Subject: WHAT ARE OUR AMBITIONS?
Text: Philippians 3:10, Phillip's Translation: "How changed are my ambitions!"
When the words "Damascus Road" are mentioned, our thoughts immediately turn to the Apostle Paul and the experience he had on that road when he was known as Saul of Tarsus. In one simple sentence, he tells us a great deal about the effect that experience had on his life. In Philippians 3:10 in the Phillip's Translation of the New Testament, he says, "How changed are my ambitions!" In the first verses of this chapter, he tells us something of what his life was like before that experience. In the latter verses, he tells us something about his life after that experience. As dark is different from light, as night is different from day, as fall is different from spring, as death is different from life, so was Paul's life before the Damascus Road experience different from his life afterwards. He explains the difference in his life before and afterwards by simply saying that his ambitions are changed.
Whether we realize it or not, the ambitions we have largely determine the course and the directions of our lives. A person who has no ambition is one whose life tends to drift with the tides with little direction to it. A person whose ambitions are low and unworthy tends to set the course of his life on the downward path towards those low and unworthy things he desires. A person whose ambitions are worldly tends to follow the pathway that leads to the things that are worldly. And the person whose ambitions are spiritual tends to seek those pathways of the soul where the spiritual goals may be reached. Our ambitions determine to a tremendous degree the direction of our lives. We tend to direct our lives towards those things that deep down in our hearts we want more than anything else. When our ambitions change, the whole course of our lives is changed. We see this clearly in this chapter where the Apostle Paul describes his life before and after the Damascus Road experience and explains the change by simply saying, "How changed are my ambitions!"
It is a soul-searching thing to honestly examine one's own ambitions! Have you ever searched out the deepest ambitions that you have to see what they really are? Have you ever faced up to the question of what, deep down in your heart, you want more than anything else in life - not just in the world to come, but right now, here in this present world? Do you have any ambitions, any goals, that you have set your heart upon and are striving for? This is something extremely important, not only because our ambitions set the direction of our lives, but also because, to a far greater extent than we realize, we can get pretty much what we want in life if we want it badly enough! Roll that through your mind and let it soak in for awhile: to a far greater extent than we realize, we can get pretty much what we want in life if we want it badly enough!
Take Abraham Lincoln for an example: when he was a young man, he set his mind and heart on a career in politics and his ambition was to be elected to the United States Congress. It is said that on one occasion he was in a group where all who wanted to go to Heaven were asked to stand. He remained seated. "Why, Mr. Lincoln," the speaker said, "don't you want to go to Heaven?" "Not just now," he is quoted as saying. "I want to get elected and go to Congress."
He ran for the legislature in Illinois and was defeated.
He entered business and the business failed. It took him 17 years to pay up the worthless debts of his business partner.
He fell in love with a beautiful woman, became engaged to her, and she died. He ran for Congress and was badly defeated.
He tried to get an appointment to the U. S. Land Office and failed.
He ran for the Vice-Presidency and was defeated.
He ran for the U. S. Senate and failed.
But he was determined to have a career in the political life of our nation and he kept on until he became one of the greatest, if not the greatest, presidents our nation has ever had.
If it's a lot of money we are ambitious for, if we want it badly enough, it can be had. I think about a man who lived in my little home community when I was a boy. He was a son of one of the store-owners and was associated with his father's business for awhile. I heard that he had set his goal on becoming a millionaire, an almost unbelievable fortune in those days for folks in that area. I grew up, went away to college for a couple of years, worked a short while, went into the army, and have never gone back to Matthews to live since. But from time to time I would hear someone remark about the man and of how he was doing thus and so to make money. Finally, one day many years later I heard that he had apparently reached his goal. His ambition to become a millionaire had directed much of the course of his life, and he wanted to reach his goal badly enough to pay the price and he got it, though he didn't live too long after reaching it.
When I was a boy there was another man in our county who wanted to go to Congress or the Senate, I forget which. I can still remember hearing some of the older folks joking about it and how such a fellow as he was would never make it. Well, he ran and he lost. He ran again, and he lost again. He ran again, and he lost again. I don't know how many, many times he ran and lost - but finally he made it and stayed in Washington for quite a number of years. He wanted it badly enough to pay the price, and he got it.
When we were in another county some years ago, there was in the church a young man who was the son of an ordinary working man. The family lived in a low-priced wooden house, perhaps rented, drove an old car, and had little of this world's goods financially speaking. He was a good student in school. He graduated from high school, and soon afterwards got married. But he wanted more out of life than just a job and a wife: he had his heart set on an education, a college degree, and a career in some professional field, though I don't suppose he had enough money to make the down payment on a semester's tuition in a college. We moved away from there, and I wondered sometimes what ever became of him. One day a good many years later, I was going down a hall in the Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem when I ran into him. What was he doing there? Visiting some of his folks who were ill or someone in for surgery? No! He was finishing up the work on his doctorate degree.
Ambition is a powerful thing if one has enough of it! When we want something badly enough to pay the price for it, we can usually get it.
If you want to make a lot of money badly enough, you can do it.
If you want an education badly enough, you can get one. When I was a student at Brevard College, some of the boys there came to college without any money at all, just a few things in an old battered suitcase, and they made it. And that sort of thing is just as possible today as it was then if a person is willing to pay the price and make the sacrifices necessary.
If you want a fine house, you can get it. I remember a friend of mine who, when he got out of the army around 1945, married, built a little boxed house out of rough lumber, and started to try to make a living on a few acres of steep mountain land. He had little of this world's goods and from my viewpoint he wasn't likely ever to do much better. But he and his wife wanted a fine house, and they set out to get it. They had a place to build it, and they got started. Somehow they got the foundation poured. Then, after so long a time, they got the foundation built up to the sills. We moved away from the area. Across the years each time I went back by there, I noticed that a little more of the house would be completed. And finally, after a number of years, they had a beautiful stone house, largely built with their own hands, and much of it from materials they had collected bit by bit. If you want a fine house and are willing to pay the price, there are ways to get one.
If you want to be a Christian, you can be one. Have you ever stopped to think that there is not a person in this entire community who could not be a Christian if he or she wanted to be a Christian badly enough? The Bible tells us that it is not God's will that any one should perish but that all should come to repentance. The invitation of Jesus is, "Whosoever will, let him come" and the promise is, "Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out." If you or I are not Christians this morning, it is not because we cannot be, but it is because we do not want to be badly enough.
William Law, whose book, A SERIOUS CALL TO A DEVOUT AND HOLY LIFE, had a tremendous influence on John Wesley, in this book takes the position that to a large extent we are what we are spiritually because that is what we intend to be. He implies that if we use profanity, it is because we intend to use it; if we don't attend Sunday School and church services, it is usually because we do not intend to do so; if we don't study our Bibles and have regular times for prayer, it is because we have no intentions of doing these things; if we don't tithe and support God's work generously, it is because we have no intention of doing so; if we aren't living close to the Lord, it is because we do not desire to do so badly enough. "And," he says, "if you will here stop and ask yourselves, why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it."
In a college class some years ago, a professor of mine was talking about one of the well-known saints of the Christian church, I think it was St. Francis of Assisi, if I remember correctly. In his remarks, he said that he wished he could be as Christlike as that saint was. Then he stopped and corrected himself: "No, that's not true," he said in effect. "I could be if I were willing to pay the price."
Some years ago Bishop Roy H. Short was speaking to the ministers of our conference in a meeting in Dilworth Methodist Church in Charlotte. He was talking about this matter of personal Christian experience and about getting the power of God in one's life. One thing he said made a deep impression on me. He said, "I believe that I know in my life and in my heart as much of God's power and God's grace as I choose to know." Most of us perhaps think that we would like to have more of God's power and grace in our lives, but he implied that how much of God's power and grace we come to experience is really up to us, and is a matter not of what is possible but of what, deep down in our hearts, we want enough to pay the price to attain. He implied that God's power and grace are available to us all and can be experienced if only we want them enough to meet the conditions.
We can be Christians if we want to be badly enough. We can come to know God's power and grace through personal experience if our desire is great enough to lead us to meet the conditions. We can grow daily in the knowledge and love of God and of Christ Jesus our Lord if we are willing to do so. We can become saints of the Lord if our affections are truly set upon things above and we are willing for God to have His way in our lives. Yes, and we can go to Heaven when our earthly lives are over if we want to enough to lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us and run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith.
Far more than we realize, our ambitions determine what we acquire and what we attain both in the material and in the spiritual realms.
What are our ambitions this morning? What are the things we want more than anything else out of life? Are they such that when we attain their fulfillment and get what we seek, we will have things of eternal worth? Is the direction of our lives such that when we arrive where we are going, we will be sad or glad?
Jesus said, "Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you..."
Saul of Tarsus was apparently an ambitious person from early in life. He had a zeal and enthusiasm apparently far beyond that of the average person of his day. But his life was headed in the wrong direction because his ambitions were wrong. He needed to change his ambitions, and he did change them.
Do you need to change any of your ambitions? Have you ever changed your ambitions? I have changed mine a number of times. In years gone by my ambition was to become a cowboy, ride the range on a horse, carry a six-shooter revolver, and maybe even help drive a herd of cattle down the old Chisholm Trail! Those were the days, of course, when as a boy I was reading every one of Zane Grey's and William MacLeod Raine's novels of the old west that I could get my hands upon.
Then I ran across Ernest Thompson Seton's book, ROLF IN THE WOODS, and I decided that when I grew up I wanted to go north, live way back in the wilderness in the woods, and run a trapline as Rolf did. In the world of reality, that ambition didn't last too long; and then something else came along that struck my attention.
My ambitions, as far as making a living is concerned, have changed a number of times across the years until God finally settled the matter by calling me into the ministry when I was around 27 or 28 years old. Young people sometimes become disturbed when they graduate from high school and start to college or out into the business world because they do not know exactly what they really want to do with their lives so far as a vocation is concerned. My experience and personal observation is that most of us go through some unsettled years when our ambitions in this area are subject to change and that if a person really gets this decision firmly settled even in the mid-twenties of his or her earthly life, he or she is doing as good as if not better than average.
Are these our ambitions? Do we want more than anything else to attain the righteousness which is of God by faith? to come to really know Christ and to so identify ourselves with Him and His redeeming work that we, like Him, might attain unto the resurrection of the dead and share with Him in the glory of the life eternal?
Without ambitions such as these, which change the direction of life to the fulfilling of God's will and purposes, what will we have of lasting worth to show for having lived when we come to the close of our earthly life? What future will we have to look forward to when the undertaker closes the lid on our cold bodies of flesh? What will be our place in the everlasting kingdom when the kingdoms of this world shall have passed away?
What are our ambitions this morning? Do we need to change any of them? How are they changed anyway?
There is, of course, a price to pay in the changing of one's ambitions. In the changing of his ambitions, the Apostle Paul said that he suffered the loss of all things - of all things, that is, that he had at one time valued highly which would not fit into God's plan and God's will. And so it still is.
Some years ago Bishop Arthur Moore was preaching in revival services in a church in a distant state. He noticed that on the back seat at each service was one of the most miserable looking men he had ever seen. He never opened a hymnbook or took any part in the service. He slumped down in the seat until his chin rested on his chest, with unhappiness written all over his face. During one of the services, Bishop Moore asked the pastor what the man's trouble was. The pastor said, "You ask him that question." At the close of the service, while the benediction was being said, Bishop Moore slipped back to the door and stopped the man as he was hurrying out. In a gentle voice he said, "Why are you so miserable? Won't you tell me what's the matter?" The answer was something like this: "Bishop, I want to be a Christian worse than anything in the world - almost - but here's my trouble. I was brought up in Chicago, sleeping in boxcars and empty sheds, half-frozen most of the time, hungry about all of the time, while on the lake beautiful yachts lay anchored. And the rich people living in them threw overboard scraps that made me drool. Sometimes I got so mad I couldn't see, and I vowed that one day when I grew up, I was going to anchor my own yacht out there, and it was going to be the biggest yacht on the lake. Today I am in a position to make that dream come true, or I will be in a few weeks. I am a rich man, and I own two farms in Kansas. When the crops are harvested, I am going to sell them and the farms, and buy that yacht."
The man seemed to have finished his story, and Bishop Moore looked at him and finally asked, "Well, what has that got to do with your being a Christian?" With surprise written on his face, the man said, "Don't you, see? If I surrender my life to God, He might want me to sell those farms and crops and give the money to missions. Wouldn't He?" Bishop Moore replied that God might want him to do that and God might not, "but, anyway," he said, "you ought not to accept His salvation and redemption until you are willing to give God all that you are and all that you have, if He wants it."
A few nights later, when the invitation hymn was being sung, the man walked down the aisle, knelt at the altar, and prayed. In his prayer he said, "Dear Lord, You can have the farms and the crops; You can have everything I own, and You can have me if You will forgive my sins and give me peace in my heart."
In the services after that he sat near the front, peace and joy written all over his face, and sang the hymns at the top of his voice.
It is no simple and easy thing to change our ambitions when the change involves giving up some of our long-desired goals and our wills, to accept God's purposes and to do God's will! Some of us know through personal experience about this struggle between self-will and God's will because it is a matter that all must deal with who would enter the Christian life and accept God's salvation and redemption. But, my, how wonderful it is when we do settle the issue in the right way, and change our ambitions from selfish ones centered on earthly things to the great ambitions of the Christian life!
What is the thing that you want above all other things in this life? Can you honestly say that, if you know your heart, it is for God's will to be done throughout every part of your life? Can you truly say, with the Apostle Paul, that your great ambition is to come to know Christ and to be found in Him, not having your own righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: that you may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death; if by any means you might attain unto the resurrection of the dead? Have you resolved no longer to linger, charmed by the world's delights? Have the things that are higher, the things that are nobler - have these really allured your sight? I pray that they have. Let us pray...