Um – just quickly – when you get to the end of your life and look back – will yours be a life of impact? Will yours be a life that’s added something to other people’s lives … or … not so much. Well?

Each minute that slips by is one less minute that you and I have to live on this earth. In fact life slips by with each tick of the clock. How we spend this precious time has everything to do with the sort of life we will have ended up living when it all comes to an end. So how are you spending your time?

When we were young children most of us didn’t think too much about dying. We pretty much have this mindset that we’re going to live forever here on this earth. I mean just think back, when you were a child did you ever think about dying?

Of course some people do. I have a dear friend who grew up in a war zone and was chased by rebel fighters through a jungle as they tried to forcibly conscript him to take up arms at the age of eight and nine. So some people I guess do think about dying young or perhaps a child with the life threatening disease but most of us as children simply aren’t wired to think about dying.

And even as teenagers and young adults we pretty much think we’re bullet proof and we’re going to live forever. One of the reasons that males under twenty five have more car accidents than any other age demographic is because they think they’re invincible.

But as time slips by our own children come and then they go and before you know it the grey hair starts appearing and then what really surprised me was the body just doesn’t work quite as well as it used to. At first I was shocked, then I was annoyed and then this sense of my own mortality crept in.

At some point the stark reality that our life here on this earth isn’t infinite becomes real in our hearts and in our consciousness and that my friend is a sobering realisation. Perhaps you’re at that point, maybe you’re way beyond it or maybe not.

I have a dear friend Phyllis at our Church, she’s ninety-nine years old as we go to air and as sharp and as witty as she is she’s at the point in her heart and her mind where she’s actually ready to cross over to the other side.

So when you and I get to Phyllis’s stage in life, if not perhaps her age but at that point when we know that the end isn’t far off, how will we look back on our lives? Come on, how will you look back on your life? And just as importantly how will others look back on your life? A life well lived, a life full of impact, a life with purpose, a worthwhile life or maybe not so much.

I remember being confronted by those questions when I read a book in my mid thirties called, ‘The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People’ by Steven Covey; a business best seller. One of the habits, the second one in fact, is to begin with the end in mind. In other words, to set your life on a course that gets you to where you want to head.

He begins the chapter by taking you to a funeral, your funeral; as though you have a chance to listen to what other people will say about you when you’re gone. And the question he asks the reader, me as I was reading it is this, will the people say about you the sorts of things that you really like them to say or not?

And that right there is an incredibly confronting question because it speaks directly about the gap, small or large, between the sort of life you’d really like to be living and the one you’re actually living. Are you really living the sort of life that you’d like to be living? Is it having the results, the impact, the outcomes that you’d really like to be having or not?

Because if it’s not then the only way it’s going to change is if you change. The only way that your report card at the end of the day is going to be different is if the attitudes, the desires, the motivations and ultimately the things you say and do become different.

And with life slipping away with each tick of the clock my friend, do you really have time to waste? It was that very question that brought me to a complete turning point in my life at age thirty six because I decided there was a huge gap between what I wanted my life to add up to at the end of the day and what it was going to add up to if I kept heading in the same direction.

I was living my life, by and large, for me, me and me and that, as it turns out, is no way to get the results that I was looking for because the results I was looking for from people who would stand up at my funeral were about the positive impact I’d had on their life’s journey.

Some might call that a mid life crisis, I don’t know but at some point we each need to ask ourselves whether our lives are headed in the right direction. So without putting too finer a point on it can I ask you quietly and gently and respectfully, is your life headed in the right direction?

Jesus once told this story about a man, Luke chapter 12 beginning at verse 16:

The land of this rich man produced abundantly and he thought to himself, ‘what should I do for I have no place to store my crops?’ And then he said, ‘I’ll do this, I’ll pull down all my barns and build bigger ones and there I will store all my grain and my goods and I will say to my soul, soul you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink, be merry.

But God said to him, ‘you fool, for this very night your life is being demanded of you and the things that you’ve prepared whose will they become?’ So it is with anyone who stores up treasures for themselves but is not rich towards God.

That story had a big impact on my life because I was that guy. I thought it was all about what I could build and what I could have. With no doubt we’ve all heard that saying, “you can’t take it with you” to which I would rather stupidly respond, “well you know if I can’t take it with me I’m just not going.” Yeah what that’s an option.

At some moment in time we are all going. We are all going to breathe out last breath. My heart will stop one day, your heart will stop one day and within just a few short minutes every cell in our bodies will be dead. If I have the opportunity to look back on my life in the weeks and the days and hours leading up to that event I decided that I’d like to be able to look back on a life with contentment, with satisfaction.

Okay every life has it’s mistakes and it’s regrets, yours does and mine does, things we wish we could unwind, things we wish we could have done differently but the greatest tragedy of all would be to get to the end, look back on it all with way more regret than satisfaction. The greatest tragedy of all would be a wasted life.

So is your life headed in the right direction and if not what are you doing about it? There’s something that the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossians in the New Testament that had a huge impact on my life. It was the thing that God used to start turning round my life. And just quietly it’s still turning around, it’s still a work in progress. None of us is there yet; at least I don’t feel that I am. Have a listen to these amazing words, Colossians chapter 3, verse 1 to 3:

So if you’ve been raised with Christ seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above not on the things that are on this earth for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ.

And then just a little bit further down in the same chapter verse 16:

Let the word of Christ dwell richly in you.

For me change didn’t happen, I mean real change, radical change, the sort of change that sets my life on the course that would give it the impact and the results that deep down I was secretly hoping for until my perspective changed. Once I stopped focusing on this life, what I could get out of it and lifted my gaze and set my mind on heavenly things that would last forever rather than the earthly things that satisfy me today but are as fleeting as the morning mist.

What I wanted changed, what I desired changed and then my life started heading in the right direction. Up until then I’d tried everything but the only thing that really worked was following Jesus Christ and setting my heart on Him.

If I died tonight would I be content with the life I’ve led? Well there are some things I’d still like to achieve but if the Lord God called my home tonight, if this is it, you know what, I’m content with the life that I’ve lived, can’t ask for much more than that can you?

Bringing up children is one of the toughest jobs on the planet. Any parent knows that. So … what sort of impact are you having on your kids. A good one … or, well, you know …

Being a parent is, I think, absolutely one of the most challenging things we can ever do. And in part that’s because there is always, always a generation gap between parents and their children. We always end up parenting in a world that’s profoundly different to the one in which we grew up. So how can we be good parents when someone’s moved the goal posts?

When I was growing up I remember feeling incredibly misunderstood by my parents. It’s not that they weren’t fantastic parents, they tried their very best and gave us all that they could, it’s just that they had ways of looking at the world that were different to mine.

Of course I didn’t entirely understand that at the time, I couldn’t quite of put it into those words but that was the reality. They came from a different culture and they grew up in a different era and surprise, surprise as though it was anything new under the sun, as a parent I’ve discovered the exact same thing albeit from a different perspective.

Bringing up children isn’t easy, that’s the truth, we love them, of course we love them but they’re different from us in so many ways. Firstly children by their very nature are immature, God gave them to loving parents because there has to be someone who loves through their immaturity and out through the other end of that.

They’re different, as I said, because they’re growing up in a different world with different priorities, different technology, different perspectives, different music and they’re different because their personalities are different to our own.

It never ceases to amaze me how children who are so closely related genetically and who grew up in the same environment can be so profoundly different and all those differences cause real tensions in families and on top of that part of growing is pushing the boundaries.

So if you have children in your life whether they be young or whether they maybe grown up how can you impact their lives in a positive way? How can you leave a legacy, a good legacy that lives on for generations to come through your children, their children and their children’s children?

That’s the power of a generational legacy; whether it be good or bad it will live on. Habits, behaviours, attitudes, faith, perspectives that we pick up in our formative years live on in us and we pass them onto our children and down they go through the generations.

It seems to me that being a fantastic parent is a blend of three things: love, discipline and our own behaviour as a role model. Without love we can’t be great parents. It’s a given that our children are going to make mistakes, they are going to fail us, they are going to dishonour us, they are going to be rude to us, they are going to do all sorts of things along the way, they just are, it’s part of growing up. Yet through all that the most important thing they need to know is that we love them. Unconditional parental love needs to be the bedrock beneath their feet.

Jesus once told a story, a parable of a son who left his father’s house, took his share of the inheritance, squandered it all on drinking and prostitutes the lot, completely dishonoured his father and yet when he fell on hard times he headed for home hoping to get a role as a servant rather than a son knowing he deserved little better.

But every day his father went out on the road to see whether his son might be coming home and when he did, listen to this, his father was filled with compassion. He ran, threw his arms around his son, kissed him, he called for the servants to bring out a robe, put a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet, he threw a party. That’s unconditional love.

Whenever our children fail, no matter how badly they fail, they need to know that we are their one safe haven in this world. But at the same time love involves discipline, it just does. A parent who doesn’t set boundaries and discipline their children isn’t making the emotional investment that the child needs to learn and to grow and to become a balanced mature adult.

God disciplines His children. Why? Because He loves us. Hebrews chapter 12:

And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children. ‘My child do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when he punishes you’. For the Lord disciplines those whom he loves and he chastises every child whom he accepts.

And the greatest way of all to teach our children is through our own example, our own high standards of love and sacrifice and integrity and reliability and kindness and gentleness. Often they won’t hear the things we say to them; instead they see what we do. And the way we live our lives is the single, strongest, most lasting influence that we will ever leave with them.

The Bible is replete with role models; the greatest of all is Jesus Himself. After learning from His earthly parents, Mary and Joseph, for a good thirty years, as a child and then as a young man in the workplace, He launched into His three and a half year public ministry and chose for Himself twelve disciples.

Jewish Rabbi’s had disciples, followers, that was the custom of the day. Jesus chose twelve. A disciple, that word literally means ‘to be a learner’ and these twelve men were by and large uneducated fishermen, tax collectors and the like yet they followed Jesus around for three and a half years and learned from His example.

They saw how He treated people, how He reacted in difficult situations, what He believed, what He said, what He did. He was their role model and this relationship between this Rabbi, Jesus, and His disciples has had a huge impact down through the generations.

In the same way our children learn from us, they learn our good traits and yes, they learn our bad traits. Who you and I are as parents, how we live our lives is going to have a massive impact on our children.

You and I, we only have one life to live here on this earth but in a very real sense when we’re gone we live on through our children. That’s true genetically as they carry our genetic imprint on down through the generations and its true emotionally and spiritually as they take on our character traits, our perspective on decency and honesty and kindness and humility. Or alternatively the terrible opposites of those things.

Do you want to live a fantastic life? Do you want to have a real impact in this world? Then take this whole parenting thing seriously. I mean incredibly seriously. Your children need your unconditional love. They need to know that they are unconditionally loved and no matter how badly they fail, that you will always protect them and accept them and love them.

They need your discipline. They need you to set boundaries to teach them to grow and they need an example from you that will equip them to live their lives and pass a great example on to their children. Being a parent is so important.

I always find it interesting in revealing Himself to us God comes up with this model of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; three persons in one; perfect love and community and yet one God.

You and I are made in His very image, we are in small, apart from our sin, what He is in the infinite and one of the ways He chooses to reveal Himself, come on, is as God the Father, God our parent, God the one who brought us into existence and who loves us the way a fantastic parent is meant to love their children.

And Jesus the Son honoured His Father by doing His Dad’s will. Jesus the Son had a close, intimate, personal relationship with His Dad. Interestingly the Jewish nation before Jesus would never have thought of calling God Father or even more familiar ‘Abba’ which literally means dad, which is how Jesus referred to Him.

And yet here we have it, the parent/child relationship is used by God as a tangible means of revealing Himself to us. He uses a relationship that we should know something about, the relationship between a father and a son to speak of the love He has for us.

Hey that should tell us something, that should tell us how important it is, this parent/child relationship in living our lives, it should tell us the powerful impact that we can have in this world by being a fantastic parent.

We were never made to be isolated individuals. We’re not hermit crabs – and yet so many people withdraw into their shells and live their lives like that. What does it mean to be a community?

During a recent trip to India there was a profound difference between Indian culture and western culture that really hit me between the eyes. The Indians, as with many Asian cultures, are much more family and community orientated than perhaps we westerners are. Community is such a powerful thing and that’s something about which we westerners living in so-called ‘developed economies’ frankly have a lot to learn about.

In my line of work I get to talk with a lot of people, lots, especially people who are Christians and who are either part of a local Church or not. Now Christians sometimes get all high and mighty about who they are and what they believe, most of us has seen that. I’ve seen Christians look down their noses at people who don’t believe what they do, which is all pretty sad really because anyone who calls themselves a Christian is supposed to love others as much as they love themselves. That’s what Jesus said.

Now in the west in countries like Australia and the US and the UK there’s something that Christians and Churches, many of them, simply aren’t good at. That thing is community. As I said it really strikes me what a powerful, powerful impact family and community have in countries like India.

Interestingly one of the things I noticed a complete absence of was billboards with scantily dressed women advertising whatever they’re advertising. Something you see rather a lot of around where I live. So I asked on of my Indian colleagues about this, why is that? Is it cultural, is it religious? What? This is what he said to me:

No it’s not so much religious, it’s something we all agree on because family is so very important to us here in India. We see that sort of thing as undermining the family so we’re against it.

See this attitude of family and the Indians are so incredibly family orientated as a people, has the power to influence even the behaviour of the advertising industry. Just wow! In the west we think more as individuals. Individual freedoms, individual beliefs, individual rights, individual this and that. Now to a point it’s of course great to have individual freedoms but in the eastern cultures people think far more collectively, as families, as communities and that brings a strong component of mutual responsibility, mutual respect.

Take either of those two models, extreme individualism or extreme collectivism and that’s not a good thing but I guess the point I’m trying to get to is that if my life and your life is going to have a real impact, if we’re going to leave a lasting legacy then a part of who we are needs to be about serving a community.

I want to come back to the concept of Church and whilst a lot of good things happen there, I see so many people struggling to find even genuine connection and community belonging to a Church and that’s sad. Whatever you may believe, whatever faith or belief system you may ascribe to, come on community is incredibly important.

Have you ever wondered what community really is? Well it’s not the complete subjugation of the individual; we are all individuals. No two people look alike except maybe a very rare set of identical twins but even then no two people have the same abilities, skills, experience, outlooks. Each one of us is unique and yet uniqueness was never meant to mean isolation, which is what individualism leads to for many.

Do you see the kind of paradox that emerges here? We’re created to be an individual and yet not in isolation, in community and community doesn’t work if it doesn’t accept, love and value the uniqueness of each individual in it. That doesn’t mean we have to say look everything that someone else does or says or believes or thinks is right, clearly there are times when in community people do do the wrong thing and that’s where community brings a sense of mutual obligation into play.

Can I ask you something? What part do you play in your community? How do you contribute to your community? Do other people benefit from your uniqueness in a relationship of genuine family and community? Because if not then I don’t believe you’re living the life you were made to live.

None of us was ever made to live in isolation yet I see so many people, maybe bruised or hurt or injured by others, withdrawing into their shells kind of like a hermit crab as though that’s the solution to anything. Community is laughing and crying together. Community is sharing the ups and the downs. Community is serving each other and benefiting from each other and benefiting from serving one another.

The most beautiful picture I’ve ever come across of this community thing is a picture I find in the Bible, in the New Testament and it uses the metaphor of a body to represent community. Have a listen, 2 Corinthians chapter 12, beginning at verse 15:

If the foot would say because I’m not a hand I don’t belong to the body that wouldn’t make sense, that wouldn’t make it any less a part of the body and if the ear was to say, because I’m not an eye I don’t belong to the body that wouldn’t make it any less a part of the body.

If the whole body were an eye where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing where would the sense of smell be? But as it is God arranged the members of the body, each one of them as he chose. If all were a single member where would the body be? But as it is there are many members yet one body.

The eye can’t say to the hand, I don’t need you nor again the head to the feet, I don’t need you. On the contrary the members of the body that seem to be weaker are in fact indispensable and those members of the body that we think less honourable, we clothe with greater honour and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect whereas our more respectable members don’t need any of this.

But God has so arranged the body, giving greater honour to the inferior members that there maybe no dissension within the body but the members may have the same care for one another because if one member suffers all suffer together with it, if one member is honoured then all should rejoice together with it.

Beautiful picture. Can I ask you? What part are you playing in your community, your local neighbourhood, maybe your block of apartments? Do you serve the person in need next door? Do you use your skills as an accountant to manage the finances of the apartment block where you live? Anyone who wants to have an impact in this world needs to be part of their community, serving it and benefiting from it.

The problem is that too often we’re too busy worrying about ourselves. Too often we’re too concerned about who’s on top, who’s got the best reputation, who’s going to get the accolades, the most money, the nicest house, the most well adjusted children, you know all that stuff.

Greatness isn’t about winning it’s about losing. Being first is really about being the last. That’s what Jesus said. In setting straight the religious leaders of His day who for the most part were hypocrites, who manipulated common people in the name of God and religion, this is what Jesus said, Matthew chapter 23 beginning at verse 11:

The greatest among you will be a servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

Do you want to live a life of impact? Do you want to live a life that will have people remembering you when you’re gone with fondness, with a sense of gratitude for the impact you had in their lives? Then it is time to focus on your community.

How could you serve? How can you make a difference? Is there sacrifice involved? Yeah of course there is but at the end of the day there’s nothing so satisfying as using the unique gifts that you’ve been given to serve others even when that serving is hard. That’s what community is.

God made us not as loners, not as hermit crabs to live our life in isolation, He made us to be social beings and community creatures and if perhaps you’re one of those people who’s forgotten what community is, whether in a Church setting or frankly in any other setting, maybe today’s the day to rethink that, maybe today’s the day to engage, to become part of, to serve, to sacrifice for your community.