How Do You Face Your Weekends?

by Dorothy Dalton on May 2, 2009 at Midland Michigan

        Bob Proctor shares this story in “Chicken Soup for the Soul.  He was doing a weekend seminar north of Toronto.  On Friday night a tornado swept through Barrie, a near-by town killing several people and doing millions of dollars worth of damage.  That night when returning home he stopped in Barrie: it was a mess.  Everywhere he looked there were smashed houses and cars turned upside-down.  That same night Bob Templeton was driving down the same highway and he too stopped to look at the disaster.  Bob Templeton was the Vice-president of Telemedia Communication which owns a string of radio stations in Ontario and Quebec.  The following night Bob Proctor was doing another seminar in Toronto and Bob Templeton and a co-worker stood in the back of the room.  They shared their conviction that there had to be something they could do for the people in Barrie.  The following Friday Bob Templeton called all the executives at Telemedia into his office.  At the top of a flip chart he wrote three 3’s.  He said to his executives “How would you like to raise 3 million dollars, 3 days from now, in just 3 hours and give the money to the people in Barrie?”  There was nothing but silence in the room.  Finally, someone said, “Templeton, you’re crazy!  There is no way we could do that!”        Bob said, “Wait a minute.  I didn’t ask you if we could or even if we should.  I just asked you if you’d like to.”  They all said, “Sure, we would like to.”  He then drew a large “T” with the 333 resting on its cross bar.  Underneath, on one side he wrote, “Why we can’t and X’d it out.  On the other side he wrote, “How we can.”  They began brainstorming creative ideas for the fund raising and avoided reasons why the idea was not possible.  That was on a Friday.  The following Tuesday they had a radiothon of 50 radio stations across the country that agreed to participate.  It didn’t matter who got the credit as long as the people in Barrie got the money.  They succeeded in raising 3 million dollars in 3 hours within 3 business days, just as planned.  You see, you can do anything if you put your focus on how to do it and not on who gets credit or why you can’t.  Can’t: such a little word with so much power.

        This is the day that we attack a disease.  It rages untouched, it hinders too many.  It has shattered too many hopes, contaminated too many lives.  The time has come to declare war on the pestilence that goes by the name, “I can’t!”    I can’t!  I can’t understand my teenager.  I can’t pay my bills.  I can’t forgive any more.  I can’t go on.  I can’t fight any longer.  I can’t resist temptation.  I can’t stay in this marriage.  I can’t forget.  I can’t!  Don’t confuse I can’t with I shouldn’t.  Sometimes we say, I can’t when we really shouldn’t do something.  The father of three little kids should say; I can’t golf every day.  The family that is careful with finances should say; we can’t bust the budget just so we can have a bigger house.  There are times we say I can’t, appropriately; because, we shouldn’t; but then there are times when we say I can’t, when we should say, I can.  You see, when we say, I can’t, it affects the confidence center of our lives and it neutralizes us.  It renders us incapable of doing what God prepared us to do.

        Do you remember your life before “I can’t” came along?  You’ll have to think back to your childhood.  Remember, you could do anything then!  I can play soccer,  I can fly a plane; I can be a doctor; I can run for president; I can run in the Olympics, I can run a company.  I can go to college.  But then came; the “I can’t” condition.  Your relationships were different in those days, too.  You didn’t have black friends or Hispanic friends or white friends.  You just had friends.  Right?  And anger had such a short shelf life, in those days.  You could almost come to blows with your best friend one minute and become best buddies again within five minutes.  Now things are more complicated.  Now, we might say I can’t work with that ethnic group or I can’t forgive.  No wonder Jesus stipulated, “Unless a person is converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 18: 3)  There is something about the heart of a child that God loves to create: even in the hearts of adults.
 
        We all want to have that kind of heart and to be more like children, don’t we?  We want to be like Jenny Worth.  She was eight years old, when her father decided to take her on one of his business trips.  He took her with him on a Southwest Airlines flight.  Now, she had been on airlines before, but she had never been on Southwest.   Southwest Airlines, as you may know, are famous for equalizing everything.  There is no first class, or coach, there is no wide seats or narrow seats: everyone is the same.  Now, if you are a seasoned traveler you might get on a Southwest Airlines flight and say that everything is coach.  But, if you are eight years old:  she boarded that flight and as they walked down the aisle she looked back over her shoulder to her Dad and said, “Dad, the whole plane is first class!  That is the attitude that God wants us to have: an outlook on life where everything is first class.  And He will help you remove the “I can’t” from your life.  He will help you do that so every day will be a great day.

        To see how he does that is by looking at the three most important days in history.  The days of Easter weekend: Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  And that is the plan in this message.  “How Do You Face Your Weekends?”  I believe we can learn from how Jesus faced that Easter weekend.

        First of all with Christ, you can face the struggles the struggles of Friday.  How many of you think that Jesus struggled on the Friday of His crucifixion?  Absolutely!  He struggled beneath the weight of the cross.  He struggled at the rejection of His friends, the betrayal of Judas, the physical abuse.  He faced struggles everywhere He turned.  He struggled because no friends were with Him, except John: everyone else fled.  No one interrupted the crucifixion, not even God.  God didn’t interrupt the crucifixion and it was God himself, who foreordained the crucifixion.  The Bible says that “He so loved the world that He gave, His one and only son and who so ever believed in him should not perish but have everlasting or eternal life.” (John 3:16)  So God is the one who permitted the crucifixion.  In fact, had there been no Roman’s there still would have been a crucifixion.  Had there been no religious leaders there still would have been a sacrifice.  Because at the cross God, Himself, gave his Son to us: as a gift from himself.  In other words: He saved us from his own wrath by giving His Son to us.  And we wonder, how did Jesus endure the struggles?  My favorite female author writing on this subject says when in the garden of Gethsemane “the humanity of the Son of God trembled in that trying hour.  He prayed not now for His disciples that their faith might not fail, but for His own tempted, agonized soul.  The awful moment had come—that moment which was to decide the destiny of the world.  The fate of humanity trembled in the balance.  Christ might even now refuse to drink the cup apportioned to guilty man.  It was not yet too late.  He might wipe the bloody sweat from His brow and leave man to perish in his iniquity….The words fall tremblingly from the pale lips of Jesus, “O My Father, if this cup may not pass away from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done.”  Three times has He uttered that prayer.  Three times has humanity shrunk from the last, crowning sacrifice..…He sees that the transgressors of the law, if left to themselves must perish.  He sees the helplessness of man.   He sees the power of sin.  The woes and lamentations of a doomed world rise before Him.  He beholds its impending fate, and His decision is made.  He will save man at any cost to Himself…And He will not turn from His mission.”  We are amazed at His love for a fallen human race.  “Christ suffered keenly under abuse and insult.  At the hands of the beings whom He had created, and for whom He was making an infinite sacrifice.  He received every indignity.  And He suffered in proportion to the perfection of His holiness and His hatred of sin.”  I wonder if we can learn from His example.  And our question is more than just idle wondering because we have major decisions to make and a few of those struggles ourselves, don’t we?  Dawn to dusk days of struggles, tragedy and challenge.  Had I been in the place of Jesus I think I would have lashed out or bailed out.  I would have boomeranged the spit of the soldier’s right back into their faces.  I would have silenced the blood thirsty crowd just like I silenced the storm on the Sea of Galilee.  But, Jesus didn’t do that.  He never one time said, “I can’t.  I can’t do any more.  I can’t take any more!”  He never said that.  And the Bible tells us what He knew that we need to follow and imitate.  Hebrews 12:2 “For the joy set before Him Jesus endured the cross.”  How did Jesus endure the cross?  He looked at the joy that was set before Him.  He lifted up His eyes from that which He was facing and looked into the eternity that awaited Him.  There you have it!  How do you face the Fridays of struggle.  You face the Fridays of struggle by lifting up your eyes into the eternity of peace.  You focus less on your problems and more on the joy that awaits you and it does await you.  So, look less at the problems that you have now and more on the eternity that awaits you.  The Apostle Paul said, “Set your mind on things above and not on things of the earth.” (Col 3: 2)  So the more you make heaven bigger the more the pain here can be tolerated.  That’s how you face the Fridays of struggles.  Let me show you how Jesus did this by looking at His activities of that Friday.  At daybreak, when we first find Jesus speaking  we find Him telling his accusers, “The son of man will be seated on the right hand of the mighty God.” (Lk 22: 69; Matt 26: 64b)  Now where was the mind of Jesus, that morning?  He is thinking into the future, isn’t He?  Then He says, “In the future you will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Matt 26: 64b) Where’s the mind of Jesus?  In the future.  When interrogated by Pilate later that same day Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”  (John 18: 36)  Where’s the mind of Jesus?  He is thinking of the next world.  Jesus keeps lifting His eyes upward.  He said, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.” (John 19: 11) Now, let’s just pause and highlight those phrases:  in the future; not of this world; from above.  Jesus is fixing His mind on things above and this continues on the cross.  On the cross He says to the Father, “Father, forgive them. (Lk 23:34) He promises eternity when He says, “You will be with me in Paradise.” (Lk 23: 43)  He prays again, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? (Matt 27: 46b; Mk 15: 34b) and completes His assignment.  “It is finished. (John 19: 30b)   He ends His life in prayer.  “Father into your hands I commit my spirit. (Lk 23: 43b)  You see Jesus fixes His mind on things above.  If my count is correct, when Jesus spoke on that last Friday, he spoke thirteen times, 10 of those thirteen times He was either speaking to God or about God.  Now, my math might be off but that is almost 80%.  80 % of His comments that last Friday were either to God or about God.  So, where was the mind of Christ during that day?  His mind was God saturated.  God was who He could think about.  Now, do the math on your tough days.  What percentage of your thoughts, on your tough days, are God centered and God oriented?  If the percentage is small, maybe that is why the days are so tough.  What if you thought more on those days about God’s strength and less on those days about your troubles?  What if you did what the Apostle Paul said, “We don’t look at the troubles we see right now.”  We don’t look at them because; “the sufferings we now endure bear no comparison with the splendor, as yet unrevealed, which is in store for us.” (Rom 8: 18 NEB)    So, how do you face the toughest days of life?  You think more about eternity than you do about the problems you’re facing.  With God’s help you can do that.  With Christ you can face the struggles of Friday.  

        And with Christ you can endure the silence of Saturday.  Jesus was silent on that Saturday.  “At last, He was at rest.  The long day of shame and torture was ended.  In the beginning the Father and the Son had rested upon the Sabbath after Their work of creation…Now Jesus rested from the work of redemption.”  “Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus were determined that the body of Jesus should have an honorable burial….The body together with the spices brought by Nicodemus was carefully wrapped in a linen sheet and the Redeemer was borne to the tomb.” The body of Christ is as mute as the stone that guards the tomb.  Jesus said much on Friday and He will surely say much on Sunday.  But, He doesn’t say anything on Saturday.  God doesn’t say anything on Saturday, either.  The Heavenly Father doesn’t speak, He sure spoke on Friday.  Sometimes actions speak louder than words.  He split the rocks, He shook the ground, He tore the curtain in the temple, He eclipsed the sun of the earth.   He sacrificed the Son of Heaven.  He did much on that Friday and on Sunday He will do much, again.  The angels will be speaking, and the resurrection truth will be proclaimed.  But on Saturday the Heavenly Father is silent.  Jesus said nothing, God says nothing.  Saturday is silent.

        When we talk about Easter weekend we talk a lot about Friday, which we should:  the crucifixion.  We talk about Sunday, which we should:  the resurrection.  But how many of us talk much about Saturday?  I don’t recall hearing much about it in sermons. But it occurs to me that we need to talk about Saturday too.  Because we face those Saturdays:  those silent Saturdays.  Those days when God seems to say nothing to us!  We go through those long periods where our spiritual life seems to be in a draught.  We offer prayers and they seem to bounce off the ceiling and come back down to us.  A silent Saturday is that day in between the crucifixion and the resurrection.  A silent Saturday is that day between the discovery of the disease and the healing of the disease; the discovery of the problem and the discovery of the solution; the job dismissal and the new job discovery; the broken heart and the healed heart.  That silent Saturday occurs when we offer prayers and we say, isn’t God listening?  I wonder if the disciples might have offered prayers and said doesn’t God know that His Son is suffering?  I wonder if you offer prayers and say doesn’t God know my body is sick; that my job is going down the tube; that my finances are in a wreck; that my marriage stinks.  Doesn’t God know?  Why doesn’t He act? What are you suppose to do on days like that?  Here is what you do.  You do what Jesus did.  You wait.  You be patient.  Jesus was buried with His conviction.  I am sure he was familiar with Ps 16:10 “You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.”   And Jesus believed God would not leave Him alone in that grave.  And some of you have been brought here by God today to hear this next sentence.  God will not leave you alone, with your problem!  His silence is not His absence.  His inactivity is not His apathy.  You just need to do what Jesus did; be patient and wait.  Haven’t we discovered that Sundays always follow Saturdays?  Haven’t we?  And haven’t we found, although we don’t like to admit it, that Saturdays are good for us.  They teach us to trust; they teach us to rely.  I know, we would like God to solve our problem the minute the problem appears!   But, had Christ been raised from the dead the second He took His final breath, would we really appreciate the power of the resurrection?   Sometimes God puts a Saturday bookended by a Friday and a Sunday so that we will understand His power and maybe that is what He is doing for you.  If you are in a silent Saturday, let Jude 21 (NEB) encourage you.  His words to you and his words to me would be this:  “Keep yourselves in the love of God, and look forward to the day when our Lord Jesus Christ in his mercy will give eternal life.”  And He will come and when He comes you can enjoy, you can celebrate on Sunday.  

SPECIAL MUSIC    Charles McDonald

        “The women who anointed the body of Jesus on Friday went to the tomb on Sunday to finish that job.  They went with spices and aloes and cloth to finish their work of preparing the body of Jesus for the burial.  But, when they arrived they saw the first fruit of the resurrection.  They saw the stone rolled away.  They saw an angel sitting on the rock and remember what that angel said?  “He is not here, for He has risen just as He said.  Come see the place where the Lord lay.” (Matt 28:6)  That same invitation is offered today, to anyone who will come and look in to see the place where the Lord lay.  And when we go in, here is what we see:  we see a vacant slab where the body was;  we see cloth that had covered the body;  we see a folded napkin that had covered the head.  And if we look closely enough, do you know what else we see?  If we look very closely, over in the corner we see a stack of “I can’ts!”  Languishing, awaiting their fate, to be doomed and sealed forever in that grave.  Honor God by burying and leaving your “I can’ts” in the grave of Christ.  What is that one “I can’t” that you need to leave behind you?  What is that one I can’t?  I can’t forgive him.  I know you can’t but, with Christ you can!  I can’t resist the temptation.  I know it is hard but with Christ you can.  I can’t face the fears of tomorrow?  I know, but with Christ you can.  With Christ you can and you say what the apostle Paul said, “I can do all things, through Christ because He gives me strength.” (Phil 4:13)  Why don’t you do with your “I can’ts” what a fourth grade class here in Michigan did with theirs.  

        Chick Moorman tells this story about a Michigan fourth grade teacher by the name of Donna.  He was impressed with her when he met her at a seminar and asked if he might come and visit her fourth grade class.  She said yes, and one day he showed up, unexpectedly and walked into the class.  He did not want to interrupt anything so he just stood in the back of the class.  He noticed that all the class, all 30 of them, were making a list.  And he went and looked over the shoulder of one of the boys and read what the boy was writing:  All the things the boy was writing was prefaced by the words  ”I can’t.”

I can’t hit the soccer ball into the net.
I can’t do division with more than three numbers.
I can’t get Debbie to like me.

He looked at another boy’s paper and read:

    I can’t do ten push-ups.
    I can’t hit a home run.
    I can’t eat only one cookie.

And Moorman was concerned.  What a negative class, he thought.  And he went up to the front to say something to the teacher and she was busy writing a list too.  On her paper, he read:

    I can’t get Johnnie’s mother to come to a parent-teacher meeting.
    I can’t get my daughter to fill the car with gas.
    I can’t get Alan to use words instead of fists.

        Puzzled, he went back to his seat.  Finally, the teacher stood up.  She asked if all the students were finished.  They said they were.  And she invited them to fold their paper and bring it to the front where she had a box waiting on the desk.  She instructed them to place the papers in the box.  She put her paper on top of theirs and then put a lid on top of the box.  Then she invited all the kids to follow her and she stepped out into the hallway, walked to the custodian’s office and she grabbed a shovel and went out onto the play ground: the far corner of the play ground!  And she began to dig and she invited the students to help her.  And one by one they each turned a spade of dirt, until they had a hole three feet deep.  Then they placed that box of “I can’ts” down deep in that hole and began to cover it.  And when it was covered she had all the students stand around in a big circle and delivered this eulogy for the “I can’ts.”

        Friends she said, we gather in honor of the memory of “I can’t.”  While he was with us on earth, he touched the lives of everyone: some more than others.  His name, unfortunately, has been spoken in every building, in schools, city halls, state capitals, yes, even the white house.  We have provided ‘I can’t” with his final resting place, though, today.  He is survived by his brothers and sisters: I can, I will and I’m going to right away!  Now they are not as well known as their famous relative and certainly not as powerful, yet!  Perhaps one day, with your help maybe they will make an even bigger mark on the world.  May “I can’t’ rest in peace and may everyone here pick up there life and move forward in his absence.  Amen.  Then she brought the kids back into the class and they had a party with popcorn, punch and cookies.

      Let us do the same!  I don’t know about the popcorn, punch and cookies but I think we can bury our “I can’ts,” don’t you?  We can leave them in the grave.  Do you know that the Bible says  (1 Cor 6: 14NIV& Eph 1:19)  “That God’s power is very great for those that believe?  Look at this: “and he will raise us also” “With God all things are possible” (Matt 19:26) when you ask Him for help with our “I can’ts.”  

        How do you face your Fridays?  Well, you say, God, “I can’t” do it alone, would You help me so I can lift up my gaze and look more into heaven.  How do you face the silent Saturdays?  You say God “I can’t” do it alone, would You give me Your patience.  And how do you celebrate on Sundays?  You celebrate on Sunday because you left all of your “I can’ts” in the grave of Christ.  And you celebrate because you have found the peace of God.  Phil 4: 7 says “the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.  Your struggle-free weekend can begin with a simple prayer:  just like this one.

        Dear God, without you “I can’t” solve my problems; remove my sins; or go to heaven.  But with You I can and I ask you to help me, to cleanse me from sin and save me.  I thank you for what you have begun in my life.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

       Would you like to pray that prayer out loud with me?  Follow my lead.





Benediction:

Rom 15:5-6 NIV  May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of or Lord Jesus Christ.


1 Desire of Ages  pg 692-6932 Desire of Ages  pg 7003 Desire of Ages pg 7694 Desire of Ages pg 774

Special thanks and appreciation to the works of Max Lucado