The Message of the Church is… the Power to Change

Pentecost Sunday 2010

Scripture Passage – Acts 2:1-13

Description – The final sermon in the series “The Message of the Church is…”

This past week at a seminar here in town, I was introduced to a church in Sheffield, England that I would very much like to visit. Called St Thomas Crookes, it is a church that was formed through the merger of an Anglican (we call them Episcopal here in the states) and a Baptist church several years ago. I have no idea why it is called St Thomas Crookes, but I like how they describe their vision for the ministry that God has called them to there in the city of Sheffield.

(Slide 1) Here it is…

(source: http://www.stthomascrookes.org/the-vision)

What I like about (beside the fact that it is Biblical) is that it uses a simple icon, a triangle, to express a very simple vision: UP which means to meet God; IN which means to meet with friends; OUT which means to live life better.

It says a great deal with few words. If you use a computer these days, we recognize programs by their icons. It is how we navigate our computers these days.

Word pictures, icons if you will, have been used in this series as well.

(Slide 2) On April 11^th I used the word, “slather” as in we need to slather people with message and acts of God’s love and forgiveness through Christ. I did not have an icon for that word but I thought this week of slathering ribs with barbecue sauce. (Smells good!)

I also thought of putting up a picture of a St Bernard, but that would be a rather, disgusting shall we say, image of slathering! (A drool machine!)

(Slide 3) On April 18^th I used the image of a turning point that illustrates the need for repentance, a turning away from our sins and a turning to God as we proclaim the message of repentance.

(Slide 4) On April 25^th I used the image of a “plus” sign to illustrate the message of adding Christ to our lives while subtracting sin as the Patrick Morley quote illustrated.

(Source: Patrick Morley, Walking With Christ in the Details of Life.)

(Slide 5) Two weeks ago on Mother’s Day, I used the image of the shepherd as we thought about the important and practical message of guiding and caring.

(Slide 6) Then last week, I used the image of a prescription, for the message of peace. We viewed Philippians 4:6-7 as a prescription for having God’s peace in our lives as outlined in that text and on the screen.

(Slide 7) For today, I first remind us that it is Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost, as we read in Deuteronomy 16:16 was one of three annual Hebrew festivals in which thanksgiving for the harvest was made. On the Pentecost, however, that we remember and are going to revisit this morning, a great event was to take place in which the harvest of human hearts and souls would begin to take place. A harvest of redemption and forgiveness that continues to this day.

The image to consider this morning is power or strength. But it is a power and strength that is not for sale. It is a power and strength that is not for us to use for our own personal benefit (though it does benefit us). It is a power and strength that comes from God the Holy Spirit for His purpose and plans. It is a power and a strength that creates change, deep change, in a person’s life and character.

(Slide 7a) This message of the church is about the power to change… for the better! This brings me back to St Thomas Crooke’s website…

(Slide 8) Notice the first sentence of their vision statement “God has given us a life to live and our desire is to live that life better by living a God life.” This is a key part of Pentecost… the ability to live our live better by living a God life.

On this particular Pentecost Day that we will read about shortly, 10 days have gone by since Christ ascended back to heaven. Prior to His ascension back to heaven, He told the eleven, as we read in Acts 1:4 and 8:

“Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you what he promised. Remember, I have told you about this before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit… But when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The coming of the Holy Spirit allows for the launch of the Christian faith and church. The result is a power, God’s power, to live for Him and to tell others about Jesus Christ and His saving grace and forgiveness.

But, but, it is not about building our own private reservoir of power for our own personal use. It is about allowing the power of God to work in us for our betterment AND through us for the betterment of others. A better that is redemptive.

Let’s now read our main text or launch text for this morning, Acts 2:1-13:

On the day of Pentecost, seven weeks after Jesus’ resurrection, the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm in the skies above them, and it filled the house where they were meeting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them.  And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.

Godly Jews from many nations were living in Jerusalem at that time. When they heard this sound, they came running to see what it was all about, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers.

They were beside themselves with wonder. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, and yet we hear them speaking the languages of the lands where we were born! Here we are—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the areas of Libya toward Cyrene, visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans, and Arabians. And we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!” They stood there amazed and perplexed. “What can this mean?” they asked each other. But others in the crowd were mocking. “They’re drunk, that’s all!” they said.

Now to get the full impact of what follows from this initial shock and wondering about what is going on we need to continue into chapter 2. As we do so, we read that Peter gets the audience’s attention and says to them that they are not drunk people they are ordinary folks just like them. He goes on to quote the prophet Joel and then launches into a sermon in which he speaks of Jesus of Nazareth. (Remember that 53 or so days have passed since Jesus was crucified. So the memory of Jesus’ crucifixion is still fresh.) He goes on to link the prophetic utterances of the Old Testament to Jesus as the Messiah and concludes with the declarative statement that “let it be clearly known by everyone in Israel that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified to be both Lord and Messiah!” (NLT)

The result of this message, as we read in verse 37 is a deep and profound conviction of heart, “Brothers, what should we do?” And, as we have already studied in this series, Peter replies with “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Repentance takes place. The Christian faith begins to take root in people. God’s mission of being witnesses, of making disciples starts to occur. It is the result of allowing the Holy Spirit to do His thing.

We read it in verses 42 through 47:

(Slide 9)

joined with the other believers

A deep sense of awe came over them all

met together constantly and shared everything they had

sold their possessions and shared the proceeds with those in need.

(Slide 10)

worshiped together at the Temple

met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity

all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people.

This the result of allowing the Spirit to His work.

(Slide 11)

Selfishness is surrendered; cliquishness is let go, personal agendas (the “what’s in it for me” attitude) is given up… this is not the goal of Pentecost.

(Slide 11a) It is result of Pentecost.

Pentecost is the coming of Holy Spirit to empower the church to do its work and, as Jesus said in John 16:6 “convince the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment.”

All of this takes place in Acts chapter 2.

(Slide 12) So what does all this mean for us today?

Let’s think for a moment about the context of Acts 2.

In verse 41, we read that about 3,000 persons believed that Jesus was the Messiah that day. In verse 5 we read that “Godly Jews from many nations were living in Jerusalem.” They came running to find out what was going on because they heard their native language being spoken in a place that was a hub of “multilingualness” at the time. And, in verse 13, there were the skeptics and the mockers in the crowd. (There always is…)

I think that there were hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem, perhaps a million people, but more likely several hundred thousand. And not all of them believed what Peter said. And because all of them did not believe what Peter said, they resisted the work of the Holy Spirit.

But, but as we read over in chapter 6, there was eventual grumbling in the developing Christian community as we read “as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. Those who spoke Greek complained against those who spoke Hebrew, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.”

The issue is addressed and the apostles say “elect seven men who are well respected and are full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. We will put them in charge of this business.” As we recall then from last week, Stephen was one of them.

Here we have both an essential criteria and a focus that comes out of Pentecost – seeking spirited filled persons to lead and seeking the Holy Spirit’s aid in the resolving the situation so that the message of the church goes forward uninhibited.

Here, I think the rubber meets the road for us today. And it has more to do with Acts 6 rather than Acts 2.

There has been so much written about the dynamics of Acts 2 over the years. It is constantly referred to when thinking about and discussing the role of the church and how the church should function. Pentecost Sunday is a very important Sunday for us in the Christian Church. I think that it is just behind Easter Sunday (and for others behind Christmas Sunday) in importance.

But I think when it comes to the Holy Spirit these days we find that the rubber meets the road more in the collision of goals and issues in Acts 6 than in the awesome power of Acts 2. Part of the role of the Holy Spirit, as Jesus indicates in John 14 is to be our comforter; our advocate.

And we have need of the Holy Spirit in this capacity often, if not daily. Yet it is not for selfish purposes that He comforts us. It is for God’s purposes and our growth that He comforts us…

… especially when it has to do with changes and the fear (even anger) that change(s) bring.

This past week I read the words of Rupert Loyd, Jr about change and it was one of those ‘aHA!” moments for me.

(Slide 13) “Change can be a difficult animal to wrestle with. Most of us perceive change as resulting in some kind of loss on our part: loss of influence, or authority, or control, or maybe just the loss of being comfortable with a stable situation. People don’t resist change, we resist what we think change will cost us.”

(Source: http://rupertloydjr.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/leadership-is-not-influence/)

Loyd is describing fear here. We fear that change will cost something and we are not sure if we want to pay it. Not everyone in Acts 2 wanted to pay the price of confession and repentance and in a few short chapters those that did, found that they were not willing to pay a certain price on another matter. Jesus talked about counting the cost. It is still something we do.

We have had a lot of change, unwelcomed change in our community over the past 18 months. We have had job change, really job loss. And though it is beginning to turn around and people are going back to work, there is still a feeling that we are not out of the woods yet.

Our schools have been radically changed and it has caused frustration, disappointment, and even anger not just for adults but also for kids. Lack of funding has caused job loss and there has been disagreement, often public and intense disagreement, about the best way to spend the dollars we have in the bank on our education system.

There is, and there has been, a strong sense (and experience) of loss and powerlessness in us and our community for the past year and a half. So we can really relate to those widows in Acts 6 who felt that the food distribution plan was not exactly fair.

But, the Holy Spirit was at work in this conflict. I think that we can read between the lines and sense that the Spirit gave shape and influence to the apostles’ decision to have the church select “seven men who are well respected and are full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.” Then with the requirement of being filled with the Spirit, there was a second way in which the Spirit’s will was carried out. A problem, yet also an opportunity, is solved and God’s work moves forward!

We cannot bottle up the Holy Spirit. We cannot stop the progress of God in and through His church. We cannot contain the Holy Spirit like we think we can… He runs through us and well as in us to accomplish God’s work. To reservoir Him, is to try and contain Him for our private usage. He won’t allow us to do that!

To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be filled on His terms and not ours. God is on the move, here in Kendallville and Noble County, as well as elsewhere. As Henry Blackaby has said, “find out where God is at work and join Him there!”

‘Are you with God this morning?” Better yet, “Are we with God this morning? Are we allowing the Holy Spirit to have His way in us? Are we allowing the Holy Spirit to change us and help us move forward as the First Church of God?

We have to because if we do not, we are going to get nowhere. And God wants us to get somewhere… His direction, His mission, His location.

But for each of us personally this morning, we also need to be in alignment with God and allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in us and to be allowed to do the inner work of transformation of our attitudes, priorities, and habits that will enable us to live as God would have us live… in His strength and power.

(Slide 14) …which brings me back to St Thomas Crookes.

This is one expression of living a God life. It sees a Spirit filled and Spirit led life as the synergistic response to a life lived in God (UP) and with other believers (IN) so that as we go (OUT) we demonstrate and invite others into this God life we have.

This is Pentecost living. This is what and how the Lord is calling us to live. And it requires of us the infilling of the Holy Spirit and our obedient response to His direction.

I invite us this morning to recommit ourselves, individually and congregationally to live in the strength, power, and mission of what this Sunday is really about – a Spirit Filled life on mission with God to accomplish His plan and purpose in the whole world.

I pray that it be so! Amen.

Waiting…Waiting…Waiting

Acts 2:1-2:4

(1) Last week I shared a quote from Rueben Job that began, ‘Most of us do not wait well.’ He went on to say, ‘Jesus asked the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received the promised power to meet all that lay ahead of them as well as an advocate to teach them all that they needed to know.’ He then made a very important observation, ‘It must have been hard to wait. They were under suspicion by the authorities; they wanted to get on with their lives; how did they know that waiting would make any difference? The disciples were obedient to the command of Jesus, though, and their obedience was rewarded with power and a companion.’ 10 days have passed since Jesus returned to heaven under the remaining disciple’s overwhelmed and amazed gaze. That’s nearly a week and a half of waiting. It had been 50 days, nearly two months, since the Resurrection had taken place. But they waited in Jerusalem as Jesus had commanded them to do as we read in Acts chapter 1. And because they waited they experienced the power of God in their lives like never before. What is hard for you to wait on? What tests your patience more than anything else? Is faith worth waiting on and for? Is forgiveness worth waiting on and for? Is hope worth waiting on and for? Is love worth waiting on and for? Is God worth waiting on and for? I believe that they are! As impatient as I am at times, God and all that He offers me is worth waiting on and for. We don’t know how hard it was for those gathered together to wait although Job makes a very salient point that they were under suspicion and that they wanted to get on with their lives. Waiting then is often a pressure cooker experience. I remember waiting for my wedding ceremony to begin and I expected that it would start promptly at 6 PM because that was the time it said on the invitation. I was told that you wait for all the guests to be seated before you start. I didn’t care! It was their fault they were late! We were going to start at 6 PM! Well, everyone did get seated on time and we began on time. (I have photographic proof that we started at 6 PM!) I also remember another time of waiting due to a less, very much less, pleasant experience. It came during middle school when I became the target of the neighborhood bully who loved to give me a daily kick in the seat of the pants. I dreaded the wait getting on and off of the bus. He was bigger and stronger than I was and I did not want to get into a tangle with him. I don’t remember how long this went on, it seemed forever, but it was probably a couple of weeks, but all of that changed one day when he smarted off on the bus to the biggest kid on the bus who got off at our stop and expressed his displeasure. I was never bothered again by him. (Maybe it was because I picked up his glasses and gave them to him after everyone had left. But I don’t know.) Sometimes we have waited for things that we dread to hear or experience. (2) One of my favorite Bible verses is Isaiah 40:31, ’But those who wait on the Lord will find new strength. They will fly high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.’ I believe this to be true. I have experienced it in my life and I have seen it happen in the lives of others. I have also experienced the results of impatient waiting and have found that it often creates a bigger mess than patient waiting. I think of Abraham whose fear of being killed caused him to not wait for God to help but instead put him and his wife in an embarrassing situation as we read in Genesis 12. Gordon MacDonald suggests that Abraham (then called Abram) should have waited on God to provide for them instead of going to Egypt to wait out the famine and getting himself, and his wife, in trouble. Fear, greed, lust, anger, impatience, you name it, a whole host of things can cause us to lose our place in line forcing us to go to the back. The ‘grass is greener’ myth can also force us to understand why waiting is hard to do. But the disciples did what Jesus ask them to do, they waited, and waited, and waited… so that they would be empowered to become witnesses filled with a power and an ability not of their own making. Anthony de Mello has written, (3) ‘The Holy Spirit is given to those who watch and pray and wait patiently, those who have the courage to get away from everything and come to grips with themselves and with God in solitude and silence.’ I believe that the disciples came to grips with themselves and with God in those 10 days of waiting. I also believe that there was a reason for those 10 days of waiting. We find the reason as we go deeper into the Biblical background and discover that the Day of Pentecost took place during the Jewish Festival of Harvest. It was one of the three major festivals celebrated in the Jewish faith and it was celebrated in Jerusalem that would swell in population as Jews from other nations came there to celebrate the festival. Verse 5 in Acts 2 confirms this, ‘Godly Jews from many nations were living in Jerusalem at that time.’ So God, in His great wisdom, sends the Holy Spirit at a time when a great number of people are present at the place where God the Son told the disciples to remain. (Isn’t God smart?) The results of this strategy are that a large number of people from many nations hear the gospel in their own languages right now! Waiting pays off! How long might it have taken for the gospel to be told if the disciples had been sent to various locations to learn the language first? God jump starts the birth of the church and the Christian faith in one moment of action because key people in His plan, waited… (4) This past week we have mourned and remembered a young man who gave his life for his country in Iraq. Waiting has been difficult for his family, his friends, and those who knew him here. Waiting for his body to be returned. Waiting for the caring greeting of family and friends. Waiting for the funeral and the burial. Waiting for the grief and silence which comes afterward. We not only remember Nick Hartege but we also remember others in other times and places who gave of their lives as well. Their faces are still very vivid to those who went into battle along side them and the memories of war and death remain ever strong today. (5) As we move toward communion, we also remember another night of waiting: We remember the disciple’s anxious waiting as they are confronted by Jesus with the statement ‘one of you will betray me’ and the uneasy wrestling they had with their conscience. We also remember Jesus’ waiting… in the garden as He wrestled with the Father’s will and what lied ahead for Him… in the courtyards and before Pilate and Herod as they passed their judgment (or non judgment) on Him… in the midst of the Roman soldiers who beat him with lead tip whips into an unrecognizable condition, waiting for the next blow, and the next, and the next to fall on Him. (6)We remember the waiting that takes place at Calvary when Jesus hangs from the cross as His mother looks on… I have been reading an interesting conversation between a Christian and an atheist as they discuss the question, ‘Is Christianity Good for the World?’ One of the statements that caught my attention as I read it with this day and this weekend in mind was uttered by the Christian named Douglas Wilson, ‘it is good for the world because Jesus died for the life of the world.’ We are the beneficiaries of waiting and the sacrifice of waiting… both politically and spiritually because the sacrifice of others on our behalf, including a living sacrifice, has made it possible as we stand here today because God sent Jesus to die for our sins and wrongs and because young men and women have died in places far away so that we don’t have to over here. Are you grateful for this? I am. (7)And as we prepare for communion I would suggest to each of us today that one of the ways that we honor both those who have sacrificed for our country and our faith is we make the sacrifice of faith and commitment for those who come after us so that both political freedom (as well as responsibility) and spiritual freedom in Christ (as well as the responsibility that is there) is offered and enjoyed by the generations that are to come. May all who come behind us find us faithful and may we also wait on the Lord and experience the strength and power of the Holy Spirit as we do so. Amen.

Healthy Heart Habits

Scripture Passage – 1 Corinthians 13:7

Description – The Sixth and Final Sermon in a post-Easter series on Love.

I begin this morning with this question…

(Slide 1) How healthy is your heart? I am speaking on two levels right now – the physical and the spiritual.

What do you know about your heart? That is, your physical heart?

From the Texas Heart Institute’s website, we learn the following about our human heart.

(Slide 2) It weighs between 7 and 15 ounces (16 ounces is one pound.)

(Slide 3) It is the size of our fist (Make a fist.)

(Slide 4) For a person who lives a long life it will beat up to 3.5 billion times.

(Slide 5) It pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood daily. (Now let’s see, gas is around $2.60/gallon and so 2,000 gallons at $2.60/gallon would be $5,200.00/day!)

What is required to keep this vital organ healthy? I checked several well-known websites and they said the same thing.

(Slide 6) Eat right and exercise.

Yet, there is another heart we need to care for just as much as our physical heart. It is our ‘spiritual’ heart. That part of us, which influences our decisions, values, and beliefs. Jesus had much to say about this heart.

In Mark 7:20-23 “It is the thought-life that defiles you. For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, eagerness for lustful pleasure, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.”

When we began this series, we stopped at Matthew 22 where Jesus responds to a leading question, ‘“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” with a declaration about loving God with our heart, mind, soul, and strength and neighbor as self.

How do we, to extend this analogy (refer to slide 6) for our spiritual heart?

(Slide 7) I suggest this morning that we eat right by asking and allowing God to use the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and the all-important fellowship of the church to help us ‘eat right.’

Last July Newsweek magazine published an article entitled, ‘What Works.’ In the article, reporters Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert presented the findings of three of the ‘latest, greatest’ diet studies. What did they reveal about how to lose weight?

Keep a food diary. The article reported a study done by Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research that found that ‘diarists actually doubled their weight loss. Not only do they see how much they are eating, they also can spot problem areas…’

Deal with ‘weekend weakness.’ A study by Washington University indicated that Saturdays were difficult for a group of dieters. The suggestions offered to help combat the increased weekend food and calorie intake included weighing yourself daily and eating healthy before attending a party or other event where food is served.

Workplace weight loss programs. The article indicated that the ‘American Journal of Health Promotion found that work-based weight-loss programs were effective. In general, participants lost an average of 2.2 pounds to almost 14 pounds. Workplace programs also offer the advantage of a built-in support group since most employed adults spend almost half their waking hours at work. Many offer incentives to the most successful losers.’

How many here this morning have found or heard that being involved with tracking your eating, dealing with those challenging moments when eating is easy, and being a part of a support group has made weight loss easier?

Does not the same hold true in dealing with our inner heart or soul?

If we are to develop heart healthy habits so that our faith grows and we love God and self and neighbor in the Biblical way, do we not need to:

(Slide 8) Keep track of our spiritual diet by making the Bible a daily part of that diet?

In Hebrews 4:12 we read, “For the word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires. It exposes us for what we really are.” That is a very potent statement!

But, if we want to know God’s will and seek guidance for our lives, if we want to have a healthy heart and thus a healthy love, the Bible must be a part of our daily life. We need to read, daily; think on it, daily; for God to use it to take root.

Now there are many good books to help us grow in our faith. And there are many good books that are interesting and helpful to read. But if we seek to develop and maintain spiritual heart health, the Bible needs to be a part of our daily ritual.

In doing so, God will help us keep track, if you will, of our what we are spiritually consuming that is not good for us to consume.

Today is Pentecost Sunday. It is the day that the Holy Spirit came, as Jesus said that He would, and filled those Jesus had told to wait with the power to proclaim the gospel message.  Allowing the Holy Spirit to work in, through, and on us is another important way of developing a heart healthy faith and love. His power and presence is essential, very essential in the development of our soul.

This leads me to ask do we not need to:

(Slide 9) Ask the Holy Spirit to empower us and help us overcome our inner ‘weekend weaknesses?’ We have not just weekend weaknesses but weekday weaknesses, don’t we? We have weak moments, when we falter and fail in our walk with God, don’t we?

This is where the Holy Spirit comes in. He is present to not only convict us of our sins but to help us get back up and move forward again!

Do you also know that the Holy Spirit is one of our biggest prayer supporters? How many here this morning know this?

(Slide 10) Romans 8:26 and 27 says this, “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.”

Please notice the italicized phrases… (Slide 11)

the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. It has only been in the last few years that I have begun to understand the implications of this passage. For many years, I thought of the Holy Spirit as “the Big Gun of the Trinity.”

If God the Father could not get to me through His majesty and power and if Jesus could not get to me through His upcloseness, then the Holy Spirit was called in for a ground attack mission! And this does happen sometimes because of our stubbornness and willful disobedience.

But what Paul writes in these verses gives us a bigger picture of the Holy Spirit. He is the counselor as Jesus says in John 14:16. The Greek word in that verse is paraclete which also means ‘advocate, comforter, and encourager.’ The Holy Spirit becomes our cheerleader!

(Slide 12) the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. This moves me to tears. The Holy Spirit prays for me and for you and for us in ways that cannot be expressed in words! What does that do to you? Think of what it does for us!

The Holy Spirit goes to God on our behalf with a deep groaning; a deep passion; a deep longing that God’s will is done in, through, around, and to us! Why? Because He is our encourager our advocate! Such prayerful intervention cannot, with our obedient cooperation, but help us overcome our heart weaknesses!

I believe that when we come to a place in our praying that we cannot put it into words, we need to start praying, ‘Holy Spirit pray for me because I cannot pray right now.’ When we do, I believe that the Spirit goes to bat for us and for those we are praying for but we need to watch out!

(Slide 13) the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.”

There is a point to this praying, this intercession; it is for us to be in harmony with God’s own will. The operative word here is ‘God’s.’ To overcome our ‘weekend weaknesses’ is God’s will for us. It is not often our own will; our own desire until we are in enough inner pain that we want to change. The purpose of the Holy Spirit praying for us is so that we are in line with God’s will and not our own.

Notice also that Paul does not use singular pronouns in this statement like ‘I,’ or ‘me.’ He uses a plural pronoun ‘us’ to signify that this harmony is about ‘us’ the church and not just ‘me.’ This brings me then to the suggestion if we are to develop heart healthy habits so that our faith grows and we love God and self and neighbor in the Biblical way, do we not need to

(Slide 14) Attach ourselves to a local church as our support group?

Now I have not watched The Biggest Loser on a regular basis but when I have, you don’t have long to watch before you realize, especially during the weigh-in at the end of the show, just how much bonding has taken place in those groups. I don’t think that it is made up TV drama.

Those individuals have put their heart and soul into losing weight that has crippled them physically, emotionally, relationally, and mentally. Their stories of triumph are moving.

The same holds true for the church. We are in need of a spiritual weight loss program. We are in need of confession and repentance of losing weight, as we read in Hebrews 12:1 by stripping of “every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress.”

Remember last week what Chaplain Smith said about bearing one another’s burdens. We are to do so gently while remaining responsible for our own. Yet, how can we bear one another’s burdens when we are weighed down by our own?

How many of those people on The Biggest Loser lost their weight by themselves? None of them! They lost (and sometimes gained) as part of a team.

Think for a moment about someone who has recovered from drug addiction. Did they do it on their own? Probably not. They had help. They had a group to go to and a sponsor to help them.

They also had to face their burdens, sometimes called their character defects, right? These are the weights in Hebrews 12:1 that slow us down in believing, trusting, and loving. Things like: shame, impatience, perfectionism, anger, rage, lust, self-pity, resentment, jealousy and the like.

Someone once said, ‘there is no such thing as solitary Christianity.’ But it seems to me that we like to practice it.

As we read the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments, there is a balance, I believe, between our God given individual choice to accept or reject God’s saving grace through Christ and the need for joining other believers to grow in that faith. We need both. We need the Lord’s wonderful forgiveness through His grace, mercy, and love, and we need to intentionally to enter into a relationship with a carefully chosen group of believers that will help us shed this inner weight. We cannot lose it on our own we need safe people who will help us take it off and keep it off.

(Slide 15) So what does all of this mean for us this morning?

Let us go to main text this morning, 1 Corinthians 13:7.

(Slide 15a) Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

This is a heart healthy love. This is love tracked by daily Bible reading; renewed through prayerful and intentional surrender to the Holy Spirit; and cultivated by intentional and responsible accountability to a carefully chosen group of believers.

(Let me share a good working definition of accountability. It is not being treated as a witness in a courtroom. Effective accountability comes when we say, “I need to work on _______, and this is what I intend to do, please ask me how I am doing on this.”)

In this heart healthy love, we read of endurance, hope, and faith because this heart healthy love is rooted in the love of God and the love of God is rooted in the character of God.

If then, we call ourselves, ‘Christian,’ this love must become our daily practice because to love as Jesus would have us love requires a healthy and getting healthier heart.

So then, how do we assess, that we are developing heart healthy habits that lead to a vital and helpful faith in Christ?

Let me share the story of “Hank” (not his real name) as told by John Ortberg.

“Hank,” according to Ortberg, “was a cranky guy.’ He hardly smiled and when he did it was often a crooked kind of a smile that was at the expense of someone else. “Hank” was not an affirming kind of a guy says Ortberg and was a chronic complainer.

One time he complained about how loud the music was in worship and eventually called OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and complained to them that resulted in their visiting the church!

But Ortberg also says something that I think we need to take a moment to process.  Hank went to church his entire life and no one expected him to change. He notes that the church had some expectations and beliefs for Hank and the rest of the church (i.e. membership) to follow but that no real level of personal transformation seem to be expected of Hank.

That is sad. That is tragic. That is not Biblical!

Out of that story, Ortberg asks five questions for his readers to consider as they assess their faith and the need for personal transformation that faith requires.

(Slide 16) Am I spiritually inauthentic?

In other words, do I appear to be more spiritual, more Christian than I really am? A little boy was asked in Sunday school what is brown, furry, has a long tail, and stores nuts for the winter.’ ‘I guess the answer is Jesus,’ he said, ‘but is sure sounds like a squirrel to me!’

Are you tired of the ‘Jesus’ answer and instead are longing to answer how you really feel and what your really think about your inner life?

Am I becoming judgmental or exclusive or proud? I’ll let you in on a little secret, okay? You promise not to tell okay? Ready? Can you handle it?

Preachers do a great deal more of comparing themselves to other preachers than they will publicly admit to!

Pride is a big problem for those of us who call ourselves Christian. Once we think we have the answer we become smug and think we have arrived. Is this a heart healthy attitude?

Am I becoming more approachable, or less? Is my relationship with God attracting or repealing people? Are people being drawn to God because of me or not?

Am I growing weary of pursuing spiritual growth? Do you ever get weary of the faith and all the expectations that come with being a Christian?

Am I measuring my spiritual life in superficial ways? How do we do that? By the number of verses we memorize or how many ‘quiet times’ with God we do on a weekly basis? Or how many times we get to worship on a monthly basis? Is this the true measurement of spiritual health and life?

Ortberg cuts to the chase and asks, “Am I growing in love for God and people? Because he goes on to say,” the real issue is what kind of people we are becoming.”

This is your assignment for this week: (Slide 17) Ask yourself this question for the rest of your life…Am I growing in love for God and others or not? Act accordingly and do what is right.

All of us are in danger of becoming like Hank: lifeless, joyless, and loveless. Make the determination to become like Jesus – individually and congregationally again and again and again. Let us resolve to love with a healthy heart and sould. Amen.

Sources:

Bible References are NLT

Texas Heart Institute:

http://www.texasheartinstitute.org/HIC/anatomy/Anatomy.cfm

Newsweek article: http://www.newsweek.com/id/144958

Ortberg quotes are from his book The Live You’ve Always Wanted.