Blessed Out!
This whole stewardship deal has been weighing on my mind a lot lately.
Let me start by saying this... Pretty much all the things we say and do and specific choices we make along the way are just symptoms or natural actions of a deeper rooted belief. Pause with me as I push my glasses back up the bridge of my nose with my middle finger and encourage you to read this first sentence of this paragraph again and keep reading.
Continuing on... most of the time we don't even think about deeper rooted belief's before we act or speak, we just react and these belief's inform or drive what we are doing. For example... If I were to say to you, "The Packers are lame." You would most likely instantly fire back, "You are lame." Which would betray your true deeper rooted belief that the Packers rule and Vi-Queen fans drool and that the Packers are the best football team ever in the history of the universe. You wouldn't have to tell me, I would just know this by what you say and how you act as you stick your tongue out at me.
This is important because the way a person speaks and acts often gives insight to what they actually believe about the world or in this case a football team. Ok... so I just checked my calculator watch, straightened my pocket protector and am ready to get to the point.
Having now explained this let me share with you again... This whole stewardship deal has been weighing on my mind a lot lately.
You see I listen to people. More specifically I listen to you the brothers and sisters of St. Johns and I hear words that betray deeper rooted beliefs. I watch your actions as those entrusted to me as a shepherd and your actions also betray deeper rooted beliefs. And I see these same things in myself. And in this observation there is often reason for concern.
This all hit me one day when my wife and her friends were joking around. They were recalling a good memory from a trip to New York they took last summer and how something had turned out very well. In the midst of the giggles and the smiles and the good feelings that memories such as these bring, one of the girls said, "Yeah we really Blessed out!" And the other two chimed in, "Yeah we really blessed out.", which is a phrase I think they made up, for I have never heard anyone else use it.
Anyways, at first I thought it was weird and they were just being girls, which is partially true. But I began to reflect on how I would of described the event. Most likely I would have used the phrase, "We got Lucky" or "We were very Fortunate".
Why? Why would I have used this phrase? Do Christians believe in Luck? Do Christians believe in Fortune? Well No. But do I? Although painful to admit, I think that sometimes I do? So deep was it rooted that I didn't even realize it. You see I was raised that way and I realized that my deeper rooted belief was actually contrary to God's will. You see there is no such thing as luck or fortune or karma or any of the other new age crap constantly being floated our way out there. There is only God. And he rules his creation actively and every blessing is from Him. So did this work out well for the girls because of Luck? No, it worked out well because it was God's will. So their way of explaining it was actually betraying their deeply rooted belief that all blessings are from God. 'We really Blessed out!" Only someone who believes that everything is from God would say this.
So as I have been listening and watching, this whole stewardship deal has been weighing on my mind.
Do the brothers and sisters at St. John's actually believe, deeply rooted, that everything they have is from God? And to be honest as I have listened and observed the lives of many of our people and as I have reflected upon my own life, I am not sure we all do. It's no suprise. This is a first commandment issue which is the first one we in Sin always break. The hardest thing for us to do, is just let God be God. We want control and we are selfish in our sinfulness. We know we aren't supposed to have other God's and yet we make other things and most often our selves our God's daily.
All the more reason to reflect upon what God's word says and make this our deeply rooted belief. You see I know that if someone truly believed that all of the money, assets, health, children in their lives or whatever else we have were only theirs because it was given to them by God, there is no way that someone would only put a few bucks or whatever they could find in their wallet into the offering plate and call that their first fruit (or best portion of what God has given them). They wouldn't do it, because it would be an insult to God and they would know it.
On the flip side of the coin, someone who is struggling with or who doesn't deeply hold to the belief that literally everything in life is a gift from God could and would do this. Actually if one thought everything they have is theirs and they only have it because they earned it or created it then it would only makes sense that they would put in the plate what they think the Church deserves based on what they are personally provided or some other evaluation criteria. And if that the case sometimes the church in its sinfulness wouldn't be worthy of anything. This kind of action and speech those in faith confess a providential Father who created the heavens and the earth.
Which is why I can say boldly that God doesn't need your money to do the work of the church, because its not your money. Its His. While at the same time saying that you need to give a first fruit to God. You need it. I need it. I can say this boldly because when you give an offering to God you are called remembering that everything you have is from Him and in fact honoring him and praising Him for giving it to you. Obviously God does not need money. Sometimes churches in their sinfulness act like the sky is falling if God chooses not to provide them with what the they have budgeted. Churches, Pastors and Leadership Boards are not immune from Sin or Self-Reliance. But what we believe, teach and confess is that God gives exactly what he wants us to have and we as Christians all live out this reality.
So as you can see if you have made it this far in this long, nerdy blog entry, this stewardship deal has been weighing on my mind alot lately. And I encourage you to reflect on these questions I have been personally struggling with. What are the deeply rooted beliefs informing and driving your words and actions? Are you just lucky, do you have what you do because you deserve it or is it because you have really "Blessed out?"
Pastor Guy
