Courage in The Storm

It's proper on from stuff.

So there's so many places, we could go this morning with these verses and so I'm going to I have a script repaired but we have some other stuff I want to talk about. So why does the church exist?

To worship God. Okay. What else? Spread the gospel. Place to gather. I'm really serving you guys just so you know what else? All right, so we got Gathering, we got spreading the gospel and I hinted on it during the offering prayer. I better get that. The bee, the hands and feet of Jesus, right? So in our community so I can I get to meet with Pastor Craig this past week and Pastor Ray and I were talking about Ministry philosophy, right? Like what's what what am I called to do with and Powers me and gets me excited, right? And I was talking to Jane about it this morning, like, I love being with the people, like the stinky lost people write like in the gutters, like in the city right in the barrooms and that wherever they're at the farmers in the field. If anybody has, you know you have a horse. Maybe I'll go out and pick up horse poop or something. One day, I love that type of ministry like your Hands-On type. Like I am not a good pastor in the sense of I I don't like just sitting still and and sitting in an office. Every day in and just kind of doing paperwork like that is the most boring that is not what Jesus calls us to do. I like, being the Hands-On Pastor, like, that's what I like, that's what excites me. And so this morning I am trying to get that sense from the church of what are those hands on Ministries that you guys want to lead? Cuz like, if it's all on the pastor or the staff for your counsel, I don't know if we're going to go anywhere, but if we can get the people to say, you know, God's called me to make an impact in the life of faith for Dundalk and this area. So obviously, we have the pillowcase Ministry. Alright. And I don't know what else they make, but all the sewing, right? Like, that's Hands-On, like you're doing something to make a difference. So I'm big on the Lord's. We say on Earth as it is in heaven. So we are trying our best to bring God's Earth to heaven so and Lutheranism, right? This is where the ology matters. Theology does impact the way we live Church. There's always been this debate. The two kingdoms God's kingdom and the kingdom on Earth. And I'm a loser in that says, they're together. Right? That we have to tie God's kingdom here on Earth, and there are no needs in this community. There are people that are hurting there are people that are addicted to drugs and alcohol and all that stuff. We talked about that, that we can make an impact for there. Are people that are homeless Right? Just look around us. What are we actively doing to engage Hands-On with those people, right? You know, some of them and it's been weird since covid, you know, the only thing they wanted some human interaction. Human interaction. I'll never forget going on the streets of New Orleans and hugging the homeless. And feeling really like I don't know, at first judgmental. I didn't want to touch him, right? But wouldn't have Jesus, wouldn't Jesus have embraced them with a hug and love them? You know where this is Father's Day? You know, some of us had good father, some of us didn't have good Fathers in this congregation but the point here is as we have one father, that's the example, this morning our heavenly father, write a father like the prodigal son, where you know, he goes off and take spends all his money and and its father, welcomes him back and open arms, right? That's the type of church that we need to be that. We, I hope we are. That when people come off the street, not knowing Jesus, not knowing the right words to say, not knowing the of the Creed that we found some morning that we open with welcome arms. So, so Pastor blue, just so you all know. I like to be Hands-On Hands-On and I got to get back into that, right? Because it's going to cause me to dry up. If I don't get on with my hands working with the people of God. So join me. Think about it. I want you to think about where those Mission opportunities be very missional and maybe I'm talking completely crazy for some of you. And some of you are like, yes, amen. But I want us, I want us to really think about where those spots of this community, which we find ourselves. God is called the sin that we can Outreach. That we cannot reach. We we go all the way back to October, and we do that Trunk or Treat, right. We haven't really done an Outreach like that sense, but part of it is a season were in, I want another one soon. I know we're talkin about it, man. It wouldn't it be cool if once a month, we had some type of Outreach to Dundalk every month that this community knows that we love them for who they are. They're welcomed at this church, they're welcomed at this table, right? So I'm going to get back to this message here. But we look at then the second Corinthians passes for getting out of my message this morning. So you look here and it says, verse 3, we put no stumbling block in anyone's path so that our ministry will not be discredited. So I want you to think about first Evangelical, Lutheran Church of great manner that the full name right here and I want you to think about it. Are there stumbling blocks? If they are all cut them up, right? Cut up the stumbling blocks, give them to God. Be servants. And I think that's the translation of here called it co-workers of the Gospel, right. We're co-workers of the Gospel of Jesus. And so we work alongside Jesus to spread the good news to be the hands and feet that we were just talking about and then it goes into the different things that we talked about. He's talking about having great endurance. Now who is ever been just exhausted, right? Everyone here. Alright and let me tell you I know some of your church leaders including Pastor have got to the point where I'm just exhausted, right? And the point here is is a time to have some endurance. We got to keep running the race even when we start getting shot at right, we're going to have troubles that says and hardships and distresses and beatings. Now I haven't been physically beaten yet so I'm in good shape you know emotionally you can't be beaten but we we are to expect the beating. We are to expect it. It says imprisonments and riots and hard work and sleepless nights. And hunger. Impurity, understanding, and patience and kindness and the Holy Spirit. And truthful speech in the power of God. And so it goes on and on and talks about and he could just take the scripture and say this is what being a co-worker of Jesus is all about, right? It's more than here. It's more than Sunday morning like we come to worship because we're a Community of Faith write. Like, we're not a community face because we come to worship. Like worship is the pivotal moment where we've been in Ministry together? We've been serving the church. We've been serving our community and then we come together on Sunday morning, we say praise be to God right for all your glory. So there was something that happened, right? When us lose when the Protestant Reformation happen to go back in time and we said you know we're going to leave the Catholic church and we left all the good works with it right cuz good work can't save us any men. I got that but sometimes we said you know they have good works and where does Going to worry about it and I had I'm at this point in my life where I'm saying, you know, we still should have some good works that we're doing we as the church is a hole. There's this is America American Christianity has turned into like a Sunday morning experience and I posted online this past week that, you know, it's not about how good worship was or any of that, right? Because it's only God, Only God knows how good our worship our this this morning, only God, because he is who we are worshipping. so what we strive to do better as a church for God right now for anyone else, so I want you to go through that, passage a second Corinthians And put yourself there. Put your name there. I so until a co-worker of Jesus. I so and so a servant of Christ and go through all those words and say man, what am I missing out on so, this morning,

I don't think 11 is going to hear all this, so you guys got a special note.

Have courage in the storm have courage and your storm, Jesus tells us that have faith in the storm. And I got four points this morning, but don't worry, they're not that long. Okay, so we're going to have the courage and the storm. So I want you to think about those storms in your life. Be a physical storm, emotional storm. I just want to tell you this, a very brief story cuz you guys don't need to hear everything about me every Sunday. Okay? So back it when I was a youth pastor and we decided we would try living with the northern people, right? We moved up the St. Louis. That was the first five. First time we decided we're going to move north, right? So and they told me it's going to snow, is it going to snow? So I said, okay, it, we actually live in a little town called Worden Illinois. We had no gas station, we had a population of like 450 people in our Township. There was a little Methodist Church, the parsonage that we lived in behind me, there was the town butcher shop and I remember is a newlywed Amanda calling me screaming one day, cuz there was a severed deer leg on our porch, some dog, some stray dog. Took it from the butcher shop and brought it to the porch of the parsonage. So we were, you know, we're transitioning out of that call because I was starting to go to Seminary and I said, okay, I got to move back out of the North back down south. I applied to every Southern Seminary in the country, right? So my father-in-law because it's Father's Day, decided him and my mother-in-law flew up to and they were going to help us drop U-Haul truck cuz from St. Louis to New Orleans and experienced driver, really at that point. I needed some help. So, it was the evening before we're going to leave and we're all starving refrigerator is cleaned out. There's nothing in the house, he said, okay, we're going to go to Dairy Queen, which enroll Southern Illinois, was a good Thirty miles through Country Roads. Right? So what did Dairy Queen and how do you remember that little town Edwardsville Illinois. So we went to Dairy Queen in the start of the storm so bad. That I when we got the Dairy Queen, the staff were throwing food at us. And they were going into the freezer and I'm driving my Toyota Prius. That's what I had the time. So we started driving and trees are falling everywhere, right? Come to find out. There's a tornado. We're driving through a tornado. Blue lightning everywhere, right? We crash are Prius. Our brand new Prius into a tree, right? And it that still had a dinner about this big into the the front of the Prius, the rest of the time we owned it cuz I never did get it fixed. But we thought literally like we were going to die. And my father-in-law sitting there in the passenger seat and I'm driving and he's trying to say go this way, I go that way, you know, and somehow we made it alive when we got home.

There was no power, right? So then the four of us had to go into one room that we shared that evening, the last night of my Ministry, And Worden Illinois and I wondered to God, then. What are you telling me?

Am I supposed to be here? Am I not supposed to leave? But we made it through that storm that debt storm. That I thought literally could take our life away. God used and that incredible way God used because that next morning the sun came out, it was shining. It was beautiful and we had a great drive back to New Orleans. That was an interesting time in my life, right? Because at that point, probably in my first time in my kind of adult life. I wasn't working in the church for a while. I went home and took that janitor position at the local, middle school and served and then eventually got back in the youth ministry. But God uses the storms. so, this Father's Day, I want you to think about maybe the storms that your dad went through, raising you, Or perhaps, as a father, the storms you have gone through raising your children but it's it's a life is a rollercoaster. It really is. You have your moments of her up and moments that are down at Wilmington between and I've written a lot of roller coasters lately. So it makes a lot of sense. Right. So we like, said we really loved her, she it's not quite dizzy, but it was enough to get our fixed, right? we had a great time but let's go back to the scripture this morning and the first few verses we hear the story where Jesus is sleeping in the midst of a storm, when there's a hurricane outside, for the most part I can sleep I got I feel comfortable now tornadoes. That's another thing I try to find cover, right? But up, but think about Jesus sleeping, you're on this boat, if you ever been on a boat, when it's rocking and moving and that you're scared to death. And you go and there is your captain of your boat. Sleeping now who's ever been on like a big boat in the middle of a bad mother? Anybody Cool. So we got we got some of y'all that the understand this go to the Gulf of Mexico go maybe a hundred miles south of you know of Louisiana the shores of Louisiana near the oil rigs. It's all bad like you better have a good boat when you're driving through there. But Jesus this morning. In the scripture, when he heard the worry of the disciples he got up. He got up and he went to action. So I'm telling you this morning is, is when you pray to God, when you pray to our Heavenly Father That he goes to action. It doesn't go on deaf ears. When we pray to God. It's, it's an active relationship to like the god of the universe cares about us. He wants that relationship with his his children, this morning. And when we cry, when we cry, Jesus hears, our cries, Jesus hears our cries, he hears My Cries. I want nothing more than this church to grow and Thrive for Jesus, that's it. All I want. And I've had times that I've cried and Jesus hears them, he feels them. He hears my cries for those going to hell because they don't know him, he hears my cries when I'm emotionally bruised and beaten, he hears, My Cries, whenever hard time, finishing, whatever it is for the week. Hears my cries when I'm drowning and I don't know where else to turn. The congregation Jesus hears our cries when we think we're about to drown. When we thinking life, we are struggling through something that we can't get through. Jesus, is there. Jesus is there with the tissue box? Wherever it's at this morning. Jesus, is there in the midst of life's most difficult challenges. And it's hard, right? When you're in the midst of stuff and and it's it's heavy and you feel all alone and isolated her even if your family is there Jesus is there. Jesus's is with you. Jesus Is With Us in the storms of life because church family. He was there with his disciples, we may not always see him or hear him, but he is weathering life with us. When we lose that job and we, we can't pay our bills when we when we got that promotion at work that we've been dreaming about, right? And the good and the bad Jesus is there.

And we cannot think for one moment. That he does not care for us. And again, I've gone through those ups and there's downs, but God has always turn those crappy situations. In two, good ones for me, always always and I'm sure for many of you this morning you had those experiences, right? Where wife just sucked right and God just turned it around completely you know like where did this come from? How did God know this is work. What I needed at this moment of my life. And I've heard some of those testimonies from within this church and let me tell you kind rogation, we have a lot of them. we have a lot of testimonies of God working in the lives of this church and I believe as the pastor if we were just to be more open and vulnerable with each other and an open to this community man you all Give me a Beacon of Hope for those people out. These walls, a Beacon of Hope for those. You know, people my age that is trying to figure life out You guys can be examples for the lost sheep in this community. For those people that are the nuns and the Dunn's, right? Those people that are just so mad at church. This church can be an example to them. A living breathing, testimony of the power of God right here. We just have to decide to do it. Now again, I know this is a cultural difference, right? Like people up north here in the northeast or less open with sharing, right? And I'm always apologizing, like, at least out there, my son going up and hugging every random stranger, right? Because that's just, I don't know what people kind of give us weird. Looks around here for that. But that's how we got to be. So I'm going to tell on you and brave. Some of that more of that Southern Culture of being open give a hug Give a lending hand when needed. Because Jesus this morning, that's exactly what he does. That Jesus has the power this morning brothers and sisters the calm those storms with a simple word, right? Be still. Be still, he says be still and know that I am. God. Brothers and sisters. So why are we so frightened? He said he asked the disciples. Don't you have any faith? Now, that's, that's hard, but that's that takes me back, right? When I'm having doubt the same man, do I have any faith? I mean, the faith, the size of a mustard seed can move mountains. A mustard seed. Do we have a faith, the size of a mustard seed. This morning congregation. and if we do, Do we believe what the word says that we can move mountains, right? That we can clear valleys all for the kingdom of God, to be a living. Testimony is ashamed. When you wrestle with God, you know, Jacob in the Book of Genesis, wrestles with God and leave all these stories of the disciples and and leaders in the church. Paul I always go back to Paul because I always let you know, if God can use a murderer for Jesus, may, I would hope he could use me, right? Like if I can use some of these people that you would never expect to use me, don't want you to think about the congregation. Many of you have been disciple your whole life, you've been a Christian. Since the time you could remember, you have so much knowledge of the word of God of you have a relationship in your heart with Jesus. But those fruits, right? Those tools are being underutilized for the kingdom. So I am so glad when when I see random classes pop up around the church, right? And I believe because covid is becoming I want to take it to an end but we are definitely more normal than we were. I mean, we're always a little strange. It's okay, as a church, but more more starting to come back. And I believe the church is on a healthy projected path to reach people for Christ. Took two brothers and sisters. Hear this. God does hear our cries. He does hear our prayers.

And he listens, and he is calling all of us this morning. So, once again, get out that boat, Write, get out the boat even if it's storming outside right to get out, walk on some water. Look at this passage from 2nd Corinthians to say, you know what? I am a co-worker of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a co-worker. I am a servant. I am I'm going to go through all these things and that's okay. Because God's going to get me through it. so, congregation I want you to pray. I want you to pray sincerely on. Where is God calling you to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world? Where is he calling you this morning? And I'd like you to really think about that and I want you to write it down. What should I write it down? So I'm going to do something impromptu here. Next week to the stable here. I'mma put this table here in the middle and on Sunday morning. I'm going to have you come take those pieces of paper and I might have you placed him in a basket. We're going to kind of survey the church and say where is guy calling us with your hands and feet and then we're going to act on it. We're not just going to talk about it, tired of talking about stuff, let's just do stuff right to take those items. We're in the same and we got 10 people that are interested in this type of ministry. Let's do it. Let's make it happen. And I believe we're starting to do that in a week. Again, we got this food Ministry that is going to be getting next door. So I know for a fact that stretches people have always ask what's going on with the house next door, right? Can I get a amen? Okay, everyone wants to know what's going on. So we have something happening in the house next door, we have a food ministry that's going to be happening. Kevin is or ski, if that's how you pronounce there last night. I'm always messing. That up is starting the ministry, you know, they're looking for donations of time, Talent, finances, all of it food, How come out reach out to them? We are always looking for volunteers to do stuff in the church. You know all this stuff on Sunday morning I'm going to be honest. All the stuff upstairs I know causes some people Stress and Anxiety. I know it, it's okay. I'm not telling you your shirt and cause you Stress and Anxiety. But I'm telling you, I'm trying my best to make it happen, but I can't do it on my own. Jen and Colin up there. Cannot do it on their own. We need people that feel call by the Holy Spirit to do those things. So please be a part, please be, if you see a Bible study going on and you're not involved in one to be apart, Jane, I think you still run up prayer warriors, be a part of the prayer team. We need people playing every single week. There is so much going on in his life of this church. We need I want 95% of our church involved in something. You could be involved. You can grow that's how you build community, right? So, I don't know if that's trying to end it today. Thank you for hearing my off-topic conversation today and my sermon and Billy.

You got a testimony.

Amen.

Absolute, let's pray. Absolutely 100%. So please hear let's let's out and I pray for this, the word of God, this morning that it impacts us. God, we we take this word from from your holy gospel, God for the epistle reading. God, that we are to be co-workers God for you that we are the weather storms of life. Good bad. But we know and trust that you are with us, That you have called us to be the hands and feet. I love you God for for the loss and they're hurting and God the the beaten by the persecuted. Help us as the church, God fulfill your calling on our lives. I took to move forward in Ministry, and the gospel got in our Outreach to, to this community, in it at Large.

God help us in our souls. God took to grow in our faith. If there's any of us this morning, that doesn't have a personal relationship with. Jesus got to ask your Holy Spirit to to do, well, got to go in their hearts, and their minds and and 2 to bring them home.

Got to bring them to you. God for our family members, that I need Jesus in their life. God, let us be examples for them. Can let this church as 2nd Corinthians cold as this morning, not be a stumbling block cuz I don't want to be a stumbling block for anyone. So, got if there's any of those that are around this church that we ask you to just cut them up and throw them in the fire.

Got so that we can be a direct. Impacting congregation for you. To the guy that are Legacy. Our Legacy as a church. Moving forward. God, we continue to move forward. Is that people God will not be lost sheep without a shepherd.

Help us. God help us be still and know that you are God. God and we pray all this in your holy name. Amen.