GROWING & BUILDING GIFTS: Pursuing Your Passion

Jeremiah 31:31-34, 1 Corinthians 3:6-11

9/16/07

We all know them. Perhaps, we have been them from time to time in life - people who walk around with bent over spirits and tired eyes, people who find fault with everyone and everything, people who wear a bitter residue like a familiar set of clothes, people who, for one reason or another, seem to have had the light, the hope, the joy of life squelched right out of them. And this, I think, is a great tragedy. For I believe with my whole being that God desires something better, something more for people and the world. I believe that God’s plan and way from the beginning of creation to the very last moment is to bring healing and wholeness, peace and reconciliation, joy and light into our lives, and through the church, into the world.

And so today, as we embark on a new adventure and begin a new church school calendar year, I invite each one us to stop and take stock of our life and faith. Are you one of those described above? Do you feel trapped by the circumstances of your life? Do you know or have you encountered others who desperately need a word of hope, a seed of faith that there can be freedom, joy, love and light in life? Perhaps, it’s finally time then to pay attention to the deep longings of your heart, to pursue God’s plan and your passion, to use your God-given gifts in life to spread healing and hope wherever we find yourself. The prophet Jeremiah reminds us of God’s words in chapter 29. “For surely, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, plans to give you a future with hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

A few weeks ago, Dave G. and our Church Health Team invited us to think about Gifts-Based ministry in our church and shared the words ofMax Lucado who puts it this way… “When we submit to God’s plans, we can trust our desires. Our assignment is found at the intersection of God’s plan and our pleasures. What do you love to do? What brings you joy? What gives you a sense of satisfaction? Some long to feed the poor. Others enjoy leading the church… Each of us has been made to serve God in a unique way… The longings of your heart are not to be ignored; they are to be consulted. As the wind turns the weather vane, so God uses your passions to turn your life. God is too gracious to ask you to do something you hate.” (p. 240, Max Lucado). Corporate Executive and business guru, Jack Welch, defines passion in this way – passion is that heartfelt, deep and authentic excitement about work.

God longs to give us life and through us and the church, offer life to others. God invites us to unleash our longings and passions for this purpose. God gives us, each one of us, spirit-fed gifts to grow and build up the church, not simply to fill our pews or pad our bottom line, but to grow and build-up the church because there are people who are perishing all around us. The church, our church at Wellspring, is called by God to be a source of living water and a lighthouse for people who are gasping for life, for people who seek safe haven. This seems a tall task for our little community of faith, but it is a holy calling and one that the apostle Paul through his life and words assures us is possible. We have all that we need right here around us. We have God’s plan. We each have the passion that simply needs to unleashed and directed. We each have gifts given to us by God for this purpose – to bring light and life into our lives and the world. But where do we start? How do we discover, uncover, our passion and gifts? I’ll offer a couple suggestions as a starting point and invite you into an exciting journey that will be navigated by our Church Health Team who worked all day yesterday to develop our itinerary or action plan for the year. (Celebrate)

The first suggestion for pursuing your passion and discovering your gifts is to begin to listen to your life. Pay attention to your heart, mind, and spirit. What activities or work are deeply satisfying for you? What gives you energy? What do you look forward to each day? Or conversely, pay attention to the opposite as a way of discovering what is not your passion. What do you avoid? What drains your energy and saps your spirit? What gives you headaches or bellyaches or heartaches? In the quiet time before sleep review your day, each moment of it, and note those thoughts and activities that were a wellspring of life for you. Jot them down/ use a song, a picture, a word to help you remember. Review your journal over the course of days and weeks to see if a pattern emerges. Look at your calendar and your checkbook. What do you give your time and money to? What do these say about you, your priorities, your passions? Often times, actions speak louder than words. We may say one thing is very important to us but if we neglect or ignore or shortchange that one thing, that work, that relationship, that ministry then perhaps we might need to re-think and re-evaluate. Finally, listen for God’s voice in your life. Do you listen for God’s voicehere in worship, through daily devotions, prayer and time with God’s Word, through the words of a faith-filled friend, teacher, or guide, or through small groups? One of the best ways I know of to listen for God’s word and discover gifts and passions is through Disciple Bible Study. It is one of the best places to ask questions about God, about the Bible, about faith and the world. It is one of the best ways to grow in faith and understanding. Talk to someone today in our congregation who has taken Disciple to find out more. Suggestion One: Listen to your life.

A second suggestion for pursuing your passion and discovering your gifts is to dare to take a risk. Try something new. Dare to learn something new about yourself, about others, about God. Take a Disciple Bible study. Make a point to participate in the Church Health Team “Discover Your Gifts” Seminars coming soon to Wellspring. Participate in a Small Group and if there’s not one that speaks to your passion – talk to Jerry about starting up something new. Dare to relate and respond to others in new way. Of course, the trouble with risk is that there are no guarantees. When we risk, we risk rejection, we risk disappointment, we risk failure. But when we risk we can also leave ourselves open to the moving of the spirit of God. We can find ourselves depending on God’s grace. We can discover God’s deep and abiding love for us. We can join with God in sharing our particular gifts and passions to bring greater healing, wholeness, and hope into our world. We can risk making a difference in our own small way.

Mohja Kahf, writes in the Arkansas Gazette, the following in her story, “We Are Not Strangers.” Posted on July 29, 2007. “I got a phone call one evening from a friend who is a lovable gossip in my hometown. ‘Have you read today’s paper? She wanted to know. A letter-writing curmudgeon had mouthed off about how U.S. Muslims ought to be expelled, as worthless, dangerous, and un-American. ‘What are we going to do?’ she said. We’d worked together on non-pork lunch options for our kids in school – we share that dietary law as she’s Jewish and I’m Muslim. Anyhow, I invited the letter writer to coffee. Walter declined, but we started writing to each other, his letters bearing a purple heart address label; he had been wounded in World War 2. Walter was the crotchedy, racist American great-uncle I never had. I sent him family photos, as you do to even an ornery relative; he replied that he guessed I was Syria’s loss, America’s gain. ‘Huh’, I said. ‘Why, you’re a Syrian beauty queen,’ the old charmer said. One day, I found a plastic baggie of Asparagus tied to my doorknob. Mystified by this American vegetable, not one I cooked in my heritage cuisine, I brought it in – then noticed, sticking to it, the little address label with the Purple Heart. ‘Saute in butter,’ Walter advised. He made me promise to come to the cemetery on Veteran’s Day; I did. A year later, I get a knock at my door. It’s Water. “La ilaha illa Allah!” he says, before ‘hello.’ “You and I worship the same God. I know that now.” He limps into my living room and we finally sit down to coffee.” Oprah Winfrey has said that “I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.” Suggestions 2: Dare to take a risk, to pursue God’s plan and your passion and gifts, this year.

A final suggestion is to be open to new possibilities. Think out of the box. Be open to the unexpected opportunities and interruptions that mark your day. What do they have to teach you about God’s plans and your passions and gifts? Let go of that same old, same old attitude. Albert Einstein once said that the definition for insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Look at challenges, obstacles and roadblocks as opportunities to try something new, to look at a work situation or relationship in a new way, to check your own attitudes, perspectives, and judgments of self or others and to find new ways of thinking and responding to situations. We, as human beings, tend to gravitate toward routine. Our routines can offer comfort and order in life but when our familiar ways of being or doing become sacred cows, they can block us from seeing the possibilities that exist right before our eyes. Dr. Tony Campolo, tells a story of how he was opened, and helped others to be open, to new possibilities for life. This true incident happened to Tony Campolo a few years ago and this rendition is pretty close to the original. (from swapmeetdave.com/Bible/Agnes.htm).

A few years ago Tony flew to Hawaii to speak at a conference. The way he tells it, he checks into his hotel and tries to get some sleep. Unfortunately, his internal clock wakes him at 3:00 a.m. The night is dark, the streets are silent, the world is asleep, but Tony is wide awake and his stomach is growling.

He gets up and prowls the streets looking for a place to get some bacon and eggs for an early breakfast. Everything is closed except for a grungy dive in an alley. He goes in and sits down at the counter. The fat guy behind the counter comes over and asks, "What d'ya want?"

Well, Tony isn't so hungry anymore so eying some donuts under a plastic cover he says, "I'll have a donut and black coffee."

As he sits there munching on his donut and sipping his coffee at 3:30, in walk eight or nine provocative, loud prostitutes just finished with their night's work. They plop down at the counter and Tony finds himself uncomfortably surrounded by this group of smoking, swearing hookers. He gulps his coffee, planning to make a quick getaway. Then the woman next to him says to her friend, "You know what? Tomorrow's my birthday. I'm gonna be 39." To which her friend nastily replies, "So what d'ya want from me? A birthday party? Huh? You want me to get a cake, and sing happy birthday to you?"

The first woman says, "Aw, come on, why do you have to be so mean? Why do you have to put me down? I'm just sayin' it's my birthday. I don't want anything from you. I mean, why should I have a birthday party? I've never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?"

Well, when Tony Campolo heard that, he said he made a decision. He sat and waited until the women left, and then he asked the fat guy at the counter, "Do they come in here every night?"

"Yeah," he answered.

"The one right next to me," he asked, "she comes in every night?"

"Yeah," he said, "that's Agnes. Yeah, she's here every night. She's been comin' here for years. Why do you want to know?"

"Because she just said that tomorrow is her birthday. What do you think? Do you think we could maybe throw a little birthday party for her right here in the diner?"

A cute kind of smile crept over the fat man's chubby cheeks. "That's great," he says, "yeah, that's great. I like it." He turns to the kitchen and shouts to his wife, "Hey, come on out here. This guy's got a great idea. Tomorrow is Agnes' birthday and he wants to throw a party for her right here."

His wife comes out. "That's terrific," she says. "You know, Agnes is really nice. She's always trying to help other people and nobody does anything nice for her."

So they make their plans. Tony says he'll be back at 2:30 the next morning with some decorations and the man, whose name turns out to be Harry, says he'll make a cake.

At 2:30 the next morning, Tony is back. He has crepe paper and other decorations and a sign made of big pieces of cardboard that says, "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" They decorate the place from one end to the other and get it looking great. Harry had gotten the word out on the streets about the party and by 3:15 it seemed that every prostitute in Honolulu was in the place. There were hookers wall to wall.

At 3:30 on the dot, the door swings open and in walks Agnes and her friend. Tony has everybody ready. They all shout and scream "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" Agnes is absolutely flabbergasted. She's stunned, her mouth falls open, her knees started to buckle, and she almost falls over.

And when the birthday cake with all the candles is carried out, that's when she totally loses it. Now she's sobbing and crying. Harry, who's not used to seeing a prostitute cry, gruffly mumbles, "Blow out the candles, Agnes. Cut the cake."

So she pulls herself together and blows them out. Everyone cheers and yells, "Cut the cake, Agnes, cut the cake!"

But Agnes looks down at the cake and, without taking her eyes off it, slowly and softly says, "Look, Harry, is it all right with you if...I mean, if I don't...I mean, what I want to ask, is it OK if I keep the cake a little while? Is it all right if we don't eat it right away?"

Harry doesn't know what to say so he shrugs and says, "Sure, if that's what you want to do. Keep the cake. Take it home if you want."

"Oh, could I?" she asks. Looking at Tony she says, "I live just down the street a couple of doors; I want to take the cake home, is that okay? I'll be right back, honest."

She gets off her stool, picks up the cake, and carries it high in front of her like it was the Holy Grail. Everybody watches in stunned silence and when the door closes behind her, nobody seems to know what to do. They look at each other. They look at Tony.

So Tony gets up on a chair and says, "What do you say that we pray together?"

And there they are in a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, half the prostitutes in Honolulu, at 3:30 a.m. listening to Tony Campolo as he prays for Agnes, for her life, her health, and her salvation. Tony recalls, "I prayed that her life would be changed, and that God would be good to her."

When he's finished, Harry leans over, and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he says, "Hey, you never told me you was a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to anyway?"

In one of those moments when just the right words came, Tony answers him quietly, "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning."

Harry thinks for a moment, and in a mocking way says, "No you don't. There ain't no church like that. If there was, I'd join it. Yep, I'd join a church like that."

Suggestions 3: Be open to new possibilities for your life this year.

Will you listen to your life, dare to take a risk, be open to new possibilities this year? Will you help to grow and build the church this year? Will you participate in God’s plan and pursue your passions and gifts this year? For your sake and the sake of our community and world? And I pray and trust, that by the grace of God, it may be so.

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