Light Service Sermons for the Month
Prize Your Priorities
DATE:August 13, 2000
TEXT: Proverbs 4:25-5:2
Light Service Sermons for the Month
Putting the Passion Back into Life
Prize Your Priorities
DATE:August 13, 2000
TEXT: Proverbs 4:25-5:2
DRAMA: Smooth Sailing
"We all come here this morning with a thousand different pressures that discourage us and rob our lives of vitality. That's part of why we're here. We've come to remind ourselves of what's most important in life. And although we'll ask God's help with all these kinds of problems, what we need more than a solution is the peace that happens in our asking, in our dependence, in our surrender. It’s the peace that happens when we keep the main thing the main thing. When you hear the word, "passion," what comes to mind? Now I can see from the twinkle in some of your eyes that we need to quickly get on the same wavelength. When I think of passion I think of energy, enthusiasm, focus, drive, and intensity. It's that consuming desire in the pit of our gut--that thing we're so committed to that we'd rather do that thing than eat or sleep. In other words, passion is the fire in the belly that fuels all of life. We've all experienced it from time to time. We come home after a long day at work or school and we're absolutely dead tired. All we want to do is collapse and sleep. But then the phone rings. A friend on the other end of the line says he has two tickets to the Cleveland Browns opener or to a Blossom concert of your favorite group or reservations at your favorite restaurant. And suddenly, you find energy surging through you and you're ready to go for another 24 hours. That's passion. It's the fuel of life. It's passion that keeps the spark alive in marriage; that energizes the job; that builds healthy relationships; that gives life meaning. Passion keeps life vibrant and alive. It empowers us to make the most out of life. As one philosopher once said, nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. Unfortunately, life has a way of draining us of passion. The pace of life, its routines and ruts, tough circumstances, and stress, among other things can put the fire out. And without passion, life becomes boring and joyless. God created us to live life with passion. The Bible demonstrates over and over again that God is passionate. And that passion is best seen in the death of Jesus who laid it all on the line for us because he's so committed to us. And as people created in the image of God, a part of what it means to be human is to be passionate. Over the next several weeks we're going to look at the characteristics of passionate people and how it is that we can put the passion back into our lives. And today, as we begin our series, we're going to focus on how people keep the passion alive by prizing their priorities--by keeping the main thing the main thing. Our Bible reading for today, which we will look at more closely in a few minutes, offers some great advice on setting passion-empowering priorities. It says: "With all your heart you must trust the Lord and not your own judgment. Always let him lead you, and he will clear the road for you to follow." Let's pray together… (Clip from Hook) Stephanie is a 42-year-old business administrator and mother of three teenage daughters. Unfortunately, her job is becoming increasingly time consuming. Recently she had to cancel several after-school events with her oldest daughter. Needless to say, her daughter wasn't pleased and at one point she couldn't contain her anger and said to Stephanie, "you care more about your work than you care about me." Stephanie is doing everything she can to make time for her children, but the demands of life seem to be taking over. In meeting with a counselor she said, "Life in the fast lane is getting to me. I've lost complete control of my life." Like Stephanie and like Peter Pan in the clip we just saw, many of us often find ourselves torn between the urgent and the important. The urgent continually screams at us demanding our attention now while that which is really important to us gets put on the back burner. The crisis at work, the ringing of the cell phone, the message on the email, the latest fax from a customer, the checkbook, the "friendly" call from a customer complaining about your company, and the clock all conspire against us. By chasing the urgent we often use up our energy so that we have none left for what really matters: our family, our health, our spiritual well being, and so on. There's an old story about two paddleboats that left Memphis about the same time to travel down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. As they traveled side by side one of the sailors made a remark to a sailor on the other boat about how slow his boat was. Soon the good-natured teasing turned into a challenge. And the race began. The competition became fierce as the two boats headed toward New Orleans. Soon one of the boats began to fall behind. It didn't have enough fuel. There had been enough coal aboard for the trip, but there wasn't enough for race speed. So to make the ship go faster, the sailors started throwing the ship's cargo into the coal oven. And sure enough, the boat started picking up speed again. So they threw more of the cargo into the ovens. As a result, they won the race. But unfortunately, they burned their entire cargo. In other words, they were so caught up in the urgent--winning the race--that they lost sight of what was important--delivering the cargo. The same thing happens to us. When we get too focused on the urgent, we lose sight of that which really matters to us. And as a result, we find ourselves de-energized. For the urgent has a way of wringing the passion out of us. On the other hand, it's the important that puts the fire in our belly. It's focusing on what really matters that puts the vitality back into life. Passionate people are those who know how to cut through the urgent to get to the important. They've learned the art of keeping the main thing the main thing, of making their priorities the priority. For when life is lived on the basis of priorities, when we put our time into what we really value, it's then that we find a new sense of passion for life. Our Bible reading for today has some life-changing advice on how to prize our priorities, on how to cut through the clutter of the urgent to get to those things that empower us with passion. Let me read it for you again. "With all your heart you must trust the Lord and not your own judgment. Always let him lead you, and he will clear the road for you to follow." There's another ship story about a young sailor who, after completing his first overseas cruise, was given the chance to take the lead in getting the ship ready for its new voyage. He issued a series of commands and had the decks buzzing with men, and soon the ship was headed out the channel on its way back to the United States. He did such a fine job that he actually established a new record for efficiency. Moments after setting sail, a seaman approached the sailor with a message from the captain. The sailor was a bit confused by the message because it was sent by radio. He was even more surprised when he read it. It said: My personal congratulations upon completing your underway preparation exercise according to the book and at amazing speed. In your haste, however, you have overlooked one of the unwritten rules. Make sure the captain is aboard before getting underway. In trying to navigate between the urgent and the important, passionate people recognize that it's important to have the captain on board--to make God the number one priority. As our Bible reading assures us, when we entrust our lives into God's care, when we make God our priority, he clears the road for us to follow. He clears out the clutter and confusion of the urgent so that we can determine what's important and put our energies there. In other words, when our vertical relationship with God is intact, he helps take care of the horizontal relationships as well. He helps us keep our eye on the ball--to keep the main thing the main thing. You see, God created us to live in relationship with him. That's the purpose for our existence. In fact, God is so impassioned about a relationship with us that he made that relationship a priority. He sent Jesus to die on a cross and rise again to remove the barriers that make a relationship between God and us impossible. It's that relationship that is the starting point for prizing our priorities. When we live outside of that relationship, our lives lose their balance. We get caught up in the urgent. But when our lives are lived on the basis of a relationship with God, he restores the balance and helps us set the right priorities. An old recipe for rabbit stew starts out with this ingenious statement: "First, catch the rabbit." When we put first things first, when we set the right priorities, when God is of the utmost importance in our lives, the rest of our priorities begin to fall into place. And as we set those priorities and begin to put our energy there, we discover a renewed passion for life. So I encourage you today to discover a new passion for life by prizing your priorities and to begin that new way of living by taking God up on his invitation to live in a relationship with him. He made that relationship possible through Jesus. And as you walk with him each day, he'll clear the road so that you can determine the urgent from the important and begin to invest your time in the things and people that matter to you. AMEN