Getting into the Overflow

Transcription

1 George A. Mason Thanksgiving Sunday Wilshire Baptist Church 23 November 2014 Dallas, Texas Getting into the Overflow Deuteronomy 8:7-18; 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 It s sometimes called being in the zone. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it getting into the flow. Csikszentmihalyi was born in a part of Italy that is now in Croatia. He was in an Italian prison camp during World War II and made an accidental discovery. He learned to play chess and found that the experience of getting so absorbed in the game changed his perception about all that was going on around him. Flow is that feeling you get when you are so taken up in an activity that you lose yourself in it. Like when you are running, say, or doing yoga, and you aren t thinking about what you have to do at work on Monday or whether your kid is going to pass senior English and graduate or why your mother keeps asking you if you ve found a girlfriend yet. Your mind is focused on what you are doing. In fact, you get so caught up in the whole thing that you might forget how far you ve run or that you are actually hungry but hadn t noticed. Getting into the flow gives you the feeling that you are somehow connected to life in the way it s set up. You feel that you are doing exactly what you were meant to do. You don t worry. You don t fret. You aren t distracted. Every once in a while I have that experience when preaching a sermon. I m not thinking about what I m going to say next. I don t worry about what you will think about what I am going to say next. I may not even know what I m going to say next, but I trust that it will come because I m in the flow. Csikszentmihalyi has not just analyzed the phenomenon; he also talks about how to get there. Flow happens when a person s skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable, so it acts as a magnet for learning new skills and increasing challenges. 1 He says that if you want to get into the flow, you have to push yourself to achieve something that requires what he calls a slight stretching of your current capabilities. You have to have a 1 /mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-biography.htm

2 goal that is reachable but challenging enough to call forth your best efforts. You can t just live your life for ease; you have to have goals worthy enough to give yourself to. I ve been thinking about that as we come to this Thanksgiving season. Our texts today from Deuteronomy and 2 Corinthians seem to take us there. Like the word Thanksgiving itself, these two passages can be divided into thanks and giving. The first has to do with how everything we have is a gift from God that calls for our gratitude. In a sense, Moses is telling the people of Israel about the flow of God s grace and how to be mindful of it. The second has to do with how we give in order to get into the overflow of the way God has designed things. Our giving mimics God s giving to us. When we are giving of what God has given to us, we find ourselves in the overflow of God s way with the world. So thanks and giving go together. And flow can become overflow. First, thanks and flow. What is the alternative to thanks? Moses nails it. He says that that the opposite of being a grateful person is being an ingrate. The word ingrate comes from the Latin gratus, which means pleasing, agreeable, or cheerful. The prefix in sometimes means not. So an ingrate is a person who is not pleasing, not agreeable, and not cheerful. What s more, the root of that word gratus is shared by the word gratia, which means gratitude or thanks. So there s the tie. Moses says: When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, Do not say to yourself, My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth. Moses will not let the children of Israel think that they have done all of this on their own. He reminds them of the time when they had nothing and were nothing when they were slaves in Egypt. He tells them never to forget how hungry they once were and how God sent manna and quail from heaven and water from a rock to sustain them. And when they go into the Promised Land and settle down and 2

3 prosper, they must find ways of remembering that the ground of their being is the gifts from God and not just their own hard work. Moses knows what God knows and what we must learn: The moment we start thinking that we have only ourselves to thank is the moment we lose the flow. It stops with us. And when it stops with us, we threaten to close the open heart of God. When I was about 13 years old, I attended a basketball camp in upstate New York that was put on by Norm Sonju, who was the first general manager of the Dallas Mavericks. It was a twoweek camp, and I was having a great time of it. I made some friends and learned a lot. My family had a second home about a half-hour from the camp in a town called Indian Lake. On their wedding anniversary which is, by the way, the Fourth of July, because my dad didn t ever want to forget his anniversary, not because their love was like fireworks, don t you know?! they showed up to see how it was going. They watched one of my games and stood on the side of the court, the only parents in sight. They had paid for me to be there. They were proud of the way I was playing. And in return I didn t give them the time of day. I was embarrassed that they were there. I wanted to be with my new friends. I felt that it was my right to be there and do my own thing. My behavior hurt their feelings, as it would have done to me if my son had done such a thing. As parents, they didn t let their feelings of being hurt dictate their actions, but they did think about who I was becoming, and they worried that they might be rearing an ingrate. So they pulled me out of the camp after the first week. I tried crying and begging and repenting, but to no avail. They shut off the spigot. I had a lesson to learn. All it would have taken was thanks. All I needed to do to stay in the flow of their giving was to be grateful and show it by thanking them for what they had made possible for me. But instead I had to learn a lesson that has stuck to this day because it s still fresh enough after 45 years for me to use as a sermon illustration. If we are to be in the flow of God s grace and to enjoy God s continued giving to us, we need to be thankful. But we also need to give. Paul says that if we understand the 3

4 flow of God s grace, we will participate in it. Our cheerful giving is a sign of our not being ingrates. He reminds us of the ground of flow: And God is able to provide YOU with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, YOU may share abundantly in every good work. When we are grateful, we not only continue to receive from God, but we are also more likely to be gracious. When we are thankful, we keep the flow coming; when we give, we keep the flow going. Listen again: You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us. That s the flow. Then this: for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. God not only gets thanksgiving from us; God gets thanksgiving from others through us. Flow to overflow. In other words, there s an exponential factor in this enterprise. Abundance flows into superabundance. Our entire giving plan at Wilshire matches this deep truth. We can give in order to get into the flow of God s goodness, but if we have a lofty enough goal giving more by a slight stretching to be more generous we can get into the overflow. Our gifts will spill over to others in a way that not only supplies the needs of others but also gives more glory to God. In 2009 Jason Brown signed a $37.5 million contract to play center for the St. Louis Rams. After a few years, he realized that his heart just wasn t in playing professional football. So he left the game and bought a farm in North Carolina. His agent told him he was crazy. He insisted he wasn t. Jason had never farmed before, so he watched YouTube videos to learn how. He rides a tractor now and plows his own field. Last week he harvested 46,000 pounds of sweet potatoes and 10,000 pounds of cucumbers. He s only getting started. He s got 1,000 acres, and he s plowed only 50. But the thing that s so special about this former football player/current farmer is that he doesn t sell his produce. He gives it away to food banks. He is committed to doing his part to eradicate hunger. When you see them pop out of the ground, man, it s the most beautiful thing you 4

5 could ever see, he said. He says he s has never felt more successful than feeding those in need. Not by man s standards, but in God s eyes. 2 Nice. This man is getting into the overflow. I have noticed that more of you are working longer, and not just because you have to. But one friend of mine is doing so in order to be in the overflow. He was tired of working for his partners and feeling the pressure of the job. He thought at first that he would find a second career that would be more meaningful. But as he explored his options, he realized that he really likes what he does, and he makes a good living doing it. So he left the firm he was with and joined another with less pressure. He loves getting up in the morning and doing what he s good at. But the difference now is that he doesn t need to make money for himself. He is working and doing what he does so that he can make money that he can contribute to ministries that he believes in. He sees this as God s gift to him that he can be in the overflow of God s economy. God gives him what he needs and so much more. And he now can give to others as an act of thanksgiving to God. No matter who you are, and no matter how much you make or have, you can get into the flow by being thankful to God for what you have. And by your generous giving, you can get into the overflow of God s work of grace in the world. Thanks and giving go together to make thanksgiving. Nothing delights the heart of God more than when we get into that flow. And nothing makes us more cheerful in our giving than when we are in the overflow of God s grace. If you don t know the truth of that in your own life, start thanking; then start giving /jason-brown-ravens-rams-nflcenter-farmer 5