Turning Over The Keys

Turning Over the Keys

“For as many as are led by the Spirit

of God, these are the sons of God.”

                           Romans 8:14

In his popular book “tuesdays with Morrie”, Mitch Albom tells of the day when the main character, a college professor named Morrie battling the debilitating effects of ALS, turned over his car keys. No sooner had I read the words than my mind returned to my own parents and how vast;u different turning over the car keys was for each of them. On the one hand, you had my mother who one day, at the age of 94, made a decision that driving her car was no longer a good idea and not only handed over the keys but her car as well. My father was a whole different story. I can still remember him using a walker, having to be helped up and down steps and in so many other ways, yet in total seriousness asking me to take him to renew his drivers’ license. Needless to say his keys had to be taken away while he slept one night.

Turning over the keys can be likened to turning over control of our lives to the Lord. Some people quite easily find the faith to let go and trust God with their lives while others struggle, stuck in that place with head knowledge that God can be trusted but never actually able to give God complete control. Pastor Jim Cymbala said it this way, “Sadly, there are too many believers today who profess faith in Christ but who haven’t surrendered themselves to the control of the Spirit.” Surrendering control to God is a “not my will but yours be done Lord” mentality. Turning over control means admitting that only God knows what is truly best for our lives and includes our humbly acknowledging that if left to ourselves, we would make a mess of our lives.

Maybe another analogy from one of our two junk drawers would help. This particular one contains the spares sets of keys to each of our cars. Most of us reading this have given God some measure of control over our lives; we have certain areas of our lives that are yielded to Him, areas of behavior and speech limited by the constraints of right and wrong imprinted on our hearts by the Lord. But, then again, there is always that spare set of keys, the ones we pull out of the drawer when we want to do something that is selfish, that God would say no to if we dared to ask, and that are outside the boundaries of a committed, devoted, holy Christian life.

In encouraging each of us to turn over both sets of keys to the Lord, I do it with the certainty that our very best efforts to live a good life are as nothing compared  to the abundant life we can experience through a life fully surrendered to the Lord. It will take faith and trust greater than we have ever known but the result will be joy, peace, and contentment beyond our imagination.

God Bless
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church

The Unwritten Chapters

The Unwritten Chapters

“Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a

good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

                                                 Philippians 1:6

The short little story, tucked away in the gospel of Luke, tells of a fig tree that had not borne fruit for three years. The man who owned the tree, frustrated at the lack of fruit, wanted the tree cut down but his gardener talked him out of it. With a plan of breaking up the soil around the tree and heavily fertilizing it, the owner agreed to give the tree one last chance; either the tree bore fruit or it was going to be cut down.

The story is actually quite encouraging, helping us to realize that despite our mistakes and failures, God continues to give grace and opportunity for each of us to make the changes He has long wanted to see in our lives. And those changes relate to character, to personal holiness, to a committed relationship to Jesus Christ, and to bearing fruit in the kingdom of God. The owner not giving up on that tree is a message of hope, the words written in red, but a message of hope that comes with a warning that the grace given should not be taken lightly.

The story has something missing though; it has no ending. We don’t know if that tree began to bear fruit and lived “happily ever after” or if it was cut down twelve months later and replaced by the landowner. The story of that tree is left open-ended, the outcome unknown, just like the story of our lives. The last chapters in the story of our lives are still unwritten, their message still to be determined, hope still alive for an ending that gives glory to the Lord.

The question then is what do you want those unwritten chapters of your life to say? And how do you go about bringing that ending to pass? It will certainly take courage, determination, and a deeper relationship with the Lord for the unwritten chapters of your life to tell a tale of a man or woman of God who overcame, who wouldn’t give up, who pressed in to accomplish all that God desired for their lives, leaving behind a legacy of integrity, of a genuine love for both God and man, and of being able to discover what really matters in life.

What a joy to know that on this Saturday in March of 2012, the story of our lives is still open-ended, still has bright hope and promise, and is still being written. Let’s make sure that the story of our lives being written is one we’ll be glad to have others read.

God Bless
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church

Even Though

Even Though

“Therefore, let him who thinks he

stands, take heed lest he fall.”

                   I Corinthians 10:12

Teaching the Book of Luke in the Philippines was an eye-opener for many reasons as many of the parables and stories that I’ve taught many times before seemed to have a new freshness. One challenging thought follows below. Consider this man:

• He took part in handing out the loaves and the fish, seeing five thousand and later four thousand miraculously fed by the power of God. When they were done, he also helped to gather the many basketfuls of fragments that were left over.

• As he was entering the city of Nain along with a crowd of people, he saw Jesus, moved with compassion, stop a funeral procession and raise a grieving widow’s only son back to life.

• He experienced the fear of being in a boat during a storm and seeing it filling with water, only to have Jesus get up, rebuke the wind and the raging waves, and calm the storm.

• He looked on as demons were cast out of the man with a “legion” of spirits, sent into a herd of swine, only to see the swine rush down an embankment and all drown. And if that wasn’t enough, the man out of whom the spirits were cast out became a new person right before him, sitting at Jesus’ feet and in his right mind.

• He was one of the twelve sent out by Jesus to preach the good news and to heal the sick, and experienced being used by God and having the power of God flow through him as he ministered in city after city.

• He heard the truth preached for a three and a half year period, sermons, parables, and stories that were so anointed that no one could speak a word after Jesus had finished sharing them.

• He looked on as Lazarus was raised from the dead, as a woman crippled for eighteen years was healed, as the blind received their sight back, as the deaf had their hearing restored, and so much more.

You would think that with all those experiences, with getting to be a part of so much that God was doing through Jesus, with seeing what he saw and hearing what he heard, that this man’s life would have been perfectly on track. And you would be wrong. This man’s name was Judas – the Judas who betrayed the Lord, in part because he never let the Lord deal with the covetousness in his heart.

With that in mind, let’s each walk humbly before the Lord, allowing Him to speak to our hearts, being open to change, sometimes radical change in the way we are serving the Lord and, most importantly, not thinking more highly of ourselves than is wise.

God Bless
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church