Discipline of Journaling? You've got to be joking!

Well, after what felt like a promising start to my blogging career, all that's been happening lately is me posting up copies of my sermon notes! My last journal-type post was a month ago, so it's time for a re-start.

Part of the difficulty for me has been that a lot of the stuff dominating my thoughts & feelings over the last month or so has not been the sort of stuff that I could share online. Some things need to be kept in fairly small circles. Through it all though I have been learning a lot about what we need to be moving towards as communities of Christians (see "Disillusioned with Church").

I'm excited that we have finally (after 3 years of thinking about it) started a midweek prayer group, which includes people who cannot always get to Sunday services. Prayer is really the engine room of church life for a whole stack of reasons. One thing I love about corporate prayer (when it is done well) is that it draws us closer together vertically and horizontally. It brings us closer to God and to each other. It breaks through suspicions and misunderstandings and fosters a geniune sense of teamwork and mutual care. It encourages boldness in prayer and in prayerful action.

Anyhow, let's see how I go at being a bit more regular in jotting down stuff!

Sermon - How to be a person God uses pt 1

How to Be a Person God Uses Pt 1
1 Thessalonians 2:1-6
11/03/07

audio

Introduction

Do you want to be the sort of person who does great things for God? Would you like God to use you to accomplish great things in the lives of people, things that make a difference for eternity? Or does the idea of that sound foolish to you?

I want to read a little blurb that did the rounds on the internet:

Think God Can't Use You? Well, Read On. . .

Noah was a drunkard, Abraham was too old, Isaac was a daydreamer, Jacob was a liar, Leah was ugly, Joseph was abused by his family, sold into slavery and falsely imprisoned, Moses had a stuttering problem, Gideon was afraid, Samson had long hair and was a womanizer, Rahab was a prostitute, Jeremiah and Timothy were too young, David had an affair and was a murderer, Elijah was suicidal, Isaiah preached naked, Jonah ran from God, Naomi was a widow, Job went bankrupt, Peter denied Christ, The Disciples fell asleep while praying, Martha worried about everything, Mary Magdalene was, well you know, the Samaritan woman was divorced, more than once, Zaccheus was too small, Paul was too religious, Timothy had an ulcer . . . AND . . .Lazarus was dead. Now, no more excuses!

The Bible isn’t full of stories about great people – it’s full of stories about a great God who uses all sorts of people – people just like you and me. Today we are going to explore some of the things that get in the way of what God wants to do in and through you, and how we can make sure that those barriers aren’t stopping God from doing great things in our lives in and the lives of those He wants us to touch.

Today we are going to start looking at the ministry of the Apostle Paul in Thessalonica. We have been looking at the Thessalonians themselves and what we can learn from how they responded to the gospel message. Now we want to see what God wants to teach us from how Paul and his companions went about their ministry of sharing the gospel message, because we have been given both those roles to play. We are all people who should be constantly receiving God’s truth and responding to it, and we are also people who possess God’s truth and must share it.

Prayer

Read: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-6a

You know, brothers, that our visit to you was not a failure. ^2 We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition. ^3 For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. ^4 On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts. ^5 You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed—God is our witness. ^6 We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else.

v. 1: You know, brothers, that our visit to you was not a failure.

We’ve already learned the visit was not a failure because of the work God did in those particular Thessalonians so that the gospel message powerfully changed their lived. Today we will discover that it was not just about what God did in the hearers of the message, but what God did through the messengers that was important.

v. 2a: We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know

If you don’t remember the story, here’s how Luke describes it in Acts 16:

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. ^17 This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” ^18 She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.

^19 When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. ^20 They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar ^21 by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”

^22 The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. ^23 After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. ^24 Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

That night God sends a powerful earthquake that rocks the jail, opens the prison doors and loosen everyone’s chains! However instead of running away, Paul & Silas stay and share the gospel message with the jailer and his family, who become Christians also. Later, when the magistrates find out that Paul & Silas are Roman citizens, they realise they have made a bad mistake but they still ask Paul & Silas to leave town.

Now, when most people remember the story of Paul & Silas in Philippi, they remember the miracle and how the jailer and his family became Christians as a result. That’s because it’s always great to hear those stories of God exercising His power. Paul would remember that too, and he would be grateful to God for that. But what does he remember most? The suffering and insults!

You put yourself in Paul’s shoes: First you get harassed day after day by this girl. Finally, you do something about it and the result is that you get your clothes torn off by an angry mob, beaten to a pulp then thrown in jail with your feet clasped in stocks. All of this doesn’t stop them from praying and singing to God, while all the other prisoners listen; but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a traumatic event.

Now they rock up to another city, knowing that once again there is going to be plenty of hostile people there, and what are they going to be thinking?

“Hey, let’s do what we did in Philippi! Let’s offend the people, get ourselves beaten up and imprisoned and see what God does with that this time!” (NOT!)

So what did they do?

v2b: but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition.

They dared to tell the gospel, despite strong opposition. They knew that it was going to be tough. They had only just come through a tough time. They were scared! Sometimes we have this weird idea of people like Paul that makes out that these people thrive on opposition – they love being called names, beaten up, thrown in prison and so on.

No, Paul says they “dared to tell” the gospel message. Who has ever played a game of dare? I’ve played games like that several times as a younger person. I was never once dared to spend an hour in a spa, or eat a nice meal, or read a good book or anything like that. All the dares I was given were things that could have made me look very silly or were very unpleasant. You don’t dare someone to do something safe or easy. You dare someone to do something that they don’t want to do or something that entails risk.

We read through a list of some famous Bible characters earlier on. Do you think that what they did for God was easy? They took risks! They believed things and did things that weren’t easy or safe. They did things that were beyond their own ability to do! They predicted the future, achieved feats of strength, defeated armies, built a ship, stood up to empires and kings – all because of their faith in God and obedience to Him.

Paul says that this is exactly what he and Silas did in Thessalonica. Verse 3 says “with the help of our God we dared…“

Why? We’ve seen that it was not easy for them to share the gospel in Thessalonica. We know from our background study a few weeks back that they put their lives in danger and had to be smuggled out of town, because exactly the same thing was happening as in Philippi – an angry mob had assembled and was looking for Paul & Silas.

So why did they do it?

Verse 3 tells us what the reasons were not…

 v. 3: For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you.

Paul says there is no lying or manipulation or trickery or profiteering going on here. We’re not in this because of some delusion or for our own personal gain. We’re not resorting to dodgy methods in order to win you over. Something else is going on.

v. 4a On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.

First of all, we speak because we have been given the authority by God to do so. We are trustworthy messengers and we have been entrusted with the gospel message – the message that every person needs to hear and have an opportunity to respond to.

At this point in time, the gospel message has been transmitted primarily by word of mouth, so it has been vital that the people who are spreading the message are people who are trustworthy. Paul was taught the gospel by Jesus himself, and was confirmed as an Apostle by James, Peter and the other leaders of the early church in Jerusalem. Silas was originally a member of the Jerusalem church, and was a leader there who had a recognized gift of prophecy. He learned the gospel from the disciples of Jesus, and was trusted by them as a faithful messenger. So Paul and Silas chose to share the gospel because they had the truth that others needed to hear. They were well qualified messengers.

Some people believe that today this sort of condition applies to ministers, priests, evangelists, missionaries and other special classes of Christians. A lot of people lack confidence in their status as being people approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.

Let me simply say this: “If you have a Bible, then you have been entrusted with the gospel.” God has given the church the means of ensuring that we can speak as people approved to be entrusted with the gospel. We have a way of testing what anyone says that relates to God and His plan of salvation – we use the Bible as our measuring stick. It’s therefore up to each of us to simply make sure that we know it well. That we are confident in what it says. That we are able to share it’s message with others. That is what it means to be entrusted with the gospel. Of course, just like Paul and Silas, we need God’s help to do it, but none of us lack the authority to be a messenger of God.

v. 4b-6: We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts. ^{ 5} You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed—God is our witness. ^6 We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else.

Secondly, if we are going to be faithful messengers of the gospel – if we are going to be available to be used by God to change lives – we have to learn to care more about what God thinks than about what people think.

Does not being controlled by what people think mean that we simply don’t care about other people? Is it a flippant “They can think whatever they like, it doesn’t worry me” sort of attitude. “If they don’t like me or what I believe they can go jump for all I care”!

Not at all. Verse 8 talks about how much Paul & Silas loved the Thessalonians. They cared very much about what the Thessalonians thought & how they responded to them and their message. At other times, such as in his second letter to the Corinthian Christians, Paul works very hard to defend his ministry and his reputation – he doesn’t want people thinking badly of him. He doesn’t want to give anyone an excuse to reject his message.

In his morning devotions at the Urban Neighbours of Hope conference last year, Mick Duncan talked about what is “above the line” and what is “below the line”. Above the line are the people or things that we live for. Below the line are the things that we care for and care about, but they are not the people or things that we live for. The Bible is clear that only one thing belongs above the line, and it’s not a thing, but a person. That’s God’s place. It’s where He belongs. To live for anything or anyone except God is idolatry. That is a really helpful image to explain what is happening here. If we are controlled by other people or what they think of us, we are committing idolatry. If we are controlled by our own self esteem or lack of it, that is idolatry. Paul says, “There is only one who I live to please. It’s not myself. It’s not you or any other human being. I live to please God. That’s why I do what I do.” Does Paul care about what others think and say about him? Does he care about what others do to him? Does he care about the hardships he endures and the risks he takes? Yes, to all of that. But he doesn’t live for any of those things. He lives for God. And because he does not live for any of those things he is not controlled by any of them. Instead he is controlled by the Spirit of God. Not perfectly, but that is what his chosen lifestyle is.

What about you?

Today you have a choice to make about whether you will dare to please God by doing what He has called you to do. Paul wrote that God tests our hearts. What does God find above the line in your heart? What or who are you living for? What or who has the power to control what you do? Is it the approval of others you seek? Is it your own pleasure or security? Is it the stuff that you think you need? If you say that God is number one in your life, will you dare to tell His gospel despite whatever opposition you might face or whatever you risk might need to take?

If the answer is yes, I want you to pray steadfastly that God will help you to see the opportunities and take them up. I want you to think about how well you know the gospel and how you can explain it to others, and to get hold of resources that will be a help to you.

Today in Lifegroup we are going to talk further on the topic of healthy self esteem, and how important that is generally, but particularly in the Christian life. In a nutshell, we will be discovering how healthy self esteem flows from healthy God esteem. You’re welcome to join us!