Storing Up Treasures

In researching my sermon for this past Sunday on Kingdom Priorities (Matthew 6:19-34), I discovered an article that was written for the New York Times Magazine in September of 2009.  The article was entitled, "The Self Storage Self" by Jon Mooallem.  It was a pretty amazing article that you may want to read yourself at the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06self-storage-t.html

Here are some things I gleaned from the article.  According to the president of a storage consulting group, "Human laziness has always been a big friend of self-storage operators."  This conclusion is based on the fact that people will store their stuff and leave it there not wanting to move it again.  Often times they will forget what they have put in their storage facility.

According to the Self Storage Association the United States now has about 2.3 billion square feet of storage space.  They indicate that this would be like building a giant canopy and having every person in America covered with seven square feet of space per person.  Being from the Chicago area I did some calculations based on the Merchandise Mart in Chicago.  That monstrous building is the world's largest commercial building boasting of 4.2 million square feet of gross space.  If my math is correct it would take over 500 Merchandise Marts to equal the square feet of storage space in the United States!

According to the article the original use of storage facilities was temporary.  People would rent space temporarily when between houses, or in difficult situations such as a divorce or death in the family.  But since the 1990's storage facilities have been places to accumulate our stuff.  The article quotes one sociologist who stated that the average consumer purchases one new piece of clothing every five and a half days.

Consider how you have personally accumulated stuff.  I remember as an incoming college freshman all my earthly belongings fit on one flatbed cart.  But even as a poor college student it took a pick up truck to move me out.  Now having been married 30 years and having three kids and a couple of grand kids, we have more and more stuff.  My guess is that I am not alone.  We seem to be natural accumulators of stuff.

So what is the point of all this?  For me it comes down to the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:19-21.  Jesus told us to not store up, or more literally hoard, treasures on earth but to store up treasures in heaven.  The point is not necessarily to get rid of all our material possessions but to make sure that our material possessions are not controlling our lives.  At the risk of sounding contradictory, I suggest that we give serious thought to what possessions we have that we really need and use and which ones are we holding on to because they give us a sense of security or some emotional attachment.

How can you tell the difference? I would suggest that you use the six month rule.  If I have not used something in the last six months then it may be possible that I no longer need it.  I understand, antiques and collections and hobbies, but the fact is that we will take none of those things with us.  Moreover, if we are refusing to hold them up to God in an open hand then they have become more than just collectibles they are becoming idols. 

This is not a call to move out of your house and live under a tree in the woods.  But it is a call to consider what value are you placing on your accumulated stuff?  Is it of such value that you have not given God permission to take it away?  If so then it is not an investment in eternity but an earthly investment and it has captured part of your heart that should belong to God.

Join me in asking God to teach us to travel light on our earthly journey.

Some Thoughts on Following Jesus

“If anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  Luke 9:23

This passage is in my opinion the vision statement of discipleship.  It focuses on putting me second and Jesus first.  I am to follow Jesus.  Following Jesus is to be my daily drive and motivation.  Following Jesus is to be what I do every day, not just on Sunday.  It is a daily choice.

But if I am going to make that choice it helps to know what I am choosing to do.  For too many of us, we leave the real following Jesus part of our lives to the super saints and spiritual giants.  It is easy to buy into the myth that pastors and missionaries follow Jesus and the rest of us just live our lives.  But Jesus does not give us the option to believe that myth.  We are all called to follow him.

The word translated “follow” means to attend, to go with or to accompany a person, typically a teacher so as to learn.  So to follow Jesus means we need to go with Jesus.  But one will not go with someone they do not trust.  One will not learn from someone in whom they have no confidence.  So to follow Jesus will mean that we put our confidence, or better our trust in him.  That means we believe that he is who he said he was; that we believe that he is the answer for the emptiness in our soul and that we put our complete trust in him for the forgiveness of our sins.

But it does not stop there.  Jesus called that first step of belief being “born again” (John 3:3).  In all of life and nature there is the foregone conclusion that growth will follow birth.  While it seems as though many Christians have set that conclusion aside when it comes to spiritual birth; God does not.  He expects that we will “follow” or as the Apostle Paul says “imitate” (1 Corinthians 11:1) the example of Jesus.  We should desire to grow in our relationship with Jesus, which will take time, sacrifice, effort and communication.  We will want to do the things Jesus does in being kind and living a pure life and being free from materialism.  We will want to let others know of our relationship with Jesus and how he frees us from our burden of sin and calls us to serve him.

When we deny ourselves and then go so far as to die to self, we find that we are free to follow Christ and completely lose our lives in him (Luke 9:24).  This does not mean that life will be easy; it does not mean that we won’t have struggles; it does not mean that we won’t be able to think for ourselves.  What it does mean is that we will find a freedom and a sense of purpose that is beyond what we could imagine.  We will see our relationships in light of how we can move others closer to Jesus.  We will see our employment as a gift from God that gives us the means to provide for ourselves and be charitable to others.  We will see our times of worship as offering our gift of praise to God.  We will be less inclined to complain and more inclined to look for solutions. 

It begins with taking God at his Word; trusting Jesus; and letting him have control of one’s life one area at a time.

Take Up Your Cross Daily

Many of us have been successful at self denial to one degree or another.  Some have lost weight and then maintained the weight loss.  That takes self denial.  Look at the parking lot of the local gym and the cars in the lot are evidence of individuals who are working out or taking a class when they could be doing something else.  That is self denial.  Athletes at all levels give up time when they could be doing other things to practice.  Musicians spend hours in rehearsal.  Good parents will put their personal desires aside so that their children can have their needs met.  All of the above are examples of self denial.

When Jesus said we must deny ourselves to follow him, we have the tendency to say, “I got this one.”  And we would be accurate to a degree.  But our creator knows us better than we know ourselves (Psalm 139) and so Jesus adds a second element to self denial that ups the ante when he says “…and take up his cross daily…”  (Luke 9:23).  The image here is quite shocking when we look at it through 1^st Century eyes.

In our culture we use the phrase to mean a burden that we bear and it more or less is designed to glorify the one using the phrase.  That is not even close to the image one of those listening to Jesus would have had in mind.  It was not uncommon in that time to see a condemned criminal carrying his cross beam to his execution.  Everyone knew that he was going out to die. It was a one way trip.  This is the mental image Jesus is burning into the conscious of his hearers.  To follow him means that one must daily carry his own “cross beam” out and die to self.  This takes self denial to a new level.  There is no turning back.

These are not easy words to digest for any of us.  Our human nature rails against these words.  Our culture is like a raging river flowing against these words.  But Christ calls for us to live radically different than the siren call of culture.  Following Jesus means that every day, we each make the choice to put Jesus first in all that we do.  I would suggest that the only way that this can happen with any measure of success is to invite the Holy Spirit to fill us, or more clearly, to control us each day (Ephesians 4:15-18).

What does it look to live a life of putting Christ first?  On the surface some things will be the same.  One will still need to go to work or school and do their best.  One will still need to obey authority figures from parents to teachers to employers to law enforcement.  One will still need to care for the basic necessities of life.  One will still need corporate worship and service and one will still need to enjoy leisure time.

However a person who is dying to herself will be respectful of those around her because that is what Jesus would do.  The person who is dying to himself will not spend time worrying about his retirement fund.  The person who is dying to herself will find ways to be generous to others.  The person who is dying to himself will understand that any skill, ability, knowledge or talent he has is from God and God alone, there are no self-made people in the kingdom of God.  It bears repeating: dying to one’s self means striving to put Jesus Christ first in every endeavor, every thought, and every action.  Know this, not a single person does it perfectly, it is a journey.  Following Christ is a radical choice to live in the culture and yet differently from the culture every single day.

Self Denial

A local furniture company has a jingle that says: “I want it all! I want it all! I want it now!”  A soft drink company used the slogan, “Obey your thirst.”  An optical chain adopted as their motto the lyrics “It’s your thing.  Do what you want.”  We live in a culture where the norm is to get what you want, as much as you want when you want.  It is that flow of the cultural river into our daily lives that can cause us to not want to hear and follow the words of Jesus.

“If anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  Luke 9:23

There are three actions in this sentence that are each vital to one’s following Christ.  I am going to take them one blog post at a time.  First of all we must deny ourselves.  This is more than just giving up something temporarily for Lent.  There is nothing wrong with that practice and it can be the first step of learning self denial.  But it seems that more is intended by Jesus.  On the other hand self denial does not mean self deprecation.  Just putting myself down and taking on a passive role in life is definitely not the path that Jesus has for us.

As I understand it, self denial means that I actively put aside my personal ambitions, my hopes and dreams, my personal tastes in order to put Jesus first.  In other words, I lose my life in him.  I determine that I will make Jesus my first priority.  I will make following him the first passion of my life.  And as the verse says, it will have to be a daily choice.  It is not a “one and done” type of decision. 

When I was 16 my voice changed and I went from singing second soprano in the 8^th grade choir to singing bass.  God blessed me with a resonance that many suggested would be a good voice for the media.  I pursued a career in broadcasting and earned a bachelor’s degree in communication.  And yet in the middle of that I was challenged in the core of my being by the Holy Spirit to deny myself, my hopes and dreams of being in the national media and following Jesus as a pastor.   What I found is that as I put aside my dreams God still used my training.  I worked in the audio visual department of a national mission agency and narrated several productions for them.  I narrated media productions for other missionaries and for a local crisis pregnancy center.  I even spent a season in a local broadcast booth calling high school football games.  When I denied my dreams of being on the national news, God reshaped them to give me a greater opportunity to be used to help others spread the good news of the gospel.  Today because of the internet, people around the world can log on to our website and hear a sermon I have preached.  Who would have imagined?

There is a cost to denying yourself daily and putting your hopes, dreams and plans aside for following Jesus.  The fact is this is not an easy decision nor does it always result in Jesus giving us back what we have given up.  But there is also a great reward in a way that we don't always expect.  I don’t have it all materially.  I chose to not obey my thirst.  I realized it was not my thing but God’s thing and I chose to do what he wanted.  But what I continue to discover is that denying myself results in a depth of satisfaction, contentment and fulfillment that is hard to describe.