Signs of a Shrink-wrapped Life

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Here's something I had to cut from my message for the same of time and focus. It's adapted from Paul David Tripp. Five signs of a shrink-wrapped life:

1 - Here and now. My life and eyes are focused solely on the hear and now. So it’s "an impatient kingdom that wants what it wants and wants it now." But you were designed to live with eternity in view. Yes, here and now is important, but this has to do with limiting our sight.

C.S. Lewis wrote that if you look back at history, the people that had the greatest impact on this age were people who thought most of the next age...people with eternity on their minds. The apostles, the reformers, those who abolished the slave trade, those who started hospitals of mercy all over the world left their mark in this life because their eyes were focused beyond this life. He then says this:

It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one. Aim at heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither.

2 - Me and mine. Of course God’s vision for my life begins right here at home, with my friends and family. But it also calls me to care for things and people outside of the borders of my tiny life. It calls me to have a world vision. It calls my heart to break over the things that break the heart of God. It calls me to invest in taking the message of the gospel and the demonstration of the kingdom beyond my Jerusalem and to Samaria and then to Judea and to the world.

3 - Wants and needs. Life dominated by personal wants and needs. Nothing wrong with desiring joy and happiness or even some nice things, but the shrink-wrapped life is most committed to get as much of my desires satisfied as possible. And my desires and wants and needs trump all else.

4 - Physical and material. Limited to the physical and material. We are physical people created to enjoy a physical world. But this is about being dominated by “what the hands can touch [rather] than [by] what the heart can embrace.”

5 - Entitlements and rights. Fighting for what I’m entitled to and on my rights. This is what drives you. Wanting to be served rather than to serve.