There Will Be Enough!

2 Kings 4:42-44;Psalm 145:10-18; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21

In our reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus feeds the five thousand and then goes off by Himself to a mountain. The disciples hang around a while, then they get back on board their boat and row across the lake, heading home to Capernaum. After three or four miles of rowing, the sun goes down, the wind whips up the waves into a chop, and then suddenly, the disciples see Jesus walking on the water toward them, and they are frightened. But as soon as they invite him into the boat they arrive quickly at the shore.

Once upon a time, there was a man and a woman who had three children living at home. The man worked at a good job and the woman stayed home taking care of her children. They attended a good church and eventually the man became a Christian believer. In the course of time, while the woman was pregnant expecting their next child, the day after he became a believer, the man was laid off from his job and at almost the same time the landlord called to say that they were planning on selling the house. It was very stressful for the woman, so her body decided that it was time to give birth to the child – three months early. However, the woman knew a great doctor who convinced her body to hold onto the child as long as the woman stayed in bed, which was VERY stressful at the time, but she loved the life inside of her and followed the doctor’s orders.

The man and the woman did what people were supposed to do. He created a resume and they made many copies of the resume and sent it to 120 different employers and recruiters in the man’s field. After a week or two, a recruiter called on a Thursday to say that he had possibly found the man a new job – would he be interested. The man was interested, so the recruiter promised to call him back on Monday.

Monday came and went, Tuesday passed, and pretty soon it was Friday again and the man and the woman had not heard from the recruiter. The man was busy filling out applications for jobs and so the woman called up the recruiter – only to find that he had suddenly been transferred three states away to a different office. The man and the woman were heart-broken. How would they pay their bills? How would they pay for the birth of their next child? Where would they live? How would they pack and move?

But about that time, a customer of the man – a brand-new customer who had only me the man one time before – that customer called on the telephone and said, “I’ve been trying to track you down. Come visit me.”

The man went to see him. The customer said, ‘You need to start your own business. “ The man said, “I have no money and I’m in debt as it is.” But the customer said, “Do you have any projects you could do if you had money?” The man said, “Yes, but I’d need $7500.” The customer said, “I’ll loan you the money.”

And the man and the woman started their business.

It was very, very difficult. That next year, they only made $5000 – and their rent was $15,000. They borrowed money on credit cards and struggled to collect money from customers before they had to pay their suppliers. The man drove hundreds of miles a day visiting customers. The woman set up appointments from her bed and called suppliers to get parts. And the child decided to stay in her body two weeks longer than she was supposed to, but was finally born very healthy. The hospital agreed to be paid over three years.

When the little girl was two months old, the house finally was sold and the man and woman moved to a new house, even better than the first house. Life was very hard – every month it was always touch-and-go to see if they would have the money. And they stopped eating at nice restaurants and ate at McDonalds. The man was injured and they lost another $30,000 that summer. But through it all, they prayed to God and God took care of them.

They had many close calls. Once, they needed $6000 and had no place to get it. A credit card statement arrived and their line of credit had been increase by $6,000. Another time, a $5000 piece of equipment was destroyed by accident – and that afternoon a check arrived from an investor for $5,000 in the mail.

Once, they need exactly $751.48 to keep their bank account from bouncing. That afternoon, 20 minutes before the bank closed, two checks arrived totaling exactly $751.48, which were quickly deposited. Another time when they were desperate, two friends from church were caught trying to thread a $300 check in their screen door.

Their church helped them move. Their church kept them sane and loving each other. And the church people babysat the children once every couple of weeks when they would sneak out for a couple hours at Long John Silver’s.

And about three years later, their business grew rapidly and they were able to pay off many, many debts- not all, but many debts. And it wasn’t anything they did – it was just trusting that God had put them through those struggles for a reason and that God would take care of them. And God did take care of them.

They eventually moved again and this time they bought a house. They paid off more debts, and they spent more time with each other and watched their children grow. And they got more involved with telling people what God had done for them. And then one day, after the man had changed jobs a couple of more times, he moved to Quiet Dell and the man became your pastor, and so when I tell you that God will provide you whatever you need if you will just trust God, I know what I am talking about!

I mentioned to you a few weeks ago that God is asking you to invite the Holy Spirit into your life, but you have built up a castle to protect your Self from the outer world. You keep the doors and windows securely locked to protect your castle self from intruders, because you were hurt so badly by other people when you were younger – by family, by friends, by strangers, by acquaintances – by yourself and your actions. And buried inside your castle are rooms into which you do not allow people to enter, for you fear that those people may change those rooms in your house, may parade the things you’ve buried in those rooms in front of the public, or may use what they find there to burn down your castle.

And so we meet everyone on the drawbridge of our castle and don’t let anyone in. And we even do this with God’s Holy Spirit, allowing the Holy Spirit to step onto the front porch and redecorate the front porch, but we don’t dare let the Holy Spirit pour into all those hidden rooms inside the castle, because we know very well that if we let that Spirit inside, like a headstrong decorator, the Spirit will change everything and those cold rooms will not look the same.

We are like the people who painted their church fellowship hall hospital blue-green thirty years ago and don’t have the guts to let an interior designer change the color to a nice warm beige with soft padded chairs, because that cold hospital blue-green with uncomfortable chairs is the way it always has been and should be. We don’t want to be changed – and we know that the Spirit WILL change us given the opportunity.

And no where do we resist change more than in the accounting room of our castle.

Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, once said that “Life’s a game and money is how you keep score.” Most people laugh at this, and many people say, “how sad”, but the truth is that most people act like this is what they believe. How do I know this?

Because very few people drive really cheap cars if they can afford not to. And very few people live in really cheap homes if they can afford not to. And very few people buy cheap clothes from Wal-Mart and Gabriels if they can afford to shop at Kohls. And most people prefer to eat at Oliverios and the steakhouses and Muriels and Minards instead of McDonalds and Burger King and Denny’s.

If we were getting honest with ourselves, we might begin to justify our cars and our homes in terms of comfort, but the real fact is that we are trying to show off just a bit. The cheap clothing would keep us warm in the winter or cool in the summer – but stylish clothing tells people that we are doing better than other people are doing. And we eat at those nice restaurant partially because we know that those are the places where the wealthy eat and the people with a bit of power eat, and if we eat there we can tell ourselves we are wealthy and have power. And if we drive an expensive car, we know that people are looking at our car and thinking that we must be successful to afford such a car. And so we truly are keeping score – we just aren’t measuring it by our bank accounts, but by our material possessions. Or perhaps we ARE looking at our bank accounts and keeping score.

I have a friend who paid off his house early. He paid off his thirty-year mortgage in about fifteen years. Then, he put that money into his retirement savings for another ten years. At this point he had nearly a million dollars in his investments and no house payment and two new cars at age 45. Set for life, right?

He was laid off from his job and he panicked. You see, his security had become the fact that every month his retirement account was increasing, and now it was decreasing. Some simple math showed that he could live at his current rate for another 40 years, even without accounting for interest earnings or social security, but he panicked. His security was in that retirement account and he went into a deep depression until he found another job.

Are you the same way? Is your bank account or your 401k account your security?

Jesus and the disciples had no bank account. They had no 401k account. And they had little money. When Jesus told them to feed the five thousand, they panicked. What shall we do? We have a major expense, here! – It might cost us 200 days pay!

There is an implication that the disciples actually had that money with them in some of the Gospel accounts, but they didn’t think that spending that money on this one meal would be a good use of the funds.

And so Jesus shows them that He has resources that He will use even if they are hesitant to spend the money. He feeds everyone with five barley loaves and two fish – did anyone catch that in our first reading that Elisha had also fed people with barley loaves? And when Jesus does this, the people believe that Elisha has returned and they want to make Jesus king. It is amazing how quickly people are willing to take someone who appears to have money and make Him king, as if in some way that person will continue to spend their money on the problems of the nation.

Oh, we wouldn’t do that today.

REALLY?

Why do you think every presidential candidate dresses like a wealthy person? Why do you think a certain billionaire is currently leading the polls in one of the political parties? Why did a certain multi-millionaire once become governor and then US senator in this state in years past?

We are still impressed by wealth and we want to impress people with our wealth. But Jesus’ wealth and Elisha’s wealth was the wealth of the Spirit, the only thing that really counts.

Would you spend $80 if it led to a soul being saved? How much would you take from your bank account and spend on a gamble that five children would come to know the Lord?

I’m not asking the question to get you to give money to us. I’m asking you to look deeply into your hidden room inside your self-castle and ask yourself – which God do I worship, follow, and listen to: God the Creator, the Father of Jesus Christ? Or the god of wealth? You see, God the Father does not need nor want your wealth – God owns the entire planet lock, stock, and barrel. God the Son does not need nor want your time – God has over a billion followers on the planet. God the Holy Spirit does not need nor want your talents – God has access to the best any human can provide. God doesn't want anything you can give.

No, God wants you!

God wants to lift you out of the traps you find yourself in and set you free. God wants you to stop loving things and ideas created by mere mortals and wants you to love the Creator of eternity. God wants to take you away from playing in the mud with little twigs and put you in a place where you can create beautiful, wonderful symphonies, majestic, gorgeous works of arts, and overwhelming joyful lives. This is what God seeks to do with you and with what you offer – God wants to turn you into God’s child!

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added onto you.”

When Saundra and I were running our business in Atlanta, it was growing strongly. I made a subtle change to our website. I changed our website from “The Source for Inkjet Ink.” To “The Christian Source for Inkjet Ink”.

Now if I were a televangelist telling you this story, I would probably tell you that our sales climbed even faster. But that would be a lie. It was at that point that our sales began to flatten out and even decline. For that one word change represented a major shift in my life, my values, and my soul. And let me tell you what happened. Follow me here, for this is subtle and nuanced, and I don’t want you to misunderstand.

When I made that one word change, it meant that I had stopped striving for money, money, money. I began to look toward leading other people to know the love of Christ.

Our sales growth slowed and stopped and then sales began to fall. While our sales had been growing, we had been paying off debts rapidly. But now, I had to lay off people. We had to move to a lower-rent building. Eventually, we moved to Ohio to save on the rent. Our sales continued to fall.

But my life grew. Instead of working away from home from 8 in the morning until 9 at night, I spent time at home working with my dear wife and my family. Saundra and I began to spend long phone calls talking with people about the Lord. We still paid down our debts – but perhaps not as fast. We were still always tight on money – but we always had enough. Over the next ten years, my personal income dropped to a quarter of what it had been – but my life grew and grew.

I had to take a teaching job to pay the bills and I learned to teach and led many bright students at Parkersburg Catholic High School to understand Algebra and Calculus – and God. We both worked hard to minister to international students and eventually our eldest son moved to China where he is making a difference in the world. For three years I worked the hardest I’ve ever worked, teaching full-time at Catholic, teaching two evening courses at the local colleges, handling a full-time seminary load of master’s courses, and pastoring two churches, including mid-week Bible studies. And my life grew, all the while I went deeper into debt, this time with student loans for myself and my son.

And it is still difficult financially. But it is not nearly as difficult as it was twenty years ago.

You see, Jesus has always been there to provide us with the loaves and fishes. He has walked through stormy nights and led me to a peaceful shore time after time. Whenever I have followed Jesus, I have found my way off the stormy lake of life into a safe harbor – and things have been peaceful.

And so I tell you this: I do not know what troubles you are facing, what shortages of money, what you are lacking in your life. But I do know that if you stop worrying about what you don’t have – you will have what you need. If you will stop worrying about how bad things will become on your stormy lake – you will find a peaceful shore. If you will stop focusing upon the crowd and stop focusing upon the storms – Jesus will be there to provide you with enough – and plenty left over, and if you look up, Jesus is walking towards you even at this moment.

Turn your problems over to Him and there will be enough.

There was a man who traveled far expecting a particular job, what we would call a $10/hr job today. When he arrived, he discovered that there was no job and he did not have enough money to go home. But the man chose to go to a church, ran into a pastor and talked to the pastor of his problems. The pastor told him of Christ and the sacrifices that Christ had made for him, and said, “my son, surely God has not brought you to me simply to die of starvation. What was your trade in your former land?”

The man told the pastor. And the pastor said, “My son, don’t you realize that that trade is in high demand here, that there is a shortage of that trade and there are many jobs available for workers at a high wage?” And the man immediately got a job in his old trade, making three times what he had come to the town to work for.

When you turn over your money troubles to Christ, never be afraid. For there will be enough – you may never be rich, but there will be enough.

Overwhelmed?

2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-44
Audio Version

I was reading recently, and I discovered that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft is now worth about $80 billion. That number is so hard to get a handle on. Let me try to help you.

Harrison County, WV has a population of about 60,000 people. Mountaineer Stadium in Morgantown holds about 80,000 people when full. Now let me put Bill Gates’ fortune in this manner – if Bill Gates gave every person at Mountaineer Stadium ten thousand dollars, Gates would still have $79 Billion left over.

If Bill Gates were sitting in this room, and we found the average net worth of everyone in the room, our net worth would be about $800 million each – and that assumes each of us is dead broke except for Bill Gates, which is close enough to the truth!

If Gates puts his money in the bank and earns just 1% interest on that money, he will earn about $2.5 million a day, or about $100,000 per hour. Think of it – he can buy a new house every hour, every day, pay cash, and not ever go broke!

Gates was raised in a Congregationalist church and now is a practicing Catholic. He has taken billions of his money and put it into his foundation, where he works to cure malaria and improve education world wide. He hasn’t worked at Microsoft in a year, but is now spending his tremendous mind working on problems that will help people worldwide. This is one billionaire we shouldn’t complain about.

The numbers, though, kind of overwhelm us, don’t they?

Jesus’ disciples were overwhelmed, too. Jesus told them it was time to get some rest. So they tried to go on vacation.

What happened?

They went on vacation in a boat, and the crowds followed them on shore. When they got to their “quiet place”, the crowds were waiting on them. They had gone to the beach during May to beat the rush, but the beach was filled with a Biker Convention and college spring break at the same time!

But rather than turn around or send away the crowds, Jesus taught them. And at the end of the day, when the disciples simply want to be left alone, to get a chance to rest, to get a chance to eat a bite and when the disciples say to Jesus, “send these people away so they can find someone to sell them food”, Jesus says, “No, you feed them”. And the disciples look out over the crowd and there are at least five thousand men and probably three times that in women and children. Feed twenty thousand people an hour from now with what you have on hand. That means they need about 5 tons of bread or 2 ½ tons of fish. It will cost them 6 months wages – the equivalent of $20,000 – to feed them all. The disciples are overwhelmed with the problem. Wouldn’t you be overwhelmed, too?

Other things can overwhelm us, too.

In our daily lives, most people in America complain of being overwhelmed. There is always too much work to do, too many problems to solve, too many things going on. We think that retirement is the solution, but for most people it isn’t. Most people recently retired report today that since they’ve been retired, they are busier than ever. There is something about us that makes us take on more and more tasks until we collapse, overwhelmed at the length of our “to do” list.

Work is something, but then there are the children and grandchildren. We spend our hours and days driving people around, cooking meals, cleaning up rooms, fixing our homes, creating or buying presents, working at the food pantry and running to choir practice. We call people on the phone and we mow the yard. About the time we get half-way through the yard, we have to repair the mower. And after two trips to Lowe’s for parts – never one trip – we come back home to find that a tree has fallen down in the back yard and need cutting up.

Meanwhile, at work the boss asks us for a special report that will only take a couple of hours, but those couple of hours have to be in the evening and we fall farther behind. And then, while we are finishing up the report at work, we get a phone call that our spouse’s mother has fallen and been taken to the hospital emergency room and we need to go right then and there. We go to fill up with gas and discover that we only have ten dollars to last til Friday. And then we discover while we’re at the ER that she has a previously undiagnosed disease which means she will need twice-weekly visits to doctors and hospitals and in-home care and we go home and sit there on the couch with a blank stare, wondering when it will all end.

Or worse yet, we are the ones who end up at the emergency room, are admitted to the hospital, and find we are in for the fight of our lives when just yesterday we felt fine and were looking forward to decades more active life.

Do you realize that 25% of Americans are taking mood-altering drugs for anxiety or depression? The problem is widespread – you may feel ok, but I’m sure you know someone who does not feel ok. They are hurting, worried, sad, or frightened.

It is at those times that we feel overwhelmed. Have you ever felt overwhelmed? Are you overwhelmed today?

And yet…we see a few people around us who never seem overwhelmed. There are people around us that seem happy and relaxed all the time, never rushed, never looking drained, never arriving with mis-matched clothing because they simply didn’t have time to find the right clothes. These people seem to have it all together. What are they doing differently? What secrets have they found that we can’t find?

Well, I’d like to say that they are simply better at hiding that overwhelming feeling from us, and that is true of many people – but the reality is that there are some people who are not overwhelmed. Some of those people are that way because they are totally selfish – these people are usually single, living alone, and lead a simple life in which they control almost everything. They have a simple life because they have no life – no significant interactions with others, tiny apartments, few friends. But there are not many of these people.

But there are people who manage to live full and rich lives with many friends, accomplishing great things, involving themselves in other people’s lives, and yet they manage to keep things sane, keep things altogether, and keep from being overwhelmed. How do they do it?

Even Jesus and the disciples were overwhelmed. One day, Jesus felt the crowds were getting a bit out of hand – the Gospel says that the group did not even have time to eat. So Jesus tells them that it is time to get away – to go to a deserted spot where they can rest. It is time for a vacation.

Have you ever taken a vacation and then felt you needed to have a vacation to rest from your vacation? Two weeks at Myrtle Beach, doing everything, seeing shows, playing miniature golf, shopping, hitting this attraction and that attraction, doing everything, and driving back on Sunday, getting home late in the evening, unpacking and throwing clothes into the washer and then crashing, only to get up Monday morning at 6 am and head to work?

That was what happened to Jesus and the disciples. Before they could even get to the deserted spot, the paparazzi had spotted them, tracking their boat from shore, and followed on foot, arriving even before the boatload arrived. And Jesus and the disciples began to work once again. For you see, Jesus and the disciples were not ministering in a place that had crowds. The crowds were there because Jesus and the disciples were ministering there. Wherever Jesus and the disciples went, there would be crowds, because Jesus and the disciples would be there.

But the principle was sound to go on vacation. Perhaps It is just our implementation of it that is not sound. When we go on vacation, we take our built-in need to do things, and we work hard on our vacations. If we try to rest, someone who has come along – probably a child – utters those demonic words “I’m bored” and we feel the need to do something.

But, you see, there is our problem. Wherever you go, there you are.

Where ever we go, that’s where we are. Just like how the crowds followed Jesus because it was Jesus who created the crowds, our stresses follow us, for we are the cause of our stresses.

We think that vacations are to get away from the stress of our lives, but what we don’t realize is that we create almost all of the stress of our lives. We decide we need to shop, we decide we need to respond to others, we decide that we need to spend money which causes this or that bill to come due. We decided that we would have this or that home and hence we have that particular size house payment. And for many diseases that strike us down, we decided that we would smoke or drink or eat pork or soda pop and then we wonder why we have lung cancer or diabetes or heart disease or liver problems.

Where ever we go, that’s where we are.

When you go on vacation, do you actually relax? Or do you find yourself bored?

Here are several ideas to keep you from being overwhelmed.

First, military strategists will tell us that the key which keeps a force from being overwhelmed is to always keep a reserve, extra forces that can be put into play if a surprise occurs. If a force of ten thousand people are fighting an enemy, the commander calls for help when his reserves are down to about three thousand, because he wants to keep those three thousand spare troops ready to respond to a surprise by the enemy.

We need to do the same thing with our lives. We need to keep three hours a day in reserve. Because we are not comfortable “doing nothing”, we don’t keep reserve time available. If we find ourselves with three hours to spare, most of us must “do something”. We remove that reserve time immediately and fill it with something. Worse yet, we even look ahead on our schedule and fill in any blank spaces. “Oh good, I’ve got an hour on Friday afternoon between 5 and 6 pm, so I’ll mow then.” And then when Friday afternoon arrives, Susie calls and needs a ride, so the stress level builds because you had planned to mow during that time.

Have you ever considered planning your life so you have a spare three hours a day that are unplanned, time in which you can simply sit and talk with God if nothing urgent comes up?

Or are you so uncomfortable when it’s just you and God in the room that you must fuss around, doing something so that you won’t have to talk with God?

Have you ever just scheduled time with God alone, to sit and talk? Or is it more important to dust off the windowsills?

You see, we find work for us to do to keep us from talking with God. Maybe we try to squeeze in conversations with God while we drive between appointments. Maybe we try to talk with God a bit while we vacuum. Maybe we try to speak a bit with God while we mow the lawn. But would you treat any other person that way, telling them – “I can only talk with you while I vacuum, while I drive, while I mow.” Imagine if you talked to your wife or husband that way!

Have you ever considered that it doesn’t really matter if the dust is thick on the windowsills? Have you ever considered that one of those appointments really isn’t that important? Have you ever thought that perhaps someone else could mow that lawn – maybe the boy down the street who needs $30 a week.

There is a saying in business: Work expands to fill the time allotted. We have a tendency to try to fill every minute with something to do, even if it is just watching television, because we are scared to death of being alone with ourselves and God. And this comes at an early age – look at a child or a teenager and ask them to sit alone, doing nothing except silently talking with God, for five minutes or “gasp!” a half an hour.

If you want to avoid being overwhelmed, give yourself reserve time. Plan your day with three hours unscheduled time. Put in time for God.

The second key to avoid being overwhelmed is to have plenty of help available for yourself. Most people have certain jobs which they do. They are the person who plans the meals. They are the person who drives the children. They are the person who cleans the gutters. They are the person who handles the customer complaints.

Whatever your role at work, at home, in the church, a key to keep from being overwhelmed is to train other people to do your job. How many of you have avoided vacations because you are the only person who does your job and when you return you know you’ll have two weeks of extra work stacked up on your desk? How many of you can’t skip out on a Friday afternoon because if you don’t do it, it won’t get done? How many of you actually believe that you are vital for the proper functioning of your workplace, your home, your church?

Jesus trained his disciples to replace Him on earth. Have you done the same? Have you trained your replacement?

Get real, folks! If you think you are irreplaceable, you have a really big ego problem. Although you are unique and very, very valuable, every single thing you do could be replaced with someone else, if properly trained. But you have not trained someone because you really like what you are doing. And you have not trained someone because it would take time and effort to train someone and you are too lazy to find and train that person with the time and influence you have. And most of all, you have not trained someone because you are afraid that you would be replaced.

But as long as you do not train a replacement, you will not be promoted. As long as you don’t train a replacement, you will be overworked. As long as you don’t train a replacement, you will be stuck doing exactly what you are doing, feeling overwhelmed.

Look at the church. Do you realize that there are only four things that I do which I cannot delegate to someone else in the church? Anyone in this church can visit and contact visitors – and there are many people who can do it better than I can and more effectively. Anyone in this church can visit the sick in the hospital and many can spend more time and have better conversations that I can. Anyone in this church can read scripture and many can do it as well as I can. Anyone in this church can lead singing and several can do it better than I can. With a single Saturday’s training, anyone passed by Rosemary’s committee can preach a sermon, and we have about a half-dozen people who have done so.

The only four things which our United Methodist church says that only I can do are to baptize people, bless Communion, perform weddings, and perform funerals. And given a few days notice, Mary Ellen Finegan could find a replacement for me for those functions. Everything else that I do is something you could learn to do. Let me know what you’d like to do that I do – I’d love to train four of you to do each thing I do.

At a previous church I pastured, I did everything on Sunday mornings. I greeted people, I read the scripture, I preached, I played the piano, and I sang solos. It was a struggle - the church was struggling. Part of the measure of a good church, you see, is when people are willing to get involved and share the joy of doing. And another part of a good church is when everyone realizes that there are multiple people who can do the same work, and so the duties get passed around from week to week, from person to person. This way, people don’t get overwhelmed.

Have you trained your replacement? Have you trained another to do what you used to love doing, but now wears you down because you are constantly doing it?

Our third way to avoid being overwhelmed is to realize that some jobs simply don’t need to be done. Just don’t do it. Jesus did not ask His disciples to build tents for the people, although it would likely become very chilly that night. He knew that the people would figure it out themselves. In the same way, consider this: what do you do in your life that takes up your time that simply doesn’t need to be done?

For most of us, watching television or playing Facebook games is something we could stop doing. For most of us, cleaning parts of our house could be done half as often and no one would notice. If you live alone, have you thought about vacuuming once a month instead of once a week? Have you thought about cutting your grass every ten days instead of every week? Have you thought about doing laundry once a week instead of three times a week? Have you thought about reconciling your bank statements every quarter instead of monthly?

There are habits which we have made in our lives which need changed from time to time. Perhaps when there were children at home it was necessary to vacuum weekly or even daily. But now that it is just you, look at everything you do and decide if it is really necessary to do it so often.

And maybe it just doesn’t need done. How many of you have doctor’s or dentist's appointments that don’t really need to happen? My wife was called up by her eye doctor’s office who told her that it was time for a cataract checkup. She knows herself well enough to know that she didn’t need a doctor to tell her that she didn't have any cataracts, and she canceled the appointment. The same goes for oil changes – most cars today need oil changes every five or even seven thousand miles, not every three thousand miles as the oil change places recommend.

And some things simply aren’t needed at all. We limited our children to one activity at a time – Swim team or dance, Boy Scouts or Civil Air Patrol. Too many activities overwhelm us and so we didn’t do it.

Cut back or don’t do is one answer to being overwhelmed. If you only do one important thing a day, that’s 365 important things a year – and you will be far ahead of everyone else. Don’t let the things that don’t really need doing overwhelm the very few important things.

And the fourth key to being overwhelmed is shown by the disciples and Jesus once again. The disciples had no idea how to feed the five thousand – but Jesus could. And so, the final answer to being overwhelmed is to rely upon God to fix things. The disciples were asked to blindly bring the bread and the fish to Jesus and let Him handle things. And when they trusted Him to handle it, five thousand people were fed and were filled. They let God do it.

What is overwhelming you?

What are your most pressing problems?

Hand them over to Christ and let Him solve the problem for you. As long as you hold onto the problems, you are denying God permission to work on them, like a child who is afraid to let the parent wash the scrape on the child’s knee. But God knows how to fix those problems and if you will truly surrender the problems to God, then God can work in your life. Truly surrender the problems – don’t give them to God and take them back again. Ask God to stand by you and handle the problem.

Take a blank piece of paper in your bulletin and put your overwhelming problems on that paper. Crumple up that paper and put it in the wastebaskets. After you have done that, if you want to take back the problems, you can walk back to the wastebasket and take them back, but my suggestion is that you just leave them there for God to handle. Ask God to handle those problems - and leave them there so you won't be overwhelmed.

The Joy of Amos - Thoughts on the SCOTUS decision

Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85:8-13; Luke 6:20-38; Romans 1; Leviticus 18

Amos was an Old Testament prophet. One day, the Lord showed him that God was holding a plumb line, a vertical line with a piece of lead on the end beside a wall. It was the line to which the straight, vertical wall was being measured – a perfectly vertical line which God held, showing the people that God sets the standard and the people should build to that standard. For you see, if a wall is not built perfectly vertical, following a plumb line, the only good thing to do is to knock it down and rebuild before greater damage is done when the wall falls down of its own weight. And Amos was given the great honor and joy of serving God that day by telling the people of what the Lord had shown him. For this great service to God, the king’s messenger told Amos to leave the country and go work somewhere else. Amos simply replied that he had been minding his own business, but God had told him what to say. Amos was not well liked by the powers of his country, but Amos was on a first-hand speaking arrangement with the Creator of the Universe. Such is the joy of being a prophet when prophets help people reconnect with the Creator of the Universe.

In everything we do, this key mission of helping people reconnect with the Holy Creator of the Universe and have eternal life with God should be our motivation, our reason for everything we do in this church. As Jesus said, “ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. “(Matthew 18:19-20) This is why we do what we do in this church.

Yet once in a while, things outside the church distract us from our mission.

Today, I speak of the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. This is fair warning – This sermon is most definitely PG-13 rated.

I also want to point out at the beginning that while most people in this audience disagree with the decision, there are many people who are very happy with the decision and believe it was proper and just. Before we start, I want to remind you of this, and the related fact that this is not the most important thing that ever happened. Jesus Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection were the four most important things that ever happened.…and the law of one particular nation on an issue of sexuality pales in comparison.

To many people, this decision came as a surprise. It did not to me. To many people, it signaled a significant change in the world around us. It did not to me. To many people, this was an announcement that our nation was no longer Christian. It did not to me, for I had realized that in some ways this country had left Christianity many decades ago, and in other ways our Christianity had become a deep bedrock upon which the nation increasingly stands. The difference, you see, is how you define Christianity and what you consider a Christian nation to be like.

Furthermore, I am not angry about the decision – and I am not glad about the decision. I just expected it. I do not blame the men and women of the Supreme Court, for they are doing just what is to be expected in a democracy which is based upon a Constitution instead of religious laws. In a way, the people to blame for this decision are mostly Christians, for we are supposed to be the wise people in our society, as Christ said, we are to be the salt of the earth, giving it flavoring and seasoning, an intensely valuable yet rare group of people who ensure a good turn to society. The ordinary people in society are not expected to know better – and those who are truly evil can be expected to do evil. Yet we are the people who were expected to share God’s wisdom with the people around us, and we did not share God’s wisdom in a wise manner. And so the decision was made.

A brief look at the background, looking at both sides of the issue, as wise people should, so that we can prepare ourselves and understand those with whom we disagree, for understanding them is the key to persuading them.

When we go back in history and begin looking in the pages of the Old and New Testament, there is little direct teaching about who should get married. The Old Testament law of Moses has some definite rules, which are mainly the rules which we would take to be rules against incest, which are very practical rules for a culture with no birth control and where the absolute authority of father and grandfather were unchallenged.

The Old Testament does not even indicate how many wives a man can have – in fact, in the oldest times it is clear that multiple wives were common. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob each had several wives and concubines. David and Solomon each had many wives and concubines. You will notice that in the Old Testament times, though, there was a distinct difference between a legal wife who had a certain amount of prestige and legal claim to property, and a concubine who had little if no legal rights. Also, adultery - a violation of marriage - was one of the evils prohibited in the Ten Commandments.

The question of whether two men or two women can or should get married never even came up. It was assumed that marriage was between men and women. But that is not to say that homosexual practice did not exist in ancient times. It did and the Law of Moses condemned the practice in no uncertain terms, calling it, as you have undoubtedly heard, “an abomination” as the King James Version puts it, the harshest condemnation possible in the language. More recent translations use the word “detestable”. Around ancient Israel, in ancient Greece, homosexuality was widely practiced. Even the term “Lesbian”, which is commonly used to describe women who are sexually attracted to each other, comes from the Isle of Lesbos, a Greek island, on which the women were alleged to be unusually attracted to other women in ancient times. But in Jewish regions, the practice was looked at in the worse possible light because God’s Word condemned the practice.

Yet we do see a slightly different view of marriage and even homosexuality in the New Testament. In Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus, Paul indicates that a leader in the church should be the husband of only one wife, and we generally see a movement toward having just one wife. We see various prohibitions to Christians against “fornication”, which was a catch-all term and meant “sexual impropriety” of many types, ranging from pre-marital sex, to sex with a woman you were engaged to, to sex with prostitutes, and many other situations. In Paul’s opinion, marriage is the second-best solution to life, with the preferred state being celibacy – or living completely single without sex of any kind. And it is from this mention that the Roman Catholic church requires that its priests remain unmarried and celibate.

It should also be noted that Biblically speaking, there is no discussion made of the orientation of a person toward having sex with a male or a female. In the Bible, the issue is always the practice of homosexuality. Celibacy, Paul’s preferred state, is simply refraining from all sexual relationships and does not concern itself with orientation. Thus, biblically speaking, there is no modern concept of being gay – only the activity of gay sex, which is condemned, just as sleeping with another man’s wife is condemned.

In the first chapter of Romans, Paul puts forth his great analysis of sin and the present fall of humankind. Paul says that humans first turn their back on God, ignoring or denying God even though God is clearly present in the world. Because of this, people’s thinking turned from wise to foolish, and they began to worship gods and idols they had created and even people rather than the One God who Created all things. Paul says, “24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

Paul says, in essence, that the natural consequence of turning your back on God is homosexual practice. It is not exactly a punishment from God, but more a situation where God lets a person do what they wish to do – to worship the created person rather than worship the Creator. Our God is a polite God, allowing you to get what you want.

And so this is why we see most traditional Christians pointing out that homosexuality is considered a sin in the Bible, declared by the Word of God to be abomination in Leviticus 18:22, (Speaking to men, the verse says: “You shall not have sexual relations with a man as a woman. It is detestable” (or abomination depending upon the translation).

Yet we see that there is great debate among many Christians, and many Christians also wish to accept homosexuals into the church. In fact, several denominations have even allowed homosexuals to be local priests and some even allow bishops to be homosexual. Where are these people coming from? We expect lost people to not care what the Bible says, but why do Christian believers believe in this way?

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, real moral problems never occur when the debate is between good and evil. The problems always occur when there are two good principles at stake, or two evil outcomes at stake. In this case, the dilemma comes between the clear condemnation of homosexual practice in the Bible and the concept that all people are equally sinful in the sight of God and are valuable images of God. In this case, many of the more theologically liberal Christians argue in the following manner:

At one time, men used the Bible as a justification for slavery since directions are given which explain how slaves should be treated and act. Also, the Bible was used as a justification for treating women as second-class citizens because of some statements made in the Bible. The argument goes… we eventually saw the light about slavery and about women, therefore we should also see the light about homosexual marriage.

Even deeper, though, is a basic disagreement about the nature of God which underlies this debate.  Traditionalists have argued that at the root, God is the great “I am”, the ultimate Creator of the Universe and everything else. Thus, it is vitally important to learn about the personality of this great, complex Creator-Being and take seriously everything written about God in the Bible. The Bible is seen as the Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit’s influence upon the writers over the centuries, who were guided by that Spirit in their writing. Thus, everything said in the Bible was what God wanted said and we ignore or disparage those words to our great danger.

Theological liberals, as I mentioned last week, have a hard time with that view of inspiration. They are often hung up on the fact that men wrote down the Bible, and therefore will argue that a reading of the Bible, just like any other book, is mostly influenced by who you are, what your background is, where you come from, and by the influences upon the writer of the book. In other words, because the Bible is a document written by men, it should be treated as and analyzed as any other document written by men.  Because of some theories in the mid-twentieth century by some French philosophers, many liberals have decided that these influences upon the writer and the reader are far more important than the precise words actually written on the paper. And so liberals don’t take the writings of the Bible nearly as seriously as traditionalists do. They attribute most anything that they do not like about the Bible to the negative personal power agendas of the men who wrote the Bible. Rather than letting the Bible mold the reader’s life – they would rather mold the Bible to the reader. In essence: Whatever you decide the Bible says, no matter how convoluted, is right for you. 

But what about the idea that God inspired the writing of the Bible? This is ignored in practice, for the field of biblical studies, which assumes that prophecy cannot exist, a field which is essentially a literary field and not a theological field, has confused many people through claims of late authorship for many books of the Bible. If you follow the conclusions of biblical studies, then men wrote the Bible without help. And that isn't a critical problem to a theological liberal because of their views of God.

Chief among their view about God is this view: God is love. I’m sure you’ve heard this before: God is love. We even have songs that reinforce this concept. Unfortunately, about a hundred years ago some people began taking this as the complete truth about God: God is love. Now I agree that God wishes us to love one another, and God loves us, but despite a single sentence in I John 4, “God is love” is not the complete total expression of the most complex personality in existence, the God who Created the Universe. God may love more deeply than anyone else, but the Bible also states that there are things and people who God hates. God is very, very complex and any attempt to reduce this wonderfully complex Being down to a simple three-word statement is heresy – a false teaching. Yet “God is love” is easy to remember, and leads to simple, easy ideas which have a certain appeal.

You see, if “God is love” and that is all there is to God, then anything we do which can be portrayed as loving another person must be good. And clearly, supporting the rights of homosexuals to marry can be seen as loving other people, so it must be good. In fact, helping people to do and achieve anything they wish promotes freedom, which is an American virtue, and must be good, right? And stopping people from doing something reduces freedom, which must be evil, right? And those parts of the Bible which are "difficult" (meaning in conflict with this "God is love" point of view) are simply the product of men caught up in their own need to dominate other people.

Add the very real legal benefits of marriage in regard to healthcare, and we end up with the debate which went to the Supreme Court.

As you can probably see by now, the deep, root cause of this moral debate – which is the cause of most moral debates in our country over the last thirty years – is both a fundamental disagreement over the nature of God, and a conflict between the perceived moral standards of the Bible and the moral standards actually found in our society as a whole. Biblical standards are written down and you will find them written mostly in the books of Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Exodus, as well as in the books of the New Testament. Society’s standards are not written down – they mostly involve the primary principle of personal freedom to do anything desired, an acceptance of the goodness of what anyone desires, and the concept of fairness - which at its root is the concept that there is no one who has a preferred point-of-view. These are derived from the US Constitution. Since the US Supreme Court follows the evolution of law as developed from the Constitution – it must look toward previous decisions and laws rather than biblical standards. But why did this whole issue come up in the first place?

Unfortunately, in any group of people, there exist certain people who feel an obligation to instruct other people how to live and act. While we have that duty toward our children, in an ideal world our goal is to help other people learn how to listen to the Holy Spirit, and to let the Holy Spirit of God instruct other people in their behavior. Jesus was very angry at the group of Jews known as Pharisees because they were constantly telling other people how to act and live. Then – as now – the behavior of Pharisees keeps people away from God, because people tend to mistake the behavior of these busybodies with the behavior of most of the people of God, people who are willing to live and let live, people who walk in peace, people who are happy dealing with their own problems and pleasant to all others.

Our most outspoken Christians who defend “Christian morals” do not help the cause of Christ, but instead have set up a dynamic where many people in society at large have identified Christian belief with the belief in a strict, joyless, strait-jacketed, controlled life among unpleasant people who tell each other what not to do. When we or our parents said negative things about the behavior of a man or woman, we and our parents reduced the public perception of Christianity to "just another" controlling system of moral behavior. We have forgotten to tell people what Christianity really is: An explanation for why we each exist, an understanding of how the Universe exists, a relationship with the greatest Being in the Universe and a view of the world which allows us to live in total freedom, secure that our Heavenly Father loves us completely and will eventually provide us with a life free of tears.

And so we end up with people in the society at large who have been hurt by Christians and now truly hate Christians because of the actions and words of a few of us. And those people who hate Christians will eventually die a real death and be separated from God throughout eternity. And that is very sad.

Unfortunately, these Christian-hating people also often have the built-in desire to instruct other people in what is correct behavior and incorrect behavior and have also become modern Pharisees, insisting upon behavior as their moral code demands, including especially their need to instruct traditional Christians in the “proper” way of behavior, according to their code of total tolerance for all behavior – except for Christian behavior.

Theology – your understanding of God - you see, has consequences. It leads to decisions – sometimes very good decisions, sometimes very poor decisions. It is important to have a reasonably good understanding of the personalities of God the Creator, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit so that we make good decisions.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of the Supreme Court decision is that it has finally led many people to realize that our legal code no longer follows the Law of Moses and Christian common law as it did for centuries. This is why this decision did not surprise me – I never bought into the idea that America is a Christian country based upon Christian law. Instead, I understood that America is a country in which many Christians happen to live, and in which for a period of a couple hundred years it gave a person a tremendous social advantage to be or pretend to be a Christian, as many, many people have over the years and many still pretend to this day. We were founded principally by Christians - but we were not founded as a theocracy, but instead a republic, designed to follow laws and the evolution of laws developed from a basic rulebook known as The Constitution. Where that Constitution references the Christian Bible, it is just as a starting point - in no place in the Constitution was there placed a guarantee that Christian concepts should be followed.

For you see, this decision forces us to face the greatest distortion of what Christianity is. This decision forces us to look at ourselves and decide what it means to be a Christian. This decision forces us to understand deeply that Christianity is NOT a moral code, a code of behavior, a rulebook of do’s and don’ts.

No, Christianity is about a choice made deep in your heart that you will attempt to your very best to truly follow the leadership and example of Jesus Christ – not because Jesus was a wise man – although He was – not because Jesus was the greatest moral teacher the world has ever known – although He was – but because Jesus told us that He was God Himself, sacrificed Himself for each of us, and then proved that He was God Himself by His Resurrection which was seen by over 500 witnesses in at least eleven different situations and recorded by eyewitnesses on documents which are still being reprinted to this day. We follow Jesus because He was and is God!

Jesus had certain things to say, He answered the greatest questions, Jesus endorsed the Old Testament writings, and the followers of Jesus reported upon certain events and teachings of Jesus in what we call the New Testament. And so we follow those teachings first because of Who taught them, and only secondarily because they happen to work better than any other set of moral teachings the world has ever known. But if you follow Christianity because of our moral teachings, you are missing the core of the religion, which is that Jesus was and is God, and from this everything else follows.

And when we put them together, here is what the wisest people I know have arrived at in consensus, as written in the United Methodist Book of Disciple – our law book - and certain resolutions that have been adopted by our United Methodist pastors and laity in assembled conference.

First, we consider the Holy Scriptures to contain everything that is necessary for our salvation, and we consider the Holy Scriptures to be the foremost authority on social matters and our relationship to other people.

Second, we consider every person to be of great worth, a special and unique image of God created by God, and thus every person is entitled to love and dignity and respect.

Third, we consider the practice of homosexuality to be at odds with Christian teaching and the practice of a holy Christian life. Thus, those who are self-avowed and practicing homosexuals are prohibited from being pastors in the United Methodist Church at this time. Changing this position has been voted upon several times by our international “General Conference”, and each time the proposal has been soundly defeated. And as the percentage of conservative delegates from Africa and the Phillipines and South Korea grows, the chances of liberalization occurring grow less possible every four years.

Fourth, because of this Bible-based understanding, it is the official policy of the United Methodist Church that no pastor may conduct a same-sex wedding, and an official statement from the legal Counsel of the Council of Bishops has been sent to all pastors in West Virginia affirming that the Supreme Court decision does not change this policy. In fact, Justice Kennedy’s decision expressly stated that the First Amendment gives us the right to continue teaching our traditional religious-based views against same-sex marriage. Of course, those in favor of same-sex marriage may also teach their views.

In this church, there are a couple of ways that I would suggest to you we react.

First, we should recognize that there is no sin worse in the sight of God than any other. Gossip is a sin; homosexual practice is a sin; being inhospitable is a sin. Everyone who walks into this assembly for the first time brings with them a whole host of sins, all of which are, theologically speaking, none of our business, and any one of which God hates. Our business is to connect people – particularly people who are hurting, who are realizing that their ideas about life aren’t working, who are stridently anti-God – and connect them with the love that Christ brings and the healing that happens when a person decides to follow Jesus Christ, be baptized, and listen to the Holy Spirit. It is the business of the Holy Spirit and Holy Scripture to convict people of the sins in their own life and lead them to repent and live another way, in this new way learning how to grow closer to God rather than farther away.

No matter what the sin of the person, I can think of no place better for anyone than to be in church most Sunday mornings.

Secondly, we hold people in leadership to a higher standard of holiness, while recognizing that only Jesus Christ lived a perfect life. If you wish to lead or are called to lead, begin getting your life in order today by listening to the Holy Spirit – whatever your sins.

And so, for your friends and relatives who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual – or straight – I say, we will love you regardless of your sins – all of them, singling out no particular sin for special hatred, but being hospitable to all so that all may be saved by Christ. Judging you is above our pay grade – it is for the King of glory, Jesus Christ to decide.

The only wise action and approach to sin is to accept all who sin – which is every person on this planet – and trust in the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to lead us all to a holy life.

Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment and He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” “And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself.”

Our mission given by Christ, my friends, is to go to all groups of people, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them all that Jesus has commanded, and He will be with us always until the end of the age.

Be wise – help us to convert this nation to the love of God and then we will once again be a Christian nation. We need to return to the straight vertical plumb line of God. Tell people this – and know the joy of Amos. You will be beloved of God - but may not be the most popular person with the government or the populace. But the joy that a close relationship with God brings will be worth it.

Going Out to Speak

Ezekiel 2:1-5; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

We all wish for a time when Christianity would be the overarching religion of our country and the world. We feel that it is slipping away from us, that something important is being lost, that our religion is disappearing. Some institutions are disappearing, some are dying. Some of those are associated with Christianity in America – and some of the things that are dying are things which should die. Does anyone remember those shiny aluminum Christmas trees with Styrofoam ornaments?

We should always remember that the “good old days” were often good mainly because we were too young to notice the problems. We need to be aware of the weaknesses in our church and country that have led to their decline, or as we rebuild, we will rebuild with exactly the same problems in their structure that led to their decline in the first place. Don’t rebuild a falling down house with the same plans you built it with in the first place, or it will fall down again!

The more important reason that we see the loss of the church’s influence in our society is that we built our churches the same way we built our great companies of the 1950’s – top down from management..

In the 1950’s, the greatest companies were based upon the idea that a couple of smart engineers and a handful of great managers could employ thousands of unthinking people and hundreds of cycling machines to make great profits and provide a living for everyone associated with the company. All the thinking and creativity was done in the front office – the average person was supposed to shut up and work. But in the new companies of the last twenty years, everyone is encouraged to be creative and given the chance to try out new ideas. Google actually asks everyone to spend 4 hours a week working on their own new ideas for the company.

In the 1950’s, in the church, the greatest churches were based upon the idea that a couple of smart pastors and a couple of great staff could employ hundreds of unthinking people and their donations to do great things for the community and provide good programs and care for everyone associated with the church. All the thinking and creativity was done up front – the average person was supposed to sit down in the pews, shut up and donate. In the new churches, everyone participates. Every single person is looked upon as a wonderful image of God, with ideas and creative energy, with a desire to do good and, possibly with training, to start and operate ministries which bring more people to the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

And gradually those older companies died, as competition came along who had learned to better use their capital – recognizing that everyone that works in a company has a brain and ideas and creativity and wants to make the company a better place. And so Kodak’s film cameras have been replaced by Canon’s digital cameras, Western Electric, who made the basic black telephone that was on everyone’s end table in 1955 has been replaced by Apple and LG, and Zenith console televisions have been replaced by Sony and Visio and Panasonic flat panel televisions. Even taxi companies are being replaced today by Uber, an online company that lets anyone become a taxi driver and earn some money on the side.

And you know, the big churches died also as church choirs were replaced by a desire for praise bands, as Sunday evening worship was replaced by a desire for Saturday evening worship, and an outreach committee was replaced by ministry teams. I know of a local church that has seating for over 500 people and is down to about 75 people on an average Sunday – but they still operate the same way they did in 1950, while Horizon’s church in Lost Creek has many hundreds in worship because they have dozens of ministry teams, interesting worship, and young people in leadership positions. But most of all, the older churches stopped listening to the Holy Spirit.

Unlike what you may think – the Christian church is not dying. It is growing faster than it has in centuries. Christianity is growing rapidly in China, in India, in South America, and in Africa. Since 1900, it has gone from almost zero believers in Korea to claiming about half the population of South Korea. Christianity is growing in Russia and the states formerly controlled by the Soviet Union. It is only in Iraq and Egypt under severe persecution, in parts of Western Europe, and in Canada under ridicule that Christianity is dying.

And what about America?

Since the days of the Pilgrims, the highest weekly percentage of church attendance in America occurred around the year 2000. Attendance has increased steadily over the last four hundred years. That attendance has dropped some in the last ten to fifteen years, but is actually still increasing in many parts of the country. But attendance at older, well-entrenched mainline churches is slipping. Instead, attendance is growing in those denominations and independent churches known as “evangelical”. Our United Methodist Church has many churches that are older mainline churches, and many churches that are evangelical. What are the differences between the older churches and the evangelicals?

First, evangelicals consider the Bible to the inspired Word of God, written by men who listened to the Holy Spirit as they were writing. The Holy Spirit guided their writing - not as dictation, but with a gentle guidance about what points to make. The older denominations mostly like to point out that the Bible was written by men - men alone - and this helps them justify picking and choosing what they will believe.

Second, evangelicals consider that the most important thing a Christian can do to help another is to help that other person become a Christian believer, for unlike everything else, this has eternal consequences. The older denominations mostly are focused upon providing social services and social activism – activities that government organizations and political groups are very good at doing, probably better than churches can for most recipients.

Evangelicals believe that equipping people for ministry will change our society for the better and then they go ahead and do the ministry with God’s help. – the older churches believe that the churches themselves must work through the government and government programs to accomplish anything truly important.

Third, evangelicals are willing to do what it takes – each one of them – to spread the Gospel because they each understand that this is every believer’s duty. The older denominations are mostly concerned that their churches are shrinking, and do things to keep their churches from shrinking. Evangelical churches are generally doing well because they have an important eternal mission and that mission breeds passion.

Finally, evangelicals are always looking forward toward what is the best new way to spread the Gospel to people. Older mainline churches are always looking backward to what they used to do, to a time of glory in the past for their church instead of looking forward to a new and upcoming time of glory. To an evangelical church, the time of glory is three or five years in the future.

Our United Methodists are on the border. We have some churches that act like churches of the 1950’s – and we have other churches that act like modern evangelical churches. As you may have guessed, I consider myself an evangelical, as do many of our West Virginia United Methodists. What about yourself? Which are you?

I have mentioned a couple of times before our friends Bill and Pat Risley, who are missionaries in Northern Mexico. Almost twenty years ago, Bill and Pat were assigned to a church in northwestern Ohio, and did not feel like they were accomplishing much, if anything for the Lord. So they and their five children began to pray for 24 hours a day, taking turns, for an entire month about what they should do. At the end of the month, they held a family meeting and the consensus was that God’s Holy Spirit was speaking to them to “go to Mexico”. So they gave their home to a friend, grandma and grandpa promised to send them some money as they could, and they loaded into their camper with about a hundred boxes of macaroni and cheese and drove into Mexico. And because no one in the family knew any better, they also took along a course on “How to speak Spanish”. They became missionaries in Mexico and none of them spoke Spanish. Folks, this was truly faith in action!

Today, their children are married and all work in missions. God led one daughter to become a doctor and found a regional clinic, another is a nurse, and a son works for a missionary support air company. Still another founded and operates a hospital house similar to a Ronald McDonald House. All of them have experienced God’s care and provision many times.

And then there is Grady. Grady teaches about Christianity in Mexican prisons, and also does door-to-door evangelism. But his evangelism is not the Jehovah Witness style of evangelism. You see, in his part of Mexico, the Witnesses do much as they do here: They go in pairs, wearing white shirts, ties, and wingtip shoes. And they talk to people who are cowboys and field workers.

Grady is a big guy. He lifts weights and is about the size of an NFL offensive lineman. He is bald and has a beard. As he wrote recently, “When I go up to somebody’s door dressed in combat boots, jeans, a tee shirt, and looking like a cross between Grizzly Adams and his bear, people come out and talk to me. Even though I’m carrying a Bible…they know I am not a Jehovah’s Witness.”

Grady makes an appointment with people to talk with them the next day or two about what it means to be a Christian. He says that gives the Holy Spirit a chance to work on the people for a day and a night as Grady prays for them. And in the month of April, Grady led forty people in town to the Lord, and has started two Bible Study classes in the town. Brady never waits to form a team or a fancy plan – Grady just talks to people about the Gospel.

So what is Grady’s Gospel? Stop trying to be good enough for God and trust Jesus to make you acceptable to God. He uses 1 Peter 2:24, Romans 3:10, and John 3:18 as key verses for most of the people he meets.

And when Grady leaves their home, as with Ezekiel, “they know that a prophet has been among them”.

When you have been talking to someone, do your new friends “know that a prophet has been among them”? Or have they just met another person, bland and dull much like everyone else in this world?

One of the lessons of the Gospel is that we must speak to new and different people if we are to be effective at promoting the Gospel. In our Gospel story, even Jesus cannot make much headway among the people he has known for years and years. And so Jesus decides that the time has come to make a difference – and He doesn’t do it Himself. He had already done this in front of His disciples. So He teaches and the disciples do. Years later, they would repeat that part of the process – they would teach and others do. And this pattern has been repeated down through the ages.

Jesus talks to his disciples, the men who were most advanced, who understood what Jesus was talking about and who were beginning to understand His message that God was for everyone.

Jesus sends His disciples out two by two to go meet people. They are to meet people and tell them that people should repent – notice that Jesus did not send his disciples to the mayors and governors and the king, but to the average people. He didn’t try to change the government, but tried to change the average person, for the average person is just as much a special image of God as the powerful man in government is. The average person is to look at himself, recognize his own sin, repent – which means to re-think what he has been doing – and ask for forgiveness from God. And this was Jesus’ plan for beginning to change the world. You see, after thousands of average people changed, the governments began to change.

It still works today. This is what Grady is doing in Mexico. This is what countless numbers of men and women are doing in India, in China, in Africa south of the Sahara desert. This is what is happening in Brazil and the other countries of South and Central America. This is what is happening in Russia. And this is what is happening in places where evangelicals are strong – Georgia, Texas, Southern California, Colorado – and in places where you would be surprised – the apartment buildings of New York City, the suburbs of Chicago, the villas of southern France, the booming desert city of Dubai, the historic city of London, the atomic town of Hiroshima, and Starbuck’s city of Seattle.

Let’s do the same in the green hills of Harrison County and other parts of West Virginia.

Get a friend and visit a neighbor. Just like the disciples, don’t take any props with you. Talk with your neighbor and see what develops. Afterwards, talk with your friend and figure out what worked and what didn’t work. Try another neighbor. Repeat the process.

If they ask you to leave, remember that Jesus said to kick the dust off your feet. There will always be people who will not want to talk to you. We are concerned about the people who do want to talk to you. Don’t fret about the ones who got away – praise God for the one who listened.

We have been losing America because of one simple reason. We have not talked to people in loving, kind ways about the Gospel. Instead, we have complained to ourselves about non-Christians, yelled at and about those who do not come to church, and generally made the most sinful mistake possible in today’s world – we have become boring people. Too often, church services - and our personalities - are seen by the casual visitor – or the outsider – as the equivalent of plain rice cakes – no flavor, no sweetness, no taste. In our quest for stability in the world, we have become as dull as cardboard.

My friends, we have in our possession the answers to the deepest questions in the Universe. Why am I here? Who made me? What is my purpose? We speak daily to the Creator of the Universe and go “Ho Hum – that’s just prayer.” As if it was something everyone had the ability to do, like making a phone call!

We have managed to make God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit - the three most fascinating People in the Universe – boring! We have taken the Being that created the scintillating rainbow, the Man who actually walked on stormy water, the Holy Spirit that allowed Samson to kill a thousand strong men in a day with nothing more than a donkey’s jawbone – and we have turned them into gray cardboard.

We need to recapture the wonder that happened the day you first heard that Jesus walked on water. We need to recapture the excitement that happened when you first heard that Jesus really died and came back from the dead. We need to remember the emotion that we had when we first realized that if everybody else in the world was ok, Jesus would have died on the cross just for you – and did that.

Today, I'm asking each of you to write a sentence or two about what God and Christ mean to you in the comments section. Let everyone here know what God means to you – it may be profound, it may make us cry, It may make us laugh. You may really not know today. But I’m going to give you the chance – and I promise you, I know you folks - it won’t be boring...

After you make your comment, consider this paraphrase of the call of Ezekiel:

“Sons and daughters of men, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.

3 God says: “Sons and daughters of men, I am sending you to the Americans, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day. 4 The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says.’ 5 And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious people—they will know that a prophet has been among them."

Go now and tell the people what God’s Son has done for them.

The Power of Faith

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Psalm 130; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43

When I was a teenager, I was an atheist. It puzzled me to no end why otherwise perfectly sane and intelligent people would believe in a God that they could not see, especially when science had proven that the world was hundreds of times older than what my Christian friends told me. Talking snakes! A world-wide Flood! Men walking on top of liquid water? I could not believe it and openly laughed about these things.

When I asked my teenage Christian friends how these things could have happened, they often responded “You’ve got to have faith.” Well, I didn’t have faith, and I really had little idea what that meant. I simply wanted answers to my questions. To me, I couldn’t understand what the big difference was between a typical question – “why do airplanes fly?” - and “why do you think God exists?” It took many years before I understood.

In our reading today, we see faith in action. A man named Jairus has a daughter who is dying and he begs Jesus to come and heal her. Jesus agrees and goes walking through a crowd with many people around Him toward the home of Jairus.

There is a particular woman. She has heard about Jesus and His ability to heal people – literally, His ability to make people whole. (The word we commonly translate as “heal” means “to make whole”. This woman has been suffering from a slow hemorrhage for twelve years. For twelve years she had bled, and in this time before surgery, before modern medicines, there was nothing any of the doctors could do for her. Notice that the reading even says “she had endured much under many physicians”. She had gone from one doctor to another, spending money on different treatments, many of which were very painful and irritating, and she was now broke. And she continued to bleed.

Now we would worry about this condition even today. The continual loss of blood would mean that this woman was pale and anemic, weak and unable to work well. But in that time, in that culture, it was even worse. Blood was considered “unclean”, and unclean people could not worship at the Temple. Because of her disease, she was not even allowed to enter the Temple grounds. Because of her disease, she was not able to offer sacrifices. Because of her disease, she could not even be touched by another person. She was cut off from her friends. She was cut off from her family. She was cut off from God.

Imagine having Ebola today. You are isolated inside a quarantine room. The nurses and doctors treating you wear isolation suits. Your family talks to you from a distance. You cannot attend worship or receive Communion. You must live separately from everyone and not be touched by anyone. Now imagine that this state of affairs has gone on for twelve years.

The woman heard about Jesus and the miraculous healings He has performed. And so she made a courageous decision. She decided that even if she could simply touch the hem of his cloak, it would heal her. And so she enters the crowd around Jesus as he heads toward Jairus’ house, and she pushes and shoves with everyone else until she can reach out and touch his cloak. Surely no one will notice! Reach, reach, stretch! She barely touched the very corner of His cloak and suddenly SHE KNEW THAT SHE WAS HEALED!

But as soon as she touches Him, Jesus stops. “Who touched my clothes?” he says. And the disciples laugh and say, “Everyone is pushing up against you and you say ‘who touched my clothes?’”

The woman now was caught. She knew that she should not have touched this great and wonderful Rabbi’s clothing, a regular woman should not touch Him, let alone an unclean woman like herself. “He probably thinks I was trying to steal money from Him or assassinate Him or something equally terrible!”

And so she steps forward, trembling, scared to death, falls down on her face before Him and admits what she had done and why she had done it, and she waited for sentence to be pronounced upon her, a great and terrible sentence to be sent away, lashed, put into prison, or stoned.

And Jesus looks down upon her, smiles, and says: "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

There is something wonderful here, something beyond the graceful words of Jesus, the powerful Rabbi showing kindness to a skinny, pale, fearful woman. There is something deeply profound here, something which is very important for us, something more than this beautiful encounter between a frightened woman and the majestic Son of God. There is something in what Jesus did NOT say.

For you see, Jesus did not say, “God has healed you today.” And Jesus did not say “I have healed you today” and Jesus did not say, “My power has healed you today.”

Jesus said, “Daughter, YOUR FAITH has made you well.” Literally, “YOUR FAITH has made you whole.”

What power healed the woman? The power of Christ, flowing to her because the faith of the woman opened the valve controlling that power. Jesus did not command her healing – she took the healing power through her faith!

There is something very deep here which shows the difference between the miraculous healings of Jesus and the magical healings that others would claim to have the power to do.

In our Trinitarian view of God, it has long been noted that God the Father-Creator provides the creative power for the Universe. If you will, God the Father pumps the power into the hose.

Jesus Christ, the Word of God, directs that creative power – remember from the First chapter of the Gospel of John? “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” Jesus directs and controls the hose’s power.

And now we see that Jesus has let our faith open the valve.

When we have faith, we open the valve that lets the creative and healing power of God the Father flow to do great and wonderful things.

When we have faith, Jesus says, mountains can be moved into the sea. When we have faith, people can walk upon liquid water. When we have faith, people and nations can be healed.

If you still doubt, let’s continue the story.

Just as Jesus is still talking with the woman, a messenger comes to speak to Jairus. “"Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?"

But Jesus overhears him and says to Jairus – “Do not fear – only believe”

And then Jesus takes Peter, James, and John and they go see the twelve year old girl who is lying there dead, and Jesus takes her by her hand says to her “Little girl, get up!” and she does.

“Do not fear – only believe”.

But why does our faith control such power?

To understand, we must look at two key aspects of God’s character.

First, God tells us that God is a jealous God. God will have no other gods before Him. We are not to think that anything else has god-like power – not a stone or wooden idol, not a man or a woman or a ruler or a government, and not even a philosophy or money or science or Mother Nature or even a powerful medical treatment. God wants us to be completely loyal to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

And yet over the centuries and decades and years, humankind and each one of us has fallen victim to the lie that says that one particular type of problem is fixed by a belief in this method or that method. Broken bones are healed by casts; money problems are fixed by working harder or finding someone with money; relationships are fixed by counseling; cancer is cured by chemotherapy. And so we worship other gods. But where does all the positive, creative energy of the Universe come from? God the Father, directed by Jesus Christ the Word of God.

My wife pastors Liberty UMC on the other side of town. They are a small church; they had slowly been dying for many years. They needed a new roof and it would cost over $12,000, which was about the same as their ANNUAL offerings. They had begun to believe that they were too small to survive, and that money and young people and a nice building were what was needed to grow a church. But they began to believe differently about a year ago. You see, my wife had a vision, a wide-awake dream, given to her by God. She saw a hot dog on a sign.

She told me she had been in prayer and saw a hot dog on a sign. A hot dog in a bun with a big streak of yellow mustard on it, and the whole sign had a blue background. And so she went to work at her telemarketing job that day and tried drawing out the vision of the sign God had given her.

Her godly friend saw what she was doing and Saundra told her about the vision. The friend said, “I made advertising signs for 10 years. It was my job.” And after work, they went to AC Moore, Saundra bought some supplies and her friend made the sign, a beautiful sign.

Liberty had a hot dog sale. Liberty is a tiny church on Limestone Run Road, where the only real traffic are water trucks. Nobody came to their fund-raisers – they usually made $200-$300 from a fund-raising event. But this time, the water truck drivers saw the beautiful, God-given sign and stopped in to order a dozen hot dogs to go. They bid on baskets, and they bought drinks. They bought crafts and they bought potato chips. And Liberty made $1200 that weekend, about 10% of what they needed for the roof. They were excited, so they tried some more fundraisers, raising about $3000 altogether. But the roof was still far out of reach. But Liberty now believed that with God’s help they could handle the roof. And then this spring, Saundra went to Cedar Lakes with the United Methodist Women.

She ran into some women from St. Marys. We had served churches near St. Marys, and I grew up in St. Marys, so Saundra knew most of these women. But she met a new woman, and discovered that she was my fifth grade math teacher. She asked how I was doing and Saundra told her, bragging about these two churches I pastor. Then Saundra told her about her four small churches and the story of Liberty and its roof. The woman said, “It sounds like you need a grant.” And Saundra said, “How does one get a grant?” and the woman said, “You ask me” and promised to email Saundra a form.

Liberty jumped on the form. They got all the information together in record time and asked for just over $9000. The entire leadership laid hands on the form and prayed over it. Saundra sent in the form on a Thursday and on Tuesday evening received an email telling them that they had been approved for the grant. The check should arrive shortly. God is good to those who worship God - and only God.

The second aspect of God’s character is God’s tremendous overwhelming politeness. God allows you to choose your path. God does not coerce you. If you truly want to be your own god, God will let you, even letting you try to figure out how to live after your death by yourself without God’s help. If you truly think that money can buy you happiness, God will let you get that money and you will find out the answer to the question. If you really think that the best specialist in the country is the only answer to your cancer, as Steve Jobs did, then God will let you reach that specialist and find out, as Steve Jobs did, that that specialist cannot make you whole. Your lack of faith in God blocks the power of God to flow.

But if you will surrender yourself to God, and ask God for help. truly trusting in God as the woman did, as Jairus did, as Liberty Church has, you will find that the valve of positive creative power has been opened. God helps those who love God.

When you do not have an open faith in God, God knows this. God will not work against your subtle fears of God. You may say that you want a miracle done, but deep inside, deep down inside, you may fear that you will lose control of your world if God does the miracle. You may truly NOT want the miracle done, and God knows this. God is tremendously polite.

Now this is not to say that God will always grant your prayers, and this is not to say that when your prayers are not granted it is because of your lack of faith. I am simply saying that a child-like faith in God and God’s goodness is helpful, very helpful in giving God permission to enter your life in a big way to do good things for you.

Generally speaking, God does not grant prayers for two reasons. First of all, God knows you don’t really want the prayer granted. Or secondly, God knows that granting the prayer is bad for you or others, or not granting the prayer is actually better for you or others. God always acts for the long term good of those who choose to follow God. Sometimes, that “long term” may not happen for a hundred years or more, long after you have left this earth. So be patient – and have faith. Have faith in God.

Does this mean that you should not go to the doctor? No. God often acts through other people when God does miracles, and doctors are one of the ways God makes us whole. But they are not the only way, and regardless of what the medical schools teach, the healing power of doctors ultimately comes from God and Christ.

And so, you see, it is our faith in God that gives God the permission to work in our lives. It is faith that allows the tree to cling to the side of the rocky cliff and grow. The power is there, waiting for us, for God has already commanded that that positive creative power work to make people whole. God has chosen to provide that power to the followers of God’s Son, and Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the Son of God, has chosen to direct that power to make us whole. Our faith in Christ removes the real barriers to that power working in our lives: our desire to be independent…our desire to rebel against God….our desire to be in charge of our lives…. And our desire to worship other gods.

So often we think that we must make a strong effort to move toward God and to find God. We think that we must beg God to come into our lives, that we must negotiate terms with God, that we must go forth and convince God that we are worthy of being helped. We think we have to go outside the fortified castle that is our self and find the God who will rescue us. We expect a journey of a thousand miles to find God and then we expect God will give us ten quests to do before we are good enough for God to help us. But that isn’t so.

God is, even now, pounding on the doors to your castle. God is ready to pour into your castle, like the sea flooding through a broken dike on Holland’s coast if you will simply open the door and invite God in. But we only want God to speak to us on the drawbridge. We don’t want to let God into our castle. And we surely don’t want to let God pour through our castle-self into every room, flooding us with God’s overwhelming love, do we?

Why not?

Because we know that our lives will never be the same inside our castle. Those cold, stone walls inside our self-castle will be redecorated with fine warm tapestries if God comes inside. Our rough-cut furniture will be replaced with beautiful designer pieces, easy on our bodies. Our empty halls will be filled with friends of God, joining us in fellowship and joy. We will no longer have a dungeon in which we have imprisoned our self, torturing ourselves daily over our terrible deeds, for God will open up the dungeons in our castle and replace them with places where God will talk with us over tea or coffee until the wee hours.

And so we keep God out because we know God’s power, but don’t trust God’s love. We have the fear of what we have not experienced, the fear of places we have never gone, the fear that God will change things and we are afraid that those changes won’t be for the better.

We do this in our lives, and we also do this in the church, don’t we? We say we have faith, but we don’t act in faith. We are afraid to step forward and teach people about Jesus, not because we are afraid that those people will laugh at us, but because we are afraid that they might actually choose to follow Jesus, and then we would have to show these new Christians we have found just how much faith - or how little faith - we truly have ourselves. And that is frightening, because underneath our costumes of churchy words and churchy activities and churchy behavior, we are all naked before God, and we are afraid that other people will see this. And so when God brings a non-believer to us, we are afraid to tell him or her of our God-stories, we are afraid to mention what Jesus has done in our lives, and we are afraid to have a long, heart-to-heart talk with them about the most important story in the Universe because we are afraid that we will be discovered to be naked and afraid before God, like Adam and Eve in the Garden after they sinned.

That is why God does not act in your life in a big and bold way. You have only let God onto the drawbridge, allowing God to redecorate your front porch, but have not let God into your castle in faith.

The woman who touched Jesus’ cloak had faith. True, it was her desperation which gave her the courage to step forth and touch the great Rabbi that day. But she acted upon her faith – and so must we.

We must each step forward and act upon our faith, surrendering the doors of our self-castle to God, letting God pour into our self and redecorate us, change us, transform us through God’s Holy Spirit. Faith means that we trust the One at the front gate with more than our front porch. Faith means that we ask to be made whole people, people who are ready to do spiritual battle throughout our lives, throughout our community, and even throughout the world.

Have you ever thought about what you would do for God’s mission if you were single and wealthy, if every day you could count on all the money you needed for support, for life, for the mission, if no one had a call upon your life except God? What would you allow God to do through you? What great things would you and God accomplish? What group of people would you lead to God's love? 

So why wait to be single and wealthy? Have faith in God’s ability to make things happen despite your poverty, despite your commitments to others, despite your fears. When you have that faith and completely trust in God, you will truly be made whole. Take the leap… and trust your Heavenly Father!