A woman was getting a pie ready to put into the oven when the phone rang. It was the school nurse: Her son had some down with a high fever and would she come and take him home? The mother calculated how long it would take to drive to school and back, and how long the pie should bake, and concluded there was enough time. Popping the pie in the oven, she left for school.
When she arrived, her son's fever was worse and the nurse urged her to take him to the doctor. Seeing he son like that -- his face flushed, his body trembling and dripping with perspiration -- frayed her, and she drove to the clinic as fast as she dared. She was frayed a bit more waiting for the doctor to emerge from the examining room, which he was doing now, walking toward her with a slip of paper in his hand.
“Get him to bed,” he told her, handing her the prescription, “and start him on this right away.”
By the time she got the boy home and in bed and headed out again for the shopping mall, she was not only frayed, but frazzled and frantic as well. And she had forgotten about the pie in the oven.
At the mall she found a pharmacy, got the prescription filled and rushed back to the car . . . . . . Which was locked. Yes, there were her keys, hanging in the ignition switch, locked inside the car.
She ran back into the mall, found a phone and called home. When her son finally answered, she blurted out, "I've locked the keys inside the car!”
The boy was barely able to speak. In a hoarse voice he whispered, “Get a wire coat hanger, Mom. You can get in with that.”
The phone went dead. She began searching the mall for a wire coat hanger -- which turned out not to be easy. Wooden hangers and plastic hangers were there in abundance, but shops didn't use wire hangers anymore.
After combing through a dozen stores, she found one that was behind the times just enough to use wire hangers.
Hurrying out of the mall, she allowed herself a smile of relief. As she was about to step off the curb, she halted. She stared at the wire coat hanger. “I don't know what to do with this!” Then she remembered the pie in the oven. All the frustrations of the past hour collapsed on her and she began crying.
Then she prayed, “Dear Lord, my boy is sick and he needs this medicine and my pie is in the oven and the keys are locked in the car and, Lord, I don't know what to do with this coat hanger. Dear Lord, send somebody who does know what do with it, and I really need that person NOW, Lord. Amen,”
She was wiping her eyes when a beat-up older car pulled up to the curb and stopped in front of her, a young man, twentyish-looking, in a T-shirt and ragged jeans, got out. The first thing she noticed about him was the long, stringy hair, and then the beard that hid everything south of his nose. He was coming her way. When he drew near she stepped in front of him and held out the wire coat hanger.
“Young man,” she said, “do you know how to get into a locked car with one of these?” He gaped at her for a moment, then plucked the hanger from her hand.
“Where's the car?” Telling the story, she said she had never seen anything like it -- it was simply amazing how easily he got into her car. A quick look at the door and window, a couple of twists of the coat hanger and bam! Just like that, the door was open.
When she saw the door open she threw her arms around him. “Oh,” she said, “the Lord sent you! You're such a good boy. You must be a Christian.”
He stepped back and said, “No ma'am, I'm not a Christian, and I'm not a good boy. I just got out of prison yesterday.”
She jumped at him and she hugged him again fiercely. “Bless God!” she cried. “He sent me a professional!”
God gives us all different gifts and abilities and we’re going to be talking about them today, focusing on the legal ones. The last two weeks we have been discussing our new vision statement. The first week we talked about building relationships. We said that we need to not only do that with each other but people outside the church. Many of the people that we form relationships with will also be Christians. This is important, because we need to have those kind of relationships that encourage us and also hold us accountable. We also need to have relationships with people who are not Christians, but those are relationships with a purpose, we develop those relationships with a purpose, the purpose of building relationships with them so that we can introduce them to Him.
In order to do this well we have been memorizing and acrostic together. This is a tool you can use when people ask you what you believe, or what the Bible says, or what Christians believe.
God created us to be with Him.
Our sins separate us from God.
Sins cannot be removed by good deeds.
Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again.
Everyone who trusts in Him alone has eternal life.
Life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever
Last week we talked about what it means to say that we are Building people we said this is not just theological but sociological. It’s not just about what you know but how you live. The key question is, “Are you living what you know?” The thing is that if we don’t live what we know it not impacts the people around us but ultimately it impacts us. Because the Christian life is not just meant to be lived with others it is meant to be lived for other. The result is that when we don’t live what we know it hurts us. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California put it this way, “Impression without expression causes depression.” In other words if you hear something and it makes an impression in your heart and mind you need to express it with your life.
Our key verse was Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” The thing to notice about each of these is that each one builds on the previous one. Love leads to joy, joy leads to peace, peace leads to patience and so on. Of course after the service someone pointed out that I remind them of another wise philosopher. Play Yoda Video. We call that the fruit of the dark side. Let’s try to avoid living that way. I’d also appreciate it if we try and avoid comparing the pastor to short green puppets.
Today we are talking about the last portion of our vision statement, Building the body to go serve God. We really looked at the wording of this statement because we wanted to make sure that it conveyed the message that we wanted. We liked the term building because it presents the picture of a deliberate task, something that takes effort. There was a question about using the term “body” because the understanding is a little bit “churchy.” I mean most people in our culture who aren’t Christians don’t really know that Christmas story how are they supposed to know that the Bible tells us that the church is to function as one body with each of us having different tasks, just like our bodies have hands, feet, eyes, etc. But then we realized that the people who read a church’s vision statement are most likely already Christians and if not they’re interested enough to ask what it means and that is a conversation that we would like to have.
You see being a member of a church is not just about coming into a building on Sunday morning. It is about living life together. When you live life together with people, in a healthy group of people, everyone ends up serving everyone else. This isn’t always pretty in the application but it is the plan. When I was a child, my mom and dad worked, so my sister and I were responsible for cleaning the house and cooking. It was a good plan, unfortunately the house was often a mess and we ate a lot of Mexican food, hey it’s what I could cook.
The church is the same way. We’re not always going to work together perfectly and everything that we try and do isn’t always going to work the way we want it too. But it is God’s plan not ours. If we say that we are followers of Christ then we’re going to not only respect that but also realize that the things He told us to do are for our good. They are not just commands but expressions of His best will for our lives. You see one of the biggest questions that any religion must answer is what is your purpose and place. What were you meant to do and where do you belong.
The answer to the first question is that you were called to serve others. Evangelism by the way is a service. Remember the public service announcements a few years ago with the slogan, “friends don’t let friends drive drunk”? I loved the twist on that “friends don’t let friends go to hell.” I’m not belittling drunk driving, one of Linda’s childhood friends was killed by a drunk driver. What I am saying is that when someone drives drunk something bad may happen, but when someone dies without Christ as their savior something bad will happen. It is a service when we try and avoid either event from happening, but one is more certain than the other.
Evangelism is a part of service and if we’re going to call ourselves followers of Christ we must be servants because to be like Christ we must serve as He served. Jesus said in Matthew 20:28, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus came to be a servant. Think about it if the service of others was the ultimate purpose of Jesus life here on earth then wouldn’t He make that be ours as well. The human life is meant for service. The usefulness of everything we do for ourselves ends when our lives ends but what we do for others lives on. We were created to serve.
The place we are to serve is in the church. God designed it this way because there are two inescapable truths. The first is that the church needs you. This isn’t a big surprise, we have a mission to carry out. If we decide to do a mission project and no one shows up to help then it doesn’t get done. If we want to support our missionaries but no one gives any money, we can’t support our missionaries. Here’s a big one, we can plan all kinds of outreaches, we can plan programs and work hard to improve our worship services but no matter how hard we as a staff work this church will never reach it’s potential for growth unless the people of this church bring more people to it. The good news is that we already know all the people we need to fill this sanctuary every Sunday morning. What that takes though is that they are the people that you know and as a church we need you to invite them. The church was designed that way so that in everything we would depend on one another, be it service, stewardship or evangelism, it takes all of us to be successful. That is what Paul was talking about when he wrote to the church in Corinth, “All of you together are Christ’s body, and each one of you is a separate and necessary part of it.” 1 Corinthians 12:27. You are a part of the church and if God has called you here to Madison we need you.
The second truth is a little bit less obvious but to really find you purpose and joy in life, you need the church. Paul wrote, “Each of us finds our meaning and function as part of his body.” His body to Paul meant the church. Think about it. Maybe God gave you a wonderful singing voice, God would love to use you in the praise team, but you save it for the shower, car and karaoke night. Those are all nice, you might enjoy them but they’re not quite the same are they. Maybe God gave you the ability to build things. Do you use that at work, at home, or do you also use it where it can build His kingdom? You’ve seen the sets that we’re building, for 252 but also other programs. Lori, our talented church secretary designed those. It’s not in her job description, I didn’t give her the assignment, but she heard what we were doing, she has a talent for designing things, so she designed them for us. She used her ability and found fulfillment in doing it. My cousins John and Laura, they visit us occasionally, they heard what we were doing they build sets for Laura’s job as a drama teacher, they came and showed us how to build the sets. They used their gifts, we all had fun, but they also found great satisfaction in doing something for God. To really find meaning you have to use your gifts for the One who gave them to you, and to do that you must be in the church. God set it up this way, the church needs you and you need the church.
Service is not a question. You need to find a place to serve within the church. But the next thing we’re going to look at is where you are supposed to serve, and you can write this next to it, this is your permission to say, “no”. See there are two different times that we ask people to serve. Sometimes we just need someone to stand in a gap short term. If we ask you please consider saying yes. But most of the time, when we ask someone to serve it’s long term. If you meet the criteria that we’re about to look at we’d like you to say “yes.” By the way you know what’s better then when you say yes when asked to serve? It’s when someone sees a ministry that they would like to serve in and volunteers. That is the best. If you see a ministry that you would like to get involved in, come and talk to us, odds are not only will we say yes but that we’ve been looking for people to help.
But here is a simply anacronym to help you determine where to serve. I took this from Rick Warren, it is called SHAPE. The first letter is S it stands for Spiritual Gifts. We’re going to talk a whole lot more about these in a minute, but these are the abilities, passions, talents, emotions and a whole lot more that God has given you. Understand tat God gave them to you, that’s why they’re called Spiritual Gifts. Many years ago I read an interview by a band named Servant. This was when people had just started playing songs with Christian themes in a rock ‘n roll style. They were just a group of college students they were sitting around talking about how much they enjoyed Christian rock but how there just weren’t a lot of bands playing it. So they decided to start a band. Here’s the thing, they didn’t play instruments and they didn’t really sing. But they prayed about it, picked their instruments and away they went. In a few months they were good enough not just to play for people, but to be signed to record what turned out to be several albums. God used them to bless tens of thousands, of young people. Here’s the thing, they didn’t put in the years of work to get their. Odds are against them all just picking their instruments that they were naturally talented with. But they asked and God gave them the ability. They still worked for it but God gave them the ability. That is a Spiritual gift.
How do you find your Spiritual gifts? Well the first thing is to look at where you heart is, that’s the H. What do you love to do and by the way what brings out love in you? At my last church we had a man volunteer to work with our AWANA program. He really wanted to work with kids. So we put him in helping to teach a group of boys. He was smart, he was a dedicated Christian, he told us how excited he was to do this. But within a couple of weeks we started getting complaints that he was losing his temper, yelling at the students and in general just being mean. We got this from the other adults in the group who had been trying to talk to him about it. So we pulled him aside and asked him what was going on. He said that he really felt called of God to work with boys that age and he really enjoyed teaching them, but that he really didn’t like the way they acted and their behavior got under his skin. In other words, he liked working with kids, he just didn’t like kids. It’s kinda like saying I’m a good carpenter I’m just not good with wood. The area’s that God is calling you to serve are going to be area’s that you love, and area’s that you will share that love with others. The first thing to check is your heart.
Next we have Abilities. If God calls you to work in an area He’s going to give you the ability to serve in that area. Romans 12:6 says, “God has given each of us the ability to do certain things well.” We all have things we would like to do but that doesn’t mean that we are called to do them. One test of this is can you do them. I love to play guitar. I would love to play lead guitar in the praise band. But God has called me to preach and therefore didn’t give me a left hand that moves like Randy’s does. I can confidently say I am not called to play lead guitar because I can’t play lead guitar. If you are called to do something then God will give you the ability to do that thing well. If He didn’t give you the ability to do something well then He didn’t call you to do that thing.
Next we have personality. Each one of us is wired differently. Did you know that our DNA can be wired to come up with is 10 to the 2,400,000,000 power. If you were to write that many 10’s it would take a strip of paper 37,000 miles long. There is nobody quite like you. Even identical twins have differences in who they are. Because we are all different we all different places to serve. I love to sit down with my Bible on one side and a commentary on another and just read a passage and make notes on what is in that passage to share with others. Few things in life make me happier then doing a study verse by verse study like we’re doing on Wednesday nights. Other people just don’t share my excitement for sitting and reading multiple books on the same subject. They would rather be trimming a tree, designing a set, working with kids whatever the list is. We are all wired differently, whatever God is calling you to do will be something that you are able to do, but something that you enjoy doing. If you would rather have a root canal, without Novocain, then work in the nursery, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you are not called to work in the nursery. If you view working with the youth group as baby sitting, you’re probably not called to work with youth. But if you view working with the youth as an investment in the church and a rock concert is a good time rather then the cause of a migraine then you might be called to work with youth. The point is that where you are called is related to your personality. Rather then drain you of energy it will leave you excited and looking forward to the next task.
The final thing is that it will involve you experiences. Buck is our finance board member, he ran his own business for 30 years, that’s why he’s there. His experiences match. But it’s not just your work experiences that God uses. It’s all of them the good and the bad. The best people to work in addiction ministries are people who have been delivered from an addiction. When you’re hurting the best person to listen is someone who has walked in your shoes. Every situation is unique, so you
This even applies to our pain. God never wastes a hurt, He uses them to shape us and to help other people. When Linda and I were unable to have a child and we went through several painful experiences adopting, God placed us in a group of friends who were all going through the same thing. Together we pray, laughed and cried, but we helped each other to make it through. God uses our experiences to help others and the experiences of others to help us.
Ultimately all of these things our Spiritual gifts, our hearts, our abilities, our personality and our experiences determine where we should serve and where we shouldn’t. But before we finish today I want to look more closely at the area of spiritual gifts. This is a quick survey, but also a little better definition of what they are. You see there are Spiritual Gifts that we have. God gives them to us, He expects us to use them. The great thing is that if we do, He gives us more. Like the group of college students that was able to form a band. God gives us spiritual gifts.
Here a quick survey of spiritual gifts just so you can realize how many of them there are and how many different area’s they cover. 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.”
Also look at Romans 12:6-8, “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.” God gifts us in all different area’s not so that we can feel good about ourselves but so that we can use our gifts for others.
But there is something else to realize about a spiritual gift. A spiritual gift is an expression of faith used to strengthen someone else’s faith. We’re not given our gifts for ourselves, we are to use them to benefit others. When they really find their purpose when you use them for God. You can be musically talented and sing to a stadium full of people, but if you’re not pointing them to Jesus what does it matter. Everything will pass away but not His name.
Look at what Paul wrote in Romans, “I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong – that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each others faith.”
In other words there are also Spiritual gifts that we give. We have gifts and we give them to others. When all the time. Look at this quote by from John Wesley, “do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” May we encourage each other so that such a thing can be said of us, that we did all the good we could by all the mean we could, in all the ways we could, in all the places we could; at all the times we could, to all the people we could, for as long as we could.
