BRAVEHEART: Make Your Life Count

I have reached that grand stage of life where my 3 children are now married, I am an empty nester, a grandmother several times over and I have a husband who has lost most of his hair, therefore I feel I can safely proclaim that I have had enough life experience to have gained some wisdom. And there is one piece of wisdom which I will deign to share with you today….. My mother was right!

Life is Short When we are 10 years old and dying to grow up so we can make our own choices, it

seems to take forever, When we have young children who do not sleep well and need constant attention, it

seems forever, and When we have teenagers and we need to dig deep into all our resources of patience

and wisdom, it seems forever.

And yet it would appear that in almost the blink of an eye I am in that place, and I hear the same words of my mother coming out of my mouth to my now parenting children, ‘Life is short’.

Now what my mother didn’t know about this piece of wisdom, is that Jesus himself had shared this same thought more than two thousand years ago. James 4:4 “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

It seems almost depressing to read this until we stop and to look also at God’s wider perspective. God says of his time span, “I am the Alpha and Omega, who is and who was and who is to come.” (Revelation 1:8) God is ‘ETERNAL’!

And as his beloved children, though we die in this ‘earthly life’, we will actually go on to live eternally, forever with him.

This concept of Eternity plays with my brain.

Eternity is such a huge concept that I think only God’s brain can truly comprehend and define it. But let me try to illustrate it for today’s purposes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now let’s illustrate the length of your life on earth, on this line of eternity that never had a beginning and never ends.----------------------------* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now if this is how 80 years of your life looks, on this ‘extremely’ limited timeline view of eternity, my mother’s quote that “life is short” is possibly the hugest understatement ever.

What I want to share with you today is a pretty sobering concept as we look at this tiny ‘blip’ that is your life… We have two choices of what to do with this ‘blip’.

We can make the choice to use our time, energy, gifts, abilities and resources to make this ‘blip’ as fun, comfortable and self-fulfilling as possible OR We can use our time, energy, gifts, abilities and resources during the time of this ‘blip’ to impact eternity for the sake of many, many others. Now that may seem an oversimplified statement, but that is exactly the choice each one of us makes, whether it’s conscious or unconscious.

An ‘Ordinary’ LifeI am a first generation Christian. I was bought up by loving Catholic Parents but I didn’t know that salvation came by grace, not by works, until I was 18.

The guy who led me through the scriptures about this difference became my husband. We were engaged when I was 18 and married when I was 20. When we first married, my husband was in the middle of his training to become a Pastor, so with no background in the faith I began the long journey of educating myself on the Christian life.

I read many books, and articles about living as a Christian, about raising children God’s way and a doing life positively in a pastor’s household.

In our first church, I had a lovely Christian friend, a bit over a decade older than me. One day I was sharing with her about the latest book I had been reading. It was about a woman who had died in hospital due to complications from a burst appendix. After being declared dead and laid in a room with a sheet over her face, God had miraculously brought her back to life. In her book she went on to share her life journey from that point and the things God had called her to do and the amazing answers to prayer she had experienced along the way.

My friend Joan listened to me speak in wonder about this woman’s amazing life, and then she said to me, “You know, you too will have enough material to write such a book one day. You too will experience God’s hand in your life journey ahead. He will answer your prayers and do amazing things through you”

Now my friend Joan was not prophesying. She was not saying I would actually write a book or have a life experience with God that would be something out of the ordinary for a Christian. She was reminding me that this God who did amazing things through the woman in this book, is the exact same God I serve and follow.

His power is available to me also. His desire is to work in and through me. His desire is that all people, no matter how seemingly ‘insignificant’,

o be open to walk where he calls, o do what he asks and o allow his supernatural power to achieve his purposes.

You know, I doubt my friend Joan remembers the conversation we had that day but it had a powerful impact on me.

Me, a very ordinary, somewhat shy, 26 year old young mum of two small children, a pastor’s wife with no skills in music, typing or public speaking, who lived in a small remote country town, could be intimately involved with the enormous, powerful, awesome God of the universe, to actually make a difference for His Kingdom.

I will be never be famous, never write a book or have a book written about me, but that doesn’t matter. More importantly that is not what pleases God. Whether I appear to be famous or inconspicuous in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of my fellow Christian counterparts is not a measure of whether I am making my life count. Making my life count simply means focusing all I am and do towards his will and purposes.

AND THE SAME GOES FOR YOU!

Have you ever truly read James 5:17? Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.

Just as my friend Joan had abruptly awakened me to a seemingly obvious truth; when I read this scripture years later, it was is if I had seen it clearly for the first time. It’s revelation struck me so hard, I remember I sat up straight in my bed and stared. First of all I wondered, does anything astound us long-time Christians any more, when we read the Bible? …..It did not rain in Israel for 3 years! But even more astounding, this meteorological condition was due to a specific earnest prayer of just one person.

God did this because one man asked him to. Pretty powerful, mind blowing stuff! We can be tempted to write this off in our minds because after all the man doing the praying was a prophet, a huge figure of faith in the Bible, a seemingly spiritual man beyond our realms to imagination. But then this is what blew me away, the verse begins with, (the part I think we too often gloss over)….“Elijah was a person just like us”. In other words he was a human with feelings and goals and desires and choices to make. A person just like us.

What difference could we make if we followed and called on God as Elijah did? Surely we would indeed be able to write ‘that book’.

Another human being, a person ‘just like us’, who lived in more recent history than Elijah, was a woman who served God amongst the poorest of the poor, in a foreign country. She did so out of her desire, as she herself described it, ‘to love Jesus as he has never been loved before.’ This woman was Mother Theresa.

While we will not all be called to make our life count in overseas, but I believe we should all be challenged to pledge the same three vows Mother Theresa lived by…That is, if we truly want to make our life count!

She vowed she would: 1. Give God anything he asked for, she would refuse him nothing 2. Do God’s bidding no matter what- She said If God imparts himself fully to us should we answer with just a fraction of ourselves 3. Do His bidding promptly, no bargaining, no delaying

Now I truly believe that if every single Christian took up the challenge of walking this ‘short life’ under the direction and power of the same supernatural God of Elijah with the same vows of Mother Theresa, we would see revival in every nation on earth.

But we do not. And I wonder… ‘Why’?

A Life ‘in the World’ But Not ‘of it’ The answer is probably manifold but maybe simpler than we wish to acknowledge…Firstly, I think we get caught up in the everyday of our own agendas because we forget that ‘Life is Short.’

Secondly, I think each of us just don’t recognize that we are a human being ‘just like Elijah’! With exactly the same connections to the powerful God of the universe.

Finally, I believe many Christians are blind to the insidious infiltration of our society and its norms, into our Biblical Christian worldview. That is, the way non-Christian’s in our society do life is strongly influencing how we as Christians choose to do life.

Think about it…Other than the fact we don’t swear or get drunk and we go to church on Sunday, perhaps a Bible study during the week, what sets us apart from the way the rest of Australian families are doing life?

Some years ago, when my oldest child was 10 years old, I was listening to a high profile Pastor. As part of his talk he gave an illustration about his daughter who was growing up. He was struggling with the new era of their lives as she was now going out on dates. He talked about her first date and watching her walking off, all dressed up, heading off to the movies with her boyfriend.

She was 12 years old!

Now it is not my place to judge how others parent and this is certainly not a scriptural issue, but at the time I remember being confused. I was still in this big learning curve of my faith and parenting and I earnestly watched older more mature Christians who came from second and third generation Christian backgrounds. I was hungry to learn but something about this situation gnawed at me. And God placed this seed of unrest in my heart, an unrest that further incidents ‘added to’ over the years, and has in fact led me to giving this talk today.

Why do we as Christians allow society to dictate to us its norms? Doesn’t God’s word say: ‘Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ (Romans 12:2)

I can share with you many more such examples of society insidiously influencing the way we as Christians do life. But the one I want to draw particular attention to today is the one that impacts us as women and mothers… Paid employment. Please hear me out before throwing rotten fruit!

As I mentioned earlier I am a MOPS Area Coordinator I am a volunteer, therefore that is my ‘job’. I don’t ‘work’ anywhere else. Do you know I cannot go to the hairdresser without someone asking me if I have the day off. Of course a woman with her children off her hands must be pursuing a career! A few months back I had a MOPS Coordinator ring me. We discussed her efforts to find a new Coordinator for her group for next year, as her youngest child had already gone to school.

This woman is a powerhouse for God. Very involved in ministry in her church, as his her husband. She has a large family; her husband has a very busy, responsible job. She does not want a job outside the home, but she burst into tears when she said to me she did not know who she was anymore.

Everywhere she seemed to go this year people asked her what she did? ie what was her job? (She must have one as they could not see any little ones in tow!) Even the people in her church were asking her what she did all day now she had no preschoolers. Joking about all the coffee she was drinking.

While these were well meaning jokes it was beginning to have an affect on her. Was she a person of value if she did not have a career?

It seems to me that once again this push from our culture is infiltrating our churches, our thinking as Christians.Once our youngest child hits school age, ‘Society’ tells mums we should head off and find paid employment. This same thinking has filtered into the Christian church. It is the norm there too.

Today as we talk about making our life count, I want to challenge this thinking that society has foisted upon Christians.

Now I need to add a disclaimer at this point. I am not here to tell you, you shouldn’t be in paid employment once you are a mum because I know that for some, this is indeed part of God’s call. In fact when my kids were in their teens, I worked for some years one day a week and then several years, two days a week. But what I do want to do today is challenge you about this automatic mode we seem to go into.

I want to challenge all Christian women… young mums, mums with teenage kids and even mums like me, the empty nesters, to not go into ‘automatic mode’ and head in the direction society calls us. Instead as Christians, as we head into new seasons of our life,

Should we not instead head ‘automatically’ to our knees? Should we not be falling before the throne of grace asking God to reveal the next

stage of his journey for us? Should we not be praying as Mother Theresa did and tell the God of the Universe

that we will do His bidding no matter what?

I want to challenge you to put aside dreams of a bigger house, a new car, and private education for your children because, believe me, from one who has experienced it, if that is what God wants for you he will provide. He will indeed provide when it seems impossible. Jesus himself promises this: in Matthew 6:33 “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Do you know that in every sphere of society the pool of volunteer workers is shrinking? Meals on wheels, school canteens, reading mums in classrooms, etc.

But the sad truth is that in Christian circles things are exactly the same. Ask any church. They are finding it harder than ever before to get volunteers to run programs from Sunday School to Youth group and beyond. MOPS leadership teams are shrinking across the nation. MOPS groups are closing, because despite large numbers of mums wanting to attend, there are not enough Christian women available to run them.

I wonder if Jesus knew this would be an issue! That his people would become side-tracked and lose sight of the number one call on their life, ie to make a difference for the Kingdom. In Luke 10:2 Jesus said, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."

This has become my constant prayer, and the challenge I want to put before you today. Whether you work full-time, part-time or are a stay-at-home mum. I pray you will hear God’s call to the harvest. I pray that you will get to the end of your ‘short life’ and

know that you have refused God nothing, know that you have done his bidding no matter what. know that you have made that tiny ‘blip’ count for more than 80 years but for

eternity,

So to sum up: how do you ‘Make Your life Count’? For all you mathematicians out there, people like me who want an equation, a specific plan, let me sum up… a+b+c = MAKING YOUR LIFE COUNT

a) Recognize Life is Short; Don’t wait for a better time to follow God’s call. It is a myth to believe that a better day, a day with more time to think and plan, a day with less worries, a day when money won’t be such an issue, will come. Believe this older, now somewhat wiser woman, THAT DAY WONT COME! There will always be something.

b) Recognize that you are an ordinary woman, a human being ‘just like Elijah’! With exactly the same connections to the powerful God of the universe, no matter how insignificant you may feel.

c) Recognize the insidious pull of society drawing us from the call to follow God whole-heartedly. Recognize the material possessions pull and the pull to career based self-fulfillment

= A LIFE THAT COUNTS FOR GOD (Either noticed or unnoticed by man but that doesn’t matter ]

Some Good Reads:

RestlessBecause You Were Made for MoreBy: Jennie Allen

Restless explores the fact that God has called each of us to do great things in his name, and then helps us discover what that might mean for each of us individually. Jennie doesn't suggest women add one more thing to their to-do list, but instead she offers a simple process to identify the raw materials-the unique threads-they've been given by digging into five areas: Gifts, Suffering, Places, People, Passions. And since living out our purpose is often filled with uncertainties Jennie addresses the doubts, fears, and challenges that hold women back from what they've been called to do.

If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat By John Ortberg

Winner of the 2002 Christianity Today Book Award! Deep within you lies the same faith and longing that sent Peter walking across the wind-swept Sea of Galilee toward Jesus. John Ortberg invites you to consider the incredible potential that awaits you outside your comfort zone. The experience is terrifying. It is thrilling beyond belief. The choice is yours to know him as only a water-walker can, aligning yourself with God’s purpose for your life in the process.