Over 70% of our nation has gotten at least one of
these amazing shots with, for the most part, minimal side effects And, yet almost a hundred million, including
about half of Florida, still haven’t gotten it.
Maybe they distrust the government or drug companies because of those
institutions’ sins in the past. Maybe
they read an article online that led them to think something that isn’t
true. Maybe they don’t think that folks
are even getting sick or that they could.
At least they don’t think that, until they get sick, until
they are struggling for breath, until that breathing tube goes down their
throat. And yes, I know. The virus caused that. But it didn’t begin there. It began with thoughts that literally
disconnected folks from reality, a reality that as of this past week has put
over 15,000 Floridians in the hospital, fighting for their life. And their vulnerability to this virus began
in their head. It began with their
thoughts, thoughts that prevented them from doing the one thing, vaccination,
that almost certainly would have saved them from the suffering, even death that
awaits them now.
But even if you’re vaccinated, even if you had the
right thoughts there, has that always been the case? How often in your life has messed up
thinking messed up your life? Maybe
your thoughts led you to trust the wrong person or to distrust the right
one. Maybe it led you into fears that
limited your life or into actions that crashed it. There’s no end honestly to how wrong thinking
can wreck your life.
But what if your thoughts are moving in the right
direction? What if your thinking doesn’t
contradict reality, but lives in the flow of it? How much more powerful and fulfilled would
your life be with that thinking? But how
does that happen? Where do you even
begin? In these words, God shows you the
way. Let’s listen and hear what God has
to say.
Wrong thinking has the power to wreck your life. Why?
Your thoughts power your life, even control it, in ways nothing else
does. The leadership guru John Maxwell
put it well. The thoughts in your mind
will always be more important than the things in your life. So how
do you live in the flow of the right thoughts, the ones that will give you life
rather than take it away. In these
words, in a way, in simply one word, God shows you the way. For here God shows you, you more you live in
the flow of the right why, the more you can survive any “how.”
In saying that, I’m adapting a quote from Nietzsche, a
brilliant philosopher but one who hated Christianity a lot. Why
did Nietzsche hate it? He thought it had
the wrong why, but even so, he saw something that folks often miss. Everyone has a why, and yet often they don’t
even realize what it is. And because
they don’t, that why often wrecks them because they don’t even see that it’s
there.
Now before, you see how the why you don’t even know
you have wreck you, you need to see how in Christianity, everything is based on
knowing the why, everything. What do I
mean? Well, just look at how this part
of the letter begins. Peter is getting
now even more into the practical details, how Christians are called to order
their life. But do you see how he
begins the section? He begins it with the
simple word, therefore. And that word
tells you a lot.
A Bible teacher once said that in the Bible when you
see a therefore, you need to ask. What
is it there for? And so, what is this
particular “therefore”, there for?
Well, this one is pointing you to the why.
Peter has just finished discussing how Jesus, the just
one, suffered for the unjust (that is all of us), how that act of infinite
self-giving love has defeated everything that disconnects us from God, even death
itself. Jesus gained a triumph so total,
Peter says, he even delivered people from hell itself, that even now Jesus lives
above every power in existence, including the powers oppressing them.
And Peter says that is your why. Because you know that truth, because you have
experienced that victory, you can live by God’s vision not the desires that
used to drive you. You can love one another constantly. You can open your hearts to each other
without complaint. You can use your
gifts on behalf of each other. And all
these things, you can do, because you have the why.
You love because God loved you to death and
beyond. You open your heart and give to
each other because God opened his heart to you, even gave his life for you. In other words, Peter is simply saying. Living your life in this way is just what it means
to live in the flow of the why.
And everyone lives in the flow of a why, everyone. But too often, folks don’t even know what their
why is. And because they don’t know
their why, their life, even if it isn’t wrecked, never becomes all it could
be. They don’t become all that they
could be. And I don’t know anyone who
exposed the danger of not knowing your why, then the late, great writer, David
Foster Wallace did in
a joke and quote that I never tire of sharing. In fact, it comes from an amazing
commencement address, called This is Water, that I encourage all of you to read
The joke from that address goes like this. Two young fish were swimming along when an
old fish called out. “Howdy, young’
uns! How’s the water?” The young fish swam along a bit, until one
turned to the other, and puzzled, asked:
“What the heck is water?” And
from that joke, Wallace shared the water for us is our why. That’s the water you swim in. And that why will either give you life or take
it away.
And Wallace, though not an explicitly religious man,
understood that the way people live their why could be described as a way of
worship. Here is how he put it.
In
the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as
atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The
only choice we get is what to worship.
And the compelling reason for choosing some sort of god or
spiritual-type thing to worship…is that pretty much anything else you worship
will eat you alive.
If
you worship money and things if they are where you tap real meaning in life,
then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough…worship your body
and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will
die a million deaths before they finally grieve you…Worship power, you will up
feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb
you to your own fear. Worship your
intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always
on the verge of being found out. But the
insidious thing about these forms of worship is…. they’re unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day
after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you
measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.
You see. You’ve
got to ask yourself. What is your
why? What defines your identity? How do you measure your value, your worth,
your meaning? And as Wallace points out
pretty much any why but God will limit your life. But if you ground your identity, if your why
is in something that cannot be shaken, that doesn’t depend on your
circumstances or your popularity or even how you are feeling that day, well, that’s
an immensely powerful foundation.
In fact, Peter even says that remembering this why is
the very thing that empowers you to love and to serve one another. After Peter say the “therefore”; after he reminds
these folks of what Jesus has done for them, what does he say next? He says “arm yourself with this same thought.” Now the translation says “intention,” but
that’s not the word. The word ennoian
literally means thought. And do you see
the verb that precedes that word? Peter
says, no Peter orders them, to “arm themselves with this thought.”
Do you see what he is saying? This thought, this why of God’s love for
you, has power to protect you. It gives
you power to advance into the world in strength. It arms you. Why? It gives you a why that grounds you no matter
what you face. When you know that God
loved you to death and beyond, you have a value nothing can shake. You can face any sacrifice, endure any
hardship, survive any “how.” Why? Because you are living in the flow of the one
why, the one reality, the one truth, the one love that has conquered
everything, even death.
But can a thought arm you like that? How does that even work?
In the past ten days, Simone Biles showed you how it
works. Simone Biles has not had an easy
life. Her grandparents adopted her and
her sister when their mother’s addiction prevented her from caring for them. Even as she developed into the greatest gymnast
of all time, the doctor who was tasked to care for her was molesting her and
over a hundred other gymnasts as well.
And then, after all that, in this year’s Olympics, she came down with a
terrifying mental block known in the world of gymnastics as the “twisties.” When the twisties hit, you lose all sense of
where you are in space as you fly through the air in your routine. And a block like that, with the breathtaking
moves she does, could have easily injured or paralyzed her.
So, what did Simone Biles do? She armed herself with the thought that
affirmed where her value truly lay, not in her performance or her medals or the
opinions of others, but in a God who loved her no matter what. You see.
At the heart of Simone Biles’ life is this very why of God’s love, a God
who as she put it in an
interview, “you can go to for anything” a God who “directs your
life.”
And so, Simone Biles stepped back, first from the team
competition so she wouldn’t prevent her teammates from getting a medal. Then she stepped away from the individual
competitions knowing she wasn’t yet ready to compete safely. And as she did that, she showed up every day
to cheer on her teammates, to encourage them, to rejoice with them in their
victories. And in the end, she
confronted her own fears, and found a way through the twisties back into
competition.
And why did she have the courage to do all of that, to
step back, and then to step forward even as she felt the pressure of the entire
world looking at her? She had the power
of this why, this God who had given up everything for her. Her value, her identity didn’t depend on the
crowds or the medals or the opinions of others
Her value lay in a God who loved
her no matter what.
And as you arm yourself with this thought, with this
reality, with this truth, with this love, you will discover power nothing can
shake. For you know a God who gave up
all power so you might live in power.
You know a God who gave up all love so you might know that love will
never give up on you. You know a God
whose love has triumphed over everything, every disappointment, every failing, every
dark and twisted why of this world. You
know a God whose love makes a way where there seems no way, through a virus,
through injustice, through even death itself.
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