The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Christians (4)
Live the UneXamined Life
Cardiff Heights Baptist Church
23 January 2000
As we come to the fourth habit of the highly ineffective Christian, I
am sure it hasn’t escaped your attention that each of the habits
has featured a shape. Habit 1 was to “Live in the Circle of
Ineffectiveness”. Habit 2 was to “Put God in a Square Box”. And
Habit 3 was to “Embrace the Triangle of Mediocrity”. Now some of
you may have hypothesized that this is just some fixation of mine
with shapes but that is not the case. These shapes were carefully
chosen because these shapes were a vital part of my research for
this sermon series. The shapes come from my research
instrument this.
Hold up Playstation controller
Here we have the circle, the square, the triangle and the fourth
button is an X. Which brings us to the fourth habit of the highly
ineffective Christian.
Show Overhead http://www.geocities.com/dreamingisdangerous/unexamined.JPG
The fourth habit of the highly ineffective Christian is that they “Live
an uneXamined life”.
You will enter a new sphere of ineffectiveness if you live an
unexamined life. The truth, that living an unexamined life will
produce mediocrity beyond compare, is not a new discovery. The
ancient Greeks new it well. It was Socrates who said, “The
unexamined life is not worth living”. To be effective in your
Christian walk you need to examine your life in order that you can
as Socrates put it “Know Thyself”. This habit is actually quite easy.
We seldom examine ourselves since we don’t want to know
ourselves. If we knew ourselves we would probably run away.
To examine yourself is to take the most treacherous journey there
is. The journey within. The famous American Monk, Thomas
Merton is said to have once claimed, “The real journey is the
journey within.’ For the effective Christian it is crucial that the
impact of the gospel upon their inner life is taken seriously.
A great deal of Christian teaching and books have to do with how
people deal with their ‘outer world’: being Christian in lifestyle;
sharing the gospel with others; engaging in works of justice,
compassion and mercy and upholding traditional Christian work
ethics and moral stances. The emphasis is often on service or on
ministry to others as if such activity is the hallmark of Christian
obedience. However, it is not possible to sustain any such
dimensions of Christian living without renewing the inner world.
Without taking the inner journey and examining your life, you
cannot cope with the activity. A good example of this can be found
in the story of Elijah found in the first book of Kings chapters 18
and 19.
This was a period in the history of the nation of Israel like so many
others where they were worshipping other gods. The king at the
time, Ahab, was married to a woman named Jezebel who
worshipped Baal and Asherah. And in chapter 18 we have a kind
of contest between Elijah and four hundred and fifty prophets of
Baal. The contest was not to show that the Lord was more
powerful than Baal but to show that Baal was no god at all. Cutting
to the chase, God won and then Elijah killed all four hundred and
fifty prophets of Baal and then after that Elijah had a race with the
king, Ahab. The King in his chariot and Elijah on foot and Elijah
won. All in all a busy day for the prophet.
When he collapsed on his bed in his home town, Jezreel at the
end of his big day on Carmel, Elijah was a spent man. Three years
of pent-up emotions had been released that day; the same day in
which he had built an altar, wrestled in prayer on the mountain top,
his head between his knees in intense concentration, then dealt
with the prophets of Baal; and finally, after all that, he had run like
the wind ahead of the king’s chariot to Jezreel, some thirty
kilometres away.
All the man’s energies had been fiercely consumed. But this is the
point in the story where it gets interesting. We pick up on the story
in Chapter 19.
Read 1 Kings 19:1-9a
Here we have Elijah who took on 450 prophets of Baal and won
and then ran faster than the kings chariot and is now scared to
death of one woman, Jezebel. That must be one scary lady. The
truth is that Elijah was crushed by the demands of ministry. He
couldn’t cope anymore. He’d had enough. He fled the cruel
Jezebel.
Threatened by Jezebel, he runs like a cockroach when the lights
are turned on, clear across the country, on and on, until he loses
himself in the desert, overwhelmed by depression.
Look at God’s servant now, convinced that neither his own faith
and obedience on the one hand, nor the much publicised power of
God to save on the other hand, has really changed anything at all.
Lost in the desert of despair, he is not lost to God. He feels that he
is because he has tumbled into the foolishness into which we all
tumble when we become depressed. He has shut his ears to every
voice in the world except the complaining voice of his own
miserable and unhappy self. To that voice he gives his undivided
attention. He needs - desperately - to hear God’s voice. And soon,
he will. But not just now, because for the moment he has no ears
for it. The time for counsel is not yet. God let him say his piece; He
hears Elijah out, without rebuke, without interruption. He simply
listened, till his child has nothing left that is hidden still to say and
then baked him a cake.
Then Elijah made his way to Horeb. He wanted to hear God
speak, and speak to him, he wanted to meet God again, face to
face. The story of what happened then is superbly told.
Read 1 Kings 19:9b-18
The demonstrations of God’s power and presence that have
meant so much to Elijah pass before him again; the same things
that had been the signs of God’s presence on this mountain with
Moses: the storm, the earthquake and the fire.
But now, God Himself is not in them. Like a violin that had seemed
a thing alive while the violinist played it, so these things had
seemed alive with God. But now, the way a violin is when it is laid
aside becomes a dead thing, so all these things were empty of
God’s presence. What thoughts raced through the prophet’s mind
as he crouched, half forward to see, half backward to protect
himself, and watched the gale shriek among the savage peaks, felt
the shock that split the trembling mountains and saw the flames of
the forest fire torn by the wind? It was in all these things he had
once known God. Now they were empty of Him. Was God lost to
him, then? Where was God?
And then, the great silence; and in the silence, the whisper of a
gentle stillness. In that stillness, Elijah was aware of God as he
had never been before. All the world lay quiet, like a tool a
craftsman has laid aside, but God had not been laid aside with His
tools. He was near - in Elijah’s own inner being, nearer than his
heart-beat.
A person cannot, by searching, find out God. But let them search
and God will find out them. We must wait for God, until he comes.
He is not at our beck and call, like some genie when we rub a
prayer lamp, but in his own sovereign freedom he will come, with
infinite majesty, in a stillness so awesome and alive that like Elijah
we must bury our face in our clothes, for none can see him and
live.
How long Elijah was held in awe we are not told, but when that
time had passed - as pass it must - Elijah had been made into
another man. The vision of God does that; it always does that. And
only the vision of God does it.
One aspect of Elijah’s flight from Jezebel was the inner movement
into his own being. He sort the Lord, initially thinking he would find
him in the storm, fire or earthquake. Instead Elijah experienced
God as the farthest point of the journey, as the still, small voice of
calm which Martin Buber calls “a hovering voice of silence.” This
voice of hovering silence is the presence of the brooding,
protective spirit of God, in whom Elijah found such security that he
could come to a new experience of trusting God. It was in the calm
that Elijah met God and found himself. What do I mean by that?
Saint Gregory of Nyssa answered that question better than I when
he said,
“How can we know ourselves? The image of the eye, seen in a
mirror, is taken from the eye itself and is its imprint; but with regard
to the character and image of the soul it is the other way round:
the form the image of the soul is traced, is taken from the
Divine beauty; consequently, the soul only contemplates itself
when it sees itself in its prototype, which is God.”
We can only truly know ourselves when we come face to face with
God. We can only truly examine ourselves when we come into the
presence of God. How do we come into the presence of God? The
same as Elijah. We wait. As the Psalmist says, “Be still and know
that I am God.”
In the stillness of silence we can come into God’s presence and
only then can we examine our lives, our motives.
To be a highly ineffective Christian in order to live an unexamined
life you need to avoid stillness. The best strategy for this is to fill
your life with stuff. Keep yourself so busy you don’t have time to
think about life’s purpose, the eternal destiny of those around you
and what legacy you’ll leave behind. Crowd your life with
scheduled events that keep you moving from one to the other until
you are living on automatic. Does everyone know what this is?
Hold up small diary.
This is useless. Get one of these.
Hold up big diary.
And fill it. This will help you to resist the temptation to look at your
motives, the ‘why’ of what you do. Live as if you cleared that up
years ago. You will become shallow, which is the byproduct of a
life that is too busy.
Here is a list of questions that you should avoid at all costs if you
wish to be highly ineffective.
Who am I?
Why am I here?
What do I want to do?
How can I serve?
In what areas of my life am I doing well? Doing poorly?
What do I value?
What am I afraid of?
How do I define Love?
What is my relationship with God like?
How do I treat others?
How do I treat myself?
What are my beliefs and feelings about death?
How do I view the society I live in and my place in it?
How do I handle anger?
What has my past been like? What does it mean to me now?
How do I define peace?
What has been my most peaceful experience?
Do I feel like a victim of the world?
What are my natural talents and spiritual gifts? Do I use them?
Can I quiet my thoughts and be at peace? If so, how? If not, why
not?
What are my significant relationships in my life?
What physical activities do I participate in?
Do I care for my body?
What are my opinions about nature? Do I care for the Earth?
What emotions do I enjoy? Dislike? Feel neutral about?
Am I able to forgive myself and others?
Am I loving everyday?
You have to avoid these questions if you wish to remain highly
ineffective. It is quite dangerous of me to even share those with
you. Pondering just one of those questions could enrich your
relationship with God. So go out and just live your life. Be happy.
Fulfill yourself. And for mediocrity’s sake don’t think about it!
Just in case you are put off by Socrates’ statement that the
unexamined life is not worth living. Let me just encourage you to
restrain yourself from examining your life by pointing out that from
the truth of this proposition one cannot infer that the examined life
is worth living.
