The first United Methodist appointment Wanda and
I had was to the McCook Lake United Methodist church in North Sioux City, now
known as the ARK United Methodist church. Now, that church had quite a
history. It had started out as a small,
mission church. Then Gateway Computers
came into North Sioux City. The town
boomed, and the church boomed right along with it. They were averaging
over two hundred people in worship on Sunday morning, and it looked like that
would grow to more. The church’s future
looked incredibly bright.
Then, Gateway ran into trouble. And they pulled out
of North Sioux City. And the town faltered, and the church faltered right
along with it. The number of people in worship plummeted. When Wanda and I got to North Sioux City this
church, which had been averaging more than two hundred people in worship, was
down to about twenty-five. And when we got there, we were told that we
had three years to get the church turned around or it would be closed. In fact, at the first church meeting we had
after we got there, we were told that we were going to have to leave our
building in two months and find another place to worship. That’s why the
picture of the school is up there--that’s ultimately where we held worship
services for most of the three years Wanda and I were there.
So anyway, there we were. Our first United Methodist
appointment. Not really knowing what we’re doing anyway, a couple of
small town people now living in the suburb of what, for this area at least, is
a fairly good-sized city, and told to find a way to get this church turned
around in three years or it would be closed. Without even having a
building to have worship services in.
Talk about a stressful situation!
Well, as you might guess, we prayed a lot. And as I
was praying one day, this thought struck me. If God wants this church to
be here, then it’ll be here no matter what I do, because I’m not stronger than
God. And if God does not want this church to be here, then it won’t be
here no matter what I do, because I’m not stronger than God. Now, that
does not mean that I decided to sit back and do nothing. What it means is that I decided to do my best
to follow God and to serve God, and then I would see what God decided to do
with that. If God decided to bless it, the church would grow. If not, then it would not. It was not my job to determine the
results. It was God’s job to do that,
and I would trust God to make the result come out the way it was supposed to.
All my job was, was simply to be faithful to God and to do the best I
could.
When I realized that, it took a lot of stress out of my
life. Wanda and I still worked hard.
But we knew that if we stayed faithful to God and did the best we could,
the result did not matter. In we stayed faithful to God, we would have
succeeded, no matter what the actual result might be.
We talked last we about how, after Jesus died, at first the
disciples did not know what they were supposed to do. But Jesus told them
to go and spread the gospel, to make disciples of all nations. And that’s what they started doing.
The disciples had no guarantee of what was going to happen
when they went out to spread Jesus’ message. I’m sure they had
hopes. I’m sure they had dreams. I’m sure they were hoping that they would make
hundreds, thousands of converts. They were probably dreaming of a day
when everyone they talked to would believe in Jesus and be saved.
But at the same time, they’d been with Jesus for three
years. They saw what happened when Jesus spread the gospel message. There were some people who believed, but
there were some people who did not. There were people who rejected Jesus’
message immediately. There were others
who followed for a while, and then lost interest. And of course, they saw what ultimately happened
to Jesus--he was killed on a cross. If that could happen to Jesus himself,
the disciples surely knew that it might happen to them, too. That’s a pretty stressful situation, too!
The disciples did not know how things would go when they
started to spread the gospel message. But they realized that they did not
need to know. Jesus had told them to go
and spread the gospel and make disciples of all nations. So, they decided
to do the best they could to do that.
They would do their best to follow God and to serve God, and then see
what God would do with that. If God decided to bless their work, then the
gospel message would be spread. If not,
then it would not. The disciples knew
that it was not their job to determine the results. It was God’s job to
do that, and they trusted that God would make the result come out the way it
was supposed to. Their job was simply to
be faithful to the task Jesus had given them and to do the best they could.
If they did that, they would have succeeded, no matter what the results
might be. And I suspect that knowing
that took a lot of their stress away, too.
Well, the result, at least at the time of our Bible reading
for today, is that the disciples got hauled up before the Sanhedrin, which was
the Jewish ruling authority. The Sanhedrin basically said, hey, we told
you to stop telling people about Jesus.
And yet, here you are, going around talking about nothing else. What do you think you’re doing?
And the disciples basically say, you can tell us whatever
you want, but we have to do what God told us to do. God told us to spread
this message. Yes, we know you might try
to stop us, but we cannot control what you do.
We can only control what we do, and what we’re going to do is follow
God. So you do whatever you’re going to do.
We tend to kind of gloss over that, but think of the faith
that takes. I mean, the Sanhedrin could’ve had them put in prison for
life, and there would’ve been nothing they could’ve done about it. And
back then, prison was a really bad place to be.
Not that it’s a great place now, but prisons were awful back then. Just the unsanitary conditions might kill
you. And yet, here the disciples are, standing up before the Sanhedrin
and saying, do whatever you want. We
don’t care. We’re going to follow God no
matter what you do to us. Again, they were going to be faithful to God
and trust that God would make things come out the way they were supposed to.
Well, when the disciples said that, the Pharisees were up
in arms. They were furious. Some
of them wanted to kill Peter and the others, despite the fact that they really
did not have the power to impose the death penalty. And then, a Pharisee
named Gamaliel speaks. And Gamaliel
takes a similar attitude to what the one I took in North Sioux City. He said to the others, look, if God is not
behind what these guys are doing, we don’t have to do anything. What
they’re doing will fail, because they are not stronger than God. But if God is behind what these guys are
doing, then nothing we do is going to stop them, because guess what, guys. We’re not stronger than God, either. So you know what? We don’t have to take
on the stress of defending God. God can
defend Himself. So let these people go
and wait to see what God decides to do.
It seems to me that’s a pretty good attitude to take toward
all aspects of our lives. In fact, it seems to me that it would make a
lot of our lives a lot less stressful, too. Whatever our situation,
whether we’re at work, or at home, or wherever.
Do the best we can. Do the best we can to love God, to serve God,
and to be faithful to God. And realize
that if we do that, we’re not responsible for the result. God is. And we can trust God to make that result be
the way it’s supposed to be. That may
not be the way we wanted it to be, but it will be the way it’s supposed to be.
It’s not our job to get a result.
It’s our job to be faithful to God and do the best we can to serve God
and show love to God. If we do that,
then in God’s eyes, we’ll have succeeded, no matter what the result might be.
It’s not always easy to give control of the results to God.
We tend to want to control the results ourselves. And maybe sometimes we can. But my
experience has been that when I try too hard to control the results, what I end
up doing is trying to force things to go my way, and trying to force people to
do what I want them to do. And that does not work very often. And when you think about it, you can see why. Even God does not force us to do things the
way God wants us to. If God does not
force people to do things, why would I think I can do it and make it work?
But if we just do our best and leave the results to God, then we don’t
feel a need to force anything. We can
relax, let go of the stress, and let God take care of things.
God is always stronger than we are. If God wants
things to happen in a certain way, they will happen that way, no matter what
you and I do. If God does not want things to happen in a certain way,
then they won’t happen that way, no matter what you and I do. So let’s do
the best we can to serve God, to follow God, and to love God. And let’s trust God to take it from
there. It’ll take a lot of stress out of
our lives. And if we stay faithful to God, then in God’s eyes we will
have succeeded, no matter what the results on earth might be.
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