God Is On Your Side!

September 5, 2004

Brian Mallett, Lay Speaker

Montgomery United Methodist Church

Good morning.  Pastor Tony is on vacation today, and will return next week.  We expect he will be well rested and re-energized, with a positive and powerful message you don’t want to miss!  Our Sunday schedule will also change back to two services next week, at 8:30 and 10:30 AM, so if you come at 9:30 AM you will be either very late or very early.

This is a season of change.  If you have children, they are returning to school and the regimen that you have missed during the summer.  Daylight hours are getting shorter and we begin to notice a chill in the air that brings out the sweaters and jackets.  The leaves on the trees will soon turn colors and start to fall.  I had a professor in college who used to tell us at the beginning of every year that our 1^st semester agony would be over when the leaves were off the trees.  Watching them with this picture in mind only seemed to make them stay on longer.

Now change can be a disturbing thought.  Our first instinct is often to want things to stay the same, to be predictable.  We generally perceive change as something that will be painful or have negative consequences, especially when we are not in control of change or when the outcome of change is un-certain.  It can take a lot of time, even many years after the event, to recognize positive aspects of change.  If you have ever moved to a new town or changed jobs, either by your own choice or someone else’s, you know the anxiety this can cause.  Some of you have children who have graduated or will graduate, and you face the thought of a changing family experience.

Bob Dylan wrote a song in the 1960’s called … “the times they are a changin”.  I think he could have said … “the times they are always a changin”.  Change is inevitable, and as Christians, we have an important perspective to share with regard to change.  So today, I humbly offer three ideas about change, and perhaps how to see it in a new way.  When we change the way we look at something, the thing we look at changes.

First of all, change means growth.

It is a natural part of life that we must grow.  Children look forward to growing up, while adults try to keep from growing out!  It is this capacity for growth that makes children so remarkable.  When Jesus said for us to become like children, in part he meant to be open to change and recognize it as an opportunity for growth.  Learning should be a life long process, and we should never stop learning and growing.  Change inspires this kind of growth.  When asked to explain his famous equation, E=mc², in every day language, Einstein replied … “nothing happens until something moves.”  You have to move to experience growth.  When you hear the word “change”, think “growth”, because change means growth, and growth requires us to change.

In the corporate world we talk about continuous improvement.  If you are not growing and moving forward, if you are not constantly getting better you can’t compete.  This concept seems to be widely accepted until the realization that continuous improvement requires continuous change. 

In our personal lives we also experience this desire for continuous improvement and growth.  We start out in life with a focus on survival.  Then, when we have satisfied the basic needs, we strive for something more, some type of achievement, something we call success.  Finally, if we are thoughtful enough, our focus will shift toward a new goal, some kind of purpose that stretches us to be better than we thought we could be, a change we initiate, in the direction we choose to go, to something we call significance.  It’s a life long process, we don’t get there in one jump.  We have to grow.  We have to change! 

Change means growth.  That is what Jesus meant when he said we must be born again.  We have to change, continuously.  What’s important is what we are becoming.  John Denver put it this way in a song inspired by an eagle soaring above the Rocky Mountains, “reach for the heavens and hope for the future and all that we can be, not what we are.”  

My second thought for you is the things that are most difficult bring the most growth.

Change is never easy, especially when it’s something we didn’t ask for or want.  Life can deal us some trouble, suffering and hard times.  We make mistakes.  In our scripture lesson today, Paul’s letter to the Romans reminds us that “suffering builds endurance, and endurance builds character, and character leads to hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”  Stress strengthens the muscles, and we get our strength from overcoming obstacles. 

This summer, Elaine and I visited the Houston Space Center, the home of NASA and where our nation’s space program is directed.  On the tour, we heard the inspiring words of John Kennedy from a speech he gave at Rice University, “We choose to go to the moon.  We choose to go to the moon (in this decade), and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, and that challenge is one which we are unwilling to postpone.” 

The difficult times can strengthen us if we choose to look at it that way.  No matter what our situation, we get to choose our response to change.  There was a book written several years ago called “Who moved my cheese?”.  It’s a story about some mice living in a maze that all react differently when one morning their inventory of cheese is gone.  Some can only complain and look for who is to blame.  Others realize there is a problem, but are afraid to venture out of their routine.  The mice that prevail are the ones that put on their shoes and look for new cheese.  The point of the story is that our cheese is always moving, our life is always changing, and we can chose to move with it and grow with it.

Churchill said that “success is moving from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” 

We have to keep moving, we have to keep growing, we have to keep changing, and we have to keep choosing to live that way.  Life is a continuous cycle of change and choice.

Jesus was a change agent, he moved people’s cheese, not to destroy them or confound them, but to build them up … to help them grow!  His message was difficult for some, it required a choice, a choice of faith and hope and love, a choice to move, toward God and the positive possibilities represented by the plus sign of the cross.

With God, the things that are most difficult bring the most growth.  “In certain ways we are weak, but the Spirit is here to help us.  For example, when we don’t know what to pray for, the Spirit prays for us in ways that cannot be put into words.”  With God, our strength will be renewed and we will be prepared for the next step, even though we cannot see it immediately.

When Elaine and I were first married, she made an embroidery of the Serenity Prayer, which hangs in our house.  I am sure you have heard it … “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”  With God, we can find the serenity and courage and wisdom to face change, and choose change, and that is the secret to spiritual growth.

John Wooden, the former basketball coach at UCLA said it this way, “do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”  The things that are most difficult bring the most growth.

Lastly, you must remember that God is on your side.

We read the creed that begins “we are not alone, we live in God’s world.”  The scripture from Jeremiah assures us that God has “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Watching the Olympics this past month, we are reminded of the power of teams.  We are on God’s team!  Paul’s letter to the Romans is our half-time pep talk … “If God is on our side, who can be against us?  God did not keep back his own Son, but gave him for us.  If God did this, won’t he freely give us everything else? … In everything we have won more than a victory because of Christ who loves us.  I am sure that nothing can separate us from God’s love …”

In our human experience, the times are always changing.  In our spiritual experience there is a constant … God’s love … what Paul called “the undeserved kindness on which we take our stand”, which Christ has introduced us to.  This is our inspiration, that we have the power of God, helping us grow and learn and change.  We are at our best and most able to cope when we are “in spirit”. That is where our “inspiration” comes from.

There is a story of a grandmother who gave her grandson a cup of dirt for his birthday.  The grandmother instructed the boy to water his cup of dirt every day, and something wonderful would happen.  The boy watered his dirt and kept it in the window sill by his bed.  Each morning he would rise with anticipation, looking for the mysterious promise, but each day he could see no change.  After more than a week, he asked the grandmother what was wrong, why was nothing happening?  The grandmother instructed him to keep watering, keep believing.  Things were happening beneath the surface, even though he could not see it just yet.  So the boy continued, each day watering and each day looking for some sign of life. 

Then one morning, just when he thought there was no hope, where the day before there was only dirt, now he could see the start of a plant stem growing up out of the cup!  As the days continued, it grew and blossomed into a beautiful flower, and the boy was happy and filled with joy over the miracle he had participated in.

He was so proud to show the flower to his grandmother.  He asked her, what was the secret, was it the water, was that what made the flower grow?  The old woman answered with serenity and wisdom that seemingly only grandmother’s have … the water was important, but the real secret was the power of God, working with you, and your faithfulness.

Friends, God is on your side, still moving and creating and inspiring and working miracles, in our lives, we are on God’s team, and nothing in all creation can separate us from God’s love.

So I leave you with this image, of a flower growing (not leaves falling!), an image of faith … the kind of faith that helps us to see change as an opportunity, because change means growth … the kind of faith that helps us grow through difficult times, because the things that are most difficult bring the most growth; and  … the kind of faith that reminds us God is on your side, with “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Amen!