Fruits and Excuses - What is Your Calling?

1 Kings 19:15-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62 

About fifteen years ago, a white-haired man from the new church we were attending stopped in to visit Saundra and me at our business, which was about a mile from the new church. It was the first of several visits that Jim made to us the last years we lived in Georgia. One of those visits was key for me.

I had begun to write my first book about Christianity, and I asked Jim to read the couple of chapters that I’d finished. Jim was very encouraging. But, you see, I had doubts at the time. I wondered if I had received the Holy Spirit at all – the previous church we attended, the church where I accepted that Jesus had saved me, the church where I was baptized – in that church, the official theology was that the actions of the Holy Spirit had stopped about the time that the Apostle John, the last of the original apostles, had died. And so I wondered – I had doubts about whether the Holy Spirit was speaking to me. And I asked Jim what he thought because the Reverend Jim Webb had pastured many churches in fifty-five years of ministry. I asked an experienced pastor if I was truly on track.

“There’s no way you could write what you’ve written unless you were listening to the Holy Spirit,” Jim said. And that was that.

We soon left Georgia and moved to Ohio. Another pastor, Steve Dennis, asked me to read the prayers, and the scripture – the job of what our lay leaders and lay speakers do. After a couple months of this, Steve, who had led pastoral training for his denomination, came to me after the service one day and asked, “I’m not sure how to ask this delicately, so I’ll just ask it bluntly. Have you ever considered the ministry?”

I had, and it was soon after that that I began studies for ministry. My calling had been confirmed by two pastors I respected.

A few years later, I was pastoring two small churches 30 miles from my home. I prepared a sermon every week and preached it twice. I taught two Bible studies on Tuesday evenings. I showed up once a month for a church-sponsored community dinner. And I visited people on Sunday afternoons. But that wasn’t my whole life. I also taught full-time at Parkersburg Catholic High School. I taught two evening courses at WVU-Parkersburg on Mondays and Wednesdays. And I took a full-time seminary course load, four or five courses a semester, and found time to watch a DVD with my family every Thursday evening. I was never bored!

The original disciples, eleven in number after the loss of Judas, were initially convinced that Jesus would return in a matter of months or years. But as those original Apostles aged, they began to look toward developing successors, looking for men primarily, but sometimes women – in particular Phoebe and Priscilla come to mind – you’ll find them in the book of Acts and the last chapter of Romans. The Apostles looked to find people who could and would spread the Gospel far and wide. And so they found men and women of talent, men and women who loved the Lord, men and women whose loyalties lie not with money and prestige and the other gods of this world, but who were willing to focus their lives upon saving their souls and the souls of those people they encountered as God brought them face-to-face with those people.

We see a pattern for this developing early, even before Jesus arrived on earth. Elijah was sent by God to name Elisha to be his replacement prophet, because Elijah was old and worn out. We remember Elijah, but when we analyze the deeds of the two men, Elisha did even greater deeds that Elijah had.

Elijah placed his mantel, his cloak, on Elisha, who was a wealthy, yet hands-on farmer – he was plowing with 12 pair of oxen and he was driving the twelfth pair himself. Elisha had been successful in the world, Elisha drove a Lexus, Elisha had a 4000 square foot home even in a country ruled by Ahab and Jezebel, a king and queen who worshipped false gods.

And Elisha, to his credit, stopped right there when Elijah put his cloak on his shoulders. Elisha slaughtered his oxen, cooking the meat with the plowing equipment and harness, and followed Elijah. To put it in a modern context, he scrapped and destroyed all his tractors that day, he killed his most valuable livestock, he burnt his customer list, he gave away his Lexus and his house, he melted down his computers and office furniture, he walked away from his family business, never, ever to return – and he made sure that there was nothing to return to. That is a commitment to God, my friends!

Years late, when Jesus is walking along, Jesus is asking people to follow him. What most people don’t realize is that the Jesus movement consisted of several groups of followers. There were the famous Twelve disciples, who received special teaching and were expected to teach and lead after Jesus returned to Heaven. Perhaps you are destined to be a successor to the Twelve, leading a congregation. Perhaps you have the ability to speak, the ability to understand what you are reading in the Bible, the ability to inspire other people to look at their gifts and passions and styles and walk closer to God. If you will, perhaps God has given you the abilities to become a full-time, starter on God’s team, working all week long to help people understand what Jesus taught and commanded. These people are committed to helping other people understand what God wants of us.

With Jesus, there was also the large crowd of hundreds and thousands of people who followed Jesus from place to place, watching and hoping to see miracles. Throughout history, there have been those spectators, like fans at a Mountaineer game, enjoying the spectacle of the church, the entertainment value of the show, the feeling of belonging that comes from sitting in the stands and cheering for the Mountaineers – or for God. When Jesus was winning, they came out in their thousands. They cheered His arrival into Jerusalem. But when the authorities turned against Him, they disappeared. Many went home – others even demanded Jesus’ crucifixion. They were spectators, consumers of religion, buyers of entertainment, looking to their needs rather than the needs of others. We still have many spectators in the church today. Most churches have a host of spectators. Are you a spectator?

But Christ did not intend Christianity to be a spectator sport. Jesus worked to get people on the field, playing the game, doing more than just watching. But Jesus only had three years – His time on this earth was short, and most people take longer than that to break free from the world and commit to following Jesus.

But. you see, there was a third group of followers of Jesus. There was also another group of about 120 men and women who followed Jesus closely, who provided financial support for the group, who listened closely to His teachings, who spread the word about His miracles, and who were committed to Him for the long term. They followed Him around the Holy Land, yet they weren’t in the first Twelve that Jesus called. We saw 70 disciples sent out 2 by 2 to announce the Kingdom was near. Most of them followed Him that day to the foot of the cross. Others helped bury Him. Still others went to find the empty tomb on that glorious Sunday morning.

These 120 people – men, women, teenagers - were present on the day Jesus returned to Heaven, and they were still together a week or so later when Pentecost arrived and the Holy Spirit came down and the crowd was once again drawn together. Many of them later appear in the Book of Acts and many of them are also listed in the final chapter of the Book of Romans, as Paul leads the Jesus movement to descend upon the capital of the Roman Empire to jumpstart the Church in that huge city. Perhaps you are destined to similarly become one of these committed people, men and women who spread the Gospel and do good works in their neighborhoods, their workplaces, their clubs.

Like the 120, perhaps you may not be ready to lead a church, but you are ready to lead a dozen or so people out of darkness and into an understanding of the love of Jesus Christ. Perhaps that is where you are. Perhaps you are the vital support staff, the trainers and coaches and scouts and the head of the concessions and the groundskeepers and all those other people who make sure the team on the field is functioning at peak efficiency. Is this who you are? For not everyone was ready to give up everything to become one of the Twelve. Yet many of these 120 eventually did give up their secular lives and went full-time for Jesus later in their lives.

And we also see in our Gospel reading that from time to time men would ask to follow Jesus. “Even foxes have places to sleep, but I don’t have a home”, He pointed out, reminding the men that the life of a prophet is a life on the road. We don’t just give up the chance to eat out at nice restaurants a couple times a week or some other minor comfort, we give up our homes. Is Jesus enough for you? Are you willing to move around wherever the Holy Spirit leads you so that your talents may be used to spread the Gospel?

Jesus asked another man to follow him, and the man said, “let me go bury my father.” In essence, he said, “I’ll follow you after my parents die.” He didn’t say “Let me go and have a party before I leave,” or some other trivial excuse. He was saying “I have to take care of my parents.” He had a serious life issue he was dealing with. But Jesus responded, “Let the dead bury their dead,” which meant – “the people who are not following me today are already dead. Follow me and have life. Which do you want – to stick with the dead or to have life with me?” Following Jesus is critically important.

In the 1930’s, many men and some women hopped freight cars to cross the country to find a new life, a life with hope instead of a life without options. As the train went passing by, each man or woman had to make a decision – the train was passing by – will you chose a new life or stay with your old life? The train is passing by. What is important in your life? The train is passing by.

Another man just wanted to go back and say goodbye to his family. Jesus was having none of it – “If you put your hand to the plow and look back, you aren’t fit for the kingdom.” In other words, are you ready to get to work or not? Do you look at your old life with regrets about leaving it, or is the new life attractive and interesting enough and eternally rewarding enough that you are ready to go forward now? Do you love Jesus and God that much?

Jesus understood that He had little time on this planet to teach and to minister. He understood that His time here was limited – and He knew just how much time He had. Jesus only had three years with us.

We, on the other hand, believe that we have plenty of time. We think we have much more time that Jesus – yet how many of us can guarantee that we will last through tomorrow? How many of you know whether or not Jesus will return this week or not?

Despite this lack of knowledge of our future, we have a tendency to put other life events in front of our ministry. “I’ll start in ministry when my children are grown. “or “I’ll start in ministry when I get my finances and retirement in order.” Or “I’ll start in ministry when I get married.” These are the excuses of younger people. I know. I made excuses and missed years of ministry because of them.

Older people are more sophisticated in their excuses. “I’m too old to start in ministry.” “I’ve been out of school too long for ministry.” “I’ve only got 20, 15, 10, 5 good years of ministry before I’d have to retire.” “I don’t want to leave my home to do ministry.” I also know these excuses. I made them too, and missed five years of ministry because of it. But my friend Jim was working for the Lord into his nineties. When Jim was 70 years old, he still had over 20 years of ministry ahead of him – years when he led people to Christ, years when souls were saved eternally because of Jim’s care, years when people like me chose to go into ministry because of Jim’s encouragement.

Does it really matter what our excuses are? The real issues that block us from ministry are quite simple:

Our comfort and our fear.

Let’s face it. Most of us are pretty comfortable in our lives and our lifestyles. We are basically paying our bills, we live in homes that only the wealthiest people in many countries could afford, and we are pretty much enjoying our lives. Our overwhelming fear is that our lives would change. We fear that we would be forced to drive a smaller, older car. We are afraid we’d have to move to a different town. We are concerned that we might have to meet 150 new people, like I did when I moved here, and we are afraid those people might not like us. We are afraid that we will meet messy people and their messy situations will make us uncomfortable. We love our comfort more than we love other people.

We know our current life and we like it. And so we let our comforts and our fears combine to override our concerns for lost souls. Here’s a simple check to see if you let your comforts and fears override your love for the lost – how many of you have invited someone who isn’t family, who you haven’t known for months or even years over to your house for dinner in the last five years? How many of you have invited Saundra and I over to dinner at your home? Are we that scary?

But Pastor, that’s just who we are. You pastors are a special type of person, you signed up for that sort of life, and we haven’t. We like our comforts and there’s nothing wrong with that. And we have fears, but this is a dangerous world and we see no need to bring non-Christians into our homes, especially when we have so many good Christian friends.

And you’re right on both counts. There is nothing wrong with liking comforts and the world is a dangerous place. And yet you place your souls in danger on both counts.

For you see, the flip side of loving our comforts is that we love our comforts more than other people – and Jesus didn’t tell us to love our comforts, but He DID say to love other people like ourselves. Part of developing as Christ asks us to develop is to love other people more and more. Will you stretch to love people more than your own comforts?

The flip side of fearing other people and the world is that we don’t trust God to protect us, we don’t believe God will take care of us, we don’t have faith in God’s goodness and ability. We really don’t have much faith in God. Part of developing as Christ asks us to is to put more and more faith in God to protect us. Will you stretch and learn to reach beyond your fears so you can grow closer to God?

And so, we have farther to go to develop in our Christian walk.

For a Christian should never love a comfort more than another person. One of the old saints wrote, “When a Christian has a pair of unworn shoes in his closet, he is stealing from the man who has no shoes.” Ouch! Our closets are full with shoes and clothes. Our homes have been feathered with comforts. When will our nests be feathered enough?

A Christian should never fear another person more than he has faith in his God. Especially an ordinary, run-of-the-mill person who is not threatening him, but simply is a man or woman or a family without a good Christian friend. We are afraid to just talk to strangers or have a coffee with them. It’s not like we live in a land where 2/3rds of the people we meet want to kill us and rob us! Yet, we’re afraid to invite a family that has lived beside us for years over to supper, because our house might not be clean enough or our food might not be restaurant quality.

How can we change? What is it that changes us into those special people who love others, who have constant faith in God, who choose to sell our homes and give up our good jobs and become ministers of the Gospel?

Paul provides us the answer in the fifth chapter of Galatians.

13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Indulging the flesh is another way of saying that we are concerned with comfort. We are not to be concerned with our own comforts – but we are to serve one another humbly in love.

And so we must practice loving others. Invite your neighbors over for a cookout; invite your friend over for lunch; mow your neighbor’s yard when they get behind in their yard work; wash that young mother’s dishes for her; fix your friend’s car; buy the young couple with toddlers a wading pool and watch the kids for a couple hours while mom takes a nap; show up with a complete meal for the family that has just traveled hours to visit a sick relative; offer to walk their dogs and pet their cats while they’re out of town on vacation. Stretch yourself and specifically work and practice loving new people, not just your kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews, but people you don’t know – or want to know.

Practice loving your neighbor as yourself. And learn to love in new ways. You may be really good at fixing your friends broken cars – try grilling them hot dogs. You may be really good at fixing church dinners – try taking care of three toddlers for a few hours. You may be really good at working at the food pantry – try delivering the food and talking for an hour with them about their children and grandchildren, and telling them about how God led you to our church.

Furthermore, Paul tells us:

16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Following the Holy Spirit will keep you from hurting people and blindly following the Law. Following the Holy Spirit will keep you safe and guide you to do the right things. Listening to the Holy Spirit will tell you who needs help most of all. Be led by the Spirit – do not stay under the law.

How many of you would trespass into your neighbor’s yard? How many of you would trespass into your neighbor's yard to put out a fire on their back porch with a water hose? Most, right? Yet you have broken a law. You would break a law to save a house, right? But how many of us are willing to break laws of behavior that we have learned growing up to rescue a hurting soul from hell’s destruction?

Would you give our benevolence fund five thousand dollars from your retirement account that we might help people truly get cars repaired instead of just give people a tank of gas every month or two?

Would you buy a family a brand new computer so mom could get a job that would allow her to work from home with her children?

Will you sign up to help with Vacation Bible School because you want to serve, or will you tell us this fall that you didn’t serve because “no one asked me”? I’m asking you right now!

Would you give a man just out of prison a job mowing your lawn weekly so he’ll stay out of prison?

Would you take a few days and learn new computer skills so we could put recordings of our services on the Internet? I’ll teach you!

Would you write personal letters to people you don’t really know to cheer them up and lead them to Christ? One letter a week?

Would you spend a Saturday and build and paint a new sign for this church so people can find this church easier?

Would you drive around town putting up posters for events at the church? Would you contribute ten thousand dollars so we could put sermons on the radio? Would you spend a week planting flowers to beautify the church?

Would you write a letter to our District Superintendent, telling her that you are available to pastor a pair of churches with ten to fifteen people each, preaching twice every Sunday and visiting those people in those churches, teaching a Bible study and taking two, just two courses a year to learn how to be a better pastor for little pay? We have a shortage of pastors and the shortage will grow more intense over the next few years. Are you willing to leave behind the life you know, like Elisha did, and step forward for God? Or will you continue to follow the way of comfort, the life you understand, the life of the world and the flesh?

19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
To truly crucify the flesh, you must take action. You must leave behind your old life – you must step forward and truly belong to Christ Jesus by crucifying your own fleshly desires, your own desires for comfort. You must take your desires and hang them on the cross to die. Give them away, throw them away, drive them away. Let them die on the cross as Christ died.

Paul tells us to live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit. And the best way to do this is to step forward beyond your fears, to step out in the faith that God is with you, to sprint where the Spirit speeds you rather than fall where the flesh flops you. John Wesley, when he convened the first Methodist conference of preachers, said that their purpose in gathering together was that they might save their own souls and them that heard them. Is your own soul saved?

Do you want to have love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in your life? It happens when you trust God and listen to the Spirit, doing what the Spirit asks you to do. It happens when you decide that you can walk on a high wire without the net of the secular world to catch you, because you know that God will catch you even before you begin to fall.

Put away your excuses – God can handle every excuse if you are willing to follow the Spirit. Destroy your acts of the flesh – God can destroy the flesh and every evil act you can do if you will surrender your will to His. Instead of reaching for comfort, grasp instead for the fruit of the Spirit – and find life in those gentle whisperings of the Spirit, find love in those people you meet, find happiness and joy in watching God work.

Don’t look at the other people you’ve seen in ministry; don’t compare yourself to them negatively. Every minister has a different set of gifts; every minister is good at some things and so-so at other things. God is ready to act in your life and help you to succeed – if you truly believe that Jesus Christ is THE way, THE truth, and THE light.

And so, what is your area of growth? Where do you need to grow? Are you ready to love people more and your comforts less and move from being a spectator to support staff? Are you ready to love people in different ways? Are you ready to chuck all of the excuses into your spiritual waste basket and devote your entire life to serving God full-time? Only you and the Holy Spirit can decide, but if you want to talk about it, contact me. For Jesus is calling you into ministry – how will you respond?

Father's Day - What Makes a Great Father!

1 Kings 19:1-19; Psalm 42; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39

Last weekend, as we all know, a young man in Orlando, FL chose to end the lives of almost 50 other people in Orlando. As our society does today, we quickly discovered that the victims were all of a particular group of people. At first, it appears to be a simple story – the young man was of a different group of people and so he slaughtered the men and women at the night club because they were of a different group. But as the week continued and we found out more information, we discovered that the young man may also have been of that same particular group of people. And so the story grew more complex. Now, we are confused. Why would a young, possibly gay Moslem man kill so many gay people in a bar?

Some would have us believe it was the easy access to a semi-automatic rifle. But that explains the “how” without explaining the “why”. Millions of people own semi-automatic weapons and do not kill dozens of people in a bar. Some would have us believe it was because the young man was following the call of ISIS to kill people in America. Perhaps it was – but this also seems too simple, especially because the young man had also expressed support for other Islamic groups which are at odds with ISIS. Some would blame the FBI for investigating him and deciding he was safe. Some would blame our immigration policies, except for the fact that he was born here, and his parents immigrated over 20 years ago. Perhaps he was just “unstable”, which I believe is the word that is being used today, where in an earlier time we would have called him “crazy”.

I have another explanation – evil exists in this world and has existed since the beginning of the human race. Damaged people have damaged other people throughout the centuries and passed on the rot of the soul that is sin and evil like rot moves through a container of strawberries, moving from one soul to another, rotting, rotting, rotting the goodness away. And the only cure for that rot is the close, personal attention of Jesus Christ applied to the rotting soul – and Jesus Christ, being Oh so very polite, will not work on your soul unless you give your permission. That is why so many souls are rotting today – and why, even here, we sit here in this building with rot eating away at our own souls – we are afraid to give Christ permission to cut out the rotten parts of our souls, to destroy forever the blight that entered the human race in the beginning with our choice of death over life, we are afraid to turn over our bodies and minds and souls completely to the surgeon who has the skill and wisdom and power to restore us to total health.

It is a fine line between the path we walk and the path the young man in Orlando chose. Only the unmerited graceful love of Jesus Christ has made the difference in our lives, that and our choice to listen, if only a little bit, to the Word of God and the voice of the Holy Spirit. It is only because our Father has shown us a better way that has kept us from walking that same path of darkness that leads into death and destruction. May our Father continue to guide us on a different path, keeping us walking in the light, leading us to joy and hope.

Today is Father’s Day. You know, the first Father’s Day was held on July 5, 1908 in Fairmont WV at the Methodist church now known as Central United Methodist. It was held as a memorial to the 361 men, 250 of them fathers, who died during the Monongah Mine disaster the previous December. Today, Father’s Day is celebrated throughout most of the world.

Being a father is both a simple thing and a difficult thing. The simple thing requires you to gain the cooperation of a woman, which can be a difficult thing, as most men will testify to. But to become more than a “baby daddy”, to become a good father, requires hard work. It requires stamina, endurance, courage, strength, and wisdom. Being a good father requires God’s help and it requires a spine that is strong enough to hold up the world – and flexible enough to bend down in humbleness and prayer.

Being a good father means you enjoy very short people who talk a lot and make a lot of noise – and it means that you are often alone, standing by yourself for what is right, standing against the winds and fires and earthquakes that would destroy your family, and it means lying still in the dead of night listening for the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit to guide you in answer to your prayers begging God for help. In short, being a father is not a job for the cowardly – but the job can turn the coward into a Congressional Medal of Honor winner.

In our readings today, we see men who act as super-fathers – they act in ways that all fathers have to act in lesser ways as life happens and their families grow. Let’s see what we can learn from Elijah the prophet and from Jesus today.

In the first reading, we see Elijah. The name Elijah means “My God is Yah!” or “My God is Yahweh”. Elijah has just stood up against King Ahab, Queen Jezebel, and the 400 prophets of Baal in the “Battle of the Gods” on top of Mt Carmel. After the prophets of Baal danced around their altar for hours with no effect, Elijah doused his sacrifice with water three times and then prayed to God to light the fire. Boom! Fire came down from heaven, the sacrifice, the wood, and even the water that had accumulated in a trench around the altar were burnt up. In the commotion that followed, Elijah had the people execute the 400 prophets of Baal. And then, the great drought that had enveloped Israel for three years was broken as a tremendous rainstorm drenched the countryside.

When word reached Jezebel, she sent word to Elijah that she would have him killed that night, so Elijah ran for the southern desert, the desert that covers the lower third of the modern state of Israel. Elijah ran for his life.

Exhausted, Elijah traveled a day out into the desert and fell asleep under a broom tree. An angel woke him and gave him a cake or loaf of bread and water. Elijah slept some more. Again the angel woke him and gave him bread and water, and in one of the great miracles, Elijah traveled on the strength of that cake and that water for 40 days and 40 nights until he reached Mr Horeb, the mountain where Moses brought down the tablets of the Law to the people of Israel. It was God’s mountain – as if any mountain is NOT God’s mountain!

(By the way, do you know what type of cake that was that allowed Elijah to travel 40 days and 40 nights? Angel-food cake!)

So Elijah reaches God’s mountain. He’s carried this tremendous burden of believing that he is the only righteous man left in Israel, and this equally tremendous burden of being a coward by running from Jezebel. And he is exhausted and reaches God’s mountain, Mt Horeb, the place where God the Father showed Himself to the people of God, and Elijah falls asleep in a cave.

When he awoke in the cave, the word of God came to Elijah. “Elijah, what are you doing here?” Indeed, throughout our lives, God asks us time and again, “What are you doing here?” at different points in our lives. Think about your life. “What are you doing here?”

Elijah said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.”
God’s answer was “Go out on the mountain and stand before Yahweh.”
And the next few minutes were perhaps the most terrifying of Elijah’s life.

It is a terrifying thing to stand in front of God, open and exposed on the mountainside. It is frightening to realize that God has the ability to literally blow you away with His breath, to break you into pieces with rocks thrown through the air, to crush you in an earthquake, to burn you to a crisp with fire. It is more frightening when you realize that because of your actions, your words, your betrayals of Him over the years, God has every reason to destroy you to keep you from further harming God’s Creation, from a further spreading of your soul rot to His creatures, His people, your own family. It is frightening and humbling when you realize that God is God and you are not. And this is something that all good fathers eventually realize, and that understanding is what makes them great fathers.

Elijah stood on the mountainside. A great wind came, an earthquake hit, fire flew all around, boulders bounced down the side of the mountain, but God was not in any of these. Only afterwards, in a great silence, Elijah heard a still, small voice saying, “Elijah, what are you doing here?” Elijah listened to that still, small voice and he answered the voice, saying once again, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.”

Sometimes, as a father or a mother, we stand before God feeling alone. As the head of a household, biblically speaking, we are responsible not only for our own relationship with God, but also for the relationships of our other family members. It is a tremendous responsibility – and standing before God, answering the question – “What are you doing here?” can be very difficult. When you are awake in the middle of the night, praying to God, consider that question – “What are you doing here?” Will you be able to answer – “I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts?”

That night, alone on the mountain, Elijah faced God’s question without quaking. Elijah knew that despite his cowardice, running from Jezebel, despite his fear of being captured, tortured and killed by Jezebel’s soldiers, despite the hardships Elijah had to endure – the lack of water, the lack of food, the pain in his feet and legs – Elijah knew that here, standing before God, he had been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts and God would love Elijah for that. Elijah knew that God loved him.

Then the Lord said to Elijah: “Go, return on your way to the Wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria.”


So Elijah began to walk toward Damascus, for he had faced his terror and stood on the mountainside, he had faced his fears and remained on the mountain, he had remained true in his faith and trusted in God. God had spoken to Elijah and Elijah had listened to that still, small voice, and talked with God. And God gave Elijah instructions, a new mission, a new purpose, a new life. Elijah, who had led the nation of Israel as a father through a dark time, was still on God’s good side and had a new mission – he only had to walk about 500 miles on foot to Damascus, but that was just a detail.

Will you face your fears, trusting in God? Will you listen to that still, small voice and speak with God? Will you follow the instructions that the voice of the Holy Spirit gives you?

Many years later, Jesus was leading his disciples around the lake, the Sea of Galilee. They landed on the southeast side of the lake, in an area which was inhabited by people who were not Jewish. We know this because they raised pigs, creatures which the Law of Moses forbade to all good Jewish people. Even today, Orthodox Jews will not eat pork.

When Jesus and the disciples arrived there on the southeast side of the lake, they encountered a genuine, demon-possessed man. After some back and forth, we find that the man is possessed by perhaps 5000 demons, the number of men in a Roman legion. You’ve heard of the hordes of hell? This was indeed a horde of hell, and Jesus had to face them down.

When you are facing the hordes of hell, it really, really helps to be God’s Son. And when Jesus stood up to these demons, they actually begged Him not to send them back into the Abyss. And so, He let them enter a herd of pigs grazing nearby. Suddenly, the demons left the man, entered the pigs, and the pigs stampeded down the hillside into the lake and were drowned.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine standing up to hundreds or thousands of demons?

Yet that is what we fathers are sometimes called to do. In this world, there are many evils that will attack our families, and we are the ones who are called to stand up to the evil, standing supported by our faith in God, standing supported by only God’s love behind us to face down the evil, to chase away the demons, to defeat the enemy that would attack our family, our friends, our neighbors who are vulnerable to their attack. And we do not have the strength within us – yet God, OUR FATHER, does indeed have the strength as God stands behind us, supporting us, showing that God supports God’s adopted sons just as much as God supported God’s begotten Son Jesus.

For we have been adopted as God’s sons. We are God’s heirs. Always remember that when you are fearful, or feel hopeless or are facing down hordes of demons. YOU…ARE…GOD’S…SON!

Many of you have met my little dog Brownie – she is a 12-pound shih tzu. Now Brownie is a complete coward – except when she knows I’m standing behind her. Then, she’ll stand up to anyone and bark her head off!

Do you realize that God is standing behind you, ready to catch you when you fall, ready to lift you up when your knees buckle, ready to do whatever it takes to strengthen the relationship between God and you? God is here, with you!

And so Jesus appears to easily defeat the demons. And then the neighbors showed up. And what was their reaction? Was it “WOW! You cured that man that was demon-possessed?” No! They were more concerned that their pigs were dead, and so they asked Jesus to leave. They didn’t really care that much about the man that the demons had been torturing. And so the man wanted to go with Jesus, but Jesus told him to tell people what had happened to him, and so he stayed and began to tell people about Jesus.

One day, God will work through you to do something remarkable. And there will be people who will consider you dangerous, a trouble-maker, a bit odd, and they will ask you to leave. Maybe you’ll help someone get free of the demon of alcohol, maybe you’ll help someone break free from the demon of addiction. Perhaps you’ll help someone get free of the demon of poverty – may be it’ll be the demon of loneliness you’ll defeat. You might lead a person free from the demon of despair or lift them from the clutches of the demon of anger. But there is something you can count on – someone will be there to ask you to leave – it never fails. Someone will not be happy that Jesus has come into the neighborhood, into the house, into someone’s life.

But that is what OUR father wants us to do. Our father wants us to lead people away from the demons, and let the demons die with the pigs that they run to. And our father also wants people to tell the story of how Jesus freed them from bondage. Do you tell that story?

Paul pointed out in our Galatians reading that we were all under bondage, we were all under bondage to the law before Jesus came and freed us from our bondage. Only Jesus could have done what He did through His sacrificial death and then his resurrection. But since Jesus has done this, we each now have the ability to tap into His power and break free from bondage – and to help others free from bondage. But we have to recognize bondage in others for what it is.

Did you notice that the people Jesus met had actually put the demon-possessed man in chains? Rather than try to free him from the very real slavery to his demons, they had added chains to him.

Don’t we do the same to people who are suffering today? Don’t we add trouble to people who are already in slavery to chemicals, to anger, to ways of thinking that are messed up? Instead, shouldn’t we step in and help people get free from their demons instead of adding chains to them? For the men and women who do evil in this world are not the enemy – they are the victims of our real enemies – sin and Satan and death.

We worship Jesus because He set us free. We worship Jesus because He taught us how to be free, how to follow Him. We worship Jesus because we are now free to worship Him, we are able to be free from the chains our fellow human being put on us – chains of shame, chains of guilt, chains of fear.

And we worship Jesus because Jesus showed us the Father, His Father, Our Father, and taught us what fatherhood is supposed to be all about – a quiet power under control, filled with self-sacrificial love for sons and daughters, a steady source of stability in a chaotic world, a source of peace, hope, and love. This is the heritage Jesus has given us. This is the heritage Our Father has given us. This is the spiritual heritage you, as a good father, should give your family.

God Calls - What is God Calling You to do?

1 Kings 17:8-24; Psalm 146; Galatians 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17

In our readings today, we hear of the God working through three men. Two of the stories are similar – a son dies, a mother cries, and a man of God brings the son back to life. The third story is quite different. Let’s look at these stories in the order they occurred. A warning – pull your toes back under the pew – God has asked me to step on a few toes this week!

In our story from 1st Kings, Elijah is a prophet called by God. Let me give you a bit of background:

In the years after King David and then King Solomon, civil war split the kingdom of David into two kingdoms, with the tribes of Judea and Benjamin uniting as the Kingdom of Judea in the south around Jerusalem, and the other ten tribes united as Israel in the north, in the area that would later be known as Samaria. After many years and many kings, a man named Ahab inherited the throne of Israel from his father Omri.

The writer of Kings tells us that Ahab was the worst king to date. He encouraged worship at centers outside of Jerusalem. He also had shrines built on high mountains and allowed non-Levites to become priests. Then, he married Jezibel, the daughter of the king of Sidon, and began to worship the false god Baal and the goddess Ashereh. This greatly upset God, for God's nation was led by a man who worshiped other gods. 

God sent Elijah to Ahab, the king of Israel to declare a drought, a time without any rain. Elijah told Ahab: “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.” And of course, this meant that there would soon be very little food, because plants require rain to grow and in those days they could not bring food in on trucks and trains from thousands of miles away when your own gardens dried up.

As you might expect, this did not endear Elijah to Ahab. God had Elijah leave town. At first, God sent Elijah to the east of the Jordan, but then the little stream he was camping beside dried up and so God sent Elijah to the north, to the town of Zarephath near Sidon – the home of Jezebel’s father.

There, Elijah met a widow who was so poor, so broke, so desperate because of the drought that she only had enough food to make Elijah, herself, and her son a couple of biscuits. Then, she and her son were planning to lay down and die from starvation.

But Elijah told her that she would have plenty of flour and plenty of oil, that she would not run out until the drought broke. He told her that God had made this promise.

And it happened that way. There was plenty of flour and plenty of oil. They never did run out of food. It was a miracle from God!

But then another problem happened. The boy began to have trouble breathing and eventually stopped breathing and died. The woman was upset. She thought that her boy had been taken from her because of her sin, her earlier wrongdoing, and that Elijah had come to remind her of her sin.

But instead, Elijah took the boy, prayed to God, and the boy came back to life. And the woman finally accepted that Elijah really did speak for God.

How many miracles do we need to see before we believe? Elijah had already shown one miracle of God – the bottomless flour and oil! Yet the woman did not believe until her son was brought back from the dead. How many miracles do you need to see to believe? Do you need to have someone close to you die and be brought back from the dead, or can you believe in God and God’s word on the basis of something less extreme? And perhaps even as important – how many miracles does it take before you will agree to truly serve God in all you do, how many miracles before you understand that God is not just calling you on Sunday mornings, how many miracles does it take before you decide that God can keep you supplied with flour and oil if you decide to chuck all of the world’s distractions, all the world’s temptations, all the world’s lies and follow the only One who will still care for you in a hundred years?

The woman shows us the way people are. The world has us so controlled with the ideas that employers and retirement plans and salaries are the only way to live life that we ignore the miracles around us and instead cling to the world that will forget us someday. We claim to trust in God, yet we live our lives as though we are atheists, trusting instead in our bank account, the things we have stored in our attics and outbuildings, our government programs, our health insurance, our hospitals. For you see, if we truly trusted in God’s generosity, then we would be supremely generous, if we truly trusted in God’s promise of eternal life, then we would not fear death, if we truly trusted in God’s love for us, then we would never be fearful or lonely or worried about anything. Do you trust in God or are you like many people, a person who talks a good talk about God but lives a life trusting in the same things any atheist trusts in?

A thousand years after Elijah and the widow, almost the same story happened again with Jesus, and once again, it was because he raised the widow’s son from the dead that many people began to believe that He spoke on behalf of God. They had seen other miracles, but on the basis of this miracle they finally believed He was a prophet. A boy had to die and be raised from the dead before the people would believe. As Luke writes:

16 They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.”17 This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.
Yet the people of Judea did not yet accept that He was God Himself walking among them. That would take His own death before they would believe.

In our third story, the Apostle Paul is talking about his own conversion. He talks about how He received the gospel from Jesus directly, and only later visited Peter for a couple of weeks and also saw James the brother of Jesus. In his case, the great miracle was the great change in Paul’s actions. You see, before Paul encountered Jesus, he was known as Saul. Saul was a Hebrew name; Paul was the Roman name. Before his encounter, Saul was persecuting Christians. Saul was hunting down Christians and putting them into jail.

And then one day, Jesus struck Saul with blindness and spoke with him. Saul had to be led to the city and did not recover his sight until a follower of Jesus laid hands on him. And after Saul met Jesus, Saul became known as Paul. In effect, Saul died and this new man with a new life named Paul began preaching that Jesus was Messiah and God walking upon the earth. And it was for this miraculous conversion that people gave God the glory. In many ways, it was the death of the man named Saul and the resurrection to a new birth of the man named Paul that people were thankful for.

In each of our three stories, a man did what God asked. In each of the stories, people came to know God and to worship God simply because a man had done what God told him to do. But in each case, a man had to die and be brought back to life for someone to believe in God’s goodness.

In our lives, God asks us to do many things. If you have been baptized as a Christian, your old person has died and you are a new person, raised from the dead. Now, the Holy Spirit lives inside of you and is speaking to you. You may be listening – or you may be ignoring that still, small voice that is always telling you the good, right things to do and say. If you read the Word of God and follow the guiding of the Holy Spirit, you will hear God calling to you, asking you to do and say things which will lead others toward Christ and toward God and toward a life of holiness.

Yet in our world today, we have many outside voices telling us things which go directly against the Holy Spirit. The world wants to devour and destroy Christians. Those voices tell us: “You don’t know enough to speak about God.” They tell us “You’re too old or you’re too young to help someone.” The voices insist: “Christians are hateful people, surely you don’t want to be known as a Christian!” Other voices tell us “Don’t let anyone know you’re a Christian”. Still other voices speak forth: “You don’t have the money to help, you might need that money next week, you’ll retire without any money!” The voices are telling you “Be respectable, don’t mention God, people will think you’re a fanatic!”

And all the time, if you listen to those outside voices - those voices of the world - people around you - people you could be helping, people who need to know the love of God and Christ are struggling. They are desperate, they are dying, they are falling down the hole of despair and they are ending up dead, dead, dead without God. And if you die without God, the Bible tells us you spend eternity apart from God in a flaming pit.

And so today, let me put you on the spot and ask you this question: Who will you let down this week? How timid will you be, how respectable will you be, how rich will you be, how far from God will you stay? How much will you act like an atheist this week? Or will you act like the Christian you claim to be?

Many of you knew Hobe and Shirley Bunner, the couple that owned KC Auto. Did anyone get through a car-buying discussion with them without knowing that they were committed to helping people understand God and Christ? No…they decorated their office with Christian symbols, they talked about church, they talked about Jesus Christ their savior, they always did the right thing, they stayed honest in a difficult business, they always pointed to Jesus Christ in deed and in word, and they gave up thousands of dollars to help people who needed helping. And even though they both suffered terribly from poor health at the end, they were joyful and they kept pointing to Jesus. This is what Christians are to act like!

We know of the Apostle Paul because of one simple reason – when Paul encountered Jesus, he was such an honest man that he spent the rest of his life telling the truth about Jesus to everyone he could find. Paul traveled, on foot and by crude boat thousands of miles to bring the Gospel to thousands of people. And although he wrote much of the New Testament, we remember him most for his complete change of heart, from persecutor of Christians to the greatest salesman of Christianity. This is the change that Christianity is supposed to bring to a person's life!

My wife is a wonderful person. When people meet her, you know very quickly that talking about God is very important to her. And she tells me that within about five minutes of meeting someone, she can figure out what is important to someone else. 

What is important to you? Is it your work, is it your children, is it your grandchildren, is it your studies, is it your money, is it the Mountaineers, is it your God? Our God is supposed to be the most important thing in our lives!

Only loving God, of all those important things, will make an eternal, positive difference. God is calling you today to look at your life, your priorities, your obedience to God. Are you willing to follow the call that God has placed upon your heart?

God has given you certain talents, certain gifts, certain abilities to help people in different ways - you may be able to speak, you may be able to sing, you may be an excellent woodworker, artist, or administrator. God has given you passions – you may love children, you may love the elderly, you may love the people of India. God has given you a style of working – perhaps you like working in groups, perhaps you like working alone, perhaps you like the computer, perhaps you like the skillsaw, perhaps the sewing machine, perhaps the dining room table. Yet no matter what your gifts, your passions, your style, God has called you to work with God to change this world – and to rescue people in this world.

With the Holy Spirit guiding you, the love of Christ in your heart, and the power of God the Father behind you, you CAN make a difference in this world. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of Christianity playing defense, giving up ground to the evil and the secular in the world. It’s time for the counterattack of good over evil, it’s time for the counterattack of life over death, it’s time for God’s loving people to stop sitting around and to use the mighty sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God to reclaim that which has been lost!

God has not called you to act like an atheist – God’s called you to act as a Christian, fully committed to God, fully committed to loving God and fully committed to loving other people. God has actually called you to come out of the world and be God’s servant, doing what the world will not do, and not doing what the world likes to do. What special task is God asking you to do? What great blessings is God waiting to shower you with if you follow God’s call? God has called you today – do you believe that? If so, it is time for action, it is time to stop sitting around, it is time to stand up and walk forward.

God’s call is for you. What is God calling you to do? Why don’t you ask Him at the altar of prayer today.