Pour yourself out

I just listened to a great sermon from Mark Driscoll on the Mars Hill website. I made some notes as it went along so thought I would post them here also.

Luke 4:42 – 5:11

I’m going to try and make you do anything for Jesus. Christianity is a belief system and a lifestyle. It’s getting up out of the chair, turning off the TV, reordering your budget, doing things with and for Jesus because He loves you.

1. Pour yourself out in ministry

Everything in this world is to encourage you to love, worship, idolise and adore yourself. If you don’t get what you desire you go into grief, sadness, anxiety, depression, narcissism. The way out is love of God and service of others. If your life is about you, you should be depressed and anxious because you are wasting your whole life. You need to give your life to what Jesus gave his life to: the glory of God and the good of others.

2. Rest and recover in solitude

Jesus got up early. God became a man and could only be in one place at a time and he needed to go away and get a bit of rest. So ministry is you pouring yourself out and then your tank is empty and you go to be with God to fill it.

You have no business enjoying rest and solitude unless you’ve poured yourself out it in ministry. Rest and Solitude is a gift that God gives to those who have poured themselves out in ministry. Solitude is fasting from people, crowds, hurry, worry, busy, noise, activity. It is a routine not a lifestyle. If your whole life is into silence, solitude, Sabbath, resting, refreshing - you’re lazy. “I want to make enough money to then not have to work and retire.” We are supposed to passionately serve and give our lives away until the end.

Two types of people: Contemplatives and Activists.
Contemplatives: Thinkers, feelers, ponderers, considerers, journalers, silence, all in the head
Activists: Doers – hands and feet, go get it done

Schedule, plan, protect and make times of solitude happen.

Solitude is good but isolation is bad.

Things that stop the kind of solitude that Jesus enjoyed:

i) The people that wouldn’t leave him alone - ‘those people’ - always needy, demanding, everything is a crisis. Are you that person?

ii) It is not planned for. Put it on your calendar. Some tips for days of solitude: http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2009/11/12/organizing-a-silence-and-solitude-day-part-1-of-5/

iii) Technology is going to kill solitude. You can go through your life and never be alone again due to technology. Connected and plugged in to the world, to the neglect of God continually. You can go the rest of your life without ever hearing the voice of God, because there is too much noise, or talking to God, because you’re too busy talking to everyone else. Turn off the phone, shut down technology, go and be alone with God.

A discipline. Jesus did it and you will die without it.

You may need a lifestyle re-orientation. You have an all consuming, ever present, continually demanding lifestyle. The myth is that it will get better in the next season but that never comes.

3. Pursue your calling not your potential (42b-44)

The people wanted Jesus to do perfectly good things but they were not the things the Father had called Him to do.

You have more things you can do than things you should do. If Satan can’t make you sin he will keep you busy not doing bad things but neglecting first things.

A sense of your calling will come in silence and solitude.

My whole life belongs to Jesus – body, time, money, days, etc.

Christians exchange busyness for fruitfulness. Be fruitful not just busy.

Four ways to live your life – from ‘Leading on Empty’ by Wayne Cordeiro

i) Reaction – there’s a need, you jump. Someone demands, you obey. Letting everyone else tell you who you are. Life is out of control.

ii) Conformity – fear of man, people pleasing, I want everyone to like me. Doing what everyone tells you. Obedient, moral, nice, ineffective.

iii) Independence – I’m not doing what anyone else tells me to do, I’m not getting involved or letting anyone into my life. I’m not going to do what I don’t like doing. I’m very smart and I have my own opinions.

iv) Intentionality – retreat from your life to focus on and organise your life and then reengage. Spend time with God and then live your live with intentionality doing what God tells you to do. Intentionally live your life to do the things that God has gifted you and called you to do.