in that belief leads to obedience which then enables us to intentionally choose. That is our course today. That is where we are going.
So with that, let’s start with belief. If belief is our starting point, who or what do we believe in? Sunday school answer is….Jesus. O.K. I just want to make sure. Our belief is in Jesus, isn’t it? That’s what we talked about last week. Jesus is our vision. He is our One. He is the one we must rely on; he is the one we must count on; he is the one that we lean on. It is He and He alone that is the Christ, that’s what we believe. He is the anointed one, he is the Messiah. He is the one that’s been prophesied from the days of old. He is the one who came to earth as a child who lived a sinless life who died on the cross for your and mine sins. He was the one who died and was resurrected so we can live forever without payment for our sins because he took the pain on himself. That is what we believe. That is who He is; that’s what we are about. He is the one who brought the kingdom of God to earth. That’s what we talked about last week. He brought the kingdom of God to earth and showed us how to live in that individually in our daily lives.
Do you believe that? Do you believe that Jesus is “the way the truth and the life? And no one comes to the father except through him?” Do you believe that? That’s right. If we were in a southern church I would get an Amen right now. Amen. Do we believe that? That’s the starting point for belief. Is that your belief? That piece has to be settled otherwise the rest of the stuff doesn’t matter. You have to have that belief. That is where we start.
Then trust builds off of that. Trust is the demonstration of belief. That is why this chair is up here. I believe this chair will hold me if I sit down in it. That’s my belief. That doesn’t mean anything until I actually sit down. I’ve just demonstrated my trust in my belief, by sitting down. That’s what we are talking about. Demonstrating your trust in what you believe by acting on it. Now let’s apply that to Christ. No one can actually believe the truth about Jesus without trusting him by intending to obey him. In other words, we must demonstrate our trust by obedience. I demonstrate my belief about this chair holding me by sitting down. With Jesus I demonstrate my trust in what I believe about Jesus by obedience. You have to be obedient because that demonstrates that you trust what you believe. If you are not obedient, what you in effect are saying is, “You know, I don’t believe Jesus is who he says he is. All those things we just went through, I don’t believe them.” We are saying I really don’t believe what I say I believe. The great fallacy among too many followers of Christ is that we can believe the right things and say the right things about Jesus without believing him.
So it comes down to a question of surrender. If you trust what you believe you will be obedient and that really is about surrender. Will you surrender the control of your life to Christ? Will you let him have control? Will you surrender your will to him? Will you surrender your desires to him? Will you surrender your hopes and dreams to him? Will you surrender your job to him? How about surrendering your kids to him? How about surrendering your promotion to him? Surrendering your marriage to him? When you do, you are saying I believe Jesus has my best interest at heart. When you surrender that is what you are saying. If you do, if you believe Jesus has your best interest at heart, then you will be obedient. You will be obedient by showing that you trust what you believe about Jesus. We need to stop and catch our breath here for a minute. Take a moment here and just kind of file through the thoughts in your head about what you believe about Jesus. How are you demonstrating that? How are you demonstrating that trust? In other words, how are you being obedient?
Pray with me for a minute, will you?
Lord, we just come before you and we ask that you will help us to see clearly. Lord, help us to be obedient. We want to be obedient. We want to demonstrate our trust in what we believe about you. So Lord, help us with that. Show us how we are wayward. Show us what you would have for us in that. Thank you Lord. Amen.
Well let’s move on. Willow Creek Community Church is a large church in suburban Chicago that has spent many years reaching people for Christ and also helping them to take on the character of Christ over the years. They recently took a hard look at how well they were doing on that second half of their responsibility, and that is helping people take on the character of Christ. Much to their dismay, they were not as successful as they had thought. So, because they were a large church and they were able to bring in some very sophisticated resources to bear on, they began to research why they were not doing what they said they wanted to do. The results are chronicled in a book called Reveal. The results are applicable to many churches because it is not just research that was done at this large mega church but it was done initially at an additional thirty churches; and now it has been rolled out to an additional five hundred churches. What they are finding is the results are pretty consistent right across the board, across denominations, across church size; it doesn’t matter. These things are holding true and what they have sought to do in this research is to measure spiritual maturity. They defined it as loving God and loving others. Sound familiar? We have been talking about that. That is their definition for spiritual maturity. What they found is that churches break into four major groups. They are listed up there: those who are exploring Christianity, those who are growing in Christ, those who are close to Christ, and those who are Christ centered. In each of those groups, they looked at the attitudes of the people in those groups. They looked at the behaviors of the people in those groups, what kind of things do they do? They also looked at the needs for the people in those groups, as well. What do they need? We will talk more about this study as we go forward down the road but, for now, I want to just kind of begin to roll it out and use it as a reference; because one of the things they found is that there is, as people move on this continuum from exploring Christianity all the way to Christ centered, what they found was as people moved more toward Christ centeredness trust and obedience increased.
Now if you think about that it is probably not exactly earth shattering news. But it does speak to something that I think is important for us to remember and that is the obedience to Christ as our vision and our teacher, the things we have been talking about, are critical; and if Christ centeredness is our vision, that we identified last week, then we move toward Christ centeredness through trusting and obedience. Those are key factors for putting on Christ character. Those are key ways that people become transformed and become more like Christ.
Let me conclude this piece by saying that a decision, that’s that end piece that intentional decision, is the result of intending to obey what we trust as our belief. That’s kind of the main big picture. Now let me add a few side bars; you know in magazines they have the side stories. There are a couple of side bars that relate to this one for us, as well. One of them I want to start with is this quote from Dallas Willard. “Now the robust intention with its inseparable decision can only be formed and sustained upon the basis of a forceful vision.” Pretty straight forward, right? Let me read it one more time. “Now the robust intention with its inseparable decision can only be formed and sustained upon the basis of a forceful vision.” What Willard is saying here is that vision, the thing we talked about last week, and intention, the thing we are talking about today, go hand in hand. You must have an adequate vision or the intention will not follow; and if you have great intention to obey, it will fall flat if your vision is not inspired. Vision and intention feed off of each other. They reinforce one another. You can’t have one without the other and make a go of it. Simply having a vision is not enough because if there is no desire to obey, it is going to fall flat. Simply having a great will, a great intestinal fortitude to get this done, if you don’t know what you are going to get done, what you are going towards, doesn’t make any difference anyway.
So you need both that forceful vision and that robust intention to move towards Christ centeredness. O.K. Let me add another piece to it now, the adequate vision if that is where we want to go and that’s what Jesus lays out for us, in the process of laying that out for us he also makes something else very clear. In order for that vision to be robust, I think we also have to come to grips with where we are presently. Another way to say that is if our vision is to become Christ centered, that’s our vision, then we must lay it against where we are currently, our own self-centeredness. For that vision to take hold we have to understand the gap between these two. We have to understand the gap between where God envisions us and where we currently are. That too is a heart check time for you. It is a chance for us to look deeply and carefully and exactingly at our own selves and understand the depth of our depravity, understand the depth of our sinfulness. For we all live with sinful natures still at us, even as it is being routed out, it is still there. But then if you layer on top of that the world in which we live you think about that, the world in which we live it is a place in which the scripture calls blatantly sinful are now acceptable, where greed and lust and power are the norms. We live in a world where Hollywood sets our moral compass for us. While we are saying, I don’t indulge in those things and you may not, because we still live in this culture with all those things in play, they still seep into our soul and they affect our thinking, our feeling and even our actions.
When Jesus came to earth how did he come? When he began his ministry, what was one of the first things he said? He said, “Repent.” Why? “….Because the kingdom of God is at hand.” Folks, the kingdom of God is still at hand. We talked about that last week. In fact I think it is more at hand now than when Jesus was here as the lone representative of it. So if that was Jesus’ starting point, that too must be our starting point. We have to look very carefully at ourselves. So I want to give you some homework. I want to give you some homework because I think this is not something that gets done very well in an auditorium like this. I think this is something that requires us to sit down, quiet our heart, quiet our mind, read God’s word and let it soak into our souls so that God can speak to us. So what I to do is I want to invite you through this next week to take a look at Ephesians 5. Paul contrasts the notion of children of light versus children of darkness. Read that a couple times, slowly over and over, pray over it. Then in Galatians 5 we contrast life in the spirit versus life in the flesh. Take that. Read it over. Ask God to show you where you are. How are you doing with life in the spirit? How are you doing walking as a child of light? As he speaks to you, ask for forgiveness; repent, turn from those things, start a new way. For when we see that gap between this is really who Buck is; this is who God wants Buck to be. When we see that gap then we can begin to see and ask for the surrender that we need; we can be broken. It is a painful process and it is necessary, but it is that that leads to surrender. Surrender is that first piece towards trusting obedience that we have been talking about, going back to that main piece. It is not about trying, it is about trusting, trusting that God has our best interest at heart, that he wants us to become children of light so he has to rout that stuff out. It has to be removed if we are really going to become Christ centered. If we are willing to take that step if we are willing to step into scripture and allow God to examine us, what we will find there is we will find God’s grace. We will find God’s grace in all of its glory, all of its joy, all of its peace, all of its freedom. It is there that we will be able to say yes to God’s vision of life for us. It is at that point that we can then intentionally choose; because as we see this gap, it reinforces that desire to intentionally be obedient. Once that gets settled then we can move on to the mean, to the M, to the how-to’s. How do we show our obedience to Christ in building Christ’s character? I invite you back in two weeks for that.
Would you pray with me, please?
Mighty and holy God, you say that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Lord give us a dose of wisdom, not that we might be shaking in our boots; but that we might more accurately see ourselves as you see us; that we might become who you envision us to be as we put Jesus at the very center of our lives. Lord we have a lot here to think about today, a lot of different things that might apply to each one of us in a lot of different ways. Jesus I ask that you would make those things that we personally need to hear again kind of continue to prick our soul; and those things that we don’t need to hear I pray you would let them fall away. But Lord, help us to listen and then give us the courage not to run from you but to run to you. For in running to you, we will find healing; we will find forgiveness; we will find freedom that perhaps we have never experienced before. Lord we cry out for that. We know we need that. We know that we have been created for that and we trust in you to help us become that. To you be all honor and glory. Amen.
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