PASTOR BURCHAM'S SERMON

Sunday, March 6, 2005

Carolyn Lyle is a 53-year-old resident of California . Last February, she fired nine shots from two different revolvers trying to scare away an intruder in her home. It seems that three friends and she were playing cards in the living room when they heard something happening in the other room by the door wall. One of the friends went to investigate and found out there was a man trying to break into the home. Well, the three guests of Carolyn's fled the house in terror not wanting to be around but Carolyn didn't want to do that. Carolyn picked up a 357. She started unloading on the guy. She told reporters later on that he was like a mosquito. Each time he turned around, pow. One gun wasn't enough, though, for Carolyn. It seems that as she fired the last shot from the first revolver, he crashed through the door and was heading for her garage. Well, she wanted to make sure he was going to be gone so she had another revolver. She picked up the second revolver, went after the man, caught him in the garage, and fired off a bunch of more rounds. Somewhere along the way, she ended up wounding him and he went running down the road. Finally, he was apprehended by the local sheriffs. In her police report, she told the officer that really her only concern was, while she was shooting at the man, she wanted to make sure she was careful that she didn't hit any of her furniture. She said, “Priorities, you know.”

Now I'm not going to argue if Carolyn wants to defend herself and defend her property. I don't know that I'd go to the extreme she went to, but it really seems awful curious to me that her last statement, when she was firing at the man, she wanted to make sure she didn't hit any of her furniture. “Priorities, you know,” she said. Now if I'm understanding her correctly, what she's saying is that, as she's firing her 357, she's more concerned about not hitting her furniture than say a stray bullet hitting one of her neighbors or somebody passing by? And if I'm understanding her correctly, according to her priorities, her second most important objective after defending herself was protecting her furniture to make sure it wasn't damaged. In that intense moment when the adrenaline was pumping, it seems to me that her priorities surfaced and her priorities were her furniture or her possessions.

It's pretty hard to know how you and I would react in that situation, but let's go ahead and try. What would you have done? What would have been your priorities in that instance? If maybe that's too far out there, then would you take a moment for me right now and, if you need to, close your eyes so you don't see the surroundings, what are the most important things in your life? What takes priority for you? You have your list? You have your first one? Maybe your first one is equal with something else. You have two that you can't decide. Maybe you have your top five things, your priorities in life. Now here comes the tough part. Are they really your priorities? In other words, let's dig a little bit deeper. Let's find out what are your true priorities. Sometimes it's easy when we're sitting back here in a comfortable place in God's house to say what are your priorities. We could come up with one list of “These are the things that are most important to us.” In fact, I would guess if Carolyn would have been in church the Sunday before the intruder and she had to list her priorities, I seriously doubt that furniture would have been at the top of her list. But when you're sitting here and you think about what the priorities would be or you think maybe what your priorities should be or you think about what you want your priorities to be, but really when it comes down to the moment, when it comes down to where you have to make some choices, that's when your true priorities come out.

So let's revisit your list again. You're thinking about your priorities and I'm guessing, as you're sitting here, I'm going to go out on a limb, and I'm going to guess your top priority for at least 90% of you is going to be family and God. I bet those are the two you listed up there. Now you have to ask yourself, what are your true priorities? Your true priorities are the things you spend time doing. It's things you invest yourself at. It's the things you work towards. So how much do you invest yourself in something? How much effort do you put towards it? What are you willing to sacrifice when you have to make a choice? That's really when the true priorities start coming up. When you take a look at your calendar and you see what occupies most of your time, that's when the priorities start coming to the surface. You see, you have to remove yourself from sitting here in this nice safe environment and listing what you think your priorities should be but now really ask yourself what are your priorities?

For instance, if I were to say, “Which is more important to you, your relationship to God or soccer?” Well, that seems easy, doesn't it? But which are you more likely to skip, church on Sunday morning or the soccer game that's scheduled on Sunday morning? How is it we can spend hours sitting in front of our television set surfing through the channels complaining to our spouse, “You know, there's just absolutely nothing on. Why do we pay for this cable anyway?” And yet, we can't squeak out 15 minutes to read God's Word or to have personal devotion. How is it that we can pour ourselves into our careers, that we can give so much at work that by the time we come home there's nothing left? There's nothing left for our family. There's nothing left for our friends. And yet I'll bet you'd list as your two top priorities God and family.

But what are the priorities you're living with? What are the ones you're willing to sacrifice for, to make decisions for? Society as a whole has mixed up priorities. In fact, they're so mixed up what do we have to show for them? We have fatigue. We have anxiety. We have stress. We have ulcers. We have all those negative things that are happening to us physically and a lot of them have to deal with the fact that we have mixed up priorities because we don't know what's really supposed to be important in our lives. It's time for us to look through the eyes of Jesus and to see from Him what is it that should be important to us, what should take priority in our lives?

Jesus gave it to us in the gospel lesson for today. He said, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all the rest will be added unto you.” Now did you hear it correctly, all of it? He said, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness,” and then He says, “and all these things will be given to you as well.” Sometimes I think when we read that we don't make it past “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” because we get it into our head, “Well, yeah, we're going to make God number one and then life's not going to be fun.” We're going to make God top priority in our life and what that means is we're just not going to enjoy life at all. God is not asking you to be a bible toting, card carrying Jesus nut. He's not. God is not saying, by putting Him first in your life, that you clutch your bible in your hand and you walk down the street looking pious, genuflecting whenever you have a chance. It's not what God's expecting. God says, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and then all the rest is added to you.” He's not taking anything away from you. In fact, God wants you to enjoy life and enjoy all the things He's given to us in this life, but we're never going to do that until we get our priorities straight. He says if you want to enjoy life, if you want to be rid of stress and anxiety, then seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. God's not asking you to take a vow of poverty, quit your job. God's saying let's just get things straight and then all the rest will fall into place. If we put our relationship with God as our top priority, the relationship that was given to us by the Son, if we put that as number one, then all the rest of them fall into place, our careers, our kids, our family, soccer, Little League, all the rest. There's room for all of that. But God tells us to put Him number one. Make Him our top priority.

What Jesus' priorities produce for us is peace and joy. You see the context in which Jesus makes this statement? He's talking about worry and anxiety and stress and how we fret over what we're going to wear and what we're going to eat. In other words, we're worrying about our careers. We're worrying about our jobs. We're worrying about our bank account. We're worried about our portfolio and all the things that are surrounding us in this world. And Jesus says those are important. You need those to live, but your Father knows that. He's going to take care of that. He says, “Seek first His kingdom, His righteousness, then the rest.” You see, when we focus our relationship on God, what we discover is we can trust Him that He's going to take care of us, that He's going to fulfill what He said to us. He says, “You're going to have something eat. You're going to have something to wear, and you're going to have someplace to live.” God says He'll supply all those things for us. And as we make our priorities straight, we start trusting in Him more and more.

The real question for us this morning then probably is how do we change our priorities? Now if your priorities are all set and you're in line with Jesus' priorities, that's great, you have about 7 minutes to nap right now. Otherwise, if you're like me, you can have the ideal of what you want your priorities to be but then the actual priorities. The first step you need to do is be honest with yourself. You have to stop fooling yourself. It means you pull out your calendar and you ask yourself, “Where do I spend most of my time? Where is it that I pour myself into, that I give more to this than anything else?” And is that the right place? Maybe it is, but let's be honest about it. Ask yourself, “When I have to make a choice and I have to make a decision, what takes precedence? What are the immovables for me, the things I'm not going to give on?” That's going to clearly define for you your priorities. What is it you're willing to spend your time with, you're willing to invest in, you're willing to make choices for? How does that compare to the ideal? Better yet, how does that compare to God's way? How does that compare to His priorities? They're probably not exactly in line.

The second thing you need to do, which is the most important, is to pray. I know, the preacher always says pray. Pray about everything. That's because prayer is God's power line to us. And I don't know about you but, for me, I don't pray nearly enough. We will never change our priorities if we don't take it to God in prayer. Changing our priorities is hard work, and changing our priorities is not a matter of willpower. It is not a matter of us sitting down on Monday morning saying, “I'm going to change, by golly, and by sheer willpower I will do it.” You will fail. I guarantee it. We of our own power cannot change our priorities, but God through the power of His Holy Spirit can change our priorities because God can change our heart and God can change the way we think and that all begins when we come to God in prayer. We come to Him asking that His spirit who dwells in our heart would have an impact upon us. And we start praying to God and developing our relationship with God. Now if you're not used to praying, go ahead and be honest. Don't tell the person next to you. Then I want you to start slow. The first thing to do is start praying at meals, even if the whole family prays, that's fine. Take two minutes. Just pause before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner and just give a word of thanks to God. What's that going to do? That's going to remind you that the food in front of you, God gave it to you. God's taking care of you just like He promised He was going to take care of you. Then start praying at night before you go to sleep. If you fall asleep praying, I can't think of a better thing for you to do. Thank God for what's happened during the day. The next step is start praying in the morning when you wake up, saying, “God, as I go about my day, I want to bring honor and glory to you. I want to have my priorities straight.” What you're going to find out is that you can pray to God any time and any place, and you're going to find yourself talking to God more than you've ever talked to Him before. Because you're going to discover, as you're standing in the elevator going up for the important meeting, you're going to have a word with God. When you're standing outside the classroom before the big test, you're going to have a word with God. When you're driving in the car stuck on 235, you're going to have a word with God. And as you have those words with God and as you pray to God, your relationship with Him gets stronger and stronger and, all of a sudden, you're thinking about Him more and more and priorities start falling into place. Because you filled your heart and your mind with God.

The third thing you need to do is spend time in God's Word. In prayer, we speak to God. In His Word, He speaks to us. We need to hear from God. Maybe it's just a devotional book, maybe it's something quick and simple. In fact, if you're going to start it in your life, that's what I suggest. I say that you make it convenient and you make it easy and simple. Maybe it means picking up a Portals of Prayer and spending two minutes a day doing that. Maybe it means going down to the library, to our Christian library, and picking up one of the great authors there and spending some time reading that. In fact, if you haven't done daily devotions before, I suggest you start there. Now some of you are going to be all gun ho and so tomorrow morning you're going to say, “You know what, I'm going to read the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. I'm going to start right now.” And you're going to do great through Genesis because Genesis is pretty interesting. Exodus is going to go pretty good too because there are a lot of great stories. Then you're going to hit Numbers. Yeah, Numbers is tough to get through, I have to tell you. Maybe put that one off. Start with something that someone else wrote that has a scripture lesson in it, that speaks to your heart. Now if you can commit those

10 minutes, those 5 minutes, those 15 minutes, as your relationship with God starts to develop, priorities start falling into place. And what you're going to discover is you put those priorities in place and, all of a sudden, the blessings that God promises come true as they always do.

You want to be rid of worrying about every little thing in your life? You want to be done with stress in your life? It's time to look through the eyes of Jesus and see what's really important. Amen.

Copyright 2005 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church