Pray.
Yes, Lord, those words are so true.
We're such strange creatures, Lord.
One minute telling you here in this building
that we want to run after you and
serve you, and the next minute forgetting about
it and going off running after things that
keep us apart from you.
Lord, it would be nice for us to
say, do something about it, Lord.
But the fact is, you've told us to
do something about it.
You've made that move in grace.
Now the next move on the board is
ours, Lord, in response.
You've made us in your image.
We're supposed to reflect you.
Granted, as we consider what we will today,
that the use of the things you've given
us, which are your gifts to us, may
be such that as they are used to
serve your church and the world, people may
see you in the use of them.
We ask this for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Well, would you turn with me then to
Romans 12 that we're going through this week,
and we started on Sunday morning with the
first two verses, and we yesterday morning continued
on to verses three, four, and five.
So we're going to take the next three
verses today.
There are marvelous picture words that particularly in
the epistles and the letters of the New
Testament are used of those of us who
belong to Jesus Christ.
There's that marvelous word, his family.
Oh my, how marvelous that is.
And we're supposed to treat one another as
the family of God in the same way
as we would treat an actual family member
of blood and flesh and so on.
And we'll see a little bit more of
that later in Romans 12.
There's another marvelous word, a flock.
If we're the flock, he's the shepherd.
And how wonderful it is to take words
like this, and if you wake up at
night at two o'clock and just take
a little walk of 10 yards or whatever
it is to that little room, then you
get back and you can't go off to
sleep.
Then if you've intercessorially prayed for those you
have been praying for and you're still awake,
then take one of these picture words and
say, now, I want to think about this
word, family, a flock.
You're the shepherd.
Or we're the army.
You're the commander in chief.
We're your soldiers.
My, what tremendous implications there are in that.
Because we're not here as a club, where
it's nice to come apart for a week,
but God didn't call us to live in
a cloister.
He called us to go out into the
world as his army.
Another wonderful one is his bride, that we
are the bride of Christ.
He's the heavenly bridegroom and we are the
bride.
And my, we love him and we run
after him and he has run after us.
That's the only reason that we respond to
him is because he took the initiative to
run after us and chase us.
And we're the bride and we have those
intimate times of fellowship, just alone with him
in our quiet times.
And he sows his seed by his spirit
into our lives.
We're his bride and we produce his fruit,
the fruit of the spirit of love, joy,
peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and
self-control.
But the picture that the Apostle Paul uses
mostly, more than any others I think, is
this one of the body.
We are a body and we're one body.
There is only one body and those who
have part with Christ have part with me.
We must never allow any secondary matter, though
it be biblical, any secondary non-essential to
salvation matter, ever to become a divisive issue,
because we're one body.
Now we've seen the oneness of the body
in verses four and five, and now we
move on, six, seven, and eight, to the
diversity in the body, the two sides, the
oneness, the unity.
Not uniformity, we saw, that's in a graveyard,
remember?
But unity, and the unity is used because
it's diverse people with differing gifts, many colored
variegated gifts, for God is a God of
rich and infinite variety, who gives all kinds
of gifts to his body, and he does
that, and he wants the world to see
that though we're all different, so different, yet
he can bind us together in unity.
So now we come to that diversity.
In fact, if you wanted to, you could
look at Ephesians chapter four, and you see
the first six verses all about the unity,
just like this was.
Then you'll see from verse seven on, you'll
see it's until about 12, I guess it
is, or 13, you'll find it's all about
the diversity, all the different gifts God gives.
And then from the last two or three
verses, it's as a result of unity and
diversity, then there's maturity, and we grow into
Christ, grow up in him.
All right, so let's have a look at
these verses, six, seven, and eight.
We have, and all I'm doing in these
mornings, by the way, I'm not sort of
preaching homiletically correct.
All I'm doing is giving a running commentary.
We're just going down through these verses.
Oh, you know, that is something that I
have been greatly helped by.
When somebody just simply goes through, there's no
funny stuff, and no clever stuff, and you
know, James Denny said, you can't magnify God
and be clever at the same time.
So we're just going to go through the
verses and plagiarize, borrow God's thoughts, and that's
it.
Verse six, we have different gifts according to
the grace given us.
If a man or a woman's gift is
prophesying, let him use it in proportion to
his faith.
If it is serving, let him serve.
If it is teaching, let him teach.
If it is encouraging, let him encourage.
If it's contributing to the needs of others,
let him give generously.
If it's leadership, let him govern diligently.
If it is showing mercy, let him do
it cheerfully.
Now, there are words put in there to
make up the sense of the English.
If we just translated it in the way
in which it was written, it probably wouldn't
sound too good in English.
Sometimes, you know, translations can be so accurate,
like for instance, I like the NIV in
the Old Testament, and I like the New
American Standard Bible in the New Testament, but
the NASB is so accurate, it's not good
English.
Too accurate to be good English.
If I don't have my little Greek Testament,
I'll trust that one more than any other,
but boy, I don't like to say, and
Jesus was beginning to go towards Jerusalem.
I mean, it doesn't make sense in English.
We don't need all those 500 forms of
the verb.
So sometimes in English, we put in little
words to make it up.
If I were to translate this literally, I
wrote it down here.
Here we are.
This is what the way I would translate
this.
Look at your text from verse 6, 7,
and 8.
This is what it really is saying, specifically
if I were to translate it like that,
word for word.
Now, as having charismata, differing according to the
grace given us, be it prophesying according to
the proportion of faith, be it serving in
that service, be it the one teaching in
that teaching, be it the one encouraging in
that encouragement, the one contributing in simplicity, the
one leading in diligence, the one showing mercy
in cheerfulness.
So you can see, that's all it says.
It's got basic words.
Let's have a look at some of these.
My, there are so many lists of gifts.
This is only one of them.
I mean, not so many.
There are at least four other.
That's five different lists of gifts in the
New Testament, and you'll find that together they
make up about 30 different gifts.
Sometimes there's overlapping ones.
Some words are used, and one like speaking,
for instance, which covers prophesying, teaching, encouragement, and
things like that.
So it's difficult, but there are about 30,
and as I said yesterday, that's not an
exhaustive list at all.
There's many, many more gifts, and in fact,
you'll be sharing with me, I hope, and
tell me some of those gifts you've seen
in people, or maybe, oh, you didn't think
you had any, and suddenly you found you
had, but it wasn't in the Bible, so
somebody said, that's not a gift, and you,
but it is a gift, baby, you see.
So you've got lists.
Here's a great list, Ephesians 4, and if
you want to remember the lists, the five
lists, remember the figure four, Ephesians 4, and
then 1 Peter 4.
Only got two gifts there, but that's a
list.
Ephesians 4, 1 Peter 4.
Then remember the number 12.
1 Corinthians 12 is the third list at
the beginning of the chapter.
1 Corinthians 12 is the fourth list at
the end of the chapter, and ours, Romans
12, is the fifth list.
So you've got all these different gifts, and
as I said yesterday, there are many gifts
that people had.
Do you remember I mentioned the difference between
John and Charles Wesley?
You see, John Wesley had this wonderful gift
of teaching.
He was also an evangelist, a couple hundred
and fifty years, a couple hundred years ago
now, but here he had that gift of
teaching, and of course, that's a biblical gift.
Remember I said, but Charles Wesley, I mean,
he didn't have what we know of as
a biblical gift.
He wrote hymns, but today, which of the
brothers ministers more to us, John Wesley or
Charles Wesley?
Well, Charles Wesley, because we sing those marvelous
hymns, and can it be, and all kinds
of other wonderful hymns.
So there are differing gifts, and you're not
limited to these, but let's have a look
at this list.
Take seven of them here quickly.
We won't exhaustively talk about any one, but
give a few hints.
The first gift is prophesying.
If a man's gift is prophesying, let him
use it in proportion to his faith.
There are a number of ways in which
we use the word prophetic or prophesy, particularly
when we say, my, that was a prophetic
utterance.
We may mean by that, that my, there's
an issue around today, we're speaking and thinking
of the news and the issues today, and
somebody speaks a word, which is a word
that generally is backed up by scripture, maybe
not a particular scripture, and they come out
with a statement.
Somebody says, that was a prophetic utterance.
Or we may take, for instance, in the
Bible, sometimes the word is used just to
mean teaching, although not normally.
It is used because, don't forget, they were
often teaching with an oral tradition until the
New Testament got into written form, and the
Spirit of God would come upon people, but
they used it in that way.
Perhaps more often, we would see the difference
between prophesying and teaching in this way.
Prophesying is unpremeditated utterance, and teaching is premeditated
utterance.
I know, I do it, I have to
pre-med-itate such a lot, 70, 80
hours a week of it, so it's premeditated.
But prophesying is unpremeditated.
The Spirit of God will come upon your
sons and daughters, and they will prophesy.
It's unpremeditated.
When I decide on what I'm going to
teach, and I premeditate it in this passage,
almost every message, at least once if not
twice, I find myself starting to say a
sentence that I have never thought before.
I keep going because it's worked before, and
I say, boy, this is interesting.
Lord, what are you going to say?
And out it comes, and I'm listening.
I say, well, that was interesting.
Unpremeditated.
Perhaps the Spirit of God broke into a
time of teaching, and because I didn't know
something that he knew was needed here, then
he would cause me to say that.
And indeed, I find it that since I've
lost 15, 20 years, when I don't normally
make a practice of using notes, I find
I'm more open to that kind of thing,
because otherwise, I've got to get through all
this lot, you know, and I can't have
time to do any of this stuff that
the Spirit of God gives me.
Rosemary and I were in a camp in
Caroline, Alberta, about two or three, four years
ago now, I guess.
It was Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, and it
was a leadership conference in January there, and
during one of the evenings toward the end
of the week, I had prepared a message,
and I was sitting in the earlier part
of the service when they were singing and
sharing testimonies and so on, and I had
this increasing feeling that I wasn't to preach
the message that I had prepared.
Well, the thing is that another burden came
on me, a passage of Scripture.
Oh God, no, I can't, I mean, it's
been 15 or 20 years since I preached
on that passage.
I would need a lot of time.
No, no, put that out of my mind.
Get back to my message, you know, just
get it right.
But no, I couldn't feel comfortable, and more
of this other burden would come just shortly
before I was to get up to speak.
A man in a wheelchair who was, in
fact, the administrator of this conference grounds, on
the staff he was the administrator, not the
director, but the one who did all the
hard work of keeping all the business side
of it together, he didn't stand up because
he was in the wheelchair, and he spoke
up an unpremeditated word of prophecy out of
the blue, and in this word of prophecy
he was saying, what we need here today,
Lord, is this, and we believe that you
want to tell us this, and this, and
this, and I want to, and he started
to quote a Scripture, and he started to
quote the very Scripture that God had put
in my mind, and it was so strong
that the Spirit of God needed us to,
needed to teach us this.
Well, I knew why that prophetic utterance was
there.
It was that God would say to me,
price, eat your pride, don't worry if you
don't know what you're going to say, trust
me this time, and get up and preach,
and I got up and preached on the
burden, and indeed it met needs of people
right there, and that's the way God will
do that sometimes.
Don't think that these gifts automatically ceased.
I'm not a prophet by any means.
I looked at my calling card this morning,
it's not there, and frankly, but you see
with any one of these gifts, we don't
have to be that particular person with that
gift and the big sign outside, you know.
No, any one of these, God can take
any one of us, I suppose, and use
us in limited ways.
I'm not normally the kind of person that
could do that kind of thing, but you
know, but we all are used by God.
Anyway, that's it, prophesying is unpremeditated utterance for
the most part.
Anyway, let's look at the next one here.
No, we didn't finish it.
If a man's gift of prophesying, let him
use it in proportion to his faith.
There are two ways of interpreting that, and
if you've got an NIV, you may have,
like I have, an A by the side
of his faith, and if you look in
the footnote, it says, or in agreement with
the faith.
So there are two ways.
First of all, I can say, well, that
may be a subjective understanding or an objective.
I can say, let him use it in
proportion to his faith, as he is waiting
upon God, and he believes that God, the
Holy Spirit, can bring to him something that
he needs to say.
Well, the degree that faith is, let him
just open up and only say what the
Spirit of God has said to him in
response to his faith.
Don't go beyond that.
Let him use it in accordance with his
faith, proportion to his faith.
But the other way is this.
The early Christian teaching, the way, as Christianity
was called, the truth they taught was called
the faith.
So there it's the body of truth called
the faith, which is the scripture put in
creed form or in various other ways, and
it's called the body of truth called the
faith.
So now, let him use that gift of
prophesying in proportion to, or in agreement with,
as the margin says, the faith.
In other words, make sure that you don't
go off track just because you've got this
gift of prophesying.
Listen, God may come to this point where
there's no more truth to be revealed, and
we know he's reached that point as far
as giving new truth.
So don't go beyond what the faith says.
Incidentally, John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrim
Fathers, when they came to these coasts, which
was two or three years ago now, he
was the pastor in England, left from our
home city, of course, and in Brussels, in
England, and he came out there, and when
he came, was it?
Or am I muddling him up?
Anyway, whatever it was.
Anyway, he came out here, and he put
them on board, you know, the Mayflower, and
he said to them as they were on
board there, he said, now, don't forget, the
Calvinists will go no further than Calvin, the
Lutherans will go no further than Luther, but
he said, don't forget, there is still yet
more truth to break out of the word
of God.
But don't forget that he said to break
out of the word of God, not still
more truth to be added on to the
word of God.
This is God's final word to us, but
there's still more truth to be broken out,
to break out of it, and since the
Reformation in particular, there's been a gradual recovery
of truth that had been lost for many,
many years, and it's wonderful to find that
I work in 40 denominations, all kinds of
people, and some of which you'd look at
me and say, surely you don't.
I say, yes, I do, because God's people
happen to be there, and I go there.
But it's wonderful, isn't it, how gradually we've
recovered truth.
But this is the thing, it's where to
use it in proportion to the faith, or
in agreement with the faith, all right?
Look at the second gift, the gift of
serving.
Verse 7, if it is serving, let him
serve.
Now, this is a general word for serving.
There are two words used for either a
servant or a slave, the main words.
A little later on, down in the next
day or two, we will see the one
about slaving, but this one is the servant
one, and it's just the word that we
get our word deacon from, and deaconos, and
although there are different ways of looking at
it, dia is diameter going through the circle,
and some people say, I'm not too sure
it's right that conus, dust, you know, going
through the dust, so you must go through
the dust.
I don't know, it may just be a
nice little picture that people have picked up.
I'm not sure whether that's right or not,
but this is the general word for serving
in all kinds of ways.
And so, if a person's gift is serving,
let him serve.
What a wonderful thing it is to see
someone with a servant spirit, and how wonderful
it is that God has chosen to put
this gift of doing, action, where everyone else,
the rest of us, like, you know, yak
and talk.
The one before it, the prophesying, he's talking.
The one after him, this teacher, he's talking.
But the one in the middle, he's serving,
he's really doing his task.
I can think of people now, I can
think of great people with servant spirits who,
in our church, people like, some of you
will know the names, doesn't matter, Doug Wilson,
or Janet Rashly, or people I know have
got servant spirits.
And wherever you see them, they're always serving.
They're making the coffee, or they're opening doors,
or they're taking a baby, or helping somebody
with their clothes, or whatever it is, they're
always serving.
Some people seem to be committed to that.
My wife is very much that way.
I can sit at a meal at home,
we have six or seven people maybe visiting,
and I can sit there and I get
lost in conversation.
I can only do one thing at a
time, but whatever I do, I tend to
do intensely.
Sort of made that way.
Can't see anything else, got the blinkers on,
got to give everything to it, you know.
So I don't notice if people need something
at the table, or the butter's over here,
or they run out of drinking something, or
they need another.
Funny thing, she just looks and there it,
I mean, just notices.
She can be actually in a conversation and
immediately notice at the same time that this
is, I mean, even when we're just eating
alone.
Before I've noticed that I need something, she's
noticed I need it and given it.
I mean, this is amazing that some people
have that kind of manner of working.
It's a marvelous gift, but you know, I'm
not too sure that we just sit back
and wait for God to zap us one
and say, hey, you've got this gift.
We've got to do it.
Price one year, you're going to learn.
We've just got to sit, get down, and
doing it.
And we may find, as we'll see in
a moment or two when we discuss, we
may find that we have gifts we never
knew because we just sit down and do
it.
But what a marvelous gift to serve.
This is what Jesus was.
This is one of his greatest names for
himself, the Son of Man.
He said, the Son of Man, his favorite
choice of names, the Son of Man has
come not to be served, but to serve
and to give his life a ransom for
many.
You can't be a leader until you're a
servant, and you're a servant.
It's servants that we choose the leaders from.
Don't train leaders, train servants, and then the
true leaders will emerge from the servants.
Don't find a bunch of people you think
have got leadership gifts because they got some
horribly strong, aggressive personality or something, and then
you think they make good leaders.
No, no, you're going to try and find
the servants out of them.
They may never serve, but you find people
who are servant spirits, and those are the
ones that from which the leaders should come,
because the way up is down.
If it is teaching, the third one, let
him teach.
As I've said, this is the premeditated utterance,
and it's interesting that in the five lists
of gifts that we've mentioned just now, one
of the lists, which is the Ephesians 4
list, verses 11 and 12, gives these four
gifts.
Just a moment, if you can just turn
to it.
I don't normally like to turn people back
and forth, because I'm used to teaching new
Christians.
That's why I tried to take deep truths
and put them in such simple language that
a ten-year-old can understand, but so
you'll forgive me if I appear to talk
down sometimes.
I'm not trying to do that, but just
trying to make it simple.
So I don't normally turn them back and
forth, because when I try to find Romans
12 again, I have to go to the
index page and find out where it was.
So look at Ephesians 4, and look what
it says there about teachers, you see?
Verses 11 and 12.
It was he who gave some to be
apostles, some to be prophets, some to be
evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.
Four gifts, because the structure of pastor and
teacher is together there.
Although there are people that still feel you
can teach in an institution, of course, obviously
you may not have a shepherding or pastoring
gift.
But the to be isn't there.
All it really says, in the language in
which it was written, is he gave some
apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors
and teachers in order to do certain things.
Here, the only one of the five lists
of gifts, the gift is not given to
the person.
Here, the gift is the person given to
the church.
In fact, again, although we talk about gifts
of grace, and I talked about talents from
birth and so on, there's a sense in
which most of the teachers that I have
listened to and been helped by had the
gift of teaching before they became a Christian,
even though we think of it in terms
of this special anointing.
So I'm not too sure I've sorted that
one out yet.
I'm sure you've got some good ideas on
that, and you can come up and help
me sort that one out a little later.
But here is the gift of a teacher,
and where were we?
Oh, Romans, that's right, Romans 12.
So I've said enough about that in other
days, and I will in the next two
or three days, so let's leave that alone
for a while, except that God gives those
gifts.
And incidentally, when God gives any gift to
the church, whether it's a person or whether
he gives a gift to that person, that
person belongs to the whole body, it says
at the end of verse 5.
Each member belongs to all the others.
You say, all the others in my church?
No, all the others in the body.
How many bodies are there?
One body.
That means you belong to the whole Church
of Jesus Christ worldwide, and you've no right
to restrict.
Well, we have to restrict ourselves.
We've got to sort of zero in on
something, but really, quite honestly, all of the
church worldwide needs to use that resource, or
you need to be making yourself available for
churches wider than your own to use that
resource.
It's a wonderful thing in my work as
Minister-at-Large, or as my son-in
-law, Brent, calls me, Large Minister.
I used to have a bigger pot, that.
Brent, you haven't said that since I lost
that 20 pounds.
It's okay.
Anyway, in my work as Minister-at-Large
with our Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, which is
a working together of 40 denominations where we
cross over lines, the purpose is to pool
our resources so that we'll make them available
to all of those who love the Lord
Jesus.
And then we are able to draw from
other areas, other resources, that we may not
have.
Some churches say we don't have any gifts.
Well, probably you've got the blinkers on in
the wrong way, and you keep yourself only
to yourself, and you'll be stunned to find
anybody else is in heaven.
But frankly, as you use your gifts, you're
to use them very, very widely.
Now, I believe, if you can, but we
all have specific things we need to...
We'll talk a little more about that now,
shortly.
Look at the next gift.
If it is encouraging, let him encourage.
Let me talk about the difference between prophesying,
teaching, and encouraging.
The word encouraging is a word that is
translated in four different ways, as far as
I can see, in the New Testament.
It's a verb, to encourage, and it's translated
either to encourage, to exhort, to admonish, or
to comfort.
It's the same word, and it's just a
word that means, really, it's to do with
the work of the...
In fact, it's to do with the word
for the Holy Spirit.
Listen to one of the words for the
Holy Spirit in the Bible, parakletos.
Listen to this word, paraklesis.
So, really, this is what the paraklete, the
Holy Spirit, is actually doing, and he's causing
you to be an encouragement to other people.
So, para, kaleo, kal, is from call.
We get a word call from that, para,
alongside.
Someone called alongside.
Someone called alongside someone else to sit down
with them.
I know some in my family have that
gift, it's a gift of sitting down, sensing
people's needs, sensing where someone needs encouragement, taking
the time.
Somebody like me is rushing off somewhere, oh
dear, I wish I could have time, but
other people, that's their gift, and they can
sense it, and they sit down, and they
sit, they're called alongside, like a lawyer, or
a legal aid, or somebody, an advocate, you
know.
In fact, that word advocate, I suppose, is,
yes, it would be the same word, only
from Latin, because ad, towards, in Latin, and
vocare, you're calling, vocal, calling, you know, called
towards, the same kind of idea.
So, here, some people have that gift, and
they encourage people.
Now, the thought here, whether it's exhort, admonish,
or encourage, or comfort, is all one of
a positive thing, that you come in and
make that person feel better at the end
of it, because what you're doing is, you're
actually taking the prophesying and the teaching, and
you're applying it to where it's really needed.
There's prophesying, which is then the proclamation, there's
teaching, which is explanation, and now there's encouragement,
or exhortation, which is application.
Application.
Where's Jeff?
Jeff, where are you?
Yeah, we were chatting on this yesterday, and
Jeff's got a ministry of encouragement, not to
the other team playing the Seahawks, but he's
got a ministry of encouragement to his own
team, anyway, I'm sure, and there's a gift
that, you know, he wouldn't have time to
get into all the detail that's needed, maybe,
in the teaching, there are too many other
things in his area of work and gift,
but here, to encourage, to move on, to
take those things, or to take the things
we're learning this week, and say, I want
to apply that to your life.
How wonderful it is to have a ministry
of encouragement like that.
The next one is, if it is contributing
to the needs of others, let him give
generously or with simplicity.
Contributing.
This word is normally, although it was used
in a wider way, normally in the Bible,
it's used in a monetary or giving sense,
as we give our offerings and things of
that nature.
So, if it is contributing, let him give,
I don't believe generously is the best choice,
there are two choices here, but this particular
paragraph isn't about the size of people's gifts
or things like that, this is about the
full utilization.
Because God gives us a gift, and what
counts is not the nature of our gift,
or the size of our gift, but the
full utilization of the gift.
That's what God looks at.
So, he's saying, if it's contributing to the
needs of others, let him do it with
simplicity.
That's what I believe the translation says.
In other words, let there be no ulterior
motives, no wrong reasons for giving.
There are wrong reasons we can give, because,
well, we want other people to see.
And so, we get along a big band,
and we go on the street corner, wear
our Pharisees outfit, blow it, and pull the
ten dollar bill, and wave it, and give
it, and say, I'm giving this gift.
Or we can do it to curry favor
with somebody, well, we give them a gift.
Or we can do it, like I have
known many, oh, several wealthy businessmen give a
gift, and specifically hand it to the pastor
of a church, or the chairman of the
deacon's board, or elder's board, and say, there's
a gift, but you'd better change the music
style in this church.
That's not giving with simplicity, that's giving with
a wrong motive.
Or there are people say, well, I'll give,
because I'll get a good tax break on
this.
Nothing wrong with getting a tax break.
If you give five hundred dollars, and you
get a hundred dollars tax break, you say,
well, I can give a hundred dollars, and
still get twenty dollars tax break again, or
something like that.
Whatever it is, I don't know your system
here.
But you see, there's some people, obviously, we've
got to use money wisely, but that must
never be our primary motive.
Our primary motive is to give for the
sheer joy of giving.
And the more you give, the more you'll
want to give.
I tell you, I can, it's absolutely wonderful.
The more you give, the more God seems
to leave there.
I mean, it's like Sister Abigail of Buffalo,
a hundred years ago, who said, little is
much when God is in it.
And if you have only one dollar, and
somebody comes along, and you need the dollar,
but you give them fifty cents, he will
make the other fifty cents go further than
the dollar would have.
Or if you've only got an hour before
you're preaching, you desperately need it to get
your thoughts together, and somebody needs your time
for half an hour, give them a half
an hour, and God will enable you to
learn what you needed to learn in that
half an hour.
I've sure seen that to be true.
In fact, I was reading William Barclay, and
let me read you what he says on
this.
By the way, when I mention William Barclay,
be careful on William Barclay.
He's loved by Christians who love the Bible,
and love the Lord, and he's loved by
those who play church, and good liberal ways
of doing things.
You say, well, if somebody can be loved
by both, he must have a little bit
of both.
Yes, he's not always, I don't believe, orthodox
on his authorship of different books of the
Bible, on his denial of certain things like
demon possession, and things like that.
He's not orthodox on a number of things,
but he's the best I've ever read on
the new birth.
So just be careful when you read.
I warn you that, so that you need
to not just swallow everything.
But let me read what he says on
this giving.
There is a giving which pries into the
circumstances of another as it gives, which gives
a moral lecture along with the gift, which
gives not so much to relieve the need
of the other as to pander to its
own vanity and self-satisfaction, which gives with
a grim sense of duty instead of a
radiant sense of joy, which gives always with
some ulterior motive, and never gives for the
sheer joy of giving, for giving's sake.
Now that's exactly it.
Oh, may God give us, give us a
taste of the joy that comes from the
sheer joy of giving.
No wonder, have you proved yet it's more
blessed to give than to receive?
Have you found that Proverbs 11, 24 is
right?
The old King James that I learned at
crossing the Star Ferry from Hong Kong to
Kowloon when I learned 500 verses in the
first four months of my Christian life, but
they're all in the King James, so when
I repeat them I usually have to paraphrase
them.
But let me tell you what it says
in the King James.
There is that scattereth and yet increaseth.
There is that withholdeth more than is meet,
but it tendeth to poverty.
There, now you didn't understand what I said,
did you?
Well, there are those that give and give
and give, and yet they seem to increase
in what they've got.
There are others that tightly hold on to
any possibility of anybody undoing their tight fist,
and what happens?
They become poverty stricken.
Wonderful verse.
It's more blessed to give than to receive.
Oh, may God teach us that.
No matter how little, how little, but to
start giving from that little, and start giving,
then increasing, increasing, increasing.
Read the life of R.
G.
Latournoe and see what happens when you give
90 or 95 percent.
Sure, all right for him.
What he got left is 99 times as
much as I would ever get in all
my life, but it doesn't matter.
You read how it started.
And so, incidentally, I have on a couple
of occasions supervised a hundred telephone operators who
would take calls from a television program for
a World Vision telethon.
I served on World Vision board for 20
years, and sometimes we would help out in
different ways, and that was one of the
ways.
So I'd supervise, so you could answer any
difficult questions people may have.
You knew what the policies were, and so
on, whereas the operators were volunteers who'd come
to give their time for that evening.
Do you know what?
Every World Vision telethon that I know of,
and all the gifts that come in from
a city when you have a program to
support orphan children, or whatever the need is
in another country, every one that I know
of, between 90 and 95 percent of the
gifts that come in, come from the lower
middle class or the poorer areas of a
city.
Only five to ten percent come from the
wealthier areas.
I won't say any more, but does that
tell you something?
People who have suffered can identify with people
who suffer, and it's often those with a
widow's might that will give.
Oh God, make us good givers.
Go to that seminar this afternoon, and you'll
learn about that, and it's a wonderful, wonderful
thing to be able to give, all right?
By the way, hoarding isn't right, is it?
John Wesley, whom we've mentioned already, you said,
used to say, God, no, what about people
that leave things in their will?
And I remember a number of years ago
talking about this here when I was preaching
on The Rich Fool, and he said, John
Wesley said, God rewards us for deeds done
in the body, not out of it.
Wow, that's quite something.
It's quiet here now.
Laugh at yourself.
Come on, laugh at yourself and say, yes,
that's right.
Oh, how wonderful it is to, I mean,
goodness me, everybody leaves the same, exactly the
same amount, same, it's three something or other.
It's three words, all of it.
That's what they leave, only the same amount,
but oh God, I want to trust you.
How wonderful.
Give it now, maybe, there's a need, and
then trust, trust the Lord to look after
you later.
Anyway, you say you're crazy.
All right, I understand that, but you do
what you can then.
Now, if it is leadership, which is the
sixth of the seven, let him govern diligently.
This word leadership can include any form of
leadership, be it a pastor, be it the
chairman of a board, be it an elder
serving on an elder's board, or a deacon
serving, being someone leading a committee in the
church, being somebody who's leading a class of
young people or children, or you're leading in
some way.
Now, it says if you are gifted in
leadership, I want you to govern or to
do this with diligence, with zeal, with diligence.
I don't know what you think a leader
is.
We've talked about a leader compared with a
servant, but let me say this, you cannot
be a leader until you're a follower, and
once you become a leader, you don't follow
like you did before.
You follow twice as much as you did
before.
I've always been a follower.
I've always got people who lead me.
I've always been a question asker.
My wife would know.
She could see the worn-out nature of
the face of the people.
I would pump with questions all my life.
I was in...
I left school too young to be able
to know anything.
I left school at 14, and I had
to learn all my things as I went
along.
So, I used to be in the pharmaceutical
industry, and I'd get some medical specialist here
or there or something else.
I would always share what I had to
share as I would go and talk with
them in the work I was called to,
but in actual fact, I always would say,
now, I've got a question.
There's nothing to do with that, insomuch that
when I would see them later, I must
say, okay, what's your question today?
I was always the question asker.
I wanted to get information.
You've got to be like that.
I've always had followers.
I've always had leaders.
I followed them.
Dr. Tozer was the one that's influenced my
life tremendously because, of course, he used to
meet with me that morning a week and
teach me in my car.
How wonderful that was.
My wife's father, Archie Field, a wonderful Bible
teacher, had a tremendous general knowledge of the
Bible.
I would always look to him when he
died 24, 25 years ago.
I've got others along the way, many of
them.
Today, my two mentors are...
One is somebody that lived in the same
road as us in Bristol, but which we
didn't know then.
Jim Packer, J.
I.
Packer, the author of Knowing God, was a
professor of New Testament theology and systematic theology
at Regent College in Vancouver.
Well, Jim is my theological mentor, and if
I'm stuck somewhere, and I'm in the city
of Ottawa 2,500 miles away or something,
and I'm going to speak in 20 minutes,
and I don't know what this passage means,
I'll call Jim, and he'll give me a
great Calvinistic answer on what that passage means.
And I know that that's one side of
it, but there's another side, but that's the
side that counts, he tells me.
So that's fine.
Or if it's to do with life or
behavior or conduct or morality, I will go
to another friend of mine, Roy Bell, who
was the principal of Carey Hall, another college
at Vancouver, and Roy is a Baptist minister
and is very highly respected, and I would
go to Roy to find out what to
do on those matters.
And these are the people that I will
go to.
There are others, too, who you meet and
you ask.
I always ask younger ones.
Don't think they have to be older.
My word, I learned so much from young...
I learned from crying babies.
Patience or something, whatever it is, but you
can learn from anybody, right?
But a leader must be a follower, and
he must keep on following.
If somebody wants to lead you and they're
not following, don't follow them.
You say, unless they're very spiritual, and they
say, well, you know, I follow God.
Oh, that would be the ultimate?
Yeah, the ultimate in pride.
Because really, we must look to older, godly,
experienced Christians and say, there's always somebody else
must learn from.
I want to be accountable.
When I'm not at one place like this,
it's obvious whom I'm accountable to here.
I don't have to discuss with Heather and
say, Heather, would you tell me who I'm
accountable...
I know, I've got the team here that
I'm accountable to.
We're living on the grounds.
We have to have every meal.
I mean, it's marvellous.
We can have it there and we're accountable.
But sometimes you're in a city where you
go to seven or eight different places in
a week.
Well, I try to get three pastors who
are part of the group that invited me,
and I will invite them to my motel
room first night and say, would you please
come and pray with me?
When I'm there, I say, look, I'm here
in this city.
I have four areas of accountability, the areas
of morality, of doctrine, of strategic planning, and
the area of finance.
Now, I said the first two, on morality
and doctrine, I am accountable to the leaders
of our church in Victoria, British Columbia.
Now, on the matters of strategic planning and
finances, I am accountable to the Evangelical Fellowship
of Canada.
But whey, I'm a thousand miles from either
of them.
Isn't it nice to say, oh, I'm really
accountable?
But they couldn't see what I do.
I say, I want you, therefore, to be
my accountability umbrella this week, and I want
to voluntarily ask you to correct me if
I say any thin end of the wedge
of wrong doctrine.
If you see me living in a compromising
way in this motel, would you please put
them...
rebuke me on that, or whatever else it
is.
If I'm unwisely spending money, or if I'm
not planning my time, I want you to
tell me.
Will you tell me that?
You are my umbrella.
I want to be accountable.
And so, both in following people in what
you learn, and also being accountable to people.
Make sure that the people you follow are
followers and are accountable to other people.
Be careful of the man that's the kingpin
and will only bring people around his team
who are yes-men to him and only
do what he says.
Be extremely careful of that.
I've seen a lot of problems.
My work has been working with...
Well, I won't get into that.
Anyway.
So, and the last one, if it is
showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
Showing mercy, what a marvellous, marvellous gift.
Oh, just to see the need.
Again, along the line of encouragement, oftentimes the
people that have the gift of encouragement have
the gift of showing mercy.
But other people just see those needs again.
You know, somebody's sick in the church or
something, they'll cook a meal and take it
over.
The only time in all of 40 years
was last Wednesday, I think it was, Tuesday
or Wednesday, the only time I can remember
my wife ever having to try to say,
look, if you can't find anybody, do come
back.
And I'd never heard her say that because
always, always ready to cook meals for anybody,
anybody sick, anything like that.
And it was because of the difficult time
we had last week with all visitors during
my brother-in-law's crisis.
And so, as a result of that, I
actually had to interfere on the phone.
And I think I got on the phone,
if I remember rightly, I think I took
the phone and said, you know, I know
she won't tell you, but it's, it's just
going to be a very difficult week.
But please, maybe if you can't find someone
else, get on.
Even I'll cook the meal.
I knew if I said that, they'd never
get back to us.
So, so, you know, so anyway, I just
wanted, that's a marvellous gift to show mercy.
People, people have got that gift.
What a marvellous gift to show mercy.
Anyway, these are some of the gifts.
Now, there are many other gifts.
Let me just, let me just, let me
ask you, let's take a little time here.
Let me ask you, you must know that
there would be plenty of other gifts, you
know, you may have gifts other than the
ones I've said.
And you may know that there are people
you are close to or familiar with that
have got gifts that are not in Scripture.
I'd like to know some of those gifts
so that others here can get the sense,
hey, wait a minute, I had gifts like
that or this and so on.
Maybe, maybe I can use that for God
after all.
Also, I'd like to know if you didn't
think you had a gift and you found
that God in some way put you on
a spot and you started to cultivate it,
how that happened.
Now, I'm not going to stay long.
I don't want anybody to take more than
60 seconds, if possible, so you can just
encapsulate that to get a few people just
sharing here.
Yes, oh, here's Stan.
To you, sir, I will give the microphone,
the only one.
Thank you, Stan.
Our teaching pastor at our church has, I
believe, the gift of wisdom.
He's very quiet.
He'll sit through a meeting for an hour,
not say a word, and we will be
discussing some issue, and then we'll say, Carl,
what do you think?
And he'll just bring a word right from
the word, and it will be exactly the
right thing, and it'll be the totally opposite
thing of what we've been talking about, and
we'll go, you know, why didn't you say
that an hour ago?
But I just was thanking him the other
day for allowing God to use him in
this way.
He's a very wise person, and it's obviously
a God-given gift.
Thank you so much, and indeed, that is
included in the Bible, a word of knowledge
or a word of wisdom, isn't it?
Although, if you're from certain groups of churches,
you probably say that finished a hundred years
after Christ, but I don't happen to think
that.
I feel that God hasn't got rid of
any of those gifts.
It's just that at certain periods of time,
certain ones are more prominent, and that's the
way it sort of goes.
Now, who's got some area here that you
feel is something that really was right on
what we've been talking about you'd like to
share?
We have a fellow in our church that
encourages
us in prayer, and that seems to be
either his ministry or his gift.
Encouraging people in prayer.
So, what does he do?
Does he tell them?
I'll let you talk, but if you will,
that's nice.
We have a missionary friend that has the
real ability to get different missionary groups working
together among the same people, and for the
Lord, I think there's no fighting.
So, that's like on a foreign field?
And they come in all different groups, you
know, come in, and this is my section,
and this is my section, but he has
them all working together in the same section.
It's beautiful.
Special.
Oh, that's special.
That's wonderful.
In fact, I recall some years ago when
I was in Montreal, we had offices of
Christian Direction, and we sublet different offices to
Scripture Union, which we helped start them there
in the French, the La Ligue pour la
Lecture, La Bible, and we started to help
other people start the French in diversity and
the English in diversity, and then there was
Hockey Ministries International, and what happened is each
of us leaders all had keys to each
of our offices, and each of us had
keys to the other person's desks, and we
worked together to show the oneness of the
body.
In fact, a book I wrote on this
very thing for the Lausanne Committee, I mentioned
that as an illustration, and that, I believe,
that's wonderful to see that, to see, where
are you?
Sorry.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It was wonderful.
It's wonderful to see that, and it's something
very close to my heart.
So, it is a gift to bring people
together.
The old days, they used to have Comity.
Anybody know what C-O-M-I-T
-Y is?
Comity was in the old missions 100 years
ago, where they moved into India, and there
were Presbyterians and Baptists and Methodists.
They would all be given an area, and
that's your area.
That's a Presbyterian region.
This is a Baptist region, but then we
went beyond that, and we could work together.
All right.
Another good Comity.
Yes.
New gift.
Transportation.
I have a son that takes kids to
church, goes all over the place to get
them to church.
My husband, too.
Now, what, I mean, what would you put
that biblically?
Helps, servant, all kinds.
But here's, within these categories, wonderful gift.
Just think, if you feel that you don't
know yet where it is, you can always
do.
You don't have to have a gift to
do that.
Have you ever found anybody who said they
had a gift of cleaning toilets?
I mean, who covets the gift of giving?
Who covets some of these gifts?
Somebody had a hand up over here.
Now, if you stand up, Mrs. Mercer.
The gift of humor.
Yeah, I just think it's great if you
can make people laugh, and, you know, it
may not be, well, I guess it's biblical.
Oh, very biblical, I think.
And also sports.
You know, the ability, physical ability, and you
can reach people through those abilities by getting
to know them and stuff.
And there may not be people that would
come into church or whatever, but that's how
you reach them.
It's a link to them.
Well, thank you.
That's wonderful.
And humor, it certainly is biblical.
Jesus had, you know, Herod, that fox, and
you take the tree trunk out of your
own eye before you get the speck of
dust out of someone else.
I mean, there's a sense of humor.
I also, in myself, I find I have
to watch that.
I was born with several punny bones in
my body, and I see funny things about
almost every word, you know.
And also, it's so easy if you're, if
you're a person that sees funny things, you're
in the middle of a very serious description
of something in Gethsemane, and you suddenly think
of a word, and out it comes, oh,
you've ruined the whole thing.
And, you know, humor can deteriorate into levity
and destroy our Christian credibility.
So, we have to watch it, but it
is a gift that some people seem to
have, and appreciate, and sport.
Well, that kept me from coming to Christ,
so I won't say anything about that, but,
but, but you're right.
I'm sorry about that.
I didn't tell you that yet, I know,
but this is a wonderful, wonderful way of,
I mean, today, I, I, let me tell
you this.
I told somebody, who was it I told,
about Glubb Pasher.
You know, that Glubb Pasher, the Commander-in
-Chief of the Arab Legion for 15 years,
wrote a book before he died 10 years
ago, in fact, went up and down Britain,
giving a lecture on the fate of empires,
and he showed how every empire in the
last 3,000 years had lasted about 250
years, 10 generations.
It would still go on after, but it
had lost its greatness.
Every empire, he showed, he was an amateur
historian, but one who could see all of
history, not limited to one epoch or era,
and he showed in every empire, and Rome,
by the way, was divided into two, the
Republic and the Empire, so it's still about
10 generations each.
So, in every one of them, they all
started off, and they all went through the
same cycle.
Arnold Toynbee, the historian, he picked up his
ideas, where he says they would start from,
you know, bondage, and then get courage, and
then they'd conquer some land, and then you'd
move in with, with, with the soldiers, and
then the, the merchantmen would go in and
get the economy moving, and then you'd start
to enter the age of art and luxury,
there's plenty of money, and then you'd have
universities built more and more, so every empire
started with about two or three universities, Oxford
and Cambridge, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, this kind of
thing, we'll call America an empire, you don't
mind that, do you?
And they started with those, but every one
of them finished with a university in every
city, and sometimes two universities.
That's the way they all went, because it
went from the age of art and luxury
to the age of intellect, where now what
you knew was more important than what you
did, and then at that point, always moral
decadence sets in, you get corrupt thing inside,
and it's easily conquered from without, because there's
very little moral standards left anymore, and he
said at the end of every empire, whereas
at the beginning, the three people that stood
in the spotlight were always pioneers, soldiers, and
statesmen, at the end of every empire, thankfully,
we've still got people that stand in the
spotlight and can do great tasks, and this
is our chance, but at the end of
every empire, he knews in 3,000 years,
the three people that stand in the spotlight
in the last closing decades are actors, athletes,
and musicians.
Now, if you want to read Glob Pasher,
there's a book called The Fate of Empires,
and in fact, the publisher asked me to
do something with that thing, but I turned
that down, but it's a marvelous, marvelous book,
so let's use what God has given us
now, look at the gifts now, people are
interested in music, they're interested in sport, they're
interested in these other things, so let's use
them as opportunities to serve the Lord.
I'm talking too much, I wanted you to.
Yes, Guy?
I think compassion is the gift that God
expects all of us as his children to
use.
Do you feel that that is a fruit
of the Spirit or a gift of the
Spirit?
I think I would consider it a gift.
So, acts of compassion, and do you know
in the language of the New Testament, it's
the same word, it's translated mercy or compassion,
so in that sense, it is a gift,
and yet the compassion, which is love, is
a fruit.
All of us are to have the fruit
in our lives, but not all of us
have the same gifts.
Thank you so much, and you have a
wonderful gift, as you know.
What did I say?
What did we all say he has a
gift of?
Yes, they all know your voice, and if
they didn't look around yesterday when you were
praying, and Stan asked you to pray, if
they didn't look around, they'd have sworn you
were 40, and here you are, three times,
I'm sorry, twice that age.
All right, another comment.
Now, let me ask you, then, let me
go on to another thing here, just a
moment or two.
I started late, so I'm okay.
It's all right, Heather, don't worry, I'm going
to finish before tonight's meeting is on, but
no, just for a few minutes here.
How do you feel if somebody doesn't know
what gifts they've got, and they want to
know what gifts they have got, specifically now,
not so many stories now, but give precise
suggestions as to how they can find out
what those gifts are, or how you did,
and how you can then cultivate those.
Anybody got some odd, just give me one
thing at a time, somebody throw one thing
out, and start at the beginning somewhere, where
nobody knows what the gifts are.
Try it, try it.
Now, there's a great, try it.
Anybody tried something that they didn't think they
had a gift for?
You can just tell us what happened.
Anybody done that?
Yes, it's all right, you spoke just now,
but you obviously have done something, so.
I don't sing, and yet I find myself
very often leaving the singing, but the people
are very nicely helpful, and they just will
carry the tune, and do it.
Sometimes I ask for help, but they fit
it, and we get the song.
Well, I must admit, that wasn't the thing
I was thinking about.
There we are, God can even do wonders
in that field.
All right, something else here.
Somebody at the back here, here we are,
don't worry, I can come down here.
We'll even reach Heather one of these days.
A willingness to sit back in your gift.
Yes, now you're sitting back here, would you
stand a moment, and everybody can see you.
A willingness not to operate in your gifts,
so others will feel the freedom to come
forward, like if you're a teacher, but you
always teach, and you know there's others.
That's wonderful, that's exactly what Ephesians 4 is
about, that God gave the gifts of teachers,
and pastors, and evangelists, and so on.
Why?
So that they could do the work?
No, to equip the Christians, that the Christians
may do the work of ministry.
Oh, they may still preach, and so on,
but the primary thing there, in that passage,
is that you may equip others, and I
don't know, I, from 35, I started to
pour my life into other people, and at
54, I handed over my major life ministry
to someone else, and he's done a much
better job at it, and all the time
now, I'm trying to pour my life into
the next generation, getting other people to do
things.
Now, you still sometimes have to come around,
and show that you're still alive, at touching
70, but there we are, that's the way
it is.
So, something else.
You can ask other people what they feel
your gifts are.
Okay, thank you, that's a big one.
Anybody ever been in a business, where your
boss has had you in, and he said,
all right, now, I want you to sit
down here, and I want you to fill
out this form, and tell me where you
think your strong points, and weak points are,
then I will tell you what I is.
Anybody ever done that in business?
Of course, you have, and that's a way,
and frankly, that's a good way to do
it in the church.
You've done it, Andy.
Tell us, tell us, if you think that
would work, if you ask someone else what
your gifts are.
Have you ever done that?
My wife tells me what my gifts are
all the time.
Count your lucky stars.
No, no, no.
Be very thankful she doesn't tell you what
your weaknesses are.
She does that too, but she's very kind
about it.
So, is that a gift, being very kind
about your weaknesses?
Asking a pastor, or leaders in the church
in that.
Have you ever approached anybody and said, look,
I'm not too sure whether this is really
from God, but do you feel I have
this gift, or what?
Have you done anything like that?
I can't say that I've done that.
I have had pastors and other people I
respect in the church affirm my gifts, but
as I speak of that, I don't know
whether I've been telling them that, or whether
they've been telling me that.
Right.
Well, that's a wonderful thing.
Affirming is a good word, and please differentiate
between affirming, affirmation, and flattery.
Flattery is manipulation for evil purposes.
Affirmation is recognizing what God has done in
somebody else, and telling them that.
There's no reason why you can't.
Some people, my wife, I said to somebody
here, was it here, or was it somewhere
I was speaking last week, or where?
But my wife often used to say to
me, when we were in England and Britain,
she'd say, you know, my, isn't it nice,
these American girls, they have so much more
confidence than we British girls seem to have.
And, you know, she says, I don't know
why.
I've come to the realization that American mothers
are right in properly evaluating where they think
their daughters, or sons' gifts are, and telling
them.
Whereas, oftentimes, we British parents, or our parents
and that, they thought that would give you
a swollen head, so you didn't tell them
too much about that.
And so, if anybody gave you a compliment
in Britain, you say, oh no, oh that's
a nice coat you got.
Oh no, I got it in Woolworths for
Thropp and Sapney, you know, or something.
No, no, no, I have to put it
down, you see.
Whereas American girls would say, oh well, thank
you very much, because that's true.
That is true humility, recognizing where things are.
Now, of course, you can go way out
of line on that, but how important it
is to affirm, not flatter, but to affirm
other people.
We need to affirm and tell people, look,
I sense something about you.
For instance, I could tell all you now,
you've all got the gift of listening.
No, but there's something you can find that
people have got.
Affirm them.
So, anyway, I think our time is just
about, I've got three minutes left to what
I said I would take.
I mean, I said to myself I would
take.
So, let me just tell you this.
I'll finish in these three minutes, Heather, promise.
They're not going anywhere for three minutes anyway.
You know, there was a book that came
out 25 years ago or more, and those
of you who are willing to admit it
will show us your age, even though you
look younger.
But it was by a man called Lawrence
J.
Peters, and the book was called The Peter
Principle.
Did any of you ever read it?
Oh, a good number of you.
All right.
I can't remember too much about it except
that the main lesson was this.
His premise was this, built on this, that
in every hierarchy or institution, each person rises
to their level of incompetence.
What he means is here's a man working
on the shop floor.
He's working with metal, and he loves the
feel of metal, and he loves the men
around him, loves rubbing shoulders with him.
He gets on well with them.
The foreman dies.
They need a new foreman.
They say, he's the man.
Let's promote him.
So, they promote him, and, oh, my, production
goes up, and he's a wonderful foreman.
They all love working for him, and he
does so well over two years that then
the vice president of production dies, and they
say, we need another vice president.
This is the man that's done a great
job.
Let's take him upstairs.
Let's take off his blue collar and put
a white collar on him, and we'll put
him the other side of a one-way
mirror, and he can look down on all
those people in true British style, you know.
And he looks down on the shop floor,
and he longs to be down there with
him.
He loves to be where that metal is
and those men.
He's stuck up there with a bunch of
papers and pens, and I don't know what
else, and he doesn't enjoy it very much.
There's no fulfillment in his life.
His wife is miserable.
She threatens to divorce him.
I mean, she can't stand being with him.
He's so uncomfortable all the time, and at
the end of the year, the company finds
they've lost a million and a half dollars.
Now, what has happened here?
This man has been promoted to his level
of incompetence.
He was good touching things, and handling machinery,
and things like that, but he's not good
up there.
So, what do they do?
Do we demote him?
Wouldn't do that.
Do we promote him?
No, he did a terrible job here.
So, what do we do?
We leave him in the place where he's
least effective.
That means that if you're in that slot,
and many of us will be in that
kind of slot.
Thankfully, I'm not, but you can be in
that slot.
It'll be very, very unfulfilling in life, and
you've got to find that correct mosaic between
natural talents, spiritual gifts, and personality traits, and
put them together in the task that God
has called you to.
Don't be like a parent who always wants
their children whatever they want.
You're going to be a lawyer.
You're going to be a physician.
You're going to be this, because we want
to show you off.
Be very careful, because you may have, economy
may be okay in that half household, but
it may not be very pleasant to live
there, and God has given us gifts, and
we're happiest when we find the gifts that
God has made us for, and we spend
most of our energy, and most of our
time in those gifts.
Do you know, David was like that.
He was told he was going to be
king, but he didn't snatch the reins of
rulership.
In fact, he went and played before Saul,
and he was David playing the harp, and
Saul playing the harpoon, and you know, he
just put up with this whole thing, and
it was 15 or 20 years before he
got around to doing that, but he looked
after the sheep meanwhile, and you know, that
can happen.
My father was the most wonderful, honest, God
-fearing carpenters I've ever met.
All my family were carpenters back there, and
he got me out of this thing, because
in the war, they took all his men
and his wood from him, but anyway, he
was a wonderful guy, and he would do
things properly.
Everything he made was done properly.
He'd get a, had to put a screw
in, so he'd find, is it number six,
number eight, number ten, and should I get
a brad or an awl, and everything was
done by hand, you know.
He'd get the right hole in there, get
the right screw, put it in, and then
he'd screw it in with a screwdriver, the
last couple of turns, get it right, then
he'd feel the slot, it was a little
rough, so he gets a memory cloth or
something, and rub it off, make sure nobody
get cut the finger on that, then he'd
grade the little hole around the screw, so
that it was indented, and he'd do that,
then he'd, this is a crate he's making
now, right?
Then he'd move on to the next one.
He couldn't do anything with, other than with
excellence.
I mean, when I came to, went to
Canada, 40 years ago, and somebody came into
our bathroom in Toronto to do some work
on a drawer, and something there, and I
saw this guy take a screw, and he
got a hammer, and he went, wham, and
knocked it in two-thirds of the way.
My father jumped up in his grave, and
there was thunder and lightning over Toronto.
He, dad, loved that work.
He did it with excellence.
God had made him to be, he spent
12 years in apprenticeship, as a joiner and
cabinet maker.
He built houses, and schools, and churches, and
I've been to see, and there's not a
structural crack in those that I've seen.
How wonderful, this is after many centuries now,
since he did it, you know, many decades.
Anyway, this is, but you know, let me
finish, I've come to the end here.
I have, I have a son-in-law,
not that one, who's a very earthy man,
in a good sense.
He loves earth.
He loves the earth.
Oh my, he goes, his job is to
provide the conditions for God to produce three
to six million miniature wasps every week, and
he, these wasps can sit on the head
of a pin.
They won't stick, sting you, but what they
do is, they will be released into the
greenhouses of the world to lay their eggs,
and the larvae, I think, of the dragon,
not the dragonfly, the white fly, and what
happens is, they're used for biological, non-pesticidal
control of other insects in greenhouses, and so
on, and he loves the earth.
He loves playing with, he loves examining the
tobacco plants they put them on, and oh,
he loves all this, and he'll come home
in his jalopy, and park it in the
driveway.
Before he goes in, you see him looking
at the cabbage, how it's getting on, digging
some of the earth, and putting it around
it, loving to get the earth inside his
fingernails.
He loves the earth.
He's an earthy man, but his father put
him into economic geography, and that's what his
degree is in.
Nothing to do with it.
One of those people sitting right there again
in our family.
Can you believe it?
Loves to go around, and touch people's hair,
and set it up nice, and coat it.
She didn't bring her scissors with her, it's
all right, and oh, she loves to cut
hair, and she would go along with these
two little boys, and carry cots, and go
up, and set their hair.
It was wonderful.
She loved, she, she was made for that.
God made it just to do that, because
she can bring joy into people's lives just
by doing that.
Why in the world, Rosemary and I sent
her to French secretarial school, I never know.
You see, so find out, find out the
gift that God has got for you, and
you'll be extremely fulfilled in that.
But God is a God who gives us
all gifts, and there's not one of us
here that hasn't got a gift like that.
There, I've called on you already, Jeff, so
I'm going to pounce on you again.
You just close this session in prayer, would
you?
Do you want to, do you want to
back?
Father in heaven, thank you for this wonderful
time.
We thank you for gifting our friend Keith
to us this week, and we thank you
most of all for your son, Jesus Christ.
We pray that we would be changed more
and more into his image, and that you'd
be glorified in our families, and our relationships,
and in our lives, back where it's a
little more difficult to walk with you, and
yet all the more important.
We pray these things in Jesus Christ's name.
Amen.