Making Our Relationships Work: Empowerment

[This is the third and final installment of midweek Advent sermons inspired by ones written by Pastor Roger Sonnenberg.]

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Ephesians 1:3-12
Luke 7:18-28

A colleague of mine, now retired, once told me how he came to be a pastor. It all went back to when he was about thirteen at his home church in a small town here in Ohio. He was a great student and a great athlete. But he hadn’t really found the thing in life that “floated his boat.”

He was acolyting on a particular Sunday. He was in the sacristy, where both he and his pastor were getting ready for the start of the service. “You know,” his pastor said, “as he put on his alb, cross, and stole, “you should probably be doing this when you grow up.”

“That was it,” my colleague says. God used those simple words to empower him toward the goal of becoming a pastor. He knew from that exchange in the sacristy that God had called him to be a pastor.

I can assure you as a pastor who has sometimes encouraged young people to consider going to seminary that although my colleague’s pastor probably made that statement in as casual a tone as he could muster, it wasn’t an off-the cuff comment. God had empowered him to empower that young acolyte to contemplate a future in which he would first, complete his high school education, then get his Bachelor’s degree after four years of college or university, and finally, undertake another four years, including a one-year internship, to go to seminary.

Two weeks ago, we began this Advent series looking at Biblical counsel for cultivating and developing positive, joyful relationships by saying that they begin with covenants, promises or commitments, which only God can help us keep. Last week, we said that those covenants are maintained through grace, the charitable forgiveness, acceptance, and understanding we afford one another, also only possible as a gift from a gracious God.

Today, we move onto a third ingredient: Empowerment. Empowerment too, is a gift from the God of promises who is charitable in His dealings with us.

Being empowering in our relationships, according to the authors of a recent book on family living, is “the process of helping another recognize strengths and potentials within, as well as encouraging and guiding the development of these qualities…” Of course, our strengths and potentials are among the “good and perfect” gifts which the Bible says that our good and perfect God gives to all people.

God empowers us to do things that we cannot otherwise do. I knew a woman who had just learned that a friend of hers had lost her job. “What should I say?” the woman asked me. “I don’t know,” I told her sagely. “But listen to her and while you’re listening, ask God to give you the words you need to speak when it’s time to speak.” “I barely said a word,” the woman told me later. “But my friend kept telling me that I must have been sent by God. She told me everything I said stuck with her.” That woman had been empowered by God and so had I in my advice to her.

A man I know was in his thirties, without any clear direction for his life. He had long ago dropped out of college and was working as the manager of a fast food restaurant. His older brother, an overachiever with a deep and abiding faith in Christ, died, after a long battle with a terrible disease. Added now to the younger brother’s uncertainty about life was uncertainty about God. “What's the point?” he asked people with cynical resignation.

Finally, a friend approached that man. “Do you think your brother would want you to continue floating like a rudderless boat all your life? If you want to stay in the fast food business, do your best at it. But if that’s what you’re going to do, quit complaining and start living. Otherwise find a new direction!”

That conversation set off changes in the younger brother’s life. He went back to school and, through prayer and the grace of God, found his niche. Today, he counsels grieving families. Through his friend’s tough love, God empowered him to find his gifts. But his friend would say that it was God Who empowered him to have that tough conversation in the first place.

Pastor Roger Sonnenberg would hear about this incident and say, as he does in a sermon on the very same Bible lessons at which we’re looking tonight, that “such empowering is the very essence of what Jesus came to earth to do.” After all, Jesus says that He became human, died, and rose for us so that we might have "life, and have it to the full." And in the preface to his gospel, part of one of the lessons that we’ll consider on Christmas Eve, John the evangelist writes that "to all who received Christ, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of humankind, but of God."

The God and Savior Who came to earth at Christmas to empower us to be God’s children also empowers us to help others become their best selves.

All three of our Bible lessons for tonight deal with this same subject.

The Old Testament prophet Zephaniah, whose ministry happened between 640 and 621 BC, during the reign of one of the most faithful of Old Testament kings, Josiah, promises those who faithfully follow God a “day of joy” beyond judgment. “The Lord, your God,” he says, “is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice with you in gladness, he will renew you in his love.”

God empowers us for living, God sends others into our lives to spark God’s empowerment within us, AND God sends you and me to empower others. We empower others whenever we offer to pray for them, actually do pray for them, point out their gifts, and, at times, lovingly (and figuratively, not actually) kick them in the duffs, reminding them that they are children of God with God’s imprint on their design, talents, and personalities.

In our second lesson, drawn from the New Testament book of Ephesians, we’re reminded that when we set our hope on Jesus Christ, we’re empowered to live lives that bring God glory.

Our Gospel lesson reminds us that Jesus Christ has come to set us free from anything that prevents us from being the joyous, fulfilled, purposeful people God made us to be.

In the lesson, John the Baptizer is in prison. In his mind, the Messiah was going to be a vengeful king who punished people and didn’t even bother with asking questions later. But Jesus wasn’t like that at all. So, John sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one we’ve been looking for or should we look for somebody else?”

Jesus didn’t bother defending himself. He just told the disciples and John to consider the evidence. Through His ministry, Jesus said, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them…” And, Jesus adds, people who take no offense at Him are blessed. Consider my ministry of empowerment, Jesus says, a ministry in which I do all the things that the Old Testament prophecies said that the Messiah would do and tell me whether you think I’m the Messiah or not.

I have people of all ages ask me all the time, “What’s my purpose in life? What am I here for?” Let me assure you that as long as you’re living, whether you’re two or one-hundred-and-two, God has a purpose for your living. And if you’re earnest about doing God’s will, your purpose in life will always revolve around Jesus’ great commandment that we love God and we love our neighbor. God will empower us to do that in our own unique ways.

Often, that will unfold as we take the time to empower others to become their better-selves, what I call their God-selves.

Last week, I asked you to skip making a financial offering and to instead, make an offering of grace and acceptance to someone with whom you may not always get along. This week, I ask you to make a different offering and to offer it not just for the coming week. Instead, I ask you to make it for throughout the coming year.

It’s this: Pick a person, maybe the same person you picked last week. In the coming year, commit yourself to being the instrument by whom God empowers them to become their best selves. Pray for them. Ask them about their dreams in life. Encourage them in pursuing them. Send them notes of encouragement from time to time. Be willing, when necessary, to show them some of that “tough love” that helps them to see that they really can do all things through Christ Who strengthens them.

Then watch what the God Who keeps His promises, gives us forgiveness and new life, and empowers us for living…watch what God does in that person’s life. Amen

[Here are links to installments one and two of this series.]