Most of you probably know that I’m a
baseball fan. You also probably know that my favorite team is the
Minnesota Twins. And you also probably know that the Twins have not been doing
very well in the last few years.
The reason for that is not because
they’ve had a lot of bad ballplayers. They’ve had some, but their main
problem is not that they have a lot of bad ballplayers. The main problem
is that they have not had a lot of good ballplayers.
What I’m saying is that they’ve had
a lot of guys who are kind of average, kind of mediocre. The problem with
having a lot of guys like that is not that they do a lot of stuff that makes
you lose a lot of games. That’s not it. The problem is that they
don’t do a lot of stuff that makes you to win a lot of games, either.
They’re just kind of there. They’re neither bad nor good, not
making you lose and not making you win.
In some ways, having a team of average,
mediocre players like that is worse than having a team of bad players.
When you have bad players, it’s pretty obvious what you need to do.
You need to replace them. You need to give some other guys a chance
and see what they can do. If they’re better, great. If they’re not,
well, you did not lose anything by trying them, because they guys they replaced
were not any good anyway.
When you have a team of average,
mediocre players, though, it’s not so obvious what you need to do. Those
guys are not terrible. They’re just not really good. Could they get
better? Well, maybe. It’s hard to say. Could the guys you
replace them with do worse? Yeah, they might. A team like this is,
in the Bible’s phrase, neither hot nor cold. So, when you have a team
like this, it’s hard to know just what to do with them.
I think that’s why the Lord was so
hard on the people of the church in Laodicea. They were not bad people.
They just were not particularly good people. They had some faith in
God. They just did not trust God to take control of their lives.
They were not actively working against God. They just were not
doing anything to help God, either. They were just kind of there.
They were, in the Bible’s phrase, neither hot nor cold. And so it
was hard to know just what to do with them.
Does that describe you? Is
your faith strong? Are you on fire, hot for the Lord? Or are you
just kind of there, neither hot nor cold?
Now the thing is, when you preach a
sermon like this to a small gathering like this, everyone thinks I’m specifically
talking about them. I’m not. Unless, of course, that description
fits you. If, in fact, you are just kind of there, neither hot nor cold,
then yes, I am talking about you.
And I’m also talking about me.
I think a lot of us--maybe all of us--have those times, when we are
neither hot nor cold, when we are just kind of there, when we are not actively
working against God but we’re not really doing anything to help God, either.
Why is that? I mean, it’s not
like we intend to be that way. No one comes to God and says, “O Lord,
make me a mediocre Christian!” None of us prays, “God, increase my faith,
but just a little bit. Make my faith lukewarm and no more.” We
don’t start out on our Christian journey hoping to be that way. So why,
so many times, are we?
Well, that’s a question we could
probably talk about the rest of the night. I just want to talk about one
aspect of it. One of the reasons we are lukewarm for God is that we get
scared.
See, if we decide that we’re going
to become hot for Christ, we decide that we’re going to turn our entire lives
over to Christ. And if we decide to turn our entire lives over to Christ,
that means we’re giving up having control of our lives ourselves and turning it
over to God. And if we give up control of our lives and turn that control
to God, who knows what could happen?
I mean, think about it. What
if we totally gave up control of our lives to God, and God told us to go to
Iraq and help the Christians there? What if we totally gave up control of
our lives to God and God told us to go to Haiti and work with the poor?
Or, what if we totally gave up control of our lives to God and God told
us to go live on the reservation and work with Native Americans?
If we totally give up control of our
lives to God, God might tell us to go anywhere. God might tell us to do
anything. And that’s scary. And so, we’re afraid to let ourselves
get too hot for God. We think, “I’ll just stay lukewarm. It’s
safer.”
I understand that. I’ve felt
that way at times myself. I probably will feel that way again. But
we don’t need to. We don’t need to feel that way. We don’t need to
be afraid of God.
That’s one of the big differences
that the coming of Jesus made. In the Old Testament, you read about the
fear of the Lord all the time. That phrase, the fear of the Lord, or
something similar shows up all the time in the Old Testament. But not in
the New Testament. In the New Testament, we read “perfect love drives out
fear”. And who has perfect love? God, of course. Because God
loves us, we don’t have to be afraid of God any more.
Here’s the way I think it works.
If we give up control of our lives to God, God will ask us to do certain
things. But the things God asks us to do will be consistent with who we
are.
Think of it this way. God made
you. And God made me. That does not mean just that God gave us physical
form. It means that God created us to be who we are. The talents we
have, the interests we have, the abilities we have, the passions we have, all
came from God. God created you to be the way you are. God wants you
to be who you are. If God had wanted you to be somebody else, God
would’ve created you to be somebody else. God created you to be you, with
all the talents and interests and abilities and passions you have. And
God created me to be me, with all the talents and interests and abilities and
passions I have.
Now, there is one thing we need to
say about that. It can be tempting, sometimes, to use that as an excuse.
We’re not allowed to justify our bad actions, or our failures to act, by
saying, “Well, I’m just being who I am. I’m just being who God made me to
be.” It does not work that way. God wants you to be who you are,
but God wants you to be the best you that you can be. And God wants me to
be the best me that I can be.
But the things God asks us to do
will be consistent with the talents and interests and abilities and passions
God gave us. For example, most of you know that I’m completely inept at
working with my hands. Wanda says I’d pound a nail in backwards.
So, God is not going to ask me to go build houses for Habitat for
Humanity. God knows I would not be any good at that and God knows I don’t
enjoy doing things I’m not any good at and God is not stupid. Now, God
could ask me to do other things for Habitat for Humanity, things that I do have
the ability to do and that I would enjoy, but God is not dumb enough to tell me
to go do stuff that I would not be any good at and that would make me
miserable.
Now, there are times when God asks
us to try something we’ve never tried. After all, all of us have talents
and abilities that we don’t know about because we’ve never tried to develop
them. God could ask us to do something that we’ve never done before
because God knows we have a talent for it even if we don’t.
But God is not going to ask us to do something that’s going to
make us miserable because God does not want us to be miserable. Giving up
being lukewarm, giving control of our lives to God, does not mean that we’ll be
going to be missionaries in Haiti unless God has put a desire in our hearts to
be missionaries in Haiti. And God does do that for some people. But
God is not going to force us to go there and be miserable, because again, God
does not want us to be miserable. When we give up control of our lives to
God, God will ask us to do things that we have the ability to do and that we’ll
get satisfaction out of doing. God will ask us to do things that make use
of the talents and interests and passions and abilities God gave us. God
will ask us to do things that are consistent with who we are, because who we
are is who God created us to be.
So
let’s not be afraid to be hot. Let’s not be afraid to give control of our
lives to God. That whole “fear of the Lord” thing, that’s so two thousand
years ago. God is love, perfect love. And perfect love drives out fear.
God loves us. So let’s love God. And let’s give control of
our lives over to God. When we do, we will truly be who God created us to
be. And when we are who God created us to be, we find a happiness we’ve
never known befo
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