No one is meant to be a mere fixture
in a church meeting,
just like a piece of the furniture,
a spectator,
a consumer.
You know, as Americans we develop
kind of naturally to fall into
this consumer mentality,
where we in the case of a church
or a congregation,
we arrive, we hear a sermon,
and then we go home
and there's no thought about:
what can I do to serve?
What can I do to help?
It's a consumer type of mentality.
I'm there to be fed.
I'm there to be cared for.
And you'd be surprised how many people
leave churches in bad ways
because they think that they're not
being cared for
or they're not being fed
and it's all about them.
But I say beware of negligence.
Let yourself be served by God.
You don't have to be able to fill a pulpit like this
or have a grand ministry
to be used by God in the church,
to be gifted to be used by God in the church.
Spurgeon said, as only he can say things,
he said, "Good wheat grows in little fields."
In Missouri, we've got little fields.
Here you've got ranches
that take up a whole mile.
Good wheat can grow in little fields.
He says, "Little pigeons can carry great messages."
And you know, in the past history
of the world wars,
there were wars that were turned around
on the message received by a carrier pigeon.
Little pigeons can carry great messages.
He says, "Even a little dog
can bark at a thief and wake up the master
and save the house."
And it's true.
A spark is a fire.
And a sentence with truth has heaven in it.
Now, the way our congregation works -
it might not fit in here in San Antonio,
but we have what's called
an open-participatory type of a meeting
in which during the song singing
anyone can offer a comment on a verse
or give a brief word, a testimony,
or something they read in a book.
And you would be surprised -
maybe you wouldn't be -
I was surprised at how frequently
those little interjections
that the Spirit moves on a person to say
have turned out to be more important
in my estimation than anything I said
for the whole 45 minutes I preached.
God uses people that way.
And we ought to let ourselves be used by God.
Serve the church.
Serve God. Serve the church.
The household of faith.
We're told to do good to them.
I was having a conversation
around the table with Kenny Lee
over at Tony's house.
I asked him where he saw himself in the future.
He just made a comment off the cuff
about how he just wanted to
through trial and error figure out
what God's gift is for him
and try and use it in the church
however he could.
That fits right here.
Yesterday, I got a text from Raoul
and he wanted to know
what my sermon notes might be
because he's going to try and interpret it
to the Spanish-speaking ones that are here
and I thought there is a perfect example.
Here is someone who's been gifted.
He's got something to do
and he's anxious to do it,
desiring to do it.
Regretfully I had to decline
because my notes are all in hard copies
and he probably couldn't make heads or tails of them anyway.
But I like the attitude there -
an attitude of serving,
wanting to serve.
Romans 12, Paul said,
"All the members don't have the same function."
He said, "We have gifts that differ
according to the grace given us."
But the implication is everyone -
not just apostles.
In fact, he says, "Each of us
is to exercise them accordingly."
And he gives just a few examples.
He says, "If service, in his serving."
And that word literally just means helping.
Do you realize you could be gifted
just to help people?
When Tony went to move down here
to San Antonio,
Matthew McDonnell took time off,
took his own vehicle,
drove from San Antonio
all the way to Sedalia,
so that we could load up Tony's belongings,
hook up a trailer on the back,
and three days later, two days later,
he turned around, drove all the way back
to San Antonio,
gave Tony the service of moving here.
Now you see, some might say -
we have a tendency to overlook those things
as not being gifts of the Spirit,
but you might be surprised,
there's something that you can do,
something you can help with,
and it might just be that the Holy Spirit
has gifted you that way.
That's serving.