Live While You Live(19June2011)
2 Peter M8 11 06 19
Speaker Ken Shigematsu, with Tetsuro Shigematsu
Title: Live While You Live
Text: 2 Peter 3:10-14; Revelation 20:11-12
BIG IDEA: We worship God by living in such a way that prompts his applause.
If you follow sports, you know that you at some point in a game a goal, a save, even a hit can change the flow of the game – and even the flow of a whole series.
So it is in our lives.
From time to time, we have we have game-changing moments.
If you have been part of our community for a while, you likely aware of what was the most important game-changer in my life.
I was a teenager. I had invited my friend Charlie, the middle linebacker on the school football team and one of the most popular kids at school, to go to Kmart (a smaller version of Wal-Mart) with me. I was going to show him how easy it was to shoplift. I had a Canucks jacket with holes in the inside liner of the pockets, so I could steal things and hide them between the outer shell and the inner liner of my jacket (show how I did this). We walked over to the sporting goods section and I slid a baseball batting glove into my pocket, I lifted a small rubber ball, and started stealing things that I didn't need, like ear rings, just to show off.
We walked out of the store together, someone walked up behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I am a store detective, come with me.” My friend Charlie looked at me and said, "I gotta go.”
The store detective takes me to a small back room, and says I don't know if I should call the police or your parents… He ends up calling just my parents and telling them what happened. That night I remember sitting in my room Asian style (kneeling like this) with my parents. They told me how I had brought shame on them and our whole family. My mom was crying and my dad struck me a couple times (it was good for me, I deserved it).
I remember later that night standing at the top of the stairs in our house and thinking to myself-- my life must change – I don't want to ever do anything that will bring that much pain to my parents. About a year later, my dad who had just been introduced to Jesus Christ took me to a Christian youth conference here in Vancouver. On the last day of the conference, the speaker explained that because Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, we could have a new beginning, a clean slate with God. The speaker invited us to receive the gift of a new life with God, by offering our lives to God. I hesitated because I knew that doing this would likely compromise my social life. But I did it.
And as I look back across my life, I see the biggest game changer for me was being caught shoplifting, and my dad and mom disciplining me and opening me to the way of God.
Now years later, as an adult (and I don't just say this because it's Father's Day), but one of the things that motivates me most to tend not screw-up (or F up) my life is the desire not to bring pain to my dad (or mom).
For me, it's not a negative thing. It's not like I am afraid that my dad will reject me or kill me or hire someone to kill me. It's just that I have such a healthy respect for him and that I don't want to do something that would bring him a lot of pain or disappointment.
I'm really grateful for my dad and part of the motivation for my life stems from a desire – I think it's a healthy desire – to honor him.
As a community we've been in a series in 2 Peter, Chapter 1.
Peter says in Chapter 1 out of gratitude for God's grace in your life, out of gratitude for being adopted into the family that is God, the family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as Lee put it, out of gratitude for being enveloped in God's love, and receiving a new heart, we need to make every effort to progress in our friendship with God…
So at the beginning of the letter Peter says out of gratitude for the love that your perfect Father in heaven is shown you, make every effort to progress in your journey with him.
But at end of the 2 Peter he says our motivation to develop our life with God also comes from our anticipation of the final Day of Judgment.
At the end of 2 Peter, we read about a judgment that we will all experience at the end of time. Peter writes in Chapter 3, vss. 10-11:
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives
One of the most respected commentators on the book of 2 Peter, Richard Bauckman, points out that while the language of fire and the earth melting are dramatic and are likely metaphors, Peter’s emphasis here is not on the precise details of what will physically happen to the earth at the end of time, but rather how on a coming day of judgment everything will be revealed and laid bare and where the works of human beings will be made known.
I recently heard a new metaphor for this judgment day from a source an unexpected source—my younger brother.
One of the liabilities of being the sibling of a pastor is that you might get asked to speak on faith. My brother who is a filmmaker spoke on art and faith recently at a City in Focus breakfast at the Vancouver Club:
TETSURO:
I wonder if any of you are familiar with Chick Tracts. Those irresistible miniature comic books that Christians hand out to strangers in order to spread the Word.
(Show powerpoint).
When I was a young boy, we had these in our home.
My favorite Chick Tract of all time: This Was Your Life. The premise of this particular tract is from a verse in Revelation 20:12: “And the dead were judged according to their works.”
In this little comic book this verse was dramatized in a vast celestial movie theatre where God, all the angels, and every person who ever lived gathered to watch the Movie Of Your Life.
As someone who has always been interested in cinema, this has always been an intriguing premise. It made me wonder; what format of film would my life demand?
• Is my life such an epic adventure that it would take a 6-storey Imax screen to capture all the action?
• Or, am I leading a life of such quiet desperation that a stationary black and white security camera would suffice to document the narrow scope of my existence?
Throughout my life, especially when I’m about to take yet another major risk, I’ve always found, that the experience of my reality feels split down the middle. I have the sense, that not only am I existing here and now, but that another half of me is existing within the realm of eternity.
Because once you begin to see your life from the perspective of eternity, and if you knew
that in the end, we all make it safely to the other side, if you knew that’s there’s a velvet seat, and a tub of popcorn with your name on it; wouldn’t that impact the way you wanna live your life? For me, it makes me want to live my life according to whatever makes that numinous audience out there stand up and cheer.
Sometimes it means, standing up against a bully in public, sometimes it means doing the right thing. But almost always it means not taking the safe route, taking a risk.
KEN:
The Bible teaches that the end of time, we will give an account for how we have lived.
God is our Father and because of that, and you’ll know this from deep experience if you are a parent, our lives can bring him either pleasure or pain.
Part of the way we honor God is by living before him in such a way that brings him pleasure and makes him want to stand up and applaud.
Let me clarify. Our motive should not be fear or duty as if we were relating to an angry, impossible-to-please dad. Our motive instead should be love, respect, and gratitude. If you had a good father (or mother), as I did, or if you had a good teacher or a good coach or (or if you can just imagine this if you never had this experience), out of a healthy respect and gratitude you wanted to please your dad (or mother) or your teacher or your coach. So it is with God, our desire to please God and have him stand up and applaud in the stands of our life is motivated out of a healthy sense of respect, and gratitude for all that he is done for us.
Part of the way that we please God is by truly living while we live. We don’t tend to think of sin this way, but to not truly live while we live is a great sin.
In our society, in a way that probably wasn’t as true in Peter’s first century world, we have the temptation to not live our own lives, but to vicariously or imaginatively live through the life of someone else as we watch them live their life. God wants us to move from being a spectator in life, if that has been our posture, to being an actor in life.
I was recently talking to my younger brother Tetsuro at his place.
He was telling me that when our family was living in Montreal, our sister Setsu took him to a play put on by the National Theatre School in Montréal.
He was so struck by the magic of that theatrical evening, he realized it wouldn't be enough to continue sitting in the audience. No, he would have to step on stage and walk beneath that proscenium arch and join his new family. He became an actor.
KEN: “Can you tell us is there a difference between watching the play and being in the play? What is the difference?”
Tetsuro from the audience with a wireless mic (Ken Nixon please make sure he has one) banter back and forth):
When you are on stage suddenly your time horizon tanks down to just a couple of seconds. There is no past or future, there is only the present. It is a heightened state of awareness, and you have no choice but being mindful of everything that is going on. It is a state of quiet exhilaration.
KEN:
The point is not to encourage all of us who are theatre-goers or movie-lovers to become actors, but this is really a metaphor to encourage us to become actors in the play of our lives, not just spectators.
Isn’t it true that we live in a time where so many people seem content being a spectator of some kind or another, rather than an actor in the play of their lives? The television shows The Bachelor
and
The Bachelorette (powerpoint)
have been wildly popular for nearly a decade now. There is a big difference in being entertained by someone else’s romance, someone else’s heartbreak, watching love unfold for two other people, and experiencing it for yourself. The show Survivor (Powerpoint)
has been hugely popular, but there is a big difference between watching someone else experience an adventure and tasting it yourself from direct experience. (Yes, some of you are saying, “I’d rather watch someone else being voted off the island than experience being voted off myself.”) There are risks to being a participant, rather than a spectator.
As we have just witnessed through the Stanley Cup finals, almost everyone in our city has been riding this hockey wave. The banners in Rogers Arena have proclaimed, “This is what we live for!” (Powerpoint).
I can understand those words coming from an actual player like Ryan Kesler, Henrik Sedin, or Roberto Luongo because they are playing the game with great dedication, skill and effort (playing goalie in the NHL must one of the most challenging roles in sport).
Players who believe in God are seeking to play that game as a way to honour their Maker. But, if we are not actually playing that game, the slogan “This is what we live for!” is not the best slogan for us because it suggests that we are living through someone else’s story, when God wants us to live our own story. (There is nothing wrong with being a fan. I have been a fan of the Vancouver Canucks since I was a boy. I remember going to some games at Pacific Coliseum and during the pre-game warm up going down to the blue line, standing on the boards, and stretching over the glass looking (when the glass was lower) and shouting out to people like Don, Harold, or Caesar, “Can I get your autograph?” and they would actually come and sign our programs.)
But if we live for what our sports team does, or live for what some reality TV show character does, or even for what a pastor or some well known spiritual figure does – we will fail in some way to live our own lives. Part of the way that we live our lives in a way that honours God and and causes him to stand in the stands of our lives and applaud is by truly living the life that God has given us.
Peter here is a great example of how to live. Peter was one of Jesus’ closest students and disciples. One night at about 2:00 am, Peter was on a boat. He was a fisherman. He was with some of the disciples when a furious storm broke out on the lake.
They could hear the howling of the wind and feel it whipping in their faces. The waves looked taller than they were. They looked out on the water and saw what appeared to be a ghost gliding on the water. These rugged fishermen are terrified. The one gliding on the water looks at them and says, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
They wondered, “Could that be the LORD?” Peter asks, “LORD, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” says Jesus. And Peter climbs out of the boat and begins to walk on the water and move toward Jesus. He looks at Jesus and for the first time in his life Peter, who has obviously never water-skied or barefoot-skied in his life, feels the sensation of the water under the soles of his feet. Part of him is deathly afraid, but another part is excited. He senses that something or someone is holding him up. And then Peter turns his head and focuses on the wind and the waves, and he thinks, “What am I doing? This is impossible! Am I crazy!” And he begins to experience all kinds of doubt and anxiety. He literally feels himself sinking into the cold water... Jesus comes to him and grabs him by the arm and pulls him up. I imagine Jesus’ face smiling and laughing.
We can look at Peter and say he was a failure. He took his eyes off Jesus. He began to doubt. But that picture of Peter walking on the water for a brief moment is a great picture of what it means to live while we live. It makes me want to stand in the movie theatre of Peter’s life and applaud.
It would have been much safer if Peter had simply remained a boat-potato and watched Jesus walk on the water himself from the side of the boat.
But he got out of the boat and began to walk on the water. And for a short time in his life he walked on water--did something that could only be explained by God.
I don’t know about you, but I want to live the kind of life where from time to time I walk on water—that is, where I do something that can only be explained by God’s presence in my life.
For that to happen I can’t simply be a boat-potato. I can’t be a spectator of someone else’s journey. As John Ortberg says, “If ever I hope to walk on water, I need to get out of the boat.”
So what does it mean for you to get out of the boat and walk on water… to live while you live... so that you God stands up and applauds?
Pause:
Let me share some ways in which I feel led to step out of the boat… and live while I live:
Ever since we became followers of Christ, Sakiko and I have been committed to giving financially to the work of God—to tithe, give the first tenth (plus). We now feel called to practice what has been described as proportionate giving, where we basically want to cap our life style. As some more resources come our way (and as pastor it’s highly unlikely that I am going to be financially rich in North American standards. I don’t play Lotto 649 either.), we will give those extra resources away to God and others.
Here’s another way we feel called to step out of the boat.
It looks like we are going to be able to do something next month that we have never done before. When I read the passage in the gospel of Luke chapter 14 where Jesus says when you have people to your home, don’t invite just your family and your friends who will repay you, but also invite the disabled, the poor, those who can’t advantage you in any way. I felt that has been a lack in my own life. I lead a church which is known for its justice and compassion, but I don’t really have friends in my life, acquaintances, but not really friends that are truly destitute and poor. Next month, through friendships we have with Servants Vancouver, we have the opportunity to host some homeless people in our home for dinner. What a privilege that will be.
I also feel called in a fresh way to be open to sharing about the difference Christ has made in my own life with others as opportunities naturally come in my life.
As some of you may know, a couple months ago I tore the ligaments in my left ankle while running. I am hoping to participate in a triathlon next month so I've been getting some laser therapy.
I asked my laser therapist Dan how he became a laser therapist. He described how as a teenager he had been a big partier and drinker and how he ended up dropping out of school… After a few years, he realized that his life was headed in the wrong direction. He began exercising and experienced his exercise as a form of meditation. He ended up going back to school and became a kinesiologist.
I was interested in this story and reflected on how I had had a kind of conversion experience myself. I related the story of my shoplifting, being caught, dad’s discipline and how he took me to a Christian conference where I was exposed to a new path with God...
I love to hear the stories of others, and as the opportunity presents itself I love to share the difference that God has made in my own life.
(For 9:30 a.m. and maybe 10:30 a.m. only: Julie Joe, a mother of a couple of youth here at Tenth, in her Practicing the Presence article last Sunday wrote about how a dad in the youth group had shared with the other parents how he had come home exhausted from work and really just wanted to chill out and watch the Canucks, but his teenager boy came to him out of the blue and asked him to talk. Torn, he chose to spend time with his son. They talked late into the night for the first time in ages. That father chose to not be a boat potato, but to be a player in his son’s story and in his own.)
Do you sense God calling to you to step out of the boat and live into something new?
When I was a teenager, one of the positions that I played on the football team was wide receiver. Around that time, and I don’t remember all the details of this story, but I remember hearing the story about a high school player who was a also receiver maybe second or third string, but definitely not a starter. One day before a game he asked his coach, “I I am not a starter. Other players have more talent than I do, but would you please just let me start today?” The coach, seeing the passion and the earnestness and the desire, figured, “Well, even though Steve is not my most talented guy, he looks like he really wants to play today and maybe that passion will spill over and inspire my other players to play their best.” But in the first few plays of the game, Steve threw some great blocks. He ran his passes with such precision he got open. He caught every ball that was thrown in his direction. The coach kept him in for the whole game. I don’t remember; whether the team won or lost, but he became what you call an impact player. He made a difference in the game.
After the game, the coach said, “Steve, you played a great game. What happened to you? I have never seen you play like that. If you played like that all the time, you could be a starter. You could be a star.” And Steve said, “My dad has always been my biggest fan, but today was the first time he actually saw me play.” The coach was puzzled. “How come he has never seen you play?” Steve said, “… my dad was blind and last week he died. So today was the first day he was able to see me play. Today I was playing for him.”
You live your life before God who is your biggest fan, who loves you more than you can imagine.
As with Peter, with the gift of God’s love and kindness and in light of the day of judgment, make every effort to climb over the side of the boat and walk on water. Get off the bench and on to the field. Get out of the theatre seat and into the play.
Live your life while you live…
Do it for your Father who loves you and sees you.
Speaker Ken Shigematsu, with Tetsuro Shigematsu
Title: Live While You Live
Text: 2 Peter 3:10-14; Revelation 20:11-12
BIG IDEA: We worship God by living in such a way that prompts his applause.
If you follow sports, you know that you at some point in a game a goal, a save, even a hit can change the flow of the game – and even the flow of a whole series.
So it is in our lives.
From time to time, we have we have game-changing moments.
If you have been part of our community for a while, you likely aware of what was the most important game-changer in my life.
I was a teenager. I had invited my friend Charlie, the middle linebacker on the school football team and one of the most popular kids at school, to go to Kmart (a smaller version of Wal-Mart) with me. I was going to show him how easy it was to shoplift. I had a Canucks jacket with holes in the inside liner of the pockets, so I could steal things and hide them between the outer shell and the inner liner of my jacket (show how I did this). We walked over to the sporting goods section and I slid a baseball batting glove into my pocket, I lifted a small rubber ball, and started stealing things that I didn't need, like ear rings, just to show off.
We walked out of the store together, someone walked up behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I am a store detective, come with me.” My friend Charlie looked at me and said, "I gotta go.”
The store detective takes me to a small back room, and says I don't know if I should call the police or your parents… He ends up calling just my parents and telling them what happened. That night I remember sitting in my room Asian style (kneeling like this) with my parents. They told me how I had brought shame on them and our whole family. My mom was crying and my dad struck me a couple times (it was good for me, I deserved it).
I remember later that night standing at the top of the stairs in our house and thinking to myself-- my life must change – I don't want to ever do anything that will bring that much pain to my parents. About a year later, my dad who had just been introduced to Jesus Christ took me to a Christian youth conference here in Vancouver. On the last day of the conference, the speaker explained that because Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, we could have a new beginning, a clean slate with God. The speaker invited us to receive the gift of a new life with God, by offering our lives to God. I hesitated because I knew that doing this would likely compromise my social life. But I did it.
And as I look back across my life, I see the biggest game changer for me was being caught shoplifting, and my dad and mom disciplining me and opening me to the way of God.
Now years later, as an adult (and I don't just say this because it's Father's Day), but one of the things that motivates me most to tend not screw-up (or F up) my life is the desire not to bring pain to my dad (or mom).
For me, it's not a negative thing. It's not like I am afraid that my dad will reject me or kill me or hire someone to kill me. It's just that I have such a healthy respect for him and that I don't want to do something that would bring him a lot of pain or disappointment.
I'm really grateful for my dad and part of the motivation for my life stems from a desire – I think it's a healthy desire – to honor him.
As a community we've been in a series in 2 Peter, Chapter 1.
Peter says in Chapter 1 out of gratitude for God's grace in your life, out of gratitude for being adopted into the family that is God, the family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as Lee put it, out of gratitude for being enveloped in God's love, and receiving a new heart, we need to make every effort to progress in our friendship with God…
So at the beginning of the letter Peter says out of gratitude for the love that your perfect Father in heaven is shown you, make every effort to progress in your journey with him.
But at end of the 2 Peter he says our motivation to develop our life with God also comes from our anticipation of the final Day of Judgment.
At the end of 2 Peter, we read about a judgment that we will all experience at the end of time. Peter writes in Chapter 3, vss. 10-11:
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives
One of the most respected commentators on the book of 2 Peter, Richard Bauckman, points out that while the language of fire and the earth melting are dramatic and are likely metaphors, Peter’s emphasis here is not on the precise details of what will physically happen to the earth at the end of time, but rather how on a coming day of judgment everything will be revealed and laid bare and where the works of human beings will be made known.
I recently heard a new metaphor for this judgment day from a source an unexpected source—my younger brother.
One of the liabilities of being the sibling of a pastor is that you might get asked to speak on faith. My brother who is a filmmaker spoke on art and faith recently at a City in Focus breakfast at the Vancouver Club:
TETSURO:
I wonder if any of you are familiar with Chick Tracts. Those irresistible miniature comic books that Christians hand out to strangers in order to spread the Word.
(Show powerpoint).
When I was a young boy, we had these in our home.
My favorite Chick Tract of all time: This Was Your Life. The premise of this particular tract is from a verse in Revelation 20:12: “And the dead were judged according to their works.”
In this little comic book this verse was dramatized in a vast celestial movie theatre where God, all the angels, and every person who ever lived gathered to watch the Movie Of Your Life.
As someone who has always been interested in cinema, this has always been an intriguing premise. It made me wonder; what format of film would my life demand?
• Is my life such an epic adventure that it would take a 6-storey Imax screen to capture all the action?
• Or, am I leading a life of such quiet desperation that a stationary black and white security camera would suffice to document the narrow scope of my existence?
Throughout my life, especially when I’m about to take yet another major risk, I’ve always found, that the experience of my reality feels split down the middle. I have the sense, that not only am I existing here and now, but that another half of me is existing within the realm of eternity.
Because once you begin to see your life from the perspective of eternity, and if you knew
that in the end, we all make it safely to the other side, if you knew that’s there’s a velvet seat, and a tub of popcorn with your name on it; wouldn’t that impact the way you wanna live your life? For me, it makes me want to live my life according to whatever makes that numinous audience out there stand up and cheer.
Sometimes it means, standing up against a bully in public, sometimes it means doing the right thing. But almost always it means not taking the safe route, taking a risk.
KEN:
The Bible teaches that the end of time, we will give an account for how we have lived.
God is our Father and because of that, and you’ll know this from deep experience if you are a parent, our lives can bring him either pleasure or pain.
Part of the way we honor God is by living before him in such a way that brings him pleasure and makes him want to stand up and applaud.
Let me clarify. Our motive should not be fear or duty as if we were relating to an angry, impossible-to-please dad. Our motive instead should be love, respect, and gratitude. If you had a good father (or mother), as I did, or if you had a good teacher or a good coach or (or if you can just imagine this if you never had this experience), out of a healthy respect and gratitude you wanted to please your dad (or mother) or your teacher or your coach. So it is with God, our desire to please God and have him stand up and applaud in the stands of our life is motivated out of a healthy sense of respect, and gratitude for all that he is done for us.
Part of the way that we please God is by truly living while we live. We don’t tend to think of sin this way, but to not truly live while we live is a great sin.
In our society, in a way that probably wasn’t as true in Peter’s first century world, we have the temptation to not live our own lives, but to vicariously or imaginatively live through the life of someone else as we watch them live their life. God wants us to move from being a spectator in life, if that has been our posture, to being an actor in life.
I was recently talking to my younger brother Tetsuro at his place.
He was telling me that when our family was living in Montreal, our sister Setsu took him to a play put on by the National Theatre School in Montréal.
He was so struck by the magic of that theatrical evening, he realized it wouldn't be enough to continue sitting in the audience. No, he would have to step on stage and walk beneath that proscenium arch and join his new family. He became an actor.
KEN: “Can you tell us is there a difference between watching the play and being in the play? What is the difference?”
Tetsuro from the audience with a wireless mic (Ken Nixon please make sure he has one) banter back and forth):
When you are on stage suddenly your time horizon tanks down to just a couple of seconds. There is no past or future, there is only the present. It is a heightened state of awareness, and you have no choice but being mindful of everything that is going on. It is a state of quiet exhilaration.
KEN:
The point is not to encourage all of us who are theatre-goers or movie-lovers to become actors, but this is really a metaphor to encourage us to become actors in the play of our lives, not just spectators.
Isn’t it true that we live in a time where so many people seem content being a spectator of some kind or another, rather than an actor in the play of their lives? The television shows The Bachelor
and
The Bachelorette (powerpoint)
have been wildly popular for nearly a decade now. There is a big difference in being entertained by someone else’s romance, someone else’s heartbreak, watching love unfold for two other people, and experiencing it for yourself. The show Survivor (Powerpoint)
has been hugely popular, but there is a big difference between watching someone else experience an adventure and tasting it yourself from direct experience. (Yes, some of you are saying, “I’d rather watch someone else being voted off the island than experience being voted off myself.”) There are risks to being a participant, rather than a spectator.
As we have just witnessed through the Stanley Cup finals, almost everyone in our city has been riding this hockey wave. The banners in Rogers Arena have proclaimed, “This is what we live for!” (Powerpoint).
I can understand those words coming from an actual player like Ryan Kesler, Henrik Sedin, or Roberto Luongo because they are playing the game with great dedication, skill and effort (playing goalie in the NHL must one of the most challenging roles in sport).
Players who believe in God are seeking to play that game as a way to honour their Maker. But, if we are not actually playing that game, the slogan “This is what we live for!” is not the best slogan for us because it suggests that we are living through someone else’s story, when God wants us to live our own story. (There is nothing wrong with being a fan. I have been a fan of the Vancouver Canucks since I was a boy. I remember going to some games at Pacific Coliseum and during the pre-game warm up going down to the blue line, standing on the boards, and stretching over the glass looking (when the glass was lower) and shouting out to people like Don, Harold, or Caesar, “Can I get your autograph?” and they would actually come and sign our programs.)
But if we live for what our sports team does, or live for what some reality TV show character does, or even for what a pastor or some well known spiritual figure does – we will fail in some way to live our own lives. Part of the way that we live our lives in a way that honours God and and causes him to stand in the stands of our lives and applaud is by truly living the life that God has given us.
Peter here is a great example of how to live. Peter was one of Jesus’ closest students and disciples. One night at about 2:00 am, Peter was on a boat. He was a fisherman. He was with some of the disciples when a furious storm broke out on the lake.
They could hear the howling of the wind and feel it whipping in their faces. The waves looked taller than they were. They looked out on the water and saw what appeared to be a ghost gliding on the water. These rugged fishermen are terrified. The one gliding on the water looks at them and says, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
They wondered, “Could that be the LORD?” Peter asks, “LORD, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” says Jesus. And Peter climbs out of the boat and begins to walk on the water and move toward Jesus. He looks at Jesus and for the first time in his life Peter, who has obviously never water-skied or barefoot-skied in his life, feels the sensation of the water under the soles of his feet. Part of him is deathly afraid, but another part is excited. He senses that something or someone is holding him up. And then Peter turns his head and focuses on the wind and the waves, and he thinks, “What am I doing? This is impossible! Am I crazy!” And he begins to experience all kinds of doubt and anxiety. He literally feels himself sinking into the cold water... Jesus comes to him and grabs him by the arm and pulls him up. I imagine Jesus’ face smiling and laughing.
We can look at Peter and say he was a failure. He took his eyes off Jesus. He began to doubt. But that picture of Peter walking on the water for a brief moment is a great picture of what it means to live while we live. It makes me want to stand in the movie theatre of Peter’s life and applaud.
It would have been much safer if Peter had simply remained a boat-potato and watched Jesus walk on the water himself from the side of the boat.
But he got out of the boat and began to walk on the water. And for a short time in his life he walked on water--did something that could only be explained by God.
I don’t know about you, but I want to live the kind of life where from time to time I walk on water—that is, where I do something that can only be explained by God’s presence in my life.
For that to happen I can’t simply be a boat-potato. I can’t be a spectator of someone else’s journey. As John Ortberg says, “If ever I hope to walk on water, I need to get out of the boat.”
So what does it mean for you to get out of the boat and walk on water… to live while you live... so that you God stands up and applauds?
Pause:
Let me share some ways in which I feel led to step out of the boat… and live while I live:
Ever since we became followers of Christ, Sakiko and I have been committed to giving financially to the work of God—to tithe, give the first tenth (plus). We now feel called to practice what has been described as proportionate giving, where we basically want to cap our life style. As some more resources come our way (and as pastor it’s highly unlikely that I am going to be financially rich in North American standards. I don’t play Lotto 649 either.), we will give those extra resources away to God and others.
Here’s another way we feel called to step out of the boat.
It looks like we are going to be able to do something next month that we have never done before. When I read the passage in the gospel of Luke chapter 14 where Jesus says when you have people to your home, don’t invite just your family and your friends who will repay you, but also invite the disabled, the poor, those who can’t advantage you in any way. I felt that has been a lack in my own life. I lead a church which is known for its justice and compassion, but I don’t really have friends in my life, acquaintances, but not really friends that are truly destitute and poor. Next month, through friendships we have with Servants Vancouver, we have the opportunity to host some homeless people in our home for dinner. What a privilege that will be.
I also feel called in a fresh way to be open to sharing about the difference Christ has made in my own life with others as opportunities naturally come in my life.
As some of you may know, a couple months ago I tore the ligaments in my left ankle while running. I am hoping to participate in a triathlon next month so I've been getting some laser therapy.
I asked my laser therapist Dan how he became a laser therapist. He described how as a teenager he had been a big partier and drinker and how he ended up dropping out of school… After a few years, he realized that his life was headed in the wrong direction. He began exercising and experienced his exercise as a form of meditation. He ended up going back to school and became a kinesiologist.
I was interested in this story and reflected on how I had had a kind of conversion experience myself. I related the story of my shoplifting, being caught, dad’s discipline and how he took me to a Christian conference where I was exposed to a new path with God...
I love to hear the stories of others, and as the opportunity presents itself I love to share the difference that God has made in my own life.
(For 9:30 a.m. and maybe 10:30 a.m. only: Julie Joe, a mother of a couple of youth here at Tenth, in her Practicing the Presence article last Sunday wrote about how a dad in the youth group had shared with the other parents how he had come home exhausted from work and really just wanted to chill out and watch the Canucks, but his teenager boy came to him out of the blue and asked him to talk. Torn, he chose to spend time with his son. They talked late into the night for the first time in ages. That father chose to not be a boat potato, but to be a player in his son’s story and in his own.)
Do you sense God calling to you to step out of the boat and live into something new?
When I was a teenager, one of the positions that I played on the football team was wide receiver. Around that time, and I don’t remember all the details of this story, but I remember hearing the story about a high school player who was a also receiver maybe second or third string, but definitely not a starter. One day before a game he asked his coach, “I I am not a starter. Other players have more talent than I do, but would you please just let me start today?” The coach, seeing the passion and the earnestness and the desire, figured, “Well, even though Steve is not my most talented guy, he looks like he really wants to play today and maybe that passion will spill over and inspire my other players to play their best.” But in the first few plays of the game, Steve threw some great blocks. He ran his passes with such precision he got open. He caught every ball that was thrown in his direction. The coach kept him in for the whole game. I don’t remember; whether the team won or lost, but he became what you call an impact player. He made a difference in the game.
After the game, the coach said, “Steve, you played a great game. What happened to you? I have never seen you play like that. If you played like that all the time, you could be a starter. You could be a star.” And Steve said, “My dad has always been my biggest fan, but today was the first time he actually saw me play.” The coach was puzzled. “How come he has never seen you play?” Steve said, “… my dad was blind and last week he died. So today was the first day he was able to see me play. Today I was playing for him.”
You live your life before God who is your biggest fan, who loves you more than you can imagine.
As with Peter, with the gift of God’s love and kindness and in light of the day of judgment, make every effort to climb over the side of the boat and walk on water. Get off the bench and on to the field. Get out of the theatre seat and into the play.
Live your life while you live…
Do it for your Father who loves you and sees you.
posted by Shigematsu at 8:13 PM
1 Comments:
I absolutely LOVE this! Masterfully written.!@bose
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