How to Control Our Tongues - The Most Common Sin

Proverbs 10:10-21, 31-32; Psalm 52; James 3:1-12; Mark 7:31-37

Well, there were three pastors, a Pentecostal, a Baptist, and a Methodist, who all were pastors in the same small town and they went deep-sea fishing together. They rented a boat at Myrtle Beach and they went out to the Gulf Stream and they began fishing. They had a great day, caught several big fish and decided it was time to call it a day, but the motor wouldn’t start, and a storm was headed their way.

The Pentecostal pastor got a bit scared, and he told the others. “Guys, in case things go wrong here, I’ve got to confess to you that I have sinful behavior. I’ve been having an affair with a woman in my congregation.”

The other pastors acknowledged the depth of the sin, forgave him in the name of Jesus and they watched the storm get closer.

The Baptist pastor told the others, “Well, I’m getting worried. That storm looks pretty bad and I don’t swim, so I’ve got to confess to you guys that I also am deep in sin. I’ve been taking a twenty-dollar bill from the collection plate every Sunday for the last two years. “

The other pastors acknowledged his sin, forgave him in the name of Jesus and they watched the storm get closer. The waves were starting to get pretty high now, and were breaking over the sides of the boat.

The Methodist pastor said, “Well, I’m glad you guys have been so open. I have to admit that I am also deep in sin, and I pray that if I confess my sin to you the Lord will let us survive so we can get home. I really want to get home badly, for I can see the joy I will have when we get back home.”

The other pastors asked, “Well, what’s your sin?”

The Methodist pastor looked back at them in anguish and said, “I’m addicted to passing on gossip!”

History does not record whether that pastor made it home safely or not…

This is the fourth of ten sermons on Living the Christian Life. So much of the time, we know just what we are to do as Christians. We know very well we are to do all of these things. But the problem is how.

That is the subject of this sermon series. It is a sermon series on How to live the Christian life. We’ve covered kindness, developing patience, loving deeply, and breaking addictions. These sermons are now posted online at the sermon blog listed on the front page of the bulletin.

Today, we’re going to cover how control our tongues.

As we heard our readings this morning, we find that there are considerable parts of the Bible devoted to the control of our tongues and our lips. Just putting the word “tongue” into a search turns up over 130 verses. And that doesn’t include all the verses that mention gossip, back-biting, and passing on rumors.

So once again, we know that Christians – indeed all people – are to control what we say and when we say it, but this is perhaps the most difficult and common sin that we all struggle with – speaking in ways that don’t honor God or lift up people.

Our culture encourages trash-talking and verbal conflict. What used to be limited to Muhammed Ali and his pre-fight promotional talks, what moved to the World Wrestling Federation is now common practice before games of all types. Our comedy shows glorify gossip and out-of-control speech. Jerry Springer specializes in people fighting on-air. Even our news shows have degenerated into loud arguments as the networks have found that on-air arguments generate better ratings. There is something deep inside us that makes us look toward any argument and quickly decide which side we’ll take, perhaps because we humans have developed in societies where verbal arguments so quickly have escalated into physical fights. And so any television drama today will have on-screen arguments.

I heard a Star Trek writer talking about writing for the Next Generation show – that’s the one with Captain Picard. The first season, you see, everyone on the crew were friends. But they found when the writers created some conflict within the crew, some arguments, some fights between crew members, the ratings went up. So they learned that conflict is what generates interest. And that is what you see on almost every television show, in almost every movie, even in our comedies.

And because there are still limits to the violence that most people will watch, most of the conflict is verbal – wars of the tongue – especially in shows targeted towards children. Children’s comedies emphasize and glorify children who are brats, children who make rude comments, children who talk back to adults. And children are naturally attracted to those characters, and then they imitate those characters, and now, 28 years after Bart Simpson first appeared on television, we have grandparents who were in their early teens when Bart first began his rude comments. Is it any wonder that our conversations are no longer civil and uplifting? Is it any wonder that our political candidates are rude to each other – and it is a disease that has infected more than just one particular presidential candidate, it has infected almost all who run for office.

And so how do we control our tongues? How do we avoid gossip and insult, hateful speech and angry speech? How do we avoid saying things we will regret later?

Our Proverbs selection has some useful advice:

Proverbs 10:10 Whoever winks maliciously causes grief,
and a chattering fool comes to ruin.

Do you chatter? Perhaps the best way to avoid saying the wrong thing is to say less. If a boy throws a baseball at a house, even if he is trying to avoid hitting the windows, every throw is a chance to break a window. So the boy who throws only three pitches is less likely to crash a window than the boy who throws 30 pitches. Say less, and you will say less things you will regret.

Have you noticed that most good, older, wise pastors have recognized this? When they are not in the pulpit, they listen rather than talk. They would rather take the risk of being seen as distant rather than shatter the window to someone’s soul by speaking without thought.

The human resources profession and the sales profession have also learned this. Both teach that the person who says less and listens more actually controls the job interview or the sales meeting. Our stereotype of the loud, used-car salesman who is always talking is an incorrect stereotype. The best salespeople ask a few questions, keep the customer talking, and listen. And then, when they know exactly what the customer is really looking for, they speak directly to what the customer wants and they make the sale.

So perhaps we should simply learn to say less and listen more by practicing our listening skills in life.

The writer of Proverbs continues:

11 The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life,
but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.

12 Hatred stirs up conflict,
but love covers over all wrongs.

13 Wisdom is found on the lips of the discerning,
but a rod is for the back of one who has no sense.

When a wise, righteous Christian speaks, when a mature saint talks, that mature leader of the faith concentrates on speaking wisdom and on giving life-giving advice. Most of them have passed on now, but the generation that came of age in the depression and during World War II often had learned many sound lessons. Those wise men and women often spoke little about their experiences – especially the men who fought during the War, but when they spoke, it was with the benefit of their wisdom and they gave us wisdom. I’m sure you have met people like this.

It is our turn to begin to pass on our wisdom to those younger than us. And the first rule of getting a message through is that you have to shut out the noise. Just as you find it hard to hear when loud music is playing in the background, it is hard for people to hear you when most of what you speak is simply meaningless noise. Be alert that what you speak isn’t noise, but is instead something worth listening to.

There is much more in Proverbs 10, but we have little time. Take time this afternoon to sit down and carefully read each verse of Proverbs chapter ten, thinking through what is there. It will be well worth your while.

But unfortunately, most of us already realize that we need to speak less and speak more wisely. But how do we do this?

Perhaps one way is to understand why we chatter and why we speak in ways that lead to trouble.

Ultimately, a Christian is supposed to trust in the Lord to protect us. Yet, while we may trust that the Lord will protect us from a permanent death and bring us home to eternal life, we often forget to remember that the Lord has said He will always be with us, to the end of the age. And if Christ is with us – always – what can harm us? Obviously, the answer is “nothing”.

Yet we often forget that Christ is with us and when we forget that Christ is with us, we grow fearful. We focus on the loud person yelling in front of us instead of the very quiet Holy Spirit that is whispering inside us. And so our ears hear the argument, our adrenaline begins to flow, our hearts and lungs work faster, our muscles get prepared to fight or run, and from our mouth comes trash-talk that we will one day regret because it harmed the person in front of us and that harmed our reputation. More people have given up on Christianity because of our angry or hurtful reactions to their comments or actions than for any other reasons.

You see, non-Christians understand very well that we are supposed to be nicer than other people. They understand that we are to have our tongues under control. And because they have not accepted the graceful presents of God, they find it very difficult to give us grace. It is much the same way that you rightly expect clergy to be better behaved than the average church-going person. For the more grace we have accepted from God, the better able we are to give other people grace.

Here’s how this works. ..

When we accept God’s grace, a bit of our fear goes away with that grace. Usually, the first thing to go is that intense fear of death that we all are born with. As we grow closer to God perhaps by reading more scripture, by attending more bible studies, by practicing two-way prayer more, we begin to believe that God really has our best interests at heart. We learn to rely more and more upon God’s promises of protection – and our fears begin to go away. We lose our fear of worthlessness as we understand that we are truly God’s children. You know what the fear of worthlessness is, don’t you? For some, it is that fear that strikes us when someone suggests we hand over what we are doing in the church to someone else. But if we understand truly what it means to be God’s children, then we will never feel worthless.

We lose our fear of poverty when we accept that God’s grace-filled promises of giving us what we need, are truly promises of God just like the way He feeds the sparrows and those promises are backed up by God’s wonderful integrity. When that happens, we lose that fear that came when someone threatened our job, our home, our bank account.

And this losing of our fears continues every time we accept more of God’s grace and truly believe that God is giving us all these gifts. Every time we accept more of God’s grace, another fear goes away. And every time a fear goes away, another way for Satan to make us angry goes away, because anger, you see, comes from fear. We fear we aren’t respected, we fear we may lose our position, we fear another may get more attention. If you have spoken angrily to someone recently, consider what you were fearful of? What were you afraid of? Did you forget another of God’s promises? Or did you forget completely about God?

As our anger and fears go away, we are better able to control our tongue and not slash back at another with our tongue. We don’t want to hurt them in an attempt to protect ourselves. Because we are secure and standing strong in God’s protection, we can afford to let others say and do things that would previously have sent us into an angry rant. And what starts all of this is an understanding that God has sworn to protect those of us who follow Jesus from any harm. If God is for us, who can be against us?

And so we must learn to keep God’s Holy Spirit active with us so we will remember that God is always with us. And how do we keep the Holy Spirit active?

It’s sort of like our computer. Over the course of a day, I’ll open and close probably ten or twelve windows on my computer. Some, like my email, I’ll keep active all day. But to keep it active in my mind, every hour or so I need to click on the email window. I need to look and see if there is a new email waiting for me.

Or perhaps your computer, like mine, is set to go to sleep if no one touches the keyboard or mouse for an hour. Every hour, then, you'll need to simply move the mouse to keep the computer active.

And so it is with the Holy Spirit. The best way to keep your relationship with the Holy Spirit active is to practice two-way prayer regularly through the day, especially when you are alone or in a stressful situation. Two-way prayer is where you speak to God and listen for the answer from the Holy Spirit. It is intentionally listening for an answer from God.

If you keep the Holy Spirit active by touching base regularly through the day, then you will remember that God is with you and you will better be able to control your fears – and your anger – and your tongue.

But what about the things we stupidly say? What about the things we say that were just because we were chattering on – no anger – just our own stupidity?

If we work through this, most of the time, we chatter when we are nervous or we chatter when we are afraid that we are not important. And so we say things to make us feel important, or we chatter because speaking keeps us from facing the real causes of our nervousness. Nervousness, you see, is just another word for fear – usually fear that we don’t know what is going to happen, or fear that something bad is going to happen. So we chatter to keep from looking at our fears.

And why don’t we feel important? Why do we feel the need to tell everyone about the drama in our lives? Why do we find it necessary to talk about “almost” being hit by a tractor-trailer? Why do we find it vital to post rants on Facebook and go on and on telling others about how we stood up to the nurse at the hospital, about how we told off our son’s teacher, about how we told the waitress how bad the food was?

Now there is a difference between telling a story that friends have asked for because your stories are entertaining, and telling a story because you need sympathy and attention and importance. So why don’t we fell important?

Isn’t it because we haven’t yet accepted that we have been created in God’s image, that we are God’s sons and daughters, that we are a special portrait of God who is unique in the Universe and of infinite value to God our Father? Brothers and sisters, the Universe was created because of you! There is no need to feel worthless, or meaningless, or overlooked. Accept that God loves you and that you are priceless and unique, more valuable than the Mona Lisa, more beautiful than a Michelangelo painting, worth far more than any Rembrandt, for you are a portrait and child of God!

And this is also the key to understanding the unthoughtful comments that we make where we insult a friend accidentally, because we make those comments when we have forgotten that all the people in the room are also priceless and unique portraits of God, fragile and beautiful in their own ways. (Back in the days of duels, few people insulted others by accident because of the possible consequences. Insults were well-thought-out, planned beforehand, and devastating, for people recognized the life-and-death possibilities of those insults.) Of course, today, insulting people accidentally is something our culture appears to encourage, for many of these insults happen when we try to play the “blame game”.

You know the blame game. A tree falls on a highway, a car hits it, a woman passenger is injured, and someone begins the game with the announcement “Whoever owned that tree should have cut it down ages ago.” And another responds, “The tree was down for an entire hour before the accident, the state road should have cleaned it up sooner.” And still another says, “If the airbag would have worked right, the woman wouldn’t have been injured.” And another says, “I heard her husband had been drinking and he was driving.” And pretty soon, reputations are damaged, lawsuits are filed, and someone is fired.

But the actual fact was that God sent an exceptional burst of wind to knock down the tree which had been hollowed out by termites, the state road crew was cleaning up three other trees on the way to the scene which had also been knocked down by God, the sober driver dodged a huge buck deer sent by God and thus hit the tree at an angle and a speed so low that the airbag wasn’t supposed to fire, and the woman had just decided at that moment to take a drink of tea from a glass bottle, which shattered and cut her face and hands, and that was how she was injured. But because of the injury, she got a phone call from her sister with whom she had fought twenty years ago and they became friends again. Once again, God has good in mind with everything.

If we don’t play the “blame game” – and remember that God is in control - we will cut back on our accidental insults dramatically.

And a general method of controlling our tongues is to practice courtesy, politeness, and graciousness – what used to be called “being classy”. Let me recommend remembering the classiness of Sean Connery, the stories of Jane Austen and the movies based upon her novels – Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, as well as the original Sherlock Holmes books – not the recent movies. In these books you will find a pattern of behavior and speech that will help control the tongue.

Some have read the Bible and all it says about the dangers of a fiery tongue on the loose, and therefore have become silent, almost never speaking. Our reading from Mark’s Gospel appears to be a bit different from the other readings, but it also concerns the tongue.

In this case, the problem is that a man does not have a voice. In this case, a man cannot talk because he is deaf. In this case, Jesus meets the man, opens his ears and loosens his tongue and the man can now speak plainly.

And this, my friends, is the part about the tongue that we do not normally look at. It is God, working through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who gives us a voice in this world. It was the visit of Christ that started a long chain of events that allows you and I to do anything instead of being locked in as slaves to our rulers. It was Jesus Christ, who through His death and resurrection paid the price to set us free from our bondage to sin and death, who allows us to speak openly and without fear in this world. You will recall that it was Jesus, the Word of God, Who spoke the very Universe into existence. And Jesus loosened our tongues! So speak good things into existence!

How does this work?

If you believe that this life in this world is the total of all existence, if you believe that when you die, you die, if you believe that there is no hope of resurrection, no love of God, no God who will reward and punish in the life to come…no one would ever speak up against injustice, against bad laws, against those who rule over us. 

It is through Jesus Christ that we know that there is life after this life. It is because Jesus showed us His new body and promised us a resurrection that we know we shall also live. It is because Jesus told us that God will protect us that men and women over the last two thousand years have felt secure enough, brave enough, and bold enough to open their mouths and speak open words of defiance against evil, against tyrannical rulers, against the wrongs of this world. This is what has led to our modern Western-style democratic republics, where people may speak up on Facebook, in public, and yes, in pulpits when evils are seen. It is through our words of life that new ideas, new methods, and new good things can come into existence. It is through Christian men and women’s voices that we have hospitals, that we have warm homes, that we have cheap food, that we have good clothing, that we have long lives, that we have a country!

For, as the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, “there is a time for being silent and a time to speak.”

Let your fear disappear as you understand the complete love of God for you, oh child of God. For God can protect you through all things, and this means you can be silent – and God will avenge you. Or, you can speak – for Christ has freed your tongue to change the world for the better and to praise the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

As Christians, the body of Christ on earth, our task, our duty, our holiness depends upon us developing the wisdom to know when to speak and when to remain silent. In a very real way, our opinion of a person’s holiness is based largely upon what they say and what they do not say.

We must study scripture diligently to know what to speak when we speak. We must listen carefully to the Holy Spirit so that we only speak words of righteousness when we speak and never words of hatred and destruction.

And free from our fears, secure in the knowledge of God’s love, possessed by and listening to the Holy Spirit, we can do just that. And then, our tongue, that small part of the body that Paul told us is filled with “restless evil and poison”, will be tamed and controlled because of the Holy Spirit which is in you.

How to Break Addictions - Chemicals, Gossip, Anger, and all the rest.

Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113; Romans 6:1-23; Luke 16:1-13

This is the fourth of ten sermons on Living the Christian Life. So much of the time, we know just what we are to do as Christians. We know very well we are to do all of these things. But the problem is how.

That is the subject of this sermon series. It is a sermon series on How to live the Christian life. We’ve covered kindness, developing patience, and loving deeply. These sermons are now posted online at the sermon blog listed on the front page of the bulletin.

Today, we’re going to cover how to break addictions.

Our Romans reading today was written by the Apostle Paul under the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. Paul was soon to head to Rome, to meet with a group of Christians. In Rome, there were already some thirty Christians that Paul knew, and at least three house churches – we know this from Chapter 16 of this letter. With Paul, sending greetings, were many other Christians. And so, Paul was writing this letter to the Roman Christians to help them better understand how salvation occurs, how salvation is available to all men and women, and how Christ’s sacrifice allows people to break free from slavery to sinful behavior and to now be able to live a new, joyful life, free from the bondage that previously held people.

What is sinful behavior?

There are several aspects to this. Sinful behavior is the behavior that takes us away from a relationship with God our Father. Augustine of Hippo defined sin as being lost far, far from home. To a certain extent, sinful behavior is behavior which goes against the Law that Moses brought from God. But Paul points out that even if we are not Jewish, even if we do not know God’s Law that Moses brought, we have our own standards of right and wrong behavior. And we cannot live up to even that standard. So in another way, sinful behavior is that behavior of ourselves that either we consider wrong, perhaps shameful, or it is behavior that harms us and our relationships with other people, and especially our relationship with God.

Do you need a list of sins? I could give you a list, but that list would be my list. And then, you would be free to argue with me over what should be on that list and what should not be on that list. Instead, I will go back to what Paul wrote and point out that you have a list of actions you consider sinful. Some of those things you have never done and probably never will do. But many of those things are actions you have done, often do now, and will likely continue doing tomorrow and next week. It is those actions that you think are sinful that will destroy you. Those recurring actions - those sinful addictions - go far beyond the list of actions that the news media commonly list as addictions, which usually includes alcohol, nicotine, and opium-based painkillers. Sinful addictions include all those actions you would like to stop and that is what I’m going to talk about today. It is those addictions, those bad behaviors that you want to quit doing and yet can’t seem to stop doing that I’m going to talk about today, because these are the addictions that destroy your soul.

I have gone through breaking a host of addictions in my life. For six months almost 30 years ago, I had a recurring kidney stone – the urologist prescribed Tylenol Codeine #4 tablets. I’d feel the stone moving, take two tablets, lay down, and take a nap 6 inches above the covers. Nothing wrong with that, right? But I grew worried that I was getting addicted to the painkillers and that my desire for the painkillers was causing the pain. Thankfully, shortly after becoming worried about that possibility, I passed the stone and poured the pills down the toilet, and since then I’ve taken a single Percoset when I was recovering from surgery about 7 or 8 years ago. I've been wary of painkillers ever since - and this has been born out by recent research that says a person can become physically addicted to opium-derived painkillers in as little as a couple of weeks - even though many doctors will still give a 30-day prescription for them.

It has been much more difficult for me to break other addictions. I have been addicted to video games, to sweet tea – you laugh, but it cost me $10,000. I have been addicted to the feeling of power that you get when you always have the right answer in class before anyone else has a chance to even put up their hand. I have been addicted to various televisions shows and to winning arguments and games at any cost – In college, I once refused to trade any properties in Monopoly because I had the green property set and no one else could make a set, upsetting a half-dozen of my friends. I have been addicted to salty foods, and to Little Debbie Fudge Rounds.

So what is your addiction? What do you deal with that hurts your friends and family and yourself?

How do we break addictions? What you are about to hear comes from four sources. I’ve been to several seminars recently on addition. I’ve learned a lot from the Alcoholics Anonymous organization about how they approach the issue, the twelve-step approach that other addiction organizations have adapted for their addictions. I’ve had my personal experience. And there is the teaching of Holy Scripture.

"So what does this have to do with me, pastor? I’m not an alcoholic and I’m not a drug addict."

What are you struggling with? What do you do daily or weekly that you wish you didn’t do? What do you do daily or weekly or monthly that leads you to break the law? What do you do daily or weekly that has messed up your life or the lives of those around you?

When I was in college, I had a problem with video games keeping me from studying. It may have dropped my GPA by a half-point. When I was single, I had a problem drinking too much Coca-Cola, which meant I was too exhausted in the evenings to keep my apartment any where near neat. My friends made fun of the mess. When I was living in Atlanta, I was so addicted to operating my business that I didn’t take any time off and grew burned out and exhausted and ignored my kids.

Driving too fast, drinking too much sweet tea, eating out too often, buying music CD’s every week, ordering pizza, playing Candy Crush – You name it, I’ve probably had to break the addiction.

The first step to breaking free is that we must recognize that there is a problem. It is a systematic problem in our world and therefore it becomes a systematic problem for each of us.

Our society wants to encourage addictive habits. We all know that alcohol and nicotine are addictive, but do you realize that most large soft drinks have as much caffeine as a cup of coffee? Why? It’s addictive! (The chart is based upon an 8-oz cup size. Soft drinks are sold in 16, 20, or 32 oz bottles.)

Chocolate activates the same receptors as marijuana does in the brain. And while neither is as addictive as opium-based drugs, they are both mildly addictive.

Sugar makes you feel high and that’s why you want sugary drinks and sweets, especially when you are tired. And we know that too much sugar leads to Type II diabetes.

Anger and fear generate adrenaline and for some people this is addictive. That’s why there are thrill-seekers who ride roller-coasters and jump out of airplanes. What you may not realize is that the very same effect is happening in your body when you watch scary movies, when you watch suspenseful crime shows – and when you watch the evening news shows that give you “today’s thing to be scared of”. It’s actually addictive to get angry over politicians and to get fearful about the world. And so we watch more news shows.

If you are stressed, shopping might be relaxing, at least as long as you have money. I used to buy a music CD every Sunday afternoon when I was single. I kept this habit up for about four years. Do the math and see how much money I spent. Some people tell me beer relaxes them, others smoke pot, still others watch football. Some garden and others go running. The runner’s high has been talked about for fifty years.

Our world wants to make sure you fall into addictions. Have you noticed the design of the new game apps, like Candy Crush. I KNOW many of you played the game – you sent me the requests for gifts all the time! Just like a good slot machine, you get small rewards almost constantly and every once in a while you get a big reward - you complete a level. And so you keep playing to get those big rewards. You’ll even pay to keep playing!

"OK, Pastor. So I’ve got some addictions, but are they are problem?"

Your addiction is a problem if participating in the activity endangers yourself or others, or if it is becoming more important in your life than your relationships, than your job, than your relationship with God. If you don’t recognize that your addiction is a problem, you won’t try to break it. So here’s some information you can choose to listen to from the addiction scientists to decide if you have a problem.

First, if you are breaking the law to enjoy your addiction, you are endangering yourself and your family. Breaking the law runs the chance you will be arrested and convicted, leading to possible loss of your job, loss of your children, a significant loss of income. It doesn’t matter if you agree with the laws or not: you have a problem. For example, if you really think pot-smoking is safe or even good for you, move to Colorado. You won’t be arrested there. But in our state, you are endangering your freedom and your family’s livelihood if you smoke pot. And this applies to many different addictions, including gambling, pornography, computer hacking, and especially drinking and driving. If you drink and drive, you are breaking the law, so no matter how safely you drive, you are endangering yourself and others because you may be arrested. If you are underage for the activity that you are doing, you are endangering yourself and others because you may be arrested. This applies to many, many different addictions.

For example, let’s say you like to look at pretty women. That’s fairly normal. Women also like to look at handsome men. People do this all the time at beaches and in other public places. But if you are peeking in windows at night, if you are filming women secretly, if you are you are breaking laws to see women, you have a problem.

Any use of illegal drugs is an addiction, because you are breaking the law and thus endangering yourself and others even if you only use the drug once a year – or even once.

So anytime you indulge your addiction and it breaks the law, you have a problem addiction.

A second way to tell if you have a problem addiction is that you may be exceeding healthy standards. Let’s look at alcohol. We’re going to use alcohol as an example because it is common, a lot of studies have been conducted on alcohol, and the Bible actually talks directly about alcohol. 

The Bible does not teach that drinking alcohol is sinful. Wine was commonly drunk by people in ancient times and Paul even recommends it to Timothy at one point for his regular ailments. However, the Bible does teach that getting drunk leads to problems and often to sinful behavior, and that being a drunkard is a problem strong enough to disqualify a person from church leadership. The original Greek tells us that an overseer in the church should not be a person who “lies down beside a wine jug.” And our science backs this up. A little bit of wine appears to be healthy, but too much alcohol causes all sorts of physical health problems – ask a doctor - in addition to the problems it causes to relationships. So how much alcohol is too much?

According to the seminars I’ve attended, taught by addiction specialists, you are in danger of becoming an alcoholic if any of the following is true:

First, if you binge drink. Binge drinking is considered to be more than 5 drinks (including beers) at a time, more than twice a month. Binge drinking means the alcohol is controlling you rather than you controlling the alcohol.

Second, the addiction specialists say that 14 drinks a week – that’s averaging two a day – is the limit for men and 7 drinks a week – that’s averaging one a day – is the limit for women. If you are drinking more than this, you may have a problem and probably should cut back, if only for health reasons.

In another type of addiction, the doctors tell us it is unhealthy to sit for more than two hours at a time. So if you play video games for four hours solid, if you look at Facebook literally all evening long, if you watch television for more than a couple hours at a stretch – you have a problem. So our second way of knowing that we have a problem is when we go over a healthy line.

The third way you know that you are having a problem is when you declare you won’t perform your addiction and yet you do. You come home on Friday and tell your spouse – “No Facebook this weekend.” An hour later, you’re on Facebook with no good reason – you have a problem. You say you won’t eat chocolate and you eat. You say you aren’t drinking at the party tonight and you drink – you have a problem. I’ve had this problem with several of my addictions – that’s when I know I’ve got a problem. In fact, a good way to check an addiction is to see if you can go two weeks without using. That is a good start – but it isn’t a sure proof that you are free – it’s just a good start. If you can’t stop for two weeks, you’ll know for sure you have a problem.

A fourth way to know you have an addiction is when multiple people tell you that you have an addiction. One person may be off-base, but when multiple people who care for you tell you that you have an addiction – listen.

The fifth way to know you have an addiction is when trouble begins happening in your life because of the addiction. You miss school in order to video game. You miss church because you drank too much last night. You don’t pay the electric bill because you "needed" to buy another set of clothes. You flirted too much with the waitress and it caused a huge fight with your wife. You gossiped too long and too loud and your boss gave you a reprimand because of it. Oh yes, gossip can be an addiction. You had to repair the hole in the wall where you punched it last night because you were angry. And you can’t stop.

The twelve step programs tell us that there are three beginning steps to breaking any addiction:

First, you must recognize that the addiction is a problem. Specifically, you recognize that you are powerless to stop the addiction - that your life has become unmanageable because of the addiction. Take a minute to think about your addictions. Are they controlling you? Are they problem addictions?

Second, you recognize that God has the power to handle the addiction. And this is exactly where our Romans reading steps in….Listen to Paul’s argument.

"Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."

Paul is saying our baptism unites us in a spiritual way with Christ, so that our old self is dead and we are ready to live a new life in Christ. When we were baptized, we spiritually died and then came back to spiritual life with the Holy Spirit now energizing us.

"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin."

Paul is saying that with this baptism death-and-resurrection, we are free from the slavery to sin. A dead person can no longer sin. Our new rebirth resets us, we are rebooted, free from the virus of sin.

Skipping down a bit…Paul continues….

"When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

When sin controlled us, sin paid us with death. Now that God controls us, God pays us with eternal life.

In Star Trek, there was an episode where one of the regular characters was possessed by an alien energy being which was slowly killing that character. The doctor figured out that the only was to get rid of the alien was to kill the character. So the crew killed their friend, the character. The alien left the ship quickly. But then, the doctor brought the character back to life, free from the control of the alien.

It is somewhat similar to us with addiction. The only way to remove the slavery of addictive sin from our character is for us to spiritually die. When we voluntarily “die” by giving control of our life to Christ through baptism and the receiving of the Holy Spirit, the slavery to sin chains are broken, the sin leaves, and now God can bring us back to spiritual life and give us an eternal life.

Which leads to the third step in the process…

We must turn our lives over to Christ.

How simple! Yet how difficult!

I love my mother. My mother is now 81 years old. As a state senator covering four counties near Parkersburg, she drives all over the state – last year she also drove to Dallas, TX and back. She regularly logs around 30,000 miles a year. And she drives. Not my dad. No one else. When Mom, Dad, Saundra, and I go out to eat, Mom drives. Total control of the wheel. My dad and I learned many years ago that even if we get to drive, Mom still won’t give up control of the wheel – she’ll just reach out for it if she gets scared.

And that’s how we all are with our lives. Few people want to give up control of the wheel of our lives to Jesus. Fewer still want to really give up control and not reach out to grab the wheel when we get scared.

But that’s why we continue to have problems. That’s why we have addictions. We have addictions because we tell Jesus – "Jesus, you can drive on this street of our lives, but not on that street, and certainly not on the four-lanes." We will always have problems with addictions as long as we don’t employ Jesus as our full-time chauffeur. We really need to move to the back seats of our lives, sitting in the limo in the seat that faces the rear. As long as we insist on driving or even sitting beside Him in the front seat, he’ll never be able to take us away from the bad parts of town, to the truly beautiful spots, to the wonderful roads high in the mountains that we are too inexperienced to drive over, but that He has driven over many times. We need to take the third step – to say, "Jesus, you have total control of my life."
Now the scientists, the doctors, the folks at the rehab centers – they have given us all sorts of good research about what keeps us addicted. They point out that some addictions are addictions which calm us down when we are too excited or tense or stressed. And some people drink or smoke pot or play video games to calm down. I’ve learned to read the Psalms and to pray.

Other research shows us that some addictions are addictive because they give us a wonderfully pleasurable high, and some people will do almost anything to repeat that high. Because of that, today you can go to Mon General Hospital and they will give you a drug which block the receptors in your brain which makes you feel high. Then, you don’t have any wish anymore to drink or shoot heroin or take pain pills because you simply can’t get high off of anything anymore. I prefer to watch someone come to know God, or hear someone tell me of discovering a new, deeper relationship with Christ, or see someone listen to the Holy Spirit and begin to blossom like a huge rosebud opening up.

Still other research shows this: Twelve-step programs only work for about a quarter of people - the quarter of people who truly turn their lives over to God. The spiritual part is not optional. Twelve-step programs are still the most effective thing going, because they are based upon Holy Scripture, they use the power of God – not our own feeble power – and they substitute an eternal life-giving relationship with God for the relationship with Satan that would lead to your early death and eternal demise.

To break free of any addiction, admit it is a problem you are helpless to handle, recognize that God and Christ are ready and able to step in, and turn your life’s control over to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

And you will live abundantly and eternally.

For more information on twelve-step programs nationwide, try this link. For more information in or near Harrison County, WV, come visit us at the Quiet Dell United Methodist Church any Saturday evening at 8 pm. We're located at I-79, exit 115, 50 feet east of the exit. Turn left at the BP-7/11 store and follow the access road back to toward the interstate.

How to Love Deeply - The How of Loving God and Others

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1; Philemon; Luke 14:25-33

This is the third of ten sermons on Living the Christian Life. So much of the time, we know just what we are to do as Christians. We know very well we are to do all of these things. But the problem is how.

That is the subject of this sermon series. It is a sermon series on How to live the Christian life. Two weeks ago we covered kindness and last week we covered developing patience. These sermons are now posted online at the sermon blog listed on the front page of the bulletin.

Today, we’re going to cover loving deeply.

Love. To an outsider looking in, modern American culture is about three things: Making money, using firearms, and falling in love.

Look at our movies, our television shows, our popular books. In the last ten years, we have seen a popular book and movie series (Twilight) based upon a teenage girl deciding whether to fall in love with a vampire or a werewolf. We’ve seen another popular book and movie series (The Hunger Games) about a teenage girl who is torn between her boyfriend and destroying an oppressive government. And our popular television detective shows focus more and more on the personal love lives of the detectives than on the crimes.

Of course, the English word “love” covers a lot of territory. Ancient Greek, the language of the New Testament, used four different words to cover what we use a single word for. For example, the intense, passionate physical love between a man and a woman in the Greek language is eros. The love between two brothers is phileos. The affection between grandparents and grandchildren is storge. And the unselfish, freely given love that God and Christ give to us is agape. Today, I’m going to focus upon agape, because that is the love that is most difficult for us and at the same time, most important for the Christian to develop. Agape – self-sacrificing love.

Christians are to agape each other, just as Christ agaped us.

We all know that Jesus told us that we are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” We also know that we are to love our neighbor as ourself.

But both of these loves, both of these agapes, are very difficult for us to get a handle on.

It is easy to fall in love with someone. It is easy for a man to fall in love with a woman, or a woman to fall in love with a man. It is easy to grow up with a brother or sister and love them, because they are so familiar. It is easy for grandparents to love grandchildren because they are so cute when they are born, and every time we see them we remember them when we first held them in our arms. It is easy for grandchildren to love grandparents because Mom and Dad are the enforcers and our grandparents tend to spoil us, at least a little bit.

But how do we love God and Christ, neither of whom we’ve seen? After all, most of us feel we’ve become closer to our favorite movie or television stars than God and Christ. Yet it is essential to our continued life in eternity that we fall in love with God.

In our Deuteronomy reading, Moses tells us: “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

So what are we to do? We are called to love God, but we have great difficulty with this. How shall we then be saved?

Perhaps we can learn some lessons from the world. The world rarely gets it right, but the world can always teach us what is wrong.

The world tells us that love is an emotion, that we are overwhelmed by love, that we are helpless, not having any choice in who we love and who we don’t love. But that is an invention of our time.

In ancient, even medieval times, love was a choice. Love was an act of the will, of the mind. It was when we took our mind and put it in charge, and thus we learned to love the person that our parents had decided was best for us. In Ephesians 5, Paul tells men to love their wives as Christ loves the church. And how does Christ love the church? He chose to lay down His life for the church. Does anyone really think that Christ was caught up by His emotions, and that those emotions had Him come to earth for 30 years, to preach for 3 years, and then to stay on the cross until He died? No. Jesus thought through the consequences of His love before He committed, and then He was and is committed to the love of His eternal life, the Church that is His body, we who follow Him.

As Jesus said in our Luke reading, :

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
Jesus decided the cost before the Universe began, and so He was committed to loving us deeply.

We use our minds to calculate the cost. The man who builds the tower asks the question “can I afford to build a tower?” In the same way, we who look for love often fail to ask the question, “Can I afford to fall in love right now?”

Too many people jump into love with the forethought of the dog that chased the car. What was the dog going to do with the car if he caught the car? If you begin to date, what are you going to do if you fall in love? Or are you just dating because everyone around you is dating, yet you have no job, you live at home, you have no skills, you couldn’t and wouldn’t get married for another ten years even if you fell in love. Only trouble can come from dating before you are ready. You are like a man who decides to build a tower because his neighbor has decided to build a tower.

If we are wise, we look at the cost of love before we take the plunge. A wise young man looks at his own situation before he begins to date a woman. He asks himself, “Can I afford the dates? Can I afford the time? Will this interfere with my studies? If she falls in love with me, is it even conceivable that I’d want to marry her?”

A wise young woman thinks things through. “Do I trust this young man? Am I ready to consider marriage? Do I have other plans? How much time will dating take? Do I have a career plan and what will this do to my studies for that career?”

There is a reason why fifty or a hundred years ago most colleges were limited to either men or women, but not both. Dating takes time and money. Dating takes lots of both that are wasted if we aren’t ready and able to marry.

And so we decide whether or not to love. And that is based upon our calculation of the costs – and the benefits.

The wise person recognizes that life has some easy times and some difficult times. Like a rollercoaster, there are times when we are feeling great – and other times we are scared out of our wits. And so it is with love.

If we believe that love is totally emotion, out of our control, then we will fall in love and fall out of love and never get to the good part, the rich, wonderful time when our love has become deep, the deep, rich love of the man and woman who have been in love for fifty years, who have endured the time the house burned down, the times he lost his job. The months she recovered from the car wreck, the neighbors who cut down their flowerbed, the time the car broke down in Louisiana when the tropical storm came through, the cute blonde secretary at work that always flirted with him, the time their son ended up in jail for drug possession, and the loss of their granddaughter to that awful disease. For that deep love that the couple has makes newlyweds look silly, the confidence they have in each other makes the Marines look like a sandlot pickup team, the meaning that they give a slight touch on the neck, the quietly whispered word “Richmond”, the special reason why every anniversary there is a piece of Colby cheese on the plate cannot be duplicated in any less than decades together.

And the way we get there is through the will. Our will. Our will that we will stay in love. We used our mind to calculate the cost and now we use our will to stay in love through the difficult times. And our love deepens.

And so we come to loving God and Christ…

Is there really a difference between loving God and Christ – and loving another human being?

Michael Buble has a great song. “I just haven’t met you yet”. He talks about the great love of his life and yet he hasn’t met his love. Yet.

It is a great song for those who would fall in love with God and Christ. Listen to it.

Let’s work through the steps…

A wise person calculates the cost. What is the cost of falling in love with God and Christ? The cost is simple – Jesus Himself tells us in our reading from Luke:

“those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.”

The cost of falling in love with Christ is that you must give up everything you have. But isn’t this also the cost of falling in love with anyone? In the wedding ceremony, the couple pledges “with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you.”

The couple getting married pledge to give up everything to one another. And truly, the couple that honors that pledge will stay together, while the couple that only partially honors that pledge will soon split. It is a matter of who is more important, our self or our spouse. We have to open up ourselves, to take the chance that we will be hurt deeply, to accept that we are vulnerable if we are to have a chance of finding a deep, lasting love. Those who put invulnerable barriers around themselves will never experience deep love, because love has to flow into our innermost being – and from our innermost being to another, or it remains a surface affection. Invulnerable barriers block the love flow.

Let me give you an example. If you want a puppy to love you, you must pet the puppy. Yet, the puppy might bite you. You must take that risk if you want the love of the puppy.You have to pet the puppy.

C.S. Lewis wrote the deep children’s novels we call the Narnia series. In one of them, a child looks at the Christ figure of the novels, a huge lion known as Aslan with a bit of fear. “Is he safe?” the child asks. The other, wiser person replies, “No, he’s not a tame lion. But he is good.” Jesus, the Son of God, is the same. He is not tame – He and His Father created the Universe and they can destroy the world with a word and if they choose to do so, there is nothing you can do to prevent them from doing exactly what they want to do. But Jesus is good and wise. Supremely good and wise. Always remember that.

And if we are truly to become a disciple of Christ, we must give up everything we have for Jesus. Re-read your Gospels. Multiple times Jesus says that we must give up everything for Him. John 12:25: Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” A couple of weeks ago, you heard Jesus tell the rich young ruler to sell all his possessions and follow Jesus.

Why is Jesus so all-consuming? Perhaps there is a family resemblance. Didn’t His Father – our heavenly Father – say, “You shall not worship any other Gods before Me?”

In December, 1941 and into the spring of 1942, hundreds of thousands of young American men walked into Army recruiting stations around the country and said, “I’d like to volunteer for the Army.” And before they joined up, they had to take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. They understood when they joined that their lives were now the Army’s, to spend and to use as the Army deemed best. That might mean they got a free chance to visit London and Paris – or it might mean they were in charge of a shovel in southern Georgia digging a new latrine for all the troops to use. It might mean they would be flying in the Army Air Force – or it might mean they would be shivering in a cow barn in a place called Bastogne in Belgium, surrounded by German tanks. When they signed up, they surrendered their life to the Army and they went and did what the Army told them to do. Sometimes the Army was wise about this – and sometimes the Army was not very wise. Yet those soldiers still volunteered and went where the Army sent them.

When you choose to follow Christ, unlike the Army, you are turning over your life to the wisest, most loving personality in the Universe. If you listen to the Holy Spirit’s direction, you will always be guided in the manner that is best for you and others. But here’s the rub – it won’t always be easy.

A couple begins dating and they like each other. There are chocolates and roses and movies and dinners. It is all fun and play. But at this point, there is always the understanding that they can stop dating at any moment, they can run away from each other. And then later, they may become engaged. At this point, there is an understanding that only some major event will separate them, will lead them to run away. Today, some couples choose to live together, but the church has historically seen that to be a mistake, because the couple has not really committed to each other. Each still has that lurking fear that the other may choose to run away for almost any reason. That lurking fear creates tension which keeps the couple from truly relaxing in their love for each other. Will you commit or not? Will you overcome your fears?

The next step is marriage.

Now, married, the couple has promised to stay together for the rest of their lives. They now live together and work together, the chocolates and the roses and the movies and the dinners are few and far between.  Instead, they work in the house, they work in their garden, they work together and grow deeper in love. Far deeper in love.

In the old days, this was what happened. But over the last hundred years or so, people have begun to break that promise more and more often, to the point where almost half of marriages end in divorce. Of course, many more couple break up who have chosen to live together. And that is sad, for both people are hurt during a divorce or a break-up. We all know that divorces hurt people. It seems that many people get bored with the marriage when the chocolates and roses and movies and dinners stop.

So knowing all of this, why is it that so many people choose to date Jesus Christ? So many people make the little decisions every day to hold back large parts of their lives from the one person in the Universe who will never hurt them, who will never betray them, the one person who always has their best interests at heart, who is good and wise and loving all the time? Why don’t you give your entire life to Christ?

For some people, it’s because they don’t realize they’re supposed to give everything to Christ. They think that they are to be wooed by Christ and the church, that they are to receive chocolates and roses and movies and dinners. But instead, you see, everything is to be at the call of the Holy Spirit, nothing held back, ready to do what you are asked to do, ready to move if called, ready to step in and do God’s will as the body of Christ on earth. In this, being in the church is similar to being in the Army.

For other people, the issue is that we look at the people around us and see other people dating Jesus, so we think this is what is supposed to happen, like middle school or elementary school students with their first crush, meeting their first love at a school dance or exchanging texts with him or her. Those middle schoolers and elementary students don’t understand the sacrifices and work that real love demands, they don’t understand the difficulties of sticking to a relationship, they operate their relationships like games – and we do the same in our churches, treating our churches like we do our restaurants – how’s the food, how’s the entertainment, how’s the air conditioning today? – not realizing that the church is not a chain store, but it is a family business and we are part of the family, with our part to play, our chores to do, our responsibilities to do the Father’s will.

We are not customers, you see. We are the employees. We cannot really fall in love with the Father unless we work in the business with the Son, for it is when we work together beside Jesus to bring another family out of despair that we learn to love each other and Jesus and we develop that deep understanding of each other, like the couple that has been happily married 50 or 60 years. Are you dating Jesus or are you part of His family?

Deep love, agape, the self-sacrificing love that Jesus gives us flows from Him. We can only love Him because He first chose to love us. For Jesus, love and sacrifice are all tied up together. Jesus is not the suitor who brings chocolates and roses to your door. Jesus is the suitor that says, “Wear your jeans! Let’s spend the day together working in the garden.” As long as you sit here looking for chocolates and roses and movies and dinners, you are just dating Jesus – and He knows it.

When you get serious and choose to work in the garden with Him, to help Him pull weeds and plant seeds and prune the apple trees, to listen to hurting people, to give of your time, talents, and treasures, to tell His story to new people - then He’ll know you are serious about Him. And it is then that He brings out the surprising treasures that He only gives to His friends that are in love with Him. It is as though you’ve worked in the garden all morning and He stops and shows you where the bluebird nest is. It’s like He walks over behind a stump and shows you an amazing set of orange and white mushrooms growing between purple violets and yellow dandelions. It’s as though he calls you into the back room of a shed and there is a refrigerator in which He has hidden a pitcher of ice-cold pink lemonade and a plate of chocolate raspberry brownies.

But He only does this to those who choose to give up their lives to Him, to the people who have decided that the only real purpose of life is to follow Jesus, to those people who are willing to work in the garden with Him. For we must learn to work and learn to sacrifice and learn to stop worry about our self and instead worry about what the other wants if we want to experience deep, deep love.

For, you see, Jesus gave up everything He had for us. He surrendered His life to pay the fines for all the things we have done wrong in our lives. His Father loved Him so much He restored His life to Him. Eternally. But then, Jesus turned around again and said, “Those who follow me shall also have eternal life.” He gave us that eternal life He has. In return, He asks us to follow Him – to join Him in the garden.

And that is how to love deeply. That is how to be a disciple of Christ.