Evaluating our lives accurately

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Someone took a survey recently whose primary question was, “What keeps you from knowing God and growing spiritually?” And the most common answer? “I don’t have enough time.”

Question: When will you have enough time? And how will you find it?

Yesterday I heard a sermon inspired partially by Psalm 90:11-17 — especially verse 12 (”Teach us to number our days/That we may get a heart of wisdom”). But, more fully, it was based on Luke 12:15-21:

[Jesus] said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’

“But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’

“So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

In Luke 15:20, God says to the rich farmer, “This night your soul is required of you.”

The word translated required is a technical term for what a creditor does when he demands payment on a loan. Significance: our lives are owned by God. They are only on loan to us.

“It’s amazing how your life slows down and your schedule clears out when you die,” said the pastor.

Is it possible we need to slow down and clear out our schedules now, while we are still alive?

“We have richness of having; do we have richness of being, of love and relationships? Stuff doesn’t last, it all goes back in the box.” (Funny, he used an illustration about the game Monopoly^® that I heard only a month ago from another pastor, Todd Van Ek of Gun Lake Community Church in Wayland, Michigan. A copy of the video from Todd’s sermon is here:

Main idea: You win at Monopoly^® by acquiring property and hanging onto it. But when the game is done . . . it all goes back in the box. . . . And then what?)

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“I once asked my key mentor how I could become closer to God,” said the pastor yesterday. “My mentor answered, ‘You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.’ There was a long silence and then I said, ‘Anything else?’ He repeated what he had said the first time only more slowly: ‘you . . . must . . . ruthlessly . . . eliminate . . . hurry . . . from . . . your . . . life.’ ”

The pastor reminded us of Howard Hughes and Marilyn Monroe. Each one “only” wanted more: more money, more fame, more s*xual satisfaction, more . . .

“So suppose they’d gotten one more million dollars (Howard Hughes) or one more lover (Marilyn Monroe) or one more . . . anything. Would that have been enough?

“Suppose I gave my credit card to my wife and told her to go to the local shopping mall and buy absolutely anything her heart desired. And suppose she actually did that. Would that be enough?” He paused for a moment and then said, with a twinkle in his eye, “We will never know!”

But I think you and I know the answer.

We need to find better ways to fill our lives than by hurrying and rushing about and being rich in having but poor in being. We need to learn how to be “rich toward God” and not worry about laying up earthly treasures.

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