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Today Matters: Commitment FUMC Dayton October 1,2017
Romans 12:1,2 (The Message)
Today matters.
Just for today…
I will choose and display a right attitude.
I will determine and act on important priorities.
I will know and follow healthy guidelines.
I will communicate and care for my family.
I will practice and develop good thinking.
This morning I want to talk about another daily practice:
I will make and keep proper commitments. Commitment. Following through. Staying with it. Being steady. Being dependable. Christianity is a 24 hour, 7 days a week, day by day, minute by minute expression of our faith. Every minute counts. Every moment counts. The truth is we are all given the same amount of time- everyday is a gift- and we can use it to honor God and do His will or we can waste it. Every minute is God’s gift- how will we use it? We build our lives on the solid foundation of Christ? Will we put into practice what God has taught us in His Word? The choice is ours. The scripture from Romans 12 speaks of commitment. Let’s look at this passage: “So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. In other words, commit yourself to God.Give yourself to God. The interesting thing about the Greek word that is used is that it is in the present imperative tense- which means- keep on offering yourself to God- keep on committing yourself, everyday. Again and again, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.
Commitment. I looked up the word commitment in my handy Thesaurus on my computer. Here are the words associated with commitment:promise, pledge, obligation, dedication, loyalty, devotion, steadfastness, allegiance, faithfulness.
Commitment is the agreement or pledge to do something in the future; it is the state of being obligated. It is being devoted to a cause, ideal, or purpose. Jesus asks his followers to be committed. Jesus calls for radical commitment. In Luke 9, Jesus says“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. …He calls for total commitment. One day, as Jesus and his disciples were walking along the road, a man said to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” These are radical statements. What Jesus makes clear in his responses to these excuses is that if you follow him, you abandon everything- your needs, your desires, even your family. This is profound. He is basically asking those who say they want to follow him “Are you all in?” Are you serious about following me? Jesus also said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
He told the rich young ruler who said he wanted to follow him- “Go and sell your possessions, and give to the poor, and come and follow me”
Jesus said: whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” The truth is that life is not about my wants, my passions, or my needs, it is about my commitment to God’s greater purpose and the coming of the kingdom of God!Micah 6:8 says: He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humblywith your God. This is God’s call to action. It is more than reciting a creed and or just saying what you believe! It is a way of life! It is what God requires!
As we read through the scriptures, God is calling us to himself to be a people of love and justice and mercy, his instrument of grace. In Isaiah 58 Israel had come to worship God and sing songs and fast and pray, but God made it clear that just going through the motions is not enough, the kind of fasting God wants involves full commitment; it is to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke. It is to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood.
In the Romans passage,the Message paraphrase goes on to say: “Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. (Again, in the Greek tense it means- keep on fixing your attention on God- everyday, again and again and again..you keep on fixing all your attention on God, God alone….And here is what will happen: You'll be changed from the inside out. (You’ll be transformed)Readily recognize what God wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

God is committed to us. God does not give up on us.
In Philippians we read: “He who began a good work in you will complete it….and later in the letter Paul adds: “for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Since God is changing us by his grace in Jesus Christ, what should our response be? Commitment. Devotion. Dedication.
John Maxwell in his book Today Matters says: “I think many people see commitment as an event, something that is done in a moment. They say “I do” in a wedding ceremony. They shake hands to close a business deal. They buy a treadmill in order to exercise. But the commitment doesn’t end with that decision; it’s just getting started. And you better believe that any time you make a commitment to something, it will be tested. It will be tested by failure to follow through. You make a commitment, then you don’t do it. But commitment means you don’t let your inconsistency to keep you from trying again. Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton says’ “
Achieving that goal is a good feeling, but to get there you have to go through the failures. You’ve got to be able to pick yourself up and continue”
Commitment is in the continuing. Commitment is not letting one or two or three failures be the final word. Failure should never be the final word. Why? Because we are all on a journey of faith- and success is not our destination, success is the journey itself…It is walking by faith. It is walking with God. It is loving God and loving people. It is putting God and His Kingdom and his righteousness out front. And faith is not knowing what is around the corner, it is walking with the Lord before we get there. Faith is not the destination- it is the day by day journey…Failure should never be the stone we trip over, the stone that blocks us, instead our failures are the things we learn from, they should be our stepping stones. As Christians, we can say along with Paul, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on- I keep going. Commitment is pressing on …. If you determine to make and keep proper commitments daily, you greatly improve your chances of being able to carry on.
Commitment. Following through, trusting God, being steady in doing what we know God wants us to do.
Maxwell writes: “Anything worth having is going to be a struggle. Commitment doesn’t come easy, but when you are fighting for something you believe in, the struggle is worth it ….if you want something out of your day, you must put something into it. Your talent is what God put in you before you were born. Your skills are what you put in yesterday. Commitment is what you must put in today in order to make today your masterpiece and make tomorrow a success.
In the Olympics, when the athletes come into the stadium during the opening ceremonies and prepare to participate in the games, one of the things they do is recite the following: “I have prepared. I have followed the rules.I will not quit. Arthur Gordon wrote: “Nothing is easier than saying words. Nothing is harder than living them, day after day. What you promise today must be renewed and re-decided tomorrow and each day that stretches out before you.”
Commitment. It is God’s call. I want to conclude by quoting this prayer written by Leonard Sweet. It is entitled: “A Radical Confession of Faith” I am part of the Church of the Out-of-Control. I’ve given up my control to God. I’ve jumped off the fence; I’ve stepped over the line. I’ve pulled out all the stops; I’m holding nothing back. There’s no turning back, looking around, slowing down, backing away, or shutting up.

It’s a life against the odds, outside the box, over the wall, “Thy Will Be Done…” I’m done playing by the rules, whether it’s Robert’s Rules of Order or Miss Manner’s Rules of Etiquette or Martha Stewart’s Rules of Living or Merrill Lynch’s Money-minding/Bottom-lining/Ladder-climbing rules of America’s Most Wanted.

I am not here to please the dominant culture. I live to please my Lord and Savior. My spiritual taste buds have graduated from fizz and froth to Fire and Ice. Don’t give me that old-time religion. Don’t give me that new-time religion. Give me that all-time religion that is as hard as rock and as soft as snow.

I’ve stopped trying to make life work, and started trying to make life sing. I’m finished with secondhand sensations; third-rate dreams; I can’t be bought by any personalities or perks, positions or prizes.

I won’t give up, though I will give in…to openness of mind, humbleness of heart, and generosity of spirit. When shorthanded and hard-pressed, I will never again simply hang in there.

I will stand in there; I will run in there; I will pray in there; I will sacrifice in there; I will endure in there – I will do everything in there but hang. I am organized religion’s best friend and worst nightmare.

I won’t back down, slow down, shut down, or let down until I’m preached out, teached out, healed out, hauled out of God’s mission in the world entrusted to members of the Church of the Out-of-Control…to unbind the confined, whether they’re the downtrodden or the upscale, the overlooked or the under-represented.

My fundamental identity is as a disciple of Jesus. And I won’t walk through history simply “in His steps,” but will seek to travel more deeply in God’s Spirit. Until God comes again or calls me home, you can find me filling, not killing, time so that one day God will pick me out in the line-up of the ages as one of God’s own. And then…it will be worth it all…to hear these words, the most precious words I can ever hear: “Well done, thou good and faithful…Out-of-Control Disciple.”
When we understand the radical call Jesus makes- we need to come to the altar and admit our weakness, our hesitancy, our need, our failure, and seek his face, seek his hand, know his touch, and be empowered and be restored and renewed and refined. Let us pray.