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I read a book one time by Tom Clancy entitled "The Sum of All Fears" and in the book he tells the fictional tale of a terrorist trying to make an atomic bomb to blow up at a sporting event. As the book went on I was struck by the detail that the author was giving on the making of the bomb and what was needed and such and was thinking that "if I had the money to buy the stuff, I could make an atomic bomb with this book." Such was the clarity of the instructions and information in this work of fiction. As I got further into the book I began thinking "I hope a terrorist doesn't read this book, because if they were determined and resourceful enough, they could make it come true." I was somewhat relieved when I got to the end of the rather thick book to discover a note from the author on the last page which stated that although every detail in the book about the manufacture of atomic bombs was accurate, he had omitted one important step from the process because he didn't want his book to be a manual for a terrorist. For somebody to make a bomb, they would have to have access to some classified experiments or smart enough to figure it out that one missing piece themselves, which limited the knowledge to a handful of people in the world. Because of this the book was harmless, but if that "one thing" had been added, there could have been trouble come from the book!

I have been often reminded the hard way about the power of just one small thing missing or being wrong in my life. In trying to get my automobile license plates switched to the great state of Texas this year, I ran into the "sweet little lady" at the DMV center. That lady is the master of details and after three trips back and forth from her office back to the mechanics shop where I had my inspection done, I learned that one little small thing to me would keep me from getting my tags. At first it was that my inspection wasn't recent enough. Then when I went and got the inspection done, they messed up one letter -- one letter! -- in copying my vehicle's identification number. Then when I got back, it was twenty minutes to her lunch break and she let me know that she never misses her lunch break and I would have to come back after lunch. When I got back there was a line a mile long. Finally I came back the next day. It was a day that God was trying to remind me, evidently, about the power of just "one thing." If just one key thing is missing, it doesn't matter how much you've gotten done, then that one thing is paramount.

But that's the glass half-empty. On the other side of the coin, is the power of one thing to cause something to go right. How often have we waited for something to happen -- waiting for "that one thing to fall into place" and when it does, we are so happy! It reminds me of turning 15 years old and learning to drive (I still can't believe that Louisiana would give licenses to 15 years old back then). I had learned to drive in the field out behind the house. I knew all the street signs and all the commands. I had learned to drive on the road and start and stop and signal and had only broken one side view mirror on a mailbox! My parents had bought me a used car that was to be mine and I had gotten in and adjusted all the mirrors and seat and knew the important stuff like how to adjust the radio to loud and how to open the sunroof. There was only one thing that I lacked, but it was the most important, I didn't have my license!

I remember well the first day that I got my license (precious memories). I passed the written test with flying colors. When it came time to do the driving test, it began to rain a monsoon, and so I had to wait until the following week. I was highly disappointed. The next week, we went to take the driving test and as the lady and I went to our car, it started raining again. The lady smiled and said, "oh well pull the car out of the slot and park in another one." I did that and then heard the sweetest words that I had been waiting to hear: she said "okay you pass, you seem to know what you're doing." I was so excited about it that as I drove home and was telling my mother, I ran the first red light that I came to! My driving career was unleashed on the world. And thank God that I have now experienced that one thing, turning 25, that forever lowered my car insurance rates. In car insurance, as with many other things I have learned, that one thing makes a big difference!

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What is true in the natural must also be true in the spirit and it is. The Bible repeatedly talks about the power of just "one thing" in our everyday lives. Sometimes we overcomplicate living for God. Despite it's depth and the many areas at which God desires to work in our lives, really people live for God or don't live for God because of one thing. People make it through a trial or they don't make it through a trial because of one thing. It would take a long time to discuss what all those "one things" are but it's never a myriad of reasons why people do or don't do things.

Take the story of David and Goliath for example. Goliath, the giant who is an idolater, is railing in the valley against the Israelites all of whose soldiers are hiding in the bushes and scared to death! When the young shepherd boy, David comes along, he is willing to fight Goliath. Most of you know the story of how David wins the battle and a great victory for Israel by hitting Goliath with a rock from a sling and then pulling out his sword and cutting off his head. We tend to forget that the story really happened. That David and Goliath were real people that actually lived and died. And really the difference between David and those "mighty" warriors that were hiding in the bushes was really "one thing." David loved and respected God enough not to stand idly by and let this "big jerk" speak evil of Him. It was only that one thing that separated David from the pack. I think that David was fearful at first too. I think that there were butterflies in his stomach just like the rest of the guys. I think that David realized that this guy was a big and formidable foe. But David understood that His God was great and nobody should be able to speak evil of Him like that. David had the attitude "if I die, I'll die trying to shut Him up from speaking against my God." David loved His God enough to stand up for Him and that one thing moved David past the fear and the trepidation and even past his own inadequacies right into the will of God and victory! And David was faithful to God and did the right thing because rather than get distracted by all the other variables and feelings, he was focused and acting because of just one thing! To the other guys, they let there one thing -- "fear" -- block out all of the other reasons why they should fight. They were faithful or they were not, all because of their focus on "one thing."

In our text, in Philippians, Paul revealed his secret for being successful in living for God. He said:

Paul was saying "I don't think that I have attained and accomplished all that much, but one thing I have got ahold of." He then said what that key was "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." The Living Bible puts it like this:

Paul was saying "I have one thing in mind as I live my life, and that is to reach heaven and the prize that God has for me!" Paul lived every area of his life with that one thing as his goal and focus. And because of that he was able to "forgetting those things which are behind." If we were to interview the Apostle Paul today about his life, it might go something like this:

Have you ever been physically abused for living as you do? "Yes, many times." Paul did you ever have friends and family stab you in the back or have someone whom you dearly trusted leave you? "Yes, I did many times." Paul, have you ever been arrested and unfairly tried, or beat for no reason, or had to weather some storms of life? "Yes, that happened to me fairly often." Paul, did you ever go through a spiritually dry time, or get discouraged or disillusioned? "Yes, I've been there." Paul did you ever have something not turn out quite like you had expected it to? "Yes, unfortunately that happened too." Wow. So Paul tell us your secret, how were you able to do all of this and go through all of these things and yet not get bitter but continue to grow in Christ Jesus and die ready to meet the Lord and still excited about Jesus? "Because despite whatever happened and whatever I did, I kept one thing foremost in mind: that I wanted to one day stand in glory and receive my heavenly prize that will never fade away!"

And so the greatest theologian and missionary that ever lived finished his revelation with this urge:

We must live our lives for one thing and one thing only! That is the heavenly prize that awaits us! And so I'm preaching to this church as we get ready to begin a new year. People live for God for various reasons and many things, but if you are going to make it through everything, you must live for God with "one thing" constantly in mind! And that one thing is "I love Jesus enough to look forward to the day that I stand in eternity and receive my heavenly prize!" If you will make that one thing your constant reference and goal, then you can't help but make it despite what life or the devil or people throws your way!

If you are a fair-weather Christian that only serves God for the sunny days and the smooth sailing, then you aren't going to make it very long because God will allow a storm to come or a dry season to see what you are putting your trust in. If you are only faithful when things are going good at home or at work or in your life, then you will not be faithful for long because it "rains on the just and the unjust!" But if your mind and faithfulness is on one thing -- that is, getting to heaven -- then hell and life can't create a storm that will blow you from your foundation of serving God! That's the power of "one thing!"

Some people are "God-what-have-you-done-for-me-lately Christians." If you base your walk or faithfulness to God on what you can see that He has done recently, then you aren't going to make it very long as faithful to Him. Sometimes, God is working behind the scenes in avenues that we can't always see. We must walk by faith and not by sight. God wants someone to get a revelation this year that "I'm worshipping today not based upon what God did for me yesterday but on how faithful I know that He's going to be. I'm worshipping today because I plan to go to heaven and worship forever and even if none of my problems are ever solved on earth, I have this one thing in mind, I will be more than justly rewarded when I get to eternal life!"

Noah heard from God one time about the plans to his boat and then didn't hear from God again until after the boat was built and it was a few days before the rains came down! But he devoted his life to one thing that was commanded by a God whom he couldn't feel and hadn't heard from again, but dedicating to that one thing turned out to be the salvation of him and his family and every living creature that walked on the earth around him! And notice the power of focusing on and selling out to one thing in his life: Despite the critics, despite the years, despite the hard work, despite the ridicule of building a boat in the middle of dry land, despite being the only family that believed in God and worshipped Him in the entire world, Noah didn't get discouraged or sidetracked. When you sell out to one thing, and that one thing is your salvation one day, then persecution, ridicule, work, weariness, and isolation doesn't deter you from doing what God has called you to do!

Somebody needs to get the revelation of Paul and Noah and sell out to one thing: I'm going to keep moving forward this year toward my eternal salvation. You can't deter me, entice me, offend me, or pull me off of my course! If I have a good year and if I have a bad year, I'm going to be faithful, because one day heaven will become my home and I have plans for eternity that have already been formulated and laid out and I'm going to make it! This needs to be the year that you live for that one thing and that one thing only!

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We need to sell out to just one thing because man wasn't created to live for more than that. Jesus said that "no man can serve two masters." Our frustrations, our moments of weaknesses, our failures, and our giving up, most often comes from trying to serve two or more things at one time. Jesus went on to say "you cannot serve God and Mammon or riches." In other words, if you are tired and a little weary because of living for God, then that's normal and the Holy Ghost is the rest that rejuvenates us and renews us to keep going. But if you are discouraged and ready to give in or offended or bitter or thinking of throwing in the towel, then understand that it probably came from trying to serve two things in your life! You can't try to live your life to please Jesus and your own carnal dreams. You can't live life your way and try, at times, to also please Jesus! But if you will put Him first and sell out to living for the one thing that I'm going to be saved and make it to heaven some day, the rest of your life and happiness will fall into place!

Even Jesus, the perfect man couldn't serve two masters! He had to die out to the will of His flesh and submit it to the will of the Spirit! Why did He do it? Because Jesus lived His entire life with one thing in mind: his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension! He was sold out to the cause of the will of God in His life. Let Judas go, let Calvary come, let His best friends run away, but He stayed faithful, because He lived His life for just "one thing."

There is an old saying that says "jack of all trades, master of none." I saw a sign the other day that said "he who chases two rabbits will lose both of them." Those sayings reveal a scriptural principle and reveal a tactic of the devil. He wants us to get focused on many things and forget about the one thing is needful.

We find this perfectly illustrated by the story of Mary and Martha. They had Jesus in their home and the scriptures say that Martha was busily trying to get everything ready for the meal and was rushing around making sure everything was just so and Mary went and sat at Jesus' feet and listened to Him teach. When Martha began to grumble because her sister wasn't helping her, Jesus rebuked her:

Martha was so busy serving Jesus in many areas and so worried about this and that and this over there and this coming up that she missed the one thing that was the most important and that was to be in His presence and allow Him to change her so that she would be able to live forever one day. She was so focused on getting everything right for Jesus that she forgot about the relationship!

2005 needs to be the year where we get involved with the local church and where we serve Him and where we strive to please Jesus in every area, but let me say that if you do all of these things and don't first get a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and learn to be in His presence, then you are going to get tired. You are going to criticize others. You are going to miss the entire point. But if you will learn to focus on one thing -- the one thing that is the most important -- and that is falling in love with Jesus Christ, then you'll want to be involved in the local church and you'll want to please Him in every way and you'll want to serve Him because of your love for Him! We need to get focused on just one thing! Whatever you do, do it unto Him! Do it from your love for Him!

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If you sell out to loving Jesus, then you can't help but be blessed! Doing things God's way and living your life according to His will may at first seem strange or even uncomfortable because you aren't used to doing so. It may also take some sacrifice to get your fleshly will subject to His, but if you do so, you are going to be blessed bountifully in the end! And more importantly, you will make it to eternal life!

With all of that being true, it's a wonder why more people don't sell out to Jesus Christ and living for Him with reckless abandon. Unfortunately, usually people sell out to Jesus like some people get into a swimming pool in the morning: they put their toe in and then their foot and then wade out into hip water and then very slowly descend into the water and finally, if everything has been okay, they plunge their head completely under. It's human nature, I guess, but unfortunately, it may be true of most of us here that we are all in a various stage of getting ourselves to that point where we are completely covered with God's Will and power.

In our other text we find the story of the Rich Young Ruler which perfectly illustrates someone partially immersed in living for God but hesitant to take that total plunge. When you compare our text with it's companion scripture in Luke 18, we find this young man came running to Jesus. He was approaching Jesus as just another teacher, because he called Him "Good Master" or "Teacher." This young man was obviously trying to get everybody's opinion in what to do next in his life. But when he came to Jesus, Jesus said "who are you calling good? There's only one Good and that's God." Now we understand from scripture that Jesus was God manifest in flesh, so what was the point? The point was that Jesus wanted him to understand that he was not talking to just another teacher whose advice that he could take or leave, but that he was talking to God. Jesus wanted him to realize that whether he liked the answer or not, he was going to be responsible for it.

Jesus quoted him the commandments and the young man said "I've kept them all from my youth up!" This man was living for God already. He was a good man. He was a religious man. He knew his scripture and believed it and lived it. But there was "one thing" that holding him up in being everything that God wanted him to be and so Jesus said:

This scripture used to bother me until I learned that the very fact that this man was a rich young ruler proved that he had inherited his wealth. They didn't have internet companies and such for young people to get rich back then. This young man was living a life that he had not sacrificed for and was hindering the will of God in his life. That's why Jesus commanded for him to sell everything and give it to the poor because his inheritance was what was hindering him to be "sold out" for Jesus. It's not necessarily the will of God for you to sell everything that you have and give it to the poor, but if your wealth -- be it small or large -- was holding you back from the perfect will of God, then it would be!

The point here is that Jesus told the boy "one thing thou lackest." He was religious and the young man had done a lot of good things and kept a lot of the commandments, but there was "one thing" that he hadn't done! And when the young man refused to do that final remaining "one thing" he went away from Jesus sorrowful and grieved. He never did the complete will of God despite all his goodness because of unwillingness to devote to Jesus the "one thing that He lacked!"

And so I'm preaching to some of you tonight that have the Holy Ghost and have the power of God working inside your life and yet for some reason, you just haven't totally dived in to living for God with all of your heart. One thing thou lackest, and what is the one thing that is keeping you from reaching your world and selling out to Jesus Christ? What is it? Pride? Sin? Something else that constantly robs your time? A memory? A commitment that God has dealt with you over and over again that you refuse to make? Unforgiveness? If you are not completely on fire and everything that you need to be in Jesus Christ, then what is the one thing that you lack to selling out completely to Him? Whatever it is, it's time to sell out to Jesus Christ in every area and be all that we are supposed to be for Him!

The problem with us is that our "one thing" that is hindering us may be what appears to be a small commitment. Like the Rich Young Ruler we may have some of the biggies down like following all of the major commandments and living a good life and it seems that the one thing that we must do is something that doesn't seem as big as the other ingredients that we already have in our life.

It may seem that way, but we talked about it in Abundant Class this morning, how that Jesus Christ said when He ascended into heaven:

That word for "power" in the Greek is dunamis which means "great force" and it's where we get the English word "dynamite." When God put the Holy Ghost within you, He intended for you to be a spiritual atomic bomb blowing apart the kingdom of sin and turning your world upside down! If you have received the Holy Ghost, you've got all the ingredients within you to turn this town into a massive Holy Ghost explosion of people on fire for God! We've got the large parts down. But like that atomic bomb detailed in that book that I read, if you "lackest one thing" then that one missing ingredient -- no matter how insignificant it may seem -- renders all of the other stuff completely useless. No matter how a small matter it is, if God is dealing with you on it or if it is hindering you from being completely sold out to Jesus, you need to surrender it and get that one thing that you're lacking in your life!

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I close with this:

I preached a message a while back called about how "I don't want to be speechless." The word is used three times in scripture all in a negative sense. The first time, it was Zachrias who didn't believe the angel when he said that Elisabeth would have a child who became speechless. The last time it was the men traveling with Saul to Damascus to persecute the Christians when Saul had the revelation that Jesus was the One in heaven shining down on him with a great light. The scriptures says that the men were speechless. But the other time is the most familiar and one that we have preached from many times and it's found in the book of Matthew chapter 22:

In the story, a king prepared a wedding feast and sent invitation out but all the people who were invited had "other things" more important than this "one thing" and so for various reasons they declined the invitation. The king sent out his servants to get "whosoever will" and invite them to the marriage supper. In those days, the invitation to a wedding feast was usually in the form of a wedding garment that was to be worn.

When the day of the wedding came, the scriptures say:

The king obviously recognized and had a relationship with this man who didn't have on the wedding garment because he called him "friend." He was also obviously invited to the wedding supper, but his lack of commitment in "one thing" caused him to be kicked out of the wedding supper.

That this parable is to teach us about salvation is very evident from what happened to the man without the wedding garment. They didn't just kick him out of the feast, but they bound him hand and foot and he was cast "into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Those words were always used by Jesus to represent hell in many other places and so it becomes obvious that the wedding supper represents the wedding supper of the Lamb in heaven and that the king is Jesus and the servants are the angels. There is a tremendous lesson to be learned here about having your wedding garment on and ready especially when you compare scriptures in Revelation and Acts that speak of the "robe of righteousness" of the saints that was "washed in the blood of the Lamb" and that it's at water baptism that our sins are "washed away." This is a tremendous lesson on making sure that you were baptized in the name of Jesus and therefore have the proper robe on. I believe that and I've preached that before.

But let's go a bit beyond that. What about the other robes in scripture? There are more garments that we are commanded to put on besides just the wedding garment. What about the garment of praise that we are to put on in place of the ashes of mourning? What about the garment of holiness? Living holy in our everyday lifestyle? What about the robe of priestly duties that we are commanded to do? Everyone one of us has a robe of our anointing and our calling and our place in the kingdom that is different from every other person. What if we fail to put on that robe that God has made for us? It's just one thing, but if we fail to do that one thing, could it be that we will be speechless when we see the king? Jesus finished His parable with these words:

The word for "called" there in the Greek means "invited." The word for "chosen" means those who did what it took to be apart. In context, what was Jesus trying to say? Just being invited and planning to show up is not enough. We must be willing to do whatever it takes and to change whatever we need to change and give Him whatever we need to give Him in order to be able to stay at the wedding supper. That's how we become a part of the "chosen" and only the "chosen" will be able to stay!

And so we need to get focused on one thing and that is loving Jesus with our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength, but just as importantly, if we lack one thing -- even a small thing -- we need to sell out to God completely and give Him that one thing! Your one thing could be a matter of life or death, heaven or hell, blessing or cursing. It's just one thing, but such is the power of one thing!