Surrendered to Jesus
Notes
Transcript
*** S1: The Pig and the Chicken
A hen and a pig approached a church and read the advertised sermon topic: “What can we do to help the poor?” Immediately the hen suggested they feed them bacon and eggs. The pig thought for a moment and said, “There is only one thing wrong with feeding bacon and eggs to the poor. For you it requires only a contribution, but for me it requires total commitment!
When we talk about surrendering to Jesus, we're talking about total commitment. We're talking about going all in.
*** S2: Surrendering to Jesus
I surrendered to Jesus in a meaningful way on January 9, 1989, and I asked God to comfort me and fill me and restore my brokenness and take control of my life. I surrendered my life to Jesus years later in a way that changed where my family lived and how I lived out my calling. I surrendered to Jesus in the last couple of years, as I ended my association with a denomination I loved but could no longer defend. Throughout my life I've surrendered to Jesus various habits, practices, and attitudes, and I'm sure I'm not finished surrendering to Jesus.
But here's the thing. For all of the times I've surrendered something to Jesus, that hasn't always meant that I had crystal clarity about my life. I haven't always known what to do:
Do I serve God by teaching Hebrew, or do I serve God by preaching? I believe I was following the will of God by entering the church. Will God ever lead me back into higher education?What's the best way to support my kids? What's the best way to discipline my kids? I haven't always know the answer to these questions.What's the difference between true recreation and wasting time? I want to glorify God. How should I live?
Paul carries out his ministry with absolute conviction, a seemingly firm trajectory. He knows where he's going, he knows what he's doing.
Why is it that I get caught in a dozen different distractions, gravitating this way and that way, not always able to move forward into the next day, week, month, year with a firm sense of where I'm headed?
What does it mean to set a course, to stick with it for a lifetime?
*** S3: The train is off the tracks
You know what I'm talking about. How many times do our plans get derailed? How many times do we think we know what the future holds but then we're shaken out of our confidence.
The job we enjoyed so much suddenly changes. People start behaving passive-aggressively, or even actively aggressively, and the situation we had no intention of leaving a year ago now we find ourselves quite miserable in.
You made a promise for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish until parted by death. And something happened that you didn't see coming, something you never thought about as your wedding photos were being taken. Maybe there was a moral failure, maybe something you could only describe as irreconcilable differences, but now the life you'd dreamed of has gotten overturned and disrupted and it's hard to figure out where you're headed. And you've surrendered to Jesus but don't really know what that means for all the pieces of your life.
We experience loss: The death of a friend, a sibling, a spouse, a child. How do you keep going when your world looks nothing like you thought it would, when there's an empty chair at the table, when nobody's there to answer the phone when you just want to talk on a Tuesday morning?
Things happen beyond our control. We plan a trip and the country we're going to visit goes to war...
Our own health catches up to us. Sometimes the bad habits we've developed, sometimes genetics, sometimes chance.
What does it mean to be surrendered to Jesus when so much in life can't be anticipated?
*** S4: The Apostle Paul
Paul has a way of life he holds to, even when the future is unknown. Even when the unexpected happens. He's managed to arrive at a lifestyle he can apply to the situation in Miletus and live consistently with even as he travels to Jerusalem with its unknown circumstances.
*** S5
Look at how I've lived among you
Serving the Lord with humility, tears, and enduring trials
Teaching in public and in small groups
Repentance toward God, faith toward Jesus
Don't know what will happen in Jerusalem: But imprisonment and persecutions await...
But I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the good news of God’s grace.
*** S6
I will live an honorable life among people, finishing my course and my ministry from Jesus, always testifying to the good news of God's grace.
*** S7: Listen
Unless what matters to us is trust in the Lord and obedience to his calling, we are not surrendered to Jesus. And surrender to Jesus doesn't mean we know what the future looks like. It means we obey God and know that, whatever comes, the one who called us to faith and obedience is with us through it all.
Genesis 12:1 (NRSV)
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you...”
So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”
As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen.
And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”
Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him,
as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity.
*** S7: Get rid of the shallow notion that all our plans have to work out
*** S8: Focus on building a character that can endure in hard times and in pleasant times. Find the thing that matters--How has God called, equipped you to serve no matter what?
In his newspaper column called “Market Report,” Bill Barnhart once explained the difference between investors and traders in the stock market.“A trader in a stock,” writes Barnhart, “is making decisions minute-by-minute in the hope of shaving off profits measured in fractions of a dollar.… An investor, on the other hand, typically buys or sells a stock based on views about the company and the economy at large.”
In other words, traders are wheelers and dealers. They pursue short-term profits. Traders may have no confidence whatsoever in the companies in which they buy stock but they buy, smelling an immediate payoff.
By contrast, investors are in it for the long haul. They “chain themselves to the mast.” Investors commit their money to a stock, believing that over a period of years and even decades the stock will pay strong dividends and steadily grow in value. Investors aren’t flustered by the typical ups and downs of the market because they believe in the quality of the company, its leaders, and its product.
In the kingdom of God there are also investors and traders. They come to Christ with very different goals. Traders in the kingdom want God to improve their lot in this world. If following Christ means pain or hardship, they sell out.
But investors in the kingdom stay true to Christ no matter what happens in this world, knowing that eternal dividends await them.
Larson, C. B. (2002). 750 engaging illustrations for preachers, teachers & writers (pp. 68–69). Baker Books.
*** S9: Stay the course. Your character, using your gifts for the glory of God, no matter what
He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1.21)
We would be seen as peculiar people, committed to God through hardships and joys, knowing who we are and who God has called us to be.
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure... (2 Corinthians 4.16)
Hymnal #607
Hymnal #607