How to Follow Jesus

Isaiah 1:10-18; Psalm 32:1-7; Galatians 5:13-26; John 21:10-25

This is the final sermon in this ten-sermon series. This series is based upon the idea that we are very good at knowing what Christians should do and behave like, but we all have trouble with some of the basics, because we don’t understand How to do these things. Over the last couple of months, we have talked about the How of being a Christian.

· How to become kind.

· How to develop patience.

· How to love deeply.

· How to break addictions.

· How to control our tongues.

· How to trade fear for hope.

· How to stop gossiping.

· How to make good habits.

· How to become joyful.

This week, we’ll finish this series with how to follow Jesus.

How to follow Jesus?

"But pastor, I’m a Christian and have been for years. I come to church at least twice a month!"

I didn’t say you didn’t. But there is a lot to be learned in the phrasing of something. And today, I want you to notice I didn’t say the title was “How to be a Christian.” I said the title is “How to follow Jesus!”

"What difference does it make? Isn’t it the same thing?"

Well…yes. And…no.

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of people in this world who claim to be Christians who rarely go to church? Have you also noticed that there are a lot of people in this world who go to church who you wouldn’t trust to take care of your dog for a week? Of course.

There’s several reasons we give why…

First of all, we say some people are beginners. They’re just learning about Christianity, and so we expect them to be kind of raw, vulgar, worldly. We don’t expect someone who was baptized last week to have the calm serenity of a saint who was baptized 70 or 80 years ago. For these people, time – and the word of God – will straighten out their kinks. So we say.

Second, we say some people are barely Christians – particularly those who don’t attend church. Once again, they aren’t really participating in the Body of Christ, so how can we expect them to act like people who have attended church and read the Word of God for 70 or 80 years. When the boy in the car next to me in the Wal-Mart parking lot plays a rap song with blaring obscenities, I don’t get mad, for how shall he know any different? For these people, a kind, gentle, but but sometimes firm word from someone they trust is needed to get them to a church where they can learn.

Of course, many of them say they’ve been hurt by church members, by churches, by pastors. They say they’ve given up going to church because the people in the churches don’t act the way they should. And to these people I say two things: 

First of all, why don’t you show us how it’s done? We’re always looking for people to teach new classes, and clearly you must be much better than the people in the church…and the second thing I say is: You’ve forgotten that church people are people still and will never be perfect. Whether you were treated poorly or ignored, judged or made fun of, dis-respected or called out in a sermon, the reality is that you missed two key points of what it means to follow Jesus.

First, we are supposed to be following Jesus. Not the people in the church. Not the pastor. Not even the Bible. You are following a living God, named Jesus Christ. And Jesus asked you to be involved in a group of believers. Why do you disobey?

Second, we are supposed to practice forgiveness. Of everyone, and for everything. And if we aren’t forgiving, then we are not following the example of Jesus. So please forgive those of us who have hurt you. Let’s try again.

There is a third group of people who don’t live up to the standards we know Christians are supposed to hold to. Those are the people who have been attending church every week for years, even decades. They may be 40, 60, or 80 years old. But they aren’t the pleasant saints we want to have lunch with. They are grouchy, mean, gossipy, jealous, envious, angry, are prone to ambition, and generally hurt people right and left. Some have all of these characteristics – and others only have one characteristic, but it flares up every now and then and causes trouble. Maybe it never causes trouble in the church – but it causes trouble at home or among friends. Of course, I’m speaking about everyone here, because I don’t see Jesus sitting in our pews today. We just don't measure up to what we're asked to do. Thankfully, we don't have to. More about that later.

Let’s see what Jesus has to say to the church…

The time is after the Resurrection, but in that glorious month before Jesus returned to Heaven. Jesus has met His disciples on a beach beside the Sea of Galilee. They had a record haul that morning, 153 large fish. Jesus guided them to those fish. It was a fisherman’s dream. Have you ever caught 153 big fish in a single day? Peter and John never forget that catch.

Jesus has a fire burning with hot coals and He cooks them breakfast, a breakfast of bread and of fish. Loaves and fish, the same thing He fed the 4000 with and the 5000 with. But this time, it’s just Him and seven of the Eleven disciples.

After they finish eating, Jesus speaks to Peter. He asks Peter if Peter loves Him more than these fish. Peter says, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” “Feed my lambs”, Jesus responds. Two more times Jesus asks Peter if loves Him and each time He tells Peter to take care of His sheep and to feed His sheep. He then points out to Peter and those watching that Peter will be led to his death some day. And at the end, Jesus says to Peter: “Follow me!”

Jesus is very clear here. Peter is to give up what is most important to him in the world – his fishing boat, his profession, his hobby, his entire identity – and follow Jesus.

Peter is not asked to “be a Christian”. Jesus is not asked whether or not he believes in God. Jesus does not give Peter a test of his morals and ethics, He does not ask Peter if he drinks, smokes, swears, or does drugs. Jesus doesn’t ask Peter if he’s been divorced, whether or not he’s ever cheated in school or whether he’s looked at a woman in lust. We all know that Peter is not a particularly good man.

Jesus knows that Peter has done wrong – and so does Peter. Jesus knows that Peter is the man who even denied knowing Jesus three times the night Jesus was arrested, deserting Him…and so does Peter. Jesus also knows that Peter will mess up again in the future…and really, deep down, so does Peter.

But Jesus says to Peter: “Follow me! Give up everything important to you and follow Me!” Is Jesus speaking to you today?

Peter tries one time to get off the hook. Peter points toward John and says, “What about him?”

And Jesus says something full of meaning for Peter and for us today. ““If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.”

Our relationship with Jesus does not depend upon other people. What Jesus has in store for each of us is between Him and each of us, individually. One man is called to go to India as a missionary. A woman is asked to start a Bible study in the projects. An old woman is asked to call every single person on her church’s prayer list every week. A young man is asked to go to seminary to become a full-time pastor. And a middle-aged man and his friend are told to start a church-supported school for troubled high school students.

Another man is told to take his woodworking skills and make beautiful Communion tables for the churches nearby. A woman is told to take her pastor’s sermons and edit them and format them into tracts that her friends at the church can hand out to neighbors. Still another man is told to simply say Jesus’ name once a day among his friends when he meets them at McDonald’s for coffee. What is Jesus asking you to do? Whatever it is, do it!

But always remember that our relationship with Jesus does not depend upon other people:

It does not matter whether or not this church has ever sent out foreign missionaries. If Jesus asks you to go to Haiti – you'd better go to Haiti. Follow Jesus.

It does not matter if anyone else in this church goes to the altar today. If Jesus calls you to the altar, go to the altar.

If does not matter if anyone else in this church laughs at you, makes fun of you because of where you speak the word of God, or whether people think you are crazy because you can hear the Holy Spirit and say so. If Jesus asks you to go into a bar and start a church, do it. If Jesus asks you to raise your hands when you sing a hymn, raise those hands. If Jesus gives you a message through the Holy Spirit, speak the message. It does not even matter if you believe every other person in this church is a rank hypocrite, going through the motions, ignoring the Bible, ignoring the Holy Spirit. What matters is what Jesus wants you to do.

And the other side is also true.

If someone raises their hands and shouts “Amen” in our services and Jesus has told you to be quiet, be quiet. If someone tells you about an encounter with Jesus in their living room, listen and be happy – but don’t laugh or gossip. If someone says they have been called to go to Russia to be a missionary, listen and see if Jesus is asking you to help them – or go along with them.

Even the same thing applies to those acts that many people would call sin. For following Jesus means listening to the Holy Spirit of God and letting that Spirit tell us what is sin and what is not sin for us. One man may be able to drink three glasses of whisky three nights in a row and then easily stop drinking for the next five years. Another man may not be able to stop after one beer. The whisky is not sinful for the first man but the beer is sinful for the second man. He should stop drinking.

One woman may get a divorce from her unbelieving husband because Jesus is telling her to leave and serve God. Another may stay with her husband because Jesus is telling her to stay and lead her unbelieving husband to know God. Follow what Jesus is saying to you.

One person eats fish every Friday during Lent because Jesus has told her to do this. Another person ignores that idea because Jesus has told him to ignore it. Follow what Jesus is saying to you.

The world wants to paint Christianity as just another moral and ethical system with rigid moral and ethical rules, for when we believe that morals and ethics and sin are what Christianity is all about, then we easily get lost in a debate of what are sins and what sins are worst and what are the rules to be followed. But Jesus Christ died so we could stop worrying about the rules. Jesus died so that our sins would no longer make a difference. Jesus died so that our sins would no longer be a way for people, for the devil, indeed for our own souls to tie us down. Jesus died so we could be free from the slavery to our sinfulness. Now, we are to simply follow Jesus. The rules? Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. That's it. And follow Jesus!

Notice what Paul says in Galatians Chapter Five:

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 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.

Paul has just listed many of the sins which we have all committed. While you may never have participated in an orgy, I’m sure that you have hated, you have caused discord, you have been jealous, you have been angry, ambitious, and envious at some point in your life. We all have. This is our body’s nature. This is what is natural to men and women. These are the acts of the flesh that Paul points out to us. He goes on:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

People from which the fruits of the Spirit flow are nice people to be around. These are the people we call “godly”. These are the people we wish we could be like.

But it is easy to get this message turned around. It is easy and natural to say, “Well, we should not have jealousy, but we should have gentleness. We should not get angry, but we should have self-control." And we could go down both lists, saying we should not do things on the first, but should do the things on the second list, for we all want to leave behind the acts of the flesh and grab the fruits of the Spirit. But how do we do this? Why haven’t we done this and simply stopped doing all the acts of the flesh? Why don’t we simply radiate the Fruit of the Spirit?

It isn’t a matter of trying harder. We don’t move from one list to the other simply by trying harder. This is not a problem we can solve by simple willpower, in the same way it is easy to say that the way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more - hasn't your doctor told you this? -  or the way to quit cigarettes is simply to stop smoking. We all know this, but it isn’t that simple. We need the key that gets us out of the prison of the acts of the flesh and lets us have the Fruits of the Spirit. And following Jesus is that key. But even that requires we understand a bit.

I don’t know about you, but I have a key ring with about ten keys. And when I come home at night and it’s dark, I have to fiddle with the keys on the key ring until I find the right key and then I have to line it up just so to get it into the keyhole, and then about half the time, it seems I’ve got the key upside down. So it is when we want to use Jesus as the key to life. We get things upside down.

Becoming a Christian is easy. You believe that Jesus is divine, worthy of being followed, tell someone you believe this, get baptized, and  - Bam! - you are a Christian.

But becoming a good Christian is much more difficult – and yet the path is simple. You have to follow Jesus. It isn’t a matter of just believing certain things, it is a matter of who you are, how you act and speak on a daily basis, and why you do and say the things you do. And the only reason to do and say those things that makes sense is: That’s what Jesus told me to do. Not what your pastor told you to do. Not what your friends told you to do. For the issue here is your relationship with Jesus, your trust, your obedience, your willingness to listen and to learn. Just remember that Jesus is also known as the Word of God, and so the Bible will not contradict His commands. They will be one and the same.

Let’s get this straight. If Jesus is God’s Son, Jesus is worthy to be followed. He is good and wise and powerful. He will not let us down. Ever. He is not at all like other men because He has that unique blend of God and human that makes Him the Christ. And so we need to actually find out what Jesus said to do and do that. We need to find out what Holy Scripture and the Holy Spirit tell us Jesus wants and do that. We need to truly become followers of Jesus, not merely people who try to follow some instruction manual about what it means to be a Christian that was written fifty or a hundred or even five hundred years ago.

All of this is a round about way of saying that we don’t go from the acts of the flesh to the Fruits of the Spirit by going there directly. We get there by listening to what the Holy Spirit tells us Jesus wants us to do and doing it. Each day.

Because, you see, it is the change that happens in our soul that is important. It is the change that happens when we actively are seeking Jesus’ will, God’s will, listening to the Holy Spirit and reading God’s Word, when we accept that we DON’T know the answers and need divine guidance all the time, when we go beyond praying when we are in trouble and asking for help and move into the two-way prayer where we are asking for advice and instructions all the time….That’s what changes us, We don’t find the fruits of the Spirit lying along the way– we grow the fruits of the Spirit in our own soul as we travel along the path where Jesus is leading us.

The ancient Greeks spoke about virtue and St Augustine of Hippo taught about the idea of the virtuous soul. In both cases, they spoke of the need for people to develop good habits, good practices, good speech, wisdom, good character, holiness in themselves. The difference between the ancient Greeks and the great St Augustine, is that Augustine recognized that virtue comes when you listen to the teaching of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, and you begin doing things in obedience to the commands of Jesus. If you follow Jesus, you will be good. Period.

For you see, no normal person can naturally perform the Fruits of the Spirit. No ordinary person can constantly have love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. No, it only comes when the Holy Spirit has been listened to so much that the divine Holy Spirit is in control, sitting there beside you in the cockpit of your mind, driving that body of yours around.

If you will, following Jesus is the path that leads us to begin receiving letters from the Holy Spirit, then telephone calls, then we invite the Spirit to come into us, and then we move from the driver’s seat into the passenger seat, letting the Spirit captain our body. That is when the Fruits of the Spirit begin to appear, and they feed everyone around us.

So how DO we follow Jesus?

First, find a place of some quiet. It doesn’t have to be in the woods with birds chirping around, but that can really work. It can be simply a few minutes in your car in a parking lot.

Now, read some Scripture. Perhaps a chapter, perhaps half a chapter.

Third, begin with this simple prayer:

Jesus, what do you want me to do today?

Then, listen for an answer. And do what appears, what you hear, what God sends to you.

It is a simple process. Find a quiet place, read some scripture, ask Jesus for guidance, listen for the answer, and do it.

After you have done this for a while, begin doing it various times during the day. You don’t need to read scripture each time, but you should still read scripture daily.

You’re walking into the store. “Jesus, what do you want me to do?”

You’re deciding where to sit at lunch. “Jesus, who should I sit with?”
You’re trying to make a decision. “Jesus, what should I do?”

You’re listening to someone rant and rave about something. “Jesus, what should I say or do? Anything?”

You might see a pattern here….

It really is simple. And the reason we don’t do it already is because of something we’ve seen in churches all of our lives.

Have you ever noticed during prayer time that people only ask for prayer for big things? My family member has cancer, please pray... My friend had a heart attack, please pray... My co-worker’s husband died, please pray... And so we sort of develop this idea that we only pray for big things.

But Paul tells us we are to live by the Spirit. That means we need to be talking with the Spirit constantly. You’ll notice I use Jesus and the Spirit almost interchangeably. Of course… they are both God.

We are to live by the Spirit. We live by breathing air. We should be talking with the Spirit, with Jesus, with God almost at every breath. Instead, many of us ask for help about as often as we change tires, every six months or so. Are you a tire changing Christian – or an air-breathing Christian? Remember that in the original languages, the same word was used for air – and for Spirit. Breath the air of the Spirit.

So this is how to follow Jesus. It will seem silly at first. But if you will practice this one, simple habit – “Jesus, what do you want me to do?” several times a day and actually listen to the answers and do them – you will become a true follower of Jesus, and soon, very soon, your friends will begin to comment to you about those strange and wonderful Fruits that have been growing from your soul. And you, my friend, will then be on the path to goodness, to virtue, to holiness in your life.

How to Become Joyful - Spiritual Reasons for Depression

Lamentations 3; I Chronicles 16:8-12, 23-36; Luke 10:1, 8-9, 18-24

How to become joyful? For some people, it seems like joy will never come again. Perhaps you are working through your sadness and depression. Perhaps you are looking for something that will help, because the medicine only works just so far and not far enough. Perhaps you have gradually let the news and the politics and the world around us bring you down into the dumps, into the darkness, into sadness, hopelessness, and into depression. This article isn't the whole answer...but hopefully, it can give you a step or two up out of the hole...

The world is falling apart around us. I’ve heard this from many people in the last year.

• You’ve heard about the tremendous death and destruction in the cities of Syria, and you wonder when that death and destruction will come here.
• You’ve told me how the jobs have dried up and those that remain don’t pay enough.
• You’ve told me how the politicians discuss each other’s sexual advances because it is simpler than talking about policies.
• You’ve told me how the Chinese and the Russians and ISIS are ready to destroy us.
• You’ve told me how our schools are becoming war zones.
• You’ve told me how our city streets are no longer safe for the police.
• You’ve told me how the police are killing all sorts of people without cause.
• You’ve told me how the drugs are killing our relatives.
• You’ve told me how less and less people attend our churches.
• You’ve told me how our television shows are no longer worth watching.
• You’ve told me how the weather is the worst it’s ever been.
• You’ve told me how people are doing terrible things to children and babies, both those who have been born and those who are still in the womb.

• You’ve told me how your life is depressing and lonely and without purpose.

It seems like sadness and depression are all around. Yet somewhere deep inside us, we know that joy exists. We had it once when we were younger. We had sunny days, we had carefree days, we had love, we had the excitement of good jobs that paid well and were interesting, we knew the USA was strong, we had days when our churches were full, we had great television shows like Andy Griffith and The Walton’s and Little House, our police were strong and respected, we had friends and love and joy. The joy was there, we know it, we remember it. We just can’t seem to find it anymore. It seems to have gone somewhere and hid. I guess we are sad and depressed.

You’ve heard all the world’s remedies for sadness and depression:

There are the physical causes: Perhaps we’re not getting enough exercise, we aren’t getting enough sunshine in winter, perhaps our caffeine that lifted us up yesterday has decided to let our mood fall today. Perhaps we need more sleep. Perhaps we’ve been getting too much sleep. Maybe our brain chemistry is out of whack and we need medication. Perhaps. These causes are real and affect many people. We can't ignore them or gloss over them.

All of these are real physical causes of sadness. For example, I know with me that if I have a large glass of Dr Pepper on Monday afternoon, I will drag on Tuesday morning. I have lots more energy when I’ve been to the YMCA than when I didn’t make it there. And dark, cloudy days of winter make me sad – sunshine makes me happy. And there is a sweet spot with just enough sleep. And all of this is tied into the same dopamine/serotonin system that’s involved with addiction, which is why addiction and sadness and feeling really, really good, feeling high can be so intertwined. And that’s why the anti-depression medicines and the opium-based pain relievers are so tricky to use together and to phase out carefully with medical attention.

Then, there are the event-driven causes of sadness. If you’ve lost a loved one through death or divorce or them moving away to college or work, it’s natural to feel sad. If you didn’t feel at least a little bit sad, you’d be a bit odd – even for those who wanted the divorce or wanted the child to get out of the house! We feel sad when we lose people we are used to being around. After all, How many of you went back to a high school football game after you graduated because you missed being there and the people from your class?

And why is it that some people seem to bounce right back from sad events and others stay sad and don’t see joy again?

We feel sad when we lose people because we actually have a connection, a spiritual and emotional connection with people we love, and when that cord between us breaks, that emotional energy springs back into our souls and it fries us, it injures us, and we need time and love for that burn to heal.

One day about twenty years ago, (don't try this!) I was testing a 600 amp, 480 volt electrical circuit when the circuit arced from one pole to another. A 300,000 watt heat source flashed six inches from my right hand. I was blind for a couple of minutes, my hair was crispy, my upper arm was in pain and red, I had blisters on my wrist and the back of my hand and my fingers looked like elephant hide, gray and fried. The pain was intense, a co-worker took my to the hospital where they gave me really good drugs and proceeded to remove the dead, cooked skin and then I spent three days recovering with plenty of morphine. It took six weeks for that burn to heal.

Twice a day I washed my hand in warm water with Clorox. Then I put a white burn cream on the exposed skin which sealed the skin and killed any bacteria. Then my hand was wrapped in bandages. But while I was washing my hand in that warm water, I had to carefully stretch my fingers and hand in all directions, because if I did not stretch my hand, painfully pulling apart the new skin that was growing, my hand would end up with limited movement, withered and drawn together, unable to function normally. And slowly my hand healed. And today I can play the piano even better than I did before the accident.

After we have a sad event, being loved by others is like that burn cream that heals the wounds and protects us from the bitter bacteria that would kill us. But loving others – children, friends, people through ministry – loving others, which is often a painful process - that is like the necessary stretching of the emotional skin that allows us to function normally or even better than before once again. We need to be loved – and we need to love others - to fully recover from the pain of losing someone we loved. For otherwise we will stay withered and drawn together, with limited emotional movement.

But what do we do when our sadness continues? What do we do when months and then years go by and we stay sad? I will point you to this reading from Jeremiah the Prophet, in the Book of Lamentations, the 3rd Chapter. Let’s learn from Jeremiah.

Lamentations was written shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. The whole city was destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar by fire. Archaeological evidence shows the entire city was burned and turned into rubble. And Jeremiah was there and lived through that terrible time. Afterwards, taken prisoner by the Babylonians and forced to walk 900 miles across the Middle East from Jerusalem to Babylon, south of Bagdad, Iraq, Jeremiah wrote this book.

Lamentations is perhaps the saddest book in the entire Bible. Let’s hear most of the 3rd chapter, which, unfortunately is the most uplifting chapter of Lamentations (New International Version),

I am the man who has seen affliction
by the rod of the Lord’s wrath.
He has driven me away and made me walk
in darkness rather than light;
indeed, he has turned his hand against me
again and again, all day long.

- Notice that Jeremiah is blaming God. Jeremiah has his head on straight – He knows that God is in charge of all that has happened. Jeremiah understands that God Himself is working against Jeremiah – Isn’t that enough to make you want to stay in bed all day! But it gets even worse for Jeremiah...

He has made my skin and my flesh grow old
and has broken my bones.
He has besieged me and surrounded me
with bitterness and hardship.
He has made me dwell in darkness
like those long dead.

He has walled me in so I cannot escape;
he has weighed me down with chains.
Even when I call out or cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer.

Jeremiah points out that even his prayers are not being listened to!

He has barred my way with blocks of stone;
he has made my paths crooked.
Like a bear lying in wait,
like a lion in hiding,
he dragged me from the path and mangled me
and left me without help.
He drew his bow
and made me the target for his arrows.
He pierced my heart
with arrows from his quiver.
I became the laughingstock of all my people;
they mock me in song all day long.
He has filled me with bitter herbs
and given me gall to drink.
He has broken my teeth with gravel;
he has trampled me in the dust.

That hurts just hearing it!

I have been deprived of peace;
I have forgotten what prosperity is.
So I say, “My splendor is gone
and all that I had hoped from the Lord.”
I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.

So far, I think we would agree that Jeremiah is having a bad time and is justifiably deep in depression. His bones have been broken; his teeth have been broken with gravel. He has been trampled in the dust. He’s been given gall – that is the liquid from the gallbladder - to drink. Everything has gone wrong for Jeremiah! And don’t forget that his home town, his capital city has been destroyed along with the beautiful palace of David and the even more beautiful Temple of Solomon. Everything has been burned to the ground. Jeremiah has been taken captive along with thousands of other people and marched from Jerusalem to Babylon, 500 miles if you go straight across the desert, but a 900 mile walk if you follow the rivers. From here in West Virginia, 900 miles will take you 40 miles south of Orlando, FL – how would you like to take that walk? And Jeremiah wept all the way.

And so we have come to verse 20 where he talks about the terrible things that have happened and Jeremiah writes “I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.”

And then, Jeremiah writes something truly amazing. He writes verse 21:

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:

Things are terrible, things have fallen apart, the city is destroyed, we’ve walked hundreds of miles as captives, our bones are broken, our teeth have been broken by gravel and ground into the dust and Jeremiah has hope?!

Is the man insane? Has the desert heat fried his brain? Is Jeremiah bonkers?

NO!

He writes:

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear the yoke
while he is young.

Let him sit alone in silence,
for the Lord has laid it on him.
Let him bury his face in the dust—
there may yet be hope.
Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him,
and let him be filled with disgrace.

For no one is cast off
by the Lord forever.
Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
so great is his unfailing love.
Jeremiah, who blames all of his troubles on God, has hope because Jeremiah knows God’s character. Jeremiah knows that God puts us through times of testing to work out the kinks in our character. Jeremiah knows that God sometimes disciplines us to get our attention. Jeremiah knows that sometimes God lets us get our teeth busted in so we will learn. But Jeremiah has hope because Jeremiah knows that God is wise, very, very wise and God loves us very, very much, and God has all the power in the Universe and therefore events will not get out of God’s control. And God has compassion for us!

And so, if God loves you and God is wiser than you and God has all the power God needs – why do you feel hopeless and sad?

For some people, a reminder of God's compassion may be all you need today to feel joy. If you are one of those people, smile, lean back, think about your life with hope and joy.

But for other people, there is something much deeper here at play. For other people, simply be reminded of God’s power and wisdom and love isn’t enough to turn us around, for there is something going on here that goes deeper than our forgetfulness about God's love. Sometimes, the very problem that lies at the root of our depression is that we have very good memories and so we have to work through some issues.

You may be one of those people or have a dear friend or relative that is one of those people. So let’s look at the spiritual causes of sadness and depression and perhaps we’ll see our way out to a joyful afternoon.

First and foremost, the world reminds us daily that we are not to believe in the Gospel. Oh, yes! Are you surprised? There are some parts of the world that insist that there is no God, and more who insist that Christianity is wrong and messed up. Jesus is said to be another man, a great teacher and philosopher, perhaps, but most of the world insists that Jesus is not divine.

And that steady drumbeat of denial of Jesus, like the wipers on your car windshield when it rains, puts you slowly, slowly to sleep spiritually. Do you realize that most people in America, even those who are Christians, have a view of God that is more Jewish than Christian? Most people focus upon the rules that we break, upon the idea that “God is going to get you!” than on the gospel message. Christianity, we say, is about living a particular way, about following particular moral and ethical standards, about treating other people a certain way specified by rules, rules, and more rules. And so we focus upon the things we have done wrong, the times that we regret, the things we have said and the actions we have done which have hurt ourselves and other people, the things we didn’t say or do that we should have done and even if we ask forgiveness from God we don’t really believe that God has forgiven us – and we don’t forgive ourselves!

Why? This is because we really believe in the Law and the Rules and how important they are to our salvation. We believe in the Law more than we believe in the Gospel! Doing the right thing is critical! At least, that’s the way we act, and so that’s what we really believe down deep in our hearts. And this is because we’ve missed the Gospel message, the real meaning of the Good News that Jesus brought us.

But Pastor, didn’t I get the message that Jesus, who was the Son of God, died on the cross for my sins and was resurrected to prove He is divine, actually is the Son of God and if I believe this I have eternal life? What did I miss?

What you may have missed are the implications of this Gospel. Have you ever noticed that the Christian in the New Testament are joyful, praising God even when they are in prison? They may be in physical prison, but they’re never in an emotional prison. Let’s look at those implications of the Gospel people often miss:

Most of us remember very well the wrong things we have done. We remember those mistakes we made, those sins we committed, those times we injured ourselves and others. And because we remember them, we have a really hard time with forgiveness. Forgiving ourselves.

Oh, we ask God for forgiveness once a month during part of the Holy Communion ceremony. But we don’t ever really forgive ourselves. We know we broke the Law, the Rules, did the wrong thing. And because we have that idea down deep in our hearts that the Law is so divinely important, we don’t forgive ourselves, because, after all, the Rules were broken and you can’t fix that!

It is as though our sin debt was $100 billion – like receiving an invoice so huge it is impossible to pay. But don’t you see, if Christ paid the price for our sins as we say, if He paid the bill in full as we say, if his credit was good enough to pay that huge invoice with His death on the cross as we say, why do you want to keep paying additional invoices every week or so as you remember your sins? 

Only the Son of the owner of the Universe could pay that bill. So after Jesus has paid that tremendous debt for you, stamping the invoice “Paid in Full”, why do you try to keep sending $4 against the bill every week or every few days? Like any swindler who sends out fake invoices, the devil will send you invoice copies….”Remember when you…” And then the devil whispers into your ear “And you thought I’d forgotten about that time when you..." etc. But you don’t have to pay those invoices. Even if you send the money, the guilt in to pay back Jesus, the money or guilt goes to the devil and not to the Christ who paid the bill. The debt has been discharged, the bill marked “paid in full”, the mortgage has been burned. Believe that Christ has done this! There is nothing left to pay, nothing to feel guilty about!

My friends, Jesus didn’t pay for all your sins that you’d committed by the day you were baptized, He paid the price for all your sins, including the ones you committed in the last hour and those that you will commit tomorrow. And this is where we need to understand something really amazing about sin and kingdoms and how we think.

We live in a republic. We live in a country ruled by Law, not men or women. The Law is higher than the President, than the Senators, than the Congressmen. And the kingdom that we are most familiar with, the English kingdom, is ruled by Parliament, their equivalent of Congress, and the Queen of England has very little real power. Parliament could pass a law and remove her in an hour if she began breaking laws. If Prince Charles stole money, he’d go to prison, just like anyone else. And so we grew up to think we are under the Law in everything.

But in a classic old kingdom where the King truly rules – like the old Russian Tsar did or the Roman emperor did. the only way a prince or princess could get in trouble was if they were in rebellion against the King, their father. A prince was trusted to have the best interests of the nation at heart and so if the prince walked into a village and said, “I need all of your sheep and cattle for my soldiers”, he was not charged with being a thief and he did not get in trouble with the King as long as he had the King’s interests at heart. The King’s family was not under the Law.

And so it is with us. When we say, “We believe in Jesus Christ”, that is shorthand for saying, “We believe that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God, divine and part of God, and we not only believe in His existence and title, but have decided to follow Him as His adopted brothers and sisters.” You see, we are looking toward Jesus to guide us in what God the Father, our King wants. And we have accepted and are happy that Jesus has talked to God the Father about us. We have been adopted as princes and princesses and SO WE HAVE BEEN SET FREE FROM THE LAW!
We now have one guiding principle: What does God the Father want us to do? And “What Would Jesus Do?” is a reasonable way to figure this out.

It is like you lived in that destroyed city of Jerusalem, that city destroyed by God's wrath. You may have been guilty of murder – actual murder or killing someone through gossip. You may have been guilty of adultery – actual adultery or lusting with your eyes and mind. You may have been guilty of theft, of arson, of terrible sexual crimes, of slicing and dicing someone in fact or with your words. It doesn’t matter anymore.

The day you signed up for Jesus through your belief and baptism, the day you asked for forgiveness from your sins, the day you decided following Jesus was the answer, you were set free from that past and that city of destruction. God truly forgave you, you were given a special pass to leave the city, and when you listen to the Holy Spirit, God will guide you to do the right things and avoid the wrong things because you are now His son or daughter, an adopted prince or princess of the Kingdom, and nothing can change that situation except your voluntary choice to walk back into that terrible city and completely forget about God and Christ.

But pastor, I hate that I did wrong. It keeps me up at night. I feel guilty.

The very fact it bothers you is why you have hope. There was a time when your sins did not bother you at all, because you didn’t care for anyone except yourself.

Now, you care for others and you look at yourself and you look at Jesus and you see his blazing white purity and your filthiness in comparison.

But where you once wore a blood-stained robe, you now wear  a robe that is clean, but dingy and worn cream and gray. Jesus still wears blazing white, but you have come so far, oh so far, my friend. Jesus washed your blood-stained robe in his blood and his blood is like full-strength Clorox bleach, undiluted, it bleaches out all the sins of the past.

And so, get this solidly in your mind. God has forgiven you. God no longer cares about your past now that you care about His Son and what He thinks about you. Forget about your past and be glad that you now ride in the company of God’s sons and daughters. Spend time with them. Don’t focus upon the past, but upon the future…And what is the purpose of this great company of God’s children, the Body of Christ on earth, the men and women who are brothers and sisters of Christ?

At one point, Jesus sent 72 people into the towns and cities to which He would go. They entered those towns, they told the people of the Kingdom of God, and they went back to Jesus with joy and He responded with joy!

He has put out a call for volunteers to us today, volunteers who are willing to walk into the dying cities which are being destroyed – the world around us - and find people covered in blood and lead them to the pool filled with Jesus’ blood, so they can wash their robes and bleach their lives. For the best cure for our sadness is helping other people. Only then can we see more realistically how well our lives are going and that brings gratitude – and joy.

The world is filled with people who are convinced, perhaps as you have been, that there is no hope, that they have no way to leave a dying, burning city, that, as with Jeremiah, the army sent by the Lord is about to grind their teeth into the dust, that everything is falling down around them. 

But you know better. You know that in this place, like a hospital in a war-torn city, there are many people recovering from the shock of the world, from the terrible sights they have seen, from the stories they have heard on the evening news. But you also know that in this place, just like in that hospital in that war-torn city, there are doctors and nurses who are working, there are aides and orderlies who are working, there are people who actually care and love and would do anything for you in order that you could be healed. The city is our world and this church is the hospital. The people sitting around you are the hospital’s staff.

And the treatment for all these spiritual wounds is the blood that was shed so long ago on a hill outside of Jerusalem. It is when we really, deeply grasp that Jesus didn’t die for humanity, that instead Jesus died for me and for you, and would have died for you even if no one else needed saving – that is when we realize how deeply God and Christ love us.

They have promised that soon, very soon, there will be a new Heaven and a New Earth, a New Jerusalem that will be rebuilt and replace the horrible place of death that surrounds us. And we will walk through those gates, gates which are each made of a single huge pearl, glittering in the light – not the light of the sun, but the light of God the Father.

But until that day, we have work to do. There are people who are still dying without that hope. You may not feel you can talk to anyone – that’s okay, we now have a short brochure we need distributed to homes and people in the area. You could just walk or drive up and down or pass these out to friends. There are other ways to begin to help people. Come by Wednesday evening and ask me what you can do while we share a meal at the Wednesday evening dinner. Or knock on my door or call me up and we’ll talk about it.

I’ve read the last part of the Book of Revelation. After all the destruction, after all the troubles, after all the Tribulation, the message is clear…Those who follow Jesus win in the end. And, as Jesus said, “My yoke is easy.” Our sadness comes when we look at ourselves too much, when we look at the past, when we look at the world that humans have made. Our joy comes when we-who-have-found-Jesus help our friends, our neighbors, and our family find Jesus, when we look at the future, when we look at the world the way God has promised it will be someday and we believe in those promises. 

Be joyful! All is forgiven! You are free of the city of death and now live in the beautiful land. It's time to look around and see God.

How to Make Good Habits

Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Psalm 130; I Timothy 4; Luke 18:1-15

This is the eighth sermon in this ten-sermon series. It seems that we mostly know what to do to live a Christian life. But we don’t live that way. We don’t live that way because we have trouble with the How of living like a Christian should. And so in this series, we are trying to cover the HOW of what we do, since most of us get more hung up on HOW than What.

This week, we’ll cover how to make good habits.

How many of you read your bible every day this week? How many of you prayed over every meal? How many prayed before bedtime? How many spent an hour with just God every morning this week? How many of you praised God to your friends, neighbors, and family in your conversations this week? Here’s something easier – how many people brushed your teeth once in the last 24 hours?

OH, good habits. If we all did what we are supposed to do, then we would be such a wonderful, godly, growing group of people.

Habits are what routines are made of, and I for one am a man of routine. There are certain things you can count on with me.

At night, before I turn off my light, my cell phone and Kindle are plugged in and on the nightstand beside my bed. My alarms are set.

Whenever I leave my house, I pat my pocket for my key. The same thing when I leave my car.

When I arrive home after services today, I will let the dog out for a walk and check telephone messages. At some point today, I’ll check what the sermon plan is for next Sunday and read the scripture that I’ll be using.

I began my sermon on Monday, getting very in-depth with the scripture and research, mostly writing the sermon, finished it on Tuesday – ten type-written pages, Romans 14 point font for most, six or seven pages for Communion Sundays, On Tuesday, I prepared overhead images and started the bulletin on Wednesday.

At some point this week, probably on Thursday, I finished the bulletin, made copies, and folded it. I printed out my sermon and emailed it and the bulletin to Ethel, AJ, and Brian Nichols so Ethel could make copies for those who need it, AJ could prepare the Monroe Chapel bulletin, and Brian could prepare the overhead slides for presentation.

This morning, I arrived at Quiet Dell about 9 am, I prepared my hymnal with paperclips, arranged my sermon package in order, and made a copy of the third reading for whoever would read today.

Routine, you see, is nice because I don’t have to figure out what to do. I have my routine and my habits. In fact, almost everyone already has developed some good habits. For example, almost everyone here brushed their teeth this morning. So we already have experience with this – we just need to extend it to more of our lives.

So how do we develop new, good habits?

Well, the world has some methods, and mature Christianity has additional methods. Let’s talk about worldly methods first, because these are simpler – and amazingly enough – they often work.

First, we have to decide what habits we will adopt. Pick a habit you'd like to adopt, like reading your Bible daily or praying daily. Don’t try to adopt more than one or two at a time, or you won’t adopt any.

Now that you have decided what habits you will adopt, begin this way:

First of all, assign a place for every THING you have. Perhaps the best habit we can adopt is to put everything in its place. For example, my keys are in my right pants pocket, my phone in my shirt pocket if I have one, or else it is in my left pants pocket. At night, my phone and keys are one my night stand. That way, I know exactly where they are when I need them.

In the same way, my shirt pocket has a pen – or it is in the right pants pocket if my shirt doesn’t have a pocket. The pen also goes on the night stand at night.

If you give every item in your house a home, you have just reduced all that thinking and searching effort that’s needed if you put things in many different places. The habit of putting things in the same place is the single most valuable secular habit you can have. Those who have looked for your keys or phone, can I get an “amen”?

Second, we have to develop habits for activities. And this is trickier. But we can take advantage of the fact that our life is so structured around the clock – most of our activities happen at the same time on particular days.

Perhaps the best way to develop the habits in our modern world is with the calendar. I use my phone’s calendar to schedule events which repeat every week or every month. For example, my calendar is set to show UM Women on the 2nd Tuesday of every month at 6:30 pm. I get a notification email a day ahead of time and my phone beeps with a notification a half-hour before the meeting.

At 8:55 this morning, my phone began to play the theme from the Lone Ranger, just as it does every Sunday morning, so that I will remember to stop what I’m doing and go to church.

And you know, after I’ve done these activities for a year, I can usually remember them without help.

And you know, you can set alarms on your phone for taking medicine, for birthdays, for turning on the television to watch a great pastor like Dr. Charles Stanley, for calling your mother – and for reading scripture or praying.

When the Quiet Dell bells ring on Sunday mornings at 9:30 am, about a half-dozen women head to my office to pray for the success of the worship service. You can join them if you wish. The bells trigger them to remember, just as in the old days before everyone had clocks, the bells told the people in the community that it was time to worship.

Now for some of you, I’ve already given you enough to run with. You’ll simply put a time to pray on your daily schedule with an alarm and that will be it. You’ll begin praying at that time every day. And you’ll add a time to read your Bible with a notification and a block of time and that will be enough.

But there is something we’ve all noticed. There are certain good habits we simply don’t start. We may do them for two or three days and then we stop. The exercise centers of the world have noticed that huge numbers of adults like to join exercise centers like the YMCA, Planet Fitness, etc during September and January. Attendance peaks for a couple of weeks, and then attendance drops off. That’s why they set up a monthly debit to your account which keeps charging you even during the months you only attend once or twice…if at all. If everyone who started at a fitness center in January attended the fitness center every day, there wouldn’t be nearly enough machines to go around. But we can’t hold onto that habit and so the fitness centers this time of year have very few people on the machines.

Other good habits we all know about include saving money, reading your bible, praying, attending Sunday School and mid-week studies, writing cards of encouragement to people on the prayer list or telephoning them, giving tithes to the church. We start out with great plans, but we stop after a few days or weeks. Why?

Sometimes the will is there but the memory is not. That’s why I have my donations to the church sent automatically from my checking account – I could never remember to write the check out in the business of Sunday morning. If you want to do that, the church address is in the bulletin. I have money automatically put into a retirement savings account by the church; I have additional money automatically transferred to another account each month to pay my income taxes with, since clergy must pay both sides of the Social Security and Medicare, and the church isn’t allowed to withhold for us. I fix my bad memory by setting up automatic payments and automatic transfers through my bank.

Other times…let’s be honest? The will simply isn’t there. You had a teacher in elementary school who made you feel stupid in reading class and so you have never liked to read since then and besides, the Bible is complicated to read. Two answers – Modern translations of the Bible like the NIV – New International Version, the New King James Version NKJV, the Common English Bible CEB, or the Holman Christian Standard Bible are much easier to read than the old King James Version, which was written at the same time as Shakespeare. And secondly, audio versions of these are available for your telephone so you can listen to them.

But maybe you consider reading the Bible to be dull and boring. Maybe when I use the word “class” about a Bible study class, you think – “I hated the classroom when I was in school”. For this habit, we need to learn more about what is actually involved in the habit. What is a modern Bible study class like, after all?

Most of our classes are actually groups of people who are discussing the Bible passages. We read a section of the bible, then we start talking back and forth. Sometimes we start talking about Peter and John in prison and someone asks what a prison was like in those days. Another person talks about visiting a prison with a prison ministry, and a third person wonders what prisons of the mind we put ourselves in, and then we all talk about how Christ gets us out of those prisons of sadness, prisons of loneliness, prisons of bad habits, and someone who has been sad for a month tells of their journey and others gather around him or her and hug the sad person and suddenly, we all feel that the Body of Christ has done just what the Body of Christ was supposed to do. That’s what we do in our classes. And that’s why these good habits are so important, because some weeks you are the one who hugs and some weeks you are the one who needs and gets the hugs, but the good habit of being with other people who are positive and focused upon Christ is necessary for our well-being.

Jesus told a story about a woman who had a good habit. She begged a certain judge for help. She begged him every time he came to town, every week or so. It was her habit to ask for justice. At first, the judge told her “NO!”, but over time, he began to crack and finally he gave into her, heard her case, and granted her request. Jesus makes the point that this judge was not particularly good, but gave in because of the woman’s persistent habit. And in the same way, God – who is good and just – will hear our prayers. The persistent good habit of prayer is important. But do we do this? No. We pray once or twice and then give up. The point of this parable is that we are to continue in our prayers. Habitual prayer is important.

The Apostle Paul also liked a good habit. In our reading from Timothy, Paul compared good Christian habits that lead toward holiness and godliness to an athlete training for competition. He wrote:

Rather, train yourself in godliness, for
the training of the body has a limited benefit,
but godliness is beneficial in every way,
since it holds promise for the present life
and also for the life to come.

Godliness and holiness “is beneficial in every way.” So what habits lead to godliness?

Paul tells Timothy and us:

Command and teach these things. Let no one despise your youth; instead, you should be an example to the believers…

Holiness does not depend upon us being old. We can become holy while we are still young if we practice, so we can be an example to others.

Paul said:

“…you should be an example to the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

There are habits of action that we are to practice. Our speech should be pure and clean and uplifting. Our conduct should be a good example. We should show others examples of self-sacrificing love – the Greek word used here for love is agape. Our faith should set a high standard, and we should remain pure and not be vulgar or low. (Perhaps we can stop watching Presidential debates!) Each of these good things is a habit which needs to be built every day – a way of acting which develops best when we are constantly reading our Scripture, in conversation with God and the Holy Spirit throughout the day.

Here’s a tip I picked up a while back. Several hundred years ago, St. Ignatius of Loyola, who was a military man before he became a Catholic priest, developed a training system for his group of priests, the Jesuits. Part of the training is teaching trainees that whenever we recognize a sin in our actions, words, or thoughts, we should take our hand and make a subtle, quiet, and private movement, such as touching our heart. In this way, we begin to notice our sins more and this leads us to a better recognition when we are doing wrong. We can then better work on what we are doing wrong, removing the bad habits and focusing on developing good habits. Having a way to call our own attention to our bad habits can led to good habits.

Paul continues:

Until I come, give your attention to public reading, exhortation, and teaching.

Paul means that we are to read scripture publically – in our world this means Bible study with others and quoting scripture. Do you read scripture in your family with your children or grandchildren, with your husband or wife? Make it a habit and see what happens in your family. Perhaps when the extended family comes over, you can read a paragraph of scripture before you say grace for the meal. Simple enough. Make it a tradition.

Scripture traditions can become important. In our family, we have a tradition that on Christmas Eve, we read Luke 2 before the presents are opened. Because of the help of Biblegateway.com, we are able to have Luke 2 printed out in any language, and our tradition says that Luke 2 is read in the native language of every person present by a native speaker of that language. We began this when we were ministering to the International students at Marietta College. We’d read Luke 2 in English, another would read in Chinese, another in Portuguese and another in Korean or Japanese. You can get any language on biblegateway.com. If you visit my home on Christmas Eve, you’ll hear Luke 2.

Paul says we are to give attention to exhortation – encouraging one another to do good. We point people to God – not to their sins. Remember, if you are pointing toward another’s sin, you are not pointing toward God. We are to point the way to God. Practice pointing in the right direction.

And Paul says we are to be teaching. Did you ever teach a child anything? How to tie shoe laces, how to brush teeth, how to hold fishing pole, how to sew? Teaching involves much more than standing in a classroom and lecturing. We teach all the time when we sit with children or adults and tell them stories of God, of Jesus, of the Old Testament, of what we’ve learned of God’s love, what we know about how deep in sin we were but how Christ and God helped us come out of that sin. We are to teach – it is a habit. Practice it.

Paul continues:

Do not neglect the gift that is in you;

God has given each of us one or more gifts – almost superpowers – which we are not to neglect. Each of these gifts helps the Body of Christ. One person may be a great singer – then practice singing as a habit! You may not like a particular person in the choir – consider: Will you turn down the gift of singing for God because of one person’s attitude or action?

Another person may be able to lay on hands and heal people. Get in the habit of doing this – even if God didn’t heal everybody every time. Heal those whom God will choose to heal.

Still another may have the gift of organizing – then organize things – you can start with my office!

You may have still another gift, but whatever your gift is, use your gift regularly – get in the habit of using that gift which God has given you for God’s glory!

Paul finishes with a general request to practice these habits:

Practice these things; be committed to them, so that your progress may be evident to all. Pay close attention to your life and your teaching; persevere in these things, for by doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.

When you practice godly habits, you will save both yourself and your hearers – those people near you. Persevere in these things. Keep at it.

But what advice does the Bible give which will help us to practice these habits and make them part of our lives?

Most importantly, we must recognize becoming godly as an important goal. If we don’t care to become godly, we won’t care about habits that lead to godliness. And that is difficult, for so many people believe that “I’m going to heaven, so I’m ok.” Why practice becoming godly if this is your position?

Yes, you believe that Jesus Christ was and is the Son of God. Yes, you believe He died for your sins and that His resurrection proved He was and is divine. Yes, you were even baptized. But are you truly following Christ? Do you see and understand that Jesus set an example for us that we are to follow? Are we trying each day to become more and more Christ-like in our thoughts, our actions, and our words?

When you sign up for the army, that is not the end. Every week there is further training so that you aren’t just a soldier, but you become a better and better soldier every week. The sergeant with 20 years experience is a much better soldier than the raw recruit. And so it is with the Army of God.

If you have been a Christian for twenty years, are you more godly than you were 15 years ago? Or did you sort of plateau, like the runner who works up to running a mile a day and then, three years later, can still only run a mile a day? Or are you the type who practiced and after three years, you can now run five miles a day and plan to run a marathon in three more years?

Godliness doesn’t require our bodies to be in great shape. It is a matter of practicing so our souls are well-trained, so we have traded in our bad habits for our new, good, godly habits. Godliness means, as Paul says, that we “pay close attention to our lives and our teaching; and persevere in these things, for by doing this we will save both ourselves and our hearers.”

One of the things I plan to do over the next year is to remind us of something, something most of us have forgotten. The apostles, Peter, John, Paul and all the rest, the second generation that included Timothy, Titus, Phoebe and others – they accomplished great things. That original group of about 120 people changed the world completely.

They did not do it because they were great men and women. They were not particularly educated or great speakers or wise or wealthy – although some were, most were not. Those early disciples did not have special advantages over the rest of the people in the world. Except this one overwhelming advantage.

They were possessed of the Holy Spirit, listened to the Holy Spirit, and did without fear what the Holy Spirit asked them to do. And they changed the world!
I need to remind you of something. If you’ve been baptized – you have that very same Holy Spirit, which has not gone away or changed. That Holy Spirit will speak to you on behalf of Christ and the Father, neither of whom have changed or gone away. God the Father has every bit as much power as He did 2000 years ago. Jesus Christ has every bit as much love as He did 2000 years ago. The Holy Spirit has a voice just as loud as 2000 years ago. The same wisdom is still there.

So what has changed?

Only our willingness to listen to that Spirit, to trust in Christ, and to ask the Father to do great things. My wife Saundra calls it the “Jesus is in the pews” problem. Instead of trusting in Jesus, we began to trust in our earthly leaders, giving them the trust we are supposed to give Jesus. We trusted in Ed Tutweiler, in Mary Ellen Finegan, in Kermit Auvil, in George Bramble, in Bob King, in Brian Boley, in AJ King. We trusted in our ability to give, in our ability to do things, in our ability to evangelize, in our ability to put on a great show. And we stopped listening to the Spirit, we stopped trusting in Christ, we stopped asking the Father to do the great things.

For we need to remember that in this building, there is a potential Paul, a John, a Simon Peter, a Phoebe, a Pricilla, an Aquila, a Timothy, an Augustine, a St Francis, a Mother Theresa, a John Wesley, another great saint ready to change the world for God, another great saint – or twenty – who are ready to listen to the Spirit, to trust in Christ, to ask the Father to do great things. When we trusted in our leaders and our own abilities, we limited ourselves, because we forgot that God is ready to kick down doors and make roads to our goals with His almighty power behind His projects. Each of us are princes and princesses of the Kingdom, and our Father is the King of the Universe. Don’t ask how we can possibly do something. Ask yourself - and God – what should we do?

To reclaim our position as God’s heirs, God requires us to do only a few things really, a very few things. Only three good habits are critical – but they, they make all the difference in the world.

First, we must fall in love with God by reading His love letter to us, the Holy Bible, opening our eyes and ears to the God who is here with us this morning and every day and night.

Second, we must learn to listen to God’s gentle voice by two-way prayer, by listening for the speaking of the Holy Spirit, the voice that leads us to give life to ourselves and to others, never harming, never scolding, but gently guiding us toward godliness.

Third, we must learn to trust, to have faith, to have courage that what the Holy Spirit tells us to do is actually the right, the just, the correct thing to do, and then we must do what we are asked to do and say, even if the people around us may look at us with wide, frightened eyes. For we ultimately have to decide – will we do as the men and women around us would tell us to do - or as God asks?

And if we make these few good habits, if we let becoming godly rule our lives, then we will begin to change the world, saving ourselves and those who watch and listen to us.

How to Stop Gossiping

Proverbs 26:17-28; Psalm 15; Romans 1:28-32; Matthew 15:1-20

Once upon a time, in a small, but prosperous Russian village, there were several shopkeepers. One of them was known for being a very, very, VERY nice man. Everyone loved him, because when the people visited his shop, he always told them the news of the village. He told them who was sick and how many new calves the farmers had each year. He told his customers who had a new baby and who was getting married. He always knew who the new people in the village were, and where they had lived before, and he also knew what was happening in the outside world, who was fighting which wars, and whether or not the price of flour was going to be high or low this year. Plus, he always had entertaining stories about famous people and fabulous places and he could tell a joke in that special way, with that special timing that makes you laugh even if the joke isn’t all that funny.

One day, the very nice shopkeeper saw something happen with a friend of his who owned a shop down the street. It was very entertaining, so he told several of his customers that day and the next. But by the end of the week, his friend had noticed that nobody was coming to his store anymore. He asked a few questions and found out why – it was because everyone had heard about what he had done. But he didn’t find out where the story began.

So the second shopkeeper went to the rabbi in town and he sat and cried in the synagogue with the rabbi. “My business is destroyed! I’ll have to move or retire!”The rabbi promised to find out what had happened.

The next day, which was a windy fall day, the rabbi went to visit the very nice shopkeeper that everyone liked. As he walked up the street, the leaves were whissing all around him. Although the rabbi really had no idea where the story had started, he knew that the very nice shopkeeper would almost surely be able to tell him where he had heard the story.

When the rabbi got to the shop, he told the very nice shopkeeper about the visit from the second shopkeeper and how his business was failing because of the story going around town. And because the very nice shopkeeper was indeed very nice, he immediately told the rabbi that it was his fault about the story, apologized, and asked the rabbi what he could do to make it right.

The rabbi saw that the very nice man was sincere, so he asked him. “Do you have a feather pillow?”

“Of course I have feather pillows. I’m the most prosperous shopkeeper in town. I probably have ten feather pillows!”

The rabbi continued. “Just run home and bring me one of them.”

The very nice shopkeeper ran home and came back a few minutes later with a nice feather pillow. Standing in the doorway to the shop, with the wind and leaves blowing around his feet the rabbi took out his knife, cut a big slice into the feather pillow and dumped out all the feathers, which the wind quickly began blowing around with the leaves on that windy fall day.

“Now, put all the feathers back into the pillow and you will be right with your friend.”

“But….that’s impossible! I could get the feathers that fell in my shop, but those on the street – I’ll never catch them all!”

“And so it is with gossip, my friend. Once it is poured out, it can never all be recovered. And pretty soon, the feathers are being poured out all over town.”

(The above story adapted from http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/812861/jewish/A-Pillow-Full-of-Feathers.htm  .)
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Gossip and slander are spoken of quite negatively in Holy Scripture. The Proverbs 26 reading includes this verse:

20 Without wood a fire goes out;
without a gossip a quarrel dies down.
It speaks to the ability of those people who stand around gossiping to keep fights going. “I heard Bill say this… or I head that Gladys said that.” And the fight goes another round.

And can we have harmless gossip? No, because gossip is remembered. As the Proverb says:

22 The words of a gossip are like choice morsels;
they go down to the inmost parts.

I’m sure most of you have heard the story of the revival that shrank the congregation by half? It happened this way: 

The preacher preached a beautiful, passionate sermon for three nights, for two hours each evening, and on the fourth night, he preached for twenty minutes and gave an altar call. A beautiful, yet somewhat overly made-up woman came up to the altar and kneeled in prayer. The preacher went to her and asked her, “Have you accepted JE-SUS?” in a loud voice and handed her the microphone.

“Yes, yes I have. “

“Praise the Lord!” The preacher exclaimed. “Are you ready to confess your sin before God and this congregation?”

“Yes, yes I am.”

“Tell us your sin!”

“Well, I’ve committed adultery.”

“Adultery? Where?”

She turned to the congregation and began pointing. “At his house…and his house…and his house…and his house…."

And you know…for some reason, nobody could remember the sermon, but everybody remembered that list of houses….Gossip is INDEED like choice morsels, like wonderful pieces of chocolate - gossip is remembered.

Jesus even took up the subject of gossip and slander one day in a different situation, as told in Matthew 15:

It was a frustrating day for Jesus, He’d been up the night before walking on the water with Peter – and you’ve gotta know that walking on waves must be exhausting, with the water moving back and forth under your feet, and then He spent the morning healing people, listening to their complaints, their aches and pains, and dealing with their ailments.

Then, some of the Pharisees came down from Jerusalem and began complaining that Jesus’ disciples didn’t wash their hands before they ate. And let me be delicate, but I have to make this point…this was in a time before toilet paper and similar ways for people to stay clean. Remember, ancient Israel was largely desert, a land without leaves or Sears and Roebuck catalogs.

And so, the enemies were implying that the disciples were terribly dirty and nasty. And Jesus had had enough complaints for the day.

Jesus’ response was like bolt of lightning on a clear, sunny day. “Why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” and then He quoted from Isaiah and really burned them.  "You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.'”

Then, speaking to crowd, he said:

"What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

Jesus was saying that it isn’t what you eat that makes you impure before God, but how you speak that makes the difference.

Naturally, Peter didn’t get it. Peter never got it. Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.”

"Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

(The Bible records that Peter still didn’t get the message…in the Book of Acts, God has to send Peter a dream to get across the idea. See Acts 10 and 11 for when Peter finally understood.).

Why do we gossip? Jesus tells us that evil thoughts, like false testimony, and slander come from our heart.

We gossip because our hearts are not right. And the root of this is when we don’t truly accept that our friend is an image of God, just as we are. You would never think of destroying a real photograph or painting of Jesus or God, would you? You would protect it as the priceless piece of art that it is. Yet when we thoughtlessly gossip or slander, we are like little children drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa, like little boys throwing baseball at the church’s stained glass windows, like the men who rode into ancient cities and cut off the noses and arms of beautiful sculptures.

Gossiping is like putting water glasses on finely varnished walnut furniture, like sticking pins into burgundy leather chairs, like juggling fine crystal stemware. It is like taking a knife and carving your initials into a marble altar, like scratching the CD that holds every photograph and video from your wedding, like letting a herd of hungry deer loose in a beautiful flower garden.

"But Pastor, aren’t you making a bit much of a little gossip?" No, not according to Scripture.

Paul has the harshest words for gossips. In the first chapter of Romans, starting at verse 28, Paul writes:

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Harsh words! According to Paul, gossips have depraved minds, and are filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. And even though they know they deserve death, they actually approve of other gossips.

So how do we stop gossiping?

First, we need to turn to God. Like all the other things Paul listed, the root cause of all these evils is when we turn away from God. And so the solution is to turn back to God, recognizing that God actually cares about gossiping and the evil that it is a symptom of.

As with every other sin we are guilty of, we need to bow the knee to God and ask forgiveness. This is the beginning of our recovery – as with every other sin.

So how do we keep from gossiping after we've asked for forgiveness?

First, look around this room. Remember the halos that the old painters put over the saints? I want you to try something. As you look around the room, imagine that everyone here is a beautiful painting in a beautiful frame – an image of God. Halos glowing. Priceless. And everyday, as you greet your friends, perhaps for coffee or tea, as you sit in the kitchen, as you stand in the garage and talk to your friends, as you look at your fellow students or workers, look around the room at the most valuable thing there and understand that it is not a tenth as valuable as your worst enemy is to God. Look around your room again and see the gold of your friend’s hair or cheeks, the diamonds that are their eyes, the rubies that are their lips, the ivory that forms their fingernails and teeth. Imagine how valuable a piece of artwork they are – and how valuable to God the person you want to talk about is.

But what about necessary information? Is it gossip to say that so-and-so is in the hospital?

No. But consider what your friend would say if he or she were here. If what you are saying would embarrass you or your friend if you said it in front of your friend, then don’t say it at all. It is ok to say “June was in a car wreck and is in Ruby.” It is not ok to say, “June was drinking the other night and wrecked her car.”

This is where Jesus would say, “Why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” Many of us have developed the tradition of gossiping under the justification of sharing necessary information for praying. But don’t we often share more than we need to share?

I actually attended a church in Atlanta of a couple hundred people who had a very strong “No Gossip” policy. One of my teenage daughter’s friends who attended the church was more than six months pregnant before my daughter or us found out. All we had heard was to pray for the teen’s mother, because “she is having a difficult time.” That was all that was necessary - and that was all that was shared.

Part of the way they controlled the gossip was an understanding among the people. When one person would begin to move from useful prayer information into gossip, one of the people would almost always say, “I think we’re moving into gossip” and the conversation would be changed to another subject. For you see, gossip is like adultery – it takes at least two people to commit this sin.

And as soon as I wrote that comment, my mind turned to Facebook. All the rules of face-to-face gossip apply to Facebook. If it would embarrass you or your friend in public, don’t write it. And if you see gossip on Facebook, the appropriate way to respond is always in private – never in public - with a politely worded request to reconsider the post. Not a demand. Not an accusation. A politely worded private request to “please reconsider if our mutual friend would want this posted.” As Paul writes in I Corinthians chapter four, ” When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly.” This is how Christians are to respond.

And what is perhaps the most single important way to remember not to gossip? Consider this: When you gossip, you almost always are giving a judgment on another person’s behavior or actions or speech. And there seems to be a law of the Universe: Those who gossip will be gossiped about, just as those who judge will be judged by the same standard that they judged another by.

As Christians, we live in the sure knowledge that there is another much wiser than we are who is ready to judge each one of us at the end of time. I’ve noticed in my life, that as soon as I condemn another person for an action, a situation, a weakness, or a sin, I will find myself with that same action, situation, weakness or sin within days, often within hours. God is jealous of His right to judge each one of us for our actions. And gossip usually contains a judgement.

We, on the other hand, are to focus upon our own transgressions, our own sins, our own shortfalls in holiness, working to improve ourselves and give others assistance – practical assistance to others in trouble. Gossip is never that assistance.

Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are fully able to make any person aware of when they are stuck in sin. The drug user, for instance, knows better than you do just how badly he or she is addicted to the drug. The man who cannot keep the four-letter words from flowing from his mouth is fully aware of his speech pattern. Even the liar knows just how difficult it is to keep lying. Yet because they do not have the Holy Spirit – or do not listen to the Spirit if they have the Spirit – they do not change for the better. No condemnation we give them will help with that change. Only our love and positive suggestions to find and listen to God, and our help in pointing out the direction to God will make a difference. And pointing towards sin is not pointing towards God.

Our job is to connect people with the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ. Our job is to introduce people to Jesus Christ and together with Jesus, help our friends come to listen to the Holy Spirit. No one who is truly listening to the Holy Spirit will gossip for long – or continue in any particular sin. The difficulty is that we don’t like to listen to the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit speaks to us and focuses upon our issues. The Spirit doesn’t gossip about other people.

If we want to listen to the Holy Spirit, we first must accept the Holy Spirit, which is done through baptism. And then, we must make time for two-way prayer, finding a place of quiet to speak to God our wants and needs, and asking questions – and then listening for the still, small voice inside us that speaks back to us. And finally, we must do what the Spirit asks, knowing that the Spirit will never contradict Holy Scripture.

So instead of letting the feathers of gossip escape from our pillow of sin, let us send out feathers of love, feathers that lift up others, feathers that encourage other people, feathers that float off and touch other people with a gentle, wonderful touch, like the gentle touch of the Holy Spirit when the Spirit guides us to all things bright and beautiful. Let our words be the words of the Holy Spirit, the words of Christ, the words that give life to our friends and neighbors and family. When we are tempted to gossip or to listen to gossip, let us simply change the subject: “Let me tell you what God did for me yesterday…” Turn your gossip into praise!

And so we come back once again to God. Our solution to escaping the sin of gossip is to listen closer to the Holy Spirit, to read the Word of God more often, to always keep our connection with the Holy Spirit active during the day. And if we do that – listen to the Holy Spirit and read the Word of God more often – we will find that we will rarely be the subject of gossip, but will become the subject of a quiet praise from our friends, a good example to be pointed to, a holy saint that God will commend one day: "Well done, good and faithful servant."

How to Trade Fear for Hope - Getting Through the Crashes in our Lives

Job 6; Psalm 25; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 12:9-21

“Well, we’re lost!” The young pilot looked over at the older man on the secret mission who was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. “We’ve only about 15 more minutes worth of fuel, so I’m taking us down so we’ll have a chance when the engines stop.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” The older man was wearing a business suit and a fedora hat, but there was something that marked him as a pilot, too. Maybe it was the confidence, maybe the way his still sharp eyes scanned the horizon.

There were eight on the B-17. There were the two businessmen and another passenger returning to his unit in Australia, and there were the five crew members. They had taken off from Hawaii about 13 hours earlier and had flown some 1800 miles, but they were lost in the South Pacific, and they’d been lost for the last couple of hours. And now they were going to crash into the cold water without any sign of land visible.

As they descended, the crew put blankets and pillows around them to handle the shock of the landing. Three rafts were stashed, ready to be deployed. Emergency rations were put at the ready. The older man grabbed some handkerchiefs and about 60 feet of rope. They sent out one final message and then they crashed into heavy waves. They were in the ocean, with a thousand feet of deep water below them and no land in sight.

Almost immediately, water began pouring into the plane. Everyone quickly climbed out on a wing, got the rafts into the water and then looked around for the emergency rations they had piled up. They were gone, lost in the crash, deep in the water. They climbed into the rafts and watched the plane sink away into the dark depths.

They took inventory. Most of them had been injured in the crash. They had five oranges. They had bailing buckets, a bible, a map, some pencils and knives and pistols, the clothes on the their backs, three fish hooks, but no bait, and they used most of the 60 foot of rope to tie the three rafts together.

It was October of 1942, and the weather at night was cold, while the days were hot and dry. They ate an orange every day – a small orange shared between eight adult men. Sharks swam just below the surface, and small fish followed the rafts, but they wouldn’t touch the unbaited hooks, nor were the fish the least bit interested in bits of oranges used as bait. The men were sunburned and salt covered their bodies. There was nothing to drink, because you can’t drink salt water, and now there were no more oranges. They tried shooting at seagulls, but those gulls stayed too far away and finally the guns were too rusty to use because of the salt. The men were depressed and sad, they were afraid – almost certainly they were going to die – and they still had no idea where they were or which direction to try to travel. They were tired, hungry, thirsty, sunburned, and itchy. They were lost with nothing but the ocean around them. Their fear had turned into hopelessness.

Finally on morning of the eighth day, the men resorted to discussing how they might cut off one man’s toes and use those toes as bait. The older man changed the subject and had one man read some scripture, and then they prayed for a miracle. And then, they settled back to nap in the hot mid-day sun. The older man pulled his fedora hat over his face.

And suddenly, he felt something on his head that weighed more than that hat. As he looked out from under the hat, he could see the other men had frozen in place and they were looking at whatever was on his hat. The older man slowly, ever so slowly moved his hand carefully up by his ear and then in a flash, he grabbed the seagull by the feet and with his other hand he wrung its neck. That seagull quickly was plucked and became a meal for those men and its guts became bait that allowed them to catch a couple of small fish.

And that evening, rain came and the men captured enough water for several days.

They weren’t out of the ocean yet – it would be more than two weeks more before planes flew by, they would wave to the planes, and they would be found and rescued, but God had rescued them already.

And the older man?

He’d been in tight places before – he’d even been critically injured in a plane crash a year earlier. His body was so badly injured then that ambulance drivers took away dead bodies from the crash before they took him to the hospital. But he recovered then and he had many years to live onward, living until 1973 when he was 83 years old.

He lost 40 pounds during those weeks at sea – he never really liked the sea – for he was one of the most famous pilots in American history, the man who had shot down more enemy planes than any other American in the first World War, a man who became the president of Eastern Airlines, the man known as Eddie Rickenbacher.

Eddie survived because he had hope. He had crashed before and lived, and He knew that his government would be looking for him. He knew his government had enough power – ships, planes, men – to find him. He had faith in his government – and he had faith in his God, for he knew his God truly owned all of those ships, planes, and men, and his God controlled the government – and the seagulls.

Rickenbacher’s original secret mission was to visit several American bases and then make recommendations to the generals and admirals in Washington. When he returned from his time on board the rafts, he had some very specific recommendations about the emergency equipment, water, and food that should be stored INSIDE every raft, recommendations that saved countless lives during the war. And the government was able to use the good news of Eddie’s rescue to lift everyone’s spirits. It had an effect which was much stronger than the original plan made by the men in Washington. God used this crash to save countless other men as the war went on.

And a legend grew up how in Eddie’s later years, every Friday night, Eddie went down to the pier near his home in California and he took a bucket of shrimp and fed the sea gulls, saying, “Thank you. Thank you.” to the sea gulls… and to God.

In our lives, we have many times when we are filled with fear. Sometimes, it is a fun-type of fear, like when you come to the top of the roller coaster and it begins to head down the other side. Sometimes, you know the fear can be handled because you have a wonderful protector around, like a child being tossed up and down by his dad.

But then, there are other times. As Job said,

“If only my anguish could be weighed
and all my misery be placed on the scales!
 It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas—
no wonder my words have been impetuous.
(Job 6:2-3)

There are times when all you have is a mind-numbing fear, a fear that everything bad is going to happen, a fear that the world is collapsing in around you, a fear that there is nothing you can do to keep the evil away and you know you are going to be hurt, injured, and it is the end of everything good.

It may be like the Friday I saw people being fired and laid off at one company I worked for. In fact, I was asked to help fire and lay off a couple of people and then I walked back into my office and saw that the company president had returned to my desk a book I had lent him some weeks before and at that moment I knew that my name would also be called for me to come into the personnel department. And very soon, my name was called and I was laid off.

I’ve seen this sort of fear on family members faces at the emergency rooms. I’ve seen it in people’s eyes when they’ve been told by their spouse that their marriage is over. I’ve seen it in the faces of people I’ve had to lay off when my business could no longer afford to pay them. Eddie Rickenbacher saw this fear in the faces of the men on those rafts in the South Pacific.

But there is a way to trade fear away and put hope in its place.

The first thing is to realize that the world around us is indeed an evil and frightening place. It surrounds us like a huge ocean and there is nothing visible except that world ocean, that ocean of murky trouble, that world where dangerous sharks swim just out of sight, an ocean filled with salty corrosion that gradually destroys our souls and bodies, a place where a huge dangerous creature might suddenly come up out of the depths and destroy us or our family.

But none of that really matters, because, like the men on the raft, we-who-know-Christ are not truly part of that ocean of despair, but we sail on top of that world, floating in the bright sunshine because we are creatures of the air and the light. Like a lighthouse, the Lord will lead us to safety. David understood this when he wrote our Psalm, particularly this verse:

My eyes are ever on the Lord,
for only he will release my feet from the snare.
(Psalm 25:15)

Just as the seagull was caught by Rickenbacher, our feet are often caught. Will we be dragged down, torn apart and destroyed? It will happen if we are left to our own strength, for the evil one who has caught us is much stronger than we are.

But we don’t have to worry. We are not seagulls caught by men. Instead, we have the LORD, who can and will release our feet from the one who snares us. As Paul wrote to the Romans, “we boast in the hope of the glory of God.”

No, while the world is like a big ocean that can swallow us up, we know that our Lord is looking for us and He will find us if we will do our part and wave Him over to our rafts floating on that terrible ocean.

But are we important enough to be searched for? How do we know we are good enough for Jesus to rescue us?

Jesus went into a synagogue one Sabbath day. The Jews of the day considered that you could not work on the Sabbath, and healing people was considered work.

On that Sabbath morning, Jesus found a man with a shriveled up hand. It was not regular size, it was damaged, it was twisted together, it looked dried up. If Jesus healed this man, it would get Jesus in trouble – big trouble. And this man with his shriveled up hand wasn’t anyone special. He was like all people – he had done some good in his life – and he had done some bad in his life. Yet he couldn't work well with his damaged hand. But he had two things going for him that day…Jesus was there…and the man believed that Jesus could help him.

Jesus cares about all people, not just the very good people. So that morning He healed the man’s hand. And Jesus got into big trouble. Matthew tells us that “…The Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.” Pretty rough stuff for helping another person.

But Jesus cares about everyone. He went so far as to sacrifice His life for us. And Jesus’ Father controls the entire Universe. Jesus’ Father controls absolutely everything He wants to control. And so: “I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”

What are your fears? What fears would you like to toss deep into the ocean and replace with the hope that comes from knowing that Jesus loves you and will protect you?

Now there is one very important thing we have to remember. Jesus doesn’t always act as quickly as we want – Eddie Rickenbacher and his men were stuck on those life rafts for 24 days. Jesus doesn’t always do things the way we would like – one of the men on the rafts died while they waited to be rescued. Sometimes losing a loved one provides us with lessons we need to learn. But Jesus does have our best interests at heart. The difficult thing is that sometimes our best interests require us to stay on our own rafts, drifting lost on the ocean of the world, without rescue, without hope until we turn to Jesus for help - and even for many days afterwards.

And then, Jesus will use the entire situation for our good and the good of the people around us, just as Rickenbacker's ordeal lead to many other lives being saved. Sometimes we won’t understand what good was served by the troubles we go through. Sometimes we find out many years later. Sometimes we won’t find out until we reach Heaven and talk with Jesus face-to-face. But you can be sure that Jesus is ready to move in and help you when you find yourself drifting alone on that ocean of despair – and you ask for help from Him.

Remember this, though. Jesus is polite. He will not step in until you ask Him to step in. He won’t send you a seagull until you ask Him for help. But when you ask, admitting that you aren’t nearly as capable as He is, He will show up for you. When you need Him…not necessarily when you want Him. For trading fear for hope means that you haven’t been rescued yet. Hope is a state of looking toward the future. Hope is when we believe that the rescue will come someday. We have no need of hope once we've been rescued.

But we still float on the world's ocean, waiting to die. And we have hope because of this. Rest in God alone. Jesus has already told us that we who follow Him have eternal life. Jesus died for us…and came back to life, showing the entire world that it can be done when God wants it to be done. Our fate lies in the hands of God – not in the hands of Fate or Luck or ourselves.

So when you are floating on the world’s ocean, surrounded by sharks, dying of thirst and hunger…remember that it is a loving God who gives us rain…and airplanes….and seagulls….and that is how to turn your fear into hope.

Jesus wanted us to remember a few things after He left us. He wanted us to remember His teachings. He wanted us to remember His Resurrection. And just as that seagull's body was broken up and eaten uncooked by Eddie and his friends, just as the seagull's blood was dripping on the rafts that day - Jesus wants us to remember that He gave up His body and blood for us. For each of us.

And so He told us, that as often as we eat bread and as often as we drink wine or grape juice, we are to remember Him. "This is My body, which is broken for you...This is My blood, which is shed for you."