Lifestyle

Experiencing Abundance, Part Three

John 10:10

Most of you know that a group of our men have recently returned from our latest mission trip to Mexico. While we were there, we built 2 homes and did an “Extreme Home Makeover” of a third. As He always does, God blessed us in ways we never could have anticipated.

As is our tradition, we had dinner on our first night in Mexico at our favorite roadside taco stand, Poblanos (don my hat). Mid-way through the dinner, a young man came running up to our group. I recognized him immediately. Jesus, now 16 years old, and his family were the recipients of one of the very first homes we built in Mexico 6 years ago. He had learned from our missionary friends that we were coming to town and he had come to the taco stand to see us.

I’ll never forget the first glimpse I had of his family all of those years ago. The 5 of them…his mother, Lupita; older brother, Jose; younger sister, Sarai and younger brother Emmanuel were living in an abandoned camper shell on the edge of a cliff. As our van pulled up, little Emmanuel…3 years old and afflicted with Down’s Syndrome, stuck his smiling face out of the tiny window at the front of the camper shell.

After 20 minutes of catching up at the taco stand, I told Jesus I wanted to see his family so off we went. As we walked into the little house we had built for them years ago, Lupita gave me a big hug and then she shared an amazing testimony that had all of us in tears.

She told us that before we built the house for them she used to pray everyday that God would bless them with a home. And she knew that one day He would answer her prayers. She shared her confidence in God with her neighbors, but they all laughed at her. They looked down their noses at her and made fun of her. Not only was she living in a rusted out camper shell, it was on a completely unusable piece of ground hanging off a cliff. She was the joke of the neighborhood.

She said, “And then one day you drove up and built me a house. God answered my prayers like I always knew He would. And the whole neighborhood saw it happen. And over the past 6 years a great spirit of repentance has swept through this neighborhood. One by one my neighbors have come to know my God.”

All we did was build a house. God used that house to change a neighborhood. And, folks, that’s not unusual. That’s our God. He’s a God of great abundance. And as we’ve seen these last few weeks, His passionate desire is to pour His abundance into our lives. He wants to lead us to and then secure us in that place where we can personally and consistently experience the free flowing abundance of His grace and His blessing.

In fact, He’s so passionate in that desire that He sent Jesus into the world to make it possible. In John 10:10 Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Or, as some translations read, “life in all its fullness.” That’s God’s desire for every one of us.

But we’ve also discovered in these past weeks, that God’s desire for us will go unfulfilled if we allow sin to take root in our lives, because sin separates us from God, the source and hope of our abundance. Isaiah 59:2 says it like this, “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”

So, because the lingering presence of sin in the life of a Christian stifles the flow of God’s abundance into our lives, we’ve been doing a very difficult thing recently…we’ve been looking at some of the ways in which sin can so subtly work itself into our lives that we may not even recognize it for the sin that it is.

A couple of weeks ago, for instance, we looked at sins that happen not so much as a result of the things we do, but rather the things we think. Romans 12:2 tells us that God’s desire is to transform our thought processes so that our minds are filled with the kinds of thoughts that are pleasing to God; thoughts that are consistent with the purposes that God is working to accomplish in us.

You say, “Well, I can’t keep bad thoughts from popping up in my mind. Sometimes they just pop up.”

And that’s right. Sometimes they just pop up. But you don’t have to dwell on them. So, 2 Corinthians 10:5 says that the moment a thought that is in any way contrary to the abundant life that God desires for us, begins to creep into our minds, we are to take immediate and decisive action to take that thought captive…to stop that thought in it’s tracks so that we can continue to experience the abundant life.

The bottom line, here, is that there are some thoughts that just have no place in the heart and mind of a child of God. They are sinful thoughts that stifle rather than invite God’s abundance. In the same way, there are also some attitudes that have no place in the heart and mind of child of God. They are sinful attitudes that stifle rather than invite God’s abundance. And it’s these sinful attitudes that I want us to consider, this morning.

Now, what exactly is an “attitude?” An attitude is simply a mental disposition or orientation that governs the way that we respond to and interpret situations.

--Some attitudes encourage us to respond to and interpret situations in a Christ-like way; a way that is consistent with the mind, the character and the purposes of Christ. And as, Christians we want to foster those kinds of attitudes.

--But there are other attitudes that predispose us to respond to and interpret situations in ways that are anything but Christ-like. These are attitudes that are rooted in and fueled by our sinful nature and the only appropriate thing to do with these kinds of attitudes is to confess them for the sin that they are, repent of them and then ask God to drive them completely out of our lives.

We don’t have time, this morning, to compile an exhaustive list of these sinful attitudes but let’s identify a few of them.

Let’s begin with the attitude called, prejudice. What an awful, distasteful, disgusting, hateful, un-Christ-like thing it is for a child of God to treat another person…loved by God…with contempt, scorn, disrespect or condescension simply because their skin happens to be a different color, or they speak with an accent or they come from a different class of people. I think it absolutely breaks the heart of God when we allow pre-established, pre-conceived, negative judgments to influence the way we treat or relate to someone. I have to believe that it breaks God’s heart, because I know that it breaks mine.

James 2:1 makes God’s position crystal clear, “My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism.” The Greek words translated there as, “don’t show favoritism,” literally means, “don’t lift up the face.” It means, don’t allow your treatment of another person to be influenced by their outward appearance. It doesn’t matter to God and, as God’s children, it must not matter to us. God has not given us the right to establish different standards of treatment toward different kinds of people based upon how like or unlike us they happen to be.

John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the WORLD that he gave his one and only Son, that WHOEVER believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus didn’t die for some people. He died for all people. God doesn’t love some people, He loves all people. And for us to do anything less is sin. In any form, prejudice is sin. And the only way to deal with sin is to confess it, repent of it and humbly ask for God’s forgiveness.

“Oh, Father, I’ve done an awful thing. I have regarded these people that you dearly love as inferior; second class citizens. Father, I’ve sinned. Please, forgive me.”
Another sinful attitude that has no place in our lives as God’s children and yet can so easily work itself into our lives is materialism. Being so concerned with, attracted to and focused on the stuff of this world that it distracts our focus from the things of God. This is, without a doubt, one of the grand sins plaguing contemporary Christians.

We are blessed to live at a level of affluence that most of the world cannot even imagine. But instead of leading us to contentment, for the most part, what it seems to have led us to is an insatiable desire for more and more stuff.

Instead of allowing the wisdom of God’s counsel through His word and the Holy Spirit to guide us along that path that let’s us fully enjoy our material blessings while still being fully faithful to God, far too many of us have rejected God’s counsel, disobeyed God’s commands, ignored God’s warnings and wholeheartedly embraced the lie of materialism. And the consequences have been devastating.

--Our families and marriages are strained to the breaking point by our increasing debt.

--We’re working such long hours to pay for all this stuff that we don’t have time to pray, to study God’s word or to serve Him in the ministries of the church.

--We are likely the wealthiest generation of Christians ever and still many of us regularly rob God of the tithes and offerings that rightfully belong to Him and resent it when the pastor points it out. Even though God’s word is very clear about the sin of materialism.

1 John 2:15-17 is stunningly harsh in its assessment of this sin. It says, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

“But, Pastor Tom, that preacher on TV told me that God wants me to be rich, that God wants me to have a bigger house, that God wants me to drive an expensive new car. In fact, he said that God doesn’t want me to be satisfied with anything less than the newest and best of everything.”

et me be real clear about this—that preacher lied. That preacher misrepresented God word and God’s will. Turn him off. Open God’s word and read it for yourself. Start with Hebrews 13:5, which says this, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have…”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with having nice stuff or wanting a better lifestyle. But we need to recognize that this is an area of our lives in which we can easily be deceived. So, ask God regularly to examine your heart to make sure that your relationship to the things of the world is not only right in your eyes, but its also right in the eyes of God.

While there are any number of additional sinful attitudes that would be worth our attention, I want to end with one that, according to God’s own word, He finds especially offensive. It’s the sin of complacency. Spiritual complacency. Being lackadaisical about our relationship with God. Being content with the status quo. It describes a relationship with God that’s completely lacking in any kind of excitement, enthusiasm, fervency or zeal. And when we allow complacency into our relationship with God, it makes God sick. Revelation 3:15-16 God says, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

I don’t know anyone who starts out complacent in their relationship with God. But I know a whole bunch of people who started out on fire for God and eventually the fire went out and they became lukewarm. And, then, they got comfortable being lukewarm and now they’ve been there for years. So how are you doing? On a scale of 1-10, how passionate is your relationship with God? How hot is the fire in your spiritual belly?

--Are you passionate about prayer?
--Are you enthusiastic about studying God’s word?
--Do you love to worship and praise God?
--Are you fired up about the ministries you’re involved in?
--Are you excited about using your spiritual gifts to the fullest?
--Are you chomping at the bit to go on that next mission trip?
--Do you love to tell people about Jesus?
--Are you fired up about the new things that God is teaching you and new growth He’s producing in you?

If not, would you like to be? Would you like your relationship with God to be characterized by fire and passion? That’s what God wants for you. He wants it so much that He sent Jesus to make “abundance” the norm for His children and free us from any hint of complacency. That’s what God wants for you. Do you want it for you? Are you willing to coast along in spiritual complacency…year after year after year…or would do you want to be on fire for God?

Folks, spiritual passion is not something you have to work up on your own. It’s a gift of God’s Spirit that God freely gives to those who really want it. How long has it been since you asked God to set your heart on fire for Him? Have you ever asked Him to do that?

James 4:2 says, “You do not have, because you do not ask God.” Folks, ask Him. Ask Him to light a fire in your heart. This is a prayer that God loves to answer. Ezekiel 36:26 God says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you…” Folks, ask Him to do it. Don’t settle for a lukewarm relationship with a God of abundance. Don’t settle for the house, when God wants to transform your entire spiritual neighborhood. Ask Him to do it. Ask Him now.