The message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, May 15, 2022. The Bible verses used are Deuteronomy 6:1-19.
This is the time of year for graduations.
This Saturday is high school graduation day. A week ago many of our
colleges had their graduation day.
Graduation day is a significant day in a person’s
life. It’s the end of something, something that you’ve
accomplished. And it’s important in life that we take the time to
celebrate our accomplishments. Our graduates should be proud of what
they’ve done.
But while it’s the end of something, it’s also the
beginning of something. And as always happens when we talk about a
beginning, you’re really not sure what it’s the beginning of. You have a
plan, probably. You may have an idea where you hope things are going to
go. But will they actually go there? Only God knows.
And in fact, the odds are that things won’t go according to
your plan, because they rarely do. We always have to make adjustments as
we go. And that’s true at any age. Even when you’re sixty-three,
like I am, things still rarely go according to my plan. I have to make
adjustments as I go, too, just like everyone else.
We still have to have a plan, of course. We cannot
just go through life aimlessly, not having any idea where we’re going or what
we want to do. But what we need to realize is that the most important
thing is not that life goes according to our plan. The most important
thing is that life goes according to God’s plan. And that’s why, at any
age, it is important that we stay connected to God.
In our Bible reading for today, Moses is trying to prepare
the people of Israel for their future. And he tells them, here is the
most important thing you need to know. He says, “Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
strength.”
Now, some of us have heard that many times. But the
thing is, sometimes we don’t think about it enough. We say, okay, yeah,
sure. We’re supposed to love God. I get that. Let’s move on.
But think about what that says. Moses did not just
say, “Love God.” Moses said love the Lord your God. And love Him
with all your heart. Love Him with all your soul. Love Him with all
your strength. Not a little bit of your heart. Not some of your
soul. Not a lot of your strength. But all your heart. All
your soul. All your strength.
In other words, God is not supposed to be someone we love
sometimes. God is not supposed to be someone we love when we have
time. God is not supposed to be someone we love when it’s convenient for
us. Our love for God is supposed to be complete. It’s supposed to
be total. It’s supposed to be all the time.
That’s really the only way it’s love, right? If it’s
complete. If it’s total. If it’s all the time. A partial
love, a love that’s just once in a while, is not really love. The only
way it can really be love is if that love takes priority over everything else.
That’s the kind of love Moses said we need to have for
God. How do we show we have that love? By keeping God’s
commandments. In other words, by doing the things God told us to
do. Living the way God told us to live. And again, not just doing
that sometimes. Not just doing it when it’s convenient. Doing it
all the time.
And Moses told us how to make sure we do this. He
told us that living the way God wants us to is something that should be
impressed on our hearts. We should talk about it whenever we’re with our
families. Look at this: Moses says, “Talk about them when you sit
at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get
up.” In other words, our love for God, our desire to live the way God
told us to live, should not be something we keep to ourselves. It should
not be something that’s just lurking in the background. It’s something
that should be a topic of conversation in our family time. It’s something
that should always be at the forefront of our minds.
And to make sure it stays in the forefront of our minds,
look at what Moses told us to do with God’s commandments: “Tie them as
symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the
doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
Now, do I think we need to take that literally? Well,
obviously not–I don’t have God’s commandments on my hands or on my
forehead. But I do think we need to take the purpose of what Moses says
seriously. What he’s saying is that we need constant reminders of the
importance of God in our lives. We need to be reminded that we are to do
the things God wants us to do, and that we are to live the way God wants us to
live.
Because if we don’t have those reminders, what’s going to
happen? The chances are, we’re going to drift away. We may not
intend to. We may not even realize we’re doing it. But the thing is
that life gets awfully busy. Life gets awfully crowded sometimes.
And in all that busyness, in all that crowding, it’s really easy for God to get
crowded out. It’s easy for us to move God to second-class
status.
Again, a lot of times we don’t
intend to. It happens slowly. Gradually. We don’t even
realize we’re doing it. But we do. We gradually stop praying.
We gradually stop thanking God. We gradually stop even thinking about
God. Again, we did not make a decision to do that. We may not even
be aware that we have done it. But we have. We still think we love
God. If someone asked, we’d probably say that we love God. But it’s
pretty hard to truly love someone if you don’t talk to them. It’s pretty
hard to love someone if you don’t think about them. We may not have made
a decision to stop loving God. But in fact, that’s what we’ve done.
Because the thing is that
loving God, quite often, is not something that comes naturally to us.
It’s not something that we do automatically. Loving God is something we
need to think about. It’s something we need to make a decision to
do. And we need to make that decision every day, day after day. Each
day, we need to make a decision that we are going to love God fully and
completely. That’s the only way it’s going to happen.
Because the world is going to
do its best to keep us away from God. And that happens in all kinds of
ways. We make new friends, friends who don’t necessarily make God a
priority. We have new work commitments or school commitments. We
find new things to do. Or, sometimes, we slip into old habits, because
those old habits are easy and comfortable. And the next thing we know,
love for God is not the number one thing in our life anymore. It’s one of
many things in our lives, and not necessarily a very major one. Again,
we’d still say we love God. But there may not be very much in our lives
that shows it.
We need those reminders Moses
was talking about. If we’re not going to do it the way Moses told us to,
we need to find some other way. A designated prayer time, even if we have
to get up earlier in the morning to do it. A reminder on our phone.
A note on the bathroom mirror. Something. Anything. Whatever
works for you. But something. Somehow, we need those reminders to
put God first. We need those reminders to show love to God. We need
those reminders to do what God wants us to do
I assume everyone here loves
God and wants to love God. You would not be sitting here in a Christian
church on a Sunday morning if you did not. But it’s not what we do on
Sunday morning that’s the most important. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m
glad you’re here. I hope you’ll come again next week and every week, and
I know many of you do. But if we come here to worship God on Sunday
morning and then we don’t think about God again until next Sunday morning, we
cannot truly say we love God. Again, loving God cannot be a sometimes
thing. It needs to be an all the time thing.
Moses did not just say that we
are to love the Lord. He said we are to love the Lord with all our
hearts. With all our minds. With all our
strength. That’s a tough standard. If we don’t focus on it, if we
don’t actively make an effort to do it, we won’t. It won’t happen by
itself. If we truly love the Lord, if we truly want to do the things God
wants us to do, if we truly want to live our lives the way God wants us to live
them, we need to consciously make the decision that that’s what we’re going to
do. And then we need to give ourselves constant reminders, so that we
don’t slide back and drift away from God.
God always loves us. But
God does not force us to love Him. God leaves that choice up to us.
So let’s make that choice, every day. Let’s keep God in the forefront of
our minds. Let’s give God a love that’s total and complete. When we
do, we’ll find that God will always be there for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment