God Has Lavished Blessings On Me!

Well, good morning everybody. Whether you are on the live stream or joining us here in person, I am so glad that you're with us today. My name is Valerie. I'm one of the pastors on staff. And before we dive in to what we're gonna talk about today, I wanna talk about next weekend. Next weekend, Renee is going to be kicking off our Advent series that we call Christmas Mix Tape. And in this series, we are going to be looking at the words from Christmas carols that we all sing, and we're gonna look at how those words actually illuminate and give us insight into the wonder of Jesus' birth. It's gonna be a great series that all kicks off next weekend.

But today, let's start with a question, okay? Here's your question for the day. What was your favorite book when you were little? What was one of your favorite books when you were little? You know what, we're just gonna go to greeting part two. Take a moment, you don't have to get up, but just turn around and tell the people around you the title of one of your favorite books when you were little.

Well, all right, that's a conversation that got everybody's attention. We apparently have some strong thoughts about our childhood books. I am gonna tell you that this book right here was my favorite book when I was little. It is called The Picture Book of Bible Stories and Present Day Stories. And this is the actual book from my childhood. It's barely held together. A testament to how much I love this book and to how old I am, I'm afraid.

This book gave me such hits as "God gave me berries." This is one of my favorite stories. And this book, this book right here, introduced me to my favorite Bible character. Now my favorite Bible character has a small problem. And it's her name. To our modern Western ears, her name sounds kind of funny, but I am undeterred because she is my favorite. And her name is Dorcas.

Go ahead, laugh, get it out of your system. You're gonna hear that name a lot today, and we are gonna make it cool again, or perhaps for the first time. And I am not sure what latched on to my little heart about Dorcas's story, but something got a hold of me, and I have loved her ever since.

As an adult, I absolutely know what captivates me about Dorcas's story, and it's the one sentence summary of her life that we find in scripture. "She was always doing good and helping the poor." I mean, if you only get one sentence in the Bible, that's a really good one.

So as we continue our Thanksgiving series, Grateful, we're gonna build on what Mark talked about last weekend, counting our blessings. And today we're gonna talk about becoming a blessing. We're gonna talk about living like a Dorcas. There you go, I said it.

And if we were to recap last weekend's sermon in just one sentence, it would be this: God has lavished blessings on me. God has lavished blessings on me and you, not just a trickle, God has lavished, absolutely lavished blessings on you. Remember our key verse from last weekend. What do you have that you did not receive? Everything, from the breath in your lungs to every single penny in your bank account, your strength, it's all a gift. It's all a blessing from God.

But sometimes we get busy. We get distracted. We get distracted by, well, what blessings do they have over there? And we start to think about that. And we get so lost in it all that we forget. And so to help us all remember, we gave you gratitude journals last weekend. And Mark told us to write down three things every single day that we are grateful for.

Here's a picture of something I was grateful for, this beautiful tree outside my window. It made the list this week. Now, I do not know if said tree is going to make the list when the leaves fall and I have to rake it, but for now I was grateful for it. How about you? How's it going for you with the journal last week? Have you written things down? That's awesome. If you didn't get a journal, by the way, be sure to pick one up out in the lobby. And if you did get a journal and you're just quietly sitting there going, "Don't look at me, don't look at me, I didn't write anything down." It's never too late to start. Just start counting your blessings. It makes such a difference.

If we were to look at this Thanksgiving series, say as a coin, a coin has two sides. Last week, side one, counting your blessings. This week we're gonna flip that coin over and ask, how do I not only count my blessings, but how do I become a blessing? Because we don't wanna just sit with our gratitude journals and go, I'm grateful for this, I'm grateful for this. It's all mine. And sound like a toddler just going, all my blessings, all my blessings. No, we wanna give it out. We want to become a blessing.

You know, we've all heard that phrase, we've been blessed to be a blessing. And I think most of us believe that. Most of us actually want to live that way. But things get in the way. I'll tell you what gets in the way for me. I wanna be a blessing on my own terms. I wanna bless who I wanna bless. And I wanna bulldoze who I don't like. Or I wanna bless on my timetable, when my schedule opens up, or I wanna bless, depending on where you live in the county, I wanna bless when the traffic's looking good. Things like that just get in the way.

So how do we move from bulldozing to blessing? I think it starts with a prayer. It starts with a very simple prayer every day. "Lord, make me a blessing." Make me a blessing today. Scripture teaches us that gratitude overflows into generosity and that produces more gratitude. You've heard of the circle of life? This is a circle of gratefulness.

Gratitude overflows into generosity which produces more gratitude to God. Second Corinthians 9:11 says, "You will be enriched, blessed in every way so that"—get ready to find out why we are blessed—"so that you can be generous on every occasion and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God." The circle of gratefulness.

And as we dive into God's word today, I wanna focus not surprisingly on the story of Dorcas. So grab your notes, open your Bibles to Acts chapter nine. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the pew rack in front of you, or if you don't own a Bible, we will gladly give you one at the Info Desk today. And today we wanna look at what this woman, with a slightly odd name, who lives thousands of years ago, can teach us about being a blessing.

First, we see in the life of Dorcas that we have a choice to make. We need to decide to be a blessing. We need to decide that this is how we're gonna live, that we are gonna choose blessing over bulldozing. Let's start in Acts chapter nine, starting in verse 36. It says "In Joppa, there was a disciple named Tabitha." Why didn't my book make this story about Tabitha? I do not know. But there's a disciple named Tabitha in Greek, her name is Dorcas. "She was always doing good and helping the poor." And we're gonna stop right there for a moment.

If you were with us this summer when we studied the biblical book of Luke, we learned some things about the gospel writer Luke who also wrote the book of Acts. Luke was a doctor. Luke was a Greek. He was a person who loved the details, the names, the cities. He used it all to anchor us in the stories of Jesus, in the book of Luke and the stories of the early church here in the book of Acts. Each one of these words matters. So let's take a look at them.

First Luke says this story takes place in Joppa. Sounds like a weird name, but Joppa is an absolute real place. You could go there today. And Joppa interestingly was already an ancient city when the book of Acts was written. And it was a thousand years old by the time Dorcas comes along. And Joppa was and is a beautiful harbor town, kind of like Santa Cruz. And if you were to go to Joppa today, you still get some of that ancient feeling and vibe in that beautiful harbor town.

And it's interesting, in this short verse, Luke then adds three more details that we see. It says right out of the gate that Dorcas is a disciple. Did you know that Dorcas is the only woman in the Bible to be called a disciple? I find that fascinating. And we don't know why Luke chose that word, but what we do know about Luke is that he wrote everything down carefully. So this word is not a throwaway word. Certainly in calling Dorcas a disciple, it means that she was a devoted follower of Jesus, she was respected in the church. And I think most likely it indicates that she was seen as a leader in the church of Joppa as well.

Second, Luke gives us her name, we've talked about that. We get it in Hebrew and Greek, so Tabitha is her name in Hebrew. And that actually means gazelle. Dorcas, her name in Greek, take a guess what that means. Gazelle, there you go, it does not mean dork. It means gazelle. And so, here you now know how to say gazelle in English, Greek, and Hebrew. If things get quiet on Thanksgiving, this can be your party trick that you can pull out.

And third, Luke gives us this one sentence summary of her life. She was always doing good and helping the poor. Now we do not stumble into a reputation like that. Dorcas did not stumble into that reputation either. She was a person who made a choice. And this is the same choice that we face daily.

The Bible tells us we will face the "be a blessing" decision every day. Romans 12:21 says, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." It is so tempting in this day and age to just give in, to give into the rage, to give into the self-righteousness, to give into the self-pity. But the Bible says, no, choose blessing. Evil is not overcome with more evil, break the cycle, decide to be a blessing.

The apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians, "Remember this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. And whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."

We have to decide. Do we wanna live a stingy life? Do we wanna hoard our blessings to ourselves? Or do we wanna live generously? Do we wanna live with an open hand, giving and sharing all that God has given to us. Dorcas chose blessing.

It's interesting, traditionally it's believed that Dorcas was a widow, and in that culture, being a widow was basically a one-way ticket to poverty. But Dorcas made a choice. She decided not to focus on what she did not have or the insecurity of her situation. Her mourning prayers were not, "Lord, where are my blessings?" She chose instead to pray, "Lord, make me a blessing."

Who do you wanna be in this world? Who do you wanna be in this world? In a world that I tell you sometimes feels like the gas pedal is straight down and we are in such a hurry and it feels cynical sometimes, it feels self-promoting sometimes, we as followers of Jesus need to make that counter cultural choice to pray every day. Lord, make me a blessing.

And one thing I wanna add here, I wanna encourage us not to think of blessings that are just scattered out there, sort of random acts of kindness. I think we need to make the decision to be a blessing at home. We need to make the decision to be a blessing at school. We need to make the decision to be a blessing at work. We need to make the decision to be a blessing in that relationship. That one relationship, or maybe you got two, that are really a struggle.

Think of somebody in your life. Think of a relationship in your life, especially as we head into Thanksgiving this week. Think of somebody who may be around your table. And that relationship would benefit from you being a blessing. It could be a parent, a coworker, a sibling, a friend, anyone. But how can you be a blessing in that relationship? And pray the prayer, Lord, make me a blessing. I have a little insider secret for you. If you pray the prayer, Lord, make me a blessing, He will always say yes. That is a prayer 100% of the time, you will get a yes.

So let's live like Dorcas. Let's decide to be a blessing. But Dorcas did not just sit on her decision to be a blessing. She didn't just sit there and go, "Well, I'm gonna wait until my schedule opens up a little, or I'm gonna wait to have a little more money." No, she immediately put her decision into action, and that's point two for all of us: the practice. We need to actually live as a blessing.

We could decide to be a blessing all day and not do anything about it, but we've got to like Dorcas put feet to it. And most of us are nodding along. Yes, you're thinking, you know what Val? I could have actually written point two. That is not rocket science. But here's the thing. It may not be hard in theory, but when it comes to the practice to actually put feet to living as a blessing, it's hard. And there's things that stop us.

Some of the things that stop me are what I call the "I'm just." Well, I'm just one person. I'm just too old. I'm just too young. I'm just not having enough money in my bank account right now. I'm just. And I sideline myself. Or I get sidelined by the "yeah, buts." Well, yeah, but no one's doing this for me. Why am I gonna be a blessing? Or yeah, but I'm really tired. Or yeah, but the traffic's going the wrong direction right now, I don't wanna do that. And the list goes on.

Or I have fear. I have fear that if I live as a blessing, I'll be taken advantage of. And it's true, there are some bad actors out there who would love to take God's good truth and just manipulate it. You gotta use wisdom too. But I'm fearful that I'll be taken advantage of. I'm fearful that there won't be enough, that the scales of blessing won't balance. Guess what? They won't balance. Being a blessing is not about one for you, one for me. It's hard.

Or another fear I get is I think I have to do it all. Every need, every single thing I see, it's just, bless, bless, bless, bless, bless. I gotta bless. And that just seems exhausting to me. And I get overwhelmed and so I just stop.

Well, how did Dorcas do it? Let's go back to her story. We're in verse 37. It says, "About that time, she became sick and died. And her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. Lydda was near Joppa, so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, please come at once."

It's interesting to me that Dorcas's place in the church, beloved in her community, was such that they would send two people to Peter to say, please, please come. Peter went with them and when he arrived, he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.

Dorcas had died and the people were devastated. Peter arrives to more than just the polite social mourning of the day. He arrives to people who are grief-stricken, people who are grieving the loss of somebody who was such a blessing to them. And when Peter arrives, he doesn't necessarily hear fine speeches and eulogies. Peter arrives in an evidence room, an evidence room full of blessings. The proof of Dorcas' faith in God was not necessarily in her theology, it was in her tangible expressions of love in those blessings, and faith needs skin on it.

We absolutely need to be telling people about Jesus, but people need to do more than just hear about Jesus. They need to experience Him. We need to be Jesus with skin on for people. Dorcas uses her sewing needle to bless people. Some of you in this room, thinking of my friend Anna, does beautiful work with a sewing needle. I do not do any good work with a sewing needle. You may not either, but what is your sewing needle? What is that skill? It may just be the most simple skill. What is that skill that God has given you, blessed you with, so that you can be a blessing to others?

And don't you love that we can bless with something as simple as just a sewing needle. I sometimes fall prey to the lie that blessings must be grand, they must be big, they must be glorious gestures, and meanwhile, hundreds of little opportunities to be a blessing are just passing right by me. The reality, it honestly is, that living as a blessing means we are called, as Pastor Max Lucado says, to the ministry of the ordinary. We are called to the ministry of the ordinary. Don't just wait for the grand moments. Pick up that sewing needle, that skill that God has given you and just start living as a blessing.

One of the things I love deeply about this church is that I think this is in our DNA. To live as a blessing is who we are. I look around this room right now. I see Robert who has helped here for decades and decades. I see people who have taught in our Sunday school classes for years and years. I see Phil who plays in the band and has since he was a teenager basically volunteering his time here.

I wanna tell you about some other things I've seen lately. I have seen our Hub team, which is our college ministry, helping a woman in our church with a bad back move. I have seen sweet Lucy, look at this sweet girl, who of her own initiative made bracelets to thank the Twin Lakes Kids team and to thank the volunteers. I see people like Phillip who visits people in the hospital or Kathleen and Mike and Janet and Mark and Connie who meet with people in our church who are requesting help.

There's a dear couple in our church, George and Deanna, who are homebound a bit right now. But they're putting together, they don't let that stop them, they're putting together all 7,000 candles for the candlelight services next month. So much the food drive. I mean, have you seen the lobby? Could you even get through the lobby today? It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming to see how this church does things. Kaylee, who wrote the prayer for us to pray. TLC en Español is doing a Thanksgiving dinner for people. I mean, it's just overwhelming in the best possible way.

And most importantly to me, this is exactly how the Bible says the body of Christ is supposed to function. The body of Christ is not a staff. The church is described in the Bible as a body and just as in our physical bodies, every little part of us has a role to play, it's the same in the church. And God has gifted every one of us, every one in the sound of my voice has been gifted by God with a sewing needle, a skill, a gift, an experience, a passion that he wants you to use. He's blessed you with that so that you can bless others.

We don't have to do it all by ourselves. We're a body and every part matters. You may think, well, I'm just like the little toenail on the little toe in the body of Christ. Okay, have you ever lost a toenail? That toenail matters, I tell you.

You know, we're told again and again through scripture, live as a blessing, live as a blessing. In Hebrews 13, it says, "Through Jesus, therefore let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that openly profess his name, and do not forget to do good and share with others, for with such sacrifices, God is pleased." When we claim Jesus, we don't just stop at words of praise. We live lives of blessing that praise God as well.

I personally love and need the reminder found in Ephesians 4:29. "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful in building others up according to their needs that it may benefit, that it may bless those who listen." Heading into Thanksgiving week, you may wanna hang this verse up, I don't know who you're gonna be visiting with.

But I have to admit to you, there are times it's easier for me to act as a blessing. I am happy to do something for you. But sometimes my words and my actions do not sync up. And it's so important that we not only live as a blessing in action, but that we speak blessings out loud, that we say thank you, that we say things that build others up. And it's also so important that our internal dialogue matches. And that's hard, 'cause nobody hears what goes on up here, but the Bible says, "Out of the abundance of your heart, your mouth will speak." So they'll hear it eventually.

Look around, look around your Joppa. How can you be a blessing? How can you be a blessing in the places that God has put you this week and just in general in your life? You know, I pray, I genuinely pray every day of my life and have for years, Lord, make me a blessing. And it's still hard sometimes to live it out. And that's because, as Hebrews says, this will be a sacrifice. It will be a sacrifice of time. It will be a sacrifice of energy. It will be a sacrifice of money.

And when I get in the place of just thinking, oh, be a blessing, be a blessing, be a blessing. Don't be a bulldozer Val, don't be a bulldozer Val. It all can start to feel pretty heavy. I can start to be sapped of my energy and I can feel bitterness just start to creep over the hill and start to land.

If we are going to decide to be a blessing and then if we are going to endeavor to live lives that are a blessing, we must remember the final point. And this is the all important thing. If you go to Twin Lakes, you might be thinking, I feel like they say this a lot. We do, because this is the beginning and the middle and the end of everything we do here at Twin Lakes Church. In order to be a blessing, I must third, go to the source. I must rely on the source of all blessing. So important.

Listen, whether it's counting your blessings, being a blessing, or honestly, literally anything in your life, we must rely on Jesus. We must rely on Jesus. I mean, look at Dorcas in our story. Dorcas is dead, she cannot do anything anymore, but God was not done with her.

So we're going back to Acts chapter nine. It says in verse 40, "Peter sent them all out of the room, then he got down on his knees and prayed." He went to the source. "Turning toward the dead woman," he said, "Tabitha, get up." She opened her eyes and seeing Peter, she sat up. He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called for the believers, especially the widows, and presented her to them alive. This became known all over Joppa—I bet it did—and many people believed in the Lord.

And you may think, "Okay, nice, happy ending, love a happy ending in church, that's great, good. Good for Dorcas." But check out these words from Ephesians chapter one. It says, "I pray that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened, enlightened for this reason, in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you. The riches of his glorious inheritance and his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly realms."

You heard that right. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead. The same power that raised Dorcas from the dead is at work in you and me right now. That's the source. As I said in Friday's Devo, Romans 11 says, "For from him, through him, and for him are all things." I cannot say this enough. He is the source. He is the source of everything.

Remember the circle of gratitude that we talked about. Gratitude to God overflows into generosity, which leads to more gratitude in God. And this only happens though when we rely on Jesus. When I rely on myself, there is no circle of gratitude. There is a straight line of gratitude that ends in bitterness usually. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, burnout. That's how it goes when I rely on me. We must rely on the source.

If you are waiting, waiting for the pain to end. Maybe you're waiting for an answer to prayer. Maybe you're waiting to be thanked yourself. It's gonna be a wait. It's broken down here. That's why we need to rely on the source. We bless and live generously by faith. Faith in God. Faith in the source. And I do hope that you receive thanks along the way. We all do, but that's not our motivation. Our motivation comes from gratitude. Gratitude for the abundance.

And I know some of you don't feel like it's abundant right now. I know it's hard down here sometimes. It's just ridiculously expensive to live in this county. It can feel like there are almost no blessings and no abundance, but you have been abundantly blessed by God and we give out of the abundance that we have received, we give out of gratitude for what God has already provided, the ultimate blessing, His Son, Jesus Christ, God in flesh. And that is the truth, that is the source that we must, we must—you know what, that is the source we actually get to rely on. What's the source we get to rely on? What an overwhelming privilege.

There's a song that I sang a lot when I was younger. It's called "He Giveth More Grace," and I want you to just sit and soak in one of the verses of that song. It says, "When we have exhausted our store of endurance, when our strength has failed, ere the day is half done, and we have reached the end of our hoarded resources"—isn't that a great phrase? Our hoarded resources—"our Father's forgiving has only begun. His love has no limit. His grace has no measure. His power has no boundary known unto man. For out of the infinite riches in Jesus, He giveth and giveth and giveth again."

We do not have to cling. We do not have to hoard our blessings. We do not have to grasp at God for blessings. We can open our hands and we can be a blessing because we have been lavishly blessed with blessings without end. He giveth and giveth and giveth again. And with those blessings, it is my prayer that each one of us in our church as a community would be imitators of Jesus, that each one of us in our church together would walk in the footsteps of Dorcas, that we would choose to be a blessing. Let's pray together.

Father, thank you so much for the example of Dorcas in the Bible. Thank you that you not only bless Dorcas, but you have blessed every single person in the sound of my voice. God, thank you. Thank you for giving everyone in this room a sewing needle, a skill, a gift, a heart, a passion that they can use. And God, I pray that each person here would realize they have purpose. They have purpose that you have called them in a specific way to bless.

God, may we find that. May we rejoice in that purpose. And Lord, for the one who is struggling today, for the one who is just feeling overwhelmed by loss or pain or uncertainty, God, I pray that they would in a special way today experience your blessing, that they would see in something around them that you have your eye on them, that you have not forgotten them.

I pray for the person today, Lord, who's just feeling cynical about it all, thinking, yeah, it never works. I'll just get run over. God, may they find hope in you. May they find inspiration in the life of Dorcas and the others that they know around them who have chosen blessing. And for the person who's just feeling blah today and tired, God, may out of your abundance, may that same strength that raised Christ from the dead fill that person today.

God, we need you. We acknowledge we need you, the source of all blessing. We praise you for being our source. Thank you that we do not have to do this alone. Thank you that in your son Jesus, we have all that we need. We are so grateful in Jesus' name, amen.