As the time drew near for the merger of Sunrise and SBC, I was afraid. I was fearful of losing things. At Sunrise I was comfortable, I led music during the English service, I sang in the Spanish service, I was familiar with all of the families and the youth. I liked what we had, and, if it wasn’t broke, why fix it? What could merging with SBC bring besides the possible loss of some of these things? Why would we, as a church, choose to give up things that were going “good”?
Since our first Sunday together, God has been teaching me a key significant lesson, and maybe some of you have experienced this as well. Sometimes, we have to let go of good things to experience the great things he has in store for us. Sometimes those good things are taken from us, and we grieve the loss of those good things, BUT, if we pay attention to what HE is doing, we find that He has allowed those good things to be taken away in order for us to experience HIM more fully.
How many people here today would say that your current church experience is just the same as it was before January 2, 2011? We are in a different place. God is moving here (gesture to church) and God is moving here (gesture to heart).
Just like the hoarders we see on TV, there are things I wasn’t willing to give up. Although my hoarding was mental, emotional, spiritual, like those physical hoarders, it was just as unhealthy and destructive to me personally as well as to my relationship with God and others.
You see, the piles that filled my heart and my mind did not just go back to my time at Sunrise, I spent 25 years at SBC beginning when I was in third grade. When you look around this room some of you see a large room, with blue carpet and peach colored pews. I bring memories, like crawling through the attic with Pastor Ken Stevens to run some wiring that hadn’t made it into the final plans, a Ford Pinto parked on this platform while the building was still just a steel frame. Three large Christmas trees filled with lights and singers. Dave Berkey Jr. wandering around the stage and being crucified on a cross portraying Jesus in an Easter pageant My bride walking down that aisle, looking like an angel. Standing holding my baby, who is now 17 for baby dedication.
Some of my piles are of happy times, some are times of pain and sorrow. What they are really does not matter. God came in and is cleaning out some of that stuff I was hanging on to, and He is filling me up with a fuller experience of Him.
Just like the rose bush, that, in order to develop its most beautiful blossoms has to be pruned, so do we, both individually and corporately have to allow God to remove those things which, by our logic and standards might be really, really good, but are not the GREAT that He has planned for us.
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