[header size= “1” type= “single”] You’re Moving, but Are You Going Anywhere?[/header]
Text: Proverbs 9:1-6 (MSG)
Lady Wisdom has built and furnished her home;
it’s supported by seven hewn timbers.
The banquet meal is ready to be served: lamb roasted,
wine poured out, table set with silver and flowers.
Having dismissed her serving maids,
Lady Wisdom goes to town, stands in a prominent place,
and invites everyone within sound of her voice:
“Are you confused about life, don’t know what’s going on?
Come with me, oh come, have dinner with me!
I’ve prepared a wonderful spread—fresh-baked bread,
roast lamb, carefully selected wines.
Leave your impoverished confusion and live!
Walk up the street to a life with meaning.”
Proverbs 9:13-18 (MSG)
13-18Then there’s this other woman, Madame (FOOL)—
brazen, empty-headed, frivolous.
She sits on the front porch
of her house on Main Street,
As people walk by, minding
their own business, calls out,
“Are you confused about life, don’t know what’s going on?
Steal off with me; I’ll show you a good time!
No one will ever know—I’ll give you the time of your life.”
But they don’t know about all the skeletons in her closet,
that all her guests end up in hell.
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the merry go round of life, seems fun, exciting and thrilling, and it seems like everyone is on it. However, it’s very empty because although its moving, its not really going anywhere.
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The idea of the merry-go-round is to help us understand that a world of constant movement and activity highly influences us. It seems that busyness is our solution to everything. This series of blogs is an attempt to help us see that although the merry-go-round of life seems fun, exciting, and thrilling, and it seems like everyone is on it, it is empty because although it’s moving, it’s not going anywhere.
It’s a life filled with things but not the right things. It’s climbing the ladder to the top but then realizing it’s leaning against the wrong wall. It is constant movement with little progress.
Writing these blogs and speaking on this subject has brought about some profound changes in my own life. It’s those changes and the results of those changes that have prompted me to continue to write on this subject and bring some solutions to the problem.
The saddest part about the merry-go-round life is that it keeps our priorities out of place. We spend loads of time planning our time but not planning our priorities. We are putting the urgent, unimportant things first and the nonurgent, essential things last. So yes, we are busy, yes, we are moving, and yes, we are active, even overactive, but for all that, we are just going in circles. We are not moving forward in life.
So what are we to do?
We need to identify the Merry Go Round.
What does it look like?
What are its results?
How does it get us?
2. We need to identify the problems with it.
1. Why is it a problem?
2. what is the fruit it bears?
3. Is it that big of a deal?
3. Figure out what we are benefitting from it.
1. Why are so many on the merry-go-round?
2. Why does it seem so hard to get off of it?
3. Why, when we try to get off, it pulls us right back on?
4. Identify how to get off and stay off
1. Are there steps?
2. What do we have to do to accomplish this?
3. is there a formula, model, or program that we can do to stop this madness?
In identifying all of this, the first conclusion I come to is that living the merry-go-round is a strategy of our spiritual enemy to keep us so involved and active that we are not Maintaining our spiritual priorities.
Deceptive: Because the round is so tricky, meaning it seems like we are moving, but we aren’t making progress, it causes those on it to deceive themselves.
> I’ve heard people say, I don’t need to go to church; I am a believer and have a relationship with Jesus; I am too busy to go to church consistently; I am the church, and anywhere I am, I can have church. This is deception: We have convinced ourselves of things that are not in the Bible by saying to ourselves, “It’s OK because I love Jesus. However, Jesus said that the proof of our love for him is when we obey him.
>We fail to pray and seek the face of God because of busyness, even sometimes busy doing good things. We say to ourselves well, I don’t need to pray all the time; I don’t want to be legalistic. Here, we find ourselves using religious terms to justify a confusion of priorities and to Justify our wall-to-wall busyness.
>We are not studying the word like we should, and we say we don’t have time.
The average person watches TV a week
2-11: 24 hours, 16 minutes.
12-17: 20 hours, 41 minutes.
18-24: 22 hours, 27 minutes.
25-34: 27 hours, 36 minutes.
35-49: 33 hours, 40 minutes.
50-64: 43 hours, 56 minutes.
65-plus: 50 hours, 34 minutes.
We categorize active church attendees now as people who attend church on 3 out of 8 Sundays. However, even if people came to every church service we have in a year, that is only 52. So, at 1.5 hours in church, if you came all 52 and didn’t even take a vacation, that would only be 78 hours a year.
The average person 35-49 years of age watches 1,716 hours a year. That’s 33 hours a week. Seven hours short of a work week. So, if Sunday is a worship and rest day, that’s very little worship and very little rest.
According to research done by Lifeway, only 19% of church-going believers read their Bible daily.
>If we don’t have time to go to church, pray, or study the word, it’s no wonder our lives lack spiritual depth and strong faith. It’s no wonder the Moral fabric of our nation and our homes are suffering. No wonder we are struggling to teach our kids right from wrong and keep them on a path that will minimize the trouble and sin in their lives.
We are so busy making a career that we barely see our families.
We are so busy with activities with our kids that we are losing our marriage, and we don’t realize it.
We are so busy socially that we are losing our spirituality, and the compelling question is, for what?
Will we have anything worth having left at the end of the day?
The solution to this is not spinning the Merry go round faster.
The solution to getting our kids to find purpose and live out their faith is not to speed their lives up or add more things for them to do. The answer is to help them find meaning and destiny through a relationship with Jesus and let them know that the grace of God gives them the power to fulfill everything God created them for.
>I have personally made some changes in my life as a result of close evaluation and introspection. In other words, I got honest with myself.
>In all my attempts to be a great Pastor, a great father, a great husband, a great friend, a great leader, and a great communicator, I found myself leaning on my abilities and capabilities to achieve things that will only be achieved by trusting God. The continued riding of this merry-go-round increases the frustration and discontentment.
>The question we need to ask is why we end up on the merry-go-round.
Restlessness.
Discontentment.
Status
Searching for success
A need to belong with everyone else.
We are supposed to be different.
Romans 12:2 (MSG)
Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you and develops well-formed maturity in you.
The butterfly: Caterpillar – cocoon – Butterfly
The answer is always to fix your attention on God.
I found myself running, moving, adding more and more to my plate, only to become more frustrated.
The answer is not more, more, faster, faster, higher, higher.
Not more complicated, but more simple.
Not more activity, but suitable action.
Not more tasks but the proper functions.
This new way of living for me is not about doing nothing, but it’s about doing the right things.
It’s not about emptying our lives of anything; it’s about opening our lives of the unimportant so we can live out the important.
What we have done is change the definition of essential.
We used to understand that rest is essential, but now it’s just a waste of time.
We used to understand that Prayer, Bible study, and church were high priorities, but now we consign that to others and then try to pick up what we can from them, saying to ourselves I don’t have time.
We used to understand that sitting down with our family just talking about life was essential; now, we are busy running around with our families, convincing ourselves that somewhere in the hustle and bustle, the crucial things our kids need to know are getting through. Our role with our kids has become the keeper of the calendar, not the Protector of the Priorities.
We used to understand that dating, communicating, nurturing, and encouraging our spouse was incredibly important. Now, we have convinced ourselves that if we have sex in the time we left over, we are doing alright.
So what changed with me? My focus.
From Getting THINGS DONE to loving people.
From Striving to provide a good life for my family to giving my family my life.
From running from one thing after another to the point that I didn’t have time to hear from God to Stopping everything, creating a margin, and getting quiet before God.
****Some of us can’t hear the still, small whispers of God’s voice because of the roar of all of the demands, schedules, expectations, and activities requiring all of our attention.
From allowing people to make me their source to pointing people to God and each other for personal growth.
>Getting off the merry-go-round is just saying I’ve had enough. I am not letting things, people, my stubbornness, schedules, or out-of-balance living steal my life from me anymore.
If God were to call many of us out to do something significant with our lives right now, we would be too busy. We would be too financially strapped to do it.
So what do we do?
We need to make some hard decisions.
Return to our first love spiritually.
Have the courage to face the backlash.
Make God’s priorities for us, our true priorities, no more excuses, and no more deceit.
Realize the things you think you will miss out on are the things that are making you miss out on the essential things in life.
Live for God’s purpose, not man’s approval.
Be honest about what the Merry go round gives you, and deal with your motives.
In the next two weeks, I will bring practical practices that will get you off the merry-go-round and keep you off the merry-go-round.
Be here and bring some friends with you, and believe God to help us refocus for 2016, which could be the best year yet.
