Hello and welcome to our ongoing journey to be followers of Jesus, which means we are on the road to becoming like Jesus. A very tall order, but what grace is ours in Jesus who gives us examples, gives us the assistance of the Holy Spirit, gives us a community to encourage us and keep us accountable, and gives us the Scriptures to help describe what we should be aiming for.
I'm a little excited about the new football season that is coming. The news is filled with training camp stories about the trials and tribulations of getting the players into shape, molding them into a team, getting them to follow the plays so that when the games really count, the team can win. Not a bad reminder of what we are to be doing.
We are to be living the faith we have in our heads and hearts. It's hard to do sometimes, when the voices we hear, coming from the TV, movies, celebrities, and other media tells us the complete opposite of what we should be doing.
We get way too wrapped up in keeping up with the Joneses, and not these Joneses, I can assure you. WE feel like we ought to have the things we are shown in the commercials, and in those shinny catalogs that come in the mail all the time. It's back to school, so get to the stores... even if we haven't outworn or outgrown what we already have, we are to get more. But our faith should help us hear a voice in our heads, "Are You Kidding Me!" we really don't need all that stuff.
John Wesley led people to the Lord long enough that he even began to see the prosperity that often came to those who turned their lives around, from ruining their health with bad habits, to becoming valuable citizens and employees, who became successful because they were dependable. He was often hurt by the success of his transformation, which led people away from the faith, in order to enjoy the gains they had made in their lives. So he came up with three simple rules for using our money, and it's still a helpful tool today, but the advice gets drowned out by the noise of buy, buy, buy.
Rule number one was EARN ALL YOU CAN. He was serious about being paid a proper wage and for the relationship between work and proper reward. He was enthusiastic about helping people find a better wage for their efforts. He thought that an appropriate salary would ensure that you could be healthy and a good family and a good witness to the world by following rules number two and three. If we stop at rule one, we will miss the whole point.
Rule number two was SAVE ALL YOU CAN. He was not encouraging us to hoard, but to use what we have wisely. The save all you can was about using what you needed until the very end. Don't throw away stuff before it wasn't finished being helpful. Pass it along if it still had some life left in it and you didn't need it anymore. The same advice would come into play now about the recycling encouragement to save our planet. Save it, recycle, pass it along, share it, make sure it has done all it could. That's a challenge when we are told to upgrade all the time, and usually before we actually need to. So try to stretch your stuff out a little longer, get more out of it, use it wisely so it will last longer. Eloise, the adviser on consumer products and uses, has a good point here, you can still use that somehow.
The third rule was GIVE ALL YOU CAN. John Wesley was famous for living very simply, he ended his life living on 10 percent and giving 90 percent of what he had. He was filled with the hope that God's people, who had earned all they could, and used what they had as well as they could, would naturally be able to be generous and make a difference in the world. Wesley was able to start credit unions to help get people out of debtors prison, he started schools, because that was the best way to advance and to be able to read the Bible for yourself, so God could influence you. He cared about the physical as well as the spiritual, and worked on cleaning up our bodies, our communities and with those folks giving all they could, he started hospitals and clinics to provide healthy resources to those in need.
So we take our Spiritual life seriously, and apply them to our life style. Earn all you can, save what you have by using it wisely, and give all you can to bless and help someone else.
The Empty Tomb, organization, researches human needs around the world, and they figured out that if all USA Christians would tithe, we would have enough money available beyond the local church to take care of EVERY major health concern, water to every village that needed it, food for the hungry, health resources wherever it is needed. Now that's something to think about.
Blessings on your journey and try looking at your own rule potential. Earn all you can, save all you can, and please GIVE all you can. The joy of knowing you are doing the right thing will be a glorious feeling.
Pastor Jeff
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