"A Challenge to Our Men"
Sermon Transcript for June 15, 2003Scripture Reading: Mark 8:34-38
By Rev. Mike Beck
Life passes by so quickly. And if we are not careful, we’ll go through life floating downstream with the current or merely reacting to situations as they arise. Most Christians do not purposefully neglect their soul. Most unbelievers who lose their soul, who will forfeit eternal life in most cases won’t have that happen because of a well thought out purposeful rejection of Jesus Christ. We just get busy and we develop habits that don’t lend themselves to nurturing the part of us that’s going to remain long after our earthly bodies have turned to dust, long after our employment and bank account are totally meaningless. The part of us that’s going to make a difference ten billion years from now is what we’ve done to cultivate what the Scriptures call “our soul”. Like the Parable of the Sower, the soul of our heart just slowly gets hard and the seed of life in Christ never develops as God intended.
What I want to share today is more a heart-to-heart conversation between your Senior Pastor and the men in our congregation than it is a traditional sermon. If you are a younger man with wife and kids, I’m especially addressing you. All of the rest of you are welcome to listen in because I’m confident the Holy Spirit will speak to you through these words. This quote from Rev. Ken Houts, the founder of Care Ministry, is just as applicable to individuals as it is to churches. He says, “If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we will keep getting what we’ve been getting.” What I’m trying to say to you as individuals is this, individual men, if you are not satisfied with where your soul is at, with your spiritual relationship with God, something has to happen different because if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting. In terms of those things in our life that will ultimately matter, if something doesn’t happen that causes us to do something differently, we will come to the end of our days here on earth with numerous regrets.
I’d like to begin by sharing stories about two men who I’ve had the privilege of knowing in my ministry who very intentionally changed what they had been doing with the end result that God’s Holy Spirit began to be at work in their life, the grace of God began to flow, their individual walk with the Lord was changed, their family was changed. When I was pastoring at Greensburg there was a fellow in our church by the name of David Rickey. David had a beautiful wife and four daughters. Maybe it doesn’t get any tougher than raising four daughters especially when it comes to the time they get married. David was catholic. Susie and the girls were at church almost every Sunday. David would be there on Christmas and Easter. The rest of the Sunday mornings he’d be out fishing.
A number of folks in our church started to share in the three-day spiritual retreat, the Walk to Emmaus. Susie, his wife, wanted to go but she knew that Emmaus really expected an equal commitment on the part of the husband as well as the wife if they were married. So Susie did a real no-no; I do not recommend it to any of you ladies. She filled out David’s application and sent it in without his knowledge. Then two weeks before the retreat, she said, “Mike, you’re his sponsor. Go tell David that he’s going on this three day retreat.”
When I went to talk to David he said, “I’m going to go.” But he said, “Mike, you’ve got to understand some things about me. I was in Vietnam. You just told me I was going to have to sleep on the floor on a mattress. Anything that reminds me of those hundreds of days that I spent in a tent in Vietnam, I despise.” He said, “I played football at Purdue and I just checked my calendar. I’m going on this retreat on Purdue’s Homecoming weekend.” And he said, “Here I am, Catholic, going with a bunch of Methodist fanatics to spend three days in a Methodist church. When I get back you and Susie owe me big time.”
On Sunday evening when Susie and I picked him up, this big, burly man had tears flowing down his cheeks. And he said to us, “I told you ‘you owe me’.” He said, “I have never spent three more glorious days in my entire life. I owe you!” From then on, and Leland can attest to this, he was the Senior Pastor, David was down there on the second row with his kids and his wife every Sunday. He still went fishing but he got up at 5:00 a.m. to go fishing, went home and changed his clothes, and made sure he was in church with his family. David has continued over the last fifteen years, about every year he gives up three days of his time to cook meals for seventy men who are sharing in their walk to Emmaus. But what did David do? He changed something because if he kept doing what he’d been doing, he would have kept getting what he’d been getting.
The other story I want to tell is about a man who was in our church till a couple of years ago. And ironically our youth had a cookout at Rod’s home in Colorado Springs yesterday. I’m talking of Rod Davis. His wife Becky had four beautiful young children. But Becky came in to my office one day and said, “The marriage is over.” And it really looked like it was. Her husband, Rod, in the meantime developed a rather debilitating illness. Rod was a big, strapping football player for Ball State University when severe rheumatoid arthritis began to knar at his body. And he began to realize what he might risk losing. When I invited him to come into my office to talk, he came. I encouraged that he and Becky get some counseling, which they did. That family is stronger then it’s ever been today. Rod and Becky were here at the church about four months ago. We went out for dinner afterwards. And in my conversations with Rod, I had encouraged him to read this book, The Worth of a Man, by Dave Dravecky. I had wanted to order twenty copies to have available to distribute this morning; I found three. They may be all gone after the first service; but I told them, “You take one of these, read it, bring it back so some other man can read it.”
If you are a baseball fan, you know that Dave Dravecky was a great pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. He developed cancer in his pitching arm, made a miraculous recovery to pitch again. And then in one of the most gruesome scenes ever filmed in sports, you see Dave Dravecky in his comeback delivering a curve ball to home plate. And during the motion, his arm snaps and becomes horribly disfigured. He falls to the ground in pain; and six months later his arm is amputated and his career is over. Dave Dravecky, a deep Christian, wrote this book about what happened to his psyche when he could no longer pitch. He called it, The Worth of a Man. You ought to read it.
When we had lunch together, Rod said, “You’ll never believe who goes to my church.” He said, “We went to a Sunday night service recently with my family.” It’s a very large church. “Who was the speaker? Dave Dravecky who is an elder in that congregation in Colorado Springs.” God things begin to happen when we stop doing what we’ve been doing so that God can work in our lives.
So men, on this Father’s Day I just want to challenge you in a few areas. I want to assure you that if you will take these challenges seriously and act upon one or more of them, your life will be different!
Do not be Ashamed of your Relationship with Christ: I want to first of all challenge you not to be ashamed of your relationship with Christ. I’m not encouraging you to be a religious fanatic that passes out the four spiritual laws to every person you meet. I’m simply inviting you in your conversation with other people to bring up your faith. I’m simply inviting you, if an off-color joke it told where the Lord’s name is used in vain, to politely and lovingly say to the other person, “Jesus Christ means more to me than any thing in the world. Please don’t use his name like that.” Our Scripture this morning said, if we are ashamed of Christ in this life, he will be ashamed of us someday when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
Make Attendance at Corporate Worship a Priority: I want to urge you men to make attendance at corporate worship a priority. I know that we live in a day and age in which our schedules are busy, but I’m beginning to be really alarmed because I know that spiritual growth doesn’t take place when we’re at church one Sunday out of six. It just doesn’t happen. I’ve met many adult children who maybe didn’t like it at the time but who have said, “My Dad made sure that we were at church and Sunday school every week”, and it makes a difference.
Love your Wife: I want to challenge you men to love your wife. That’s a short, but profound, phrase. If you have children, you love your children dearly. But men, you are to love their mom more than you love them. One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given to a strong marriage was when a person told me, “The greatest gift, Mike, you can give to your children is to love their mother and let them see you setting their mom on a pedestal.”
Practice Tough and Unconditional Love with your Children: Fourthly, let me challenge you men to practice tough and unconditional love with your children. Those two things may sound contradictory but they are not. Tough love means we let our kids experience the natural consequences of their actions. Tough love means our children periodically hear us say ‘No”. That’s tough love. Our youngest son, Adam, was a challenge to raise to say the least. When he was in college he got a major ticket with a big, big fine which we said to Adam, “You are the one that made the mess, Adam; you’ve got to find the money to pay the fine.” It was his sophomore year in college; he went out to Speedway gas station and got a part-time job. The ironic thing is, today he is a District Manager for Speedway gas stations. And I wonder what would have happened if I had paid the fine.
Tough love and unconditional love! There is nothing my boys could do that would cause me not to love them. There is nothing my boys could do that would cause me to write them out of my life. That is the tragedy of tragedies. Parents, some of the things our kids do may break our hearts. It may keep us awake at night crying. But don’t stop loving them unconditionally! Tough love, unconditional love – practice them both.
Be a Spiritual Leader in your Home: Be a spiritual leader, men, in your home. When those kids jump up on your lap and let you read Bible stories to them, Dad, make sure you read the stories too. Make sure they hear Dad pray at the dinner table. Make sure they hear Dad talk about his faith. God has given our children freedom of will. There is no guarantee they will choose to have faith when they become adults no matter how great a job we might do. But all the research indicates that if children see faith exhibited not only in their mom but also in their dad, the odds of them becoming a believer shoot up incredibly high. So, men, be a spiritual leader in your home.
Grow in the Word: And then individually men, let me challenge you to grow in the Word. And to not only be a student of the Scripture, knowing what it says, but also let the Word grow in your heart and change you, transform you, and make you different.
Deeper Involvement in the Spiritual Life of Grace Church: Which leads to the last thing I want to say. I want to challenge men to a deeper involvement in the spiritual life of Grace Church. And I want to flush that out in some practical ways. Ralph Lewis was my preaching professor in seminary. Dr. Lewis said to we, who would be future pastors, said, “You thank God every day for the ladies in your church. They will carry you.” And he said, “When you preach, preach to men because if God begins to work in the hearts of men in the church, the sky is the limit of what God’s spirit will do.”
So I want to list four specific ways, men, that you can maybe change what you’ve been doing.
Saturday Morning Prayer Group: I want to invite you men to come to our Men’s Prayer Group on Saturday morning. It starts at 7:15 a.m. and ends at 8:00 a.m. promptly. I’m not a morning person but I look forward to getting up on Saturday morning to share with the men. Men, I promise you this, if you come to that group you will never be asked to volunteer to pray out loud. You can just be there. You can just read a prayer card or two. Help us as we say, “Lord, hear our prayers.” And it’s a great chance to get to plugged in. We normally have eight. What would God do in this church if we started having forty and in five or six different rooms around this church on Saturday morning men were gathered to pray?
Disciple Bible Study: I’ve been trying to think as the church goes how to best spend my time. Now I have to admit for all the good things I know about it, I’ve never taken or taught the Disciple Bible Study. I know Steve Wakefield says the transformational moment in his life was those 34 weeks he spent in Disciple Bible Study. God has laid upon my heart to recruit twelve men to be a new Disciple Bible Study group that I will lead on Sunday evening starting in September. Retired pastors – you cannot come! I’m looking for twelve men who know they don’t know the Word real well, but they want to begin to learn it.
Involvement in Children and Youth Ministries: In the life of our church, men, I want to challenge you to be involved in children’s and youth ministries. I’m looking at Jim Roseman down here who is one of the few men that works in our children’s ministry. Where did we get the idea that you had to be a lady to teach children’s Sunday school? I will never forget the first morning we walked in with our boys to the Well River United Methodist Church. Adam was three. We took him to the 3-year-old class. He walked in the door and immediately walked out because he was shocked by what he saw. Do you know what he saw? A man teacher! He had never as a young boy experienced a man teacher in church. That man teacher was Dr. Charles Killion, Professor of Preaching and Homiletics at Asbury Seminary. And what was he doing on Sunday morning? Teaching three-year-olds! And if you would ask Adam today, “Name me Adam the six men who meant the most in your faith development?” Chuck, with his bummed up old pickup truck that he use to pick him up and take him to get ice cream during the week, Chuck would be on his list. So I challenge you, men, to leadership in our children’s and youth ministries.
Men’s Retreat: And then, finally, we’ve heard great reports from our ladies these past three years in their fall Women’s Retreat. And I’ve been asking myself, “Why isn’t there a men’s retreat?” October 4-5, men, are the dates. We are going to be at Camp Indicoso and we’re going to have some fun. Monroe Reservoir is ten minutes away and there are some great golf courses ten minutes away. That’s a Saturday. One group is going to fish; the other group is going to play golf. But in the meantime, before and after that, we’re going to talk about how God wants to use men at Grace Church.
Reflect on the challenges I’ve given you as Rick Bowman comes now to sing.
E-mail Comments to: Reverend Dan Sinkhorn