I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my life while driving. I’ve seen other drivers eat full meals behind the wheel. Once I saw someone eating a bowl of soup while driving! I’ve seen women put on makeup, men shave their faces, kids playing games on their iPhones. All of it is distracted driving, which is the number one cause of vehicle accidents and deaths in this country.

Distracted driving is when you do anything other than the one thing you’re supposed to do. It’s doing anything other than what you were told to do in Driver’s Ed. It’s doing anything other than what your car was designed to do.

When we get behind the wheel of a 4,000 pound car, we need to feel the weight of the responsibility – literally. We need to realize how powerful the big hunk of metal and plastic and rubber underneath us is. We need to acknowledge the fact that if we don’t drive the right way, bad things will follow.

We also need to feel the weight of responsibility in our lives. Just like distracted driving, distracted living can be harmful to ourselves and others. When we treat life any other way than how we’re supposed to, we get our eyes off the road. And we lose sight of what’s ridiculously important – our relationship with Jesus Christ.

A car was designed for driving. You were designed for living. And more than that! You were designed by God for abundant, everlasting, eternal life! We were all designed to live “up there down here.” We were put on this earth not to just go through the motions until we die. The point of life is not to die and go to heaven. It’s to live in a way that brings heaven down to earth.

Jesus taught us a lot of stuff that we’ve sometimes ignored. A big part of his teaching is found in the Sermon on the Mount. Right at the center of that sermon is his teaching on prayer. We call it the Lord’s Prayer for good reason. And right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer is this line:

¹⁰ Your kingdom come,

your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

-Matthew 6:10

We Pray for God’s Kingdom

Jesus taught us to pray for God’s kingdom to come. Not to wait around for it. Not to hope it happens. And not to bide our time until we die and end up in heaven. No. We need to pray that God’s kingdom shows up right here, right now.

Jesus told us in Matthew 4:17 that the “kingdom of heaven is here!” We don’t have to wait for it. In heaven, it will be impossible to ignore the presence of God. And you know what? It’s the same thing here on earth if we really pay attention. If we get our eyes back on the road. Find ways to acknowledge the real, kingdom presence of God in your life every day.

We Pray for God’s Kingdom and God’s Will

We all have a kingdom. You have a kingdom and I have a kingdom. In America, we don’t live in a kingdom. We live in a representative democracy. We choose our leaders, and we don’t choose them for life. But in our lives, we all follow certain rules and regulations and behaviors that align us with a certain kingdom. A kingdom is the way I really want things to go in my life.

When I decide that God’s will is better than my will, when I consciously decide to do what he wants and what he says is best, then I’m really living. Because I’m really living in his kingdom. And his kingdom is always better than my kingdom.

We Pray for God’s Kingdom and God’s Will Right Here

Where can God’s kingdom show up in the little corner of earth you call home? Where is God’s reign really absent? Where could his power and presence make the biggest difference? Where do you need him to show up?

It could be your school, your neighborhood, the “rough part of town,” or just your workplace. When we pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, there are no limits. In fact, the places that feel most absent of God should be where we focus most intently our prayers.

How are you living out the kingdom of God in your life? Keeping your eyes on the road means that you find ways each day to do God’s will before your own.

This week I laid out a pretty heavy challenge to all of us, and it was heavy for me too. It’s something that I have to keep tabs on, keep checking myself to make sure I’m not slipping. I’m talking about Distracted Christianity. It’s when we get our eyes off the road, off our Rabbi Jesus. It’s so easy to get distracted with life, with careers, with finances – whatever! But none of it is as important as the ridiculously important job of being a follower of Jesus.

Throughout the years, we’ve been called a lot of different names. The one that’s seemed to stick is “Christian.” In recent years, some people have tried to escape the baggage of that name by using different terms or different names. One phrase I hear get thrown around a lot is “Christ Followers.” It’s sort of the same but different enough for some folks, I guess.

Whenever I think about this controversy over the name “Christian,” I can’t help but come back to this quote attributed to Mahatma Ghandi: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

That sentence may offend you. I think it offended me the first time I read it. But it’s easier to swallow when you realize he’s not talking about the truly committed Christians. He’s talking about Distracted Christians.

Like distracted driving, Distracted Christianity keeps our attention off of what’s really important…what’s ridiculously important. It keeps us from being radically transformed by the person of Jesus Christ.

We can put so much energy defending our version of “right” that we can lose sight of who we are. As a result it is very easy to create a form of hybrid religiosity that seems very different from what we read about Jesus in the New Testament. Instead of being transformed into Christ-likeness, we trade it in for something that’s a little like Christ, but different enough to keep our friends and coworkers happy. It’s different enough from Jesus to keep people from making fun or even persecuting us. It’s different enough from what we know of Christ to keep us in the game and climbing the ladder of success. It’s different enough to allow us to keep hating those who hate us, to keep hoarding what we think is ours, to keep living with little sins infiltrating our hearts.

It’s close enough to Jesus to pass a religious test, but different enough to keep us from being rejected by the world.

We don’t need to be close enough to Christ-likeness. We don’t need a religion that is like Christ, a little bit. We need a transformation that makes us like Christ completely!

The name “Christian” was first used by outsiders, by unbelievers to describe the followers of Jesus. They saw something different in us and had to come up with a whole new vocabulary. They recognized the transformation was so complete that a new thing was now on board. And it required a new team name, along with new team logo, uniform, colors and slogans – the whole thing! They realized something – and someone – was different.

Do we still look different? Sound different? Act different? Or are we so tragically integrated into the American way of life that we don’t make any difference at all?

The invitation “follow me” that Jesus laid down to his disciples 2000 years ago is still valid today. And it’s an invitation to transformation. Are you ready for it? What is it in your heart that needs to be healed? What has been distracting you from what’s ridiculously important? And how are you going to get your eyes back on the road?

There’s a big difference between smart and wise. You can be the smartest guy in the room. You can get a 1600 on your SATs. You can memorize the encyclopedia! But if you don’t know how to use what you learn, you’ll never be wise.

It’s obvious wherever you look that society needs wise people more than they need smart people. We have enough experts. What we really lack are people willing to roll up their sleeves and say, “Okay, where do we start?”

At Northbrook, I have a firm conviction and desire to be a wise church. That means we aren’t just simply a church in the community, but we exist for the good of the community. We don’t just think we have the answers, we put them into action. We don’t just tell people about Jesus, we show them. I hope that after a while, no matter what anyone says about our church, they will say that our community is better because we’re in it.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been in a series called Operation: Love My Neighbor. But it’s not just been information, it’s been action. If all we did was read the book of James, study the text, and then talk about what it means, we’d fall way, way short of the high demand that Jesus is asking of us. “Faith without works is dead,” after all. So instead, we got together and looked at how we can make an impact. How can we love our neighbor in the best way possible?

First, we encouraged you to do it by making it a rhythm of your life. Day in and day out, as you work, go to school, or just live in your neighborhood, how can you show Jesus’ love in real, practical ways? And how can you make it nearly automatic – a rhythm of life?

And then, we decided on two major projects. The first was to partner with Feed My Starving Children, a Christian organization committed to providing meals to the hungry all over the world. They work with local groups to hand-pack meals that are specially formulated to help malnourished children, then they ship them to distribution partners around the world, like Convoy of Hope. To date, they’ve fed nearly 2 billion children!

We had 417 volunteers on hand as we packed boxes, prayed over them, and provide 108,864 meals for starving kids in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. That’s what you did, Northbrook! That represents 834 total hours. There’s not a single person who could do that by themselves. But together, we were able to accomplish so much.

The next major project had a huge impact on our community. We served up lunch and handed out gift bags to local school teachers. Altogether, we were able to touch 1,700 school staff. If you know a teacher or are a teacher yourself, you know the long hours and dedication it takes. This was just one way we could say thank you to our educators for helping our community.

I hear a lot of things about our church. I hear about how friendly we are, how welcoming and fun we are, or even how big we are. But I really want to hear that we are a wise church, that we put what we believe into action. A wise church is a group of people who use their knowledge of God, the scriptures, and their applied life experience to make a difference in the world.

And as a believer, you can do that on your own anytime you like. It means you live a life that is praiseworthy because of your deep concern for people expressed in action. Living well, according to Jesus, is to give your life away so others can also live this vibrant, beautiful life of faith.

Operation: Love My Neighbor the series may be over, but it’s really just begun. I hope that you’re making a commitment to create a rhythm of life that includes giving of yourself every day so that others can know Jesus more.

This weekend I wrapped up a message series called “Operation Love Your Neighbor” with a message called “The Wise Church. The book of James is filled with wisdom. I mentioned 8 characteristics of wisdom from the book of James and 7 intentional practices I have observed in wise people. Here is the recap:

Wise People:

• Pray for wisdom (James 1:5) “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10)
• Are Resilient: Hard times and temptations lead to maturity (James 1:2-4)
• Live Gods word as much as they study it (James 1:22)
• Great Listeners (James 1:19)
• Have a firm control of their mouth (James 3:3-12)
• Submit themselves to God (even when things are confusing)(James 4:7)
• Live in unity and harmony with others (James 4:11-12)
• Are incredibly Patient (James 5:7)

Wise people intentionally:

• Embrace and experience life events, the good and the challenging with grace
• Reflect deeply
• Pray Honestly
• Read the scriptures openly
• Process with others and are OK with being challenged
• Interact with people whose lives are radically different than their own and learn from them
• Give all of life in submission to God