"Shaped for Serving God"
Sermon Transcript for November 9, 2003By Rev. Dan Sinkhorn
Well, we are in Week Five of our “40 Days of Purpose”. How have you found it so far? I don’t know about you, but I have been overwhelmed by this series of messages and all the Bible study. And I’ve really been stunned, especially in this past week as Reverend Mike’s been on vacation and I’ve had opportunity to meet with some of the groups he meets with in addition to the ones that I meet with. And I have seen more people involved in extra activities than I think I have ever encountered in any church at any time. We have so many people who will be back tonight for “40 Days of Purpose” Bible studies, for Disciple Bible study; people who will be here tomorrow in the afternoon for Bible study; people at the United Methodist Community; people on Wednesday. We had 300 books and every one of them was taken. And we were sending people to Wal-Mart for more! This has been a profound experience and I hope that it has been personally profound for you. It certainly has been for me and as I’ve preached these sermons I have really been convicted by them myself. So rest assured that the preacher is being preached to as well.
Now we are going to look at the next purpose in our purpose driven life. And we begin by looking at this word from Ephesians, Chapter 2. I want you to read this with me, please: “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.” And that’s the message for today. You were made to make a contribution. You were not made to consume but to contribute, to make a difference. And what matters is not how long you live, but how you live. What matters isn’t the duration of your life; it’s the donation in your life. On this planet, nobody gets a free ride. Have you ever heard that before? Sometimes it’s said like this, “There’s no free lunch.” Well, nobody gets a free ride. We are meant to give something back. We are all meant to make a contribution. Now, whenever God gives you an assignment you can relax and know that He will give you all the equipment you need to fulfill it. Look at this word from Job. It says, “Your hands shaped me and made me.”
Now, Rick Warren, the author of our series, uses the word SHAPE in his church to help people realize how God has equipped them to do what God has called them to do. The word SHAPE reminds people with the letter “S” that you use your spiritual gifts, with the letter “H” that you use your heart, with the letter “A” that you use your abilities, the letter “P” you use your personality, and the letter “E” you use your experiences. So you use your SHAPE—your spiritual gift, your heart, abilities, personality, and experiences. And these five things that make you entirely unique are the things that God uses in you for His purposes.
Now consider this. God did not make you unique; God did not give you those unique experiences and gifts for your benefit. Look at this word from I Peter, “Each of us should use whatever gift he has received to”…make a lot of money? No, that’s not what it says does it? It says, “to serve others.” Each of us should use whatever gift God has given us in order to serve others. God gifted you the way that you are, God wired you the way you are so that you could serve Him and serving God is done by serving others. Your first line of your Purpose Drive Life book, do you remember what it says? It was real short and simple. It said, “It’s not about you.” It’s not about you. And so you do what God has called you to do. You serve God by serving others. Okay? You might want to write this down because this is your fourth purpose in life—Serve God by serving others.
We were put here by God to serve. The Bible has a word for this and it is called “ministry”. Like worship, and fellowship and discipleship, which were our first three purposes, the word ministry is often misunderstood. Now when you think of a minister what do you picture in your mind? A guy in a robe, white tab collar, you know, a priest or a pastor, maybe a rabbi? You think like that when you think of a minister. But the Bible says, “Every believer is a minister.” Ministry simply means that you use your SHAPE to help others in the name of God. And any time that you use your talents or your abilities or your background or your experiences to help somebody else, you are a minister. Did you know that in the Bible in its original text, the words “service” and “ministry” are the same? Did you know that the word “servant” and “minister” are the same? So change your thought pattern if you are one of those who has always thought that the word “minister” meant professional clergy because the truth is it means people who use their unique personality and experience to serve others in the name of God.
In the first week of this series we learned that our life was actually a preparation for eternity. We learned last week that this isn’t heaven; that we are here to prepare for heaven. And it means that one of the things you are going to do in heaven is to serve. No matter how long you live, you are here practicing for eternity. And that means while you are here you want to practice, practice, practice because in heaven you will serve because that is what God does. And the good news is we don’t have to figure out how to do that on our own because God has shown us how to do that. God has come to dwell among us as Jesus and He has said, “Look at me, this is the way.” And Jesus told you exactly what form your service should take. He told you exactly how to do it. Look at His words found in Matthew, Chapter 20. Jesus said, “Your attitude must be like my own. I did not come to be served but to serve.” Now, listen because this is really important, your SHAPE—your spiritual gifts, your heart, your abilities, your personality, your experience—that will determine your ministry.
I want to stop right there because a lot of people don’t do ministry because they think they are not wired right for it. Someday I’ll tell you the longer version of my call to ministry, but I want to tell you this. I prayed for years that God would help me identify my calling and I always had this little parenthetical comment at the end of the prayer--“And, Lord, I don’t mean ministry. Amen”--because in my mind, that was for people who were wired entirely different than me. So I understand that feeling. And I want you to know that your ministry is all about who you are, who God made you to be. And when I realized that I was called to pastoral ministry as a professional clergy person, I realized that the secret to my success would be being myself. And I know that me being me can rub some of you the wrong way, but thank God I’m allowed to be me because I know that as long as I use the gifts that God has given me and the personality that God has wired into me, as long as I use my SHAPE to do my ministry, God will bless it. And I know that is true for all of you.
So your SHAPE determines your ministry, but your attitude will determine your maturity. Your SHAPE determines your ministry, but your attitude determines your spiritual maturity. You see, if your heart isn’t ready, your SHAPE won’t take the form of ministry. And so you have to pray. You have to open your heart. And in this particular instance, maybe the most important thing many of us will do is go look in the mirror and decide that the person in the mirror is okay, uniquely equipped for ministry. People spend so much of their time searching for self-esteem and self-worth. And they always seem to look in the wrong places, don’t they? In order to feel good about themselves, they try to become successful, earn a lot of money, and earn a lot of prestige. And what always happens is that sooner or later someone just outdoes you. It’s always that way. Records are made to be broken I think is something that you will hear. No matter how good a job you do, there is someone who will always do a better job. You are not going to get your self-esteem from personal relationships. You are not going to find status in what the earth values, what people of the world value. The reality is that the Bible promises that you will receive self-esteem from service from surrendering your self to the Lord and doing the Lord’s will and serving others as you are uniquely gifted to do.
You know the greatest thrill in life is to be used by God. I speak of that from personal experience. That is so awesome when that happens. If I can digress for a moment, I’ll tell you that when I heard yesterday that Gene Harrell passed away, all of the sudden it dawned on me that God used me the day he came by for a visit. I stopped what I was doing and I spent some time with him. And the more I talked to him the more I enjoyed the visit, the more I enjoyed hearing the church history. And do you know what? At the time I didn’t know what I know now which was that he came to visit probably because he knew that he was dying. And this was an important part of his life. And when you realize that you have been used by God, there’s no word to describe the feeling. I encourage you to try because serving like Jesus means making yourself available.
There’s a story in the Bible from the Gospel of Matthew that tells about the time when Jesus was on His way to Jericho. He was, you know, He had a plan. He was going somewhere. And the Bible says two blind men shouted, “Lord, have mercy on us!” And Jesus stopped and called to them, “What do you want from me?” Now, I want you to look at that passage. Do you see the word “stop”? Jesus stopped. You know, if you want to be used by God, if you want to serve in the way that God wants you to serve, you’ve got to be willing to be interrupted. You’ve got to be willing to have your agenda stopped. If you really look at the Bible, you will find it interesting, as I have, to see that just about every miracle that Jesus performed, every act of ministry, every really profound, life-changing, universe-changing word that Jesus said, came as a result of interruption. Seems like every time something big happened in the Gospels, Jesus was always doing something else and an interruption came. Jesus’ first miracle recorded in the Bible was an interruption of a wedding that he’d come to attend. And then we have stories of blind people being healed, sicknesses taken away, people being raised from the dead. All interruptions, all times when Jesus was willing to stop.
So there is a phrase that Rick Warren uses, I really like this. The phrase is, “If you want to walk in Jesus’ steps, you’ve got to study His stops.” That is really good so I’m going to repeat it. You can say it with me if you want. If you want to walk in Jesus’ steps, you’ve got to study His stops. Look at Proverbs, Chapter 3, Verse 28. It says, “Never tell your neighbors to wait until tomorrow if you can help them now.” Boy, that’s good stuff. The truth is that if you are willing to be interrupted, if you are willing to make yourself available for whatever God has placed right in front of you, you are primed for ministry in imitation of Christ. Now I know there are a lot of good Methodist here who probably recognize this phrase from John Wesley. He said, “Do all the good that you can, by all the means you can, by all the ways that you can, and all the places that you can, and all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you can.” Now, that is greatness in God’s sight, isn’t it? That’s making yourself available to whatever God wants to do in your life.
You must be willing to step away from your agenda and say, “Okay, Lord, whatever you want.”
But there are things that prevent us from doing that. Number one reason that we don’t do that is self-centeredness. The Bible says this, “Forget yourself long enough to lend a helping hand.” Do you realize that whenever an interruption comes, whenever a need is placed right in front of your face, it is probably God giving you an opportunity to practice serving? Let me say it again. Whenever there is a need right in front of your face, it is probably God giving you an opportunity to practice serving. Too many people say, “I just don’t have time to serve.” So many people say, “I’d like to help with that community project. I’d like to help with the kids football team or soccer team. I’d like to help at church, but I just don’t have time.” Well, remember that your dreams and your ambitions and your goals ought to be about building your character, which is the only thing that you can take to heaven with you. You know, there’ a story about a couple of guys who were talking several years ago about Howard Hughes and one of them said, “I wonder how much Howard Hughes actually left?” And the other one said, “He left it all.” He left it all. There’s nothing you can take to heaven with you except the character that God has built in you right here and now during this practice time on earth.
The second barrier that often gets in the way of our availability is perfectionism. You know how this is. You want to help, you want to get involved, but well, it’s just not a good time. Maybe there will be a better time and then you will get involved. Has that ever happened to you? I really love the story that I heard Zig Ziegler tell a long time ago. I don’t have time to give you the long version. But he gives a long litany of things that people use for excuses not to get involved in changing their lives for the better and then he starts to tell a story about this old southern black cook that lived nearby in his neighborhood down in Mississippi. And one day he went over to her house to beg for some food and she pulled some biscuits out of the oven and they were just little flat things. And he said, “What happened to those?” And she laughed, and she said, “Well, they squatted to rise and then they got cooked in the squat.” Perfectionism just might stop you like those biscuits. You might just get cooked in the squat. Let’s read these words from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 11. It says, “If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.” Now, how many of you knew the Bible said that? The Bible is good stuff! And it’s talking about real life. It might as well say, “If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll get cooked in the squat.” We’ll add an extra verse to the Bible when the next one’s written.
Christ-like servants do the best they can with what they have. For Jesus could do whatever he needs to do with whatever you have to give. So we don’t wait. Now here’s a question for you to consider. What if it doesn’t have to be perfect for God to bless it? Well, I’ve got good news for you. I don’t see any perfect people out there and I happen to know the guy standing up here talking isn’t perfect either. But God continues to bless us anyway; and thank God for that! There’s only been one perfect person and he’s in heaven right now. And by the power of his Spirit, he needs for us imperfect people to do the best we can and let God take care of the rest. And so, trust that God will bless it. Don’t wait until the perfect time. There is no such thing.
The last barrier that gets in the way of our availability is materialism. Now look at what Jesus said about that. He said, “No servant can serve two masters. You can not serve God and money.” Notice that he did not say, “You should not serve God and money.” He said, “You can not serve God and money.” You know, the most important decision that you are ever going to make after you become a believer is whether you are going to be a “kingdom-builder” or a “wealth-builder”. And I would just remind you again that you can’t take the wealth with you but you can take the character that God builds in you during your practice time here on earth. So for my part, I’m going to try with all of my ability to be a “kingdom-builder”. So, serving God means making yourself available.
Now the next characteristic of a Christ-like servant is you’ve got to have a grateful heart. You’ve got to be grateful. Now, there’s a story in John, Chapter 11, about the time when Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, died. And when he traveled to be with the family everyone assumed he was coming for a funeral. But Jesus went to the tomb where Lazarus was laid and he prayed a prayer and Lazarus came back to life. Now you know and I know that if Jesus wanted to, he could have prayed quietly, but he chose to pray out loud. And if you hear His words, maybe you’ll understand why. Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you heard me. I know that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here. I want them to know that I am grateful that you heard me.” I think Jesus prayed that one out loud so that it would get recorded and we would all here something really, really important. He wanted us to hear that he was grateful. Jesus wants us to know that everything he did in the way of service, he did in gratitude. He was thankful. You know, the litmus test for your service is gratitude. As you work through your service, your personal ministry, you can always know that your heart is right, if you are grateful. The Apostle Paul taught us that. He was always in some bad situation. He was always in trouble with the law or something. And he never failed to say, “I just thank God that I’ve been given the opportunities that I have.” I once knew a Christian missionary who was running out of time to be in the country where he was doing his work, and he wanted to stay longer because he didn’t feel like he was done. And some how or other he crossed the wrong person and got thrown in jail. And he thanked God because it gave him an opportunity to stay longer. Now that’s gratitude!
The Bible talks about our attitude of gratefulness in Psalm 100 where it says this, “Serve the Lord with gladness.” Do you like what you are doing? Does it make you happy to serve God? I can tell you, it makes me happy! I’m having the time of my life. It’s not always easy, but it is fun. The fact is that you don’t want to serve God out of a sense of obligation. You don’t want to serve God because you feel like you have to. You know, if I ever call you and ask you to volunteer to help with something at church, one of the things I’ll tell you is please don’t do this if you think that it is going to flop if you don’t say “Yes”. Because the truth is, I don’t want you to do something here at church in the form of ministry, if it is not something that makes you happy to do it. Because you won’t be happy and that will make it something you are doing out of obligation and not for the glory of God and more than likely it won’t go as well. Look at these words from Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy. He tells us what it is all about. He says, “It is He who saved us and chose us for His holy work. Not because we deserved it but because that was His plan.” So our service, our holy work that we are to be doing, is the result of God’s salvation. You’ve been saved, and that’s why you serve with gratitude.
Let’s move right along here. Now, as human beings we tend to trip up in our service, and one of the ways that we do is by comparing and criticizing. There is a tremendous Scripture passage that says what we ought to do with that. It’s found in Romans, Chapter 14. It’s Paul again and he says, “Who are you to criticize someone else’s servant? The Lord will determine whether your servant has been successful.” Ouch! Isn’t that good? You know, one of the things that astonished me when I came idealistically in to my first appointment as a pastor was to find out that some people in the church don’t get it. And they spend a lot of time criticizing other people. Well, they should hear Paul’s words. Don’t criticize someone else’s servant. Let their master be the one that determines whether they are successful or not. You know, we’d get a lot more done in the Kingdom of God and in the Body of Christ if we’d just do our parts with our unique gifts the best that we can for the glory of God and with grateful hearts thank God that he is using others in the same way.
The second way is that we get in the way of this is wrong motivations. Now I know none of you have ever done this. I certainly have never done this. But some people, I hear, bargain with God. They say, “God, I’ll help with Vacation Bible School, if you’ll just take care of this.” We never do that, do we? Sometimes we perform Christian service because it will look good on our resume. Sometimes we perform Christian service because we just want to be able to say that we are actively involved in this way. God challenges us not to let false motives get in the way. Let’s hear what Jesus had to say about that. He said, “When you do good deeds, don’t try to show off. If you do, you won’t get your reward from the Father in heaven.” That same missionary that I told you about told me a long, long time ago when I was about 18 years old, that you can have your reward now or you can have it in heaven. It lasts a lot longer in heaven.
Let’s admit it. Sometimes servant hood is just our way to manipulate God, isn’t it? And sometimes it’s hard to see the wrong motivations in ourselves so we have to be willing to be honest. We have to be willing to hear hard words like these and let them convict us. If you want to serve like Jesus then you have to learn to serve gratefully and honestly for the right reasons. And then it means you need to be faithful. You need to stick to it and see it through to the end. Listen to what Jesus said near the end of His ministry here on earth. He said, “I have brought you glory God on earth by completing the work that you gave me to do.” Being faithful means seeing it through. Once God has appointed your task for you and given you all the necessary skills and experiences—your SHAPE—then you need to see it through. Never give up! That’s being faithful. Knowing that wherever you are, whatever you are doing is God’s will and that you can, if you will let Him, see God’s perfect purpose in all of it and remain faithful to the end. You must be persistent in doing what God calls you to do.
The Bible says this in I Corinthians, “The one thing required of servants is that they be faithful.” And how will you be faithful? Well, go back to that gratitude thing. Your faithfulness comes from your gratitude. It comes from knowing that you do these things because you just can’t help it for the glory of God. Here’s another one from I Corinthians that says it very well, “Throw yourselves into the work of the master competent that nothing that you do for him is a waste of time or effort.” I want to conclude that segment by telling you a little story. Once upon a time there were two teenagers who went to a church service kind of like this one. They couldn’t find a place to sit. They were about to give up and walk away when an older gentleman, who was an usher, said, “Come here boys. I’ll help you find a seat.” And so with a little bit of effort, he found them a place in the middle of it all and got them comfortably seated. And later that night the boys, one of whom was Billy Graham, accepted Jesus as his savior. Now, most of you know who Billy Graham is. He’s responsible for hundreds of thousands of people coming to the Lord. Where do you figure that usher played into all of that? Remember that nothing you do, no matter how small, is a waste. God uses your unique SHAPE in even the tiniest ways to fulfill His purposes. Don’t ever underrate it. Don’t ever miss your opportunity. If it’s right in front of your face, it’s probably an opportunity to practice serving like Christ.
Look at these words from Hebrews, Chapter 6, “He will not forget how hard you worked for Him and how you’ve shown your love to Him.” How? —by caring for others in the name of Jesus, in the imitation of Jesus. And when you’ve done that, one day you will stand in front of the Lord and I hope you hear these words recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. “Well done good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful with a few things so now I am going to put you in charge of many things. Come and share your Master’s happiness.” If you’ll use your unique SHAPE, if you’ll be honest with yourself about your service no matter what you do, no matter how trivial it seems, you will be entitled to that reward. The Bible assures us of that. I believe it. So I want to hear with you some day in heaven, “Well done good and faithful servant. Well done.” Let’s pray, “Heavenly Father, I realize that I was shaped for you; that we were all shaped for you in order to serve others. So Lord, forgive us for those times when we’ve put a ‘Do not disturb’ sign on our hearts. Help us to see the interruptions as opportunities. Help us to make time for what matters the most. Oh, Lord, you’ve been so good to us. We just can’t help wanting to give something back. We want to serve you freely, gratefully, and faithfully and we want to practice here on earth so that when we get to heaven you will say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”
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