Do You Have Unused or Unclaimed Gifts?

Last year Harvard Business Review published a book titled Harvard Business Review, Stats & Curiosities. Among the statistics that it cites are these:

• 39.2 percent of shoppers will purchase a department store gift card for friends and family.
• 33.4 percent of shoppers will purchase a restaurant gift card for friends and family.
• According to estimates reported in the Journal of State Taxation, the typical American home has an average of $300 in unused or "unredeemed" gift cards. These cards are often misplaced, accidentally thrown out, or only partially redeemed.
• Between 2005 and 2011, $41 billion in gift cards went unused.

I have never had $300 in unused gift cards at home. There have been times, however, when I have forgotten I had a gift card and it took me a few months to use all of it. I do understand how people could forget to use a gift card.

Some people, however, refuse to use or even claim the gifts that God has given us. There are two primary references to those gifts in 1 Corinthians.

First, there is the gift of grace. In 1 Corinthians 1:4, Paul says, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus.” The word grace itself refers to an “undeserved gift” or “undeserved merit” that God gives us. Receiving the gift of God’s grace results, of course, in our salvation. Yet many people decide not to receive God’s gift and thus never experience eternal life. Of all the gifts you can decide not to claim, this is one you do not want to miss out on.

Second, there are spiritual gifts that God gives to believers. These gifts are given to us as a part of God’s grace. It is important that we understand and use our gifts, because it is through our gifts that God ministers to the church and the world. Yet many Christians either do not use their gifts or seek to know what gifts God has given them.

It is important that every follower of Christ exercise their spiritual gifts, that you exercise your spiritual gifts. Paul said, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.” Our gifts come from God, and God does his work through us when we use our gifts.

Be sure you do not refuse the gift of grace or your spiritual gifts.

Temptation and Testing

 

One of the great promises of the Bible is one I have drawn on many times. Perhaps you have too. The passage, however, offers us even greater hope than many of us have drawn from it. Let me explain.

1 Corinthians 10:12-13 gives us this great promise: “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” The promise is given after Paul references a series of failures by Israel to trust God during their wanderings in the wilderness. He says that their failures were meant as examples to us.

We need to take heed so that we do not fall as the Israelites did. We can do so because God will not let us be tempted beyond our ability, but will always provide a way of escape. We have taken Paul’s description of temptation as a temptation to sin. It is that, but what we have missed in the passage is that it is much more.

The word temptation that Paul uses, has no negative connotation. It simply means to test or prove. Whether it becomes a proof of righteousness, of trusting God, or an inducement to sin and evil depends on our response;.

Satan, you see, will use inducements to sin to draw us away from God, but he will also try to draw us away from God when we face the hard things in life. These things are also tests for us, tests of whether we will be faithful to God.

Now let me be clear. I am not talking about tests that God sends us. The hard things in life come from Satan and are the result of the presence of sin in the world. So hard things do come to us just as temptations to sin come to us, and Satan tries to use them all to draw us away from God.

The promise of God, however, is that God will provide us a way of escape no matter how difficult the test is, no matter how great the temptation. The question for us is always whether we will remain faithful to God when the test comes.

Since Christine’s accident on December 8 and death on December 10, I have been experiencing the kind of test that comes to us. As I told my daughter on the phone one night about two months after Christine’s death, Satan would like nothing better than to lure us away from faith in Christ as a result of what happened. He would like us to give up on the ministries God has called us to. We have determined that we will not let him do so, but that struggle is certainly hard. How, then, does God provide a way of escape?

Let me illustrate with the experience of a minister I met at at conference last month. As we talked, he told me that his wife had died five years earlier in the midst of what would become a thirty-seven year ministry. When I shared with him about Christine’s death, we discussed our two experiences and he prayed for me. In the midst of our discussion, he told me how God had opened up an entirely new ministry to him that led him to Florida.

God provides a path to a new adventure. I do not know what God will open up to you or me when we face temptation and trials, but he does promise he will provide us a way of escape. My “way of escape” may be different than my new friend’s and yours may be different than mine, but whether it is temptation or testing, God will show us the way out.

We are engaged in a great spiritual battle — we have been ever since the sin of Adam and Eve. Satan wants us to walk away from God. God will, however, always provide us a way out if we trust him. The way out may not be easy, but the promise is still true. Trust God when life becomes hard.

Worshiping Idols and Practicing Paganism Today

Worshiping Idols and Practicing Paganism Today

The worship of idols and pagan gods were clearly issues for the church at Corinth when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. Most of the young believers in the Corinthian church had participated in idol worship. These practices were entrenched in that entire region of the world. Friendships were built in the pagan temples and business was conducted around their religious practices.

We do not have the same kind of idols and pagan worship that they did, but we do have practices in our own culture that lead many people away from God, and our practices are just as pagan.

Consider the TV show Hoarders which aired on the A&E network from 2009 through 2013. The show depicted the real-life struggles and treatment of people who suffer from compulsive hoarding. They people’s compulsions are so strong that they cannot let go of their “stuff.” On the show, loved ones, psychologists, and organizational experts were brought in to try to help the hoarders stop hoarding.

One episode focused on a middle aged hoarder named Phyllis. Her house was so cluttered with dolls and other belongings that she had to crawl over mounds of garbage in order to reach the recliner where she ate and slept. Her compulsions were so strong that she chose to live without running water and heat and to huddle under blankets to stay warm. Another episode told the story about a man who had collected such a large stash of games, action figures, books, and novelties that it was nearly impossible to move through his home.

Most people who watched the show had the same reaction: they could not believe that people just would not let go of all the stuff that was slowly sabotaging important relationships and harming themselves. They treated these things as gods. While many people do not hoard as those on the TV show, we can treat possessions as if they are our “gods.”

In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul warns against not trusting God. He discusses how the Israelites in the wilderness received “spiritual food” and “spiritual drink” and that they drank from the “spiritual Rock,” who was Christ. Yet they put Christ to the test by not trusting him and by grumbling about God’s provision for them, so Paul tells us to learn from them. If you think you can continue in the ways of the world and not fall from Christ, you should “take heed lest you fall.” No temptation is too great, no idol or pagan practice or possession is so great but that God can provide a way of escape for us. God is faithful, so always put your faith in him.

Come and See

The theme for the Exponential Conference — a conference on church planting — that I attended this week was “Seek and Save—Rethinking Evangelism.” One of the speakers, Larry Osborne, pastor of North Coast Church in Oceanside, California, spoke about how their congregation has reached people for Christ by implementing a “Come and See” approach to evangelism. In short, their philosophy is to encourage their people to invite friends and family to come to church with them to see who Jesus is. They make every effort as a congregation, then, to make sure people see Jesus when they visit the church.

Some Christians, of course, go to much greater lengths to take the Gospel to people. Beginning in 1992, Dr. Bill Becknell of Manchester, Kentucky, for instance, has been recruiting other doctors to go with him to Russia’s far north country. In those isolated villages near the North Pole, where the nearest medical clinic is a three-day trip over rut-filled roads, they treat Nenet Eskimo children who have never seen a doctor or heard about Jesus.

Every trip is a story. On one expedition, Becknell flew from Moscow to Siberia and traveled 10 hours on a rickety bus to a Siberian outpost of about 3,000 people. Leaders asked if he would travel to another village about eight hours away to see people who had never seen a doctor.

In the six to seven hours in a jeep loaded with medicine, Becknell never saw a human being, car or house. At a tent in the middle of nowhere, he met a young shepherd about 25 to 30 years old. “All my life, I have sat on these mountains and looked at the stars at night and wondered if there was a God and if He knew me. I can’t believe He sent you here to tell me about Him,” the young shepherd said as he committed his life to Jesus.

In 2012, 13 expeditions cared for 2,610 people. Currently, there are more than 400 written invitations to come and serve in different parts of Russia.

God doesn’t ask all of us to go to such lengths to witness for Christ. A friend from New Mexico whose wife died in her 70’s in February from cancer told me over lunch this week of all the women his wife had influenced for Christ. Four of them spoke at the celebration service for her life.

For most of us, sharing Christ can be as simple as saying to friends and family, “Come and see.” All of us know people who do not believe and people who do not attend church. We just need to look around us, and we will notice them. Some of them may not respond at first, but as we demonstrate a life that has different values than most people and they begin to see Christ in us, some will come and see. Who do you know to whom you can say, “Come and see”?

Reflections on Good Friday – The Truth About Everything

Tonight many from our church, along with guests, will gather for our annual Good Friday service at 6:00 PM. If you had not planned to come or have forgotten about it, I encourage to join us for this service that reflects on the death of our Savior.

For the last few years, Christine has planned our Good Friday service. In preparing this year’s service, I have been reminded that this year she is no longer here to do so. However the plan that we will use for this year's service is one she found a few years ago and implemented. It takes us through the stations of the cross — those events Jesus endured on his way to the cross and on the cross itself.

My worship on this Good Friday will be richer this year as I reflect on the eternal reward that Christine has now received as a result of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. We only have hope for eternal life because Jesus did endure the cruelty and suffering of the cross, and because of Christ’s resurrection, which we will celebrate on Sunday. However, as Charles Colson wrote a few years ago, we must not “rush the celebration before coming face-to-face with the paradoxes that are at the heart of the Christian faith” — paradoxes which are seen most clearly in the c ross.

Richard John Neuhaus wrote about this a few years ago in his book, Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus. Neuhaus writes, “If what Christians say about Good Friday is true, then it is, quite simply, the truth about everything.” What is that truth? It begins with the truth about the human condition, namely that we are sinners and our sins keep us from God. So what does God do? He paradoxically punishes the offended party — his Son — instead of the guilty party — us.

Colson reflected on the cross, in his meditation on Good Friday, this way: “Our unwillingness to see our sins as they really are—that is, as God sees them—leads us to embrace another falsehood: that is, that we can make things right. Even though our culture is, in many respects, post-Christian, it still clings to the idea of redemption. However, just as with our ideas about sin and guilt, our ideas about redemption are pitiful and impoverished.

“On Good Friday, God made it clear ‘that we are incapable of setting things right.’ He made it clear by taking our place. On the Cross, ‘the Judge of the guilty is Himself judged guilty.’ This is, of course, the great scandal, one that paradoxically points to the great truth at the heart of Good Friday. We are powerless to set things right, and only God, the offended party, could undo the mess we created.

“The Cross—God’s way of bearing witness to the truth about our condition—is as offensive today as it was 2,000 years ago. Now, as then, we insist on misinterpreting the events of that Friday afternoon, but to no avail. Our sin has been judged, and God Himself bore the punishment. And that is the truth about everything.”

So reflect on the cross today. It is the most important reflecting you will ever do.

April 4-6 – An Amazing Weekend

Jerry Kizzire, senior minister at Lake Superior Christian Church (LSCC) in Marquette, MI — who preached at Westwood on April 6 — called it a “God weekend.” He could not have been more right. Our two congregations have been inextricably intertwined since Christine represented WCMA at LSCC on December 8 and then died on December 10 after her accident, and God did some amazing things at both congregations through the events of last weekend.

The weekend events began on Thursday when Jerry and his wife, Natalie, left Marquette to begin their trip to Madison and I left Madison to travel to Marquette so that we could each preach for the other’s congregation. Ryan Gilroy, who has begun plans to plant a church in Manistique, MI, traveled with me so that we could meet with LSCC leadership about the church plant. We all traveled on Thursday because forecasts called for a winter snow storm in the U.P. on Friday, but even an all-day snow storm could not stop what God was about to do.

The actual events of the weekend began with the Madison Christian Women’s Retreat on Friday evening. Although the attendance was smaller than the planners would have preferred, all the ladies were blessed by the retreat events and by this year’s speaker, Shelly Larson. I spoke with Shelly on Monday, and she was thrilled with how well the retreat went.

On Saturday, Ryan and I attended LSCC’s monthly men’s breakfast and shared information about WCMA and the two current church plants in Menomonee Falls and Muskego and plans for the Manistique church plant. Then we met with some of the elders and missions team from LSCC for a broad ranging discussion about the church plant. There is growing momentum and enthusiasm for the church plant project in Manistique that will result in Ryan, WCMA, and LSCC all working together to see another church planted in the U.P.

On Sunday, I preached in both services at LSCC. I preached the sermon I preached at Westwood on February 2 when I returned to preaching after Christine’s death, “When Life Tumbles In, What Then?” Quite a few people at LSCC, shared with me conversations they had with Christine when she was at LSCC on December 8. Jerry preached at Westwood from the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25 and asked, “Are You Ready?” He told about his interaction with Christine on December 8 and then told the adult class about Christine’s presentation at LSCC on December 8 and how their congregation had learned about her accident and death and how they then prayed for me, my family, and Westwood in their worship service on December 15.

All through the weekend God was at work, healing our hearts, strengthening bonds of friendship and creating new ones, and prodding us for how God will work in the future through another church plant, the very thing for which Christine had gone to LSCC on December 8 with which to challenge them.

Videos of Christine’s presentation at LSCC on December 8 and of the prayer time there on December 15 are available on LSCC’s website at this link. If you just want to see the applicable parts of the videos, fast forward to 51:37 on the December 8 video and to 13:10 on the December 15 video. Also, the audio of Jerry’s sermon and his adult class presentation are available on Westwood’s web site: www.westwoodchristian.com. The audio of my message at LSCC is also available at this link and the video of the worship service from last Sunday at LSCC is available at this link or either may be accessed through the sermon page on our church website.

Doubting the Resurrection

A few weeks ago, I received a small book in the mail — it is just over 100 pages — that the publisher was marketing in preparation for Resurrection Sunday. The book, written by two pastors, has an intriguing title: Raised? Finding Jesus By Doubting the Resurrection. The title piques your interest — which I am sure is intentional — because it begs the question, how can you find Jesus by doubting the resurrection?

Chapter 1, “Doubting the Resurrection,” goes immediately to the heart of the matter. They say at the outset that “One out of every five Americans does not believe in a deity. The ‘none’ category in religious polls has doubled over the past ten years, and less than half of the population attends religious services on a regular basis.”

This is not new, however. Matthew 28:17 even says about the disciples of Jesus after the resurrection that “when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.” Indeed why wouldn’t some people doubt him? After all, the Christian faith makes some audacious claims.

As Raised? unfolds, the authors answer the doubters questions as they discuss the evidence for the resurrection and why you should want the resurrection be true. They spend a chapter showing “How the Resurrection Reshapes History.”

In chapter 3, “Stepping into the Resurrection,” the authors of Raised? come to the heart of the matter when discussing the resurrection — as does the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul maintains that the heart of the Gospel — what “I delivered to you as of first importance”— is “that Christ died for our sins…, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day….”

Raised? lifts one verse out of 1 Corinthians 15 to get us to the crux of the matter in regard to the resurrection. Verse 17 says, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in sins.” The authors say,

“Here Paul puts it all on the line. If Christ hasn’t been raised, the Christian faith is fiction and we are stranded in the fall of humanity, trapped in our imperfections. In others words, there is no hope, no purpose, no plan for the future. This is all there is. But if the resurrection is true, it means there is hope; there is purpose and a plan for the future.”

Churches will return to the theme of the crucifixion and resurrection with services on Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Resurrection Sunday, and at other times. No matters are more important to our faith, to resolving our doubts, to empowering our walk with Christ. The resurrection is indeed our greatest hope.