Pastor Elwin Ahu
August 22, 2010 - W1034

One Thing

Primetime Series

By Pastor Elwin Ahu

August 21-22, 2010

Welcome to Primetime, we are going to move you from where you are to life at its best.  Today, I would like to start the message with cooking.  I will be cooking seared Ahi Chinese style. Let me prepare the Chinese parsley first, and chop up the ginger.  Then I cook all these together with peanut oil.  So it smells good now.  Oh but did I miss something?  Oh yes, I missed the main ingredient - Ahi!  Okay so now let me sear the Ahi, and then put the Ahi with the rest.  Now the dish is complete and good.

It happens to us a lot in life that we miss the main ingredients too.  Life can be so busy and we become very caught up with the peripherals, but forget about the main ingredient, the most essential thing in our lives.  This way we would miss the point of life and are not living in primetime.  The Bible has a lot of lessons through food and cooking, too.  For example, Jesus taught through feeding 5,000 on the hill side with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, he also taught through the last supper.  And there is another lesson from Luke 10, which we will get into today.

This historical incident took place at Bethany.  Jesus often traveled to Jerusalem through Bethany in the old days.  Martha and Mary lived at Bethany.  Martha knew about Jesus and all the great things He had done, so she wanted to invite Him to her house.  Jesus was known as a great rabbi at that time, and women were not supposed to sit with a rabbi according to their culture. Despite all this, Jesus accepted the invitation so it became a huge event and privilege for Martha.  If you were Martha and a very important and famous person was coming to visit your house, what would you do?  You would serve and prepare the best for this guest, and often times you would want to make sure your house is clean and presentable, so then you would start the big cleaning before the guest arrives.  So did Martha!  She was busy cleaning the house, and made good food to serve the Lord.  But Mary was just sitting in front of Jesus and not helping Martha.  So Martha started complaining to Jesus asking for Mary to help.  Martha was too pre-occupied with the chores, and got upset at Mary, because she was caught up with the peripherals and forgot the main ingredient of that event - Jesus.  Accordingly, the Bible tells us, “But the Lord answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.’ ” (Luke 10:41-42)

Martha was distracted by all the peripherals and missed out on what was the most essential thing in life at that moment, which was spending quality time with Jesus.  Life can be busy and distracting which could prevent us from living our life at its primetime.  So what is the most essential thing in life for us now?  We get worried and upset over so many things that aren’t essential. We want more and more, but we only need one thing, which is Jesus. As the Bible says, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple.” (Psalm 27:4)

We often have a list of goals to achieve, but are we contented after attaining all our goals?  What else is in life after we have them all?  I could set up plans for others when I was a judge, but what about the plan for myself?  How do I make my life the most useful?  One day a friend challenged me with this question:

1. What’s in your BOX?

This question was so challenging and it hit my soul.  He started telling me this story of the Coca Cola executives.  Back in the 80’s, they were changing the look of Coca Cola.  The strategic planner asked the executives what they wanted to put in the box. In other words, what was their driving force of their business for their future?  The executives said “Good Taste”.  So they re-formulated the Coca Cola and put out a “New Coke” after 2 years of testing.  With all the effort of marketing, they put the New Coke out in June 1985.  However, it tanked.  They pulled every can of New Coke off the shelf a month later.  What was the problem?  The problem was that they put the wrong words in the box.  The public didn’t want a new taste, they wanted the traditional one.  So the executives replaced “Good Taste” with “American Traditions” in the box afterwards, and then put out Coke Classic instead later on.  The sales went up again and became Number 1 in sales after a year.

What is in your box?  If we don’t have the right word in the box, we would spend all the time to strive for it but the effort will be all in vain, and falling short of what we want to be.  One day, I went fishing with my friends at Kaneohe Bay.  We laid out nets in the water and had to go to the water to check the nets to find the fish. We left our lantern at the sand bar so we had a light to guide us back.  Later on, I thought we had gone too far out so I suggested walking back to the sand bar.  We saw a light and thought it was our lantern so we followed and moved towards it.  The more we walked towards that light, the water got deeper and eventually the water got up to my chin!  I thought we were going to die!  We then called out for our friend Will who was checking the fishing nets on a boat.  Will heard us and found us.  Will was wondering what we were doing at the deep water and we told him that we were heading back to the sand bar.  Will then laughed and told us that we were heading in a wrong direction!  So we had been following the wrong light!  That light wasn’t our lantern at the sand bar!

There can only be one light in our life too.  What light are you heading toward when we talk about the one thing?  What is your point of reference in your life?  Is it your career or a person? What is the one thing in your box?  If you put the wrong thing in your box, you have the wrong point of reference, and you will always fall short and your efforts will be in vain by trying to reach that point of reference. It is a choice. Do we live for our career, success or someone else? Or do we live for Christ? We have to choose it right. Let’s see how Paul chose:

“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:13-14)

What did Paul mean for “forgetting what lies behind”?  He was talking about not just forgetting past failures, but also forgetting past accomplishments.  Past accomplishments and achievements can be the greatest distractions to distract us from heading toward what God is leading us to.  Let’s do a quick test.  Imagine there is a box that is a bomb shelter.  A bomb will go off and wipe out everything outside the box.  And you can only take 5 things with you into it within 30 seconds.  What would these 5 things be?  You can write it down in 30 seconds.  And now what if you can only take 3?  Which 2 items will you scratch off?  And what if you are told to take only 1 item with you into the box within 10 seconds?  What would this 1 item be?  Whatever you wrote down, that is the only thing that survives with you, and you need to think upon how you are living your life in relation with this one thing.  If you wrote down you spouse, how are you spending your time and life with him/her?  What are you doing with this one thing today?

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Eph. 2:10)

We will do something with what God has built in us.  Why is it hard to prioritize things in life?  It is because we get confused between what is urgent and what is important, which is our next point:

2. We fail when we choose what is URGENT over what’s IMPORTANT.

This was Martha’s problem.  She wasn’t necessarily doing anything wrong or evil, she was just trying to serve the Lord, but she was too concerned with what was urgent, and missed out what was important – Jesus.  We might miss out on our time doing work to pay our bills, or even busy with ministry, but ignore spending time with God, our loved ones and our families. Accordingly, it is written, “The Master said, ‘Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it…’ ” (Luke 10:41-42 MSG)

Mary chose Jesus over Martha’s chores because she saw that Jesus was important while house chores were only urgent.  An urgent matter is something that demands immediate attention, while an important matter is something that will devastate you if you disregard it.  Urgent matters are like a phone ringing, and you will pick up the phone whenever it rings because it seems urgent. But we know that not every call is important.  An important matter would be studying for an exam from the beginning of a term.  Studying is important but it’s not yet urgent until the last night before the exam!

So is it important to spend time with families?  It is, but the average is that a dad only spends 7 minutes a week with his son, and a husband and a wife only spend 27 minutes a week together. Why don’t we treat them as important?  Because we don’t feel the urgency. We assume that our families will always be there. We get consumed by the urgent items that are not necessarily important, and then we don’t spend time with our families.  There is only one thing that is essential and Mary chose to make space for the essential.

·     Clear away “SPACE”

Mary cleared everything else off of her schedule and made “space” to sit before the Lord. As it is written, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.” (Ps. 37:7)

Sometimes we have to just relax and discern what the Lord says to us; when we are able to create the space for the Lord, we will be able to:

·     Say no to the GOOD; Say yes to the BEST

Do you want to settle just for the good?  Or do you want the best?  God always has the best for us but we just have to sometimes say no to the good.  A lot of times, we try to satisfy urgent needs and settle for good, but we miss out on God’s best in life for us. It our choice now to make:

3. When you fail to choose, you choose to LOSE

If you choose the wrong thing, or if you cannot even name what the one thing is in your box, you lose living life at its best.  We have to make this choice.  Mark 10 said there was a rich young man searching for an answer. He came to Jesus and asked Him what he had to do to inherit eternal life. The Bible said, “Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.’ But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.” (Mark 10:21-22)

So this rich young man made one mistake, he failed to choose the correct one thing to put in the box.  He missed it.  The Bible asks what is the good of gaining the whole world only to lose your soul?  What is the one thing God wants you to choose that can move you from where you are to living your life at your primetime?

Discussion Questions:

1.  What is the priority you spend the most time on?

2.   What confuses us and leads us to put the unimportant thing as our priority in life?

3.   What do we need to do to be able to hear the Lord?

4.   What would we be able to do once we are able to discern what God says to us?

5.   What happened when we failed to put the right thing into our box?