Wes Minyard sent me an e-mail last week that I want to share a portion of this morning. It is entitled "A Wish for the New Millennium."

May your blood pressure, your triglycerides, your cholesterol, your white blood count and your mortgage interest stay low.

May your hair, your teeth, your face-lift, your abs, and your stocks not fall.

May you get a clean bill of health from your dentist, your cardiologist, your gastro-endocrinologist, your urologist, your proctologist, your podiatrist, your psychiatrist, your plumber, and the IRS.

May Friday evening, December 31, find you seated around the dinner table, together with your beloved family and most cherished friends, ushering in the New Year ahead. May you find the food better, the environment quieter, the cost must cheaper, and the pleasure much more fulfilling than anything else you might ordinarily do that night.

May you wake up on January 1^st finding that the world has not come to an end, the lights work, the water faucets flow, and the sky has not fallen.

May you go to the bank on Monday morning, January 3^rd, and find your account is in order, your money is still there, and any mistakes are in your favor.

May you ponder on January 4^th: How did this ultramodern civilization of ours manage to get itself traumatized by a possible slip of a blip on a chip made out of sand?

I also wish for us and for our world that Y2K passes without a hitch, but I want to be ready. I want you to be ready. I want to prepare you for Y2K with some central teachings of the New Testament.

Let me begin by saying that I do not know what is going to happen when we pass from one millennium to the next in less than a week’s time. However, I do know that the previous days which doomsayers predicted would be highly problematic have been passed with no significant disruption. So I am not expecting world chaos. But I could be wrong. The inability of computers to read the double zero date when January the first rolls around may cause major problems. Our water may become polluted, our banks may be unable to find our money, planes may crash, and nuclear bombs may go bonkers. I don’t think so, but I want to be prepared if those things happen. But I want to prepare according to the teachings of Scripture, not according to those who give directions concerning physical security and survival.

You see, I think the major concern of the Christian relative to the future, whether that future appears stable or unstable, is to focus on spiritual things, not physical. Please turn to Matthew 6:25-33 where Jesus says,

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Focus on the spiritual things. Focus on the kingdom. Leave the physical problems to God. God has been providing for God’s creatures since the beginning of time. If Y2K is as tumultuous as some think, God will still be in charge. And the most important thing for us to do is the same thing that is always the most important thing for us to do––seek first the kingdom of God.

And I want to focus on a biblical triad this morning that I believe can help us to seek first the kingdom of God. The most oft-quoted statement of that triad is found in 1 Corinthians 13:13. There the apostle Paul says, "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."

This triad occurs more often than we tend to notice. Listen, for example, to Colossians 1:3-6a. The apostle Paul says,

In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you.

Did you hear it? They are in a different order, but there they are: faith, hope, and love––listed in rapid succession to summarize the Christian attributes of the believers in Colossae. In the opening section of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Thessalonica, Paul says,

We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ (1Thessalonians 1:2-3).

Paul puts these same three items together again in 1 Thessalonians 5:8. And there are at least two other passages in which he uses these three terms in very close proximity to one another––Ephesians 1:15-18 & 1Timothy 4:10-12. And listen to 1 Peter 1:21-22. There we read,

Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.

There they are again––faith, hope, and love. Sisters and brothers, when facing any and every future, when living in any and every present, we must stay focused on being a people of faith, hope, and love. We must be prepared for Y2K. We must be prepared for the new millennium. We must be prepared for every future we face. We must be prepared by being a people who are shaped by faith, hope, and love.

Let’s think first about faith. Just a short time ago we sang the great hymn, "Blessed Assurance." That’s a song of faith, of trust. I can face any future with assurance because Jesus has received me into the kingdom of God. No future calamity can take that from me. No Y2K bug can devour that. Blessed assurance is mine because of the grace of God, and I receive that grace by faith in God and in God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

As we face the future let’s face it with a faith that is fearless, a faith that will never shrink. Let’s exhort one another to have that kind of faith by singing together the song, "O For a Faith That Will Not Shrink." John, come lead us.

Faith, hope, and love. New Testament hope is not wishful thinking. New Testament hope is not uncertain and weak. New Testament hope is solid because grounded in the work of God in Christ Jesus.

The apostle Paul, in Romans 5:5 says, "hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." In 2 Corinthians 3:12 Paul says that because of the kind of hope we have "we act with great boldness."

Our hope is solid and secure because it is fixed on the coming of Christ. Our hope is fixed on the new existence which that coming will grant us. Our stability in this life is due to the fact that we are focused on the next life, the life which God will give us, the life which God will secure.

If Y2K is the most calamitous event in the history of our world, it cannot change the fact that we are secure in Jesus Christ. It cannot, it must not change the focus of our hope.

We hope for, with anticipation and joy, the return of Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can touch that. Because Jesus lives we can face every new day, every new year, every new millennium with confidence. Let’s sing a song of hope in Jesus as John leads us.

Faith, hope, and love. Jesus, in John 13:35 says, "everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Love is the mark of the Christian. Love is the attribute that is to set us apart from the rest of the world. Y2K may increase the need to display that attribute; it will certainly not decrease it.

Let’s commit ourselves anew this morning to love. Let’s commit ourselves anew to loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Let’s commit ourselves anew to loving one another as Jesus loves us. Whatever the new millennium holds, let’s pour as much love on it as we can. May the Broadway Church shine in the third millennium because of the love with which Christ fills us.

I want to close with a short reading from Richard J. Foster, and I thank Bill Starcher for passing this piece on to me. Foster is arguably the foremost expert on the spiritual disciplines. He has a monthly pastoral letter which he calls Heart-to Heart. Here is how he begins the November 1999 edition of that letter.

As the end of the century––and the millennium––approaches I am often asked about the theological and spiritual significance of this milestone. My answer is simple and straightforward: absolutely nothing! The end of the millennium is a human calendar invention (and an imperfect invention at that) and it has nothing to do with the march of Holy History or the economy of God. So, please, for God’s sake (and your own) simply ignore all the hysterical millennial hype that is going on these days. And this includes the Y2K issue. Y2K is merely a computer defect that will get worked out by those who deal with such things; and whether it is worked out with ease or difficulty is of little consequence to those whose lives are hid with God in Christ. In fact, inordinate attention to these matters only distracts us from the far more substantive issues of ongoing character formation into Christlikeness and faithful obedience to Christ in the midst of a society that is indifferent––even hostile––to Christian things. I regret even having to devote one paragraph to so trivial a subject. Enough said.

Sisters and brothers, let’s focus on becoming more Christlike. Let’s focus on the faith, hope, and love that are central to the Christian lifestyle. We may not know what Y2K holds, but we know who holds Y2K. Let’s make sure that the God who holds Y2K holds us. Let’s show the power of God in our lives by allowing faith, hope, and love to flow through us by the power of the Holy Spirit. That is how to be ready for Y2K. That is how to be ready to live to the glory of our God. Let’s stand and sing about the "Common Love" that we have because of Christ Jesus.