ARME 6: Spangle, WA - July 2011

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ARME Bible Camp

Alan Parker

Selling out God for a bucket of happiness

Phenomenon before we begin here that I need to mention.

And that is, have you noticed that this group is different from your church?

I mean it's not just the singing, I'm noticing where people sit.

I've gone to many churches, where do most people sit in the church?

I heard of a church where the pastor was always complaining about where people sat.

And so he had a businessman who was very wealthy and the businessman said, don't worry pastor, I'm going to take care of the problem.

And so he says, I'm going to pay for you to go on a vacation and I'll fix the church.

When he came back, he noticed there was only 1 pew in the church, and it was right at the back.

So the pastor got up to preach that next week, And he noticed that people filled up the road from the back, but then something interesting happened.

There was a whirring sound and suddenly the whole pew moved forward.

To the front and another pew popped up at the back And then people filled up that pube to the front.

So when the pastor got up to preach he said, this is wonderful, this is marvelous, I've never seen anything like this.

And he started preaching and he preached and he preached and he preached and he preached and he preached.

And pretty soon it was noon and then something strange happened.

A little bell rang out, and a trap door opened up and the pastor disappeared.

And the congregation said, wonderful, marvelous.

Now I tell you that because we have a timer here that tells me I have 57 minutes and 30 seconds.

But do you think you're going to make it in this heat?

All right, because otherwise we have a trap door for you and me.

Father God, we pray that you be present during this time together.

May it also become clear what You are calling us to do.

Thank You for the presence of Your Spirit.

The title of my message is Selling Out God for a Bucket of happiness.

Selling out God for a bucket of happiness.

And we're going to be taking a look at a few scriptures today that will help us to understand what this means.

Now I take this idea of a bucket because I've been hearing from young people lately that they're working on their bucket list.

You know, it's what you're going to do before you kick the bucket.

And so they have these list of things to do.

So on her 18th birthday, she went skydiving.

And then she says, the next thing on my bucket list is I want to ride an 1100cc motorcycle.

At least if she rode it, it may have been over her dead body, but she said, this is what I want to do.

So I said, start out with an 80 CC and then let's see how you do.

Well, she wrote that little 80 CC around, fell off and said, you know what, I don't feel like writing an 1100 CC anymore.

And I find a lot of young people saying things, you know, I want to skydive, I want to write a Harley Davidson.

Some of them are even saying, I want to become a missionary, or I want to go and visit the Holy Lands.

And I want to suggest to you that the Christian life is more than a bucket list that you have to fulfill.

It's not just about things that you want to enjoy.

We are created, however, for something more.

Inside of each 1 of us is a quest for transcendence.

A quest, a desire to be something more than our mundane lives.

Have you ever looked at your life and said, I just wish I had something more going on.

I think I was created to do more than licking stamps for my school.

I think I was created to do more than simply taking the offering at church.

God has placed inside of me a desire for something more.

And this is what Paul David Tripp says, an excellent biblical counselor, he says, there's woven inside of each of us a desire for something more, a craving to be part of something bigger, greater, and more profound than our relatively meaningless day-by-day existence.

We have this desire for more, but how do we relate to it?

Well, some people do some really interesting things.

This guy wanted to get into the Guinness Book of World Records.

And so he ate 36 cockroaches in 1 minute.

He said it kind of left a numb feeling at the back of his throat because the scent that cockroaches use to give off to waterway predators just is like an anesthetic and it numbed the back of his throat, but I'm not going to test it to find out if that's true.

Why would you want to do something so unusual?

It's because each of us have a desire for something more.

Now the word transcendence simply means to live outside of yourself.

And so we find people are always looking for something outside of themselves.

You go to a football game and if your team wins, what do people say?

Now did you have anything to do with the football game being won?

You had nothing to do with it, but you sense that we are part of something greater than just me.

When a person climbs a mountain and they reach the mountaintop, and they see the grandeur before them, and they've achieved something, they feel like they've gone beyond themselves, they've done something that goes beyond.

That feeling of beyondness is transcendence.

And what Paul David Tripp suggests and what I believe is backed up in the Bible is that each 1 of us has that desire inside of us.

In fact, I believe that God created us for glory.

Inside of each 1 of us, He created us to worship.

The question is just what are you worshiping?

It's not a matter of will you worship or not, but simply what do you worship?

And we want to examine that against our lives because many of us, instead of seeking God's glory, seek little glories.

For a moment, a man may get more of a sense of satisfaction out of the smell and the look of his brand new car than out of the condition of his heart.

For a moment, a mother will get more of a sense of satisfaction from making her son clean his bedroom than from having community with that same son.

For a moment a man may get more of a thrill from the shape of a woman's body than he does from the kind of community he should have with his spouse.

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Selling out God for a bucket of happiness

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