Encouragement for Life

By Hugh Whelchel, originally posted September 3, 2012.

Recently I saw a bumper sticker that read,

He who dies with the most toys wins, but he is still dead.  

This must be a post-modern version of the late 1990’s original, which simply read, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

If bumper stickers are a reflection of the soul of our culture (and I am not sure that is true) are we in the 21^st century moving away from the idea that the acquisition of “things” and the pursuit of pleasure are the driving forces and measuring rods of a successful life?

If so, what does success look like today?  What is the measure of success? Does it look different for Christians? What is the Biblical definition of success?

I was asked to preach this weekend as part of the Labor Day Weekend Service at my church. I set out to try to answer these questions.  My sermon title was “The Biblical Meaning of Success,” and I used the Parable of the Talents from Matthew 25:14-30 as my text.

I told the congregation they had been lied to. Two great lies have been told to them by everyone from their kindergarten teacher to the U.S. Government:

1. You can be anything you want to be.
2. You can be the best in the world.

These two lies distort the Biblical meaning of success, and set all of us up for disappointment and failure.

The antidote for these two great lies is the Parable of the Talents, which teaches us three important lessons:

1.  We are called to work while we wait for the return of the King.

The Parable of the Talents teaches us how to work while we wait for the second coming of Christ. Many Christians believe that our salvation is a bus ticket to heaven, and what we do while we wait for the bus makes little difference. The parable makes it clear this belief is false.

One of my favorite quotes is spoken by General Maximus in the opening scenes of the film, “Gladiator.” General Maximus tells his troops, “What we do in life echoes in eternity.”  While this may not have been true about them, it is certainly true for Christians. Our work matters to God.

2.  We are given everything we need to do what God has called us to do.

Do you know what a talent is worth in today’s dollars? Somewhere between five hundred thousand and a million dollars.  Even the servant that was given only one talent was given more than enough to set up a business and produce the expected return for the master.

God has given each of us unique resources and talents to be used in everything we do, especially our vocational callings. The master gave out a different number of talents to each servant “according to the servant’s ability.”  The one talent servant was not expected to produce five talents.

Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:10,

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

We seldom associate this verse with our vocational work, but we should.

3.  We will be held accountable for what we do with what God has given us.

As Christians we work “as unto the Lord,” not for an earthy boss. The Parable of the Talents shows us we will be held accountable for what we do while we wait for the return of our King. Thankfully, we are not held to some arbitrary standard. What God expects from us is based on what he has given us.

However, it will take just as much effort for the two talent servant to produce two additional talents as it does the five talent servant to produce five additional talents. This is why the reward for both is the same. This is the great lesson of this story.

So what does this parable tell us about the Biblical meaning of success?

We are called to use all the resources God has given us and work diligently at our callings, maximizing the return for the Master while we expectantly await His return.

The late John Wooden, the most successful college basketball coach in history and a committed Christian, was asked how he would define success. He replied:

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.

This is what the Parable of the Talents is all about.

We labor at the pleasure of the Lord God Almighty. Our work is driven by our love of the Master. Our only desire should be to hear his praise at the end of our days on this earth:

Well done my good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the master.

What do you think? What does the Parable of the Talents say to you about your work? About success? 

This article is copied with permission from the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics ( www.tifwe.org ). The original article appeared here. IFWE is a Christian research organization committed to advancing biblical and economic principles that help individuals find fulfillment in their work and contribute to a free and flourishing society. Visit https://tifwe.org/subscribe to subscribe to the free IFWE Daily Blog.

By Hugh Whelchel, Originally posted July 2, 2018

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

— Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Declaration of Independence

Former U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall challenged Americans, “May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.” As we prepare to celebrate the 242nd birthday of the United States of America, the question is, how are we stewarding our freedom?

The week Congress voted to declare independence, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, declaring the events he had just witnessed would “be the most memorable Epoch, in the History of America.” He went on to write:

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

And celebrate we have. But over the years, have we forgotten the most important, self-evident, unalienable right alluded to by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and codified by Madison in the U.S. Constitution: the right to religious freedom?

Freedom and Flourishing

We see the best examples of human flourishing today where people enjoy religious freedom, which we believe is foundational for economic freedom and self-government. Unfortunately, our exercise of this inalienable right, as defined by Jefferson, Madison, and America’s founders, is under attack today.

There are those who would replace religious freedom with religious tolerance or worse—allow anti-discrimination laws to trump religious freedom completely. Those who should be most uneasy with this development—people of faith—seem unaware or unconcerned. As Os Guinness writes in A Free People’s Suicide, the long-held truth of America’s founders, that “freedom requires virtue, virtue requires faith, and faith requires freedom,” has been lost, even by the faithful.

At IFWE, we believe religious, economic, and political freedom form the basis of uniquely American values and are essential to the flourishing we have enjoyed as a nation. Among these freedoms, religious freedom—our “first freedom”—is one of the most important things the American experiment gave the world.

Legal scholars throughout American history have believed that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution recognized the right to lead a life according to our faith and religious moral code, not only in our churches but also in our homes, our places of work, and in the public square. Yet, in recent years, that belief has been challenged.

We view this attack on religious freedom as an alarming development because it threatens to negate the guarantee of individual liberty afforded every person, regardless of their faith. Left unchecked, it will threaten the culture of freedom upon which our system of republican government was founded. Religious freedom provides a strong foundation for limited government because it is the bedrock for all human freedom. Freedom of conscience not only demands but ultimately justifies limited government.

Freedom and Responsibility

Conversely and consequently, limited government requires individual responsibility. Religious freedom necessitates the engagement of the moral responsibility of every person. In a free society, religion is an ally of good government as it forms the moral character of individuals and communities.

Today, a culture that exhibits an ever-decreasing sense of individual moral and civic responsibility seems to be pervasive. Religious liberties we took for granted twenty years ago are now being challenged in the courts. Ironically, those who support religious tolerance over religious freedom are proving the subtle danger of this concept by becoming intolerant of and excluding views other than those deemed politically correct in the public square.

In his first year as president, President Ronald Reagan was asked by Parade magazine to write about what Independence Day meant to him. The article, written in Reagan’s own hand, after describing his memories of the Fourth of July as a child, ends with the following:

In recent years, however, I’ve come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation. It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history. Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government. Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people. We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.

Free Indeed

As followers of Jesus Christ, we acknowledge that true freedom can only be found in a relationship in him. As Jesus said in the Book of John, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). We, among all people, should understand the importance of religious freedom, not just for Christians but for everyone, whether at home or work.

In our diverse, pluralistic culture, everyone must be free to live out their beliefs in matters of conscience, both in private and in the public square. If we all are not free to do this, none of us are free to do this. The former was the vision of our founding fathers, and we should not allow that vision to be lost.

This article is copied with permission from the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics ( www.tifwe.org ). The original article appeared here . IFWE is a Christian research organization committed to advancing biblical and economic principles that help individuals find fulfillment in their work and contribute to a free and flourishing society. Visithttps://tifwe.org/subscribe to subscribe to the free IFWE Daily Blog.

By Nancy Cotterill, Claiming Peace

http://www.uniteindy.org/claiming-peace/

I remember a book I read called The Poisonwood Bible in which a family of fiercely evangelical missionaries go to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They took with them everything they believed they would need from home, but find nothing but sorrow and loss in the cruelty of the African wild. Nothing works, people die, crops fail, and wars erupt.

At the end of the book, the two surviving children land back on U.S. soil. They exit the terminal and are stopped, awestruck, at the wonder of the yellow striping at the edge of the street. After decades in the wildness and unpredictability of the mission field, this simple painted line slaps them in the face with a culture so organized and so tamed that IT PAINTS YELLOW LINES ON THE SIDES OF ITS ROADS.

I felt that way recently. I lost my phone.

As ridiculous as this comparison may be, for one brief moment I was shattered. The organization of my personal life-culture is pretty much on that phone. For me, it was going from the comfort of an organized environment to the wildness and unpredictability of loss. Loss of important names. The phone numbers that I used to keep in my head, now rest in the marrow of my SIM card…I cannot remember one of them, they were lost. I had lost my schedule. All the addresses. My map to get to places that are new to me. Lost.

Frankly, I am amazed at how bad I felt. After a few hours, the phone was located. But still, the fear reverberated somewhere in my chest. I claim peace. I really have it most of the time. But in this crazy world, most of us have filled every hour of every day to the limit with things that need doing. We are like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland who keeps looking at his watch muttering, “I’m late, I’m late…

What were the trappings of a highly evolved culture to the missionary sisters in the form of striping on roadways is nothing for us in the 21st century. We believed the Microsoft and Apple “scripture” that said computers and blackberries and cell phones would lighten our workloads, instead, they have allowed us to work around the clock—falling asleep with a half-written email in process, our computers on our laps in bed.

Remember Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Well, the “time for completion” has reached about 18 hours, seven days a week. Even our Bibles (every version imaginable) is on our phones. So turn now on your Bible App to Exodus 20:18. It says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” Some of you might be able to look back…maybe when you were children when Sunday was a day of rest. You could be chastised by a neighbor if you so much as started your lawn mower on a Sunday. (This was mainly because you would be interrupting his day of rest.) But this is no joke. Sundays were to be quiet and restful—no phones needed.

The Poisonwood Bible, I will tell you, was written by Barbara Kingsolver. I give you this bit of information so you don’t have to Google it, and hopefully, that will give you a few more nanoseconds of peace in your particular day. Meanwhile, I am trying to take better care not to lose my phone. As for that peace, I want so much…maybe after church on Sundays, I won’t turn my phone’s ringer back on, or maybe I’ll just take some time to stare at the yellow lines on the side of the road. That might just do it.

Claiming peace,

Nancy

Nancy Cotterill is Vice President, Chief Communications Officer, and co-founder of UNITE INDY, an organization that mobilizes volunteers, expertise and other resources on behalf of urban churches, ministries and other charities that are struggling to meet the ever-growing needs of those they serve. Nancy is an award winning editorial writer, and spent 20 years as Editor and Editorial Director of several magazines and newspapers, and served as Publisher of Indianapolis Business Journal. For more about UNITE INDY, visit http://www.uniteindy.org/about

By Gary Stanton, Walking Where Jesus Walked – My Trip to the Holy Land

Traveling all the way to the Holy Land and experiencing scripture come alive was a great confirmation of what I believe as a Christian. Being able to actually visit the locations of some of the greatest successes and laments of biblical history reinforced my faith of 57 years in Jesus.

My wife, Cindy, and I embarked on our journey April 26 with a group of 31 other people from mostly Cincinnati. Our experienced host, Keith Thomas, from the Vineyard Church in Cincinnati, has led groups to Israel 6-7 times.  After the lengthy flight, we arrived in Israel to meet our local tour guide who narrated all the sites, explained the geography and infused the historical perspective.  Israel is diverse in various religions (Jewish, Messianic Jews, Arab Christian, Muslims), which is why it is important to have a local guide who is educated in the differences. Keith did a great job with more in-depth spiritual aspects by reading scripture and providing time for us to pray.

There were so many highlights of the trip. Seeing ruins that were over 2,000 years old and experiencing the history of Israel was something that I will remember forever. We took a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee where Jesus asked Peter “do you love me?” three times, saw where Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount, visited Mt. Carmel where Elijah defeated the 400 Prophets of Baal, and also visited Caesarea Philippi where Peter proclaimed that Jesus is Christ. In addition, we were baptized in the Jordan River and were able to float in the Dead Sea. Being in the Garden of Gethsemane and also seeing olive trees over 1,000 years old growing on the Mount of Olives, were some of my favorite parts.

There are many arguments about where the tomb of Jesus actually is, but it has been said to be at the Place of The Skull, which is a big rock that looks like a skull. Our tour guide would give us a scale between 1 and 4 of how accurate they believed the locations were, but just being in the vicinity of where Jesus walked, lived and died was so powerful to me.

When we visited Shiloh where the Ark of the Covenant laid before it was taken, we were able to worship there in song and spend some quiet time in prayer. This was an incredibly holy place where the last tabernacle stood. Only the High Priest was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was. While we were there, I was overcome by the presence of God. I could feel the holiness of God all around me. There are times in our lives that God allows us to feel His presence more than others, and that was a defining moment for me.

Since the Jewish people have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah, they gather at the Wailing Wall to read the Old Testament and pray for the Messiah to come. Men and women have separate areas where they were allowed to be on the Wall. People from all over the world have prayed there. I was able to pray for my family and friends. My feeling around the Wailing Wall was probably quite different than many others – I was deeply saddened for the Jewish people and prayed that they would come to accept Christ as Lord.

My advice to you if you are considering visiting the Holy Land is to be flexible and be open to whatever God wants you to experience. Don’t try to be in control, and allow God to lead! But most importantly, go. Go and walk where Jesus walked to experience His presence in a whole new way.

By Darrel Geis, More to This Life

In February of 2014, I stood at my younger brother Alex’s side as he sadly passed away at the age of 48 due to complications from years of alcohol abuse. He had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver that previous September, went through a detox program in October, and had been clean and sober since. By God’s grace, he had experienced a true conversion to Christ through involvement in Teen Challenge Cincinnati years ago. We were as hopeful for his physical recovery as we had been for his spiritual one…

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By Darrel Geis, The Greatest Birthday Gift Ever

It was late in the spring of 2006, and my parents had come from their home in Pennsylvania to Cincinnati to visit my wife and me on the eve of my birthday. They hinted of a special surprise for me, and the next day we piled into their SUV and headed to Lexington, Kentucky. Much to my surprise, the gift ended up being a new custom fitted set of golf clubs that everyone in the family (mine and Karen’s) had pitched in to purchase! But I soon found out that an even greater blessing was in store on that trip…

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By Darrel Geis, Live in the Moment

It was the 2nd Sunday of Advent in 2003, and I was sitting in the back row of the sanctuary at North Cincinnati Community Church, my home church. On my left was my girlfriend at the time, who had flown from her home on the East Coast to visit me for the weekend.

During the offeratory song, I remember leaning forward a little, my eyes fixed on the ground, poised to drop my envelope in the collection basket. Suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I leaned back in my chair to look over at my girlfriend.

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