You Choose

In December, on my birthday, my wife, Lori and I were driving to a new barbeque place in Sacramento when we received a phone call from her brother who was in Japan at the time.  We answered, and Mike said, “I’m going to splice in Leslie and Dan”—Lori’s twin sister and her husband.  “I’ve got bad news, sad news,” he said.  The manager at Dad’s apartment just called to say Dad died in his bedroom.

We’ve been dealing with this family death, arrangements and stuff for a while.  A couple weeks ago my wife, Lori and I flew down to Long Beach to clean out a couple of storage units Dad Wan had.  Several of us were there, so we sorted through everything.  The storage people said we could leave whatever we didn’t want, and they would auction it.  We spent the day cleaning things out, then Lori and her sister went to the office for the final paperwork while Dan and I finished up.  We left the doors open, so they could see what was in there, but when we got to the office, we were asked to close the doors.  Dan drove me back, I hopped out of the car and lowered the garage-like door to the first unit.  As I closed it reality hit me.  When I lowered the other door, I could actually feel the finality.

 A lifetime was coming to a close, a life represented by discarded stuff in two storage units.  When the door smacked the ground, I reflected, “Is this it?  What are we doing here?  What are we leaving.  What are we giving our lives to, a bunch of stuff?”

It was the same feeling I had at my mom’s funeral.  Her grandsons loaded the casket into the hearse, and the funeral director shut the lift gate and then banged twice on the back door to signal it was time.  As it drove off, I thought, “What are we doing with our lives?”  “What should we be doing with our lives?”

I suspect that you know the answer to that question, but I want to remind us what is urgent, what is needed, what is necessary by looking at one of Jesus’ most famous teachings.

Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy.  But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.  Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.  Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”

–Mark 4:13-20 (NIV)

A large crowd had gathered around Jesus, so large that he got into a boat and taught the people from there.  And he told the parable of the sower.  Jesus explained that the seed represents the Word of God.  Matthew says it is the message about the kingdom of God.

And clearly the implication is that we are called, as believers and as leaders, to sow some seeds, to plant the message of the gospel in people’s lives.  We’ve given our lives to this; we have been sent to spread the Word.  We are planters.

But why did Jesus tell this story?  What was he getting at with this parable?

I see two lessons about vision in this passage:

1. We get a choice about what to aim for.

This story implies choice.  We can choose to be resistant, to be hard and difficult and closed off and defiant people.  We can choose to be a flake, superficial, shallow, a flash in the pan, to over-promise and under-deliver.  We can embrace quitting.  We can choose to choke and get choked out by the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth.  We can choose to be unfruitful, fruitless, useless, ineffective and unproductive.  Ot we can choose fruitfulness.  We can reproduce thirty times, or sixty times or even one hundred times. 

You are not a victim; you are not destined for a wasted life.  You can choose the abundant life.  We get a choice about what we produce.

My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.

--John 15:8 (NASB)

In the middle of Matthew’s rendition, Jesus says:

Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. –Matthew 13:12 (NIV)

We can choose to lose, or we can choose to reproduce more and more and more.

Steve Jobs’s famously quipped, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

We at Excel have chosen fruitfulness, usefulness, and reproduction.  We are shooting for that one hundred-fold.  This year.

2. We get a choice about what will stop us.

We have got to get past our limiting beliefs

What will stop us?

Are we going to let resistance stop us?

We ask a girl out on a date, she says she has to wash her hair.  So what do we do?  Its what we don’t do: we don’t ask another girl out for two years.  We let one girl with dirty hair stop us.

Are we going to let flakiness stop us?

I know it’s challenging.  Someone comes to church; promises to be there forever; and quickly fades away.  We call that church planting. 

The saying goes, “You will lose everyone on your launch team in three years.”

I’ve got some good news and some bad news.  The good news is the saying isn’t true.  There are a good number of people in our church who were on our launch team twenty-five years ago.

The bad news is the saying is partially true.  You will more than likely lose part of your team in the first couple of years.  We thought they were family, they turned out to be scaffolding.

Paul and Barnabas lost John Mark after eight verses.  And John Mark was Barnabas’ cousin! 

Are we going to let thorns stop us?

The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature..—Luke 8:14 (NIV)

What chokes us?

·      Worries

·      Riches

·      Pleasures

What worries you?  Politics is all about worries. 

Money is a huge worry.  And it can choke us.  Jesus mentioned the deceitfulness of money.

Money talks, but usually it is lying.  Money says:

“Trust me”

“I’m the solution”

“You can’t do that”

“Put me first”

Pleasures choke us. 

Houses, cars, vacations, hobbies, clothing, binge-watching, social media all choke us. 

I have EOE--eosinophilic esophagitis.  All my allergies have caused some issues with my esophagus. And it means that on a semi-regular basis, I choke on food, most often some kind of meat, often with certain spices.  Food gets stuck in my throat, my longest episode lasted thirty hours, I’ve had lots of endoscopies.

Food, something good, can stop me cold it I don’t take small bites.

Worries, riches and pleasures will ruin our lives if we don’t take them in small bites.

Will we let complacency stop us?

Dennis Miller quipped, “If you could make a difference in just one person’s life…well one isn’t enough.”

The number 100 in the Bible often symbolizes completeness, fullness, and divine blessing

We have chosen to shoot for one hundred, and not let resistance, flakiness, thorniness or complacency stop us.

I started grade school in Boise, Idaho at Scared Heart Catholic School.  I went there for two years, did well, I got straight A’s but a B in penmanship.  We moved to Southern California, but the local Catholic schools were full, so for third and fourth grade, I went to public school.  I was way ahead, school was easy, I got straight A’s but a C in penmanship.

By fifth grade the Catholic school in our neighborhood had an opening so I was in.  My teacher was Mrs. Gross.  Imagine what some poor lady named Mrs. Gross must have been like.  She was worse.  It was awful, I was way behind, I got b-minuses and C-pluses.  I even gained weight and was destined for a life as Mr. Mediocre.

Then came sixth grade and Mrs. Jones.  My Mom came home for the first parent-teacher conference and shouted, “Jimmy David, we need to talk.”

I don’t remember ever having a discussion after teacher conferences, before or after that.

Mom had this stunned look on her face, and she started in, “Mrs. Jones Likes you.”  Okay, how could anyone not like me.  “No, she really likes you.”  Well, me and Mrs. Jones, we got a thing going on…  She was like eighty.

Mom continued, “When you came into her class, Mrs. Jones looked at your grades from last years and assumed you were just an average C+ student.  But then she saw you work, and your writing.  She went back and looked at all of your transcripts and realized you’re an A student.  Last year’s problems were more about Mrs. Gross than James Pearring.”

I was feeling pretty good about myself, then my mom said, “Mrs. Jones is especially impressed about your participation in religion class.”  Remember it was a Catholic school.  She says God is working in your life and you are destined to be a religious leader.”

I ended up doing really well in Mrs. Jones class, I even lost weight.

I rarely think about that experience, but I wanted to bring it up to say, “There are a lot of Mrs. Grosses out there who will resist and reject the likes of you and me.   There are Mrs. Grosses who will flake out, choke out, disappoint, and even hold us back.

Forget Mrs. Gross.  Remember the Mrs. Joneses in your life.  That’s what Excel wants to be.

You are not a victim; you are not destined for insignificance.  God has a 30, 60, 100-fold future for you.  You get to choose to pursue it.