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2013 Personal Goals

Sermon Series: Where to Next?

How many times have you started off a new year by setting some personal goals? I would guess that most of us probably start off each year with some things that we want to accomplish or do differently. We set goals and resolve to watch what we eat, exercise more often, get more rest, watch less television, read more, etc. Last year Amy and I set some pretty big goals for the two of us. Amy made it her goal to run a 5k last year, so she began the year by making time every week to go to the YMCA to run on the treadmill and worked to build up her cardiovascular endurance. By the time summer came around her hard work had paid off and she was ready. Then once it cooled off a little she signed up for, ran in, and completed her first 5k in October. Last year I made it my goal to do a triathlon. I don’t own a bike, I hadn’t swam more than about 30 feet at any given time in years, and I had never attempted to run more than 3 miles at once, so I don’t know what exactly I was thinking when I made that my goal. Still, I bought a new swim suit, some goggles, and started asking around about bikes that I could borrow. Then it was time to start training. I can still remember the first day in the pool. After 2 laps I was about to hyperventilate and I remember thinking to myself, “I’m never going to be able to do this.” But I stuck with it. The swimming started to come around; I started slowing increasing the distance that I was running; but I wasn’t really doing anything to prepare for the bike portion. I kept thinking, “How hard can the bike ride be? I hadn’t ridden a bike in years, but the phrase ‘It’s like riding a bike’ wasn’t coined for no reason, right?” Well I finally found a bike that I could borrow, complete with helmet and shoes that clipped into the pedals. I had never ridden a bike with shoes that clipped into the pedals but I have a good friend who is a bike riding enthusiast and he was quick to give me some pointers. The first thing he said that I needed to do was to take the bike into the house, prop myself between a door frame, and practice clipping my feet in and out of the pedals. Sounded easy enough. But he failed to tell me ‘how’ to unclip my feet from the pedals. So I brought the bike in the house one Sunday afternoon while my kids were napping, grabbed hold of the door frame, clipped my feet in . . . and then I realized I was stuck. I had no clue how to get the shoes unclipped. I didn’t have my phone on me and I couldn’t get off of the bike, so I had to swallow a lot of pride and call out to my wife to bring me my phone because I was stuck. To make a long story short, I eventually figured everything out, trained as best as I knew how, and then completed my first triathlon in the summer of last year.

I share that with you this week just to give an example of some personal goals that Amy and I set for ourselves last year. They were goals that we thought about, goals that we set, and goals that we determined we were willing to work towards. You can probably think about several examples from your own life of personal goals that you set and which you worked hard to accomplish. But what if someone else said to you this year that he was going to pick some of your personal goals for you; that he was going to determine what it is that you need to work on over the course of the next year? How would that make some of you feel? Some of you might respond positively. You might see it as a challenge and respond by really striving to accomplish those goals. Perhaps the person setting the goals saw greater potential in you and was pushing you to accomplish more. On the other hand, some of you might respond negatively. You might question the other person’s right to determine your goals, or you might think that the goals are too difficult to accomplish. As a result you might resent the individual, you might determine to give only a half-hearted effort, or you might determine not to give any effort at all. So take a deep breathe because here’s the news I have for you all this week – I’ve got some personal goals that I want you to strive after this year and they are goals that I want you to really go hard after over the course of the next 11 months. So my request this week is this: First, listen to and write these personal goals down. Second, prayerfully consider if you can honor and glorify God by pursuing these goals this year. And if so, then begin today to fervently pray for and strive after these things with the rest of us this year.

Concerning personal goals there are three specifics that I want us all to be fervently praying for and striving after in 2013. The first is the biggest one, the most difficult one, and the one which will play a significant part of us accomplishing the other two. So the first personal goal for each of us this year is to do a better job of daily dying to self.

Scripture is incredibly clear about the condition of our hearts and what happens when we don’t die to self and don’t allow Jesus to reign as King in our hearts. Listen to just a few verses that speak to this:

. . . for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” – Genesis 8:21

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” – Jeremiah 17:9

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” - Judges 17:6

We are extraordinary lovers of self! And to make things worse we live in a society that only encourages us to love ourselves more and more. Consider just a few examples: Advertisers are constantly encouraging us to spend our money on their products because they will make us happier or cause us to feel better about ourselves. Kids are given trophies and certificates for every activity they participate in because we don’t want to damage their self-esteem. Money, power and fame are highly sought after because of what it they can do for us. And the culture criticizes any stance that would condemn someone else’s personal preferences. The message that we hear over and over and over again is, “If it’s right for you, then do it.” But we have to be able to recognize the eternal danger of living life this way. When there is no king reigning in our lives the throne doesn’t go unoccupied – we sit ourselves down on it. Then we determine to live our lives based on what is right in our own eyes and in our own hearts. That is unbelievable dangerous because our hearts are – to use God’s descriptions – evil, deceitful, and desperately sick.

The Bible tells an unbelievable story though of a God who saw the sinfulness in the people He created, but who had rebelled against Him; who saw their hopeless and helpless condition; and who went to unimaginable lengths to rescue them from that condition. Our sin had separated us from God and the Bible tells us that it had made us His enemies who deserved to have His wrath poured out on us. But instead of immediately condemning us and sentencing us God sent His only Son, Jesus, to be our substitute (i.e. to take our place). Jesus made a way to rescue us from our debt to sin by paying our debt for us in full. Though Jesus was without any sin and wasn’t deserving of death or God’s wrath, Jesus chose to die on the cross and to have all of God’s wrath for sin poured out upon Himself, so that we wouldn’t have to endure it. He came to reconcile us to God (see Romans 5:6-11). Now God calls each of us to respond to that good news of salvation by His grace alone through the placing of our faith in Jesus alone – it’s what we call trusting in Jesus as Savior. But that’s not all we are called to do. God also calls us to follow after Jesus as our Lord and Master. He calls us to turn over control of the throne of our hearts to Jesus and to allow Him to daily rule and reign in our hearts. And the NT is very clear about how this has to happen as well. Listen to a few more verses:

For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” - Galatians 2:19-20

And calling the crowd to Him with His disciples, He said to them, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.’” – Mark 8:34-35 (also Matthew 16:24-25 and Luke 9:23-24)

Both Jesus and His apostles painted a very clear picture of what must happen in our own lives on a daily basis if we are going to be His followers and disciples – our ‘self’ has to die and it has to be removed from the throne of our lives. Then, and only then, can we turn control over to Jesus, allow Him to rule and reign, and live a life that is centered on Him. Listen there is only one throne in our hearts and lives and we are going to live to make much of whoever is sitting on that throne. Unfortunately, the heart-breaking thing that so many “believers in Christ” are doing is using Jesus to commit idolatry. You see they are sitting on the thrones of their lives worrying about what to do with their sin and the consequences that their sin brings. Then they hear that there is this guy who stood in their place as their substitute, who paid the penalty for their sin, and who freely offers them cleansing and forgiveness. So they run to Him with selfish desires and say, “I believe, now cleanse me!” Then, with a free conscience, they go back to living for themselves. They never had any intentions of surrendering to Jesus as Lord and Master. They simply came to Jesus to use Him – He was a means to the ends that they desired. Matt Chandler says this in his recent book, The Explicit Gospel, “It is still idolatry to want God for His benefits but not for Himself.” Do you get that?!?! When we don’t die to self and continue to occupy the throne of our lives and ask God to cleanse us of our sins, or to grant us this blessing, we are only looking to make our position on the throne of our lives more comfortable. That’s ‘self’ worship! That’s idolatry! We have to be pleading with God to help us die to ourselves, to help us love and treasure Him above all things, and to help us surrender the throne of our lives to Him – so that we are completely satisfied and fulfilled by nothing other than Himself.

The second personal goal that we need to be praying for and striving after in 2013 is a brokenness for the lost and a greater commitment to the Great Commission. Does your heart break for your close family and friends who don’t know Jesus as Savior and Lord? Does your heart break for your neighbor who isn’t involved in any church and hasn’t accepted any of your invitations to come to church with you? Does your heart break for the people you don’t even know who are around you in your classrooms, at the gym, at the grocery store, and at Wal-Mart, who may have no real idea about who Jesus is and what He did for them through His death, burial, and resurrection? If we are honest with ourselves many of us would have to answer ‘no’ because we don’t even slow down to give any consideration to their spiritual condition, much less be broken for them – we’re too busy living for ourselves. This isn’t at all the example that Jesus left for us; He did the opposite. Rather than forsaking others to look out for Himself, Jesus would often sacrifice His own needs/wants to look out for others. He loved all men, was broken by our spiritual condition, and was deeply committed to bringing us to saving faith in Him. Consider these two examples:

He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to Him, and He was teaching them. And as He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and He said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him. And as he reclined at table in his house many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and His disciples, for there were many who followed Him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that He was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to His disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ And when Jesus heard it, He said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’” - Mark 2:13-17 (also Matthew 9:9-13)

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When He saw the crowds, He had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.’” – Matthew 9:35-38 (also Mark 6:30-34)

Jesus, in response to a question asked by the Pharisees, likened Himself to a physician. He challenged the Pharisees to consider what good a physician would be if he didn’t have any concern for those who were sick. They knew the answer to that question. A physician who wasn’t concerned for the sick would be of little use because those who were healthy would have no need of him. Jesus was teaching them that He was spending time with these tax collectors and sinners because He understood their need, He was concerned for their need, and He could help them with their need.

In the Matthew 9 passage, Matthew says that Jesus looked on the crowds of people as He traveled from one city to the next and that “He had compassion for them.” While He was proclaiming the gospel He was observing that everywhere He went He was surrounded by those who were dead in their sin and in need of a Savior. The need was incredibly vast and broad. Multitudes of people near and far and from every corner of the world were in desperate need of rescue and Jesus’ heart was broken by that. So what was it that He instructed the disciples to do? Pray! The task was enormous and His disciples would never be able to carry out the task on their own. So He instructed His disciples to ask God to send more individuals who would proclaim salvation to those who needed it. And while you may not have ever realized it, Jesus’ disciples began praying that prayer for you and me. They were asking God to raise us up so that we too would have compassion for the lost around us and that we would be committed to going to them and taking the good news of Jesus to them.

We need to be asking God to make us more sensitive to the spiritual condition of those around us. We need to be asking Him to break our hearts for the spiritual condition of the lost in our lives – for our family and close friends, for our neighbors and co-workers, and for the strangers in our classrooms, in the restaurants we eat in, and in the stores we shop in. Then we need to ask God to help us be committed to making the good news of salvation through Jesus known to them.

The third personal goal that we need to be praying towards and striving after in 2013 is a greater commitment to personal growth in our relationship with Jesus. Listen carefully because you need to make sure that you hear clearly and understand this truth – being a Christian is more than going to church and being a good person. But unbelievably there are people in churches all over our community who think that Christianity consists of attending religious services with some regularity and not screwing up in major ways. Being a Christian is about having a personal relationship with Jesus, about growing in your love for Him, about growing in your understanding of Him, and growing in the image of Him. Simply showing up in a church building and hanging out there for an hour each week does not make you a Christian. The apostle Paul was always laboring to help people grow deeper in their love for, knowledge of, and reflection of Jesus. Listen to two examples from His letter to the church at Ephesus and the 1st letter to the church at Corinth.

And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by the every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from who the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” – Ephesians 4:11-16

When I was a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” - 1 Corinthians 13:11

Paul had an expectation that those who were disciples of Christ would be laboring to grow and mature in their relationship with Him. So let’s ask the question, “How are you doing in this area?” “Are you laboring to grow and mature in your relationship with Jesus?” Our knee-jerk reaction is to probably immediately answer ‘yes.’ So let me follow up with another question, “How are you laboring to grow and mature in your relationship with Jesus?” Are you working hard to make sure you are spending time reading the Bible and praying every day? Mature Christians develop lifelong habits of Bible reading and prayer. Are you setting aside time each week to meet with another person to encourage you, pray for you, and push you in your faith? Are you growing in your understanding of Scripture and of God by reading books written by wise and godly men and women who want to help you grow? If I want my muscles to get bigger I’ve got to work them. I have to run. I have to lift weights. I have stretch. My muscles will never grow if all I do is sit lazily on the couch day after day and do nothing. Friend, the same is true for your relationship with God. You won’t see any growth in your relationship with Jesus and in your reflection of Jesus if you aren’t doing anything to help yourself grow. Let me be clear, I’m not asking you all to become scholars and theologians by the end of 2013. I’m not asking you to have mastered the Greek or Hebrew language by the end of the year. But how many of us failed to read even one book last year? I want you guys to be able to look back at the end of 2013 and see that you have grown in your faith from where you were at the end of 2012. I want to encourage you in the same way that Paul encouraged the church at Ephesus and the church at Corinth to be growing. But it will only happen if we commit to working toward personal growth in our relationship with Jesus.

Connection Point Questions for Discussion:

1. Of the three personal goals that we were challenged with this week, was there one that stood out to you more  than the others as one that you really want to work on?  If so, why?

2. Of the three personal goals that we were challenged with this week, which one makes you the most uneasy and why?

3. What are some things you can do (or need to do) this year to grow in your personal relationship with Jesus (some suggestions given were setting aside time daily for Bible reading and prayer, regularly meeting with someone one-on-one, and reading books that can help us to grow in our faith).

4. What is the likelihood of us forgetting these goals as we get further and further into 2013? How can we realistically  encourage one another to be committed to these goals and to be striving after these things throughout the year?

 

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