Kerry Shook - Made For The Moment
When I got my first job as a pastor, even before I was settled in I got a call from a funeral director who asked me to do a funeral for a man. He said, "Kerry, could you preach this funeral"? And I said, "Well, did the guy go to our church"? And he said, "No. In fact, he was a 35-year-old drug dealer and I just can't get anyone to preach his funeral". Well, I found out that there was going to be a lot of teenagers at the funeral because apparently this guy was a huge supplier in the area and all these teenagers bought drugs from him, so they wanted to come pay their respects. So it was going to be packed with teenagers. I thought, "Well, that's a good chance for me to share Christ. So okay, I'll do it".
When I got there, the funeral director said, "Well, the only music in the service is something that the family really wanted. It's the song the 'Circle of Life' from 'The Lion King.'" And I thought, "Well, 'Circle of Life,' the theology is not that great in that song, but if that's what the family wants during this time I guess that's okay". And he said, "Yeah, they brought the soundtrack for 'The Lion King.' And so if you'll read the obituary, then I will play the song over the speakers and then you preach the message". I said, "Okay, sounds like a good deal".
So I read the obituary, and then the director put the song on that came over all the speakers. But instead of putting on the "Circle of Life," he accidentally put on "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" and nobody was feeling it. And that song just went on and on and on, and everybody's looking at me like, "This is kind of weird". This whole thing seems kind of weird to me. I mean, I love the song. Don't get me wrong. "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" it's a great romantic song, but it just wasn't the moment for it. That music wasn't made for that moment.
Have you ever experienced one of those cringe-worthy moments where somebody says something or somebody does something that just doesn't fit the moment? The timing is just off. Well, I'm talking today about how you were made for the moment. I was watching a movie about Winston Churchill the other day, and of course Winston Churchill was the prime minister of England who was the only leader in all of Europe that stood against Nazi aggression and called it out for what it was and the evil that it was early on. And then he led all of England to stand up and it really turned the tide of World War II. And there would be many times when Winston Churchill would get depressed or he would get down on himself and his wife would always say something like this: "Winston, you were made for this moment". And it would bolster him up. "You were made for this moment".
I thought about that. Sure, he was made for that moment to turn the whole tide of human history. But then I thought, "Wait a minute". You, too, are made for this moment. You were made for this moment. How do I know that? Because God chose to place you on this earth at this point in time. He could have chose to put you on the earth 3,000 years ago, he could have chosen to put you on the earth 100 years from now, but he chose to place you on this earth at this moment in time. So you were created, you were made for this moment. The problem is you can miss your moment. Life is made up of a lot of little moment that if you don't know how to take advantage of those moments and seize those moments you will miss your moment.
I want you to open your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter 3. It's here in Ecclesiastes we see the writer tells us that life is all about timing. It's all about moments and knowing what to do in the moment. So would you stand in honor of God's Word, Woodlands Church? And I want to welcome all of you worshiping with us at our satellite campuses, everyone worshiping with us through our broadcast and online ministry. Wherever you are in the world, you are so welcome. And all of you here in the Woodlands, we're one church built on the Word of God. So just follow along with me.
"For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven; a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to harvest, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up, a time to cry and a time to laugh, a time to grieve and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones, a time to embrace and a time to turn away, a time to search and a time to quit searching, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be quiet and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. What do people really get for all the hard work? I've seen the burden God has placed on us all, yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time".
You can be seated. And I want you to underline the first sentence in that whole passage: for everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. Success in life is all about timing; and here we see the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for every activity under heaven, but there's a right time for it and a wrong time for it. You can do the right thing at the wrong time and it ends up being the wrong thing. Wouldn't you agree? And so life is really all about timing and understanding timing. For example, if on our first date I would have asked Chris to marry me, that would have probably creeped her out a little bit. I mean, think about it.
You know, you take someone out on the first date and then when they come to the door, you just kneel down and go, "Would you make me the happiest man in the world"? Some of you single adults say, "That's happened to me. It is creepy, you know". I mean, you know, if I would have asked Chris to marry me on our first date, that probably wouldn't have gone so well. It worked out fine on the second date, but on the first date... no. A few months later, the time was perfect that I asked her. And so you can do the right thing at the wrong time and it becomes a very wrong thing. And so the Scripture here tells us that life is all about timing. But so many times we say things at the wrong time, we do things at the wrong time and it causes a lot of destruction and pain and hurt in our relationships.
So if I'm going to really seize the moment that I'm made for, then there are three things I want you to see, three things that I have to do that this passage tells me. First, I have to see the moment. I have to see the moment clearly. You can't seize the moment until you see the moment. You need God's wisdom to see the moment. In 1 Chronicles chapter 12, it talks about all the tribes that were coming to join David and to be on his team even before David was king. Saul, who had turned away from God, had banished David and David was living out in a cave. And he was on the run, but there were tribes that started coming to him in spite of the fact that it looked like he was going to be the loser and in 1 Chronicles 12:32 it tells about one of those tribes. It says, "From Issachar, men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do, 200 chiefs, with all their relatives under their command".
Underline that phrase, men who understood the times, and then underline the phrase, knew what Israel should do, and draw a line connecting the two because if you want to know what you should do you got to understand the times. You've got to understand what this moment calls for. You got to understand what you need to do in this moment so you can do the right thing at the right time. These guys had a wisdom from God where they understood the time so they knew what Israel should do, and that's my prayer. My prayer for my life is that God would give me the wisdom to understand the times so that I'll know what he wants me to do, so that I will do what he calls me to do in this moment.
What I want us to do is just go through Ecclesiastes chapter 3 because it gives us so much wisdom on what to do in the moment so that we can see the moment clearly and know what to do. In verse 2 it says there's a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to harvest. So this is talking about knowing the difference between the beginning and the end of something. It's so important to understand the beginning or the end, and it's not as easy as it might sound.
But can you imagine a farmer who goes out during the planting season and he plants some seeds? He plants all the seeds, then the next day he gets all his harvesting equipment and he comes back and he harvests all that he's planted. That'd be silly. You'd just get a bunch of dirt and seeds, and he would ruin the harvest for harvest season, why? Because it's planting season. And then can you imagine a farmer who goes out during the harvest time and he has these huge crops, field after field of these amazing crops and instead of bringing all the harvest equipment he comes out and he just starts planting over those crops and he never harvests the crops and they die? It would make no sense, but that's exactly what we do in our lives so many times. It's exactly what we do in our relationships.
So you've got to know the difference between when it's time to plant and when it's time to harvest, and the only way I can know that is with God's wisdom. Well, let's go on because he continues on. He says in the next passage, look at it with me, there's a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up. This is really interesting to me because you think, "Is there a time to kill really and a time to heal? I know there's a time to heal".
You know, oftentimes when a marriage is hurting or a family is hurting, they try to heal too quickly. Oftentimes when a marriage is hurting, someone is trying to heal it before they really kill the destructive behaviors that are causing hurt in the first place. And instead of it being time to heal, it's time to kill the selfishness, the bitterness, the lies that are causing the hurt. Because if you try to heal when it's time to kill, then you're just going to make everything worse. You're just going to just tear these wounds open over and over again because you can't heal. We need to kill off some things that are causing the disease in the first place.
And so maybe for some of you it's time to kill. For some of you, though, today it's time to heal. It's time to heal from your past because in your heart you're holding on to that hurt and it's turning to bitterness and you're still killing the person who hurt you but really is just killing you, and God says for you it's time to heal. It's time for you to heal. It's time for you to choose to forgive for your own sake because it's only hurting you. It's not hurting the person that hurts you. You're holding on to the hurt. It's turned into hate and bitterness and it's hurting you, it's killing you. So it's time for you to choose to forgive not because you feel like it but because God commands it and it's for your own sake so healing can flow into your life. You got to know when it's time to kill and when it's time to heal.
Verse 4, "A time to cry and a time to laugh, a time to grieve and a time to dance". Now, notice the time to cry is before the time to laugh and the time to grieve comes before the time to dance. This is important because when you suffer loss you have to grieve that loss before you can get over it. A lot of times we try to get over the loss and we don't grieve the loss, and we try to dance before we grieve. And if you dance before you grieve, it'll turn into a dance of depression or a dance of really bad decisions because if you don't grieve your losses it will eventually come out. That grief will come out.
Some of you are experiencing that right now. You didn't grieve a loss somewhere in your life. You stuffed it down and you just went on, and you didn't grieve that loss and now it's coming out a lot of bad decisions. It's coming out in a lot of different ways because you didn't deal with it 'cause grief is real. God created grief for us because it's a healing thing. And so you have to go through it and you come to the place where you're totally broken and then God can bring blessedness and then he will turn your mourning into dancing. But you can't dance before you grieve, and some of you it's time to grieve.
It's time to grieve the losses that you've caused in your life, in your relationships. It's time for you to admit it, to feel the brunt of it; or it's time for you to grieve the losses that you didn't have anything to do with but came into your life and blindsided you. It's time for you to grieve those losses and feel the brokenness in your heart so that God can take it and bring blessedness out of it. And then I would say I know that there's someone here, I don't know who you are, but it's time for you to dance. You feel like the music has died in your life and you feel like you'll never be able to dance again, and God says, "Put those dancing shoes on because it's time to dance". God says, "I can take your deepest hurt and turn it into a dance floor upon which you can dance the dance of joy".
And I'm just telling you I know that God is saying to someone, "It's time to dance. It's time for you to dance, whether you feel like it or not, because your dancing day is coming. Get the dancing shoes on because it's time for you to dance, it's time for you to celebrate. The mourning is over. I'm turning your mourning into dancing". You see, God gives us the wisdom to know what to do at the right time. What does the moment call for? Well, let's continue on because it says there's a time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones, a time to embrace and a time to turn away. This is knowing when to be tough and when to be tender.
As a leader, I know that I have to be tough at times; a really strong leader. And then there are times I need to be tender and compassionate. But I get the two mixed up a lot. Sometimes I get really tough to try to prove I'm the leader. "I'm the leader here". And if you have to tell people you're the leader, you're not really the leader. You know, I mean, if you have to have something on your door really huge, "I'm the boss," something on your desk, "I'm the boss. Hey, don't forget. I'm the boss. I'm the one who signs your checks," you know, then you're really not the leader. And so, but there are times where I feel like, "Man, I ought to be really tough here, show them I'm such a great leader," when it doesn't call for that. It's the wrong moment. And then there are times that I'm tender when I need to be tough. You know, I let something slide and I, "That's okay, no big deal".
Well, it is a big deal. It's just that I'm tired and I don't feel like dealing with it because it's a hassle. For those of you who are parents, you know what I'm talking about? There are times you need to be tough, times you need to be tender. And sometimes as a parent when my kids were growing up, I would be tough. I'd just get mad. You know, I'd get mad and then get really tough. It would come out all wrong. And then there were times when I would be tender when I needed to be tough. And I wasn't really enforcing the rule, I was just being tender because I was being lazy and because I didn't feel like it.
And so there are times when your kids need you to be tender and just give them a hug. Just give them a hug. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay". And there are times when you need to be tough and say, "I love you enough to be tough right now. I love you enough that I'm going to enforce this rule because this is for your own good. I care enough about you to be in the game on this". The problem is, when are you to be tough and when are you to be tender? You need to know what the moment calls for, and only God can show you what the moment calls for because success in life is all about timing. You do the right thing at the wrong time and it's really wrong. God wants you to do the right thing at the right time. That's the key to relationships, doing the right thing at the right time.
Well, let's go on. There's so much in here. Verse 6, "A time to search and a time to quit searching, a time to keep and a time to throw away". So this is knowing when to hold on and when to let go. Now, sometimes we hold on too tightly to relationship we crush the life out of it when it's time to let go and to give it to God. Sometimes we hold on too tightly to a goal or a dream, we crush the life out of it. It's time to let go and give it to God. For some of you, it's time for you to let go and give it to God because you're trying to control it, you're trying to hold it and it's too big for you. You got to let go and give it to God. For some of you, God is saying it's time for you to let go. You've been holding on for too long. But then I also know there's someone here who God's saying, "Hold on. Hold on to me with all your heart, with all your might".
Don't let go because you feel like letting go. You feel like letting go of God. You feel like giving up. You feel like turning away and God says, "Don't you do it. You come to me. You can yell on me, you can curse me, you can pour your heart out to me, but don't you dare let go of me. Hold on. Hold on. The blessing is just around the corner". It's always darkest before dawn so don't give up before the blessing comes. Sometimes we let go right before God is getting ready to come through, and God says, "Don't let go. You hold on. You hold on with everything you have. And when you can't hold on any longer, I will hold on to you and never let you go".
So when do I hold on? When do I let go? God wants us to know. Then the next verse, "A time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be quiet and a time to speak". This is knowing when to stand up and be noticed and when to sit down and blend in and be part of the team. Sometimes I stand up to be noticed out of pride and insecurity and I stand up at the wrong time and I try to shine at the wrong time and it's all about me, and sometimes I sit down and I just blend in when God wants me to stand up and make a difference; when God wants me to stand up or stand up and walk over to someone who's in need, but I just don't feel like it.
So I need to, "God, show me when to stand up, show me when to sit down, when to stand up for your glory, when to sit down for your glory". When do I stand up? When do I sit down? Look at the next verse. "A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace". That's knowing when to fight and when to surrender. A lot of times we fight for control when God says, "It's time to surrender to my care and control". Sometimes we surrender to sin and our flesh when God says, "It's time to fight with my power". God wants us to know when we surrender and when it's time to fight. And, folks, this all comes down to God's wisdom. God says, "If you like wisdom, ask me and I'll give you the wisdom to know what to do in the moment".
What does the moment call for? The only way I'll know is with God's wisdom, and that's my prayer. "God, show me what this moment calls for. Give me the wisdom to know what to do at this time". And then we have to also stay in the moment. First thing is see the moment clearly. You got to see the moment before you can seize the moment, then you stay in the moment. In Ecclesiastes 3:11 it says, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He's also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end".
Underline that phrase: he has made everything beautiful in its time. Every moment is beautiful in its time. At the right time every moment is beautiful. Even the most painful moments, even the ugliest-feeling moments, God can take them and make something beautiful out of them. But we try to move ahead of the moment and we miss out on the beautiful thing that God wants to do in our lives. You were made for the moment, but the moment is also making you. Don't forget that. You were made for this moment, but the moment you're in is also making you. God's using the moment to make you into what he wants you to be. And when you move ahead of God and you move ahead of the moment, you miss out on what God is trying to make you into and you miss out on the blessings and the beautiful thing that God is doing.
We move ahead of God and he drops the blessing where we used to be. Sometimes we don't step with God and we miss the blessing that we could have received. You try to run ahead of the Lord, you get worn out. How do you know if you're running ahead of God? You're probably worn out in your mind, in your heart. You're probably close to burnout because you're trying to run ahead. You're trying to make something happen that God says it's just time to wait. "If you'll wait on me, I'm going to come through. That delay won't stop my plan". But then there's the third thing, and that's seize the moment.
You got to see the moment, see it clearly, and then you have to stay in the moment that God has you in. Enjoy every moment, and then you seize the moment. I'm talking about those defining moments. You were made for this moment in time, but God also has made you or making you to be ready for your defining moments, and there's always two or three defining moments in every life that makes so much difference. It's where you stand in the defining moments of your life that determine your destiny. I don't know what the moment is for you. Maybe it's time for you to start trusting God with your finances and giving. Maybe it's time for you to share your faith with the neighbor that you've been talking with.
I don't know what time it is for you, but I know this. God has a moment for you. Did you ever stop and think maybe the reason God has blessed your business and raised you up to the position he's raised you up for is so you can make a difference in lives, so that you can put God first? Did you ever stop to think that maybe the reason God puts you in that neighborhood next to that person, next to that neighbor you can't stand, that ungodly heathen is because he wants you to be his love to that neighbor or maybe he just wants that neighbor to rub off the rough edges of your character? Maybe that neighbor thinks the same thing about you. "God, why did you place me next to this neighbor"? I don't know, but I know this. God has placed you where he's placed you for a reason.