Act
16:6-10
June 1, 2014
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.
Have you ever read a book that changed your life? I’m not
talking about that self-help book that got you through a crisis, or a technical
book that helped you figure out your career. I’m talking about the book that
changed everything because after you read it you no longer saw life the same
way. Your perspective on people, work, the world, and God changed. For me, that
book was Catherine Marshall’s book, Beyond
Ourselves.
What made this book so life-changing for me was her basic
premise that God is here, God wants to make a difference in our lives, and all
we have to do is open up, which she then demonstrated through story after story.
At the center of her book were these three basic ideas:
1.
God knows the
past, present, and future, and knows what’s best for us.
- God loves us so much that God wants to guide us to what’s right.
- God can communicate to us what’s right, but we have to listen
Marshall discovered these principles almost by
accident. She says that her first big, and somewhat trivial, experience of
these ideas came about when she tried to hang some curtains. She had seen
curtains hung a certain way in a magazine and wanted to hang them in a similar
way. No matter what she did, though, the curtain rod kept bowing. She invited a
friend over to help her, and after an hour neither could figure it out. After
her friend left, she tried again, but soon became discouraged. Going up to her
bedroom she cried in frustration. She lied on the bed very still, and she heard
a voice inside her say, “Do it this way,” and she sensed a series of steps she
was to do. She went downstairs and did it. It was perfect. She felt that it was
God.
She even admits that this is SO trivial, yet she noticed
in it that God seems to want to be part of even the trivial moments of our
lives. She discovered God’s presence more profoundly in a healing experience
she had that changed her life. In her thirties she contracted tuberculosis, and
it slowly degraded her life. Tuberculosis is a disease of the lungs that slowly
kills. It’s rare now because of the many antibiotics we have that cure people
of tuberculosis. When she got it in the 40s, there wasn’t much treatment for
it. For her, it eventually rendered her bedridden. She became helpless.
She had been reading about the need to relinquish and
surrender ourselves to God, so she decided to do so. Mustering all the strength
she had while spending the summer in Cape Cod, she forced herself out of her
bed. With all the energy she had left, walked to the beach. There she started
praying. She began by confessing to God, telling God about her doubts, fears,
and lack of faith. She offered herself to God and said that she would serve God
no matter what happened in her life. Finally, she asked God for healing. Afterwards,
feeling a bit more energetic and as though God was in her life, she walked back
to her bed.
Over the next few months, she continued to pray for
healing, and as she did she slowly recovered. The strength returned, and one
year later there was no sign of the tuberculosis in her lungs. She was healed.
What made an impact on me wasn’t just this
experience, but how she reflected on it afterwards: “It was not until after my entering-in experience in 1944 that the inner
Voice became a reality to me. Apparently this surrender of self is necessary
groundwork, since not even God can lead us until we want to be led. It is as if
we are given an inner receiving set at birth, but the set is not tuned in until
we actively turn our lives over to God.”
Catherine Marshall led me to discover amazing Christians
I hadn’t heard of before--people like George Müller, who started an orphanage
based on prayer in the 1850s, and over 40 years grew from 4 orphans to over
2050. She led me to people like Brother Lawrence, who wrote about turning
everything into prayer—sweeping floors, washing dishes, and more.
Her writings led me to experience similar things,
and it led me to try her approach to life and ministry, which led us at Calvin
Presbyterian Church to experience similar things. The fact is that Calvin
Presbyterian Church has been a church that has grown because we live by Catherine
Marshall’s principles.
It’s these principles, and others like it that, have led
us to our mission to Trinity Presbyterian Church, which we are embarking on
today. We are helping Trinity to recover from a crisis that’s led them to
shrink from 200 members to 17 over a three-year period. And we are doing it
because we believe God is both calling us, and because God has great things in
store for Trinity if we are willing to join God in what God is doing.
One of the people who has also inspired me the way
Marshall did is a Southern Baptist writer (a Canadian one,… go figure) named
Henry Blackaby. He has listed Seven
Realities of Experiencing God that have guided me in my life and ministry,
and that speak to both what we try to do at Calvin Church and are going to try
at Trinity Church. He realities are:
1.
God is always working around you.
2.
God pursues a continuing love relationship that is
real and personal.
3.
God invites you to become involved with Him in His
work.
4.
God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible,
prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His
ways.
5.
God’s invitation for you to work with Him always
leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.
6.
You must make major adjustments in your life to join
God in what He is doing.
7.
You come to know God by experience as you obey Him
and He accomplishes His work through you.
I want you to focus most on numbers 5 & 6. Too
many people think doing what God works with us, life gets easier. What this
says is that often doing what God wants leads us to a crisis, and that crisis
moves us to number 6. When we seek to do what God wants, we have to adjust our
lives.
This is what we are doing with Trinity Church. They’ve
gone through a crisis of faith and action. They’ve prayed. We’ve joined them in
prayer, and we are adjusting ourselves to join them in what God is doing there and
here. We have to change. Trinity has to change. We all have to adjust to what
God is doing.
God has plans for Trinity Presbyterian Church. God has
plans for Calvin Presbyterian Church. What we are doing there isn’t the
beginning, but it is the next big step. We are all being called forward, and
God has great things planned, but we can only go forward if we are willing to
join God in what God is doing.
Amen.
