Get handouts, look at the books, ask me questions.
Before we start, I did have a couple of people
that reminded me that I did not give you my
phone number and email and address. And I meant
to do that. So I'm just going to say it because
I don't
have it written down. I'm too close to
finishing this Masters, have business cards made
at this point in life, without that on there.
So, I mean, I have
educator ones, but let me give it to you. My
email is my name, it's just
Ross Beverly, all lower, RossBeverly at Hotmail.c Om
That's easy. And I will try to get back to you
within 48 hours.
Okay? If you email me. If you call me and you hear
a teen voice, you might want to think I didn't
get the message
and call back. Because I have been known as a
senior answerer of the phone. He has senior
items and that means brains out the door. And
so I don't always get those. But
leave it on the machine and I will get back to
you as soon as I can. If I'm traveling or
whatever, it may
take me just a couple of days, but I'll be back
to you pronto. I check my email even while I travel.
But my phone number is 972-564-0289.
We have just recently moved
out to a little town out of Mesquite and that's
for me.
Okay, it's 972-564-0289
and my address is 10054.
10054. What? Oh, I do that!
I know it! Okay, tell me what?
Okay, it's 972-564-0289.
Okay? The address is
10054. 10054.
Antelope, that's a big word.
A-N-T-E-L-O-P-E. You can hear every sound. It
sounded out like a first grader. A-N-T-E-L-O-P-E
W-A-A-Y. Then 40
and F-O-R-N-E-Y Texas
75126. You might need me to repeat anything.
Email. It's just Ross Beverly all lower.
R-O-S-S-V-E-V-E-R-L-Y at hotmail.com Hotmail.
No, no high finishes. All lower. Just straight
like that.
No, I probably said it too southern. W-A-Y.
I have a tendency to do that from time to time,
but sorry.
Okay, well let's start with just a couple
of jokes. You've been sitting for a while and
that was your first joke.
Okay, ready for the next one. You might have
seen these. I've seen them so many times, but I
still think
they're cute. Bloopers and church bulletins.
Okay, hang with me. We're gonna read some of them.
The Low Self-Esteem Support Group will meet
Thursday at 7.
Please enter by the back door. The pastor will
preach his farewell message, after which the
choir will sing break forth into
joy. Remember in prayer those who are sick of
our church
and community. Weight watchers will meet at
7:00. This one just struck me as hilarious.
Please use the large double doors.
Don't let
worry kill you. Let the church help.
Let's see.
For those who have children and don't know it,
we have a nursery downstairs.
During the absence of our
pastor or our preacher for us, we enjoyed the
rare privilege
of hearing a good sermon when A.B. Doe supplied
our pulpit.
The Reverend Adam spoke briefly much to the
delight of his audience.
So here we go. Okay, we talked
a whole lot the first hour about mentoring,
about relationships. What I want to talk
about during this second hour is just walking
together with one another.
The power that is found in Christian connection.
Here we go. This is a quote by Carl Mays.
I love this quote. There is
nothing, nothing as powerful and contagious
as positive, uplifting enthusiasm that is
handled wisely by
a group of people who contribute their
individual talents and abilities
coming together as one unified force
to reach one common cause,
goal, or dream.
There is nothing as powerful when one group of
people contributes all of their individual
talents when they come together about one dream.
When they come together about one dream. Now
the premises that I'm operating
off of, just want to make sure and remind you,
number one, I believe the Word of God to be
total truth,
not my feelings. I believe that what God's word
says is truth.
And that's going to be important to us during
this hour because we're going to cover some information
that you may not be as comfortable with. We're
going to cover some information that you
may struggle with within your own heart, not
about if it's right or wrong, just struggling with
being obedient to doing that, to acting on
that, but our feelings
are not truth. God's word, obeying that, is
truth in your life. Are we on the same page
with that? Secondly
is that God put a place for himself within your heart.
And it is only for him. And your heart feels stunning.
It feels messed up. It feels weird when you see
other things on the throne of God
in your heart. It only feels appropriate. It
only feels
what the Holy Spirit uses the terminology in
the word of, you only feel the joy
and the peace that comes from the Holy Spirit.
When God is seated in his appropriate place in
your heart. And then
the third premise that I operate off of is that
God made you
without only a need for him, but also he made
you with a need for other
people. Someone once asked,
do I have to go to church to be saved? That's
the biggie question from time to time.
And my answer of course is no.
The church is the response of the saved.
When you are saved, when you are in a saved state,
when you are covered with the blood of Jesus,
the church is your response.
You want to be with other people worshiping and
praising him forever.
You want to be practicing Heaven. That's what
you're going to live in.
It's just what we do. We're going to be with
other people.
What does it mean to connect with other people?
It means to feel a part of something that is
greater than myself. Now if you have your Bible
this morning
I invite you to turn with me to a verse. For us
in Mesquite
it's our women's ministry verse.
But it says exactly what Carl May said, just a
little bit differently.
It's like pulled away a little bit better. It's
in Romans 15:5.
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement
give you a spirit of unity among yourself as you
follow Christ Jesus.
Are we struggling with unity?
Who gives unity? God gives unity.
May the God who gives endurance and
encouragement give you a spirit
of unity among yourself as you follow Christ Jesus.
When you're following who you're supposed to
follow, unity will come.
Do you believe that to be true? I do.
So that with one heart and mouth you may glorify
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Accept one another then just as
Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God.
And we already talked that I believe and I know
that some of you do, that that is
the ultimate purpose of life. In order to make
your ultimate purpose come truth
which that is praising God. And these are the
things that you must do to accept
one another. And to join your heart with other
people's hearts so that in one
big heart you can glorify the Lord together
with other people. Would you buy in with me
this morning, I believe with all my
hearts that we have never been more connected
than we are today.
I have
too many messages all at the same time. What
about you?
When I hit my hotmail today some of you will
say, I have over
twenty messages immediately. Clicking it on.
Too many messages
all at once. The phone's ringing. Internet. We
have ways we can get
in touch with people. Do Christmas shopping. Internet.
Television. I mean lately haven't you heard more
about some news incidents than you wanted to
know about? Television.
In your living room. We are connected.
On Wednesday night we have a ladies Bible class.
It has anywhere from probably seventy-five to a hundred
ladies in it. We do this thing where we pass
out legal pads.
It's time for the legal pad. And we do legal
pads. We do three a week in different groups.
We collect them at the end. By noon the next
day everyone's prayer request
that was written on that legal pad is in their
computer system.
You can pull it off. That is connection. I mean
have you ever
had that many people praying for you before? We
are connected. But my problem with that
is the more that we connect could it be that we
are connecting less
and less and less interpersonally? Now I'm
talking what we call in first
grade knee to knee, eye to eye. You see what we found
that would be a perfect way to solve prayer
requests. We still had women writing us
and talking to us. Somehow I'm just not getting
a need filled in my life.
There's something about prayer right then. See
we didn't have time to pray over seventy-five
to a hundred women right there. Or did we?
What was going to be our purpose? How could we
achieve that purpose? How can we as a
group of people make sure that we connect
eye to eye, knee to knee with the women in our
group every time we meet?
Is that possible? Yes. It is possible with
that word that we just talked about being
intentional. We
intentionally connect a different way. Recently
I had one of the saddest experiences.
It was about a year ago. I was doing a retreat
and on
the front row I noticed the minute I started
talking, as soon as I got to that part about
the throne in your heart, this woman on the
front row was just sobbing. She sobbed
through the entire first talk. The minute it
was over
I finished the prayer. I looked at my notes and
she was right there.
In the last year she had had a daughter
tragically killed
who was a part of their youth group. I didn't
know what to do to help
her as she began to relate the story and of her
journey and of the
walk and getting her life back together, what
she thought was going to be back together.
I didn't know what to do so I said, we have to
pray. When they saw that she
was crying, two of her friends came up and they
were standing on either side of us. The four of
us got together.
We began to pray. She said the saddest thing to
me when the prayer was over, and I'm not in
doubt, it was one of the saddest
moments of my life. She looked at me and said,
did you realize that for the
last year I've had hundreds of people tell me
that they would be praying for me. No one has said
my name in a prayer, but I heard it.
I've had hundreds of people tell me,
I'll be praying for you. Don't we do that. Be
praying for you.
Hope it works out. Get back with me. Let me
know how it works out. You know?
It changed my life.
I thought, let it never be said in the path of
me, of Beverly Ross.
Let it never be said that I just tell people
that and I don't stop to pray
with them right then. She said, I didn't
realize until this
moment in me that I've had in my life to hear someone
say my name before the throne of God.
About two weeks later, you know how the Lord
does that. If he's going to teach you a lesson,
it seems like at all
comes at once. About two weeks later we had a
woman that signed the prayer sheet on a
Tuesday night and she said, I've been coming to
this class for too long. Why people even
speak to me? They don't look at me.
No eye contact. Would you agree with me today
that we are busy people? Yeah. We're pretty
busy, aren't we?
We have things to do and places to be. And that
is why
I come before you today talking about the word intentional.
Intentional. I believe that when we wake up in
the morning and we step on that
fast moving treadmill of life. Now please
understand I'm not talking about the
real treadmill. I'm talking about just the
treadmill of life. You know the one that the
alarm goes off
if you're like me, I'm not a morning person. I
just get on and I do what I'm supposed to do
every day. I know where I'm supposed to be. I
look at that clock and think, oh my goodness I
should be on 6:35
by now. I'm going to be late for school. I know
what I'm supposed to be doing.
What I'm supposed to be doing. I don't even
have to think about it. I don't even have to
think about it.
Or is that exactly why I do need to think about it?
Henry Nowen wrote a book to ministers and it's
called In the Way of the Heart.
This quote is phenomenal.
And by the way, we do believe in the church of
Christ that we are all ministers, right?
Okay, so this book could be for you. It says,
in general,
we are very busy people. We have many meetings
to attend,
many visits to make, many services to lead. Our
calendars are filled with
appointments. Our days and our weeks are filled
with engagements and our years are filled
with plans and projects. There is seldom a
period in which we do not know what to do.
And we move through life in such a distracted
way that we don't even take the
time and rest to wonder if any
of the things that we think, say, or do are
worth thinking, saying, or doing.
We simply go along with the many musts and
oughts that have been handed on to us.
And we live with them as if they were the authentic
translation of the gospel of our Lord. This is
the clincher.
Thus, we are busy people, just like other busy people,
rewarded with the rewards which are rewarded to
busy people.
That's a tough one.
If you didn't find that one, I'm not really
here to hurt you today.
I don't want to beat you up. But this next quote
is a grabber too. This is from a book, Shaxman Dahl,
called Living Beyond the Daily Grind. How easy
it is
to fall into the trap of ritual religion.
Could it be us? I don't know.
So many Christians know little of a vital,
fresh, day-by-day relationship
with the Lord. I did not say inactive relationship.
Christians have never been more active. Some of
you that have lived a while, is that true?
We've never been more active than we are today.
The tyranny of the urgent is no theoretical problem.
Many a believer leaves the treadmill of three
or more activities every Sunday
only to enter a full week of meetings,
appointments, functions, rehearsals, clubs,
engagements, banquets, studies, committees, and retreats.
This is the clincher of this one. Much of our
religious activity today
is nothing more than a cheap anesthetic
to deaden the pain of an impure eye.
Could it be
could it be that the reason that we stay so busy
is because when we are in stillness is when we
hear the voice
of the Lord telling us that we need to make a change.
Telling us that things need to change. Could it be?
When we said in stillness is when you hear
maybe a voice
from your past that you didn't want to hear
anymore. Could it be
why we struggle with Psalm 46 10 where it says,
be still and know that I'm God.
Could it be the time in your life that you
realize that you lack peace
the most is when you sit in stillness?
Beside that verse in my own Bible I have
written, oh God help me to always
experience your peace when I am in stillness
and quietness and help me not to get so
caught up in my own
voice screaming at what I need to be doing.
It's so interesting to me to read through the
Old Testament and I do believe
that powerfully the Old Testament is put there
to show us in physical what we are to be doing
and spiritual today.
And it says that Elijah looked for the Lord in
all of the loud things but where did he find him?
In the general hospital.
And how many of us make the exact same mistake
spiritually today?
As moms, as grandmothers, as busy people.
We become so caught up in meeting the needs of
the loud things in our lives.
We have twenty-five first graders. Now you want
to hear loud.
But I get so caught up in what is urgent that I
don't have time
for what is important.
I say this almost everywhere that I go and it's
because it impacted my life over twenty years ago.
Rick and I were members at Highland when
Anderson was preaching
and he said something that it was like it was
just to me although it was to two thousand
other people.
But he said if the devil cannot get you caught up
in one of the biggies, and we in this room know
what the biggies are, right?
He will get you so caught up in doing good
that you will not have time for what's best.
It gives me goosebumps as I stand here almost
twenty-five years later
and say that to you. I read this last week.
If you think you are too busy not to pray,
you're right.
You're too busy.
Let me just stand before you this morning
as a woman convinced that we must become more intentional
by the way that we live our lives. We must be
more intentional in our relationship with God.
That is a whole other talk and I would love to
do that one for you. That is truly the passion
of my heart.
This is my second passion. We must become more
intentional in our relationships
with one another and that is revealing him to
each other.
I believe that we must allow the Lord
to so fill our hearts
that he has cut all of us out
that he floods in. Let me show that. Let me
just illustrate that with a verbal.
I told you I'm very visual. If I were doing
this for children today, and I don't know why I
don't do it
for adults, but if I were doing this for
children, I would have up here on probably this
front table
several different pie tins, okay? Just picture
that with me.
Pie tins. And in each pie tin there's a sponge.
If I pour water into the first sponge,
and if I press it, what's going to come out?
If I pour orange juice into the next one, and I
press it, what's going to come out?
Are you with me? Whatever goes in
is what comes out. This is the hard part.
At the moment of stress. At the moment
the pressure is applied is what comes out.
Now you probably are thinking I could have gone
for hours without finding the sun.
Let me just ask you. When you were pressed,
when you were stressed, what comes out?
Have you allowed yourself
to sit at the feet of the throne
for enough time that the Holy Spirit has so
flooded your heart
that even when you were pressed, it's not you
that comes out anymore.
He didn't fix you. He made you new.
So then his words would come out. So it would
be his reflection.
It would be him that people see. Even when
you're not pressed.
That's the point. I believe that we have
disconnected with each other
because we have become so stressed, and you
certainly don't want to hang out with other Christians
because you might get stressed around him and
call somebody a bad name or something.
You know? You might do something you didn't
want to do.
You just have to apologize. It's just safer for
me and my wife. We just hang out with my family.
They know I'm going to mess up, and they have
to live with me anyway.
If I just disconnect from some of you, then it
keeps me
from doing what I'm supposed to do.
Because I'm not who I've been called to be.
The power of connection starts with being so
filled with the Holy Spirit.
I said I wasn't going to go here, but here I am.
I believe that in the book of Ephesians, it
sort of maps that out.
It says that first of all, we are to be seated
at the throne of the Lord.
Then in the book of Ephesians, as you read on
through, then it says you walk with each other.
And then at the very end, it says take your
stand against Satan.
Now how many of us have messed this thing up,
and we've even left Satan out altogether?
Don't ever sit! That's a sign of laziness. You
keep busy and you walk with one another.
You keep busy and you stand against... We have
new Christians trying to stand against Satan
at the throne. This is a big thing for us in
our church.
We've had a major movement started about two
years ago
with people being baptized. We've had over 200
people being baptized in our church.
I mean, it is totally God. It is totally our teenagers.
It is really a God thing. What do you do with
these new people? Do you put them to work?
Well, some people say yes. Put them to work in
the church.
If y'all believe it's going to take people like us
and say, you know what? Why don't we study
together for a while? Why don't we walk
together for a while? And let me tell you about
sitting. Let me tell you about quietness. Let
me tell you about a few
things that you have to do that are so
different from the world. So different
from the world screaming at you to get busy and productivity!
I was taught as a child, and I know some of you
are too. My parents are incredible
Christian people. I mean, incredible. But I was taught
you didn't even sit down to watch TV unless you
had something to do in your hands.
You know? You saved all the folding towels for
when you
wanted to watch a 30 minute show. Are we
cross-stitched? You do
something. You have a product at the end of
every 30 minutes or an hour. That's good.
And that's when we have to step off.
Intentionally step off the treadmill and say,
that's not what I want to live my life.
I want to live my life. See, this is a struggle
for me. Have you caught
on? I mean, this is a struggle for me because I
like that go, go, go stuff.
You know? To sit in stillness so that I can
appropriately connect with other people. To become
so alive in Him that it is a Holy Spirit
bonding time when I am with others. I believe
that there
are five gifts that the Holy Spirit supplies us with.
And this is all through the Word. Jesus did it.
God did it
to the people in the Old Testament. And I
believe that it is still true today.
And if we want to follow God's pattern in
relationship and show
to ourselves that we are Holy Spirit
filled people, there are five ways that we
connect up.
They all start with an A. This is really easy.
To feel connected
all people need these things.
The very first one is they need to feel
accepted. Is that a biblical concept? Accepting
one another.
We just read about it. There's more passages
that we can read about it.
Accepting one another. I read this this last
week that in the role of
being connected with other people, to walk up
to someone and say,
I will pray for you every day for the rest of
my life. Until I die
your name will be on my prayer list. There's
nothing that you can do to get off my prayer list.
Listen to this next part.
If you become a prisoner in a federal penitentiary
or if you become president of the United
States, I want you to know
as long as I walk on the face of this earth,
you have someone who's praying for you.
You have someone who wants to see you win, and
I want to help you in any way I can.
That's acceptance.
No matter where you walk in life, you know that
I'm going to be praying
that the Lord is over you.
I went to church recently. I walked away from
his wife.
I left to live with a young woman he met on a
golf course. She was the girl that drove around
on a golf cart selling drinks.
He left to go and be with her.
I called him a couple of weeks later.
He said, before we hang up, I just need you to
know something.
I kind of think that you're a man in pain. He
said, oh yeah, you just won't even believe how
painful this is.
You know what? I'm praying for that pain to
stay in your heart.
I'm praying to smoke. It's good.
Because I pray that you're going to be so
uncomfortable until you start obeying him.
Because we love you.
And we accept you. We hate this behavior.
And he said, I can't ever change this now.
No one will accept me. I said, think of what I said.
But he wasn't interested in what I said. He was
interested in the way that we walked.
The eye to eye, the knee to knee. Do you get that?
I'm over at 10:45. Is that right?
Oh good. I had a little panic. Okay.
That's why we have few sinners coming back.
Because after they've done one of the biggies,
the acceptance is removed until they earn it back.
That is wrong.
We accept and love the person. Why?
Because God does. It's not what you feel like
doing. In fact,
it could even be what your daddy did to your mama.
And you could never accept that kind of
behavior. I cannot deal with that.
Listen again. God did not ever call you to be
comfortable with anything.
He called you to reflect him. And when someone
needs to
I know you've heard the story about the little
boy who was crying at night.
It's okay. Son, God is with you. But tonight,
tonight I just need God with skin. That's you.
That is you to the people in your church. You
are God with skin.
Now how are you going to act about it? How are
you going to treat them
when they come forward and say, biggie, is it a biggie?
Well, we'll just see if you keep coming. We'll
see how faithful you can be.
Would you want to come if no one looked at you
or talked to you or acted like you were Yuck?
What's the whole point in the New Testament
when we're told to accept when it's there?
Because you recognize and know as a sinner, as
a Christian,
the Lord without the blood of Jesus on you, you
stink. Do you know that?
You smell before him. When the Lord sniffed the earth
before the blood was all over you, you stink to him.
And then now when he smells the earth, he
smells you and you smell just like
his son. So he says, accepted,
ordained, saved. Not because of you, because of him.
Because of him. We must accept
one another. Ladies, I'm just going to say this
real up front
because I'm not just talking here about people
in church family. That even may be the easiest
of relationships.
I'm talking here about husbands and children
too. If we can get
husbands and moms to understand this concept with
children and with each other, to accept one another,
that doesn't mean we're cookie cutters.
It doesn't mean I only accept you when you do
what I do.
It doesn't mean I only accept you when you sing
what I want to sing.
Or when you watch my show. Or when you get
meaty. Let's codependent again.
We're talking about us accepting one another no
matter what.
Because you have a heart that sees them like
God does. The second A
is attention. Again, that eye to eye, knee to knee.
And let it never be said that out of the women
that are represented here today, that no one will
leave our church without eye contact again. But
we have it
set up. And we've talked about that. And people
know how important it is.
To look at people.
I've seen before you, and I struggle with this.
I love eye contact. When I have a problem with someone
when they've done something that I have a
problem with,
this is difficult for me.
Recently, we had a man in our church who
did something that I didn't think was a very
kind thing at all.
I thought it was rude. And two Sundays later,
it was just a light on my heart took up to him
and told him I'd been praying for him.
And he said, well, I know I kind of thought
you'd been praying for me, but I kind of don't
think that you
like me. I said, what? I mean, you're supposed
to say thank you
when somebody says I've been praying for you
and let's not get real deep here, you know? I
mean, I didn't say that
but that's not what I was thinking. I didn't
really want to go here. And he said,
I said, why would you think that? He said,
well, you really haven't done anything. You
just haven't
talked about me. Because with me, that's what I do.
People know you. And people know when you disapprove.
When you remove attention. People
crave attention. When we get on these
treadmills of life, we can't look at each other.
You're focusing on something else that's busy.
Have you ever tried to talk
on a treadmill?
This doesn't work, you know? We have to step off
and be intentional about our attention. And the
next one is appreciation.
Aren't these easy? These are so easy. We know
these things.
We know these things.
Willard Tape says a long time ago, I heard him
for the first time, he's probably still saying it,
but he talks about a story about
a woman that didn't have any compliments at all
in her life.
And she really did die from a broken heart.
Now there are lots of studies that are out now
that do show that
people do die from broken hearts.
People do die from broken hearts. By the way,
the latest
heart research says that it is not overactivity
that burdens your heart, that kills you. It is
what motivates your overactivity
that kills you. It's the stress
that kills you. It's not people who do too much.
It's people who do too much for the wrong reason.
But back to appreciation,
I made a promise to Malaya when she was born
that she would never
suffer from a broken heart. She may have a big head.
Because you see, big heads don't kill people,
do they?
But you know, we were brought up in a
generation, a lot of us, we don't compliment
each other too much.
Because you know, our job as Christians is to
keep people humble.
You know, don't tell them they're doing a good
job, because hey, that's the way to make them better.
You know, just dangle that carrot out there
where I might say you did a good job
someday, when you do it good enough, when I
think it's good enough someday.
You know, I don't know about that. You should
talk about this professionally for just a minute.
... critiques me or says something negative
about me. It doesn't make me do better.
But what makes me better is when she says, good
job, and I go, I can be better than that.
I can be better. I can even be better. When we appreciate
each other as mentors, as women go, I really
like the way that you take care of your children.
It's going to be taking care of their children
even better the next day.
That's what we do. That's the way we're made.
When somebody says,
I appreciate the way that I see the Spirit of
God living in you.
Just going to make sure they spend extra time
to get the Spirit tomorrow.
The next A is affirmation. Affirmation.
God loves you no matter what. That quote we did
at the beginning.
No matter what. There are so many people in our
churches that do believe
that because of something that they have done
in their past, it's made God's love be removed
from them. They will spend the rest of their
life trying to earn it back. That is Satan's life.
God's love is not removed from his people.
God is love. That is the affirmation.
The way that we do this in our women's
ministry, and sometimes in our churches,
I already told you about parenting. I can't
wait to see what the Lord is going to do with you.
I can't wait to see you Sunday.
And to see how the Lord is going to work this
one out for you. We affirm them as people.
We affirm them not just as people, but the Holy
Spirit is in them and giving them a gift.
And the last one is the gift of affection. Affection.
There is so much
rich brain research out right now about the power
that is in the human touch. For those of you
that came into this room
this morning and you hugged someone as you were
walking in or whatever, do you know what happened?
It made you listen better. Because it lights up
your brain.
It sends your brain the chemicals that it needs
to say, wake up.
Now when we pray in our group, we
always hold hands. We touch.
Now my husband and I do that too, and there's
times that we may see how lightly we can touch.
There's a little problem going on. We might
really touch and there's a big problem going on.
But you know, just touch. The power that is in
the touch.
It still says, I accept you. That is one of the
things that is so fascinating to me about Jesus.
That when he walked by people, he didn't just
say, get on up,
you're healed. He touched them. He touched the people
who hadn't been touched. He touched the people
that other people thought
were dirty people. But how did he show that he
believed in them?
I was touched. Do you know how many of our children
once they hit eleven or twelve, don't get
touched? Could that be why we have children
that struggle with doing some really
inappropriate things to get touched?
Boy, we could go there for a while, couldn't we?
But I believe that the more that we do these
five things
in our church families, the healthier that we
will be. Because see, I believe
that it is the gift of the blessing. If you
have not read Gary Smalley, John Trent's book,
The Blessing,
you've got to get it. It's the best of the best.
If you want the workbook, get the workbook.
It is an incredible journey. But some of us did not
get these five things growing up. I was so
blessed to live in a home that did.
But I recognize that there are people that I
cross paths with every day
all the time that did not get these growing up.
And they're
looking for them. This is what God has supplied
for us.
This is what he did for Adam at the very
beginning. It's all through the
testament. It's all through Jesus' walk. And we
want to walk
like Jesus did. And we want to see people
like he sees. Like he sees people.
Question for you, I'll ask you the question
that I just answered on my project.
Do you believe that the group process, meaning church,
enhances individual spiritual growth?
Do you believe that it does? Are you more in depth
in your relationship with God because of your
church family today?
If not,
then what do we need to do to fix that? Because
you see, that is a Biblical principle.
The group process is what holds us to some things.
And I believe there are three major ways that
it does. I really believe
that there's five, but just for time this
morning I'm going to go down to three. I'll
tell you the other
two, but I'm not going to address them. It is a
whole other retreat almost.
That is the power of prayer and Bible study.
Groups hold you to that.
There's three that I want to talk about in
relationships. Number one,
we've already covered, and that's the concept
of mentoring relationships. It's a very
Biblical principle.
We've gone through that one. But the next two
that I want to talk about for just a
few minutes left this morning is one of accountability.
Accountability is really hot buzzword right now.
Mostly since promise keepers, I'll be real
honest with you, the men decided
they need to be more accountable, and I agree
with that too. We have men that need to be more accountable.
We have women that need to be more accountable.
This was not in the Church of Christ, this was
just a
Youth Counselors Conference period in Atlanta
several years ago, and you may have heard this,
but one hotel reported, the hotel that had that
conference in Atlanta,
reported there was more pornography seen in
that weekend with youth ministers.
And they had ever had recorded in the history
of that hotel in one weekend.
That is just shocking to me.
It is shocking to me.
We as God's people must hold one another accountable.
If you know that that is a problem for you, you
need to do something about it.
You have those channels blocked from your room.
You call another minister.
You get together with them. Now we're talking
to men, but how can we as women
hold one another accountable? What does it mean
to be accountable?
You see, accountability has a little bit of a
negative connotation to it, and we think it's just
saying, well, how are you doing with that sin?
And that's not really it for us,
is it? Accountability is walking the road together.
It's walking the road and asking, oh, my 20
year old taught me this.
When I call him now, always before I call him,
because he says this to me at the end of conversations,
Mom, how's your relationship with God going?
The first time he asked me, I thought, Mom, you
kids know your business, buddy.
I can't believe he asked me that. I didn't say that.
I fumbled around for a minute. But that was
just such a shocker
to be asked by someone younger than me. Or was
it just to be asked?
How's your relationship with God going? You
know that's the intimate part of your heart,
isn't it?
But isn't that something, if we want to be more
intentional about it, that we want to talk about
more? How is your relationship with God going?
How's it going?
What are you doing to make it better? You see,
I can get up here this morning
and we can get a chart up here that can tell me
everything that you struggle in your
relationship with God with.
And we can do that, can't we? I mean, we go
through those struggles. What are you going to
do about it?
Well, I don't know. I kind of thought God made
you something about it, you know?
But you see, it's God, like we talked about
already, right there
over you, providing every answer for you.
What we must do is make a determination to
intentionally walk in obedience
more. To do what he says to do.
What does it mean to be accountable? Walking
the road together
and keeping an eye out for one another.
Being in tune when things are hurting.
Someone once said, I think it's Gail MacDonald,
Gordon MacDonald's wife, he's a real popular
Christian author, and she did a magazine
article one time, and I believe it's her, that said
we struggle in our churches today because
good friends stay silent while acquaintances
confront. Why do good friends stay silent,
what do you think? I believe it is because we
value our relationship with
one another more than we value our relationship
with God.
I value if I'm going to make you mad and make
you not like me. Who knows? God may want to use
me someday
in bringing you back. So we just never mention
it at all. How many people
in our churches have a little inkling about an
affair but no proof
before it comes out?
How many of us have watched teenagers, what we
call, just go down the tubes,
we saw it coming, but we didn't do anything
until we got to the bottom of the tube.
Calling one another accountable is just kind of checking
with each other, you know, how you doing? I
kind of feel like you've been feeling
bad. Kind of get some non-verbal cues from you.
And I don't know if you ever had one of those
experiences, but I have.
Where someone saw me doing that and came and
talked to me and
out bonded our relationship even more.
It's a bonding experience, but even if it's
not, even if it's
not, let's just say it doesn't work for you
that way. To hold
one another accountable means when we get so
busy like the little sheep in the
pasture, just nibble, nibble, nibble, nibble,
and we're nibbling all over the grass,
but forget to look up at the shepherd. It's
when other sheep
come beside you and remind you who the shepherd is.
You must look up to him. You must see him. That
is holding each other
accountable, picking our heads up, looking at
the Lord. And the next one's the one I want to
talk about
is forgiveness. Forgiveness.
We must offer forgiveness. We must teach
people, model, yes to model something. It means
you had to have done it yourself
first. I know that. You see, I believe that
forgiveness is one thing that we really
struggle with in our churches. And the reason
that we
struggle with it in our churches is because we
struggle with it as individuals.
Our human brain is not set up to forget. And someone
years ago coined that little phrase of forgive
and forget.
And so since we find it impossible to forget,
then hey, we must find it impossible to forgive too.
Can you forget? The way that I picture it,
I'm not real computer savvy, but I know this
much that my computer has a screen saver.
Do you know what that means? And the computer
has a little mouse.
And whenever my computer sits for just a
minute, what comes up?
It's a saver. But what do I do to get the saver
off? I just wiggle that little mouse and it's gone.
And my brain is like, see, I have some memories
from my past.
Some things that were done to me, some things
that I did,
I don't want to think about. But
when I'm on that treadmill and I'm not being
intentional about thoughts, and my screen saver
comes up on my brain,
those thoughts replay again for me. Maybe
something that my husband did. Maybe something
that my children did. Maybe something for my
childhood. Maybe something that I did that I
cannot believe I did.
Something that I said. I just kick myself and
beat myself up
every time it comes up. What do you do with that?
You see, it's intentional thoughts too. You wiggle
your mouse. Now hang with me.
Okay, this was when this came to me. Some of
you have heard me tell this story before, but
it's just the best way I know to
illustrate it. In the 70's, I began having my children,
late 70's. Jenny was born in 78, and
I nursed. She nursed every day at 2:00.
It just so happened. It was not my fault.
General Hospital came on.
Luke and Laura. You know. Have you been there?
Anyone in here know Luke and Laura?
Oh, yeah. I was obsessed with Luke and Laura. I
dreamed about them.
I thought about them. I went in together. Those
of you that don't know, Luke, Rape, Laura,
Laura, and Laura Don't Love Luke,
It was a real weird story, but Laura was
married to Scotty, and I didn't want to be
married to Scotty anymore. I wanted her with Luke.
And then all of a sudden, I did my Devo at 130.
So I was doing my Devo, and I was reading my
Bible, and all of a sudden I was reading in Philippians.
It says, think on these things.
Things that are lovely and pure. Luke and Laura
are lovely and pure.
Think on these things.
I came to the conclusion after a lot of
thinking, about thinking,
who's in charge of my thoughts? Me.
I didn't want to be. It was easy just thinking
about whatever popped into my brain, you know?
Just thinking about things.
What do you think about? Just things.
And I try not to do that anymore because I
still have those screensavers.
I still have moments of thinking things I don't
want to think.
Thinking them is not the problem.
Dwelling on them, camping there, and building a
tent to protect them is the problem.
There are some things that have been done in my
life I will not forget.
What I give up, what forgiveness means is not
forgiving and forgetting.
Forgiveness means I release my right to have
pain over that.
I release my right to the pain.
I will give the pain up, even if it's something
that I did.
The only way that I can do this in my own life,
this is just what works for me.
We're just doing a little brainstorming here, okay?
This may or may not work for you, but I do
believe in brainstorming with other Christians
so that if you know how it works for me then
maybe you can take this idea
and branch off of it and make it work for you.
The only way that I can do this is when those
thoughts have been particularly burdensome.
On Sunday morning when we're doing the Lord's
Supper and I take the fruit of the vine
and I'm thinking about the cross, I picture
those scenes that are in my screensaver
going down the hill and they have blood all
over them.
They have blood all over them and they're
washed in the blood of Jesus.
You see, I believe that that is one reason with
myself and I believe that's one reason with
some of you
that we struggle with walking in the light
because we don't think we're worthy of the light.
The darkness is for us because we made some
dark choices.
That is Satan's lie to you because God made you
to walk in light, his light.
What do you do to become worthy of that light? Nothing.
You just claim him, you're clothed in the blood
of Jesus.
Let me give you an illustration of that. I've
alluded to it a couple of times.
It gets kind of confusing, hang with me.
There's two mama sheep, Sheep A, sheep B. They
both have babies.
This mama's baby dies, this mama dies.
Here we have a mama and a baby. They don't
belong together.
This mama smells the baby and will not let her nurse.
It doesn't smell right.
So the shepherd had an idea and he took this
baby and cut it open
and washed the other baby in this one's blood.
Are you with me?
And then when the mama sheep smells the other
baby, it smells like her own child.
She accepts and she affirms, she touches, she
nourishes, she nurtures.
That's how it is with God with us.
Pre-Christian, pre-God, pre-Christ in our lives.
When God smelled you, you were a stench.
You were stinky to him.
No matter how good you tried to look, no matter
how good you tried to act,
no matter how good you covered what was in your heart.
God saw your heart and he said, stink.
That's why we wear the blood of Jesus so that
we smell like Jesus to God.
And he accepts you at that point as his very own,
no matter what you've ever done, no matter what
was ever done to you.
No matter what.
Some people struggle with forgiveness because
of this.
We think that forgiveness is condoning and it's not.
I hate the behavior, but I will forgive and
release my light to the pain over your behavior.
Something else that we struggle with is
thinking that forgiveness and reconciliation
are the same.
Hang with me on this one. Reconciliation takes two.
There will be some relationships in my life
that will never reconcile.
They will never reconcile.
Does that mean I can still forgive?
Yes. Does the other person have to say they're sorry?
Visit with me after class. I'll be glad to
visit with you on this one.
But no, it does not.
You see, whenever I choose not to forgive
someone, and forgiveness is a choice.
This is a choice.
You know I was going to say that as therapists,
didn't you?
That's a choice. We choose the behavior.
People do what they want to do.
So if you choose, if you want to forgive, then
do it.
Make that choice.
Make that choice to forgive the behavior.
Resentment, which is the opposite of
forgiveness, is like taking poison yourself.
I've heard so many people say this. This is so true.
And waiting for the other person to die.
Isn't that true?
You're killing yourself.
The other person, think about the terminology
that we use.
He's a pain in my neck.
Whose neck is he a pain in?
Really gives me a headache. Who has a headache?
Gets under my skin. Whose skin feels sunny?
The terminology that we use is very indicative
of our hearts.
They don't know what they did.
They may not even care what they did.
It doesn't bother them at all.
Forgiveness is your job.
It's a forgiven one.
It is your job to forgive other people.
Oh, somebody sitting there thinking, oh, but
Beverly, you just don't know what they did to me.
You're right, I don't.
I have no clue what they've done to you.
But again, going back to premise number one,
I believe the Word of God is truth.
And God said, do it.
God said, forgive one another.
Forgive one another.
You are never, I believe, never more like God
than when we practice this very thing. Forgiveness.
We faithfully forgive one another.
Now, again, I know that in a group this size,
there's possibly someone who's struggling with
something that you don't know how to get rid of.
Last week, I was visiting with a man after
church, and he said,
I mean, this man is older, 50, 60-ish, OK?
But he came to me and said, I really struggle
with relationship with my mom.
She doesn't talk to me or talk to mine.
He had a little grandbaby that died.
Never acknowledged the grandbaby that died.
It was her great-grandchild.
I said, well, you know, chances are it's not
going to be reconciled.
He said, I don't want to reconcile it.
I don't know what to do with my heart.
It is so hard to pray with this problem in
front of me.
And I believe that when Peter said, be
self-controlled so that you can pray,
you make good choices so that you can become
into a prayerful state.
There's never a time that I don't want to pray
more than when I'm so upset with someone
and I'm struggling with forgiveness.
But I gave him this little assignment, and I
believe that it works.
I do want to tell you upfront that you cannot
do it alone.
So I will volunteer today to be your friend to
walk through this.
Or there may be other people in your church
that will walk through.
Sometimes it takes multiples of people.
Because I believe that we struggle as adults
and we don't do things physically.
And we just try to do them in our minds.
And it's so hard to do them in our minds
because we forget that they've happened.
You understand what I'm saying?
I believe that we need to write a letter to the
person who has hurt us
or the group of people.
For some of you, it may be a church if your
husband was a minister.
I visit with ministers' wives a lot that
struggle with that.
But you write a letter that they will never see.
But you pour out everything that you've ever
wanted to say in your heart.
You tell them exactly all the pain that they
have brought to you.
And you flood it. Now listen to me carefully.
If this is big enough, you are not going to be
able to do that writing alone.
You're going to want to quit. You're not going
to want to know where to start.
So you're going to have people praying over you
at the very moment that you are doing the writing.
Either in your house, outside of the room, not
with you, not where they'll ever see what you write.
Or at their homes, however it works best for you.
But you find people that will pray over you
while you're writing.
And they will not let you quit.
They will remind you, you can do this. You can
do this.
And then once the letter is written, you tear
it up.
Because you need to physically understand that
that is trash behavior.
If it's something that you did and you're
struggling with it, trash.
If it's something that was done to you, trash.
And then you put it in a baggie.
And you've got two choices at this point.
If it's not a big deal for you, go ahead and
throw it away.
But every time that screensaver comes up,
remember that you don't think about God's trash.
Because that's trash that you gave to God.
Or you may want to put it in a prominent place
in your home if you're struggling with thinking
about it a lot.
Wherever, like on your cardboard dash, if
you're stuck in traffic a lot, you may want to
put it there.
To remind yourself every time that comes up, I
don't think about trash.
That's God's trash.
I'm not going back there.
God has washed me new. God has made me new.
We have no trouble singing about it, do we?
Make me new, Lord Jesus, make me new.
But sometimes we have trouble believing that
we're new.
Because we still hang on to old garbage.
And then one day you will be able to throw it away.
Now the reason you have to tear that.
You see, my friend had written the letter years ago.
Another counselor told him to do that.
But he saved it and he put it in his underwear drawer.
And then he pulled it out every so often to
revisit it.
What is that doing?
Revisiting the pain.
There's nothing more than etching it, seeing
any more in your brain.
It's validating that. That it's something worth keeping.
That's a memento.
That is trash.
The Jewish people had no problem doing it.
They went beside the flowing stream of water
once a year,
emptied their pockets out, and read from Malachi,
as far as the east is from the west.
So my sin is removed from me.
They emptied their pockets of all of the trash
that they had stored up there.
You know that house coat pocket? You know that one?
Clean X-Fracers, all that stuff.
Emptied it out. It has washed down river.
Even the stuff you didn't know was there.
It's washed in the blood of Jesus.
It's washed in the blood of the Lord to you.
You see, I believe that it is by our
forgiveness level
that we make a statement to the people in our world,
the people that we long to connect with,
and what you really believe about God.
It's not what you say.
It's not always how faithful your church
attendant is.
Do you believe that God is powerful enough
to forgive you of everything that you've ever done?
Do we have to act on it?
Do we have to believe that we are forgiven?
Do you believe that he's powerful enough
to forgive your husband of everything he's ever done?
The people in your church, even that man
that had the affair and hurt your best friend
so badly,
is God powerful enough to forgive him? Yes.
God is powerful.
And he
has no trouble forgiving you
and never remembering it again.
That's a biblical concept.
And if we are called to act like God to the
people in our world,
and that's what we're called to do,
truth, that is truth.
That is truth.
I had so much more that I wanted to go over
with you today,
but we'll just save it for another time.
I want to close with this thought.
I have two thoughts I want to close with.
I know that we're almost out of time, but give
me about 30 seconds.
Well, maybe 45 seconds. We can do it.
I believe in this room this morning
that we have people
that God has put a bow right on top of your head.
And that he is longing
for someone to open your heart.
That you are a gift package
from God to the people in your world.
He wants you to stop long enough
so they can open you.
And see the beautiful heart that he has created
within you.
I also believe that we have to stop
our journey from time to time.
And maybe open a gift package
that was put right in our way.
Let me just remind you of the story with Ruth
and Naomi.
In a little verse, I think it's in chapter 2,
it says that as it turned out,
Ruth fell in Boaz's field.
Now I ask you, was that as it turned out? Never.
God tripped her, don't you think?
God pushed her right over there in Boaz's field.
God may be pushing you
somewhere this morning into someone's field.
I don't want you to miss it
by not being intentional.
I'm going to make this story
the shortest I've ever told this story,
but you've got to hear it. And if you've heard
me speak before,
you've probably already heard it. I just ask
you to please endure it again.
It's a powerful story to me.
My son, Joshua, he's the only one
I've told stories about today, isn't he?
You'll have to hear me again so you can hear
Jenny and Thomas
and stories because they're all good.
But Joshua has this one.
He needs to hear it on tape. He teases me
because it happened so long ago and my memory
kind of fails me
from time to time that he might not even
recognize this story.
But I think he might.
Joshua was an athlete.
Still is an athlete.
And started varsity as a sophomore.
And that brought some real
peculiar problems
for him that he wasn't used to dealing with.
Some things that we weren't
used to dealing with and some things that were
not appropriate
to not be practiced in our home.
We struggled with Josh
and we prayed over Josh for that whole sophomore year.
Prayed and prayed and prayed.
His junior year, football started again and he was
starting quarterback for our team.
We have kind of a new high school and it was
the first time
that our high school team had ever made the playoff.
No, we made the playoff and we hadn't won a
playoff game.
We won. We won playoff games. We really did.
And then one night we played in Texas Stadium
and I mean we got stomped
of course we can. I mean they were men.
Men out there playing in football.
And it was horrible. Josh couldn't move the ball
one yard one way or another. My mother standing
up and saying,
way to go good try. I was going, damn it was awful.
That's just my mother.
But Josh
the next morning, well he had a little concussion
that night. You know the trainer says,
you know you don't need to watch him and if he
can't wake up
you're not going to get him to the hospital. I
said, I think we will.
I can't imagine him not waking
up and not getting him to the hospital. But
thanks for sharing.
And so the next
morning Josh goes forward at church.
And I don't know what it's like in your church.
But at our church we don't just give the
microphone to
anybody. You know. And my husband's like,
what about your concussion?
Are you sure you feel like this? And Josh,
daddy I have something
I really need to share. We have a church
of about seven or eight hundred people. So Josh
goes forward
that morning and shares the story.
Last night we played in Texas Stadium
and the Dallas Cowboys playing. We were at the
top of the tunnel.
At the top of the tunnel it was an unbelievable
experience because it was very dark.
And we couldn't hear anyone.
We couldn't hear any cheering.
We couldn't hear the band.
And so I looked at my coaches and I said, coach
are you sure it's time?
I mean is this the time?
Is this where we're supposed to be right now?
And the coach is like, yes.
Josh you get with this team
and you march.
You get ready. You know how football boys do.
If you've been to high school
football games you know they get in this march together.
They're in this rhythm. They're doing the beat
on their
pads. We're doing all this and coming out.
And Josh said, as we exited the tunnel
I saw
the brightest light I had ever seen
in my whole life.
And as I looked around the stadium
there were signs with my
name on them.
There was a sign with my name.
People were cheering my name.
And so I dedicate myself
this day as I walk
through the dark tunnel of life.
And will again I'm sure.
But I will always
march with my team
where I know that the light of Heaven
will be someday.
I cannot wait to get to
Heaven and to see
the signs that the great cloud of witnesses are
making this day I believe
with your name on them.
And when you get to Heaven
and you see
your name in lights
and you hear people
cheering that you've made it there.
Is that not going to be an incredible
moment for your journey?
I'm here to tell you there will be days
and there will be days, there will be times in
your life
that things will be dark.
Things will be dark.
But you keep marching with your team
with your people you are connected to
where you know the light of Heaven will be.
And it will be the most incredible
experience that you can
even fathom.
Your imagination is not that good
at how good Heaven will be.
So no matter what
we will walk as a team
with the beat. We will remind one another
this is where the game is.
This is where it starts.
This way. This is the way to Heaven.
And we will walk
toward Heaven. Let's pray.
If you're comfortable, and then again
I just say that to be nice, even if you're not
if you want to just grab a hand of the person
beside you
we're going to have some touch power
here, okay?
Lord we love you so
very much. We just never want to talk
to you that we don't say that again to remind ourselves
of who we live for.
Because of our intense love for you.
I thank you for the things in your
word that you've hidden away.
That we can learn so much from about how to act
how to live and Lord help us to live
like you want us to with each other.
Draw us
to your throne
alone, and then help us
to remind other people how to get there too.
Help us to truly
be ready that day when we get our crowns
and tie them all at your feet to be able to sing
with one heart in unison
to sing your praises because
we practice them so well here on earth.
Lord help us to always walk
no matter what happens in our lives.
Help us to always walk straight into your arms.
I thank you so much for the power
that happens when Christians get together.
Let's talk about you.
Help us to be transformed
a little more like you this day.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
I thank you so very much
for being here.