Trying To Do The Impossible

Last week when Brother Jerrel asked me to speak here this morning, I could hardly sleep
that night, trying to put together in my mind the things I felt like the Lord would have me
say. The next morning in my quiet time I read a quote by Oswald Chambers:

Let God have perfect liberty when you speak. Before God’s message can liberate
other souls, the liberation must be real in you. Gather your material, and set it
alight when you speak.

My prayer is that God will bless greatly what He’s given me to say this morning and that
He might give you some pitfalls to watch out for in your own lives.

When I was saved, back in 1992, it was a several month process. Included in that process
was the desire the Lord put into my heart to listen to the New Testament on cassette as I
was driving back and forth from work.. When I got to where Jesus was telling the
Parables in Matthew Chapter 13 one verse stood out to me:

Matthew 13:23
But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and
understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some
sixty, some thirty."

I made up my mind then and there that if I was going to become a Christian, I would be
good soil.

For the first 7 years the Lord was my main focus of life. I started writing Christian songs.
I had written over 250 country music songs prior to being saved, but I had no idea the
Lord would use me to write and sing songs for Him. But He knew. I wrote 128 songs
between the beginning of 1993 and the end of 1999. That’s an average of over 18 songs
per year. I listened to countless sermons driving back and forth to work.. I spent
tremendous amounts of time reading sermons and books about Jesus in addition to at
least an hour of Bible Study every day when I’d get up. I saturated myself with God and
the things of God.

But starting around the end of 1999 I heard a lot of people talking about the stock market
and all the stocks they were buying and making money on. I thought to myself these
people are obsessed with this stuff. And then one fateful day in February of 2000 I
started out on a 2 year and 9 month ordeal, and it was an ordeal, of trying to do the
impossible.

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Matthew 6:24 says:
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or
else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and
mammon.

A friend of mine said to me “Did you see what that Franklin Mutual Fund did last
quarter? It went up 92%”. It’s amazing how one unsuspecting moment can cause you to
waste years of your life. For 15 years I had my money diversified so that I didn’t have to
worry about it at all. But on that day I moved all of my 401K money into that fund.
Then I found out I could transfer some of the money into an individual IRA account and
start buying individual stocks. I became obsessed with becoming rich in the stock
market. I was going to be able to buy a big house and big cars. I was going to be able to
buy my family all the things that most Americans, and I think sadly most Christians, are
wanting. It’s my personal opinion that the pursuit of ease, comfort and pleasure is
the main reason for the lukewarmness of Christianity as a whole. I wrote a song one
time called “When are we gonna start livin’ it”. There’s a line in it that says, “we’ll only
sacrifice if there’s no pain”. I’m afraid there’s way too much truth in that line.

Jesus tells this parable in Luke 12:16-19

16 . . . "The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully.
17 "And he thought within himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no room to
store my crops?'
18 "So he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and
there I will store all my crops and my goods.
19 'And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years;
take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry." '
I think we all know that it didn’t end well for this man. I was headed in the direction of
giving it a try though.

I started reading everything I could on the stock market. It became an addiction to me. If
the Nasdaq had a good day, then I felt good. If it had a down day, I felt bad. My
emotions were tied to what kind of day the stock market had.

Let me add here that I still spent just as much time in my morning Bible study, I still kept
singing at The Haven, at the Rescue Mission and here at our church. But, even more of
my time was spent researching the stock market, in buying and selling stocks. My song
total went from an average of 18 songs per year into a 3-year stretch from 2000 through
2002 where I averaged 3 songs per year. Three songs per year.

Why was that? Because I no longer heard God’s still small Voice. I no longer followed
the advice of what had become one of my life’s verses:

Hebrews 11:6
But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must
believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

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I didn’t diligently seek God any more. I diligently sought the things of this world. I
found myself showing signs similar to those mentioned in the verse before Matthew
13:23:

Matthew 13:22 says:

Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares
of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes
unfruitful.

And that’s exactly what happened in my life. I left my first love. I became a lukewarm
Christian. A Christian that tried to have it all. All the things the world values plus God.
It can’t be done. You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot serve God and
the world.

I fought it for 2 years and 9 months with the Lord trying to get me to see the condition I
had allowed myself to sink into.

I started “coming to myself” when I read a commentary on John Bunyan’s book “The
Pilgrim’s Progress”. It was written by G. B. Cheever. He said:

Then there is that other passage, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Cannot!
Yea, cannot; it is an absolute impossibility! Then the life of a great many persons is
a perpetual strife after what is impossible, for many are striving to serve God and
mammon. Hard-working people they are; there are no greater drudges in the
world, than those By-ends and Money-loves and Demases, who, in the Christian
church, are working away at this problem, to serve God and mammon. That is also
a tremendous sentence, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” “Often as the motley reflexes
of my experience move in long processions of manifold groups before me,” says a
great writer, and certainly not a cynical man, Mr. Coleridge, “the distinguished and
world-honored company of Christian mammonists appear to the eye of my
imagination as a drove of camels heavily laden, yet all at full speed, and each in the
confident expectation of passing through the eye of the needle, without stop or halt,
both beasts and baggage!” From such sad and fearful madness may the grace of
our God deliver us!

Then the words of Jesus in Luke Chapter 9 began to sink in. They’re a call to salvation,
but they’re also things that as Christians we need to be doing daily:

Luke Chapter 9:23-25

23 Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.

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24 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My
sake will save it.
25 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself
destroyed or lost?

Finally, last November 23rd, I closed out the personal IRA account so that I could not buy
and sell stocks, even if I wanted to. I put my 401K money back into a diversified setup
where I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I quit reading things on the stock market.
I quit worrying about how the stock market was doing. I went back to my first love.

The Lord has blessed that. I have a commitment to personal holiness like I have
never had before. It’s probably an even greater commitment than if I had never
taken that detour in my walk with God.

I want to share some of the things I’ve learned and some of the actions we’ve taken:

♦ I know the power that the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life
have over us. Their ability to take our minds off God. Their ability to destroy that
perfect peace that comes from a mind stayed on Him.

♦ I now know to guard the things I allow into my house. We’ve gotten rid of all our
non-Christian music. Thousands of dollars worth of CD’s and albums are now buried
in the Dothan Landfill, along with those 250+ country songs I had written. I’m not
saying that everybody needs to do this, but I want to get rid of all distractions that
would keep my mind off of Him, even if they’re not necessarily bad things.

♦ We’ve gotten rid of the movies that we had become desensitized to. We were
watching movies with words commonly used that I never heard in my parent’s house
as I was growing up. We were watching movies with “sexual content” that as
Christians we had no business watching. Things we should have been embarrassed to
let into our home. Now, we’ve pretty much gotten away from watching TV at all for
the most part, other than Daniel’s NBA games and Christian programs.

♦ We’ve started having our family Devotions again. And it’s not something that’s a
“duty”. We don’t get in a hurry. We start out with a worship song, we read a chapter
out of the Bible, we have time to discuss prayer requests, we pray, and then we close
out the devotions with another worship song.

♦ I’ve started listening to sermons again driving back and forth from work. The Lord
has blessed me with an hour a day of drive time and I use it to fill my mind with
God’s truths.

♦ I’ve started reading books that glorify Jesus again, at times other than my morning
quiet time.

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♦ I’ve asked God to burn away the wood, hay and stubble in my life that was causing
me to miss the purpose that I was created for: To walk with Him, to proclaim His
Gospel. To be an Evangelist through the songs He’s given me.

♦ I’ve started writing songs again. When I write songs, I know that I’m walking
close to God. I am diligently seeking Him and being receptive to the things He is
trying to teach me. In the first two and one half months of 2003 I’ve written 15
songs. I praise God that He’s gotten me back into Hebrews 11:6 and Matthew
13:23. I pray He’ll never let me leave them again.

I’ve learned to hate Satan for the way he can hold an apple out there and make it
look real good.

♦ I’ve learned to love God more because of the tremendous patience and love He
has shown to me.

I heard a sermon by a Chinese Preacher named Watchman Nee. He lived from 1903 until
1972, the last 20 years of his life he was imprisoned by the Communist government there.
He said something in a sermon that I wrote down. To me it was God’s way of putting
closure on all that I had gone through in trying to be a “Christian Mammonist”. He said:

Presenting myself to God implies a recognition that I am altogether His. This giving
of myself is a definite thing . . . There must be a day in my life when I pass out of my
own hands into His, and from that day forward I belong to Him and no longer to
myself.

I printed out a sheet of paper with that quote at the top. Then I left some space for the
members of my family to sign their name on it when they were ready to make that
commitment. I put it on the side of our refrigerator and signed it on February 19th of this
year. It’s not a commitment that I take lightly. I am sick and tired of wasting the one
shot the Lord has given me to make a difference in this life. My prayer is that the Lord
will keep burning out the wood, hay and stubble and live His life through me.

At the bottom of the page I put a quote from a song I wrote in January called “I Hope
You See Gold”. It says:

Burn away wood, hay and stubble, everything else must go. When our lives You
behold – I hope You see gold.

I want to close by asking two questions that I hope you will prayerfully consider and
answer in your own hearts:

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In your everyday lives do the lost see any real difference between your life and
theirs?

In your everyday lives does God see any real difference between your life and
theirs?

Let’s pray,
Dear Father, thank you for this time we’ve had together. I pray that you will work in
each life here to burn away any wood, hay and stubble that’s there. Forgive us please, for
our sins, for our failures to put you first in our lives. Please forgive us for our
lukewarmness. I pray that each person here this morning will fully surrender their lives to
you, as vessels you can live in and work through, and I pray we’ll be contagious. We
love You and praise You in Jesus name. Amen

Theses are the notes for a Brotherhood Breakfast talk on March 16, 2003. Mike Wilhoit, Dothan, Alabama.
www.soundclick.com/mikewilhoit