Most people on planet earth look at things and ask themselves … so what’s in it for me? That’s the way we tend to evaluate our options. There’s just one small problem with living life that way, it simply doesn’t work.

NEW OFFERING

It’s true, isn’t it? The world is full of options for us. I mean, I look at the career options that kids seem to have before them today. There are so many more of them. It just didn’t seem that way when I was making those decisions forty years ago. Look at the entertainment options that we have: The whole smartphone and tablet/computer revolution, the way the Internet has put everything in the palm of our hands.

So often when I’m out, say at a café, I see parents with young children. Now back in my day, keeping the kids entertained and quiet was a challenge. These days though, these tiny tots are sitting there playing their favourite game on Mum and Dad’s phone or tablet. There are travel options; options about where we live, how we live; where we work, how we work.

I’m trying to think of my grandfather, who was born in Romania back in 1889. He lived in a house that didn’t have glass in the windows but animal-skins, and I think back to his grandfather, who was born in the late 1700s, not long after Australia was first colonised.

I don’t know, but I’m imagining that they had far fewer options than we do today. They had far fewer choices to make than we have to make today, so here you and I are with all these options and choices and our primary measure, our primary assessment tool is, “What’s in it for me? Which one of these is best for me? Will we go to the movies this Saturday afternoon or will we go out for dinner, or both? Or would you rather stay at home and watch something on Netflix on the 55-inch, high-definition television in the living-room?” We don’t think about it, but that’s what’s going on day after day. Right?

In your life, in my life. And the more choices we’re given, the more focused we become on deciding which one is best for me, and so without even thinking about it, we’re on our way down a slippery slope. Matthew 7:13-14:

You can enter true life only through the narrow gate. The gate to hell is very wide, and there’s plenty of room on the road that leads there. Many people go that way, but the gate that opens the way to true life is narrow, and the road that leads there is hard to follow; only a few people find it.

It’s a wide road – it’s an apparently easy road – this road to self-gratification, and there are so many today who unwittingly find themselves on that road. The problem is that it leads to pain along the way, and destruction in the end. 1 Timothy 6:9-10:

People who want to be rich bring temptations to themselves. They’re caught in a trap. They begin to want many foolish things that’ll hurt them. These things ruin and destroy people. The love of money causes all kinds of evil; some people turn away from what they believe because they want to get more and more money, but they have caused themselves a lot of pain and sorrow.

It’s true. It ends up in a lot of pain and sorrow, and as we’ve stepped over this threshold of this new year, there are all too many people living in that pain and sorrow. Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe someone close to you is one of them. The question is, what’s the answer? What’s the solution? How do we get a fresh start this year, and get our lives heading in the right direction? And one of the answers to those questions is to do a hundred and eighty-degree turn from being inward-focused to being outward-focused; so instead of asking, “Which option is going to be best for me?” We’re asking, “Which is the option that God wants me to choose?”

The Israelites found themselves in this very position: Something we read about in the last book of the Old Testament. Malachi 3:6-9:

I am the LORD, and I don’t change. You are Jacob’s people, and you have not been completely destroyed, but you never obeyed My laws; even your ancestors stopped following Me. Come back to Me, and I’ll come back to you. This is what the LORD, the all-powerful One, said: ‘You say, “How can we come back?” People should not steal things from God, but you stole things from Me. You say, “What did we steal from You?” You should have given Me one-tenth of your things. You should have given Me special gifts. In this way, your whole nation has stolen things from Me, so bad things are happening to you.’ This is what the LORD all-powerful said.

In other words, they’d stopped honouring God with their firstfruits; with the offering the LORD commanded them to make; their tithe; one-tenth of their income, and the other special offerings under the Law. Now you and I, we’re no longer under that Law, but nevertheless, God still calls us to give to Him first – of our best; of our very best: Not just our money, but of all that we have and all that we are.

Here God’s people had strayed away from putting Him first, and they were putting themselves first, and things weren’t going well for them. That’s what the whole book of Malachi is all about. Malachi 1:6:

The LORD, the all-powerful One, said: ‘Children honour their fathers; servants honour their masters. I am your Father, so why don’t you honour Me? I am your Master, so why don’t you respect Me? You priests don’t respect My name, but you say, “What have we done that shows that we don’t respect Your name?

So God is pouring out the truth to them: The truth that they’ve headed down that wide, easy road that leads to destruction. That’s why things aren’t going well for them. That’s why they’ve brought so much pain and sorrow on themselves. I wonder how much you relate to their story in your life right now.

So what was God’s answer? How did God provide a way back for them? Malachi 3:10-12:

The LORD, the all-powerful One, says: ‘Try this test. Bring one-tenth of your things to Me. Put them in the treasury; bring food to My house; test Me. If you do these things, I will surely bless you. Good things will come to you, like rain falling from the sky. You’ll have more than enough of everything. I won’t let pests destroy your crops; all your grapevines will produce grapes.’ This is what the LORD, the all-powerful One, said: ‘People from other nations will be good to you. You will have a wonderful country.’ This is what the LORD, the all-powerful One, said.

So He gave them a way back into His blessing by giving them a tangible way in which to put Him first in their lives: By going back to tithing their incomes, which is what was required under the Old Testament Law – a Law, by the way, that you and I are no longer under.

But let’s get back to your life: Are you looking for a fresh start in this new year? Are you looking to get rid of some of the pain and the sorrow that you’ve brought upon yourself by wandering down that wide road of, “What’s in it for me?” Then decide to put God first in your life.

Maybe you’ve made some lifestyle choices that you know don’t honour God. Perhaps you’re not married and you’re sleeping with someone. Perhaps you’ve buried yourself in your career and earning money and all that stuff, and there’s no room left for God. Perhaps you’re so busy juggling work and family, and running the kids here and running them there for this and for that, you’ve simply stopped praying and reading God’s Word. Perhaps you’ve taken some big decisions in life, maybe even small decisions, without involving God and asking Him what He wants for you. 2 Corinthians 9:7-8:

Each one of you should give what you have decided to give in your hearts. You should not give if it makes you unhappy or if you feel forced to give, for God loves those who are happy to give. And God can give you more blessings than you need, and you’ll always have plenty of everything; you will have enough to give to every good work.

There are so many different ways to honour God by making a new offering of your life to Him. Come on, give it over to Him! Give it all back to Him. Do it with all your heart. Put Him first in your life.

  NEW GROWTH

According to Lindsey Mires on Brain-Blocker, the self-help/self-improvement industry helps itself to ten billion dollars of people’s money each year, and that’s just in the US. Worldwide, you’d have to imagine it’s somewhere between fifty and a hundred billion-dollar a year industry, perhaps even more. So how effective is this whole self-improvement thing? Well, have a listen to what Mires writes on his website:

In addition to high revenues, self-help also has a high recidivism rate, with the most likely purchasers of a self-help book being the same person who purchased one already in the last eighteen months. This begs the question of how much good these self-help books and seminars are doing for consumers. If they’re so effective at solving our problems, why do they usually result in a continuing stream of self-help purchases? Self-help books are frequently followed by a train of subsequent manuals for happiness, for weight loss, success, money or spirituality by the very same authors, fuelling the six point one percent average annual growth rate projected by Market Data Enterprises Inc.

Now most of us have tried some sort of self-help kit to make ourselves happy, and you know as well as I do it almost never lasts. People almost always fall back into their old ways, and those who get through the hype and actually lay hold of the promises that the self-help gurus are making are few and far between. I once read a quote; can’t remember whose it was, but it went something like this: The self-made man is simply demonstrating the horror of unskilled labour.

So, if you and I want to grow, if you and I want to live a better life this year than last year, if we want to master some of our inherent weaknesses and learn to develop some of our natural strengths, if we want to grow and mature as people, to be able to better cope with the conflicts and the trials and the temptations that are sure to come our way this year, what’s the answer? Where do we turn? Because let me tell you, self-help doesn’t help, and self-improvement doesn’t improve anything. In fact, they’re nothing but hard work, and they rarely if ever deliver a dividend that justified the sacrifice.

I’ve tried. Now look; I’m pretty intelligent, I’m a very hard worker, and I’ve a very strong and determined personality-type. Ok; maybe compassion and empathy aren’t my strong suit, but I guess you’d expect that from someone who has it in their makeup to be a strong and determined person: An achiever personality-type, and even with my personality-type, I still can’t make the self-help work, so how is someone who is gentler and more mellow than me going to find success? And in any case, if you’re going to tackle a large complex problem like transformation, surely you’ll want to involve someone with the love, the power, and the expertise to really make a difference and that … that is where God steps in.

With all my heart, I believe in God-help, not self-help. With all my heart, I believe in Holy Spirit-transformation, not self-improvement, and with all my heart, I believe that God wants to get involved in your life with His love and His power and His expertise to transform it every bit as much as He transforms that caterpillar into a stunning butterfly. Have a listen to what the apostle Paul writes to his friends at the church in Corinth, the second half of the first century AD. He goes back to when Moses went to the top of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, and how his face glowed with the glory of God, and what that means for you and me here and now today. It’s beautiful stuff, so have a listen. 2 Corinthians 3, beginning at verse 7:

The old agreement” (or the old covenant) “between God and His people that brought death, written with words on stone, came with God’s glory and in fact, the face of Moses was so bright with glory – a glory that was ending – that the people of Israel could not continue looking at his face, so surely the new agreement” (or the new covenant) “that comes from the life-giving Spirit has even more glory. This is what I mean: That old agreement judged people guilty of sin but still had glory, so surely the new agreement that makes people right with God has much greater glory!

And that old agreement had glory, but it really loses its glory when it’s compared to the much greater glory of the new covenant. If the agreement that was brought to an end came with glory, then the agreement that never ends has much greater glory.

We are so sure of this hope that we can speak very openly. We are not like Moses, who put a covering over his face; he covered his face, so that the people of Israel wouldn’t see it. The glory was fading and disappearing, and Moses didn’t want them to see it end, for their minds were closed and even today, when those people read the writings of the old agreement, that same covering hides the meaning.

That covering hasn’t been removed for them. It is taken away only through Christ. Yes, even today when they read the Law of Moses, there’s like a covering over their minds, but when someone changes and follows the Lord, that covering is taken away. The Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And our faces are not covered; we all show the Lord’s glory and we’re being changed to be like Him. This change in us brings more and more glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

What Paul’s talking about here is that the old covenant (the Old Testament Law), whilst it came with glory clearly (I mean, Moses glowed with the radiance of God’s glory), that glory faded. But the new covenant (the new agreement, the new deal that you and I have with God, through the grace and the mercy that was poured out on that cross by Jesus), that brings a glory that’s never going to fade: A glory that never leaves us because Jesus when we believe in Him, the moment we believe in Him, puts His Holy Spirit in us, and so His glory changes us from the inside out, from glory to glory.

One of the reasons that superpowers like America and China and Russia put nuclear power plants in their ships and their submarines is that the power never runs out. They don’t have to stop to refuel because the on-going nuclear reaction gives more than enough power: Power that doesn’t run out, and that’s the picture here. You and I might be able to fire up a tiny engine within us – our will, our strength, our drive, our determination, and yeah, human beings are capable of some truly amazing feats of endurance, but compared to the nuclear power plant which is the Holy Spirit, our efforts are puny. They’re ineffectual and pretty soon, we run out of power.

What would you rather do: Pedal away on your own in your own strength burning needless energy, or let God provide the power? Here’s what I’ve discovered.

Transformation on my own is incredibly hard work, and nearly impossible to achieve in a sustained way, but when I draw close to God, when I spend time in prayer and in His presence, when I open the Bible and read it and receive and believe it, I have power to burn; more than enough power; power that comes from the joy of the LORD; power that comes from the presence of the LORD by His Holy Spirit in me; power that words simply cannot describe; power that brings real, lasting, loving change in me; power that helps me to deal with the many trials and temptations that life brings; power to go through the narrow gate; to walk the hard path with Jesus, the path that leads to life; power that changes me from the inside out, as God’s glory gets a hold of me and leaks out through me.Jesus said to His disciples:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and unto the ends of the earth.

Holy Spirit-power.

 

TIME TO DECIDE

Just for the last few minutes that we have together today, I want to share something very, very important with you. It’s about a decision that each one of us needs to take, if we’re to lay hold of the fresh start that God has ready and waiting for us. God’s Word says (in Proverbs 16:9) that whilst we in our minds plan our way, the LORD orders or directs our steps. That’s an interesting symbiosis.

That’s God giving you and me a clear role in choosing the direction in which our life heads. You can choose today to make Jesus’ most important things your most important things, or you can choose today not to do that, but instead to make your most important things your most important things. Which one of those two do you think is going to work better for you in the long run? Just a few verses earlier, God says this (in Proverbs 16:7):

When the ways of people please the LORD, He causes even their enemies to be at peace with them.

Would you rather have peace or strife? Would you rather have the LORD ordering each step, or be tripping over yourself as you head in the wrong direction? This is why so many people’s lives are such a mess. We can’t go off and do it our way, and expect God to come along and dance to our tune and clean up the mess. No, God loves us much more than that. If we head off in our own direction, according to our own priorities, He’ll let us suffer the consequences of our mistakes to bring us back to our senses.

So, back to your choice: What’s it going to be? What decision will you make? What will be the guiding purpose of the things that you put in your diary, the things that you sacrifice your time for, the things that you’ll spend the rest of your life doing? Because make no mistake about it: Time is short. Time is running out. I don’t care how far you plan ahead. One day, as you lie in a box in a funeral home somewhere, the tasks that you put in your diary, the ones you thought were oh so important, will be gathering cobwebs.

It’s interesting that the original Greek word used most commonly for sin in the New Testament literally means to miss the mark. For example, James 4:17:

Anyone then who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it commits sin.

And you see, that’s why so many people end up heading in the wrong direction. That’s why so many people, through their non-decisions if you will, end up losing focus and missing the mark, and indeed that’s the easiest way I know of missing the mark: To lose focus. That’ll do it for you every time.

Let’s take this and apply it to your life right now. I know that you’re going through stuff: Some trial, some temptation, some opposition, some struggle, something that’s hurting right at the moment, something you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself. The truth is, we all are, so let me ask you: How are you going to make the right decision and then stay focused – today, tomorrow, the next day, as this thing plays itself out? Focused on the prize that lies ahead; on the calling that God has on your life; on the decision to put Him above all else. What are you actually going to do to decide and to get focused?

Well, in case you’re coming up short on answers, here’s what I do: Two very simple things. I pray, and I read my Bible. Every morning, sometimes it’s half an hour; sometimes a bit longer, but in a quiet, unhurried way, I spend time with the Lord. I hear Him speak. I experience His presence. I enjoy Him, and then talk about sharpening my focus. Talk about getting all that stuff out there in its right perspective. Yeah, it takes a bit of practice, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing, like time with God every morning; and His Word, hearing His powerful truth, sharing our hearts with Him in prayer, there’s nothing like it to help you stay focused.

In any case, what have you got to lose?