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What
gets you excited? Or should I say, does anything get you excited? Almost
everybody in western Pennsylvania gets excited about the Steelers, even
though there wasn’t much to get excited about last season. That’s
because most of us still remember how thrilling it was to watch them win
four Super Bowls back in the 70’s. For me the start of March means
spring training and I start to get excited about baseball. Now that’s
even crazier. The Pirates haven’t had so much as a winning season since
the first President Bush was in office.
But
to me it doesn’t matter. I remember how it felt as a boy when wonderful
players like Stargell and Mazeroski and the great Roberto Clemente played
for Pittsburgh. When March comes Robin gets excited about the daffodils
pushing up. I get excited about baseball.
How
many of us, however, get exited about our faith? How many of us respond
emotionally, in our heart, in the pit of our stomach, to what Christ did
for us? We ought to come into this building with an attitude of
celebrating the incredible love that God has shown for us through the
ages, and instead we bring a bad attitude of whining about the
inconvenience of worshiping God. This is a big part of the message of
“The Passion:” Christ didn’t deserve this, you did, but he was
willing to take this suffering on himself so you didn’t have to.”
Clement
Stone said something that makes a lot of sense to me. He said “There
isn’t much difference between people, but what little difference there
is makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big
difference is whether it is positive or negative.” It is
undeniable—people who have a positive attitude accomplish so much
more—and are so much happier in the process.
Last
week we talked about forgiveness and how difficult but how vital it is for
our own well being. Today I want to focus on six words of practical advice
from the apostle Paul: “Do everything without grumbling or
questioning,” as a good sequel to forgiveness as a practical step we all
can take to improve our lives this Lenten season.
Charles
Swindoll said, “The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of
attitude in life. Attitude is more important than facts. It is more
important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances,
than failures, than successes, than what other people say or do. Attitude
will make or break a company, a church, or a home.” In other words, a
positive attitude is more important that who your parents were or how much
advantage you had in life. You can conquer anything with a positive
attitude, or you can let a negative attitude drag you down in the mud.
Swindoll
continues, “The remarkable thing is that we have a choice every day
regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.” Catch that—you
only have to improve your attitude for one day at a time. “We cannot
change the past,” he says. “We cannot change the inevitable. The only
thing we can change is the one thing we control, and that is our attitude.
We are in charge of our attitude.”
I
love the way that differing versions of the Bible relate what is a very
simple point: Here is the Revised Standard Version: “Do everything
without grumbling or questioning.” The King James Version urges us to do
all things “without murmurings and disputings.” The New International
Version recommends, “Do everything without complaints and arguments.”
How many of us are able to do everything we do without complaints and
arguments? Just as I thought—nobody. Most people, even the best
intentioned people, would say it’s impossible for human beings to never
grumble.
Now
Paul wasn’t the best example of doing everything without moaning and
groaning. He was known to point out the shipwrecks he had endured, the
beatings, the jailings, the people who listened to his preaching and
turned a deaf ear. But catch this: Paul was an imperfect man preaching to
the imperfect, meaning all of us. What he said is so important: for our
lights to shine as a beacon of hope to the rest of the world, we must take
on the same positive attitude that Paul found in Jesus—that of humility.
In
John’s Gospel Jesus predicts his own suffering and death and says “No
one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” He was
perfectly obedient to his Father’s will, and obedient without
complaining, without arguing. Paul wants us to imitate that perfect
obedience; that’s the Christian ideal. But we find it to hard to live up
to that ideal. We get angry with God. We file a grievance with God. We
tell him to his face that he has screwed up; what he really meant for us
was (fill in the blank.)” Nobody ever will match Jesus in his perfect
obedience, but Paul asks us to take up Christ’s positive attitude that
says, “I am not God’s slave, I am his willing servant.”
What
do Paul’s words mean in everyday life? The word “complaining” could
convey the idea of holding grudges, as in when you hold a grudge against
somebody, you like to complain about them to others. Arguing has to do
with making excuses or blaming others. “It’s not my fault. It’s her
fault. It’s his fault. The devil made me do it.” Sound familiar? True
humility does away with all that stuff. The world sees someone who is
peaceful, unruffled when we are wronged by others, and ready to take
responsibility for our actions when our actions upset someone else.
To
put it plainly, when someone hurts us, we forgive them. And when we hurt
someone else, we ask them to forgive us. In this way, we let our light
shine in the world.
Of
course, as we all know, many, many people prefer to keep their light to
themselves. They love to carp and complain and whine. They love to hold
onto their grudges and slights and wounds. They are living in the past.
Their vision is locked firmly on the past, and as a result, they stay in
the past. They accomplish nothing of value, for themselves or for the
church. I suspect they realize that, and don’t care. But they probably
don’t realize how much they’re hurting themselves with this tremendous
extra weight they’re carrying.
One
of the problems that seems to unite soldiers across the years, even across
the centuries, is that they must carry much of their equipment on their
own backs, and this can easily total 50 to 100 pounds of extra weight to
carry. You can imagine how that feels in Iraq when temperatures pass 120
degrees. Of course, you don’t fully appreciate carrying a lot of extra
weight until you lift some of the backpacks that kids carry to school now.
This is no lie, health professionals say kids are coming in with all kinds
of neck, back and shoulder problems because of their heavy backpacks,
problems that are even worse if they carry their backpack on one shoulder.
Just
as carrying an extra 100 pounds is a terrible strain on the heart, so
carrying a rotten attitude is a terrible strain on your life. It keeps you
stuck in the same ruts, the same patterns, the same unhappiness. It keeps
you stuck in the past.
Both
the hummingbird and the vulture fly over our nation’s deserts. All
vultures see is rotting meat, because that is what they look for. They
thrive on that diet. But hummingbirds ignore the stinking flesh of dead
animals. What they look for is life—specifically, the life of desert
plants and their colorful blossoms. Vultures live on what was. They live
in the past. They fill themselves with the dead and gone. But hummingbirds
live on what is. They seek new life. They fill themselves with freshness
and life. Each bird finds what it is looking for. We all do.
Remember
the old poem, “Two looked our from prison bars. One saw mud, the other
stars.” In life you see what you look for.
There
are numerous examples of carping and complaining found in the Old
Testament, but one of the best examples is found in the Book of Exodus,
where we find the people of Israel after they were delivered from Egypt.
God was preparing them to live in the land he had promised, but to do it
he had to march them through the wilderness. And that got to be a problem.
They did not want to be in the wilderness, so they whined. Moses was the
point man for their complaints, but they really were complaining about God
and the leadership he was providing through Moses.
That
was always the problem with the Hebrew people. God had brought them out of
slavery in Egypt, God had destroyed their enemies, God had fed them in the
desert, but they were always complaining.
One
of the most popular movies of 2003 was called “Bruce Almighty,” and it
had the unusual distinction of being one of the few Jim Carrey comedies
that I can stomach. The setup is that Carrey plays a TV who thinks that he
has more problems than Job. And he complains to God about his problems.
Loud and long. Finally God calls his bluff and says, “Okay, if you think
you can do it better, go ahead.” Carrey is granted all God’s powers to
solve humanity’s problems, but soon discovers that the more problems he
solves, the more that come flooding in.
The
point of the movie becomes Carrey’s realization that God’s system
works—we are meant to use the powers that God gave us for the sake of
others, without grumbling, so that we shine light in the world.
The
world that these lights shine on is called crooked and perverse, and most
of us would agree with that definition of the world. To say the world is
“crooked” is to say that it is harsh and unjust. To say that the world
is perverse is to mean that it is morally corrupt. But instead of avoiding
the world and hiding from it, or instead of standing to one side and
hollering “clean up your act” at the world, we are to be more
proactive in our approach. We are to show the world a better way. We’re
supposed to carry our light to the darkness
This morning I want to leave you with
three points about keeping a positive attitude: the first is: A
positive attitude comes from knowing where you’re going: Oliver
Wendell Homes, the Supreme Court judge, hurriedly boarded a train, As he
boarded he looked in his pocket for his ticket, but he couldn’t find it.
The conductor came by and recognizing the famous man, was very patient and
understanding. He said, “Judge Holmes, don’t worry about the ticket.
Just send it in when you find it. We trust you for the money. Don’t
worry about it.”
But
Judge Holmes was not thankful. He was still irritated and angry. He said
“Good sir, the problem is not where is my ticket. The problem is where
am I going?”
Here’s
the truth, folks: If you know you’re bound for heaven, the problems of
the journey will not sour your attitude. Instead, the problems will
inspire you to work to smooth them out. But if you’re not sure of where
you’re going, that’s when you’ll lose your way. In 1950 a certain
company was voted the number one best managed company in the United
States—which meant, at the time, the world. Can you guess? I’ll give
you a hint. That company no longer exists. In 1950 the Pennsylvania
Railroad was on top of the world. Now the company is just a memory.
The
problem was that the railroad managers didn’t know where they were
going. They were foolishly self-confident. They thought that the present
would always be the future. A better sense of the future would have
allowed them to diversify into different kinds of transportation.
We
as Christians know what our future is—an eternal home with God in
heaven. So we have nothing to fear in the present. That knowledge alone
should eliminate much of our grumbling.
A
positive attitude comes out of understanding our dependence on God.
Billy Graham’s biographer credits his success over 60 years of preaching
to Graham’s continuing sense of inadequacy. Billy once said, “The Lord
had always arranged my life so that I have to keep dependent on him. Over
and over again I went to my knees and asked the Spirit of Wisdom for
guidance and direction. There were times I was tempted to flee from
problems and pressures and my inability to cope with them, but somehow,
even in the midst of confusion and indecision, it seemed I could feel the
steady hand of God’s leading me on.”
It
is so important in holding onto a positive attitude to also hold onto the
idea, as the Hebrew people could not, that the God we serve is in
control—that the final outcome is going to be a positive one, so we
might as well relax and enjoy the ride today. Are you willing to relax?
A
positive attitude comes out of serving the Lord with gladness. When we
are truly grateful we come to understand that God’s mercies endure
forever. That is the central focus of Psalm 100. When the congregation
enters the gates of the temple and comes into the sanctuary together they
marvel in the assurance that there will be no end to the love of God, even
in the face of evil.
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1943 for his
resistance to the Third Reich. He spent the next two years in prison with
the war raging around him. His camp was bombed, the window of his cell
blown out and he endured the miserable cold of the winters.
At
the end of the two years, he was sentenced to death, but still conducted a
church service for the prisoners.
Bonhoeffer
understood the impact of a positive attitude. One of those prisoners, an
English officer who survived, wrote the following:
“Bonhoeffer
always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the
least incident, and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was
alive. He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was
real and always near. On Sunday, April 8, 1945,
Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship and spoke
to us in a way that went to the heart of all of us. He found just the
right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment, and the thoughts
and resolutions it had brought us.”
He
had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two guards came
in. “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us,” they said. Everyone knew that
this was the end of the line for this gentle and profound soul. Everyone,
that is, except Bonhoeffer. The English officer remembered him whispering
in his ear, before he was led to his execution, “Now my life begins.”
Let
me close with a final thought. There was a pastor at a church down south
who went to call on a member of his congregation who was 105 years old. He
found her sitting up in her chair, all pretty and dressed up, and she
said, “It’s nice that you came to see me.” He said, “I want to get
to know you better. So tell me, what was it like in your day?” With a
twinkle in her eye and a smile on her face, she said, “Sonny, this is
my day.”
This
is your day, and mine. Let us claim it together, with a positive attitude,
for the glory of God. Amen.
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