Right now, in our Saturday night at 5pm and Sunday at 11am services I am teaching Pastor Jason's series, Your Life Incorporated. Here's what we've learned about so far:
Overview
We are looking at our lives using the example of a company's structure. For a company to be successful it must have the right CEO. As we have seen in the news, having the wrong CEO in charge of your company may bring destruction.
God desires for our spirit or, more accurately, the Spirit of Christ in us to be the CEO of our company. According to Genesis 1:26, we were created as a spirit being in the image and likenes of God.
We have tended to define ourselves by what we can physically see or our physical body. If you asked someone to describe themselves they would most likely describe what they see in the mirror. We have to learn to define ourselves by the Spirit of Christ that dwells in us, allow that Spirit to run our company and see the success that God has us destined for.
Employee #1 - The Mind
In the first two weeks we discussed the first employee in our company. The mind is overemphasized by worldly intellectuals. The mind cannot run the company because, like all things other than God, it is going to fail us. it has weaknesses.
However, the mind is a tool given to us by God. We cannot neglect it. We must not only allow it to do its job, but continually develop it to be a better employee. Pick up a book instead of the video game controller. It is a tool that will be with you for your whole life. So you better make it a useful tool.
You must also remind the mind who is in charge of this company. You might need to call it in for a meeting and tell it that you don't like the negative junk it's been thinking about. It needs to think about the things that are true -- that is think about what the Word says about this company and what it is capable of.
Employee #2 - The Body
Lets face it, no matter how strong the spirit may be in you, without a body to carry it around it can do nothing. We need our body and we need to treat it well if we want it to be a productive employee. The body, or flesh, has a lot of desires that in and of themselves are not bad. In fact the desires come from God.
The desire to eat is good. If you don't have it, the body will not survive very long. But allowing that desire to do what the body wants to do with it will be self-destructive. We should eat to live, not live to eat.
The desire to sleep is also important. However there are some who have too strong of a desire to sleep and end up sleeping life away. I had a friend in high school that would sleep well into the afternoon every weekend and all summer. Or try not sleeping. I know Jack Bauer on "24" can go without sleep, get shot half a dozen times and get infected with a bioweapon nerve agent and keep humming along. But our bodies are not designed for that. If you go just a couple days straight without adequate sleep you see a significant performance breakdown.
Yes, there is the desire for sex. God also gave us that, but He has very specific instructions for how it is to be enjoyed. Giving in to the flesh's desire for sex in the wrong situations (any one where you are not married, just to clear that up) will always have negative consequences whether you realize them now or not. It will have an impact on future relationships and marriage, trust and of course things like unplanned pregnancy or even sickness and disease. The desire itself is not what is bad. It is a matter of whether you make this employee submit to the CEO or allow it to take over the company that determines what happens.
We talked about the importance of looking good. We used the example of Esther from the Bible. We understand that God doesn't care one bit about how we look physically. And we should not judge one another's value based on looks either. But the world does and the world is who we need to reach.
Esther was able to save an entire nation because she was beautiful and well-kept. Why do you think we dress up for interviews for jobs or college entrance? How we look communicates something to the world. The world judges whether what you have to say is important or of value based on how you look.
Employee #3 - Emotions
Last week we stated discussing another of our employees -- our emotions. Most of us, when evaluating how we end up in bad situations, can point to make an emotional decision. In the heat of emotion we do something that, if we stopped and thought it through, we would not have done. Sometimes it is an impulsive purchase that puts us in debt or keeps us from having the money to do something important to our future. It can be a reaction of anger that destroys a relationship or results in violence.
Like all of the other employees in our company, our emotions came from God. They are designed to be a useful tool but they cannot be allowed to rule the company. They also cannot be ignored. There are some that think they are exercising self-control by not showing any emotion. But repressed emotion will eventually become more dangerous than the original desired emotional response.
For example, grief is a normal emotion when we lose someone close to us. If we suppress it we may go down a path to depression, worthlessness and maybe even suicide. If we allow ourselves to let the grief emotion take the company over it can be just as dangerous.
God desires for our lives to be a walk on a path of joy and peace. There are situations that happen in our lives where our emotions take us off of that path. That's OK. It is the way God programmed us. His plan is that, with His help, when we leave that path that there is a plan for getting back on. But is either we allow the emotions to rule us or we suppress them we will continue to veer further and further from the path of joy and peace.
We looked at the story of how Jesus handled the loss of a close friend, Lazarus, in John Chapter 11. We also looked at Peter in Matthew 26 when he denied Christ. He experienced strong emotion (he wept bitterly) but did get back onto the path of joy and peace.
This week we will be talking about how to make that plan; how to make sure when we leave that path that we have a plan to get back on.
