Your Life

Well, good morning, everyone. Everyone's having a good Sabbath, and thank you very much Carson and Zach for that special music. Appreciate that very much. Not one for props, but I have a prop today. As you may be able to tell, it's a glass, and it has water in it.

All right, my question for you, is it half full or is it half empty? I love audience participation. I know it's a cliche, half empty or half full, but what's your view? Is it half full or is it half empty? Okay. Sometimes people say it depends on if you're pouring or drinking. Okay. And then, as I was told yesterday, mine's half full, but people keep drinking out of it.

So there's a number of variations on it. And over the years, I've heard this since I was a kid, it still has something to teach us, I think. Something for us to think about. It's an important question about life. I like to call it a mind view. Whether it's half empty or half full can represent exactly the view of mind that we have about life and how we live our lives.

And I think that it's an important one for each of us in our own life to consider. And I think it's also important for the church, for the United Church of God, at this moment in its development and the current state of the world, which is always fluid. Many things happening that we have to consider as well as in our own lives. Because whether or not the approach we take to life and to ourselves and to each other, as to whether it's a half empty or a half full approach applies to our life and how we view ourselves and how we view what we are born into, what we have developed, what we have become in our life, what we've made of our life, what lies ahead of us, it impacts the way we interact with people and the view people have about us.

It impacts the opportunities that come our way, whether or not we seize them or just ignore them because of the way we might view them. It even impacts the attitude we have toward God and to His way of life.

There's no question about that. And it impacts the church of God, the leadership of the church of God, and its way we view the mission that we have in the church. But most importantly, I think, for each of us to consider, it illustrates a mind view that bears on our role in the future kingdom of God. So let's look at it. Let's consider for a moment if your mind view is that this is half-empty.

Okay? Let's think about that. What does that mean? What can that imply? Well, largely, that we take a negative view more often than not toward situations and toward people in life. It could mean that we are resource-limited when it comes to what we see and how we use the resources of people, tools, money, and, again, opportunity in front of us. A half-empty view toward life can lead us to be a bit more critical of things and people.

You ever met someone who you would describe as a person who is always looking for the loose brick in the wall? I have. And you have to kind of work carefully with a mindset that is always looking for the loose brick. Whenever every other brick might be solidly mortared in, they're going to be poking and testing it.

And when they find that one loose brick, that's the one they're going to focus on, and that will be the whole thesis. That will be the whole story. That will be the whole book. And it will might as well tear the whole wall down. Are you one like that?

A half-empty glass approach is problem-focused, and it's going to see people in situations that are rather negative to life. How many of us have watched and read, either had it read to us or we've watched and we've read to our children, the great cartoon series that was really immortalized by Disney, Winnie the Pooh? We all know Winnie the Pooh? Piglet? How many of us remember the donkey? Eeyore. Eeyore. I think we have the classic Disney Winnie the Pooh, the earlier one.

I know there have been one or two others that have done in recent years. I took my grandkids to see the one about four or five years ago when it came out. But Eeyore is a recurring character in the hundred-acre wood with all the characters there. Eeyore, of course, is a donkey with his ears kind of droopy and just kind of walking around. Eeyore is always negative. Some of the classic lines from Winnie the Pooh is, Kenga comes up, Eeyore's lost his tail.

Kenga comes up and puts a new tail on Eeyore. Eeyore kind of turns around and says, It's awful nice, Kenga. Much nicer than the rest of me. Instead of having a bit more gratitude. The other one that struck me was Eeyore looks at a new house of simple sticks that have been made for him, a little shed for him to be in. And he looks at it and he says, Not much of a house, just right for not much of a donkey.

And that's Eeyore's approach. But my favorite is the one where Eeyore and his friends are kind of walking off into the forest at the end of a scene and into the mist of the forest. And Eeyore's the last one in line. And here's what Eeyore says. End of the road. Nothing to do. And no hope of things getting better. Sounds like Saturday night at my house.

We love Eeyore, but I don't know that we should be like Eeyore or want to be like Eeyore. That type of an attitude can be set very early in life with the environment of the home, the approach of the parents, the circumstances that life gives. And so often we really don't know that that gets programmed into us. We take it as just a way of life by adults and people in our life when we're young.

And a lot of the conversation in the home will set a tone for that for children. A half-empty approach to life can be described by what is called a zero-sum theory. In economics, there's what they call a zero-sum. And it works like this in economic theory. Everything is finite. Everything is approached in finite terms, and there's no more.

It's like if you would take a pie and you would cut it up into pieces. Someone gets a piece of that pie, and if you have a zero-sum approach to life, you look at that and you realize that leaves less for you, and that's your focus. Rather than someone gets a piece of the pie, someone else will get a piece of the pie, you will get a piece of the pie, it sees the pie only as a whole and, in a sense, very possessive.

That is zero-thumb approach to things, and again, to life. It can come out in other ways as well. Someone gets more money out of maybe an inheritance or a division of income. Someone gets a better job, and there's envy that might set in, or recognition is given, praise is given, and we might react, I deserve that, why did they get that? And we don't have the joy. We can't share the joy in that. Someone in the family, perhaps another sibling, might get a bit more respect, maybe a little bit more love on an occasion, shown to them.

More friends, and these are the way things happen, and we may have a bit of envy and a bit of jealousy. In other words, we see that there's less for me, and it's a focus upon the self. But zero-thumb sees everything as a win-lose proposition. Very competitive. Love is only conditional. I will love you if you love me. It is not unconditional, and it can lead to an adversarial relationship. Sometimes people get crossways in their relationship with people in the church and or to the church, maybe the ministry or the leadership in some way, and they part company with the church.

Have you ever heard the phrase, the church is not meeting my needs? People might have as a complaint. People aren't friendly to me is another statement that people will make. I heard this one recently by someone who had left a few years ago. I'm tired of all the politics. Rather than staying and working it out and being a part of a solution, things like that can happen, and it can just break apart the entire approach. A half-empty approach says that the world is bad. The world is evil. The world is full of sin. We can look at examples of sin in the world and certainly great evil.

The Bible has a lot to say about not being a friend of the world, coming out of the world as a mandate for a Christian, all of which is true. But it is the balancing of that spiritually with the reality of living in the world and being a light to the world, and also understanding that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, as John 3 16 does tell us, and balancing that out to an approach to where in our messaging, whether it's as we write and speak to proclaim the message of the gospel as a church, as an individual will have opportunity to give a sermon at or sermon at any given time and emphasizing God's way of life, talking and how one might talk about the world as a whole, other religions, other churches.

The way that we approach that, again, is going to be impacted by whether or not we have a half empty or a half full approach to the Word of God and even to the world itself. Sometimes we hear the complaint that feast messages and even other sermons that might be given are a bit too negative and not emphasizing enough hope and joy and love. And while we warn, a message of warning and even call to repentance is best delivered with a half full mind view.

The world can be bad, and that is true, but life is good. The world can be bad, whether it's a hurricane, one after another as this season is showing, or an earthquake, or a tragedy of other proportions that takes place on a large scale, on an individual expression of evil, and a world that certainly is not in tune with the true God.

The world, yes, can be bad, but brethren, life is good. Life is good. One time I had a member of my congregation who was contemplating a particular course for their health, whether or not they should take this particular treatment, and I just looked at him and I said, you know what God says? Choose life. Choose life that you may live. And he knew what to do, and he made the right choice, and he extended his life for himself, for his wife, for his family. I told him, you choose life. That's what God says. The world can be bad, but life is good, and we have to live it with a positive approach, hopefully with a half-full approach.

A half-full approach, if you look at it this way, that glass is half-full. It's solution-oriented. It sees opportunity. It's a problem-solver, not a problem-maker, who, when there is a real problem, instead of just complaining about it or bringing it up to the minister, to the supervisor, in the office, will bring it up with a solution. That's the best type of employee.

That's the best type of approach to a problem that can be very real. That can be either losing money for the company, that can be creating problems within a group of people. Address the problem, but address it with a solution. Constructive criticism is the way that is called. And those are the best approaches to have.

It's mission-focused. It is wanting to see the best. It's what is called by Stephen Covey in his great book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, an abundance mentality. It's trusting, it's open, it's giving. It will value the differences of opinion, differences of personality, differences of approach. It will even allow people to breathe a little, live a little, live and let live within a little bit broader pen without trying to control and command and force people into a narrow channel of life or even sometimes righteousness that we can get into.

And we get a little bit legalistic in our fellowship in the church. And we feel that maybe our way and our minister can feel this way, that his view of righteousness is for everybody, everybody, including you. You're everybody. And it can get a bit strident and it can get a bit complicated when one's view of a standard of righteousness about any point of God's law becomes what is imposed, continually indicated, and put upon others.

The ministry can be guilty of that. Individuals can be guilty of that. We have to be very, very careful about Christian liberty and allowing us all to work out our own salvation within the broad parameters of God's way, God's law, God's teaching, while at the same time upholding a standard. But a half-full approach is going to take joy at other people's success. First Corinthians 12. The apostle Paul brings this out here. But he says in verse 26, that our presentable parts have no need, but God composed the body having given greater honor to this part, which lacks it.

And then over in 1 Corinthians 13, beginning in verse 4, it says, Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself. Love is not puffed up. We are going to take joy in what we see in other people's success and express a love that is not envious and does not get puffed up. A half-full approach is going to see a very high self-esteem and a very high internal security for people, for individuals. In Matthew 25, there is a parable that I think is very helpful here for us to consider, Matthew 25, about the talents. Give it in the context of the Olivet prophecy and teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven.

Matthew 25, beginning in verse 14, Christ gives us a parable of the talents and He says, The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man traveling to a far country who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one. To each, according to his own ability, and he immediately went on a journey. One man got five, one got two, and another one, which immediately could set up all kinds of scenarios in terms of what is allotted to an individual.

In verse 16, He who had received the five talents went and traded with them and made another five talents. He doubled what he had. He took what he had, what talent, what abilities, what money, what goods, and he took it and he doubled it. Quite a high return. It's important to look at the proportion that is indicated here. Because likewise, he who had received two gained two more also. So he had less in terms of the numerical quality, but he doubled what was given to him.

And there is any number of degrees of lessons here as we look at this, but to see this is to understand a very important lesson regarding the contrast between half empty or half full. But he who had received one, in verse 18, went and dug in the ground and hid his Lord's money. And after a long time, the Lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them. So the one just didn't really do anything. Dug a hole, buried it there, and just let it sit. And if it was gold or silver, then it would just, it would not decay, it would not tarnish, it was not going to rust.

It would be virtually as it was, no matter how long it would have been left in the ground. In verse 20, he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, Lord, you delivered me five talents. Look, I've gained five more talents besides them. And his Lord said to them, well done, good and faithful servant.

You were faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord. And again, just note that a half full approach is one of joy, hope, and love as well. But this person really had already entered into the joy of the Lord because of the productivity that he had accomplished with what he had in his life.

Think about that as you analyze the level, the degree of joy that we might have in our own life. Verse 22, he also who had received two talents came and said, Lord, you delivered to me two talents. Look, I've gained two more talents besides them. And his Lord said to him, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord. Again, he had learned the value of productivity and the fruit of joy in his life had been there. These two servants had this glass-pathful approach to life. They represent a mind view that sees opportunity.

The one with two could easily have been envious of the one with five and felt competition. My master doesn't love me as much as he loves him. Or he was born with two legs up and I've only got one leg up in life. Whatever the excuse could have been, he could have capitalized on it. But he took his two and he worked hard at it. And again, you can read into this any scenario that you might want to paint a fuller picture of the type of personality that the one with two had as opposed to the one with five. And it can be a very good lesson in life. But the point is, they both had a half-full approach and didn't let anything stand in the way.

And then in verse 24, the one who had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. His approach to the Lord was that his way was hard, inaccessible, not fair. You're a hard taskmaster. You gather when you haven't worked.

You gather when you haven't even taken the seed out of the bag and cast it into even a prepared field. You exact from others in an unfair way. You're not fair. Then in verse 29, he said, I was afraid, verse 25, I was afraid and I went and I hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours. Fear. Fear is often associated with, I think, a half-empty glass, not knowing exactly how to deal with life, circumstances, setbacks, difficulties, challenges.

People who may have more talent and ability. Have you ever been put off or fearful of just not wanting to engage? You just kind of move to another classroom. You move to another team. You move away from someone who may have a bit more obvious ability in whatever field it might be, rather than taking it as a challenge or finding one's place and contributing within the teamwork as a whole, electing to learn other lessons.

Fear is what this one who didn't do anything allowed to keep and to cripple him emotionally. The Lord answered and said to him, you wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reaped where I have not sown and you gather where I have not scattered seed. Sometimes you have to weigh the way the office is laid out. The company is directed. You have to learn sometimes that there will be politics. There will be things that are not fair. I learned this a long time ago in Little League Baseball.

I was playing on a team managed by a man and I was playing second base, but I had to share the second base time and the innings of each of our games with the son of the manager. I did that, I think, two seasons and I had one season left at that age level in summer baseball in Little League there in my hometown. Toward the end of that second season, I got increasingly less and less time. It wasn't because of my batting average. It wasn't because of my skills, at least as I thought, but I recognized that I was going to have to do something different if I was going to get playing time on the field because I wasn't going to get around the manager's own prejudice and bias toward his son.

At the end of that second season, our catcher was graduating out. He would not be there the next year. The catching slot was open. So I began to teach myself how to be a catcher, knowing that that slot would be open. I even volunteered a few times and put the catcher's equipment on before the second season ended and caught a few innings. By that time, I recognized I had a pretty good slot for it. Well, our little league expanded the next season and they created new teams. I got sold to one of the new teams.

It's hard to get sold when you're 11 years old, but that's what happened. I had already prepared myself and I became the starting catcher on the new team and played every inning of every game that summer. I could have just settled on the bench and chewed worms, but I realized you've got to do something. So I learned a new skill. I was not a Johnny bench, I will tell you that. But I held my own and I enjoyed the game.

You have to recognize and admit certain situations are not going to be fair and you may not get the primed opportunity. You have to create those opportunities for you. That was a big lesson that I learned. It helped me in that area, at least, to not just be eaten alive with envy and jealousy over the coach's son who was there. The first two servants in this parable, they both had a half-full glass approach.

The third servant had a half-empty glass syndrome. Zero-sum. And that is the difference. The third servant did his duty. He didn't work. He let his money sit idle, gaining no interest, building no capital by any investment in anything. It kind of reminds me of the statement that is made in the first chapter of the book of Haggai, the prophet Haggai, where God, through the prophet, chides the Jews who had stopped building the temple on their return. They had instead started building their own homes, and they were accumulating things. God says, you're putting your money into bags with holes in it. His overall point was, they were not investing at that moment in rebuilding the temple, which they were there to do.

That was the real investment. That was the real work. That was the real advancement forward. And yet, they were just focused upon surviving. And they were not surviving too well. They were a rather ragtag group when Haggai came among them. God says, you're putting your money in bags with holes in it. And that's a challenge at any time. Today, interest rates are historically low. But to invest anything and make a wise investment can be a challenge.

Takes a bit of wisdom. One needs to be very careful, but there are other opportunities there. We don't want to be like those who put money in bags with holes in it and have a half-empty mind view. In Proverbs 22, verse 13, it talks about, as slugger, it says, who says that there's a lion outside and won't go out into the streets.

That, too, is a half-empty approach to life. We have to avoid the fear. We have to be able to step out and avoid fear of failure, fear of punishment, fear of not quite achieving what we might think we should and have in our own life. I use the story of baseball in the Little League. There was another example of an individual that I had on my – he was one of the assistant coaches in my years.

His son played on our team. His son was very good. But the gentleman's name was Archie Smiley. Archie Smiley was one of our assistant coaches. And I would spend summers kind of, you know, he'd be always assisting the coach. Archie Smiley was a unique man in my life and in my hometown. Archie Smiley had no hands. When he was young, he had been playing around with some blasting caps and dynamite. And one day they both went off and all he had were two stumps from about here forward on both arms. So he had his elbow and about half of the lower arm.

No hands, nothing. Now, he didn't let that stop him. I would – I got acquainted with him. He knew me and I knew his son and he was just one of these really adults in your life. But because of a man, you know, when you're that age and you see somebody with no hands, that's something you kind of look at with eyes wide open anyway as a kid.

But I would sit on the bench in the dugout with Archie Smiley and I would watch Archie Smiley reach into his back pocket and pull out a map or folded piece of paper that would have a map on it. I remember this clearly one day. And he would unfold it on his lap and show the directions to whatever it was.

It may have been an alternate field we were playing on at a particular time. And then I watched him fold it back up and put it back in his pocket with his two stumps. All right? But that's not all. Archie Smiley would also sit there. He always wore a white t-shirt with a pocket there and his sleeves were always rolled up. But in the pocket was a pack of camels.

When Archie Smiley wanted a cigarette, he could push that pack of camels up and out, lay it on his lap and get a cigarette out, put it into his mouth, and then get into his pocket and pull that Zippo lighter out, open it, strike it, and light his camel cigarette.

Put it all back into his pockets and smoke that cigarette. It was amazing. I watch him do it. He would actually hit infield practice to us. He overcame his disability. He overcame his accident. He made a life. He had a family. He drove his car down the road with his stumps.

And you know what else Archie Smiley did? Because he didn't want to depend on welfare. His wife worked, but he supplemented the income. He had a bicycle repair shop that he operated out of his backyard. Bicycle repair shop. Chains, spokes, nuts, washers. He could do it all. It was an amazing eyewitness of an individual who didn't let what he had done to himself out of youthful, whatever you want to call it, change his life. And he made a life for himself and his family. Had several kids. I lost track of him after I left home, but he made a life. And he had a half-full approach to what he needed to do. You never heard him say a word about it or complain. There are many, many stories like that, and you can find them. We see them all the time of people today who do a lot without all of their limbs. But it takes a mindset to approach that. If you were to look at this parable, Matthew 25, literally, and define for yourself one or two or three strengths that you have going for you, one or two or three talents that you have going for you, what would they be? What should they be? What might you have that you haven't yet fully developed in your own life that is just waiting there? Maybe because you don't have that full-half-glass approach. How about hospitality? Sometimes we don't necessarily talk about that as a means of serving, contributing. People talk about wanting to be involved or serve. But hospitality in my years of experience is one of the traits that people can have naturally and bring into a church setting or can learn to develop. It really does more than anything else that might be a bit more prominent to build a church, to build a church family, to be able to be hospitable. I know we all like our space and we have our friends and we have our ways, but hospitality can go a long way toward building a church.

Is that a talent that you might yet have to develop? How about another idea, another talent that can be cultivated and developed? Empathy. Empathy. It's a trait, but asking people and making sure, how are you? How's your cousin? How's your family member? How do you remember someone in another's family? I commented on this last week. I gave the sermon at the PM, but I'll mention it again with what has recently transpired with our youngest son, Ryan, and the epilepsy that he has developed. Certainly the prayers and the support and all has been very good, but one of the things that just kind of came in on Debbie and I was the people asking, how's your son? How's Ryan? Phone calls that would come in. Emails, text, cards. But the empathy that has shown. Now, we can take little things like that for granted, but it's until you really get to a situation like that that it's really impacting you, that you realize what it does mean. And to just go out of the way to touch a person on the arm or whatever and ask how they're doing or someone close to them that a prayer request has gone up for and following up, not just once, not just twice, and not just with a Facebook like. Facebook likes are nice. They're better than not likes. And I guess they're better than, it's better to have friends on Facebook than not, you know, be defriended. I've got friends and I've been defriended on Facebook and when I get defriended, I think, really? That's it, huh? That's the best you can do? Anyway, my point is, pick up the phone. The sound of a human voice is much better. A handwritten note is far better than a digital tap. A touch, a look in the eye, empathy. Remembering someone, that's critical. Where your music talent is there, I appreciate everyone's efforts in the musical aspect of the congregation here. Debbie learned that a number of people could pick up sign language and over the last three or four years, learn something and branch out into a whole new world. Even face the fear there and learn something that allows them to serve and to help with people. But sometimes we just have to step out. We have to volunteer in order to contribute something to the whole of the church. Analyze your talents, analyze your strengths, build on them. Take a half-full approach to yourself and what you can do to increase them and ask God to help you to do that. It's so important. It is so important to see yourself. Sometimes we work in the media area of the church, and we work very hard at that. We analyze so much. Our statements, our articles, our programs, our approach, our strategies, and try to find a way to reach minds and hearts in the world today with the message of the Gospel. Frankly, you have to have a half-full approach to do that job, I think. That is one thing that I have learned. Because there are so many others that have half-empty approaches that you have to overcome and recognize that, hey, you have to keep going because that is what God says that we are to be found so doing as part of the time of the judgment. When you hear statements like, well, we have tried that before, it doesn't work. It is just, okay, well, the one I really like is, the Beyond Today program is better than it used to be. I love that one.

Sometimes we look at our world today and we recognize nobody is listening. They are distracted. It is a secular world, a post-Christian, yes and yes and yes. Sometimes we can say, well, the world has changed in 20 years or 30 years or 40 years. Well, yes, it has. But it isn't any worse than the world in which the Apostle Paul and the people at Antioch and other places we read about in the Bible went out and walked into and preached the Gospel. Then, in the Roman world, it doesn't take much to study into the Roman world of the first century to realize that we have a little bit of catching up to do to get as bad as they were, as bad as things can be in our world today. But we are not quite even, I don't think, where they were in the Roman world. That didn't stop them. We can't let that stop us. We can look at an aging church. We're an aging church, and let that be a fear-based approach to the things. We can't do that. That's half empty. Only a few attend a personal appearance campaign or a Kingdom of God lecture. Only a few. Well, if it's one, that's great. If it's three, that's even greater. If someone comes out, you have to take a half-full approach to it.

And frankly, without that, there is no reason to go on. We can say we have small and scattered congregations. Well, yes. How do you approach that? You draw your baseline, and you work from there. We have to have a half-full approach. In the announcements today, brethren, it was announced about the death of an individual named Raleigh Collins. I used to be Raleigh Collins pastor for two years in the mid-1970s in Pikeville, Kentucky. I lived there in the heart of Appalachia. Debbie and I did, with our two small boys.

Raleigh was in our congregation in Pikeville. Now, Frank Dunkel knows Raleigh a lot better. He, I think, worked with him longer and had a better relationship or deeper relationship for a longer period of time. I think Frank's going to do Raleigh's funeral. But anyone who ever knew Raleigh knew that he was a unique man, a unique person. He died at age 95 yesterday. What most people don't know, unless you've spent the time to listen to Raleigh and get to know his story, is that Raleigh lived most of his adult life with black lung.

Black lung is what you get when you work in the coal mines. And that fine black dust gets down in your lungs, and you can't get it out. It just hardens your lungs. And it's a major problem in Appalachia, among the coal community, coal industry. He was disabled from that long before I ever became his pastor in the mid-70s. And he was drawing a disability from that, but he was in God's church. But Raleigh just didn't come to church. Back in the mid-70s, when we started a Plain Truth newsstand program, Raleigh Collins said, I can do that. And he took Plain Truths, and he went out into the literally hills and hollows of eastern Kentucky to the little bitty country stores and he placed magazines there.

A lot of times he had to walk to do it. And he kept doing it. He was our top person and responsible down in Floyd County, Kentucky, to get magazines out to the people and places. He didn't let his black lung. He didn't let the fact that he was alone. He didn't let whatever problem that he had.

He had an opportunity, and he couldn't get it. Now, Raleigh would also share his faith with people. Sometimes a little bit too forcefully, perhaps, if you knew Raleigh. But he had no qualms about telling people about the truth of God. And you knew what Raleigh believed after you'd had a conversation with him, whether you were a stranger or a lifelong friend. And I will tell you, I may have stopped being his pastor in 1978, but I've run across him through the years, and I've often thought for Ollie Collins, I think he'll have more cities to deal with in the kingdom than a lot of others.

I'm a firm believer of that. That he took what he had. He took the talents that he had, and he more than doubled them. He more than doubled them. Didn't let anything stop him. And everybody that knew him was like that.

That's the way that he was. He believed in the work of God. He believed in pushing it out and doing what he could to let it be known. His glass, and he lived his life with a hand, and he was glass, and he lived his life with a half-full glass and a half-full approach. We all need to think about that. You know, if we take a half, sometimes in our own personal lives, and I think some of our young adults have to think about this, that if you live with a half-empty approach to life, sin doesn't look so bad.

You can doubt what you're going to do with life because of that. You can doubt God. And it's all too easy to not see a penalty for your action, for what you may decide to do. You see no penalty, and you then doubt, because doubt's a part of your mind view, you doubt that you're ever going to have to give an account for your life in a day of judgment. So, it's why it's so important to think about that at a very, very young age and move beyond and out of that, so that we are not caught in that in the times of our lives.

You know, there's a beautiful example from the story of Jeremiah that shows a half-full glass approach to life in Jeremiah 32. You can turn there. I'll just paraphrase the story.

In Jeremiah 32, the story is that Jerusalem is surrounded by the Babylonian armies. That's bad. That's definitely half-empty. Jeremiah is in prison for the first time in the prison, in the king's house. Verse 2 tells us of Jeremiah 32 that he was shut up in the court of the prison, which was in the king of Judah's house, and the Babylonian armies that surrounded Jerusalem. So, a lot of half-empty going on there. But then, as you read through the story here, God sends word that to Jeremiah is going to come as uncle, who's going to offer him an opportunity to buy a field that was his right to buy. He has right of first refusal. He says, he's going to come into your prison here, and he's going to offer you this opportunity. Take him up on it. Well, it happens. His uncle comes. He says, buy this field. And here's an offer. Here's an opportunity. Now, think about it. Jerusalem is about to go down. Real estate prices are really down. There's no future. All title deeds are going to be null and void by the king of Babylon. And Jeremiah knows it because he's been told by God to talk about that. And this is the time to make an investment. And God tells him, you make that investment because as you read through the story, he says, there's going to come a time when the people will return and they will buy and sell in this land. Now, it's not going to be for nearly two generations, over 70 years until that will happen. But Jeremiah buys the field. Now, you talk about turning around a half-empty situation and demonstrating a half-full approach to life. Jeremiah had it. He had to have it to actually do all of his job. But this is one of the classic examples of what he had to face and then believing God, which whether we're young, middle-aged, or old in our life, would finally come to a point where we recognize it's time to move forward. I got a kick. I was talking with Mr. Herb Jones this morning and I asked him, how are you doing? He said, I told my wife I've run out of complaints. I've run out of complaints. I'm not quite where Mr. Jones is, but we should all work to get there. We should all get to the point where we run out of complaints in our lives. Maybe circumstances and years get us to that point. But an example like Jeremiah of investing even when it doesn't look all that good and seeing the good, seeing the future, and taking the opportunity because God says to do it. Sacrifice a little bit in our own life. We see that as sacrifice because we choose God's way over the world's way. We choose God's way over Satan's. We choose righteousness over sin. We choose to say, no, I won't even go there a little bit if it impacts my fear of God and that he is a God of judgment. And I will have to answer for this if I don't repent and if I don't cleanse my body and my life of this. So I don't even want to go there. I'll take a half-full approach to life. In Philippians 4, the apostle Paul, again himself in prison, writes this letter to the church at Philippi. Philippians 4. And he says to a group of people with whom he had a very close relationship and a positive bond. In verse 10, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last your care for me has flourished again, though you surely did care, but you lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. Paul had run out of complaints. And remember, he's writing this from imprisonment.

I know how to be abased, he says, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things, I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer in need. Paul had learned to have a half-full approach to his life. And he had learned that and he conveys that here in this message. Let's work on that in our own lives. Let's look at whatever comes our way and let's learn to do the pouring and be pouring as much as we can into our lives, into our approach, and to live life with a half-full approach to it all.