Becoming Christ - First Steps toward Evangelism

Our Readings:

Psalm 119:129-136 (NIV)

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 (HCSB)

Good Morning! I want to tell you a story this morning.

There was a Christian woman I know who once took a job with Taco Bell. At the time, she was quite gray, getting some age on her. The interviewing manager liked her nice, outgoing personality and so decided to put her on the first drive-through window, taking orders and the money from customers.

She struggled a bit the first week, for there were many codes to memorize to enter orders. But she had worked many places over the years, and soon had the codes under control. But another incident happened that first week that set the tone for what was to follow.

One of the teenagers who worked there was upset about something and came back near her, cussing a blue streak, loud enough the man in the car outside the window’s eyes widened. She said, “Excuse me a minute,”, closed the window, turned around and shouted, as only a woman who has raised several children and was working on grandchildren can, “Pipe down! The customers can hear you!”

There was silence. She turned back to the man, opened the window, smiled and said, “That’ll be $8.17.” The man gave her a big smile back.

Soon, she began talking and listening to the teenagers. She listened to their stories, she gave them loving advice, she hugged them, and generally treated them like any good grandmother would. The kids were lonely, usually had no idea how to handle life, and how their words were hurting the other teens in the shop. She taught them how to care for each other, and she prayed with them at the drop of a hat. She kept their confidences.

Once, she overheard a conversation where three girls were giving advice to another girl, “It’ll just take an afternoon and your parents will never need to know” was part of what she heard. As they moved away, she motioned the young girl over. “What’s happening?” she asked. The story came out – a good-looking young man, an evening in the car, news on a pregnancy test, and the young man said goodbye. The older woman explained about the Women’s Care Center, how they would provide diapers and help and other options that would allow her to raise the child.

An older worker joked about committing suicide. She sat with him on break and they talked. He seemed better. She gave him a ride home that evening and they talked more and they prayed. He began joking with her over the next few weeks – now in a positive way.

The girl came back a couple weeks later and said she’d keep the baby. And the older woman gave thanks and praised God.

This story is true. Since then, the woman has worked in several places, and always makes a point to listen to people, to give wise, biblical advice, and to pray with the people anytime, anywhere. She says that God puts her in different places and anywhere she is, she looks to share the love of Christ. There. With whoever needs Christ. And she loves her jobs, for she loves working for Jesus in those places.

I’ve found over the years that most people get the idea that we are to share the Gospel of Christ with people, but I’ve also found that most people don’t know how to do this, are afraid of doing it, or worried that they will mess up. Let me deal with a couple of things first.

Did you notice in our Gospel of Matthew reading that Jesus was talking about the kingdom of heaven in each part? Jesus compares the kingdom to a mustard seed which grows into a large bush, to yeast in 50 lbs of flour, to a treasure buried in a field, to a priceless pearl, and to a net collecting good and bad fish. And at the end, he compares every disciple of scripture to a landowner who brings out of his storeroom what is new and what is old.

A couple of minutes on the details. A mustard seed is very small, but the Middle Eastern mustard plant can grow 10 feet tall. Jesus is saying that the kingdom will start small, but grow – and it will grow like a plant grows, not like a building.

There is a difference between builders and farmers. Builders make detailed plans and put together their buildings in large modules. If we were to expand this physical church, we’d draw up plans, raise money, and then put together a new building or a major expansion, right? But a farmer – a farmer puts seeds in the ground and then nurtures them with access to water, fertilizer, soil, and sun. The growing plant does the work. In fact, with the right conditions, the plants would grow without cost. Jesus does not compare the kingdom to a building like a palace, but to a plant. He expects the plant to grow itself.

This has definite consequences for us here today. There are church builders, church growth experts, who tell us that we need to invest thousands of dollars in sound and light systems, that we need to invest tens of thousands of dollars in local advertising, that we need to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions in buildings, and if we build it, they will come. After all, this is how Americans built all their great companies, their great industries, their chains of restaurants – capital investment, the hiring of professionals, the investment of much time and money in the development of the right product.

But Jesus did not ask us to do this. He says, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that grows to become a tree. This is the difference between an organization created by men and an organism created by God. If the DNA is right, the organism grows from a tiny seed into a tree. The church grows from a tiny beginning into a large, strong organism.

Organisms have a strength that organizations don’t have. Plants have a strength that buildings don’t have. That strength is the ability to adapt and recover and grow from small beginnings.

I once had some crepe myrtles. I had planted them, little 18 inch whips, along our driveway at Lowell. Saundra went mowing – I told her to watch out for the crepe myrtles, but she thought I was talking about the apple trees growing in the upper part of our property. She mowed down all those little 18 inch crepe myrtles, pruning them down to the ground with the riding lawn mower. But they came up and formed beautiful bushes the next year.

A few years later, they were frozen down to the ground by some dry zero-degree weather. By July, they were back up, three ft tall and reached 6 feet that year.

That’s the difference between an organization like a restaurant or a clothing store – and an organism like a church. The organism has the DNA to endure bad times and recover. Our church can take this COVID stuff, adapt, and grow back where a restaurant like Ruby Tuesdays or a clothing store like Sears may not. We just have to work on getting the DNA right, on adapting, on making sure each one of our cells can grow by itself – and each of you are the cells of this organism.

Jesus talked about the kingdom of heaven being like yeast that is mixed into 50 pounds of flour. The yeast cells actually grow and divide throughout the flour, going throughout the dough. It doesn’t take much yeast – just the right warm, moist environment, and some time for the yeast to multiply and spread, and the whole 50 pound loaf can be risen ready for the oven. What Jesus is saying is that we, the church body, are to grow throughout the world and help the world. We don’t stay in one spot with a handful of people, but we are constantly growing throughout the world around us until we spread throughout the world. Today, in particular, it doesn’t matter where we spread the kingdom – we can be online together almost anywhere! After all, most of us are in contact online with people all across the country, aren’t we? Each of us could potentially lead people to Jesus around town, around the state, even in California and never leave our home and spend nothing except a bit of time!

In verse 44, Jesus makes a different point. He says that the kingdom of heaven is like a man finding a treasure buried in a field. He sells everything he has and buys the field, for he recognizes the value of the kingdom. What are we willing to give up for the treasures of the kingdom? Jesus is clearly saying that we should be willing to give up absolutely everything for the kingdom, to know God intimately, to become close followers of Jesus, for Jesus repeats the meaning with the story of the merchant and the priceless pearl. Yet we often worry about spending too much time talking about church. Jesus would have us all make it a full-time job! And in another place, He reminds us that God provides for the sparrows – won’t God provide for us, too?

Finally, Jesus tells us tat the kingdom of heaven is like a large fishing net. It catches everything – tuna, mahi-mahi, halibut, flounder – as well as sharks, starfish, sea urchins and other things you won’t want to eat. There are good, righteous people – and there are evil people caught up in the kingdom. The kingdom net tries to catch them all – the doctors, the lawyers, the engineers, the teachers, the welders, the carpenters, the bricklayers, the custodians, the garbage truck drivers, the secretaries, the tattoo artists, the drunks, the drug users, the drug dealers, the hit men, the prostitutes, the reporters, the welfare mothers, the truck drivers, the gangsters, even the politicians and every other way people make a living. We aren’t the people who decide if someone gets into the kingdom – we just try to catch the fish.

God and God alone decides at the end of the age who God keeps and who the angels throw away. Yet we often fail at reaching the very people who need Christ the most because we are afraid. We are afraid and only invite people who are already attending church. That’s like fishing for men but requiring we clean them and filet them before we let them into the church. We don’t want to fish just for nice Mrs Paul’s fish filets in our churches – we also want the slimiest bottom feeding catfish we can find! God wants everyone in the net!

And if you understand this, Jesus says that every student of Scripture instructed in the kingdom of heaven – that means us – is like a landowner who brings new stuff and old stuff out of his storeroom. In other words – scripture teaches us some treasured ideas that are new – and some treasured ideas that are old. Jesus says Scripture that we understand is like treasures kept in a storeroom – but those treasures are to be shared.

So now that we’ve learned this from Jesus’ words, from Holy Scripture, how can we apply it to our situation here?

Folks, we need to adopt some kingdom thinking. We need to remember that God is a farmer, not a builder, and we need to remember that God’s Spirit dwells in all of us!

I used to have an orchard up in Lowell. One of the things I found was that in every part of an apple tree is all the information needed to make another apple tree. Orchard owners have known this for thousands of years. And so orchard owners take a tiny twig from a good apple tree – say, a Golden Delicious - and graft it to a good root from another apple tree, and then another Golden Delicious tree grows up and gives us more Golden Delicious apples. It is because the twig has the DNA of the Golden Delicious.

So in our church, we have to stop thinking that this is an organization – or worse, a dead building – and begin thinking of us as an organism like a mustard plant or an apple tree and we are the individual cells or the individual twigs!

Each one of us needs to be able to grow back the important part of our church by ourselves! Is that scary? It’s scary because we’ve grown up thinking that only programs pulled together by the leadership of the church can grow the church. It’s scary because we’ve been taught that we need to use professional programs, professionally made Vacation Bible Schools, large Christmas programs, professionally written Easter cantata’s, big church-wide sales, and other activities that always involve a big group of people and lots of money and resources. It’s only scary because we stopped doing church the Biblical way about a hundred years ago when we started treating churches like other American organizations, needing capital and human resources and land instead of the organism it’s supposed to be, needing only the words and deeds of individual Christians leading other people to Christ. And you know? When we changed from Biblical ministry to corporate ministry, that was about the time the Methodist Church began to decline. We started following the ideas of men instead of the ideas of God. So what are we supposed to do?

We are to become Christians. And you know what a Christian is? In the original Greek, it meant to be a “little Christ”. Jesus told us the night of the last supper, that each of His disciples would do far more than Jesus did. And so, we might want to look at what Jesus did.

Jesus talked a lot about loving God and loving other people. And Jesus walked the talk. He taught stuff and did the same stuff. We know that Jesus loved God and loved other people. You can too, right?

Last week, you’ll remember I suggested that you make a list of twelve people who are probably not practicing Christians, and to begin to pray for them daily?

Then, I said to call them once a week. Talk with them, ask them about life, if you need to tell them that you’ve just been a bit lonely and need to talk during this COVID time. Take a minute or two in the conversation to tell them something you’ve learned about God or Christ. It’s not necessary to convert them in this phone call. And I’ll open this up – text them, message them, call them, post on Facebook, share our sermons, share our worship services, even talk to people in person or write them an old-style letter! Let people know us as the people who talk about God!

Have you ever seen water work on a stone over time? Drop by drop, the stone gradually is worn away. That’s our strategy. Week by week, we will speak a bit about God and Christ until our friend or relative or neighbor turns to Christ.

If you don’t know what to talk about, try this. “I’ve been praising God for the beautiful weather we’ve had – no snow, very little rain – it has been beautiful to watch the clouds God’s given us out the window.”

And if it happens to rain – Praise God for the rain.

The important thing is to begin praising God to everybody for everything. Let me give you an example. If we're at Kroger’s, we have a full buggy, and the person behind us has only a couple items, we’ll probably let them in front of us, right? Of course we would. And then, they’ll say something like, “Thank you, you’re so nice!” And then, we’d naturally say, “You’re welcome.” And that would be it for the conversation.

But the person who is praising God will say in response. “Well, God asked me to let you in front, because He told me it would help you.” We are giving credit where credit is due, for the Holy Spirit really did speak to us about this.

We bake a great lemon meringue pie and someone tells us, “That’s a great pie!”

We might normally say, “Thank you!”, but the person who praises God will give credit where it is due. We’ll say, “Thank you, but God sent me a wonderful woman forty years ago who taught me how to bake.” We give credit where it is due. We praise God. We praise God about everything. We work to make it become a habit.

And you know, if we will start praising God to our twelve disciples – for that is what they will become, after all. I’d like us to consider that we, who have attended church for years, know much more about God and Christ and the Holy Spirit than our twelve people who probably aren’t practicing Christians do.

But if we start praising God once a week in conversation with them, if we’ll start praising God to the servers at the restaurant, if we’ll start praising God to our children and relatives and friends and neighbors online and the checkout lady and our friends at work – something wonderful is going to happen!

First, if we haven’t done much of this, all of these people will look at us like we’ve grown a second head. But after they get over the shock that we talk about God and Jesus, in about six weeks they’ll come to us one day and say, “I have a problem, will you pray for me?” and we’ll listen and we’ll listen and we’ll listen and we’ll pray with them right then and there just like my friend did at Taco Bell. And they’ll come back to us with deeper and deeper questions about God and Christ, and one day, we’ll be able to say to them – “Have you accepted Jesus as the Lord of your life?” And they’ll probably say, “no, not yet.”

And then, we’ll ask them – “would you like to?”

And then, they’ll either say, “I’ve got some more questions, or I’ll think about it.” Or they’ll look at us with tears and say, “Yes.”

And then, we just tell them to pray after us a prayer something like this, and you can pray with me this morning, even at home. I’ve put the prayer in our bulletin:

“Father God,

I need You. I’ve made a mess of things and I need Your help.

Please send your Son and Your Holy Spirit to take control of my life.

Help me to follow Your Son, Jesus.

Amen.”

Don’t worry about the exact words. The important things are that we help our friend confess their weakness and to ask Jesus to lead our friend.

"The measure of a successful church is the amount of time spent each week by the members lifting up friends and neighbors and family and pointing them to Christ."

I know another woman who worked at a deli counter. She began praising God to her customers and they looked at her strangely the first time, but soon they were coming to her asking for prayers and asking her questions about God’s working in this world.

I know a man who talks with his online video gaming buddies and has private chats with them when they are having personal problems and prays with them and teaches them about God and Christ.

I know a woman who simply calls up friends every day, finds out how things are going and prays with them after cheering them up. And another older woman who posts a devotional every morning explaining what she has learned from reading her Bible.

You see, all these people break the ice by praising God and then the people begin coming to them about God questions.

For the measure of a successful church is not the size of the offering. It is not the number of people who come to the worship service each week. It is not size of the building. The measure of a successful church is the amount of time spent each week by the members lifting up friends and neighbors and family and pointing them to Christ. For if a church is constantly praising God and explaining Christ to people, then it is doing God’s will and God will send people to them.

For we know that many people waste a lot of time talking about Mountaineer football, about politics, and about the trivial and fearful things of the world. Our duty as Christians is to be little Christs, praising God and lifting people up.

You know the nicest thing about following this Biblical model where everyone praises God? It doesn’t take big meetings and it doesn’t take big money and anyone can make a difference just by deciding, “I can do that!” on their own. Can you begin to talk a little bit about God each week to people who don’t appear to know Christ? Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor!” “I can do that!” “And Neighbor!” “I know that you can do that too!”

But Pastor, what about showing Christ with our lives?

That is critical also. But unfortunately, about 40 years ago we began using that idea as an excuse to stop telling people about Christ. And you know, many people today can’t connect the dots between you being nice and Jesus Christ. They think, “Some people are just nice and others aren’t.” They haven’t been to church more than a handful of times in their lives and so they don’t have the background to connect a pleasant person with Jesus Christ when television always shows Christians as mean, judgmental people or as the idiotic comedic relief character. Watch some British mystery shows – the Christian is always the murderer or an idiot. American shows are almost as bad.

So we need to both show Christ in our lives AND tell people about God and Christ, praising God and explaining Jesus’ teachings. And if you think you don’t know enough – what have you learned in the many years you’ve listened to sermons? Do you realize that if we come to church once a week for ten years, we’ve heard 500 sermons? Compared to people who have only come to church a handful of times, we should be experts!

Our world around us is very ignorant of Christian ideas. I had a college student – a grad student – ask me once: “Who is this pastor? Is he the government official in charge of the church?” Surely we can handle this level of question.

And so, this week, I want us to continue to pray for the twelve people on our lists. Make your list if you haven’t done so already – twelve people who probably don’t know Jesus Christ. Put the list on your refrigerator and pray for these people at breakfast or lunch every day. Call them or talk or text them once a week or once every couple weeks, using your Covid loneliness as an excuse. And find a way to praise God in the conversation at least once.

Next week, we’ll learn more.

Father, I pray for these people in these churches. Help them to become the kingdom of heaven here in this world, reaching out to grow new, young Christians through their praise of you, becoming fruitful in their lives and the lives of those friends, neighbors, and family around them. I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Remember: A mustard seed is fully capable of growing a huge mustard bush by itself. Make a list of twelve people and begin praying for their eternal soul and praising God to your friends, neighbors, and family – and this church will grow like a mustard plant. Be a mustard seed.

Benediction

Now Go into the world, hearing the word and understanding it as it lights your path. May what is given to you by God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit produce a wonderful crop of blessings for you and the world around you. Amen.

Weeds and Seeds - How to Survive the Harvest

Our Readings:
Psalm 86:11-17
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Good Morning!

I have a question for you so I’ll understand you better. How many of you have been attending church here for at least five years? 10, 20, 40, etc?

Great! That’s a great way to spend your years, learning about God. Let’s learn some more!

Last week, you will remember that we discussed Jesus’ parable of the sower, where the man scattered seeds on a path, on rocky ground, on thorn-covered ground and on good ground and we found that the seeds in this parable was the Word of God about the kingdom of Heaven. And we discussed how to prepare our hearts for the Word of God so that it might grow inside of us.

The last line of this parable talks about producing a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. But what was that crop? What is the crop that the seed is to produce?

In this week’s reading, Jesus tells us another parable about seed. This time, Jesus tells us that an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. Let me tell you a story.

As you may know, in Texas football there are two Christian powerhouse teams. There is Texas Christian University – TCU – and there is Southern Methodist University – SMU. They play each other every year and have a rivalry like WVU and Pitt used to have, or like Michigan and Ohio St.

In November of 1999, SMU traveled to TCU for a humiliating defeat that most people saw coming. SMU left town, defeated 21 to nothing. But the SMU band had the last laugh. It seems that just before halftime, each SMU band member was given a handful of rye grass seed. The band marched onto the field, and soon moved into their trademark Diamond M formation in the center of the field, marching in place for a minute or two. It was at that time that they all quietly dropped their rye grass seed and continued to march in place, tamping down those seeds into the mud of the field.

So when spring time came – the bright green rye grass quickly grew much faster than the other grass on the field, leaving a nice green outline of an M – M for Southern METHodist University on the field of Texas Christian University. And it came back over the next couple of years as the grass faded out.

Yes, an enemy had come and sowed weeds among the wheat that game day!

In the story Jesus told, much the same happened. The wheat grew – but there were weeds growing within the wheat field. An enemy had mixed weed seed in with the good wheat seed. The servants asked if they should remove the weeds, but the master said, “No, that will uproot the wheat, too. Let’s just wait until harvest time, when we’ll collect and burn the weeds and then gather up the wheat.

Now, once again, this time after Jesus had finished speaking, the disciples wanted to know the answer to the parable – what it meant. So they asked Jesus and He explained:

The sower of the good seed is the Son of Man – Son of Man is an expression used in Daniel and in Ezekiel to refer to the Messiah – the man who will become the savior of Israel. Jesus often used this expression to refer to Himself.

Jesus continued. The field is the world and the good seed are the people of the kingdom – in other words, the people who follow Jesus.

The weeds are the people of the evil one – Satan and the enemy who sows them is the devil. Notice – Jesus says there are people who do what the devil wants. The harvest is at the end of the age and the harvesters are angels.

Jesus goes on to say that the weeds will be pulled up and burned in the fire – and Jesus says that these weeds are everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will all be thrown into the blazing furnace, and then “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” “Righteous” means those who are right and acceptable to God. I’ll come back to that.

So we are beginning to get the idea that the crop Jesus keeps talking about, the fruit He sometimes talks about, the wheat He mentions here are people who will be part of the Kingdom of God.

Now earlier I asked you how long you’d been attending here and some of you said many years. Now, in all that time – or, let’s say, the last five years – how many of you have led at least one adult to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior? In the last five years, how many of you have led at least one adult to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior?

Hmm. We may have some work to do. Let me start with some basics, which you may already know, but we all need to be able to explain these things to others, particularly to the new people who will be joining us this fall. Let’s see if this can give you some ideas that you can use to help other people.

Jesus speaks of a fire and the kingdom of Heaven. Every person is headed for one of those destinations. We either are wheat or a weed, destined for the kingdom of Heaven or destined for the blazing furnace.

Now there is one thing I hope you’ll understand about me. I believe that Heaven is real and Hell is real because – Jesus speaks of these as if they are real. We can’t believe that Scripture is inspired without believing that Heaven and Hell are real!

Spending eternity with God in Heaven is wonderful, because God loves us more than any human ever could. Spending eternity without God in Hell is a terrible tragedy, for it means being alone except for the others who are also in Hell – the devil Satan, yes, but even if Satan were not there, there would be all those people who decided that they did not want to bow down and accept the Son of God as their leader, the people who wanted to be in full control of their future, the people who could not accept God in control – and that includes such people as Genghis Khan, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and millions of troublemakers, gangsters, bandits, murderers, thieves, and other people who took what they wanted and still take what they want from each other. If you go to Hell, you are left with them to negotiate some sort of rules and way of living together. Or you can accept life following the rule of the kindest, wisest, most patient Being that has ever existed.

You see, there are two types of people. The weeds are the people who say, “I will decide what is best for me,” like a toddler, or a teenager, or a little god would. And the wheat are the people who say, “God, please decide what is best for me.”

For God is like an ancient king whose word was law in the land. Humans are born in rebellion to God – have you ever noticed that an infant cares nothing for anyone else, but loudly demands service from Mom and Dad, and anyone else around it? They are totally selfish – we have to TRAIN them not to be selfish. “Johnny, share!” and usually by the time they are five or six they are reasonably able to think about the needs of others.

You see, the root problem of someone who is not ready to accept Christ is that that person really does understand that they are being asked to accept another’s leadership, to bow down, to accept that they are NOT little gods in control of the universe around them. They don’t want to admit they are not in control of the Universe around them. And accepting Christ as Son of God means that we have to accept someone else is more powerful than we are and worthy of being followed. And so for many people, it takes a bit of life lived to see that we really can’t control the Universe around us. We must lose a job, lose a relationship, lose our health before we will admit that we need the help of Someone much wiser and much more powerful than we are.

And so, for God the King, the question is really quite simple. Will we swear allegiance to God’s Son, Jesus Christ? Will we stop being in rebellion and follow the King’s Son? For if we will take that step, God knows that God has eternity to teach us how to live.

Just as the rebel breaks the King’s laws everyday and doesn’t even care, the rebel to God doesn’t care how a Christian should live. But the man or woman who stops being a rebel, who chooses to follow God’s Son Jesus, who bows down and says, “I need help” can then be taught. We won’t be perfect for many years, for we need to learn what God’s rules are before we can follow them. But God is happy, for now the new, loyal subject is trying to follow the King’s Son and to listen to the King’s rules.

For, you see, it is not our ability to follow God’s rules that matters most to God. It is whether or not we’ve chosen to follow the King’s Son and be loyal. For God has all of eternity to help us become better people if we have chosen to be taught.

On the other hand, the man or woman who remains in rebellion to God can never be taught.

I want you to think of a nice older woman you’ve known. She didn’t become nice overnight – she had to practice for 80 or 90 years. Now imagine how beautiful her soul will be after ten thousand years! How sweet the smile, how wonderful the expressions, how pleasant to be around!

Now think of the crabby old man you’ve know. He also did not become crabby overnight – he practiced for 70 or 80 years also. Now imagine how ugly and mean and distorted his soul will be after he practices for another ten thousand years!

God, more than any of the creatures of the world, knows that a single, simple flaw of character in a person left to themselves will grow and increase and multiply as the person lives longer and longer. And that is why we are given a choice for a while – during our lifetime – to either bow before Christ and be taught a better way – or to walk away and say, “That’s fine, God. I think I know better myself.”

And then when we die, God either takes us into God’s kingdom – or lets us continue to be alone, little gods playing at being in control until we encounter the other people like ourselves who have been practicing for centuries longer than us.

But if we want to be alone, then God no longer wants us around God and God’s Son in the Kingdom. For God, you see, is also more polite than anyone else. God lets us have our way – to follow Christ – or be alone to make our own way. It is really that simple.

The Bible talks a lot about righteousness. What is righteousness? It is simply choosing to follow Jesus, swearing allegiance to Jesus and accepting Jesus as our leader. By this decision, God decides that we are Jesus’ responsibility – and God loves Jesus very, very much, so we are accepted by God, just as you accepted that kitten because your child told you it was her's. It wasn't a particularly good kitten - all kittens have bad habits, like making messes in the corners, scratching the furniture, and leaving furballs around. But it was your child's kitten so you accepted it because of your love for your child. In the same way, God the Father accepts us because Jesus says, "They're mine!"

You may have heard that we are to believe in Jesus. That’s true. It says that a couple times in the New Testament. But the New Testament tells us to FOLLOW Jesus about 80 times. Righteousness is not a once-and-done sort of thing.

It is like walking a path through the woods. The path was made by Jesus and we are to follow Jesus. The gate that gets us started on the path is a declared belief that Jesus is the Son of God, accepting Jesus as our Lord, and baptism is the first step along that path. But it is only the first step. Sometimes we are on the path, sometimes we are off the path, sometimes WAY off the path. But as long as we are trying to find the path and follow the path behind Jesus, we are okay. God knows that with time, we’ll become wonderful people to associate with. And God gives us time – eternity.

Now, it is possible to walk so far away from the path that we choose to forget the path, to leave the path behind, to forge our own path because we think our own path is easier or better or leads to a great patch of blueberries. But then we are lost because we are no longer following Jesus, but we are following a path we’ve decided is better. Remember - blueberry bushes often hide rattlesnakes!

But if we change our mind, we are allowed to come back to the path and continue following this path of holiness that leads us into the kingdom of Heaven. For the path is the kingdom, the path teaches us to imitate Christ, the path leads us to a wonderful, abundant life, now and in eternity. Those of you watching at home, as soon as you feel safe, come back to the path and walk with us. Or call me and we’ll talk about how to follow the path even as you stay at home.

Think of the wheat seeds. Like those seeds, we grow in the soil of Scripture, are watered by the living water from Jesus, given the light of the Sun by the Son of God. And then we bear fruit. Weeds don’t bear fruit. At least, not fruit that is worth anything.

With wheat, the fruit are the new wheat seeds. How much fruit have you borne for the kingdom? How many seeds have you planted that have sprouted into baby Christians?

Remember last week? The good soil gives a good crop, a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown? Can you imagine what would happen if each of us brought two people to baptism over the next year? Can you imagine the excitement, the wonder, the good that would happen if we each one focused upon sharing what we know about Jesus to friends, neighbors, and family?

Let me suggest this. This afternoon, write down twelve names of people you know who probably aren’t practicing Christians. Begin to pray for them every day. Call them up once a week and tell them just a little bit about what you learned here. Lead them toward Christ, bit by bit, teaching what you know, listening to their lives, praying them through their troubles and their difficulties. And you will be blessed – as will we all. Make your list of twelve people to begin praying for this afternoon.

Father, I pray for these people in these churches. Ancient Gardener, your holy word is planted in our hearts as good seed in fertile soil. So nurture us that we may bear fruit abundantly. Pour down your grace and Holy Spirit upon all the people here, that they may do your will. May the soil of their hearts prove to be a wonderful and fertile place for your scripture, your word to take root and grow, becoming fruitful in their lives and the lives of those friends, neighbors, and family around them. I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Remember: A grain of wheat is destined to bear a crop. Begin working on your crop today. Make a list of twelve people and begin praying for their eternal soul.

Benediction

Now Go into the world, hearing the word and understanding it as it lights your path. May what is given to you by God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit produce a wonderful crop of blessings for you and the world around you. Amen.

Holy Scripture

Good Morning!

I want to thank you for your kind words after last week’s sermon. It has been an interesting week. As you may remember, our son Andrew came in for a visit and vacation time. On Monday, we traveled to Morgantown so he could purchase a new car. The air conditioning was out in the salesman’s end of the building. And, as sometimes happened, the car Andy wanted and the car he could afford were at odds, so we left to return to Parkersburg. Traveling through Clarksburg at dusk, we found out why God had denied Andy the new car. I was in the lead and Andy was following me a few hundred yards back. There was a flurry of traffic, a couple cars came flying and weaving through traffic past me, I dodged, and eventually got free. About that time, we got a call from Andy – “I’m okay and the lady is also okay.”

It seems Andy had been in the left lane, she had merged on, and then decided to merge left again, but Andy was in her blind spot. She bounced off him, and gave his blue car some white racing stripes and a bit of a crease. She was nice, we were nice, and the Clarksburg policeman was nice. We made a couple of new friends. Thanks to God, the damage was to Andy’s old car rather than to a brand new car. God knows best, doesn’t He?

But the week was a good time with Andy. We played chess, talked books and we talked scripture. And it reminded me of when I was 6 years old, and my mother took me to the town library in St. Marys.

At that time, the library was on the third floor of the old Illar theater. You walked up two very long flights of wooden steps and then into a fantastic room. The floor was polished hardwood, with the wax of fifty years thick on the planks. You were greeted by Mrs Klein, a thin ancient woman who must have been around 50 at the time. She later became my second grade teacher for a while. And around you, there were books, and books, and more books. Here were wondrous stories. Here was the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of centuries. Here we were on the third floor of an old, rickety wooden building with a single exit in a room filled with dry fuel ready to catch fire from the open bulbs hanging from the ceiling!

That’s why the county moved the library a couple of years later to a nice new brick-and-glass one-story building. And I continued to visit the library once every week or two. I remember checking out one book in 1966 or so. The book was called, “1970” and it had predictions of the great things that we’d have in 1970, like video telephones. Over the years, I’d remember that prediction over and over until it finally became true in the last five years as our smart phones have allowed us finally to see the person we’re talking to.

Eventually, I went to the University in Morgantown and had the chance to explore the literally millions of books in that grand library’s stacks. You know, what is amazing to me is that each and every book written took up several months at least of a man or a woman’s time. The authors thought it was so important to spend all that time writing or typing a story, or a set of instructions, or telling a history. And so you ended up after those months with “The Wizard of Oz”, the first full book I ever read other than Dick and Jane and Doctor Seuss. Or a man would write “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Or another would write “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Or still another person would decide to write “The 1987 Ford F150 Repair Guide.” At least we’ve had typewriters and word processors and computers, and cheap paper and ink and printing presses and printers to help us write and publish books over the last hundred or so years.

It wasn’t that way back in Biblical times. At the time of Jesus, to make the parchment that would be written on, you began with a calf. The calf was killed and skinned, and the thin, smooth, white leather of the underbelly was stretched and dried, then soaked in water and stretched and dried a few more times. Usually, this was a six-month process before the leather parchment was ready for ink. And the ink was expensive, hand-made usually by the scribe. Furthermore, there were highly paid professional scribes employed by the authors, for mistakes were very expensive. In general, the material and labor to produce a book the size of our Bible was at least the equivalent of $100-150 thousand of today’s dollars. One…single…copy. And this remained the price until the printing press arrived in the late fourteen hundreds.

And because of this, authors were very, very careful what they had written for them, for extra words were expensive to write, expensive in the space they took up, and expensive to copy. And so, when Matthew authored his Gospel, he thought very carefully about what he wanted to say before having that scribe come over to put pen to parchment. You can be sure that Matthew thought and prayed diligently, asking the Holy Spirit to advise him in everything said. Then Matthew told the scribe what to put onto the parchment. And after some time, the parchment was rolled up into a scroll. And that is how the original documents we call Holy Scripture were produced, with the Old Testament almost totally written in Hebrew with a bit of Aramaic, and the New Testament written in Greek.

As near as we can tell, all of the writers of the New Testament were men who originally came from the lands between modern day Israel up through Turkey. The individual letters and Gospels were written in that area and Greece between the late 30’s and roughly the year 95, beginning with Galatians and finishing up with Revelation. Then, people began to carefully hand-copy them. We have a fragment of the Gospel of John that dates from around the year 110, and several complete books of the New Testament from before 150. We have two almost complete Bibles that date from 250 AD, and thousands of fragments, individual scrolls, and sermons from the time. In fact, it has been estimated that the complete Bible could be recreated just from the sermons and sermon fragments we have from this time.

Around 1530, the reformers of Western Europe, such as Martin Luther and John Wycliff, began to translate the Bible into local languages, such as German and English. And today, we have dozens of English language translations, all of which have their advantages and their disadvantages. That’s why I’ll sometimes use one translation and sometimes use another translation. All have their advantages and all have their disadvantages. If I really want to see what a New Testament passage means, I’ll go back and check the Greek version.

Now with all of this in mind, knowing what was going to happen, Jesus was speaking at the shore of the lake of Galilee, a freshwater lake about 6 miles across located in northern Israel. The crowds were so large, Jesus climbed into a fishing boat and spoke from the boat and He told them this parable, this story: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

Now you might have listened to this that day and turned to your neighbor and said, “What’s He talking about?” So turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor!” “What’s He talking about?”

So Jesus explained it for us. He said 18 “Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: 19 When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. 20 The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 22 The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. 23 But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

So Jesus is talking about “the message about the kingdom”, which we can generalize and say that this is Holy Scripture. When people hear Holy Scripture, the condition of their heart and their personality largely determines how effective Holy Scripture is with us. We can be confused by the meaning – and so Satan encourages us to just forget it. We can receive it with joy, but if we are shallow people and don’t follow up, the Scripture has little lasting effect, with us returning to our old ways when tough times come. Or our focus upon our worries and our money will choke out the Scripture, making us forget it. But we can have an open, willing heart, having the self-discipline to follow up and practice what we find in Scripture, and then we will find that Scripture effects a mighty change in us for the better.

Scripture can change us for the better if we follow with it.

But what makes these 66 books of the Bible so much more powerful than all those other millions of books in our libraries?

Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17 that “16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

God-breathed. Some translations use the word “inspired”, which means “in spirited” In the ancient Greek, the word pneuma could be replaced by any of three

English words: Spirit, breath, or wind. The Greek did not distinguish between the words. Holy Spirit, Breath of God, or the Wind of God. They are all the same. You can swap the English phrases at will.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Now hold this thought about Scripture being God-breathed for a minute.

Today, there are essentially three ways that people look at the Bible. One view is that the Bible is just another old book, written by men a couple thousand or more years ago, and you take it just like any other collection of stories written at that time. Yet the Bible claims it is not just a book, but is THE Book.

At the other extreme are the people who believe that God wrote the Bible or dictated it word-for-word to the men who wrote it. Unfortunately, this word-for-word view leads us to questions about what we should do when we see the phrase “the sun set” and we know that the sun doesn’t really set but the earth rotates us away from the sun so the sun only APPEARS to set. Besides, what do we do with the style differences between different writers.

And then, in the middle, are those who take Paul at his word. All Scripture is inspired by God.

This does not mean that God dictated the Bible. Instead, the Holy Spirit nudged the writers, urging Matthew to tell this story and not that story, to emphasize one point and not another point. The Spirit whispered to John to write in a totally different style and cover different stories than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But each writer held to his own style. In some places, Paul even says explicitly, “I have no command from the Lord, but I say” do such-and-such, implying that Paul prayed but the Spirit did not give Paul advice on a particular issue.

We believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the original writings in the original languages using the idiom of the day, which may have changed by the time we translated the Scripture to English thousands of years later. So for example, at one point, Jesus refers to King Herod as a “fox”, and we might think that means Jesus thinks Herod is crafty, but in the idiom of the day, the way of speaking at the time Jesus spoke, a “fox” was considered to be a lot like we might think of a chihuahua – a little, noisy, irritating critter. Jesus was saying, in essence, tell King Herod, that little chihuahua such-and-such. And understanding this takes some study.

And so the 66 books of the Bible, which were written over a period of about 1700 years by a large number of different authors, in different places, all tell the same basic story. The story is of a God who loves us deeply but has integrity and standards He asks us to follow, a God who gives us many chances, a God who loved us so much that He sent His Son as a sacrifice for us that we might be able to come home to God’s love. This is what we find in Holy Scripture, and it is only because of the guidance of the Holy Spirit that this Scripture is so powerful a force for good change in our lives.

So, going back to how we receive Scripture and how we make sure that our heart has good soil to receive Scripture. The best ways I have found is to pray before reading or listening to Scripture, and I have put this prayer in our bulletin today. You might want to snip it out of your bulletin and put it into your Bible.

Holy Father, This is Your Word for my life at this time and in this place. Today I am a new creation in Christ, and I believe that He has a Purpose for my life. Open my heart to the working of Your Word and Your Holy Spirit, that I may be transformed into Your new creation. Amen

One final thing. When you choose a Bible, look most of all for a Bible that you can read and understand. You might find a study Bible is useful, for it has many extra notes that explain the idioms and the history and people of the Bible. Don’t be afraid to make notes in your Bible – just as well-worn hoes and rakes and wheelbarrows are the signs of a good garden, a well-worn and marked up Bible is a sign of a soul that is becoming cleaner and neater over the years as that scripture flows into our heart improving the soil like in a good garden.

Father, I pray for these people in these churches. Ancient Gardener, your holy word is planted in our hearts as good seed in fertile soil. So nurture us
that we may bear fruit abundantly. Pour down your grace and Holy Spirit upon all the people here, that they may do your will. May the soil of their hearts prove to be a wonderful and fertile place for your scripture, your word to take root and grow, becoming fruitful in their lives and the lives of those friends, neighbors, and family around them. I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Remember: Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. The seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

Who are we?

Good Morning!

It is good to be in the house of the Lord! I’m the new pastor here at Cedar Grove UMC in Parkersburg. My name is Brian Boley. For those of you watching at home, continue to stay safe – if you don’t feel safe meeting with us, please continue watching at home until you feel safe. Folks, this virus is still deadly to the old and to the young. Wood County’s number of total positive cases has jumped from about 50 to 80 just in the last week. We need to wear masks here and in the shops and stores of world – not for our protection, but for the protection of the vulnerable among us. For loving our neighbors is central to Christian living.

I want to thank you for continuing to support Cedar Grove during our time of Covid. Your donations continued strong until just recently – I ask that if you are watching at home you might take a moment to put a donation in the mail to us hear at 168 Old Turnpike Rd in Parkersburg, WV 26104. Or stop by the church or the parsonage and drop it off. I’d love to meet you – we can sit outside if you like.

I also want to thank the entire team of people who helped get the parsonage in shape and unload our stuff. The place is now beautiful and most of the boxes have been banished to the recycle bins by Donna Elliott. My wife Saundra sends along her thanks.

One of the hardest things to preach is the first sermon at a given church. The reason is we pastors care deeply about each of you – in particular, what your relationship is with God, the viability of your church, and whether or not we will see you one day in New Jerusalem in our new, glorified bodies. Scripture tells us that those of us who lead and teach have responsibility for your souls. And so we care about the condition of your soul. While acknowledging that God working through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, speaking to us through Scripture does the most remarkable work, we pastors also recognize that we must listen to God’s Scripture and Holy Spirit and help connect you to God through Jesus.

For my role is not to be your Holy Spirit, telling you what is right and what is wrong. My role is not to be your Sunday morning entertainment. My role is not to give you an emotional service that makes you laugh, cry, and walk away saying, “The preacher really brought us the Spirit today!”

No, my role is to help people connect with Jesus, first and foremost. And then, after I have introduced you to Jesus, to help you learn to follow Jesus more and more fully by teaching each of you how to read and interpret Scripture, to learn two-way prayer – asking God what to do and then listening to the Holy Spirit’s soft, quiet, whispered response. My role is to encourage you that that Voice you hear is truly the voice of God speaking to you through the Holy Spirit, and therefore you’ll need to be about your Heavenly Father’s business, just as Jesus was.

For the Apostle Peter in his old age wrote to a vast number of disciples: 2 Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ…

This is what Peter said. And remember that Peter had followed Jesus closely, so closely. Peter, you will remember, declared on the night of Jesus’ arrest that Peter would never desert Jesus, that he would never deny Jesus, but before the rooster crowed three times that night Peter denied Jesus three times. When Jesus was on the cross, dying, Peter was nowhere to be found. He had deserted the leader he had sworn to follow. Can you imagine Peter’s joy – and fear – when Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to the assembled disciples and then assured them that if they – and we – continued to follow Jesus, that they would be able to follow Him into eternal life? And Peter must have wondered if that promise applied to Peter, the one who had deserted Jesus.

But Peter, you will recall, was restored, not only in his discipleship, but also in his leadership role by Jesus as they later walked alongside the beach at Galilee after Jesus’ resurrection. And Peter led the other Apostles on the day of Pentecost and led them to accept non-Jews as Christians after his experience at the home of the Roman Centurion Cornelius. So when Peter wrote, he wrote with authority and reminded the followers of Jesus who they were – and so I remind you today who you are in Peter’s words:

9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Over the next few weeks, we are going to explore who the people of God are called to be – what the purpose of you, the chosen people, the royal priesthood, God’s special possession, is.

But first, let me tell you a bit about myself. I’ll tell you a bit today, and I hope that you will come to know me over the next few months as we meet in twos and fours.

I’m originally from St. Marys. My mother still lives in the same house her and my father moved into a month before I was born, on the hill above St. Marys. I rode a school bus like all the other kids did. I graduated from St Marys High School. Frankly, I was a nerd. I was into science and math and music – but I did not attend church. I think we attended church a couple times before I started school, and then our family attended six weeks straight when the cooling towers fell at Willow Island.

I went to WVU and majored in physics, actually astrophysics, the study of stars and planets, but I also took several courses in philosophy and history. And when I graduated, the economy was so bad I went back to get a master’s degree from WVU in business – marketing and finance. That got me a job in Texas Instrument’s Industrial Automation division in Johnson City, TN.

A few years later, I became an insurance agent for a year, met and married my wife Saundra who was an agent for another company, and then I promptly took a job near Buffalo NY as marketing manager with a high tech company. Soon we moved to NJ where I worked for a subsidiary of the company you know as Panasonic, once again in factory automation. It wasn’t until we moved to Atlanta that I began to attend church – an independent evangelical church that sent out a person or a family every year to the foreign missions field, or founded a daughter church with a group of 10 or 12 families. It was intense; we soon discovered that if you are not growing as a Christian you might as well be dead.

We eventually started our own Internet-based company, and finally moved it to Lowell, OH in 2003. I planted an orchard, 80 fruit trees and 50 grapevines. Then, I took a bunch of graduate education classes and got a job teaching at Parkersburg Catholic and taught part-time at WVUP and OVU. And during this time we got involved at FUMC Williamstown, as well as operated a ministry to the international students at Marietta College. Many Friday evenings, it was not unusual to walk into our home and find a dozen or so students from China, as well as students from Korea, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil eating dinner with us and listening to an explanation of, for example, why Christians adopt orphan Chinese girls from Chinese orphanages or why the Christian Trinity is like the egg.

And, by the way, we’ve raised five children. Daughter Heather and husband David have four children and live in Myrtle Beach where she is advertising sales manager for the Sun newspaper. Daughter Hollie and husband Chris are in Atlanta where he is an Army captain and she raises their three children. Chris has Covid, by the way. Please pray for them. Son Ian will be married next weekend to Clara in a Zoom ceremony – he is finishing up his Ph.d. in military history and they have to move from Austin TX to Washington DC by July 20 for her new job with the Foreign Service. Daughter Jessie is asset protection manager at a huge supermarket in Fairbanks, AK. She also has her welding certification. At age 22, youngest son Andrew is a full-time Methodist pastor at Meadow Bridge between Rainelle and Hinton with three churches.

Back in Williamstown, I taught Sunday school, and then became a lay speaker and then lay leader and worship leader, began seminary, and then became a part-time pastor in Pleasants County, graduated from seminary and then we moved to Clarksburg where I became a full-time pastor, Saundra was a part-time, then full-time pastor, and now we are back in Parkersburg, where I preach her and Saundra preaches at 7th Street UMC.

I’m telling you all this because I want you to know that this all took time. From the time I began to attend church to the time I was saved was about a year, and from then it took another 7 years before I taught Sunday School, and then it took another 7 years before I began seminary. It has been 7 years since I graduated from seminary. A life spent with Christ should be a life of continual growth. It is not supposed to be like flipping a switch – one day you are a heathern, and the next day a fully mature Christian leader. It is a process that takes time.

And one other thing. Between us, my wife, my son, and I have attended or led about 40 churches of many denominations – Church of Christ, Southern Baptist, Lutheran, evangelical, Reformed, Bible Missionary, Free-Will Baptist, Missionary Baptist, even Catholic and yes, Methodist. We have also had the honor of being invited and attending Jewish and Islamic services because of our friendships we’ve made over the years. We’ve attended regular services at churches as small as a half-dozen people and as large as 800 worshipers. So do not assume that anything I do is “catholic” or “Baptist” or whatever, because I’ve seen enough to know what the full spectrum is of Christian worship services, what makes a church successful and what leads to failure. And I have learned from each of these churches – but what I will teach is solidly, conservative, evangelical Methodist.

Peter says we are all part of a royal priesthood. The ancient Latin word for priest was “pontifex”, which literally meant “bridge-builder”. As priests, our job is to build bridges between God and the people around us. But that takes time, just as building our own relationship with God takes time as we take a simple rickety swing bridge when we first encounter Christ and work with Jesus and the Holy Spirit to build a firm, solid, multi-lane concrete spiritual bridge between God and ourselves.

John Wesley, the man who began both the Methodist movement and the movement that led to the EUB churches – the Evangelical United Brethern churches – Wesley believed that salvation was a process, not an event. God taps you on the shoulder and puts the Gospel in your face. Eventually one day, you choose to follow Jesus and God declares you are no longer a rebel, that you are welcome in the Kingdom of God. When we choose to follow God’s Son, we are no longer enemies with God, but instead God becomes our biggest coach and cheerleader – but we then spend most of our lives learning by following Jesus so we will be saved from our own foolishness. And we begin to teach others by word and by deed what it means to be a Christian. Mind you – you ARE teaching others what it means to be a Christian, even if you aren’t intending to.

And time and again we make a mess of life, hurting ourselves and hurting others. And God – who understands that we have chosen to be loyal followers of His Son – God looks at us and now says lovingly, “Again? You did it again?” God helps us get on our feet again, whispers words of encouragement through the Holy Spirit and cheers as we try once more. Our goal is to eventually reach Christian perfection, which is when we don’t want to do anything that is outside of God’s will. That takes continually growing as we follow Jesus down the path of holiness.

Some of you will listen carefully to what I teach you. You’ll learn that it is not our position to be each other’s Holy Scripture and Holy Spirit, but it is critical for each of us to regularly read the Holy Scripture, meditate upon it, roll it around in our mind like a wine taster moves the wine around in his mouth, and then to apply that scripture to our lives. You’ll learn that it is important to listen to that gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit in the back of our mind, to react to the Spirit’s voice, and take action as the Spirit directs you. You’ll learn that it is NOT your personal responsibility to invite people to church, - we don’t get off that easily - but we are each to go much further, to responsibly teach people the basics about Jesus Christ, his teachings, his sacrifice, and his resurrection and what this Good News means for people, going to all the people you know with this Gospel first and foremost on your minds.

You’ll learn that giving grace and forgiveness is a core part of the Christian life because we have received grace from God. Instead of pointing out to people how they are breaking the Law of Moses and how these people you meet are not living like a Christian you’ll learn to accept that many of the people around us are not Christians, only people who believe in a vague God. How should they understand how to live unless we love them and gently lead them toward Christ through the advice given us by the Holy Spirit?

You’ll learn that what is comfortable for you is not necessarily what God wants you to do, for there is no reason to grow when you are comfortable, and God wants growth because God wants mature Christian followers rather than spiritual babies.

You’ll learn that God looks at you and sees you as potentially a great spiritual warrior who may need a bit more training, but you’ll also learn that God will lead you along the path of spiritual growth, the path of holiness if you ask God to do this.

You’ll also learn that the best way to walk the path of holiness is to attempt to be the very best you can be at leading other people to the knowledge of Christ, for becoming excellent at leading others to Christ requires us to learn Scripture, to learn two-way prayer, asking God for direction and guidance and then listening to the response of the Holy Spirit, to learn to become grace-filled and forgiving ourselves, we’ll learn to become tolerant of the rough parts of other people, we’ll learn that all we have has come, not from our work and knowledge, but from the gifts of treasure and knowledge given to us by God the Father simply because we’ve made the one decision that is ours to make. We’ve decided to do our best to follow Jesus Christ.

Some of you will learn that following Jesus Christ takes renewed effort every day, but that it is ALWAYS worth that effort. Some of you have already learned most of these lessons. If you have, perhaps you’ll learn how to pass on what you’ve learned to others. Perhaps you’ll learn new ways to explain these things to your friends, neighbors, and family.

And others of you may not listen and learn these lessons, preferring to offer excuses to the Holy Spirit such as “I can’t do that”, “God wouldn’t want me to do that”, “That’s someone else’s job”, “I’m too old”, “I’m too young”, “I’m too busy”, or even, “He can’t make me do that, can he?”

And I feel sad for you, for while you may end up in Heaven, you will miss so much in this life you are living today. For God not only wants us in Heaven, but also wants us to have a joyful, abundant life today. And that is what I hope I can teach over the next few years – to you and to hopefully dozens and even hundreds of other people who join us.

So hang on for the ride! For this church is going to grow in so many ways – numbers, yes, but also we are going to find ourselves stretched and tugged at by God as we move along the steps of our leader, Jesus Christ.

Father, I pray for these people in these churches. I ask that you protect them, to lead them to hear your Good News, to transform each person into people who love you and all the people they meet. Make them a welcoming people to everyone they meet, as people who are not concerned with their comfort as much as the comfort of visitors and people who do not know your love, that they will become a great power for transformation in this part of the world. Teach them many good things, Father, and I thank you for the friends we’ll make while we are here. Pour down your grace and Holy Spirit upon all the people here, that they may do your will. I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Remember: You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Act accordingly.