I want you to make a list of reasons for missing a free throw. Just limit it the top 5 reasons.
Now scratch out everything but the good reasons for missing a free throw. Whatever you put on your list, now you can scratch it out. It’s a free throw!
Nobody is guarding you. Nobody erected a wall between you and the goal. It’s a free throw. The best players make 90% or more of them.
The worst free throw shooters are the ones that you foul near the end of the game.
I have an announcement to make. I think that I have carried a little too much weight for the past decade. I did some research and found out that I weigh as much as I do on purpose.
No, it’s not so I don’t blow away in the Oklahoma wind. That’s a good euphemistic attempt at an excuse, but it doesn’t work. I discovered that everything I have eaten over the past few decades, I ate I on purpose. Not once was I walking home when a slice of apple pie flew into my mouth and I accidentally swallowed it. No. Everything that I ate, I ate on purpose.
Sometimes, I have eaten things that I wished that I hadn’t. A few years ago, Sharman had baked some Christmas cookies and left them out on the counter. I tried one and it was terrible. I didn’t want to say anything, but I didn’t want someone else to have to eat one, so I told her how bad they were.
She wasn’t upset. She just said, “Thomas, those were Christmas ornaments.”
I think that I kind of knew that before she told me but after I ate the second one, but I mentioned it anyway.
But, I ate them on purpose. Those terrible tasting cookies that weren’t really cookies didn’t just fly into my mouth while I was sleeping.
When the clear tip of the front sight post is halfway up and centered from left to right in the rear sight aperture… I know how to hit a target. Those words seem ancient now that there are all kinds of high-speed, low-drag optics for shooting. Once upon a time, sight alignment and sight picture were necessary to hit the target, even with old iron sights.
I have been invited to speak to the teachers at the beginning and end of the school year on a few occasions. I always ask the same question of the person who invites me. What topic? What do you want me to speak about?
I get the same answer every time. “Oh, talk about whatever you want.” You have to love it. The teachers either want to be in their classrooms getting them ready for the school year or getting things wrapped up for the summer, and someone invites me to speak about anything that I want.
Here’s the thing. I know that I will hit my target. I don’t know if I will hit the target of those who have to sit there and listen to me, but I know that I will talk about exactly what I decided to talk about.
I know how to hit the target.
The author of Hebrews tells believers to keep their eyes fixed on Jesus—the pioneer and perfecter of their faith. He says don’t get distracted or entangled by all the other stuff.
Paul writing to believers in Galatia, chastised them saying, “You were running a good race. Who cut you off?” These believers were living in the truth and then for some reason had started adding to the truth.
The proverb says to train up a child in the way he should go and later on he will not depart from it. That doesn’t mean that along the way there won’t be distractions, pitfalls, and an occasional wrong turn.
But, what is the way he should go?
These are the laws and decrees of the Lord. These are the directions that God gave his people for their own good. These are the very things that parents are to talk with their children about in the morning and before they go to bed and when they are walking together.
There should be visible reminders of these things in the home, even as you would enter the home. All of these things begin with love the Lord—he is your God—love him with everything that you are.
How do we love him?
We trust him. We obey him. We love him by loving others.
It’s a good list, well, if you remember it. So we do things that help us remember.
GOD LOVES YOU – LOVE ONE ANOTHER is a good message that we put on wristbands and I hope is written on our hearts. It’s a good message and it produces good results when we are focused upon it. We even warm up for worship now by saying this.
In baseball, pitchers put all sorts of preliminary movements into their delivery motion in hopes of distracting the batter so that the fastball seems faster than it is, or the curveball is harder to detect.
The batter is only concerned about the ball, picking it up as soon as possible from its release point. Everything else is distraction. When the batter has eyes to see, he is gong to have a good day.
When we have eyes to see what God wants us to focus upon, we to have good days. But staying focused means that we have God’s word, especially as it pertains to trust, obey, and love, in our hearts and minds.
It is fixed in our hearts and in our minds.
In the original promise to God’s Chosen People, if they would keep these commands and decrees in their hearts and obey them, God would drive out the pagan nations that were in the land he had promised them long ago. He would send rain in season.
If the people remembered their journey and the mighty acts of God that brought them to this Promised Land, they would remain in awe of their mighty God. They would obey him and love him and be blessed again and again by him.
God tells his people through Moses that they still have free will. There is one way that is blessed by the Lord. Everything else is a different story.
Remember my short summary of the Proverbs: There is God’s way and there is everything else.
That everything else included wickedness, laziness, foolishness, selfishness, and anything apart from God’s way. In Deuteronomy, we see God through Moses setting forth this simple dichotomy.
God declared that he was setting before his people a blessing and a curse. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry that I could not travel both, and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could…
Unlike Robert Frost’s poem, God has given his people two distinct courses with an obvious choice to be made if you want to be blessed. There are two choices here. There is a fork in the road but in the case of God’s Chosen People, God has placed a sign that says, “Go this way!”
On the other road is a sign that reads, “Trouble for sure!!!”
How many times have you heard people say, “I just need God to give me a sign?” He has. This way is blessed. The other way is cursed.
So how could people take the road marked trouble? They lost their focus. They saw things of interest and some were enticing. It’s not a new story.
Remember the only command that God gave to Adam—see that tree right there—the one right in the middle, well, don’t eat from it. ‘Nuff said.
Adam obviously passed on these instructions to Eve. And then there was this conversation with a serpent, but Eve made her own decision.
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
They both knew of God’s prohibition about this one tree; yet what they knew in their minds was not fixed in their hearts. There was dissonance between heart and mind. Did somebody say Proverbs 3:5-6?
The commands and decrees from God, which he told his people he gave them for their own good, would keep them on the path of blessings and fullness.
He put this dichotomy into simple terms. This way is blessed. That way is cursed. How could they not choose the way that is blessed?
Sometimes they did. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we are distracted or lose our focus. Sometimes it seems that we couldn’t even hit a free throw or a fast ball right down the middle of the plate. Sometimes we lose our focus.
God told his people, fix these words of mine on your hearts and in your minds. Heart and mind must be in agreement with God’s directions to us, directions that he gave them for their own good.
Today, we are told to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus—the author and finisher of our faith. To do that, we must know in our hearts and minds that he is the way, the truth, and the life.
We must know that not only salvation and eternal life come through him, but life abundant in this age comes through him.
We must understand that distractions are just that—attempts to pull us off course. We must stay the course, press on towards the goal, walk in the light, and be known as his disciples because of our love.
We are still on this course and discourse of love, and now love in action. For us to stay the course of love in a world of so many distractions, we must have these three things fixed in our hearts and minds.
Trust God
Obey God
Love God by loving others.
Trust-Obey-Love must be fixed in our hearts and minds, for our own understanding is always competing against what God told us was for our own good.
How do we fix what we need in our hearts and minds? There are some ways that you know.
By what we sing
By what we memorize
By what we post as reminders in our homes, and today I would add on our phones.
By the things that we talk about.
Salvation is a gift entirely from God. Discipleship is our part and it takes effort. Jesus said that his yoke was easy and his burden was light, so we might surmise that it is not extraordinary effort. It is focused effort.
The guy or girl who make the most free throws isn’t always the strongest. She is the most focused. He sets his sights on the target and hits it again and again and again. Focused effort produces the ability to stay the course without succumbing to distraction.
Following Jesus is not back-breaking work. It is focused work. Jesus said to take his yoke and learn from him. When we learn from him, we write those lessons on our heart and keep them foremost in our minds. Heart and mind are in agreement in God’s word.
James talks about our struggles and uses the term double-minded. We can be conflicted in just our mind. Our hearts can be uncertain. Blessing lies in making our thoughts obedient to Christ and trusting in the Lord with all of our hearts.
Our hearts and minds must be fixed on the things of God, his ways, his decrees. Do we not understand that he gave them for our own good?
In the course of this message, we have touched on the first two parts of the Hebrew Shema. The Shema is a declaration or affirmation of their faith. It has a general affinity with a confession of faith. The first part is the affirmation. The second part is the witness—the acceptance of what God has commanded. The third part is the reminder.
The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes. Then you will remember to obey all my commands and will be consecrated to your God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord your God.’”
God’s Chosen people affirmed what they believed, accepted God’s commands in their lives, and made reminders for themselves not to chase after the desires of their own hearts but to be consecrated to the Lord.
We today affirm our belief, witness to taking the yoke of Jesus, and have reminders that we are to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus—the author and finisher of our faith.
God’s words are on our hearts. His will is becoming the will of our hearts. We are becoming love as he is love.
It begins by bringing our hearts and minds into one accord with God’s word and his will. It continues with his words becoming fixed in our hearts and minds. It continues with us choosing the path marked blessed again and again.
The more we do things God’s way, the easier it is to trust him and obey him. And when we trust and obey, we are so much more inclined to love.
Trust – Obey – Love.
Amen.
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