Broadway Christian Church - Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship - June 19, 2005

Prayer of the Day

Dear God, we give you thanks and praise for the beauty within each day, for the bonds of family, for the miracle of forgiveness, and for the sweetness of life lived in relationship with you through Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Scripture
Philippians 1:2-4, 8-11; 4:8-10

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God.  I always pray for you, and I make my requests with a heart full of joy.

God knows how much I love you and long for you with the tender compassion of Christ Jesus.

I pray that your love for each other will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in your knowledge and understanding.  For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until Christ returns.  May you always be filled with the fruit of salvation – those good things that are produced in your life by Jesus Christ – for this will bring much glory and praise to God.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, let me say one more thing as I close this letter.  Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right.  Think about things that are pure, and lovely, and admirable.  Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.  Keep putting into practice all you learned from me and heard from me and saw me doing, and the God of peace will be with you.

How grateful I am, and how I praise the Lord that you are concerned about me again.  I know you have always been concerned for me, but for a while you didn’t have the chance to help me.

Message
My Net Worth
Jim Coffman
Guest Minister

[Jim Coffman is a retired Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) minister who is now a member of Broadway Christian Church.  Jim held long pastorates in both Savannah, MO and Carrolton, MO before moving to Columbia in retirement.]

“We have someone to see you,” said the guard.

Paul jumped, shaking himself from prayer.  “To see me?” he asked.

“Yeah, the guy says he’s come a long way.”

Paul heard the shaking of keys and the creak of an iron door.

“We’ll give you half an hour,” the guard said as he ushered a man into the door and locked it behind him.

Paul squinted, overcoming his own bad eyesight and the dim light.  “Pappy, is it you?”

“Yes, Paul, it’s me,” said the little man.

“Oh, you came!” said Paul.  The men embraced.  Other prisoners watched.  The guard watched from 20 feet away, but none spoke.  “Let me look at you,” Paul said, standing back.  “You do look a little older, and is that gray in your beard?”

“It’s been eleven years, you know,” said Pappy.

“Are you well, Pappy?  Excuse me for saying so, but you look thin.  Your eyes… they look hollow.”

“I’ve been sick.  It was a long trip.”

“It’s 800 miles from Philippi.  There are mountains, good roads and bad roads, lots of water, too,” said Paul.  “And you came all this way to see me?”

“Yes, I did, Paul, on behalf of all of us there.  We’ve been worried about you.”

That is how I envision it happening, that reunion of Paul and Pappy.  But, excuse me; I am ahead of myself.  Let me start at the beginning.

It is the year 52 A.D., eleven years before that reunion in a Roman jail cell.  Paul, the apostle, goes to Europe.  In Philippi he starts his first church on that continent.  He lives there for a while.  He suffers persecution and must leave.

The little band of believers in Philippi inherits the persecution but holds up under hard times.  Unlike the other churches, they stay in contact with Paul, remembering him with a missionary gift when he goes to Thessalonica and later to Corinth.  This is the only church in those early days from which Paul will accept a monetary gift.  That is how close they are to him.

Eleven years have passed.  Paul is now in prison in Rome, perhaps his last imprisonment before death.  To his delight, he receives a letter of encouragement and, at least for the third time, a gift from the Philippian church. Better than that, it is delivered by a sickly little man from the Philippian church, a man by the name of Epaphroditus, whom I call Pappy.

The book of Philippians is a beautiful thank-you letter, perhaps the most gracious and beautiful in all literature.  Paul writes to thank them for their gift and love.  It is more than that.

Pappy had become sick, near death, but had survived.  The Philippians are worried about Pappy, and Paul is concerned about their concern.  Paul, then, sends Pappy back to Philippi with this letter.  Paul is careful to tell them that Pappy is not a quitter.  He had served admirably and well.

Philippians is a thank-you letter to a church, not unlike Broadway Christian, a cell of Christians in an unbelieving world.  The Philippian letter – itself so small it only takes up four pages in my Bible – is filled with the good, the inspiring, the optimistic, and the positive.  If you ever need motivation, go here and read.  If you ever need a lift, read from these powerful words.  This little letter is crammed with the things that cause us to want to live, to achieve, to be faithful to God and one another.  It calls forth the best in us.

It speaks of good memories, thrilling to God’s grace, prayer, love, putting things in perspective, hope, generosity, Christ and his resurrection, steadfastness, unity in the church, faith, the peace of God, being positive minded, of being contented even in times of suffering and distress.  Above all, it speaks of joy and gratitude through all of life, especially during those though times.

Paul starts his letter with, “I thank my God every time I remember you.”

I remember the first time I ever sat down to figure my “net worth.”  I went to the bank to borrow money for a used car I had my eye on.  “Go home and fill out these forms and come back,” the loan officer told me.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“I want you to come up with a ‘net worth’ statement,” he said.  “Just look up the totals of your savings, bank accounts, insurance policies, etc., and add them up and come back.”

I went home and worked for hours, digging up things, writing down figures.  It was almost as involved as doing income taxes, which I dearly love.  Not! 

Then I went back to the officer.  He spent all of five seconds examining my hours of work.  He went to the bottom line and divided it by ten.  “That’s how much we can loan you.”

I learned several things.  The most important thing was this: I am worth more than I think.  At that time, I was worth ten times the value of that old care I wanted to buy.

It is always a good time to take stock of what you have.  Today, I am not talking about economics.  This morning, I am talking about your blessings.  What is your net worth in terms of blessings?

I’ve done it.  I’ve done it many times.  Every time I do it, I raise my head with a smile.  I am blessed!  Put me in the Forbes 400.  Put me at the top of the list.  I am the richest man alive!

“I am blessed.”  Say that to yourself.  “I am blessed!”  Let it take time to soak in.  Say it again.  “I am blessed.”  This is one of the most fantastic ideas one can have.  Being blessed is “an idea.”  It is “an attitude.”

What do you mean, preacher, an “attitude?”  Can’t you see that blessings are things?  Some people have things, and others don’t have things.  Those who have things are lucky and blessed, and those who don’t have things are cursed.  You have on one side the “haves,” and on the other side you have the “have-nots.”  You have the rich and the poor.  Over here are the winners and there are the losers.  The lucky and unlucky.  The rich and the poor.

I say to my detractors, “You don’t get the point.  Being blessed is not an observable thing.  It is not summed up by things.  Being blessed is not having the most presents under the tree or having the most toys when you die.

Being blessed is an idea, one of the big ideas of the Christian faith.  It is not about what one has, but rather how one thinks about what one has.

We are fortunate in having the apostle Paul for many reasons.  His pioneering work in the Christian faith.  His life of example and faithfulness and productiveness.  We think today how we think about God, because of the way Paul thought about God, and about life, and its meaning.  But, we are also thankful for him because of his attitude.

Paul was motivated by the big idea that God had entered the world through a Jew named Jesus and that God was still out there and could come into our lives and change us forever.  One of the consequences of that was that Paul was obviously convinced that no one on earth was more blessed than he.  It did not matter that he got slapped around for his ideas, that he was put into prison many times, that a lot of people thought he was crazy, and that even Peter didn’t always agree with him.

Paul was convinced beyond any doubt that he was blessed.  He shunned the advantages he was given early in life – education, position.  Those did not matter to him.  He did not depend on those things for joy or for meaning in life.  Paul had something more important than prestige, or silver, or gold.

Paul started life as Saul, the Pharisee.  He had it all.  He had education, high station in life, power, some wealth.  Then one day, when on a mission to root out some pesky Christians in Damascus, he was struck blind and thrown to the ground.  In a matter of hours, he changed from Saul to Paul.

As Saul, he felt right and righteous.  He felt secure.  But, we have no indication that, as Saul, he ever felt blessed.  Then came his dramatic conversion.  He is blinded by a bright light and confronted by a voice.  He is led around for days as a blind man.  He emerges from this as one who denounces most of his earthly privileges.  From that moment, he lives for Christ on the edge and often on the run.  Most profoundly, from the time of his conversion and his renouncing of earthly things, he sees himself as the richest man on earth.

How does he manage to get buy?  He makes tents.  He goes all over the world sharing this powerful eye-opening faith in God through Jesus Christ.  He takes nothing from anyone of financial support, except from his dear friends, the Philippians – from that small church with a big heart.  He supports himself with a simple craft of canvas and thread, fashioning tents in which people dwell.  He is convinced in all this that he is the most blessed person on the face of the earth.

Paul and his friend Silas are chained in a jail one night.  One of the guards hears something.  Thinking it might be suspicious, a trick maybe, he inches close enough to overhear.  He cannot believe his ears.  Those two crazy men, Paul and Silas, are singing.  In the night, in chains, they are praising God!  What is the matter with those two crazy Jews?  Don’t they know they are defeated?  Don’t they know they are on the bottom of the social ladder?  Don’t they know when they’ve been defeated?  Don’t they know when they’ve failed?  Can’t they get some hint that they’ve thrown the dice and lost?  No, apparently not!  Paul is singing because he is a winner.

Paul is singing because down deep, where it really counts, Paul is a free man, a wealthy man, a blessed man.  Paul has the idea he is blessed, and nobody – nobody – is going to un-bless him!

Several years ago I stopped wishing I was somebody else, somebody who had more, or who could do more, or who had more advantages.  I think what happened was I saw so many wealthy people who were emotionally and spiritually bankrupt.

Many years ago, a man who was wealthy sat across my desk.  He had so much money that if you cleaned out my bank accounts and all my fiscal net worth and added it to his, he wouldn’t even notice.  But he sat there with his face and body limp, deeply dispirited.

I didn’t miss the irony.  Here was Jim, poor as a turkey, faced by a man who wanted something I had.  The question came to me out of the blue, so I asked it.  “What would you like to have you don’t have now?”  I will never forget his answer.

“Tomorrow, at eight o’clock in the morning, I’d like to have a job to go to,” he said.

It was about that time in life that a powerful idea took hold of me.  It went something like this.  (I turned it into an admonition.)

Don’t ever wish you were someone else.  You, whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you lack, are wealthy!  You are blessed!  Look at what you have, not at what someone else has.  Look at what you have, not at what you do not have.

A man lived in his humble home and looked out across the valley near his house to see the other houses in the countryside.  He especially looked out in the morning to miles west across that valley to a house with golden windows.  He so wished that he lived in that house with gold.  It was so filled with riches it sparkled.

One morning, early, he decided to visit that house.  It was a long trip down through the tangles of the valley with no roadway, but he labored on all day.  At day’s end, before the setting of the sun, he reached the house with the golden windows and looked in.  It was a simple house, one much like his own.  There was no gold inside.  The gold had come from the reflection of the rising sun.

He looked back eastward across that valley to his own home.  As the sun neared the horizon in the west, it glittered off the windows of his own home and shimmered a brilliant gold.

I know there are cynics who will say, “You think that thinking will make something so.”

My answer is, “Well, yes, I suppose I do.  At least I’d rather be a needy man who thinks himself blessed than a wealthy man who thinks himself poor.  This I know:  I am blessed!”

Though I did not do anything to deserve it, the One who created everything sent part of himself to this world to rescue me from selfishness and mean spiritedness.  That One, the Creator God, unilaterally gave his love to me.  He wouldn’t have it any other way.  He showered me with love.  Not only did he give me life and breath and bread, he loved me.  I am blessed beyond any reason, beyond any deserving, beyond any measure.  And so are you!

Paul said, “Rejoice in the Lord, and again I will say, rejoice.”

This week, I chanced to pick up the current issue of “Woman’s World” (July 12, 2005) and read an article by Sally Shannon entitled “Happiness Found.”  She writes:

I had an aunt, now departed, whom our family used to laugh about.  We said she had the “gift of being easily pleased.”  For example, when eating fast food at McDonalds, she would praise the French fries rather than wish she were in a nicer restaurant down the street.

We kids thought Aunt Maggie was funny.  I now know she was wise.  She didn’t let any gift the day offered go unrecognized or unappreciated.  Though she was widowed young and had the usual share of life’s troubles, she was a singularly happy woman.

Paul says, “If there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:10).

Benediction

Providing Lord, we have all we need in you.  You have made us who we are.  Thanks for whose we are.  We are, indeed, blessed.  Amen.