What’s Up? Part 2

1. What’s Up? Part 2

2. What is up in our lives? • Last week: Two questions… • What are you going to be about this year? • Will it matter next year or five years from now?

3. I propose two truths that are closely related… • You will become that which you are committed to! • Your direction, not your intention, determines your destination.

4. A 6’6” Giant!!! • Michael Jordan • What do you think Michael Jordan was committed to? • What did he value? • How did he see life working out? • Was basketball what he really valued???

5. Michael Jordan • If you know the highlights… • As a sophomore in high school, he was cut from the basketball team. Within the next 10 years, he became one of the greatest, basketball players of all time… • What choices do you think he made early on that set him in that direction?

6. MICHAEL JORDAN - Biography • Hall of Fame Class of 2009 • 6-time NBA champion: 1991-93, 1996-98 (all with Chicago Bulls) • 5-time NBA Most Valuable Player: 1988, 1991, 1992, 1996, 1998[ • 10-time scoring champion: 1987-93, 1996–98 • 3-time steals leader: 1988, 1990, 1993 • 3-time minutes leader: 1987-89 • 14-time NBA All-Star: 1985-93, 1996–98, 2002-03 • 3-time NBA All-Star Game MVP: 1988, 1996, 1998 • 6-time NBA Finals Most Valuable Player: 1991-93, 1996-98 • 1-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year: 1987-88 • 11-time All-NBA selection:

7. MICHAEL JORDAN - Biography • Here are a few other recent details released from interviews with him just after turning 50 this last year. • Jordan himself and those who have been close to him were pretty honest about what it has been like as his friend, team mate, employees and family. • His security team said that they assigned code names for overseas trips. Estee is Venom. George is Butler. Yvette is Harmony. Jordan is called Yahweh -- a Hebrew word for God.

8. MICHAEL JORDAN - Biography • Others said Jordan is used to being the most important person in every room he enters and, going a step further, in the lives of everyone he meets. • He does what he wants, when he wants. On a long trip to China in the Nike plane, he woke up just as everyone else was taking an Ambien and settling in to sleep. Didn't matter. He turned on the lights and jammed the plane's stereo. If Michael is up, the unwritten rule goes, everybody is up. People cater to his every whim… smoothing out any inconvenience.

9. Jordan’s Stuff

10. MICHAEL JORDAN - Biography • Along the way Michael Jordan divorced his wife of 17 years and the mother of his children to pursue a Cuban model nearly half his age.  

11. MICHAEL JORDAN - Biography • It was down in Florida, where he was spending time with his new wife’s Cuban family, that he got a taste of the life he'd traded for the jet-set circus of modern celebrity. They weren't fawning -- her grandparents, who speak little English, aren't basketball fans -- and he sat at a dinner table, with people laughing and eating home-cooked food. That's what it was like growing up in Wilmington. "It's gone," he says. "I can't get it back. My ego is so big now that I expect certain things. Back then, you didn't."

12. MICHAEL JORDAN - Biography • Aging means losing things, and not just eyesight and flexibility. It means watching the accomplishments of your youth be diminished, maybe in your own eyes through perspective, maybe in the eyes of others through cultural amnesia. Most people live anonymous lives, and when they grow old and die, any record of their existence is blown away. They're forgotten, some more slowly than others, but eventually it happens to virtually everyone. Yet for the few people in each generation who reach the very pinnacle of fame and achievement, a mirage flickers: immortality… They come to believe in it.

13. MICHAEL JORDAN - Biography • Here lies the greatest basketball player of all time.That's his epitaph. When he walked off the court for the last time, he must have believed that nothing could ever diminish what he'd done.  

14. MICHAEL JORDAN - Biography • Roman generals who rode in victory parades through the streets of the capital; a slave stood behind them, whispering in their ears, "All glory is fleeting." Nobody does that for professional athletes… All that can happen in the days and years that follow is for the shining monument he built to be chipped away, eroded. Maybe he realizes that now.

15. MICHAEL JORDAN - Biography • His self-esteemhas always been, as he says, "tied directly to the game."Without it, he feels adrift. Who am I?What am I doing? • "It's consumed me so much," he says. "I'm my own worst enemy. I drove myself so much that I'm still living with some of those drives. I'm living with that. I don't know how to get rid of it. I don't know if I could. And here I am, still connected to the game."

16. MICHAEL JORDAN - Biography • "How can I enjoy the next 20 yearswithout so much of this consuming me?" he asks, sitting behind his desk as his cellphone buzzes with trade offers. "How can I find peace away from the game of basketball?"

17. Another Guy…also 6’ 6” • Anyone know of a guy named Tom Seaver? • George Thomas "Tom" Seaver

18. George Thomas "Tom" Seaver • "The Franchise” • Major League Baseballpitcher • National Baseball Hall of Fame • Holds records most say will never be beat! One of the best in his sport • 311 wins, 3,640 strikeouts, 61 shutouts and a 2.86 earned run average. • …He’s just 15-20 years farther down the road of being forgotten than Jordan

19. Significance, Peace and Purpose • Why can’t Jordan find significance apart from basketball • Why can’t Jordan find peace, feeling adrift and without purpose? • If many people have already forgotten or never even heard of the hall of famer Tom Seaver, is Michael Jordan rightly questioning who he is, where he is going and where in the world he can find peace over the next 20 years?

20. Perspective Matters • What he assumes is that he has 20 more years… • He confessed in the interview something very few on earth knew. • He never expected to live this long… at an early age he expressed this gnawing expectation of a short life with his mother. So he went after what he wanted like there was no tomorrow…interesting that he is now wondering what the rest of his life will be about.

21. What would you tell Michael Jordan? • Would you point him toward loving God, His Word and People? • Are you committed to these? • Jesus asked Peter [in effect] what he was committed to…He asked three times in a row, “Do you love me?” As Peter, hurt and almost indignant, answered him the third time… “you know I do”… Jesus for the third time told him to love and care for people.

22. Be About Eternal Things! • Matt 6:19-21 • "Donotstore up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. • Where is Michael Jordan’s Treasure? • Where is yours?

23. You will serve something… • Matt 6:24 • "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

24. You will love something… • 1 John 2:15-17 • Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world — the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does — comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

25. You will become something… • Someone once said “You tell me what you do…I’ll tell you what you’ll become. • What will count 5 years from now,is not how you were inspired, but how you perspired! • Live intentionally for eternity • Pastor Harold – “A marine commits to becoming a marine first, then he is trained into one.”

26. “Normal Goalsou • Just want to be happy • Just want enough… • Just want to be comfortable • Good job • Good college • Just want to have fun and enjoy life…YOLO • Some do desire to get rich!!! • Some, who have tasted fame…seek it!!!

27. Biblical Goals • Walk with God in line with the Bible • Be committed to God’s mission. • Be responsible/faithful. • Relate to people righteously and well. • Have good judgment about life. • Discern wrong ideas/people to avoid. • Work through problems trusting God. • Learn how to learn and master subject matter. • Acquire skills and information for life’s work.

28. Perspective Shift • How does that translate for a high school student living in Fort Worth Texas? • Most of us look at Michael Jordan and can’t imagine that life and may even say “I am not in any danger” • He said several times that he was consumed by the game and consumed by the lifestyle, consumed by all the trappings…

29. Perspective Shift • The truth is it take a whole lot less to consume most of us… great video games keep millions of teens consumed… Athletics at any level consume millions more. • What are you consumed by? • I pray as the Psalmist wrote that you and I would have an all consuming passion for God and “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my[and your] soul would thirst for God”

30. Our Response • Seek Him… • Call to Him… • Yield to Him… • Then… • Heb 12:1-2 • Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfectorof our faith.