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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