Transcript - Menlo Park Presbyterian Church

Menlo Park Presbyterian Church
950 Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 650-323-8600
Series: Unstuck
March 29, 2015
“Get Out”
John Ortberg
Well, I want to say hi and happy Palm Sunday weekend to everybody in this room and everybody in San
Jose and everybody at the Café and at San Mateo and at Mountain View and at the secret location we're
coming to next. We haven't landed on it yet, but we're talking and praying and studying and super excited,
so stay tuned.
I want to start this message by reading the last of the 12 steps we've been looking at together. It goes like
this. "Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we sought to carry this message to others
and to practice these principles in all of our affairs." That leads to the great question of this message. What
message are you carrying? Everybody carries a message by our body language and our words, by how we
spend our time and our money, by how we treat people, by what makes us smile, what makes us mad,
what makes us cry.
On purpose or by accident, for better or for worse, everybody is carrying a message. A lot of the time, it's
not the one we thought we were carrying. There is a designer named Clif Dickens who has created ads for
companies that he says carry their actual real messages. I thought I would show you a few. Take a look at
the screens.
Lays: flavored air. The next one. Starbucks: we serve you decaf if you're rude. Hallmark: when you care
enough to give a card mass produced by a corporation. Old Spice: smell like Grandpa. I like that one.
WebMD: convince yourself you have a terminal illness. Harley Davidson: here for you during that midlife
crisis. Victoria's Secret: lowering a woman's self-esteem since 1977.
Anyway, the point of it is everybody is carrying a message, and it may not be the one you think you're
carrying. It could be, "Life is a competition." It could be, "I'm a victim. You have to save me." It could be,
"Image is everything." It could be, "Stay thirsty, my friends." What message would you like to carry? The
twelfth step is all about this.
It says, "Having had a spiritual awakening, coming alive to God and his power and presence in my life as
a result of these steps, we sought to carry this message to others." Now where did that idea come from?
Well, it came from Jesus. At the end of his time on earth, even though his disciples still had doubts, were
very imperfect, we're told Jesus undeterred went right ahead and gave his charge.
"God authorized and commanded me to commission you to go out and train everyone you meet far and
near in this way of life, marking them by baptism." Jesus said to his followers, "I will give you a message
worth carrying. As a result of this spiritual awakening that you've had through me, through Jesus, you can
carry the message to other people that a living God changes lives and gives people hope."
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I've told you before about how my favorite poet is Dr. Seuss, and my favorite book of his is,
"Congratulations! Today is your day! You're off to great places. You're off and away. You have brains in
your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. Oh the places
you'll go."
I want to talk to you about why you might want to consider seeking to carry this message and two real
simple ways about how we actually carry the message. I want to start with the why because it's hugely
important. We want to carry the message about the love of God through Jesus to people, but the reason
you need to be a message-carrier is not the reason that is often talked about in churches.
When AA was getting started, Bill W. had been going through these steps we have been learning about.
He did all of this with a little Christian community called the Oxford Group. They were a part of a church,
Calvary Episcopal Church in New York with a pastor called Sam Shoemaker who introduced Bill W. to
Jesus. Bill W. did what we all have been learning about week by week.
He admitted his life was unmanageable, and he was powerless. He came to believe that a power greater
than himself could restore him to sanity. He turned his life and his will over to the care of God, did a
fearless and searching moral inventory, admitted to God, himself, and another human being the exact
nature of his wrongs, became willing to make amends, and made amends.
After going through all the steps, he still had one more discovery to make, which would be the difference
between life and death. Bill was at a hotel in Akron, Ohio, He had been seeking to follow God for some
time, had been sober for some time, but he was lonely. It was the day before Mother's Day, and his own
mom had deserted him decades earlier.
He stood in this hotel lobby, and there was a bar at one end. In his loneliness and his self-pity, he said,
"Oh God, I'm going to get drunk." He panicked because he knew this meant death. He knew if this new
spiritual pathway did not work for him, he had no hope. One thought came to his mind. It's the strangest
thing. The thought that came was, "I need another alcoholic. I need to find another alcoholic. I have to tell
my story to another drunk. I have to find somebody who needs the help I need."
He ended up finding through a church actually another alcoholic, a hopeless drunk who became known as
Dr. Bob. Bill W. went to see him and stayed with him for hours, telling him his story. As it happens, Dr.
Bob listened to him, the amazing journey he began to go on, and Dr. Bob met the living God. Dr. Bob got
saved, and with the two of them, Bill W. and Dr. Bob, Alcoholics Anonymous got born. It's dated June
10, 1935.
Here's the thing… Bill W. didn't go to talk to Dr. Bob in order to save Dr. Bob. Bill W. carried the
message because if he didn't do that, he would get drunk, and he would die. Now it was enormously
helpful. Dr. Bob needed it, but Bill W. needed to carry it for him. Here's the thing. He found this strange
dynamic. This is where we all come in.
When I carry the message, when I find somebody else to whom I can tell my story, when I find another
person who has a need where I might be able to help them, something happens inside of me. I get a little
less self-absorbed. My mind focuses more on how I can serve somebody else and a little less on my own
life and my unfulfilled demands and desires. I discover this joy that there is meaning and purpose in my
life that gives me energy beyond myself. I have the dignity and even the thrill of being used by God.
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I find this strange thing. If I focus inward on me, I do worse, but if I focus outward on others, I do better.
This is true for individuals. It's true for churches. I carry the message to others not because they're weak
and I'm strong, not because I'm right and they're wrong. I do it because there is no healing without
helping. If I do not carry the message to other people who are on the outside, it will lose its aliveness for
me on the inside, so I carry the message. We carry the message.
We have this strange resistance to carrying the message. Over and over, when God comes to people in the
Bible… "Moses, I want you to carry the message." People resist. I think in all of the Bible, maybe the
patron saint of resistance to carrying the message was a prophet by the name of Jonah. Does anybody here
remember Jonah? One day, the word of the Lord came to Jonah. "Could you, would you go to preach?
Could you, would you go to reach the people in Assyria for you fit my criteria?"
Jonah said to the Lord, "I would not go there in a boat. I would not go there in a float. I would not go there
in a gale. I would not go there in a whale. I do not like the people there. If they all died, I would not care. I
will not go to that great town. I'd rather choke. I'd rather drown. I will not go by land or sea, so stop this
talk, and let me be." That's the book of Jonah in a nutshell.
A writer actually by the name of Abraham Maslow, a brilliant guy, wrote about what he called the Jonah
complex, that we all have this strange tendency to avoid our calling, to evade our destiny. See, you were
born to carry a message. We have this way of saying, "Nope, I'd rather not." That's the Jonah complex. It
happens to people, and it happens to churches, but not here, not you, not me, not us. I want to make this
twelfth step super simple for all of us to do, and it involves just two activities, and you can do them today,
and I can do them today. The first activity is this as we carry the message to other people…
1. Talk to people about the love of God. It's that simple. Talk to people about the love of God. Talk to
people in your home. Talk to people in your neighborhood. Talk to people at your work or at your school.
Just talk to people without God. Now, I know. Especially in the Bay Area where so many people can be
so suspicious about religion and churches and faith, this can sound daunting.
Sometimes people don't do it because they feel inadequate. I know. Folks feel like, "Somebody might ask
me a question about God that I cannot answer," or, "I'm just not trained appropriately to talk to other
people about God." Here's the thing. You do not have to be. You know all you need to know right now.
I was thinking this past week if somebody were to ask you, "What's the best sermon that has ever been
preached?" what would you say? At all of our venues, if you don't mind, right now, turn to the person next
to you. What is the best sermon of all time? What would you say? Turn to the person next to you and just
see what their guess is. Does anybody have any idea? The Sermon on the Mount is actually the one I was
thinking about. It's in the Bible. You didn't hear that here, by the way.
What's the worst sermon that has ever been preached? Did you hear that one here? I'll tell you my
candidate for the worst sermon that has ever been preached. It also is in the Bible. I think this may be the
worst sermon of all time, and it's from the book of Jonah. God calls Jonah to preach to the city of
Nineveh. Now, Nineveh is the capital of Assyria. It wasn't part of Israel, so the people who live there
know nothing about God. They don't have the Bible. They don't even have the Ten Commandments.
They don't even know God's name, so this is going to be a tough assignment to preach to Nineveh. Jonah
is going to have to craft a masterpiece to introduce people who don't know anything about God to God.
Look at what the Bible says. "Jonah began by going a day's journey into the city, proclaiming…" Now,
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here's the sermon. "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown." The end. That is not a great
sermon. There is no introduction. There is nothing practical, no application. It doesn't even mention the
word God. Did you notice that? "In 40 days, you're all toast." That's his sermon.
Look at the results in the next verse. "The Ninevites believed God." The Ninevites repented. The
Ninevites changed their lives. It turns out that what somebody else is ready to hear matters more than
what you are ready to say. It turns out that it's better to have an inadequate message about a glorious God
than a glorious message about an inadequate God. It turns out that it is what God does with the words
after they leave your lips and before they hit the other person's ear that counts.
But we just feel like, "I don't know what to say. I haven't been trained." It doesn't matter. God is at work.
See, here's the deal. We don't do this. We don't carry the message by ourselves. God is involved when we
start talking about him. We have a spiritual awakening because we're actually experiencing the power and
the presence of God in our lives, and we just tell our stories.
Even more than inadequacy, I can tell you from experience the biggest barrier to talking to people about
God is fear. Again, I know. I experience this. I hear this from folks all the time. "I'm afraid of what might
happen. I would talk to people about God, but I'm afraid." Let's think about this for a moment. Let's think
about this. Whenever you're facing a fear, a super helpful question to ask is, "What's the worst that can
happen? If I'm afraid of something, what's the worst that can happen?"
Now, in previous eras, when other followers of Jesus would talk about God (these are like our brothers
and sisters if you're a follower of Jesus) even though they got ridiculed, rejected, disowned… Paul got
arrested, imprisoned, stoned, shipwrecked, eventually martyred. John the Baptist lost his head. James and
his brother John got beaten and counted themselves honored to be considered worthy to suffer for the
name of Jesus throughout the centuries.
People, real people, flesh-and-blood people no braver than you or me have been persecuted for talking
about him, have lost their capacity to make a living. They've had their possessions stolen. They've had
their houses burned. This goes on in our world. They have lost their citizenship, their freedom. In millions
and millions of cases, people have lost their lives, and it couldn't stop the church from carrying the
message about the love of God.
Now, let's take us. You're chatting with somebody in the cubicle next to you, and they talk about a
relational hardship, and you ask, "Would you like me to pray for you? Could I pray for you?" What's the
worst that can happen? You're talking to a neighbor, and they mention a family member who has
substance abuse issues. You say, "You know, we're talking about that at our church right now. Do you
want to come next week?" What's the worst that can happen?
They might say, "No." Oh, that would be awful, wouldn't it? They might say, "No." People in the Bay
Area hardly ever get arrested for inviting someone to church, not even in Berkeley. Are we going to be
cowed into message-carrying failure when those who went before us gave their lives so the faith could get
passed down to our generation? No.
Tell them your story or ask somebody who is having a problem, "Could I pray for you?" Just when you're
talking with somebody, and they're having a difficulty financially or with their health or with their family
or something, "Can I pray for you?" I can't tell you how many times I've done that. Often, that's a first step
into a spiritual conversation.
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I've hardly ever had somebody even get offended by that, even say, "No," to it. Mention the fact that
you're part of a church. Tell them what we're learning about. Invite them to come with you. They might
say, "Well, you know, I'm kind of new to the area." If they say that, say, "Great. This would be a great
time to come." They might say, "Things are a little bumpy in my life right now." If they say that, say,
"Great. This would be a great time to come."
They might say, "I don't know. We have little kids, so it's kind of chaotic." Say, "Great. This would be a
great time to come. We have a great program for kids. You can drop them off when you come to our
church and not see them the whole time you're there. You can leave them all week long and pick them up
again the next Sunday." Why do we carry the message? Why is that such a big deal?
I'm going to ask Scotty Scruggs to come out for a moment, and I want to say this before I'm going to ask
Scotty to read something to you. Sometimes it's possible to forget how much people need God.
Sometimes in a place like the Bay Area, you might think people have their lives together or people have
considered all the options and think they have a better alternative or God can't do miracles here.
Then you talk to a real, live person, and you remember that's somebody's son or daughter like I have a son
and I have some daughters. Scotty preached a sermon a couple of weeks ago in this series about step five,
about getting honest before God, myself, and another human being. He got a letter this week. He came
into my office with this. It was so powerful when he read it to me. I said you all have to hear this. Scotty,
would you read this?
Scott Scruggs: I shared a couple of weeks ago, and I got a little vulnerable. There was just an
overwhelming response like I tapped a nerve. Everybody was saying, "Thank you. Can I now share
something?" I'm just going to share an anonymous letter of a person who shared some vulnerable stuff in
their life and what God did with it.
This person wrote, "I feel compelled to share with you an example of God's work that occurred in my life
following Sunday's sermon. My story is proof that God liberates us in ways we cannot imagine or
anticipate." He tells a little of his background. "I was raised in a Christian home by two loving parents
starting from a young age. My mom had been raised in the church, but she was not following the Lord
when she met and married my dad.
When I was 7 or 8, my mom rededicated her life to the Lord, and my dad accepted Jesus as his personal
Savior, and from that time on, my parents took every opportunity and made every effort to ground my
upbringing in a strong and abiding faith in God. From that young age, I felt I had a very close relationship
with Jesus. Then around 19 years of age, I became physically and emotionally involved with a young girl
I had dated during high school.
At the time, I knew what I was doing was sinful and not in harmony with what my commitment to Jesus
was. We became involved sexually. Then one day I will never forget, she called me to inform me that she
was pregnant. As in your story of throwing a rock at your friend, the frightening reality of how far I had
let my sin take root in my life suddenly became so real to me in that moment. I was 19. I did not know
what to do.
I wanted so desperately to let my parents know and ask for their help, but the shame and fear of
disappointing them was so great. It overwhelmed me, and I did not know how to turn to them for aid.
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Shortly thereafter, she informed me that she would have an abortion with the support of her family. I did
nothing to dissuade or stop her. I did nothing to ask my dad or mom for help or even my mom about
whether adoption was possible. I just hid behind the door, as your sermon described.
In my young adult years until today, I continued to feel intense feelings of loss and guilt. I had drifted
away from God and distanced myself from my family, particularly my mom. Looking back, I lived my
life for many years as though God did not exist, as if I had not even committed my life to Jesus. Over
time, I rededicated my life to him. I married a woman who came to know Jesus, and we started a family.
All this was through the grace of God.
Although I knew Jesus had forgiven my sin when I asked him, I felt guilt and shame every day. I prayed
for guidance on how to bear the secret I kept. I knew Jesus willingly underwent crucifixion and death,
knowing what I had done, but I could not shed my shame and guilt because only I knew of it. I felt great
isolation and loneliness despite God's grace and forgiveness."
Just to say this happened in this person's life. It remained this way for over 20 years. Over 20 years of
living this way. Then he writes, "In your sermon, the Holy Spirit told me it was time to share my story,
my sin, and confess it to another person so that I could be fully cleansed from the burden of my secret
shame. Most important, I felt God telling me to tell my mom, which truly frightened me to my core
because if there was one person in the world I did not want to tell that day, it was her.
She was the person I feared for more than two decades would find out about what I had done and would
be the most hurt and devastated. For that entire Sunday, I struggled with what to do next, how I would
confess my sin. Was it better to send in a letter or email, wait until I saw her in person? What would I say
exactly? How would she react? Did she know already?" Have you been in this place before?
"While at work, I felt the Holy Spirit urging me not to wait and simply to call her that day, which I did.
From the parking lot outside my office, while I was sitting in my car, I told my mom everything, including
how I had felt the Holy Spirit urging me to tell her. I never anticipated my mom would break down in
tears just as I did and tell me she had carried her own secret her whole adult life, which was as an 18-yearold woman, she had fled a troubled home life, become involved sexually with a man outside of marriage,
and had become pregnant.
She had been prescribed an injection by a doctor that induced an abortion for which she had struggled and
kept secret from her family and her children for her entire life. My mom's sense of relief at being able to
share this with me, along with her guilt and shame, poured out like mine did. At that moment, we realized
how God had brought us back together through our mutual confession to finally cleanse and heal us from
our sin.
There was a reason the Holy Spirit told me to confess to my mom. In fact, I was no longer sure if the real
person God wanted to liberate from the bondage of that secret sin was me or my mom. In his divine and
perfect plan, he healed both of us at once." Here are his final words. "This week, I have felt a deep sense
of peace and confidence in my salvation that I have not felt in over 20 years.
If my mom had only confessed and shared her testimony with me sooner, I wonder if my choice as a 19year-old would have turned out differently. I wonder if I would have been more likely to reach out to her
for help. I would encourage anyone who seeks true freedom from sin to not delay in shedding it through
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confession because my story is proof that God liberates us in ways we cannot anticipate or imagine."
That's the message.
John Ortberg: Thanks, Scotty. That's great. See, God is still in the spiritual-awakening business. Next
week, we're going to celebrate Easter. At the heart of the message we carry is that in Jesus, we find a God
loving enough to defeat sin on the cross and strong enough to defeat death in a tomb. Next week, we're
going to celebrate baptisms all over the place, at every site.
If you're wondering why, "Why would we celebrate baptisms on Easter?" I will tell you why. It is the
weekend when more people will attend church than any other time of the year, and many of them are
people who do not yet know God, and we want those people to see that our God is still in the lifechanging business. We want them to have the chance to give their lives to God too.
Those of us who follow Jesus know our church does not exist so we can focus on us on the inside. It exists
so we can be a blessing to those on the outside. Jesus loves them too, and we have a message to carry.
Maybe it will be that week for somebody you know and love, and you get to carry that message. Talk to
people about the love of God.
If you feel inadequate, that's okay. You are, but God uses inadequate messages. If you're afraid, that's
okay. God uses us when we're afraid. There will be people in your life this week who you can tell about
the love of God. Tell them your story. Invite them to be with us next week.
2. Serve people with the love of God. Most of you know Compassion Weekend is coming up. That's when
we shut down our services and go worship by serving all around the Bay Area. We're actually going to do
that this year directly after Easter, the week after Easter. Here's why. I was talking to somebody, and they
said when he came to church before he surrendered his life to Jesus, he was what he called a CEO
Christian. He came to church on Christmas and Easter only.
If somebody is a CEO attender and come on Easter, and on Easter we say, "Hey, come back next week,
the week after Easter. There will be great music and worship and wonderful stuff for the kids and a really
helpful series," they often think, "Hey, give me a break. I was just at church this week. I only have two
bullets in my church gun for the year. If I came to Easter and the week after and Christmas, that would be
three times in one year. That would be like spiritual overachieving."
Here's the deal. There's a research outfit called the Barna Group, and they study various measures of faith
life in the Bay Area, like belief in God, church attendance, and so on in major metropolitan areas. Of all
the areas on the West Coast, guess where the Bay Area ended up. Dead last. The only exception was
volunteering for non-profits. Folks in the Bay Area often have a high respect for a willingness to try to
impact the community for good.
We thought this year, we would invite as many people as we can for Easter and let them know what the
message is and let them just see how God changes lives. Then next week, we're going to tell them, "Hey,
the following week, nobody is going to go to church. We don't want to overachieve either. We're all going
to go out into the Bay Area, and we're going to help schools, and we're going to help isolated seniors and
homeless folks and under-resourced people," and we think something might happen. We're going to see.
Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew, "…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and
sisters of mine, you did for me." It's so interesting. I was thinking about this with the twelfth step and
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why we do it. He didn't say, "You will be Jesus for the people you help." He said, "You will find Jesus in
the people you help." "Whatever you do for the least of these brothers, you do for me." In other words,
we're not bringing Jesus to them. They're bringing Jesus to us.
This year, don't just serve in Compassion Weekend, but bring a friend. Bring a friend who is not usually
part of a church. Invite somebody who is here at Easter to not come to church the following week, but
serve together instead. It's the twelfth step. This is what Dr. Bob said after God touched his life. He said,
"The spiritual approach was as useless as any other approach when it came to finding power to be
changed if you soaked it up like a sponge and kept it to yourself. The purpose of life is not to get; it is to
give."
The way things work in the realm of the flesh is when you get something, the only way to keep it is to
hold onto it. Six days of the week, I eat very carefully. On Sunday, I just pig out all day long. That's why
Sunday is my favorite day of the week. I start at 5:00 in the morning. I get a cinnamon roll and a bagel
with half a jar of peanut butter and honey on it, and it's like that all day long. At lunch, I'll have a
hamburger with cheese and bacon and French fries and bread and butter and cheesecake with ice cream
and hot fudge.
My wife will want a bite of my stuff on the theory that if you eat somebody else's food, the calories don't
count. When she asks for a bite, what do you think I say? "No way." What I keep, I get. What I give, I
lose. In the realm of the flesh, the way you keep something is to hold onto it. In the realm of the Spirit, it
is just the other way. When I give, I get back. What I hold for myself, I end up losing. That's how it is in
the realm of the Spirit.
I got a couple of emails last week. We did a tithe challenge. Some of you know about last fall where we
looked at how God says in the Bible, "Test me when it comes to your finances, when it comes to this
tithing business." We said, "If you're ready to trust God, go online and sign up to tithe for 90 days, and if
God doesn't clearly bless, if it's not sustainable, we will joyfully return your tithe."
I got an email from one couple this week who talked about how for the first time in 30 years of marriage,
they were working toward the same financial goal. They decided, "We're going to tithe," and they met all
their expenses while they were tithing, and they said, "We only have one question. Where did the tithe
money come from?" They said there was only one explanation. God is good.
I heard from another person who made a commitment to tithe and ended up having an employment
opportunity that far exceeded anything on the horizon when they made that commitment and said, "We're
going to trust God and give." It's all part of the twelfth step. The spiritual approach was as useless as any
other if you soak it up like a sponge and kept it to yourself. The purpose of life is not to get; it is to give.
That's why we carry the message.
As we're looking forward to Easter and talking about this last step, I want to close this message with some
of my favorite words. These were written by one of the most important people in the development of the
12 steps. His name was Sam Shoemaker. He was the pastor of this church, Calvary Episcopal Church in
New York. He was the leader in the US of these Oxford Groups.
All of a sudden, after Bill W., these people started showing up in these groups and at his church, just a
bunch of drunks. This is way back in the 30s. They didn't look good. They didn't dress right. They didn't
act right. They don't use polite Episcopalian language. Some people in the church were not too crazy
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about this idea, and Sam had to ask himself, "Do I want a bunch of drunks around my church?" Do you
know what his answer was? "Oh, God, yes. Could I be a part of that?" He wrote these words that will be a
rallying cry for us and I hope for you this week.
"I stay near the door. I neither go too far in nor stay too far out. The door is the most important door in the
world. It is the door through which men walk when they find God. There is no use my going way inside
and staying there when so many are still outside, and they, as much as I, crave to know where the door is,
and all so many ever find is a wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men with outstretched, groping hands, feeling for a door, knowing
there must be a door, yet they never find it, so I stay near the door. The most tremendous thing in the
world is for men to find that door, the door to God. The most important thing any man can do is take hold
of one of those blind, groping hands and put it on the latch, the latch that only clicks and opens to the
man's own touch.
Men die outside that door as starving beggars die on cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter, die
for want of what is within their grasp. They live on the other side of it, live because they found it. Nothing
else matters compared to helping them find it and open it and walk in and find him, so I stay near the
door. The people too far in do not see how near these are to leaving, preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door but would like to run away, so for them too I
stay near the door. I admire the people who go way in, but I wish they would not forget how it was before
they got in. Then they would be able to help the people who have not even found the door or the people
who want to run away from God.
You can go in too deep and stay in too long and forget the people outside the door. As for me, I shall take
my accustomed place near enough to God to hear him and know he is there but not so far from men as to
not hear them and remember they are there too outside the door, millions of them. More important for me,
one of them, two of them, three of them whose hands I am intended to put on the latch, so I stay by the
door and wait for those who seek it. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of our God."
Everybody carries a message. What is yours going to be? Guys, let's stand in the door. Would you pray
with me? Would you take a moment right now and just think about somebody in your life who needs
God? Maybe it's somebody in your family. Maybe it's a husband or a wife or an ex-spouse. Maybe it's a
son or a daughter, and your heart just yearns.
Maybe it's a mom or a dad or a neighbor or a boss or somebody who sits in the next desk or cubicle.
Would you say to God right now, "God, help me carry the message. I will carry the message. I'm going to
do this twelfth step. I'm kind of afraid. I feel kind of inadequate, but I don't want the message to die inside
of me. I don't want to just be all preoccupied with myself. I want to carry it."
God, thank you for the door through which women and men walk to find you, to be found by you. Help us
to be a church of people who stay near the door. Help us to carry the message. We ask this in Jesus' name,
amen.
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