What If?

What if?

It’s natural to wonder how things might have turned out if we had done something different in our lives.  What if you went to a different college?  What if you had moved to a different city?  What if you turned left instead of right?  Our life is filled with choices and each one makes a difference.  Growing up, one of my favorite comic books was titled “What If?” and every month they would explore this idea about how the choices we make can affect our lives.  Sometimes the differences were huge.  Sometimes the differences were small but meaningful.  Sometimes the differences were just…different.  It was always interesting to read but was also a reminder that every day is important.  What we do and say MATTERS!  God has given us this chance at life, but we only get to do it once so how can we make the most it?

God wants us to be BOLD!

Nowhere in the Bible is there a story about a guy who played it safe and was told by Christ, “Good job! Who needs to take risks?  Play it safe.”  Instead, it’s quite the opposite.  In the story of the Parable of the Talents, God rewards those who have taken a chance with the gifts they are given and instead punishes the guy who plays it safe.  In the book of Acts, we read about Ananias and Sapphira who withhold a portion of their profits for themselves instead of giving it to God and they die on the spot!  Not that God would literally kill us for playing it safe, but maybe it’s a metaphor for how our trust and our faith die a little bit when we hold back.  We were put on Earth to serve God in BOLD ways, to dare to make this world a better place.  And that takes BOLD people.  There was a scene in the movie Dead Poets Society that reminds me of God’s call to boldness.  In it, Mr. Keating is teaching his students about poetry, and the kids are used to studying about rhyme and meter and iambic pentameter – all the forms and functions of poetry.  But Mr. Keating wants to inspire them, to go beyond just studying about it and understanding it and he says to his students, “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.  Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman: ‘O me, o life of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these, o me, o life?’ Answer: that you are here. That life exists, and identity.  That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.  What will your verse be?”  What will YOUR verse be?

God is never short of inspiration either.

There’s a great passage in Malachi I want to share with you today. Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament.  It was written to the Jews who had returned from Babylon after the temple had been rebuilt.  The people had become spiritually apathetic.  They didn’t turn to false gods or other deities, but were “disillusioned about their future and skeptical of God’s promises.”[1]  They had the form and function of a church, but really had turned into nothing more than a country club for Jewish people.  They stopped being a church.  And in the beginning of this chapter, Malachi foretells the coming of Christ and asks the important question, “…who can endure the day of his coming? (Malachi 3:2)” Who can endure the day of his coming?  And he follows it up with the section we are about to read this morning. 

 ⁸ “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.

   “But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’

   “In tithes and offerings. ⁹ You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. ¹⁰ Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. ¹¹ I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the LORD Almighty. ¹² “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty. – Malachi 3:8-12

Test me in this!

“Test me in this…and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it…”  That is such a striking image and I imagine as God is saying this, he isn’t angry or upset.  He’s excited!  He’s challenging.  He’s ripe with anticipation.  Are you willing to take God up on that offer?  All we need is two things – faith and trust.  When we have faith in God’s promise and trust him to be faithful to us, he promises a flood of blessings.  Instead, we often choose to rob God of what is already rightfully his.  God doesn’t ask you to give everything you have.  He only asks for your trust enough in him so he can show you the amazing blessings he has in store for you.  God challenges us to tithe, not because he needs it, but because we do.  When we fail to give in service to God, we are not only robbing God, but robbing ourselves of this opportunity to experience God’s blessing in our lives.  Now, you might be tempted to get this image of a mighty God holding back this wonderful blessing as a punishment for our failure to be more faithful or trusting.  But the curse we are under is one we’ve made ourselves, not one that God wants for us.  When we hold back from giving all we can, we are also holding back the chance for God to work in our lives in the most powerful of ways.  God WANTS to do this for us.  He invites us to “test him,” but that requires us to have faith in God’s promise. 

For me, this is a reality.

And I can’t promise that it will happen for you in the same way.  But before I ever even thought about becoming a pastor, I went through a real crisis of faith.  It was not long after 9/11 and we just found out Cassie was pregnant with Emma. With so many horrible things going on in the world, it made me wonder what kind of world we were bringing our newborn child into.  I started to wonder what kind of God would let so much evil go unchecked.  Where was God in all of this mess?  Maybe…there wasn’t a God.  My whole world seemed to turn upside down, and it was horrible.  I lost sleep.  I woke up in the middle of the night sweating through my shirt.  I felt hopeless and helpless.  But during this time, I kept hearing this challenge – to test God.  I heard it from my pastor, from the radio, on the Internet, and so I did it.  And I can’t help but feel that it was God reaching out to me through these various people.  Test me in this.  Not with money but with prayer.  I prayed for God to give me a sign, to show me some direction, to show me some kind of proof that he was there.  And through people I loved and people I never heard of; through books and radio and Scripture and everything in-between, I kept feeling more and more connected again to God.  God helped me to develop eyes to see and ears to hear until I felt what John Wesley felt – that blessed assurance God was there.  And at the end of it all, I felt a new calling on my life.  I needed to serve God in a new way so others who may be distant from God could see him and know they are loved.  It was this crisis of faith that led me to be here today. 

Where do you need to be bold?

What areas do you find yourself hesitating in?  What things do you not fully trust God with handling?  For you it might be prayer, too.  But it might be giving financially to growing God’s kingdom whether that is through our church or in some other way.  Or it might be in giving of your time to help others grow in their faith.  Maybe you’re being called to serve as a Sunday School teacher or in the tech booth or on one of our committees.  Challenge yourself in this thanksgiving season on how you can be bolder in your love of God and neighbor and see if he doesn’t rain down blessings upon blessings on your life.  In whatever way I can, I would love to help so please reach out.  But it’s really up to you.  How is God calling on you to be bolder, more giving, more open to where he is leading.  May we all pray to have eyes to see and ears to hear. 

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[1] Some of this section is taken from The Archeological Study Bible, “Introduction to Malachi,” p. 1545.