Friends, we live in a frenzied world, filled with amazing demands. And as much as we
would love to experience a greater measure of the simple life; many of us never will.
Why not? Because we have this idea that I don't really have a choice. If my life is
exhausting, unmanageable, or out of control, it's because of...
- my work or
- my family or
- my friends or
- my financial pressures AND therefore,
- I’m TRAPPED
Well, I’ll tell you the Bible says that’s an illusion – you’re not a victim, you’re responsible.
Jesus gave us some instruction that will help us simplify through the use of two simple
words? Within two simple words are the power to change your life. Those words are....
YES and NO. This is what he said:
Matt 5:37 - simply let your “Yes” be yes and your “No” be no. Anything beyond
this comes from the Evil One.
As you go through life you’re confronted with a billion things -
- financial commitments,
- relational commitments,
- job opportunities,
- family requests,
- interruptions,
- how you're going to use your leisure time...
When you’re confronted with those things and you begin to feel powerless, Jesus says,
stop and consider that you have enormous power. And your power resides in two
words: yes and no.
But we misuse these words instead. He mentions this in the context of swearing.
Because people in Jesus day would be full of so much bluster and bravado and spin
that you never knew when someone was telling the truth. Eastern culture is still much
like this, we recall Sadaam Hussein’s infamous comment, “the MOTHER of all battles”.
So to set apart truthful speech from normal speech, people would swear on sacred
things.
We still do this today.
“I SWEAR I’ll never do that again”
“I SWEAR on a stack of bibles, I’ll do it.”
“I SWEAR” it was THIS BIG”
What’s this about? It’s about making is more committed somehow if we swear to
something that if we don’t. Because we’re sort of born wafflers aren’t we? We say
“yes” when we mean “no”. And no when we should say yes.
Somebody asks you,
- Would you do this or attend that?
- Would you pay for this?
- Would you watch my hyperactive, insomniac triplets while my husband and I
move to Oregon?
- Would you go on a blind date with my second cousin this Friday when he gets
out of prison?
Although a clear "no" was in your mind, you open your mouth and much to your surprise
it's "yes" that comes out. In Jesus life he used YES and NO decisively and He meant
them He and accepted the consequences that went along with them. The result was a
person at peace and full of joy.
- He said yes to a ministry of teaching and healing and
- He said yes to dying on a cross, because it was part of His Father’s will and his
Purpose in coming to earth.
But, he also knew when to say no.
- He said no to temptation.
- No, to things that did NOT advance God’s will,
- No, when the people wanted to make him king (John 6:15).
o He didn’t say, “Why do you people keep pestering me? I get so tired of
your whining. Okay, I'll be king. Just get off my back.”
His yes was yes and his no was no. Therefore Jesus lived with great freedom and joy.
That’s the kind of life he wants his children to live too. Doesn’t that sound attractive to
you? To find that kind of life, we have to learn when to say YES and when to say NO.
Henry Cloud and John Townsend in their book titled, BOUNDARIES that about this:
If you don't have a real clear sense of who God made you to be and what he's
calling you to do you’ll end up over-committed, exhausted, self-absorbed,
resentful and guilty. This is the boundary-less life.
In the time that remains in this talk, I'd like to get practical about how the power of yes
and no can help us create better boundaries.
The first one is friendships.
The Bible says this about boundaries in friendships:
Titus 3:10-11 Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time.
After that, have nothing to do with him. NIV
I bet most of us, have had at least one friend where there’s a friend you need to say
“NO” to, to lay down a boundary with because they’ve become unsafe. Like the Bill
Murray Character from WHAT ABOUT BOB. Or the Jim Carrey character from CABLE
GUY.
Now, sometimes, a friend requires extra care during a crisis. It’s a good thing to reach
out to a person like that. That’s something God wants you to say yes to. The bible
says:
1 John 3:17-18 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need
but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
But even in our reaching, the Bible teaches there are still limits. Think about the story
Jesus told of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. We think there’s a person who just gave
and gave. It was yes and more yes and never a no. But even in this story of
compassion, there are implied boundaries.
Think about it. The man is beaten up and left by the side of the road. Two religious
types come by but their boundaries are so rigid they don't even look at him. They have
the kind of boundary problems where they say “no” when they ought to say “yes.”
But then a Samaritan comes along and he's moved with compassion. So he stops and
bandages the guy up, and Jesus says:
Luke 10:34. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and
took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the
innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for
any extra expense you may have.'
But imagine the man says to the Samaritan at that point:
What, you're leaving? I'm beaten and bloodied and you're worried about making
money? Isn't that a little selfish? Whatever happened to denying yourself?
Don’t you want Jesus to use you as an example in one of his stories?'
Imagine the Samaritan, overwhelmed with guilt says,
“I'm sorry, I guess you're right. I could do more. Take my wallet, I'll stay home,
I'm sorry I was so selfish.”
The story doesn't go that way. In Jesus' story the Samaritan helps, but helping has
limits.
- He bandages the man up, but he doesn't perform surgery.
- He takes him to an inn. He doesn't have the guy move into his house.
- He pays for a few day's expenses. He doesn't give his wallet.
- He’s the good Samaritan, not the great Samaritan.
Some of you might be in a relationship where limits need to be set.
Some “no”.
- Maybe you're the one that always initiates being together. Well, you need to talk
to the other person about that because you’re going to start resenting it.
- Maybe the focus is always on your friend’s needs or problems. And you pour out
advice they never take.
It’s time for you to spell out your “yes” and your “no”.
2. The second area, families.
Families are the place we’re supposed to learn to say yes and no. When we don’t learn
good boundaries, everyone reaps a lot of pain. Sometime around the age of two a child
will learn one of those words that Jesus talked about, and it’ll become their favorite
word. Guess which one?
“No! Drink my milk? NO! Eat my vegetables? No! Take a nap? No!”
As frustrating as that is, “NO” is a not only a boundary word that our children must hear,
they must learn how to use it as well. To do so they need to be allowed to SAY it.
Some of you when growing up, if said no at all, if you got angry, or pushed back, love
was withdrawn or harsh disipcline followed. Well it doesn’t take a prophet to guess that
a person like that will get an addiction to saying “yes”.
o But a person who walks out of a home like that, doesn’t really have clarity
on what it is that he or she wants, feels, believes or values. And when
they hit 15 or so, they start saying “yes” to all these terrible things and we
wonder why.
Parents, it needs to be OK for our children to say no. Paul says
Eph 6:4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the
training and instruction of the Lord.
The quickest way to frustrate kids is to never let them get upset or express their
opinions. If you don’t want to send young adults into the world addicted to “YES”
thereby bringing all sorts of exhaustion, inner resentment and pain from unwise choices
on themselves. It doesn’t mean they’ll always get their way, it just means they learn they
have a mind – and someday when they need to stand against an immoral culture, they’ll
know how to speak it.
Now on the other side of this thing children need to learn to HEAR no as well. The Bible
says:
Prov 23:13-14 Don't fail to correct your children. They won't die if you spank
them. 14 Physical discipline may well save them from death.
Now let’s face it, children don’t like boundaries. The child labor unions are always
wanting to strike for more TV times, fewer chores, higher allowances and later
bedtimes. So loving parents who want their kids to be happy will be tempted to give in.
Here’s what happens if you do that. Your children will never learn the law of “sowing
and reaping”.
Now, I know you people aren’t from an agricultural community, you know more about
airplanes and computer software than tractors, but here’s a farming trivia question even
you could answer:
- When you sow corn kernels into the ground, what kind of plant will come out of
the ground?
o Corn! Very good.
If we were farmers we would not look out over a field and say,
"This is a little surprising: I sowed corn, and there's corn coming out of the
ground. I was kind of hoping for watermelon.”
The Bible says there’s a connection between actions and consequences. There may be
a delay, but the one always follows the other. Well, the law of sowing and reaping is
one of the most important things for children to learn. We are not helping them if we
artificially suspend the law every time your child ignores a boundary.
Your parenting life will get a lot simpler and your life less frustrating, if you can learn to
set a reasonable boundary for your kids, which includes a clearly spelled out “harvest” if
they don’t respect it. And, because they’re sinners they will not respect every boundary.
SO then, no ranting, no raving, no indignation… with as much calm as you can, you let
them REAP.
I know of a matriarch who loves her boy so much that under the misguided notion of
helping, every time he made a bad choice, she bailed him out. Then he made more
irresponsible choices and then he hit another pain, and instead of exposing him to the
law of sowing and reaping, - she bailed him out again – into adulthood.
It just so happened that God blessed her with enough money to do a lot of bailing for
several children AND grandchildren. I wonder sometimes if that money was a curse. If
they had run out, they would have been forced to stop subsidizing their offspring’s
irresponsibility and bad choices.
- Children desperately need to learn that she or he can say no, and still be loved
and embraced,
- BUT they also need to hear the word “NO” and to learn those boundaries have
consequences.
And this sets them up to hear the gospel. The Bible says, the law is a school teacher to
lead us to Christ. The hard reality of law will teach a child the wonder of grace and train
them to be eager to receive it.
3. Now a third area is work.
For some, work is just threatening to take over your whole life. Maybe for you, there are
no boundaries between work and the rest of your life. What does this lack of
boundaries look like? Well for example:
- You have somebody at work not taking their share of the load, but they expect
you to cover for them, or
- You're working way too much overtime, or
- You're being asked to do work that is not what you were hired for.
Prov 23:4 says: Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show
restraint.
Let me say this clearly: in your career, nobody's holding a gun to your head. This is
your one and only life. If you need to make some changes, you better make some
changes. I had this conversation with a person I deeply care for but was just struggling
with boundary issues at work.
Here was our conversation.
- She said, “they expect too much of me.”
o I said, “meet with your supervisor”
- She said, “I’ve tried that and he just says, do whatever you can”
o I said, “so take him at his word and just do whatever you can - but no
MORE than you can.”
- She said, “but we have deadlines.”
o I said, “if you can’t get done in a reasonable work week what they ask of
you, then you may have to sacrifice a few deadlines. Are you doing the
company any favors by killing yourself to make deadlines when really the
company needs to know is that those deadlines are unreasonable?” I was
back to the law of sowing and reaping.
- She said, “but if they feel the sting my job I could be fired”
o I said, “then maybe you need to look at a different place to work that
values it’s people...”
- She said, “but financially we just can’t handle that right now.”
o I said, “so let me get this straight. You will hurt yourself and your family
emotionally because you’re worried about your standard of living? What’s
more important to you?”
Some of you are wearing yourself out and if you’re honest you would have to say that
the difference between where you are now and the simple life is 500 sq/ft of living
space. It’s that 500 sq/ft that’s the difference between 2 careers or 1 ½, between 50 vs
40 hours a week.
This week at supper our kids revealed to us that they were pining for the days when we
lived in a smaller house, with another family, no individual bedrooms and sleeping in
bunk beds.
What’s important? What are pushing for? Can we get off this treadmill with two easy
words? Yes and No.
4. Then there’s boundaries with God.
One time Peter said to Jesus: in Mark 10:28
"We have left everything to follow you!"
Saying “yes” to God, means saying no to anything that gets in the way of following him.
That means saying no to sin and temptation.
In the Bible, when God gives Moses the 10 commandments, he’s gone for a long time.
So Aaron’s put in charge. But without Moses there, the people get restless. They get
bored. They say,
who knows when this God is going to speak again. Let’s make a god that we can
control and thereby call our own shots.
So they come to Aaron and say, “you’re in charge. Let’s make an idol that we can
worship and control”. Now, Aaron needed to seize the power in one word in that
moment. Just one word, what was it?
“NO!” You must be crazy. There’s one God, I will not disobey him and I don’t
care how many of you do, I’m not going to do something that would dishonor
God.”
Some of you are at a place right now where there is a clear cut choice between pleasing
God or pleasing people. Maybe it’s peer pressure to abuse your body, or to be involved
in some kind of sexual behavior or some financial misbehavior, to give into worry or
fear. Whatever it is, the choice is clear, it’s please God or please people. Will you have
the courage to say,
“NO. No, I will not. I will not disobey or dishonor God. If I say yes to him, I say
no to everything that gets in the way. My yes is yes and my no is no. N-O. No.”
Well, Aaron did not say that. He said “Ok, bring me your gold, let’s make an idol.” Then
when Moses shows up, Aaron blames it on the people. “You know those stubborn
people. He says, my hands were tied, I had no choice.” To say you’re trapped is a
myth. People try to force a lot of things on you, but no one can take away your power to
say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
CONCLUSION
Now, imagine that you stood the test and built better boundaries. And you said, yes
when God compelled you, yes to love, yes to God’s calling, yes to service offered up
freely and joyfully. And imagine you said no to sin, to appeasing and fear and
temptation and exhaustion. No to being over-committed out of guilt, no to peer
pressure.
That would be the simple life. Just say YES to it.
