Live Life to the Fullest

So a young soldier and his commanding officer got on a train together.

The only available seats were across from an attractive young woman who was

traveling with her grandmother.

As they engaged in pleasant conversation, the soldier and the young woman kept

eyeing each other, and the attraction was obviously mutual.

Suddenly, the train went into a tunnel, and the car became pitch black.

Immediately, two sounds were heard, the smack of a kiss and the whack of a slap across the face.

The grandmother thought, I can't believe he kissed my granddaughter,

but I'm glad she gave him the slap he deserved.

The commanding officer thought, I don't blame the boy for kissing the girl,

but it's a shame that she missed his face and hit me instead.

The young girl thought, I'm glad he kissed me, but I wish my grandmother hadn't

slapped him for doing so.

And as the train broke into the sunlight, the soldier could not wipe the smile off his face.

He had just seized the opportunity of the dark tunnel to kiss a pretty girl

and slap his commanding officer at the same time, and he'd gotten away with it.

I would say that the young soldier knew the meaning of how to seize the moment

and live life to the fullest.

While I would not suggest that you men in the congregation seize an opportunity

to kiss a lady in a tunnel, unless she's your wife, but then you can do that in the daylight as well.

But I would suggest that in a similar fashion to the soldier,

we must take advantage of every opportunity that comes our way to fulfill our purpose in life.

Unfortunately, many times we get caught up in the details of everyday life that

we just don't have the time to seize the moment.

We're busy paying bills. We're busy going to work. We're doing all this,

and we aren't even thinking of what it means to live life to the fullest.

We've got deadlines and commitments, problems and priorities,

distractions, and obstacles.

And though we really want more

fulfillment from each day, it just doesn't seem to be within our grasp.

No one wants life to be just average. At least not many of us are willing to admit that.

But by nature, we want our lives to be full and prosperous. We want everything

we can get out of our lives.

Advertisers know about the basic human desire that we have to enjoy life to

extreme, to get everything we can right now.

And they translate that desire into slogans like, just do it.

Go for the gusto. Look out for number one. Life is a journey.

Enjoy the ride. You've heard a lot of advertisements about get it right now.

Of course, there was the old Fram commercial, you can pay me now or you can pay me later.

Type thing. But there seems to be this buying into the idea that we want to

have life to the fullest right now.

I've often thought that we've got things mixed up in America.

We should go to high school, go through high school and college,

and then be in retirement for 40 years, and then work till we die.

Some reason the money doesn't work out that way.

I believe that it was also the Apostle Paul's philosophy in life to seize the

moment and live life to the fullest. And in Philippians chapter three.

He puts it really and easily within our grasp.

He describes his own philosophy of life, and I want us to read it again.

We read this a couple of weeks ago, and we're going to read this passage again.

It's found in Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 through 16.

Philippians 3:7–16

So if you would read that or follow along as Marty reads that.

But whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of

knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.

I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him,

not having a righteous of my own that comes from the law, but that which is

through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

I want to know Christ, yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation

in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow obtaining to

the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal,

but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it,

but one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

All of us, then, who are mature should take such a few things.

And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.

Only let us live up to what we have already obtained.

So if we would only learn to follow Paul's example here in the Scripture,

we would learn to make the most of every opportunity we have and live life to

the fullest, no matter how hectic our lives may be.

Paul shows us three simple ways in these verses to live a more fulfilling life.

The first one is this, find your purpose.

If I were to ask everyone in this room, what is your purpose in life?

I would probably get several different answers.

I want to be a good wife or a husband. I want to be a good mother.

I hope you know the difference. I want to be a good mother or father.

I want to do my job better. I want to be a good teacher. I want to be a good

nurse, mechanic, salesperson, and so on.

These answers would be good, but they are all secondary purposes.

The question is, what is your primary purpose in life? In other words,

what is your reason for living?

For what purpose did God put you here on the earth? Everything in creation has

a primary purpose, a raison d'etre, which means a reason for existence, a reason to be.

For anyone or anything to be successful, it must fulfill their life's purpose.

Here's an easy question. What is the primary purpose of an ink pen?

To what? To write. The primary purpose of the ink pen is to write.

Does it do any of that on its own?

No, it has to have somebody directed it. That's the purpose, right?

So I have, well, I don't know if I can find it anymore, but I was given a beautiful

cross pen and pencil set with my name engraved on them as a gift one time.

And the set of pen and pencil was pretty costly for somebody to give to me.

I was given that several years, and it was pretty, and I think it's in storage

down in Greenville in our house there, and it's really pretty to look at,

and it was not cheap, but it was a failure as a pen.

Why was it a failure as a pen?

Because I let it sit so I could look at it and read my name on it.

Wasn't that cool? I just love my name.

And we like to do that. We like to look at things, and they bring glory to us.

It does nothing but sit there.

So what do you think I do when time comes on Monday morning to sign my paycheck

and deposit it in my account?

I grab the trusty free advertising pen that was sent to me by pens.com to try

to buy some more pens, and I use the free ones to sign my check.

Many of you do that too. You probably grab a pen from the bank or wherever you

do. You'll grab a free pen from Quick Trip or whoever has free pens,

and that's what you use for most of your writing. Why?

Because you like looking at your name on a cross pen.

But you don't use that. You don't use its purpose. You guessed it.

I bypass that cross pen and use a cheap cross pen.

Free pen. Maybe a simple illustration, but just as the pen has a primary purpose,

every individual that God has created has a primary purpose.

Our lives will be without meaning. We would be failures unless we find out what

our purpose is, our reason for existence, our reason for living.

Paul stated his reason for living in verses 10 through 11. He said this,

I want to know Christ so that I may live like him.

Simply put, Paul's reason for living was to be like Christ.

This is also to be our reason for living.

In fact, the simple mission statement of the Free Methodist Church is this,

knowing Christ and making Christ known to people everywhere.

That's our purpose, is to know Christ and to make him known.

Orison Sweet Madden said this, there's no greater sight in the world than that

of a person fired up with a great purpose dominated by an unwavering aim.

Just like I tried to aim that card at the bucket, if we have an aim and a purpose

in life, we're going to hit where we're going through.

I remember in cross country in high school, we had a statement,

You can't reach the tops of the mountains unless you shoot for the stars.

If we keep our eyes right ahead of us on the things in front of us,

on our feet and what's right in front of us, we're not going to reach that goal ahead of us.

When you're running in cross country and any other thing, well,

even when you're driving, your purpose is to keep your eye focused way ahead

of where you're going, to know what's up there in the obstacles and know where you're going.

And what happens when you're running in a cross country, and Brayden should

know this. Where's Brayden?

Right there. Brayden knows this. When you're running cross country,

and by the way, he's doing really well this year. The cross-country team,

Richland Center and Ithaca team, placed first in conference this year for the

first time in like 50 years. So that's cool.

But anyway, if you aim at a point farther ahead of you, what happens is you

find yourself being drawn toward that at an even faster pace when you're going toward that goal.

And so if this statement describes any of us here, then we would certainly be

learning to seize each and every moment.

There's a second step Paul shows us in Philippians chapter 3 in developing the

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

ability to seize the moment.

Every day of our lives, he says, first, we must find our purpose,

and second, we must forget the past.

Look at verse 13. There are two elements of the past that we must forget.

First, we must forget the bad. Well, we want to do that, but oftentimes it doesn't happen.

Paul, just like us, has a past to forget. He had tortured and murdered many

innocent people. He had caused a lot of pain and had done much damage to the cause of Christ.

But now he was faced with a choice. He could either dwell on his mistakes and

let them ruin his life and his chance for effective ministry,

or he could forget about all these and move on with his life.

How many of us have done things bad in our life?

Okay, well, if you don't raise your hand, then there's something.

You better check your pulse.

But all of us have done things that we're not proud of it. All of us have sinned

and fallen short of the glory of God.

And if we dwell on those things that we've done in the past, guess what?

We're going to repeat them. And we will never forgive ourselves and move on

if we don't understand that Christ has forgiven us for those things.

We don't need to carry them anymore. And this is what Paul is saying.

Forget those things that are bad in the past and move on toward what is good.

Just like Paul had to make a choice, so do we.

Maybe we've had an experience just lately, or maybe you did something long ago that we regret.

While we probably never completely erase the wrong things from our memories,

we must learn to live them in the past and move on to a better life in Christ.

On New Year's Day, 1929, I wasn't there, Georgia Tech was playing California.

Late in the second quarter, Roy Regals recovered a fumble for California,

and in his excitement, became confused and began running in the wrong direction.

After running 65 yards, he was finally tackled.

By his own player at his own two-yard line.

California, if he had not tackled him, it would have been gone in for a safety.

California attempted to punt from deep in their own end zone,

but the kick was blocked, and Georgia Tech instead scored a safety even after they did that.

In the locker room at halftime, Roy Regals sat in the corner with his face buried in his hands crying.

The room was silent. The coach didn't make his usual halftime speech,

but shortly before the team was to take the field for the second half,

he said, the starting team is going back onto the field to begin the second

half. This included Roy Regals.

The whole team left the rocker room, except for Regals, who remained in the

corner with his face in his hands. He said, I can't do it, coach.

He said, I can't play it. I ruined the team.

The coach said, get up, Regals. the game is only half over you belong on the

field guess what our game is only half over,

regardless of the past we still have the rest of the game to play so what if

the enemy scored off of you in the past god is willing to forget about the mistakes

of the first half and he expects us to do the same forget what was behind and

move on toward what is ahead God.

In Isaiah 43, verse 25, it says, I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions

Isaiah 43:25

for my own sake, and I will not remember your sin.

And while Paul is referring to the bad things that he did before Christ confronted

him on the road to Damascus,

he is also referring to the bad hardships that he faced when he says to forget

the past at the hands of nature and some at the hands of cruel men.

How many people do you know who seem to dwell on the negative of their past

situations and even the misery of the moment?

They moan and groan about their circumstances and hold grudges forever. Don't worry.

And does worry and bitterness and negativity ever solve in our problems? My mom was a worrier.

You know, she made us clean up our house before we left on a vacation Because

she was worried that somebody might break in and find the house a mess,

She made us wear clean underwear, new underwear When we went outside the door

Because she never knew that, you know, somebody might mug us And they'd find

us with not brand new underwear on,

She was a worrier And my wife can testify to that Remember the old Mayberry RFD television shows?

Barbara Floyd and his buddies would sit out front on a bench in front of the

barbershop, and they would talk about how things used to be,

and they would dream for those days to come back while gossiping about certain people in town.

By the way, you know the only person in Mayberry RFD who was married?

Otis, the town drunk, guess what marriage did to him? They're just,

I'm just, that's, never mind.

When they were sitting there in front of the barbershop talking,

did they ever see the good old days come back? No, why?

Because they just talked about

them and dreamed about them and didn't do anything to fix the situation.

Those who dwell in the past will miss the future.

Surprisingly enough, this is the same temptation that Christians and the church give in to.

So many times we've all heard that statement, remember the good old days when

so-and-so was still here, when so-and-so was our pastor.

Oh, how he could pray. Oh, how so-and-so could sing.

Oh, how our pews were packed, and so on and so forth. Maybe we've even done

some of that ourselves and been some of those who said it.

But you see, Paul knew that a good pass was not good enough to guarantee a meaningful future.

Times change and people change too. And if we don't seize the opportunities, change our methods,

and reach a changing population, then we'll lose those opportunities and be

left sitting on the bench in front of a closed church talking about the good

old days where everyone around us is dying and going to a Christless eternity.

We can sit on these benches outside and talk about how Richland Center.

Is impoverished. Richland Center has all kinds of evil.

There's drugs and everything else. We can talk about that, or we can live our

lives in such a way and speak to people who need to know Jesus,

who desperately need to know Jesus.

How about that? Wouldn't that be something?

Wouldn't that be a purpose? Just a thought.

I remember Bishop Gerald Bates preaching a sermon at annual conference in Oklahoma.

The title of the message was On-Ramp Theology.

In his message, he stated correctly that far too long, the church,

and especially the Freemuthers Church, has stood on the side road of culture,

sheltered in our four walls, while society has raced on past us down the freeway of life.

We were stuck in the Twadi syndrome, T-D-W-W-A-D-I.

You know the way we've always done it. We were stuck in the Twaddy syndrome

and stuck in our memories of the way things used to be.

We were stuck in our commiseration of how evil everything had gotten around us.

So we clustered ourselves in little groups away from everyone else where no

one could touch us and make us dirty.

I remember one time in one of the churches, and I won't mention where one of

the churches where we pastor, we talked, we were having a meeting about how

we could reach the community.

And one of the guys said...

If the people in this neighborhood ever got saved and cleaned up,

we could invite them into our church.

But otherwise, we're afraid that they might make us dirty. Friends,

we're supposed to be the light in the life, right?

And what Bishop was talking about, he went on to say, we need to be doing what God is doing,

seizing every opportunity we can to be right in the mainstream of commerce and

activity and theology and politics.

Paul engaged in the culture. In Bishop Bates' words, we need to get on the on-ramp,

get up to speed, and get into the traffic of life where we can make an impact

on the flow of the culture and traffic.

That's one of the things I like about being at the school. I love to be out

there with the kids and the teachers and the staff.

Just being where people are who need to know Jesus.

And we need to know him here too, but we need to be out where people are living

our lives in such a way and speaking to them in such a way.

I've been convicted over the last little bit, my discipleship group with the

guys, some of the guys here in the church, we're in Revelation,

and it talks about all the things that are going to be happening.

And I thought, you know, why is this book of Revelation here?

You know, non-Christians aren't going to pick this up and say,

oh, I better hurry up and get right.

And yet it's also there. Is it there for us to say, oh man, I can't wait for

this to happen so all those evil people will be condemned and go to hell?

No. What it's there for is for us to look at is this is what's going to be happening,

and these people around us, these friends of ours, neighbors of ours,

relatives of ours who don't know Jesus are going to be in a Christless eternity

unless we do something about it.

And I want to be on the on-ramp getting up to speed with the culture of society,

not living necessarily in the things they do, even though I buy playing cards.

But living a life in such a way that people will know that Jesus lives in me.

And I can share that message. It really pushed on me as I can live my life for

Christ, but if people just see the way I live, are they going to do anything

about it until I ask them, how is it with you?

How's it going in your life? Let me tell you about somebody I know.

Paul was saying, I will not live in the past.

My reason for living is to be like Jesus, and whatever happened yesterday,

good or bad, is now ancient history.

So we also need, in addition to forgetting the bad, we need to forget the good.

Sometimes we revel in the good things in life, don't we? I mean,

how many of you have been at a class reunion recently?

You hear all of your friends talking about all the things that we did in high school.

And where has that gotten us? You know, there's still a lot of people who I

grew up with that are living the hippie life and haven't done a thing.

But most of us have moved on and are seeking towards something more productive and better.

Paul is saying, I will not live in the past. My reason for living is to be like

Jesus. And whatever happened yesterday, good or bad, is now ancient history.

I will live for Jesus today so that by being like him, I will glorify the Father

and point people to the good news of God's love.

Now, the third thing that we find in this passage is that we need to face the

present. Now, that doesn't make sense.

It's easy to live in the past. It's easy to dream away the future.

It's easy. It's a real challenge to face the present, however,

because it means we can no longer allow ourselves the luxury of saying,

one of these days, I'm going to do something about my temper.

One of these days, I'm going to do something about my commitment to God or my

health or my responsibility to my friends.

You know, I got a membership at the local fitness center out there,

and it hasn't done a thing for me.

And I went and talked to them about it. I said, I wanted my money back.

And they said, well, you got to come in and do something.

Actually, I saw that on a Facebook thing. wasn't really me. I wouldn't spend

the money for that. I'd rather just wear black.

In the 11th chapter of John, there's a story I believe most of us are familiar with.

It's a story about Jesus' good friend when his good friend Lazarus died.

When Jesus arrived at the tomb, Lazarus had been dead for four days.

Lazarus' sister Martha came to

Jesus and spoke that classic phrase used by people who live in the past.

If only, she said.

She said, Jesus, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.

Jesus said to Martha, your brother will rise again.

Martha began dreaming about the future and said, I know that he will rise again

in the resurrection on the last day.

She knew that Jesus had the power in the past, and she knew that Jesus had the

power in the future, but Martha, like many of us at all times,

aren't quite sure about Jesus's power right now. Let that sink in.

Always have a problem. We have no problem believing that Jesus performed many miracles in the past.

We can read them in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

And the greatest one of us all was dying on the cross and rising from the dead

on the third day. We don't have a problem believing that.

We also have no problem that in the future, Jesus is going to be coming back

to take us home to be with him.

But why is it we all have a problem believing him at his word in this present

day? Look at what Jesus said to the woman.

He said, I am the resurrection and the life.

Not I will be or I was, but I am the resurrection and the life.

Do you believe this? He asked her.

Martha's simple reply was, yes, Lord, I believe. It's not a hard thing for us to say.

And sometimes we should practice it more often.

We should simply say this, when you get up in the morning, look in the mirror.

Well, maybe not when you look in the mirror. When you get up in the morning,

just say, yes, Lord, I believe.

Kind of like the hallelujah, praise God, in all things.

Martha said, yes, Lord, I do believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God.

By this confession, she was saying, not just yesterday, not tomorrow,

but today I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God.

It's at that moment that Martha began to face the present and put her faith into action.

We need to say, yes, Lord, we believe and put our faith into action.

We need to say, yes, Lord, I believe you're still my lily of the valley.

Yes, Lord, I believe you're still the bright and morning star.

Yes, Lord, I believe you're still the one that has the still small voice that

speaks to me, yes, Lord, I believe that you walk us across the rivers of,

to dry land. Yes, Lord, I still believe that you calm the storms in my life.

Yes, Lord, I still believe that you raise the dead, even those of us who are

dead in our sin, and you heal the blind, the deaf, the mute,

the lame, the brokenhearted, and cast out demons.

Forgetting the present means that we put our faith in Jesus Christ and trust

him to be involved in leading in every part of our lives.

We need to know that Jesus is not just with us in the past or in the future,

but Jesus is with us right now.

We need to be busy about being on mission with God, living life to the fullest,

seizing that moment, facing the present and seizing that day.

You know, there's a phrase carpe diem, which is Latin that means seize the day.

Whatever comes before us, go ahead as much as we can in the power of the Holy

Spirit, seeking people who desperately need to know Jesus.

I hope that you'll be on mission with me and with God as we do that in this community.

God needs that. This city needs that.

He needs a church that'll wake up and go around them leading people to the throne

of grace. Would you stand with me as I pray.

Heavenly Father, as we close this time in worship, we give you thanks for the

messages that Paul wrote, the messages that Jesus gave us,

the scripture that comes so real and alive to us that oftentimes we put on the

shelf and just disregard.

Father, we pray that you would help us to be reignited by the mission of Christ

so that we can live life to the fullest and seize the moment in Jesus' name. Amen.