The Living Room
Dr. Larry Thorson
Mark
35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark,
Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
I John 1:1-4
1 That which was from the beginning, which we have
heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands
have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared;
we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life,
which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we
have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our
fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this
to make our joy complete.
Philippians 3:7-8
7 But whatever
were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8
What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider
them garbage, that I may gain Christ
Today’s New
International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society
Our current sermon series is based on the classic sermon, My Heart
Christ’s Home by Dr. Robert Munger, which describes the human heart as a
home with many rooms. In the first week we saw that becoming a Christian means
inviting Jesus into in your heart to make His home there. Jesus himself put it this
way (Jn. 14:23: "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My
Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” – or as Paul prays in Eph.
3:17: “I pray … that Christ may
dwell in your hearts through faith.”
But Jesus not only wants to make His home in our hearts, but also to
transform us. Munger pictures Jesus going
through each room in our heart and doing His renovating work there.
So far we’ve looked at “the study” – the realm of our minds, and
the dining room – the realm of our desires. Today we come to what Munger using
an older term called “the Drawing Room.
I grew up in a post World War II starter house that didn’t have a
drawing room. It had two bedrooms, one
bath, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room and a one car garage. In the early 1960’s my parents learned about
a concept called the “family room”. All
the new houses had family rooms. So they
added a family room, a bedroom and a half bath.
We felt like we had moved up to the big leagues.
I learned quickly that the primary purpose of the family room was
to house the television. The purpose of
the old living room was to house the old pastor when he came looking for our
annual pledge. When my parents’ friends
came over the women sat in the living room because my mom didn’t like the
television interrupting their visit. The
men drank beer in the family room while watching professional wrestling.
In my present house the living room has two couches and a comfortable
chair. There is no television in our
living room, no game consoles, no stereo system – nothing to distract people from
what the room is meant to encourage – engaging others in conversation.
Unfortunately I realized just recently that really only one member
of the family actually uses the room on a regular basis. With long legs, long black hair, our collie pushes
the sofa pillows on the floor so he can stretch out better on our finest
furniture. His human mother and I are
not happy with that arrangement and he knows it. It’s the price he demands for our security
system.
In My Heart Christ’s Home, Dr. Munger sees the drawing room
or the living room as it’s now more commonly called as representing our
devotional life with Jesus – the time we spend with Him. When we become a
Christian we begin a relationship with Jesus – and everyday He comes to the
living room to spend time with us. For those times He doesn’t come to watch tv
with us. He’s not drinking beer and
watching professional wrestling. This is
the time when he wants to have conversation with us. But there are always hindrances to those
conversations. If we want to grow in our
conversational life with Jesus, it starts by recognizing hindrances to
conversations with God.
One of the big hindrances to having conversations with God is lack
of comfort. What do I say? What do I do?
Whatever is uncomfortable to us we’ll tend to not do it very often.
Conversation can be a little scary, and speaking for men, especially
for men, and especially for some men.
Why do you think guys almost always want to take their date to a
movie? Face to face conversation is
scary. What if I say something stupid
and I offend the other person? What if I
get bored and can’t think of anything to say?
(Thank the Lord for professional wrestling!)
So it’s no surprise that a
lot of people have a difficult time with the living room. I never understood why whenever my family visited
people’s homes as I was growing up, that we never went into the living room but
sat in the family room with the television on.
Then when I became a minister I would only be invited to sit in living
rooms where no tv’s were found. I suppose
they think when the minister comes it’s going to be an uncomfortable time
anyway so why try to relax. Lack of
comfort with conversations is a big hindrance to spending time in the living
room.
Busyness is also a
hindrance to regular conversations with God.
As Dr. Munger observes in his sermon: “… under the pressure of many responsibilities, little by little this
time began to be shortened…. Somehow I assumed I was just too busy to give
special, regular time to be with Christ.” Its true there’s always something more to
do. Every time I move even an inch there
seems to be at least five inches of space to clean as a consequence. Even my 90 year old mother says she’s so busy
everyday.
Besides being busy there’s also the world’s allure. Let’s face it, there’s a lot in our world that’s alluring. If find the morning newspaper to be alluring. It used to be bad enough when we’d have a
newspaper delivered to our house. I’d be
so excited to go out and get it. Now I
read the news on the computer which is even more alluring. Not only do I have the LA Times which I used
to subscribe to but I also have the Press Enterprise online, my hometown San
Jose Mercury News not to mention Yahoo News.
It’s all so fascinating. For the kids in our youth group My Space on
cell phones is their big allure even being addicting. It’s all part of the world’s allure and it’s a
hindrance to living room time with Jesus.
Another hindrance to living room time with God is what I call “life’s momentum.” As we go through life, we never really get
into the habit of spending time with God. And so while we know such time is
important, because we aren’t doing it, we continue not doing it –not because we
don’t want to, but just because we don’t get around to it and we aren’t used to
doing it.
Once you recognize what hindrances to conversations with God you
have, the next thing to improve our devotional life is to renew our vision of God. If we could truly see who God is and what He
is like, then we wouldn’t be able to tear ourselves away from time with Him.
Listen to how one eyewitness, John, describes how he was able to
see how God is in I John 1:1: That
which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our
eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched this we proclaim
concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to
it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared
to us.
John was a first hand witness who heard Jesus, walked with Him,
ate with Him, listened to Him – touched Him with his own hands. Here is the
greatest truth in human history - God has made Himself known through the real
flesh and blood person of Jesus Christ. God, John says, is not distant and uninvolved!
To think this eternal God desires a relationship with
each one of us.
Allow those words to sink in for a moment. The God who was
before
everything, who has made everything, wants to be in a
relationship
with you. God wants to know you. “Our
fellowship,”
writes John, “is
with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.”
This word “fellowship”
implies not a casual or impersonal
relationship,
but the most intimate knowing and caring for one
another
imaginable.
In Philippians 3 Paul describes this relationship in this way:
What is more, I consider everything a loss
compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose
sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ
This word “knowing” can be an extremely intimate word – it
means not just
intellectual knowledge, but a deep relational
connectedness.
You see, God made us for fellowship with Himself
– to know Him
– and until we begin such a relationship with Him,
we can never
become who we were created to be.
What is perhaps even more mind blowing about this
relationship
with God is that it is not just for our benefit – but for God’s! Your relationship with God – my relationship
with God –
brings Him joy! He likes being with us! You know
how with some
people, you just like being around them? They
bring you joy,
you feel good around them? Well what the
Scripture
indicates is that this is how God feels about time with
you! It brings
Him delight! That’s why He wants to spend time
with you.
Munger has Jesus saying it this way: “The trouble is that you have been thinking of the quiet time, of Bible
study and prayer, as a means for your own spiritual growth. This is true, but
you have forgotten that this time means something to me also. Remember, I love
you. At great cost I have redeemed you. I value your fellowship. Just to have you
look up into my face warms my heart. Don’t neglect this hour if only for my
sake. Whether or not you want to be with me, remember I want to be with you. I
really love you!”
We begin by recognizing the hindrances and then see God
for who He
really is – as the eternal one who has come in Christ
and wants a personal
relationship with each of us. When we do
this – we recognize the importance of
time with God for us and we recognize how it helps us.
Now there are lots of ways it helps us, but here are just three.
First, spending time with God helps us to re-center our lives.
When I was growing up, my neighborhood elementary school had one of those
spinning playground merry-go-rounds – the kind that you can spin and make it go
really fast. The further you go to the outside of the merry go round, the more
the force of spinning affects you … I remember as a kid getting to the point
where it felt like it would have been easy to have been thrown off. That’s what
our lives can feel like. It’s as if we’re
barely holding on because life is spinning so fast.
But the closer you go to the center of the merry-go-round, the
less the force of the spinning affects you – in fact, theoretically, if you
could get to the very center, there would be no affect from the violent
spinning at all. The center – God’s quiet presence – is the resting place for God’s
hyperactive servants.
Time with God helps get us refocused. It allows God to help us take our eyes off the
things of this world that are so alluring, and onto the things of God. It
allows God to remind us of what we already know that it is not money, not
recreation, not success, or anything else that fulfills us – but knowing and
serving God.
And then it also does this – helps us get re-energized. It is easy in this
world to get worn down – to get tired from all that we have to deal with in it.
Time with God gets us in touch with the Spirit who can empower us to live in
this world the way God desires – give us everything we need to be the people
God is calling us to be.
Here’s what we need to do … we need to reprioritize our time to include God because
the only way to build a relationship is by spending time together. Think about it, if you want to grow your
relationship with your children, you’ve got to spend regular time with them. If
I want to grow my relationship with my wife, I’ve got to spend regular time
with her. And so it is with the most important relationship in our lives – our relationship
with God. If we don’t reprioritize our lives to include time with God, we are
by the very definition of “relationship” not really in an active relationship.
Now there are lots of ways we can do this. Some people have a
special chair in their office. Others have
a special place
which looks
out over an area where they go in the morning and meet Jesus as they read the
Scripture and pray. There are some who
are not good sitters, so they go on a prayer walk, and read a daily devotional. But here’s the thing – make it regular – so
that it becomes a habit – something we regularly make space for in our lives.
Now a second way we spend time with God is this way: by
spending some weekly community time with Jesus. In other
words, we make
weekly worship with God’s people a priority.
The Bible
structures all of life around a cycle of setting one day in seven aside for
rest and for the community of faith to gather for worship. That, in part, was
what the Sabbath was all about. Why is it such a big deal? Why do we take time
out of our lives to do something we are supposed to do all the time anyway? Why
can’t we just worship God by ourselves?
We gather weekly for worship because there is something we experience
together with others that we don’t experience when we worship alone. Now there
is a lot you do alone. You can praise God in song by yourself. You can learn
from a book or from a recording. You can pray alone. But there is one thing you
can’t
experience
alone that can experience when you gather with other
Christians –
Jesus in other believers!
What Dr. Munger is trying to help us see today is the need for us
to make it a regular habit of spending a focused time with God. My prayer today for all of us is this: That
God would use
what we’ve
heard today to help each of us begin to make our
relationships
with Jesus the priority it needs to be, by helping us
recognize the
hindrances that keep us from Him, by seeing again
how much God
wants this relationship, by seeing how important it
is in our
lives, and by reprioritizing our time so that we can have
time with Him. Let’s talk to Him about it right now. Amen.