Sermon: "God Invites You to Become Involved"

Third in the "Experiencing God" series.
Delivered March 12, 2006 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8

Theme: Our lives are full of dreams and plans. As Christians we spend a lot of time praying that God will bless these plans, but resist the clear plans that God has expressed for all of us in his word. God is not in the business of joining us - making our plans happen. God invites us to join in His plans.

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Sermon Notes are at the end.

I am going to show you that size really doesn't matter here. We are going to arm wrestle. Now John has an inch or two on me and might be slightly stronger, but you never know. I mean, you know, I might have a trick up my sleeve or whatever, but we are going to arm wrestle and you are going to see just how effective this sort of thing can be. For me, I am going to win. Wait. I've got to roll the sleeve up here. You ready. Okay. You realize I am going to win this. Okay, go. (They arm-wrestle, John wins) He was toying with me. I don't often win anymore when I wrestle with Jon. There used to be a time when I could handle both kids. He got a little larger and I could only handle him and now when we goof off at home I just bounce off of him and run in to things in the house. I never win anymore.

Now, this is fun, but if this were serious wrestling or we were doing it for money and glory, I would be crazy to do this. It's absolutely futile because there is no way I am ever going to win. It's not smart to deliberately get involved in a contest that you know you are not going to win. And yet I think far too often this is exactly what we do with God. We are always trying to wrestle God in to doing what we want him to do.

We make all kinds of plans. You know this is not everybody's dream, but some of us carry these dreams around. You know you want to have a really good job that pays well, you want to get it fast, you want to enjoy it and then you want to get married at about 27-years-old, then you have two kids and then you want to get a nice four bedroom house. Now if you get a little older your dreams change a little bit. When you get to a certain age, you want your kids to get a good job and study something better in college to get that good job. You still want them to get married by 27; you want four kids though, because they have to put up with the kids and they are only grand kids to you, so the more the merrier and then you want them to live in that nice four bedroom house right next door. We make these plans all the time. It's a natural thing.

What's unnatural is when we think that the Christian life consists of getting God in to our lives so that God can bless all of these plans, so that God can do. What 'bless' means here, is that God would take our plans and make them full and rich and make them happen. That is what the word 'bless' means here. But you see, this idea that God comes into the center of our lives and then we surround God with all of our good plans and then, by God being in our life, he then works through all these plans and makes all of our plans happen and makes it all wonderful - That's not a biblical picture. The biblical picture is that God comes in to the center of our lives and he surrounds himself with his plans and then God works out his plans in our lives an it's through us getting caught up in what God's doing that we experience fullness and peace and joy. God is in the center. God is working out his own plans in our lives. God is not in the business of joining us to make our plans happen. God is in the business of calling us to join him as he works out his plans in the world.

And we see this happening in the life of Moses. I would like to take a look at this same passage again and I am going to pick it up where Andy left off. Andy read through the 6th verse. I am going to begin at Verse 7 of Chapter 3 of the Book of Exodus.

"The Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey-the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

Let's pray. God, we pray that you take this word, take this time that we think about it together and help us to respond to you with the obedience that comes through faith. For we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

First thing to notice about this passage is that God lights the bush. God lights the bush on fire, not Moses. In other words, God interrupts Moses life to get his attention. So this is not a situation where Moses wants God to do something so he piles up a bunch of wood and lights it on fire and says, God come. I want to be a shepherd. I want to be a great shepherd. I want to be a rich shepherd. I want to be the biggest shepherd in this part of the world. It's not that sort of a dynamic. Moses is going around his normal business and then God grabs his attention because God has a concern and God wants to draw Moses in to what he is doing.

Let's see why. The reason why God interrupts Moses life is because God sees how bad things really are. God already sees the needs. It comes up in this passage beginning at Verse 7 as a number of phrases that show us this. "I have indeed seen the misery." "I have heard them crying out." "I am concerned about their suffering, so I have come down to rescue them." I have seen, I have heard, I am concerned; I have come down to rescue. God knows how bad things are. He sees how bad things are in the world. He hears the prayers of the people who call on his name saying this has got to end, this has got to change, God please do something. And God does not listen dispassionately from a distance. God is concerned. He cares about what's happening in the world and it's out of this care that God comes down to do something about it.

And that brings up the second point of what we see in this passage and also the passages that we have been looking at in the prior weeks. God is already at work. When God connects with Moses, he connects with Moses to draw him in to something that's already going on. Remember in the prior weeks we looked at the fact that God was working in Moses' life to protect him, to guard him through this period when the Pharaoh was saying that all male children should be killed. Moses was protected among may others and Moses was actually protected by Pharaoh's own daughter. Nobody knew what was going on. Nobody knew God's purposes in the long run for Moses life. This was all invisible behind the scenes, but God was at work preserving Moses to get ready for this day. God is already at work around us too.

This summer we are going to have a special event in Baltimore; the Franklin Graham Festival: a time when thousands of people are going to hear the gospel in a major event in this city, and we are one of the churches that is cooperating with that and praying for that and many of you might make a personal decision to get involved in some of the training and to invite some friends to participate. Well we were at a session a few weeks ago when the leader was telling about his first experience. His first experience was with a Billy Graham crusade a number of years ago and when he heard it was coming, he decided that he wanted to invite some of his friends, so he identified six friends that he wanted to ask to go to the event, to hear the gospel. He prayed for them and one by one he got a chance to share with them why don't you come. Much to his surprise, all six said yes. He had no expectation of this. He was going to share with all six because he cared about all six and he expected one or two to say yes. But all six had said yes because God had already been at work in their lives through illnesses, through difficulties, through changes in their lives that made them ready to consider God in the new way. Ultimately all six of those people became Christians; not at that Billy Graham crusade, not all of them, but across time all six did.

Now this is not the way that it always happens in our lives, but what does always happen is when God calls us to do something, he is calling us in to the situation where he has already been at work, just as he was in the lives of those people. So God is at work; God is seeing the need; God is already at work about it and the next thing we see in this passage is that God calls us to get involved. He invites us to join him. We see in Verse 10 of this passage when God says to Moses, "So now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh." Man those are serious words to hear, but at some point or another God always gives an invitation to his people to invite them to participate in what he is doing. God always uses people. And so at some point or another he take a concern that he has and he enlists one of us to partner with him.

I can remember a time in 1995; it was right after the Kobe earthquake. In that earthquake 6,000 people died and really the whole family: Debbie and I and Jonathan and Sarah we were all trying to find places to help with the devastation. 80,000 buildings had fallen in to the street or had collapsed on themselves. People were homeless everywhere. We were trying to help, but we couldn't find a place. We couldn't find a place where people would allow us to help, where our particular strengths as foreigners or anything could be put to use. About two weeks in to this, I finally go frustrated that I was praying that morning and one of my habits at that time was I was praying through the Lord prayer and I would take each phrase and I would pray about it. So I would say, my father in heaven and then I would pray about what it meant that God was my father and that he had all of the power of heaven at his disposal. I prayed that his name would be hallowed, that God would be honored in this world and I would pray about that. Finally it came to the phrase - "may your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" - and I pictured this city right outside our window with all these needs. I said, "God in this city there has got to be some need on your heart; whatever it is I will do it."

That very day we got a phone call: the first phone call we got from somebody asking us to do anything and it was someone asking us whether we would be willing to drive physically and mentally disabled people from their homes to their shelter workshops and back home, because all of the public transportation had been destroyed. I said yes to that because I knew that it was God voice. And so for the next three months one of the main things I did was ferry people from home to their workplace and it would sometimes take three hours to do a roundtrip of about four miles because of the traffic and devastation and then I would go home for a few hours and I would do the same trip in the afternoon. I would pick them up and take them home and then go home after that. I did this again and again and the reason I did it, is because here in the middle of this devastation God cared about physically and mentally challenged people. He cared about their need for routine. He cared about their families needing some extra space. He cared about them earning a livelihood and because God cared and because God was involved, he invited me in.

In 1995 a woman named Sissy Davis, a bus driver, got to retirement and at retirement she said "God it looks like I am going to have a lot of good years maybe ahead. I am healthy. Show me what to do with my life so that with what have left in life it will really matter for you." And she prayed that prayer and prayed that prayer again. A pediatrician in Baton Rouge at the Charity Hospital there contacted the pastor of her church, the First Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge and talked to the Pastor Russ Stevenson about the need that had seen, that families that had children that were born prematurely or sickly or too small to survive, that these families were having to face the situation where they were having to bury their children wrapped up in napkins or they would have to go to Toys-R-Us and buy doll clothes to bury their child because they were too small to be buried in normal baby clothes. All those baby clothes they had been collecting for the baby; they couldn't use them. And so this pediatrician saw this need and Russ went to Sissy and said "Sissy, I know you sew. Would you be willing to make something for this hospital and Sissy in his words heard the voice of God. It was her burning bush. And so she said yes. She got some other women together. Somebody gave a $100 donation, they bought fabric and they began a sewing ministry that continues on to this day and it now has over 100 chapters all over the country and those various chapters of this ministry called Threads of Love gives away some 30,000 items every year to hospitals all over the United States and Canada.

Now it's not any longer just for babies that pass away. They also have things now where they provide support for families that have special emergencies. There is a picture up here that I would like you to see. Here is a premie and right there by the baby's side is a little doll; it's called the lovey doll. This ministry now makes those so that babies that are in these isolation units and all; the mother can wipe the doll on her and pick up the scent and the baby can smell his or her mother no matter what all through this period of time. It helps with the bonding and helps with the family dealing with this. This is making a real impact in people's lives because this is a major issue. And why are people doing this? Because God was concerned first. God cares about babies who haven't been born yet. God cares about families who are suffering and grieving because of the kind of world we live in and so God one day came up to Sissy and he interrupted her life and said "Join me and the world will never be the same." God interrupts our lives and calls us to join in to something that really matters; matters to God.

So how do we get involved with what God is doing? How do we accept these invitations, even notice when they are happening? There are a number of things we can do. First thing we can do is pray. And by pray I mean to break out of the "God bless me" prayers where we make the plans and then ask God to bless them. Now believe me, there is plenty of opportunity in the Christian life to ask God to bless us, to do things for us that we feel needs to happen. We have that liberty but it's inside of a life that's already committed to doing God's will; not over against doing God's will. So instead of praying as our first prayer, that "God bless my plans" sort of prayer, one of the ways we need to pray is availability prayers. God I am here. I am available. What are you doing? I am willing to join you even if it is something unusual.

The second thing we need to do, is we need to make connections. We need to notice when God is actually showing us part of our answer. I can remember a time when I was at First Presbyterian Church, I was praying about the fact that there wasn't enough corporate prayer in the life of the congregation and in one month, seven people came to me, they called me, emailed me, came to my office, made appointments, but seven people came in the course of four weeks and said, "we've got to do something about prayer and here is an idea that I have." I noticed this and simply got the seven people in to one room for them to talk to each other and out of that group four prayer ministries, most of which are still happening right now at First Presbyterian Church. Just noticing what God has done in making the connection. For some of us the Franklin Graham festival might be one of those connections. You might have been praying about something and this might be part of the answer that God gives you. It might be something quite different, but we have to be alert.

The next thing is we need to ask questions. We've got to take some initiative; to talk to God about these things. Moses talks to God considerably about this, much of it because he does not have a whole lot of faith and sometimes that is why we have to talk to God, because we don't have a whole lot of faith. Well we have got to talk to people too. We need to find out what the real needs are; to not just step out into something before we really understand what the environment is like; what the needs are; what the people think; what opportunities are there; what's already happening; maybe even do some research on the internet or in talking to other ministries, talking to the city government; or whatever.

And then we need to listen. We need to listen to what God is saying and we need to listen to our circumstances, because sometimes our circumstances will put a full stop to something. Now just because things get hard doesn't mean we are on the wrong track, because Moses: his life is going to get a lot worse and the life of the Israelites is going to get worse before it gets better. So it's not just whether things are difficult, but sometimes a door actually closes on us. We think God is calling us to a certain job, a certain opportunity and we don't get hired; well that's a close. Circumstances are speaking and we need to listen.

And the final voice we need to listen to is to godly people. A part of discerning the will of God is always listening to God, looking at the opportunities in the circumstances, but also talking to the church. Do other spiritual people resonate with the call that God has put on your life? We need to be in dialogue with godly people that will give truthful answers and help us discern things. We can be open to what God is doing in the world. It's not just for hyper-spiritual giants. It's for regular people like Sissy, regular people like me, regular people even like Moses. Moses was still a regular guy here, but he became something more, but he wasn't at this time. Regular people like missionaries who come and speak to us; regular people like lawyers and doctors who are serving God and are aware of the opportunities that God gives.

The big issue is, are you tired yet with trying to wrestle God in to doing what you want him to do? Are you tired of it yet? Let me tell you, you are not going to win. God is stronger than Jonathan. You are not going to win that power battle and you know you are not going to win by manipulating either; "well I can't push God into doing it, but maybe I can kind of finesse him in to doing it." God knows your tricks. God's will or yours? If you are tired of trying to get God to do it your way, then why don't you just stop it and instead open yourself up to what God is already doing in the world and if you do, you just might run in to a burning bush somewhere.

Let's pray. God, we thank you. We thank you that we all have the incredible capacity and opportunity meet with you face to face, to encounter you and to be invited in to something significant that you are doing in the world, whatever it is Lord, help us to be willing to join you, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Sermon Outline Notes:

• God is not in the business of joining us - making our plans happen.
• God invites us to join in His plans.
• God already sees the needs.
  • I have seen
  • I have heard
  • I am concerned
  • I have come down to resucue.
• God is already at work.
• God invites us to join Him.
  • So go, I am sending you.
  • God uses real people.
• Threads of Love
• Responding to the invitation:
  • Pray
  • Make the connection.
  • Ask questions
  • Listen

© 2006, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org