What Matters Most
Purpose Driven Life #16
Cornwall
November 29, 2003
Life is made up of many activities and many things we can focus on. However, there is one focus, which is the one, and only and most important focus, from God’s point-of-view. Paul said it best, as he declared in:
Ga.5.14. Love and learning to love is the most important activity of life. When we consider that ‘God is love’, it is no surprise that this is something he wants us to focus on. On the other hand, because we have a spiritual enemy who wants to rob us of what God has for us and wants to interrupt God’s plan and purpose in our lives, it’s no surprise that loving is difficult for us. It’s no surprise that we have so many distractions and other ideas about what is important. However, for us, it is back to the Bible- it is to the scriptures- and it is from them that we’ll draw our instruction about how to set up our lives. Learning to love, as God loves, is not easy. In fact, it’s hard for all of us and more difficult for some than others, due to gender, as well as due to unloving events in our pasts that hinder our openness to what God wants of us.
While we’re looking at what Paul teaches us, we need to consider what he says in:
Ga.6.10- not only do we have our families and ‘loved ones’ for loving, but God gives us a special place to learn how to love, too. He puts us, with his calling, into a church community, filled with irritating, imperfect, frustrating people, and tells us that we’re to give special attention to these people. This is our ‘workshop’ environment. I don’t know how many of you have ever been to workshops, but in them you have a leader who is teaching about something. Then, he or she gets you to get into groups and you have to practice what is being taught. You might have to practice counseling skills, as I did in one course I took at Liberty University in Virginia a few years back. You might have to practice listening-skills or other communication skills, as those participating in the Empowering Couples seminars in Montreal have had to do. Well, here is where we get to practice our love skills. These are the people God has given us to be around and these are the people God has given us to love.
This is actually a very important beginning point. We must look around ourselves and recognize that those who are here are precisely who God wants to be here and these are the people God has decided that we get to learn to love. It’s not easy. We know each other relatively well. We know the strengths and weaknesses, and might focus, most easily, on the weaknesses or points of irritation. However, we’re not meant to go running from here in irritation and anger, but are to learn to love these men, women, and children in a very special way. We are God’s assignment to you! You are God’s assignment to me! Let us not forget the divine, the holy, and the presence of God in the midst of this congregation! It can be a little ‘scary’ in a way, but this is a reality not to be forgotten. This is God’s congregation. It’s not mine. It’s not yours. It’s not the Council’s. It’s God’s and everything that happens here is part of God’s curriculum in spiritual development for us. Keep this perspective and you’ll do a lot better than if you allow humanity to rise up and overtake you. God wants you to be in regular and close fellowship with these believers, first of all, and with other believers, as you have opportunities.
God wants us to learn three vital lessons about love here.
1. The best use of life is love. Love is the most important part of your life. It’s not just some small part- it is the main part.
1 Cor.14.1a- relationships are to have a priority in your life that tops all other priorities. Do they? Or are relationships only one of your priorities? If relationships and building those relationships, in your family and here, are not top, I challenge you to change, now! Christianity is not about just hearing some nice things. It’s about changing more and more into the way God is and wants each of us to be. How are relationships placed in your life? This is harder for some, I know. If you’re a man, it’s harder. We do very well at ‘parallel play’ and at being around other people, but not being ‘with’ other people. The greatest complaint from wives about husbands is that they are not ‘with’ them. They might be physically nearby. They might be at home in an evening. But they are not ‘with’ them. Men, we must confront this and fight this. We must repent of this and we must change. There’s NO option.
If you’ve come from a hurtful background, placing relationships at the top can be scary, too. You can feel like it’s safer not to do this. However, God calls on you not to be coloured by what has happened, but to prioritize your life by what He says. If you avoid relationships because of past hurts, God calls on you to repent of that avoidance and to get in there and work at relationships. Work at love. These ideas are very important. As Christians, who have been bought and paid for by Jesus Christ, we’ve given up ‘our’ right to decide how we’ll be. If Jesus is Lord of anything, then He must be Lord of everything- not exceptions.
1 Cor.13.3- life is worthless without love. Relationships are not just something to be ‘squeezed into our schedules’. They are what should dominate and guide our schedules. We shouldn’t be fighting to have time for our children or be ‘making’ time for people in our lives. Relationships are what life is all about.
Jesus declared what the great commandments are:
Matt. 22.37-40- don’t get bogged down in that word ‘commandment’. He was showing from where the ten sprang. We tend to get all upset about the ten but they are, as I’ve said several times before, irrelevant to the Christian. They were temporary and for a carnal people without the spirit of God. WE are to go to the heart of God and these verses express the heart of God and what will flow with Jesus living his life in each of us.
Here he tells us that after learning to love God- which is what worship is all about-, learning to love others is the second purpose of your life. Relationships, not achievements or the acquisition of things, are what matter most in life. So, why do we allow our relationships to get the short end of the stick? When our schedules become overloaded, what is that ‘goes’. We let relationships slide when we should not do that. What’s most important to God gets displaced by the ‘urgent’, which is really not all that important most of the time. Busyness is the great enemy of relationships and we need to take control of our lives and live like we believe that the point of life is learning to love- God and people. Life minus love equals a big fat zero.
Remember, too, that love lasts forever- it is not temporary. The relationships you form now will go with you forever.
1 Cor.13.13- Mother Teresa said, “It’s not what you do, but how much love you put into it that matters.” This is an important idea with Christmas coming up, too, and with any giving you might do.
2. Our second lesson this morning is that the best expression of love is time.
1 Jn.3.18- don’t just talk about what’s important. What is important to you is shown by your use of time. The best way to spell love is “T-I-M-E”. The essence of love is not what we think or do or provide for others, but how much we give of ourselves.
Now, men, let me pick on ‘us’ for a bit in this. We, often, don’t understand this. We say things like, “I don’t understand my wife and kits. I provide everything they need. What more could they want?” They want us- you and me. They want your eyes, ears, time, attention, presence, and focus. Nothing can take the place of that. We are wired differently than women and we can easily get caught up in ‘doing’ and ‘lists’ and the like. Relationships are another thing ‘to do’. But that’s not how relationships work. What people want more than anything else is ‘focused attention’. I understand this and am so guilty of not giving it to all of you, and to those in my household, even. This is a big struggle I have and that most men have, from what I understand of men. K
You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.
John 3.16- example of God in this. Love means giving up- yielding my preferences, comfort, goals, security, money, energy, or time for the benefit of someone else.
3. Our third lesson is that the best time to love is now. Love needs to take top priority to everything else that’s going on in our lives.
Ga.6.10
Eph.5.16
Prov.3.27
These all tell us to get in there and love now, not later. Our families hear too much ‘later’. We need to attend ‘now’. We need to be present and attentive ‘now’. We don’t know that we have ‘later’ to do it. I’m much aware of the fact that my children are growing up and it’s rather surreal sometimes now as we’re together and I have this realization that, in some situations, this might be one of the last times I do ‘whatever’ with one of them. It’s quite a concept.
Conclusions
It’s all about love. This is what life is for and about. The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.
Ga.5.14- great summation to this message- and who can summarize best but God?!
