Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

Does anybody remember that commercial from the ‘80s? Isn’t that the cheesiest thing you’ve ever seen? This is the third installment in our series called Games People Play. Today we’re talking about Twister. In 1966, Milton Bradley released Twister as “the game that ties you up in knots.”   Sales of Twister were sluggish at first, until Johnny Carson sent the sales of the game through the roof when he played Twister with Eva Gabor on the Tonight Show. On May 2, 1987, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst set a world record for the largest Twister game ever as 4,160 students played Twister at the same time. Conservative estimates are that Twister has been played by 65 million people worldwide.

The premise of the game is simple. Spin the spinner and the place the proper hand or foot on the proper color. But if you’ve ever played the game, you know that what sounds so simple actually becomes extremely difficult. You can only be pulled in so many different directions before you fall.

What I want to do this morning is help us all to stop playing this game in our lives. Getting pulled in 100 different directions on a Twister mat is fine. But it’s not so fine when life feels like one big game of Twister, is it?

This morning we’re in the New Testament book of Hebrews. In Hebrews 12, there’s a short little passage that can really help us to do a little “untwisting” in our lives.

Let’s pick it up in the second half of verse one. “…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” (Hebrews 12:1b-2a, NIV)

Throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. We know that Twister is full of hindrances and entanglements. That’s what makes the game challenging and fun. But the hindrances and entanglements we meet in our lives can really make a mess of things. So how do we lead a life that is unhindered and untangled? There are two significant phrases in our passage that we need to key in on. The phrases are “throw off” and “fix our eyes.”   We’re actually going to talk about the second phrase first.

The Hebrews writer encourages us to “fix our eyes on Jesus.”   In other words, he’s telling us to bring our lives into focus.

When you’re playing Twister, it eventually becomes impossible to focus on one thing. You’re being pulled in so many different directions that eventually even the best players will lose their balance and fall.

It’s really easy to lose your balance in life for the very same reason. We’re pulled in so many different directions that we can’t maintain our balance. There aren’t enough hours in a day; there aren’t enough days in a week. There is so much competing for our time, so much vying for our attention, that we can lose focus on what is most important.

Do you remember the old TVs where you actually had to get up and turn this big knob to change the channels? I still had one of those up until just a few years ago. And sometimes the picture on those old TVs goes out of focus and you’ve got to turn this other knob until the picture refocuses. Some of our younger people are looking at me like I’m from another planet right now. Yeah, the remote control didn’t always exist.

This phrase, “fix your eyes on Jesus,” is really a call for us to turn the knob on our lives to bring things back into focus. In another New Testament book, Galatians, Paul wrote basically the same thing.   “You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it's obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives.” (Galatians 3:1, The Message)

If your life is off balance, the first question to ask is, “What is my focus?” But here’s the deal when you ask that question: There’s only one right answer. There’s only one focal point that can be a stabilizing force in our lives. And it’s not my career, it’s not my cash flow, it’s not sports, it’s not technology, it’s not my status, it’s not my toys. This is a game that a lot of people play in their lives. They try to become a pro at Twister because they bend and twist their focus toward all this stuff. We probably all know people who are focused on this stuff and their lives are way out of focus and completely off balance. Maybe the person we know who is focused on the wrong things is us.

The reason Hebrews challenges us to fix our eyes on Jesus is not just because he offers us eternal life, it’s because he also offers us a focused, balanced, content, and purposeful life now.

Which brings us to a question: how do I do this? How do I turn the knob on my life, how do I refocus my life on Jesus? Our verses from Hebrews hold the answer.

Let’s look at the second key phrase in our passage.      Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. Throw off all this stuff. Lay it aside. Get rid of it.

In other words, prioritize. This is a pretty logical idea. The way to focus on the right thing is by eliminating the wrong things. We prioritize things in our lives, find our focus, and then eliminate, or throw off, the other stuff.

In Twister, you have to spin a wheel to decide what your next move will be. You can’t prioritize your moves because your moves are all a matter of chance. So how do we prioritize the “moves” in our lives without simply leaving it to a spinning wheel?

The answer is that we adopt a proactive plan and start prioritizing. I want to give you a simple plan to help jumpstart you as you evaluate and possibly change your life’s priorities. Whenever we’re facing an option or a choice in our lives, there are four questions we can ask that will help us decide where this choice belongs in our priorities.

The first question is does this choice bring glory to God? For someone who claims to be a Christ-follower, this has to be the first question in your quest to prioritize your life.   We need to take David’s prayer from Psalm 86 and make it our own. “I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever.” (Psalm 86:12, NIV)

In every choice we make, big and small, macro and micro, we have to remember that our first priority is to bring God glory. If our choice doesn’t do that, then it’s not a valid choice. Our passage this morning would tell us to take that choice and throw it off because it’s not a viable option for the Christ-follower. It’s a choice that will take our focus off of Jesus and will therefore throw our lives out of balance.

A second question to ask as we prioritize: does this choice strengthen my family? I’ve really worked hard at this priority in my own life over the last few years. There was a time when I found that I was giving way more time and effort to my ministry than I was to my marriage. This was back before we had our son, Ryan. I got a wake-up call at a minister’s conference I attended. In one of the evening main sessions, the speaker told all of us, “You know what? Your church had a pastor before you and they’ll have a pastor after you. But you are the only husband and father your family will ever have.” I knew at that moment that some things were going to change in my life. And the changes I’ve made have paid huge dividends in my family. I limit the amount of evenings that I’m out of the house. I ask church members not to call after 9:00 pm unless it’s an emergency. I make sure that my wife and my son get the first fruits of my time and attention, not leftover scraps. I’m not perfect at this, but I’m trying to constantly improve. Don’t get me wrong: I love being your pastor. But I also know that I’m replaceable here. I’m irreplaceable in my family.

You are irreplaceable in your family. You are replaceable at your job, you are replaceable in your club, you are replaceable on your team, but you are irreplaceable in your family. Do your priorities reflect that? Do your choices serve to strengthen your family? This is a crucial question to ask as we prioritize. If there is a choice that at best is innocuous for your family, or at worst is detrimental or destructive to your family, throw it off.

A third question to ask as we prioritize our lives: does this choice minister to others?

The Bible tells us, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others…” (1 Peter 4:10, NIV) Serving others is a hallmark of the Christian life and it has to be reflected in the choices of a Christ-follower.

This is an easy question to gloss over as we arrange our life’s priorities because it just doesn’t seem all that important. But the more you know about God, the more you understand His Word, the more that service and ministry has to jump to the forefront of your life. What, at times, doesn’t seem like a big deal to us is a huge deal to God.

Let me tell you about Matt. Matt was a student in our youth ministry in Indiana. He was one of our core kids. We had him on stage a lot. He did really well in front of his peers. But that’s not what I loved most about Matt. What I loved most was that he was always looking for what he could do behind the scenes. If chairs needed set up, Matt did it. If equipment needed moved, Matt moved it. If our room needed cleaned up afterwards, Matt did it. When our room needed painting, Matt grabbed a roller and started painting. Now, almost no one except me knew everything that Matt was doing, but it didn’t matter to him. Matt loved Jesus and service was just what he did. Ministry and service have to be a priority in the life of a Christian.

A final question to ask as we prioritize our life’s choices: does this choice enrich my life? And now you’re thinking, “Wow, we had to get all the way to the last question before I get to focus on myself.” Ah…you noticed that. Good. That’s no accident.

If we follow our culture’s lead and we live egocentric, self-centered lives, we’ll never have a life of balance and focus. Everything will be out of whack. That’s why this question is last.

However, once we make it this far down the list, this still isn’t a bad question to ask. God has placed a desire in all of us to live a life that is rich and fulfilling.

Proverbs 28 tells us, “…the one who trusts in the LORD will be enriched.” (Proverbs 28:25b, ESV) It’s a paradox of God. Our life is at its best when God, and not ourselves, is first. If we decide to make God’s glory our first priority as we said earlier, then we’re well on our way to have the rich, satisfying life that God has planned for us.

These four questions on the screen are critically important if we want to prioritize our lives according to God’s will and design. If we have a choice that doesn’t match up with one of these questions, then our passage from Hebrews says “throw it off.”

If we don’t take a proactive approach to prioritizing our lives, our world will prioritize our lives for us. And it will be about as predictable as giving the Twister wheel a spin. Your life will be nothing but run and gun. You will have no peace because, if you haven’t prioritized your life, everything will seem like an immediate crisis. You’ll never be able to focus on what matters because everything else will seem more important at the time. If we don’t put out the time and effort to align our lives by God’s design, the result will be a life that is a chaotic mess.

If any of you are a geology buff, then you know about the principle of isostasy. Isostasy refers to the equilibrium, or balance, in the earth’s crust. Most of the time the earth’s crust is in perfect isostasy. However, there are times when the equilibrium is upset and things under the earth’s surface go out of balance. The result can be devastating. When isostasy is disrupted, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions occur. Lives are destroyed when the earth’s isostasy is lost.

Our own lives can be destroyed if we allow the isostasy, or balance, of our lives to be disrupted. 

2 Peter says, “My dear friends, you have been warned ahead of time! So don't let the errors of evil people lead you down the wrong path and make you lose your [isostasy] balance.” (2 Peter 3:17, CEV)

If we follow our world’s lead, we’ll do nothing but play a losing game of Twister day after day. We’ll allow ourselves to be pulled in so many different directions that we’ll lose our balance.

The secret is to remember our key words: Focus and Prioritize. Our focus has to be on our relationship with Jesus and that has to be reflected in our life’s priorities. Anything less and life will always be a game that ties you up in knots.

As we close this morning, I want to invite you to fix your eyes on Jesus, maybe even for the first time. If you’ve tried doing life our culture’s way, then you know what it feels like to chase after meaningless things, to be pulled in a thousand different directions, and to still feel empty at the end of the day. Jesus is offering a better way. If you will focus your life on Him and commit to rearrange your priorities to reflect your new focus, I promise you’ll begin to see some changes in your life. Best of all, the promise of eternal life is yours. If you’ve never made Jesus your Savior and your Lord, we invite you to come and accept Him today.

Mike Edmisten