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Sunday, September 17, 2023

Stress Relief

The Sunday morning message in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  September 17, 2023.  The Bible verses used are acts 5:27-42.

            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.

When 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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