NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH



NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH

November 27, 2011

Thanks

Mark Batterson

Let me just say that we are so honored and excited to have Christine Caine next weekend. We were only able to get her live on Saturday night. We’ll be meeting at Barracks Row for that one service and in video at all of our locations. It’s going to be a great weekend.

Did you survive Thanksgiving and Black Friday? I love sleeping in on Black Friday. It feels even better because I know people are getting up early. What a wonderful weekend! For my birthday not long ago, Lora got me a deep fryer, so I deep fried my first turkey for Thanksgiving. Those of you who follow me on Twitter might have already seen this, but would you like to see my first deep fried turkey? That’s what I call deep fried! We pulled it out and my heart dropped. But there is good news. Go to the next turkey. There was my turkey and this is Lora’s turkey, perfectly done. By the way, don’t feel bad for me, we didn’t eat the skin but the turkey itself was wonderful. That’s why I don’t spent a lot of time in the kitchen. I’m much better at eating food than preparing it.

Hey, if you have a Bible, turn over to I Thessalonians Chapter 5, verses 16-18 and that may sound like, wow! We’re going to do three verses this weekend! But two of them are two of the shortest verses in the Bible but they speak volumes.

I Thessalonians 5:16

Rejoice always.

That’s the first verse!

Pray continually.

That’s easy. Or not! Easier said than done! What does that even mean? Am I supposed to have my eyes closed all the time?

Verse 18

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Probably the question I get more than any other question, it always comes back to the will of God. Is this person the will of God for me? Last weekend I was at our Georgetown location and on the way out, one of the attendees there who goes to school there said, “I’m trying to figure out what my major should be.” Part of me internally was thinking, ‘Don’t worry about it because it is probably going to have nothing to do with what you do anyway, but I know you are paying a lot of money for education,’ so we chatted for them and I reminded them that the will of God, we tend to focus on what we are doing or where we are going, but it is always about who you are becoming. That’s what God cares about. It has less to do with circumstances and more to do with our attitudes. So I think what I might say up front is that you already know the will of God. Rejoice always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try real hard to make really good God-honoring decisions, decisions that are sometimes tough to make that require prayer and fasting. We need to figure that stuff out. So I’m not saying we ignore that stuff, but I am saying right here, right now, you know the will of God. Rejoice always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances.

But that is easier said than done! So let’s talk about it a little bit.

A few months ago, Joel Osteen was in town and I had the opportunity, along with a few other pastors, to meet him. If you are talking about joy, it seems like you ought to reference Joel. I don’t know anybody that smiles more. He probably smiles in his sleep! He is such an upbeat, energetic guy and he was kind enough to give us a copy of his new book, Every Day is a Friday. Then over the last couple of days, I’ve had the chance to read the first couple of pages and I was trying to figure out the title. It was really interesting to me because he cites a study that found that happiness increases 10 percent on Fridays. How many of you believe that study is true? It didn’t take a scientist, you didn’t have to do a study, I can tell you that! How many of you, it’s more like 20 or 30 percent? Why? Because we love weekends! You can sleep in. You can stay up late. You can do whatever you want to do. You can go on a hike, go shopping, whatever. It is your own deal. But I love the point that Joel makes at the beginning. He ties it to this Scripture that is one of my favorites, Psalm 118: This is the day that the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it. I thought it was funny because Joel says, ‘It doesn’t say this is the Friday that the Lord has made.’ No, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The funny thing for me, by the way, is that my Friday is Monday and my Monday is Friday. TGIM for me because Monday is my day off and Friday is the day I’m ramping up for the weekend. But I love this idea that every single day, every single moment, we can find something to be grateful for, something to rejoice about. It is not a circumstance, it is a decision.

A couple of months ago, I took my son Parker to a shooting range. I had never been so I had to take lessons before we could actually shoot some clay pigeons. So, this weekend, we started a new tradition. We went a couple months ago for his birthday, then we decided it was so much fun, let’s make it an annual Thanksgiving weekend tradition. So it was me and my brother-in-law Rob and his son Noah, my nephew, and Parker. We decided to do the old guys against the young bucks and turn it into a competition. So we got out there and we were doing our thing but let me rewind and tell you what I learned. Evidently I didn’t learn enough because I’m literally black and blue. My shoulder is killing me because I didn’t hold it right. It feels like I did a thousand curls or something. So we went through the lessons and they tell you about safety and how to carry the gun. But here’s the interesting thing to me, one of the first things I learned, and some of you this will be a total revelation and others will be like how did you just now learn that? They asked which one is your good eye. Do you know what I’m talking about? You choose a little object out in the distance and do a little triangle. Pretend I’m the target and do your little triangle. Let me ask you, how many of you already know if your right eye or your left eye is your good eye? What is it called? Your dominant eye! Thank you! Ok. Everybody, let’s find out, do the triangle and close one eye then the other eye, which one am I still in your triangle? How many of you are left eye dominant? How many are right eye dominant? And how many of you are confused? Ok. I’m right eye dominant and I didn’t know this. It took me until I was 41 to figure out that I’m right eye dominant. Well, when you get up to shoot, if you are shooting with your eye where stuff is moving, you might hit where you are aiming but you won’t hit the target. Your dominant eye is the one that is going to give you that best shot. So, we are sitting there and I find out that many other have a Thanksgiving weekend tradition of going to the shooting range because we had to wait for about an hour to even get out there and shoot and we were watching some people shoot and, this is terrible, but it’s always awesome when there is one person that makes you feel like a sniper! There was this one guy that was so bad! What was he aiming at? I was feeling better and better. Halfway through, he switches and starts shooting leftie! And he doesn’t even do any better. Then we got up and looked pretty good! I was thinking to myself, ‘Are you looking through the right eye?’ I was really wondering if any eyes were open at all. But I was wondering if maybe you’re not hitting the target because you’re looking through the wrong eye.

The Bible talks a lot about the eye and looking through the eye and how the eye is the window to the soul and how we see things. In fact, one of the interesting verses is Matthew 6:22. It says

Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness.

The Message translation says:

Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a damp cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have.

It’s kind of this good eye bad eye that caught my attention. When I read that, I had flashback to Little League. You hear, ‘Good eye, good eye!’ Like when you are up to bat and you don’t swing at a bad pitch and you hear, ‘Good eye!’ Even if you can’t hit the ball, at least you have a good eye! I think what this verse is saying is that more important than your circumstances is how you perceive those circumstances. Maybe another way of saying it is, your experiences, are they significant? Yes, of course, but far more significant than your experiences are your explanations for your experiences. It is how you perceive them. It is the filter through which you perceive. And I think in many cases the only difference between light and darkness or maybe we could say joy and depression is which eye you are looking through, your good eye or your bad eye. If you have an eye for wonder, you will see wonder all around you. If you have an eye for the negative, you can be in the best circumstances and you will find something to complain about. You’ll find something wrong. I just happen to believe that we control that and we have to train ourselves to see things the way God sees them. To see through his eyes, if you will. By the way, I think that starts with seeing ourselves through his eyes. If you could see yourself the way your heavenly Father sees you, ah, it changes everything.

A few years ago, I came across an interesting study involving a group of Americans who had never been to Mexico and a group of Mexicans who had never been to America. The researchers built a binocular viewing machine capable of showing one image to the right eye and one image to the left eye. One of the snapshots was of a baseball game, a traditional American pastime, and the other photo was of a bullfight, a traditional Mexican pastime. During this study, the pictures appeared simultaneously so the two eyes were seeing two different images at the same time, forcing subject to focus on one or the other. This is so fascinating to me. When they were asked what they had seen, the American subjects reported seeing a baseball game and the Mexican subjects reported seeing a bullfight. What’s up with that? There were two images. Well, there’s an old adage seeing is believing, and I think on one level that is true, and I also think that believing is seeing; that our perceptions are greatly affected by our experiences and our education and our expectations. We tend to see what we want to see. The psychological term is perceptual vigilance. What we see depends on what we’ve experienced or not experienced, what we know or don’t know, what we expect or don’t expect. That’s why Americans see a baseball game and Mexicans see a bullfight.

Let me take it a step further. We generally see what we want to see and don’t see what we don’t want to see. Are you with me? If you want an example of that, watch a football game with a fan of the opposing team. I’m just going to tell you that this happened at our house on Thanksgiving Day. Pastor Dave is a Bears fan and cannot bring himself to root for the Packers under any circumstances. I am a Packers fan. So we were watching the game and at one point there was a pass interference call in the end zone and Dave jumped out of his chair and said, “That’s a terrible call!” I’m like, “What are you talking about? It was so obvious!” Then the Packers ended up scoring and Dave was like, “Lucky.” And I’m thinking, ‘The skill level on this team!’ Why? Because we have two totally different filters. Now, I’m going to be the first person to say that I’m totally biased. I tend to see through cheese-colored glasses. I’m going to see it through that bias. Now here’s the trick, all of us are biased, and I know the word has a negative connotation, but to me, joy is just being biased about the goodness of God. We have a bias about his blessings. We are biased by a God who is so good, a God who is good all the time. And we choose to focus, not on who we are but on who He is, not on what we’ve done wrong but on what He has done right. I think the battle is won or lost in the mind and it’s our thoughts that really dictate what our lives are going to become.

This gets into some of my theology but also some of my philosophy of life. I just think our thoughts and our words are self-fulfilling prophecies. And that’s why I’m very careful in the way I speak to my kids. Now, have I ever said some things that I wish I hadn’t because that could be a self-fulfilling prophecy in a negative fashion in their lives? Absolutely! But I try very hard not to ignore reality but to speak what I believe, to speak prophetically into the lives of my kids. Proverbs 23:7 says: As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. In other words, our thoughts are going to dictate who we become. I think everything is created twice. The first creation is in the mind. It is our thoughts. And then it is created with our actions. We have a core value as a family – your focus determines your reality.

Which eye are you looking through? Are you looking through the good eye or the bad eye? Are you looking through the eye that is focused on the things that you are not happy with? Or are you looking through the eye that is focused on the fact that you are saved, that you are a child of God, that your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, that your sins are forgiven, that you are going to spend eternity with God? How can we not get up every day and not jump out of bed saying Hallelujah!! Wow! If I had nothing else but I had a relationship with my Lord and Savior, I have everything I need and everything I want. I don’t need anything else.

Let’s keep going.

Philippians 4

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.

You know what? Joyful people aren’t joyful because they have better circumstances or more money or higher IQs or nicer homes or better jobs, joyful people are more joyful because they focus on things that produce joy. It is as simple as that. I think every once in a while, we need to be reminded of that.

Pray continually. Let’s talk about this for just a moment. The best translation would be pray without intermission. I like that. There is no intermission. Always on mission, if you will. I think prayer is what gets up on God’s wave length and then keeps us on that wavelength so that we hear the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. We are going to talk about prayer in the month of January, so I’m going to save some of this but I love this connections in Colossians, watch and pray, because I think praying is the way we open our spiritual eyes to begin to perceive that way God is moving and what God is doing in us and around us. If we don’t have our spiritual eyes open, then we are going to live down to the level of our circumstances. So prayer is what elevates our minds and elevates our hearts.

I think it also hints at the fact that prayer is something far more than just bowing your head and closing your eyes and folding your hands. And then beginning with whatever name you choose for God. For some, it is Father, for others, Lord, for some, God. ‘Lord,’ followed by prayer, ‘Amen,’ now I have prayed. That is what we consider prayer. But I would suggest that that is just a small dimension of what prayer is meant to be. Ultimately our lives are intended to be a prayer. What does that look like? Let me give you an example. On Tuesday night, we have a prayer meeting over at Barracks Row. It was an amazing night. Pastor Joel mentioned that last weekend, the Southeast Whitehouse, the ministry that we are now joined with, I’m so excited about what God is doing in and through the Southeast Whitehouse, a couple of our protégés live at the house and minister there, and it was broken into. The safe with gift cards was cracked and they were stolen and some tires were slashed, it was a traumatizing thing, and I love what Pastor Joel said, and again this is focused, the next day when we found out about it, he was like, ‘I know we don’t want that to happen but isn’t that a confirmation that we are right where we need to be.’ So we are on the frontlines right there. Afterwards, I felt this impression, sometimes we pray about things but we have the power to do something about them too. In other words, we can kind of answer our own prayer. And I felt like, let’s at least have an opportunity for people to give so that those who were stolen from aren’t out one red cent. Let’s let them know that we are in their corner. So on the way out that night, we gave $1,383.08! You tell me, what was the prayer that night? Was it just those moments when our eyes were closed and we were thanking God or praying for something in prayer circles, or were those gifts that were given perhaps a very tangible prayer? Isn’t that a form of prayer? To actually act on an impression from God and give. Which one of those is more meaningful to our heavenly Father? I would suggest that both are. He loves it when we just talk to Him. But He also loves it when we act on those prayers.

I think, for me, my personalization of this idea, I’ve shared this before, but one of my idiosyncrasies is that when I write, I don’t write with my shoes on, I always take my shoes off, even if I’m writing in an airport, but I’m typically in my office, and I always take my shoes off because I feel like this is holy ground. For me, writing on a keyboard is one way that I pray. So I really don’t view my books as books, my books are prayers. This next one is a 224 page prayer. I took my shoes off and sat down at the keyboard and said, “God, I don’t know what to say, but would You lead me and guide me?” I prayed before, during and after. So that book is a prayer. I think in the same way, we’ve got to make sure, the way that you pray continually is to realize that your life is a prayer.

Finally, give thanks in all circumstances. It doesn’t matter what the economy does. It doesn’t matter what your doctor says. It doesn’t matter how your kids are acting. It doesn’t matter what your colleagues think of you. I think this is a no matter what no matter how deal. No matter what, give thanks in all circumstances. I think it is more meaningful when you give thanks in circumstances where it is difficult. I think it is just the pure act of praise. I think it is more meaningful, like a sacrifice, “God I don’t feel like it but I know that You are worthy to be praised and I give You thanks.”

I look back at my life and I look at some of the circumstances and I wouldn’t want to go through them again, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I’ve shared my parenting philosophy a time or two, but it’s hard and complicated and it takes tremendous wisdom and patience. There is nothing more challenging and nothing more rewarding than being a dad. One of the ways I’ve tried to simplify things is at the end of the day, I’m going to mess up a lot of times, I’m going to miss some things, but at the end of the day, I feel like my kids needs to know how to say please, sorry and thank you. If they are really good at saying please, if they are really good at saying sorry, if they are really good at saying thank you, they are going to be fine. Then I’m not worried about them. Whatever job they have, it’s going to be fine. Whoever they marry, it will be fine. Their relationship with God will be fine if they are really good at saying please, sorry and thank you.

Give thanks in all circumstances. By the way, after we went shooting, my son sent me a text, thanks for taking us shooting! Oh, we are going again! He said thanks and that makes me want to bless my kids even more. Our heavenly Father is no different. When we have a heart filled with gratitude, when we learn to say thank you, we have a God who wants to bless us beyond what we can even believe.

This stuff isn’t easy. Let me mention this. The God Anthology album just came out. We can’t stop listening to it. On the way out to the in-laws we listened to the first half and listened to the second half coming back. I think part of this is just choosing what we are going to focus on. I’ve found that even when I have a soundtrack playing, you know what, my youngest son Josiah has a hard time going to sleep if the radio isn’t playing in his room, and they listen to a bunch of different stations and I’m ok with that. But when they are going to bed at night, I’m very intentionally, there is only one station it is going to be on and I want to make sure those lyrics are honoring God. So I’m very intentionally about making sure it is on the right station because subconsciously, I know something is going in and I want to make sure. One of the things I’ve loved about the God Anthology and these songs we’ve been singing and will be singing is that first it gets in your ear, then it gets in your mind, but these are songs that are now in my spirit. Then I find it so much easier to rejoice and so much easier to pray and so much easier to give thanks because I’m careful about the soundtracks that are playing in my life.

Let’s close with this. Your focus determines your reality. Your focus determines your reality. I really think it is as simple or as complicated as that. What’s up with this midnight shopping thing? When did this happen? Did I miss something last year? Now Black Friday is no longer 5:00 a.m. but now it’s midnight? This is ridiculous! Yet, we went! Let me amend that! I did not go! I was sound asleep by midnight but Lora and Parker and Noah were all amped about going to Target at midnight. So they went and bought some Christmas gifts. There’s just something about a sale, right? So Lora was telling me about it the next morning. She said, “When we checked out, the check-out person said ‘Thanks for shopping at Target, you saved $118.” This is obvious but they are not going to say, ‘You spent $224!’ Then half of us would, just hearing, would return something right away! That would not be a good technique for retail stores. But isn’t this funny? You can go out and spend all this money and then you just feel so good about how much money you saved. So the next morning, I was taking the boys to the Turkey Bowl to play a little bit of football and they were talking in the back seat. Quote, “We owned Target!” And then they told me, ‘We stole $118 bucks from Target.’ Oh you stole it? So Target got ripped off in this deal? I’m thinking whatever Target is doing is working like a charm on my teen-age son! But it’s the focus!

We are about to head into a holiday season where you can get focused on a lot of different things and be going a thousand different directions. Can I just remind us that Christmas is about celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ? Let’s be careful in this season to rejoice always, to keep our good eye, our dominant eye on the blessings of the Lord. This is the day, it doesn’t whether it is Monday, Saturday, Thursday, Friday, this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Give thanks.

We are going to celebrate communion. Here’s what’s cool about this. The word for communion, Eucharist, comes from this Greek word give thanks. It is the same word, the same root. So what a wonderful way for us to immediately put this message into practice, by going back to the foot of the cross and giving thanks to God. Let’s pray together.

Father, we love You and thank You. God You are so good. We are so blessed and God we are so grateful. Thank You. Lord thank You for being so giving and forgiving. God thank You for being so generous with us. God your mercy and kindness know no end. Your grace, your love, unconditional, unmerited, we don’t deserve it but we receive it and give You thanks. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Ministry Transcription

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