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11/17/13 On a Mission from God

From “My-Opia” toMission

INTRO

As we start today, let’s begin with an awareness test. Watch this…

(Play “Test Your Awareness” clip)

It is easy to miss something you’re not looking for, isn’t it?

TEXT

Myopia is the medical term for nearsightedness. People with myopia see objects more clearly when they are close to the eye, while distant objects appear blurred or fuzzy. Reading and close-up work may be clear, but distance vision is blurry.

I started wearing glasses for myopia when I was about 14. At first I only needed them to see the board at school. When I first started driving I could still pass the eye test, but about when I started college I also started to have to wear my glasses to drive.

I struggle with myopia. I also…

(We) Struggle with “My-opia”

I not only have near-sighted vision; I also tend to have a near-sighted focus in life. Maybe some of you can relate.

  • I tend to focus on myproblems.

It is often hard for me to focus beyond the difficulties I have going on in my own life. But life is filled with difficulties. As long as we live in sin-scarred bodies in a sin-scarred world, we will have problems; so we have to learn to focus on more than just our own problems. My-opia is even more obvious because…

  • I tend to focus on mypreferences.

It amazes me how so many of you can be so blind. Obviously football season is the best time of year, soft rock is the only truly good music, medium-rare is the only way to eat a steak, and toilet paper is supposed to roll off from the top and not the bottom. If you don’t see things my way, then you need to change your perspective; because my way is obviously the right way.

That is “my-opia.” I tend to focus on my problems, on my preferences, and…

  • I tend to focus on mypeople.

My focus naturally turns to my family and my friends. My-opia keeps me from seeing other people clearly.

Instead of seeing them as people of worth because they were created by God; instead of seeing them as people of value because Jesus came to die for them; I see them as people who are either a help or a hindrance in my life. I see them as a blessing or a burden. My-opia is a difficult condition to live with.

The Apostle Paul addressed this in Philippians 2:4 where it says…Not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. We need to be able to focus on something besides our own interests. That doesn’t mean we neglect our families or our jobs or even our personal interests.

  • We need a balanced view of life.

Sometimes my reaction to my “my-opia” is to over-correct. Instead of focusing only on my own interests; I over-correct and focus only on others… what do others think, what are others saying, how can I make and keep everyone satisfied? Psychologists refer to the extreme of this approach to living as co-dependency. For the co-dependent, meaning and purpose in life comes from solving everyone else’s problems. Co-dependents are often drawn into one-sided relationships that consume them. They are so afraid of failing in that relationship that they will fail to care for themselves. The answer to my-opia is not to over-correct. The answer is a balanced view of life.

A lesson that I am still trying to learn is that…

  • Self-care is not selfish, it is stewardship.

God has given us a life to live for his glory. We are to be good stewards of that life.

Author and educator Parker Palmer writes… “Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.”

The answer to “my-opia” is not over-correction. It is a balanced view of life. So…

  • Meeting the needs of family comes first.

It is right for us to make our own family our first priority after our relationship with God.

In 1 Timothy 5:8 Paul writes…Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. But Paul was talking about providing for basic needs, not giving our families everything they could possibly want. Our families come first, but they are not our only focus. We need a balanced view of life, and…

  • We are all called to serve others.

If we do not have the space in our lives to serve someone, somewhere; we are too busy. If we are so busy rushing through life that we don’t notice the people right in front of us, we need to slow down and take notice. It really is easy to miss something you’re not looking for. If my-opia is such an issue in our lives that we are blind to the needs of people around us; we need some corrective lenses. Watch this…(Play “Got Service” video)

We struggle with “my-opia” and we need our vision corrected. That is today’s Big Idea. The eyes of our hearts need a correction from time to time to stay on mission. In Ephesians 1, the Apostle Paul talks about…

ReFocusing the “Eyes of Our Hearts”

Ephesians 1:18-19 says… 18I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,19and his incomparably great power for us who believe…

  • We need to learn to “see” with our hearts.

The word picture here is the light that comes when someone opens their eyes and sees something for the first time. It is like a child opening their eyes for the first time. It is like a blind person who has been healed and sees for the first time.

Paul was praying that through their faith in Christ these believers would be able to see life and people with more than their physical eyes or even their minds. Paul was praying that for the first time these believers would see fully from deep inside of themselves… that they would truly see life and people in a way that brought light deep into the inner reaches of their hearts. When we see with our hearts…

  • We need to remember what we have in Christ.

The word that is translated “that you may know” is in the perfect tense. This means it is something that has lasting results. Paul wanted us as believers to see with the eyes of their hearts so we would remember, first…

  • The hopewehave in Christ.

This is not a wish for the best; but the confident faith that what God has promised us is true. As believers we also need to remember…

  • The inheritance we have in Christ.

An inheritance is not just about money and material possessions. An inheritance is something that is passed on and is shared because of a family relationship. That is why it is so tragic when children fight over the possessions of their family inheritance.

Awhile back, before we moved here to Sunnyside, I ran into someone I knew in line at Starbucks and I asked how he was doing. He began to tell me the story of the last year of his life; his last parent had passed away leaving him as the trustee of the estate. He was going at Starbucks to meet with his attorney because his sister was suing him over the distribution of the estate. How tragic…

Fighting over the material possessions of their inheritance was destroying the family connection that is more important than any amount of money or things. Our glorious inheritance in the saintsis a picture of what we share for eternity as part of God’s family.

The third thing that Paul wants us as believers to remember is…

  • The power we have in Christ.

The passage goes on to describe the power that raised Christ from the dead. This is the power we have available to us in Christ.And because of the hope, inheritance, and power of knowing Christ…

  • We need to realize what we have to offer.

We can offer those same three things to others. And we can offer those things to others with no loss of those things for ourselves. Our hope is no less because others share that same hope. Our inheritance in Christ is limitless, and so is God’s power. And since what we have to offer is the limitless hope, inheritance, and power of knowing Christ…

  • We need to reach out with no strings attached.

Outreach isnot a strategy of church growth. The goal is not that we have the biggest church in town. We reach out to share with others the limitless supply of blessing we have found in Christ.

Jesus was attending a banquet that was hosted by a prominent religious leader. He noticed that people were looking out for themselves, trying to find the best seats, trying to gain the greatest advantage for themselves. There was some serious “my-opia” going on here!

And in Luke 14:12-14 we read…12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid.

13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

CONCLUSION

A new friend of mine gave me this picture last month. It says, “The best things in life are not things.” I read a story about someone whose severe case of “my-opia” blinded him to this truth.

Ironically, this story is about a man who had a huge passion for noticing—butterflies. He traveled the world to add rare and unusual species to his collection. As he moved toward retirement, there was only one butterfly left in the world that he needed to make his collection complete. This rare butterfly had only been spotted a few times in the deserts of Utah. So he made arrangements to stay with some friends who lived near the desert.

Day after day, he got up early and came home late, driven by his desire to net this elusive butterfly. Day after day, he returned empty-handed. Near the end of the first month, he thought he saw the prized butterfly floating around in the dry desert breeze. His heart began to pound, as he knew this might be his only opportunity to net the rare butterfly. The sun was beginning to go down, so he had to move fast. As he raced to the area where he had spotted the butterfly, he heard what sounded like a man groaning in distress. He quickly tried to block it out of his mind because he didn’t want to miss his opportunity to capture the prize of a lifetime.

As he moved toward the butterfly, he made a quick decision to investigate the groaning noise after he had netted the butterfly. He pulled out his special gear, and within a couple of minutes, he had managed to net his dream. Euphoria swept over him. His quest to posses the world’s greatest butterfly collection had been realized!

In his excitement, he forgot about the sounds he had heard just a few minutes earlier. He headed home to show his friends the butterfly that very few people in the world had ever seen. As he recounted his story, he suddenly was jarred by the reality that he had forgotten to investigate the sounds he had heard earlier.

He and his friends got up before dawn the next morning and made their way back to where he thought he had heard the sounds. After looking around for about an hour, they came across the body of an old prospector. Some time during the night, when the temperature in the desert had plummeted, the old man had passed away. (Doug Pollock, God Space, p. 40-41)

Chasing butterflies has consequences, doesn’t it? We tend to chase what we cherish most. Well folks, we aren’t chasing butterflies; we are on a mission from God.

“My-Opia” is particularly prevalent during the holiday season. Christmas can be a time when I focus on my problems, my preferences, and certainly my people. In order for us to carry out our mission from God this Christmas; I must, you must, we all must, deal with our “my-opia.” We need some correction that refocuses the eyes of our hearts. This Christmas we need to put on the corrective lenses that help us see people as Jesus sees them. We need a refocused vision to stay on our Mission from God.