Bethel’s Birthday Celebration - God’s Work Through Our Weakness

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

2 Corinthians 12:2–10 NIV

2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3 And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—4 was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. 5 I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. 6 Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, 7 or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

God’s Work Through Our Weakness

Bekah

Before I begin I want to all you to pull out your bulletins. There are a couple questions on the back for you to begin to think on. Will you pray with me…

Today is a special day. Today, we celebrate a whole year of being Bethel Church of Washington! Happy Birthday, church!! What a year we have had, creating a new story together.

When Tony and I first arrived in Washington that first week of July in 2023, we were filled with anticipation and hope. You, as a church, and we, as pastors, were starting a new story. A year ago, we both stepped out in faith and into a lot of new.

For Tony and I, this story was starting to be written a few years ago. We knew that God was telling us something new was on the horizon. We saw where the denomination we had dedicated our lives to was headed, and we knew God had something different in store for us. At the beginning of 2023, we took everything we had and placed it at the feet of Jesus. We ask for Him to guide us in our steps. To open the doors for us. We humbly asked for God to lead us where He wanted us to go. We knew that Kentucky wasn’t the place we were going to land, but we had no idea that Washington, Indiana, would be it. The moment we pulled into the parking lot of the churches, we knew God was leading us to this place. We knew He was bringing us here for just a time as this.

We know that a praying church that is listening to God’s leading will move mountains. That process isn’t always easy, it is full of challenges but it is one that ends in so much joy.

I am a collector of stories. I love hearing people's history, and this church and it’s people is full of deep history with lots of storeis. As I have listened to your stories and have learned more over the last year about the church's history can see that being a praying church is part of your DNA. It is who you are.

These last few years have been hard for all of us. We have come up against many challenges. We have all, in our weakness, leaned into our prayers for God to move those mountains. This last year is a testament to the dedication and faith of each of you. We have said that the road to the promised land isn’t paved smoothly, and this past year has not been the smoothest ride.

In the last twelve months we could have paved the road between campuses with the changes that have been made. We have watched as ministries have come back to life and some start-up for the very first time. We have watched some ministries come to a close and have celebrated what God has done through them. We have had to say a lot of see you laters as we grieved the death of loved ones. We have watched you all wrap your loving arms around each other as you endure the waves of grief. You have continued to find ways to support and love each other in both times of sorrow and of joy. We have had much to celebrate. From new members to curriculum for our children’s worship to new leaders using their God given gifts. Our ministry teams have been working hard this last year to pave the future of Bethel

It has been amazing to see what God is doing while we are just a part of it. We are writing our story one Sunday to the next with God working through all of our weaknesses, and that is what we should continue to do in the coming year

Tony

For Our Sake

Paul wrote about boasting in several of his letters. It was enough to make us think that people had a bigger problem with boasting and bragging back then. However, they did not have junk mail, radio, television, internet, or giant billboards for advertisement. So, what did they use instead? The voices of people. If you wanted to advertise your business, you didn’t put an ad online or on the radio. You went into the streets and told everyone you met how good your company was. Or, if you had enough money, you hired someone to boast on your behalf. When Paul was advertising, recruiting, and telling others about the church and why they should follow Jesus and become part of this growing family of believers, he did so by boasting. When he did share, he talked a lot about the strengths of others, rather than his own strengths, as he taught them to become faithful churches following Jesus.

This coming year, in our work of making disciples with Jesus, we will share testimonies of how God is working with us. For the most part, it all involves walking together.

We are going to walk others to Jesus. There are people who don’t know Jesus and those who know about Him but are not following Him. It takes words to invite others to follow Jesus with us and our actions as well, as we lovingly bring them to Him because they do not know the way themselves. I’m reminded every Sunday that we have people here with us, from babies to great-grandparents, and there are always some who are not yet following Jesus as His disciple and others who have walked away and are waiting to be led back.

We don’t want each other to walk away from Jesus, but the road is not easy. We get weary, discouraged, disappointed, hurt, and broken. That is why Jesus always calls His disciples to walk together. We watch each other’s backs and hold each other close to Jesus so we can serve Him faithfully and follow Him to the end. We walk together as we follow Jesus.

When we walk together with Jesus, we commit to finishing well. We aim to walk each other to our eternal home with Jesus, whether that takes a month or 100 years. We want everyone to finish this marathon we call life faithfully as we step back and allow Jesus to take them to the place He has prepared for them, knowing that someday it will be our turn to take those final steps.

That is our ultimate goal: Heaven. We will not be satisfied when we hit a specific attendance or giving number, and we won’t be finished when we have a certain number of small groups or ministries serving the community’s needs. The purpose of all those things is to walk people to Jesus, walk with them as we follow Jesus together, and faithfully walk them home to Jesus when they reach the end. The numbers won’t mean anything if we cannot do those three things.

Spiritual gifts

We all have a place walking with each other. It will take us serving with the gifts that God has given us. Serving with our gifts means sharing whatever God has given us with others, according to God’s direction. It is much more than serving on committees. So, as our nomination team gathers this month, we will invite everyone to participate in conversations about their spiritual gifts so we can work to ensure that we are all in the right places, serving with the gifts God has given us.

We will also not assume that those already serving are in the areas they need to be next year. Our team worked hard last year to make sure we asked everyone serving if they were willing to serve another year, and we will be even more diligent in that work this year. When you volunteer to serve in our church family, it does not mean that you have to do the same thing forever. We hope that those serving in ministries will continue to participate in this work by passing on their passion and experience to the next team of leaders that Jesus calls to follow after them — truly making disciples with Jesus.

Communication

Bekah and her communication team have worked a lot on our church communication this past year, and we, as a church family together, will continue that vital work. As Bekah and I have strived to honor your prayer requests, sharing publicly only the things we have been given permission to share, we have seen the number of prayer requests increase. As we have honored those people requesting prayer, they have come to trust us more and stepped into a deeper relationship with us and Jesus. How we communicate with each other, making sure what we share is right and true, and communicated in love, makes all the difference in how we walk together, and each of us plays a part in our communication.

Children

We also want to pay attention to each other, particularly our children. Our children learn how to follow Jesus by watching you follow Jesus. They learn how to sing and worship Jesus by watching you discover new ways to sing and worship Jesus. They learn to pray by watching you pray. Our children are wired to see themselves in us all, especially those who show them love in a way they can understand and receive. If we follow Jesus faithfully and love them like Jesus, they will rise to meet Him every day in new ways, and we will be amazed at what Jesus will do in their lives.

For our sake, we work in our strengths and we share the gifts that God has given us with each other so that we can all follow Him faithfully to the end. But what Paul really boasted about was not his strengths. Paul boasted about his weaknesses and the way the power of Christ showed up where his strength ended. For Christ’s sake, we will also share our weaknesses.

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For Christ’s Sake

After the baptism of Jesus, the Holy Spirit sent Him into the wilderness to fast and be tempted for 40 days. Each gospel uses a different word to describe how Jesus entered the wilderness. Mark’s gospel says the Spirit “threw” Him there like a Hail Mary pass into the endzone. Luke’s gospel says the Spirit “led” Him there. Matthew’s gospel uses a strange word, though (anago), which is used to describe the way the wind fills the sails of sailboats and directs them across the sea. So the Spirit sailed the ship of Jesus into the deserted wilderness to wander and go without food for 40 days while the devil tempted Him. He did so to prepare Him for the ministry ahead, just as the Israelites wandered the wilderness for 40 years to prepare them for the Promised Land.

We are in a season that is much like trying to sail through the desert wilderness. Some people would look at our work and think we are ridiculous. Boats don’t belong on the sand dunes. But this is precisely where we are called to be. If we are faithful throughout the temptation we face and we wait on Jesus, He, too, will show up with the angels at the end to minister to us and prepare us for the next part of our journey.

The key to this is hidden in a tiny statement from our scripture today. Three words in that phrase, “God’s power is made perfect in weakness,” are softened a little bit in our translation to make them sound safe. But they are not. We made our word dynamite from the word used for God’s power. And to be made perfect doesn’t mean to be made pretty or without wrinkles. It means to be complete, or to live into it’s true purpose. And the word weakness does not mean tired. It means incapacitated.

In other words, God’s real power doesn’t show up until we cannot do it ourselves anymore.

It means some of those who invite others to follow them to Jesus are the ones who have no ability or authority to persuade anyone to do anything.

It means many of those who will be best able to keep others together as they follow Jesus are the ones who have the biggest problems getting lost themselves.

And it means those who God will use in the most powerful ways to walk us home to Jesus may be the ones who cannot walk at all themselves.

Jesus never told anyone not to ask for help. The church exists because Jesus asked for help, and He always encouraged His disciples to work together and ask Him for help at any time. It is difficult and frustrating, and I know it very well. I’ve had nearly a month of being able to do very little other than ask for help in everything. But I watched some of our best worship services and church meetings happen because I asked for help, admitted my incapacity to do it myself, and let God step in and move.

Our task is to sail through this desert wilderness in a boat bigger than we know what to do with. And we won’t move an inch until we unfurl our sails and ask God to help us do all this work we cannot do on our own. But if we are humble enough to ask for help, we will find next year that our most extraordinary testimonies will come from the places where God worked through all of us together, and it was not our collective strengths that worked together to save the day, but instead, the collected weaknesses that held us together as He stepped in and did what we could never do on our own.

Please take a moment to prayerfully answer those questions on the back of your bulletin. We will invite you to bring them forward in a moment.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we come to You today looking for a change of heart. We wish you would take our weaknesses away and replace them with things we can take pride in. But pride won’t help us follow You faithfully or bring anyone else along with us. It just makes us feel better. So today, as we come and surrender our lives to You again, we pray that You would help us not to be ashamed of the weaknesses You give us but instead to share them boldly as the ways You show up the most in our lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Covenant Prayer

“I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.  Put me to doing, put me to suffering.  Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.  And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.”