Pay it Forward

June 23, 2011

Lord, thank you for each one of your children gathered in front of me. I pray that their hearts are receptive to you and your message, not just right now, but on a twenty-four/seven basis. Lord, I pray that the words that I am about to speak are yours…that you receive any praise that this message may bring. Lord, shut me up right now, I pray that you take over from amen on. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

This sermon really goes back to the routes of my sermons…my freshmen or sophomore year of high school, I stood before the church and gave a sermon on being called to the broken…on how there are so many people dying in a state of spiritual hunger each day and showed a clip from Pay it Forward. I bawled for about a half hour before I was supposed to walk up the pulpit and speak and was so shaky the entire time.  Well, today, the message is very similar…a Pay it Forward clip is included and my nerves will probably get the best of me a few times throughout this sermon. I say all of this to show how important I feel this message is to the Church and to the churches, so pay attention J

Pay it Forward clip of Scene 2

We are on that hellish, shaky bridge that everyone must cross, before we become members of that undyingly enviably elite. Now, some of you may think that you can’t get across this bridge fast enough, that you’d rather hold your breath, close your eyes and not think about anything until it’s all over. I’m here to tell you, that’s not an option. This class is LIFE, which is you and the world. Yes, there is a world out there and even if you don’t want to think about it, it is still going to hit you in the face. What does the world mean to you? Come on’ a little class participation. Well, let me ask you another question…how often do you think of things that happen outside this town? Do you watch the news? All right…so there are some global thinkers, but why not more….we are not 11 year olds. What does the world expect of us? We have to pay taxes and show up to our jobs, send kids to school…but what more. What if when God asks what we’ve done for HIS kingdom and you haven’t prepared? We are at a loss….unless we take the things that we don’t like about the world, what breaks God’s heart,  and flip them upside down.

We are in a place that is comparative to a middle school…somewhere that we have to be…it is the law of nature…we have to live.  As Christians, we know that there is somewhere else…somewhere better that we all want to be, but we just can’t be yet. We have to live in this world…this world that essentially expects nothing of us….but the world is only one aspect. Where does God and church factor in?

The church and world and their correlation have been the topic of many recent conversations. My pastor at school did a sermon on the church not that long ago and it really got me thinking. He started by saying that there are one hundred and ten churches in Huntington County…Huntington county is only about ten thousand more people than White County…and I would estimate that we have about the same ratio of churches to people in White County.  Even going to a Christian college, there are so many students who refuse to go to one of those one hundred and ten churches because so many people feel that the church has been distorted. So here’s another audience participation question…what does “CHURCH” mean? Does it mean the building with the steeple and stained glass windows, the people gathered together right now in this building, all of the people worshiping in different buildings this morning, all of God’s family? What is the church? What does the Church expect of us?

The church has grown to expect so much out of their members. We are expected to tithe…preferably over ten percent. We are expected to bring people to church with us every Sunday to grow our numbers. We are expected to not only show up every Sunday, but at least two other times each week for church activities. We are expected to follow the laws and make it so that our families are portrayed as the perfect little church-going families so that our church (little c) looks like the best church it can be.

The church has grown into some skewed motives. Churches, little c, are often concerned more about the building that they have residency in. They are concerned with which political figures and good-looking people attend their church because they want to look like the best. Is there a need for one hundred and ten churches in Huntington County?! No, but the church has chosen to become a group of competitors competing for God’s love, favor and grace instead of a body..a family of believers lifting eachother up… and saving the world.  Each church seems more to be trying to top the church down the street than following God’s call to save the world. Churches even seem to be more encouraged not to get the broken and un-churched to church, but to get the members of that church down the street to their church…proving that they are the better church.  

I think it is about time to get back to the routes of what God expects…isn’t that the question we should all be asking anyway?

Today, most of our time will be spent in Galatians 6, I will be reading from the Message translation just because I really like how it breaks it down.

Galatians 6:1-3, “Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the days out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.”

No Christian should ever think that they can live independently, not ever needed help from others; on the flip-side, no Christian should ever think that they are excused from helping others, from loving others where they are. This passage doesn’t just tell us to love our neighbors; it commands us to share in their burdens. What does sharing in anothers burdens actually entail?

Well, how many times have someone revealed his or her struggles to you and you’ve given the Christianese answer of “I’ll pray for you”? Now, how many times have you actually left them and steadfastly prayed for that person’s struggles? The Church, big C, has become really good with words, but we’re lacking in our actions of follow-up. So, not only tell the person that you will pray for them and actually earnestly pray for them. Invest some time in that person. Call them, text them, check up on them once in awhile. If they are struggling financially, show some of Jesus’ love and be willing to sacrifice.  A story that I heard always sticks out when I think about this concept. A man had been talking to a single-mom family that had been struggling financially; she had just gotten a job, but had to figure out how to get there because they didn’t have a ca. Instead of just praying that God provide for the family, which he did, he prayed that if there was something he could do for them, that God would let him know what. Well God answered with give them that extra car that you have…so he did. He not only used words to share in their burdens, but he wasn’t afraid to step up to a little action. Now not many of us have an extra car or that much extra money to just give to someone else, but how many of us donate clothes with Keith sends out things about a family who lost all their clothes in a fire. We all have plenty of extra clothes. Not always, but typically there is more that we can do for someone than prayer…though prayer is important. We also need to keep in mind that we can not be everything to everybody, we can always try to find someone else that CAN meet the needs of the burdened person.

When my pastor at school did a similar sermon, advised to “Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.” The Church seems to be going wide, trying to shallowly reach everyone…this especially happens with churches are in competition with eachother trying to gain more attendance than the one down the road. Instead, each member of the church needs to go deep. Pray for one or two people for God to stick in your life to really minister to for an entire year. Do everything you can for those two people. Pray for them daily, be a long-term friend. Remember money doesn’t save the broken, love and time saves the broken.

Galatians 6 goes on to say in verses 9-10, “So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time, we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get a chance, let us work for the benefit of all.” It is easy to become discouraged when we are not seeing the sowing-reaping principle mentioned in this chapter immediately. We are still encouraged to continue to doing good for God’s glory and trust God for the results. Eventually, maybe not even in this worldly life, we will reap a harvest of blessings.

Throughout the rest of Galatians 6, Paul takes the pen and takes the opportunity to talk about the people who were forcing circumcision because of the outward appearance of holiness. Verse 13 of the Message puts it like this, “They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible!” This is just what the churches, little c, have gotten in the habit of doing. They recruit the “good looking” people to their churches, pulling them from other churches since they will already know how to behave. The churches have decided to neglect the completely broken people because they are too much work, and it looks bad to have a church full of addicts and drunks. Churches go surface level, changing people’s actions and appearance so they look more holy…and neglect the heart. Paul says right here, THAT IS CONTEMPTIBLE! The Church, big C, is called to the broken, to the ugly, the addicted, the drunk, the poor, the people that everyone else shies away from..they people that are whispered about, the people never looked directly in the eye. You know, the people like yourselves.

Galatians 6 finishes with the central issue: “I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. Can’t you see the central issue in all of this? It is not what you and I do-submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God-His chosen people. Peace and mercy on them!”  

Churches, little c, have made it about them, about them getting the glory…to see who can have the best stained-glass windows, the hippest band, the biggest building, the most in attendance, the greatest offering. We have made it about us..about the expectations of the world: to be the best and richest. However, we are called to be more than what the world expects of us.

We are called to more than the world, more than this hellish bridge of middle school. We are called to more than crouching in a corner and closing our eyes until it’s all over. We are called to share in the burdens of others. We are called to BE THE CHURCH, not only take up our cross, but to help with anothers load. We are called to not make it a show, to not make it about us or the church, the building, the world.

Two songs come to mind to sum up this sermon. Matthew West has a song that is on KLOVE a lot…my own little world. It’s lyrics go like this:

In my own little world it hardly ever rains
I’ve never gone hungry, always felt safe
I got some money in my pocket, shoes on my feet
In my own little world
Population me
I try to stay awake during Sunday morning church

I throw a twenty in the plate, but I never give ’til it hurts
I turn off the news when I don’t like what I see
Yeah, it’s easy to do when it’s
Population: me

What if there’s a bigger picture?
What if I’m missing out?
What if there’s a greater purpose
I could be living right now

If our world is population me, we are missing out: There are 27,000 children under the age of five dying each day due to hunger. We are called to them. There are 1.2 billion that live on less than a dollar a day, we are called to them. We are called to the 13, 000 girls under the age of 13 that are captured into sex slavery in America. We are called to the 5 children who die each day of child abuse in Indiana. We are called to the addicts, the drunkards, the ugly of White County. We are called to make the imperfect, the ugly, the poor, the broken, the divorced; the beaten…part of our population.

I want to do something a bit different to end this sermon. There is another song by Hillsong called Hosanna to really make this our prayer. Really pay attention to the lyrics.

What would that look like, to see our generation rising up to take the place with selfless faith…to see a near revival praying and seeking? To see our entire generation living God’s expectations.What would it look like to surrender everything we are…our entire identity as a church and as individuals to His Kingdom’s cause? So let’s stand to sing this song along with Hillsong…make it your prayer… however, that may look for you, if it’s raising a hand, closing your eyes, getting on your knees. Let’s pray for God to break our hearts to what breaks His. Let’s not be like the metal detectors at the beginning of the scene of Pay it Forward, the ones that didn’t even go off when the knife was slid through them….let’s not let the broken go unnoticed.

Hosanna by Hillsong

The Pay it Forward video challenged the students to changed the world and each of the students responded cynically, that it was weird, crazy, bummer, hard…but it is indeed possible…it is God’s ultimate expectation and hope for each of us. The realm of possibility exists in Christ. He has already done His part in changing the world, through the cross…now he has passed the buck to us. It is your job to take it and not sit back and let it atrophy. Let’s close in prayer.

Lord, we want you to break out hearts for everything that breaks yours, to nudge us out of our world of population one…to surrender everything we are for Your kingdom’s cause. Guide us in everything we say and do that it may be used to change the world for Your glory. We love you Lord, Amen.