Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
The theme verse for an upcoming 3-week Sermon Series is Colossians 1:16 All things were created through Him and for Him. Starting on Sunday October 8th we will walk through Colossians chapter 1, using the lens of Biblical Stewardship to focus our worship and messages. The 3-week Stewardship Campaign is called, “Through Him & For Him”.
The basic premise of all Christian Stewardship is that earth and its fullness belong to the Lord, our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. We are entrusted with God’s blessings to be good managers of God’s stuff. In times like this we want to reflect on how we are using our time, our talents and our treasures to glorify Christ in all areas of our lives.
In the midst of prayer meeting service in a large downtown church, with several hundred people present, a timid little woman arose to speak. It was in the midst of the Lenten season and the pastor had asked a rather simple but searching question: “Suppose you had the chance to be some one person associated with those last days of Jesus in Jerusalem, whom would you choose to be?” The woman was trying to reply to that question.
“There are a lot of people in the passion story whose place I could never fill,” she said. “I could not carry my Master’s cross as Simon of Cyrene did. Nor could I have followed him out to the garden as some others did. But I could make ready for him the best room in my house, where he might eat the last supper with his disciples. I could promise him that it would be made ready to his satisfaction.”
Someone had to make ready a room and furnish it. There is no record of any such thing in scripture, but it is easy to imagine some housewife telling her Christian friends, years afterward, how the Lord had come to her home that night and had eaten that last solemn meal under her roof. She never wrote a gospel nor became a martyr, nor did she hold an office in the church; but she did provide a furnished room!
A great deal of the service of the kingdom of God (and the Church) must be rendered by those who never get their names into the papers, are never publicly commended, and are never elected as a delegate. But there is need for a furnished upper room and some devoted heart furnishes it without thought of publicity or commendation. In the eternal records of God the name is inscribed, and after it the notation-clearly written: “Well done, thou good and faithful steward.”
May the same kind of notation be made about us in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
In Christ’s Peace,
Pastor Ryan Honeycutt
