Practically Sanctified

2 Timothy 2:1-13 “You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.
Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules. The hard-working farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops. Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.
Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel, for which I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal; but the word of God is not imprisoned. For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.
It is a trustworthy statement: For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; If we endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us; If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”

Prisca and Aquilla (Romans 16:3-5). One of my claims to fame is that I am Bonnie Grove’s husband. Her debut novel won the Best Contemporary novel at the Word Guild awards this past week. When you read the back cover copy you see the words “…blah blah blah Grove, and her pastor husband, Steve blah blah blah…” That’s what I am talking about. I got mentioned on the cover of a real book – how much better can it get? I know it is not all about me, that it is really all about Bonnie – but in her ministry there are people who pray and support her. In every celebrity’s life there are all the unfamous who do all the background stuff. Sometimes they get mentioned, sometimes not. We like to focus on the celebrities, the famous ones. I can talk of Joseph and David and even Gideon who was famous partially because he wasn’t famous. He was the last of the last, yet God used him. There are whole stories behind those other names, the behind the scenes regular people.  For example, who are Prisca and Aquilla? We find them mentioned in the closing of Paul’s letter to the Romans. There are two things we note in Paul’s comments. The first is that they risked their necks for Paul. What? Isn’t that a story you’d want to know? Here we know all about Paul. Paul goes to the Gentiles. Paul almost dies a zillion times. Paul is almost shipwrecked. Paul is beaten. Paul this and Paul that, yet here is an unknown couple that sounds like they saved Paul’s life. If they didn’t do what they did, we may not have heard about Paul past Acts 16! How many of his letters would not have been written if these two unknowns hadn’t put their life in harm’s way on Paul’s behalf? God likes to use the unknowns. He likes to use you and I.

The message I want you to go away with today is that regardless of who you are, if you show up God can use you. Showing up means you are willing to do the work. There are two guys sitting on a park bench eating their bag lunches. One of  them has a special phone that is supposed to connect straight from God. You can’t dial out on it, only receive. He is talking to the other guy about God and waiting for His call – the call that will change his life; the call that will give him his ministry, his purpose in life, that might even make him famous. Down the path a little old lady stumbles and the bag of groceries she was carrying scatters all across the ground. The guy without the phone jumps up and helps her up and picks up the groceries while the other guy keeps rambling on about reception issues and how far away heaven must be. The second guy comes back, but just as he does he sees a little boy down the other way looking around like he is lost and starting to cry. He runs over and calms him down and starts asking him about his parents. Shortly the frantic mother of the lost boy comes running over from across a green area and the situation is resolved. The second guy returns to the bench to hear the man with the phone wondering about the data plans available on the phone. A homeless man shuffles by looking for handouts, and receives the bag lunch from the second man while the first just scowls and shoves the rest of his half eaten sandwich in his mouth. Then it happens. The phone rings, and it is ever so melodious. It is as if the angels are playing the ring tone themselves, and the guy with the phone almost panics as he chokes down his mouth full of food. He composes himself, nods and winks at his buddy saying, “This is it! This is the call I have been waiting for!” He answers the phone with a confident , “Hello”, but his face shows great disappointment when he turns to his friend, the one who has been running around and helping people with their needs, he turns to his friend, extends the phone and says, “It’s for you.” You see, the guy with the phone didn’t really show up. Showing up isn’t about sitting on an easy chair waiting for the call, the finger of God to come down and point to a ministry and a loud voice bellows, “Do this!” Showing up is being faithful to the things right around you. He was not engaged in life with his faith, with the people around him. The second guy was full of life and good works and love – that is the man God calls.
And so God is looking for men, for people, to stand in the gap. He is looking for the one who will be faithful to the calling of a life of ministry. He is calling you to show up today.
Outstanding among the great world heroes of ancient times were the Scottish torch runners. Long before the invention of the internet or telephone or telegraph, if a message had to be sent throughout the land, it was entrusted to the strongest and swiftest young man, chosen by each town to be their torch runner.
In one secluded highland town, there was a man famed as among the greatest of this valiant band, and widely known for both his speed and faithfulness. His name was Duncan, known throughout the land as “Duncan the Swift.” He stood constantly ready for the arrival of the runner from the next town. He would listen carefully to the message, seize the lighted torch, and sprint to his appointed town, there to relay the message first to that town’s torch runner and then to all the people. Only then would he return home.
Duncan’s young son, Douglas, was deeply moved by his father’s constant readiness for action and his reputation as “Duncan the Swift.”
When Douglas turned twelve he was allowed, if ready when the torch came, to run with his father to the next town. He could not keep pace, but would follow, and when the torch and message had been duly delivered, father and son would walk home together. Within two years, Douglas could run all the way with his father.
One day, when they had worked hard in the fields harvesting grain, Duncan was greatly fatigued. But at nightfall, the flaming torch was delivered with a crucial warning that enemy forces from the north were to attack that very night. Duncan heard the message, grabbed the torch, and sped off into the darkness.
His son, Douglas was nowhere in sight, but arrived just as the message was being relayed to the people. Learning that his father had already left, he took the road to follow him without any hesitation. In less than half the distance, he caught up with his dad, and immediately noticed that his dad’s running was labored. Suddenly Duncan’s legs gave out, and he fell to the ground. Quickly he turned to his son. “Do you have the message?”
“Yes, Sir!”
 “Then go!” And he handed him the torch.
Without delay, Douglas seized the torch and sped off into the darkness, reached the next town and delivered the message, first to their torch runner, then to the people. Returning swiftly, he found his father able to stand and to walk home with his hand on his son’s shoulder. Then Duncan told his son with pride, “One day you will be known as ‘Douglas the Swift.’”
In time Douglas became one of the fastest of all the torch runners of Scotland, known widely indeed as “Douglas the Swift.”
But there was another torch runner, whose name no one remembers, in a town on the northernmost Scottish coast. His job was to carry the message out to a little village on a peninsula stretching far out into the North Sea. In another harvest season, this runner was extremely weary. He listened to the message warning of an enemy attack, seized the torch, and took the trail. But as he ran, his feet became heavier and heavier.
Out of sight of the townspeople, he chose a shortcut leading to a nearby third town, to which the runner from out on the point should have carried the torch. Bypassing the town on the point, he gave the message to the runner and to the people, and then returned home. All the highland villages had been warned, except for that tiny town on the northern point.
That night, the enemy attacked with mighty warships at that very point. The people were unprepared. Many died. The town was taken. The attackers established a beachhead. Great damage was done—all because of the failure of one man, forever nameless, the torch runner who took the short cut.

Do you know that God has chosen you and me to be His torch runners, to take His wonderful message to the whole world? This message is the Good News of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He commands all who have received Him as our Savior to go into the entire world to deliver the Good News that everyone who believes in Him will have everlasting life. We each have a path to run. We each have a shortcut before us, tempting us to do it the easy way.
Are you willing to become one of His torch runners? Are you ready to run with perseverance and stay on the right path? Make that commitment to Jesus today. Tell Him you are in it for the long haul, that whether famous or unknown, blessing or calamity befalls you, your voice is for Jesus and His mission.

Matthew 6:9-13
9 Pray, then, in this way:
‘Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
[For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]‘

We all have stories of our fathers. Maybe he was present, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was involved, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was, then wasn’t, or vicey voo. When I was a little kid, my dad worked on the fire department. They had a bomb scare and they asked for a volunteer to go out in equipment and hook things up so they could take it to a safe place to blow it up. My dad volunteered for 2 reasons. As a fire fighter he had enough insurance on his life so that his family would lack nothing if he died in the line of duty. More importantly he knew that nobody else on his shift was a Christian. He figured his life was expendable over another’s if it meant they would spend eternity in hell. Fortunately, all went well, and he is still alive today.

As we celebrate Fathers’ Day I want to speak to the men. My message would not be any different if I was just speaking to ladies, so you can listen in too and apply it where you will. What does it take to be a good father, or a good son? What dynamics do we need to relate to our heavenly Father? I like to work on genealogy so I think of generations that go by and how one influences the next. I want to talk about our heavenly Father. Jesus had a unique relationship with His Father and when He prayed to God Jesus said some very specific things. It is to this I want to speak to today. Let us go through the Lord’s prayer and see what is called of us to be good sons, good fathers, and good men and women of God.

Worship – Verse 9 “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
Worship is about position. Everybody has a sense of who they are in relation to the people around them; to the world; in a spiritual sense as well. Sometimes this sense is right, or pretty accurate, and sometimes it is off. Some people have a very inflated sense of who they are to the world. They are medieval in the sense that they think the universe revolves around them. It may not even be their fault in a sense. They may feel that way because other people have told them that. Our Celebrity Culture forces that upon people; but it is still a decision to listen to those people and allow ourselves to believe it. Whatever the case, they focus way too much on what they look like, and what others think of them. At the other end of the spectrum are those people who think so poorly of themselves that they also care too much about what other people think and how they look. And they may be that way too, because of what other people have said about themselves. Both extremes are people focus on themselves: the first in pride, the second in shame.
A real man not only eats quiche, but he recognizes who he is before God. The root of his identity comes not from his job or abilities, and not from his relationships or friends, but from the truth that the Creator of the ends of the earth made him for a very special reason. Not only was he created for a special purpose, he is also loved more than he will ever know. That is our basic problem as people – we don’t grasp how much we are loved by the eternal God. If we could somehow understand the depth of the incarnation and the strength of the resurrection, our lives would be changed. That is true worship. We focus so much on our short-comings when we should be focused on God’s sovereignty and grace and love and holiness. If we could understand who God is, and give Him His due, we would much better see our place in this world. That is why Jesus started this prayer with these words, Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. And that is why we sing the words “Our God is an awesome God”.

Victory – verse 10 “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Victory is about goals. It is about accomplishing something very specific. In any conflict both sides are trying to accomplish something. Sometimes it is to overcome something or someone else, sometimes it is just to survive. In every sense of the word as Christians we are in a conflict. What is unfortunate is we invariably look at the wrong place for our enemies. We think it is other people, that there is an “US” who is righteous fighting against the “THOSE” who are unrighteous. That is not our battle. That battle and those decisions are God’s.
Ephesians 6:12-13 “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”
Our battle is a spiritual battle, and the thing at stake is the very soul of those people. When we talk down, when we ignore them, when we consider them beneath us we are doing that to Jesus, for He created them. The man of God has to respond to the call of God to take the freeing truth of the Good News of Jesus to the world around him. God has a plan, and we can walk in victory in that plan knowing God is in control. There are a lot of problems in life: financial, relational & political. We follow a different drummer than the one who is the God of this world. Regardless of health or wealth, of life or death even, we pursue the Lover of our soul who draws all men to Himself. We want to see Jesus’ love shine all around us and so we sing “Shine Jesus Shine”.

Dependence – verse 11 “Give us this day our daily bread.”
When you think of a man’s man, what do you think of? Often people think of a guy like Grizzly Adams. A man of great physical strength, of great emotional fortitude. Ethical and moral standards sometimes are less important, and as you look at the celebrity culture you find that many of these heroes are regular people. Money and fame does nothing but give them room to indulge in the excesses of life. The other thing about Grizzly Adams is his independence. He is the king of his mountain, and fierce animals nor the evil of men will overcome Him.
It’s funny then that in this prayer in a simple sentence we see dependence highlighted. The man of God is told to depend on an unseen and untouchable force for his every need; not the strength of his own 2 hands, nor the wisdom of his mind, nor the fortitude of will. We are called to ask of our Heavenly Father for all we need. But what if we don’t get what we think we need? I go shopping with Ben (who is and invariably he looks at things through his eyes. He sees things at his level, things in the moment that he is sure he would love to have and play with. He sees all the pretty colours and diagrams, and blazing pictures of the toy in cartoon action. He knows it will not really be like that, but it will be pretty close. And here I am with my full 46 years of earthly and fatherly wisdom saying, ”No” because I understand the fallacies of advertising and the weakness of plastic. I know, to an extent, the values of not just looks, but playability. I also know the dangers of certain things, that a flamethrower really isn’t a toy.
How often, though, are we like that 8 year old, thinking we know what we want and whining and complaining when we don’t get it. Have you ever heard a kid tell his or her parent that they hate them. There was a court case in the States where a 14 year old boy tried to divorce his parents. How many people do you know have walked away from the church and God because they did not get what they wanted? God is our Father, and seeks to give us wonderful gifts, and to provide for us all that we need. He asks us to pursue Him and His righteousness, and let Him bless us with all these other things (Matthew 6:33). That is why we sing “Seek Ye First”.

Forgiveness – Verse 12 “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
There is a transition in this prayer, not unlike the 10 Commandments. The first part of this prayer is about our relationship with God. It has to do with who we are before an eternal, omniscient and all powerful God. It is about our vertical relationship, personal integrity. The second half is about how we conduct ourselves among our fellow man, our social integrity; about our horizontal relationships. This verse about forgiveness goes hand in hand with who we are before God. It is based on the character of God, the agape love which is at the heart of our faith. Anyone who hurts another in the name of Jesus is a lie. Go to any of the social media and you will find people turned off faith because of something someone did to them, or to humanity in the past. What they don’t understand is that calling yourself a Christian doesn’t change you. Following Jesus is what changes you. There have been far more secular rulers who have conquered lands in the name of themselves, than “Christian” kings who have pillaged and killed and maimed. A man who holds bitterness and hate in his heart will do bad and unnecessary things because what is in you will eventually come out, regardless of the name of his religion (including atheists).
The call for the man of God is to love. Remember those verses in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8? Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails… Where does it say in those verses that there is a cut off point? In our relationship with God, His love is everlasting. There is only one thing that can prevent the love of God reaching you – that is rejection. If you reject God, you continually turn your back on the Holy Spirit’s promptings and nudging in your life, you tread on dangerous ground. Seek the forgiveness of God for all you are not and all you are that shouldn’t be, and then extend that to another. That is why we sing “He Paid a Debt”.

Following – Verse 13 “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
There are many people who have followed a leader who turned out to be bad. Both in the financial world, the political world, the celebrity world, and the spiritual world. The call of the Christian, the chief aim of our life is to follow Jesus. God is in the process of making His children into the likeness of Christ. And so here we are, as Hebrews 12:1-2 says: Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. We are following Jesus. We pray, then, for guidance and direction. We know that He is a loving God. His promises are full of things for our success and fruition as His beloved children. We know that with Him by our side nothing can befall us that has taken Him by surprise, and nothing has befallen us that is so big we cannot get through with Him.
1 Corinthians 10:13 says no temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.
And so we follow. We don’t need to be afraid, God is with us: Emmanuel – my favorite name of God. Fear should not even be part of our vocabulary because of how great and awesome our God is. We follow a God who leads us like the shepherd, keeping us out of dangers way, leading us to food and water, and rescuing us when we go astray. We can trust in Him. While this world is filled with chaos, and even our lives can be filled with the chaos of sickness or stress due to financial or relational issues, we can walk in the calm assurance that God is Sovereign and in control. I speak not because emotions are bad or wrong, but because the truth and reality of God is bigger than those things. That is why we sing “God Will Make a Way”.

Surrender – Verse 13b “[For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]”
When it all comes down to it, who is God and who isn’t? Who sits on the throne of the universe, and, more importantly, who sits on the throne of your life? The man of God recognizes in the grand scheme of things who’s who and what’s what. There is recognition that God is at work in the world. He no longer fights God for control, but rather goes out in the power of God to do the work of God. He allows the power of God to work in him, producing holiness, a character alignment with Jesus Christ.
Matthew 16: 24-26 “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”” Discipleship is costly. Following Jesus takes effort and initiative. Let your pride die with mine, let the things go that hold you back from God, and join with me as we follow in His footsteps. That is why we sing “Be Unto Your Name”.