Jumpstarting Ministry

Turn with me to Acts chapter 6, book of Acts chapter 6. People are doing crazy things like that and come up with all kinds of stuff, when really the Lord wants us to just focus on Him, wants us to just look to Him, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, not getting all caught up in everything else. Be aware of what's going on around us, but our strength is in the Lord, and as we come to His word this morning in Acts chapter 6, we're going to look at the first 7 verses, but we'll actually just take time with the first 4 this morning, but I encourage you to read 6 and 7 because they are tied together in a special way, and you'll see that as you read it. Let's look at the first 7 verses in chapter 6 this morning.

First of all, in those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. And so the twelve gathered all of the disciples together and said it would not be right for

who prayed and laid their hands on them. And so the word of God spread, and the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. As you take time to consider the human body, so many different specials out today, different things focusing on the uniqueness of the body and how different things that science is discovering about the human body and its function are just awesome. And as you consider these things, it's just amazing as to how tremendous our bodies are and how they could not be the product of some evolutionary coincidence, that they are the handiwork of a loving Creator God.

The intricacies of things such as the function of the eye, it's not something that could evolve. Things had to be spontaneously created for the eye to function. It could not just come along over time or the eye would not function the way it functions. It had to be spontaneously generated. In the areas of DNA, so much in the last 10 years especially has come out about the building

blocks of our very system as the nucleus of the cells have been dissected, and not only do we see chromosomes, but now we see and understand the DNA makeup of those cell structures. The DNA evidence is just, it's mind-blowing, it's baffling. And I read an article this week about that, that just again confirmed God's handiwork, God's creative power in our physical bodies. But then also in line with where we're at in Chapter 6, I wanted to use as a springboard this morning for this particular study.

It mentioned, to try and give a visual illustration of the complexity of this and the power of the DNA, to imagine taking two monofilament fishing lines that fishermen use, the real thin, small line, and putting them parallel, side by side, just an inch or so apart, and then placing other pieces of line in between those, representing the DNA structure in between the sides of the filament of the DNA set. And then every few inches or so, kind of fold the one line over the other one, making kind of a figure 8 effect every couple of links, which is called a double helix when you look at the DNA structure, and doing that for 125 miles of fishing line. Then after you have all of that done, to begin to roll this fishing line up together without

getting it tangled, and put this 125 miles of fishing line together inside a basketball. Now once you have all of that in there, inside the basketball, then take and pull apart the sides of that little small fishing line, unzipping it like, like taking off its little coat, and peel off an identical structure, just like that fishing line with the pieces in between it that you just put in the basketball. So you unzip it and take it off like a coat, and you start to peel it back, and you actually have now two structures that are the same. And you pull that one out, all 125 miles of it, without getting it tangled with the other

Now if you were to take each cell and reduce it now to the size of the head of a pin, each one of those DNA strips would be about, still about 6 feet long, that fits inside of one of those cells. And every day, each of the 3 billion cells in your body separates completely that way. All of the processes of the DNA are duplicated and separate into another cell. And in looking at that, it just confirms again, not only how awesome God is, but how awesome the human body that he created is, and how organized it is.

Now in the scriptures, we are told that the church itself is the body of Christ. And I want you to notice that it's not like the body of Christ. It's called the body of Christ. We are the body of Christ. We are his representative in this world. And it says that we are the body of Christ to get us to think about the human body, and specifically Christ's body, when he was here on the earth, because that is what the church

is. That is what we are to be, is the body of Christ. And we are to be functioning then like a human body, like his human body, and we have a visual representation then, 24 hours a day, of what we're supposed to be like in the body of Christ. Just like us. You look in the mirror and you go, I'm supposed to be just like this body works. And our bodies, again, are tremendously organized and tremendously dependent and interdependent

upon one another. Every part of your body depends on every other part for its total function. It's tremendously organized. Now I've taught before, many times, and believe very much that the church is not an organization. It's an organism. The church is not an organization like a secular business and it should not be run like a business. Too often, many churches put on their leadership staff, those with business acumen, those with

business experience, thinking that somehow they can help run the functioning of the church because they run a successful business. But the church is not a business. The church is not an organization. The church is an organism. However, when you think of the church in terms of the body, of a physical body, though it is an organism, it is tremendously organized, or should be.

And so the church should be an organized organism. But unfortunately, within most parts of the church, there's factions and dissensions and divisions and criticisms and splits and animosities and one group against another or some people complaining about some other people. And that doesn't represent an organized body, which is what the church is supposed to be. Now if you have a particular part of the physical body, well, first of all, every part of the physical body, as I mentioned, is interdependent and seeks to serve the body as a whole.

Every part of your body seeks to serve every part of the other part of your body. Every cell in your body seeks to bring oxygen to every part of your body so that every part of your body is served as it is subject to your head. Your head, your brain is functioning in it. Somehow you don't have to think, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, or we die.

You know, you just kind of get involved in a TV program all of a sudden. But your brain tells you how to function. The autonomic nervous system automatically takes care of all of that. Every part of your body flows in ministering to every other part subject to the direction from the head. And that should be true with the body of Christ. Our flow, our service should be to everyone else subject to the Lord.

We should have an openness, an interdependence among all of us. And yet at times we find an exclusiveness. We want to fellowship just with this group, not these over here. Now in the physical body, when that happens within cells, when cells become selfish and say, well, we don't want to supply food or oxygen to the rest of the body. We want to just stay over here and just feed ourselves.

We want to just take the nutrients that come into the body and we want to just consume it upon ourselves. That's called something. It's called cancer. Cancerous cells are those cells that have disengaged themselves from functioning to service and feed the rest of the body. They are now servicing themselves, seeking to feed themselves, seeking to build themselves

up and they become a threat to the health of the rest of your physical body and need to be removed or they will kill you. And the same is true within the physical body of Christ. If we come together just to be fed, I'm here, I'm in a bad mood, so boy, you better say

that the apostles have been the initial ministry of the church, the initial functioning group within the young church. They've been doing all of the ministry. They've been doing all the teaching. They've been leading all the prayer times. They have been involved in handling all the distribution of the finances and things to those that are in need. We saw in chapter 5 and 4, we saw at the end of chapter 4, Barnabas sold a piece of land

and brought the finances to the apostles and laid it at their feet so they could distribute it to those that were in need. Ananias and Sapphira mocked that in a way, sought to gain the glory for themselves by doing that. So it's implied that a lot of people did that. If you remember, many of the Jews, and we'll talk about this in a little bit, are from areas outside of Israel, outside of Jerusalem specifically.

And when they received Christ, they lost their heritage. They were disowned by family and so had no place to go and they couldn't immediately get jobs in the area and they needed some needs met. And so the people were selling things, bringing food, bringing finances in, laying it at the feet of the apostles in Solomon's porch in the temple area and the apostles were distributing it to those who had need. Well, we find now that it's time for the people to get involved in this.

The people have been observers of this for the most part. It's something new. Something new is happening. It's exciting. It's tremendously powerful and tremendously refreshing. But they've just been kind of watching it up to this point. And now we see that it's time for them to participate together in the ministry. Now something I want you to notice here is in verse 1, it says,

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in, and in NIV it says, the daily distribution. In your version, it may say the daily ministration or the daily dispensing of food. One of those words. The word itself is a derivation of the word diakonia.

It might be the word diakonos right there. And it means to serve. It means a serving, to minister to. And so this group of Grecian widows was being overlooked in the serving of food. And so the twelve gathered all the disciples together and said it would not be right for us to neglect. Now there you have the word ministry. That word ministry is the same word, diakonos.

So it would not be right for us to neglect the serving of the word of God in order to, and then you have in NIV again the phrase wait on tables. It's the same word from the same derivation of diakonia. So the Grecian widows were being overlooked in the serving of food and the apostles said it wouldn't be right for us to overlook the serving of the word of God in order to serve the tables. And so brothers, choose out seven men from among you, known to be full of the spirit

If you think you have a part of your physical body that's inconsequential, you don't really need, just let us know. We'll have one of the ushers cut it off or cut it out as you leave. And as ludicrous as that is, as funny as that sounds, there's no inconsequential one of you here. None of you is insignificant. None of you are inconsequential. None of you have nothing to offer.

No, that's not true. That's a lie that the enemy seeks to hit you with. You have received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

nourishment to your flesh and your muscle tissue and your bones are reproducing the blood itself. For you'd die. That thing would fall off. But it doesn't because it's continuing to function. It's continuing and it's necessary in its function. And so too in the body of Christ, none of us are idle. None of us should be idle. None of us should think, well, I'm just sitting here not doing anything.

No. There's a function. You're functioning. God wants you to be functioning as a part of His ministry. And so we see that this word ministry is here serving. We should be serving one another. Now, I use this verse to share whenever we raise up deacons that this is how the process is to happen. But you'll notice the word for the office of deacon is not mentioned here.

Diakonos is mentioned, but it's mentioned here as far as the serving is concerned. The office itself isn't mentioned except in 1 Timothy where Paul talks about elders and deacons and deaconesses. But this is just talking about ministry itself, about serving itself of which the entire body is to be a part, is to be a functioning part. And so here in this section, we're going to see God jump-starting His ministry.

It's brand new. It's fresh. It's like when a car is finished in one of the manufacturers there in Detroit and they bring it to the end of the assembly line, somebody gets into the car, puts a key in the ignition and starts it, and all of the systems light up together for the very first time. And they drive that off the line and take it down and put it in the area where they're ready to ship.

The car is off. But the minute that key is put in and turned, for the first time, all the systems together light up. And the diagnostics check to make sure the whole system is fired up together and ready to go. And that's what God's doing here in chapter 6. He's firing up. He's jump-starting all of the people to let them see that they are a part of His ministry.

And that's what I want us to see this morning. All of us are called to be a part of the body of Christ, part of His ministering structure that ministers this grace and peace and love and all to one another. Now another thing I want you to notice is that as this chapter starts off with that, God does that by way of difficulty, by way of problems. God usually uses problems to get our attention.

If you look back through the Old Testament, you'll find that that's what God did all the time. Moses warned Israel, be careful now, when you go across the Jordan, there's going to

Now it's amazing that we, general we, fight for, I mentioned this first service and I used the word mundaneness, we fight for the house and the well and the field. That's what we live our lives for. When you enter the work scene, usually you're entering it looking down the road towards retirement so that you can get the house and the well and the farm, you know, the area, the place where you can just kind of rest and feel secure. And that's your whole focus.

The focus of life is to do that. And unfortunately, usually we never reach that. We die before we get there or we retire and go to there and we die or we never really make that and yet we concern our whole lives with that which is temporal, with that which is passing away and it just obsesses us and takes our focus off the Lord. And so God will bring trouble.

He'll allow trouble into our lives to get us to take our focus off of that and back onto Him. We're laboring here for a rest that God said is not going to come until we're with the Lord, unfortunately. And unfortunately, that occupies all of our time. The rest, He says, to come into that you can cease from laboring for is acceptance with God. You've got that in the beloved, in Jesus Christ.

When you come to that point of realizing Jesus is your Lord and Savior and you receive Him into your heart, you ask Him to come in and cleanse you from your sins, you have entered into that rest and you can cease now from your labors to be accepted by God and now lovingly work with Him with what He wants to do. That's the labor that we're to cease from. But the rest of the time that we're here in this life, there's going to be working, there's going to be a laboring that goes on and we will never find a rest from that until we're with the Lord. And yet that occupies our time and we labor for this mundaneness, you and I labor for the weekend or we labor for the two weeks off or we labor for that time when we can

kind of find that plateauedness that ceases from the labors here and whatever, what usually happens? The drought comes up in the midst of that. I was going to take a week off and the washer quit, the car broke down, whatever broke, you name it, it happened. The kids got sick and had to go to the hospital, electricity went off and had to move all the meat out of the freezer, whatever, there's a problem.

And we always, always look at those as interruptions. and they get us mad, and what God is wanting us to do in the midst of that is to look to Him He uses problems to get our attention to move us out of our comfort zones, so that we grow if you and I would find that place here, that would be comfortable and without problems and trials that we could just coast on we would stagnate and die, because we would no longer be trusting in Him and that's what Moses warned the Israelites about when you get there, you'll find all this stuff, and you're gonna relish in that and you're gonna turn away from the Lord, and you're gonna die unless He stirs you up and brings you back and so God will normally use problems to get our attention

look at verse 1 here, again in chapter 6 in those days when the number of disciples was increasing the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food in those days the number of disciples increased the commentators speculate that there were probably somewhere between 20 and 30,000 believers now at this particular time and in the midst of these problems, in the midst of this growth there were problems, there were problems in taking care of everybody it says that the Grecian Jews complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution or the daily ministry of food

now, the Grecian Jews again, maybe your Bible, your version has Hellenists the Hellenistic Jews, the Hellenists it just designates that they were more than likely from outside of Israel back if you read the Old Testament you find the history of Israel their ancestors would have been carried off to other lands by either the Assyrians or the Babylonians back a few hundred years BC and planted into other nations planted into other areas where their heritage had grown up they still kept their Judaism, they still kept their traditions and so they would come back every year, three times a year they would come back to Israel to celebrate these three major feasts of which Pentecost is one, that they had just come for this celebration

but their philosophies of life, their culture, their lifestyle would be mixed with this Grecian tradition, this tradition of the Greeks for the most part they only spoke Greek it was the language of the modern culture, of the progressive culture and so they would have come into this setting now and with all of them coming in and all these people gathering together it was interesting that the Hebraic Jews started separating themselves evidently the text kind of intimates that that they were separating themselves and not caring about these Hellenistic Jews they were looking down on them because they only spoke Greek where the Hebraic Jews spoke Aramaic and they knew Hebrew and then they also spoke Greek

there was a tendency to kind of look down on them as being well here they come with all their Greek philosophy and their culture and they're just kind of snooty acting and you know, they think they're better than we are but really they're not as far along as we are they're not as discerning and capable as we are and so there was a discrimination among them that caused the neglect to happen now the same thing happens down through the history of the church the same thing is happening today

and there was a discrimination that was happening in the body then that's happening today how many of you have that tendency that well, you know, we here at Calvary Chapel have finally found life in the liberty and so we're embracing our casualness and we've grown in that we've grown past the formality of rituals of church and we've grown into our casualness now boy, we are free, we can come to church in shorts and sandals and we can love the Lord in shorts and sandals and we're in our casualness now there are those here though that are still in bondage because every now and then I see a tie and a coat they just haven't grown as much as we have and found the liberty in Christ as we have in our casualness and then there's others that come in

and they'll come in and they look around and they go how can these people worship God? they're so slovenly looking don't they know you give your best to the Lord? there's a real tendency just even in that

because, you know, we just don't want to be around them it's the same thing that's happening here in chapter 6 same kind of an attitude and that's a cancer because it moves in and begins to corrode that area of fellowship and begins to make us self-seeking and self-fulfilling and cuts us off from the rest of the fellowship and there will be an unhealthy part there that's not receiving the ministry that's not giving out ministry that's not serving and it's a sickness that will come along and eventually kill a ministry now let me say that both groups here are wrong in chapter 6 the Hebraic Jews are wrong because they were obviously neglecting in this the ministry to the widows that's obvious from the text but I want you to notice that it says that

the Grecian Jews among them complained now that's where we kind of overlook a lot because somehow we think that the complaining must be in here you know, it must be in here for we hear it all the time in the world that it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease and how will people know that things are wrong unless one complains but you can't go in here and find that Jesus said unto thee when thou dost not get what thou wantst, complain or if you see something that you don't agree with that you feel like you've been miffed about you've been overlooked in and complain about matter of fact in Ephesians 4 it says put away from you all malice and backbiting and complaining complaining is a sin it seeks to tear down it tears down the body

it tears down that relationship complaining listen to this because this is going to be one of the hardest things you're going to learn in your Christian walk complaining is never right our purpose, our calling is to be servants ministering to, loving one another and neither group was doing that they were both focusing on themselves on their needs and they were separating themselves from the whole the church had grown past the way that it used to be here if there's 20 or 30 thousand people now getting together you can't get everybody all of those people all at the same time in this area around the temple around Solomon's porch

who comes to first service that you know? who at first service comes to second service? I don't know we've grown past the way that it used to be this is our 12th year in this building and things aren't the way they were 12 years ago and see, there's a real tendency for us to not like that we are fighting for complacency we are fighting for sameness I want sameness in my life all this different stuff is distracting it makes me uneasy, unnerves me God is a growing body He is growing His church He is constantly moving He is constantly stirring us up and we don't live in the past but there were those that were, you know I remember when it was just Peter and John and 120 of us it was so cool, really neat I'd like to have it like it was before

but the church had grown past that and the people had become dependent upon settings rather than dependent upon the Lord so God had stirred them up there was a problem that was there really there was more than that but that's the one that God chose to let us know about in His word and He shows us that there's a right response to that and so that's what I want to focus on this morning before we go to the Lord's table is that there are probably problems in your life there are probably problems and this applies to church because this is specifically what the text is referring to is the ministry of the body serving one another within the setting of the fellowship but it also applies outside of here businesses that function well in life today

that aren't corrupt and using all the immoral things of corruption they're finally exposed but businesses that are really functioning well and the employees like it there and things are going well usually use biblical principles they usually take the principles of scripture and apply them to business and it runs well it works and so you can take this and apply it to not only problems in the church in the function of the ministry here but in life itself as you function around others and they'll apply when problems happen there are certain things that we need to do certain responses that we need to make to those problems and let me show you this in the text first of all look at verse 2 problems arisen so the 12 verse 2

gathered all the disciples together and said it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables and look at verse 4 he's already said you get these guys select them out we'll set them up over this and verse 4 we will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word so the apostles are saying it's not right for us to neglect the ministry of the word and prayer you get these guys and set them up and we'll go ahead and focus our attention on prayer and the ministry of the word the very first response that we should have well is turning to the Lord we need to first of all check our priorities when a problem happens and I know you can't do that in the midst of the problem

you got to either stop the leak or you know shut off the electricity or something like that but when you have them and just kind of stop and check your priorities because God's wanting to get your attention a lot of people race race along through life and they're going to do this sometime and they're going to do that sometime and I'll get around to it and I'll spend time with the family sometime and sometime then I have a heart attack boom now the time to reevaluate time to realize the things that aren't really that important the things that they really need to be devoting their lives to I pray that you check your priorities before you have a heart attack before you have those real difficult times stop and check your priorities the apostles here

knew their priorities their priorities were prayer praying for the church praying for God to work and continue that work in the church and ministering serving the word of God these other administrative duties that they had as far as as far as leading the prayer groups and as far as helping with the dispersion of the food and the items to the people that were in need those weren't bad things those weren't bad things for them to do those were good things those were things that had to be done but they were keeping the apostles from their priorities their most important priorities which were prayer and the ministering of the word and as the apostles were being kept from that they were weakened and the apostles being weakened made for a weak church

much of the church today in this society is weak and impotent and ineffective because there's no teaching of the word of God there's usually no teaching of the word because the pastors and the congregation have strayed from what the priorities of the ministry are many if not most congregations see this division between the leadership and the church the leadership and the laity and we'll talk about this next week it was it was a doctrine that Jesus said that he hated in Revelation chapter 2 he said he hated the doctrine of the Nicolaitans the word Nicolaitans is actually a combination of two words in the Greek Nikos which is leadership and laity or laos which means laity or the people and there was evidently from this time that the church is born

until the time of John's writing the Revelation in about 90 A.D. there has become this function in the church where the leaders are now hierarchy and the people are just peons and so the leaders are running the thing with a heavy handedness and rather than it being seen as the leadership has a gift of administration and a gift of teaching just the same kind of gifts as the rest of the body we're just a part of the body functioning in a different way there's been a separation between leadership between hierarchy of the church and the laity and the hierarchy of the church is lording it over the laity and Jesus said

and the pastor has to be at all committee meetings and everybody that has some kind of function within the church the pastor has to be there for all of that because nothing can happen without the pastor the pastor has got to do it all and when the church thinks that way the pastor has no time for prayer and no time for studying the word so that he can minister so that he can serve it and so you get these little snippets of niceties that are thrown out on a Sunday morning a little poem here a little cute phrase there and that's what the church is being fed and the church has no idea how it's supposed to function

what are your priorities in your home husbands what does God want you to do in your home what does he say in his word he wants you to do in your home love your wives and cherish them as Christ cherished the church well how are you doing on your first priority wives how are you doing on your first priority in the home that you submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord kids how are you doing in the home obey your fathers and mothers as unto the Lord

it's too big it's too much for us to handle it's too much for us to do we need to delegate we need to disperse some of this ministry to somebody else Moses' father-in-law came to him because Moses from the time they left Egypt until they were in the wilderness every time the the cloud would stop or the pillar of fire would stop and they'd set up camp set up the tabernacle and all all the people would set up their camps Moses would come to the entrance to the tabernacle and he'd sit on a chair

we have to bring in help D.L. Moody has written that it's better to put ten men to work than to try to do the work of ten men what are our priorities God, what have you called me to do first what's the most important thing you want me to be doing and am I doing it in this situation a few years ago we went through the Colossians 2.7 study with the our discipleship thing from Navigators and one of the things that it emphasized in there was learning how to handle the tyranny of the urgent

you wouldn't want to do that with your friends because they don't get to see how you really are and so we take that out on the people we love at home what did God intend for you to do today spend time with him now what about tomorrow well you probably have lots of things that you know you need to do in your mind let me encourage you to write those things down I have a day timer and it's my life now I take that and I write out for my day and I pray Lord this is what I see planned because other things are going to interrupt and I know what I absolutely positively have to get done because inevitably something will interrupt and some of those things you have to handle right then but some of them you can say I'm sorry you have to call me

later or I'll call you back because I'm busy and I have to take time with this particular situation and until you and I learn how to do that the urgent will eat you alive the things that cry out immediately for your attention

apostles, these weren't the B apostles, these were the A apostles, this was the first team that's in here, and these guys are frustrated, and had they not delegated, had they not checked their priorities, they would have, they could have really done things that would have weakened the church, would have really hindered the moving of the ministry. So the first thing we have to do is check our priorities. Second thing we have to do, quickly here, is to evaluate our own areas of service. Remember, that's why you are still alive and breathing, it's not to amass a fortune and live happily ever after here. Jesus is coming back and this

is all going to be renewed, it's all going to be changed. You are still living and breathing because he wants you now to be a vessel for him to carry his word to the dark places, out to the edges of society, wherever you are, wherever you work. So how am I doing there, Lord? How am I functioning? And especially in the fellowship of which I'm a part of, how am I serving? How am I helping the people? How am I encouraging your flock, your people

to grow, Lord? How am I doing that? Second thing we have to do when problems come is evaluate that, because more often than not, the enemy will seek to cut you off from that because you're too busy, I'm too busy, I've got all of this stuff that's going on that I've got to take care of. When you get away from serving others, you will dry up. If you are going through something now where the problems are seemingly overwhelming you, one

of the best things you can do is to see how God would have you pour your life out into someone else. Lord, how can I, in the midst of my pain, in the midst of this hurting, what can you show me, Lord, to do that I can minister now to someone else? A tremendous area for healing in your life happens with that, but the enemy will seek to get you so busy that you're cut off from fellowship, cut off from ministry, cut off from areas of serving, and you will dry, and you will get bitter, and you will complain, and you will stagnate, and you will die if that happens. So Lord, let me evaluate my areas of functioning and my areas of ministry now. Am I following you, Lord, or am I just perpetuating a function?

Let me say that again. Am I just following you? Am I really following you? Not just. Am I really following you, Lord, or am I just perpetuating a function? I mentioned this at the first service. If I could get up, or if I could be at your house when you get up in the morning and follow you, I would imagine you have a routine that you go through. You get up the same way, same time every morning, kind of turn off the alarm the same way, you

kind of stumble. You don't even have to really open your eyes. You know where the bathroom is. You move that way, and you move in there, and you can take care of everything in the bathroom and still not open your eyes, and you can move in through into the next part of the house, and you kind of open your eyes, and you move through certain routines in every part of your day. No matter how organized or disorganized you are, you basically have

a routine that you will go through. But when we say and we talk about, and it's even in the newsletter about our taking time to pray. Oh, I don't have time. It's just so busy. I'm just so busy. I can't find time to pray. We talk about, well, if you get up 15 minutes earlier and spend just 15 minutes praying, but see, that would mess up my function, mess up my routine. I'd get up in the morning 15 minutes earlier, and I'd be stumbling around

because I think I'm not supposed to be here for another 15 minutes, and it just tends to mess us up. But are you doing what you're doing because it's what God wants you to do, or are you just continuing, enabling a function, just perpetuating a function? See, in ministry to one another, a lot of times, that's just what we do. We're just perpetuating a function. We've always done it this way. We haven't ever done this differently.

You know, it's where we've always had children's church. This is the way we always do it here. Is this what you want me to do? Are you serving in a ministry where the Lord wants you because it's what the Lord wants you to do, or because you're just perpetuating a function? I shared the illustration before about the young lady that grows up and gets married, and the first

time it's a holiday season, and she's going to prepare the dinner for the holiday, she takes, and the husband brings her a nice big ham. She takes the ham, sets it on the counter, unwraps the ham, takes out a big butcher knife, and plowie, plowie, cuts off both ends of this big ham, puts it in the pan, puts it in the oven. The husband sees that, never seen that before. He says, what did you do that for? She said, I don't know. That's just

the way Mom always cooked the hams. He said, I'll call her and find out. She calls her Mom and says, Mom, you know, it's time to fix the dinner for the holiday, and I did what you always taught me to do, and I always get the ham, bring it home, cut the ends of it off, and put it in the pan, and put it in the stove, and the oven, and my husband just asked why we did that, and I said, well, it's just because it's how you trained me, and that's why I'm calling to find out why you do that. Why do you cut the ends off the ham? And she said, well, I never had a pan big enough to put a whole ham in to cook,

so I'd always get the ham and cut the ends of it off so it would fit in the pan, so it would fit in the oven. And a lot of times we can perpetuate a function that really is senseless, you know. God's not in it anymore. He's standing there going, when are you going

music program on The Buzz, in the midst of all this secular stuff that was going on, this junk here on, there was just this old breath of sunshine on Sunday mornings for an hour, contemporary Christian music. And then one of the DJs that's now going here, one of the former DJs, is on his shift, and he said one day when we came in, we had to hurry up and finish a tape that morning, and he said, why don't you just sit in and do it live with us, okay? So we sat in and did that whole thing live. And then we started taking call-ins, and then for several years we did that, and it was exciting and a blessing, but we were living in Winfield and driving down here for church on a Sunday morning,

so we'd drive to Strother Field, do an hour radio program, and then come down here for church and do the ministry, and I was getting to the point where I was dragging, and I had to say, Lord, are you still wanting me in this? But I founded it, you know, I'm part of the founding group, and the Lord said, no, why don't you give that up, because I've got other things for you to do, and that was hard to lay on the altar, hard to give that over, but I was just perpetuating a function that God was fully capable of using others to do, and I had to give that up, and God blessed as a result of that. Both the radio

so he says, seven men who are, in King James it says, of honest report, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, and we will turn this responsibility over to them, they bounce the ball back into the court of those who were complaining, choose out from among you, you guys are complaining, this is an opportunity now for you to love one another. I mentioned that complaining is a sin, and I don't say that, that's what the Word of God says, we are not to complain, but if you are here this morning, and you have a complaint about something, about the way something in particular is done, or you see something maybe that could be done better, or you see something that's not being done that you think should be done, don't complain,

please don't complain, because number one, that causes division and strife, and God doesn't like that, and I've seen God, I just kind of stand out of the way, you know, it's like, okay, the lightning's coming, so I'll move over here, because God does, he moves in some powerful ways against complaining, because he knows it destroys. Let me encourage you that just as these people were a part of the solution, maybe if there's some area like that that you see, rather than complaining about it, stop and pray, and say, Lord, since you brought this to my attention, maybe you want me as part of the solution, so how can I best minister for you? How can I love others for you where this is concerned? That's how

ministry gets going, that's how ministry has gotten going from this fellowship, people have gotten a chance to love others, and rather than coming and complaining, they've come and said, well, you know, I was just wondering, would it be possible to do something like this? Years ago, when we were in the other building, we had two little old ladies that were coming to church, and they came up one Sunday, and they said, we could really see these teachings being used to help other people, would you mind if we brought a little tape recorder and sat it down on the front pew, and we'll bring tapes, and we'll take care of taping your study so that we can give these tapes away, and I said, no, that's fine, so

they came and they brought a little tape recorder, and they set it down on the front pew, and then every Sunday, you know, in the midst of the study here, click, click, click, click, they'd tape on the side too, and get that going, and then they'd take it home, and they'd have their, another tape recorder, and they would duplicate their own tapes, and hand those tapes out. Well, then that finally grew into the tape ministry. Now, somebody didn't come and say, well, I think you ought to be taping your studies, why aren't you taping your studies? I said, well, would you mind, would it be all right if we kind of did this?

Same thing happened with the sound ministry, we had a couple old columns, old custom columns, with a little high impedance head that sat right down on the front row, right next to the ladies that were tape recording, and finally somebody donated a sound board, an older sound board, and they said, well, we can run sound, we'll run the wires for this, and we can even run a thing from that into a tape player, and actually record the tapes right there too, and the sound ministry was born. When I was just going to this church, and not involved in leadership yet, there was a need for children's ministry on Sunday nights, and so Anne and I took children's ministry, and we taught the children on Sunday nights, saw the need,

stepped out and did that. That's how each one of the ministries has happened here, that's how the library happened, we had, somebody came and said, can we start the library, we can bring some books and resources and make them available to the people, they said, what? That's how Carpenter's Corner started. Nobody makes money on Carpenter's Corner, that's not a personal business, that's something that when things are sold, it goes right back into stock, it comes right back in to make things available, and we had brothers and sisters say, we'd like to make these resources available to the people, and we'll oversee it, is that okay if we do that? Sure. That's how the prison ministry got started, that's

how the nursing home ministry got started, somebody came and said, I'll be ministering up here, and if any of them or other nursing homes call, let me know, because we want to help out at that nursing home. That's how the things got done, and everything that's kind of done, is the flowers in the lobby. A sister, and most of you know who that is, but a sister came and said, would it be alright if I just would kind of do these flowers, and I just kind of feel like the Lord's kind of blessed me with that, and I can, sure, super, that'd be great. A couple of, well a few weeks ago now, a couple of sisters came to me, and they said, well, we really enjoyed those times when we'd all get together, the

agape feasts, and we know that we've grown a whole bunch, and you know, most of us don't realize agape feasts. Agape feasts to us, are we bring a covered dish in, and we set it down on that long table, and then we go get in line, and get our plate, and we come through, and we get all the stuff out of there that we want to eat, and we go sit down, and we eat, and we visit, and we have a good time, and we get up, and we go home. But we forget that it took somebody setting up those tables. It took somebody making the coffee, and making the drinks, and setting up the coolers, and getting the ice all ready, and setting up the plates, and setting up the napkins, and setting up the silverware, and

making sure all the dishes were there. The dishes that needed to be heated, they heated them up, and got them all out, and lined up on the table, and then when all of us were done, and we're on our way home, they took all of that stuff, and they washed all the dishes, and they put it away, and they emptied the coolers, and they put the stuff back in the refrigerator, and they folded the tables up, and they put them away. And they wiped everything down, and vacuumed the lunchroom. See, we don't know that all goes on. We just

like to get together to eat. But these ladies came, and they said, well, we really enjoyed that getting together, and we know that we've grown, and it takes a lot of work to do that, so we'd like to volunteer to set it up, and to clean it up. And you just tell us when you want to have an agape feast, and we'll take care of that. That's ministry. That's how ministry gets started. That's how it flows. God has gifted you, and he wants you to love

others. That's loving others. You think, that's not, that's just a function. That's just coming and setting up tables and cleaning. That's ministering love to others, because you're providing an opportunity for function to happen, for the ministry to happen. That's what it's all about. Those that come and clean during the week, you have no idea what they do. You have no idea who they are. But they clean it so that you can walk into a clean

place that's vacuumed floors, and all the facilities are cleaned, so you don't have to worry about it. That's what ministry's all about. And they do that so that they can