Spotlight
What do you want to be the center focus of your life? What is the spotlight? What is worth living for?
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
-Jim Elliot
This pandemic has forced us, many against our will, to slow down. It forced us to think and face some of the deeper questions of life that we’ve been distracting ourselves away from.
When you do the rocking chair test and you come to the end of your life, what do you think you’ll feel was worth living for? What did you do here with your time? What did you value most?
When you start thinking of eternity, are you sure the things that you usually think are valuable actually are?
At the end of your life, it won’t matter how much money you made or what kind of car you drove or how many people liked you. You can’t take any of that with you.
Jim Carrey has a famous quote I have taken to heart. He says I wish everyone could be rich and famous so they could see that being rich and famous won’t make you happy.
And another that says the biggest tragedy would be to spend your whole life climbing the ladder just to get to the top and find out you were climbing the wrong one.
Well if there is an eternity or life after death, will that make a difference in what we consider valuable or what the right ladder is?
I want you to imagine a rope that extends all the way into our solar system, to our moon, around the moon and back it actually didn’t stop there. It just kept going infinitely, but for the sake of being able to understand, let’s pretend it stopped there. Now I want you to imagine one tiny inch of the rope. That inch represents the amount of time that is your life on earth.
There are a lot of things that we think matter on earth that don’t matter in eternity and a lot of things that matter in eternity that we don’t focus on very much on earth. In light of how long eternity is... if it’s real, does it make any sense that’s something that only has value during your time on this earth could possibly be the right ladder? And yet so many people live this way.
If God is real and created you with a purpose shouldn’t you want to know him with every ounce of your being? What could’ve possibly stolen the spotlight?
So many people I talk to say, I’ll think about that stuff later, as if it’s not the most important question in the entire world. Every single day they don’t ask that question they are wasting another day of their life, not getting to experience the adventure that God had for them that day. But instead, they choose to stay in the pointless endeavors of the world.
What drives you, your god-given purpose, or your animal instincts? Your desire to be cool, or your desire to have purpose?....
What might you miss out on both in this life and the life to come and what do you gain by ignoring the most important question of your life?
One more big party... One more fling….. what has that temporary pleasure got you so far? Does this satisfy? And even if they did, are they worth spending an entire eternity apart from God for?
The Bible says the kingdom of God is like a pearl of great worth. When someone finds it, they sell all they have to buy it ...the modern-day equivalent would be something like a lottery ticket.
Selling everything you have, your house, your possessions to buy a winning lottery ticket that's worth $1 billion. See, once you have the lottery ticket no one would say you “lost your house and your possessions because you know you can buy back a better one. You lost nothing.
And on the reverse, if you refused to make that deal, you did not gain anything by holding onto your cardboard house and losing the mansion.
The Bible says, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?
Someone I knew who had been addicted to drugs for 6 years and finally got clean made an interesting statement. When I asked how he finally quit. He said he finally realized that the drugs were taking more than they were giving.
In fact, they were not giving anything at all anymore.
Many say, “oh I will buy the lottery ticket, but I’m just gonna wait a couple of years and stay in my house first and watch some tv and then I’ll go buy the ticket.
Don’t be foolish. The Bible gives numerous analogies about what happens to people like this. One is a parable of a man who stores up for himself treasures on earth instead of treasures in heaven and God’s response is basically “you fool, your life will be taken from you this very night and everything you worked for will be given to someone else.”
Another parable talks about virgins going out to meet the bride groom but they didn’t bring enough oil for their lanterns, when he arrived unexpectedly the ones who were ready went out and the ones who were not prepared were left behind.
No one knows what tomorrow will bring, especially not in times like this. This is not meant to be a scare session, but let’s be real. You don’t know that you won’t get in a car accident today. You don’t know when your last opportunity to respond to God's call will be.
Even if you don’t physically die the Bible says if you hear his voice act now because every time that you ignore your conscience your heart gets a little bit harder. If you aren’t ready to respond right now you will be less willing to respond the next time. What will change, what will be different next time that will make you choose a different decision than the one you’re going to make right now?
Billy Graham tells a great story about a bird floating down the river. He gets his paws on some ice to catch a stranded fish. An onlooking Beaver says “watch out, there’s a waterfall just after the curve of the river, but he laughs at the beaver because he believes his powerful wings will rescue him should he come to the waterfall, he’ll be able to fly away just fine so he’ll just stay a little longer enjoying his meal before he gets out of the way of danger
When he gets to the waterfall he lifts his wings to lift him off of the ice block but hadn’t realized that his feathers had froze onto the ice and he was unable to escape.
It’s one thing to take silly chances with your life even though I don’t recommend it, but do not take silly chances with your soul.
Don’t waste another day headed towards the fall. Don’t waste another day not experiencing all that God has for you. Don’t waste another day living for vain empty purposes chasing after meaningless things.
The Bible says “choose you this day whom you will serve” the very first commandment Is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” It says to worship him alone.
It also says you cannot serve both God and material things. You have to make a choice. You can run after created things and live for the approval of other created beings or...
Live for and run after the creator, the one who alone can lead you down the path he created you for. Live for an audience of one and let your life source be drawn from perfect love.
He says I am the vine you are the branches. Apart from me you can do no good thing. Are you living apart from him today?
This talk is not to put you in a melancholy mood and make you feel bad. The purpose is to get you excited that you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The reason that you feel like there’s more to this life is because there is and I am so excited for you to experience it.
So what will it be? What will be the spotlight of your life?
Don’t center your life around things that can be taken away. The Bible says doing that is like a man who went out and built his house on the sand, but the winds came, and the house tumbled and fell, but if you build your house on the rock, on the things that have eternal value and if you build your life connected to God himself, the source of purpose and peace, then your house will never fall. The storms will still come and the wind will beat against it but it will stand tall against any force.
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If you're saying to yourself, but Lisa, how do you know the lottery is real, and God isn't just man’s made-up idea to keep people in line. Paul himself admitted that if Christ was not raised, we of all men are to be most pitied.”
If this is you, check out the next video about why I think we can have the assurance of our hope.