When will Enough be Enough?

Enough!

Stop the world, I want to get off!

For most of us living in the Western world, our experience of life is that of an endless striving for best. The mantra we live and breathe is: Do your best. Get the best. Be the best. And we are encouraged by the way life works, by our jobs, by advertising and just by our innate desire not just to “keep up with the Joneses” but to surpass the Joneses by having a bigger house, a better job, a more electric car, a phone with more functions you don’t understand, kids who play instruments you’ve never heard of, a diet full of macros or not full of macros and the capacity to do more supersets at the gym than anyone else you know.

Stop the world, I want to get off!

Friends, what I have just described is not a set of Western capitalist cliches - it’s what I see and hear on the North Shore of Sydney. We have opportunities to better our lives that few in the world have, perhaps less than 10%, but our pursuit of them is killing us. I was walking home after Parish Council this week and there are twin 5 year olds getting tennis coaching at 9.45pm. I chatted to a guy in a cafe queue who was frustrated it was taking so long because time is precious and he had more to do that day than he could cope with. I could tell story after story. 

The Bible describes this story like this.

What do people gain from all their labours at which they toil under the sun?

Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

All things are wearisome, more than one can say.

The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’?

It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.

Ecclesiastes 1:3-11

The Bible is so brutally realistic about life in affluent Sydney. The endless striving for perfection is not only old news, it is in the end of little long term value. 

Fortunately, the Bible also tells a better story and over three Share Life Sundays, I am going to unpack that better story under the theme of ‘Enough’.

• Sunday September 4 - Enough? - Our first Share Life Sunday will focus on our endless striving for perfection and ask the question ‘When is enough, enough?’. As we gather, we’ll be challenged to consider whether Christianity has something powerful to contribute to our lives. 

• Sunday September 11 - Jesus is Enough - Our second Share Life Sunday will focus on Jesus as the perfect substitute for sinful humanity. God’s grace and the good news of the gospel will be shared clearly and faithfully from Scripture.

• Sunday September 18 - Enough is Enough - Our final Share Life Sunday will call people to respond rightly to the person and message of Jesus. If Jesus is who he says he is, how does the rubber hit the road in our lives?

The way this works is that I am essentially giving one long talk across the three Share Life Sundays. I’ll move from engaging with wider cultural problems in week one, to proclaiming the message of gospel in week two, and end with an invitation to respond in repentance and faith in week three. I’d encourage you to invite a friend in the first week and my hope is that I will make such a compelling case for the Bible’s better story that they will want to come the following week and the week after.  

As we partner together in mission in the Share Life Sundays season, my prayer is that God will be at work in the hearts of those we know and love as we pray for them, speak with them and invite them along to join us at church!

While every Sunday presents a chance to invite someone along to hear the life-changing good news of the gospel, Share Life Sundays are a once-a-year opportunity for us to fling the doors wide open and eagerly invite in those we know and love to see our church family in action and to taste and see that Jesus is enough.

Pray for me as I prepare, pray, speak and invite. Please know I am praying for you.