A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

Holy Spirit as “Betterer”

Romans 8:9-17, Preached by Tom Lacey at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, October 22, 2006

There was a perfect man who met a perfect woman.  After a perfect courtship, they had a perfect wedding.  Their life together was, of course, perfect. One snowy, stormy Christmas Eve this perfect couple was driving along a winding road when they noticed someone at the roadside in distress. Being the perfect couple, they stopped to help. There stood Santa Claus with a huge bundle of toys.  Not wanting to disappoint any children on the eve of Christmas, the perfect couple loaded Santa and his toys into their vehicle. Soon they were driving along delivering the toys. Unfortunately, the driving conditions deteriorated and the perfect couple and Santa Claus had an accident. Only one of them survived the accident. Who was the survivor?

Answer: The perfect woman.  She's the only one that really existed in the first place.  Everyone knows there is no Santa Claus and there is no such thing as a perfect man. Now the man's response: So, if there is no perfect man and no Santa Claus, the perfect woman must have been driving.  This explains why there was a car accident.

Look, nobody’s perfect. But we should be getting better. You know, improving, progressing, developing. Getting better means not staying put at an earlier, angrier, more selfish, and less restrained form of our potential. We have a physical potential that we reach by eating well and exercising, and we have a spiritual potential that we attain by living well and putting our faith into action. In 2Peter 3:18, we read that we are to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of the Lord.” The point here is that your spiritual growth, growing in grace and knowledge of the Lord, will lead you to greater personal stability and emotional strength. Without growth, we remain at the mercy of outsider forces keeping our personal lives intact and together. But that’s not the way the world works. It’s up to us when we grow into adults to keep it together and keep it real. So don’t stop now. I know you’ve come along way, baby, but there are better days ahead for you. Keep growing. Be gracious and thereby grow in grace. Trust in God and thereby gain knowledge of God’s will for you.

Luke tells us that from the age of twelve, “Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature.” In other words, he grew up spiritually and physically. But that’s not all. Luke says he also grew “in divine and human favor.” The result of growing up and growing spiritually is that you grow in the eyes of God and people. People like you. They trust you. They believe in you. They can count on you. You become a favorite. Is God any different? No. God blesses those who are a blessing.

What we want to see this morning is that the Holy Spirit has every intention of pulling us to our feet, telling us to grow up, and pushing us out the front door to live on God’s terms. And this is good for us. So, enough with selfishness. Enough with me, myself, and I. Get larger than your life. Find the Spirit in this material world and there you’ll find the joy in your winged heart. The fact is we can get so stuck that it feels as if we’re walking around half dead. Marriages get there, careers get there, our personal lives get there. I know it sounds very dramatic the way he puts it, but Paul says this is a serious issue, a serious spiritual issue. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” This isn’t talking about eternal life. This is about life on planet earth, in the flesh. This is referring to a life of righteousness and vital actions done for God and good here and now. If we can’t get ourselves off the couch and away from the TV, then we don’t have the raising Spirit in us. Or it’s seriously napping. You know, if you can’t say you’re sorry because you’d rather hold onto the anger or the jealousy or whatever it was that made you lash out in the first place, then you’re not listening to the raising Spirit in you. If you refuse the grace it takes to forgive the fault that hurt, you’ve turned your back on the raising Spirit in you. And if we live like this, we’re the walking spiritually dead—Christian Zombies. Our mortal bodies may be alive but the Spirit is dead. So come to life. Be better today than you were yesterday but not as good as you will be tomorrow. Make it a point to rise to the challenge of living life at a more demanding spiritual level. Put an end to laziness. Cease being materialistic. The better you is rising to the top.

Now you may be thinking, “Come on, little things like that don’t make a difference. There are bumps in the road of my spiritual life, but I’m driving forward basically.” Look, who knows if little bumps make a difference. But I know that little things can make a big difference. Tony Campolo tells a wonderful story about a pastor friend of his who had a deacon in his church. The pastor tried to get the deacon to really open up and let the spirit of God lead him. Finally the spirit led the deacon to conclude that there was one thing he could do in service to God and to others. He could take the youth group to the old folk's home. Once a month the youth group of this church went to the old folk's home and put on a little church service for the people who were there.  Once this deacon went with the youth group and stood in the back of the room. The young people were performing and an old man in a wheel chair rolled his chair over to where the deacon was standing, took hold of his hand and held it all during the service. That was repeated the next month and the next month and the next month and the next month and the next month. Then they went one Sunday afternoon and the man wasn't there. The deacon asked the nurse in charge, "What happened to that man?" "Oh," she said, "He's not doing well. Maybe you should go in and visit him. He's just down the hall, the third room. He's unconscious, though."  The deacon walked down and went into the room, and as stood at the bed, he took hold of his hand. Led by the Spirit, he said a prayer. And when he said "Amen," the old fellow squeezed his hand. The deacon was so moved by that squeeze of the hand that he began to weep. He tried to get out of the room and, as he was leaving the room, he bumped into the nurse who was coming into the room. "He's been waiting for you,” she tells him. “He said he did not want to die until Jesus came and held his hand, and I tried to tell him that after death he would have a chance to meet Jesus and talk to Jesus and hold Jesus' hand. But he said, ‘No. Once a month Jesus comes and holds my hand and I don't want to leave until I have a chance to hold the hand of Jesus once more.'" You never know how following the Spirit in little matters may lead to big things. Just as babies take very little steps forward in their attempt to grow up, little spiritual things add up. Do you have a tough time looking someone who you believe has wronged you square in the eye? That’s seems like a little thing, but…. Do you find it difficult to be generous with encouragement or you restrain yourself from being too happy for someone else?

Hebrews 5:14 says, “Solid food is for the mature.” If we want to grow, we’ve got to grow up. Let me repeat that: If we want to grow, we’ve got to grow up. Of course, the reverse is true as well: If we want to grow up, we have to grow. The trouble with growing is that it usually occurs in response to having experienced something demanding. It’s like the muscle. In order for it to grow, the muscle must be put under stress, so that in order to deal with the stress, it grows bigger. But for us spiritually, we often choose to avoid experiencing such hazards. In fact, the worst of all are parents. We do everything we can to protect our children from stress, conflict, and demands, all of which are great for taking care of infants but not when girls need to become women and boys men. Children have to face the new day and be put to the test. They have to reap what they have sown, but first they have to be permitted to sow. Parents must not ignore their responsibility to care for their child but they must take on the greater responsibility to allow for the right amount of stress to occur in their child’s life. This will help them grow at the right pace and in the right direction.

We stunt our own growth when we stay small and hide from greater responsibility with its greater demands. To rise to meet a challenge is to cultivate a new and better spirit within you. I believe that self-destructive behavior can often be traced to a spirit that has been stunted and kept immature. We may never be the president, or a CEO, a pro athlete, or pastor of a 2,000 member church, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t step in and fill out the space we have been given. It is in taking on responsibility that we mature. By wearing the mantle of authority that fits us, we live the life of authenticity that God gives us. As Jesus said, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” So grow into your position or seek a new one to which you can devote yourself. Don’t leave your potential wasted or your soul wanting. God requires the balance paid in full.

In his men's seminar, David Simmons, a former cornerback for the Dallas Cowboys, tells about his childhood home. His father, a military man, was extremely demanding, rarely saying a kind word, always pushing him with harsh criticism to do better. The father had decided that he would never permit his son to feel any satisfaction from his accomplishments, reminding him there were always new goals ahead. When Dave was a little boy, his dad gave him a bicycle, unassembled, with the command that he put it together. After Dave struggled to the point of tears with the difficult instructions and many parts, his father said, "I knew you couldn't do it." Then he assembled it for him. 

When Dave played football in high school, his father was unrelenting in his criticisms. In the backyard of his home, after every game, his dad would go over every play and point out Dave's errors. "Most boys got butterflies in the stomach before the game; I got them afterwards. Facing my father was more stressful than facing any opposing team." By the time he entered college, Dave hated his father and his harsh discipline. He chose to play football at the University of Georgia because its campus was farther from home than any school that offered him a scholarship. After college, he became the second round draft pick of the St. Louis Cardinal's professional football club. Joe Namath, who later signed with the New York Jets, was the club's first round pick that year. Excited, he telephoned his father to tell him the good news. His asked, 'How does it feel to be second?' 

Despite the hateful feelings he had for his father, Dave began to build a bridge to his dad. Christ had come into his life during college years, and it was God's love that made him turn to his father. During visits home he stimulated conversation with him and listened with interest to what his father had to say. He learned for the first time what his grandfather had been like—a tough lumberjack known for his quick temper. Once he destroyed a pickup truck with a sledgehammer because it wouldn't start, and he often beat his son. This new awareness affected Dave dramatically. "Knowing about my father's upbringing not only made me more sympathetic for him, but it helped me see that, under the circumstances, he might have done much worse. By the time he died, I can honestly say we were friends." Charles Sell, Unfinished Business

To grow is to grow up. We can’t grow nor grow up if we hate the people we are made to love. At least we have to try.

So don’t run from your soul. Listen to the Holy Spirit urging you to better yourself. Place yourself on the path to take on new challenges, bigger responsibility, greater authority. And let the Spirit give life to your living.

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