You've Been Qualified!

[00:00:00] Not there anymore. [00:00:04] Every summer we have these camps called Ryla and Young Ryla that we do through Rotary. [00:00:11] They're what we call Rotary Youth Leadership Award. And we take these kids through the training for a week in which we talk about how they can better themselves and become leaders in a community. [00:00:27] We've been doing it for over 17 years in this area. We have kids from Wyoming and Nebraska and Colorado who come together. And we have two of these weeks each summer with the young ones and one for high schoolers as well. [00:00:44] Our district started this program and now there are many of them around the world. But we are one of the few that still have the young. Rila, I have been a rotarian for over 30 years. [00:00:56] I believe that Rotary is a good way for us to also model who we are as Christians because Rotarians live by a motto of the four way test. [00:01:08] Is it the truth? [00:01:09] Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better relationships? And will it be beneficial to all that fits in with who we are? And this morning I want to talk about being qualified because each of these kids that come to camp have gone through a process in their local Rotary where they had to go through interviews to be able to be in attendance and then they were selected. Usually there's a number of kids that never able to become part of the camp. [00:01:42] And so I want to talk about qualifications. This morning I was thinking about these kids qualify to be a part of this week. Now to tell you that everything was wonderful. [00:01:54] Well, you got eighth graders, so figure that out for yourselves. [00:02:01] Sometimes I found out they talk too much. [00:02:04] And then there's other times you find out they don't talk enough. [00:02:07] They just look at you. [00:02:09] So you know, that's how it is when you're dealing with eighth graders. [00:02:13] But I want to talk about our scriptures this morning because they apply to our being qualified or all of you have probably had jobs where you had certain qualifications, right? [00:02:28] And so you needed to be qualified for this job. Or sometimes you may applied for a job and been told you don't meet our qualifications. [00:02:40] And sometimes that's not easy to hear, but it's a reality of who we are in our world in which we find ourselves. [00:02:52] We place qualifications on a lot of things. [00:02:57] Look at what happened in Texas last week. [00:03:01] I've been through that part of the country. I've been in that hill country and what a tragedy to see so much loss of life so quickly. And I've driven through there and seen those signs that said, you know, be prepared for flash flooding. [00:03:19] And when I drove through, I said, you know, I look around and say, where's the flash flood? How could you do that? But I also know I've seen it several times. [00:03:27] And this one here had some very serious consequences in our Old Testament reading this morning in Leviticus. It's an interesting reading. It's a reading about what question qualifies you as a Jew in some respects? What are the qualifications? If you read through those readings there, you see that it's pretty tough. It's about the law. It's about how we treat one another. [00:03:58] And I gotta say, if we apply those standards to today's world, I'm afraid we're failures. [00:04:07] We don't do it very well. [00:04:10] We miss some of those most important points. [00:04:14] When they harvested, they think about the poor, how one was to treat his neighbor. They need to think about that. [00:04:24] You shall love your neighbor as yourself. How many of you know your neighbors? [00:04:31] We become so isolated in the world we live that sometimes we don't even know who lives around us. [00:04:38] And in the Gospel we have this beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan. We've all heard it, we've all thought about it. And when I was in high school, we did a play about it when I went to LSV school way back when. I won't tell you how far back, but way back when. [00:04:59] You see the reality is that's an important Gospel reading, because who should have taken care of this individual? [00:05:09] Even those who walked by on the other side. [00:05:13] And then the unlikely one is the one who did what others should have done, but they didn't do it. [00:05:22] And then there's Paul's letter to the church of Colossae. [00:05:26] This is the opening of that letter and some of those beginning verses. [00:05:32] And I am drawn always to verse 11 when I read this letter, Paul's letter to the Colossians. [00:05:38] May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience and joy. [00:05:48] Think about that with joy. How many times do we live our lives with joy? [00:05:53] Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in life. [00:06:02] And there comes that word, giving thanks to the Father who qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints. [00:06:15] How many times do you think about that? [00:06:19] You have already been qualified. [00:06:24] It's not what you do. It's not what this list of qualifications you put together that's going to get you there. [00:06:32] You have been qualified. [00:06:35] A powerful statement to the body of Christ. [00:06:39] A powerful message. Yes. To the church of Our day. [00:06:44] And next weekend, you're going to have kids from this congregation who are going to be attending the national youth gatherings we've been doing in this church since 1980. And from 1980 till I retired in 2015, I was at every one of them. [00:07:01] And how did these kids learn about themselves as they gather with as high as 35,000 young people? It's a lot of fun to be with that many in one place. [00:07:11] Not really always, but for mostly it is that you have to stand in the crowds that you want to eat, and you got to stand for an hour to find and get food, all those kind of things. [00:07:26] Here he is saying to the church, to the church of Colossae, may you be strengthened with all power. [00:07:35] What is your power? [00:07:38] The power that you and I have together. [00:07:42] We are people who are filled with endurance and patience, with joy. How many times do we look like that, with endurance, patience and joy? [00:07:55] Sometimes when I walk into church, you wonder where the joy went. [00:08:01] And sometimes you see the struggles when patience and endurance isn't there. [00:08:13] Churches struggle. [00:08:15] And let me tell you, there's a lot of churches right now that are struggling and having a hard time. [00:08:23] And because we haven't really followed those qualifications that we have been qualified already, I think we've become comfortable living in the darkness of our times. [00:08:41] We become comfortable with what's going on around us as though it's normal. [00:08:47] It is not. [00:08:51] This is not the way we should be living. [00:08:57] And we as Christians, Paul reminds us that we have been qualified for something better. [00:09:07] The world around us is filled with everything that opposes what we as Rotarians believe. Is it the truth? [00:09:17] Let's just start with that one. Okay? Let's not. [00:09:21] Because much of what we hear is not the truth today. [00:09:25] Is it fair to all concerned? How many times are people only looking out for number one, ourselves? [00:09:36] And how does it benefit those around us in the church? [00:09:43] We ought to be living with that joy, with that endurance, with that patience that Christ has poured out upon us. And how do we know that the qualifications. [00:09:57] When we do things, how often does joy really fill us? [00:10:04] You know, when I come home from a week like this, I am just inspired. [00:10:09] Well, tired, too, but inspired. [00:10:13] Because when I work with these 8th graders and I hear them and I listen to them and their thoughts about where they are in this world and sometimes in our world today, we hear so much negativity about young people. And I'll tell you what, the kids I was with will tell you the opposite story, because that's what the media tells us. But the truth is there's a lot of great kids out there, smart, compassionate, empathetic, and they just are wonderful human beings. [00:10:46] And hang around and listen to them. They just inspire you. [00:10:53] What's interesting is why does Paul write this letter to the Colossi Church? And I started thinking about that because here we are in the kind of world we live in. And yet, guess what? [00:11:04] I think Paul was talking about some similar kind of things going on in the world around him at the time. [00:11:10] They were having problems. Things weren't as they should be. He's talking to the Colossi Church, this church that he loved and believed in. And he's telling them, look, this is what you need to do. You need to be strengthened with all power, for endurance and patience with joy. [00:11:30] It was fun coming in this morning because there was a lot of laughter. I had a lot of fun with a number of you as you came in this morning, because that's what we should be, a joy filled people. [00:11:39] We should be loving one another for who we are and what we might become. [00:11:47] Because you see, you and I, through the waters of our baptism, have been delivered from the darkness that surrounds our lives. [00:11:59] We, as Paul says here, have been transferred to the kingdom of his beloved Son. [00:12:08] I don't know about you, but whenever I get up every morning, which sometimes is difficult, but when I get up every morning, I remind myself that, hey, you know what? This is a new day God has given us because he is in charge. [00:12:21] We are a part of his kingdom. [00:12:24] I'll never be good enough. [00:12:26] You guys have seen that. [00:12:29] The failure sometimes. [00:12:32] And yet we are all failures in a certain way. [00:12:39] But guess what? [00:12:41] We have been redeemed. [00:12:43] We have been redeemed by his Son who came into our world to take our place. [00:12:50] And that ought to motivate each one of us that God has got it. [00:12:55] He's done it all for us. And he looks at every one of us and he says, you are qualified. [00:13:04] You are qualified because of my son who came into the world, walked the way to Calvary, taking your sins upon that cross, and you have life because of him. [00:13:23] In all the troubles of our world, there's a light. [00:13:30] And sometimes the darkness is so dark, we fail to see that light. [00:13:37] But you and I have that light right in here. [00:13:42] God called you by name, made you his child. [00:13:49] And you should never lose sight of who you are. [00:13:53] Because no matter how bad you may think you are, you know that you can be forgiven. [00:14:01] You know that you are loved by God. [00:14:05] And he will always love you to the very end. [00:14:10] And one day, one day, we will be able to stand before him in all of his glory. [00:14:21] And that's the beauty of who we are as brothers and sisters in Christ. [00:14:28] You know, everything around us is never going to be what we want it to be. [00:14:33] I've been trying that for many years. [00:14:36] And the reality is people disappoint you. [00:14:41] People fail you in your families, you have it. [00:14:46] In your work, you have it. [00:14:49] In your relationships, you have it. [00:14:52] But there's one, one who said, I came into this world, took your place, and I qualified you for an eternal inheritance. [00:15:06] Live that. [00:15:08] Enjoy that. [00:15:10] We need to be a people of joy who live enduring and with patience as we love one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. [00:15:23] Pray for those young people gathering with all the other ones throughout the United States and some from around the world, because it's a beautiful time when they can celebrate and see how others also find that joy and peace that really ought to fill our lives each and every day. [00:15:43] So never forget, God has qualified us. [00:15:51] Be qualified. [00:15:52] Amen.