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Let’s turn to scripture. Our
scripture today is a conglomerate of a couple different scriptures and I
want to invite you to…. take a look at this!…. That’s a 34 inch Northern
that was caught on Table Lake in Canada by yours truly. A little
fishing excursion and that’s my big fish right now, so. Thank you,
Rick; I appreciate that very much. Let’s try this again and see what’s
next. Ah, O.K. Let’s turn to scripture. Would you join me in read it
together with me, this is from Matthew. (Matthew 6:33)
“But seek first his kingdom and his
righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
And then from Ephesians: (Ephesians
4:1)
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I
urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.
And then from John: (John 10:10)
“The thief’s purpose is to steal and
kill and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all of its fullness.”
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!
Would you pray with me, please?
Lord, it is good to be still before
you. So we come and we ask that you will speak to our souls in this
moment of stillness. Lord, allow us to hear what you have for us this
day. We ask that because of Christ. Amen.
Well, the new iphone has hit the
market and it promises to change the cell phone world much as the way
the ipod has. People were waiting in line; no doubt you’ve seen that.
It is sold out and on waiting lists, I believe, right now. But it is
changing, they predict, how we will live in our world today. It is
simply just another one of the next latest, greatest, next best things
that everybody has to have, isn’t it? But it also happens, too, in our
celebrity world. Paris is back on her game, so to speak. We have this
fascination with celebrities. We want to know all the ins and outs of
them. All we need to do is to walk through a grocery store check out
line and we can get caught up-to-date right away, even if we don’t want
to get caught up-to-date. There is this part of our world, I think,
that just wants to be something beyond ourselves. We want our fifteen
minutes of fame. I mean, we think of “American Idol” and it is all
about that. “America’s Got Talent”; “So You Think You Can Dance”; all
of these shows are all about trying to get beyond something better than
what we are right now. If you think about, “Well, oh, that’s just the
world; it’s not those who follow Christ.” Well, have you looked at the
top selling Christian books lately, and their titles? I think it also
speaks to this notion of wanting to get beyond. The number one
best-seller right now on the book list is a fictional book called
“Forever.” Then other books that go by the titles of “Get Out of the
Pit”; “Facing Your Giants”; “The Five Love Languages”; “Sex God” (I’m
not sure what that’s all about.); “A Purpose Driven Life”; all this idea
of probably self-help kind of things. Then another fictional book,
rounding out the list, I think it has an interesting title, “White
Chocolate Moments.” Ahhh. It is about a woman trying to discover a
love that will last forever. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch
to say that all of us are looking for something beyond maybe who we are,
or perhaps what we currently have; so we are groping after those things
out there. There are lots of ways, I think, to quantify what that
something is. But I want to suggest to you that that something at the
root of it is really about a desire for significance. We want to be
wanted. We want to matter. We want to matter to our spouses, if we are
married. We want to matter to our kids, to our friends. We want to
matter to our employers. We want to matter to God. We want to be able
to get to the end of our life and look back; and, hopefully, someone
will say about us, “Boy, I’m glad she was in my life.” Or “I wouldn’t
be where I am without him.” We desire that. But that desire for
significance, I think, is more than just in the relational world. I
think that desire for significance also carries over into being a part
of making a difference in the world. We all want to make a difference,
somehow, someway. Think about that. I think about my dad. My dad was
an electrical engineer for the Apollo project that went to the moon.
That was significant. I think about the people that started “A Walk
for the Cure” for breast cancer and how significant that has been for so
many people, to say nothing of the money it has raised to help find a
cure for breast cancer. Or how about the improvements that have been
made in prosthetic devices; how much of a difference has that made for
so many service men and women who are returning from the war. We all
long for things of significance. We want to have a life of
significance, not just maybe on a macro scale; but for many of us that
desire for significance probably is more in our severe of influence, the
people in our lives, maybe the ways that we interact with the world and
can make a difference. So for us it is about maybe changing our
character; changing habits; helping the less fortunate; maybe learning
something new, like learning to fillet one of those fishes; maybe
working on a relationship with God. I think we all desire to live a life
of significance. As I have been thinking about that, I’m calling that
desire for significance our “significance quotient” or “SQ”; and, no, I
am not talking about a new Nike golf club. We all desire to have an
increased SQ because we want to make a difference. We know that when we
have an increased SQ, it’s going to require some change on our part.
Change comes in lots of forms, doesn’t it? Sometimes change is
something that we embrace with open arms, particularly when it comes in
the form of a new child, a new season of life, perhaps a new friendship;
those are things we all welcome. But sometimes, change is, we kind of
keep it out there, don’t we? Maybe when it is a loss of a loved one, or
we are struggling with health issues or employment issues. But when we
begin to think about change and we bring it into God’s realm, there are
a couple of things we can say about change. One is that God does not
change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. But even though
God does not change, He is in the change business. He wants to change
us; not just for change sake, that doesn’t do any good. He wants to
change us to build us up, to change us to enable growth. Change always
accompanies something new. I’ll be clear when I say this, hear me; our
desire for significance is not a bad thing. In fact, I believe it is
how God has wired us up. He has wired us up to live lives of
significance, because when we live with a higher SQ, not only will we be
significant in our world and our relationships; but also we will live
lives of significance and we will make an impact for God in the world.
So that is part of how God has put us together.
So the question that I think the
world is seeking to answer and that we desire from a Godly perspective
is, well then, how do we increase our significance quotient? Increasing
our significance quotient is not a bunch of self-help techniques, five
easy, quick fixes to be more significant in your world and your
relationships. Increasing your significance quotient, your SQ, will
eventually include practices in our lives, but it doesn’t start there.
It is first and fundamentally an inward change. It is a change of who
we are as people. I think that is where the world gets messed up,
because the world thinks it is all about the outward change. If we just
take care of doing things on an outward scale, then our inward self, our
heart, our mind, our attitude, our thoughts, will all begin to fall in
line if we do the right thing. But that’s fundamentally flawed because
it works just the opposite. Increasing our SQ starts here, starts
inward, starts with our attitudes, our thoughts, our minds and then
works outward. Dallas Willard is one of our great Christian thinkers in
our day and he says of increasing our SQ, “It is really a renovation of
the heart. It is changing our heart to reflect Christ’s heart.
Increasing our SQ apart from Christ is always going to leave us wanting
more, because we are never going to be satisfied because there is
something that is incomplete about that. Living a life of significance
is first and foremost a spiritual endeavor. It is not simply changing
what we do.” So let me give you a way to think about this.
I have the worst lawn in my
neighborhood. This is a picture of my house. Not really! I have the
worst lawn in my neighborhood, one of the reasons is because I’m too
cheap to pay for lawn service; but the other reason is I have an
understanding of how to build a healthy lawn. A healthy lawn in not
just dumping fertilizer and weed killer on it, but it starts with your
soil. A healthy lawn starts with a good soil and it is out of that good
soil that healthy grass grows. So, in order to have a good lawn, you
need to start with the soil and when you grow good grass doing that,
with good soil, it actually helps keep the weeds down. So it is with a
life of significance. Living a life of significance starts with
changing the inside and then, out of that, comes the change. That is
the exact same thing that Laurie was talking about with our children.
It is about the inside.
There are a couple ways to begin to
think about increasing our SQ. There are probably lots of ways but I
want to give you three that are I think are pretty critical. One of
them is to live in the Holy Spirit. As a follower of Jesus Christ, we
are new creatures; the old has passed away and the new has come. Part
of that new creature-ness, part of what comes into our life as a
follower of Christ, is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit takes up
residence in our lives. Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit is
given to us to, one, mark who we belong to, we belong to God now so God
has given us the Holy Spirit; but then He has also given him to us as a
guarantee of what is to come. Some versions say it is actually “a down
payment on our eternal life.” So the Holy Spirit is given to us. The
Holy Spirit is given to us to make us holy, as God is holy; to take on
the character of Christ. So to live in the Holy Spirit, I think, is
two-fold. It is one, allowing the Holy Spirit to transform our
character on the inside so that it reflects Christ; and, then,
empowering us to serve and witness for Christ in the world. I think
most followers of Christ get that first part pretty well. We
understand, we probably even welcome, the notion of being changed from
the inside out so that we can take on the character of Christ; but I
think a lot of us stop right there. We don’t take that next step of
allowing the Holy Spirit to empower us, and that’s the key word, empower
us, to serve and to witness. Now you say, “We all serve and witness.”
Well, we do that. But how many of us do it out of guilt, out of
compulsion, because someone says we have to or we should, the great
word, should; instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to empower us and let
the serving and the witnessing come out of who we are becoming. And it
comes with joy. There’s a lot more to say about how that all takes
place. I hope in this next coming year to be able to have a class that
would talk about some of those kinds of things because I think a lot of
us are asking a lot of those kind of questions. “How does that happen
exactly?” So hopefully we will get a chance to talk about that this
year in a class setting. But for now, that’s the piece of living in the
Holy Spirit; it’s allowing the Holy Spirit to change us from the inside
out; and then to empower us, to come with power as we serve and we
witness.
Another one of those components for
increasing our SQ is to live in community. We are made in God’s image;
and part of being made in God’s image is that we were designed to live
with God and to live with each other. We are to love on each other the
way that Jesus loves on us. We think about Jesus and his life, he was
part of the disciples; he cared about them; he lived with them. He
spoke the truth and love to them. He eventually laid down his life for
them; and the group grew under him, as well. Christ calls us to do the
same. When we are connected to each other in significant ways, growth
happens. When we are connected, it gives an opportunity for iron to
sharpen iron, to use that old adage. Life change, I believe, best
happens in the context of groups. We are going to talk a lot about this
idea of community this upcoming year, this notion of being connected.
There are a lot of ways to be connected and I know that many of you are
connected in groups right now, in small groups; and that’s a good thing.
If you are not, we want to try to create more small groups going
forward. But I also want to say that small groups are not the only way
to live in community. I think there can be larger groups that also
provide that same function of encouragement, of support, of fellowship
and of growth. One of the ways that we are going to kind of experiment
with that in this upcoming year is what I am calling gathering groups.
Gathering groups are simply a group of people that what to get together
who are the same age and life stage. We are going to start with a
couple of those this fall and see how it goes. If you want to find out
more about those, come and talk to me or keep an eye out for what’s
going on in the Faith in Action as well as the website. But, living in
community is a critical piece of increasing our significance quotient.
One final component about increasing
our SQ is to live in the Word. The scripture is the baseline for living
a life of significance. When we look at the characters of scripture
those characters all lived with a high SQ. So I invite you read through
the wonderful stories of scripture about the many great characters and
live with them so you can see how they acted; what they did; what they
said; kind of what they smell and taste like; so that we can live that
way as well. As you do that, I invite you to ponder the words that come
out of scripture because I think that many of us just plain read
scripture too fast. We read it too fast, we kind of blow through it
maybe because we have to or we are trying to get something done or we
are just trying to get through our devotion. My pastoral word to you
today is “slow down.” Slow down; let the words kind of dwell in your
thoughts for a while; ponder them. One of the ways that God has been
working on that in my mind is that I have been wrestling with these
phrases that we see in scriptures; one is “being filled with the
Spirit.” Another one is called “having the Spirit come upon you”.
Another way scripture talks about it is “being in the Spirit.” I have
been kind of playing with those, let those phrases kind of sit in my
mind, going “God are they the same? Are they different? How?” I am
just kind of living with those. Slowing down allows the words of
scripture to penetrate our heart, all that are prerequisites for living
a life of significance; because people who live a life of significance
live a life of grace and of beauty and of the peace of Christ. They
exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. That is one of the outcomes of an
increased SQ.
Increasing your significance quotient
will require change; and, I hope you have gotten the notion by now; it’s
not something you have to do on your own. It is a cooperative effort
between God and us. Allow God to bring the needed change into your life
and then step out in faith knowing that God will lead you to great
things for Him. I think your potential significance is only limited by
your faith. I came across this quote from Nelson Mandela that I think
is appropriate, and it says, “There is no passion to be found in playing
small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable
of living.” Wow! And to that I say “Go big! Go big! Live a life of
significance.” Let’s pray.
Mighty and holy God, we do desire to
live a life of significance. I think it is part of our spiritual DNA.
So Lord, I ask that you would grow our significance in our lives as we
lean on you and allow you to change us into the person that you see us
to be. Lord thank you, that you are so faithful, that you stand by us
and walk with us to increase our life in you. In your name we ask it.
Amen.
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