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[Music] Glendale Presbyterian Church People Moving Power brings you Dr. Bruce W. Thielman with a message on living without loose ends.

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[Music] [Music] As you're listening to this tape, you are noticing, of course, that it is going around in circles.

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Now, going around in circles is fine for tapes, but it's not so good for people. Yet a lot of people spend a lot of time doing exactly that, going around in circles.

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I read somewhere the following comment, "Blessed are those who go around in circles, for they shall be called big wheels." Well, going around in circles is not testimony to being a big wheel. It's testimony to being subject to confusion and disorder.

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It is an experience the Christian should not know, should not have to endure. I'm going to be sharing with my people on just this theme this morning, and I'm grateful that you've given me the opportunity to share these thoughts with you. I hope they will help you learn how to live without loose ends.

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Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of the Word of God, as it is recorded in the Gospel according to John, the 15th chapter, beginning the reading at the verse which is numbered 1. Let us be upstanding for the reading of this Word.

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Jesus is speaking. "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

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You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

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I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers,

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and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit,

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and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love,

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just as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. And these things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. May God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word.

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You may be seated. [silence] Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

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Amen. I would like to talk with you for a few minutes this morning about joy. Not long ago, one of the young candidates for the ministry who live at my home returned from a conference at the Forest Home Conference Center.

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He was wearing a t-shirt on which was the single word "joy." I asked him about the t-shirt, and he explained that they had various athletic teams there. One was faith, one was hope, one was peace, and one was joy. He said, "I was a member of the joy team."

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Every Christian ought to be able to make that statement. "I am a member of the joy team." For it was Jesus' wish that this would be so. His word to his disciples on his last night with them before his crucifixion,

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and his word to each one of us this morning. For heaven and earth might pass away, but his word will not pass away. His word to us as to them is this. "These things have I said unto you, that my joy might be in you,

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and that your joy might be full." Now what do I mean by the word "joy"? I take joy to be a sense of unity, a deep peacefulness down in the center of yourself,

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a harmony, an order, a power, a oneness with God which gives you an all-encompassing sense of wholeness. I would illustrate it in what may seem to you to be a rather unusual way. By reference to a famous old baseball player.

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His name was Hannes Wagner, and I think he was the best shortstop that our national sport has ever known. He played for the Pittsburgh Pirates during his greatest days, and there's a bronze statue of him erected in Pittsburgh until this day.

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I can remember one of the greatest thrills of my life was the day that I put my very little hand, because I was about eight or nine years old then, into the great gnarled hand of Hannes Wagner. Now why do I think of him in terms of joy?

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Well, because of what one of his coaches once said about him. He said, "Hannes covers the infield like a tent, and he does it because he moves in the flow of an inner joy and happiness." Now being able to meet the challenges that come to you

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because of the flow of an inner peace and contentment and wholeness and unity and harmony which is given you by God, being in that kind of flow is what I understand the joyful experience to be. Now one of the principal enemies of joy is tension.

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If joy is unity, then tension is disunity. If joy is peace, then tension is discord. If joy is harmony, then tension is disharmony. If joy is getting it all together, then tension is having it all torn apart,

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living at loose ends. And we see a great deal of tension in our world today. Someone has said that if St. George is the patron saint of England and St. Joan is the patron saint of France,

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then St. Vitus is the patron saint of America, referring of course to St. Vitus dance, always jumping up and down but never seeming to get anywhere. The American Dental Association has recently released a report

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in which they said that there has been a marked increase in teeth grinding on the part of Americans. That's tension at work. I don't think it's an accident that if you are in New York City

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and you want to know what time it is, the numbers that you dial on the telephone, if translated into letters, spell out the word "nervous." We live in a very tense time.

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Now if joy is what we want to experience in our lives and if tension is one of those things that robs us of joy, the question which confronts us is obviously how do we get rid of tension in our experience?

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How do we get rid of that which pulls us apart and forces us to live at loose ends? I think we find the answer to that very real and very vital question in the upper room,

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in the scene of which this Scripture passage which I just shared with you is a part. Now this was a very tense time for Jesus. He had just come out of the midst of a circumstance

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in which the disciples had been arguing with each other over which one of them was going to be first in the kingdom and just ahead of him, the two most agonizing hours of his life, the agony in Gethsemane, the agony on Calvary.

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Tenseness before, tenseness afterwards. How did Jesus deal with that tension? How is it that in the midst of that kind of time he could still say,

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"I want my joy to be in you and your joy to be full." He held joy in time of tension and I would submit that he was able to do this first of all

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because he always rested in his Father. He always relied upon his Father. In the Scripture passage which I just shared, that of the vine and the branches,

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Jesus suggests that we are the branches, that he is the vine. One could carry that figure another step and say that if he is the vine, then his Father God is the root. And as the vine rested in the root,

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so we are to rest as branches in the vine and in the root. Our contentment, our source of life, our source of power, that which brings joy into us is the Father. We must recognize always our dependence upon him

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and lean upon him in that dependence just as Jesus did. If I may change the figure from a pastoral image, which was common in Jesus' day, to a mechanized image, which more appropriately fits our own.

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Suppose you were to go out and get into your automobile. You sit down and you get very comfortable. You fasten the seat belt, adjust the seat to suit you. You reach forward and you put the key in the ignition.

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You turn on the engine. You listen to the humming power of the motor. Now you reach down and you release the handbrake. The car begins to move.

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Now it is not necessary for you to provide power to that automobile. The power is already there. You don't have to pedal it and you don't have to push it. All you have to do is steer it and enjoy the scenery.

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Now that's what our lives are to be like. Relying upon God to provide the power, understanding that that which will lift us up, sustain us and encourage us comes from him

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and relying on that to just steer and enjoy the scenery. A minister friend of mine is a member of the board of the magazine Christianity Today, which has the largest circulation of any Christian periodical in America today, about 180,000 page circulation.

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Not too long ago he was attending the annual board meeting of Christianity Today. And while he was there, he chanced to be sitting at one time at a table with four other men. Now the first of these men was Dr. L. Nelson Bell. Dr. Bell is a medical doctor, had years of medical service as a missionary,

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then returned to the United States, was an elder in the Southern Presbyterian Church, then was elected moderator of that church and served splendidly. He was one of the founding individuals of this magazine Christianity Today. Now, L. Nelson Bell is blind in one eye,

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had had previous to this time four coronary attacks and also had a serious artery blockage in his right leg and there was the possibility of surgery ahead. Now seated next to him was Dr. Harold Linzel,

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the editor/publisher of Christianity Today, the man who has led it to the largest circulation it has ever had, the circulation which it now enjoys. Dr. Linzel suffers from chronic bronchiectasis, a disease with which some of the people in our church are painfully familiar.

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This is a pulmonary disease which sometimes requires lung surgery and at the time of this board meeting, Dr. Linzel was confronting the possibility of a major lung resection. His chest has to be pounded upon every day to loose the phlegm in his lungs

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in order that he might get it out of his system, something which is very easy for us. This gives him a very painful and frustrating choking sensation. Now seated next to him was Dr. Harold Ockengay. Dr. Ockengay, one of the distinguished clergymen of our time.

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For many years the pastor of the Park Street Church in Boston and then when he got to be 65 he retired and then just to keep busy while he was retired, he took on the presidency of a college and a seminary, Gordon-Conwell in Massachusetts. Dr. Ockengay is the present chairman of the board of Christianity Today,

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a man who spends himself in the service of Christ, but a man who bears upon his heart a terrible burden. He has two daughters whom he loves. Both of them have gone through very tragic divorces.

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Both of them are now living at home. It's a great burden to his heart. Now seated next to Dr. Ockengay was Mr. Maxie Jarman. Mr. Jarman is one of America's most noted businessmen

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and has been the financial angel of Christianity Today. Chairman of the board of Genesco Incorporated, he built the company until it had 104 subsidiaries and last year did $1.4 billion worth of business.

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Here's a man who is a magnificent steward and has underwritten Christian activities across this country that are beyond numbering. But that very day of the meeting, it had been reported in the Wall Street Journal

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that Mr. Jarman had been ousted from the chairmanship of his own company and he had been ousted by his own son, one with whom he had no communication, one who has in him nothing of the spirit of Christ

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and who has actually turned to that kind of persecution of his own father. Now the man who was telling me about sitting at the table with these four men went on to say, "If anyone had walked into that room and seen those four men and known who they were by reputation, he would have said, 'My, what magnificent men

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and how much they are able to accomplish because of all the blessings which God has given them. They have everything going and they have money, they have brains, they have ability, they have all of these things and look what a pageant of success their lives are.'" Yet every one of these men knows that which could reduce them to a terrible debilitating tension,

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yet none of them demonstrate that tension. Why? Because their rest, their contentment, their peace is in God. Finding their comfort in him, they can live significantly in spite of things in their experience which would reduce less dedicated persons to living at loose ends.

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The first thing Jesus tells us about the defeat of tension is to rest in the Father. Now the second thing which he suggests to us is this. We should never verbalize, we should never rehearse to ourselves those things in our lives which make us tense. Jesus always spoke about the things which gave him peace,

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not about the things which would contribute tension to his experience. Here he is in the upper room confronting these terrible moments of tension just ahead and having come out of a tense experience, but what is he talking about? Well the first thing he does is to tell Judas to go and do what he has to do quickly.

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He gets the negative factor in the room out of the room. He gets it out of the picture. And then he goes on to say to his disciples things like this. "The Son of Man is now glorified. Love one another. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in me and you will do what I do and do even greater works than I do.

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I will not leave you alone but will send a comforter. Abide in me. Receive the joy which I have to give you. No one will be able to take my joy from you. Ask and you will receive. Do this remembering me for I am coming again. Yes, in the world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world."

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Again and again you see, not accentuating the tension producing experiences, but accentuating, emphasizing, repeating, thinking about the things which bring joy and peace. I'm not a psychologist but I read a book every now and then and I know about Dr. Hans Berger who is the psychologist who a long time ago first identified the fact that our brains have waves.

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Thought goes across our brains in the form of waves. They come at a regular frequency. Now since Berger discovered that back in 1923, we have discovered through further study that when we are in the midst of circumstances which create disharmony, those waves move into a non-rhythmic pattern and affect our thinking negatively.

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On the other hand, when we are in the midst of circumstances, when we are feeding into our brains positive, affirmative, rhythmically sound ideas, those frequencies become more constant and the more constant they become, the better we are able to think, the better we are able to control our emotions, the better we are able to control what happens in our bodies.

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This explains a great deal to me. I've often wondered why it was that when I would really get uptight, I could go home, turn on the music and let that music fill the room and sit there and just let that music soak into me and I found that the tensions would begin to disappear. Sometimes I even get up and lead the orchestra, you know, it helps the rhythm go.

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You don't do that where anybody can see, of course, but it helps. This is what Cosgrieve meant when he said, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast." When we get harmony about us, it tends to harmonize our thinking. Now what Jesus did was to rhythmically, that is, steadily introduce into his mind,

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into the minds of others, those thoughts which produced that kind of ordered, harmonious, peaceful, unified thinking. And he refused to introduce into his mind or into the minds of others that which was unharmonious, that which produced discord, that which disordered thinking. Jesus introduced that which integrated, not disintegrated.

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The root of the word integrated is the word integer, one. He made us one. He emphasized those things that unified and called us to wholeness. He spoke about the great life principles, joy, peace, power, victory, faith, trust, confidence. A young business executive who's a member of our church and who's sitting in your midst right now

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came to me two weeks ago. He's in a new job and the job was getting ahead of him. And he came in and he was talking about how far behind he was and how he couldn't keep up with this and how that was getting beyond him and this was getting beyond him. And the more he talked, emphasizing, you see, all these negative things,

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the more tense you could see him becoming every minute it was like that. And I said to him, "I'm going to tell you what to do. When you go back to your office, get three folders that are three different colors. Now in the first of those folders, you put the five most important things that you have to do.

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Put that in the first folder. Everything else that's on your desk, you divide into two piles. That which is medium important to do right away and that which you can let slide. Put the medium stuff in the middle folder and the slide stuff in the last folder.

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Now every day when you come to your office, only pick up the first folder. The one that has the five most important things in it. Do those five things that day. Don't go to the second folder until the first folder is done.

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Every time you take something out of that first folder, empty it, then you can go down and take five things out of the middle folder and bring it up. And when you get your mail every morning, you put your mail in whichever folder is appropriate. And if some things come along which are very important that have to go in folder number one,

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take one or two of the things in there that are not so important and put them in folder number two. He's been doing that. And he told me on Thursday of this last week that his whole approach to the job has changed, that his desk is getting cleared off, that everything is coming into order,

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that he feels more powerful on the task than he ever had before, and that he's experiencing a new joy in the work. And all I did to him, you see, was give him first of all a rhythm, a regular thing to do, and it was an affirmative rhythm because every day he's able to empty that first folder.

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So every day he's able to say to himself, "I did what I needed to do today. I did what I needed to do today. I did what I needed to do today." And as he did that, you see, and continues to do that, this rhythm of victory becomes basic to his thinking,

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and with it comes the power to overcome, and with it comes joy. Now the folder idea is mine, but the principle, that belongs to Jesus. It's part of his way of living without loose ends. Now the third thing that Jesus says to us is this.

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"Never harbor in your heart any bitterness or hardness, because bitterness and hostility produce more tension than anything else in a person." Now let me demonstrate that to you. Put your feet flat on the floor, your hands sort of in your lap.

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Now make your feet stiff. Feel like your feet are stiff. And let that stiffness come up your legs. Just make your legs real rigid, you know, up to your hips, you know. And now your abdomen. Pull all those, you know, breathe, hold all those organs in very tightly.

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Make your arms stiff. Now your neck stiff. You know, get your chin real stiff like this. So you're stiff like a board, see? Now just hold that for a minute. Feels awful, doesn't it? That's what happens when you get angry. That's really what happens.

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Your organs tighten, glands spurt, your veins and your arteries contract, so the blood pressure increases, your pulse rate climbs, your elementary processes cease, you can't digest your food, all that. Now, relax your scalp. Now your head. Now your shoulders and your arms.

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Let that flow down into your hips, your legs. Doesn't that feel good? That's the opposite of anger. That's the opposite of that kind of tension experience. Now look at Jesus there in that upper room. Judas was there.

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The man who would betray him. Jesus knew that. Yet you see no bitterness or hardness. Peter was there, the man who would deny him. Yet you see no bitterness or hardness. Thomas was there, the man who would doubt him. Yet you see no bitterness or hardness.

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All of the disciples were there who would head for the hills while he was dying on one hill called Calvary. Yet you see no bitterness and no hardness there. Jesus never permitted that to become part of him.

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And because he was free of that, he was free of tension. I know a businessman who has one fellow in his business that he always assigns to the toughest, most obnoxious customers. And he does that because one day he went into the guy's office

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and there on the wall he had a picture frame and hanging inside the picture frame he had a rubber band. And the guy went over and he picked up the rubber band and he said, "Well once my life was like this.

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But through relying on Jesus Christ, resting in my Father, affirming the positive things in life, the great life principles, I've learned how to let my life be like that. And I keep that rubber band hanging on the wall to remind me to play it loose."

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That's the fellow who's given the tough customers. And he almost invariably is successful with them. When you're uptight, other people get uptight. When you're loose, other people get loose.

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I talked to that young man and he told me that before he meets anyone he prays. But he does not pray that tension will be taken out of him. No. He prays instead that joy and peace and contentment and harmony will flow into him. And when those things flow into you, the tension flows out.

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Where God is, tension can't be. Where faith and confidence are, tension can't be. Where bitterness and hatred are not present, well, tension will not be present. Now this secret of praying that the young man referred to

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is the fourth and the last thing that Jesus says to us about tension. Jesus says we are to nourish our inner selves with prayer. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee." If you go to all the scripture passages concerning Jesus there in that upper room situation

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and you count the verses, you will discover that more of those verses are given over to Jesus' conversation with his Father in prayer than are given over to his conversation with the disciples who were gathered with him. That's how important Jesus understood prayer to be in the process of defeating tension.

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Do you know how birds open nuts that they can't open when they're beaks? If the nut's too hard to crack with the beak, the bird carries the nut up into the air and then drops it on a hard object. That breaks it open.

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The answer to the tough nuts is in altitude. So when you get into a tough tension-producing situation, get altitude. That's pray. Do you remember back in 1970 when Apollo 13 was on its way to the moon?

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Everything started out just fine. The blast off was as smooth as it could be. And then when the three astronauts, Lovell, Hayes, and Swigert, were 205,000 miles out into space, across the ether came that sentence, "We've got a problem out here."

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And just like that, millions of Americans who have come to take these things almost for granted turned and listened very carefully, and we learned that they were in danger of loosening their lives. There had been an explosion on board that space vessel. Do you remember that?

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And how many millions of Americans went immediately to prayer, how we were called by the president to a time of prayer? And do you remember how it was necessary for the Manned Space Center in Houston to plot a new reentry course for that space ship back to the Earth?

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And when it came time to plot it, they did not rely on any of the sophisticated electronic equipment which they had, which was the most sophisticated electronic equipment which had ever been designed. Instead, they said to the astronauts, "Look out the window of your space ship and spot a star. Look to the stars."

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They were 205,000 miles up, but they said, "Look higher." And they did look higher. And they brought them back safely. They landed in the water.

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The helicopter brought them to the carrier. And when they got out of the helicopter, a chaplain went forward to meet them. And they bowed their heads, the three of them, and folded their hands and prayed. And Time magazine picked that picture up and put it on the front of their magazine.

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And later in the interview which followed, Swigert said, "If you're asking me if we prayed, well, I can tell you that we certainly did. And we believe it was the prayers of all those around the world that brought us back here." In the time, you see, when panic could have gripped them,

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they held firm, and they held firm because they looked above. They found the answer in prayer. And that's exactly what Jesus counsels us to do. There's an old story about a monkey god.

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Don't ask me much about a monkey god. I don't know much about monkey gods, but let's not be theological about this story. And this monkey god is supposed to have appeared before our father god, and he wanted to impress him.

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So he did a whole lot of tricks. You know, monkeys are impudent and arrogant and show-offs. And he did a lot of tricks, and god never said a word, never changed his expression. So god decided to do his best trick.

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He jumped straight up in the air and disappeared. Five minutes later, he was back again. God never changed his expression and never said a word. "Don't you want to know where I've been?" the monkey god said.

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No response. "I have been to the very edge of the universe." Now the monkey god expected god to ask him, "What did you find when you got there?" God never changed his expression and never said a word.

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"Don't you want to know what I found when I got there?" No comment. "Well, when I got there, I saw five huge pillars that went up and up and up and up until they disappeared in the clouds."

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Then god, still not saying a word, just raised his hand. And when the monkey god looked at it, he looked at the fingers, and they appeared to him as five huge pillars that went up and up and up and disappeared into the clouds.

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He had the whole universe in his hands. We are the monkey gods. Impudent, smart-aleck, arrogant, getting tangled up in our own tricks and other people's tricks, asking questions nobody wants to answer

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and seeking answers to questions nobody's asked. We let ourselves become tense until that moment when we look into the face of god, into the face of our Lord Jesus Christ, and hear him say, "Rest in my Father. Accentuate in your thinking the great life principles.

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Never let bitterness or hardness dwell in you. And remember to pray, 'For the joy which I have, which I have shown you, that's the joy I want to be in you until your joy is full.'" That's how Jesus teaches us to live, without loose ends.

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Let us pray. O God, sometimes we think we're big wheels just because we go around in circles. Relieve us of tension. Fill us with peace, that we might know your joy. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

00:37:12.200 - 00:37:16.200

Goodbye, Mr. Bacon. Good luck. Have a good weekend, Mr. Bacon.