Expect Versus Demand

Luke 12:48 But the servant who didn’t know what his master wanted and did things for which he deserved punishment will receive a light beating. A lot will be expected from everyone who has been given a lot. More will be demanded from everyone who has been entrusted with a lot.
This verse comes from the teaching of Jesus about an evil servant and a faithful caretaker. It teaches that there are degrees of punishment and reward as well as degrees of responsibility. I want to focus of the last half of the verse that has been italicized.
Yesterday was an awesome day for me. I celebrated my 50th birthday and the highlight, other than spending the day with my wife, was preaching that morning. I love to preach and on those rare years that my birthday falls on a Sunday I had much rather preach than take the day off. This was no different and as always it was special. I usually give my testimony and this was no different and at the end of it when the invitation was given, 3 people accepted Jesus and I now share my birthday with the day that they were born, again.
Being 50 is not much different from being 49. I am sure that will change as the year goes by. I hear that 50 is the new 27, so that is exciting. But 50 does bring a time of reflection or at least it did with me. I sat up Saturday night waiting on midnight to roll around and then I spent some time looking back at what I had done with my life. I realized that I had wasted far too much of it on things that did not matter. So I thought about the things that do matter and found them to be lacking and decided to see if I could change that in the next 50 years. So far, I have done a great job of keeping the things that matter outweighing the things that don’t.
One of the reasons that we don’t do the important things in life is because they matter to other people and there is a huge level of accountability involved. That is what the last half of the verse above says. But notice that even the last half of the verse can be broken into 2 statements. Lets look at them for a minute.
A lot will be expected from everyone who has been given a lot. I believe that there is something that God puts into all of us that says that we should be a compassionate people. I also believe that most people know that there is a God who is responsible for everything that we have. After all, only a fool says in his heart. “there is no God”. I also believe that God has an expectancy of those whom he created to be responsible with the things they have. If you have a lot, you have a lot expected of you. I believe those who have a lot will be judged more harshly than those who do not. I think that there is that teaching in this story where this verse comes from. I believe that this is talking to people who do not have a relationship with God of their Father.
The second half, More will be demanded from everyone who has been entrusted with a lot, I believe he is talking to those who know Jesus as Savior and God as Father. Here is why. It uses the word entrusted verses the word given. I did a study on these two words and found that given, as used here, is most commonly used when speaking of giving servants their work load. The word entrust is most commonly used when giving an inheritance or a trust to a family member. God therefore entrusts those who are His children with a task far more important that those who are merely slaves. The good name of the family is at stake and that is why more will be demanded of us.
Now here is the difference in two more words. Expect versus demand. Expecting comes with an uncertainty of accomplishment. Demands come with a certainty of accomplishment. If you have high expectations of a new college graduate quarterback to become a great pro quarterback and he fails, he didn’t live up to expectations. If he makes the team and is made the starting quarterback, the team then demands his continued best.
In that context, you can think of someone blessed with much but not knowing God as Father as being expected to do what is right, but those who know God as Father, are demanded to use what they have been entrusted with to protect the good name of the Lord.
I want to spend my next 50 years meeting the demands of what I have been entrusted with; The good news that Jesus loves and saves those who are lost.

Gratitude

Yesterday in my series on Foundations of Our Faith, I preached about gratitude. It was one of the most rewarding Sundays that I have experienced in a while. For me to say that and you to get the understanding of it is difficult, because I am extremely blessed to pastor this church and every Sunday is rewarding. We average seeing 3-5 people each week come to know Jesus for the first time and the people who call this their home church are incredible in their pursuit of true Christianity. They love each other and they make those who come for the first time feel like they are welcome and like they can be themselves. They are unashamed to invite folks who don’t “do church” to come because they will not feel like an outsider or treated as if they are another notch in our cross or something like that.
So what was so special about this Sunday? I have to say that I am not sure that I can articulate it in a way that everyone will understand, but I will try. One thing that happens every week that freaks me out, is that people really listen to what I am saying. That shouldn’t be weird, but I have preached in churches where I thought that I was all alone and the building was full. But there was a different atmosphere this week. Every week these guys listen and I am thankful, but not only were they listening this week, but they were responding with understanding . When our praise band finished their last song, just before we did baptisms, the band was called back for an encore. Sure I may have started it, but the feeling was real. Then instead of people rushing out to get home, they all stayed as we baptized 12 people. It was funny to watch folks jockeying for position to take pictures and videos and then to see them posted on Facebook by the time I got home. We had kids as young as 8 and adults as old as 40 getting baptized for the first time and even had a whole family get baptized. It was fun. It was not a religious experience, it was a family affair. No one rushed out after the baptisms were through, most everyone stayed to clean up water, hug wet people, and laugh about the fact that we need higher ceilings so that we could flick lighters next week when they call the band back for another encore. The whole thing even spilled over to today, as I checked out Facebook and Twitter to see people posting how they were grateful for one thing or another.
It is experiences like this that make you grateful to be a Christian and for me to be a pastor. I have always taught that God does not want us to have religion, but rather He wants us to have a relationship. First, He wants a relationship with us, then He wants us to have a relationship with each others. I know that there are churches everywhere that say they have that type relationship, but I really think ours is special. Yep, I am a bit prejudice, but it is true. We don’t just hang out together on Sundays, but we hang out all throughout the week. Last week, about 30 women from our church spent the weekend at the beach together and skipped church. Something tells me they were more like what God intends the church to be during that time than most people an any given Sunday. Friday and Saturday of this week there were 9 of the guys took off for a motorcycle ride around the perimeter of South Carolina for no other reason than to hang out with each other and have some fun.
To wrap up Sunday, after our evening Bible study, about 20 of us went to eat at IHOP. Moms, dads, kids, pastors and lay people, just eating and laughing. Nothing organized, nothing fancy, but everything about it screamed, “we love each other”. The Bible says that people will know that we are disciples of Jesus by the way we love one another. I think people know this about our church, and although I have felt this for a while, this Sunday it all just seemed to come together in every way.
Nothing says you believe in what you are doing better than having a grateful heart and showing that heart to others. That is what made it all so special: gratitude.

Could It Get Better?

Incredible would be the best word I could use to describe this past weekend. Our church had its annual lady’s retreat and about 30 of our ladies spent the weekend in Tybee Island, Ga. From the pictures I saw on Facebook and the short conversations that I had with my wife, they had a great time and I am sure once I hear the details it will only get better.
Of course when I talk about 30 women being away for the weekend, that meant that they are away from our church too. On most Sunday mornings we will have about 140 people attending and that includes an average of about 30 kids also. So if you take 30 people away from our normal Sunday morning it is noticed simply by looking at the crowd size. But we notice it even more because many of these ladies serve in our church in vital areas. Children’s director, teachers, greeters, check in stations for kids, just to name a few. Add to the ladies being away the fact that we had our audio/video guy and his wife out and about 12 other folks who were away, and it was really noticed that people were missing.
I have to say that rarely do we have people who just lay out of church. The folks here have taken an ownership in what God is doing and for whatever weird reasons, they seem to enjoy coming. Mostly because people find God here, but secondly, they have real friends that come here. Not just people we see once a week, but people that we hang out with and have a real relationship with. So I am not the type of pastor who has to guilt people when they are away and usually when they are away it is for a good reason, not just laziness and lack of desire to come. Have I told you lately that I am a very blessed pastor? God has allowed me to serve a bunch of folks who are real and excited about knowing God.
With so many people away this Sunday I was expecting the worst. Although my wife assured me that things were well taken care of, I couldn’t help but be skeptical. All the other people who were gone had also assured me that they had things covered and that nothing would be missed. They were right. Although the people were missed, things went over without a hitch. I was so amazed, and I really shouldn’t be. That is just what kind of church I serve.
I also thought that because so many of the regular folks were out that the crowd would be rather puny, but it wasn’t. Sure those who are here regularly could tell that people were missing, but only because we knew who they were. We had plenty of folks and if those 40 plus people had shown up we would have been near capacity. Boy, listen to me whine.
My sermon this week was on using grace as the foundation to build your Christianity on. Grace is favor given, not earned. God just loves us and when we seek Him, He gives us grace and therefore we have favor in His sight. Being in His good grace is a special thing that anyone can experience, but sadly too many people don’t because they pervert who God is. God is love, not someone waiting to crush you like a bug when you screw up. Sure, if you continue to deny Him and never ask for His favor, He can and probably will prove He is able to squash you like a bug, but that is not His goal. His grace is an awesome thing that allows us a very personal relationship with the Creator of the universe.
Because of God’s grace, six people became God’s children this weekend. It is not uncommon for our church to see 3 or 4 people each week trust God, but this week with a lot of folks gone, God showed us that He never misses hanging out with people who welcome Him. As we were finishing our morning worship time I informed people that we would be filling the horse trough for baptisms next Sunday because there were 2 or 3 people who had asked about it. As the day progress and we came back for the evening Bible study, about 12 more people had contacted me about getting baptized next week. It wouldn’t surprise me if we see 20 people baptized next Sunday.
If you don’t consider yourself a Christian, maybe you find this hard to get excited about. But it is what God gets excited about. He is not excited about money or buildings or how important a person thinks they are. God is excited about people knowing about His great love and sharing it with others. So if you are not a Christian, first let me thank you for reading my blogs. Secondly, if you live in the Rock Hill SC area, come next week and see all these baptisms and meet some people who will be surprisingly a lot like you. Either way, the first visit is free and if you don’t like it you don’t have to come back.
But WOW!!! This was an incredible weekend. I will be so glad to get my wife home and all those ladies who serve all over our church. They should be really stoked for next weekend. Holy Kaw! Next weekend could be better than this one!

Monday is Funday!

Why do we hate Mondays so much? It is almost like on Monday we lose all hope in humanity and ourselves and go into a deep depression. I laugh at the negativity on Facebook and Twitter as people moan and groan about going to work. You would think that just the opposite was happening, that they had found out that they had no job and couldn’t go to work.
As a Christian, I find it so wrong to be this negative, just because it is Monday. I have always thought that we should be the most positive on Monday and if we were going to be negative, it would be somewhere near the end of the week. I think that we have been influenced too much by a society that has become very ungrateful. I think that Christians are too focused on self, instead of others. Let me elaborate.
If you go to church on Sunday and you have an experience that puts you closer to God and His people and you fill up on God’s word and see Him working in people’s lives, shouldn’t we be excited about getting to work Monday? A friend of mine once told me that church was the a pit stop in a race. The race was what happened Monday through Saturday and on Sunday we pulled in for a filling of fuel, refreshing drink, some new traction, and have our windshield cleared. After that, it is back on the track where the race is won. I don’t know about you, but I have never seen a race-car driver not want to get back into the race.
Church people have been too influenced by those around us instead of being the ones who influence. We allow all the negativity of a worldly point of view to cause us to lose our joy and when we lose our joy we are no different that anyone else. We are to be salt that flavors the world and light that brightens the world. We are to be thankful for the blessings we have and joyful for the life God has given us. We are to show hope to the hopeless and love to the unloved. We are supposed to have a relationship with a God that is so awesome that He makes even the worst situations better and yet we hate Mondays.
There is an old song that the church used to sing and it goes like this. Count your blessings. Name them one by one. Count your blessings and you will see what God has done. I don’t think we are counting our blessings much anymore. In this economy, if you are going to work on a Monday, you should be singing God’s praises and not complaining because its Monday. If you have a boss who is a jerk, you should be praising God for the opportunity to show what a difference being a Christian makes by working harder and better than anyone else so that the jerk sees Jesus, not you. If you have a home, and family, and job, your health, a car, your salvation, then you should be smiling all the way to work on Monday and keep on going as Friday rolls around.
Mondays are a great day to see how many people you can tell about how thankful to God that you are to have that job and them as co workers and that you feel extremely blessed to be working when so many are without. If your work is a dark place, turn on the light! If it is a miserable place, spread some joy!
Here is a suggestion for those who are Christians but you still hate Mondays. If you hate going to your job, tell God that you are not appreciative of what He gave you and maybe He will take it away from you so that you can rejoice in unemployment and poverty. Then you can really look forward to Mondays, because it won’t be any different from any other day that you DON’T go to work.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
16 Always be joyful.
17 Never stop praying.
18 Whatever happens, give thanks, because it is God’s will in Christ Jesus that you do this.

Only You Can Say It

This past Sunday I had a guest speaker at our church. He was a friend who I had met through my associate pastor and we had planned for him to preach several months ago. I find it hard to not preach on Sundays. I LOVE to preach. I LOVE my church and its people. But I also know that from time to time God wants our church to hear something different.
Matt is an ex-Marine, one of the Navy’s finest soldiers, and now works as a government contractor and with the Gideon’s. He has a passion for God’s word and for people and it definitely showed in his sermon. He challenged us all to consider the demands of discipleship and did it well
I rarely get to sit back and listen to someone preach on Sundays. The people I work for rarely give me a Sunday off and expect me to work during normal church hours. When I get that rare Sunday off, it usually means that I am on vacation and attending another church, so to sit around with my own church and be fed the word was refreshing.
I know that people have differing opinions on preaching styles. I have developed a style that allows me to sooth and relax people to the point of overcoming insomnia. When I first started preaching I was very mechanical and then got very methodical and later became hallucinogenic. The point is that there are many different preaching styles and none of then are wrong as long as God’s word is being preached. The Apostle Paul said that he did not speak to the church with eloquent words and soothing speech, or in other words, he was not a good public speaker, but no one can deny his effectiveness in sharing the Gospel.
Every one of us who claim to be Christians have a responsibility to share Jesus with whoever will listen, whenever they will listen. We must be bold to speak and not be ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You never can tell who needs to hear what you have to say in the unique way that only you can say it.

Do we get it?

Jesus often told people “You just don’t get it”. That is a loose translation of what He really said. I would have to impress you with my knowledge of Greek and Aramaic to give you the perfect translation and then we wouldn’t have the benefit of my translation of things and I would have to think of something else to blog about. Anyway, when Jesus would say that, he was often talking about people who tried to make God’s teachings harder to understand than they needed to.
God is not the type to beat around the bush, unless it’s the bush that is burning…get it? Burning bush? When he created man He said quite plainly, “Don’t eat from that tree.” He didn’t mean if it looked good or seemed good, He simply meant DON’T.
He told Noah to build an arc because he was going to flood the world and He did. Noah was smart enough to build the size arc that God said to and that is a good thing or else he and his family would have been wiped out. Noah got it. He told Moses to strike a rock one time and water would come out for the people to drink. God meant one time because he says what He means. Moses got mad at the people and because they didn’t get it, and he hit the rock more than once and God punished Moses for not listening. Moses didn’t get it.
God told Joshua to march around the city of Jericho and then the wall would fall down. Joshua got his men together and did what God said, just as he said it and guess what? The walls fell. Joshua got it.
Over and over there are examples of God speaking in plain language and people reaping the rewards of obedience or the consequences of disobedience. The Old Testament is full of great and not so great acts of faith and that is what Jesus was up against while He walked the earth. The Religious leaders of His day were experts in quoting what the Old Testament said. They could quote the Bible better than anyone of their day and yet over and over Jesus told them, “You just don’t get it”. In fact, the majority of the Jewish people did not get it. They had been told for thousands of years that Jesus was coming, and now He stood before them and yet few had sense enough to know who He was. They didn’t get it.
So Jesus took a few folks that wanted to get it and began teaching them what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. He challenged them to look at greatness as one who served rather than one who was being served. He told them that laying down their lives for a friend was the greatest act of love and they did not get it, at least right then.
After Jesus was crucified and resurrected, He told the disciples to go everywhere and tell people the good news that forgiveness was available and eternal life was real. It wasn’t until then that those guys got it.
Jesus promised great rewards for those who get it. I just wonder if He was to come into our churches on Sunday if He would think that we get it. I wonder if He was to meet us out at our jobs or schools or homes during the week if He would have to say to us, “You just don’t get it.”
One thing that I do get is that God don’t play around when it comes to what He tells us to do. I get it when He says that we are to love others but where I struggle is that He said to love them like I love myself. I really love me and I will have to really try harder if I am going to “get it”. I get it when He says to love my wife, but I struggle to love her like He loves the church. I will have to try harder to “get it.” I get it when He said that He will give us life that never ends, but I will have to try harder to “get it” when my life is inconvenienced and I get frustrated at those who I think don’t get it. Why? Because the whole purpose of His life was to give it as a sacrifice for my sins so that when it comes to eternal life, I get it.
The last thing we need to hear from Jesus when we stand before Him and he asks us if we told others about Him and His love is , “you just don’t get it”.
It is not a suggestion to share Jesus with others, it is what God tells us to do. Get it?