A Faith that Works in Overcoming a Foolish View of Time

REFLECTION QUOTES

“To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.”

~Simone Weil (1909-1943), French philosopher and political activist; Albert Camus described her as “the only great spirit of our times”

“Today is yesterday’s tomorrow and tomorrow’s yesterday.”

~Alfred Lloyd Tennyson (1809-1892), British poet

“If what we do now is to make no difference in the end, then all the seriousness of life is done a way with.”

~Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Austrian-British philosopher

“…all your money won’t another minute buy.”

~Kerry Livgren of the musical group Kansas

“Wisdom is a matter of the quality of what we know, not the quantity.”

“Only truth and eternity give relevance to ‘relevance.’ To think or do anything simply ‘because it is relevant’ will always prove to be irrational, dangerous, and a sure road to burnout. It may taste like an unpleasant medicine to our practical modern thinking, but in facts it’s a powerful antidote to perpetual folly: There is an irrelevance to the pursuit of relevance just as there is a relevance to the practice of irrelevance.”

~Os Guinness, English author and social critic

“Thankfully, God has given us His self-revelation in the Bible. And anyone who takes the Bible seriously soon discovers that the issue is not to begin with us as human beings. The moment you begin with us you’re starting in the wrong place. You need to begin with God.”

~Conrad Mbewe, Zambian pastor and author in his book Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically

“The problem about the liquidity of modern times is that we can’t actually stay put, whether we travel or not, whether we try to the best of our ability to stick to what we have, to our place of life, to our community, to our kind of job, to our skills: it all moves anyway… Every success is until further notice. Every achievement is a temporary one, and not a guarantee that it will last for ever, not a guarantee that in the future you will be as successful as you have been so far. You have to constantly brace yourself for a new kind of challenge, unexperienced so far, unfamiliar, and you have to forget old habits as quickly as you learned the new ones.”

~Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) Polish-born sociologist and philosopher in his book Liquid Modernity

“Futurism is “the major mental disease of our time.”

~George Orwell (1903-1950), English novelist and critic

SERMON PASSAGE

James 4:13-17

James 4 (ESV)

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

James 5 (ESV)

1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

James 1 (ESV)

11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. 12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

1 John 2 (NASB)

15 Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.