#lessofme

Sunday December 27 Less of me Several years ago I was doing some college ministry at Flagler College. I got talked into going to a college event in Orlando for students called Sonburst. Well, the leader at that time of our local Intervarsity Fellowship asked me to drive a group. I drove them there, a young lady named Amy, one named Mindy and one named Lindsay all tagged along and rode to Orlando with me. Lindsay rode shotgun and as we drove thru Orlando towards the Hotel where the event took place we ended up driving past Goodwill. Linz was star struck, she looked over and said can we please, please please stop by there on our way back home? That is the biggest Goodwill I have ever seen. I had seen this excitement driving past the Bass Pro Shop in Orlando, the huge two story McDonalds in Orlando but never Goodwill. Well, as luck would have it I wanted to try my hand at having an intern that year and I let the leader of the youth ministry class know about it. She sent me Lindsay, Linz is still a huge part of my life and actually visited just a few weeks ago with her husband and now three children. Linz’s name was Linz van meter, I started calling her Linz van and the name stuck. She helped out with our ministries for a year or two and was a huge part of things going well in my youth ministries those years. Well, Linz van had an older car, she practically lived in it. She would go to thrift stores and buy old ties and sew them together to make bags. She sold the bags and worked a few jobs to pay for her necessities. She wore clothes from Goodwill, she never matched socks so that if one had a hole in it she wouldn’t be forced to retire them both and it just saved time getting ready in the morning. Linz van went on a mission trip to Africa for a summer and when she came back she told us she was done living the way she had. She was telling me that she had to sell all of her things, her car her clothes and all of it because she was living in excess. I laughed, no way I could look at her and think that for a moment. But, a real experience with God in a poor and broken country changed her. With the help of Amber and her family we were able to convince her she was not living in excess lol. #lessofme I have made less of me my movement for the future. I know that times change, people change and usually people change because they are influenced in some way. Either by good or by bad. But I want you to think about your church, I want you to think about your God, I want you to think about your life and put less of you in it. It’s going to be tricky but let’s break down the things I just listed above. John 3:30 I must decrease, He must increase. 1. Your church Alright Jeff, how can church be any less about me. I don’t preach, I don’t teach a small group, I don’t give that much what could I possibly do to make church less about me? Church needs to be less about you, and more about God. God designed the church in Acts to be how he reached the world and your role in reaching the lost world is going to come thru your role at the church. Also, your church attendance far too often is made about you, bettering you, hearing what you want to hear or what you need to hear. Have you ever thought about it this way: Who is encouraged by you being at church that day? For starters God is. God is encouraged because you were designed to worship God, and worshiping with your church family is part of that design. Next, your pastor certainly is. I know what you could be doing, I know what distractions there are out there and I am thankful when you choose to be here with us. I feed off of your energy and your attendance whether I want to admit it or not. The people in the pew in front of you, the pew behind you and the area you sit in are encouraged by you being there. The people you shake hands with, the people you laugh with, the people you go to lunch with afterwards are all encouraged by your presence. Many of them, count on your attendance at church. Studies show that a person needs to connect with 7 people in a church to want to stay. That makes it a whole lot less about the pastor now doesn’t it. They connect with people, not a person and not a place. Think about it this way, when close friends call or text and ask if you want to go out to dinner, you spend time deciding where. Then you show up and it is not about the food or the restaurant at all. It is 100% about the people you are there with. Why is church any different? 2. Your God In what ways can you make your relationship with God less about you and more about Him. In what ways can you spend more time thanking and listening than requesting? I won’t dive too deeply into this, but I will say this God doesn’t need you. Not for a second, but He is willing to use you and that to me is pretty cool. God can breathe into every person on earth His grace, hope and love but instead he uses us to dispense that good news and we should be excited and humbled by the chance to do so. I cannot tell you how many times I sit down with a couple and discuss their marriage or do counselling with them and it all ends up that the marriage is on the rocks not because of what one of them have done so much but their attitudes towards it. I shared this at Thanksgiving most relationships that are in peril are depreciating because there is no appreciation. So many, many times I end up telling them they need to make their marriage less about themselves and more about their partner. That is what marriage is, it’s no longer thinking of yourself it is making decisions that effect the marriage and the relationship. Well, your relationship with God I can guarantee you will improve if you make it less about you. Psalms tells us to Be still and know that He is God. How often are you still, I mean really, truly still? We listen in conversations to answer instead of to hear. How true is that with God? We talk to him and talk to him and pray and cry out for him and then we give him no time to talk to us in return. 3. Your life Your life can be summed up into three basic areas. Your time, now we have to go to work, school and things like that but what do you do with the rest of the time? Who does it belong to? Your talents and abilities - God has given all of us an ability that is unique and needed within the church. and Your finances - your finances, how are they used, who do they ultimately belong to? Are you a saver or a spender? Spenders many times find their self worth in the things they are able to aquire. Savers many times find their security in life in the amount of money they are able to put away. Nothing wrong with being either way, except that if your finances belong to God then you give Him what is rightfully His, the FIRST 10% and spend or save the rest. This firmly places your trust and your security where it belongs, in God. I will give you a test later to break each of these down. At work I have to do sign in sheets for every class I speak in. Well, I tell them as I start passing it around first name last initial please. Please, please, please no last names. Every time, the sign in sheet starts out with first name last initials then it slowly goes to including last names. And once one kid puts their last name, they all follow suit. Sadly, they sign the same sign in sheet each time I am there, and the last names start at a different place each time. Sometimes kids who did it correctly the first 3 or 4 or 5 times put their last name the 6, 7 or 8th time I am there. Why? Because they are following suit. Likewise one person, one member of a church family not listening, not growing, not attending or attending for the wrong reason can throw the whole family off track. So my challenge to you today is this. #lessofme what does that mean for you. How do you take John the Baptist’s words and apply them to your life. If he lived in the wilderness, interacted with literally no one, wore animal skins and ate bugs and realized he needed to decrease how much more do we need to? I am giving you my word that Freedom is going to be less about me. I am going to assure you that you will see and hear from me less and less. I am going to lead this movement and I am going to charge in wide open. I am starting it out by letting Justin preach next Sunday while my family and I get away for the weekend. I am going to have some guest speakers, I am wanting to even do some Sundays where you guys share about your faith or your walk with God. I want to play doctor with you for just a minute. If you are like me when you get sick or have something wrong you first research it on the web. Then, you decide if you need to go to the doctor or not. When I finally decide I need to go see the doctor I walk through the door having rehearsed all of the questions and answers that will be needed. I sit down, when the doctor walks in he/she starts asking me questions. One by one I answer them like a champ, like a college exam I studied all night for. THen, the doctor asks me a question I didn't prepare for, then another one and somehow some way those questions will lead up to what the problem is. Not only that, they remind me why I am a pastor and not a doctor. So today, this morning I want to help you figure out if you are living the less of me lifestyle. 1. What is first in your decisions? (with your time, talents or finances what comes first) 2. Does God get the first and best of your time, your talents and your finances? 3. Do you think of yourself as an owner or a steward when it comes to your time, talents and finances?