Building The Temple

First, two points of clarification and one oversight on my part:

1. When pointing out the workers in my remarks today, I totally forgot about Kim Mester sitting to my right as I spoke. I would never intentionally overlook the person who taught 8th Grade to both my daughters, and I wanted to take the opportunity to clear up that faux pas.

2. Jason Abramowski came up to me after class and mentioned that the gold collected (about 300 tons) would make a pile about 10 feet long x 5 feet wide x 5 feet high (if I heard him correctly)--quite a collection, to be sure, but not an infinite amount . Also, worldwide gold reserves today are approximately 33,000 tons, so the amount of gold described would be 1% of today's reserves, with the understanding that the amount of gold in the world at that time had to be significantly less than that.

3. In several places, I made references to how conscripted or slave labor WASN'T used, and today's reading makes it abundantly clear that I got that part wrong. Oops.

Psalm 127 is something we should read before we undertake any labor for the church. The first verse states:

     Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain. 

The most dangerous thing we do on this earth is confuse God's plans with our own. One of the most sobering conversations I've had in some time was last fall, when the Board of Directors was interviewing firms to assist us in a capital campaign. One of the people we talked with was thrilled that we were looking to do a campaign for expanding ministry opportunities, which led me to ask what the other campaigns were for, to which he responded "Debt retirement." He told of one congregation that had debt of around $8 million (I might have that number wrong, but the amount was somewhere in the millions) for a congregation of 300 people. I simply shook my head, since I couldn't begin to comprehend how a congregation of that size thought they could manage debt like that. I'm sure at the time it was incurred, it seemed like a good idea...

Until we're with the Lord, we'll never be 100% certain that we're doing his will, but he has given us three tools which will assist us greatly when we're not sure:

1. Prayer--without going too deep into it (I will when we get to it on October 6th), Jesus tells us we'll get what we need to fulfill his mission for us on earth. It may not be what WE think we need or in the manner we expect to get it, but Jesus isn't an incompetent manager who tells his employees what to do without providing the resources or training to do it.

2. Discernment--we need to be able to separate our plans from God's, and the Holy Spirit assists us in that. That is clearly show when we use something we usually discuss derisively, which is...

3. Hindsight--Yes, I know it's 20/20, and in the real world, I have so little use for the "I told you so" crowd that I can't describe it. However, when we take an objective view, uncolored by prejudices, hurt feelings or other worldly interferences, we can usually separate success from failure. Hindsight is the BEST tool to review how God works not only for the church, providing resources when we need them, and usually from the most unexpected of sources, but also in our lives, if we're humble enough to give God the credit.

In Rick Warren's book "The Purpose Driven Life" (which I insist should be Purpose-Driven, but that's just me), he describes an easy way to tell if your on the right path--is anyone following you? The Lord doesn't have us work in a vacuum, waiting for the final grade at the end, but constantly reinforces us and helps us when we start heading in the wrong direction. It's been that way for 141+ years at Trinity, and I have yet to find anyone who can reasonably tell me why it should stop anytime soon. As long as we're doing his will, we'll be fine, and as long as we continue to seek his will, we'll have all the support and reinforcement we'll ever need.

Scott