This month at North Park we've been talking about Choice, Desire and the Will of God. As we've heard about it on Sunday mornings and talked about what it means to be sold out to Jesus in our Community Groups, this parable kept coming to mind. Jesus used several parables (stories with a meaning) to try to explain the kingdom of God (or the kingdom of heaven) to his disciples. In short, it is His reign in heaven and on earth. It is His will being done, and His purposes being accomplished for His glory alone. In our lives, it is serving Him and living for Him everyday. It is taking up our cross daily, and considering everything else as "rubbish" in comparison to knowing Him and the power of His resurrection. You've heard all those scriptures before, but where does "the rubber meet the road," in my life, and in yours.
Think for a moment about the choices that we make. If we are honest, most of us make choices based on our desires. We all have desires. Some of them are worthy desires, others less worthy, and still others are simply benign. So where do our desires come from? Do we just wake up one morning with urges and wants and needs? No, for most of us, our desires are formed over time. In many cases we can look back to an instance, or a season in our lives, when we got hooked. I don't use the word "hooked" pejoratively. I simply mean that there was some event or catalyst that caused the desire to take root. For example. I know several men who love to hunt. They will do almost anything to get to hunt. When hunting season is in, they will not be found. When hunting season is out, they are reading about hunting, scouting the hunting area (building a stand), shopping for new hunting gear, or talking to other hunting enthusiasts about, you guessed it, hunting. But if you talk to most avid hunters, they will tell you that their love for hunting had its roots in a season or singular event. Maybe it was that exciting first kill, or that shared experience with a father or entire family. It could have even been the thrill of the outdoors. And as they nurtured that activity, the desire continued to build. So because of that formation, the hunter "desires" to hunt. Thus he makes choices based on that desire.
Consider it visually this way -
Formation -> Desire -> Choice
On occasion, responsible adults will thwart their desire and make choices out of responsibility, duty, or guilt. But if we examine these choices, there is still an element of desire in them. We desire to care for our families because we love them. That desire was formed in us over time or through an ingrained sense of responsibility. If you think about it, all of our choices have some element of desire in them. Even if the direct act itself is undesirable to us, there is usually a desirable outcome somewhere down the line.
So here is the question that all of this has been leading us toward. What forms our desires? What are those things in our lives that create those desires in us? For some of us, this is a level of self-inspection that we have never before attempted. The answer in a word, worship. Or maybe in a more accurate word, worth-ship. In Philippians chapter 3, Paul lists all of the things to which he had previously assigned worth. All of the things that his culture would have "worshiped." Then he said that they are all worthless compared to knowing Christ Jesus. He actually called them a big, steaming, pile of crap. (Hey, Paul had a filthy mouth, the Biblical translators cleaned it up for us.) I don't think we realize how radical Paul was being. Can you imagine taking all the things to which our culture assigns worth, and putting them all together and naming them worthless? Let's try it and see. Let's put names to some of them.
Being a good parent. Being a good citizen. Being a responsible employee. Being a home-owner. Providing for our family. Having nice "things." Letting our kids play little league baseball. Volunteering. Saving and investing our money. Having plenty of the right things to eat. Being physically healthy and taking care of our bodies. Being a good neighbor. Getting a good education for ourselves and our children. Having leisure time to spend with our families. And the list continues. You add your own cultural values.
None of these are bad things. Most are really good things. But Paul would say that compared to knowing Jesus, they are all a big pile of crap. Now that's radical. It's sounds dangerous, even subversive. That's because it is. You see, many people want to lump "knowing Jesus" in with the rest of this list. But you can't. It doesn't belong. But for most of us, these are the things to which we assign worth. These are the things that form our desires. We all want to shop at this mall of cultural values. We all want to worship at this altar. So then here are the two choices we have. Remember, Jesus said that we cannot serve two masters.
Worship of (assigning ultimate worth to) cultural values -> formation -> desire -> choice -> lives look the same as those around us
or
Worship of (assigning ultimate worth to) Jesus Christ -> formation -> desire -> choice -> the will (or Kingdom) of God in our lives
Now, this takes us back to the parable with which we began this epic journey. Please take a second to reread it at the top of this entry, and answer one simple question. Each one of us is selling everything he/she has (our very lives) to buy a field. Only one field has the treasure of ultimate worth (worthy of worship), that leads to joy. Are you digging in the right field?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment