Philippians 3:12-4:1 John 1:35-43

There are supposedly 100,000,000 Christians in the United States. When I hear statistics like that, I wonder why the world isn't vastly different, why our own country isn't vastly different. Then what comes to my mind is that probably the vast majority of these people simply are not committed to living their faith. Although they call themselves Christian, they don't put it into practice; they don't live it. There is an interesting device that has been recently invented. It is called a No-Nap. The No-Nap is a device for drivers who are sleepy. It attaches to your head and it registers movements as you drive. If you were to begin to nod off, it would shout an alarm into your ear and wake you up. Of course, it has an internal computer in it or something that measures a person's responses. Therefore, the hope is that people will begin to use this device, especially when they are driving tired and there will be fewer accidents. My understanding is that there are over 100,000 accidents a year in the United States based on people nodding off and falling asleep at the wheel. Of those 100,000, 1550 people die. It sounds like a worthwhile thing.

Wouldn't it be neat if we had a no-nap device for Christians? If you weren't living your faith, it would go off and scream in your ear, “Wake up! Wake up! You've got to do something here. Don't just stand there. Go ahead and live your Christian faith. Live it in any way that fits your personality, that fits you. Live it. Let your life speak. Let your life be a witness to the glory of God.” But there is no such device except the Word of God. The Word of God is sufficient for all of us. It just doesn't shout at us. It doesn't necessarily wake us up. A person can read the Word of God and still snooze through it. A person can read the Word of God and nod off. Just because you know the Word of God, it doesn't mean that you are going to be a fantastic Christian. Someone once said, “Even the devil can quote scripture.” He knows the Word of God quite well. So just knowing the Bible is no guarantee that you will be a Christian. It is making a decision to live the Word of God that makes us a Christian.

When I was in the hospital, I had a fascinating experience if you could call it that... I have been talking about it now for the last five weeks, sharing with you what I learned while there. And I have today's sermon and next week's that I will talk about my experience, and then I will be done with it the rest of my life, I hope. You probably hope so, too, at this point! As I was lying there, I began on one occasion to think - my survival deserves a recommitment but what do we recommit ourselves to? Or what do we need to recommit ourselves to? I thought about you and how, at some point, probably most of you in this congregation made a commitment to follow Christ. That is why you come every Sunday. That is why you call yourself a Christian. Yet, as I lay in the hospital bed, I became very much aware that every now and then, we need to make that a recommitment. We need to say to ourselves again, “I give myself totally to you, Lord. I promise to work for you in your vineyard.”

It seems to me that there are actually five things that we recommit to. You've heard them before and you've probably committed to them before. The first is the person of Jesus Christ Himself. Our goal in life always as the Bible points out is to develop that personal relationship with the Lord where we can talk to Him in our private prayer, where we can, as the Bible says, “walk with Him.” That is a great metaphor. “Walking with Christ.” We experience Him by our side. We experience Him right with us and follow His lead. Maybe He'll be a pace or two ahead of us and we can follow His lead and obey Him. So committing ourselves to Jesus Christ is number one. It is what it is all about. That is why we call ourselves Christians. It is because we are committed to following Jesus Christ and letting Him walk with us.

The second thing it seems to me we recommit to is personal growth. Christians should never be static people. We should always be growing. Let me read a scripture text that Paul wrote. He said, “Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) That is a powerful scripture, isn't it? It is urging us to not be conformed to this world. That means be not conformed to the values of this world. Be not materialistic. Do not fall prey to the over-sexualization of this world and all those kinds of things that seem very attractive to the public. We are to offer our bodies in service to the Lord so that we are doing for the Lord and being with the Lord. In other words, it is total commitment of ourselves to Him as a living sacrifice as Paul says. This might even involve persecution and suffering.

The next thing that we recommit to is reading the Bible. This is the way that we renew our mind. Paul said in the reading that I just read to you, we need to do that. How do you renew your mind? You renew your mind frequently by turning to the pages of the Bible. In 2 Timothy 2:10 and following, Paul writes these words, “All scripture is God-breathed.” Another word for that is inspired. “And it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” So as we read scripture, it sometimes confronts us. It may make us feel guilty. Sometimes it encourages us and makes us want to do something. It trains us in righteousness which means that it encourages us to do the right thing, to be an ethical person. Then we can be a person of God, a representative of God. “And thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Wow! We can't miss that. We have to become Bible readers.

The next thing to commit to is the local church. That comes through especially in the epistle to the Hebrews. The author writes this sentence. “Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing. But let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:25) I think this is a very interesting sentence. “Let us not give up meeting together.” So many people don't come to church on Sunday. So many people visit what one of our church members call “St. Mattress” where they would rather sleep in than worship the Lord. Paul identifies that it is a habit. If you get out of the habit of worshipping, it is very hard to get back into the habit. Paul is urging us to get into and stay in the habit of worshipping every week, spending the Lord's Day, at least for one hour, with Him. I am reminded of that passage in the Bible where Jesus was in the garden right before His death and the apostles fell asleep. He pray; He knows what He is going to face  certain torture and death. He asks God if it is possible to take this cup from Him. “Please do it. But not my will but your will be done.” Then He gets up to encourage the apostles to pray with Him and He finds them all sleeping. He says, “Can't you just spend one hour praying with me?” I think they are words that Jesus says to all of us Christians. The statistics are, you've heard me say this before, that the average Protestant Church has only eighty four people attending per Sunday. That is the average Protestant Church! Isn't that frightening? There are 100,000,000 Christians in the United States but the average church only has eighty four attending on a typical Sunday? Again, Paul would say, “Encourage one another to be there. Encourage one another to commit to the community of faith.” It is within the community of faith that you are taught. It is within the community of faith that you are supported. When I was in the hospital, I felt your prayers. I felt your love. I felt the community of faith helping me throughout the whole time. I received so many cards and so many well wishes and almost all of the cards were especially chosen because they had a promise of prayer within them. I can tell you personally how important that is. It was comforting to visualize so many of you gathered here on a Sunday praying for me and the others who are sick in our congregation. How important it is to have the community of faith supporting you and being a member of that community of faith. It also tends to keep a person moral. When you are in the community of faith and you show up every Sunday, you are not really going to want to do bad things because guess what? Somebody might find out. So there is an advantage to being a good church attender. That is, it keeps you on the straight and narrow path on the way to heaven. That is absolutely a necessity.

The last thing that we commit ourselves to is ministry. “Jesus said, 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.' Another disciple said to Him, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.' But Jesus told him, 'Follow me and let the dead bury the dead.'” (Matthew 8:20)What did He mean by that? He meant by that we have to be totally active in our faith. We have to put our body and our mouth where our faith is. “Out of the heart the mouth speaks,” Jesus says. Following Christ is to become active in our practice of Christianity, to develop ministries that fit our personalities. Ministries where we do something for other people, we get outside of ourselves. It is always fascinating to me that when I work with people who are highly depressed, one of the things that a highly depressed person does is withdraw into themselves and they don't want to be with others. The opposite of that helps get rid of depression. If you can get out there and be with others and especially do for others, depression will lift. That is one effective way to make depression go away. Of course, it is not the only answer. Exercise helps, too. Talking out your problems with someone else helps too. There again, we discover the value of the Christian community. So there are times when all of us may experience some depression, especially in these economic circumstances. But part of the answer is to get outside of yourself and to become active and do something for others. As you become active, make that commitment to doing it in behalf of our church because our church is the body of Christ right in this location. As the body of Christ, we reach out to others and we make Christ present here. As we get outside of ourselves, we are bringing Christ to others and that's one of the greatest gifts you could ever give to another person.

It requires time - a commitment of time. Time in our society is probably the commodity we have the least of. Yet, if we are true to our Christian commitment, we will give other people of our time and we will share ourselves with them. It is so important. I can't over-emphasize this.

When I was in the hospital, you all did a wonderful thing for me. I will never forget it. It actually brought me to tears. That is, you sang my favorite song. I think LaVerne Mohr was the instigator of it and David Ralphs shared what he knew to be my favorite song. I understand that you all came forward to sing where the microphone could pick you up. So you sang How Great Thou Art. When Dick and Jean brought me that recording, it meant the world to me. In fact, I couldn't help but cry because I felt your care and your love so intensely. Again, that is the kind of thing that makes an enormous difference. I wish that everybody could experience that kind of love from our congregation. I know ministers have an advantage. We're like signposts where people can express their love more easily and safely than just a regular person in the pew. So we aren't likely to have the whole congregation sing to a regular member of the church when that person is sick. But I wish you all could experience that, at least know that everybody in the congregation is praying for you and offering their love to you if you are sick or in the hospital or undergoing some kind of trauma or something of that nature.

As I thought about this and experienced you singing to me How Great Thou Art, what occurred to me is&wouldn't it be wonderful if the congregation did that for Jesus Christ? The minister is not all that important. The minister is just another human being like you. As my father used to say, “I put my pants on the same way you put pants on.” So there is very little difference between all of us. But the reality is, if you would do that for me, wouldn't you want to do even more for Jesus Christ if that is where our love and commitment should really be? Then as I thought about that, it occurred to me that what I would love to do today is an old-fashioned altar call where Jesus says, “Come follow me.” And those of you who are willing to commit to Jesus Christ, recommit because I know you have already committed, but recommit with all your heart and soul and strength and mind, that you would come forward as if you were singing or saying a prayer or hymn over the microphone and He is going to hear it like you did for me. But do it with even more gusto and more commitment than you did for me because He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We talk about Jesus in two terms in the Bible. He is Lord. He is Savior. The word Lord in the Bible is Adoniah in the Greek and actually is the substitute word for God. So by saying that Jesus is Lord, we are saying that “we acknowledge that you are God, that you are the King of Kings, that you are the center of my life.” When we say “He is Savior”, we are saying that He saves us. He saves us from sin, He saves us from ourselves and He saves us from sickness and illness at times, but He is the one who saves us. So why wouldn't we want to confess our faith to Him personally from the depths of our heart? Jesus also made this statement, “If you are not willing to confess me before men, I will not confess you before my Father.” We are to give public recognition of our faith in Jesus Christ. We are to confess our faith in Jesus Christ in front of others. So I am going to invite you now with me to recommit, to stand up if you are willing and come forward if you can. If you have infirmities and can't, that is OK, too. If you would rather just stay in your pew, that is OK, too. But all of you who are willing, I want to invite you to come forward right now. As we come forward, bring the white sheet in your handouts. It has the song of gathering Just As I Am. And we ask you to come forward just as you are while singing.

(Singing of Just As I Am.)

Now I am going to recite a prayer and after each line of that prayer, would you repeat the words that I say&. Dear heavenly Father, I place my trust in your Son. I recognize Him as my Lord and Savior. I repent of my sins. I give Him my heart, my soul, my strength and my mind, and I commit myself, too, to your work in the world - to serving Him through Pilgrim Church. And I offer this prayer in His name. Amen.