"Making the Ordinary Extrodinary"
(8th message in an 8-part series, "An Ordinary Day With Jesus")
Sermon Transcript for March 24, 2002
By Rev. Mike Beck
You know, last week we talked about "hurry sickness". You know when I get to train in the area of "hurry sickness"? Sunday morning. So I invite you now as we bring this wonderful series to a close to just relax, to not fall guilty of "hurry sickness", to let the Holy Spirit speak to you this morning. We began this series with the good news that Jesus was to join us in the ordinary moments of our lives. Our text verse for the series was Colossians 3:17, which tells us, "Whatever you do in word or in deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus."
How can we experience this kind of life with Jesus, not compartmentalized, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? That’s our question for this last Sunday. The first step is BELIEF. We must believe that experiencing the reality of God in our everyday lives is a real possibility for us. And we are perhaps inclined to think, "Well, you know God showed up for people like Moses, David, Peter, and Paul, but who am I to think that God is interested in being a part of my everyday existence?" But this is the good news that the Scripture proclaims over and over again – that God is not aloof way up there some place but that God is a personal God who wants to enter in to a relationship with us. And so, in this step of belief, I urge you, be willing to step out in faith wherever you may be in your spiritual journey with the attitude of the man who came to Jesus for healing for his son. And the Lord asked him about his faith and he said, "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief."
And then once we believe this kind of life is possible then we must grow in our DESIRE for that kind of life. John Eldredge, the author of The Journey of Desire writes, "We must journey to find the life we prize. And the guide we have been given is the desire set deep within." Those of you who are basketball fans, especially those of you who are Hoosier fans, have seen a team playing with tremendous desire over these last couple of weekends. So I ask you, "Do you hunger after God today?" And if you do, remember Jesus’ promise on the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled".
Now, if we’re really honest, we may need to admit that there might be times and places in our life we’re not sure we really want Jesus to be with us. There may be certain kinds of activities that we’re fairly attached to that we’re pretty sure He wouldn’t approve of. Perhaps we harbor destructive thought patterns or behaviors that we would rather keep hidden. Or maybe we’re afraid that if we invite Jesus into every element of our lives, He’s going to demand more of us than we are able to give. But hear again this word of good news today: "The truth about ourselves never scares or embarrasses Jesus, even if we don’t want to face it." If you want to spend your ordinary days with Jesus, hear His gracious invitation today—"Come, follow me." Hear Him say, "I know you’ll mess up. That’s okay. Come follow me. For I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly!"
But there is a big difference between desiring to do something and actually doing it. The difference is the DECISIONS that we make. We may want to exercise and be physically fit, but when it comes right down to it, we never make it to the gym to exercise. I’ve been real envious of Reverend Dan. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed but since the first of the year, that guy has lost 30 pounds! I’ve lost three. I’ve lost three! I gave up donuts and French fries for Lent and that’s helped me lose three. I believe I can lose them, but you see my desire has not been as great as Dan’s and Dan’s been making decisions on a daily basis that resulted in losing those 30 pounds. The decisions that I made only resulted in three. It’s kind of like one of those myths we talked about last week. You know, "one of these days" things are going to be a little different? And the reality is, "one of these days never comes" unless we make some decisions. We can say we want to spend our ordinary days with Jesus, but if our day-to-day decisions work against our desire, we’ll never achieve our goal.
If someone asks me, "Reverend Mike, what is your desire for every person at Grace?" My answer would be the same irregardless of age or station in life or whether they are a seeker or have been a Christian for 50 years. I would say, "I want them to grow in Christ. And the way they do that is when they are faithful to worship, when they find a small group to be a part of, and when they find a place of ministry that matches their spiritual gifts. If you make a decision to do those things, like Gerard and Shelly made a decision to be a part of the ALPHA course, you grow in your walk with Christ.
Three steps: Belief – Desire – Decision.
Two quick things--If we anticipate spending our ordinary days with Jesus, first of all DON’T BE DEFEATED BY FAILURE. Many times throughout the day you’re going to forget all about Jesus. You’re not going to do what you planned to do. You’re going to make mistakes. Don’t worry about it! Jesus doesn’t! Just talk to Him about those things, receive grace, and move forward. For it isn’t about "trying harder", it’s about "training"! And then secondly, DON’T FORGET TO LOOK FOR THE BURNING BUSHES along the way. God appeared out there to Moses in a routine, ordinary day while he was tending his sheep and he looked over and there was a bush burning. But it didn’t burn up. On an ordinary day God showed up in a special way to Moses. And there will be "burning bushes" in your lives as well if you have spiritual eyes to seem them and are looking for them. God may speak to you through a friend. He may bring reassurance of love or forgiveness from an unexpected source. God may give you a "leading" of some task He wants you to do. Like the character we talked about in the first week in those "Where’s Waldo" books, we need to remember that God is always present in the pictures of our lives if we’ll just look for Him.
We’re going to wrap up this series by watching a video now. It’s a wonderful review of things we’ve covered. And I want you to listen carefully as ordinary people like you and like me talk about the impact that "living an ordinary day with Jesus" has had on their lives.
VIDEO
"I was not loving people the way I wanted to love people."
"I am a recovering legalist."
"I get an assignment and I do it."
"My addiction is so bad."
"I haven’t shared how serious this was even with my closest friend."
"Here I am trying to learn not to be in a hurry and I’m in a hurry to learn not to be in a hurry."
"I think I have a conviction that some day things will settle down."
"My relationship with God is something that I have set up where I know what needs to be done, I get an assignment, and I do it."
"The environment that I grew up in, there was this need to measure up."
"How do I do stuff to please God?"
"I need to be perfect."
"I felt like I always needed to be doing something."
"I do that in my job as a consultant."
"I learned how to do Scripture memory when I was very little."
"I do that in my marriage."
"…learned how to do Bible study"
"…do that for my friends"
"I was leading small groups."
"Recently I’ve been learning a lot about grace."
"It was the perfection that pleased God."
"But still understanding Grace isn’t something to do."
"One of the things that has been significant for me is discovering the difference between training and trying."
"It’s a transformation of your daily routine."
"It’s a substantially different approach."
"Trying to go to the health club on a regular basis and trying to understand all of the fitness there without having any training is really pointless."
"Since I’m a new Christian I expected everything to just happen, and I was concerned because it wasn’t, didn’t just happen. I’m not all of the sudden loving. So it was very important to me to learn that I need to train."
"You can try and try and try but if you don’t have the training to go with it, it’s going to be very frustrating."
"My family had gotten back from a play that my daughter had been in and we wanted to stop for a cup of coffee. We go to this coffee shop and there is a line. So we’re standing there in line. There’s myself, my wife, another woman, and a guy in a wheelchair in the front of the line. Part of the problem with this gentleman was that he had trouble speaking. And he had some kind of a device on his wheelchair where he would type in the letters and they would actually kind of come up on the screen. The guy behind the counter could not understand quite what he was asking for. I was watching this woman in front of us. She was very impatient. And I could see her I could see the vile on her face. And I noticed that. And I thought, "I wonder what’s her deal?" And it was a realization, that’s a mirror of me!"
"When I am not a loving person, that’s a really good sign that I’m not spending an ordinary day with Jesus."
"School’s in session right now and I get a chance to learn something, right here, right now, waiting for a cup of coffee."
"It wasn’t until I really understood the concept of belief, desire, and decision, that God was able to get into my life and help me overcome the addiction. It’s very hard for me to talk about it. And really the only person who knew how serious it really was was my therapist. A particular one for me was an addiction to chocolate. It sounds like a silly thing but it was very serious in my life because it affected my health a lot."
"I guess I didn’t really have the belief that God was enough on my side that He wanted to come into my life and help me make the changes that He and I both wanted for me."
"One night I came home rather late and all I could wait to do was to get in to bed. But before I did that I wanted to peak in on my three children and give them all a kiss on the cheek. My daughter sat full, upright in the bed and said, "Mom, I don’t feel well." And in my head I’m like this is really not what I want to hear right now. We got in to the bathroom and she threw up all over. And I’m still thinking this shouldn’t be happening because I want to go to God."
"Something drastic changed. And my therapist asked me, "Why, you know, last week were you eating and this week you’re not?" And I said, "Because I finally realized that God loves me and I believe that God loves me."
"What I had recently learned was that we can take those moments to God. Here was an opportunity to help my daughter understand that I’d like to go to sleep in Jesus’ name."
"Finding Jesus in my life every time I came to that moment of decision was part of being aware that he was there, first of all. And stopping long enough to kind of hold His hand."
"I had hurry sickness."
"And that’s when you can realize how hurried I was."
"Yesterday morning I deliberately chose to try to go under the speed limit and I failed miserably."
"I would realize I was rushing through the routine in the morning. I’m not late!"
"I remember one morning I was eating my breakfast and I knew I had to go somewhere. But I had enough time that I could have sat at the table and ate. But I was standing at the counter just shoveling it in and trying to make the lunches at the same time. And I thought, "I am really hurried and I don’t need to be!"
"Yesterday, I was in a hurry and a lane opened up. This was a perfect opportunity to speed right by everybody else and what happened right in front of me comes out a motorcycle. If I’d been just a little bit faster, I would have gone (boom) and he’d be dead right now."
"I am learning about the difference between being busy which is inevitable and having a hurrying spirit."
"One of the phrases that kept coming back to me was "wrinkle-free, eliminate hurry from your life". And that has just been repeated in my head."
"If I slow down a little bit, I think I’ll find my connection with God will be better."
"When I’m living that fast, it’s harder to hear God’s voice."
"There have been times when I’m going about my everyday and I’ll get leadings that will happen in a moment."
"When I was on a flight returning back from Europe, as I’m standing in line for the washroom a woman comes up behind me. All of a sudden I sensed a prompting or leading to say "hello" to this woman. But I thought, "No!" And yet it persisted. And so finally when our eyes met I realized that this was the window and so I acknowledged her and asked, you know, I couldn’t help but notice the elderly gentlemen. Well, all of a sudden she turned and just gave me this whole story. Yes, he was her 91-year old father. They had just been to Poland and had buried her 83-year old mother. And now they were bringing him back to live out the remaining few years of his life. I just had a moment there to say to her, "That is an amazing gift that you are giving to him."
"A lot of times it’s through that person they’ll say, "That’s exactly what I needed to hear."
"Then she said, "Thank you for saying that. We’ve been unsure about this whole move." A prompting came up affirming in my heart, that …..(end of tape)
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