Time to Be Still

Thank you, my name is Mark, one of the pastors here and you know on the heels of Valerie's question about what your favorite Winter Olympic sport is. Anyone seen the slope style competition where the snowboarders do those incredible jumps and they flip like, I don't know how many times, it's like not human, it looks like a video game or something like that. And of course it doesn't you know have the pageantry of ice skating but I still find it pretty impressive nonetheless so it's pretty cool but glad that you are with us here this morning and we are in a series called Still and our theme verse for this passage Psalm 46:10 you saw it just a few moments ago but since this is our theme verse we're trying to make this a reality in our lives.

Let's read this together, let me hear you read this. Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am God. I have to think that this is a concept that appeals to a lot of us. I mean who wouldn't want to just be still. I mean even that image we keep showing of Lake Tahoe, I mean hand me a chair I'd love to just sit up next to that and have a moment to catch my breath and so here's the thing we can be attracted to something, we can be convinced that it's a good thing and yet the struggle I think for many of us is finding time to be still.

You know what I'm talking about I mean and I have to come clean right out of the gate I struggle with this just as much as anybody else that just this week I was writing this message at home and I get a text from my wife Laura who says oh I forgot to tell you but our son Luke is getting a character trade award at school today in about an hour and here at Twently Church in school every so often they will recognize several students at a time give them award for a particular character quality and my son Luke happened to be one of them this week and you know what my first response was that to that oh man this is not good timing.

I know that's terrible I'm a terrible person because here the school is going to recognize a virtue that I'm trying to instill in my son and it's a proud moment before his teacher and his peers and all I can think at first is how this is going to blow a hole in my afternoon and I'm sure you would never have a thought like that it's just I pulled myself together put my precious work away and I'm driving down to the church and now I start daydreaming I wonder if I could time it so that I'm just there for like when he gets the award because those other kids they don't care if I'm there right again I know I'm the only one that ever thinks this way or maybe now I'm going to test you all right here we go two words piano recital you know where I'm going with this right because you get invited to a piano recital for your child grandchild niece nephew someone and you know you want to go to a current they've been working hard on their piano lessons you arrive and you see on the program there's 26 other kids that are going to be performing that day and what do you think if I could only time it to the three four minutes that I actually need to be here as opposed to the two hours that I'm going to hear the train song over and over and over again.

Now it doesn't mean that you're a bad person if you think that way it just means that we are often pressed for time I have to think that many of you your schedule is just maxed out you swing from one event to the next you know you're just you're so busy you're like a rock that skitters over a pond you cover some distance but you never penetrate you never fully present in any one moment so you long for the opportunity to slow down you long to catch your breath to be still and know that he's God but how we allocate our time how we spend it it's a challenge this is really hard in fact get this right now look this up this weekend or the words time management in Amazon in their book section got a hundred and twenty thousand hits hundred and twenty thousand books for sale right now about time management this is an issue for us.

I'm gonna save you a little bit of time and money you don't have to buy any of those books because I'm gonna take it to a book that you probably already have the Bible and we're gonna hear today from someone who has a lot to say on this subject someone you know of his name is Moses and here's why we should listen to Moses today Moses lived 3500 years ago you know his name you probably know quite a bit about his life so I have to think if 3500 years from now people know your name people are talking about things you did hey you're an impressive person we should all just pull up a chair and listen to what you have to say.

The Bible says that Moses lived a hundred and twenty years so you learn a lot over 120 years and he had three major careers three you might have one he had three they all each lasted 40 years 40 years he's a prince in Egypt and Pharaoh's household he's surrounded by wealth power he's got the best education the world can provide he's helping to run one of the superpowers of the day that he kills a guy and then for the next 40 years he's living out in obscurity as a shepherd 40 years but 40 years into that career what happens he encounters God in a burning bush so you still know that 3500 years later God says you're going back to Egypt now he's back on the big stage again he's somebody says God says to Pharaoh you know let me let my people go calls down plagues parks the Red Sea and for 40 years he is the leader of a nation now this guy has a little bit of experience don't you think he's got some wisdom to offer.

So open up your Bibles to Psalm 90 often we associate the Psalms with David but this one was written by Moses and if you don't have your own Bible you can use one of those TLC Pew Bibles or if you're in venue good morning all of you in venue you can find Bibles in the back of the room today and this is an incredible really a motive a meditation on how to really be still he's going to kind of do in action he's going to I think demonstrate for us something that we are trying to achieve in our own life and I want to give credit this morning to a pastor named Andy Stanley I'm borrowing some thoughts from him and I want to acknowledge that also want to say that if you fall asleep this morning and you wonder what happened you can go to our website TLC org and try again this sermon hundreds of others thousands in fact are there you can watch them anytime anywhere and it's all for free.

All right Psalm 90 let's begin it says a prayer of Moses the man of God that's a great title the man of God and not only is this a prayer but it's really a meditation it's going to begin with a meditation on the vastness of God and the smallness the finitude of human beings in comparison follow along as I read starting at verse 1 Lord you have been our dwelling place throughout throughout all generations before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world from everlasting to everlasting you are God you see how he's expanding the lens for us he's going beyond his 120 years beyond all the generations that preceded him before even creation he says Lord before you did any of that you existed in eternity past and after all the course of history in the course of this world runs into an end Lord after that you'll still be there from everlasting to everlasting you are God he's like wow I mean this is big picture this is big as the picture gets.

It continues verses verse 3 you turn people back to dust saying return to dust you mortals that's a great line that's the line only God can say that right return to dust you mortals he's not talking about God blasting people he's just saying from this perspective you and I we go from dust to dust like that that fast verse 4 a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by or like a watch in the night a watch is three sometimes four hours and he said it's for you God it's like a day you're so vast and you know when you're young a year seems like a long time you know that year before you get your driver's license that's a long year or the year before graduation but by the time you hit 50 or middle aged years not so long is it goes by at warp speed and Moses is saying God you are so old thousand years is like a day for you not even a day it's like a couple hours that's how expensive you are.

Continuing with verses five and six yet you sweep away you sweep people away in the sleep of death they are like the new grass of the morning in the morning it springs new but by evening it is dry and withered and he looks for like the smallest insignificant thing he can a little blade of grass and says you know that's that's what we're like in comparison we're born in the morning at the end of the day rolled and creaky it just goes by so fast and you have to be thinking yourself well this is a really encouraging song so glad I came to church today but because Moses has lived longer than us because he's wiser than us he keeps forcing this perspective upon us verse 10 our days may come to 70 years or 80 if our strength endures yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow he's saying you know first of all you think you're old at 70 or 80 I got 40 years on you and the older you get the more troubles you're likely to experience it's just the way it works the more time you're around the more time you have to experience trouble he says man those last 40 years those were my hardest ones I was doing laps out in the wilderness with a bunch of whiners and complainers it was not fun I didn't even get to see the promised land he got a look at it he didn't get to enter it but however the years passed whether they're kind or they're difficult even if you have 120 of them they go by so quickly.

The rest of verse 10 he says for they quickly pass and we fly away if you grow up in church you might recall a hymn sometimes we would sing it on Sunday nights I'll fly away remember that I'll fly away oh glory I'll fly away you can sing with me if when I die hallelujah by and by I'll fly away very nice did you know that was Moses right here 3,500 years later we're singing a song inspired by these words now this next verse probably didn't inspire too many verses it's someone's a little bit of a downer and it's it's also very hard to translate from the Hebrew but it goes like this in it this English translation the NIV they do a pretty good job here says if we only if only we knew the power of your anger your wrath is as great as the fear that is your do kind of an odd sentence right your wrath is as great as the fear that is your do like maybe it's missing a couple words a modifier or an adjective here or there but here's what I think Moses is saying in in this verse and in the perspective that he's been giving us on the expansiveness of God think he's saying this if we could see God as he is we would give him the reverence he is do I want to write that down if we could see God as he is we would give him the reverence he is do because that would just be the reasonable logical response when you start to take in God when you are still enough to do that and you meditate on who he is once you start to get a glimpse of that it's like wow he's God I'm not he's huge I'm small.

Now you might be asking yourself well what does this have to do with you know being still it has everything to to be with being still in fact our theme verse be still and know that I am God be still means let go see striving and know that that I am God one of the reasons that God wants us to do this is because this is how we recalibrate our perspective and without this regular recalibration of our perspective we tend to think that we are the center of the universe that everything actually hinges on us which leads to either arrogance or anxiety because either way I'm thinking I'm the one that's propping all this up one of the reasons that God instituted the Sabbath the day of rest was so that we would have a weekly opportunity to remember he's the one that provides this was so powerful in Moses time when you couldn't just run down to the market you ate what what you gathered what you toiled for and so to take a day off and trust that God would provide trust that he after all is the bread of life this was huge and it flows out of these regular times when we are still enough to have our perspective renew.

But there's more to it than that because if we could see God has as he is we would be more careful with the time we've been given we could see God as he is we would be more careful with the time we've been given and that's really where Moses is bringing us in this meditation he's going to bring us to this point where we realize wow I don't really have a lot of time and so here comes a prayer request out of this meditation verse 12 he says so teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom just this week as I've been meditating on this passage you know I'm reminded you know what I'm not going to have this job forever I'm not going to be in this stage of life forever my family is not going to look the way it does now forever we're in a season and it's a great season for us Laura and I our kids are 9 11 and 13 which is a fun time because they're they're old enough they're they're somewhat independent they don't require constant care but they're young enough they're still kids they still like to hang out with us you know they're not embarrassed to be seen with us yet at least that's what I keep telling myself not so sure with my 13 year old but you know we're only going to have so many regular meals around the kitchen table at least on a daily basis we're only going to have so many lazy Saturday mornings like we had yesterday where we lived in our pajamas for half the day it's a season that will pass quickly.

So Moses says teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom and here's the big picture in this song here this is what I hope you will take away when you think of Psalm 90 you remember it here's the big idea and it's this remembering our time is limited gives us wisdom to know how to spend our limited time remembering our time is limited gives us wisdom to know how to spend our limited time and let me tell you something if you incorporate this into your life if you actually learn how to number your days it will change your life because you will gain a heart of wisdom you will live more wisely than you otherwise would have it's that profound it will actually change your life and I'm going to prove it to you here's the good news you already know how to do this you've already done it if you're married or have been married when you got engaged and then you set the date for your wedding day what did you do you numbered your days right you got busy planning and preparing and making all sorts of decisions and and setting the stage for the wedding day because you knew your days were numbered.

If you've ever been a student you know when you sit down you get the syllabus in class and you realize when those assignments are due what do you do you number your days the clock is ticking especially at finals week you know you only have so many hours and even if you procrastinate like I often did at school the voice of wisdom shouts at you saying you better not go down you better get ready because they're going to give that exam whether you're ready or not see this is so clarifying because the wisdom in this area it's it's not elusive once we number our days our priorities become clear the things that are urgent and important they rise to the surface and so I want to make this really practical okay here's here's the application this is what I hope that we will do in our lives and remind ourselves today tomorrow this week remind yourself every day of your life if you can that my time is limited so I need to limit how I spend my time my time is limited so I need to limit how I spend my time.

You might be thinking well that's pretty obvious mark but would you agree much of the time we don't do this I think there's two obstacles for us making this a regular reality in our life the first one is that it's just human nature to live like we've got all the time in the world right I'm gonna be around forever I can put off till tomorrow whatever I can just kick the can down the road I'll get to that eventually and if that's the way you find your thinking often that you find yourself thinking often then I would encourage you to review the verses that we just read because it's a corrective as an antidote to that type of thinking to meditate on what Moses says here in Psalm 90.

The second reason I think is a little bit more subtle it comes from our culture and it's this I think most of us grow up believing that money is our most precious commodity and if I had more money well then you know I could be in command of my own time I could say you know when I'll be where and what I'll do because I'll be the captain of my own ship that may be true that happens for some people but for a lot of people more money just leads to more stuff and more stuff leads to spending more time taking care of all your stuff right one thing's for sure you can spend money and you can probably go out and earn more you can lose money and you can likely go and earn more but you can't spend time or lose time and get one second back not ever so this is huge this is really what our lives end up amounting to not how much money we have in the bank but how we spent the time that we were given.

Well for the sake again of making this a reality in your life so I want to help us do the math so to speak in the way that Moses is encouraging us to do to to look down the line because here's the thing we will have to do the math someday in our final days it will be inescapable we will look back and we will be aware of how we spent our time and so this song encourages us to get a jump on that and do now do stuff now that we won't be able to go back and do that and to help us in this this area I found a fascinating article by a woman named brawny where brawny is an Australian hospice nurse and she's for many many years cared for patients in she says typically between their third to 12th week of life in other words their last three to twelve weeks of life she's caring for them so she's in a perfect position to hear what people are thinking in and what they're feeling when they know they have run out of time and out of her experiences last year she wrote a book called the top five regrets of the dying top five regrets of the dying I'm going to share with you just the two top regrets and I'm going to start with the second highest one and it goes like this number two I wish I didn't work so hard I wish I didn't work so hard that's not terribly surprising but listen to what she says this came from every male patient that I nursed they missed their children's youth and their partners companionship women also spoke of this regret but as most were from an older generation many of the female patients had not been breadwinners all of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence wow every single one of them wished they hadn't worked so hard.

Now I get it we live in a terribly expensive place to live on this planet it is really hard to make a living but we have to guard ourselves here because we can get so caught up in just the daily grind where I got to keep the pedal to the metal and I got to just keep pushing and pushing and hustling and hustling I got to work late day after day after day I got to prove to the boss that I'm the one that he or she can count on and after a while man if I don't do that I won't make it that's what we tell ourselves but let me humbly ask you to consider have you ever taken a moment to define it what is the it that you're trying to make is it something that's been defined by your culture by your parents your peers your neighbors your upbringing what is the it that you're trying to make because all the men that she surveyed in her book at the end of their life felt like they had spent far too much time for it and it wasn't worth it that's so great.

Now I'm not trying to make you feel guilty I'm not trying to make you feel bad I'm just trying for all of us to get us to think to reflect for a moment in such a way that then maybe we can avoid some regrets that would be otherwise avoidable but once that time passes there's no going back first highest regret the number one regret according to brawny where is this I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me wish I had a life I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself not the one others had expected of me and to be clear she's not talking about they weren't talking about you know shirking their responsibilities or you know chasing after the person that they thought would make them happier than their spouse or following some one impulse after the next they're talking about good God given dreams the dreams that that people had over the course of their life that kept coming back to them but they kept pushing down the road year after year and she says this this is this is really profound this is the most common regret of all when people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made or not made and then she adds this this is worth meditating on right here health brings a freedom very few realize until they no longer have it still have freedom still have a reasonable level of health what's your dream what's the thing that all your life you say someday someday most people that she talked to their number one regret they they didn't honor those dreams.

Yesterday was a funeral for just a lovely man Dudley Jocelyn a longtime member of this church father of one of our pastors Jim Jocelyn from what I could tell Dudley's dream especially over the course of his life was that his family would know and love and follow Jesus and so he just poured himself into that goal in fact the family was surprised it was a video of Dudley talking from beyond the grave so to speak something that was recorded about six months ago he says pretty much everything on my bucket list has been crossed off all I care about is that my family knows Jesus and it gave him so much joy to know that those efforts had not been in vain he it's just a beautiful life had been caught up in a dream that Jesus had given him a dream centered on Jesus you think he came by that dream kind of on the run just skipping from one thing to the next it came in those quiet moments of stillness where the things that matter most became impressed upon his heart.

You realize that most of the things you see in terms of the ministries at Twin Lakes Church started somebody's dream our camp Camp Hamra was a dream of pastors Roy and Ralph Kraft Twin Lakes Christian School were 250 students gather every single day was the dream of pastor Dick Jordan our people's pantry that feeds people every single day or every single week of the year was the dream of one woman in this church Stephanie Knight she moved away 15 years ago but the dream has been carried on by dozens of others and the list just goes on this 2020 vision could just as easily be called our 2020 dream right because we're we're dreaming to accomplish a few things a building here a building in India million pounds of food for second harvest while there's opportunity to do it because here's the thing opportunities don't stay open for forever and once they're gone they're gone once the window closes there's no going back.

Those of you who are young and single maybe your dream is to get married and raise a family that's a wonderful good godly dream I hope that you achieve it someday but someday if you do and you're holding a little one or you're picking up after them you're going to think back to when you were young and single and you're to go man I had so much time on my hands I had a ridiculous amount of time it's a great time of life to pursue your dreams because you're only going to be 20 one time you're only going to be 30 one time you're only going to be 40 like two times and you're going to be 50 forever right right remind yourself as often as you can my time is limited so I need to limit how I spend my time.

Again I want to make I want to help make this very practical for all of us so if you look at the end of your notes here it says where do I need to make some adjustments and this is something that I hope you will not only do now but as you take opportunities to be still because again that's where this all flows from this perspective this sense of priority this heart of wisdom you don't get it on the run you get it in moments of stillness we let God and his greatness and his truth and his beauty and his purposes recalibrate your sense of what matters but where do I need to make adjustments and if you see that first line there's a little happy face with a plus sign that's someone in your life who needs more of your time that's someone you will be glad that you gave them more of your time and so I want you to think about that person and if not now write in a name or initial next to that.

There's a not so happy face with a minus sign this is someone in your life who you are giving too much of your time to now that might have been okay when you were in different circumstance of life a different stage of life but now they are stealing time that should be going somewhere else and if you have a situation like that in your life that is worth pondering because you only have so much time the next line with the clocks plus and minus same idea but with the activities of life what activities do you feel like you should invest more time into is it rest time quiet time family time TV time how many people feel they need more TV okay I just seen if you're still listening alright still with me the last line obviously activities that we could probably curtail a little bit I don't know what yours are I know what mine are it helps when we identify those things that we bring those before the Lord and we say Lord give me the power through your spirit to make these types of adjustments and if you do this if this becomes a reality in your life even before you get to your last three or twelve weeks you will have fewer regrets you will have more blessings because you will have gained a heart of wisdom and who wouldn't want that.

Let me close with one last story and then my time's up this past year going all the way back to spring my son Jack 13 and I started talking about building a skateboard half pipe and if you don't know what one of those are here's a picture of one on screen this photo here it takes a little doing it's not something you build in an afternoon and for both as a blessing and a curse the way my mind works is I'm just an analyzer I will think about things over and over and over again and so I'm immediately I'm going online and I'm researching different building designs and I'm pricing materials and I'm thinking how long this is going to take how much it's going to cost where it's going to go in the yard and all this kind of stuff and I've already burned you know two three weeks just mentally gearing up for this project and I decide that the best thing to do would be to find one that someone no longer wants something that they built and paid for but they want someone to come take it off their hands it'd be a lot cheaper and so I start searching Craig's list and well the month goes by and another month goes by now it's summer and there's family activities and summer stuff and other projects that come up things that need to be fixed and all now summer's gone I check Craig's list ever so often still haven't found the right half pipe and now it's fall kids are back in school and that takes time to gear up for and months go by and around the mid fall Jack isn't saying anything but he's he isn't saying anything if you know what I mean it's not complaining but I think he's giving up I think he's despairing that this whole half pipe thing this was an exciting thing that dad was willing to talk about but it doesn't look like it's ever going to materialize it looks like other things are always going to take precedent.

A few more months go by now it's the last couple days of the year and I find a half pipe up in Boulder Creek that looks like it'd be just right but even then I'm going well it's kind of the holidays and I get a little bit of gentle help from my wife Laura kind of look like this and go up there and make the deal and now this thing weighs I don't know 1500 pounds and it's as big as a house and and so we're gonna take it apart in pieces and I'm calling in favors and friends and Jack's there and we're as we're dismantling this thing the owner really really nice guy every time he comes out to check on our progress he wants to talk about all the times that his three boys had on this half pipe now they're mid teens on up and the half pipe era has come and gone for them they're into cars and whatever else and he knows his boys are quickly becoming men and on the last day we're hauling off the last section and he actually starts to tear up and I can tell that he's replaying all these memories when his boys were younger and they just went back and forth back and forth hour after hour day after day.

I get home and that night I text him because I want to thank him he just was so nice he let me use tools that I'd forgotten and all this kind of stuff I thank him he texts me back he wishes me well and then he says seize the moment dad just those four simple words seize the moment dad and just hit me like a ton of bricks because I thought man for six months or more I've been just dilly-dallying getting distracted by other things and you know by God's grace finally we got the thing installed and we've been skating on it the last couple weeks in fact my son Jack and I have had moments together just the two of us skating on that thing which I really shouldn't be doing at 50 but it's worth it that we wouldn't have had else otherwise moments that maybe he would have just been looking into his iPad or I would have been doing something else someday that half pipe it's gonna go silent again but we will have the moments that we seize that we otherwise wouldn't have had and so that man gave me some really good advice where do you need to seize the moment dad we need to seize the moment mom husband wife grandpa grandma sister brother son daughter friend where do you need to seize the moment Christian how has God been speaking to your heart what's the dream he's laid upon you or for those of you who God has been speaking to you you're not quite a believer yet but Jesus keeps tugging on your heart when will you seize the moment and respond to his voice our time is limited I pray by God's grace you will spend it well.

Let's pray Heavenly Father I thank you for this moment that we can be still in your presence to be reminded that you are God that you have a perspective on life that we so often don't get so caught up in things and busyness we live as if we will always have tomorrow Lord I thank you for the reminder that comes with this day that today is precious and Lord I thank you that one of the greatest things about being a Christian is that Lord you came to not just redeem us to bring us to heaven but to redeem our entire lives that every single thing we do Lord can be something that's meaningful that's something that that is lasting or at least something that is done in gratitude because you have redeemed our lives we are caught up in you and so we thank you Lord for the joy of knowing that but I do pray for all of us here today I pray that specifically whatever thoughts we've had today in the last few minutes that wouldn't just be the end of those thoughts but we would take time to be still and to review these things to meditate upon the time that you've given us and that we would help us to number our days I pray this in Jesus name amen.