The cliché, God hates the sin but love the sinner, is false on the face of it and should be abandoned. Fourteen times in the first fifty Psalms alone, we are told that God hates the sinner, His wrath is on the liar, and so forth. In the Bible, the wrath of God rests both on the sin (Romans 1:18ff) and on the sinner (John 3:36).
D.A. Carson

From One Of Us

From One Of Us

From One of Us

by Thomas P Wynn

It was supposed to reconfirm American supremacy in science and innovation; an orbiting, automated telescope that could peer toward distant galaxies and open a new chapter in human understanding of the universe. But at the beginning of this month it was determined that the Hubble Space Telescope was crippled by a mysteriously misshapen mirror, which placed it high on the list of great techno-fiascos. The failure of the telescope, which two months earlier had riden up into space aboard the space shuttle amid such great fanfare, has caused many people today look at this and say “Oh no, not again. What’s gone wrong now? Can’t we get anything right?”

People today look at situations such as this and totally write off the entire project as a failure. They fail to see that something can be salvaged from it. The Hubble telescope, which contains several new systems, for the most part works fine. In fact NASA says that the computer program that reads the data that is sent back to earth could be modified to compensate for the imperfections in the mirror. It is also planning to send a shuttle crew up sometime later and repair the mirror.

Now I want you to look at your spouse or best friend. Now I know you like to tell them that they are perfect, but in real life what you learn to do is live with their imperfections. You don’t totally write them off because of one flaw or another, but rather, you learn to love them.

Many people today look at the church, and see its flaws and totally write it off. They see flaws of individuals and attach their flaws to the organization. These people see the church as something that was hurled onto the earth and left to do the best that it can do. I don’t believe that this is true. I believe that God’s Spirit is active and moving within His church today just as it was in the days of Peter and Paul. If we are going to examine the church today we will need to examine how God’s spirit is working within each of us today.

The New Testament clearly teaches that all Christians recieve the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the moment that we accept Christ as our Savior. This baptism is not something that we seek or look for. Nor does it come with miraculous signs. Yet it empowers all believers with its power. The baptism of the Spirit places us in a position to recieve spiritual power, but it does not guarantee that we use that power. Paul shows us that many of the members of the early church had recieved the power of the Spirit and did not live exemplary lives.

From the standpoint of practical daily living, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is crucial if we are to mature and succeed in the Christian life. Faith, is standing on God’s integrity and acting on his promises. The Christian life must be lived one day at a time. We must learn to trust our heavenly Father every step of the way. God is looking for individuals who will run His race. Someone who will run ahead of the crowd and not be embarrassed if we falter and continue on.

We must look at some of the tools and gifts that we are equiped with to handle our mission. The New Testiment Greek word for gift is charisma and is related to the word for grace (charis). Spiritual gifts are given by the grace fo God to enable us for service. While they originate from God, the true believer may enhance them further. We are told in 2 Timothy 1:6 to stir up the gift of God.

Some spiritual gifts are designed for specific tasks such as apostleship, evangelism, and pastoring. Others can be used as spiritual motivation for service. Romans 12:3-8 points out that we all parts to God’s body. Just like a large jigsaw puzzle. When you dump the box out to start putting the puzzle together you start with a large pile of jumbled peices. As the pieces are linked together you then can see what the finished product will look like.

READ ROMANS 12:3-8

As the scripture states some of the gifts are:

Prophecy or Preaching the Word of God. This does not only refer to speaking from the pulpit but also to the everyday times when we have for sharing God with the people we come in contact with.

Ministry, Practical service to meet the needs of others. There are needs that only you see that I cannnot see and well as ones that I see that you won’t. It is through us seeing and recognizing these needs that we are able to reach out to help fill them.

Teaching, Clarifying and explaining God’s truth. We are always in a position where we can both teach those who don’t know what we know as well as times when we can learn from others.

Exhortation, Encouraging others in the everyday walk with God. Sometimes we have times where we have fallen in the race of life. When things seem to be against us. It is these times that we should look for those who can encourage us and exhort us to get up and continue our run.

Giving, The desire to invest one’s substance in the work of God. It has been said that how successfull you are is based on what it will take to stop you from completing your goal. If you want to be a success then you are will to give everything that you have.

Ruling, The gift of administration and leadership. It is amazing how disruptive things can be when there is no leadership within an organization. It is always a blessing to me in my work when I don’t have to deal with the government’s red tape.

Mercy, Understanding and identifying with the hurt of others. This is something that men generally don’t do very well. So often Sue will tell me about hurts somebody is experiencing from relativly short contacts with them.

I know that this is something that I will have to work on. But some of you are very good at recognizing peoples hurts but not very good at public speaking or preaching. We all have our own nitch in the church of God. The Holy Spirit gives these gifts to unify the church and minister to each member individually. Time and experience will soon reveal to each of us what our gifts are. We need to actively use them to God’s glory.

Robert Lucky, an executive director at AT&T Bell Laboratories expressed an idea that that can be applied in both our daily lives as well as our Christian lives. He said that “Doing something that is difficult, you have to dare to fail”.

When many of us bought our first homes we looked at our budgets and thought that there is no way that we are going to make it. You worked hard at trying to make ends meet. We were determined to make it work because you had set a goal before you of being a home owner. It was not easy, but you jumped out and held on to that dream until it became easier to handle.

Today many of us are now comfortable in our homes. Few of us have established new goals for our lives. We are content to be comfortable. Let me ask you today what new goals have you set for you life? When I realized that I had become that way in my life I decided to do something that I had set as a goal in my life some 10 years ago, I reenrolled in school. I am right now taking classes from Liberty University in an effert to get my BS degree in Church Ministeries. It is causeing changes in my life that are not always comfortable.

As Chairman of the deacons I have also tried to look at the goals of our church. So this fall, we will be trying to have a Lay Renewal Weekend here. I know that I have fond memories of how our church reacted to the last Lay Renaewal Weekend that we had several years ago. I hope and pray that the time grows nearer that you would pray that God would renew our hearts first as individuals with a goal of trying to do His will. And secondly, our hearts as a church, so that we could come together to reach the lost for Christ, just as the bulletin states is our church goal.

Louis Pasteur, a noted scienctist, once said “Chance, Favors the prepared mind.”

PRAYER Father, God, we humbly come to you now knowing in many of our hearts that we have not been fully committed to doing you work. We know that we have become too comfortable in our lives. Help us to realize that we need to remember to do Your work in our every day lives. AMEN.

This is the basic text for a message given to the First Baptist Church of St Charles on 29 July, 1990 during the moring worship service, by Thomas P Wynn