How’s Your Aim?
Finally, brothers, good-by. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints send their greetings. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
(2 Cor. 13:11-14)
A man was hiking through the Blue Ridge Mountains. He walked up to a little farm with an old barn and a farmhouse. On the side of the old barn there were numerous bulls-eye targets, and as he examined them he noticed there was a bullet hole in the exact center of every target. Impressed, he walked over to the ramshackle house where a Hillbilly was sitting in a rocking chair. The hiker said, “Are you the one who did that shooting?” The hillbilly said, “Yep, I shore did.” The hiker said, “Sir, you must be finest marksman I’ve ever met.” The hillbilly spat out some tobacco juice and said, “Naw. Truth is, I shot the bullets into the side of the barn first, and then I jus’ drew a target around each bullet hole.” Sadly, that’s the way many people live their lives. They never set goals, or aim at any worthy targets. Then whatever seems to happen, they draw a target around it after the fact as if that’s what they were really aiming at. Someone said: “If you aim at nothing in life, you’ll hit a bulls-eye every time.”
In the passage above, Paul is concluding a letter to a group of people who had lost their aim. It is in fact the concluding words of the second letter he wrote to the church. The church in Corinth was a church, Paul loved – even though they had strayed far from what God had intended them to be. In his final remarks to them, he gives them a target to aim at. Not that they would always hit the target with a perfect bulls-eye, but Paul realized that if the church was going to grow it had to have specific targets to aim at. So he tells them:
* Aim at Maturity. He says “Aim at perfection” The Church in Corinth had many problems which they had never grown out of. The problems all started with “I.” They struggled with immorality, immortality (they didn’t know what happens after death), and immaturity. Paul said that he wanted to write to them as spiritual adults, but they were still a group of self-centered, spiritual babies. In other words, they had never grown in their faith. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest baby ever born was in Italy in 1955 weighing in at a little over 23 pounds! Now that’s a big baby! But I’ve seen bigger babies than that. I’ve seen 100-pound babies, 150-pound babies, and even 200-pound babies - adults who have been Christians for dozens of years, but they have never grown beyond spiritual infancy. Babies born into the physical world grow naturally, as long as they are placed in an environment which meets their needs. Not so with the Christian. A Christian must choose to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Set your sights on maturing as a believer.
* Aim at Unity. Paul says, “be of one mind.” Jesus intended that His church, His body, should be one unified group of brothers and sisters. However, since the Church was born on the Day of Pentecost, His followers have splintered into thousands of branches, sects, and denominations. There are a lot of strange ideas floating around what Christian unity really is. Unity isn’t the same thing as uniformity. Some people think all Christians should wear the same kind of clothes, talk the same, look the same, and like the same kind of music. But God never intended to create what I call “cookie-cutter Christians.” Real unity is when all kinds of different people gather together and they still love each other; the long hairs getting along with the short hairs - and even the no hairs! The blue jean crowd singing next to the suit crowd. The off duty cop with his flat-top studying the Bible with the biker with the tattoos and piercings. The kids in their shorts and sandals learning from the elderly couple in their twilight years. The Ph.Ds worshipping alongside the high school dropouts. The millionaires praying alongside the people on welfare. When there is oneness in purpose and conviction coexisting at the same time with diversity because of our collective amazement of God’s Grace - that’s Church! Now catch this: Unity is more than just worshipping together in the same place at the same time. I could tie the tails of two cats together and put them in a pillow case and not have anything close to unity. Unity is achieved by each person taking every thought captive to Christ and conforming our lives to His perfect standards.
* Aim at Harmony Paul says, “live in peace” If you’ve ever listened to a piece of music in which all the vocalists sing in unison, after a few songs it gets fairly boring. Good music requires harmony. When a bass sings with a tenor and an alto along with a soprano, you’ve got something that catches your attention. There is a fullness of sound when there is harmony that makes music beautiful. The same is true of believers. When we live in harmony with one another, it captivates the world’s attention. Now catch this: We don’t have to all sing the same note, but we do have to be tuned into the same pitch. I once learned from a piano tuner that if there were 100 pianos lined up in a room and you tuned the first one to a tuning fork, then put away the tuning fork and tuned each piano to the one beside it, the 100th piano would be terribly out of tune with the first one. Why? There are such minor variations in pitch that it would be impossible to precisely duplicate each piano’s pitch. But if you tuned each piano to the same tuning fork, then all 100 would be in perfect tune. What’s the lesson? It won’t work for you to try to tune your life, spiritually speaking, to mine, even if I’m tuned in to Jesus. We loose harmony when we start comparing ourselves with each other. Each of us must tune our lives to Jesus Christ, and refuse to use anyone else other than Jesus as our measure or standard. As the wonderful old hymn says, “Tune my heart to sing your praise.” When that happens, our lives will be in perfect pitch with each other and there will be disharmony between us.
Aim at maturity, unity and harmony and we’ll on hit the bull’s-eye together!
Live the Victorious Life,
PT
(2 Cor. 13:11-14)
A man was hiking through the Blue Ridge Mountains. He walked up to a little farm with an old barn and a farmhouse. On the side of the old barn there were numerous bulls-eye targets, and as he examined them he noticed there was a bullet hole in the exact center of every target. Impressed, he walked over to the ramshackle house where a Hillbilly was sitting in a rocking chair. The hiker said, “Are you the one who did that shooting?” The hillbilly said, “Yep, I shore did.” The hiker said, “Sir, you must be finest marksman I’ve ever met.” The hillbilly spat out some tobacco juice and said, “Naw. Truth is, I shot the bullets into the side of the barn first, and then I jus’ drew a target around each bullet hole.” Sadly, that’s the way many people live their lives. They never set goals, or aim at any worthy targets. Then whatever seems to happen, they draw a target around it after the fact as if that’s what they were really aiming at. Someone said: “If you aim at nothing in life, you’ll hit a bulls-eye every time.”
In the passage above, Paul is concluding a letter to a group of people who had lost their aim. It is in fact the concluding words of the second letter he wrote to the church. The church in Corinth was a church, Paul loved – even though they had strayed far from what God had intended them to be. In his final remarks to them, he gives them a target to aim at. Not that they would always hit the target with a perfect bulls-eye, but Paul realized that if the church was going to grow it had to have specific targets to aim at. So he tells them:
* Aim at Maturity. He says “Aim at perfection” The Church in Corinth had many problems which they had never grown out of. The problems all started with “I.” They struggled with immorality, immortality (they didn’t know what happens after death), and immaturity. Paul said that he wanted to write to them as spiritual adults, but they were still a group of self-centered, spiritual babies. In other words, they had never grown in their faith. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest baby ever born was in Italy in 1955 weighing in at a little over 23 pounds! Now that’s a big baby! But I’ve seen bigger babies than that. I’ve seen 100-pound babies, 150-pound babies, and even 200-pound babies - adults who have been Christians for dozens of years, but they have never grown beyond spiritual infancy. Babies born into the physical world grow naturally, as long as they are placed in an environment which meets their needs. Not so with the Christian. A Christian must choose to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Set your sights on maturing as a believer.
* Aim at Unity. Paul says, “be of one mind.” Jesus intended that His church, His body, should be one unified group of brothers and sisters. However, since the Church was born on the Day of Pentecost, His followers have splintered into thousands of branches, sects, and denominations. There are a lot of strange ideas floating around what Christian unity really is. Unity isn’t the same thing as uniformity. Some people think all Christians should wear the same kind of clothes, talk the same, look the same, and like the same kind of music. But God never intended to create what I call “cookie-cutter Christians.” Real unity is when all kinds of different people gather together and they still love each other; the long hairs getting along with the short hairs - and even the no hairs! The blue jean crowd singing next to the suit crowd. The off duty cop with his flat-top studying the Bible with the biker with the tattoos and piercings. The kids in their shorts and sandals learning from the elderly couple in their twilight years. The Ph.Ds worshipping alongside the high school dropouts. The millionaires praying alongside the people on welfare. When there is oneness in purpose and conviction coexisting at the same time with diversity because of our collective amazement of God’s Grace - that’s Church! Now catch this: Unity is more than just worshipping together in the same place at the same time. I could tie the tails of two cats together and put them in a pillow case and not have anything close to unity. Unity is achieved by each person taking every thought captive to Christ and conforming our lives to His perfect standards.
* Aim at Harmony Paul says, “live in peace” If you’ve ever listened to a piece of music in which all the vocalists sing in unison, after a few songs it gets fairly boring. Good music requires harmony. When a bass sings with a tenor and an alto along with a soprano, you’ve got something that catches your attention. There is a fullness of sound when there is harmony that makes music beautiful. The same is true of believers. When we live in harmony with one another, it captivates the world’s attention. Now catch this: We don’t have to all sing the same note, but we do have to be tuned into the same pitch. I once learned from a piano tuner that if there were 100 pianos lined up in a room and you tuned the first one to a tuning fork, then put away the tuning fork and tuned each piano to the one beside it, the 100th piano would be terribly out of tune with the first one. Why? There are such minor variations in pitch that it would be impossible to precisely duplicate each piano’s pitch. But if you tuned each piano to the same tuning fork, then all 100 would be in perfect tune. What’s the lesson? It won’t work for you to try to tune your life, spiritually speaking, to mine, even if I’m tuned in to Jesus. We loose harmony when we start comparing ourselves with each other. Each of us must tune our lives to Jesus Christ, and refuse to use anyone else other than Jesus as our measure or standard. As the wonderful old hymn says, “Tune my heart to sing your praise.” When that happens, our lives will be in perfect pitch with each other and there will be disharmony between us.
Aim at maturity, unity and harmony and we’ll on hit the bull’s-eye together!
Live the Victorious Life,
PT
posted by Larry | 2:23 PM
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