April 24, 2005

Keeping Your Balance

Philippians 3:7-16

I spent much of my ninth summer on a bicycle. About a mile from our house the road went down a steep hill and turned sharply at the bottom. Coasting down the hill one morning, I felt my gathering speed to be ecstatic. To give up this ecstasy by applying breaks seemed an absurd self-punishment. So I resolved to simultaneously retain my speed and negotiate the corner.

My ecstasy ended seconds later when I was propelled a dozen feet off the road into the woods. I was badly scratched and bleeding, and the front wheel of my new bike was twisted beyond use from its impact against a tree. I had been unwilling to suffer the pain of giving up my ecstatic speed in the interest of maintaining my balance around the corner. I learned, however, that the loss of balance is ultimately more painful than the giving up required to maintain balance. It is a lesson I have continually had to re-learn. As must everyone, for as we negotiate the curves and corners of our lives, we must continually give up parts of ourselves. (Citation: Condensed from The Road Less Traveled, By M. Scott Peck. Leadership, Vol. 6, no. 2.)

To really seize hold of the incredible life that God offers to us we’ve got to lay some things down and pick others things up. We’ve got to let go and take hold. This immediately raises the questions: what things are we to give up and what things are we to take hold of?

It is a certainty of life on this planet: one comes to a crossroads, an intersection where two paths cross. There you must stand, reflection on the unknown destinations before you, pondering the possibilities, weighing the options. Where should I look for another job? How am I to deal with the changes in my family? What good thing am I to give up to pursue a better thing? How do I change that one area of life that is glaringly out of order?

There is also the incredible tension of where I’ve come from and where I am going; the conflict of what I must do today and where I wish I could be tomorrow. As Scott Peck articulated so well, the desire to maintain my speed and the need to turn the corner ahead.

Life requires the delicate balance of paying attention to the realities of the world in which we must live while maintaining the momentum of the godly life in which we’ve been taken to live.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not speaking of a compromise in values or beliefs. This is not a balance of truth and fiction where I must somehow hold one set of values, those of God’s kingdom, while simultaneously adopting an opposing set – those of the world – in order to live in the world. I am speaking of the realities of life: How do we fully be God’s people while living life in this broken, run-down, sinful world with all of its obstacles, illusions, mirages, and painfulness? This is great challenge and a great mystery to human race.

“Life has value only when it has something valuable as its object.” (Citation: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher, 1770-1831)

It is only in the pages of the Word of God we can find such value. God’s dream for our lives is that we would fully embrace him and trust him to change us, guide us, transform us, provide for us, and love us. The apostle Paul saw this in marvelous clarity as he wrote his many letters to his churches around Asia Minor in the first century.

In the book of Philippians in particular, Paul is writing to encourage his friends in their journey of being God’s people. He speaks of such incredible joy and hope and optimism that is theirs. He speaks honestly, too, of the challenges and the opposition that he knows they live in the midst of: people of selfish pride, people who abuse religion, the pagan cultures of the Roman empire, sharp conflicts and disagreements that are part and parcel of human life: these are just to name a few. And yet Paul infuses his writing in this book with the certainty and confidence that such a world can be lived in with great victory and joy; it seems he has found a balance of living with eternal passion in a temporal reality.

2Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.

3For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh-- 4though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

The question that must be considered is one of confidence: who are the candidates for our attention and affections? What is the source of our certainty?

The historical setting in this passage concerns a great debate that raged among the first followers of Christ regarding the Jewish requirement of circumcision. Some were convinced that the only way a male Gentile could become a follower of the Jewish Jesus was to undergo the most complete of conversions into Judaistic life—the circumcision prescribed by Mosaic. Others, including Paul, were adamant about the freedom provided from this law by Christ: it was faith in him alone that brought them into the church, not confidence in this act. Paul strengthens his denial of this requirement by reminding his readers how deeply entrenched his whole life had been in that way of doing things. If anybody would have reason to think that something they brought to the table, some adherence to a group’s expectation or rule would bring salvation, it is Paul. Paul – his pedigree and training equipped him with everything he needed to be a great Pharisee of his time. It was not sufficient to let him live the life of God.

The greater lesson here for us is that there is only one thing that lets us enter into the vast, wonderful expanse known as the Christian life: embracing fully and only Jesus Christ at every point. Come face to face with the fact that the best we’ve got takes us nowhere; it will not give us what our heart most fully desires.

"One of the things that really attracts me about mountaineering is its total pointlessness. So I've dedicated my life to it." —Tom Whittaker, mountaineer (Citation: Lee Eclov, Lake Forest, Illinois; source: Time, 4-20-98)

If we dedicate our energies and efforts to pursuing those things that we believe will give us the security, satisfaction, and provision we want and need; if we think that anything we bring is going to help us achieve our God-given dreams of a life of potency and fruitfulness, we’d better think again. Thatis a life of total pointlessness.

The more ambitious Paul became in his own making and ability, the further and further from the kingdom he traveled. It was an encounter at a crossroads for Paul that brought dramatic change. For Paul the result of his self coming into contact with the realities of God’s kingdom through the risen Christ was blindness. For many, the result of our own abilities coming into contact with the realities of the world and God’s kingdom is paralysis. When we really see what ought to be and recognize our own inability to get there we freeze and go into ‘possum-mode’.

Paul let all of this go. Willing to let his life be thrown away, his dreams as a high-ranking, well-educated Pharisee be tossed out. No easy consideration. How many of us willingly are ready today to toss out the window all of the expectations, the desires, the beliefs that our upbringing and our own theological environment has bred in us? How many of us would really become fools for Christ?

Thus, it’s imperative that we maintain our spiritual balance. That we constantly take the time to remember where we are going and why we are going there. Our goal is the life of Jesus Christ. Our reason is because we were created to love and be loved. This was the one thing that seized Paul: knowing Christ. Intimacy with God. Bathing in the love of the Holy Spirit. Being daily transformed and renewed moment by moment for Christ’s work in his world. That is our destiny. How many of us go days, sometimes weeks with something totally different as the object of our thoughts and contemplations?

What if the Spirit moved in here right now and said to do ______________…Could we do it?

12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.

Paul found the singular truth that changes the world: Christ has done what it takes for us to live for real. He says, “Take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of you.”

When Gordon McDonald first ran track in prep school, his coach invited him to his home for dinner one night. After the meal, he pulled out a notebook displaying McDonald’s name on the front cover. He immediately turned to the back page, which bore the heading "June 1957"—three and a half years away.

"Gordon," he said. "These are the races I'm going to schedule you to run almost four years from now. Here are the times you will achieve."

The times were impossible; they were light years away from where he was at that moment as a runner.

Then Coach began turning back the pages of that book, page by page, showing the 42 months he had scheduled for workouts. These were the graduated, accelerated plans for my increasing skill on the track as the months and years would go by. He had a sense of direction and development when it came to Gordon’s athletic growth.

Coaches and leaders of all kinds understand the absolute necessity of strategic, long-range planning. Similarly, a wise and all-knowing God has a plan for our total lives—gradually, inevitably, down through the years, we become more like Jesus. (Citation: Gordon MacDonald, from a message delivered at the Promise Keepers' "Go the Distance" Conference, 8-11-00)

One of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith is that you take hold by letting go, you climb higher by sinking lower, you become first by being last, you live by dying. This is a great mystery to the world but it is the divine law of God’s love and goodness. And you and I can take hold of the Great Life because Jesus Christ is already holding onto it for us. It requires our attention, our participation, our willingness to let him chart the course and develop the plan, but he has done the work. This is freedom. Why do we so often run hard in all the wrong directions, exhaust ourselves emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically before realizing how miserable and lonely and without direction we are? There is no need – Jesus Christ is running on our behalf. He is interceding with the Father for our safety and provision. He is working to give us everything we need in order to really live. Not only is there nothing we can do to obtain life; there’s nothing we need do but receive.

But this note of encouragement does come with one caveat: We do have a responsibility. Just as a gift wrapped in beautiful paper given at a special time is not fully experienced and received until it is opened and viewed through eyes of gratefulness and delight, so too is God’s gift of taking hold of life for us. Until we focus our energies and attentions on unwrapping through day to day life this gift, we will never know its power or taste its goodness.

"No steam or gas drives anything until it is confined. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined." (Citation: Harry Emerson Fosdick)

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ

And to this end, Paul tells us, lay aside that which is past and strain towards that which is ahead. It’s likewise an imperative to keep moving ahead when we run. We are not interested in running in place, or running backwards as we sometimes are apt to do. It’s easy to entangle ourselves in things which keep us from seeing the beauty of God’s gift and rushing to open it. Paul saw the Holy Spirit unleashed into his life when he laid aside his importance pedigree and tremendous spiritual talents. He became a servant, a sufferer, a persecuted lover of God. What are the things in your life and mine that would keep our attentions held elsewhere?

We must be on our guard against the temptation to get caught up in all the things that make up the fabric of our individual lives. It is possible that we get so consumed with the living of life that we never really manage to live well. Some of you have been there and that statement needs no explanation.

How many times have we let ourselves be caught up in holding onto a dream yet unlived, reliving a golden moment of the past; of determining to prove oneself able and competent particularly in the face of failure and criticism; or the constant and plentiful snares of gratifying inner desires? It’s impossible to run when held down by these things. It’s impossible to live fully and freely when entangled by human illusions of meaningfulness and importance. They’ve got to go by the wayside.

But Paul is almost coming out of his seat with excitement on this point: Christ is holding us—let us forget all those things that look good but won’t deliver and instead hone our sights in on the person of Christ and embrace, strain to reach that which he is offering. A person strains when they run a race when every muscle and brain cell is hungry and pulsing to reach the finish line in record time. A great runner’s one ambition is to finish well. Embracing, straining to take hold of this life God holds out to us means waking up each morning and choosing that day to be God’s man or God’s woman and let him do the work freely.

The truth is that crossroads I mentioned at the beginning comes to us each morning when the sun rises. What will today hold? How shall I live and love today? As for me and my house, who will get our allegiance and attention today?

Because of sin, what we will pick by default is the alluring song of the siren with its promises of beauty and passion beckoning us like Ulysses in the Odyssey closer and closer to the ragged rocks of disaster. Each day dawns. The challenge is to take hold, to stand resolute as we ponder the great difficulties that lie ahead. But then to once again remember the even greater promises and as the day breaks to willfully and determinedly lay down what belongs to yesterday and embrace the heart and call of Jesus for this day.

But I want to sound this one note of hope again as the ending call.

Father and son Dick and Ricky Hoyt have run together in more than 800 Ironman races (which include swimming, biking, and running). But the son, Ricky, was born with cerebral palsy. To race, he must be pulled, pushed, and carried by his father. There is a part of us that might jump to the conclusion that Ricky does not race at all, but that his father does all the work.

But tens of thousands of TV viewers saw the son's role in 1999, when wind, cold, and an equipment failure made progress hard on Ricky, even though his father was the one pedaling the modified tandem bike. Dick knelt down to his son, contorted and trembling in the cold, as the two were still facing many more miles of race on the defective bike. He said to the child belted to the bicycle seat, "Do you want to keep going, Son?"

The father would be the one enabling and providing the means to overcome, but the son still had to have the heart to finish. (Citation: Bryan Chapell, Holiness By Grace. Crossway Books, 2001)

Jesus Christ will do the work for us in our lives – we must have the hearts sold out to that one solitary goal and purpose: to knowing Christ intimately and deeply. Then we can run. Amen.