How Do You Face Your Weekends?
by Dorothy Dalton on May 2, 2009 at Midland Michigan
Bob Proctor shares this story in “Chicken Soup for
the Soul. He was doing a weekend seminar north of Toronto.
On Friday night a tornado swept through Barrie, a near-by town killing
several people and doing millions of dollars worth of damage.
That night when returning home he stopped in Barrie: it was a
mess. Everywhere he looked there were smashed houses and cars
turned upside-down. That same night Bob Templeton was driving
down the same highway and he too stopped to look at the disaster.
Bob Templeton was the Vice-president of Telemedia Communication which
owns a string of radio stations in Ontario and Quebec. The
following night Bob Proctor was doing another seminar in Toronto and
Bob Templeton and a co-worker stood in the back of the room. They
shared their conviction that there had to be something they could do
for the people in Barrie. The following Friday Bob Templeton
called all the executives at Telemedia into his office. At the
top of a flip chart he wrote three 3’s. He said to his executives
“How would you like to raise 3 million dollars, 3 days from now, in
just 3 hours and give the money to the people in Barrie?” There
was nothing but silence in the room. Finally, someone said,
“Templeton, you’re crazy! There is no way we could do
that!” Bob said, “Wait a
minute. I didn’t ask you if we could or even if we should.
I just asked you if you’d like to.” They all said, “Sure, we
would like to.” He then drew a large “T” with the 333 resting on
its cross bar. Underneath, on one side he wrote, “Why we can’t
and X’d it out. On the other side he wrote, “How we can.”
They began brainstorming creative ideas for the fund raising and
avoided reasons why the idea was not possible. That was on a
Friday. The following Tuesday they had a radiothon of 50 radio
stations across the country that agreed to participate. It didn’t
matter who got the credit as long as the people in Barrie got the
money. They succeeded in raising 3 million dollars in 3 hours
within 3 business days, just as planned. You see, you can do
anything if you put your focus on how to do it and not on who gets
credit or why you can’t. Can’t: such a little word with so much
power.
This is the day
that we attack a disease. It rages untouched, it hinders too
many. It has shattered too many hopes, contaminated too many
lives. The time has come to declare war on the pestilence that
goes by the name, “I can’t!” I can’t! I can’t
understand my teenager. I can’t pay my bills. I can’t
forgive any more. I can’t go on. I can’t fight any
longer. I can’t resist temptation. I can’t stay in this
marriage. I can’t forget. I can’t! Don’t confuse I
can’t with I shouldn’t. Sometimes we say, I can’t when we really
shouldn’t do something. The father of three little kids should
say; I can’t golf every day. The family that is careful with
finances should say; we can’t bust the budget just so we can have a
bigger house. There are times we say I can’t, appropriately;
because, we shouldn’t; but then there are times when we say I can’t,
when we should say, I can. You see, when we say, I can’t, it
affects the confidence center of our lives and it neutralizes us.
It renders us incapable of doing what God prepared us to do.
Do you remember your life before “I can’t” came
along? You’ll have to think back to your childhood.
Remember, you could do anything then! I can play soccer, I
can fly a plane; I can be a doctor; I can run for president; I can run
in the Olympics, I can run a company. I can go to college.
But then came; the “I can’t” condition. Your relationships were
different in those days, too. You didn’t have black friends or
Hispanic friends or white friends. You just had friends.
Right? And anger had such a short shelf life, in those
days. You could almost come to blows with your best friend one
minute and become best buddies again within five minutes. Now
things are more complicated. Now, we might say I can’t work with
that ethnic group or I can’t forgive. No wonder Jesus stipulated,
“Unless a person is converted and become as little children, you will
by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 18: 3) There is
something about the heart of a child that God loves to create: even in
the hearts of adults.
We all want to have that kind of heart and to be
more like children, don’t we? We want to be like Jenny
Worth. She was eight years old, when her father decided to take
her on one of his business trips. He took her with him on a
Southwest Airlines flight. Now, she had been on airlines before,
but she had never been on Southwest. Southwest Airlines, as
you may know, are famous for equalizing everything. There is no
first class, or coach, there is no wide seats or narrow seats: everyone
is the same. Now, if you are a seasoned traveler you might get on
a Southwest Airlines flight and say that everything is coach.
But, if you are eight years old: she boarded that flight and as
they walked down the aisle she looked back over her shoulder to her Dad
and said, “Dad, the whole plane is first class! That is the
attitude that God wants us to have: an outlook on life where everything
is first class. And He will help you remove the “I can’t” from
your life. He will help you do that so every day will be a great
day.
To see how he does
that is by looking at the three most important days in history.
The days of Easter weekend: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And that
is the plan in this message. “How Do You Face Your
Weekends?” I believe we can learn from how Jesus faced that
Easter weekend.
First of
all with Christ, you can face the struggles the struggles of
Friday. How many of you think that Jesus struggled on the Friday
of His crucifixion? Absolutely! He struggled beneath the
weight of the cross. He struggled at the rejection of His
friends, the betrayal of Judas, the physical abuse. He faced
struggles everywhere He turned. He struggled because no friends
were with Him, except John: everyone else fled. No one
interrupted the crucifixion, not even God. God didn’t interrupt
the crucifixion and it was God himself, who foreordained the
crucifixion. The Bible says that “He so loved the world that He
gave, His one and only son and who so ever believed in him should not
perish but have everlasting or eternal life.” (John 3:16) So God
is the one who permitted the crucifixion. In fact, had there been
no Roman’s there still would have been a crucifixion. Had there
been no religious leaders there still would have been a
sacrifice. Because at the cross God, Himself, gave his Son to us:
as a gift from himself. In other words: He saved us from his own
wrath by giving His Son to us. And we wonder, how
did Jesus endure the struggles? My favorite female author writing
on this subject says when in the garden of Gethsemane “the humanity of
the Son of God trembled in that trying hour. He prayed not now
for His disciples that their faith might not fail, but for His own
tempted, agonized soul. The awful moment had come—that moment
which was to decide the destiny of the world. The fate of
humanity trembled in the balance. Christ might even now refuse to
drink the cup apportioned to guilty man. It was not yet too
late. He might wipe the bloody sweat from His brow and leave man
to perish in his iniquity….The words fall tremblingly from the pale
lips of Jesus, “O My Father, if this cup may not pass away from Me,
except I drink it, Thy will be done.” Three times has He uttered
that prayer. Three times has humanity shrunk from the last,
crowning sacrifice..…He sees that the transgressors of the law, if left
to themselves must perish. He sees the helplessness of
man. He sees the power of sin. The woes and
lamentations of a doomed world rise before Him. He beholds its
impending fate, and His decision is made. He will save man at any
cost to Himself…And He will not turn from His mission.” We are
amazed at His love for a fallen human race. “Christ suffered
keenly under abuse and insult. At the hands of the beings whom He
had created, and for whom He was making an infinite sacrifice. He
received every indignity. And He suffered in proportion to the
perfection of His holiness and His hatred of sin.” I wonder if we
can learn from His example. And our question is more than just
idle wondering because we have major decisions to make and a few of
those struggles ourselves, don’t we? Dawn to dusk days of
struggles, tragedy and challenge. Had I been in the place of
Jesus I think I would have lashed out or bailed out. I would have
boomeranged the spit of the soldier’s right back into their
faces. I would have silenced the blood thirsty crowd just like I
silenced the storm on the Sea of Galilee. But, Jesus didn’t do
that. He never one time said, “I can’t. I can’t do any
more. I can’t take any more!” He never said that. And
the Bible tells us what He knew that we need to follow and
imitate. Hebrews 12:2 “For the joy set before Him Jesus endured
the cross.” How did Jesus endure the cross? He looked at
the joy that was set before Him. He lifted up His eyes from that
which He was facing and looked into the eternity that awaited
Him. There you have it! How do you face the Fridays of
struggle. You face the Fridays of struggle by lifting up your
eyes into the eternity of peace. You focus less on your problems
and more on the joy that awaits you and it does await you. So,
look less at the problems that you have now and more on the eternity
that awaits you. The Apostle Paul said, “Set your mind on things
above and not on things of the earth.” (Col 3: 2) So the more you
make heaven bigger the more the pain here can be tolerated.
That’s how you face the Fridays of struggles. Let me show you how
Jesus did this by looking at His activities of that Friday. At
daybreak, when we first find Jesus speaking we find Him telling
his accusers, “The son of man will be seated on the right hand of the
mighty God.” (Lk 22: 69; Matt 26: 64b) Now where was the mind of
Jesus, that morning? He is thinking into the future, isn’t
He? Then He says, “In the future you will see the son of man
coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Matt 26: 64b) Where’s the mind of
Jesus? In the future. When interrogated by Pilate later
that same day Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
(John 18: 36) Where’s the mind of Jesus? He is thinking of
the next world. Jesus keeps lifting His eyes upward. He
said, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from
above.” (John 19: 11) Now, let’s just pause and highlight those
phrases: in the future; not of this world; from above.
Jesus is fixing His mind on things above and this continues on the
cross. On the cross He says to the Father, “Father, forgive them.
(Lk 23:34) He promises eternity when He says, “You will be with me in
Paradise.” (Lk 23: 43) He prays again, My God, My God, why have
you forsaken me? (Matt 27: 46b; Mk 15: 34b) and completes His
assignment. “It is finished. (John 19: 30b) He ends
His life in prayer. “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.
(Lk 23: 43b) You see Jesus fixes His mind on things above.
If my count is correct, when Jesus spoke on that last Friday, he spoke
thirteen times, 10 of those thirteen times He was either speaking to
God or about God. Now, my math might be off but that is almost
80%. 80 % of His comments that last Friday were either to God or
about God. So, where was the mind of Christ during that
day? His mind was God saturated. God was who He could think
about. Now, do the math on your tough days. What percentage
of your thoughts, on your tough days, are God centered and God
oriented? If the percentage is small, maybe that is why the days
are so tough. What if you thought more on those days about God’s
strength and less on those days about your troubles? What if you
did what the Apostle Paul said, “We don’t look at the troubles we see
right now.” We don’t look at them because; “the sufferings we now
endure bear no comparison with the splendor, as yet unrevealed, which
is in store for us.” (Rom 8: 18 NEB) So, how do you
face the toughest days of life? You think more about eternity
than you do about the problems you’re facing. With God’s help you
can do that. With Christ you can face the struggles of Friday.
And with Christ you
can endure the silence of Saturday. Jesus was silent on that
Saturday. “At last, He was at rest. The long day of shame
and torture was ended. In the beginning the Father and the Son
had rested upon the Sabbath after Their work of creation…Now Jesus
rested from the work of redemption.” “Joseph of Arimathaea and
Nicodemus were determined that the body of Jesus should have an
honorable burial….The body together with the spices brought by
Nicodemus was carefully wrapped in a linen sheet and the Redeemer was
borne to the tomb.” The body of Christ is as mute as the stone that
guards the tomb. Jesus said much on Friday and He will surely say
much on Sunday. But, He doesn’t say anything on Saturday.
God doesn’t say anything on Saturday, either. The Heavenly Father
doesn’t speak, He sure spoke on Friday. Sometimes actions speak
louder than words. He split the rocks, He shook the ground, He
tore the curtain in the temple, He eclipsed the sun of the
earth. He sacrificed the Son of Heaven. He did much
on that Friday and on Sunday He will do much, again. The angels
will be speaking, and the resurrection truth will be proclaimed.
But on Saturday the Heavenly Father is silent. Jesus said
nothing, God says nothing. Saturday is silent.
When we talk about Easter weekend we talk a lot
about Friday, which we should: the crucifixion. We talk
about Sunday, which we should: the resurrection. But how
many of us talk much about Saturday? I don’t recall hearing much
about it in sermons. But it occurs to me that we need to talk about
Saturday too. Because we face those Saturdays: those silent
Saturdays. Those days when God seems to say nothing to us!
We go through those long periods where our spiritual life seems to be
in a draught. We offer prayers and they seem to bounce off the
ceiling and come back down to us. A silent Saturday is that day
in between the crucifixion and the resurrection. A silent
Saturday is that day between the discovery of the disease and the
healing of the disease; the discovery of the problem and the discovery
of the solution; the job dismissal and the new job discovery; the
broken heart and the healed heart. That silent Saturday occurs
when we offer prayers and we say, isn’t God listening? I wonder
if the disciples might have offered prayers and said doesn’t God know
that His Son is suffering? I wonder if you offer prayers and say
doesn’t God know my body is sick; that my job is going down the tube;
that my finances are in a wreck; that my marriage stinks. Doesn’t
God know? Why doesn’t He act? What are you suppose to do on days
like that? Here is what you do. You do what Jesus
did. You wait. You be patient. Jesus was buried with
His conviction. I am sure he was familiar with Ps 16:10 “You will
not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see
decay.” And Jesus believed God would not leave Him alone in
that grave. And some of you have been brought here by God today
to hear this next sentence. God will not leave you alone, with
your problem! His silence is not His absence. His
inactivity is not His apathy. You just need to do what Jesus did;
be patient and wait. Haven’t we discovered that Sundays always
follow Saturdays? Haven’t we? And haven’t we found,
although we don’t like to admit it, that Saturdays are good for
us. They teach us to trust; they teach us to rely. I know,
we would like God to solve our problem the minute the problem
appears! But, had Christ been raised from the dead the
second He took His final breath, would we really appreciate the power
of the resurrection? Sometimes God puts a Saturday
bookended by a Friday and a Sunday so that we will understand His power
and maybe that is what He is doing for you. If you are in a
silent Saturday, let Jude 21 (NEB) encourage you. His words to
you and his words to me would be this: “Keep yourselves in the
love of God, and look forward to the day when our Lord Jesus Christ in
his mercy will give eternal life.” And He will come and when He
comes you can enjoy, you can celebrate on Sunday.
SPECIAL MUSIC Charles McDonald
“The women who anointed the body of Jesus on Friday
went to the tomb on Sunday to finish that job. They went with
spices and aloes and cloth to finish their work of preparing the body
of Jesus for the burial. But, when they arrived they saw the
first fruit of the resurrection. They saw the stone rolled
away. They saw an angel sitting on the rock and remember what
that angel said? “He is not here, for He has risen just as He
said. Come see the place where the Lord lay.” (Matt 28:6)
That same invitation is offered today, to anyone who will come and look
in to see the place where the Lord lay. And when we go in, here
is what we see: we see a vacant slab where the body was; we
see cloth that had covered the body; we see a folded napkin that
had covered the head. And if we look closely enough, do you know
what else we see? If we look very closely, over in the corner we
see a stack of “I can’ts!” Languishing, awaiting their fate, to
be doomed and sealed forever in that grave. Honor God by burying
and leaving your “I can’ts” in the grave of Christ. What is that
one “I can’t” that you need to leave behind you? What is that one
I can’t? I can’t forgive him. I know you can’t but, with
Christ you can! I can’t resist the temptation. I know it is
hard but with Christ you can. I can’t face the fears of
tomorrow? I know, but with Christ you can. With Christ you
can and you say what the apostle Paul said, “I can do all things,
through Christ because He gives me strength.” (Phil 4:13) Why
don’t you do with your “I can’ts” what a fourth grade class here in
Michigan did with theirs.
Chick Moorman tells this story about a Michigan
fourth grade teacher by the name of Donna. He was impressed with
her when he met her at a seminar and asked if he might come and visit
her fourth grade class. She said yes, and one day he showed up,
unexpectedly and walked into the class. He did not want to
interrupt anything so he just stood in the back of the class. He
noticed that all the class, all 30 of them, were making a list.
And he went and looked over the shoulder of one of the boys and read
what the boy was writing: All the things the boy was writing was
prefaced by the words ”I can’t.”
I can’t hit the soccer ball into the net.
I can’t do division with more than three numbers.
I can’t get Debbie to like me.
He looked at another boy’s paper and read:
I can’t do ten push-ups.
I can’t hit a home run.
I can’t eat only one cookie.
And
Moorman was concerned. What a negative class, he thought.
And he went up to the front to say something to the teacher and she was
busy writing a list too. On her paper, he read:
I can’t get Johnnie’s mother to come to a parent-teacher meeting.
I can’t get my daughter to fill the car with gas.
I can’t get Alan to use words instead of fists.
Puzzled, he went back to his seat. Finally,
the teacher stood up. She asked if all the students were
finished. They said they were. And she invited them to fold
their paper and bring it to the front where she had a box waiting on
the desk. She instructed them to place the papers in the
box. She put her paper on top of theirs and then put a lid on top
of the box. Then she invited all the kids to follow her and she
stepped out into the hallway, walked to the custodian’s office and she
grabbed a shovel and went out onto the play ground: the far corner of
the play ground! And she began to dig and she invited the
students to help her. And one by one they each turned a spade of
dirt, until they had a hole three feet deep. Then they placed
that box of “I can’ts” down deep in that hole and began to cover
it. And when it was covered she had all the students stand around
in a big circle and delivered this eulogy for the “I can’ts.”
Friends she said, we gather in honor of the
memory of “I can’t.” While he was with us on earth, he touched
the lives of everyone: some more than others. His name,
unfortunately, has been spoken in every building, in schools, city
halls, state capitals, yes, even the white house. We have
provided ‘I can’t” with his final resting place, though, today.
He is survived by his brothers and sisters: I can, I will and I’m going
to right away! Now they are not as well known as their famous
relative and certainly not as powerful, yet! Perhaps one day,
with your help maybe they will make an even bigger mark on the
world. May “I can’t’ rest in peace and may everyone here pick up
there life and move forward in his absence. Amen. Then she
brought the kids back into the class and they had a party with popcorn,
punch and cookies.
Let us do the
same! I don’t know about the popcorn, punch and cookies but I
think we can bury our “I can’ts,” don’t you? We can leave them in
the grave. Do you know that the Bible says (1 Cor 6:
14NIV& Eph 1:19) “That God’s power is very great for those
that believe? Look at this: “and he will raise us also” “With God
all things are possible” (Matt 19:26) when you ask Him for help with
our “I can’ts.”
How do
you face your Fridays? Well, you say, God, “I can’t” do it alone,
would You help me so I can lift up my gaze and look more into
heaven. How do you face the silent Saturdays? You say God
“I can’t” do it alone, would You give me Your patience. And how
do you celebrate on Sundays? You celebrate on Sunday because you
left all of your “I can’ts” in the grave of Christ. And you
celebrate because you have found the peace of God. Phil 4: 7 says
“the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts
and minds through Christ Jesus. Your struggle-free weekend can begin with a simple prayer: just like this one.
Dear God, without you “I can’t” solve my problems;
remove my sins; or go to heaven. But with You I can and I ask you
to help me, to cleanse me from sin and save me. I thank you for
what you have begun in my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Would you like to pray that prayer out loud with me? Follow my lead.
Benediction:
Rom
15:5-6 NIV May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give
you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so
that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of or
Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Desire of Ages pg 692-6932 Desire of Ages pg 7003 Desire of Ages pg 7694 Desire of Ages pg 774
Special thanks and appreciation to the works of Max Lucado