Answer The Door

How many of us were raised in churches where nearly zero priority was given to the poor? I understand the importance of using the treasury for authorized things, but what about Christians using their own money and time to help the poor in the community?  I confess, I was not raised with much of that, nor was it present in the early years of my preaching.  

We. Can. Do. Better. In fact, as you'll hear more in next week's episode "The Math Problem," we must. And just as importantly, God is putting people in our lives, strangers, who need our help.  It becomes easy to write them off as insignificant or deceptive, but so many times they most certainly are not. 

I want to tell you a story today.  I want you to hear about Lorenzo and Heather. May it have the kind of affect on you, and your local church, that it has had on me and my friends in Christ.

- Is it important for Christians to help the poor in the world?

- Should preachers "Answer The Door" when people come by looking for help?

- How can an altered "church culture" be the be the key to better things?

- Does it sometimes take money and time investments to open the door to the Gospel?

- Are you ready to renovate your saving and giving to be more hospitable in 2021? 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Excel Still More Podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson. I'm here to encourage you in your walk with God. Thank you for joining in. Today's podcast is sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John Cunningham is a friend of mine and a brother in Christ, and he can help you with financial decisions and future planning. He's been a big help to me and my family, and I commend him to you. You can reach him at 205-913-1720. I am so thankful you're here, so let's get started. Hello, welcome back. I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season. This episode is set to launch on Monday, the 28th of December, right between Christmas and New Year's. And if that's when you're listening, I hope you're coming off of a great week with family, a wonderful Sunday of worship, and high hopes for the new year. For me, on the recording side of things, it's actually Christmas Eve. About 2 p.m. I'm up here at the office, headed home in a little while to enjoy dinner with some family and Christian friends, but there is a story, an event that took place here over the past forty-eight hours that I just feel emotionally compelled to share with you. It's about a 55-year-old man named Lorenzo and his 21-year-old daughter Heather. I hope you enjoy it. It's real and it's real time. And for me, it made for the perfect end of this year and has created a lot greater clarity for the things that I want to do and do for others in 2021. So before we dive off into that, I wasn't planning on recording this episode this week titled Answer the Door. Instead, I'd been working on an episode called The Math Problem, designed to help you get a better hold on your personal finances, on where the money is going, to position you to be more giving and to do more work for the Lord next year than in any year of your life. We will be talking about that, Lord willing, next Monday. It's about personal finances, it's about personal convictions. If I could just say this without getting into too much trouble, and it applies to today's episode and next week, I think a lot of us who were raised in what we might call conservative churches of Christ, I did a little air quote thing there when I said that. We were not taught well, in my opinion, in general, the importance of sharing our wealth, the importance of being ready to share, to prepare to share and then engage in sharing, to pool our funds together with fellow believers and make a difference in the lives of the poor. I'm talking about the poor who are among God's people and the poor that we meet in the community. There is this bizarre disconnect between our spiritual walk and general attitude of influence on others, and the way we might use the money in our pockets to help and influence others. So next week we will look at passages in the New Testament, including something just downright shocking that Jesus commanded disciples to do, to help reset our focus on the connection between our blessings and the way that we help people in our lives. We'll talk about the math problem. We will talk about some of the common mistakes that households make that sometimes make it impossible to help others. How can you help others if you've not prepared to do so? If there's no money to do so, and of course, time and energy and all of those things are factors as well, but I'm pretty sure in your family, money matters. It keeps things going for you. Well, what about people God puts in your life who don't have those things going, who need that help? That's where we're headed. And I used several minutes introducing that today because today's topic is not unrelated. We will be talking about giving time, energy, and money to others, though I would like the application more today to go towards the culture of the local church where you worship. Next week is more about personal, family planning, budgeting, and financing. Today is more about the church where you worship. Are the members there committed to helping people they don't know? Hospitality, love of strangers. What are some things that the members of your church are doing? Maybe you don't feel like it's authorized for the Sunday contribution to be used to help the community. I totally understand that. But what are Christians doing to help the people who God puts in their path? So I think you'll see a little application at the end. I want to share with you a few ideas that we have been working on as Christians here in Lyndale, and we are beginning to see results. In fact, today's story of Lorenzo and Heather is but one case study of what those results might look like when we choose to answer the door. One more thing, and then I promise I'll tell you the story, and I believe you will be moved by it. I pray that you will be. If at any point in the next ten minutes you hear anything that even remotely suggests that I am touting my own spirituality or boasting the progress of the Lindale Church, please understand that is not the intention here. In fact, I might argue it's the opposite. I have been so wrong on charity, on community work, on the focus upon souls, and I believe a lot of fellow church members agree with me on that. We are changing. Today's story is a product of changing and probably just the beginning of where God wants to take us. So I told you today is Thursday, December 24th. Two days ago, I'm up here at the office working, it's Tuesday afternoon, and I hear a knock on the window at the front door of the church building. It takes me a few seconds to get up from my desk and walk around it and work my way towards the front door, and as I do, I see a man, a black man, mid-50s, who had knocked on the door fifteen seconds earlier and now was beginning to walk away. I took a step towards the door, and then I paused. I would say that pause was maybe two seconds. But within those two seconds were the instant mental flashings of a lifetime of wrongful ideas. Do you know what I'm talking about? I look outside, I see an African American man. We don't have too many of those in our community. And so I'm thinking this is an out of town guy who probably wants something. He's probably looking for money. And if I open the door, he will probably tell me some unverifiable story that will sound like stories I've heard a dozen times before. And if I choose to do nothing for him, I'll look like a jerk. Honestly, I think I'll spare myself the trouble and just let the man walk away. Now, as I confess to you those thoughts, your first inclination might be, man, maybe Chris is a little racist or something. But no, it's actually worse than that. I have had those same thoughts, I have suffered those same pauses, and many times over the years turned and walked away, no matter who was at the door. Doesn't matter the ethnicity, male or female, old or young, by themselves or with others. I feel like I've always been in this predetermined box of we as Christians take care of our own people here. We're pretty tied up with that. We can't feed everyone in town, we can't handle everyone's problems. People in the world tend to lie anyway, I've got better things to do. This is not important. I want you to hear that. That person on the other side of the door whom I do not know is not important to me. That's the message that had been locked in my mind for a really long time. No more. Never again. To be clear about this, this change has been occurring in me over the course of several years. I remember a church that I worked for not many years ago where the standing rule was kind of, you know, we don't answer the door here. We never answer the door. We don't help anyone. If we do, they're going to go back and tell someone else, and before you know it, there'll be 10 drug abusers at the door. So I moved away from that to usually answering the door with the occasional two-second pause. As I said, no boasting here, just a work in progress. Alright, so let me get back to what happened. I opened the door and I said, Sir, can I help you? And he turns and he walks back to the door and he says, My name is Lorenzo, and I'm trying to get from Memphis, Tennessee to Dallas, Texas. I have lung cancer. I ran out of money trying to treat it. My 21-year-old daughter, who was maybe 50 yards away across the parking lot, she and I are trying to get to my older daughter's house in Dallas, where she thinks she can get me into a program. He goes on to tell me that his truck broke down on Interstate 20 and he caught a ride into town and he's just kind of been walking, asking churches for help, and that brought him to me. Now at this point, I want to tell you something really cool that a handful of members have been doing here in Lyndale for the last few years. When they come in the building on Sundays or Wednesdays, they'll often give me a $10 bill or a $20 bill, and I accumulate that in a little envelope in my desk drawer so that when people come and have needs, maybe we can actually help them in a way that makes a difference. I used to be that preacher who said, I'll put twenty dollars in my wallet on Monday and give it to the best story I hear, but that's going to be it. I am greatly ashamed of who I have been, but at the same time prayerful and penitent and hopeful for better things. So between a little bit of my funding and what was already there, I had enough to put them in a motel. So I said, Lorenzo, I will take you and Heather up to a hotel here in about an hour when I get done. So come on in, take a load off, and relax. Here's some snacks that I have, and I'll take you. So an hour later, I'm taking them down to the motel six, and he actually begins to tell me that he's a member of the church. He mentions a preacher up in Martin, Sitka, Tennessee area. He talks about how he was baptized by this man a few years ago. Really interesting. Kind of glad I didn't know that at first, because I wanted to help a man because he needed it, not because he had crossed some threshold into deservitude by being a Christian, if that makes sense. But then it was also really cool to hear. So I get him set up at the motel, the night paid, and I tell him, look, I'll put a post on our private Lindale Church Facebook group and see if anyone will take a look at your truck. By the way, that's a second really cool thing that we do. We keep a private group where we can pass around questions and requests like that. One of the men of our church, Kyle, immediately called Lorenzo, picked up he and Heather, and took them to look at the truck on I-20. The truck would not start, so Kyle called a wrecker and had it taken to a facility there in Lyndale. In the meantime, he started talking to them about faith. He also learned about Lorenzo being a Christian, but that Heather had been in foster care most of her life and only reunited with her dad a few years ago, and she had not obeyed the gospel. But Kyle really got her thinking. So we decided the next day to pay up another day till we could figure out this car situation. And when I got to the motel, I picked up Lorenzo and Heather, and I met Kyle and his daughter Andy at the church building, and we sat down and had a Bible study. As a result of that, Heather was baptized into Christ. If you could have seen her face, a young lady who maybe has never known peace, if you could have seen it, the look I saw in her eyes after she came up out of that water, and then her father's eyes, I'm supposed to be a word guy, but I just don't think there are any. It was incredible. So just after she's baptized, we're in the foyer talking, and Kyle gets a phone call from the mechanic. The engine is toast. Talk about a gut punch coming out of a wonderful event. So Kyle says, Let me go get them some lunch. We'll go talk about it. I'll let you know. He texts me a couple of hours later, and at this point, it's Wednesday, December 23rd, it's around noon. He says, We're going to go another direction. He texts me a few hours later, he says, I found them a forty five hundred dollar Yukon and bought it. And I immediately responded and said, Kyle, we're going to help you out with that. So a couple of hours before church on Wednesday night, I send out an email to the members and I post on the private group and say, hey, Kyle's out forty five hundred dollars. If you'd like to contribute and help him, you can bring the funds tonight. Well, it just so happened that the lesson, the math problem that you, Lord willing, will hear next week, I had preached here in a much longer form a couple of weeks ago, so we've been having a lot of conversation about why we have wealth in the first place. Anyway, long story short, by the time we got home from church last night, forty five hundred dollars had been collected from the membership to cover all of Kyle's costs. But listen, that's not even remotely the best part. Far and away the best part was when Lorenzo and his daughter Heather walked through the door last night at 7 o'clock for Bible class. At this point, because I had shared photos on the private group and sent out the email of the 200 people in the room last night, probably half of them recognized him. And I just stood back and watched. Before services, during services, when he was invited to sit with Larry, and Heather sat with Andy and Kyle, the looks on their faces in Bible class, maybe the first one she'd ever been in. And then the people who gathered around them after services when we mentioned that Heather was a new sister in Christ, just seeing God at work through us. I don't mean through me. I didn't do much. I gave a little time, a little money, but all I really did was answer the door. Preachers, if you're listening right now, secretaries, people working at the church building, answer the door. God is bringing people into your life. Now there's a part of you right now thinking, yeah, but some of them lie, and some of them are drug addicts, and some of them can't be helped. You know, that's true, but you're not going to know that, are you? You can't know that until you have answered the door, started a conversation, invested some time, and helped them connect with other Christians. And here's where the culture conversation comes in. In the grand scheme of the amazing events, including a new soul in Christ of the last 48 hours, that began with a man and his daughter broken down on the highway and just about an hour ago concluded with them headed towards Dallas in their new Yukon and were working on connections with brethren from the moment that they get there. In between, I didn't do very much, but members of this church did. We are working diligently to let love lead. I wanted to say in Lindale just then, but that would be a 3L alliteration, maybe a little over the top. But we're trying to let love lead. We want a culture of giving, of community service. People say, well, in our church, we don't believe the treasury should be used for that. Please tell me you're not under the illusion or the delusion that funds in a treasury is the extent of the work of Christians with their monetary blessings in this life. We can do more, we must do more, and we can do the most when we do it together. So next week, I'm going to talk to you about your personal finances and how you're setting up for these kinds of things. But today, this week, think about church culture. Have a conversation with the preacher or one of the shepherds of the church or a few other families. Start pooling some funds together so that when the door is answered, work can get done. Create a network of conversation where people can be educated to the needs and active in finding solutions. And very soon you will be reminded of what has filled my heart today, December 24th at 2 30 p.m. The same words Paul told the elders in Ephesus: it is more blessed to give than to receive. May God bring opportunity to us all at the church building and everywhere. But when he does, remember you must answer the door.life to sign up for emails, order the three month journals, or just catch up on old episodes. So until next time, let me leave you with this. Whatever you choose to do today, in the name of the Lord Jesus, excel stillmore.