God’s Got It
Joshua 1:1-9 1 Thessalonians 5:1-24 12/5/2022
It has been said, that the only person who likes change is a baby with a dirty diaper. Change means that a transition is taking place. We are witnessing the end of one thing and the beginning of another. We have all experienced one chapter in our life ending and another beginning. Sometimes we know what to expect, other times we are unsure of what the future will bring.
One of the promises we have from God, is that God will always be with us. God is always outside of our transition looking at them take place. Therefore no matter what the transition, we still have access to the same God as we did before the transition took place. In other words, “God’s Got It.” When we have God, we have all that we need. Everything else is just an accessory in our lives.
We serve an incredible God with big plans for all of humanity. It’s God’s will that every person born gets the chance to hear about Jesus Christ and the tremendous love that he has for them. It’s God’s will for everyone to know the joy of being saved from their sins so that they need not fear punishment when they stand in the presence of the Lord after they die.
It’s God’s will that we would love God, so that they can spend eternity with God. It’s God’s will that when we die, everyone would hear the words well done, my good and faithful servant and that no one will ever hear those dreaded words, “Depart from me, for I do know you, into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Although these things are God’s will, they will not all come to pass. God gave each of us the gift of the freedom of choice. We are free to accept what God has to offer or to reject it. We like to use the term forever when it comes to our love for each other in relationships. But the truth is, the only forever relationship we are going to have is our relationship to God.
Some of us will reject the opportunity to hear about Jesus Christ. Some of us will not be interested in the love he has for us because other things look better at the moment.
Some of us believe that our sins do not matter, and that there is no heaven, and there is no hell. Some of us believe we are good enough on our own to answer for our sins and we can be our own Savior.
But the amazing thing about God, is that regardless of what we believe, God still pursues us with his love like beagle dog chasing after a rabbit. God sees value in the soul of each and every human being. That is why Jesus chose to build his church.
We the people of God, have been given the honor and privilege of letting others know about the love of God. That’s why we come for worship, that’s why we feed the poor, that’s why we love each other, that’s why we try to let our light shine.
God’s big picture is the saving of humankind . God desires that everybody who wants to be with God can be with God. For God has promised the creation of a new heavens and a new earth in which we can spend eternity with God.
God’s vision includes those who have come before us and the generations that are still waiting to be born. Each of us is called to serve God in our own generation.
It is so important to recognize that Jesus said, “you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you that you should go forth and bear fruit.” It’s amazing how sometimes God literally calls us on the phone. And yet neither we who are receiving the call, nor the person who is making the call knows that God is on the line.
It was over 3 decades ago when Pastor Toby and I received a phone call from a Gail H. Banes asking if we would be interested in coming to speak at Glenville Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, OH. Glenville was a small congregation that the denomination thought should be closed.
The Presbytery didn’t see how that congregation could move forward and figured it would close. Our salary in Boston was already low, and to come to Cleveland would mean taking a $5000 pay cut.
What on paper looked like an easy decision to say no to, in our spirits we felt God was saying, this is where I am appointing you. We had no idea what a tremendous jewel God had hidden inside of that small congregation. Nor could we have foreseen the diamonds that would be added to it in the new members who were yet to come into the life of the church.
We could not have imagined the ministry that congregation would do because of the people consistently saying yes, if that’s what God is calling us to do, let’s do it. The love of Jesus Christ was our rallying cry and we reached new levels of love, of giving, and serving and spreading the gospel.
Our motto was “we love and we care.” I can remember one woman coming to our church to see if we really meant it or was it just words on a wall. She later testified, “I found out” you all really do love and care.
God called us again on the phone 23 years later, but this time it was Freddie Briskey doing the calling. Freddie was from Calvary Presbyterian Church and he called to ask if I could come and moderate a Session meeting at Calvary Presbyterian Church because they were without a pastor.
At this point Glenville Presbyterian had become known as Glenville New Life Community Church. I have to confess, having learned much of what we knew about Calvary from Presbytery, it was not good. We had been told the congregation was stubborn and rebellious.
I agreed to come and moderate the Session, and as I listened, I realized that what I saw in the Session meeting was not the same as I had been told about the church. I knew I was in the midst of people, who felt the call of God on their lives to make a difference in their community. I realized they were serious about following Christ.
At our next staff meeting, I told Pastor Toby and Pastor Kellie, I really believe we could work together with Calvary. They reluctantly were willing to give it a try. We entered a two year partnership agreement together. That partnership led to the birth of New Life At Calvary. We inherited a whole new group of brothers and sisters in Christ, with a common call to serve others in the name of Jesus Christ.
It wasn’t that God chose us as pastors, but rather God chose us a congregation to have an impact in this neighborhood. New Life At Calvary is always at it’s finest when we are united in serving our community. I will always remember all those purple shirts picking up paper, glass and trash on a Sunday morning up and down Euclid, E. 79th, Carnegie Ave. and down to Cedar Avenue.
God appointed this church with a mission for this part of our city. Our purpose is to love others, to teach the word of God and to reach the world for Christ. That purpose does not change simply because there is a change in the pastoral leadership team. It has been an honor for Pastor Toby and I to have had Pastor Kellie as our Joshua in training.
Some of you may not know the story of Moses and Joshua. Moses was appointed by God to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt into the promised land. Joshua was Moses’s aid, truly was his right hand man. Moses was able to lead the people to the border of the promised land and he got to see where God was going to take his people.
But it was under Joshua’s leadership that the people received what God had for them. He led them into the promised land. Pastor Kellie has been as faithful to us and to the Lord as Joshua was to Moses and the Lord. Christ has been calling New Life At Calvary, to plant seeds in this city for the past 8 years. It’s time to bring in the harvest under our new senior pastor.
With the harvest will come a need for more workers to enter the fields. Remember the purpose of pastors is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. For anyone thinking “what are we going to do without Pastor Rick”, you’re asking the wrong question.
You should be asking, “how has Pastor Rick equipped me to do some of the things I’ve seen him do. What do I need to step up to do so that the church keeps marching forward even though God has placed him somewhere else.”
God has placed our church in a strategic part in the heart of our city. We have been called to break down some of the barriers that divide us in the natural, but never should divide us in the body of Christ. We have an expanded apartment complex with people who are mentally challenged because of the lingering affects of years of drug addiction.
We have a seniors and disability high rise across the street. We have an apartment of low income residents on SSI and disability behind it. We have been able to welcome people from all of these groups into our worship and to be a part of our church family. We have welcomed in those God has sent us from other parts of Cleveland and the surrounding suburbs.
We are united in ministering to the needs of others regardless of their background. On our monthly give a way of food, we are serving an ever increasing number of Chinese Americans in addition to the African Americans and Caucasians. Our chapel is used each Sunday by The River Of Life Church with brothers and sisters from West Africa with services in French and English.
Our community is beginning to change again. Just a few blocks down toward town are some new high price townhouses. Across the street from them are brand new apartments geared to the upper middle class. We still have new housing being added toward Chester and on Euclid.
The challenge before us is to reach these new groups for Christ, many of them will probably be Caucasian. Some will be of a different social status and economic background. Christ loves each of them as much as he loves us.
God may be calling us to begin to look more and more and more like the body of Christ as it will be in heaven with a multitude of people from all nations and tongues. New Life At Calvary is more in need of your commitment to ministry for the cause of Christ than ever before.
God reminded Joshua, that Moses was gone, but the removal of Moses, did not nullify the promises of God. I give to Pastor Kellie and the Elders on Session, the same words God gave to Joshua, 7 “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.”
I challenge you to go to some of these new areas being built up and march around them just as Joshua and the people marched around Jericho and watch the walls of separation come tumbling down. Claim these new neighbors for Christ. Do you best to love them into the kingdom of God by your speech, your love and your service.
God has a purpose for New Life At Calvary that’s far greater than any one or two leaders. This church has stood as a faithful witness for God on this corner for 131 years. That tells me that God had plans to use a number of pastors to bring to completion the work God intended for us to accomplish.
We love and we appreciate the pastors that God has sent during those 131 years, but God has never been without a plan for our church. God’s Got It. God’s plan for us now is to seek to expand as a congregation under the leadership of Pastor Kellie and the Session along with Pastor Antonia, the lay pastors and all of the leaders of the various organizations.
I want to thank you as a congregation, for giving Pastor Toby and I some of the greatest years of our lives together. We had no idea that pastoring would mean we would gain so many new mothers and fathers that would love us as they loved their own children. We had no idea of how many children and grandchildren we would get to claim as our own.
We had no idea of how many of you would see us as you father or your mother, as your brother or your sister.
We started as just a young couple who wanted to serve Jesus. We had no idea of how many friends we would be inheriting by responding to the call of Jesus Christ to go and serve at Roxbury, at Glenville, at New Life Fellowship, At Calvary, and finally at New Life At Calvary. It has been an incredible journey.
You are among the finest people on the planet. Your love and your presence in our lives made us far richer than all the billionaires on this planet. Thank you for allowing us to be a part of some of the most intimate and painful moments in your lives in which we hugged and sometimes cried together.
We hope you learned from us that you don’t have to be perfect or to have the perfect family, to be a witness for God or to be loved by God.
Thank you for all the joys and the celebrations we shared together, the graduations, the promotions, the marriages, the retirements, the award banquets, the prom events, the baptisms, the vacation bible schools, the football games, the coming home from prison, the birthday parties, the cotillions, and the college acceptance letters.
Thank you for the love and support we showed each other during our times of grief as we buried our parents, our children, our brothers and sisters and for the meals we shared together afterwards.
Thank you for your faithfulness in your giving weekly, your giving to the special offerings, and your giving to the many building campaigns we held through the years. Thank you for giving to the pastors fulltime salary fund. Other churches wondered how we can have two and three full time pastors for a church our size. It was your love and commitment that made it possible.
Thank you for all the painting campaigns in the buildings and the cooking of the food so that the workers could keep on working.
Thank you for your participation in various kinds of fasting. Thank you for all the meetings we shared as we tried to study the word of God, or plan the coming year’s calendar, or understand where God was leading us.
Thank you for taking risks by taking new assignments in the church. We discovered some of you were gifted as actors in the skits, plays and movies we produced. I gave you scripts and your brought them to life with your own personalities.
Thank you for all the music, the praise, the worship, the choirs, the praise dances, and the solo’s as we sang to the glory of God. Thank you to all of you who serve in the ministry of helps, as ushers, cooks, cleaners, parking lot attenders, greeters, teachers, nursery workers and more.
Thank you for sharing us with the body of Christ at large. You always paid for us to go to presbytery meetings, synod, general assembly. You paid for us to be on the radio preaching the good news. You paid for us to be on public access tv. You eagerly shared us with other churches and organizations in the city when they needed pastoral leadership.
Thank you so much for the media team that has taken the gospel message far beyond the walls of this church. You can view our services anywhere in the world where there is Roku connection or the internet. Your generosity of us, made a huge difference in other ministries.
Thank you for the many years you stood by our side. Some of you have been with us since the first day we arrived in Cleveland. Others of you joined us along the way. You were proud of us, but we were every bit as proud of you.
Some of the greatest honors we received was listening to you introduce us to others saying, “this is my pastor.” You said it with such conviction and joy. You so faithfully came to church and truly expected to hear from God through something we would say in the sermon. You have been outstanding among congregations.
There have times I wish I could have served you more effectively. I ask your forgiveness for when I was too busy to notice you wanted to talk. I ask your forgiveness for forgetting to return a phone call, or not getting to you as soon as you thought I should have.
I ask your forgiveness for leaving your name out of a bulletin or not giving you credit along with others. I ask your forgiveness for when I may have given you a wrong impression of who Jesus Christ was or what the Scriptures taught.
I ask you forgiveness for when I may have been so passionate about an issue that I came off as harsh, insensitive, or unkind. I ask your forgiveness for any way in which you felt I failed you as a pastor. It was not my intention to hurt any of you.
For our youth I ask your forgiveness for when I yelled at the wrong one of you or made a decision you thought was unfair. I have always tried to let you know, that even though I am your pastor, I too am just a sinner saved by grace and that God is still working on me.
I want to thank you for all of your prayers that you sent up on our behalf during the course of our ministry. It’s an honor to have a congregation praying that God will keep you each day that you wake up.
I hope that after you have prayed for Pastor Kellie and the Session, and Pastor Antonia, you will still take a moment and remember to pray for me. I’m not sure what God has next in store for me, but I know I’m not strong enough to be dropped from your prayer list just yet. I am going to be praying for you.
My prayer for you comes straight from the word of God. 9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
As the apostle Paul told the Philippian Church, “I am confident of this, that He who began a good work in you, shall be faithful to complete it.”
Summary: this is my final message to the congregation after 33 years of service and 39 years of ministry before my retirement. The goal is to be grateful for the past, but look forward to the future.
