I don't have time to write in this blog. But I have decided that it is one of those little disciplines in life that are good for me. So Here I Am Lord.

There are lots of changes going on in my world. We just hired two new people that I am responsible for overseeing. I am one of 5 pastors who have had a vision that we are praying about, laying out a fleece to see if it's God's idea or ours. My youngest child (and this time he really IS IT) is now officially a senior in high school, and the changes that brings are already making me feel wistful and a bit sad. But I'm the one who rallies around the cry "Change is good!" But it's also not the easiest route to travel.

I thought I'd also start posting my sermon manuscripts here from time to time, although that makes me a bit nervous. Mostly because what I write is often not what I end up saying. But, for what it's worth, I'm posting it here. Let me give credit to Andy Stanley and his book "The Principle of the Path" here before I post it. I've been using it for this month of Sundays as the basis for the sermon series. Usually I credit him in the sermon, but since this is number 4 of 5 I didn't this week. My bad. Here it is:

The Heart of the Matter Jer 17:9-10; Jn 8:31-32
Rev. Suzi Goldt August 15, 2010

The Principle of the Path:
“Direction, not intention, determines destination”

Let’s be honest. Most of us are bright enough to know that this principle is indisputable. We might not always SEE what’s at the end of the path, but when we look backward we can usually, if we’re truthful, see exactly how we got to where we are today. We can look back at the financial decisions we’ve made, the life-style decisions we’ve made, the relationship decisions we’ve made and say “Yep – that’s where everything came together for me.” Or “Darn – I really wish someone would have told me that I’d end up here; I would have gone a different direction.” And sometimes we look back and see that we were forced on to a detour that we didn’t want to take: the loss of a job; the death of a spouse; the downturn of the economy. Things like these are just like the big “DETOUR” signs around my neighborhood right now as they rebuild the Overland Parkway, otherwise known as 69 Highway or to really long-timers, the Switzer Bypass. There is no choice. I cannot get on where I normally do, and it usually adds a few minutes to any destination I’m heading for.

We’re all reasonably smart people with pretty good brains and lots of common sense. But we’ve all made decisions that we knew were NOT going to take us where we wanted to go from the minute we made them. Our intelligence didn’t stop us. For example, how many of us have taken on a payment for something that we just HAD to have, something like a new TV, a new car, a new kitchen, a time-share at the lake… I’ll bet each and every one in this room has, at some time, justified some action that really wasn’t totally justifiable. Sure, we might have been able to afford it. But we didn’t have any real NEED for it; we just WANTED it.

Take Chuck for instance. His wife had a perfectly good SUV. Chuck took it down and traded it in for a new one. The reason he TOLD himself that he bought it was “I got it because the other one was eating us alive with poor gas mileage. This one is more fuel efficient.” Give me a break. NOBODY buys an SUV if the real reason is fuel efficiency. The best SUV couldn’t possibly be as fuel efficient as a smaller car. But that was the reason that helped justify the purchase for Chuck. If he’d been honest, he probably would have said “The reason I bought it is because the new one looks better, smells better, has a Bluetooth and some smokin’ hot twenty-inch wheels.”

Now I don’t mean to pick on car purchases. We can do this with just about anything. We all know that we have.

The question is: Why do we do that?

We talked about making wise, prudent decisions last week. And we all know that the wise decision will take us down the path of ultimate happiness. But here’s the rub. Our IMMEDIATE HAPPINESS isn’t always stroked when we’re prudent. We are constantly on the prowl for that buzz of happiness that happens right NOW. We tell ourselves we should be happy that we take our money and put it into a savings account for a rainy day. But when we just saw that shiny new THING, that we had to have, like an18 foot bass fishing boat with 100% unsinkable level flotation, lifetime structural hull warranty, pro seat with power pole, and Teleflex sea star hydraulic steering,

or that beautiful solid oak dining set including a 10 foot extendable table with 8 chairs and a china hutch with two wood-framed, beveled glass doors, 3 adjustable glass shelves and halogen lights,

WE’RE NOT ALL THAT HAPPY!


And we should think: “I’ve got that money that I’ve been saving for future house repairs. Won’t it be wonderful to have the money to pay for a new roof when it starts to leak? That will make me happy.”

Of COURSE we don’t think that.

We think “I’d be very happy if I had that boat. It’s the coolest boat I’ve ever seen.” And then we start in with the justification. “I’d probably catch more fish in that boat because it would take me out farther into the lake and it would be more comfortable so I’d fish longer. And if I caught more fish we could eat them and we’d save money on our grocery bill. And I can take my grandchildren fishing with me and we’ll have a wonderful time.” (That excuse works even if that the grandchild isn’t even conceived yet.)

Or

“That dining set is JUST what I’ve been looking for. It is so beautiful.” And the justification stage kicks in “I can host all kinds of family dinners; we’ll really bond as a family around the table. The china hutch will hold my grandmothers china and my children will be enriched by the heritage of the stories that I’ll tell them about my grandmother.”

You get the point.

In the Message version of the writings of the prophet Jeremiah we read:
9-10"The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart
and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human.
I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are,
not as they pretend to be." Jeremiah 17:9-10 (the Message)
We lie to ourselves every day so that we can have what we want when we want it.

We don’t NEED the Starbucks coffee. We can brew coffee at home whenever we want for a lot less; even if we can’t bring ourselves to do that we can buy it at McDonalds. But we LIKE Starbucks better, and it makes us happy; so we buy it. Maybe we justify the $20 or $30 we spend a week on coffee by saying “It’s my one little luxury that I allow myself to have.” There’s nothing wrong with that. Let’s just be honest though; it’s not the ONLY luxury we have. Our entire lives are more luxurious than most of the rest of the world.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting what we want; but the only way to coolly examine our wants and recognize them as wants instead of needs is to be HONEST with ourselves. We are so used to justification that we automatically jump to those thoughts in order to make our wants OK. We can’t live wise, prudent lives on paths that lead to our ultimate destination if we’re not sure where we are right now. That’s why we’ve got to be honest with ourselves.

We might decide to go ahead and be unwise. We might know that a particular decision is going to take us down a path that will eventually lead us to a dead end, or even a destructive end. Prudent, wise people wouldn’t go there and we know it. But today we say “I’m going into the jungle knowing it’s full of poisonous snakes and deadly spiders. But that’s what I want to do and I’m going to do it.” No justification, just honesty.

At one point early in my ministry I counseled a couple who was planning their wedding. They had been living together for seven years, and now they were going to be married. The length of time they had been together was significant in itself because many marriages start to travel on some bumpy roads at the seven year mark. Their relationship was beyond bumpy. They didn’t agree on anything. They didn’t like each others habits. They didn’t agree on religion. They had completely different styles of money management. They didn’t agree on how their children should be raised. (Thankfully they didn’t have any at the time.) One of them dominated the other one and the one being dominated resented it terribly. So after three counseling sessions I asked them, “Why do you want to get married to each other?”

And she said, “Because I love him.
And he said, “Because I love her.”

If love had ever existed in that relationship, it was hard to find evidence of it now. They could not come up with any concrete answers to the question. I advised them together and separately to seriously consider breaking up, living apart and taking some time as individuals to find out what they really wanted from a mate.

I’d love to tell you that they didn’t get married. They did. And I performed the ceremony, justifying it by saying “Well they’d just go get someone else to do it so I guess I might as well.”

And they justified it by saying “When we get married everything will be different.”

All three of us were wrong.

Jesus, in the gospel of John says this:
"If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:31-32 (TNIV)
Only when we tell the truth to ourselves can we be free to follow the wise path and avoid destruction.

In every area of my life I have learned that if I have to think of a justification for what I am about to do, then I need to think hard about whether I should be doing it at all.

That doesn’t mean that blind decisions made hastily are the way to stay on the path either. We can’t rush into a decision without thinking and assume that it’s going to take us where we want to go. We could get lucky, but the odds are against us.

But most decisions aren’t made blindly. And usually we have plenty of information and insight and can SEE that a particular path is likely to lead us in the wrong direction. The problem is we deceive ourselves; we refuse to be honest with ourselves so we can justify our ability to do things that make us happy in the moment, even though they are more than likely to make us miserable in the long term.

Our society often lives by the adage “Trust your heart.” But Jeremiah had it right. The heart, that part of us that is looking for immediate happiness, lies to us. The only way we can work around it is to KNOW that it lies. To be honest with ourselves about our ability to deceive ourselves. We can’t trust it, because it’s like a two-year-old. It’s that part of us that does not want to see that a stove is hot and that if you pull the dog’s tail it will bite. Your two-year-old self will find a way to convince your adult, wise, prudent self that eating that pastry today won’t kill you; that hanging around the cute girl in the office won’t lead to infidelity; that going into debt that you can’t afford won’t ruin you.

The truth is liberating, but it can be terrifying and maddening. Whenever we’re about to make a decision that could end in an undesired destination, let’s fill in the blank. Say “The real reason I ……..”

The real reason I don’t invite people to my home is….
The real reason I don’t call my kids is…..
The real reason I don’t call my parents is….
The real reason I drink so much is….
The real reason I don’t go to church is…..
The truth will set us free to follow the path that takes us in the correct direction.

But first it might make you scared. It might make you angry.

But better to be scared and angry now with the truth than to be angry later with the deception.