Leading an Effective LIfe

Pastor Burcham ’s Sermon

 Sunday, September 9, 2007

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

This morning, I want to start out with a few questions and I want you to do a show of hands to answer these questions. How many of you right now on your person have some sort of way of keeping track of everything you need to do? Maybe it’s a calendar, maybe it’s a PDA, maybe it’s something on your phone, even something as simple as a To Do List. How many of you have that on you right now? Okay. It’s good to be retired, isn’t people? Wow. Okay. That’s alright. That’s alright.

How many in your lifetime have taken some sort of course on time management? Maybe you listened to a tape, you watched a video, you went to a seminar, you did something for time management? How many of you have done that? Ah, now we’re getting some more. Now how many of you, your children or your grandchildren, at the beginning of the school year were given a planner for the year so they could keep track of all their homework and everything they had to do? Alright.

Why do we have to have such devices? Why do we have to have calendars, PDA’s, To Do Lists, Planners for our kids? I mean I understand the simple answer. The simple answer is we have so much to do and our schedules are so packed that we have to keep track of it someplace or we’d forget it. I’m with you on that. If my phone didn’t ding at me 15 minutes before an appointment, I’d probably miss half of them.

My question goes a little bit deeper than that. Not just the function of the calendar or the PDA. My question is why do we do all those things? Why is it we feel compelled to fill up our calendars with activities? Why is it that we allow and encourage our children and grandchildren to be involved in so many activities that we’re gone seven nights a week taking them from here and there and everywhere else? Why is it that our life is so busy and so jam packed?

My personal theory on that is because we want our life to mean something. We don’t want to waste it. We want to have an impact on the world. We want to have a life that we feel is fulfilling. Or another way of saying it is we want to live an effective life. We want to accomplish something with our life and we want to see the same thing happen in our children and our grandchildren. We’ve convinced ourselves that if we just budget our time better, if we do a good job of time management and we pack as much as we can into a 24-hour period, somehow we will then be more effective in our lives.

Interesting. Stephen Covey, you might remember his name, monster big hit, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, so you might call him the “effective life guru.” He had a follow-up book he wrote with a couple of other authors called First Things First. In the introduction to this book, this is what he writes, “Traditional time management suggests that by doing things more efficiently, you’ll eventually gain control of your life and that increased control will bring peace and fulfillment that you’re looking for.” Then the next two words, “We disagree.” We disagree. He goes further to say, “We live in a modern society that loves shortcut techniques. There is no shortcut but there is path. If there is one message to glean from this wisdom, it is that a meaningful life is not a matter of speed or efficiency. It is much more a matter of,” and here it is, “what you do and why you do it than how fast you get it done.” It’s much more a matter of what you do and why you do it. If you want to have an effective life, I’m going to agree with the authors here, it’s much more important to understand why is it you do the things you do? What’s your motivation? What’s your reasoning behind that? And then, of course, it matters what do you do with your life? What activities are you involved in?

Well, thankfully, scripture answers both those questions. I believe in Peter’s second letter he wrote in the first chapter, he answers both the question of why, what is our motivation for everything we do in life, and also what is it we should be doing if we want to have a meaningful, purposeful, effective life. For the next few weeks, we’re going to use 2 Peter 1 kind of as our roadmap to get through that, the whys and the whats.

But this morning, we have to lay the foundation of why. We have to ask ourselves the question of why do we do the things we do and then look to God for the correct answer. What is the correct motivation? What is the correct reason for everything we do in life? And that sets the stage then, the base for determining what we do.

So my question this morning now is why do you do the things you do? As you think about your schedule last week, as you think about every aspect of your life, from relationship to work to leisure time, down time, everything you do in life, from the minute you get up to the minute you go to bed at night, why do you do the things you do? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Why do you love your wife? Why do you love your children and your grandchildren? Why do you go to work? Why are you honest? Why do you have integrity? Why do you follow the speed limit on Aurora? Why do you play golf? Why do you volunteer at church? Why do you do the things you do? You see, how you answer that question really will reveal a lot about how fulfilling you feel your life is or your whole attitudes towards the life God has given to you. How do you answer that question? Why do you do the things you do?

Well, I’m going to guess some of you are saying, there’s at least a whole list of things, you say why do I do the things I do? I don’t know. I just do. How many things in your life you do because, well, you just do. Why do I love my wife? I don’t know. I just do. I’ve been with her for so long, I guess I just do. How many things in your life are like that? You just do them. You don’t really know why. There is a whole list of things. I want you to think about those. There is a whole list of things you do because you never really thought about why. You just simply do those things.

There are probably a certain amount of things you do out of fear. What I mean by that is the fear of the consequences if you don’t do them. Alright? Why do you follow the speed limit on Aurora? Well, if you don’t follow the speed limit on Aurora and we have one of Urbandale’s finest out there, you’re going to get a ticket and then it’s going to go on your record and then your insurance is going to go up and there are a whole lot of things and consequences of why you do that, so I’m guessing there is another whole list of activities that you do out of fear of the consequences if you don’t do them.

And then the third list is there is probably a whole other list of things you do out of obligation. You just feel this is something you have to do. It’s something you’re supposed to do. So why will you go to work tomorrow morning? Because I have to, that’s why. If I don’t, I don’t get a paycheck. I can’t put food on the table. I don’t have a house to live in. I have to go to work tomorrow morning. I have an obligation. Sometimes you may do other things in life that are out of obligation. Maybe you’re here in worship this morning out of obligation because that’s what you’ve done your whole life. That’s what happens on Sunday morning and that’s where I’m supposed to be so out of obligation, I’m going to be in worship or out of obligation, I’m going to volunteer. Out of obligation, I’m going to take care of the grandkids because that’s what grandparents do.

There is a whole other list of obligations. So you have these three lists of why you do something and now the fourth list. What are the things you do because you genuinely want to do them? You genuinely have a desire. These are the things you want to do. I suspect these three lists far outnumber this list. If that’s the case, what does that say about an effective life, a life that brings meaning, that has purpose? If most of what you do you either don’t know why you do it, you do it out of fear or you do it out of obligation, there’s a better way. There’s a better way to answer the question of why and God answers that question. God answers the question, “Why do you do everything you do in life?” God says the answer is faith. God says your faith relationship with Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior is the reason why. In other words, God says He has a power for your life and the power is this: The power is you do things not out of obligation, not out of fear, not because of not understanding but you do everything in your life because you genuinely want to do those things in your life. That is the power God has for us. That’s what Peter was talking about. He says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.” He says the divine power that’s in our life is the knowledge of what God has done for us. In other words, it’s the power of the gospel message.

St. Paul put it another way, Roman 1:16, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.” It is the power of God’s gospel message of what God has done for us that motivates us, inspires us, gives us a reason for everything we do in life. The key is this: An effective life is lived in response to everything God has done for you.

An effective life is lived in response to everything God has done for you. That means we need to take a moment and say, “What has God done for us?” And maybe the more pertinent question is, “Where would we be without our faith? Where would we be without God? Where would we be without a belief, a faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior?”

Well, let’s turn to the book of Ephesians 2 to answer that question, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” You were dead in your transgressions and sins. Sin is what separates us from God. It is the great divide between us and Him. You see, God hates sin. God will not be in the presence of sin. God wants to have nothing to do with sinfulness. That’s what happened at creation time when Adam and Eve failed to sin and messed up the whole thing. And scripture says that left on our own, we are dead in our sins, we are dead in our transgressions. That’s what separates us from God. And God says there has to be some sort of punishment for that sin. There has to be some sort of payment made for those transgressions, somehow they have to be wiped out and removed from being a barrier between us and God. So then we have to ask our question, “What are we going to do about that?”

There are several ways we could answer that. One way of looking at it, which maybe we don’t want to admit but I think it creeps into our thinking more times than not, and that is, “You know, I’m only human and so I’m going to do the best I can and I’m going to try my hardest and I’m going to have some good days and I’m going to have some bad days but at the end of the day, God’s going to say, ‘You know, I know you tried your darndest. I know you did your best, that you gave it an all out effort and so that’s good enough for me.’” Because God is a loving and merciful God and as long as you’re trying, as long as you’re living the best life you can possibly muster, then God is going to say, “That’s fine. Come on and have them spend eternity with me.”

Now maybe you’ve gone down that track before or maybe it’s slipped into your thinking before. If so, just consider one thing if you would. This past week, I was scrolling through some news blogs and I came across an interview with Billy Graham. The interviewer said to Reverend Graham, “Reverend Graham, do you believe that you’re going to go to heaven?” And Reverend Graham answered back, “That’s up to God. That’s not up to me.” And the interviewer says, “Well, what do you mean by that?” He says, “That’s up to God whether I go to heaven or not because I am not a righteous man. People want to put me up on a pedestal. They want to make me a saint.” But Reverend Graham said, “I am not a righteous man.” What Reverend Graham is saying is if he’s going to get to heaven based upon how good he is and how hard he’s trying, he’s not going to make it because he doesn’t consider himself a righteous man. It’s going to be up to God whether he gets into heaven or not and God’s grace and mercy in his life. My friends, if Brother Billy isn’t good enough to get into heaven, where does that leave us?

Scripture says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Scripture says, “Be perfect as I the Lord your God am perfect.” We are dead in our sins and transgressions. But scripture doesn’t stop there. A few verses later, “But because of His great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions.” God who is rich in grace and mercy made us alive with Christ even when we’re dead in our transgressions. He goes on to say, “It is by grace that you have been saved through faith.” And this isn’t from yourself. It’s a gift of God. Not by works. This is God’s gift to us. You see, we don’t deserve heaven. We can’t earn heaven. God simply gives it to us. It is God the Father who sent His Son Jesus into the world. It’s Jesus who lived the perfect life among us and yet it was Jesus who was nailed to the cross, not you. And it was Jesus who paid the debt of your sin, not you. And it was Jesus who went to hell, not you. He was dead in our transgressions and our sins. And He paid the debt of all of that and when He rose three days later and He came back to life, my friends, He gave you life. He gave you new life. You couldn’t earn it. You don’t deserve it. But God gives it to you.

This is the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel is you don’t have to do anything because anything you do isn’t enough. The power of the gospel says you don’t have to do anything. But you want to do so much.

You see, I don’t have to do anything but because of the gospel, I want to do so much. I don’t have to love my wife but I want to. I don’t have to spend time with my grandkids but I want to. I don’t have to go to work tomorrow but I want to. I don’t have to follow the speed limit on Aurora but I want to. Do you see the shift in attitude, the change in thinking? The gospel removes all of those implications of having to do things, obligated to do things, fearful if you don’t do things because God says you don’t have to do anything. I’ve done it all for you.

But the response is there’s so much now that I want to do. That’s the power of the gospel. That’s the answer to the question of why. Why do you do anything in your life, personally, socially, down time, relaxing? God says there’s one answer, one answer. Faith. An effective life is a life that is led in response to all that God has done for us. So God answers the question of why. Faith.

Oddly enough, He answers the question of what the same way. Faith. Peter goes on to say, “For this very reason,” because of the power of the gospel, “make every effort to add to your faith goodness and knowledge and to knowledge, self control.” And he goes on with a whole list of things and for the next few weeks, we’re going to dig into and we’re going to try to understand the what. But he answers the question that the faith we’ve been given now is put into action. The response we have for God, now God is going to lead us. The goodness of God, we want to take on that goodness. The knowledge of scripture, what it has to say for us and the direction it gives our life, we want to pay heed to that because we’ve settled the question of why and now we can move on to the question of what.

This coming week, I want you to do something for me. See if you can do it this afternoon. I want you to look back at the things you’ve done over the past week or two and ask yourself again why did I do those things. And be honest. Did you do them out of obligation? Did you do them out of fear? Did you do them because you don’t know why you do them, you just do them? Okay? And then I want you to look ahead for your commitments for this next week. And I want you to be reminded of what God has done for you and the power of the gospel in your life. And all of a sudden saying, “You know what? I don’t have to do any of those things but I want to. I want to bring glory to God in my life and respond to all He’s done for me.” So everything that’s coming up this week, you say, “I want to do that.”

You tell me next week if your life doesn’t start to be more fulfilling. You tell me if you don’t feel that your life is much more effective. Amen.

Copyright 2007 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church