Stories
From the Series: Non-series
Speaker: Dick Foth
Date: November 16, 2008
Leave a comment | Back to Media Page
Transcript
Mark Batterson
Welcome to everybody at all four of our locations. I want to take a few minutes this weekend to share what I think is some pretty significant news. You might have been tipped off with the survey last weekend, but as you know, we are a multi-site church, which means we meet in multiple locations. In fact, when we started meeting in the movie theater in Union Station, we realized this is a good set-up. What a great place to go in and redeem that space and use it for God’s purpose. For years, our vision has been to meet in movie theaters wherever possible at metro stops around the DC area, and of course we also own and operate the largest coffee house in Capitol Hill and we envision doing another coffee house, but I want to share the last breaking news. For the past couple of months, we have been praying about, doing reconnaissance, thinking about where God is taking us next. After a lot of praying and researching, drum roll please, we are going to launch in the movie theater in Kingstowne, which is in Alexandria! I’ve got to say, I am so excited about this on so many different levels, but can I share a little bit of back-story?
When Lora and I, when I graduated from seminary, we first moved to DC, the first apartment we lived in was in Kingstowne. Now this was back in the Middle Ages, it was before Wal-Mart was there, a long time ago. We beat Wal-Mart to Kingstowne, and I remember seeing the community grow up. We lived there for about a year and a half and then when NCC was only in one location on Capitol Hill, we really felt like we wanted to move into the city and live in the neighborhood and we have ever since. But I remember seeing Kingstowne grow up and I remember thinking to myself, when they built that theater, I thought - some church needs to meet there. Seriously. I just didn’t know it would be us. To me, it is a neat thing to go back. It is an amazing residential community, you’ve got Alexandria and Springfield sandwiched in between, a lot of retail, we feel like there are a lot of reasons it could be a great community for us to go into. Can I remind us why we are doing this?
Two thousand years ago, Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Gates are defensive measures, by definition, we as a church are called to play offense as long as there is another person that needs a relationship with Christ, we need to keep growing. We aren’t doing this because we need one more thing to do, you know what I’m saying? We are doing this because we believe it is what God has called us to. So here’s the deal, just a couple of housekeeping items. Would you like to know the results of the survey last weekend? I will tell you. I was so encouraged by this, it’s the first time it was hitting your ears, we hadn’t really even cast any vision for this, and one the survey, we had nearly 100 people say we would definitely or probably want to be part of the launch team, and we had another 250 people say maybe. I want to say that one of the things I love about this congregation is the flexibility and the desire to be about God advancing his kingdom, so I’m so encouraged by that, I think we are going to have a great launch team. So here’s what I want to ask you to do, we do this every time we launch a location, we simply want you to pray and we want you to ask God this question, “God, do you want me to stay right where I am or God, if you want me to be part of that launch team, just tap me on the shoulder.” Then, between now and our informational meeting, this is not in your bulletin, jot this down, December 7th at Uno’s, dinner is on us and no, you are not committing if you come, just an information meeting, but we wanted to get on the ground right there. If you feel like probably, definitely, maybe God is calling you to be part of this, then we want you to come. This launch will be led by Pastor Chris and his wife Lora and by the way, they are the proud parents of Torin who is about three weeks old!
We are so excited, so if you fill like God is calling you to go to the informational meeting, fill out a connection card or email Pastor Chris, and let him know you’re coming. Right now, let’s pray and commit this to the Lord. I didn’t tell you when the launch date is did I? February! We are going to have to get jiggy with it! I don’t think that’s in the Bible, but we have to get busy. We have to believe that God is going in front of us preparing the way, we are just stepping into his sovereign plan for National Community Church and for our lives.
Lord, thank You for the way that You are working and moving and for the things that You are doing. God I pray that You would continue to guide us as a congregation, guide us individually into your plan and your purpose. God we believe that You want us to be part of your kingdom advancing in Kingstowne and Lord we pray even now for your favor, we pray for wisdom. Lord we pray for those that You would call would be sensitive to the voice of your Spirit and respond to that, and Lord ultimately our pray is that many people would come to faith in Christ because we are not going to sit back, we are not going to look back, we are going to continue moving forward into the vision that You have for us. God we commit this to You, may your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Everyone said Amen.
It is a joy this weekend for me to welcome a friend and a mentor to me. It wasn’t all that long ago that NCC was a core group of about 19 people meeting at a DC public school and I wonder if it weren’t for Dick and Ruth and Dick’s role in my life if I’d even still be here. What a voice of wisdom and encouragement in my life. As you know, if you’ve been a part of NCC for any length of time, any time we have an opportunity for Dick to share, we’ve done that. Even though Dick and Ruth a few months ago moved to Colorado, we still find ways to get them back to DC, so when I knew Dick was coming back, I asked him to share with us. This is his first time back since leaving so let’s give it up for Dick.
Dick Foth
My goodness, good evening. Colorado is very different than Washington D.C. I feel like we are in the right place in being there. We are with a wonderful growing group of new friends and closer to grandchildren and all those things that old types look for. But I knew I was in a different place a few weeks ago when I pulled up behind a battered Nissan pickup. Fort Collins is the home of Colorado State University, about 27,000 folks, and I pulled up behind a college student and the truck had two stickers in the back window. One of them said: Sarcasm is a free service I offer. The other said: This vehicle brakes for wee people, leprechauns, fairies, elves, unicorns and other creatures only I can see. I knew that I was not in Washington D.C. anymore because we would never brake for those things in Washington D.C.
Election season is over. It was wearing; I gotta tell you that I got so tired of it. But it was interesting, what a story. Multiple stories. I want to talk to you tonight about stories and self. I don’t particularly like this theme because it is much too self-oriented, much too close to home. I’d rather talk on something that doesn’t touch me very closely, but I love stories. I love reading stories, I love hearing stories, I love seeing stories, I love telling stories, I even like making up stories. I mean, think of the cast in this, you’ve got three Senators and a Governor, you’ve got an African-American man, a woman in the story, you’ve got relatively older and relatively younger, and you’ve got people from Hawaii and Alaska and Pennsylvania and Delaware and Virginia, and you’ve got spouses who are Harvard lawyers and millionaires and guys who race snow machines across Alaska, what a story! Multiple stories! Only in America! It is interesting when we think about America and the dream of America, it is rooted in an idea, and I’m not going to do a talk on nationalism or anything like that but I have been thinking about this a lot.
I have an office in my house and I look out each morning at the Rocky Mountains. I’ve told people, I used to give people a tour of the monuments, now I give tours of the monumentals. This idea of America is based in liberty and freedom, and when sociologists have studied that over the years, they find out it is a particular kind of freedom. Many of you know the name Alexis de Tocqueville he came in the 1830s, social philosopher, he came to study prisoner reform and ended up studying us, what makes American American and he came up with four things. He said there are four streams that people are rooted in.
One is republican tradition, not the party but the idea of being involved in the process. The second is biblical tradition, that people get their sense of morality from this Book in some way, whether they are churchgoers or the Ten Commandments or the idea of the Golden Rule. The third thing was utilitarian individualism, anybody has a chance here. Ben Franklin, poor boy makes good; Abraham Lincoln, born in a log cabin, becomes President of the United States. And the fourth thing was expressive individualism, this is the last where I can do anything I want as long as I don’t infringe on you. Robert Bellow, who is a sociologist at UC Berkeley some years ago with a group of four others wrote a book called Habits of the Heart, back in 1985, 150 years after the fact, revisited that, and expressed the concern that the first guy, de Tocqueville had, that if this individual ever comes to the forefront, because those first two, being involved in the process and having some absolute basis for where we are and where we are going, if those two things ever erode so that individualism comes to the forefront, democratic institutions can’t stand. That was its thesis. Our idea of freedom in America is individual freedom. I don’t think that is bad unless it becomes the end. When you look at individualism, when you look at that idea, Arnold Toynbee saw it this way, he wrote ten volumes, as many of you know, on the rise and fall of nations, he said that the motivating energy in the rise of a nation was self-interest. If at the point of its zenith, there is not a call to a higher value than self-interest that nation will start to decline. A nation is comprised of guys like me. I don’t mind us talking about the nation having self-interest, what I don’t like is for you to talk about me being self-interested.
But there is another story besides the story of America, and it is that one that is talked about in biblical traditions. Let me read what Jesus thinks about self-interest, if I may. In John 12, just a verse or two, He is about ready to go to the cross and Jesus replied: The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat (speaking of himself) falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life, (who is totally self-absorbed,) the man who loves his life and hangs on, that person will lose it, while the man who hates his life (or holds it loosely or has a broader view) in this world will keep it for eternal life. Then you have Paul, who takes that idea of what Jesus was about, and records it this way, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, in Philippians the second chapter: If you (speaking to us) have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition. I don’t know if that is redundant, I don’t think it is, I think one can be ambitious without being totally self-absorbed. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility consider others better than yourself. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others. Then he describes this story. What a story! If we thought the election story, with all those players, that was a good story, but listen to this story.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped or held on to, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found as appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name in heaven and on earth, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
What does that do to my self-interest? I was thinking about myself just the other day, this is confession and it is on tape. I was thinking about how much I couldn’t control. I can’t control Wall Street, I can’t control the 401K, I can’t control this, I can’t control that, and people are nervous because of what they can’t control. I’m thinking, I can control the stuff right around me. Really? I tried to control Ruth, once. That didn’t work so well. When you read the text, when you read this Book, when you look honestly at yourself, half the time you say I’m not even really good at controlling myself. Yet that particular theme of what you do about you is a huge thing in this Book. It is huge, it is central to the essence of the character of God. Jesus is not just a model of a good Man, He is not just a model of a set of moral principles, I believe He is the Redeemer of mankind. But the way He did that was by controlling Himself, by humbling Himself, by saying, I don’t hang onto the stuff, I let it go so that I can redeem a Foth who doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in July of making it without Me, in terms of eternity. He might muddle along, he might do some good stuff, he might even be an inventor, he might be a really smart cat and all that stuff, but in terms of affecting people forever, he doesn’t have a chance. And when I think about that, I think about all the things that go with self. All these words that if you put self in front of them, it is interesting to think about. Like self-awareness. That’s not a bad word. Babies become aware that their parts are attached early on. You give a baby anything, they will stick it in their mouth. What’s that about? That doesn’t even look like a donut, they just stick it in their mouth. Then they start getting teeth and they stick their fingers in their mouth and all of a sudden, they are aware that that part is connected. That is called self-awareness.
Kids are great at self-expression. Sometimes it is cool, sometimes it is not cool. We have ten grandchildren, and Hope, who is now five, when she was about two and a half, talking a little bit, she threw a tantrum. This is just the thing that drives parents crazy, because you say my children are not going to act like that. Hope just threw herself on the floor in the middle of a hotel lobby and started screaming. I understand that there are all kinds of things you are supposed to do, I can’t remember, it’s been so long ago for us, but they just ignored her, and after about 40 seconds of just doing that, she just stopped. She got up and brushed off her dress and said, “Me better now.” I think I may have done that a few times in my own life, as an adult, without the dress!
I have this huge capacity to be self-centered unless I listen to this story, take this story seriously. I told you the story about my friend, Randy who is the head of the Communications Department at Community College of California. I said he has a sister who is a stunner, a lovely woman, and a lot of young men wanted to date her. They would come and pick her up at the house, open the door and so forth, and she had a rule of thumb, she would put her right hand down by her side and as the car pulled away and they started having a conversation, she would count the times that he said “I” or “me” or “my” in the first 20 minutes. She said that if it got up very high, it was going to be a very long evening.
I have this tremendous capacity for wanting you to know what I’m about. I think in many of us, there is this incipient thing and I won’t speak for you, that if we could just be loved and adored, that would be a wonderful thing, but think of all the words that are negative relative to self. Not all of them are, self-image, self-esteem, I don’t think that is negative. Self-help or self-motivated, but self-gratification or instant self-gratification or self-loathing or self-absorbed or self-indulgent or self-serving, you can go on and on. But there is a whole other range of words that you can put self in front of that are more positive and freeing. What about self-effacing? What about that? I had the privilege of going with a doctor to Calcutta some years ago and we went at 4:30 in the morning to the morning prayers at Sisters of Charity with Mother Theresa. About 100 novitiates were there sitting on the concrete floor saying prayers and doing the rosary, various things, and at the end of that hour, we were coming out, and Mother Theresa was there, she had a heart problem but she was in a wheelchair and my doctor friend and I went over and knelt down beside her. Here is this single woman, this woman from Albania who just started out, according to the book I read called Wild Goose Chase, with a dream and three pennies, and here she is being invited in by presidents and kings and princes because she picked up dying people for 50 years in one of the most difficult places in the planets. And the doctor said, “Thank you, Mother Theresa for what you’ve done and what you’re doing.” And her response was, “Pray that I don’t get in the way of the work of God.” And he said again, “But all the things that you’ve done and all the people you’ve helped.” And her response was along the lines of, “I don’t help the poor, they help me.” She wasn’t just blowing smoke there, you blow smoke when you just fly in for a day and fly out and take pictures and put them in the newsletter. When you’ve been there for 50 years and you say pray that I don’t get in the way of the work of God, that is coming from your spirit, from your heart.
What about self-deprecating? When you can make fun of yourself. I was a young associate pastor with my father-in-law in Modesto, California in 1965, and we were walking through a breezeway and some people had done some volunteer labor and I looked up and there was scene where taping had been done. Now, taping has to be one of the hardest things in the world for someone like me, that’s where you have the drywall come together and you put a compound in there and put tape over it and you smooth it out, and you could see some wrinkles, and I said, “Look at that, that’s not good.” And he looked up and he said, “Oh no, that’s not good.” And I said, “Did volunteers do that?” And he said, “Yes.” And I said, “Even if they are volunteers, they need to take pride in their work, they need to have some sense that it is done right, this is the Lord’s place.” He said, “You’re absolutely right. What can we do?” He said, “As soon as I find who did that, I’m going to string him up by his thumbs.” I said, “Well who did it?” He said, “Me.”
I know you saw that coming. The fact is, being able to laugh at yourself. That is an endearing quality, isn’t it? The difference between self-preservation and self-release is an endearing quality. When you read Philippians, that He let go of what He could rightfully hang onto, and humbled Himself. Those pronouns get in the way. It says submit yourselves one to another. God is not going to do that to you. If somebody does that to you, that’s called slavery. When you do it to yourself in order to grow in grace, in order to express what’s in your heart, not just from the law, powerful things happen. What a story that is. When you read Titus and Timothy, when Paul is speaking to Titus, he says when you work with the older guys, help them to be self-controlled. When it talks about leadership in the church, it says be sure that he is a one-woman guy, not a philanderer, make sure that he can control money and not just waste it, make sure that person in leadership is hospitable, who could control his space but in fact, allows others into his or her space. Then it says they need to be self-controlled. Why? Who wants to follow somebody who is out of control? Who wants to be nurtured by somebody who is a wild person? The word for control comes in three flavors, if you will, in the New Testament, three different words that are used most often, it means mastery of your strength. It has to do with strength that is mastered. It has to do with reason or sound judgment, it has to do with not being shaped by your circumstances but helping to shape your circumstances.
I don’t know about you, but when I read this story of the God who can control everything and can control us without our will, He could just make us robots or puppets, He says, I’m going to give you free reign, I’m going to encourage you to control yourself, but let Me give you some help. I will give you my Holy Spirit so that one of the expressions of that Spirit is patience and right there in the middle, it says self-control. I am not a person who is absolutely self-controlled in every arena. Hopefully, I’m controlled in the key arenas. But it is a work in progress, even as old as I am, maybe especially as old as I am, it is a work in progress, and God says here’s My Son, He came down. I like that song we sang, heaven come down. Opens Himself, discloses the character of the Father. You want to know what the Father looks like, look at Jesus. You want to know what the Father feels, sense Jesus. You want to know where He wants you to be? Listen to Jesus. Self-revelation. Here is the God who says I want you to be self-controlled so you can humble yourself. I want you to be self-disclosing so that people can sense Me in you. I want you to be self-effacing so you don’t take credit for the work that I am doing in you, even though we are participants together, we are partners in the process.
Sometimes we play this little game, what do you want as an epitaph on your tombstone. The older I get, the less I like playing that game! I don’t think somebody could write this on mine, but I think it may be the highest accolade a person could ever get for somebody to say he or she loved Jesus and was selfless. It doesn’t mean they were nothing, it means they were someone in Jesus and it allowed them not to have to control everything around them because they were able to control themselves and be before God in a way that He works through us to allow that to happen. The highest accolade, or at least one of the highest, might very well be that. Let me read it to you again.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped or held on to, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found as appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name in heaven and on earth, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
What a story! I love stories! This is the best! This is the story about what He did and what He desires to do through us. Humble ourselves, control ourselves, give ourselves away, because when you are self-effacing, when you give credit where credit is due, when you don’t have to be self-justified, when you are self-controlled, when you are self-disciplined or deny oneself or any of those and people sense that, that is attractive. Self-sacrifice, that is Jesus. There is an old gospel song, I would like, in closing, for us to sit for a few minutes and listen to this song. It is about this story, and just ask yourself the question that I’m asking myself – if I were to put self in front of words that describe me tonight, what would those words be? Listen to this song and let the Lord minister to your heart.
[Song]
Lord Jesus, help us to have all the individual freedom we want, centered in You. You are the story. We are the expressions of your story. As we think in the hours and days ahead about what might be those words that come after self, speak to our hearts by your Spirit, show us ourselves on the other hand and hold us with a grip like all eternity on the other. If there is one tonight, in hearing my voice, who has never opened his or her heart to You, we pray that this will be the moment they will be able to say, “I need your help with me, I need You to change me, I need You to redeem me.” Thank you Lord for these friends, we give you honor in Christ, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
404-775-4197
margaretsalyers@gmail.com