From Self Confidence to God Confidence

From Self confidence to God Confidence Psalm 126 Philippians 3:4-14 Fifth Sunday of Lent Year C March 22, 2010 Max Lucado is a pastor and has written many many books on the Christian faith and what it means to believe. He tells the story of taking his daughter Jenna to the park when she was a little girl of about two years old. While she was playing with the other children, and there were other parents around – he decides to go across the street to the dairy queen and get her an ice cream cone. He returns to the park to give her the cone, only to discover that not only has she been playing in the sand – she has decided to eat the sand. He can’t very well give her an ice cream cone – when she has sand in her mouth. In telling the story – Lucado asks himself – did I love her any less with dirt in her mouth? Was she any less my daughter because she had dirt in her mouth? No – was I going to let her continue to play with dirt in her mouth(especially while holding an ice cream cone) no. He took her to the water fountain and washed her mouth out. Lucado compaired this to the way God thinks about us sometimes. He catches us all of the time with dirt in our mouths, God loves us, god cares for us, and yet God feels the need to clean out the dirt in our lives – because there is something much better in store for us. Most of the time if left alone to our own devices, we want to play in the sand and eat it- and yet god wants us to see that there is a bigger life, a greater relationship that we can have with ourselves and with God – if we stop depending on our own devices and seek to learn the ways of God. I tell you that story because Paul can relate to it very well. It proves the point that he is trying to make in Philippians when he says that his life is dirt. All of the things that used to matter in the world, no longer matter because his whole perspective in life has changed. Now that is really strange – because Paul was not a bad person. And he did not have a bad life. And there was nothing in his life that he had any real reason to be ashamed of. He came from a good family. When many other jewish families were giving up their faith for new beliefs. Pauls family were true Hebrews among Hebrews. He grew up to be a teacher and defender of the faith. He fervently persecuted Christians who were trying to ruin his faith. He was very well respected. And when others may have been thrown in jail because there were not citizens, even though he was jewish, he was still a roman citizen, he had all of the rights and priveledges that would have been given to the best of people. There were people who were trying to put Paul down and say that he was not a true leader, and yet Paul wanted them to know that there were at least 7 things in his life that he could point to and say that he was indeed a good and respected person. Good and respected if his life were about him. The thing is – he realized that his life was not about him. His life was about jesus Christ. And even though those things mattered in the eyes of humanity – they were nothing in the eyes of God. Whatever gains I had, these have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and regard them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ. Rubbish – how do you come to call everything that you have accomplished in life a rubbish? As I pondered that question I remembered a time in my own life – when I was living with my boyfriend. And on this night our argument was not any more significant than they were on other day. We fought all of the time about any thing. But for some reason, on this night I remember he made a fist, and I remember in the moment between his fist hitting my face and my head hitting the wall – I remember taking everything inside of myself that valued, all of my self esteem, all of my pride, all of the things that I loved about myself – and hiding them onto the white wall. So that when he hit me – he wouldn’t hurt anything. In the days to come, there were many people who asked why I had a black eye – and I always responded the same – I walked into a wall – I am just clumsy that way. It is nothing serious. Until one day – my manager at work asked me how long I intended to lie to myself. And I had to face the fact that I needed to make up a tale, so that I did not have to deal with the seriousness of what was really going on. But it was that tale that kept my life in place- and allowed me to continuing to live in the midst of a bad situation. Dirt in the mouth, while God was trying to show me that there was a better way. Sometimes it is easier for us to hold onto the tales – then it is for us to let the truth in and deal with it. But I don’t want to get caught up in the intensity of the story – that is not my point in telling it. That was a long time ago, and my life has gone on since then, and I have had many experiences in life that supercede that one. That wasn’t the incident that finally got me to leave the relationship, it was the incident that turned my life around to listen more intently to God. But it is an illustration of the intensity of what Paul is saying when he is using the word rubbish in regards to his old life. I few days after that incident I remember saying – I wonder how I am going to get all of that junk off of the wall – all of the things that I admired about myself – now that they were totally worthless. They didn’t mean anything to me anymore – because now I had a new reality, on which none of that stuff applied. The greek word that Paul uses for rubbish is skybala. Skybala means junk, trash – but it also means human waste or excrement. That is a pretty strong word when you are talking about your life’s accomplishments. And yet his new life in Christ – was so much more important than the person that he used to be. He was able to taste the ice cream cone that God was offering. And was glad that he did. Are we able to do the same? Lent is our reminder to put old ways behind and to study more intently to see God’s new ways for us. And there are always new ways. There are always thought patterns and beliefs that no longer serve their purpose, there are resentment and fears that is time to give up, there are ways that we have been coping that need to be put away. There are allegiances to people that are no longer helpful. There is an old understanding of our relationship with god that we are being called to give up – in order to be open to what is happening in our lives today – which is leading us to a new understanding and a new relationship. There is dirt, a lot of dirt that we can stop eating. The good news for us is that junk can be recycled. Even excrement is used are fertilizer. The old ways of thinking make us who we are today- they are the pathway for the new. They inform our lives and give us a chance to truly understand Christ salvation for us. The story of our salvation is always part of the bigger story of salvation of the world. Our story is important because it is a part of God’s story. It shows us that God is always working to make us better people. There is always room for us to grown to mature, to make sense of why things happen to us. And to know that in the end – it always a story of God’s love. When we are able to put aside our own accomplishments and our own self confidence – we are free to take on God confidence. We don’t know what god’s final vision of the world will be – most of the time we have no idea of what God’s final vision for our own lives is. But we can give up the past in order to prepare ourselves for the future. Paul ends his pep talk by saying – beloved I do not consider that I have made it my own. But this one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead- I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. It is time for us all to leave the past behind and press on to the destiny of Christ – let us pray…..