SOCKS and SHOES

Man, I’m going to have to talk to Leon about how you get a sabbatical. How do you do that? I’m excited to be here with you. I want to thank you for what you do for big water Togo network. We’re starting.

Actually, it’s already starting right now, our fifth tower. We’re now reaching 100 villages with water, and our fifth tower will get us to 125 villages. So that’s exciting. We are working with 400 orphans, children that are living on the margins of their world in the third world country. So thank you.

Your contribution monthly really touches the lives of these kids in the school that is there. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m excited to be a part of this. This morning, I’m calling this message socks and shoes. And we’re going to start off by playing a little game.

And here’s the game. The game is, I’m going to say a name. I’m guessing there’s going to be a picture. And then you shout out the answer to what I say. Is there a picture?

Not yet. Okay. All right, so, ready? Here we go. Babe Ruth was the sultan of Swat.

The salt and of SWAT. Okay, now, you get valuable points for every question that you get. Right? And those points will be redeemable for salt merchandise at any time during the year. Just see Leon.

He’ll figure it out. Or Leon will take it to a surf shop and buy something or whatever. But. So, okay, so we got Babe ruthenhenne. Muhammad Ali said I am.

There you go. Now, this one is only for people from Boston. Red Sox fans. I threw this in for you Red Sox fans. Ted Williams was the splendid.

I knew this was going to be a hard one. Anybody from Boston? No? Okay. All right.

He was the splendid splinter. I have no idea how he got the word splinter in there, but he was the splendid splinter. Just an amazing ball player. Frank Sinatra was old blue eyes good. Bette Midler is known as the divine.

Divine. Miss him. Wilt Chamberlain was Wilt the stilts. Ervin Johnson is best known as magic. Very good.

And this is my tough one, but you’re gonna get it. Claudia Alta Taylor became famously known as lady bird. Lady Bird. Now, let me ask you a question. Do you know how she got the name Lady Bird?

And when she was a baby, she was so cute that somebody at the house said, she is purdy as a ladybird. And that just stuck when she was a baby and she became the first lady. Lady Birdhouse. Okay, but now we’re doing Sunday school lesson here. We go Sunday school lesson.

Barnabas is known as. Oops. I like that. Oops. Barnabas is known as the son of encouragement.

And how do you think he got that name? How did he get that name? He encouraged everybody. If you were around him, you were encouraged. We go to acts chapter four, where it says, Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles feet.

So he was an encourager in stewardship. He was an encourager relationally. We’re going to look at a story about that this morning. Let’s pray. Dear heavenly Father, open our hearts and our minds to what you want to say to us, to what you want to do in us and through us as the body of Christ, the church here on the earth, being a light and a hope in the world.

Father, take these moments. Press them into our hearts. In Jesus name. Amen. When the apostles were frightened of Paul, Barnabas vouched for his good character and sought him out to encourage him in his missionary journeys.

The church at Jerusalem sent Barnabas to check out the situation in Antioch. Antioch was where the early believers were first called christians, and that word christians meant little christs. They were a reflection of Jesus Christ. And they sent Barnabas to check out the situation in Antioch, and he welcomed the new believers with joy. He was an encourager.

Barnabas stood up for and mentored Mark. This is why he was called an encouraging guy. He got his name because it was who he was. So let me ask you two questions this morning. Who encourages you, and who are you encouraging?

Who do you encourage? We all need encouragement, and we all need it all the time. Here’s what encouragement is. Encouragement is the power of God’s love, revealed in moments that require more grace than judgment. It’s so easy to judge.

It’s so easy to say, well, why’d you do that? And you need to be thinking, encouragement is the power of God’s love, revealed in moments that require more grace than judgment. And you’re going to find that it changes people’s lives. Let’s go to acts 15 for the story that we want to look at today. After some days, Paul said to Barnabas, let us return and visit the brethren in every city in which we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are.

This is what I call. I like to call relational glue. I’m in a series right now. I call it relational glue. Who’s holding your life together?

Relational glue. This is like faith and life together. Hey, hey, hey, Barnabas. Let’s go back to all these cities. Not like, let’s take a tour.

Let’s show up and have everybody appreciate us. No, let’s go back to all the cities that we told the gospel to, that we spoke the gospel to, that we preached the gospel to, that we invited people to come and give their lives to Jesus Christ. Let’s go back and let’s see how they are. This is really down to the bedrock of what relationships are about, what the church is about. Let’s go see how they are.

When we get to go back to Togo, West Africa, we don’t just look at water projects. We don’t just look at a school building. We look into people’s eyes. We see our friends. We see how they are.

We listen to their heartbeat. We listen to their stories. And as you do that, as you go out and serve the city, not only are you going to go out and serve the city, but you’re going to be doing that together. You’re going to be sharing each other’s lives and seeing how you’re doing. That’s the other side of that equation.

You get to do something together, build relational, glue with each other. Let’s go see how they are. But then the plot thickens. Barnabas wanted to take John, called Mark. Uh oh.

He says, I want to take Mark. I really like this kid. I think this kid, he’s a rookie, but I think he’s an up and comer. He’s going to. He’s going to.

He’s going to make mark. He’s going to make a mark. He want to bring Mark with him. But Paul kept insisting that they should not take him along, who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. So Paul is going, no, this guy is not going to cut it.

I don’t want. He’s going to drag us down. I’ve been with him before. You know, he’s a whiner. He’s a drifter, and it just slows the whole work in.

You got to take care of him. We got to move when we have these trips, we got to keep going. We can’t have somebody slowing us down now. Watch what happens next. And there occurred such a sharp disagreement that they separated from one another.

Sharp disagreement. Sometimes we think, this is the church. It’s a lot of kumbaya. This is the church. It’s a lot of I love you.

This is church. You know, it’s like we’re doing this together. The church sometimes has relationships that have sharp disagreements, and that’s okay. That’s okay. Iron sharpens ironization.

The proverb says things. Proverbs 20 717 aren’t sharpens. So one man. So one person sharpens another. Sometimes you have to have a sharp disagreement so you can grow, you know, in marriage, you can have a disagreement.

Somebody once said, if you don’t ever have a disagreement in a marriage, one of you is not necessary. You’ve got, my wife taught me that you have to have things. You go, I don’t see it that way. Well, I think you’re gonna see it this way in a couple minutes. You have to have sharp disagreement.

It’s part of being human. It’s part of sometimes figuring out God’s will. And this is a situation where they’re trying to figure it out, and there’s a sharp disagreement. And if Paul Barnabas had a sharp disagreement, it’s okay to have a sharp disagreement sometimes. And so they separated, and Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.

But Paul. Paul had his own little bonus baby choice over here. But Paul chose Silas and left being committed by the brethren to the grace of the Lord. And he was traveling through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. Tension, drama.

It’s there. What are you going to do with it? So let’s unpack the story. Encouraging doesn’t mean you’ll never disagree. It’s going to be disagreement, and that’s okay.

Encouraging sees what a person can become beyond what they have been. Beyond what they have been. There was a man in the church I attended when I was a brand new Christian. I mean, I was wet behind the ears. I was brand spanking new, and I was just shy of being 21 years of age.

And amazing hair. I mean, amazing. I mean. I mean flowing. I mean flowing.

You can’t imagine it flowing. Okay. And sideburns down. Sideburns down to here. So, you know, and I’m wearing army fatigue pants that I got at an army navy store that were all kind of up and worn out.

I had on a fruit of the loom navy blue t shirt with a pocket that had been washed so many times. You know, even the fruit of the loom, people were, like, amazed, like, that it lasted that long. They wanted it for the fruit of the Loom museum in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. But this man would see me after church, and he was an older man. He was probably in his eighties.

He would come up to me. He had a big smile on his face. He knew I was brand new, and he said, I pray for you every day. And he said it as an encouragement. I pray for you every day.

He saw something in me that I didn’t even know was there, that I didn’t even see myself. I’d never spoken at a church before. I’m like, brand new. I never. That was the church I first gave my testimony at.

But he said, I pray for you every day. Encouragement. Encouraging sees what a person can become beyond what they have been. Encouraging agrees to disagree. Sometimes you got to do that as an adult to live in an adult world.

There is such a thing as agree to disagree. But encouraging always chooses relational glue. It’s because Jesus died for us. He died on that cross for us, and he took care of everything for us. And because of that, and by grace, we’re saved through faith.

It’s a gift of God. We can choose relational glue. We can still choose to love one another, which Jesus said in John 13, that was going to be the defining characteristic that would enable people to really know that we were the real deal, that kind of love. So you can agree to disagree. You can choose relational glue, because encouragement is the power of God’s love, revealed in moments that require more grace than judgment.

So let’s pick up the story in two. Timothy, chapter two, where Paul writes, do your best to come to me quickly for demos. Because he loved this world has deserted me. Demis is off. He wanted to go back to just doing his own thing.

He was selfish. He was self centered. He was egotistical. He just didn’t want to listen. He didn’t want to be held accountable.

Demis is out of here, and he wants to love the world, and he’s gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia. We don’t know why, but questions. Maybe he was tired. Maybe something happened.

He was gone. And Titus to Dalmatia. And then Paul says, only Luke is with me, and you could feel his heartache. Am I just alone now? I’ve done all this.

This is Paul. We all love Paul. He’s like, only Luke is with me. You can feel his need for encouragement. And it’s a story that a woman named Ann Lamotte writes about in her book somehow thoughts on love.

Anne Lamott is a little different. She’s kind of a little out there a little bit. She writes some really interesting books. The book that I really like, and I’ve used it a lot, that she wrote is called help. Thanks.

Wow. It’s really a great book. Help. Thanks. Well, these three great prayers that she uses, she describes those prayers, help.

Thanks. Well, but this book, this book, she tells a story, and it’s a story about encouragement. She starts out asking a question, what can I leave my son and grandson, by the way, of general instructions for when I am gone? It’s a good question. What am I going to leave behind?

What has consistently worked to lift us and light the way during the inevitable times of deep darkness? There’s a story I live by, which I have been telling my Sunday school kids for 30 years now, and which they never tire of, or at least have the good sense to still pretend to enjoy it if they have any hope of getting snacks. It’s kind of like the underlying principle of Sunday school. A young girl is having a hard time falling asleep one night and calls out for her mother. Her mother comes in and gently tucks her in again and assures her that Jesus is there in the room with her.

So we needn’t be afraid. This goes on and on each time, the increasingly annoyed mother saying basically the same thing. Jesus is in the room. You learn about Jesus in Sunday school. Jesus is in the room, and we don’t have to be afraid until finally, in the dark.

The girl cries out very plaintively, but mommy, I need somebody with skin on. I need someone with skin on. And then Lamont writes, this is the main instruction that I would leave my family in my swag bag of spiritual truth. Be goodness with skin. On.

Most days this will be enough. Also, be sure to plant bulbs in the winter, help the poor, and light candles in the dark to see where you are, where you’ve been, what remains, and how much still works just fine. The last one will amaze you. And then she says, we are called to be the love that wears socks and shoes. I don’t care what kind of shoes you’re wearing today.

It could be adidas like your pastor. You could be olokai like I’m wearing. You might be in flip flops. You might be in Skechers. A slip on kind so you don’t have to tie anything anymore.

You might have socks. You might not have socks. I got polka dot socks on today that somebody gave me for my birthday. But she says, you’ve got to be. You’ve got to be loved that wears socks and shoes.

Take food to the nearest food bank, call your cranky uncle to say hello, and stay on the phone even after he goes into full weirdness. Foster old pets or donate to people who do. There are nearly infinite ways to be loved. So let’s go back to second Timothy. Paul says only Luke is with me.

Get Mark. Get Mark and bring him with you because he is helpful to me in my ministry. You see, what was a drama, what was attention, what caused a rift, what sent Barnabas one way and Paul another way somehow had worked out. Somehow Mark had risen to the occasion. Somehow, Mark grew up.

Somehow, with the encouragement that Barnabas gave him, he changed. Mark didn’t wear socks and shoes, but he had the sandals that Paul needed to see walk into his life. Encouragement is being helpful. Like Mark was helpful. You know, theology sometimes just comes down to these little things.

A good theology is maybe just be in the moment. What somebody needs that can be the best evangelism. Like I’m fond of saying, there’s five gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and you, which is why your serve the city thing is so great. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and you serving the city. And in that moment, it can be evangelistic, or it could just be building relational glue into salts as a community of men and women and children who are trying to follow Christ each and every day to his honor.

So here are the specifics of what I want to encourage you about today. It’s from one of my friends and a gentleman who’s made a lot of impact in the church for the last 30 years. His name is Henry Cloud. He wrote a book that I keep pretty close at hand, which is called never go back. And it’s an encouragement about how to live following Christ, how to live in the body of Christ in the church, and then how to live and move forward in the right way in your life.

So I’d like to give you my friend Henry’s encouragement this morning. First, never return to what hasn’t worked. Never return to what hasn’t worked. And there are lots of things that you kind of spin your wheels on, and, you know, it doesn’t work, and it didn’t work, and it hasn’t worked. It’s not worked for a long time.

Maybe it worked once, and that was a fluke. But, you know, sometimes we’re ten, we’re tempted to go back to things, because maybe it’s the easy way, or this is what somebody expects, but things that don’t work, they just don’t work. And you know, what doesn’t work? This is what recovery is all about. Recovery is about never returning to what hasn’t worked.

And you need God’s power in your life to be able to do that, turned our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Step three, never do anything that requires you to be someone you’re not. You have gifts and you have talents. You have things that you can do, and you have things that you can’t do. You have things that you’re clueless about.

If somebody asks you to do something and it’s like you draw a blanken, don’t say yes because you think you want them to like you. Or, well, you know, it’s the church or, well, it was Leon. It’s like, you can say no to Leon, it’s okay, he will not die, or, you know, he’ll be fine, you know, because sometimes as a pastor, we think that we’re asking the right person, but then later on, we realize this is, like the truth that nobody tells you. We think we’re asking the right person, then we learn it wasn’t the right person, and then we have to figure out, there’s drama, and it’s kind of like that mark drama with Paul and Barnabas, and we got to unravel that and figure out how to get out of that. But the easiest way to avoid that is don’t do anything that requires you to be someone that you’re not.

Never try to change another person. People have to take their own responsibility for change. You can pray for them. You can be an encouragement to them. In the process of it, you can maybe see a change and encourage that because they’re owning that and living that.

But we don’t change people. People changed by God’s power at work, in their lives that they walk with God in. Never believe you can please everyone. You can’t. I can’t.

Pastors can’t. Nobody can. You know, it’s not our job to please everyone. It’s our goddess. It’s our job to do what God wants us to do, to do his will on earth as it is in heaven each and every day.

Never choose short term comfort over long term benefit. You gotta see the long term. You gotta have the vision. Anything that makes you feel good right now is just a cheap substitute. Never trust someone or something flawless, as they say.

If something looks too good to be true, it is. Somebody once said, if you find a church that’s perfect, don’t join it. You’ll ruin it. There is no perfection in the church. So just, you know, kind of.

Yeah, you know, a lot of God’s grace, a lot of encouragement, God’s grace. Never take your eyes off the big picture. Have the big picture of what God’s given you as a vision. Keep the big picture at the forefront. Don’t let the little stuff get you down.

The ups and downs and in betweens. Keep your eyes on the big picture. And Leon does such a great job with that. Of telling you what the vision is. And leading you into the vision.

Never fail to ask why you are where you are. Wherever you are is because of a why. Something happened. You made a choice. So never fail to ask why you are where you are.

Figure. Figure out your life. Have responsibility for your life. Henry Cloud once put it this way. You are amazingly in charge of your life.

And then here’s the big one. Never forget that your inner life determines your outer success. And we’re going to go to Jesus on this one. Let’s look at Jesus in Luke, chapter eleven. When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him.

So he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed. That Jesus did not first wash before the meal. And truth be told, the Pharisees were probably looking for something to pick on. Then the Lord said to him, because he already knew what he was thinking.

Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside, the cup and dish. But inside you are full of greed, wickedness. You foolish people. Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now, as for what is inside, you be generous to the poor.

And everything will be clean for you. Woe to you Pharisees. Because you give God a 10th, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You sort of hit that benchmark. You give God a 10th, but you don’t give justice to the equation.

You don’t bring love to the equation. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. Whoa. To you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues. And respectful greetings in the marketplaces.

It’s all kind of a big show. Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves. Which people walk over without knowing it. You’re already dead. You’re not really living the life that God has called you to live.

That God wants to give you the life of grace, the life of encouragement, the life of blessing, the life of love. So here, get this. One of the experts in the law answered him. Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also. And then Jesus apologized.

I’m sorry I made you feel bad. No, I’m so. Oh, you felt bad. Let me give. I’ll give you a hug.

No, you insult us also, Jesus said. And you, experts in the law, woe to you. You think you’re so hot because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. He called them on it. He called them all out for not living lives of encouragement, for not living lives of love.

This is kind of like he puts relational glue in reverse. So he hopes that they get on board with real relational glue. And so never forget that your inner life determines your outer success. But let me put it this way, let me put it this way. You need Jesus on the inside to have real life on the outside.

You need Jesus on the inside. Is that the way it works, to have real life on the outside? So maybe the biggest question this morning is this. Do you have Jesus on the inside today? Do you have Jesus on the inside today?

I encourage you to really ponder that, to think about that, to understand that, and to make a decision about that, to make a decision, maybe you need to say what I said a long time ago. Okay, Jesus Christ, if you can change my life like these people say, you can’t go ahead and do it, and you can be born again and live a whole new life and get involved in the true work of the gospel and getting involved with the true work of the church. When Jesus said, I will build my church, he wasn’t talking about a group of people that were going to gather and just kind of make themselves feel better. He was talking about a group of people that were going to change the world. You see most of what you leave behind going to be your encouragement.

That’s what it’s going to be. So I need you, I implore you to decide who you’re going to encourage today. You can think about who’s encouraging you, but go one step further and think about who can I encourage this week? Who can I encourage today? Because we are called to be the love that wear socks and shoes.

Romans 15, five and six is a great word from Paul. He says, may the God who gives endurance and encouragement. Paul says, God gives encouragement. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Encouragement is the power of God’s love, revealed in moments that require more grace than judgment.

We’re called to be the encouragement that wears socks and shoes. Maybe someone, and I believe there is someone, maybe someone right in front of you, someone that you know needs you to be Barnabas. Dear heavenly Father, help us to walk in those shoes, those sandals that Barnabas walked in when he put his arm around mark and said, I see you who you are, but I also in a bigger way I see who you can be. And Father, give us somebody in our minds that we can put that upon, that we can give that as a gift to someone, whether it’s a child, whether it’s an adolescent, whether it’s somebody we work with, whether it’s somebody that has poured into our lives for years and years and years and we just want to encourage them and give them an encouraging word of thanks for what they’ve given to us. Father, allow us to see in this story not just the drama of Paul and Barnabas, but allow us to see the relational glue and how the story comes full circle.

And Paul says bring, bring mark. Father, allow us to find that place where today in this week we can be Barnabas in Jesus name, amen.