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“The Most Excellent Promise - Talent” "2nd in a 3-part series" Scripture Lesson: II Corinthians 8:7 Sermon Transcript for October 19, 2008 By Pastor Bob Coleman
Let us share in the song, “I Will Serve Thee”. I will serve Thee because I love Thee Heartaches, broken pieces We are in the midst of what we call our annual request. We are not talking so much about money today; we are going to be talking about talent in just a little bit—the gifts that God gives us. Preachers you expect to hear us talk about it. But when lay people can speak, I think you hear more clearly, more deeply, and more personally. We’ve invited Nina Miller to come and share. And let’s listen to her words as she gives us her witness, her testimony. Good morning! Pastor Bob asked me to speak about what stewardship means to me. Although I agreed to do that, I have to speak for both my husband, Harry, and myself when what we chose to give to the church is a decision we pray about and make together. Sirach 35:12-13 states, “Give to the Most High as he has given to you, and as generously as you can afford, for the Lord is the one who repays, and he will repay you seven fold.” This passage illustrates our belief in church stewardship. Our family has been blessed more by God than what we could possibly give to the church. We have four wonderful daughters, three great son-in-laws, and four beautiful grandchildren. We have all been blessed with good, meaningful jobs, nice homes, and relatively good health. Does this mean that you have to give generously to the church in order to be blessed? No way! God would never make blessings contingent on giving. Do we think we can out give God? No, we can never out give God. He will bless us even if we can’t afford to give anything to the church. Does this mean that because we give to the church, we never have any trials? No way! We’ve had our trials; and we continue to have our trials. But God helps us through them if we just ask Him. We have faced serious illness, loss of loved ones, and many of the other trials that many of you have had. If you do not give generously to the church, will God help you through your trials? Yes, He will! God helps all of us regardless of how much we give to the church. When I sit down to pay the bills, the first check I write is to the church. This way I am giving to God first. At times our finances have been very tight and we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to pay all of our bills. But God has seen us through every time. And for those of you who don’t know who I am, that’s because I’ve only been here about a year and a half. We moved to Franklin about a year and a half ago. But before that we lived in Decatur which is south of Fort Wayne. And we were very active in our church there and both Harry and I served on the Stewardship Committee at that church. So stewardship is a very important part of the church for us. Each year when the Stewardship Campaign would begin, we would ask ourselves, “Are we giving as generously right now as we could? Or could we be more generous? Could we give up eating out one time each week so that we could give more to the church? Or is there something bigger we could give up so that we can really help support the programs here at Grace?” Each year we have been able to increase our giving and we’ve still been able to pay all of our bills. And we haven’t suffered—if you look at Harry and I, we’ve neither one missed a meal. Malachi 3:10 states, “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house and thus put me to the test,” saith the Lord of host. See if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.” Harry and I spend a lot of weekends camping during the summer. That’s why you haven’t seen much of us recently. However, we always bring our offering envelopes to the church before we leave for the weekend. Often when Harry brings the envelope in to the office, he tells Sandy, “We may not be regular attenders during the summer, but we are regular givers.” Even though we are not in attendance, the church still has bills to pay. Just like a home, the bills can not be paid if the money is not available. Another scripture that is very meaningful to us when it comes to stewardship is II Corinthians 9:7, “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind. Not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves the cheerful giver.” We rejoice in our blessings by giving cheerfully to the church so that the many programs offered here at Grace continue. Please pray for God’s direction and guidance for our church and for your financial commitment to Grace and please give cheerfully. Thank you, Nina. Now let me tell you a little of the rest of the story which I didn’t do last night. The rest of their story is that Nina used to be extremely fearful of public speech—very shy. But she was coached by Harry, loved by Harry and guided by God’s spirit and we see the results. She was serving at that very moment what she was doing. She was using what God has given her and helped her to develop and use in a meaningful way to help the ministry of Jesus Christ. That’s essentially what we mean by serving—by the gifts that we are given. This is our theme for these three Sundays. The most excellent promise that God promises to us that we will have what God wants for us to have in the way of gifts and abilities, and then our returning to God is our most excellent promise to use what God has given us in service to our Lord. II Corinthians, Chapter 8, Verse 7 is our key verse. I would hope all of you might memorize it by the time you have heard it, if you’ve been here for all three services. “But just as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.” And today is the giving of our service, who we are, the gifts that people identify and some that they do not. Now I thought about a couple ways to emphasize how you ought to serve, and one was to use this. (holds up a bat.) I suppose some preachers someplace will beat you over the head to make you serve. Now, we won’t do that. I offered to use it for ringing bells but they turned me down. What I’d rather say is it’s a little bit like baseball. You’ll never hit anything if you don’t get up to the plate. To serve is to step up to the plate of what God has for you to do, what God has for you to be. I heard Bishop Craig in our Pastor’s Convocation this last week share the phrase that “we are baptized, and when we are baptized it’s as if we are watermarked like good stationery”. Have you ever seen that? The paper, the work? If you hold it up to the light it’s subtle, but it’s there. The watermarking of our lives is exhibited in service. It’s a doing for others what God is asking us to do in the name of God, in the presence of Jesus Christ. I sort of had a dream, day dream, night dream, I’m not sure exactly. It’s one of those where it was sort of a mystical experience walking in downtown Franklin, Indiana. Now if that’s not mystical enough, I don’t know what we’ll do for you. But in this dream, I was walking along and a coke can came rolling across in front of me. I thought “This is a TV moment!” If I pick up that can, some one else will see me pick up that can and they’ll think about the next point that they can go do something good for some one else so they can pass it on. It’s a wonderful thought, isn’t it? The other was I can also, by picking it up, recycle it. That’s another good thing I could do. So I bent down to pick it up and it was not empty, it was full. And I looked over and noticed a little girl who was sitting on a bench. She looked at me with sort of a tear in her eye. I assumed it was here coke that had fallen out of her hand and rolled across the sidewalk. So I turned. Ah, another good chance for me to serve. And then I saw her parents look at me with not a kind look. I was a stranger. They weren’t sure what I might do. Good intentions, good service misunderstood by someone else. It happens all the time. The difficulty is that most of the time we don’t see those kinds of curve balls coming until we have to step up to the plate. In the immediate crises of the floods in June, a lot of people stepped forward, many of you in so many different ways. It’s almost instinctive when that happens. And that’s good because I believe that’ helps us to see that in humanity the basic instinct is to do what is right and good particularly when it is a crises. Although I heard a sadness last night by one of our members who was in a, not an automobile accident but a motorcycle accident. And after they had the accident, not seriously hurt fortunately, some people drove up, looked at, then drove on. Not even to call 911 for them. You see, I believe that we as the church, the body of Christ, in our service must do some things of action in word that tell people it’s not just okay to be of service, it is what we are called to do. It is what we are meant to do. And that we do need, at times, to extend ourselves even to sacrificial levels to go beyond. That’s in a sense what we are doing this morning without realizing it. You are here to worship. That is service. We call it a worship service. There is no mistaken reason why those two are put together. They are meant to be together because to serve God is to worship God. And by God being in our presence in this place, we are fulfilling our obedience to God. And you think, “Well, it’s not that big of a thing to come to worship.” It is when the human population, even the United States. Pastor Andy shared a copy of a chapter from a book that says all the statistics that say how worship oriented and how Christian we are as a nation doesn’t seem to be proved out when it comes to actually being a part of a church. They say it is 40-50% but it seems like the statistics support more like 20%. Worship is a service and you are here to do that. It is our bridge to God. And then another step is to reach – to reach the people. We call it a bridge; reach across to the people in our own congregation as well as the community--Unconditional love, serving people as we find them. Not saying, “Well, you ought to be different before I serve you”, but taking them as they are. Like the picture of a rescue in a slum area, rescue people don’t ask, they just go and do. Christians need to be of that attitude. They see the need, they respond. A third type of service is to point. This means where we step into the prayer and the activity of life as Christians because we should, in one way or another, speak the testimony of God in our lives. As Nina shared with you this morning, that’s one way to do so. Most of us aren’t gifted in that way. Most of us it comes more hesitantly to say something in words. But personal invitations to church, to come to a Bible study, to be here on Wonderful Wednesday, telling others about the gift of salvation if that how God leads you to do in a loving and an honest way. Those are the ways we point to God and that is a service. And then the fourth is the connection where we connect with people and we begin to build a network that is a meaningful one. Not on the surface, but where we get to know people and be in a personal way. Encouraging others to grow in a relationship with Christ--that is, indeed, a form of service. Developing authentic relationships with others, discovering gifts for ourselves and for others, it is where we become a family. God intends for us to act and to be in that way. Think of your life as a tool of service that God through God’s direction helps us to do what is right and best for others. Now, the hand is a very easy identification with service. But hands can also bring violence can’t they. Hands can be abusive; hands can be destructive. So let our hands stand for that which is good, and right, and true, not for that which is destructive and harmful. Let our words also, in parallel, to be not destructive and harmful and hurting to others, but helpful and bring healing and hope and understanding. As we hold our hands in prayer, in this symbol, let us also be the symbol of our lives being a living prayer in our service for others. I’m going to ask you to do something. It will be uncomfortable. I’ll give you fair warning. It might be uncomfortable to some of you here today. And I don’t want to push you to where you are too uncomfortable but uncomfortable just enough to learn. You are going to need to get closer to somebody. Now if you’ve already have your arm around them, that’s close enough. If you are not next to someone, please move to where you are closer to one other person. You are going to be now in pairs. Thank you for shifting and moving, that’s good. Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? Now the next I want you to do, each step will take you a little
bit more down this road. I want you to hold the hand of the person next
to you. Now if you are married to them or if you have a long term relationship,
whatever, it will be comfortable. If you don’t know the person,
then at least do it like this. Now, that’s comfortable isn’t
it? We do it all the time. So however you want to hold the hand of the
person next to you. Stick with me. Now I want you to look them in the
eye. Not too long; that’s uncomfortable. Are you still holding hands?
Looking them in the eye, will you say this, “Thank you for being
here”. Now that wasn’t so hard was it? You thought I was going
to do something else didn’t you? Now take your hands apart and get them so they are not so sweaty for a minute. It’s about as long as we can be intimate here at church. But I do want you to hold that hand again and look that person in the eye and say, “I pray that your hands, I pray that your heart, and I pray that your head will serve Jesus.” Okay. Was it that hard? Easy, we worked in to it. That’s what service is. You work in to it. You can’t jump off the cliff until you are running, but you need to practice it a step at a time. For some of you, you are veterans at it. It was nothing new at all. You’ve been down that road; you understand what that means. For others it was new and maybe even somewhat uncomfortable or even frightening if you are honest. But that’s simply what God is calling us to do. God has given us the most excellent gift of who we are, and then all of the other mixtures that go along with it. And the way we offer in return in worship of who we are, is to give that gift to others as Pastor Jenothy said. “You have to open the gift; you have to know who you are.” Henry Neuwon, a priest, real gifted in writing, a world-renowned speaker, chose to go and work and live at a place called L’arch in Toronto. He spent his days, literally, caring for a young man who could do absolutely nothing for himself. I mean physically, emotionally; could not communicate in our way of understanding, needed total and complete help beyond himself. And Henry Neuwon writes that he discovered over time this young man to be one of the most gifted persons because he gave a gift to Henry. Think of that! The world would write that person off as worthless and a waste, a waste of resources. Henry found that in his service to this young man, he was blessed by a gift that the young man returned. It’s a beautiful expression –service - heartfelt, coming from a sense of wanting to do what is right in the name of Christ. Let’s have a moment where we will have sort of a guided prayer, followed by a song, “Just Ordinary People”. Will you share with me as I walk you through this prayer. “I believe God wants you to hear the words of confirmation and affirmation of service. I believe God will be able to help you to hear these words and to give these words to others—confirmation and affirmation. I believe God wants you each to see the results of your service, to know that lives have been touched and changed. I believe that God will open up your eyes to Christ’s work in you and in others. I believe God wants you to reveal Christ in you as you serve in His name. May you see, hear, and feel Christ as an ordinary person doing the ordinary things in your life. ORDINARY PEOPLE
E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman
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