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MAKING DECISIONS: Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 and James 4:13-17
9th January 2011, The Anvil
This evening was supposed to be the time that we looked at the vision of Uncut. This is something that I always struggle with: we are a church, our vision is Jesus, we want to see His kingdom come and His will done on earth as it is in heaven. Do we need to get more specific than that? Well some people would say yes, but let’s not get into that right now.
Instead, I think that if each of us decided to live for God, each of us lived as Christians and disciples to the extent that it affected each and every decision that we made, that it impacted our whole lives, and if each of us took that responsibility, then as a community we would have a vision and a communitas. Communitas is that sense of belonging together, of being in this together, on the same team, facing the same things. And I think that that is as exciting and more exciting than me telling you what I think God is telling me is the vision for us.
And this thought led me to thinking about how we make decisions.
Decisions that seem to be important but which probably aren’t that important
And I am not talking about those decisions which really seem to matter, but which really don’t. Shall I be an orthodontist or a vet? Shall I change jobs so that I get paid more, but leave behind a job that I am really enjoying now? Shall I go to the University of Warwick or Birmingham?
Don’t get me wrong, God cares about all aspects of our lives. God wants us to be happy, to live an abundant and full life, and these decisions do have an influence on this, but God has given us a brain. John Wesley is alleged to have said that the vast majority of time God spoke to him through his common sense. Sometimes we pray prayers like, “God should I do physics or biology A-Level?” and I think God’s response is, “Do what you like. No really, do what you love.”
I think we sometimes pray prayers like, “God do you want me to talk about you with my friends?”, as if we imagine God turning around and saying, “No, whatever you do, don’t do that.” Of course God will not say that. A lot of decisions are no-brainers.
Now this belief that we should use the common sense that God has given us, and that we can trust the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us sometimes seems a bit extreme when I employ it. So I wake up one morning and announce to my wife that I am going to get ordained in the Church of England, she understandably wants to know at which point we discussed this and when did I pray about it. To which I respond that I can do it, that it is right there in front of me, that it seems like it would be fun, so why shouldn’t I?
Of course, there needs to be a balance, but in the Bible, James reminds us that we can’t say for sure what we will do tomorrow. We are not sure what the future holds for us, life is fragile, which of course is a recurring theme of Ecclesiastes which we looked at in a sermon series not so long ago. But what we can be sure of is right now.
Let’s hear from John Wesley again. He was once asked what he would do differently if he knew that Jesus was coming back at the end of the day. He replied that he would do nothing differently. He was living his life as if this was the last.
So how do we make those decisions – who to marry, what job to do, whether to go to University, which one and to do what, whether to buy a house or continue renting, which GCSEs to do, whether to retire early, etc. etc.?
I think it goes like this:
Trust God and His guidance. If you really want to do the right thing, the chances are you will. If you want to live your life for God then He will lead you and guide you. For some people this seems to be just a little too risky, and in some ways it is. You have to trust the Holy Spirit, but hey, that’s what faith is all about.
Decisions that don’t seem to be important but which are really important
There are also decisions we have to make that don’t seem to matter that much, but that in reality, are way more important than they seem.
There are some things in our lives that we can change, and we think that if they did then things would get better for us. You may have even said this to yourself before, I know I have,
“If only I had…more money things would be better, moved out of my parents home things would be easier, if I were married things would be better, if I had an iPhone 4 my life would be more organised, once I start driving things will be a lot better, I can’t wait till I am 18, everything will change then.”
Sometimes we get more extreme, we think that if we move church, move cities even, then everything will better. And sometimes it is right to move church or cities.
But on the whole none of these examples change much. Whoever you are now you still will be even if you are richer, living away from your parents, driving, married, got a degree. The best examples of this I think is boys attitudes to marriage. I get asked more often than I would sometimes like to talk to young men about sex and relationships, and one of the things I tell them is that if they struggle with lust and pornography now, getting married won’t change that. “Oh come on Harry,” they say, “once I’m married I’ll be having sex like five times a day, I won’t struggle with lust.” To which I tell them, “You won’t and you will.”
So what are the decisions that really matter? Well a good place to start seems to me to be to ask the question of what things did Jesus go on about? The main focus of Jesus’ teaching was to ‘repent for the kingdom of God is near.’
Matthew 3:2; Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:15; Mark 6:12 and Luke 13:3-5 are all about repenting.
REPENT
When we here the word ‘repent’ we immediately think that what Jesus is saying is that we stop doing naughty things and go to church instead; this is what the word repent has come to mean, stop sinning and do something religious instead.
But we are wrong if we think this is what Jesus meant. One way for us to find out what the word meant at the time that Jesus used it is to look at other people who used the word at about the same time. And forty years or so after Jesus’ crucifixion there was a Jewish historian called Josephus who used the word, and when wrote it down we still have a copy of what he wrote. When I say historian we might imagine that Josephus had a beard and a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbow. He probably did have a beard, but no tweed jacket. In fact as well as being a historian Josephus was an aristocrat, a rich and important Jew. He was also a general.
One day he was asked to go and visit the Jewish rebels. These were a group of people who wanted to use force to beat the Romans and drive them out of Israel. Josephus was given the task of telling the leaders of these rebels to wait until the right time, to not be hot-headed and take on the Romans when they can’t win. So Josephus goes to them, and as he records in his history book, he tells them to, ‘Repent and believe in me.’
That sounds familiar, it sounds a lot like what Jesus used to say. When Josephus said it he wasn’t asking those rebels to stop sinning and to do something religious instead. He was asking them to give up their own agendas and follow him instead.
40 years earlier when Jesus used that same phrase he probably meant something more than Josephus. When Jesus used the phrase it had more theological implications especially because he spoke of the kingdom of God. But if Jesus meant more than Josephus, he certainly didn’t mean less. He too at least meant that we should give up our own agendas and live for the kingdom of God instead. Give up our own agendas.
SO WHICH DECISIONS REALLY MATTER?
If Jesus calls us to repent, and if repentance is, at the very least, a call to give up our own agendas, then that means every decision we make matters. Whether we become an orthodontist or a vet might affect our salary, it might affect where we live, it might ultimately affect who we marry. It might affect how many hours we work, it might affect where we go to university, so on one level a decision like this is important. But all of those things can happen in different ways and you can still be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
But what about decisions like who we hang around with? Proverbs 27:17 says, ‘As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.’ In other words, if you hang around with the right person you’ll get sharper, if you hang around with the wrong people you’ll get blunter. This is a decision that really matters, and yet a lot of the time we don’t stop to think about it – we let life happen to us. Before we know it we have been influenced by the people we hang around with and find ourselves doing a whole load of things that months ago we wouldn’t have even dreamt of doing because somehow or other it seems ok now.
What about decisions like the things we say. Sticking with Proverbs for a while 12:18 says, ‘The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.’
I know people who have left the church and aren’t following Jesus anymore because of gossip and people saying negative things. Saying something behind someone’s back that isn’t very nice is a decision most of us don’t make – we just find ourselves doing it. Yet for those people who think, “If that is what it means to be a Christian, I want nothing to do with it!” that decision is way more important than the decision of what job you do.
What about what we think. Jesus said in Matthew 5:28, ‘But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’
Most of us would spend more time on the decision of which car we want to buy than making a decision about what we think about, or the things we watch or see that feed our thoughts. Yet Jesus said that lustful thoughts are as harmful as a physical adulterous relationship, whether you are married or not, we tend not to think too critically about the films we watch, the words we read or what we are thinking about.
What about praying? Paul gave the seemingly impossible bit of advice for us in one of the shortest verses of the Bible when he said, ‘pray continuously’. I guess this is only impossible if we think that prayer means kneeling down at the side of the bed. If we see prayer as simply a matter of being in God’s presence then we can make a decision to be with God, to take Jesus with us everywhere we go and all day. The difficulty is this needs to be a conscious decision of the will, and secondly, I guess some of us go some places and do some things that we don’t want to do with or in the presence of God. Taking God with us, being in his presence all day, recognising that when we are doing the housework we can be in God’s presence, is one of the most important decisions we make.
What about being part of a church – Hebrews 10:25 says, “Don’t give up meeting together as some do, but encourage one another.” I have met a lot of people who think they don’t need to meet with other Christians – generally speaking their faith is stagnant, and the gifts that God has given them they don’t share with brothers and sisters in the church.
These are the decisions that really matter.
Depending on what we decide about issues like these will either move us closer to or further from Christ. And yet there is a real danger that a lot of people in the church don’t let their faith influence decisions like these, we don’t let Christ into these parts of our lives. Sure, we want Jesus to tell us about which job to have or who to marry because we want to get that right, but we don’t want Jesus to have a say in who our friends are, what we watch, who are boyfriend or girlfriend is. And people sometimes suggest to me that I need to talk to people about these decisions – but Jesus has already spoken to us, and if we won’t listen to Jesus then won’t listen to me – or I won’t listen to others.
This is vision Sunday. My vision for Uncut is that we would be a community of people in which we have all repented, and I don’t mean we’re more religious, I mean we have all given up our own agenda and are living for Jesus.
If you want to join me tonight in repenting, maybe for the first time, maybe for the millionth time, then you can do that in the quietness of your heart right now. You might want to kneel down and do it.
