There's a thought that's crossed my mind on many occasions, and you might be surprised that a pastor would have such a thought. Actually, you'll probably be relieved, because I suspect you've thought the same thing: why is it that some people seem to go through life very well without a serious, close connection with God?

My father was a godly Iowa farmer. He loved the Lord and sought to serve Him by teaching the high school boys’ Sunday school class for years, being a deacon, and serving in our church in other ways. He never did field work on Sunday; even our tractors rested on the Sabbath!

There were other farmers who, as far as we could tell, didn't seem to have the time of day for the Lord. I remember my dad’s saying that he had a conversation with one farmer who said he didn't have to go to church; he could worship the Lord on a manure pile. To each his own, yet that man was able to farm just as successfully as Dad. What Jesus said about God was proven true among the farmers near Parkersburg, Iowa where I grew up: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)

There’s a temptation to go it alone in life, without a serious, day-by-day, moment-by-moment, life-encompassing connection with God — or even with other people. Many people seem to get along fine without “getting religious,” as some people might call it. What should we think about all this?

JESUS' STORY ABOUT THE INDEPENDENT FARMER
Jesus told a story about a successful farmer; the story addresses this issue of being tempted to go it alone without getting serious about God. A man asked Jesus to be an arbitrator between him and his brother over the fair division of their inheritance. The story was a response to this man, who obviously was giving first priority to material things.

The story Jesus told about the farmer showed that the man didn't have a focus on God; he was more concerned about being his own self-made person. As you read this very short story, notice every time the man referred to himself with words like “I” or “my” or “mine.”

“The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, 'You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.'” (Luke 12:16-19) He referred to himself thirteen times! God was conspicuous by His absence in the man's thinking and planning.

The man was living from his own personal perspective — and it seems to have gone very well for him. How did Jesus say that God responded to this? “But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'” (Luke 12:20)

Eventually, of course, the man had nothing on earth he could call his own — not even his life, because he died. Taking the long view of things, did this man really make a wise choice not to factor God into his life? Jesus called the man a fool, and went on to say that “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:21)

LIVING WITH A GOD-PERSPECTIVE
There's a genuine temptation to go it alone in life without a focus on God, not including Him — and God has obviously made it possible for us to do that. It's sort of like a Cub Scout and his parent who build a wooden car to compete in the Pinewood Derby. I'm holding one of the kits that a Cub Scout buys to build his car. It's just a block of wood with some screws and wheels. It takes a lot of work to turn the block of wood into a pinewood racer.

The point of pinewood racing is to get a parent and Cub Scout to work together. Of course a young boy can't use power tools to cut out the shape of the car, so the parent is supposed to get involved — but not so involved that the boy doesn't contribute anything. The parent plays a big part, but so does the child; it's a partnership. Now I'm holding a completed car that was built years ago by Jim Black and his son Dan, who’s now a U.S. Marine who works on 40-million-dollar aircraft. Can Dan say, “I built this all by myself”? That would be wrong, but of course he can say that — and believe it, if he wants to (though I'm sure he doesn't).

God gives us the same choice. We can go through life tempted to say we’re doing it on our own, when in reality God is giving us the ongoing miracle of a thinking brain and a breathing body to live as if He doesn't exist.

Even those of us who have decided to take the Lord seriously can find ourselves living our day-to-day lives as if God didn't exist, with the same wrong priorities and worries as someone who doesn't have any focus on God. Eugene Peterson, one of my favorite authors, wrote, “One of the bad habits that we pick up early in our lives is separating things and people into secular and sacred. We assume that the secular is what we are more or less in charge of: our jobs, our time, our money, our opinions, our entertainment, our government, our house and land, our social relations. The sacred is what God has charge of: worship and the Bible, heaven and hell, church and prayer. We then contrive to set aside a sacred place for God, designed, we say, to honor God but really intended to keep God in His place, leaving us free to have the final say in everything else that goes on outside that space.” (The Way of Jesus, p.120)

It's a temptation to go it alone without God. Giving in to that temptation means that we miss out on the best of life now — and forever, in God's eternal plan. Life can be good and a person can be successful without having a close connection with God, but we'll miss the best part of life. A boy can live under the illusion that he built his pinewood racer on his own, but how much richer the memory would be if he remembers that he had the help of a loving parent! Building a pinewood car isn’t just about building a car: it's about a relationship and teamwork. That's also the way life is supposed to be between God and us!

Jesus said to His first disciples — and He says to us, too — “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10) and “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.” (John 15:16)

The good news is that we can resist the temptation to think that we can or should go it alone in life. We can turn to God. Have you consciously ever really put God first in your life? Eugene Peterson wrote, “We are after something – more life than we get simply by eating three meals a day, getting a little exercise, and having a decent job. We're after the God-oriented and God-shaped life: a holy life.” (The Way of Jesus, p.147)

All it takes is a choice to accept what God has already done for us: He made a way to provide us with forgiveness for everything that's wrong with us: our sin. He died on His cross for each one of us. Accept the fact that He did that for YOU! Accept Him as your very own personal savior. Then turn your life over to Him — the whole thing! Decide that you're no longer going to live for yourself: you’ll live for Him, taking the “I,” “me,” and “mine” out of life and putting “He,” “Him,” and “His” into it. Do that now, if you haven’t done it before!

CONNECTING WITH GOD’S PEOPLE
The temptation to go it alone isn’t just about living without God; it also includes living without God's people. Once we decide that we're going to live from the perspective that we're God's people, we should do that in the company of other people who feel the same way about God.

Jesus chose to spend His active earthly ministry of three years with twelve men we call His disciples (or apostles). “He appointed twelve – designating them apostles – that they might be with him . . .” (Mark 3:14) Jesus didn't want to be alone. This was very obvious at Jesus' most crucial hour in the Garden of Gethsemane when He was struggling with the whole issue of going to the cross for us. He said to His disciples, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” (Matthew 26:38) What wonderful words of endearment! Jesus needed those men at this crucial time in His life!

Jesus also knew that the disciples needed each other. When He sent out the twelve on their first preaching mission, “Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two . . .” (Mark 6:7) Later He sent out a larger group of His followers: “And after this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.” (Luke 10:1) He knew that they needed each other, so He didn't send them out alone.

I'm inviting two men of the church to come forward because I want you to see them eat. As you can see, each of them has a stick tied in two places to each of his arms so he can't bend his arms at the elbow. OK, you both have some food in front of you; go ahead and eat.

You can't do it, can you? You can't bend your arms to put the food into your mouths. Now watch this, everyone. It works if each man feeds the other, sort of like a bride and groom with the cake at their wedding. This exercise reminds us that we need each other!

We can be tempted to live without a significant connection with God or with God's people. It’s nothing other than a temptation, because living that way is far from God's ideal for us! We need a personal connection with God and with His people.

OTHERS NEED THIS, TOO!
This is so important that we shouldn't be keeping it to ourselves! That's why part of God's plan for each of us is to help others overcome the temptation to live without God and His people. Each of us has human connections, and among these relationships are people who don’t have the Lord as the supreme focus in their lives — or if they do, they aren’t connected to other people who have the same focus. They need a church family, and maybe it's this church family that they need!

That's why we need to take seriously our calling to have “Each One Reach One.” When we’re successful at reaching others, we'll need to make room for them! We want and need a bigger and better facility to make room for others who need to connect with the Lord and the Lord's people. It's not all about us; it's all about them!

A hundred years from now nothing could possibly be more important to us than the Lord and His people. Our choice now can put us in the Lord's presence in heaven with His people. Let's not be like the farmer in Jesus' story who thought about nothing but the tangible things he could have in this life. There's a lot more to life than this, now and for all eternity. That's why we need to resist the temptation to go it alone!