Use your time to be available to enjoy the gifts of the Spirit. Gifts can be neglected. Gifts edify you when you use them. Just be available. Fellowship. You don’t to be so gifted to have gifts. We need to be stirred up in God.  It’s all about influence. (Proverbs 22:24-25)

Speaker(s): Pastor Thomas Schaller
Sermon # 11460
7:30 PM on 4/25/2018

P. Schaller

Beautiful, awesome, joy, Jesus. I’d be in a lot of trouble tonight if it wasn’t for him. We come together on this Wed. night because we are people of the Spirit, the Spirit of God. There are people of the flesh, the world and we too live in a world but we are people of the Spirit.

We seek and receive and are loved. Jesus is the friend of sinners, Mt 11:19, so do you qualify? Huh? Did you make it into the group? He came all the way down, down, down into the abyss. If I make my bed in hell, he is there. He is a friend of sinners. His right hand leads us.

P. Jason wrote another book, People Building. I just got this just now. Teen Builders. Legacy Builders. Conclusion. Thanks, Pastor. Excited about that.

Prov. 22:24, why not? You might become like him.

vs.25. There is a word of advice for us. I want to draw a picture here. Here you are and there is somebody in the world that would like to become your friend. If you become a friend with him, he’ll take you down further away from where you would like to be. If you make a friend with an angry man, you sit with him, listen to him, and are with him, it can affect you. It has the power of influence.

Jesus was a friend to sinners and brings us to another place because of his Spirit, his wisdom, his words and his mission. I would say you and I have not chosen each other to be friends but God made us friends. God put us together and the Spirit of God leads you. You have another option in your life and this is to be a friend not with an angry man but with an edifying man or woman. Edifying. Learning, gifts of the Spirit are given to people and the gifts of the Spirit are used for our edification.

19 gifts mentioned in our New Testament. We believe we have those gifts. God gives them as he pleases. The way we use our gifts because they can be neglected. Time and gifts. When you came here tonight you put it in your schedule and have made this, as we look around the room, it is our habit, we come and are using our time to assemble. We want the Spirit to say something. I want the Spirit to influence me. I want the Spirit to lead me, to edify me. It is possible to become – make no friendship. It is possible to make friendship with ungodly, angry people. It’s possible to have a relationship, a soul relationship with someone and I can’t see where it will bring me. It may be what I listen to will affect me and I will become more like them. How I use my time.

1 Cor. 5 cast out the old leaven.

To read about King Ahab (1 Ki 21:25). Let me put her name down here, Jezebel. It says, there are two parts, he sold himself. He did sell himself and the second part Jezebel stirred him up. Ever have someone stir you up? Ever have someone talk to you maybe scandalously, provocatively, intelligently and afterward were not sure what the whole thing meant but it had an influence on me.

The Body of Christ is where the Spirit of God ministers and it takes time. Jesus came into the world – we’ll put here Jesus and the Body of Christ. Time.

One of the big changes that happened in my Christian life is when I started to come to church a lot. I put my time into it and realized what I lost was television. That was all I lost time wise and maybe some of my hobbies that weren’t that important. I decided to invest my time and be available to the second word, gifts.

Gifts of the Spirit. Gifts from God. Gifts of preaching, exhortation, teaching, mercy, compassion, faith; gifts of knowledge, gifts of wisdom. I want to say we have the pulpit here which we are thankful for the Body of Christ when we gather God visits us. This is a normal Wed. night at the end of April. But every time I’m with you, I feel like this is Convention time or Eurocon, or this is the visitation of God. This is the Spirit of God. Maybe a short meeting or long one doesn’t matter as long as the Spirit is speaking, ministering to us by songs and each other in our faith. The small groups happen on the property and off the property. Small groups. Sunday school, teen meetings, cafe at lunch, Bible college class, connections across the street, dorm, raps. Community groups, telephone, prayer times.

I called P. Arnold Vanduren tonight and we chatted a few minutes. The phone calls. Thinking of Maggie and Neal and Neal not being about to come because of sickness. Thinking about small groups connections. You and I have gifts of the Spirit. Those gifts are needed so people come off of drugs. Those gifts are needed so people receive ministry. This meeting hall is needed because people need to take their time and use it to be instead with an angry man or promiscuous woman or angry woman or Jezebel or some other thing not of God, then we are able to see God’s hand in our life and building us up. Gifts can be neglected.

Just like a young boy with a soccer ball starts to kick it around and starts to realize I can do it. I didn’t know that but I’m hanging from a tree limb. Every Olympic gymnast started hanging from some bar or tree limb. Every teacher started somewhere, at a kitchen table explaining some simple thing. Every person with a gift of helps started by washing someone’s windshield and doing something out of love or faith. They enjoyed what they were doing.

There are the natural gifts with the Spirit filling me, like singing. The natural gift someone else has that, and the Spirit of God is anointing them and then a spiritual gift that is totally from the Spirit of God, not a natural ability. I see it in the Body. There are people who give and love and serve and go and they like it.

Two things about your gifts. They edify you when you use them. They are not tiring you out. They are not tiring you out. That happens in the natural. If you use your spiritual gift, it is edifying and you think that was great. Maybe God needs me in New Jersey or in a school, on a college campus, in a nursing home. God needs me in the Body, on the side walk of the church, on the telephone.

We had a woman with arthritis in Hungary, invalid, went blind and wanted to be a missionary in Baku. She lost her eyesight and we brought her to Baku in a wheel chair. She was amazing. We had a hotline, an emergency hot line in Hungary and she would lay in bed and the phone would be here and that’s how she talked as a counselor. People contemplating suicide would call. She shared and I said do they have any idea you are an invalid in bed? She said I don’t share that. That’s not my message. She was shining. She passed away in Baku and is buried there. There is an Islamic cemetery and a small place for Christians and she’s there. She’s in heaven and her body is waiting for the Rapture.

You don’t’ have to be gifted to be gifted. You don’t have to be so bright and strong and powerful. You just are available and using your gifts. You find yourself joyfully in the parking lot helping, joyfully in the fellowship, in your neighborhood and some have been sent to the foreign mission field.

For every one of us, there is that possibility of an influence that will not build me up in Christ. It will not take me on. It is the old leaven. It is what Nehemiah ran into and he resisted it. When Sanballat said come and talk to us, they pleaded with him in Nehemiah 6, four times and Nehemiah said no, I don’t have time for you. The horses have the blinders on so they can get the work done. The disciple that has found the answer so I don’t fall back into a drug addiction because of how I use my time and gifts. That means I am available. I’m on purpose focusing. I’m looking for the opportunities. Jezebel stirred him up in wickedness. I need someone to stir me up in God. Instead of selling myself to Jezebel, I want to do this in God.

Curtis is the gentlemen in the wheel chair. He was shot. 28 years ago he was shot on the street, very foolish and senseless. He passed a couple guys, and said something, and one gave the gun to another and shot him in the chest. He’s lying on the sidewalk and he’s watching it turn red as he is bleeding to death. He says the medical people came. He lived. He’s in a wheelchair and he said I would have gone to hell. Something said to me don’t go to sleep. Mysteriously some guy stopped his car and kept him awake and called 911. I heard about it second hand. Maybe we’ll have it in the church one night here. He wants to tell it.

It’s all a game of influence. Who can influence you? Who is going to get your ear, your time, your attention, your lust pattern? Who can seduce, convince, mislead? The whole point of us gathering on Wed. night is to have the opposite influence on each other. We are here to say God is great, God is better than the world. We live by faith. The Holy Spirit is the answer and he’s given gifts to all of us. Let us use them.

It edifies you when using your gift and edifies others. One of the things about Dr. Stevens I loved, he’d say go in Jesus’ name. Pastor, I can’t even wash behind my ears but can I preach the gospel? Absolutely. Go and do it. When? When I’m ready. Go now. I want to go to the misisonfield. What are you waiting for? Get your training and get going.

We go to the whole state of New Jersey, the whole country of the U.S. We can’t bite off the whole thing but can go bit by bit making disciples. Jesus had twelve. He had an influence on them. What are we going to do with you, Jesus, tomorrow? Our day will be filled. I have gifts. God has called me into a mission. We are walking by faith. You can cast out demons, raise the dead and heal the sick. As the Father sent me, I send you. Go by faith and many of us have been in different places in these walks of faith and come back with joy rejoicing saying it is true. He is with us.

We don’t be so domesticated that the only thing you have on your mind is your favorite TV show. Don’t be so domesticated the only thing on your agenda is to please your wife, husband, or children. Don’t be so domesticated the only thing you’re thinking about is your future retirement.

Life is more. It’s seeking, finding, knocking, being Spirit filled and bringing it home to our family. Sharing with children and grandchildren and talking to them about the mission. Yes, there is a time we are in a wheel chair but as I sit there, I have spiritual gifts and giving my time, my very life to build up the Body to help them.

I’m not wanting anyone to be guilty for having a comfortable home. I have an amazing one. To feel I need to suffer in some way. There are two directions on our diagram I have to find and we have those people who are talking about it. Saying the lost are here amongst us. God has sent us to reach lost people. To say there is something in Owings Mills we could start up. Let’s get in a car and go to the pizza shop in the next town and preach to kids in a pool hall.

I asked in class how you know you are Spirit filled. I went over to Wallace and Brian. Brian said I don’t have a clue! But he knows. I said to Wallace, and he said I’m a professional pool player. I love playing pool but God spoke to me about going to Bible school. God has led me to believe I should be in Bible college. I can play pool anytime. He said I think that’s the Spirit of God. I’m using my time. I’m making my decision.

God is using the gifts we have. We find them in the Bible college and faith obedience. We find them in our fellowship with each other. We are in the presence of them tonight here but in my regular life my drugs will go away, my temptations will not be as great; I’ll find myself occupied in the work and we’ll make room and a place and we’ll have a great influence on our sisters and brothers.

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