今天我重溫HOP講道：
You Can Have a Fantastic Future! Written By Jim Penner Jan/02/2011
So, the question is: Do you believe that you can have a fantastic future? Whatever your walk of life, no matter how old you are, whether you've got fifty years left on this planet or five days, do you believe that you can have a fantastic future? It's a very important question for us to ask.
A couple of weeks ago I was watching TV - sitting on the couch, being a couch potato - and this commercial comes on for a Wall Street investment firm. You've seen ads like this, geared at people who are supposed to be saving for retirement. The point of the first twenty-five seconds of this commercial is that, if you save your money with us and you stay the course with us, your financial life will be peaches and cream when you retire. During the last five seconds of the ad, they hit you with some words that are really interesting: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."
And I go, "Man, that's a downer. They just told me my financial future was peaches and cream and now they tell me, if I stick with them, I may lose my shirt. So which message am I supposed to believe?"
I kept thinking about that phrase. It continued to bother me through the next couple of commercials that came on. I kept thinking, "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." Then I did something interesting. I took out my possibility thinking cap. You all have one of those, right? It may be in your closet, it may have a little dust on it because of the economy, but I know you have a possibility thinking cap somewhere in your closet. Now take that thing out for a second and dust it off, shake it off, put it on, and think about that statement one more time: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." A possibility thinker would say, just because you've had a setback in life, that does not guarantee future failure in your life. Correct? Past failure in marriage is no guarantee of future failure in marriage. Past failure in business is no guarantee of future failure in business. Past family struggles are no guarantee of future family struggles. Past failure in your job or in a job search is no guarantee of failure in a future job or job search, right?
Now some of you are thinking, "Man, my possibility thinking cap was dustier than I thought it was. Those are some hard things to think about." So, shake that thing off a little bit, because all of us want a fantastic future.
This morning, our scripture reading was from the ultimate prescription book of the Bible for possibility thinking for a fantastic future. There are only four chapters in this book of the Bible. It's the book of Philippians. Only four chapters. Do yourself a favor when you leave today. Make yourself a promise that you're going to read Philippians cover to cover. It's four chapters. It'll take you, if you're a quick reader, fifteen minutes. If you take a while to read, it'll take you half an hour. But don't just do it in one day. Take this book of the Bible, Philippians, and read it every day this week for as many days of the week as you can. This book is so chockfull of encouragement for your life, no matter what you're going through, it will literally alter your attitude, your faith, and your mindset. You cannot walk away the same person after reading the book of Philippians. So pull out Philippians this week and read it.
So, who wants a fantastic future? If you said, "Yes," I've got four points for you. Get ready - the first one's going to sting a little bit.
POINT NUMBER ONE is you need to CHECK YOUR ATTITUDE AT THE DOOR. The verse that goes with that from Philippians is chapter two, verse fourteen: "Do all things without complaining and disputing that you may become blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you will shine as lights in the world."
"Do all things without complaining or disputing." I think the apostle Paul lived in exactly the same world that we live in today because everybody I know has a PhD in complaining and disputing, including yours truly.
I'm very good at complaining and disputing. Not that long ago, I was driving in the car with my youngest daughter; she's a senior in high school. Suddenly, some guy comes racing along the freeway, cuts across four lanes of traffic in front of me, and heads to the exit ramp. I turned to my daughter and said, "Paige, that's not just an idiot, that's a world-class idiot." Now, you've probably said the same or a similar thing in the heat of the moment. And the minute it came out of my mouth, I thought what a great example I am of Philippians: "Do all things without complaining and disputing." So what do we do? How do we get away from responding like this?
You know, it's interesting. I read a story not too long ago, and some of you may have read this story. The story is called "Ice Cream is Good for the Soul." It absolutely spoke to me. To summarize the story:
A father took his kids to a restaurant and his youngest son, probably six years old boy, said, "Daddy, can I say the prayer?"
And father said, "Sure."
So, they bowed their heads and the little boy said, "God is great, God is good, God we thank You for our food. And God, I'd thank You even more if Dad gets us ice cream for dessert, and liberty and justice for all. Amen."
People in the restaurant chuckled all around them. Then a woman a couple of tables away said, "That's the problem with society today. Children just don't know how to pray. I can't believe he prayed that prayer for ice cream. Well, I never."
When the little boy heard the woman's criticism, he started crying, climbed into his dad's arms, and said, "Dad, did I do it wrong? Is God mad at me?"
The father replied, "No, son, you're fine. God's not mad at you."
Just then, an elderly man walked over, put his hand on the little boy, crouched next to him, and said, "Son, I happen to know on good authority that God is not mad at you. He thought that was a wonderful prayer. Ice cream is sometimes good for the soul."
The little boy dried his tears as the elderly man walked away, and the family went on with their meal. When the server asked about dessert, the father ordered his kids ice cream. When it came, each serving was one of those three-scoop hot fudge sundaes with whipped cream piled high. And the little boy looked at that sundae, but he didn't start eating it. Instead, he picked it up, walked it over to the woman who had made the critical comment, put the sundae in front of her, and said, "Here, this is for you. Ice cream is sometimes good for the soul and my soul's already good."
Oh, I love that story!
So, how in the world are we supposed to go through life without complaining and disputing? Is it even possible to go through life without complaining or disputing? Well, the prescription for that is also right here in Philippians. It is possible to live a life free of complaining. It's right here in Philippians 2:13: "For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." Whoa. It is God working in you and working in me for His will to happen. So, if you live a life of complaining, or you tend to complain, or complaining comes easy, think of a couple of words. Though it's become a cliché, a lot of people have used it, and it's been around a long time, these words are helpful. You ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?" What happens when you ask, "What would Jesus do?" God actually works in you - things change.
You can have a fantastic future if you check your attitude at the door and have your thinking become Christ-centered thinking. That's how you can do it.
POINT NUMBER TWO: Be willing to ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES AND WORK HARD AND LIVE FOR SOMEONE OTHER THAN YOURSELF. There are two parts to that.
Part One: Be willing to roll up your sleeves. You're not going to succeed in life sitting on the couch doing nothing. It's not going to happen. You've got to be willing to do something - physical labor, brainpower, whatever gift God has given you. God's given you the ability to do something.
You need to be wiling to roll up your sleeves and, Part Two, be willing to live for someone other than yourself. This is from Philippians two, verses three and four: "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself." Let each of you look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others. I love that. This verse tells us to look out for our own interests. We have permission to do that. We have permission to work hard, to set goals, and do great things. But it also says to, equally, look out for the interest of others.
So, since you have permission to work hard, absolutely set a goal, absolutely pursue your dream, and absolutely dream impossible dreams. But as you do that, also look out for the interests of others.
A great example of that kind of living is Coach John Wooden. Greatest coach in history, college or pro. This man won ten NCAA tournaments in a row at UCLA. An amazing man of God. But what was going on inside the mind of this man of God, John Wooden? John Wooden made his success by making other people successful. John Wooden built other people up to their success, which made him successful. An amazing story. Let's get inside the mind of John Wooden.
There are six of his quotes I want you to hear:
"Consider the rights of others before your own feelings and the feelings of others before your own rights."
"A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment."
"Talent is God given; be humble. Fame is man given; be grateful. Conceit is self-given; be careful."
"You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
And the final one is: "Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord because He knows what we really are and that's all that matters."
So, you can have a fantastic future if you 1) check your attitude at the door and make your thinking Christ thinking, and 2) roll up your sleeves and work hard, but work hard, equally, for somebody else's behalf.
POINT NUMBER THREE in our journey to a fantastic future: DON'T BE AFRAID OF FAILURE. Are you afraid of failure? Everybody on some level is afraid of failure. You may not be afraid of failure at business, but you are in relationships or friendships. You may be afraid of failure in money. There's something that may be causing failure in your life today. You're afraid to fail at something.
The prescription for the fear of failure is Philippians 3, verse 13, and that says, "Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press towards the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Forgetting - many of us have a PhD in forgetting everything except negative things. Right? We forget names, we forget addresses, but we will never ever forget the terrible thing we did last year or the terrible thing somebody did to us. We are terrible at forgetting. And this Bible verse says, "Forgetting those things which are behind."
When I was in my college years, I went through the agony of watching my father lose his business. He was a contractor in Colorado, and very successful in his earlier years. He had built the original stadium where the NFL Denver Broncos played. He built shopping centers, he built bottling plants for Pepsi Cola, he was very successful. I watched him downsize his company in the early eighties when the economy was terrible in Denver - jobs were hard to come by, and one of his senior managers embezzled a lot of money from him, which weakened him even further. However, it was interesting that during that whole time, whenever a student from a Christian college came home during the summer and needed a job, Dad always gave him a job. Couldn't pay himself, but he always gave that college student a job just to earn a living. And I've never forgotten that.
Eventually he folded his company and took a job out here in California. I would not be in California if my dad had not moved here. If his company had stayed successful, I would have gone into the family business. I was going to college in Denver, working toward a dual degree in finance and real estate. I was learning a lot about real estate, construction, and business. Having worked for him since I was fourteen years old on construction sites, I would never have moved to California if his business hadn't failed.
So, he moved us to California. And then, it was interesting. A couple of years after I married my wife Gretchen, Mom and Dad were driving on a California highway not saying a word to each other. A long, quiet time passed and Mom knew that Dad was deep in thought. This happened to be just two weeks before he passed away in 1994. Oh, I get choked up. But, anyway, Mom told me a few years ago, "You know on that drive, your dad said to me, 'So let me get this straight. I lost my company and closed it down so we could move to California, so Jim could marry Gretchen, so we could have two new granddaughters, and we could be introduced to the Crystal Cathedral, and we could join this great congregation.'"
And my mom says, "Yep, that's pretty much it."
And Dad said, "I'm okay with that. God is good. God had something better in mind for me than I had planned for myself.'"
That, my friends, is Philippians 3:13: "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching towards those things which are ahead, I press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
So where are we? We've got four points total to cover. The first three are 1) check your attitude at the door and let your thinking become Christ's thinking, then 2) be willing to roll up your sleeves and work hard for somebody else, and 3) don't be afraid of failure. God always has something in mind that's better for you then you have for yourself.
POINT NUMBER FOUR is GLORIFY GOD IN ALL THINGS. Philippians 4, verse 4: "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice." Wow! Rejoice in the Lord sometimes? Nope. Rejoice in the Lord, when? Rejoice in the Lord always.
There are many difficult times that we go through, but the Bible doesn't make disclaimers. That's what's interesting. Rejoice in the Lord except if you have cancer? Rejoice in the Lord except if you have heart disease or you're lying in a hospital bed? All I see is: "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice." He didn't say it once, but twice, and this is written by a man, Paul, who was sitting in prison chained to a guard. Think of a dirty, filthy Roman prison two thousand years ago, and Paul is writing the words: "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice." If he can do it, I can do it.
So what you need to do is sit or kneel down somewhere and start saying, "'Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice.' Lord, thank You for this circumstance. Lord, thank You for this trauma. Lord, thank You that my bank account is empty because You're teaching me something. Lord, thank You that You're going to bless me tomorrow because You promised me blessings." Whatever you're going through, it doesn't matter. Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.
So, you CAN have a fantastic future, and guess what? It's your choice. You can choose to check your attitude at the door and have your thinking become Christ-centered thinking. You can choose to roll up your sleeves and work hard for somebody else. You can choose not to be afraid of failure. And you can choose to glorify God in all things.
Now, how can you do that? That's a tall order. You may walk out and say, "Man Jim, that's tough."
I encourage you that you can do it because there's a promise right here in Philippians 4:13, and it says, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength." That doesn't say I can do SOME things; it says I can do ALL things. Repeat it with me: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Do yourself a favor this week. Take this book of Philippians - it's four chapters long, a very short book in the Bible - and read it. It will change your life.
Let's pray: Heavenly Father, we do have a fantastic future thanks to Your guiding hand. The best future is in Your loving embrace. And for someone listening (or reading) right now who does not know Christ, simply say "yes" today. Yes, I believe in You, Jesus, as my personal Savior. I believe You died for me, for my sin. Forgive me, Lord, for what I've done. I invite You, Jesus, to be Lord of my life. Take my life today and make it new, holy, and acceptable to You. Lord, let us go out today with our possibility thinking caps on knowing that we can do all things through You who gives us strength. Hallelujah. Amen.
© 2011 Crystal Cathedral Ministries. This message was delivered by Jim Penner from the pulpit of the Crystal Cathedral and aired on the Hour of Power January 2, 2010.
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更新於：2013Sep10, 23:31
