Sermon Transcript
Well, friends, today’s message has been 40 years in the making. That’s how long I’ve served as a lead pastor. 22 years in, we get to live here. Are you kidding? Agoura Hills.
And then 7 years in, are you kidding me? Phoenix. And 11 years now, and who would have thought Los Altos in the heart of the Silicon Valley? Me, really? Are you kidding?
And I look back at my 40-year run as a lead pastor, I’m absolutely amazed. I really am. From the very beginning until now, it’s been like a surprise party and an out-of-body experience at the same time. You talk about a surprise. I was the kid sitting in the back row of the balcony in my parents’ church who said to himself while listening to the pastor’s boring sermon, I never ever want to do that.
I never want to be a pastor. No way. Well, guess what? God surprised me. And now 40 years I’ve been preaching sermons most Sundays.
And the surprises continue to come. I went from not wanting to do this to I get to do this. That’s where I think in some ways there’s this out-of-body experience that comes in. You know, the kind where you’re doing something and you’re experiencing something and you’re just saying, How? I mean, what’s going on here?
Why am I doing this? They’re asking me to do what? They’re asking me to speak in front of people? I mean, lead meetings, do weddings and funerals, give advice to couples that are getting married or those who are trying to make their marriages work, you know, help parents who are at the end of their rope, explain things in the Bible that are hard to understand. Call unbelievers to repent, make a 180-degree shift from a self-directed life to a God-directed life.
You know, I’m amazed, I really am, that I’ve had the privilege of doing all of that. And what may be even more amazing is that I’ve loved it. I really have. I mean, this has just been what the Bible calls a labor of love. It’s been that for me.
I got to say that there have been some things along the way that I didn’t like, but Hey, that’s life, isn’t it? But the joy of serving God and others as a pastor has made my life incredibly fulfilling. So that being the case, and in light of our coming lead pastor transition on January 10th, I’ve done some reflecting on my past 40 years as a lead pastor and that ministry. And I’ve been asking myself questions like, how did this happen? How did I make it for 40 years?
Why did I do what I’ve been doing? And for that matter, why am I doing now what I’m doing, which is stepping down from my lead pastor ministry here in order to step into whatever ministry God has for Bernice and I next? I mean, what’s behind what I’ve done and what’s needed for what I hope to be doing? I think that’s a great question. It’s a great question for us, but really it’s a good question for anybody to ask.
I think it’s a great question for you to ask. One that would be good for all of us to ask ourselves as we come to the end of 2020 and we look forward to 2021. You know, at whatever stage of life we are in, wherever we live, whatever condition we are in spiritually, emotionally, relationally, physically, I found that if we hope to make the most of our lives, we need to do what Philippians 2:12-13 talks about. It says that we need to work out what God works in. And if we hope to work out what God works in, and ultimately see surprises from the Lord.
I believe we’re going to see him do things beyond what we could ask or think. So, I just want to take you back a little bit on our journey to what we can see would be 5 gifts, 5 gifts that God has given us all along the way. And I really hope that in looking at these gifts, they might be an encouragement to you, they might be a help to you. The 5 gifts are God’s providence, God’s Spirit, God’s family, God’s workmanship, and God’s word. So let’s talk about that.
God’s providence first. I like what the Apostle Paul said about God’s providence in a speech that he gave to a group of spiritual seekers. And you can find the speech in Acts chapter 17, but just looking at verses 27 and first part of 28, this is what it said. Paul said, God intended that they, and this was all people, that they, mankind, would seek him God intended that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.
Do you believe that? That in God we live and we move and we have our being? So that’s to say that whatever we do, wherever we are, God is there. We live in the sphere of God’s providential care, his providential work. Now, I didn’t have much insight into God’s providential care until my high school all-night graduation party at a bowling alley, believe it or not, which was— and this is hard to believe— it was 50 years ago as of this coming June 2021.
Now, I don’t remember a lot about the party other than I bowled terrible, and I think the rest of whatever happened was quickly forgotten. But what I’ve not forgotten is how on that night while hanging out with some friends and talking about the future, one friend said this to me. This friend said, Dave, you would be really good at Teen Dimension. And then that person told me a little bit about Teen Dimension and their ministry and their work with junior highers. Well, for the next couple of months over the summer there, I just could not get that brief comment off of my mind.
So, I decided to look in the Yellow Pages. You remember the Yellow Pages? Some of you don’t. I do. And I looked for Teen Dimension and I found it was connected to YFC or Youth for Christ.
And I called them up and expressed my interest in finding out more about their ministry. And they said, sure, why don’t we set up an appointment? So, we met and I ended up spending the next 2 years hanging out with junior high kids at Yosemite Junior High School in Fresno, California. And I learned from the director of the 14D TD Clubs, who happened to be director of that club. And really, how did it happen?
Well, it was because of a providential comment that was made at a graduation bowling party, and that began my unexpected journey on a ministry path providentially. You know, quite frankly, my life with Bernice is a testimony to God’s providential care. After I graduated from college and we got married I worked for 2 years as the full-time director of youth ministries. Now, don’t miss this. At the church where I had vowed from the balcony to never ever be a pastor.
Well, during the course of those 2 years of ministry at this church, I began to see that I was going to need some more training if I was going to go on with this ministry thing. So, I began to consider if I should go to seminary. I suggested to Bernice that maybe we should apply at Talbot Theological Seminary, which is a graduate school of Biola University, and just, you know, let’s see what happens. But the fact was it cost $40 to apply. Our budget was already tight, so we didn’t have that money until Bernice one day was balancing the checkbook and she found that we had providentially shortchanged ourselves by $40.
Well, guess what we did with that money? Yeah. After graduating from seminary, we faced another major decision. Should I become a lead pastor? And at the time, I really didn’t think I had the discipline that it would take to prepare message after message, you know, week after week.
But once I graduated, the lead pastor at the church that we were at, Nagora Hills, California, where I was youth pastor while I was in seminary, that lead pastor decided that he was being called to Hawaii. I questioned him on that. And the church providentially, after he went to Hawaii, they providentially asked me if I would consider being their lead pastor. And we ended up in that role and I served in that role for 22 years. You seeing a pattern here?
The fact that we— in fact, we wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for God’s providential care or providential work in us. In fact, I’d connect it to a providential cry. At the time, we were thoroughly enjoying our ministry in Phoenix at Bethany Bible Church. We’d been there for 6 years, but then things began to change after our first grandchild was born, and a couple of visits to see him really began to tug on my heart. And on the second visit, we had the joy of participating in Camden’s baby dedication, And I had the shock of falling apart during the ceremony emotionally.
In fact, part of that, we were on the platform to be a part of the dedication. So here I am, I’ve done a lot of baby dedications, here I am crying. The thought hit me that we’re not going to be, if we continue to live in Phoenix, we’re not going to be close enough to be helpful grandparents while Cam is growing up. And that was enough for us to begin a conversation. And just to say, Lord, are you possibly moving in our emotions, or at least my emotions, in such a way that you would want to take us providentially back to California?
We would move from Arizona to California. And you know what happened? That’s what happened. We ended up being here, close enough to be grandpa and Nana to our family the past 11 years. All I’m saying is, you know, pay attention to the gift of God’s providential care and leading.
It’s one of the ways that he has led us, and I’m sure it’s one of the ways that he’ll lead you. Secondly, God’s Spirit. Pay attention to the gift of God’s Spirit. Have you heard these words before found in Zechariah 4:6? This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.
Do you know why God spoke those words to Zerubbabel? Because he wanted him to realize that the task that he was calling him to, that God had called him to, which was the rebuilding of the temple could not be done without God’s supernatural power and the leading of God’s Spirit. Have you heard of these words before, found in Luke 24:49? Jesus is speaking and he says to his 12 apostles, I am going to send you what my Father has promised, but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. What was he talking about?
Well, he was telling his men, the ones that he had been training for the past 3+ years to do the work of ministry, that their training under the Lord was not going to be enough on its own, that they needed the Holy Spirit to empower them and to guide them, such as Zerubbabel needed the Holy Spirit to empower him and to guide him in that work. And so Jesus went on to tell these guys in Acts 1:8, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. You know, I can’t tell you how many times over the past 40 years we’ve prayed for God’s leading and God’s wisdom and for God’s power and for God’s strength to do his will. And even then, when we had all of that in our minds, we ultimately came to believe that we needed even more the Holy Spirit to pray for us, to pray on our behalf, You’ve probably heard this passage out of Romans 8:26 where it says, in the same way, Paul writes, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
What’s Paul saying? Hey, we couldn’t have got this done without the work of the Holy Spirit. In fact, you go over to Acts 16, and what you find there is Paul is trying to sort out what it is that God wants him to do, and we’ve been stuck in that position many times where we’ve asked, Lord, what is it that you want us to do? And it ultimately was the work of the Holy Spirit that showed Paul what he should do. And ultimately we’ve seen that in our lives.
It’s the work of the Holy Spirit joined through prayer that we came to see God’s will. In fact, one of my favorite memories was after we resigned from that first lead pastor ministry at Agoura Bible Fellowship in Southern California, and we sought God’s leading through the work of the Holy Spirit and through a lot of prayer. We kept asking the question, Lord, what do you want us to do next? And at one point we thought that God wanted us to pastor in Santa Barbara at a church that was asking us to come and candidate. Now you got to know we wanted to go back to Santa Barbara someday.
Both of us went to Westmont College in Santa Barbara and we had in our minds, man, we’d love to go back there someday. And so this church is asking us to candidate. We wanted to say, yes, you better believe it, but we didn’t have this peace in our hearts about whether or not that was the right thing to do. So Bernice and I spent 24 hours praying and fasting for God’s clear leading, and you know what? The Lord gave it so that we ultimately made a call and told them in Santa Barbara that the Spirit of God was leading in our lives in a way that it wasn’t exactly what we had hoped for.
But then after that, 90 minutes after we made that call, we got a call from somebody at Bethany Bible Church in Phoenix, Arizona. And they invited us providentially to come over and to help them. God works like that, doesn’t he? And as many of you will remember how at Bridges a few years ago, we ended up remodeling the worship building. It was a work that we did not think we were going to be able to do, but God had other plans.
Not by might nor by power, but by his Spirit and prayer. So be on the lookout for God’s providential work and the work of God’s Spirit. Without those, I don’t think we’re going to see God do more than we can ask or think. We’ve certainly seen that in our lives. And then a third matter, it’s a matter of God’s family.
Over the years, one of my favorite Bible passages is found in Paul’s last will and testament, the last book that he wrote out of 13 books, 2 Timothy. And in the last chapter, so his last words in this book, it’s focused on people, God’s family. And this is what Paul wrote. Do your best. He’s telling Timothy, Timothy, do your best to come to me quickly for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica.
Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. I sent Tychicus to Ephesus. Now, what’s Paul saying?
What’s the aged Paul saying? He’s saying, Timothy, you got to know something. I can’t do this ministry. I can’t do life without God’s family. So Timothy, I need you.
Please come quickly. It’s good that Luke is with me, But I need you too. A couple of weeks ago when I started working on this message, the Lord woke me up one night. I got to say that’s happened to me many times over the years. I found actually it’s one of the ways that God tends to lead in my life when I’m not in a hurry or I’m not distracted by something else, when all I want to do, you know, is sleep, but I can’t.
And so I find myself writing down things that the Lord is bringing to my mind. And in this case, God began to bring to my mind people. People in God’s family who’ve been a part of my life. Bernice, my mom, Jim, John, Darryl, Lee, Dean, Bill, another Bill, Bruce, another John, Rick, Russ, Ron, Brad, another Jim, Bill, another Bill. You get the idea.
Each one of those people in my mind has a very special place. It’s a very special place, not just in my mind, but in my life. Each one’s been used by God to make me the person I am. My guess is, is that you’ve probably been impacted by God’s family in similar ways or in your own ways. People that God brought into your life as gifts to encourage you and to challenge you, to correct you, to pray for you, to befriend you, lead you, counsel you.
Thank God for them. We would not be who we are without their impact on our lives. I would not be the person I am or have been without mom having sat me down when I was in college and she said to me, Dave, you’re not reaching your potential. Things need to change. I would not be the leader I’ve become without Lee sitting me down in a restaurant and saying, hey, Dave, I got to talk to you about something.
You need to step up and lead. And Jim, I will never forget what Jim said to me. He said, Dave, you would be a fool not to marry Bernice. I took that advice. Well, there’s a 4th matter that I think that is really another gift from God.
I call it God’s design. Ephesians 2:10 talks about this unique design. It says, Paul’s writing, he says, for we are God’s workmanship. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. You know, I could still remember hearing a friend, Ron Walters, give a talk that was focused on this word workmanship, which can be translated handiwork or masterpiece.
So you might think of a painter who with paint creates masterpieces. Well, God is the master painter. He is working in our lives in ways to put us on display to the world around us so that wherever we go, we are a demonstration of his work. His work can be seen in us and his work can be seen in the world. And the best thing that you and I can do is step into that good work that God has designed us for, that he’s fit us for.
Now, I don’t know where you’re at in that. Here’s what I know though. That kind of a step, it takes faith, takes courage, it takes trust, it takes self-awareness. It’s probably going to take some trial and error. But whatever you do, take the step.
Step into God’s will. Yield your will for God’s will. One of the first times I was confronted with that, it was kind of like a crossroads decision. I was working in an architect’s office. I was an office assistant.
It was a very busy engineering office in Fresno, California. At the time, I was in my first year of college and I was on track for a career in architecture. But then one day, out of the blue, while I’m at the architect’s office, it was like the light of the Lord came through the window that was next to me, to my left, and without any audibly speaking, this is what I heard. David, do you want to spend your life, do you want to spend your life building things that are temporal or building people who will live forever? That, what I would call a word from the Lord, seemingly came out of nowhere, but it would not go away.
I just couldn’t get it out of my mind. Which is why I ended up giving up architecture. I began preparing myself for vocational ministry. Little did I know where, you know, that decision would lead. But had it not been for that decision, had I not made that decision, I would not be sitting here right now 40 years later talking to you about the importance of living out your God-given design.
After a few years of serving as the lead pastor in Agoura Hills down there in Southern California, I got a call from one of my friends, Darrell, who’s a lead pastor. He was at a church in Scottsdale, Arizona, and he called because he wanted to invite me to join him on his staff. He said, I’d love to have you on staff with us. The more we talked about it, I would have loved, I mean, I would have loved to minister with Darrell, be a part of his staff, but the position that he was offering to me, it just wasn’t a fit. Darrell wanted me to do some things that, you know, he didn’t have the time to do, He would be doing most, if not all, of the teaching.
And as I prayed over that and thought about the workmanship and how God has created me, I realized I wouldn’t be using the teaching gifts that he’d given me and the leadership gifts. And so I ultimately ended up saying no, and we ended up staying in Agoura Hills for 25 years total. So that’s to say, sometimes living out your God-given design, your unique God-given design, it takes saying no to some things and it takes saying yes to other things. And I think we’ve got to be willing to do both depending on, you know, how God’s leading and working in your life. I haven’t regretted that we have done our best to stay on course with God’s call.
And that’s not all. While you’re at it, a 5th gift. Pay attention to this 5th gift, God’s Word, the Bible. The Bible. What is the Bible?
It’s a love story. It tells of God’s unending love for sinful mankind. The truth contained in the Bible. It fills us with life. It contains the final word on life, how to live it, and death, how to prepare for it.
And when you look at the scriptures, especially in the New Testament, there’s one preeminent message that you find in the New Testament, a message that’s all throughout the Bible that leads up to the time of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. But Paul calls this message a message of first importance. You know what message I’m talking about? It’s found in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 where Paul’s very clear and he writes this, verses 3 to 6. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance, as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the 3rd day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the 12.
And after that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time. This message he’s talking about, this is a game changer. God loves us, and therefore he gave his Son so that everyone who believes in Jesus Christ as Lord will be saved. And that message of salvation is presented all through the scriptures, but it’s specifically focused on in the New Testament, a message that was made possible because Jesus lived. He died on the cross, as Paul is saying here, to save us from our sins.
He was buried as predicted in a tomb. He was raised on the 3rd day as promised, and He appeared proving that He is the resurrection and the life. And all of that testifies to the truth of God’s Word, that God’s Word can be trusted and the message that we find in God’s Word can be trusted. So that if we trust that message, it leads to what Jesus called an abundant life through Jesus Christ that’s found in understanding the Word of God, applying the Word of God, and teaching God’s Word to ourself and to others. It’s a message that quite frankly has given me something worth talking about for the past 40 years.
40 years I’ve had the privilege of calling people to make a great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. You familiar with the Great Commandment to love God and to love others? Jesus was asked, you know, what’s the greatest commandment? And Jesus replied, love the Lord your God. Matthew 22:37-40.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these 2 commandments. And it’s all built around a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, coming to God, coming to God through Christ, and then becoming more and more like Christ.
And we call that disciple-making. And Jesus talked about disciple-making in Matthew 28:19-20, where he said, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Now that’s a gigantic task. In fact, that’s an impossible task, one that we would fail at if it were not for the work of God, the work of God through his providence, through his Spirit, through his family, through his design, and through his word.
So the thing is, and I hope you hear this, the thing about the Christian life is this: we can’t pull it off without Christ. Without his work in and through us, making it possible for us to love God and love others and to make disciples. And that being the case, you know, and I hope you hear this, whether you’re in full-time ministry or not, it’s all about bringing glory and honor and pleasure to the one who makes all of this possible. Of course, that’s what the scripture calls us to. It calls us to live with the foremost objective of glorifying God.
You may know this verse, 1 Corinthians 10:31. It says, whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. Whatever you do, do it all for God’s glory so that God is exalted. And certainly he deserves to be exalted and praised and thanked and honored for who he is and for what he has done and for what he continues to do even right now. So for us, it’s unto that end that we are praising God that we have had the joy of serving him as a lead pastor this past 40 years, 11 of those here at Bridges Community Church.
I mean, who would have thought that me, Dave Gudgel, would have done that over a period of 40 years, the past 40 years. You know, I lived in Phoenix. I was given a gift that I just couldn’t believe. It was a golf country club membership. In fact, I was so shocked by this, I used to walk around the course with another pastor friend and I would talk about pinching myself just to be sure I wasn’t dreaming that I was actually playing golf at Moon Valley Country Club.
The whole thing, it was just a surprise to me, and it happened because of an are-you-kidding-me connection to the owner of the golf course. Well, 40 years of ministry as a lead pastor, it’s been even a greater surprise, one that I would have never dreamed of, but one that I found that God had dreams of for me. And so when I think about my life and I think about how I’ve lived my life, best life that I found is found in fulfilling God’s amazing plan and seeking to live out his purposes for my life. It’s given us a life that we’re never going to forget and one that we’re always going to be thankful for. And it’s why we with sincere thanks want to say, To God be the glory, great things he has done.
My prayer is that you, through your life, will be able to say the same thing, however God uses you. Well, let’s pray. Father, thank you so much for the joy of talking about your work in our lives. Every day you are working out your plan. And the best thing that we could do would be to embrace your plan.
It would be to yield to the work of the Holy Spirit. I pray that each one of us would in greater ways be people who are totally surrendered to whatever it is that you have for us, and we would walk in your will, and it would all be done for your glory. And Lord, I pray if there’s anybody here right now connecting to this message, to this service, that they have not yet connected with you. I pray that even today would be the day of salvation for them, that they would begin this journey of living not for themselves but of living for you. And if that’s the desire of your heart, tell God that right now.
Bible says if you’ll confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you’ll be saved. And we pray that you’ll come to the place in your life where, if you’re not there now, that you will be adopted into his family through salvation in Jesus Christ. Open up your heart and come to that point of belief and ask God to change you and make you the person he wants you to be. Lord, thank you for this wonderful time of worship today, for this time of reflection in the word, May what we’ve heard transform how we live to your honor and glory, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
