Holistic Stewardship: To enable our churches and
their members to live a whole life as disciples of Jesus Christ by being
stewards of our lives in regard to our time, talent, and treasures.
“Now, I hope you are not here to try to get a bargain.
Some people just put money in the offering plate to try to save face.
That reminds me of a man and his son who went to church.
As they came out following the service the man complained to his son
about the service being so long. His little boy said, "Daddy, I thought
it was pretty good since you only had to pay a dime."
God’s Champions: Who
are they? Are they the biggest
and the strongest? Are they the
smartest and the prettiest? Are
they the top of the economic pile? How
does God measure greatness? What
are His rules of measure?
Scripture Text:
Mark 12:38 And he said
unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long
clothing, and [love] salutations in the marketplaces, 39 And the chief seats
in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts: 40 Which devour
widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive
greater damnation. 41 And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld
how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in
much. 42 And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two
mites, which make a farthing. 43 And he called [unto him] his disciples, and
saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast
more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: 44 For all
[they] did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all
that she had, [even] all her living.
Who
are God’s Champions?
1.
God’s Champions have inner beauty not necessarily outward.
They aren’t always the best dressed, but they wear the righteousness
of God. They are beautiful people
who love and care without cause. They
are the beautiful flowers in God’s Garden.
They give the benefit of the doubt to all they see.
Beware
of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and [love] salutations in
the marketplaces, 39 And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost
rooms at feasts:
2.
God’s Champions aren’t always the most respected in the
community. Widows were looked
upon as a determent to the community.
Widows were a drain because they weren’t allowed to work, so they had
to depend on someone else for their livelihood.
(People give away clothing that isn’t worth anything anyway.)
3.
God’s Champions wait on the Lord and depend on His justice and His
reward. God doesn’t settle
all his accounts on the spot. God
will reward his righteous ones in his time.
“There was a very wealthy woman who lived in a palatial home,
surrounded by fine tapestries, linens, imported china, expensive bric-a-brac,
and who indulged in every luxury. She
died and went to the gates of Heaven, but to her astonishment there was no
fanfare of trumpets when she arrived. An
angel was chosen to accompany her to the home that was to be her grandeur and
magnificence. finally they came
to a street of much less glamor, and way down at the end of it was a very
humble little cottage. They turned to enter, and the woman stopped and looked
about with tragic disappointment on her countenance.
The angel said to her, "This is to be your eternal home."
"Oh but," she said, "I have been accustomed only to the
finest and most expensive. There
are many, many beautiful homes, which we passed similar to mine on earth.
There must be some mistake." "Ah,"
said the angel, "but we built your eternal home here out of the material
which you have sent us from earth, and this is the best we could do with what
you have sent."
4.
God’s Champions are the pure in heart and actions.
They aren’t pretentious or pretenders.
They are who they are no matter whom they are with.
Who are they? They are
God’s chosen and they have chosen the Lord.
5.
God’s Champions aren’t always the loudest in the bunch or
those who are up front. They are
often the silent ones who go unnoticed who serve God in humility.
6.
God’s Champions don’t always give the most, but they give the
best. God measures us by what
we keep and not what we give.
“An Indian one day
asked Bishop Whipple to give him two one dollar bills for a two dollar note. When asked why, the Indian replied, "One dollar for me
to give to Jesus, and one dollar for my wife to give."
The Bishop asked him if it was all the money he had.
He said, "Yes." The
Bishop was about to tell him it was too much, when an Indian clergyman who was
standing by whispered, "It might be too much for a white man to give, but
not too much for an Indian who has this year heard for the first time of the
love of Jesus." The
Expositor
7.
God’s Champions do what they can and give all that they have to
the Lord. Why do they give so
much to God? Because they believe
in the Lord and his promises to them. Most
folks who are down to their pennies wouldn’t think of giving away their
final cents, but not the widow who was one of God’s Champions.
She trusted in the Lord to take care of her if she believed.
And He always does.
Truly
Rich People - The Rich Family In Our Church (Adapted)
I'll never forget Easter
1946. I was 14, my little sister
Ocy 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We
lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do
without many things. My dad had
died 5 years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money.
By 1946 my older sisters were married, and my brother had left home.
A month before Easter,
the preacher of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be
taken to help a poor family. He
asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.
When we got home, we talked about what we could do.
We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month.
This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering.
Then we thought that if
we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn't listen
to the radio, we'd save money on that month's electric bill.
Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both
of us baby sat for everyone we could. For
15 cents, we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell
for $1. We made $20 on pot
holders.
That month was one of
the best of our lives. Every day
we counted the money to see how much we had saved.
At night we'd sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was
going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church, so we figured that whatever
amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that
much. After all, every Sunday the
preacher had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.
The day before Easter,
Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three
crisp $20 bills and one $10 for all our change. We ran all the way home to
show Mom and Darlene. We had
never had so much money before.
That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep.
We didn't care that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter; we had $70
for the sacrificial offering. We
could hardly wait to get to church!
On Sunday morning, rain
was pouring. We didn't own an
umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to
matter how wet we got. Darlene
had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes.
The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.
But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the
Smith girls having on their old dresses.
I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt so rich. When the
sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the
front. Mom put in the $10 bill
and each of us girls put in a $20. As
we walked home after church, we sang all the way.
At lunch Mom had a
surprise for us. She had bought a
dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes.
Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car.
Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back
with an envelope in her hand. We
asked what it was, but she didn't say a word.
She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money.
There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1.
Mom put the money back in the envelope.
We didn't talk, just sat
and stared at the floor. We had
gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash.
We kids had had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who
didn't have our mom and dad for parents and a house full of brothers and
sisters and other kids visiting constantly.
We thought it was fun to
share silverware and see whether we got the fork or the spoon that night.
We had two knives, which we passed around to whoever needed them.
I knew we didn't have a lot of things that other people had, but I'd
never thought we were poor. That
Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money
for the poor family, so we must be poor. I didn't like being poor.
I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed that I
didn't want to go back to church. Everyone
there probably already knew we were poor!
I thought about school.
I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100
students. I wondered if the kids
at school knew we were poor. I
decided I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade.
That was all the law required at that time.
We sat in silence for a long time.
Then it got dark, and we went to bed.
All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with
the money. What did poor people
do with money? We didn't know.
We'd never known we were poor.
We didn't want to go to
church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to . Although it was sunny day, we
didn't talk on the way. Mom
started to sing, but no one joined in, and she only sang one verse.
At church we had a missionary speaker. He
talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks,
but they need money to buy roofs. He
said $100 would put a roof on a church. The
ministers said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor people?"
We looked at each other
and smiled for the first time in a week.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope.
She passed it to Darlene, Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy.
Ocy put it in the offering. when
the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over
$100. The missionary was excited.
He hadn't expected such a large offering from our small church.
He said, "You must have some rich people in this church."
Suddenly it struck us!
We had given $87 of that "little" over $100.
We were the rich family in the church!
Hadn't the missionary said so? From
that day on I've never been poor again. I've
always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus.