When you look around you, what do you see? Do you see
your friends and neighbors sitting in church listening to a sermon? Maybe
if you get a little better perspective you might see a church meeting together
in the middle of their community. Pull back a little further and your
perspective might allow you to see this as the body of Christ being
obedient. With one more lens adjustment your perspective might include
seeing this as the bride of Christ preparing for the coming of the Bridegroom,
the perfect Lamb of God, Jesus Christ…or maybe all you can see is a short, fat
and bald guy yapping about something you don’t really care about yet.
It’s all in your perspective.
A man read an ad in the newspaper, "Hunting dog for
sale, $2,500.00, but well worth it." He called the number and the man told
him that he had to see the dog in action. The next morning they met and went
hunting early. The dog flushed two birds from a clump of bushes and when they
fell into the water, he walked on top of the water, grabbed the birds, and
walked back on top of the water. The man was amazed, and bought the dog on the
spot. The next day he persuaded his brother to go hunting with him. They
flushed a couple of birds and the dog again walked on top of the water,
retrieved the birds, and walked back to their boat on top of the water.
He asked his brother what he thought of the dog and the brother replied, "So,
you bought a dog who can't swim." Source Unknown.
A shoe manufacturer who decided to open the Congo market
sent two salesmen to the undeveloped territory. One salesman cabled back:
"Prospect here nil. No one wears shoes." The other salesman
reported enthusiastically, "Market potential terrific! Everyone is
barefooted." Source Unknown.
Perspective is what allows us to continue doing what God has
called us to do when the market potential looks nil to some people. Some
will see us as a little church with few resources trying to do an overwhelming
job in the face of not only great adversity but also of little concern to the very
neighborhood we are trying to serve.
Perspective is what keeps us going when the world sees us
and thinks, “Well, you’re not making any money. You’re not growing like
this church over here and I don’t see any stained glass or million dollar
fountains so you must not be doing it right.” But because Christ
Fellowship has a God-given, biblical perspective, we can see that God has
called us to serve and minister to the poor, addicted and incarcerated and we
don’t see in the Bible where stained glass is going to help us do that.
We don’t even see that we are supposed to try to impress
another church or another group or another association. Our perspective
allows us to see that we are called to make disciples as we go and not much
else and we do that…for the glory of God’s Kingdom, period. Other
churches may have a different perspective because only this church is called to
minister to Lake Bridgeport.
We are the only church in the world called to minister to
this community. We know from reading Acts 1:8 that we are called
not only to Lake Bridgeport but also to Wise County, Texas and the world but
nobody else is called to this little community and so we do that with the
resources God has given us, with the knowledge and wisdom and patience that God
has given us and we do it all for His glory and for the sake of His Kingdom.
Our perspective allows us to see that everything we have,
including the desire to witness, the ability to make friends, and the
opportunities to serve all come from God and so all we say is “Lord, please
hear us. Please strengthen our hands. See what we are doing and
trying to do and, Lord, please bless this work for our sake and for the sake of
this community and the world and for the sake of your Kingdom here and in
Heaven. Lord remember us.” We pray that because our perspective
is biblical. We see in the book of Nehemiah that Nehemiah prayed the same
thing.
Is it wrong to pray for yourself? I sure hope
not. Jesus prayed for Himself and we see in the last chapter of Nehemiah
that Nehemiah prayed for himself too. Turn to Nehemiah 13 and
let’s look at three verses where Nehemiah asked God to remember him and to show
him mercy and favor. We will look at verses 14, 22 and 31.
At this point the wall around Jerusalem was complete.
We see that God had given Nehemiah wisdom, discernment and courage to be able
to lead the people in the rebuilding and while not everything was perfect in
the world of Nehemiah, he has done what God has called him to do. It has
taken great sacrifice for Nehemiah.
Do you remember how the book started? Nehemiah was the
cupbearer to the king of Persia. While technically a slave, Nehemiah has
a pretty good job. He had everything he needed. Things were working
out pretty well for the guy. He could have kept doing what he was doing
and nobody would have blamed him and his life would have been pretty good and
pretty comfortable.
Don’t you hate it when everything seems to be going fairly
well in the scheme of things and God decides to make you uncomfortable in your
comfort? Have you ever been there? God puts something on your heart
and it just gets stronger and stronger and pretty soon it keeps you from
sleeping in your big, comfortable bed. Pretty soon your plentiful and
delicious food starts to lose some of its flavor and in the back of your mind
(at least you try to keep it back there) you can’t help but think that God has
something different for you? It’s called perspective.
That was Nehemiah and so he did what God wanted him to do
and all the way God provided everything Nehemiah needed to get the job
done. You’ve heard it said that where God guides, God provides.
Nehemiah is proof of that and now we see that he has completed the wall and got
done what needed to be done. Let’s see how he prays in verses 14, 22
and 31.
Leading up to verse 14 Nehemiah had righted some
wrongs that had been done and so he prays, “Remember me for this, my God, and do not blot out
what I have so faithfully done for the house of my God and its services.” Between 14 and 22 Nehemiah
gives some orders that keep some people from not keeping the Sabbath day holy
and then he prays, “Remember me for this also, my God, and show mercy to me
according to your great love.” Then between 22 and 31 Nehemiah
sees the people reverting back to some old habits. It’s interesting to
see in verse 25 that it took taking a whooping from Nehemiah for some of them
to shape up but he did what needed to be done and so he prays this one last
prayer, “Remember me with favor, my God.”
Remember
me. Remember me. Remember me. Was he in danger of being
forgotten by God? No, of course not. The original Hebrew word is
“zakar” (zaw-kar’) and it means to earnestly be mindful. God remembered
Noah. God remembered Moses and Abraham. God remembered His covenant
and every time God remembered these, He did something. He saved, He used,
He provided, He blessed…He remembered.
Nehemiah prayed
in chapter 1, verse 8 that God would remember the instruction He had given
Moses and based upon that remembrance Nehemiah was asking favor. He was
asking God to do something. Is it selfish or self-centered to ask God to
bless you for doing something? I’ll be honest with you. I struggled
with this question for a long while this past week. How is it that in a
book like this that, from the front cover to the back, talks about how God
wants to reward us and God wants to give us good things and how God loves us so
much that He sent His only Son to die for us that we can read all of this and
still have a problem asking God to remember us for what we have done?
The problem is
that we don’t have a real grasp of who God is. The problem is that we put
ourselves into this equation too much and we put God into the equation too
little. In this day of false teachers and preachers preaching the
prosperity Gospel that teaches that if we do the right thing the right way that
God will bless us with health and wealth, it is easy to want to get away from
that and to think that all Christianity consists of is me working for
God. I know my reward is in Heaven and so all I’m going to do here is
work for God.
We have the
mistaken idea that we are working for an absentee boss who wants us to do our
job and every so often we should send in our progress report so He can pay us a
little stipend when He chooses. The problem with that thought is that
it’s not close to being true. Joshua 1 says, “for
the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Deuteronomy
says, “for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you
or forsake you.” Even the Great Commission in Matthew 28 that
tells us to go make disciples says, “And behold, I am with you always, to
the end of the age.”
Yea, Todd, I know that but it still feels like Christianity
is about me working for God. Is it not? Again, this thinking is
based on a misunderstanding of God. That same God that is with us is
doing the work through us. It’s not us working for Him. He is
working through us. It is why we can do all things through Christ Who
strengthens us and why we can’t seem to do anything without Him. Philippians
2:13 says, “for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to
work for His good pleasure.”
We misunderstand that it is Him working through us but we
also misunderstand God because we think of Him like an earthly father and there
are some real good parallels there but ultimately, I don’t care if your father
is as rich as Donald Trump and as godly as Billy Graham, your father is not
comparable to our Heavenly Father.
We read passages like Psalm 50:10 that says He owns
the cattle on a thousand hills and we subconsciously think, “Well, that’s
only a thousand.” We think at some point God is going to start
running low on blessings because we just can’t fathom that God owns
everything. God owns the cattle but He also owns the hills, the cowdog,
the cowboy and the horse he rode in on! He is the owner and the
author. He is the perfecter. He is the giver of all good things.
James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of
the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” Nehemiah knew that God was always
with him and that God is loaded (as we like to say around here) but he also
knew his motivation was pure. In verse 14, he asks God to remember
him for what he did “for the house of my God and its services.”
Nehemiah gained
nothing personally for all the work that he did. His right perspective
allowed him to see that the work God wanted to do through him was going to take
him out of his comfortable job at the palace thousands of miles away where he
was going to have to work and fight and struggle for everything and he did all
of it, not for himself, but for the sake of God’s Kingdom. His motivation
was pure.
A little boy told a salesclerk he was shopping for a
birthday gift for his mother and asked to see some cookie jars. At a counter
displaying a large selection of them, the youngster carefully lifted and
replaced each lid. His face fell as he came to the last one. "Aren't
there any covers that don't make any noise?" he asked.
Unlike that little boy, Nehemiah had pure motives. He
gained nothing by all that work but he knew it was God’s will and he knew that
there are blessings of obedience just like there are consequences of
disobedience. In the church it’s real easy to do some good thing and to
do it in just the right way so that somebody notices. Right? If I
do this at just the right time or in just the right way, it won’t look like I’m
wanting anybody to see but I know they will.
Nehemiah put all that foolishness aside and just did the job
God called him to do and he did it knowing that if his good deeds outweighed
his bad deeds that he would go to Heaven, right? Surely that was
it. Surely Nehemiah wanted God to remember him by taking him to Heaven
for those good things he had done. Is that what he was thinking?
How did people in the Old Testament get to Heaven since Jesus had not come
yet? They got there the same way we get there; by grace and through
faith. It has nothing to do with working our way there.
That’s not what Nehemiah was asking at all. Nehemiah
wasn’t asking God to remember him to Heaven. He wasn’t asking God to give
him health and wealth. His right perspective had allowed him to see what
needed to be done and with God working through him, he did what he was called
to do and so he went to the One who owns all things, who gives all things and
who knows all things (including motives) and simply said, “God remember
me. Whatever that looks like, God, remember me.”
Here at Christ Fellowship we don’t worry about what other
people see in us as long as they see Jesus. It’s nobody’s business how
many people go to this church or how much money we give. If some person
or organization is impressed or not with who we are and what we do, we care not
a lick. But we come to God right now through His son Jesus and because of
Who He is and not because of who we are and we cry out to the One gives all
good and perfect things and we say, “Lord, remember us. Be earnestly
mindful of us today.”
We come to you because there is no other. We come to you
because we know that all we have and all we need comes from you. Yes,
Lord, we want to be remembered in Heaven but we can’t grasp what that is going
to be like. But Lord we want you to remember us right now as a church and
as individuals and that you will give us everything we need to do what you have
called us to do and when we have done that we ask that you would remember us
and give us our next task to do for the glory of your name and for the sake of
your Kingdom.
Lord if there are any here today that don’t know you personally
we ask that you would remember them especially right now and that you would
show them Who you are and how you work and that you would draw them to you and
we ask these things in the name of Jesus and for their sake and the sake of
your Kingdom, Lord. Amen.
What now? What is your part to play in our church
doing what God has called us to do?
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