If You Want To Improve Your Life…
In case you didn’t know it already, Americans are woefully ignorant about religion. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published the outcome of its U.S. Religious knowledge survey on September 28 and the results were not flattering. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons were among the highest-scoring groups on the new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions. On average, Americans correctly answered only 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey. (If you want to test your knowledge, take an abbreviated quiz on the Pew website.) Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers and Catholics as a whole 14.7.
October 10, 2010: Psalm 37:1-9, If You Want To Improve Your Life…
Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
Previous surveys by the Pew Research Center have shown that America is among the most religious of the world’s developed nations. Nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults say that religion is “very important” in their lives, and roughly four-in-ten say they attend worship services at least once a week. But the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions – including their own.
Along those lines I’d like to suggest you consider watching God in America a program on PBS this week on Monday through Wednesday evenings. The series is about the significant role religious belief has played in shaping American history. The contributions of early Baptists toward religious freedom will be a key part of the second hour. We all need to be more aware our own faith and the religions of others. It is concerning that only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and only half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” Three out of four Americans believe this notion which was written by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. While I admire a great deal about Ben Franklin, this saying is not biblical; in fact, it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the Christian message, with its call to trust God and love our neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, it is as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.
Not surprisingly in our culture which is so focused on the self, self-improvement is a huge industry. There are seemingly countless ways different ads, books, and products promise to “improve your life,” and yet tens of millions of people remain very dissatisfied and discontented. Perhaps because focusing exclusively on the self is not the best thing to do if we want to improve our life.
Against the flood of information focused on the self, Psalm 37 presents a different approach to improving your life. Psalm 37 is a wisdom psalm and most wisdom psalms are meditations on the good life. Often they begin with beatitudes like, “Blessed, O how happy, is the one who…” or with admonitions against following evil or foolish ways. They describe two approaches to life, two attitudes, two life-styles. There are those who humbly acknowledge their dependence on God and seek to know and do God’s will and there are those who are out only for themselves and are scornful of God and of those trying to live a spiritual or devout life of faith. This is still the case today.
Listen to Psalm 37:1-9
“Do not fret because of the wicked;
do not be envious of wrongdoers,
2 for they will soon fade like the grass,
and wither like the green herb.
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good;
so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.
4 Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.
6 He will make your vindication shine like the light,
and the justice of your cause like the noonday.
7 Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him;
do not fret over those who prosper in their way,
over those who carry out evil devices.
8 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath.
Do not fret—it leads only to evil.
9 For the wicked shall be cut off,
but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.”
When I was reading Psalm 37 last month, for some reason, four things we are encouraged to do stood out clearly to me in a way I hadn’t seen before. There are four things we are to do that are all focused on the Lord. As we focus our life around the Lord in these four key ways, the Psalm says good things are likely to happen.
First, Trust in the Lord and do good – you will live and enjoy security.
Trust in the Lord means we believe that God knows what is best for us.
Henri Nouwen wrote, “When we dare to trust that are never alone but that God is always with us, always cares for us, and always speaks to us, then we can gradually detach ourselves from the voices that make us guilty or anxious. This is a very hard challenge because radical trust in God is not obvious. Most of us distrust God. Most of us think of God as a fearful, punitive authority or as an empty, powerless nothing. Jesus’ core message was that God is neither a powerless weakling, nor a powerful boss, but a lover whose only desire is to give us what our hearts most desire.” We are to trust in the Lord and do good.
Mark Twain wrote, “Always do right, this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” The more we truly trust God the more we will want and choose to live in a way that we are consciously trying to do good each day, in every encounter and action we can. We do this because we can trust and rely on the Lord and we want to part of what the Lord is doing in the world. We want to be in the words of the old hymn, “on the Lord’s side.”
The second thing Psalm 37 encourages us to do is to Take Delight in the Lord – God will give you the desires of your heart.
Taking delight in something means that we value and find pleasure in it. A parent takes delight in a child. A child takes delight in a pet. As Christians we take delight in the Lord. We realize the worthiness of the object we delight in whether God or a person or something else. Long ago there was a young Chinese boy who went to a Master because he wanted to learn how make jade into beautiful objects. So he went to the Master’s house, knocked on the door, and said he’d come to sit at his feet to learn. The Master took a piece of jade, put it into the boy’s hands, and sat there. He went on to chatter about his wife, his job, his children, and things like that. All the while the boy was sitting there, minute after minute, hour after hour, holding the jade.
The next day the boy came back, and the same thing happened. The Master put a piece of jade into the boy’s hand, and then he went off and talked about all kinds of things. The boy was getting somewhat confused, but this was the Master, and he very embarrassed or hesitant to say anything to him. This happened week after week after week, and one day the boy came, and the Master put into his hand a stone. And the boy cried out, and said, “Hey! This is a stone!” He had learned the feel of jade.
How about turning this story on its head? What if one time long ago a young Chinese boy went to the Master to learn how to make jade, and when he went there the Master put a stone in his hand. Every day he put a stone in his hand, week after week after week, until one day the boy came and he put a piece of jade in the boy’s hand. The boy exclaimed, “What is this?” and he dropped it. And the jade broke all over the floor.
If you keep on holding something valuable and beautiful, you will get a feel for it, and delight in it, and you’ll know the counterfeit or the fake when it is before you or in your grasp. That is what Psalm 37 is encouraging us to do – take delight in the Lord day after day, week after week after week, and the genuine value of who Jesus is and the delight and assurance and strength we derive will cause us to see the shallow, empty, and counterfeit things of this life more clearly. Again as a song says, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in light of his glory and grace.” But in the image of the jade story, if you keep holding a stone in your hand, day after day, week after week after week, when something beautiful and valuable come along, you won’t even recognize it and you may toss it away or even ruin it.
The third thing Psalm 37 advises us to do is, Commit Your way to the Lord, trust in him – he will act. Being willing to commit ourselves means we are willing to take a risk. An opera singer at the Met knows about commitment, because without it she can’t hit the high note. A golfer understands about commitment because a tentative golf swing is never a good one. A cliff diver in Acapulco, Mexico understands the importance of commitment before he dives out into space far above the ocean. Jesus understands the need for commitment. He says in Matthew 6 “Set your hearts on God’s kingdom first…and all other things will be given you as well,” that summarizes what committing our way to the Lord looks like. We give our commitment, trust, and the energy of our life to the Lord and believe the Lord will act.
We get one shot at life so where we place our commitment is a huge decision. If you are a little reluctant to commit your way to the Lord and you prefer to be in control of your own life ask yourself this question – If you had been asked ten years ago to predict what would happen in your life in the next ten years, to describe where your life would be in ten years, how accurate would you have been? While some of us might have been close; I would guess many of us didn’t have the faintest idea what would happen or that we would end up where we are now ten years ago. The significance of this is we still like to keep up the illusion that we are in control of our own life. So much of what happens is beyond our control, Psalm 37 encourages us to commit our way to the Lord and trust that God will act, even though there are times we find that challenging to believe. The scriptures are always encouraging us toward commitment, that is why it’s called “A leap of faith” and not, “A cautious, tentative, small step of faith.”
I like the anonymous poem,
“There was a very cautious man
Who never laughed or played
He never risked, he never tried,
He never sang or prayed.
And when he one day passed away,
His insurance was denied,
For since he never really lived,
They claimed he never died.”
When it comes to commitment some people will say, “I lack motivation.”
John Maxwell writes, “The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.”
Commit your way to the Lord and keep doing it and the motivation will follow.
The fourth thing we’re encouraged to do is:
Be Still Before the Lord and Wait Patiently for him.
It is difficult for many of us to be still and wait patiently for the Lord or anything or anyone else. There was a man in a small southern city who bought a bus ticket to Macon, Georgia. He stood and waited, and checked his watch. The bus should be arriving soon. So he wandered around a bit, and his attention was diverted to a large scale, which promised to be able to tell not only one’s weight, but one’s name and other pertinent information about the person being weighed. Curious, he stepped on and put a quarter in the slot. Instantly a slip came out that said, “Your name is Harry Hanson. You live in Sparta, Georgia. You weigh 197 pounds. You are seventeen pounds overweight. You are on your way to visit your sister in Macon. The bus to Macon has been delayed. Have a nice day.”
He was surprised and amused, so after a few minutes he stepped on the scale and put in another quarter. The slip popped out. It said, “Your name is Harry Hanson. You live in Sparta. Your weight has not changed in the past four minutes. You still weigh 197 pounds, and are still seventeen pounds overweight. You are still on your way to visit your sister in Macon. The bus to Macon is still late. Have a nice day.”
Tired of waiting for the bus and determined to fool the machine, Harry walked across the street to a variety store. He bought a pair of Groucho Marx glasses with the exaggerated nose, mustache, and eyebrows. He also bought a black hat and a cane. With this disguise in place, and walking with a limp, he returned across the street to the bus station and approached the scale.
He stepped on and eagerly deposited his quarter. When slip came out he read, “You are still Harry Hanson, from Sparta, Georgia. Your weight is still 197 pounds, and you are still seventeen pounds overweight. You are still on your way to visit your sister in Macon, but while you were across the street fooling around, you missed the bus. Have a nice day, anyway.”
Sometimes, we can get impatient and tired of waiting for God and we “miss the bus” because we’re “fooling around” doing something else instead of waiting, watching, and being still. If we want God to be more real in our life then we need to learn to be still and wait patiently before the Lord. Reading the Bible, coming to worship, taking time to pray and talk with other people about the life of the Spirit – all help the Lord to become more real to us
Trust in the Lord, and do good;
so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.
Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him;
Psalm 37 encourages and exhorts us, if we want to improve our life to stay true to who and whose we are no matter what happens in life.