Better Dads Better Kids

Written as a speech 

LONG TERM PAYOFF – SHORT TERM EXPERIENCE

(lay out Jesus shirt)  audience of one

Identify

Pony Joke 

What are you doing for the next 200 years?  Hopefully some of you won’t still be here at Millikin.  How many of those are you going to spend on the earth? Where are you going to spend the rest of them?  

Rick Warren has a good book that everyone should read and in there he says that Life is preparation for eternity.  We use to have a hymn in the Lutheran church.  I am but a stranger here.  Heaven is my home. 

Are we human bodies with a soul? Or souls with a human body.

Are you focused on the long term payoff or the short term experience? I have a book I will mention in a moment where I talk about preparing for opportunities. One opportunity that we need to be prepared for is death. Could you die today?  I hope and pray that doesn’t happen.  But in a room this size odds are someone here only has 5 or 10 more years on this earth. As Stephen covey's seven habits of highly effective people he talks about beginning with the end of mind. Should that be the approach we have towards life?

A guy I knew had terminal cancer.   Guy loved video games.   So he told his wife to go out and buy the best gaming system available and put it in the attic.  So when he died and headed to Heaven, he could grab it on the way up.   After his death, his wife went up to see if the gaming system was still there and it was.   To which she stated “I knew I should have put it in the basement.”  

So what are you doing for the next 200 years?

Long term payoff vs short term experience 

Are you living according to the flesh or according to the spirit.   Romans 8:5-8

I believe it's important that we approach life with a WORD view.  the key to life is to get the L out. Don't be stuck in the world be stuck in the word. World word get the l out.  What do you think it means to be stuck in the world?   

*****************************************

So do we need a sun?

Some of us get kind of cranky if we don’t get some sun.   But Couldn't we solve global warming by getting rid of the sun? Did whoever designed the universe mess up by putting the sun where it is? Does anybody know how far away the sun is? Over 1,000,000 miles or under 1,000,000 miles? The sun is 93 million miles away if it were any closer we'd burn up if it were any further away we'd freeze. Who put that in just the right spot?

Now when I drive to work in the morning I don't always feel that way there's times I drive East in the morning and I can't see because of something that's 93 million miles away but then I turn around and drive to the West of an evening and now I can't see cause the sun's over there. So how did the sun go from being in the east in the morning to being in the West in the evening? 

So we now know that it's not the sun that's moving it's the earth that's moving. How fast is the earth moving? So the earth rotates around 24,000 miles every 24 hours so that means we are currently spinning at 1000 miles an hour but why don't we feel that? Because it's constant. If there were any disruption in that spinning we'd have major problems but part of the job of the moon which is only 240,000 miles away is to keep the earth stable.

The earth has to go 66,000 miles an hour to rotate around the sun in 365 days.  

Your worldview needs to explain who put the sun where it is and did they do a good job? 

God and Eternity can be hard to comprehend.   But so are the facts about the earth and the sun that we know to be scientifically true.  Could God be true as well? If God were real would you be more focused on the long term payoff or the short term experience?   

***********************************************************

Are you still with me? If so could you give me a thumbs up. So what is unique about your thumb? 8 billion people in the world and we all have a different thumbprint. Even identical twins have different thumbprints. You know why that is? So we can have all these crime drama shows on TV.  We could get away with a lot more if our fingerprints didn't give us away.

Just like your fingerprints, I believe you are as unique as your fingerprints. For some reason God looked at the world and said we need a sun to keep us warm and give us light. But then he said we need one of you in order to make this world complete.

You are not an accident. Be sure and check out Rick Warren’s purpose driven life book.  I believe it is a must read.

Did you ever think about how your parents met? How did it happen that your mom and dad crossed paths in order to create you? There are a few times it has come up that I was a party baby. I have an older brother and sister in their 70s and an older brother and sister in their mid 60s. and I would guess my parents thought they were done but then I came along. I’m 59 …You wanna hear something crazy on February 10th 1964 The Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show. Nine months later on November the 10th I was born. Think about that one for a moment. Was that the party?

I played baseball at a little school in Chicago called St. Xavier.   I hated January because January was all about conditioning.   Aerobics was the big thing then and I could catch a double header but my body was not made for aerobics. 

So one night we are getting ready to go in the gym to do a workout and I told the guys.  I can’t go in there.   They were like Yeah we know it’s hard for you but you can get through it.   We will help you make it through it.    No I can’t go in there.   I am going to be a Dad.  

I will never forget The looks on their faces.  Earlier in the day I got a call from JJ’s mom that I was going to be a Dad.     

So I have a book now  Just Call Me Dad.    

In the book I talk a lot about the fact that life didn't really go quite as I had it planned. But God’s plan was Millikin was going to need an FCA director so we need a JJ Minton. It really is shocking that FCA has a Macon County leader in JJ Minton.  How events played out for me to be JJ's dad?

Why didn’t your parents abort you?  Today 1 in 5 babies are aborted.  

Did you ever think about did God or whoever you think designed the universe did they get sex marriage and babies wrong?  Shouldn't sex be more about a short-term experience than a long term payoff?

Have you ever thought about what the next generation would look like if we didn't have any kids? I believe a big part of life is winning the generational relay race. That a big part of everyone's life is to build the home.   That is how we change our world. 

So to finish up here, why is there a Son of God? Why was there a baby born in manager who had to struggle and die on a cross.   Who makes this stuff up?  Because we are all sinners in need of a savior. Our nature is to get focused on the short term experience.  FCA Does a great job of presenting the gospel. That God loves you.   He created you.  He wants you to discover your purpose through a relationship with him.   Genesis 127 so God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them male and female.

But SIN Separates you from God. It has been said that heaven is the presence of God and the absence of sin… hell on the other hand is the absence of God and the presence of sin.   You cannot experience God's love when you ignore him … when you look for fulfillment in things other than him.  Sin damages our relationship with other people and with God…

God gave us an owners manual on how to live the next 200 years… how to focus on the long term payoff .. make sure you spend time in your Bibles every week so you don’t get that wrong.   I am but a stranger here.  Heaven is my home.