"HOW INTENTIONAL ARE YOU?"
Luke 6:46-49
John Tung, 11-12-00
I. Introduction
Things do not just happen. Ask Al Gore and George W. Bush. They do not get votes just by placing their names on the ballots for the Presidency. They have to work hard, very hard, spend money, lots of money, and energy, lots of energy, to get every vote they have.
Some people did actually just put their names on the ballot for President, names you probably never heard of. I had never heard of them until the day after Election Day.
Monica Moorehead, of the Workers World Party, got 4,304 votes. Denny Lane, of the Grass Roots Party, got 879 votes in this presidential race. Earl F. Dodge, of the Prohibition Party, got 205 votes for President of the United States. And a man named Jim Wright got 23 votes. It must've been just his family and friends whom voted for him.
In fact, besides the two major party nominees: Democratic and Republican Parties, there were another 114 parties, like the Earth Federation, The Freedom Party, Marijuana Reform Party, most of them very tiny, that had people on the ballot this election.
But you don't hear about them because they are too small, in pockets here and there, or just recently formed, or also because they were not as intentional in getting organized and getting noticed as the major parties did.
It is people who are intentional who make things happen. And in life it is when we are intentional that we make things happen. The same thing is true in our spiritual lives. If we don't put in the effort, not much good things will happen. Today's message is about making our spiritual growth an intentional thing in our life.
Let's turn to Luke 6:46-49, as we continue our series on Encounters Jesus Had with people. [Read.]
II. We Slide because We Default
This is a familiar passage, part of Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount.
But because we are familiar with it, we may read it casually and miss some major ideas.
Jesus is addressing people who are his disciples. In. this chapter, vs. 20, Luke tells us that Jesus looked at his disciples and he spoke to them these words.
But Jesus needed to tell his disciples, those who have followed him, that they have to pay attention to some spiritual issues, even though they follow him. No disciple is perfect. Disciples are not just people who made a one-time commitment to Jesus; disciples carry out a life-long process of applying that commitment.
And that's what some Christian writers are saying, that the problem in America, where 40% of the people say they are evangelical Christians, (and 90% say they believe in God,) is not in making commitment - many people have made that commitment - the problem is in applying the commitment to daily life situations (Chap Clark, Youthworker, Nov./Dec. 2000, 42-43).
The Sermon on the Mount is a message about applying our commitment to Christ.
Jesus said that his disciples could call him, "Lord, Lord," and yet do not do what he says.
Disciples can have made a public statement that Christ is their Lord at one time, but in their life they are not doing what Christ has commanded them to do. There is a discrepancy between their words and their lives. These two do not match up.
It's like spouses who have made a vow to love one another and care for one another at one time at their wedding ceremony, yet after they are married, they fight and yell and are not very loving to one another. The problem is not that they didn't make the commitment to each other, the problem is in applying the commitment to their daily life.
That is the kind of thing that Jesus is addressing to his disciples' relationship to himself.
The disciples vowed at one point to make Christ their Lord, yet now they do not love him and are not doing the things that please him.
What does this mean? How does this happen?
The answer is that they have forgotten how to love Christ intentionally.
They are like the builder who did not pay attention to the foundation.
Yes, they are building a house, both men in this parable are building a house, but one pays attention to the foundation and other does not.
What is the foundation?
The foundation is the substructure of our life. The foundation is the support base for our visible daily life. The foundation is invisible, underneath our life, but which provides the strength for our visible life.
I have not had to lay a foundation for a house. The closest I have come to that is working on the sub floors in our townhouse hallway to replace old wood tiles with vinyl tiles.
Not knowing a lot about sub floors, but wanting to do it by myself, I lifted the old wood up and saw that the sub floor was somewhat warped. I tried to sand it as much as I could, but I didn't want to have to lift up the whole sub floor and place a new one down.
Guess what? After sanding it down as much as I could, I started to put the vinyl tiles down, and it looked fine. But a few weeks later, the tiles started to crack a little bit.
What had happened was that under the pressure of being walked on, and since the sub floor was not a clean, flat one, the tiles were not resting on a perfectly flat surface and they started to bend and eventually crack. I had to replace some of the vinyl tiles as a result.
Anyway, it's not my problem now, since we've sold it.
I tell this story not to tell you how to do your sub floor, although you might learn something from my experience. My point in telling you this is to give an example to you that if the foundation is not carefully and intentionally done right, forget about whatever you put on top because it will crack sooner or later.
But the foundation in this parable is obedience; the foundation is doing the things that Jesus commanded.
There is one person who hears the words of Christ, but he does not pay attention to it, he ignores it, puts it aside, throws it away, thinks he can go back to it later, but he never does.
In other words, he was not intentional in putting the commands of Christ into practice and therefore his foundation is shallow or non-existent.
How does a person have a strong foundation?
There are three things he must do.
1. He must dig down deep. This is what the other man in this story did. The first thing he did was to dig down into the soil, and dig down deep. He might have to dig for a whole day, or two days, five feet down or ten feet down, but he kept digging. And what was he looking for?
2. The second thing he did was to find the rock.
He was looking for rocks. This is the second thing the man did. He was digging so that he could find rocks. Because it would be on the rocks, and not on the soil or dirt that he would build his house.
3. The third thing he did was to lay down the foundation.
And once the man found the rocks and could dig no deeper, then he could lay down stones or smaller rocks on top of it and fill up the hole he had dug, but now he knows the house will be on a solid foundation.
Notice that there is nothing accidental about this. The man was intentional in everything he did. He deliberately dug down, persisted, even though he was tired. He kept going until he hit the rocks, and then he began to fill it up.
This is the picture of a man who also builds his spiritual life. This person is not aimless or hoping that somehow he would grow spiritual by drifting along.
Instead, the person who wants to build up his spiritual life also is very deliberate and intentional in working at it.
That work is called obedience, in spiritual terms.
Obedience is taking the commands of Christ and carrying them out. It is the digging down and the finding rocks and filling it up.
It is obedience to Christ's command to prayer, even though we may not feel like praying. It is obedience to Christ's command to read and digest the scriptures. It is obedience to giving ourselves to God in worship and listening to him. It is obedience in serving others who are in need, whether physically or spiritually in need.
These are some of the things that we need to intentionally do in obedience so that we can grow.
How do we measure ourselves to that intentional process?
Do we pray? How often, how deep? Do we read God's word? How much and how deep? Do we worship? How sincere and how deeply?
It is obeying the commands of Christ that builds us up spiritually. This is the only way to do it. There is no other way.
The person who does not obey Christ on these things is like the man who builds without digging deep. He or she hears the words, and they put it aside, ignore it, thinks they will get around to it later, and they never do.
They are building their house on sand.
I have seen a house built on sand. When I go to the beach, I see kids and adults build sandcastles. They may be very beautiful and intricate, take many hours to build. Yet…
At the end of the day when the tide washes up the beach, the sandcastles gets washed away. Or if not the tide, if there were rain or wind blowing, it would also destroy the sandcastles.
I have also seen buildings with deep foundations. On many of our cities, there is one right now in Rockville, when they are building a tall building, they board up the sidewalks, and they start digging. Some of the holes may go 100 feet down.
Why so deep? So that the building will be able to rise up. And the taller the building, the deeper must be the digging.
How deep do you want to go in your spiritual life?
Do you want to remain on the surface and try to build up as much as you can?
It won't work. If we do not practice what Christ has commanded, we are building on sand. For a while, everything may look all right on the outside, but as soon as we encounter a trial or crisis in our life, we don't have the spiritual resources to deal with it.
That trial can be having a child. That trial can be a promotion. That trial can be an illness. That trial can be a marriage. That trial can be anything, good or bad.
Many people think that crisis is only something negative, but that is not true. This is something we've learned in Stephen Ministry, crises are not only bad things; good things can bring a crisis into our life. The torrent that struck the house is simply water coming down a hill.
Having a strong foundation not only enables us to deal with negative things in life, but also positive things in life. The person who is going bankrupt and the person who gets a huge inheritance are both facing a crisis. How they deal with the crisis depends on what they have been doing before the crisis.
If the person has been taking steps to obey God, not perfectly, but nevertheless making the effort to obey God on a regular and consistent basis, then the crisis will not be as difficult to deal with.
If the person has not been taking steps to obey God, consistently ignoring the commands of Christ, then when the crisis comes, it will be very difficult to deal with.
The way we handle crisis is determined by what we do before the crisis comes.
How confident are you that you can deal with a good or a bad crisis.
The best way to deal with it is to take care of spiritual business right now.
And for disciples of Christ, we not only should cry out "Lord, Lord," but we should also do what he says.
What is it we need to as Christ's disciples: Be intentional in doing what Christ has commanded.
Think of doing one thing that you know Christ wants you to do. Start with that, keep at it. Don't give it up. Then you will be digging for a stronger foundation in your life.
