Sunday July 31

PJ is a driving machine, at the age of 9 I put her in the riding lawn mower here and let her mow the back field. She took off around and she was soo excited. She started out making laps and just having a blast but by about the third or forth time around the field she started driving with her feet and attempting to do tricks, why because she got bored with it. So we started letting her drive the cars and things around. Since about 11 she has been driving my truck around in private areas. She and I will go to the ballfield and hit some in the batting cage and then she will ask to drive around the parking lot some. We started out with the same rule I was given by my dad when he let me drive at a young age around parking lots. No gas pedal, you can drive but you cannot accelerate any. Well that lasted almost 3 minutes, next thing I know I we are zooming around the parking lot around 25-30 miles per hour and laughing and having a blast. Idle was too weak, too slow, not enough. Why on earth then is idle enough for us in life. This is a big scary world, not because of the bad people in it, but because of the number of people not doing anything about it. - Albert Einstein Warn the idle – the devil’s greatest tool isn’t temptation or sin, it’s a believer who isn’t doing anything active. Idleness is something that we fear. We fear it in many different capacities. There is the fear that we will waste our lives or waste our time. Switchfoot has a new song called Life is short I want to live it well. God does call us to be good stewards of our time and we don’t want to waste it. I am not a good sit around and watch tv, lay on the beach and do nothing person. If one of those is going on I prefer to be reading, because I want to be bettering myself in some way shape or form. There is also the fear that comes from idleness and it is that fear that drives us to issue curfews. Listen, when our teens go out to a movie or to dinner maybe to bowl or play putt-putt there is nothing at all wrong with that. But, we all know that when that wraps up there is a lot of sitting or hanging around and that’s when they are going to get into some sort of trouble. The old Ponce de Leon mall was a major hang out in some ways I wish my kids could experience it, but it was after the mall closed when kids were just sitting and standing around waiting for their rides that the most trouble occurred. I find this amusing the way different versions of the Bible use different words. The word Idle in the New International version has replaced the word unruly in the King James Version. I go two different places with those two different words. Idle says to me lazy, sitting around and doing nothing. Unruly says to me getting into trouble, not following the rules. It is a person with a lack of discipline and self-control. Let’s be honest teens who are on fire for Jesus and being used by God to do big things stay on the go. Then they meet someone, start dating someone or get into a group where church isn’t as important and they slowly disappear from church and more importantly they become idle. They stop showing up to encourage others and to be encouraged by others. There are believers right now who know they should be in church today who are not. Here’s the thing, we are working through this encouragement series because I think far too many people today are pushing. We are attempting to push people to Jesus. The old saying you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink is true. It’s oh so true, but you know what you can do? You can make him thirsty. That’s our job as believers in Christ to make others thirsty and we do that thru encouragement not thru yelling, pushing and being abrasive. At times it is going to be tough to tell the difference between the two things we are addressing here today. Idleness and timidity. You are going to know Christians, people who you know have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ who don’t seem to be doing anything at all with it. They could be idle and just doing nothing or they may be timid and just not comfortable doing anything. Either way it’s going to be encouragement that gets them into gear. That same person may be purely lazy or they may be afraid they will do something wrong. Encourage the timid – Let’s be perfectly honest for a minute, we all have a certain amount of timidity. But there is almost always strength in numbers. Just knowing that someone else has your back, is in your corner and wants to walk with you can be the difference between being idle and timid vs. serving and speaking out. An article by John Piper a pastor and well respected Theologian wrote addresses busyness and I have read and read and re read it before plugging it into this message and here it is. Busyness is moral laziness [because it is often a statement of our self-importance and our excuse to be inattentive to people]. . . . But God has given us just enough time to do what we need to do moment by moment to respond to him. And his grace is there; it is eternally present. Every moment is a sacrament where time touches eternity and there is exactly enough time to do what God has called us to do. “Busyness Is Moral Laziness” We all know busyness. Everyone is busy. And everyone complains about being busy. Busy, busy, busy. Busy is a buzzword (even phonetically). Most of us have grown fairly comfortable with busyness. But to call busyness (meaning a frantic, distracted lifestyle) “moral laziness” suddenly makes us uncomfortable. It means that busyness is not something that merely happens to us. It is something we choose. As objections begin to rise in our minds, it is helpful to remember what Jesus said to busy Martha: “Mary has chosen the good portion” (Luke 10:42). Martha, you have chosen something else. So why do we choose busyness? Prof. Hindmarsh says that too often we make it a “statement of self-importance.” We use busyness as a way of telling ourselves and, maybe more importantly, others how essential we are. Busyness is a way of posturing our significance. Ouch, right? But a more serious issue is that we choose busyness as a way to avoid having to make harder, sometimes more costly choices. Busyness can easily be an escape. It provides a convenient way to opt-out of wrestling through complex decisions that we will be responsible for. It’s much easier to be the victim of circumstances than to be responsible for a mistake. And an overflowing schedule can become a shield protecting us from the unpredictable, inconvenient, time-consuming needs of other people. It’s an effective cover. Who can argue with you if you have too many things to do? Jesus can (Luke 14:15–24). Now, of course there is such a thing as being legitimately too time-taxed to take on another need. We really are finite, with many limitations. “Just Enough Time” I need to break the very bad habit of saying I don’t have enough time. When I say this, I’m not only blaming my own moral laziness on my circumstances, I’m actually blaming God. I’m essentially saying that God is either insufficient or he’s stingy. In reflecting on this I’ve become more aware of our lack of faith for God’s provision of time. This past year I have taken on about 4 more programs thru work, it has me stretched thin but somehow there is always enough time. I still have ample time to prepare messages for Wednesdays and Sundays as well as time to coach softball and spend with my family in the evenings playing cards and such. I struggled mightily with accountability when I started working bi-vocationally. I turned in a schedule each week and everyone could know where I was when I was full time at ACBC. So I started posting what all was going on each day for people on facebook to know. Well that backfired in ways that I never saw coming, it meant I looked too busy so people didn’t reach out to me when I they normally would. God has given us just enough time to do what we need to do. “Every Moment Is a Sacrament” “Every moment is a sacrament where time touches eternity and there is exactly enough time to do what God has called us to do.” What a beautiful and fearful statement. It’s beautiful in that every moment belongs to God (therefore every moment is holy) and he gives each moment to us as a gift. And he gives us enough moments to provide for our callings, whatever they are. It is fearful in that we are stewards of these gifts and we will be held accountable for their investment. Here is the truth, we all walk thru this door at different places in life. Some are retired, some are in school still. Many of us are in debt up to our eyes and some are debt free. Some of us drove up here in a brand new car that is paid for, others an old beat up heap that also is paid for, some drove here in something that brings the stress of a huge payment once a month. Some of us live in a house that is in the best neighborhood in town, others don’t live in the best of neighborhoods. But there are two things that absolutely equal us all out. One is Jesus’ love, we all receive the same amount of it, it’s the same and consistent thru and thru. The second is time. We all get 24 hours in a day, we all get 7 days in a week, we all get the same about of time. Time is the great equalizer. The difference then is not in the amount of time we have but how we spend it. Most people want to invest their money wisely, why don’t we invest our time wisely. I make it a point each day to better myself in every area of life.