Hold on a moment….it’s gonna be just a second (as I
look at my phone). Oh, it’s taking
forever! Has that ever been you when it
comes to something you’re looking for on your phone or computer? If something
takes more than a few seconds to appear, does your irritation start to rise. Maybe it happens in the check-out line. You make your best guess for the fastest line. But then it happens. Someone in front of you
has an issue, like God forbid, a price check. And you see the other lines moving along as
you stand stranded in a line that is lasting forever. The injustice of it all!
Have you grown more impatient? It seems that everyone has, that it has gotten
harder to wait for well, most anything. Everything
in the world today seems to be about, going faster, acting quicker, seizing the
moment. But does that impatience really lead
you to success, to satisfaction, to a complete life? Or does the marshmallow
test tell a truer story?
In the late 60s and early 70s, the psychologist Walter
Mischel, came up with this interesting experiment. His researchers interviewed about 600 or so
preschoolers. During the interview, the researcher put a small marshmallow on
the table. He then told the child,
that if she waited until the researcher came back, she would get two
marshmallows. Some kids just went
ahead and ate the marshmallow. But a
number waited. They came up with ways to
distract themselves from looking at that marshmallow. They counted their toes. They covered their eyes. They even turned
their chair around to avoid seeing the marshmallow. Some even stroked the marshmallow like a
pet. But they waited for that second
marshmallow.
Mischel then tracked the kids who waited and those who
didn’t through high school, into college, even into middle age. And the ones who waited had higher SAT scores,
greater success in school and career.
They even had a better body mass index than those who didn’t. Waiting worked not only for that second
marshmallow but for the rest of their lives.
Yet,
the world can lead you to do the exact opposite. This world, with its bewilderingly fast pace,
can terrify you with the prospect of waiting too long, with missing out on the
opportunities you need to take. And
let’s be honest. Waiting might be
good. But you can’t wait forever. Life requires action. So, how do you know? How do you know when to move forward in a way
that gets you to where you truly need to be?
In these words written thousands of years ago, God shows you the
way. Let’s listen and hear what God has
to say.
This
world can drive you to move simply for the sake of moving. It can equate action with success. It tells you that a full schedule leads to a
complete life. But is that the way? Does action always mean success? If it doesn’t, how do you know when to act or
when to wait? What truly leads to a
complete life?
In
these words, God tells you. God says. Moving toward a complete life doesn’t begin
with you and it won’t end with you either.
God began that work, and if you are willing, God will complete it. But you have a role in that completion. It is letting God lead you to a place where
you act not out of fear but out of love.
Do
you know from where Paul was writing this letter to the church in Philippi? Paul was writing it from prison, a prison from
which he knew he would never leave. He
had begun this small community of Christians in Philippi not all that long
ago. And now he knows. He will never see them again. Yet Paul isn’t worried about their future,
about their ability to stick it out, to stand up for their faith.
Paul
understands. God began the work in them,
and God will finish it. And God doesn’t
need Paul to get that done. In fact,
Paul assures them with just those words.
The One who began a good work in you will bring it to completion in the
day of Jesus Christ.
And
what Paul says is of course true. When
you were born, did you choose your parents?
Did you pick the nation in which you were born? Heck, did you even choose your own name? No, all that work began, and you had nothing
to do with it. Nobody even consulted you.
Even
now, much of your life remains beyond your
control. And that’s a good
thing. Who wants to have to remember to
breathe or keep your heart beating.
Your body keeps countless things going, without any from you. And that works. Your lungs keep breathing. Your heart keeps
beating. Think about this. Last week, it was 80 or so degrees
outside. A few days ago, it was 40. But do you know that in the middle of those dramatic
changes, your body temperature hardly
changed at all? Your body did that,
without you even thinking about it. And that’s
amazing, miraculous even.
In
the same way, God maintains those physical systems, God is working to shape your
life, to make it more than you could have ever dreamed it to be. And that means in the seeming chaos of life, including
your life, God is working, working to make you complete, whole, everything God
intended you to be.
But
does that mean you do nothing, just let God do it all? It means that, no more than it means that
just because your body is taking care of all sorts of functions, that you have
no job there either. I mean. To keep that heart beating, you’ve got to
eat, to exercise, to rest, to do all sorts of things. And what is it that fuels God’s deeper work in
your life, God’s moving you to completion?
Paul points to it in his prayer for the Philippians. What does Paul pray for? Paul
writes this: And this is my prayer,
that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight. Why does he pray this? It’s because Paul says that is what will
produce the harvest.
Too often today when people act in their lives, they
act out of fear, out of anxiety. Sure, people
might be busy, that’s easy enough.
Anyone can be busy. But what are
you busy about? What drives you? If you let your inner fears, your personal
anxieties drive the movement in your life, then you will be moving, but you won’t
be going anywhere or at least anywhere good.
And sadly the world around us seems more caught up in that sort of
movement than anything else, grabbing the first marshmallow because they’re
afraid the second one will never come.
But God has a different vision, a different path, one
that leads you to completion, to becoming who God intended you to be. And that path leads you away from acting in
fear to acting out of love. And the
more love drives your decisions, the more God moves you toward completion,
towards becoming the person that God intended you to be. And in that love, God can do more in you, in
this world, than you could ever have imagined.
What does this look like? To take one example, it looks like over $11,000.00,
the largest Christmas offering in the church
where I serve’s history. God did that, but God did that through
countless people acting out of love. It
started, when I moved past my own fear, and made a call to a member with a bold
ask for a $5,000.00 match. I’d like to
tell you the call came easily, but I found myself getting “busy” with all sorts
of other tasks to avoid it. But then I
realized, that I wasn’t making that request, I was simply sharing what I sensed
God wanted. And if that member said no,
God would still love me as much after as before. So, I made that call, and that member
responded out of love. He and his wife
not only committed the money, they wrote the check even before we’d made the
match. But so many here responded that
the church blew that match away. And
because they did, God is going to do some great things through us in Puerto Rico,
in our county in Florida, Broward, and through the church’s own ministry.
In
this passage, God was reminding that church of two things. First, God began the work at First Church
long before any of the folks there now had gotten there. In fact, each week we worship in a building
that the generosity of others raised up around us, and most of the folks in our
congregation had nothing to do with that.
And what God began, God will complete, in ways that no one in our church
can see right now, but God will. As the
pastor, I see the challenges that lie before that church. But God
has brought this church through challenge after challenge in the past. And God
hasn’t changed. God can overcome the challenges
now just as God overcame them back then. And as God will work in that church, God will
work in your life.
But
for God to do that work, to move it towards completion, both in that church and
your life, God wants folks that don’t live in fear, but that act out of love. And when
we do that, God works. For example,
with First Church’s financial situation, our leaders could have limited that Christmas
offering only to meet the church’s needs.
But they didn’t. They said for every dollar that stays here for
ministry, we will send a dollar out to our community and world. They didn’t live in fear. They acted out of love. And God blessed that.
It’s
why that church invested funds to create a
website to share with the world what God is doing there. It’s why that church took a risk, and pulled
funds out of reserves to bring a new staff person, James
Potts, to share God’s love with families in our church and community. And when our church took that risk, God blessed
it. A member stepped up and gave everything
we needed to renovate an apartment in our building where James could live and
an office area where he could work. And
in the coming months, God will lead that church to take other bold steps. But, in those steps and in the steps that
you take, God wants you and I to remember that God is working always in ways
you and I can’t see. This is God’s work,
not ours. We don’t need to be driven by
fear in the decisions we make. We can be moved by love, love for the God who
gave out of love everything for us, even God’s very life. So
move into this New Year, not driven by fear, but moved by love. And as you enter that year, may that love move
you to love your neighbors, to love your community and world, and to love one
another as never before, to love even as God loves you. And as you do that, Jesus will stun you at
what he will complete in you, more than you could ever ask or dream or imagine!
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