Sermon Transcript
We’re going to talk about teams this morning through Priscilla and Aquila. Acts chapter 18, we’re in a study in Acts, and so we come to Priscilla and Aquila, the teammates, a couple who did ministry together as a couple, which is really cool. And they stand out as all the couples, and all the couples in the New Testament, there aren’t a lot of couples mentioned. Did you notice that? And when it comes to the New Testament in terms of couples that did ministry together, I mean, there was Ananias and Sapphira, but you know, that didn’t really turn out too well for them.
So you’d rather kind of raise to the top here Priscilla and Aquila. So we’re gonna try to learn something from them this morning about being ideal teammates, ideal teammates. I want you to think just for a minute about all the teams that you’re on, okay? So no doubt you’re a teammate with somebody in some capacity. Why don’t you turn to the person next to you and just talk about some of the teams that you’re on, okay?
Maybe you can only think of one. Just go ahead, tell them what teams you’re on.
Okay, sounds like you were able to identify a couple teams that you’re on. Hopefully, uh, that wasn’t too hard. I hope every— was there anybody here that doesn’t have a team they’re on? Anybody? Uh, pretty much everybody’s on some kind of team.
I was going to say, if you don’t have a team to be on, you can be on this church team. Okay, the church and, and what God wants to do through us. So there’s a team. We have all these different teams, and hopefully we’re the kind of people that others want on our team, who make a contribution, we’re valuable to the team. We’re the kind of people on the team that would show up in the beginning pages of a book.
You know, when you get especially a nonfiction book, you flip open the pages and you get to the acknowledgement page, right? And on that acknowledgement page are just listed several people. This is Max Lucado’s book, Outlive Your Life, and he starts it by saying, behind this book stands an army of thinkers. So again, right at the outset, he’s thinking about a team, an army of thinkers, strategists, dreamers, and grinders. Love that.
And then he goes in and he just lists all these different names of people that added value to this book who are behind the publication of this book. You might call it his book team, and especially Thomas Nelson Publishers and the ones that made that possible. When you look at the New Testament, there are lists of teams. They usually aren’t in the beginning of a book. They’re usually at the end of a book.
And so, you kind of get the acknowledgment page, or we would call it maybe the chapter, especially in Paul’s letters. Paul wrote 13 letters that are found in the New Testament, and he lists at the end of each one of those letters different people that in some way were significant in his life or his ministry. There was some kind of an impact thing going on there. Priscilla and Aquila, Aquila were a couple of them that he mentioned. He mentions them in 4 of the 13 letters.
For instance, Romans chapter 16 and verse 3, he says, greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Not only I, but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets at their house. So, you can learn even just a couple things right there about Priscilla and Aquila if you knew nothing else about them.
You can see that they were fellow workers with the Apostle Paul. Evidently, they put their lives on the line for him and other churches. He’s grateful to them, and there’s a church that meets at their house. They’re also mentioned in 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 19, where it says, greet Priscilla and Aquila and the house of Onesiphorus. And there again, they’re mentioned.
There’s a church that this couple was so much a part of that met in that house and other homes that they, you know, other places that they ministered. But the point is, is that Paul shared a relationship with this couple. 2 Timothy is the last book that he wrote. So he shared a relationship with this couple right out, right up to the end of his ministry. They added value, you might say.
Well, when we get to chapter 18 of Acts, we see 3 ways that they added value. And I thought, you know, let’s just focus on this this morning. Because all of us are involved in teams and we could add maybe even more value to our team, or maybe we’re looking for people that would add value to our team. What kind of qualities would show up in a person who adds value to a team? And we can see some qualities in Aquila and Priscilla.
So we’re just going to take a few minutes to just think about that with me, all right? Acts, chapter 18, let’s begin in verse 1. After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And there he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his life Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and he worked with them.
So just to set the context, if you look there at these first 3 verses, you can learn a couple things about this relationship, what was going on. We know that this is Paul’s 2nd missionary journey, having ministered in Athens. Now Paul comes to Corinth, and when he gets to Corinth, he meets— as you see it in verse 2, he meets Aquila. And Aquila was from the town of Pontus, which is a seaport on the southern coast of the Black Sea, a city within the Roman Empire. Aquila was married to, as you see it here, his wife’s name was Priscilla.
Some of us, you know, we look at these names, we’re not sure who’s the man, who’s the woman, but Priscilla is the woman here. So, Aquila is married to Priscilla. They had lived, it says, in Italy until Claudius ordered them to move, and he ordered them to move because they were Jews. And he wanted them out of their land, and so they moved to Corinth. And in Corinth Aquila and Priscilla set up a business and they made a home for themselves, and they also used their home for the ministry.
And so we got a couple things that come out right in the beginning here. They use their home and they invite into their home the Apostle Paul. So they extend hospitality to the Apostle Paul. That’s the first thing I want us just to notice. When we think about an ideal teammate.
Now, we might not use the word hospitality. We might use the word friendly or warm or inviting or an extrovert, or I don’t know what term you might want to use, but hospitality was the love of strangers. It was to open the door to somebody that you did not know and meet their needs and make a sacrifice in some way. And that’s what happened here. Paul came to town.
Priscilla and Aquila were already living in Corinth. They had a business of tent-making. Maybe they met the Apostle Paul at the tent-making meetup meeting. I have no idea, you know, how they got connected, but they had a common trade because Paul was a tentmaker by trade as well. And so they meet and they begin a friendship, but this friendship begins as a result evidently of them inviting Paul to come into their home and to stay in their home.
Now we’re not told how long they stayed. If you look down in Acts, chapter 18, verse 11 there, you could see that Paul ministered in Corinth for 18 months. Does that mean they stayed for 18 months? Hey, come on over, you know, and stay in our home for a couple days. Or, you know, did it turn out to be 18 months or whatever it was?
Probably wasn’t 18 months. You’ll notice in verse 11 the word settled is used, so it kind of gives the idea that he settled somewhere. He wasn’t just living in sort of temporary quarters, if you will. But we do know that that was the beginning of the friendship, and the friendship came through the hospitality that Priscilla and Aquila showed toward the Apostle Paul. Now, let’s think about that in light of our lives.
Recently, Marcus came on staff. He’s our newest staff member. We thank God that the Lord brought Marcus here. He’s responsible for the student ministries, and essentially part of our welcoming recently was to invite him into our homes. Some of you did this.
You extended hospitality to Marcus. You didn’t know him. You knew that the church had brought him on staff, and you brought him into your home, and you began a friendship with Marcus just because you extended hospitality. That’s the way this thing works, right? And not only can it work in terms of friendship, but can it— it can work in terms of helping the ministry move forward.
So Priscilla and Aquila had often churches in their home, meeting in their home. Romans 16, again, verse 3 says, greet Priscilla and Aquila, and also the church that meets in their house. The church that was meeting in their house there, Paul’s talking about, was a church that was in Rome. So they, again, were hospitable enough to invite people into their home, and there was a church that blossomed out of that, or it was the church that was growing, or they just needed a place to meet. 1 Corinthians 16, Verse 19, Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets in their house.
And this is a church in Ephesus. So this was this couple that was hospitable. That’s the point I want to make. Now you say, well, I don’t have a home. Well, you can be hospitable, right?
You can extend a warm welcome to somebody. Somebody is new and you, you guys, maybe you’re on a team and you bring a new player on your team. And you are the first to make that person feel welcome, to invite them to go out to lunch with the rest of you, or whatever it is that you guys do to hang out, you’re being hospitable toward them. Any kind of group, there are people that come to the group that are new. We can either be, you know, inviting them in or basically kind of keeping them out.
I was playing golf a couple months ago and Payson, Arizona. It’s up in the mountains there, and a friend up there has a membership at this really nice golf course. He invited me to play. We’re about on the 13th hole, and he points out this house that’s sitting on the hill, and he said, Dave, that’s an incredible house up there. I said, it sure looks like it.
How many square feet is it? He said, it’s 16,000 square feet. I said, have you been in it? He said, yes. He said, the interesting thing about this house is that there’s only one bedroom.
I said, really? 16,000 square feet, only one bedroom. Why? He said, because they don’t want company.
They built this house with one bedroom so that they don’t have to entertain guests staying overnight. Seriously. I said, do they have family? He said, yes, they do. So you’re telling me they don’t want their family to ever stay overnight?
He said, that’s exactly right. He said, actually, they do have— it’s kind of like 2 bedrooms. There’s their bedroom, and then there’s this other one if you want to call it a bedroom, but it’s for their cat.
If you look up the word selfishness in the dictionary, that house, that house should be there, right? See, God’s given us different things that we can use, whether it’s a personality or whatever it is, but we can be hospitable, right? Some of you right now are enjoying the hospitality of somebody else and it’s somehow helping you. It’s growing your faith. Maybe it’s helping you just in a practical way.
My daughter Katie, who’s in her 20s, she’s right now a part of a study that this lady started. Actually, it’s not a study. It’s actually just a gathering of ladies and they just— she just invites them over once a month and they hang out together and they have dinner and they just socialize and it’s just a time of encouragement. That’s all it is. She’s just opening up her home just to encourage people, and it’s making a difference in Katie’s life, especially as a new mother.
I mean, there’s so many ways we could do this. I could think of somebody right now in the church who— she uses her home, especially around the holidays, to invite other neighborhood kids over to her home, and she entertains these kids and she teaches these kids, and it’s making a difference in the neighborhood just because of the area of hospitality. We can do this. Don’t you love it when you have a teammate— do they add value to your team when they’re thinking about how could we make the setting that we’re meeting in very inviting, very friendly, you know, welcoming? They think about you before you get there.
They bring your favorite food, whatever it is. You know, they just— they’re those kinds of people that want people to just be at home. Hospitality. The second factor here I want you to see about Priscilla and Aquila. Go on down.
We’re just going to capture 3 little parts here in Acts chapter 18. It says Paul stayed on in Corinth for some time. Verse 18, Paul stayed on in Corinth for some time, and then he left the brothers and he sailed for Syria accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. Before he sailed, he had his head— hair— head— he had his hair cut off at Cenchreae because of a vow he had taken. Let me just say, we don’t know what was the vow specifically.
You could read the commentators on this. Was it the Nazarite vow? All we know is that he’s thinking, I’m moving towards something and I’ve got to make sure that I follow through on this vow. That I had. And so it evidently involved getting his haircut— well, actually having all of his hair cut off.
And it says, and they arrived at Ephesus, where Paul left Priscilla and Aquila. He himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. And when they asked him to spend some more time with them, he declined. But as he left, he promised, I will come back if it is God’s will. Then he set sail from Ephesus.
Now, what do you see here? What you see is you see Priscilla and Aquila willing to accompany Paul when he finished his ministry in Corinth, they were willing to move with him from Corinth where they had been living, where they had a home. They were willing to move from him to wherever God was going to take Paul. Now, at the beginning of that journey, he didn’t know where he was going. He ended up in Ephesus just for a short stop.
Then he went on, and it says that he left then Priscilla and Aquila there. What you see there is another quality of an ideal teammate. I’ll call it available. They’re available. They’re hospitable.
Secondly, they’re available. And you see Priscilla and Aquila available in 2 ways here. They were available to go and they were available to stay. Okay, so the first part, they were available to go. What do you mean?
Paul evidently came to them and said, you know, the Lord evidently has some more work for me to do someplace else, and I think you would be valuable in this work that needs to be done. So would you be willing to go with me? I mean, you know, pick up. I know it’s going to mean a move for you, but would you be willing to pick up and would you come with me wherever it is God wants us to go? Some kind of conversation like that.
It’s the can you help me conversation. Will you help me? And at this point, you know, we’re going to find out just how available we are, right? Well, I don’t know. I mean, let me check my calendar.
Nope, can’t help for the next 5 years. Sorry. No, I’m not really that available. I thought I was, but no, I really can’t do that. I have a friend, when somebody asks him if he could help in some way, he always tries to say yes.
That’s just like a policy for him. I just always want to try to say yes. And you say, I mean, is he working 24 hours a day because he says yes all the time? No, he still has these boundaries in his life. But what he does is simply this: whenever he can’t do something, he always tries to find a yes of a way he could do something.
So he might say— you ask him, could you do such and such? Well, I can’t do that, but I can do this. What is that? It’s a way of just being available in some way through, you know, the resources and maybe the time frame or whatever you’ve got that you’ve got to work with. It’s being available.
So Priscilla and Aquila were available to go. Let me just think about that just for a second. Some of us are so tied down by so many different commitments, and they could be financial commitments, it could be our schedule. We have no margin in our schedule for anybody else but ourselves. I mean, there are just all these things that we’re doing that if God was to tap us on the shoulder, maybe through somebody else, and say, would you do such and such, our answer immediately would have to be no.
But not Aquila and Priscilla. And by the way, not great teammates, right? A teammate is a person who’s going to hear what the need is and hopefully, if at all possible, find a way to meet that need, to do something valuable for the team. They were available. The second thing here is they were available to stay.
And I find that fascinating too, because when they arrived at Ephesus, evidently the people wanted Paul to stay. Do you see it there in verses 19 and 20? They asked him to spend more time with them after Paul had spent time in the synagogue reasoning with them, sharing the gospel with them. But he said, no, I’m not going to be able to do that now. But if the Lord wills, I will come back someday and maybe I could meet that request.
But right now I can’t do that. But he left, it says, Priscilla and Aquila. Now that means they were available to stay. That means that when they had that conversation of, hey, you know, I can’t stay, but would you stay? Would you, you know, set up a base of ministry here?
They were able to say, yeah, we’ll do that. Which is interesting in itself, because here they are with the Apostle Paul. This guy is gaining in notoriety. And if you had an opportunity or I had an opportunity to kind of hang out with somebody of notoriety, somebody who’s growing in fame, maybe we would just say, no, I think I’ll continue on this tour for a while. I think I’ll just stay with this person because I really want to be around this person right now, not, you know, just set up a base of ministry here where nothing’s going on.
No, they said, you know what? If the Lord wants to use us here, then that’s great. We’ll stay here. We’ll do exactly what it is that he wants us to do. What about us?
Are we available? Teammate is available. My mind went back to how I ultimately got into the ministry in Agoura Hills, California. Some of you’ve heard parts of this story. I’ll give you the simple version.
We had messed up our checkbook. I know some of you have no idea what a checkbook is because what’s Checkbook? What’s that? I mean, is that like ancient kind of stuff where you write things in pencil and stuff and erase it? What’s all of that?
But we had messed up our checkbook, and the amount that we messed up was an amount that we cheated ourselves out of. And this amount turned out to be the exact amount that was needed to register for seminary. There was a registration fee, you know, like when you register for college, right? An application fee. It was the exact amount, and at the time I was trying to figure out whether or not God wanted me to go on to seminary.
And when we found that we were off that much and we didn’t have the money to actually turn in the application, but we had that much because we had cheated ourselves out of that much— we didn’t know it, but we did— then we said, oh, maybe we should better use that for the application. So I applied at seminary, seminary at Talbot Theological Seminary, which is at Grace Community Church, and they had a fabulous ministry there under John MacArthur. And I just wanted to go sit on that campus. Be a part of seminary, and be a part of that church. But while we were waiting to move over a period of a few months, I got a phone call from a church that was in Agoura Hills, California, and they said, would you consider coming to Agoura and consider being our youth pastor?
I had been in youth ministry for a while, and at that point I was thinking, you know, I really want to kind of be doing something else. And so when the person called up, I said no. I’m not interested. This is what you call being unavailable, okay, at this point, unavailable. So when the person said, would you be interested?
I said, no, without any further conversation with anybody. So I said no, and then I walked across the street. We were living in a home right across the street from the church, which was kind of ideal, but not really. But anyway, so we were over there, and I walked across the street for lunch, and I said to Bernice, just got this phone call from somebody who’s interested in us going to Agoura Hills. Have you ever heard of that place?
No. Anyway, it’s in Southern California. And they’re wondering if we might be interested in the youth pastor thing. So we talk about it over lunch. This is one of the good reasons why I have done so well in marriage, because I have a wife who gets it, you know?
I mean, seriously, she gets it. And she said, well, maybe, David, you should let God close the door. It’s one of those zingers, you know, that wives can— and so that kind of sunk in, and I said, okay, I think you’re right. So I went back across the street, called them up, and said, you know, maybe I should let God close the door. Like I was profound in my thinking or something.
And they said, well, that sounds good. And so anyway, the short story of this is they had me come down and interview. They hired me on the spot for this position. I never got to go to Grace Community Church and just sit there as like a member and just take it in or anything like that, because God put us in Agoura Hills. And I began in that ministry as the youth pastor for a couple of years.
Then I was the associate pastor. Then I was the interim pastor. I became the interim pastor when the senior pastor said he got a call to Hawaii. He said it was from God. But anyway, so he got a call to Hawaii, and then this church said, hey, would you, like, do the interim thing?
And so I started doing the interim thing, and then they said, hey, would you consider being our lead pastor? I said, well, I don’t know, maybe you should go through the whole process. They went through the whole process. And the result was they asked me to be their lead pastor, and I ended up staying another 21 years at the church, 25 years total, 25 years total, because we got available to, to go. And then we said, well, if the Lord wants to keep us here, he’ll make it known.
And we were available to stay. And sometimes you have no idea what God will do until you make yourself available. Now let me just add one other thought about this. I was talking to somebody recently who was talking to a friend who’s in a bad relationship right now. It’s a guy-girl relationship, and this girl’s in a bad relationship with somebody who is pulling her down in her Christian faith.
Compromise, other matters are going on in this relationship. And this friend of this person said to her, she said, you know what? God is not going to do what’s best for you until you get out of that relationship. See, right now she is unavailable, and yet at the same time she’s wanting someday to marry some Prince Charming kind of guy that’s a strong Christian that will have— that she can share a great marriage with and that she could have children. And she’s telling her friend this, and this friend has enough courage and kindness to say to her friend, listen, God’s not going to do that if you’re already tied up in this other relationship over here.
You need to make yourself available to do what’s God’s best in your relationships. See, this availability thing has application in a lot of different ways, but we just know this: if you want to be an ideal teammate, you want to add value to your team, be available. Be available to go. And be available to stay. And then there’s a third quality that comes out in Aquila and Priscilla.
Acts 18, go down to verse 24. It says, meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor, and he taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue.
When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately. When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. On arriving, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed, for he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. Now, what do you have here? What you have here is a couple, Priscilla and Aquila, who are living in Ephesus now.
And, of course, as we already mentioned here, Ephesus started a church, and that church started in Priscilla and Aquila’s home, the result of them staying in Ephesus. And while they’re there having that ministry, a man named Apollos comes along, and evidently this guy was an incredible communicator. He was eloquent. He was gifted. He had passion, fervor, boldness.
He was a learned man. He knew the Old Testament Scriptures, the Hebrew Scriptures. He was well-versed in that. It tells us here that he was well-versed about Jesus Christ. He even accurately taught about Jesus, about the way of the Lord.
So you might like look at this and say, this guy would be a perfect teammate. You know, I want Apollos on my team. But he had a major shortcoming. Do you see the shortcoming? He knew only about John and what John taught, and he did not understand what Jesus taught, which means this: his focus was on John’s teaching, which is a teaching of works or a law-based teaching.
His focus was not on Jesus, a system of grace, which is not a works-based system. It is the result of gifts. It’s the result of the gift that God gives to us in Christ, forgiveness, and all of the rest of that. He knew that John was teaching a baptism of repentance, but we know that John the Baptist was the one who pointed at Jesus and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that in Jesus there’s a whole different way into a relationship with God. It’s found through Jesus’ payment on the cross for our sins as our Lamb.
And when he died on the cross to pay for our sins, he made it possible for us not by our works to be saved, but by his work we are saved. Okay, you see the difference there? And so Priscilla and Aquila hear this guy. They’re aware of what it is that he’s teaching, and they know— let me use Silicon Valley language at this point— they know that this guy needs a system upgrade. So they take him aside.
In order to give him a system upgrade. Now, I think even that is fascinating in and of itself because they could have— the guys speaking in the synagogue— and they could have in the synagogue just raised their hand and said, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, wait, wait, wait. You know, no, you’re all on John. We got to get on Jesus over here. But they didn’t do that.
What did they do? Verse 26, they invited him into their home. Here we go again. Hospitality. Hey, would you like to come over to our home for a bit?
We could have a conversation. Maybe you could have dinner with us. Whatever it was, they invited him into their home and they explained the way of God more adequately. And as a result of this explanation and evidently this relationship that was built with Apollos, it says that he got to the point where he wanted to go to Achaia, to another place to minister. And so these disciples, Priscilla, Aquila, and the others got together.
They wrote a letter and said something positive in reference toward Apollos so that he would be welcomed. And when he got there, it says he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. He wouldn’t have been a big help in helping others who had believed by grace before the conversation with Priscilla and Aquila. But now all of a sudden he’s got a whole different perspective, and he’s used vigorously to debate the Jews and proves that Jesus is the Christ. What am I talking about here?
What I want you to see is that Priscilla and Aquila as teammates were thirdly capable. They were capable. They were hospitable, they were available, and they were capable. And you say, how were they capable? They were capable enough to be able to take the scriptures and to explain the scriptures to a brilliant communicator so that this brilliant communicator could teach the word of God accurately.
See, they had to be well-versed in the scriptures. They had to understand the scriptures. They had to be able to refute error if necessary. So, in a sense, they were capable of helping him align his will with God. There was a vertical focus in their conversation with Apollos, but there also was a capability that was horizontal.
And what was the capability there? They knew what it took in order to help a person that was wrong. They didn’t discredit this person in front of others. They didn’t disrespect this person in front of others. They didn’t cause this person to lose his dignity in front of others.
What they did was they invited him in private to go to their home, and they sat down together in private, and they talked about his teachings. And as a result of that, he came to teach Jesus in a way differently than he had been teaching him before. Isn’t that good? You want to grow in your capability. I know we all do.
This is part of the reason why we go to conferences and we are in training and part of the reason that, you know, we read books and we listen to podcasts. And there’s a lot of that going on even in this congregation, certainly in the Silicon Valley. We’re all trying to become better than we are, hopefully. Let’s become better than we are. Well, let’s not neglect to do that even in the areas of our relationship with God and this relationship with others.
We can grow, and as we grow in our capability, we become even more qualified. We become even— I don’t want to use the word important, but we have an even greater contribution to give to the team. Isn’t that true? Yeah, all because we’ve done something to move this ball down the field in hopefully more significant ways. So there it is.
You want to be a better teammate? Be hospitable, be available, and be capable. Now let me ask you a question. Can we make progress in these areas? Can you make progress in the hospitality department?
Absolutely. Come on. And again, you don’t have to have a house to make progress in this area. Do you eat? Oh yeah, I eat.
Yeah. I mean, look at me. I eat. Yeah. For sure.
Well, invite somebody over for, you know, lunch, or just go do lunch together. Hey, let’s go to the park and let’s, let’s have a picnic together. And just extend a hand of welcome, maybe to somebody you don’t know. This happens a lot on Sunday mornings around here. You’re reaching out to others, and in doing that, we are showing that others have value and that we want them in on the team on what God is doing.
We want to extend the love of God to them. We can all be hospitable. You as a student can be hospitable on the campus when you just extend a hand to somebody you don’t know and say, hey, I don’t know you. Let’s get, you know, acquainted. Did that recently over at the club.
There’s this guy that I’ve admired his workout for quite some time. And, man, I mean, just— he’s just crazy. His workout is so intense. Never seen anything like it. So I was working out right by him the other day.
I was doing nothing; he was doing everything. You know, it was like that combination. And I stood up, I said, you know, I gotta meet him. So I walked over, I said, hi, my name’s Dave. Stuck my hand out.
My name’s Dave. You gotta understand, this is weird at 24 Hour Fitness to say anything to anybody, okay? If you do it, it’s really cool though. So I stuck my hand out, I said, hi, I’m Dave. I’ve been admiring your workouts for months.
You must be like a professional athlete or something. Seriously, he looks like a professional athlete. He said, no, I’m not. I said, really? Well, you look like one.
He said, no, I’m a computer nerd. I said, really? Well, then you must be the most fit computer nerd that’s at your company. And he said, well, you know— and we started this conversation. We started a friendship just through the act of hospitality.
That’s all. You can do that. Can you be available? Yeah. And think of ways right now where you could be available.
Maybe God’s tapping you on the shoulder right now and he’s saying, I want you to Are you available to that? Maybe he wants you to stay somewhere right now. Maybe you’re ready to quit something. You say, I just had enough. I am not doing this any longer.
Well, maybe he wants you to stay. Maybe he’s got something more there for you. Available to stay. Capable. Is there an area where you could grow in your relationship with God?
Can you help others grow in their relationship with God? Who knows what could come out of that? Another Apollos. Another Apollos might come out of this relationship where you help a person see the Scriptures in a way they’ve never seen them before. Or maybe it’s this way, maybe it’s growing in the capability that when somebody is, you know, spouting off air, it’s learning to help them in a polite way where you’re not pushing them out of your life, but you’re drawing them into your life.
Maybe it’s that kind of capability. In other words, what we’ve talked about this morning is just simply this. We’ve talked about qualities— hospitable, available, and capable— that could be the kind of qualities that someday a person puts your name in a book, and they put your name in the book because that’s the person that you are, because of something you’ve done. Now, I can’t guarantee you that’s going to happen. It’d be cool, wouldn’t it?
Wow, you know, somebody noticed something about me that made a difference. That’s cool. To the glory of God. But let me tell you this, even if you never get in this book, there’s another book you can get into absolutely for sure. It’s called the Book of Life.
And God wants us on his team. And there’s an open invitation to every one of us this morning. And he invites us, he invites us to come and to be a part of the work that he is doing. And even if our name is never listed in any other print, Our name is found in the Book of Life. And if there’s one book you want to get your name in, that’s the one, right?
Amen to that. Let’s thank him. Let’s pray together. Lord, thanks for what you’ve done through history, through people that served you. And as we look at their lives like
