Introduction
Our
theme for annual conference is about praying hands with dirty fingernails.
Sounds
a little disturbing.
I
don’t like dirt under my fingernails
But
the bishop has directed us here and the point is that
Somehow
prayer and the work of the kingdom go together
One
points us toward the other
Henri Nouwen
In
what may have been his last interview before his death in 1996, Henri Nouwen
talked about prayer
He lifted up the story in Luke 6:12-19 where Jesus spent the night in prayer on the top of the mountain. In the morning, he came down and created a community of apostles around him. Then, in the afternoon, with his apostles, he ministered -- he went out and healed and proclaimed the Good News.
He lifted up the story in Luke 6:12-19 where Jesus spent the night in prayer on the top of the mountain. In the morning, he came down and created a community of apostles around him. Then, in the afternoon, with his apostles, he ministered -- he went out and healed and proclaimed the Good News.
What
a fascinating progression. Prayer,
community, then ministry
The
church too often has become stuck in the pew.
We did the first part, but not the rest.
We
sing are we yet alive. One day the
answer will be no.
It
is so easy for us to get off track.
we
are busy fighting over all sorts of things and have forgotten about God’s world
Yellowstone story applied to the
church.
We
are all inside arguing about silly things when outside the kingdom is passing
us by
We
Methodists are at our kingdom worst when we fight with one another
We
are at our best when paint a school
or partner with a church in Mozambique or feed the hungry.
If
Wesley were alive today, he would invite us again to agree on the essentials,
join hands and get to work in his kingdom.
The story of the good
Samaritan-
If jesus told it to
us, the people passing by would be a Methodist preacher
The
second might be the Methodist lay leader.
The
religious forget the needy. Does that
bother you?
The
kingdom is brought to the table by someone outside of our faith family.
Does
that bother you?
They
must have been in a hurry to get to the temple to pray
Prayer
How we have commonly
thought of prayer
I
have thought many wrong things about prayer.
I
thought prayer was supposed to make me clean.
It
was my duty to pray.
prayer
was about getting something from God.
Spend
much of my young life feeling guilty and not understanding.
The prayer breakfast
in Lebanon
Nothing
wrong with it, but Its not enough
It’s
a bad place to get stuck
We
want God to bless us -but we forgot that God’s call is mostly outside of our
comfort. The holy spirit calls us to
places we have never heard of, to do things that seem unthinkable to us. The Holy Spirit lives beyond the edge of our
comfort.
Acts 9 is about Saul
on the road to Damascus
Its
also about a fellow named Ananias………
He
is praying and he has a vision.
The
Lord invites him to go to pray for this Saul of tarsis
13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and
all the harm he has done to your holy people(N) in Jerusalem.(O) 14 And he has come here
with authority from the chief priests(P) to arrest all who call on your
name.”(Q15 But the Lord
said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument(R) to proclaim my name to the Gentiles(S) and their kings(T) and to the people of Israel.
He
sets aside his comfort
He
is put in harm’s way
He
overcomes his fear – lives through his fear and become a part of some things
great.
The challenge of
today’s church is not that we do not love God.
We
do. Our challenge is that we have created a God who is largely about our
comfort.
Each of us need moments
of conversion
First
toward Christ, secondly toward the needy
Mine
began in Russia in 2000
Meeting
kids with one shirt.
Wanting
to eat your food
Collecting
sausage and bread for the kids on the ride home.
Pulled
into my driveway and cried
Never
looked at a plate of food the same.
This
is where our members start to feel guilty
Not
guilty, but responsible
Began
to think of the faith less as something internal more as something external
True prayer turns us
from our will to Gods.
I
think Jesus said that in the garden…..
DeMello story about
the woman
“I’m
Out There”
Prayer
takes us past our needs and turns us toward the needs of others
How
to do this
Stages
of Prayer
1.
I
talk God listens
2.
God
talks I listen
3.
Neither
talks both listen
we
don’t hover in prayer, we don’t bask in prayer, we don’t hang about, we don’t
linger, we don’t relax with god in prayer and so we don’t often listen in
prayer - we are afraid of what we might hear
if
I really get to know the heart of God, what would he say to me?
-
Barbara Brown Taylor
"We name our
concerns, giving God suggestions on what to do about them.
What reversal of
power might occur if we turned the process around, naming our concerns and
asking God to tell us what to do about them?
Sort of a …..Speak,
Lord, for your servants are listening."
We sit around praying
for direction, for purpose when Joplin is flattened. When the prisons
are full; when children in our towns are hungry.
As if In the American
version of Christianity; Jesus gets married, buys a house in the suburbs; has a
family; serves as PTA president for a stint; has good health care; has a fat
401K; lives a long life and dies quietly in his sleep.
We
all must come to a point when we stop worrying that we are not getting our fair
share from God.
We
need to Stop thinking that life is about me – and look instead to join the
kingdom work and invest in others.
True
Prayer gives us a heart of compassion for all people but especially for the
broken and wounded on the side of the road.
We
can no longer sit by, we can no longer
pass by
All human hearts
desire comfort. Some human hearts desire greatness. Friends,
these are a contradiction.
These
are Two things that cannot abide together.
You
wish to be brave? Courageous for God? Then you must enter the danger zone.
We must be willing to
cross the road and stoop down to reach for the broken. We must be willing to get our clothes bloody
and dirty for the cause of Christ.
Not
my will but your will be done.
This is the true joy in life,
the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one;
the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap
of life…
and being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod
of ailments and grievance, complaining
that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. -George Bernard Shaw
I love that quote.
I love it in a painful way.
Challenging our life paradigms is always
painful.
But that is the only way that God can move us
from our ways to his.
Transition
One
o f the root problems in our faith today is our soteriology. Our theology of salvation.
Salvation hat hangers
–
Ephesians
2:8-10 8 For it is by grace(P) you have been saved,(Q) through faith(R)—and this is not from yourselves, it
is the gift of God— 9 not by works,(S) so that no one can boast.(T) 10 For we are
God’s handiwork,(U) created(V) in Christ Jesus to do good works,(W) which God prepared in advance for us
to do.
Romans
10 9 If you
declare(L) with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,”(M) and believe(N) in your heart that God raised him
from the dead,(O) you will be saved.(P) 10 For it is
with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth
that you profess your faith and are saved.
·
Good
Samaritan- Lk 10 [what must I do to inherit eternal life]
·
The
ten talents – mt 25, lk 19 – what is the kingdom like? weeping, wailing, gnashing
·
Zacchaeus lk 19 – today salvation has come to this
house
·
Rich
Young Ruler- mk 10, lk 18, mt 19 what must I do to inherit eternal life
·
Matthew
25 sheep and goats- not divided by what they believed, but by what they did
I
was hungry and you preached to me
The
righteous have done this for so long, they are self unaware…when were you
hungry and we fed you?
Ephesians
2 & Romans 10 are fine except they allow us to stop with our comfort. Sort
of a, I believe, and that is enough.
We have to decide
whether we will have in this life, a salvation that is primarily consumed by
me or a salvation that finds its expression thru me
Prayer
centered primarily on me tends to see the value of me
God
centered prayer sees the value of everyone
Loving
God takes us From our mission to his mission
Missions isn’t
something that the missions department does, it is what all of us do
GK
Chesterton on the incarnation. Just as God came to meet us; we must go out to
meet others.
Truly spiritual
people are those who have learned to set aside their comfort and personal
preference for the sake of the mission.
Peter rollins - It is time that we stop thinking of
Christianity primarily as a way of believing, and instead begin to think of it
as believing in a way”
Wesley would have
gone there.
Although
a big believer in salvation by faith
He
was also a deep believer in living your faith out.
Holiness
of heart and life
Sort
of a ……..No one is saved by works, no one is saved with out them
Being
made perfect in love is not something that is relegated to the heart
It
surely begins in the heart but love is never perfected until it stretches out
to the needy
The
church has hung its hat on jn 3:16. God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That whosoever believes in him would not
perish but have everlasting life. Jn
3:16. We all know it.
How
would the life of the church be changed if we all knew equally as well 1jn 3:17
17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a
brother or sister in need but has no pity on them,(AR) how can the love of God be in that person?(AS) 18 Dear children,(AT) let us not love with words or speech but
with actions and in truth.(AU) 1 jn 3:17-18
Usually the pivotal
moments of our lives hang on the activity of another the gifts of
another, or the investment of another. A teacher; a parent; a friend. Maybe even a pastor. Made a difference in our
lives
And
so it stands to reason that the greatest moments of someone else’s life tend to
be created when we are investing in
others. When we are willing to become the significant other to them.
Some years ago I was
depressed little d depression. Friend sat me down
1.
What
are you going to do about it?
2.
Helping
others
He
reminded me of a timeless truth.
We
are not alone we are here to care.
The
man on the other side of the road was helped by the Samaritan,
but
let us be clear the Samaritan was also helped by the man.
There
is a joy found in the human heart when we help another.
God has a purpose and
he calls you.
Not
your pastor. He calls you.
He
calls your pastor too.
To
leave your nets.
To
buy back the errant spouse
To
feed the widow
To
take up your cross
To
find the joy in the timeless truths that is in
The
prayer of St. Francis
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen
Then go to conclusion
God has given us this
wonderful journey that we call life.
But
We have lost our adventure; the dream, the fight, the calling.
We
are bored in life and so we fill it with snow skiing, sky diving and vacations
– one sensory overload after another. Then we come home and we are bored again.
And
we look to god and pray for god to call us to something…..
And
the needy of the world wait
At
a time when the influence of the churches warning, at a time when the
reputation of the church is tarnished, at a time when people are looking everywhere
else. It is time for the church to rise. Not a conference at a time, not a
church at a time, but the church always rises one person at a time.
The
church is not an end in itself, it is a launching pad. The disciples never
pulled the wagons into a circle. Every christ follower should follow Christ in
mission.
Conclusion
I
have heard many sermons. Most of them
went in one ear and out the other.
I
have delivered many sermons, often these too have gone in one ear and out the
other,
But
there have been those times.
A
few moments that touched me. where the
stars aligned and I felt the touch of the spirit.
those
moments set my life on a different course.
.
If you have fallen
into a place of comfort, may almighty God use this moment to catapult you into
his purpose.
Fan
the flames
You
cannot let fear hold you back – no great things ever achieved without fear
It
was a nervous moment for the good Samaritan, but he pushed thru his fears and
invested himself in another
A ship in
harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
there is a
load to be carried and a destination to be reached.
The open seas
are sometimes rocky, but We are called to a purpose.
We Christ
followers are to follow him, into the mission field to be his hands. And those who work in the field always end up
with dirty
fingernails.
Lord Christ,
You have no body on earth but ours, No hands but ours, No feet but ours. Ours are the eyes through which your compassion
Must look out on the world. Ours are the feet by which you may still
Go about doing good. Ours are the hands with which
You bless people now. Bless our minds and bodies,
That we may be a blessing to others. AMEN
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