What I have, I Give. Sep. 20. 2009
Acts M5 Sermon Notes September 20, 2009
Title: What I Have, I Give, Text: Acts 3:1-10
Big Idea: When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, each of us has gifts that can bless others.
I recently saw the movie, The Soloist. The Soloist is based on a true story. Steve Lopez, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has had a bicycle accident in which he has gashed his face. One day as Lopez is walking out of the Los Angeles Times building and thinking about some possible story ideas, he discovers Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless man with extraordinary musical talents.
Show clip….
Steve Lopez: What's your name?
Nathaniel Ayers: Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, Jr.
Steve Lopez: You only got two strings.
Nathaniel Ayers: I've had a few setbacks.
Steve Lopez: Me too.
Ayers once attended the prestigious Julliard School of Music in New York City, but dropped out during his second year because of his mental illness and ended up playing the violin on the streets of LA.
Lopez begins to write a series of acclaimed articles about Ayers, and becomes friends with him, as well. He does what he can to advocate on behalf of the 90,000 homeless people in Los Angeles. As he gives, he finds that he also receives.
Today as we continue our series in the Book of Acts we are going to see how Peter and John, two of the disciples of Jesus that emerge as key leaders of the early church, encounter a man, who in the words of Nathaniel Ayers, has been through hard times, as well. He is a man who over 40 years old and has been crippled from birth. We are going to look at how Peter and John respond, and what happens to the man, and also what happens to Peter and John in the process as they give what they have to give and become a channel of God’s love.
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at a time of prayer at 3:00 in the afternoon.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Acts 3:
1 One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer—at three in the afternoon. 2 Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. 3 When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. 4 Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, "Look at us!" 5 So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.
6 Then Peter said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." 7 Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. 8 He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. 9 When all the people saw him walking and praising God 10 they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
Devout Jews would go to the temple at 9:00 am, 3:00 pm, and in the evening to pray. Peter and John were walking in the midst of the crowd making their way to the temple for the 3 o’clock prayers. They come across a paralyzed beggar, a beggar who has been crippled from birth… He has never taken a step.
This particular beggar may not have been able to walk, but he was savvy. He had street smarts because he asked someone to carry him to a very strategic place to beg. He is being carried to a gate called Beautiful which stretched some 75 feet high, had double doors and was covered in bronze. It was a spot which was on route to a temple where religious people, for whom giving to the people was considered a good work, would pass by.
When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Peter said, “Look at us!” So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get some money from them. Then Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I will give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!”
Taking the man by the right hand, Peter helped him up. Instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and he began to walk. Peter makes it clear that the reason the crippled man is healed is because of the work of Jesus Christ.
When Peter says, “In the name of Jesus Christ, rise and walk,” he is referring to the fact that Jesus Christ, is risen from the dead, is alive, active and able to heal and deliver us.
In Acts 3: 11-12, we see that after this miracle, people who witnessed it, were astonished and came running to Peter and John.
11 While the man held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon's Colonnade. 12 When Peter saw this, he said to them: "People of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?”
In verse 16 Peter makes it clear that it is through the work of Jesus Christ that this man has experienced complete healing, that the healing does not come directly from Peter or us, but through Peter and us from Jesus.
16 By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see.
And though physical healing is not the primary of focus on this message, I want to say that Jesus Christ continues to heal people today.
Just under a year ago, James Ricard, a member of our community who works as an electrician, collapsed on the job because of a large, unknown tumor in his brain. The tumor was so large that he was given in his words, “a death sentence” by the doctors. He underwent surgery and radiation, and that coupled with, what James clearly believes is the grace of God, he has emerged strong and healthy. He has been given a clean bill of health, and just started back at work last week.
He knows he has been spared and healed for a purpose. And so, he is saying to God, “Here I am. Take all of me and use me for your purposes.”
1) Liz, God did something remarkable for you. Can you share your experience with us?
In November 1989 I’d just started at University in the UK, living in a residence, when I got sick with flu.
Unknowingly I was sharing a kitchen at the time with another student suffering from infectious hepatitis. Unfortunately the vaccination I received to prevent the hepatitis spreading through the residence compromised my immune system and I never recovered from what had been a very ordinary flu.
I spent the next five years struggling: to find a diagnosis – eventually given as a severe case of chronic fatigue, some treatment –there was no cure, and some purpose to my life that was now being spent mostly lying in bed, reliant on others for the even the most basic things such as washing my hair, and even on occasion feeding me. Sometimes I was well enough to leave the house in a wheelchair.
Well meaning Christians came and prayed with me, but their frustration that I didn’t leap out of bed instantly healed was very evident. Perhaps more helpfully, others came to visit me and made meals!
After almost five years of sickness, in August 1994, I was at a Christian camp for a week with my husband Tom. Tom was teaching waterskiing while I wasn’t well enough to be left at home alone. While we were there, I was praying with another leader Andy about some completely different subject. Andy suddenly stood up and walked over to me, and I absolutely knew in that instant that he was going to pray for my healing and perhaps even more incredibly I knew even before it happened that I was going to be healed. Andy prayed a very simple prayer, inviting the presence of the Holy Spirit and saying “in the name of Jesus be healed” and I was.
One day I was being pushed around camp in a wheelchair and the very next morning I was playing in the worship team having helped carry the PA up to the third floor of the building.
1) God also used you to bring an extraordinary gift to someone else? Can you share that with us?
I’ve got lots of great healing stories I’d love to share over a post-service cup of tea some other week when I don’t have to dash off, but this is one that happened not too long after I was healed.
I was working for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, which is made up of 150 teenagers who get together on residential courses three times a year to perform to professional standards in the major concert halls in the UK. The kids in the orchestra are by definition high achievers, practising 8 hours a day whilst keeping up with their academic workloads.
We were snowed in on a Christmas course when disaster struck one of our violinists. During a prohibited snowball fight, he’d slipped on ice and fallen on his elbow. After an emergency visit to the hospital, Hugo came to find me, knowing I was a Christian, to tell me the dire news that while the doctors were sure his arm would heal to a certain extent, there was no way he’d be able to play the violin to a professional standard again.
Even while Hugo was still telling me the news I felt that same gift of faith – that same absolute certainty in my spirit – that Jesus was going to heal him. My only problem was getting the child to stop his hysterical panicking long enough for me to pray. When I could finally get a word in edgeways, I laid hands on his arm and prayed for him to be healed.
I googled Hugo this week and discovered he is now a Fellow of the Royal Schools of Music in the UK, and is teaching violin at the music academy in Stockholm.
Praying for someone feels like the most natural thing in the world – talking to a friend about a friend. It’s only when I stop to think about what actually happens in the physical world when we pray that it totally blows my mind. God is just so much MORE than we are, in every way.
It’s an awesome story, but really I am just an ordinary Christian, but I have an extraordinary God. Do you?
There is healing through the person of Jesus Christ. Why some are physically healed and some are not is a mystery. Though this would be a topic for a different sermon, we know that there are times when God allows a person like Joni Erickson Tada, a young woman who as a teenager dove into Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, and snapped her neck, and ended up becoming a quadriplegic. She later he gave her life to Christ… prayed for healing… had famous “healers” pray for her, but she was not healed. But God has done a greater work in her life and through her life as a result of her disability.
But this particular man in Acts 3 experienced physical healing through the touch of Jesus Christ. He was ecstatic about it. In verse 8 we read how he jumped to his feet and began to walk, perhaps at first like a toddler or a drunken sailor, then walking straighter… But we read he ran up into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God. What a remarkable moment for this man! He had been healed and he was experiencing the beginnings of a new life because of Christ healing him. What joy! What a sense of wonderment he must have felt! This was an amazing experience for this man who for all life, and was over 40 years of age, to be walking and jumping for the first time in his life—joy unspeakable!
But it must have ALSO been a wonderment moment for Peter and John, as they witnessed how they were able to channel Jesus’ healing for this paralyzed man. There is joy in receiving, as this healed man could attest to, but there is also joy in giving. Our greatest joy and fulfillment comes in giving ourselves to God and others.
In The Soloist, which, as I said, is based on a true story, you feel a certain ache for a Nathaniel Ayers. He has so much talent, went to Julliard, and yet because of his schizophrenia, and now because his lack of a proper musical instrument (he has a violin, but it only has two strings), and his concert hall audience being a noisy tunnel in LA, he is not able give all that he has to give to the world. Later, a reader of one of Steve Lopez’s LA Times columns reads about Nathaniel plight and ends up donating her cello to Nathaniel. He is then able to give more to the world.
Our greatest joy comes in giving.
As Peter and John are walking by this person who is begging and asks, “Gentlemen, spare change?” Peter says, “Silver and gold I do not have.” But he does not stop there. He says, “But, what I have I give you.” We face a need or some opportunity in the world, we often fixate on what we don’t have.
Peter and John were part of the early church which had many members with financial needs, and as we see in Acts 2 the people were voluntarily selling off their possessions and money and giving away what they had to give to those who were in greater need than they were. So Peter and John had presumably given away what they had. They did not have silver or gold to give to this man, but they did not fixate on what they did not have to give, but what they did have.
It is easy to fantasize about scenarios of what we might do if we had more than we currently have. I think of the story of the two farmers. One farmer asks the other farmer, “If God were to give you 500 cows, would you give 250 of them to the Lord?” And the other farmer said, “If God were to give me 500 cows, I would give half of them back to him.” And then the farmer asked, “If God were to give you 200 horses, would you give 100 to the Lord?” The farmer said, “Yes, if God were to give me 200 horses, I would be willing 100 back to him.” And the farmer asked, “If God were to give you 2 chickens, would you give one chicken back to him?” The farmer became mad, “You and I both that is not a fair question, because you and I both know I have 2 chickens.”
Sometimes it is easy to fantasize about what we would do if we had more, instead of asking God, “What do I have and what could I give?”
A friend of mine was talking to his grandson. His grandson, I think, was about 8 years old at the time. His grandson said, “If I had as much money as Bill Gates, I would go down to a poor place in Mexico and I would give everyone a $20 bill.” The grandfather said, “You are not Bill Gates and you can’t do that, but what could we do to help the poor? Would you be willing to take some of your allowance money, combine it with my money and sponsor a child through World Vision with me?” The grandson Benji agreed to do that.
What can we do? What can we give?
We may not be Bill Gates, but we all have something that we can offer the world. We have certain gifts, certain talents… certain abilities. God has given us a unique character and personality. If we have Christ, and his Spirit is living in us, we have the greatest gift that we can offer the world—we have Christ.
What talents do you have? (It may not be the violin as it is for Nathaniel)
What kind of character or personality do you have?
What kind of resources do you have?
Do you have Christ?
God wants to shine his life through your gifts, character, and personality.
Richard Stearns, in his book, The Hole in Our Gospel, shares the story about Leon, who works at a shoe shine stand at a large office building in Seattle.
Several years ago, while traveling in Mexico, Leon met a woman who told him a story that changed his life. The woman had hosted a North American tourist in her home. The tourist, when using her bathroom, noticed that the bathtub was filled with water, so he pulled out the plug to drain it, thinking he was doing the woman a favor. When he told the woman what he had done, she began to cry. He had drained the only clean water she would have for a month.
Leon returned to Seattle, determined to learn as much as he could about the crisis caused by a lack of clean water in the developing world…
Following a spate of flooding in Bolivia, Leon approached World Vision to see if the organization could use a certain water filtration machine to assist the thousands displaced by floodwaters there. World Vision said it could, but they would need Leon to donate the machine and pay for its transportation and ongoing technical support and maintenance.
He remembered that he was shining the shoes of some top lawyers, business, and bankers in the city. So he taped pictures of the flooded Bolivian community on the walls of his shoe shine stand to stimulate conversation, and then began to talk to his clients about his dream about to help bring clean water to communities that didn’t have it.
It worked. Through his shoe shine contacts, Leon was able to fund his first machine for Bolivia. World Vision Bolivia staff were so impressed with it that they soon ordered 15 more and Leon is now setting his sights on helping other countries that struggle for lack of water.
Leon works as a shoe shine person, but like Peter, what he has (what he earns and raises), he gives and he experiences joy.
Peter and John literally didn’t have silver or gold, but some of us like Leon can give financially to the work of God if we are working.
Many of us can see our work or what we do in our life as a means of offering God’s life to the world.
There is a young man in our community who works as a physiotherapist and he is committed to Christ. In his medical work he sees himself as an instrument of healing.
Craig Gourley is a friend of mine who is an obstetrician/gynecologist, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. When my wife Sakiko and I experienced pregnancy early in our marriage, Craig invited us to check in with him at any time. When we went through a complication in that pregnancy, Craig was right there for us, offering us counsel, support and love. He would pray for us on the phone, too. (And I want to say that our obstetrician/gynecologist here, who worships here at Tenth, was also a great gift to us, as well.)
Craig, has a habit of asking women, who are about to deliver their babies, if they would like him to pray for them. Most of them say, “yes.” Craig is a gifted obstetrician/gynecologist and a very close friend of Jesus, so it is just a natural thing for him to pray for his patients who are about to give birth. I guess what he does in terms of praying with mothers is somewhat unusual, even in Charlotte so a local ABC News affiliate ran a feature TV story on him called “The Doctor Who Prays.” With Craig, part of the way he mediates the love of God in his work as a doctor is by praying.
What Craig has, he gives.
Craig has the love of Christ in his life. What he has, he gives and he experiences joy in that.
Is there a way you can give to others through your work or through what you do? It might be by praying with someone, it might not be. Is there a way that you use your work or what you do as a means as a means to share what God has given you?
Is there something that we can do in our volunteer life that would enable us to give? As we assess our gifts, our experiences, our personality are there things that we can do to serve others?
Many people invested in me when I was a younger leader, so one of the things I do now as a volunteer for the Leighton Ford Ministries is to voluntarily mentor an international group of young emerging Christian leaders from different parts of the world.
I have had some leadership experience, and I also have a growing heart for the poor. Some of you serve the poor in a very direct way by volunteering with Out of the Cold, feeding the homeless, sleeping with them in shelters, serving at Oasis drop in. Part of the way I have been to serve the poor in a small way is by using some of my experience in leadership and governance to govern with World Vision as one of its trustees (it is a volunteer role).
Is there a way you could serve through volunteering? It doesn’t have to be at Tenth, by any means, but as we have begun new sites in Kits there are needs in Kits and here at Mount Pleasant and you could make a difference.
In your program there is small card which says:
"Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you” Acts 3:6
What do I have that I could give in service to God and others?
(skills, talents, time, resources)
If you think that your gifts could connect with something we are doing here at Tenth, please contact Jade (Pastor of Community Life): jade@tenth.ca or Dan or Lee
Sometimes our voluntary work is unofficial. We might not even call it voluntary work. We might simply call it “this what we do.” Is there something we can do in our neighbourhood or in our world?
I was deeply moved by Sherah Brodie’s friendship with her friend Paul. Sherah is a member of our community. She attends our third service and she had a friend named Paul who was dying of AIDS. She would regularly drive over from her place in Vancouver’s West End out tog Abbotsford--just simply to be with him, care for him and support him. He didn’t have many friends. If he fell, sometimes he wouldn’t be able to get up. Sometimes, he would crawl over to the phone, call Sherah and ask her to support him and she’d come help him move.
Sherah had some challenges of her own. Sherah had an issue with her foot. She her right toe amputated. She had in a cast on her leg. So it would hard to drive. Yet she didn’t let that stop her. She would hobble out to her car and drive out to Abbotsford to be with Paul and helped him move all his stuff (with some people here) to his new apartment in Abbotsford. Paul died not long ago, but he died in the knowledge that he was loved by God, a love that was mediated through Sherah. Though his death was hard for Sherah, Sherah has the peace of knowing that she gave what she could for her friend Paul.
What Sherah had, she gave.
She had Christ’s love and she gave it.
At the end of the movie, The Soloist, Steve Lopez, the LA Times reporter he says.
“There are some people who tell me I helped him. According to some mental health experts, the simple act of being a friend can alter his brain chemistry and improve his functioning in the world. I can’t speak for Mr. Ayers in that regard. Maybe our friendship has helped him…but maybe not. But I can however speak for myself. I can tell you that by witnessing Mr. Ayers’ courage, his humility, his faith in the power of his art, I have learned the dignity of being loyal to something you believe in, holding on to it above all else, and believing without question that it will carry you home.”
Steve Lopez
What Steve and Nathaniel had they gave.
What we might offer is friendship, a listening ear to neighbour, helping to rake someone’s leaves.
Peter and John said, “Silver and gold have I none, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”
There are things we do not have, to be sure, but there are also things we do have. If we have Christ in us, and his Spirit is living in us, we have the greatest gift that we can offer the world—we have Christ.
The greatest gift that we can offer the world, as Peter and John offered their world, is the gift of ourselves--or rather Jesus, offering through our life and our unique set of gifts and personality, his joy, his peace, his well-being, his shalom to world…
You have something unique and special to offer the world--as you give yourself and what you have for God and for others.
With Peter and John will you say, “What I have, I will give”?
Title: What I Have, I Give, Text: Acts 3:1-10
Big Idea: When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, each of us has gifts that can bless others.
I recently saw the movie, The Soloist. The Soloist is based on a true story. Steve Lopez, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has had a bicycle accident in which he has gashed his face. One day as Lopez is walking out of the Los Angeles Times building and thinking about some possible story ideas, he discovers Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless man with extraordinary musical talents.
Show clip….
Steve Lopez: What's your name?
Nathaniel Ayers: Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, Jr.
Steve Lopez: You only got two strings.
Nathaniel Ayers: I've had a few setbacks.
Steve Lopez: Me too.
Ayers once attended the prestigious Julliard School of Music in New York City, but dropped out during his second year because of his mental illness and ended up playing the violin on the streets of LA.
Lopez begins to write a series of acclaimed articles about Ayers, and becomes friends with him, as well. He does what he can to advocate on behalf of the 90,000 homeless people in Los Angeles. As he gives, he finds that he also receives.
Today as we continue our series in the Book of Acts we are going to see how Peter and John, two of the disciples of Jesus that emerge as key leaders of the early church, encounter a man, who in the words of Nathaniel Ayers, has been through hard times, as well. He is a man who over 40 years old and has been crippled from birth. We are going to look at how Peter and John respond, and what happens to the man, and also what happens to Peter and John in the process as they give what they have to give and become a channel of God’s love.
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at a time of prayer at 3:00 in the afternoon.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Acts 3:
1 One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer—at three in the afternoon. 2 Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. 3 When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. 4 Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, "Look at us!" 5 So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.
6 Then Peter said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." 7 Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. 8 He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. 9 When all the people saw him walking and praising God 10 they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
Devout Jews would go to the temple at 9:00 am, 3:00 pm, and in the evening to pray. Peter and John were walking in the midst of the crowd making their way to the temple for the 3 o’clock prayers. They come across a paralyzed beggar, a beggar who has been crippled from birth… He has never taken a step.
This particular beggar may not have been able to walk, but he was savvy. He had street smarts because he asked someone to carry him to a very strategic place to beg. He is being carried to a gate called Beautiful which stretched some 75 feet high, had double doors and was covered in bronze. It was a spot which was on route to a temple where religious people, for whom giving to the people was considered a good work, would pass by.
When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Peter said, “Look at us!” So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get some money from them. Then Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I will give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!”
Taking the man by the right hand, Peter helped him up. Instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and he began to walk. Peter makes it clear that the reason the crippled man is healed is because of the work of Jesus Christ.
When Peter says, “In the name of Jesus Christ, rise and walk,” he is referring to the fact that Jesus Christ, is risen from the dead, is alive, active and able to heal and deliver us.
In Acts 3: 11-12, we see that after this miracle, people who witnessed it, were astonished and came running to Peter and John.
11 While the man held on to Peter and John, all the people were astonished and came running to them in the place called Solomon's Colonnade. 12 When Peter saw this, he said to them: "People of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?”
In verse 16 Peter makes it clear that it is through the work of Jesus Christ that this man has experienced complete healing, that the healing does not come directly from Peter or us, but through Peter and us from Jesus.
16 By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see.
And though physical healing is not the primary of focus on this message, I want to say that Jesus Christ continues to heal people today.
Just under a year ago, James Ricard, a member of our community who works as an electrician, collapsed on the job because of a large, unknown tumor in his brain. The tumor was so large that he was given in his words, “a death sentence” by the doctors. He underwent surgery and radiation, and that coupled with, what James clearly believes is the grace of God, he has emerged strong and healthy. He has been given a clean bill of health, and just started back at work last week.
He knows he has been spared and healed for a purpose. And so, he is saying to God, “Here I am. Take all of me and use me for your purposes.”
1) Liz, God did something remarkable for you. Can you share your experience with us?
In November 1989 I’d just started at University in the UK, living in a residence, when I got sick with flu.
Unknowingly I was sharing a kitchen at the time with another student suffering from infectious hepatitis. Unfortunately the vaccination I received to prevent the hepatitis spreading through the residence compromised my immune system and I never recovered from what had been a very ordinary flu.
I spent the next five years struggling: to find a diagnosis – eventually given as a severe case of chronic fatigue, some treatment –there was no cure, and some purpose to my life that was now being spent mostly lying in bed, reliant on others for the even the most basic things such as washing my hair, and even on occasion feeding me. Sometimes I was well enough to leave the house in a wheelchair.
Well meaning Christians came and prayed with me, but their frustration that I didn’t leap out of bed instantly healed was very evident. Perhaps more helpfully, others came to visit me and made meals!
After almost five years of sickness, in August 1994, I was at a Christian camp for a week with my husband Tom. Tom was teaching waterskiing while I wasn’t well enough to be left at home alone. While we were there, I was praying with another leader Andy about some completely different subject. Andy suddenly stood up and walked over to me, and I absolutely knew in that instant that he was going to pray for my healing and perhaps even more incredibly I knew even before it happened that I was going to be healed. Andy prayed a very simple prayer, inviting the presence of the Holy Spirit and saying “in the name of Jesus be healed” and I was.
One day I was being pushed around camp in a wheelchair and the very next morning I was playing in the worship team having helped carry the PA up to the third floor of the building.
1) God also used you to bring an extraordinary gift to someone else? Can you share that with us?
I’ve got lots of great healing stories I’d love to share over a post-service cup of tea some other week when I don’t have to dash off, but this is one that happened not too long after I was healed.
I was working for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, which is made up of 150 teenagers who get together on residential courses three times a year to perform to professional standards in the major concert halls in the UK. The kids in the orchestra are by definition high achievers, practising 8 hours a day whilst keeping up with their academic workloads.
We were snowed in on a Christmas course when disaster struck one of our violinists. During a prohibited snowball fight, he’d slipped on ice and fallen on his elbow. After an emergency visit to the hospital, Hugo came to find me, knowing I was a Christian, to tell me the dire news that while the doctors were sure his arm would heal to a certain extent, there was no way he’d be able to play the violin to a professional standard again.
Even while Hugo was still telling me the news I felt that same gift of faith – that same absolute certainty in my spirit – that Jesus was going to heal him. My only problem was getting the child to stop his hysterical panicking long enough for me to pray. When I could finally get a word in edgeways, I laid hands on his arm and prayed for him to be healed.
I googled Hugo this week and discovered he is now a Fellow of the Royal Schools of Music in the UK, and is teaching violin at the music academy in Stockholm.
Praying for someone feels like the most natural thing in the world – talking to a friend about a friend. It’s only when I stop to think about what actually happens in the physical world when we pray that it totally blows my mind. God is just so much MORE than we are, in every way.
It’s an awesome story, but really I am just an ordinary Christian, but I have an extraordinary God. Do you?
There is healing through the person of Jesus Christ. Why some are physically healed and some are not is a mystery. Though this would be a topic for a different sermon, we know that there are times when God allows a person like Joni Erickson Tada, a young woman who as a teenager dove into Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, and snapped her neck, and ended up becoming a quadriplegic. She later he gave her life to Christ… prayed for healing… had famous “healers” pray for her, but she was not healed. But God has done a greater work in her life and through her life as a result of her disability.
But this particular man in Acts 3 experienced physical healing through the touch of Jesus Christ. He was ecstatic about it. In verse 8 we read how he jumped to his feet and began to walk, perhaps at first like a toddler or a drunken sailor, then walking straighter… But we read he ran up into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God. What a remarkable moment for this man! He had been healed and he was experiencing the beginnings of a new life because of Christ healing him. What joy! What a sense of wonderment he must have felt! This was an amazing experience for this man who for all life, and was over 40 years of age, to be walking and jumping for the first time in his life—joy unspeakable!
But it must have ALSO been a wonderment moment for Peter and John, as they witnessed how they were able to channel Jesus’ healing for this paralyzed man. There is joy in receiving, as this healed man could attest to, but there is also joy in giving. Our greatest joy and fulfillment comes in giving ourselves to God and others.
In The Soloist, which, as I said, is based on a true story, you feel a certain ache for a Nathaniel Ayers. He has so much talent, went to Julliard, and yet because of his schizophrenia, and now because his lack of a proper musical instrument (he has a violin, but it only has two strings), and his concert hall audience being a noisy tunnel in LA, he is not able give all that he has to give to the world. Later, a reader of one of Steve Lopez’s LA Times columns reads about Nathaniel plight and ends up donating her cello to Nathaniel. He is then able to give more to the world.
Our greatest joy comes in giving.
As Peter and John are walking by this person who is begging and asks, “Gentlemen, spare change?” Peter says, “Silver and gold I do not have.” But he does not stop there. He says, “But, what I have I give you.” We face a need or some opportunity in the world, we often fixate on what we don’t have.
Peter and John were part of the early church which had many members with financial needs, and as we see in Acts 2 the people were voluntarily selling off their possessions and money and giving away what they had to give to those who were in greater need than they were. So Peter and John had presumably given away what they had. They did not have silver or gold to give to this man, but they did not fixate on what they did not have to give, but what they did have.
It is easy to fantasize about scenarios of what we might do if we had more than we currently have. I think of the story of the two farmers. One farmer asks the other farmer, “If God were to give you 500 cows, would you give 250 of them to the Lord?” And the other farmer said, “If God were to give me 500 cows, I would give half of them back to him.” And then the farmer asked, “If God were to give you 200 horses, would you give 100 to the Lord?” The farmer said, “Yes, if God were to give me 200 horses, I would be willing 100 back to him.” And the farmer asked, “If God were to give you 2 chickens, would you give one chicken back to him?” The farmer became mad, “You and I both that is not a fair question, because you and I both know I have 2 chickens.”
Sometimes it is easy to fantasize about what we would do if we had more, instead of asking God, “What do I have and what could I give?”
A friend of mine was talking to his grandson. His grandson, I think, was about 8 years old at the time. His grandson said, “If I had as much money as Bill Gates, I would go down to a poor place in Mexico and I would give everyone a $20 bill.” The grandfather said, “You are not Bill Gates and you can’t do that, but what could we do to help the poor? Would you be willing to take some of your allowance money, combine it with my money and sponsor a child through World Vision with me?” The grandson Benji agreed to do that.
What can we do? What can we give?
We may not be Bill Gates, but we all have something that we can offer the world. We have certain gifts, certain talents… certain abilities. God has given us a unique character and personality. If we have Christ, and his Spirit is living in us, we have the greatest gift that we can offer the world—we have Christ.
What talents do you have? (It may not be the violin as it is for Nathaniel)
What kind of character or personality do you have?
What kind of resources do you have?
Do you have Christ?
God wants to shine his life through your gifts, character, and personality.
Richard Stearns, in his book, The Hole in Our Gospel, shares the story about Leon, who works at a shoe shine stand at a large office building in Seattle.
Several years ago, while traveling in Mexico, Leon met a woman who told him a story that changed his life. The woman had hosted a North American tourist in her home. The tourist, when using her bathroom, noticed that the bathtub was filled with water, so he pulled out the plug to drain it, thinking he was doing the woman a favor. When he told the woman what he had done, she began to cry. He had drained the only clean water she would have for a month.
Leon returned to Seattle, determined to learn as much as he could about the crisis caused by a lack of clean water in the developing world…
Following a spate of flooding in Bolivia, Leon approached World Vision to see if the organization could use a certain water filtration machine to assist the thousands displaced by floodwaters there. World Vision said it could, but they would need Leon to donate the machine and pay for its transportation and ongoing technical support and maintenance.
He remembered that he was shining the shoes of some top lawyers, business, and bankers in the city. So he taped pictures of the flooded Bolivian community on the walls of his shoe shine stand to stimulate conversation, and then began to talk to his clients about his dream about to help bring clean water to communities that didn’t have it.
It worked. Through his shoe shine contacts, Leon was able to fund his first machine for Bolivia. World Vision Bolivia staff were so impressed with it that they soon ordered 15 more and Leon is now setting his sights on helping other countries that struggle for lack of water.
Leon works as a shoe shine person, but like Peter, what he has (what he earns and raises), he gives and he experiences joy.
Peter and John literally didn’t have silver or gold, but some of us like Leon can give financially to the work of God if we are working.
Many of us can see our work or what we do in our life as a means of offering God’s life to the world.
There is a young man in our community who works as a physiotherapist and he is committed to Christ. In his medical work he sees himself as an instrument of healing.
Craig Gourley is a friend of mine who is an obstetrician/gynecologist, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. When my wife Sakiko and I experienced pregnancy early in our marriage, Craig invited us to check in with him at any time. When we went through a complication in that pregnancy, Craig was right there for us, offering us counsel, support and love. He would pray for us on the phone, too. (And I want to say that our obstetrician/gynecologist here, who worships here at Tenth, was also a great gift to us, as well.)
Craig, has a habit of asking women, who are about to deliver their babies, if they would like him to pray for them. Most of them say, “yes.” Craig is a gifted obstetrician/gynecologist and a very close friend of Jesus, so it is just a natural thing for him to pray for his patients who are about to give birth. I guess what he does in terms of praying with mothers is somewhat unusual, even in Charlotte so a local ABC News affiliate ran a feature TV story on him called “The Doctor Who Prays.” With Craig, part of the way he mediates the love of God in his work as a doctor is by praying.
What Craig has, he gives.
Craig has the love of Christ in his life. What he has, he gives and he experiences joy in that.
Is there a way you can give to others through your work or through what you do? It might be by praying with someone, it might not be. Is there a way that you use your work or what you do as a means as a means to share what God has given you?
Is there something that we can do in our volunteer life that would enable us to give? As we assess our gifts, our experiences, our personality are there things that we can do to serve others?
Many people invested in me when I was a younger leader, so one of the things I do now as a volunteer for the Leighton Ford Ministries is to voluntarily mentor an international group of young emerging Christian leaders from different parts of the world.
I have had some leadership experience, and I also have a growing heart for the poor. Some of you serve the poor in a very direct way by volunteering with Out of the Cold, feeding the homeless, sleeping with them in shelters, serving at Oasis drop in. Part of the way I have been to serve the poor in a small way is by using some of my experience in leadership and governance to govern with World Vision as one of its trustees (it is a volunteer role).
Is there a way you could serve through volunteering? It doesn’t have to be at Tenth, by any means, but as we have begun new sites in Kits there are needs in Kits and here at Mount Pleasant and you could make a difference.
In your program there is small card which says:
"Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you” Acts 3:6
What do I have that I could give in service to God and others?
(skills, talents, time, resources)
If you think that your gifts could connect with something we are doing here at Tenth, please contact Jade (Pastor of Community Life): jade@tenth.ca or Dan or Lee
Sometimes our voluntary work is unofficial. We might not even call it voluntary work. We might simply call it “this what we do.” Is there something we can do in our neighbourhood or in our world?
I was deeply moved by Sherah Brodie’s friendship with her friend Paul. Sherah is a member of our community. She attends our third service and she had a friend named Paul who was dying of AIDS. She would regularly drive over from her place in Vancouver’s West End out tog Abbotsford--just simply to be with him, care for him and support him. He didn’t have many friends. If he fell, sometimes he wouldn’t be able to get up. Sometimes, he would crawl over to the phone, call Sherah and ask her to support him and she’d come help him move.
Sherah had some challenges of her own. Sherah had an issue with her foot. She her right toe amputated. She had in a cast on her leg. So it would hard to drive. Yet she didn’t let that stop her. She would hobble out to her car and drive out to Abbotsford to be with Paul and helped him move all his stuff (with some people here) to his new apartment in Abbotsford. Paul died not long ago, but he died in the knowledge that he was loved by God, a love that was mediated through Sherah. Though his death was hard for Sherah, Sherah has the peace of knowing that she gave what she could for her friend Paul.
What Sherah had, she gave.
She had Christ’s love and she gave it.
At the end of the movie, The Soloist, Steve Lopez, the LA Times reporter he says.
“There are some people who tell me I helped him. According to some mental health experts, the simple act of being a friend can alter his brain chemistry and improve his functioning in the world. I can’t speak for Mr. Ayers in that regard. Maybe our friendship has helped him…but maybe not. But I can however speak for myself. I can tell you that by witnessing Mr. Ayers’ courage, his humility, his faith in the power of his art, I have learned the dignity of being loyal to something you believe in, holding on to it above all else, and believing without question that it will carry you home.”
Steve Lopez
What Steve and Nathaniel had they gave.
What we might offer is friendship, a listening ear to neighbour, helping to rake someone’s leaves.
Peter and John said, “Silver and gold have I none, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”
There are things we do not have, to be sure, but there are also things we do have. If we have Christ in us, and his Spirit is living in us, we have the greatest gift that we can offer the world—we have Christ.
The greatest gift that we can offer the world, as Peter and John offered their world, is the gift of ourselves--or rather Jesus, offering through our life and our unique set of gifts and personality, his joy, his peace, his well-being, his shalom to world…
You have something unique and special to offer the world--as you give yourself and what you have for God and for others.
With Peter and John will you say, “What I have, I will give”?
posted by Shigematsu at 1:27 PM
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