Series: Unpack Your Bag, #1 Text: Jer. 29:10, 11; I Cor. 12:7, 11, 14-20 Valley Community Baptist Church Sept. 12, 13; 2009 Avon, CT Pastor Jay Abramson God Made You to Live in Your Sweet Spot Mick Jagger, the lead singer of the Rolling Stones, wrote the lyrics in 1965 to what has become for many people the anthem of their lives I Can t Get No Satisfaction. Have you been feeling that way lately? As the unemployment rate pushes toward 10%, are you staying in your job because you need it or because you love it? - 25% of Americans say their job is the number 1 stress producer in their lives. - 43% of employees feel anger toward their employer often or very often. 1 Or, how about at home? Do you just love leaving work so you can get home where it s always peaceful and calm? Of the top ten causes of stress, two are work related and six are related to relationships at home. 2 Apparently a lot of people are singing right along with the Stones. Over the next seven weeks, we re going to examine this Sweet Spot idea. What is it? How can I find it? What keeps me from experiencing it? And, what will it do for me once I find it? We begin today with a two part introduction: What are the obstacles to my finding my sweet spot and what are the road signs to take me there? First I. What Are the Obstacles to My Finding the Satisfied Life? The metaphor of life as a journey makes a lot of sense to me and I believe it s very biblical as well. Jesus said, Follow me. Jesus said, I am the way The primary story of the Old Testament is a journey story, the Exodus. And God said to His people through Moses, I will put my dwelling place (tabernacle) among you... I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. (Lev. 26:11, 12) So, seeing life as a journey is completely biblical and legitimate. Now, when you ve traveled for business or pleasure, what obstacles have you faced? I d say one of the biggest obstacles has to be lost luggage, right? Is there anything worse than that? You get to Dallas just fine but your clothes or your equipment goes to LA. Even if it eventually is returned (which is no sure thing!), by the time you get it, you don t need it! What about in your spiritual journey? Do you have your luggage? Do you have what you need to thrive spiritually - food for strength, tools to do your work, medicine to deal with sickness or disease? Do you have your luggage? Friends, this is what we re talking about when we speak of our Communities, Bible Studies or Small Groups this Fall. These groups are where you find your luggage. It s in these groups where you will get spiritual food for strength, spiritual tools so that you ll be equipped for your work and medicine to deal with all the varieties of illness that attack travelers. Just attending worship and going home is like going on a trip with one change of underwear. If that s your only luggage, you re going to be doing laundry in the bathtub before the next week rolls around! Instead, why not join one of our Communities for the next seven weeks and see if you aren t better nourished, better equipped for the spiritual work you encounter during the week and see if you don t have the proper medicine to deal with all the headaches that 1
come your way. Whether it s a Community, a Woman s Bible Study, Men s Fraternity or whatever, you ve got to have the right luggage to travel well. A second obstacle to having a successful and satisfying life-journey is getting the Wrong Luggage. Have you noticed how many suitcases these days are black? You think you know your own suitcase until you see 300 hundred suitcases going around the baggage claim carousel, all exactly the same color as yours! And have you ever taken a suitcase that you were sure was yours, only to get to the hotel and find somebody else s stuff in YOUR suitcase! How did that happen? Wearing size 34 pants when you have a 44 waist, just isn t going to work, is it? And nobody that I know is even going to think about using somebody else s toothbrush! So then, why do we try to get people to live out of somebody else s SPIRITUAL suitcase? You say, Oh, I would never do that! Really? Max Lucado gives a few examples. A dad says to his son, Your great-granddad was a farmer. Your granddad was a farmer. I m a farmer. And you, my son, will someday inherit this farm. A successful business woman says to her daughter who dreams about staying at home and raising kids, Don t squander your skills! With your gifts you could make it to the top. The professional world is the way to go. Or a pastor can even try to assign luggage from the pulpit. God seeks worldchanging missionaries. Jesus was a missionary. Do you want to please your Maker? [Then] spend your life on foreign soil. 3 Is there something wrong with being a farmer or a business woman or a missionary? Absolutely not, unless you were made to be something else. If you try to live your life out of someone else s luggage, no matter how holy that other person may be, it s simply not going to bring satisfaction to you or glory to God. Lost luggage and the wrong luggage are two huge obstacles to us finding our sweet spot. God has a good plan for your life. He says that over and over again but no place more clearly than Jeremiah 29. Here, God is speaking to people who haven t just lost their luggage, they threw their luggage away. They threw away a whole country that God had provided for them by totally rebelling against God. Now, exiled in a foreign land God tells them: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:10, 11) You see, even if you ve messed up royally. Even if you at one time had your spiritual luggage and through stupidity, lost it or through rebellion, threw it away; God will not abandon you. He has plans for you and they are good plans plans to give you hope and a future. He wants to bring you back from your spiritual exile. Will you let Him do that? It can all begin today if you will simply say to Him, Yes LORD, I m sorry for what I ve done. Bring me back. This is the first necessary step to finding your sweet spot. Why not take it right now? Secondly, we need to ask II. What Are the Road Signs that Lead Us to the Sweet Spot of a Satisfied Life? The first road sign is: Your Uniqueness. No two snowflakes are identical. No two sunsets are exactly the same. No two people have the same fingerprints, DNA or retina. Are you getting the idea that God likes variety? None of this came about by accident but rather by design. Why do workmen have dozens of different tools in their tool boxes? 2
Because each tool is designed for a different task. Screwdrivers are fantastic for driving screws but lousy at pounding nails. So, why did God design you the way He did? And He most certainly DID design you! Listen: For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Ps. 139:13, 14) Do you KNOW that? I don t mean, have you heard that. I mean, do you KNOW that? The enemy of God wants you to believe that you are an accident, a fluke, a random collection of spare parts thrown together by cosmic chaos. Friends, it s not true! You were fearfully and wonderfully made by a Master Designer. He created you to fit into a specific purpose in life as exactly as a Phillip s screwdriver is made for a Phillip s head screw. In our text by Max Lucado, he quotes Eph. 5:17 from The Message, which says: Don t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants. Then, Max adds: You can do something no one else can do in a fashion no one else can do it. Exploring and extracting your uniqueness excites you, honors God, and expands his kingdom. 4 The first road sign leading to your sweet spot is your own uniqueness. The second road sign is: Your Context. It s one thing to know what God has packed in your bag and it s another thing to know where to use it. The apostle Paul s description of the part s of the human body each being unique and yet all being a subset of something larger, called the body, is another way of saying that each part must do it s part IN THE CONTEXT where it was designed to do it. Each was designed for a unique role in a unique context: God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. (I Cor. 12:18) You re a Christian, you know your gifts, your strengths, your weaknesses you know what God has placed in your bag. But, do you know where to use them? Eyes don t belong at the end of your fingers they couldn t see well there and it would prevent your hand from doing its work. Ears wouldn t work well on your feet, inside your shoes. Each part has a certain context where it works best. What s the best context for you? Over these seven weeks, we ll help you discover what context works best for you. The last road sign to help us find our sweet spot is His Glory. Your uniqueness and your context are the result of His creative work designing your life. His glory is the result of His character. When you use your uniqueness and your context to give God Glory, both you and God will be fully satisfied. In other words, when these three realities come together (what you do, where you do it, why you do it) THAT is your sweet spot. Now, over the next seven weeks, we re going to be studying all this in much greater detail, but let me conclude with a story of someone today who has found his sweet spot and is living in it. His face was on the cover of Sports Illustrated July 27 th of this year. His name is Tim Tebow, the quarterback for the National Champion college football team, the Florida Gators. By the world s standards, Tim really has it made. He s won the national 3
championship twice already and he s still got another year left to play. He won the Heisman trophy, the highest award in college football, in 2007 and his success in the NFL (where he will make gazillions of dollars) is virtually assured. But football for Tim Tebow is not the end, it s the means to an end. For Tim Tebow, football is just one context in which he can use his physical gifts and desire to compete. And the awards and National championships prove that he does that very, very well. But football for Tim is just a means to a greater end, a greater context where he competes for a greater prize the souls of men and women. On his way to speak to 660 prisoners in the Lawtey Correctional Institution in Florida, Tim told the Sport s Illustrated reporter, It s one of my favorite things to do. You re talking to guys who have no hope, no support, who have been totally written off by the world. Going to prison is one of his favorite things to do? How can that be? On this particular night, fourteen inmates responded to Tebow s invitation to become followers of Jesus Christ. He seemed more excited about that than when he won the national championship. The SI reporter observed, The more incorrigible the inmate, the more Tebow relishes the chance to save him. How did a 20 something college kid get such a mature view of life? It started early. Tim was born to Christian missionary parents in the Philippines. Tim s mom s pregnancy was so difficult and risky, the doctor advised her to abort the baby. She refused. Tim s missionary dad, Bob says, All his life, from the moment he could understand, I told him, You re a miracle baby. God s got a purpose for you, and at some point I think He s going to call you to preach. Then Tim s dad smiles and says, I asked God for a preacher, and he gave me a quarterback! Tim goes back to the Philippines every summer to help his dad with the work there. His dad s ministry now has a staff of 45 Filipino pastors who have preached the gospel to more than 15 million people, started 10,000 churches and opened an orphanage that houses 50 children. And Tim, now takes many of his Gator teammates with him. His coach, Urban Meyer, says Tebow s impact on the team has been phenomenal. And the impact hasn t just been on the team, but even on Meyer himself. Last summer, Coach Meyer and his family, inspired by Tebow s work, participated in a mission trip to the Dominican Republic. Meyer s family was deeply moved by the experience. He said, Tim has done a lot of things to open my eyes and that s one of them. On the way home from the Lawtey Prison, Tim is already talking to the teammates he dragged there with him, about going to the Gainesville prison to speak to the guys there who are on death row. He tells the SI reporter, You should come with us to death row. It s gonna be great! That same reporter concludes, Having covered Tim for three years, I would say he s the most effective ambassador-warrior for his faith I ve come across in 25 years at SI. 5 What makes Tim Tebow so effective? He knows his uniqueness, that he was created by God for a specific purpose. And he knows the context in which his gifts can best be used. But most of all, he does it all for the glory of Jesus Christ, not for the glory of Tim Tebow. You can experience the same level of effectiveness in life as Tim Tebow. The Bible says that throughout our lives we have the opportunity to secure crowns from our work on earth. There are all different kinds of crowns for all different kinds of work. There are 4
Crowns for leaders: Be shepherds of God s flock that is under your care and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. (I Peter 5:2a, 4) Crowns for those who persevere, resist temptation or simply endure suffering: Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. (James 1:12) Crowns for those who lead others to become Followers of Christ: For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy. (I Thess. 2:19) Your work in this world, done for Christ and His kingdom will earn you a crown. And what s the crown for? Do we get crowns so we can strut around heaven showing off our great works for Christ? Do you get a bigger mansion based on the number of crowns you have? NO! No! A Thousand times no! Rev. 4 tells us what the crowns are for: Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne (Rev. 4:9, 10) The Greek here literally says, They CAST their crowns, they throw them at his feet. Friends, listen to me carefully. One day, every one here will stand before this throne. At that moment, you will have one burning desire in your heart, only one. You will say, Oh, that I had another crown to throw! Now I see it! Now I see what my purpose was on earth. It was about giving greater glory to Christ. Oh, that I had another crown to cast at His feet! I want to: Crown Him with many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne Hark, how the heavenly anthem drowns all music but it s own. Awake my soul and sing, of Him who died for Thee And hail Him as thy matchless King, thro all eternity. Friends, this is what the next seven weeks is all about. We don t want anyone to show up at the throne of Christ empty handed. We want to help you decide to gather crowns now, in whatever years you have left so that on that day you may fulfill your hearts desire and your purpose in life and Crown Him with many crowns! Let s pray 1 Max Lucado, Cure for the Common Life (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005), p. 15 2 Holmes-Rahe Stress Test 3 Ibid. page 14 4 Ibid. page 19 5 Austin Murphy, Sport s Illustrated, July 27, 2009, pp.56-63 5