Where is Your Life Going?

Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

I know we have all heard of the Top 10. I read somewhere about the Top 10 Liar’s Lies.  Number ten is “We’ll only stay five minutes.”  Number nine is, famous in Presbyterian churches, “This will only be a short meeting.” Number eight is “I’ll respect you in the morning.”  Number seven is “The check is in the mail.”  Number six is which I hear in the Army quite a lot, “I’m from the government, I’m here to help.”  Number five is, “This hurts me more than it hurts you.”  Number four, “Your money will be cheerfully refunded.” Number three is “We service what we sell.”  Number two is, “Your table will be ready in just a minute.”  Number one is, which relates to New Year’s resolutions, “I'll start exercising or dieting, or forgiving”

Today is traditionally a day when we think about New Year’s resolutions.  But for Christians I think it’s a lot more.  We need to look back at the previous year and then look forward to the next.  We need to think in terms of where we are in terms of our relationship with God.  We need to think about that relationship.  To help us this morning I’ve come up with some questions to ask based on Galatians chapter six.  First let’s read this together.

Galatians 6:11-17 (NIV)   See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand! Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God. Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Christ.

Let us pray.

Father, I ask you to be with us now as we listen to your words.  May these questions that we ask touch our hearts and minds and may they bring us into closer relationship with you.  Father, thank you for loving us so much in Christ. Be with us now.  We pray in Jesus name, amen.

Question number one:  Where is the emphasis in your life?  When Paul wrote a letter to people he usually used a person who wrote for him.  They would write these letters in his name but they would use his words, of course.  But here in this particular part of Galatians it’s almost as though he takes the pen away from this person and he wants to write himself.  He wants to say to the Galatians, “If you haven’t got anything else, listen to this.  If you haven’t heard anything, listen to this. See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand.”  Emphasizing what he is going to say and we can take this and say for ourselves, “What is our emphasis in our own lives?” A good way to perhaps think about that is through the use of epitaphs.  I have been the pastor of several churches and like this one I was pastor of a couple churches that had ancient cemeteries.  Sometimes if you go through them you can read epitaphs.  In the old days they like to put little epitaphy sayings on the tombstones.  Three of them I read about that were in England that had sort of a pessimistic ring. One said, “He always expected the worst and it happened.”  Another said, “I told you I was sick.” Another said, “Pardon my dust.”

James Dobson tells about his own father.  Just before he passed away he asked him what kind of epitaph he would want and his father said, “Let it simply read ‘He prayed’.”  What would be your epitaph?  What would people say about you?  I know for some of you it might be, “He had tickets to the game.”  My children gave me a pillow a couple of years ago for Christmas.  It says, “King of the remote.” 

Some epitaphs are funny but in some ways they are sad too for some folks.  I don’t mean anything by this, in fact I’m kind of getting on myself about this a little bit, and one of my favorite things to do is to play golf.  I will play as much golf as I can when the weather is good.  I remember a couple of times in my pastoral career I’ve heard of people dying and then having their ashes spread on a golf course.  I have to admit I found that sad.  That’s all their life was about, playing golf. 

In my own career as a pastor I have the privilege of doing many, many funerals. It is a privilege.  If find it to be one of the most rewarding things that I do. But often when we do funerals we have folks get up and talk about the person and that sort of thing.  And that’s great but how often do I hear people say, “He first sought the kingdom of God.”?  How often do I hear people say, “They put Jesus first in their lives.”?  It’s very rare.  Now I know a lot of people do and a lot of people don’t know how to say that.  I would like to hear more of that.  I hope they say that about me.  I don’t know if they will or not.  I hope they would say that about all of us.  What is our emphasis in our lives?  God wants us to enjoy life.  Please do not hear me say anything about that.  But what is our emphasis?  It’s a good question for us to examine.  What is our emphasis?

To go along with that:  Who are we trying to please?   I know when you read the scripture today you were going “Circumcision? Uncircumcision? What’s he talking about?” In Paul’s day, the mark of a religious person, religious Jew, a person that was really committed, a male was circumcised.  But when Jesus came along, he got rid of it.  Actually, in Paul’s days there were a couple of ways to be religious.  For the Greeks it was to be real smart.  If you had the knowledge, if you were really smart, if you studied and you knew all these facts about the gods or about philosophy you were in the religious in crowd.  For the Jews it was keeping the rules.  It was following the law.  There is nothing wrong with being smart and there is nothing wrong with following the law but Jesus came along and said, “You know what? It isn’t about being smart because you aren’t that smart.”  And he also said, “It’s not about keeping the rules because you can’t be that good.”  When Paul was running around preaching the Gospel he was telling them about how to come to know Christ.  He would say, “It’s about faith.”  People would follow right along behind him and say, “Having Jesus is just fine but you need to know things.”  And others would say, “No you need to follow the rules, you need to be circumcised.” Paul asks this question, “Who are you trying to please?”  It’s a good question for us to ask as well.  You see I really have come to believe in my own heart as a pastor, as I observe the church, as I observe myself that its almost like falling into the default mode.  We fall into this mode of saying, “oh I’ve got to do this.  I’ve got to do that.”  Very often, pleasing people is really what it’s all about. 

Steve Brown tells a story, a wonderful story about a young man who was a high school football player.  He wasn’t very good.  It came to a game one night when he came up to the coach and said, “Coach! Coach! Let me play! Let me play!  I want to play!”  And the coach said, “I might let you play.”  It got to be this particular night the game was well in hand and the last five minutes he put the kid in and he was an explosion on the field.  He did this, he did that, he made this tackle, he made that catch, he did all these things.  After the game was over the coach said, “What’s up with you?  I didn’t know you were that good.”  And the young man explained, “Well my father in his life was blind and he passed away a couple of days ago and this is the first time he’s ever seen me play.”  Steve Brown goes on to say, “You have a Father who watches you play.  And doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks.  You pray for your Father that is who we need to please.”   

This is a question that bothers me:  What are you professing that you aren’t possessing?  I guess I can say, “Everything in some ways.”  None of us, none of us possess what we profess perfectly.  Paul says, “Not even those who are circumcised obey the law yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh.”  In other words, “We’ve got another convert!  See that person?  We got them to follow the rules.” What Paul is saying is that it doesn’t matter.  What matters is loving God and believing by faith and trusting him, not only for salvation but for this whole life.  Jesus changes everything.  Jesus changes yes how we are saved but he also changes everything that we do here and how we live our lives. How we deal with one another.  Grace applies to everyday life as well.  How we approach one another should be by grace as well.   

What are we professing that we aren’t possessing?  It’s a great question.  We need to ask ourselves that every year so we can look back and say, “You know Lord I need to do a little bit better here.  Lord I would like to be better there.”  I find it tricky though I have to admit.  C.S. Lewis once said, “The harder you try to be good the more you realize how bad you are.”  The harder I try sometimes the worse I get but that doesn’t mean I should quit trying.  The trick is as we try we always do so with the Lord’s help.  There was a guy that wanted to make that New Year’s resolution of getting up and exercising and he does it great for two weeks but then he falls by the way.  Isn’t that the case with all of us?  I was talking to one of our church members who has a business of selling candy in machines.  He says its just like clockwork, during Christmas people don’t buy a lot of candy out of his machines so its kind of a hard time for him, and then especially the first two or three weeks of January because everybody has made that New Year’s resolution. But he said by the third week in January everything is back to normal. 

The Christian life is the long haul.  We need to always ask that question of ourselves: What are we professing that we aren’t possessing?  It isn’t in the sense of saying, “Bad person. Bad person.”  It’s just really trying to identify, “Lord I want to be better in this area, please help me.” 

And what do you take pride?  Paul was given to saying some odd things occasionally. He says, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  To us that sounds to us normal, or we have heard it all before but in that day that was an incredible statement.  In the Bible itself says, “Cursed be he who is hung on a tree.” So anyone crucified was automatically a cursed of God.  How dare Paul say something like this. It was true in the Roman world as well why do you think the Romans used the cross.  It was a shameful, cursive death.  We’ve gotten used to the cross we hang them around our necks.  We put them in our churches and that is all very appropriate but we’ve lost the cursiveness of the cross in our consciousness.  And yet Paul says, “May I never boast except in this cross.”  He is simply saying we shouldn’t brag about what we’ve done but what the Lord has done.  We should never brag in what we’ve done but what the Lord has done. 

A lot of you ask me and it’s a great question and I encourage you to ask the question, “How do I witness to my friend?” “How do I tell my friend who is an agnostic about Jesus?”  It’s not easy in modern life to tell someone about your faith but a good place to begin is kind of with a negative.  Don’t tell them about what you’ve done. Don’t even hint about how good you are because you go to church or whatever you do.  Tell them about what God has done for you.  Tell them how God has taken care of you.  Tell them about how Jesus died for you, start there.  If we start with ourselves, our friends will simply call us hypocrites and they may be right.  I only say that because none of us are perfect in our faith and the way we live our lives.  People can always point to something we’ve done wrong.  If you’ve had children you know what I mean.  They are the first ones to point out, “Well, you do it.” “That’s okay, don’t do what I do.”  But we really can’t do that with our friends.  It isn’t really about us it’s about Jesus.  I am not trying to say it is easy to do that, but that is where we begin and what do we take pride?

Another odd question.  Paul again is disposed to asking strange questions or saying strange things. He would say things like, “I’m crucified with Christ. Christ I have been crucified.”  What in the world could he mean by that, what could this question mean?  It simply means that there’s a part of our lives which needs to die and we all know what it is.  It’s that thing inside of us that wants to do wrong and we all have it.  One of the hardest Christian doctrines I think for people to come to grips with is the idea that we’re born with a problem.  I think it’s empirically verifiable, all we have to do is look at our children and then look at the world, but it’s hard.  It’s hard to deal with.  

I tell this story very often I had a friend in one of my first churches who was dealing with their then eight year old, he is about twenty six now.  She was trying to tell him what heaven would be like and she said all these wonderful things about heaven and then she said a little off handedly, “and you won’t want to do anything wrong any more.”  His eyes got big, “You mean I won’t want to sin any more?”  The kid had it right.  He knew at eight years old that there were times when he did things wrong even though he knew they were wrong because he wanted to.  We do the same.  We do the same.  Part of the Christian life is putting that side of us to death.  Simply saying “no” to the flesh and it’s not an easy thing.  Part of growing as a Christian is saying “no” to parts of our lives.  I know that’s hard in our day and age, we’re so used to saying, “Yes, we can do whatever we want to.”  But Part of growing is learning how to say “no”, putting to death that which we know hurts us and hurts others. 

I love what Paul says, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, what counts is a new creation.”  What he’s simply saying is that when Jesus enters our lives he makes us new but it is something that grows its not something that is totally new.  I read an illustration by a man who was trying to explain something to other Christians.  He was asked, “Why is it taking me so long to get better?”  The man thought about it for a long time and he had this illustration, he used the illustration of In World War II when the Marines would go to certain islands in the Pacific and they would establish a beach head there. Once they got the beach head established and they began to move in they essentially had the island won, it was theirs, but there was often weeks of fighting left.  That is a great analogy for the Christian life.  Jesus has moved in. he has established a beach head, he’s won us yet the fight continues in our lives until the day we go to heaven.  How is your death coming along? 

What is your brand?  Another little pitsy comment Paul has here, “Finally, let no one cause me trouble (in other words, don’t criticize me or what I’m doing) for I bear on my body the marks of Christ.”  It has become very popular in our day to have tattoos.  When I was eighteen, nineteen or twenty in that day and age to grow your hair long was kind of the thing, now its tattoos and things in your body and studs and this and earrings and all kinds of different things.  I’ve gotten used to earrings so I’m not going to criticize any male that has an earring, I’ve gotten used to it.  It’s hard for me I have to admit, when I was in high school if I’d show up with an earring I would’ve been dead that day. I just remember that.  I went to a redneck high school in the south you have to remember.  I am interested in tattoos and I understand, and those of you who know better can tell me if I’m wrong or not, for some people it’s like telling the story of their lives.  They will have a tattoo about a date they had or something wonderful that happened to them and then they’ll go all over the place.  Or for others it’s just a mark of its cool. 

Tattoos are nothing new.  In Roman times people were tattooed in different ways. The soldiers were tattooed as a mark of their units. Slaves were tattooed were to mark themselves as slaves and there were millions of slaves in the Roman times. Paul when he says this is using the same term for tattoo the slave would have.  But he was referring to the fact that in his life, in his ministry he had been beaten many times.  He had been whipped many times.  He had marks on his body.  He had paid the price for being a Christian. He’s saying these are like the tattoos of a slave, “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.”  A good question for us is what is our brand?  I don’t think Paul went out and was masochistic enough to try to have things done to him.  They were just done to him because he was out there witnessing and bringing the Church all over the world. 

I guess the appropriate question for us is: are we willing to sacrifice for our faith?  Are we willing to bear the marks, not necessarily that anyone is going to beat us up or anything like that but if we do speak the name of Christ to a friend will they treat us as unsophisticated? Or if we are Christians at work, we don’t have to be buttonholers or anything like that but how will you be treated?  Are we willing to be treated poorly in our context of our lives because we are Christians? Are we willing to sacrifice our time and our talents and our resources?  Do we bear the marks of Jesus?  Are we willing to give up for Christ? A good question for us to think about. I want to encourage you to pray about these questions.  I want to encourage you to think about what God is saying to you in them.  What would God have you be this year and do this year?  Again, I would encourage you not to have an “I think I can” mentality where you are just going to go out and do it.  Really pray about it and ask for God’s help.  If you go out and just try to do it you may succeed but if you’re like me you will find out in a month that you are doing the same old thing.  Seek God’s help.  Ask the questions of your life, what would God have you be and do?  What is your mark?  What is your brand? 

Let us pray.

Father, I thank you for loving us so much.  Thank you for making us your children.  And as your children we pray to you.  We pray that you would help us to live our lives well, that we would live them in faith, that we would live them in your power and not our own.  Give us vision of what you want for our lives, what we can be, what we can do, what you want us to do in the name of You and your Kingdom. We pray these things in Jesus’ precious name, amen.