|
Century Christian
Church 1301 Tamarack Road, Owensboro, KY 42301, (270) 684-0286, Pastor: Rev. Jim Westmoreland |
|
You Can Begin Again . . . After 40 Psalm 139:1-18 by Jim Westmoreland Today, we are going to look at beginning again after you are over the hill! And, if you are 18.75 years old, you’ve already lived a fourth of your life. If you are 50-years old, you are almost 2/3 of the way there. And if we are past 50 by some number of years, then giving thanks for each new day takes on special meaning. So, this is for everybody, ok? Psalm 139 has been described as the Psalm of David’s old age. You know his story of disgrace and scandal. And, yet he came back and lived in the second part of his life, as 2 Chronicles said, “To a good old age full of honor and riches and truth.” From Psalms 139, “Lord you have searched me and known me. You know everything about me. You understand all of my thoughts. You know everything that I am going to do, whether I am awake or asleep. You know what I am going to say before I speak. Yet, you surround me and protect me with your love and your care. Such a thought is beyond my comprehension. Yet, I know it is true. Where can I go to run from you, or to escape you. You are everywhere, in heaven, in the world of the dead, beyond the East and the West. There is no way to hide from you, O God, and no way to escape your mercy. Darkness and light are all the same to you. You put me together in my mother’s womb. When I was only a seed, you recognized me and numbered my days. How wonderful you are, O God. How precious these thoughts are to me. And, when I awaken, you are always there. How to begin again after you are over the hill. A pastor told about having a man in his church that celebrated his 97th birthday. He asked him, “How does it feel to be 97, what is life like?” And he said, “Well, I can’t see very well, about 10 yards. He said, “I don’t hear anymore, and my hands are so full of arthritis that I can’t close ‘em. And, my right foot, the only way I can lift it up is to grab my leg with both hands and raise it up. But, thank God, I can still drive!” Isn’t it interesting that, whenever we speak of old age, it is almost always with humor, or we don’t speak of it at all. How many of us have had the feeling that to say that someone is old now is politically incorrect? We are supposed to say you are aging, or maturing or you are in the golden years. And, we are not supposed to use the word, “old.” Notice the implications of advertisements you hear on TV. New is a synonym for good. Old is a synonym for bad. You don’t want the old stuff. You want the new stuff. We are the only culture in history that not only ignores the wisdom of our elders, we abhor the wisdom of our elders, because we are so obsessed with youth and terrified with the idea of mortality. We run from the whole idea of aging. And the result is that everyone of us is programmed, early in life, to be plagued by what Dr. Gerald Mann calls the three dogs of despair, three feelings that are programmed into us from the very beginning. The feeling of worthlessness, that I am no longer of value because I am old, like an automobile. The older it is, the junkier it is, worthless. The second feeling is the feeling of failure. We never live up to our dreams, and so we feel like we are failures. And the third dog of despair that plagues us all is the feeling of obsolescence, the idea of being washed up. Where do you think we came up with the expression, “washed up?” Washed up came from things that died in the ocean and washed up on the shore. So, we all have these three feelings that are programmed into us. How are we going to deal with those? I think David’s great Psalm, 139, shows us how he overcame the dogs of despair as he aged. And, I think that there is a good lesson there for us, too. The first dog of despair is worthlessness. How did David deal with the feeling that he was of no value because he was old. It says in that psalm that he dealt with that feeling by getting in touch with how God was a God of grace and forgiveness. He got in touch on the feeling level with the graciousness of God. He says in that great psalm, “God, you know everything about me. You know what I’m going to say before I say it, what I’m going to do. You know me more than anybody else knows me, and yet, You continue to surround me and protect me and to hold me up with your loving care.” He got in touch with the graciousness of God. Many of us grew up knowing what grace was in our heads, but we’ve had trouble internalizing it in our hearts. God knows everything about us, not only those good things, but all of that junk and all of that garbage and all of that smell that we associate with things that are decaying. He knows all of that, and yet he continues to surround us with his love and with his forgiveness. I don’t know of any way to overcome the feeling of worthlessness unless you can get in touch, down deep in you gut, with how God thinks about you. For the young people and young adults here, it is important that you come to love yourself the way that God loves you. If you can feel about yourself the way that God feels about you, you can overcome all of the insults and all of the put downs and all of the fun that is made of you. It is the only way,–by knowing a God who is gracious. Martin Luther was 10 years old when he went caroling with a friend on Christmas Eve. They would sing at the different houses, and they came to this one home, and they sang for a little bit. They saw a lit lamp approach the door. Then, the door opened, and they saw this huge hulk of a man with a lamp in one hand and a big club in the other. In fear they ran down the street, and he ran after them, saying “Stop! Stop! Stop!” They made a right hand turn and went down a blind alley. The man with the lamp the club turned down the alley, and, as he approached, they were quaking in fear. Martin Luther said, “The club was not a club. It was a big sausage.” He said that I would later understand that all of my life, I had been programmed to think of God as a monster with a club who was chasing after me saying, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” But, He is not. He is a loving father who is saying, I want to give you the nourishment that you need. How do you get over this feeling of worthlessness? The only thing I know to do is to get in touch with the God of graciousness. The second black dog of despair that plagues us all is the feeling of failure. When we are young we have all these dreams, and all these plans, and we make all these pledges, and when we are 20, we set all of these goals, and when we are 40, we haven’t achieved half of them. And, suddenly, it begins to dawn on us that we are not going to be what we predicted we would be when we were young. How do we overcome these feelings of failure? We all have them. One scene from a Peanut’s cartoon has Charlie Brown standing there, and he says, “You know, I never measured up. From the very first moment when I walked on to the stage of life, they took one look at me and said, ‘Not right for the part!’” Do you feel that way? David overcame his feelings of failure by getting in touch with what we call the providence of God, the “pro vidus.” He said, “God, I can’t run from you. Everywhere I go, you are there. If I go to heaven you are there. If I go to hell, you are there. The night is all the same to you as the light. I can’t escape you God, and every time I run into you, I run into goodness. I run into forgiveness. I run into a God who provides for me in my every need. I don’t know any way to overcome feelings of failure except to meet a God who provides, who is in charge of providing for you. And He always does. We could lose our faith if God were not so good! How do you overcome the feelings of failure. You have to get in touch with the providence of God. He does provide. The third dog of despair that plagues us all as we grow older is the feeling of obsolescence, that we are obsolete. I feel more and more obsolete every day as I look at the high tech world. I have tried to keep up. I have a computer. I do the basic things on it, word processing, email, and I occasionally play solitaire on it. Middles school young people are doing things in computer class that I can only shake my head with envy. Change comes so rapidly in so many areas in our time that it is hard not to feel left behind at times. It is easy to feel obsolete. The world tells us that we are obsolete. You are getting a little over the hill. How do you deal with that? Well, David has a marvelous part of that psalm. He finishes it by saying, “God, you knew every thing about me before I was even planted in my mother’s womb. You’d already numbered my days. You knew the good stuff and the bad stuff and you knew what was going to happen to me. And, all of it, you could see in your mind’s eye from the very beginning when I was only a gleam in my dad’s eye, you knew everything about me. Yet, every time I wake up, You are still there! The hope of God. David overcame these feelings of inferiority by getting in touch with a God who was alive! You know the greatest threat to all faith is second-hand religion. To believe because we have been told to by the preacher or by our parents or by our ancestors. God has no grandchildren! God has only children. And, until we know God firsthand as the hope of God, everything else doesn’t work. I think being over-the-hill, being obsolete, is a state-of-mind. But, being obsolete is also a state of sin. Our hope is that God has another chapter for all of us. What is the number one truth of our faith that guides you through darkness and grief? Let me suggest this simple, yet profound affirmation. There is more to come! Our life does not end. A chapter ends. And, ever time the door slams shut, another one pops open. Every exit in the kingdom of God is also an entrance to a new chapter. So, how do you overcome these feelings of failure, of being obsolete and these feelings of being a nobody, worthless? The only thing that I can advise you to do is to come to know God the way David expresses him in that great psalm, Psalm 139, to know a God of grace, a God of forgiveness, a God of providence, and a God of tomorrow. Let’s pray. Father, help us to cling to first-hand faith. Speak to us in the quietness of our lives. In Christ name we pray. Amen Century Christian Church, October 28, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland _________________ |
|
|