typically how we make decisions…

romans 12.1 in the message says, take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before GOD as an offering.  embracing what GOD does for you is the best thing you can do for HIM.  but then notice romans 12.2 (msg), don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.

this is a very important point.  most of us live our lives just like everyone else lives their life. we listen to our groups of friends and we just go along with the crowd.  we’re making our decisions like everybody else is. 

yet the bible says there is a better way.  the bible talks a lot about good decision making.  proverbs 3.5-6 (nlt) is one of the best known parts of the bible on decision making.  trust in the LORD with all your heart.  do not depend on your own understanding.  it says, do not depend on your own understanding. 

isn’t that typically how we make decisions – on our own understanding?  “this is my choice a, choice b, choice c.  my understanding of the situation is if i go that way ‘these’ will be the consequences.  those will be the pros and the cons.  if i go that way that’s where it will get me.”  then we make a decision. 

that’s how everybody is making decisions and most people are getting in big trouble.  they’re not depending on GOD to trust in.  why do you think horoscopes and psychic hot lines are so popular?  that’s kind of the way of the world.  i’ve always wondered about psychics.  why aren’t all psychics rich?  why aren’t they living in las vegas beating the odds makers?  why don’t they just retire after the superbowl?  if you think about it, you should never have to call a psychic.  if they’re psychic they’ll know your needs and they’ll call you.  not long ago one of the hottest psychic hot lines went bankrupt.  you would have thought they would have seen it coming.

just a thought from the front porch…

they are unpredictable…

crises in your life are inevitable, they are variable, they are impartial and they are unpredictable.  they can come suddenly, unexpectedly. 

in the story of JESUS and the storm, the disciples got in the boat and went out on the lake of galilee and it says in matthew 8.24 (niv), without a warning a furious storm came up.

the mediterranean sea is relatively near and storms often sweep in real quickly into the lake of galilee.  there are some steep mountains there and storms can come up quickly. 

if you talk to pilots, they talk about clean air turbulence when they’re flying.  you can’t see it but, when you hit it, you feel it. 

a crisis is like that.  you can’t see it coming.  none of us can predict tragedy.  that’s what scares us about it.  you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.  you can’t predict it but when you hit it, it will hit you.

a fifth reality about a crisis is, i can choose my response to it.

in looking at verse 24 in its entirety we see two responses.  in verse 24a we have the response of the disciples.  in 24b we have the response of JESUS.  there are two options when you have a crisis.  have you noticed you can have two people, put them in the same crises and they react differently.  different responses.  the options you have when you face a crisis:  you can be filled with panic (like the disciples in 24a) or you will be filled with peace like JESUS. 

we’ll look in more detail at this tomorrow.

just a thought from the front porch…

a quiz to assess susceptibility …

i want you to take a little quiz.  ten questions about ten different areas of your life.  i want you to write down a number as we go through these.  then we’re going to add up the numbers and i’m going to interpret them for you.

first, your physical condition.  zero meaning really bad off.  four being perfect.  first, am i more physically exhausted or am i more energetic and in shape?  i’m not talking about your entire life.  i’m talking about this week, right now.  am i physically exhausted?  or am i energetic in shape? 

if you say i am tired all the time, all the time.  give yourself a zero.  if you say, i’m in tiptop condition.  i’m really to take jack lalane’s place, give yourself a four. 

how about your emotions?  are you discouraged about your life right now, do you feel pessimistic?  or, on the other hand, do you feel encouraged about your life and feel very optimistic?  give yourself a score from zero to four.  a low score if you’re discouraged and pessimistic.  a high score if you’re encouraged and optimistic. 

your lifestyle.  do you feel bored or discontented with your life?  you don’t like the situation you’re in right now.  if you’re bored or discontented give yourself a low score.  if you say i feel challenged by the life i’m living right now.  it’s not too stressful but it’s challenging, worth getting up for and i feel contented with my life give yourself a high score.

your spiritual life.  if you’d say, right now i’m feeling kind of spiritually dry.  i don’t feel really close to GOD right now.  then give yourself a low score.  on the other hand if you’d say, i’m really growing.  i’m growing more than i’ve ever grown before in my life, give yourself a four.  i’m growing closer to the LORD every day.

your relationships.  if you’d say the people that i love right now i’m geographically distant from and i feel alone.  maybe you have to travel a lot.  or the people you love the most are overseas or they’re distant and you don’t get to spend much time with them, then give yourself a low score.  if you say, those that i love the most of my relationships, they’re near and i get to spend a lot of time together with them, circle a high score. 

am i feeling insecure or unsure about my future?  or am i feeling very secure and very confident about my future?  give yourself a zero to a four there.

have you been deeply wounded?  are you carrying a deep hurt?  give yourself a low score, a zero or one or something like that.  if you feel like, i’m loved and i feel understood by the people in my life give yourself a high score. 

if you have been carrying a hurt and you’re secretly bitter, in other words, are you holding a grudge against anyone?  you say, “i’m angry and i can’t forgive them.”  give yourself a low score.  on the other hand if you say i feel like i’ve forgiven every person who’s hurt me in my life give yourself a four.

the next has to do with am i feeling more sad about life or more happy about life right now.  rate yourself on that. 

then finally, am i feeling more alienated and unsupported by my relationships?  in other words i’m having conflicts with people in my life.  or do i feel close to them and supported?  are you emotionally close to your family or are you arguing a lot?  in other words do you have supportive friends or are you detached and distant?

i want you to add up your numbers right now.  there are ten questions there.  if you put four on every one then you’d be JESUS and you would have a perfect score of 40.  if you got zero in all of them then obviously you’d have zero.  so everybody has a score between zero and forty.  add them up right now.  this has profound influence on how you handle temptation.

we’ll analyze this more tomorrow.

just a thought from the front porch… 

it messes you up physically, spiritually, emotionally…

one reason why you’ve got to let go of that hurt that someone did to you is because GOD has forgiven you and another reason is because resentment makes you miserable.

you see, resentment always hurts you more than it does the other person.  it makes you the victim.  some of you have been hurt by people in the past and you’re continuing to allow them to hurt you in the present and that’s dumb.  they can’t hurt you anymore.  your past is past.  they can only hurt you if you choose to continue to hold on to the hurt with resentment.  that’s your choice.  you can let it go.

you see forgiveness is not a feeling, forgiveness is a choice.  you just say, i’m going to let it go. 

holding on to resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.  it’s like turning a shotgun on yourself, pulling the trigger and hoping to hit them with the kick of the recoil.  it always hurts you. 

now when this king here in matthew 18 heard that this servant who he had forgiven his debt of 12 million dollars had thrown into prison a person who owed him 17 dollars he was livid and he brings this unforgiving servant in and says in verses 33 & 34 (niv), “shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as i had on you?”  in anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured.  now the word jailers in greek literally means “torturers.”  he says this guy deserves the torture chamber. 

here’s the point.  nothing tortures your life more than resentment.  resentment.  bitterness.  it is a poison that when you swallow it it’s worse than cancer.  it will eat you alive.  resentment robs you of peace, of joy, of happiness.  it messes you up physically, spiritually, emotionally.  resentment can make you sick. 

heart circulation magazine reported findings from medical studies that people carrying resentment are twice as likely to have a stroke, three times as likely to have a heart attack or bypass surgery, and four times more likely to have unhealthy cholesterol.  in another study stanford researchers have linked carrying a grudge to higher levels of diabetes and cancer.  “there is a physical cost to holding on to anger.” 

job 21.23&25 (gnb) says this, some people stay healthy till the day they die; they die happy... others have no happiness at all; they live and die with bitter hearts.  if you want to be healthy, happy, you’ve got to let it go. 

just a thought from the front porch…

a determining factor for the quality of our life…

listen, the quality of your life is determined by the decisions and choices you make and the wisdom that is behind those decisions and choices.  james is saying that when we do not trust GOD it produces a lifestyle of instability in our lives.  the cause of all the frustration in my life is not my indecision over the job, the marriage, my kids, my health although those are important.  there is a deeper issue and that is my inability to trust GOD and lay it all in HIS hands and ask for wisdom.

where are you double minded?  where have you been wavering and trying to live two different ways, trying to live for the LORD when in church and then downplaying it the rest of the time.  that produces instability.

i want to talk with you about life’s greatest decision.  the greatest decision you’ll ever make in life is this:  who is number one in your life?  are you going to be number one?  is money going to be number one?  is your job number one?  listen, there is only one thing that will produce stability in your life.  that’s when GOD is number one in your life.  no man can serve two masters, JESUS said.  you will hate the one and love the other.  the most important decision you can ever make is to make JESUS CHRIST number one.  “LORD, you call the shots.  YOU’re the chairman of the board.  i’m going to check in with YOU on a regular basis.  YOU guide my life.  i want to find the niche for which i was created.”

when you do this it will not change you overnight.  not instantly but that is the starting point of a long journey.  it is the smartest decision that you will ever make to put JESUS CHRIST number one in your life and get in tune with GOD’s plan for your life.

just a thought from the front porch… 

prayer – your first choice, not your last resort…

prayer is usually something you do way down the line after you've tried everything else.  people will say, “has it come to that?!?!  is it so hopeless that all we can do is pray?” 

but prayer should be your first choice, not your last resort.  if you want GOD to help you to overcome the odds in any area of your life you have to turn to him first.  2 chronicles 20.1, 3 (nlt/ncv), after this the armies of the moabites and the ammonites and the meunites declared war on jehoshaphat.  he was afraid so he decided to ask the LORD what to do. 

after this.  after this there came a battle.  after what?  in the previous chapter, 2 chronicles 19 there’s the story of a great national revival, a spiritual awakening.  there’s great joy in the country, prosperity, blessing.  it's good times!  then it says, “after this there came a battle.” 

we all know this principle, that with every high there is also a low, with every mountaintop there is a valley.  and after every victory, there is always a letdown.  and with every blessing there comes a testing. 

you may be in a time of blessing right now, soaring.  you’re on the mountaintop.  but you’re going to come down eventually.  so you need to expect blessing in your life but you also need to expect battles in your life.  you’re going to have difficult times. 

notice the king’s first reaction.  it says he was fearful, he was afraid.  that's a normal reaction.  here are three enemy nations teaming up on you and they’re going to come pound on you at one time.  it’s normal to be afraid. 

the things that are overwhelming you right now, your problem is not that you’re afraid of them.  it's not your fear.  your problem is what you do with your fear.

when you’re afraid in a situation, you feel overwhelmed, stressed out, the odds against you, do you let that fear de-motivate you, destabilize you, depress you, discourage you and cause you to want to throw in the towel and say “i give up!” even before the battle starts? 

you want to say, “i can't make this work.  why put forth the effort?  why even go into battle because i’m going to lose?  i give up.  the odds are stacked.  i’m not even going to try.” 

never let an impossible situation intimidate you.  let it motivate you to pray more, to trust more.  let it motivate you to expect more from GOD and to depend more on GOD.  let it motivate you to get your priorities right, to decide what’s not important and worth doing.  let it motivate you.  turn to GOD first.

that's exactly what this guy did.  he headed straight to GOD.

just a thought from the front porch…

peace and courage…

we have two decisions in this matter of pain in our life. we can decide to turn to bitterness or to turn to GOD for peace and courage. our choice.

we’ve all seen examples of this, where people have gone through virtually identical sets of suffering, very similar experiences in life. one woman may lose a child to a drunk driver and turn chronically bitter for the rest of her life. another person came to him and worked through her grief and then founded mothers against drunk drives to help other people going through this.

as one philosopher said, “i believe all suffering is at least potential good – an opportunity for good. it’s up to our free will to actualize that potential. not all of us benefit from suffering and learn from it because it’s up to us. it’s up to our freewill.”

our choice is either, to run from GOD. and what is the up side to that? or we can turn to GOD.

JESUS himself says in john 16.33 (nasb), these things i have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. in the world you will have tribulation but take courage. i have overcome the world. HE says the two things we need, after we turn to JESUS CHRIST, is peace to deal with our suffering at present and courage to deal with suffering in the future. JESUS says, “i can give you the very things that you need.”

GOD’s ultimate answer is not an explanation, it is the incarnation – JESUS CHRIST fully GOD and fully man, coming in to our experience to live and die, to live among us.

i could never love a GOD who was distant, disinterested, detached and who just watched the suffering from afar. i could never love a GOD like that. but i cannot help but love a GOD who says, “i will enter into your suffering, i will enter into your pain. i will come into your world and i will suffer a death on the cross so that you might have eternity in heaven.” i can’t help but love a GOD like that.

just a thought from the front porch…

it’s in the focus...

envy is a choice. i can choose to rejoice, or i can choose to resent. those are the options. the good news is if you learn to rejoice at GOD’s goodness to others, you’ll have a lot more to be happy about.

we all need to have the attitude of grandparents. you can brag to them, and they don’t think you’re bragging. you can say, “you wouldn’t believe what the kids did this week!” and they’d say, “that’s great!” you tell somebody else and they’d go, “but my kids…” like, “my kid was inmate of the month in prison.” they have to one-up you every time. there’s no guile in grandparents.

but eventually your grandparents die off. so we need to be grandparents to each other. and we all need a place where we not only share our hurts, but we also share our successes and everybody goes, “that is great!” when a sorrow is shared, it is cut in half. when a joy is shared, it’s doubled. that’s very important. that’s what we do in our life groups at our church or we should do.

another antidote to envy is to be grateful for what you have. instead of focusing so much on what you don’t have and what didn’t happen, be grateful for what you do have. this also has to be learned. the apostle paul wrote, i have learned to be content. it was a learning process.

so instead of complaining like these workers did about what wasn’t happening, what they didn’t get, you learn to realize that you’d have nothing without GOD, without HIS goodness and what HE’s given to you.

1 corinthians 4.7b-8a (msg) says, isn’t everything you have and everything you are sheer gifts from GOD? so what’s the point of all this comparing and competing? you already have all you need.

envy is based on a myth. the myth is i have to have more to be happy. i have to have something i don’t have now to be happy. and you get caught up in this myth and focused on everyone else. envy always looks at others and asks, “why them? but gratitude says, “why me? why did i get this? i don’t deserve what i have.” it totally flips around the perspective of our mind.

the truth is although we all struggle with envy, it’s hard to admit it. one of the reasons why is because it is such an ugly feeling toward others. when you’re envious of others, you really want them to fail. you don’t tell anyone else, but it really makes your day when they have a bad day because you feel better because they don’t have something. when you think about that, that’s pretty crazy, isn’t it?

just a thought from the front porch…

love is a choice not a feeling...

the bible also says that love is a choice.

we choose to love, and we choose to not love. it’s a choice. the bible says in 1 corinthians 14.1 in the message paraphrase, go after a life of love as if your life depended on it because it does. go after means make a choice. decide. choose. we choose to love or to not love.

that destroys another myth that we have about love. we think love is uncontrollable. as if one day i'm just walking along and i'm instantly in love – no control over it. even the terminology we use is kind of accidental – i fell into love. like it’s a big ditch or something. i fell in love. “help! i’ve fallen in love, and i can’t get up!” as if i have no control over my choice to love or not love.

i can’t tell you how many times i’ve had men or women say to me, trying to justify a separation or divorce: i just don’t love him/her anymore. as if that's totally out of your control and now because you don’t love her that gives you the right to divorce her or leave her.

let’s be honest about this. love is a choice. you need to rephrase that: “i'm choosing not to love him any more.” because it is a choice, and you could choose to keep on loving even if they didn’t love you. that’s your choice. in fact, the truth is, acting in love when you don’t feel like it is actually a higher level of love than when you do feel like it.

it’s one thing to love when the flowers are in bloom and you’re on a honeymoon and things are going your way and you’ve got a lot of money to spend and things are going great. but the real test of love is when things are not going great in your life, when you’re out of money and when you’re sick and don’t feel good, the pressure is on and you’ve lost your job. you choose to love in spite of how you feel. that’s a higher level of love. loving in spite of your feelings. loving in spite of your emotions.

have any of you gotten up in the middle of the night with a kid that was sick? that’s love. have any of you ever been kind and patient with your mate when they were grumpy and grouchy? one guy was asked, “do you wake up grumpy in the morning?” he said, “no, i usually let her sleep.”

love is giving a person what they need, not what they deserve. that’s what GOD does. that’s how GOD loves you. GOD doesn’t give you what you deserve. if i got what i deserved from GOD, i wouldn’t even be here, and you wouldn’t even be alive either.

but GOD doesn’t give us what we deserve; HE gives us what we need. that’s called grace. that’s called love. love is giving to another person without any guarantee of getting anything back. if you’re doing it to get something back, that’s not love. love is committing to the well being of another person without any guarantees that they’re going to give back to you. that’s love. it’s a command, and it’s a choice. it is not a feeling.

just a thought from the front porch…