COMEBACK SERIES - Week 1 - PRIORITIES MetroCITYchurch.tv Pastor J. Schossau

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1 COMEBACK SERIES - Week 1 - PRIORITIES MetroCITYchurch.tv Pastor J. Schossau Welcome to Metro at both campuses how many of you have one of these? You have a smart phone? Anybody, especially those of you joining us at our video campus today smart phones. Show of hands Anybody almost everyone Now let s be honest for a moment. How many of you have a LOVE HATE type of relationship with the thing? YOU LOVE IT AND YOU LOVE TO HATE IT? Love Hate relationship? I ll tell you why we have this love hate relationship. It s because they have become vital to our lives. Most people freak out if they don t have it with them. We are obsessed with our phones. There have been studies done that demonstrate that people would rather let a stranger hold their wallet or purse then their phone. We love these things. Studies show that we take them everywhere as a matter of fact you take them in the shower and into the bathroom when you are, well using the bathroom. These studies show that most people check their phones between 50 and 75 times a day during the waking 16 hours. That s at least 4 times an hour for every hour you are awake. We have more assecability, connect-ablity, productivity, and mobility than ever before but we are bored. We have all this stuff, this information coming at us we can KNOW MORE ABOUT MORE THINGS THEN EVER BEFORE and yet we are empty. We have hundreds of friends and followers and yet we are lonelier than ever. I ll tell you why we have this love hate relationship with these things it is because THEY FILL US WITH THINGS THAT DISTRACT US FROM THE RIGHT THINGS. Did you hear that? THEY FILL US WITH THINGS THAT DISTRACT US FROM THE RIGHT THINGS. The buzzing and the beeping and the ringing they are a sign that we are important. They make us feel like we matter and we love that but really, all the buzzing and the beeping and ringing is one big distraction from what really matters. We re beginning a brand-new series called COMEBACK. Everybody loves a comeback. We love the guy at the bottom fighting back to become somebody, to fulfill a dream, to make something of himself when everyone thought he was a nobody. We talked about the Greatest Comeback Ever on Easter? Anybody here for that? Talk about a COMEBACK. Rome thought the name of Jesus would slip into history. His closes followers thought the movement was over. BUT BOOM COMEBACK. In this series we re going to talk about some COMEBACKS that some of us need to have. We re going to talk about a COMEBACK with your FINANCES some of us need a FINANCIAL COMEBACK. You hear me. We re going to talk about a COMEBACK with your health. Oh boy this is going to get good. Some of you need a MARRIAGE COMEBACK. Or maybe a PARENTING COMEBACK. Anybody tracking with me? We re going talk about how God wants to orchestrate a COMEBACK in a whole bunch of areas in your life and my life.

2 And we re going to start with a COMEBACK TO YOUR PRIORITIES. It doesn t take much. It doesn t take long and those dreams those things that mattered most to you start to slip. You get DISTRACTED and boom you are a different person. Commitments you made are no longer commitments they are broken promises to your kids to your friends to your spouse to your family to yourself and listen to me to God! German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (I m sure you re reading a lot of his stuff these days ) Wolfgang grasped the importance of priorities. He said, Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Stephen R. Covey in his bestseller the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People put it this way: As a longtime student of this fascinating field [of life and time management], I am personally persuaded that the essence of the best thinking in the area of time management can be captured in a single phrase: Organize and execute around priorities. - Stephen R. Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People There s a book that came out way back in the 90 s that is really fascinating It s called The Common Denominator of Success written by E.M. Gray. He spent his life searching for the one denominator that all successful people share. He found it wasn t hard work, good luck, or astute human relations, though those were all important. He said, The one factor that seemed to transcend all the rest [was] putting first things first - The Common Denominator of Success by E.M. Gray. (1990, pp ) Setting the right priorities is vitally important for success in every area of life. You do realize that you have a set of priorities. You may not have them written down, but you have this list that drives you. That you orchestrate your life around whether you want to admit it or not. And for many of us not everyone here but many, if not most of us we say, somewhere near the top of that list of priorities is our relationship with God. I mean, that s probably why you came to church. Because, in some way, you re saying you want to work on that relationship. You want to get better with that relationship. You want to take your next steps. Not everyone but a whole bunch of us say, ETERNITY MATTERS TO ME. Getting this GOD MAN RELATIONSHIP RIGHT matters to me BUT WE GET SO DISTRACTED. We get so busy that we lose what matters most! I want to read something for you that is just so important. It sort of sets our priorities for us. It s the first of the Ten Commandments. Anybody hear of those? Are we even allowed to talk about these anymore? Check this out, early in the human story God knows that mankind is going to have trouble with a whole bunch of things. We d easily get distracted. We d easily fall into darkness and sin. We d easily loose what is good. So, he gives us this list of TEN BIG THINGS TEN COMMANDMENTS not suggestions. Not options. But commandments ten things that if we get these right things would probably turn out decent.

3 And I want you to see this. Right off the bat he sets the TOP PRIORITY for us. He says this is what matters most. If you want to get life together here s where you start. YOU READY FOR THIS? God says I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me (Exodus 20:2-3). God does not want us to place anything before Him. His desire is that we worship Him and Him alone. He must come first in our lives. Jesus said it this way when asked about the most important things in life listen to what he said. Matthew 22: Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. Matthew 22:37-40 Have you heard this before WHAT MATTERS MOST what should be your first priority is your relationship with God? LADDER ILLUSTRATION Growing up I d hear things like this It goes GOD, then family, then friends, then work or school or finances or something like that. Have you heard this before? I think most of us have this list of priorities and we say it goes God is first then family, then friends and then work or whatever. CANDLES So, if there was this ladder of life we d say GOD IS FIRST. HE gets the top spot. He gets the top rung. And everything thing else comes below it. He s the big thing. You get the GOD THING RIGHT YOU GET EVERYTHING ELSE RIGHT. If God is BIG in your life, if God is your top priority, it will sort of light the way for everything else. Does this make sense? Maybe you ve heard something like this before? But you can see the problem with this right? What s the problem? IT DOESN T TAKE LONG FOR PRIORITIES TO SHIFT. It doesn t take long for the demands of work to grow and grow and grow and so now you it s not only God that is moved from the top spot, but your wife and kids feel like they ve been moved down the ladder. You didn t mean to make them feel that way, but it just sort of happened and without even knowing it, you woke up one day and GOD WAS WAY DOWN HERE AND YOUR KIDS WERE WAY DOWN HERE AND YOU ENDED UP DIVORCED because you lost track of what mattered most. Or maybe life just became so busy and distracting that you just let the priority of your health slip away and you never intended it but just happened and now you re fifty pounds

4 overweight and your heart is giving you trouble. And you don t even know how that happened. Maybe the countless hours we spent on Facebook we should have spent a few of them in the gym. I don t know. Maybe God used to be way up there but then you started letting other things tempting things slip into your life. A little drink of this. A little hit of that. A little look at something you know full well doesn t fill your heart and mind with the things of God and all of a sudden, your heart is so full of addiction and lust and all sorts of things THE GOD SPOT IS NOW FILLED WITH SOMETHING ELSE and there is no purity. There is no vibrant relationship with God. Maybe you wanted to serve God. Maybe you volunteered to be a Life Group Leader for some Junior High boys through Generation City because you felt God wanting you to do that but you no longer have time for that but maybe, I don t know, maybe it s not really a time issue but it s a priority issue. Everything else is crowding out what really ought to matter most. Friends is anybody feeling this? Have you seen this in your own life? You had these dreams this direction of life these priorities that are nothing more than just let downs and broken promises. Think about money for a minute. Most of us, seriously, most of us, thought somewhere back in our 20 s that we were going to do this money thing right. We were going to spend wisely and give generously and invest diligently while we were young so that when we got old like our parents we d be in better financial shape, but we ve woken up to our 40 s or 50 s and it s still as stressful as it was in our 20 s. We re still not much beyond pay check to pay check and truthfully, we don t give that much because we re not able to give that much and we have very little saved for our old age. FRIENDS this is all a PRIORITY ISSUE and we need a COMEBACK to our PRIORITIES. You with me? Can we talk about this for a few minutes? I want to do a couple of things with the remaining time we have. Here s what we are going to do. First, I want us to rethink how we think about priorities. And then I want us to take a few lessons from Jesus about how to keep the important things important. So, let me just ask God to reveal his heart to us. Let me just pray for a moment FATHER SPEAK TO US. GIVE US YOUR HEART ON WHAT MATTERS MOST. SPEAK OH GOD FOR YOUR CHILD IS LISTENING AMEN. Some of you are a little freaked out because that is the longest into every to a message. If I m just getting to the little opening prayer you re thinking we re going to be here forever! Ha don t worry. This is going to be quick but punchy. Is that ok? I want us to rethink how we think about priorities. I was in a marriage mentoring session a couple years back. This young couple was having trouble. There was a lot of brokenness in their lives. The husband was and is a strong believer and was trying to follow Jesus, but the wife just wasn t there. It was just a difficult situation. There was a lot of selfishness going on.

5 And at one point the wife says to me Well, my husband doesn t really love me like he should because he talks about his little list of priorities and he s always going, It s God first then you and the kids and then work and down the list. And I m thinking to myself yeah that s pretty much how it should go. But as she went on she felt that by her husband spending time at church was not loving her. And her husband wanting to give some money to support the church was not loving her. And her husband wanting to volunteer in one of our ministry was not loving her She said, that sometimes he s work late and work some over time and that wasn t loving her and putting her where she needed to be on his list of priorities. Or maybe he d want to spend time alone with the kids and that made her feel less on his list. And all of this made her push away from God. If God is that important to you then I MUST NOT BE THAT IMPORTANT. And that s when it dawned on me that maybe the way that we think this list of priorities the wrong way. So literally, in that little mentoring/counseling I grabbed a napkin on my desk and a pen and I said HOLD ON maybe we are thinking about this all wrong. POINTING AT THE LADDER Maybe we shouldn t be thinking about priorities as a list or rungs on a ladder where it goes God then spouse then kids or family, then health then work then hobbies or whatever maybe there shouldn t be a list at all. So, I took the pen and I drew a circle and said I want you to think about our relationship with God like this circle. Then I wrote God in it. (SCREEN ONE) To a Christian, God is the most important thing. He is the center of everything in our lives. From him the flow of our lives come. Jesus is our hope. As a matter of fact, there is this little passage of Scripture that says it all for a true follower of Jesus. Acts 17:28 says For in him we live and move and have our being Acts 17:28 That about says it all. He is the center. He is the goal. He is our eternity. He matters more than most BUT, here s the deal, because he matters most doesn t mean that you don t matter. I m talking to this young lady, this young wife and mother trying to explain this to her. I said, actually, because God matters most to your husband that means that he will love you more. That means that he will sacrifice for you more. That he will honor you more. Because GOD MATTERS MOST YOU WILL MATTER MORE. And so, I drew another circle. Like an overlapping OLYMPIC RING and just wrote family in there. (SCREEN TWO) And then then we talked about friendships (Screen THREE) and finances (Screen four). And how incredibly important those things are. And we talked about health (Screen FIVE) and WORK (Screen SIX) hobbies and alone time and all these things that demand part of our life. And how easy it is to get them all out of balance. (Leave SCREEN SIX UP) And it was in that conversation that it was like a light bulb going off for me personally. That maybe priorities aren t so much of a top to bottom list where this kid is more important

6 than then your wife or this friend is more important than this friend because I like this friend more they are higher on my priority list and it makes this other friend feel like junk because this guy gets all your time. Or because maybe you re a Christian - your church needs you and so you don t have any time for your family or friends according to them. MAYBE instead of a list of priorities it should look a little bit more like this. (Leave SCREEN SIX UP) Where there these circles of life that are all important to various degrees but sometimes somethings take more of you then other things BUT WHERE GOD IS IN THE CENTER OF IT ALL. Here s what I mean what if LOVING GOD MOST means spending extra time with one of your kids who needs a little more of you. Or what if LOVING GOD MOST means, that for a season, maybe a short season, you have to pick up an extra shift at work in order to take care of the family bills. Maybe, for a short season, going to college at night is actually prioritizing your family because in the long run it s what s best for your family. What if making sure you are in church EVERY WEEK is actually what is best for your family because at church you re are reminded and challenged to be the best kind of wife, mom or woman you should be. What if SERVING AT CHURCH was actually serving your family because by SERVING AT CHURCH you are modeling who Jesus was to your children. (Leave SCREEN SIX UP) What if prioritizing spending less now was actually prioritizing your future? WHAT IF THE KEY TO PRIORITIES WAS NOT A LIST BUT A CIRCLE WHERE GOD IS AT THE CENTER OF EVERY DECISION, EVERY DIRECTION, and EVERY RELATIONSHIP. What if GOD AT THE TOP looks more like GOD AT THE CENTER. I don t know maybe I m just thinking out loud here. I just know that I want to LOVE GOD WITH ALL MY HEART SOUL AND STRENGTH, I just know I want GOD at the absolute top spot of my life and that looks different at different times. It s not always praying for an hour and reading the bible. It definitely includes that but it s bigger than that. TAKE SCREEN SIX DOWN Is this making sense? So how do we do this. How do we keep it all in balance and God in the CENTER of it all? Keeping priorities in balance is no simple task. Keeping busyness and distraction in check is no simple task. I think first, it requires us to recognize that simply being busy isn t the issue. Having multiple commitments is an unavoidable part of life. Distractions are part of life. Rather, it s living in hurry It s living in an unfocused, undisciplined, unfulfilling state of busy that s problematic. Correcting this requires rethinking our time but I think it s worth the effort, and through the life of Christ, we have a model of what it looks like to live a purpose-filled life.

7 I want you to think about this Jesus lived differently than most of us. He didn t have a spouse or kids. He didn t have a required 40-hour workweek, a commute in rushhour traffic, or an overflowing inbox. He didn t have electricity, advanced technology, or many of the other things we might argue contribute to our busyness. But He also didn t have many of the conveniences that come with our modern-day lifestyles. He didn t have a space to call His own, no office or house in which to seek privacy. There was no method of quick transportation, no supermarkets or fast food restaurants, no appliances to speed life up or electronics to simplify communication. Despite these differences, one of the things you learn about Jesus is that Jesus was busy. He was in high demand to say the least. Everybody seemed to want some of his time. Twice in Bible Book of Mark, we learn that He and the disciples were in such demand that they didn t even have time to eat. I can tell you that I rarely don t have time to eat. Just saying. You don t get this from NOT EATING. Yet in the midst of His busyness, Jesus knew how to get it right with His time. He had to figure out this priority thing too and there are few lessons we can learn from Jesus that can help us get this right. Learn to Say No Some people are very uncomfortable with the idea of disappointing anyone. They think that if you are kind, you ll never disappoint anyone. They think that if you try hard enough, if you manage your time well enough, if you re selfless enough, prayerful enough, godly enough, you ll never disappoint anyone. I fear these people are headed for a rude awakening. I know this, because I am one of those people. I want people to think of me as a very competent, capable, responsible person. And truthfully, I care about people. I want to love people the way Jesus loved people. But it doesn t take long to figure out that you will NEVER MEET other people s NEVER-ENDING LIST OF DEMANDS, REQUESTS and EXPECTATIONS. This is what I know for sure: along the way you will disappoint someone. You will not meet someone s needs or expectations. You will not be able to fulfill their request. You will leave something undone or poorly done. Somebody somewhere along the way will be angry with you, or sad feeling like you left them holding the bag. Or maybe instead of sadness or anger, they ll belittle you or talk bad about you because you didn t live up to their expectations or standards. I know this seems to happen to me OFTEN! They ll say things like, I guess he s just not a hard worker. Or, I guess you re just a low-capacity person. Or, I thought I could count on you. These are basically sharp blades straight into the hearts of people like me, people who want very heavily to meet people s expectations.

8 But here s the good news: you get to decide who you re going to disappoint, who you re going to say no to. And guess what disappointing people gets easier over time. Look at this. This is an amazing insight to the life of Jesus. Mark chapter 1 starting in verse 35. Jesus had spent the previous day with a huge crowd of people. And he miraculously healed a bunch of people. And here s something that you figure out IF YOU HEAL PEOPLE, I don t know, IF YOU MAKE BLIND PEOPLE SEE AND DEAF PEOPLE HEAR AGAING YOU SORT OF DRAW A CROWD. People saw Jesus doing all this crazy stuff and from then on it was game on. EVERYBODY WANTED SOMETHING FROM JESUS. And so, the next day, tons of people first thing in the morning were looking for Jesus. Mark chapter 1 verse Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: Everyone is looking for you! 38 Jesus replied, Let us go somewhere else to the nearby villages so I can preach there also. That is why I have come. Mark 1: LEARN TO SAY NO. Are you catching this? All these expectations. All these demands. All these opportunities. The disciples were like Jesus this is GREAT. Look at the crowds. They love you. We can start charging admission. We re going to be rich. And Jesus was like, YEAH NO. Let s go somewhere else anywhere else then here. LEARN TO SAY NO. And here s why. Not because you want to be selfish with your time. Not so you can just slip off and entertain yourself right into the grave. Not so that you can spend another hour seeing how many followers like your Facebook post BUT WHY? LEARN TO SAY NO SO THAT YOU CAN SAY YES TO WHAT GOD IS CALLING YOU TO. In his book Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book About a (Really) Big Problem, pastor Kevin DeYoung discusses how Jesus experienced temptation to get off mission in the Gospels. He says Jesus understood His mission, writes DeYoung. He was not driven by the needs of others, though He often stopped to help hurting people. He was not driven by the approval of others, though He cared deeply for the lost and the broken. Ultimately, Jesus was driven by the Spirit. He was driven by His God-given mission. He knew His priorities and did not let the many temptations of a busy life deter Him from His task. - Pastor Kevin DeYoung - Crazy Busy: A Merciful Short Book About a Really Big Problem Jesus devotion to His mission sometimes required that He say no. The work He was doing with the people that day was good; it was important. But His mission required Him to be elsewhere. Listen to me this is going to sound terrible but EVEN though there were undoubtedly more people in need of healing and teaching,

9 Jesus walked away. Though He cared for people, His focus was not on them, but on God. I think if we are going to keep GOD at the CENTER and if all these important things all these priorities are going to come together, I think, like Jesus we need to say no to things that distract us even when those things are good. Just as Jesus didn t meet every need, neither are we meant to seize every opportunity before us. It s a spiritual practice to say no to the wrong things so you can say yes to the right things. It s a spiritual DISCIPLINE to say NO to lesser things so that you can say yes to GREATER THINGS. IS ANYBODY LISTENING? You must remember that at the root of everything is our mission to love God and love our neighbor. That s what Jesus said, RIGHT? God is at the center and his love flows from that center. As long as every day you re seeking to love God and others, you re living on mission. Everything else is secondary. Here s another lesson from Jesus. And this is SOOOOOO HARD for me. Not only do you need to learn to say no but you have to LEARN TO GET ALONE Luke 5:15-16 reads: Yet the news about Him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Luke 5:15-16 This is one of the hardest things in the world to me AND I M A PASTOR! Everything in this world is noisy. It s loud. It s demanding. Everything in our world says, engage with me, buy me, pay attention to me. Everything is a distraction to everything else and in the middle of it God is saying SOME HOW, IN SOME WAY YOU HAVE TO CONNECT WITH ME. LOVE ME MOST. I MATTER MOST. I want to be first and at the center. And Jesus shows us a model on how to do this. Jesus was clearly mission-focused, He also knew the importance of taking time to be alone with God. There was a rhythm to the way Jesus lived. He would go away to a lonely place to pray, get charged up. Spend time with God the Father then he d re-engage in mission with those in need, go away to pray, then re-engage. Not only did Jesus live in this rhythm, He encouraged the apostles to do the same, beckoning them in Mark 6:31 to Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest. Mark 6:31 One of my favorite writers is a guy named John Ortberg. He wrote something so good so challenging, I just want to share it with you. He says

10 For many of us the danger is not that we will renounce our faith, it is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. In an effort to avoid this, it is important that we seek to imitate the rhythm of Christ. THEN HE SAYS If we want to follow someone, we can t go faster than the one who is leading. - Pastor John Ortberg If all these circles are going to work and if God is going to be the center of it all we have to figure out how to slow the pace of our life. We have to be disciplined and learn to say no to something so that we can say YES to the right things. And we have to, we must, do the unthinkable we have to unplug from the world long enough to plug into God. We have to learn to be alone with God. Maybe you re a morning person. I bet most of you, within the first few minutes of your day pick up the phone and check your messages, check your threads. You wonder if you got RETWEETED overnight. Well, how about you check in with God. Maybe you could load a downloadable daily devotion and prayer time to your phone to come to you screen every day when you wake up. Or at lunch time. I am more of a night person. I try to read something Godly and pray every night. We ve got to learn this if we are ever going to be busy with the right things. And that s really the last thing that we can learn from Jesus. LEARN TO SAY NO. LEARN TO BE ALONE and LEARN TO FLOW. Ha that s the best I could think of. But you have to get into the FLOW of God s Spirit. I m serious. You must learn to pay attention to him. There is this one verse in John s Gospel that says this The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit. John 3:8. There is this movement to the Spirit of God. There is this rhythm. God moves, and he expects those of us who follow him to move with him. Listen to me friends WE WILL UNDOUBTABLY ALWAYS WILL BE BUSY, BUT WILL IT BE THE RIGHT KIND OF BUSY. Will you be busy with the kinds of things that will matter TEN MINUTES AFTER YOUR DEAD OR TEN YEARS OR TEN THOUSAND YEARS. The Right Kind of Busy be busy matters. Yes, we have to mow the lawn and do laundry and clean the house and earn a living but all of those things ought to be an avenue to something bigger All of those things out to be a gateway to serving God and engaging His mission on earth right around you. Jesus wasn t busy. He was very busy. But He was the right kind of busy. There is a difference between being purposefully busy the sort of busy that provides fulfillment and seeks to accomplish the good work we ve been called to do and being rushed, distracted, and weary. In the words of DeYoung: The busyness that s bad is not the busyness of work, but the busyness that works hard at the wrong things. - Pastor Kevin DeYoung

11 Slowing down is not the goal. I don t want to slow anything down. I want to get more done but I want to work hard at the right things. Being more like Jesus is the right thing for me. Being part of the ongoing mission of Jesus through the local church is the right thing for me. Having Jesus at the CENTER OF EVERYTHING is the right thing for me and loving my wife and kids and family and friends and doing my work and taking care of my health and finances and having fun ALL NEEDS TO FLOW FROM JESUS BEING THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING. Learn to say no. Learn to get alone. AND LEARN TO FLOW. It seems to me that we need a new kind of busy that flows from JESUS being at the center!