1411 - "Aim high!" 2 Corinthians 5:9.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1411. Over the last few days, I have been speaking to you about the great Moadim, the appointments that God laid out for his people. He built structure into their lives to where every week they had an appointment with God. It was called Shabbat. That appointment had a purpose. They were to remember that God is the creator and the sustainer of all of life. Before they were born and after they had died, God is still creator. He is immutable, he never changes. And throughout the entire revelation of God, creation and God is the creator is brought to the forefront. It was a special day. All of the other days were numbered only Shabbat was named. And when God brought his people out of Egyptian bondage and brought them into the promised land after forty years of wandering in the wilderness, God, while they were in the wilderness, gave them these great appointment times to where they would never forget about who he was, his person, and his great works and the miracles that God had wrought on their behalf. And the reason God did this, the reason he told them to do certain things to remember this and to remember that is because we are prone to forget. We are prone to go astray. Left to ourselves we will go astray. You see, you don't have to do anything to drift. All you do is just stop being intentional, turn the motor off, stop with the oars, stop rowing, and you'll drift. You see, this is the way of life. As many of you know, I have taught leadership conferences to mid-level businesses and small businesses across America. I've helped churches by the grace of God to assess where they are and help them to go to the next level. But as I've talked with businessmen, with athletes, with people from every walk of life, and they say to me, How can I go to the next level? I said, Do you want to go up or down? They said, Well, of course I want to go up. Then I say to them, What are you doing to go up? You see, if you coast, there's only one way to go, and that's downhill. You don't coast uphill to the next level. As a matter of fact, there's no elevator up to the next level. You gotta take the stairs, you gotta walk the steps. That doesn't matter who you are. And if you were to take an elevator, you wouldn't appreciate the journey. You see, God allowed his people to understand that maturity is a process. It was in their walk with God, it is for ours. Romans chapter 15 and verse 4 says, the things that were written before, this is what the apostle Paul said about the people of God, that is, the Jews of the Old Testament, God said, I'm doing this not just for you, but I want to use you and your walk and your struggles to help those that will come after you. That's why Paul said the things that were written before were written for our learning, our instruction, our admonition. All of these Moadim, these appointment days, what you believe might just be rules or ritual, there was a purpose in that. And the Apostle Paul said that we and all of us need to make as our aim to be well pleasing to God. In other words, we need to make progress. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 9, Paul said, after he had talked about this earthly house of ours, this tent, this building that we live in right now, one day is going to go by the wayside. And we will be absent from this body. But Paul said, that's not bad, that's good for the child of God, because to be absent from this body is to be at home with the Lord. And so he talks about that for eight verses, and then he says, Therefore, on the basis of that, and because of that, we make it our aim. That's one word. We make it our goal, we make it our aspiration. This is what we're living for. That whether we're present or absent in this body, that we will be well pleasing to him. You see, this is the life of the child of God, to give it all we've got, to do whatever we do for his glory, whether we eat or whether we drink, we do all for the glory of God so that people will look at our lives and praise him. Now, in order for that to happen, you have to be intentional. As a matter of fact, this phrase, the word philosoph with tomayo, philos or phileo means love or lover, or depending upon the context, it can mean fond of, but it's the idea of cherishing something, going after something, loving something, being in love with something. And so what is that? He said honor, lover of honor, lover of doing what is good and excellent. That's our goal, that's our aim. In other words, whatever we do, let's do for the glory of God. Let's do it with all of our heart. Don't halfway do anything for God. And so that means that you and I need to stay at the task of walking with God. But the reality is if we do not have structure and we do not have ritual and we do not have habits and routines, we will go astray. You see, those are like lines on a road, on a highway. Can you imagine being out on the busy interstates with no guidelines whatsoever? With no yellow lines, with no white lines, with no solid yellow lines to say don't pass. You see, these things are there and they're necessary. Why? Because in any area of life with everything we need guidelines. Well, so it is with our walk with God. And so Paul said, I'm making it my aim to strive for excellence, to be an honor to God and well pleasing to God, and to give it my very best shot. I'm going to give everything I've got unto God. Now, this is an amazing principle all the way through Scripture. I have been amazed down through the years as I have read the works and the writings of Benjamin Mays, the former president of Morehouse College, one of the mentors of Martin Luther King. Now I am not in any wise commending Martin Luther King Jr.'s theology. His theology was heresy. He did a lot for civil rights, but he and I are totally opposite on our view of who Jesus is, of his life, his work, what he represents, and all that he is. But I can tell you he was a great orator. One of his great mentors was Benjamin Mays. Benjamin Mays really epitomized the philosophy of aim at nothing and hit it every time. As a matter of fact, I read one quote that he said, It is not a disgrace to reach for the stars and fail in your goal. But it is a disgrace to not have stars to reach for. True tragedy is apathy, complacency, set high standards, lofty goals, dream big dreams. When I was in Knoxville, many who are listening to this will remember this. The man who put together the Sunsphere, the architect for the Sunsphere was a man by the name of Bill Denton. He was from Morristown, Tennessee. Bill is the man that became my friend and the architect of the beautiful auditorium and sanctuary at Chillawa Hills Baptist Church in Knoxville, out in the eastern part of Knoxville. Bill, when he designed the Sunsphere, which was built as the hallmark and the centerpiece of the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee, the last of the World's Fairs as they were for decades past, far more than a century, he wrote The Sunsphere and other famous structures of past World's Fairs. And in the front of that, Bill wrote, hand wrote in the print and the penmanship that only an architect would write. Christmas 2001, Dear Tony, Daniel Burnham, architect of the eighteen ninety-three Chicago's World's Fair, once said, and this is the quote, make big plans. Little plans fail to stir men's souls. How true that is. Then he said, Therefore, let's follow the Lord's guidance, and with his leadership, let's make big plans and stir the souls of all Knoxphilians. Thank you for this opportunity to participate in God's plans. Sincerely, sunspherically Bill. Now the reason I read that to you and the reason this book is near and dear to me is you see God does all things well. And when we do things in His name, whether they are small because we don't need to despise small beginnings. That's what God said. But whether it's small or whether it's great, what you and I need to do is do what we do with all of our heart, and that also includes our walk with God. You see, if you are not making an effort to walk with God, you're not walking with God. It doesn't happen naturally. As a matter of fact, our bend is away from God. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one into his own way. You see, the hymn writer was accurate when he said, prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. That's in all of our hearts. The greatest of us, if it were not for the grace of God and the discipline that He gives us and the ability to discipline ourselves, we would go astray. What I'm asking you to do is make up your minds that you're going to set up some barriers to walk with God. You're going to set up some appointed times. Do you read the Bible every day? As a matter of fact, Ezra in Ezra chapter 8 set a pattern of reading the Word of God publicly, that after that we don't read about it in the Bible, but we read about it in Jewish history. After that Nehemiah 8 passage, Ezra set up some guidelines that the people of God would read a portion of the Word of God every day to the point to where now, every year, Jews all over the world read the Torah portion, as we would say in English. Then they read the Haftara, which is a portion now of the prophets or the writings. And this is done publicly every three days or within three days. On the Shabbat it is read, the Torah portion. And then two days later, on Monday it's read. And then three days later it is read on Thursday, and then again on Shabbat you start another portion. Now why am I telling you that? Because Ezra believed that the reason the people went into captivity and exile was because they failed to know the Word of God. There was a famine in the land with the Bible, with the Torah right before them. And so he wanted to set up a structure where they would publicly read the Word of God and be called to reading of the Word of God every no longer, they would go no longer than three days. Yet many of God's people that I'm talking to right now will go long periods of time. Sometimes people just pick up their Bible to go to church and they'd only open it when they're at church. Some people only pray when they're at church. That's once a week. That's not enough. We need to be in the Word of God every day. So get on a pattern. If you don't use my 365 that God gave me to a chapter a day, key chapters in the Bible, then read the Daily Walk Bible with Bruce Wilkinson. Tyndall House publishes that and they do it in several versions. It's absolutely wonderful. But get in on some plan and stick with it. Because if you're not reading the Word of God on a regular basis, you're not making progress with God. And it's not just reading it, but as you read it, God will speak to your heart. It might not be peaches and cream every day. Sometimes you read the Word of God and it's like dry cereal. It's dry, but it's nourishing. And you need that, and I need that. And not just that, we need the discipline of meeting God every day. So I pray that as we learn about these rituals and routines, that it will not just be something that happened in the past, but it'll be something that's current in your life. That you'll set up these memory marks where you will meet God on a regular basis, and then you'll take aside a week or a few days to fast and pray and seek the face of God and let God do a fresh work in your life. That's my prayer for you. The reason I do these podcasts day in and day out is simply because I want to provide you with another tool that'll help you to walk with God. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.