This Week's Light Service Sermon

Light Service Sermons for the Month
Putting the Passion Back Into Life
Spice Up Your Spirit
DATE: August 27, 2000
TEXT: Psalm 51:10-12

Over the last several decades we have been witnessing a remarkable transformation taking palace in the are of medicine and healthcare. To understand its significance we need to understand the underlying bias of the medical world. As inheritors of Isaac Newton and the enlightenment, modern society has generally viewed the body, at least from a medical point of view, as a machine made up of different parts. As a result, the medical world has, for the most part, focused on various parts of the body rather than on the whole when dealing with illness. As a result today we live in a world of body parts specialists—heart doctors, eye doctors, ears and throat specialists, knee doctors, and so on. On top of that, this machine-like view of the body set up a unique division of labor. Doctors saw their job as caring for the physical body. And pastors had the task of caring for the soul.
But all that has been changing. Holistic medicine is beginning to reshape the medical world as we rediscover the truth that the body isn’t a machine made up of separate parts, but a holistic organism whose parts are interrelated. What happens physically affects the soul and what happens in our spirit affects our physical health. The two can’t be separated. We’re relearning that true health and bell-being comes when our body, mind and spirit function together at maximum performance. Today, doctors are not only looking at physical symptoms; they are also increasingly probing the spirit to see how that might be impacting our overall health..
Holistic medicine may be a fairly new phenomenon is our modern world, but the Bible has been an advocate of such an approach to life for thousands of years. The Bible knows that a healthy spirit is essential to living life with joy and passion, for the spirit is the essence of life—it is the energy of life. According to the Bible, our spirit is the living part of us. Remove the spirit and you have removed life. Damage the spirit and you have damaged your life physically, mentally, and emotionally. In other words, a healthy spirit is essential to overall health and vitality.
Today as we conclude our series on putting the passion back into life, we’re going to look at those forces that have a negative impact on our spirit, forces that drain passion from us. And we’ll also look at how God can counter-act those negative forces in such a way that he spices up our spirit and keeps the fire in our soul alive. But before we talk about it, let’s pray together.
(PRAYER)
I have shared this story before. Tommy was out in grandma’s back yard playing with his brand new slingshot. He had been told not to aim it at any animals, but when he saw grandma’s favorite duck waddling toward him he couldn’t resist. He loaded and let his ammunition fly, mortally wounding the duck.
Tommy was in shock. He didn’t mean for that to happen. In a bit of a panic he grabbed the duck and quickly buried it in a dirt pile close to the house. After the deed was done he turned toward the house only to see his little sister, Amy, watching him.
That night after dinner, grandma asked Amy to help her with the dishes. But Any said, “You know what, grandma. Tommy was just telling me that he wanted to do the dishes tonight.” When Tommy looked at her in surprise, she leaned over and whispered into his ear, “Remember the duck.” So Tommy did the dishes.
The next day grandma said to Amy, “I’d like you to help me do the wash.” Amy said, “Well grandma, Tommy told me he really wanted to help you do the wash today.” Tommy looked at her and saw her mouth the word, “Remember the duck.” So Tommy did the wash.
Day after day Amy reminded Tommy of his dirty little secret and forced him to do whatever it was she wanted. She owned him, and he knew it.
Tommy’s life, ultimately, was being controlled, not by his sister Amy, but by his own guilt—a negative force that gunk’s up our spirit and robs us of passion. Guilt is that gnawing sense that we’ve done something wrong. It eats away at us by reminding us of our failure and filling us with the fear that we might be found out. Guilt clogs up our spirit and consumes us. It drains away our passion for life because it takes so much of our energy to try to cover up.
Our Bible writer for today could no doubt relate with Tommy’s plight. David was overwhelmed with the guilt of his own moral failure. He had committed adultery with a woman named Bathsheba and then had her husband killed to try to cover up the crime. And the guilt was eating away at his spirit robbing him of joy and energy.
But David discovered the key to spicing up his spirit when he turned his guilt over to the only one who could free him from it. In our Bible reading for today he says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit.”
David knew that God could be counted on to wash away the gunk of guilt through his unconditional forgiveness. His experience over the years with God taught him that God’s greatest delight comes in setting us free from our failures and shortcomings—that God is a God who enjoys forgiving us. In fact, God is so determined to free us from guilt and sin that he sent Jesus to died on a cross and rise again to deal with our guilt once and for all. And when we invite Jesus to wash us clean, he, without question, removes our guilt and sin and drowns it in the deepest sea to be remembered no more. The unconditional forgiveness of Jesus is God’s cure for a guilt-clogged spirit.
Dr. Karl Menniger, the great psychiatrist, once said that if he could convince patients in his psychiatric hospital that their sins are forgiven, 75% could walk out of the hospital the next day.
By the way, Tommy finally had enough of being controlled by his guilt. And so he confessed everything to his grandma. When he was done grandma said, “Tommy, I saw you kill the duck. And I forgive you. I just wanted to see how long you’d let Amy run your life.”
Guilt no longer needs to control you. For God, through Jesus, will wash the guilt away and reinvigorate your spirit with energy and passion.
At the beginning of the summer, during the spike in gasoline prices, I tried to beat the costs by lowering the octane I used in my car. Normally, in my little Mazda, I have to use either 90 or 92 octane for the car to run well. After about two tanks of 86 octane I noticed that the car would sputter a bit when I hit the accelerator and actually slow down a bit before picking up speed. I found I couldn’t pull out into intersections as quickly and almost had a few close calls.
Ned Hamad of Ned Hamad’s Sunoco where I buy most of my gasoline told that in the summer, because of the heat, my car, in order to run at peak performance, needed the right kind of gas. I needed to upgrade the fuel. The wrong kind of fuel would only cause me frustration and a less than acceptable ride.
Worry is a negative fuel in our lives. While worry can give us a kind of energy, it’s a passion-draining energy rather than a passion-enhancing energy. Worry makes us jittery. It causes us to experience a lot of starts and stops in our lives. It keeps us from taking risks, from enjoying all God has to offer us in life. As Edith Bunker once said, “Archie doesn’t know how to worry without getting upset.” Worry poisons the spirit so that it can’t run at peak performance.
The Bible tells us that God has a cure for worry, and that cure is His peace. Jesus came to remove the worry from our lives and fill us with the confidence of his care for us. The Bible assures us that when we keep our minds on Jesus that he will fill us with perfect peace. Unfortunately, in this busy world, it’s hard to slow down and enjoy the peace that Jesus offers us. So it’s important to set aside time to be with Jesus, to go to the mountain with him, so to speak, that he might calm our fears, lift our anxieties and replace the worry with peace.
I read an interesting fact the other day that said that a dense fog that covers a 7-city block area one hundred feet deep is actually composed of less than one glass of water. In reality, there’s not much there and yet it can paralyze an entire area.
Worry is like that. There’s really not much to worry. As one woman put it, “I’ve had a lot of trouble in my live, most of which never happened.” And yet worry can paralyze us and rob us of joy. But Jesus, the prince of peace stands ready to calm our fears and spice up our spirit with his everlasting, life-transforming peace.
Tiger Woods was featured recently both in Time and Newsweek magazines. As he talked about his rise to stardom, one thing caught my eye. After winning almost every golf title possible, after winning all the money he could every want, after having all the toys and fame that goes along with being the hottest property in the golfing world, he went to say how lonely and depressed he had become. He felt his whole life slipping away from him a year ago. Though he had everything most of us think is necessary for life, his spirit was empty. He had no real purpose in life.
Meaninglessness siphons life right out of the spirit. And when the spirit has no purpose, life has no energy or passion.
Jesus came to spice up our spirit with purpose and meaning. He tells us that he came to give3 us an abundant life, a life overflowing with joy, hope, peace and purpose—spiritual gifts that the material world can’t give us—gifts that re-animate us with passion. Jesus came to remind us that God created us to enjoy life, to enjoy him, and to enjoy others. And as Jesus sets us free to do that, we discover a new fire for life.
The cryptobiotic tardigrade is an interesting life-form that can exist for 100 years in a death-like state without water, oxygen, or heat. But when it’s moistened with water it springs back to life.
A spirit without purpose is like the cryptobiotic tardigrade. It exists, but it isn’t really living. But when our spirit is moistened by the abundant life Jesus came to offer us, we find a new passion for life.
So I encourage you to invite Jesus to come and spice up your spirit by freeing you from your guilt through his forgiveness, by transforming your worry into peace, and by filling the emptiness with his purpose for your life. And as he spices up your spirit, you’ll find yourself freed up to live life with passion and energy.
AMEN