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Today is the second Sunday of a six week sermon series called, How to bless others. This series started at our Property Celebration last month when I said that one of the next tasks for us as a new church is to bless the people who live in the neighborhoods near our property. The primary reason that we changed our worship location is the Steering Committee wanted our worship location to be closer to the people who live there. We want to bless them. Change is hardeven in a new congregation. I want to say I love you for your willingness to change our worship location. On behalf of the Steering Committee I want to say thank you for the trust you gave. We didnt have a chance to get the input of the congregation on this decision. The opportunity came up quickly, and the Steering Committee and our Facilities team went with it. I believe that finding this worship location was a God thing. Let me share the story. We had a group who had been looking really hard for a long time for a worship facility and nothing was happening. At Blazin Blaine a pastor of another church said, have you ever thought about Da Vinci Academy? We said, no. We decided to check it out. We couldnt get in touch with the principal so one day we decided to come here unannounced. We just showed up. When we showed up unannounced the principal of the school was not only willing to see us I think he would have been willing to sign a rental contract on the spot. His response was so different than the response we received at other facilities. We explored worshipping at Lino Lakes Elementary STEM. It took me six weeks just to get a meeting. Here we showed up unannounced and were practically offered the place. Then the principal resigned and the leadership team from Da Vinci accepted us with open arms.

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Only God can do this. Imagine someone saying at the start of the summer, a pastor of another church is going to help you find a worship location that you havent even thought of, do you know what I would say. Wow! God is really at work. Yay God!!! Yay God! God is working in us. God delivered us. God has been very good to us. This worship space is an example of salvation. Now our task is to bless others. However it is almost impossible for us to bless others unless we know that we have been blessed. Blessing others is a paradox. We think blessing is what we do for othersand it is. But we cant bless unless we know how deeply we have been blessed. We cant share something that we dont think we have. In this series Im talking about how weve been blessed. Im sharing six gifts or blessings that God has given to us. My ultimate hope for this series is our hearts will burn with love because we know we have been blessed. We will go out of our way to bless others. Last week I talked about the gift of salvation. I talked about how salvation is deliverance. It happens when God delivers us from a situation in a way that only God can do. Salvation happens here on earth. I shared the story of the Exodus of how God delivered the Israelites from the oncoming chariots of Pharaoh. That was salvation. I also shared how we are delivered from deathour eternal salvation. Our hearts can burn with love because we have been given the gift of salvation. Today Im talking about unconditional acceptance and unconditional love. I want to encourage you to get out this brochure that is in the bulletin. I made a special plea last week for you to use the devotion and some of you took notice. I received some feedback about the devotion I wrote about salvation. Thank you. I encourage you to use the devotion each week. When you

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read it, send me an E-mail. We also have a place for prayer requestsweve started them again, and we have a place for you to take notes. I want to start out an exercise. Imagine that one day you are cleaning out your closet and you come across a list of all the times youve screwed up in your life. All the times you have sinned. If I came across the times Ive sinned or screwed up the list would be a book. I remember the time I was confirmed in High School. It was at our home church in Worthington. When worship was done my sister came up to me in the aisle to congratulate me. She was really excited for me. But I was the older brother and I was cool. I was too cool to acknowledge my sister. I didnt literally spit in my sisters face, but I practically did. That incident will go in my book. Or I think about the times I have lost my cool with my daughter. It doesnt happen very often, but it does happen. Recently she spent what I thought was way too much time during the day on the Internet. When it was time for her to go to bed she was still on the Internet. I didnt give her a honey, lets got to bed, instead it was Hannah, now, go to bed. The next day I woke up feeling guilty. That incident will make my book This Friday Im going to my high school reunionits number 30. I hope to see a friend of mine, Lynn Shade. I remember when I was in fifth grade when Lynn Shade and I got into a brutal fight. This was the type of fight where we were trying to belt the you know what out of each other. If I see him at the reunion Im going to ask him if he remembers that fight. That one will make my list. One part of worship that we do as Presbyterians is confession. Today I put confession after the sermon. It is an important time in worship. If you are like me the time for individual confession is never quite long enough. My list is long.

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God knows this book of mine. God can recite the illustrations of my book. God knows all the ugly parts of me. The parts that hopefully dont come out often, but they exist. God looks at these parts of me and judges me. The judgment is Paul, I know every part of youall the good and all the bad AND the verdict is------------------I love you. I accept you. I know all the hidden parts of who you are. I know all of you. I love you and I accept you right where you are on your journey. This is Gods judgment. God knows every part of us. God loves us and accepts us where we are on our journey. If you take one idea from this sermon take this one. I encourage you to write this down. God knows every part of us. God judges us. Gods judgment is: I love you, and I accept you where you are on your journey. The Bible is the source of this idea. Look at the greatest people in the Bible. Take for example Abraham. Hes the father of our faith. God called Abraham to travel to a distant land. Do you know what Abraham did when he was in a hostile territory and the king of that territory was interested in his wife? Abraham lied about his relationship with Sarah to protect his own skin. Abraham called Sarah his sister. Abraham was willing to let the kinghis name was Abimilech have sex with Sarah so that Abraham would live. Look at Genesis 20. How about

Moses. He led the Israelites out of Egypt and then endured them for 40 years in the Wilderness. When he was a young adult Moses saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Moses killed the Egyptian. He was so scared about what would happen to him that he fled Egypt for his life. Along with Abraham and David Moses is one of the three greatest figures in the Old Testament even though he was a murderer.

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How about David? He was the greatest king in the history of Israel. Remember that David raped Bathsheba and then covered it up by having Bathshebas husband, Uriah, killed. David actually got away with it until God confronted him through Nathan. If we think that these colossal mess ups only happen to men. Let me remind you about Eve. She was not supposed to eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. Adam was with her so the responsibility lay with both of them. Eve was the leader of that colossal screw-up. Then MiriamMoses sister. She got upset with Moses in the wilderness and tried to overthrow him. In case we think that these screw-ups only happened in the Old Testament look at the New Testament. Look at Peter. Hes the rock upon which Jesus was going to build the church. Remember what Peter did three times? He denied Jesus. Or how about Paul, the first new church developer. Most people think that he had a hand in the killing of Stephen. These are great figures of the faith. And they all did acts that were most likely are worse than any of us will ever do. And God loved them; God gave them grace. God used them to create the Kingdom. God accepted them where they were on their journey. And there is one more story. Its about Jesus. Amy read part of the story for us. Jesus had already been nailed to the cross. He had nails in his wrists, his stomach, and his legs. He was practically naked. Its hard to imagine the physical pain. That doesnt include the emotional pain. The religious leaders were yelling at him. The Roman soldiers were mocking him. The criminal on his left was ridiculing him. It was an ugly scene. But how about the criminal on the right. Do you remember what he did? He came to the defense of Jesus. He wasnt named in the story, but some traditions called him Dumachus or Dismas. The name dismas was adapted from a Greek word meaning sunset or death. A number of

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towns are named after this man including San Dimas, California. Dismas rebuked the other criminal. We are getting what we deserve, the man said. But this man has done nothing wrong. Then he looked right at Jesus. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. You know the song, Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom. Weve sang it as weve come to celebrate Communion. The words come from Dismas. It certainly would made sense to us if Jesus had ignored the request. He was in so much physical and emotional pain. We would have understood if he could have only focused on himself. Jesus didnt do this. Jesus replied. Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise. Did the criminal deserve this treatment? No. Jesus gave it anyways. One of the reasons Ive given my life to Jesus is how Jesus responded in this story. His behavior in this story is consistent with his behavior in many other places in the Scriptures. We need this so much in our world. We leave this sanctuary and immediately we get judged. One reason I find it so exciting to be part of a new church is I want to be part of a community of people who will love and accept people like Jesus did. One of our Core Values is acceptance. We understand it to mean that we accept people without judgment, regardless of what has happened on their journey of faith. Im willing to work 50 to 60 hours a week for many years to create a community that lives out this valueits Jesus value. Its a lot of work. When we share this value of Jesus, the world starts to change. I want to be part of that. I want our new church to be part of that. Weve already started to achieve this. Ive had many people tell me that when they come to Chain of Lakes new Church they love feeling so accepted.

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Lets not kids ourselves. Living into this value is very difficult. On my Facebook page this week I asked the question, why are we so quick to judge? An excellent conversation broke out. I encourage you to read it. Why are we so quick to judge? First I think its important to understand what judgment means. One meaning of judgment is the ability to make decisions. When a person does well at making decisions we would say that person has good judgment. Another meaning is a decision that an official body makes. When a jury or a judge makes a decision we say that this is the judgment of the court. Another meaning is when we have an opinion based on morality. We are judging in terms of the morality of an action by another person. Its this last idea that can raise our hackles. Most of us dont want to be told by another individual or even a community that our actions are morally wrong. We certainly have the right to place this type of judgment. We dont believe that anything goes. If someone in our faith community went out and murdered a child, we would have no problem saying that this is wrong. We would place judgment. Jesus judged peopleironically he often he judged the religious leaders of the day when they were judging. The question I have is why are we so quick to judgment? The point Im driving at is when we come across a situation we have a choice. We can either accept or judge. Why is it that we humans first response is to judge. A part of judgment is being critical of others. Being critical is dangerous in a faith community. People dont want to come to a place where people are quick to criticize others. When criticism is the norm in a faith community there is a deadness. People dont really want to be there because they are so critical of each other. When a newcomer walks in there isnt a spirit of energy, of being alive. On the other hand when people accept and love each other there is a

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sense of joy. People want to be together because they love each other. To bless others we want this spirit of joyof acceptance and love. The task is to resist our impulse to criticize and go out of our way to love and accept. This is so important that I could easily share ten steps for resisting criticism. Let me share one tip for resisting criticism. The tip is this. Dont let another person be critical without some gentle pushback. I know that weve all been at gatherings where someone starts being critical of a person who is not present. Of course this is unhealthy and of course its not fair, but it does happen. My tip is if we hear someone being critical of a person who isnt present ask the question, have you shared this with the person? The criticism might be valid, but if we dont do this face-to-face then really all we are doing is having a conversation by ourselves. The next time we hear criticism of a person who isnt present, ask have you shared this with the person. If we do this, then criticism will begin to dry up. I think we do a great job at Chain of Lakes New Church in accepting others, but criticism is so natural that we always have to be vigilant about resisting it. The world needs us to accept others. The world needs us to go to bat for others through acceptance. The world needs us to have our hearts burn with love for others. When that happens we can change the world. Lets be part of that change. Groups