Sermon Tone Analysis

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Spiritual Disciplines-Stewardship

Stewardship has been a Biblical concept sense the very beginning.

In fact it’s seen in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.

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Genesis 1:26

From the beginning of creation, we have been given the responsibility to be stewards of what God has created.

This morning we are going to be looking at, what I believe are the

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5 key areas God has called us to Steward.

The 1st thing He has called us to steward is: NEXT SLIDES

God has called us to Steward our Time.

To a certain degree we spent time discussing this area of Stewardship the past 2 Sundays when we looked at the Spiritual Discipline of Service, so we won’t spend much time on it this morning, but I do want to look at a passage of Scripture this morning that should provide motivation for us each day.

Ephesians 5:15-16

Paul makes it very clear to us here, that we are to make wise use of the time God has given us each day.

I didn’t have the time to cover everything I wanted to last Sunday, and one of the things I didn’t get to was a very important question that was on the back of your bulletin insert last week.

I’ve added it this morning, but changed it slightly.

This question is important enough that I think we all ought to consider printing this and posting it somewhere you will see it each day.

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What did I do today that matters in light of eternity?

Perhaps you may change it to “What will I do today that will matter in light of eternity?”

I honestly believe that we have opportunities each day, to do something that makes a difference in light of eternity, and I think this needs to be the prayer of our hearts at the start of every day.

Lord help me not to miss Your divine appointments.

By the way, I don’t want you to think that this will always be some HUGE accomplishment.

Do you remember last week when Pam talked about God directing her to comfort a gal she saw crying in a parking lot?

All Pam did was to give her a hug, nothing huge, just a hug.

I am convinced that this was a divine appointment.

You know what else I believe?

I believe that the time will come when God will allow Pam to see His purpose behind that divine appointment.

Would you mind if I speculate for a moment?

In my mind I picture some point in eternity that some gal walks up to Pam and says something like this;

I know you don’t recognize me, you only saw me one time in a parking lot, but that encounter changed the course of my life.

The day before I had buried my husband and I just couldn’t imagine going through life without him.

I pulled in to that parking lot to go in to the store and buy a bottle of sleeping pills, I wanted to quietly end my life.

I remembered, that at my husbands funeral, the Pastor had mentioned that there is a God, and that this God loves me and is even with me in the “valley of the shadow of death”.

Before I pulled my keys out of the ignition, through my tears I pleaded with that God,

God, if You are truly real, and if You are with me even in the valley of the shadow of death, will You somehow let me know You are here?

All of the sudden you appeared, you mentioned that you saw me crying and wanted to give me a hug.

Your hug was the answer to my prayer.

Because of that hug, I contacted that Pastor, he and his wife began to meet with me and before long I trusted in Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

I know that you were just saying “Yes” to a divine appointment, but that hug changed my eternity.

Perhaps this isn’t what happened, but I am absolutely certain that God regularly gives us divine appointments, and I am certain that God gave Pam a divine appointment that day.

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When we say “Yes” to God’s divine appointments, we are living our life in light of eternity.

This brings us to the next thing God has called us to Steward: NEXT SLIDES

God has called us to Steward our Gifts, Talents & Abilities.

In Ephesians 2:10 we read;

Ephesians 2:10

There are 3 important keys for us in this verse.

We are God’s workmanship.

This is really a powerful concept.

It means that the God of the Universe is presently at work in our lives.

Paul doesn’t write “We were His workmanship” as in His work in us ended at the point of our birth.

He writes that “we are His workmanship”, meaning that this is an ongoing work.

And if you team this up with what we read in Philippians 1:6 “ And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

That makes this concept that much more powerful.

The 2nd key is:

We were created in Christ Jesus “for good works”.

That basically means that this life we live is not our own, we are simply Stewards.

The 3rd key is;

This was God’s plan for us before we were ever even born.

Paul writes “which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them”.

This means that the Gifts, Talents & Abilities God has given us are to be used in a way that is pleasing to Him.

I’d like to tell you about 2 different teen guys we had in our Youth Ministry when we were in Coos Bay, OR.

The first was Wayne.

Wayne came from a stable 2 parent home, I’m pretty sure his parents are coming up on 50 years of marriage.

He had been raised in the church.

To this day, Wayne was the most gifted musician I have ever know.

It seemed like there wasn’t an instrument Wayne couldn’t play, and play with excellence.

He had an amazing voice, could act, played the role of the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera and was voted Most Likely to Succeed by his fellow Senior class members.

I had regular conversations with Wayne challenging him to surrender his many skills to the God Who had given them to him.

As long as I kept prodding him, he did a pretty good job, but I had to constantly prod him.

The second was Harley.

Harley was literally named after the motorcycle.

I was never certain who his biological father was, I’m not even sure Harley knew.

His mom was on at least her 4th or 5th man when we first met her.

She and Harley fled her 2nd husband, or maybe it was her third?

Anyways, they had to flee because he had put a hit out on them.

As a baby, his parents would laugh as Harley would walk around their living-room the morning after a party, drinking what remained in the bottom of beer bottles left over from the night before.

His mom had made somewhat of a turn by the time we met them.

Her arms were covered with scars from profane tattoos she had had removed.

She was now back involved in the church.

Then something happened at the start of Harley’s Senior year.

She tried to take her life, ended up spending most of his Senior year confined to the psyche unit of the local hospital.

I was his parent representative for Parent Teacher conferences that entire year.

While Harley didn’t have the gifts, talents and skills Wayne had, Harley had something Wayne didn’t have, a passionate relationship with Jesus.

I never had to prod Harley the I did Wayne.

Harley and Wayne were both very close friends and very actively involved in our youth ministry.

They both graduated the same year, and both went on to Moody Bible College the following year.

Initially Moody turned Harley down for admission.

I placed a phone call to the registrar at Moody and challenged them to reconsider, while Harley may have had some strikes against him academically, God had His hand on Harley.

They reconsidered and accepted him.

One of the first phone calls I made when Pam and I were getting ready to head to Liberty was to Harley.

He wept when I told him I was now following in his footsteps as a Pastor.

My last contact with Wayne he had turned his back on God and was an agnostic.

Our Gifts, Talents & Abilities are of little value if we don’t surrender them to the King of Kings.

The next thing God has called us to Steward is: NEXT SLIDES

God has called us to Steward our Possessions.

In Psalm 24:1 we read; NEXT SLIDE

Psalm 24:1