One of the things in life that I am finding more and more amazing as I grow is the way in which God provides for us. When we trust in him and cast our worries away it always seems to work out. I don’t understand it, and I have to admit I don’t like it much either. I mean, I don’t mind being provided for, but frustratingly stressful to have to rely on someone else to do the providing. I think that over the past year or two this is something I have been learning to trust in and even become comfortable with. I have learned that God will help, but only when I relinquish my pride enough to accept such help. Turn with me to Matthew 6:25-34;
"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 ¶ "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
I can now find comfort in Matthew 6 knowing that God will provide for me, instead of simply applying it to someone else. I have learned to become comfortable and accepting of God’s providing. It used to be easier to try and explain verses like this away, because in reality the questions and uncertainties were just too difficult to deal with. We talked some time ago about being weak and in our weakness is when God works. What I have found is that we cannot appreciate God’s helping hand and providence until we find ourselves in need of that helping hand.
But we need to take this one step further. God doesn’t provide simply for his people individually but he provides for his church. The church as a whole has a large numbers of problems and struggles it must overcome, but God will provide a means to overcome. Oswego Church of Christ today has plenty of obstacles to overcome, but just as Jesus told his audience not to be anxious about their lives we as a church cannot be anxious but must believe that God will provide for every weakness and turn these lowest points into our strongest points. The problem is we need to get over ourselves and our pride collectively as whole. It isn’t enough to one person in the church to be open to the providing of God. The church as a well must be willing to step up and accept the aid and help of God admitting that not even one of us is capable of being all that we must be. We need to get over ourselves and realize that if we want the door to be opened we need to start knocking.
Let’s do some role playing of sorts here. Imagine for a moment that you are wandering in the desert near to Sinai. You are a part of the tribe of Israel and you have run out of food. You and your family are starving. There is nothing to eat and you are beginning to resign yourself to the fact that you are incapable to put food on the table and provide for yourself and your family. You begin to grumble and complain. There has to be some way for you to survive. God could not have led us out here simply for the purpose of death. Listen as I read Exodus 16:4-5;
Exodus 16:4-5 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily."
Your hope has finally been fulfilled. There will be no starving today. We will eat and we will eat well. It is as if an all you can eat buffet has been laid in front of us. As long as we are wandering in the desert we will never grow hungry again because God is providing for us.
After going for who knows how long without any food, and then suddenly all of this food is provided for you and you are told to eat your fill, what do you do? Well obviously you run forward and start eating. But what if instead of eating you decide it is too hard to bend over to pick up the manna. Or maybe eating bread that has fallen on the ground isn’t good enough for you, you don’t like the way in which your prayers have been answered. Then you go back to Moses and Aaron again and you tell them how incompetent they are and you begin grumbling and complaining all over again proclaiming that God has not provided for you. God doesn’t care about us, he is going to let us starve. We mean nothing to him, our prayers are going unanswered. Well that would be completely absurd. Of course God has provided, all you have to do is step outside and pick up what has been laid before you. And what if the people of Israel decided not to pick up the manna? Well there would have been no people of Israel, they all would have died out.
As crazy as that sounds, I think that is where we as a church have found ourselves. We don’t mind asking God to provide, we don’t even mind relying on him and accepting what he has provided. But I think the manna is falling all around us and we are leaving it untouched. Imagine for a second a hockey game. You all know how much I enjoy hockey, and while our team was playing a game one day, I began to think of our church manna experience in these terms. Here is a hockey bench. As you can see the bench is full. Every player on the bench is fully equipped. They have their helmets, sticks, various pads, and they all look ready to go. But what is the problem with this picture? They are sitting on the bench. You can’t score any goals with that stick it you don’t touch the ice. Across those boards there are goals to be scored, hits to be made, and shots to be stopped. But none of that can be done unless you get off the bench. I think that this is a weak point for us here. We all come prepared. We have our Bibles, our baptism, our worship songs, and our communion. We are as prepared as we will ever be. There is not a piece of equipment we could possibly be missing here. But we are all still sitting on the bench. There are people to be served, brokenness to be mended, souls to be saved. But none of that can be done from the bench. We have asked God to provide, prayed for growth, strength, and boldness and God has been faithful to provide in every instance. He has been sprinkling the manna in front of us since long before we were born. But it is laying out there untouched because we are all sitting on the bench waiting for someone else to get it.
In the kingdom of heaven there are no bench warmers. This is what the bench looks like in the kingdom of heaven. It is bare empty because every single player has stepped out and is playing there part. In the kingdom of heaven people are being served, brokenness is being mended, and souls saved. The bench is gathering dust because the people of God are active people. The manna is being picked up.
I think we have allowed church to become business which is organized and run by the professionals. There is the preacher, the teachers, and the elect few specially skilled Christians who are tasked with doing all the work. We have turned every activity of calling of the church into a well organized machine where a certain few go out to pick up the manna while the rest sit on the bench. But the church cannot revolve around a certain few. There are no professional Christian in the kingdom of heaven. There is but a single category of disciple that applies to everyone. The same Spirit resides in every single one of us. We stop saying someone will handle it and realize that someone is sitting on the bench and that would be you. Someone else is not going to accomplish what you have been called to do because someone else is waiting for someone else and that someone else is waiting for someone else. And the only thing being accomplished is the development of a pro shop of all kinds of dusty equipment here on our crowded bench. We those sitting on the bench to get in the game and pick up some manna and those in the game to stop organizing and start spurring others onward.
But I can’t do it, I don’t have the ability, skill set, or body to accomplish the task required of me. Well that is ok. When we worry about not having the skills necessary we step back into Matthew 6 and we become anxious about our life and calling. We become worried about whether God really will provide or not. I know there is manna and all, but what if it doesn’t work for me. We are worried that we are in fact the wrong people. But building the church depends on using all the wrong people. It is not a professional business of a few specialized evangelists who speak the word while the rest sit around and listen. There are no all stars, and there are no bench warmers because when the spirit of God begins to work it turns us all into clutch performers.
If the church were reliant on our ability to be what we need to be then we would all be destined to be bench warmers. But when the Spirit came down and began working in us it made every single one of us to be what was needed for the church to move forward. We need those who share the word, who teach, who serve, who organize and brainstorm. We need those who can speak to teenagers. We need those who can speak to the elderly. We need someone who will spur us on to great fellowship and activity. We need someone to clean the bathrooms. We can pray and pray and pray for these needs to be addressed, and trust me we have. But we also need to pick up our heads and see that the manna has fallen. God has provided. All that needs to happen now is for us to hop off the bench and start collecting. The Spirit has been poured out on us all and for every role that needs filling, the ability has been provided. If we are willing to step out we will start accomplishing. There are now Sunday morning Christians in the kingdom of heaven and there shouldn’t be any here in Oswego Church of Christ. God has provided the greatest blessing he has, but we need to step out and take hold of it. The Spirit resides in all of us and there are only disciples. So let’s all step forward and start picking up the manna. The next time we think, well someone will do it, let’s cast it aside and do it ourselves.
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