"The Journey of Faith"
Sermon Transcript for March 9, 2003Scripture Reading: Proverbs 3:5; Jeremiah 29:11
By Rev. Mike Beck
Let us pray, “Eternal God, you have known how reluctant I have come to this message today. How concerned I am that it be heard in the spirit that you intend; of the nervousness that I bring to these words; and also, Lord, of the presence of your Spirit that was sensed at work here at Grace. Believing with all of our hearts that you want to use each of us to expand our vision, to make space, to share Grace. So let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts together be pleasing, acceptable, and bring fruit to your Kingdom. Through Christ, our Lord, Amen.”
I want to begin our thinking today with two simple but profound verses of Scripture. The first is perhaps my life verse. It’s found in Proverb’s 3:5 where we are told to, “Trust in the Lord with all of our hearts, and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge God,” and then here’s the promise, that “He will direct your paths.” And then a verse that we have taken from Jeremiah; it’s kind of a key verse to our campaign. It also relates to us as individuals. It’s the words of the prophet Jeremiah to the people of Israel, but it has application to us when God says, “For I know plans I have for you,” declares the Lord; “plans to prosper you; plans to give you hope and a future.”
We begin today the inspirational phase of our capital campaign, “Imagine Grace”. And it is important that we not minimize the importance of these next two months. These next two months will in many ways determine the next two decades of ministry here in this church. In last week’s message was this quote, “Doubt sees the obstacles but faith sees the opportunities.” God sees great opportunities for our future here at this church. But, friends, without additional parking and without additional classroom space we will not be able to embrace that future to its fullest. I think we need to remember that the South Indiana Conference sees great potential here at Grace. That’s why they invested $50,000 over the last three years to allow us to expand our outreach ministries to the growth that we see in Johnson County.
Mitch Stewart is our campaign consultant. He’s doing a great job. He gathered together about 50 team members the other night. I was sitting in the balcony. He said, “There’s a rule in the campaign, nobody can be asked to serve and do more than one thing. And if they do there is a $15,000 fine.” I wanted to raise my hand in the back and say, “Obviously that doesn’t apply to preachers.” And can I say in all sincerity, “Thanks”, to those of you who are praying for me in a very busy, very stressful, very emotion-laden period of life in this church.
In the next few weeks, at first glance, it appears that we are talking about money, which is never an easy or popular topic. When we had Mickey’s family over for Christmas, some of those nephews that we knew when they were about this tall are now married and we were really pleased to discover they had gotten back involved in church. And before we opened the gifts, I was listening to their conversation in the family room. And they were talking about the churches they were going to and one of them said, “Yeah, but you know that preacher preached on money two weeks in a row back in November. We didn’t like that at all.” And, you know, it kind of reminded me that part of this calling…it’s not always…falls on the best of ears. But I’m reminded, if you look at Jesus’ teaching in the gospels, if we’re going to teach like Jesus taught here were his top two topics: 1) He preached most about the Kingdom of God; 2) and his second topic that was preached on most often had to do with our possessions because Jesus knew the profound truth that where our treasure is, that’s where God will find our heart. Although allow me to make this promise to you, when Grace Church reaches the point that more than half of the church is obedient to the biblical teaching of tithing, Reverend Mike will never preach on money again! Our meetings at that point will just be to try and determine how we spend what’s in the storehouse.
But, friends, ultimately these next few weeks are not about money. They are about authentic discipleship, it’s about where our heart is, it’s about our priorities, its about recognizing our blessings and our responsibilities, and it’s ultimately about trust, and faith, and obedience. The reason I have been so nervous about this message is that I have been asked at the beginning of this inspirational period to share with you the commitment that Mickey and I have prayerfully decided to make to this campaign over the next three years. For as I believe strongly, you have to lead in the churches. Your people have to know your example as we move in to the campaign. And I’ll do that at the close of my message today. But nervously thinking about how to do that, I want to just share with you in a personal way this morning some of the lessons I’ve learned in my journey of faith of 54 years. And part of the nervousness is, whenever you share personally, you’re feeling you are trying to draw attention to yourself, which is not my intent this morning. I share some of the lessons that God has taught me with the hope that they intersect at some point with your faith journey and will help lead you into a greater trust and greater obedience to God in your life.
There is a quote that you will hear often in this campaign and it is very important that you hear it. “Not equal gifts, but equal sacrifice.” I’ve said to some young families, with children in braces and all that goes with that, that a commitment of $1500 for them over a three-year period might be sacrificial. There are others of you hearing my voice today that would need to write a check for $50,000 or more to have any ingredient of sacrifice in your commitment. “Not equal gifts, but equal sacrifice.” God in His love gave His only Son as a sacrifice for us. I think we often forget the price that was paid that we might know forgiveness of sin and to have the hope of eternal life. It’s in that light that each of you are to prayerfully reflect in the coming weeks, “What is God calling you to do so that Grace Church can embrace the future God has for us?”
Many of you, like Mickey and I, we come and enjoy this beautiful building and its facilities, and we have absolutely nothing invested in the bricks and mortar. I would wager that that is true of over half of this congregation. We experience all these wonderful things that we enjoy that were made possible by the sacrifice of generations before us--the sacrifice of many of you who I am looking at this morning. And to use an athletic analogy, it’s almost as if God takes a snapshot of Grace Church at this point in it’s history and says to each of us, “You’re now at the plate. It’s your turn at the bat to make an investment in the current and the future generation.”
As we think about sacrifice, I look back now growing up on a farm in eastern Indiana. Dad and Mom didn’t have a whole lot of money. You know, at that time a group of kids my age thought money grew on trees. Now, kids think you’ve been given by God one of these plastic cards you just put in this machine and money comes out. But you know as you get a little older you realize how much they did without, how much they sacrificed for me because they wanted a future for me. Now, friends, God’s given us a mind and He intends us to use it, but the first lesson I want to share with you this morning that God has taught me through the years is this:
Faith doesn’t alway6s make sense at first: Let me take you back to a time in which I was a senior in high school to illustrate that. There were four of us. Our family of four kids and mom and dad didn’t have money for college. And I was a pretty good student and I received a full-ride scholarship to a rather prestigious college here in Indiana. But in the meantime, I’d heard a guy by the name of Don Otto from Taylor University talk at a youth rally. And God impressed on my heart that that was where I was suppose to spend my college years. And I wonder looking back what in the world did Dad think when I took that letter of acceptance to that University and I said, “Dad, I’m sending it back because I think I’m suppose to go elsewhere.” There wasn’t any promise that there would be scholarship aid; there was a step of faith that didn’t make sense.
And then in April I said, “Dad, I want to ride a bike across country this summer from San Francisco to New York. He kind of rolled his eyes and said, “You dreamer, you are suppose to be making money for this fall.” Faith doesn’t always make sense at first. But he let me go! He did have, the day after I got back, a job for me to start at in Shelbyville at 6:30 a.m. in the morning. But, friends, it was in those years and then on in during my twenties that I began to learn about genuine faith. The faith of Jesus Christ was more than just keeping a bunch of words, that life in Christ was a fulfilling, joyful, abundant kind of living. Something you’ll hear Dan and I, here’s our passion for you, we want you to know more than a quarter’s worth of God because a quarter’s worth of God might give you religion, but it won’t give you the relationship that God wants.
I began to learn about the power of the Holy Spirit—that I didn’t have to do this thing called living a Christian life on my own. I began to learn what true discipleship was about. That didn’t happen at first. In fact, a college professor said it’s almost impossible for anyone under the age of 30 to understand the concept of discipleship. If I had to give you a simple definition of discipleship it would be this, it’s moving from understanding Jesus as my Savior, and that is what God does for us, to coming to understand Jesus as my Lord. What it means to surrender everything I have to Him. Some of you have heard me tell the story of when this matter of stewardship was impressed upon me. We’d been going to a Methodist Church east of here and putting our $10.00 in the offering every week and thinking we were doing God a favor. I took some high school athletes down to Black Mountain, North Carolina for a Fellowship of Christian Athletes Conference. And in my adult huddle group that week led by a Baptist layman from Florida, Mike got hit right between the eyes that all I was doing was tipping God. The Bible said, “Everything I have is a gift from God!” God let me keep 90% of it, wanted me to be good stewards of it, but the first fruits belong to Him. We didn’t get there overnight, but we came home and set a plan toward reaching a point at which we were obedient disciples of the One who had done so much for us.
Then as I approached age 30 there came this call to ministry about my life. I was moving up in the school business. I was Assistant Principal and Athletic Director over here at Triton Central High School in Shelby County. Our second child had been born. And so that Mickey might be able to stay home, I took a job as the Youth Pastor in a United Methodist Church up in Noblesville. There was an evangelist that came in to preach one weekend and he cornered me after the Sunday evening service and he said, “Mike, are you sure God doesn’t have other plans for you?” And I talked with him for a minute. And some of you have heard me tell this story. I can tell you the exact place on the bridge going over Morse Reservoir between Noblesville and New Palestine that I turned to my dear wife and said, “Honey, what do you think about what he said to me tonight?” Do you know what your Senior Pastor’s wife’s first response to the call of God to ministry was? Some of you know. She turned to me and said emphatically, “Don’t you dare talk to me about that. I never married any preacher.” End of conversation!
We started attending New Life United Methodist Church over in New Palestine. The pastor asked us to teach a young adult Sunday school class. They didn’t have one. And we had no reason to say “no” and we watched God bless and the church grow by almost 50 percent. And God is saying, “Mike, I’ve got some plans for you.” Most of you know how much I like to play golf. I could tell you the t-box on a golf course up in Fort Wayne when I looked up to heaven and said, “God, you’ve got me. I can’t even play golf now without thinking I’m suppose to be doing something else.” And if you could have peered into the family room in our home in those days you would have seen me sit in a brown recliner after the boys had gone to bed, take out the clipboard, pencil and piece of paper and try to figure how we could do this. Most evenings ended up with me slamming the paper in the waste bin and saying to God, “God there’s no way.” Faith at first sometimes doesn’t make sense. Then secondly I want to say:
When we choose to step out in faith to follow God, it doesn’t mean that life is easy: Now if you want that kind of gospel there’s plenty of TV channels on the religious stations that you can tune in to. I’m looking out on some saints whose life is incredibly hard. And Mickey had what I needed to say on her behalf when we loaded up that U-Haul truck with all of our possessions, two little boys 3 and 5 in tote, to head to an uncertain future, she’s the one that God had given peace about what we were doing. But to go from having a graduate degree to washing dishes in the seminary cafeteria and cleaning offices of college professors at night for $3.35 an hour was a pretty humbling experience. Bills had to be paid. Then after a couple of months God gave me a really good job. Mickey can tell you about it. She was coming home from her job at work. I’m running down the street in front of our house saying, “I’ve got a job as a school bus driver - $100 a week!” But I look back on those days and say, “How’d we do it? Up at 5:00 a.m. in the morning while it’s dark, you drive to Nicklesville, you scrape the ice off your bus window, and you drive 30 minutes out to the Kentucky River to pick up your first kids. You drive your route, hurry back to seminary to take a class at 8:00 a.m. When afternoon classes finish at 2:00 p.m. you jump back on the bus to go do your afternoon route. You come home, gulp down a bite of supper, head up to the library for four hours of study of Greek yuck! Talk to my dear wife and she’ll tell you for a period of almost ten years of anxiety and depression. Always wondering, not only when we were in seminary but when we started out in the ministry, they don’t care whether you are 35 you’ve got to start out where everybody else starts with minimum salary. And how are we going to make ends meet; how are we going to pay the bills? And then just about the time we kind of had that under control, the crazy voice thing comes along and for twelve years now I always wonder every week what kind of voice am I going to have to preach to my people this week? Faith doesn’t always make sense and friends faith isn’t always easy! But now I want to say this:
When we step out in faith and obedience, we will always discover that God is faithful: And you will discover it as faithful; take it out of the box! I think back now on the investments made in my life by my Dad and Mom who during those years in seminary where there was no way we should have been able to make it financially, every funeral, every wedding Dad did he endorsed his honorarium check and sent it. Bob Davenport up at Taylor University did the same thing. Ray Pierson who’s retired down in Tennessee now did the same thing. They invested in me! They invested in the future. I’ve always tried to be faithful to their investment. And it’s been so much fun to see God’s amazing grace work through a bloated character like me. To see God reach down and touch and change lives, to think about the fact that in churches and on college campuses today there are seven men and women serving full-time in Christian professions that were called of God like I was called from the churches I was privileged to pastor. One of those is now your Associate Pastor. Friends, our God is an awesome God.
When we are weak, God is strong. When we see no way, God makes a way. But it only happens when you are willing to step out in the faith and trust God. I believe with all my heart that God is calling me to minister in leadership here in this church at this important time in this church’s history. God is at work here. Lives are being changed! I think we are understanding in ever increasing ways that the Church of Jesus Christ is not about maintenance, it’s about mission. And we’re learning that lost people matter to God. I hope you realize how blessed we are as a church. Are you like me when you watch the news in the evening when you see starving children in Africa, when you see refugees, do you ever look at those pictures and say, “God why isn’t that me? Why have I been so blessed to sit here in my comfortable living room?” There’s never an answer to that question, friends. But you need to know this, if we have been blessed, it’s so we can be a blessing to others.
The videotape connected to the campaign, by the way there were some of you who didn’t get one last week. If that’s true of you, pick one up as you leave today. There was a whole box underneath they didn’t know about. There were three simple words in that video—vision, space, and grace. And that video reminded us that what we are involved about right now is not new or revolutionary, it’s what Grace church has been about over and over again in its long, glorious history. Find the vision, make space, and provide grace!
Mickey no longer works outside the home. You need to be able to see our commitment in context. Our combined income, including the housing allowance that you provide for us is $83,000 this year. We own no real estate other than our home and the bank owns most of it. But you know, I kind of chuckled recently. Sometimes pastors take a hit they don’t deserve. People will say, “Yeah, but their house is provided. They don’t have the utility bills. They don’t have to worry about repairs.” Well, as I share with you our commitment this morning friends, your senior pastor knows all about mortgage payments. We gulped just like you did when we got our gas bill for January and February. We own no stocks and bonds other than what are in our pension plan. I laughingly told people over the years that my investments are the two-legged kind. You can find them, one of them is up in Chicago today, and the other one is on the south side of Indianapolis. And the $20,000 we still owe in Parent Student Loans is proving to be a pretty good investment in the future.
We’ve practiced tithing for the past 15 years. I’ve been a Christian longer than 15 years. We didn’t get there overnight. We’ve sat where you sat. But for the past 15 years God has laid upon our hearts to tithe our giving to the General Fund of Grace Church last year was $7,500. Our giving to missions was $1,500 over and above our tithe. In the past few weeks, as we have prayerfully reflected what God wants us to do in the Imagine Grace campaign, we’ve found it helpful to think of our commitment in terms of “so many dollars a day”, not in terms of a large total amount that seemed impossible for us to reach. But God led us to think about what $10 a day would mean to our lifestyle over the next three years.
We believe in the future of Grace Church. At this period in our lives, God is now saying to us, “It’s time, Mike, it’s time, Mickey, to move beyond tithing to start to give back some that was shared in love with you. It’s time to lay up some treasures in heaven. And thus our commitment to expanding the facilities of Grace Church over the next three years will be $11,000 over and above our current giving. We believe that everything we have is a gift from God. God has been faithful to us. His grace is awesome and amazing and we count it a privilege to share with you in what God is doing and what God wants to do through this church called Grace. Please hear again these important words, “not equal gifts, but equal sacrifice”. Your Senior Pastor understands your situation is unique and individual. This campaign is not about guilt or pressure. It’s about faith and trust and obedience and growing in our love for God. But as you pray over these next couple of months, I simply urge you to remember these critically important words of King David of the Old Testament when he was considering a situation what his offering would be, he said, “I refuse to give to God that which costs me nothing.” That’s why, not equal gifts, but equal sacrifice.
As I’ve watched TV recently, as I’ve picked up the newspaper, as I’ve encountered persons on the street, there are so many problems in the world, so much strife and turmoil. But I’ve been asking myself this when I see that situation, I’ve said, “What if they knew the love of God that I have come to know in Jesus Christ? How might their lives be different?” I want to know Christ; and I want to make Him known. Our closing hymn summarizes what I’ve been saying this morning.
When we walk with the Lord,
In the light of His word,
What a glory He sheds on our way.
While we do His good will,
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.
But we never can prove
The delights of His love,
Until all on the altar we lay.
For the favor God shows,
And the joy He bestows;
Are for them who will trust and obey.
Trust and obey,
For there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus,
But to trust and obey.
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