Life

June 11 sermon – Life Romans 8:12-17

Joke……In leu of a joke, Dilbert is hilarious...http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20060611.html

John was a 2nd year college student. He had some tattoos on his arms, a couple ear rings. His standard dress was cut off shorts, T-shirt, and sometimes flip flops, sometimes barefoot. He went to a liberal college in a northeastern town. Right across the street from the college was a huge traditional button down Methodist church. One Sunday he got an idea. “I want to check this out”. So he went to the church one Sunday morning. The service had already started. The church was packed. He started walking down the isle looking for a seat. Finally he got down to the very front and realizing there were no seats, gave up and plopped himself down on the floor right in front. Right after that, people started seeing an old man who was the patriarch of the church walking slowly down toward him, his cane keeping him balanced. As he walked, people started whispering. “Oh he’s going to get it” “He should have known coming to church dressed like that” “Here it comes”. When the old man gets down to the front, the church was so silent, you could hear a pin drop. The man dropped his cane down, squatted down, and sat beside the college kid. After a minute the pastor said “no matter what sermon you hear today, you won’t remember it. There is just one thing you will remember from today.
That’s life. That’s Christian life. Both of these men were led by the Spirit of God. The college boy was led to seek God. The patriarch was led to welcome the boy by sitting beside him.
There is more to being a Christian than having the right stuff, knowing the right doctrine, having your head in the right place. To be a Christian, you must open yourself up to the Holy Spirit.
You must invite the Spirit to invade you, possess you, take over your life. Are you willing to let the Spirit take over your life and you surrender all control over EVERY single part of it?
It’s not easy, and it’s not a pie in the sky picture where everything comes up roses and you never have any problems. Romans 8:28 says “All things work for good for those who are children of God”.
Many people think that means if you believe in God, everything will go good in your life. Then when something bad happens like terrible sickness, death of a loved one, September 11th, they lose faith. It’s different than that.
Those who are lead by the Spirit, say that no matter what goes on in my life, how good or how bad, I know God is there. My rock that I can tie to. My savior I can hold on it.
And God’s people are there and can be called on whenever needed because they are led by the Spirit. I’ll tell you how God’s people are there.

Our electricity was cut off on Friday….a week early. After yelling at Direct Energy for an hour, and waiting, it was not turned on that night. We drove to Llano for my family reunion, a day early.
Yesterday it was still not turned on. After going round and round with Direct energy again, I gave up. After some phone calls to the Rogers area, we showed up on Mary and Kin’s doorstep at 10:30 last night with an offer for a bed. I also got a call back from Margaret offering help. That is stepping up in Christian faith.
A man named Millard Fuller, called a friend of his many years ago and said, "I want you to be on a board."
"For what?"
He said, "We’re going to build houses for poor people."
The friend said, "That’s good."
He said, "Not only are we going to build houses for poor people, but they are going to be able to buy these houses with no down payment."
The friend said, "That’s terrific! That’s what usually keeps poor people from buying houses."
He said, "Beyond that, they are going to have long term mortgages and no interest on the mortgages."
"That’s wild!” said the friend “ I’m buying a house and most of what I pay in any given payment is for interest."
And he said, "That’s right. But the Hebrew Bible says that you should never charge interest to poor people so we’re not going to do that. One thing more, when these poor people buy these houses they are only going to have to pay for the cost of building materials."
"Millard, that’s wonderful except for one thing, who’s going to pay for the labor, who’s going to pay for the workers?"
He said, "No problem! I’m going to get church people to volunteer."
"Yeah Right!" was the response to that.
Twenty-five years later, Habitat for Humanity has completed 100,000 houses. Did you hear that? 100,000 families delivered from sub-standard living, with some degree of dignity, because this man was led by the spirit of God, led by Jesus to do something incredibly important with his life.
You know, when the hurricane blew through Homestead, Florida, some years ago, it blew down every home in Homestead except for the 18 houses that were built by Habitat for Humanity. When the press interviewed Millard, they asked, "How do you account for this? How come the houses built by Habitat stood when all the others were blown down?"
He smiled and said, "Well you have to understand that when Habitat builds a house, we build a house on the rock."
These reporters wrote it down. They didn’t get it. But, of course, it’s deeper than that. The real reasons the houses didn’t blow down is because the people who built them, these church volunteers, didn’t know what they were doing.
You see, a builder knows you put a piece of wood in place, you put a vise in place, you put five nails here and five nails there. That ought to hold the beam. But the Habitat builders don’t know what they are doing, so they put twenty nails here and twenty nails there.
If the foundation requires this much cement, they put in that much cement. Every house they build is over built. And so when the storms came, other houses might have blown down but their houses stood.
It’s an incredible story of the man who had a vision, a vision that was given to him by God. He will tell you that. He’ll tell you how that at a particular point in his life, he opened himself up and asked the Holy Spirit to invade him, possess him, take possession of him and lead him. For as it says in Romans 8:14, "As many as are lead by the spirit of God, they are the children of God."
Now you say, “I’m no Millard Fuller. I can’t do fantastic stuff like that”. I’ll tell you another story. John was a preacher in a small Texas town. He was trying to get a deacon to step up and be led by the Spirit.
Finally this deacon decided that the one thing he could do was take the youth group to the old folks home. Once a month they went and did church service. The deacon stood in the back of the room.
An old man in a wheel chair rolled over and grabbed the deacon’s hand and held it all thru the service. He did the same the next month and the next and the next and the next.
Then one month the old man did not show up. The deacon inquired about him at the nurses desk. “What happened to him”. He is near death” the nurse said “maybe you should go see him.
He is in the 3rd room, but he is unconscious.” The deacon went to the room, and the man was lying there with lots of tubes in him. Instinctively led by the Spirit, the deacon grabbed the man’s hand and started to pray. And when he said
“Amen” the old man squeezed his hand. The deacon started to cry. He tried to get out of the room, but as he was leaving, he bumped into this lady. She said “he has been waiting for you. He said he would not die until Jesus came and held his hand.
I tried to tell him that after death he can hold Jesus’ hand all day long. But he said No, once a month Jesus comes and holds my hand and I don’t want to leave until I get to hold his hand one more time”.
To be led by the Spirit of God will allow you to do some amazing things like Millard Fuller. It will also allow you to do some things that will never make the headlines and never be on TV.
There is a good chance God does not want some big flashy show from you. There is a good chance that he wants you to open your house or open your hand and be Jesus for someone else. He does not want you to just believe in him, but he wants you to surrender to him, yield to him, and be transformed by him.
For Paul, the radical message of Jesus was that love offered belonging and forgiveness, and from the renewed restored relationship with God, goodness would flow, not because of fear of disobedience, but because love begets love. Love is the fruit of the Spirit.
If we don’t love, eventually the well of loving will dry up, and the fruit of the Spirit will disappear. Paul calls this living in the flesh.
By flesh he means the human values that come to dominate us – selfishness, greed, exploitation. He contrast these with the fruits of the Spirit – love, goodness, kindness.What matters most to Paul is the ongoing relationship with God. What thrilled Paul is the shared life of God he gave.
God…and shared God everywhere. That is where we must be too. Sharing God here there everywhere.