Message: October 14, 2018 Given by: Geoff Kohler Series: What We Have to Offer Scripture: 1 Peter 4:7-11 Title: Wrapping the Gift Last week, this week and over the next couple of weeks we re talking about the values our Elders have led us to adopt as part of our Values statement. Our Values statement reads, With God s help, we seek to be a joyful community of faith in Jesus Christ, filled with the Spirit and marked by the values of humility, gratitude and engagement. We re looking to be marked by these values so we can live into the Vision the Elders also adopted. You can find it on the front of your bulletin right under the word Welcome. Say it with me. This is a place to meet and get to know God, discover why we re alive and find the resources to meet the world s needs. Our Values link into helping us live into this vision. The first value we looked at was engagement as resisting a compartmentalized life living a life of integrity of being one thing, a follower of Jesus, all the time. The second value we re looking at today is gratitude and next week we ll look at humility. So, to start today, I d like to tell you a story. The story goes that Jesus healed 10 men who had leprosy. This is a deadly disease. The 10 came calling out, asking Jesus to heal them and he said, Go show yourselves to the priest. As they left and are walking down the road they are restored, healed. One of them, a non-jewish man, turned back and came to Jesus and thanked him. Jesus said, Wait! Weren t 10 people healed and only this foreigner came back to praise God? He tells the man to go on his way because your faith has made you well. It is gratitude that is core of that faith. This story teaches us a few things about Gratitude. Gratitude Stabilizes us in the truth Spiritually forms us Sends us into ministry Gratitude is part of the actual healing of our souls. The other nine were healed of their leprosy, but they didn t receive the full healing they might have found. Let s look at our Scripture 7 The end of all things is near. Therefore, be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. 8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as
faithful stewards of God s grace in its various forms. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. So, let s start with everything s ending. It s all over, you might as well give up. Did you ever have one of those days That s a place a lot of us know, that feeling like we are at the end of all things. But, instead of giving up, we re told we have a place to turn. So, we re told get clear in your thinking, not caught by your circumstance but by the truth that God always has us in his heart, and that the troubles of our world are not bigger than God. So, we can pray we can enter God s presence. How do we enter God s presence? The way we are to come to God is through gratitude Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. Psalm 100:4 Do you know that God always has you in his heart? If we start with everything s falling apart, but God always has me in his heart, we walk out of the overwhelming stifling of our spirits in suffering by being grateful. Our gratitude to God opens our hearts to love of others, covering them (like the Lamb the covering sacrifice) to receiving and welcoming, being hospitable to others o without grumbling and to using our gifts on behalf of others Do you see the direction of this? When we walk in gratitude, we walk from our suffering and troubles into God s presence and then into forgiving and loving others, to receiving and welcoming them, to providing for them, to using our giftedness on their behalf. Gratitude Stabilizes us in the truth Spiritually forms us Sends us into ministry We turn from inward to outward. Gratitude is this mighty force that moves us from an inward focus to an outward focus. Gratitude is one of the mightiest forces on earth. That s because it connects us so deeply with God and with life all around us. It is also the key element out of suffering. That might sound like an outlandish claim, so I ll say it again. Gratitude is the key element that moves us out of suffering. It doesn t deny the pain or pretend that we aren t suffering, but if suffering was a well, a pit, in which we stood at the bottom gratitude is the knotted rope by which we can escape. Gratitude is stronger than optimism. It s not just a positive thought. Gratitude actually ties us to strength, to God s strength. If suffering were a well that we were in the bottom of and gratitude was a knotted rope on
which we could climb out we d realize on our way that someone up above was actually pulling the rope up while we climbed. Gratitude ties us together with God, other people, creation itself. And it is a mixture, an array of emotions. We can be feeling relief or insight or assurance or freedom or comfort or hope or all of these seemingly all at once. I read a story of a missionary who was being tortured in a communist country for being a Christian. In the midst of his suffering, his chief torturer began telling him how stupid he was to follow Jesus and that Jesus was stupid. Your Savior, this one you trust he says he is like a shepherd who would leave 99 sheep in the wilderness to seek out one. What kind of stupid shepherd would do something like that? And, after a moment, the missionary lifted his head and said, Thank you. The torturer was stunned. The missionary went on. I had almost given up but you reminded me how much God loves me how grateful I am. Even it s only me, he searched for me to bring me home. Do you know that God always has you in his heart? We must know how grateful we are to God. We must know why we re grateful. If we don t have that much to be grateful to God for we will not find the power God promises. Jesus went for dinner to the home of a leader and while he was there a woman who had a bad reputation came in and began crying over his feet. People would lie down when they ate and so Jesus feet were extended back and she cried over his feet and then began to wipe his feet with her hair. The leader saw all this and thought to himself, if Jesus really was a prophet he wouldn t let a woman like this touch him. Jesus said he wanted to tell the leader a story. The went: A rich man loaned money to two men. One owed him 100 dollars and the other owed him 50,000 dollars. He forgave both debts. Then Jesus asked the leader, Which do think loved him more? The leader said, The one who was forgiven more. Exactly right, said Jesus, And that is how things are here. When I arrived you didn t give me any water to wash my feet but ever since I got here this woman has washed my feet with her tears, dried them with her hair. She has been forgiven much and so she loves much. The one who is forgiven little, loves little. Unless we are grateful to God, unless we know how much we have to be grateful for, we will not find the power God promises. The power of God in our lives grows from our gratitude. You see we won t receive little children into our worship unless we re grateful to God they re here. We won t welcome teenagers unless we re grateful to God they re here. We won t welcome the newcomer, help them to find a seat, show them how to find a classroom or a restroom unless we re grateful to God they re here. That gratitude for the presence of anyone else being here grows because of our gratitude that a place was opened up here for us by God. God received us and now, from within our gratitude, we want to make sure others know they are received as well.
If God hasn t done all that much for us we don t need to be that grateful to God. If God has just given us a church and it makes us feel good to be here and it s given us some security that being a Christian is the right thing because it makes us feel nice we could have very similar feelings if we just had a great hobby. This is why our campaign right now is focused on Giving from a Grateful Heart. Some people have a gift of giving. Giving is a Spiritual Gift, like any other. Like where Peter, in our Scripture, tells us to serve in the ways we are gifted to serve, Paul, back in Romans 12 says We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously Giving is a spiritual gift, but we can all give out of gratitude. There are a million ways to do good things out there in the world. But, this is the place where the community of God doesn t just do good things, it s where we show up to say thanks for what s been done for us, to not only pool our resources but to get in line with God s purposes as we do it. We are here to do what God needs accomplished and that he wants us to be part of. There was an old comedian named Jack Benny and he created this schtick that was all about how stingy he was. He had a skit he did where he is held up at gun point and the thief says, Your money or your life. Jack Benny just stands there, until the gunman says, Well, what is it? And Benny says, I m thinking. I m thinking. There was a pastor I know of who decided to use that line as his Stewardship sermon title Your Money or Your Life. The Choir that day decided to sing, Take My Life. Gratitude stabilizes us in the truth, spiritually forms us and sends us out into ministry. You see, the question isn t your money or your life. Our money is our life. Money is the closest thing we have to the power of God. That s what makes it so important to us. It gets us food, clothing, shelter, healing and help. It also forms us spiritually. It narrows us down into ourselves, into taking care of ourselves, into doing what we want to do and into making sure we re safe. This is why Jesus talked about the use of money only this much less than he talked about the kingdom of God. But he talked more about the kingdom of God. He talked about the kingdom because he knew that money spiritually forms us downward and inward. It makes us ungrateful. He knew that the Kingdom of God spiritually formed us outward and into God s purposes. As you discern how you will give to this church, let it grow out of gratitude. I was brought up in Christian home where I was taught to give to the church. But, I live with this Baptist girl and she discovered that as we were laying out our early budget, when we first got married, that I was more worried about keeping money than letting it go. And Baptists her kind of Baptists they re kind of funny about this stuff. She got on me about being grateful to God. The first thing, she told me, is we give to the church. That s why the biggest amount of our disposable income comes right here. That s why every year we increase that amount. The first thing we want to see accomplished is
what God is going to do through this place. The first thing we want to do is to tell God how grateful we are that we get to be here. So, I m inviting you to join me as you discern what you will give to this ministry. What will express your gratitude to God?