Series Title: The Life You Were Meant to Live

Sermon 2: Why Do We Settle For Less?

Romans 1:18-25

June 18, 2006

In this series we’re talking about the life you were meant to live. I’d love to know what pops into your mind when I say that phrase, “The life you were meant to live.” How do you envision that life?
On my day off this week there was a space of a couple of hours when everybody was gone and our home was totally quiet. I saw an opportunity. So I got into my favorite easy chair, grabbed the TV remote, and started looking for the opening round of this week’s golf tournament. There’s no better way to take a nap than in front of a televised golf tournament. My family doesn’t get it. Somehow they think that in the midst of my snoring I’m not tuned into the golf. But just let someone try to change the channel and I’m right there, “Hey, I’m watching that!” Well before I got to where the golf was, I ran into the Travel Channel. They were showing the 10 best resort spots in the world. The one on the screen as I was passing by with the TV flipper stopped me, because it was exactly what I envision in a dream vacation spot. A beautiful, white-sand beach with accommodations right on the waterfront, swaying palm trees, and crystal blue water—I could just feel the warm breeze. Then they showed a man about my age, sitting in a lounge chair in front of his own private bungalow, with an iced tea on one side and a stack of books on the other side. And I immediately thought to myself, “Now that is the life I was meant to live!”

So what comes to your mind? What is the life you were meant to live? Lest we get sidetracked into more unrealistic fantasies, let me be clear about what I’m talking about when I say in this setting, “the life you were meant to live.” We’re talking about a life where by grace you are able to love God so completely—body, mind, soul, and spirit—that there are no barriers between you and God. We’re talking about a life where your heart is at rest with confidence before God because you know like you know your own name that you belong to God and that God delights in you! It’s a life where the burden of guilt before God is gone. It’s a life where the strongholds that once threatened to destroy you have been broken by the power of Christ! It’s a life where you awaken every day in the knowledge that by God’s grace and mercy you are free—free from bondage and free to love God without compromise. That’s the life you were meant to live!

But there seems to be a problem. It seems so many of us have settled for far less than what I’ve just described. Why is that? Why do we settle for less? In the opening chapter of his magnificent letter to the Romans, Paul gave us a window of understanding into why people have a tendency to settle for far less than what God desires for us. It has something to do with our well-honed ability to make excuses for ourselves. The standard our God has put before us is incredibly high: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). Who can attain that standard? Nobody. That’s pretty obvious. Unless—and this is the whole key, friends—unless God is able to do something for us that we cannot do for ourselves.

But before Paul gets to that, he starts by talking here about the tendency we have to make excuses for why we so often live beneath our privilege. We are adept at producing excuses for why we can’t be totally committed to God, why we can’t be active in ministry, why we can’t give, why we don’t spend time in prayer, why we can’t overcome a particular temptation. I don’t know how often I’ve come to a point in conversation with someone when I asked him or her, “Have you ever fully surrendered your life to Jesus Christ?” And the answer is often, “Well yes, but . . .” and the excuses begin. The truth is if I am not experiencing true peace in my life, if I am not living with a sense of purpose—the problem is not that God failed to deliver. God has already delivered in Christ Jesus everything we need to be totally free, totally peaceful, and totally joyful. But our excuses keep us from receiving fully.

Now in this text, Paul wants to tell us in no uncertain terms that there really are no excuses for keeping God at arm’s length, which is exactly what so many try to do. The reason there is no excuse is because who God is and what God has done has been fully revealed for us. It’s clear, it’s obvious, and there is no good reason to doubt it. For example, God has revealed himself in creation itself. The whole world speaks to us every day of the character of God, if only we will see it. God also makes himself known to us in the very depths of our own spirits. You know that longing you have way down deep inside for life to be meaningful and fulfilling and peaceful? You didn’t just make that up on your own. God made you to feel that. And through our Lord Jesus Christ, God made a way for you to cross over the barrier of sin that cuts us off from God and to be reconciled to the One who made us and who loved us before anyone else did.

But here’s the problem: Paul says correctly that for some reason people have just refused to acknowledge all of that as God. We chalk it up to the human spirit or some vague sense of the divine in all of us. You know, the religion of Oprah. I know I pick on Oprah a lot, but she strikes me as the poster child for the futile thinking of our age. That futile thinking is the ridiculous idea that somehow there exists within me enough wisdom, grace, and love that I can be my own God. If recent history has taught us anything it ought to be the truth that human beings are not able to bear the weight of trying to be their own Gods. In verse 25 Paul calls this, “exchanging the truth of God for a lie.”

That’s it. That’s why we settle for less. It’s because we allow this world to dupe us into exchanging the truth of God for its own, manufactured lies. And do you know what I wish were true? I wish that statement were only true of people who have never heard the gospel of Christ. But my concern is that even many of you who have experienced new life in Christ are still selling yourselves way short of what God really wants to do for you.

For example, the truth of God is that Jesus Christ died to free you from bondage to sin. But how many Christians settle for so much less? How many of us settle for the constant cycle of failure and forgiveness, never truly being freed from the sin that entangles our lives? Another example: the truth of God is that when you lay down your life for others, you truly live. When you become least, that’s when you become greatest. When you give away, that’s really when you receive. But how many Christians are settling for so much less? How many of God’s people are struggling through life with the very same selfish, materialistic values as the world? Paul wants all of us to know that if we are not living the life we were truly meant to live, it’s likely nobody’s fault but our own.
Now Paul opens this passage with talk about how the wrath of God is being revealed. We don’t much like talking about the wrath of God. It conjures all kinds of tyrannical images. We find the idea of God’s wrath objectionable because we see it in terms of our human experience of anger or even our passion for revenge. That’s not what Paul has in mind. God’s wrath is not temperamental. Quite simply, God’s wrath is revealed when He lets us go our own way. If we insist, God will allow us to turn in on ourselves and spiritually implode.

C. S. Lewis said, “There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘all right, then, have it your way.’” You see, the wrath of God is upon the world today. But it’s not what you might think. It’s not coming in fireballs and plagues and wiping out whole cities. Someone said it well, “A society where anything goes and everyone does what is right in his own eyes is a society suffering under the wrath of God.” And that’s where you and I are living today.

Now a key question here is to whom is Paul addressing these penetrating charges? As we read chapter one it sounds like he’s taking aim at those who have no concern for God. But when we move into chapter two it becomes pretty obvious he is seeing the same spirit at work even among God’s chosen people as he sees in the world. Similarly, the Church of Jesus Christ today seems more to reflect the values of the culture than to shape the values of the culture. Why are so many of us living lives that are not distinct from the lives of those who don’t know Christ?

There is a power failure within the Church today. And it’s because too often we are settling for far less than what God really wants to do for us. How do you imagine the life you were meant to live? I’m not talking about beachside lounge chairs and iced tea. Seriously, what would your life look like if you were totally at peace? What if exhausting busyness was no longer the order of the day? What if restless anxiety was no longer the order of the night? What if the pain of the past was truly replaced by the freedom of forgiveness and healing? What if you could really know a joy and happiness that nothing could ever threaten?

Loved ones, don’t sell the gospel short! Don’t miss out on what God really wants to do for you. Why are you holding back? What is there in this world that is more important to you than knowing the love of God?

We say often, “God calls us here to let people know that in Jesus they can be forgiven, healed, and made new.” I think most of us understand our need for forgiveness and our need for healing. But don’t miss the last part, “made new.” Do you know how that “made new” part happens? It’s totally by grace, to be sure. But God has already given us all the grace we need to live the life we were meant to live. What we need to do is to use the grace given to live in total obedience to God. And that’s why so many of us settle for less. When it comes right down to it, we don’t want to be fully obedient to what God says about how we are to think and act. For most of us full obedience to Christ would mean significant change in our lives. We’d have to change how we order our days. We’d have to change how we use our resources. We’d have to change how we think about a lot of things. I know that kind of change can be frightening. But I promise you—the changes God wants to accomplish in your life will bring you to a place of freedom and joy you will never know if you keep trying to get there on your own.

Please don’t exchange the truth of God for a lie. Take God at His word. Trust Him and surrender your life fully to Him. Then, and only then, will you have the life you were meant to live.