Sermon Tone Analysis

*You Are Here:*

Placed with a Purpose

Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor

July 31~/August 1, 2009

 

You are here.

That’s the new series we are starting today, and before I jump in let me say that /I/ am so glad to be /here/.

I had a great break, first part vacation and second part study break, and many of you prayed that it would be a refreshing time, a spiritually rich time, and a productive time—and God made all those requests come true—so thank you very much for your prayers for me.

And I also was deeply moved by the opportunity to pray for you, those who wrote out prayer requests that last week I was here before break.

Thank you for that, too.

And now I am back, and I have to tell you that I was very homesick for Chase Oaks.

I could not have stayed gone one more week.

So, I am very glad to be here.

This series we start today, /You are Here/, focuses on the basic and profound truth that God has placed you and me where he has for a very strategic reason.

Where you are, your neighborhood, your family, your place of work, your social circles--none of that is accidental.

You are there because you have been place there.

That’s important to realize, because I think that many of us who really want to be used by God in big ways assume that whatever ministry God has for us is out /there/ somewhere.

Like Dorothy singing somewhere over the rainbow, we can easily look past our current lives looking for that ministry out there somewhere that God has for us.

Years back as a young believer, I was pretty sure that serving God meant moving to somewhere like Africa, and I was ready to go, to find my somewhere out there.

In fact, many of the prayer requests that I prayed for were about this very thing, people who wanted to be used by God and wanted me to pray that God will guide them to that place of ministry, presumably out there somewhere.

And there may be a ministry for you and me somewhere out there, but for now, guess what.

Your greatest ministry and my greatest ministry is not out there somewhere, but it is right now, right where God has placed us.

Our greatest ministry is right in front of our noses!

We can easily miss what God wants to do, if we don’t really get this concept today.

And over the centuries, we as Christians have had this somewhere over the rainbow mentality a long time, assuming that meaningful ministry was somewhere else, somewhere out there.

In the NT book of 1 Corinthians, Paul challenges this tendency in their thinking.

These were new Christians, who had just come to Christ in the most pagan city on the planet in that era.

They were new believers and were excited and wanted to make an impact, so they began to leave their current job situations and relationships in order to find the ministry “out there” for them.

Paul writes to say, “No! Don’t go anywhere.

You have been placed where you are for a reason.

You are leaving your most important ministry opportunity—those people in your life right where you are!”

He talks about this in 1 Corinthians 7. One situation was married people who came to know Christ whose spouse had not converted.

Their spouses were still serving the Roman and Greek pantheon of gods, still worshiping in the temples by having sex with temple prostitutes, and had no use for Jesus Christ.

So, these newly converted Christian spouses assumed that the best thing to do was to leave their spouses, so that they could be free to jump into that ministry out there somewhere unencumbered by their non-believing spouses.

So Paul says,

 

Slide: ______________ ) 1 Cor.

7:12b-13

 

If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.

*13*And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him.

Why was this so important to Paul?

He says it:

 

Slide: ______________ ) 1 Cor.

7:16

 

*/16/*/How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband?

Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?/ Then he gives this important command, repeated throughout the chapter:

 

Slide: ______________ ) 1 Cor.

7:17

/ /

*/17/*/Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him.

/Paul is saying, “God has placed you there in that home.

That was no accident.

It is an assignment, an opportunity to impact that non-believing spouse.

Don’t leave your calling right in front of you for some phantom calling somewhere out there!

He continues with this same way of thinking, but this time about social circles.

He says,

 

Slide: ______________ ) 1 Cor.

7:18

/ /

*/18/*/Was a man already circumcised when he was called?

He should not become uncircumcised.

Was a man uncircumcised when he was called?

He should not be circumcised./

He tells them, Stay as you are!

And the uncircumcised men in Corinth who might be thinking they should get circumcised said, “Amen!”

But it wasn’t about that, it was about their social network.

He is saying, “You are going to jump into church life and build community with other believers, but don’t do so in a way that separates you from these friendships you already have.

Don’t leave your social circles now that you are a believer.

God has maybe your greatest ministry right there in those circles with your non-believing friends.

Then Paul moves to the subject of work.

Now, in that day, many of the new converts to Christianity were slaves.

About 1~/3 people in the Roman Empire were slaves, and because of the whole equality aspect of Christianity, many slaves were coming to know Christ.

Because of that essential equality, some Christians thought they needed to escape that situation to be free to pursue ministry out there somewhere.

They felt stuck, unable to pursue what God had for them.

But Paul says this:

 

Slide: ______________ ) 1 Cor.

7:21-22, 24

/ /

*21*Were you a slave when you were called?

Don't let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so.

*22*For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord's freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ's slave. . .

*24*Brothers, each man, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation God called him to.

Do you see Paul’s challenge!

Stay where you are, because you have been placed there by God.

Resist the somewhere out there temptation, assuming that your best ministry is out there.

You have spend months and years in your social circles, your places of work, your families, your marriages building relationships and credibility—so if you want to know where God can use you most, you don’t have to look far!

You are surrounded by people that God loves, most of whom do not yet know him.

The Bible is challenging us, as Drew did a few weeks ago in the /Blind Spots /series, to avoid the bubble, to avoid what seems unfortunately to happen to many people when they come to know Christ, to migrate away from their relationships, their social circles they had before, and be completely surrounded by fellow believers.

This trend is so strong that a study was done on what happens in American churches when people come to know Christ, and the conclusion was that it takes about two years for the process to be pretty much complete…that in two years, the person pretty much is so busy with their church and with their believing friends that they have no significant friendships with non-churched people.

In their well-meaning attempt to grow spiritually and surround themselves with Christian community, they did not “remain in the situation in which you were called,” and bailed out on the ministry God had placed right in front of them.

Think about your own life.

What is your trend line?

Are you increasingly engaged in loving and relating to those that God has placed in your world who might be far from God, or is your trend line the opposite direction?

You know, about once a month I have a conversation with someone who believes God has called them to “be in ministry.”

For them, that means that they should quit their job, go to seminary, and get a full-time ministry job.

And for some people that really may be the thing to do, but I really push on that first.

Because what Paul is saying is this, “Your ministry is right in front of you.

You’ve already been called to ministry and assigned a position.

You are in your work place for a reason.

You are in your family, in your neighborhood, on your sports team—because you have been placed there.

Don’t be so quick to leave it.

I was actually delighted to talk to someone last year who was leaving full-time ministry in a church to go back to his career.

He felt guilty about it, like he was bailing out on God, but he said, “I honestly think I had more impact there then I do in full-time ministry.”

The truth is, he was already in full-time ministry right where he was.

Nothing to feel guilty about.

He probably should have never left where he was in the first place, but very cool to be going back.

This is one of the reasons at Chase Oaks we have a very simple ministry model, meaning that we are a church essentially built around this large group experience we are in right now, plus the life group experience, and then ways to engage and serve our community.

We do have other ministries and opportunities, but we work hard to limit those, which is not easy to do.

Constantly we have the conversation on staff about how to keep ministry simple, because we could easily load up our ministry model with a million good things for Christians to be engaged in.