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Thursday, August 14, 2014

No Fear

This is the message from the Gettysburg WOW (Worship on Wednesday) service August 13, 2014.  The Bible verses used are Revelation 3:14-22.

            Most of you probably know that I’m a baseball fan.  You also probably know that my favorite team is the Minnesota Twins.  And you also probably know that the Twins have not been doing very well in the last few years.
            The reason for that is not because they’ve had a lot of bad ballplayers.  They’ve had some, but their main problem is not that they have a lot of bad ballplayers.  The main problem is that they have not had a lot of good ballplayers.
            What I’m saying is that they’ve had a lot of guys who are kind of average, kind of mediocre.  The problem with having a lot of guys like that is not that they do a lot of stuff that makes you lose a lot of games.  That’s not it.  The problem is that they don’t do a lot of stuff that makes you to win a lot of games, either.  They’re just kind of there.  They’re neither bad nor good, not making you lose and not making you win.
            In some ways, having a team of average, mediocre players like that is worse than having a team of bad players.  When you have bad players, it’s pretty obvious what you need to do.  You need to replace them.  You need to give some other guys a chance and see what they can do.  If they’re better, great.  If they’re not, well, you did not lose anything by trying them, because they guys they replaced were not any good anyway.
            When you have a team of average, mediocre players, though, it’s not so obvious what you need to do.  Those guys are not terrible.  They’re just not really good.  Could they get better?  Well, maybe.  It’s hard to say.  Could the guys you replace them with do worse?  Yeah, they might.  A team like this is, in the Bible’s phrase, neither hot nor cold.  So, when you have a team like this, it’s hard to know just what to do with them.
            I think that’s why the Lord was so hard on the people of the church in Laodicea.  They were not bad people.  They just were not particularly good people.  They had some faith in God.  They just did not trust God to take control of their lives.  They were not actively working against God.  They just were not doing anything to help God, either.  They were just kind of there.  They were, in the Bible’s phrase, neither hot nor cold.  And so it was hard to know just what to do with them.
            Does that describe you?  Is your faith strong?  Are you on fire, hot for the Lord?  Or are you just kind of there, neither hot nor cold?
            Now the thing is, when you preach a sermon like this to a small gathering like this, everyone thinks I’m specifically talking about them.  I’m not.  Unless, of course, that description fits you.  If, in fact, you are just kind of there, neither hot nor cold, then yes, I am talking about you.
            And I’m also talking about me.  I think a lot of us--maybe all of us--have those times, when we are neither hot nor cold, when we are just kind of there, when we are not actively working against God but we’re not really doing anything to help God, either.
            Why is that?  I mean, it’s not like we intend to be that way.  No one comes to God and says, “O Lord, make me a mediocre Christian!”  None of us prays, “God, increase my faith, but just a little bit.  Make my faith lukewarm and no more.”  We don’t start out on our Christian journey hoping to be that way.  So why, so many times, are we?
            Well, that’s a question we could probably talk about the rest of the night.  I just want to talk about one aspect of it.  One of the reasons we are lukewarm for God is that we get scared.
            See, if we decide that we’re going to become hot for Christ, we decide that we’re going to turn our entire lives over to Christ.  And if we decide to turn our entire lives over to Christ, that means we’re giving up having control of our lives ourselves and turning it over to God.  And if we give up control of our lives and turn that control to God, who knows what could happen?
            I mean, think about it.  What if we totally gave up control of our lives to God, and God told us to go to Iraq and help the Christians there?  What if we totally gave up control of our lives to God and God told us to go to Haiti and work with the poor?  Or, what if we totally gave up control of our lives to God and God told us to go live on the reservation and work with Native Americans?
            If we totally give up control of our lives to God, God might tell us to go anywhere.  God might tell us to do anything.  And that’s scary.  And so, we’re afraid to let ourselves get too hot for God.  We think, “I’ll just stay lukewarm.  It’s safer.”
            I understand that.  I’ve felt that way at times myself.  I probably will feel that way again.  But we don’t need to.  We don’t need to feel that way.  We don’t need to be afraid of God.
            That’s one of the big differences that the coming of Jesus made.  In the Old Testament, you read about the fear of the Lord all the time.  That phrase, the fear of the Lord, or something similar shows up all the time in the Old Testament.  But not in the New Testament.  In the New Testament, we read “perfect love drives out fear”.  And who has perfect love?  God, of course.  Because God loves us, we don’t have to be afraid of God any more.
            Here’s the way I think it works.  If we give up control of our lives to God, God will ask us to do certain things.  But the things God asks us to do will be consistent with who we are.
            Think of it this way.  God made you.  And God made me.  That does not mean just that God gave us physical form.  It means that God created us to be who we are.  The talents we have, the interests we have, the abilities we have, the passions we have, all came from God.  God created you to be the way you are.  God wants you to be who you are.  If God had wanted you to be somebody else, God would’ve created you to be somebody else.  God created you to be you, with all the talents and interests and abilities and passions you have.  And God created me to be me, with all the talents and interests and abilities and passions I have.
            Now, there is one thing we need to say about that.  It can be tempting, sometimes, to use that as an excuse.  We’re not allowed to justify our bad actions, or our failures to act, by saying, “Well, I’m just being who I am.  I’m just being who God made me to be.”  It does not work that way.  God wants you to be who you are, but God wants you to be the best you that you can be.  And God wants me to be the best me that I can be.
            But the things God asks us to do will be consistent with the talents and interests and abilities and passions God gave us.  For example, most of you know that I’m completely inept at working with my hands.  Wanda says I’d pound a nail in backwards.  So, God is not going to ask me to go build houses for Habitat for Humanity.  God knows I would not be any good at that and God knows I don’t enjoy doing things I’m not any good at and God is not stupid.  Now, God could ask me to do other things for Habitat for Humanity, things that I do have the ability to do and that I would enjoy, but God is not dumb enough to tell me to go do stuff that I would not be any good at and that would make me miserable.
            Now, there are times when God asks us to try something we’ve never tried.  After all, all of us have talents and abilities that we don’t know about because we’ve never tried to develop them.  God could ask us to do something that we’ve never done before because God knows we have a talent for it even if we don’t.  
But God is not going to ask us to do something that’s going to make us miserable because God does not want us to be miserable.  Giving up being lukewarm, giving control of our lives to God, does not mean that we’ll be going to be missionaries in Haiti unless God has put a desire in our hearts to be missionaries in Haiti.  And God does do that for some people.  But God is not going to force us to go there and be miserable, because again, God does not want us to be miserable.  When we give up control of our lives to God, God will ask us to do things that we have the ability to do and that we’ll get satisfaction out of doing.  God will ask us to do things that make use of the talents and interests and passions and abilities God gave us.  God will ask us to do things that are consistent with who we are, because who we are is who God created us to be.
            So let’s not be afraid to be hot.  Let’s not be afraid to give control of our lives to God.  That whole “fear of the Lord” thing, that’s so two thousand years ago. God is love, perfect love.  And perfect love drives out fear.  God loves us.  So let’s love God.  And let’s give control of our lives over to God.  When we do, we will truly be who God created us to be.  And when we are who God created us to be, we find a happiness we’ve never known befo

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