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This time twenty six years ago I was engaged in a search for a youth pastor position because I had a desire to spend a few years of my life serving God full-time. I did not realize or even expect to be a pastor 26 years later. I thought that I would be doing something else.
Now, I have done other things in the past 26 years. I spent four of the past 26 being a student earning two master’s degrees. I spent another 2 years working in some different occupations. But when all is said and done the ministry has been my life for most of the past 26 years.
I have done everything that there is to do in ministry. I have married and buried. I have baptized and help others come to Christ. I have preached and I have taught. I have led and I have served. I have led groups large and small and taken teenagers across the county.
I have been faithful to God and I have been unfaithful to God. I have walked ever so closely with Him and I have walked at a distance from Him.
I have learned some lessons in that time that I seem to keep relearning over and over again.
(1) One lesson is that being faithful is more important than being successful. I confess to you there have been days when I look at some of my colleagues both within the Church of God and outside of it and ask, ‘What do they have that I don’t have?’ ‘Why is their church or their ministry getting bigger and bigger and mine seems to stay the same?’
But I have also seen some of those same colleagues leave the ministry, one in the past year, and make the decision to pursue other occupations. Such situations have made me do a gut check. But as I have done so, a very clear clarity, has come to me and reminded me that I am doing what God wants me to do where He wants me to do it and I am at peace with that. That to me is the Holy Spirit.
A book that I read 20 years ago and still look at from time to time is entitled ‘Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome.’ In it, Kent Hughes shares the story of a church planting experience early in his ministerial career that did not succeed and forced him to reconsider his calling.
His rock bottom moment came when he said to his wife, ‘God has called me to do something he hasn’t given me the gifts to accomplish. Therefore God is not good.’ Her response was ‘hang on to my faith.’
Out of that dark moment in his life, Hughes began to realize that his beliefs and values regarding ministry had been shaped by things that were often at odds with what scripture expected. They both came to the conclusion that based on passages such as 1 Corinthians 4:1-2, success is really being faithful. So look at Apollos and me as mere servants of Christ who have been put in charge of explaining God’s secrets. Now, a person who is put in charge as a manager must be faithful.
The church at Corinth was doing too much comparison and not enough growing. They were looking at who was more successful as their spiritual leader rather than who was being faithful in their life and service. Paul attempted to bring perspective to this situation when he remarked in I Corinthians 3, ‘we’re only servants. Through us God caused you to believe. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. My job was to plant the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God, not we, who made it grow.’
One of the Holy Spirit’s purposes then is to help us be faithful to the life and calling God has given to us as His children.
(2) A second lesson is that character is very important and that over the long haul it counts for more than skill and ability. Every time I hear about a pastor who has to leave the ministry because of moral issues, I grieve and I cringe. And I do so because it is another ‘I told you so’ the Devil uses to get people to give up on Christianity and the church.
Such failure hit close to home for me several years ago when Susan and I received a Christmas card from a former seminary classmate’s wife informing us that they were no longer together and he was no longer in the ministry because she had discovered a secret life he had been living. Never in a million years did I think that it would happen to him. But it did.
There are not just pastors but teachers and parents and spouses who show one side to the world and have a secret life that no one knows about. There are also those who, as Craig Groeschel, a pastor and author put it, ‘play the game’ because that is what they learned to do from an early age.
Writes Groeschel, ‘From my earliest memories, I remember "playing the game": try to say the right things at the right times to the right people. When the people or circumstances changed, so did I.
As a young child, I tried to please my parents. In school I made sure my teachers got my grandest act. There’s nothing terribly wrong with that, but looking back, I see that those were just practice runs for what would come later.
As a teen I did almost anything for acceptance from my buddies. I partied, swore, lied, cheated, and stole. By the time I got to college, I was playing so many different roles that I began to lose track of the real me. Honestly, I began to wonder if there was a real me.
At nineteen I became a follower of Christ. And the parts of my life he changed, he changed miraculously. He cleaned house. But in a darkened corner here, a locked closet there, I continued to believe I was better off putting up a front.
It was a new front, a spiritual one. But still the same old game, just played on a different stage.
Within a few years, I became a pastor. You’d think that would have shaken the deceit right out of me. But as a young pastor, I simply turned pro. My church members observed my finest performances. I fooled many of them, but I didn’t fool myself.
And I didn’t fool God.’
He goes on to say that a seminary professor did not help matters when he spoke of the ‘pastor’s mystique’ and said to Groschel and his classmates, "Keep your guard up. Don’t let them know the real you. Dress the part. Talk the part. You’re a pastor now. Never let them into your life, or you’ll regret it."
Eventually he came to realize that he was, as he shared with his congregation one day, ‘a full-time pastor but a part-time follower of Jesus Christ.’
I cannot help but think of King Saul who grew impatient waiting for the prophet Samuel and ended up short circuiting his rule as King and losing the favor of God and eventually his throne. Christian character, as I have often said, is best described by the Fruits of the Spirit. Patience is one of them… and I recently was reminded how hard it is for me to patient when I read the words of Rueben Job who said, ‘Most of us do not wait well. A check out line at the grocery store, a registration line at school, a doctor’s appointment, or holiday traffic can quickly make us impatient, uneasy, and irritable….deep in our hearts we know that many things cannot be hurried without endangering the results for which we wait. Friendship, character, personal transformation, pregnancy, ripened fruit, and sprouting seeds all take time. Each has its own schedule…
‘Jesus asked the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received the promised power to meet all that lay ahead of them,’ he continues, ‘as well as an advocate to teach them all that they needed to know. It must have been hard to wait… The disciples were obedient to the command of Jesus, though, and their obedience was rewarded with power and with a companion.’
Another important mission the Holy Spirit has is to shape the character of God into our lives.
(3) The third lesson is that the power to life a God honoring life is not about techniques and presentation but about surrender to and empowerment by God.
This lesson ties into the lessons of faithfulness and character because they require us to be responsible for our own life and choices as it relates to a faith in and relationship with God. And these lessons are all linked in several parables that Jesus shared during His earthly ministry.
For example, we read in Luke 19 about the servant who did not take care of the one talent that he was given to take care of. He was unfaithful to his task of being faithful for what had been given to him to take care of.
But notice what he says to the King, his master, his manager, his leader - I was afraid because you are a hard man to deal with, taking what isn’t yours and harvesting crops you didn’t plant.’ Now, let me ask you, ‘If you said this to your boss at work, would you still have a job?’
This servant has issues… never mind the king for now… he has issues, he has problems… we all do.
But there is a character issue for this servant and we hear it in the words, ‘I was afraid…’ Fear is a character issue… it shows a lack of trust and confidence in someone (including oneself) as well as God. So in this parable, in which Jesus is illustrating what the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven is like (very important to notice here) faithfulness, character, and obedience are key traits that matter.
This brings me to my main point for this morning. (4) We learn these lessons and we become faithful servants of God and a faithful congregation of servants when we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives on a day to day basis and let Him have His way so that we are people of faithful character who are rooted in the Lord.
In our main text for this morning, Jesus says to the disciples and to us as well, ‘I am not abandoning you in going to the Father because I will return. But what I am doing is asking the Father to send you another counselor, another aid, another helper, (another cheerleader if you will) who will never leave you.’
He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world at large cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you do, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.
Notice the important distinction Jesus makes in the final statement, ‘he lives with you now and later will be in you.’ Next Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. I believe that it is an important Sunday because it the Sunday on which we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit to those gathered in the Upper Room.
On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came and filled those gathered and empowered them to proclaim a faith that can and does and has changed lives across the centuries. The events and results of that day have echoed across the centuries.
Yet I find myself asking at this point in my life and in history, ‘Where is the Holy Spirit today?’
In a recent article Mindy Caliguire wrote, "With the performance pressures church leaders face today, it’s a wonder more are not flaming out. I wish more churches could talk honestly about the ministry systems that perpetuate the problem. What will have to happen before we change? For how long will we ignore the health of our leaders’ souls and focus only on their performance?"
Many pastors and church leaders are wondering why more people are not in church. They see decline instead of growth, conflict instead of harmony, and biblical immaturity instead of biblical maturity. Why?
Have we become so impatient with the lack of whatever we think is missing in the church or our lives that we have trouble waiting for and on the Holy Spirit?
Where is the Holy Spirit today in you and me, in us? Have we tuned him out or turned him off? Have we sought other things to stimulate our faith instead of allowing him in us to make the changes (some of which are hard ones to make) that help our faith grow up and forward? Have we become so concerned with our performances that we have forgotten the substance of our faith which is not about performance but about faithfully following Jesus?
The Holy Spirit is a vital and essential part of our faith and life in Christ. At times there is a very emotional aspect to it. But, at other times the Spirit works very quietly, almost imperceptibly in us and our circumstances to accomplish his work in and through us.
He challenges us, he comfort us, he stretches us, he convicts us, he affirms us, he renews us, he strikes down with guilt and lifts us up with forgiveness, he wounds us, he heals us. His work is a vital part to our faith individually and corporately.
This morning I say to all of us, ‘Be patient and wait on the Lord and the Spirit.’ If you are discouraged, let the Holy Spirit in to encourage you. If you are under conviction, let the Holy Spirit forgive you and release you from the bondage of your sin.
If you are struggling to live for God, let the Holy Spirit help you in your struggles. If you are weary from doing what is right and good, let the Spirit renew you and uplift you.
If God is for us, who can be against us? No one! No one! Holy Spirit move in our midst right now! Amen.
Power Points for this sermon are available by e-mailing me at pastorjim46755@yahoo.com and asking for ‘052007slides’ Please note that all slides for a particular presentation may not be available.
