First Things First

 

I’m not sure if you remember where you were a year ago today, but I do   I was in Israel.  To be specific I spent this day in Jericho, touring the ruins of Qumran where they discovered the Dead Sea scrolls

Qumran

and standing in the rain on the Mount of Olives.

Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives

My morning began this way.

Riding a camel on the way to Jericho.

All week I’ve been thinking back to the amazing trip that all of you made possible and I just want to say once again – Thank You.  On our first full day in Israel we traveled around the Sea of Galilee

Sea of Galilee from Tiberius

and actually stood in the place where today’s gospel reading took place.

This was the synagogue in Capernaum

Synagogue in Capernaum

and the actual stones that Jesus could have touched, walked or sat upon are the dark stones at the base of the wall.

Because it was one of the few areas where we saw the actual foundation of walls and homes that were there in the first century – this place had a very special meaning.

Capernaum was Jesus adopted home town.  While he grew up in Nazareth, which is in the hill country outside the region of Galilee, as an adult Jesus chose to settle in Capernaum and so after he called some fisherman to follow him, this was the place Jesus began his ministry and what we heard today was the first official act of Jesus in ministry found in Mark’s gospel.  The first official act of any person who enters into a new position or begins a new job is important.  When a new congress is seated everyone looks to see what legislation they will take on first.  When a new governor is sworn in everyone looks to see what their first act is going to be.  When a new boss takes over at work everyone looks to see what tone they will set on their first day and this story of Jesus in the synagogue sets the stage for Jesus ministry and it teaches us what is important to Jesus and therefore what should be important for us.

After hearing the story read this morning, we might think the first act of Jesus was to cast out the demons from the man in the synagogue and so what is important to Jesus is the power of God working to overcome evil, injustice and all that is wrong in our world.  We might think what is most important to Jesus is the power of God to set people free from demons or bring healing and wholeness to our lives.  While those things lie at the heart of Jesus life, ministry and mission – they were not the very first thing Jesus did.  So let’s go back to Mark 1:21.

So what is the very first thing Jesus did on his first day of ministry?  That’s right, he taught.  Jesus stood up in the synagogue as a guest teacher and began to teach people the word of God.  Jesus would have used a reading from the Old Testament and after he read from the scrolls he would have taught the people what those words meant, what it meant for them and maybe how to live it out in their world and in their own lives.  Jesus would have taught the people how to take the teaching of God and make it personal and apply it to how they treated their husbands and wives, parents and children.  Jesus taught them how to live out God’s word at home and at work and how to use it to make Capernaum and the world a better place.  The very first thing Jesus did was teach and it was his teaching that captured people’s attention not his miracles.  Look at Mark 1:22.

So the people noticed that Jesus taught differently than the other religious leaders.  The other teachers would only quote the religious leaders who came before them.  They would lift up the law and then what all the teachers before them had said about the law.  There was no personal reflection, no personal take on the word and no personal application of the word beyond what the officials of the day had said, but Jesus was different.  Jesus taught as if the word was His – which it was – and He taught them with the authority of how to live it out in their lives.  This was new for the people; it was different and refreshing and it showed them that Jesus not only knew the word of God but the real meaning and intent of God’s word.

So Jesus spoke to the hearts and lives of the people and they were amazed, but they weren’t the only ones who were amazed, the demons were as well.  Look at Mark 1:23.  The demons also heard something in the teaching of Jesus, but they weren’t amazed as much as they were terrified.  The demons recognized the power of God and they knew that they were in trouble.

As I read this passage I wondered how often this demon possessed man might have been in the synagogue but neither he nor the demons ever cried out because what they heard never challenged them.  Had they sat on the steps or leaned against the wall and listened to all the other teachers but realized their words were empty and hollow so they could just be ignored?  We don’t know, but we do know that this day what they heard struck fear into their hearts because they recognize that Jesus teaching was from God and that teaching had the power to destroy them.

What happens next is important for us to think about because when Jesus actually drives out the spirit He takes his teaching from the abstract to the concrete.  Instead of using words to teach people about God’s power and love, He used action.  You could say this was a teachable moment.  Let’s think about this scene.  Jesus has just read part of God’s word, maybe he read the passage from Isaiah 61:1 which says in part, God binds up the broken hearted and sets the captives free. Jesus would then have talked about how God’s power can help us overcome all the obstacles of life and how God’s grace and love can really help us in a time of need, and then the spirits cry out.  Jesus now goes from talking about how God’s power can help to using God’s power to help.  Jesus is not just telling people that God can set them free he is showing them.  The power of God to set captives free is not just words and a nice message, it is action.  The love of God which binds up the broken hearted is not just words, it is action.  The teaching of Jesus not only has authority to speak to our hearts and lives and encourage or inspire us it has the authority to change us.

So the first official act of Jesus in ministry wasn’t to heal a man or drive out spirits, it was to teach and it was His teaching that amazed people because it was personal and powerful.  Jesus didn’t just speak God’s word and help people understand it, he made the word come alive in their hearts and lives.  Teaching was the first priority for Jesus because the word of God has power.  Jesus not only made it a priority the first of his ministry, He made it a priority on the second day as well.
The news of Jesus teaching and power quickly spread throughout the region so that by the end of the day all those who were sick and demon possessed showed up at the home of Peter where Jesus was staying.  During the night Jesus was faced with a choice of what his ministry was going to look like.  Was he going to spend all his time healing people and driving out demons or did God have another priority for him?  Look at Mark 1:35-37.

The disciples and crowds were looking for Jesus because they wanted him to do more miracles, but Jesus once again sets down first things first.  Look at Mark 1:38.  Jesus’ first order of business was to preach and teach because He understood that the power for us to change and become free and whole comes from the word of God.  Jesus knew that at some point in time he would not physically be present in this world as a man, but his word would remain here forever and it was going to be this word, God’s word, that would have the power to change people, so Jesus’ first priority was to share this good news.

That the teaching of Jesus is this important is made clear to us by a promise Jesus made near the end of his life.  Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would come and help us remember all that he said, John 14:26.  And part of the mission Jesus gave to the church was to teach people what He taught us because he knew that this teaching had the power of God.  Look at Matthew 28:19-20.  So the priority for Jesus was teaching which means that the priority in our lives needs to be learning what Jesus taught because that teaching still holds power to amaze us, speak to us and change our lives.

I’ve shared before that my faith came alive when I joined a Bible Study in college.  It was actually reading the gospel of Mark with some friends when the teaching of Jesus spoke to me in a new way.  God’s word started to speak to me personally and I found myself trying to figure out how to live the way that Jesus lived and apply the truth of his words to my life.  It was learning God’s word that changed my life and the good news is that God’s word still speaks to me and at times it still amazes me and it can still change my life.  Last year our Men’s Bible Study was reading the gospel of Matthew and as we went through a section of the book new insights jumped out each week.  The teaching of Jesus once again amazed me and it was something that we all could share.

Today I want to invite you to put first things first and allow the teaching of Jesus to become a priority in your life.  We all need to read the teaching of Jesus and I want to invite everyone to read through the gospel of Mark from now until Easter.  It only involves reading 2 chapters each week which means we are going to go slow because I want to honor the breathing room I know we are all trying to create in our lives.  If you take this on I not only want you to read slow but I want to encourage you to find new ways to hear the teaching of Jesus.

Read out loud.  I know it seems kind of silly at first, but when we read out loud we read slower, we hear the words differently and maybe we hear a message we didn’t see before.

Read in a different translation.  You can go to the internet to find dozens of different translations and we have several around the church that you could borrow.

Take notes or keep a journal.  Each week challenge yourself to find something that you didn’t know before or never noticed before and write it down.  Find one or two things you can apply to your life.

Read together.  Maybe you can read as a couple or family, maybe use your child or teen’s Bible a week or two.  If you are part of a small group or ongoing Bible study take a few minutes each week to share what you have learned.  Take time to learn from one another and share insights with one another.  This is what the people did when they heard Jesus in Capernaum – they told one another how much they were amazed at his teaching.

And let me share this as well, if you are not part of a Sunday School class, Bible Study or small group, we would invite you to think about joining one.  We hope to start some new small groups in a few weeks that will run through Easter and what those groups are going to study is the teaching of Jesus on prayer.  Here’s a great way to not only grow in our prayer lives but in our understanding of God’s word.

Small Groups are great places to learn and grow and we have a short video on small groups that we want to share with you.

If we are willing to make the teaching a priority in our lives then we will begin to see the power of God coming through that teaching to help us, heal us and fill us with hope.  That’s why Jesus put this first, because He knew that the word of God could help people and heal people and give them hope.  Jesus knew the power to change our lives and families and our world comes from the word and truth of God.  We just need to put first things first.


 
Next Steps
First Things First

Commit to reading the gospel of Mark from now until Easter.

Gospel of Mark Reading Plan:
Week 1 (2/1-2/7) Chapters 1 & 2
Week 2 (2/8-2/14) Chapters 3 & 4
Week 3 (2/15-2/21) Chapters 5 & 6
Week 4 (2/22- 2/28) Chapters 7 & 8
Week 5 (3/1-3/7) Chapters 9 & 10
Week 6 (3/8-3/14) Chapters 11 & 12
Week 7 (3/15-3/21) Chapters 13 & 14
Week 8 (3/22-3/28) Chapters 15 & 16


To hear the authority and power in Jesus’ teaching:
• Read slow
• Re-read passages
• Read out loud
• Read in different versions of the Bible
• Take notes on what you find important
• Find one way to apply what you learn
• Memorize a verse or phrase
• Share your insights with others


Join a small group that will study the teaching of Jesus on prayer.  Small Groups will meet during Lent, Feb. 22 – April 5.  Contact Cassie Marsh-Caldwell for more small group information.  cassie.marsh-caldwell@bellefontefaith.com

Breathing Room ~ Choosing to Cheat

Today we are going to finish up our series by looking at the need we have for breathing room in our most personal and important relationships.  All month we have seen that life is better when we have breathing room and we defined breathing room as the space between our pace of life and our limits.  God did not create us to live at the very limit of our lives.  God created so that we can push ourselves to the limit at times to handle a crisis or to get through a busy season in life but then we need to pull back in order to rest and recover.  A great example of this is physical training – if we push our bodies and muscles to the limit every day at some point we will physically break down.  Our bodies need time and space to rest.  Our bodies need breathing room, our schedules need breathing room which means we need to limit the time we do some things in order to focus on the things that matter most.   We need breathing room in our finances which most of the time means we need to cut back on our spending so that we have financial space and reserves to use when needed.  Today we are going to talk about the need we have for breathing room in our relationships and here’s why this is so important.

Maybe this has happened to you.  You’re eating dinner with your family and someone asks you to pass the ketchup and you just lose it?  Maybe you have a complete break down at the table and start to complain about how you are always the one who has to pass everything and no one can ever take care of themselves, help themselves, clean up after themselves or help anyone else.  The work always falls to you!!  Or maybe you don’t lose your temper but just walk away, literally get up from the table and walk away and then distance yourself from everyone in the house allowing the silence to grow.  If that has ever happened at your dinner table, you know the issue isn’t the ketchup that was just the last straw.  If that sounds familiar then you need some breathing room.

Now one of the reasons we get this stressed out in our relationships is because we simply do not have enough time to do all that we want to do.  We know that to be the best parent we can be it would require us to give it more time, but we have to work and we know that to be the best we can be at work we would need to give that more time.  We also enjoy and find satisfaction in what we are able to do in the church and community and want to give that more time.  This scenario is true for all of us - we simply do not have enough time to all that we want to do in all areas of our live..

Let’s face it, there is not enough time to do it all and be the best in ONE area of life and so what we often end up doing is cheating.  We steal time from one area to spend on another and usually we cheat from our family in order to spend time at work.  Now sometimes we have to do this.  There are times when our work might require us to go on the road so we aren’t going to be home a night or two, or there might be a project or deadline that calls us to work late and maybe a weekend here and there and so we take time from our families to spend at work.  We tell our spouse that we will be late a few nights this week until the project is complete.  We tell our kinds we might miss a game or the next recital because we have to be away on business and because we are family and we love and care for each other we accept this.  We willingly carry the load.

Think about it that way for a moment.  When we take on the responsibility of someone else for a period of time we are carrying the load for them.  When they can’t follow through on their family responsibility we help out because that’s what it means to be a family.  We show compassion and understanding and we willingly do this because that’s what loving relationships are all about.  While this is good, the problem comes when they never take back the load they have asked us to carry.  If we carry the load too long we live at the limits of our relationships and we don’t have the breathing room we need  Now most people don’t do this intentionally; they have just allowed themselves to fall into bad habits or haven’t been able to reset right priorities.

If we are the ones carrying the load, we know it.  We feel the stress, we sense we are at our limit and running out of space.  If we have put the load on someone else, however, we may not know it.  We may not know that someone we love is at their limits until we ask them to pass the ketchup and by then it is too late.  Here are some ways we can tell if we have handed off some of our responsibility t someone else and not taken the load or burden back.

1.  We are always making promises but never following through.  We promise not to work late, but then work late.  We promise to help out but then come home and turn on the TV or computers to check the news, weather, sports or social media.

2.  We are chronically absent from important events.  While there are times when we might have to miss our child’s game, if we haven’t made any games this seasons or any school concert this year, then we letting someone else carry the load.  We might not be able to go out for a scheduled date night with our spouse one week, but if we have postponed them all for 6 months then we are not taking seriously our responsibility.  Absence doesn’t always make the heart grow founder, sometimes it just because a burden that someone else has to carry.

3.  We keep pointing to the future to make up for the past.  “I will make the next game.”  “I will help out around the house next weekend.”  “I will make it up to you on our next vacation.”  If we keep pointing to the future to make up for the failures of the past, then we are allowing someone else to carry our load and that decreases the breathing room in our relationships and without breathing room in our relationships, relationships die.

If any of these situations sounds familiar than please take some time to evaluate what’s going on in your life because if we ask people to carry our load for too long, it can cause real damage to relationships.  Resentment, anger and bitterness are what causes relationships to reach their limit and if breathing room is not created, those emotions can destroy marriages and families.  Every event we miss with our family is an event that we can never get back and some events will never be repeated.  There is only one first music recital and only one final game and if we miss these events then we miss a lot and our absence creates stress in relationships and pushes them to the limit.
What happens in these situations is that we have chosen to cheat but we have cheated what is most important for what is secondary.  When we place the burden on our family and ask them to carry the load for us by taking on responsibilities that only we can meet and when we take time from them we are choosing to cheat them so we can give more of our time, interest and energy to other things and there is nothing more important than our family.

While our jobs are important in order to care for and provide for the ones we love, we have to strike a healthy balance in our priorities because no job is as important as our family.  Think about it, if we were to disappear from our job – the organization would continue.  I worked as an aide in a nursing home one summer and one day another aide didn’t show up.  We worked the same shift and since he had all the men on the unit, they gave me all his patients.  The next day the same thing happened and then it happened again.  That man never showed up again to work but all his patients got the care they needed.  Many times we think we are indispensible at work, but the reality is that we are not.

At some point in time someone else will come along to be the pastor here at Faith Church and Faith Church will continue on, but no one can be the only son to my parents.  At some point someone will replace all of us in our jobs but no one can replace us at home.  Each of us has a unique role to play in our families that no one else can fill.  No one else can be the son to my parents.  No one else can be the mother or father to your children.  Someone might come along to be a step-mother or father and those roles can be vital and important, but no one can replace you in your family so why would we choose to cheat the most important, vital God-given roles we have for a job that someone else can and someday will do?

We do not have enough time to do all the things that need to be done in every area of life, so we have to choose to cheat, the key is to cheat in the areas that are secondary so we can invest in relationships that are the most important.  If we need breathing room in our most critical and important relationships than we need to cheat from areas that are not as important.  It doesn’t mean we neglect those areas, or abandon them, but can make home and family and loved ones a priority.  In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, God calls us to make our primary relationships a top priority.

Ephesians 5:22 Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

Ephesians 5:25, Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.  This call to love and sacrifice is really submission PLUS.  It’s a call to deeper submission and responsibility.  The idea Paul is lifting up here one of mutual submission which Paul said first: Ephesians 5:21, submit to one another.

So God calls us to submit to one another in our marriages and in our families, but He doesn’t call us to submit to our boss at work.  We should be humble, respectful and willing to serve, but submission is reserved for our relationships at home which shows us that these relationships need to be the priority, but many times they are not and when they aren’t we are pushing our relationships to the limit and that’s when breathing room diminishes and relationships suffer.

So why do we do this?  Many times we do this out of fear.  We cheat and take time from home to spend at work because we are afraid of looking lazy.  We are afraid we won’t look as good as those around us and that we won’t measure up.  Sometimes we are just afraid we might lose our job.  These are real fears and if it is fear that is causing us to cheat from our family and push those relationships to the limit, then we need to face those fears and trust God.  Now, for those who were around a few years ago, in order to fear less we need to do what?    (Trust More.)

Can we learn to trust God more in order to create more breathing room in our relationships?  When Andy Stanley talked about creating more breathing room in his marriage and with his family he shared how his prayer life changed.  Early on in his life he prayed: God, take care of things at home while I care for things at work.  But when he realized he was cheating his family of time and wanted to give them breathing room so the relationships would remained strong and healthy he changed his prayer to: God, take care of things at work while I care for things at home.

God is more than able to care of things at work – not matter what job we have - and if we will trust Him to do this, then we might be able to step back enough to give our families and those we love the most the time and energy that they need.  When we have breathing room in our relationships we can focus on what is really going on and work to improve our marriages and families..

The truth we all face today is that we can’t do it all.  We can’t give every relationship and every situation all the time and attention we want and so at times we are going to have to choose to cheat and take time from one relationship and one situation to give to another, but we need to learn how to cheat well.  Can we take from all that is secondary in life to invest ourselves in what is primary and what is important and what is ultimately our God ordained and God given relationships?  Our spouses, our children, our family, our loved ones are more than worth.
 
Next Steps
Breathing Room – Choosing to Cheat

Evaluate your relationships with the following questions:
• In the past six months, have you lost your cool with your spouse or children?  How often does this happened?

• In the past six months, have you missed an important family event?  Birthday?  Recital?  Game?  Anniversary?

• Do you find yourself promising to give your family more time and attention the “next time”?  Do you say things like: “I’ll be at your next game.  I won’t take work with me on our next vacation.  I won’t forget our next anniversary.”

If any of these describe your current life and relationships, then you need some breathing room.

1.  Talk honestly with your spouse about how much time together and time with children is needed for a healthy marriage and family.  What times of the day and/or week are most important for you to be around to help or be together?

2. Where might you have to cheat in order to give this time and attention to your spouse, children and family?

3. What fear comes to mind when you think of taking that time from work and other activities?

4. The Bible says we are to submit to one another in our most important and vital relationships.  What does this submission look like in your marriage?  With your children?

5. Use this prayer to keep the right perspective and to deepen faith and trust in God:
God, take care of things at work ~ while I care for things at home.  AMEN

Breathing Room ~ Dollars and Sense

This month we are talking about the need we all have for Breathing Room in our lives.  We have defined breathing room this way, the space between our pace of life and our limits.  The reason this breathing room is so important is because God did not create us to live life at the limits.  While we might be able to push ourselves to the limit for a period of time, if we don’t step back and rest we will self-destruct.  Last week talked about needing some breathing room in our schedules and we learned that since our time on earth is limited, we need to limit our time.  We need to limit the time we spend doing some things so that we make sure we have the time to do the things that are most important.  Moses said it this way in Psalm 90. We need to count our days and spend them wisely.

Today we are going to talk about the breathing room needed in our finances which means we are going to talk about everyone’s favorite subject – money.  Now if you are visiting us this morning or have just recently come back to church this might be the reason you don’t attend often, because you think that all we do in the church is talk about and ask for money.  Well, today we are going to talk about money but here’s the good news, I am not going to ask you to give anything I am not going to talk about tithes or offerings or giving anything to the church, but we are going to listen to what Jesus had to say about money because he actually had a lot to say about it.  In fact, Jesus talked more about money, wealth and possessions than just about anything else.

The one thing we all know about our money is that just like our time our money it is limited.  We all have a limited amount of money in our checking and savings accounts.  We have a limited amount of money in our pensions and retirement accounts and we have a limited amount of money that comes in our paychecks, social security or other monthly income.  Our money is limited.  Last week we learned that our time was limited so we had to limit our time, but that’s not true with our money.  While our money is limited we don’t have to limit our use or spending of money because we can always do what?
BORROW
Because we can’t borrow time we have to limit the time we spend doing certain things, but we can borrow money so we don’t have to limit our spending.  We can borrow money and go into debt.  The problem is that if we do this for too long and live too far beyond our financial limits everything will fall apart, and I do mean everything.  It’s not just our finances which will fall apart but our jobs can suffer and most of all our families and marriages can suffer because of the stress brought on by financial difficulties.  In fact the #1 cause of divorce is actually money.

While everyone needs to learn some good financial practices if we are a Christian and identify ourselves as a follower of Jesus then we have no choice but to pay attention to this because Jesus had something critical to say about money and believe it or not he did not say “increase your giving to God or the church.”  What he did said was increase your financial breathing room.  OK, he didn’t use those words, but that is what he was talking about.

I want to be clear that these financial ideas are not new from me, they are sound biblical and financial principles from people like the pastor Andy Stanley and the financial expert Dave Ramsey.  And if there is one principle I would want us all to take with us today it would be this:  Standard of Living ≠ Quality of Life

Our standard of living does NOT equal our quality of life.  If our standard of living goes up and we are able to get bigger homes, newer cars and more stuff it does not mean that the quality of our life will automatically goes up as well.  In fact for many people as our standard of living increases our quality of life decreases because we end up worrying about how to maintain, fix, store and care for all we buy.  And if we live beyond our means too long and find ourselves upside down on our mortgage, behind on those new car payments and have all the access we could want to entertainment and media but no time to enjoy it, then we know that our standard of living is not bringing any kind of quality to our lives.

Now think about this?  Which do you think God is more interested in, our standard of living or the quality of our lives?  Is God more interested in our making more money and having more things or is He interested in the time we have with our family, friends and the opportunity to develop and live out our faith?  Clearly we would say God is interested in the quality of our life more than our standard of living so we need to ask ourselves how we can increase the quality of our lives.  One way to do that is create some breathing room in our finances and one way to do that is to actually lower our standard of living.  I know the idea of actually lowering our standard of living seems completely wrong and un-American, but if lowering our standard of living could bring some financial breathing room and increase our quality of life – wouldn’t it be worth it?

So let’s look at what breathing room in our finances looks like.  Graph 1

Over time we hope that our spending goes up and for most of us it does due to raises, promotions or just cost of living increases.  This may not be a nice smooth line but in general as we move along in life we tend to make more money.  If our spending is less than our income than this space in between is our financial breathing room.  Looking at this graph, most of us would want this.  There’s not a lot of stress here because our bills are being paid, we might have a little saved up in case we have an emergency and we might even have some resources to help or give in some extra way when God calls us to help.  So this is what financial breathing room looks like.
But here is where many of us live:  Graph 2

We spend everything that comes in and so at the end of the week, month or year there is nothing left over.  There is no room for an emergency, no room for an error and no room to step out in faith to do what God might call us to do with our money or time.  Living this way does impact our time because when we live this way we can’t take time off to spend with family or go on a mission trip because we have to work because if we don’t work we won’t get paid and if we don’t get paid we can’t maintain this delicate balance.

Now some of us actually live here: Graph 3

Now it could be that we are living here because our income dropped.  Maybe we lost a job due to the company moving or downsizing, maybe we lost income because our retirement took a hit in the market but most of us who live here do so because we allowed our spending to get out of control.  We leased that new car we didn’t need but wanted and have maxed out our credit cards and are paying outrageous interest and late fees.  If you are living here then you are not enjoying life at all.  You might be avoiding phone calls from debt collectors, worried they might reposes your car, cut off your credit card or turn off your utilities.  Life here is not good and if this is where you are then what I want to say to you is get some really good financial help.

But let’s go back to where many of us live these days, where our income and expenses are basically the same.  

When we are just making it each month and have no financial breathing room then what drives our lives isn’t God but our mortgage company, bank and credit cards.  When we are on this financial treadmill running each day to just survive then we have become slaves to our lifestyle and this is exactly what Jesus talked about.  Luke 16:13 - no one can serve two masters.  Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and money.

If money is our master and drives every area of our life then we cannot be completely devoted to God.  If this is where we are living than we cannot be fully devoted to Jesus and I am not the one saying it – Jesus is.  Jesus said, you can’t serve God and money, and this is what it looks like to serve money.
 
Money is our master when we are spending all our time and energy trying to keep up with our spending and if money is our mast then we can’t be followers of Jesus because we won’t be able to do what he asks us to do with our money.

It goes deeper than that because if money is our master than we also struggle to do what God might ask us to do with our time and our relationships.  Have you ever felt God calling you to go on a mission trip but you couldn’t because you can’t take time off work because if you missed work you would miss a paycheck and if you miss a paycheck then you can’t pay your bills so you cancel the mission trip to keep paying the bills.  With breathing room, however, we might be able to do things with our time we never thought possible. We might be able to spend more time with family, more time with God, more time chasing those dreams we let go years ago.

Our relationships also suffer when money is our slave.  Not only do we have no time to spend with family but when have no breathing room then stress goes up and our ability to focus goes down and increased stress and anxiety and the inability to focus takes a toll on our marriages and children.  Stress robs us of quality time with our family and friends and so relationships suffer.  When we live without any financial breathing room we have no peace and we have no passion and purpose in relationships and no power to live for God because all that we have is being poured into our need to make money.  The only way to live an abundant and free life where we can be faithful to God is to have some financial breathing room, so let’s talk about how we can get there.

You’ll find these steps on the next steps in the bulletin and the first thing we need to do is decide that we have a problem and that we need to do something.  It all starts with a decision.  Any change or improvement in life starts with a decision.  If we don’t have any financial breathing room then we need to decide today to do something about it.

The second thing we need to do set a breathing room goal and this means making a decision on what % of our income we will live on.

This is often a question we never ask ourselves but we should, what % of my income will I live on?  Do you know what % you currently live on?  I don’t and it is something I have decided I need to figure out.  Now if we decide to live on 100% of our income, then we are making the decision to be slaves to money, but if we can lower the % that we live on then we increase our breathing room and our relationship with God and everyone else improves.

The third thing we need to do is track our spending for a few months so that we know exactly where our money is going.  There is no way we can make any changes in our finances until we first know where our money is going.  It takes discipline to do this, but it can be a helpful exercise so we can see if our spending actually reflects the values and priorities we have for our lives.

The last and hardest step is this, cut spending.  Now we can’t cut spending until we know where our money is going but once we see where our money is going we can ask ourselves what we can cut so that our breathing room can increase.  This is a difficult step because we have been trained to think that our quality of life will increase if our standard of living increases so we spend more thinking things are going to get better, but they don’t.  Many times our quality of life increases when our standard of living goes down and we spend less.

Today you may be sitting here saying that while this all sounds good, your financial situation just isn’t that simple, and it may not be.  If it isn’t and you need some real help with your finances then please get some.  Dave Ramsey has written a great book called Financial Peace Revisited and we have a copy in the church library.  If you need help with credit counseling or mortgage issues we have given you a phone number of a local agency which offers free help.  Doing nothing will not change anything and just making a little bit more money won’t solve the problem.  For most of us it is not an income problem but a spending problem.

Jesus is clear that the main competition for our hearts isn’t the devil, it’s money, it’s possessions and wealth and the riches of this world which is why Jesus clearly said, you can’t serve God and money.  We can’t serve God if we have no financial breathing room.  Our faith will suffer; our families will suffer, our future will suffer.  If we have no breathing room then we need to do something about it.


 
Next Steps
Breathing Room – Dollars and Sense

You can’t serve God and Money
                                               ~ Jesus ~

1. Decide: If you need financial breathing in your life then decide today to do something to create it.  It won’t happen on its own and it won’t happen by simply making more money.

2. Set a breathing room goal: Decide how much breathing room you want in your finances and determine what % of your income you will live on to reach that goal.  For example, if you want 10% of your finances to be your “breathing room” then you need to live on 90% of your income (and that has to include everything).

3. Track your spending: For the next few months track where you spend your money.  You can’t cut spending if you don’t know where your money is going.

 4. Cut your spending:  The only real way to create more financial breathing room is to cut spending where we can.  Sometimes the only way to do this is to lower our standard of living which is OK because…

Our Standard of Living ≠ The Quality of Our Life


For further reading and great financial advice, check out Financial Peace Revisited by Dave Ramsey

To speak with someone about debt or housing concerns call:
Consumer Credit Counseling Service (814) 238-3668

Breathing Room ~ Limited Time

We are talking this month about the need we all have for breathing room.  We defined breathing room as the space between our current pace of life and our limits.  Whether it is time, money or the emotional energy needed for relationships, we all have limits and when we live at the edge of those limits it increases our stress and decreases are ability to focus on the things that matter the most.  

We saw last week that the Bible speaks to this need because God created us to have margins in our life.  God gave us the law of the Sabbath so that we would not work 24/7 but actually set aside time in our schedules to rest, reflect and recharge our lives.  God also gave the law of the Tithe which called people to set aside 1/10 of their resources to give to him, but in the process this taught the people they didn’t have to live on all they produced.  Setting aside an offering told the people they could live on less which meant they could have a margin to reserve for times of need.  God also gave the law of gleaning which told the people not to harvest their fields to the very edge but to leave space around the outside for the poor and needy.  This law helped people learn to trust God for what they needed and not just trust the work of their hands.   

So margins and space in life are important and today we want to focus on time.  Do we have breathing room in our schedules?  As we think about this, let me ask some questions:

Do you arrive places late & then tell people you need to leave early?

Do you eat at your desk through lunch?

Do you eat and drive at the same time?

Do you text, make phone calls, apply make-up AND drive?

Do you constantly drive too fast because you are going to be late?

When you are at work are you thinking about all that needs to be done at home?

When you are at home are you thinking about all that needs to be done at work?  

If any of these describe your life – then you need to think about creating some breathing room.  If you are someone who doesn’t struggle with these issues, then I hope you will listen today so that you can keep these things from happening.  What will help us today is not a time management principle – you can find those out there and they certainly can help, but I want us to look at one thing that can change our lives because it will change our perspective on time.  

The one thing we are going to look at is a principle given to us by Moses.  Moses had an interesting perspective on time because there were 4 distinct phases of his life and each phase had a different pace.  

1. Moses grew up as a prince in Egypt where the pace of life was fast and the whole world was his.    

2. When Moses fell out of favor with Pharaoh he went to live as a shepherd in the wilderness for 40 years.  The pace of life as a shepherd was drastically different.  What do you do as a shepherd?  Watch sheep eat.  Watch sheep sleep.  Watch sheep drink.  For Moses it was a radically slower pace of life and it is was during this time that Moses married and had a family.  His focus was different

3.  Moses then returned to Egypt to lead God’s people out of slavery and during this time Moses became the leader of one of the most dramatic events in all of human history as he led God’s people out of slavery and out of Egypt.  The pace of life radically changed again and everything now seemed to move quickly.

4.  Once they were on the other side of the Red Seas, Moses led the people in circles for 40 years.  The pace of life once again slowed dramatically as Moses turned a group of runaway slaves into nation.

  

At the end of his life Moses never got to enter the Promised Land.  He got to see it, but after his long life as a leader, Moses never got to enter the land and the vastly different seasons of his life give Moses an interesting perspective on time and how we use it.  With that in mind let’s look at Psalm 90.   90:1-2

God is everlasting.  God was before everything and God will be at the end of everything and we are just somewhere in the middle of all of that.  Because God is eternal, He knows the beginning and end of our lives.  Elsewhere in the psalms this is made clear when it says God knows us in the womb and he is there at the end of our days.  So God is everlasting and eternal, but our lives on this earth are not.  God is at the beginning and God is at the end, which means that there is a beginning and an end to our lives.  So the big truth here is this, our time is limited.  

While we all know this, the truth is that many times we don’t live as if our time was limited.  We often live as if we will always have another day, another season, another year but we don’t.  Moses talked about this in Psalm 90:3-6

If God is from everlasting to everlasting, think about how God must see time.  1,000 years are like a day.  If that is true, then what must 80 years must be like for God?  A couple of hours? A couple of minutes?  Moses says that to God, our lives are like the grass that sprouts up in the morning and is gone by evening, our lives are short.  Even Moses who lived to be 120 says that life is limited and short, Psalm 90:10.  

Moses is speaking from personal experience here.  Moses not only knows the trouble and sorrows, spending 40 years marching in circles in the wilderness and never being able to enter into the promised land and he knows how quickly those years have passed now he is at the end of his life.  Moses isn’t complaining here as much as he is sharing with us this truth.  This is life.  Our days are limited and they pass quickly before us and even more quickly before God.  But Moses doesn’t end there, he goes on in 90:11-12.  

If we take these 2 verses together, what Moses is saying is that if we really understood God for who He is in all of his power and anger as well as His love and patience then we would give God the reverence and honor that is due him and if we did that we would be more careful with the time He has given us.  If we really understood God then we number our days and use them wisely.  

Think of it this way, if we live as if our days are numbered and our lives are short then we will prioritize how we live and be smart about what we do.  Think about how we live when we face a deadline – maybe it’s a wedding day, a due date for a child or the deadline for project at work – we look at our schedules, order what needs to be done, make smart decisions about how and when to do things and stick to that schedule to make sure it all happens.  What if we lived life this way?  What if we lived life as if there was a deadline or an ending date?  Would we live our lives differently?  

In his classic book, the 7 habits of highly effective people, Steven Covey gives an exercise where we imagine ourselves going to a funeral and when we walk up to the casket we see that it is our funeral.  As we sit at our own funeral and people get up to speak, what is it that we would want them to say?  Who would we want to be there?  As we reflect on that we then need to ask ourselves if we are living in such a way that those words would be true.  If not, can we change our lives so that those words could become true?  Our time is limited so we need to limit our time and spend it wisely.  

Bronnie Ware was a hospice nurse in Australia who spent a lot of time talking with and helping those who were dying.  She asked people if they had any regrets in life and then would work to help them resolve those issues to find peace.  She wrote a book called The Top5 Regrets of the Dying in which she outlines the top regrets people shared with her.  Let me share with you the top two regrets, in reverse order.  

#2   I wish I hadn’t worked so much.  

Bronnie goes on to say, “This came from every male patient that I nursed.  They missed their children’s youth and their partners’ companionship…   All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.”

While it wasn’t just men who shared this regret, the generation that she was dealing with was the generation where more men worked outside the home than women.  Steven Covey said the same thing.  He said most people don’t want their bosses standing up at their funeral talking about how hard they worked and how much overtime they put in, and yet that is often how we live, but if we live knowing that our time is limited we might limit our time at work and invest more time at home and with family and friends and our faith development and those things that matter most.

The #1 regret:  I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

Bronnie said, Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to the choices they had made, or not made.  One of the things that these top two regrets show us is that we don’t regret what we have done as much as we regret those things that we have not done and one of the reason many important things don’t get done is that we put it off thinking there will be another day, another year, another season of life to do it.  As Moses would say, we need to learn to number our days so that we can have a heart of wisdom to make the most of them.  

Let me quickly address some reasons we do as much as we can and crowd out the things that often are the most important.

1.  We think we will never make it if we don’t do it all.  But what is the “IT” that we are striving for?  We need to make sure we striving for the right things or we will end up getting all the wrong things.

2. If I don’t do it all - I will fall behind.  Fall behind whom?  Fall behind what?  Who and what are we trying to keep up with?

3. I will end up poor.  I won’t have enough money in life.  Here is a really important question we need to ask ourselves – how much money is needed to really enjoy life?  My sister and husband have downsized 5 times in the past 10 years and they are happier and more fulfilled than they have ever been.  How much do we really need in life to be happy?  

4. I won’t be accepted if I don’t do it all.  Again, accepted by whom?  Whose expectations are we trying to live up to?  Our parents?  Our friends?  Remember the top regret people had as they were dying was that they had not been true to themselves but had tried to live the way others expected them to live.  They were trying to be accepted by others  

These are just a few reasons why our schedules might be too tight and filled with things that don’t ultimately matter and while we need to face these fears and expectations, the bigger questions is what can we do about it?  What changes can we make so we are spending our limited time wisely?  There are only 4 things we can do:

• We can add something new to our lives

• We can subtract or remove things from our lives

• We can do more of something we are already doing

• We can do less of something we are already doing

Only you can determine what these things might be so the next steps we are providing this week is a card that allows you to evaluate these 4 things.  What can you add, subject, do more of, or do less of so that your limited time is spent wisely.  If you can identify some of these things, I would encourage you to share them with your spouse, friends, parents or members of a small group or Sunday School Class.  By sharing these goals they become more real and we find support and accountability for living the way we want to live.  

So that one truth Moses gives us is that our time is limited so can we limit our time and spend it wisely. Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Breathing Room ~ Creating Space

As a child, one of the things I didn’t like about New Year’s Day was that it was the day we boxed up our Christmas tree for another year.  The tree would go to the basement, the chairs and TV would go back to their normal places and our living room would look empty.  These days, I like the day all the decorations get put away and the house feels a little less cluttered.  Some people are ok living with a lot of clutter and others despise it.  It’s not that one is way is good and the other is bad, it’s just two different ways of living.  My mom is fine with clutter but my Dad is not.  My Dad’s closet always looked like something from a marine’s barracks.  Everything was hung to perfection and all the shoes were lined up perfectly.  My Mom’s closet, on the other hand, was so full that many times you couldn’t get the door closed.  They are two very different people.

Closets that overflow and basements packed to the limit are ok, but overstuffed and cluttered lives are not.  If our calendars are so full that there is no time to rest and if our finances are so tight that there is no room for error and if our family relationships are so cluttered that everyone is going in 100 different directions all at the same time so we never see each other – then we have a problem.  You may be saying to yourself, but that’s just how life is or how it is right now and it’s ok, but please hear this – it’s not ok.  God did not create us to live life at the edge of our limits.  God created us to live with breathing room.

Breathing room is the space between our current pace of life and our limits.  We all have limits.  We have limits on our time, limits on our money and limits on our emotions, which mean there are limits on our ability to relate in healthy ways with the people around us.  While we all have different limits, our limits are real and when we live right up to the edge we can’t fully enjoying the life God has given us.  What we want to do this month is look at how to create space in our lives so we can get some room to breathe.  We are going to look at three key areas where we often live dangerously close to the edge: our time, our money and our relationships, and as we reflect on how we are living we hope to find some ways to create some much needed room to breathe.

The reason breathing room is important is because without it our stress level goes up and our ability to focus goes down.  You know this is true.  When we don’t have the time to do all the things we want or need to do in a day or week, we get stressed.  When we are rushed with our families, have to cut corners at work and end up working until early in the morning just to get things done - we get stressed.  When we don’t have an extra dollar at the end of the month, there is nothing to put away in case of an emergency and  we are afraid that the check we just wrote is about to bounce – we get stressed.  When we try to live life at the very limits of our life it creates stress and so finding some breathing room can bring peace.

Breathing room also helps increase our ability to focus.  Let me give you a great demonstration of this.  If I were to preach this entire sermon today walking right on the very edge of this step, what do you think my mind will be focused on?  Right – not falling.  And what would you be focused on?  Right – me not falling.  But if I step back and create some space I am able to focus on so much more.  I can actually think about what I am trying to say and listen to God when he wants to speak and your ability to listen and keep focus increases as well.  Breathing room helps us maintain our focus on the things that matter most in life, like our relationships with family and friends and our ability to listen to and hear God.

So if we know that breathing room is so important, then why don’t we maintain it?  Why do we live life at the pace we do when we know it is not healthy?  Andy Stanley has said that the underlying reason we live at an unsustainable pace is fear.   First there is the fear of missing out on something.  We pack so much into our schedules because we don’t want to miss an event or activity.  We load our children’s lives full of sports and dance and music and church because we are afraid they might miss out on some experience that will benefit them.  In a world where we can instantly hear about everyone else’s experience and see what fun they are having doing so many different things, we suddenly have the urge and drive to do everything.  We are afraid of missing out on something wonderful that will absolutely change our lives.

Sometimes the fear that pushes us to the limit is the fear of losing something.  If we don’t work all the overtime we can and volunteer to take on that extra project we are afraid we might lose our job or not be in line for the next promotion.  If we don’t take the extra job we are afraid we might lose our house or lose the ability to buy the house we want or retire when we want.  Sometimes the reason we do so much and fill our lives to the limit is the fear of losing face.  We will do everything possible and say yes to everyone because we don’t want people to think we can’t do it all.  We are afraid people will think less of us or see us as a failure – so we try to do it all.

In many different ways fear keeps us moving at an unsustainable pace because we think all we are doing will make life better but what happens is that all our activity and the stress it brings is keeping us from getting ahead and keeping us from those things that matter the most in life.  This is important because we only get one life and if we go through it afraid of missing something or losing something then at the end of life we are going to find that we missed out on all that’s really important and the real meaning and value in life.  So we need to name our fears and confront what it is that is driving our schedules, spending and or relationships to see if there are ways we can slow life down.

God speaks to this very issue in the Bible and one of the first places God addresses the issue of breathing room is in the Ten Commandments.  The 10 Commandments were given to the people of Israel after they had lived for generations as slaves in Egypt.  As slaves, all they knew was work.  They had to work all day – every day.  There were no vacations, no days off and no sick days.  If you didn’t work, you weren’t useful and if you weren’t useful – life was short.  So fear drove the people to work, but God didn’t create us to just work so when the people were set free from slavery God told them to create space in their lives to breathe and rest.  God gave them the gift of the Sabbath, Exodus 20:8-11.

This day of rest does two important things.  First, it calls us to actually stop working and rest.  For Israel, all work for 24 hours was to actually stop.  This had never happened before and so for the first time they could literally rest and breathe and allow their minds and bodies to recover.  But it was also a day for their souls to rest because the Sabbath reminded them that even God rested and they were created in the image of God.  The Sabbath reminded them they were God’s people and it gave them a day to reflect and give thanks to God and allow their souls to reconnect with God.  So the Sabbath was a day for their bodies, minds and souls to recover, but it also increased their faith and trust in God.

Think about what it must have felt like for Israel to be told to not work for a day when all they knew was work.  While it sounds good to us, they were thinking – how will we eat?  They lived hand to mouth day after day so if you didn’t work you didn’t.  The people had no reserves and no food stored up so they were afraid not to work.  What if things didn’t get done that had to be done?  What if they weren’t able to get ahead?  What if something bad happened?  Israel had to learn to trust God in the midst of the fear.  So the Sabbath not only gave the people rest but it helped them confront their fear and overcome it with faith and trust in God.

But it wasn’t just the Sabbath that created space for God’s people, so did the tithe, look at Deuteronomy 14:22 and 28.  When the people were told to give 1/10 to God, they had to set some of it aside until they could go to the temple, so every day they saw resources they couldn’t use.  The tithe taught them that not everything they had in life was for them to live on, they had to learn to live on less and if we can live on less than what we bring in then we can to set aside money to invest and to save.  The tithe was one way God helps us to created financial breathing room and not live on the limits of the resources.  This can give us security and peace.

There was one other law God gave that taught the people the importance of creating space and that was the law of gleaning.  This is found in Leviticus 19:9-10.  The people were told not to harvest their entire field.  They had to leave the space around the edge untouched so what grew there could go to those who were hungry and they weren’t supposed to go back over their fields to pick up what had fallen but leave that for those in need.  Basically God is saying, leave money on the ground, don’t go out and get everything you can but leave some for others and the reason they were told to do this was because it was to help them learn how to trust God, and it is trust that help us overcome fear.

As the people left part of the harvest in the field they had to trust God for what they needed and the more they trusted God, the more they were able to work at a sustainable pace because God would help them.  These three laws, the Sabbath, tithe and law of gleaning were very clear ways God helped the people see the need for some space and breathing room in their lives.  Each law also helped the people to focus on God and taught them how to trust God.

Jesus reinforced this idea in his sermon on the mount, Matthew 6:31.  Don’t worry about going after all those things that everyone else goes after because God knows you need them and if we trust God to provide we can live at a pace that is healthy.  Jesus also tells us that we need to keep the right focus which is to seek God’s kingdom first and the way we increase focus is to not live at the limits of life but with some breathing room.

This week we need to ask ourselves what is driving us to live dangerously close to the limits?  Is the culture that tells us we have to do it all and have it all?  Is it the fear of missing out or losing something?  Is it our pride which says we can actually do it all?  Is it a lack of faith that God will provide so we have to go out and get it ourselves?   We need to consider why we live at the pace we do and then ask where we need some breathing room.  Is it our schedule?  Our finances?  Our relationship?  Life is short and our marriages, families and friends are too important to not ask these questions.  If the pace of life is keeping us from those things that matter the most, then let’s figure out how to create some space and find some breathing room.


Next Steps
Breathing Room ~ Creating Space

1.  Where do you need some breathing room in your life?
• Schedule
• Money
• Marriage
• Children
• Job
• Faith

2.  Why do you live at the edge of your limits?
• Fear of missing something or losing out?
• Fear of failure or falling behind others?
• Fear of not making the most of your life?
• Lack of faith and trust that God will provide?

3.  How do other people living at the edge of their limits effect you at home and at work?

4.  Read the three laws God gave the people of Israel which showed them the importance of space and breathing room.  What do these laws have to say to us today?
• The Sabbath – Exodus 20:8-11, 23:12 & Mark 2:27
• The Tithe – Deuteronomy 14:22-26 and Malachi 3:10
• The Law of Gleaning – Leviticus 19:9-10, 23:22

4.  Are there places in your home you can clean out and de-clutter in order to create some space?  Can items be donated to those who might really need them and could use them?