In Matthew 25 we see a king going off to a far away land and leaving a very large sum of money in the possession of three stewards.  A steward is the one given the responsibility to manage a household. The Greek word translated into English literally is economy. In God’s economy he owns everything and entrusts us to manage what he gives us. No it is not biblical for our government to own everything and distribute it evenly but they think it is. ( I digress)

God gives to each of us and you are in charge of your portion, and whether it is handled wisely or poorly is strictly up to you. We see this played out in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13). First the seeds are people who either accept the gospel of Christ or deny the gospel of Christ. Those who accept the Gospel of Christ will produce either 30, 60, or 100 fold. But what ever you produce you will be held accountable for.

The Talents here are money not talents like we think of.  A talent is said to equal about 6000 denari and a denari is a days wage.  We work about 260 days per year so this would be equal to 23 years of wages.  In those days the man with 5 denari would have at least 2 1/2 life times worth of money.  But he did not use it unwisely, nor did the second man.  They both used what they were given to get more.  They multiplied their gifts for the kingdom.

I retrieved the following quote from Preaching Today.com:

In his Books & Culture article “A Lot of Lattés,” Ron Sider reviews Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money
, a book “about the pitifully small charitable donations of the richest Christians in history.” Sider offers a synopsis of some of the authors’ findings:

Twenty percent of American Christians (19 percent of Protestants; 28 percent of Catholics) give nothing to the church. Among Protestants, 10 percent of evangelicals, 28 percent of mainliners, 33 percent of fundamentalists, and 40 percent of liberal Protestants give nothing. The vast majority of American Christians give very little—the mean average is 2.9 percent. Only 12 percent of Protestants and 4 percent of Catholics tithe.

A small minority of American Christians give most of the total donated. Twenty percent of all Christians give 86.4 percent of the total. The most generous five percent give well over half (59.6 percent) of all contributions. But higher-income American Christians give less as a percentage of household income than poorer American Christians. In the course of the 20th century, as our personal disposable income quadrupled, the percentage donated by American Christians actually declined.

If just the “committed Christians” (defined as those who attend church at least a few times a month or profess to be “strong” or “very strong” Christians) would tithe, there would be an extra 46 billion dollars a year available for kingdom work. To make that figure more concrete, the authors suggest dozens of different things that $46 billion would fund each year: for example, 150,000 new indigenous missionaries; 50,000 additional theological students in the developing world; 5 million more micro loans to poor entrepreneurs; the food, clothing and shelter for all 6,500,000 current refugees in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East; all the money for a global campaign to prevent and treat malaria; resources to sponsor 20 million needy children worldwide. [The conclusion of the authors] is surely right: “Reasonably generous financial giving of ordinary American Christians would generate staggering amounts of money that could literally change the world.”

That is all total if you did not get it. Those things and more could be done if just the committed Christians would start giving.   Take care of what you have by being faithful with it.  It is not about success it is not about the big  house or car.  If you focus on those things they will end up letting you down.  It is o.k. to have money and be a Christian but you need to remember where it came from.  Every good gift is a gift from God.

If you go to a church that is not  at least tithing what they bring in.  Find a church that is and support them with all you have.

You have different talents from mine. The body of Christ is made up of many parts. You have a function. One of my talents is not understanding complex things. I just don’t. I am not willing to put the time in to learn because I am busy building up my gifts. When we understand that building up what we can do instead of trying to work on what we can’t do will increase our contribution to the kingdom. If you work on what you can’t do you will spend hours just spinning your wheels. But if you build on your gifts you will see fruit quicker and better because that is something you are good at.

I was a copier tech for twelve years and I could never troubleshoot what was wrong with a machine. I had to call someone every time I had a major problem. I never forgot the symptom and the fix after I was told what it was but I could not just troubleshoot a problem. The KISS principle is my motto. Keep it Simple Stupid. I work on what I do best to make it better. Look at Michael Jordan. He was the greatest basketball player of all time. He was one of the worst baseball players of all time. He should have never tried to play baseball because that was not what he was gifted in.

What you bring to the table is like what no one else brings. We need each and every person here to use what God has given them and it will bring glory back to Him who has given it.

Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi is an axiom of ancient Christianity, meaning, the rule of worship is the rule of belief is the rule of life. That is, the way we are oriented in worship (whatever it might be that we focus on most devotedly) orients the way we believe and the way we live.(1) I don’t know latin but I do know a good thing when I see it.

We are told through the Old Testament that the Israelites always went back to the idols of the cultures around them.  As American Christians we sometimes are no different.  We are emerged in a culture that tells us to beautify the gospel, don’t mention sin, don’t remind people how far they are from God.  We need to be aware of where we are in our walk with Christ.  As for me I get off track.  I love politics I get caught up in the conservative vs liberal debates.  I actually agree with both sides on some issues, but that is a different blog.  We can so easily get lost and focus our worship on a cult of personality, or the t.v., or a new car that we just have to get because ours is three years old.

We can worship; worship, no joke if you have been in church over ten years you have probably seen your churches worship service change.  Both sides of that argument are worshiping something other than God when they go into those sanctuaries.

My point is this.  What ever you focus your worship on is what is going to set the way you see yourself, others, and the church.  Are you studying your bible daily, are you praying and memorizing scripture, or are you putting junk into your mind?  This week turn off the t.v., turn off the computer and fill your mind with a little more scripture.  Get some 3×5 index cards and start memorizing it as well.

(1) Jill Carattini, A Slice of Infinity daily email Newsletter January 23, 2009.  Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

My sermon this week is on patience from James 1. But my cross reference took me to John 14

1″Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God[a]; trust also in me. 2In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Part of being patient is knowing God is in control. This passage let us know that Jesus has it all taken care of and we don’t need to worry about what will come in the future. When we rest in Christ we can know that we have a big future in store. He is going to prepare a place for us in heaven so who care what happens here on Earth.

I know it is a hard concept to grasp with all the layoffs and work closings that are going on right now, but it pales in comparison when we rely on him and him alone. Maybe a job loss is meant to draw someone closer to him. We are still trying to understand why my wife’s mother was called home last year, but we know that he has a reason and his reason is beyond our reasons.

In Romans Paul write that all things work to good for those who love the Lord. Give your burden to him and let him comfort you. He has it all under control and he will com back for us someday.

If you are in the Middleburg Florida area this Sunday we would love to have you. Our Church is located at 3965 Old Jennings Rd on the corner of Old Jennings and Long Bay

God Bless,

Our faithfulness to the church is paramount.  It is not our church.  We should love it and want to take care of it for God.  He has put every one of us in a church because our gifts can be used there.  When you miss a Sunday your gifts are not utilized and someone is not getting ministered to .  When you miss a practice for praise team or drama ministry you essentially say you don’t care about the people that are involved or the church as a whole because your time is more important than they are.

I think for me this has hit home over the last year.  I have seen so many people step up to do things like;  plan visitor connection times or step out of their comfort zone and teach a class that when I see people just snub their nose at the church because they are tired that Sunday it really get’s to me.

Love the Lord your God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Think about that the next time it is to hard to get out of bed on Sunday or maybe when you figure out you have committed yourself to so many things outside the church you can’t give any time to God.

Read Marc Driscoll’s Blog here:

The Mars Hill Blog | Blog Archive » Final Thoughts From Pastor Mark at 12:37am After the Lowest Sunday in Many Years.

What Is The Chief End of Man? Man’s Chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy Him forever!

That is the first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Apply that to your life. Do you glorify God in all you do? Do you enjoy being with him? We attribute worship to what we love.

Today we most commonly think of Christian Worship as only one thing; Sunday morning church service. We have had a change over the last twenty years, like never before, in how the Sunday morning worship service is going to be acted out. We have seen churches split apart over the style of music used in the worship services. We are now seeing a new kind of service, and churches for that matter, that is modeled after what some believe to be the book of Acts model.

But is Sunday morning the only time we are to worship God? Do we worship him in our daily lives and work? Do we give our all to honor him? Lets explore worship and see what it really is.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind (Luke 10:27)

What Do You Worship

Not everyone that says they worship God actually worships Him. We see so many people today that go to church only show up there because they get a good feeling from the experience or out of duty to someone (maybe to God maybe grandma).  They go to a church but do not actually worship the God they go to see.  How do we determine this? Look at the divorce rate or the teen pregnancy rate or the drug and alcohol abuse rate in the church at large.  For every pastor that gets caught with drugs or porn there are ten more that have not been.

So what does this have to do with worship?

Look at the verse above. We worship what we love. We pour or affection into what we love. One of the reasons I say the Church in America has become a laughing stock is because we love the world and all it has to offer and we put God and Jesus on the back burner. When we say yes to Christ we begin a discipleship where we learn from him. If we do not love Him then how can we learn anything from Him?

Let’s go back for a minute. If you came to this lens from the Spiritual Disciplines lens then you know that I asked you to read the 23rd Psalm during the week. Verse 1-3 says:

1The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

3He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. (KJV)

How are you going to let someone lead you if you do not love them? How can you read this and worship him for leading you if you do not love him? in verse 4 it says, “thy rod and thy staff comfort me.” How can you say that if you are trying to buck the system and lead yourself.

Worship is about love, we will worship and need what we love and we will shun and deny what we do not.

I receive a weekly newsletter from Leadership Journal and I usually just go through the main articles then file it in my leadership folder for future reference.  Today I scrolled through it and decided to go to their blog called Out of UR.  David Swanson has written a very good article about the new move toward a social justice in our conservative churches.

About four years ago we had a guy come to our church to help us discover our mission and try to figure out how to reach our community.  During one of these session I pointed out that our church does no mission work either in our neighborhood or abroad.  I was met with a resounding what are you talking about our this and we that.  So I knew we were going to get no where.  Yes we give about 13% of our budget to missions but we do no missional work what so ever.  But I digress

This article points out what I was trying to tell our congregation 4 years ago.  We need to see the hurting and get involved.  Unlike the social gospel movement in more liberal churches we are equipped to share the gospel when we do these missional projects.  My point is that we need to get involved.  Read the article I think you will like it.

Urban Exile: Re-discovering Justice? | Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders.