Recently I spoke with a close friend who has been in ministry as long as I have. We were talking on the phone and he said, "I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we are doing. What do we want people in our churches to become? What do we want them to do? When everything is said and done, what are we really aiming toward? Do we just want people to attend church? Do we want people to come and sing songs on Sunday, listen to a sermon, take communion, tithe, and be done for the week? Do we want them to spend two hours a week serving? Three hours? Five hours? Do we want them to serve on a committee or a ministry team? Do we want them to learn information? Attend a Bible study, a small group, or a men’s or women’s ministry?" We both agreed that there is so much more to the Christian life than these things. But what?
What are we aiming at?
There is an old adage that suggests, "If you aim at nothing, you will certainly hit it." Last week you enjoyed a week off from my preaching as much as I did. A couple of times a year I try to visit other churches to see what they're doing. The minister at the church I visited last week did an excellent job challenging his congregation to read through the entire Bible in one year. He was completely on message and the congregation seemed receptive to what he was saying. He was challenging them to aim for something in the New Year. He wanted them to hit the mark. I would challenge you to embrace the same worthy goal. God’s word is powerful. As he preached I put myself into the shoes of a typical American churchgoer. And I thought a lot about our congregation here at Lakeside. What are we aiming at?
Church attendance is important. Praising God in song, receiving instruction in God’s word through preaching, celebrating communion, and contributing financially to God’s work through tithes and offerings are all enriching activities. God consistently uses this time every week to accomplish extraordinary things.
Likewise, one cannot overstate the importance of service in the local church. It takes all of us working together, contributing our time and our service, to make a difference in our world. Look at what we were able to accomplish for the local food pantries when all of us came together, rolled up our sleeves, and sacrificed. The whole county heard about it and hundreds of families were touched.
This past year we also pushed our L.I.F.E. groups and Lifestage Bible Fellowships. These are all good things to aim for. They are all important aspects of our ministry that we all want to see strengthened. But they are not the essence of the Christian faith. They are not the core, the substance, or even the heart and soul of the Christian life we possess. For that, we must look deeper.
I am praying that this new year will be a transitional year for Lakeside. I am praying that we don’t miss the forest for the trees. I don't want us to get so caught up in being busy churchgoers that we miss the root of what God is calling us to. I am praying that we will get keyed into the four purposes that we explored at length last year. I am praying that we experience a measure of transformation. Do you remember our four purposes?
Our first purpose concerns loving God’s son.
Colossians 1:15-20 (NIV) has this to say about God’s son, Jesus Christ. "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross."
In every way, our relationship with Jesus Christ must be our single, highest priority. Jesus is God made visible and real to us. Jesus is a completed picture of God. Jesus is the fullness of God. We know God only to the degree that we know Jesus Christ.
Some religions have statues and idols portraying their gods. Other religions have sacred writings, prophetic utterances, holy sights, traditions, and myths. But we have God’s son, his living son, the creator and sustainer of our world, the source of all of life, and the head of the Church. We have the one who conquered death, the one who reigns supreme over everything in the universe, the one who reconciled the world to God, and the one who made peace by shedding his blood on a cross.
It isn’t an accident that as we grow closer to Jesus Christ, we experience an ever deepening peace with God. We make sense out of life. We receive forgiveness. We are spared judgment and condemnation for our sins. We receive strength. We receive the hope of a bodily resurrection. We receive the promise of eternal life.
I love my wife Lara. I love my family, my parents, my brothers, my sister, my in-laws. But they cannot offer even a fraction of what God offers us in Jesus Christ. Before anything else, we must concern ourselves with loving Jesus Christ. You will love your spouse more if you love Jesus Christ first. You will love your children more if you love Jesus Christ first. You will give of yourself more if you love Jesus Christ first.
One of our problems is that so many churchgoers aren’t passionate about Jesus Christ. We read our Bibles, but we don’t encounter the living word, Jesus. We sing on Sunday, but we forget that Jesus is God’s love song. We give money and tithe ten percent, but we forget that Jesus laid down his life. We take communion, but we forget it required Christ’s shed blood and broken body to purchase our forgiveness and salvation.
Bible reading, singing, giving, and communion. These things aren’t the substance of our faith. They are an expression or evidence of a deeper, underlying spiritual passion. The remaining question for us is whether Jesus Christ is the essence and the core of our spiritual lives. Is our love for Christ stirring us to deeper worship, deeper pursuit, deeper obedience, deeper conviction, deeper trust, deeper knowledge, and deeper devotion?
Our second purpose concerns loving God’s Spirit.
I want to remind you of a couple of important passages that really go well together. 2 Peter 1:3-4 (NIV) tells us plainly, "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. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires."
This first verse reveals a remarkable truth. This truth is that God leveraged his power to give us everything we need for life and godliness. In fact, God’s power is so great that it gives us the capacity to participate in God’s divine nature. Or to say this another way, we can be transformed into God’s nature.
God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love. He relents in sending calamity. He is good. He is pure and holy. He is just. He is our helper. He came to serve, to give, to pour himself out, and to sacrifice. He is patient. He is sinless. As Christians, we have all the resources we need to become holy and to be moral and good.
Now for the second verse in which apostle Paul prays for this power to be unleashed in us. In Ephesians 3:16-17 (NIV) Paul prays for God to fill the believers in Ephesus with this power. "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
God’s life-changing power is unleashed in our lives through his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit isn’t some impersonal force. The Holy Spirit is God dwelling in our souls.
Because the Holy Spirit is within us, we have God's power to change ourselves. The Bible says we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. He dwells within us. He is ever present, convicting us, teaching us, empowering life-change, and working in us to will and to act according to God’s good purposes. We have the power and the power is available through God’s Holy Spirit.
One problem in the American Church is that churchgoers aren’t tapping into this power. The Holy Spirit is convicting us of our sin and he is giving us the power to resist temptation and courageously walk in obedience, as we know we should. But for whatever reason, we refuse to keep in step with the Spirit.
Sometimes it's fear. Sometimes it's unbelief. Sometimes it's pride or even selfishness. But most of the time we just choose to love our sins more than we love Jesus Christ. We're comfortable in our sins, in our ruts, and in our old clothes. We like the old man.
The question for us is not if we can change, but when will we change? Why not now? It is more than mere procrastination. We need to invite the Holy Spirit to do heart surgery and brain surgery in our lives. We need to sow those daily seeds of obedience that will ultimately produce the harvest of righteousness that God desires.
Our third purpose concerns loving God’s family.
In 1 Corinthians 12:27 (NIV) Paul says, "Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it." I believe the Church in America is having an identity crisis. We forget that we are the body of Christ and that we are Jesus' physical presence on earth. Christ is literally living his life through us. He is speaking his truth through our lips. He is serving through our hands. He is healing and comforting through our touch. We are his eyes, his ears, his feet, his back, and his integrity. We are whatever he needs to advance his purposes in our world. Colossians 3:4 (NIV) says that Christ is our life! "When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory."
In 1 John 4:11-12 (NIV) John writes, "Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."
We are Christ's hands and feet on this earth. There is this sense that people can only know the love of our invisible God when they see it in action. They see it in action in the life of the Church and in the lives of Christians like you and me. God wants to make his love complete in this church. He wants people to experience his love first-hand through their every encounter with Lakeside Christian Church. These encounters may take place in this building or wherever we find ourselves at any given moment of any given day.
But how often do we live with the awareness that we are Christ’s body and he is our life? Are we concerned with Christ’s agenda, or only with our daily agenda? Do we make time to live Christ’s life, or only our lives? Our priorities? Our day timer? Are we loving others in the body of Christ, or demanding that they love us? Are we serving others, meeting needs, or are we waiting on others to serve us? Are we living and modeling Christ’s life, or just expecting others to?
Our fourth purpose concerns loving God’s world.
Jesus came that we might have life and life more abundantly. God sent his son. The son sent the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is sending the Church. The Church is sending us into our world. In Matthew 28:19 (NIV) Jesus commands us to, "go and make disciples of all nations."
And herein lies a final problem with the American Church. We are being pushed back on almost every front. We reaching a smaller and smaller percentage or our population. We have lost the courage and willpower to go. We are waiting on other people to invite our families, our friends, our neighbors and co-workers to meet Jesus Christ. We are ashamed to mention the name of Jesus Christ because of political correctness. We are afraid to stand up for the one who hung on a cross for our sins.
The question is whether we are going to be part of the growing problem or part of the solution?
What I want to do in these last couple of minutes is to challenge you to think in terms of balancing all four of these purposes in your life. A lot of Christians are really ramped up about Jesus Christ, but refuse to let God’s Holy Spirit transform their lives. A lot of Christians are really ramped up about Jesus Christ, but refuse to get connected into God’s family in any meaningful fashion. A lot of Christians are really ramped up about Jesus Christ, but don’t raise an eyebrow over the plight of those who do not know Jesus Christ. Does this describe you?
A lot of Christians are really concerned with right and wrong, but have fallen out of love with Jesus Christ. They are mere legalists. They obey the form of religion, but do not know the true heart of Christ. A lot of Christians, because of this same imbalance, alienate themselves from God’s family and God’s world. They become judgmental. They burn bridges. They spread condemnation and guilt. They withdraw. Does this describe you?
A lot of Christians are really connected into God’s family, but they are so busy with church activities that they do not make time to know Christ through his word, through worship, or through prayer. Some Christians spend their whole lives in change, but never allow the Holy Spirit to change their lives, to heal their relationships, or to shape their characters. Some Christians isolate themselves in the church, completely withdrawing from the world. They are the salt that never gets out of the salt-shaker. They are the light that stays hidden under a bowl and never permeates the darkness. Does this describe you?
Some Christians are so connected in the world that they never make time to know Jesus Christ. They become more like the people they associate with in the world, instead of becoming more like Jesus Christ. They have no time for God’s family because their relationships in the world take precedence. Does this describe you?
We need to balance all four of these purposes in our lives.
We should aim for balance. Loving God’s son, God’s Spirit, God’s family, and God’s world. As we begin this New Year I urge you to concentrate on an area of weakness in your life.
Deepen your knowledge, trust, convictions, and love for God’s son, Jesus Christ. Be transformed in the power of God’s Spirit into the likeness of Jesus Christ. Build up the body of Christ, allow Christ to live through you, serve, give, and minister. Cultivate new life in Christ in your circle of influence. Reach out. Share your faith.
If you aim for something, you’ll be closer than if you had aimed for nothing.