Church out of the Box II

We are here (@ the Lake) again because the walls of a building cannot contain our God!

Church has been in the box for far too long, it’s for it to come out into the world! That is where you and come in, We are all called to be God’s Royal Priesthood, a holly nation set apart to be God’s hands and feet at work in the kingdom.

Yesterday at Emily’s birthday party, I had a chance to make some new friends and share life with some new people. While I was there I met a man named Mike who said something profound to me. He talked about a time in his life when he was just starting out into the business world he needed some help and older man helped him get his start. This older man taught him that “If you have it, you give it, if you don’t have it you don’t give it.” Mike said this really transformed how he saw the world around him and

He had learned to live by those words and when his business was rolling he would help as many as he could. He seemed like the kind of guy that would have given me something right then and there if I had needed it. Mike demonstrated a greater understanding of how God wants us to use wealth than any other person's. Mike gets it, it’s not all about the Benjamin’s, it’s not all about security, and it’s about people.

We are called to be in the business of people. Investing our time, money, energy, and effort into people. People are kingdom things, they last, and stuff doesn’t. We are so warped in this society of what is means to be successful. We have this idea in our head that we are to retire someday; I don’t think that is biblical concept. That is a lie from Satan. Our work will not be finished on this earth until we die. So I want to leave you today with a challenge to “be like Mike” find people around you that need to be invested in, spend time, help them out, listen to them, and get your hands dirty. . . We are all messy and smelly, you can’t stay clean when you get down in the trenches and see where people are and come away unchanged. Accept people for where they are in life, not where you think they should be, but just for who they are and what they bring to the table. We can’t change people; all we can do is plant some seeds by helping them out. God will water it and it some point something from inside that person must kick in and help it to grow, we can’t do it for them.

Jesus talked a great deal about money; He talked very strongly to the concept of storing up great sums of wealth for ourselves. Go all the way back to the desert and the manna that would spoil if they gathered too much, to the man who built bigger storage buildings to hold all his junk, God called him fool! Jesus’ teachings are full of helping others with the money that God has given us. When we see needs around us we have a hard time seeing them from God’s perspective; in Luke Chapter 9 we have the story of feeding the five thousand.

Don’t be like these disciples that could not see what God could do through them, learn to see the good that God wants to do through you.

Be like Mike this week.