What's Needed In The Next Five Years?
September 9, 2018 Numbers 13:26-33 Acts 16: 6-10
It was five years ago today that we came together to merge Glenville New Life Community Church together with Calvary Presbyterian Church to give birth to New Life At Calvary. Two weeks ago Pastor Kellie’s message told the story of how we came together, last week Pastor Toby preached on where we are today, and I was assigned the task of preaching on where we are headed for the next five years.
It is very easy to predict the future, but getting it right is a lot more difficult. Here are some predictions that were made about technology in the past:
1876: "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." — William Preece, British Post Office.
1876: "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." — William Orton, President of Western Union.
1903: “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” — President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company.
1946: "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." — Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox.
1955: "Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years." — Alex Lewyt, President of the Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Company.
1959: "Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail." — Arthur Summerfield, U.S. Postmaster General.
1961: "There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the United States." — T.A.M. Craven, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner.
1966: "Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop.” — Time Magazine.
1981: “Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.” — Marty Cooper, inventor.
1995: "I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." — Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com.
2005: "There's just not that many videos I want to watch." — Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube expressing concerns about his company’s long term viability.
2006: "Everyone's always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is, 'Probably never.'" — David Pogue, The New York Times.
2007: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” — Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.
How many of you have had hopes and dreams for the future that did not turn out exactly as you had hoped they would? Our church today, does not look like what he had hoped and planned for five years ago. But how many of you know, God is still on the throne and God is still at work in our midst. When the children of Israel left Egypt, many of them would not have left if they had known where they were going to be in five years?
There are times when we want to do things for God and we want to try to make a difference for the kingdom of God, but God’s plans and our plans do not necessarily line up with each other even when we have good motives.
Acts 16:6-10 (NIV2011)
6 Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 7 When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. 8 So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas.
Paul and his companions had wanted to preach the of God in the province of Asia, but the Holy Spirit would not allow them. They saw that they could make a difference in the lives of the people of Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. I can remember the one ministry we really wanted to do and we got an overwhelming response for the congregation to do was to be a place of refuge for homeless women and children on Saturdays during the winter, but the Holy Spirit would not allow us to do that ministry. Although we had been told, we’d have a lot of people referred to us, not a single person was ever assigned over a period of three weeks. Somehow our vision and God’s plan just didn’t connect with each other and only the Lord knows why.
Paul and his friends were frustrated that they wanted to serve, but God was not allowing them to do so. Finally they got a sign from the Lord.
9 During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
The vision before them now was to get to Macedonia and start to build some great churches for God. God had sent Paul and Silas a third great worker alongside of them by the name of Timothy. When the vision for Macedonia was cast, it did not include that Paul and Silas would be thrown into prison and severely beaten with rods. Their crime was that they used the power of Jesus Christ within them to cast a demon out of a girl. We don’t usually equate delivering people with beating and jail time.
Sometimes the path that we are on is a pretty good indicator of our future. For instance if you are on your way to Pittsburgh, but if you get on I-71 south, I can tell you with a fairly high degree of certainty even though you believe you will be in Pittsburgh , in four to six hours you will arrive in Cincinnatti.
Instead of laying out a vision of what we hope to accomplish in the next five years, I want us to focus in on what is the Lord calling us to be. Why is that we are located at this place in time to make a difference for the cause of Jesus Christ in this world ? What should we be expecting to happen?
One of the first things we need to recognize is that our city needs Jesus and we need him more than ever. I’m talking about a Jesus who lets people know they are valuable in the eyes of God. A Jesus who says, yes I know what your circumstances are and the sins you have committed, but I am coming to you anyways. God is calling us to be a place of acceptance for the brokenness of others.
This past week, there was a killing spree that went on in Cleveland over the Labor Day weekend with 5 people dead. 35 year old woman in her living room, 26 year old man attacked by a group of men, 28 year old woman killed in strip club, 17 year old meeting with someone, a man killed outside New Tech West High. 84 homicides in 2018. There won’t be any protests for the five because they weren’t killed by the police. Left behind each of those persons is a family in pain. If we were to go out and witness to them or if they somehow found their way into New Life At Calvary, what would they find when they entered our doors. Would they see people with lives different than the lives they have lived.
There are so many people looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places. It’s funny how so many people want the kind of relationships with each other that God wants them to have, yet they think they can have them without God. Our society glamorizes things that most of us do not want, especially when it comes to relationship and marriage. They glorify the person who is unfaithful and all the wonderful fun they are having. But it is a lie. That’s not what most of us really want in a relationship.
They want someone that’s going to be loyal and faithful to them, someone they can depend on when needed, someone who will stand by them when things get tough, someone who will forgive us when we make mistakes, someone who won’t talk down to us, and someone who will put their interests above even their own while treating them with respect. The only place that kind of a relationship is taught is found is in 1 Corinthians 13. They actually want a person who yields themselves to the authority of God’s Word.
The best marriages are the drama free marriages where there is very little to talk about. Pastor Toby and I have been married 38 years. My greatest reward of the day is simply having her close to me for a few minutes before I fall asleep. Marriage Jesus’s way may sound boring, but it sure is worth it.
Our society glorifies the online hookup, the one night stand, and do what you want to do, and can’t understand the rise in syphilis, gonorrhea, and other stds. I saw an article that blamed the problem on a lack of increase in government spending to deal with the problem. It’s not a money issue, it’s a moral issue.
Jesus reaffirmed God’s plan when he told us therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. What should we become in the next five years? A congregation where the relationships among the congregation are built upon the word of God, rather than the latest tv show.
How do we allow God to turn us into people who can accept people with sin in their lives as Jesus did with tax collectors and sinners without allowing ourselves to focus on the sin instead of seeing the person for whom Christ died. How will we handle the first gay married couple that comes through our doors? I hope it will be with love, with truth and with grace.
In the next five years, Jesus word’s, come follow me are going to be even more challenging. Are you preparing to pay a greater cost to follow Jesus Christ. It will be harder than ever to hold true sound biblical doctrine and not be ridiculed or harassed. Our society is becoming more anti-religious and even more so anti-Christian than it has ever been before.
It is no longer freedom of religion, it seeks to become freedom from religion. There are those who think the first amendment simply means free to do what you want in a worship service, not freedom to live out your faith in your every day life.
The bible tells us, as far as it lies with you live at peace with all people. The New Testament’s position is tolerance with those you disagree with. But now, it is not enough to tolerate others. We will be told what we must believe in order to get jobs, qualify for degrees, or hold governmental positions. You must believe the LGBQT have the same behavioral standing in God’s eyes as any African American or black person has.
You must believe gay marriage is God’s gift to creation. You must believe unborn children should not have any protection in any way and that killing off the elderly is actually a blessing to them. Assisted suicide is something to cherish. None of these things sound like Jesus’ words I have come to give you life and to give it to you more abundantly .If you stand for Jesus, its going to hurt more in the next five years than in the past five years.
The bible tells us that in the last days, there will be a great falling away and people will have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof. There will be more Me hacks, Shadrachs, and Abenegos who will be thrown into the fire, but they will not come out of the fire as they went in and they will burn up.
In the next five years God will give us the opportunity to heal the wounds and divisions in our society by starting the process within the church. Jesus said, this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. How much of our interaction in the church is with the people on the same level I am on financially or socially? Do we go out of our way to relate with those people as our equals or tolerate them as our mission project? Are we afraid of some of the people in our church?
Can our church endure another presidential election in which our allegiance is stronger to a particular party or candidate than it is to Jesus Christ so that we stop seeing people as people for whom Christ died, and will only see them through the demonic eyes of a particular party. All political parties want us to hate the opposition in order to win no matter what the costs.
After stirring up all this hatred, do you really think it just disappears out of hearts simply because an election is over. Just think, if politics brings irreconcilable differences within a church, what if any hope does the society have for unity. At least we have Jesus praying for us that we might be one as He and the Father are one. The issue with us, is do we want to be one?
In the next five years God is going to give us a final chance to be molded into a winner as we cross the finish line for Him. Some of us have never attempted to do something different for God in terms of ministry. We’ve never attempted to tell someone about Jesus Christ. We have never been a part of a small group of believers for Bible Study. We have never attempted to tithe.
We have never attempted to lead a small group in our home. We have never attempted to pass out any evangelistic materials. We’ve never attempted to build a relationship with someone in the church outside our age group. We’ve never asked God to give us a love for people who are lost. We’ve never asked God to use us to help save somebody. Could this five year period be the time to try.
We have never looked at the things we love to do and asked God, God how can I use this for your honor and your glory. God created you with a love for what you love doing. There is a way to reach people with the gospel through what you are doing if you choose to look at it from God’s perspective
For some of us, we will get the full five years, but for others we will only get a few months or a couple of those five years before either we go home to be with the Lord, or the Lord comes for us during the rapture.
The path you are on right now, is going to determine where you are in five years. You have to make the decision to change something in order to end up in a different destination. Are you really on path to hearing,” Well Done in 5 years or are you like me in which is God pointing out some areas in my life which need some adjustments.
As your pastors, we thank God for all of you who have taken this journey with us at some point, including those who left us along the way for whatever reason. God has blessed us in some incredible ways. We invite you a journey of not doing something great for God, but on becoming more like Jesus Christ so that we can see this world and others a little bit more like God sees them. A journey of creating a place where anyone can feel loved and accepted and where Jesus Christ is lifted up as Lord of all. A journey where the most important thing about us becomes, this is a place where people come each week to give their lives to Jesus Christ and are changed by the Holy Spirit simply because they know, we love each other here.
