Acts 6:5-16
February 6, 2011
They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.
Do you recognize the name Kaile Warren? You may have seen him if, over the years, you’ve watch the CBS early show on Saturday mornings. Warren used to do features on things such as how to winterize your house and how to make basic repairs. He is the founder and owner of a franchised company, Rent-a-Husband, and he is known nationally. He is a successful man, but he wasn’t always like this. There was a point in his life when he was as low as anyone could imagine. He was homeless and hopeless, living in a warehouse and sleeping with rats.
At one point, in the early 1990s, Warren had his own construction business, a nice house, a wife, and an enviable life. Then tragedy struck. He had an accident that left him injured, and the results were that he slowly began to lose his business. Eventually he had to declare bankruptcy. He lost his house. Then his wife left him. He was penniless, alone, and directionless. He drifted onto the streets. He became a homeless man living on a wharf in Portland, Maine. His life was in shambles. No matter how hard he tried to resurrect his life, some sort of self-destructiveness kept pulling him down. He was in despair and ready to die.
He hit the lowest point of his life in 1996. He was working in a warehouse during the day, getting paid peanuts, and then sneaking back into it at night to sleep. He couldn’t afford an apartment. He was sleeping on boxes and washing up in a bathroom. It was 3 a.m., and he woke up as a rat scurried across his foot. It brought his descent into his own personal Hell into clear focus. After getting rid of the rat, he began to cry. For the first time in his life he prayed. He wasn’t sure that he believed in God, but he didn’t know who or what else to turn to. In his desperate prayer, he asked God to help him somehow, anyhow. As he prayed, ten words popped up in his mind: Rent-a-Husband. For Those Jobs That Never Get Done. In that instant he knew his future. He would develop a handyman business based on integrity. He knew that many divorced and widowed women felt helpless to do the home repairs that their husbands used to do. He also knew that they were often targets of con-men and scam artists. So he would become a source of integrity for divorced or widowed women who didn’t know how to fix things for themselves.
Still homeless, he managed to rent a beat-up van for $50 a week. He put the name Rent-a-Husband on the side of the van with electrical tape. He printed up fliers for his business and put them on the car windows of women attending a divorced womens’ group. Soon he received requests for his services. Slowly he built up his business. His operation was such a shoestring operation that he often had to borrow tools and ladders from the women he worked for. Still, he was determined that his reputation for politeness, responsibility, and reliability would win them over.
Today, Warren is the president of a business that has eight franchises and continues to grow. The business has gone up and down with the economy, and he has made some bad business decisions along the way, but that has not detracted from his calling. His business is built on his own faith in God, whom he experienced on that wharf years before, and on a pledge to offer the best service possible—to be a business that cares about people. All the men who work for him have to undergo a thorough background check, take classes on dealing politely and responsibly with others, and have their work continually monitored for quality. His is a story of following God’s calling to live a life of serving.
I love Kaile Warren’s story because it teaches so much about what it takes to hear God’s calling in our lives. The truth is that many of us struggle with hearing and understanding God’s call in our lives. All of us wish we were like Paul in our passage for this morning—able to hear God’s voice telling us what to do. But most of us don’t really feel as though we ever hear God’s voice, let alone hearing it constantly like Paul seemed to do. The downside of reading Paul’s story is that when we don’t have the kinds of experiences that people in the Bible, like Paul, have, then we tend to think of the Bible as being unrealistic.
I want to challenge that idea, though, because I think most of us do hear God’s voice constantly, and even somewhat clearly. The problem is that we just don’t recognize it as God’s voice. We’re too busy in our lives, too focused on the demands of our lives, too sure we know the way the world works to really hear God.
If you want to understand how God’s calling works, it’s helpful to look at Paul’s and Kaile’s experiences for guidance. How was it that Paul was able to hear God’s voice in a dream? The thing we forget when we listen to the story is that Paul was able to hear God’s voice because he was totally committed to hearing God’s voice. Paul lived a life of dedication to serving God, and that dedication became the ground for hearing God. You see, many of us want to hear God’s voice, but we want God to speak to us about things that matter to us, and not necessarily to God. We want God to call us to what we already want, not to what God wants. Paul was living a life focused on serving God, and God’s calling to him was serving focused.
Now before you get too tempted to say that Paul didn’t live a realistic life because he was serving as a missionary, unlike us, I’m going to challenge that notion. Did you know that Paul actually was a businessman? Did you know that he was an entrepreneur? For fourteen years before he became a missionary, he was a tentmaker, making tents that were essential to commerce in those days. There were few inns or hotels at that time, so when business people, or the army, travelled, they would use elaborate tents. Whenever Paul went to a different place to spread the gospel, he also set up his tentmaking business. He was living in the working world, but at the same time was dedicated to serving God in all of his life. That’s important to understanding God’s call.
Also, Paul didn’t hear God’s voice constantly. Only at crucial times. Often God’s doesn’t need to speak to us when we are already doing what God wants. Then God’s calling is a whisper, telling us to keep doing what we are doing.
Kaile Warren was able to hear God’s calling because, even though his life wasn’t dedicated to serving God, he was desperate in his life for something different, for something more. He was praying for help, for an intervention, and he was doing so with as much honesty and openness as possible. His desperation opened him to God, but he also wasn’t just self-focused. He wanted to serve others. What he heard from God was a confirmation of that service-focus. Rent-A-Husband wasn’t just a business. It was compassionate service to those who are often preyed upon.
Here’s what we learn from Paul and Kaile. First, God often speaks to us in the most simple terms, saying stuff like, “Come over to Macedonia and help us,” or “Rent-A-Husband. For Those Jobs That Never Get Done.” But in that simplicity is a world of understanding. When God speaks in simple words, we often intuitively understand all that it means. Also, when God speaks, it is always giving and service focused. God doesn’t speak to us about how we can get a better job, better house, better situation. God speaks to us about how we can care more about other people, make life better for others, and serve God in all of life.
God is ready to speak to each and every one of us, but the question is whether we are ready to hear what God has to say. If you don’t think you’re hearing God’s call, here are several things to think about.
First, what’s the focus of your listening? God’s calling is always giving and other oriented. If you’re not hearing God’s voice, it may be that you are focusing too much on God serving you, not on you serving God.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. A few months ago I had a conversation with a member of our church about his business. He works in an engineering firm. He told me that back when he started working there, the place seemed to effortlessly make money. The reason, he said, was that the founders were men of faith. Their focus was on serving others. They believed that engineers should be servants, making life better for others, and that if they did this the money would take care of itself. And it did. The firm grew and grew. But in recent years other members of the firm have been made partners, and these men care mostly about the bottom line, profits, and making money. They are always talking about how to get more business, and the result has been that the company has been struggling. They’ve had to cut staff. What’s the difference? As long as the company was service focused, they made profits, but once they became more profit focused they lost business because of their lack of service. Often the staff they cut are those who provide customer service. Whether they knew it or not, the original owners were able to hear God’s calling to serve. But now the company struggles because they aren’t open to it anymore. If we can’t hear God, we need to ask what the focus of our listening is.
Second, if we can’t hear God’s calling, we need to ask what the state of our life is? The more our lives are lived away from God, the harder it is to hear God and to receive a calling that leads to God’s blessings. How we live has a lot to do with what we hear. Remember, Paul was immersed in serving God. The way he lived his life had a lot to do with how well he heard God.
Finally, we need to ask, what are we doing to pay attention to God? Are we engaging in practices and ways of praying that open us to God’s calling? I’m not going to go into detail on this because this is going to be the point of Connie Frierson’s sermon next week.
The point of all this is that God does speak, and God speaks to us constantly, but to hear we have to live a life that’s open to it. Is our focus on serving God or ourselves? Does our life open us to God’s call or close us? Are we praying and seeking God’s calling in a way that helps us hear?
Amen.
